Gotta love this reply by crashed as kabam representative, but with less sass than miike. Lol Even with the sass, miike was a great pro community manager.
Before I provide an update, I just want to say that players tend to look at the game economy different than we do. We look at it holistically - are players who are engaged in the game progressing? The answer right now is definitely yes. Think about your own accounts compared to a year ago. If you play the game regularly I guaranteed you have made substantial progress, regardless of how much you are spending.
A larger portion of rewards have been focused on events this year. We do this because we see a clear signal that it drives more player engagement than focusing those rewards into our regular modes. That doesn't mean they will never be updated, but it does mean more of the baseline reward budget is going to come from special events and things like the Daily Super Event.
Arenas - I said in a different thread, you don't want us to update Arenas. It would almost certainly result in lower Unit yields per time spent than the current tuning.
.
Hey Crashed. Thanks as always for the info. Can I ask for one clarification though? You mention you don’t think an economy change in arenas would ultimately benefit the players and I certainly understand your point for the ones Monday to Saturday. However, would it be possible to tweak just Sunday and maybe throw in som 6* shards or a couple units. I can imagine that would be game breaking
If they go back to touch the sunday arenas, they're going to touch the normal ones too
opinion or fact? what insider info do you have?
Always definitive statements with appeals to secret knowledge with that dude. Was at least better when it was dumb memes.
Game currency stores stay ****, while unit and cash deals go out of control. Yeah, that’s intended lol
Just so you all know the best way to get results is by working together and that best way is kinda like a strike of sorts. Take off the game a week or two see how they respond when they are getting zero income from the player base. Just saying unity is a powerful thing. I usually get banned from forums for my posts bc they know how much damage it can do. They obviously don't care about what you guys or gals say and nothing gets done so see how my method works (trust me on this)!!
Never in the history of MCOC has any sort of boycott worked.
If you want to be ridiculously and extremely pedantic, then sure, you're kind of correct. However, in the realm of the sane, you are incorrect.
At best, you can say that mass protest (to include boycotts) have caused Kabam to react and respond to them. However, rarely if ever do they actually get what they are asking for, usually because they are either asking for the literally impossible (reversing Thor's 12.0 nerf, decoupling CR from Parry mechanics) or because what they are asking for is impractical. Because protesters aren't game designers.
Hence why i said he was kind of correct. A boycott if you want to be super specific about its definition has not succeded however there have been movements that have shifted how kabam has done things in the past akin to a boycott but not exactly
This isn't a semantic quibble. The only way in which you could say boycotts work is in the sense all feedback works. The devs listen, decide how they want to act on that information, and then act accordingly.
However, there is no question that every announced boycott of the game had its own explicit goal, and to the extent that such goals are explicitly stated, they never get them. You could argue that the 12.0 boycott did not get anything they asked for, but on the other hand the Earth didn't explode so at least they got something.
But I will go further. Not only have all boycotts been failures, in the sense of not accomplishing what they set out to accomplish, I would argue that collectively all of them have been counterproductive, in the sense of making things worse than had they not happened at all, which is something you can't say about all feedback.
Normal constructive feedback is the sort of thing the developers and the players can have a dialog about. It is something that can evolve through discussion. There's space for back and forth. A boycott is one side saying "my way or else." It forces the developers to respond accordingly, which is to say their primary objective when confronting such a thing, if they choose to acknowledge it at all, is to take the actions that will best dissolve it.
Think again about 12.0. Most of the actions taken by the devs were appeasement. 99.999% of the playerbase had no real understanding of the technical issues involved, including the boycott organizers. They were asking for Challenge Rating to be decoupled from Parry, which was impossible because CR does nothing to Parry mechanics. Kabam *could* reduce the CR scaling curve, which they did. Which did what, exactly? Players heard "we reduced CR" and that sounds a lot like going half way to eliminating it. Which is of course nonsense. Most players couldn't tell the difference, and today we live in a world where the CR values are basically where they were in 12.0, and will continue to rise beyond that, and still no one cares.
I remember at the time trying to get attention to the problem DR itself was causing with Parry damage mitigation: Parry was being affected by DR, and it shouldn't be because of the nature of what Parry was supposed to be doing in the first place. Parry was not an overstacking stat, it was *deliberately* intended to close the block damage gap. And Kabam did in fact change Parry mechanics in 12.1. But who knows how much of a distraction all the other noise around DR was at the time. Who knows what other, better refinements we could have made to DR (since it is kind of opaque and intuitively nonsensical) if there were reasonable discussions going on at the time? There was no space for that at the time.
Before I provide an update, I just want to say that players tend to look at the game economy different than we do. We look at it holistically - are players who are engaged in the game progressing? The answer right now is definitely yes. Think about your own accounts compared to a year ago. If you play the game regularly I guaranteed you have made substantial progress, regardless of how much you are spending.
A larger portion of rewards have been focused on events this year. We do this because we see a clear signal that it drives more player engagement than focusing those rewards into our regular modes. That doesn't mean they will never be updated, but it does mean more of the baseline reward budget is going to come from special events and things like the Daily Super Event.
Arenas - I said in a different thread, you don't want us to update Arenas. It would almost certainly result in lower Unit yields per time spent than the current tuning.
.
Hey Crashed. Thanks as always for the info. Can I ask for one clarification though? You mention you don’t think an economy change in arenas would ultimately benefit the players and I certainly understand your point for the ones Monday to Saturday. However, would it be possible to tweak just Sunday and maybe throw in som 6* shards or a couple units. I can imagine that would be game breaking
If they go back to touch the sunday arenas, they're going to touch the normal ones too
opinion or fact? what insider info do you have?
When the arenas were refactored from the original four to the current three arena structure, I was one of the people in the pseudo working group of CCP players giving feedback to Kabam about the changes, and helping to analyze different variations of the changes and reward structures.
If they go back to look at the Sunday arenas, they will almost certainly do so as part of a holistic review of all arenas. There are things I can say about the process and things I probably cannot directly comment on, but one thing I will say is the devs were very open about the thought process during that exchange. Not only what the requirements and limitations were surrounding the arena refactor, but even *why* an arena refactor was happening. While I cannot speak for the devs and they are free to change opinions whenever they want, the fundamentals of game development and game economy design don't change.
Every property of the arenas, from the rewards to the champs you're allowed to use to the milestone point structure are all interconnected. When we tried to change any one of them during the arena redesign, we ended up changing all of them to match, or having the change rejected because it would require changing all of them to match. And the arenas need to fit within the large game economy, which itself places constraints on things (re:units).
Collectively, the arena reward availability is *far higher* than it was intended to be, due to a variety of inflation effects. I say that as someone who knows what the original constraints the arenas were designed to fit in were, and I don't think I'm giving away any super secret idea there. Even Crashed has hinted in live streams that arena rewards are living outside the lines at the moment.
The devs could sprinkle a few rewards into the Sunday arenas and call it a day, but they won't because they have better things to do than do some small thing no one will appreciate. They could do a complete overhaul but I doubt they would do that without some compelling reason to do so. One compelling reason to do so would be to do that as part of a complete overhaul of the arenas to update them for modern roster strength. That would allow them to also review what the rewards and commensurate appropriate roster strength would be for a hypothetical new set of Sunday arenas.
You don't want them to do that. You really really don't.
Just so you all know the best way to get results is by working together and that best way is kinda like a strike of sorts. Take off the game a week or two see how they respond when they are getting zero income from the player base. Just saying unity is a powerful thing. I usually get banned from forums for my posts bc they know how much damage it can do. They obviously don't care about what you guys or gals say and nothing gets done so see how my method works (trust me on this)!!
Never in the history of MCOC has any sort of boycott worked.
If you want to be ridiculously and extremely pedantic, then sure, you're kind of correct. However, in the realm of the sane, you are incorrect.
At best, you can say that mass protest (to include boycotts) have caused Kabam to react and respond to them. However, rarely if ever do they actually get what they are asking for, usually because they are either asking for the literally impossible (reversing Thor's 12.0 nerf, decoupling CR from Parry mechanics) or because what they are asking for is impractical. Because protesters aren't game designers.
Hence why i said he was kind of correct. A boycott if you want to be super specific about its definition has not succeded however there have been movements that have shifted how kabam has done things in the past akin to a boycott but not exactly
Boycotts and movements are different by definition.
A boycott is the community saying on this day don't spend.
A movement is the community coming together and giving good solid feedback and sticking to that feedback.
In fact, in the history of this game, we've accomplished more change by not trying to organize boycotts and just communicating rationally with Kabam.
If they took the rest of the year off on champ releases and fixed the damned game, it would likely make them much more in the long run.
For the 1000000000th time. That's not how game dev works
Do you work for Kabam? Is that you trying to clown on me Mr. Diggety?
If they did what you are suggesting, the developers would not be working for Kabam either.
By fix the game I meant actual game bugs. The stores being trash isn’t too big of a deal for me. I understand why they are mega-low priority.
I just don’t try to gaslight other posters with attempts to logically handwave the issue. They need to make revenue and that’s fine.
New champ releases are the engine that powers this game. The entire game monetization foundation is built upon it. Not only that, new champ releases are one of the few ways in which this ten year old game can compete with the upstarts. If they were to stop releasing new champs, that would be blood in the water. The game would smell like it was going into maintenance mode. And once you give people that impression, it can be virtually impossible to reverse it.
I'm not saying bugs don't hurt, but for bugs to hurt the game, someone actually has to play the game to experience them. The biggest problem a ten year old game faces is getting people to pick it up in the first place. If the new shinys stop coming out, we stop getting new players. And all the old players come from the new players. All the spenders come from the free to play revolving door.
The Kabam devs knows this, and would never risk tampering with this process. Kabam management also knows this, and would never let the devs risk this. Netmarble also knows this, and would probably never allow Kabam itself to tamper with this process.
its the fact that someone can completely drop the game and ONLY open to clean out every big deal weekends and still be a top endgame player. Making in game rewards and stores not "low" but pretty much useless. And second. its not 1-2 things that r outdated its EVERYTHING. not one store is worth it, glory loyalty incursion bgs, a valiant player still needs to explore TB eq (which gives essentially no rewards btw) to get into PARAGON (lower than valiant) and get very very minimal stuff. whats the point of a progression title if im gonna be getting rewards for a title 2 levels below me, or wait a year before a store or eq gets updated to my level, nowhere can we buy t4a materials as valiants except, you guessed it, daily 5$ cards! the one store that yall update
I don’t understand this desire to change arenas. They’re more than fine. You get like a 100 dollars worth of premium currency by playing like 30 minutes before bed every night. What more do you want?
Ultimately I’ve been ok with the pace of rewards… the stores are outta date, and BG top end is poorly rewarded but neither of these things bother me as much as the subpar, unexciting and constant let down 2024 attacker designs and the horrendous potentially manipulative AI and all the infight bugs.
I know not all infight problems are one or the other but at the same time there has not been no seriously transparent ANYTHING done to make it better. Just empty words fill this space from what we are allowed to see. I mean look at this SoS Toad design with clearly hidden nodes, look at ever increasing AI response times, with the ability to move faster than a speeding frame rate… this to me is what demotivates the people I know and is driving people from the game.
And on 2024 champ design… if they don’t know the disappointment felt be the community by now then I don’t think they’ll ever understand. Ironheart is a decent champ but when I think of 2024 attacker design she’s the champ that symbolizes. A 101 abilities, but damage so mid it makes her riskier than 2017 nukes in the fights she’s designed for. At that point why even bother?
They introduced Herc, then subsequently admitted that they had to make the game harder specifically because of him. One can plainly see that the game is indeed harder, yet the rewards for playing the harder game haven't improved in step with the increase in AI/game difficulty.
Yes, harder specific content has better specific rewards (which rapidly become dated, but that's for another conversation); However, the increased difficulty is across all game modes, and the blanket rewards have largely remained the same...
Therin lies the problem...
Players are facing an AI that has straight Hulked out over the past few months, yet they're expected to accept pittance for doing so, or to just be thankful that Kabam hadn't nerfed Herc, smile, and go about their business.
The game economy and AI difficulty are tied together. You can't expect us to fully accept both the current state of the AI and the current state of the rewards. They don't balance out, and that's why the playerbase largely isn't happy.
Arenas - I said in a different thread, you don't want us to update Arenas. It would almost certainly result in lower Unit yields per time spent than the current tuning.
@Kabam Crashed Would the decreased units go towards other modes of the game? If so, then I'm sure majority would be in favor of it.
Also, in regards to Unit Acquisition, i do think you can make the argument that the Unit Value has depreciated since those July 4 and Cyber Monday deals that once costed 18k to get everything are now twice that at 36k. And back then the 18k basically got you the majority of what the 36k gets you in more recent times if you compare how the economy was back then.
Because of this I assumed we would see the rate at which we get units increase to match with the higher cost of offers
I've been semi-retired for about three weeks now and I 100% agree with everything said here. This year overall has just been a mess for the game, and in my opinion it is one of the worst years for the game in general.
New releases have never been this disappointing, a couple months ago some were even trying to argue that the best champs usually came in the second half of the year yet September's over and we still have nothing, just more mediocre garbage or mid but nothing good. Even Shathra was a massive disappointment for me, I said I was going to get her pre-release and after seeing gameplay I was so disappointed (once again) I ended up not getting it and it drove me away from the game even further.
Stores are all garbage, I don't care what Crashed has to say (this time), doing AQ and BGs feels pointless (I had to leave my alliance since I stopped playing these game modes) when t6b t3a and t6cc are still this damn expensive. Do they not realize p2w players already have over 15 r3s and that gap is about to get wider after Cyberweekend and Banquet? How are f2p players supposed to keep up when rank up materials in the store are still this ridiculously overpriced even for Valiants?
Game is trash right now, worst state it's been in since I came back three years ago. I'm literally only doing SoS these days and nothing else, probably will fully quit after Banquet and come back when the Cyclops rework goes live lmao.
No wonder why I haven't seen you on forums for a while.
Also, why are you disappointed in Shathra? She seems like a good champion
If they took the rest of the year off on champ releases and fixed the damned game, it would likely make them much more in the long run.
For the 1000000000th time. That's not how game dev works
Do you work for Kabam? Is that you trying to clown on me Mr. Diggety?
If they did what you are suggesting, the developers would not be working for Kabam either.
By fix the game I meant actual game bugs. The stores being trash isn’t too big of a deal for me. I understand why they are mega-low priority.
I just don’t try to gaslight other posters with attempts to logically handwave the issue. They need to make revenue and that’s fine.
New champ releases are the engine that powers this game. The entire game monetization foundation is built upon it. Not only that, new champ releases are one of the few ways in which this ten year old game can compete with the upstarts. If they were to stop releasing new champs, that would be blood in the water. The game would smell like it was going into maintenance mode. And once you give people that impression, it can be virtually impossible to reverse it.
I'm not saying bugs don't hurt, but for bugs to hurt the game, someone actually has to play the game to experience them. The biggest problem a ten year old game faces is getting people to pick it up in the first place. If the new shinys stop coming out, we stop getting new players. And all the old players come from the new players. All the spenders come from the free to play revolving door.
The Kabam devs knows this, and would never risk tampering with this process. Kabam management also knows this, and would never let the devs risk this. Netmarble also knows this, and would probably never allow Kabam itself to tamper with this process.
I agree that new champs power the engine… but more specifically its new attackers that are enjoyable to use and easy to understand. Not this middling year of complexity and cancerous defenders.
If they took the rest of the year off on champ releases and fixed the damned game, it would likely make them much more in the long run.
For the 1000000000th time. That's not how game dev works
Do you work for Kabam? Is that you trying to clown on me Mr. Diggety?
If they did what you are suggesting, the developers would not be working for Kabam either.
By fix the game I meant actual game bugs. The stores being trash isn’t too big of a deal for me. I understand why they are mega-low priority.
I just don’t try to gaslight other posters with attempts to logically handwave the issue. They need to make revenue and that’s fine.
New champ releases are the engine that powers this game. The entire game monetization foundation is built upon it. Not only that, new champ releases are one of the few ways in which this ten year old game can compete with the upstarts. If they were to stop releasing new champs, that would be blood in the water. The game would smell like it was going into maintenance mode. And once you give people that impression, it can be virtually impossible to reverse it.
I'm not saying bugs don't hurt, but for bugs to hurt the game, someone actually has to play the game to experience them. The biggest problem a ten year old game faces is getting people to pick it up in the first place. If the new shinys stop coming out, we stop getting new players. And all the old players come from the new players. All the spenders come from the free to play revolving door.
The Kabam devs knows this, and would never risk tampering with this process. Kabam management also knows this, and would never let the devs risk this. Netmarble also knows this, and would probably never allow Kabam itself to tamper with this process.
I agree that new champs power the engine… but more specifically its new attackers that are enjoyable to use and easy to understand. Not this middling year of complexity and cancerous defenders.
I hope this trend of unfair defenders starts to decrease starting in 2025.
I've been semi-retired for about three weeks now and I 100% agree with everything said here. This year overall has just been a mess for the game, and in my opinion it is one of the worst years for the game in general.
New releases have never been this disappointing, a couple months ago some were even trying to argue that the best champs usually came in the second half of the year yet September's over and we still have nothing, just more mediocre garbage or mid but nothing good. Even Shathra was a massive disappointment for me, I said I was going to get her pre-release and after seeing gameplay I was so disappointed (once again) I ended up not getting it and it drove me away from the game even further.
Stores are all garbage, I don't care what Crashed has to say (this time), doing AQ and BGs feels pointless (I had to leave my alliance since I stopped playing these game modes) when t6b t3a and t6cc are still this damn expensive. Do they not realize p2w players already have over 15 r3s and that gap is about to get wider after Cyberweekend and Banquet? How are f2p players supposed to keep up when rank up materials in the store are still this ridiculously overpriced even for Valiants?
Game is trash right now, worst state it's been in since I came back three years ago. I'm literally only doing SoS these days and nothing else, probably will fully quit after Banquet and come back when the Cyclops rework goes live lmao.
No wonder why I haven't seen you on forums for a while.
Also, why are you disappointed in Shathra? She seems like a good champion
Cause of damage, again. They keep designing these new champs around r3s and the result is mid damage almost always. Since I'm sick of waiting for them to release something decent this year I've just stopped playing the game for the most part, it's not fun for me anymore.
I've been semi-retired for about three weeks now and I 100% agree with everything said here. This year overall has just been a mess for the game, and in my opinion it is one of the worst years for the game in general.
New releases have never been this disappointing, a couple months ago some were even trying to argue that the best champs usually came in the second half of the year yet September's over and we still have nothing, just more mediocre garbage or mid but nothing good. Even Shathra was a massive disappointment for me, I said I was going to get her pre-release and after seeing gameplay I was so disappointed (once again) I ended up not getting it and it drove me away from the game even further.
Stores are all garbage, I don't care what Crashed has to say (this time), doing AQ and BGs feels pointless (I had to leave my alliance since I stopped playing these game modes) when t6b t3a and t6cc are still this damn expensive. Do they not realize p2w players already have over 15 r3s and that gap is about to get wider after Cyberweekend and Banquet? How are f2p players supposed to keep up when rank up materials in the store are still this ridiculously overpriced even for Valiants?
Game is trash right now, worst state it's been in since I came back three years ago. I'm literally only doing SoS these days and nothing else, probably will fully quit after Banquet and come back when the Cyclops rework goes live lmao.
No wonder why I haven't seen you on forums for a while.
Also, why are you disappointed in Shathra? She seems like a good champion
Cause of damage, again. They keep designing these new champs around r3s and the result is mid damage almost always. Since I'm sick of waiting for them to release something decent this year I've just stopped playing the game for the most part, it's not fun for me anymore.
Yeah even this year's buffed champs have more damage (for the most part).
Also Count Nefaria? He's getting a lot of praise so far
I've been semi-retired for about three weeks now and I 100% agree with everything said here. This year overall has just been a mess for the game, and in my opinion it is one of the worst years for the game in general.
New releases have never been this disappointing, a couple months ago some were even trying to argue that the best champs usually came in the second half of the year yet September's over and we still have nothing, just more mediocre garbage or mid but nothing good. Even Shathra was a massive disappointment for me, I said I was going to get her pre-release and after seeing gameplay I was so disappointed (once again) I ended up not getting it and it drove me away from the game even further.
Stores are all garbage, I don't care what Crashed has to say (this time), doing AQ and BGs feels pointless (I had to leave my alliance since I stopped playing these game modes) when t6b t3a and t6cc are still this damn expensive. Do they not realize p2w players already have over 15 r3s and that gap is about to get wider after Cyberweekend and Banquet? How are f2p players supposed to keep up when rank up materials in the store are still this ridiculously overpriced even for Valiants?
Game is trash right now, worst state it's been in since I came back three years ago. I'm literally only doing SoS these days and nothing else, probably will fully quit after Banquet and come back when the Cyclops rework goes live lmao.
No wonder why I haven't seen you on forums for a while.
Also, why are you disappointed in Shathra? She seems like a good champion
Cause of damage, again. They keep designing these new champs around r3s and the result is mid damage almost always. Since I'm sick of waiting for them to release something decent this year I've just stopped playing the game for the most part, it's not fun for me anymore.
Yeah even this year's buffed champs have more damage (for the most part).
Also Count Nefaria? He's getting a lot of praise so far
I find him to be a great sell job… but overall he’s another 2024 midfielder
Before I provide an update, I just want to say that players tend to look at the game economy different than we do. We look at it holistically - are players who are engaged in the game progressing? The answer right now is definitely yes. Think about your own accounts compared to a year ago. If you play the game regularly I guaranteed you have made substantial progress, regardless of how much you are spending.
A larger portion of rewards have been focused on events this year. We do this because we see a clear signal that it drives more player engagement than focusing those rewards into our regular modes. That doesn't mean they will never be updated, but it does mean more of the baseline reward budget is going to come from special events and things like the Daily Super Event.
Arenas - I said in a different thread, you don't want us to update Arenas. It would almost certainly result in lower Unit yields per time spent than the current tuning.
.
Hey Crashed. Thanks as always for the info. Can I ask for one clarification though? You mention you don’t think an economy change in arenas would ultimately benefit the players and I certainly understand your point for the ones Monday to Saturday. However, would it be possible to tweak just Sunday and maybe throw in som 6* shards or a couple units. I can imagine that would be game breaking
throwing units in the sunday arenas would cause the same problem. they would remove them from other areas of the game and we’d have to do more work for the same stuff.
arenas shouldn’t be touched because it’ll be worse off for everyone and that’s guaranteed…
I think some things could be changed in the Glory store, but it's not all bad. The T4b, T5b, and T4cc aren't a bad price (still needed for 6*, and T5b for 7*), fairly cheap gold for non arena grinders is nice, even 450 for T5cc isn't bad.
But a total of 5500 for only 65% of a T6cc? 2000ish for a T4A and over 2000 for a T6b? The ISO is also super expensive for how much we need lately.
I want to add the Sigil Store/Black ISO Market to this. That's something that we actually PAY money to access. This should HANDS DOWN be updated on a regular basis. And the reset time needs to be drastically reduced. It's almost painful how long it takes to purchase some of the items again. With the addition of 7*'s and the direction that the game is going in, It should no longer take a month for large health potions to be available again. They're becoming outdated anyway.
100% agree here. I used to buy the Sigil every month, but after a certain point, the only benefit was a cheaper featured 6*, and Sigil Witch. But now, it isn't even worth trying to get the 7*, because nothing else is worth it (except maybe the quicker arena thing, but even then it doesn't save too much time).
I've been semi-retired for about three weeks now and I 100% agree with everything said here. This year overall has just been a mess for the game, and in my opinion it is one of the worst years for the game in general.
New releases have never been this disappointing, a couple months ago some were even trying to argue that the best champs usually came in the second half of the year yet September's over and we still have nothing, just more mediocre garbage or mid but nothing good. Even Shathra was a massive disappointment for me, I said I was going to get her pre-release and after seeing gameplay I was so disappointed (once again) I ended up not getting it and it drove me away from the game even further.
Stores are all garbage, I don't care what Crashed has to say (this time), doing AQ and BGs feels pointless (I had to leave my alliance since I stopped playing these game modes) when t6b t3a and t6cc are still this damn expensive. Do they not realize p2w players already have over 15 r3s and that gap is about to get wider after Cyberweekend and Banquet? How are f2p players supposed to keep up when rank up materials in the store are still this ridiculously overpriced even for Valiants?
Game is trash right now, worst state it's been in since I came back three years ago. I'm literally only doing SoS these days and nothing else, probably will fully quit after Banquet and come back when the Cyclops rework goes live lmao.
No wonder why I haven't seen you on forums for a while.
Also, why are you disappointed in Shathra? She seems like a good champion
Cause of damage, again. They keep designing these new champs around r3s and the result is mid damage almost always. Since I'm sick of waiting for them to release something decent this year I've just stopped playing the game for the most part, it's not fun for me anymore.
Yeah even this year's buffed champs have more damage (for the most part).
Also Count Nefaria? He's getting a lot of praise so far
Nefaria is also mid, overhyped as per usual by the white knights who think Kabam has been doing a great job this year.
I feel like there’s a fundamental disconnect in what Kabam and I consider high value rewards, especially for BG
Never once in my post did I say I wanted the economy to speed up and that I wanted every store to have the highest end rewards. Why can’t they tune down the cost of t6cc since it’s so much more available now? Why can’t they lower the cost of relic shards and increase the cap? Are you telling me that having more 5* relics to purchase will break the game economy? Reduce some of the costs and increase the caps on certain items. 7* shards aren’t worth as much as they once were, another thing that could have a lowered cost
For the ranked rewards, 6k 7* shards for placing in Quantum 1 is a joke. You also only get like 1k 6* relic shards. Is that all the game economy can spare? If you’re telling me some resources that can be spared and should be increased for the level of effort can’t be changed, I’m calling bs
Before I provide an update, I just want to say that players tend to look at the game economy different than we do. We look at it holistically - are players who are engaged in the game progressing? The answer right now is definitely yes. Think about your own accounts compared to a year ago. If you play the game regularly I guaranteed you have made substantial progress, regardless of how much you are spending.
A larger portion of rewards have been focused on events this year. We do this because we see a clear signal that it drives more player engagement than focusing those rewards into our regular modes. That doesn't mean they will never be updated, but it does mean more of the baseline reward budget is going to come from special events and things like the Daily Super Event.
Arenas - I said in a different thread, you don't want us to update Arenas. It would almost certainly result in lower Unit yields per time spent than the current tuning.
.
Hey Crashed. Thanks as always for the info. Can I ask for one clarification though? You mention you don’t think an economy change in arenas would ultimately benefit the players and I certainly understand your point for the ones Monday to Saturday. However, would it be possible to tweak just Sunday and maybe throw in som 6* shards or a couple units. I can imagine that would be game breaking
throwing units in the sunday arenas would cause the same problem. they would remove them from other areas of the game and we’d have to do more work for the same stuff.
arenas shouldn’t be touched because it’ll be worse off for everyone and that’s guaranteed…
Champion arenas could be changed, especially how the ranked rewards work
Before I provide an update, I just want to say that players tend to look at the game economy different than we do. We look at it holistically - are players who are engaged in the game progressing? The answer right now is definitely yes. Think about your own accounts compared to a year ago. If you play the game regularly I guaranteed you have made substantial progress, regardless of how much you are spending.
A larger portion of rewards have been focused on events this year. We do this because we see a clear signal that it drives more player engagement than focusing those rewards into our regular modes. That doesn't mean they will never be updated, but it does mean more of the baseline reward budget is going to come from special events and things like the Daily Super Event.
Arenas - I said in a different thread, you don't want us to update Arenas. It would almost certainly result in lower Unit yields per time spent than the current tuning.
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Hey Crashed. Thanks as always for the info. Can I ask for one clarification though? You mention you don’t think an economy change in arenas would ultimately benefit the players and I certainly understand your point for the ones Monday to Saturday. However, would it be possible to tweak just Sunday and maybe throw in som 6* shards or a couple units. I can imagine that would be game breaking
If they go back to touch the sunday arenas, they're going to touch the normal ones too
opinion or fact? what insider info do you have?
When the arenas were refactored from the original four to the current three arena structure, I was one of the people in the pseudo working group of CCP players giving feedback to Kabam about the changes, and helping to analyze different variations of the changes and reward structures.
If they go back to look at the Sunday arenas, they will almost certainly do so as part of a holistic review of all arenas. There are things I can say about the process and things I probably cannot directly comment on, but one thing I will say is the devs were very open about the thought process during that exchange. Not only what the requirements and limitations were surrounding the arena refactor, but even *why* an arena refactor was happening. While I cannot speak for the devs and they are free to change opinions whenever they want, the fundamentals of game development and game economy design don't change.
Every property of the arenas, from the rewards to the champs you're allowed to use to the milestone point structure are all interconnected. When we tried to change any one of them during the arena redesign, we ended up changing all of them to match, or having the change rejected because it would require changing all of them to match. And the arenas need to fit within the large game economy, which itself places constraints on things (re:units).
Collectively, the arena reward availability is *far higher* than it was intended to be, due to a variety of inflation effects. I say that as someone who knows what the original constraints the arenas were designed to fit in were, and I don't think I'm giving away any super secret idea there. Even Crashed has hinted in live streams that arena rewards are living outside the lines at the moment.
The devs could sprinkle a few rewards into the Sunday arenas and call it a day, but they won't because they have better things to do than do some small thing no one will appreciate. They could do a complete overhaul but I doubt they would do that without some compelling reason to do so. One compelling reason to do so would be to do that as part of a complete overhaul of the arenas to update them for modern roster strength. That would allow them to also review what the rewards and commensurate appropriate roster strength would be for a hypothetical new set of Sunday arenas.
You don't want them to do that. You really really don't.
I’ll farm some disagrees here from the usual suspects, but here goes:
1. DNA may have some inside knowledge but conspicuously the person my comment was directed at is silent 2. To DNA, I understand the points you are making about not wanting to overall all arenas as it may ultimately be detrimental for the overall player base. 3. I will also admit that I’m not a game designer. I don’t do dev work. I may not understand the intricacies of games. 4. I am a consumer of many forms of entertainment. I spend money on things that I enjoy. 5. The reality after 10 years of game play is that there are currently more frustrations than there have ever been. 6. So if some long time players want a few things to be tweaked to make things a little more enjoyable, well maybe that’s worth listening to. 7. Lastly I’m a realist and I know this will fall on deaf ears.
TLDR: I accept that Kabam makes their own rules, nothing we want will change and that we will continue to play.
Comments
Game currency stores stay ****, while unit and cash deals go out of control. Yeah, that’s intended lol
However, there is no question that every announced boycott of the game had its own explicit goal, and to the extent that such goals are explicitly stated, they never get them. You could argue that the 12.0 boycott did not get anything they asked for, but on the other hand the Earth didn't explode so at least they got something.
But I will go further. Not only have all boycotts been failures, in the sense of not accomplishing what they set out to accomplish, I would argue that collectively all of them have been counterproductive, in the sense of making things worse than had they not happened at all, which is something you can't say about all feedback.
Normal constructive feedback is the sort of thing the developers and the players can have a dialog about. It is something that can evolve through discussion. There's space for back and forth. A boycott is one side saying "my way or else." It forces the developers to respond accordingly, which is to say their primary objective when confronting such a thing, if they choose to acknowledge it at all, is to take the actions that will best dissolve it.
Think again about 12.0. Most of the actions taken by the devs were appeasement. 99.999% of the playerbase had no real understanding of the technical issues involved, including the boycott organizers. They were asking for Challenge Rating to be decoupled from Parry, which was impossible because CR does nothing to Parry mechanics. Kabam *could* reduce the CR scaling curve, which they did. Which did what, exactly? Players heard "we reduced CR" and that sounds a lot like going half way to eliminating it. Which is of course nonsense. Most players couldn't tell the difference, and today we live in a world where the CR values are basically where they were in 12.0, and will continue to rise beyond that, and still no one cares.
I remember at the time trying to get attention to the problem DR itself was causing with Parry damage mitigation: Parry was being affected by DR, and it shouldn't be because of the nature of what Parry was supposed to be doing in the first place. Parry was not an overstacking stat, it was *deliberately* intended to close the block damage gap. And Kabam did in fact change Parry mechanics in 12.1. But who knows how much of a distraction all the other noise around DR was at the time. Who knows what other, better refinements we could have made to DR (since it is kind of opaque and intuitively nonsensical) if there were reasonable discussions going on at the time? There was no space for that at the time.
I just don’t try to gaslight other posters with attempts to logically handwave the issue. They need to make revenue and that’s fine.
If they go back to look at the Sunday arenas, they will almost certainly do so as part of a holistic review of all arenas. There are things I can say about the process and things I probably cannot directly comment on, but one thing I will say is the devs were very open about the thought process during that exchange. Not only what the requirements and limitations were surrounding the arena refactor, but even *why* an arena refactor was happening. While I cannot speak for the devs and they are free to change opinions whenever they want, the fundamentals of game development and game economy design don't change.
Every property of the arenas, from the rewards to the champs you're allowed to use to the milestone point structure are all interconnected. When we tried to change any one of them during the arena redesign, we ended up changing all of them to match, or having the change rejected because it would require changing all of them to match. And the arenas need to fit within the large game economy, which itself places constraints on things (re:units).
Collectively, the arena reward availability is *far higher* than it was intended to be, due to a variety of inflation effects. I say that as someone who knows what the original constraints the arenas were designed to fit in were, and I don't think I'm giving away any super secret idea there. Even Crashed has hinted in live streams that arena rewards are living outside the lines at the moment.
The devs could sprinkle a few rewards into the Sunday arenas and call it a day, but they won't because they have better things to do than do some small thing no one will appreciate. They could do a complete overhaul but I doubt they would do that without some compelling reason to do so. One compelling reason to do so would be to do that as part of a complete overhaul of the arenas to update them for modern roster strength. That would allow them to also review what the rewards and commensurate appropriate roster strength would be for a hypothetical new set of Sunday arenas.
You don't want them to do that. You really really don't.
A boycott is the community saying on this day don't spend.
A movement is the community coming together and giving good solid feedback and sticking to that feedback.
In fact, in the history of this game, we've accomplished more change by not trying to organize boycotts and just communicating rationally with Kabam.
I'm not saying bugs don't hurt, but for bugs to hurt the game, someone actually has to play the game to experience them. The biggest problem a ten year old game faces is getting people to pick it up in the first place. If the new shinys stop coming out, we stop getting new players. And all the old players come from the new players. All the spenders come from the free to play revolving door.
The Kabam devs knows this, and would never risk tampering with this process. Kabam management also knows this, and would never let the devs risk this. Netmarble also knows this, and would probably never allow Kabam itself to tamper with this process.
I know not all infight problems are one or the other but at the same time there has not been no seriously transparent ANYTHING done to make it better. Just empty words fill this space from what we are allowed to see. I mean look at this SoS Toad design with clearly hidden nodes, look at ever increasing AI response times, with the ability to move faster than a speeding frame rate… this to me is what demotivates the people I know and is driving people from the game.
And on 2024 champ design… if they don’t know the disappointment felt be the community by now then I don’t think they’ll ever understand. Ironheart is a decent champ but when I think of 2024 attacker design she’s the champ that symbolizes. A 101 abilities, but damage so mid it makes her riskier than 2017 nukes in the fights she’s designed for. At that point why even bother?
Yes, harder specific content has better specific rewards (which rapidly become dated, but that's for another conversation); However, the increased difficulty is across all game modes, and the blanket rewards have largely remained the same...
Therin lies the problem...
Players are facing an AI that has straight Hulked out over the past few months, yet they're expected to accept pittance for doing so, or to just be thankful that Kabam hadn't nerfed Herc, smile, and go about their business.
The game economy and AI difficulty are tied together. You can't expect us to fully accept both the current state of the AI and the current state of the rewards. They don't balance out, and that's why the playerbase largely isn't happy.
Also, in regards to Unit Acquisition, i do think you can make the argument that the Unit Value has depreciated since those July 4 and Cyber Monday deals that once costed 18k to get everything are now twice that at 36k. And back then the 18k basically got you the majority of what the 36k gets you in more recent times if you compare how the economy was back then.
Because of this I assumed we would see the rate at which we get units increase to match with the higher cost of offers
Also, why are you disappointed in Shathra? She seems like a good champion
The game itself needs a 2.0 / sequel type variation
I can’t believe I lived and breathed 10 years into the game lol. Literally grew up with it.
But the game needs to catch up on a lot of things.
Also Count Nefaria? He's getting a lot of praise so far
arenas shouldn’t be touched because it’ll be worse off for everyone and that’s guaranteed…
But a total of 5500 for only 65% of a T6cc? 2000ish for a T4A and over 2000 for a T6b? The ISO is also super expensive for how much we need lately.
Everything else I agree with. 100% agree here. I used to buy the Sigil every month, but after a certain point, the only benefit was a cheaper featured 6*, and Sigil Witch. But now, it isn't even worth trying to get the 7*, because nothing else is worth it (except maybe the quicker arena thing, but even then it doesn't save too much time).
Never once in my post did I say I wanted the economy to speed up and that I wanted every store to have the highest end rewards. Why can’t they tune down the cost of t6cc since it’s so much more available now? Why can’t they lower the cost of relic shards and increase the cap? Are you telling me that having more 5* relics to purchase will break the game economy? Reduce some of the costs and increase the caps on certain items. 7* shards aren’t worth as much as they once were, another thing that could have a lowered cost
For the ranked rewards, 6k 7* shards for placing in Quantum 1 is a joke. You also only get like 1k 6* relic shards. Is that all the game economy can spare? If you’re telling me some resources that can be spared and should be increased for the level of effort can’t be changed, I’m calling bs
1. DNA may have some inside knowledge but conspicuously the person my comment was directed at is silent
2. To DNA, I understand the points you are making about not wanting to overall all arenas as it may ultimately be detrimental for the overall player base.
3. I will also admit that I’m not a game designer. I don’t do dev work. I may not understand the intricacies of games.
4. I am a consumer of many forms of entertainment. I spend money on things that I enjoy.
5. The reality after 10 years of game play is that there are currently more frustrations than there have ever been.
6. So if some long time players want a few things to be tweaked to make things a little more enjoyable, well maybe that’s worth listening to.
7. Lastly I’m a realist and I know this will fall on deaf ears.
TLDR: I accept that Kabam makes their own rules, nothing we want will change and that we will continue to play.