So let's talk about the current state of the game
Blizzard25
Member Posts: 67 ★★
I've been thinking about this for a while. and I didn't want to post anything until formulate a thought that wasn't predicated on emotion. I can't promise this isn't going to have some in this post, but I'll try.
The current state of the game, I believe, is at a tipping point. There are bugs plaguing the game that have been there for years, new bugs constantly coming up with "hot fixes" that may or may not actually fix the issue, broken new content, champions being changed without notice, the game economy is in complete disarray from cash offers, software security is essentially a non-factor so modders still exist, the list goes on. I think frustrated is a mild way of putting how a lot of people feel right now. But I don't want to re-hash every single thing that has probably been said a thousand times.
Whether you're free to play or someone who spends, games are a transaction. Time, money, or both is being spent for entertainment. With all of the issues and current game state, that entertainment is slowly becoming something that people don't achieve, and it's being replaced by resentment for a lot of us. I think for new players it's still a fun experience, because it's the only thing they've known, but for many it's basically a ghost of a distant past. If things don't change, you're going to slowly see long-time free to play and spending players fall off. I promise you that once it starts, it has a snowball effect, and eventually the game dies. I don't want that to happen, I've had a lot of fun playing the game through the years and it's one of those games that if you invest in it, can last a long time. I've made friends through the game that I enjoy playing with, I've enjoyed the competitive aspect of battlegrounds (which I think single-handedly kept the game going since its release even with the issues), I want that to continue.
So to the community, l'm going to see if we can try to spitball some solutions that Kabam can take to use to make the game better. I'll start it off, I've always said your graphic designers are pretty incredible with the work they do. But the development and integration of their design into the game needs serious work. The pre-release testing and quality control (not the CCP, but internal testing) needs to improve drastically. And obviously we want to see the borderline game breaking bugs get fixed.
This is just a suggestion, but I would like to see more time going into new content that you release. It's nice having 2 new champs a month (or whatever the average is, I'm not counting), but what I'd much rather is to take a step back and rather than focusing on new releases, devote more resources to the bugs and evening out the game economy. I know there will be some that disagree and enjoy the current rapid release structure, but also i know a lot of us really don't care if there's still pre-existing issues. I'd like to keep the current content, slow down and restructure into something where so many people aren't frustrated. Your marketing department is doing a good job of promoting material, but you can't market without good engineering behind it. When you do that, things like your twitch streams just become very cringe to watch (although I didn't have a problem with the game designers being on the stream talking about their work being done. They can't control what their management is telling them to do, and if they already did the work, go ahead and be proud of it, i have no issue with that. I mainly just disliked every other part of the last twitch stream). Also alter the way you approach your application security and how modders are detected. Obviously nothing is unhackable, but right now you have basically security theater with your report button and manual ban sweeps. Host a hackathon where you encourage people like myself and others to try and find the security flaws in their system, the reverse engineering is fun and you get to see what you can change (this is very common with larger corporations even with their dedication red teams, sometimes things get missed). Before you release new content, run it through your quality control/internal testing team before even releasing it to the CCP. If that means new content is delayed, I'm fine with that, as long as it's working as intended. Stop throwing out cash offers that de-incentives actually playing the game, that's how you make good money in the short term but it's a terrible long term strategy.
If you made it this far and got past all the word vomit, just try and offer suggestions based on what you're seeing or discuss the situation where they would be open to hearing what you'd have to say. I've definitely been guilty of just lashing out in frustration, but I also know that's not how people are receptive to suggestions.
The current state of the game, I believe, is at a tipping point. There are bugs plaguing the game that have been there for years, new bugs constantly coming up with "hot fixes" that may or may not actually fix the issue, broken new content, champions being changed without notice, the game economy is in complete disarray from cash offers, software security is essentially a non-factor so modders still exist, the list goes on. I think frustrated is a mild way of putting how a lot of people feel right now. But I don't want to re-hash every single thing that has probably been said a thousand times.
Whether you're free to play or someone who spends, games are a transaction. Time, money, or both is being spent for entertainment. With all of the issues and current game state, that entertainment is slowly becoming something that people don't achieve, and it's being replaced by resentment for a lot of us. I think for new players it's still a fun experience, because it's the only thing they've known, but for many it's basically a ghost of a distant past. If things don't change, you're going to slowly see long-time free to play and spending players fall off. I promise you that once it starts, it has a snowball effect, and eventually the game dies. I don't want that to happen, I've had a lot of fun playing the game through the years and it's one of those games that if you invest in it, can last a long time. I've made friends through the game that I enjoy playing with, I've enjoyed the competitive aspect of battlegrounds (which I think single-handedly kept the game going since its release even with the issues), I want that to continue.
So to the community, l'm going to see if we can try to spitball some solutions that Kabam can take to use to make the game better. I'll start it off, I've always said your graphic designers are pretty incredible with the work they do. But the development and integration of their design into the game needs serious work. The pre-release testing and quality control (not the CCP, but internal testing) needs to improve drastically. And obviously we want to see the borderline game breaking bugs get fixed.
This is just a suggestion, but I would like to see more time going into new content that you release. It's nice having 2 new champs a month (or whatever the average is, I'm not counting), but what I'd much rather is to take a step back and rather than focusing on new releases, devote more resources to the bugs and evening out the game economy. I know there will be some that disagree and enjoy the current rapid release structure, but also i know a lot of us really don't care if there's still pre-existing issues. I'd like to keep the current content, slow down and restructure into something where so many people aren't frustrated. Your marketing department is doing a good job of promoting material, but you can't market without good engineering behind it. When you do that, things like your twitch streams just become very cringe to watch (although I didn't have a problem with the game designers being on the stream talking about their work being done. They can't control what their management is telling them to do, and if they already did the work, go ahead and be proud of it, i have no issue with that. I mainly just disliked every other part of the last twitch stream). Also alter the way you approach your application security and how modders are detected. Obviously nothing is unhackable, but right now you have basically security theater with your report button and manual ban sweeps. Host a hackathon where you encourage people like myself and others to try and find the security flaws in their system, the reverse engineering is fun and you get to see what you can change (this is very common with larger corporations even with their dedication red teams, sometimes things get missed). Before you release new content, run it through your quality control/internal testing team before even releasing it to the CCP. If that means new content is delayed, I'm fine with that, as long as it's working as intended. Stop throwing out cash offers that de-incentives actually playing the game, that's how you make good money in the short term but it's a terrible long term strategy.
If you made it this far and got past all the word vomit, just try and offer suggestions based on what you're seeing or discuss the situation where they would be open to hearing what you'd have to say. I've definitely been guilty of just lashing out in frustration, but I also know that's not how people are receptive to suggestions.
Post edited by Kabam Miike on
44
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
2. The economy will never be equal for anyone willing to spend money. It really doesn't matter as you'll never compete with them.
3. Every game out there has modders. Let's not pretend that MCOC is an anomaly. I've honestly seen more hackers in COD and Fortnite than I've seen in MCOC and I play this game daily. You're never going to stop them.
4. The game is always dying. Every month. Every bump in the road. It's been dying since it's release.
5. I'm not sure how much more testing you want the handful of champion/content designers to do. They can't test for every device out there. It's impossible. How do you test for every little interaction that can happen? How do you plan for things the community finds a champ can do from a specific rotation?
6. You want new content but you want to slow down content?
7. Again, having just the CCP test new content won't work plus we already have betas for story content.
8. They've had cash offers for the entirety of.the game and it's going on 9 years... Not exactly short term.
You've given nothing that's a new idea. Everything you've said has been suggested dozens of times.
But yes, for 500th time and 9th year in a row, the game is dying.
2) Sort of, kind of true but not really. The economy will never be equal, but it doesn't have to be so drastic. The last July 4th deals are a great example, there has never been a case where you could just buy your way through 5 years of doing content like what those deals were.
3) Also true that most games have modders, and MCOC is not an anomaly. But the security measures taken by kabam compared to something like COD (I don't play Fortnite so i can't speak to that) is extremely minimal. Also the incentive to mod in COD is a lot higher (monetization, tournaments, things of that nature) so you have a LOT more people making mods for it. You're comparing apples to oranges here. Also they have a much more advanced system in place for modder detection after the fact. Yes there will always be modders, because as I mentioned, nothing is unhackable. But at least make it moderately difficult.
4) I've never said it was dying. I said it was at a tipping point. And prior to this I never believed it was at a tipping point.
5) Again, there's a difference between doing everything and doing the minimum possible. I'm not asking them to test every device, every interaction. I'm asking them to increase their testing procedures. There's a pattern forming here where you take an argument and look at it from an extreme view to try and invalidate it. That doesn't work.
6) You can make new content, at a slower pace, after better testing and verification to minimize bugs.
7) Having the CCP be the testers is exactly what i said wasn't acceptable. Please read.
8) Take a look back at number 2.
Also what we're experiencing is basically minimal bugs considering the age of the game and how much legacy code is in the game. I'm pretty sure most, if not all, the original developers and engineers for the game aren't there anymore, so you lose crucial knowledge of how the legacy code and engine works. For an 8.5 year old game that is way more complex and has also grown more than what its creators had in mind for it, the game is doing pretty well.
This month's update with the mythic crystals fiasco is hopefully a wakeup call for the QA or whoever approves the store/rewards to doublecheck and triplecheck the rewards to make sure it is 1. The right item and 2. The right amount of it.
I don't agree that the game is doing well given its age. 8.5 years seems like a long time but the development world, it's really not. They can't control changes in the Unity engine (which i believe is a cop-out for other development issues, but that's another conversation in itself), but legacy code should be modular, well documented, and portable. Transferring to other developers is common, there should be systems in place where incoming devs are able to take over with minimal onboarding. In the case where they aren't, it's best to take a step back and sometimes rework the code. It's a PITA, it sucks to do (I've done it), but in the long run it makes things a lot less painful like what we're experiencing now.
The context in which the post is written is fair. A lot of us enjoy the game, spend a lot of time and/or money and want the game to continue and prosper. But the reasons made above are valid and I wouldn't say this is just a typical state of the game post but the general vibe amongst parts of the community that I see are shifting towards this mindset.
I hope Kabam does take note of some of these voices coming more prominent players within the Mcoc community.
2. What about the games economy has an effect on you that it matters so deeply?
3. Kabam is leagues better with modders than before. They haven't had much of a need until battlegrounds. Again, what's your background in terms that you you can speak to the level of Kabams security? What steps should they take with their processes that will make it to where it's at your satisfaction?
4. Pretty sure you have dying in there somewhere.
5. Why do you think they're doing the minimum? Because bugs exist? What procedures are they missing?
6. We already get new content at a slow pace. Story content is every 6 months. Things like EoP is even fewer in-between so how much slower faster do you want?
7. You said at first you don't want CCP to test things and want intern testing and then later, you said you want CCP to test new content at the expense of it taking longer.
8. They aren't going to stop cash offers.
Having said that, there are realistic and unrealistic expectations, and this falls into the unrealistic category. I'm sure there are lots of players who think Kabam can just "slow down" but that's only true in the literal sense: it isn't impossible. It is not, however, a practical possibility.
I could suggest that to spice up the game Kabam should start adding DC characters instead of just Marvel ones. But while that is not literally impossible, that suggestion would reflect a complete lack of awareness of the reality of the game. The game is a licensed Marvel product. Convincing Marvel to allow Kabam to add DC characters would require some form of mind control. And that's before considering the fact that DC as the rights holder would also need to sign on to this idea. This isn't literally impossible, but it is also impractical to the point of ludicrousness.
The reality of the situation is simply slowing down the releases of champions or content for the purposes of quality control is equally impractical. It implies the belief that the business of Kabam is to make the best champions and content possible, and they are just not spending enough time on it. It isn't. Kabam is in the business of operating MCOC as a game as a service with a release schedule, and the goal is to do the best possible work within that schedule. Arbitrarily slowing down champion releases or content releases completely throws everything from monetization (which supports the game) to progression and economy balance into uncharted territory. The devs would never do this. And even if they wanted to, Netmarble who owns the game and the studio would never allow them to do that. MCOC is a property Netmarble paid a lot of money for, and they would not allow this sort of change just because someone thought it would be a good idea. I'm sure someone is going to say that in the long run things would be better and thus more profitable for Netmarble. You just have to prove it to them. Good luck.
Also: For the most part, the problem with bots and modders is not something a hackathon would be useful to defend against. On the assumption that you will understand what I am saying here, I will state precisely but without explanation. Most of the mod defense for games is PC-based because of the need for platform protection. However, mobile devices are both less vulnerable to such things but also less allowing of such defenses. Yes, there are platform defense kits for mobile, but they are non-trivial to retrofit into eight year old games. The real problem is telemetry. MCOC was built back when combat telemetry was not a thing that was seen as a necessity. Telemetry would kill modders in the crib, and the devs know this, but scaling out such features is also non-trivial. But without that, there's no "flaw" in the game that a hackathon would find. The game isn't broken in that regard, rather it is missing the features you would leverage to conduct the kinds of anti-mod detection typical of online games.
I have had many conversations with the devs regarding these topics, including options for improving client-side integrity (from mod detection to device banning). Awareness is not the issue. They are aware. It is the resources available and the complexity involved that are the issue.
2) Tough to answer, I might have to give this one some thought. But on the surface, because it affects a lot of other people, it affects me. If people that I know quit because they are frustrated with the economy, that effects me indirectly. Again, that's not a full answer, I need to think on it.
3) I work as a professional red team analyst and I do contract cyber security work/research. I'd be happy to share my thoughts with them if they message me. But you don't openly discuss security measures you plan to implement.
4) Yes I did. Not my intention, so you're right about that one.
5) I can only speak to the product of what they put out to know they need additional testing procedures. I don't know what they currently do or don't do, but it's easy to come to a conclusion that whatever they are doing isn't enough given the releases they put out.
6) I'm not saying I want it slower, I'm saying if that's what it takes to produce minimally bugged content, I'd be happy if they did slow down. I'd rather they do that then do it at the current pace without it being tested thoroughly.
7) I said CCP SHOULD NOT be the testers. I never said they should test, I said they shouldn't be.
8) Obviously. And they shouldn't stop them. But the amount of cash offers and what you can buy for them doesn't incentivize actually playing the game, which is the whole point.
it's been a steady decline since 5.4 but this july 4th the game economy was nuked, erasing a decade of progression. why bother doing anything if you can pop in once a year and catch up to the fools who've been breaking their backs for years?
skill is meaningless, content is meaningless, and being competitive is meaningless. all replaced by a credit card.
6 months into 7 stars and we've already burned halfway through the rarity. are rarity lifecycles getting cut in half and so are we getting 8s in 2-3 years?? looks like it.
and deals are also getting more and more expensive and what we do and buy loses value quicker and quicker. mcoc game has lost it's identity, it's supposed to be a game about content and fun, not a store that replaces them.
They do test. Again, they can't test for a lot of different things. Different device, different specs, different GPUs, different connections.
To your second point, I think I'm going to DM you about it so we can speak more openly.
There is a new "open discussion" on state of the game in forum pretty much every single day, nothing different in your post, just exact same things said but hundreds of people thousands of times before you.
You don't like the state, others agree,
still others are indifferent, and others still really enjoy aspects of the game.
Everyone can do better, and if you hadn't noticed there's not a single company out there not dealing with layoffs, downsizing, and especially forcing more work on fewer (and lesser/cheaper) laborers. This is how it's going to be. And before anyone embarrasses themselves pointing to "millions" that mcoc generates, EA, Ubisoft and Niantic generate billions and they've downsized 1500+ in the last 4 months. Miike will tell you he's stretched between all the remaining kabam games and he certainly knows what's up.
Want a better functioning game? Fair enough. Understand and read the room as to why that's hard right now, everywhere? Please do.
I do however work fairly closely with app developers in my current job. The problem MCOC vs games like console games is the varying devices it's played on.
I'm not saying Kabam can't do better or shouldn't do better but you're not right in how you assume what does or doesn't get done.
EA makes hand over fist more and has 10 times the amount of staff MCOC has but probably has more bugs in Madden than MCOC.
Fortnite makes way more money than MCOC and they can't stop hackers and has bugs.
CoD makes tons more money than MCOC and has more devs and has tons of bugs and tons of hackers.
You can't say Kabam should be better than those. Until you know what they do, you're speculating like me.