5-Star Featured Crystal Change Discussion Thread

Summoners!

We've just released some more information on the future of the 5-Star Featured Crystal here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/43300/upcoming-changes-to-5-star-featured-crystal

We know you've got questions, and this is the place to ask and discuss!

FAQ

Will you announce the pool of 18 each time it changes?
We do plan on sharing the list every time the crystal is updated.

Can you buy the 5 star featured crystal with units or only shards?
This crystal is replacing the currently available 15,000 Shard Featured Hero Crystals.

So does it means that if a new champ comes to the Battle Realm we won't be able to get them as a 5* right away?
You will still be able to get them in the Grandmaster Featured Crystal, but they will not be available in a featured 5-Star Hero Shard Crystal until they are added to this new Crystal. So, this might mean having to wait a little while to get some Champions, but it also gives you a shot at 6 New Champions at a time, as well as a smaller Basic pool.

Comments

SpiritOfVengeance

I am surprised magik is not in the crystal she is still an amazing defender. Also nightcrawler and spiderman.

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bradshaw84

Now I know you’re trolling us, by your own admission the lesser account players make do with what they’ve got because they don’t have a choice.

How does that justify those champions usefullness? Are we saying that unless a level 20 player deletes the game that must mean their ant man they’re forced to use is of value to the content they attempt at a lower level?

G. T. F. O. H.

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

To be fair, they're relying on their own internal data, and that is a broader picture than what people use at the top only. The top is a smalier demographic compared to the remainder, and a huge chunk of Players make-do with what they get.

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GroundedWisdom

bradshaw84 wrote: »

If I spend 15k on a featured blade crystal and get ant man it is what it is, I paid my money I took my chance and lost out to the 80% odds not in my favour.

This oh so outdated system that is tilting the game in such a way that is unfair and kabam must remedy before it gets out of hand has netted me, a 600k account, a grand total of two, TWO featured champions out of 16 attempts.

There are so many ways they could go if they insist on once again making it harder for players to get what they want but no...they choose to go the route they always do, by diminishing effort and rewarding excessive expenditure.

If they’re so forward thinking how could they not see that implementing the featured hero crystal to begin with would result in players targeting champions?

This isn’t me being a whiny baby, its just me acknowledging their track record of self serving at the expense of our enjoyment.

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

The term "Garbage" sums up the problem. People want a better chance at a new Champ and don't want to spend Shards on what they call Garbage. As I said before, people will have to roll what they don't want. That's a fact. The changes are for a few reasons, not just because the system is outdated. The real issue is the decreased possibility of rolling one Champ. So what dictates the entitlement to the increased odds, which by all means was higher than any other in the game? Is it the cost? Is it where someone is at, therefore the requirement to "keep up"? Is it just the disappointment of not getting what we want? Having an equal chance at any Champ is about as fair as it gets. The amount of 5* Featured Champs that are rolled every month is quite high. Compared to any other new Champ, very high, actually. It will only get higher with time as Shards become more increased in availability. Plus the pool of 5*s was growing in the old Featured, so there was less and less chance to have a favorable outcome regardless, if you didn't roll the Featured.

Obviously the point of a Featured is to go for a specific Champ. That's not what I was saying. The example was to place 6 Champs in the Crystal, with 2 less desirable ones, and that is much higher than the current Crystal, and would in essence mean they are picking and choosing their own product. The Players are the ones who pick and choose. They make them available. It's elective what we go for.
The problem is partly because of the increased odds, the increased Shards available, the growing pool of unfavorable Champs, the list goes on. It's not just about lowering the drop rate of one Champ. It's also about creating a rotation and increasing the chance at a newer Champ. People will still go for what they want. I suspect that any Crystal they offer will have a range of possibilities. Save for the Top 12 Crystal, and we voted for that ourselves.

Mmx1991

CoquiFongo wrote: »

So let me clear this up. You were fine with everything and the way Featured 5 Stars were handled for the past many months. Never said a word or complained about the way the game was designed by the developers etc. Then the moment they announce something different that goes agains the status quo, in essence upsetting the players you defend to the death the new way, even going so far to speculate the reasons why for the change, the positives of said chance, and the negatives of the past(that no one had an issue with that I know of).

If Kabam came onto this thread tomorrow and said; "Oops we messed up and are sorry. We have listened to what the community has said and are reverting back to the old Feature." Would you still be for the new system of Feature Crystals?

Everything was fine until they announced this, and then all of a sudden feature crystals are "problematic" and "unfair".

And just like in those thousand page discussions about changes to AW you'll get a ton of vague reasons for supporting these new changes to features.

"It needs change"
"Oh, that was THE OLD system, we now have a new one"
"They did it for a reason"
"Equal is fair"

DNA3000

CoquiFongo wrote: »

SpiritOfVengeance wrote: »

No point speaking with grounded you see how this thread just focuses on him when he posts. Just one of those people who will always have an answer. It won't stop unless people just read what he says and moves on after maybe a small convo. Our main focus keeps drifting away because of this. I have never once had to argue with him because I ignore it is quite easy.

Thank you for knocking some sense into the rest of us Spirit.

Ok so back on topic. It seems that between the "garbage" pool and the new system of 5 star featured the community is unhappy. Now we may be more receptive if we had some of that, oh whats the word; clear..no, opaque...no.

OH YEAH Transparency. Yeah that good communication that Kabam and the forum mods promised and talked about so recently. There has to be more of a reason for this.

Some form of logic the devs want. But once again we are left in the dark waiting for the surprise party of our nightmares.

I don't see how transparency has anything to do with it. They announced the change well in advance and stated their general reasons for doing so. Its not perfect, but that's ample transparency. What you seem to be asking for is absolute accountability, in other words you believe the devs have a responsibility to convince you their decisions are warranted, and if you disagree they are wrong until they figure out a way to prove themselves right.

I am a strong proponent of better dev communication and better transparency about how the game works in general. But the devs are not accountable to the players in that specific way. Kabam is ultimately accountable to its playerbase in a general sense, but their individual developers are not required to defend their design decision against all player opposition. They are only required to explain them to be reasonably transparent.

The fact that the thread keeps repeating false indictments against the devs, like the false accusation that Kabam said the curated eighteen basic champions were the "most effective" champions, is a really good reason why game developers generally opt out of communicating on public forums most of the time.

I may not agree with everything Kabam does, I'm not even saying I approve of every aspect of the new featured crystal system (I have a few objections myself). But based on the recent history of the game and the statements they've made in and related to the announcement, it all seems reasonably logical to me. There is a logical explanation for at least the broad strokes of the changes. But no one really seems interested in that. They just seem to want to beat up the devs over a decision they disapprove of. Transparency doesn't grant that right.

The devs cannot answer questions like "why are you screwing the players" or "why are you making the game pay to win" or "how can you believe these eighteen champions are the most effective champions" because all of those things contain false assumptions. They are all either emotional objections that have no basis in reality or fundamentally erroneous. Even attempting to respond to them in any way can only end up causing more problems. The mindset behind all questions like that cannot lead to any productive dialog.

If we want the devs to respond to us, we have to give them something reasonable to respond to. And for the most part, we aren't doing that.

SpiritOfVengeance

What about the suggestions that we made for kabam thay were perfectly reasonable? At first we were confused and just wanted to help them with feedback to change this idea but now they are not changing it at all even after 33 pages.
I think they should be considered.

Ashtontonic

SpiritOfVengeance wrote: »

What about the suggestions that we made for kabam thay were perfectly reasonable? At first we were confused and just wanted to help them with feedback to change this idea but now they are not changing it at all even after 33 pages.
I think they should be considered.

they'll just remain silence in the dark and say well, they will get over it and accept it, what else can they do...hahaha

Mmx1991

DNA3000 wrote: »

If we want the devs to respond to us, we have to give them something reasonable to respond to. And for the most part, we aren't doing that.

Regen
Raw Damage
Power Control
Ability Reduction
Immunity

How about, "Hi Devs, 90% of the champs in the pool significantly lack any of the qualities players look for in AQ and AW champs".

Not hard to prove.

Good enough? Not that hard to do a quick summary of why they make poor AQ/AW champs.

AlphAzAzElZ

C'est une arnaque de kabam cette modification du cristal 5 nous n'aurons que 4% de chances d'avoir un nouveau perso!!

DNA3000

SpiritOfVengeance wrote: »

What about the suggestions that we made for kabam thay were perfectly reasonable? At first we were confused and just wanted to help them with feedback to change this idea but now they are not changing it at all even after 33 pages.
I think they should be considered.

The only reasonable response to even the reasonable suggestions in the thread would be "we'll think about it." It is the only thing I could say if I was one of the design devs. And that's a ticking time bomb of a response. First of all, it would generate a ton of incredulity. Next, it would be met with people saying that since a change wasn't made the last time I said I would think about it, that's just BS boilerplate that means "go climb a tree." And finally, "we'll think out it" would be quickly converted into "the devs promised to change it and then they lied to us."

The most reasonable suggestion I've read so far, and one I made myself, was to speed up the iterations of the crystal from three months to one month with the appropriate shifting, so that if we don't like the eighteen curated basics we can just wait for them to change the following month. We'd at least see twelve versions of the crystal instead of four over the next year, and if the iterations are all going to be subpar, we'd have the data to prove it with twelve. With only four, Kabam could weasel out with the excuse that we didn't see very many versions.

But if they were thinking about that suggestion at all, I would think it would take them days to decide if it was worth pursuing. They would have to consider the increased workload of curating versions three times more often, and whether that would repeat champions too often in shorter windows. They would have to verify the UI could handle three versions of the crystal for purchase simultaneously. They would have to discuss if there were metrics that they could use to justify the change after the crystal launches in February, such as the projected rate of shard redemption.

And while all of that was taking time, saying anything before you know if you're actually going to do it would only risk getting in trouble if they decide not to do it. It takes them a couple weeks to figure out how many players are affected by a server outage and how to distribute what kind of compensation package, if anything. MMO developers move slowly.

And beyond all of that, just because they are listening, doesn't mean they must do something about it. I will take it as a given you're reading my posts. I'm pretty sure you're not in complete agreement with me. But I don't judge whether you are respectfully listening to me based on whether or not you choose to be in complete agreement with me. You might respectfully give me your full attention and then decide I'm wrong.

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DNA3000

Mmx1991 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

If we want the devs to respond to us, we have to give them something reasonable to respond to. And for the most part, we aren't doing that.

Regen
Raw Damage
Power Control
Ability Reduction
Immunity

How about, "Hi Devs, 90% of the champs in the pool significantly lack any of the qualities players look for in AQ and AW champs".

Not hard to prove.

Good enough? Not that hard to do a quick summary of why they make poor AQ/AW champs.

I posted my own evaluation of the pool, and while you may disagree with it, I am a player last time I checked. When you say that 90% of the champs in the pool lack the qualities players look for, it is not true that statement encompasses all players. Just the ones that agree with you. How should the devs respond? My only response is "that statement isn't objectively true." Maybe all the players who disagree with you have bad judgment. But the statement that 90% of the champions are not desirable is still false.

You're asking the devs to get into an argument with you over what a desirable champion is. Who is going to referee that debate to decide a winner?

beyonder8421

Mmx1991 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

If we want the devs to respond to us, we have to give them something reasonable to respond to. And for the most part, we aren't doing that.

Regen
Raw Damage
Power Control
Ability Reduction
Immunity

How about, "Hi Devs, 90% of the champs in the pool significantly lack any of the qualities players look for in AQ and AW champs".

Not hard to prove.

Good enough? Not that hard to do a quick summary of why they make poor AQ/AW champs.

It would actually be a good idea to make them ensure that the crystal has champion with at least one of those features. That is a good idea.

Although champions on the list do have these and other players are calling them "mediocre" (like Nebula), so it is really hard to get a consensus around just abilities.

PS: I do not consider Nebula mediocre, I just think she is not good for all the game modes, but she is still very useful.

DNA3000

CoquiFongo wrote: »

I agree with the spirit of what you are saying in the essence of transparency, along with allowing ample time for the information to sink in. I guess what I am saying is we got a blanket statement about this change, then some responses from our resident mod. Then silence has fallen like a snow filled forest.

We have 33 pages(20 if you remove the troll posts) about this issues 95% are against it. And we have heard nothing more from the mods. And I don't mean an actual dev appearing on the forums, even though the Triple A game dev I know wouldn't let this much negative backlash go unanswered.

Its hard for even just the players, none of whom have any power to change anything, to discuss the situation rationally. I wish it was different.

I don't know if you know someone that happens to be the rare exception, but game devs don't "let" negative backlash go unanswered. I know more than one triple-A game dev. They are generally limited by what they can and cannot address, and honestly most of them don't like to participate in public forums. Most of the game devs anyone might know most likely first encountered them on public forums: they were already the exception.

Kabam isn't great here. In fact, they aren't even average here. On a scale of one to ten, with one being the most hidden and ten being the most communicative dev teams out there, I'd give Kabam a three. But no game dev I've ever heard of jumps into a thread like this and starts responding to everyone. You get a couple, maybe half a dozen responses strategically targeted. Very, very rarely you get an open dialog. But the playerbase has to be of a kind where that is possible. And if I'm being honest, if Kabam gets a three here the playerbase doesn't get any higher.

In every game where open dialog was even a convenient fiction, much less a reality, all of those games had one thing in common in the playerbases. There were always player-advocates that were extremely knowledgeable about particular areas of the game *and* were extremely level headed. They could communicate objectively and rationally with the devs, and they could communicate clearly and unambiguously with the players, and they were respected by both sides. They were not the only people who communicated with the devs, but they were active facilitators for that communication. In Contest of Champions, who are those people? It doesn't sound like an important omission, but it is actually fatal.

Also no one has the huevos to address the pay to win elephant in the room. EA got the flak and Bungie got the flak. So that seems to upset the masses.

I did, but I don't think many people care what I think about it, because my conclusion is that the change isn't a pay to win change. I would be very surprised to see a Kabam employee enter that fray though.

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DrZola

Mmx1991 wrote: »

Regen
Immunity
Power control
Ability Accuracy Reduction
Damage Dealers

These are the qualities we look for in champs for AQ and AW offense.

This is a valid point and responsive to @DNA3000 above. On that list, apart from the featureds, there are very few of the attributes listed. And for what there is, there are at least several champs not on the list who do it far better.

Take, for example Regen: included in the 18 are Cable, Beast, Punisher, Venompool, Mordo, Doc Ock, Phoenix and Nebula, all of whom have some form of Regen.

Apart from Phoenix, I would wager that most of the community doesn’t think of any those champs in the top 3 they think of when they think of a Regen champ.

Or take Immunity: unless I’m wrong, Nebula is the sole bleed immune there. Beast and AV have some bleed resistance but are not immune. Nebula is also poison immune, along with Ronan (yuck!) which about rounds that one out.

For power control, there’s Hawkeye and CW and Doc Ock, with a little from Nebula and Punisher, but HE and CW are really the most reliable in the list.

Damage dealers. Hmmm...Phoenix. Maybe HE. Maybe Ock. But overall not much.

Ability accuracy reduction is similarly not well-represented.

Feel free to correct if I’ve missed something. Not intended to be comprehensive and working from memory.

Dr. Zola

Gargamesh

You are drifting away from the real issue here...
...this is about getting a better shot at the Champion you desire and not a group of Champion on which your desired Champion is among...

The featured crystal was the only influence I, as a player, had and now they are taking it away...or at least are limiting it a lot. Now I won't have as much chance to get the one Champion that would fit perfect into my team, or is my favourite marvel character etc.
Now I'm spinning for a group of featured Champion, so even if I get a featured one, now there's a big chance it's not the one I intended to get....and that's the whole issue here, the little influence I had on the outcome of my crystal is getting watered down a lot

Svain

DrZola wrote: »

Mmx1991 wrote: »

Regen
Immunity
Power control
Ability Accuracy Reduction
Damage Dealers

These are the qualities we look for in champs for AQ and AW offense.

This is a valid point and responsive to @DNA3000 above. On that list, apart from the featureds, there are very few of the attributes listed. And for what there is, there are at least several champs not on the list who do it far better.

Take, for example Regen: included in the 18 are Cable, Beast, Punisher, Venompool, Mordo, Doc Ock, Phoenix and Nebula, all of whom have some form of Regen.

Apart from Phoenix, I would wager that most of the community doesn’t think of any those champs in the top 3 they think of when they think of a Regen champ.

Or take Immunity: unless I’m wrong, Nebula is the sole bleed immune there. Beast and AV have some bleed resistance but are not immune. Nebula is also poison immune, along with Ronan (yuck!) which about rounds that one out.

For power control, there’s Hawkeye and CW and Doc Ock, with a little from Nebula and Punisher, but HE and CW are really the most reliable in the list.

Damage dealers. Hmmm...Phoenix. Maybe HE. Maybe Ock. But overall not much.

Ability accuracy reduction is similarly not well-represented.

Feel free to correct if I’ve missed something. Not intended to be comprehensive and working from memory.

Dr. Zola

Honestly the only champion in the list that caught my eye was Hawkeye.

DNA3000

linux wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

linux wrote: »

Regardless, saving 90k shards for a less than 1/4 chance to get the champ you want (when you really only want one from the featured crystal) is going to lead most people to miss and be unhappy.

The vast overwhelming majority of public complaints about the featured 5* crystal on both these forums and the reddit seem to me to be not that the player missed, but that out of all the tries for featured they got nothing but "garbage" champions instead, making the value of the crystal perceived to be worse than just pulling basics.

So if you are focusing on "unhappy players" I think it is far more important to focus not on the chance to "win," but rather on the chance to "lose." This crystal seems to have a lower chance to pull champions most would consider garbage champs repeatedly.

I'm looking at that list ... and to be honest, I don't agree with you about many of them. CW, Ant-Man, Thor JF (I have her duped, and yes she's staying at r1) ... those are pretty bad. I'd also be disappointed by Cyclops, Sentry, Loki, and Ronan given where I am in terms of progression, though I'll grant that CW and Cyclops would have uses if I didn't already have a deep bench of 5*s. But I'd find them very disappointing (I say that from experience, as I have all all the above except Sentry and Loki; AM is duped 3x).

It is entirely possible that much of the benefit of the new featured crystal accrues to players that do not have very large rosters of 5* champions. When you have a very strong roster, what's "good" tends to be "what either fills a hole or is better than anything else I have" and that list gets shorter and shorter. Eventually it becomes so short that it is impractical for the devs to design crystals with no chance to disappoint such a player.

I can make no statement in general about what everyone would find disappointing. But I stand by my statement that for *most* players, those rankings would be reasonably close to their usefulness in their rosters.

I wouldn't R4 Antman, but that's because I don't R4 defenders. I wouldn't R4 *any* champion that was only going to be used for defense. I wouldn't R4 Magik as a defender if I couldn't use her also as an attacker, no matter how valuable she was. If Magik couldn't be used as an attacker, Magik would be a disappointing pull for me even if she is a bordline I win button in AWD. No developer can account for those variable kinds of preferences.

But would I take AntMan to R3 for AWD? That's a good question. It would mostly depend on how much rank up resources I had, and whether I had other science champs ahead in the queue. The fact that I'm not sure tells me there's a potential use there in general. Not for all players, but in general.

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Mandagar

BigPoppaCBONE wrote: »

bradshaw84 wrote: »

I guess the radio silence from kabam on this subject now means we’ve reached the inevitable stage 3 of their approach to customer service.

1. Drop the bomb, try and make it sound like they’re doing it for us, insult our intelligence a little (a lot).

2. Dig themselves in deeper by sending Mike out to the wolves and have him attempt to answer questions that quite frankly they cannot answer to the satisfaction of the customers without digging themselves in deeper.

3. Let the community duke it out on their own, maybe even fight amongst themselves a little, whilst remaining quiet...if they wait long enough everybody will shut up and get in line (12.0 aside).

You left out the part in 3 where the thread stops bubbling to the top with new posts making it both harder to find and easier to ignore.

Plain and simple the people at Kabam does not care about the gaming community. Honestly, if they truly did then they would see the backlash that the announcement of this new featured 5-Star shard crystal is causing. You know after the Blade featured crystal comes out, which by the way I'm going for, it will be only 10k basic 5-Star shard crystals from that point on. I just pray that they don't do something ridiculous like nerf the Blade featured by making the drop rates worse than they already are.

Ja1970

Realy good change to the 5* featured crystal, this needed to happen

DNA3000

linux wrote: »

I can understand the argument that the featured crystal would be curated with champs where none of them will be a disappointment -- I just don't think this fills that bill. It's true that it left out HB and IP, but it left out lots of good champs and included some which are not very useful.

Everyone evaluates champions differently, so it is really hard to find any consensus here, but when I think about a "squib" in the 5* crystal I think in terms of Colossus, Rhino, Ronan, Superior Iron Man, Iron Man, Iron Patriot, Hulkbuster, Gambit, Venompool, Loki, Spider Gwen, Netflix Daredevil, Luke Cage, Groot, She Hulk, Red Hulk, Kamala Khan, Falcon, Civil Warrior, and Karnak. The very bottom of the barrel for most people I think. That is twenty champions. If there are 84 champs in the basic crystal now, that's about 24% of them. Four of those are in the first new featured, that's 17%. More than I would like, but it is lower.

I'm curious to see how this exercise works out for you. If you make a list of "disappointing" champions, how many champs in the basic crystal meet that criteria as you see it, and then of that list how many are in the featured crystal. I did not count featured champions, as they basically have to be there.

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Gargamesh

Ja1970 wrote: »

Realy good change to the 5* featured crystal, this needed to happen

Do you mind to share with us why it's "really good changes" and why it "needed to happen"?

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

Mmx1991 wrote: »

Regen
Immunity
Power control
Ability Accuracy Reduction
Damage Dealers

These are the qualities we look for in champs for AQ and AW offense.

This is a valid point and responsive to @DNA3000 above.

I don't agree it responds to the point I made in the post I believe you are referencing. The point I made was that players were not making statements or asking questions that the devs are in a reasonable position to respond to. But this post (specifically the first half you are quoting) essentially states that there are much better champions for various purposes than the ones the devs curated for the first crystal. @Kabam Miike already responded to this assertion. He said that the intent of the crystal was not, and was never specified to be intended to, include the best champions. He said that the intent of curation was to exclude the worst champions, as they datamined them to be. So when you point out there are better champions, the response is "yes there are." There's nothing more they can say about that beyond what @Kabam Miike said.

Having said that, and not being privvy to Kabam's datamining, I decided to write out the champions I would have deleted as being the bottom of performance to respond to @linux and it does give me pause. There are fewer "squibs" in the curated list than there are in the basic crystal on a percentage basis. But I'm not sure there are enough fewer to justify the featured crystal shard cost. What I think the bottom is and what Kabam has datamined the bottom to be is of course almost certainly different, but it does raise questions for me about precisely which metrics Kabam is focusing on when it comes to underperformance or effectiveness.

I do now have a question that Kabam should be able to answer. Without giving away the actual data, I would like to know how many champions were deemed "not effective" or "less effective" and thus excluded from the curated list. @Kabam Miike is that a question that Kabam can answer? Out of the 84 or so basic champions that could have been added to the new featured, how many are NOT going to be added given the current state of the game (i.e. I assume Red Hulk and Luke Cage were two of the champions excluded, although they could become eligible after they are changed as a result of the beta test changes coming up).