i’ve been running an alliance for about a year and have been hearing a lot of the same complaints about the game. in just the past two months seven of my members uninstalled. i want to keep this constructive and share why many people quit the game.
the biggest complaint is getting bad champs over and over. one member got six star iron fist followed by six star ant man. deleted the game.
next complaint is they are tired of grinding for resources to rank champs. people get burnt out and bored doing alliance quest all week long. (we’re at a level that getting a full tier 5 basic takes about a month from glory store. map 5/4/3)
they stop having fun. everyone in my alliance is uncollected or above. act 6 is where i’ve seen many members just stop trying to progress in story and claim they don’t enjoy the content.
i don’t like losing valuable members and don’t want to see anyone quit after investing so much time into the game. feel free to add concerns as well but keep it constructive
It is incredibly disheartening to pull bad six stars. My last six stars have all been trash: Elektra awakening, Punisher 2099, Beast, Karnak, Nightcrawler, Psylocke, and Cable. Seven trash pulls in a row. It's incredibly disheartening and it's not much better in the five star crystal. It's to the point where I no longer enjoy opening crystals and that I have decided to take a break from exploring Act 6 because nothing is worse than getting Punisher 2099 from exploring 6.2 and awakening Elektra from 6.3. Additionally, all those champs, except for Cable, were from completing content. Nightcrawler and Psylocke came from completing Abyss and Beast and Karnak came from completing Act 6. The triumph of actually completing such hard content was totally erased by pulling worthless champions.
Hey wait a minute don't piss on psylocke and nightcrawler, they are pretty good atleast. And plus, you have one of the most annoying defenders in the game as a 6 star (nightcrawler), your alliance will worship you like a king.
The issue is that neither are usable in Act 6. Psylocke's damage and block proficiency is too low and Nightcrawler needs his awakened ability for offensive and even then, he's not a great attacker. I really like Psylocke and tried using in Act 6, but she would die too easily because of how long the fights were because of her damage output and the amount of block damage she took. I was looking to take her to r3 with the mutant catalyst I got from Abyss, but she just dies too easily in Act 6 and will do even poorer in Act 7. The problem is that she is, at her base, an amazing champion, but the number just aren't there. She's one of the champs that if she received a good stat increase, she would be a top tier champion. She doesn't need be awakened, but does benefit from her awakened ability and she has amazing utility and a good burst damage potential. She would shut down a lot of nodes due to her ability to shut off the opponent's power, but it doesn't matter because you won't survive long enough to win the fight. Also, Nightcrawler is no longer a good defender, let alone one of the most annoying defenders. He has so many easy counters that he's really only good for a diversity defender now.
The biggest issue I have now with the game is niche champs for content, and 80% of champs being useless. They either need to rework champs which will take a very long time or add buffs to content for some of the older champs. For example on an evade path make a buff for falcon and Karnak that give them 300 to 400%.attack bonus when they have true strike as an example. This solves the problem of more counters and having pulled useless champs. For that path I would corvus it with proxima as an example or stealthy spidey if I had him. But it will open options for people that do not have counters. Be creative with nodes find 2-3 older champs that can also do it if buffed. Book 2 act 1 chapter 2 modok boss fight only collussus, corvus duped and maybe silver surfer can do that fight. The sabretooth fight only solo I have seen is archangel. Those are too niche unless you have every top champ at max level.
For modok you could have a buff for black panther of bpcw that grants immunity and increases attack. Or daredevil universe champs to make them useable.
For chapter 6.4 I used too much corvus, quake nick fury and doom always the same champs. It is repetitive and boring.
Aq has no quality of life additions grant double energy or 30 minute timers having to take washroom breaks at work to play is nuts and shows you do not care about players. It feels like alliance mode is select your life or the game.
Agreed with everything except that Aegon can also do modok boss with ease but that boss is still such a niche fight
Just stop these legend run. No rush = no burn out = no annoying time = happy players for have content to do
In the beta I suggested a completely different way to conceptualize story arc difficulty, and one component of that was to correct what I have always seen as a major flaw in the legends system. It takes the top tier players, players who already do everything, and encourage them to do everything even faster. That's nonsensical, and encourages burn out.
The solution: eliminate timed Legends runs. Instead, Legend titles get granted to the first X players to complete the content (be it Act 6 or Book 2 or whatever) under challenge conditions. For example, I suggested itemless. First X players to complete Book 2 Act 1 completely itemless get the legends title and rewards.
That would slow them down. Instead of seeing who's fastest, we'd be seeing who can complete the content the cleanest. The top players and the Youtubers wouldn't be racing to blitz the content with the highest damage champion while pumping potions into it. They would have to slow down, think about the content, analyze it, practice it, and try to carefully beat it one path at a time.
When you do this, you can make the base difficulty of the content easier, to target the average player. And then you can make the challenge mode much harder, to give the stronger players a decent challenge with the same content.
Eventually, you can have tiered Legends titles where let's say the first 100 players to complete the content itemless get Legends titles. And then, after those results are in, the first 100 players to complete the content itemless without using any of the top ten champions used by the first group of Legend runners gets a separate Legend title (and you can't get more than one Legend spot in the same piece of content, or there is a two month cooldown where you can't, or something).
There are a lot of ways to turn the Legends system from its current mode where I think the runs are uninteresting, and make it the source of higher tier challenging content for higher tier players without really having to make more content. You just build challenges on the existing content.
Incidentally, this more or less solves the problem of Android devices being at a disadvantage for Legends runs. An old, slow, laggy device you can't play the game well will still be problematic, but a device that takes ten seconds longer to load a fight won't matter.
Love this idea. People buy energy and potions for legend runs and this would make people spend less for legend runs though. I wonder if Kabam can see the value in the potential increase in health of the game vs. decreased short term spending. I've always thought the time legend thing was odd as it encourages skipping all the story part. Why go to the trouble of writing a story and then encourage people to ignore it?
Well, first of all I don't think people spend all that much on legends runs. A lot of people grind up units and potions. Even if you do spend, you generally aren't spending much. If you're spending too much, you probably aren't going fast enough. We're talking maybe an Odin or so for about a hundred people. Ten thousand dollars, except if most of those people grinded the resources in-game the actual cash would be a lot lower. This is probably less revenue than MCOC averages per hour. Not a typo: per hour. They aren't going to notice.
However, this might contribute in a small way to players ranking up more diverse rosters, because the roster you need to go fast is primarily the highest damage champ for the most part. But the roster you need to do a challenge run depends on the challenge, and if it is itemless or reviveless or whatever, odds are the best champs to do that won't necessarily be the high damage ones. In the same way that Incursions brings different champions to the forefront, challenge runs would bring different champs to the forefront. If you want to look at it this way, anything that broadens the kinds of champions players want to chase after does generate revenue for the company in indirect ways.
@DNA3000 Have you watched Brian Grant's video? It seems like you two have come up with similar ideas about story difficulty and legend's runs.
I did, late last night. I agree with some of it, disagree with some of it, some of it was a bit stream-of-consciousness, but I know he addressed something like this towards the end of his video and I think the ideas are similar but slightly different in nature. But definitely compatible. The core idea is the same: make the difficulty of the base content appropriate to average users, and make challenge parameters to challenge higher tier or stronger players. I think what he wants to do with this idea is slightly different than what I would want to do, but that's because he's approaching the same problem from a different direction.
On the general subject of BG's video and a subject that's been talked about in the thread quite a bit as well, the idea of champs being "useless" is I think a complicated one, because I think some of that is the fault of the champions themselves and some of that is the fault of the content. In other words, many of the champions we think are great are only great because the content coincidentally makes them great. Quake is only great because the devs tend to ignore her unique playstyle when making most fights, which makes her sort of kryptonite for a lot of fights. But that has nothing to do with Quake intrisically: I can easily envision an alternate timeline MCOC where Quake would be horrible for most fights. Champs like Ghost, like Aegon, like Stealth Suit Spiderman, are all good because the content either coincidentally or deliberately makes them good. There are probably lots of champs that could be good, but aren't because whatever those champs do, the content doesn't value. Bishop, for example, I think fits into this category. For whatever reason, it is easier for the devs to make content that makes Ghost look great than it does for the devs to make Bishop look great.
Then there's champs where content could make them look great, but for various reasons the devs painted themselves into a corner and now they can't make them look great. Consider Iron Man's heal. It is actually stronger than Voodoo's heal. But IM's heal happens at low health while Voodoo's happens at start of fight. That's the difference between a heal everyone loves and a heal no one cares about. Why? Because the heal triggers so low there's a decent chance you'll die while healing. Because you implicitly have to have taken a lot of damage to trigger it, while Voodoo can heal even small amounts of chip damage over time. The way the game works, the circumstances under which you get IM's heal at all are the same ones that are likely to just kill you. It would be difficult to design content for which this wasn't true. It is so counter to the way the devs stack difficulty in the game the content would probably seem weird. But it is not impossible.
Then there's frankly useless champs. There's almost no way to make Netflix Daredevil useful no matter what the content looks like. I can't see making Magneto useful in his current form.
But then, there's champs even worse than the useless ones. Some champs are hopeless. See, a useless champ has hope: he's so useless he could be buffed. But there are hopeless champs that in my opinion don't even have that to look forward to because they are not totally useless, but what they do is completely subsumed by other champions. In other words, they could be used, but almost no one will ever use them because there are simply too many alternatives that are better. Ms. Marvel might be in that category. She isn't useless. But where are you going to use her? How do we make content that makes her shine? Well, she's poison immune and she procs Furies and I think she armor breaks on specials. The problem here is any content you make that makes her look good also makes the 800 pound cosmic gorilla look good: Hyperion. Hyperion is a poison immune fury-procing armor-breaking champ. Who also can heal. Whatever MM can do, Hype can do way, way better. But heck, Medusa can also do that for the most part. And Captain Marvel (movie). Even Ronan has a similar set of abilities, and he's Mr. Velveeta against buffs besides.
You can make the content more interesting and require more diverse champs. And you can buff the bottom feeders. And maybe, just maybe, you can figure out a way to make Iron Man's heal worth something. But champs like Ms. Marvel kinda sit in Kabam's blind spot. And I think, with varying shades of grey, there are a lot of them. I'm not saying a champ has to be the best to be useful. But I think a champ either has to be much better than average doing what they are supposed to be good at, or they have to be good enough in a wider array of situations to make them at least a good generalist to have around. Kamala is neither in my opinion.
@DrZola I think this also partially addresses your questions about champion usefulness.
I was trying to find a more gingerly approach to saying that it makes no sense that people are ready to quit over something that isn't even finished yet.
Perhaps it’s because b.s. nodes with extremely niche counters is not new, and seeing the same regurgitated in the Act 7 beta shows that the lesson has not yet been learnt?
It's not our responsibility to teach anyone anything. There's a great deal of guff towards the design team, but their goals are not to punish people, or make them morbidly unhappy, or to bleed them dry. Their goals are to design content that sufficiently meets the criteria for the level that it's at, and to match Rewards appropriate for that as well. There's a line between want and appropriation. Hard content isn't always going to be fun. I understand that they're listening to the feedback and I think that's great, but faulting them for doing their job designing it, and faulting them for listening to people and working their concerns into the design is just overkill. Not all goals are completely on the mark on both our side and theirs.
Just stop these legend run. No rush = no burn out = no annoying time = happy players for have content to do
In the beta I suggested a completely different way to conceptualize story arc difficulty, and one component of that was to correct what I have always seen as a major flaw in the legends system. It takes the top tier players, players who already do everything, and encourage them to do everything even faster. That's nonsensical, and encourages burn out.
The solution: eliminate timed Legends runs. Instead, Legend titles get granted to the first X players to complete the content (be it Act 6 or Book 2 or whatever) under challenge conditions. For example, I suggested itemless. First X players to complete Book 2 Act 1 completely itemless get the legends title and rewards.
That would slow them down. Instead of seeing who's fastest, we'd be seeing who can complete the content the cleanest. The top players and the Youtubers wouldn't be racing to blitz the content with the highest damage champion while pumping potions into it. They would have to slow down, think about the content, analyze it, practice it, and try to carefully beat it one path at a time.
When you do this, you can make the base difficulty of the content easier, to target the average player. And then you can make the challenge mode much harder, to give the stronger players a decent challenge with the same content.
Eventually, you can have tiered Legends titles where let's say the first 100 players to complete the content itemless get Legends titles. And then, after those results are in, the first 100 players to complete the content itemless without using any of the top ten champions used by the first group of Legend runners gets a separate Legend title (and you can't get more than one Legend spot in the same piece of content, or there is a two month cooldown where you can't, or something).
There are a lot of ways to turn the Legends system from its current mode where I think the runs are uninteresting, and make it the source of higher tier challenging content for higher tier players without really having to make more content. You just build challenges on the existing content.
Incidentally, this more or less solves the problem of Android devices being at a disadvantage for Legends runs. An old, slow, laggy device you can't play the game well will still be problematic, but a device that takes ten seconds longer to load a fight won't matter.
Love this idea. People buy energy and potions for legend runs and this would make people spend less for legend runs though. I wonder if Kabam can see the value in the potential increase in health of the game vs. decreased short term spending. I've always thought the time legend thing was odd as it encourages skipping all the story part. Why go to the trouble of writing a story and then encourage people to ignore it?
This was probably mentioned somewhere back in an earlier post I missed, so forgive me if I’m covering old ground, but why couldn’t some quests have a limitation on items like AQ or AW? If not whole quests, then specific lanes with an item limitation (or outright exclusion)?
If the emphasis is on skill, a quest could also limit champ rarity (downward, not upward) along with limiting items.
@DNA3000 I can’t speak to the coding complexity or practicality of it all, but that would necessitate clean runs, right?
Dr. Zola
Item limits would limit revives and heals. it wouldn't on its own limit boosts, because boosts are global and you could get around item limits on the map by exiting the map and using them, then going back in. The game would have to deal with those kinds of things, if that's something you wanted to also restrict.
I was trying to find a more gingerly approach to saying that it makes no sense that people are ready to quit over something that isn't even finished yet.
Perhaps it’s because b.s. nodes with extremely niche counters is not new, and seeing the same regurgitated in the Act 7 beta shows that the lesson has not yet been learnt?
It's not our responsibility to teach anyone anything. There's a great deal of guff towards the design team, but their goals are not to punish people, or make them morbidly unhappy, or to bleed them dry. Their goals are to design content that sufficiently meets the criteria for the level that it's at, and to match Rewards appropriate for that as well. There's a line between want and appropriation. Hard content isn't always going to be fun. I understand that they're listening to the feedback and I think that's great, but faulting them for doing their job designing it, and faulting them for listening to people and working their concerns into the design is just overkill. Not all goals are completely on the mark on both our side and theirs.
It’s not about responsibility. It’s supply and demand. If people want to quit because the content is less fun and less rewarding, Kabam ought to know. It’s their best chance to save the game.
@DNA3000 Have you watched Brian Grant's video? It seems like you two have come up with similar ideas about story difficulty and legend's runs.
I did, late last night. I agree with some of it, disagree with some of it, some of it was a bit stream-of-consciousness, but I know he addressed something like this towards the end of his video and I think the ideas are similar but slightly different in nature. But definitely compatible. The core idea is the same: make the difficulty of the base content appropriate to average users, and make challenge parameters to challenge higher tier or stronger players. I think what he wants to do with this idea is slightly different than what I would want to do, but that's because he's approaching the same problem from a different direction.
On the general subject of BG's video and a subject that's been talked about in the thread quite a bit as well, the idea of champs being "useless" is I think a complicated one, because I think some of that is the fault of the champions themselves and some of that is the fault of the content. In other words, many of the champions we think are great are only great because the content coincidentally makes them great. Quake is only great because the devs tend to ignore her unique playstyle when making most fights, which makes her sort of kryptonite for a lot of fights. But that has nothing to do with Quake intrisically: I can easily envision an alternate timeline MCOC where Quake would be horrible for most fights. Champs like Ghost, like Aegon, like Stealth Suit Spiderman, are all good because the content either coincidentally or deliberately makes them good. There are probably lots of champs that could be good, but aren't because whatever those champs do, the content doesn't value. Bishop, for example, I think fits into this category. For whatever reason, it is easier for the devs to make content that makes Ghost look great than it does for the devs to make Bishop look great.
Then there's champs where content could make them look great, but for various reasons the devs painted themselves into a corner and now they can't make them look great. Consider Iron Man's heal. It is actually stronger than Voodoo's heal. But IM's heal happens at low health while Voodoo's happens at start of fight. That's the difference between a heal everyone loves and a heal no one cares about. Why? Because the heal triggers so low there's a decent chance you'll die while healing. Because you implicitly have to have taken a lot of damage to trigger it, while Voodoo can heal even small amounts of chip damage over time. The way the game works, the circumstances under which you get IM's heal at all are the same ones that are likely to just kill you. It would be difficult to design content for which this wasn't true. It is so counter to the way the devs stack difficulty in the game the content would probably seem weird. But it is not impossible.
Then there's frankly useless champs. There's almost no way to make Netflix Daredevil useful no matter what the content looks like. I can't see making Magneto useful in his current form.
But then, there's champs even worse than the useless ones. Some champs are hopeless. See, a useless champ has hope: he's so useless he could be buffed. But there are hopeless champs that in my opinion don't even have that to look forward to because they are not totally useless, but what they do is completely subsumed by other champions. In other words, they could be used, but almost no one will ever use them because there are simply too many alternatives that are better. Ms. Marvel might be in that category. She isn't useless. But where are you going to use her? How do we make content that makes her shine? Well, she's poison immune and she procs Furies and I think she armor breaks on specials. The problem here is any content you make that makes her look good also makes the 800 pound cosmic gorilla look good: Hyperion. Hyperion is a poison immune fury-procing armor-breaking champ. Who also can heal. Whatever MM can do, Hype can do way, way better. But heck, Medusa can also do that for the most part. And Captain Marvel (movie). Even Ronan has a similar set of abilities, and he's Mr. Velveeta against buffs besides.
You can make the content more interesting and require more diverse champs. And you can buff the bottom feeders. And maybe, just maybe, you can figure out a way to make Iron Man's heal worth something. But champs like Ms. Marvel kinda sit in Kabam's blind spot. And I think, with varying shades of grey, there are a lot of them. I'm not saying a champ has to be the best to be useful. But I think a champ either has to be much better than average doing what they are supposed to be good at, or they have to be good enough in a wider array of situations to make them at least a good generalist to have around. Kamala is neither in my opinion.
@DrZola I think this also partially addresses your questions about champion usefulness.
It does.
But...the more I think about it, the more I like the notion of a champion “recall.” Forget about wasting time on Ms. Marvel (or the Magnetos). Just acknowledge they are essentially proto-champs and drop them from the playable champs side of the game, along with full refunds to players.
It can take place over time, and no one has to waste time trying to deconstruct and then reconstruct and then run a beta. Champ gone. Poof. A month or two later, resources pop into your stash.
Just stop these legend run. No rush = no burn out = no annoying time = happy players for have content to do
In the beta I suggested a completely different way to conceptualize story arc difficulty, and one component of that was to correct what I have always seen as a major flaw in the legends system. It takes the top tier players, players who already do everything, and encourage them to do everything even faster. That's nonsensical, and encourages burn out.
The solution: eliminate timed Legends runs. Instead, Legend titles get granted to the first X players to complete the content (be it Act 6 or Book 2 or whatever) under challenge conditions. For example, I suggested itemless. First X players to complete Book 2 Act 1 completely itemless get the legends title and rewards.
That would slow them down. Instead of seeing who's fastest, we'd be seeing who can complete the content the cleanest. The top players and the Youtubers wouldn't be racing to blitz the content with the highest damage champion while pumping potions into it. They would have to slow down, think about the content, analyze it, practice it, and try to carefully beat it one path at a time.
When you do this, you can make the base difficulty of the content easier, to target the average player. And then you can make the challenge mode much harder, to give the stronger players a decent challenge with the same content.
Eventually, you can have tiered Legends titles where let's say the first 100 players to complete the content itemless get Legends titles. And then, after those results are in, the first 100 players to complete the content itemless without using any of the top ten champions used by the first group of Legend runners gets a separate Legend title (and you can't get more than one Legend spot in the same piece of content, or there is a two month cooldown where you can't, or something).
There are a lot of ways to turn the Legends system from its current mode where I think the runs are uninteresting, and make it the source of higher tier challenging content for higher tier players without really having to make more content. You just build challenges on the existing content.
Incidentally, this more or less solves the problem of Android devices being at a disadvantage for Legends runs. An old, slow, laggy device you can't play the game well will still be problematic, but a device that takes ten seconds longer to load a fight won't matter.
Love this idea. People buy energy and potions for legend runs and this would make people spend less for legend runs though. I wonder if Kabam can see the value in the potential increase in health of the game vs. decreased short term spending. I've always thought the time legend thing was odd as it encourages skipping all the story part. Why go to the trouble of writing a story and then encourage people to ignore it?
This was probably mentioned somewhere back in an earlier post I missed, so forgive me if I’m covering old ground, but why couldn’t some quests have a limitation on items like AQ or AW? If not whole quests, then specific lanes with an item limitation (or outright exclusion)?
If the emphasis is on skill, a quest could also limit champ rarity (downward, not upward) along with limiting items.
@DNA3000 I can’t speak to the coding complexity or practicality of it all, but that would necessitate clean runs, right?
Dr. Zola
Item limits would limit revives and heals. it wouldn't on its own limit boosts, because boosts are global and you could get around item limits on the map by exiting the map and using them, then going back in. The game would have to deal with those kinds of things, if that's something you wanted to also restrict.
Sounds good. Or keep a counter. Gear overall rewards to lower boost usage. Tier prizes based on % of total health remaining on your team. Whatever...
I was trying to find a more gingerly approach to saying that it makes no sense that people are ready to quit over something that isn't even finished yet.
Perhaps it’s because b.s. nodes with extremely niche counters is not new, and seeing the same regurgitated in the Act 7 beta shows that the lesson has not yet been learnt?
It's not our responsibility to teach anyone anything. There's a great deal of guff towards the design team, but their goals are not to punish people, or make them morbidly unhappy, or to bleed them dry. Their goals are to design content that sufficiently meets the criteria for the level that it's at, and to match Rewards appropriate for that as well. There's a line between want and appropriation. Hard content isn't always going to be fun. I understand that they're listening to the feedback and I think that's great, but faulting them for doing their job designing it, and faulting them for listening to people and working their concerns into the design is just overkill. Not all goals are completely on the mark on both our side and theirs.
It’s not about responsibility. It’s supply and demand. If people want to quit because the content is less fun and less rewarding, Kabam ought to know. It’s their best chance to save the game.
You have to discern what's personal reactions and what's backed up by the data. Take Gates for example. People aren't going to like being excluded. That's just a common reaction. However, if the in-game data shows a need to separate Players because there's a huge grouping of everyone after Uncollected, then it's necessary but unwanted. In terms of the plan for the future content, what they have to go on is the data from the previous content. Not necessarily the fact that people thought certain Fights were bogus. Again, Act 7 was not something that was almost ready to release. They were looking at proposed ideas, and the purpose of the Beta was exactly what's taking place. They're gathering the feedback.
Another thing that needs to be fixed is adding in a five star basic arena where the top 10% get the champ. It's so hard trying to target a specific champ in the crystals (I am well over 120 five stars without pulling Wasp a single time, including 15-18 of the featured crystals she was in last summer) and just as hard to awaken and get them to a good sig level (I have Antman at r5 sig 120. I have only pulled him once, I had to awaken and pump 119 sigs into him because I couldn't dupe him). Wasp is just one example, I still don't have Crossbones, Archangel, Omega, Emma, Torch, or so many other champs, but I pulled Elektra four times in a span of 20 crystals. Having a five star basic arena would go a long way in helping build our rosters for all these specific nodes and lanes in Act 6/7
I was trying to find a more gingerly approach to saying that it makes no sense that people are ready to quit over something that isn't even finished yet.
Perhaps it’s because b.s. nodes with extremely niche counters is not new, and seeing the same regurgitated in the Act 7 beta shows that the lesson has not yet been learnt?
It's not our responsibility to teach anyone anything. There's a great deal of guff towards the design team, but their goals are not to punish people, or make them morbidly unhappy, or to bleed them dry. Their goals are to design content that sufficiently meets the criteria for the level that it's at, and to match Rewards appropriate for that as well. There's a line between want and appropriation. Hard content isn't always going to be fun. I understand that they're listening to the feedback and I think that's great, but faulting them for doing their job designing it, and faulting them for listening to people and working their concerns into the design is just overkill. Not all goals are completely on the mark on both our side and theirs.
It’s not about responsibility. It’s supply and demand. If people want to quit because the content is less fun and less rewarding, Kabam ought to know. It’s their best chance to save the game.
You have to discern what's personal reactions and what's backed up by the data. Take Gates for example. People aren't going to like being excluded. That's just a common reaction. However, if the in-game data shows a need to separate Players because there's a huge grouping of everyone after Uncollected, then it's necessary but unwanted. In terms of the plan for the future content, what they have to go on is the data from the previous content. Not necessarily the fact that people thought certain Fights were bogus. Again, Act 7 was not something that was almost ready to release. They were looking at proposed ideas, and the purpose of the Beta was exactly what's taking place. They're gathering the feedback.
You wanted to understand why people are ready to quit, so I offered a reason.
I lead a team of developers and have a background in data analysis. If one of my live products had a really unpopular feature, I would not put that very same feature into my next product backlog, regardless of whether it’s in alpha or beta.
Might not even have been a developer’s decision. They implement the build/design, based on the requirements provided by the product owner.
But as a user, I and many others are saying that the fun, effort, and reward are out of balance. And like extremely unregulated capitalism, is prone to massive upheaval.
@DNA3000 Have you watched Brian Grant's video? It seems like you two have come up with similar ideas about story difficulty and legend's runs.
I did, late last night. I agree with some of it, disagree with some of it, some of it was a bit stream-of-consciousness, but I know he addressed something like this towards the end of his video and I think the ideas are similar but slightly different in nature. But definitely compatible. The core idea is the same: make the difficulty of the base content appropriate to average users, and make challenge parameters to challenge higher tier or stronger players. I think what he wants to do with this idea is slightly different than what I would want to do, but that's because he's approaching the same problem from a different direction.
On the general subject of BG's video and a subject that's been talked about in the thread quite a bit as well, the idea of champs being "useless" is I think a complicated one, because I think some of that is the fault of the champions themselves and some of that is the fault of the content. In other words, many of the champions we think are great are only great because the content coincidentally makes them great. Quake is only great because the devs tend to ignore her unique playstyle when making most fights, which makes her sort of kryptonite for a lot of fights. But that has nothing to do with Quake intrisically: I can easily envision an alternate timeline MCOC where Quake would be horrible for most fights. Champs like Ghost, like Aegon, like Stealth Suit Spiderman, are all good because the content either coincidentally or deliberately makes them good. There are probably lots of champs that could be good, but aren't because whatever those champs do, the content doesn't value. Bishop, for example, I think fits into this category. For whatever reason, it is easier for the devs to make content that makes Ghost look great than it does for the devs to make Bishop look great.
Then there's champs where content could make them look great, but for various reasons the devs painted themselves into a corner and now they can't make them look great. Consider Iron Man's heal. It is actually stronger than Voodoo's heal. But IM's heal happens at low health while Voodoo's happens at start of fight. That's the difference between a heal everyone loves and a heal no one cares about. Why? Because the heal triggers so low there's a decent chance you'll die while healing. Because you implicitly have to have taken a lot of damage to trigger it, while Voodoo can heal even small amounts of chip damage over time. The way the game works, the circumstances under which you get IM's heal at all are the same ones that are likely to just kill you. It would be difficult to design content for which this wasn't true. It is so counter to the way the devs stack difficulty in the game the content would probably seem weird. But it is not impossible.
Then there's frankly useless champs. There's almost no way to make Netflix Daredevil useful no matter what the content looks like. I can't see making Magneto useful in his current form.
But then, there's champs even worse than the useless ones. Some champs are hopeless. See, a useless champ has hope: he's so useless he could be buffed. But there are hopeless champs that in my opinion don't even have that to look forward to because they are not totally useless, but what they do is completely subsumed by other champions. In other words, they could be used, but almost no one will ever use them because there are simply too many alternatives that are better. Ms. Marvel might be in that category. She isn't useless. But where are you going to use her? How do we make content that makes her shine? Well, she's poison immune and she procs Furies and I think she armor breaks on specials. The problem here is any content you make that makes her look good also makes the 800 pound cosmic gorilla look good: Hyperion. Hyperion is a poison immune fury-procing armor-breaking champ. Who also can heal. Whatever MM can do, Hype can do way, way better. But heck, Medusa can also do that for the most part. And Captain Marvel (movie). Even Ronan has a similar set of abilities, and he's Mr. Velveeta against buffs besides.
You can make the content more interesting and require more diverse champs. And you can buff the bottom feeders. And maybe, just maybe, you can figure out a way to make Iron Man's heal worth something. But champs like Ms. Marvel kinda sit in Kabam's blind spot. And I think, with varying shades of grey, there are a lot of them. I'm not saying a champ has to be the best to be useful. But I think a champ either has to be much better than average doing what they are supposed to be good at, or they have to be good enough in a wider array of situations to make them at least a good generalist to have around. Kamala is neither in my opinion.
@DrZola I think this also partially addresses your questions about champion usefulness.
It does.
But...the more I think about it, the more I like the notion of a champion “recall.” Forget about wasting time on Ms. Marvel (or the Magnetos). Just acknowledge they are essentially proto-champs and drop them from the playable champs side of the game, along with full refunds to players.
It can take place over time, and no one has to waste time trying to deconstruct and then reconstruct and then run a beta. Champ gone. Poof. A month or two later, resources pop into your stash.
Dr. Zola
It's too late now, but what this game needs is a Gear system.
There have been milestone events in this game with unintended consequences. I know you were around during 12.0, where people were unwilling to even allow Kabam to discuss the idea of a Gearing system. That was shortsighted then and we pay the price for it now.
Because there are plenty of games out there, past and present, that miss on initial character releases or the meta shifts. We all have played these kinds of games, other games, over the years.
But in those games, you could get either skins or uniforms or ISO-8 sets or Runes or Blessings or targeted gear sets, whatever, that could drag even a weaker character that the developer initially missed on into the fringes of the meta.
I said way back then that was a huge missed opportunity, because I have consistently believed that not all of these kits are bad. They really aren't. They just need some potency upgrades or individual stat boosts and they would at least be on the fringes of the meta and would be usable in Act 6 level content -- maybe not the best, but usable.
For example: I have been testing Punisher 2099 for about a week now, hard. Before this all started.
His kit really isn't bad. It makes sense and is actually on the cusp of fun and effective.
All that character needs is the kind of stat boost that a Gear system usually provides...and we just don't have it
Someone raised the idea that "hard content doesn't need to be fun". I think that fundamentally is flawed given that it's a game, and also I suspect that mentality may be what has resulted in this burnout/fallout. If the focus of developers is to just keep focusing on making harder and harder content (which uncreatively, seems to come in game as making fights extremely niche), then they are forgetting or at least neglecting that the priority should be that it is fun.
After they create some content, when they test it, they should really ask "was that a fun path/fight?" And then "was that sufficiently challenging for progressing players?". Not just "was that harder than the previous act? Yes? Ok good"
Someone raised the idea that "hard content doesn't need to be fun". I think that fundamentally is flawed given that it's a game, and also I suspect that mentality may be what has resulted in this burnout/fallout. If the focus of developers is to just keep focusing on making harder and harder content (which uncreatively, seems to come in game as making fights extremely niche), then they are forgetting or at least neglecting that the priority should be that it is fun.
After they create some content, when they test it, they should really ask "was that a fun path/fight?" And then "was that sufficiently challenging for progressing players?". Not just "was that harder than the previous act? Yes? Ok good"
I think challenging content can be frustrating and costly, but with practice, with skill, you can overcome it. Plus if it is fun, at least for me, I would actually be interested in doing it over again. As many ppl have pointed out, nameless Thanos and Grandmaster are the perfect examples. GM cost me many units and was really frustrating my first try. But right after I did it, I had a strong sense of accomplishment and was like, ok, I can do better, I want to go try again. In contrast, "hard" content is where I hate doing it the whole time, and when it's done, my reaction is "I'm glad that's over, I hope I never have to do that again in my life".
I didn't have time to read the whole thread, so I apologize in advance if I repeated something that some had already mentioned.
One thing that I think gets overlooked is the availability of 5* and 6* sig stones. Recently I pulled a Namor and an Omega Red. Sure, they are great champions unawakened, but their awakened abilities with high signature levels are what make them extraordinary. Even if I target a mutant gem during this event, what am I going to do, take them to sig 40? It feels like such a tease to pull these kind of champions. Most f2p players and light spenders that don't live and breathe arena and in turn don't buy all the sig stone offers have to wait so long to get sig stones.
Let's say I wanted to sig 200 Namor. The UC EQ gives 10 class gems, and the master EQ gives 5. That means that every month I should get 2-3 mutant gems add on the side events and you get maybe 5 more. Really? 25 months to sig 200 one champion? All the whales are getting sig 200 on champs for fun!
Sure, whales should get an advantage that is proportional to how much they spend, but putting that much of a gap in a resource that should be more common (since 6*'s are now becoming more meta), can't be justified. I have seen a lot of people complain about this and I hope Kabam decides to take action on making resources like sig stones more available to people that don't whale out or live in the game.
Please kabam, you don’t hear us. But please hear a person that speak for us.
• stop adding trash champs to 6* pool • stop making wars more difficult, more units, more potion and so meh rewards (from a plat 1 player) • we tired of WS , make a content like ROL for endgame players , we don’t care about 200 6* shards from arena, we don’t want to play arena all day. • change the ratio of champs at cavaliers , there are 3 stars there for people that have end abyss 100% and act 6 100% don’t you think the accessibility of six star should be bigger?
Please , tale care of your playerbase. Really sad to hear that from seatin, but very happy that one guy speak for all of us.
İll add somethings Buff the damn champions that waiting for a freaking buff for YEARS please stop forcing players to play arena and give more gold rewards in quests And if u give only 3 energy and waiting 10 grown up man complete a whole map by arrange all thier works and lifes to each others and to this game you should understand sometimes people can be busy so stop ban every account sharing cases And most importantly you should aware no matter what industry if a company don't listen their customers, soon or later that company will founder And after +4 years im sorry but my impression is, İ HAVE NEVER SEEN A COMPANY THAT WORST THAN KABAM,not only in game industry in whole economic history (And if mike or other admins going to edit or delete my comment for what i say about kabam, make yourself useful and forward this comment to kabam, this companies stubborn make everyone bored of this game)
seems these days it's more about playing perfectly and never getting hit. the ridiculous nodes are getting out of hand. Act 4 was really fun, act 5 started to get silly with the crazy nodes that you can only beat with "Unit man". Act 6 is just too much of a PITA to call fun.
The gap between players that have 4* and 6* is too wide in my opinion. If you haven't played this game for a few years you are stuck at 4* champs until you slowly work your way up. To an extent that's ok, but the difficulty getting a single 6* for a new player is a huge time sink. New players will get turned off on that after a few months.
Please kabam, you don’t hear us. But please hear a person that speak for us.
• stop adding trash champs to 6* pool • stop making wars more difficult, more units, more potion and so meh rewards (from a plat 1 player) • we tired of WS , make a content like ROL for endgame players , we don’t care about 200 6* shards from arena, we don’t want to play arena all day. • change the ratio of champs at cavaliers , there are 3 stars there for people that have end abyss 100% and act 6 100% don’t you think the accessibility of six star should be bigger?
Please , tale care of your playerbase. Really sad to hear that from seatin, but very happy that one guy speak for all of us.
İll add somethings Buff the damn champions that waiting for a freaking buff for YEARS please stop forcing players to play arena and give more gold rewards in quests And if u give only 3 energy and waiting 10 grown up man complete a whole map by arrange all thier works and lifes to each others and to this game you should understand sometimes people can be busy so stop ban every account sharing cases And most importantly you should aware no matter what industry if a company don't listen their customers, soon or later that company will founder And after +4 years im sorry but my impression is, İ HAVE NEVER SEEN A COMPANY THAT WORST THAN KABAM,not only in game industry in whole economic history (And if mike or other admins going to edit or delete my comment for what i say about kabam, make yourself useful and forward this comment to kabam, this companies stubborn make everyone bored of this game)
1) No one's forcing anyone to do anything. If you don't want to do it, don't do it.
2) Account sharing is against the rules. It's not fair to other players. I understand that people are busy, but cheating is not it. Periodt.
3) Attacking and insulting Kabam is going to get you nowhere. This forum is meant for constructive feedback and civil criticism. Bashing Kabam isn't going to get you anywhere hunny.
I've been mulling it over in terms of the RNG, and while I don't think that every Crystal should be a Nexus, and I don't agree with abolishing the RNG completely, I do think there may be a way to alleviate some of the stresses. It's an idea that I shared a while back, and others have shared before, and many after. However, I've revised it. They could allow access to Class-specific Crystals, for an increased Shard cost, that are in line with levels of progression. 6*s for Cavalier, 5*s for UC, 4*s for....you get it.
Comments
pretty much same feelings and boat as you in terms of your situation to the game. Also f2p having also only probably spent around £50.
If it wasn't for the current situation with Corona virus, i'd have probably walked away from the game.
However, this might contribute in a small way to players ranking up more diverse rosters, because the roster you need to go fast is primarily the highest damage champ for the most part. But the roster you need to do a challenge run depends on the challenge, and if it is itemless or reviveless or whatever, odds are the best champs to do that won't necessarily be the high damage ones. In the same way that Incursions brings different champions to the forefront, challenge runs would bring different champs to the forefront. If you want to look at it this way, anything that broadens the kinds of champions players want to chase after does generate revenue for the company in indirect ways.
On the general subject of BG's video and a subject that's been talked about in the thread quite a bit as well, the idea of champs being "useless" is I think a complicated one, because I think some of that is the fault of the champions themselves and some of that is the fault of the content. In other words, many of the champions we think are great are only great because the content coincidentally makes them great. Quake is only great because the devs tend to ignore her unique playstyle when making most fights, which makes her sort of kryptonite for a lot of fights. But that has nothing to do with Quake intrisically: I can easily envision an alternate timeline MCOC where Quake would be horrible for most fights. Champs like Ghost, like Aegon, like Stealth Suit Spiderman, are all good because the content either coincidentally or deliberately makes them good. There are probably lots of champs that could be good, but aren't because whatever those champs do, the content doesn't value. Bishop, for example, I think fits into this category. For whatever reason, it is easier for the devs to make content that makes Ghost look great than it does for the devs to make Bishop look great.
Then there's champs where content could make them look great, but for various reasons the devs painted themselves into a corner and now they can't make them look great. Consider Iron Man's heal. It is actually stronger than Voodoo's heal. But IM's heal happens at low health while Voodoo's happens at start of fight. That's the difference between a heal everyone loves and a heal no one cares about. Why? Because the heal triggers so low there's a decent chance you'll die while healing. Because you implicitly have to have taken a lot of damage to trigger it, while Voodoo can heal even small amounts of chip damage over time. The way the game works, the circumstances under which you get IM's heal at all are the same ones that are likely to just kill you. It would be difficult to design content for which this wasn't true. It is so counter to the way the devs stack difficulty in the game the content would probably seem weird. But it is not impossible.
Then there's frankly useless champs. There's almost no way to make Netflix Daredevil useful no matter what the content looks like. I can't see making Magneto useful in his current form.
But then, there's champs even worse than the useless ones. Some champs are hopeless. See, a useless champ has hope: he's so useless he could be buffed. But there are hopeless champs that in my opinion don't even have that to look forward to because they are not totally useless, but what they do is completely subsumed by other champions. In other words, they could be used, but almost no one will ever use them because there are simply too many alternatives that are better. Ms. Marvel might be in that category. She isn't useless. But where are you going to use her? How do we make content that makes her shine? Well, she's poison immune and she procs Furies and I think she armor breaks on specials. The problem here is any content you make that makes her look good also makes the 800 pound cosmic gorilla look good: Hyperion. Hyperion is a poison immune fury-procing armor-breaking champ. Who also can heal. Whatever MM can do, Hype can do way, way better. But heck, Medusa can also do that for the most part. And Captain Marvel (movie). Even Ronan has a similar set of abilities, and he's Mr. Velveeta against buffs besides.
You can make the content more interesting and require more diverse champs. And you can buff the bottom feeders. And maybe, just maybe, you can figure out a way to make Iron Man's heal worth something. But champs like Ms. Marvel kinda sit in Kabam's blind spot. And I think, with varying shades of grey, there are a lot of them. I'm not saying a champ has to be the best to be useful. But I think a champ either has to be much better than average doing what they are supposed to be good at, or they have to be good enough in a wider array of situations to make them at least a good generalist to have around. Kamala is neither in my opinion.
@DrZola I think this also partially addresses your questions about champion usefulness.
But...the more I think about it, the more I like the notion of a champion “recall.” Forget about wasting time on Ms. Marvel (or the Magnetos). Just acknowledge they are essentially proto-champs and drop them from the playable champs side of the game, along with full refunds to players.
It can take place over time, and no one has to waste time trying to deconstruct and then reconstruct and then run a beta. Champ gone. Poof. A month or two later, resources pop into your stash.
Dr. Zola
Dr. Zola
I lead a team of developers and have a background in data analysis. If one of my live products had a really unpopular feature, I would not put that very same feature into my next product backlog, regardless of whether it’s in alpha or beta.
Might not even have been a developer’s decision. They implement the build/design, based on the requirements provided by the product owner.
But as a user, I and many others are saying that the fun, effort, and reward are out of balance. And like extremely unregulated capitalism, is prone to massive upheaval.
There have been milestone events in this game with unintended consequences. I know you were around during 12.0, where people were unwilling to even allow Kabam to discuss the idea of a Gearing system. That was shortsighted then and we pay the price for it now.
Because there are plenty of games out there, past and present, that miss on initial character releases or the meta shifts. We all have played these kinds of games, other games, over the years.
But in those games, you could get either skins or uniforms or ISO-8 sets or Runes or Blessings or targeted gear sets, whatever, that could drag even a weaker character that the developer initially missed on into the fringes of the meta.
I said way back then that was a huge missed opportunity, because I have consistently believed that not all of these kits are bad. They really aren't. They just need some potency upgrades or individual stat boosts and they would at least be on the fringes of the meta and would be usable in Act 6 level content -- maybe not the best, but usable.
For example: I have been testing Punisher 2099 for about a week now, hard. Before this all started.
His kit really isn't bad. It makes sense and is actually on the cusp of fun and effective.
All that character needs is the kind of stat boost that a Gear system usually provides...and we just don't have it
After they create some content, when they test it, they should really ask "was that a fun path/fight?" And then "was that sufficiently challenging for progressing players?". Not just "was that harder than the previous act? Yes? Ok good"
MORE CHALLENGING DOES NOT JUST MEAN HARDER.
One thing that I think gets overlooked is the availability of 5* and 6* sig stones. Recently I pulled a Namor and an Omega Red. Sure, they are great champions unawakened, but their awakened abilities with high signature levels are what make them extraordinary. Even if I target a mutant gem during this event, what am I going to do, take them to sig 40? It feels like such a tease to pull these kind of champions. Most f2p players and light spenders that don't live and breathe arena and in turn don't buy all the sig stone offers have to wait so long to get sig stones.
Let's say I wanted to sig 200 Namor. The UC EQ gives 10 class gems, and the master EQ gives 5. That means that every month I should get 2-3 mutant gems add on the side events and you get maybe 5 more. Really? 25 months to sig 200 one champion? All the whales are getting sig 200 on champs for fun!
Sure, whales should get an advantage that is proportional to how much they spend, but putting that much of a gap in a resource that should be more common (since 6*'s are now becoming more meta), can't be justified. I have seen a lot of people complain about this and I hope Kabam decides to take action on making resources like sig stones more available to people that don't whale out or live in the game.
Buff the damn champions that waiting for a freaking buff for YEARS
please stop forcing players to play arena and give more gold rewards in quests
And if u give only 3 energy and waiting 10 grown up man complete a whole map by arrange all thier works and lifes to each others and to this game you should understand sometimes people can be busy so stop ban every account sharing cases
And most importantly you should aware no matter what industry if a company don't listen their customers, soon or later that company will founder
And after +4 years im sorry but my impression is, İ HAVE NEVER SEEN A COMPANY THAT WORST THAN KABAM,not only in game industry in whole economic history (And if mike or other admins going to edit or delete my comment for what i say about kabam, make yourself useful and forward this comment to kabam, this companies stubborn make everyone bored of this game)
The gap between players that have 4* and 6* is too wide in my opinion. If you haven't played this game for a few years you are stuck at 4* champs until you slowly work your way up. To an extent that's ok, but the difficulty getting a single 6* for a new player is a huge time sink. New players will get turned off on that after a few months.
2) Account sharing is against the rules. It's not fair to other players. I understand that people are busy, but cheating is not it. Periodt.
3) Attacking and insulting Kabam is going to get you nowhere. This forum is meant for constructive feedback and civil criticism. Bashing Kabam isn't going to get you anywhere hunny.