@DNA3000 - I was going to quote your post, but it's really long, so I'm not going to do that.
Also, I had to trim 60 characters from it to post it, so quoting it would mean you probably could only say "I do think" and then the forum would cut you off.
I do think that there is some responsibility on both sides (a lot of my player perspective comes from my own experiences and those in my alliance who, when we made changes, have all been able to succeed against the Sentineloids), but I am glad to see that Kabam has not only acknowledged their mistake, but has actively worked to fix it.
I wouldn't use the word "responsibility." Whenever the developers introduce new difficulty in any part of the game, how well the players adjust to that difficulty and what rewards and experience they get out of it depends greatly on how intelligently and efficiently they react to that. I'd say that is a valid perspective when it comes to, say, the introduction of uncollected difficulty. Some players were so strong when that happened that uncollected difficulty was not a significant challenge. For some players, it was entirely out of reach. But there was a range of players for which that difficulty was high but not insurmountable with thought and practice you could either beat it or work towards overcoming it. The return you get is based in large part on the effort you put it.
But while that's also true for AQ, I think the problem goes beyond individual player efforts. Alliances grow and evolve over time to mesh together many different players that are compatible with each other. Part of the criteria those players have to satisfy is being compatible when it comes to alliance events, AQ and AW. It is unrealistic to expect that every single player will be able to adjust to changes in AQ and AW at exactly the same rate, but it isn't an inability to adjust that can tear an alliance apart. It can be simply the differences in the way and the rate at which each individual player adjusts. Even if every player does everything right, a sudden change in difficulty and content in AQ can put enormous pressure on an alliance that didn't exist before. It is one thing to expect an alliance to deal with gradual changes over time, putting a small amount of pressure to adjust on each individual player. It is another thing to expect everyone to adjust quickly to a sudden change, all in the same way at the same rate in a way that will allow them to still mesh together.
A question for you is: do you think it is a good idea to periodically "shake up" whole alliances and challenge them to adapt or die? That seems contrary to me to the purpose of player groups like alliances, which is usually to promote players forming attachments to other players in ways that allow games to retain players for longer periods of time.
That's an interesting question!
I do think the answer to that question is yes. If you were asking me as a designer, I would answer yes.
I think it is contrary to player groups - but I think if one player advances quicker than one alliance as a whole, they'll hop up until they end up in a group at their skill level. What has happened (for most of us) is that we've leveled out and found an alliance of similar skill and like minded-ness.
But even then, after extended periods of time - you often see people step down, or step up. There are shakeups that happen, especially in large break periods.
So, I think for the health of the game, yes, I do think that is necessary from time to time.
I'm not sure if that addresses the question I was asking. Yes, it is unavoidable that alliance shake ups happen from time to time, so it is necessary to allow such things to happen. The players themselves as a natural consequence of progressing in the game will on occasion find themselves outgrowing their alliance or vice versa, and we shouldn't constrain individual player progress to avoid this.
But should you *deliberately* induce those shake ups, because there's a specific benefit to those shake ups in and of itself? And if so, what is the actual benefit to the game and/or the players?
Ah, that's a much different question.
With some conditions, I'd still keep my answer the same. Yes, because if change isn't consistently and constantly introduced, stagnation occurs. Now would I do it frequently? Hell no. Maybe once every 12-18 months.
By forcing that big a change - while it'll hurt in the short term, in the long term of the game, I think it benefits them to keep us changing and doing things differently. The only thing I'd say against doing something like this is that people who have forged friendships with their alliances aren't going to want to change, and that resistance might be a reason not to do it in the first place. But then again, people are always resistant to change.
So, yes. Because change is healthy and good, even if it doesn't feel like it in the short term.
Players said the changes were a bad idea and gave reasons why before the update rolled out.
Kabam said "Give it a chance and you'll see nothing has changed"
Players said the changes were a bad idea and gave reasons why after the update rolled out. (Amid the aforementioned sea of unhelpful complaints, granted).
Kabam said "Give it time. It's not actually harder, it just requires an adjustment on your part".
The way this article read removed any fault from Kabam in all this and made the players 100% to blame. It's not very objective and thus makes it tough to give any credence to.
Also, I wouldn't put this on the level of the 12.0 to 12.0.1 adjustment. That was a lot of coding changes that dealt with how each champ at each level interacted with one another. With the pending AQ adjustment, it's small things like capping energy at 2 bars and making the tiles unhidden. The items they're proposing are pretty basic. Saying that it was a herculean task to figure out the problem and make an adjustment is overstating it a bit, don't you think?
Kabam saying give it time is based on historical data that they have, showing that we adjust to things. Do they miss the mark sometimes? Sure! Every business does. No fault of theirs.
Look, no lie? The players are 100% to blame here. If we'd all bothered to sit down, read and understand how the Sentineloids worked and stopped trying to power through them like we do every other fight in this game, majority of the problems wouldn't have shown up. The players who DID read and understand the abilities of the Sentineloids and how they worked didn't have an issue. There just weren't many of them.
Despite that, Kabam still made changes, because there WAS good feedback (if you look at my good examples, that kinda illustrates it) that they needed to hear.
The launch of 12.0 and the time it took for 12.1 to show up was about 2 to 3.5 weeks if I'm remembering right. This was a faster turn around time. The items they might be proposing are pretty basic, but when you consider that they had the decisions made on the changes they're making (those take meetings and debates, not to mention feedback gathering, all of which takes time, on top of all the stuff they're probably doing for IW), the coding that does have to be done for the changes (again on top of the other stuff they're scheduled to do), and then fitting it in, this wasn't an EASY thing to do for Kabam.
From a business perspective, trying to get anything from "Ahhh, broken!" to "Yay, fixed!" in a week is tough, when you consider the size and scope of their player base. So no, I don't think that I'm overstating it. Especially having had to do those sort of adjustments in an old job of mine.
-Now, I also work in a corporate world and understand the reasoning...except this change was done durine the middle of an AQ season. I am not upset as I have been playing since December 2014 and have seen a wide range of changes and updates. I do agree that Kabam is changing quickly, but every alliance and players have different champs to assist in the progression of the game. Not every player is as agile to learn fron the challenges. I feel that with the change ...coupled with the inconsistent game play like (block, parry and evade) have made the community upset.
Next, for the quick response to say apologize to our community. ..not for the Sentinel-loids but for the change during the middle of the AQ season. A change during the middle of the season is like a change in job title's and responsibilities but with no pay raise. It would be a bit of a sour taste in my mouth to add more challenging content without the rewards.
If the introduction of the class sentinels was offered at the end of the AQ season and we as the community had 2-4 weeks to prepare for the adjustments. But at the same time we knew there was going to be much better rewards for the change in difficulty similarly to the end of the next AQ season. ..then I feel everyone would be happen happier with the change. That is why by offering 3 rank down tickets, one for each star rating of a five, four and three star champ to assist with this unexpected challenges.
Lastly, any change can happen in a few weeks or several months ...no matter the size of the company. I agree that Kabam is still learning and we need to thank Kabam for its efforts. Also thank @Kabam DK , @Kabam Rose@Kabam Miike@Kabam Vydious@Kabam Loto@Kabam Zibiit for their efforts. Together we can make Kabam MCOC a much better experience.
Players said the changes were a bad idea and gave reasons why before the update rolled out.
Kabam said "Give it a chance and you'll see nothing has changed"
Players said the changes were a bad idea and gave reasons why after the update rolled out. (Amid the aforementioned sea of unhelpful complaints, granted).
Kabam said "Give it time. It's not actually harder, it just requires an adjustment on your part".
The way this article read removed any fault from Kabam in all this and made the players 100% to blame. It's not very objective and thus makes it tough to give any credence to.
Also, I wouldn't put this on the level of the 12.0 to 12.0.1 adjustment. That was a lot of coding changes that dealt with how each champ at each level interacted with one another. With the pending AQ adjustment, it's small things like capping energy at 2 bars and making the tiles unhidden. The items they're proposing are pretty basic. Saying that it was a herculean task to figure out the problem and make an adjustment is overstating it a bit, don't you think?
Kabam saying give it time is based on historical data that they have, showing that we adjust to things. Do they miss the mark sometimes? Sure! Every business does. No fault of theirs.
Look, no lie? The players are 100% to blame here. If we'd all bothered to sit down, read and understand how the Sentineloids worked and stopped trying to power through them like we do every other fight in this game, majority of the problems wouldn't have shown up. The players who DID read and understand the abilities of the Sentineloids and how they worked didn't have an issue. There just weren't many of them.
Despite that, Kabam still made changes, because there WAS good feedback (if you look at my good examples, that kinda illustrates it) that they needed to hear.
The launch of 12.0 and the time it took for 12.1 to show up was about 2 to 3.5 weeks if I'm remembering right. This was a faster turn around time. The items they might be proposing are pretty basic, but when you consider that they had the decisions made on the changes they're making (those take meetings and debates, not to mention feedback gathering, all of which takes time, on top of all the stuff they're probably doing for IW), the coding that does have to be done for the changes (again on top of the other stuff they're scheduled to do), and then fitting it in, this wasn't an EASY thing to do for Kabam.
From a business perspective, trying to get anything from "Ahhh, broken!" to "Yay, fixed!" in a week is tough, when you consider the size and scope of their player base. So no, I don't think that I'm overstating it. Especially having had to do those sort of adjustments in an old job of mine.
a nice post but nope i disagree with you as we the players are NOT to blame. if kabam simply TESTED, like a beta, the aq changes before instead of letting us test it for them we wouldnt have a problem in the first place.
Kabam should have fixed this asap and to their credit they did and i say thank goodness NOT thank you
also why cant they work this fast on the bugs then? its been over a year since cm's sp2 worked properly not to mention the clear blocks dropping, double dashing back and dex issues still present for months.
@DNA3000 - I was going to quote your post, but it's really long, so I'm not going to do that.
Also, I had to trim 60 characters from it to post it, so quoting it would mean you probably could only say "I do think" and then the forum would cut you off.
I do think that there is some responsibility on both sides (a lot of my player perspective comes from my own experiences and those in my alliance who, when we made changes, have all been able to succeed against the Sentineloids), but I am glad to see that Kabam has not only acknowledged their mistake, but has actively worked to fix it.
I wouldn't use the word "responsibility." Whenever the developers introduce new difficulty in any part of the game, how well the players adjust to that difficulty and what rewards and experience they get out of it depends greatly on how intelligently and efficiently they react to that. I'd say that is a valid perspective when it comes to, say, the introduction of uncollected difficulty. Some players were so strong when that happened that uncollected difficulty was not a significant challenge. For some players, it was entirely out of reach. But there was a range of players for which that difficulty was high but not insurmountable with thought and practice you could either beat it or work towards overcoming it. The return you get is based in large part on the effort you put it.
But while that's also true for AQ, I think the problem goes beyond individual player efforts. Alliances grow and evolve over time to mesh together many different players that are compatible with each other. Part of the criteria those players have to satisfy is being compatible when it comes to alliance events, AQ and AW. It is unrealistic to expect that every single player will be able to adjust to changes in AQ and AW at exactly the same rate, but it isn't an inability to adjust that can tear an alliance apart. It can be simply the differences in the way and the rate at which each individual player adjusts. Even if every player does everything right, a sudden change in difficulty and content in AQ can put enormous pressure on an alliance that didn't exist before. It is one thing to expect an alliance to deal with gradual changes over time, putting a small amount of pressure to adjust on each individual player. It is another thing to expect everyone to adjust quickly to a sudden change, all in the same way at the same rate in a way that will allow them to still mesh together.
A question for you is: do you think it is a good idea to periodically "shake up" whole alliances and challenge them to adapt or die? That seems contrary to me to the purpose of player groups like alliances, which is usually to promote players forming attachments to other players in ways that allow games to retain players for longer periods of time.
That's an interesting question!
I do think the answer to that question is yes. If you were asking me as a designer, I would answer yes.
I think it is contrary to player groups - but I think if one player advances quicker than one alliance as a whole, they'll hop up until they end up in a group at their skill level. What has happened (for most of us) is that we've leveled out and found an alliance of similar skill and like minded-ness.
But even then, after extended periods of time - you often see people step down, or step up. There are shakeups that happen, especially in large break periods.
So, I think for the health of the game, yes, I do think that is necessary from time to time.
I'm not sure if that addresses the question I was asking. Yes, it is unavoidable that alliance shake ups happen from time to time, so it is necessary to allow such things to happen. The players themselves as a natural consequence of progressing in the game will on occasion find themselves outgrowing their alliance or vice versa, and we shouldn't constrain individual player progress to avoid this.
But should you *deliberately* induce those shake ups, because there's a specific benefit to those shake ups in and of itself? And if so, what is the actual benefit to the game and/or the players?
Ah, that's a much different question.
With some conditions, I'd still keep my answer the same. Yes, because if change isn't consistently and constantly introduced, stagnation occurs. Now would I do it frequently? Hell no. Maybe once every 12-18 months.
By forcing that big a change - while it'll hurt in the short term, in the long term of the game, I think it benefits them to keep us changing and doing things differently. The only thing I'd say against doing something like this is that people who have forged friendships with their alliances aren't going to want to change, and that resistance might be a reason not to do it in the first place. But then again, people are always resistant to change.
So, yes. Because change is healthy and good, even if it doesn't feel like it in the short term.
Can you describe in what way this change is beneficial to either the players or the game. You mention stagnation, but here we aren't talking about content stagnation, we are talking about alliance stagnation. In what way does an alliance "stagnate?" If the players themselves become dissatisfied with an alliance for any reason, up to and including that they are bored in it, they themselves always have the option to leave it. So when you shake up an alliance you aren't causing people to leave an alliance they want to leave most of the time, you are causing people to leave an alliance they would otherwise not want to leave. In what specific way does that benefit either the game or the affected players?
When we allow players to group together of their own volition, there are objective, quantifiable benefits to the game we can theoretically measure. For example, many studies have shown that membership in an MMO guild - an alliance in our case - improves engagement and retention. Meaning: players in groups play the game more and stay with the game longer than players that are not in groups and play solo. While I don't have specific numbers for MCOC, that seems to be true in every study of MMO gaming I've seen, which makes it likely true in general.
Periodically shaking up alliance memberships from outside rather than from the players' own actions would almost certainly act to counter that. People would have less attachment to their alliances and that would almost certainly reduce the beneficial effects of engagement and retention. That directly affects the game's bottom line financially, and it is also a proxy of how good a game you're running. If players are playing less and quitting faster, we would tend to accept that as the definition of a game being not as good as before.
So if we were discussing the merits of this change prior to it being implemented, I would say on one side of the scale you're potentially damaging engagement and retention, both of which are generally harmful to the game. Balanced against that, what would you present as counter-balancing those problems? Change is only healthy and good if it has healthy and good effects. What would those effects be?
Meaning: players in groups play the game more and stay with the game longer than players that are not in groups and play solo. While I don't have specific numbers for MCOC, that seems to be true in every study of MMO gaming I've seen, which makes it likely true in general.
Like throwing 30 drug addicts into a crack house. They enable each other.
Sorry about the analogy Kabam but it's fitting. The psychology is the same. Alliances help retain players through enabling their addiction.
Fine....how about 30 lone gambling addicts get together and form a gambling club. Their addictions are likely to grow not diminish. They'll encourage each other to continue gambling and anyone who wants to leave is pressured to stay. Sad, but predictable human psychology.
Meaning: players in groups play the game more and stay with the game longer than players that are not in groups and play solo. While I don't have specific numbers for MCOC, that seems to be true in every study of MMO gaming I've seen, which makes it likely true in general.
Like throwing 30 drug addicts into a crack house. They enable each other.
Sorry about the analogy Kabam but it's fitting. The psychology is the same. Alliances help retain players through enabling their addiction.
If that is how you feel, you should also believe all ethical game developers should remove all rewards from their games. Because rewards just enable addiction. If you like the game, you shouldn't need any rewards from it. Not units, not new champions, not rank up resources, not even leaderboards. All just psychological hooks to get you addicted to a game.
They placed these new bosses and sents in to make AQ harder without upping the rewards. They never gave a good explanation as to why they did it. Sorry but giving them any praise is ridiculous.
This change was the straw that broke a lot of backs. So many people got fed up and quit and retired. That's the only reason Kabam took action.
While I'm sure Aria is a very nice person and is knowledgeable about the game, she's been wrong on almost every thing she's said. Not by a little but by a hurculean amount. I'll usually just say I disagree instead of telling someone they're wrong but you sort of deserve it. No it's not the players fault and no alliances don't need to be artificially shaken up to avoid stagnation. This was purely Kabams mistake and they need to cowboy up and own it. They've actually taken some ownership which is good but that doesn't solve the problems. While they may have made AQ easier the damage is done, there is no fixing it. Kabam needs to do some community outreach and build some trust. The best way to do this is by fixing bug and performance issue. Nobody wants to fight lag and an opponent in war. Half of a fight last war was constant lag, how are you supposed to enjoy that? Or enjoy the 5 dollars of health pots to recover from game issue? The game has been around 3 years, pure skill and Capt Marvel have been broken a third of that.. unacceptable.
If that is how you feel, you should also believe all ethical game developers should remove all rewards from their games. Because rewards just enable addiction. If you like the game, you shouldn't need any rewards from it. Not units, not new champions, not rank up resources, not even leaderboards. All just psychological hooks to get you addicted to a game.
I don't know what to think about this.
But I'll say this about F2P games in general:
They're designed to addict players and keep them addicted.
Because right now I can't think of many good reasons that many of us play the same old repetitive arena match thousands of times of month. It must have a giant payoff that makes people do it.
If that is how you feel, you should also believe all ethical game developers should remove all rewards from their games. Because rewards just enable addiction. If you like the game, you shouldn't need any rewards from it. Not units, not new champions, not rank up resources, not even leaderboards. All just psychological hooks to get you addicted to a game.
I don't know what to think about this.
But I'll say this about F2P games in general:
They're designed to addict players and keep them addicted.
Because right now I can't think of many good reasons that many of us play the same old repetitive arena match thousands of times of month. It must have a giant payoff that makes people do it.
Many F2P games are in fact designed in part to addict players to playing the game. But that's true for many things. That's the main reason television shows use cliff hangers. Most people consider those kinds of tactics to be reasonable ways for content creators to try to hold the attention of their audience.
Why people do repetitive things is not as simple as there must be a gigantic payoff or they must be psychologically addicted. People lift weights, they run, they knit. You could argue that there's some payoff there, getting stronger, getting in better shape, getting a nice scarf. But the truth is many people simply like having a past time that they enjoy, even though each individual second of that past time isn't always terribly interesting on its own.
Personally, I'm someone with very long time horizons. I don't mind starting projects that will take months, years, even decades to complete. I don't mind playing a game where the rewards build up over long periods of time. That's actually always been my attraction to conventional MMOs in the past. I could play this single player game here, or I could log in to this other MMO and everything I do adds up over time. To me personally, that's the attraction of a game like MCOC. Every day every minute I play is accumulating progress of some kind. But of course everyone else has their own reasons for playing, and some of them may have less healthy reasons for doing so. But I don't think that's a necessary outcome.
That's not to say some games don't go the extra mile to addict players. But I don't consider MCOC to be a particularly bad actor in this regard.
1. Yes, many players rant on this forum without knowing what they are talking about. The people complaining about Wolverine, or how they get smashed because Sentinels can do X or Y, "they are broken". They haven't read Sentinel abilities. To them I say: Do your homework. Seven of Nine would advise you to adapt. Stop ranting! (I, for example, dropped AA from attack team in favour of BW. Between her and Rulk no Sentinel survives.) That being said, I don't like Sentinels and I see how, at certain prestige levels, they can be a problem.
2. I laughed at "I can't finish AQ with 3 champs intact, even though I don't need revives" -> sounds like the difficulty is spot on!
3. KABAM'S fault is doing this mid-season. They should just have waited until everything for the new season was ready. Then have 2 weeks of free AQ, collect data, adjust, and let the season really start
4. Communication about this was actually pretty good, even though the decision to inplement the changes now was a poor one.
The article is very well written but completely one-sided. There are so many parts that could be picked apart and almost all of the assumptions fall in a favour of Kabam. You could easily flip a lot of them around and they’d be no more or less valid, because we simply don’t know Kabam’s intentions.
On a side note, here have been numerous threads of sentinels and the changes to AQ which have all been closed down and redirected to the main thread, yet this one somehow remains open.
Funny that.
I've stayed quiet about the sentinel issues, But I disagree with this..
I read the sentinels abilities, I understood them. Players continuously voiced their concerns only to have them shot down with responses such as..
It's not more difficult it's just a change you need to adjust to..
How do you know it'll be more difficult, they melt at armour break champs..
If you take a champ that can be beaten by anyone and replace them with a champ that requires a "class advantage" (your words) or an armour break champ, Then it's clear the difficulty has been increased.. If they're immune to bleed and poison alone the difficulty has increased but then add the sentinels abilities on top of that and it's 100% clear the difficulty has been increased.. (plus someone needs to tell the skill sentinel he's meant to melt at armour break, he clearly missed the memo) No increase in rewards their not ready to do anything like that.. Just able to change all the champs for harder ones hmmm...
Then you commend them for pushing a fix to an issue they coursed, Laying 100% of the blame on the players? Helllll Nooo.. Once players started quiting the game it was obvious a fix was coming as instead of a positive effect on revenue it would begin having a negative one..
No matter how much sugar you attempt to pour on to this issue the salt is still overpowering..
Furthermore, The way they have fixed the issue is questionable..
Example: You suffer a budget cut, The best way to solve this is reduce the workers wages by 6% do you tell the workers that?.. No.. Instead you cut all overtime and 50% heath benefits.. The workers go crazy.. They complain.. Threaten to strike.. Hand in notice.. After the storm, You tell them you have a new solution. After looking at the budget again if they agree to a 6% cut in wages you can immediately reinstate overtime and 100% of the heath benefits.. The workers aren't happy about it but it's better then the situation they were in so accept it with much less complaining..
Kabams fix means Sentinels (still tougher then the previous champs) are still in AQ with no reward increase.. But players will be more likely to accept them now..
Anyone asking for kabam to compensate them shouldn't be belittled.. They most likely will get nothing but they still have the right to ask for it given they ARE NOT 100% to blame..
I think what dragon has written in spot on for the most part.
The real problem here is self entitlement of the players and the pink glasses that players wear looking in the mirror.
This game is not supposed to be easy. Its not supposed to be faceroll content. U are not meant to finish everything easily from the get go. People here complain about everything, not enough easy content , not enough hard content. Content that used to be easy last month is harder now...
The game is so popular because it offers struggling content, because u have to play/grind a lot for ur rewards. If there is no struggle there is no appreciation for having overcome that struggle and earned the rewards.
Instead of people complaining about sentinels they should have focused on how to beat them and maybe dedicated their next 1-2 rankups for them, perhaps alliances should have reshuffled paths accordingly instead of throwing tantrums like children. And like children u got what u wanted because you cried loud enough- they are needed. But as majority of spoiled young ones - that is not enough, you want some sort of compensation for not beeing able to get over yourselves and actually try and overcome the new obstacles.
P.s - only thing kabam did wrong here was that they missed the perfect time of starting new aq season. Due to war beeing on break. And there would be a lot less backlash should there would be a new carrot dangling in front of players faces.
There are several more marvel games out there. But this one does by far the best. And what is the major difference between mcoc and lets say future fight - in mcoc u have to work harder for your rewards
And those rewards should scale with the difficulty.
Act 6 will be harder that act 5 and will have better rewards to reflect that. Updating AQ maps with harder enemies should go hand in hand with updating rewards to reflect the increase in difficultly. It’s not rocket science.
Comments
Ah, that's a much different question.
With some conditions, I'd still keep my answer the same. Yes, because if change isn't consistently and constantly introduced, stagnation occurs. Now would I do it frequently? Hell no. Maybe once every 12-18 months.
By forcing that big a change - while it'll hurt in the short term, in the long term of the game, I think it benefits them to keep us changing and doing things differently. The only thing I'd say against doing something like this is that people who have forged friendships with their alliances aren't going to want to change, and that resistance might be a reason not to do it in the first place. But then again, people are always resistant to change.
So, yes. Because change is healthy and good, even if it doesn't feel like it in the short term.
-Now, I also work in a corporate world and understand the reasoning...except this change was done durine the middle of an AQ season. I am not upset as I have been playing since December 2014 and have seen a wide range of changes and updates. I do agree that Kabam is changing quickly, but every alliance and players have different champs to assist in the progression of the game. Not every player is as agile to learn fron the challenges. I feel that with the change ...coupled with the inconsistent game play like (block, parry and evade) have made the community upset.
Next, for the quick response to say apologize to our community. ..not for the Sentinel-loids but for the change during the middle of the AQ season. A change during the middle of the season is like a change in job title's and responsibilities but with no pay raise. It would be a bit of a sour taste in my mouth to add more challenging content without the rewards.
If the introduction of the class sentinels was offered at the end of the AQ season and we as the community had 2-4 weeks to prepare for the adjustments. But at the same time we knew there was going to be much better rewards for the change in difficulty similarly to the end of the next AQ season. ..then I feel everyone would be happen happier with the change. That is why by offering 3 rank down tickets, one for each star rating of a five, four and three star champ to assist with this unexpected challenges.
Lastly, any change can happen in a few weeks or several months ...no matter the size of the company. I agree that Kabam is still learning and we need to thank Kabam for its efforts. Also thank @Kabam DK , @Kabam Rose @Kabam Miike @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Loto @Kabam Zibiit for their efforts. Together we can make Kabam MCOC a much better experience.
Chicano509
*Reads.......reads....continues rea 😪🌃*
Sammee
a nice post but nope i disagree with you as we the players are NOT to blame. if kabam simply TESTED, like a beta, the aq changes before instead of letting us test it for them we wouldnt have a problem in the first place.
Kabam should have fixed this asap and to their credit they did and i say thank goodness NOT thank you
also why cant they work this fast on the bugs then? its been over a year since cm's sp2 worked properly not to mention the clear blocks dropping, double dashing back and dex issues still present for months.
why arent these being fixed just as fast?
Can you describe in what way this change is beneficial to either the players or the game. You mention stagnation, but here we aren't talking about content stagnation, we are talking about alliance stagnation. In what way does an alliance "stagnate?" If the players themselves become dissatisfied with an alliance for any reason, up to and including that they are bored in it, they themselves always have the option to leave it. So when you shake up an alliance you aren't causing people to leave an alliance they want to leave most of the time, you are causing people to leave an alliance they would otherwise not want to leave. In what specific way does that benefit either the game or the affected players?
When we allow players to group together of their own volition, there are objective, quantifiable benefits to the game we can theoretically measure. For example, many studies have shown that membership in an MMO guild - an alliance in our case - improves engagement and retention. Meaning: players in groups play the game more and stay with the game longer than players that are not in groups and play solo. While I don't have specific numbers for MCOC, that seems to be true in every study of MMO gaming I've seen, which makes it likely true in general.
Periodically shaking up alliance memberships from outside rather than from the players' own actions would almost certainly act to counter that. People would have less attachment to their alliances and that would almost certainly reduce the beneficial effects of engagement and retention. That directly affects the game's bottom line financially, and it is also a proxy of how good a game you're running. If players are playing less and quitting faster, we would tend to accept that as the definition of a game being not as good as before.
So if we were discussing the merits of this change prior to it being implemented, I would say on one side of the scale you're potentially damaging engagement and retention, both of which are generally harmful to the game. Balanced against that, what would you present as counter-balancing those problems? Change is only healthy and good if it has healthy and good effects. What would those effects be?
Like throwing 30 drug addicts into a crack house. They enable each other.
Sorry about the analogy Kabam but it's fitting. The psychology is the same. Alliances help retain players through enabling their addiction.
Fine....how about 30 lone gambling addicts get together and form a gambling club. Their addictions are likely to grow not diminish. They'll encourage each other to continue gambling and anyone who wants to leave is pressured to stay. Sad, but predictable human psychology.
If that is how you feel, you should also believe all ethical game developers should remove all rewards from their games. Because rewards just enable addiction. If you like the game, you shouldn't need any rewards from it. Not units, not new champions, not rank up resources, not even leaderboards. All just psychological hooks to get you addicted to a game.
This is the only award I'll give Kabam.
They placed these new bosses and sents in to make AQ harder without upping the rewards. They never gave a good explanation as to why they did it. Sorry but giving them any praise is ridiculous.
This change was the straw that broke a lot of backs. So many people got fed up and quit and retired. That's the only reason Kabam took action.
I don't know what to think about this.
But I'll say this about F2P games in general:
They're designed to addict players and keep them addicted.
Because right now I can't think of many good reasons that many of us play the same old repetitive arena match thousands of times of month. It must have a giant payoff that makes people do it.
I've been corrected...so half of the games life she's been broken. Nice.
Many F2P games are in fact designed in part to addict players to playing the game. But that's true for many things. That's the main reason television shows use cliff hangers. Most people consider those kinds of tactics to be reasonable ways for content creators to try to hold the attention of their audience.
Why people do repetitive things is not as simple as there must be a gigantic payoff or they must be psychologically addicted. People lift weights, they run, they knit. You could argue that there's some payoff there, getting stronger, getting in better shape, getting a nice scarf. But the truth is many people simply like having a past time that they enjoy, even though each individual second of that past time isn't always terribly interesting on its own.
Personally, I'm someone with very long time horizons. I don't mind starting projects that will take months, years, even decades to complete. I don't mind playing a game where the rewards build up over long periods of time. That's actually always been my attraction to conventional MMOs in the past. I could play this single player game here, or I could log in to this other MMO and everything I do adds up over time. To me personally, that's the attraction of a game like MCOC. Every day every minute I play is accumulating progress of some kind. But of course everyone else has their own reasons for playing, and some of them may have less healthy reasons for doing so. But I don't think that's a necessary outcome.
That's not to say some games don't go the extra mile to addict players. But I don't consider MCOC to be a particularly bad actor in this regard.
2. I laughed at "I can't finish AQ with 3 champs intact, even though I don't need revives" -> sounds like the difficulty is spot on!
3. KABAM'S fault is doing this mid-season. They should just have waited until everything for the new season was ready. Then have 2 weeks of free AQ, collect data, adjust, and let the season really start
4. Communication about this was actually pretty good, even though the decision to inplement the changes now was a poor one.
On a side note, here have been numerous threads of sentinels and the changes to AQ which have all been closed down and redirected to the main thread, yet this one somehow remains open.
Funny that.
Ok humour aside
I've stayed quiet about the sentinel issues, But I disagree with this..
I read the sentinels abilities, I understood them. Players continuously voiced their concerns only to have them shot down with responses such as..
It's not more difficult it's just a change you need to adjust to..
How do you know it'll be more difficult, they melt at armour break champs..
If you take a champ that can be beaten by anyone and replace them with a champ that requires a "class advantage" (your words) or an armour break champ, Then it's clear the difficulty has been increased.. If they're immune to bleed and poison alone the difficulty has increased but then add the sentinels abilities on top of that and it's 100% clear the difficulty has been increased.. (plus someone needs to tell the skill sentinel he's meant to melt at armour break, he clearly missed the memo) No increase in rewards their not ready to do anything like that.. Just able to change all the champs for harder ones hmmm...
Then you commend them for pushing a fix to an issue they coursed, Laying 100% of the blame on the players? Helllll Nooo.. Once players started quiting the game it was obvious a fix was coming as instead of a positive effect on revenue it would begin having a negative one..
No matter how much sugar you attempt to pour on to this issue the salt is still overpowering..
Example: You suffer a budget cut, The best way to solve this is reduce the workers wages by 6% do you tell the workers that?.. No.. Instead you cut all overtime and 50% heath benefits.. The workers go crazy.. They complain.. Threaten to strike.. Hand in notice.. After the storm, You tell them you have a new solution. After looking at the budget again if they agree to a 6% cut in wages you can immediately reinstate overtime and 100% of the heath benefits.. The workers aren't happy about it but it's better then the situation they were in so accept it with much less complaining..
Kabams fix means Sentinels (still tougher then the previous champs) are still in AQ with no reward increase.. But players will be more likely to accept them now..
Anyone asking for kabam to compensate them shouldn't be belittled.. They most likely will get nothing but they still have the right to ask for it given they ARE NOT 100% to blame..
The real problem here is self entitlement of the players and the pink glasses that players wear looking in the mirror.
This game is not supposed to be easy. Its not supposed to be faceroll content. U are not meant to finish everything easily from the get go. People here complain about everything, not enough easy content , not enough hard content. Content that used to be easy last month is harder now...
The game is so popular because it offers struggling content, because u have to play/grind a lot for ur rewards. If there is no struggle there is no appreciation for having overcome that struggle and earned the rewards.
Instead of people complaining about sentinels they should have focused on how to beat them and maybe dedicated their next 1-2 rankups for them, perhaps alliances should have reshuffled paths accordingly instead of throwing tantrums like children. And like children u got what u wanted because you cried loud enough- they are needed. But as majority of spoiled young ones - that is not enough, you want some sort of compensation for not beeing able to get over yourselves and actually try and overcome the new obstacles.
P.s - only thing kabam did wrong here was that they missed the perfect time of starting new aq season. Due to war beeing on break. And there would be a lot less backlash should there would be a new carrot dangling in front of players faces.
Act 6 will be harder that act 5 and will have better rewards to reflect that. Updating AQ maps with harder enemies should go hand in hand with updating rewards to reflect the increase in difficultly. It’s not rocket science.