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...
Hard Disagree. Balancing is MANDATORY in all games like this, and we have lagged behind because we haven't had the ability to really communicate where a Champion should be before they're out in the wild, and this helps with that. It won't be perfect, which is also why we're integrating players into the change process as well.
If balancing is mandatory for game health, why are the devs not immediately going after Quake, Ghost, and Corvus? They have done more to imbalance the game than everyone else.
Good question. Why are the devs trying to refocus on rebalancing champions shortly after they come out rather than much later? Same answer. The longer a champion is, the harder it is to rebalance because the wider the impact is and the more entrenched the users of that champion are.
There are no absolute rules when it comes to game operation. Everything is a compromise between competing forces. There are absolutely no free lunches. Give the players less rewards and they will balk. Give them more rewards and you force downstream changes they won't like. Nerf a champ and you'll piss off some of your players. *Don't* nerf a champion and you'll anger others in a different, possibly invisible way.
Players often say that if the devs are supposed to do a thing, why don't they always do that thing: if they aren't supposed to do that thing why don't they never do that thing. Because every action they take helps something and hurts something else, and thus every action has to be calculated to do more good than harm. Reasonable intelligent people can disagree on where that line is, so no decision will ever be universally seen as the right one. For example, I argued strongly against the Guillotine 2.0 buff. I believe I was on solid grounds. The devs did it anyway not because they ignored me, not because they are stupid, and not because they are incompetent. They did it because they disagreed. It can be a tough pill to swallow, but sometimes that's all there is to it.
The devs know that if they nerf a champ, they will anger some players. If they don't, bad things happen to the game that ultimately worsen the game experience for some players. A dev can decide that nerfing Quake causes more harm to the game than good, but nerfing champion X four months after release does more good than harm. That's a judgment, and different people will disagree about whether that judgment is the right one. But whether it looks consistent from the outside or not, it is still a judgment they have to make based on what they think the right choice is at that time.
An overwhelming majority of people have not asked for this and simply do not want you spending time on it. Just look at the Disagree ratio on your original post. There are 4-5 YouTubers I can name off the top of my head that have their own tier/rating system. And let's be real, their assessments of the champions are likely to be far better than any rating system you guys come up with.
Will you listen to the gaming community or ignore them (yet again)?
P.S. There's no reason to discontinue buffing old champions, especially if you're asking the community to do the testing on all the new champs for you. If anything, that should free up resources.
That's part of the problem. Ratings by YouTubers are somewhat helpful and entertaining. They can help people gauge their choices. However, adhering to that religiously leads to confusion. The game team doesn't use the same model. Part of this is aligning their understanding with our own.
An overwhelming majority of people have not asked for this and simply do not want you spending time on it. Just look at the Disagree ratio on your original post. There are 4-5 YouTubers I can name off the top of my head that have their own tier/rating system. And let's be real, their assessments of the champions are likely to be far better than any rating system you guys come up with.
Will you listen to the gaming community or ignore them (yet again)?
P.S. There's no reason to discontinue buffing old champions, especially if you're asking the community to do the testing on all the new champs for you. If anything, that should free up resources.
While maybe not in this exact implementation, I think a lot of people have wanted to make sure that a new Champion they've been looking forward to had been better than what they got. I'm sure that many would have loved for something like this to be in place for somebody like Super Skrull when he was released. The bones are there, but his numbers need some juicing.
The numbers are not Assessments, they are visual interpretations of Data that show how Champions stack up in different aspects. This is not a Tier list, but a summary of their abilities to do damage, sustainability in a fight, and more.
We are not asking for anybody to be doing any testing. Players will continue to play as they always have, and we will collect Data exactly as we always have, but will now be actioning on that Data instead of just looking at it.
Since Kabam Mike closed my previous post(Classic Kabam). This is so far the dislikes they have on this, I think the wise decision for this would be forget about this idea and focus on actual things that matter. Not trying to be rude but if people don't like the idea why go through with it, you're wasting you're time and ours as well. If this idea ruins the many good champions I have, I think its time to move on from this game. I've dealt with the bugs, bad content, buggie content( remember V8 VP) and buggie AW. If they mess around with the best champs instead of the bad ones like I've said I'm done. Cause Namors nerf and Cull weren't even good things and I've barely seeing anyone using them so thats just straight up cap and means a bad sign. Feels like 12.0 will happen again with this.
Every new champion from March forward, may be having a "re-balancing" six months after. Is it gonna be good? Bad? Who knows? And why try to get him early from arenas or crystals when there's no guarantee he ll stay the same after his "trial period"?
Every time someone says this, I think to myself I can only hope people think this way. But they never do. If they did, then it would make it so much easier to snag the featured 6* champ. But while you can always find someone who gets upset by a game change and claims they will stop spending or stop grinding, the entire history of the game says that those claims are always a very small minority. Players still spend, crystals still spin, and arena grinders still grind.
If you're a player shooting for a champ right off the bat, you have already made peace with going for a champion before you know how it really performs and what its true potential is. Ikaris was not a super rare anomaly. That risk calculation is already factored into spending and grinding. Because of this program, *someone* will stop spending and *someone* will stop grinding, but they'll be replaced by other players that won't.
Maybe this time it will be different. People are hard to predict. But I won't be changing the way I approach the game, and my bet is not enough other people will do so for me to notice.
@Kabam Miike I have some questions/concerns about the plan moving forward.
1) The champion ratings system seems like a logistical nightmare. I see and understand your intentions with this system but there will be problems that need to be addressed. How will these ratings be measured? There is a possibility that these ratings will be subjective and arbitrary. Also, to put it nicely, Kabam and the player base have been known to disagree on champion quality (see guillotine buff criticism and Q/A responses). What happens when Kabam and the players inevitably disagree about a champion's rating?
2) The rebalance program has been done before and was not well received. I get the arguments in support of this program but why is Kabam insisting on a system that wasn't asked for? You mentioned super skrull but that can be addressed with a buff. Couldn't this be in connection to the champion buff program? which leads me to...
3) The champion buff program. This is what really gets me and a lot of others too. As evident by many responses in this thread, many will agree with me when I say that the Champion buff program was one of the best things MCOC has done in recent memory. It was a source of reliable excitement and hope that trash champs would be brought up to relevance. I understand that buffs will not completely stop but it is clear in the original post that buffs are taking a back seat to balancing. Why? Shouldn't improving our current champions, and by extension our experiences, be the priority? I've gotten the impression that people care more about buffed champions than newer champs because the average player won't get their hands on the new champ for months if not years. Balancing can and has been done through the champion buffs so why change? It just confuses me that Kabam would reduce and replace a system that is overwhelmingly supported with a system that is unwanted and disliked.
I ask this as a concerned fan who only wants what's best for the game. Thank you
For me even with the balance of new champs strategy, the new ranking system or any other idea would be welcome in the meantime they wouldn't have touched the old champs buff system, which really worked, it is really what keeps me playing this game, all this new measures do not have impact on new players, but in my case old player , thronebreaker with a bunch of useless 6* and stuck in act 7, it was what kept me waiting for the next month to come. So , really , disappointed.
I can see the Kabam mods though. Drawing straws as to who has to cover this xxshow. And the winner is....Kabam Miike. Everyone else sighs in relief.
Not being a whale that purchases a bunch of crack crystals as I call them, I think my disappointment is that with a couple extra resources, they could continue to buff 2 old characters a month. On the other end, people will just purchase less chances on the front end for new ones and wait until they roll back around a year later. Lost revenue. Guillotine proves that it isn't worth the risk, even though that was an older character. So rank down tokens should be given for that character ONLY if any nerf is made.
I think they need to reduce the time period for large adjustments to no more than a few months, so people know whether to even focus on featured crystals. They need adjusted before being put in the pool.
The more I think about it and review comments, if they want to add a chart on intended dps, who cares....they should already have been doing this at the beginning of their design phase before we even know about the character. Plop the chart they should already be doing anyway in the character notes.
Every new champion from March forward, may be having a "re-balancing" six months after. Is it gonna be good? Bad? Who knows? And why try to get him early from arenas or crystals when there's no guarantee he ll stay the same after his "trial period"?
Every time someone says this, I think to myself I can only hope people think this way. But they never do. If they did, then it would make it so much easier to snag the featured 6* champ. But while you can always find someone who gets upset by a game change and claims they will stop spending or stop grinding, the entire history of the game says that those claims are always a very small minority. Players still spend, crystals still spin, and arena grinders still grind.
If you're a player shooting for a champ right off the bat, you have already made peace with going for a champion before you know how it really performs and what its true potential is. Ikaris was not a super rare anomaly. That risk calculation is already factored into spending and grinding. Because of this program, *someone* will stop spending and *someone* will stop grinding, but they'll be replaced by other players that won't.
Maybe this time it will be different. People are hard to predict. But I won't be changing the way I approach the game, and my bet is not enough other people will do so for me to notice.
Speaking for myself, I won't stop spending, but I ll be less focused getting 6* featured crystals. And that means I won't be trying that hard to get 6* shards, new champions aside, everyone else can be found in regular 10k crystals. So I will buy one or two monthly offers less, (and absolutely no "1st appearance how it s called new champ crystal offer for 54 euros).
An overwhelming majority of people have not asked for this and simply do not want you spending time on it. Just look at the Disagree ratio on your original post. There are 4-5 YouTubers I can name off the top of my head that have their own tier/rating system. And let's be real, their assessments of the champions are likely to be far better than any rating system you guys come up with.
Will you listen to the gaming community or ignore them (yet again)?
P.S. There's no reason to discontinue buffing old champions, especially if you're asking the community to do the testing on all the new champs for you. If anything, that should free up resources.
While maybe not in this exact implementation, I think a lot of people have wanted to make sure that a new Champion they've been looking forward to had been better than what they got. I'm sure that many would have loved for something like this to be in place for somebody like Super Skrull when he was released. The bones are there, but his numbers need some juicing.
The numbers are not Assessments, they are visual interpretations of Data that show how Champions stack up in different aspects. This is not a Tier list, but a summary of their abilities to do damage, sustainability in a fight, and more.
We are not asking for anybody to be doing any testing. Players will continue to play as they always have, and we will collect Data exactly as we always have, but will now be actioning on that Data instead of just looking at it.
Miike, you're killing me, bud. Don't tell people you haven't been using the data for meaningful action all this time, because that's not the case. Maybe you guys need to contract with some people that are better and more nuanced at the game than your existing staff*. The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long? Sometimes you don't need Big Data when you control everything from the champs, to the environment. The only thing you don't control is us; but we can be simulated. Assume that you give your assessors access to all rarities and sig levels with a 100% full roster accessible. Top skilled players give assessments. Very low skilled noob players gives assessments. Mid-level players give assessments. Hopefully these people will give nuanced opinions from a broad set of viewpoints, otherwise why did you hire them? What are several million more points of data acquired over months really adding except more work for you all and frustrating uncertainty for your customers?
*Meaning able to play with a certain level of skill, know what their observations mean, and translate those to people with a higher or lower skill level in a variety of conditions. Some high level players suck at this and some low level player are great at it. It's an important skill to have in the team to maximize the effectiveness of your testing.
An overwhelming majority of people have not asked for this and simply do not want you spending time on it. Just look at the Disagree ratio on your original post. There are 4-5 YouTubers I can name off the top of my head that have their own tier/rating system. And let's be real, their assessments of the champions are likely to be far better than any rating system you guys come up with.
Will you listen to the gaming community or ignore them (yet again)?
P.S. There's no reason to discontinue buffing old champions, especially if you're asking the community to do the testing on all the new champs for you. If anything, that should free up resources.
While maybe not in this exact implementation, I think a lot of people have wanted to make sure that a new Champion they've been looking forward to had been better than what they got. I'm sure that many would have loved for something like this to be in place for somebody like Super Skrull when he was released. The bones are there, but his numbers need some juicing.
The numbers are not Assessments, they are visual interpretations of Data that show how Champions stack up in different aspects. This is not a Tier list, but a summary of their abilities to do damage, sustainability in a fight, and more.
We are not asking for anybody to be doing any testing. Players will continue to play as they always have, and we will collect Data exactly as we always have, but will now be actioning on that Data instead of just looking at it.
Miike, you're killing me, bud. Don't tell people you haven't been using the data for meaningful action all this time, because that's not the case. Maybe you guys need to contract with some people that are better and more nuanced at the game than your existing staff*. The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long? Sometimes you don't need Big Data when you control everything from the champs, to the environment. The only thing you don't control is us; but we can be simulated. Assume that you give your assessors access to all rarities and sig levels with a 100% full roster accessible. Top skilled players give assessments. Very low skilled noob players gives assessments. Mid-level players give assessments. Hopefully these people will give nuanced opinions from a broad set of viewpoints, otherwise why did you hire them? What are several million more points of data acquired over months really adding except more work for you all and frustrating uncertainty for your customers?
*Meaning able to play with a certain level of skill, know what their observations mean, and translate those to people with a higher or lower skill level in a variety of conditions. Some high level players suck at this and some low level player are great at it. It's an important skill to have in the team to maximize the effectiveness of your testing.
As an expert in this game, tell me: across all the players in the game, which champion performs better: Angela or Ghost. One of those champs is used more often, completes more content, dies less often, earns more rewards, costs less potions to run, gets ranked up more, in an overall sense generates more benefit to the players that use her.
It is easy to say which champ is "better" or "worse" on a spreadsheet or in a video. No game is balanced that way. Games are balanced based on actual performance, not what people *think* the performance should be.
If the data says Angela, a lot of people would say well, the data is wrong, the reason why Angela looks better is because people just aren't good with Ghost, but Ghost is *obviously* a much better champ. Those people are wrong. No champ is good in spite of their actual performance when used by the players of the game. A champ is only good *if* it performs well across all the players of the game.
All you have to do is ask any strong player, and they'll tell you Ghost is better, and it wouldn't take but a few seconds. The problem is those people have a 50% chance of being wrong because their expertise is on how to get the most out of a champion, not on how average people play champions. In fact, their expertise probably makes them less likely to get the answer right, because their opinions will be skewed by their experience.
@Kabam Miike so i think whats happening here is 2 fold. People are scared that Kabam will implement this and current champs in the game will get nerfed like 12.0. So upon roll out is that something the team is looking to do or is the focus strictly on new champs on release?
The second part is the disappointment of the lack of buffs. I think thats one of the best things the game team has done in a long time. It was a lot of fun watching youtubers leak the upcoming buffs and checking the roster and trying them out in ROL. I know its not over just slowing a bit.
Bonus. The qol of the bugs in game. The parry issues. The lag the dropped input the crashes. I think these things all came together in a storm and its hard for us to see the positives in this new move. I know for me if you talked to the team and let us know that our fav champs dont have nerfs incoming would be much appreciated.
. We have recently expanded our Balance Design team on Contest and brought in a beloved member of the community
Based on the available clues, I'd like to be the first to congratulate Ebony on his new role...
The person hired by Kabam outed themselves on twitter.
That comment didn't stay on the thread for long. I wonder why? 😇
Genuinely disappointed it's not you, by the way 🙁 But I guess it's good for the rest of us you can stay independent on the forums 👍
While there are certain advantages to being able to work professionally on a game you love, the poor sap now has deadlines I don't have. If something happens I don't like, I can just blame him. He can't just hit back.
When new champ comes out people have to heavy grind and spend for arena twice maybe
Or they spend a lot for cavs
Then tjose guys have to buy the risk that their champion gets nerf?
As someone who commonly does those arena grinds - and will continue to do them? Yup!
Not everyone has the same perspective as others to Champion acquisition. It's still worth it - so people will still grind. But hey, maybe they won't grind QUITE as hard and we'll see scores drop! I wouldn't complain about that!
An overwhelming majority of people have not asked for this and simply do not want you spending time on it. Just look at the Disagree ratio on your original post. There are 4-5 YouTubers I can name off the top of my head that have their own tier/rating system. And let's be real, their assessments of the champions are likely to be far better than any rating system you guys come up with.
Will you listen to the gaming community or ignore them (yet again)?
P.S. There's no reason to discontinue buffing old champions, especially if you're asking the community to do the testing on all the new champs for you. If anything, that should free up resources.
While maybe not in this exact implementation, I think a lot of people have wanted to make sure that a new Champion they've been looking forward to had been better than what they got. I'm sure that many would have loved for something like this to be in place for somebody like Super Skrull when he was released. The bones are there, but his numbers need some juicing.
The numbers are not Assessments, they are visual interpretations of Data that show how Champions stack up in different aspects. This is not a Tier list, but a summary of their abilities to do damage, sustainability in a fight, and more.
We are not asking for anybody to be doing any testing. Players will continue to play as they always have, and we will collect Data exactly as we always have, but will now be actioning on that Data instead of just looking at it.
Miike, you're killing me, bud. Don't tell people you haven't been using the data for meaningful action all this time, because that's not the case. Maybe you guys need to contract with some people that are better and more nuanced at the game than your existing staff*. The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long? Sometimes you don't need Big Data when you control everything from the champs, to the environment. The only thing you don't control is us; but we can be simulated. Assume that you give your assessors access to all rarities and sig levels with a 100% full roster accessible. Top skilled players give assessments. Very low skilled noob players gives assessments. Mid-level players give assessments. Hopefully these people will give nuanced opinions from a broad set of viewpoints, otherwise why did you hire them? What are several million more points of data acquired over months really adding except more work for you all and frustrating uncertainty for your customers?
*Meaning able to play with a certain level of skill, know what their observations mean, and translate those to people with a higher or lower skill level in a variety of conditions. Some high level players suck at this and some low level player are great at it. It's an important skill to have in the team to maximize the effectiveness of your testing.
As an expert in this game, tell me: across all the players in the game, which champion performs better: Angela or Ghost. One of those champs is used more often, completes more content, dies less often, earns more rewards, costs less potions to run, gets ranked up more, in an overall sense generates more benefit to the players that use her.
It is easy to say which champ is "better" or "worse" on a spreadsheet or in a video. No game is balanced that way. Games are balanced based on actual performance, not what people *think* the performance should be.
If the data says Angela, a lot of people would say well, the data is wrong, the reason why Angela looks better is because people just aren't good with Ghost, but Ghost is *obviously* a much better champ. Those people are wrong. No champ is good in spite of their actual performance when used by the players of the game. A champ is only good *if* it performs well across all the players of the game.
All you have to do is ask any strong player, and they'll tell you Ghost is better, and it wouldn't take but a few seconds. The problem is those people have a 50% chance of being wrong because their expertise is on how to get the most out of a champion, not on how average people play champions. In fact, their expertise probably makes them less likely to get the answer right, because their opinions will be skewed by their experience.
An overwhelming majority of people have not asked for this and simply do not want you spending time on it. Just look at the Disagree ratio on your original post. There are 4-5 YouTubers I can name off the top of my head that have their own tier/rating system. And let's be real, their assessments of the champions are likely to be far better than any rating system you guys come up with.
Will you listen to the gaming community or ignore them (yet again)?
P.S. There's no reason to discontinue buffing old champions, especially if you're asking the community to do the testing on all the new champs for you. If anything, that should free up resources.
While maybe not in this exact implementation, I think a lot of people have wanted to make sure that a new Champion they've been looking forward to had been better than what they got. I'm sure that many would have loved for something like this to be in place for somebody like Super Skrull when he was released. The bones are there, but his numbers need some juicing.
The numbers are not Assessments, they are visual interpretations of Data that show how Champions stack up in different aspects. This is not a Tier list, but a summary of their abilities to do damage, sustainability in a fight, and more.
We are not asking for anybody to be doing any testing. Players will continue to play as they always have, and we will collect Data exactly as we always have, but will now be actioning on that Data instead of just looking at it.
Miike, you're killing me, bud. Don't tell people you haven't been using the data for meaningful action all this time, because that's not the case. Maybe you guys need to contract with some people that are better and more nuanced at the game than your existing staff*. The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long? Sometimes you don't need Big Data when you control everything from the champs, to the environment. The only thing you don't control is us; but we can be simulated. Assume that you give your assessors access to all rarities and sig levels with a 100% full roster accessible. Top skilled players give assessments. Very low skilled noob players gives assessments. Mid-level players give assessments. Hopefully these people will give nuanced opinions from a broad set of viewpoints, otherwise why did you hire them? What are several million more points of data acquired over months really adding except more work for you all and frustrating uncertainty for your customers?
*Meaning able to play with a certain level of skill, know what their observations mean, and translate those to people with a higher or lower skill level in a variety of conditions. Some high level players suck at this and some low level player are great at it. It's an important skill to have in the team to maximize the effectiveness of your testing.
As an expert in this game, tell me: across all the players in the game, which champion performs better: Angela or Ghost. One of those champs is used more often, completes more content, dies less often, earns more rewards, costs less potions to run, gets ranked up more, in an overall sense generates more benefit to the players that use her.
It is easy to say which champ is "better" or "worse" on a spreadsheet or in a video. No game is balanced that way. Games are balanced based on actual performance, not what people *think* the performance should be.
If the data says Angela, a lot of people would say well, the data is wrong, the reason why Angela looks better is because people just aren't good with Ghost, but Ghost is *obviously* a much better champ. Those people are wrong. No champ is good in spite of their actual performance when used by the players of the game. A champ is only good *if* it performs well across all the players of the game.
All you have to do is ask any strong player, and they'll tell you Ghost is better, and it wouldn't take but a few seconds. The problem is those people have a 50% chance of being wrong because their expertise is on how to get the most out of a champion, not on how average people play champions. In fact, their expertise probably makes them less likely to get the answer right, because their opinions will be skewed by their experience.
First, I never put myself out there as an expert. Secondly, I wouldn't categorize champs as universally better or worse, because it depends on the nodes, opponents, and skill of the user and even the most deeply underpowered champs might have a chance to perform adequately under a particular set of node-opponent-skill combinations. Anyone that knows what they're talking about wouldn't give such a terrible blanket statement as to who is better or worse without knowing the conditions for their usage. We might tongue in cheek say a champ sucks with no caveats but it we know that it actually always depends.
The problem is actually how the champs are designed.
Know the difference between high damage and ramp up. A.
If it’s a ramp UP damage champ. Then it should start with good/ok damage and get HIGHER if you can play their extra sketchy play style. The more risky or complicated play style should have higher reward.
If they are meant to have utility. Don’t bury it behind their sig/awakened ability. Put utility on the base kit and every sig just accentuates the base kit to make them more like themselves. When this isn’t the case. You immediately remove them from the “useful champs pile” for anyone except the top top players and the “lucky”. And you create a paradox where 6* Namor is a “bad roll” for a new player. Not only will the 6* not “do what he does” for a looooooong time. But now they will be less likely to invest resources into the 5*. Which they could use for their utility.
The next point actually has to do with content design. But it effects every single champ. Because this is how players gauge usefulness and damage.
Decide what level champs are supposed to be able to do X content. Legendary side quest for example. And stick to that. Now design every new champ up to that bar, then assure they can do it.
These things would negate 90% of your rebalances. And would cure complaints in most cases.
The other 10% are the champs we have now that are just terrible.
@Kabam Miike so i think whats happening here is 2 fold. People are scared that Kabam will implement this and current champs in the game will get nerfed like 12.0. So upon roll out is that something the team is looking to do or is the focus strictly on new champs on release?
The second part is the disappointment of the lack of buffs. I think thats one of the best things the game team has done in a long time. It was a lot of fun watching youtubers leak the upcoming buffs and checking the roster and trying them out in ROL. I know its not over just slowing a bit.
Bonus. The qol of the bugs in game. The parry issues. The lag the dropped input the crashes. I think these things all came together in a storm and its hard for us to see the positives in this new move. I know for me if you talked to the team and let us know that our fav champs dont have nerfs incoming would be much appreciated.
This isn't something that's putting anything new on the chopping block. It's a metric that outlines the perspectives they're looking at, in a way that is comprehensive to us.
I don't like this at all! this will bring this game to an end in my opinion. I love when you guys try to buff a champion that is horrible and have no use in the meta but to see awesome Champs get tuned down I don't agree at all with that decision.example mcoc after 12.0 what was the reasoning behind 12.0 to bring "balance" in to the contest what have we learned over time? that all of them would've actually been fine. Thor was amazing and after 12.0 he's garbage and only for what? To later on have Champs like corvus, cosmic ghost rider and etc..... I think the focus should be at making bad Champs useful and also focus on making Champs with new mechanics and useful for the actual meta of the game. this system is unfair for the customer who's buying your product. if a champ is released and the community likes them why mess that up? there are plenty of other Champs that needs a buff.... hopefully you guys listen to the community this time bc I guarantee that the vast majority will just give up on the game due to this! 12.0 was bad enough don't go back there.
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...
I have to Disagree. Balancing is necessary in all games like this, and we have lagged behind because we haven't had the ability to really communicate where a Champion should be before they're out in the wild, and this helps with that. It won't be perfect, which is also why we're integrating players into the change process as well.
If the entire idea is to ensure the champions release are meeting the expectations they were designed with, why not give each summoner the champion for free during the evaluation period? You can even base this off title progression. Throne breakers get a free 5 star, Cavalier get a free 4 star, a free 3 star for uncollected, etc.
Let us test, evaluate, and provide feedback, before we have to grind, spend, or waste shards on a champion that may or may not be changed in the future.
If this is truly necessary to the game, let us help without making us open up our wallets or dedicating our time and resources to do so.
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.
Thank you for clarifying this. It wasn’t clear from your original post whether the rebalancing would pertain to older champs. Knowing it will not is a huge relief.
I believe there are other issues with the overall plan as outlined but they will be sorted in time.
An overwhelming majority of people have not asked for this and simply do not want you spending time on it. Just look at the Disagree ratio on your original post. There are 4-5 YouTubers I can name off the top of my head that have their own tier/rating system. And let's be real, their assessments of the champions are likely to be far better than any rating system you guys come up with.
Will you listen to the gaming community or ignore them (yet again)?
P.S. There's no reason to discontinue buffing old champions, especially if you're asking the community to do the testing on all the new champs for you. If anything, that should free up resources.
While maybe not in this exact implementation, I think a lot of people have wanted to make sure that a new Champion they've been looking forward to had been better than what they got. I'm sure that many would have loved for something like this to be in place for somebody like Super Skrull when he was released. The bones are there, but his numbers need some juicing.
The numbers are not Assessments, they are visual interpretations of Data that show how Champions stack up in different aspects. This is not a Tier list, but a summary of their abilities to do damage, sustainability in a fight, and more.
We are not asking for anybody to be doing any testing. Players will continue to play as they always have, and we will collect Data exactly as we always have, but will now be actioning on that Data instead of just looking at it.
Miike, you're killing me, bud. Don't tell people you haven't been using the data for meaningful action all this time, because that's not the case. Maybe you guys need to contract with some people that are better and more nuanced at the game than your existing staff*. The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long? Sometimes you don't need Big Data when you control everything from the champs, to the environment. The only thing you don't control is us; but we can be simulated. Assume that you give your assessors access to all rarities and sig levels with a 100% full roster accessible. Top skilled players give assessments. Very low skilled noob players gives assessments. Mid-level players give assessments. Hopefully these people will give nuanced opinions from a broad set of viewpoints, otherwise why did you hire them? What are several million more points of data acquired over months really adding except more work for you all and frustrating uncertainty for your customers?
*Meaning able to play with a certain level of skill, know what their observations mean, and translate those to people with a higher or lower skill level in a variety of conditions. Some high level players suck at this and some low level player are great at it. It's an important skill to have in the team to maximize the effectiveness of your testing.
As an expert in this game, tell me: across all the players in the game, which champion performs better: Angela or Ghost. One of those champs is used more often, completes more content, dies less often, earns more rewards, costs less potions to run, gets ranked up more, in an overall sense generates more benefit to the players that use her.
It is easy to say which champ is "better" or "worse" on a spreadsheet or in a video. No game is balanced that way. Games are balanced based on actual performance, not what people *think* the performance should be.
If the data says Angela, a lot of people would say well, the data is wrong, the reason why Angela looks better is because people just aren't good with Ghost, but Ghost is *obviously* a much better champ. Those people are wrong. No champ is good in spite of their actual performance when used by the players of the game. A champ is only good *if* it performs well across all the players of the game.
All you have to do is ask any strong player, and they'll tell you Ghost is better, and it wouldn't take but a few seconds. The problem is those people have a 50% chance of being wrong because their expertise is on how to get the most out of a champion, not on how average people play champions. In fact, their expertise probably makes them less likely to get the answer right, because their opinions will be skewed by their experience.
First, I never put myself out there as an expert. Secondly, I wouldn't categorize champs as universally better or worse, because it depends on the nodes, opponents, and skill of the user and even the most deeply underpowered champs might have a chance to perform adequately under a particular set of node-opponent-skill combinations. Anyone that knows what they're talking about wouldn't give such a terrible blanket statement as to who is better or worse without knowing the conditions for their usage. We might tongue in cheek say a champ sucks with no caveats but it we know that it actually always depends.
I was speaking colloquially, so let me be precise: you said:
The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long?
So tell me, for the specified group of players encapsulated by the word "we" how it is you know quickly and without looking at months of data whether the champion fulfills the role you believe the champion was designed to fulfill? Given any two champs, Angela and Ghost, or War Machine and Cosmic Ghost Rider, or Namor and Storm Pyramid X, tell me how this group of players knows which one fits their intended role better than the other one. This is a skill you explicitly state some group of players possesses, implying this group includes yourself.
The *only* way I know how to do this precisely and consistently is to monitor the performance of the champion when a wide range of players plays the champion long enough to become reasonably proficient at playing them (to within the limits of their skill). It is possible to use judgment to guess, and those guesses might be right often, but I know of no way that judgment can improve except by cross checking it against the performance data, which no player has access to. Whatever their guesses might be, they have no avenue to improve significantly. As a practical matter, I have no way to even know who is better at it than any other, because I have no way to know who's closer and who's father away.
Multiple people including yourself have made the claim that this can be done without analyzing significant amounts of data. By what process are these apparently extremely proficient analysts arriving at their conclusions?
I'm trying to get a sense of what overpowered means. Quake, Ghost, and Corvus are obvious, but if Apoc was released in March, would they nerf his prefight and his special damage?
Would they touch Doom's crit resist and armor a little and would they limit his Doom cycle by allowing only 1 stun per fight after the sp3?
In the context of this announcement, I believe it means the same thing it always meant.
I wouldn't be so sure that Quake, Ghost, and Corvus would all be judged OP had they been released under the announced balancing program. In the first three to six months of release, how good did Quake look across the entire playerbase? For that matter, how good does she even look now?
We tend to judge champions by how good they look when the top tier players show off with them. But when Ghost first came out, almost no one really knew how to optimize her play. I will bet anything most players still don't know, or play her in a synergy team, or don't make mistakes that get them killed. I said the same thing about Sparky when he first came out. How many players can actually Quake with Quake consistently? If they can't, what's her performance when players play her conventionally?
Maybe they would have been rebalanced, maybe not. I don't think it is obvious. The most dangerous champs in the game are not the champs that MSD can solo the Abyss with. The most dangerous champs (to game balance) are the ones that grandma can solo Uncollected difficulty with while watching Jeopardy. Top tier performance balancing is a thing, but it is not the core thing, and it is done by a completely different process.
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...
I have to Disagree. Balancing is necessary in all games like this, and we have lagged behind because we haven't had the ability to really communicate where a Champion should be before they're out in the wild, and this helps with that. It won't be perfect, which is also why we're integrating players into the change process as well.
Balancing only works if you don't sell champs. You can't nerf sold champs w/o huge compensation and backlash.
Balancing is a part of the game, and it's quite clearly explained in the ToS that they have the right to modify their product if they need to. We don't purchase to own. We lease permission to use their product. Having said that, they're not building a stonewall of "Sucks to be you.". They're taking into consideration the feelings of Players investing. That's saying something. The game is not a point-of-sale final product. It's an evolving network of moving parts.
Wrong. Champ monetization is the reason that they don't nerf champs and when they do they have to give huge compensation.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with that perspective.
When don’t you Disagree?
That's not a fair statement. Some aspects I agree with and some I don't, quite regularly. What I don't do is blindly agree with everything based on peer pressure. I look at as many aspects as I can with complex situations. Some of those aspects are not in line with what people want, but are important to look at overall. I don't disagree with the express purpose of disagreeing. I simply don't agree for the sake of it either.
An overwhelming majority of people have not asked for this and simply do not want you spending time on it. Just look at the Disagree ratio on your original post. There are 4-5 YouTubers I can name off the top of my head that have their own tier/rating system. And let's be real, their assessments of the champions are likely to be far better than any rating system you guys come up with.
Will you listen to the gaming community or ignore them (yet again)?
P.S. There's no reason to discontinue buffing old champions, especially if you're asking the community to do the testing on all the new champs for you. If anything, that should free up resources.
While maybe not in this exact implementation, I think a lot of people have wanted to make sure that a new Champion they've been looking forward to had been better than what they got. I'm sure that many would have loved for something like this to be in place for somebody like Super Skrull when he was released. The bones are there, but his numbers need some juicing.
The numbers are not Assessments, they are visual interpretations of Data that show how Champions stack up in different aspects. This is not a Tier list, but a summary of their abilities to do damage, sustainability in a fight, and more.
We are not asking for anybody to be doing any testing. Players will continue to play as they always have, and we will collect Data exactly as we always have, but will now be actioning on that Data instead of just looking at it.
Miike, you're killing me, bud. Don't tell people you haven't been using the data for meaningful action all this time, because that's not the case. Maybe you guys need to contract with some people that are better and more nuanced at the game than your existing staff*. The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long? Sometimes you don't need Big Data when you control everything from the champs, to the environment. The only thing you don't control is us; but we can be simulated. Assume that you give your assessors access to all rarities and sig levels with a 100% full roster accessible. Top skilled players give assessments. Very low skilled noob players gives assessments. Mid-level players give assessments. Hopefully these people will give nuanced opinions from a broad set of viewpoints, otherwise why did you hire them? What are several million more points of data acquired over months really adding except more work for you all and frustrating uncertainty for your customers?
*Meaning able to play with a certain level of skill, know what their observations mean, and translate those to people with a higher or lower skill level in a variety of conditions. Some high level players suck at this and some low level player are great at it. It's an important skill to have in the team to maximize the effectiveness of your testing.
As an expert in this game, tell me: across all the players in the game, which champion performs better: Angela or Ghost. One of those champs is used more often, completes more content, dies less often, earns more rewards, costs less potions to run, gets ranked up more, in an overall sense generates more benefit to the players that use her.
It is easy to say which champ is "better" or "worse" on a spreadsheet or in a video. No game is balanced that way. Games are balanced based on actual performance, not what people *think* the performance should be.
If the data says Angela, a lot of people would say well, the data is wrong, the reason why Angela looks better is because people just aren't good with Ghost, but Ghost is *obviously* a much better champ. Those people are wrong. No champ is good in spite of their actual performance when used by the players of the game. A champ is only good *if* it performs well across all the players of the game.
All you have to do is ask any strong player, and they'll tell you Ghost is better, and it wouldn't take but a few seconds. The problem is those people have a 50% chance of being wrong because their expertise is on how to get the most out of a champion, not on how average people play champions. In fact, their expertise probably makes them less likely to get the answer right, because their opinions will be skewed by their experience.
First, I never put myself out there as an expert. Secondly, I wouldn't categorize champs as universally better or worse, because it depends on the nodes, opponents, and skill of the user and even the most deeply underpowered champs might have a chance to perform adequately under a particular set of node-opponent-skill combinations. Anyone that knows what they're talking about wouldn't give such a terrible blanket statement as to who is better or worse without knowing the conditions for their usage. We might tongue in cheek say a champ sucks with no caveats but it we know that it actually always depends.
I was speaking colloquially, so let me be precise: you said:
The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long?
So tell me, for the specified group of players encapsulated by the word "we" how it is you know quickly and without looking at months of data whether the champion fulfills the role you believe the champion was designed to fulfill? Given any two champs, Angela and Ghost, or War Machine and Cosmic Ghost Rider, or Namor and Storm Pyramid X, tell me how this group of players knows which one fits their intended role better than the other one. This is a skill you explicitly state some group of players possesses, implying this group includes yourself.
The *only* way I know how to do this precisely and consistently is to monitor the performance of the champion when a wide range of players plays the champion long enough to become reasonably proficient at playing them (to within the limits of their skill). It is possible to use judgment to guess, and those guesses might be right often, but I know of no way that judgment can improve except by cross checking it against the performance data, which no player has access to. Whatever their guesses might be, they have no avenue to improve significantly. As a practical matter, I have no way to even know who is better at it than any other, because I have no way to know who's closer and who's father away.
Multiple people including yourself have made the claim that this can be done without analyzing significant amounts of data. By what process are these apparently extremely proficient analysts arriving at their conclusions?
If Kabam is trying to answer the question of whether a champ is suitable for their intended purpose, they can make finding the answer significantly easier without wasting time on gathering data from large samples over a long period of time for no good reason.
Presumably Kabam knows the intended purpose of a champ. Should they waste time having their people play the champ in scenarios that won't help inform that decision? It isn't a Pre-Quake world anymore. Our testing and theirs has become more sophisticated given our experiences and the state of the game. Part of the problem with our testing quickly is that champs are a pain to acquire at all rarities to be thorough and that's a problem Kabam's testers wouldn't have.
Please just fix the 50 or so champions that have no relevancy in the game currently.
I know there are separate teams that work on new champs and old champ reworks; but seriously, instead of giving us boring champs that no one has ever heard of or cared about, please repair the old champs that currently exist and plague our rosters.
Comments
There are no absolute rules when it comes to game operation. Everything is a compromise between competing forces. There are absolutely no free lunches. Give the players less rewards and they will balk. Give them more rewards and you force downstream changes they won't like. Nerf a champ and you'll piss off some of your players. *Don't* nerf a champion and you'll anger others in a different, possibly invisible way.
Players often say that if the devs are supposed to do a thing, why don't they always do that thing: if they aren't supposed to do that thing why don't they never do that thing. Because every action they take helps something and hurts something else, and thus every action has to be calculated to do more good than harm. Reasonable intelligent people can disagree on where that line is, so no decision will ever be universally seen as the right one. For example, I argued strongly against the Guillotine 2.0 buff. I believe I was on solid grounds. The devs did it anyway not because they ignored me, not because they are stupid, and not because they are incompetent. They did it because they disagreed. It can be a tough pill to swallow, but sometimes that's all there is to it.
The devs know that if they nerf a champ, they will anger some players. If they don't, bad things happen to the game that ultimately worsen the game experience for some players. A dev can decide that nerfing Quake causes more harm to the game than good, but nerfing champion X four months after release does more good than harm. That's a judgment, and different people will disagree about whether that judgment is the right one. But whether it looks consistent from the outside or not, it is still a judgment they have to make based on what they think the right choice is at that time.
The numbers are not Assessments, they are visual interpretations of Data that show how Champions stack up in different aspects. This is not a Tier list, but a summary of their abilities to do damage, sustainability in a fight, and more.
We are not asking for anybody to be doing any testing. Players will continue to play as they always have, and we will collect Data exactly as we always have, but will now be actioning on that Data instead of just looking at it.
Since Kabam Mike closed my previous post(Classic Kabam). This is so far the dislikes they have on this, I think the wise decision for this would be forget about this idea and focus on actual things that matter. Not trying to be rude but if people don't like the idea why go through with it, you're wasting you're time and ours as well. If this idea ruins the many good champions I have, I think its time to move on from this game. I've dealt with the bugs, bad content, buggie content( remember V8 VP) and buggie AW. If they mess around with the best champs instead of the bad ones like I've said I'm done. Cause Namors nerf and Cull weren't even good things and I've barely seeing anyone using them so thats just straight up cap and means a bad sign. Feels like 12.0 will happen again with this.
If you're a player shooting for a champ right off the bat, you have already made peace with going for a champion before you know how it really performs and what its true potential is. Ikaris was not a super rare anomaly. That risk calculation is already factored into spending and grinding. Because of this program, *someone* will stop spending and *someone* will stop grinding, but they'll be replaced by other players that won't.
Maybe this time it will be different. People are hard to predict. But I won't be changing the way I approach the game, and my bet is not enough other people will do so for me to notice.
1) The champion ratings system seems like a logistical nightmare. I see and understand your intentions with this system but there will be problems that need to be addressed. How will these ratings be measured? There is a possibility that these ratings will be subjective and arbitrary. Also, to put it nicely, Kabam and the player base have been known to disagree on champion quality (see guillotine buff criticism and Q/A responses). What happens when Kabam and the players inevitably disagree about a champion's rating?
2) The rebalance program has been done before and was not well received. I get the arguments in support of this program but why is Kabam insisting on a system that wasn't asked for? You mentioned super skrull but that can be addressed with a buff. Couldn't this be in connection to the champion buff program? which leads me to...
3) The champion buff program. This is what really gets me and a lot of others too. As evident by many responses in this thread, many will agree with me when I say that the Champion buff program was one of the best things MCOC has done in recent memory. It was a source of reliable excitement and hope that trash champs would be brought up to relevance. I understand that buffs will not completely stop but it is clear in the original post that buffs are taking a back seat to balancing. Why? Shouldn't improving our current champions, and by extension our experiences, be the priority? I've gotten the impression that people care more about buffed champions than newer champs because the average player won't get their hands on the new champ for months if not years. Balancing can and has been done through the champion buffs so why change? It just confuses me that Kabam would reduce and replace a system that is overwhelmingly supported with a system that is unwanted and disliked.
I ask this as a concerned fan who only wants what's best for the game. Thank you
Not being a whale that purchases a bunch of crack crystals as I call them, I think my disappointment is that with a couple extra resources, they could continue to buff 2 old characters a month. On the other end, people will just purchase less chances on the front end for new ones and wait until they roll back around a year later. Lost revenue. Guillotine proves that it isn't worth the risk, even though that was an older character. So rank down tokens should be given for that character ONLY if any nerf is made.
I think they need to reduce the time period for large adjustments to no more than a few months, so people know whether to even focus on featured crystals. They need adjusted before being put in the pool.
The more I think about it and review comments, if they want to add a chart on intended dps, who cares....they should already have been doing this at the beginning of their design phase before we even know about the character. Plop the chart they should already be doing anyway in the character notes.
Maybe you guys need to contract with some people that are better and more nuanced at the game than your existing staff*. The biggest problem is that it shouldn't take months of assessments and collecting vast data sets to figure out how well a champ fits their intended role. Why is it that we can figure it out so quickly and it takes your staff so long? Sometimes you don't need Big Data when you control everything from the champs, to the environment. The only thing you don't control is us; but we can be simulated. Assume that you give your assessors access to all rarities and sig levels with a 100% full roster accessible. Top skilled players give assessments. Very low skilled noob players gives assessments. Mid-level players give assessments. Hopefully these people will give nuanced opinions from a broad set of viewpoints, otherwise why did you hire them? What are several million more points of data acquired over months really adding except more work for you all and frustrating uncertainty for your customers?
*Meaning able to play with a certain level of skill, know what their observations mean, and translate those to people with a higher or lower skill level in a variety of conditions. Some high level players suck at this and some low level player are great at it. It's an important skill to have in the team to maximize the effectiveness of your testing.
It is easy to say which champ is "better" or "worse" on a spreadsheet or in a video. No game is balanced that way. Games are balanced based on actual performance, not what people *think* the performance should be.
If the data says Angela, a lot of people would say well, the data is wrong, the reason why Angela looks better is because people just aren't good with Ghost, but Ghost is *obviously* a much better champ. Those people are wrong. No champ is good in spite of their actual performance when used by the players of the game. A champ is only good *if* it performs well across all the players of the game.
All you have to do is ask any strong player, and they'll tell you Ghost is better, and it wouldn't take but a few seconds. The problem is those people have a 50% chance of being wrong because their expertise is on how to get the most out of a champion, not on how average people play champions. In fact, their expertise probably makes them less likely to get the answer right, because their opinions will be skewed by their experience.
The second part is the disappointment of the lack of buffs. I think thats one of the best things the game team has done in a long time. It was a lot of fun watching youtubers leak the upcoming buffs and checking the roster and trying them out in ROL. I know its not over just slowing a bit.
Bonus. The qol of the bugs in game. The parry issues. The lag the dropped input the crashes. I think these things all came together in a storm and its hard for us to see the positives in this new move. I know for me if you talked to the team and let us know that our fav champs dont have nerfs incoming would be much appreciated.
Not everyone has the same perspective as others to Champion acquisition. It's still worth it - so people will still grind. But hey, maybe they won't grind QUITE as hard and we'll see scores drop! I wouldn't complain about that!
Know the difference between high damage and ramp up. A.
If it’s a ramp UP damage champ. Then it should start with good/ok damage and get HIGHER if you can play their extra sketchy play style. The more risky or complicated play style should have higher reward.
If they are meant to have utility. Don’t bury it behind their sig/awakened ability. Put utility on the base kit and every sig just accentuates the base kit to make them more like themselves. When this isn’t the case. You immediately remove them from the “useful champs pile” for anyone except the top top players and the “lucky”. And you create a paradox where 6* Namor is a “bad roll” for a new player. Not only will the 6* not “do what he does” for a looooooong time. But now they will be less likely to invest resources into the 5*. Which they could use for their utility.
The next point actually has to do with content design. But it effects every single champ. Because this is how players gauge usefulness and damage.
Decide what level champs are supposed to be able to do X content. Legendary side quest for example. And stick to that. Now design every new champ up to that bar, then assure they can do it.
These things would negate 90% of your rebalances. And would cure complaints in most cases.
The other 10% are the champs we have now that are just terrible.
Let us test, evaluate, and provide feedback, before we have to grind, spend, or waste shards on a champion that may or may not be changed in the future.
If this is truly necessary to the game, let us help without making us open up our wallets or dedicating our time and resources to do so.
I believe there are other issues with the overall plan as outlined but they will be sorted in time.
So tell me, for the specified group of players encapsulated by the word "we" how it is you know quickly and without looking at months of data whether the champion fulfills the role you believe the champion was designed to fulfill? Given any two champs, Angela and Ghost, or War Machine and Cosmic Ghost Rider, or Namor and Storm Pyramid X, tell me how this group of players knows which one fits their intended role better than the other one. This is a skill you explicitly state some group of players possesses, implying this group includes yourself.
The *only* way I know how to do this precisely and consistently is to monitor the performance of the champion when a wide range of players plays the champion long enough to become reasonably proficient at playing them (to within the limits of their skill). It is possible to use judgment to guess, and those guesses might be right often, but I know of no way that judgment can improve except by cross checking it against the performance data, which no player has access to. Whatever their guesses might be, they have no avenue to improve significantly. As a practical matter, I have no way to even know who is better at it than any other, because I have no way to know who's closer and who's father away.
Multiple people including yourself have made the claim that this can be done without analyzing significant amounts of data. By what process are these apparently extremely proficient analysts arriving at their conclusions?
I wouldn't be so sure that Quake, Ghost, and Corvus would all be judged OP had they been released under the announced balancing program. In the first three to six months of release, how good did Quake look across the entire playerbase? For that matter, how good does she even look now?
We tend to judge champions by how good they look when the top tier players show off with them. But when Ghost first came out, almost no one really knew how to optimize her play. I will bet anything most players still don't know, or play her in a synergy team, or don't make mistakes that get them killed. I said the same thing about Sparky when he first came out. How many players can actually Quake with Quake consistently? If they can't, what's her performance when players play her conventionally?
Maybe they would have been rebalanced, maybe not. I don't think it is obvious. The most dangerous champs in the game are not the champs that MSD can solo the Abyss with. The most dangerous champs (to game balance) are the ones that grandma can solo Uncollected difficulty with while watching Jeopardy. Top tier performance balancing is a thing, but it is not the core thing, and it is done by a completely different process.
If Kabam is trying to answer the question of whether a champ is suitable for their intended purpose, they can make finding the answer significantly easier without wasting time on gathering data from large samples over a long period of time for no good reason.So tell me, for the specified group of players encapsulated by the word "we" how it is you know quickly and without looking at months of data whether the champion fulfills the role you believe the champion was designed to fulfill? Given any two champs, Angela and Ghost, or War Machine and Cosmic Ghost Rider, or Namor and Storm Pyramid X, tell me how this group of players knows which one fits their intended role better than the other one. This is a skill you explicitly state some group of players possesses, implying this group includes yourself.
The *only* way I know how to do this precisely and consistently is to monitor the performance of the champion when a wide range of players plays the champion long enough to become reasonably proficient at playing them (to within the limits of their skill). It is possible to use judgment to guess, and those guesses might be right often, but I know of no way that judgment can improve except by cross checking it against the performance data, which no player has access to. Whatever their guesses might be, they have no avenue to improve significantly. As a practical matter, I have no way to even know who is better at it than any other, because I have no way to know who's closer and who's father away.
Multiple people including yourself have made the claim that this can be done without analyzing significant amounts of data. By what process are these apparently extremely proficient analysts arriving at their conclusions?
Presumably Kabam knows the intended purpose of a champ. Should they waste time having their people play the champ in scenarios that won't help inform that decision? It isn't a Pre-Quake world anymore. Our testing and theirs has become more sophisticated given our experiences and the state of the game. Part of the problem with our testing quickly is that champs are a pain to acquire at all rarities to be thorough and that's a problem Kabam's testers wouldn't have.
I know there are separate teams that work on new champs and old champ reworks; but seriously, instead of giving us boring champs that no one has ever heard of or cared about, please repair the old champs that currently exist and plague our rosters.