Alliance war new globals make it borderline unplayable

startropics

FunnyDude said:

Another typical dna style of pushing feedbacks away, everyone else’s comment, I can see their point straightaway, no matter its long or short, but this guy, a big pile of texts of “no opinion “, then why bother to say it.
It’s a horrible way of communicating with customers, and yeah, it’s also the first time I saw a hired guy call customers poison their product, brilliant!

he's not always right but DNA is good people and he really understands a lot of things that we don't. his posts are infuriating sometimes mainly because we can be irrational.

FunnyDude

startropics said:

FunnyDude said:

Another typical dna style of pushing feedbacks away, everyone else’s comment, I can see their point straightaway, no matter its long or short, but this guy, a big pile of texts of “no opinion “, then why bother to say it.
It’s a horrible way of communicating with customers, and yeah, it’s also the first time I saw a hired guy call customers poison their product, brilliant!

he's not always right but DNA is good people and he really understands a lot of things that we don't. his posts are infuriating sometimes mainly because we can be irrational.

Why do I care if he is good people or not, I'm not trying to make friend on forum, and I'm pretty sure he does not understand as much as he thought, it's not hard to find his in-game account, far away from understanding a lot things.

Did you actually see what he said?

Danxor

My overall impression from the announcement was this season is going to be just like the last one, with such minor tactic changes that don't address the key problems, along with the we have bigger health potions for sale is that Kabam mostly doesn't care that this tactic is terrible and is willing to ride out another season of demolishing alliances care for war.

Amms90

DNA3000 said:

Amms90 said:

Look you wrote a lot of essays here but the matter is that my original post was right on the money. It's my turn now to type a lot and you'll see how it feels.

Feels like you had a lot to say. Which is perfectly fine.

And to be honest, I agree with a lot of it. As I said repeatedly, and perhaps you didn't read the entire thread and thus aren't aware of, I haven't posted any particular opinion about this seasons tactics. Mainly because I don't participate in tier 1 war, so I didn't feel my opinion was especially relevant. From what I've seen of it on paper and what I know from discussing it with players who do participate, it seems rather broken. But I don't think my saying it is broken is especially meaningful, so I left it to others to discuss their experiences with it.

It was another poster who tried to make the argument that I was stifling discussion about this, because of comments I've made elsewhere in completely different contexts which themselves have nothing to do with stifling discussion. When people express their opinions on a subject, for the most part I don't post just to contradict them. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions when it comes to preferences. When people want things to be easier, harder, less rewarding, more rewarding, less expensive, those are preferences. Only they know what those are and everyone should feel free to express preferences.

But a lot of people can't just express their preferences. It isn't enough to say, for example, "I feel these potions should be cheaper." They have to try to make it seem like their preferences are universal, obvious, and everyone should agree with them. They don't just want potions to be cheaper, they say that the making them cheaper is the easiest thing in the world, and because the devs don't do what is obviously trivially easy to do, they must be stupid, greedy, or cruel. These are now statements of fact that are either true or false, and refutable. In those cases, sometimes I refute them. To some, this makes me the enemy. Because if (some of) the players want something, they can say anything they want to try to get it because they are on the Right Side, and anyone who disagrees with anything they say, even if it is 2+2=5, is the enemy because they are on the Wrong Side. I reject this attitude, and if that makes me their enemy, so be it.

Getting to the meat of your complaint. Personally, I have often stated that if I have a fundamental gripe with not just this dev team, but *most* game dev teams, it is the religious belief that incremental design means you can release anything and just tweak it later. That's a radical oversimplification, but there is a lot of truth to the statement that the way devs know they've made a mistake is when the fire reaches the second floor. If there is one thing I could wave a magic wand and change, everywhere across the games as a service industry, it would be that. And I know there is probably at least a few professional game developers reading this now thinking I'm just a little bit naive for saying it.

Until that magic wand appears, however, that's the world we live in. Players have to understand that complaints are factored in. They know complaints will happen, so complaining by itself will have limited impact unless it is accompanied by either extremely convincing arguments or changes in player behavior or both. I am not someone who claims that complaints don't matter. I'm someone that has gotten Kabam to acknowledge and even act on complaints. I know how difficult it is to cut through the noise and get noticed, and how hard it is to make suggestions the devs have any chance to act upon. When I see a discussion that might lead in productive ways, I try to advise on what I believe the best strategies for taking that discussion into productive directions might be.

I actually read your original post when you originally posted it and thought it was well written in general. I found it convincing. However, as I said, I didn't really feel I had anything material to add to it. If it was about something I actually had direct experience with, I would have tried to contribute to it. In any event, I don't know if you have some direct misunderstanding about how I view feedback posts or if you're just reacting to the opinions of others, but personally, I'm all for it. The forums could use people willing to spend more time expressing feedback thoughtfully and with detail, and especially without histrionics. I didn't see any cash grabs, any slaps to the face, any claims game design is easy or the devs are idiots. Just thoughts supported by facts. If I was a tier 1/2 player, it is the sort of post I might have forwarded to the devs.

Giving feedback is a marathon, not a sprint. The devs are not going to acknowledge everything you write. The devs are not going to act upon every suggestion you make. But they do read and they do listen. They remember who makes calm, logical arguments and who is just looking to go off the rails. If you make the kind of post you made at the start of this thread on a regular basis, you will make a difference. The hard part is doing it thanklessly. The forums won't always be on your side. The devs won't always visibly react to them. You have to have faith that that kind of post ultimately wins. Almost no one can sustain it for long.

Just know this. Even your dig at me above, I read in its entirety. Whether you believe it or not, I get it. Except for needing a few more paragraph boundaries, even that rant was more readable than a lot of the posts I see on the forums. The question you have to ask is: are you done? You see a problem, and you don't think the devs are doing what they need to do to solve it. What's next?

Nah look I get your answer and I accept it.

My complaint with you and other forum guardians in this case was simply that you didn't push in the players' direction by trying to make the devs do something about this... you say they couldn't/wouldn't... dunno... what I know is at some point you said that IF we think the content isn't worth doing then we shouldn't do it. This is a rational answer in its concept, but if you put it in the perspective of it being an alliance content and not a solo content then the answer becomes irrational. If the leadership of my alliance decides to endure it and push for the season, I don't have much of a choice unless I quit my alliance. That should also be a factor when considering whether or not a person can just decide to skip some content.
Let's think about carina o necropolis: I can freely choose to skip that if I want to. As long as I still have a competitive roster to be on par with my teammates, so I don't let them down, I'm not really obliged to push through. This is when your reasoning makes sense: if you think it's not worth it, don't do it. But when it comes to alliance content like aw aq or raids... well it's not up to me to choose. My only free choice would be to quit. And even quitting comes with the burden of hurting my teammates. For example I plan war and me quitting hurts my alliance a lot because they need to find a new planner or they can't play aw season regardless... and I don't know if this is well known, but good planners aren't easy to come across. That's why there's even people who get hired to plan the war map... In some other cases it could be a problem if a player with a very strong roster quits because we'd lack options that he would offer. In some other cases it could be a problem if a very strong player quits because we'd be much weaker... alliance content is not the same as solo content. This was the core of my complaint with you.

Also I think it's wise of you not to try and judge tier 1 aw issues when you don't have direct experience from that. Because I guarantee you that when I played in tier 3-5 aw was much different. That said, I thought we have many ccps who also play in tier 1 as well as some kabam employees from tier 1 alliances... I thought there was a direct channel of communication to quickly rely feedback to kabam when things are bad... what I found disheartening was the lack of action from kabam when the problems we brought up were crystal clear. And what I find disheartening now is what kabam decided to do as for "tuning" after acknowledging the problem.

I don't wanna be boring with this concept but we all agree that harder global is better than too easy global. What we don't like is bad design. We have to waste lots of potions to heal up even when we play the nodes correctly by their design, which in itself requires some skills. I can recall a couple times when I thought I was at risk of iteming out with still a few fights to go, both wars in which I didn't die. To avoid the risk of going 0/15 with still some fights to clear, I had to buy the bigger potions with units despite me having plenty of potions in my inventory. Potion economy was already bad to begin with, since we use champs with 100k+ boosted health and we have "only" 9500 loyalty potions, with a limit of 15 objects per war. That was bad even before last season. But at the very least in previous seasons if you played really well you could clear some fights with close to full health and so you wouldn't risk iteming out unless you'd mess up badly (which we can agree it's alright to be punished if you mess up). Last season playing perfectly often times meant finishing a fight with half of your health left... depending on the nodes and match up. This is bad design of the nodes coupled with unbalanced potion economy. I recall kabam is very very strict when it comes to increasing the availability of resources like units, catalysts, sig stones and so forth. They pay a lot of attention so that desired items don't become too easy to acquire. Such items only become easy to acquire when they basically lose relevance. Let's make an example: last year I was always struggling to pile up t5b and t2a. I always had less than what I needed and I wanted to rank up many more champs but I didn't have enough catalysts. Now I have 100+ of each in overflow but what I really need is t6b and t3a... which are not as easy to come by. This is all part of what it means to keep game economy balanced. It's fair and I understand that. What I don't understand is why they are so accurate when it comes to these things but they can miss the mark so bad when it comes to potions and aw node design...

startropics

Amms90 said:

DNA3000 said:

Amms90 said:

Look you wrote a lot of essays here but the matter is that my original post was right on the money. It's my turn now to type a lot and you'll see how it feels.

Feels like you had a lot to say. Which is perfectly fine.

And to be honest, I agree with a lot of it. As I said repeatedly, and perhaps you didn't read the entire thread and thus aren't aware of, I haven't posted any particular opinion about this seasons tactics. Mainly because I don't participate in tier 1 war, so I didn't feel my opinion was especially relevant. From what I've seen of it on paper and what I know from discussing it with players who do participate, it seems rather broken. But I don't think my saying it is broken is especially meaningful, so I left it to others to discuss their experiences with it.

It was another poster who tried to make the argument that I was stifling discussion about this, because of comments I've made elsewhere in completely different contexts which themselves have nothing to do with stifling discussion. When people express their opinions on a subject, for the most part I don't post just to contradict them. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions when it comes to preferences. When people want things to be easier, harder, less rewarding, more rewarding, less expensive, those are preferences. Only they know what those are and everyone should feel free to express preferences.

But a lot of people can't just express their preferences. It isn't enough to say, for example, "I feel these potions should be cheaper." They have to try to make it seem like their preferences are universal, obvious, and everyone should agree with them. They don't just want potions to be cheaper, they say that the making them cheaper is the easiest thing in the world, and because the devs don't do what is obviously trivially easy to do, they must be stupid, greedy, or cruel. These are now statements of fact that are either true or false, and refutable. In those cases, sometimes I refute them. To some, this makes me the enemy. Because if (some of) the players want something, they can say anything they want to try to get it because they are on the Right Side, and anyone who disagrees with anything they say, even if it is 2+2=5, is the enemy because they are on the Wrong Side. I reject this attitude, and if that makes me their enemy, so be it.

Getting to the meat of your complaint. Personally, I have often stated that if I have a fundamental gripe with not just this dev team, but *most* game dev teams, it is the religious belief that incremental design means you can release anything and just tweak it later. That's a radical oversimplification, but there is a lot of truth to the statement that the way devs know they've made a mistake is when the fire reaches the second floor. If there is one thing I could wave a magic wand and change, everywhere across the games as a service industry, it would be that. And I know there is probably at least a few professional game developers reading this now thinking I'm just a little bit naive for saying it.

Until that magic wand appears, however, that's the world we live in. Players have to understand that complaints are factored in. They know complaints will happen, so complaining by itself will have limited impact unless it is accompanied by either extremely convincing arguments or changes in player behavior or both. I am not someone who claims that complaints don't matter. I'm someone that has gotten Kabam to acknowledge and even act on complaints. I know how difficult it is to cut through the noise and get noticed, and how hard it is to make suggestions the devs have any chance to act upon. When I see a discussion that might lead in productive ways, I try to advise on what I believe the best strategies for taking that discussion into productive directions might be.

I actually read your original post when you originally posted it and thought it was well written in general. I found it convincing. However, as I said, I didn't really feel I had anything material to add to it. If it was about something I actually had direct experience with, I would have tried to contribute to it. In any event, I don't know if you have some direct misunderstanding about how I view feedback posts or if you're just reacting to the opinions of others, but personally, I'm all for it. The forums could use people willing to spend more time expressing feedback thoughtfully and with detail, and especially without histrionics. I didn't see any cash grabs, any slaps to the face, any claims game design is easy or the devs are idiots. Just thoughts supported by facts. If I was a tier 1/2 player, it is the sort of post I might have forwarded to the devs.

Giving feedback is a marathon, not a sprint. The devs are not going to acknowledge everything you write. The devs are not going to act upon every suggestion you make. But they do read and they do listen. They remember who makes calm, logical arguments and who is just looking to go off the rails. If you make the kind of post you made at the start of this thread on a regular basis, you will make a difference. The hard part is doing it thanklessly. The forums won't always be on your side. The devs won't always visibly react to them. You have to have faith that that kind of post ultimately wins. Almost no one can sustain it for long.

Just know this. Even your dig at me above, I read in its entirety. Whether you believe it or not, I get it. Except for needing a few more paragraph boundaries, even that rant was more readable than a lot of the posts I see on the forums. The question you have to ask is: are you done? You see a problem, and you don't think the devs are doing what they need to do to solve it. What's next?

Nah look I get your answer and I accept it.

My complaint with you and other forum guardians in this case was simply that you didn't push in the players' direction by trying to make the devs do something about this... you say they couldn't/wouldn't... dunno... what I know is at some point you said that IF we think the content isn't worth doing then we shouldn't do it. This is a rational answer in its concept, but if you put it in the perspective of it being an alliance content and not a solo content then the answer becomes irrational. If the leadership of my alliance decides to endure it and push for the season, I don't have much of a choice unless I quit my alliance. That should also be a factor when considering whether or not a person can just decide to skip some content.
Let's think about carina o necropolis: I can freely choose to skip that if I want to. As long as I still have a competitive roster to be on par with my teammates, so I don't let them down, I'm not really obliged to push through. This is when your reasoning makes sense: if you think it's not worth it, don't do it. But when it comes to alliance content like aw aq or raids... well it's not up to me to choose. My only free choice would be to quit. And even quitting comes with the burden of hurting my teammates. For example I plan war and me quitting hurts my alliance a lot because they need to find a new planner or they can't play aw season regardless... and I don't know if this is well known, but good planners aren't easy to come across. That's why there's even people who get hired to plan the war map... In some other cases it could be a problem if a player with a very strong roster quits because we'd lack options that he would offer. In some other cases it could be a problem if a very strong player quits because we'd be much weaker... alliance content is not the same as solo content. This was the core of my complaint with you.

Also I think it's wise of you not to try and judge tier 1 aw issues when you don't have direct experience from that. Because I guarantee you that when I played in tier 3-5 aw was much different. That said, I thought we have many ccps who also play in tier 1 as well as some kabam employees from tier 1 alliances... I thought there was a direct channel of communication to quickly rely feedback to kabam when things are bad... what I found disheartening was the lack of action from kabam when the problems we brought up were crystal clear. And what I find disheartening now is what kabam decided to do as for "tuning" after acknowledging the problem.

I don't wanna be boring with this concept but we all agree that harder global is better than too easy global. What we don't like is bad design. We have to waste lots of potions to heal up even when we play the nodes correctly by their design, which in itself requires some skills. I can recall a couple times when I thought I was at risk of iteming out with still a few fights to go, both wars in which I didn't die. To avoid the risk of going 0/15 with still some fights to clear, I had to buy the bigger potions with units despite me having plenty of potions in my inventory. Potion economy was already bad to begin with, since we use champs with 100k+ boosted health and we have "only" 9500 loyalty potions, with a limit of 15 objects per war. That was bad even before last season. But at the very least in previous seasons if you played really well you could clear some fights with close to full health and so you wouldn't risk iteming out unless you'd mess up badly (which we can agree it's alright to be punished if you mess up). Last season playing perfectly often times meant finishing a fight with half of your health left... depending on the nodes and match up. This is bad design of the nodes coupled with unbalanced potion economy. I recall kabam is very very strict when it comes to increasing the availability of resources like units, catalysts, sig stones and so forth. They pay a lot of attention so that desired items don't become too easy to acquire. Such items only become easy to acquire when they basically lose relevance. Let's make an example: last year I was always struggling to pile up t5b and t2a. I always had less than what I needed and I wanted to rank up many more champs but I didn't have enough catalysts. Now I have 100+ of each in overflow but what I really need is t6b and t3a... which are not as easy to come by. This is all part of what it means to keep game economy balanced. It's fair and I understand that. What I don't understand is why they are so accurate when it comes to these things but they can miss the mark so bad when it comes to potions and aw node design...

by design potion their economy has always lagged behind player needs. they always leave it until there's a near-backlash before slightly improving it. 2 years ago they waited so long to bump it from 6k to 9.5k that it was not enough when they did.

now they've decided that last season's broken map is a now a permanent fixture in t1 war "just because". if they're using the top few teams like gt40 and salty as role models for everyone else, that's a mistake.

FunnyDude

startropics said:

by design potion their economy has always lagged behind player needs. they always leave it until there's a near-backlash before slightly improving it. 2 years ago they waited so long to bump it from 6k to 9.5k that it was not enough when they did.

now they've decided that last season's broken map is a now a permanent fixture in t1 war "just because". if they're using the top few teams like gt40 and salty as role models for everyone else, that's a mistake.

Someone probably will jump out and say again the economy system is the most difficult thing to fix, but I just don't buy it.
We are not even asking for fixing the entire economy system in the game, just want to see baby step changes like making the potion right, which is an issue for YEARS. Eventually, Kabam started to do something, but making the potion scale with boost wouldn't happen before March, which is pathetic.

I kept saying on the forum that fixing these kind of things are low-hanging fruit, but each time it's either ignored or being told it's the most difficult thing to fix, which sounds like they just don't want to do it. Everyone with gaming experience knows that making potion work properly isn't that hard, it can even be implemented in 25-years old game like Diablo2, is it truly so hard today?

Cdjcdkj

The easiest fix for potions is just make them percentage based no need to change with boost no need to make higher potions every few years no need to waste money coding more sizes if it's so hard to fix potions just make them percentage based and every problem is solved for potions but aw is supposed to fun and enjoyable this meta war just isn't fun and makes you feel like damn I got to heal after every fight why bother time to just revive and use no potions until they fix aw back to a better meta

Ming_Mow129

Get rid of the global node period there's no skill involved when your taking 40/50% block damage every fight. (It's stupid) and just wrong to get ppl to spend that way. The game is supposed to be fun and you've taken the fun out of the game

startropics

the global hasn't been addressed in tier 1 and we might be walking into an escalating cost problem with potions.

Doctor_Doom94

Ming_Mow129 said:

Get rid of the global node period there's no skill involved when your taking 40/50% block damage every fight. (It's stupid) and just wrong to get ppl to spend that way. The game is supposed to be fun and you've taken the fun out of the game

I second to this.. or they should add some % of block proficiency while steadfast is on attacker to counter some block damage .
Otherwise it's insane getting 1 sp on block & half of your health is down.