Why MCOC NEEDS the dataminers

Kabam, you may disagree, but please hear me out.
In my opinion, the last 2 months have proven that data miners are very valuable to the players of this game. With the controversy from last month's battle grounds nodes to the controversy of this month's robot challenge in winter of woe, or the release of dust that requires an incinerate champ + the use of white mags prefight ability to fight efficiently, to the release of ironheart champ that requires an armor break champ to fight against do real damage against her while having her cycle through unblockable, to the combination of various nodes in various aspects of the game modes that are simply a unit/money drain due to the niche champion requirement to complete the content. Data miners are essential due to your own node-defender structure you choose to keep putting out.
Set aside winter or woe; its endgame content and not meant for everyone. We agree it should be a unit drain/card-swipe/ best of the best content. No problem
However, when the champion development team decided on releasing dust and ironheart with their current abilities did they think of other aspects of the game past the initial release? That sound insulting, but its a genuine question. Did they consider fights in arena, or battlegrounds, or incursions; where you don't always have the preview option to plan for the fight to and bring in niche counters? Meaning the team is undoubtedly going to re-work the champions in the future because its "damage is too high/over-powered" or " not playing as intended" so you'll tweak the champion's abilities, and infuriate the player base that spent units/money on crystals for early access bundles.
Going back to why the players need data-miners, the players need data miners to give us a general idea of the upcoming champs and their abilities or immunities so we can rank up champs that are counters to the niche champions you'll eventually "re-work" after the release, or counters to the node combinations in various game modes that that you plan to release. This helps the player base have a chance to prepare, Jaxx and Miike not to have to field so many angry post, and elevate player frustration because the players have had a chance to accept reality of the game prior to release while understanding the content hasn't been released thus might be inaccurate or complete speculations.
I'm not a data miner, nor have I ever used a mod, nor would I want to, but I'm seeing and uptick in both in MCOC since data miners no longer publish as frequently, thus you eventually catch and strike/ban those players. I also see players frustration rising as high as I seen since V12 nerf, I see players leaving the game due to frustration, I saw the layoffs then the hiring post within kabam, and maybe this is anecdotal, and I don't have access to all the data.
I love my alliance, and this game helps me relax, and I don't see how constantly upsetting your players can be good for business. To me data miners gave you a bit of buffer, and your making too many mistakes since threating law suits against them, but thats my opinion.

Respectfully and Best wishes

Comments

Buttehrs

It sounds more like your just upset that this month added 2 new champs that have a limited amount of counters. But thats nothing new in 9 years. They frequently add new champs that have few or limited counters. And as they release more champs later on that effectively counter those new champs the cycle starts over again.

ahmynuts

Plot twist. This is Andrewtheruff

Nightheart

Ironheart easy Red Mags and Galan solo Dust use incinerate champs problem solved 😎😎😎

Demonzfyre

You think this is equivalent to 12.0?

DNA3000

That’s an interesting position, and it is also one that I’ve heard before in other games. Here’s the opposing side:

1. Data miners are sometimes wrong. They see early data, but sometimes the actual release differs from the leaks. Players can make decisions based on leaks that turn out to be completely wrong, or completely inappropriate due to the fact the released game doesn’t match the leak. Who’s to blame there? That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is the leakers, but they never bear the brunt of these issues. It’s the game that suffers, it is the game that ultimately gets blamed, even if subconsciously.

2. Data miners often have no restraint. Most are out for glory. They are not Robin Hood. They won’t just leak information that arguably players should have, they also leak stuff that has absolutely no bearing on informed decisions, and in the process spoil marketing efforts or just plain old surprise in the game. Most don’t care, they think they have the right to decide on their own what is and is not fair to release. Which makes it extremely difficult to treat them as a whole as necessary evils. As someone who is in a position to know far more than I’m allowed to say and has to judge whether what I say is in the best interests of the game and the player community all the time, I don’t find most of the data miners to be acting in the best interests of the player community.

3. Data miners often reinforce an adversarial relationship between game developers and game players. Once upon a time, I was a data miner. Not for this game, but I did way, way more than all the data miners of this game combined. And the reason why I was tolerated back then is because I played by a set of rules. I only released data players could have figured out on their own, albeit at extreme expense of time or resources. Or things players should know about how the game worked. I did not spoil content before it was released. I did not leak mechanical details before they were actually used. I made things easier for players, I did not act as a weapon to be used against the developers. But most data miners do not act in the same way. They act as if they are fighting for the players against the developers. And that sort of adversarial relationship ultimately helps no one. It discourages the developers from engaging with the players, and encourages them to obfuscate the game rather than make the game more transparent. It encourages players to egg on the data leakers in response.

Fighting a war with your game’s dev team has no winning strategy. They are holding all the cards, own the table, the chairs, and the rest of the house. I have never seen a player revolt take control of a game and still survive. The only way forward is cooperatively. Or not at all.

I should mention that while in this post I’m referring to data miners in general, I am specifically referring to them in the context of the OPs post which is as not just data miners, but data leakers, and specifically of leakers of advance unreleased information. Data miners out there looking at the data to try to figure out how much damage Colossus does with his special three, or making animated content with the models of Spider Gwen and Apocalypse are in their own category of data miners. Also a grey area, and not entirely legal either, but not generally the source of the problems I mention above.

Demonzfyre

Kabam, you may disagree, but please hear me out.
In my opinion, the last 2 months have proven that data miners are very valuable to the players of this game. With the controversy from last month's battle grounds nodes to the controversy of this month's robot challenge in winter of woe, or the release of dust that requires an incinerate champ + the use of white mags prefight ability to fight efficiently, to the release of ironheart champ that requires an armor break champ to fight against do real damage against her while having her cycle through unblockable, to the combination of various nodes in various aspects of the game modes that are simply a unit/money drain due to the niche champion requirement to complete the content. Data miners are essential due to your own node-defender structure you choose to keep putting out.
Set aside winter or woe; its endgame content and not meant for everyone. We agree it should be a unit drain/card-swipe/ best of the best content. No problem
However, when the champion development team decided on releasing dust and ironheart with their current abilities did they think of other aspects of the game past the initial release? That sound insulting, but its a genuine question. Did they consider fights in arena, or battlegrounds, or incursions; where you don't always have the preview option to plan for the fight to and bring in niche counters? Meaning the team is undoubtedly going to re-work the champions in the future because its "damage is too high/over-powered" or " not playing as intended" so you'll tweak the champion's abilities, and infuriate the player base that spent units/money on crystals for early access bundles.
Going back to why the players need data-miners, the players need data miners to give us a general idea of the upcoming champs and their abilities or immunities so we can rank up champs that are counters to the niche champions you'll eventually "re-work" after the release, or counters to the node combinations in various game modes that that you plan to release. This helps the player base have a chance to prepare, Jaxx and Miike not to have to field so many angry post, and elevate player frustration because the players have had a chance to accept reality of the game prior to release while understanding the content hasn't been released thus might be inaccurate or complete speculations.
I'm not a data miner, nor have I ever used a mod, nor would I want to, but I'm seeing and uptick in both in MCOC since data miners no longer publish as frequently, thus you eventually catch and strike/ban those players. I also see players frustration rising as high as I seen since V12 nerf, I see players leaving the game due to frustration, I saw the layoffs then the hiring post within kabam, and maybe this is anecdotal, and I don't have access to all the data.
I love my alliance, and this game helps me relax, and I don't see how constantly upsetting your players can be good for business. To me data miners gave you a bit of buffer, and your making too many mistakes since threating law suits against them, but thats my opinion.

Respectfully and Best wishes

1. This isn't anything like 12.0.
2. Kabam has 4 titles they develop. Layoffs and job openings don't immediately mean it's MCOC and that the game is in some sort of dire state.
3. Data miners have gotten champions mostly right but have rarely been correct when it comes to other information regarding rewards and in-game content. They don't have the nodes and things like that.
4. Battlegrounds nodes were laid out 3 seasons in advance, why were any of the nodes a surprise to you?
4. Data miners leaked act 8 or act 7 completion rewards and were wrong.

Who do we get to yell at if data miners are wrong? Everyone was in a uproar because Charles Wong put out an infographic based on the 7*'s that were added in the update and was wrong.

The community complained because of that and Jax and Miike had to field that frustration. Charles Wong keeps doing what he does with no repercussions.

Andrew31

I appreciate the push back from all of you've whom have already posted. I actually I assumed most would be saying something similar to "just get better at the game" and some comments were basically that.
However, DNA3000, I appreciate the respectful nature of disagreement. Thank you for that as well as your personal insight.
Some topics I think we both agree upon though, like when data miners get things wrong.
You believe players would blame the developers, to some extent, I agree with you Sir/Ma'am; I think players would just think the miner got it wrong, and place less belief in future info coming from the miner.
Also, I originally didn't bring up rewards; this was intentional. I know I can not dictate what miners would or wouldn't release, but I never believe any of the rewards aspect of releases. I attempted to stick the champion abilities, and node combinations for countering purposes.
Again, I play this game to relax, and I realize all of the content was not designed for people like me, but I don't think EQ, arena, battlegrounds, incursions, etc is meant to be built solely for top end players.
Demonzfyre, I stated the frustration is rising similar to what I saw around V12, not that it was the same,
I acknowledge I could be wrong, but these are my opinions.

Respectfully and Best wishes

DNA3000

Some topics I think we both agree upon though, like when data miners get things wrong.
You believe players would blame the developers, to some extent, I agree with you Sir/Ma'am; I think players would just think the miner got it wrong, and place less belief in future info coming from the miner.

Certainly, a leaker that got things wrong would lose credibility, but when I say that most of the blame would fall upon the game, I mean that in the sense that the leakers by in large have no skin in the game. If a player gets frustrated with MCOC because they place their trust in a leaker and they turn out to be wrong, that frustration can only turn against the game. A player that loses interest with or gets frustrated with the game ultimately hurts the game. It can cause them to stop playing. Or it can just sour them enough to contribute to disengagement. The game has a lot to lose, relative to the leaker, even from undirected untargeted frustration.

We’ve even seen situations where a leaker was wrong, and some players blame the devs for not following the leak. They might prefer the leak or grown attached to the leak, and wonder why the devs couldn’t have done that instead. A leak can be seen as a kind of possible alternate future, and blame the devs for choosing futures incorrectly..

ReignkingTW

This is a forum not Lord of the rings ain't reading all that bro

Demonzfyre

Again, I play this game to relax, and I realize all of the content was not designed for people like me, but I don't think EQ, arena, battlegrounds, incursions, etc is meant to be built solely for top end players.

None of these are built solely for the top players. Anyone in the game can take part in them but if you're expecting to be rank 1 in BGs or arena then you probably won't be a casual player.

Andrew31

Demonzfyre I actually agree with you. You caught my typo, I meant to say that the examples I gave is NOT meant to be built solely for top end players. My apologies for the confusion. I thought I was making it clear from the beginning I am speaking as a casual player.
Thank you for bringing the typo/misunderstanding to my attention so I could clarify.
Respectfully and Best wishes.