Really, Kabam? Another update with this?

Why are Android devices still relegated to worse graphics with missing effects by default no matter how capable the device? Doesn't anyone at Kabam play on an Android phone?

No, the many different Android devices don't matter. Broad device compatibility is built into the operating system and the game engine. No one has to hand tune anything for an exact screen size anymore. Back when the iPhone 4S came out, a slightly different screen size and ratio was a big deal, but that hasn't been the case for years. The same way the game doesn't try to place a tiny iPhone mini image when you play on a 12inch iPad and doesn't use high res assets on a low-res device or vice versa (unless you play on Android 😂... 😐... 🥺... 😢).

When can we expect to get back to something close to the graphics, warp, and transparency effects that flagship Android devices used to have (at 120Hz no less before that was nerfed too!)? Maybe an update just flat out saying that you're going to keep Android graphics worse and you don't want to turn them back up, so we shouldn't hold out hope every month.

Comments

ItsDamien

Why are Android devices still relegated to worse graphics with missing effects by default no matter how capable the device? Doesn't anyone at Kabam play on an Android phone?

No, the many different Android devices don't matter. Broad device compatibility is built into the operating system and the game engine. No one has to hand tune anything for an exact screen size anymore. Back when the iPhone 4S came out, a slightly different screen size and ratio was a big deal, but that hasn't been the case for years. The same way the game doesn't try to place a tiny iPhone mini image when you play on a 12inch iPad and doesn't use high res assets on a low-res device or vice versa (unless you play on Android 😂... 😐... 🥺... 😢).

When can we expect to get back to something close to the graphics, warp, and transparency effects that flagship Android devices used to have (at 120Hz no less before that was nerfed too!)? Maybe an update just flat out saying that you're going to keep Android graphics worse and you don't want to turn them back up, so we shouldn't hold out hope every month.

Because different hardware has different capabilities and android has no uniform hardware to work with. There are several different CPUs, several different GPUs, all within the same release year of androids. Hell even the same “model” of phone can have two different CPUs manufactured by different companies in them. It’s happened many times.

You know why apple has less issues with this? Because the same chips that go into an iPhone mini, is the same chip architecture as the standard, pro, and pro max models. Those same chips are the same as the ones that go into that years iPads.

Android is simply harder to give “better graphics to” because unless they cut support for A LOT of devices that are capable of running and have OS that are still supported, then they have to cater to those models too. And it’ll be an inevitable thing that will have to happen again and again, forcing users to upgrade devices that are otherwise fine to play the game on.

Optimising for the minority of top spec android players is not worth the investment. Nor should they.

BigPoppaCBONE

Because different hardware has different capabilities and android has no uniform hardware to work with. There are several different CPUs, several different GPUs, all within the same release year of androids. Hell even the same “model” of phone can have two different CPUs manufactured by different companies in them. It’s happened many times.

You're way off the mark here, repeating the iOS' supposed magic uniformity/Android's Who knows what's in there Fragmentation BroScience.

How do you figure PCs have worked for decades playing games across a much, much, much, did I say much, because I meant much more diverse variety of hardware than Android could hope to compare to?

You know why apple has less issues with this? Because the same chips that go into an iPhone mini, is the same chip architecture as the standard, pro, and pro max models. Those same chips are the same as the ones that go into that years iPads.

What? There are less issues because the tools are significantly more iOS oriented. Android app product is very often a port and patch of the iOS app product, for a number of different reasons. Apple calling their SOCs by the same naming conventions every year doesn't mean they don't change between devices. Between same year devices they can and have changed the manufacturer, the memory, the number of high efficiency cores, number of performance cores, the GPU, the number of graphics cores enabled, and the coprocessors included in addition to the screen size, resolution, aspect ratios, and the dead space from the notch on some models.

Android is simply harder to give “better graphics to” because unless they cut support for A LOT of devices that are capable of running and have OS that are still supported, then they have to cater to those models too. And it’ll be an inevitable thing that will have to happen again and again, forcing users to upgrade devices that are otherwise fine to play the game on.

Optimising for the minority of top spec android players is not worth the investment. Nor should they.

The effects were there and then they were disabled. The assets and their associated effects are already made. The game isn't a benchmark. It only operates within specific parameters and not as fast as it can without burning up, so a device doesn't have to be blazing, bleeding edge fast or anything, it only needs to be "street legal".

Yes, old devices get support cut. Obviously. They've cutoff compatibility in the past for iOS and Android devices that were mad old that the engine didn't support anymore. I don't know what point you were going for there.

Demonzfyre

Mine look the same as the last update and I have a Google Pixel 6 Pro. I went from a LG V60 to the 6 Pro and now have those more in depth animations I didn't before.

BigPoppaCBONE

Mine look the same as the last update and I have a Google Pixel 6 Pro. I went from a LG V60 to the 6 Pro and now have those more in depth animations I didn't before.

You got in at the right time. When the Pixel 6 Pro released, it didn't have the good effects enabled either. That came later.

ItsDamien

Okay I’m not going to use the quote function for every bit because I’m lazy and sick right now so simple copy and paste will have to do.

How do you figure PCs have worked for decades playing games across a much, much, much, did I say much, because I meant much more diverse variety of hardware than Android could hope to compare to?

Because each generation of PC component architecture is mostly the same across the main manufacturers. Games developers then use the tools that work with the current architecture available to give them their fidelity. All Nvidia Graphics cards in a given series use the same chipsets, albeit some shaved down for the lower end markets, but a Palit 3060 is the same as an Gigabyte 3060. The core is the same. Yes they can add higher quality capacitors to them, which allow a little more power, but performance wise they will be almost the same. Same with AMD cards and their AIBs and the SKUs for each card in a generation, with CPUs it’s the same with Intel and AMD again, they are from the same die, but usually shaved down for the lower end, but the architecture remains the same. However older generations simply cannot handle newer games, that’s why games have a minimum requirement on PC. And more to this fact, some games perform better or worse on NVidia/AMD cards and Intel/AMD CPUs, simply because games developers can’t account for every variation of PC build out there, so they make it as widely available for the lowest common denominator they can.

What? There are less issues because the tools are significantly more iOS oriented. Android app product is very often a port and patch of the iOS app product, for a number of different reasons. Apple calling their SOCs by the same naming conventions every year doesn't mean they don't change between devices. Between same year devices they can and have changed the manufacturer, the memory, the number of high efficiency cores, number of performance cores, the GPU, the number of graphics cores enabled, and the coprocessors included in addition to the screen size, resolution, aspect ratios, and the dead space from the notch on some models.

The iPhone processor doesn’t change for that generation. It’s made by TMSC, they put in the order and that’s what they get for that year. And in fact the iPhone 14 line are getting the same processors this year, albeit the slightly beefier version that was found in the iPhone 13 Pro. Any manufacturer that puts in an order for chips with any company will stick to the same process for the entire duration for that generation of device, because it’s more cost effective to do it that way. Apple specifically wants to keep things uniform with their partnership with TMSC, and they do not change the performance of the models they release within the specific models within a generation, if they decide to release something with different specs they then label it as a different model. An iPhone 13 mini from a year ago is the same as an iPhone 13 mini this year. Nothing changes. You should fact check that for yourself.

As for developing apps, yes, some are designed with iOS in mind and then ported over. That’s nothing new in the gaming sphere at all. It’s happened for decades.

The effects were there and then they were disabled. The assets and their associated effects are already made. The game isn't a benchmark. It only operates within specific parameters and not as fast as it can without burning up, so a device doesn't have to be blazing, bleeding edge fast or anything, it only needs to be "street legal".

Yes, old devices get support cut. Obviously. They've cutoff compatibility in the past for iOS and Android devices that were mad old that the engine didn't support anymore. I don't know what point you were going for there.

If the effects hadn’t been disabled then many of the other currently compatible devices would have been put into the “no longer supported” category. Having less people be able to play the game is never a good decision. It’s as simple as that really. Any game will aim to run at the max capacity of the device it’s on, and when that becomes too much for certain devices the game will either not run at all, thus less people being able to play, or run so poorly that people complain about it not running as well as it should and having even worse stuttering, graphical, and input issues leading to less people wanting to play.

DNA3000

You're way off the mark here, repeating the iOS' supposed magic uniformity/Android's Who knows what's in there Fragmentation BroScience.

How do you figure PCs have worked for decades playing games across a much, much, much, did I say much, because I meant much more diverse variety of hardware than Android could hope to compare to?

First: because PC compatibility is actually a mess, and always has been. Sure, you can get Excel to work the same on (almost) any PC, but high performance games? I'm not a DirectX expert, but if you want to talk history of PC compatibility, I know where a lot of the bodies are buried.

Second, because making a game work on a mobile phone is as different from making them work on PCs as it is making an app work on Windows and MacOSX. Actually, it is harder than that. Windows and OSX work completely differently, but they both tend to run on computers that have vast amounts of hardware on a relative basis. They have hardware to burn, particularly memory. Mobile games are all highly optimized: they simply wouldn't work at all if they were not. And it is in those optimizations that platform compatibility becomes problematic.

Even people I know that are die-hard Android developers would never make the claim that platform compatibility is a myth. It is the one development issue all professional Android developers will concede right up front. It is PC compatibility that is a myth (just read the release notes and patch notes for any modern PC game).

BigPoppaCBONE

You're way off the mark here, repeating the iOS' supposed magic uniformity/Android's Who knows what's in there Fragmentation BroScience.

How do you figure PCs have worked for decades playing games across a much, much, much, did I say much, because I meant much more diverse variety of hardware than Android could hope to compare to?
First: because PC compatibility is actually a mess, and always has been. Sure, you can get Excel to work the same on (almost) any PC, but high performance games? I'm not a DirectX expert, but if you want to talk history of PC compatibility, I know where a lot of the bodies are buried.

Second, because making a game work on a mobile phone is as different from making them work on PCs as it is making an app work on Windows and MacOSX. Actually, it is harder than that. Windows and OSX work completely differently, but they both tend to run on computers that have vast amounts of hardware on a relative basis. They have hardware to burn, particularly memory. Mobile games are all highly optimized: they simply wouldn't work at all if they were not. And it is in those optimizations that platform compatibility becomes problematic.

Even people I know that are die-hard Android developers would never make the claim that platform compatibility is a myth. It is the one development issue all professional Android developers will concede right up front. It is PC compatibility that is a myth (just read the release notes and patch notes for any modern PC game).

I agree with some and disagree with others of your statements here. Another discussion for a different venue, perhaps.
We're getting away from the issue here of finding why the effects are on or off, seemingly on a whim, and why they can't be consistent or applied in a way that makes sense. It would be one thing if all Android devices ran the game with lower quality assets, effects, and framerate due to platform requirements, contractual obligations, or insurmountable hardware limitations, but we know that isn't the case. Demonstrably worse performing hardware is getting the graphic effects that more capable devices aren't. There probably aren't too many people that have played this game on every Samsung flagship for the last several years, and several midrange versions, the Folds 2 and 3, and played it back and forth switching between the same year iPhone for years, along with iPads Air, Mini, and Pro, the Pixel 6 Pro, and other devices that I don't remember from my first play to today. Among all those Android devices, devices have started with the good effects, lost them, then gotten them back, only to lose them again. Other devices started out with the degraded graphics at launch and had the good graphics enabled later. Others never got the good effects but the midrange, lesser version in the same family always had them.

DNA3000

You're way off the mark here, repeating the iOS' supposed magic uniformity/Android's Who knows what's in there Fragmentation BroScience.

How do you figure PCs have worked for decades playing games across a much, much, much, did I say much, because I meant much more diverse variety of hardware than Android could hope to compare to?
First: because PC compatibility is actually a mess, and always has been. Sure, you can get Excel to work the same on (almost) any PC, but high performance games? I'm not a DirectX expert, but if you want to talk history of PC compatibility, I know where a lot of the bodies are buried.

Second, because making a game work on a mobile phone is as different from making them work on PCs as it is making an app work on Windows and MacOSX. Actually, it is harder than that. Windows and OSX work completely differently, but they both tend to run on computers that have vast amounts of hardware on a relative basis. They have hardware to burn, particularly memory. Mobile games are all highly optimized: they simply wouldn't work at all if they were not. And it is in those optimizations that platform compatibility becomes problematic.

Even people I know that are die-hard Android developers would never make the claim that platform compatibility is a myth. It is the one development issue all professional Android developers will concede right up front. It is PC compatibility that is a myth (just read the release notes and patch notes for any modern PC game).
I agree with some and disagree with others of your statements here. Another discussion for a different venue, perhaps.
We're getting away from the issue here of finding why the effects are on or off, seemingly on a whim, and why they can't be consistent or applied in a way that makes sense. It would be one thing if all Android devices ran the game with lower quality assets, effects, and framerate due to platform requirements, contractual obligations, or insurmountable hardware limitations, but we know that isn't the case. Demonstrably worse performing hardware is getting the graphic effects that more capable devices aren't. There probably aren't too many people that have played this game on every Samsung flagship for the last several years, and several midrange versions, the Folds 2 and 3, and played it back and forth switching between the same year iPhone for years, along with iPads Air, Mini, and Pro, the Pixel 6 Pro, and other devices that I don't remember from my first play to today. Among all those Android devices, devices have started with the good effects, lost them, then gotten them back, only to lose them again. Other devices started out with the degraded graphics at launch and had the good graphics enabled later. Others never got the good effects but the midrange, lesser version in the same family always had them.

In general this sort of thing is easier to avoid on iOS because of Apple's monolithic control of the stack. They control the hardware, the OS, the libraries, and the dev tools. Because of that, upgrades tend to be smoother. Transitions upward are built into the totality of the stack, and usually ratchet much more smoothly upward. If Apple introduces a new feature, or improves an older feature, they have the power to make not just the dev tools backward compatible, but also the support libraries and even the hardware.

This doesn't happen in Android, because no one owns the entire stack. When new or improved capabilities are introduced, they are often in competitive environments. Frameworks like Unity have to do a lot more work to simultaneously support new features and gracefully degrade on platforms that don't support them. Meanwhile the software developers have to be a lot more careful about how they support those features. They can't always rely upon backward compatibility features, because those safety nets don't always work correctly.

I'm not saying it is impossible to do this: some dev teams do this better than others. Kabam's platform support has always been less than stellar, and they also have to deal with the fact the game is eight years old. Everyone assumes that the problem with an eight year old game is technical debt: its old, it probably has a lot of weirdness in it, and the devs have to constantly work around that. But actually, a more serious problem is that there is almost certainly no one left in the studio that was around when any of it was first built. Technical debt is one problem, but the loss of institutional knowledge is a far worse problem.

Especially, for technical issues, when you build on Unity. Compared to engines like Unreal, as I understand it Unity requires a lot more deep institutional knowledge to maintain. Unreal is analogous to iOS itself. Someone has built everything for you, and you just have to use it. It is much easier to develop in iOS, but it is also much more difficult to do things iOS didn't anticipate. Unreal is like that. Unity meanwhile is a much more nitty gritty engine. I'm not a Unity or Unreal expert, but I've heard people tell me (and I'm paraphrasing here) that Unity is 80% of a game engine that you have to complete, while Unreal is 80% of a video game that you have to customize.

This is a very superficial description of the situation, but there are reasons why this sort of stuff happens to older games, and more often on Android.

BigPoppaCBONE

That's all known and fine (not really, but you get what I'm saying), but still doesn't explain why the graphics and effects are frequently subject to change up or down(mostly down) even between updates, even on one Android flagship device. No one at Kabam has looked at their game on an older Android phone (S20+, for instance) and noticed how it looks better on that than on the newer and objectively superior hardware of the S22 Ultra? Or wondered why Magneto and Ghost looked fine yesterday but look trash with no effects today?

DNA3000

That's all known and fine (not really, but you get what I'm saying), but still doesn't explain why the graphics and effects are frequently subject to change up or down(mostly down) even between updates, even on one Android flagship device. No one at Kabam has looked at their game on an older Android phone (S20+, for instance) and noticed how it looks better on that than on the newer and objectively superior hardware of the S22 Ultra? Or wondered why Magneto and Ghost looked fine yesterday but look trash with no effects today?

Well, recently certain effects disappeared for everyone, so clearly something is going on there. When this happens, I tend to blame mandatory Unity updates.

Longshot_33

I have to ask. Why even bother owning an android phone? Especially if u play this game. I have never seen a single reason to even considering buying one. It seems like comparing a car to a bicycle. They are not even in the same league

Buttehrs

I have to ask. Why even bother owning an android phone? Especially if u play this game. I have never seen a single reason to even considering buying one. It seems like comparing a car to a bicycle. They are not even in the same league

I use android. And I've honestly never really had any problems or at least none as bad as alot of other Android uses complain about. Maybe it's because I tend to keep mine updated and what not.

the_eradicator

I will summarize . The iPhone is like a ps5 and Android is like your PC.
The power of the PC depends on the configuration. Parts come from different sources and manufacturers.
But PS5 games are more optimised and have a baseline graphics preset which is very good out of the box. Cos all PS5 are same.
It's easier to create software that works on similar systems.
If the PC is powerful enough , games look better on PC compared to ps5 due to high graphical potential.
So simple solution - Provide graphics setting/preset options in the settings.
The player will decide what works best for their phone if it can handle it.

the_eradicator

I have to ask. Why even bother owning an android phone? Especially if u play this game. I have never seen a single reason to even considering buying one. It seems like comparing a car to a bicycle. They are not even in the same league

Iphones are too expensive for the player in most countries. So maybe apply some common sense before you ask why bother.
Top end Android phones actually are really powerful and have already beaten iphone in most games. The power is not the problem it's that the developers cannot be bothered to optimize on Android .
There is no car and cycle analogy here.

Pikolu

I have to ask. Why even bother owning an android phone? Especially if u play this game. I have never seen a single reason to even considering buying one. It seems like comparing a car to a bicycle. They are not even in the same league

Fun fact: about 71% of the global marketshare is owned by android phones while IPhone only makes about 27% of it.

Outside of the US, not many people use apple phones due to how expensive they are. They are made and distributed from the US. In the UK, I found an iPad valued at like 425 pounds (about 650 USD at the time), and then I found the same iPad on Amazon for a mere 380 dollars.

Meanwhile, Android phones are super diverse, you got fancy options that rival iPhones, and you also got more economical ones that aren't as powerful, but not everyone needs the latest and greatest thing and just needs a basic smartphone.

Demonzfyre

I have to ask. Why even bother owning an android phone? Especially if u play this game. I have never seen a single reason to even considering buying one. It seems like comparing a car to a bicycle. They are not even in the same league
I use android. And I've honestly never really had any problems or at least none as bad as alot of other Android uses complain about. Maybe it's because I tend to keep mine updated and what not.

Same.

DNA3000

I have to ask. Why even bother owning an android phone? Especially if u play this game. I have never seen a single reason to even considering buying one. It seems like comparing a car to a bicycle. They are not even in the same league
Fun fact: about 71% of the global marketshare is owned by android phones while IPhone only makes about 27% of it.

Outside of the US, not many people use apple phones due to how expensive they are. They are made and distributed from the US. In the UK, I found an iPad valued at like 425 pounds (about 650 USD at the time), and then I found the same iPad on Amazon for a mere 380 dollars.

Actually, this is very regionally specific. For reasons that vary iOS market share fluctuates wildly. For example, the country with the highest market share of iOS devices is not the US, it is Japan where iOS has a 70% market share. And while iOS has something like 57% of the US market, is has the same market share in Sweden and an even higher market share in Norway (63%). Outside of Scandinavia, the European country with the highest iOS market share is I believe Switzerland, with about the same market share as the US (56%).

Median personal income levels can explain some of this, but only to a point. It would be the obvious explanation for why high iOS market share is pretty much confined to the countries among the top 25% in median income levels. But it wouldn't explain the difference in market share between Austria and Japan, say, or even between Austria and Belgium (Austria's median per capita income is 14% higher than Belgium). Some of this just comes down to cultural preferences.

The fact that Apple devices have about a 27% market share but Apple app store revenue has about 65% market share creates some very strange developer incentives and conditions. The fact that Epic games could even attempt to make the legal claim in court that Apple is an unfair monopoly of its own app store with a straight face and not be immediately laughed out of court is just one of those weird things. Apple controls just a small piece of the mobile market, but it is the piece everyone wants.

It is probably no coincidence that arguably the most successful Android device maker, Samsung, is the only Android device maker that goes directly head to head with Apple. There was a time when Apple and Samsung combined made more than 100% of the profits from the smartphone market, meaning if you took all other vendors for smartphones worldwide and combined them into one business, it would be losing money. That's no longer true, but the two companies combined still make almost all the net smartphone profits worldwide.