I read the forums most days while I'm eating lunch. If I see a question I know the answer to I try to answer, but for the most part I do it to try to keep the team appraised of potential issues and concerns. You can bet that any thread longer than a few pages I have seen, and if it's important I have let the relevant people know that something is amiss.
This obviously isn't the ideal 2-way street of communication but as others have said, please be patient with the community team while they ramp up to their new roles.
Thank you and I appreciate for your honesty. But I have a question, what made the balance team decide that Serpent is fine as is and doesn’t need a nerf? Don’t they know the backlash they would receive from other people who called for a rebalancing?
The balance team's job is to perform balancing. It is not to satisfy the expectations of the vocal elements of the player community.
I'm not saying they got it right on Serpent. I'm saying the people who wanted changes aren't necessarily right either, and if you can't exercise proper design judgment without being unduly influenced by outside chatter, you are not qualified to be a game designer. You listen, you observe, you perform your own analysis, and then at the end of the day you do what your judgment tells you is correct, factoring all relevant facts.
I was not following Serpent closely, but I can say that there have been many times I was made aware of upcoming changes where I was pretty sure there would be significant backlash or push back by the community, or at least the loudest parts of it, and I say that to the devs when that situation arises. They acknowledge that, which they should, and then they do what they think is best for the game, which is also what they should do.
I'm sure they knew the Serpent balancing announcement would be unpopular. I'm pretty sure they knew Serpent himself would be an unpopular defender, period. I'm pretty sure that's explicitly intended.
They deserve the backlash for this. If all the top players to regularly compete in the hardest content in the game know how unbalanced and bad he is for the game, I’m not trusting the Kabam devs for this
Their analysis shows that he’s hard but balanced but I haven’t seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him. They could never justify this defender as being good for the game. I’d love to see this so called data
1. i remember when Kabam actually showed the data behind balancing a few years back, to respond to the "show the data" thing. It didn't do anything super productive because, to be blunt, most people aren't data analysts.
2. Data only says what's happening. Data cannot tell you what's supposed to happen. Balancing is about making what is happening into what's supposed to happen, and the target for what's supposed to happen is a matter of design judgment. If you say "this is happening" and the devs say 'yeah, that's what we want to happen" then what? How do you prove they are wrong? You can't, because intent can't be right or wrong. What if the intent of Serpent is to make you mad when you fight him? Then they've succeeded. Maybe you think that's never supposed to happen. But every piece of content with any sort of difficulty makes somebody mad. If you can't make players mad, you can't design content.
3. "I have never seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him" is something I've heard before. In fact, so many times it just sounds like a low buzz to me. That's not to say Serpent is not an overpowered defender: he may be. But the notion that because a lot of people claim he is, he must be, is not particularly convincing. The problem with that argument is that it has been used far too many times to be meaningful. You might as well threaten a boycott, which would be another one of those "too many times, no longer has meaning" things.
I don't trust anyone blindly, but this much is true. There has *always* been defenders that have been called unfair. And in every single case, without changing a hair on their heads time eventually proves them to not be, once the playerbase learns how to deal with them. So when it comes to the devs making game destroying unfair defenders, the players accusing them of this are so far batting zero.
There are a lot of players out there who know way more about Serpent than I do, and straight up know more about the game as a whole than I do, that think Serpent is overtuned defensively. I respect that opinion. But find me one that was right before when the devs were wrong - they believed a defender was unfair, Kabam disagreed, and to this day long past the point where players have had a chance to learn how to deal with them it is still considered an unfair defender - and I'll listen.
Ok the first point is fair: There’s video proof of serpent being busted and way too overtuned from the top of the game players though
I agree that the community is quick to call a lot of defenders unfair but serpent is a completely different ballpark. If the community and top players can’t convince them of that, I don’t know what can
I’ve never seen everyone so united before and the only people I know saying serpent should be left alone have him ranked and don’t want him to be tuned down
Slayer was saying in the discord earlier that data isn’t god. If they’re going to alienate the active player base by making decisions like this, I don’t think they’re gonna be doing so well
I read the forums most days while I'm eating lunch. If I see a question I know the answer to I try to answer, but for the most part I do it to try to keep the team appraised of potential issues and concerns. You can bet that any thread longer than a few pages I have seen, and if it's important I have let the relevant people know that something is amiss.
This obviously isn't the ideal 2-way street of communication but as others have said, please be patient with the community team while they ramp up to their new roles.
Thank you and I appreciate for your honesty. But I have a question, what made the balance team decide that Serpent is fine as is and doesn’t need a nerf? Don’t they know the backlash they would receive from other people who called for a rebalancing?
The balance team's job is to perform balancing. It is not to satisfy the expectations of the vocal elements of the player community.
I'm not saying they got it right on Serpent. I'm saying the people who wanted changes aren't necessarily right either, and if you can't exercise proper design judgment without being unduly influenced by outside chatter, you are not qualified to be a game designer. You listen, you observe, you perform your own analysis, and then at the end of the day you do what your judgment tells you is correct, factoring all relevant facts.
I was not following Serpent closely, but I can say that there have been many times I was made aware of upcoming changes where I was pretty sure there would be significant backlash or push back by the community, or at least the loudest parts of it, and I say that to the devs when that situation arises. They acknowledge that, which they should, and then they do what they think is best for the game, which is also what they should do.
I'm sure they knew the Serpent balancing announcement would be unpopular. I'm pretty sure they knew Serpent himself would be an unpopular defender, period. I'm pretty sure that's explicitly intended.
They deserve the backlash for this. If all the top players to regularly compete in the hardest content in the game know how unbalanced and bad he is for the game, I’m not trusting the Kabam devs for this
Their analysis shows that he’s hard but balanced but I haven’t seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him. They could never justify this defender as being good for the game. I’d love to see this so called data
1. i remember when Kabam actually showed the data behind balancing a few years back, to respond to the "show the data" thing. It didn't do anything super productive because, to be blunt, most people aren't data analysts.
2. Data only says what's happening. Data cannot tell you what's supposed to happen. Balancing is about making what is happening into what's supposed to happen, and the target for what's supposed to happen is a matter of design judgment. If you say "this is happening" and the devs say 'yeah, that's what we want to happen" then what? How do you prove they are wrong? You can't, because intent can't be right or wrong. What if the intent of Serpent is to make you mad when you fight him? Then they've succeeded. Maybe you think that's never supposed to happen. But every piece of content with any sort of difficulty makes somebody mad. If you can't make players mad, you can't design content.
3. "I have never seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him" is something I've heard before. In fact, so many times it just sounds like a low buzz to me. That's not to say Serpent is not an overpowered defender: he may be. But the notion that because a lot of people claim he is, he must be, is not particularly convincing. The problem with that argument is that it has been used far too many times to be meaningful. You might as well threaten a boycott, which would be another one of those "too many times, no longer has meaning" things.
I don't trust anyone blindly, but this much is true. There has *always* been defenders that have been called unfair. And in every single case, without changing a hair on their heads time eventually proves them to not be, once the playerbase learns how to deal with them. So when it comes to the devs making game destroying unfair defenders, the players accusing them of this are so far batting zero.
There are a lot of players out there who know way more about Serpent than I do, and straight up know more about the game as a whole than I do, that think Serpent is overtuned defensively. I respect that opinion. But find me one that was right before when the devs were wrong - they believed a defender was unfair, Kabam disagreed, and to this day long past the point where players have had a chance to learn how to deal with them it is still considered an unfair defender - and I'll listen.
yeah, we have a long history of overreaction and laziness, can't disagree there.
trying to think of examples of defenders like serpent but can't really think of any.
mephisto - iceman was out earlier in the year and blade was released a month later
imiw - hyperion was a good counter and corvus was already out. and he was beatable with anybody if they learned his kit
korg - omega red came out weeks later and imiw was a good counter and already out. there weren't many energy damage only champs at the time who can take him, but bishop was a counter.
correct me if i'm wrong but unlike any previous defender, serpent is the only one that we can't outskill. there's a few counters like chavez and symb supreme and maybe a couple of more, but no one counters him well and if we don't have these handful of champs we get destroyed.
skill doesn't come into play and the only solution is to wait for hard counters. of course we will get past this problem when 2-3 counters get released in the next 18 months, which will probably consist of new set of mystic abilities...but is that healthy? maybe for game longevity, but until then we're getting our butts kicked for no reason.
Slayer was saying in the discord earlier that data isn’t god.
As did I, right up there. Data tells you what's happening. It doesn't tell you what's supposed to happen. That's why you need game designers. Game designers decide what's supposed to happen. Data tells them if they did it right.
There's a misconception that because game designers rely upon data, they are somehow driven by data to do wrong things because data can be wrong. Literally none of that is true. Game designers rely upon data because data is the only objective way to know what is actually happening in the game. No one, not the designers, not the players, not even the top players in the game, know what's happening in the game everywhere. They each know their own little slice of what's happening. The data tells you what's happening everywhere, to everyone, in every part of the game. But it doesn't tell you what's supposed to be happening in all those places.
If the devs make a champion too strong on defense or too weak on offense, that's not data's fault. That's 100% on the judgment of the designers, who decided how high or low the champ should perform. Data only tells them where on the target they actually hit. But who decides what "too high" and "too low" is a completely different thing. What if they want it to be stronger than average or weaker than average or whatever for some reason? If I want a champion to be a stronger attacker and you want the same champion to be a weaker attacker, who's right? There is no right or wrong here, outside of context. If we both agree that the champion should be, say, as good as a particular other champion, then the data will tell us which one of us is right. But only if we agree on what the data is supposed to be showing in the first place.
So much of this depends on judgment. You can discuss design judgment over a couple of beers. But you can't *argue* judgment. You say there's video proof of Serpent being "busted." There's no such thing. There's video proof of Serpent performing very well as a defender. But it is an *opinion* that that level of performance is "busted." If you disagree, please articulate what the criteria for "busted" is. What if everything that is happening in those videos is literally what the devs want to happen. How do you argue that what's in the videos should never happen objectively?
I remember having this same conversation back when tier 1 alliance war difficulty was the topic de jour. I pointed out how if I say something is too difficult, the response is "get good." If some other player says something is too difficult, the response is "get good." But if a top player says something is too difficult, then it has to be too difficult. Because the assumption seems to be, the game should be calibrated to them. If it is too hard for them, something is wrong. But why is that? Why should they not be pushed just like everyone else. Literally everyone else in the game finds something hard, something super hard, and something basically impossible. Why should everything be in their comfort zone? Maybe some things are explicitly intended to be to them what lots of other things are to everyone else. Maybe they are supposed to experience the same things everyone else does, just higher. Maybe we're supposed to be pushed by content to get better, and so are they. And maybe some of them even want that to happen, and Serpent is one of those things explicitly intended to do just that.
I don't know that's the intent, but I don't see the problem if it is. Top tier players are not a protected species. And there can't be universal antagonism towards Serpent, because there are top tier players on the dev team, and I'm pretty sure they had some input into the balancing decisions. Maybe Serpent is an Everest to climb for them, just like everything else is for everyone else.
Howdy Summoners, the Forums are still a priority on our side and we'll continue to make adjustments and beef up our presence. Discord is not our singular priority just to put that to rest, and we'll continue to improve! Thank you for the continued feedback.
That is good news, thank you! Lack of announcements/updates here has some concerned. As well as advertising of only the discord in media posts as below
These guys just need to pay me 2 cans of Monster a day and I’ll build a clean community forum that’s much more improved.
I’d have you guys hooked up with profiles showing off your favourite champs, would even throw in a gallery section so you can upload all the cat photos you could dream of.
These guys just need to pay me 2 cans of Monster a day and I’ll build a clean community forum that’s much more improved.
I’d have you guys hooked up with profiles showing off your favourite champs, would even throw in a gallery section so you can upload all the cat photos you could dream of.
Howdy Summoners, the Forums are still a priority on our side and we'll continue to make adjustments and beef up our presence. Discord is not our singular priority just to put that to rest, and we'll continue to improve! Thank you for the continued feedback.
I’ve always appreciated your YouTube videos, and I really am optimistic about what you’ll bring to the table but at the same time it feels like the forums truly don’t matter. No communication on hot topics like:
Serpent Balancing Raids not letting alliances in Kingpin nerf/bug fix Galan Sp2 AI recovery rates and ignoring animations Lag and latency
Meanwhile there is an army of discord moderators for those that can understand that mess, responding to what they can.
Here it feels like half focused efforts. So much going on that’s good and bad but the silence on the bad is drowning out the good
Howdy Summoners, the Forums are still a priority on our side and we'll continue to make adjustments and beef up our presence. Discord is not our singular priority just to put that to rest, and we'll continue to improve! Thank you for the continued feedback.
This is something you really need to work on, mate.
AQ and Raids are down - cancelled for the week - and the only information on the forums is because someone helpful reposted an announcement from Discord...!
This really isn't adequate communication, Dave: how hard is it to say that major announcements affecting game functionality need to hit multiple communication channels?
It would have taken Rex less than 60 seconds to cut-and-paste that into the thread already Stickied at the top of the forums...
Comments
I agree that the community is quick to call a lot of defenders unfair but serpent is a completely different ballpark. If the community and top players can’t convince them of that, I don’t know what can
I’ve never seen everyone so united before and the only people I know saying serpent should be left alone have him ranked and don’t want him to be tuned down
Slayer was saying in the discord earlier that data isn’t god. If they’re going to alienate the active player base by making decisions like this, I don’t think they’re gonna be doing so well
trying to think of examples of defenders like serpent but can't really think of any.
mephisto - iceman was out earlier in the year and blade was released a month later
imiw - hyperion was a good counter and corvus was already out. and he was beatable with anybody if they learned his kit
korg - omega red came out weeks later and imiw was a good counter and already out. there weren't many energy damage only champs at the time who can take him, but bishop was a counter.
correct me if i'm wrong but unlike any previous defender, serpent is the only one that we can't outskill. there's a few counters like chavez and symb supreme and maybe a couple of more, but no one counters him well and if we don't have these handful of champs we get destroyed.
skill doesn't come into play and the only solution is to wait for hard counters. of course we will get past this problem when 2-3 counters get released in the next 18 months, which will probably consist of new set of mystic abilities...but is that healthy? maybe for game longevity, but until then we're getting our butts kicked for no reason.
To be honest, I've seen greater consensus than this before, lots of times.
As did I, right up there. Data tells you what's happening. It doesn't tell you what's supposed to happen. That's why you need game designers. Game designers decide what's supposed to happen. Data tells them if they did it right.
There's a misconception that because game designers rely upon data, they are somehow driven by data to do wrong things because data can be wrong. Literally none of that is true. Game designers rely upon data because data is the only objective way to know what is actually happening in the game. No one, not the designers, not the players, not even the top players in the game, know what's happening in the game everywhere. They each know their own little slice of what's happening. The data tells you what's happening everywhere, to everyone, in every part of the game. But it doesn't tell you what's supposed to be happening in all those places.
If the devs make a champion too strong on defense or too weak on offense, that's not data's fault. That's 100% on the judgment of the designers, who decided how high or low the champ should perform. Data only tells them where on the target they actually hit. But who decides what "too high" and "too low" is a completely different thing. What if they want it to be stronger than average or weaker than average or whatever for some reason? If I want a champion to be a stronger attacker and you want the same champion to be a weaker attacker, who's right? There is no right or wrong here, outside of context. If we both agree that the champion should be, say, as good as a particular other champion, then the data will tell us which one of us is right. But only if we agree on what the data is supposed to be showing in the first place.
So much of this depends on judgment. You can discuss design judgment over a couple of beers. But you can't *argue* judgment. You say there's video proof of Serpent being "busted." There's no such thing. There's video proof of Serpent performing very well as a defender. But it is an *opinion* that that level of performance is "busted." If you disagree, please articulate what the criteria for "busted" is. What if everything that is happening in those videos is literally what the devs want to happen. How do you argue that what's in the videos should never happen objectively?
I remember having this same conversation back when tier 1 alliance war difficulty was the topic de jour. I pointed out how if I say something is too difficult, the response is "get good." If some other player says something is too difficult, the response is "get good." But if a top player says something is too difficult, then it has to be too difficult. Because the assumption seems to be, the game should be calibrated to them. If it is too hard for them, something is wrong. But why is that? Why should they not be pushed just like everyone else. Literally everyone else in the game finds something hard, something super hard, and something basically impossible. Why should everything be in their comfort zone? Maybe some things are explicitly intended to be to them what lots of other things are to everyone else. Maybe they are supposed to experience the same things everyone else does, just higher. Maybe we're supposed to be pushed by content to get better, and so are they. And maybe some of them even want that to happen, and Serpent is one of those things explicitly intended to do just that.
I don't know that's the intent, but I don't see the problem if it is. Top tier players are not a protected species. And there can't be universal antagonism towards Serpent, because there are top tier players on the dev team, and I'm pretty sure they had some input into the balancing decisions. Maybe Serpent is an Everest to climb for them, just like everything else is for everyone else.
People here remember Golivarez, Redfire and others.
Just don't say these names 3 times and we're in peace.
About Summoners requests here, may not of a big thing for them as the game at this moment don't have any critical trouble.
I’d have you guys hooked up with profiles showing off your favourite champs, would even throw in a gallery section so you can upload all the cat photos you could dream of.
Serpent Balancing
Raids not letting alliances in
Kingpin nerf/bug fix
Galan Sp2
AI recovery rates and ignoring animations
Lag and latency
Meanwhile there is an army of discord moderators for those that can understand that mess, responding to what they can.
Here it feels like half focused efforts. So much going on that’s good and bad but the silence on the bad is drowning out the good
AQ and Raids are down - cancelled for the week - and the only information on the forums is because someone helpful reposted an announcement from Discord...! Original post here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2620405/#Comment_2620405
This really isn't adequate communication, Dave: how hard is it to say that major announcements affecting game functionality need to hit multiple communication channels?
It would have taken Rex less than 60 seconds to cut-and-paste that into the thread already Stickied at the top of the forums...