An Update to Balancing in MCOC!

ElMelloi · January 2022

why buff gamora another time and not another champion?? gamora is not in the 5* basic pool and has already been buffed twice while other worse champs have gotten nothing...

Ironman3000 · January 2022

I have zero faith that Kabam can accurately rate new champs. They try to nerf a champ they gave the wrong stats to and there's gonna be another riot.

Carnage313 · January 2022

Oh boy. Another disaster on the horizon. You should still be focusing on the mass champs you have got wrong over the years. Dr. Strange 12.0 nerf should be rectified. All OG champs relavent so that when we constantly pull them it isn’t so gut wrenching. And don’t get me wrong magneto is awesome and Very useful but cmon bullets should not hit him. It’s little things like that. But as usual after all these years my faith in this company continues to not be restored.

psp742 · January 2022

So in current champion pool.. if kabam finds an existing champion with higher damage potential and survivability..

will kabam nerf/balance the champion to make them not as OP?

I hope not..

Let's not do a update 12.0, where some champions were adjusted and nerfed beyond recognizable state.. Dr Strange, Scarlett Witch og, Thor og.

If you watch Karate Mike's take on champions, it does not rate each one vs another champion..

he rates it based on: [seems better overall]
Damage - short / medium / long
Utility - general / support / unique or synergy
Viability - AW / AQ / solo or long content / defender
Dependence - playability / synergy / mastery.

Sorry KarateMike.. just pointing out the beauty of your champion rating.

Pseudouber · January 2022

Kabam Miike said:

mgj0630 said:
I'm shocked no one was asked this yet, so I'll go first.

What will the policy be regarding preview bundles that you sell, when there will clearly be a risk of you down-tuning the champ?

For example, March's champion drops, the champion preview looks amazing, and he/she seems amazing as a boss in EQ. You release his crystal for sale on Thursday, and I buy 10 of them. What assurances will you give to the community that you will compensate them if you need that champ later?

Rank down tickets alone don't begin to cut it, as people are likely spending real money on them.

Will you commit to refunding the units spent? Or will you commit to not selling a new champ until after all balancing has taken place?
This is one of the reasons behind the Ability Ratings and feedback process, so we can avoid the situation of people not understanding what is intended when choosing to chase a Champion, so we don't have anything planned at this time.

Honestly, I don't think anyone will look at this or rate their champs based on this. People look at videos made by trusted community members on youtube. Again doing something nobody asked for and stopping something everyone loves and looks forward to every month. You guys are taking a lot of the excitement out of the game and people will get bored and quit just based on this..no champ buffs.

Chrisco66 · January 2022

Priorities now should be 1. Game function (input). 2. Masteries facelift. 3. Upgrade rewards in cav eq & solo & alliance events. Not this

Pseudouber · January 2022

I foresee a lot of nerfs incoming as well.

Doomsfist79 · January 2022

This might have already been asked, but I haven't gone through all the posts in response to the Balance/Ranking information..

In regards to the balance portion of the post, how is this different from what was started in August of 2019?
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/153017/more-consistent-balance-changes-coming-your-way#latest

It seems that we are taking a step back by a few years.. rather than moving forward into 2022 and beyond. It is possible that I am misunderstanding how the new balancing is supposed to work. If so, could some please briefly explain the difference between what is now going to happen and what was announced in 2019?
Thanks.

Chovner · January 2022

I don’t think this new champ balance system is a real pro player move in how it's being implemented.

If I understand the announcement properly, the main focus for champion tuning will be on the NEW champs every month of which the only way we’ll be able to get them are with:
1. Excessive arena grind where only 1000 people out of hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people will get a 5 or 6* version of the new champ this way (focus on 5 and 6* rarity because they’re the most sought after rarity)
2. Money spent on preview bundles with a very low chance of luck
3. Units/money spent on special Cav/featured crystals with a very low chance of luck. So a main focus will be put on a small percentage of the community that will have the new champs in a 6 months window.
So the main focus of this balance system will be to initially affect a small percentage of the overall community

The area of champs balance where the MAJORITY of the community has been excited for and wants to continue (buffing existing under performing champs) will now take a backseat and will only be taken on IF there’s time depending on how excessive the new champ tunning is. As a point of reference there are currently 216 champs in the game and (in my opinion) these are the champs that are pretty useless in the game and making overall champion balance garbage (synergies to buff champs are not taking into consideration, just how the champ themselves perform on their own:
1. Abomination
2. Agent Venom
3. Air Walker
4. America Chavez
5. Ant Man
6. Beast
7. Black Bolt
8. Black Panther CW
9. Black Widow
10. Captain America
11. Captain America WW2
12. Captain Marvel
13. Cyclops
14. Cyclops Red
15. Daredevil
16. Dr Strange
17. Dormamu
18. Drax
19. Electro
20. Elektra
21. Green Goblin
22. Groot
23. Heimdall
24. Hulk
25. Invisible Woman
26. Iron Fist
27. Iron Fist Immortal
28. Iron Man
29. Iron Patriot
30. Jubilee
31. Korg
32. Loki
33. Moon Knight
34. Ms Marvel
35. Kamala Kahn
36. Nightcrawler
37. Nova
38. Phoenix
39. Sentry
40. Rogue
41. Rocket Racoon
42. Rhino
43. Red Skull
44. Spider Man
45. Spider Man Symbiote
46. Super Skrull
47. Superior Iron Man
48. Taskmaster
49. The Champion
50. Thor
51. Thor Jane Foster
52. Ultron Prime
53. Unstoppable Colossu
54. Winter Soldier
55. Yondu

55 out of 216 champs works out to 25% of the Champion pool needing attention and re-balancing to make relevant with the current game Meta, and those 55 champs are existing in likely 50%+ of the community’s roster as a 5 or 6* rarity.
If the interest is to serve the player community in offering a better balanced game experience then the MAIN focus should be continuing to improve the large pool of pretty useless champs and not the new champs released every month. I’d say with the new balance team you’ve created, a 75% focus should be on continuing the popular old champs buffing monthly (still 2 per month) and 25% focus on reviewing the new champs. Given my list above, and 2 old champ buffs a month we’re looking at almost 2.5 YEARS to address your underperforming champs which is kind of ridiculous to think THAT wouldn’t be your main focus.

Last, with the new balance system, one important point that was never addressed (that I can find) is Kabam fairly giving us the opportunity to change our mind on rank up decisions we made to these champs in their 6 month Beta/Balance window. If we acquired a new champ through means of time and/or money, AND ranked up those champs with resources acquired again through means of time and/or money, then we should 100% have the opportunity to rank them down and get back those resources (at a min.) if you decide to change them from their initial state. Generic rank down tickets are not the answer for this, but champion specific rank down tickets should 100% be implemented to be fair to the community that are lucky enough to acquire, play and essentially BETA TEST these champs FOR YOU! I personally have way less drive to push for newer champs now knowing any base utility they have that I’m excited for (and possibly fill a niche role in my roster) could change after I’ve invested in them.

I don’t think re-balancing champs is a bad idea, I jus don’t think this is the right way to go about it, and not much about this new system gives the community a lot of confidence in how this will end up going (given the recent track record from Kabam in the last year), and now one of the only reliable things to be excited about (WHO WILL BE THE NEXT 2 CHAMPS TO BE BUFFED THAT I MIGHT ALREADY HAVE??1?!!!!), isn’t a guarantee anymore, so 1 less consistent thing to be excited for every month. Personally, with how poorly the game has performed across the board the last year (game controls, stability, bugs, champ bugs, etc.) the one thing I always looked forward to was the new buffs announcement and then testing.

I hope this all goes well, I’m just honestly not optimistic at all… the last 9 months of playing a pretty broken game and mis-managed community has taken its toll on me.

Logan00 · January 2022

Total disappointment

Noob619 · January 2022

Someone needs to update the new CEO we have been here before and the majority of players thought it was a bad move to re-balance champs. I try to stay positive I love this game. I really liked the buff program 2 Older champs get a rework or value update. For the most part its working but to change to a program were they can potentially nerf an OP champ we spent hours to grind for or spent money on early access crystals ect.. is bad form. You know in the business world you cant advertise a product then after its been bought change the product that Illegal. There are so many players leaving since it feels like Kabam is not listening to the player base. We need the bugs fixed spend time on that. You promised a ton of things in the Dev diaries work on that. Many things have not been delivered its been about 2 years like a pre set mastery system for example. But you have delivered on a lot of things promised kudos for that. Please keep the player relationship good with us. Doing this is not a pro-player move and will only hurt your player base and the game. Keep the buff system scrap the re balancing. Thank you.

BigManOnCampus · January 2022

K_P said:
Stop doing bad things do good things instead

Love the way this guy thinks , hope his the "beloved member" !

Texas_11 · January 2022

Do they mean no major reworks? Or just tune ups?

Guytennis · January 2022

If the conversation begins with kabam thinking Hercules and Cull are equal in terms
of damage output and only separated by one or one and a half points in utility, they've
failed before they even started. I have very little hope for this new process.

Barca3bar3 · January 2022

Whether character balancing is something the player base thinks they want is a debatable proposition; whether character balance is a problem that can be solved is not. It can’t. No matter what Is done there will always be champions perceived as overpowered or underpowered by different factions of the player base. You are tilting at windmills by focusing time, energy and resources to what is either not a problem or a problem that can’t be solved (depending on perspective).

Please reconsider this allocation of manpower at a time when the game feels more stagnant than ever. It could be redistributed to areas that actually could spur interest and excitement from the player base such as:

-developing new game modes
-developing monthly side quests that are fun and interesting rather than slightly more convoluted versions of previous side quests
-adding a new monthly EQ difficulty/reward level
-changing reward structures to match the current meta of the game more often than once every time Halley’s Comet is visible (arena milestones, incursion milestones, glory store, AQ map crystals, monthly EQ, etc.)

I’m sure there is a lot more that could be focused on that I haven’t listed. It’s disheartening, at a time when the game has so little that feels fresh about it, that your solution appears to be trying to give us slightly tweaked champions to run the same old, monotonous content.

AceT · January 2022

Been playing for a couple of years now and built up some good teams but I can tell you right now if this 'balancing' ends up nerfing my top champs then I'm done because it's insulting to spend my time every single day grinding to power up my teams only to have them negated by some convoluted system with no apparent advantage for those actually playing the game.
Reading through all the responses so far, a vast majority are wondering why this is even being done when nobody asked for it and essentially wiping out champ buffs. What's left to look forward to? AW ... broken. Parry issues ... never ending. Lousy, convoluted EQ's like that one that replaced summoner appreciation.

AMS94 · January 2022

AverageDesi said:

Kevo9513 said:

AverageDesi said:

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
So they don’t have a team that does testing before they release the champ? Maybe because I work in Development in a Chemical lab I see things differently. Before a product is sent out to a customer there is a series of extensive testing that produces data and we can see what needs to be fixed. Kabam wants to sell the product before testing is done.
Nobody can test a champ for every possible Playstyle in every content in game. That's just near impossible for only the dev team to do.

This example is a tad bit different from testing chemicals. I'm sure there is a very specific purpose you make chemicals for and they are to be used that way only(correct me ) but champions are only given a set of kit with a broad application. It's upto the players to use them in ways even the dev team couldn't
Chovner said:
I don’t think this new champ balance system is a real pro player move in how it's being implemented.

If I understand the announcement properly, the main focus for champion tuning will be on the NEW champs every month of which the only way we’ll be able to get them are with:
1. Excessive arena grind where only 1000 people out of hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people will get a 5 or 6* version of the new champ this way (focus on 5 and 6* rarity because they’re the most sought after rarity)
2. Money spent on preview bundles with a very low chance of luck
3. Units/money spent on special Cav/featured crystals with a very low chance of luck. So a main focus will be put on a small percentage of the community that will have the new champs in a 6 months window.
So the main focus of this balance system will be to initially affect a small percentage of the overall community

The area of champs balance where the MAJORITY of the community has been excited for and wants to continue (buffing existing under performing champs) will now take a backseat and will only be taken on IF there’s time depending on how excessive the new champ tunning is. As a point of reference there are currently 216 champs in the game and (in my opinion) these are the champs that are pretty useless in the game and making overall champion balance garbage (synergies to buff champs are not taking into consideration, just how the champ themselves perform on their own:
1. Abomination
2. Agent Venom
3. Air Walker
4. America Chavez
5. Ant Man
6. Beast
7. Black Bolt
8. Black Panther CW
9. Black Widow
10. Captain America
11. Captain America WW2
12. Captain Marvel
13. Cyclops
14. Cyclops Red
15. Daredevil
16. Dr Strange
17. Dormamu
18. Drax
19. Electro
20. Elektra
21. Green Goblin
22. Groot
23. Heimdall
24. Hulk
25. Invisible Woman
26. Iron Fist
27. Iron Fist Immortal
28. Iron Man
29. Iron Patriot
30. Jubilee
31. Korg
32. Loki
33. Moon Knight
34. Ms Marvel
35. Kamala Kahn
36. Nightcrawler
37. Nova
38. Phoenix
39. Sentry
40. Rogue
41. Rocket Racoon
42. Rhino
43. Red Skull
44. Spider Man
45. Spider Man Symbiote
46. Super Skrull
47. Superior Iron Man
48. Taskmaster
49. The Champion
50. Thor
51. Thor Jane Foster
52. Ultron Prime
53. Unstoppable Colossu
54. Winter Soldier
55. Yondu

55 out of 216 champs works out to 25% of the Champion pool needing attention and re-balancing to make relevant with the current game Meta, and those 55 champs are existing in likely 50%+ of the community’s roster as a 5 or 6* rarity.
If the interest is to serve the player community in offering a better balanced game experience then the MAIN focus should be continuing to improve the large pool of pretty useless champs and not the new champs released every month. I’d say with the new balance team you’ve created, a 75% focus should be on continuing the popular old champs buffing monthly (still 2 per month) and 25% focus on reviewing the new champs. Given my list above, and 2 old champ buffs a month we’re looking at almost 2.5 YEARS to address your underperforming champs which is kind of ridiculous to think THAT wouldn’t be your main focus.

Last, with the new balance system, one important point that was never addressed (that I can find) is Kabam fairly giving us the opportunity to change our mind on rank up decisions we made to these champs in their 6 month Beta/Balance window. If we acquired a new champ through means of time and/or money, AND ranked up those champs with resources acquired again through means of time and/or money, then we should 100% have the opportunity to rank them down and get back those resources (at a min.) if you decide to change them from their initial state. Generic rank down tickets are not the answer for this, but champion specific rank down tickets should 100% be implemented to be fair to the community that are lucky enough to acquire, play and essentially BETA TEST these champs FOR YOU! I personally have way less drive to push for newer champs now knowing any base utility they have that I’m excited for (and possibly fill a niche role in my roster) could change after I’ve invested in them.

I don’t think re-balancing champs is a bad idea, I jus don’t think this is the right way to go about it, and not much about this new system gives the community a lot of confidence in how this will end up going (given the recent track record from Kabam in the last year), and now one of the only reliable things to be excited about (WHO WILL BE THE NEXT 2 CHAMPS TO BE BUFFED THAT I MIGHT ALREADY HAVE??1?!!!!), isn’t a guarantee anymore, so 1 less consistent thing to be excited for every month. Personally, with how poorly the game has performed across the board the last year (game controls, stability, bugs, champ bugs, etc.) the one thing I always looked forward to was the new buffs announcement and then testing.

I hope this all goes well, I’m just honestly not optimistic at all… the last 9 months of playing a pretty broken game and mis-managed community has taken its toll on me.
I haven't ever used her but I think Jubilee doesn't need a buff
Ultron Prime is essentially a trophy champ so he doesn't need it either
I don't think they'll ever buff Champion bcoz of his regen potential, but he could do well with a value only
Other than that every other champ on that list desperately needs a buff ASAP

Lordabck · January 2022

If good champs are nerfed in the name of balancing. I swear it will be final nail in coffin.

Lordabck · January 2022

Wozzle007 said:
So here’s my list of champions that are pretty useless in the game. There’s more that would ideally need a buff as well, but I have no idea why the focus is not on buffing these as quickly as possible. Then we’d start to see some balance to the game.

Abomination, Captain America, Captain America WW2, Ant Man, Hulk, Rhino, Sentry, Spider-Man, Agent Venom, Black Widow, Daredevil, Elektra, Korg, Moon Knight, Punisher, Winter Soldier, Beast, Cyclops Blue, Cyclops Red, Deadpool X Force, Nightcrawler, Storm, Iron Patriot (still trash for me), Green Goblin, Iron Man, Iron Patriot, Psycho Man (confirmed value buff), Red Skull, Rocket, Yondu, Black Bolt, Captain Marvel, Drax, Gamora (still trash for me), Groot, Heimdall, Ms Marvell, Nova (still trash for me), Phoenix, Ronan, Spider-Man Symbiote, Superior Iron Man, Thor, Dr Strange, Iron Fist, Immortal Iron Fist, Juggernaut, Loki, Mordo, Jane Foster, Unstoppable Colossus

Don’t know what there expert team is doing in this matter.

Kabam Miike · January 2022

Done2023 said:
Disappointed 100%. What's the point now in putting sig stones into my 6* Herc? You guys are going to nurf like there's no tomorrow. Complete BS. Screw trying to get new champs, I hope this blows up in your faces.

This does not affect older Champions, but those coming starting in March.

Harish_HK07 · January 2022

First of all...Give proper buff to the champ who are really powerful in comics..like sentry..he deserves more powerful buff. I can't believe how useless he is in this game..he is one of powerful character..but in this game it's like a puppet..it's not at all logic... secondly - Odin..one of very powerful character but he is not much powerful in this game.. it's kinda annoying and disappointing.. it's no fun..he doesn't have any abilities like Armor break etc..with that animations..where he using his powerful weapon to hit opponents..but still he can't even apply Armor break.. it's not logic at all..so just redo the balances in proper ways according to how powerful that character is..i am sure that atleast it's makes sense..In this ways.. it's looks good..

Above scenarios is an examples..we can tell more like these...i hope u understand this..

Mattstafari · January 2022

I would like to know what the benchmarks are for the new rating system; what champs are 5/5 in a given area and what champs are 1/5.

Mario Kart can reliably give you stats on a racer for a few attributes but, I'm not sure this is going to deliver as required.

New champs balancing!
Hmmmm, surely this is just going to leave people not wanting to rank up the great new champs, for fear that in 6 months time they'll be nerfed!

This post just just flopped in a ridiculous way but, dont worry, the Tin man is getting a numbers buff.

Furrymoosen · January 2022

You guys bit off more than you could chew with the promises you made when it came to buffing champions. That much has been obvious since like the second or third month. The community was fine when it went from 3 champs to 2 champs per month, but now we've got 2 months with no buffs and now you're trying something new that no one asked for. Over a year ago you guys made promises to the community that easily 98% of us were excited for the majority of, yet we've seen little more than the minor promises (like QoL updates) come to fruition. Now instead of continuing to fulfill the promises that got your community excited, you divert resources and attention to something that no one asked for and likely no one wants, especially as a trade-off for things like solo competitive mode or mastery reworks. This whole thing is an absolute joke, a disappointment to the community, and shows that we really shouldn't get excited for what you promise to do because you will only come up short.

Cwhite318 · January 2022

Here you guys go again with something else that we didnt need in the game im done spending with you guys period..You guys always seem to make everything worse with the game... Instead of balance come out with new content or change chaacters special attack animations or something but this is trash.... My wallet is permanently close and will never ever spend with you guys again...

An Update to Balancing in MCOC!

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