It definitely did not. Now, if you want to have a conversation about SGA's foul-baiting... I'm here for it.
#JokicWasSnubbed
ANYWAY... carry on with the discussion.
SGA is the most unwatchable star I’ve ever seen. NBA keeps letting that whistle fly they might as well declare the sport dead.
Manu Ginobli is probably ashamed of how bad this ish is…
Also oh no don’t open 3star crystals on me… how will my Valiant account loaded with hundreds of thousands of 5star crystals I’m saving for ISO survive 😢🥸😏
It definitely did not. Now, if you want to have a conversation about SGA's foul-baiting... I'm here for it.
#JokicWasSnubbed
ANYWAY... carry on with the discussion.
Nice to see Kabam taking a serious discussion so seriously.
I guess this is in line with Kabam's typical anti-player mentality. No need to address actual concerns about player well-being when we can just laugh about other things so everyone focuses on that instead.
Lighten up, Francis.
This would carry some weight if it didn't come from someone forever on the forums.
I can arrange that if this is something you require.
IMO battlegrounds needs OP defenders to be interesting otherwise everyone would be running the exact same decks occasionally switching up 3-5 champs per meta depending on what the nodes are. Having difficult defenders who only have 10-20 counters promotes roster diversity. You may actually have to rank up Diablo and learn how to use him properly to take down a DP. You may actually have to learn how to use Tigra because she can counter Serpent, Zola, and take out DP in a reasonable amount of time in addition to the plethora of other matches she covers.
It also forces you to think critically about your bands when constructing your deck. You have to construct your deck for the meta as well as who you may have to fight and who you definitely won’t have to fight. I always ban Serpent so I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’ll get a counter for him which allows me to be able to focus on other problem defenders as well as include people who can benefit from the nodes better. Without those problem defenders the game would be stale with everyone running the same decks banning the same champions.
Also, something that hasn’t been mentioned in this thread is that having more powerful defenders in the game has made champion acquisition a lot more fun. Before battlegrounds was added, all new champions were purely evaluated on their offensive capabilities. If someone couldn’t do a piece of game content or act content well, they were cast aside by the community. After the official launch of of battlegrounds People actually started caring about a champion’s defensive capabilities. I took my 6* R1 Korg ranked him as high as I could and put 200 sig stones in him to help me win rounds. Yelena doesn’t look like she’ll be that great of an attacker, but she does look like she’ll be able to stall my opponent long enough for me to win an unideal matchup it has made champs who never would have seen the light of day super valuable which is good for the game overall
BG used to be very good, nowadays I see that skill is no longer useful. Extremely strong decks that money buys, AI that seems to be programmed to determine who wins before the fight. It's horrible, a mode that used to be fun to play. The game and the gameplay are on the sidelines, the important thing is to promote the game so that those who spend can evolve faster, the rest isn't necessary anyway.
This post suggests that BGs was ever a popular game mode but according to Kabam it never was. So any changes could only be considered an attempt to "fix" BGs right?
Kabam manages to destroy everything that was good, that's their skill. BG is only played because of the new currency, but it's not worth it with this sick AI that decides the winner before the fight. To release a special lately, I don't know, do you have to pay for the opponent to release it? I just want to thank this horrible company with the worst support I've ever seen! Congratulations!
This post suggests that BGs was ever a popular game mode but according to Kabam it never was. So any changes could only be considered an attempt to "fix" BGs right?
Kabam never said BG wasn’t a popular game mode. They said it was a niche mode, meaning it only attracted a subset of the players. We know for a fact that a significant chunk of the players play BG: on the order of 300k players play it every season to at least some degree, and on the order of 30-40k make it to GC during seasons without any special incentives. I’d say at least 100k players play it semi-seriously or seriously, which is like around 10% of the active playerbase. That’s more than arena, and possibly more than Incursions. But it is not something the majority of players do, like monthly EQ, story quests, or probably something like AQ.
Whether a third of the players playing at least a little and 10% playing a lot is “popular” is a subjective judgment. But it is a niche segment of the players.
Thing is, I do not believe there is any “fix” for BG that would make it anything but a niche game mode for the simple reason that ultimately it is competitive PvP. Most game players are not attracted to competitive PvP game play: competitive PvP is itself a niche. If you make a competitive PvP game right out of the game then you will only attract players that like that kind of game play, so of course the vast majority of your players will enjoy competitive PvP game modes. But when you launch a game that starts off without PvP, you will attract a much wider set of players, of which most aren’t competitive PvP players. When you introduce competitive PvP down the road, only a small slice of those players you’ve attracted are going to like it, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do to cause them to like it, because it isn’t the gameplay itself they don’t like, it is the competitive nature they fundamentally aren’t fond of.
This post suggests that BGs was ever a popular game mode but according to Kabam it never was. So any changes could only be considered an attempt to "fix" BGs right?
Kabam never said BG wasn’t a popular game mode. They said it was a niche mode, meaning it only attracted a subset of the players. We know for a fact that a significant chunk of the players play BG: on the order of 300k players play it every season to at least some degree, and on the order of 30-40k make it to GC during seasons without any special incentives. I’d say at least 100k players play it semi-seriously or seriously, which is like around 10% of the active playerbase. That’s more than arena, and possibly more than Incursions. But it is not something the majority of players do, like monthly EQ, story quests, or probably something like AQ.
Whether a third of the players playing at least a little and 10% playing a lot is “popular” is a subjective judgment. But it is a niche segment of the players.
Thing is, I do not believe there is any “fix” for BG that would make it anything but a niche game mode for the simple reason that ultimately it is competitive PvP. Most game players are not attracted to competitive PvP game play: competitive PvP is itself a niche. If you make a competitive PvP game right out of the game then you will only attract players that like that kind of game play, so of course the vast majority of your players will enjoy competitive PvP game modes. But when you launch a game that starts off without PvP, you will attract a much wider set of players, of which most aren’t competitive PvP players. When you introduce competitive PvP down the road, only a small slice of those players you’ve attracted are going to like it, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do to cause them to like it, because it isn’t the gameplay itself they don’t like, it is the competitive nature they fundamentally aren’t fond of.
Do you think this is why we're seeing so many triggered/unhinged BG posts this season? I.e., players who aren't built to play this game competitively yet being compelled to do so due to the radiance incentive and then just collapsing mentally?
I think there's alot of complaints ATM because its too R&G, I don't think a single champ has destroyed the mode, even if dark phoenix does give a silly advantage over those who didn't simply buy her (would be nice if there was another opportunity to buy her or even better EARN her) For example, my thanos and serpent aren't banned. The opponent drafts both of theirs, I do not, plus I do not see a single mystic in my drafts, even after a reroll.. this needs to change, it happens way too often. The game can easily control the outcome of a bgs before you even start..
This post suggests that BGs was ever a popular game mode but according to Kabam it never was. So any changes could only be considered an attempt to "fix" BGs right?
Kabam never said BG wasn’t a popular game mode. They said it was a niche mode, meaning it only attracted a subset of the players. We know for a fact that a significant chunk of the players play BG: on the order of 300k players play it every season to at least some degree, and on the order of 30-40k make it to GC during seasons without any special incentives. I’d say at least 100k players play it semi-seriously or seriously, which is like around 10% of the active playerbase. That’s more than arena, and possibly more than Incursions. But it is not something the majority of players do, like monthly EQ, story quests, or probably something like AQ.
Whether a third of the players playing at least a little and 10% playing a lot is “popular” is a subjective judgment. But it is a niche segment of the players.
Thing is, I do not believe there is any “fix” for BG that would make it anything but a niche game mode for the simple reason that ultimately it is competitive PvP. Most game players are not attracted to competitive PvP game play: competitive PvP is itself a niche. If you make a competitive PvP game right out of the game then you will only attract players that like that kind of game play, so of course the vast majority of your players will enjoy competitive PvP game modes. But when you launch a game that starts off without PvP, you will attract a much wider set of players, of which most aren’t competitive PvP players. When you introduce competitive PvP down the road, only a small slice of those players you’ve attracted are going to like it, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do to cause them to like it, because it isn’t the gameplay itself they don’t like, it is the competitive nature they fundamentally aren’t fond of.
Do you think this is why we're seeing so many triggered/unhinged BG posts this season? I.e., players who aren't built to play this game competitively yet being compelled to do so due to the radiance incentive and then just collapsing mentally?
Gracious… can we get a cleanup crew over here? The amount of high minded hubris and disdain dripping from this comment is starting to stink up the place even more than normal.
If you ever wonder why only endgame and mostly competitive players frequent the forums and newer players or less skilled players don’t have much of a presence here…. Just remember posts like this. The flippancy of dismissing a great majority of the player base with a “poor bastards, I wish they would just quit so we didn’t have to bother with them” comment truly is something the behold. It’s Really beneficial to the community. 🙄
This post suggests that BGs was ever a popular game mode but according to Kabam it never was. So any changes could only be considered an attempt to "fix" BGs right?
Kabam never said BG wasn’t a popular game mode. They said it was a niche mode, meaning it only attracted a subset of the players. We know for a fact that a significant chunk of the players play BG: on the order of 300k players play it every season to at least some degree, and on the order of 30-40k make it to GC during seasons without any special incentives. I’d say at least 100k players play it semi-seriously or seriously, which is like around 10% of the active playerbase. That’s more than arena, and possibly more than Incursions. But it is not something the majority of players do, like monthly EQ, story quests, or probably something like AQ.
Whether a third of the players playing at least a little and 10% playing a lot is “popular” is a subjective judgment. But it is a niche segment of the players.
Thing is, I do not believe there is any “fix” for BG that would make it anything but a niche game mode for the simple reason that ultimately it is competitive PvP. Most game players are not attracted to competitive PvP game play: competitive PvP is itself a niche. If you make a competitive PvP game right out of the game then you will only attract players that like that kind of game play, so of course the vast majority of your players will enjoy competitive PvP game modes. But when you launch a game that starts off without PvP, you will attract a much wider set of players, of which most aren’t competitive PvP players. When you introduce competitive PvP down the road, only a small slice of those players you’ve attracted are going to like it, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do to cause them to like it, because it isn’t the gameplay itself they don’t like, it is the competitive nature they fundamentally aren’t fond of.
Do you think this is why we're seeing so many triggered/unhinged BG posts this season? I.e., players who aren't built to play this game competitively yet being compelled to do so due to the radiance incentive and then just collapsing mentally?
There’s been a lot of those kinds of posts almost every season. They tend to fall into one of a couple of categories. First, there are the pure PvE players that do not understand competitive play at all. They claim to, but they don’t. They see all competitions through a very weird lens of what they define to be “fair” but they define fair in terms of giving everyone an equal chance to win. That’s not competitive fairness, that’s a lottery. In real competitions there’s always competitive advantages and disadvantages. That’s in the nature of competition. When one NFL team destroys another we don’t say that was unfair, we say one side was vastly better than the other side, so they won. But there was nothing unfair about it. We’re likely never going to convince these kinds of players anything, because no one who competes in anything for anything would have this belief. These are just not competitive people, and they don’t participate in competitions voluntarily in general, and so their world view is just not compatible with competitive game play.
Then there are the people who are fine with competition in general, but believe that roster strength specifically is an unfair advantage because it can be bought. These are players who don’t understand Free to Play gaming. I think a lot of game players today grew up in an internet service dominated world where so much is free, it is instinctive to think the default is free. Facebook is free, Gmail is free, why shouldn’t games be intrinsically free? So they don’t appreciate the fact that MCOC is only free for most because it extracts a heavy toll on the spenders. Spenders keep the game alive, spenders subsidize the free players. It is easy for F2P players to think they are the “real” players and the spenders are more or less cheating their way to the top. But it is actually the reverse: spenders are the players paying for the game they play, and they let the free to play players come along for the ride. Spenders and their spendy rosters are not second class citizens we have to make exceptions for. Everything they bought they got fair and square, by trading a ton of money for a few pixels in a game. We cannot take their money then tell them to go sit in the corner with their stuff while the rest of us plays the real game (note: I’m a spender, I’m speaking colloquially here, not personally).
And then of course there’s the players who deep down inside know all of this, but still feel the need to vent. Which I get: I’ve come close to throwing my phone out the window many times, and it’s usually BG that is doing it. Some of that stuff, you just have to let slide.
There are complaints that are at least marginally if not fully legitimate complaints about the mode, don’t get me wrong. But they tend to get lost among the rest.
I think there's alot of complaints ATM because its too R&G, I don't think a single champ has destroyed the mode, even if dark phoenix does give a silly advantage over those who didn't simply buy her (would be nice if there was another opportunity to buy her or even better EARN her) For example, my thanos and serpent aren't banned. The opponent drafts both of theirs, I do not, plus I do not see a single mystic in my drafts, even after a reroll.. this needs to change, it happens way too often. The game can easily control the outcome of a bgs before you even start..
Random chance can have a significant effect on a single match. I think I once said that a single BG match is influenced by roster, skill, knowledge, and luck in roughly equal parts. However, over the long run luck averages out. In VT because of the 2/1 medal situation luck tends to favor weaker players slightly because luck tends to push everyone towards 50/50 win rates (luck doesn’t favor any player) and weaker players tend to have a lower win rate than that intrinsically. And 50/50 still nets a positive medal outcome due to winning two for every loss of one.
In GC, it also tends to push players towards 50/50, but GC itself also tends to push players towards 50/50 by matching against roughly equal rating players. If you win one because you got lucky, you’ll match against higher rated players in the next match and you’ll likely be at a slight disadvantage relative to your previous match. You’ll only continue to win if you are much stronger than the surrounding competition and would be winning either way. Conversely the player you beat will match against a weaker player by virtue of losing rating, and if he was meant to win before he’ll have an even easier time winning now. In GC, ratings based matching quickly overpowers luck. Luck shakes things up in the short term, but skill erases things in the long run.
Where this might become a problem is at the very top, and I mean the absolute top where literally no two players have the same rating. But below the top 50 players or so, I don’t think luck ultimately determines much.
Someone might point out that a single match can determine which GC bracket you land in, which can have a significant impact on your rewards. But that sort of borderline thing is unavoidable. You can also slip down a bracket by sitting at home and doing nothing, while a couple other players play one more match and jump over you. Bracket borders are inherently and deliberately unstable - it’s baked into the incentive to push for more. BG GC rewards are a zero sum game above Uru 6. The incentive BG provides to players to push for more rewards are *your* rewards. BG offers the players below you a chance to knock you off and take your rewards. Luck is allowed to play a role here, but only because so does everything else.
This post suggests that BGs was ever a popular game mode but according to Kabam it never was. So any changes could only be considered an attempt to "fix" BGs right?
Kabam never said BG wasn’t a popular game mode. They said it was a niche mode, meaning it only attracted a subset of the players. We know for a fact that a significant chunk of the players play BG: on the order of 300k players play it every season to at least some degree, and on the order of 30-40k make it to GC during seasons without any special incentives. I’d say at least 100k players play it semi-seriously or seriously, which is like around 10% of the active playerbase. That’s more than arena, and possibly more than Incursions. But it is not something the majority of players do, like monthly EQ, story quests, or probably something like AQ.
Whether a third of the players playing at least a little and 10% playing a lot is “popular” is a subjective judgment. But it is a niche segment of the players.
Thing is, I do not believe there is any “fix” for BG that would make it anything but a niche game mode for the simple reason that ultimately it is competitive PvP. Most game players are not attracted to competitive PvP game play: competitive PvP is itself a niche. If you make a competitive PvP game right out of the game then you will only attract players that like that kind of game play, so of course the vast majority of your players will enjoy competitive PvP game modes. But when you launch a game that starts off without PvP, you will attract a much wider set of players, of which most aren’t competitive PvP players. When you introduce competitive PvP down the road, only a small slice of those players you’ve attracted are going to like it, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do to cause them to like it, because it isn’t the gameplay itself they don’t like, it is the competitive nature they fundamentally aren’t fond of.
Do you think this is why we're seeing so many triggered/unhinged BG posts this season? I.e., players who aren't built to play this game competitively yet being compelled to do so due to the radiance incentive and then just collapsing mentally?
There’s been a lot of those kinds of posts almost every season. They tend to fall into one of a couple of categories. First, there are the pure PvE players that do not understand competitive play at all. They claim to, but they don’t. They see all competitions through a very weird lens of what they define to be “fair” but they define fair in terms of giving everyone an equal chance to win. That’s not competitive fairness, that’s a lottery. In real competitions there’s always competitive advantages and disadvantages. That’s in the nature of competition. When one NFL team destroys another we don’t say that was unfair, we say one side was vastly better than the other side, so they won. But there was nothing unfair about it. We’re likely never going to convince these kinds of players anything, because no one who competes in anything for anything would have this belief. These are just not competitive people, and they don’t participate in competitions voluntarily in general, and so their world view is just not compatible with competitive game play.
Then there are the people who are fine with competition in general, but believe that roster strength specifically is an unfair advantage because it can be bought. These are players who don’t understand Free to Play gaming. I think a lot of game players today grew up in an internet service dominated world where so much is free, it is instinctive to think the default is free. Facebook is free, Gmail is free, why shouldn’t games be intrinsically free? So they don’t appreciate the fact that MCOC is only free for most because it extracts a heavy toll on the spenders. Spenders keep the game alive, spenders subsidize the free players. It is easy for F2P players to think they are the “real” players and the spenders are more or less cheating their way to the top. But it is actually the reverse: spenders are the players paying for the game they play, and they let the free to play players come along for the ride. Spenders and their spendy rosters are not second class citizens we have to make exceptions for. Everything they bought they got fair and square, by trading a ton of money for a few pixels in a game. We cannot take their money then tell them to go sit in the corner with their stuff while the rest of us plays the real game (note: I’m a spender, I’m speaking colloquially here, not personally).
And then of course there’s the players who deep down inside know all of this, but still feel the need to vent. Which I get: I’ve come close to throwing my phone out the window many times, and it’s usually BG that is doing it. Some of that stuff, you just have to let slide.
There are complaints that are at least marginally if not fully legitimate complaints about the mode, don’t get me wrong. But they tend to get lost among the rest.
Very well-stated and I agree. There are legitimate complaints but they tend to get drowned out by the emotional and/or uninformed outbursts, which is unfortunate.
5 counters for bullseye? He’s got like 20+ at this point, literally every new champ counters him in some way. Half my deck can take bullseye
Champs like Spiral having small defensive quirks has been a thing since the start, some attackers have a few defensive mechanics to watch out for but that doesn’t make her a defender lmao
Serpent and DP are restrictive so I ban them, and I have one ban left for a strong attacker or another highly ranked defender. I agree champs like this that force just a few shouldn’t have been made but we’re long past Serpent’s balancing period now
I think 15 counters in the deck that makes the bullseye in this specific meta is an exaggeration on your part. I played about 40 matches and only saw people do it with Sinister, Okoye, Guardian and Nick Fury. I managed to do it with Venom and Dust taking damage. I might be able to do it well with Iceman. Gentle too.
Stark Spidey, Gentle, Serpent 🐍 to add a few more and when fighting Gentle just don't push to L2 and don't get hit. With Spiral qhen her blades are purple 💜 only do M-L-M combos. Hope this helps
Comments
Manu Ginobli is probably ashamed of how bad this ish is…
Also oh no don’t open 3star crystals on me… how will my Valiant account loaded with hundreds of thousands of 5star crystals I’m saving for ISO survive 😢🥸😏
Whoops wrong whining thread. Uh BGs actually felt decent this season.
(the fight is very legit btw)
It also forces you to think critically about your bands when constructing your deck. You have to construct your deck for the meta as well as who you may have to fight and who you definitely won’t have to fight. I always ban Serpent so I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’ll get a counter for him which allows me to be able to focus on other problem defenders as well as include people who can benefit from the nodes better. Without those problem defenders the game would be stale with everyone running the same decks banning the same champions.
Also, something that hasn’t been mentioned in this thread is that having more powerful defenders in the game has made champion acquisition a lot more fun. Before battlegrounds was added, all new champions were purely evaluated on their offensive capabilities. If someone couldn’t do a piece of game content or act content well, they were cast aside by the community. After the official launch of of battlegrounds People actually started caring about a champion’s defensive capabilities. I took my 6* R1 Korg ranked him as high as I could and put 200 sig stones in him to help me win rounds. Yelena doesn’t look like she’ll be that great of an attacker, but she does look like she’ll be able to stall my opponent long enough for me to win an unideal matchup it has made champs who never would have seen the light of day super valuable which is good for the game overall
Yet has audacity to say he plays in celestial and masters tier war.
Extremely strong decks that money buys, AI that seems to be programmed to determine who wins before the fight.
It's horrible, a mode that used to be fun to play.
The game and the gameplay are on the sidelines, the important thing is to promote the game so that those who spend can evolve faster, the rest isn't necessary anyway.
Congratulations!
Whether a third of the players playing at least a little and 10% playing a lot is “popular” is a subjective judgment. But it is a niche segment of the players.
Thing is, I do not believe there is any “fix” for BG that would make it anything but a niche game mode for the simple reason that ultimately it is competitive PvP. Most game players are not attracted to competitive PvP game play: competitive PvP is itself a niche. If you make a competitive PvP game right out of the game then you will only attract players that like that kind of game play, so of course the vast majority of your players will enjoy competitive PvP game modes. But when you launch a game that starts off without PvP, you will attract a much wider set of players, of which most aren’t competitive PvP players. When you introduce competitive PvP down the road, only a small slice of those players you’ve attracted are going to like it, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do to cause them to like it, because it isn’t the gameplay itself they don’t like, it is the competitive nature they fundamentally aren’t fond of.
For example, my thanos and serpent aren't banned. The opponent drafts both of theirs, I do not, plus I do not see a single mystic in my drafts, even after a reroll.. this needs to change, it happens way too often. The game can easily control the outcome of a bgs before you even start..
If you ever wonder why only endgame and mostly competitive players frequent the forums and newer players or less skilled players don’t have much of a presence here…. Just remember posts like this. The flippancy of dismissing a great majority of the player base with a “poor bastards, I wish they would just quit so we didn’t have to bother with them” comment truly is something the behold. It’s Really beneficial to the community. 🙄
Then there are the people who are fine with competition in general, but believe that roster strength specifically is an unfair advantage because it can be bought. These are players who don’t understand Free to Play gaming. I think a lot of game players today grew up in an internet service dominated world where so much is free, it is instinctive to think the default is free. Facebook is free, Gmail is free, why shouldn’t games be intrinsically free? So they don’t appreciate the fact that MCOC is only free for most because it extracts a heavy toll on the spenders. Spenders keep the game alive, spenders subsidize the free players. It is easy for F2P players to think they are the “real” players and the spenders are more or less cheating their way to the top. But it is actually the reverse: spenders are the players paying for the game they play, and they let the free to play players come along for the ride. Spenders and their spendy rosters are not second class citizens we have to make exceptions for. Everything they bought they got fair and square, by trading a ton of money for a few pixels in a game. We cannot take their money then tell them to go sit in the corner with their stuff while the rest of us plays the real game (note: I’m a spender, I’m speaking colloquially here, not personally).
And then of course there’s the players who deep down inside know all of this, but still feel the need to vent. Which I get: I’ve come close to throwing my phone out the window many times, and it’s usually BG that is doing it. Some of that stuff, you just have to let slide.
There are complaints that are at least marginally if not fully legitimate complaints about the mode, don’t get me wrong. But they tend to get lost among the rest.
In GC, it also tends to push players towards 50/50, but GC itself also tends to push players towards 50/50 by matching against roughly equal rating players. If you win one because you got lucky, you’ll match against higher rated players in the next match and you’ll likely be at a slight disadvantage relative to your previous match. You’ll only continue to win if you are much stronger than the surrounding competition and would be winning either way. Conversely the player you beat will match against a weaker player by virtue of losing rating, and if he was meant to win before he’ll have an even easier time winning now. In GC, ratings based matching quickly overpowers luck. Luck shakes things up in the short term, but skill erases things in the long run.
Where this might become a problem is at the very top, and I mean the absolute top where literally no two players have the same rating. But below the top 50 players or so, I don’t think luck ultimately determines much.
Someone might point out that a single match can determine which GC bracket you land in, which can have a significant impact on your rewards. But that sort of borderline thing is unavoidable. You can also slip down a bracket by sitting at home and doing nothing, while a couple other players play one more match and jump over you. Bracket borders are inherently and deliberately unstable - it’s baked into the incentive to push for more. BG GC rewards are a zero sum game above Uru 6. The incentive BG provides to players to push for more rewards are *your* rewards. BG offers the players below you a chance to knock you off and take your rewards. Luck is allowed to play a role here, but only because so does everything else.
There are legitimate complaints but they tend to get drowned out by the emotional and/or uninformed outbursts, which is unfortunate.