The goal of the game should be to try to make the players feel good about accomplishing something, not feel bad about failing something. And while those are two sides of the same coin, that doesn't mean you can't skew that coin in one direction.
You and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye and I disagree with some of what you said, but I like this paragraph.
The only way I might tweak it would be to say something about how so many of us don’t feel good even after we accomplish something great, because the rewards themselves don’t turn out in our favor.
More often than not, I’ve accomplished difficult content without the right champs and felt great about it - only to have the wind sucked out of my sails with another dupe on my Thor Jane Foster.
The reward vs. disappointment ratio is just way off - and it just seems to get worse the further you go. And by reward I mean in-game rewards AND player satisfaction for completing difficult content.
Maybe that’s exactly what you were saying and I misunderstood - but, everyone seems to have a different view on where things seem to turn for the worse for themselves in regard to this game, and it seems like everyone who plays it eventually crosses a line where disappointment outweighs gratification so much, that they eventually feel defeated no matter what they’ve accomplished or how far they’ve come.
Let me toss this out there. I agree with what you're saying here up to a point. I think no one would argue with wanting the content itself to be sufficiently entertaining on its own, regardless of rewards (as subjective as that is). When it comes to actual in-game rewards I think the same principle applies, but while there's no counterbalancing priority to making the content entertaining (there's no reason at all to go the other way) the rewards do have balance concerns that mean you can't simply make the rewards as rewarding as possible. What you can do, and I think Kabam has taken very small steps in this direction, is to make the rewards have a better "lower bound" the greater the content accomplishment associated with them is. But I think they should go much farther.
I think it is perfectly reasonable for rewards to be highly random when you're grinding for them. The 5* basic crystal I open with the 5* shards I grind for in the arena is a repeatable reward I'm going to be opening over and over and over again. RNG makes sense, because I will eventually have lots and lots of rolls. But when you complete Act 6, you're only going to get those rewards once. The psychology of those rewards is different, because they feel like a once in a lifetime thing (because for most players, they are). So the disappointment associated with them should be as low as possible. The Nexus crystals are a kind of way to do that. You can think of the Nexus crystal as a way to roll a 5* champ three times and pick the best one. But another way to look at it is the Nexus crystal is a basic crystal with some of the disappointment removed. The best case scenario is still the same, and you still get only one champ, but the odds of being disappointment are much lower.
I think just letting people directly pick their rewards is a bridge too far in most cases. But a compromise in the middle would seem to be helpful, specifically when it comes to once in a lifetime rewards. If i'm disappointed when I open a crystal that I grind out several times a month, that's on me. If I'm disappointed in the reward I get for the one and only time i fully explore Act 6, I think the game has to take some responsibility for that.
Here's a crazy idea. Suppose we were to datamine the game and determine which champions were the top twenty four champions used in Act 6.1. And suppose the reward for first time completion of 6.1 was a crystal that contained those twenty four champions. I understand there's a lot of impracticality with the details of this idea: how do you revise the crystal over time, and how would you have bootstrapped the crystal when 6.1 first came out. But just as a brainstorm, what would it mean to the game if the reward for completing 6.1 was a crystal that was almost guaranteed to help you explore 6.1, because it contained the very champions the end game players were using to explore 6.1? Is that broken? is that too good? I don't know myself, but I think it is worth asking the question, because it directly tackles the question of how appropriate should the rewards be to the content awarding the rewards. Shouldn't the reward for completing 6.1 be useful for exploring 6.1? Where do we draw the line?
Spending is not the only way to acquire Champs and Rank them. The most primary source of them is playing the game. Experience.
Spending is the only way to avoid the rut than many of us get into of months and months and months without a champ we want to do anything with. Spending is the only way to avoid potentially going years without the one counter that works for a particular fight. 6*s entered the contest in January of 2018. It took me over 2 years to get one that I wanted to rank. Spending is the only cure for that.
One that you want, perhaps. Could also just be the result of good luck. We're also forgetting that new Champs are added each month, and other counters could be in the works down the road. Years depends on the availability of 6* Shards and that can be increased. Then as much as I don't want to trigger anyone, I have to point out that it's reasonable to have some content that can't be done right away, and the fact that people can start Accounts and go all the way to Uncollected in a matter of months indicates it's a bit too easy TBH.
He wasn't talking about wanting, he was talking about needing.
There are fights in act 6 that can not be reasonably done without at least one of a small group of champs. To an acid wash mysterio in 6.3. (iirc) for example there's a total of 2 counters.
That's kind of why people ask what you base your opinion on. You genuinely don't know the struggle. That's nothing to be ashamed of, it's simple reality.
What even is this Thread? Is it an ode to Seatin, or a mass vent?
Could it not be both? A major figure in the game's history is on the verge of leaving, bringing up some really good points about what's wrong with the game right now.
A major figure of the game's history? No offense to Seatin, but that's a bit fanboyish. He's not even in the CC anymore. He's had his good points and his bad just like anyone else.
You sound really jelly. If you can’t even acknowledge that Seatin is a huge figure in this game then idk what to tell you.
A major figure of the game's history is an exaggeration. Not "jelly" at all. Just giving some perspective. We're not all playing with 6* Seatins.
I just watched Seatin's latest vid on YT explaining his thoughts on this game and it made me reflect on it as well. I've been noticing, everytime i log into my device, i never have the heart or excitement to go onto MCOC and play it... i just end up watching youtube instead. It's like there's nothing to look forward to in this game, i just log on occasionally and flick through random crystals and i just do random arena fights with my champs because there's nothing to do, and even that's boring. I'm starting to become disheartened and bored with this game, with the direction the game is going, it's gonna lose a lot of players. MCOC used to be fun, but it's been going downhill ever since... they keep adding trash 6 stars, which no one wants, arenas are boring as hell and not worth the time, and don't even get me started on Alliance War. The game's just overall going downhill, and is Kabam doesn't make the game more fun quickly, god knows what it'll be like in the future.
Spending is not the only way to acquire Champs and Rank them. The most primary source of them is playing the game. Experience.
Spending is the only way to avoid the rut than many of us get into of months and months and months without a champ we want to do anything with. Spending is the only way to avoid potentially going years without the one counter that works for a particular fight. 6*s entered the contest in January of 2018. It took me over 2 years to get one that I wanted to rank. Spending is the only cure for that.
One that you want, perhaps. Could also just be the result of good luck. We're also forgetting that new Champs are added each month, and other counters could be in the works down the road. Years depends on the availability of 6* Shards and that can be increased. Then as much as I don't want to trigger anyone, I have to point out that it's reasonable to have some content that can't be done right away, and the fact that people can start Accounts and go all the way to Uncollected in a matter of months indicates it's a bit too easy TBH.
You are suggesting that an alternate way of breaking the months and months of bad luck is to have good luck? Damn! I wish I had thought of that lol.
Spending is not the only way to acquire Champs and Rank them. The most primary source of them is playing the game. Experience.
Spending is the only way to avoid the rut than many of us get into of months and months and months without a champ we want to do anything with. Spending is the only way to avoid potentially going years without the one counter that works for a particular fight. 6*s entered the contest in January of 2018. It took me over 2 years to get one that I wanted to rank. Spending is the only cure for that.
One that you want, perhaps. Could also just be the result of good luck. We're also forgetting that new Champs are added each month, and other counters could be in the works down the road. Years depends on the availability of 6* Shards and that can be increased. Then as much as I don't want to trigger anyone, I have to point out that it's reasonable to have some content that can't be done right away, and the fact that people can start Accounts and go all the way to Uncollected in a matter of months indicates it's a bit too easy TBH.
You are suggesting that an alternate way of breaking the months and months of bad luck is to have good luck? Damn! I wish I had thought of that lol.
Just saying. Lol. It could happen. Other things can change as well.
The goal of the game should be to try to make the players feel good about accomplishing something, not feel bad about failing something. And while those are two sides of the same coin, that doesn't mean you can't skew that coin in one direction.
You and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye and I disagree with some of what you said, but I like this paragraph.
The only way I might tweak it would be to say something about how so many of us don’t feel good even after we accomplish something great, because the rewards themselves don’t turn out in our favor.
More often than not, I’ve accomplished difficult content without the right champs and felt great about it - only to have the wind sucked out of my sails with another dupe on my Thor Jane Foster.
The reward vs. disappointment ratio is just way off - and it just seems to get worse the further you go. And by reward I mean in-game rewards AND player satisfaction for completing difficult content.
Maybe that’s exactly what you were saying and I misunderstood - but, everyone seems to have a different view on where things seem to turn for the worse for themselves in regard to this game, and it seems like everyone who plays it eventually crosses a line where disappointment outweighs gratification so much, that they eventually feel defeated no matter what they’ve accomplished or how far they’ve come.
Let me toss this out there. I agree with what you're saying here up to a point. I think no one would argue with wanting the content itself to be sufficiently entertaining on its own, regardless of rewards (as subjective as that is). When it comes to actual in-game rewards I think the same principle applies, but while there's no counterbalancing priority to making the content entertaining (there's no reason at all to go the other way) the rewards do have balance concerns that mean you can't simply make the rewards as rewarding as possible. What you can do, and I think Kabam has taken very small steps in this direction, is to make the rewards have a better "lower bound" the greater the content accomplishment associated with them is. But I think they should go much farther.
I think it is perfectly reasonable for rewards to be highly random when you're grinding for them. The 5* basic crystal I open with the 5* shards I grind for in the arena is a repeatable reward I'm going to be opening over and over and over again. RNG makes sense, because I will eventually have lots and lots of rolls. But when you complete Act 6, you're only going to get those rewards once. The psychology of those rewards is different, because they feel like a once in a lifetime thing (because for most players, they are). So the disappointment associated with them should be as low as possible. The Nexus crystals are a kind of way to do that. You can think of the Nexus crystal as a way to roll a 5* champ three times and pick the best one. But another way to look at it is the Nexus crystal is a basic crystal with some of the disappointment removed. The best case scenario is still the same, and you still get only one champ, but the odds of being disappointment are much lower.
I think just letting people directly pick their rewards is a bridge too far in most cases. But a compromise in the middle would seem to be helpful, specifically when it comes to once in a lifetime rewards. If i'm disappointed when I open a crystal that I grind out several times a month, that's on me. If I'm disappointed in the reward I get for the one and only time i fully explore Act 6, I think the game has to take some responsibility for that.
Here's a crazy idea. Suppose we were to datamine the game and determine which champions were the top twenty four champions used in Act 6.1. And suppose the reward for first time completion of 6.1 was a crystal that contained those twenty four champions. I understand there's a lot of impracticality with the details of this idea: how do you revise the crystal over time, and how would you have bootstrapped the crystal when 6.1 first came out. But just as a brainstorm, what would it mean to the game if the reward for completing 6.1 was a crystal that was almost guaranteed to help you explore 6.1, because it contained the very champions the end game players were using to explore 6.1? Is that broken? is that too good? I don't know myself, but I think it is worth asking the question, because it directly tackles the question of how appropriate should the rewards be to the content awarding the rewards. Shouldn't the reward for completing 6.1 be useful for exploring 6.1? Where do we draw the line?
I cannot emphasize enough how much I agree with two points made here:
1. Completion/Exploration rewards are big deals and aren’t the same as Basics. At some point, we all have to be able to agree that it’s not a great feeling to complete something like a 6.1 or higher and pull a character that you basically cannot use — we have to be able to acknowledge that some characters cannot clear post-Cavalier content and there has to be some way people at that level can consistently, not every single time, but consistently have a milestone to shoot for that they can clear and know that they will get something to help them clear post-Cavalier content
2. No game should leave people feeling as empty as MCoC can consistently. Again, consistently. I get it, we all get it, RNG means you aren’t gonna get everything you want, when you want it. But there has to be another way to help players not feel that instant feeling of misery when they open a six-star multiple times in a row and it just isn’t good enough to help them clear anything
I don’t know what the final answer would look like, but today’s outburst on all levels has to indicate that what has been done can be questioned
You guys are arguing with a player who has likely...
1. Has never played in Act 6. 2. Has never played in Act 7. 3. Has very little experience in the endgame, if at all.
Even Kabam Miike said himself in the Act 7 post, that expressing opinions on content you haven’t experienced isn’t the best idea... because it’s easy to be mislead & misunderstand what other players getting at.
Why anyone would ever form an opinion on something without doing it, is beyond my understanding. That goes for literally ANYTHING in life. Saying McDonalds fry’s are good with trying them, saying Aliens is a bad movie without watching it... & saying your dads car is a heap of junk without riding in it. To form an opinion without experience or knowledge, it simply shows how you value yourself WAYY too highly above other people... it’s just that simple.
And yet certain comments in this thread are still deemed relevant enough to not delete them.
That's because it's not at all what's taking place here. Offering feedback on a Beta that someone hasn't participated in isn't the same as discussing subjects that have nothing to do with experience completing it. Anyone can discuss a topic and it's not a requirement to pony up in order to participate. Not once has experience been feigned or falsely claimed. The subject is just being discussed. Contrary to popular belief, anyone is allowed to participate in a discussion. Calling people out because we disagree with the points they make is juvenile.
Nexus crystals are real awesome. This is what I got for act six.
They're still a lot better than the basic. 3 options is better than 1.
Is a single one of those pulls going to help someone who’s explored act 6? Didn’t think so
I'm confused by your logic. I know that the 3 champions you pull from a nexus can all be TERRIBLE. But 3 5 star crystals is 30k 5* shards, while if the nexus replaces the featured, you will have 3 choices to pick 1 champion with 15k less shards. Now, this means that you have 3 times the chance to get a better champion than the basic for only 5k 5* shards more. I'm not saying that you can't get shafted by it because you can, I'm just saying that it could be a nice alternative to the basic to give players more of a choice when it comes to crystals instead of constant RNG.
I see some in here discussing specifically the story mode and about natural progression. That naturally it gets harder and harder as one progresses. That book 2 naturally should therefore be harder. Well that's one way to approach it.
There of course is another. A way I genuinely feel is far better for the long term health of the game.
I have some friends irl who are devs (not for this game for others) and I've asked them about some things that make their lives difficult when developing and both of them said developing end game content. It's hard because after a time you kind of pigeon hole yourself into a corner. This game has the unique opportunity to avoid that pitfall. I bet if you asked some of the devs designing these act 7 nodes they'd say it is difficult and really stifles their creativity because pigeon holed.
Say for example, kabam went in an entirely different direction. Started over with 2* for act 1, did 3* for act 2 e.t.c all the way up to 6* rank whatever for the final acts.
Think about what you could do. Design entirely new nodes... you could even start stacking those node combinations in later acts. In essence training your players HOW to play around these nodes for the later acts.
Players would feel as though they were progressing and devs would have more creative freedom rather than simply cranking up the numbers. You could make entry contingent upon completing book 1 if that really worries you. I mean possibilities are endless. The opposite csb be said for cranking numbers up.
There are players who will beat whatever you put out within a week. You can't design towards them. They'll always beat whatever you throw at them. You need to design that content for the masses. Design end game stuff separate from story mode. Story keeps players feeling like they're getting somewhere.
What kabam really needs is a game mode that addresses retention. They've already installed the most used (bulky almost all games) method to keep players invested. It's called alliances. They need to address and create a new mode of ava/war that people are interested in. It's near impossible to design story stuff fast enough and of a high enough quality to keep both end game players and the masses happy and satisfied. War on the other hand runs itself once you have an good one.
That's why I think kabam has missed three mark. Just my .02
Very good point about separating story mode and hardest content.
What do you guys think of content similar to rpg games?
For example, have like boss rush and leaderboard stuff. (Everyone in an alliance fight a 70% weaker grandmaster/or other bosses, and alliances get points based on defeating the bosses with unique champions)
Unique champions giving more % points, amount of hp remaining giving a few % points of the total possible leadership board points.
The goal of the game should be to try to make the players feel good about accomplishing something, not feel bad about failing something. And while those are two sides of the same coin, that doesn't mean you can't skew that coin in one direction.
You and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye and I disagree with some of what you said, but I like this paragraph.
The only way I might tweak it would be to say something about how so many of us don’t feel good even after we accomplish something great, because the rewards themselves don’t turn out in our favor.
More often than not, I’ve accomplished difficult content without the right champs and felt great about it - only to have the wind sucked out of my sails with another dupe on my Thor Jane Foster.
The reward vs. disappointment ratio is just way off - and it just seems to get worse the further you go. And by reward I mean in-game rewards AND player satisfaction for completing difficult content.
Maybe that’s exactly what you were saying and I misunderstood - but, everyone seems to have a different view on where things seem to turn for the worse for themselves in regard to this game, and it seems like everyone who plays it eventually crosses a line where disappointment outweighs gratification so much, that they eventually feel defeated no matter what they’ve accomplished or how far they’ve come.
Let me toss this out there. I agree with what you're saying here up to a point. I think no one would argue with wanting the content itself to be sufficiently entertaining on its own, regardless of rewards (as subjective as that is). When it comes to actual in-game rewards I think the same principle applies, but while there's no counterbalancing priority to making the content entertaining (there's no reason at all to go the other way) the rewards do have balance concerns that mean you can't simply make the rewards as rewarding as possible. What you can do, and I think Kabam has taken very small steps in this direction, is to make the rewards have a better "lower bound" the greater the content accomplishment associated with them is. But I think they should go much farther.
I think it is perfectly reasonable for rewards to be highly random when you're grinding for them. The 5* basic crystal I open with the 5* shards I grind for in the arena is a repeatable reward I'm going to be opening over and over and over again. RNG makes sense, because I will eventually have lots and lots of rolls. But when you complete Act 6, you're only going to get those rewards once. The psychology of those rewards is different, because they feel like a once in a lifetime thing (because for most players, they are). So the disappointment associated with them should be as low as possible. The Nexus crystals are a kind of way to do that. You can think of the Nexus crystal as a way to roll a 5* champ three times and pick the best one. But another way to look at it is the Nexus crystal is a basic crystal with some of the disappointment removed. The best case scenario is still the same, and you still get only one champ, but the odds of being disappointment are much lower.
I think just letting people directly pick their rewards is a bridge too far in most cases. But a compromise in the middle would seem to be helpful, specifically when it comes to once in a lifetime rewards. If i'm disappointed when I open a crystal that I grind out several times a month, that's on me. If I'm disappointed in the reward I get for the one and only time i fully explore Act 6, I think the game has to take some responsibility for that.
Here's a crazy idea. Suppose we were to datamine the game and determine which champions were the top twenty four champions used in Act 6.1. And suppose the reward for first time completion of 6.1 was a crystal that contained those twenty four champions. I understand there's a lot of impracticality with the details of this idea: how do you revise the crystal over time, and how would you have bootstrapped the crystal when 6.1 first came out. But just as a brainstorm, what would it mean to the game if the reward for completing 6.1 was a crystal that was almost guaranteed to help you explore 6.1, because it contained the very champions the end game players were using to explore 6.1? Is that broken? is that too good? I don't know myself, but I think it is worth asking the question, because it directly tackles the question of how appropriate should the rewards be to the content awarding the rewards. Shouldn't the reward for completing 6.1 be useful for exploring 6.1? Where do we draw the line?
I cannot emphasize enough how much I agree with two points made here:
1. Completion/Exploration rewards are big deals and aren’t the same as Basics. At some point, we all have to be able to agree that it’s not a great feeling to complete something like a 6.1 or higher and pull a character that you basically cannot use — we have to be able to acknowledge that some characters cannot clear post-Cavalier content and there has to be some way people at that level can consistently, not every single time, but consistently have a milestone to shoot for that they can clear and know that they will get something to help them clear post-Cavalier content
2. No game should leave people feeling as empty as MCoC can consistently. Again, consistently. I get it, we all get it, RNG means you aren’t gonna get everything you want, when you want it. But there has to be another way to help players not feel that instant feeling of misery when they open a six-star multiple times in a row and it just isn’t good enough to help them clear anything
I don’t know what the final answer would look like, but today’s outburst on all levels has to indicate that what has been done can be questioned
When I did my first completion of the Abyss I was so exhausted from the grind that instead of popping 2 6* crystals, I accidentally popped open a featured 6* and got Groot. Yes, a 6* Groot out of a featured crystal after completing the single hardest content in the game.
I kept asking: why the heck is Groot in the 6* pool, let alone in the featured pool?
It's really baffling to me because in the recent Q/A with Kabam devs by Dorky Diggity Dave the guy who has been working on Hulkbuster buff says he's excited about Hulkbuster rework because he's in the 6* pool and that he wants the players to be excited about 6* champions. Well, then, why has Kabam been adding the absolute trash like Groot and Falcon and others into the pool before they've been buffed?
Listen I do not view myself as a big account. I think I am middle to upper middle of this game. I have 17 champs at either r2 or r5. I am 3 paths away from 100% 6.3 but I have no real answer to the caustic temper path. I have played for over 4 years. How long am I supposed to be willing to wait and or, i give into hoe it is designed and just spend my way through it? The issue is the game design is no longer about fun and challenging, it’s about luck and spending.
The goal of the game should be to try to make the players feel good about accomplishing something, not feel bad about failing something. And while those are two sides of the same coin, that doesn't mean you can't skew that coin in one direction.
You and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye and I disagree with some of what you said, but I like this paragraph.
The only way I might tweak it would be to say something about how so many of us don’t feel good even after we accomplish something great, because the rewards themselves don’t turn out in our favor.
More often than not, I’ve accomplished difficult content without the right champs and felt great about it - only to have the wind sucked out of my sails with another dupe on my Thor Jane Foster.
The reward vs. disappointment ratio is just way off - and it just seems to get worse the further you go. And by reward I mean in-game rewards AND player satisfaction for completing difficult content.
Maybe that’s exactly what you were saying and I misunderstood - but, everyone seems to have a different view on where things seem to turn for the worse for themselves in regard to this game, and it seems like everyone who plays it eventually crosses a line where disappointment outweighs gratification so much, that they eventually feel defeated no matter what they’ve accomplished or how far they’ve come.
Let me toss this out there. I agree with what you're saying here up to a point. I think no one would argue with wanting the content itself to be sufficiently entertaining on its own, regardless of rewards (as subjective as that is). When it comes to actual in-game rewards I think the same principle applies, but while there's no counterbalancing priority to making the content entertaining (there's no reason at all to go the other way) the rewards do have balance concerns that mean you can't simply make the rewards as rewarding as possible. What you can do, and I think Kabam has taken very small steps in this direction, is to make the rewards have a better "lower bound" the greater the content accomplishment associated with them is. But I think they should go much farther.
I think it is perfectly reasonable for rewards to be highly random when you're grinding for them. The 5* basic crystal I open with the 5* shards I grind for in the arena is a repeatable reward I'm going to be opening over and over and over again. RNG makes sense, because I will eventually have lots and lots of rolls. But when you complete Act 6, you're only going to get those rewards once. The psychology of those rewards is different, because they feel like a once in a lifetime thing (because for most players, they are). So the disappointment associated with them should be as low as possible. The Nexus crystals are a kind of way to do that. You can think of the Nexus crystal as a way to roll a 5* champ three times and pick the best one. But another way to look at it is the Nexus crystal is a basic crystal with some of the disappointment removed. The best case scenario is still the same, and you still get only one champ, but the odds of being disappointment are much lower.
I think just letting people directly pick their rewards is a bridge too far in most cases. But a compromise in the middle would seem to be helpful, specifically when it comes to once in a lifetime rewards. If i'm disappointed when I open a crystal that I grind out several times a month, that's on me. If I'm disappointed in the reward I get for the one and only time i fully explore Act 6, I think the game has to take some responsibility for that.
Here's a crazy idea. Suppose we were to datamine the game and determine which champions were the top twenty four champions used in Act 6.1. And suppose the reward for first time completion of 6.1 was a crystal that contained those twenty four champions. I understand there's a lot of impracticality with the details of this idea: how do you revise the crystal over time, and how would you have bootstrapped the crystal when 6.1 first came out. But just as a brainstorm, what would it mean to the game if the reward for completing 6.1 was a crystal that was almost guaranteed to help you explore 6.1, because it contained the very champions the end game players were using to explore 6.1? Is that broken? is that too good? I don't know myself, but I think it is worth asking the question, because it directly tackles the question of how appropriate should the rewards be to the content awarding the rewards. Shouldn't the reward for completing 6.1 be useful for exploring 6.1? Where do we draw the line?
I cannot emphasize enough how much I agree with two points made here:
1. Completion/Exploration rewards are big deals and aren’t the same as Basics. At some point, we all have to be able to agree that it’s not a great feeling to complete something like a 6.1 or higher and pull a character that you basically cannot use — we have to be able to acknowledge that some characters cannot clear post-Cavalier content and there has to be some way people at that level can consistently, not every single time, but consistently have a milestone to shoot for that they can clear and know that they will get something to help them clear post-Cavalier content
2. No game should leave people feeling as empty as MCoC can consistently. Again, consistently. I get it, we all get it, RNG means you aren’t gonna get everything you want, when you want it. But there has to be another way to help players not feel that instant feeling of misery when they open a six-star multiple times in a row and it just isn’t good enough to help them clear anything
I don’t know what the final answer would look like, but today’s outburst on all levels has to indicate that what has been done can be questioned
When I did my first completion of the Abyss I was so exhausted from the grind that instead of popping 2 6* crystals, I accidentally popped open a featured 6* and got Groot. Yes, a 6* Groot out of a featured crystal after completing the single hardest content in the game.
I kept asking: why the heck is Groot in the 6* pool, let alone in the featured pool?
It's really baffling to me because in the recent Q/A with Kabam devs by Dorky Diggity Dave the guy who has been working on Hulkbuster buff says he's excited about Hulkbuster rework because he's in the 6* pool and that he wants the players to be excited about 6* champions. Well, then, why has Kabam been adding the absolute trash like Groot and Falcon and others into the pool before they've been buffed?
Oh, my gosh. I am so sorry to see that. Totally serious
I will never understand why they do that. I just don’t understand the purpose of that experience for a player, why anyone at Kabam would want that to happen
Groot is in the game. OK. Fine.
Scarlet Witch is in the game, too. Right?
So if we know that Scarlet Witch is designed so we cannot get the character as a five-star, then we should also be able to state clearly that Groot should not ever be in a Featured crystal.
In a basic? Sure. Totally fine. Totally acceptable.
But if we know there are superior characters who cannot be released at higher rarities, why is it possible to have the worst characters in the game in the Featureds?
Not the Basics. I get that.
No one will ever be able to explain to me why the Featureds have Groot in them
Listen I do not view myself as a big account. I think I am middle to upper middle of this game. I have 17 champs at either r2 or r5. I am 3 paths away from 100% 6.3 but I have no real answer to the caustic temper path. I have played for over 4 years. How long am I supposed to be willing to wait and or, i give into hoe it is designed and just spend my way through it? The issue is the game design is no longer about fun and challenging, it’s about luck and spending.
Do you have any poison immune cosmic champions? There’s a good boost for that path
1. Completion/Exploration rewards are big deals and aren’t the same as Basics. At some point, we all have to be able to agree that it’s not a great feeling to complete something like a 6.1 or higher and pull a character that you basically cannot use — we have to be able to acknowledge that some characters cannot clear post-Cavalier content and there has to be some way people at that level can consistently, not every single time, but consistently have a milestone to shoot for that they can clear and know that they will get something to help them clear post-Cavalier content
I think completing the monthly should be considered the same thing as repeatable content. I'm fine with that being random, because its different every month, but not really: I see that as cyclical content. I think completing something like Variant, or temporary content like the Maze should be considered a step up. The rewards can be random, but they should be a "better random" than regular monthly completion; a Nexus-like mechanism maybe. And I think completing/exploring Act 3, Act 4, Uncollected (5.2), Act 5, Cavalier (6.1), and Act 6 should be very special, because they are in effect a very overt once in a lifetime step up the progression ladder. I think they should somehow guarantee a step up the roster ladder. How, I'm not sure, but something less than pick your own reward and better than a Nexus.
We know the devs datamine performance in a number of areas. What if the reward for completing Act 5 was a choice of 5* crystal: damage, heal, power control, damage over time, etc. And in each crystal were the ten best champs in its respective category. So first you could choose in which direction you wanted to go, and second you might not get the best but you're guaranteed to get something much better than average. Since this is a once in a lifetime crystal, maybe that is reasonable to give to players, and it would have a high likelihood to be helpful in Act 6. Maybe the reward for Cavalier (6.1) is a 6* crystal of the same kind. Just spitballing.
Listen I do not view myself as a big account. I think I am middle to upper middle of this game. I have 17 champs at either r2 or r5. I am 3 paths away from 100% 6.3 but I have no real answer to the caustic temper path. I have played for over 4 years. How long am I supposed to be willing to wait and or, i give into hoe it is designed and just spend my way through it? The issue is the game design is no longer about fun and challenging, it’s about luck and spending.
Do you have any poison immune cosmic champions? There’s a good boost for that path
Listen I do not view myself as a big account. I think I am middle to upper middle of this game. I have 17 champs at either r2 or r5. I am 3 paths away from 100% 6.3 but I have no real answer to the caustic temper path. I have played for over 4 years. How long am I supposed to be willing to wait and or, i give into hoe it is designed and just spend my way through it? The issue is the game design is no longer about fun and challenging, it’s about luck and spending.
Do you have any poison immune cosmic champions? There’s a good boost for that path
Only Medusa at r4 or guillotine 2099 and every fight on path is like lol
1. Completion/Exploration rewards are big deals and aren’t the same as Basics. At some point, we all have to be able to agree that it’s not a great feeling to complete something like a 6.1 or higher and pull a character that you basically cannot use — we have to be able to acknowledge that some characters cannot clear post-Cavalier content and there has to be some way people at that level can consistently, not every single time, but consistently have a milestone to shoot for that they can clear and know that they will get something to help them clear post-Cavalier content
I think completing the monthly should be considered the same thing as repeatable content. I'm fine with that being random, because its different every month, but not really: I see that as cyclical content. I think completing something like Variant, or temporary content like the Maze should be considered a step up. The rewards can be random, but they should be a "better random" than regular monthly completion; a Nexus-like mechanism maybe. And I think completing/exploring Act 3, Act 4, Uncollected (5.2), Act 5, Cavalier (6.1), and Act 6 should be very special, because they are in effect a very overt once in a lifetime step up the progression ladder. I think they should somehow guarantee a step up the roster ladder. How, I'm not sure, but something less than pick your own reward and better than a Nexus.
We know the devs datamine performance in a number of areas. What if the reward for completing Act 5 was a choice of 5* crystal: damage, heal, power control, damage over time, etc. And in each crystal were the ten best champs in its respective category. So first you could choose in which direction you wanted to go, and second you might not get the best but you're guaranteed to get something much better than average. Since this is a once in a lifetime crystal, maybe that is reasonable to give to players, and it would have a high likelihood to be helpful in Act 6. Maybe the reward for Cavalier (6.1) is a 6* crystal of the same kind. Just spitballing.
I am gonna tell you/everyone a story about why your post matters so much, why they have to try harder, try something, anything, like this.
My best friend in the game is like me: married/job/kid. Only so much time to play, but really love the fundamental aspect of the games and Marvel characters and lore.
He would spend some. Not a ton, but some. A loot bag here, an offer there. His progression was average but he had fun playing with his kid.
But he really struggled to get through Act 5, the initial completion. He was a decent player, not great, not bad. But he finally got the completion with 4-stars and a 5-star Spark.
He was really happy. He was. But he decided to take the shards and some he had saved and open a Featured. Can’t remember the two or three characters he wanted, but he would’ve been happy with probably 12-15 of them.
He pulled an Iron Patriot.
And he just didn’t want to keep playing after that. He just didn’t understand why he did all that for RNG to not even give him something that could help him in Act 6.
He quit. Deleted his account, moved on.
Now that is one guy and one story. That’s his story.
But he was a good guy who just wanted to play the game and have fun, and to me, my personal opinion, there’s no good reason for that Iron Patriot to have been in that Featured. None. For the player to reach that milestone and not get something to make them feel good about playing...I don’t get why anyone would want that.
Hey Everybody, I know this thread is continuing to grow, and there's lots of feedback here. You've kicked off some big discussions, and we've got lots to think about. I don't have anything more to add, and we probably won't have much to say for a few days, but I didn't want to end the day without letting you all know that you've been heard and that we're talking about your concerns.
Comments
I think it is perfectly reasonable for rewards to be highly random when you're grinding for them. The 5* basic crystal I open with the 5* shards I grind for in the arena is a repeatable reward I'm going to be opening over and over and over again. RNG makes sense, because I will eventually have lots and lots of rolls. But when you complete Act 6, you're only going to get those rewards once. The psychology of those rewards is different, because they feel like a once in a lifetime thing (because for most players, they are). So the disappointment associated with them should be as low as possible. The Nexus crystals are a kind of way to do that. You can think of the Nexus crystal as a way to roll a 5* champ three times and pick the best one. But another way to look at it is the Nexus crystal is a basic crystal with some of the disappointment removed. The best case scenario is still the same, and you still get only one champ, but the odds of being disappointment are much lower.
I think just letting people directly pick their rewards is a bridge too far in most cases. But a compromise in the middle would seem to be helpful, specifically when it comes to once in a lifetime rewards. If i'm disappointed when I open a crystal that I grind out several times a month, that's on me. If I'm disappointed in the reward I get for the one and only time i fully explore Act 6, I think the game has to take some responsibility for that.
Here's a crazy idea. Suppose we were to datamine the game and determine which champions were the top twenty four champions used in Act 6.1. And suppose the reward for first time completion of 6.1 was a crystal that contained those twenty four champions. I understand there's a lot of impracticality with the details of this idea: how do you revise the crystal over time, and how would you have bootstrapped the crystal when 6.1 first came out. But just as a brainstorm, what would it mean to the game if the reward for completing 6.1 was a crystal that was almost guaranteed to help you explore 6.1, because it contained the very champions the end game players were using to explore 6.1? Is that broken? is that too good? I don't know myself, but I think it is worth asking the question, because it directly tackles the question of how appropriate should the rewards be to the content awarding the rewards. Shouldn't the reward for completing 6.1 be useful for exploring 6.1? Where do we draw the line?
1. Completion/Exploration rewards are big deals and aren’t the same as Basics. At some point, we all have to be able to agree that it’s not a great feeling to complete something like a 6.1 or higher and pull a character that you basically cannot use — we have to be able to acknowledge that some characters cannot clear post-Cavalier content and there has to be some way people at that level can consistently, not every single time, but consistently have a milestone to shoot for that they can clear and know that they will get something to help them clear post-Cavalier content
2. No game should leave people feeling as empty as MCoC can consistently. Again, consistently. I get it, we all get it, RNG means you aren’t gonna get everything you want, when you want it. But there has to be another way to help players not feel that instant feeling of misery when they open a six-star multiple times in a row and it just isn’t good enough to help them clear anything
I don’t know what the final answer would look like, but today’s outburst on all levels has to indicate that what has been done can be questioned
What do you guys think of content similar to rpg games?
For example, have like boss rush and leaderboard stuff. (Everyone in an alliance fight a 70% weaker grandmaster/or other bosses, and alliances get points based on defeating the bosses with unique champions)
Unique champions giving more % points, amount of hp remaining giving a few % points of the total possible leadership board points.
I kept asking: why the heck is Groot in the 6* pool, let alone in the featured pool?
It's really baffling to me because in the recent Q/A with Kabam devs by Dorky Diggity Dave the guy who has been working on Hulkbuster buff says he's excited about Hulkbuster rework because he's in the 6* pool and that he wants the players to be excited about 6* champions. Well, then, why has Kabam been adding the absolute trash like Groot and Falcon and others into the pool before they've been buffed?
I will never understand why they do that. I just don’t understand the purpose of that experience for a player, why anyone at Kabam would want that to happen
Groot is in the game. OK. Fine.
Scarlet Witch is in the game, too. Right?
So if we know that Scarlet Witch is designed so we cannot get the character as a five-star, then we should also be able to state clearly that Groot should not ever be in a Featured crystal.
In a basic? Sure. Totally fine. Totally acceptable.
But if we know there are superior characters who cannot be released at higher rarities, why is it possible to have the worst characters in the game in the Featureds?
Not the Basics. I get that.
No one will ever be able to explain to me why the Featureds have Groot in them
We know the devs datamine performance in a number of areas. What if the reward for completing Act 5 was a choice of 5* crystal: damage, heal, power control, damage over time, etc. And in each crystal were the ten best champs in its respective category. So first you could choose in which direction you wanted to go, and second you might not get the best but you're guaranteed to get something much better than average. Since this is a once in a lifetime crystal, maybe that is reasonable to give to players, and it would have a high likelihood to be helpful in Act 6. Maybe the reward for Cavalier (6.1) is a 6* crystal of the same kind. Just spitballing.
No heimdal, no Hyperion, no corvus, no cap mov
My best friend in the game is like me: married/job/kid. Only so much time to play, but really love the fundamental aspect of the games and Marvel characters and lore.
He would spend some. Not a ton, but some. A loot bag here, an offer there. His progression was average but he had fun playing with his kid.
But he really struggled to get through Act 5, the initial completion. He was a decent player, not great, not bad. But he finally got the completion with 4-stars and a 5-star Spark.
He was really happy. He was. But he decided to take the shards and some he had saved and open a Featured. Can’t remember the two or three characters he wanted, but he would’ve been happy with probably 12-15 of them.
He pulled an Iron Patriot.
And he just didn’t want to keep playing after that. He just didn’t understand why he did all that for RNG to not even give him something that could help him in Act 6.
He quit. Deleted his account, moved on.
Now that is one guy and one story. That’s his story.
But he was a good guy who just wanted to play the game and have fun, and to me, my personal opinion, there’s no good reason for that Iron Patriot to have been in that Featured. None. For the player to reach that milestone and not get something to make them feel good about playing...I don’t get why anyone would want that.
I just don’t get it