Dear Kabam. About the Banquet.

_phil__phil_ Member Posts: 2
Dear Kabam,

Thank you for the, let's be honest, absolute bare minimum adjustment to the absolute end game milestones in the Banquet milestones. This only helps the few % of players who were going to push that far already, but it does show you’re at least open to listening and adjusting.

This would be an incredible time to start listening harder. There are some inescapable gaps between what your game team is doing and considering “ground breaking good value rewards” and what your customers are TELLING you is incredibly bad value. This gap is immense and I recommend something be done immediately to start closing that gap.

In Kabam Crash’s response to the uproar about the value in the Banquet crystals he says something close to “the game team values rewards differently than the playerbase.” This is a true, and necessary, statement. If players had every single thing we wanted, the game would probably be unplayable (looking at you 7* Herc, Magik, and Quake). That being said, the disconnect between the game team's valuation and the players is beyond the pale of what should be considered acceptable in the Banquet event.

The player's valuation of what 300 units should achieve when spending 300 units in the game absolutely must be taken into consideration - and it very, very obviously was not taken into consideration with this event. For doing 4 runs of 1.1 in Road to the Labyrinth, a Valiant player achieves all Daily Super Event milestones. These rewards include things like half a T6 Basic/T3 Alpha, a full T5 class catalyst selector, 225 Titan shards, 1800 T4 Alpha frags, or a single 7* sig stone, and a bunch of extras. These are the things we get every single day for doing nothing more than putting our phone on autofight and hitting Replay 3 times. This doesn’t even take into account the Battlegrounds store or any other place we can piece these rewards together.

Your team has somehow decided that charging us 300 units for the rewards we get every day for free is somehow “great reward valuation.” 2 T5CC, 2 7* sig stones, 1-5% of various catalysts for 300 units? Talk about an absolutely defenseless level of disconnect. Kabam Crash is 100% right that all the rewards we get are tuned to 7*s and therefore aren’t “useless” but the quantities being offered are nowhere near a 300 unit valuation for a Valiant player.

The team also keeps saying things along the lines of, “the rewards in their entirety is incredibly good valuation.” And again, I would actually agree. But to get all the rewards in their entirety requires spending the equivalent of $500-$600 USD worth of units to get there. You have the data, how many of your players can actually do that? Should the players who can't spend/hoard enough units be left feeling absolutely miserable, worthless, and hating the event because they can’t afford it? What an awful way to treat your players, customers and potential customers.

The player base is not as foolish as we are being told we are by the game team. We completely understand not every single SBC can give an equivalent 300 unit valuation. That being said, when we are going through tens and hundreds of these crystals and coming out feeling overwhelmingly ripped off and like there was next to no value in what we pulled, there’s obvious, drastic action that needs to be taken. For something like the 10th anniversary Grand Banquet Event not a single action or crystal opening should leave us feeling like we didn’t get any value out of it. Not. A. Single. One.

The long term solution moving forward is under absolutely zero circumstance should Valiant players be in the same reward categories as Thronebreakers. That is completely nonsensical. It destroys the value of achieving the Valiant title and requires rewards tuning to be ridiculously pathetic value for Valiant players while TB players get beyond phenomenal returns. Pair Paragons and Thronebreakers together, sure. Under no circumstance should the top tier title player be suffering lessened returns because they are paired with lower-tier players.

I’m not one to go on about compensation, but honestly, there needs to be something significant done to turn around the ongoing player sentiment immediately. The 7* crystals will be appreciated by those who were already going to get them, but it has honestly made player sentiment even worse. There are reports of players vowing to never spend again, wanting a boycott/review bombing to happen, and even those putting the game down for good. You have said to “keep an eye out for the Christmas gift” but that may legitimately be too little, too late. Especially with the complete lack of trust that it will be anything of actual value at this point. You have said “just wait” over and over and every time we have been left disappointed and wanting.

There have been a few suggestions made here that could work well:

*Increase the milestone rewards for those who haven’t reached them and mail the difference to those who have. Simple and efficient.

*Create a new SBC with only the top rewards adjusted by title level and send each player 5.

*Implement a progression based Christmas Calendar that starts Monday and is filled with only the top % rewards to make up for the lacking crystal pulls. Progression based - custom for each progression level.

Again, moving forward, Kabam truly needs to invest in a Valuation Team that understands player psychology for events like this and allows them to put that ahead of what might be considered “fair rewards”. There is nothing more disheartening for a player to open $500 USD worth of units and feel awful for it. See what I did there? You’re going to tell me, “but units are free” and you’re not wrong, but the psychology behind it still leaves a player feeling like they took a massive financial hit. It’s value they could have used elsewhere and been left feeling like they actually got something of equivalent worth.

If you need help, I would be more than happy to help. As a consultant. For a fee. Would probably do it for an equivalent exchange of 3400 units per hour or so.

Comments

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  • Superdude575Superdude575 Member Posts: 1
    Totally agree. Opening these crystals has just felt bad. The milestones help it to not feel as bad, but doesn’t encourage me to spend more. I watched the video of Seatin opening 50 crystals and it was just sad. There was no excitement at all in that crystal opening video.
  • jj_jj_9jj_jj_9 Member Posts: 167
    Well put
  • HuitzilopochtliHuitzilopochtli Member Posts: 4
    Couldn’t have worded it better myself. I hope Kabam reads this and realizes how most of us see the solution they’ve proposed.
  • Baggy86Baggy86 Member Posts: 21
    Brilliantly worded, and highlights the feeling of 99% of the community.
  • AllnamesbetakenAllnamesbetaken Member Posts: 123
    Amazing post. Out of the hundreds of posts ive seen on this topic and the one i wrote myself, I truly believe this is the best put one out there. If there is anything Kabam should read and take into consideration it is this right here. I'm sure the vast majority of the community agrees with you and lets hope kabam will see this and see reason.
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  • FuzzycatFuzzycat Member Posts: 94
    Kabam claimed the banquet crystals would contain minimal fillers. Yet, with a 31.26% T6CC drop rate in the Superior Banquet crystals, it’s hard to see anything more filler than that. On the other hand, if it had been replaced with T4AC instead, the community’s reaction would have likely been the complete opposite.
  • AllnamesbetakenAllnamesbetaken Member Posts: 123
    kvirr said:

    This is probably the best constructive criticism I’ve seen.

    ONE thing I have to say that I don’t agree with, separating tb from paragon is where it should stop, I know many good paragons that have completed all of story, just aren’t valiant. ( or maybe I’m bias idk )

    However this is still great criticism.

    Its a hard destinction to make though, that is, whether a paragon player is close to valiant or not. However, I agree with you, as a Paragon player who has explored act 9 so far and needs 1.5 T4 alpha to get valiant, i was hoping that the banquet event would get me there but so much for that I guess. I have multiple 7*s at rank two that i had to take up because of catalyst overflow, but very long grind to get the T4 alpha i need for valiant. I also spent my 5K units on wishfull thinking (banquet crystals), so there goes the revive strategy to push through necro or such.
  • MidnightfoxMidnightfox Member Posts: 1,363 ★★★★
    100% on point with 95-99% of the player base and how this event has started.
  • OwlkitOwlkit Member Posts: 69
    Well said
  • Amanda_CruzeAmanda_Cruze Member Posts: 230 ★★
    Thronebreaker and Cavalier at same

    Paragons and Valiant at same.

    That's the only edit I would say to OP.
  • Nemesis_17Nemesis_17 Member Posts: 2,515 ★★★★★
    There really shouldn’t be progressions lumped together at all, they’re fundamentally unequal and when you bunch them together the higher one always gets the short end of the stick.

    In a perfect world we find a way to completely progression separate banquet and have rewards accurately tuned to each level.
  • BigBlueOxBigBlueOx Member Posts: 2,512 ★★★★★
    edited December 22
    Well written post OP. And spot on with the root cause. Not a single one of the SBC crystal videos is exciting to watch. It’s not even fun to vicariously live through other spenders in this event.


    I personally am tired of these failed valuations and I think the realm events are partly if not wholly to blame. The team has 0 clue on how to successfully implement these from a player psychology perspective. They should include fun nice to have bonuses only not important rewards.

    We have the other reward pools for the high value things.
  • kvirrkvirr Member Posts: 885 ★★★

    kvirr said:

    This is probably the best constructive criticism I’ve seen.

    ONE thing I have to say that I don’t agree with, separating tb from paragon is where it should stop, I know many good paragons that have completed all of story, just aren’t valiant. ( or maybe I’m bias idk )

    However this is still great criticism.

    Its a hard destinction to make though, that is, whether a paragon player is close to valiant or not. However, I agree with you, as a Paragon player who has explored act 9 so far and needs 1.5 T4 alpha to get valiant, i was hoping that the banquet event would get me there but so much for that I guess. I have multiple 7*s at rank two that i had to take up because of catalyst overflow, but very long grind to get the T4 alpha i need for valiant. I also spent my 5K units on wishfull thinking (banquet crystals), so there goes the revive strategy to push through necro or such.
    I’m in the same boat as you, I have 45k t4a frags, and have 1, I need 1 and a half to rank up my domino. It does suck that banquet doesn’t have anything, and the t4a it does have is so far…
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