A START to appeasing the community regarding banquet
JackTheSnack
Member Posts: 992 ★★★
So, as paragon and valiant players were the only ones who had access to a majority of the banquet tickets (showcase, etc.), or were the only ones with rosters to be able to finish those higher level pieces of content to get the tickets how would it not make sense to make the token purchases crystals worth 400 points as well. I opened 12 of those + over 6k units worth and didn’t even make it to the 2x tier 6 class cat selector. This would have at least provided a little separation since really on valiant and paragon had those tickets available to them and if you were lower progression you would have had to spend money. Another point, people spent money on the bundles because they’re a 1 to 1 trade in for 10 tickets - token - crystal. I think this could be just the tip of the iceberg in trying to please the community. This post isn’t for the whales as most of them already have the points but for the ftp or light spenders who grinded out the tickets. This whole event is just a big mess because how would they now justify that with all this money spent and people would have spent less because they would have started higher up in milestones
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You can't ever please everyone, but by gosh those who aren't will make their best efforts to be heard - whilst those who are happy, generally carry on in silence.
Hence why I said literally anyone. It was there for anyone playing the game to get that 7* sinister. Just because it was locked behind a paywall if you couldn’t do the content, doesn’t mean it wasn’t attainable.
It's sorta a compensation in a way
I don't remember any holiday gift been that great in previous 9 years of playing
I think I’m over the Banquet as a concept. Gifting was superior in execution and spirit of the season. Too bad some turds had to enter the punch bowl and ruin it.
If rewards are structured to be guaranteed next year as well I’d love to see the forced opening of disappointing crystals to be removed from the event.
But how do you know they changed the Xmas gift?
This year, the complaints literally went through the roof, every major youtuber complained about it, all the players were out with pitch forks and the holiday gift turned out to be way beyond my expectations
Somehow I see a link
You wouldn't expect a titan nexus normally would you?
And when I say kind of, I mean in the sense that it is exactly like that. Buying and opening those crystals *is* the grind to get the milestone rewards. It is the spending version of arena grinding in a very literal sense.
And this year there was a distinct pivot on the reward balance from the crystals themselves to guaranteed rewards and making the realm event look good. Which is probably better for most people but it sucked all anticipation and joy out of the act of opening crystals.
I at least find arena relaxing and sometimes enjoyable. This was neither of those things. I’d be happy to see it go away… or if it’s kept I’d love to see them bring gifting back instead of this celebration of gluttony.
2023: Valiant - 7* Crystal, Abyss Nexus crystal
2022: Paragon: Abyss Nexus Crystal, 50 6* sig stone crystals
2021: Thronebreaker: 6* Nexus, 20 6* sig stone crystals
2020: Thronebreaker: 6* R1->R2 rank up gem crystal, 20 6* sig stone crystals, 10% T5CC crystal
2019: Cavalier: 5* AG
My recollection is the 2019 one and the 2022 one was considered really good, and last years one was considered pretty good. The 2020 one was considered okay. There was some interesting controversy over the 2021 gift as Cavs got a 6* R1->R2 gem which some argued was actually better value than the Thronebreaker one, because of the guaranteed value in the rank up gem (back when those catalysts were pretty hard to get) compared to the Nexus crystal.
I am reasonably certain Kabam did not alter the holiday gift due to player unrest. Most of the staff was out of the office by then, and mass mail outs like the Holiday gift require special handling. There would be a huge risk associated with making a last minute change to that during a period where there would be few resources available to fix it if something went wrong with those changes.
I'll just add that there is definitely a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" dynamic going on, and Kabam doesn't hesitate obliging to this dynamic, so you get even more people piling on just to trigger some of that extra grease. Not that I'm complaining, I've enjoyed the extra grease myself. Thanks whiners!
While the event could have done some things different and I agree with much of what Crashed said, most of the complaining is self inflicted. Kabam didn't need to "make up for it" with a better x-mas gift and certainly doesn't need to give compensation.
The one thing to be optimistic about is the current community team does seem much more thoughtful and open to feedback so maybe there will be more attempts at positive change
It's really damn awful
There are many different things kabam could have done to make the banquet a better experience for most people. It's tiring for them to hide behind this idea of not being able to please people to double down on bad execution of ideas.
30,000 mysterium for 10 banquet tickets for 1 banquet crystal token for 1 SBC which doesn't give you anything much unless you strike the rare prize (I got a 7* nexus and that's it and I got 27k banquet points by now)
30,000 mysterium can buy more stuff in store
As I’ve been saying for a long time now, you can always get the devs to look, you can sometimes get the devs to act, but you can never control what the outcome will be when they do. They aren’t going to just do what you want. They will act in accordance with their own rules and perspectives to react to the feedback, not just blindly follow it.
They heard players wanted less randomness. But players assumed the devs would just put guaranteed good rewards in the crystals. But that would be problematic, because the banquet is a spending event and spenders can buy unlimited amounts of crystals. if the crystals have guaranteed good value, that would place too much stuff into the game economy concentrated into too few hands. So they shifted that value to the milestones, because the milestones can only be earned once no matter how much you spend. That seemed to be a reasonable compromise to them, and it does to me as well. It does make the crystals a whole lot boring for most, but that’s the price to pay to get what the players were asking for - more guaranteed rewards - without giving too much stuff to the largest spenders.
We can ask them to try to square that circle again, but it is impossible to a) make the crystals have good value, b) make that value guaranteed, and c) allow players to buy an unlimited number of them. At least one has to go, and in a spending event it isn’t going to be (c). It will have to be less about what the crystals are, and more about what they are perceived to be. And that’s never going to be a sure thing.