[Feedback] Friendship Mission Story content situation and feedback

[Kira]

In the response to that the story content in friendship missions might be removed from the game completely, I have made some prototype pictures for how the story content in the friendship missions could be preserved in a good way and be easily accessible in the game.

This is what Polaris said:
“I know the writing is very popular, and the team really enjoys creating it, but it is an extremely large amount of time to research, write, edit, and get approval for the friendship dialogue and it’s become unsustainable. By reducing the quantity of writing, our plan is to focus on the quality of the story. The old missions are being removed, so there isn’t a clean way to keep that dialogue in the game and appearing on the wall”.

I think most people would be fine if PerBlue cut down on the amount of friendship missions, like to 3 or 4 story missions for each new character’s friendship after this instead of 8 per new friendship which would be 16 new mini stories per released character which has been the norm up until now.
And for the other part they say that they didn’t find a clean way to keep the dialog in the game and on the wall, so i thought why not show them ways the story content in friendship missions could be in the game in a good way.

The first 2 images here represent how you could setup the UI that takes you between the two types of missions:

While the actual final products doesn’t have to be exactly like this, I think these prototype ideas could be something and that way have a way to keep the story content in the friendship missions in the game.

I removed the rewards from the story mission picture as I assume in the new system we will only get them from the power missions as I called them. I also think that the story missions shouldn’t cost anything beside time if they don’t give back actual power increasing things, that way they can focus on story content.

As for the friendship story content in friendship missions I think something like this UI wise could be a workable and easy enough to implement even if it take some time to adjust everything.

The M stand for Main, as in the main friendship campaign.
The other letters represent the letter number mission wise.

In terms of implementation there are two ways I am assume.
The easiest maybe would be that the whole friendship has 1 wall and in terms of switching between the story content like in a hide and show content kind of way.
The other way would be to have 1 wall for each mission and friendship campaign if that makes the transitions more smooth and looking more professionally made. I imagine each way works, just have to find out what is the most efficient and works best.

These are the ideas for how PerBlue could preserve the story content in the friendship missions while implementing the new mission system. One mission system focusing on power and resources, the second mission system on stories.

So yeah, hope all of these ideas can help you all at PerBlue if possible and find a way to keep the story content in friendship mission in the game.
And yeah, what do you all players think of these ideas and suggestions, and it would also be interesting to hear what ideas you all have if you have any additional ideas for the friendship mission story preservation :-).

[Kira]

The main reason why I am making this post and trying to save the story in the friendship missions is due to that I think a relative majority of the players in the game are the kind of players that like story content and are playing the game for the story content, or would be more easily bored without the current amount of story content.

I think Disney Heroes main demographic is the Explorer type player, the player that enjoy discovering and learning new things.

I made a post about player types earlier so it should be relatively easy to read, as well as it show that a large amount of Disney Heroes players seem to Explorers or lean towards Explorer quite a lot.

Community fun: Player types

Hi, I thought it could be fun to ask what kind of player types people here are and share opinions between us how we go about the game and such. Happened to start some talk about player types in a private group chat where each of us saying what type we are, so thought it could be fun to expand it out into the forum itself so more people can join in if they are interested :-). The Player Types: Achievers: One who enjoys the competitive aspect and/or completionist aspect. Seeing their overall pow…

While the amount of players who commented there aren’t that big, it still might show that it is likely that many of the loyal players are the Explorer type players or lean towards Explorers even if their core player type is an another of the 4 player types.

Given that a relatively large amount of the majority of players might be the Explorer type of player I think removing the Friendship content in the Friendship Missions will likely negatively impact Disney Heroes’s health/income in the long run. The Explorer type of player can be pretty switchy, so if they are bored of a game like there being nothing new for them to discover in a relatively regular rate they are likely to switch to another game.

In order to find out if the majority here are likely Explorer type players I thought it could be a good idea to make a poll so that we have a more concrete number and see how many people here are interested in story content in general :-).

• Yeah, I am Explorer type of player and like story content in the game a lot.
• I am not an Explorer type of player, but I do enjoy the story content in the game.
• Not really interested in story personally.

The Explorers can be very loyal as long as they can easily access new content like story content, but if not they can be bored pretty quickly. I can say that in my own experience from having played Disney Sorcerer’s Arena that I got pretty quickly got bored of it and wanted to move on as no story content didn’t seem to come as when I first joined during the beta I thought story content would probably come eventually.

The friendship change mission wise should technically appeal to the Achiever type player as it allows them to more likely get more out of their time, though I think the Achiever type player are more likely intersted in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena as there the level cap isn’t increased so often and as such have more time to max their characters. The K!ller(PvP) type player are also more likely to prefer Disney Sorcerer’s Arena as it has live PvP, so I don’t think the friendship change in terms of removing the story content in terms of missions won’t help the game in the long turn.

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Beside while the Explorer type of player might not be the most likely to spend a lot of money on the game, they are they type of player that might help the type of players who are more likely to spend. The Explorer might just intend to help by telling the other player what characters are good, but indirectly they might make the other player more likely spend money on the game and become a loyal player. So investing in the Explorer type of players in return means more people’s that might turn other players into longer playing players at least even if not spending, so they are important to the ecosystem of the game on a financial level likely.

If wanting to monetize to the Explorer type of player I suggest story packs in a good DLC sense, like Mickey and Friends characters getting 3-5 extra missions each for each friendship between them. Another thing would be selling permanent feature unlocks like Power Craft, being able to equip all the badges at once on a character, VIP chat and other things that are support features. I don’t know how many Explorer type of players are interested in customization of this sort, but it could be an idea to have purchasable themed buildings/landscape, like selling different looks for how the icon buildings looks. The important thing is that the Explorer type of player doesn’t necessarily buy short term power, but rather long term things.

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So yeah, for the long term health/income of the game I think it would be good to implement ways to keep the Friendship Mission Story content in the game. Disney Heroes are a game that likely has attracted an demographic that loves story content as in the typical Explorer type of player or leaning toward the Explorer type of player, so keeping the Explorer type of player engaged I think would benefit the game in the long run.

I don’t know if my post will help, but I really do think the friendship mission story content should be in the game and I have showed examples in my post above how it could be done UI wise.
I want Disney Heroes to be a healthy game and be a fun place to be, so that’s why I want to help and write all this feedback :-).

[TherMasterStitch]

PerBlue should definitely keep the storyline. I was thinking of quitting the game since the game doesn’t work for me. Apparently there might be a fix soon but I wasn’t sure if I would continue playing even then. But then people pointed out I could get the Stitch characters’ friendships unlocked even faster with the new friendships update which made me want to play again. On the other hand though if the storylines are gonna be cut then that takes away some excitement.

[Pipsqueak]

These ideas are good, but the friendship rework has been in consideration & development for literally months & months - one would hope that PB wouldn’t have taken the decision to remove existing content lightly, and if it were this simple it would probably have been kept

Maybe if the friendship dialogue exists in the game files, someone can go through and make an archive of it.
(edit - i don’t think it does )

[Kira]

@TherMasterStitch
I am not 100% sure if you have gotten all the information in terms of how the friendship refresh changes the disks, since while we do get access to the disks faster we can only have a 1 star version of the disk until we get further in the Friend Campaign, so it may not be all that much faster in terms of actually getting to obtain fully star-ed disks.
However we will be able to preview disks we haven’t gotten yet which will be a good change.

But yeah, it is really sad that it looks like all the story content in the friendship missions are going to be removed, but yeah hopefully PerBlue can let us read all the friendship story content in some way.

@Pipsqueak I definitely see what you mean and I do think that the friendship refresh has been in the works for a long while and that it likely wasn’t an easy decision for them to decide that they were going to remove all the story content in the friendship mission from the game.
However my second post there is to highlight that it might be a worse idea in the long run if the removal of the friendship content cause players(Explorer kind of players) to get bored and move on earlier due to not having enough new content in a regular pace.

I am afraid of what the removal of the mission story content will have more negative effects in the long run than what we might be aware of now, especially since I as a player who is an Explorer kind of player I know myself pretty well and know how switchy I can be between games. Of course it could be that I overestimate the impact of the mission story content removal some, but still I can’t help being a bit worried given that story liking players are likely Disney Heroes biggest demographic whether or not they are mainly the Explorer type of player.

As for the friendship mission dialog and trying to extract it from the game’s files it worth a try, but yeah hard to say if it is possible right now before trying. We will see I suppose, but hopefully someone can try.

[Miss_Unicorn_XIX]

Speaking as a 100%, Explorer player, a lower number of stories is a compromise I would be willing to make. Perhaps the way unlocking new missions works without the level system could be that you unlock the next story automatically once the last one is complete, so you get B once you’re done with A and so on?

Or as a last resort, maybe higher level players could go through their friendship walls and save pictures of the story content so we’ll have as much of it as possible saved for posterity, then post it here on the forum like we suggested Perblue do.

[Kira]

Yeah, I think we all are fine with a lower amount of mission stories per character since now there are 16 friendship missions per character and 8 per friendship, which I can understand is a bit much. Halving as in from 8/16 to 4/8 story mission would be a good compromise, even 3/6 too though then I think all the nods should have stories like the old story missions have like Mickey and Goofy and not cut of in the middle like Donald and Scrooge and providing no satisfying ending usually or at least compared to before where it felt like a story with meaning.
And the idea in terms of having a level like system that makes it so that you have to complete the previous mission stories in order to unlock the next ones would be a pretty good idea I agree and such would well :-).

Even just keeping all the mission story content that’s in the game would have been better than removing it all, so that’s what I and many others are unhappy about, a reduction we can understand, a removal we don’t understand and I would say reduces the fun of Disney Heroes for those that like story content which are likely many of those who play.

I would maybe actually the last resort to a degree would be if we had to pay to get back the story missions. I would be willing to pay 60 dollars as that’s the price of a console AAA game, but yeah I don’t want to pay more than 60 dollars. That way it is at least an option to get the story missions back, even though I think 20 dollars would be kinder on people’s wallet and make the purchase of the story missions more accessible to buy back.

I at least hope the wish of keeping the mission story content in the game, even if it takes some time to program them back in, I do hope the mission story content will be a part of the game again after the friendship refresh :-).

[Jody_Caviness]

You’re being off-topic and abusive.

EDIT: I suppose I should specify, just to make sure there’s no confusion, that I’m referring to the two comments immediately above this one.

[Kira]

What? Not sure what is going on?

[Kira]

I have just been resting my eyes in terms of screens like PC and games more lately which is why I haven’t typed many long posts lately.

I do have some feedback posts in mind and I have read other people’s friendship system refresh feedback, so will probably post in a few days.

[Serenity]

How so? Just by stating that the story isn’t important in light of the recent changes to frienships? This is an open forum. I can state my opinion why I think the story isn’t an important part of said game feature, can’t I?

Who are you to judge? You are the forum police now? Just because we clashed on an onther thread you are flagging my matter-of-factly critisism to the new friendship system? Please restrain yourself with your emotional reaction. Just because I don’t agree with @Kira 's assessment doesn’t mean I don’t respect her opinion.

[Kira]

I assume the two accounts are by the same person, so I guess I reply to your newest comment.

Player types if wanting to check it:

Community fun: Player types

Hi, I thought it could be fun to ask what kind of player types people here are and share opinions between us how we go about the game and such. Happened to start some talk about player types in a private group chat where each of us saying what type we are, so thought it could be fun to expand it out into the forum itself so more people can join in if they are interested :-). The Player Types: Achievers: One who enjoys the competitive aspect and/or completionist aspect. Seeing their overall pow…

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First of all, by your comment I think I can probably tell that you are either an Achiever or K!ller(PvPer) type of player and that’s okey :-). I am not sure what you like the most, but that what you like in games are different from my preferences are of course okey and understandable if you are another type of player.

I am the Explorer type of player, the player type that generally are most likely type to like story content, and for me the mission story content were valuable and liked them a lot :-).
I can say that after the friendship system change the game overall for me are feeling like it is falling a bit apart interest wise for me, just feel like the new mission system is a RPG reward treadmill without any heart as in like being engaging to me.

We are all have our own preferences, so yeah I hope you enjoy Disney Heroes and can play the way you want to play and have fun while playing :-).

[Serenity]

My biggest problem with those dialogues is that they are not characteristic for the heroes. They just seem random and don’t reflect the typical funny traits each hero has in his specific role. They don’t feel genuine.

If a game developer don’t care to give them a meaningful story true to their characters why bother at all? If you are reading those exchanges they feel forced and not very funny at all.

[Kira]

That’s a completely different kind of issue and yeah, some of the writing could probably be better, but I am just happy to at least have some story content in the game :-).

I think the older Mission stories were more true to the characters, the ones that had filled out all the 5 stages of the missions like Mickey Mouse and Jack Skellington’s missions.
The newer missions however have been of less quality yeah, as in that now they only complete up to the third stage and not all up 5 of the stages, like Donald Duck and Scrooge’s missions.
Though, the worst example of story reduction of the newer ones I have noticed would be of Tron and Kevin Flynn as that had no actual mission story at all in it as far as I noticed beside the intro story you can read at the mission info.

So yeah, overall PerBlue were scaling down their focus on story content which I think is really sad and unfortunate u_u. Now all the mission story content is gone beside the story intro text, which just makes me sad as I know now I may never be able to actually getting to read those stories.

[Kira]

I guess how to best quickly describe how I feel about the new friendship refresh and the new mission system, would be like getting a pizza without any topping on it, just the base and not really much more compared to what I were used to before.

[Serenity]

Exactly, I couldn’t agree more. If friendships were a meaningful feature I would expect to have the two involved heroes an animated sequence at the end like a victory dance or at least a high five of some sort. Or something artistically completely different.
For me after starting this game in March 2018 on beta server it’s like it has become a chore for the art team to work with those iconic characters.
That’s why I don’t bother. The whole game has been streamlined into a money making machine.
Everything left and right from this goal has become unimportant. I digress, but I loved the season end war poster. So this was building inside of me, this feeling they don’t give much for players to enjoy the game beyond game play and purchasing deals.

[Kira]

While I for sure wouldn’t mind animated sequences I think that might be a bit much to ask for or they may need to hire more people to make it possible to do the extra work load.
What I do think could be possible and not all that hard would be if PerBlue more often used different emotion states as most are just in their default state emoting wise, or at least not many ones beside the oldest characters that are having different emotion variation in the mission stories and dialogue sequences overall. The other emotions could be taken from their other animations like the older characters has. I know at least Ralph has 3 emotions, fight ready, scared and happy/positive.

If you mean like development fatigue or something like that I don’t know, but I imagine corona has impacted things lately and why we get slightly fewer things now. Might be partly why for example Tron and Kevin Flynn had mission story at all in the first story mission at least beside the intro text story wise.

If they actually want money I would actually be up for paying for story content.
If takes me 60 dollars like an AAA console game to buy back the mission story content I would buy it. Technically preferable if the 60 dollar pack included additional story and such, like actually filling in some of the story content, but yeah I would definitely be up for spending money to get the mission story content back.
Overall I would be up for paying for story content and such, I just don’t buy microtransactions as in temporary power.

And for the War poster, I definitely agree, it would be super fun to have the War posters back again as they were and are really cool :-). I think it was maybe due to an artist leaving or switching focus why they stopped making the War posters.

PerBlue has at least been better about Quality of Life features lately like the shop updates which has been really helpful in my view, so they have at least been a bit better at the Quality of Life front improvements lately :-).