I like that they are trying to finally after 7 years weed out the scammers, bots, and frauds. But I will be sad to see this event go because so many looked forward to GGC every December. But I sort of seen the writing on the wall this past December when for the first time they offered you a chance to buy 10 GGC for yourself for $50USD twice during the event. They probably took the sale numbers they got back from that and realized that they will make just as much if they just make a crystal that is basically the same as a GGC, take "Gifting" out of the name and just sell it in the crystal store or unit store straight up. Because we all have to agree those GGC crystals are great they have awesome materials and are extremely valuable. So as long as they have something equivalent to those that I can still get this Holiday season I'm ok with this. I am anxious to see how they will replace the rank rewards from alliance and solo gifting though? Because those rewards were a HUGE part of how fast this game started progressing over the past 2 years. I mean the majority of the first group of Paragon players would not of had those 3 rank 4 6* champs if it wasn't for gifting rank rewards. So let's be honest we all want to see less cheating but we also want the same juicy rewards and that's where Kabam needs to be smart about how they handle this event now. IMO they can't miss on this event this year or it could be really bad for them going into 2023 because the community already is split on how they feel about Kabam and the trust level is not what it used to be.
Personally I am not a fan of the change. For the last 8 months I have spent 6.99 a month across 4 accounts to save units for the gifting events. Now that we are nearing X-mas I am to find out all these months of spending and saving were useless. I find it very unfair that to punish those who do not follow the rules, those that do follow the rules are SOL. I have 4 accounts but only 1 "main" account.
Why not tell us sooner? We've seen the criticisms stating that this should have been mentioned immediately after the last gifting event concluded. Ultimately, until very recently, we weren't sure what this year's holiday event would look like. With the amount of fraudulent activity, we weren't able to analyze the full impact until months into 2022. I know there were internal conversations about ways to provide an adjusted gifting event, but every avenue the game team explored lead to more problems. As was stated in the original post, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to make decisions about how they'd spend their time; we did this as soon as we had an idea that the gifting event wouldn't happen this year, even with limited information about what the new event looks like. This communication came three months prior to a normal communication cadence for in-game events.
How are we supposed to get trophy champs, now? We haven't seen anything to suggest the replacement crystals would remove opportunity to acquire trophy champs. We will continue to keep an eye on the development of this event and will communicate as we have more information, likely closer to the holiday season.
What consumables can we gift? As the details about the new holiday event are still falling into place and there is still a lot to consider, we don't have a definitive list of what will be available. Expect more information closer to the launch of the new event.
“Tell us what stuff you want to be able to gift and we’ll make sure it’s not on the list”
This is going to create a nightmarish 2-week window where you can revive your way through whatever un-fun content you want for outdated rewards (Carina vol 1…what up)
How does this event will fix the problem with fraudulent units or exploiter's? Do you plan to not make the crystals purchasable at all or to set up a cap on them?
gifting promoted shady behavior in this game since it was introduced. good riddance.
i seem to remember @DNA3000 stating that he was surprised that gifting even existed in this game as it was pretty uncommon with other games.
I think any old farts like me around here who lived through the golden age of MMOs will be experiencing a bit of deja vu.
Fraud and exploitive exchange are the biggest threats to player to player gift/trades in games like this with non-trivial progression based resource economies. Stuff that's super hard to earn for a low level player is trivial to earn for a high level player: that allows lots of opportunities for power leveling. Conversely, there are times when stuff that is hard to earn for high level players is proportionately easier to earn for low level players, because the resource earning curve is faster. Gifting upwards could sometimes be economy-breaking in some situations because of this imbalance (when the devs revamped the low Acts to accelerate low level player progress, this created exactly this situation).
This was always a problem, but when MMOs moved to the F2P or F2P hybrid models circa 2006 or so, the problem was massively amplified. In the old days, you subscribed to games. That means every account you had you had to pay for. You had skin in the game: losing an account because it was banned was costly, literally. Also, you had to have things like credit cards on file: a game operator could not just ban your account, they could ban *you* - or at least any credit card with your name on it - making replacing banned accounts more difficult. But once games became free to play, anyone could make any number of accounts without limit and without the possibility of being explicitly barred from creating new ones. It was very difficult to police. So most MMOs I played instituted restrictions on in-game trading and gifting. You had to meet certain criteria to do it, all of which were intended to make sure the player had sufficient skin in the game that the threat of a ban was meaningful. That meant being around for a year or more, or actually being on record as having spent money on the game, or something similar. To participate, you had to be "bannable." A free to play account anyone can roll up with a burner Gmail account is not really bannable - it is, but it is a ban with no consequences.
Basically, if the consequences of breaking the rules is lower than the benefit of breaking the rules, you have an unstable situation that will eventually get exploited to its ultimate limits. Gifting has to exist within those parameters, and clearly it hasn't up to now.
MCOC lives in a very weird place where it is in all but name an MMO, but wearing the costume of a mobile fighting game. As a result, Kabam doesn't develop MCOC as if it was an MMO, subject to MMO rules, and with two decades of MMO life lessons. They develop it as if it is a unique work where everything is seemingly happening for the very first time. Anyone who lived through the MMO transition to F2P would know gifting was doomed, it was just a matter of time. You're ultimately betting on the restraint of your worst players, and that's a bet you're always going to lose.
Thousands will sleep better tonight knowing less grandparents aren't going to be fleeced to pay their outstanding tax bill by itunes cards over the phone or risk going to jail. Well done on getting rid and shutting down the scam operations which thrived on this event.
This is a big plus true.
Yeah cause scammers only sell to mcoc players....🤣
I meant from the game's aspect, not from the scammer's aspect. There will always be scammers - always have, always will. Less will be able to scam in game during gifting.
Can the full details of the gifting replacement event be out before black friday so we can make an informed chocie on how to spend units?
It felt like the unit deals from black friday were short last year compared to the gifting but I guess that was because it was before Paragon existed so the need for r4 mats were different.
“Tell us what stuff you want to be able to gift and we’ll make sure it’s not on the list”
This is going to create a nightmarish 2-week window where you can revive your way through whatever un-fun content you want for outdated rewards (Carina vol 1…what up)
At last... The most powerful champ in mcoc got a nerf...
If half the playerbase leaves because they prevented Fraud from occurring, then that's not the half we want to save. Did I say that? #sorry
Why do you spin everything negative then run with that negative assumption? I've grinded thousands of units over the last year on my alt account. I did it for gifting... am I a fraud in some way? Are the 97%+ of people just like me also frauds to you? Or does that 3% fraud that needs to be stomped out supersede all of the rest of us?
You implied in your Title that they cut the playerbase in half. The reasons for taking this route have been outlined. I've witnessed all kinds of shady, and in some cases illegal, behavior. Unfortunately, the negatives outweigh the benefits. That's just where we've come to.
“Tell us what stuff you want to be able to gift and we’ll make sure it’s not on the list”
This is going to create a nightmarish 2-week window where you can revive your way through whatever un-fun content you want for outdated rewards (Carina vol 1…what up)
At last... The most powerful champ in mcoc got a nerf...
We demand rank down tickets for this champ
lol no he didnt. he will return for the event. Its the normal Kabam thing to do, screw the player base so they can fill their pockets. Those vets who saved on multiple accounts and played by the rules are SOL. Those who are willing to spend more money will have the opportunity to, no doubt. They are going to milk this like crazy.
Lol dude im sorry cause its gonna seem like i'm making fun of u... But its bad enough there was a big fuzz about the chap 1-3 unit gain buff and how it affected the game.. u decided to 1 up that situation and bought the unit card... 🤣
Or does that 3% fraud that needs to be stomped out supersede all of the rest of us?
In this case, yes they do.
What we are allowed to do in a common shared environment is limited by what the worst of us attempts to do. They are the ones that make continuing to allow us that latitude to be too costly to continue, and they set the example for the slightly less unscrupulous to follow. The 3% that does the horrible and gets away with it encourages the next 3% that were not willing to follow suit to believe it is okay to go along with it, and now you have 6% doing horribly things setting the example for the next 10% of slightly less savory players to figure why not.
You then have the majority of players wondering why bother when every year more and more people aren't playing by the same rules, and an increasing number of players believing what they are doing is fully endorsed by the game operators and they are untouchable. Which, as they say,
Why not tell us sooner? We've seen the criticisms stating that this should have been mentioned immediately after the last gifting event concluded. Ultimately, until very recently, we weren't sure what this year's holiday event would look like. With the amount of fraudulent activity, we weren't able to analyze the full impact until months into 2022. I know there were internal conversations about ways to provide an adjusted gifting event, but every avenue the game team explored lead to more problems. As was stated in the original post, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to make decisions about how they'd spend their time; we did this as soon as we had an idea that the gifting event wouldn't happen this year, even with limited information about what the new event looks like. This communication came three months prior to a normal communication cadence for in-game events.
How are we supposed to get trophy champs, now? We haven't seen anything to suggest the replacement crystals would remove opportunity to acquire trophy champs. We will continue to keep an eye on the development of this event and will communicate as we have more information, likely closer to the holiday season.
What consumables can we gift? As the details about the new holiday event are still falling into place and there is still a lot to consider, we don't have a definitive list of what will be available. Expect more information closer to the launch of the new event.
I, an I’m sure many others, appreciate such a response on these topics.
Thank you for jumping in an addressing.
I am hopeful that whatever is replaced is not as awful as the new summoner appreciation method. All I ask is that whatever this method is, please make sure it is clearly explained and defined for the player base that no one gets screwed out of something - otherwise, it’d be the same as getting scammed!
On the bright side, Maybe the end of gifting will have the add on bonus of eliminating arena bots after all there’s no reason for those bots to grind arenas anymore
On the bright side, Maybe the end of gifting will have the add on bonus of eliminating arena bots after all there’s no reason for those bots to grind arenas anymore
I wouldn't go that far. First of all, I'm sure there will be people who will still set up bot farms on the hope that they become useful in the future. Second, there are other uses for bot farms, although this was probably the most profitable one. This will weaken the incentive, but probably not completely eliminate it.
I will say that however much I understand that this change will hit some perfectly legit players and that's unfortunate, the fact that there are bot farmers blowing a gasket right now brings a smile to my face nonetheless.
This is tempered by the fact that those people didn't, and don't really care about the game. With their profit motivation gone, they'll just move on. The most we can do is inconvenience them and drive them away. We can't really hurt them because you can't hurt people that don't care. Which is a pity.
Knowing earlier would have been nicer but historically they don’t ever give any information on the event until very close to the event starting. This announcement is months ahead of anything before. If you save your units and decide the new version of the event won’t be for you then you can use the units to chase Thronebreaker, which I would say is a better use of units than gifting crystals would have been but to each their own. As I have multiple alt accounts I wish this would happen next year but at least I didn’t keep grinding them for the rest of them year. I have no idea what to do with all the units on those accounts now but consumables isn’t really an option for my main that has already completed all content.
My opinion on this situation Is that I would rather see Investment in gifting as an alliance event. Kabam could do that so Everyone could participate
Summoners deserve a chance to use Units that they farmed on legit alts. Crystals were the most fun part of the event. Keeping them would show the Summoners that Kabam will keep the game fun.
I would have had no problem at all with this had you announced it right after gifting last year. However as someone who can’t spend absorbent amounts of money of this game. I spent hours grinding units on Alts for the first time because last years was so ridiculous. It gave a huge edge to whales for months. And as a top tier player I had to figure out a way to keep up with ally mates and other allys who spend tens of thousands of dollars. To let people grind for 9 months then say too bad so sad is reprehensible. I have finished every bit of the content so you know what I don’t need is? Consumables.
Maybe a better plan was allowing max 10 ggcs to be traded then get rid of it. But to just end it the way you did hurts mostly ftp or low paying players. Which combined with the changes to war becoming buy to win, releasing 2 new top5 prestige champs back to back you’ve basically made it even more impossible for many players to compete.
So after 6 years I’m pretty sure I’m done. It was the proverbial throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Only reason I have an alt account is to send myself GGC. Have 9000 units saved up since last gifting event. All down the drain. Ridiculous
You were essentially taking advantage of the system and it's Kabam's fault... You knew this wasn't their intention and there was always the chance they'd fix it
I 1000% disagree. Kabam knew this would happen and welcomed it. It padded their unique users which is great for their valuation and attracting investors.
Brilliant way to have new accounts when it plateaued a long time ago.
Comments
Following up to answer some FAQs.
Why not tell us sooner?
We've seen the criticisms stating that this should have been mentioned immediately after the last gifting event concluded. Ultimately, until very recently, we weren't sure what this year's holiday event would look like. With the amount of fraudulent activity, we weren't able to analyze the full impact until months into 2022. I know there were internal conversations about ways to provide an adjusted gifting event, but every avenue the game team explored lead to more problems. As was stated in the original post, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to make decisions about how they'd spend their time; we did this as soon as we had an idea that the gifting event wouldn't happen this year, even with limited information about what the new event looks like. This communication came three months prior to a normal communication cadence for in-game events.
How are we supposed to get trophy champs, now?
We haven't seen anything to suggest the replacement crystals would remove opportunity to acquire trophy champs. We will continue to keep an eye on the development of this event and will communicate as we have more information, likely closer to the holiday season.
What consumables can we gift?
As the details about the new holiday event are still falling into place and there is still a lot to consider, we don't have a definitive list of what will be available. Expect more information closer to the launch of the new event.
This is going to create a nightmarish 2-week window where you can revive your way through whatever un-fun content you want for outdated rewards (Carina vol 1…what up)
Because otherwise, this will be a big fail again
Fraud and exploitive exchange are the biggest threats to player to player gift/trades in games like this with non-trivial progression based resource economies. Stuff that's super hard to earn for a low level player is trivial to earn for a high level player: that allows lots of opportunities for power leveling. Conversely, there are times when stuff that is hard to earn for high level players is proportionately easier to earn for low level players, because the resource earning curve is faster. Gifting upwards could sometimes be economy-breaking in some situations because of this imbalance (when the devs revamped the low Acts to accelerate low level player progress, this created exactly this situation).
This was always a problem, but when MMOs moved to the F2P or F2P hybrid models circa 2006 or so, the problem was massively amplified. In the old days, you subscribed to games. That means every account you had you had to pay for. You had skin in the game: losing an account because it was banned was costly, literally. Also, you had to have things like credit cards on file: a game operator could not just ban your account, they could ban *you* - or at least any credit card with your name on it - making replacing banned accounts more difficult. But once games became free to play, anyone could make any number of accounts without limit and without the possibility of being explicitly barred from creating new ones. It was very difficult to police. So most MMOs I played instituted restrictions on in-game trading and gifting. You had to meet certain criteria to do it, all of which were intended to make sure the player had sufficient skin in the game that the threat of a ban was meaningful. That meant being around for a year or more, or actually being on record as having spent money on the game, or something similar. To participate, you had to be "bannable." A free to play account anyone can roll up with a burner Gmail account is not really bannable - it is, but it is a ban with no consequences.
Basically, if the consequences of breaking the rules is lower than the benefit of breaking the rules, you have an unstable situation that will eventually get exploited to its ultimate limits. Gifting has to exist within those parameters, and clearly it hasn't up to now.
MCOC lives in a very weird place where it is in all but name an MMO, but wearing the costume of a mobile fighting game. As a result, Kabam doesn't develop MCOC as if it was an MMO, subject to MMO rules, and with two decades of MMO life lessons. They develop it as if it is a unique work where everything is seemingly happening for the very first time. Anyone who lived through the MMO transition to F2P would know gifting was doomed, it was just a matter of time. You're ultimately betting on the restraint of your worst players, and that's a bet you're always going to lose.
It felt like the unit deals from black friday were short last year compared to the gifting but I guess that was because it was before Paragon existed so the need for r4 mats were different.
Did I say that? #sorry
We demand rank down tickets for this champ
What we are allowed to do in a common shared environment is limited by what the worst of us attempts to do. They are the ones that make continuing to allow us that latitude to be too costly to continue, and they set the example for the slightly less unscrupulous to follow. The 3% that does the horrible and gets away with it encourages the next 3% that were not willing to follow suit to believe it is okay to go along with it, and now you have 6% doing horribly things setting the example for the next 10% of slightly less savory players to figure why not.
You then have the majority of players wondering why bother when every year more and more people aren't playing by the same rules, and an increasing number of players believing what they are doing is fully endorsed by the game operators and they are untouchable. Which, as they say,
Thank you for jumping in an addressing.
I am hopeful that whatever is replaced is not as awful as the new summoner appreciation method. All I ask is that whatever this method is, please make sure it is clearly explained and defined for the player base that no one gets screwed out of something - otherwise, it’d be the same as getting scammed!
Thanks jax❤️
One of the best things kabams done for a while this change.
I will say that however much I understand that this change will hit some perfectly legit players and that's unfortunate, the fact that there are bot farmers blowing a gasket right now brings a smile to my face nonetheless.
This is tempered by the fact that those people didn't, and don't really care about the game. With their profit motivation gone, they'll just move on. The most we can do is inconvenience them and drive them away. We can't really hurt them because you can't hurt people that don't care. Which is a pity.
Is that I would rather see
Investment in gifting as an alliance event.
Kabam could do that so
Everyone could participate
Summoners deserve a chance to use
Units that they farmed on legit alts.
Crystals were the most fun part of the event.
Keeping them would show the
Summoners that Kabam will keep the game fun.
Maybe a better plan was allowing max 10 ggcs to be traded then get rid of it. But to just end it the way you did hurts mostly ftp or low paying players. Which combined with the changes to war becoming buy to win, releasing 2 new top5 prestige champs back to back you’ve basically made it even more impossible for many players to compete.
So after 6 years I’m pretty sure I’m done. It was the proverbial throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Brilliant way to have new accounts when it plateaued a long time ago.