I would love to hear a valid argument for why they would not be issued.
Something tells me you have a pretty subjective view of what is considered "valid".
My view is based on facts and how to conduct business dealings in fair and just manner.
Subjective? Not really.
To be clear, I'm not affected by this bug. I don't have a ranked Zemo or Kraven (or Spot, Spidey Supreme, or Sandman). I personally think they should issue rank down tickets, but I also think there are plenty of valid reasons why they shouldn't.
I have them all, and use Zemo a ton so this issue affects me greatly. It is beyond clear that rank down tickets are warranted, and the clear and obvious right thing to do given the circumstances.
Rank down tickets simply give back the resources that someone already spent, they are not some weird perk that gives someone added value they did not earn. A massive change was made silently, the least that could be done is to make it right.
...and like I said, I think they should issue rank down tickets. It is very similar to the Mole Man situation from last year.
My only concern was that you claimed that you have yet to see a valid argument against doing so, and I took issue with that. There are plenty of valid arguments on both sides.
Can you try to articulate plenty of valid arguments for not issuing RDTs? I’m not trying to be argumentative. Some of us are genuinely lost as to what we are missing here so if there are plenty of valid arguments, even if you don’t agree with them, please try to outline them.
1. There was never anything in any description that said rooted champs should have been special locked at any level. Fixing a "broken" mechanic to align with the description shouldn't warrant rank down tickets.
2. Fixing this bug does not break Zemo. It only removes an unintended functionality. Zemo is still a very good champion without the indefinite special lock mechanic. As KarateMike said the other day, "if you're playing zemo with the infinite root strategy you're playing him wrong."
3. Just like they did with issuing Mole Man rdts, issuing rdts for this situation sets a dangerous precedent for future bug fixes. The next time there's a bug fix that affects a very small percentage of the player base, those players are going to demand rdts as well, and before you know it rdts will become a regular occurrence. This was a valid argument against the Mole Man rdts as well.
Because they issued the rdts for Mole Man, there's a precedent for issuing rdts for Zemo and Kraven in a similar situation that I think Kabam would be mistaken to overlook. However, there are still valid arguments against it.
I can get behind #2, but you're wrong on a couple of things.
1.The ability section never mentioned special locks. They added that to the root mechanic which has now impacted multiple champs that have root as their core mechanic. 2. Zemo isn't useless now, he needs to be played differently. He is now much more of a matchup champ than he used to be. 3. They should take some time to test champs and their core mechanic interactions prior to release. If they miss something, the CCPs hopefully catch it. If that doesn't happen, then they should catch it by the time of their rebalance. If they still don't catch it, then no changes to the mechanic or character should occur. What's the purpose of data over 6 months if it doesn't prevent these issues from happening?
Again, I don't necessarily disagree, which is why I think they should give out rdts. There is certainly precedent for doing so. So while rdt's may be "justified" in this case, there are certainly "valid" arguments to be made against them.
One place where I disagree is that I don't think most people need to play Zemo differently. I think most people already play him without the indefinite root strategy and are more than satisfied with him.
But that's the point right? There are definitely people like myself who took him up specifically because there was no indication after his balance update post that his root lock is unintentional/a bug. If everyone gets RDTs then it's a win win, whoever plays him the same way can keep him ranked up and whoever ranked him up for his root lock can rank him down. Champ-specific RDTs can't be used on other champs anyways, so it's not going benefit some people more than others.
I would love to hear a valid argument for why they would not be issued.
Something tells me you have a pretty subjective view of what is considered "valid".
My view is based on facts and how to conduct business dealings in fair and just manner.
Subjective? Not really.
To be clear, I'm not affected by this bug. I don't have a ranked Zemo or Kraven (or Spot, Spidey Supreme, or Sandman). I personally think they should issue rank down tickets, but I also think there are plenty of valid reasons why they shouldn't.
I have them all, and use Zemo a ton so this issue affects me greatly. It is beyond clear that rank down tickets are warranted, and the clear and obvious right thing to do given the circumstances.
Rank down tickets simply give back the resources that someone already spent, they are not some weird perk that gives someone added value they did not earn. A massive change was made silently, the least that could be done is to make it right.
...and like I said, I think they should issue rank down tickets. It is very similar to the Mole Man situation from last year.
My only concern was that you claimed that you have yet to see a valid argument against doing so, and I took issue with that. There are plenty of valid arguments on both sides.
Can you try to articulate plenty of valid arguments for not issuing RDTs? I’m not trying to be argumentative. Some of us are genuinely lost as to what we are missing here so if there are plenty of valid arguments, even if you don’t agree with them, please try to outline them.
1. There was never anything in any description that said rooted champs should have been special locked at any level. Fixing a "broken" mechanic to align with the description shouldn't warrant rank down tickets.
2. Fixing this bug does not break Zemo. It only removes an unintended functionality. Zemo is still a very good champion without the indefinite special lock mechanic. As KarateMike said the other day, "if you're playing zemo with the infinite root strategy you're playing him wrong."
3. Just like they did with issuing Mole Man rdts, issuing rdts for this situation sets a dangerous precedent for future bug fixes. The next time there's a bug fix that affects a very small percentage of the player base, those players are going to demand rdts as well, and before you know it rdts will become a regular occurrence. This was a valid argument against the Mole Man rdts as well.
Because they issued the rdts for Mole Man, there's a precedent for issuing rdts for Zemo and Kraven in a similar situation that I think Kabam would be mistaken to overlook. However, there are still valid arguments against it.
I can get behind #2, but you're wrong on a couple of things.
1.The ability section never mentioned special locks. They added that to the root mechanic which has now impacted multiple champs that have root as their core mechanic. 2. Zemo isn't useless now, he needs to be played differently. He is now much more of a matchup champ than he used to be. 3. They should take some time to test champs and their core mechanic interactions prior to release. If they miss something, the CCPs hopefully catch it. If that doesn't happen, then they should catch it by the time of their rebalance. If they still don't catch it, then no changes to the mechanic or character should occur. What's the purpose of data over 6 months if it doesn't prevent these issues from happening?
Again, I don't necessarily disagree, which is why I think they should give out rdts. There is certainly precedent for doing so. So while rdt's may be "justified" in this case, there are certainly "valid" arguments to be made against them.
One place where I disagree is that I don't think most people need to play Zemo differently. I think most people already play him without the indefinite root strategy and are more than satisfied with him.
But that's the point right? There are definitely people like myself who took him up specifically because there was no indication after his balance update post that his root lock is unintentional/a bug. If everyone gets RDTs then it's a win win, whoever plays him the same way can keep him ranked up and whoever ranked him up for his root lock can rank him down. Champ-specific RDTs can't be used on other champs anyways, so it's not going benefit some people more than others.
I would love to hear a valid argument for why they would not be issued.
Something tells me you have a pretty subjective view of what is considered "valid".
My view is based on facts and how to conduct business dealings in fair and just manner.
Subjective? Not really.
To be clear, I'm not affected by this bug. I don't have a ranked Zemo or Kraven (or Spot, Spidey Supreme, or Sandman). I personally think they should issue rank down tickets, but I also think there are plenty of valid reasons why they shouldn't.
I have them all, and use Zemo a ton so this issue affects me greatly. It is beyond clear that rank down tickets are warranted, and the clear and obvious right thing to do given the circumstances.
Rank down tickets simply give back the resources that someone already spent, they are not some weird perk that gives someone added value they did not earn. A massive change was made silently, the least that could be done is to make it right.
...and like I said, I think they should issue rank down tickets. It is very similar to the Mole Man situation from last year.
My only concern was that you claimed that you have yet to see a valid argument against doing so, and I took issue with that. There are plenty of valid arguments on both sides.
Can you try to articulate plenty of valid arguments for not issuing RDTs? I’m not trying to be argumentative. Some of us are genuinely lost as to what we are missing here so if there are plenty of valid arguments, even if you don’t agree with them, please try to outline them.
1. There was never anything in any description that said rooted champs should have been special locked at any level. Fixing a "broken" mechanic to align with the description shouldn't warrant rank down tickets.
2. Fixing this bug does not break Zemo. It only removes an unintended functionality. Zemo is still a very good champion without the indefinite special lock mechanic. As KarateMike said the other day, "if you're playing zemo with the infinite root strategy you're playing him wrong."
3. Just like they did with issuing Mole Man rdts, issuing rdts for this situation sets a dangerous precedent for future bug fixes. The next time there's a bug fix that affects a very small percentage of the player base, those players are going to demand rdts as well, and before you know it rdts will become a regular occurrence. This was a valid argument against the Mole Man rdts as well.
Because they issued the rdts for Mole Man, there's a precedent for issuing rdts for Zemo and Kraven in a similar situation that I think Kabam would be mistaken to overlook. However, there are still valid arguments against it.
I can get behind #2, but you're wrong on a couple of things.
1.The ability section never mentioned special locks. They added that to the root mechanic which has now impacted multiple champs that have root as their core mechanic. 2. Zemo isn't useless now, he needs to be played differently. He is now much more of a matchup champ than he used to be. 3. They should take some time to test champs and their core mechanic interactions prior to release. If they miss something, the CCPs hopefully catch it. If that doesn't happen, then they should catch it by the time of their rebalance. If they still don't catch it, then no changes to the mechanic or character should occur. What's the purpose of data over 6 months if it doesn't prevent these issues from happening?
Again, I don't necessarily disagree, which is why I think they should give out rdts. There is certainly precedent for doing so. So while rdt's may be "justified" in this case, there are certainly "valid" arguments to be made against them.
One place where I disagree is that I don't think most people need to play Zemo differently. I think most people already play him without the indefinite root strategy and are more than satisfied with him.
But that's the point right? There are definitely people like myself who took him up specifically because there was no indication after his balance update post that his root lock is unintentional/a bug. If everyone gets RDTs then it's a win win, whoever plays him the same way can keep him ranked up and whoever ranked him up for his root lock can rank him down. Champ-specific RDTs can't be used on other champs anyways, so it's not going benefit some people more than others.
Sure. I never said they shouldn't give them out.
Yeah but you're saying you find the arguments for not giving them out such as Zemo's playstyle not changing as "valid" arguments, when RDTs are a win-win for both players who play his root locks playstyle and don't play his root lock playstyle, since it's the player's choice to rank down the champ or keep them as is. If you think RDTs are warranted because of precedent as well as a win-win for people on both sides of the argument, it's counter productive to validate the argument against RDTs.
First, we want to apologize for this situation. It was not our intent to leave any of this information out of our release notes or make any changes silently. We do not purposely make silent changes to the game, but there are processes in place that, in this case, didn’t work and this information was not disseminated the way it should have been.
Instead of asking the Devs a bunch of questions, and then translating them into communications for you, I’ve asked the Developers directly to write something up, and share it with you. This covers why we made these changes, and where we messed up on the communication process.
History of the bug and identifying it:
Back in January as Zemo was heading out the door, someone made an offhand comment about how the defender’s heavy bias while rooted seemed really reliable in keeping the opponent from throwing specials, to the point where they couldn’t remember it ever not working. No AI bias should ever be 100%, and that was not the intent with which we had been building characters. Our engineers informed us that root fully special locked the defender, preventing all three special attacks, and always had.
This was a problem because there is a big difference between designing a character that reduces specials and grants openings, and designing a character that prevents them.
Zemo in particular had the most aggressive use of the mechanic yet, because we were evaluating it in the former terms and not the latter. As a team, we knew a change was necessary, but had to decide what change to pursue. There were some good arguments made in favor of removing the special lock entirely and leaning on the very high heavy bias already present, since that was the original intent behind the mechanic. We decided against this because, as we said earlier, no AI bias is ever 100% reliable, and instead chose the middle ground of leaving the AI bias alone, preserving the inability for the defender to throw Special Attack 1 or 2, and just unlocking their Special 3.
This account may cause some confusion because root didn’t use to cause the defender’s power bar to grey out, a visual we normally associate with special locks, and now does. This was an accidental knock-on of the prep we needed to do for the change, but the change below three bars is exclusively visual.
Some of you may also wonder why defenders could break out of Spider-Man (Sorcerer Supreme)’s root before if root prevented all specials, and that’s actually because there was a 0.1s delay before his root activated to allow for VFX to kick in, during which the defender could activate a special because of the way Special 3 animations work. We have actually replaced this delay with an invisible special lock to make his root mechanic more consistent with other characters and easier to use.
How did we Miss This?
First, we announced that Zemo was bugged via the Trello board as quickly as we could. This is why we have created that board, so we can share identified bugs as soon as we know about them, regardless of if we know what the resolution will be. At the time, we were still having conversations about how broad the fix needed to be, and so the listed bug only referred to Zemo.
At the time, we were unaware of the extent to which players were relying on the existing interaction to use Kraven, or we would’ve mentioned him by name as well. It was very much our mistake for not understanding that, and we apologize.
When we did ultimately make the call that we were going to be fixing all root effects, we should have updated that post, but didn’t have systems in place for doing so. We’ll be amending our internal tracking process to make sure that the Trello board is better up to date with new developments going forward.
Second, we decided not to discuss this in Zemo’s rebalancing post because we sincerely did not consider it to be part of his rebalancing process. This is, in retrospect, another mistake on our part. “Root-locking” the opponent was never one of his goals, most players weren’t doing it anyway, and we weren’t holding the outliers against him when evaluating his data, so it didn’t factor into whether we considered him balanced or not. Additionally, we considered the bug public knowledge due to the Trello board.
Lastly, we missed this change in the most recent patch notes. Writing patch notes is a very collaborative process that requires many different teams working together, and it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. We will be re-evaluating the way in which we collect information for our patch notes in the future to help ensure that something like this doesn’t slip through the cracks again.
Root in the Future
Moving forward, this is how we intend for all Root effects to function unless otherwise specified, and will be expanding the in-game glossary to clarify as much.
Rooted defenders will be more likely to perform heavy attacks and unable to activate Special Attack 1 or 2, and any root that does not match this behavior should be considered to be bugged unless stated otherwise.
Dealing with the Current Situation
Because this bug was publicly announced via the Trello board during the 3-month window where Zemo was subject to change, we do not plan to issue any rank-down tickets for him, nor do we plan to offer any for Spider-Man, who is actually stronger after this change than before.
However, because Kraven is an older Champions and was not mentioned as affected by this bug in the past, we do plan to offer rank-down tickets to anyone with a ranked up 5 or 6-star Kraven as of the time of this post. Only those that have ranked up Kraven prior to this message going live (2:30pm PT on July 14, 2023) will receive those Rank Down tickets, so please do not rank up Kraven expecting a Rank Down ticket in the future. We plan for these to go out before the end of the month.
Once again, we want to apologize for our misunderstanding around Kraven and for the failures in communication, and will be making process changes to prevent repeats.
I would love to hear a valid argument for why they would not be issued.
Something tells me you have a pretty subjective view of what is considered "valid".
My view is based on facts and how to conduct business dealings in fair and just manner.
Subjective? Not really.
To be clear, I'm not affected by this bug. I don't have a ranked Zemo or Kraven (or Spot, Spidey Supreme, or Sandman). I personally think they should issue rank down tickets, but I also think there are plenty of valid reasons why they shouldn't.
I have them all, and use Zemo a ton so this issue affects me greatly. It is beyond clear that rank down tickets are warranted, and the clear and obvious right thing to do given the circumstances.
Rank down tickets simply give back the resources that someone already spent, they are not some weird perk that gives someone added value they did not earn. A massive change was made silently, the least that could be done is to make it right.
...and like I said, I think they should issue rank down tickets. It is very similar to the Mole Man situation from last year.
My only concern was that you claimed that you have yet to see a valid argument against doing so, and I took issue with that. There are plenty of valid arguments on both sides.
Can you try to articulate plenty of valid arguments for not issuing RDTs? I’m not trying to be argumentative. Some of us are genuinely lost as to what we are missing here so if there are plenty of valid arguments, even if you don’t agree with them, please try to outline them.
1. There was never anything in any description that said rooted champs should have been special locked at any level. Fixing a "broken" mechanic to align with the description shouldn't warrant rank down tickets.
2. Fixing this bug does not break Zemo. It only removes an unintended functionality. Zemo is still a very good champion without the indefinite special lock mechanic. As KarateMike said the other day, "if you're playing zemo with the infinite root strategy you're playing him wrong."
3. Just like they did with issuing Mole Man rdts, issuing rdts for this situation sets a dangerous precedent for future bug fixes. The next time there's a bug fix that affects a very small percentage of the player base, those players are going to demand rdts as well, and before you know it rdts will become a regular occurrence. This was a valid argument against the Mole Man rdts as well.
Because they issued the rdts for Mole Man, there's a precedent for issuing rdts for Zemo and Kraven in a similar situation that I think Kabam would be mistaken to overlook. However, there are still valid arguments against it.
I can get behind #2, but you're wrong on a couple of things.
1.The ability section never mentioned special locks. They added that to the root mechanic which has now impacted multiple champs that have root as their core mechanic. 2. Zemo isn't useless now, he needs to be played differently. He is now much more of a matchup champ than he used to be. 3. They should take some time to test champs and their core mechanic interactions prior to release. If they miss something, the CCPs hopefully catch it. If that doesn't happen, then they should catch it by the time of their rebalance. If they still don't catch it, then no changes to the mechanic or character should occur. What's the purpose of data over 6 months if it doesn't prevent these issues from happening?
Again, I don't necessarily disagree, which is why I think they should give out rdts. There is certainly precedent for doing so. So while rdt's may be "justified" in this case, there are certainly "valid" arguments to be made against them.
One place where I disagree is that I don't think most people need to play Zemo differently. I think most people already play him without the indefinite root strategy and are more than satisfied with him.
But that's the point right? There are definitely people like myself who took him up specifically because there was no indication after his balance update post that his root lock is unintentional/a bug. If everyone gets RDTs then it's a win win, whoever plays him the same way can keep him ranked up and whoever ranked him up for his root lock can rank him down. Champ-specific RDTs can't be used on other champs anyways, so it's not going benefit some people more than others.
Sure. I never said they shouldn't give them out.
Yeah but you're saying you find the arguments for not giving them out such as Zemo's playstyle not changing as "valid" arguments, when RDTs are a win-win for both players who play his root locks playstyle and don't play his root lock playstyle, since it's the player's choice to rank down the champ or keep them as is. If you think RDTs are warranted because of precedent as well as a win-win for people on both sides of the argument, it's counter productive to validate the argument against RDTs.
Dismissing valid arguments to get your way is not a good strategy in debate. Conceding that they are valid, but arguing why that valid argument should not preclude the issuing of rank down tickets is a much more conducive way to win said debate.
Just because there are valid arguments on the other side doesn't mean the rdts are any less justified.
Because this bug was publicly announced via the Trello board during the 3-month window where Zemo was subject to change, we do not plan to issue any rank-down tickets for him, nor do we plan to offer any for Spider-Man, who is actually stronger after this change than before.
However, because Kraven is an older Champions and was not mentioned as affected by this bug in the past, we do plan to offer rank-down tickets to anyone with a ranked up 5 or 6-star Kraven as of the time of this post. Only those that have ranked up Kraven prior to this message going live (2:30pm PT on July 14, 2023) will receive those Rank Down tickets, so please do not rank up Kraven expecting a Rank Down ticket in the future. We plan for these to go out before the end of the month.
Once again, we want to apologize for our misunderstanding around Kraven and for the failures in communication, and will be making process changes to prevent repeats.
Completely understandable fix. Zemo's still great without the Zemo Lock, but Kraven definitely isn't worth those materials. Thanks, Miike.
I do think a lot more thought should go into the importance of clarifying abilities in game, even if they're AI specific. As well as updating players on the Forums. The Trello board isn't a reliable place to receive updates considering the amount of hoops players have to jump through to find it in the first place.
Because this bug was publicly announced via the Trello board during the 3-month window where Zemo was subject to change, we do not plan to issue any rank-down tickets for him, nor do we plan to offer any for Spider-Man, who is actually stronger after this change than before.
However, because Kraven is an older Champions and was not mentioned as affected by this bug in the past, we do plan to offer rank-down tickets to anyone with a ranked up 5 or 6-star Kraven as of the time of this post. Only those that have ranked up Kraven prior to this message going live (2:30pm PT on July 14, 2023) will receive those Rank Down tickets, so please do not rank up Kraven expecting a Rank Down ticket in the future. We plan for these to go out before the end of the month.
Once again, we want to apologize for our misunderstanding around Kraven and for the failures in communication, and will be making process changes to prevent repeats.
So does your balance update timeline mean nothing to you? You posted Zemo's balance update with no indication of the root mechanic being bugged. I ranked up my Zemo because your balance update said Zemo was performing "as expected" in most matchups and the only changes were a cap to his fury stack and his armor up turning into a passive. Are we to not take those posts at face value anymore?
Thanks for the detailed response. I don’t agree with the conclusion on Zemo but I appreciate the explanation for how this all came together and acknowledging all the gaps that need filled going forward.
I’m glad you went with a true special lock in place of an unreliable bias. That would have made attacking into rooted defenders a complete gamble and basically made it worthless.
So good to know the original all special lock was purposely added but was due to a communication gap between character design and coding team (?) Is that right?
This isn't the firs time stuff has slipped through the cracks. So hopefully it doesn't happen again.
Direct Dev message is great. Much more technical than usual.
I wonder how many mcoc players knows about trello board. Wonder if it was ever accessible from ingame or advertised in game. These things would have been avoided if ingame notifications were given
Good response regarding Kraven. The level of detail is much appreciated but…
It remains an absolutely trash response regarding Zemo… sorry it just is. The Trello board is not easily visible or a wide spread communication. Instead the team remained silent while video after video was put out by content creators on this ability. A cacophony of promotional material vs. a poorly visible whisper that lacked context. Zemo deserves RDTs as well, because this change to root should have been highlighted at his balancing announcement it’s a big miss, not a small one and sorry is a poor replacement for the RDTs that should be there instead.
I do appreciate the thoughtful response, but disagree with the conclusion.
Completely understandable fix. Zemo's still great without the Zemo Lock, but Kraven definitely isn't worth those materials. Thanks, Miike.
I do think a lot more thought should go into the importance of clarifying abilities in game, even if they're AI specific. As well as updating players on the Forums. The Trello board isn't a reliable place to receive updates considering the amount of hoops players have to jump through to find it in the first place.
@Kabam Miike i think the incorrect decision has been made regarding Zemo. Maybe take this back to the team and talk it over a little bit. As stated above, a long time reader on the boards, I have never heard the Trello board mentioned or been directed to check for bugs on that particular website. This is the 2nd time something has been changed without giving clarity to us summoners before it was changed. I know you all have a lot on your plate, but there seems to be a breakdown in communication.
Completely understandable fix. Zemo's still great without the Zemo Lock, but Kraven definitely isn't worth those materials. Thanks, Miike.
I do think a lot more thought should go into the importance of clarifying abilities in game, even if they're AI specific. As well as updating players on the Forums. The Trello board isn't a reliable place to receive updates considering the amount of hoops players have to jump through to find it in the first place.
OK, soooooo I don't use the forums often, I only come here when a content creator on YouTube states a problem that affects me, and this is the 1st time I've ever heard of the trello board.. how about communicating that to us normal casual players, make it accessible in game, because seriously, I wouldn't have invested into zemo if I knew this.. I feel robbed, I even waited with 200 sig stones, a generic gem and all the resources to take my zemo up to r4, for his balancing update.. Shame on you for this really
Also, how can we look at this balancing update and trust the data Kabam used to balance those champions when they admit to missing this bug? What if all their numbers were skewed by this bug? What if majority of the cases Zemo was finishing fights faster than he was supposed to because of this bug preventing rooted champions from throwing an SP3 and he is actually much worse than Kabam's data suggests and in fact needs a buff? There seems to be no indication to the contrary, you are losing the little trust your players have in you as a company, it's becoming harder and harder to keep playing this game with situations like this. Do better.
I feel robbed, I even waited with 200 sig stones, a generic gem and all the resources to take my zemo up to r4, for his balancing update.. Shame on you for this really
Comments
First, we want to apologize for this situation. It was not our intent to leave any of this information out of our release notes or make any changes silently. We do not purposely make silent changes to the game, but there are processes in place that, in this case, didn’t work and this information was not disseminated the way it should have been.
Instead of asking the Devs a bunch of questions, and then translating them into communications for you, I’ve asked the Developers directly to write something up, and share it with you. This covers why we made these changes, and where we messed up on the communication process.
History of the bug and identifying it:
Back in January as Zemo was heading out the door, someone made an offhand comment about how the defender’s heavy bias while rooted seemed really reliable in keeping the opponent from throwing specials, to the point where they couldn’t remember it ever not working. No AI bias should ever be 100%, and that was not the intent with which we had been building characters. Our engineers informed us that root fully special locked the defender, preventing all three special attacks, and always had.This was a problem because there is a big difference between designing a character that reduces specials and grants openings, and designing a character that prevents them.
Zemo in particular had the most aggressive use of the mechanic yet, because we were evaluating it in the former terms and not the latter. As a team, we knew a change was necessary, but had to decide what change to pursue. There were some good arguments made in favor of removing the special lock entirely and leaning on the very high heavy bias already present, since that was the original intent behind the mechanic. We decided against this because, as we said earlier, no AI bias is ever 100% reliable, and instead chose the middle ground of leaving the AI bias alone, preserving the inability for the defender to throw Special Attack 1 or 2, and just unlocking their Special 3.
This account may cause some confusion because root didn’t use to cause the defender’s power bar to grey out, a visual we normally associate with special locks, and now does. This was an accidental knock-on of the prep we needed to do for the change, but the change below three bars is exclusively visual.
Some of you may also wonder why defenders could break out of Spider-Man (Sorcerer Supreme)’s root before if root prevented all specials, and that’s actually because there was a 0.1s delay before his root activated to allow for VFX to kick in, during which the defender could activate a special because of the way Special 3 animations work. We have actually replaced this delay with an invisible special lock to make his root mechanic more consistent with other characters and easier to use.
How did we Miss This?
First, we announced that Zemo was bugged via the Trello board as quickly as we could. This is why we have created that board, so we can share identified bugs as soon as we know about them, regardless of if we know what the resolution will be. At the time, we were still having conversations about how broad the fix needed to be, and so the listed bug only referred to Zemo.At the time, we were unaware of the extent to which players were relying on the existing interaction to use Kraven, or we would’ve mentioned him by name as well. It was very much our mistake for not understanding that, and we apologize.
When we did ultimately make the call that we were going to be fixing all root effects, we should have updated that post, but didn’t have systems in place for doing so. We’ll be amending our internal tracking process to make sure that the Trello board is better up to date with new developments going forward.
Second, we decided not to discuss this in Zemo’s rebalancing post because we sincerely did not consider it to be part of his rebalancing process. This is, in retrospect, another mistake on our part. “Root-locking” the opponent was never one of his goals, most players weren’t doing it anyway, and we weren’t holding the outliers against him when evaluating his data, so it didn’t factor into whether we considered him balanced or not. Additionally, we considered the bug public knowledge due to the Trello board.
Lastly, we missed this change in the most recent patch notes. Writing patch notes is a very collaborative process that requires many different teams working together, and it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. We will be re-evaluating the way in which we collect information for our patch notes in the future to help ensure that something like this doesn’t slip through the cracks again.
Root in the Future
Moving forward, this is how we intend for all Root effects to function unless otherwise specified, and will be expanding the in-game glossary to clarify as much.Rooted defenders will be more likely to perform heavy attacks and unable to activate Special Attack 1 or 2, and any root that does not match this behavior should be considered to be bugged unless stated otherwise.
Dealing with the Current Situation
Because this bug was publicly announced via the Trello board during the 3-month window where Zemo was subject to change, we do not plan to issue any rank-down tickets for him, nor do we plan to offer any for Spider-Man, who is actually stronger after this change than before.However, because Kraven is an older Champions and was not mentioned as affected by this bug in the past, we do plan to offer rank-down tickets to anyone with a ranked up 5 or 6-star Kraven as of the time of this post. Only those that have ranked up Kraven prior to this message going live (2:30pm PT on July 14, 2023) will receive those Rank Down tickets, so please do not rank up Kraven expecting a Rank Down ticket in the future. We plan for these to go out before the end of the month.
Once again, we want to apologize for our misunderstanding around Kraven and for the failures in communication, and will be making process changes to prevent repeats.
Just because there are valid arguments on the other side doesn't mean the rdts are any less justified.
I do think a lot more thought should go into the importance of clarifying abilities in game, even if they're AI specific. As well as updating players on the Forums. The Trello board isn't a reliable place to receive updates considering the amount of hoops players have to jump through to find it in the first place.
I’m glad you went with a true special lock in place of an unreliable bias. That would have made attacking into rooted defenders a complete gamble and basically made it worthless.
Does this move kraven up the buff list? Too soon?
This isn't the firs time stuff has slipped through the cracks. So hopefully it doesn't happen again.
Direct Dev message is great. Much more technical than usual.
Also yes for the Kraven RDT.
Even I didn’t think that they wouldn’t send RDT for this one.
Do better.
https://trello.com/b/yM4RGbuU/mcoc-community-bugs-and-issues-tracker
It remains an absolutely trash response regarding Zemo… sorry it just is. The Trello board is not easily visible or a wide spread communication. Instead the team remained silent while video after video was put out by content creators on this ability. A cacophony of promotional material vs. a poorly visible whisper that lacked context. Zemo deserves RDTs as well, because this change to root should have been highlighted at his balancing announcement it’s a big miss, not a small one and sorry is a poor replacement for the RDTs that should be there instead.
I do appreciate the thoughtful response, but disagree with the conclusion.
- In-game mail
- Game forum
- Twitter page
- YouTube channel
Nope some random trello page 😂
This is the 2nd time something has been changed without giving clarity to us summoners before it was changed. I know you all have a lot on your plate, but there seems to be a breakdown in communication.