We Need An Update to Old Champs
Werewrym
Member Posts: 2,830 ★★★★★
Are new champs breaking the game? I would say yes they are, but not perhaps for the same reasons as many people have expressed in the forums. I believe new champs are breaking the game because they make all of our older champs illegitimate. Kabam cannot keep coming out with new characters that continue to widen the chasm that exists between the new and old champs. If they want a balanced game (and they have said they do) they need to update many of the current playable characters who have been around for 2+ years.
The problem here is that this game is rapidly moving to the point of refreshing itself from the old content. Let me explain what I mean by this. Essentially all of the old classic characters, Iron Fist, Colossus, Iron Man, Abomination, DPX, and many many more have become useless except if you are just looking for champs to fight the old content that existed without buffed nodes. These days almost none of the old champs are ever used in the real competitive game modes and the harder story and event quests because the old champs have no utility against all of the complexity that the nodes these days throw at us.
What this has essentially done is penalize those of us who put resources into ranking these champs back when they could actually be used. I am not asking for rank down tickets, nor do I expect they would ever be given for a shift in the meta of the game, however, I do think it is not unreasonable to question if this shift in the meta should ever make our previous choices in this game null and void, such as ranking older champs. I think it's time that Kabam do something about this. I realize that this kind of update to old champs doesn't directly benefit the wallets at Kabam, but I would hazard a guess that in the long run, more players would be more willing to spend money on a game where less of their favorite champs aren't old and outdated by newer and likely less well known champs.
One of the things that really bugs me is that there are a lot of these old and useless champs in the 6* crystal. I don't know about you, but there is nothing worse than saving 15k 6* shards only to pull an Iron Fist who you know is completely useless to you because he is an old champ that has been outdated by the newer champs in the game. Aren't we supposed to be able to actually use our 6* heroes??? At what point has it gone too far? Kabam can't keep releasing new champs without first making sure that the old content in the game can still be used.
@Kabam Miike I know you will probably see this, and I'm not asking for a response, but please consider addressing this topic with the team. This has to be an issue that even moderators who play this game for fun can see and relate to. It makes this game much less enjoyable to see all of the awesome comic book characters of our youth underrepresented in such a cool game. Many of the players in this game can't even use the old champs because the level that we play at demands the latest and greatest champs. This is something that really demands more direct attention than just a beta test of a couple champs like what happened with Rulk and LC. It needs to be something that we as the player base can see you guys actively working to improve and not at the slow pace of once every couple of months.
There is so much more that I could say on this topic and so much more that needs to be said by the community, so hopefully we can get some attention to this issue.
Last thing before I post this... I realize that compared to some of the current bugs with the app and the game itself this is quite insignificant. But perhaps once all of that is fixed we can get back to some of the most important things that need to happen in the game, outside of bug fixing.
The problem here is that this game is rapidly moving to the point of refreshing itself from the old content. Let me explain what I mean by this. Essentially all of the old classic characters, Iron Fist, Colossus, Iron Man, Abomination, DPX, and many many more have become useless except if you are just looking for champs to fight the old content that existed without buffed nodes. These days almost none of the old champs are ever used in the real competitive game modes and the harder story and event quests because the old champs have no utility against all of the complexity that the nodes these days throw at us.
What this has essentially done is penalize those of us who put resources into ranking these champs back when they could actually be used. I am not asking for rank down tickets, nor do I expect they would ever be given for a shift in the meta of the game, however, I do think it is not unreasonable to question if this shift in the meta should ever make our previous choices in this game null and void, such as ranking older champs. I think it's time that Kabam do something about this. I realize that this kind of update to old champs doesn't directly benefit the wallets at Kabam, but I would hazard a guess that in the long run, more players would be more willing to spend money on a game where less of their favorite champs aren't old and outdated by newer and likely less well known champs.
One of the things that really bugs me is that there are a lot of these old and useless champs in the 6* crystal. I don't know about you, but there is nothing worse than saving 15k 6* shards only to pull an Iron Fist who you know is completely useless to you because he is an old champ that has been outdated by the newer champs in the game. Aren't we supposed to be able to actually use our 6* heroes??? At what point has it gone too far? Kabam can't keep releasing new champs without first making sure that the old content in the game can still be used.
@Kabam Miike I know you will probably see this, and I'm not asking for a response, but please consider addressing this topic with the team. This has to be an issue that even moderators who play this game for fun can see and relate to. It makes this game much less enjoyable to see all of the awesome comic book characters of our youth underrepresented in such a cool game. Many of the players in this game can't even use the old champs because the level that we play at demands the latest and greatest champs. This is something that really demands more direct attention than just a beta test of a couple champs like what happened with Rulk and LC. It needs to be something that we as the player base can see you guys actively working to improve and not at the slow pace of once every couple of months.
There is so much more that I could say on this topic and so much more that needs to be said by the community, so hopefully we can get some attention to this issue.
Last thing before I post this... I realize that compared to some of the current bugs with the app and the game itself this is quite insignificant. But perhaps once all of that is fixed we can get back to some of the most important things that need to happen in the game, outside of bug fixing.
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Comments
The good thing about new champs having all these interesting abilities is it keeps the game new and fun, the bad thing is... well just look at hawkeye’s Ability page compared to IMIW. One is a manual for a small vehicle and one is a post-it note.
I applaud you for reading my novel
Also if they released him today, he might also fight with his bow and not only his fists.
Yeah it would be awesome if they updated on a consistent schedule instead of once every 6 months or so.
You guys are forgetting one thing though, why would kabam buff old champions? By doing so people wouldnt be as hungry to get the new champs. So its simple, make each new champ 10x better than original characters and people will want them so bad they spend.
Its sad, but its the way it is. I read somewhere from a former employee that "if it doesnt make Kabam money, they dont even want to hear it."
That is the big issue here isn't it. Can they balance updating old champs, while still making new champs desirable. Its a balancing act for sure, one I would hope they could get right. The one thing I can say in their favor is that they seem to have done a really good job in the past with character buffs. They managed to meet this fine balance when they updated Rulk and LC. We at least don't feel like quitting the game anymore when we pull them as 5* or 6*.
This, I think is the key issue. This became very much a main focus of my own post about how Kabam should consider releasing only 1 champ per month and focus additional time on buffing older champs and better QA and testing...so as not to see things happen like the post version 19.0 update events. I also agree that the updates they have done have been very good ones. The potential money thing is pretty sad too.
I read your post, and kind of thought that this was where you were going with the poll, but either way, I wanted to create my own post that focused more specifically on the need to update old champs, without necessarily referring to whether they needed to release less new champs to do so.
Yeah being unlucky in this game really sucks. Especially with how all the new content is oriented to favor those with newer champs. Are you still not playing the game? It looks like we are both in agreement that while no direct revenue comes from updating old champs, they might still benefit indirectly from continued willingness of players to spend.
I had periods where I got really bad pulls and I had always heard that new accounts had more luck. So about a year prior I made a baby account to play with and sure enough it was pretty lucky. So I’ve just been using that account.
I started a new account during the deadpool events because I wanted to test the "beginners luck" theory. I mainly wanted to see if I could get a 5* Goldpool but no definitive results and no Goldpool.
I made the account last year around the time SS and Doc Oc came out. I got one Doc Oc crystal and got him. Thought that was pretty incredible.
It would have definite costs for intangible rewards, but they could also offer 6* special crystals of the updated champ and I guarantee then they'd make more than they put out.
These obsolete champs such as IF should absolutely not be included in things like the 6* crystals. I got a 6* IF and he only sees arena duty, there's zero other content he would be good at for anyone who can get 6*. They're included because the devs don't want a crystal without a little boo-boo in it because then almost everyone would be satisfied with what they got and dissatisfaction wouldn't drive people to consume more. I just wish they'd up the level of boo-boo they put in there cuz it doesn't have to be that bad.
Agreed. We all know that there is no direct monetary benefit to updating old champs. I think we can all also agree that customer satisfaction would get a big boost if they did actually decide to start updating some outdated champs and there are many ways, like you pointed out, that they could still make good money off of it. I can relate to how bad IF is... I use him for diversity in war and he NEVER gets kills. So essentially he gets us a few points each war and that is it complete waste of a 6*.
How about even starting with buffing one champion per quarter? Just one champ per three months? A lot of older champs don't need huge buffs to be useful again. IF would be great if he had some base armour or perfect block (c'mon he's supposed to be an amazing martial artist) and gained Cruelty or Armour Break the way Mordo gains Fury when charging a heavy attack (could even use Mordo's animation for this) The coding is already there, guys!....
If it was something 'small' like this, it could even be an improvement that only applied to 5*/6* versions of the champion, like Ronan gains Fury as a 5*.
I agree completely. Anything small would be better than completely ignoring the old champs, which is what we get currently.
Winter Soldier
Magik
Spider-Gwen
Luke Cage
Red Hulk
In other instances, adjustments or improvements we make to the game positively impact older Champions as well. An example of this would be Karnak - he became better when we made True Strike counter Auto Block.
Does this mean that all of these above Champions are exactly where we want them to be? No. Are there other older Champions we want to revisit? Yes, absolutely. It's true that developing new features and new content in order to keep The Contest fresh and exciting is a big priority for us, but we do want to and like to make improvements to existing content as well. In the instance of Luke Cage and Red Hulk, we ran a beta test. We recently ran a Mystic Dispersion beta test, but we do have a good idea of what we want our next 'existing Champion refresh' beta to be. While I can't share the specifics of that just yet because we don't have the timeline nailed down, I am looking forward to the day where we can share more on that front
Wait a second. Spider Gwen was buffed? This is a buffed version of her? How was she buffed?
I believe there was a change to how her trap spider/ hunter spider worked. Instead of being random it now starts with a specific one. Instead of using an sp1 to change Hunter/spider you can now dash back and hold block.
Lol wow. Well I guess I never really noticed this change and I’m guessing others haven’t either. Doesn’t really seem like a “buff” though.