It shouldn’t cost anything or close to nothing to adjust mastery. We have several champions in the game that responds either favorably or unfavorably to certain masteries, nodes and contents that are influenced by masteries and so forth. We have to be able to make these adjustments at ease to fully benefits from the champions we collect and the contents we do, it will influence the enjoyment we have with the game from champions we use to contents we do. It’s just this simple imo. After all, we pay to unlock most of the masteries. Others are yet to be unlocked not because we don’t want to but because we’re economizing our units. Tells you we need more flexibility and freedom to switch or adjust masteries and shouldn’t be expensive. One main reason we’re complaining is because it’s costly and some of you are saying it’s not about money for Kabam. Just listen to yourself again. The fact that the game has come this far in years, complexity, number characters and contents but mastery has stayed the same for this long shows it out of date and rigid. We’re no longer using a handful of champions with 2-3 lines descriptions. But it doesn’t matter what I say or what majority says, not even a 4 disagrees to 102 agrees ratio will change Kabam mind, whatever they wanna do is what they do. You think they don’t know this? Mastery preset for example would have won by a landslide over battlegrounds if they were to put it to a survey. Yet, they spent the time to work on battlegrounds which will feed on masteries change . Maybe I’m wrong and they’ll listen to the community, who knows.
While i agree about making a decision, this isnt an mmorpg where you choose a race, specialization, and are stuck with it for the rest of the game. I consider it to be a character building fighting game.
Once upon a time MCOC might have been that in concept, but it hasn't actually been that for a very long time. The trend in development has been for the game to be a hybrid MMO-light roster-building game since before v12. Someone familiar with deck building games that played from the start would have seen the game consistently drift farther and farther away from the game concept they were familiar with from day one, while people familiar with MMOs have seen the game dejavu itself into more and more MMO tropes over time.
Heck, v12 itself was an MMO trope. Mobile game players were saying at the time how ridiculous the v12 changes were, while MMO veterans were mostly yawning, as almost every MMO that lasts long enough has a v12 of its own.
I would agree with you in some way but i dont see MCoC as an mmo, rather a pokemon style game. It is actually Marvel based Pokemon game, is all it is.
Different people see the game as different things. We all have an idea of what we think it "should" be.; But at the end of the day it is what it is, and it hasn't shied away from incorporating MMO and RPG elements. You could say those elements are not proper for what the game should be, but it is equally true that those elements define what the game actually is.
Masteries, rank ups, soon Relics, are all MMO and RPG elements that define the kind of game MCOC is. The conscious decision to shift from scalar difficulty scaling (just pumping up attack and health) to the more complex node interaction style content in Act 7 and Cavalier EQ are also examples of RPG-like design sensibilities. They all reflect the past and current thinking of the developers and how they see the different elements of the game functioning. I think it is important to keep that in mind. The goal of every business might be to make money, but that doesn't mean the chef in every restaurant is thinking about maximizing revenue when they cook or design recipes. Chefs still want to make delicious food, and game developers still want to make good games. And part of that thinking is thinking about the fundamentals of how games present choices and how they make player actions important, when at the end of the day they are just selling temporary glowing flickers of light. What makes things valuable is perhaps more important than what they cost.
I'm not saying that Kabam is bad, I'm saying its a business decision based on the amount of units earned. If you lose units it all adds up, so for anyone saying that you can farm units, thats a duh. It still takes away from the pool you can use on crystals or completing end game content.
I could honesty careless to anyone's proximity to developers. It is still a business and currency is revolved around units period.
Examples of Kabam making restraints via time limits is Battlegrounds, AQ, AW. Those are all time limit restraints where you need more powerful champions to take down enemies within a time limit. So I absolutely stand by what I said. And your backlash has now made this topic toxic whereas I was simply advocating for a pro player exchange that will approve the level of enjoyment for most players.
Earlier I said it was all about money but doesn't DNA make a good point? It's a basic game design thing that's there to force players into a tough decision.
I will keep asking for free switches, but it's probably not about the money.
Honestly I think his point sounded good but had very little substance. That's my honest opinion.
Fortunately for me, the developers of the game seem to disagree with you. But to be fair, it is just the arbitrary opinions of the people who actually make the game.
Oh so I guess they have no interest in shedding a better light on Kabam lol. That's like me defending my job and being like I have 0 conflict of interest with my opinion.
Your response is laughable and you know better than that.
I'm not saying that Kabam is bad, I'm saying its a business decision based on the amount of units earned. If you lose units it all adds up, so for anyone saying that you can farm units, thats a duh. It still takes away from the pool you can use on crystals or completing end game content.
I could honesty careless to anyone's proximity to developers. It is still a business and currency is revolved around units period.
Examples of Kabam making restraints via time limits is Battlegrounds, AQ, AW. Those are all time limit restraints where you need more powerful champions to take down enemies within a time limit. So I absolutely stand by what I said. And your backlash has now made this topic toxic whereas I was simply advocating for a pro player exchange that will approve the level of enjoyment for most players.
Earlier I said it was all about money but doesn't DNA make a good point? It's a basic game design thing that's there to force players into a tough decision.
I will keep asking for free switches, but it's probably not about the money.
Honestly I think his point sounded good but had very little substance. That's my honest opinion.
Fortunately for me, the developers of the game seem to disagree with you. But to be fair, it is just the arbitrary opinions of the people who actually make the game.
Oh so I guess they have no interest in shedding a better light on Kabam lol. That's like me defending my job and being like I have 0 conflict of interest with my opinion.
Your response is laughable and you know better than that.
Isn't he technically right? Would you keep playing if your decisions didn't really matter?
If you could reverse and undo almost anything or unrank, ungem, or unsig any champ, would you like it as much?
No but I would like it for masteries. Also, I would love if rank down tickets were given more often. So actually, I would like the game more.
@DNA3000 The restrictions and the compromise only exist on "limited economy". The moment you are willing to spend freely the restriction is gone.
It feels to me that is a "economic decision" which sets apart "rich" from "poor".
I see the inherent restriction when you limited the total points to everyone, that's design, but the moment you open a pay to avenue, the restriction by design becomes a economic restriction looking purely to separate the elite or the pay to win from the rest.
I may be wrong but that's how I see it. I love your post and I appreciate them a lot, but I can't agree with you on this one.
I loved the fact that you can prepare for a battle by changing your masteries, it gives much more strategy to the game, and it increases the deepness of your roster and the battle ahead. To me the free masteries has brought a lot of enjoying and joy, it makes me sad that they are gone
@DNA3000 The restrictions and the compromise only exist on "limited economy". The moment you are willing to spend freely the restriction is gone.
That's true, but this is true for a lot of things in a free to play game supported by microtransactions. Inventory is limited, but you can pay for higher limits. Champion crystals are limited, unless you decide to pay for them with cash. Every design limitation the game implements has an internal logic to it, but many also have ways to mitigate those limits through monetization.
Inventory is the obvious one to discuss. For the longest time, there was no way to increase it above the limits set by level progress. Now, you can do that with the Sigil. Someone who starts playing now and only sees the game as it currently exists might try to make the case that the only reason why inventory limits exist is to generate revenue, because there is a way to spend to increases them. But that's obviously false, because for most of the game's history there was no way to spend money to mitigate them. Inventory limits obviously have a non-revenue reason for originally being added to the game. So the idea that the existence of monetization is an obvious proof that monetization is the primary factor for a limit existing is not true
If the devs were only concerned about monetizing the mastery system, they would sell mastery points. Since there's an obvious advantage to having more, it is an obvious avenue for monetization. However, the devs have repeatedly stated that they wouldn't add more mastery points until they added more masteries, making an explicit connection between how many masteries exist and how many they want players to be able to use simultaneously in one mastery configuration. This is an issue monetization cannot overcome, and it is an example of a situation where monetization does not override game design principles.
I can personally tell you that I play less arena since I started placing without suicides for AW defense. That has a direct impact on how many units I can farm.
To say that it has noting to do with monetization is purely tone deaf and irresponsible at best. They should be free because we paid to unlock them as many have said earlier. It is really that simple.
@DNA3000 The restrictions and the compromise only exist on "limited economy". The moment you are willing to spend freely the restriction is gone.
That's true, but this is true for a lot of things in a free to play game supported by microtransactions. Inventory is limited, but you can pay for higher limits. Champion crystals are limited, unless you decide to pay for them with cash. Every design limitation the game implements has an internal logic to it, but many also have ways to mitigate those limits through monetization.
Inventory is the obvious one to discuss. For the longest time, there was no way to increase it above the limits set by level progress. Now, you can do that with the Sigil. Someone who starts playing now and only sees the game as it currently exists might try to make the case that the only reason why inventory limits exist is to generate revenue, because there is a way to spend to increases them. But that's obviously false, because for most of the game's history there was no way to spend money to mitigate them. Inventory limits obviously have a non-revenue reason for originally being added to the game. So the idea that the existence of monetization is an obvious proof that monetization is the primary factor for a limit existing is not true
If the devs were only concerned about monetizing the mastery system, they would sell mastery points. Since there's an obvious advantage to having more, it is an obvious avenue for monetization. However, the devs have repeatedly stated that they wouldn't add more mastery points until they added more masteries, making an explicit connection between how many masteries exist and how many they want players to be able to use simultaneously in one mastery configuration. This is an issue monetization cannot overcome, and it is an example of a situation where monetization does not override game design principles.
I'm sorry I answered you somewhere eles also. Let me start saying that I appreciate a lot your post, and the fact we don't agree doesn't mean that I don't see the point.
As I see it, Laban doesn't want masteries to be free because paying for them, makes them a luxury item that can open avenues for revenue.
The problem that I have, is that, that concept was valid when the game started and you didn't have that many micro games. Now it feels that the system it's really antiquated. No set-up will fit it all, and you are just left with the decision of paying or loosing fun.
Arenas for instance, suicide masteries are not required, but it is way more fun to grind that mode with them is it really giving you a huge advantage or it is more reducing the amount of time that you spend doing a chore?
On some other modes just give you a little extra strategy, same thing as synergy, relics, or whatever is next I feel masteries are not current or valid for the game that it was before, and since a redesign will take time and resources, for the time being and all considered, been them free would not be a bad decision for the game, and it's current state. Do something better in the future, but not doing anything now takes away a lot of fun that could be available. If they could set masteries per game mode, that could be a compromise, but if they can't (time, cost, technology...) Make them free until you get with something better
@DNA3000 The restrictions and the compromise only exist on "limited economy". The moment you are willing to spend freely the restriction is gone.
That's true, but this is true for a lot of things in a free to play game supported by microtransactions. Inventory is limited, but you can pay for higher limits. Champion crystals are limited, unless you decide to pay for them with cash. Every design limitation the game implements has an internal logic to it, but many also have ways to mitigate those limits through monetization.
Inventory is the obvious one to discuss. For the longest time, there was no way to increase it above the limits set by level progress. Now, you can do that with the Sigil. Someone who starts playing now and only sees the game as it currently exists might try to make the case that the only reason why inventory limits exist is to generate revenue, because there is a way to spend to increases them. But that's obviously false, because for most of the game's history there was no way to spend money to mitigate them. Inventory limits obviously have a non-revenue reason for originally being added to the game. So the idea that the existence of monetization is an obvious proof that monetization is the primary factor for a limit existing is not true
If the devs were only concerned about monetizing the mastery system, they would sell mastery points. Since there's an obvious advantage to having more, it is an obvious avenue for monetization. However, the devs have repeatedly stated that they wouldn't add more mastery points until they added more masteries, making an explicit connection between how many masteries exist and how many they want players to be able to use simultaneously in one mastery configuration. This is an issue monetization cannot overcome, and it is an example of a situation where monetization does not override game design principles.
I'm sorry I answered you somewhere eles also. Let me start saying that I appreciate a lot your post, and the fact we don't agree doesn't mean that I don't see the point.
As I see it, Laban doesn't want masteries to be free because paying for them, makes them a luxury item that can open avenues for revenue.
The problem that I have, is that, that concept was valid when the game started and you didn't have that many micro games. Now it feels that the system it's really antiquated. No set-up will fit it all, and you are just left with the decision of paying or loosing fun.
Arenas for instance, suicide masteries are not required, but it is way more fun to grind that mode with them is it really giving you a huge advantage or it is more reducing the amount of time that you spend doing a chore?
On some other modes just give you a little extra strategy, same thing as synergy, relics, or whatever is next I feel masteries are not current or valid for the game that it was before, and since a redesign will take time and resources, for the time being and all considered, been them free would not be a bad decision for the game, and it's current state. Do something better in the future, but not doing anything now takes away a lot of fun that could be available. If they could set masteries per game mode, that could be a compromise, but if they can't (time, cost, technology...) Make them free until you get with something better
I don't think we're super far apart here. I agree there are benefits to allowing players to switch mastery set ups, and I don't think Kabam disagrees either. The two largest areas where I think there's at least a broad if not universal consensus that allowing mastery swaps "at will" are probably in the arena, and for defensive placement of alliance war. My guess is that battlegrounds will be another one. These are "mode-specific" areas where the game presents a sufficiently different, relatively self contained gameplay situation that the burden of being locked into one mastery configuration probably has a higher gameplay cost than the benefits of preserving the design intent of managing mastery tradeoffs.
On the one hand, there's the benefits of forcing players to make actual choices with actual consequences, but we want to minimize the bleed over into those choices making whole game modes unappealing. If we make mastery respec free, we lose the former unless we place throttles on swaps, but that then means people who strictly want to swap for purposes that have limited requirements - defensive placement - get basically unfettered swapping while people who want to bounce in and out of different game modes are penalized. I don't see a reason to pick one of those groups of players over the other. That's why I believe the best compromise is mode specific mastery profiles. We allow players to make mastery configuration decisions per mode, however we define a mode. If we define arena to be a mode, we would allow players to have a mastery set up for arena. If we define alliance war defensive placement itself to be a mode, we would allow players to have a mastery set up for defensive placement. Once set, there would be no cost to use it, because that mode would be set to use it.
The critical idea is we don't penalize players that want to play different parts of the game. If they want to play arena and they also want to play alliance war, we don't penalize them for hopping in between game modes. We charge them to make an arena mastery set up, but once it is set they don't have to pay to leave arena and come back. We stamp their hand and let them go in and out without additional costs. If they want a special AW defensive mastery set up, they have to pay for that, but once again going into defensive placement and then coming back out doesn't incur additional costs. The idea that someone would have to pay more if they bounce between game modes five times a day instead of three times a day is weird to me, and mode specific profiles would negate that issue.
For those that believe Kabam would never give up the monetization revenue of mastery swaps, mastery profiles become the new QoL chase item. You give everyone one mastery profile, which in effect is what we have now. We award them for game play and we monetize some of them. You earn one when you reach Uncollected, say. You get one if you subscribe to the Sigil. You sell one for a thousand units, or whatever. You allow people to earn a handful so they don't need to spend, then you give the spenders the ability to get more as a convenience item.
In my opinion, the revenue part is just icing on the cake. The real problem is giving players enough agency on mastery configurations to make them sufficiently flexible that they don't seriously impair playing other game modes, without making them so flexible their design intent of presenting meaningful player choices completely evaporates.
3 Presets with free changes. One for AQ, AW, & BG. That is all.
A preset for AW would mean your AW defense would share a mastery config with your AW attackers. Some people find that acceptable, some people primarily swap masteries for AW attack and defenses and wouldn't be helped if alliance war had one mastery preset configuration.
Inventory limits used to be unlimited. I remember I used to have over 300 health potions and over 80 revives at one point. Kabam removed the limit and sold increases to the inventory back to us via the sigil. So that was definitely monetized.
If you ask DNA3000 it allowed Kabam to give us options on whether or not we should use units or farm revives, making it a more interesting game and money is an after thought lol.
Inventory limits used to be unlimited. I remember I used to have over 300 health potions and over 80 revives at one point. Kabam removed the limit and sold increases to the inventory back to us via the sigil. So that was definitely monetized.
The gap between when the inventory limits were implemented and when the Sigil was introduced suggests that the decision to institute inventory limits had nothing to do with monetizing inventory limits. Unless you believe they implemented inventory limits and then just forgot they were supposed to monetize them for a few years.
Inventory limits used to be unlimited. I remember I used to have over 300 health potions and over 80 revives at one point. Kabam removed the limit and sold increases to the inventory back to us via the sigil. So that was definitely monetized.
If you ask DNA3000 it allowed Kabam to give us options on whether or not we should use units or farm revives, making it a more interesting game and money is an after thought lol.
If you ask literally any game developer that's been on the job for more than a week, they will give you the reason why inventory limits generally exist in most games. Of course, you'd have to find one willing to tolerate you long enough to explain things to you first, so maybe Google searching would be a better avenue for you at this point.
@DNA3000 The restrictions and the compromise only exist on "limited economy". The moment you are willing to spend freely the restriction is gone.
That's true, but this is true for a lot of things in a free to play game supported by microtransactions. Inventory is limited, but you can pay for higher limits. Champion crystals are limited, unless you decide to pay for them with cash. Every design limitation the game implements has an internal logic to it, but many also have ways to mitigate those limits through monetization.
Inventory is the obvious one to discuss. For the longest time, there was no way to increase it above the limits set by level progress. Now, you can do that with the Sigil. Someone who starts playing now and only sees the game as it currently exists might try to make the case that the only reason why inventory limits exist is to generate revenue, because there is a way to spend to increases them. But that's obviously false, because for most of the game's history there was no way to spend money to mitigate them. Inventory limits obviously have a non-revenue reason for originally being added to the game. So the idea that the existence of monetization is an obvious proof that monetization is the primary factor for a limit existing is not true
If the devs were only concerned about monetizing the mastery system, they would sell mastery points. Since there's an obvious advantage to having more, it is an obvious avenue for monetization. However, the devs have repeatedly stated that they wouldn't add more mastery points until they added more masteries, making an explicit connection between how many masteries exist and how many they want players to be able to use simultaneously in one mastery configuration. This is an issue monetization cannot overcome, and it is an example of a situation where monetization does not override game design principles.
I'm sorry I answered you somewhere eles also. Let me start saying that I appreciate a lot your post, and the fact we don't agree doesn't mean that I don't see the point.
As I see it, Laban doesn't want masteries to be free because paying for them, makes them a luxury item that can open avenues for revenue.
The problem that I have, is that, that concept was valid when the game started and you didn't have that many micro games. Now it feels that the system it's really antiquated. No set-up will fit it all, and you are just left with the decision of paying or loosing fun.
Arenas for instance, suicide masteries are not required, but it is way more fun to grind that mode with them is it really giving you a huge advantage or it is more reducing the amount of time that you spend doing a chore?
On some other modes just give you a little extra strategy, same thing as synergy, relics, or whatever is next I feel masteries are not current or valid for the game that it was before, and since a redesign will take time and resources, for the time being and all considered, been them free would not be a bad decision for the game, and it's current state. Do something better in the future, but not doing anything now takes away a lot of fun that could be available. If they could set masteries per game mode, that could be a compromise, but if they can't (time, cost, technology...) Make them free until you get with something better
I don't think we're super far apart here. I agree there are benefits to allowing players to switch mastery set ups, and I don't think Kabam disagrees either. The two largest areas where I think there's at least a broad if not universal consensus that allowing mastery swaps "at will" are probably in the arena, and for defensive placement of alliance war. My guess is that battlegrounds will be another one. These are "mode-specific" areas where the game presents a sufficiently different, relatively self contained gameplay situation that the burden of being locked into one mastery configuration probably has a higher gameplay cost than the benefits of preserving the design intent of managing mastery tradeoffs.
On the one hand, there's the benefits of forcing players to make actual choices with actual consequences, but we want to minimize the bleed over into those choices making whole game modes unappealing. If we make mastery respec free, we lose the former unless we place throttles on swaps, but that then means people who strictly want to swap for purposes that have limited requirements - defensive placement - get basically unfettered swapping while people who want to bounce in and out of different game modes are penalized. I don't see a reason to pick one of those groups of players over the other. That's why I believe the best compromise is mode specific mastery profiles. We allow players to make mastery configuration decisions per mode, however we define a mode. If we define arena to be a mode, we would allow players to have a mastery set up for arena. If we define alliance war defensive placement itself to be a mode, we would allow players to have a mastery set up for defensive placement. Once set, there would be no cost to use it, because that mode would be set to use it.
The critical idea is we don't penalize players that want to play different parts of the game. If they want to play arena and they also want to play alliance war, we don't penalize them for hopping in between game modes. We charge them to make an arena mastery set up, but once it is set they don't have to pay to leave arena and come back. We stamp their hand and let them go in and out without additional costs. If they want a special AW defensive mastery set up, they have to pay for that, but once again going into defensive placement and then coming back out doesn't incur additional costs. The idea that someone would have to pay more if they bounce between game modes five times a day instead of three times a day is weird to me, and mode specific profiles would negate that issue.
For those that believe Kabam would never give up the monetization revenue of mastery swaps, mastery profiles become the new QoL chase item. You give everyone one mastery profile, which in effect is what we have now. We award them for game play and we monetize some of them. You earn one when you reach Uncollected, say. You get one if you subscribe to the Sigil. You sell one for a thousand units, or whatever. You allow people to earn a handful so they don't need to spend, then you give the spenders the ability to get more as a convenience item.
In my opinion, the revenue part is just icing on the cake. The real problem is giving players enough agency on mastery configurations to make them sufficiently flexible that they don't seriously impair playing other game modes, without making them so flexible their design intent of presenting meaningful player choices completely evaporates.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and opinions, I'd appreciate them.
I'm just going to speak from my own experience here, and mileage may vary here. But I paid attention to masteries when I was growing up as a player, until I got something that was ok, then at some point we focused in aq over aw and I unlocked the suicide masteries, which at that time and for my account was a huge investment. It has some pros and some cons. Although at some point I switched back to non suicides, mainly because I wanted to play with a bigger amount of chars and also because we were focusing more in Aw and we had aq "dominated".
Last week I was able to switch masteries and I really enjoyed it. I didn't change masteries per fight, maybe more per mode as you said, had a configuration for battleground, one for aw defense, aw attack (maybe 2 for attack), and same suicides for aq and arena(arena with suicide masteries was really fun).
And that was awesome, I had a lot of fun switching things up, playing differently, and using my roster in different ways, and I realized that the ability of switching masteries without spending that many runes increased a lot my love for the game and my engagement. I'd love that Kabam would take a compromise here, maybe not completely free, maybe different set ups to switch, or per game mode, or reduce the cost, or allow free switches every week or I don't know exactly the formula, I just think that the way there way designed originally with one only game mode available it isn't working anymore. I also know that the perfect solution could take time...
So for the time been, or maybe some days a month, they could be free, I'd just love that Kabam would meet us in the middle, at least, because the experience gave me the opportunity to see that guess what, I have something called masteries, a tab that haven't used in a year? Maybe two? And it could add not only strategy to the game but also change the way you play and enjoy the game. I also saw, that the way that they were designed isn't really working anymore, and until Kabam would find an implement how they should be today, been them free would much better than going back what it used to be.
3 Presets with free changes. One for AQ, AW, & BG. That is all.
A preset for AW would mean your AW defense would share a mastery config with your AW attackers. Some people find that acceptable, some people primarily swap masteries for AW attack and defenses and wouldn't be helped if alliance war had one mastery preset configuration.
No you are missing the point. The presets can be changed at any time. With three setups you could reserve one of them for AW defense specifically. The other two keep for offense. Simply turn on the defense preset before placing champs then immediately change back to an offensive pre set.
3 Presets with free changes. One for AQ, AW, & BG. That is all.
A preset for AW would mean your AW defense would share a mastery config with your AW attackers. Some people find that acceptable, some people primarily swap masteries for AW attack and defenses and wouldn't be helped if alliance war had one mastery preset configuration.
No you are missing the point. The presets can be changed at any time. With three setups you could reserve one of them for AW defense specifically. The other two keep for offense. Simply turn on the defense preset before placing champs then immediately change back to an offensive pre set.
If they worked the way you described, you could also, say, make a suicide mastery set and a non-suicide mastery set and switch them constantly from fight to fight in a single piece of content. You can ask for that, it isn't my place to say no. But I will say that your odds of getting that are very, very low.
If mastery resets were limitless then we'd end up with nodes designed for different mastery setups. Ugh.
Why would that be a bad thing? Also, we have that now.
We have Nodes that correspond to basic functions like Parry and Dexterity. We do not have Nodes that specify the need for Suicides, as far as I know. They've always been elective. Further to that, the game isn't likely to encourage us to swap Masteries from Node to Node. While they're available for anyone to change, there is a purpose to making it somewhat consequential, both for our benefit and the functionality of the game.
3 Presets with free changes. One for AQ, AW, & BG. That is all.
A preset for AW would mean your AW defense would share a mastery config with your AW attackers. Some people find that acceptable, some people primarily swap masteries for AW attack and defenses and wouldn't be helped if alliance war had one mastery preset configuration.
No you are missing the point. The presets can be changed at any time. With three setups you could reserve one of them for AW defense specifically. The other two keep for offense. Simply turn on the defense preset before placing champs then immediately change back to an offensive pre set.
If they worked the way you described, you could also, say, make a suicide mastery set and a non-suicide mastery set and switch them constantly from fight to fight in a single piece of content. You can ask for that, it isn't my place to say no. But I will say that your odds of getting that are very, very low.
Why? We were already able to do that when masteries were free. It took longer because you needed to manually change them. But yes, Switching them freely for a single piece of content is something you can do already. It wouldn't be game breaking or anything.
3 Presets with free changes. One for AQ, AW, & BG. That is all.
A preset for AW would mean your AW defense would share a mastery config with your AW attackers. Some people find that acceptable, some people primarily swap masteries for AW attack and defenses and wouldn't be helped if alliance war had one mastery preset configuration.
No you are missing the point. The presets can be changed at any time. With three setups you could reserve one of them for AW defense specifically. The other two keep for offense. Simply turn on the defense preset before placing champs then immediately change back to an offensive pre set.
If they worked the way you described, you could also, say, make a suicide mastery set and a non-suicide mastery set and switch them constantly from fight to fight in a single piece of content. You can ask for that, it isn't my place to say no. But I will say that your odds of getting that are very, very low.
Why? We were already able to do that when masteries were free. It took longer because you needed to manually change them. But yes, Switching them freely for a single piece of content is something you can do already. It wouldn't be game breaking or anything.
It would not be game breaking, but that doesn't mean anything. It would be design breaking though. And while there are a lot of players that wouldn't care, the developers would. There are a million things they could be working on, and if you ask for something design breaking, they don't have to say no. They can just decide to work on something else instead and avoid the problem entirely. And you would never know it happened.
3 Presets with free changes. One for AQ, AW, & BG. That is all.
A preset for AW would mean your AW defense would share a mastery config with your AW attackers. Some people find that acceptable, some people primarily swap masteries for AW attack and defenses and wouldn't be helped if alliance war had one mastery preset configuration.
No you are missing the point. The presets can be changed at any time. With three setups you could reserve one of them for AW defense specifically. The other two keep for offense. Simply turn on the defense preset before placing champs then immediately change back to an offensive pre set.
If they worked the way you described, you could also, say, make a suicide mastery set and a non-suicide mastery set and switch them constantly from fight to fight in a single piece of content. You can ask for that, it isn't my place to say no. But I will say that your odds of getting that are very, very low.
Why? We were already able to do that when masteries were free. It took longer because you needed to manually change them. But yes, Switching them freely for a single piece of content is something you can do already. It wouldn't be game breaking or anything.
It would not be game breaking, but that doesn't mean anything. It would be design breaking though. And while there are a lot of players that wouldn't care, the developers would. There are a million things they could be working on, and if you ask for something design breaking, they don't have to say no. They can just decide to work on something else instead and avoid the problem entirely. And you would never know it happened.
I don't agree with you at all on this one. First, I don't think it would be as "design breaking" as you think. Second, just because something might be difficult to add doesn't mean we shouldn't ask for it.
If mastery resets were limitless then we'd end up with nodes designed for different mastery setups. Ugh.
Why would that be a bad thing? Also, we have that now.
We have Nodes that correspond to basic functions like Parry and Dexterity. We do not have Nodes that specify the need for Suicides, as far as I know. They've always been elective. Further to that, the game isn't likely to encourage us to swap Masteries from Node to Node. While they're available for anyone to change, there is a purpose to making it somewhat consequential, both for our benefit and the functionality of the game.
Yeah, I disagree with everything you said and I don't feel the need to explain why.
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The fact that the game has come this far in years, complexity, number characters and contents but mastery has stayed the same for this long shows it out of date and rigid. We’re no longer using a handful of champions with 2-3 lines descriptions.
But it doesn’t matter what I say or what majority says, not even a 4 disagrees to 102 agrees ratio will change Kabam mind, whatever they wanna do is what they do. You think they don’t know this? Mastery preset for example would have won by a landslide over battlegrounds if they were to put it to a survey. Yet, they spent the time to work on battlegrounds which will feed on masteries change
Maybe I’m wrong and they’ll listen to the community, who knows.
Masteries, rank ups, soon Relics, are all MMO and RPG elements that define the kind of game MCOC is. The conscious decision to shift from scalar difficulty scaling (just pumping up attack and health) to the more complex node interaction style content in Act 7 and Cavalier EQ are also examples of RPG-like design sensibilities. They all reflect the past and current thinking of the developers and how they see the different elements of the game functioning. I think it is important to keep that in mind. The goal of every business might be to make money, but that doesn't mean the chef in every restaurant is thinking about maximizing revenue when they cook or design recipes. Chefs still want to make delicious food, and game developers still want to make good games. And part of that thinking is thinking about the fundamentals of how games present choices and how they make player actions important, when at the end of the day they are just selling temporary glowing flickers of light. What makes things valuable is perhaps more important than what they cost.
Your response is laughable and you know better than that.
The restrictions and the compromise only exist on "limited economy". The moment you are willing to spend freely the restriction is gone.
It feels to me that is a "economic decision" which sets apart "rich" from "poor".
I see the inherent restriction when you limited the total points to everyone, that's design, but the moment you open a pay to avenue, the restriction by design becomes a economic restriction looking purely to separate the elite or the pay to win from the rest.
I may be wrong but that's how I see it. I love your post and I appreciate them a lot, but I can't agree with you on this one.
I loved the fact that you can prepare for a battle by changing your masteries, it gives much more strategy to the game, and it increases the deepness of your roster and the battle ahead. To me the free masteries has brought a lot of enjoying and joy, it makes me sad that they are gone
It is a cost restriction more than anything imo.
Inventory is the obvious one to discuss. For the longest time, there was no way to increase it above the limits set by level progress. Now, you can do that with the Sigil. Someone who starts playing now and only sees the game as it currently exists might try to make the case that the only reason why inventory limits exist is to generate revenue, because there is a way to spend to increases them. But that's obviously false, because for most of the game's history there was no way to spend money to mitigate them. Inventory limits obviously have a non-revenue reason for originally being added to the game. So the idea that the existence of monetization is an obvious proof that monetization is the primary factor for a limit existing is not true
If the devs were only concerned about monetizing the mastery system, they would sell mastery points. Since there's an obvious advantage to having more, it is an obvious avenue for monetization. However, the devs have repeatedly stated that they wouldn't add more mastery points until they added more masteries, making an explicit connection between how many masteries exist and how many they want players to be able to use simultaneously in one mastery configuration. This is an issue monetization cannot overcome, and it is an example of a situation where monetization does not override game design principles.
To say that it has noting to do with monetization is purely tone deaf and irresponsible at best. They should be free because we paid to unlock them as many have said earlier. It is really that simple.
As I see it, Laban doesn't want masteries to be free because paying for them, makes them a luxury item that can open avenues for revenue.
The problem that I have, is that, that concept was valid when the game started and you didn't have that many micro games. Now it feels that the system it's really antiquated. No set-up will fit it all, and you are just left with the decision of paying or loosing fun.
Arenas for instance, suicide masteries are not required, but it is way more fun to grind that mode with them is it really giving you a huge advantage or it is more reducing the amount of time that you spend doing a chore?
On some other modes just give you a little extra strategy, same thing as synergy, relics, or whatever is next
I feel masteries are not current or valid for the game that it was before, and since a redesign will take time and resources, for the time being and all considered, been them free would not be a bad decision for the game, and it's current state. Do something better in the future, but not doing anything now takes away a lot of fun that could be available. If they could set masteries per game mode, that could be a compromise, but if they can't (time, cost, technology...) Make them free until you get with something better
Ugh.
On the one hand, there's the benefits of forcing players to make actual choices with actual consequences, but we want to minimize the bleed over into those choices making whole game modes unappealing. If we make mastery respec free, we lose the former unless we place throttles on swaps, but that then means people who strictly want to swap for purposes that have limited requirements - defensive placement - get basically unfettered swapping while people who want to bounce in and out of different game modes are penalized. I don't see a reason to pick one of those groups of players over the other. That's why I believe the best compromise is mode specific mastery profiles. We allow players to make mastery configuration decisions per mode, however we define a mode. If we define arena to be a mode, we would allow players to have a mastery set up for arena. If we define alliance war defensive placement itself to be a mode, we would allow players to have a mastery set up for defensive placement. Once set, there would be no cost to use it, because that mode would be set to use it.
The critical idea is we don't penalize players that want to play different parts of the game. If they want to play arena and they also want to play alliance war, we don't penalize them for hopping in between game modes. We charge them to make an arena mastery set up, but once it is set they don't have to pay to leave arena and come back. We stamp their hand and let them go in and out without additional costs. If they want a special AW defensive mastery set up, they have to pay for that, but once again going into defensive placement and then coming back out doesn't incur additional costs. The idea that someone would have to pay more if they bounce between game modes five times a day instead of three times a day is weird to me, and mode specific profiles would negate that issue.
For those that believe Kabam would never give up the monetization revenue of mastery swaps, mastery profiles become the new QoL chase item. You give everyone one mastery profile, which in effect is what we have now. We award them for game play and we monetize some of them. You earn one when you reach Uncollected, say. You get one if you subscribe to the Sigil. You sell one for a thousand units, or whatever. You allow people to earn a handful so they don't need to spend, then you give the spenders the ability to get more as a convenience item.
In my opinion, the revenue part is just icing on the cake. The real problem is giving players enough agency on mastery configurations to make them sufficiently flexible that they don't seriously impair playing other game modes, without making them so flexible their design intent of presenting meaningful player choices completely evaporates.
I'm just going to speak from my own experience here, and mileage may vary here. But I paid attention to masteries when I was growing up as a player, until I got something that was ok, then at some point we focused in aq over aw and I unlocked the suicide masteries, which at that time and for my account was a huge investment. It has some pros and some cons. Although at some point I switched back to non suicides, mainly because I wanted to play with a bigger amount of chars and also because we were focusing more in Aw and we had aq "dominated".
Last week I was able to switch masteries and I really enjoyed it. I didn't change masteries per fight, maybe more per mode as you said, had a configuration for battleground, one for aw defense, aw attack (maybe 2 for attack), and same suicides for aq and arena(arena with suicide masteries was really fun).
And that was awesome, I had a lot of fun switching things up, playing differently, and using my roster in different ways, and I realized that the ability of switching masteries without spending that many runes increased a lot my love for the game and my engagement. I'd love that Kabam would take a compromise here, maybe not completely free, maybe different set ups to switch, or per game mode, or reduce the cost, or allow free switches every week or I don't know exactly the formula, I just think that the way there way designed originally with one only game mode available it isn't working anymore. I also know that the perfect solution could take time...
So for the time been, or maybe some days a month, they could be free, I'd just love that Kabam would meet us in the middle, at least, because the experience gave me the opportunity to see that guess what, I have something called masteries, a tab that haven't used in a year? Maybe two? And it could add not only strategy to the game but also change the way you play and enjoy the game. I also saw, that the way that they were designed isn't really working anymore, and until Kabam would find an implement how they should be today, been them free would much better than going back what it used to be.