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.
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?
What I’m trying to explain to you is, for every champion, the intended purpose is *always* when played by the players of the game, the performance they generate across a representative slice of content is consistent with the original design profile.
The part about “when the players play it” is not optional. Ghost’s performance is not what you think it is, not what you get out of her, not what the YouTubers get out of her, and not what the Kabam devs get out for her. It’s what the player base as a whole gets out of her.
Saying you know what the performance of a champ is without actually observing a wide range of players playing it is like saying you know how the player base will vote on anything, so you don’t need to actually poll them.
To put it another way, how well the champ performs in the game when played by all the players isn’t *measuring* champion performance, and it isn’t *testing* champion performance. It *is* champion performance, period. You seem to think that the data they collect is unnecessary because expertise can analyze a champ’s performance just as well. But that assumes “performance” is something that needs to be uncovered, and a good tester can do that better than the average player. But that’s his problem: he’s better. That makes him wrong.
This is not a guess. This is not an opinion. This is simply how games like this work, and specifically how MCOC has worked since the beginning of time, and good luck to anyone who thinks they can redefine performance in the games industry. I discovered long ago I’m not going to live long enough to tackle that one.
The whole system of them changing champs down the line seems horrible in my opinion. Are they just gonna release champs like Hercules and then 6 months later just go "nah they are too strong, here are some rank down tickets It just feels like it will remove any excitement from a new champion being powerful when you know they could most likely get changed in 6 months.
The Problem is that Kabam never establish a Baseline for their characters kits so in the middle of the project life they want to... They could establish it now and all kits are set and will not be impacted. NEW CHAMPIONS RELEASE are subject to the re roll updates. It's not hard to be fair to the community and change the direction of kits in the future. This might actually be my last straw
Do people actually believe that gameplay results are a new thing? It's what the entire game has been built on. This is where the data comes from. It's impossible to dedicate a team to sit in a room and generate the thousands of sources of hours of gaming that the live results give. That doesn't mean improvements can't be made. There's always room for growth. It's just that this isn't some new addition. 7 years of us playing the game has been the basis of the data they speak of for anything implemented. That, along with our feedback, and their vision, all make the game what it is.
Hey, it’s nice to hear that you care about players opinions, but your actions says the opposite. At least to me is too sad to read about that we are not getting champions buffs/rework, because at least for me that was almost my only moto to survive another month in the game. The monthly event, AQ, and AW have become bored. So, the excitement of probably getting something new from my **** champions -or at least make them useful- was keeping me in game, but lately is hard for me to find reasons to play it. Nowadays I usually join just for not my fail my alliance (friends), but rarely because I want to experiment something in the game or even to grind arenas no more. I’m pretty much an ending game player, and as the many other ending game players -we have expended a significantly real money- I’m scared that game is loosing a lot of players -risking the game to finally close- and taking arbitrary actions, not fixing some issues, and stop working on the things that currently work (monthly buff/rework) is not the correct path to follow if this game want to continue. I have never posted nothing before, but right now I can’t look away and pretend that nothing is happening. Please guys I know that you can work in the buff/rework program and the things that you want to implement at the same time -at least if you want to still getting money-, is not a warning, this is just and advice because I love this game and don’t want to see my beloved Mcoc getting close. I almost sure that I’m not the only one who have reduce significantly the amount of real money used in Mcoc -thing that I don’t want, I want you to take my money, but please keep me entertained (give me reasons to still doing it). Thank you for your time.
@Kabam Miike The part of your statement where you will be free to decide before chasing whether a champ is hitting their mark or not based on the rankings before chasing I don't get at all. So if you rank a champ 5 out of 5 for damage, how are we going to know if he is overpowered and going to get nerfed because he has too much damage (ie cull)? There's no way to honestly know. If you rank a champ as going to have 4 out of 5 damage what exactly are the parameters where he will then get nerfed for having too much (5 out of 5) damage? No one knows. It will create more confusion and the first time you nerf a champ you will lose alot of your customer base. I personally after reading this won't chase any crystals or rank up any champs past r2 until the trial period is over.
The only way this makes sense for kabam is if someone there thinks that they should make new champs super op (which is what they hinted at in their initial post) at release to drive up sales and then take it back 6 months later to restart the process again not realising that you will drive away your customers quickly in the process.
You guys took away for next few months and are slowing rest of the year the 1 thing alot of ppl were excited about which was to see which old champs are getting buffed.. I guess for you guys old champs don't drive up crystal sales as much as New ones so why concentrate on them. If you were actually listening to your base like you said you are you would realize this is the wrong approach. Just look at your like to dislike ratio. YOUR community is speaking! LISTEN.
If kitty pride or herc got released after March who here would feel safe chasing them or ranking them up? Not me.
I was really looking forward to Feb and the resumption of the buff program after a slow and dry January. It's only now that we are facing another month without buffs that I've raised how much it was keeping me playing.
In principle I don't have an issue with the rating system and balance programme. If anything, it seems like an internal scoring system for champs that Kabam are choosing to make public for purposes of debate and discussion. I don't think it should come at the cost of buffing older champions though.
The forum can be an echo chamber at times but in real terms I think Kabam need to do something for February to encourage player retention. I'm not necessarily talking about 5*/6* shards or anything like that. I'm taking about doing something more than they would do, but I'm not sure if it's too late to get anything substantial together that would qualify.
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?
What I’m trying to explain to you is, for every champion, the intended purpose is *always* when played by the players of the game, the performance they generate across a representative slice of content is consistent with the original design profile.
The part about “when the players play it” is not optional. Ghost’s performance is not what you think it is, not what you get out of her, not what the YouTubers get out of her, and not what the Kabam devs get out for her. It’s what the player base as a whole gets out of her.
Saying you know what the performance of a champ is without actually observing a wide range of players playing it is like saying you know how the player base will vote on anything, so you don’t need to actually poll them.
To put it another way, how well the champ performs in the game when played by all the players isn’t *measuring* champion performance, and it isn’t *testing* champion performance. It *is* champion performance, period. You seem to think that the data they collect is unnecessary because expertise can analyze a champ’s performance just as well. But that assumes “performance” is something that needs to be uncovered, and a good tester can do that better than the average player. But that’s his problem: he’s better. That makes him wrong.
This is not a guess. This is not an opinion. This is simply how games like this work, and specifically how MCOC has worked since the beginning of time, and good luck to anyone who thinks they can redefine performance in the games industry. I discovered long ago I’m not going to live long enough to tackle that one.
We're looking at performance and testing differently, I'm assuming it's due to our backgrounds. If I'm performance testing a product, a device, or a compound, I'm not testing in a vacuum with no prior knowledge of the intended use, interactions, and environment of usage and I have full knowledge of prior testing of similar subjects to avoid duplicate efforts or collecting and sifting through an infinite number of in-limit variables that add nothing of value and simply waste time. If they've been collecting data all this time, what is the value in repeating so much of it forever every time they introduce a champ? Once you've got your 14th champ that procs a lot of buffs or debuffs, why do you need months of repetitive player data at this point for every item within an established spec? If Kabam says they didn't expect a champ to perform as well in the wild as they are and therefore might need tuning down, I'd ask "Why? Why wouldn't you expect that performance? Given the components of the champ, the provided starting point with the spotlight, the history of the game, and the fact that you control the environment they're used in, how are you surprised still and why did it take you so long to get there?"
Comments
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.
The part about “when the players play it” is not optional. Ghost’s performance is not what you think it is, not what you get out of her, not what the YouTubers get out of her, and not what the Kabam devs get out for her. It’s what the player base as a whole gets out of her.
Saying you know what the performance of a champ is without actually observing a wide range of players playing it is like saying you know how the player base will vote on anything, so you don’t need to actually poll them.
To put it another way, how well the champ performs in the game when played by all the players isn’t *measuring* champion performance, and it isn’t *testing* champion performance. It *is* champion performance, period. You seem to think that the data they collect is unnecessary because expertise can analyze a champ’s performance just as well. But that assumes “performance” is something that needs to be uncovered, and a good tester can do that better than the average player. But that’s his problem: he’s better. That makes him wrong.
This is not a guess. This is not an opinion. This is simply how games like this work, and specifically how MCOC has worked since the beginning of time, and good luck to anyone who thinks they can redefine performance in the games industry. I discovered long ago I’m not going to live long enough to tackle that one.
line seems horrible in my opinion. Are they just gonna
release champs like Hercules and then 6 months later just
go "nah they are too strong, here are some rank down
tickets
It just feels like it will remove any excitement from a new
champion being powerful when you know they could most
likely get changed in 6 months.
their characters kits so in the middle of the project life they
want to... They could establish it now and all kits are set
and will not be impacted. NEW CHAMPIONS RELEASE are
subject to the re roll updates. It's not hard to be fair to the
community and change the direction of kits in the future.
This might actually be my last straw
Thank you for your time.
The part of your statement where you will be free to decide before chasing whether a champ is hitting their mark or not based on the rankings before chasing I don't get at all. So if you rank a champ 5 out of 5 for damage, how are we going to know if he is overpowered and going to get nerfed because he has too much damage (ie cull)? There's no way to honestly know. If you rank a champ as going to have 4 out of 5 damage what exactly are the parameters where he will then get nerfed for having too much (5 out of 5) damage? No one knows. It will create more confusion and the first time you nerf a champ you will lose alot of your customer base. I personally after reading this won't chase any crystals or rank up any champs past r2 until the trial period is over.
You guys took away for next few months and are slowing rest of the year the 1 thing alot of ppl were excited about which was to see which old champs are getting buffed.. I guess for you guys old champs don't drive up crystal sales as much as New ones so why concentrate on them. If you were actually listening to your base like you said you are you would realize this is the wrong approach. Just look at your like to dislike ratio. YOUR community is speaking! LISTEN.
If kitty pride or herc got released after March who here would feel safe chasing them or ranking them up? Not me.
I was really looking forward to Feb and the resumption of the buff program after a slow and dry January. It's only now that we are facing another month without buffs that I've raised how much it was keeping me playing.
In principle I don't have an issue with the rating system and balance programme. If anything, it seems like an internal scoring system for champs that Kabam are choosing to make public for purposes of debate and discussion. I don't think it should come at the cost of buffing older champions though.
The forum can be an echo chamber at times but in real terms I think Kabam need to do something for February to encourage player retention. I'm not necessarily talking about 5*/6* shards or anything like that. I'm taking about doing something more than they would do, but I'm not sure if it's too late to get anything substantial together that would qualify.