I think that perhaps there been a clash of interests here, and there's not an easy way out.
Fans of Guillotine voted for her because they loved the character and her unique place in the Contest, wanted the buff to be the same plus a little extra utility or relevance to the wider contest. Players who have invested their hard earned and won rank up resources want to see their investment justified or at very least not undermined.
Kabam decided to buff not just on what she was, but what they wanted her to be. As an Attacker, Defender, level of utility, for veterans and new players. They have their own set of criteria.
Very often, the two things line up. In this case, and the original Hood buff, and a lesser extent the DDHK buff, they don't. And clearly from Kabam John's comments, there isn't going to be a rollback of significant change to the new Guillotine.
Summoners are entitled to ask for RDT. Kabam are entitled to say no, because they don't like issuing RDT as the end result would be people would go and rank up someone else and not play Guillotine ever again. The effort would be largely wasted. But, people won't want to use her because they don't like the buff and feel negatively about the champion so that effort is wasted anyways.
It's weird because the whole reason for this buff was the result of a Community vote program. Shouldn't that mean that the buff should be tailored to what the Community wants as a whole. It's completely different from other buffs because the developers choose which champs need a buff. If the Community doesn't like the buff, then it's disappointing but it's out of our hands. With Guillotine, the choice was put into our hands and we decided on Guillotine and they had a certain responsibility to deliver a buff that the Community (as a majority) would have liked.
And to address that this buff was aimed toward lower level players: A lot of lower level players look up to higher level players for advise on who to rank up wether it be from looking at their profile, looking on Youtube, or asking them directly in the Global Chat. When higher level players are saying that Guillotine is bad, then the lower level players aren't going to want to use her either. Plus her new play style is way more stressful than her old play style and that doesn't seem to benefit newer players.
Yeah....prematurely R2'd my gully after the buff announcement. Figured Kabam would do good by her seeing it was their first original champ....reeeeeeally regretting it now. -_-
I'm still trying to find out what the point of pain link is? I read through kabam johns responses and he conveniently didn't answer any questions about that or about why they lowered her bleed chance or anything really, he sounded like a politician with generic responses
Guillotine 2.0 is what Ms Marvel was to Captain Marvel classic.
The questions that I wanted to see an answer to were just ignored and the safe questions got answered.
Very disappointing!
I noticed that to , a lot of the Guillotine questions was skipped for the more off topic ones.. I wish they just offer RDT's because i know after the AMA not much gonna be done about her.
I think the Kabam response to the player base has largely become a bigger issue than the buff itself. I think their response indicates either a childish level of hurt pride and stubbornness, or is masking an inability to correct the problem. Perhaps they don’t know HOW to fix her. Either way, no business can survive treating its customers this way. I’ve spent a lot of money on this game, and it’s a big part of my free time, and believe me, I hate to use the dreaded boycott word, but with cyber weekend approaching, it would be an opportunity to really express our displeasure. I also think people would be well within their rights to ask for refunds on any rank up offers, or sig stone offers they bought and used on Guillotine. You don’t listen to your customers, you lose them. Simple as that.
I think the Kabam response to the player base has largely become a bigger issue than the buff itself. I think their response indicates either a childish level of hurt pride and stubbornness, or is masking an inability to correct the problem. Perhaps they don’t know HOW to fix her. Either way, no business can survive treating its customers this way. I’ve spent a lot of money on this game, and it’s a big part of my free time, and believe me, I hate to use the dreaded boycott word, but with cyber weekend approaching, it would be an opportunity to really express our displeasure. I also think people would be well within their rights to ask for refunds on any rank up offers, or sig stone offers they bought and used on Guillotine. You don’t listen to your customers, you lose them. Simple as that.
This is my first comment ever. I really like Guillotine design and I was looking forward to her getting buffed. Kabam's response is disrespectful, and I think that a Boycott is needed to remind them of the correct way to treat customers. I myself will not invest a dime, until Guillotine is rebuffed.
Her kit isn't a "homage" to her original kit. It's essentially the same, but everything she does is now worse. Her regen is constant now, but the amount is so minimal that it doesn't matter. If you have a 350,000k health opponent the most she will heal from a non-regen opponent is 7k health. Guillotine as a 6* r3 has 36137 base health. That's a 20% health which will barely be noticed because of chip damage you take from blocks.
This response has absolutely nothing to do with the Guillotine rework and is absolutely irrelevant.
So you see an uptick in people playing Guillotine the same month she's reworked? People always test newly reworked champions to see how they are. Saying that you've seen a huge uptick the same month of the rework is like saying fire is hot.
I'm not really sure what the point of this response even was. I'd consider myself a high tier player and while I don't have her as a 6*, if I get her from this featured she's going to sit at rank 1 level 1 until I don't have other mystics to level up and have mystic ISO expiring. She offers nothing that I can't get from other mystics outside of the heal reversal and even that I wouldn't use a spot on her for. This isn't a "cool new toy" for us. It's a champ I'll never actually use.
Absolutely irrelevant to Guillotine's buff.
Another irrelevant post in a discussion about Guillotine's buff.
While a beta server would be nice for reworks, this isn't really relevant to answering players concerns about Guillotine's rework.
You've acknowledged her regen is subpar and are looking at changing that in the future so moving on.
Here are the last three posts. None have anything to do with player concerns about Guillotine's rework. In total there were 11 responses to questions about Guillotine's rework. Only four of those actually addressed concerns. Only one said that you're going to adjust something based off concerns. When eight out of eleven posts don't address concerns about the champ you're actively discussing, you are better off not doing an AMA about that rework. It's insulting to the players.
You gave us a "buff" that did nothing for the character. There are no fights in game currently that I can think of that she can do now that she couldn't do before. ROL Wolverine? I did it with a 3*. LOL X-23? Did it with a 4*. That's ultimately the problem with this buff. There's no where she excels that she didn't before.
How I would fix her:
1. Change her bleed chance to 35% off any basic attack. This way it isn't a chance off another chance. Bleeds would be more consistent as would critical bleeds with the Purgatory synergy. This would immediately up her damage potential. 2. Leave her base regen at 2% of all damage, but have her regen go up to 4% when she is Unshackled. 3. Give her critical hits a chance to nullify a buff. 4. Change Pain Link to share all damage, not just non-physical.
Totally agreed. I recently pulled guilly as a 5* but she's gonne be at R1 until she gets a proper buff that she deserves. I don't think kabam will give rank down tickets at all. So no hopes there.
Her kit isn't a "homage" to her original kit. It's essentially the same, but everything she does is now worse. Her regen is constant now, but the amount is so minimal that it doesn't matter. If you have a 350,000k health opponent the most she will heal from a non-regen opponent is 7k health. Guillotine as a 6* r3 has 36137 base health. That's a 20% health which will barely be noticed because of chip damage you take from blocks.
This response has absolutely nothing to do with the Guillotine rework and is absolutely irrelevant.
So you see an uptick in people playing Guillotine the same month she's reworked? People always test newly reworked champions to see how they are. Saying that you've seen a huge uptick the same month of the rework is like saying fire is hot.
I'm not really sure what the point of this response even was. I'd consider myself a high tier player and while I don't have her as a 6*, if I get her from this featured she's going to sit at rank 1 level 1 until I don't have other mystics to level up and have mystic ISO expiring. She offers nothing that I can't get from other mystics outside of the heal reversal and even that I wouldn't use a spot on her for. This isn't a "cool new toy" for us. It's a champ I'll never actually use.
Absolutely irrelevant to Guillotine's buff.
Another irrelevant post in a discussion about Guillotine's buff.
While a beta server would be nice for reworks, this isn't really relevant to answering players concerns about Guillotine's rework.
You've acknowledged her regen is subpar and are looking at changing that in the future so moving on.
Here are the last three posts. None have anything to do with player concerns about Guillotine's rework. In total there were 11 responses to questions about Guillotine's rework. Only four of those actually addressed concerns. Only one said that you're going to adjust something based off concerns. When eight out of eleven posts don't address concerns about the champ you're actively discussing, you are better off not doing an AMA about that rework. It's insulting to the players.
You gave us a "buff" that did nothing for the character. There are no fights in game currently that I can think of that she can do now that she couldn't do before. ROL Wolverine? I did it with a 3*. LOL X-23? Did it with a 4*. That's ultimately the problem with this buff. There's no where she excels that she didn't before.
How I would fix her:
1. Change her bleed chance to 35% off any basic attack. This way it isn't a chance off another chance. Bleeds would be more consistent as would critical bleeds with the Purgatory synergy. This would immediately up her damage potential. 2. Leave her base regen at 2% of all damage, but have her regen go up to 4% when she is Unshackled. 3. Give her critical hits a chance to nullify a buff. 4. Change Pain Link to share all damage, not just non-physical.
Totally agreed. I recently pulled guilly as a 5* but she's gonne be at R1 until she gets a proper buff that she deserves. I don't think kabam will give rank down tickets at all. So no hopes there.
Funny, I also recently pulled her as a 5* and just... sighed.
Looking at her changes, I'm still not sure how her regen could possibly be the only problem. After trying the rework, I was so disappointed I basically said "I'm not using her again, because even 'optimal' play won't be any different"
What I think about her rework, with more thought put in:
- Basic Attacks (Bleed) Her chance to bleed is low, and further hampered by her crit rate being generally not high. In the very brief time I tried using her, bleeds were just too rare to be significant.
- Heavy Attack Bleed Curse... despite its mystical sounding name is just a Bleed inflicted by a Heavy Attack, which creates more Bleeds on Special Attacks.
Unfortunately, this isn't exactly groundbreaking, considering another red-clad Champion also has a Bleed on heavy attacks which can create more bleeds (though on any critical hit at all). But for them, Bleed actually does something more.
With a name like "Bleed Curse", the least it could do was have some interaction with opponent buffs, rather than be a fancy Bleed debuff. The most positive I can say about it is that it stacks. If you can get enough heavies in.
- Special Attacks SP1's Pain Link? To be rather honest, I don't know much about what this is actually meant to do... I think it's supposed to be a defensive ability, because I can't really think of any offensive application it has that a different champion wouldn't do better, since she still takes the damage. All of it. And heals only 2% of whatever damage she is reflecting onto her opponent...?
SP2's Spectre is... It's fine. It didn't need changing anyway. Pausing Spectre gives her something against those few Champions who have reduced Debuff duration, but as it is a debuff it is still prone to Tenacity and similar. Tenacity in general pretty much shuts her down but we won't go into that.
SP3... I don't really know here. Old Guillotine could deal massive chunks of damage with this if she managed to get enough souls, making for a spectacular fight ender, but... I can see if they thought this was too strong, even if arguably she did need a few synergies to reliably build Souls against high HP opponents. The Degeneration new Guillotine has obviously lacks that same powerful feel (considering that it does 'a fair bit of damage over a long time' as opposed to 'an instant hit of massive percentage damage', and the base damage of her SP3 is... low. Really low.
- Souls Speaking of souls, they're a bit easier to get now (I say this, but there's the problem of actually inflicting Bleeds), so that's nice - she doesn't require as many synergies. They also give some extra Attack now... which would be fine if her special attacks didn't spend them on "utility" that doesn't exactly feel worth the loss of damage.
- Awakened Ability Her sig... gives an option against Bleed immune Champions (but not Champions who punish you for making them Bleed, which is... fine. There are other options.)
- Conclusion All in all, she still doesn't feel like a proper Mystic Champion, her playstyle got a lot less interesting, her abilities got less interesting (when that 10% chance regen of old Guilly actually procced, it could give big numbers, which was one thing I liked - even if it was unreliable) and now she's honestly less appealing to me and I'm sure there are sadly many others who like her less now.
I think the most glaring issue is Kabam failed to account for hype.
We waited months for this buff and people were campaigning to vote for Guilly or Antman. The community was excited, and rightfully so. When you give people the option to weigh in, you cannot half-*ss it, then it’s better to not do any vote at all.
Guilly is a beloved character and many of us praise the work that went into her design, which makes this hurt so much more. Buffs are tough as hell to keep balanced, so please, if you aren’t confident a buff will be fantastic, you should not start a hype train for it.
I don’t expect to see any movement on Guillotine (except potentially her regen, as has been discussed), but this is really just gross.
To be clear, I don’t think this was intentional. I don’t think anybody at Kabam sat down and said “Let’s make this champion worse.” One of the biggest takeaways (that seems to have been largely missed) is that there’s a grand total of one person who is fully dedicated to champion buffs. Kabam John helps too, but he seems to be all over the company, so he can’t be putting that much time into this.
That’s wild to me. No wonder they dialed back the number of updates and why some of them have been so lackluster. That’s a ton of work for one person to do!! They have to come up with the idea, implement it, balance the numbers, reimplement, troubleshoot it, on and on it goes. Then do it again for the other champion that month. I’d hand in a Nova buff at that point too.
I don’t blame the individual devs who worked on this because I’m sure they are overtaxed. I think the MCoC team may be a lot smaller than I’d previously believed, which is worrisome in a lot of ways and explains why so much seems to slip through the cracks.
I hope this changes. I hope that the game team gets a proper allocation of resources and the help they need to make this game run smoothly and create champions we as a community can enjoy.
I don’t expect to see any movement on Guillotine (except potentially her regen, as has been discussed), but this is really just gross.
To be clear, I don’t think this was intentional. I don’t think anybody at Kabam sat down and said “Let’s make this champion worse.” One of the biggest takeaways (that seems to have been largely missed) is that there’s a grand total of one person who is fully dedicated to champion buffs. Kabam John helps too, but he seems to be all over the company, so he can’t be putting that much time into this.
That’s wild to me. No wonder they dialed back the number of updates and why some of them have been so lackluster. That’s a ton of work for one person to do!! They have to come up with the idea, implement it, balance the numbers, reimplement, troubleshoot it, on and on it goes. Then do it again for the other champion that month. I’d hand in a Nova buff at that point too.
I don’t blame the individual devs who worked on this because I’m sure they are overtaxed. I think the MCoC team may be a lot smaller than I’d previously believed, which is worrisome in a lot of ways and explains why so much seems to slip through the cracks.
I hope this changes. I hope that the game team gets a proper allocation of resources and the help they need to make this game run smoothly and create champions we as a community can enjoy.
I completely agree with your point about not placing any blame on individuals, but as a company/business, it seems completely wrong that ONE person is in total control of champion buffs. Basically, any champion that requires and is getting a buff, has flaws, or faults, or simply doesn't meet the requirements of the current game standards. So in that respect a 'think tank' is needed to decide what and how a champion can be changed.
For a game of this size, that has lasted this long, and clearly has a very large number of active participants, I would have thought the basic ideas I have just mentioned wouldn't be necessary to say. Unfortunately, the Guillotine buff is just the tip of the ice berg of which beneath is an ever increasing array of in game issues and unlikable decisions which don't seem to be getting the necessary diligence before going live.
I don’t expect to see any movement on Guillotine (except potentially her regen, as has been discussed), but this is really just gross.
To be clear, I don’t think this was intentional. I don’t think anybody at Kabam sat down and said “Let’s make this champion worse.” One of the biggest takeaways (that seems to have been largely missed) is that there’s a grand total of one person who is fully dedicated to champion buffs. Kabam John helps too, but he seems to be all over the company, so he can’t be putting that much time into this.
That’s wild to me. No wonder they dialed back the number of updates and why some of them have been so lackluster. That’s a ton of work for one person to do!! They have to come up with the idea, implement it, balance the numbers, reimplement, troubleshoot it, on and on it goes. Then do it again for the other champion that month. I’d hand in a Nova buff at that point too.
I don’t blame the individual devs who worked on this because I’m sure they are overtaxed. I think the MCoC team may be a lot smaller than I’d previously believed, which is worrisome in a lot of ways and explains why so much seems to slip through the cracks.
I hope this changes. I hope that the game team gets a proper allocation of resources and the help they need to make this game run smoothly and create champions we as a community can enjoy.
I completely agree with your point about not placing any blame on individuals, but as a company/business, it seems completely wrong that ONE person is in total control of champion buffs. Basically, any champion that requires and is getting a buff, has flaws, or faults, or simply doesn't meet the requirements of the current game standards. So in that respect a 'think tank' is needed to decide what and how a champion can be changed.
For a game of this size, that has lasted this long, and clearly has a very large number of active participants, I would have thought the basic ideas I have just mentioned wouldn't be necessary to say. Unfortunately, the Guillotine buff is just the tip of the ice berg of which beneath is an ever increasing array of in game issues and unlikable decisions which don't seem to be getting the necessary diligence before going live.
It’s been said by several people in different threads, but honestly if Kabam were to post a thread saying “we’re planning a buff to Champion X. What do you currently like about this champion? What do you dislike? What would you like to see?” they would get an astronomical amount of feedback, and much of it would be either partially viable or inspire other ideas from the dev or devs who are working on it.
If Kabam doesn’t want to open such a discussion to the whole community (which would be understandable because that would generate an overwhelming amount of feedback and probably entail its own issues), they could use a separate platform for these discussions. They could use their survey system if that’s easier. But it’s clear that there is no shortage of players who love this game, understand the balance of it, and would be willing to chip in some free labor to see the characters they love done properly.
One of the biggest takeaways (that seems to have been largely missed) is that there’s a grand total of one person who is fully dedicated to champion buffs. Kabam John helps too, but he seems to be all over the company, so he can’t be putting that much time into this.
That’s wild to me. No wonder they dialed back the number of updates and why some of them have been so lackluster. That’s a ton of work for one person to do!! They have to come up with the idea, implement it, balance the numbers, reimplement, troubleshoot it, on and on it goes. Then do it again for the other champion that month. I’d hand in a Nova buff at that point too.
I don’t blame the individual devs who worked on this because I’m sure they are overtaxed. I think the MCoC team may be a lot smaller than I’d previously believed, which is worrisome in a lot of ways and explains why so much seems to slip through the cracks.
The MCOC team is in fact a lot smaller than I think most people assume, because they think a game making hundreds of millions of dollars must have hundreds of people on the payroll. But I think people keep forgetting Kabam itself gets none of that money: Netmarble gets that money. And they are going to want to keep most of it, given how much they paid for Kabam when they acquired them. I could also insert a dissertation on the difference between mobile gaming and other platform gaming, but that's a separate long story.
However, I also think most people who aren't familiar with the game development process aren't fully appreciating how pipelined and siloed the process generally is as well. I believe Kabam John mentioned that there's two people mostly working on updates but five to seven working on new champs. That makes it seem like they are dedicating far more resources to new champs. But most champion updates only touch numbers: they don't change models, animations, visual effects, sound design, or any of that stuff. Two people touching numbers and ability design is actually a comparable level of effort to seven people making whole new champions from scratch, if you are focusing on ability design itself. Not identical, but not as disparate as the numbers themselves make it seem.
Are they a bit slammed by the workload? Probably. They probably have a similar number of employees they had a couple years ago when we went through the whole "burnout/boredom" dev diary situation, and the developers accelerated content and champion updates and designs. They are doing more with the same resources. That time cannot materialize for free. Lots of things have to change. That's part of why they revamped the arenas: going from five to three lowered the internal costs of maintaining them, which frees resources to do other things.
This isn't to make excuses: I'm sure Kabam itself would say they have the same responsibility to deliver the best product they can regardless of the development situation. But there are practical limits on what can and cannot be done, and every push in one direction comes at a cost from somewhere else.
To be honest, I factored all of this into my original feedback on Guillotine. A lot of what I believe to be the flaws in Guillotine's update aren't the result of lack of time or rushed mistakes or a resource bottleneck. They are the result of unforced design decisions that made Guillotine more vulnerable to such things, and the *lazy* way of updating Guillotine would have almost certainly ended up better. I don't fault Kabam for taking risks: if they stop taking risks the game is going to stagnate, and if they are taking legitimate risks sometimes those risks will bite them. You have to be able to take the downside with the upside when you take calculated risks. But I believe the risks taken with Guillotine were not necessary risks, and the theoretical upside wasn't worth the downside.
Rarely if ever do I complain that the devs are overworked and underpaid, or lazy, or stupid. I always assume they are doing their best, and informed by data and process that I might be completely unaware of. When I complain, it is because the decisions I see appear wrong to be even when factoring all of that and then some, and they *still* seem wrong. I give the developers a lot of benefit of the doubt. Only when all of it fails to account for the issue do I strongly complain.
All those things are merely speculations, the main problem is that Kabam is not communicating their struggles. Most of us work and understand that now more than ever companies are asking us to do more with less resources. If they were to tell us "guys, the buff did not come out as intended, give us some time to fix it, we will take your feedback into consideration", no one would complain, but what we are getting is "we are happy with the buff, we will just some minor updates to her regen" or "this is a homage to her previous kit" or simply avoiding the topic as they did in the AMA when the whole community has expressed their sentiments about this decision, with no validation whatsover from Kabam, is just not acceptable. What we need from Kabam is straight forward COMMUNICATION, we are their customers. Again if the final decision will be "we will keep her the way she is now", just send the rank down tickets and they can continue with whatever projects they have for the future, and we all just move on with a dissatisfaction feeling, but we all move forward.
You say you want communication, but your example of communication is "guys, the buff did not come out as intended, give us some time to fix it, we will take your feedback into consideration." In other words, your definition of communication is "admit you're wrong." That's problematic, because they don't believe they are wrong, and saying the first step to better communications is to admit you're wrong wouldn't work on me, wouldn't work on you, and won't work with them either.
Communication is not about one side admitting their wrong while the other side talks. Communication is about the free exchange of ideas. Somewhere in there you hope that the free exchange of ideas gets people to think beyond their experience, and that sometimes causes people to learn something new. But you can't get there in one jump.
You don't change people's minds by getting them to admit they are wrong. You get them to change their minds by surrounding them with your best ideas, and hope that they recognize on their own that some of them are better than the ones they had.
All those things are merely speculations, the main problem is that Kabam is not communicating their struggles. Most of us work and understand that now more than ever companies are asking us to do more with less resources. If they were to tell us "guys, the buff did not come out as intended, give us some time to fix it, we will take your feedback into consideration", no one would complain, but what we are getting is "we are happy with the buff, we will just some minor updates to her regen" or "this is a homage to her previous kit" or simply avoiding the topic as they did in the AMA when the whole community has expressed their sentiments about this decision, with no validation whatsover from Kabam, is just not acceptable. What we need from Kabam is straight forward COMMUNICATION, we are their customers. Again if the final decision will be "we will keep her the way she is now", just send the rank down tickets and they can continue with whatever projects they have for the future, and we all just move on with a dissatisfaction feeling, but we all move forward.
You say you want communication, but your example of communication is "guys, the buff did not come out as intended, give us some time to fix it, we will take your feedback into consideration." In other words, your definition of communication is "admit you're wrong." That's problematic, because they don't believe they are wrong, and saying the first step to better communications is to admit you're wrong wouldn't work on me, wouldn't work on you, and won't work with them either.
Communication is not about one side admitting their wrong while the other side talks. Communication is about the free exchange of ideas. Somewhere in there you hope that the free exchange of ideas gets people to think beyond their experience, and that sometimes causes people to learn something new. But you can't get there in one jump.
You don't change people's minds by getting them to admit they are wrong. You get them to change their minds by surrounding them with your best ideas, and hope that they recognize on their own that some of them are better than the ones they had.
but i think they should admit that they are wrong about guilly buff. i can agree with whatever you said but cant stand the fact they ignored us
All those things are merely speculations, the main problem is that Kabam is not communicating their struggles. Most of us work and understand that now more than ever companies are asking us to do more with less resources. If they were to tell us "guys, the buff did not come out as intended, give us some time to fix it, we will take your feedback into consideration", no one would complain, but what we are getting is "we are happy with the buff, we will just some minor updates to her regen" or "this is a homage to her previous kit" or simply avoiding the topic as they did in the AMA when the whole community has expressed their sentiments about this decision, with no validation whatsover from Kabam, is just not acceptable. What we need from Kabam is straight forward COMMUNICATION, we are their customers. Again if the final decision will be "we will keep her the way she is now", just send the rank down tickets and they can continue with whatever projects they have for the future, and we all just move on with a dissatisfaction feeling, but we all move forward.
You say you want communication, but your example of communication is "guys, the buff did not come out as intended, give us some time to fix it, we will take your feedback into consideration." In other words, your definition of communication is "admit you're wrong." That's problematic, because they don't believe they are wrong, and saying the first step to better communications is to admit you're wrong wouldn't work on me, wouldn't work on you, and won't work with them either.
Communication is not about one side admitting their wrong while the other side talks. Communication is about the free exchange of ideas. Somewhere in there you hope that the free exchange of ideas gets people to think beyond their experience, and that sometimes causes people to learn something new. But you can't get there in one jump.
You don't change people's minds by getting them to admit they are wrong. You get them to change their minds by surrounding them with your best ideas, and hope that they recognize on their own that some of them are better than the ones they had.
but i think they should admit that they are wrong about guilly buff. i can agree with whatever you said but cant stand the fact they ignored us
They didn't ignore us. They told us what they thought. I disagree with what they thought, but I don't disagree with them saying what they thought honestly. If we don't make a safe space for the devs to express what they think, even if we disagree with it, the next step isn't that next time they admit they are wrong, the next step is for them to not do these anymore.
An admission from Kabam that they were wrong with the Guilly update is worthless if they don't honestly believe it. It would be lip service to placate us, while they went back to doing what they were doing. Remember they don't work for us. They work for their supervisors, and through them for Kabam management, and through *them* for their Netmarble overlords. Being honest with us tells us something that might be useful. But they don't have to be honest. They can hide behind corporate messaging, or they can be completely silent. We can't force them to exposes their thinking to us. Most game developers do not do that with their playerbases.
If we want the developers to sit with us at the table and tell us what they were thinking, we can't tell them they said the wrong things. We have to distinguish disagreeing with their *position* while accepting that their *expression* of their position is at least honest.
I don't let them off the hook just because they agreed to do an AMA. However, I choose to take them at their word, and critique their position about the buff, which they so kindly helped me to understand. I thank them for honestly explaining their position, because it now gives me a clearer understanding of what to challenge, and how to challenge it directly. I can only try to change their minds if I know what their minds are, and guessing is not as good as knowing. I want them to *honestly* tell me why they think they are right, so I can try to prove to them that they are wrong. At the risk of sounding more confrontational than intended, honesty is radar: it tells me where to aim.
Well, just spent 15k shards to get my 6 star Guillotine to s60. And it made me realize that every time she pops out of a crystal now it's gonna just remind me of what happened here and just make me upset again. 😅
And reading a bit of the above... I agree, I don't blame any individual devs. I mean.. c'mon, the champion buff program has turned out some amazing results. Let's look at it like this... I just counted and 8 of my r3 6 stars are buffed characters. That's proof that the buff program has been a success on the whole. I do think it's very important to give appreciation for all the hard work that's gone into it.
Here's the thing. I'm not upset because I feel that Guillotine's buff was a huge miss. I'm upset at the response to our feedback. That's why I'm upset. It sucks to have the vote, wait months... only to actually feel that your champion (r2 before announcement of vote) is now worse instead of better. But... we're being told that we are wrong and our opinion won't be considered... when it was their idea to hold the dang vote in the first place.
I'm curious how much feedback was obtained from CCP members on this subject. And what it was.
All those things are merely speculations, the main problem is that Kabam is not communicating their struggles. Most of us work and understand that now more than ever companies are asking us to do more with less resources. If they were to tell us "guys, the buff did not come out as intended, give us some time to fix it, we will take your feedback into consideration", no one would complain, but what we are getting is "we are happy with the buff, we will just some minor updates to her regen" or "this is a homage to her previous kit" or simply avoiding the topic as they did in the AMA when the whole community has expressed their sentiments about this decision, with no validation whatsover from Kabam, is just not acceptable. What we need from Kabam is straight forward COMMUNICATION, we are their customers. Again if the final decision will be "we will keep her the way she is now", just send the rank down tickets and they can continue with whatever projects they have for the future, and we all just move on with a dissatisfaction feeling, but we all move forward.
You say you want communication, but your example of communication is "guys, the buff did not come out as intended, give us some time to fix it, we will take your feedback into consideration." In other words, your definition of communication is "admit you're wrong." That's problematic, because they don't believe they are wrong, and saying the first step to better communications is to admit you're wrong wouldn't work on me, wouldn't work on you, and won't work with them either.
Communication is not about one side admitting their wrong while the other side talks. Communication is about the free exchange of ideas. Somewhere in there you hope that the free exchange of ideas gets people to think beyond their experience, and that sometimes causes people to learn something new. But you can't get there in one jump.
You don't change people's minds by getting them to admit they are wrong. You get them to change their minds by surrounding them with your best ideas, and hope that they recognize on their own that some of them are better than the ones they had.
but i think they should admit that they are wrong about guilly buff. i can agree with whatever you said but cant stand the fact they ignored us
They didn't ignore us. They told us what they thought. I disagree with what they thought, but I don't disagree with them saying what they thought honestly. If we don't make a safe space for the devs to express what they think, even if we disagree with it, the next step isn't that next time they admit they are wrong, the next step is for them to not do these anymore.
An admission from Kabam that they were wrong with the Guilly update is worthless if they don't honestly believe it. It would be lip service to placate us, while they went back to doing what they were doing. Remember they don't work for us. They work for their supervisors, and through them for Kabam management, and through *them* for their Netmarble overlords. Being honest with us tells us something that might be useful. But they don't have to be honest. They can hide behind corporate messaging, or they can be completely silent. We can't force them to exposes their thinking to us. Most game developers do not do that with their playerbases.
If we want the developers to sit with us at the table and tell us what they were thinking, we can't tell them they said the wrong things. We have to distinguish disagreeing with their *position* while accepting that their *expression* of their position is at least honest.
I don't let them off the hook just because they agreed to do an AMA. However, I choose to take them at their word, and critique their position about the buff, which they so kindly helped me to understand. I thank them for honestly explaining their position, because it now gives me a clearer understanding of what to challenge, and how to challenge it directly. I can only try to change their minds if I know what their minds are, and guessing is not as good as knowing. I want them to *honestly* tell me why they think they are right, so I can try to prove to them that they are wrong. At the risk of sounding more confrontational than intended, honesty is radar: it tells me where to aim.
as i said i agree with you. they need to express what they think freely without any harsh behavior from community. but they did ignored us actually. if you check back AMA again, most questions didnt get an answer and most of those that were answered, werent related to guilly buff. and again if you read this answer, you'll see this ignorance from kabam
Thou i appreciate their attempt at doing an AMA i do feel nothing of importance was address in regards GUILLOTINE Buff, and a lot of question that were on topic was left unanswered while other questions were picked by John, next time i wish they just stayed on topic and also they said guillotine was used more but the reasoning is simple alot of players want to see how good she is now after the buff, now can someone help me with this where is she the top 7 mystic option at in the game , AQ=nope, AW=nope , EQ=Nope, Story Quest =Nope, now my second question would be the voting system how many players played arena to vote for her Buff are new players with small accounts vs players that's been playing the game for 2 plus years because if you have been playing this game for more than 2 years she literally has no use for you besides arena points, which defeats the purpose of her buff or anything to be excited about they might as well just revert her to her base and move to another champ.
Comments
The questions that I wanted to see an answer to were just ignored and the safe questions got answered.
Very disappointing!
We vote for a buff and get a nerf instead. Please don't ever have a player choice buff vote again. Regret taking her to r2
Fans of Guillotine voted for her because they loved the character and her unique place in the Contest, wanted the buff to be the same plus a little extra utility or relevance to the wider contest. Players who have invested their hard earned and won rank up resources want to see their investment justified or at very least not undermined.
Kabam decided to buff not just on what she was, but what they wanted her to be. As an Attacker, Defender, level of utility, for veterans and new players. They have their own set of criteria.
Very often, the two things line up. In this case, and the original Hood buff, and a lesser extent the DDHK buff, they don't. And clearly from Kabam John's comments, there isn't going to be a rollback of significant change to the new Guillotine.
Summoners are entitled to ask for RDT. Kabam are entitled to say no, because they don't like issuing RDT as the end result would be people would go and rank up someone else and not play Guillotine ever again. The effort would be largely wasted. But, people won't want to use her because they don't like the buff and feel negatively about the champion so that effort is wasted anyways.
It's a bit of a pickle.
And to address that this buff was aimed toward lower level players: A lot of lower level players look up to higher level players for advise on who to rank up wether it be from looking at their profile, looking on Youtube, or asking them directly in the Global Chat. When higher level players are saying that Guillotine is bad, then the lower level players aren't going to want to use her either. Plus her new play style is way more stressful than her old play style and that doesn't seem to benefit newer players.
Totally agreed. I recently pulled guilly as a 5* but she's gonne be at R1 until she gets a proper buff that she deserves. I don't think kabam will give rank down tickets at all. So no hopes there.
Looking at her changes, I'm still not sure how her regen could possibly be the only problem.
After trying the rework, I was so disappointed I basically said "I'm not using her again, because even 'optimal' play won't be any different"
What I think about her rework, with more thought put in:
- Basic Attacks (Bleed)
Her chance to bleed is low, and further hampered by her crit rate being generally not high. In the very brief time I tried using her, bleeds were just too rare to be significant.
- Heavy Attack
Bleed Curse... despite its mystical sounding name is just a Bleed inflicted by a Heavy Attack, which creates more Bleeds on Special Attacks.
Unfortunately, this isn't exactly groundbreaking, considering another red-clad Champion also has a Bleed on heavy attacks which can create more bleeds (though on any critical hit at all). But for them, Bleed actually does something more.
With a name like "Bleed Curse", the least it could do was have some interaction with opponent buffs, rather than be a fancy Bleed debuff.
The most positive I can say about it is that it stacks. If you can get enough heavies in.
- Special Attacks
SP1's Pain Link? To be rather honest, I don't know much about what this is actually meant to do...
I think it's supposed to be a defensive ability, because I can't really think of any offensive application it has that a different champion wouldn't do better, since she still takes the damage. All of it. And heals only 2% of whatever damage she is reflecting onto her opponent...?
SP2's Spectre is... It's fine. It didn't need changing anyway. Pausing Spectre gives her something against those few Champions who have reduced Debuff duration, but as it is a debuff it is still prone to Tenacity and similar. Tenacity in general pretty much shuts her down but we won't go into that.
SP3... I don't really know here. Old Guillotine could deal massive chunks of damage with this if she managed to get enough souls, making for a spectacular fight ender, but... I can see if they thought this was too strong, even if arguably she did need a few synergies to reliably build Souls against high HP opponents.
The Degeneration new Guillotine has obviously lacks that same powerful feel (considering that it does 'a fair bit of damage over a long time' as opposed to 'an instant hit of massive percentage damage', and the base damage of her SP3 is... low. Really low.
- Souls
Speaking of souls, they're a bit easier to get now (I say this, but there's the problem of actually inflicting Bleeds), so that's nice - she doesn't require as many synergies. They also give some extra Attack now... which would be fine if her special attacks didn't spend them on "utility" that doesn't exactly feel worth the loss of damage.
- Awakened Ability
Her sig... gives an option against Bleed immune Champions (but not Champions who punish you for making them Bleed, which is... fine. There are other options.)
- Conclusion
All in all, she still doesn't feel like a proper Mystic Champion, her playstyle got a lot less interesting, her abilities got less interesting (when that 10% chance regen of old Guilly actually procced, it could give big numbers, which was one thing I liked - even if it was unreliable) and now she's honestly less appealing to me and I'm sure there are sadly many others who like her less now.
A grand shame.
We waited months for this buff and people were campaigning to vote for Guilly or Antman. The community was excited, and rightfully so. When you give people the option to weigh in, you cannot half-*ss it, then it’s better to not do any vote at all.
Guilly is a beloved character and many of us praise the work that went into her design, which makes this hurt so much more. Buffs are tough as hell to keep balanced, so please, if you aren’t confident a buff will be fantastic, you should not start a hype train for it.
To be clear, I don’t think this was intentional. I don’t think anybody at Kabam sat down and said “Let’s make this champion worse.” One of the biggest takeaways (that seems to have been largely missed) is that there’s a grand total of one person who is fully dedicated to champion buffs. Kabam John helps too, but he seems to be all over the company, so he can’t be putting that much time into this.
That’s wild to me. No wonder they dialed back the number of updates and why some of them have been so lackluster. That’s a ton of work for one person to do!! They have to come up with the idea, implement it, balance the numbers, reimplement, troubleshoot it, on and on it goes. Then do it again for the other champion that month. I’d hand in a Nova buff at that point too.
I don’t blame the individual devs who worked on this because I’m sure they are overtaxed. I think the MCoC team may be a lot smaller than I’d previously believed, which is worrisome in a lot of ways and explains why so much seems to slip through the cracks.
I hope this changes. I hope that the game team gets a proper allocation of resources and the help they need to make this game run smoothly and create champions we as a community can enjoy.
For a game of this size, that has lasted this long, and clearly has a very large number of active participants, I would have thought the basic ideas I have just mentioned wouldn't be necessary to say. Unfortunately, the Guillotine buff is just the tip of the ice berg of which beneath is an ever increasing array of in game issues and unlikable decisions which don't seem to be getting the necessary diligence before going live.
If Kabam doesn’t want to open such a discussion to the whole community (which would be understandable because that would generate an overwhelming amount of feedback and probably entail its own issues), they could use a separate platform for these discussions. They could use their survey system if that’s easier. But it’s clear that there is no shortage of players who love this game, understand the balance of it, and would be willing to chip in some free labor to see the characters they love done properly.
However, I also think most people who aren't familiar with the game development process aren't fully appreciating how pipelined and siloed the process generally is as well. I believe Kabam John mentioned that there's two people mostly working on updates but five to seven working on new champs. That makes it seem like they are dedicating far more resources to new champs. But most champion updates only touch numbers: they don't change models, animations, visual effects, sound design, or any of that stuff. Two people touching numbers and ability design is actually a comparable level of effort to seven people making whole new champions from scratch, if you are focusing on ability design itself. Not identical, but not as disparate as the numbers themselves make it seem.
Are they a bit slammed by the workload? Probably. They probably have a similar number of employees they had a couple years ago when we went through the whole "burnout/boredom" dev diary situation, and the developers accelerated content and champion updates and designs. They are doing more with the same resources. That time cannot materialize for free. Lots of things have to change. That's part of why they revamped the arenas: going from five to three lowered the internal costs of maintaining them, which frees resources to do other things.
This isn't to make excuses: I'm sure Kabam itself would say they have the same responsibility to deliver the best product they can regardless of the development situation. But there are practical limits on what can and cannot be done, and every push in one direction comes at a cost from somewhere else.
To be honest, I factored all of this into my original feedback on Guillotine. A lot of what I believe to be the flaws in Guillotine's update aren't the result of lack of time or rushed mistakes or a resource bottleneck. They are the result of unforced design decisions that made Guillotine more vulnerable to such things, and the *lazy* way of updating Guillotine would have almost certainly ended up better. I don't fault Kabam for taking risks: if they stop taking risks the game is going to stagnate, and if they are taking legitimate risks sometimes those risks will bite them. You have to be able to take the downside with the upside when you take calculated risks. But I believe the risks taken with Guillotine were not necessary risks, and the theoretical upside wasn't worth the downside.
Rarely if ever do I complain that the devs are overworked and underpaid, or lazy, or stupid. I always assume they are doing their best, and informed by data and process that I might be completely unaware of. When I complain, it is because the decisions I see appear wrong to be even when factoring all of that and then some, and they *still* seem wrong. I give the developers a lot of benefit of the doubt. Only when all of it fails to account for the issue do I strongly complain.
Communication is not about one side admitting their wrong while the other side talks. Communication is about the free exchange of ideas. Somewhere in there you hope that the free exchange of ideas gets people to think beyond their experience, and that sometimes causes people to learn something new. But you can't get there in one jump.
You don't change people's minds by getting them to admit they are wrong. You get them to change their minds by surrounding them with your best ideas, and hope that they recognize on their own that some of them are better than the ones they had.
An admission from Kabam that they were wrong with the Guilly update is worthless if they don't honestly believe it. It would be lip service to placate us, while they went back to doing what they were doing. Remember they don't work for us. They work for their supervisors, and through them for Kabam management, and through *them* for their Netmarble overlords. Being honest with us tells us something that might be useful. But they don't have to be honest. They can hide behind corporate messaging, or they can be completely silent. We can't force them to exposes their thinking to us. Most game developers do not do that with their playerbases.
If we want the developers to sit with us at the table and tell us what they were thinking, we can't tell them they said the wrong things. We have to distinguish disagreeing with their *position* while accepting that their *expression* of their position is at least honest.
I don't let them off the hook just because they agreed to do an AMA. However, I choose to take them at their word, and critique their position about the buff, which they so kindly helped me to understand. I thank them for honestly explaining their position, because it now gives me a clearer understanding of what to challenge, and how to challenge it directly. I can only try to change their minds if I know what their minds are, and guessing is not as good as knowing. I want them to *honestly* tell me why they think they are right, so I can try to prove to them that they are wrong. At the risk of sounding more confrontational than intended, honesty is radar: it tells me where to aim.
And reading a bit of the above... I agree, I don't blame any individual devs. I mean.. c'mon, the champion buff program has turned out some amazing results. Let's look at it like this... I just counted and 8 of my r3 6 stars are buffed characters. That's proof that the buff program has been a success on the whole. I do think it's very important to give appreciation for all the hard work that's gone into it.
Here's the thing. I'm not upset because I feel that Guillotine's buff was a huge miss. I'm upset at the response to our feedback. That's why I'm upset. It sucks to have the vote, wait months... only to actually feel that your champion (r2 before announcement of vote) is now worse instead of better. But... we're being told that we are wrong and our opinion won't be considered... when it was their idea to hold the dang vote in the first place.
I'm curious how much feedback was obtained from CCP members on this subject. And what it was.