Kabam continue to wet the bed

Rookiie · March 16

Also, I am sorry for being a bit hostile towards you in some of my comments - not my intention but debates can get a bit heated sometimes
@GroundedWisdom
@BringPopcorn
@Drago_von_Drago

GroundedWisdom · March 16

All good.

BringPopcorn · March 16

Love h

Rookiie said:
Also, I am sorry for being a bit hostile towards you in some of my comments - not my intention but debates can get a bit heated sometimes
@GroundedWisdom
@BringPopcorn
@Drago_von_Drago

Its ok I got thick skin.
I kinda get it from your perspective; it is flawed i am not denying that; but its the only way to make sure people who moved a progression can get credit.
Imagine having 40 points in TB and not being able to gain anymore points and instead start the Paragon one...

klobberintyme · March 17

Rookiie said:
Also, I am sorry for being a bit hostile towards you in some of my comments - not my intention but debates can get a bit heated sometimes
@GroundedWisdom
@BringPopcorn
@Drago_von_Drago

Personally I'd word the complaint as follows:

Dear Brian O/Simon C,

Great work on the game, the design is top-notch. However, incidents like this tend to cause confusion and dismay amongst users, especially when it appears to be a procedural oversight. Going forward, it would be beneficial to the player base that these issues be addressed accordingly. Please let me know who this could be forwarded to for best results.

Thanks in advance,

Klob Berrintyme

Bugmat78 · March 17

BringPopcorn said:
Love h
Rookiie said:
Also, I am sorry for being a bit hostile towards you in some of my comments - not my intention but debates can get a bit heated sometimes
@GroundedWisdom
@BringPopcorn
@Drago_von_Drago
Its ok I got thick skin.
I kinda get it from your perspective; it is flawed i am not denying that; but its the only way to make sure people who moved a progression can get credit.
Imagine having 40 points in TB and not being able to gain anymore points and instead start the Paragon one...

It was definitely the best solution they could provide at the time, and solves the real issue (people getting stuck halfway due ti progression)..but ultimately an oversight on their part not foreseeing this might have happened. Hopefully this incident will ensure it won't in the future.

DrZola · March 17

DNA3000 said:

Rookiie said:

ahmynuts said:

DNA3000 said:

Suros_moon said:

DrZola said:

BringPopcorn said:

n00bslayer47 said:
just shows how little thought goes into these events now. Theres no reason a event should be released where its impossible to achieve all the miles stones. The lack of QA at kabam is beyond frustrating due to their long track record of releasing incomplete events like this.

Additionally, how is starting off at 0 "ensuring you leave where you left off". Overall a very poor execution. Kabam seems to be really toeing the line for what they can get away with and what players wont tolerate.
Its not impossible, it can be done but its time consuming
Time is an irrelevant resource in game.

Dr. Zola
Which makes it doubly hilarious that they hard code the reward distribution just to make sure we sign in daily…
It is kinda funny in the sense that I can see "time is irrelevant" is becoming the next "Cyclops is the most effective champion" but as I get older I actually find these sorts of telephone game memes less and less amusing, given they are a reflection of a lot of what's wrong with the world today.

Zola, I'm sure, understands the issue, and just enjoys needling the devs, the community, and the Earth in general. And we'll both be dead before humanity's brain damage crosses the Idiocracy threshold.
I disagree with you about the similarities between the two phrases. The Cyclops one is a meme because he's so bad, so it was inherently funny when that was said.
The "time is irrelevant" is the reverse of that, in my opinion, where something so unbelievable, so negative, so shocking was said by employees of the game we all play to our faces. It was the worst, most hateful comment they could have ever thrown our way, and it's one of those things where people see it and can't help but laugh in disbelief. It's much different from Cyclops.

That’s a great point actually.

When Miike announced that Cyclops was effective in AW, it came from a statistical standpoint. The community’s reaction was petty, but also understandable given that Cyclops is in fact an ineffective champion. The comment from Kabam was factual and neutral in its nature.

When Jax defended Kabam’s decision on the WoW energy cost, he was also being factual - the high energy cost was justified. However, he was fundamentally incorrect by stating ‘time is not a relevant resource in the game’s economical balance.’ Time is the underlying current and heartbeat of the game’s economical balance. Time is implemented, measured, accounted for, rewarded and penalized across the entire game. While not a hateful comment, it was definitely naive, not neutral and frankly, borderline insulting.

The common denominator here is that @DNA3000 is right - both memes reflect things that are wrong in the world today - just on opposite sides of the spectrum.

More importantly, what I do think @DNA3000 missed is a shot at @Suros_moon ’s definition of hard coding, which could have potentially started a sweet sequel to their debut showdown on the ‘crystals are rigged’ thread.
Actually, what I meant is that in both cases, statements were taken out of context and then warped to the point of no longer meaning what they originally meant, but people like the misattributed meaning more than the original one because it fits their own preconceptions more.

When Miike made his original "Cyclops effective" statement he didn't say Cyclops was an effective champion. He said Cyclops was an effective champion for those who used him. That's a subtle but important difference. If you say "Cyclops is a very effective champion" the impllication is that he's an effective champion compared to all other champions. That's the natural inference. But when you say he's effective for the players using him, you're saying something different. You're saying the people who use him get done what they want to get done. Cyclops might be the worst champion in the game, but if the players who use them complete the content they are using him for, he is effective in the sense that he does the job for those players. And that's was true then and true now.

Today, I think the playerbase is more used to the idea that there are so many champs and so many ways to play them, that a player can have a favorite champ that runs counter to conventional wisdom and still get the job done. If my favorite champ is Agent Venom or Rogue or Howard the Duck, it is entirely possible that I play that champ so much, I'm just comfortable enough with that champ to do all the content I want to do. They are effective for me. And this is important when it comes to balancing champs, because we have to always consider that even if a champion is not well loved by the majority, that doesn't mean we should change them in ways that the people who do use them and like them are just ignored. This was brought up most directly during the rebalancing processes for Guillotine and Hood. But when Miike first made his Cyclops statement, those discussions were not yet commonplace.

More recently, Jax stated that player time was not a relevant resource for balancing, but that was within the context of high difficulty content. When Kabam is designing content intended to test player skill, they obviously do not factor in the time it takes to do the content as part of the overall parameters of how to balance rewards for that content, because the reason for that content to exist is to test player skill. If you design the rewards to factor in time spent, then those rewards are not being given for the difficulty challenge. This makes total sense.

If MSD does a Woe fight and solos it on the first try, and I take fifty tries to do it, should Kabam somehow acknowledge the time I spent on it? Should I get more rewards than MSD because I spent more time on it? Of course not: that would be rewarding incompetence. But should I get less rewards? Well, if my rewards dropped the more tries I took, the incentive value of those rewards would drop steadily, until they became so low they ceased to be an incentive to even continue trying, which is not, in general, what you want your content rewards to do. Instead, I spend more energy and I spend more revives, because while my rewards are the same, there's a cost associated with not being as good. Instead of getting less rewards, I experience a higher cost. In that way, MSD is rewarded for having higher skill than me, but that reward is designed as a cost to me, not a loss of rewards from me. That prevents the death spiral of rewards dropping for me until those rewards become too low to incentivize me to even bother trying. Because they stay the same, and because the costs of trying over and over are sunk costs, the rewards still provide the same incentive value. This is usually a smart design decision.

But when players claim that Jax is saying that literally Kabam does not factor in player time at all with no context, that's ridiculous. In any communication between people, there's a certain amount of slack you have to cut each other, because if you force people to express everything perfectly and without any ambiguity or context, you get, well, my posts. It should be obvious to anyone being a reasonable reader that Jax could not have meant that Kabam does not value player time at all, because there's obvious counter-examples where that is false. The arena rewards are balanced primarily around the time players spend in it grinding. The calendars are designed to promote time engagement with the game - to encourage players to log in and spend time in the game. Kabam changed the way Dungeons worked, replacing them with Incursions, in part because of concerns regarding player burn out, a concern about how players were spending time in the game mode.

Time is an important factor in the design of any game: how much players spend and how they spend it. But time spent on a specific activity is not always a factor in how its difficulty or rewards are designed. That is, or at least should be, both obvious and reasonable. Kabam can care about something in general, but completely ignore it in specific limited circumstances when it is inappropriate to consider it with any weight compared to all other concerns in that circumstance. We don't really factor skill into arena rewards: it is difficult to squeeze more rewards out of the arena with any level of skill. There's a minimum threshold to actually do it, but then beyond that you're just rewarded for the amount of grind you do, not how skillfully you do it. And in fact, Kabam has resisted calls in the past to add skill elements to the arena, because that would be inappropriate.

The memes persist because it fits with the perceptions of many that Kabam developers a) have no idea how champions work, and b) could care less about the well-being and challenges of their playerbase. So there's no need to find out if Kabam ever said those things, and if so in what context.

As to the "hard coded" thing. In general, I wouldn't describe most of the player-facing parts of the game to be "hard coded" as they are almost always data driven. Which is to say, change the data fed into the game engine, and those things change. The random number generator algorithm is something you could say is likely "hard coded" because the game is almost certainly using a language random library. It didn't implement its own RNG, so the algorithm within the RNG is "hard coded." It can't be altered by the developers without fundamentally altering the programming of the game itself.

I vote the next phrase to be memed is the forgotten Jax classic “we will use the power of data.”

Seeing as I’ve still got a mini waiting on that awesome *power* to fix the missing days on its Valentines Calendar, I figure it safe to assume the power of data is what’s being used to address all kinds of things in game…AI, striker malfunction, lag, etc.

Dr. Zola

I_tell_no_tales_1 · March 17

BringPopcorn said:

n00bslayer47 said:
just shows how little thought goes into these events now. Theres no reason a event should be released where its impossible to achieve all the miles stones. The lack of QA at kabam is beyond frustrating due to their long track record of releasing incomplete events like this.

Additionally, how is starting off at 0 "ensuring you leave where you left off". Overall a very poor execution. Kabam seems to be really toeing the line for what they can get away with and what players wont tolerate.
Its not impossible, it can be done but its time consuming

And that apparently is too much of a cost for keeping the game working without new bugs and issues popping every single fix

DrZola · March 18

Just some standard EQ whackery:

Chavez managing to whiff her third hit on a heavy in 2.1 EQ (against P99, not an evade champ or node) and Bishop having his Sp1 interrupted by Korgs Sp3 in the same quest.

Nothing to see here, please disperse…

Dr. Zola

ahmynuts · March 18

klobberintyme said:

Rookiie said:
Also, I am sorry for being a bit hostile towards you in some of my comments - not my intention but debates can get a bit heated sometimes
@GroundedWisdom
@BringPopcorn
@Drago_von_Drago
Personally I'd word the complaint as follows:

Dear Brian O/Simon C,

Great work on the game, the design is top-notch. However, incidents like this tend to cause confusion and dismay amongst users, especially when it appears to be a procedural oversight. Going forward, it would be beneficial to the player base that these issues be addressed accordingly. Please let me know who this could be forwarded to for best results.

Thanks in advance,

Klob Berrintyme

Klob Berrintyme made me laugh way harder than it had any right to

laserjohn26 · March 18

You don't have to do all content in game. You actually don't have to do any.

Rookiie · March 18

laserjohn26 said:
You don't have to do all content in game. You actually don't have to do any.

DrZola · March 19

DrZola said:
Just some standard EQ whackery:

Chavez managing to whiff her third hit on a heavy in 2.1 EQ (against P99, not an evade champ or node) and Bishop having his Sp1 interrupted by Korgs Sp3 in the same quest.

Nothing to see here, please disperse…

Dr. Zola

Morning whackery diary entry:

DPX gains Spidey evade in EQ 1.1–after heavy knockdown against wall, somehow manages to evade second heavy as he’s getting back up and subsequently engineers a triple dex of attempted Venom combo.

Screen freeze missed the entirety of Capt. Britain Sp1. Luckily, the game registered my block just prior to screen freeze and I found my champ standing there blocking post-freeze.

Full WiFi bars, no issues with any other app. Only you, MCoC.

Dr. Zola

Warlockjr · March 19

DrZola said:

BringPopcorn said:

n00bslayer47 said:
just shows how little thought goes into these events now. Theres no reason a event should be released where its impossible to achieve all the miles stones. The lack of QA at kabam is beyond frustrating due to their long track record of releasing incomplete events like this.

Additionally, how is starting off at 0 "ensuring you leave where you left off". Overall a very poor execution. Kabam seems to be really toeing the line for what they can get away with and what players wont tolerate.
Its not impossible, it can be done but its time consuming
Time is an irrelevant resource in game.

Dr. Zola

It really is lmao

Rookiie · March 19

DrZola said:

DrZola said:
Just some standard EQ whackery:

Chavez managing to whiff her third hit on a heavy in 2.1 EQ (against P99, not an evade champ or node) and Bishop having his Sp1 interrupted by Korgs Sp3 in the same quest.

Nothing to see here, please disperse…

Dr. Zola
Morning whackery diary entry:

DPX gains Spidey evade in EQ 1.1–after heavy knockdown against wall, somehow manages to evade second heavy as he’s getting back up and subsequently engineers a triple dex of attempted Venom combo.

Screen freeze missed the entirety of Capt. Britain Sp1. Luckily, the game registered my block just prior to screen freeze and I found my champ standing there blocking post-freeze.

Full WiFi bars, no issues with any other app. Only you, MCoC.

Dr. Zola

I am enjoying these Morning Whackery diary entries @DrZola

Kabam continue to wet the bed

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