Unblockable for bosses (and in general) is just lazy

I understand I'm in a small minority here but I'd like to point out that the use, and objectively overuse of, unblockable for any defender, but especially in quests, is just lazy quest design. Look, I'm never going to be the greatest player, and I don't mind having to use revives and health pots, but I do expect a game to be fun, not frustrating.

I realize that the devs at Kabam care about revenue first, but fun should be goal #1. When I'm having fun, I spend. When I'm frustrated, I leave the game for a few days and definitely don't spend even when I come back. I'm not asking for easy, just a lot more thought about nodes, the champs you're putting on those nodes, and to highlight that unblockable has become a go to node or champ to put in places that you want to trip people up so they have to use/buy resources.

Comments

Ruwqiersa

Bro definitly died to some boss with unblockable node

Ortoun

If you can have them be unblockable the whole fight, then Miles is a great cheese option, just need to get them to launch a special then just heavy in the corner forever

DNA3000

I understand I'm in a small minority here but I'd like to point out that the use, and objectively overuse of, unblockable for any defender, but especially in quests, is just lazy quest design. Look, I'm never going to be the greatest player, and I don't mind having to use revives and health pots, but I do expect a game to be fun, not frustrating.

I realize that the devs at Kabam care about revenue first, but fun should be goal #1. When I'm having fun, I spend. When I'm frustrated, I leave the game for a few days and definitely don't spend even when I come back. I'm not asking for easy, just a lot more thought about nodes, the champs you're putting on those nodes, and to highlight that unblockable has become a go to node or champ to put in places that you want to trip people up so they have to use/buy resources.

What node would you prefer killed you?

I ask because when you say the devs are being lazy and you expect them to put more thought into the design of fights, I get the impression that "put more thought" translates into "so I don't die." So I'm curious: would you feel better about dying to some other kind of node combination, or do you think the devs need to put more thought into making sure you survive?

Also nobody "has to" buy resources. I say this because statistically speaking, over 90% of all players of the game do not spend and have never spent. The mobile game spending conversion rate hovers around 5% or less, and MCOC is typical in this regard. Most of the players don't spend cash on *anything* much less potions and revives. They might grind for them, or even spend units they gathered within the game for free, but they don't spend.

The #1 goal for mobile game developers is engagement. Not spending, not some nebulous idea of "fun" but engagement. Do people want to play the game, and do they want to come back and play more. Without engagement there is no fun and there is no revenue. Frustrating content does not improve engagement in general, but boring content kills it faster than anything. What would be perfectly tuned difficulty for you would probably bore a lot of other players to tears and cause them to quit. Content has to be balanced for the general case across the entire playerbase. Higher tier content gets more difficult, because the longer a player plays the more likely they are to have acquired the skills that make lesser content too boring to keep them engaged.

Pikolu

Yeah I agree with you, I too want to see more slashed tires in the game.

doctorb

If you can have them be unblockable the whole fight, then Miles is a great cheese option, just need to get them to launch a special then just heavy in the corner forever

Spider man miles morales is great against unblockable specials. Just stand there and smile

Yaga

....stuff

Totally agree DNA, except for the engagement part...well kind of. Yes, they want engagement, like any other social app but they still need to follow good game design to get that engagement. A game that isn't entertaining won't be engaging. And to answer you question, root. I quite like dying to the root mechanic.

Where do you get your 90% of players don't spend info? I'd like see what other data there's available to poke around in.

Pikolu

Totally agree DNA, except for the engagement part...well kind of. Yes, they want engagement, like any other social app but they still need to follow good game design to get that engagement. A game that isn't entertaining won't be engaging. And to answer you question, root. I quite like dying to the root mechanic.

Where do you get your 90% of players don't spend info? I'd like see what other data there's available to poke around in.

DNA has real experience in the mobile game industry, if there is someone who I would trust knows what they're talking about, it is definitely them.

Yaga

If you can have them be unblockable the whole fight, then Miles is a great cheese option, just need to get them to launch a special then just heavy in the corner forever
Spider man miles morales is great against unblockable specials. Just stand there and smile

True, I guess it's not that bad to automatically know you've got a specific go-to champ for the situation.

Yaga

DNA has real experience in the mobile game industry, if there is someone who I would trust knows what they're talking about, it is definitely them.

Trust but verify. If you can't produce the data, it's just words. It's nice that someone speaking up for him though.

Shivacrux

I understand I'm in a small minority here but I'd like to point out that the use, and objectively overuse of, unblockable for any defender, but especially in quests, is just lazy quest design. Look, I'm never going to be the greatest player, and I don't mind having to use revives and health pots, but I do expect a game to be fun, not frustrating.

I realize that the devs at Kabam care about revenue first, but fun should be goal #1. When I'm having fun, I spend. When I'm frustrated, I leave the game for a few days and definitely don't spend even when I come back. I'm not asking for easy, just a lot more thought about nodes, the champs you're putting on those nodes, and to highlight that unblockable has become a go to node or champ to put in places that you want to trip people up so they have to use/buy resources.
What node would you prefer killed you?

I ask because when you say the devs are being lazy and you expect them to put more thought into the design of fights, I get the impression that "put more thought" translates into "so I don't die." So I'm curious: would you feel better about dying to some other kind of node combination, or do you think the devs need to put more thought into making sure you survive?

Also nobody "has to" buy resources. I say this because statistically speaking, over 90% of all players of the game do not spend and have never spent. The mobile game spending conversion rate hovers around 5% or less, and MCOC is typical in this regard. Most of the players don't spend cash on *anything* much less potions and revives. They might grind for them, or even spend units they gathered within the game for free, but they don't spend.

The #1 goal for mobile game developers is engagement. Not spending, not some nebulous idea of "fun" but engagement. Do people want to play the game, and do they want to come back and play more. Without engagement there is no fun and there is no revenue. Frustrating content does not improve engagement in general, but boring content kills it faster than anything. What would be perfectly tuned difficulty for you would probably bore a lot of other players to tears and cause them to quit. Content has to be balanced for the general case across the entire playerbase. Higher tier content gets more difficult, because the longer a player plays the more likely they are to have acquired the skills that make lesser content too boring to keep them engaged.

Slashed tires maybe

Zuro

I understand I'm in a small minority here but I'd like to point out that the use, and objectively overuse of, unblockable for any defender, but especially in quests, is just lazy quest design. Look, I'm never going to be the greatest player, and I don't mind having to use revives and health pots, but I do expect a game to be fun, not frustrating.

I realize that the devs at Kabam care about revenue first, but fun should be goal #1. When I'm having fun, I spend. When I'm frustrated, I leave the game for a few days and definitely don't spend even when I come back. I'm not asking for easy, just a lot more thought about nodes, the champs you're putting on those nodes, and to highlight that unblockable has become a go to node or champ to put in places that you want to trip people up so they have to use/buy resources.

I agree every fight in the game should just have life transfer 👍

RiderofHell

Having unblockable nodes isn't annoying as almost every other new champ if not every 3 or 4 champs is suddenly gifted unstoppable or unblockable heck even both. Now we have 3 champs who have untouchable mechanic which won't stop there because i see this mechanic becoming more annoying then US and UB combined.

Vegeta9001

Give me unblockable every day of the week over the protectron fetish they had for a few months.

Squirrelguy

If only there were some way to counter unblockable. It is such a hard ability to get around. Too bad there aren't mechanisms for regaining health, or not losing health, or that stop you from getting knocked out, or allowing you to dodge hits (or AI to catch you when you mess up), or making you impossible to hit, or reducing damage from hits, or any of those things.

Entirely unveiled sarcasm aside, unblockable can indeed be annoying. That being said, it really isn't a bad game design. One of the best things about unblockable is that (depending on the situation, of course) it inevitable forces me to get better at evading attacks when I haven't specifically planned for an encounter. It would be much worse game design if there weren't a plethora of ways to plan around it.

You don't seem to want help as much as you want to vent (understandable sometimes), but if you want any advice on how to make the game less frustrating for certain encounters/bosses, I'd be more than happy to help.

BigBlueOx

My only observation on this is the correlation between increased use of “unblockable” and decreased use of reliable inputs

MiniMF

isnt gwen also viable against unblockable defenders ?

Thi101

isnt gwen also viable against unblockable defenders ?

She is
I don’t think it reaches 100%, but her evade chances skyrocket against unblockable specials

MaxGaming

I understand I'm in a small minority here but I'd like to point out that the use, and objectively overuse of, unblockable for any defender, but especially in quests, is just lazy quest design. Look, I'm never going to be the greatest player, and I don't mind having to use revives and health pots, but I do expect a game to be fun, not frustrating.

I realize that the devs at Kabam care about revenue first, but fun should be goal #1. When I'm having fun, I spend. When I'm frustrated, I leave the game for a few days and definitely don't spend even when I come back. I'm not asking for easy, just a lot more thought about nodes, the champs you're putting on those nodes, and to highlight that unblockable has become a go to node or champ to put in places that you want to trip people up so they have to use/buy resources.

While lazy what would you rather, unblockables or unstoppable

Buttehrs

Unblockable doesn't usually mean undexable though.

LilMaddogHT

You know what is really funny about all this...?

The Steady Buildup Unblockable shouldn't even be on the boss node anymore... It should be Opportunist.

During the prior offseason - which seemed like eternity (actually it was

) - the Boss node was reverted back to Steady Buildup Unblockable. As of Season 40 (so for 3 seasons: 40, 41, 42), that node was swapped for the Opportunist node. This made the boss really start to hit like a truck as the Adaptive buffs started to stack up.

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/326719/alliance-war-season-40-changelog#latest

I clearly remember this because it was like the 2nd original offseason war (way back in mid June) and I wanted to test Thing as an attacker to combat Opportunist node with a Nova boss. Mid fight, the protection wasn't triggering as expected and I did finish it out regardless but I was disappointed that my test failed simply because the node was reverted unknowingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxMLSeTGWig

RiderofHell

Unblockable doesn't usually mean undexable though.

Photon is ready for her close up. 🤣

Buttehrs

Unblockable doesn't usually mean undexable though.
Photon is ready for her close up. 🤣

Hmmm I never let her throw an sp2 whenever I fought her in incursions and I didn't have any problems.

DNA3000

....stuff
Totally agree DNA, except for the engagement part...well kind of. Yes, they want engagement, like any other social app but they still need to follow good game design to get that engagement. A game that isn't entertaining won't be engaging. And to answer you question, root. I quite like dying to the root mechanic.

Engagement is a science. It is something you can design for. Fun is not a science. There's no fun school in game design. If fun was something you could design for, everyone would do it and there would be no unfun games.

There's an analog in architecture. You can teach someone how to make a building structurally sound. That's a science, and it is something you explicitly design for. However, you cannot teach someone how to make a building beautiful. Architects want to design beautiful buildings, it is one of their goals, but it is generally an aspirational goal not a specific process goal, because there's no such thing as a process for adding beauty to a building's design. Beauty is more of an emergent property of the entire design that requires artistry. But it is not a bullseye you can actually aim for directly.

It is possible to add features almost everyone would agree are not fun or impair fun. But it is not possible in the general case to do the opposite: add features that everyone would agree are fun, because fun is not in the pieces of the game but the game as a whole. Dying is not fun. But remove dying from the game and it becomes boring, and thus not fun. Fun is in the whole, not in the parts.

Where do you get your 90% of players don't spend info? I'd like see what other data there's available to poke around in.

Everywhere, actually. Mobile game monetization conversion rates are quoted in many googleable places (search for mobile game conversion rates), and then there are conversations I've had with game operators that confirm the broad strokes of those numbers.

Monetization and game revenue models is not an easy conversation to have on the internet in general, because in general those people do not expose themselves to public forums. But get a few drinks in them and mention "World of Warcraft" and "South Korea" and you'll get an education. Or at least that's how I did it back in the day. Today, "predatory monetization" would probably do the trick. But only after the fourth tequila.

Actual data from actual games is generally considered extremely proprietary. So for the most part, you'll get the industry average numbers publicly, and off the record whisper numbers privately, and that's it unless you decide to become a monetization specialist in the games industry.

DNA3000

I understand I'm in a small minority here but I'd like to point out that the use, and objectively overuse of, unblockable for any defender, but especially in quests, is just lazy quest design. Look, I'm never going to be the greatest player, and I don't mind having to use revives and health pots, but I do expect a game to be fun, not frustrating.

I realize that the devs at Kabam care about revenue first, but fun should be goal #1. When I'm having fun, I spend. When I'm frustrated, I leave the game for a few days and definitely don't spend even when I come back. I'm not asking for easy, just a lot more thought about nodes, the champs you're putting on those nodes, and to highlight that unblockable has become a go to node or champ to put in places that you want to trip people up so they have to use/buy resources.
I agree every fight in the game should just have life transfer 👍

I put Life Transfer on the Boss Rush fight I designed in 2019. Of course, I put it on Invisible Woman when she was still relatively new, so some people struggled with that, but it is possible to make an interesting fight with Life Transfer. Probably moreso for the typical player than top tier players though.

Thi101

>I put Life Transfer on the Boss Rush fight I designed in 2019. Of course, I put it on Invisible Woman when she was still relatively new, so some people struggled with that, but it is possible to make an interesting fight with Life Transfer. Probably moreso for the typical player than top tier players though.

I made a little challenge like a few days ago suggesting players to design a boss fight (no one participated lmao)
And I think I did a nice job with it.
I’m saying this cause I used Life Transfer, but paired it with Power Shield, so your basic attacks did no damage.
On top of that made the opponent go unstoppable everytime they filled a bar of power (custom node)
I think it would make a pretty fun fight
Easy, sure, but fun

I kinda agree with OP that Unblockable just for Unblockable’s sake is kinda meh, but personally because I find it boring, and it doesn’t really add that much challenge (depending on the champion the node is on)

Go_To

Unblockable, unstoppable, protection. Kabams three rules to creating an easy quest

DNA3000

>I put Life Transfer on the Boss Rush fight I designed in 2019. Of course, I put it on Invisible Woman when she was still relatively new, so some people struggled with that, but it is possible to make an interesting fight with Life Transfer. Probably moreso for the typical player than top tier players though.
I made a little challenge like a few days ago suggesting players to design a boss fight (no one participated lmao)
And I think I did a nice job with it.
I’m saying this cause I used Life Transfer, but paired it with Power Shield, so your basic attacks did no damage.
On top of that made the opponent go unstoppable everytime they filled a bar of power (custom node)
I think it would make a pretty fun fight
Easy, sure, but fun

My design was Invisible Woman with Cornered + Power Struggle + Life Transfer. See here for the details.

In there I also mentioned what I thought would be a nightmare (but still doable) fight for 2019: Power Struggle, Power Shield, Destructive Feedback, all on Korg. Even today I think that would be a fight that would get me death threats if I were to design in a boss rush (but stronger modern players would probably have a decent time fighting).

Bugmat78

Variety is the spice of life. It would be nice to not see the "same 3 nodes/attributes" in 75% of new content or champs. Alternate every other month maybe.

Thi101

My design was Invisible Woman with Cornered + Power Struggle + Life Transfer. See here for the details.

In there I also mentioned what I thought would be a nightmare (but still doable) fight for 2019: Power Struggle, Power Shield, Destructive Feedback, all on Korg. Even today I think that would be a fight that would get me death threats if I were to design in a boss rush (but stronger modern players would probably have a decent time fighting).

Yes! I do remember it from back in the day. I got to read it when you first posted it.
I’ll leave mine here too if you want to take a look. It’s definitely not as intricately designed as yours, but it was still fun to make regardless.
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/345222/design-boss-challenge

It should be the first comment on the post

Yaga

Having unblockable nodes isn't annoying as almost every other new champ if not every 3 or 4 champs is suddenly gifted unstoppable or unblockable heck even both. Now we have 3 champs who have untouchable mechanic which won't stop there because i see this mechanic becoming more annoying then US and UB combined.
I understand I'm in a small minority here but I'd like to point out that the use, and objectively overuse of, unblockable for any defender, but especially in quests, is just lazy quest design. Look, I'm never going to be the greatest player, and I don't mind having to use revives and health pots, but I do expect a game to be fun, not frustrating.

I realize that the devs at Kabam care about revenue first, but fun should be goal #1. When I'm having fun, I spend. When I'm frustrated, I leave the game for a few days and definitely don't spend even when I come back. I'm not asking for easy, just a lot more thought about nodes, the champs you're putting on those nodes, and to highlight that unblockable has become a go to node or champ to put in places that you want to trip people up so they have to use/buy resources.
While lazy what would you rather, unblockables or unstoppable

I actually don't mind unstoppable except when the AI get unstoppable while I'm mid-5 hit combo and it ends up wrecking me. Even then, I'm not that upset about it.

As someone mentioned, I did want to vent a bit but I will stick to my opinion that it's lazy game design and that's coming from someone that has a background in cognitive psychology and game design. With all due respect to DNA3000, yes you can design for fun to a general degree.