**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

5-Star Featured Crystal Change Discussion Thread

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Comments

  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Posts: 9,254 ★★★★★
    There’s literally no confirmation bias. You’re just throwing a definition hoping to prove me wrong
  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Posts: 9,254 ★★★★★
    There’s literally no confirmation bias. You’re just throwing a definition hoping to prove me wrong
  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Posts: 9,254 ★★★★★
    I’m bored of this. You are very clearly wrong. Enjoy being “mates” with Gw
  • You are beating the honor mate,nothing else.
  • Vdh2008Vdh2008 Posts: 966 ★★★★
    Well, well, well...

    Looks like the thread went off the rails. Classic.

    38 plus pages of negative feedback with a whole bunch of people creating accounts for the first time to come and tell Kabam how bad this idea is...

    Now? The exact same people who derail most other important threads have managed to completely take this one away from us too. Expect to see this post closed shortly, and we will all just have to live with this terrible change.

    Here's a thought... Get this thread back on track, and Mods can basically remove the last 3 pages of garbage that shouldn't be here anyway.

    Seriously folks, I know it's hard, but stop feeding the trolls! People come to the forums for information and discussion. It's impossible to make informed decisions if you have to slog through people arguing about who said what and when.

  • Pry22Pry22 Posts: 136
    OhGodYes wrote: »
    The real question is, are the odds in the basic equal? Or will they be? In its current state they are not equal, that is why so many people consistently pull lower tiered heros from the basics over and over again. Please let us know.

    It is equal, and always has been. You have exactly the same chance of pulling any Champion for a Basic Crystal as anyone else, and every Champ has an equal chance of dropping as each other.

    No way, your trying to tell me that those who drop bigger dollars are not increasing there odds?
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    It's not about the most effective at all. They're looking at the data and avoiding the least effective based on what they're finding. Which means anything else can be included. People might have an opinion one way or another, but the data shows what it shows.

    And data can be used to lie, meaning that it shows nothing significant

    Data doesn't lie. It shows the actual usage of the Champs. When examining the effectiveness of Champs, that's about as significant and impartial as it gets. There is a difference between general concensus on who is good and who is not, and the actual performance data.
    TL:DR - Just because Top Tier Players think that half the Roster sucks doesn't mean that will reflect in the data. The efficiency of a Champ is more than just one area of the game.

    Data doesn't "lie" but data mining isn't about data, its about mining. Every datamining process has a step vulnerable to throwing the entire exercise off. You have to take a colloquial thing you want to know and translate that into a set of numbers you can extract from your logs. That step is full of pitfalls I've seen go wrong lots of times.

    To get this right requires a significant amount of mathematical acumen, a high order mastery of statistics, and a significant amount of prior experience with large data analysis. This is expertise the overwhelming majority of game developers do not have. In fact statistically speaking the average number of developers with this expertise in the average game development house rounds to zero.

    For example, suppose for example purposes we decide we want to find the "lowest" performing champions. We could naively decide to select all champions whose usage numbers were far below average and those whose reward earning values were far below average and any overlap between those two lists would be deemed as "low performing." But I suspect Blade would be on that list, because he's so new he isn't used often across the entire playerbase. And if hypothetically people used him in AW more than quests, his actual reward earning value could be relatively low compared to other high value champs. Unless this step is done very carefully, data mining can generate operationally wrong conclusions. Data doesn't lie, but mining can be done wrong.

    An example from real life that illustrates the point. In another MMO I played in the past the devs data mined a particular character class being the most common played character class in the entire game. It was the class that players created new characters most frequently. It was the character class that had the most logins. It was the most leveled on average. And yet it was considered underperforming by many players of the game. It took a deeper dive to discover that while that class was the most common across the entire game, it was overwhelmingly common in the lower levels and significantly lagged in the higher levels of the game. It appears the problem with the class was that it was easy to play and did a lot of damage so it was popular with new players and leveled quickly. But it became outclassed at higher levels and many players actually abandoned playing those characters in favor of slower, less easy to play, less direct damage character classes that were far more survivable in the latter part of the game. You had to look at the data very carefully, and in a very detailed way, to see the problem the players were complaining about actually show up in the datamining.
  • Mmx1991Mmx1991 Posts: 674 ★★★★
    You judge a champ by pushing it to it's max. IE. Hard content.

    Any champ can be effective in map 2 or Tier 18.

    Test it out in hard content and you'll find out who comes ahead. This isn't a debate, it's fact.
  • AnonymousAnonymous Posts: 508 ★★★
    This is why the forums are virtually empty

    Unless you agree to bash Kabam on every thread for every reason then you are called a troll and flagged none stop

    Lots of people agree with kabam. I don’t mind if you do or don’t. It’s the way he carries himself on the forum, the way he argues his side, and yes of course some of his opinions. I believe he’s a troll because he agrees with kabam on every issue, literally anything kabam has done, gw is there praising them. Anyone speaks against kabam he calls them conspiracy theorists.

    To be fair mate, I see virtually no-one siding with Kabam on here, at all. It is constant bashing and blaming when that achieves nothing at all as you know. People should discuss, and if they disagree then they disagree. But people get personal, name calling, flagging every post etc etc

    @GroundedWisdom rubs some people up the wrong way, but no need to abuse him non-stop is there. I genuinely believe he tries to help as much as he can, but people take this the wrong way. Plus he has different opinions than some as well. And people posting personal attacks is then flagged as liked by others? Not nice or grown up

    But, back to this change: Like I said, nothing will change on this for at least the next 3 months however much some people want it to. So we may as well calm down and see how it works out is what I suggest?
    It’s because he acts like a troll. Whether he is or not, he acts like one. If I act like a bully to someone and they perceive me to, even if I’m not BEING a bully, does that make me one? Well that’s a different debate but regardless, it would make me in the wrong.

    You don’t know if anything will change. Nothing will change if nobody says anything about it. But we could bring about real change. Like with the arena changes that kabam cancelled due to community outrage.

    Your suggestion of Just accepting it and thinking “well there’s nothing I can do” would mean that nothing would change in the game if everyone thought like that.

    Eg
    -oh look a bug, but ah well there’s nothing I can do about it so I’ll see how it works out
    -oh look someone is cheating, but ah well there’s nothing I can do about it so I’ll see how it works out
    -oh no, kabam are changing arena so we have 10 hour recharge unless we buy an item, but ah well there’s nothing I can do about it so I’ll see how it works out
    -oh look, kabam are removing blade, spark, ghost rider, star lord and wolverine from the game, but ah well there’s nothing I can do about it so I’ll see how it works out

    People need to complain to tell kabam what’s wrong. It would be a very bad game and different if nobody complained.

    Also look at the alliance war forum. The community filled up lots of pages of complaints. There were months of diversity wars before finally kabam made a positive change.
  • BahamutBahamut Posts: 2,307 ★★★★
    So you changed it from a 20% chance to get a specific champ on the day of their release with chances at other good and bad 5*s to a 4% to get a specific champ up to 3 months after their release along with some other dip champs. Great job Kabam
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    Axo4545 wrote: »
    I give up. DNA3000 and grounded wisdom you two can talk to each other about whatever you want because no matter what anyone else has to say both if you have to try and prove that you are the most intelligent person in the thread. DNA3000, you may or may not be who knows. You definitely have a better shot at it than GW. Anyway, continue on with doing what you both seem to love to do which is trying to prove everyone else wrong. Enjoy the thread and chatting with each other. I don't like the new crystals but I'll take them over being on this thread and having to listen to both of you. Good luck getting the outcome you want on the crystals.

    Then just ignore them like most people here do? lol they spend more time chatting on the forums than actually playing the game. Disregard them.

    The price of participating on these forums and attempting to voice a reasoned opinion regardless of the emotional level of the discussion thread is having to deal with comments like this from commenters like yourself. Its not a high price and I'm perfectly willing to pay it. But you don't have to read my posts because it takes a trivial amount of effort to eliminate them from your view if you believe my posts are entirely worthless. Just like I don't understand why anyone would invest significant amount of time into a game they hate, I don't understand why someone would subject themselves willingly to content they believe is consistently worthless. That's irrational.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    You don’t know that kabam won’t change it. You are saying something with absolute certainty that you couldn’t possibly know. You’re either assuming or lying. Again, I’ll mention the arena update that kabam didn’t do because of a week of complaints on forum.

    Your correct mate, I dont know, its just my opinion. But I am pretty certain about this one, and you are as well really arent you?

    Plus every post you post yourself (the same as we all do) you state it as if it is fact, when its just your opinion, You keep saying this is a bad change, that we all dont like it or want it, that it will have a bad affect on the game for us etc. These are your opinions, not facts

    Point to where I said that we all hate it. Or that it will affect the game negatively.

    You said, just 2 posts above:

    Well it's a fact that more people hate the idea than like or love it

    You even said it was a fact, when it clearly isnt, it is your opinion only

    Since when are these two statements the same?

    1) we all hate it
    2) more people hate it than love it

    Out of Everyone I know in the game, upwards of 1000 people (I’m in a line chat with my alliance’s family of alliances) the vast majority dislike it. Using that sample of variously rated players. Some with 4-40s some with rank 5 5*. The largely vast majority hate it. Meaning that to me, it is a fact that more hate it than love it.

    Stating as a FACT that more people dislike it than like it is just wrong mate. It is your point of view, not mine or others at all. Plus I have already explained that we all look for people who share our opinions, it is a common thing to do. It doesnt make it a fact in any way, it just means you say it is! Doesn't make the opinion the right one

    Out of the 500+ people I know in game I would say the split is:

    30% hate it
    20% like it
    50% wait to see what happens

    Does that make my opinion now a fact?

    It is my point of view, and from a statistical standpoint it is 99% of others as well. We did a poll in our chat and 970 of the 1100 people in the chat voted that they disliked it. Companies use data like that to get “facts” about their general market every day.

    The odds that the data from that poll is accurate is very high. As I said before, a huge range of progress of each account. So it is very like the population.

    Actually, those two polls would be considered irreparably statistically skewed due to self-selection bias.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    Mmx1991 wrote: »
    You judge a champ by pushing it to it's max. IE. Hard content.

    Any champ can be effective in map 2 or Tier 18.

    Test it out in hard content and you'll find out who comes ahead. This isn't a debate, it's fact.

    That's a reasonable way to judge which champions have the highest performance potential. That's useful for some game balance operations, but in general that's not how MMO developers judge the content they put into their games accessible to a wider player population. A champion is good or bad depending on how it behaves when judged across all of the players taken as a whole, because that's the overall goal of development in the first place.

    This sometimes works against the players (some of them) and sometimes for the players. They just don't tend to recognize when the latter happens. For example, this same principle is almost certainly how Star Lord escaped the nerf hammer in 12.0 relatively unscathed. Star Lord does a lot of damage in theory. He does a lot of damage when used by the right players. He doesn't deal that enormous amount of damage on average across the entire playerbase, so the need to nerf him was lower than SW or Thor. Thor dealt ridiculous damage in everyone's hands with 11.0 mechanics (and honestly, I believe the devs incorrectly double-nerfed him and don't fully realize it, nor do most of the players), so he was the larger outlier than Star Lord (and SW was probably the largest outlier).
  • AnonymousAnonymous Posts: 508 ★★★
    There's nothing positive about this new crystal. A 4% chance at someone you might want doesn't compare to roughly 20 to 25% chance. Where is the reason to spend 15k? You don't have anything special for me or many others that I associate with. Just my opinion, not bashing anyone else's opinion. I'm also a tier 1 player, so maybe it's just my level.w2jr4lez96bf.png
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    Anonymous wrote: »
    There's nothing positive about this new crystal. A 4% chance at someone you might want doesn't compare to roughly 20 to 25% chance. Where is the reason to spend 15k? You don't have anything special for me or many others that I associate with. Just my opinion, not bashing anyone else's opinion. I'm also a tier 1 player, so maybe it's just my level.

    For me personally, I would have to agree with you on the contents of the first announced crystal. But that was also true for the majority of featured 5* crystals as well. I wasn't going to spend 15k on King Groot or Carnage or Vulture. The question is whether the crystal structure has anything to offer in theory, depending on what the future contents hold. The current 5* featured is not a 20% chance to get someone I want. It is *sometimes* a 20% chance to get someone I want, and most of the time someone I don't want, or at least don't want to spend the extra shards to get.

    For the new crystal to have the same chance to pull a desirable 5* champion than the current one approximately has, five out of the twenty four champions have to be "sufficiently desirable" whatever that means for any particular player. Looking back at the release schedule we have had strings of six 5* champions that had several good pulls, the set that had Rogue, Ghost Rider, and Voodoo had three of six, and the set with Hyperion and Gwenpool had two good ones and two decent (Hood, Dormammu). The set added to basic in December contained Iceman, AA, Psylocke, Angela, King Groot, and Nebula. Its a set with two top tier champions and no real complete duds.

    Rotating the crystals faster, every month instead of every three months, increases the likelihood that a rolling sequence of six featured champions contains several top tier or near top tier options, and also at least a few strong desirable basic champions to make the odds of pulling a strong champion higher than the current featured crystal.

    I don't need every new featured crystal to be packed with highly desirable 5* champions (for me). That's not true with the current crystal now. I'd just like the odds of a few of them out of an entire year happening to land in the general area of my bullseye to be reasonably good. That's the real problem with judging these crystals for me. I can't judge their true value without knowing what the contents are or will likely be. And the first one could simply be bad luck.

    The first one has a slightly higher chance to avoid duds, so if that's what you're after it might be interesting. If you're looking for something with the same value as a highly desirable featured 5* crystal, I don't think it gets there. It could, depending on how the new 5* featured champions line up in the calendar and what the curated basic champions look like in future crystals. But if there's only going to be four versions in the entire year, I'm skeptical people will find what they want value-wise in an entire year of featured crystals. That's probably not a good idea. On top of everything else, it gives you fewer options to adjust things if the players reacts badly to them across the entire playerbase.

  • AnonymousAnonymous Posts: 508 ★★★
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    Anonymous wrote: »
    There's nothing positive about this new crystal. A 4% chance at someone you might want doesn't compare to roughly 20 to 25% chance. Where is the reason to spend 15k? You don't have anything special for me or many others that I associate with. Just my opinion, not bashing anyone else's opinion. I'm also a tier 1 player, so maybe it's just my level.

    For me personally, I would have to agree with you on the contents of the first announced crystal. But that was also true for the majority of featured 5* crystals as well. I wasn't going to spend 15k on King Groot or Carnage or Vulture. The question is whether the crystal structure has anything to offer in theory, depending on what the future contents hold. The current 5* featured is not a 20% chance to get someone I want. It is *sometimes* a 20% chance to get someone I want, and most of the time someone I don't want, or at least don't want to spend the extra shards to get.

    For the new crystal to have the same chance to pull a desirable 5* champion than the current one approximately has, five out of the twenty four champions have to be "sufficiently desirable" whatever that means for any particular player. Looking back at the release schedule we have had strings of six 5* champions that had several good pulls, the set that had Rogue, Ghost Rider, and Voodoo had three of six, and the set with Hyperion and Gwenpool had two good ones and two decent (Hood, Dormammu). The set added to basic in December contained Iceman, AA, Psylocke, Angela, King Groot, and Nebula. Its a set with two top tier champions and no real complete duds.

    Rotating the crystals faster, every month instead of every three months, increases the likelihood that a rolling sequence of six featured champions contains several top tier or near top tier options, and also at least a few strong desirable basic champions to make the odds of pulling a strong champion higher than the current featured crystal.

    I don't need every new featured crystal to be packed with highly desirable 5* champions (for me). That's not true with the current crystal now. I'd just like the odds of a few of them out of an entire year happening to land in the general area of my bullseye to be reasonably good. That's the real problem with judging these crystals for me. I can't judge their true value without knowing what the contents are or will likely be. And the first one could simply be bad luck.

    The first one has a slightly higher chance to avoid duds, so if that's what you're after it might be interesting. If you're looking for something with the same value as a highly desirable featured 5* crystal, I don't think it gets there. It could, depending on how the new 5* featured champions line up in the calendar and what the curated basic champions look like in future crystals. But if there's only going to be four versions in the entire year, I'm skeptical people will find what they want value-wise in an entire year of featured crystals. That's probably not a good idea. On top of everything else, it gives you fewer options to adjust things if the players reacts badly to them across the entire playerbase.

    Well, I do believe it's around 20% to pull the feature, obviously different people have different luck. I used a different strategy for my pulls based on timing, spinning or not spinning made no difference. For me, I watched the alliance feed. If there was some bad luck in a few crystals, I'd open mine next. Maybe it works, maybe not, but I got iceman, stark spidey, and medusa on 1 15k crystal each. So it definitely worked for me lol.

    I do agree that there is very little value in any possibility of how this new crystal is designed. In essence, as someone else pointed out, people may have an overload of t4ccs in one particular class, expiring t2as, and awakening gems. With the current chances in the featured, you have a legitimate shot at pulling that champ and using the resources before they expire, adding to your prestige, and basic account progression. No one likes being stuck where they are watching everyone else progress much faster.
  • Hubris and Grounded,you should become a politician.both of you are very talented.long tongue and thousands of words written down,without any meaning…..this new featured 5* is not good for any of the players,not even for the beginners.it is just a shameless push for the garbage GMC crystal sales,nothing else.anyway,i am having fun,when i read your [Removed by Moderator].

  • LocoMotivesLocoMotives Posts: 1,200 ★★★
    This thread is a trainwreck
  • MhykkeMhykke Posts: 431 ★★★
    This thread is a trainwreck

    I agree, I think it’s pretty great too.
  • SvainSvain Posts: 453 ★★
    We hit 45 pages of complaints about this moronic change, and yet nothing from the overlords. What does it take to get it through the thick skulls above that we don't like this change, we don't want this change, and we never asked for this change.

    About 15 of those pages are the same 5 people bickering over who said what.
  • RedRoosterRedRooster Posts: 337 ★★
    @DNA3000 Your post about data mining is exactly why I've said some sampling bias is not necessarily bad. Because it depends on your objective. Looking at new account or low skill account data is not really going to garner you useful information on "effectiveness".
    1) They're just learning how to play
    2) They don't have access to many champs

    It's entirely different if you're talking about using that kind of data to understand account retention or turning F2P into paid.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    RedRooster wrote: »
    @DNA3000 Your post about data mining is exactly why I've said some sampling bias is not necessarily bad. Because it depends on your objective. Looking at new account or low skill account data is not really going to garner you useful information on "effectiveness".

    1. Sampling bias is always bad unless it is controlled. If you don't know in what specific way you're skewed, your conclusions can't be justified, even if the skew direction was intentional.

    2. As I mentioned before, you're talking about "effectiveness" to mean "potential" whereas game developers almost certainly do not.

    The devs don't really care, most of the time, if you're twice as strong with Blade as I am. They don't care because they don't have to care. You being twice as good as me with Blade won't in and of itself help or hurt the game as a whole. What they care about because they have to care about it, is what Blade is doing now in the hands of all the players that have him, and what will happen when a million players eventually get their hands on him. That can make or break the game, so 99% of the time what matters to them is what actually happens, not what happens in the top tier or what happens with the absolute best players or what is the best that can possibly happen. Short of game-breaking exploitability, what matters is what everyone does with Blade, not what the few best players can do with him.

    Keep in mind this is all somewhat moot, because while this academic discussion surrounds @Kabam Miike 's use of the word "effective" it doesn't directly say anything about the intent of the featured crystal. If we all start agreeing on how we will all use the word "effective" or even how we should measure it, it won't change the content of the crystal. They chose those champions for their own internal reasons, and hitting the devs over the head with a dictionary won't change their minds any more than I could change your mind about how good the crystal is by forcing you to redefine the word "good." Even if I get you to change your mind about the word, it wouldn't change your opinion. The word is just a way to express the opinion. You'd change words, not your mind. The devs aren't going to change their minds either. At best, and even this is unlikely, they will just change words.
  • RedRoosterRedRooster Posts: 337 ★★
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    RedRooster wrote: »
    @DNA3000 Your post about data mining is exactly why I've said some sampling bias is not necessarily bad. Because it depends on your objective. Looking at new account or low skill account data is not really going to garner you useful information on "effectiveness".

    1. Sampling bias is always bad unless it is controlled. If you don't know in what specific way you're skewed, your conclusions can't be justified, even if the skew direction was intentional.

    2. As I mentioned before, you're talking about "effectiveness" to mean "potential" whereas game developers almost certainly do not.

    You totally missed my point even though we're on the same page. Did I say uncontrolled? I specifically said why you would bias a particular way, therefore you would know how you're skewed.

    And the reason why "effectivness" is in quotes is because it's such a nebulous concept. I have no idea what their metrics are and neither do you, but it is the term that the Kabam mods used.

    Don't go the way of other contrarians on this forum.
  • I have a real concern regarding this and would like clarification and certainty that kabam will be smart and not put she-hulk, khamala khan, spidergwen and other mediocre champs that are completely and utterly useless????
  • They’ll have to add them at some point if they continue to rotate the pool, even if they don’t have 2 back to back.

    Hopefully they’ll only add them after they go through a tweaking process similar to Luke Cage and Red Hulk.
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