TLDR; you may not agree with every point, but we can all agree that Kabam is long overdue for doing better and doing more not only to create and improve enjoyable content, but to make it up to us for continuing to invest our time and money into this game that we all enjoy.
It's safe to say it's been a rough year. Really since Miike and Jax left (and no this isn't about missing them) the game has been working its way downhill. Crazy that the community leads had that big of an effect, but it's a pretty safe point to look back to and see the decline beginning. From overall enjoyability to the endless amount of new or unaddressed bugs, it's been a significant and noticeable decline. Yet we keep playing, and many keep spending, because we still enjoy the game.
Now, credit where it is due. The deathless content was enjoyable. Season of Suffering content has been fun and rewarding. EoP, The Crucible and The Ordeal, all solid content. But these are all one-offs. While they've been doing good work on content many finish in a matter of minutes, they've ignored the content that we do day in and day out.
AW gets the occasional, nearly irrelevant reward boost that is nice for masters alliances, okay for Platinum, and completely useless for anyone underneath - ya know, the majority of players. Tactics were added once upon a time in hopes a varying defender placement so AW didn't feel as stale as AQ, and yet, defender placements are still fairly consistent. The change in points for a victory, while it has less of an impact on those that lose, has a significant impact on those who win. My alliance won three wars in a row and lost placement every single war because the tier multipliers make those 5k points completely irrelevant. Nothing like getting punished for winning.
EQ content has been stale for years. We've got a Valiant trial coming in May, but who knows how long it will be before it's permanent, and who knows how out-of-date it will be at launch. If it doesn't come swinging, certainly the players will.
BGs has a glimmer of hope, but it took way too long to get here and until that hope is realized it's pretty hard to believe in. And then for how long will the content sit where it is about to be? Another 18 months or more?
Story content may not technically be delayed officially, but it's taking longer than the "normal" 6-month cadence, which only gives concern for 9.3 and its timing.
Once upon a time we were going to get 3 champs buffs a month, then it became 2, now we need to wait a year before we know if a new champ is going to be worth the rank-up or not. Granted, they've done a better job of creating balanced champs in general, but have also failed miserably in addressing champs that are too strong or fairly useless (looking at your Serpent and Leader).
It would be great to have a conversation around the staleness of years-old arenas without being told our units will be taken away or made harder to get, but that is what it is I guess.
Bugs take months to address, and sometimes even months to acknowledge. Longstanding bugs are met with more "our bad" and far less "let us make it up to you". While I'm not one to hop on the compensation train, you guys owe your player base a lot. We've received more while dealing with less. A good faith offering is not only wise, but at this point required.
And finally we come to AQ. The absolute worst and most ignored piece of content in the game. Despite promises of regular updates to alliance content, AQ has remained, almost entirely, ignored. Sure, the glory story got a tiny update awhile back...well over a year after it's previous update. But the content itself just gets a shuffling of champs and nothing more. Stale, repetitive, boring, terrible content. But then you introduce raids. One week of enjoyment for every three weeks of suffering through a repeat map.
Now, while I wasn't around for the first few rounds of raids because I took a break from the game, but I've been in every round since August. You know how many rounds of raids have launched without some sort of bug impacting them? One. One round has been bug free. While it's frustrating, the bugs could be overcome and the content was overall still enjoyable, though much of that enjoyment may strictly come from the fact that it isn't a boring map that we are forced to run for 4 days.
Then nightmare raids were announced. A glimmer of hope for players wanting updated and worthwhile rewards. We knew it would be hard
(no matter how many times you feel a need to remind us that it's supposed to be), but my goodness. You've released plenty of hard content, but there's always been something enjoyable about the content. The Crucible was hard, but it was a lot of fun. Epoch was hard, but also quite fun. Nightmare raids weren't hard, they were torturous. There was little fun to be had with this content. Nothing says fun like being happy that you were able to take 4% off of Apoc in a round, I guess.
You made difficult (but not fun) content and then limited the pool to one champ that was great, a handful of champs that were good, and the rest were just a waste to bring. That made it even less fun.
You launched the content bugged (probably because you didn't test it, which seems to be the norm), considerably and unnecessarily adding to the difficulty level, and then sent out a paltry 7 revives to make up for it - not enough for the majority of summoners to make it through the content without having to spend units. And yeah, we know 4Loki did just fine bugs and all, but you can't say it didn't help having an employee in the alliance.
So players put forth the effort, cough up what is needed to make it through, and then are greeted with this absolute joke at the end of it all.
Now, this isn't all the rewards. We had other chests (which RNG ruined for many and saved for some), and we've got some nice exploration rewards - nice if we didn't have to put up with so much garbage to get them.
But at the end of it all, our choice is this - a pile of useless garbage (maybe some iso at best), or a $10 off coupon that is absolutely worthless for any player that doesn't spend or play at the top of BGs (again, your majority). Couldn't have at least given us the option to choose a Valiant chest instead? Of course not, the poor reward budget couldn't handle it.
The decisions made over the last several months have been primarily disappointing. There have been some highlights, but they're overshadowed by a lack of care for many issues that we have been facing the whole time, and you do nothing to make it up to us.
Last week, in reference to a bunch of issues with the game being out-of-date, Pinwheel said these weren't "snap your fingers" issues, but that there are many that take time to address and address correctly. And while I agree with that, my response was, and is, that we are in fact in a snap your fingers moment and Kabam needs to quickly address the fact that through a lack of action, or through deliberate inaction, the players have been playing in a nightmare raid for months, and this week it hit a new low.
We're tired of hearing how things are "supposed to be hard". It's a game, they can be challenging, but they're supposed to be enjoyable and fun. We're tired of hearing about the reward budget. The game has been around for 10 years and this is the least worthwhile rewards have felt unless it is one-off content, or at the very least in a very long time. Repeat content is rewarded dreadfully. Everything is so far behind the 8-ball that the best course forward is an overcorrection as a thank you to the players that have remained loyal. We're tired of the bugs, but we know that's just the nature of such a large live server game. But in the past when bugs of relentlessly plagued us, and you admitted to those bugs and their impact, you made up for it to some degree through compensation.
There's an NFL quarterback named Carson Wentz. When he played for the Eagles he had an MVP year, which was then derailed by an injury, and he watched his teammate win the Superbowl instead of himself. Then next couple years, he was nowhere near the MVP that he was before and was heavily criticized for it. In every single postgame interview, he had the same refrain: "I've just gotta do better." Kabam, we've been telling you this for months and you've been saying it back to us for months - eventually you actually have to do better. We love this game. Please do better.
