Dev Diary: A Contest Evolved

Summoners!

We're coming to the end of our series of 4 Dev Diaries on the Future of the Contest, and we're ready to go out with a bang! Get ready for a glimpse into the far future of The Contest of Champions!

This Dev Diary not only covers some improvements to Arenas and Incursions, but will also give you a first look at some features and systems that are still in their Prototyping and early design phase. As a reminder, all information in our Dev Diaries is subject to change as they develop further, but that is especially true of this one!

You're gonna have a lot of questions about some of the features that are far in the future, but we're not going to have many answers yet. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ask or discuss them, just that you might not get a response from us on them.

So, without further adieu, read about the future in our latest post, A Contest Evolved!

UPDATE:
Hey Summoners, we're hearing a lot of questions about the lack of an update on Masteries in the Roadmap. This is intentional, but we haven't forgotten about it.

As some of you had brought up, we had plans for a Mastery revamp featured in one of Dorky Diggedy Dave's videos earlier in the year. Unfortunately, while we had it planned, it didn't pass one of our design gates, preventing it from going any further.

Like you, we want to update Masteries and while it seems simple on the surface there are a lot of challenges in changing something that affects every Champion and fight in the game. BUT, we are working on it and we'll get a proper Dev Diary out about it when the time is right. We know it's important to you, as it is to us, that's why we want to get it right and we're looking forward to sharing more on that soon!

Comments

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Worknprogress

Yeah, while I'm overall very positive about everything mentioned between all the posts, no mention of adjusting how mastery changes are made is a huge miss for me.

SkyLord7000

For tag team could it be a pre-fight ability. Maybe all these champ reworks could have tag team. I dunno just a thought. Stoked for the future if this all comes through

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ArthasMenethil97

@Kabam Miike I didn't see anything in the post about masteries. Can you tell us if you have anything planned regarding masteries for the near future? I think it's a very important part of the game and i think it needs a lot of QoL improvements. I thought something like that would be in this post.

Mainzel

I was hopeing that there would be a "restart quest" button when you are in a quest and struggle with some of the first fights. Shure its a Qol change but it would be nice not to click through all those menus just to restart a quest

LeNoirFaineant

Love that we will be able to get 6* shards from incursions and buy more than one of the same crystal. Ending the AON AI will make the early part of arena less annoying, but if you are going to do that you shouldn't drop death matches. It ought to be some work to get the infinite streak. Besides, if the AI is going to throw specials the death matches are already far less dangerous and they give more points.

VanillaCoke

Artifacts? So a new name for GEAR that you guys tried to introduce?
Spiked walls? So a way to nerd Quake without messing with her kit?

You’re acting as if spiked walls will be everywhere in the Contest now. Just because True Strike is a node doesn’t mean it nerfs Quake to the ground.

VanillaCoke

Any updates on scoring in Incursions? The reward/time factor isn’t there as it was in Dungeons. I’d go in, take about 20 or so minutes, and be done. Now I’m spending closer to 1 hour. That’s unnecessary.

StevieManWonder

Can we get a response from Kabam about the lack of mastery updates? It’s the most important QoL for many summoners.

Kabam Miike

@Kabam Miike I didn't see anything in the post about masteries. Can you tell us if you have anything planned regarding masteries for the near future? I think it's a very important part of the game and i think it needs a lot of QoL improvements. I thought something like that would be in this post.

Nothing planned, but that doesn't mean we're not thinking about it. This was really only showing what we've planned so far. Other things might still happen in the meantime.

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Buttehrs

Not sure I really see the point behind strikers. For one, it seems like itll be easy to spot bugs and glitches and this game has enough as is. And for a second thought, if I wanted tag matches I'd go play tekken tag or something akin.

RogerRabs

Tbh, this one feels a little underwhelming. Arena could use a bigger rewards revamp and going from 150 to 300 in the featured grind is not going to lower scores all that much. Getting rid of AoN will be nice at least.

Also Masteries should be a high priority. Still pretty expensive to switch back and forth for something that already takes a significant amount of work (or cash) to unlock.

ExHavok

No update for summoner advancements ? I believe they should remove it from alliance tab and make it a solo event runs for 7 days base on progression level. This way cavalier players can access more 6* shards. I don't think they can just improve rewards while this event attached to alliances because there are allliances with uncollected and cavalier members both in.

Billie

So, considering your roadmaps have timelines of over 12 months, we should not expect any mastery change before 2022. Wasn’t this whole objective to share what you are thinking about since there is almost no concrete change today and relatively minor ones in the next couple of months.

@Kabam Miike I didn't see anything in the post about masteries. Can you tell us if you have anything planned regarding masteries for the near future? I think it's a very important part of the game and i think it needs a lot of QoL improvements. I thought something like that would be in this post.
Nothing planned, but that doesn't mean we're not thinking about it. This was really only showing what we've planned so far. Other things might still happen in the meantime.

RogerRabs

No update for summoner advancements ? I believe they should remove it from alliance tab and make it a solo event runs for 7 days base on progression level. This way cavalier players can access more 6* shards. I don't think they can just improve rewards while this event attached to alliances because there are allliances with uncollected and cavalier members both in.

Damn, I knew I forgot something. SA is wildly outdated. The 1# spot still awards 4 star shards. Anyone in a top alliance is rocking full profiles full of R3 Six Stars.

DNA3000

So basically this post can be summed into:
1. QoL changes: Somethings that should already be there and some are.
2. New Gameplay Mechanics (Root and Volume Trigger): Seems to have more punishing potential than rewarding and nobody really asked for it.
3. Fight Replays: does not help with the actual issues in the game.
4. Strikers: WHY DO WE NEED THIS?
5. Incursion: Zero mentions of any reward increase which is the main issue with incursions
6. Arena: It will still be a "grind" with some relaxations for the super grinders. (The arena alternative might help but not with the current set of rewards as it would still be damn near impossible for normal players)
7. Social Progression: Again WHY DO WE NEED THIS?
8. Solo competetive mode: Probably the only good idea on the whole page with zero specifics

Just my review of the "future". anyone thinks otherwise?

I think otherwise.

DNA3000

You guys have 5 more years planned for the game? 😦

I think the devs have gotten addicted to eating and paying the rent.

DNA3000

That striker mechanic looks super wonky. Like, almost in a good way, but it's really up to how it's implemented.

As far as I understand it know, I'm much more excited for defensive strikers, like the fantastic 4 example. If the striker related actions are something we can play around and react to then that could be really exciting.

There's a massive "but why?" in my head when looking at it, but I'm curious.

I look at strikers as having the potential to be a kind of hyper-synergy. Suppose you need two abilities to bring down a target, lets say armor break and poison, but you don't have a single champ that can do both. You could use a poison champ and tag in an armor break champ to combine their abilities in a single fight under certain circumstances. It would open up new avenues of gameplay if the team you brought into a map wasn't just five stand alone champs, but five champs that could more closely work together on select fights. Maybe a rare special team up you could use on a an especially worthy fight on a map.

There's a lot of paths in the game where there's just that one particular fight that presents a challenge a player's roster can't quite find a solid match up for. Opening this up to striker combos could make selecting attack teams more interesting, and open the door to wider possibilities for players to use. Champs with interesting abilities but just aren't strong enough on their own to be useful could have a lot more value as a striker partner, much like some champs are used more for their synergy benefits than for actually being used in the fight. Say, using Cyclops as a striker for his unblockable specials. Or maybe using Dormammu for his power control and pairing him up with a high damage striker like Havok. If anything the problem would be limiting the striker combos so they don't get too insane.

Seraphion

@Kabam Miike I didn't see anything in the post about masteries. Can you tell us if you have anything planned regarding masteries for the near future? I think it's a very important part of the game and i think it needs a lot of QoL improvements. I thought something like that would be in this post.
Nothing planned, but that doesn't mean we're not thinking about it. This was really only showing what we've planned so far. Other things might still happen in the meantime.

Come on. Its time to do something.
And its not hard. Make them free until you have a page system.

Polygon

Can’t we get a democracy before releasing some things that might make the game even worse?

As @Liss_Bliss_ said spiked walls can easily be seen as a quake nerf

GuruYosen

Kabam, please make ask for help animation faster

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kenadroid

Hi Kabam, waiting for the roadmap was worth it. Thank you!
Just have three Incursions changes hope you will consider including.
1. Rare Hack Refresh option - instead of picking up a new rare hack that might not be beneficial to the champions, just add another +4 zones to one rare hack. E.g. for Hyperion, it's best to keep Buff Cornucopia active as much as possible.
2. List the rare hacks beside the revive/heal champions - enables gamers to weigh in their decision better.
3. The big squares in the Incursion maps are often mistapped instead of going to that node - I don't think it's only just me but a lot of my incursion buddies agree as well.

Aomine_Daiki10

Great work but please add mastery swaps and remove phc from arena for uncollected/ cavalier players.

TheInfinty

Interesting not quite has hype as 1-3 but not as bad as 2 this was quite solid as others pointed out mastery’s not being changed Is not great but overall pretty decent roadmap. I’m mostly satisfied with this whole roadmap I think the game is going to move in a positive way from now on hopefully.

bloodyCain

The deathmatch fight should be fixed under 90 days and not 12 months. People will be in rage to wait almost a year for that.
Plus, within that year we might have a R5 6* or at least R4 6* which will greatly affect the arena.

I'm disappointed with the plan but at the same time, when people are in rage because of that, I'll laugh as KABAM deserves it. Again it should be fixed within 90 days

Championcritic

Like what I'm seeing so far. There is 1 problem I foresee with firewalls and I need clarification on this kabam. You say if we can break through zones in multiples of 5 we can then start future incursions runs from the latest firewall. That's great and all, but does this mean when we start a new run at zone 5 we will automatically receive incursions points with regard to 5 day incursions milestones reset properly? like in 1 cycle me and my friend break through zone 5 but die in zone 8. Then in the next 5 day incursion cycle we start at zone 5, will we automatically gain all the incursion points and rewards that we would have gotten for going from zone 1 to 5? Please clarify that this is in fact the intention that you guys have.

Buttehrs

So I got a random question, now that we know what the next 12-18 months looks like mostly, will you guys keep this up and provide updates and more dev diaries?