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

Username1583

Can we get something similar for 4 star champions? I would really like to have more chances on getting Hyperion or Gwenpool since I hadn't had time to grind for them and my chances to get them from 4s crystals are probably 0.

DNA3000

AnotherPool wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

You know how many players were certain that this game was doomed after 12.0 and we would all know it soon enough? All of them were about as wrong as wrong gets.

.

This is fun, don't you remember those apologies for 12.0 posted by Kabam? don't you remember it just took a couple of weeks for them to rollback some of those stupid and ridiculous changes in 12.0?
If everyone is just like you and accept all the greedy changes made by them with no complaint, this game is already dead.

In fact, they didn't actually "roll back" very many changes. They revised some of them, but every champion that was nerfed was still nerfed, just less in some cases. Every mechanical change they made remained (like the stacking armor break mechanic no one seemed to have noticed), and every attribute players complained about was defaulted to zero but remained in the game (like armor penetration and critical resistance).

And once again, this is entirely irrelevant to what I was saying, because I don't deny any of these changes happening. I said, and apparently have to repeat, again, that even with every single one of those changes there were still many players saying MCOC was doomed either because those changes did not go far enough or were irrelevant.

And while everyone is not like me, I feel comfortable adding you to the list of people who believe that the game is effectively dead if it doesn't specifically address your issues or if everyone doesn't see every game change exactly the same way you do.

DNA3000

BaccaBossMC wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

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.

We are only responding in kind to the BS they are pulling on us. They brought this on themselves, and we aren't being that unreasonable anyhow.

The situation is not symmetric. When the devs communicate badly with you, that hurts you. When you communicate badly with the devs, that also hurts you. In a tit-for-tat war, the players lose.

unknown

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RehctansBew

This may or may not have been covered, but with Blade being added to the basic before his feature comes back out will that mean there is an increased odds in his feature?

xRemyLeBeaux

@Kabam Miike

YouTuber Jade Jolie reminded me in her video a very important aspect of this change.
What about those that are not Uncollected? Cannot get a new 5* straight off the bat?

This change isn't for good but for the bad. It's really cheap and about money. Very bad move. No one will pay 15k for the same chance for obtaining Hela OR Antman. If you listen to the community, do not push it.

I would personally boycott this. How 'if you want new 5* you have to wait 3 months and you have the same chance for it and old champions' can be good for us, it's ridicoulus. No one asked for this. You want us to gamble with units instead. EA level. Leave it as it is or make 2 featured crystals.

You already dropped out of top 20 games that most people spend on. And don't say that if it's not appealing to me, it can be for others, because all this thread provided negative feedback. None of this champions are worth duping (not counting Hela, Doc Ock and RagnaThor for prestige mostly). Are you crazy? Want another boycott? Seatin already said that he won't spend money for a while on the game because of this change.

SpiritOfVengeance

@RehctansBew
That is also something I wondered I mean this will be the last featured crystal we get. Might as well end it in a good way to start off the new featured crystal.

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

“We are using empirical data based on Champion performance in Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars to decide which Champions will be added to the Crystal. This means that while Player perception of the Champions may not always align, we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions...”

“It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars.”

“I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.”

@DNA3000 I’m not sure how you read these quotes and conclude they intended to only eliminate the champs we think are bad and didn’t intend them to be anything in particular.

The first quote literally says "we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions" which is an explicit statement of intent.

The second quote says literally nothing about intent. It says they used empirical data showing the champion effectiveness in making their choices. This statement would be true on its face if the devs decided to put the best champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the worst champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the most mediocre champions into the crystal, if they decided to put a random sampling of different effectiveness champions into the crystal, or if they decided to make each crystal have a different effectiveness basket.

The third statement doesn't address what the intent of the crystal contents are. It expresses @Kabam Miike's opinion, or an opinion he is passing on, about the effectiveness of certain champions: the quote in context is:

Kabam Miike wrote: »

bradshaw84 wrote: »

Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, civil warrior, ant man amongst the 18 best and most used in aq and aw? GTFOH! LMAO!

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Just talked to the team, and they are comfortable with sharing the list of Champions we plan to include in the first Featured Champion Crystal. It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars.

Beast
Storm
Cable
Cyclops (New Xavier School)
Thor (Ragnarok)
Taskmaster
Agent Venom
Hawkeye
Modok
Sentry
Void
Ant-Man
Mordo
Thor (Jane Foster)
Loki
Juggernaut
Hela
Phoenix
Ronan
Venompool
Nebula
Punisher (2099)
Civil Warrior
Doctor Octopus

Bold Text denotes Featured Champions.

I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.

He is speaking very specifically about a list of champions, not the intent of the crystal. He is saying that Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, Civil Warrior, and Ant Man score highly in their datamining in terms of how they judge effectiveness when they are used by players. He also specifically disavows the notion that lots of players use them or even necessarily think they are effective champions to use. He only says that the players who use them are effective with them.

But again, that doesn't say that the intent of the crystal is to place the highest effective champions (as Kabam datamines them to be) into the crystal. Because he does not mention other champions, it is still entirely possible that the crystal contains a mix of champions, of which some are effective in certain ways in certain tiers of AQ and AW. There is no reasonable reason to state that if Kabam Miike says those nine champions are seen as effective and used by a small number of players, that every champion fits that description.

As for analysis, it’s pretty clear Miike wants to hang his hat on empirical data the team looked at to make their determination.

I'm not sure what you mean by "hang his hat." Its a plain statement that Kabam used empirical data to decide how to evaluate the champions. Every MMO company does that. But nowhere do they say *which* champions, given that data, were intentionally put in the crystal.

For example, it would be entirely consistent with how MMO companies generally work for Kabam to see that different champions are used at different tiers, or by different player populations of varying skill and playtime, and try to pick a random sample of such champions from across different segments of the player population to represent a wide swath of them. Doing so would guarantee that many if not most of the champions would only be seen as useful by a small percentage of the players, and seen less favorably by a majority of the players. That happens all the time when a reward is created that is a segmented sum of narrow-casted datamining.

Plus, there's simple math that makes all of this really moot in an analytical sense. There's about 84 champions in the basic crystal that could have been curated into the new featured. Kabam has said no champion will repeat twice in a row, although they could reappear after that. So that means the May crystal has to have eighteen different champions in it. The two crystals combined must contain 36 of the 84 champions. It is highly unlikely that they will just alternate between the two versions, so as a practical matter for there to be any significant variations the third crystal should contain at least half of its content not identical to the first one (and it cannot contain anything from the second one). That means the pool of champions they are picking from to add to the curated list for the new featured champions must be at least 45 champions. That's over half of all the possible basic champions that exist at the moment. Whatever the criteria they are using is, it cannot be to put the best, or even just the top half of the options, because they don't have enough champions to do that. At least a few must be below average (as in literally below the 50% mark) just because of the sheer numbers involved.

It is numerically possible for Kabam to exclude the bottom 25% from the curated list. It is numerically impractical, and borderline impossible, for Kabam to include only the top 50%.

TheGodfather

@Kabam Miike What's it going to take for you to realize this is not what we want.

Scratch that, you already know this is a huge issue for the majority of players.

So what is it going to take for you to stop this madness? Clearly 1K comments in the span of 48 hours isn't enough.

Perhaps a petition is called for?

MallKaas

@Kabam Miike
I would ask it very simply. If you had 15,000 5-star shards would you prefer to get the old crystal or the new crystal?

DNA3000

MallKaas wrote: »

@Kabam Miike
I would ask it very simply. If you had 15,000 5-star shards would you prefer to get the old crystal or the new crystal?

That may not be a valid choice. If the change to the featured crystal is part of the overall evolution of 5* champions, then the new featured crystal is probably closely coupled to the increases in 5* shard availability we've had and continue to get. The choice would be between having 5* availability frozen where it was a year or more ago and the featured crystal as it originally was designed, or the new crystal and the greater shard availability.

Some people might still prefer the original crystal and the highly constrained 5* shard availability, but I suspect a larger percentage of players would prefer the higher availability regardless of the crystal design. In either case, that's not the kind of thing you can easily put to a vote. Most of the players the evolving system benefits the most are very likely to be not vocal forum participants.

becauseicant

Ignoring the new crystal for a moment, can we PLEASE get some attention on the current 5* featured crystal schedule and how everyone who was saving for a chance at their favorite champion that came out after Blade - like Taskmaster or Modok - have now lost that chance? It would make so much sense and would make so many people happy if you would finish off the schedule by releasing the 5* featured crystals for every champion you released before you made this major announcement which means all the way up to Sentry. You're giving the community one last shot at Blade but ignoring people who have planned their game time, resources, and effort into saving for what they thought at the time would be their major opportunity to get those champs.

SpiritOfVengeance

@becauseicant
I forgot about this in anger of the new idea. I originally was planning for taskmaster not blade only because I remember wanting him to join for quite a while along with other champions.

So if featured crystals are going then yeah I totally agree with what you said these guys should have their run instead of being cut off. One of my alliance members was also saving quite a lot of shards to dupe his thor ragnarok not the best I know but still.

It would make a lot of people happy if you could at least do this guys.

LeNoirFaineant

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I know what everyone else knows. That they're looking at Champs based on imperial data, that they're making an effort not to include the ones that perform poorly, and that there is a varied range in the Crystal.
I am entitled to my own opinion based on the information presented. That's not up for debate.

@GroundedWisdom it's based on imperial data? Lmao Kabam must be the Evil Empire.

unknown

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DNA3000

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I know what everyone else knows. That they're looking at Champs based on imperial data, that they're making an effort not to include the ones that perform poorly, and that there is a varied range in the Crystal.
I am entitled to my own opinion based on the information presented. That's not up for debate.

@GroundedWisdom it's based on imperial data? Lmao Kabam must be the Evil Empire.

I'm pretty sure that means Kabam is not on the metric system.

Gladiator09

Well @Kabam Miike tried his best to sell us the idea of cyclops ... just doing as the boss says.

What a start of the year ;
First game play issues,
Then Sentry disappointment;
Now the featured crystals gone:
Next .......

GroundedWisdom

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

I know what everyone else knows. That they're looking at Champs based on imperial data, that they're making an effort not to include the ones that perform poorly, and that there is a varied range in the Crystal.
I am entitled to my own opinion based on the information presented. That's not up for debate.

@GroundedWisdom it's based on imperial data? Lmao Kabam must be the Evil Empire.

Depends on who you ask. Lmao. I was tired. XD

Mandagar

Everyone the below is for Kabam Miike. I honestly don't expect him to listen but it sure would be nice. Heck, if this gets removed I wouldn't be surprised. I just hope it is up long enough for everyone to see and possibly get a chance to put in their two cents.

Dear @Kabam Miike,
Please listen to the players. Look at this discussion. You have to see that this new featured crystal is a bad idea. Your so-called empirical data is wrong. Here is an idea listen to the players not the team because the team does not make it possible for you to get a paycheck,

The players in this discussion does just that and I can bet that they will agree with me.

Mandagar

Mandagar wrote: »

Everyone the below is for Kabam Miike. I honestly don't expect him to listen but it sure would be nice. Heck, if this gets removed I wouldn't be surprised. I just hope it is up long enough for everyone to see and possibly get a chance to put in their two cents.

Dear @Kabam Miike,
Please listen to the players. Look at this discussion. You have to see that this new featured crystal is a bad idea. Your so-called empirical data is wrong. Here is an idea listen to the players not the team because the team does not make it possible for you to get a paycheck,

The players in this discussion does just that and I can bet that they will agree with me.

Because without the players who are willing to put money into this game (like me) then this game would honestly crash and burn.

Mmx1991

CoquiFongo wrote: »

That’s what happens when you try to use too many $5 words and get caught.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sPNP8Zir0Y

Titan_A97

Say what you want but the term 'effective' is quite vague in this context. To be frank, I don't really understand what 'effective' means.

In reality, every champ can be used 'effectively', creating further confusion. I'll try explain to the best of my ability. For example, She-Hulk is commonly regarded as 'trash' by some, but she can still be used 'effectively' by stunning the opponent and following it with a heavy attack. This combo is 'effective' in the fact that the player uses 2 of She-Hulk's mechanics (stun + increased heavy attack dmg while stunned).

In the same way, Colossus, also another lowly regarded champ, can also be used 'effectively' by building up his armor through his armor up buffs then firing off an SP3. That's an 'effective' use since it also utilises his mechanics to maximise his potential (armor up + increased SP dmg based on current armor).

Finally, Iceman, a highly praised champ, can also be used in an 'effective' manner. In this hypothesised instance, if Iceman was facing a duped Spiderman (OG) on a poison or bleed node, it would be regarded as an 'effective' use of his mechanics since a) Iceman is immune to both poison and bleed and b) Iceman's Coldsnap can easily bypass Spiderman's autoevade mechanic, thus making it an 'effective' use of this character's abilities.

I could go on and on for literally every champion in the game, Thanos, Kang, Redpool you name it. But you get the point. Every champion, 'god' or 'trash' tier each have their own individual abilities that can be used in an 'effective' manner to gain the largest possible advantage over your opponent. So if each champion can be used 'effectively' through masteries, synergies or just skill, what does this term even mean? Is 'effectiveness' defined as the ability to use most if not all of a champion's ability simultaneously to maximise their potential? Is 'effectiveness' measured on a scale, a chart, a bar? Is it the champion's W/L ratio statistics?

Whatever it is, it's probably a combination of factors, statistics and data in either a numerical or categorical form. If anyone knows the meaning of 'effective' in this specific context, please let me know.

Mmx1991

effective

DNA3000

Titan_A97 wrote: »

Say what you want but the term 'effective' is quite vague in this context. To be frank, I don't really understand what 'effective' means.

In reality, every champ can be used 'effectively', creating further confusion.

Only Kabam knows the precise details of how they datamine their game, but when any game developer talks about measuring performance or "effectiveness" they aren't talking about "can be" done. They are talking about what is done.

You're thinking about all the ways a champion could be effective, but Kabam isn't saying everyone sat around and debated with each other over which champions were more or less effective. They ran a report. That report showed numbers for each champion. This number better than that number, this champion more effective, period.

Precisely which numbers you look at and how you adjust for certain parameters is important, but at a fundamental level if the players kill more things with Colossus than Stark Spiderman, then Colossus is more effective. We can debate why that happens and try to explain that difference away to force the numbers to conform with what we "know" but what we know is also hopelessly contaminated by the kind of players we are. Star Lord only does a lot of damage if you can hold a high combo. If we simply dismiss that as trivial, that "everyone" can hold a combo because it is "easy" then we're in effect saying only certain players matter when it comes to determining how useful a champion is. The other players are just scrubs that don't matter.

We can say that, because our opinion doesn't really affect anything. But game developers don't think that way and can't think that way. If 90% of the playerbase can't hold more than a combo of 40, then Star Lord is not really very powerful for the players of the game taken as a whole. If for some crazy reason 90% of players get more kills with Colossus than Elektra, then Colossus is a stronger champion than Elektra for most players.

You do need to take into consideration that, say, a lot fewer people have Blade, so Blade has to be used less often. His popularity is based less on how good the players think he is, and more because of his rarity. But if, say, about the same number of players have Dr. Strange and Black Widow and Dr. Strange is played 30% more often, that means Strange is more popular with the players. It also means, statistically, that he should get 30% more kills. But if he gets only 10% more kills, that would suggest he is less effective when he is played.

The devs may have no idea why the champions they datamined as being "effective" actually are effective. The datamining they did may not contain that kind of information. It most likely contains information on what percentage of the playerbase possess each champion, and relative to that number how often is each champion played. And when the champion is played, what is the general result. How many kills does it get? How often does it die in the hands of the player. How much rewards do the players earn with that champion?

And this is usually broken down by some kind of partitioning of the playerbase. Obviously the data from players with less than a week of play will be different than players with three years of play, on average. Players with 200k rating will do different things than players with 600k rating. How finely grained they dice up the playerbase is something that is highly variable and I couldn't guess at meaningfully. But I'm guessing they probably know things like which champions are played the most often among 400k+ players verses 200k-400k players verses 0-200k players, or some kind of breakdown. They might know which champions generate more rewards among three year veterans vs two year veterans vs one year veterans. Stuff like that.

But while it is interesting to speculate on *how* the champions might be effective in a particular player's hands, and that might be useful when it comes to thinking about game balancing, its probably not relevant to how champions were selected for the featured crystal. Why the champion appears effective in their datamining is something the crystal designers probably didn't give a second thought to. They were handed a set of reports showing what the raw numbers were for each champion in every datamined pigeonhole, and they used that to decide which champions would and would not be eligible for the curated eighteen.

Thestoryteller6

It's too late to do this but... I think this might have gone down much better if you hadn't tried to put this ridiculous spin on it. It's clearly not beneficial to players and progression so why try to spin it as such? I would have been far happier with an explanation like, 5 star shards are getting much more easily available making featured crystals imbalanced. Or something that made sense. This is exactly the situation with AW - you put together a ridiculous statement with a ton of exclamation marks saying it would be amazing and that really made you look out of touch with reality (as real as a video game can be).

DNA3000

Thestoryteller6 wrote: »

It's too late to do this but... I think this might have gone down much better if you hadn't tried to put this ridiculous spin on it. It's clearly not beneficial to players and progression so why try to spin it as such? I would have been far happier with an explanation like, 5 star shards are getting much more easily available making featured crystals imbalanced. Or something that made sense. This is exactly the situation with AW - you put together a ridiculous statement with a ton of exclamation marks saying it would be amazing and that really made you look out of touch with reality (as real as a video game can be).

I don't think they really spun this specific crystal as being better than the old crystal. If you read the original announcement carefully, they actually mentioned the state of the game when 5* champions were first introduced, not what the state of the game was very recently. They said that originally, you had two shots at a featured, and then it was basically gone. And the basic crystal got additions extremely slowly, so if you missed your chance, it was gone for a long time or maybe practically forever.

Every change to the 5* system has improved that situation taken as a whole. 5* shard availability has increased. Featureds are now added to the basic much faster, which means the featured crystal itself is not the last and only chance at the featured like it originally was. And had we jumped straight from there to here, I don't think this crystal would seem quite so out of place if it came with a huge increase in shards.

The problem is that all of the 5* changes happened slowly in a problematic order. First we got the basic acceleration, then we got the 5* shard availability increases, and then only now are we getting the new featured crystal, and the devs never told the players directly this was all part of a whole. So the players (at least some of them) got used to having gigantic piles of shards and a featured crystal that was practically a featured champion selection box for anyone not called Anonymous2k.

Maybe this would have been better if they had announced way in advance that oh yeah, we're going to be shoving all the featureds into the basic crystal and tripling the availability of 5* shards, but starting now the current version of the featured crystal is on borrowed time: as soon as we catch up we will replace it with a crystal designed for higher 5* shard availability. In the meantime, enjoy the temporary ability to spend your shard on that crystal. I think some players would still be mad, but I think it might have been more palatable if, as you say, the new crystal was linked to other 5* improvements, and not allowed to be judged singularly.

And then again, maybe not. It is not something I would bet money on personally. If I was in charge, I would have probably wanted to do that anyway. But I don't know if that wouldn't have blown up in my face.

DrZola

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

“We are using empirical data based on Champion performance in Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars to decide which Champions will be added to the Crystal. This means that while Player perception of the Champions may not always align, we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions...”

“It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars.”

“I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.”

@DNA3000 I’m not sure how you read these quotes and conclude they intended to only eliminate the champs we think are bad and didn’t intend them to be anything in particular.

The first quote literally says "we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions" which is an explicit statement of intent.

The second quote says literally nothing about intent. It says they used empirical data showing the champion effectiveness in making their choices. This statement would be true on its face if the devs decided to put the best champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the worst champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the most mediocre champions into the crystal, if they decided to put a random sampling of different effectiveness champions into the crystal, or if they decided to make each crystal have a different effectiveness basket.

The third statement doesn't address what the intent of the crystal contents are. It expresses @Kabam Miike's opinion, or an opinion he is passing on, about the effectiveness of certain champions: the quote in context is:

Kabam Miike wrote: »

bradshaw84 wrote: »

Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, civil warrior, ant man amongst the 18 best and most used in aq and aw? GTFOH! LMAO!

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Just talked to the team, and they are comfortable with sharing the list of Champions we plan to include in the first Featured Champion Crystal. It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars....

I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.

He is speaking very specifically about a list of champions, not the intent of the crystal. He is saying that Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, Civil Warrior, and Ant Man score highly in their datamining in terms of how they judge effectiveness when they are used by players. He also specifically disavows the notion that lots of players use them or even necessarily think they are effective champions to use. He only says that the players who use them are effective with them.

But again, that doesn't say that the intent of the crystal is to place the highest effective champions (as Kabam datamines them to be) into the crystal. Because he does not mention other champions, it is still entirely possible that the crystal contains a mix of champions, of which some are effective in certain ways in certain tiers of AQ and AW. There is no reasonable reason to state that if Kabam Miike says those nine champions are seen as effective and used by a small number of players, that every champion fits that description.

As for analysis, it’s pretty clear Miike wants to hang his hat on empirical data the team looked at to make their determination.

I'm not sure what you mean by "hang his hat." Its a plain statement that Kabam used empirical data to decide how to evaluate the champions. Every MMO company does that. But nowhere do they say *which* champions, given that data, were intentionally put in the crystal.

For example, it would be entirely consistent with how MMO companies generally work for Kabam to see that different champions are used at different tiers, or by different player populations of varying skill and playtime, and try to pick a random sample of such champions from across different segments of the player population to represent a wide swath of them. Doing so would guarantee that many if not most of the champions would only be seen as useful by a small percentage of the players, and seen less favorably by a majority of the players. That happens all the time when a reward is created that is a segmented sum of narrow-casted datamining.

...

It is numerically possible for Kabam to exclude the bottom 25% from the curated list. It is numerically impractical, and borderline impossible, for Kabam to include only the top 50%.

I’m tempted to simply reply tl;dr.

But I think you need to reread my initial comment as well as what Miike said.

I didn’t argue that the most effective champs needed to be in the crystal; rather, that I agreed with another poster who listed a set of attributes he believed most players found desirable in champs. I compared that list to the 18 champs and found it mostly lacking, with some exceptions. Most of those exceptions were not, in my opinion, best in class with regard to those attributes, but were somewhat serviceable.

As for Miike’s comments, we clearly read English differently. Your observations may be partially accurate if you read each statement absolutely literally and in a vacuum. But that’s not how an ongoing dialogue like the one occurring here is read. Statements should be read in context.

Miike essentially says 3 things in sequence: (1) We used data on performance in AQ and AW to exclude the worst champs; (2) We selected the 18 based on their effectiveness in AQ and AW (and in the context of (1) and (3) it can be inferred that we didn’t just pick the next worst champs or worst champs as determined by our data); and (3) The champs we selected were not only “not the worst or next worst,” but they were “among the most effective” in AQ and AW according to our data even if they were not always the most used champs in AQ and AW (which suggests to me potentially skewed and misleading data set based on small sample size, but that’s another matter).

That’s pretty much it. The upshot is that they selected champs they considered based on their observations to be useful (“among the most effective”) champs, regardless of of how many observations there actually were. Quite a lot of folks (not just the few dozen in this thread) disagree on the actual level of usefulness for the 18 selections based on their own experiences actually playing the game.

Continue splitting hairs if you want but I don’t think it’s much more complex than that.

Dr. Zola

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Mhykke

DrZola wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

“We are using empirical data based on Champion performance in Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars to decide which Champions will be added to the Crystal. This means that while Player perception of the Champions may not always align, we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions...”

“It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars.”

“I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.”

@DNA3000 I’m not sure how you read these quotes and conclude they intended to only eliminate the champs we think are bad and didn’t intend them to be anything in particular.

The first quote literally says "we are trying to avoid poor performing Champions" which is an explicit statement of intent.

The second quote says literally nothing about intent. It says they used empirical data showing the champion effectiveness in making their choices. This statement would be true on its face if the devs decided to put the best champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the worst champions into the crystal, if they decided to put the most mediocre champions into the crystal, if they decided to put a random sampling of different effectiveness champions into the crystal, or if they decided to make each crystal have a different effectiveness basket.

The third statement doesn't address what the intent of the crystal contents are. It expresses @Kabam Miike's opinion, or an opinion he is passing on, about the effectiveness of certain champions: the quote in context is:

Kabam Miike wrote: »

bradshaw84 wrote: »

Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, civil warrior, ant man amongst the 18 best and most used in aq and aw? GTFOH! LMAO!

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Just talked to the team, and they are comfortable with sharing the list of Champions we plan to include in the first Featured Champion Crystal. It's important to note that this list could still potentially change a little before the release, but the selected Champions are based on empirical data showing their effectiveness as 5-Star Champions in both Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars....

I didn't say most used, but they are among the most effective. Cyclops actually scores very high on this list. There is a smaller group of players that use him, but they use him VERY effectively.

He is speaking very specifically about a list of champions, not the intent of the crystal. He is saying that Beast, Jane foster, Cyclops, Ronan, Loki, Phoenix, Venompool, Civil Warrior, and Ant Man score highly in their datamining in terms of how they judge effectiveness when they are used by players. He also specifically disavows the notion that lots of players use them or even necessarily think they are effective champions to use. He only says that the players who use them are effective with them.

But again, that doesn't say that the intent of the crystal is to place the highest effective champions (as Kabam datamines them to be) into the crystal. Because he does not mention other champions, it is still entirely possible that the crystal contains a mix of champions, of which some are effective in certain ways in certain tiers of AQ and AW. There is no reasonable reason to state that if Kabam Miike says those nine champions are seen as effective and used by a small number of players, that every champion fits that description.

As for analysis, it’s pretty clear Miike wants to hang his hat on empirical data the team looked at to make their determination.

I'm not sure what you mean by "hang his hat." Its a plain statement that Kabam used empirical data to decide how to evaluate the champions. Every MMO company does that. But nowhere do they say *which* champions, given that data, were intentionally put in the crystal.

For example, it would be entirely consistent with how MMO companies generally work for Kabam to see that different champions are used at different tiers, or by different player populations of varying skill and playtime, and try to pick a random sample of such champions from across different segments of the player population to represent a wide swath of them. Doing so would guarantee that many if not most of the champions would only be seen as useful by a small percentage of the players, and seen less favorably by a majority of the players. That happens all the time when a reward is created that is a segmented sum of narrow-casted datamining.

...

It is numerically possible for Kabam to exclude the bottom 25% from the curated list. It is numerically impractical, and borderline impossible, for Kabam to include only the top 50%.

I’m tempted to simply reply tl;dr.

But I think you need to reread my initial comment as well as what Miike said.

I didn’t argue that the most effective champs needed to be in the crystal; rather, that I agreed with another poster who listed a set of attributes he believed most players found desirable in champs. I compared that list to the 18 champs and found it mostly lacking, with some exceptions. Most of those exceptions were not, in my opinion, best in class with regard to those attributes, but were somewhat serviceable.

As for Miike’s comments, we clearly read English differently. Your observations may be partially accurate if you read each statement absolutely literally and in a vacuum. But that’s not how an ongoing dialogue like the one occurring here is read. Statements should be read in context.

Miike essentially says 3 things in sequence: (1) We used data on performance in AQ and AW to exclude the worst champs; (2) We selected the 18 based on their effectiveness in AQ and AW (and in the context of (1) and (3) it can be inferred that we didn’t just pick the next worst champs or worst champs as determined by our data); and (3) The champs we selected were not only “not the worst or next worst,” but they were “among the most effective” in AQ and AW according to our data even if they were not always the most used champs in AQ and AW (which suggests to me potentially skewed and misleading data set based on small sample size, but that’s another matter).

That’s pretty much it. The upshot is that they selected champs they considered based on their observations to be useful (“among the most effective”) champs, regardless of of how many observations there actually were. Quite a lot of folks (not just the few dozen in this thread) disagree on the actual level of usefulness for the 18 selections based on their own experiences actually playing the game.

Continue splitting hairs if you want but I don’t think it’s much more complex than that.

Dr. Zola

I read Kabam Miike’s statement similarly.

I read it as according to some nebulous criteria Kabam used, the champs selected were among the most effective. Too bad Kabam will never tell us what they consider effective or what criteria were used. Possibly because their reasoning would be torn apart, and they know that it would be.

Sweatlip

This is all because they were losing money with this set up. They will announce 5* arena very soon and then we will be back to how it was. Grind an arena for a new champ or spend loads trying to get them from crystals. This was always a huge money making part for them because the whales at the top need those new champs to stay on top of the prestige race.
They way it is now is so much more balanced in terms of pay to play and free-moderate.