On Tuesday June 5th at 11 am PDT, a select group of Summoners that use these two Masteries will receive in-game invitations to take part in the Beta Test. If your receive a Beta Invite, you will have until Thursday June 7th at 11 am PDT to opt in to the Beta Test.
From the official announcment..
The other guy is correct I only have points in Dexterity and I got invited to the beta testing, and I'm definitely not a top player in anyway shape or form so they did a good job inviting people this time.
On the beta testing, my account was probably under 200k at the time and my 4/40 RH was enough for an invite.
On the subject as a whole, entire threads of questions that get ignored (especially champion spotlights and bug reports) that could and should be answered by something other than "Hey, we'll get back to you" or "We are totally working on it" couple with cherry picking something worth a response like "Great question, completely off topic poster, the EQ runs for blah blah blah" while ignoring legitimate queries about the actual topic.
Being a Mod of any forum is a thankless job, you get bashed no matter what you do but the difference here compared to most special interest forums is I presume moderating is part of a paid job with queries from paying customers and I sometimes think more time is spent Moderating than serving the customer.
Happy customers generally say nothing, most of what we see here is unhappy customers wanting clarification or simple answers to sometimes complex questions but the role of a company representative to at least try to make those customers happy.
I've said it before, if I treated my customers the way I sometimes feel I am being treated by this company, I would be broke.
The AA debacle, well, enough has been said already but while we can debate the effect of the change there is no denying that the incorrect initial info followed by the complete lack of information and the attempt to hide the change in Patch notes means that the whole spiel from 12.0 regarding communication was mostly lip service.
The addition of drop rates didn't end the world but how hard would it have been to add them to ALL crystals instead of doing the bare minimum that complies with Apples TOS.
TL;DR
Communicate more, don't be afraid to elaborate and accept that while you as a supplier may see some complaints as trivial or your changes as vital to long term health of the game, your customers do not.
Just wanted to drop by and let you know that this discussion has been being monitored this morning to ensure it stays constructive and on the topic to what the OP is trying to talk about. A few comments had to be removed due to them either being nonconstructive OR false information. That said, we're planning on giving a more direct response on the matter in a couple hours. Ad0ra wants to swing in herself and comment, but first, she's gotta finish up her boxing training session.
I think her boxing training session not yet finished still. It's very long session. and said IN A COUPLE HOURS.
Just wanted to drop by and let you know that this discussion has been being monitored this morning to ensure it stays constructive and on the topic to what the OP is trying to talk about. A few comments had to be removed due to them either being nonconstructive OR false information. That said, we're planning on giving a more direct response on the matter in a couple hours. Ad0ra wants to swing in herself and comment, but first, she's gotta finish up her boxing training session.
Pretty Impressive to still be going after almost 24 hours lol.
Do hope it’s worth the wait, not a classic like the whole 12.0 “just adapt” comment
I think her boxing training session not yet finished still. It's very long session. and said IN A COUPLE HOURS.
I don't mind the extra waiting time if we have constructive feedbacks. I'm so glad that this thread is not removed.
These Q&A sessions, seems to be one of the easiest and most short-term efficient solution.
Pretty Impressive to still be going after almost 24 hours lol.
Do hope it’s worth the wait, not a classic like the whole 12.0 “just adapt” comment
Wow! That's indeed impressive. I can probably only go on for 2 hours top before dying of exhaustion. Looks like I have alot to look up to her in terms of fitness and stamina! Let me put this into my to-do list for year 2099.
You really thought that someone was going to answer on a Sunday?
Come on... you know better than that.
You're not all kids still believing in Santa.
Some mods may work on Sunday too. We can't tell among them, which Mod took their break on Sunday and which works on Sunday. Maybe some of them loves their work too much they decide to login from home after dinner? Sunday is NOT an Universal holidays, depending on where you are. We can't tell if all mods are physically based in Canada or there are mods working from cross-site from another countries. No we don't believe in Santa, but we believe in Kingpin, and we believe in RNG Gods too. lol
So much for more input and quick fixes. Mods promise to comment and don't. And then another thread about Kabam's terrible customer service and QA just got shut down after over 250 comments without so much as a response. @Kabam Zibiit Is this how you deal with situations you don't want to mess with? You just silence them and hope they go away? I'm just telling you. We're not going away.
I just spoke to Ad0ra, and she send her apologies. It looks like something went wrong when she tried to post, but she did try and get back to you all yesterday. Now, as for the topic at hand...
We're constantly working on improving communications between our Game Team and our players. We, as a community team, are embedded with the Game Team, and this allows us to work directly with them on Players concerns, communication of issues, asking questions and getting answers, and relaying player feedback. The questions you ask Mods, and the answers you receive, are from the Game Team. While we totally appreciate the request for direct access to the Game Teams themselves, the answers you receive will not be different just because the person answering you is. Q&As are something that we want to explore, but are pretty difficult to set up, because even taking a couple hours to host one takes the team member away from their regular duties, and those couple hours can mean a world of difference and make it a scheduling nightmare. We haven't given up on this idea, but need to work on some processes before this is possible.
One of our goals this year was to make more of those small, quick fixes, that you mentioned. However, when trying to act on that, we realized that even small fixes take a lot of time to incorporate. Every small change to a Champion requires tuning, testing, retuning, retesting, reretuning, reretesting, etc. We totally understand and appreciate how even a small tweak can make a world of difference, and are working on some for the future, but are not quite in a place where this is something we can expedite.
As for the Beta Program, it is not only accessible to Top Players. While every test will have different entry criteria, some of which may include how long you have been playing, or what tier of Alliance War, etc, that you may play in, this is not always the case. For instance, The Red Hulk and Luke Cage Beta test's only requirement was that you must have either one of them as a 4-Star or 5-Star Champion. We then made a random selection of Summoners from that pool, and added them to our Beta Test. Additionally, players have a lot of input. When you post a suggestion in our Forums, or send us a Tweet, we see those. We may not always be able to get back to every suggestion, but we do see them. And I don't just mean the Community Team; the game team is constantly looking at the Forums. I sometimes wake up to a message from somebody on the team asking me to reply to a certain thread that was posted at 3 am on a Sunday.
Like I said before, we are always working on improving our communications and relationship with the Community. Keep sharing your suggestions with us, and keep giving us feedback on the Game. We're always watching, and always improving the game.
I support that we need a greater interaction between creators and us. Players. The fact is that we often even mourn our bad luck on crystals, not because heroes are bad, but because they are not useful in the events we normally do that are Aliance Quest and Aliance War. No one sees an Iron Patriot win one fight a boss in AW because it's almost impossible without giving Time out. Please improve the conditions for the events. It may make them very difficult, but do not make them impossible. I love MCOC.
@Kabam Miike just a suggestion based on what countless other game companies do (some do this for games still in beta) but have a weekly/bi-weekly blog, in it you could talk about things you’ve all been working on since the last one, discuss some of the most recent concerns/issues brought up, maybe the occasional competition.
Doesn’t even have to be entirely game related, I know several of the blogs by other companies occasionally have one that just shows what they got upto at an event, such as E3, though for you guys that would be for if you went to NYCC
One of our goals this year was to make more of those small, quick fixes, that you mentioned. However, when trying to act on that, we realized that even small fixes take a lot of time to incorporate. Every small change to a Champion requires tuning, testing, retuning, retesting, reretuning, reretesting, etc. We totally understand and appreciate how even a small tweak can make a world of difference, and are working on some for the future, but are not quite in a place where this is something we can expedite.
I think this is one of the big things that players care a lot about, and nothing is visibly being done to update our old champs that are just honestly no good anymore. We want our 6* champs to be playable but the crystal was filled with old outdated champions which forces us to leave them on the bench in every single game mode. We need champs like DPX and Iron Fist to get updated because it is incredibly disappointing to pull our shiny new 6* champs only to realize we pulled a 6* that we literally cannot use due to the high competitiveness of the current game modes.
I think that the player base as a whole would appreciate the team at Kabam taking a break from all the new content and just focus on balancing some of the old favorite champs. All of them deserve to have some abilities that make them unique and fun to play. But in the current state of the game it's unfortunate that an increasing number of champs are just not fun to play with anymore. And it seems that a lot of these ended up in the 6* crystal which is kind of an insult to all your dedicated players.
For those who were part of the MD beta, that is a prime example on how to improve communication between players and kabam.
Kabam EIN did a wonderful job explaining every detail of the beta, taking time to explain the thinking behind the game dev team on why the change is needed. You could agree or disagree with the change but the way it was communicated and the level of detail regarding the implications on the gameplay and future content was amazing.
Also, the way bugs were thoroughly investigated and fixed in a timely manner, with constant communication betwee kabam EIN and the players. That was something I’ve never seen before and I hope its a sign of good things to come in the future.
Invite a set group of regular forum visitors and game players to participate in a private crowd source program in the forum.
Grab a few level headed and regularly constructive posters like @DrZola and @DNA3000 to name a couple, to converse on the priorities that players want in general without mods and devs being too overwhelmed by the bazillion, often duplicate, requests/complaints that get brought up forum-wide.
Pick a few who have earned a respectable spot to the "Forum insiders program" and allow them more direct access to the forum mods for clear discussion as well as player side perspective before responding. Take advantage of those willing to frequent the forum and are often well spoken of. It could add a new level of connection between Kabam and the community.
That is if anyone is interested in being in such a program...
That is if anyone is interested in being in such a program...
I've participated in something like that in the past. I would do it again if Kabam asked, but I'd strongly recommend that most of the participants in such a program be anonymous. I'm fairly bullet proof, but groups like this often draw considerable fire from the community, or at least some of its most vocal members. It is very difficult to represent the interests of people while they are trying to set you on fire.
If I was going to recommend a course of action moving forward when it comes to better communication with the players, there's two things I would recommend immediately. The first is to create a FAQ section on the forums that contains all of the common questions asked about the game, its operation, and game mechanics. Rather than have to search the entire boards (which doesn't really work when it comes to this) there would be a clearinghouse of all the information the developers have ever given the players about the game. The idea would be not just to centralize it and make it an actually useful tool for the players, but doing this would also allow for refining and improving that information over time. It would be easier to spot errors, or things that have changed. It would be a reference point for future discussion. This is something most games of this complexity have, but MCOC essentially lacks in any meaningful form.
The second thing would be to create a priorities list where all of the reported bugs were organized and listed, along with the current status of that bug. This would mirror the FAQ, but discussing things that are either broken or not working as intended. It should include both bugs that are currently being worked on and bugs that can't be fixed with current technology. It should even include things not working as intended but which no decision has yet been made about what to do about them. This would allow Kabam to better communicate intentions, and also inform the players about what's going on with regard to fixing problems on a broad scale. It should roughly mirror the release notes. This is what we fixed, this is what's still being worked on, only on a much larger and broader scale. This is something that some games do, and in my opinion the ones that have better relationships with their playerbase tend to have this more frequently.
MOST IMPORTANT is that both the FAQ and the bug list should be agenda-free. They should be managed on a purely factual basis with absolutely no slant or spin. If they are going to be trusted, they must not omit facts, spin the facts, or obfuscate the facts. When game companies start to use these tools to push an agenda regarding shaping the conversation about the game, they become immediately worthless. Warts and all, they should document what is, not what should be.
And to be very candid, so long as Kabam thinks a lot of information about how the game works and how they support the game is "proprietary information" that the players don't need to know or shouldn't be allowed to know, Kabam will not be able to make significant progress in these areas. So long as the players believe they have a right to know - and they do - and Kabam believes they don't, there will always be an adversarial relationship between the players and the developers. That is the most important thing that needs to change.
That is if anyone is interested in being in such a program...
I've participated in something like that in the past. I would do it again if Kabam asked, but I'd strongly recommend that most of the participants in such a program be anonymous. I'm fairly bullet proof, but groups like this often draw considerable fire from the community, or at least some of its most vocal members. It is very difficult to represent the interests of people while they are trying to set you on fire.
If I was going to recommend a course of action moving forward when it comes to better communication with the players, there's two things I would recommend immediately. The first is to create a FAQ section on the forums that contains all of the common questions asked about the game, its operation, and game mechanics. Rather than have to search the entire boards (which doesn't really work when it comes to this) there would be a clearinghouse of all the information the developers have ever given the players about the game. The idea would be not just to centralize it and make it an actually useful tool for the players, but doing this would also allow for refining and improving that information over time. It would be easier to spot errors, or things that have changed. It would be a reference point for future discussion. This is something most games of this complexity have, but MCOC essentially lacks in any meaningful form.
The second thing would be to create a priorities list where all of the reported bugs were organized and listed, along with the current status of that bug. This would mirror the FAQ, but discussing things that are either broken or not working as intended. It should include both bugs that are currently being worked on and bugs that can't be fixed with current technology. It should even include things not working as intended but which no decision has yet been made about what to do about them. This would allow Kabam to better communicate intentions, and also inform the players about what's going on with regard to fixing problems on a broad scale. It should roughly mirror the release notes. This is what we fixed, this is what's still being worked on, only on a much larger and broader scale. This is something that some games do, and in my opinion the ones that have better relationships with their playerbase tend to have this more frequently.
MOST IMPORTANT is that both the FAQ and the bug list should be agenda-free. They should be managed on a purely factual basis with absolutely no slant or spin. If they are going to be trusted, they must not omit facts, spin the facts, or obfuscate the facts. When game companies start to use these tools to push an agenda regarding shaping the conversation about the game, they become immediately worthless. Warts and all, they should document what is, not what should be.
And to be very candid, so long as Kabam thinks a lot of information about how the game works and how they support the game is "proprietary information" that the players don't need to know or shouldn't be allowed to know, Kabam will not be able to make significant progress in these areas. So long as the players believe they have a right to know - and they do - and Kabam believes they don't, there will always be an adversarial relationship between the players and the developers. That is the most important thing that needs to change.
...aaaand this is why you get my nomination for an anonymous position on the "Forum Insiders program".
there will always be an adversarial relationship between the players and the developers. That is the most important thing that needs to change.
This is definitely a problem. Unfortunately it leads to heated discussions and passionate posting that can cross the line, it’s almost like America right now.. people are so frustrated and feel so helpless that they lash out. I’ve done it.. and when I cross the line I take my warnings and move on. This isnt a public forum so free speech does not apply, but we are prone to speaking our minds regardless.
It’s just the attitude we get from Kabam, the dismissal, the condescension and feeling like we are insignificant despite investing time and money into a product and service that we cannot get accurate information or clarification on.
I don’t think design by community committee is necessarily a good thing, in fact it’s terrible, but feedback has to be considered on a whole. IMIW and Domino are great examples. No one likes autoblock parry or unavoidable damage and have not since day 1, yet here we go.
Wasn’t AW redesigned to remove things like thorns and starburst simply because unavoidable damage limited options?
Right back at square one, except it’s no longer a node, it’s a moving target that we have to deal with these abilities. Not that this is just about 2 champs, it’s the whole thing as a package that gets to be too much sometimes, and people react emotionally, and often cross the line in the process, which isn’t right either but damn, I can understand why.
there will always be an adversarial relationship between the players and the developers. That is the most important thing that needs to change.
This is definitely a problem. Unfortunately it leads to heated discussions and passionate posting that can cross the line, it’s almost like America right now.. people are so frustrated and feel so helpless that they lash out. I’ve done it.. and when I cross the line I take my warnings and move on. This isnt a public forum so free speech does not apply, but we are prone to speaking our minds regardless.
It’s just the attitude we get from Kabam, the dismissal, the condescension and feeling like we are insignificant despite investing time and money into a product and service that we cannot get accurate information or clarification on.
I don’t think design by community committee is necessarily a good thing, in fact it’s terrible, but feedback has to be considered on a whole. IMIW and Domino are great examples. No one likes autoblock parry or unavoidable damage and have not since day 1, yet here we go.
Wasn’t AW redesigned to remove things like thorns and starburst simply because unavoidable damage limited options?
Right back at square one, except it’s no longer a node, it’s a moving target that we have to deal with these abilities. Not that this is just about 2 champs, it’s the whole thing as a package that gets to be too much sometimes, and people react emotionally, and often cross the line in the process, which isn’t right either but damn, I can understand why.
For the record, the idea of a "community committee" that I had in mind would primarily be for communication not for game design. It would promote transparency and more distinct communication through adding a buffer of actual game playing and constructive forum contributing members. To get perspective and potentially avoid the verbal vomit that inevitably ensues. Kabam mods say they are listening, so why not a focus group to filter through occasionally?
Q&A sessions with answers and reasoning behind those decisions would go a long way. People in beta saw a glimpse of it. They explained the what and how and detailed the why behind it. Very refreshing compared to “that’s what it is, no more comments, thread closed” that we get here.
@DNA3000 deserves a medal for that concise post. It not only sums up exactly what can be done, and how to go about it, but also what is so inherently frustrating about Kabam's current lack of (meaningful) communication. Which is the main reason they receive so much flack from the community. Example: it has always baffled me why we are not updated about the status of acknowledged bugs. If they are being fixed, either actively or backlogged, what's the harm in sharing that information? That alone would make such a huge difference. To player frustration levels. To the amount of posts rehashing the same old issues. And, ultimately, to the long-term buying appetite of customers.
Take the Inequity mastery for instance: it's a well-known bug, was acknowledged by Kabam ages ago, an announced fix was retracted at the last moment, no official news since. Yet Kabam still actively promotes getting it (see CAP IW mastery recommendation), knowing full well that it's basically a broken product. It frustrates me that I have to dig up an old post about it, to try and coax an update out of Kabam. Which tends to boil down to 'We'll take it up with the team' to boot. I want to be informed proactively if possible, and lacking that option, to at least be able to find (updated!) info without having to jump through all kinds of hoops. I don't think a majority of the MCOC community likes to foam at the mouth, but a lot of us are. And lack of transparency is the reason.
Wasn’t AW redesigned to remove things like thorns and starburst simply because unavoidable damage limited options?
This I think highlights a part of the problem. Nothing ever is "simple" when it comes to game design and implementation. Almost every decision is a compromise among lots of competing and often mutually conflicting priorities. There's a lot of nuance to most game decisions, but nuance is one of those things you can't communicate at all when there isn't good communication between the players and the developers. The players won't acknowledge compromise between conflicting decisions, and the developers in kind will try to avoid representing any decision as being something other than a black and white straight forward act.
Even when the devs say that something is complicated, they don't discuss the why of it, and saying "its complicated" is really just an ironic way of oversimplifying the situation.
To me, the devs don't have a clear idea of what they want AW to be. They might think they do, but they don't. They are making local iterative design decisions to react to things, without an overarching guide to what the thing should look like overall. They think iteration will eventually get them to a good place, where ever that might be, without an overarching plan. That's not something particularly unique to Kabam, lots of game developers live by this rule. They all happen to be wrong, but they have a lot of company.
Ironically, if they were *forced* by their own rules to have to explain clearly to the playerbase what they were doing with AW on both the small scale and on the larger scale, they'd know just how sketchy their AW concepts are. Being forced to explain something to someone else is one of the easiest ways to find out just how well you understand the thing yourself. Better communication with the players wouldn't just help us, it would help them, in a lot of difficult to demonstrate ways until it actually happens.
Wasn’t AW redesigned to remove things like thorns and starburst simply because unavoidable damage limited options?
This I think highlights a part of the problem. Nothing ever is "simple" when it comes to game design and implementation. Almost every decision is a compromise among lots of competing and often mutually conflicting priorities. There's a lot of nuance to most game decisions, but nuance is one of those things you can't communicate at all when there isn't good communication between the players and the developers. The players won't acknowledge compromise between conflicting decisions, and the developers in kind will try to avoid representing any decision as being something other than a black and white straight forward act.
Even when the devs say that something is complicated, they don't discuss the why of it, and saying "its complicated" is really just an ironic way of oversimplifying the situation.
To me, the devs don't have a clear idea of what they want AW to be. They might think they do, but they don't. They are making local iterative design decisions to react to things, without an overarching guide to what the thing should look like overall. They think iteration will eventually get them to a good place, where ever that might be, without an overarching plan. That's not something particularly unique to Kabam, lots of game developers live by this rule. They all happen to be wrong, but they have a lot of company.
Ironically, if they were *forced* by their own rules to have to explain clearly to the playerbase what they were doing with AW on both the small scale and on the larger scale, they'd know just how sketchy their AW concepts are. Being forced to explain something to someone else is one of the easiest ways to find out just how well you understand the thing yourself. Better communication with the players wouldn't just help us, it would help them, in a lot of difficult to demonstrate ways until it actually happens.
ha. How did I end up getting credit for that quote? that was @JRock808 I believe. Well put though sir.
Wasn’t AW redesigned to remove things like thorns and starburst simply because unavoidable damage limited options?
This I think highlights a part of the problem. Nothing ever is "simple" when it comes to game design and implementation. Almost every decision is a compromise among lots of competing and often mutually conflicting priorities. There's a lot of nuance to most game decisions, but nuance is one of those things you can't communicate at all when there isn't good communication between the players and the developers. The players won't acknowledge compromise between conflicting decisions, and the developers in kind will try to avoid representing any decision as being something other than a black and white straight forward act.
Even when the devs say that something is complicated, they don't discuss the why of it, and saying "its complicated" is really just an ironic way of oversimplifying the situation.
To me, the devs don't have a clear idea of what they want AW to be. They might think they do, but they don't. They are making local iterative design decisions to react to things, without an overarching guide to what the thing should look like overall. They think iteration will eventually get them to a good place, where ever that might be, without an overarching plan. That's not something particularly unique to Kabam, lots of game developers live by this rule. They all happen to be wrong, but they have a lot of company.
Ironically, if they were *forced* by their own rules to have to explain clearly to the playerbase what they were doing with AW on both the small scale and on the larger scale, they'd know just how sketchy their AW concepts are. Being forced to explain something to someone else is one of the easiest ways to find out just how well you understand the thing yourself. Better communication with the players wouldn't just help us, it would help them, in a lot of difficult to demonstrate ways until it actually happens.
ha. How did I end up getting credit for that quote? that was @JRock808 I believe. Well put though sir.
I screwed up the quote by mistake. I can't edit it to correct: apologies.
It is a public secret that the relation between players and Kabam are not well. Every gaming company knows commercial succes is based on word of mouth. Kabam has done a lot to increase customer satisfaction. There is more transparency, more player-mod interaction and more communication. But can Kabam do more?
From my experience with another gaming company who experienced the same problems, I could witness some good practises regarding player-mod communication I wish to share.
Hold regular Q&A's. Players have questions, I see them all the time in this forum category and others. It is very frustrating for players to not get an answer and very time-consuming for mods to repeat (often the same) answers. So I suggest to A. hold regular Q&A sessions, B. make a forum archive with all those Q&A sessions and C. make a sticky in General Discussion with FAQ. Q&A sessions in the other gaming company were done by top content makers and yearly, the CEO himself. Players would be able to post questions in the forums and the mods would answer them. It cut down the clutter in the forums and this type of engagement with the player base was universally well-liked.
Focus on quick-fixes. To the astonishment of that other gaming company, quick-fixes were very popular, often more popular than big updates. The game is often riddled with small nuisances which can be quickly fixed. In MCOC, this could be stat-changes, small boosts to ability performance or small reworks of old champions. These are often fixes that take little time and money but increase customer satisfaction a lot. Everyone wins! Make the patch notes as important as any other big update and establish an archive for players to consult.
More player input. Currently, there is a beta programme but this is only accessible for top players. While this is better than nothing, it risks alienating players who are maybe not as famous but have equally good ideas, or content that is custom-made for these top players while not taking medium to low players into account. I suggest to make a sticky where regular players can suggest their own quick fixes. Credit changes to the game that are made thanks to player suggestions. If you give players a feeling their suggestions can become reality, it will encourage dedication to players to really try to make this game better. This will spark creativity and perhaps, inspires Kabam of that one big score.
Discuss.
Only thing that isnt on target with this post is the comment about the beta program. Its not for the top players at all. Both times they've done it, they picked people at random. Ive got about 5 people in my alliance that were picked for the MD/Dex testing. We arent top players by any means at all.
Not really at random. You had to have both RH and Luke Cage as a 4* when those where changed and you had to have MD and Dex unlocked (and I assume have points in them, but not 100% on that).
Being a top player had nothing to do with it, so you're completely right about that. I was about to explain that to OP myself.
But you won't see noobs with only 2*'s and 3*'s in the Beta programme. So yeah, maybe not only top but at least mid players. I won't be chosen, as I don't have MD unlocked.
I would edit it in the OP, but sadly still no decent edit function!
Comments
The other guy is correct I only have points in Dexterity and I got invited to the beta testing, and I'm definitely not a top player in anyway shape or form so they did a good job inviting people this time.
On the subject as a whole, entire threads of questions that get ignored (especially champion spotlights and bug reports) that could and should be answered by something other than "Hey, we'll get back to you" or "We are totally working on it" couple with cherry picking something worth a response like "Great question, completely off topic poster, the EQ runs for blah blah blah" while ignoring legitimate queries about the actual topic.
Being a Mod of any forum is a thankless job, you get bashed no matter what you do but the difference here compared to most special interest forums is I presume moderating is part of a paid job with queries from paying customers and I sometimes think more time is spent Moderating than serving the customer.
Happy customers generally say nothing, most of what we see here is unhappy customers wanting clarification or simple answers to sometimes complex questions but the role of a company representative to at least try to make those customers happy.
I've said it before, if I treated my customers the way I sometimes feel I am being treated by this company, I would be broke.
The AA debacle, well, enough has been said already but while we can debate the effect of the change there is no denying that the incorrect initial info followed by the complete lack of information and the attempt to hide the change in Patch notes means that the whole spiel from 12.0 regarding communication was mostly lip service.
The addition of drop rates didn't end the world but how hard would it have been to add them to ALL crystals instead of doing the bare minimum that complies with Apples TOS.
TL;DR
Communicate more, don't be afraid to elaborate and accept that while you as a supplier may see some complaints as trivial or your changes as vital to long term health of the game, your customers do not.
I think her boxing training session not yet finished still. It's very long session. and said IN A COUPLE HOURS.
Pretty Impressive to still be going after almost 24 hours lol.
Do hope it’s worth the wait, not a classic like the whole 12.0 “just adapt” comment
Wow! That's indeed impressive. I can probably only go on for 2 hours top before dying of exhaustion. Looks like I have alot to look up to her in terms of fitness and stamina! Let me put this into my to-do list for year 2099.
Come on... you know better than that.
You're not all kids still believing in Santa.
Some mods may work on Sunday too. We can't tell among them, which Mod took their break on Sunday and which works on Sunday. Maybe some of them loves their work too much they decide to login from home after dinner? Sunday is NOT an Universal holidays, depending on where you are. We can't tell if all mods are physically based in Canada or there are mods working from cross-site from another countries. No we don't believe in Santa, but we believe in Kingpin, and we believe in RNG Gods too.
I think so. Maybe simply tagging her might work?
@Ad0ra_ done with your boxing session yet?
I just spoke to Ad0ra, and she send her apologies. It looks like something went wrong when she tried to post, but she did try and get back to you all yesterday. Now, as for the topic at hand...
We're constantly working on improving communications between our Game Team and our players. We, as a community team, are embedded with the Game Team, and this allows us to work directly with them on Players concerns, communication of issues, asking questions and getting answers, and relaying player feedback. The questions you ask Mods, and the answers you receive, are from the Game Team. While we totally appreciate the request for direct access to the Game Teams themselves, the answers you receive will not be different just because the person answering you is. Q&As are something that we want to explore, but are pretty difficult to set up, because even taking a couple hours to host one takes the team member away from their regular duties, and those couple hours can mean a world of difference and make it a scheduling nightmare. We haven't given up on this idea, but need to work on some processes before this is possible.
One of our goals this year was to make more of those small, quick fixes, that you mentioned. However, when trying to act on that, we realized that even small fixes take a lot of time to incorporate. Every small change to a Champion requires tuning, testing, retuning, retesting, reretuning, reretesting, etc. We totally understand and appreciate how even a small tweak can make a world of difference, and are working on some for the future, but are not quite in a place where this is something we can expedite.
As for the Beta Program, it is not only accessible to Top Players. While every test will have different entry criteria, some of which may include how long you have been playing, or what tier of Alliance War, etc, that you may play in, this is not always the case. For instance, The Red Hulk and Luke Cage Beta test's only requirement was that you must have either one of them as a 4-Star or 5-Star Champion. We then made a random selection of Summoners from that pool, and added them to our Beta Test. Additionally, players have a lot of input. When you post a suggestion in our Forums, or send us a Tweet, we see those. We may not always be able to get back to every suggestion, but we do see them. And I don't just mean the Community Team; the game team is constantly looking at the Forums. I sometimes wake up to a message from somebody on the team asking me to reply to a certain thread that was posted at 3 am on a Sunday.
Like I said before, we are always working on improving our communications and relationship with the Community. Keep sharing your suggestions with us, and keep giving us feedback on the Game. We're always watching, and always improving the game.
Doesn’t even have to be entirely game related, I know several of the blogs by other companies occasionally have one that just shows what they got upto at an event, such as E3, though for you guys that would be for if you went to NYCC
I think this is one of the big things that players care a lot about, and nothing is visibly being done to update our old champs that are just honestly no good anymore. We want our 6* champs to be playable but the crystal was filled with old outdated champions which forces us to leave them on the bench in every single game mode. We need champs like DPX and Iron Fist to get updated because it is incredibly disappointing to pull our shiny new 6* champs only to realize we pulled a 6* that we literally cannot use due to the high competitiveness of the current game modes.
I think that the player base as a whole would appreciate the team at Kabam taking a break from all the new content and just focus on balancing some of the old favorite champs. All of them deserve to have some abilities that make them unique and fun to play. But in the current state of the game it's unfortunate that an increasing number of champs are just not fun to play with anymore. And it seems that a lot of these ended up in the 6* crystal which is kind of an insult to all your dedicated players.
Kabam EIN did a wonderful job explaining every detail of the beta, taking time to explain the thinking behind the game dev team on why the change is needed. You could agree or disagree with the change but the way it was communicated and the level of detail regarding the implications on the gameplay and future content was amazing.
Also, the way bugs were thoroughly investigated and fixed in a timely manner, with constant communication betwee kabam EIN and the players. That was something I’ve never seen before and I hope its a sign of good things to come in the future.
How about a forum insiders group?
Invite a set group of regular forum visitors and game players to participate in a private crowd source program in the forum.
Grab a few level headed and regularly constructive posters like @DrZola and @DNA3000 to name a couple, to converse on the priorities that players want in general without mods and devs being too overwhelmed by the bazillion, often duplicate, requests/complaints that get brought up forum-wide.
Pick a few who have earned a respectable spot to the "Forum insiders program" and allow them more direct access to the forum mods for clear discussion as well as player side perspective before responding. Take advantage of those willing to frequent the forum and are often well spoken of. It could add a new level of connection between Kabam and the community.
That is if anyone is interested in being in such a program...
I've participated in something like that in the past. I would do it again if Kabam asked, but I'd strongly recommend that most of the participants in such a program be anonymous. I'm fairly bullet proof, but groups like this often draw considerable fire from the community, or at least some of its most vocal members. It is very difficult to represent the interests of people while they are trying to set you on fire.
If I was going to recommend a course of action moving forward when it comes to better communication with the players, there's two things I would recommend immediately. The first is to create a FAQ section on the forums that contains all of the common questions asked about the game, its operation, and game mechanics. Rather than have to search the entire boards (which doesn't really work when it comes to this) there would be a clearinghouse of all the information the developers have ever given the players about the game. The idea would be not just to centralize it and make it an actually useful tool for the players, but doing this would also allow for refining and improving that information over time. It would be easier to spot errors, or things that have changed. It would be a reference point for future discussion. This is something most games of this complexity have, but MCOC essentially lacks in any meaningful form.
The second thing would be to create a priorities list where all of the reported bugs were organized and listed, along with the current status of that bug. This would mirror the FAQ, but discussing things that are either broken or not working as intended. It should include both bugs that are currently being worked on and bugs that can't be fixed with current technology. It should even include things not working as intended but which no decision has yet been made about what to do about them. This would allow Kabam to better communicate intentions, and also inform the players about what's going on with regard to fixing problems on a broad scale. It should roughly mirror the release notes. This is what we fixed, this is what's still being worked on, only on a much larger and broader scale. This is something that some games do, and in my opinion the ones that have better relationships with their playerbase tend to have this more frequently.
MOST IMPORTANT is that both the FAQ and the bug list should be agenda-free. They should be managed on a purely factual basis with absolutely no slant or spin. If they are going to be trusted, they must not omit facts, spin the facts, or obfuscate the facts. When game companies start to use these tools to push an agenda regarding shaping the conversation about the game, they become immediately worthless. Warts and all, they should document what is, not what should be.
And to be very candid, so long as Kabam thinks a lot of information about how the game works and how they support the game is "proprietary information" that the players don't need to know or shouldn't be allowed to know, Kabam will not be able to make significant progress in these areas. So long as the players believe they have a right to know - and they do - and Kabam believes they don't, there will always be an adversarial relationship between the players and the developers. That is the most important thing that needs to change.
...aaaand this is why you get my nomination for an anonymous position on the "Forum Insiders program".
This is definitely a problem. Unfortunately it leads to heated discussions and passionate posting that can cross the line, it’s almost like America right now.. people are so frustrated and feel so helpless that they lash out. I’ve done it.. and when I cross the line I take my warnings and move on. This isnt a public forum so free speech does not apply, but we are prone to speaking our minds regardless.
It’s just the attitude we get from Kabam, the dismissal, the condescension and feeling like we are insignificant despite investing time and money into a product and service that we cannot get accurate information or clarification on.
I don’t think design by community committee is necessarily a good thing, in fact it’s terrible, but feedback has to be considered on a whole. IMIW and Domino are great examples. No one likes autoblock parry or unavoidable damage and have not since day 1, yet here we go.
Wasn’t AW redesigned to remove things like thorns and starburst simply because unavoidable damage limited options?
Right back at square one, except it’s no longer a node, it’s a moving target that we have to deal with these abilities. Not that this is just about 2 champs, it’s the whole thing as a package that gets to be too much sometimes, and people react emotionally, and often cross the line in the process, which isn’t right either but damn, I can understand why.
For the record, the idea of a "community committee" that I had in mind would primarily be for communication not for game design. It would promote transparency and more distinct communication through adding a buffer of actual game playing and constructive forum contributing members. To get perspective and potentially avoid the verbal vomit that inevitably ensues. Kabam mods say they are listening, so why not a focus group to filter through occasionally?
Take the Inequity mastery for instance: it's a well-known bug, was acknowledged by Kabam ages ago, an announced fix was retracted at the last moment, no official news since. Yet Kabam still actively promotes getting it (see CAP IW mastery recommendation), knowing full well that it's basically a broken product. It frustrates me that I have to dig up an old post about it, to try and coax an update out of Kabam. Which tends to boil down to 'We'll take it up with the team' to boot. I want to be informed proactively if possible, and lacking that option, to at least be able to find (updated!) info without having to jump through all kinds of hoops. I don't think a majority of the MCOC community likes to foam at the mouth, but a lot of us are. And lack of transparency is the reason.
This I think highlights a part of the problem. Nothing ever is "simple" when it comes to game design and implementation. Almost every decision is a compromise among lots of competing and often mutually conflicting priorities. There's a lot of nuance to most game decisions, but nuance is one of those things you can't communicate at all when there isn't good communication between the players and the developers. The players won't acknowledge compromise between conflicting decisions, and the developers in kind will try to avoid representing any decision as being something other than a black and white straight forward act.
Even when the devs say that something is complicated, they don't discuss the why of it, and saying "its complicated" is really just an ironic way of oversimplifying the situation.
To me, the devs don't have a clear idea of what they want AW to be. They might think they do, but they don't. They are making local iterative design decisions to react to things, without an overarching guide to what the thing should look like overall. They think iteration will eventually get them to a good place, where ever that might be, without an overarching plan. That's not something particularly unique to Kabam, lots of game developers live by this rule. They all happen to be wrong, but they have a lot of company.
Ironically, if they were *forced* by their own rules to have to explain clearly to the playerbase what they were doing with AW on both the small scale and on the larger scale, they'd know just how sketchy their AW concepts are. Being forced to explain something to someone else is one of the easiest ways to find out just how well you understand the thing yourself. Better communication with the players wouldn't just help us, it would help them, in a lot of difficult to demonstrate ways until it actually happens.
ha. How did I end up getting credit for that quote? that was @JRock808 I believe. Well put though sir.
I screwed up the quote by mistake. I can't edit it to correct: apologies.
I would edit it in the OP, but sadly still no decent edit function!