**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

  • 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.

    If you wanna play word games
    Its called a tune up not tune down

    Removing a core ability of his lowers his utility and thus will be useable in even less scenarios now.
    If you really wanted to be semantical, they labeled it an "update", as per the Spotlight. Not a buff. As in bringing them up to date, within the current status of the game. Regardless, that wasn't my point. My point was there's a balancing aspect to it. Whether he's better or worse now, I'll have to wait and see. The objective is at least better than he was, as the game is now. Not necessarily better at what he did before. Not by default anyway. These reworks aren't simply a "give him more....give him more..." situation.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★

    Pulyaman said:

    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.
    There in lies the problem. You cannot just change the champions core ability without taking into consideration the people who have ranked him up for they ability. If I rank up mysterio for poison immunity and kabam just updated him saying that mysterio should not have poison immunity because that makes him too op, that's a problem. These reworks were supposed to make a champion better, I am not sure it does in this case.

    Considering all the champions before this were desperately in need to changing, I am not sure why kabam picked hood and why they changed him like this.
    There's no guarantee that Champs will do the same thing they used to when you change them.
    I was waiting for u to show up and defend this
    I'm not defending anything. Haven't said I like it or hate it. I haven't even seen him used yet. What I'm talking about is the idea that all they have to do is add more. That's a horrible way to balance a game.
    Yeah but when buffing a champion, you shouldn't take away the main things that made players use them. Thats like turning a nice beef burger and taking away the beef patty and replacing it with more lettuce. It's not as good as it was.
    How can you tell if it's as good as it was if you haven't even seen it play out yet? For that matter, good or bad isn't always measured by doing the same things with it. That's kind of the point that I'm making that seems pretty obvious. I'm not sure how people automatically think that changing a Champ will result in the same uses. In fact, that somewhat contradicts the point of changing them.
    When a core piece of utility to a champ is taken away, it doesn't particularly matter how much damage is added (within reason of course). You could give Hood one of the highest value damages on his sp2, but he still couldnt face vision aarkus in any high tier situation and come out alive.

    The point is, nowadays, damage and utility are the two measures that value how good a champ is. Hood was always measured by his weaker damage and really great buff control. Every week or two there was an underrated champion thread on the forum and Hood always popped up, because so many players decided to rank him up for his utility in controlling buffs. They relied on him to control buffs, everything else he did was a bonus.

    There's a reason not as many people are worried about the invisibility change. People in general arent opposed to abilities changing, his invisibility was not a core piece of why Hood is useful, it was an occasional nice to have. If this was the sole change nobody would mind too much, but taking away Hood's entire identity as a champion? He IS a buff control champ. There's a reason why people don't consider Juggernaut or Sasquatch a buff control champ, stagger is not reliable unless it stacks.

    Thats why we can tell already that this change is not good. I do not need another damage dealer in my roster, I have CGR, Ghost, Professor X, Falcon and more at r3. What i do need, is more utility, i was hoping Hood could be that utility, but now he will be a pretty good damage dealer, and in general, that is less useful to people.

    And even if Hood comes out of this update with really great damage and people start using him, a few people will be saying oh well why does it matter, his damage is really great now?

    The reason it still matters is what about next time kabam decide to upgrade a champion that people are using for a purpose and remove their ability to deal with that purpose? What if they don't get the damage numbers right? They don't always hit the mark with buffs. If Hood gets a YJ sort of damage buff would people be saying at least he still has damage? No, kabam would have taken a really usable utility champion, removed a huge chunk of the utility that people rank him up for and said here you go have some mediocre damage.

    Champions like Ronan, Hawkeye, Dr Voodoo, Hulk Ragnarok, Night Thrasher, Rogue etc come to mind. Not the top tier champions necessary, but definitely still ranked up today for specific uses, whether it's high buff, power control, immunities, passive degen, evade or whatever. These are champions similar in value to Hood, Angela and Massacre and I really hope when their time comes for an update that Kabam won't just throw damage on Glad Hulk, and nerf his face me because it's too powerful. People rank him for that ability, not his damage. They might not need damage, but they wanted the ability that Kabam decided to get rid of.
    He's not even on my mind as an option for Buff control. Not with the options we have these days. He's sitting idle.
  • AgresssorAgresssor Posts: 251 ★★
    edited February 2021
    While the game has champions such as doctor doom, symbiote supreme, claire, mojo, longshot
    in such situations where you will need control of buffs regardless of Hood's fateseal, he will not be a priority for such situations. It's easier to look at the statistics of which of the mystics are more often raised to 5* - 5 and 6* 3 ranks.
    Even in mystic variant 5, the hood is on the side.. I have not yet seen anyone who would take a hood in abyss instead of doctor doom or supreme...

    Whether he will have fateseal or not as long as players have champions like doom, supreme, mojo and claire
    it doesn't matter anymore, unless you have the champions listed above and the hood will become a more budgetary version... temporarily...

    The hood before the update remained a budget mystic version
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    HI_guys said:

    Pulyaman said:

    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.
    There in lies the problem. You cannot just change the champions core ability without taking into consideration the people who have ranked him up for they ability. If I rank up mysterio for poison immunity and kabam just updated him saying that mysterio should not have poison immunity because that makes him too op, that's a problem. These reworks were supposed to make a champion better, I am not sure it does in this case.

    Considering all the champions before this were desperately in need to changing, I am not sure why kabam picked hood and why they changed him like this.
    There's no guarantee that Champs will do the same thing they used to when you change them.
    I was waiting for u to show up and defend this
    I'm not defending anything. Haven't said I like it or hate it. I haven't even seen him used yet. What I'm talking about is the idea that all they have to do is add more. That's a horrible way to balance a game.
    Yeah but when buffing a champion, you shouldn't take away the main things that made players use them. Thats like turning a nice beef burger and taking away the beef patty and replacing it with more lettuce. It's not as good as it was.
    How can you tell if it's as good as it was if you haven't even seen it play out yet? For that matter, good or bad isn't always measured by doing the same things with it. That's kind of the point that I'm making that seems pretty obvious. I'm not sure how people automatically think that changing a Champ will result in the same uses. In fact, that somewhat contradicts the point of changing them.
    When a core piece of utility to a champ is taken away, it doesn't particularly matter how much damage is added (within reason of course). You could give Hood one of the highest value damages on his sp2, but he still couldnt face vision aarkus in any high tier situation and come out alive.

    The point is, nowadays, damage and utility are the two measures that value how good a champ is. Hood was always measured by his weaker damage and really great buff control. Every week or two there was an underrated champion thread on the forum and Hood always popped up, because so many players decided to rank him up for his utility in controlling buffs. They relied on him to control buffs, everything else he did was a bonus.

    There's a reason not as many people are worried about the invisibility change. People in general arent opposed to abilities changing, his invisibility was not a core piece of why Hood is useful, it was an occasional nice to have. If this was the sole change nobody would mind too much, but taking away Hood's entire identity as a champion? He IS a buff control champ. There's a reason why people don't consider Juggernaut or Sasquatch a buff control champ, stagger is not reliable unless it stacks.

    Thats why we can tell already that this change is not good. I do not need another damage dealer in my roster, I have CGR, Ghost, Professor X, Falcon and more at r3. What i do need, is more utility, i was hoping Hood could be that utility, but now he will be a pretty good damage dealer, and in general, that is less useful to people.

    And even if Hood comes out of this update with really great damage and people start using him, a few people will be saying oh well why does it matter, his damage is really great now?

    The reason it still matters is what about next time kabam decide to upgrade a champion that people are using for a purpose and remove their ability to deal with that purpose? What if they don't get the damage numbers right? They don't always hit the mark with buffs. If Hood gets a YJ sort of damage buff would people be saying at least he still has damage? No, kabam would have taken a really usable utility champion, removed a huge chunk of the utility that people rank him up for and said here you go have some mediocre damage.

    Champions like Ronan, Hawkeye, Dr Voodoo, Hulk Ragnarok, Night Thrasher, Rogue etc come to mind. Not the top tier champions necessary, but definitely still ranked up today for specific uses, whether it's high buff, power control, immunities, passive degen, evade or whatever. These are champions similar in value to Hood, Angela and Massacre and I really hope when their time comes for an update that Kabam won't just throw damage on Glad Hulk, and nerf his face me because it's too powerful. People rank him for that ability, not his damage. They might not need damage, but they wanted the ability that Kabam decided to get rid of.
    He's not even on my mind as an option for Buff control. Not with the options we have these days. He's sitting idle.
    Thank you for confirming you don't know how to use hood and your opinion can be taken with that on mind
    I don't know how to use him? How did you read that? I know what he does. I said I don't pull him out for Buff control. There are a number of options I go to before even considering him.
  • avenge_123avenge_123 Posts: 1,307 ★★★
    I know kabam has not done a good work with hood he deserved,but let's just wait for the gameplay, No champion has ever been worse after a buff,they have only been better.
  • avenge_123avenge_123 Posts: 1,307 ★★★

    I know kabam has not done a good work with hood he deserved,but let's just wait for the gameplay, No champion has ever been worse after a buff,they have only been better.

    Looks at DDHK
    he was meme tier before.
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