“We are using empirical data based on Champion performance in Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars to decide which Champions will be added to the Crystal. This means that while Player perception of the Champions may not always align, we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions...”
“It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars.”
“I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.”
@DNA3000 I’m not sure how you read these quotes and conclude they intended to only eliminate the champs we think are bad and didn’t intend them to be anything in particular.
The first quote literally says "we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions" which is an explicit statement of intent.
The second quote says literally nothing about intent. It says they used empirical data showing the champion effectiveness in making their choices. This statement would be true on its face if the devs decided to put the best champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the worst champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the most mediocre champions into the crystal, if they decided to put a random sampling of different effectiveness champions into the crystal, or if they decided to make each crystal have a different effectiveness basket.
The third statement doesn't address what the intent of the crystal contents are. It expresses @Kabam Miike's opinion, or an opinion he is passing on, about the effectiveness of certain champions: the quote in context is:
Just talked to the team, and they are comfortable with sharing the list of Champions we plan to include in the first Featured Champion Crystal. It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars.
I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.
He is speaking very specifically about a list of champions, not the intent of the crystal. He is saying that Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, Civil Warrior, and Ant Man score highly in their datamining in terms of how they judge effectiveness when they are used by players. He also specifically disavows the notion that lots of players use them or even necessarily think they are effective champions to use. He only says that the players who use them are effective with them.
But again, that doesn't say that the intent of the crystal is to place the highest effective champions (as Kabam datamines them to be) into the crystal. Because he does not mention other champions, it is still entirely possible that the crystal contains a mix of champions, of which some are effective in certain ways in certain tiers of AQ and AW. There is no reasonable reason to state that if Kabam Miike says those nine champions are seen as effective and used by a small number of players, that every champion fits that description.
As for analysis, it’s pretty clear Miike wants to hang his hat on empirical data the team looked at to make their determination.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hang his hat." Its a plain statement that Kabam used empirical data to decide how to evaluate the champions. Every MMO company does that. But nowhere do they say *which* champions, given that data, were intentionally put in the crystal.
For example, it would be entirely consistent with how MMO companies generally work for Kabam to see that different champions are used at different tiers, or by different player populations of varying skill and playtime, and try to pick a random sample of such champions from across different segments of the player population to represent a wide swath of them. Doing so would guarantee that many if not most of the champions would only be seen as useful by a small percentage of the players, and seen less favorably by a majority of the players. That happens all the time when a reward is created that is a segmented sum of narrow-casted datamining.
Plus, there's simple math that makes all of this really moot in an analytical sense. There's about 84 champions in the basic crystal that could have been curated into the new featured. Kabam has said no champion will repeat twice in a row, although they could reappear after that. So that means the May crystal has to have eighteen different champions in it. The two crystals combined must contain 36 of the 84 champions. It is highly unlikely that they will just alternate between the two versions, so as a practical matter for there to be any significant variations the third crystal should contain at least half of its content not identical to the first one (and it cannot contain anything from the second one). That means the pool of champions they are picking from to add to the curated list for the new featured champions must be at least 45 champions. That's over half of all the possible basic champions that exist at the moment. Whatever the criteria they are using is, it cannot be to put the best, or even just the top half of the options, because they don't have enough champions to do that. At least a few must be below average (as in literally below the 50% mark) just because of the sheer numbers involved.
It is numerically possible for Kabam to exclude the bottom 25% from the curated list. It is numerically impractical, and borderline impossible, for Kabam to include only the top 50%.
@Kabam Miike
I would ask it very simply. If you had 15,000 5-star shards would you prefer to get the old crystal or the new crystal?
That may not be a valid choice. If the change to the featured crystal is part of the overall evolution of 5* champions, then the new featured crystal is probably closely coupled to the increases in 5* shard availability we've had and continue to get. The choice would be between having 5* availability frozen where it was a year or more ago and the featured crystal as it originally was designed, or the new crystal and the greater shard availability.
Some people might still prefer the original crystal and the highly constrained 5* shard availability, but I suspect a larger percentage of players would prefer the higher availability regardless of the crystal design. In either case, that's not the kind of thing you can easily put to a vote. Most of the players the evolving system benefits the most are very likely to be not vocal forum participants.
Ignoring the new crystal for a moment, can we PLEASE get some attention on the current 5* featured crystal schedule and how everyone who was saving for a chance at their favorite champion that came out after Blade - like Taskmaster or Modok - have now lost that chance? It would make so much sense and would make so many people happy if you would finish off the schedule by releasing the 5* featured crystals for every champion you released before you made this major announcement which means all the way up to Sentry. You're giving the community one last shot at Blade but ignoring people who have planned their game time, resources, and effort into saving for what they thought at the time would be their major opportunity to get those champs.
@becauseicant
I forgot about this in anger of the new idea. I originally was planning for taskmaster not blade only because I remember wanting him to join for quite a while along with other champions.
So if featured crystals are going then yeah I totally agree with what you said these guys should have their run instead of being cut off. One of my alliance members was also saving quite a lot of shards to dupe his thor ragnarok not the best I know but still.
It would make a lot of people happy if you could at least do this guys.
I know what everyone else knows. That they're looking at Champs based on imperial data, that they're making an effort not to include the ones that perform poorly, and that there is a varied range in the Crystal.
I am entitled to my own opinion based on the information presented. That's not up for debate.
@GroundedWisdom it's based on imperial data? Lmao Kabam must be the Evil Empire.
I know what everyone else knows. That they're looking at Champs based on imperial data, that they're making an effort not to include the ones that perform poorly, and that there is a varied range in the Crystal.
I am entitled to my own opinion based on the information presented. That's not up for debate.
@GroundedWisdom it's based on imperial data? Lmao Kabam must be the Evil Empire.
I'm pretty sure that means Kabam is not on the metric system.
I know what everyone else knows. That they're looking at Champs based on imperial data, that they're making an effort not to include the ones that perform poorly, and that there is a varied range in the Crystal.
I am entitled to my own opinion based on the information presented. That's not up for debate.
@GroundedWisdom it's based on imperial data? Lmao Kabam must be the Evil Empire.
Everyone the below is for Kabam Miike. I honestly don't expect him to listen but it sure would be nice. Heck, if this gets removed I wouldn't be surprised. I just hope it is up long enough for everyone to see and possibly get a chance to put in their two cents.
Dear @Kabam Miike,
Please listen to the players. Look at this discussion. You have to see that this new featured crystal is a bad idea. Your so-called empirical data is wrong. Here is an idea listen to the players not the team because the team does not make it possible for you to get a paycheck,
The players in this discussion does just that and I can bet that they will agree with me.
Everyone the below is for Kabam Miike. I honestly don't expect him to listen but it sure would be nice. Heck, if this gets removed I wouldn't be surprised. I just hope it is up long enough for everyone to see and possibly get a chance to put in their two cents.
Dear @Kabam Miike,
Please listen to the players. Look at this discussion. You have to see that this new featured crystal is a bad idea. Your so-called empirical data is wrong. Here is an idea listen to the players not the team because the team does not make it possible for you to get a paycheck,
The players in this discussion does just that and I can bet that they will agree with me.
Because without the players who are willing to put money into this game (like me) then this game would honestly crash and burn.
Say what you want but the term 'effective' is quite vague in this context. To be frank, I don't really understand what 'effective' means.
In reality, every champ can be used 'effectively', creating further confusion. I'll try explain to the best of my ability. For example, She-Hulk is commonly regarded as 'trash' by some, but she can still be used 'effectively' by stunning the opponent and following it with a heavy attack. This combo is 'effective' in the fact that the player uses 2 of She-Hulk's mechanics (stun + increased heavy attack dmg while stunned).
In the same way, Colossus, also another lowly regarded champ, can also be used 'effectively' by building up his armor through his armor up buffs then firing off an SP3. That's an 'effective' use since it also utilises his mechanics to maximise his potential (armor up + increased SP dmg based on current armor).
Finally, Iceman, a highly praised champ, can also be used in an 'effective' manner. In this hypothesised instance, if Iceman was facing a duped Spiderman (OG) on a poison or bleed node, it would be regarded as an 'effective' use of his mechanics since a) Iceman is immune to both poison and bleed and b) Iceman's Coldsnap can easily bypass Spiderman's autoevade mechanic, thus making it an 'effective' use of this character's abilities.
I could go on and on for literally every champion in the game, Thanos, Kang, Redpool you name it. But you get the point. Every champion, 'god' or 'trash' tier each have their own individual abilities that can be used in an 'effective' manner to gain the largest possible advantage over your opponent. So if each champion can be used 'effectively' through masteries, synergies or just skill, what does this term even mean? Is 'effectiveness' defined as the ability to use most if not all of a champion's ability simultaneously to maximise their potential? Is 'effectiveness' measured on a scale, a chart, a bar? Is it the champion's W/L ratio statistics?
Whatever it is, it's probably a combination of factors, statistics and data in either a numerical or categorical form. If anyone knows the meaning of 'effective' in this specific context, please let me know.
Say what you want but the term 'effective' is quite vague in this context. To be frank, I don't really understand what 'effective' means.
In reality, every champ can be used 'effectively', creating further confusion.
Only Kabam knows the precise details of how they datamine their game, but when any game developer talks about measuring performance or "effectiveness" they aren't talking about "can be" done. They are talking about what is done.
You're thinking about all the ways a champion could be effective, but Kabam isn't saying everyone sat around and debated with each other over which champions were more or less effective. They ran a report. That report showed numbers for each champion. This number better than that number, this champion more effective, period.
Precisely which numbers you look at and how you adjust for certain parameters is important, but at a fundamental level if the players kill more things with Colossus than Stark Spiderman, then Colossus is more effective. We can debate why that happens and try to explain that difference away to force the numbers to conform with what we "know" but what we know is also hopelessly contaminated by the kind of players we are. Star Lord only does a lot of damage if you can hold a high combo. If we simply dismiss that as trivial, that "everyone" can hold a combo because it is "easy" then we're in effect saying only certain players matter when it comes to determining how useful a champion is. The other players are just scrubs that don't matter.
We can say that, because our opinion doesn't really affect anything. But game developers don't think that way and can't think that way. If 90% of the playerbase can't hold more than a combo of 40, then Star Lord is not really very powerful for the players of the game taken as a whole. If for some crazy reason 90% of players get more kills with Colossus than Elektra, then Colossus is a stronger champion than Elektra for most players.
You do need to take into consideration that, say, a lot fewer people have Blade, so Blade has to be used less often. His popularity is based less on how good the players think he is, and more because of his rarity. But if, say, about the same number of players have Dr. Strange and Black Widow and Dr. Strange is played 30% more often, that means Strange is more popular with the players. It also means, statistically, that he should get 30% more kills. But if he gets only 10% more kills, that would suggest he is less effective when he is played.
The devs may have no idea why the champions they datamined as being "effective" actually are effective. The datamining they did may not contain that kind of information. It most likely contains information on what percentage of the playerbase possess each champion, and relative to that number how often is each champion played. And when the champion is played, what is the general result. How many kills does it get? How often does it die in the hands of the player. How much rewards do the players earn with that champion?
And this is usually broken down by some kind of partitioning of the playerbase. Obviously the data from players with less than a week of play will be different than players with three years of play, on average. Players with 200k rating will do different things than players with 600k rating. How finely grained they dice up the playerbase is something that is highly variable and I couldn't guess at meaningfully. But I'm guessing they probably know things like which champions are played the most often among 400k+ players verses 200k-400k players verses 0-200k players, or some kind of breakdown. They might know which champions generate more rewards among three year veterans vs two year veterans vs one year veterans. Stuff like that.
But while it is interesting to speculate on *how* the champions might be effective in a particular player's hands, and that might be useful when it comes to thinking about game balancing, its probably not relevant to how champions were selected for the featured crystal. Why the champion appears effective in their datamining is something the crystal designers probably didn't give a second thought to. They were handed a set of reports showing what the raw numbers were for each champion in every datamined pigeonhole, and they used that to decide which champions would and would not be eligible for the curated eighteen.
It's too late to do this but... I think this might have gone down much better if you hadn't tried to put this ridiculous spin on it. It's clearly not beneficial to players and progression so why try to spin it as such? I would have been far happier with an explanation like, 5 star shards are getting much more easily available making featured crystals imbalanced. Or something that made sense. This is exactly the situation with AW - you put together a ridiculous statement with a ton of exclamation marks saying it would be amazing and that really made you look out of touch with reality (as real as a video game can be).
It's too late to do this but... I think this might have gone down much better if you hadn't tried to put this ridiculous spin on it. It's clearly not beneficial to players and progression so why try to spin it as such? I would have been far happier with an explanation like, 5 star shards are getting much more easily available making featured crystals imbalanced. Or something that made sense. This is exactly the situation with AW - you put together a ridiculous statement with a ton of exclamation marks saying it would be amazing and that really made you look out of touch with reality (as real as a video game can be).
I don't think they really spun this specific crystal as being better than the old crystal. If you read the original announcement carefully, they actually mentioned the state of the game when 5* champions were first introduced, not what the state of the game was very recently. They said that originally, you had two shots at a featured, and then it was basically gone. And the basic crystal got additions extremely slowly, so if you missed your chance, it was gone for a long time or maybe practically forever.
Every change to the 5* system has improved that situation taken as a whole. 5* shard availability has increased. Featureds are now added to the basic much faster, which means the featured crystal itself is not the last and only chance at the featured like it originally was. And had we jumped straight from there to here, I don't think this crystal would seem quite so out of place if it came with a huge increase in shards.
The problem is that all of the 5* changes happened slowly in a problematic order. First we got the basic acceleration, then we got the 5* shard availability increases, and then only now are we getting the new featured crystal, and the devs never told the players directly this was all part of a whole. So the players (at least some of them) got used to having gigantic piles of shards and a featured crystal that was practically a featured champion selection box for anyone not called Anonymous2k.
Maybe this would have been better if they had announced way in advance that oh yeah, we're going to be shoving all the featureds into the basic crystal and tripling the availability of 5* shards, but starting now the current version of the featured crystal is on borrowed time: as soon as we catch up we will replace it with a crystal designed for higher 5* shard availability. In the meantime, enjoy the temporary ability to spend your shard on that crystal. I think some players would still be mad, but I think it might have been more palatable if, as you say, the new crystal was linked to other 5* improvements, and not allowed to be judged singularly.
And then again, maybe not. It is not something I would bet money on personally. If I was in charge, I would have probably wanted to do that anyway. But I don't know if that wouldn't have blown up in my face.
“We are using empirical data based on Champion performance in Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars to decide which Champions will be added to the Crystal. This means that while Player perception of the Champions may not always align, we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions...”
“It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars.”
“I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.”
@DNA3000 I’m not sure how you read these quotes and conclude they intended to only eliminate the champs we think are bad and didn’t intend them to be anything in particular.
The first quote literally says "we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions" which is an explicit statement of intent.
The second quote says literally nothing about intent. It says they used empirical data showing the champion effectiveness in making their choices. This statement would be true on its face if the devs decided to put the best champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the worst champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the most mediocre champions into the crystal, if they decided to put a random sampling of different effectiveness champions into the crystal, or if they decided to make each crystal have a different effectiveness basket.
The third statement doesn't address what the intent of the crystal contents are. It expresses @Kabam Miike's opinion, or an opinion he is passing on, about the effectiveness of certain champions: the quote in context is:
Just talked to the team, and they are comfortable with sharing the list of Champions we plan to include in the first Featured Champion Crystal. It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars....
I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.
He is speaking very specifically about a list of champions, not the intent of the crystal. He is saying that Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, Civil Warrior, and Ant Man score highly in their datamining in terms of how they judge effectiveness when they are used by players. He also specifically disavows the notion that lots of players use them or even necessarily think they are effective champions to use. He only says that the players who use them are effective with them.
But again, that doesn't say that the intent of the crystal is to place the highest effective champions (as Kabam datamines them to be) into the crystal. Because he does not mention other champions, it is still entirely possible that the crystal contains a mix of champions, of which some are effective in certain ways in certain tiers of AQ and AW. There is no reasonable reason to state that if Kabam Miike says those nine champions are seen as effective and used by a small number of players, that every champion fits that description.
As for analysis, it’s pretty clear Miike wants to hang his hat on empirical data the team looked at to make their determination.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hang his hat." Its a plain statement that Kabam used empirical data to decide how to evaluate the champions. Every MMO company does that. But nowhere do they say *which* champions, given that data, were intentionally put in the crystal.
For example, it would be entirely consistent with how MMO companies generally work for Kabam to see that different champions are used at different tiers, or by different player populations of varying skill and playtime, and try to pick a random sample of such champions from across different segments of the player population to represent a wide swath of them. Doing so would guarantee that many if not most of the champions would only be seen as useful by a small percentage of the players, and seen less favorably by a majority of the players. That happens all the time when a reward is created that is a segmented sum of narrow-casted datamining.
...
It is numerically possible for Kabam to exclude the bottom 25% from the curated list. It is numerically impractical, and borderline impossible, for Kabam to include only the top 50%.
I’m tempted to simply reply tl;dr.
But I think you need to reread my initial comment as well as what Miike said.
I didn’t argue that the most effective champs needed to be in the crystal; rather, that I agreed with another poster who listed a set of attributes he believed most players found desirable in champs. I compared that list to the 18 champs and found it mostly lacking, with some exceptions. Most of those exceptions were not, in my opinion, best in class with regard to those attributes, but were somewhat serviceable.
As for Miike’s comments, we clearly read English differently. Your observations may be partially accurate if you read each statement absolutely literally and in a vacuum. But that’s not how an ongoing dialogue like the one occurring here is read. Statements should be read in context.
Miike essentially says 3 things in sequence: (1) We used data on performance in AQ and AW to exclude the worst champs; (2) We selected the 18 based on their effectiveness in AQ and AW (and in the context of (1) and (3) it can be inferred that we didn’t just pick the next worst champs or worst champs as determined by our data); and (3) The champs we selected were not only “not the worst or next worst,” but they were “among the most effective” in AQ and AW according to our data even if they were not always the most used champs in AQ and AW (which suggests to me potentially skewed and misleading data set based on small sample size, but that’s another matter).
That’s pretty much it. The upshot is that they selected champs they considered based on their observations to be useful (“among the most effective”) champs, regardless of of how many observations there actually were. Quite a lot of folks (not just the few dozen in this thread) disagree on the actual level of usefulness for the 18 selections based on their own experiences actually playing the game.
Continue splitting hairs if you want but I don’t think it’s much more complex than that.
“We are using empirical data based on Champion performance in Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars to decide which Champions will be added to the Crystal. This means that while Player perception of the Champions may not always align, we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions...”
“It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars.”
“I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.”
@DNA3000 I’m not sure how you read these quotes and conclude they intended to only eliminate the champs we think are bad and didn’t intend them to be anything in particular.
The first quote literally says "we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions" which is an explicit statement of intent.
The second quote says literally nothing about intent. It says they used empirical data showing the champion effectiveness in making their choices. This statement would be true on its face if the devs decided to put the best champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the worst champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the most mediocre champions into the crystal, if they decided to put a random sampling of different effectiveness champions into the crystal, or if they decided to make each crystal have a different effectiveness basket.
The third statement doesn't address what the intent of the crystal contents are. It expresses @Kabam Miike's opinion, or an opinion he is passing on, about the effectiveness of certain champions: the quote in context is:
Just talked to the team, and they are comfortable with sharing the list of Champions we plan to include in the first Featured Champion Crystal. It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars....
I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.
He is speaking very specifically about a list of champions, not the intent of the crystal. He is saying that Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, Civil Warrior, and Ant Man score highly in their datamining in terms of how they judge effectiveness when they are used by players. He also specifically disavows the notion that lots of players use them or even necessarily think they are effective champions to use. He only says that the players who use them are effective with them.
But again, that doesn't say that the intent of the crystal is to place the highest effective champions (as Kabam datamines them to be) into the crystal. Because he does not mention other champions, it is still entirely possible that the crystal contains a mix of champions, of which some are effective in certain ways in certain tiers of AQ and AW. There is no reasonable reason to state that if Kabam Miike says those nine champions are seen as effective and used by a small number of players, that every champion fits that description.
As for analysis, it’s pretty clear Miike wants to hang his hat on empirical data the team looked at to make their determination.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hang his hat." Its a plain statement that Kabam used empirical data to decide how to evaluate the champions. Every MMO company does that. But nowhere do they say *which* champions, given that data, were intentionally put in the crystal.
For example, it would be entirely consistent with how MMO companies generally work for Kabam to see that different champions are used at different tiers, or by different player populations of varying skill and playtime, and try to pick a random sample of such champions from across different segments of the player population to represent a wide swath of them. Doing so would guarantee that many if not most of the champions would only be seen as useful by a small percentage of the players, and seen less favorably by a majority of the players. That happens all the time when a reward is created that is a segmented sum of narrow-casted datamining.
...
It is numerically possible for Kabam to exclude the bottom 25% from the curated list. It is numerically impractical, and borderline impossible, for Kabam to include only the top 50%.
I’m tempted to simply reply tl;dr.
But I think you need to reread my initial comment as well as what Miike said.
I didn’t argue that the most effective champs needed to be in the crystal; rather, that I agreed with another poster who listed a set of attributes he believed most players found desirable in champs. I compared that list to the 18 champs and found it mostly lacking, with some exceptions. Most of those exceptions were not, in my opinion, best in class with regard to those attributes, but were somewhat serviceable.
As for Miike’s comments, we clearly read English differently. Your observations may be partially accurate if you read each statement absolutely literally and in a vacuum. But that’s not how an ongoing dialogue like the one occurring here is read. Statements should be read in context.
Miike essentially says 3 things in sequence: (1) We used data on performance in AQ and AW to exclude the worst champs; (2) We selected the 18 based on their effectiveness in AQ and AW (and in the context of (1) and (3) it can be inferred that we didn’t just pick the next worst champs or worst champs as determined by our data); and (3) The champs we selected were not only “not the worst or next worst,” but they were “among the most effective” in AQ and AW according to our data even if they were not always the most used champs in AQ and AW (which suggests to me potentially skewed and misleading data set based on small sample size, but that’s another matter).
That’s pretty much it. The upshot is that they selected champs they considered based on their observations to be useful (“among the most effective”) champs, regardless of of how many observations there actually were. Quite a lot of folks (not just the few dozen in this thread) disagree on the actual level of usefulness for the 18 selections based on their own experiences actually playing the game.
Continue splitting hairs if you want but I don’t think it’s much more complex than that.
Dr. Zola
I read Kabam Miike’s statement similarly.
I read it as according to some nebulous criteria Kabam used, the champs selected were among the most effective. Too bad Kabam will never tell us what they consider effective or what criteria were used. Possibly because their reasoning would be torn apart, and they know that it would be.
This is all because they were losing money with this set up. They will announce 5* arena very soon and then we will be back to how it was. Grind an arena for a new champ or spend loads trying to get them from crystals. This was always a huge money making part for them because the whales at the top need those new champs to stay on top of the prestige race.
They way it is now is so much more balanced in terms of pay to play and free-moderate.
Seriously dude, I'm curious how you guys convinced yourselves that people will buy this craaaaaap.
Did you see a single person likes this change?
If you are player, will you spend your precious shards on this craaaaaaaap?
This is just insane and ridiculous, if you can't see now, you will see from your game statistics in May and realize how stupid this change is.
I think you totally misunderstood my post. What this is in regards to is somebody saying that they would not like to pull a Storm from that Crystal, and I was saying that this is still possible even right now, as well as other Champions that they might now want, so this doesn't change that.
@Kabam Miike What you are not acknowledging or maybe you really don’t see it, is that the feature crystals
1) It gave hope to players, who have not been lucky with the champs they have pulled so far, As you know, the crystals are totally random and odds are that many of them, don’t have 1 top 20 Champ. There are also players who have 4 God Tier 5* Rnk 4 and they just need to dupe Blade and R5 him. That player might view the new crystal as being not so bad.
All of the featured champs need to be duped or require synergies to be playable against the current game content. They can’t wait 3 months for the champs to reset. They look at Storm and Ronan Antman and They don’t get why you wouldn’t at the very least choose champs that have a bit of utility.
I would probably venture that they were aware of the implications before making the decision. I wasn't part of the decision-making process, obviously, so I can't say for sure. I would suspect that they were aware that people would react to the decreased chance. Whatever the process, they ultimately decided that the reasons for the change outweigh the possible reaction.
Rarely do I reference 12.0, simply because it's used so much, but it comes to mind in this sense because it was the best example of not anticipating the reaction. I don't think this is the same extremity at all, or even close to the same situation. However, they didn't anticipate the effect that the extreme changes would have. I have no doubts that they are more cognizant of pretty much any large change now, and they have taken steps to include Players in the process. I think ultimately, there will be changes from time to time that people don't like. That is part of having to make decisions that are optimal for the present and future of the game.
I would probably venture that they were aware of the implications before making the decision. I wasn't part of the decision-making process, obviously, so I can't say for sure. I would suspect that they were aware that people would react to the decreased chance. Whatever the process, they ultimately decided that the reasons for the change outweigh the possible reaction.
Rarely do I reference 12.0, simply because it's used so much, but it comes to mind in this sense because it was the best example of not anticipating the reaction. I don't think this is the same extremity at all, or even close to the same situation. However, they didn't anticipate the effect that the extreme changes would have. I have no doubts that they are more cognizant of pretty much any large change now, and they have taken steps to include Players in the process. I think ultimately, there will be changes from time to time that people don't like. That is part of having to make decisions that are optimal for the present and future of the game.
You left out optimal for their profits.
I am opposed to many Kabam decisions but I never object to them trying to make a profit. All of the "money grab" posts I find to be short sighted. Free to play only works if others spend and if no one does there is no game. I like the game so I am in favor of decisions that make them money as long as they aren't detrimental to the game. Having said that, this crystal is garbage and it won't make them money because no one will buy it.
I would probably venture that they were aware of the implications before making the decision. I wasn't part of the decision-making process, obviously, so I can't say for sure. I would suspect that they were aware that people would react to the decreased chance. Whatever the process, they ultimately decided that the reasons for the change outweigh the possible reaction.
Rarely do I reference 12.0, simply because it's used so much, but it comes to mind in this sense because it was the best example of not anticipating the reaction. I don't think this is the same extremity at all, or even close to the same situation. However, they didn't anticipate the effect that the extreme changes would have. I have no doubts that they are more cognizant of pretty much any large change now, and they have taken steps to include Players in the process. I think ultimately, there will be changes from time to time that people don't like. That is part of having to make decisions that are optimal for the present and future of the game.
I'm still trying to figure out why someone with zero 5 stars in his IGN profile would have such a lengthy discussion about 5 stars. Can you help me understand why you have such a strong opinion on something you don't have? I'm not trying to be a jerk here, it's just odd to have such a strong opinion when 5 stars aren't what you play with.
Oh, and as usual someone (I wonder who) flags the post. I'm asking an honest question. I may endlessly wonder about who flagged it. To be clear flagging a post that doesn't violate the rules here is something you can get banned for. Flag this too then I guess. Should be one step closer to it.
To the person who wants to flag every post I have please point me to the rule being violated. Sigh. I have to guess they have over 5000 posts here based on what I'm seeing.
You're not asking a simple question. You're spamming the same comment after everything I say. My Account details were never shared by me on the Forum. Not once. While you're reading the rules, you may want to look at the rules on being non-constructive, shaming others on their experience in the game, and any other that falls under making things personal. This is the only time I will address the topic with you. I don't care what you think you know about my Account. That's not what the topic is about.
I would probably venture that they were aware of the implications before making the decision. I wasn't part of the decision-making process, obviously, so I can't say for sure. I would suspect that they were aware that people would react to the decreased chance. Whatever the process, they ultimately decided that the reasons for the change outweigh the possible reaction.
Rarely do I reference 12.0, simply because it's used so much, but it comes to mind in this sense because it was the best example of not anticipating the reaction. I don't think this is the same extremity at all, or even close to the same situation. However, they didn't anticipate the effect that the extreme changes would have. I have no doubts that they are more cognizant of pretty much any large change now, and they have taken steps to include Players in the process. I think ultimately, there will be changes from time to time that people don't like. That is part of having to make decisions that are optimal for the present and future of the game.
You left out optimal for their profits.
I am opposed to many Kabam decisions but I never object to them trying to make a profit. All of the "money grab" posts I find to be short sighted. Free to play only works if others spend and if no one does there is no game. I like the game so I am in favor of decisions that make them money as long as they aren't detrimental to the game. Having said that, this crystal is garbage and it won't make them money because no one will buy it.
I didn't say anything against it. They are a business and businesses try to make money. I was only stating that he left that out. I agree that I don't think that this will be one of there better attempts to increase their profits though. I do wish that they would be more up front about it instead of trying to sell it as something they are doing for the players. When they do that it just creates animosity towards them and kinda insults players intelligence.
I don’t know why everyone is getting so hung up on the empirical data statement. It’s just spin that has been (badly) worded to justify another unpopular decision.
It’s no different to when perfect block teams were removed, the top champs were nerfed, 2* alliance wars were disabled and defender kills were removed. On each and every one of those occasions Kabam came out with a half-arsed justification that the playerbase saw right through.
Most people I know as well as the youtubers all seem to be in agreement that the changes were made because it was becoming too easy to get the featured champ therefore you effectively build your own roster and that they also want to push people more towards the 300 unit featured grandmaster crystals.
I’d have a lot more respect if they simply came out and said that rather than trying to sell us a line about cyclops and ant man being high performing champs.
Comments
The first quote literally says "we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions" which is an explicit statement of intent.
The second quote says literally nothing about intent. It says they used empirical data showing the champion effectiveness in making their choices. This statement would be true on its face if the devs decided to put the best champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the worst champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the most mediocre champions into the crystal, if they decided to put a random sampling of different effectiveness champions into the crystal, or if they decided to make each crystal have a different effectiveness basket.
The third statement doesn't address what the intent of the crystal contents are. It expresses @Kabam Miike's opinion, or an opinion he is passing on, about the effectiveness of certain champions: the quote in context is:
He is speaking very specifically about a list of champions, not the intent of the crystal. He is saying that Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, Civil Warrior, and Ant Man score highly in their datamining in terms of how they judge effectiveness when they are used by players. He also specifically disavows the notion that lots of players use them or even necessarily think they are effective champions to use. He only says that the players who use them are effective with them.
But again, that doesn't say that the intent of the crystal is to place the highest effective champions (as Kabam datamines them to be) into the crystal. Because he does not mention other champions, it is still entirely possible that the crystal contains a mix of champions, of which some are effective in certain ways in certain tiers of AQ and AW. There is no reasonable reason to state that if Kabam Miike says those nine champions are seen as effective and used by a small number of players, that every champion fits that description.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hang his hat." Its a plain statement that Kabam used empirical data to decide how to evaluate the champions. Every MMO company does that. But nowhere do they say *which* champions, given that data, were intentionally put in the crystal.
For example, it would be entirely consistent with how MMO companies generally work for Kabam to see that different champions are used at different tiers, or by different player populations of varying skill and playtime, and try to pick a random sample of such champions from across different segments of the player population to represent a wide swath of them. Doing so would guarantee that many if not most of the champions would only be seen as useful by a small percentage of the players, and seen less favorably by a majority of the players. That happens all the time when a reward is created that is a segmented sum of narrow-casted datamining.
Plus, there's simple math that makes all of this really moot in an analytical sense. There's about 84 champions in the basic crystal that could have been curated into the new featured. Kabam has said no champion will repeat twice in a row, although they could reappear after that. So that means the May crystal has to have eighteen different champions in it. The two crystals combined must contain 36 of the 84 champions. It is highly unlikely that they will just alternate between the two versions, so as a practical matter for there to be any significant variations the third crystal should contain at least half of its content not identical to the first one (and it cannot contain anything from the second one). That means the pool of champions they are picking from to add to the curated list for the new featured champions must be at least 45 champions. That's over half of all the possible basic champions that exist at the moment. Whatever the criteria they are using is, it cannot be to put the best, or even just the top half of the options, because they don't have enough champions to do that. At least a few must be below average (as in literally below the 50% mark) just because of the sheer numbers involved.
It is numerically possible for Kabam to exclude the bottom 25% from the curated list. It is numerically impractical, and borderline impossible, for Kabam to include only the top 50%.
Scratch that, you already know this is a huge issue for the majority of players.
So what is it going to take for you to stop this madness? Clearly 1K comments in the span of 48 hours isn't enough.
Perhaps a petition is called for?
I would ask it very simply. If you had 15,000 5-star shards would you prefer to get the old crystal or the new crystal?
That may not be a valid choice. If the change to the featured crystal is part of the overall evolution of 5* champions, then the new featured crystal is probably closely coupled to the increases in 5* shard availability we've had and continue to get. The choice would be between having 5* availability frozen where it was a year or more ago and the featured crystal as it originally was designed, or the new crystal and the greater shard availability.
Some people might still prefer the original crystal and the highly constrained 5* shard availability, but I suspect a larger percentage of players would prefer the higher availability regardless of the crystal design. In either case, that's not the kind of thing you can easily put to a vote. Most of the players the evolving system benefits the most are very likely to be not vocal forum participants.
I forgot about this in anger of the new idea. I originally was planning for taskmaster not blade only because I remember wanting him to join for quite a while along with other champions.
So if featured crystals are going then yeah I totally agree with what you said these guys should have their run instead of being cut off. One of my alliance members was also saving quite a lot of shards to dupe his thor ragnarok not the best I know but still.
It would make a lot of people happy if you could at least do this guys.
@GroundedWisdom it's based on imperial data? Lmao Kabam must be the Evil Empire.
I'm pretty sure that means Kabam is not on the metric system.
What a start of the year ;
First game play issues,
Then Sentry disappointment;
Now the featured crystals gone:
Next .......
Depends on who you ask. Lmao. I was tired. XD
Dear @Kabam Miike,
Please listen to the players. Look at this discussion. You have to see that this new featured crystal is a bad idea. Your so-called empirical data is wrong. Here is an idea listen to the players not the team because the team does not make it possible for you to get a paycheck,
The players in this discussion does just that and I can bet that they will agree with me.
Because without the players who are willing to put money into this game (like me) then this game would honestly crash and burn.
In reality, every champ can be used 'effectively', creating further confusion. I'll try explain to the best of my ability. For example, She-Hulk is commonly regarded as 'trash' by some, but she can still be used 'effectively' by stunning the opponent and following it with a heavy attack. This combo is 'effective' in the fact that the player uses 2 of She-Hulk's mechanics (stun + increased heavy attack dmg while stunned).
In the same way, Colossus, also another lowly regarded champ, can also be used 'effectively' by building up his armor through his armor up buffs then firing off an SP3. That's an 'effective' use since it also utilises his mechanics to maximise his potential (armor up + increased SP dmg based on current armor).
Finally, Iceman, a highly praised champ, can also be used in an 'effective' manner. In this hypothesised instance, if Iceman was facing a duped Spiderman (OG) on a poison or bleed node, it would be regarded as an 'effective' use of his mechanics since a) Iceman is immune to both poison and bleed and b) Iceman's Coldsnap can easily bypass Spiderman's autoevade mechanic, thus making it an 'effective' use of this character's abilities.
I could go on and on for literally every champion in the game, Thanos, Kang, Redpool you name it. But you get the point. Every champion, 'god' or 'trash' tier each have their own individual abilities that can be used in an 'effective' manner to gain the largest possible advantage over your opponent. So if each champion can be used 'effectively' through masteries, synergies or just skill, what does this term even mean? Is 'effectiveness' defined as the ability to use most if not all of a champion's ability simultaneously to maximise their potential? Is 'effectiveness' measured on a scale, a chart, a bar? Is it the champion's W/L ratio statistics?
Whatever it is, it's probably a combination of factors, statistics and data in either a numerical or categorical form. If anyone knows the meaning of 'effective' in this specific context, please let me know.
Only Kabam knows the precise details of how they datamine their game, but when any game developer talks about measuring performance or "effectiveness" they aren't talking about "can be" done. They are talking about what is done.
You're thinking about all the ways a champion could be effective, but Kabam isn't saying everyone sat around and debated with each other over which champions were more or less effective. They ran a report. That report showed numbers for each champion. This number better than that number, this champion more effective, period.
Precisely which numbers you look at and how you adjust for certain parameters is important, but at a fundamental level if the players kill more things with Colossus than Stark Spiderman, then Colossus is more effective. We can debate why that happens and try to explain that difference away to force the numbers to conform with what we "know" but what we know is also hopelessly contaminated by the kind of players we are. Star Lord only does a lot of damage if you can hold a high combo. If we simply dismiss that as trivial, that "everyone" can hold a combo because it is "easy" then we're in effect saying only certain players matter when it comes to determining how useful a champion is. The other players are just scrubs that don't matter.
We can say that, because our opinion doesn't really affect anything. But game developers don't think that way and can't think that way. If 90% of the playerbase can't hold more than a combo of 40, then Star Lord is not really very powerful for the players of the game taken as a whole. If for some crazy reason 90% of players get more kills with Colossus than Elektra, then Colossus is a stronger champion than Elektra for most players.
You do need to take into consideration that, say, a lot fewer people have Blade, so Blade has to be used less often. His popularity is based less on how good the players think he is, and more because of his rarity. But if, say, about the same number of players have Dr. Strange and Black Widow and Dr. Strange is played 30% more often, that means Strange is more popular with the players. It also means, statistically, that he should get 30% more kills. But if he gets only 10% more kills, that would suggest he is less effective when he is played.
The devs may have no idea why the champions they datamined as being "effective" actually are effective. The datamining they did may not contain that kind of information. It most likely contains information on what percentage of the playerbase possess each champion, and relative to that number how often is each champion played. And when the champion is played, what is the general result. How many kills does it get? How often does it die in the hands of the player. How much rewards do the players earn with that champion?
And this is usually broken down by some kind of partitioning of the playerbase. Obviously the data from players with less than a week of play will be different than players with three years of play, on average. Players with 200k rating will do different things than players with 600k rating. How finely grained they dice up the playerbase is something that is highly variable and I couldn't guess at meaningfully. But I'm guessing they probably know things like which champions are played the most often among 400k+ players verses 200k-400k players verses 0-200k players, or some kind of breakdown. They might know which champions generate more rewards among three year veterans vs two year veterans vs one year veterans. Stuff like that.
But while it is interesting to speculate on *how* the champions might be effective in a particular player's hands, and that might be useful when it comes to thinking about game balancing, its probably not relevant to how champions were selected for the featured crystal. Why the champion appears effective in their datamining is something the crystal designers probably didn't give a second thought to. They were handed a set of reports showing what the raw numbers were for each champion in every datamined pigeonhole, and they used that to decide which champions would and would not be eligible for the curated eighteen.
I don't think they really spun this specific crystal as being better than the old crystal. If you read the original announcement carefully, they actually mentioned the state of the game when 5* champions were first introduced, not what the state of the game was very recently. They said that originally, you had two shots at a featured, and then it was basically gone. And the basic crystal got additions extremely slowly, so if you missed your chance, it was gone for a long time or maybe practically forever.
Every change to the 5* system has improved that situation taken as a whole. 5* shard availability has increased. Featureds are now added to the basic much faster, which means the featured crystal itself is not the last and only chance at the featured like it originally was. And had we jumped straight from there to here, I don't think this crystal would seem quite so out of place if it came with a huge increase in shards.
The problem is that all of the 5* changes happened slowly in a problematic order. First we got the basic acceleration, then we got the 5* shard availability increases, and then only now are we getting the new featured crystal, and the devs never told the players directly this was all part of a whole. So the players (at least some of them) got used to having gigantic piles of shards and a featured crystal that was practically a featured champion selection box for anyone not called Anonymous2k.
Maybe this would have been better if they had announced way in advance that oh yeah, we're going to be shoving all the featureds into the basic crystal and tripling the availability of 5* shards, but starting now the current version of the featured crystal is on borrowed time: as soon as we catch up we will replace it with a crystal designed for higher 5* shard availability. In the meantime, enjoy the temporary ability to spend your shard on that crystal. I think some players would still be mad, but I think it might have been more palatable if, as you say, the new crystal was linked to other 5* improvements, and not allowed to be judged singularly.
And then again, maybe not. It is not something I would bet money on personally. If I was in charge, I would have probably wanted to do that anyway. But I don't know if that wouldn't have blown up in my face.
I’m tempted to simply reply tl;dr.
But I think you need to reread my initial comment as well as what Miike said.
I didn’t argue that the most effective champs needed to be in the crystal; rather, that I agreed with another poster who listed a set of attributes he believed most players found desirable in champs. I compared that list to the 18 champs and found it mostly lacking, with some exceptions. Most of those exceptions were not, in my opinion, best in class with regard to those attributes, but were somewhat serviceable.
As for Miike’s comments, we clearly read English differently. Your observations may be partially accurate if you read each statement absolutely literally and in a vacuum. But that’s not how an ongoing dialogue like the one occurring here is read. Statements should be read in context.
Miike essentially says 3 things in sequence: (1) We used data on performance in AQ and AW to exclude the worst champs; (2) We selected the 18 based on their effectiveness in AQ and AW (and in the context of (1) and (3) it can be inferred that we didn’t just pick the next worst champs or worst champs as determined by our data); and (3) The champs we selected were not only “not the worst or next worst,” but they were “among the most effective” in AQ and AW according to our data even if they were not always the most used champs in AQ and AW (which suggests to me potentially skewed and misleading data set based on small sample size, but that’s another matter).
That’s pretty much it. The upshot is that they selected champs they considered based on their observations to be useful (“among the most effective”) champs, regardless of of how many observations there actually were. Quite a lot of folks (not just the few dozen in this thread) disagree on the actual level of usefulness for the 18 selections based on their own experiences actually playing the game.
Continue splitting hairs if you want but I don’t think it’s much more complex than that.
Dr. Zola
I read Kabam Miike’s statement similarly.
I read it as according to some nebulous criteria Kabam used, the champs selected were among the most effective. Too bad Kabam will never tell us what they consider effective or what criteria were used. Possibly because their reasoning would be torn apart, and they know that it would be.
They way it is now is so much more balanced in terms of pay to play and free-moderate.
1) It gave hope to players, who have not been lucky with the champs they have pulled so far, As you know, the crystals are totally random and odds are that many of them, don’t have 1 top 20 Champ. There are also players who have 4 God Tier 5* Rnk 4 and they just need to dupe Blade and R5 him. That player might view the new crystal as being not so bad.
All of the featured champs need to be duped or require synergies to be playable against the current game content. They can’t wait 3 months for the champs to reset. They look at Storm and Ronan Antman and They don’t get why you wouldn’t at the very least choose champs that have a bit of utility.
Rarely do I reference 12.0, simply because it's used so much, but it comes to mind in this sense because it was the best example of not anticipating the reaction. I don't think this is the same extremity at all, or even close to the same situation. However, they didn't anticipate the effect that the extreme changes would have. I have no doubts that they are more cognizant of pretty much any large change now, and they have taken steps to include Players in the process. I think ultimately, there will be changes from time to time that people don't like. That is part of having to make decisions that are optimal for the present and future of the game.
I am opposed to many Kabam decisions but I never object to them trying to make a profit. All of the "money grab" posts I find to be short sighted. Free to play only works if others spend and if no one does there is no game. I like the game so I am in favor of decisions that make them money as long as they aren't detrimental to the game. Having said that, this crystal is garbage and it won't make them money because no one will buy it.
I'm still trying to figure out why someone with zero 5 stars in his IGN profile would have such a lengthy discussion about 5 stars. Can you help me understand why you have such a strong opinion on something you don't have? I'm not trying to be a jerk here, it's just odd to have such a strong opinion when 5 stars aren't what you play with.
For me it's an endless wonder.
Here is a link to the rules:
http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/54/forum-rules-please-read-prior-to-posting#latest
To the person who wants to flag every post I have please point me to the rule being violated. Sigh. I have to guess they have over 5000 posts here based on what I'm seeing.
I think we are on the same page.
It’s no different to when perfect block teams were removed, the top champs were nerfed, 2* alliance wars were disabled and defender kills were removed. On each and every one of those occasions Kabam came out with a half-arsed justification that the playerbase saw right through.
Most people I know as well as the youtubers all seem to be in agreement that the changes were made because it was becoming too easy to get the featured champ therefore you effectively build your own roster and that they also want to push people more towards the 300 unit featured grandmaster crystals.
I’d have a lot more respect if they simply came out and said that rather than trying to sell us a line about cyclops and ant man being high performing champs.