Regarding Brian Grant’s Most Recent Video

Sadal

ok @Kabam Miike think about this..... you want the revenue from the gifting event, but dont want people creating accounts or vots to cheat the system, i have a very simple solution that you guys already implement in other aspects of the game.... tiered gifting
anyone below uncollected can only gift revives and potiins
uncollected unlocks lesser gifting crystals
cav unlocks great gifting crystals
and throne breaker gets a new crystal with rewards geared towards rank 4ing 6 stars, awakening them geting them and sig them up

it would easily kill the bot farming and the ones cheating the system

Eb0ny-O-M4w

We already have an event dedicated for spending money. Its called the money- I mean, spring cleaning event.
We don't need the gifting event to be the same

FlyGalaxyBomb

Okay so umm , how was everyone's day?💀

The_Sentry06

Eb0ny-O-M4w said:

Starhawk said:

Eb0ny-O-M4w said:

Just cap the ammount of GGC a player can be gifted.

That would set a limit of crystals you could send to your main account, and also limit the money spent on the event.

they are not going to limit how much someone can gift....people spend thousands gifting others. That would also result in leaderboards for alliances ending up with a bunch of ties as the top spending alliances would just max out

Just remove rank rewards then. The whole money-gifting part of the event is the main problem, not the farm on alt accounts.

Of course, placing a cap would end up cutting Kabam gains by a lot. Like 95% or so.
But sometimes in life, people need to make sacrifices in order to achieve greatness. So is up to them to sacrifice the money they would get in order to have a good event, fair for everyone.

Yeah no, this has got to be a top ten bad idea that I've seen on here.

Everyone loves this event, grinders, spenders and Kabam. You just killed it for all 3.
The gifting event has never been a complete "money event", like you are making it out to be. That's where the unit grinding part comes into play. Mass unit grinding on alt accounts may or may not be ok, but grinding on your own main account is perfectly. You're just viewing it through narrow, close-minded glasses where you want to hate the event.

No suggestion you have given here is viable or realistic and based on your furthur comments, you know that very well. Maybe next time trying being constructive for once?

BitterSteel

The_Sentry06 said:

Eb0ny-O-M4w said:

Starhawk said:

Eb0ny-O-M4w said:

Just cap the ammount of GGC a player can be gifted.

That would set a limit of crystals you could send to your main account, and also limit the money spent on the event.

they are not going to limit how much someone can gift....people spend thousands gifting others. That would also result in leaderboards for alliances ending up with a bunch of ties as the top spending alliances would just max out

Just remove rank rewards then. The whole money-gifting part of the event is the main problem, not the farm on alt accounts.

Of course, placing a cap would end up cutting Kabam gains by a lot. Like 95% or so.
But sometimes in life, people need to make sacrifices in order to achieve greatness. So is up to them to sacrifice the money they would get in order to have a good event, fair for everyone.

Yeah no, this has got to be a top ten bad idea that I've seen on here.

Everyone loves this event, grinders, spenders and Kabam. You just killed it for all 3.
The gifting event has never been a complete "money event", like you are making it out to be. That's where the unit grinding part comes into play. Mass unit grinding on alt accounts may or may not be ok, but grinding on your own main account is perfectly. You're just viewing it through narrow, close-minded glasses where you want to hate the event.

No suggestion you have given here is viable or realistic and based on your furthur comments, you know that very well. Maybe next time trying being constructive for once?

I really enjoy the environment my alliance has at gifting, we don't take it seriously and everyone just gifts however much they want to. The rewards are nice, it's a fun feeling during the event, and it's fun opening GGCs.

It absolutely sucks that some people on the top cheat and scam, but it doesn't take away positive experiences too

The_Sentry06

BitterSteel said:

The_Sentry06 said:

Eb0ny-O-M4w said:

Starhawk said:

Eb0ny-O-M4w said:

Just cap the ammount of GGC a player can be gifted.

That would set a limit of crystals you could send to your main account, and also limit the money spent on the event.

they are not going to limit how much someone can gift....people spend thousands gifting others. That would also result in leaderboards for alliances ending up with a bunch of ties as the top spending alliances would just max out

Just remove rank rewards then. The whole money-gifting part of the event is the main problem, not the farm on alt accounts.

Of course, placing a cap would end up cutting Kabam gains by a lot. Like 95% or so.
But sometimes in life, people need to make sacrifices in order to achieve greatness. So is up to them to sacrifice the money they would get in order to have a good event, fair for everyone.

Yeah no, this has got to be a top ten bad idea that I've seen on here.

Everyone loves this event, grinders, spenders and Kabam. You just killed it for all 3.
The gifting event has never been a complete "money event", like you are making it out to be. That's where the unit grinding part comes into play. Mass unit grinding on alt accounts may or may not be ok, but grinding on your own main account is perfectly. You're just viewing it through narrow, close-minded glasses where you want to hate the event.

No suggestion you have given here is viable or realistic and based on your furthur comments, you know that very well. Maybe next time trying being constructive for once?

I really enjoy the environment my alliance has at gifting, we don't take it seriously and everyone just gifts however much they want to. The rewards are nice, it's a fun feeling during the event, and it's fun opening GGCs.

It absolutely sucks that some people on the top cheat and scam, but it doesn't take away positive experiences too

Yep I feel the same way except I usually trade with some friends.

pseudosane

Adevati said:

AverageDesi said:

Adevati said:

thepiggy said:

Adevati said:

thepiggy said:

Zeraphan said:

thepiggy said:

Zeraphan said:

Wicket329 said:

It is probably worth noting that whatever kind of gates they put in place to address this issue will only delay it. For example, if a person were to make many alt accounts and farm units right now and Kabam came out and said “an account must be this old or X level to participate in gifting,” then those alt accounts would sit out this year… and then be usable next time around.

I have no idea how I feel about this. I don’t mind if people have an alt or two and decide to feed their main account with some quick and easy units. It’s the holidays, live and let live. I would mind if a person did this to such an extent as to tip rank rewards in an alliance or some other such nonsense. That would be obnoxious.

But it is ok for someone to spend money to buy units to do this? Either mass gifting via any means is bad or it isn't, but it can't be wrong for someone to do this for free and totally fine for someone to spend money when the end result is the same.

I'm sure @DNA3000 can explain this much better, but there's a difference between money and time, although I agree that time is money...

Kabam designs rewards like GGCs with a certain economy in mind. If you buy it with units using real money, the cost was high, rewards intended, and balanced. If you buy GGCs with units farmed from arena, it's balanced because it takes a long time farm them because the amount of units scattered across the game is intended and calculated.

If contents is adjusted that allows easy farming (post-buff Act 1-3), it devalues the value of units (purchased or grinded the old fashioned way) and throws everything out of balance.

A whale and a hardcore grinder don't affect game balance (assuming the whale can't buy everything in the game), but exploit farmers can.

Ok, so explain this to me.

Player A spends tons of their time to get units for free through alt farming and gets 50 6* champs because of it (Totally made up numbers clearly).
Player B spends real money to make sure they get the same number of crystals as Player A and they also receive 50 6* champs (still totally made up numbers).

One of these effects the bottom line for Kabam, but how does only one of these have a different impact on you? The end result from both Player A and Player B is the same on every other player.

Let me put it this way, and it's a rough estimate so bear with me...

Over the period of a week, it takes ~30hrs of in-game arena grinding to get ~2k units.

Post-buff you can farm ~2k units from Acts 1-3 in ~6hrs and you don't have to wait for a new arena and you can get multiple devices and autofight going to make it even more efficient.

You can get 5x the units doing the early Acts now that it does farming arena. Imagine if all in game item prices shot up by 5x? Imagine if 1x Cav crystal cost 1500 units..

This is bad for the game.

Except units on a developed account are worth 5x more than units on a new account.

If there were no alliance or milestone rewards virtually no one would be spending 300 units on a crystal with the same rewards as a GGC. Even at 50 units I bet most wouldn’t touch them.

And that's where those farmed units are going to..their developed main.

No it isn’t and you know it.

They are severely devaluing the units by buying GGCs.

Forget about the units number. It’s misleading because those units will never be able to purchase what a main can.

You described how units from an alt are 5x faster.

Taking your parameters, would you rather have the contents of 1 GGC (excluding milestone/alliance rewards) or 60 units?

You can’t keep focusing on the amount of units since redemption value is tied to progression.

It takes around 40 crystals to get a 6-star. That’s 12,000 units for an alt. Using your parameters, a main could have farmed 2,400 units in the same time frame. Sure 12,000 vs 2,400 looks like a huge imbalance. But not when you look at what that actually buys you. When you look at net gain, it becomes a lot closer.

In what world is 12000 units the same as 2400? Especially in the context of gifting

Your alts generate 12,000 in 36 hours of farming.

In the same time, you could have farmed 2,400 on your main.

People in this thread see 12,000 and think, “Outrageous! Devaluing units! Exploit!”

But those units are a golden handcuff. You can’t give them to your main. So, you can only buy GGCs. GGCs are terrible value for 300 units by themselves. It takes on average 15 to get enough shards for a 5-star. 4500 units. Or 40 for a 6-star; 12000 units. So you can’t compare units because units on an alt are less valuable than units on a main. You have to compare what time spent farming on alts gets your main versus what time spent farming on your main gets.

For the same time spent, it’s not “Do I want 12000 units or 2400 units”.

It is “Do I want 40 GGC or 2400 units.”

Now go look at YouTube and find GGC opening videos. Would you pay 2400 units for those contents? I’d wager some times you would, some times you wouldn’t.

The point is, the disparity is not as wide as people are pretending because alt units have to be spent on GGCs and GGCs are RNG with value tied to milestones and alliance rankings. By buying on alts, you erase the milestone and alliance value from the GGCs.

totally false. GGCs on their own have bad value in small quantities, which is what these alts overcome. Get them in large quantities and they do give massive amounts of resources.

Doctorwho13

Sadal said:

ok @Kabam Miike think about this..... you want the revenue from the gifting event, but dont want people creating accounts or vots to cheat the system, i have a very simple solution that you guys already implement in other aspects of the game.... tiered gifting
anyone below uncollected can only gift revives and potiins
uncollected unlocks lesser gifting crystals
cav unlocks great gifting crystals
and throne breaker gets a new crystal with rewards geared towards rank 4ing 6 stars, awakening them geting them and sig them up

it would easily kill the bot farming and the ones cheating the system

I just honestly can’t see that happening. For one it’s much like July 4 and cyber weekend. People relax their spending rules if they’re generally FTP except for those 2-3 times a year. That severely cuts revenue because no one will buy GCC’s to send if they cant get them back. For two, at the generally low cost of a revive or potion (comparitve to say grinding 2000 units) a conqueror isn’t really going to care about getting a couple of revives they can buy at little cost to themselves. Yeah. Free is free but it takes the hype and the excitement of the event away.

Lastly it create a great divide in alliances with multiple areas of players. From conquerors to TB. everyone in your alliance above you is getting great stuff while you’re opening your lump of coal. It sows disharmony

Graves_3

Dkcody42 said:

I’m guessing somewhere there is Brian Grant maybe wishing he had not made that video 🤷‍♂️

Nah! He will take the publicity to his video. Good for him that this is still in limelight.

FROSTTT

This issue will not exeist if Brian Grant did not post the video

BitterSteel

FROSTTT said:

This issue will not exeist if Brian Grant did not post the video

That is categorically untrue, and you are misinformed.

Kabam Miike said this on the matter: "When we made these changes to the early game, we knew that there could be some potential for this kind of behaviour. We were already looking into ways to make sure that this can't be exploited, but don't have the details right now."

I've highlighted the relevant part for you. Kabam already knew about it, get angry all you want at Brian but your anger is misplaced.

King363672

It's not gifting event it's trading event 😂
Someone behaving like they will gift others without expecting something back

Bugmat78

BitterSteel said:

FROSTTT said:

This issue will not exeist if Brian Grant did not post the video

That is categorically untrue, and you are misinformed.

Kabam Miike said this on the matter: "When we made these changes to the early game, we knew that there could be some potential for this kind of behaviour. We were already looking into ways to make sure that this can't be exploited, but don't have the details right now."

I've highlighted the relevant part for you. Kabam already knew about it, get angry all you want at Brian but your anger is misplaced.

Maybe they did.. or maybe they didn't understand the full impact and only examined the matter to a limited extent until this game out (, didn't be the first time).

Stating that after the fact of the video being public isn't exactly proving anything, except to confirm they do know about it now.

If they had included a warning about measures to be taken to prevent exploits or whatever people want to call this in their original post about the earlier act revision (, before the video) then one could say that.

The fact mike's post implied they are still thinking of how to handle it well after the changes have been made public (and well after they should've predicted and explored ways to deter any unwanted behaviour in the concept stage o these changes) don't fill me with confidence.

Adevati

Solution is simple.

Step 1) Determine the savings in time the changes to act 1-3 gives a new account. Kabam already knows this.

Step 2) Determine how long it took a new act to be eligible for gifting with last years parameters (level 15 and act 2). Kabam already knows this.

Add amount from Step 1 to Step 2 but not in a way that heavily penalizes accounts that had already completed some or most of the content prior to the change. Kabam has the data on which level thresh hold or story progression that is. We’d all be guessing. Problem solved.

But wait! There’s more…

Secret Step 1) Flag accounts lower than uncollected for bot activity.

Secret Step 2) Flag main accounts that received gifts from flagged account in Step 1. Arbitrarily create a cut off for worse offending main accounts. Ban those accounts. The cut off covers false positives.

BitterSteel

Bugmat78 said:

BitterSteel said:

FROSTTT said:

This issue will not exeist if Brian Grant did not post the video

That is categorically untrue, and you are misinformed.

Kabam Miike said this on the matter: "When we made these changes to the early game, we knew that there could be some potential for this kind of behaviour. We were already looking into ways to make sure that this can't be exploited, but don't have the details right now."

I've highlighted the relevant part for you. Kabam already knew about it, get angry all you want at Brian but your anger is misplaced.

Maybe they did.. or maybe they didn't understand the full impact and only examined the matter to a limited extent until this game out (, didn't be the first time).

Stating that after the fact of the video being public isn't exactly proving anything, except to confirm they do know about it now.

If they had included a warning about measures to be taken to prevent exploits or whatever people want to call this in their original post about the earlier act revision (, before the video) then one could say that.

The fact mike's post implied they are still thinking of how to handle it well after the changes have been made public (and well after they should've predicted and explored ways to deter any unwanted behaviour in the concept stage o these changes) don't fill me with confidence.

But we’re talking about whether they knew about it before the video or not. And Miike said they categorically were. This isn’t a maybe/maybe not, or a matter of semantics.

“We were already looking into ways” means just that, they were already looking into ways.

You can direct any lack of confidence comments at Kabam based on this, but I was simply replying to someone getting angry at Brian as if it’s his fault, and as if he alone brought this on. It’s not true.

Bugmat78

BitterSteel said:

Bugmat78 said:

BitterSteel said:

FROSTTT said:

This issue will not exeist if Brian Grant did not post the video

That is categorically untrue, and you are misinformed.

Kabam Miike said this on the matter: "When we made these changes to the early game, we knew that there could be some potential for this kind of behaviour. We were already looking into ways to make sure that this can't be exploited, but don't have the details right now."

I've highlighted the relevant part for you. Kabam already knew about it, get angry all you want at Brian but your anger is misplaced.

Maybe they did.. or maybe they didn't understand the full impact and only examined the matter to a limited extent until this game out (, didn't be the first time).

Stating that after the fact of the video being public isn't exactly proving anything, except to confirm they do know about it now.

If they had included a warning about measures to be taken to prevent exploits or whatever people want to call this in their original post about the earlier act revision (, before the video) then one could say that.

The fact mike's post implied they are still thinking of how to handle it well after the changes have been made public (and well after they should've predicted and explored ways to deter any unwanted behaviour in the concept stage o these changes) don't fill me with confidence.

But we’re talking about whether they knew about it before the video or not. And Miike said they categorically were. This isn’t a maybe/maybe not, or a matter of semantics.

“We were already looking into ways” means just that, they were already looking into ways.

You can direct any lack of confidence comments at Kabam based on this, but I was simply replying to someone getting angry at Brian as if it’s his fault, and as if he alone brought this on. It’s not true.

That is exactly who I directed it at - haven't said anything on BG, except to say it's quite possible they didn't fully appreciate how the changes would go down irregardless of what they have publicly posted here after the matter.

BG's role in this isn't too important wrt Kabam's actions prior to implementing the changes - he simply highlighted it to those of the player base who hadn't considered it.

More important to me is whether kabam fully explored the potential repercussions before they released the changes, and how far along to moderating/handling it they actually are, as there is a finite period between now and gifting (ie PR is cheap, show me action).

Dontsellthem

@ darko not sure how to spell the name because of the symbols. Here is the post

“The video is like me a non-grinder, saying arena grinders are gaining advantage because they are farming units and BC, which again will give some x amount of units. Non issue.”

How is this not putting an end to this non issue?

It makes complete sense. It takes TIME to grind the arena and most don’t want to and don’t do it. Same goes with the new accounts. It takes loads of TIME to get to even 2k units on one New account. Most won’t do it, some obviously will.

cookiedealer

BitterSteel said:

@DNA3000 I'm interested on your take about what the best way to put in a requirement, or what Miike is alluding to when they say they're looking into ways to stop it being exploited.

Every way I think about it, it's going to badly affect a certain group of players.

Account level - someone who bought the 735 unit daily card for 12 months but only is level 15
Time of creation - new players who start in the coming days
Progression - newer players who couldn't get to that level
Can only gift to similar rated players - anyone who has a mate who doesn't play the game as seriously/plays it way more seriously, or a member of the alliance who is much different rated. Same with progression.

Aside from your new currency idea, which would be great for next year, but right now couldn't fix the issue. What do you think is the best way to do something that is best for new players, lower players or the players who want to grind a couple alts, but at the same time doesn't allow someone to grind 50?

DNA3000 said:

Zeraphan said:

DNA3000 said:

People keep asking this question. And the answer is: the same way someone cheating in your class affects your grade. Massively multiplayer games, like many classes, are graded on a curve. Content and reward systems are balanced around datamined averages and other metrics.

This is absolutely not valid logic, because otherwise the 100s (1000s maybe?) of players who spend insane money to create the same outcome during the gifting event would have the same negative impact on the economy/game. I am also willing to bet that the number of people creating large scale alt farming is probably equal to or less than the number of players who whale out like crazy on the gifting event.

Mass gifting is either wrong or ok. The way it occurs makes no difference at all.

If players were somehow actually exploiting I would totally agree that needed to be looked into and fixed.

The logic is not invalid: the people who spend do create the same situation as the people who gain rewards through exploits. For that matter, highly skilled players who crush content are also creating the same issue when they raise the curve for everyone else.

It is just that when the smart kid raises the curve, we consider that to be normal. And in this game, when the rich kid buys the school a whole new wing, we let him have Stephen Hawking help him with his physics homework, because without him and his friends there would be no school.

We want the skilled players and we need the whales. We don't need mass alt farming. That's the difference.

thepiggy said:

It's a simple solution, get rid of the gifting part. You can buy GGCs for yourself using units like any other crystal but you can't gift it. Problem solved. No more having to detect armies of botters that are scamming Kabam out of money and no more shady nonsense.

If this happens I lose all units from my alt but that's a small price to pay for a fairer event.

Kabam could go down this sort of route if they have great free rewards. Maybe even throw in a one-time: if you spend $1, you can gift from 2 alts.

I can imagine players who grinded/botted on more alts than a typical ~2-3 accounts will feel frustrated.

Or somehow has 20-30k plus units on an "alt" without spending 🙄. (Bot, or bought someone else's account).

But the "spirit" of giving, and people receiving "free" stuff, will be over?!

As if anyone can't give outside the game.