It's that time of year - Banquet and Accolade Events are here!

DNA3000

iDestroyerZ said:

Aight guys, i'm gonna summon the keyboard god
@DNA3000 what are your thoughts about the current inflation of the game? Specially when it comes to 7*, after CW and now this cold water bucket that we got after the new downgrade ''upgraded'' version of the banquet, it seems like the inflation of the game has a few issues

I think this is less a direct issue of inflation, and more about progression. Inflation ultimately factors in, as it always does when it comes to anything game economy related, but I think what we're seeing here is a major issue with progression coming to a head.

For a while now, there has been this tension at the top, which I think most players not at the top don't see or aren't affected by. The tension is this: we want actually playing the game to be meaningful, or there's no point to the game itself. And that's fine in the middle of the game to a large extent, because in the middle of the game there's generally lots of ways to do lots of things. But when you get to the very top, you start asking questions like "should it be possible to get to the highest progression tier in the game just by being very good at the game?" And the answer is, of course, always "yes" but when? Because at the opposite end you have the question of monetization: how do you get players to spend, to support the existence of the game. As I've discussed elsewhere, most of the time spenders don't actually get much for their spending, but one thing they do tend to get is speed. They get what everyone else gets, but they get to have it first. Instead of paywalling parts of the game, we give spenders a head start instead, so everyone still eventually get what they get.

This creates a problem. If spenders get the best stuff first, that would tend to include progression materials, which means they are always getting to the top progression tier first. But if they keep that advantage for any significant amount of time, that heavily devalues in-game achievement at the top. We've seen complaints like this for both Paragon and Thronebreaker to varying degrees.

Sitting on top of both of these technical issues is the overarching desire for new stuff to be exciting. Releasing a new progression title should be exciting, for those pursuing it. Releasing Everest content should be exciting, for those qualified to run it. If Everest content is just giving you more stuff, that's both less exciting and also time-limited. How relevant are the Abyss rewards now - and those were *buffed* after release to make them more relevant. No amount of stuff can keep the Abyss relevant to the top, the top moves too fast. And consider how exciting it was to become Thronebreaker or Paragon: what we had to do to get there wasn't particularly interesting, even if it was difficult for some. The last time we had a race to a title that actually felt like a race to a title was probably Cavalier.

Personally, I think the way the devs resolved all this for Valiant was clever and well-thought out. You release Everest content and make completing it a critical piece of reaching the new title. Make it impossible to get to Valiant without at least completing it in the short term, and then only after a period of time release other ways to get there. This makes Necropolis exciting, and by extension it makes Valiant exciting. But there's still a spending opportunity: you can explore Necropolis or you can complete it and whale out during CW. Spending has a huge benefit, it helps accelerate players to things that would otherwise take much longer to get, but it doesn't overshadow highly skilled play. Highly skilled play gets there first. To me this is a balance between skill and spending we haven't seen in a while.

But none of this works if there are ways to bypass it. So making Necropolis meta-significant at the top means everything else can't be. It isn't just about no R3 materials: nothing in the immediate term can overshadow it. It can't be so high that players can say well, I can't get to Valiant, but that doesn't matter because look at all this stuff I can get instead. That means if you are Thronebreaker or lower, stuff like Cyber Weekend and the Banquet event can be very meta significant for you, because none of it competes with Necropolis. But if you are a high Paragon or Valiant, the banquet can't be a source of R3 because that combined with CW would allow you to bypass Necropolis, and it also cannot have too much rewards below that. Not only because they would start to overshadow Valiant progress, but also because that would then cause you to run out of room for rewards. If banquet has a ton of stuff other than R3, where will future rewards fit in between banquet and Valiant?

Right now there's two distinct reward envelopes: the game far away from Valiant, and the game within proximity of Valiant (at or near it). For everyone else, life continues on. For the players close to or at Valiant, the rewards we see will be tempered by the fact that for a stretch of time the primary reward path is the path to Valiant, and to make that path look exciting, everything else is going to be designed to not overshadow it.

Ultimately, I think this addresses long term inflation issues as well, but I don't think this is the primary driver of what we're seeing now. In my opinion what we're seeing is the devs deciding that the previous two progression rungs were lost opportunities, and they are trying to improve that situation moving forward. That means, when they do that, that player expectations will not be met, but that's a short term problem. In six months or a year, and especially when the next progression title comes around, I think most players of relevant progression will have adjusted to this type of reward design.

This is just me spitballing, but I think that this might be a proto-end game in the making. In many MMO-like games, there's the regular game, and then there's the end game. The end game is not just the most difficult stuff that the strongest players do. The end game is often qualitatively different from the rest of the game. End game players do different things, and they focus on different things, than the non-end game players. It isn't just bigger numbers: it is in many ways a different game. We've never had a true end game in MCOC. We've just had The Hardest Thing. I think to most MCOC players who have mostly just played MCOC or for whom MCOC is their first long term progressional game as a service, the idea that suddenly when you get to high Paragon the game starts railroading you into this path to Valiant, and everything else seems dull by comparison, is just weird and maybe even a little obnoxious. But maybe, just maybe, that's the price we have to pay for MCOC to eventually evolve a true end game. It is a price we're paying in the middle age of the game, so it seems weird to us. But it is a price other games pay without a second thought, because the players are just used to it. This is me projecting way, way, way out on a limb, but that's what I think might might might be happening here.

ahmynuts

DNA3000 said:

iDestroyerZ said:

Aight guys, i'm gonna summon the keyboard god
@DNA3000 what are your thoughts about the current inflation of the game? Specially when it comes to 7*, after CW and now this cold water bucket that we got after the new downgrade ''upgraded'' version of the banquet, it seems like the inflation of the game has a few issues

I think this is less a direct issue of inflation, and more about progression. Inflation ultimately factors in, as it always does when it comes to anything game economy related, but I think what we're seeing here is a major issue with progression coming to a head.

For a while now, there has been this tension at the top, which I think most players not at the top don't see or aren't affected by. The tension is this: we want actually playing the game to be meaningful, or there's no point to the game itself. And that's fine in the middle of the game to a large extent, because in the middle of the game there's generally lots of ways to do lots of things. But when you get to the very top, you start asking questions like "should it be possible to get to the highest progression tier in the game just by being very good at the game?" And the answer is, of course, always "yes" but when? Because at the opposite end you have the question of monetization: how do you get players to spend, to support the existence of the game. As I've discussed elsewhere, most of the time spenders don't actually get much for their spending, but one thing they do tend to get is speed. They get what everyone else gets, but they get to have it first. Instead of paywalling parts of the game, we give spenders a head start instead, so everyone still eventually get what they get.

This creates a problem. If spenders get the best stuff first, that would tend to include progression materials, which means they are always getting to the top progression tier first. But if they keep that advantage for any significant amount of time, that heavily devalues in-game achievement at the top. We've seen complaints like this for both Paragon and Thronebreaker to varying degrees.

Sitting on top of both of these technical issues is the overarching desire for new stuff to be exciting. Releasing a new progression title should be exciting, for those pursuing it. Releasing Everest content should be exciting, for those qualified to run it. If Everest content is just giving you more stuff, that's both less exciting and also time-limited. How relevant are the Abyss rewards now - and those were *buffed* after release to make them more relevant. No amount of stuff can keep the Abyss relevant to the top, the top moves too fast. And consider how exciting it was to become Thronebreaker or Paragon: what we had to do to get there wasn't particularly interesting, even if it was difficult for some. The last time we had a race to a title that actually felt like a race to a title was probably Cavalier.

Personally, I think the way the devs resolved all this for Valiant was clever and well-thought out. You release Everest content and make completing it a critical piece of reaching the new title. Make it impossible to get to Valiant without at least completing it in the short term, and then only after a period of time release other ways to get there. This makes Necropolis exciting, and by extension it makes Valiant exciting. But there's still a spending opportunity: you can explore Necropolis or you can complete it and whale out during CW. Spending has a huge benefit, it helps accelerate players to things that would otherwise take much longer to get, but it doesn't overshadow highly skilled play. Highly skilled play gets there first. To me this is a balance between skill and spending we haven't seen in a while.

But none of this works if there are ways to bypass it. So making Necropolis meta-significant at the top means everything else can't be. It isn't just about no R3 materials: nothing in the immediate term can overshadow it. It can't be so high that players can say well, I can't get to Valiant, but that doesn't matter because look at all this stuff I can get instead. That means if you are Thronebreaker or lower, stuff like Cyber Weekend and the Banquet event can be very meta significant for you, because none of it competes with Necropolis. But if you are a high Paragon or Valiant, the banquet can't be a source of R3 because that combined with CW would allow you to bypass Necropolis, and it also cannot have too much rewards below that. Not only because they would start to overshadow Valiant progress, but also because that would then cause you to run out of room for rewards. If banquet has a ton of stuff other than R3, where will future rewards fit in between banquet and Valiant?

Right now there's two distinct reward envelopes: the game far away from Valiant, and the game within proximity of Valiant (at or near it). For everyone else, life continues on. For the players close to or at Valiant, the rewards we see will be tempered by the fact that for a stretch of time the primary reward path is the path to Valiant, and to make that path look exciting, everything else is going to be designed to not overshadow it.

Ultimately, I think this addresses long term inflation issues as well, but I don't think this is the primary driver of what we're seeing now. In my opinion what we're seeing is the devs deciding that the previous two progression rungs were lost opportunities, and they are trying to improve that situation moving forward. That means, when they do that, that player expectations will not be met, but that's a short term problem. In six months or a year, and especially when the next progression title comes around, I think most players of relevant progression will have adjusted to this type of reward design.

This is just me spitballing, but I think that this might be a proto-end game in the making. In many MMO-like games, there's the regular game, and then there's the end game. The end game is not just the most difficult stuff that the strongest players do. The end game is often qualitatively different from the rest of the game. End game players do different things, and they focus on different things, than the non-end game players. It isn't just bigger numbers: it is in many ways a different game. We've never had a true end game in MCOC. We've just had The Hardest Thing. I think to most MCOC players who have mostly just played MCOC or for whom MCOC is their first long term progressional game as a service, the idea that suddenly when you get to high Paragon the game starts railroading you into this path to Valiant, and everything else seems dull by comparison, is just weird and maybe even a little obnoxious. But maybe, just maybe, that's the price we have to pay for MCOC to eventually evolve a true end game. It is a price we're paying in the middle age of the game, so it seems weird to us. But it is a price other games pay without a second thought, because the players are just used to it. This is me projecting way, way, way out on a limb, but that's what I think might might might be happening here.

I agree with you for 99% of what you're saying outside of using 7-star rank 3's as an anchor point to latch onto for part of the issue at hand. The fact of the matter is, no one, or hardly anyone, was asking or is asking for that out of this event. High-tier paragons and Valiant just want more of the cool stuff we already have. Kabam can close the lid on rank 3s for awhile. Just let us have fun with 6-star rank 5s and 7-star rank 2s. Hell, even 7-star rank 1s. Theres just nothing here for us to be excited about, and it's a genuine shame that the decision was made to ostracize the entire upper end of the player base for this event in favor of mid-tier players.

It feels like they're saying "Thanks for playing our game so much and getting to this highest level. We know this event has been awesome in the past but since you're too invested you need to sit out this time." Just dull vibes all around

TyEdge

Ercarret said:

The problem with events where everyone can get the same rewards regardless of progression level is that it pushes the point where you start enjoying the rewards you get further and further forward with each progression level. If you're on the lower end of the progression spectrum, you quickly start getting rewards that you can be excited by, and as you open more crystals (whether you've bought them for units or not), the rewards just keep getting better. Even before the point where you'd have to spend to be able to open more crystals, the rewards you've earned propels your account forward.

If you're more toward the middle of the spectrum, the rewards don't start out very exciting but as you open more crystals, you eventually hit a point where you start getting things you are excited about. This is where I was last year. I didn't care for the initial rewards but I eventually got some stuff that I was really happy with, and if I had wanted to continue spending, I could have started getting rewards that would have really propelled my account forward.

However, if you're and endgame player (which I consider myself to be nowadays), the point where you start getting rewards that you'd be excited for lies so very deep into the runway that it's 1) impossible to get there without spending cash on the game/burn through a lot of units and 2) hard to justify spending those resources in order to get those rewards since the ultimate payout isn't particularly impressive. If you're not a spender, the f2p rewards stop before they start becoming valuable to you. If you do spend, there are too few enticing rewards to justify that spending.

If you keep this system going forward, my suggestion would be to let players start at different places along the runway depending on their progression tier. If we have 15 steps, let Uncollected and under players start at step 1 and basically have the same experience they have now. Then have every progression level after that result in let's say a 2-step jump, meaning Cavalier players start at step 3, Thronebreakers at step 5, Paragons at step 7, and Valiants at 9. With tiered starting points, mid-level players wouldn't have open a bunch of crystals that only counts toward low-level rewards. Instead, even the first crystals they open immediately start counting toward "their" rewards. Same as you go higher up in the progressions. Endgame players would start getting valuable rewards from the go without having to wade through those aimed at low- and mid-level players.

I imagine the system to be similar to the one you have for seeding players in Battlegrounds, just based on progression instead. Staying with that idea, you could also have a similar system for rewarding players with all of the rewards they've missed. After they've opened five Greater Banquet Crystals or have reached their first rewards milestone, to spitball a few examples.

I think the issue is a lot more complicated and needs a lot more solutions than just the one mentioned above, but this post is already long enough.

You’ve made a solid point with the rewards but the reality is that the progression-locked selectors would offer a way to improve milestones for paragon+ players while still offering lower players something of immediate value.

Like, whatever year they gave us a free Hercules, I was pulling 6-star stones out of crystals at a point my alt didn’t even have duped 6-star. I think I got some t6b or t3a. Useless for an account that was right around uncollected.

DrZola

ahmynuts said:

DNA3000 said:

iDestroyerZ said:

Aight guys, i'm gonna summon the keyboard god
@DNA3000 what are your thoughts about the current inflation of the game? Specially when it comes to 7*, after CW and now this cold water bucket that we got after the new downgrade ''upgraded'' version of the banquet, it seems like the inflation of the game has a few issues

I think this is less a direct issue of inflation, and more about progression. Inflation ultimately factors in, as it always does when it comes to anything game economy related, but I think what we're seeing here is a major issue with progression coming to a head.

For a while now, there has been this tension at the top, which I think most players not at the top don't see or aren't affected by. The tension is this: we want actually playing the game to be meaningful, or there's no point to the game itself. And that's fine in the middle of the game to a large extent, because in the middle of the game there's generally lots of ways to do lots of things. But when you get to the very top, you start asking questions like "should it be possible to get to the highest progression tier in the game just by being very good at the game?" And the answer is, of course, always "yes" but when? Because at the opposite end you have the question of monetization: how do you get players to spend, to support the existence of the game. As I've discussed elsewhere, most of the time spenders don't actually get much for their spending, but one thing they do tend to get is speed. They get what everyone else gets, but they get to have it first. Instead of paywalling parts of the game, we give spenders a head start instead, so everyone still eventually get what they get.

This creates a problem. If spenders get the best stuff first, that would tend to include progression materials, which means they are always getting to the top progression tier first. But if they keep that advantage for any significant amount of time, that heavily devalues in-game achievement at the top. We've seen complaints like this for both Paragon and Thronebreaker to varying degrees.

Sitting on top of both of these technical issues is the overarching desire for new stuff to be exciting. Releasing a new progression title should be exciting, for those pursuing it. Releasing Everest content should be exciting, for those qualified to run it. If Everest content is just giving you more stuff, that's both less exciting and also time-limited. How relevant are the Abyss rewards now - and those were *buffed* after release to make them more relevant. No amount of stuff can keep the Abyss relevant to the top, the top moves too fast. And consider how exciting it was to become Thronebreaker or Paragon: what we had to do to get there wasn't particularly interesting, even if it was difficult for some. The last time we had a race to a title that actually felt like a race to a title was probably Cavalier.

Personally, I think the way the devs resolved all this for Valiant was clever and well-thought out. You release Everest content and make completing it a critical piece of reaching the new title. Make it impossible to get to Valiant without at least completing it in the short term, and then only after a period of time release other ways to get there. This makes Necropolis exciting, and by extension it makes Valiant exciting. But there's still a spending opportunity: you can explore Necropolis or you can complete it and whale out during CW. Spending has a huge benefit, it helps accelerate players to things that would otherwise take much longer to get, but it doesn't overshadow highly skilled play. Highly skilled play gets there first. To me this is a balance between skill and spending we haven't seen in a while.

But none of this works if there are ways to bypass it. So making Necropolis meta-significant at the top means everything else can't be. It isn't just about no R3 materials: nothing in the immediate term can overshadow it. It can't be so high that players can say well, I can't get to Valiant, but that doesn't matter because look at all this stuff I can get instead. That means if you are Thronebreaker or lower, stuff like Cyber Weekend and the Banquet event can be very meta significant for you, because none of it competes with Necropolis. But if you are a high Paragon or Valiant, the banquet can't be a source of R3 because that combined with CW would allow you to bypass Necropolis, and it also cannot have too much rewards below that. Not only because they would start to overshadow Valiant progress, but also because that would then cause you to run out of room for rewards. If banquet has a ton of stuff other than R3, where will future rewards fit in between banquet and Valiant?

Right now there's two distinct reward envelopes: the game far away from Valiant, and the game within proximity of Valiant (at or near it). For everyone else, life continues on. For the players close to or at Valiant, the rewards we see will be tempered by the fact that for a stretch of time the primary reward path is the path to Valiant, and to make that path look exciting, everything else is going to be designed to not overshadow it.

Ultimately, I think this addresses long term inflation issues as well, but I don't think this is the primary driver of what we're seeing now. In my opinion what we're seeing is the devs deciding that the previous two progression rungs were lost opportunities, and they are trying to improve that situation moving forward. That means, when they do that, that player expectations will not be met, but that's a short term problem. In six months or a year, and especially when the next progression title comes around, I think most players of relevant progression will have adjusted to this type of reward design.

This is just me spitballing, but I think that this might be a proto-end game in the making. In many MMO-like games, there's the regular game, and then there's the end game. The end game is not just the most difficult stuff that the strongest players do. The end game is often qualitatively different from the rest of the game. End game players do different things, and they focus on different things, than the non-end game players. It isn't just bigger numbers: it is in many ways a different game. We've never had a true end game in MCOC. We've just had The Hardest Thing. I think to most MCOC players who have mostly just played MCOC or for whom MCOC is their first long term progressional game as a service, the idea that suddenly when you get to high Paragon the game starts railroading you into this path to Valiant, and everything else seems dull by comparison, is just weird and maybe even a little obnoxious. But maybe, just maybe, that's the price we have to pay for MCOC to eventually evolve a true end game. It is a price we're paying in the middle age of the game, so it seems weird to us. But it is a price other games pay without a second thought, because the players are just used to it. This is me projecting way, way, way out on a limb, but that's what I think might might might be happening here.

I agree with you for 99% of what you're saying outside of using 7-star rank 3's as an anchor point to latch onto for part of the issue at hand. The fact of the matter is, no one, or hardly anyone, was asking or is asking for that out of this event. High-tier paragons and Valiant just want more of the cool stuff we already have. Kabam can close the lid on rank 3s for awhile. Just let us have fun with 6-star rank 5s and 7-star rank 2s. Hell, even 7-star rank 1s. Theres just nothing here for us to be excited about, and it's a genuine shame that the decision was made to ostracize the entire upper end of the player base for this event in favor of mid-tier players.

It feels like they're saying "Thanks for playing our game so much and getting to this highest level. We know this event has been awesome in the past but since you're too invested you need to sit out this time." Just dull vibes all around

I like to think of it as the “Gladiatorization” of the Banquet event.

Dr. Zola

iDestroyerZ

DNA3000 said:

iDestroyerZ said:

Aight guys, i'm gonna summon the keyboard god
@DNA3000 what are your thoughts about the current inflation of the game? Specially when it comes to 7*, after CW and now this cold water bucket that we got after the new downgrade ''upgraded'' version of the banquet, it seems like the inflation of the game has a few issues

I think this is less a direct issue of inflation, and more about progression. Inflation ultimately factors in, as it always does when it comes to anything game economy related, but I think what we're seeing here is a major issue with progression coming to a head.

For a while now, there has been this tension at the top, which I think most players not at the top don't see or aren't affected by. The tension is this: we want actually playing the game to be meaningful, or there's no point to the game itself. And that's fine in the middle of the game to a large extent, because in the middle of the game there's generally lots of ways to do lots of things. But when you get to the very top, you start asking questions like "should it be possible to get to the highest progression tier in the game just by being very good at the game?" And the answer is, of course, always "yes" but when? Because at the opposite end you have the question of monetization: how do you get players to spend, to support the existence of the game. As I've discussed elsewhere, most of the time spenders don't actually get much for their spending, but one thing they do tend to get is speed. They get what everyone else gets, but they get to have it first. Instead of paywalling parts of the game, we give spenders a head start instead, so everyone still eventually get what they get.

This creates a problem. If spenders get the best stuff first, that would tend to include progression materials, which means they are always getting to the top progression tier first. But if they keep that advantage for any significant amount of time, that heavily devalues in-game achievement at the top. We've seen complaints like this for both Paragon and Thronebreaker to varying degrees.

Sitting on top of both of these technical issues is the overarching desire for new stuff to be exciting. Releasing a new progression title should be exciting, for those pursuing it. Releasing Everest content should be exciting, for those qualified to run it. If Everest content is just giving you more stuff, that's both less exciting and also time-limited. How relevant are the Abyss rewards now - and those were *buffed* after release to make them more relevant. No amount of stuff can keep the Abyss relevant to the top, the top moves too fast. And consider how exciting it was to become Thronebreaker or Paragon: what we had to do to get there wasn't particularly interesting, even if it was difficult for some. The last time we had a race to a title that actually felt like a race to a title was probably Cavalier.

Personally, I think the way the devs resolved all this for Valiant was clever and well-thought out. You release Everest content and make completing it a critical piece of reaching the new title. Make it impossible to get to Valiant without at least completing it in the short term, and then only after a period of time release other ways to get there. This makes Necropolis exciting, and by extension it makes Valiant exciting. But there's still a spending opportunity: you can explore Necropolis or you can complete it and whale out during CW. Spending has a huge benefit, it helps accelerate players to things that would otherwise take much longer to get, but it doesn't overshadow highly skilled play. Highly skilled play gets there first. To me this is a balance between skill and spending we haven't seen in a while.

But none of this works if there are ways to bypass it. So making Necropolis meta-significant at the top means everything else can't be. It isn't just about no R3 materials: nothing in the immediate term can overshadow it. It can't be so high that players can say well, I can't get to Valiant, but that doesn't matter because look at all this stuff I can get instead. That means if you are Thronebreaker or lower, stuff like Cyber Weekend and the Banquet event can be very meta significant for you, because none of it competes with Necropolis. But if you are a high Paragon or Valiant, the banquet can't be a source of R3 because that combined with CW would allow you to bypass Necropolis, and it also cannot have too much rewards below that. Not only because they would start to overshadow Valiant progress, but also because that would then cause you to run out of room for rewards. If banquet has a ton of stuff other than R3, where will future rewards fit in between banquet and Valiant?

Right now there's two distinct reward envelopes: the game far away from Valiant, and the game within proximity of Valiant (at or near it). For everyone else, life continues on. For the players close to or at Valiant, the rewards we see will be tempered by the fact that for a stretch of time the primary reward path is the path to Valiant, and to make that path look exciting, everything else is going to be designed to not overshadow it.

Ultimately, I think this addresses long term inflation issues as well, but I don't think this is the primary driver of what we're seeing now. In my opinion what we're seeing is the devs deciding that the previous two progression rungs were lost opportunities, and they are trying to improve that situation moving forward. That means, when they do that, that player expectations will not be met, but that's a short term problem. In six months or a year, and especially when the next progression title comes around, I think most players of relevant progression will have adjusted to this type of reward design.

This is just me spitballing, but I think that this might be a proto-end game in the making. In many MMO-like games, there's the regular game, and then there's the end game. The end game is not just the most difficult stuff that the strongest players do. The end game is often qualitatively different from the rest of the game. End game players do different things, and they focus on different things, than the non-end game players. It isn't just bigger numbers: it is in many ways a different game. We've never had a true end game in MCOC. We've just had The Hardest Thing. I think to most MCOC players who have mostly just played MCOC or for whom MCOC is their first long term progressional game as a service, the idea that suddenly when you get to high Paragon the game starts railroading you into this path to Valiant, and everything else seems dull by comparison, is just weird and maybe even a little obnoxious. But maybe, just maybe, that's the price we have to pay for MCOC to eventually evolve a true end game. It is a price we're paying in the middle age of the game, so it seems weird to us. But it is a price other games pay without a second thought, because the players are just used to it. This is me projecting way, way, way out on a limb, but that's what I think might might might be happening here.

That's the comment i was looking for and you didn't disappoint xD i agree with you about the progression issue and stuff and yeah the cavalier actually felt like a race but i think TB felt even more like a race and the reason for that it was because while cavalier's requirements were just complete 6.1, TB added a rank 3 6* and that created a race in terms of progression, a race between f2p and spenders and i think the space betwen 6* rank 2 to rank 3 was the biggest that we've had so far

The requirements for rank 3 was fairly simple, just have 1 t5cc and you're good to go but here's the catch, kabam was giving us t5cc in crystals that were like 2% or 5% and etc (and of course, most of them were rng in the beginning) and because of that, 6* rank 2 lasted for a really long time and we didn't feel this rush that we're feeling now with 7*....as miike said we don't want 8* in 2024 and i will add 2025 as well, i think we can't have 7* rank 4 for at least 10-12 months

The feeling that we've had when we finally made a full t5cc was amazing, crystal by crystal and when the rng finally cooperated (because most of the time, it didn't) man, the feeling was incredible and i think this is important for the game overall, we need to feel that joy while playing and that's why i think TB was really important in terms of race and everything else, the managing of r2->3 was really well done and hopefully kabam will remember that in the future

Another point that i find interesting that you brought up was the endgame content, i have mix feelings about what you said cause i kinda disagree but i completely understand what you're saying, the reason why i disagree is because i think EOP was a true endgame content and here's why:
1) It's not available anymore, not all of it at least, most of the rewards that we got was time limited and only people that had an account strong enough and playing during that period, was able to get the full rewards for the event
2) It was really limited in terms of roster because being high skilled didn't garantee you would be able to explore the missions, you had to have some counters and do some rank ups

Overall i agree what you said about the 7* r3 materials but i stand to my comment that i made about the bg brawl, i don't think we would be in this situation if the brawl didn't have a full rank 3 for the winner, maybe if it was a rank 2 and 1 t4a full so the winner would be a step closer to a rank 3 cause no one was asking for a rank 3 back then, that created a domino effect in terms of expectations for the necropolis rewards and now the banquet as well
Let's say what if the rewards for the completion of necropolis was 1 t4A instead of a rank 3 crystal and for exploration, maintain the rank 3 gem? I think we would have a much bigger space between rank 2-3 and while some people would be concerned about having 2 rank 3 for the new title, we're getting 8.4 pretty soon and with that comes some juicy rewards that might inclued some rank 3 materials

I'm hoping kabam will listen to the progression feedback that we're giving to them, if we get a 7* rank 4 in something like 6 months then i'd lose all my hope

ahmynuts

iDestroyerZ said:

DNA3000 said:

iDestroyerZ said:

Aight guys, i'm gonna summon the keyboard god
@DNA3000 what are your thoughts about the current inflation of the game? Specially when it comes to 7*, after CW and now this cold water bucket that we got after the new downgrade ''upgraded'' version of the banquet, it seems like the inflation of the game has a few issues

I think this is less a direct issue of inflation, and more about progression. Inflation ultimately factors in, as it always does when it comes to anything game economy related, but I think what we're seeing here is a major issue with progression coming to a head.

For a while now, there has been this tension at the top, which I think most players not at the top don't see or aren't affected by. The tension is this: we want actually playing the game to be meaningful, or there's no point to the game itself. And that's fine in the middle of the game to a large extent, because in the middle of the game there's generally lots of ways to do lots of things. But when you get to the very top, you start asking questions like "should it be possible to get to the highest progression tier in the game just by being very good at the game?" And the answer is, of course, always "yes" but when? Because at the opposite end you have the question of monetization: how do you get players to spend, to support the existence of the game. As I've discussed elsewhere, most of the time spenders don't actually get much for their spending, but one thing they do tend to get is speed. They get what everyone else gets, but they get to have it first. Instead of paywalling parts of the game, we give spenders a head start instead, so everyone still eventually get what they get.

This creates a problem. If spenders get the best stuff first, that would tend to include progression materials, which means they are always getting to the top progression tier first. But if they keep that advantage for any significant amount of time, that heavily devalues in-game achievement at the top. We've seen complaints like this for both Paragon and Thronebreaker to varying degrees.

Sitting on top of both of these technical issues is the overarching desire for new stuff to be exciting. Releasing a new progression title should be exciting, for those pursuing it. Releasing Everest content should be exciting, for those qualified to run it. If Everest content is just giving you more stuff, that's both less exciting and also time-limited. How relevant are the Abyss rewards now - and those were *buffed* after release to make them more relevant. No amount of stuff can keep the Abyss relevant to the top, the top moves too fast. And consider how exciting it was to become Thronebreaker or Paragon: what we had to do to get there wasn't particularly interesting, even if it was difficult for some. The last time we had a race to a title that actually felt like a race to a title was probably Cavalier.

Personally, I think the way the devs resolved all this for Valiant was clever and well-thought out. You release Everest content and make completing it a critical piece of reaching the new title. Make it impossible to get to Valiant without at least completing it in the short term, and then only after a period of time release other ways to get there. This makes Necropolis exciting, and by extension it makes Valiant exciting. But there's still a spending opportunity: you can explore Necropolis or you can complete it and whale out during CW. Spending has a huge benefit, it helps accelerate players to things that would otherwise take much longer to get, but it doesn't overshadow highly skilled play. Highly skilled play gets there first. To me this is a balance between skill and spending we haven't seen in a while.

But none of this works if there are ways to bypass it. So making Necropolis meta-significant at the top means everything else can't be. It isn't just about no R3 materials: nothing in the immediate term can overshadow it. It can't be so high that players can say well, I can't get to Valiant, but that doesn't matter because look at all this stuff I can get instead. That means if you are Thronebreaker or lower, stuff like Cyber Weekend and the Banquet event can be very meta significant for you, because none of it competes with Necropolis. But if you are a high Paragon or Valiant, the banquet can't be a source of R3 because that combined with CW would allow you to bypass Necropolis, and it also cannot have too much rewards below that. Not only because they would start to overshadow Valiant progress, but also because that would then cause you to run out of room for rewards. If banquet has a ton of stuff other than R3, where will future rewards fit in between banquet and Valiant?

Right now there's two distinct reward envelopes: the game far away from Valiant, and the game within proximity of Valiant (at or near it). For everyone else, life continues on. For the players close to or at Valiant, the rewards we see will be tempered by the fact that for a stretch of time the primary reward path is the path to Valiant, and to make that path look exciting, everything else is going to be designed to not overshadow it.

Ultimately, I think this addresses long term inflation issues as well, but I don't think this is the primary driver of what we're seeing now. In my opinion what we're seeing is the devs deciding that the previous two progression rungs were lost opportunities, and they are trying to improve that situation moving forward. That means, when they do that, that player expectations will not be met, but that's a short term problem. In six months or a year, and especially when the next progression title comes around, I think most players of relevant progression will have adjusted to this type of reward design.

This is just me spitballing, but I think that this might be a proto-end game in the making. In many MMO-like games, there's the regular game, and then there's the end game. The end game is not just the most difficult stuff that the strongest players do. The end game is often qualitatively different from the rest of the game. End game players do different things, and they focus on different things, than the non-end game players. It isn't just bigger numbers: it is in many ways a different game. We've never had a true end game in MCOC. We've just had The Hardest Thing. I think to most MCOC players who have mostly just played MCOC or for whom MCOC is their first long term progressional game as a service, the idea that suddenly when you get to high Paragon the game starts railroading you into this path to Valiant, and everything else seems dull by comparison, is just weird and maybe even a little obnoxious. But maybe, just maybe, that's the price we have to pay for MCOC to eventually evolve a true end game. It is a price we're paying in the middle age of the game, so it seems weird to us. But it is a price other games pay without a second thought, because the players are just used to it. This is me projecting way, way, way out on a limb, but that's what I think might might might be happening here.

That's the comment i was looking for and you didn't disappoint xD i agree with you about the progression issue and stuff and yeah the cavalier actually felt like a race but i think TB felt even more like a race and the reason for that it was because while cavalier's requirements were just complete 6.1, TB added a rank 3 6* and that created a race in terms of progression, a race between f2p and spenders and i think the space betwen 6* rank 2 to rank 3 was the biggest that we've had so far

The requirements for rank 3 was fairly simple, just have 1 t5cc and you're good to go but here's the catch, kabam was giving us t5cc in crystals that were like 2% or 5% and etc (and of course, most of them were rng in the beginning) and because of that, 6* rank 2 lasted for a really long time and we didn't feel this rush that we're feeling now with 7*....as miike said we don't want 8* in 2024 and i will add 2025 as well, i think we can't have 7* rank 4 for at least 10-12 months

The feeling that we've had when we finally made a full t5cc was amazing, crystal by crystal and when the rng finally cooperated (because most of the time, it didn't) man, the feeling was incredible and i think this is important for the game overall, we need to feel that joy while playing and that's why i think TB was really important in terms of race and everything else, the managing of r2->3 was really well done and hopefully kabam will remember that in the future

Another point that i find interesting that you brought up was the endgame content, i have mix feelings about what you said cause i kinda disagree but i completely understand what you're saying, the reason why i disagree is because i think EOP was a true endgame content and here's why:
1) It's not available anymore, not all of it at least, most of the rewards that we got was time limited and only people that had an account strong enough and playing during that period, was able to get the full rewards for the event
2) It was really limited in terms of roster because being high skilled didn't garantee you would be able to explore the missions, you had to have some counters and do some rank ups

Overall i agree what you said about the 7* r3 materials but i stand to my comment that i made about the bg brawl, i don't think we would be in this situation if the brawl didn't have a full rank 3 for the winner, maybe if it was a rank 2 and 1 t4a full so the winner would be a step closer to a rank 3 cause no one was asking for a rank 3 back then, that created a domino effect in terms of expectations for the necropolis rewards and now the banquet as well
Let's say what if the rewards for the completion of necropolis was 1 t4A instead of a rank 3 crystal and for exploration, maintain the rank 3 gem? I think we would have a much bigger space between rank 2-3 and while some people would be concerned about having 2 rank 3 for the new title, we're getting 8.4 pretty soon and with that comes some juicy rewards that might inclued some rank 3 materials

I'm hoping kabam will listen to the progression feedback that we're giving to them, if we get a 7* rank 4 in something like 6 months then i'd lose all my hope

If we see any t6b before like cyber weekend next year at the earliest, I think it's Joever.

iDestroyerZ

ahmynuts said:

iDestroyerZ said:

DNA3000 said:

iDestroyerZ said:

Aight guys, i'm gonna summon the keyboard god
@DNA3000 what are your thoughts about the current inflation of the game? Specially when it comes to 7*, after CW and now this cold water bucket that we got after the new downgrade ''upgraded'' version of the banquet, it seems like the inflation of the game has a few issues

I think this is less a direct issue of inflation, and more about progression. Inflation ultimately factors in, as it always does when it comes to anything game economy related, but I think what we're seeing here is a major issue with progression coming to a head.

For a while now, there has been this tension at the top, which I think most players not at the top don't see or aren't affected by. The tension is this: we want actually playing the game to be meaningful, or there's no point to the game itself. And that's fine in the middle of the game to a large extent, because in the middle of the game there's generally lots of ways to do lots of things. But when you get to the very top, you start asking questions like "should it be possible to get to the highest progression tier in the game just by being very good at the game?" And the answer is, of course, always "yes" but when? Because at the opposite end you have the question of monetization: how do you get players to spend, to support the existence of the game. As I've discussed elsewhere, most of the time spenders don't actually get much for their spending, but one thing they do tend to get is speed. They get what everyone else gets, but they get to have it first. Instead of paywalling parts of the game, we give spenders a head start instead, so everyone still eventually get what they get.

This creates a problem. If spenders get the best stuff first, that would tend to include progression materials, which means they are always getting to the top progression tier first. But if they keep that advantage for any significant amount of time, that heavily devalues in-game achievement at the top. We've seen complaints like this for both Paragon and Thronebreaker to varying degrees.

Sitting on top of both of these technical issues is the overarching desire for new stuff to be exciting. Releasing a new progression title should be exciting, for those pursuing it. Releasing Everest content should be exciting, for those qualified to run it. If Everest content is just giving you more stuff, that's both less exciting and also time-limited. How relevant are the Abyss rewards now - and those were *buffed* after release to make them more relevant. No amount of stuff can keep the Abyss relevant to the top, the top moves too fast. And consider how exciting it was to become Thronebreaker or Paragon: what we had to do to get there wasn't particularly interesting, even if it was difficult for some. The last time we had a race to a title that actually felt like a race to a title was probably Cavalier.

Personally, I think the way the devs resolved all this for Valiant was clever and well-thought out. You release Everest content and make completing it a critical piece of reaching the new title. Make it impossible to get to Valiant without at least completing it in the short term, and then only after a period of time release other ways to get there. This makes Necropolis exciting, and by extension it makes Valiant exciting. But there's still a spending opportunity: you can explore Necropolis or you can complete it and whale out during CW. Spending has a huge benefit, it helps accelerate players to things that would otherwise take much longer to get, but it doesn't overshadow highly skilled play. Highly skilled play gets there first. To me this is a balance between skill and spending we haven't seen in a while.

But none of this works if there are ways to bypass it. So making Necropolis meta-significant at the top means everything else can't be. It isn't just about no R3 materials: nothing in the immediate term can overshadow it. It can't be so high that players can say well, I can't get to Valiant, but that doesn't matter because look at all this stuff I can get instead. That means if you are Thronebreaker or lower, stuff like Cyber Weekend and the Banquet event can be very meta significant for you, because none of it competes with Necropolis. But if you are a high Paragon or Valiant, the banquet can't be a source of R3 because that combined with CW would allow you to bypass Necropolis, and it also cannot have too much rewards below that. Not only because they would start to overshadow Valiant progress, but also because that would then cause you to run out of room for rewards. If banquet has a ton of stuff other than R3, where will future rewards fit in between banquet and Valiant?

Right now there's two distinct reward envelopes: the game far away from Valiant, and the game within proximity of Valiant (at or near it). For everyone else, life continues on. For the players close to or at Valiant, the rewards we see will be tempered by the fact that for a stretch of time the primary reward path is the path to Valiant, and to make that path look exciting, everything else is going to be designed to not overshadow it.

Ultimately, I think this addresses long term inflation issues as well, but I don't think this is the primary driver of what we're seeing now. In my opinion what we're seeing is the devs deciding that the previous two progression rungs were lost opportunities, and they are trying to improve that situation moving forward. That means, when they do that, that player expectations will not be met, but that's a short term problem. In six months or a year, and especially when the next progression title comes around, I think most players of relevant progression will have adjusted to this type of reward design.

This is just me spitballing, but I think that this might be a proto-end game in the making. In many MMO-like games, there's the regular game, and then there's the end game. The end game is not just the most difficult stuff that the strongest players do. The end game is often qualitatively different from the rest of the game. End game players do different things, and they focus on different things, than the non-end game players. It isn't just bigger numbers: it is in many ways a different game. We've never had a true end game in MCOC. We've just had The Hardest Thing. I think to most MCOC players who have mostly just played MCOC or for whom MCOC is their first long term progressional game as a service, the idea that suddenly when you get to high Paragon the game starts railroading you into this path to Valiant, and everything else seems dull by comparison, is just weird and maybe even a little obnoxious. But maybe, just maybe, that's the price we have to pay for MCOC to eventually evolve a true end game. It is a price we're paying in the middle age of the game, so it seems weird to us. But it is a price other games pay without a second thought, because the players are just used to it. This is me projecting way, way, way out on a limb, but that's what I think might might might be happening here.

That's the comment i was looking for and you didn't disappoint xD i agree with you about the progression issue and stuff and yeah the cavalier actually felt like a race but i think TB felt even more like a race and the reason for that it was because while cavalier's requirements were just complete 6.1, TB added a rank 3 6* and that created a race in terms of progression, a race between f2p and spenders and i think the space betwen 6* rank 2 to rank 3 was the biggest that we've had so far

The requirements for rank 3 was fairly simple, just have 1 t5cc and you're good to go but here's the catch, kabam was giving us t5cc in crystals that were like 2% or 5% and etc (and of course, most of them were rng in the beginning) and because of that, 6* rank 2 lasted for a really long time and we didn't feel this rush that we're feeling now with 7*....as miike said we don't want 8* in 2024 and i will add 2025 as well, i think we can't have 7* rank 4 for at least 10-12 months

The feeling that we've had when we finally made a full t5cc was amazing, crystal by crystal and when the rng finally cooperated (because most of the time, it didn't) man, the feeling was incredible and i think this is important for the game overall, we need to feel that joy while playing and that's why i think TB was really important in terms of race and everything else, the managing of r2->3 was really well done and hopefully kabam will remember that in the future

Another point that i find interesting that you brought up was the endgame content, i have mix feelings about what you said cause i kinda disagree but i completely understand what you're saying, the reason why i disagree is because i think EOP was a true endgame content and here's why:
1) It's not available anymore, not all of it at least, most of the rewards that we got was time limited and only people that had an account strong enough and playing during that period, was able to get the full rewards for the event
2) It was really limited in terms of roster because being high skilled didn't garantee you would be able to explore the missions, you had to have some counters and do some rank ups

Overall i agree what you said about the 7* r3 materials but i stand to my comment that i made about the bg brawl, i don't think we would be in this situation if the brawl didn't have a full rank 3 for the winner, maybe if it was a rank 2 and 1 t4a full so the winner would be a step closer to a rank 3 cause no one was asking for a rank 3 back then, that created a domino effect in terms of expectations for the necropolis rewards and now the banquet as well
Let's say what if the rewards for the completion of necropolis was 1 t4A instead of a rank 3 crystal and for exploration, maintain the rank 3 gem? I think we would have a much bigger space between rank 2-3 and while some people would be concerned about having 2 rank 3 for the new title, we're getting 8.4 pretty soon and with that comes some juicy rewards that might inclued some rank 3 materials

I'm hoping kabam will listen to the progression feedback that we're giving to them, if we get a 7* rank 4 in something like 6 months then i'd lose all my hope

If we see any t6b before like cyber weekend next year at the earliest, I think it's Joever.

Sorry got confused, t6b or t7b? Not sure what you meant

altavista

TyEdge said:

Ercarret said:

The problem with events where everyone can get the same rewards regardless of progression level is that it pushes the point where you start enjoying the rewards you get further and further forward with each progression level. If you're on the lower end of the progression spectrum, you quickly start getting rewards that you can be excited by, and as you open more crystals (whether you've bought them for units or not), the rewards just keep getting better. Even before the point where you'd have to spend to be able to open more crystals, the rewards you've earned propels your account forward.

If you're more toward the middle of the spectrum, the rewards don't start out very exciting but as you open more crystals, you eventually hit a point where you start getting things you are excited about. This is where I was last year. I didn't care for the initial rewards but I eventually got some stuff that I was really happy with, and if I had wanted to continue spending, I could have started getting rewards that would have really propelled my account forward.

However, if you're and endgame player (which I consider myself to be nowadays), the point where you start getting rewards that you'd be excited for lies so very deep into the runway that it's 1) impossible to get there without spending cash on the game/burn through a lot of units and 2) hard to justify spending those resources in order to get those rewards since the ultimate payout isn't particularly impressive. If you're not a spender, the f2p rewards stop before they start becoming valuable to you. If you do spend, there are too few enticing rewards to justify that spending.

If you keep this system going forward, my suggestion would be to let players start at different places along the runway depending on their progression tier. If we have 15 steps, let Uncollected and under players start at step 1 and basically have the same experience they have now. Then have every progression level after that result in let's say a 2-step jump, meaning Cavalier players start at step 3, Thronebreakers at step 5, Paragons at step 7, and Valiants at 9. With tiered starting points, mid-level players wouldn't have open a bunch of crystals that only counts toward low-level rewards. Instead, even the first crystals they open immediately start counting toward "their" rewards. Same as you go higher up in the progressions. Endgame players would start getting valuable rewards from the go without having to wade through those aimed at low- and mid-level players.

I imagine the system to be similar to the one you have for seeding players in Battlegrounds, just based on progression instead. Staying with that idea, you could also have a similar system for rewarding players with all of the rewards they've missed. After they've opened five Greater Banquet Crystals or have reached their first rewards milestone, to spitball a few examples.

I think the issue is a lot more complicated and needs a lot more solutions than just the one mentioned above, but this post is already long enough.

You’ve made a solid point with the rewards but the reality is that the progression-locked selectors would offer a way to improve milestones for paragon+ players while still offering lower players something of immediate value.

Like, whatever year they gave us a free Hercules, I was pulling 6-star stones out of crystals at a point my alt didn’t even have duped 6-star. I think I got some t6b or t3a. Useless for an account that was right around uncollected.

While not exactly part of the Banquet event, the Anniversary Calendar and the Christmas Gift are offering the progression-locked rewards you are asking for. Plus, there usually is some sort of Christmas store offers that one can spend $ or units on, that is also Progression locked.

So, overall I don't think Banquet needs more progression locked stuff. I just don't think it is all too appealing to Paragon+ level players, which isn't the worse thing in the world.

ahmynuts

Yeah I meant t7b my bad

DNA3000

iDestroyerZ said:

Another point that i find interesting that you brought up was the endgame content, i have mix feelings about what you said cause i kinda disagree but i completely understand what you're saying, the reason why i disagree is because i think EOP was a true endgame content and here's why:
1) It's not available anymore, not all of it at least, most of the rewards that we got was time limited and only people that had an account strong enough and playing during that period, was able to get the full rewards for the event
2) It was really limited in terms of roster because being high skilled didn't garantee you would be able to explore the missions, you had to have some counters and do some rank ups

There are games that define the "end game" to be whatever the top tier players are doing, that no one else can do. MCOC in particular has always defined the end game loosely in that way. The Maze was end game content, SoP/EoP was end game content, Abyss was end game content. And for us, it was.

However, there are progressional games that explicitly define an end game separate from the normal game. It isn't just descriptive, it is designed differently, it has different priorites. It even often has completely different fundamental rules. Sometimes those rules changes are subtle, sometimes they are significant, and sometimes they are dramatic. We see this in MMOs that shift from the normal instanced quest content that defines essentially the entire game up to that point to raid-like content that is the primary or sole way to progress beyond a certain point. We see extreme shifts in games like Guild Wars where the entire PvE game that most people would recognize as just like any other game is in large part just the intro to the game, while the PvP part of the game is what many consider to be the actual "end game."

This sounds like an artificial distinction, but there's a reason why long lived progressional games often plan for this. If the game keeps going along as it always has, just with bigger numbers, you eventually reach a point where exponential inflation runs into ceilings. No matter how smart you are, and how cleverly you design, and how perfect your numbers balance is, exponential inflation always wins, and then breaks your game.

Well, just don't do that, then. Except just to keep players' expectations remotely close to being satisfied, all game inflation is exponential. It just doesn't look like it, until it does. Because humans don't compare today's growth to the entire history of the game. They don't think that if we used to get one T4CC every five years, then we should get two every five years, then three, then four, then five. If we reach a point where we are getting sixty every five years, that's one a month. Increasing that from sixty to sixty one is changing that from one per month to one every 29 days, 12 hours. Nobody cares. Humans expect things to be proportionately better, relative to today. We expect tomorrow to be 20% better than today, and we expect that every day. That's exponential growth. It is unsustainable.

Eventually, the rules have to change, or the scaling rules kill you. But we can't keep changing the rules constantly, because that's chaos for players. The solution: here's the normal game, and if you reach this point you enter the end game, where things are different because it is the end game and that's just how the end game works.

Even this has to eventually break, but no progressional game of any consequence has lasted long enough to require an end game for the end game, as far as I know. Maybe Eve Online technically has, but they solve that problem by periodically assassinating everyone at the top. That's not an option for MCOC, at least within its current design.

TyEdge

Kabam did a good job warning everyone that the banquet would not create any path to becoming valiant. When it was announced in the livestream, it clearly would require two of clearing necropolis, spending a lot, or exploring act 8…or fully exploring necropolis.

And I’m still hugely disappointed with these milestones. Unless the drop rates absolutely rock, I don’t see the motivation to drop 900 units at a time to chase a t5cc.

Chuck_Finley

TyEdge said:

Kabam did a good job warning everyone that the banquet would not create any path to becoming valiant. When it was announced in the livestream, it clearly would require two of clearing necropolis, spending a lot, or exploring act 8…or fully exploring necropolis.

And I’m still hugely disappointed with these milestones. Unless the drop rates absolutely rock, I don’t see the motivation to drop 900 units at a time to chase a t5cc.

They could have added “You won’t become valiant through normal means during banquet, in fact taking a 6 star to rank 4 is probably not happening either. And 7 star acquisition? LOL.”

TyEdge

Chuck_Finley said:

TyEdge said:

Kabam did a good job warning everyone that the banquet would not create any path to becoming valiant. When it was announced in the livestream, it clearly would require two of clearing necropolis, spending a lot, or exploring act 8…or fully exploring necropolis.

And I’m still hugely disappointed with these milestones. Unless the drop rates absolutely rock, I don’t see the motivation to drop 900 units at a time to chase a t5cc.

They could have added “You won’t become valiant through normal means during banquet, in fact taking a 6 star to rank 4 is probably not happening either. And 7 star acquisition? LOL.”

Yes. Anyone who’s complaining about a pack of t4a needs to adjust their expectations.

Anyone upset at the relative lack of t6cc, t6b or t3a is right to be disappointed. No rank-up gems…practically nothing.

PT_99

Honestly I've given up on any hopes of this getting changed and will save my units for either Necro 100% or July-4th

It's their game and us wasting our energy into asking Kabam to change the game how we want it to be is just pointless. The company have decided how the event will go so whatever happens, the event will go on as it is.

iDestroyerZ

DNA3000 said:

iDestroyerZ said:

Another point that i find interesting that you brought up was the endgame content, i have mix feelings about what you said cause i kinda disagree but i completely understand what you're saying, the reason why i disagree is because i think EOP was a true endgame content and here's why:
1) It's not available anymore, not all of it at least, most of the rewards that we got was time limited and only people that had an account strong enough and playing during that period, was able to get the full rewards for the event
2) It was really limited in terms of roster because being high skilled didn't garantee you would be able to explore the missions, you had to have some counters and do some rank ups

There are games that define the "end game" to be whatever the top tier players are doing, that no one else can do. MCOC in particular has always defined the end game loosely in that way. The Maze was end game content, SoP/EoP was end game content, Abyss was end game content. And for us, it was.

However, there are progressional games that explicitly define an end game separate from the normal game. It isn't just descriptive, it is designed differently, it has different priorites. It even often has completely different fundamental rules. Sometimes those rules changes are subtle, sometimes they are significant, and sometimes they are dramatic. We see this in MMOs that shift from the normal instanced quest content that defines essentially the entire game up to that point to raid-like content that is the primary or sole way to progress beyond a certain point. We see extreme shifts in games like Guild Wars where the entire PvE game that most people would recognize as just like any other game is in large part just the intro to the game, while the PvP part of the game is what many consider to be the actual "end game."

This sounds like an artificial distinction, but there's a reason why long lived progressional games often plan for this. If the game keeps going along as it always has, just with bigger numbers, you eventually reach a point where exponential inflation runs into ceilings. No matter how smart you are, and how cleverly you design, and how perfect your numbers balance is, exponential inflation always wins, and then breaks your game.

Well, just don't do that, then. Except just to keep players' expectations remotely close to being satisfied, all game inflation is exponential. It just doesn't look like it, until it does. Because humans don't compare today's growth to the entire history of the game. They don't think that if we used to get one T4CC every five years, then we should get two every five years, then three, then four, then five. If we reach a point where we are getting sixty every five years, that's one a month. Increasing that from sixty to sixty one is changing that from one per month to one every 29 days, 12 hours. Nobody cares. Humans expect things to be proportionately better, relative to today. We expect tomorrow to be 20% better than today, and we expect that every day. That's exponential growth. It is unsustainable.

Eventually, the rules have to change, or the scaling rules kill you. But we can't keep changing the rules constantly, because that's chaos for players. The solution: here's the normal game, and if you reach this point you enter the end game, where things are different because it is the end game and that's just how the end game works.

Even this has to eventually break, but no progressional game of any consequence has lasted long enough to require an end game for the end game, as far as I know. Maybe Eve Online technically has, but they solve that problem by periodically assassinating everyone at the top. That's not an option for MCOC, at least within its current design.

I mean maybe bg will save this aspect of the game, in bg you don't need to worry about most of the consumables like revives, potions, even energy refils are not usually a problem, but i agree with you about this part of ''if they don't do this eventually, inflation will win'' and i have a question, do you think raids will also contribute with the long term form of content? Cause it's not meant to be an event like necropolis where you do 100% and never do it again, it's something that will help with players that got bored with AQ, and based on raids then kabam can come up with an event that will help with the inflation issue (if necessary)

ahmynuts

DrZola said:

ahmynuts said:

DNA3000 said:

iDestroyerZ said:

Aight guys, i'm gonna summon the keyboard god
@DNA3000 what are your thoughts about the current inflation of the game? Specially when it comes to 7*, after CW and now this cold water bucket that we got after the new downgrade ''upgraded'' version of the banquet, it seems like the inflation of the game has a few issues

I think this is less a direct issue of inflation, and more about progression. Inflation ultimately factors in, as it always does when it comes to anything game economy related, but I think what we're seeing here is a major issue with progression coming to a head.

For a while now, there has been this tension at the top, which I think most players not at the top don't see or aren't affected by. The tension is this: we want actually playing the game to be meaningful, or there's no point to the game itself. And that's fine in the middle of the game to a large extent, because in the middle of the game there's generally lots of ways to do lots of things. But when you get to the very top, you start asking questions like "should it be possible to get to the highest progression tier in the game just by being very good at the game?" And the answer is, of course, always "yes" but when? Because at the opposite end you have the question of monetization: how do you get players to spend, to support the existence of the game. As I've discussed elsewhere, most of the time spenders don't actually get much for their spending, but one thing they do tend to get is speed. They get what everyone else gets, but they get to have it first. Instead of paywalling parts of the game, we give spenders a head start instead, so everyone still eventually get what they get.

This creates a problem. If spenders get the best stuff first, that would tend to include progression materials, which means they are always getting to the top progression tier first. But if they keep that advantage for any significant amount of time, that heavily devalues in-game achievement at the top. We've seen complaints like this for both Paragon and Thronebreaker to varying degrees.

Sitting on top of both of these technical issues is the overarching desire for new stuff to be exciting. Releasing a new progression title should be exciting, for those pursuing it. Releasing Everest content should be exciting, for those qualified to run it. If Everest content is just giving you more stuff, that's both less exciting and also time-limited. How relevant are the Abyss rewards now - and those were *buffed* after release to make them more relevant. No amount of stuff can keep the Abyss relevant to the top, the top moves too fast. And consider how exciting it was to become Thronebreaker or Paragon: what we had to do to get there wasn't particularly interesting, even if it was difficult for some. The last time we had a race to a title that actually felt like a race to a title was probably Cavalier.

Personally, I think the way the devs resolved all this for Valiant was clever and well-thought out. You release Everest content and make completing it a critical piece of reaching the new title. Make it impossible to get to Valiant without at least completing it in the short term, and then only after a period of time release other ways to get there. This makes Necropolis exciting, and by extension it makes Valiant exciting. But there's still a spending opportunity: you can explore Necropolis or you can complete it and whale out during CW. Spending has a huge benefit, it helps accelerate players to things that would otherwise take much longer to get, but it doesn't overshadow highly skilled play. Highly skilled play gets there first. To me this is a balance between skill and spending we haven't seen in a while.

But none of this works if there are ways to bypass it. So making Necropolis meta-significant at the top means everything else can't be. It isn't just about no R3 materials: nothing in the immediate term can overshadow it. It can't be so high that players can say well, I can't get to Valiant, but that doesn't matter because look at all this stuff I can get instead. That means if you are Thronebreaker or lower, stuff like Cyber Weekend and the Banquet event can be very meta significant for you, because none of it competes with Necropolis. But if you are a high Paragon or Valiant, the banquet can't be a source of R3 because that combined with CW would allow you to bypass Necropolis, and it also cannot have too much rewards below that. Not only because they would start to overshadow Valiant progress, but also because that would then cause you to run out of room for rewards. If banquet has a ton of stuff other than R3, where will future rewards fit in between banquet and Valiant?

Right now there's two distinct reward envelopes: the game far away from Valiant, and the game within proximity of Valiant (at or near it). For everyone else, life continues on. For the players close to or at Valiant, the rewards we see will be tempered by the fact that for a stretch of time the primary reward path is the path to Valiant, and to make that path look exciting, everything else is going to be designed to not overshadow it.

Ultimately, I think this addresses long term inflation issues as well, but I don't think this is the primary driver of what we're seeing now. In my opinion what we're seeing is the devs deciding that the previous two progression rungs were lost opportunities, and they are trying to improve that situation moving forward. That means, when they do that, that player expectations will not be met, but that's a short term problem. In six months or a year, and especially when the next progression title comes around, I think most players of relevant progression will have adjusted to this type of reward design.

This is just me spitballing, but I think that this might be a proto-end game in the making. In many MMO-like games, there's the regular game, and then there's the end game. The end game is not just the most difficult stuff that the strongest players do. The end game is often qualitatively different from the rest of the game. End game players do different things, and they focus on different things, than the non-end game players. It isn't just bigger numbers: it is in many ways a different game. We've never had a true end game in MCOC. We've just had The Hardest Thing. I think to most MCOC players who have mostly just played MCOC or for whom MCOC is their first long term progressional game as a service, the idea that suddenly when you get to high Paragon the game starts railroading you into this path to Valiant, and everything else seems dull by comparison, is just weird and maybe even a little obnoxious. But maybe, just maybe, that's the price we have to pay for MCOC to eventually evolve a true end game. It is a price we're paying in the middle age of the game, so it seems weird to us. But it is a price other games pay without a second thought, because the players are just used to it. This is me projecting way, way, way out on a limb, but that's what I think might might might be happening here.

I agree with you for 99% of what you're saying outside of using 7-star rank 3's as an anchor point to latch onto for part of the issue at hand. The fact of the matter is, no one, or hardly anyone, was asking or is asking for that out of this event. High-tier paragons and Valiant just want more of the cool stuff we already have. Kabam can close the lid on rank 3s for awhile. Just let us have fun with 6-star rank 5s and 7-star rank 2s. Hell, even 7-star rank 1s. Theres just nothing here for us to be excited about, and it's a genuine shame that the decision was made to ostracize the entire upper end of the player base for this event in favor of mid-tier players.

It feels like they're saying "Thanks for playing our game so much and getting to this highest level. We know this event has been awesome in the past but since you're too invested you need to sit out this time." Just dull vibes all around

I like to think of it as the “Gladiatorization” of the Banquet event.

Dr. Zola

This is amazing lmao

Jjay

Kabam never disappoints to treat their player base like trash when it comes to rewards. The rewards are so underwhelming!! Like it costs kabam nothing to add some decent rewards (specially during Xmas ) and expect people to spend real money . First cyber Monday deals and now this 🤦‍♂️
There was a time when the community was boycotting the events to be heard for better rewards but nowadays people just accept whatever kabam throws at them . So many content makers are calling out the rewards as low tier but kabam doesn’t care to listen.
Also does anyone remembers at the 7* release that kabam justified the 15k shard cost by saying they'd increase 7* shards reward amounts to cover the 50% markup over the previous 10k shard cost…never happened right ?
Well i guess Condolences in advance to those who will spend money on this event in hope to get 7* crystals and in reality just to get 6 star sig stones as a Random RNG that mostly work in kabam favours.

DNA3000

Jjay said:

Also does anyone remembers at the 7* release that kabam justified the 15k shard cost by saying they'd increase 7* shards reward amounts to cover the 50% markup over the previous 10k shard cost…never happened right ?

I did not keep detailed records back then, but I believe that when the TB title launched I had about 65 different 6* champs in my roster. That includes duplicates, of course, so that’s not how many 6* crystals I opened, but that’s a data point. 65 unique 6* champs in a span of about 33 months (6* champs released end of January 2018, TB launched October 2020).

7* champs launched May 2023. As of right now, seven months later, I have 32 unique 7* champs. One is from a Paragon crystal, one is Morbius, the rest come from various 7* crystal. For me personally, 7* champs are coming significantly faster than 6* champs originally did.

Back in November 2020 I posted that at that time I was opening about two 6* crystals per month (https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/1522100/#Comment_1522100). Even if you remove Titan crystals, Loyalty crystals, Black ISO crystals, and other avenues for acquiring 7* champs (which mostly did not exist back then for 6* champs) I’m probably still opening 7* crystals almost as quickly now as I was over two years after 6* champs arrived. I am not significantly more active nor do I spend significantly more cash on the game now than then, so this is a reasonably apples to apples comparison.

This suggests the rate at which 7* champs are entering the game are substantially higher than the equivalent 6* acquisition rates, even with the higher shard costs.

Jjay said:

Well i guess Condolences in advance to those who will spend money on this event in hope to get 7* crystals and in reality just to get 6 star sig stones as a Random RNG that mostly work in kabam favours.

How does a random crystal that a player opens land in Kabam’s favor?

A player can get what they want, or they can get something they were not looking for, but Kabam itself doesn’t particularly care what you get from any one crystal.

Vivesector

@Kabam Miike can you please confirm the crystal costs?

PT_99

Vivesector said:

@Kabam Miike can you please confirm the crystal costs?

Said no plans to change 300 price.

ahmynuts

Jjay said:

Well i guess Condolences in advance to those who will spend money on this event in hope to get 7* crystals and in reality just to get 6 star sig stones as a Random RNG that mostly work in kabam favours.

Please don't start to ruin all of our legitimate arguments, complaints and solutions with rigged RNG posts.

Crime_Master_Gogo

@Kabam Miike Imagine you're new player at summoner lvl 45 currently at act 5 completion getting a 6* weapon x or Jessica from gbc crystal or maybe hercules doom from nexus or abyss nexus available in solo n alliance milestone along with some rank 1-2 and 2-3 materials maybe if lucky enough also a 6* aw gem 😂😂.... Feel like a game breaking situation right.... This events mostly profit to low level and new players. While we the old f2p players struggling to get what we actually need. New players will be getting 6* crystals and abyss crystals along with aw gems through milestones which is very precious to them while old f2p players getting what they already have. As a 6-7 year old player with 10+ rank 5 6* 25+ rank 4 6* and 10-12 7* champs
and 10+ 5*-6* relics what value you think that 5* nexus crystal and t2 alpha catalyst and 3* relic crystals hold for them? It's just like you're gifting second hand toyota to the owner of 10 range rovers... And on other hand for players like cavalier and below this rewards like 6* nexus, abyss nexus, 6* generic aw gem and those crystal drops are already too op for them lol. Maybe you should've made this milestone rewards based on players progression level just like you did with side quest stores, event solo objectives, solo event quests and remove 5* nexus crystals n t2 alpha and 3* relics for paragon players and put something much better and worthy. Yeah don't give us 7* rank up mats or 6* rank 5 mats but atleast something better then t2 alpha and 5* crystal n 3* relic

Chuck_Finley

To summarize the last 19 pages - the two basic views are:

1) I am disappointed the rewards across the board for the banquet are overpriced and underwhelming.

2) I am glad the rewards across the board for the banquet are overpriced and underwhelming.

Seems like we have reached a consensus at least in part. 👍👍

Warlockjr

I realize even tho we are mad and ranting nothing is going to change even though we want it to.

TheBaldAvenger

Warlockjr said:

I realize even tho we are mad and ranting nothing is going to change even though we want it to.

I actually think Kabam knew there was gonna be a backlash which is why they released the details unusually early. Usually details are released in the week leading up to the event. I think they released early to gather the feedback and give them time to make amendments and I fully expect them to do so

ahmynuts

TheBaldAvenger said:

Warlockjr said:

I realize even tho we are mad and ranting nothing is going to change even though we want it to.

I actually think Kabam knew there was gonna be a backlash which is why they released the details unusually early. Usually details are released in the week leading up to the event. I think they released early to gather the feedback and give them time to make amendments and I fully expect them to do so

Based off of years of experience with this game. Don't get your hopes up too high on that last part

DalBot

The weirdest thing about all of this is that Kabam is actively seeking to ostracize the very whales who have enabled this event in the past. Outside of a handful of mega whales who will spend to get Top 90, there's nothing in this for mid-range Valiant whales to actually drive us to want to spend. In the past I've been enticed enough to rank top 300 or so but this year I have ZERO incentive to do anything other than milestones. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Kontestman

Mmm quite interesting yes

Warlockjr

TheBaldAvenger said:

Warlockjr said:

I realize even tho we are mad and ranting nothing is going to change even though we want it to.

I actually think Kabam knew there was gonna be a backlash which is why they released the details unusually early. Usually details are released in the week leading up to the event. I think they released early to gather the feedback and give them time to make amendments and I fully expect them to do so

You might be right I won't give up hope right now