Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
A dev mentioned in a private discussion not long ago a point in their development timeline that is over ten years in the future.
Of course, whether the game exists ten or more years from now is not completely under their control, but the devs currently have no plans to sunset the game.
I want to ask you a question since you have a pretty good knowledge about stuff and a good relationship with kabam, is it possible for them to change the engine of the game? Maybe that will fix this huge amount of bugs that keeps happening in every single area of the game and etc I know they made some changes to the engine around 2020-2021 but i don't know if they changed the entire thing back them, i feel like if they don't have any plans to sunset the game rn, they need to do something to improve the overall state of the game cause it's bad =/ i know there's not a game that don't have any bugs but rn every single thing they try to do, seems to make things worse
In theory they could migrate the game to a new engine. In practice this would only make things worse.
The change they made to the underlying engine was they upgraded it to the latest supported version of Unity, the underlying framework the game was built upon. They've done this many times in the past (because they are required to or lose vendor support) and sometimes when this happens there are glitches. No two versions of a framework are exactly identical, even when the APIs are exactly identical there are often subtle differences. Way back when 12.0 happened they also upgraded Unity, and that actually caused the *first* "Parry is broken" problems in the game.
Most recently the problem was that the pre-2020 version of Unity had a long-standing bug with the way timing worked in the engine, specifically in iOS. When this bug was fixed, it threw the timing of the game itself off, because the game was in effect written to match the broken timing, and that timing was now different. Moreover, there was no way to just change the game to match the way the old timing worked, because the new timing didn't differ from the old timing in a consistent way. There were things the old game did that were literally impossible under the new engine. So Kabam was forced to rewrite parts of the game, including the input system which is not just about reading input from the player but also integrating those events with the rest of what's happening in the game, moment by moment.
All of this can have huge downstream effects that are very complex to mitigate or resolve. For example, consider the case where the players notice that the AI is doing something differently now than before. That may have nothing to do with the AI at all. The AI is constantly making "decisions" about what it wants to do, but it must still adhere to the rules of how the game engine works. Some actions are possible, some are impossible. If the game's timing changes and makes a previously impossible action possible, say there was no window of opportunity to launch an attack between two events before, but now with slightly different timing there's a tiny one frame window between the two events that sometimes opens up, then humans might not notice but the AI will. The AI always "wanted" to do that, but it couldn't before because that was impossible, and now because the timing is possible the AI starts doing that.
You can stare at the AI code all day and never "see" why this happens. This is a dynamic situation that requires analyzing the game's frame by frame behavior. But if everything is now running with slightly different clocks than before, these changes can affect the AI in lots of random ways in different situations. For bonus points, the game will behave slightly differently if the game client skips frames, because a skipped frame is a moment in time where things won't happen when they ordinarily would, opening some windows and closing others between events. The AI might behave differently on my phone than yours.
None of this would change if we magically ported the game to another engine. In effect, that's what Kabam was already forced to do: port the game from old Unity to new Unity. New Unity works differently, so the game also works differently. And every time they try to tweak it to return the game to what players expect in one place, they can disturb things in another place. Moving to another engine would only exacerbate that problem.
I should point out that none of this has anything to do with players getting thousands of crystals accidentally, or champion abilities working differently than described (usually) or any of the other bugs in the game. Those have different causes you can't blame on the engine. What you can blame on the engine, and what can't be easily fixed, is the game has a playerbase that has a long history of having certain expectations of how the game works in real time that changes to the underlying engine - which are unavoidable when you use someone else's engine - can sometimes throw a monkey wrench into.
You might also ask: why us? Why not every other mobile game out there? Well, very few games actually implement frame precise timing requirements on the game play in environments where the players have perfect control over the circumstances. One frame difference can be the difference between a well timed block and a punch to the face. Meanwhile, in Shooter XYZ one frame difference usually isn't the difference between a shot hitting and a shot missing, and even when it is the players in Shooter XYZ never actually know if their shot would have hit or not. They only know if it hits or not. They don't have frame accurate muscle memory, and can't test the game repeatedly under exactly identical circumstances. Not many games are as sensitive to this kind of thing as MCOC is. However, if you look at the Unity boards around the time of the iOS clock fix, you'll see there were a lot of developers going nuts over trying to work around this change.
I truly appreciate your response, it's always nice to have a better ideia of what's going on....it's sad that changing the engine wouldn't solve these problems =/ mcoc is a good game and deserves to live those 10 years you mentioned Really hope the devs find a way to solve this problems cause we're in a such delicate state where everytime they wanna add/fix something, another one breaks it -.- If i remember correctly, a few years ago we used to have a maintenance after 00 every once in a while, do u know why they stopped doing that?
The maintenance wasn't to do what you think it was to do. They don't do the maintenance anymore because it's not needed any longer.
If i remember correctly, a few years ago we used to have a maintenance after 00 every once in a while, do u know why they stopped doing that?
I don't know, but I can speculate. I manage a large colocation cluster. From literally day one it was designed to minimize the downtime required when maintenance was performed on it. However, day one was about twenty three years ago. Limitations in technology and resources meant that 95% of everything we did would not require any downtime, but a few things did. Advances in technology and implementation decisions meant that by 2006 99.9% of everything we did could be done with zero customer downtime. And today, that's literally zero. The last time the cluster was shut down was due to a power failure at the facility. Barring a volcano erupting under our racks that's the only way deliberate cluster downtime will ever happen. We're currently relocating our entire installation to a completely different location within the same building, and even that will generate zero downtime.
Downtime isn't automatically necessary. The logical presumption is that originally the game was designed without the requirement of having zero downtime upgrades and maintenance. This was originally common practice in the online games industry and would have still been common practice when this game was first implemented circa 2014. It is still common practice today. But at some point someone decided to migrate the game backends to a design that did not require downtime maintenance windows, and phased out regular scheduled maintenance downtime.
Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
A dev mentioned in a private discussion not long ago a point in their development timeline that is over ten years in the future.
Of course, whether the game exists ten or more years from now is not completely under their control, but the devs currently have no plans to sunset the game.
I want to ask you a question since you have a pretty good knowledge about stuff and a good relationship with kabam, is it possible for them to change the engine of the game? Maybe that will fix this huge amount of bugs that keeps happening in every single area of the game and etc I know they made some changes to the engine around 2020-2021 but i don't know if they changed the entire thing back them, i feel like if they don't have any plans to sunset the game rn, they need to do something to improve the overall state of the game cause it's bad =/ i know there's not a game that don't have any bugs but rn every single thing they try to do, seems to make things worse
In theory they could migrate the game to a new engine. In practice this would only make things worse.
The change they made to the underlying engine was they upgraded it to the latest supported version of Unity, the underlying framework the game was built upon. They've done this many times in the past (because they are required to or lose vendor support) and sometimes when this happens there are glitches. No two versions of a framework are exactly identical, even when the APIs are exactly identical there are often subtle differences. Way back when 12.0 happened they also upgraded Unity, and that actually caused the *first* "Parry is broken" problems in the game.
Most recently the problem was that the pre-2020 version of Unity had a long-standing bug with the way timing worked in the engine, specifically in iOS. When this bug was fixed, it threw the timing of the game itself off, because the game was in effect written to match the broken timing, and that timing was now different. Moreover, there was no way to just change the game to match the way the old timing worked, because the new timing didn't differ from the old timing in a consistent way. There were things the old game did that were literally impossible under the new engine. So Kabam was forced to rewrite parts of the game, including the input system which is not just about reading input from the player but also integrating those events with the rest of what's happening in the game, moment by moment.
All of this can have huge downstream effects that are very complex to mitigate or resolve. For example, consider the case where the players notice that the AI is doing something differently now than before. That may have nothing to do with the AI at all. The AI is constantly making "decisions" about what it wants to do, but it must still adhere to the rules of how the game engine works. Some actions are possible, some are impossible. If the game's timing changes and makes a previously impossible action possible, say there was no window of opportunity to launch an attack between two events before, but now with slightly different timing there's a tiny one frame window between the two events that sometimes opens up, then humans might not notice but the AI will. The AI always "wanted" to do that, but it couldn't before because that was impossible, and now because the timing is possible the AI starts doing that.
You can stare at the AI code all day and never "see" why this happens. This is a dynamic situation that requires analyzing the game's frame by frame behavior. But if everything is now running with slightly different clocks than before, these changes can affect the AI in lots of random ways in different situations. For bonus points, the game will behave slightly differently if the game client skips frames, because a skipped frame is a moment in time where things won't happen when they ordinarily would, opening some windows and closing others between events. The AI might behave differently on my phone than yours.
None of this would change if we magically ported the game to another engine. In effect, that's what Kabam was already forced to do: port the game from old Unity to new Unity. New Unity works differently, so the game also works differently. And every time they try to tweak it to return the game to what players expect in one place, they can disturb things in another place. Moving to another engine would only exacerbate that problem.
I should point out that none of this has anything to do with players getting thousands of crystals accidentally, or champion abilities working differently than described (usually) or any of the other bugs in the game. Those have different causes you can't blame on the engine. What you can blame on the engine, and what can't be easily fixed, is the game has a playerbase that has a long history of having certain expectations of how the game works in real time that changes to the underlying engine - which are unavoidable when you use someone else's engine - can sometimes throw a monkey wrench into.
You might also ask: why us? Why not every other mobile game out there? Well, very few games actually implement frame precise timing requirements on the game play in environments where the players have perfect control over the circumstances. One frame difference can be the difference between a well timed block and a punch to the face. Meanwhile, in Shooter XYZ one frame difference usually isn't the difference between a shot hitting and a shot missing, and even when it is the players in Shooter XYZ never actually know if their shot would have hit or not. They only know if it hits or not. They don't have frame accurate muscle memory, and can't test the game repeatedly under exactly identical circumstances. Not many games are as sensitive to this kind of thing as MCOC is. However, if you look at the Unity boards around the time of the iOS clock fix, you'll see there were a lot of developers going nuts over trying to work around this change.
I appreciate your knowledge and argument about how is the game engine work, but there is only one thing I don’t understand is that why Kabam doesn’t share this kind of information publicly with us? I remembered they made a thread about how hard to navigate input issue, but from that point they never update anything about this even though it’s clear that this “input issue” haven’t sold just worse!
They did share this information in a couple of posts. However, it is no one's job to monitor the forums and repeat this information. It is also no one's job to provide the background information necessary to frame this information in context, and it would divert huge amounts of time from the developers to do that. On the other hand, I explain this sort of thing for a living and I type extremely quickly.
Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
So the best business model is to shut down after 9 years? Can I ask what class you learned that in?
The company I work has been in business for 86 years. I need to warn them about how they've been doing it wrong for 77 years.
As I said, regarding to the downtrend of Marvel recently or the superhero in general, plus the current condition of this game, if you’re the manager, it makes sense if you monetize the game as much as possible before it is closed. The game is a business model, and from the view of a good manager, it’s right strategy to do it
This is word salad.
I don’t say it’s absolutely true! But what is happening in this game are supporting my opinion. Do you see the downtrend of Marvel, or how the monetary strategy is applied recently?
When I say something is word salad I mean that in the traditional sense of the term: it is a bunch of words seemingly scattered at random without a coherent meaning. English may not be your first language, but I'm factoring that out. But let's try to parse this out.
First of all, you seem to be suggesting that the overall market for Marvel movies is shrinking and this should have a corresponding downward influence on the revenue and interest in MCOC. However, I don't think that premise holds up. It seems to be more internet narrative. Let's take a look at some MCU movie revenues that cover both pre- and post- Endgame MCU movies.
Guardians of the Galaxy released in 2014 and made $333M (US) domestically and $773M worldwide. Guardians 2 released in 2017 and made $390M domestic and $864M worldwide. Post Endgame and post pandemic Guardians 3 made $359M domestic and $845M worldwide. That does not suggest a significant downtrend of interest.
Some would argue that Guardians is a non-representative franchise in the MCU, so let's try another: Dr. Strange. Strange did $233M domestic and $678M worldwide in 2016. Controversial it might have been, Multiverse of Madness did $411M domestic and $956M worldwide in 2022, a sizeable increase.
Black Panther did $700M / $1.3B in 2018. Even losing its main character and star, BP2 still did $453M / $859M.
Even the train wreck that was Quantumania did respectful numbers domestically. Ant Man and the Wasp did $217M / $623M and Quantumania did $215 / $476M.
First time franchise movies also did reasonably well post-Endgame. Shang Chi did $224M / $432M.in 2021. That's about the same or better than the first movies for Thor, Captain America, and Ant Man. And even Black Widow's $183M domestic number has to be taken with a grain of salt, as Disney reported $125M in streaming revenue for that movie that's not included in box office numbers. The only obvious weak spot here would be Eternals which did "only" $400M worldwide.
If we go by revenue and not internet reviews, interest in the MCU in general seems to still be reasonably strong.
We also have to look to gaming history. There were and still are lots of Marvel games out there. When MCOC first launched and for a lot of its existence there were other Marvel mobile or online games. However, even when the MCU was at its peak, many of those games folded. Conversely, even now when supposedly interest is waning, new games are still launching. Throughout that time, MCOC has been relatively stable. Its overall revenue has declined over time from its peak, but if you factor out the Covid lockdown bump, it has been a relatively slow decline. It still takes in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually, and nine years on it is still one of the top revenue streams for Netmarble. In fact, it consistently represents somewhere around 10% of all of Netmarble's total revenue.
When you say "the game is a business model" I have to take a wild guess what you mean by that. You also mention in an earlier post "the life cycle of a product and what specific marketing for each phase" so I'm going to assume you are trying to say that online games follow the basic lifecycle model they teach in business school where products are developed, get put on store shelves, and then eventually become obsolete. However, Games as a Service don't follow that model. They follow a completely different iterative lifecycle model where there is no preplanned obsolescence. Games as a service can die, but traditionally they aren't planned to die.
Some games do try to squeeze as much revenue as possible near the end, but that only hastens their demise, and MCOC is nowhere near that. As mentioned, Netmarble is currently making hundreds of millions of dollars a year on MCOC: if anything they are much more likely to cut costs to maintain profits than squeeze the game too hard for short term profits. Most online games do not go out in a blaze of monetization: they slowly fade until they reach a critical player density and then go into "maintenance mode" where they leave a skeleton crew behind to keep it alive for the die hards while the rest of the resources are redirected to other projects.
Game "managers" (product supervisors and producers, I'm assuming) almost never even have the discretion you're attributing to them. They can't just decide to step on the monetization gas. And even if they had that authority, it is not like they make a percentage of the profits. Game developers do not make money off of monetization. They make salaries, and it is in their best personal interest to manage the game to have the longest possible lifespan, not to make the largest short term profits. If they don't make profits the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. If they squeeze the players for too much profits they will drive those players away and then the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. Their goal is to make enough money for the business to be viable, in a way that the game will attract the most players and engage them for the longest time. They gain nothing from doing anything else.
A smart game manager aims for longevity, not maximal profits.
Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
A dev mentioned in a private discussion not long ago a point in their development timeline that is over ten years in the future.
Of course, whether the game exists ten or more years from now is not completely under their control, but the devs currently have no plans to sunset the game.
I want to ask you a question since you have a pretty good knowledge about stuff and a good relationship with kabam, is it possible for them to change the engine of the game? Maybe that will fix this huge amount of bugs that keeps happening in every single area of the game and etc I know they made some changes to the engine around 2020-2021 but i don't know if they changed the entire thing back them, i feel like if they don't have any plans to sunset the game rn, they need to do something to improve the overall state of the game cause it's bad =/ i know there's not a game that don't have any bugs but rn every single thing they try to do, seems to make things worse
In theory they could migrate the game to a new engine. In practice this would only make things worse.
The change they made to the underlying engine was they upgraded it to the latest supported version of Unity, the underlying framework the game was built upon. They've done this many times in the past (because they are required to or lose vendor support) and sometimes when this happens there are glitches. No two versions of a framework are exactly identical, even when the APIs are exactly identical there are often subtle differences. Way back when 12.0 happened they also upgraded Unity, and that actually caused the *first* "Parry is broken" problems in the game.
Most recently the problem was that the pre-2020 version of Unity had a long-standing bug with the way timing worked in the engine, specifically in iOS. When this bug was fixed, it threw the timing of the game itself off, because the game was in effect written to match the broken timing, and that timing was now different. Moreover, there was no way to just change the game to match the way the old timing worked, because the new timing didn't differ from the old timing in a consistent way. There were things the old game did that were literally impossible under the new engine. So Kabam was forced to rewrite parts of the game, including the input system which is not just about reading input from the player but also integrating those events with the rest of what's happening in the game, moment by moment.
All of this can have huge downstream effects that are very complex to mitigate or resolve. For example, consider the case where the players notice that the AI is doing something differently now than before. That may have nothing to do with the AI at all. The AI is constantly making "decisions" about what it wants to do, but it must still adhere to the rules of how the game engine works. Some actions are possible, some are impossible. If the game's timing changes and makes a previously impossible action possible, say there was no window of opportunity to launch an attack between two events before, but now with slightly different timing there's a tiny one frame window between the two events that sometimes opens up, then humans might not notice but the AI will. The AI always "wanted" to do that, but it couldn't before because that was impossible, and now because the timing is possible the AI starts doing that.
You can stare at the AI code all day and never "see" why this happens. This is a dynamic situation that requires analyzing the game's frame by frame behavior. But if everything is now running with slightly different clocks than before, these changes can affect the AI in lots of random ways in different situations. For bonus points, the game will behave slightly differently if the game client skips frames, because a skipped frame is a moment in time where things won't happen when they ordinarily would, opening some windows and closing others between events. The AI might behave differently on my phone than yours.
None of this would change if we magically ported the game to another engine. In effect, that's what Kabam was already forced to do: port the game from old Unity to new Unity. New Unity works differently, so the game also works differently. And every time they try to tweak it to return the game to what players expect in one place, they can disturb things in another place. Moving to another engine would only exacerbate that problem.
I should point out that none of this has anything to do with players getting thousands of crystals accidentally, or champion abilities working differently than described (usually) or any of the other bugs in the game. Those have different causes you can't blame on the engine. What you can blame on the engine, and what can't be easily fixed, is the game has a playerbase that has a long history of having certain expectations of how the game works in real time that changes to the underlying engine - which are unavoidable when you use someone else's engine - can sometimes throw a monkey wrench into.
You might also ask: why us? Why not every other mobile game out there? Well, very few games actually implement frame precise timing requirements on the game play in environments where the players have perfect control over the circumstances. One frame difference can be the difference between a well timed block and a punch to the face. Meanwhile, in Shooter XYZ one frame difference usually isn't the difference between a shot hitting and a shot missing, and even when it is the players in Shooter XYZ never actually know if their shot would have hit or not. They only know if it hits or not. They don't have frame accurate muscle memory, and can't test the game repeatedly under exactly identical circumstances. Not many games are as sensitive to this kind of thing as MCOC is. However, if you look at the Unity boards around the time of the iOS clock fix, you'll see there were a lot of developers going nuts over trying to work around this change.
I appreciate your knowledge and argument about how is the game engine work, but there is only one thing I don’t understand is that why Kabam doesn’t share this kind of information publicly with us? I remembered they made a thread about how hard to navigate input issue, but from that point they never update anything about this even though it’s clear that this “input issue” haven’t sold just worse!
They did share this information in a couple of posts. However, it is no one's job to monitor the forums and repeat this information. It is also no one's job to provide the background information necessary to frame this information in context, and it would divert huge amounts of time from the developers to do that. On the other hand, I explain this sort of thing for a living and I type extremely quickly.
I would not agree with you in this opinion. Forum is the most direct way for Kabam to communicate with summoners who are also customers here. It belongs to customer service department and I believe it is enough important to assign someone to mostly and frequently monitor the forum.
Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
A dev mentioned in a private discussion not long ago a point in their development timeline that is over ten years in the future.
Of course, whether the game exists ten or more years from now is not completely under their control, but the devs currently have no plans to sunset the game.
I want to ask you a question since you have a pretty good knowledge about stuff and a good relationship with kabam, is it possible for them to change the engine of the game? Maybe that will fix this huge amount of bugs that keeps happening in every single area of the game and etc I know they made some changes to the engine around 2020-2021 but i don't know if they changed the entire thing back them, i feel like if they don't have any plans to sunset the game rn, they need to do something to improve the overall state of the game cause it's bad =/ i know there's not a game that don't have any bugs but rn every single thing they try to do, seems to make things worse
In theory they could migrate the game to a new engine. In practice this would only make things worse.
The change they made to the underlying engine was they upgraded it to the latest supported version of Unity, the underlying framework the game was built upon. They've done this many times in the past (because they are required to or lose vendor support) and sometimes when this happens there are glitches. No two versions of a framework are exactly identical, even when the APIs are exactly identical there are often subtle differences. Way back when 12.0 happened they also upgraded Unity, and that actually caused the *first* "Parry is broken" problems in the game.
Most recently the problem was that the pre-2020 version of Unity had a long-standing bug with the way timing worked in the engine, specifically in iOS. When this bug was fixed, it threw the timing of the game itself off, because the game was in effect written to match the broken timing, and that timing was now different. Moreover, there was no way to just change the game to match the way the old timing worked, because the new timing didn't differ from the old timing in a consistent way. There were things the old game did that were literally impossible under the new engine. So Kabam was forced to rewrite parts of the game, including the input system which is not just about reading input from the player but also integrating those events with the rest of what's happening in the game, moment by moment.
All of this can have huge downstream effects that are very complex to mitigate or resolve. For example, consider the case where the players notice that the AI is doing something differently now than before. That may have nothing to do with the AI at all. The AI is constantly making "decisions" about what it wants to do, but it must still adhere to the rules of how the game engine works. Some actions are possible, some are impossible. If the game's timing changes and makes a previously impossible action possible, say there was no window of opportunity to launch an attack between two events before, but now with slightly different timing there's a tiny one frame window between the two events that sometimes opens up, then humans might not notice but the AI will. The AI always "wanted" to do that, but it couldn't before because that was impossible, and now because the timing is possible the AI starts doing that.
You can stare at the AI code all day and never "see" why this happens. This is a dynamic situation that requires analyzing the game's frame by frame behavior. But if everything is now running with slightly different clocks than before, these changes can affect the AI in lots of random ways in different situations. For bonus points, the game will behave slightly differently if the game client skips frames, because a skipped frame is a moment in time where things won't happen when they ordinarily would, opening some windows and closing others between events. The AI might behave differently on my phone than yours.
None of this would change if we magically ported the game to another engine. In effect, that's what Kabam was already forced to do: port the game from old Unity to new Unity. New Unity works differently, so the game also works differently. And every time they try to tweak it to return the game to what players expect in one place, they can disturb things in another place. Moving to another engine would only exacerbate that problem.
I should point out that none of this has anything to do with players getting thousands of crystals accidentally, or champion abilities working differently than described (usually) or any of the other bugs in the game. Those have different causes you can't blame on the engine. What you can blame on the engine, and what can't be easily fixed, is the game has a playerbase that has a long history of having certain expectations of how the game works in real time that changes to the underlying engine - which are unavoidable when you use someone else's engine - can sometimes throw a monkey wrench into.
You might also ask: why us? Why not every other mobile game out there? Well, very few games actually implement frame precise timing requirements on the game play in environments where the players have perfect control over the circumstances. One frame difference can be the difference between a well timed block and a punch to the face. Meanwhile, in Shooter XYZ one frame difference usually isn't the difference between a shot hitting and a shot missing, and even when it is the players in Shooter XYZ never actually know if their shot would have hit or not. They only know if it hits or not. They don't have frame accurate muscle memory, and can't test the game repeatedly under exactly identical circumstances. Not many games are as sensitive to this kind of thing as MCOC is. However, if you look at the Unity boards around the time of the iOS clock fix, you'll see there were a lot of developers going nuts over trying to work around this change.
I appreciate your knowledge and argument about how is the game engine work, but there is only one thing I don’t understand is that why Kabam doesn’t share this kind of information publicly with us? I remembered they made a thread about how hard to navigate input issue, but from that point they never update anything about this even though it’s clear that this “input issue” haven’t sold just worse!
They did share this information in a couple of posts. However, it is no one's job to monitor the forums and repeat this information. It is also no one's job to provide the background information necessary to frame this information in context, and it would divert huge amounts of time from the developers to do that. On the other hand, I explain this sort of thing for a living and I type extremely quickly.
And if what you thought is true, in other words it means they doesn’t care about what we want here because probably their revenue is still very good I suppose
Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
So the best business model is to shut down after 9 years? Can I ask what class you learned that in?
The company I work has been in business for 86 years. I need to warn them about how they've been doing it wrong for 77 years.
As I said, regarding to the downtrend of Marvel recently or the superhero in general, plus the current condition of this game, if you’re the manager, it makes sense if you monetize the game as much as possible before it is closed. The game is a business model, and from the view of a good manager, it’s right strategy to do it
This is word salad.
I don’t say it’s absolutely true! But what is happening in this game are supporting my opinion. Do you see the downtrend of Marvel, or how the monetary strategy is applied recently?
When I say something is word salad I mean that in the traditional sense of the term: it is a bunch of words seemingly scattered at random without a coherent meaning. English may not be your first language, but I'm factoring that out. But let's try to parse this out.
First of all, you seem to be suggesting that the overall market for Marvel movies is shrinking and this should have a corresponding downward influence on the revenue and interest in MCOC. However, I don't think that premise holds up. It seems to be more internet narrative. Let's take a look at some MCU movie revenues that cover both pre- and post- Endgame MCU movies.
Guardians of the Galaxy released in 2014 and made $333M (US) domestically and $773M worldwide. Guardians 2 released in 2017 and made $390M domestic and $864M worldwide. Post Endgame and post pandemic Guardians 3 made $359M domestic and $845M worldwide. That does not suggest a significant downtrend of interest.
Some would argue that Guardians is a non-representative franchise in the MCU, so let's try another: Dr. Strange. Strange did $233M domestic and $678M worldwide in 2016. Controversial it might have been, Multiverse of Madness did $411M domestic and $956M worldwide in 2022, a sizeable increase.
Black Panther did $700M / $1.3B in 2018. Even losing its main character and star, BP2 still did $453M / $859M.
Even the train wreck that was Quantumania did respectful numbers domestically. Ant Man and the Wasp did $217M / $623M and Quantumania did $215 / $476M.
First time franchise movies also did reasonably well post-Endgame. Shang Chi did $224M / $432M.in 2021. That's about the same or better than the first movies for Thor, Captain America, and Ant Man. And even Black Widow's $183M domestic number has to be taken with a grain of salt, as Disney reported $125M in streaming revenue for that movie that's not included in box office numbers. The only obvious weak spot here would be Eternals which did "only" $400M worldwide.
If we go by revenue and not internet reviews, interest in the MCU in general seems to still be reasonably strong.
We also have to look to gaming history. There were and still are lots of Marvel games out there. When MCOC first launched and for a lot of its existence there were other Marvel mobile or online games. However, even when the MCU was at its peak, many of those games folded. Conversely, even now when supposedly interest is waning, new games are still launching. Throughout that time, MCOC has been relatively stable. Its overall revenue has declined over time from its peak, but if you factor out the Covid lockdown bump, it has been a relatively slow decline. It still takes in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually, and nine years on it is still one of the top revenue streams for Netmarble. In fact, it consistently represents somewhere around 10% of all of Netmarble's total revenue.
When you say "the game is a business model" I have to take a wild guess what you mean by that. You also mention in an earlier post "the life cycle of a product and what specific marketing for each phase" so I'm going to assume you are trying to say that online games follow the basic lifecycle model they teach in business school where products are developed, get put on store shelves, and then eventually become obsolete. However, Games as a Service don't follow that model. They follow a completely different iterative lifecycle model where there is no preplanned obsolescence. Games as a service can die, but traditionally they aren't planned to die.
Some games do try to squeeze as much revenue as possible near the end, but that only hastens their demise, and MCOC is nowhere near that. As mentioned, Netmarble is currently making hundreds of millions of dollars a year on MCOC: if anything they are much more likely to cut costs to maintain profits than squeeze the game too hard for short term profits. Most online games do not go out in a blaze of monetization: they slowly fade until they reach a critical player density and then go into "maintenance mode" where they leave a skeleton crew behind to keep it alive for the die hards while the rest of the resources are redirected to other projects.
Game "managers" (product supervisors and producers, I'm assuming) almost never even have the discretion you're attributing to them. They can't just decide to step on the monetization gas. And even if they had that authority, it is not like they make a percentage of the profits. Game developers do not make money off of monetization. They make salaries, and it is in their best personal interest to manage the game to have the longest possible lifespan, not to make the largest short term profits. If they don't make profits the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. If they squeeze the players for too much profits they will drive those players away and then the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. Their goal is to make enough money for the business to be viable, in a way that the game will attract the most players and engage them for the longest time. They gain nothing from doing anything else.
A smart game manager aims for longevity, not maximal profits.
Your point is very constructive and absolutely correct. It’s correct in normal situation which is not here. As you said above about which may cause the ‘input issue’ in the game Engine, it’s very complicated to fix it or too costly and of course they know it, and the issue is getting worse! That’s why they had to push up the game to monetization as the final cycle of the game which clearly they don’t want it because if they don’t do it people still leaving the game gradually. Every manager indeed want a longevity business model than just a short term squeeze, however I don’t think they have better choice here.
• you guys ask us about game mode, device type, connection type & interaction. BUT in FACT, AI in almost every game mode in game is really hard to deal with at times.
The reason they keep asking for these details is because complaints about the AI getting harder have been continuous for the past four years plus. If all of them were actually correct, the AI would have already taken over the world.
In point of fact, *sometimes* I think I see things when people report them, but 99% of the time I don't. Even when people are saying "everyone" is seeing problems "everywhere" I can't find them on any of the devices I play in any of the game modes. These problems that people think are widespread and obvious aren't. If they were, they would probably be easier to find and eliminate.
To find and fix these problems requires figuring out why you see them and I don't. Or I see them and you don't. If you think the problem should be obvious and all they have to do is "find the bug" and "fix it" then okay, I don't see the problem, so the code doesn't have the problem, so problem solved.
These sporadic complaints almost certainly have to be situational issues, something whose common denominator might be something very subtle. And even when a group of people complain about "AI problems" there's no guarantee they are all complaining about the same problem. It might take a lot of people reporting a lot of problems with a lot of data before they find and address some of these issues, and it may be a lot of tiny ones rather than just one or two big ones.
Or people can just throw up their hands and say that since they aren't seeing any obvious benefit from reporting this data they shouldn't bother, in which case the problems will likely never be found. To me that seems to be shooting one's self in the foot, but all I can do is report what I see when I see it. Maybe that means eventually my issues will be found.
I think many forget that nodes and champion abilities impact how the ai functions on a fight-to-fight basis.
Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
So the best business model is to shut down after 9 years? Can I ask what class you learned that in?
The company I work has been in business for 86 years. I need to warn them about how they've been doing it wrong for 77 years.
As I said, regarding to the downtrend of Marvel recently or the superhero in general, plus the current condition of this game, if you’re the manager, it makes sense if you monetize the game as much as possible before it is closed. The game is a business model, and from the view of a good manager, it’s right strategy to do it
This is word salad.
I don’t say it’s absolutely true! But what is happening in this game are supporting my opinion. Do you see the downtrend of Marvel, or how the monetary strategy is applied recently?
When I say something is word salad I mean that in the traditional sense of the term: it is a bunch of words seemingly scattered at random without a coherent meaning. English may not be your first language, but I'm factoring that out. But let's try to parse this out.
First of all, you seem to be suggesting that the overall market for Marvel movies is shrinking and this should have a corresponding downward influence on the revenue and interest in MCOC. However, I don't think that premise holds up. It seems to be more internet narrative. Let's take a look at some MCU movie revenues that cover both pre- and post- Endgame MCU movies.
Guardians of the Galaxy released in 2014 and made $333M (US) domestically and $773M worldwide. Guardians 2 released in 2017 and made $390M domestic and $864M worldwide. Post Endgame and post pandemic Guardians 3 made $359M domestic and $845M worldwide. That does not suggest a significant downtrend of interest.
Some would argue that Guardians is a non-representative franchise in the MCU, so let's try another: Dr. Strange. Strange did $233M domestic and $678M worldwide in 2016. Controversial it might have been, Multiverse of Madness did $411M domestic and $956M worldwide in 2022, a sizeable increase.
Black Panther did $700M / $1.3B in 2018. Even losing its main character and star, BP2 still did $453M / $859M.
Even the train wreck that was Quantumania did respectful numbers domestically. Ant Man and the Wasp did $217M / $623M and Quantumania did $215 / $476M.
First time franchise movies also did reasonably well post-Endgame. Shang Chi did $224M / $432M.in 2021. That's about the same or better than the first movies for Thor, Captain America, and Ant Man. And even Black Widow's $183M domestic number has to be taken with a grain of salt, as Disney reported $125M in streaming revenue for that movie that's not included in box office numbers. The only obvious weak spot here would be Eternals which did "only" $400M worldwide.
If we go by revenue and not internet reviews, interest in the MCU in general seems to still be reasonably strong.
We also have to look to gaming history. There were and still are lots of Marvel games out there. When MCOC first launched and for a lot of its existence there were other Marvel mobile or online games. However, even when the MCU was at its peak, many of those games folded. Conversely, even now when supposedly interest is waning, new games are still launching. Throughout that time, MCOC has been relatively stable. Its overall revenue has declined over time from its peak, but if you factor out the Covid lockdown bump, it has been a relatively slow decline. It still takes in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually, and nine years on it is still one of the top revenue streams for Netmarble. In fact, it consistently represents somewhere around 10% of all of Netmarble's total revenue.
When you say "the game is a business model" I have to take a wild guess what you mean by that. You also mention in an earlier post "the life cycle of a product and what specific marketing for each phase" so I'm going to assume you are trying to say that online games follow the basic lifecycle model they teach in business school where products are developed, get put on store shelves, and then eventually become obsolete. However, Games as a Service don't follow that model. They follow a completely different iterative lifecycle model where there is no preplanned obsolescence. Games as a service can die, but traditionally they aren't planned to die.
Some games do try to squeeze as much revenue as possible near the end, but that only hastens their demise, and MCOC is nowhere near that. As mentioned, Netmarble is currently making hundreds of millions of dollars a year on MCOC: if anything they are much more likely to cut costs to maintain profits than squeeze the game too hard for short term profits. Most online games do not go out in a blaze of monetization: they slowly fade until they reach a critical player density and then go into "maintenance mode" where they leave a skeleton crew behind to keep it alive for the die hards while the rest of the resources are redirected to other projects.
Game "managers" (product supervisors and producers, I'm assuming) almost never even have the discretion you're attributing to them. They can't just decide to step on the monetization gas. And even if they had that authority, it is not like they make a percentage of the profits. Game developers do not make money off of monetization. They make salaries, and it is in their best personal interest to manage the game to have the longest possible lifespan, not to make the largest short term profits. If they don't make profits the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. If they squeeze the players for too much profits they will drive those players away and then the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. Their goal is to make enough money for the business to be viable, in a way that the game will attract the most players and engage them for the longest time. They gain nothing from doing anything else.
A smart game manager aims for longevity, not maximal profits.
Your point is very constructive and absolutely correct. It’s correct in normal situation which is not here. As you said above about which may cause the ‘input issue’ in the game Engine, it’s very complicated to fix it or too costly and of course they know it, and the issue is getting worse! That’s why they had to push up the game to monetization as the final cycle of the game which clearly they don’t want it because if they don’t do it people still leaving the game gradually. Every manager indeed want a longevity business model than just a short term squeeze, however I don’t think they have better choice here.
Hot off the presses: Netmarble's 2023 Q2 earnings report:
Of note: mcoc accounts for 12% of $457m gross revenue for the quarter, or $54 million usd. In a vacuum, it's fine, but take a good look at three things:
1) it's literally propping up the entire company 2) not pictured: any other kabam offering in the top 10 3) year over year, the game isn't growing.
The role of the "cash cow" is to provide a reliable and steady flow of cash for you to use on other endeavors. Ideally, you crank out other successful revenue streams and continue onward. When you're in the red for 8+ quarters and your EBITDA is 1.8%, you're squeezing the heck out of that one good thing you got going, but you sure as heck are spending as little as possible to keep it running. I'm sure even the board mods know the immense pressure on mcoc to hit revenue targets. Uninformed folks say Hey They Make Millions, but they don't know the parent company's saying You Better Keep It Coming Buddy More More More, We Got 10 New Releases For 2H2023.
How long before the other kabam offerings get shuttered? Not great.
Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
So the best business model is to shut down after 9 years? Can I ask what class you learned that in?
The company I work has been in business for 86 years. I need to warn them about how they've been doing it wrong for 77 years.
As I said, regarding to the downtrend of Marvel recently or the superhero in general, plus the current condition of this game, if you’re the manager, it makes sense if you monetize the game as much as possible before it is closed. The game is a business model, and from the view of a good manager, it’s right strategy to do it
This is word salad.
I don’t say it’s absolutely true! But what is happening in this game are supporting my opinion. Do you see the downtrend of Marvel, or how the monetary strategy is applied recently?
When I say something is word salad I mean that in the traditional sense of the term: it is a bunch of words seemingly scattered at random without a coherent meaning. English may not be your first language, but I'm factoring that out. But let's try to parse this out.
First of all, you seem to be suggesting that the overall market for Marvel movies is shrinking and this should have a corresponding downward influence on the revenue and interest in MCOC. However, I don't think that premise holds up. It seems to be more internet narrative. Let's take a look at some MCU movie revenues that cover both pre- and post- Endgame MCU movies.
Guardians of the Galaxy released in 2014 and made $333M (US) domestically and $773M worldwide. Guardians 2 released in 2017 and made $390M domestic and $864M worldwide. Post Endgame and post pandemic Guardians 3 made $359M domestic and $845M worldwide. That does not suggest a significant downtrend of interest.
Some would argue that Guardians is a non-representative franchise in the MCU, so let's try another: Dr. Strange. Strange did $233M domestic and $678M worldwide in 2016. Controversial it might have been, Multiverse of Madness did $411M domestic and $956M worldwide in 2022, a sizeable increase.
Black Panther did $700M / $1.3B in 2018. Even losing its main character and star, BP2 still did $453M / $859M.
Even the train wreck that was Quantumania did respectful numbers domestically. Ant Man and the Wasp did $217M / $623M and Quantumania did $215 / $476M.
First time franchise movies also did reasonably well post-Endgame. Shang Chi did $224M / $432M.in 2021. That's about the same or better than the first movies for Thor, Captain America, and Ant Man. And even Black Widow's $183M domestic number has to be taken with a grain of salt, as Disney reported $125M in streaming revenue for that movie that's not included in box office numbers. The only obvious weak spot here would be Eternals which did "only" $400M worldwide.
If we go by revenue and not internet reviews, interest in the MCU in general seems to still be reasonably strong.
We also have to look to gaming history. There were and still are lots of Marvel games out there. When MCOC first launched and for a lot of its existence there were other Marvel mobile or online games. However, even when the MCU was at its peak, many of those games folded. Conversely, even now when supposedly interest is waning, new games are still launching. Throughout that time, MCOC has been relatively stable. Its overall revenue has declined over time from its peak, but if you factor out the Covid lockdown bump, it has been a relatively slow decline. It still takes in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually, and nine years on it is still one of the top revenue streams for Netmarble. In fact, it consistently represents somewhere around 10% of all of Netmarble's total revenue.
When you say "the game is a business model" I have to take a wild guess what you mean by that. You also mention in an earlier post "the life cycle of a product and what specific marketing for each phase" so I'm going to assume you are trying to say that online games follow the basic lifecycle model they teach in business school where products are developed, get put on store shelves, and then eventually become obsolete. However, Games as a Service don't follow that model. They follow a completely different iterative lifecycle model where there is no preplanned obsolescence. Games as a service can die, but traditionally they aren't planned to die.
Some games do try to squeeze as much revenue as possible near the end, but that only hastens their demise, and MCOC is nowhere near that. As mentioned, Netmarble is currently making hundreds of millions of dollars a year on MCOC: if anything they are much more likely to cut costs to maintain profits than squeeze the game too hard for short term profits. Most online games do not go out in a blaze of monetization: they slowly fade until they reach a critical player density and then go into "maintenance mode" where they leave a skeleton crew behind to keep it alive for the die hards while the rest of the resources are redirected to other projects.
Game "managers" (product supervisors and producers, I'm assuming) almost never even have the discretion you're attributing to them. They can't just decide to step on the monetization gas. And even if they had that authority, it is not like they make a percentage of the profits. Game developers do not make money off of monetization. They make salaries, and it is in their best personal interest to manage the game to have the longest possible lifespan, not to make the largest short term profits. If they don't make profits the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. If they squeeze the players for too much profits they will drive those players away and then the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. Their goal is to make enough money for the business to be viable, in a way that the game will attract the most players and engage them for the longest time. They gain nothing from doing anything else.
A smart game manager aims for longevity, not maximal profits.
Your point is very constructive and absolutely correct. It’s correct in normal situation which is not here. As you said above about which may cause the ‘input issue’ in the game Engine, it’s very complicated to fix it or too costly and of course they know it, and the issue is getting worse! That’s why they had to push up the game to monetization as the final cycle of the game which clearly they don’t want it because if they don’t do it people still leaving the game gradually. Every manager indeed want a longevity business model than just a short term squeeze, however I don’t think they have better choice here.
Of note: mcoc accounts for 12% of $457m gross revenue for the quarter, or $54 million usd. In a vacuum, it's fine, but take a good look at three things
Honestly surprised mcoc makes more profit than three direct gambling centered games.
I wouldn't doubt that this is why we haven't seen much expansion on quality control, even after these past few months have shown just how needed that might be. If running the game the way they currently are amounts to an overall negative, investing more money into preventing these issues likely isn't happening anytime soon.
First seeing all of these genuinely strange issues popping up, then Vega leaving the CCP beta, I'm not all that hopeful for the direction mcoc is headed. I know it's not suddenly going to fail tomorrow, but I don't see much room being made for improving the product. Quality control is seemingly becoming more and more important, while their current methods are becoming less and less effective. Bleh.
What exactly do you want them to do? Just saying nerf the ai is stupid. A lot of people are fine with the ai and “nerfing” them could cause things to be even more difficult if they change behaviors
What exactly do u want then? Not a single change in current "AI" . Well i guess then AI blocking in mid of special attack is fine. Ai throwing sp just after going down by attacker heavy & throwing sp while laying on ground & you cant even punish them . AI doing 2-3 hit, dash back, repeat & then 5 hit combo to get close to sp3, not throwing sp until sp3 even with Taunt. "Few of things ai being doing in the game recently" I guess that comes under ai "working as intended" category
There are bugs that needs to be . AI should not be blocking in the middle of specials. That's not an AI issue
"AI doing 2-3 hit, dash back, repeat & then 5 hit combo to get close to sp3"
If this is happening to you ,you need to get better
I faced some AI issues 2/3 months ago in bg, like- recovering from stun during sps & heavies, defenders doing sp3 during a combo. But it got fixed after that season. Haven’t faced any issues since last 2 seasons
Watch top players, they face the same issues with the AI in BGs. Anyone telling you to get better should show where they place last season.
Yes the AI is changing. The worse ones for me are:
1. Intimidate and infuriate are broken, 2. Something has changed in Titania’s SP3, 3. Taunt seems hit or miss, 4. Nick Fury’s AI is just schizophrenic, 5. Chavez and Mysterio just go haywire at times. Doom too when he thinks you still have a purified shock.
You’ll hear many pro players say things “bro you’re tainted” in frustration lots of times. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.
Second, from my point of view, I think the second possibility is more viable because there are many better way to make money rather than tweaking the AI. However, they stop updating and responding to any thread about input or AI, regarding how huge data of this game have developed, I don’t think they can fix it or the cost could be too high. So, live with it or just quite the game bro, 9 years old for a mobile game is already too long! In a business model, if any one know about Marketing, this is the final phase, and they will just try to make as much money as possible rather spending to fix anything.
So the best business model is to shut down after 9 years? Can I ask what class you learned that in?
The company I work has been in business for 86 years. I need to warn them about how they've been doing it wrong for 77 years.
As I said, regarding to the downtrend of Marvel recently or the superhero in general, plus the current condition of this game, if you’re the manager, it makes sense if you monetize the game as much as possible before it is closed. The game is a business model, and from the view of a good manager, it’s right strategy to do it
You obviously don't know how anything monetary works in regards to games then.
I appreciate any disagreement but with proof and arguments not just like this
The proof is in the game itself. Almost no games make it as long as mcoc has. 9 years is beyond insane in the mobile game world. And it still makes I think top 3 in money only behind candy crush and clash of clans. So obviously, your very wrong in saying they are just trying to make as much before it dies otherwise the game would have ended years ago. But too many of you think you know everything when you know very little.
Not sure if kabam have seen any posts on how many ppl noticing the change in AI & yet nothing from kabam on this.
• Speed , reflexes, recovery timing, passive & aggressive nature is really inconsistent with AI & too fast at times for human fingers to beat them no matter how much space you have vs them in fight & yet they counter it at the blink of an eye.
• AI currently i would say is really on making game annoying & rage quit level if not "game breaking".
• you guys ask us about game mode, device type, connection type & interaction. BUT in FACT, AI in almost every game mode in game is really hard to deal with at times. . PS: in bgs , we understand there ai uses parry, dex , heavy/special/ intercepts & other mastery related stuff but what about other modes like AQ, Incursions, EQ, Story Quest & others as well. But nothing been done on this & now situation is getting really bad with "AI behaviour" & it won't be wrong to say AI is slowly turning into skynet( for reference) to understand where AI is really going currently within the game.
Not sure if kabam have seen any posts on how many ppl noticing the change in AI & yet nothing from kabam on this.
• Speed , reflexes, recovery timing, passive & aggressive nature is really inconsistent with AI & too fast at times for human fingers to beat them no matter how much space you have vs them in fight & yet they counter it at the blink of an eye.
• AI currently i would say is really on making game annoying & rage quit level if not "game breaking".
• you guys ask us about game mode, device type, connection type & interaction. BUT in FACT, AI in almost every game mode in game is really hard to deal with at times. . PS: in bgs , we understand there ai uses parry, dex , heavy/special/ intercepts & other mastery related stuff but what about other modes like AQ, Incursions, EQ, Story Quest & others as well. But nothing been done on this & now situation is getting really bad with "AI behaviour" & it won't be wrong to say AI is slowly turning into skynet( for reference) to understand where AI is really going currently within the game.
Sounds like you.just aren't very good.
How come ai blocking the sp when he was getting hit at start & then suddenly block the last half. I guess ai speed, recovery, reflexes are fine with you! But there are many who can agree that ai is inconsistent as of lately. If still unsure, go ahead & read ai related posts! I guess you are one of those to accuse others when things are right for you but not for other.
Not sure if kabam have seen any posts on how many ppl noticing the change in AI & yet nothing from kabam on this.
• Speed , reflexes, recovery timing, passive & aggressive nature is really inconsistent with AI & too fast at times for human fingers to beat them no matter how much space you have vs them in fight & yet they counter it at the blink of an eye.
• AI currently i would say is really on making game annoying & rage quit level if not "game breaking".
• you guys ask us about game mode, device type, connection type & interaction. BUT in FACT, AI in almost every game mode in game is really hard to deal with at times. . PS: in bgs , we understand there ai uses parry, dex , heavy/special/ intercepts & other mastery related stuff but what about other modes like AQ, Incursions, EQ, Story Quest & others as well. But nothing been done on this & now situation is getting really bad with "AI behaviour" & it won't be wrong to say AI is slowly turning into skynet( for reference) to understand where AI is really going currently within the game.
Sounds like you.just aren't very good.
How come ai blocking the sp when he was getting hit at start & then suddenly block the last half. I guess ai speed, recovery, reflexes are fine with you! But there are many who can agree that ai is inconsistent as of lately. If still unsure, go ahead & read ai related posts! I guess you are one of those to accuse others when things are right for you but not for other.
Spacing. I can recover from Mephisto's SP1 at the end if he's far enough away and doge the last bit of it.
Not sure if kabam have seen any posts on how many ppl noticing the change in AI & yet nothing from kabam on this.
• Speed , reflexes, recovery timing, passive & aggressive nature is really inconsistent with AI & too fast at times for human fingers to beat them no matter how much space you have vs them in fight & yet they counter it at the blink of an eye.
• AI currently i would say is really on making game annoying & rage quit level if not "game breaking".
• you guys ask us about game mode, device type, connection type & interaction. BUT in FACT, AI in almost every game mode in game is really hard to deal with at times. . PS: in bgs , we understand there ai uses parry, dex , heavy/special/ intercepts & other mastery related stuff but what about other modes like AQ, Incursions, EQ, Story Quest & others as well. But nothing been done on this & now situation is getting really bad with "AI behaviour" & it won't be wrong to say AI is slowly turning into skynet( for reference) to understand where AI is really going currently within the game.
Sounds like you.just aren't very good.
How come ai blocking the sp when he was getting hit at start & then suddenly block the last half. I guess ai speed, recovery, reflexes are fine with you! But there are many who can agree that ai is inconsistent as of lately. If still unsure, go ahead & read ai related posts! I guess you are one of those to accuse others when things are right for you but not for other.
It's champion dependant really. It has to do with the timing of their specials and hitboxes For example, Spidermans Sp1 is able to be dexed depending on how close you're standing to him. Plus i would imagine framerates of phones and the sort would also complicate things with how animations end and time between them etc.
This is also in line with statements Kabam has made in the past which is why they ask for specific information when things like this are reported.
Not sure if kabam have seen any posts on how many ppl noticing the change in AI & yet nothing from kabam on this.
• Speed , reflexes, recovery timing, passive & aggressive nature is really inconsistent with AI & too fast at times for human fingers to beat them no matter how much space you have vs them in fight & yet they counter it at the blink of an eye.
• AI currently i would say is really on making game annoying & rage quit level if not "game breaking".
• you guys ask us about game mode, device type, connection type & interaction. BUT in FACT, AI in almost every game mode in game is really hard to deal with at times. . PS: in bgs , we understand there ai uses parry, dex , heavy/special/ intercepts & other mastery related stuff but what about other modes like AQ, Incursions, EQ, Story Quest & others as well. But nothing been done on this & now situation is getting really bad with "AI behaviour" & it won't be wrong to say AI is slowly turning into skynet( for reference) to understand where AI is really going currently within the game.
Sounds like you.just aren't very good.
How come ai blocking the sp when he was getting hit at start & then suddenly block the last half. I guess ai speed, recovery, reflexes are fine with you! But there are many who can agree that ai is inconsistent as of lately. If still unsure, go ahead & read ai related posts! I guess you are one of those to accuse others when things are right for you but not for other.
It's champion dependant really. It has to do with the timing of their specials and hitboxes For example, Spidermans Sp1 is able to be dexed depending on how close you're standing to him. Plus i would imagine framerates of phones and the sort would also complicate things with how animations end and time between them etc.
This is also in line with statements Kabam has made in the past which is why they ask for specific information when things like this are reported.
These thing happening too often in all game modes .. eq, story quest, arenas & others as wel! Why would i make a post over a issue until it regularly happening & even after device change . Still happening!
Not sure if kabam have seen any posts on how many ppl noticing the change in AI & yet nothing from kabam on this.
• Speed , reflexes, recovery timing, passive & aggressive nature is really inconsistent with AI & too fast at times for human fingers to beat them no matter how much space you have vs them in fight & yet they counter it at the blink of an eye.
• AI currently i would say is really on making game annoying & rage quit level if not "game breaking".
• you guys ask us about game mode, device type, connection type & interaction. BUT in FACT, AI in almost every game mode in game is really hard to deal with at times. . PS: in bgs , we understand there ai uses parry, dex , heavy/special/ intercepts & other mastery related stuff but what about other modes like AQ, Incursions, EQ, Story Quest & others as well. But nothing been done on this & now situation is getting really bad with "AI behaviour" & it won't be wrong to say AI is slowly turning into skynet( for reference) to understand where AI is really going currently within the game.
Sounds like you.just aren't very good.
How come ai blocking the sp when he was getting hit at start & then suddenly block the last half. I guess ai speed, recovery, reflexes are fine with you! But there are many who can agree that ai is inconsistent as of lately. If still unsure, go ahead & read ai related posts! I guess you are one of those to accuse others when things are right for you but not for other.
It's champion dependant really. It has to do with the timing of their specials and hitboxes For example, Spidermans Sp1 is able to be dexed depending on how close you're standing to him. Plus i would imagine framerates of phones and the sort would also complicate things with how animations end and time between them etc.
This is also in line with statements Kabam has made in the past which is why they ask for specific information when things like this are reported.
These thing happening too often in all game modes .. eq, story quest, arenas & others as wel! Why would i make a post over a issue until it regularly happening & even after device change . Still happening!
Nothing i said in my comment contradicts anything you just said or your original point. In no way shape or form did i deny these issues were happening. I just gave an explanation as to why
Comments
Downtime isn't automatically necessary. The logical presumption is that originally the game was designed without the requirement of having zero downtime upgrades and maintenance. This was originally common practice in the online games industry and would have still been common practice when this game was first implemented circa 2014. It is still common practice today. But at some point someone decided to migrate the game backends to a design that did not require downtime maintenance windows, and phased out regular scheduled maintenance downtime.
First of all, you seem to be suggesting that the overall market for Marvel movies is shrinking and this should have a corresponding downward influence on the revenue and interest in MCOC. However, I don't think that premise holds up. It seems to be more internet narrative. Let's take a look at some MCU movie revenues that cover both pre- and post- Endgame MCU movies.
Guardians of the Galaxy released in 2014 and made $333M (US) domestically and $773M worldwide. Guardians 2 released in 2017 and made $390M domestic and $864M worldwide. Post Endgame and post pandemic Guardians 3 made $359M domestic and $845M worldwide. That does not suggest a significant downtrend of interest.
Some would argue that Guardians is a non-representative franchise in the MCU, so let's try another: Dr. Strange. Strange did $233M domestic and $678M worldwide in 2016. Controversial it might have been, Multiverse of Madness did $411M domestic and $956M worldwide in 2022, a sizeable increase.
Black Panther did $700M / $1.3B in 2018. Even losing its main character and star, BP2 still did $453M / $859M.
Even the train wreck that was Quantumania did respectful numbers domestically. Ant Man and the Wasp did $217M / $623M and Quantumania did $215 / $476M.
First time franchise movies also did reasonably well post-Endgame. Shang Chi did $224M / $432M.in 2021. That's about the same or better than the first movies for Thor, Captain America, and Ant Man. And even Black Widow's $183M domestic number has to be taken with a grain of salt, as Disney reported $125M in streaming revenue for that movie that's not included in box office numbers. The only obvious weak spot here would be Eternals which did "only" $400M worldwide.
If we go by revenue and not internet reviews, interest in the MCU in general seems to still be reasonably strong.
We also have to look to gaming history. There were and still are lots of Marvel games out there. When MCOC first launched and for a lot of its existence there were other Marvel mobile or online games. However, even when the MCU was at its peak, many of those games folded. Conversely, even now when supposedly interest is waning, new games are still launching. Throughout that time, MCOC has been relatively stable. Its overall revenue has declined over time from its peak, but if you factor out the Covid lockdown bump, it has been a relatively slow decline. It still takes in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually, and nine years on it is still one of the top revenue streams for Netmarble. In fact, it consistently represents somewhere around 10% of all of Netmarble's total revenue.
When you say "the game is a business model" I have to take a wild guess what you mean by that. You also mention in an earlier post "the life cycle of a product and what specific marketing for each phase" so I'm going to assume you are trying to say that online games follow the basic lifecycle model they teach in business school where products are developed, get put on store shelves, and then eventually become obsolete. However, Games as a Service don't follow that model. They follow a completely different iterative lifecycle model where there is no preplanned obsolescence. Games as a service can die, but traditionally they aren't planned to die.
Some games do try to squeeze as much revenue as possible near the end, but that only hastens their demise, and MCOC is nowhere near that. As mentioned, Netmarble is currently making hundreds of millions of dollars a year on MCOC: if anything they are much more likely to cut costs to maintain profits than squeeze the game too hard for short term profits. Most online games do not go out in a blaze of monetization: they slowly fade until they reach a critical player density and then go into "maintenance mode" where they leave a skeleton crew behind to keep it alive for the die hards while the rest of the resources are redirected to other projects.
Game "managers" (product supervisors and producers, I'm assuming) almost never even have the discretion you're attributing to them. They can't just decide to step on the monetization gas. And even if they had that authority, it is not like they make a percentage of the profits. Game developers do not make money off of monetization. They make salaries, and it is in their best personal interest to manage the game to have the longest possible lifespan, not to make the largest short term profits. If they don't make profits the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. If they squeeze the players for too much profits they will drive those players away and then the game shuts down and they have to go find other jobs. Their goal is to make enough money for the business to be viable, in a way that the game will attract the most players and engage them for the longest time. They gain nothing from doing anything else.
A smart game manager aims for longevity, not maximal profits.
https://mcompany.netmarble.com/en/invest/library
Of note: mcoc accounts for 12% of $457m gross revenue for the quarter, or $54 million usd. In a vacuum, it's fine, but take a good look at three things:
1) it's literally propping up the entire company
2) not pictured: any other kabam offering in the top 10
3) year over year, the game isn't growing.
The role of the "cash cow" is to provide a reliable and steady flow of cash for you to use on other endeavors. Ideally, you crank out other successful revenue streams and continue onward. When you're in the red for 8+ quarters and your EBITDA is 1.8%, you're squeezing the heck out of that one good thing you got going, but you sure as heck are spending as little as possible to keep it running. I'm sure even the board mods know the immense pressure on mcoc to hit revenue targets. Uninformed folks say Hey They Make Millions, but they don't know the parent company's saying You Better Keep It Coming Buddy More More More, We Got 10 New Releases For 2H2023.
How long before the other kabam offerings get shuttered? Not great.
I wouldn't doubt that this is why we haven't seen much expansion on quality control, even after these past few months have shown just how needed that might be. If running the game the way they currently are amounts to an overall negative, investing more money into preventing these issues likely isn't happening anytime soon.
First seeing all of these genuinely strange issues popping up, then Vega leaving the CCP beta, I'm not all that hopeful for the direction mcoc is headed. I know it's not suddenly going to fail tomorrow, but I don't see much room being made for improving the product. Quality control is seemingly becoming more and more important, while their current methods are becoming less and less effective. Bleh.
"AI doing 2-3 hit, dash back, repeat & then 5 hit combo to get close to sp3"
If this is happening to you ,you need to get better
But it got fixed after that season. Haven’t faced any issues since last 2 seasons
Yes the AI is changing. The worse ones for me are:
1. Intimidate and infuriate are broken,
2. Something has changed in Titania’s SP3,
3. Taunt seems hit or miss,
4. Nick Fury’s AI is just schizophrenic,
5. Chavez and Mysterio just go haywire at times. Doom too when he thinks you still have a purified shock.
You’ll hear many pro players say things “bro you’re tainted” in frustration lots of times. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.
I guess ai speed, recovery, reflexes are fine with you! But there are many who can agree that ai is inconsistent as of lately.
If still unsure, go ahead & read ai related posts!
I guess you are one of those to accuse others when things are right for you but not for other.
Plus i would imagine framerates of phones and the sort would also complicate things with how animations end and time between them etc.
This is also in line with statements Kabam has made in the past which is why they ask for specific information when things like this are reported.
Why would i make a post over a issue until it regularly happening & even after device change . Still happening!