An Update to Balancing in MCOC!

IRQ

I'm baffled why Punisher is not a top priority list when it comes to animation update. At least DPX and SIM have the excuse of being the reskin of the character they completely ripped off in this regard.

I mean, how does this superpowered punch knocking opponent into a wall that WS uses during S3 even work with him?

GroundedWisdom

It's literally the same as the game has always been. I find it somewhat confusing that people are on board with a buff program for older Champs, and not on board with this. As long as the game has existed, they've reviewed their product and made changes when the data showed a need.
As for spending, it's never been a purchase, much less a guarantee that the product is as-is. We don't purchase to own anything. We rent access to aspects of their product. That product is a part of a live matrix that's constantly changing and evolving. That doesn't mean every Champ that comes out is at risk for being altered, and history has shown that. It simply means things CAN be changed when necessary.

SkyLord7000

GroundedWisdom said:

I find it somewhat confusing that people are on board with a buff program for older Champs, and not on board with this.

If this clears up your confusion, people tend to like for a buff program that gives their old “low value” champs a chance to be useful again. Not a rework program in replacement of that does not give the same guarantee of the buffing champs that need full reworks.

SkyLord7000

@Kabam Miike one last question:

If a new champion is becomes more useful then initially rated in the program (eg. Corvus, Quake). Will they be more subject to a nerf then before the program?

GroundedWisdom

SkyLord7000 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

I find it somewhat confusing that people are on board with a buff program for older Champs, and not on board with this.

If this clears up your confusion, people tend to like for a buff program that gives their old “low value” champs a chance to be useful again. Not a rework program in replacement of that does not give the same guarantee of the buffing champs that need full reworks.

If there's a system that allows them to monitor and make adjustments more preemptively than the current setup, that's more useful in my opinion than a constant cycle of catch-up.

GroundedWisdom

At least in theory. I'll have to see the execution.

BigManOnCampus

I find that hard believe , with 12.0 players didn't know it would be a large scale game balance update. The Balancing program let you know in advance that the champs will be balanced within a six month period .

DNA3000

Chovner said:

I think it would go a long way for them to answer my valid loaded question(s) in a way that shows they've considered the main concern of the question (which is a very real concern/opinion) and gives and honest transparent position they have on the subject. Dodging that question and ignoring it repeatedly shows they're hiding any real intentions, but that's just my opinion.

No it doesn't: loaded questions are called that because they are posed in a way that guarantees there's no valid answer that cannot be picked apart by anyone with the mind to pose such a question in the first place. It puts them in a position of potentially arguing rather than explaining by shifting the discussion to unreasonable assumptions which they are not supposed to be doing.

I don't have that limitation, so I'm free to tackle those questions.

1. "Why the focus isn’t more towards buffing the old champs already in the game that people have and want to be able to use more? Why is it more important for you guys to focus mainly on the newly released rarer champs?"

This question is unfair because there's only two reasonable ways to interpret this question. The first is to respond to the assertion that Kabam thinks balancing new champs is more important than updating old champs in general. But there's no reason to assume this to be true. Kabam doesn't state this anywhere, and there's no reasonable reason to extrapolate this from the announcement. The announcement states that their plan is to eventually return to doing both balancing new champs and updating old champs, with some balance between the two.

The second is to assume that the question refers to the near term changes: that the initial focus will be on the new champion balancing program, with old champ updates as time permits. But that's also an unfair question, because that one has a trivial answer: because new champion updates have been neglected for so long, Kabam believes there's a need to reinstate such a program, and while it is starting up the focus will be on restarting that program and refining how it works. In the short term the focus will be on the new program, because that's the most reasonable thing to prioritize when you're starting up a new program.


2. "If your goal is game balance and community enjoyment then wouldn’t you agree you’re going at this backwards?"

That's not even an intellectually honest question much less a fair question. It is fishing for a "no" so that that answer can be attacked. But the correct answer is that this is a judgment call, so no. The fact that they are doing it tells you they don't think this is backwards: no one does things entirely contrary to their goals, and both game balance and playerbase enjoyment of the game are obvious goals of the dev team. So anyone asking this question knows the answer to the question. They just want to belittle it.

Game developers rarely implement balancing processes for no reason. They do so because the balancing criteria they use represent what they believe is important to the health and long term success of the game. They might be wrong, but they still have to do what they believe to be right. I would, in their place.

If the goal (one of them) is game balance, then not implementing a new champ balancing program would be completely wrong. It allows champs to enter the game and propagate that can be far from the game's balancing goals, and then by the time they are reexamined so many players have them that it makes the decision on whether to rebalance them far more painful to far more players. A suspicious mind would say that players advocating for updating old champs over rebalancing new champs is counting on the fact that the more players who have the champ, the less likely they'll be nerfed, even if that is perceived as necessary. This tends to run contrary to the community enjoyment of the buff program, so those two priorities need to exist in a reasonable compromise. Devoting no effort to new champion balance and all of that effort to old champion updates is not "forwards."

SkyLord7000

GroundedWisdom said:

At least in theory. I'll have to see the execution.

With some days to process I can see the potential of this program. So I almost agree with you.

However, when you say that you are confused about why summoners are concerned. I’d think anyone would be concerned that this system would allow kabam a way to nerf more champs. I wouldn’t of wanted this system when Herc was released. But would of loved it when super Skrull and psycho man were released. This system will be awesome until they go trigger happy on the nerfs (which is improbable)

Chovner

@DNA3000
Fair points, so maybe I'll just rephrase all my questions this way that hopefully doesn't seem loaded.

With the goal of improving game balance, what would have the greater impact?: Bringing 56 underperforming champs up to match the current game meta or ensure 2 new champs per month aren't overpowered or underpowered?

I don't think properly balancing new champs is a bad deal at all, in fact I think that it's what should happen, I just think they have such a backlog of champs to deal with that their main focus should be on that. They almost should have bumped up the old champ buff system now that they have this new team to deal with all the champs they know are underperforming, then tackle the new champ balance.

With the poor state of the game, I think they should have at least waited to roll this out until after their new engine is rolled out and working.

GroundedWisdom

SkyLord7000 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

At least in theory. I'll have to see the execution.

With some days to process I can see the potential of this program. So I almost agree with you.

However, when you say that you are confused about why summoners are concerned. I’d think anyone would be concerned that this system would allow kabam a way to nerf more champs. I wouldn’t of wanted this system when Herc was released. But would of loved it when super Skrull and psycho man were released. This system will be awesome until they go trigger happy on the nerfs (which is improbable)

It's less about open-season and more about aligning with goals in my opinion.

zaspacer

GroundedWisdom said:

Also, as an addendum, they weren't intentionally left out to make money. They were cautiously added because a number of them are already powerful.

I appreciate and like the creative brainstorming on possible reasons for Kabam choosing Champions. However, we also don't have any certainty with regards to knowing the specific choices, motives, or plans behind Kabam's actions.

It is also very likely that even the individual current persons and groups behind MCOC development (including all past and current staff at Kabam, Netmarble, Unity Technologies, Disney, etc.) do not know (or understand) the full picture of choices, motives, or plans behind many actions taken. Such are the realities of game development. Giant collaborations in chaos.

The food gets to the table (the game content gets launched)... sometimes. But there is never really a diligent accounting audit of the chaotic marathon from farm to table (a planned, tracked, and accounted full development process). And I've worked in accounting and game development (and project management).

All possible options remain viable.

GroundedWisdom

zaspacer said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Also, as an addendum, they weren't intentionally left out to make money. They were cautiously added because a number of them are already powerful.

I appreciate and like the creative brainstorming on possible reasons for Kabam choosing Champions. However, we also don't have any certainty with regards to knowing the specific choices, motives, or plans behind Kabam's actions.

It is also very likely that even the individual current persons and groups behind MCOC development (including all past and current staff at Kabam, Netmarble, Unity Technologies, Disney, etc.) do not know (or understand) the full picture of choices, motives, or plans behind many actions taken. Such are the realities of game development. Giant collaborations in chaos.

The food gets to the table (the game content gets launched)... sometimes. But there is never really a diligent accounting audit of the chaotic marathon from farm to table (a planned, tracked, and accounted full development process). And I've worked in accounting and game development (and project management).

All possible options remain viable.

They've been commented on. At least in a general sense.

BigBlueOx

I’d really like a better response as to how a simple rating system will help players understand things like damage output or utility.

Both characteristics are greatly influenced by the complexity that currently exists in this game. A utility god like Sorcerer Supreme can be useless against plenty of complicated nodes and champion kits. A damage god like Aegon or Morningstar takes multiple fights to reach that status. Or even more complicated in fight ramp up champs like Peni, MoleGod or Guardian, how does that compare to a Corvus or Falcon?

I get that it might help as a communication system but what good will these communications be?

Fit_Fun9329

This approach in general seems to be overambitious. Way too many interactions in the game for just saying “3/5”.

DNA3000

Chovner said:

@DNA3000
Fair points, so maybe I'll just rephrase all my questions this way that hopefully doesn't seem loaded.

With the goal of improving game balance, what would have the greater impact?: Bringing 56 underperforming champs up to match the current game meta or ensure 2 new champs per month aren't overpowered or underpowered?

I don't think properly balancing new champs is a bad deal at all, in fact I think that it's what should happen, I just think they have such a backlog of champs to deal with that their main focus should be on that. They almost should have bumped up the old champ buff system now that they have this new team to deal with all the champs they know are underperforming, then tackle the new champ balance.

With the poor state of the game, I think they should have at least waited to roll this out until after their new engine is rolled out and working.

Fairer, but you're comparing years of buff program to one month of balance program. After the initial ramp up period of settling into the new balancing program, they said in the announcement that they hope to return to old champ updates at a two a month cadence. That's lower than the original three to four month cadence, but there's been some evidence that that original rate was unsustainable anyway: it was slipping at times, and players were also complaining that the quality of the new champions was also slipping. That implies to me the pipeline was overloaded. And the one thing we know is never going to happen is slowing down new champions. They are the engine that powers the game in multiple ways.

Only Kabam can directly answer your question, but from my perspective the balancing program appears to be an attempt to tackle both problems: devote more time to new champions so they don't release buggy or broken as often, and separately reduce the pressure on cranking out more buffs and updates than is currently sustainable by the dev team. Whether they succeed or not is a matter of execution, but that seems to be a reasonable approach to me.

DNA3000

zaspacer said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Also, as an addendum, they weren't intentionally left out to make money. They were cautiously added because a number of them are already powerful.

I appreciate and like the creative brainstorming on possible reasons for Kabam choosing Champions. However, we also don't have any certainty with regards to knowing the specific choices, motives, or plans behind Kabam's actions.

It is also very likely that even the individual current persons and groups behind MCOC development (including all past and current staff at Kabam, Netmarble, Unity Technologies, Disney, etc.) do not know (or understand) the full picture of choices, motives, or plans behind many actions taken. Such are the realities of game development. Giant collaborations in chaos.

The food gets to the table (the game content gets launched)... sometimes. But there is never really a diligent accounting audit of the chaotic marathon from farm to table (a planned, tracked, and accounted full development process). And I've worked in accounting and game development (and project management).

All possible options remain viable.

This is true to a certain extent, in the sense that the people today may not know the full reasons for why some decision was made in the past. Even the question "why did this happen" can have no real answer, because in a collaboration the reason why something happens is that collectively that's what the group decided to do, but since every member of the group may have had different reasons for advocating different positions, there's no one ultimate reason. It depends on the narrative you want to tell.

However, the champions in or not in the current basic pools are now the ultimate responsibility of the people actually there. It is possible a champion was excluded in the past by a developer no longer there, for reasons no one else knows, but that's the sort of decision that gets revisited, and even if it is a standing decision, the devs know what it is (because they have to, to manage the situation correctly). For example, I know why Deadpool is only available in cash offers, because I was told why. I'm not the only player that knows by a wide margin, but I'm not sure if I can say as I don't know if this is public knowledge. But I do know this with reasonable certainty, because this is not something that can be chalked up to collective chaos.

I believe there are unlikely to be many champions excluded from the basic pools just to monetize them directly. The reason being, with very few exceptions (such as the aforementioned Deadpool) this would be inconsistent with how Kabam monetizes the game as i understand it. However, that's a judgment based on my previous experience with game development and my interactions with the MCOC developers. It is not a possibility that I can say I can rule out with reasonable certainty. But I would be very, very surprised if this was the case.

If you've been involved directly with game development, then you know that organized chaos is half the explanation for everything. Inertia is the other. There are never enough hours in the day to do everything the devs want to do, much less what the players want them to do. So a lot of things that look like active decisions are really deferred decisions. A champ might not be in the basic pool because someone decided it shouldn't be, but it is also possible a champ might not be in the basic pool because no one has revisited that decision recently because no one can spare the time to do so. Sometimes the reason why inertia is so important is because while players think about things in terms of the work that has to be done, developers think in terms of the approvals that have to be gotten. Adding a champ to the basic pool that got passed on earlier might require a balance designer, reward designer, economy designer, and a couple producers to all sign off. How many developers would want to advocate for that, instead of working on a new Relic?

GroundedWisdom

Then there's the obvious logical evidence that it's a damn long time to have ulterior motives on monetization when they could have done it when people were begging for them to be added. Lol.

winterthur

DNA3000 said:

zaspacer said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Also, as an addendum, they weren't intentionally left out to make money. They were cautiously added because a number of them are already powerful.

I appreciate and like the creative brainstorming on possible reasons for Kabam choosing Champions. However, we also don't have any certainty with regards to knowing the specific choices, motives, or plans behind Kabam's actions.

It is also very likely that even the individual current persons and groups behind MCOC development (including all past and current staff at Kabam, Netmarble, Unity Technologies, Disney, etc.) do not know (or understand) the full picture of choices, motives, or plans behind many actions taken. Such are the realities of game development. Giant collaborations in chaos.

The food gets to the table (the game content gets launched)... sometimes. But there is never really a diligent accounting audit of the chaotic marathon from farm to table (a planned, tracked, and accounted full development process). And I've worked in accounting and game development (and project management).

All possible options remain viable.

There are never enough hours in the day to do everything the devs want to do, much less what the players want them to do. So a lot of things that look like active decisions are really deferred decisions. A champ might not be in the basic pool because someone decided it shouldn't be, but it is also possible a champ might not be in the basic pool because no one has revisited that decision recently because no one can spare the time to do so. Sometimes the reason why inertia is so important is because while players think about things in terms of the work that has to be done, developers think in terms of the approvals that have to be gotten. Adding a champ to the basic pool that got passed on earlier might require a balance designer, reward designer, economy designer, and a couple producers to all sign off. How many developers would want to advocate for that, instead of working on a new Relic?

I am trying to get a document signed-off since Nov last year and it is moving from one person to another and getting delayed as each has their own priorities. So, this point I can understand.

winterthur

MCOC Team said:

Greetings Summoners!

In the coming months, we are going to be introducing a new Champion Rating system to help better visualize the strengths and weaknesses of any given Champion, giving you all a better understanding of the Champion at a glance.

Will the champs have a champion rating for each of its unawakened and awakened state respectively?

_Gray_ChA0S_

DON'T TOUCH ULTRON

PapaMidnite007

Well done Kabam

_Gray_ChA0S_ said:

DON'T TOUCH ULTRON

Ultrons permanent cauterise via synergy was a bug.. he only needed to have extended duration of his cauterize function lol with the synergy and we all knew it

GroundedWisdom

_Gray_ChA0S_ said:

DON'T TOUCH ULTRON

OK!

Jdmacc74

Wozzle007 said:

So here’s my list of champions that are pretty useless in the game. There’s more that would ideally need a buff as well, but I have no idea why the focus is not on buffing these as quickly as possible. Then we’d start to see some balance to the game.

Abomination, Captain America, Captain America WW2, Ant Man, Hulk, Rhino, Sentry, Spider-Man, Agent Venom, Black Widow, Daredevil, Elektra, Korg, Moon Knight, Punisher, Winter Soldier, Beast, Cyclops Blue, Cyclops Red, Deadpool X Force, Nightcrawler, Storm, Iron Patriot (still trash for me), Green Goblin, Iron Man, Iron Patriot, Psycho Man (confirmed value buff), Red Skull, Rocket, Yondu, Black Bolt, Captain Marvel, Drax, Gamora (still trash for me), Groot, Heimdall, Ms Marvell, Nova (still trash for me), Phoenix, Ronan, Spider-Man Symbiote, Superior Iron Man, Thor, Dr Strange, Iron Fist, Immortal Iron Fist, Juggernaut, Loki, Mordo, Jane Foster, Unstoppable Colossus

I felt this ENTIRE LIST!!! This is definitely where the focus needs to be....I mean,how many of u got a roster of champions they wouldn't play with unless maybe doing arena? And I'm not a huge arena fan....the goals to obtain champions requires so much skill and TIME,that is rather not. I think there's plenty of room for improvement on content that should be better. Why is it STILL to hard to obtain consistently USEFUL 4 and 5 tier potions? Revives? It dampens the game I love,like having to hold on to champs I'll likely never use

XAMA

@Kabam Miike I just need to add my voice hoping it's heard in the name of your new found will to collaborate more with the players and listen to their feedback. This announcement has a lot of nice words, but the overall feeling is not positive at all.

While in the last few months the overall perception of the game was very positive, from the majority of the players, now you're putting all your efforts into:

1. something that nobody cares (rate system)

2. something that hurts players:
You should beta test the new champions BEFORE releasing them, or people would not be keen to invest into them (buy crystals, use resources) if there's no way to tell if and how it will be changed in the future. It would feel like a 12.0 ...each month.

3. and you're basically shutting off one of the most positively acclaimed initiative Kabam ever had:
the monthly buff of old useless, forgotten champs.

I really don't get it!

Jimmy_Chnchila

Booooo! Fix the classic characters that everyone loves and plays with, before adding crappy D-list characters. I’m sick of this BS. You have A-list fan favorites sitting in Meme tier and are instead focusing on some junk characters no one cares about. How many Spider Man, Cap, and Iron Man costumes can we have? You are killing your own game.

TrapKill66

Soooo,
I need no longer read the champion information, special attack info, list of synergies, visit the forums, play with the champ in question, play against the champ in question, or have any working understanding of the way a champion works?
I can just look at a few numbers allocated by Kabam to their own products?
One glance and a champion is categorised?
My understanding of champs in this game is that many of them are complex and require repeated and diverse interactions to gain a real understanding of said champs usefulness.
Also, champ A may be good in situation A, but not so good in situation B.
This rating system sounds like a foolish idea to me; shallow and lacking forethought.
It appear that this is reducing a champ to a set of largely, potentially, arbitrary numbers. (See Hercules numerical utility designation...)
I have zero interest in this seemingly watered down numerical champion designation. I can read words; don't need simplistic number values.
Please make this an option we can turn on or turn off.
I prefer to develop my own understanding of a champions value and usefulness through use of the champ and, if I need more, then maybe some basic research online; YouTube or forums, etc.
In this way I engage with the champs and have a real interaction with them, which I believe is in contrast to the way this rating system will work.

Also, please keep buffing older champs, it has real value for those of use with larger rosters. Old champs take on a new role in my roster when buffed, I revisit them, it's fun and engaging and kind of exciting. 6 star Maw ain't so bad, now.

-TrapKill