**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Comments
Second: Late to this thread, but I don’t understand knee-jerk negative reactions to champ buffs. Disappointment with a live buff is one thing—and projecting what a buff will be like based on words is another—but flat slamming buffs this way makes little sense.
Third: Negativity does boil over, and there’s ample cause for a fair bit of negativity for things not related to the buffs. Sow—>reap
Dr. Zola
Kabam has legitimate issues and they are worth criticizing however writing off everything because one buff didn't go as you would have hoped isn't one of those ways that's remotely constructive in any way shape or form.
Dr. Zola
Kabam has the professional responsibility: their actions should be judged in that context. But players who make it harder to make progress with those problems need to accept their own culpability.
The comments made lack anything constructive and instead take the abusive approach, which is just never necessary.
If you honestly do not like a single of Kabam's recent buffs, fine. You're absolutely entitled to that opinion, but instead of saying "Kabam is pathetic, always useless" perhaps try "hmm, I don't feel the recent buffs are on the right track, I feel like the issue is the removal of previous abilities" or whatever. It's pretty simple, you don't have to say anything special, just don't be a nob.
Basically just be a decent human being. Which is ridiculous to have to tell people, but hey, this is the internet, where people can say whatever the hell they want.
Ddhk I actually enjoy, I got a bunch of his synergy partners already ranked and when he has a team around him he’s actually decent and fun to play. He’s not the top dps but he’s tanky and has some great utility in anti miss and shrugging non damaging debuffs. He actually gets a lot better when u master him. I just recently r3ed peni and she makes him hit much harder too.
So many great buffs, hood I agreed with them changing to his 3rd form cause he was always a good buff controller and I agree with keeping core identities of champs.
But I hear ppl screaming nerf at Hawkeye and that’s ridiculous he still keeps a similar power control s1 rotation but they added so much more to his kit, the power control was just balanced to match his new damage. There’s a reason magik dosnt hit that hard, power control is a powerful ability so with him going to be doing great damage (on paper) I can see why they tweaked it.
Dr. Zola
The issue is that since we invest so much in champions, a nerf is actually pretty catastrophic to you as a player. Sig stones, rank up materials and even emotional investment to some extent. Ranking a champion only for them to be nerfed isn’t a great feeling.
But I wish that even just for the buff program, we had some sort of pledge/agreement from the designers with the players that there was a schedule. Something like a champion buff is released, and for the first month, they are in their beta or grace period.
During that time, the developers will be looking at numbers and seeing whether the champion is performing too strongly in places, and at the end of the period they will make adjustments if necessary. Now that would work for the players twofold.
One: champions that underperformed will be able to be tuned up a bit. And two: designers will be able to push the boat a bit more out, since there isn’t the risk anymore that a champion is going to be released and absolutely break the game in some way. Because of that, they can try new stuff. If it were communicated properly with the community that a champion is in trial stage for the first month of their release, and either rank up at your own risk, or at the end of the month send out champ specific rank down gems.
Now for me, this is more wishful thinking than a suggestion. I all but know the community or the game doesn’t have the sort of attitude to nerfs that would allow this. But we’ve seen a lot from kabam that they are sometimes conservative with designs so that they don’t accidentally create another quake or ghost. And that’s fair enough, because they can’t Nerf those champions now.
It’s just a shame that conservative designs could have stifled many, many more amazing designs because of how nerfs work in this game.
IIRC Odin was one of the only "underwhelming" characters to actually get a buff shortly after being released (though this may have been because the original intended playstyle was pretty... nasty to anyone who actually wanted to use him)
I don't know... it seems like they've stopped doing that, considering champs like Purgatory weren't changed despite seemingly being rather disappointing.
Anyway, as always, I do wish they had a bit more communication regarding these things. I know Champion changes take a while to design, but if I saw that people were genuinely unhappy with the changes I would not be as... concrete? Can I say that?
Imagine receiving feedback from an aligned community that says Hawkeye needs prefights where you can pick which DoT effect the arrow inflicts. That’s a whole rework which they will never be able to commit to. Nor should we expect them to.
Additionally, the fact that it’s only John and Dorosh working on the Buff Program tells us there is no way that this is going to happen unless the Buff Program team size increases.
And even if it does happen, Kabam are going to need to implement change control, more intensive community interaction, they will be forced to provide data and reasoning to back their decisions up, and when they do take back a champion back, they will need to address how will it affect the cadence of other champions. Which is a very tall order considering attention needs to be put elsewhere too.
I think we just need to trust Kabam with the Buff Program. Many things have come as a pleasant surprise, and many things won’t go our way. Our voice is our best tool as usual to getting Kabam’s attention. We just need to use it wisely.
Instead, I feel like they went way too conservative and gave her a miss counter at 10 buffs, and a short duration of buffs.
I agree John and Dorosh don’t have the time for something like that. Which is why I said it was less of a request, and more of a musing.
I have the same thoughts on it as I explained above, I think it would be great, and allow a champion like Pyscho man to have had a much more exciting kit, or at least one with higher numbers. I feel like the potential of champions if they were able to be tuned up or down after release would be much higher.
Obviously a champion like Hercules wouldn’t be toned down in my ideal world where I’m imagining this happening. I’m only talking about a tune down being necessary if they were insanely broken. Like if Herc’s immortality was a passive and paused for 10 seconds each time you hit the opponent.
Yes, I agree with you. Maybe if they opened this up to a small portion of the community like they did the CCP. But a smaller set of users so that things don’t leak or spiral out of control. BG and KM only maybe.
And yes, the approach they took w/ Namor, Cull, Torch, Maw and Invisible Woman was perfect. But it’s more resource intensive as they have to provide data and invest in long posts and back and forth which might further delay the buff program / reduce the flexibility and creativity they need to do their thing.
Maybe this activity can be done at the end of the buff program where an inventory can be taken of the lesser or non successful buffs, such as Gamora, Nova and maybe even Ronin and DD Flix.
I think Kabam could look into rewarding constructive criticism by opening up a small channel for buff testing.
Let it be a month before each patch drop.
Give a max of 3 or 5 trusted users beta access.
Advantages:
1) Builds a more established and trusted channel with the community.
2) Rewards and encourages positive behaviour and criticism.
Disadvantages:
1) Risk of leaking buffed information in advance? Unless Kabam communicate this information at the start of each month, which isn’t a bad move either.
Thanks for the post otherwise. I enjoyed your well thought out piece.
It does make me wonder why Kabam got rid of the beta-buff player testing program.
1. Too slow? I am sure if they wanted to, they could speed up the recruitment portion, shorten the actual time for players to test (I am sure players could figure out bugs and cheesy interactions even with just one day to test).
2. Too much resources? Could be a thing both on the front end (recruitment, setting up the beta environment, etc) and on the back end (responding to feedback and making changes or another beta), or just one. But it could be worthwhile to avoid having to rebuff champions or deal with player outrage.
3. To keep the surprise factor? I wouldn't have any knowledge whether keeping champion buffs a secret until a few weeks before release does something regarding player engagement/purchases. So I don't have any insight there.
4. Some other (monetary) reason?
There must be some reason champion buffs are no longer a thing, as Kabam is clearly find doing betas for Act 7 and making tweaks.