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

Mauled

Hey Everybody, I've got a response to your questions about Masteries directly from our game team here for you:

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!

Thanks for the response.

I have two main points to make -

Firstly, if a full rework of the interface isn’t coming anytime soon for whatever reason, can we have the option to just reset our masteries for free - it’s not the ideal solution but it would be a massive step in the right direction and wouldn’t be much work; after all the engine work is in place for this already.

Secondly, are you able to give us a loose timeframe for the dev blog, if not the work itself?

Cheers.

Seraphion

Don’t see why they can’t just be free to switch about. The system and engine work is already in place as when you changed parry etc. They were free for a week. This would be an easy 10 second job and have such a positive effect on the game.
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.

No it won’t help to just make it free it stil take 4 to 5 minutes to swich them all I’m rather hav a built u can tourn one for with one u wil like to use.

It would be easy for them to do it and it has a positive effect on everyone. If you dont want to do then thats your choice.

Seraphion

Hey Everybody, I've got a response to your questions about Masteries directly from our game team here for you:

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!

Thanks for infos on that topic.

I can see why bringing new Mastery or change them is a very hard thing to do in terms of balancing every champ around it.

But this didnt touch the points we most care about:

Free Switching. As many have said it it should be easy for you to make it free. Switching Mastery here and there felt really great when it was free (Parry info change).

The fact that your take over 100 units when we want to change them is outdated. This would also make ppl try out new Mastery they havent unlocked yet bc it wouldnt cost them a arm and a leg to switch here and there.

The 2nd point we want the most is a page system to make switching fast and easy.
I can understand if you dont have the tech for that yet. Take your time to make it work. But please put away the units cost for it.

Only as a 3rd point we would like to have more changes to them.

You told us so much amazing stuff in the roadmaps. But 95% still needs to come.
Why not end the roadmap with a banger that shows that you really change things?

It would be such a great move, easy to do for you and everyone would love you for it

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KnightZero

Mastery reset being free would be awesome, just feel that it should be done in a way that doesn't affect war. Otherwise we're going to see max limber on offense most of the time.

Mauled

Mastery reset being free would be awesome, just feel that it should be done in a way that doesn't affect war. Otherwise we're going to see max limber on offense most of the time.

We deal with that half of the time anyway in high tier AW. The alliances that make their players take off suicides for placement will be placing with max limber and high MD as a matter of course. I’d far rather a reduced parry time than 100 units to switch

StevieManWonder

Mastery reset being free would be awesome, just feel that it should be done in a way that doesn't affect war. Otherwise we're going to see max limber on offense most of the time.

If masteries are free to switch then everyone can do it so no one will have an advantage in that regard whereas now higher tier Alliances who have lots of whales can afford to spend the extra units to change their masteries between each war, giving only them an advantage

KnightZero

Mastery reset being free would be awesome, just feel that it should be done in a way that doesn't affect war. Otherwise we're going to see max limber on offense most of the time.
If masteries are free to switch then everyone can do it so no one will have an advantage in that regard whereas now higher tier Alliances who have lots of whales can afford to spend the extra units to change their masteries between each war, giving only them an advantage

I'm not saying they shouldn't be. Just make it so that it doesn't affect war too much. Maybe keep masteries of defenders as they are during attack phase as well? Or as someone said, keep it so that you can remove from a specific mastery rather than the whole thing. May have to use a few units, but better than all units.

CoatHang3r

Maybe y’all can look at an off toggle for masteries, something similar was done with Warlock and Salve.

Something like that might solve many of the pain points without creating the additional ones players haven’t yet realized come from free mastery switches.

It would need to toggle subsequent masteries as well so players couldn’t just turn off Recoil while retaining the benefits of Double Edge and Liquid Courage.

Mauled

I think that the ultimate solution would be for players to be able to give each champion on their roster a mastery set up, though obviously this would probably require a huge amount of behind the scenes work for Kabam and probably take the player a bit of time to finesse their champions' masteries.

They would come with their 'default' which would be the player's default mastery set up, but they would be able to go in and set up full Suicides for OR and Corvus for example, a MD set up for their Mystics and a deep wounds set up for Nick Fury etc. so we could fully utilise our champions and it would have the added bonus that once we've set it up we wouldn't have to go into the mastery tree and change it in between fights. To change a champion's masteries you could go into either the champion/mastery set up and select said champion and give them a tweak.

RiderofHell

@Kabam Miike quick question are the dual class crystals being added temporary or permanent??

Mollinary

Everything looks cool for me , so I will wait how it will be implemented. Till now We had many 'great newses' and not all of them was so good. So I will wait with congratulations for finishing implementation of all those great updates.

Player1994

If you go with the strikers thing it should be limited to a new specefic mode.. A reason why i personally play mcoc is that it's not childich the striker thing would make it like some King of fighter game which is horrible .. i can't even imagine how much laggs this woud bring to the game.

in the mean time think you guys should focus on making fresh updates to existing modes instead of adding new stuff

scheduled updates should take a place so everyone stop asking about them specially for AQ and AW

AW needs rewards updates with every new season (even tough the rewards seem pretty meh for the difficulty even after the update)

ACT6 should be the first priority Instead of AW and partial changes should take place so everyone can push into the story content waiting half a year for a fix makes no sense
at least a fast tweak to the already khnown above ordinary fight like the champions boss in 6.2 and the maestro fight in 6.3.3

For Arena it's becoming a torment with those dead dealers dooms guilly99 and warlocks who are just sitting there doing nothing but waiting for sp3 which they throw in a half milisecond that make you think wth is wrong with the mode
also kang and thanos teams prestige is crazy low

we need to be able to use our 6*s in the catalyst clash arena and alpha ... why do we own them ? to make life easy come on 2t4b and 3 alpha a week it's pretty much basic to lock 6* use in those arena's

for incursions it's bugged and slow BUFF choosing screen are pretty slow and you interact with too much of them/room and THE CHAT screen is always bugged Dungeons where way smoother

Matchemaking is worse just yesterday i was matched with a player having 20k team when i used a team of over 45k in INcursion7.
+ minimum requirement to auto match in incursions should be set to higher numbers ( only for matchemaking)
something like 35k team for incursion 7 and if no player is arround it should just tell you ( not found) not match you with what ever player is ónline .

+ ADD VOICE CHAT TO INCURSIONS with a setting to enable and disable it
+ voice chat will make them a lot more better and fast to communicate and tbh it's a way better overall experience to be able to talk to your friends in there

+5 Years now i think mcoc menu lacks Graphic setting control this will allow players with Average phones to run the game smoother not only that maybe make a setting to run the game at HIGH FPS .

-Shutt down background animations
- High fps
- Graphic low med high ultra...
- maybe even add setting to move the special attack button arround in the left screen i sure wanna place it closer to my thumb for a faster use after a combo

Nix2222

At minimum we should have 2-3 mastery setups to change between for free. For example one for solo questing/arena and one for AQ/AW. Any additional changes could cost units but you should be able to change them one at a time. We shouldn’t have to pay to switch all our masteries.

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StevieManWonder

@Kabam Miike can you comment about if there’s any plans to increase availability of t4cc? I’m an endgame player, have Act 6 100% and only three paths left of Abyss, and I never have enough t4cc to rank up the champs I need. I have all the other catalysts, but getting the right class of t4cc is almost impossible for me and given how many t4cc six stars need to go from r1 to r3, it’s stopping me from progressing at this point. Can you guys please make the t4cc in glory store selectors or rotating whole catalysts? Or, at the very least, made the t4cc crystal in the black iso market a selector instead? It’s killing my motivation to play the game not being able to rank up the champs I need.

Ruckus02

Will there be any sort of act 6 energy nerf? I’ve done all of act 6 and am now exploring it, but I’ve spent more units on energy refills than I have potions. @Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Lyra ???

Polygon

More iso for higher rarity dupes

sest22

Regarding the masters, I think it would be beneficial to have 2 or 3 presets where in each of them we can save them and select them when necessary from our profile.

Danielito2k

Terrible Experience in aw. Getting some champs disadvantages over others it’s just terrible. Aw is already is already buff and getting even more buff specially unstoppable, it’s just Evil, instead of making a more joyful experience the aw it’s actually worst than before.

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TheInfinty

So it’s been over 90 days since you announced arena changes, what’s happening then? @Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Porthos @Kabam Lyra

Did you not check news and announcements page @Gmail12345 they already have them listed and they are going live next week

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Iron_Patriot_is_lit

So it’s been over 90 days since you announced arena changes, what’s happening then? @Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Porthos @Kabam Lyra
Did you not check news and announcements page @Gmail12345 they already have them listed and they are going live next week
Great thank you, too many places to look for announcements.

There’s literally only 2 locations.

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