Thanks for the response, and the communication, it always feel great. The event was clearly overhyped by calling it the "grand" banquet and the "superior" cristals. One of the issue was how the event was build, Especially the realm event who by having a asking price of 15k units felt more like a solo event than a "communitty" event we thought it was initiale. So the event was like "all or nothing" ie a single cristal for deathless she-hulk or go "All-in". The main milestone, the isophine dup only hitted by 5% of the summoner doesn't really feel like a ten year community célébration.
But at least, we now know what a banquet event is and will not have our expectations too high for the next one. Thank again for having taking time to respond, The community management team really need you crashed even if it 's not your job.
My main issue with the banquet was the drop rates and the SBCs having too many options in them taking away the chance of getting something greater and wanted. The gifted guardians was a rousing success! Many didn't even know they wanted these, until they actually saw what it was and what overhauls had been done. In many people's minds, those people had preferences already on which champs were bad before it and that carried into it. Once people started using the GGs, they began to like and be happy with who they got. I enjoyed both year's gifted guardians, but having the years banquet have all the overhauls, was a stroke of genius. Who knew at the end of 2024, DpX would become one of the most sought after 7*s! I was however, disappointed that 7* Scarlet Witch (Classic) was not a milestone in alliance or realm. I hope she will become more available to other than the 1% of top ranked allys in 2025. Another thing I really loved was "choice" as in we could choose from a pool what champs we wanted from a year! That was the most useful to me.
In summary, 2024's banquet event had more hits than misses. Reduce what is in a SBC and bring up the drop rates.
Thanks for this tremendously long post. I think you made the right conclusion. The opening of the crystals simply was not exciting. A lot of the events around the banquet were great. For me the banquet has never been the big exciting event but for some of my friends it's what they save their units for all year long and then having these anticlimactic openings was somewhat heart breaking.
I myself spent all my credits on the crystals but still kind of felt like it was not really getting me much.
The cheap sale was a really good move to be honest we at first thought it was a bug 😅
Thanks for all the hard work on this great game. I have to say the reworks of champions are almost my favourite part nowadays.
“I’ll just take the weekend and enjoy my 7* Medusa” was such a slap in the face for FTP players. I was stuck with 7* Sentry, who quite frankly, is beyond the worst champ out of the six. That comment that was made was so out of pocket. It was ridiculous.
Only here to agree with that Sentry comment,
Even hardcore sentry frogs stopped talking about that scuffed buff after 2 days 🐸🐸
Thank you very much, Crashed, for sharing your point of view and analysis! It took you a lot of time, moreover maybe as part of a Saturday. The messages were clear, no bad interpretation from them. They give a point of view from inside, and an honest one. And there are plenty lessons in them. I really appreciated to read them.
First, I am a bit surprised to not see the Valentine moment as one of the noticeable moments in the year. Of course not the most important one (especially because too close from the Banquet that is a big spending moment). But it fills a gap between Banquet and Spring.
Second, the messages remind that no matter what the people on the social medias say, the factual numbers (the sales with real money or with units, the votes) are more important. So the influence is not so absolute. As previously written, maybe because the player base is more distributed than the people in the social media activity for the game. And maybe an underestimated part of the player base doesn’t care about influencers. In the recent past, this kind of gap was saw in the not-so-important-votes for Blob.
Finally, personally, this kind of lessons from the data is interesting. If not associated to waaay too looong explanations as there are sometimes in the forum.
Whats not to like when the game team communicates with the player base. Tbh, That's all I wanted for a long time. There's always room for improvement, but it's always comforting and assuring when the game team responds. We as players will keep on disagreeing. But as a company, someone have to have the responsibility of responding. Frequently and not occasionally. Passionate people are on both sided of this coin. Am I expecting too much? Maybe I am. The worst feelings I have had towards the game has been with the silent treatment on important issues. -Just an average endgame Joe, who was fine with everything in the month of december.
I said this in the original banquet thread but I’ll add it here since Kabam never responded in that thread and I think it still holds merit.
“Remember when we asked to not make the event worse just because you add a realm event. You said that you didn’t/wouldn’t but are now saying how you moved rewards from the crystals to all of the milestones. Which makes it harder for the average player to get anything of meaning…. ”
Edit: Thank you Kabam for continuing to make this game, I do appreciate all of the insight added and it makes sense to a degree but i stand by this comment
Crashed you are wrong..... there was not a rush and avalanche if people waiting to call you a lier and other less then flattering terms.
You provided a clear and well thought out response. People can either agree or disagree with the thought process and logic of the event.
Thank you for acknowledging the main pain point, lack of enjoy with the mechanism of event. Knowingly opening crystal that were going to be disappointing to get the "real" rewards in the milestones.
The relm event for battle grounds was simular for me. Spend eldermarks to get milestones with no hope of a chance of winning. Spend a currency and suffer a negative experience just to get a desired prize.
I am glad you acknowledge that fun and enjoynent and should be part of event design.
Why did you wait so long to announce Banquet details?
Banquet is kind of strange in that it’s basically an offer event and a meta event rolled into one. Historically, we don’t announce any details of offers in advance, whereas we usually announce details of meta events alongside the patch notes for the build they launch in. So there really is no firm precedent for how far in advance Banquet information should be shared. Last year it was earlier, in years past it was later or not at all. I know lots of Summoners wanted details of the Banquet event further in advance, but I’ve also had a few people tell me they would prefer it go live in-game without any spoilers. At this point, we haven’t discussed plans for next year.
Are the Banquet Event and the holiday gift and the 10 champion calendar and ... related?
Yes, they are. Some players are choosing to look at things in isolation, but from a game economy perspective everything available everywhere is related. We tried to plan December so that no matter how many Units or how much money a Summoner was willing to spend, even if those amounts were zero, they would come out of the anniversary with a lot of great stuff. I think we accomplished that. As an end-game player with ~150 7-stars my roster saw some meaningful progression, and I bet the vast majority of players who engaged throughout the month saw gains for themselves as well.
Are you happy with the Banquet Event?
Like last year, my feelings are mixed. This year I am even more sad with how the community responded given the lengths the team went through to make December exciting, especially adding six reworks to our champion pipeline that we didn’t plan going into the year. With the increasing cost of the Banquet milestones, some players were always going to get priced out, but I had hoped that players would look at everything we offered in December and be excited about it. While some of you were, clearly for a significant group of players that wasn’t the case.
Having said that, it’s probably clear based on the performance of the Realm Event that aside from sentiment the event went very well. I don’t have the full data report back yet but I can’t find any piece of data to suggest it was anything but a massive hit. Players opened significantly more crystals than we projected. I know some will say that it’s because players opened their crystals before being disappointed, but the sustained engagement over the entire course of the event doesn’t support that theory for the broad player base. Players continued to buy and open crystals for the entire two weeks. We also had more players in the game than we have had at any point in the last two years, which is an incredible achievement for a 10 year old game.
Final Thoughts
Last year I identified four opportunities for improvement with the Banquet event. This year, the main takeaway for me is that we need to make the crystals more fun. The poor crystal opening experience, alongside the sky-high expectations that we set, clearly created a bad experience for some Summoners. Hopefully this write-up better sets expectations for next year and provides some context for how we make these decisions.
Thank you all for your continued support of the game, and for three of the funnest years of my adult life. I look forward to what’s to come.
I have to say this, I am impressed with Crashed. He is thoughtful and brave to put himself out there. I really appreciate that. I want the game to continue another 10 years too. I certainly don’t agree with everything Kabam does but I do feel they listen and if they err, will take accountability. I agree that the two areas that need to improve are not setting expectations too high and making banquet crystals fun to open. Lastly, I love this behind the scenes stuff. Beyond MCOC I am not a video or mobile game player.
1 important thing to note is that the negative forum feedback is in English
Many spenders of the game aren't English users, some are from China, South Korea etc
So the spending went up even when the though the response to the banquet crystals was overwhelmingly negative
Kabam won't let you know how much each region contributed to the revenue of Kabam bcos that's business privacy but I can say confidently English using region is just a slice of the entire revenue pie
We can reference the box office takings for a MCU movie, the US box office is just a slice of the total box office takings, overseas box office takings usually is the bigger slice
Perhaps, but it's also important to note that as many people as there are giving unhappy feedback on the Forum and other places like YouTube, there is a significantly larger number of people who are just participating in the Event and spending as they see fit. The Forum only makes up a small percentage of people playing.
I think beside Kabam Jax, @Kabam_Crashed is very open and clear and helpful to forum community! A big thanks to him and he must be proud of what he contributed to Mcoc! 👍
My thread "Its like Kabam want us to play more!" paid some homage to the team for these 10 years with so many exciting things on our loved game.
And people just forget that Kabam's Marvel Contest of Champions and the resources to upgrade champs, you need to battle to receive if F2p as they wont give to you for free putting on your lap, and they do need to receive from P2p for their job.
@KabamCrashed love the reference to Finite and Infinite Games, and developing with that in mind is how you get a community over just customers. your post reminded me a lot of Mark Rosewater speaking about design and development (and business) in Magic the Gathering. appreciate the peek behind the curtain, it’s insightful.
Honestly my biggest gripe was the drop rates open 10 crystals get t5CC fragments and iso, this pissed me off quite a bit, especially as I was looking forward to this event, hopefully this year will be better, please make sure the drop rates are achievable.
Comments
The event was clearly overhyped by calling it the "grand" banquet and the "superior" cristals.
One of the issue was how the event was build,
Especially the realm event who by having a asking price of 15k units felt more like a solo event than a "communitty" event we thought it was initiale.
So the event was like "all or nothing" ie a single cristal for deathless she-hulk or go "All-in".
The main milestone, the isophine dup only hitted by 5% of the summoner doesn't really feel like a ten year community célébration.
But at least, we now know what a banquet event is and will not have our expectations too high for the next one.
Thank again for having taking time to respond,
The community management team really need you crashed even if it 's not your job.
In summary, 2024's banquet event had more hits than misses. Reduce what is in a SBC and bring up the drop rates.
I myself spent all my credits on the crystals but still kind of felt like it was not really getting me much.
The cheap sale was a really good move to be honest we at first thought it was a bug 😅
Thanks for all the hard work on this great game. I have to say the reworks of champions are almost my favourite part nowadays.
There's actually isn't any other mobile game like this that is still going strong with monthly updates and so on.
next project? release MCOC on console? would be fire to play.
Even hardcore sentry frogs stopped talking about that scuffed buff after 2 days 🐸🐸
It took you a lot of time, moreover maybe as part of a Saturday.
The messages were clear, no bad interpretation from them. They give a point of view from inside, and an honest one. And there are plenty lessons in them.
I really appreciated to read them.
First, I am a bit surprised to not see the Valentine moment as one of the noticeable moments in the year. Of course not the most important one (especially because too close from the Banquet that is a big spending moment). But it fills a gap between Banquet and Spring.
Second, the messages remind that no matter what the people on the social medias say, the factual numbers (the sales with real money or with units, the votes) are more important. So the influence is not so absolute.
As previously written, maybe because the player base is more distributed than the people in the social media activity for the game.
And maybe an underestimated part of the player base doesn’t care about influencers.
In the recent past, this kind of gap was saw in the not-so-important-votes for Blob.
Finally, personally, this kind of lessons from the data is interesting. If not associated to waaay too looong explanations as there are sometimes in the forum.
Tbh, That's all I wanted for a long time. There's always room for improvement, but it's always comforting and assuring when the game team responds.
We as players will keep on disagreeing. But as a company, someone have to have the responsibility of responding. Frequently and not occasionally. Passionate people are on both sided of this coin.
Am I expecting too much? Maybe I am.
The worst feelings I have had towards the game has been with the silent treatment on important issues.
-Just an average endgame Joe, who was fine with everything in the month of december.
“Remember when we asked to not make the event worse just because you add a realm event. You said that you didn’t/wouldn’t but are now saying how you moved rewards from the crystals to all of the milestones. Which makes it harder for the average player to get anything of meaning…. ”
Edit: Thank you Kabam for continuing to make this game, I do appreciate all of the insight added and it makes sense to a degree but i stand by this comment
You provided a clear and well thought out response. People can either agree or disagree with the thought process and logic of the event.
Thank you for acknowledging the main pain point, lack of enjoy with the mechanism of event. Knowingly opening crystal that were going to be disappointing to get the "real" rewards in the milestones.
The relm event for battle grounds was simular for me. Spend eldermarks to get milestones with no hope of a chance of winning. Spend a currency and suffer a negative experience just to get a desired prize.
I am glad you acknowledge that fun and enjoynent and should be part of event design.
Hoping 2025 is a great year for the game.
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/384749/players-who-bought-the-50-10x-superior-bundle-that-doesnt-include-the-banquet-key#latest
I agree that the two areas that need to improve are not setting expectations too high and making banquet crystals fun to open.
Lastly, I love this behind the scenes stuff. Beyond MCOC I am not a video or mobile game player.
With him, Mcoc will be still alive for sure! 🎉
My thread "Its like Kabam want us to play more!" paid some homage to the team for these 10 years with so many exciting things on our loved game.
And people just forget that Kabam's Marvel Contest of Champions and the resources to upgrade champs, you need to battle to receive if F2p as they wont give to you for free putting on your lap, and they do need to receive from P2p for their job.