We're constantly working on improving communications between our Game Team and our players. We, as a community team, are embedded with the Game Team, and this allows us to work directly with them on Players concerns, communication of issues, asking questions and getting answers, and relaying player feedback. The questions you ask Mods, and the answers you receive, are from the Game Team. While we totally appreciate the request for direct access to the Game Teams themselves, the answers you receive will not be different just because the person answering you is. Q&As are something that we want to explore, but are pretty difficult to set up, because even taking a couple hours to host one takes the team member away from their regular duties, and those couple hours can mean a world of difference and make it a scheduling nightmare. We haven't given up on this idea, but need to work on some processes before this is possible.
It just seems inefficient to ping back and forth between the Game Team and the forums. I don't know how large the Game Team is, or if the other gaming company experienced the same problems but thought it was worth it.
One of our goals this year was to make more of those small, quick fixes, that you mentioned. However, when trying to act on that, we realized that even small fixes take a lot of time to incorporate. Every small change to a Champion requires tuning, testing, retuning, retesting, reretuning, reretesting, etc. We totally understand and appreciate how even a small tweak can make a world of difference, and are working on some for the future, but are not quite in a place where this is something we can expedite.
Well, I'm to be clear no game developer but let's imagine the smallest fix I can think of right now: Magneto's chance to bleed gets a flat increase in chance of +20 percentage points. I imagine it wouldn't be difficult in terms of coding (it simply changing a figure) nor in terms of testing (it won't break the game). But it would fix a problem of a champion desperately needing a buff. Would that be small enough of a fix to consider?
As for the Beta Program, it is not only accessible to Top Players. While every test will have different entry criteria, some of which may include how long you have been playing, or what tier of Alliance War, etc, that you may play in, this is not always the case. For instance, The Red Hulk and Luke Cage Beta test's only requirement was that you must have either one of them as a 4-Star or 5-Star Champion. We then made a random selection of Summoners from that pool, and added them to our Beta Test.
Additionally, players have a lot of input. When you post a suggestion in our Forums, or send us a Tweet, we see those. We may not always be able to get back to every suggestion, but we do see them. And I don't just mean the Community Team; the game team is constantly looking at the Forums. I sometimes wake up to a message from somebody on the team asking me to reply to a certain thread that was posted at 3 am on a Sunday.
I was wondering my efforts so far were all in vain. Good to know the developers do look at the forums. But if they implement it, it might be good to mention that when it is released. This is very motivating to players and they will do a lot more work to make better suggestions. Maybe make the habit to implement a player suggestion every few months.
I think that the player base as a whole would appreciate the team at Kabam taking a break from all the new content and just focus on balancing some of the old favorite champs. All of them deserve to have some abilities that make them unique and fun to play. But in the current state of the game it's unfortunate that an increasing number of champs are just not fun to play with anymore. And it seems that a lot of these ended up in the 6* crystal which is kind of an insult to all your dedicated players.
Amen to that. No offence to @Kabam Miike, but this month was a huge disappointment. This Masacre dude and the non-canon Goldpool, I truly wonder why Kabam invested time and money in those two. I'd rather have Kabam finish the New Order or release the Wasp. On the other hand, very popular champions (Iron Man, Hulkbuster, Colossus, Captain America) are in a desperate need of a rework. Players really believes Kabam don't do that because those champions don't earn so much money like new champions. This is deadly in terms of PR.
Ironically, if they were *forced* by their own rules to have to explain clearly to the playerbase what they were doing with AW on both the small scale and on the larger scale, they'd know just how sketchy their AW concepts are. Being forced to explain something to someone else is one of the easiest ways to find out just how well you understand the thing yourself. Better communication with the players wouldn't just help us, it would help them, in a lot of difficult to demonstrate ways until it actually happens.
Yes, clear thinking starts with clear writing. Writing forces you to think things through. This university professor has made a writing guide. What counts for essays, also counts for general writing.
I hope Kabam writes and releases a masterplan about a part of the game and what they are planning with it. However, most plans fail in the executive phase or aren't properly evaluated and updated. A plan is a living document, but one that requires inputs from all Game Teams and players alike.
If they wanted to listen to the community and make the game better for everyone they would. The sad truth is that they just don’t care unless they are making enough money. They clearly don’t have a clue how to market to the entire community and would rather just do what the 1% whales want rather than cater to everyone as a whole.
Honestly Kabam needs to hit the brakes period and fix relations first or nothing will ever get better. Honestly tired of waiting for them to get the hint
Honestly Kabam needs to hit the brakes period and fix relations first or nothing will ever get better. Honestly tired of waiting for them to get the hint
The problem is, they first have to give half a damn about their player-base's opinions, and they only care about our wallets.
SO STOP SPENDING UNTIL THEY GET THE HINT.
It is a public secret that the relation between players and Kabam are not well. Every gaming company knows commercial succes is based on word of mouth. Kabam has done a lot to increase customer satisfaction. There is more transparency, more player-mod interaction and more communication. But can Kabam do more?
From my experience with another gaming company who experienced the same problems, I could witness some good practises regarding player-mod communication I wish to share.
Hold regular Q&A's. Players have questions, I see them all the time in this forum category and others. It is very frustrating for players to not get an answer and very time-consuming for mods to repeat (often the same) answers. So I suggest to A. hold regular Q&A sessions, B. make a forum archive with all those Q&A sessions and C. make a sticky in General Discussion with FAQ. Q&A sessions in the other gaming company were done by top content makers and yearly, the CEO himself. Players would be able to post questions in the forums and the mods would answer them. It cut down the clutter in the forums and this type of engagement with the player base was universally well-liked.
Focus on quick-fixes. To the astonishment of that other gaming company, quick-fixes were very popular, often more popular than big updates. The game is often riddled with small nuisances which can be quickly fixed. In MCOC, this could be stat-changes, small boosts to ability performance or small reworks of old champions. These are often fixes that take little time and money but increase customer satisfaction a lot. Everyone wins! Make the patch notes as important as any other big update and establish an archive for players to consult.
More player input. Currently, there is a beta programme but this is only accessible for top players. While this is better than nothing, it risks alienating players who are maybe not as famous but have equally good ideas, or content that is custom-made for these top players while not taking medium to low players into account. I suggest to make a sticky where regular players can suggest their own quick fixes. Credit changes to the game that are made thanks to player suggestions. If you give players a feeling their suggestions can become reality, it will encourage dedication to players to really try to make this game better. This will spark creativity and perhaps, inspires Kabam of that one big score.
Discuss.
Only thing that isnt on target with this post is the comment about the beta program. Its not for the top players at all. Both times they've done it, they picked people at random. Ive got about 5 people in my alliance that were picked for the MD/Dex testing. We arent top players by any means at all.
Not really at random. You had to have both RH and Luke Cage as a 4* when those where changed and you had to have MD and Dex unlocked (and I assume have points in them, but not 100% on that).
Being a top player had nothing to do with it, so you're completely right about that. I was about to explain that to OP myself.
But you won't see noobs with only 2*'s and 3*'s in the Beta programme. So yeah, maybe not only top but at least mid players. I won't be chosen, as I don't have MD unlocked.
I would edit it in the OP, but sadly still no decent edit function!
They didn't just look at those with both unlocked. I had Dex but not MD and I was in it. When you entered Beta, both were Maxed anyway. They gathered a range of feedback from random Players, and it's just as important to hear from people with Dex as it is people with MD, IMO. Otherwise, your sample size is potentially biased towards those with MD.
Comments
Well, I'm to be clear no game developer but let's imagine the smallest fix I can think of right now: Magneto's chance to bleed gets a flat increase in chance of +20 percentage points. I imagine it wouldn't be difficult in terms of coding (it simply changing a figure) nor in terms of testing (it won't break the game). But it would fix a problem of a champion desperately needing a buff. Would that be small enough of a fix to consider?
Thanks for the clarification.
I was wondering my efforts so far were all in vain. Good to know the developers do look at the forums. But if they implement it, it might be good to mention that when it is released. This is very motivating to players and they will do a lot more work to make better suggestions. Maybe make the habit to implement a player suggestion every few months.
I hope Kabam writes and releases a masterplan about a part of the game and what they are planning with it. However, most plans fail in the executive phase or aren't properly evaluated and updated. A plan is a living document, but one that requires inputs from all Game Teams and players alike.
The problem is, they first have to give half a damn about their player-base's opinions, and they only care about our wallets.
SO STOP SPENDING UNTIL THEY GET THE HINT.
They didn't just look at those with both unlocked. I had Dex but not MD and I was in it. When you entered Beta, both were Maxed anyway. They gathered a range of feedback from random Players, and it's just as important to hear from people with Dex as it is people with MD, IMO. Otherwise, your sample size is potentially biased towards those with MD.