Game Design - How many have Kabam got right?
harshraj2000
Member Posts: 43 ★
This is my first discussion I am posting here and it is going to be very long one. I apologize if this entire discussion seems too technical or boring. Any feedback and criticism would be appreciated.
This is going to be an analysis on what Kabam has done right with this game (with respect to game mechanics, character design and so on). If not, what could be done instead.
First of all before we begin, I think it is best to acknowledge the creative effort taken by Kabam in making this game for 4 years since its inception (5 years on December 17th, I think?). As a guy who dabbles into software development on the side, I can appreciate how Kabam puts in tremendous effort in creating new game mechanics, calibrating them to balance "meta" of the game (We will talk more about those in a second) and most of all, making the game more fun. After all, who doesn't love smacking Realm Of Legends Winter Soldier/Wolverine with the newest brand new champion introduced to the game. Also, huge props to the entire Support team (including @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Porthos @Kabam Zibiit among many others) of these forums who read through these discussions, suggestions and complaints (Which I am sure, you guys have good experience with. Special mention to @Kabam Miike and his Cyclops (Who is still unquestionably, the "best alliance war attacker in the game" ) who despite all the memes and hate mail he gets (not saying I do that) does a really fine job on these forums on providing information on bugs, issues and questions as soon as possible, which takes some serious dedication to do. So, Kudos to him (I feel that he doesn't get enough appreciation for what he does for the player-base).
So, I do believe that Kabam must have something obviously right with some of its game design so have to such long lasting impact that people still come and play this game (And, no it is not micro-transactions. We can talk about that in some other discussion). I think it is due to the nature of the game, having a low bar of entry but a high bar to master . Things like basic combos, special attacks and heavy attacks among other core game mechanics are simple enough to be picked up by casual gamers, but some other stuff like deep evades, dash cancel (also known by the community as an intercept), parry are bit more harder to grasp, making for a fun and entertaining challenges for the people who strive for a challenge.
Skill based challenges in games are usually one of the prime reasons why games last so long. I think that Kabam has done an OK job at this (Not too great, but not bad either (for example - The Nameless Thanos boss this May was high skill based boss)). I won't go too deep into this, mainly because @DNA3000 has explained this far better than I could personally hope to achieve (See that in here ).
One of the main issues I find with this game is character balancing. Now, I am aware that the game has over 140+ characters and it is definitely not an easy task to do. But, a good balance leads to better game experiences and more profits being generated as a result of that good experience. One such example of this is/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62703886/article_image_brawlstars_1.0.jpg)
This particular game was launched globally this year and has seen a surge of player interests. One of the main reasons of that is probably the way all characters are mostly balanced in it. Players over there can choose whatever character they want and just roll with it, as the game team over there constantly balances the characters every month for fine tuning the experiences with each character. Now, I am not implying that Kabam hasn't put in any sort of effort into champion balance (They are really trying hard, in my opinion) otherwise they wouldn't have put in efforts to rework Luke Cage, Sentry, Venom among many others. However, due to massive shift in the "meta" of the game (mainly due to a shift of perspectives on game design from 2017-18 onwards, starting with patch 12.0 (which turned out to be better for the game)). But the problem now is that there's lot more people have older champions in the game (particularly from the inception of this game to around early 2016) that don't accomplish much or have very few abilities compared to the new champions released in the past 10 months that have twice or thrice the number of abilities than the older champions from 2014 had (which is good progress). But that leads to many people having champions which doesn't accomplish much for them and hence, they grind arenas for the newer ones or burn out crystals to max them out (the new champions) (which is not bad). However, this leads to a problem if the newer champions are over-tuned or under-tuned . This is one of the prime reasons, I think that lots of people were upset (to say the least) when the announcement of a Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw balance changes came in.
This is a major problem and leads to people feeling dissatisfied when they find their efforts of either grinding or spending in vain and won't likely spend in the game, which leads to creating dis-trust in the game developers (aka Kabam) and hence reduces the support and profits for the game. While, I don't have a good solution to this problem (as I am not a game developer myself), a suggestion from my side would be to hold down the balance changes on the newer champions who are over-performing than from the desired expectations down for some time and focus on the balance changes of under-performing newer champions and reworking older champions to match today's standards after updating probably around 65% champions released before early 2017, probably start re-balancing the champions who were over-performing. This would probably help you (aka MCOC game team and Kabam) to gain the trust of the player-base and create a good experience for everyone. (I already did submit a huge document (probably, around 150+ pages worth) on my thoughts and ideas here on re-working older champions. Direct link to the document - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cDkOUqkjjKeXtVfD112dgY85Iwk6WRNP/view)
Also, I would like commend @Bodhizen @Whododo872 @Magrailothos @Thi101 and many others on that thread who have put up really fascinating reworks on older champions that game designers and the forum team would sure love to read and experiment about. (Probably, call these people on board on beta testing some of the older champions when re-worked. It can also help generate more support and trust for the development team).
Also, I think we can all agree that the art and animation team for this game are killing it, especially this year and I believe that this game has most dynamic and awe-inspiring visuals out of all the games in the mobile department. My personal favorite -
Finally, with respect to in-game rewards. I think Kabam has done really good job on amp-ing up the rewards for beginners by adding progression based daily and free crystals, summoners's journey rewards and many more. I hope that Kabam balances out the rewards for the higher tiers (which I think they will) and the end-game community with respect to stuff like quest crystals (probably, make them similar in reward increase like the daily and free crystals) and War Victor crystals.
Personally, I think that Kabam outdid themselves in game design this year, except for a few major issues which are lingering effects of previous patches which is difficult to fix. Now, I would like to hear from the player-base, MCOC YouTube community, MCOC podcasts and hopefully, Kabam themselves what they about think about the analysis and share there views here. A good discussion on this topic can only lead to a better game experience for everyone.
This is going to be an analysis on what Kabam has done right with this game (with respect to game mechanics, character design and so on). If not, what could be done instead.
First of all before we begin, I think it is best to acknowledge the creative effort taken by Kabam in making this game for 4 years since its inception (5 years on December 17th, I think?). As a guy who dabbles into software development on the side, I can appreciate how Kabam puts in tremendous effort in creating new game mechanics, calibrating them to balance "meta" of the game (We will talk more about those in a second) and most of all, making the game more fun. After all, who doesn't love smacking Realm Of Legends Winter Soldier/Wolverine with the newest brand new champion introduced to the game. Also, huge props to the entire Support team (including @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Porthos @Kabam Zibiit among many others) of these forums who read through these discussions, suggestions and complaints (Which I am sure, you guys have good experience with. Special mention to @Kabam Miike and his Cyclops (Who is still unquestionably, the "best alliance war attacker in the game" ) who despite all the memes and hate mail he gets (not saying I do that) does a really fine job on these forums on providing information on bugs, issues and questions as soon as possible, which takes some serious dedication to do. So, Kudos to him (I feel that he doesn't get enough appreciation for what he does for the player-base).
So, I do believe that Kabam must have something obviously right with some of its game design so have to such long lasting impact that people still come and play this game (And, no it is not micro-transactions. We can talk about that in some other discussion). I think it is due to the nature of the game, having a low bar of entry but a high bar to master . Things like basic combos, special attacks and heavy attacks among other core game mechanics are simple enough to be picked up by casual gamers, but some other stuff like deep evades, dash cancel (also known by the community as an intercept), parry are bit more harder to grasp, making for a fun and entertaining challenges for the people who strive for a challenge.
Skill based challenges in games are usually one of the prime reasons why games last so long. I think that Kabam has done an OK job at this (Not too great, but not bad either (for example - The Nameless Thanos boss this May was high skill based boss)). I won't go too deep into this, mainly because @DNA3000 has explained this far better than I could personally hope to achieve (See that in here ).
One of the main issues I find with this game is character balancing. Now, I am aware that the game has over 140+ characters and it is definitely not an easy task to do. But, a good balance leads to better game experiences and more profits being generated as a result of that good experience. One such example of this is
This particular game was launched globally this year and has seen a surge of player interests. One of the main reasons of that is probably the way all characters are mostly balanced in it. Players over there can choose whatever character they want and just roll with it, as the game team over there constantly balances the characters every month for fine tuning the experiences with each character. Now, I am not implying that Kabam hasn't put in any sort of effort into champion balance (They are really trying hard, in my opinion) otherwise they wouldn't have put in efforts to rework Luke Cage, Sentry, Venom among many others. However, due to massive shift in the "meta" of the game (mainly due to a shift of perspectives on game design from 2017-18 onwards, starting with patch 12.0 (which turned out to be better for the game)). But the problem now is that there's lot more people have older champions in the game (particularly from the inception of this game to around early 2016) that don't accomplish much or have very few abilities compared to the new champions released in the past 10 months that have twice or thrice the number of abilities than the older champions from 2014 had (which is good progress). But that leads to many people having champions which doesn't accomplish much for them and hence, they grind arenas for the newer ones or burn out crystals to max them out (the new champions) (which is not bad). However, this leads to a problem if the newer champions are over-tuned or under-tuned . This is one of the prime reasons, I think that lots of people were upset (to say the least) when the announcement of a Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw balance changes came in.
This is a major problem and leads to people feeling dissatisfied when they find their efforts of either grinding or spending in vain and won't likely spend in the game, which leads to creating dis-trust in the game developers (aka Kabam) and hence reduces the support and profits for the game. While, I don't have a good solution to this problem (as I am not a game developer myself), a suggestion from my side would be to hold down the balance changes on the newer champions who are over-performing than from the desired expectations down for some time and focus on the balance changes of under-performing newer champions and reworking older champions to match today's standards after updating probably around 65% champions released before early 2017, probably start re-balancing the champions who were over-performing. This would probably help you (aka MCOC game team and Kabam) to gain the trust of the player-base and create a good experience for everyone. (I already did submit a huge document (probably, around 150+ pages worth) on my thoughts and ideas here on re-working older champions. Direct link to the document - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cDkOUqkjjKeXtVfD112dgY85Iwk6WRNP/view)
Also, I would like commend @Bodhizen @Whododo872 @Magrailothos @Thi101 and many others on that thread who have put up really fascinating reworks on older champions that game designers and the forum team would sure love to read and experiment about. (Probably, call these people on board on beta testing some of the older champions when re-worked. It can also help generate more support and trust for the development team).
Also, I think we can all agree that the art and animation team for this game are killing it, especially this year and I believe that this game has most dynamic and awe-inspiring visuals out of all the games in the mobile department. My personal favorite -
Finally, with respect to in-game rewards. I think Kabam has done really good job on amp-ing up the rewards for beginners by adding progression based daily and free crystals, summoners's journey rewards and many more. I hope that Kabam balances out the rewards for the higher tiers (which I think they will) and the end-game community with respect to stuff like quest crystals (probably, make them similar in reward increase like the daily and free crystals) and War Victor crystals.
Personally, I think that Kabam outdid themselves in game design this year, except for a few major issues which are lingering effects of previous patches which is difficult to fix. Now, I would like to hear from the player-base, MCOC YouTube community, MCOC podcasts and hopefully, Kabam themselves what they about think about the analysis and share there views here. A good discussion on this topic can only lead to a better game experience for everyone.
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Comments
As a regular contributor to the champion improvement thread, my philosophy is to start from the idea that the initial design of the champion isn't bad but needs improvement. Reworks should stay true to the character.
I feel Kabam sometimes forgets that and see reworks as instrumental to breaking the meta. It increases the power creep and disturbs the balance. Some reworks contain serious flaws (like Colossus https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/157105/i-love-the-new-colossus-buff-but).
The game also seem to cater to new and veteran players while neglecting the middle class. Back issue is a good example, absolutely useless content. Boss rush? Useless content.
I think that Back issues are not aimed for middle level players. They are aimed to be endgame content to players who have completed Act 5/ are about to complete Act 6. Boss rush are also fine and are indeed aimed at players who have the right 4* fully maxed champions to clear it (Again, Kabam can make it more skill based).
I'm taking all of this feedback and sharing it with the rest of our team, I'm sure many of them will be glad to hear what you have to say alongside the way you constructed it. So thank you again for this! It really is appreciated.
I know Kabam is making efforts in this area, but at the rate they are going it will literally be 2025 until they have gotten around to working on all the older champs that need addressing.
And thanks for the shout, mate. I try my best, same as the rest of the reworkers
An issue you've hit upon is the issue of champion diversity and champion acquisition. How strong and interesting are champions in general and how do we go about getting those strong and interesting champions. This is a very interesting tangle. Let's start with the notion that it is new champions that is the engine that drives the game. New champions give players something to pursue in the game, something to play for (rank up resources being another). If every new champion didn't add anything new to the game, if they were mostly redundant, few players would pursue them, and this would be bad for the game. Players would play less, they would spend less, and the game wouldn't be able to sustain itself.
Let's also acknowledge that game developers are not perfect. Maybe ours are less perfect than others, but no game developer can ever hit the bullseye. So if the developers aim for a champion to land on a number on the dartboard, they aren't always going to hit it. In fact, they are rarely going to hit it exactly. They'll hit the board somewhere in the general vicinity of the target.
If you want champions to be interesting, you have to make them somehow different from prior champions in some way, and that usually means being able to do something better. Sometimes that thing is damage, sometimes it is something else. If they aim for the champion to be much better than the average champion at something, it might end up much better, it might end up only a little better, or it might end up so much better it is too high. Let's set aside how that is determined for now. Suppose we assume there is such a thing as "too high." How do we avoid that?
We could just tell the developers to never aim so close to the edge of the board that their darts can miss completely. We can tell them to aim closer to the center. But that means most champions will tend to be closer to mediocre. We will increase the probability that new champions are "boring." That's problematic.
So you can aim every champion at mediocre and occasionally some will be interesting by mistake, or you can aim every champion at interesting and some will be broken by mistake. If you want the game to be around for the long haul, which one would you decide, if those were your two choices?
Now, suppose we end up with a champion that is performing too high. We could adjust it, or not. If we choose not to, we would be amplifying a problem you mentioned elsewhere: Like it or not, players judge champions relatively, not absolutely. A champion is great only if it isn't outclassed. The moment a champion comes along that is better, that champ isn't so great anymore. We have players saying they were "Kabammed" by a crystal opening when they pull Yellowjacket or Elektra or Ultron. These are champs that were once considered great, and they aren't any weaker today than before, and whatever they could do then they can do now. But they aren't the new hotness anymore. When you allow overperforming champs to remain in the game, you are accelerating the devaluing of the other champs you mentioned. The older champs aren't worse, the newer champs are just better. Ignoring overperformance makes the older champs even less better.
If the devs used your strategy of ignoring the overperformers and buffing the underperformers, to what standard would you buff the underperformers? Because those buffs won't be judged on the basis of what's average, or even what's high performing. They'll be judged against those overperformers you allowed to stay in the game. So how would you address the problem of the overperformers becoming the new anchor for performance?
I'm not specifically saying any particular champ is or is not overperforming. That's a separate discussion. I'm saying if we execute your strategy of ignoring overperforming champions, sooner or later we'll create a tier of overperforming champions the devs choose to ignore for balancing purposes, and that will quickly become the new standard of performance. And then we'll never be able to revisit them without creating an even bigger problem.
It's good you're thinking about the situation, because the situation isn't perfect. But it has issues not just because they've been ignored, but also because every facet of the situation is entangled in many others, and changing any one of them causes side effects in the others that often just move the problem from one place to another.
I just wanted to get the ball rolling on issues like these in the game as well praise Kabam for some of the stuff which gets ignored by most of the community. Also @DNA3000 (and this open to everyone who wants to voice their opinion on this), How would you go about combating this issue on champion balancing and acquisition?
Stop with releasing 25 new champs/year. Start fixing bugs and balancing trash champs (who said Hulkbuster?).
Merging champs versions would also be great. I.E. If I pull OG Spidey and then Black Spidey I should be able to chose which one I want to keep and awake.
Oh my god, how did you come up with the time to create this?!?!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cDkOUqkjjKeXtVfD112dgY85Iwk6WRNP/view
Someone actually read my rework ideas wut
Benefits would be more player happiness and encouragement. Can’t see a downside.
How I would do it would require a lot of math to explain. I'd expand on some work I've done in the past to break down entity abilities in a game into phase space vectors.
Yeah, not going there. So the simpler way I would suggest tackling this which preserves the idea but not the rigor would be to sit down with the developers and come up with a rough set of performance targets, and their corresponding toolboxes, so that I could accelerate the rate at which champions were designed and especially updated. Speed wouldn't fix the problem, but it would ameliorate it to the point where other solutions might become practical.
Even that's a bit complicated, but an example would make it easy to understand. Suppose we decide that all champions really only have two "capabilities" - offense and defense. No, that's not specific enough: deal damage and soak damage. That's it. Those are the only two things that matter. We could then decide that a reasonably designed champion gets some of each. We rate every champ's damage and ability to take damage (somehow) and score it from one to ten. Every champ must score a combined 12. So 6 and 6 works. 9 and 3 is a glass cannon, 3 and 9 is King Groot.
Now take this idea, and do it right: you have damage output, damage mitigation, power management, heal reversal, a variety of different kinds of things champions can do. Figure out a reasonable way to rate them, and figure out a set of metrics every champ must meet, at least within a certain margin for error. This is not easy. Doubly so because you probably can't do this with a single metric: you'd need a few.
Then there's the one you can't math: player skill. Player skill is the one thing you can't calculate, you have to measure. Think of easy of use as another valuable champion attribute. If we look at a champ like Sparky, his damage *potential* is very high, but it comes with a low ease of use: it takes skill to build up poise charges, and you can actually die if you do it wrong. Angela's damage potential is lower, but her ease of use is much higher: you don't have to do much of anything to get her full potential. Sparky has damage potential 10 and ease of use 3; Angela has damage potential 5 and ease of use 8.
Except, how do we know Sparky's ease of use is a 3? If you hand Sparky to a bunch of top tier players, you can determine relatively quickly his damage potential is a 10, because those testers will actually reach it. But how do you know ease of use is a 3? Being high skill players, it might seem like ease of use is more like a 7, because they have no problems with poise. That might make Sparky look like a 10+7=17 and be overpowered. It isn't until you hand the champ to a wide range of players of all skill levels that you can determine Sparky's ease of use is a 3, and thus he's not terribly broken in terms of damage output.
So how do you fix this? With proper beta testing. I would implement a three phase beta test program for all new champs. Phase one: selected testers. You'd have a very small group of players that are selected for being good testers: they are good at finding bugs, finding exploits, and providing good feedback. Let them test first, fix those problems. Then you have phase two: limited closed beta. This would be similar to the kinds of beta tests they run now, with maybe 50-100 players max. These guys would carefully test what the devs refined using the phase one testers feedback. These guys' primary job would be to see how the champs perform running actual content. Does the champ seem to lag against some fights, or over-excel in others. Then you do a limited open beta. Limited open beta allows players to volunteer to test the new champ in a limited set of representative content. You don't want it to just be a playground and you don't want it to be used to just give a lucky set of players extra practice time with the champ. You want to use this to measure the champs Ease Of Use metric, by seeing how this larger group of players reaches or fails to reach the champ's potential. Then you release.
You run these betas with an iron fist. If the player is a troublemaker you kick them. If you see they aren't actually testing, you kick them. If they don't provide useful feedback consistently, you kick them. You want the best possible testers, and you want the best possible signal to noise ratio coming from them.
This doesn't eliminate the need to do downstream reviews or balance monitoring. What it does is reduce the probability that a champ will fail to fall within the required metrics to an arbitrarily low number.
TL;DR: you simplify the design logic for making new champs and modifying old ones to make it easier, faster, and less error prone. You use calculated beta testing to properly measure ease of use or skill-related factors, which are most likely to cause downstream problems. You combine better math with better testing, and hopefully you reduce the number of downstream balancing issues by an order of magnitude. Going from three a year to one every three years doesn't eliminate the problem, but it would still be a pretty big win in my opinion.
The question is, is this possible or just fantasy? Well, I've seen the beta testing work: I've been involved in exactly that kind of beta program, and in my opinion they are the best kind. As to the design rule methodology above, I can't guarantee it would work, but I have used the idea directly in an actual game design project that has gone live, so it works in principle. I believe it would work here.
Also, that's an interesting response @DNA3000 . I do believe that this methodology is an industry practice in game industry as a whole. This would keep, both the developers and the community on the same page and lead to more fruitful gaming experience. Also, I believe that @Kabam Miike , @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Zibiit and many more would love to read your response. These are the kind of discussions I was hoping that the community would take part in.
Yes, I know Kabam is trying to rework new champions, but I feel this game is heading into an evolutionary arms race (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_arms_race) where OP attackers need OP counter-attackers which are OP defenders needing OP counter-defenders. It just never ends. Take for instant Ebony Maw, whose sole existence as a defender is to beat Corvus in AW. I fear when he gets buffed, we will need a counter-Maw. This game is spinning out of control.
As a middle player, I feel constantly left-out. You need mad skill to complete Boss Rush with just maxed 4*, it is just not reasonable for the middle man. Back Issues, again, is not content that interests the majority of the game. You either need to be a total newbie or a seasoned vet to enjoy that.
I actually enjoyed the time quest. Why? Because Epic was (partially) doable for mid-tier players. I crave for 5* shards and master only gave 4*. I wished exploring and completing master would grant like 1000 5* shards, but alas, all that grinding gave me practically nothing. I constantly feel I'm in limbo, not strong/skilful enough to go forward but too strong/skilful to stay where I am now.
We must ask ourselves: why did some champions age well (Wolverine for instant) and others didn''t (Ultron or Yellowjacket)? Instead of basing champions on what is currently in the meta, we need to look across the meta's (or meta-meta): what stays true across the whole game?
The answer are three things: damage (offensive), sustainability (defensive) and utility (control). Combine two or all three of these things, and you've a good champion. Is it so a coincidence that those three consist the basis of the tag type system? Every type has its sub-types: burst, DoT, raw, tank, guard, utility, denial and counter (I once suggested contact as third sub-type of control).
Kabam should start thinking more about these tags and figure out a balance system, like they did with the classes. Shouldn't one type posses the tools to overpower another? Shouldn't champions have two tags: one as an attacker and one as a defender? Regardless of champion-specifics, the mechanism across types stay true. I think we or Kabam should figure out a proper balance. This is the only escape of the current rat race of exponential growth and falling-behind.
The issue here is that I believe the "things" that champs can be good at change over time, precisely because of the problem you mention: the potential for a linear arms race. Newer champs must offer something different or they become boring: boring new champs equals dead game. But if they only just trump each over in a few things like pure damage output or regeneration you will very quickly make everything else obsolete because if you're not "higher" you're "lower."
But I think Kabam has actually done a reasonable, if not perfect job at avoiding that, by making newer champions not just linearly higher, but different. When you're different, you are by definition better at the thing you're different at. You don't necessarily need bigger numbers. We see this in champions like Hulk Ragnarok, Sentinel, and Sabretooth for example. All are champions that are in high demand and considered very useful, if not top tier champs. But they don't just have "bigger numbers" - they aren't intrinsically more survivable than the champs that came previously, or deal more damage, or have more utility. They contribute something different to people's rosters, and that different thing is valuable in the content. Or you can go the Cap Infinity War route. He doesn't really do anything significantly better than what's come before, but he is a unique package of abilities that are collectively very useful, most of which exist in other champions in better ways, but not combined in that way.