**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

Upcoming Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw Balance Changes

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Comments

  • Justin2524Justin2524 Posts: 1,626 ★★★★
    Ace_22 said:

    This basically say's that you should not rank up new champions. What is the incentive to buy crystals and grind the arena for new champions. So that we can get them based on their release evaluation from lucky crystal winners, as well as your content creator program, and then have them "balanced" after you spent hard earned resources. Tune the weaker champions up not dial back the strong ones. Is the player base's wallet and time the Alpha test now?

    How is this news? Kabam said they'd do this months in advance. Are people still grinding for Black Widow Clairevoyant? The Arena score speaks for itself.

    If you stop grinding for the champ, there'll be plenty of others who will.
  • LormifLormif Posts: 7,369 ★★★★★

    Lormif said:

    Dizzy said:

    Not a Cull player. Just saying that it's a little shady that Kabam told us explicitly that this would only impact champions not in the basic, but then would go back and adjust three champs in the basic.

    I'm fine waiting on ranking up a champion to R5 until he/she enters the basic. It's tedious, but if I'm really terrified they'll get nerfed I'll wait. I'm not fine waiting forever because I'll never know when a champion is "safe" to rank up.

    Can you point to where they said it would not affect those in basic? I am pretty sure you are taking their statement out of context.
    Are you a lawyer or a salesman? Instead of defending Kabam’s stance (or anyone’s), whether it be accepted or not, why don’t you offer your own opinions about it? Add some insight and engaging approaches to it. Contribute to the discourse instead of merely being a sharpshooter aiming to poke holes in endless forum posts. Engage. Inject something interesting into the conversation instead of being the contradiction police.
    I am a logician. I am adding insight and contributing towards discourse, you just dont like that I am correcting people, particularly on your side. I am not particularly defending kabam, but countering an argument.

    You do realize discussions are all about being contradictory right?
  • Scopeotoe987Scopeotoe987 Posts: 1,546 ★★★★★
    I honestly don’t see why this needs to happen and I will give my reasons why:
    1.) Didn’t this happen before, but no action was ever took?
    Remember Red Skull in 2018 and in early Diablo? They were ignored and put to rest on the shelf forever until the possibility of the update occurs, and just a month before Red Skull we got Domino, someone who can tik 17k worth of damage, and can 12 shot ROL Winters Soilder. Then there was Havok after Diablo, he’s very strong. Unavoidable damage and doesn’t have to be awanked. So why has action not been taken to these champs but Cull has to be hit by this.
    2.) False Advertising?
    This is something that is true in this current situation, we were shown videos of his beta and after about just how powerful he truly is. So like any reasonable person I went for him in the crystals, (or Arena but I never have that amount of time) and get him in a pop of two, I awanked him, spent 3 tfcc on him trying to get the most I could from him. But back to the point he was advertised this way. Strong, Powerful, Unstoppable, and unlike Domino And Havok. You have to work for it, and pour signature stones to get him stronger. So why did you not change him when he was in beta if you were thinking about this?
    3.) Rank Down Tickets Possible Depending The Magnitude?
    As I point out in the title it’s obvious that you have to give us the dreaded item; RDT. Also if it’s a completely new signature and ability I personally would like every resource I spent given back to me. I can’t talk on the half of the people who ranked 5 Cull Obsidian as a 5 star, brave souls. This is just a maybe, because if him and Ebony switch positions on the good and terrible scale then people won’t be happy.
    4. ) End
    Those are my personal feelings on this matter, this is not meant to be rude but constructive criticism, I’m sorry if I pushed I just hope he’s not changed to much. He was my very first featured champ to ever get throughout the 3 and a half years I’ve played.
  • SDPSDP Posts: 1,622 ★★★★

    I propose a challenge to Kabam’s “data”:

    We pick a certain number of random paths in Act 6. We have 10-15 minutes to get as far as we can along each path.

    Kabam, you can use 5/65 Cull.

    I will only use 4/55 champions of my choosing. I’ll go even one further. I’ll beat you with at least 10 different champs.

    Put your DATA where you’re mouth is.

    Act 6 is not the only content the game has to offer so it's not a fair representation. They must have looked at all the games' data not only just Act 6.
    I offer the same challenge in every piece of content available. Hell, we do all of them. That should give us some actual data that people can see.
  • Bear3Bear3 Posts: 996 ★★★
    Insane. They know how much people spent on cull crystals, arenas, featured crystals, rank up materials, sig and awakening stones/gems. He was only good BECAUSE he was the top damage dealer in the game. He’s not worth using at all otherwise. Wanna make him double immune with high block prof? Ok sure take his damage down a bit. That’s the only reason people ranked him! Nobody ranked him for armor breaks! Nobody ranked him for an evade counter after 5 charges!😂😂. Seriously!!! You waited right until the 2 sets of crystals were done.. both arenas were done.. and his featured was about to end to make a change on something that’s been WELL known for many months!!! This was a purposeful move to ensure the money got spent first before the nerf. No way you’d have done this before his cavalier crystals were released. No way. Please send rank down tickets right away. We’ll decide whether we want to keep him or rank him down.... you know since we’ll “still love him” according to you, there’s no danger in sending the rank down tickets. What a joke.

    🐻
  • DrZola said:

    I firmly believe all of this could have been avoided...with testing. Substantive, meaningful testing by people who actually play the game at a high level. I suspect the Cull issue is how he operates in the hands of a very good player...much like She-Hulk.

    I don't think so. Game developers rarely balance purely because of what a few people can do. They care more about averages. It doesn't really worry a developer much if one guy can destroy all the content with a champ. What worries a developer more is if everyone does everything 40% faster with that one champ.

    Of course even when you look at averages, you tend to contextualize. In other words, you look at the average level 30 player, the average level 60 player, the average UC player, the average Cav player, etc. You look at Act 4 performance, Act 5 performance, Act 6 performance. AQ and AW performance.

    One thing I don't really have a good idea about in this case is whether this is a normalized performance issue or a cumulative performance issue. In other words, is Cull dealing much more damage much faster in combat per fight, or is he responsible for more of the damage being dealt by players overall. The first one is a measure of how good Cull is. The second one is a measure of how good players think Cull is. The better players think he is, the more often they use him, the higher his raw output will be.

    Players are going to have preferences: Blade, Iceman, Domino, Ghost for example. The game has to allow a certain amount of high verses low preference. But it is possible Cull far exceeded the maximum allowed guardrail for that number.

    I think we presume that most players are far more skilled than they actually are. When the forum consensus is that Ghost is great, that gets filtered down to the average player, who then uses Ghost because she's supposed to be great. But Ghost requires special skills and understanding to make work, and I suspect only one player in five can actually do that. So while some players excel, many others actually do worse than average when they try to use her, which makes her average overall performance much lower than we'd otherwise expect. It is possible that Cull's problem is this isn't true for him: when the average player hears Cull is good and starts using him a lot, they can actually unlock a lot more of his ramp up strength and thus Cull is great for the top players, but also pretty good for the average players. And since there are a hundred average players for every top player, it is what they do that matters more.

    Cull seemed to me to be a bit of a glass cannon, which I thought might insulate him from nerfs. But it is possible that is an error, and in reality the average player gets more mileage out of him with minimal additional risk, and that's a bigger nerf threat than what the top players can do.
  • PlantesanPlantesan Posts: 335 ★★

    I see a bunch of Cull players unwilling to compromise for the good of the game. Game balance is a good thing. The youtubers make content for views so they try to give you what you want to hear and see. They pander to your glutinous greed and typically leave honour, decency, and reason at the wayside. This is an echo chamber where you reinforce your misguided belief through confirmation bias. Cull needs to be nerfed if you value the overall health of the game your playing. Yes it’s good for Kabam to have a healthy game. It’s also good for you. Eat your vegetables!

    This game has been considered healthy? Didn’t know such a concept existed...

    At this point we seem to be better off waiting half a year to see what they do to champs before making rank up decisions.

    I am curious at what point did they start collecting data, because didn’t they have an adjustment on him already? Seems kinda silly to do another one

  • Justin2524Justin2524 Posts: 1,626 ★★★★
    Ricki said:

    This is hugely frustrating. Cull is barely useable now, considering his terrible defence and rank up mechanism. Another nerf. Does bring into question what is the point of trying to obtain new champs.

    Cull is barely useable now? Compare to whom? He's still easily in the top 10% of all champs.

  • TheTalentsTheTalents Posts: 2,254 ★★★★★
    VOLK1902 said:

    WingTSE said:

    Why not just make champs that can counter balance those champs rather than constantly nerfing champs?

    When you have a Champion that wildly outdamages other Champions, and we start making content to counter that specific Champion, this harshly punishes every other Champion in game, and every Summoner that does not have that Champion.
    Should i remind you that you already did that with Ghost and Corvus by adding Mr.Sinister?
    Don't forget Ebony Maw who render Ghost and Corvus useless.
  • LormifLormif Posts: 7,369 ★★★★★
    Gkohler said:

    The whole retuning idea is wrong. Test your champs properly before releasing.

    I spent a ton of real life money on obtaining Cull. And that was based solely on his damage. I’ve ranked up all the way up to R5 and use him often. How fair is it to change anything at any time just because a champ is too good? That changes everything with this game. New champ comes out and does insane damage, but now there’s most likely a chance that character will be nerfed. What’s the point in trying to obtain a champ when that champ will most likely be changed in months time? Totally unfair.

    Lets give an example
    Champ a does 20k damage
    Champ b does 22k damage
    Champ c does 19k damage
    Champ d does 40k damage.

    There is obviously an issue with champ d. It does not mean there is an issue with being the top damage dealer, but that d's damage is way out of control. It means they have to design fights specifically with him in mind, similar to blades danger sense. This weakens the value of all other champs because they can no longer compete, and now everyone has to have cull to clear content.
  • LormifLormif Posts: 7,369 ★★★★★

    Lormif said:

    Lormif said:

    Dizzy said:

    Not a Cull player. Just saying that it's a little shady that Kabam told us explicitly that this would only impact champions not in the basic, but then would go back and adjust three champs in the basic.

    I'm fine waiting on ranking up a champion to R5 until he/she enters the basic. It's tedious, but if I'm really terrified they'll get nerfed I'll wait. I'm not fine waiting forever because I'll never know when a champion is "safe" to rank up.

    Can you point to where they said it would not affect those in basic? I am pretty sure you are taking their statement out of context.
    Are you a lawyer or a salesman? Instead of defending Kabam’s stance (or anyone’s), whether it be accepted or not, why don’t you offer your own opinions about it? Add some insight and engaging approaches to it. Contribute to the discourse instead of merely being a sharpshooter aiming to poke holes in endless forum posts. Engage. Inject something interesting into the conversation instead of being the contradiction police.
    I am a logician. I am adding insight and contributing towards discourse, you just dont like that I am correcting people, particularly on your side. I am not particularly defending kabam, but countering an argument.

    You do realize discussions are all about being contradictory right?
    They’re not all inherently contradictory. Many involve that to some degree of course. That’s how truth is found. That description would more easily apply to a debate. There is a distinction here.

    To clarify, I have no problem with correcting people engaged in discussion with you. I love bashing opposing views together with intelligent people.

    One thing I don’t do is just snipe trivial errors in people’s logic without offering anything if my own in a constructive manner. You think you are intelligent, and you likely are to some degree. I’d rather enjoy an actual discussion with you, but you seem to frequently just get off on proving people wrong regardless of the topic at hand.

    You seem to have what I call a “small victory fetish”.

    Just an observation from the threads I’ve seen you in, which is not a lot.

    So I must ask, do you honestly believe that taking someones statement so far out of context that it loses all meaning "trivial errors in people's logic"? Claiming someone said something they did not say is such a large error in logic it has its on fallacy named after it.
  • TheTalentsTheTalents Posts: 2,254 ★★★★★

    I’m not taking any champ beyond 3/45 until the 3 month report comes out from now on. Don’t want to rank a champ the. Be disappointed after that.

    It's actually 6 months. They warn you 3 months ahead of time than you have to wait 3 more months to find out the specific changes. Just like with Cull. They didn't tell us the update they're doing in its entirety.
  • LormifLormif Posts: 7,369 ★★★★★

    Lormif said:

    Gkohler said:

    The whole retuning idea is wrong. Test your champs properly before releasing.

    I spent a ton of real life money on obtaining Cull. And that was based solely on his damage. I’ve ranked up all the way up to R5 and use him often. How fair is it to change anything at any time just because a champ is too good? That changes everything with this game. New champ comes out and does insane damage, but now there’s most likely a chance that character will be nerfed. What’s the point in trying to obtain a champ when that champ will most likely be changed in months time? Totally unfair.

    Lets give an example
    Champ a does 20k damage
    Champ b does 22k damage
    Champ c does 19k damage
    Champ d does 40k damage.

    There is obviously an issue with champ d. It does not mean there is an issue with being the top damage dealer, but that d's damage is way out of control. It means they have to design fights specifically with him in mind, similar to blades danger sense. This weakens the value of all other champs because they can no longer compete, and now everyone has to have cull to clear content.
    Champ d does 5k damage in fight 1 all other champs do that damage regardless there isn’t an issue
    They cannot just look at that one fight, they have to look at it all.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★

    I’m not taking any champ beyond 3/45 until the 3 month report comes out from now on. Don’t want to rank a champ the. Be disappointed after that.

    It's actually 6 months. They warn you 3 months ahead of time than you have to wait 3 more months to find out the specific changes. Just like with Cull. They didn't tell us the update they're doing in its entirety.
    That's because they don't know. They're letting us know ahead of the rework for that transparency everyone keeps asking for.
  • DshuDshu Posts: 1,503 ★★★★

    Hey all,

    I know there will be a lot of questions about Rank Down Tickets and Compensation for changes, and there already are some. As a reminder, we did say that we will approach these on a case by case basis, and will not be able to make any comments on this yet, because we don't know what Cull's balance pass will look like at all yet.

    Also, remember that these changes are restricted to Tuning updates, and are will not change any abilities or utility. Our intention is that if you love your Champion now, you should still love them after.

    What the player base would really love is to be able to keep the champion they spent money or units on in early release crystals or grinded days for in arenas. While improvements to champs to make them more relevant are greatly welcomed, changes 3 months later after you have reaped the rewards of selling these overhyped champs is extremely frustrating and hurtful to the player base. Sure you can offer the occasional rankdown ticket but that only returns in game rankup resources not time or currency spent to get said champ. I can't and wont speak for the whole player base but for my gaming experience I'd rather see champs developed and tuned prior to release or released with slightly lower power/utility and buffed as needed in these "tuning " reworks. You have content creators testing these champs and I would assume in house testers. Test and tune your new champs before release. Lower the power as needed before release. If you go too far the player base has shown they prefer buffs to champs to "tuning " nerfs. I've always hated rankdown tickets and buffs to champs would never create an outcry for them. Please just give us the champs we are paying for not tuned down versions of them and an apology.
  • Bear3Bear3 Posts: 996 ★★★
    People bought deals to get him awakened.. I bought sig stone deals to increase his sig level. This is crazy. Literally waited till all the money came in for cull and now you drop a nerf? Shady as can be. Do the right thing. Return minimum peoples materials through rank down tickets and should return awakening gems and sig stones as well. Honestly should be issuing refunds on top... at bare minimum should return peoples resources.

    🐻
  • Plantesan said:

    I am curious at what point did they start collecting data, because didn’t they have an adjustment on him already? Seems kinda silly to do another one

    The game constantly records data. The problem with datamining champion performance is that initially the performance of every champion is skewed by the fact that very few players have them, and the players that do tend to skew higher in skill than average. They aren't completely representative of the playerbase. Conversely, they are also less experienced with the champs, and there's less meta-information about the champs floating around.

    Over time as more players get and rank champions up and start using them, the breadth of the players who have the champ becomes more representative of the whole playerbase, and the overall performance of the champ tends to rise as both the skilled players get more practice with them, and things like guides and videos and friend-of-a-friend experience filters down to the rest of the players.

    Given how crystals work, it could be three to six months or more before you get a rough representative sample of players using a champ, and six months to a year before the champ's full potential actually shows up in the data when the majority of players using them have a better understanding of the champ.

    To put this another way, everyone seems to be assuming that the "data" being collected is about the champion, so all it takes is one person playing the champ to show what the champ can do. But the data being collected is not about the champ. The data being collected is actually about *us* and how we do when we have the champ. Champs are balanced not based on how good they are, but on how good we are when we play them. It is the combination of champion and player that is being judged, across all the players playing the game.
This discussion has been closed.