**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

Hood Changes - Discussion [Merged Threads]

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Comments

  • Grootman1294Grootman1294 Posts: 863 ★★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    HI_guys said:

    HI_guys said:

    None of the new invisibility nonsense was needed. The hexes alone would've sufficed.

    The invisibility isn't bad, but removing the fate seal was.
    No their reasoning was that he would be op .just give the fate seal back
    Sometimes their sense of logic baffles me lmao
    The problem is not logic, it is values. When Hood came up for updates, the designer saw an opportunity to add a bunch of stuff they thought would be really cool. But they then determined that Hood was too powerful so something had to be reduced. And they decided they were not going to reduce the cool stuff they added, they were going to reduce the existing abilities they didn't care about instead. That's perfectly logical if your goal is to protect your own work, and not the previous investment anyone made into the champ.


    Didn't think of that. This gets an insightful from me.
  • MasterpuffMasterpuff Posts: 6,463 ★★★★★
    Glazil said:

    Glazil said:

    I find this entire scenario incredibly frustrating. I've been talking about this on so many different platforms that I've kind of started to lose control of words, but to those of you that don't understand the impact that these changes have to those that actively use this champion (maybe you don't have him, maybe you just didn't like him), I'd nudge you in the direction of collection of feedback I've written on the subject using specific examples and scenarios:
    https://docs.google.com/document/d/11IuBRhchjyTiQDKSIJ5d7Aad6NfqQO0Cs19I_UBH-xk/edit

    I thought you quit the forums again? Back for round 4?😈

    Joking.



    Mostly.
    I couldn't let my voice be unheard for this matter. I'm a part of the Hood cult. I'm still staying away from this toxic platform as well as the global, Line, and even the YT chats.
    Global and YT are usually bad. This place is mostly nice, Line im not a huge part of.
  • Bugmat78Bugmat78 Posts: 2,108 ★★★★★
    Hood is one of my favourite champs. I really hope this attachment isn't as bad as it looks on paper for his utility.
  • JubaknightJubaknight Posts: 82
    We cannot tell without trying the new one. But, agree the description seems that it might be actually a nerf.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★

    DNA3000 said:

    Drenlin said:

    Wow, change notes have been out for 30 minutes and everyone already knows exactly how this change is going to effect him? Let the release happen, use the champ, then condemn it if it’s warranted

    I think the most important aspect of the Hood change is being overlooked, and it is something that while Kam mentions at the end of his video, I don't think he made the direct case for. If I understand Kam's video correctly, Kam makes the case that the devs took away too much relative to what they added back, and that's problematic for the players who invested in Hood for those things the devs took away. From that perspective, maybe we all should wait and see if that's true.

    However, I believe that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Hood is good or bad. It doesn't matter if the devs added enough, or not enough. The real problem is that Hood's update reflects a toxic design philosophy, and I don't use that word lightly. The philosophy is basically this: we can take away anything we want, as long as we put more stuff back.

    This game doesn't work that way, and in fact is moving farther and farther away from that. Usefulness is not linear: we don't have champs that are 8s that are better than 7s. We have champs that are useful in this fight, and champs that are useful in that fight. We have champs good in some situations and not in others. And we have a content design philosophy magnifying those differences in higher tier content. You need a roster with a wide range of capabilities to do all the content coming out.

    We no longer live in a world where the devs can turn a champ that is a 4 into a champ that is a 7 and walk away happy. Instead we live in a world where Hood had very specific buff control capabilities that were severely weakened in some aspects, and then had other stuff added. We cannot simply say the stuff added is "better" than the stuff removed, because for the players who were relying upon Hood to do those things that were removed, the champ no longer functions as desired in their specific roster.

    This is already problematic in a game where champion acquisition is random, so you have to deal with the hand you're dealt. But this game is also a game in which the resources to rank up champs to combat effective levels relative to the rest of the roster is also limited and expensive. Every single player faces a unique challenge when ranking up roster, unique due to the fact that everyone's roster is in effect randomly generated. For some people, Hood was their best options for certain things, and they invested in Hood because of that fact. Those investments are now lost. This is true even if Hood is now better at other things, because there's no guarantee that those players *needed* those other things.

    Maybe Hood is better for a new player picking him up today, and maybe Hood is not better. But that's irrelevant, or should be irrelevant. Those players are getting a better Hood on the backs of other players getting a worse Hood and losing resources they spent in good faith on a champ that changed for no reason.

    i say "for no reason" because if there was a need for Hood to lose the utility he lost, that would be one thing. Hypothetically speaking, if losing that utility was the *only way* for Hood to become more relevant to the playerbase at large, then this change would be awful but necessary, and we should all accept that some things are awful but necessary. But it is impossible to make the case that the loss of utility was necessary, because the devs could have added less powerful versions of their new mechanics and kept his original utility, as they don't conflict.

    If preservation of player investment was an actual priority with the developers, Hood could have been updated in a way that made him better for everyone.

    Instead, the devs played a numbers game. Improve Hood for the masses, and if enough people like it, it doesn't matter how much damage occurs to the people already invested in him.

    Whether you like the Hood update or not, whether you think the Hood update makes him more valuable or not, no matter what playtesting eventually shows, I think every player should consider the Hood update dangerous, because it says the devs don't care about pre-existing player investment. They only care about what players will invest in champions in the future. And if the devs continue to update champions with this philosophy, they will eventually take something away you like and for no reason.

    I understand there's some grey area here. Most game changes, most champion updates, take something away. Some of that is inevitable. The question is whether what was taken away is sufficiently useful and important that the preservation of investment is important. But I think the Hood change is unambiguously far over the line. There is no question whatsoever that he had important use cases, and there's no question some of them were taken away. Hood is not a grey area case.
    totally agreed.
    I think it's also pertinent whether the champion is actually getting ranked up for use of the ability that's removed. When buffing Yellowjacket, i doubt many people would have complained if his stun after power sting expired was removed in place of some new abilities. Nobody is ranking up yellowjacket for that ability. People are ranking up Hood for his buff control, and that is a useful ability. Like you said, people are filling a buff control champ hole in their roster and Hood is much much worse for that role.

    There should never be a situation when an ability is removed in favour for new ability (which is arguably just damage in this case)

    Imagine, taking this to it's extreme, that Kabam decided Ghost needed a rework (would never happen of course, but bear with), they decided that they would remove ghost's phasing and in place they would give her a chunky fury buff that triggered on special attacks. People ranked up ghost because of what she does, phasing and big damage along with a host of utilities. Removing the phasing dramatically changes her as a champion and the extra damage does not replace what she was ranked up for. Removing some of Hood's buff control capabilities changes him as a champion. You cannot argue that just because he got some more damage it's a justifiable change.

    And if you say these situations are different, yeah they are, ghost won't be changed and she won't have her phasing removed, but where do you draw the line of Kabam removing a champions utility in place of adding a bit more damage?
    Therein lies a fundamental problem. I'm not entirely sure they're updating Champions to become preferred Rank-Ups. They're updating them to be more useful in the current game climate than they were previously. Certain balancing measures need to be done in these cases because it's not just about adding more. The effects of the Abilities combined need to be considered. So I'm not totally against the idea of having to remove existing Abilities overall. However, I do see it as problematic when it's overly used because it becomes more of a swap-out situation than an update. If that's the case, I'd rather have less buffs a year, and more siginficant reworks. In terms of taking away utility to add something else, that can sometimes happen though. Champs are being changed. There's no guarantee they'll be used for what they were used for before.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    Actually, they do need to remove things sometimes. As long as they've been doing rebalances, people have never responded well to the idea of taking anything away. They seem to believe all you have to do is add a little of this and a little of that. There's a reason they've called rebalances and not additions. It's not always additive.
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