Hey everyone. I thought this would be a good place to share some of my closing thoughts on Banquet this year. This is not me making excuses, but just trying to be as transparent as possible about what I and the others responsible for the event were thinking as we learn from it and move into 2024.
.... removed for brevity
Watch yourself Kabam Crashed you might become a Legend... of the forums. Thanks for the awesome response. Love the fly-on-the-wall info. Happy New Year and get back on the live streams!
Since the replies are very long, I wouldn't quote, but to be clear, I don't have too many problems with CONTENTS of the game, but I think economy of it is broken, Banquet 23 and AW tactics are the good examples.
I'm never a big fan of Banquet, Banquet 21/22 were also broken because rewards are too good and they easily made players feel all the hard contents in a year were just waste of time, they only need to save the units to the end of the year then they can catch up. I still remember a year ago, KT1 almost cried when he saw the rewards from Banquet, because nobody put more energy and passion then him in the game, he felt like he spent a whole year to be a top player, but many players can easily catch up if they saved tens of thousands of units to the EOY. I totally agree with him, Banquet 21/22 were overkill.
However, the gap between 23 and 21/22 is not 3 inches, it is 3000 miles. You guys basically just added two 7-star crystals to the milestone rewards, the rest rewards were just copied from 22, which is absolutely wrong, no matter how hard you try to explain, this is lazy. There are so many you can do it make players happier, you don't want players to go too fast on 7-star, OK, where is the ascending materials in the Banquet crystal? Check out the T6C, T6B and T3A in those crystals, they are minimum, how can we even progress our 6-star champions with T5B and T2A? To me, this is a very good evidence of broken economy of the game.
Now let's talk about war, I've posted more than one threads about this, to be clear, the tactics are fun to me because I like challenging content and I like to improve my skill, but I also think the tactics are evil for AW based on the potion price. One death of 7R3 champion will cost you 300+ units, which is $10 in price, are you kidding me? You may argue why I even die in the game, this is because I'm not skill enough? I will not say I'm the top skilled player, but my alliance is in P1 and occasionally master, so we do have reasonably skill but we just cannot afford the potions this season (btw we are not FTP players too, we are still top20 in Banquet event, but we spent much less than last year just because it's horribly designed). I assume everyone knows Fintech right? Check his channel, as a top10 players in the world, see how units he spent in wars already, other players may have to spent a lot more than him if they want to push the war, but they just wouldn't: war rewards are always lagging behind and why do they spent 5000 units in a month if they can save the units for something else? So they just use 1 loyalty revives like crazy, are devs happy to see that?
To me, economy system is the low-hanging fruit comparing with all the good/complex contents you guys created, but I'm wondering why you just wouldn't fix it. Banquet was broken for 3 years in a row (either too good or too bad); the potion price is a problem for 2 years already, I howled in the forum for many many times, but we only saw one step change so far, which was 2 months ago.
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
Whatever changes you make going forward, please continue to place the bulk of rewards in content over deals. By putting better rewards in Necropolis over Banquet, you incentivized people to play the game. Which is exactly what everyone should need to do to progress. The heart of MCOC lies in the fights. It's about clearing quests, defeating opponents, and beating bosses. You should never return to the lopsided craziness that was the July 2023 deals. This game isn't about buying your way to to the top.
So please, keep this in mind as we move into 2024. You made a good change, don't screw it up.
This ^. Continue to make the content the most rewarding portion of the game (like way back when) and then have good but not absolutely insane deals to complement that and the player's progression. The main bulk of the backlash was because there was nothing there for endgame players. We didn't need shiny next rank up mats, just more of what we already have.
Use the deals for widening our current level while using content to heighten it. That's my take at least
Hey everyone. I thought this would be a good place to share some of my closing thoughts on Banquet this year. This is not me making excuses, but just trying to be as transparent as possible about what I and the others responsible for the event were thinking as we learn from it and move into 2024.
I want to start by saying the team absolutely understands your concerns and we do care about them. The part of our community that engages in dialogue on our forums, YouTube, Reddit and other social media represents a slice of our most engaged, long-term fans. We absolutely want to surprise and delight you, and in the case of Banquet 2023, it’s clear for many of you that didn’t happen.
I think there are a few reasons why things ended up this way. The first was, as I said on one of our livestreams, we wanted to do everything possible to encourage people to do Necropolis by moving rewards away from offers and into content. We tuned rewards through the end of this year and into the first part of next year accordingly. This was successful, our engagement with Necropolis has exceeded even our highest expectations. However I do agree, despite this, that portions of the Banquet event ended up undertuned, particularly the rank-up materials in the milestones and ranked rewards.
The second reason is that internally, we valued the limited pool 7-star Gifted Guardians crystal higher than a lot of you did. To us, it carried enough value that it would make the milestones worth it. Overall, the player base seems to have agreed (more on this later), but clearly for some that was not the case.
The third reason is, as many have said here and elsewhere, the Banquet event is the one event that isn’t separated by progression, and over time, the gap from low progression to high progression increases. I don’t think I need to say any more about this, you all seem to have identified this already.
The fourth reason is that the Banquet crystals themselves are deliberately designed to not be great for our top players, but I think aiming for a certain mix of filler and high-quality chase rewards we still ended up slightly undertuned. There will always be filler in these crystals, that’s just the reality of the situation. If a player doesn’t like that, then the event isn’t for them. However about 83% of the crystal was filler for top players this year, and I do agree that’s too high. We went through something similar last year with the inclusion of T4CC but I think that this year there was an additional challenge. For top players 6-star champion acquisition materials are basically worthless and 7-star shards were still too valuable to make up a meaningful portion of the crystal. Without champion acquisition options to fill up the crystal, we ended up in a tough place.
With that all said I do want to address a couple concerns that I don’t agree with. The first is this idea that the people who tune these events don’t understand the game. I have seen various suggestions that we should hire more high-tier players to work on this content. This wasn’t a problem in this case. Of the seven people who worked on this event, two of us were Valiant before the start of December, two are high Paragon players who have completed Necropolis, and the remaining three are all either Paragon or Thronebreaker. If anything, compared to the population of our players, our team is top-heavy. We knew generally where this event would land and that the event wasn’t as good for our end game players compared to last year, relative to the current state of the game. Again, I think the main difference in perception is the value we placed on the Gifted Guardians crystals. The value we placed on that crystal took up too much of the “reward budget” and directly resulted in the rank-up resources being undertuned in the milestones. We also could have included some T4A in ranked rewards below the top 90, and probably some more 6-star 4 to 5 rank-up gems.
The second is that, despite a negative response from our engaged community, Banquet 2023 was broadly very successful. I’ll be honest, after seeing the initial reaction on these forums I was pretty worried. But in the end, players opened a lot of Banquet Crystals, approximately 34% more than last year. Part of this was that players had more Units going into the event this year, but a bigger reason was that, despite common belief, the Banquet event is actually one of our most broad-based sales events of the year - it’s one of our least top heavy events in terms of the percentage of participation coming from the top players. I know this is counterintuitive in some ways, given what it takes to climb the leaderboard, but it also makes sense when you think about how good the event was for lower-progression players. Broadly, the player base as a whole did think the Gifted Guardians crystal was worth completing the milestones for. So, if you want to argue the event was bad because it left many top players without the rewards they expected, by all means, make that argument, and I’m sympathetic to it. But if you want to argue it was bad because it wasn’t successful from the business and participation side you are going to lose that argument as it’s based on the false premise that the event failed, which it very much did not.
Finally, bringing things back to the question at hand: Are Kabam devs happy with the Banquet results? I can’t speak for everyone on the team, but I would say overall I’m neutral. On the plus side, we got more players into Necropolis, had a successful event with broad-based participation, and didn’t substantially devalue very much economically aside from the six Gifted Guardians. We still have a huge roster of unreleased 7-star champions, rank 3 materials and other champion items like sig stones and awakening gems that are holding substantial value. You could see a world where Banquet introduced 7-star awakening gems or sig stones, and it made more money in the short term, and players were happier, but long-term we were in worse shape. On the downside, a lot of our most engaged players are pretty unhappy right now, with the Banquet event compounding concerns about Alliance War, defender AI, the meta event and other legitimate issues we need to address. What I can say in closing is that we are listening and we are learning. We aim to surprise and delight as many of you as possible as we get into this new year.
I personally felt the Banquet rewards were underwhelming! But, DAMNNNNNNN!! Whaat a response from the Kabam Team. Opening 2024 with an top tier response to the community!
This game is very old, those players played game for 5-8 years have way better understanding of game than most testers of Kabam, or even some of new designers. Kabam just don’t respect their feedbacks.
I'm not saying my experience is unique, in fact the opposite: I'm just one player among many. But it is not my place to discuss the involvement of others, so I can only specify my own. Kabam has taken *tons* of my feedback, among many others over the years. They took my feedback (among others) into consideration when rethinking Act design, particularly Act 6 and Act 7. They took my feedback on war costs into consideration when they acted on my recommendation to make war revives free. And they took my feedback on Battlegrounds into consideration both during beta and after releases. I was a very strong advocate for mastery profiles in Battlegrounds. I was a very strong advocate for a low intensity mode for BG that eventually became the Victory track. And I provided specific feedback on BG post-release regarding scoring, seating, and match making, all of which eventually made it into the mode.
Other players have their own specific stories to tell, and the CCP itself has had a lot of impact on how the game exists today. They just don't keep score publicly about every single piece of feedback that makes an impact on the live game. And threads on the forums also make an impact; as someone who references and points out forum threads to the developers I know that they read and incorporate feedback.
What the devs don't do is design by poll. They factor feedback into their decisions. They don't replace their decisions with the opinions of others, as I wouldn't expect them to. I listen to customers, and I incorporate their feedback into my decisions, but no customer tells me what to do. I expect the same from the developers.
You see player feedback and complaints through rose colored glasses. You think they are always right, and the more unified they seem to be, the more right they are. But that's not remotely true. There were more people saying 6* rarity would destroy the game than were saying the banquet sucks. In retrospect, should the devs have acted upon that complaint? More players complained that Uncollected EQ difficulty was a cash grab than complained about the banquet. How quaint that one was. When players said diminishing returns was stupid and would lead to the downfall of the game, they were wrong. When people said the Cyber and J4 sales were pay to win and would destroy the game, they were wrong.
When people don't like something, they have ever right to express that. Their preferences are their own. However, when players extrapolate what bad things will happen if the things they don't like don't change, their batting average is pretty low. In fact, it is worse than random chance. When someone says that something is bad and if it isn't changed here's what even worse thing is going to happen in the future, betting against them will mean you're right the vast majority of the time. It is the safest money around, and I've been around long enough to have been keeping score for over eight years now, since even before 12.0.
This game is very old, those players played game for 5-8 years have way better understanding of game than most testers of Kabam, or even some of new designers. Kabam just don’t respect their feedbacks.
I'm not saying my experience is unique, in fact the opposite: I'm just one player among many. But it is not my place to discuss the involvement of others, so I can only specify my own. Kabam has taken *tons* of my feedback, among many others over the years. They took my feedback (among others) into consideration when rethinking Act design, particularly Act 6 and Act 7. They took my feedback on war costs into consideration when they acted on my recommendation to make war revives free. And they took my feedback on Battlegrounds into consideration both during beta and after releases. I was a very strong advocate for mastery profiles in Battlegrounds. I was a very strong advocate for a low intensity mode for BG that eventually became the Victory track. And I provided specific feedback on BG post-release regarding scoring, seating, and match making, all of which eventually made it into the mode.
Other players have their own specific stories to tell, and the CCP itself has had a lot of impact on how the game exists today. They just don't keep score publicly about every single piece of feedback that makes an impact on the live game. And threads on the forums also make an impact; as someone who references and points out forum threads to the developers I know that they read and incorporate feedback.
What the devs don't do is design by poll. They factor feedback into their decisions. They don't replace their decisions with the opinions of others, as I wouldn't expect them to. I listen to customers, and I incorporate their feedback into my decisions, but no customer tells me what to do. I expect the same from the developers.
You see player feedback and complaints through rose colored glasses. You think they are always right, and the more unified they seem to be, the more right they are. But that's not remotely true. There were more people saying 6* rarity would destroy the game than were saying the banquet sucks. In retrospect, should the devs have acted upon that complaint? More players complained that Uncollected EQ difficulty was a cash grab than complained about the banquet. How quaint that one was. When players said diminishing returns was stupid and would lead to the downfall of the game, they were wrong. When people said the Cyber and J4 sales were pay to win and would destroy the game, they were wrong.
When people don't like something, they have ever right to express that. Their preferences are their own. However, when players extrapolate what bad things will happen if the things they don't like don't change, their batting average is pretty low. In fact, it is worse than random chance. When someone says that something is bad and if it isn't changed here's what even worse thing is going to happen in the future, betting against them will mean you're right the vast majority of the time. It is the safest money around, and I've been around long enough to have been keeping score for over eight years now, since even before 12.0.
Of course I know Kabam likes you, but Kabam made all decisions right? If you were around, you should remember Kabam reverted some of changes because pushing back from the community, 12.0 almost killed the game. There were so many mistakes Kabam made that can be avoided, if they listened not only to those they like.
If you played long enough you should remember how many they put untested tactics in wars and had to revert those tactics, so yes, they did listen sometimes, but not always, it’s obviously not enough.
I’m not saying the game is not good,, I’m not saying community is always right, I’m saying kabam are still making mistakes, it can be much better if they listen to broader community, economy of the game is a mess, i know it because I completed all the endgame contents by myself and I spent a lot in many events.
So .. just a question. How come you and others you're talking about aren't running a successful game or heading of the economic department of a successful game if you know better than Kabam?
What is it exactly that Kabam should take from you feedback wise? They listen to DNA because of his experience, past and present, and have supporting data behind it. If DNA suggests something, it isn't "we need 10k 7* shards for completing TB difficulty" or just more and more rewards of the rarest forms.
The reason why Kabam doesn't implement many of the ideas is because they center around your progression and isn't anything that will always help everyone in the game.
Kabam has listened to a lot of people over the years. I've been on these forums since before they switched to the current version we're on now.
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
Technically, both of those are equally easy. Just type some words. Unless you want to do it correctly, of course.
Once upon a time, I worked on a custom reward system for an MMO. When you got right down to it, all I had to do was pick four numbers. That's it, just four numbers. It took me about two weeks to pick those four numbers, because they had to be the right four numbers. And I actually spent a couple months thinking about the problem before I was hired to actually work on it, so in a sense I spent almost three months thinking about those four numbers. In the same game I proposed a complete rework of a power system set; roughly the equivalent of making half of a champion in MCOC (on the non-art side). That took me about three days of thought.
Changing almost anything in the game economy is just changing numbers on a spreadsheet. It takes just seconds to do that. Unless you feel the need to get those numbers right. If it was as easy as you seem to think it is, game companies wouldn't need economy designers.
They actually have an open position for another one, specifically to work on MCOC. Maybe you should consider applying. With you there, in a week we could have the entire game economy "fixed."
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
Technically, both of those are equally easy. Just type some words. Unless you want to do it correctly, of course.
Once upon a time, I worked on a custom reward system for an MMO. When you got right down to it, all I had to do was pick four numbers. That's it, just four numbers. It took me about two weeks to pick those four numbers, because they had to be the right four numbers. And I actually spent a couple months thinking about the problem before I was hired to actually work on it, so in a sense I spent almost three months thinking about those four numbers. In the same game I proposed a complete rework of a power system set; roughly the equivalent of making half of a champion in MCOC (on the non-art side). That took me about three days of thought.
Changing almost anything in the game economy is just changing numbers on a spreadsheet. It takes just seconds to do that. Unless you feel the need to get those numbers right. If it was as easy as you seem to think it is, game companies wouldn't need economy designers.
They actually have an open position for another one, specifically to work on MCOC. Maybe you should consider applying. With you there, in a week we could have the entire game economy "fixed."
So, basically you are saying, instead of trying to fix something within 2 years, the best they can do is doing nothing? Please, if you are the expert, tell me why it's so hard to fix potion prices?
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
What do you think the drop rates should have been for GGCs?
This game is very old, those players played game for 5-8 years have way better understanding of game than most testers of Kabam, or even some of new designers. Kabam just don’t respect their feedbacks.
I'm not saying my experience is unique, in fact the opposite: I'm just one player among many. But it is not my place to discuss the involvement of others, so I can only specify my own. Kabam has taken *tons* of my feedback, among many others over the years. They took my feedback (among others) into consideration when rethinking Act design, particularly Act 6 and Act 7. They took my feedback on war costs into consideration when they acted on my recommendation to make war revives free. And they took my feedback on Battlegrounds into consideration both during beta and after releases. I was a very strong advocate for mastery profiles in Battlegrounds. I was a very strong advocate for a low intensity mode for BG that eventually became the Victory track. And I provided specific feedback on BG post-release regarding scoring, seating, and match making, all of which eventually made it into the mode.
Other players have their own specific stories to tell, and the CCP itself has had a lot of impact on how the game exists today. They just don't keep score publicly about every single piece of feedback that makes an impact on the live game. And threads on the forums also make an impact; as someone who references and points out forum threads to the developers I know that they read and incorporate feedback.
What the devs don't do is design by poll. They factor feedback into their decisions. They don't replace their decisions with the opinions of others, as I wouldn't expect them to. I listen to customers, and I incorporate their feedback into my decisions, but no customer tells me what to do. I expect the same from the developers.
You see player feedback and complaints through rose colored glasses. You think they are always right, and the more unified they seem to be, the more right they are. But that's not remotely true. There were more people saying 6* rarity would destroy the game than were saying the banquet sucks. In retrospect, should the devs have acted upon that complaint? More players complained that Uncollected EQ difficulty was a cash grab than complained about the banquet. How quaint that one was. When players said diminishing returns was stupid and would lead to the downfall of the game, they were wrong. When people said the Cyber and J4 sales were pay to win and would destroy the game, they were wrong.
When people don't like something, they have ever right to express that. Their preferences are their own. However, when players extrapolate what bad things will happen if the things they don't like don't change, their batting average is pretty low. In fact, it is worse than random chance. When someone says that something is bad and if it isn't changed here's what even worse thing is going to happen in the future, betting against them will mean you're right the vast majority of the time. It is the safest money around, and I've been around long enough to have been keeping score for over eight years now, since even before 12.0.
This game is very old, those players played game for 5-8 years have way better understanding of game than most testers of Kabam, or even some of new designers. Kabam just don’t respect their feedbacks.
I'm not saying my experience is unique, in fact the opposite: I'm just one player among many. But it is not my place to discuss the involvement of others, so I can only specify my own. Kabam has taken *tons* of my feedback, among many others over the years. They took my feedback (among others) into consideration when rethinking Act design, particularly Act 6 and Act 7. They took my feedback on war costs into consideration when they acted on my recommendation to make war revives free. And they took my feedback on Battlegrounds into consideration both during beta and after releases. I was a very strong advocate for mastery profiles in Battlegrounds. I was a very strong advocate for a low intensity mode for BG that eventually became the Victory track. And I provided specific feedback on BG post-release regarding scoring, seating, and match making, all of which eventually made it into the mode.
Other players have their own specific stories to tell, and the CCP itself has had a lot of impact on how the game exists today. They just don't keep score publicly about every single piece of feedback that makes an impact on the live game. And threads on the forums also make an impact; as someone who references and points out forum threads to the developers I know that they read and incorporate feedback.
What the devs don't do is design by poll. They factor feedback into their decisions. They don't replace their decisions with the opinions of others, as I wouldn't expect them to. I listen to customers, and I incorporate their feedback into my decisions, but no customer tells me what to do. I expect the same from the developers.
You see player feedback and complaints through rose colored glasses. You think they are always right, and the more unified they seem to be, the more right they are. But that's not remotely true. There were more people saying 6* rarity would destroy the game than were saying the banquet sucks. In retrospect, should the devs have acted upon that complaint? More players complained that Uncollected EQ difficulty was a cash grab than complained about the banquet. How quaint that one was. When players said diminishing returns was stupid and would lead to the downfall of the game, they were wrong. When people said the Cyber and J4 sales were pay to win and would destroy the game, they were wrong.
When people don't like something, they have ever right to express that. Their preferences are their own. However, when players extrapolate what bad things will happen if the things they don't like don't change, their batting average is pretty low. In fact, it is worse than random chance. When someone says that something is bad and if it isn't changed here's what even worse thing is going to happen in the future, betting against them will mean you're right the vast majority of the time. It is the safest money around, and I've been around long enough to have been keeping score for over eight years now, since even before 12.0.
Of course I know Kabam likes you, but Kabam made all decisions right? If you were around, you should remember Kabam reverted some of changes because pushing back from the community, 12.0 almost killed the game. There were so many mistakes Kabam made that can be avoided, if they listened not only to those they like.
If you played long enough you should remember how many they put untested tactics in wars and had to revert those tactics, so yes, they did listen sometimes, but not always, it’s obviously not enough.
I’m not saying the game is not good,, I’m not saying community is always right, I’m saying kabam are still making mistakes, it can be much better if they listen to broader community, economy of the game is a mess, i know it because I completed all the endgame contents by myself and I spent a lot in many events.
So .. just a question. How come you and others you're talking about aren't running a successful game or heading of the economic department of a successful game if you know better than Kabam?
What is it exactly that Kabam should take from you feedback wise? They listen to DNA because of his experience, past and present, and have supporting data behind it. If DNA suggests something, it isn't "we need 10k 7* shards for completing TB difficulty" or just more and more rewards of the rarest forms.
The reason why Kabam doesn't implement many of the ideas is because they center around your progression and isn't anything that will always help everyone in the game.
Kabam has listened to a lot of people over the years. I've been on these forums since before they switched to the current version we're on now.
You're upset they haven't used YOUR ideas.
It's just a game to me, to be honest, if they don't care what I said, why should I bother? I spend some money in the game to buy some fun, and I want it to be better so I gave my honest opinions, but if Kabam wouldn't listen, then it is what it is, not my job and I wouldn't upset.
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
What do you think the drop rates should have been for GGCs?
Many ppl gave very reasonable suggestions in many threads weeks ago, and I also said something in the comment you quoted, if you read.
Banquet is the past, so I just say it's poorly designed and I don't want to spend more times to explain how to fix it anymore, Banquet24 is a different story which is too early to discuss.
AW tactics and potion prices are still on going, there are also many threads include very good suggestions about how to fix, I don't want to spend more time to repeat those suggestions. Again, not my job, I just howl my concerns when I have time, if Kabam want to listen, there are plenty of answers out there already.
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
Technically, both of those are equally easy. Just type some words. Unless you want to do it correctly, of course.
Once upon a time, I worked on a custom reward system for an MMO. When you got right down to it, all I had to do was pick four numbers. That's it, just four numbers. It took me about two weeks to pick those four numbers, because they had to be the right four numbers. And I actually spent a couple months thinking about the problem before I was hired to actually work on it, so in a sense I spent almost three months thinking about those four numbers. In the same game I proposed a complete rework of a power system set; roughly the equivalent of making half of a champion in MCOC (on the non-art side). That took me about three days of thought.
Changing almost anything in the game economy is just changing numbers on a spreadsheet. It takes just seconds to do that. Unless you feel the need to get those numbers right. If it was as easy as you seem to think it is, game companies wouldn't need economy designers.
They actually have an open position for another one, specifically to work on MCOC. Maybe you should consider applying. With you there, in a week we could have the entire game economy "fixed."
So, basically you are saying, instead of trying to fix something within 2 years, the best they can do is doing nothing? Please, if you are the expert, tell me why it's so hard to fix potion prices?
I think you’re just looking for an argument, and from my perspective it is a pointless one. If this is a question you want a serious answer for, I’ve already given it. But if you don’t like my answer, you should address your question to the developers directly and get an authoritative answer from them. When it comes to things like the game economy, I’m willing to elucidate what I can, and I’m willing to discuss academically under reasonable conditions, but this is neither of that, nor do I think you’re willing or able to do either.
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
What do you think the drop rates should have been for GGCs?
Many ppl gave very reasonable suggestions in many threads weeks ago, and I also said something in the comment you quoted, if you read.
Banquet is the past, so I just say it's poorly designed and I don't want to spend more times to explain how to fix it anymore, Banquet24 is a different story which is too early to discuss.
AW tactics and potion prices are still on going, there are also many threads include very good suggestions about how to fix, I don't want to spend more time to repeat those suggestions. Again, not my job, I just howl my concerns when I have time, if Kabam want to listen, there are plenty of answers out there already.
All that peacocking and this is what you come back with? Of course. You know better than Kabam but now you completely skirt the question. Nice.
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
Technically, both of those are equally easy. Just type some words. Unless you want to do it correctly, of course.
Once upon a time, I worked on a custom reward system for an MMO. When you got right down to it, all I had to do was pick four numbers. That's it, just four numbers. It took me about two weeks to pick those four numbers, because they had to be the right four numbers. And I actually spent a couple months thinking about the problem before I was hired to actually work on it, so in a sense I spent almost three months thinking about those four numbers. In the same game I proposed a complete rework of a power system set; roughly the equivalent of making half of a champion in MCOC (on the non-art side). That took me about three days of thought.
Changing almost anything in the game economy is just changing numbers on a spreadsheet. It takes just seconds to do that. Unless you feel the need to get those numbers right. If it was as easy as you seem to think it is, game companies wouldn't need economy designers.
They actually have an open position for another one, specifically to work on MCOC. Maybe you should consider applying. With you there, in a week we could have the entire game economy "fixed."
So, basically you are saying, instead of trying to fix something within 2 years, the best they can do is doing nothing? Please, if you are the expert, tell me why it's so hard to fix potion prices?
I think you’re just looking for an argument, and from my perspective it is a pointless one. If this is a question you want a serious answer for, I’ve already given it. But if you don’t like my answer, you should address your question to the developers directly and get an authoritative answer from them. When it comes to things like the game economy, I’m willing to elucidate what I can, and I’m willing to discuss academically under reasonable conditions, but this is neither of that, nor do I think you’re willing or able to do either.
why should I spend time on explaining something they wouldn't listen? An example: Adding Lvl-6 potions to loyalty store and pricing it the same as today's LVL-4 potion is that difficult/dangerous to the game and it can take 2-years? This is a very simple question and suggestion with all the information it should include.
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
Technically, both of those are equally easy. Just type some words. Unless you want to do it correctly, of course.
Once upon a time, I worked on a custom reward system for an MMO. When you got right down to it, all I had to do was pick four numbers. That's it, just four numbers. It took me about two weeks to pick those four numbers, because they had to be the right four numbers. And I actually spent a couple months thinking about the problem before I was hired to actually work on it, so in a sense I spent almost three months thinking about those four numbers. In the same game I proposed a complete rework of a power system set; roughly the equivalent of making half of a champion in MCOC (on the non-art side). That took me about three days of thought.
Changing almost anything in the game economy is just changing numbers on a spreadsheet. It takes just seconds to do that. Unless you feel the need to get those numbers right. If it was as easy as you seem to think it is, game companies wouldn't need economy designers.
They actually have an open position for another one, specifically to work on MCOC. Maybe you should consider applying. With you there, in a week we could have the entire game economy "fixed."
So, basically you are saying, instead of trying to fix something within 2 years, the best they can do is doing nothing? Please, if you are the expert, tell me why it's so hard to fix potion prices?
I think you’re just looking for an argument, and from my perspective it is a pointless one. If this is a question you want a serious answer for, I’ve already given it. But if you don’t like my answer, you should address your question to the developers directly and get an authoritative answer from them. When it comes to things like the game economy, I’m willing to elucidate what I can, and I’m willing to discuss academically under reasonable conditions, but this is neither of that, nor do I think you’re willing or able to do either.
Hey everyone. I thought this would be a good place to share some of my closing thoughts on Banquet this year. This is not me making excuses, but just trying to be as transparent as possible about what I and the others responsible for the event were thinking as we learn from it and move into 2024.
I want to start by saying the team absolutely understands your concerns and we do care about them. The part of our community that engages in dialogue on our forums, YouTube, Reddit and other social media represents a slice of our most engaged, long-term fans. We absolutely want to surprise and delight you, and in the case of Banquet 2023, it’s clear for many of you that didn’t happen.
I think there are a few reasons why things ended up this way. The first was, as I said on one of our livestreams, we wanted to do everything possible to encourage people to do Necropolis by moving rewards away from offers and into content. We tuned rewards through the end of this year and into the first part of next year accordingly. This was successful, our engagement with Necropolis has exceeded even our highest expectations. However I do agree, despite this, that portions of the Banquet event ended up undertuned, particularly the rank-up materials in the milestones and ranked rewards.
The second reason is that internally, we valued the limited pool 7-star Gifted Guardians crystal higher than a lot of you did. To us, it carried enough value that it would make the milestones worth it. Overall, the player base seems to have agreed (more on this later), but clearly for some that was not the case.
The third reason is, as many have said here and elsewhere, the Banquet event is the one event that isn’t separated by progression, and over time, the gap from low progression to high progression increases. I don’t think I need to say any more about this, you all seem to have identified this already.
The fourth reason is that the Banquet crystals themselves are deliberately designed to not be great for our top players, but I think aiming for a certain mix of filler and high-quality chase rewards we still ended up slightly undertuned. There will always be filler in these crystals, that’s just the reality of the situation. If a player doesn’t like that, then the event isn’t for them. However about 83% of the crystal was filler for top players this year, and I do agree that’s too high. We went through something similar last year with the inclusion of T4CC but I think that this year there was an additional challenge. For top players 6-star champion acquisition materials are basically worthless and 7-star shards were still too valuable to make up a meaningful portion of the crystal. Without champion acquisition options to fill up the crystal, we ended up in a tough place.
With that all said I do want to address a couple concerns that I don’t agree with. The first is this idea that the people who tune these events don’t understand the game. I have seen various suggestions that we should hire more high-tier players to work on this content. This wasn’t a problem in this case. Of the seven people who worked on this event, two of us were Valiant before the start of December, two are high Paragon players who have completed Necropolis, and the remaining three are all either Paragon or Thronebreaker. If anything, compared to the population of our players, our team is top-heavy. We knew generally where this event would land and that the event wasn’t as good for our end game players compared to last year, relative to the current state of the game. Again, I think the main difference in perception is the value we placed on the Gifted Guardians crystals. The value we placed on that crystal took up too much of the “reward budget” and directly resulted in the rank-up resources being undertuned in the milestones. We also could have included some T4A in ranked rewards below the top 90, and probably some more 6-star 4 to 5 rank-up gems.
The second is that, despite a negative response from our engaged community, Banquet 2023 was broadly very successful. I’ll be honest, after seeing the initial reaction on these forums I was pretty worried. But in the end, players opened a lot of Banquet Crystals, approximately 34% more than last year. Part of this was that players had more Units going into the event this year, but a bigger reason was that, despite common belief, the Banquet event is actually one of our most broad-based sales events of the year - it’s one of our least top heavy events in terms of the percentage of participation coming from the top players. I know this is counterintuitive in some ways, given what it takes to climb the leaderboard, but it also makes sense when you think about how good the event was for lower-progression players. Broadly, the player base as a whole did think the Gifted Guardians crystal was worth completing the milestones for. So, if you want to argue the event was bad because it left many top players without the rewards they expected, by all means, make that argument, and I’m sympathetic to it. But if you want to argue it was bad because it wasn’t successful from the business and participation side you are going to lose that argument as it’s based on the false premise that the event failed, which it very much did not.
Finally, bringing things back to the question at hand: Are Kabam devs happy with the Banquet results? I can’t speak for everyone on the team, but I would say overall I’m neutral. On the plus side, we got more players into Necropolis, had a successful event with broad-based participation, and didn’t substantially devalue very much economically aside from the six Gifted Guardians. We still have a huge roster of unreleased 7-star champions, rank 3 materials and other champion items like sig stones and awakening gems that are holding substantial value. You could see a world where Banquet introduced 7-star awakening gems or sig stones, and it made more money in the short term, and players were happier, but long-term we were in worse shape. On the downside, a lot of our most engaged players are pretty unhappy right now, with the Banquet event compounding concerns about Alliance War, defender AI, the meta event and other legitimate issues we need to address. What I can say in closing is that we are listening and we are learning. We aim to surprise and delight as many of you as possible as we get into this new year.
A progressive could fix a lot but then a lot offer would most definitely be angry to not everyone can and be happy personally I open a lot more that’s normal one the offer with them. I ended at 142k because of the point from the offer with the 10 and I did buy a lot of the 7 star from the deal but truth be told it was the only things worth u guys definitely overlook a lot of things but totalt understand the importance of economics to there didn’t need to be more r3 materials. Could had bumped the titan shard Ect even 7 shard I gotten 750 shard ones after around 80 cystal wasn’t fun but the milestone was for me worth it also be careful using surprise most people or aim to surprise that’s can be taking hype then the next not as hype either but thanks for your point in all this nice to read
I'm still wondering what had to be fixed with the GBC Drop Rates.
Giv more tier 6b and tier 3 aplha really. Or slightly higher in tier 6cc 7 star could stays the same with a slight more 7 star shard removal the 750. And putting the 1.5k to 2k. Titans. Could bump it op to 1k. But the drops need to be slightly higher then it was
I'm still wondering what had to be fixed with the GBC Drop Rates.
Giv more tier 6b and tier 3 aplha really. Or slightly higher in tier 6cc 7 star could stays the same with a slight more 7 star shard removal the 750. And putting the 1.5k to 2k. Titans. Could bump it op to 1k. But the drops need to be slightly higher then it was
The problem is, all Players are pulling the same Drop Rates. For lower Accounts, that's a bit of a problem.
That's even worse than when I called Crashed a burning bush.
Tell me, how difficult it is to fix the potion price, how difficult it is to change the dropping rate of Banquet crystal, more difficult than design a champion?
What do you think the drop rates should have been for GGCs?
Many ppl gave very reasonable suggestions in many threads weeks ago, and I also said something in the comment you quoted, if you read.
Banquet is the past, so I just say it's poorly designed and I don't want to spend more times to explain how to fix it anymore, Banquet24 is a different story which is too early to discuss.
AW tactics and potion prices are still on going, there are also many threads include very good suggestions about how to fix, I don't want to spend more time to repeat those suggestions. Again, not my job, I just howl my concerns when I have time, if Kabam want to listen, there are plenty of answers out there already.
All that peacocking and this is what you come back with? Of course. You know better than Kabam but now you completely skirt the question. Nice.
As I said, I completed all endgame contents and I run a P1/master AQ(20-30) alliance for 6 years, I have an account with 22000+ PI, 3X7R3, so I know the game better than a lot of players. But at the end, it's a game not a job to me, I give my concerns and suggestions randomly when I have time, if nobody cares, so be it.
I'm still wondering what had to be fixed with the GBC Drop Rates.
Giv more tier 6b and tier 3 aplha really. Or slightly higher in tier 6cc 7 star could stays the same with a slight more 7 star shard removal the 750. And putting the 1.5k to 2k. Titans. Could bump it op to 1k. But the drops need to be slightly higher then it was
The problem is, all Players are pulling the same Drop Rates. For lower Accounts, that's a bit of a problem.
Which is why it should have been tiered, yes i get it include all progression levels blahblah, I am the first one to oppose UCs running around with 7*; but lets be honest, the ammount of T2a and T3b that we wish we could have sold way earlier, to have more to sell now... 750 7* shards if a player is lucky?... 750 that's 5% of a 7* crystal... As stated by Crash they put way too much value on those guardian crystals and the rest was sub par.
I'm still wondering what had to be fixed with the GBC Drop Rates.
Giv more tier 6b and tier 3 aplha really. Or slightly higher in tier 6cc 7 star could stays the same with a slight more 7 star shard removal the 750. And putting the 1.5k to 2k. Titans. Could bump it op to 1k. But the drops need to be slightly higher then it was
The problem is, all Players are pulling the same Drop Rates. For lower Accounts, that's a bit of a problem.
Which is why it should have been tiered, yes i get it include all progression levels blahblah, I am the first one to oppose UCs running around with 7*; but lets be honest, the ammount of T2a and T3b that we wish we could have sold way earlier, to have more to sell now... 750 7* shards if a player is lucky?... 750 that's 5% of a 7* crystal... As stated by Crash they put way too much value on those guardian crystals and the rest was sub par.
So you're suggesting designing Crystals that are specific to levels of progress?
I'm still wondering what had to be fixed with the GBC Drop Rates.
Giv more tier 6b and tier 3 aplha really. Or slightly higher in tier 6cc 7 star could stays the same with a slight more 7 star shard removal the 750. And putting the 1.5k to 2k. Titans. Could bump it op to 1k. But the drops need to be slightly higher then it was
The problem is, all Players are pulling the same Drop Rates. For lower Accounts, that's a bit of a problem.
Which is why it should have been tiered, yes i get it include all progression levels blahblah, I am the first one to oppose UCs running around with 7*; but lets be honest, the ammount of T2a and T3b that we wish we could have sold way earlier, to have more to sell now... 750 7* shards if a player is lucky?... 750 that's 5% of a 7* crystal... As stated by Crash they put way too much value on those guardian crystals and the rest was sub par.
So you're suggesting designing Crystals that are specific to levels of progress?
Yes, other years i got to 250-300k i did the bare minimum for milestones and ended up with insane ammounts of useless t5b and t2a.. I dunno i felt no excitement this year.
I'm still wondering what had to be fixed with the GBC Drop Rates.
Giv more tier 6b and tier 3 aplha really. Or slightly higher in tier 6cc 7 star could stays the same with a slight more 7 star shard removal the 750. And putting the 1.5k to 2k. Titans. Could bump it op to 1k. But the drops need to be slightly higher then it was
The problem is, all Players are pulling the same Drop Rates. For lower Accounts, that's a bit of a problem.
With I also why it should go and be tiered but again then all under that’s tiered would be angry
Paragon and Valiant, gets Supreme Banquet Crystal with items catering to their level of progression.
see, everyone can describe the fix it in 30 words, DNA3000 will write 3000 words and talk about something unrelated.
It's a suggestion. I'm sure from a design point, it's possible. I'm just not sure that's the direction they would want to go for an Event that includes Alliance Members of all different levels of progress.
Comments
I'm never a big fan of Banquet, Banquet 21/22 were also broken because rewards are too good and they easily made players feel all the hard contents in a year were just waste of time, they only need to save the units to the end of the year then they can catch up. I still remember a year ago, KT1 almost cried when he saw the rewards from Banquet, because nobody put more energy and passion then him in the game, he felt like he spent a whole year to be a top player, but many players can easily catch up if they saved tens of thousands of units to the EOY. I totally agree with him, Banquet 21/22 were overkill.
However, the gap between 23 and 21/22 is not 3 inches, it is 3000 miles. You guys basically just added two 7-star crystals to the milestone rewards, the rest rewards were just copied from 22, which is absolutely wrong, no matter how hard you try to explain, this is lazy. There are so many you can do it make players happier, you don't want players to go too fast on 7-star, OK, where is the ascending materials in the Banquet crystal? Check out the T6C, T6B and T3A in those crystals, they are minimum, how can we even progress our 6-star champions with T5B and T2A? To me, this is a very good evidence of broken economy of the game.
Now let's talk about war, I've posted more than one threads about this, to be clear, the tactics are fun to me because I like challenging content and I like to improve my skill, but I also think the tactics are evil for AW based on the potion price. One death of 7R3 champion will cost you 300+ units, which is $10 in price, are you kidding me? You may argue why I even die in the game, this is because I'm not skill enough? I will not say I'm the top skilled player, but my alliance is in P1 and occasionally master, so we do have reasonably skill but we just cannot afford the potions this season (btw we are not FTP players too, we are still top20 in Banquet event, but we spent much less than last year just because it's horribly designed). I assume everyone knows Fintech right? Check his channel, as a top10 players in the world, see how units he spent in wars already, other players may have to spent a lot more than him if they want to push the war, but they just wouldn't: war rewards are always lagging behind and why do they spent 5000 units in a month if they can save the units for something else? So they just use 1 loyalty revives like crazy, are devs happy to see that?
To me, economy system is the low-hanging fruit comparing with all the good/complex contents you guys created, but I'm wondering why you just wouldn't fix it. Banquet was broken for 3 years in a row (either too good or too bad); the potion price is a problem for 2 years already, I howled in the forum for many many times, but we only saw one step change so far, which was 2 months ago.
Use the deals for widening our current level while using content to heighten it. That's my take at least
What is it exactly that Kabam should take from you feedback wise? They listen to DNA because of his experience, past and present, and have supporting data behind it. If DNA suggests something, it isn't "we need 10k 7* shards for completing TB difficulty" or just more and more rewards of the rarest forms.
The reason why Kabam doesn't implement many of the ideas is because they center around your progression and isn't anything that will always help everyone in the game.
Kabam has listened to a lot of people over the years. I've been on these forums since before they switched to the current version we're on now.
You're upset they haven't used YOUR ideas.
Once upon a time, I worked on a custom reward system for an MMO. When you got right down to it, all I had to do was pick four numbers. That's it, just four numbers. It took me about two weeks to pick those four numbers, because they had to be the right four numbers. And I actually spent a couple months thinking about the problem before I was hired to actually work on it, so in a sense I spent almost three months thinking about those four numbers. In the same game I proposed a complete rework of a power system set; roughly the equivalent of making half of a champion in MCOC (on the non-art side). That took me about three days of thought.
Changing almost anything in the game economy is just changing numbers on a spreadsheet. It takes just seconds to do that. Unless you feel the need to get those numbers right. If it was as easy as you seem to think it is, game companies wouldn't need economy designers.
They actually have an open position for another one, specifically to work on MCOC. Maybe you should consider applying. With you there, in a week we could have the entire game economy "fixed."
Please, if you are the expert, tell me why it's so hard to fix potion prices?
Banquet is the past, so I just say it's poorly designed and I don't want to spend more times to explain how to fix it anymore, Banquet24 is a different story which is too early to discuss.
AW tactics and potion prices are still on going, there are also many threads include very good suggestions about how to fix, I don't want to spend more time to repeat those suggestions. Again, not my job, I just howl my concerns when I have time, if Kabam want to listen, there are plenty of answers out there already.
Adding Lvl-6 potions to loyalty store and pricing it the same as today's LVL-4 potion is that difficult/dangerous to the game and it can take 2-years? This is a very simple question and suggestion with all the information it should include.
As stated by Crash they put way too much value on those guardian crystals and the rest was sub par.
I dunno i felt no excitement this year.