State of the Game - an open letter

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Comments

  • DemonzfyreDemonzfyre Member Posts: 22,782 ★★★★★
    Wozzle007 said:

    After the initial feedback on the time it takes to complete they pretty much doubled the amount damage the class based nodes do making the CAV MEQ much quicker. That also changed the T5CC to a nexus. Since then I don’t think there’s been any serious complaints about the rewards.

    Yes, if Kabam makes a month “significantly” harder the rewards should probably be adjusted upwards, if next month it goes back to baseline or easier the rewards go back to normal. SEQ’s rewards are variable anyway.
    They increased the amount of 6* shards in addition to the Nexus. The didn't increase all of them, the mostly just changed how quickly you can get them.

    So who decides if it's harder or easier? New Cav players will always find it difficult. Thronebreakers with big, expansive rosters will never find the MEQs or even SEQs difficult. So who draws the line?
  • Stagedear85Stagedear85 Member Posts: 774 ★★★
    Everything here was well said, hope kabam takes a good look at this.
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  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 20,426 Guardian
    Kerneas said:

    Do you believe in these "quantum states" of rewards? Where the rewards can exist on certain tresholds and nothing between? I do not directly oppose you, afterall I haven't gone through Cav EQ this month yet, I just wonder what you think. Could you operate with some floating value of say ±5% depending on difficulty of the given month? Or do you really insist we need to double the hp values in order to move the rewards even the slightest?
    There's a reason that as far as I'm aware no one does this. It is a lot of extra work for zero benefit. For one thing, you're asking the devs to adjust the rewards based on the relative difficulty of the content before it is released. It doesn't work if they change the rewards after the content has been released and done by a lot of players: that would just create chaos. But the devs *always* aim for the approximate effort to do the content to be roughly in line with the rewards. If they are wrong - or to be precise if you think they are wrong - they won't know that when they are designing the content and the rewards.

    But let's say this is just magically possible. Now you're asking the developers to spend time tweaking individual monthly rewards by plus or minus 5% in a game where progression is measured on a time scale of years. And for every month where the reward get tweaked upward, there's likely to be months where the rewards are tweaked downward. So the easy months that everyone can do will have lower rewards, and the harder months that fewer people can do will have higher rewards. Who does this benefit? Only the people who can already do the harder content. So the people currently complaining about the higher difficulty will disproportionately get less rewards, while the people fine with the higher difficult will get significantly more rewards. Is that the intent?

    And all of this ignores how games are actually developed. Although this is a bit of an oversimplification, it is the rewards that are set first, and the content created to match them second. It isn't the content that is created first, and the rewards then set to match. If you're a content designer for a game company, you aren't allowed to make up whatever rewards you want. You simply don't have that discretion. Rewards follow very specific progression and economic rules. The rewards we get for monthly side quests follow a longer term budget that you can't arbitrarily break. To follow those rules, rewards are set first, based on how much rewards the game can give out in a month to fit into longer period budgets. Then the content is created to fit those reward budgets. Making rewards higher in one month would mean making them lower in the next month regardless of difficulty, which would be far more problematic than fluctuating difficulty.

    Given all the collateral issues surrounding reward design, small tweaks are rarely made to rewards. No one fights over the last 5%. If you think 1.05 is what it should be, 1.00 is close enough for most game developers. So yeah, rewards do tend to make quantum jumps, because if it is 500 now and you believe it should be 515, nobody cares, and your project manager will tell you to stop bothering them about it. It changes when it should be 645, and then they'll probably change it to 750 so they don't have to change it again for a while.
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  • StellarStellar Member Posts: 1,128 ★★★★

    Well it has been the weekend.
    Well the week-end is over and yet still no answer !
  • CoMinowCoMinow Member Posts: 364 ★★
    edited November 2021
    How did this thread turn into @Demonzfyre arguing with a bunch of people who think the monthly is hard and roster depth? and how is everyone disagreeing with him?.. the monthly is always the same, you have the counters or you don’t. It’s real simple. The only thing that makes it seem harder is the game not functioning properly. #Cakewalk

    And @DNA3000 arguing about whatever that argument is about?(sorry I don’t have 3 hours to read whatever it is, just making a point) so please don’t rip me in a giant post, just call me an ahole or something if you think I deserve it.

    And why isn’t anyone from @kabam commenting on what seems to be the closest thing to unanimous I’ve ever seen on the forums? It’s tragic how much the majority agree and how all anyone wants to do is argue about other things.

    Can we just be on same page once? We all play the game, the game is broken and we want it fixed. Can we just work on getting a response from the company we all support and give record profits to almost quarterly? Please
  • LordSmasherLordSmasher Member Posts: 1,617 ★★★★★
    Stellar said:

    Well the week-end is over and yet still no answer !
    Yeh! Clocks ticking.
  • CrusaderjrCrusaderjr Member Posts: 1,059 ★★★★
    Mauled said:

    Would tickle me if it was actually Kabam Mike after finally breaking over having to defend the state of the game for the last year.
    it wouldnt surprise me tbh xD would be a super cool plot twist. kabam mike was always the leak we needed


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  • Scratchmaster23Scratchmaster23 Member Posts: 184 ★★
    100% Agree, well constructed and written post.
    Please bring back the game we all knew and loved
  • JessieSJessieS Member Posts: 1,613 ★★★★★
    So any updates ? Especially if the side quest will be improved ?
  • KerneasKerneas Member Posts: 3,881 ★★★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    There's a reason that as far as I'm aware no one does this. It is a lot of extra work for zero benefit. For one thing, you're asking the devs to adjust the rewards based on the relative difficulty of the content before it is released. It doesn't work if they change the rewards after the content has been released and done by a lot of players: that would just create chaos. But the devs *always* aim for the approximate effort to do the content to be roughly in line with the rewards. If they are wrong - or to be precise if you think they are wrong - they won't know that when they are designing the content and the rewards.

    But let's say this is just magically possible. Now you're asking the developers to spend time tweaking individual monthly rewards by plus or minus 5% in a game where progression is measured on a time scale of years. And for every month where the reward get tweaked upward, there's likely to be months where the rewards are tweaked downward. So the easy months that everyone can do will have lower rewards, and the harder months that fewer people can do will have higher rewards. Who does this benefit? Only the people who can already do the harder content. So the people currently complaining about the higher difficulty will disproportionately get less rewards, while the people fine with the higher difficult will get significantly more rewards. Is that the intent?

    And all of this ignores how games are actually developed. Although this is a bit of an oversimplification, it is the rewards that are set first, and the content created to match them second. It isn't the content that is created first, and the rewards then set to match. If you're a content designer for a game company, you aren't allowed to make up whatever rewards you want. You simply don't have that discretion. Rewards follow very specific progression and economic rules. The rewards we get for monthly side quests follow a longer term budget that you can't arbitrarily break. To follow those rules, rewards are set first, based on how much rewards the game can give out in a month to fit into longer period budgets. Then the content is created to fit those reward budgets. Making rewards higher in one month would mean making them lower in the next month regardless of difficulty, which would be far more problematic than fluctuating difficulty.

    Given all the collateral issues surrounding reward design, small tweaks are rarely made to rewards. No one fights over the last 5%. If you think 1.05 is what it should be, 1.00 is close enough for most game developers. So yeah, rewards do tend to make quantum jumps, because if it is 500 now and you believe it should be 515, nobody cares, and your project manager will tell you to stop bothering them about it. It changes when it should be 645, and then they'll probably change it to 750 so they don't have to change it again for a while.
    You are right about punishing the weaker players, I didn't think about that.

    Still tho, I am not asking the devs for anything in this direction. I have just been watching a discussion of Demonzyfire (I think) with people here and this question came to my mind. I just asked that person what their opinion on that idea is, and I've got my answer. End of story.

    Thank you for your response tho, it gave me more insight into it
  • PorkeyPorkey Member Posts: 6
    Totally agree well said ,shame kabam have not responded to the players in any way even considering that cyber weekend is on the way , some people would think with a chance of a big cash input during that weekend you would try and keep your players happy
  • Fit_Fun9329Fit_Fun9329 Member Posts: 2,292 ★★★★★
    They will reply. They have to.

    I think, they have some meetings now regarding how to communicate with the community. Maybe someone or many at kabam is/are creating some draft answers and the management must approve it. As I said earlier, this thread here nailed all the problems the game has right now. An official answer will come, we need to wait patiently :smile:
  • DemonzfyreDemonzfyre Member Posts: 22,782 ★★★★★
    Ciedre said:

    Not fixing their content is the worst thing they could do.
    The fact that they keep releasing bugged content is the second worse thing they can do, because it takes away hope of them actually listening to the playerbase.

    What worries me is that they dont seem to have an active test server. If people here got to test new content/champions/patches before they went live, then a lot of these issues would have been noticed before release. I really dont get why they cant have a proper testserver (well I suppose its because they dont want to let players practice harder fights there, rather than having them spend extra units on the live server, but that would still be better then having all the bugs go live).
    You don't know anything about what they have or don't have. For you to say "not fixing their content is the worst thing" just shows how much you don't understand.

    So tell us how to fix it. Tell us what they should be doing instead? While you're at it, how would you like them to test content successfully for the wide variety of devices this game is played on. Since you seem to know so much about what they don't have, explain it for me. Make it make sense.
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