Best Of

At least there wasn't a joke about TBs running around with 7R4s....

Dear crashed

Love the transperancy. W post.

I never got the 8 t4 alpha catalyst that I claimed either

They will increase the price only on your account.

So for right now the dedicated videos are on a pause, however Vin_Cent has his own special channel in the Discord also called Lore Corner where he shares all kinds of helpful (and questionably helpful) facts about the lore of The Contest. Well worth checking out!

It looks like they nerfed her regen though, which was a highlight of the pre-buff version. I wished they didn't nerf it, otherwise she'd be a good counter to stuff like Thorns from Attuma

Here, Lagacy points it out and even gives an example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1_KzpXSH8s

There are so many things about this post that I love, thank you Crashed and team. This in combination with the information we were given on stream is just utterly amazing.

Apologies, but I want to break this down and address.

This post isn’t about trying to convince anybody to do anything. When the event launches you can all decide for yourselves if you want to participate or not. This post is simply to outline design changes we have made and further explain why we made them.

I really hope this section right here resonates with the community and lingers. This is exactly what we've been begging from Kabam for so long. A "pre-mortem" like this is providing us with a level of transparency and knowledge, immediately prior to a "major spending event", that helps people set and manage expectations. It helps us plan, this is massive.

Progression Catalyst Fragments - Last year the Banquet crystal ended up being imbalanced because we thought it felt bad to pull lower tier catalysts from the crystal. This year, we have separated T6B, T3A and T5CC from the Main Prize. This allows us to balance the catalysts required for 7-star champions without players getting these lower catalysts from the Main Prize drops. (Note from Mike - I wrote T6CC instead of T5CC on the Livestream Slide for the Progression Catalyst Fragments under bucket 2. T5CC is correct.)

Thank you for this. The balance of the crystal drops last year was so off balance, I do believe this will go a long way in providing that additional need.

Second, we wanted to create a more consistent experience with exciting rewards for more Summoners. To facilitate this, we have created a new Jubilant Crystal, which contains the most exciting stuff we have to offer. It has a 7.77% chance of dropping from every SBC, but critically, to achieve our goals, the SBC is set up to work with the Grandmaster’s Grace system. Summoners will be guaranteed one Jubilant Crystal for every 15 SBCs they open. The Jubilant Crystal includes only a single drop and does not grant any points in the event.

Huge W. Love seeing the Grace system show up here, that is such a tremendous yet soft guarantee of "consistent" value. Consistent being in quotes because it's clearly still RNG but the assurance of it's existence provides something that previously never existed.

Ranked Rewards Design

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Similar to Solo, we’ve added much more granularity to the ranks. Last year’s event had reward buckets to top 10, then it jumped to top 5%. This year has buckets all the way to the top 200, then 1%, 3% and 5% buckets.

Going to address this section as a whole rather than quote each part. Big W and a very necessary change. This is exactly what should be addressed and I say this comfortably as someone who knows they won't likely be in the top 30 but will still spend far more than most.

The value this actually allows you to spread out and provide to lower tiers should absolutely be felt and the Alliance aspect is just an added layer. More value to solo, across all ranks and more incentive for people to push individual ranks means more opportunity for Alliances as a whole to benefit from increased granularity within the Alliance reward ranks.

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TL;DR: Based off this post and the live stream info, I'd say I'm optimistic of two things happening this year simultaneously rather than combatively: Kabam hitting their banquet goal, and the community being satisfied with the results.

Certainly much more optimistic of this than I was when I was heading to Vancouver.

Thanks for the info Crashed. Can't wait to see what's next.