Champion Update and Reworks Discussion
Wicket329
Member Posts: 3,365 ★★★★★
For anybody who hasn’t seen it, there’s a new announcement relating to champion updates and reworks here:
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/309699/champion-attributes-and-rebalance-updates-july-2022#latest
Personally, I very much appreciated this post. I love not having to wait until the last second to know if changes are going to be made for new champions (Black Cat and Scorpion in this case). Getting that information out prior to their featured crystal releasing is even better, but obviously not going to be possible for every champion going forward.
As for the buff announcements, I am cautiously optimistic. Very cautiously. I have no problem with one a month, especially since we’re being told in advance and being told that these are fairly extensive changes to the champion’s kits (except maybe Antman’s, his sounds like they’re taking core mechanics and cranking them to 11, with a sprinkle of some new).
In any event, what’re y’all’s thoughts? I just like having a heads up on things like this, so it made me happy.
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/309699/champion-attributes-and-rebalance-updates-july-2022#latest
Personally, I very much appreciated this post. I love not having to wait until the last second to know if changes are going to be made for new champions (Black Cat and Scorpion in this case). Getting that information out prior to their featured crystal releasing is even better, but obviously not going to be possible for every champion going forward.
As for the buff announcements, I am cautiously optimistic. Very cautiously. I have no problem with one a month, especially since we’re being told in advance and being told that these are fairly extensive changes to the champion’s kits (except maybe Antman’s, his sounds like they’re taking core mechanics and cranking them to 11, with a sprinkle of some new).
In any event, what’re y’all’s thoughts? I just like having a heads up on things like this, so it made me happy.
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Comments
It is nice to know Black Cat and Scorpion aren’t getting any changes, that’s a key piece of communication, and I hope they’ll let us know that as soon as they know it going forward.
I have provided my feedback in this forum already on some of the updates we've received, and while I'm still disappointed about those outcomes, and it seems like they will receive no further adjustment it's good to know that it's basically what I should expect going forwards which allows me to adjust my expectations. I don't like it, but I'll approach any buff now as someone going from useless to occasionally useful. It also means I should never hope to love classic Iron Man, Captain America, Dr Strange or Cyclops, which is sad, but not in my control
It was Excellent news regarding Black Cat and Scorpion, which gives me hope that there will not be significant changes to the other new champions, and that's great!
Thanks for the communication
But every word in reference to the buff program made me sadder I won't lie. A tiny paragraph that makes a weak defence of the current program was not what I wanted to hear after mountains of negative feedback on how badly the current buffs are being received.
@Kabam John said "We are still approaching reworks the same way we always have", but if that's the case then why is the new program being so badly received? Every month of buffs pre-rebalancing announcement was received largely positively, and if you ask anyone now whether they prefer the buffs from before the "change" or after, they will likely say before. So what has changed? Are there just some really good buffs still to come that will balance this program out?
Again, maybe the next buff's to Ant Man, Juggs and Rocket will make me look very silly in a few months time (though I have said that about 5 times now, and the program hasn't stepped up just yet) but I just have no excitement for this program anymore.
I completely appreciate the points about buffs feeling meaningful especially for newer players, and agree with that! But if you "are still approaching reworks the same way we always have" then why were you able to consistently pull out great buffs from September 2020 to December 2021? If the ethos hasn't changed, why has the quality of the buffs and how useful they are to end game players?
Again, before someone says it, no not every buff should be for end game players, but so far, none really have been. I'm fine with the vast majority of buffs not being for me, but if all of them are then why should I be excited? If Kabam came out and said that the buff program wasn't for end game players anymore, I'd be disappointed but at least I could stop hoping against hope one will be good. But they haven't. They still maintain nothing has changed, and the program goals are still the same as the program that gave us Falcon, Kingpin, King groot, Venompool, Miles, Nebula etc, when it's giving us Psychoman, DPXF and Jane Foster...
Either the goals of this new program have changed, the old program vastly exceed the goals every time, or they aren't being met in this new program.
One of the goals for this program is "To increase a relative sense of excitement when these champs are pulled from a crystal." I have all 3 of those champions as 6*s, 2 of them duped, and I don't feel any excitement for their buffs. I do hope that I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.
Now, the average response is, "yeah, sure, whatever"
It feels strange talking something from less than a year ago in this way but that's where we are unfortunately.
The new player situation is very clear to me. New players will not read descriptions, they will see the animations, they will rank up the cool looking champs and the champions they know from MCU. Every new player is going to have the same playstyle regardless of champion, which is the way the game teaches them. A champion like storm is built for new players, do combos, throw specials and profit. Buffing with new champs in mind is just going to be combos and specials for big damage, maybe with some class specific abilities thrown in.
Someone noticed that quake has also changed. Concussion is now not 100% any longer. Any thoughts?
It is also listed that way (57.5) in the very old Forum-based post of Spotlights from 2017 long before they transitioned them up to the main “playcontest..” searchable website.
We thought they couldn't but they did
1. easy for early players to understand and use effectively
2. have many uses in wide ranges of content
3. improve enough to justify only having one a month
then i would call the buff program a success
With words like 'aggressive' and 'glancing', Juggernaut and Antman have the potential to be harder to deal with.
They have also been putting in little bits to new champs' abilities that mostly (although there are a handful that go the other way) give them benefits when they are used by the AI against us but that we don't get to use when we play them ourselves (abilities lasting longer, having reduced thresholds for things to happen against us and stuff like that). This happened occasionally before but seems to have really increased more recently and even after asking multiple times in different spotlights and other forum posts why they keep doing this Kabam has never once responded that I have seen. I understand some champs may always wind up being better as defenders or as attackers in general but I am talking about when they actually function differently as defenders than what we can make them do when we play them ourselves which honestly really ticks me off.
I have handfuls of new accounts. I like playing new accounts for fun. On every single account, I don’t use a single 2* after about 1 hour of play time.
You get a 3* after completing Act 1. That takes about 30 min. At that point, you can only take 3 champs anyways and the 3 star champ solo’s all quests in Act 2.
Another hour and you explore Act 2. That gives you 3 nexus 3-stars. And viola, you no longer have any room for 2* champs. You also get a free sigil. You can easily buy a 3-star crystal with the solo quest shards.
This excludes the possibility of getting a 3 or 4 star out of the 5 PHC you get up to this point. Let’s just say bad luck there and nothing but 2-stars.
Now we’re at Act 3 with a selection of 5 3-stars for 4 champ slots. Completing Act 3 awards 3 more 3-star crystals.
Now this new player has at least 8 3-star champs (3 of which were nexus). Even a new player should be at less than 4 hours of play time.
They can then explore Act 3, which they should have amassed enough energy refills to do so. This will award 1 4-star crystal and 2000 4-star shards.
Kabam, your data mining is flawed. Maybe there are a bunch of new accounts in which the owner plays for 10 min every month and doesn’t really progress and keeps their 2-star. But any new player that progresses the story will be completely done with 2-stars in 4 hours of play time. So WHY are we making game decisions based on a demographic that barely plays your game in lieu of the demographic that spends the most time and money on your game?
important for me is do they need to be awaken? at what signature level for respectable damage and access to crit or true-strike? Of course sig200 is preferred but not everyone can get access to 6* signature stones (class base and/or generic)..
I am sort of leaning towards Antman or Rocket Racoon (not sure how he will turn out) but I'm optimistic about the buff program.
Thor Jane Foster might need a little more love like Gamora who got the three times a charm.
Like them or not, these revisions are not done like cramming for a test the night before. There is data, forethought, calculation, and deliberation that go into these. They put in time and effort with them, and that's not something they do to placate the desire.
They're not likely to put in that much energy into blowing smoke just to make people happy, is my point.
Same is true here, I don’t see any reason to believe Kabam is fabricating anything when it comes to these buffs, just that they came to conclusions that the majority of the player base disagrees with. That being said, I think Jane Foster’s rework makes her an absolute weapon through Act 4. Her stun lock potential against opponents who don’t throw an sp3 is silly and she can cheese through all of that content.
Also, I noticed somebody in this thread talking about their alt accounts and how quickly they blow through the early game. But you’ve got to remember what it was like the first time you picked up the game, before you knew the fight mechanics and how champions worked. I could start an alt today and power through content that took me months to do my first time around because now I know how to play the game. My first time through, I didn’t even know what intercepting was in the context of the game, let alone feel proficient at it. My most complicated champions were Moon Knight and Guillotine. I can figure out a complicated champion’s kit in a few minutes now, but back then it would’ve felt like I was cramming for a final exam written in a language I didn’t speak.
These are all things to keep in mind when it comes to these reworks, and I’m sure there are plenty of variables I’m leaving out. But everybody needs to just take a minute sometimes to consider the other angles on this stuff.
Stating "I started an Alt and I was a newer Player." is not an accurate statement. It's a seasoned Player starting another Account.