An Update to Balancing in MCOC!

Knullvoid235 · January 2022

MCOC Team said:
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When we conducted tuning changes in the past, the majority of negative feedback from the community was due to the fact that these tuning changes were conducted in a vacuum. Players had a hard time understanding what was overpowered and underpowered and had no input into what was changing.

No offense but this just seems like it's saying "You don't know what is best for you, summoners, we do and we will make sure we give it to you no matter how you take it"

K_P · January 2022

Stop doing bad things do good things instead

NihalFayaz · January 2022

Please Kabam. Hire some more members & don't make the buff program lag. Please

BigPoppaCBONE · January 2022

I still don't see why the balancing process needs to take so long. If you intend someone to be capable of top rank damage, for instance, (by whatever metric you choose to compare with), why do you need months of dinking around and farming the testing out to us to perhaps make a change? You can't figure it out in a few weeks when it's literally your job? It takes us maybe 2 or 3 days at this point to get someone's relative value figured out with the given structure of the game. If we could pick the fights and/or nodes we want and warp to them without having to do the fights along the path? Drop that to maybe a day. The real variation and time-suck is figuring out the good testing spots and getting through the fights along the way multiple times.

I'd scrap the whole plan you presented (blame it on Deadpool hacking the forums) and moving forward, stop releasing champs to us in the month of their in-game debut. Push them to the next month. That way we haven't spent any money or time on them so no complaining there from feeling ripped off and you get the extra time to get their stuff dialed in.

LesktheGlut_666 · January 2022

I'm sorry but this feels like very little improvement and more issues to come rather than just dealing with the issues in hand.
How can you expect to keep adding to the game when you can't actually get the basics right in the first place.!!

AverageDesi · January 2022

Worknprogress said:
It is refreshing to occasionally see just how stupid most of the playerbase is

Or maybe they could've written this down better? If even dna300 only speculates as to what exactly kabam is going to be doing, what is the avergae player who can't filter through the information going to think?

pala94 · January 2022

Something that might be helpful to improve the communication - can we get a realistic simulation of what is intended for the rating program and how a champ released more than 6 months ago would be balanced? Take any champ released pre-July 2021, rate the champ as you would (even loosely is fair at this point) and let us know how said champ would be balanced now. I'm sure the data that would be used for this already exists and that examples like these would have been used to hammer out the finer details of this decision, just make a couple of these available to the community. Serves 2 purposes - lets everyone know that what to expect and also opens the door to more constructive conversation now rather than 8 months down the line when a (possible) balance is introduced and people are (predictably) outraged.

Personally, I agree with @DNA3000's interpretation that the ratings are intended to show what devs intended for a champ and not serve as an official rating. So yes, they open the door to better communication but also open a can of worms with people complaining left and right about being cheated by a balance on a champ they whaled out on in the preview bundles. How that is handled remains to be seen.

I'm seeing this as a new direction in the buff program and will reserve judgement since it doesn't affect how I will be playing the game. But I think it would help everyone if we could understand exactly what is intended rather than just having to wait for 8 months for the results to land.

ThatGuyYouSaw235 · January 2022

benshb said:
Doom ratings
Damage: 5/5
Utility: 5/5
War defender: 4/5
War attacker: 5/5
Synergy needs (scaled in reverse): 5/5
Prestige: 5/5

Groot ratings
Damage: 1/5
Utility: 2/5
War defender: 1/5
War attacker: 0/5
Synergy needs (scaled in reverse): N/A (literally no meaningful synergies for him)
Prestige: 0/5

Gonna be interesting how the tune ups gonna look based on this.

I'd move Doom's damage down to 4/4.5. His DPS is good but not as good as others that would be in 5.

Still a phenomenal champion through and through.

Ughzy · January 2022

The buff program was a favorite of mine. I was fine with it going from 4 a month down to 2, it made things easier to keep up with... but this feels like chipping away further in hopes of killing it all together.

The rating system seems like something put in place so that there is something to give an excuse for nerfs. I don't see how it could be useful for experienced players.

And as someone who has bought plenty of preview bundles, this is completely demotivating. Why use real world money if they could change in 6 months? Why use rank up resources, if that champ could be different in 6 months? Why waste time learning a champ, if they'll play different in 6 months? I get the desire to take bigger risks and pull back if necessary, but as many have said before, do that BEFORE releasing them to us.

The_Sentry06 · January 2022

Stoner_dnt_play said:

DNA3000 said:

The_man001 said:
This really sucks. We don't need an official tier list sort of thing in place of regular buffs.
So this is speculative, but here's what I think happened here. The ratings system is not replacing the current buff program. Somewhat the reverse, the current buff program is being replaced by the new buff program, and the rating system is being added to make the new buff program easier to explain.

Once upon a time, champions were designed, released, monitored, and then if necessary rebalanced. Back when champions were much simpler, champions didn't need rebalancing as often, but this was still the process. We know this because Kabam described this process long ago. My guess is that when they moved to the more aggressive buff schedule, this released champion review process was either heavily reduced or almost completely eliminated to make time for the buff program. And as a result, we might be seeing a higher variation in champions: more super gods, more duds.

This is problematic, because today's duds are tomorrow's old duds. If we are focusing on buffing old champs to the point where we're breaking all the new champs, we're not really making progress on the problem. What's more, whether we buff an old champ or a new champ in the long run doesn't affect how many duds the average player gets, but it does sour the new champion well more if the new champs are busted. More over, the longer the champ exists, the more people have it, the more familiar people are with the champ, the harder it becomes to tweak if there's a problem.

The hope, I'm guessing, is to solve several problems simultaneously. First, to try to stop the flow of duds into general population by returning to the old style release/review/tweak system. This might reduce the number of duds faster than buffing the old champs, because these tweaks are less likely to get tangled up in long term player expectations. Second, increase the value of new champions and new champion pools (which, when all is said and done, ultimately powers the game). And third, to learn some lessons from the last time this sort of thing was attempted, and create a system where the devs can signal to the players well in advance what the intended capabilities of a champion are in general terms, so that players are less surprised by updates: both when they happen, and what things are updated when they happen.

The rating system is not necessary for Kabam to update champions. The rating system is there to communicate to the players what they intended to make and what they are looking at when the release a champion. It is a kind of short hand for communicating the design intent of the champion when it was created. If we eliminate the rating system, all that changes is the players no longer get to know ahead of time what the design intent of champions is. The devs will still return to the release/monitor/tweak system. We just won't have any inside view of it.
Once again stop wasting energy spitting BS, Kabam should just invite you to dinner, after a good meal y’all can lock yourselves, put together these wonderful ideas and start playing some competitive mode together.. Sounds like a lotta fun right? Maybe get employed when you win too

Wouldn't mind this nutcase getting banned permanently Kabam mods.

WeXz5 · January 2022

Wow seems like Gamora is getting tons of love, she was updated twice even before the rework program came into existence.
All I can say is the rework program has some controversies as not all changes were for the better of the majority or totally welcomed but not so for a few ...
So if the rework program is so controversial do we still need another balancing program ? Truly a food for everyone's thoughts.
However, right now no matter who disagrees, this is still gonna happen anyways whether we like it or not ...
As this reality is being set in and shoved down our throats to accept ...
If I wanted to bring renewed interest on OG champions, maybe not all but the majority of OG champions should get an animation update cadence. Till today. Winter Soldier and Punisher still have same Special 3 animations, same goes for Hulk and Red Hulk. Just hoping the love going out is to all OG champions at the very least as so far karnak's special 1 animation is still as disappointing as spider gwen's original special 1 animation.
If raids ever to come into existence, hopefully celestials can be included as they are gigantic as well.
Strikers were awesome but its technically and potential are still not fully drawn out due to bugs and interactions unforeseen, maybe due to lack of extensive tests before rolling it out.
Also hopefully all champions in summoner's choice 21 and 22 gets added into this game eventually regardless so as to hype up and carry on this game's passion forth into eternity and beyond !
Lastly what is the deal with 2* star champions bring so rare and almost non-existence in the game despite being shown available in the vault for collection, yet they are not even added to the premium vaults for crying out loud.

Thank you for reading my lengthy post and Tarh Tarh.

Your ever-passionate summoner of MCoC !

Mauled · January 2022

My response to this is two-fold.

Firstly, I’m extremely surprised that this rating system wasn’t already in place, I mean how else do you analyse a champion’s place in the contest and from there whether they need a buff or not. The fact that this hasn’t always been in place probably contributes to the frightening differences in champion usability/abilities with Ghost at one and Groot at the other. I hope that this will result in more balanced champions being produced.

The second part of my response is, do the players have the ability to rate these champions? Much of a champion’s usability is down to players working out the best rotations and areas the excel or fall short. We are also - certainly at the higher levels of the game - more able to correctly place these champions. I think this can be seen quite clearly in the classification of Hercules having a 2 to 2.5 on the utility scale when I would argue that his immortality alone puts him at a 4, let alone his other bells and whistles.

FpsJord · January 2022

With the champs we have today i don’t see a reason why Cull and Namor can’t return to how they were post nerf

Skiddy212 · January 2022

The_Sentry06 said:

Stoner_dnt_play said:

DNA3000 said:

The_man001 said:
This really sucks. We don't need an official tier list sort of thing in place of regular buffs.
So this is speculative, but here's what I think happened here. The ratings system is not replacing the current buff program. Somewhat the reverse, the current buff program is being replaced by the new buff program, and the rating system is being added to make the new buff program easier to explain.

Once upon a time, champions were designed, released, monitored, and then if necessary rebalanced. Back when champions were much simpler, champions didn't need rebalancing as often, but this was still the process. We know this because Kabam described this process long ago. My guess is that when they moved to the more aggressive buff schedule, this released champion review process was either heavily reduced or almost completely eliminated to make time for the buff program. And as a result, we might be seeing a higher variation in champions: more super gods, more duds.

This is problematic, because today's duds are tomorrow's old duds. If we are focusing on buffing old champs to the point where we're breaking all the new champs, we're not really making progress on the problem. What's more, whether we buff an old champ or a new champ in the long run doesn't affect how many duds the average player gets, but it does sour the new champion well more if the new champs are busted. More over, the longer the champ exists, the more people have it, the more familiar people are with the champ, the harder it becomes to tweak if there's a problem.

The hope, I'm guessing, is to solve several problems simultaneously. First, to try to stop the flow of duds into general population by returning to the old style release/review/tweak system. This might reduce the number of duds faster than buffing the old champs, because these tweaks are less likely to get tangled up in long term player expectations. Second, increase the value of new champions and new champion pools (which, when all is said and done, ultimately powers the game). And third, to learn some lessons from the last time this sort of thing was attempted, and create a system where the devs can signal to the players well in advance what the intended capabilities of a champion are in general terms, so that players are less surprised by updates: both when they happen, and what things are updated when they happen.

The rating system is not necessary for Kabam to update champions. The rating system is there to communicate to the players what they intended to make and what they are looking at when the release a champion. It is a kind of short hand for communicating the design intent of the champion when it was created. If we eliminate the rating system, all that changes is the players no longer get to know ahead of time what the design intent of champions is. The devs will still return to the release/monitor/tweak system. We just won't have any inside view of it.
Once again stop wasting energy spitting BS, Kabam should just invite you to dinner, after a good meal y’all can lock yourselves, put together these wonderful ideas and start playing some competitive mode together.. Sounds like a lotta fun right? Maybe get employed when you win too
Wouldn't mind this nutcase getting banned permanently Kabam mods.

yea i am getting very sick of these long posts of nonsense

Colonaut123 · January 2022

Kabam Miike said:
I changed the Hercules to Cull Obsidian because I don't want people to think that this is going to be arbitrary and Hercules didn't really fit where we had him.

The utility rating is definitely going to be a little bit of a judgement call, but the rest of our Metrics are going to be based on Data, not opinions.

I am interested how Kabam will measure Ease to Use as a metric based purely on performance data...

Kevo9513 · January 2022

We should not be testing your champs in the live server. Don’t you have a team dedicated to doing this? I dont want to get a champion, invest my time and resources into it and it gets nerfed.

AverageDesi · January 2022

Kevo9513 said:
We should not be testing your champs in the live server. Don’t you have a team dedicated to doing this? I dont want to get a champion, invest my time and resources into it and it gets nerfed.

Testing the champ for Playstyle and general usefullness and strategies and stuff. Not for bugs

Treinin · January 2022

There are so many things on your road map you have failed to do, that people have been waiting for. Maybe instead of taking away the features we actually like (champion buffs), and adding in something nobody asked for (ratings), while also returning to a system the community is vehemently opposed to (nerfing champs after you sell them), you could actually work on adding the features you promised in the road maps of days passed.

Let's see the "totally revamped" AW (we don't even have working AW of the old system)

Let's see the "Wish crystal" (which seems like just something you flat out lied about pursuing to placate people)

Let's see this recognition that sig stones being hard to come by was a problem expanded to 6 stars 2 years out and get some more in the game so we can sig up champs we like and not just our top prestige options.

Let's see you actually release something that works for a change.

Let's continue to see the buffs you over-promised and fell woefully short on.

Once you get those basics down, you can start adding "fluff" like this that nobody gives a hoot about.

Searmenis · January 2022

Oh boy, this whole "being part of the progress as a community" kind of talking, when in reality players as individuals never really have any real voice in any change/upgrade/nerf/buff etc, is so tiresome... False hope to justify the ending (at some point) of the buff program, and maybe a few nerfs.

If you want to "rebalance" something, rebalance the masteries. And do at least one major buff or overhaul/month. 25% at least of the champions need overhauls anyway.

And one last thought about the "beloved community representative", I guess this is going to be a youtuber. Make that three or four or five of them, the X content creator may be one I like to watch, I like his view on the game etc, but I may not agree with his champions' choices or that he thinks that some masteries and buffs are more important from others that personally like to use.

An Update to Balancing in MCOC!

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