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**BANQUET EVENT PSA**
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To fully participate in the upcoming Banquet's Alliance Event you will need to be in your alliance for 14 days prior to the event's start date on December 20th. That means, stay in your alliance from December 6th onwards to enjoy all there is to offer in the Banquet event.
Comments
As long as they are still fairly highly pursued, and as long as they remain relevant to top tier content, I cannot see Kabam making 5* champs into a milestone. If that was even a possibility in their minds, they probably would have extended the rank rewards for them more than they did. The current 5* rank rewards are basically slightly higher than they were before to account for the fact that you would have some spillover from 6* competition that wasn't competing for the 5* champ in the past. In other words, the current 5* rank reward bracket reflects the attitude that it shouldn't even be really any larger than it used to be before they added 6* champs. That's not what you do if you're thinking that maybe 5* champs are losing their luster when it comes to being a highly valued pursuit item.
Which is to say, it is of course doable, it is just never going to be done.
Relative to what we could get before, that's 13.6k 6* shards more per month, or 16 more 6* champs (crystals) per year. That would seem to be the best way to grow roster if you're not competitive with the top tier grinders (and you're not competitive with the top tier grinders).
Alternatively you could shoot for the 6* basic champ if and when you don't have it (or need the awakening) which would take a lot less effort. But you decided that if you couldn't beat the absolute best arena grinders for one of the top 100 spots world wide in a competition for one of the more hype champs to come along in a while you were going to quit the game. Which honestly I can't fault Kabam for in this case. Someone trying to grind out a couple hundred units in the arena with 4* rosters is someone I can have a lot of sympathy for, as the game needs to do a better job supporting those middle tier players and the new arenas do the exact opposite. But someone who voluntarily puts up a hundred million points in a highly competitive arena and thinks they deserve to win regardless of the effort everyone else put in, not so much. Basically, in thinking you deserve to win you decided that no one else should want to put in more effort than you. You were wrong.
I know that I'm not the highest tier of player in this game, and I accepted that long ago
I have - in terms of doing featured grinds - a moderate sized roster. 84 6* champs, and a bunch of ranked 5* champs. Cycling my 6* champs gets be about 5.5 million per cycle. If I push to the limits with help requests and do seven cycles in one arena event that would be 38.5 million points. I've never actually calculated this, because I don't actually do it, but I believe I can get 3 million points cycling my 5* champs three times a day or nine times an arena event for about 27 million points. That's 65.5 million. To reach the ~ 130 million cutoff for Shang Chi I would have needed refreshes. Ignoring arena boosts, I would need about 323 more rounds of 6* champs, which at 60 units per refresh would be 19380 units.
The 6* featured grind is actually cheaper than Cavs for anyone with a competitive roster.
But here's something that will probably surprise many. Suppose you don't have a competitive roster. Suppose you only have three 6* champs total. Now what would it cost you? Well, assuming you can get about 200k per round (this depends on masteries and rank, but this is a close estimate) it would take a whopping 650 refreshes to score 130 million points. At 60 units per refresh, that would be 39,000 units.
Compare that with the 33,333 units it takes on average to pull the 6* featured from featured Cavs. It is higher, but not astronomically higher. The break even point is about 19 million points. In other words, if you can grind 19 million points in the featured arena for free, the cost to refresh three 6* champs enough to reach 130 million is about the same as the cost to open Cavs. Of course, we don't know where the stable range of featured 6* cutoffs is going to be yet, it might be lower as Shang Chi is the first and in high demand. But just for the sake of argument, we'll go with that 130 million cutoff for discussion purposes.
The arena is very competitive with Cav crystals, and this shouldn't be surprising. The "cost" of a 6* featured champ when it first comes out is something the playerbase "knows" at least intuitively. The amount of effort an arena grinder is willing to commit to getting that champ is not going to be *wildly* higher than the implicit cost of that champ in Cav crystals, because players aren't going to spend a lot more than they need to. They might not be 100% accurate on knowing how much that is, but they won't usually go wildly overboard.
People are beating a bush that consists of only what kabam has allowed us to do so far. If tomorrow kabam announced new milestones that included the 5* and 6* everyone would praise it. Arenas are NOT a competition mode, despite what you see.
When someone (like OP) puts up massive numbers and time for 115 million points with 40 6*. Damn, that’s straight up impressive, he should have gotten what he was aiming for. OP is also not alone, how many people have raged quit because they invested time and money to fall short of 1 rank spot. That’s ridiculous. These frustration and mental stress don’t have to be in arenas.
The game focuses so much on random outcomes. Crystals, arenas, in fight abilities and so forth, why? Why does everything have to be so uncertain? The game would not break, it would ease people’s frustrations with this part of the game.
If tomorrow Kabam allowed 5* and 6* in milestones they would absolutely destroy the game as it is today. Sure some will praise it , but I imagine the people spending money and those who play competitive would see a significant drop all around . Why? Because their efforts give no advantage neither does their money. What’s the point?
No one I know has raged quit because they have missed arena. Arena itself is not a competitive mode in itself , but you fight for placements. However when you are trying to secure a champ you are fighting against the entire world for top 100 , very similar to legend times.
The game focuses on random outcomes because it is what keeps us coming back and allowing us to grow our rosters.
OP put up 115mil points he was short and will hold on to this for awhile. Let that be a lesson for him, and you as well. You don’t deserve anything because you thought you did a good job. 100 people did it better.
If you want rewards you don’t have to compete for console games are always better.
The "middle ground" at the moment is a combination of the basic arena and the lower rank shards. In other words, the featured arena scores are not just a function of the rarity (stars) and the value of the champ, it is also due to time, or impatience as it were. People aren't grinding 130 million because they think Shang Chi is worth 130 million. Everyone knows he's going to go for less in the basic arena down the road. They are grinding 130 million to get Shang Chi *now* - to be one of the first.
People complaining about the 130 million grind need to remember that. Everyone shooting for Shang Chi now in the featured aren't just trying to get a new 6* champ. They want to be one of the first in the world to get that champ as a 6* champ. And that's going to be very competitive, because a lot more people want him immediately than there are slots to get him.
He's eventually going to show up in a basic arena for probably half the points. And he's eventually going to show up in a featured 6* crystal where a lot of people are going to get him for a lot less effort. That's the "middle ground" of the game: if you aren't one of the top 1% of the top 1% of all arena grinders and not one of the top 1% of top 1% of whales, you will get other chances at that champ down the road. The top of the top of players who expend the most effort will get him first, but not exclusively. Everyone else gets him eventually, if they play within their means and don't burn themselves out trying to compete way outside their weight class.
I have no intention of grinding for the 6* featured any time soon. I'm going to pocket my shards and wait for a more efficient shot at it. At 16k 6* shards per month just from the arena, over 30k 6* shards altogether, if I want to save them up for featured shots I can do that. Or I can just continue to build up my 6* roster with a lot more 6* crystal openings. For me, that's a pretty good reward for the extra effort, because I'm focusing that effort on something that has a good return on investment.
My opinion is that Arenas should always guarantee a prize on a specific goal because, talking about frustration, there is nothing worse than spending time and money for nothing. You can even put a 200ML goal, at least I know in advance if it's worth it or not. But selfish/addicted/rich people will never agree.
Some things you can't just pull on the thread, because it is connected to too many other things. To change the way the developers look at the champion chase, you have to figure out some other way to build a foundation of game monetization, and content release and development, and reward systems, and progression systems. You're going to get resistance at every step of the way, and without some champion for the idea within the company itself, no amount of yelling from outside the company is going to make any progress, because you don't even *know* what the problems are specifically and can't advocate solutions to them. And no one at Kabam is going to spend their every waking moment fighting that fight against the entire rest of their coworkers.
Game developers do not become game developers to start revolutions, they do so to make games. And when there's a million different things you can work on and be proud of, trying to argue for uprooting the monetization and content development foundations of a six year old game is not a choice any rational person would make.
The short answer is you can't make a game with moderate predictable rewards that always take a moderate amount of effort. Because those games all have one thing in common: they are boring.
To be blunt, however, you should consider the fact that you seem to take the position that you can refuse to accept anyone else's arguments, but you think the developers will accept yours. Why should that be?
Again, I’m speaking of changing arenas to better the health of the players. I’ve seen it for many years the spiral of players burning themselves out in arenas for pittance of hope. The rest of the game competition parts are just fine. I’m not stating the entire game has to change. Do not twist my words into that.
That’s why I don’t accept the argument that kabam has always been this way. There are times for a change. This is a proper QOL change that would not only help everyone but better the mental health of those that play. Merely telling me that developers won’t read it or saying it’s “a competition” or effort doesn’t equal reward etc...doesn’t make any sense, you’re just making excuses to not helping the players.
Part of managing the grind is setting realistic goals, and those goals have to be calibrated to one's capabilities. 6* featured grind is not really something that's within my normal capabilities. 6* basic, maybe, but a stretch and probably not enjoyable. Building to 120 is achievable, and every new champ makes the grind a little bit faster, so there's that. It is all about managing expectations.
If this idea is true, someone who grinded 116 million points should earn more rewards, and someone who grinded 114 million points should earn less, all the way down the line.
If there were only 150 players, and 100 of the players colluded together saying, we will only grind 10 million points so that everyone gets Shang Chi by ranking 1-100, you can bet that there will be some people, within that 100 group, who will grind more than 10 million because they are scared of there being 100 players out of 150 that will grind above their score. Those 50 other players, could still decide to grind all the way to 100 million, just because they want to be 'safe.'
There are definitely a lot more than 150 players playing the arena,
While the point scores are out of wack, it simply reflects how many, and how much others are willing to 'pay for it.'
The one thing Kabam should be on the hook for is ensuring that there aren't any cheaters in the rankings.
Side note: The idea of putting 5-star champions in milestones as a "Consolation prize" might seem like a good idea, but the full ramifications have to be thought out.
The cost to refresh champions has gone up with rarity, but roster size has also gone way up since then and it takes fewer refreshes to generate the same number of rounds (because refreshed champs are free). I suspect that the actual cost to grind the featured 6* today is in line with the cost to grind 4* featured back in the day, factoring in the overall price inflation of 6* champs over 4* champs.
I think at the end of the day, most players understand that for the game to exist as an ongoing concern, it can't simply hand out rewards to everyone who thinks they deserve them. There has to be elements of competition, of aspiration, and even scarcity. These things build value in intrinsically valueless things. These bunches of pixels only have value if the players think they have value, and value is judged relatively. Things that are harder to get have more value than things easier to get. Things that are rare tend to have more value than things that are common. These valuations are necessary to fund the game, because 98% of everyone is playing completely for free. The other 2% have to be convinced to spend actual cash to get pixels and numbers on a screen, or no one has a game to play. And they are not going to spend money to get what everyone else can get relatively easily. They are only going to spend money on things that are hard to get, or rare to get, or that can't be gotten at all until much later.
Like everywhere else in the world, competition can sometimes bring out the worst in some people. But I think the vast majority that can deal with it shouldn't be penalized just to protect them from themselves. If they decide to leave the game because they can't prevent themselves from self-destruction, we should let them go so the majority can continue to enjoy the game. We shouldn't be changing the game just to try to serve the needs of that tiny minority at the expense of jeopardizing the game for everyone else.
I also think you need to consider the fact that if none of this makes any sense to you, when it makes sense to most people, that the problem is probably not that it doesn't actually make sense, but rather that you're simply unable or unwilling to comprehend it. Even most people who wish to change it at least understand it.
The really nasty option is the one that seems on the surface to be the most reasonable: split the difference and set the milestone to 45 million. Although that seems reasonable at first glance, we now have a situation where the less desirable champs require far more effort than they used to, while the most sought after champs are now going for far less effort. This actually directly benefits the top grinders, who are still going to get the champ but for less effort, and penalizes the less strong grinders who used to be able to at least snag the less competitive champs but now cannot get any of them.
Milestones have a lot of issues with them, but one of the more subtle problems is that no matter what you set the milestones to, you're very likely to be helping players who don't need help and penalizing those below them. And regardless, you aren't helping the vast majority of players, none of whom can reach any reasonable milestone for the highest rarity champ. You're just redistributing costs among the top 1%, away from the strongest and towards the weakest of them. Which is the exact opposite of what you want to do.
I accept a lot of arguments, I’m rather double sided. My mind set is typically in the middle. But that doesn’t mean I can’t type out one side of the argument or the other. Also, I don’t comment back it means I’ve accepted what was said.
Your argument doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t mean I don’t understand. My respect for your POVs has dropped drastically if you truly feel that allowing people to self destructive when it can be fixed in a simple manner. Put the champions into the milestones, make the goal posts movable to adjust to growing rosters. It is that simple, there’s no reason someone like OP has to put in that much time and effort into a mobile game for disappointment. There are plenty of other areas in the game that has true competition and more that kabam can add.
Now we are going in circles. I don’t care if you like my idea. Or if people want to disagree with it. The amount of people that would be upset with my idea would be minimal. While they would still go and get those milestones competed.
Think about it, who would be upset at having the new champions at 100 million points-milestone? Still a ton of effort, time and refreshing for the average player. Much easier for larger developed rosters. Not to mention people who wanted to spend on it could bust out the milestones in one day and not give up entire weekends for a new champ. I can’t see why anyone would dislike that, except those that think it’s a competition. Which it isn’t, there’s no competition when there are players with 150+ 6* and players with 20 6* in the same bracket. It’s an illusion of a competition.