Act 1 Rewards Buff???
Notsavage19
Member Posts: 2,817 ★★★★★
So Act 1 rewards are getting their much-needed buff, but I'm wondering why players that have completed Act 1 before the 90 day period aren’t eligible for the rewards. This was the whole issue underlying the NaCull problem, where some players were unfairly given an advantage when others were not. Why reward some and not all players? Consistency guys, consistency. You've decided that rewards should be fairly given to all players (hence the fixing of the NaCull incident), so why should this be any different?
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Edit: nvm the units are the same.
The rewards we earned when we did Act 1 were appropriate for the leveling and progress curve back then. We got to build upon those rewards over time, and got a lot of advantages for getting here first and moving up with the game. The players playing today face a completely different game than we faced. They face harder content, as the difficulty curve has risen. And they face an existing population of players that is dramatically stronger than what we faced, simply because such players didn't even exist.
None of this is "fair" in an absolute, objective sense, and can't be made absolutely fair. There are pros and cons to being a vet verses being a newbee. One of the advantages of being a newbee is the game's reward structure is way better than when we vets started. But that's because the game they face is so much bigger, so much broader, and so much faster than when we vets started. Eventually, the starting blocks of the game have to be adjusted to make sense in the game's current state. And if you just finished Act 1 a week ago, you should probably be included in that adjustment. But for vets that did Act 1 ages ago, we shouldn't be getting those adjustments because those adjustments are, in a sense, specifically to help them close the gap with us. Giving them to us also would defeat the purpose of doing it at all.
Like I said before, the core problem here isn't the actual rewards, since the rewards don't impact me that much, but to others, it might. What if you completed Act 1 a while ago, but haven't really played much in the past 3 months? Should you still get the rewards because they'll really help you out with Act 2? The main problem is favoritism. Now I'm not bashing Kabam, but to some people, it might seem as though Kabam is favoring the newer players. After the whole mess with NaCull, it would seem that they would be keener on keeping everything fair throughout the player base, so why should this be an exception? It's more about the gesture than anything, really. A gesture to show that you believe in the notion that players should be rewarded unprejudiced.
Now we have a problem. Why is Kabam not distributing these rewards to all players when it clearly isn't fair to everyone?
I understand that as the game progresses in development, a player's wants and more importantly needs, grow. The rewards were a way to keep up with the current meta of the game, but the content stayed the same. Why should they be rewarded in greater quantity for completing the same content as we did?
This is not about rewards. I don't need the rewards. I care about consistency and putting what you preach to action, which Kabam has yet to do in regard to this situation.
I have zero idea how the rebalancing of Namor and Cull Obsidian have anything to do with act 1 rewards buff. Namor and Cull had changes made to them that technically effected them "negatively". Because those changes were considered negative, they gave the players who owned either or both of those champions the choice to sell them and get back what they out into them. If you didn't have either champion, you didn't get anything. Its no where near the same as what you are trying to refer to. If you're in act 3 or beyond, you probably dont need what little you'll get from the reward changes. I'd drop the topic and move on.
You're defining "fair" to be "veterans get to use their resources against beginners" because that's fair, but beginners can't get any different rewards than veterans did because that's unfair. That's a completely arbitrary choice.
Let's approach this from another angle. You think content = rewards, so if everyone does the same content they should get the same rewards. But rewards don't have absolute value, and the developers don't treat them that way, and the game isn't managed that way in the long run. Instead, rewards only have relative value. When we did Act 1 we spent time and resources to do that content. That time and those resources themselves had some value, relative to what we could do with them. At the time we veterans did Act 1, the rewards had relatively good value, compared to all other options in the game. But today, Act 1 rewards have to compete against other existing options. Even the calendar is a source of rewards that didn't exist at all at one time, and has gotten better over time. Such rewards devalue the rewards from Act 1 over time. At some point if they aren't adjusted their relative value can drop to too low a value in the context of the state of the game.
The players doing Act 1 now (before the reward change) were, on a relative basis, getting *less* rewards than we did, relative to the opportunities the game contains today. And that relative value is more important than the static value of the rewards, because it is the relative value that players need to perceive as being "worth it" for the content.
And finally, there is the question of the precedent this sets. If you hand out Act 1 completion rewards to everyone, you set the expectation that this is something players are owed. So you're going to have to do this for Act 2, Act 3, even Act 5 and 6 when the time comes. Act 1's rewards are relatively trivial in value, but that's not true all the way up the scale. You have to consider what this does to the in-game resource economies every time you do this. This places a much higher burden on adjusting older content, and that means it is less likely to happen at all. Which means adjustments that the game's reward systems say should happen don't happen because we improperly linked them to other parts of the game that have nothing to do with them, out of a misguided attempt to be "fair."
I'm a long-term vet that has done everything up to Act 6, and I don't need those back-dated rewards out of "fairness." I can only speak for myself, but I would rather Kabam balance the lower game that I'm no longer a part of based on the needs of lower tier players, and only on the basis of the needs of lower tier players. I don't want them to be thinking about me, or anyone else like me, when they make those decisions. If they choose to give us some compensation for changes to the lower tiers of the game, that's cool and I'll take it. But if they choose not to, I'm also fine with that and I see nothing good coming out of demanding Kabam go back and make things "fair" for me relative to low tier players. I don't need any help when it comes to those players: they do.
You are bringing up events that have nothing to do with changing rewards to act 1. You have said they don't matter to you. If they dont matter, then this post has no real reason to exist.
The Variant 1 Rank Up Gem issue affected very, very few people and that is why they didn't reverse the rank ups. They didn't compensate the entire player base.
They let anyone who got the wrong champ from the Void/Sentry crystals keep the wrong champ but didn't compensate the entire player base.
They let anyone who did the boss rush twice keep the extra 10k shards but from what I remember, they didn't compensate the entire player base.
So all 3 events you listed, didn't lead to everyone getting something.
Kabam has deemed that the biggest impact of the change of the act 1 rewards is anyone that has done act 1 100% or completed 1st time through within the last 90 days. Anyone after is probably past the point where they need what they possibly missed out on. This is a completely fair decision.
This isnt the first time they've done this either. When progression titles were introduced, they changed rewards for acts 1-3 and reduced the energy requirements for act 4 from 3 to 2 per step. They also made the decision at that time to issues and reward differences to those who did any of those acts in the last 90 days and sent them a bunch of energy refills.
You are absolutely making a way bigger deal out of this than needs be. Its like all these people who are buying up toilet paper because they think that's gonna save them from Covid-19 when all you need to wash your hands well and don't lick people and things. Much like all you need to do is wash your hands of this topic.
Covid-19 is nothing to be ignored, and neither are inconsistencies in thinking.
Why is it so important to lessen the gap between the newer players and the veterans? We spent lots of time and effort to get to where we are, and in the future, it's going to take only a fraction of that time for them to progress to get to where we are. Why make it easier for them? I get changing rewards as the meta shifts, but those rewards benefit everyone, from beginner to endgame.
Finally, I want them to update rewards, but I also want them to acknowledge the veterans. As you said, the rewards don't affect you, so they won't affect the economy if they were given to you. Think about it like this. You give a poor man $100. Then you give a millionaire $100. Nothing changed because the $100 the millionaire was given is so inconsequential compared to the rest of his money, just like the in-game economy will not shift drastically because Kabam decided to give the veterans low-tier rewards.
Is Kabam not buffing the rewards in favor of the lower-tier players? Is this not benefiting the top-tier players in any way? Is this not biased?
The same people who predictably complain about nearly every reward that is announced for nearly every event are now upset that they won’t get a handful of extra stuff to rank up 2*? What is that like?
I need to stay off the forums. No doubt about it.
Is this not benefiting the top-tier players in anyway? No it's not, nor is it affecting anything they do. It has zero impact on anyone that is done with act 3. Zero.
Is this not biased? No it's not. Its a business strategy that many games use. Very common. Marvel Strike Force constantly changes their path rewards and no one cares.
No one is being favored or discriminated against.
This is a free to play game, and free to play games run on certain principles. One of these is that unlike subscription model games that focus on retaining existing players F2P games focus on managing turnover. An observable fact is that when players play games for free, there's a lower engagement with the game compared to subscription games. Subscriptions are a form of commitment, and that mental commitment tends to increase the retention of players. But when players do not need to put any skin in the game, so to speak, it is much easier for them to walk away.
But the compensating factor is that free to play players attract a lot more players than subscription games. You don't need to keep as high a percentage of them compared to subscription games, because you have so much more "foot traffic" of players giving your game a try.
In this model, it is very important to keep the game attractive to new players. And one thing that turns off new players is when a game has been around too long. A game that's been around too long contains a higher percentage of long time veterans with huge piles of resources that offer them enormous advantages. You can say they "deserve" them, and they do, but by the same token newer players have no obligation to join them. That new game that just started up down the block offers a much better opportunity to them, so that's where they will tend to go.
To balance the advantage that veterans have with the need to keep the game attractive to new players, which is essential to all free to play games, game developers in effect use inflation. The net effect of inflation is to make old stuff less valuable compared to new stuff. That's what inflation does in the real world when it comes to currencies: money that is being used to earn stuff is worth more than money that is just sitting there doing nothing. If you start with a pile of one million dollars and do nothing, then in fifty years that pile of money will still be a million dollars, but a coke will cost twelve dollars and the relative value of that pile of money is lower.
Similarly, when the game increases the rewards or steepens the progress curve, in terms of what players can *earn* this benefits everyone, new and old. Veterans can better take advantages of opportunities to earn more resources because they have more tools to do so. But in terms of static resources, everything you earned in the past is worth less today than it was worth then. That first 5* champ I earned was worth a lot at the time. It isn't worth much today: even if you took it away now, I wouldn't notice.
This creates a situation where the advantage vets have is dynamic, not static. They can earn more, but only if they continue to play and continue to grind. If I play ten hours a week and a new player plays ten hours a week, I'm going to continue to stay ahead of them. But if they play ten hours a week and I play one hour a week, they will continuously close the gap between us.
This isn't true if inflation doesn't exist. If instead my big pile of rewards continued to pay dividends even if I do nothing, then it is possible for me to accumulate so much stuff that a new player can never catch up to me, even if I sit idle. That's an extreme situation, but it can happen. Think about the analogy in the real world, where if I somehow amass a big enough pile of money you're never going to catch up to me no matter how hard you work, because the interests and dividends I earn for doing nothing are more than you will ever earn in your lifetime. Even when this happens in a much softer way, without going that far, this can kill a game by choking off new players. And that's why in general, the past is the past and we don't just hand out more rewards to everyone when we change how much rewards we give out today relative to yesterday.
And while you're thinking of all the ways I'm wrong, I should point out that I didn't invent any of this. This is F2P monetization 101. Or maybe 201. Every F2P microtransaction game remotely similar to MCOC runs on this principle, among others. This is how it is. The treadmill principle that includes these ideas is so entrenched it is hard to find discussions about it, in the same way it is very hard to find scientific articles that discuss research to discover what color the sky is.
That being said, according to growth and the way that the game is set up as of now, there will be a point where only players are left stagnant. So while the newer players experience exponential growth during these early years, the endgame players are reaching the plateau. Even though we're getting compensated as well, the compensation really doesn't impact us because it's so little. Therefore, we're not growing that much, leaving the newer players able to catch up anyway.
The above graph shows the two player bases. The one on the left is the newer player. They progress through early levels because the current meta allows for very rapid growth. The one on the right is the veteran. They experience logistic growth because although they did progress through content, they are reaching a point in which progression is limited. As of now, the highest champion tier is a 6*. 7*s are unlikely. If only 6*s were to remain in the game, there would come a time when the progression of an endgame player halts because let's be real, how many good 6*s are necessary for content? There's no way to progress after hitting that final mark.
Back to the point. By introducing new rewards, you continue to feed into the exponential growth of the new player (which is good, I agree). But, even if you give those rewards to the veteran, it still has no effect on the point at which progress is stationary. Because the veterans are staying stationary, the newer players catch up anyway because the point of inflection would stay the same regardless.
They went the route of removing the 5 and 6* dupes and letting everyone keep the 3 and 4* extra dupes if they got them. There was no stance to change, it was a decision made because of an error.
Again, with namor and Cull, there isn't any stance that changed. This is being treated as a case by itself and no other past issue had bearing on any decisions made. I fully believe you are widely confused and dont know what you are talking about.
Yes, Kabam didn't change their stance on NaCull. They changed their stance regarding reward errors that benefited the player.
Although there weren't any errors like NaCull before, it could be grouped under the umbrella along with the errors I mentioned in prior comments, which have gone unresolved. Due to having NaCull resolved, they effectively changed their stance on the topic of reward errors.
In the discussion of NaCull, they did mention that it was an error and alluded to how it wasn't fair to other players. By acknowledging that it wasn't fair, they shifted their stance on "fairness".
So why are they doing something that can be seen as "unfair" when they seem to believe in "fairness"?
The difference between beginning players and end game players is huge. It is several orders of magnitude of power. How do you keep churning out content applicable to several orders of magnitude of players? You can't. The beginning is always going to be the beginning: everyone has to start at zero. But the end game keeps getting higher. So the span of players keeps getting wider.
We go from the blue line to the orange line to the red line to the brown line, where the "average" player gets stronger and the span of players keeps getting wider. How do we make content that is just as valid for the left side of the curve as the right side? We can't: that task keeps getting more and more difficult and with a finite number of difficulty tiers the number of players very far away from any of them keeps getting higher.
We can't let the far right keep going rightward. We can't support it, and we can't spend tons of development resources to address the needs of an ever smaller slice of players. Those guys have to decelerate: once you get too far to the right, the effort required to continue to push rightward has to go up (or we have to hard cap you, which no one likes).
The net result is to accelerate players towards the middle, but also make it increasingly harder for the fastest players to keep pushing way, way past the middle.
And the reason why we do this is because we want to decrease the number of players way lower than the average player (or more directly, reduce the time that everyone spends down there, which is tantamount to the same thing), and we also want to make it harder for people to "run away" at the top, reducing those numbers, all the while increasing the number of people closer to the average.
These pressures don't force conformity: faster players are still faster, better players still make more progress. We're just compressing the full expanse of players into a more manageable range.
All of this is a bit of a tangent, however, as it has drifted away from the original question: "Why is it so important to lessen the gap between the newer players and the veterans?" It is important for the reasons I mentioned regarding turnover. This addresses the question of whether these pressures somehow offer an unfair advantage relative to veteran players. They don't, because while beginners are accelerated out of the start of the game quickly and the top tier players are decelerated, there's the entire middle of the game where the beginners become moderate middle players and the forces acting on them start to reverse. At no time does a beginner overtake a veteran while still benefiting from those beginner forces. Those "booster rockets" burn out before they reach orbit: they cannot be used to overtake someone who's already half way to Saturn.
Put it another way, although this is reaching the limits of my free hand sketching. Suppose the game's leveling curve started off like this:
And then we decided, after you got all the way to B, that we were going to make it easier for beginners and harder for top tier players to advance, so the curve now looks like this:
Clearly, someone who starts today at A has a much easier road ahead than he did before the adjustment. And B now has a harder one. But does that mean A will overtake B? Of course not, because while A has an easier road *now* he actually still faces the same curve B does when he gets to B. Obviously, B still has an advantage. A will get to the halfway point between them much easier now than before. But because we changed the curve gamewide, A still has to do what B does to reach and overtake B. It is just that because the hill is much steeper, A and B will be much closer together in the long run than before, when B could just run away from A. B still has the same advantage over A, it just *looks* smaller.
Heck, if you drag your feet long enough, the leveling slope can actually invert:
At some point, you're so slow the calendar takes over and forces you forward to at least some minimum advancement level. That's actually the game design function of the calendar: among other things, it acts to create a reward earning rate "floor." Below that, as long as you actually log in at all, you can't advance any slower than that. Is it fair that someone who literally does nothing at all except log in can still get basically pushed in the back and sent forward? In this case, yes, because it is in the best interests of the game to accelerate players that far behind enough to get them to at least some minimum progress point. That "free" progress doesn't in any way help them to overtake the higher tier players, even though in some sense their reward per unit effort is essentially infinite.
Were you under a rock like six months ago?