Sentineloids: A Great Moment for Kabam (Yes, Seriously)
Dragonfei
Member Posts: 263 ★★
This is an article I wrote for MutaMatt's website - The Class Advantage, and a link to the post can be found HERE!
Hello everyone, this is Dragon here! Resident UMCOC podcast co-host and moderator for Concierge! Mutamatt invited me here today, because I wanted to take a moment to give Kabam some kudos! (And no, no sarcasm.)
When the news broke of the updates to Sentineloids in AQ on Friday evening, I saw a great deal of the community rejoicing. Speaking from experience, it’s always frustrating to question your skills when fights are consistently not going your way, and you don’t know how to master a particular fight. With the changes coming up in the next round of AQ, I want to direct the thanks to where it is rightfully deserved - to Kabam.
Sentineloids have been in place since April 2nd. It’s currently (at the time of writing this sentence) April 13th. They’re going to have a fix in place by April 18th. That’s sixteen days. When you consider it took time to receive the feedback (let’s say 1-2 days), and then a handful of days to see there is a big problem (let’s say another 1-2 days), to have a solution planned, coded, and implemented by the 18th is not only impressive, it’s a Herculean effort on Kabam’s part. The last time we saw something addressed this quickly, we’re looking at 12.0.
Which is why the topic that I really wanted to address is helping the community understand how extraordinarily well Kabam handled this, and how we can help this happen again. Not only does Kabam deserve kudos for how they tackled the Sentineloid issue, we as a community need to realize that when our concerns can be backed by data - actioning happens. Quickly.
How do I know this was backed by data? And what data was used? I’ll admit that this is supposition, but I’ve got that supposition backed by facts. So hold onto your butts while I walk you through what I believe has happened in the Kabam headquarters in the past ten days, because I believe you’ll be just as impressed as I am!
Going into the Sentineloid/mini boss update, we can make three assumptions, based on information we have. Assumption #1 - Kabam has data about what changes in AQ cost players. This assumption is based on the knowledge we have that Kabam tracks character usage in AQ. Extrapolating that data collection to include item use is pretty minimal. Assumption #2 - Kabam knows there is a learning curve with any new changes. Kabam has changed AQ enough times, they can make a proper educated guess on the increase in item use they will see, until things level out again. Assumption #3 - Kabam is not actively trying to piss the player base off. Simple business sense here.
With all of these assumptions in place, let’s set the stage for April 2nd. The Sentineloids are in place. Folks have had a chance to deal with them in event quests, so they aren’t completely unfamiliar, and have had a chance to learn their move sets and abilities. Mini bosses are also getting a refresh, giving AQ a bit of a “new” feel. Clear intent by Kabam - keep AQ fresh for those that have found it boring/routine, and set the stage for further updates down the line.
At this point, Kabam (in my opinion) had made some assumptions of their own. Assumption #1 - This is a routine/standard update to AQ and won’t rock the boat. Assumption #2 - The player base, having experienced Sentineloids in the EQ, is ready for them in AQ. Assumption #3 - The player base has bothered to take the time to read, and understand the Sentineloid abilities.
So, with two clear sets of assumptions - one I am guessing Kabam thought going into this, and the other based on past actions/facts, we go into April 2nd. There is a large and immediate backlash. It’s a Monday, so full staff is in office at Kabam, observing. They expected some backlash with the changes, so that’s not uncommon. They are in a “monitoring” state. By April 4th (Wednesday, day 3 of AQ), videos are coming out from prominent YouTubers on how to handle the Sentineloids. Complaints are only getting louder and some are coming from an unlikely corner - tenured/experienced players who have completed end game content.
My guess is that by April 4th (Thursday, day 4 of AQ), this felt like more than simple grumbling about changes. So, at this point, I am also guessing that Kabam went to compare data to the last AQ transition that was made. How did the first three days compare to the last time they made changes? (For a time check here, they posted the changes they are making and the implementation dates on April 14th, only 10 days after this point, two of which are non-business days, so really only 8 days.)
From a business perspective, nothing short of a ludicrous-level disparity is going to cause action to be taken as quickly as it has been. Imagine this - Kabam is expecting a 10%-20% increase in potion usage. And instead, when they look at the data, they see a 200% increase in potion usage. (These are fake numbers I have made up, but are meant to showcase what necessitates this level of action.) By the end of AQ (April 7th), I’d be willing to bet that whatever the initial increase in potion usage was had gotten even worse.
Something was very, obviously, broken.
More videos by YouTubers are published. Guides for handling the Sentineloids are passed out by community contributors. This is a topic being addressed by everyone, in multiple avenues, and the frustration only continues to grow. (They are now 7 days away from the announcement they made today.)
Two things had to happen at this point. 1. Ideas to address the issues are discussed by Kabam. 2. Community feedback has to be scoured to find the truth behind the problems.
The latter is where we hurt Kabam so much more than actually helping them. They knew they had a problem, a big one. But when you have to dig through hundreds (and there were hundreds) of posts to find the suggestions that were actually going to help, and were feasible, you’re talking about a truly epic uphill battle that Kabam did not have time for at this point. They needed solutions, and they needed them immediately. Any changes made had to be designed, coded and added to the implementation schedule, because this was now priority one.
Anyone who has ever worked in a corporate office, or done beta testing/UAT/triage of new software, understands, in some capacity, how absolutely incredible it is to go from: “This is horribly broken.” to “We have a solution, we have the time, money, manpower, and effort to get it fixed.” in five business days. But that is precisely what Kabam did.
To those of you who do not have the context to understand, I shall reiterate the comparison from earlier - The last time we saw Kabam stop and action this quickly, with this level of efficiency, was 12.0. This was treated (based on the timeline) with the same level of urgency. The fact that we are getting all of the updates and fixes we are on the Sentineloids by the start of next AQ is nothing short of a miracle of manpower.
We owe Kabam (as a community) a huge thank you. The handling of the Sentineloids was everything we could have asked for, and more.
What now?
When I first sat down to write this post, I had a different direction in mind than what this ended up being. I’m going to leave it as-is (because we give Kabam a lot of **** sometimes, but this time they deserve the praise), and add this on.
(Continued Below)
Hello everyone, this is Dragon here! Resident UMCOC podcast co-host and moderator for Concierge! Mutamatt invited me here today, because I wanted to take a moment to give Kabam some kudos! (And no, no sarcasm.)
When the news broke of the updates to Sentineloids in AQ on Friday evening, I saw a great deal of the community rejoicing. Speaking from experience, it’s always frustrating to question your skills when fights are consistently not going your way, and you don’t know how to master a particular fight. With the changes coming up in the next round of AQ, I want to direct the thanks to where it is rightfully deserved - to Kabam.
Sentineloids have been in place since April 2nd. It’s currently (at the time of writing this sentence) April 13th. They’re going to have a fix in place by April 18th. That’s sixteen days. When you consider it took time to receive the feedback (let’s say 1-2 days), and then a handful of days to see there is a big problem (let’s say another 1-2 days), to have a solution planned, coded, and implemented by the 18th is not only impressive, it’s a Herculean effort on Kabam’s part. The last time we saw something addressed this quickly, we’re looking at 12.0.
Which is why the topic that I really wanted to address is helping the community understand how extraordinarily well Kabam handled this, and how we can help this happen again. Not only does Kabam deserve kudos for how they tackled the Sentineloid issue, we as a community need to realize that when our concerns can be backed by data - actioning happens. Quickly.
How do I know this was backed by data? And what data was used? I’ll admit that this is supposition, but I’ve got that supposition backed by facts. So hold onto your butts while I walk you through what I believe has happened in the Kabam headquarters in the past ten days, because I believe you’ll be just as impressed as I am!
Going into the Sentineloid/mini boss update, we can make three assumptions, based on information we have. Assumption #1 - Kabam has data about what changes in AQ cost players. This assumption is based on the knowledge we have that Kabam tracks character usage in AQ. Extrapolating that data collection to include item use is pretty minimal. Assumption #2 - Kabam knows there is a learning curve with any new changes. Kabam has changed AQ enough times, they can make a proper educated guess on the increase in item use they will see, until things level out again. Assumption #3 - Kabam is not actively trying to piss the player base off. Simple business sense here.
With all of these assumptions in place, let’s set the stage for April 2nd. The Sentineloids are in place. Folks have had a chance to deal with them in event quests, so they aren’t completely unfamiliar, and have had a chance to learn their move sets and abilities. Mini bosses are also getting a refresh, giving AQ a bit of a “new” feel. Clear intent by Kabam - keep AQ fresh for those that have found it boring/routine, and set the stage for further updates down the line.
At this point, Kabam (in my opinion) had made some assumptions of their own. Assumption #1 - This is a routine/standard update to AQ and won’t rock the boat. Assumption #2 - The player base, having experienced Sentineloids in the EQ, is ready for them in AQ. Assumption #3 - The player base has bothered to take the time to read, and understand the Sentineloid abilities.
So, with two clear sets of assumptions - one I am guessing Kabam thought going into this, and the other based on past actions/facts, we go into April 2nd. There is a large and immediate backlash. It’s a Monday, so full staff is in office at Kabam, observing. They expected some backlash with the changes, so that’s not uncommon. They are in a “monitoring” state. By April 4th (Wednesday, day 3 of AQ), videos are coming out from prominent YouTubers on how to handle the Sentineloids. Complaints are only getting louder and some are coming from an unlikely corner - tenured/experienced players who have completed end game content.
My guess is that by April 4th (Thursday, day 4 of AQ), this felt like more than simple grumbling about changes. So, at this point, I am also guessing that Kabam went to compare data to the last AQ transition that was made. How did the first three days compare to the last time they made changes? (For a time check here, they posted the changes they are making and the implementation dates on April 14th, only 10 days after this point, two of which are non-business days, so really only 8 days.)
From a business perspective, nothing short of a ludicrous-level disparity is going to cause action to be taken as quickly as it has been. Imagine this - Kabam is expecting a 10%-20% increase in potion usage. And instead, when they look at the data, they see a 200% increase in potion usage. (These are fake numbers I have made up, but are meant to showcase what necessitates this level of action.) By the end of AQ (April 7th), I’d be willing to bet that whatever the initial increase in potion usage was had gotten even worse.
Something was very, obviously, broken.
More videos by YouTubers are published. Guides for handling the Sentineloids are passed out by community contributors. This is a topic being addressed by everyone, in multiple avenues, and the frustration only continues to grow. (They are now 7 days away from the announcement they made today.)
Two things had to happen at this point. 1. Ideas to address the issues are discussed by Kabam. 2. Community feedback has to be scoured to find the truth behind the problems.
The latter is where we hurt Kabam so much more than actually helping them. They knew they had a problem, a big one. But when you have to dig through hundreds (and there were hundreds) of posts to find the suggestions that were actually going to help, and were feasible, you’re talking about a truly epic uphill battle that Kabam did not have time for at this point. They needed solutions, and they needed them immediately. Any changes made had to be designed, coded and added to the implementation schedule, because this was now priority one.
Anyone who has ever worked in a corporate office, or done beta testing/UAT/triage of new software, understands, in some capacity, how absolutely incredible it is to go from: “This is horribly broken.” to “We have a solution, we have the time, money, manpower, and effort to get it fixed.” in five business days. But that is precisely what Kabam did.
To those of you who do not have the context to understand, I shall reiterate the comparison from earlier - The last time we saw Kabam stop and action this quickly, with this level of efficiency, was 12.0. This was treated (based on the timeline) with the same level of urgency. The fact that we are getting all of the updates and fixes we are on the Sentineloids by the start of next AQ is nothing short of a miracle of manpower.
We owe Kabam (as a community) a huge thank you. The handling of the Sentineloids was everything we could have asked for, and more.
What now?
When I first sat down to write this post, I had a different direction in mind than what this ended up being. I’m going to leave it as-is (because we give Kabam a lot of **** sometimes, but this time they deserve the praise), and add this on.
(Continued Below)
24
Comments
In the past 14 months, there have been three markedly large community complaints. 1. The 12.0 transition. 2. The Alliance War changes (including diversity updates). 3. The Sentineloid update. (My criteria for this is something that every level of the community is talking about - from low level alliances to the best of the best.)
Every criticism that was levelled at Kabam during the 12.0 mess (they don’t communicate, they don’t tell us what is happening, they don’t listen to us) has been clearly worked on when you look at their reactions to these things, and you take into account that they need data to make any decisions on changes. Sometimes they have to let things be broken for a week or two, so they can see how bad the break is before they fix it. An example of this? They have updated AW multiple times to address the issues we have raised.
If we want Kabam to continue to make this game better, we absolutely must, without question, give them better feedback. Kabam is going to make decisions that can be backed by data and analytics. So we have to do our part to give them feedback that is both useful, and constructive.
Example -
Bad: The Sentineloids are broken! I can’t use my Wolverine anymore, give us rank down tickets! Kabam sucks!
Good: Having the Sentineloids hidden means I can’t read their abilities, so I always forget which Sentineloid does what, making it harder to fight them well. Can we have them shown on the map to help with this?
Good: Why do the Sentineloids have three bars of power? I’ve gotten clipped a few times because they’ll use an L2, followed immediately by an L1, can they be changed to how the Symbiods were with two bars of power to prevent this?
Which ones do you think Kabam is going to listen to, and even respond to, hm? Time for us as a community to grow up a bit and do our part in all of this. Kabam needs us - and like it or not, we need them too. They’ve done their part and shown us their commitment. About time we do the same, don’t you think?
Kabam said "Give it a chance and you'll see nothing has changed"
Players said the changes were a bad idea and gave reasons why after the update rolled out. (Amid the aforementioned sea of unhelpful complaints, granted).
Kabam said "Give it time. It's not actually harder, it just requires an adjustment on your part".
The way this article read removed any fault from Kabam in all this and made the players 100% to blame. It's not very objective and thus makes it tough to give any credence to.
Also, I wouldn't put this on the level of the 12.0 to 12.0.1 adjustment. That was a lot of coding changes that dealt with how each champ at each level interacted with one another. With the pending AQ adjustment, it's small things like capping energy at 2 bars and making the tiles unhidden. The items they're proposing are pretty basic. Saying that it was a herculean task to figure out the problem and make an adjustment is overstating it a bit, don't you think?
1. Them listening to us and our feedback and making changes quickly based on that feedback is a huge compensation when you consider the potential potion use we would have had to do the rest of the season. (Also, I'm going to point out, if you were fighting badly against them like I was, it's because you didn't read and understand their abilities. That's on us, as players. That's not Kabam's fault in any way, shape, or form.)
2. Then quit. Or try to remember why you're playing this game in the first place. As infuriating as it is, it is a fun game to play. No corporation changes on a dime, it's simply not possible. But you can see the fact that they have taken our complaints from 12.0 and are applying them. Think about the heads up on 6*'s. Would we have gotten that before 12.0? Very unlikely.
If you don't like what's going on, call it out, since that's what good communities do, but when you get all doom and gloomy like that, it's not helping anyone.
Regarding this post though, I have to respectfully disagree with the sentiment of it. Yes Kabam looked to rectify and make changes in quick time. But they created this mess in the first place. And they knew what they were doing when they introduced Sentineloids and new mini bosses, without a bump in rewards. Just like they knew what they were doing when version 12.0 came out; to wring more money from their players.
They probably just didn't anticipate the level of backlash that followed these new changes in AQ, and to their credit they are going to tone down the Sentineloids.
It remains to be seen how much the level of difficulty will be decreased, so for that and for introducing them in the first place I won't say "Thank you Kabam". I will say "Thank goodness" instead.
Kabam saying give it time is based on historical data that they have, showing that we adjust to things. Do they miss the mark sometimes? Sure! Every business does. No fault of theirs.
Look, no lie? The players are 100% to blame here. If we'd all bothered to sit down, read and understand how the Sentineloids worked and stopped trying to power through them like we do every other fight in this game, majority of the problems wouldn't have shown up. The players who DID read and understand the abilities of the Sentineloids and how they worked didn't have an issue. There just weren't many of them.
Despite that, Kabam still made changes, because there WAS good feedback (if you look at my good examples, that kinda illustrates it) that they needed to hear.
The launch of 12.0 and the time it took for 12.1 to show up was about 2 to 3.5 weeks if I'm remembering right. This was a faster turn around time. The items they might be proposing are pretty basic, but when you consider that they had the decisions made on the changes they're making (those take meetings and debates, not to mention feedback gathering, all of which takes time, on top of all the stuff they're probably doing for IW), the coding that does have to be done for the changes (again on top of the other stuff they're scheduled to do), and then fitting it in, this wasn't an EASY thing to do for Kabam.
From a business perspective, trying to get anything from "Ahhh, broken!" to "Yay, fixed!" in a week is tough, when you consider the size and scope of their player base. So no, I don't think that I'm overstating it. Especially having had to do those sort of adjustments in an old job of mine.
Thank you for the compliment! Glad that you enjoy the podcast!
I think they intended to make it harder to challenge us, but I think my (fake) example of item use increases shows that they missed the mark on how hard, and that's why they reacted so quick to change.
I'm far from one to normally compliment everything Kabam does, and I'm much more likely to be on the other side of the fence, upset and frustrated. But when I sat down and really thought about this, I had to come out more positive, because this shows that when the feedback is legitimate? They act. And that in and of itself is huge!
I've played this game since it's inception, and I have always stuck through things even when it wasnt in my best interest. What has happened in the past two weeks cannot be fixed with their proposal.
I've played the game since inception too, and I'm just asking you to understand that no corporation has ever (or will ever) change overnight.
We didn't predict the Sentineloid issue, no one did, because no one bothered to read the descriptions. Sure, everyone didn't like that they couldn't bring Wolverine/X-23 any longer because they don't bleed, but hey, changes happen.
The thing they (and I) am asking you to understand is that there is very rarely a great "player consensus" about how Kabam should do things. We act like there is, but there really, really isn't. So they have to try, and fail, sometimes, in order to continue improving. They've made multiple and continued updates to Alliance War, they've added difficulty to EQ with Uncollected modes, there's now Uncollected area, 4-hour and daily crystals, etc.
They ARE listening. They're just acting on a grander scale than tossing you a few potions because you had some tough fights in AQ. I know I got my butt handed to me by the Sentineloids. More than once. It took items, changing my team up, and knowing how to fight them for me to do better. That's my adjustment as a player. That's not their fault I came in unprepared and had to use items.
I read up on the Sentinels. I watched tutorials. I made adjustments to my play style and my roster. I came on forums and gave constructive criticism including specific ways to improve. My item use in AQ (Map 5, top 100 alliance) didn't increase, but it did get substantially harder to finish the map with all 3 champs intact. And after all that, Kabam just says "you'll get used to it". I'm to blame for this?
Then Kabam states they missed the mark and will be changing things a bit...and still they are 0% to blame for this? They are 0% accountable for a negative change that players were being vocal about both before and after the rollout? They admitted that they messed up, but they are 0% to blame in all this? If players are 100% to blame for this, then mathematically, that's what you're telling us. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
To your second point, it doesn't take as long as you may think to go from "Ahhh, broken!" to "Yay, fixed!". Check your records. How long did it take to adjust Hela after she was found to be doing crazy damage? How long did it take to adjust Loki when he was L2'ing his way through the Labyrinth? When Scarlet Witch waltzed right up to Maestro in the early days of the Labyrinth of Legends, how long did it take to make a few adjustments to make sure that didn't happen anymore? In all cases, the answer is a few days max.
On the other hand, when Black Widow's signature ability was randomly breaking through blocks...how long did it take to adjust her? Or how about when Spider-man was able to evade and counter punch you before you could blink...how long for that? Weeks? Months? So what's the difference? Bugs that help the player are addressed in very short order. Those that foster a need for more item use tend to be much lower priority. This is the perception the player base has of Kabam right now. The rolling out of the Sentinels in AQ just seems to be another example of this.
I appreciate what you're trying to do. These forums can be a very toxic place at times and many (most?) posts aren't helpful. But there are many that are rooted in logic and constructive criticism. This essay feels like a slap in the face to those who have been trying to be helpful as it lumps everyone together in an unhelpful mass while relieving Kabam of any wrongdoing...which is weird considering Kabam even stated that they got it wrong...hence the impending adjustment.
What I hope you take from this is to realize that Kabam should rightfully bear some (not all) of the blame in all this. Doing so would likely rally many more players to your cause.
Wow... just wow. Yeah the players are 100 percent to blame here... We asked to have alliances crumble and more difficulty..we all love to pot up before a fight.
I get your original point. But Kabam probably jumped through hoops because people were leaving in large numbers not because we asked. Their greed was costing them. Am I glad they "fixed" it... not really. I wasn't having problems but it cost me an alliance. A once great alliance fell completely apart. I had to join another one and it's not the same, while able to complete content and win wars I don't want to spend another 2 years building bonds with people to have it destroyed because a number cruntcher wants more out of AQ
I don't have a cause, and I'm not interested in rallying anyone to my point of view. I'm offering a perspective, based on what I've seen, heard and watched over the past two weeks. You don't have to agree, and that's cool!
Kabam is saying they missed the mark, because we're all hurting. It's a bit symbiotic. This is harder than they anticipated for us, but it is harder for us because many of us refuse to adjust our play style? (Not everyone went to the lengths you did, and I'd say you went much further than most!) They say they missed they mark, but without knowing their intentions, I can't say that they should shoulder some of the blame here. My point is that if people had fought the fights and thought about them, you can get through them.
I deleted the stuff you pointed out about characters to make the reply a little shorter. Yes, there are instances where Kabam has reacted much quicker, and addressed problems with bugs like that. I don't deny that, and I promise it makes me just as frustrated as you, but that is completely separate from the discussion we're having, so I'll say I agree, I don't like it, but separate issue.
There's a reason I left the forums after they transitioned over to the new ones. Yes, there are people who give absolutely wonderful, constructive, detailed feedback, but they are in the vast minority. I'm not talking about the 5% who give good feedback (and that number is probably overly generous), but the 95% of the community who don't give constructive and helpful feedback. That's on us, not them.
Enjoy your bugged content
Were they having to use potions because they couldn't adjust their play style, though? Or because they weren't bringing class advantage, or baiting specials?
I'm sorry your alliance fell apart, because that's horrible.
We don't know why Kabam made this change, and maybe we never will. We say it's because people are leaving, because we see people we know leave. But if they left, it was likely because this was the last straw for them, not because of this alone.
While I understand and even agree with some of the sentiment of your analysis, in my opinion you're dead wrong here. First of all, all of your analysis rests on an assumption that is as false as false can get; this one:
I'm afraid I'm going to have to put my game developer hat on here and attack this assumption from two different directions: what a reasonably competent game designer should have known, and how game development teams function.
First, what should a reasonably competent game designer have known. The notion that no one can know what will happen when you make a game change because its all just a bunch of voodoo magic wrapped in Excel spreadsheets is a widespread idea both in player communities and sometimes even among game developers. It is false. I've worked - as in did work and got paid for it - with difficulty metrics. While it is non-trivial to estimate the capabilities of your playerbase, it is not impossible to judge relative difficulty. But here, you don't need any special expertise to ask whether Sentinels would be substantially more difficult than the Syms they replaced because the difference is so extreme it requires no serious analysis. Sentinels have more and stronger offensive abilities than the Syms they replaced. They are in all respects stronger defensively. They have special attacks that are both harder to evade and become progressively impossible to block. Even evading attacks feeds them attack bonuses via their signature ability. It is literally *impossible* to not know Sentinels would be substantially more dangerous than the Syms they replaced, for anyone willing to spend any thought at all on the situation. To state otherwise is completely absurd.
Second, how do game development companies work. Do they just decide, out of the blue, to make changes like this "just to change things up?" Almost never. Game development companies above a certain size or working on games of sufficient scale - and Kabam and MCOC qualify in both senses - are collections of specialists working in pipelines of development. They don't just "do" things. For literally everything in the game there are a number of different developers that have to do different interlocking things to make that content. Someone working today on something might need something that someone else worked on last week, and if that guy didn't do his thing, then the guy today wouldn't be able to do his thing. Game development is like a three-dimensional assembly line, with work happening everywhere and getting passed in all directions to other people working on top of that previous work. Development time is very carefully scheduled to make sure that no one stalls because someone else didn't get to something.
Every game change requires going through an extensive process, where developers make the content and their respective managers review it, project managers and producers organize that work and QA and other process management get involved. No one can just say "hey, lets do this to change things up a bit." No one can generally work alone to do anything, with one exception I'll get to. The very fact that Kabam officially stated that this change was done "to change things up a bit" because they claimed they didn't have enough time to do a full revision on AQ means it wasn't, and couldn't be, a "routine/standard update to AQ." Because this kind of quick change is never routine. This is the opposite of routine. Routine changes take weeks, usually months, and involve processes that couldn't have generated the AQ change. This was an out of ordinary change, relative to how Kabam (and most game development companies) usually make changes of this magnitude. Kabam itself regularly admonishes players who believe small tweaks exactly like the AQ change can "just happen." Normal and routine is days of design and weeks and months of implementation and vetting.
Both in terms of what a competent game developers should have known, AND in terms of how Kabam as a game development company operates, literally everyone should have known this was an out of ordinary change that would have a major impact on the game as a whole. So how did it happen? I can think of only two possibilities that fit the facts and that are consistent with how game development companies work.
Option one: Kabam wanted to crank up difficulty due to some internal balancing metric but didn't realize just how much more difficult their changes were. This is possible. While any competent game developer should have known that the Sentinels (and the minibosses for that matter) would increase the difficulty of AQ, it takes greater skill to estimate the magnitude of such changes. I content that it should have been obvious it would be too much, but that's a matter of judgment, not of general competency. Under this scenario, Kabam misjudged the difficulty increase by an order of magnitude, and when their internal data confirmed that they made changes to reduce that difficulty (not enough in my opinion, by the way).
Option two: Kabam wanted to make small changes to AQ, but didn't have enough internal resources to do it correctly. Because changing the nodes on the map without changing map structure is just a matter of editing pre-existing files and spreadsheets, they decided to assign it to someone new and didn't supervise him or her enough, deviating from the normal processes in the interests of expediency. I've seen this before as well (and it is the exception I referenced above), if the person making the change isn't experienced enough to understand what they are doing and the people supervising aren't paying close enough attention, it is possible no one really stopped to consider what the difficulty change actually would do.
Both of these are major Kabam failings in process.
Now, is it possible, as you say, that the players are still 100% to blame because we just didn't adjust to the difficulty properly? Well, I have two things to say to that. The first one is that I was well aware of the change as I read it in the announcement. I did everything I could to prepare for the change, including analyzing the information available on the Sentinels and practicing as available. I continued to test and experiment with strategy during AQ, as well as research all available information and gameplay. I am certainly not the best player in the game, but I believe it is safe to say that Kabam could not expect the *average* player to do any better than me in preparation and any better than me at adjusting to fighting the Sentinels. And I found them extremely difficult to adjust to. If your contention is that *everyone* should have been better than *me* at this, in my opinion your expectations are entirely unrealistic.
The other thing worth noting is that it is the developers *job* to create content for its playerbase. It is not the playerbase's job to rise up to meet the developers' expectations. AND Kabam itself made the claim that except for the novelty of the change the players should EXPECT the change to be no more difficult. Saying it is 100% the players fault for not adjusting to the increased difficulty that Kabam itself said didn't exist is another unreasonable expectation.
There are game changes for which your analysis of the situation would be entirely valid. In my opinion, this is not one of them.
Thank you for adding the game developer insight to the post, I really appreciate that and it's awesome to pull back the veil and to better understand how these things work! I'll also agree that saying it's 100% on the player base was incorrect, especially with the information you added.
I do think that there is some responsibility on both sides (a lot of my player perspective comes from my own experiences and those in my alliance who, when we made changes, have all been able to succeed against the Sentineloids), but I am glad to see that Kabam has not only acknowledged their mistake, but has actively worked to fix it.
By the way, if you ever want to stop by the podcast, we'd love to have you on!
Also, I had to trim 60 characters from it to post it, so quoting it would mean you probably could only say "I do think" and then the forum would cut you off.
I wouldn't use the word "responsibility." Whenever the developers introduce new difficulty in any part of the game, how well the players adjust to that difficulty and what rewards and experience they get out of it depends greatly on how intelligently and efficiently they react to that. I'd say that is a valid perspective when it comes to, say, the introduction of uncollected difficulty. Some players were so strong when that happened that uncollected difficulty was not a significant challenge. For some players, it was entirely out of reach. But there was a range of players for which that difficulty was high but not insurmountable with thought and practice you could either beat it or work towards overcoming it. The return you get is based in large part on the effort you put it.
But while that's also true for AQ, I think the problem goes beyond individual player efforts. Alliances grow and evolve over time to mesh together many different players that are compatible with each other. Part of the criteria those players have to satisfy is being compatible when it comes to alliance events, AQ and AW. It is unrealistic to expect that every single player will be able to adjust to changes in AQ and AW at exactly the same rate, but it isn't an inability to adjust that can tear an alliance apart. It can be simply the differences in the way and the rate at which each individual player adjusts. Even if every player does everything right, a sudden change in difficulty and content in AQ can put enormous pressure on an alliance that didn't exist before. It is one thing to expect an alliance to deal with gradual changes over time, putting a small amount of pressure to adjust on each individual player. It is another thing to expect everyone to adjust quickly to a sudden change, all in the same way at the same rate in a way that will allow them to still mesh together.
A question for you is: do you think it is a good idea to periodically "shake up" whole alliances and challenge them to adapt or die? That seems contrary to me to the purpose of player groups like alliances, which is usually to promote players forming attachments to other players in ways that allow games to retain players for longer periods of time.
This was asked in the official thread as well. If you believe that the Kabam developers honestly believed that the Sentinels would not be significantly more difficult except because they were novel, and players would need time to adjust to that novelty, then it is unclear to me what beta testing would accomplish. They would be expecting players to complain about the Sentinels being more dfficult, and that's exactly what beta testing would show.
What beta testing would not be able to easily show is just how much that increased difficulty would affect whole alliances running AQ maps across an entire week, without a massive beta test program. In effect, we were the beta test program.
I think they should have caught this problem on paper. But barring that, I'm not sure how effective limited beta testing would be, if Kabam was already predisposed to thinking everything was fine.
Dude it was a 7-10k PI sentinel, what do you want a medal and some flowers sent?
They were simple to beat, even with bleed champs.
Don’t deserve an apology or compensation
They might have been simple for you to beat, but they were clearly not simple for most players to beat. You can argue what players deserve or don't deserve, or what they should or should not believe, but at the end of the day the situation between the players and the game company is not symmetric. For me this is a game. For Kabam this is their livelihood. The effort I put in is commensurate with how much effort I'm willing to put into a game. The effort Kabam puts in should be commensurate with how much they enjoy eating regular meals.
What Kabam does when managing the game should have nothing to do with what they think players "deserves." Deserves has nothing to do with anything. The only thing that matters is what is best for the game, and its long term future. I'm not a big believer in apologies and I'm not really a big proponent in compensation either. I believe in intent, execution, and transparency. I believe the best way forward is to acknowledge what went wrong, explain what you are going to do about addressing it, and presenting a plan moving forward to avoid anything like it from happening in the future.
It would be nice to see all three happening all the time, or even once. To my reckoning, it hasn't happened yet.
That's an interesting question!
I do think the answer to that question is yes. If you were asking me as a designer, I would answer yes.
I think it is contrary to player groups - but I think if one player advances quicker than one alliance as a whole, they'll hop up until they end up in a group at their skill level. What has happened (for most of us) is that we've leveled out and found an alliance of similar skill and like minded-ness.
But even then, after extended periods of time - you often see people step down, or step up. There are shakeups that happen, especially in large break periods.
So, I think for the health of the game, yes, I do think that is necessary from time to time.
That’s not their problem
I'm not sure if that addresses the question I was asking. Yes, it is unavoidable that alliance shake ups happen from time to time, so it is necessary to allow such things to happen. The players themselves as a natural consequence of progressing in the game will on occasion find themselves outgrowing their alliance or vice versa, and we shouldn't constrain individual player progress to avoid this.
But should you *deliberately* induce those shake ups, because there's a specific benefit to those shake ups in and of itself? And if so, what is the actual benefit to the game and/or the players?