**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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The fact that the game has come this far in years, complexity, number characters and contents but mastery has stayed the same for this long shows it out of date and rigid. We’re no longer using a handful of champions with 2-3 lines descriptions.
But it doesn’t matter what I say or what majority says, not even a 4 disagrees to 102 agrees ratio will change Kabam mind, whatever they wanna do is what they do. You think they don’t know this? Mastery preset for example would have won by a landslide over battlegrounds if they were to put it to a survey. Yet, they spent the time to work on battlegrounds which will feed on masteries change
Maybe I’m wrong and they’ll listen to the community, who knows.
Masteries, rank ups, soon Relics, are all MMO and RPG elements that define the kind of game MCOC is. The conscious decision to shift from scalar difficulty scaling (just pumping up attack and health) to the more complex node interaction style content in Act 7 and Cavalier EQ are also examples of RPG-like design sensibilities. They all reflect the past and current thinking of the developers and how they see the different elements of the game functioning. I think it is important to keep that in mind. The goal of every business might be to make money, but that doesn't mean the chef in every restaurant is thinking about maximizing revenue when they cook or design recipes. Chefs still want to make delicious food, and game developers still want to make good games. And part of that thinking is thinking about the fundamentals of how games present choices and how they make player actions important, when at the end of the day they are just selling temporary glowing flickers of light. What makes things valuable is perhaps more important than what they cost.
Your response is laughable and you know better than that.
The restrictions and the compromise only exist on "limited economy". The moment you are willing to spend freely the restriction is gone.
It feels to me that is a "economic decision" which sets apart "rich" from "poor".
I see the inherent restriction when you limited the total points to everyone, that's design, but the moment you open a pay to avenue, the restriction by design becomes a economic restriction looking purely to separate the elite or the pay to win from the rest.
I may be wrong but that's how I see it. I love your post and I appreciate them a lot, but I can't agree with you on this one.
I loved the fact that you can prepare for a battle by changing your masteries, it gives much more strategy to the game, and it increases the deepness of your roster and the battle ahead. To me the free masteries has brought a lot of enjoying and joy, it makes me sad that they are gone
It is a cost restriction more than anything imo.
Inventory is the obvious one to discuss. For the longest time, there was no way to increase it above the limits set by level progress. Now, you can do that with the Sigil. Someone who starts playing now and only sees the game as it currently exists might try to make the case that the only reason why inventory limits exist is to generate revenue, because there is a way to spend to increases them. But that's obviously false, because for most of the game's history there was no way to spend money to mitigate them. Inventory limits obviously have a non-revenue reason for originally being added to the game. So the idea that the existence of monetization is an obvious proof that monetization is the primary factor for a limit existing is not true
If the devs were only concerned about monetizing the mastery system, they would sell mastery points. Since there's an obvious advantage to having more, it is an obvious avenue for monetization. However, the devs have repeatedly stated that they wouldn't add more mastery points until they added more masteries, making an explicit connection between how many masteries exist and how many they want players to be able to use simultaneously in one mastery configuration. This is an issue monetization cannot overcome, and it is an example of a situation where monetization does not override game design principles.
To say that it has noting to do with monetization is purely tone deaf and irresponsible at best. They should be free because we paid to unlock them as many have said earlier. It is really that simple.
As I see it, Laban doesn't want masteries to be free because paying for them, makes them a luxury item that can open avenues for revenue.
The problem that I have, is that, that concept was valid when the game started and you didn't have that many micro games. Now it feels that the system it's really antiquated. No set-up will fit it all, and you are just left with the decision of paying or loosing fun.
Arenas for instance, suicide masteries are not required, but it is way more fun to grind that mode with them is it really giving you a huge advantage or it is more reducing the amount of time that you spend doing a chore?
On some other modes just give you a little extra strategy, same thing as synergy, relics, or whatever is next
I feel masteries are not current or valid for the game that it was before, and since a redesign will take time and resources, for the time being and all considered, been them free would not be a bad decision for the game, and it's current state. Do something better in the future, but not doing anything now takes away a lot of fun that could be available. If they could set masteries per game mode, that could be a compromise, but if they can't (time, cost, technology...) Make them free until you get with something better
Ugh.
On the one hand, there's the benefits of forcing players to make actual choices with actual consequences, but we want to minimize the bleed over into those choices making whole game modes unappealing. If we make mastery respec free, we lose the former unless we place throttles on swaps, but that then means people who strictly want to swap for purposes that have limited requirements - defensive placement - get basically unfettered swapping while people who want to bounce in and out of different game modes are penalized. I don't see a reason to pick one of those groups of players over the other. That's why I believe the best compromise is mode specific mastery profiles. We allow players to make mastery configuration decisions per mode, however we define a mode. If we define arena to be a mode, we would allow players to have a mastery set up for arena. If we define alliance war defensive placement itself to be a mode, we would allow players to have a mastery set up for defensive placement. Once set, there would be no cost to use it, because that mode would be set to use it.
The critical idea is we don't penalize players that want to play different parts of the game. If they want to play arena and they also want to play alliance war, we don't penalize them for hopping in between game modes. We charge them to make an arena mastery set up, but once it is set they don't have to pay to leave arena and come back. We stamp their hand and let them go in and out without additional costs. If they want a special AW defensive mastery set up, they have to pay for that, but once again going into defensive placement and then coming back out doesn't incur additional costs. The idea that someone would have to pay more if they bounce between game modes five times a day instead of three times a day is weird to me, and mode specific profiles would negate that issue.
For those that believe Kabam would never give up the monetization revenue of mastery swaps, mastery profiles become the new QoL chase item. You give everyone one mastery profile, which in effect is what we have now. We award them for game play and we monetize some of them. You earn one when you reach Uncollected, say. You get one if you subscribe to the Sigil. You sell one for a thousand units, or whatever. You allow people to earn a handful so they don't need to spend, then you give the spenders the ability to get more as a convenience item.
In my opinion, the revenue part is just icing on the cake. The real problem is giving players enough agency on mastery configurations to make them sufficiently flexible that they don't seriously impair playing other game modes, without making them so flexible their design intent of presenting meaningful player choices completely evaporates.
I'm just going to speak from my own experience here, and mileage may vary here. But I paid attention to masteries when I was growing up as a player, until I got something that was ok, then at some point we focused in aq over aw and I unlocked the suicide masteries, which at that time and for my account was a huge investment. It has some pros and some cons. Although at some point I switched back to non suicides, mainly because I wanted to play with a bigger amount of chars and also because we were focusing more in Aw and we had aq "dominated".
Last week I was able to switch masteries and I really enjoyed it. I didn't change masteries per fight, maybe more per mode as you said, had a configuration for battleground, one for aw defense, aw attack (maybe 2 for attack), and same suicides for aq and arena(arena with suicide masteries was really fun).
And that was awesome, I had a lot of fun switching things up, playing differently, and using my roster in different ways, and I realized that the ability of switching masteries without spending that many runes increased a lot my love for the game and my engagement. I'd love that Kabam would take a compromise here, maybe not completely free, maybe different set ups to switch, or per game mode, or reduce the cost, or allow free switches every week or I don't know exactly the formula, I just think that the way there way designed originally with one only game mode available it isn't working anymore. I also know that the perfect solution could take time...
So for the time been, or maybe some days a month, they could be free, I'd just love that Kabam would meet us in the middle, at least, because the experience gave me the opportunity to see that guess what, I have something called masteries, a tab that haven't used in a year? Maybe two? And it could add not only strategy to the game but also change the way you play and enjoy the game. I also saw, that the way that they were designed isn't really working anymore, and until Kabam would find an implement how they should be today, been them free would much better than going back what it used to be.