The goal of this post is to suggest a more accurate way for Kabam to acknowledge player skills in MCOC. There's been a large amount of new and creative content released this year. AW Seasons, previously unseen nodes, Infinity Dungeons, last month's Master/Uncollected Infinity Gauntlet Thanos Boss Fight, and the addition of champion sizes have kept MCOC from going stale. Given the recent examination of terms of service violations in AW Seasons, I thought of a new way to better reward players who don't resort to TOS violations when playing MCOC competitive game modes.
Background:
1) We were told AW Seasons was designed to determine which players/alliances were the most skilled in the game. The importance of skill is at an all time high, but $ remains the most important attribute in MCOC. Examples of this are master tier AW players who go into every AW fight with massive amounts of boosts aka enough boosts to go through an odin's worth of units every 1-3 AWs. "Super skilled players" is a term used frequently on the forum - IMHO "super skilled spenders" or "super skilled boosters" are more accurate terms. Here are two fights by other players that I think are much better demonstrations of skills in MCOC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaHIKFsmXWE&t=13s
This was posted by a master tier AW player on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh4XplKEHL8
This was posted by a member of an MCOC Facebook group
Boosts don't disqualify players from being skilled, but intercepting and not taking any damage against stun immune evade champions with special attacks that difficult to evade require a lot more skill than spamming parry and repetitive attacks.
2) Outside of AW, Legends Titles and Arena Titles are the lone criteria available for acknowledging players' skills/dedication. This year's movie event quests have had some really cool features. Prove Yourself was an awesome node addition, and this month's addition of champion sizes is an even more awesome addition that opens MCOC up to a lot of new possibilities. Despite Kabam's game design creativity with these new features, Legends Titles continue to be dominated by players who have the same 5* champions at 5/65 (Blade, Sparky, Medusa, Archangel, Iceman, and recently Corvus Glaive). I'm sure some disagree with me, but evading predictable attacks/well-time blocks (parry)/and heavy attacks are not the best ways to measure skill. Furthermore, arena titles are dominated by players who have the $ to spend refreshing champions.
Summary:
- AW Titles acknowledge which players are both spenders and skilled, Legends Titles currently acknowledge which players have specific champions at 5/65 (or a 4/55 Corvus Glaive), and Arena Titles acknowledge which players are spenders and dedicated. Skill on its own remains overlooked, here's how to change that.
Suggestion:
Create a new title/leaderboard for players that rewards skill above everything else. Marvel has certain designations for characters who are masters of their field. Dr. Strange is the Sorcerer Supreme and Hank Pym (Ant-Man) is the Scientist Supreme. Therefore, the name of this new title/leaderboard could be called "Summoner Supreme". This new title/leaderboard would operate similarly to how the Legends Titles/Leaderboard operate, with a few differences:
1) Completion time is not the only criteria used. Instead take the top 150 scores from multiple categories, with each category being weighted. For example, completion time would contribute 25% of the points total, total damage taken would contribute 50% of the points total, and the remaining 25% of the points total would be allocated to factors that change for every event quest.
2) Some ideas for factors that change for every event quest include:
- Using champions of a certain class
- Using champions that have certain tags
- Using different teams of champions based on certain synergies
- Finishing fights in different ways (i.e., Vanishing Blows style)
- Number of attacks intercepted
3) Rewards would include in-game resources not offered through exiting titles. For example:
- Top 150 players for each event quest receive a "Summoner Supreme" title and rewards that include 5 T1AC and 500K gold
- Top 5-10 players for each event quest receive a "Summoner Supreme" title and rewards that include 10 T1AC, 1 mil gold, and 18K T2AC shards
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I'm not suggesting AW/Legends/Arena Titles be thrown away or devalued in any way. I'm suggesting that a new title/leaderboard be created in a way that players' skills are rewarded to a greater extent than ever before in MCOC. A new title/leaderboard of this type would also decrease the chance of the same champions steamrolling their way to the top 150 every month. Moreso, it would be less important for players to constantly upgrade to the newest iPhone to improve their chances of earning this type of title.
Lastly, I would also suggest this new title/leaderboard have an additional verification method to prevent players from violating Kabam's TOS to qualify for this new title/leaderboard. Mercenaries continue to devalue the integrity of MOCC, an additional verification method could help prevent this from continuing to happen. I don't know what technological methods Kabam has at their disposal, so I'm unable to give suggestions as to what kinds of verification methods would be an option.
What do you guys think?
