**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Comments
There's a patent, ergo Kabam must be doing it. Okay:
US8851978B1: Invention for providing tiered stochastic rewards based on timed events where the timer for the rewarded event begins after the successful completion of a prerequisite event. Ironic: since this is something Kabam can't actually do for legends runs: time events from end of one event to the end of another event.
US8968067B1: Invention for providing personalized leaderboards specific to a player to encourage them to compete in a narrow competitive field. Not yet, apparently.
US20150031440A1: Invention for providing a mechanism whereby in lootboxes with multiple items, the latter items have higher value if the earlier items have lesser value to guarantee players do not receive a sequence of low value items. Yeah, I would like to see the day someone accuses Kabam of doing that.
US9172697B1: Invention for obfuscating login credentials. Interesting, but I don't see this one happening any time soon.
Here's one of my favorites:
US8764534B1: Invention for increasing player engagement through realm construction.
Yes: this is a patent for building bases.
Here's a really interesting patent:
US8636591B1: "System and method for facilitating virtual item rewards based on a game of chance."
This is a patent for multi-tier rewards in a slot machine. Which, to the best of my knowledge, have existed for decades now. But not in MCOC.
Circumstantial observations are not evidence of manipulation.
You give me the impression of someone who asked two questions that had no interest in the answers.
I directed the question to someone but someone else responded.
I'd like to hear it from the horses mouth.
BULL! They can still tell us how often any particular Champ ought to drop in a pool of s people with y crystals each!
It is a sign of something, but not odds manipulation. If it was some kind of pity timer, then it would be forcing a crystal to reward something specific (or a specific rarity). But if it was a force, then the one 3* champion would be a counter-example that suggests something else.
There's no reason to believe the game doesn't contain bugs or oddities: in fact I myself have reported a higher than statistically likely example of duplicate rolls in large runs of crystal openings. But that's not manipulation as most people mean.
I mean you say it’s a waste of time but really, all it would take is for the team who have the drop rates to send one email to Mike or Adora containing a list of the drop rates which should to exist otherwise they won’t be able to publish them. Even if it was in a really basic form, leave it to Adora as the community manager (I believe that’s her) or even mike to format it in a way that would work as a forum post. That could be done by this time tomorrow if it was asked of them and they put their minds to it.
Even with a foreseeable answer of “well companies always take longer to sort these sorts of things out”, they shouldn’t.
It’s always nice when you ask a question that the only answer that matters would be from a Kabam official representative but instead we get a kabam wannabe representative, isn’t it?
If you quote me, I have to presume any question of the form "what do you think" is directed at me.
I know that you think that posting them in the Forums is quick and easy, but it is not, and doesn't satisfy what we are trying to do, which is make Drop Rates available in game. We will not be posting them in the forums, so I just want to shut that conversation down right now.
Why would KABAM create these patents without the intention of using them? That's just bad business and a waste of time and money. Sure, changes are made and bases may not have developed as they intended (for example) but I find it hard to believe that they create this probability relationship to spending and not use it. They haven't outright denied it either. Just that they don't talk about drop rates, blah, blah, blah....
No, because according to the patent each persons drop rate is different based on their previous spending habits. It's not static and tied to specific amounts of crystals because some of those could have been rewarded and not purchased.
Actually, that happens A LOT. Just because a patent is filed doesn't mean something is used, or even ever developed by any given company. It's extremely common.
This sort of thing used to sting a little. In 2005. In reality, it turns out to be a very good filter for determining whose judgments really matter. There will always be people who support you, and those who denigrate you. But the only ones on both sides that really matter are the thoughtful ones. When it comes to any subject, in this case game development, I would rather everyone who knows nothing disagree with me and only 50% of those who do know something agree with me, than 100% of those who know nothing agree with me and all of those who do know something disagree with me.
This sort of thing is the price I willingly pay. And it is a very small price.
They did deny that MCOC was using the patent in question more than once on the forums. I recall a post by Adora, and I believe another on a separate occasion from Miike.
Please note, I didn’t say that about every single thing you post. It’s when you ask a question that can only be answered by a kabam representative in the know. For example, hypothetical question of: When will the drop rates realistically be posted in the game kabam Mike?
And then I get a short novella about problems companies face during this.
Notice I didn’t ask about the problems I could face. All i wanted to know was a short answer from a kabam representative who actually knows the facts. I’m not saying you don’t know what you’re talking about, just that you don’t know what kabam’s timeframe is.
You do have good points, and you say interesting things although you write a lot. In most conversations I will read what you say and respond as you put it “thoughtfully” but sometimes when I simply need a response from kabam to satisfy my question, no matter how much you write and no matter how much of it is technically correct, it doesn’t answer my question and what I need to know. That’s my point.
Actually, companies often patent every remotely original idea they can come up with, not just to use them directly but also to build up an intellectual property portfolio that can have value, and defensively to ensure no one else comes along and patents it later.
Fair enough.
If you can point to an example where I did this - specifically reply to a question a) directed at Kabam or a Kabam employee and b) was a question that only they could meaningfully answer that I decided to answer for them - I will apologize for that.
But in this thread, I don't recall such an instance. When the question is directed at me, regardless of the question's context I'm entitled to answer it. And when the question is directed at Kabam but is a question that any forum participant can have a valid opinion on, then once again I feel its reasonable to respond. For example, @GapToothWitch actually directly quoted me and asked me two questions, then claimed those questions were not directed at me. In other cases, I responded to people asking the generic question "how can it be possible" not specific questions of the form "what delay is Kabam claiming?"
I neither have the time or patience to go through each of the 32 pages in this thread to find an example, nor through your 2,500 other posts. I realise that what I’m saying is take my word for it and that that isn’t ample evidence but it’s what I’ve experienced.
This is true... BUT at the same time you cannot blame people for assuming you might be using them if you have patents for them.
Do all drug companies release the drugs that they get patents for? Why would it be any different for a gaming company?
I have always said they do this. To see they have a patent for it. And are taking forever to disclose rates does not seem like a coincidence. Mike saying it’s not that easy to put them in the forum.
If it were a flat % distribution, it would be very easy.
It is a coincidence and is completely unrelated. We have already said that. We're not going to discuss these patents any further as we have addressed them in the past. We're not posting them in the forums because that does not satisfy what we intend to do.
Probably true...truthers gonna truth. However, the staunch and adamant refusal to release drop rates for so very long fuels the validity of these theories. There is absolutely no reason not to believe that this has been going on.
It might fuel suspicion, but it would only make these suspicions valid if it was reasonable to assume that failure to disclose correlated with manipulation. But Kabam isn't alone in not wanting to disclose odds and pretty much all the companies that have done so recently have only done so because they were compelled to. In all those other cases, we now know with reasonable certainty that they weren't manipulating odds in the way other players believed. So it isn't fair to make that presumption when it has generally been demonstrated to be untrue.
Kabam could be the exception, but while you can't rule that possibility out based on the conduct of others, you can assess whether it is fair to simply assume they are until they prove otherwise.
There is in fact many reasons to believe this is not going on. Just the statement that there is absolutely no reason to not believe it is going on is a demonstration of the idea that no evidence to the contrary is considered valid regardless of what it is.
Did you reply to the wrong post? I said what he said is 100% true in the post you quoted (which means I already agree with you). I am super confused now.
My post was saying he was right that you cannot just assume they use them just becasue they have the patent... but at the same time you cannot blame people for assuming they might be using those patents since they have them (that's it). I am not saying they do use them... nor do i care, I just wanted to point out to Miike you cannot blame people for thinking you are going to paint your house when you buy a tonne of house paint. If you still think I am saying something I am not I will just have to move on
I get that does not fulfill the requirements, and falls short of what we can expect to see later. However, it would appease many of us who have been wondering this for years.
Agreed. A little transparency goes a long way. After 12.0 the company promised transparency would be a priority, but it seems like it's just talk.
If I'm to be honest, I personally don't CARE what the drop rates are. I will still be playing this game regardless, and my spending will likely not change. However, the ridiculous secrecy around this topic is causing conspiracies and theories that are toxic to the community. There would be no harm in releasing this info in a blog post or forum discussion AND THEN continuing to work on getting the info into the actual game. Failure to do this makes us all suspicious and some can't help but to see nefarious reasoning for it.
At the end of the day, I just want to see a happy community, who can trust the company at their word.
Well that would greatly satisfy the community, and from that response it's clear that this could be easily done. Otherwise you would have brought up how it take all this production time and resources when you know very well it does not.
You are the community manager and the face for Kabam.
When we asked to have the prestige of 5-star characters in the spotlight added you happily assisted in getting that done, because you saw that the community cared about it, although it was not what you intended on doing at the time.
Now we ask a very similar request - to publish the number figures of something you know can be retrieved with ease.
You have failed us.