**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.
Comments
A new Rarity is a new acquisition, and a new X amount of Ranks to introduce. That gives X amount of time to design content, work on Rosters, make umpteen decisions, tune things, you name it.
Adding new Ranks, Items, etc....that just adds another rung to the same acquisition. Sure, that works for people wanting to stop the process, but it doesn't give the game much to grow into. It's just prolongement. As much as people think they want that, it will get old very quickly. Not only that, it limits future content which is planned and designed much longer in advance. Given the current rate of Resource acquisition, it won't take long before the game hits a stalemate.
The future of the game cannot be limited to working on a new Rank every 6 months to a year, and trying for the occasional OP Champ that people take interest in.
The real issue is people think they can get to a place where they don't have to grow a Roster, and all that spells is end-game. Literally.
You dream of a playground for the existing players where everything serves the needs of the people who are already here, already have everything, and don't want to continue chasing anything. Where the devs do nothing but blow content up our skirts constantly that we don't have to pay for. That's a gaming utopia, but no one wants to dedicate an entire game studio and online game infrastructure to make your gaming utopia. The game must first survive as an ongoing business, and that means extending the rarity ladder whether you're ready for it or not, want it or not, need it or not. And it means monetizing the game so it can pay for itself and generate enough of a profit for both the parent game company who paid hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire it, and the intellectual property license owner who doesn't just want to make some profit on their license, but maximize that profit on the license (or take it away and hand it to someone else who might make more).
The progression systems - not just the current progression environment, but the systems that mandate constant upward progression growth - are the load bearing structure of the game. They aren't optional parts of the game you can pick and choose which to keep and which to get rid of. They are the game.
1. The people who design content for the game are not the same people who fix bugs with the game systems.
2. The progression ladder is not a choice, any more than selling in-game offers is a choice. It is a thing that happens as part of the ongoing operation and development of the game. They cannot choose to stop supporting the progression and related systems in favor of "fixing bugs" any more than McDonalds can close every store in the world until they get the flavor of Chicken McNuggets just right.
I know there are people who think the next rarity tier is not inevitable, that all the devs have to do is XYZ. They'll never accept, refuse to believe, and/or will never have the opportunity to learn, just exactly what forces in game operation make this one of the safest bets I've ever been willing to make. I said 6* rarity was inevitable before they arrived, and I've been saying since forever that 7* rarity or something like it is also inevitable. Even when Relics were announced and people were hoping Relics would eliminate the need for 7* rarity, I cautioned that the only way Relics would make 7* rarity unnecessary is if Relics were basically structurally identical to new rarities. They aren't, so they can't, and here we are.
8* rarity, by the way, is inevitable. That, or something like it that isn't called 8* rarity, but is 8* rarity in disguise. Anyone holding out hope that maybe 7* rarity is the last one, you're going to end up losing that bet, just like everyone else before you, because if you think 8* rarity is an option, you don't understand why new rarities exist in the first place. Don't bet against them. If you're philosophically against them, progression based games are not for you. Not just this one, but any of them. No matter how much you think you've found one that won't do this to you, the only ones that don't are the ones that shut down before they get the chance.
I understand the concept of needing a new "rarity" to chase for the economics of the game and overall balance, but the need for it constantly to be a new star level escapes me. The overall champ pool becomes more diluted month after month and year after year, purely with the introduction of new champs. That alone makes it much harder for a new player to be able to grab the exact champions they want out of the gate and so they must "Chase" as well as existing players who want the latest and greatest. So why again is there a need for a different star?
And then I guess you're telling me Marvel doesn't have enough characters to sustain continued additions. I will whole heartedly disagree based on 40+ years of reading comics. It is more than possible to maintain a steady influx of new champions without adding stars.
There is no reason the systems of progression can't be expanded with these news ideas of relics and ascension, so that players are once again "chasing." Adding new ideas and concepts may not be what everyone wants, but at least it keeps things fresh. Adding star levels to the same old champs is boring, stale and lazy.
Frankly, I don't see why anyone would start playing this game new at this point, and widening that gap even more at this point will just further discourage new players and ultimately make this game die all the faster.
I'm proposing a solution instead of throwing stones, as I want MCOC to be around for a long time. I'll take content with hooks hands down over just hooks.
Not everyone in this game cares about prestige anyway.
You just saying "make more content" isn't really coming up with a solution. It's just stating what this game is already doing.
This is the end. I won’t spend any other € in this game. RIP Mcoc
After reading the article I'm interested to see how this plays out. Seems like Kabam are attempting to meet as many player needs/wants as possible. Seems like they are being reasonably careful.
After only two and a half years in the contest I'm not ready to plateau. Relics seem interesting however I don't really care for the striker mechanic, 7 stars as we ascend current champs seems valid and in all honesty, inevitable, delaying them is a good idea, possibly for longer than suggested in the article. Ascension interests me the most. I've worked hard for my current roster, rather than hope for the eventual 6 star Apoc, taking my max sig 5 star beyond his current capacity is quite exciting as I hunt and wait for the elusive 6 star variant.
TrapKill
3* = silver
4* = gold
5* = fire
6* = water
So 7* frame could be green for the earth/tree or white for the air. But green would be better.
As a player who saw the rise and the fall of 3*, then of 4*, then 5*, I was not in a hurry to see them for 6*.The 7* mean to keep resources of 6* for them.
Now it is better to avoid 6* until November...
2. You suggest "there are plenty of unit offers [...] that can be wrapped around new content..." This is horrible. Most players do most content without spending. Shifting the revenue focus from champion acquisition to content clearing is an idea so incredibly player-hostile that while I rarely see consensus in the playerbase, I would be confident betting my house that this would be the most negatively rejected game change in the history of the game by wide margin.
3. You call 7 stars "uninventive." To me, this is a bizarre complaint. Of course it is "uninventive" - rarities were invented in 2014. The counting numbers were invented substantially earlier than that. The rarity system is a solution to two problems: roster reset and pool dilution. While some players don't like it, it solves both problems. So a) there's no need to "innovate" a solution to those problems, and b) if someone wants to innovate a solution to both problems, they would need to find a solution that solves both problems better. If you have a suggestion, by all means suggest it. However, every "suggestion" I've seen to "innovating" an alternative to 7* rarity starts by assuming the two problems rarity solves aren't actually a problem, and then proceeds to solve a completely different problem in a way more palatable to the proposer. It goes without saying, this isn't innovation.
4. Far from trying to make a quick buck or short term revenue, rarities are a purely long term play. All of the problems they are intended to solve are long term existential threats to the game's existence. There are a lot of people who disagree, but coincidentally none of them seem to be game developers or have any first hand awareness of how those existential threats are managed (or often even: what they actually are).
Players need something to chase that has four very specific properties:
1. They don't have them yet.
2. There has to be a way to make a sufficiently diverse pool of them to make collecting them an indefinite activity.
3. There's no easy way to target the one they want.
4. When the chase pool becomes sufficiently large that dilution becomes a problem, there is a way to reset this list back to step 1.
Property one is, or should be, obvious. Property two says: (most) players should not be able to easily just get them all, and new ones should be continuously added. Property three says players shouldn't be able to terminate the chase by just picking the ones they want the most, target them, and then stop.
Property four is what makes 7* tier replace the 6* tier. For Relics to replace the need for 7* champs, they would have to eventually become 7* champs when they inevitably reach property four. And then they would be 7* champs in all but name, because then there would be the second tier Relics that replace the first tier, and then the third tier Relics that replace the second tier.
Why not just keep adding new systems, and never have anything have tiers? Because that's an enormous amount of effort for very little gain. We still have a tier system, just disguised. We have 6* champs at tier one, Relics at tier two, Whatever at tier three, and so on, each new tier completely resetting the chase to a completely new set of things, no differently than 7* tier resets the champion chase.
Maybe this would be cosmetically more attractive, and there would be a whole new set of bells and whistles to distract players, but this would also be completely unsustainable, and still suffer the exact same issue of chase reset. Eventually players would be complaining about the need for entirely new systems to chase after.
I disagree with you here, but I'm not calling you a troll, I'm explaining why I think you're wrong.
Personally, I think Kabam should hear what everyone's opinions are, but the forums are explicitly a player discussion forum. It exists to allow players to discuss the game. That includes reasonable and respectful disagreement. Everyone is free to express their opinions, but no one has the right or reasonable expectation that those opinions will go unchallenged.
If you feel you represent some silent majority of players' opinions, by all means represent those opinions. But don't expect deference just because this is self-evident to you.