Banning 4* champions from Act 6 says one thing to me, and that is that Kabam doesn’t know how to develop content that is passable in difficulty to be challenging without being an obvious cash grab with the spectrum of champions’ kits they have released. Instead of being creative and coming up with solutions to the concerns @Kabam Miike voiced as the reasons for this requirement, you are cutting off the legs of all players rosters under the unsubtle guise of not wanting people to be subject to content to difficult for their rosters and... data farming. Well, that is the players’ decision. It’s their decision if they want to spend $50k on units to explore the content with 2*s. You’re a business, and this truly makes no sense. If you need some better strategists, I’d be happy to talk pay and relocation fees.
Kabam has sold millions of dollars worth of 4* rank up material, and you will be cutting off or devaluing that revenue stream in the future by banning 4*s. It also sets a dangerous precedent for the community as, if we let this go unchallenged, we can only expect all of our champions to essentially be on a timer for not only their utility, but their eligibility. Why would I spend another dollar to run on this hamster wheel if there is no consistent value in what I’m purchasing, even if it is subject to the inflation of Kabam releasing higher star tiers.
I want this game to be a success, for Kabam to make money, and for MCoC to be around for a long time. The current model we’re previewing here is unacceptable.
Thank you all for the discussion on this topic. There’s been a lot of constructive feedback and thoughts, and it’s been valuable to us for considerations and internal discussion. We wanted to be clearer with our intentions, and better clarify why we want to do this and how it aligns with our past direction in the game.
This is not the first time we’ve hard-gated something behind a form of progression. We use gates liberally, oftentimes to prevent players from having frustrating experiences in content beyond their capabilities, but also because we’re game developers and we have some intended play experiences in mind that we--through both iteration and personal gameplay experience--believe smooth out the ride and make the whole thing as enjoyable as possible.
At level 50-60, it's easy to forget that for much of an early player’s experience they are bumping into padlock icons all over the quests menu:
- A multitude of our arenas cannot be played without specific Champion rarities, and to be competitive requires a lot of them. - Normal and Heroic difficulty event quests are locked behind levels 12 and 25, respectively. - Master was, for a long time, gated monthly behind the 100% exploration of its Heroic counterpart. - Uncollected difficulty requires not only reaching level 40, but completion of Act 5, Chapter 2. - Even entering Beginner asks you to be level 6!
And this is just looking at the monthly event quests. Dungeons need you to have a sizeable count of certain rarities before you can access the very same ones. Side Quests follow similar locking mechanics to the Monthly Events, and we’ve used gating methods both inter-quest (Dimensional Rifts and their shards) and more explicit (Danger Rooms rarity requirements, the current Recon Missions) to craft a specifically targeted experience or to more tightly tune the content we’re making.
On the topic of tuning, that is our goal when using more stringent requirements in quests. Back Issues #1 used this explicitly with the Class requirements; we did this so we could build areas in each quest where lesser-used Champions could stand out--Hawkeye’s power drain capabilities in Chapter 1, Quest 1, for example--and be important for strategy where they normally would not. We’re aiming to do similar things in Back Issues #2, with a different approach. (More on that soon!)
One reason we do this is because of how progression changes over time. Once you’ve achieved Level 60, we lose a numerical value of your time and experience in the game. The gap between a fresh 60 and a veteran 60 can be massive, just like in many other MMO games. One of the best ways we have to continue using those gates as both protective and progression measure is targeting the baseline strength and breadth of your roster.
Act 6 (and other content) is built with specific challenges in mind. The requirement of 5 and 6-Stars is a broader application of the idea, but it allows us to build a more tightly-constructed experience around a more specific box of playstyles. Making one-size fits all content for an immense player toolbox can lead to things being more watered down and general, rather than the specific moments we can make when we know the lower and upper limits of each player as a matter of fact.
Lastly, this is permanent content. When we place strict requirements on a Side Quest, it’s a gold rush; there’s only ~30 days to build or enhance a team for the quest in question, and it can be a real crunch to get it done. (I myself am going to have a hell of a time with the Avengers leg of the Recon Missions.) Act 6 is going to be around forever. If you can’t get into it right away, that’s alright. It’ll wait for you!
Again I appreciate the discussion around this, and when we say we’re taking your feedback we mean it. When there are lots of opinions and discourse around a topic like this, we take it seriously. I’ve already had two meetings today to chat about it with a variety of teams. I hope my points better explain our stance on gating content, and why we feel comfortable doing it here in the way we are.
Right after seeing the response regarding the restrictions for act 6 I honestly feel like its a poor explanation and is so contradictory and does not justify the decision.
- Its mentioned they are doing so to prevent a frustrating player experience. Well if anything this will increase the frustration. Players open their crystal and don't get the champ they need or want now means they are blocked from possibly doing content because they aren't lucky enough. E.g. requiring a bleed immune champ but because their luck is bad they haven't pulled one , or pulled a colossus. Meanwhile they have a Iceman, Sentinel, Vision etc sitting in their 4* roster.
- They talk about how rarities are used in arena and needing a big roster to be competitive. Well Arena is optional game play and is not the main story quest. The story quest is the main progression in the game and all other aspects are extras that are added for the short term to give players something to do once they complete the story mode. The main story should simply be locked behind a completion of the previous act and upon completing the act the new act is available to play. Also all the other gated progression things are normal progression markers. Once you start the game and do act 1 you are able to do the monthly beginner quest which you do alongside act 2 which when completed puts you in a position for normal and act 3 difficulty. Also when rarities have been used before it has always been in a way where it was pretty open for the majority of players to play and was a way to challenge our skill. This puts a block which isn't based on proper progression but more to do with spending money and being lucky in crystal openings.
- Then they talk about tuning and talking about variant and how lesser used champions could stand out. So on the one hand you want us to level and rank up a wider range of champions like hawk eye to help with 1.1 but if you don't have a 5* version you will likely to turn to a 4* version as he is probably the best option in that pool for that role. But on the other hand with the requirements of act 6 that shifts away from widening our roster to focusing on getting the same champs we might be using as 4* as 5* and ranking them up.
- You say you do it as a way to track progression because after level 60 there is no way to distinguish if you have played 7 months or if you played 2 years. Well surely 100% act 5 is a good indicator of where you are at in the game in terms of progression. You can be a fresh level 60 and buy loads of crystals and have a better roster then a 2 year level 60 veteran. This type of restriction /gate is basically a pay to play.
- "it allows us to build a more tightly-constructed experience around a more specific box of play styles" well no it doesn't as you are taking away from play styles. E.g Ghost, The thing, Blade, Medussa to name a few that have certain way to play them to their best potential which relies on synergies . How Many people do you think have all the required synergies to play these champions in the way they are being played as 5* and above ?. This also means certain champions will sit around and not be ranked up and used until their synergy team has been acquired e.g. Antman "Making one-size fits all content for an immense player toolbox can lead to things being more watered down and general, rather than the specific moments we can make when we know the lower and upper limits of each player as a matter of fact." Well I mean you are basically saying this has to be done with 5/6* so yeah it is to an extent one-size fits all and as stated certain champion play styles will be used less thus creating a more general play style. I mean the fact a player has progressed to act 6 is more then a better indicator of his limits as opposed to the number of 5* he has.
-"I myself am going to have a hell of a time with the Avengers leg of the Recon Missions." This is fairly easy for most players looking to progress to act 6. The fact you don't have any decent avengers/Guardians and will struggle to do this suggests you are not playing end game content so are not really in touch with those players. Perhaps it was an attempt at light hearted humor and you actually aren't struggling. But using this example, how would you feel if this was restricted to 5* only. Its permanent content so no rush. You get say 2 5 stars a month. your chance to pull a 5* avenger is 16% (19/114). Lets say best case scenario after 6 crystals you are sure to get one so 3 months later you have an avenger, great good for you. But you could have bad luck and lets say you spin 84 crystals before you get your first avenger. So after 42 months you have your avenger, "yay" you can now do the event. The avenger example is comparable with say a bleed immune champ for those bleed nodes. if 4* were included and say each month you get 6 of them, the best case scenario you get an avenger in the first month worse case scenario 10 months ( based on if you had to open 84 to get 1). so you can see you could get a situation that from the moment you get your first 5* it will take you 42 months to get a specific champ to tackle bleed nodes in act 6. Also this example had a higher probability of chance compared to something like incinerate/cold snap/ Shock immune champ.
Sure you could get past stuff by just chucking units/revives/potions at it but then it comes less of a skill based game and more farm lots of units and potions etc to get it done, which means the game becomes more geared to the spenders and hard core players and less the casual player
I have wrote a lot more then i set out to but i just felt the need to say this as i don't like this direction.
p.s. excuse any spelling and grammatical errors, this was typed in haste.
I’m not one to complain about free stuff but.........
With everything going on in this thread...... I spit my drink out all over my keyboard at work. Thanks for the laugh!
That was a gift for International Women's Day. Has nothing to do with Act 6.
Still: They are basically giving us useless stuff for future content while this discussion is going on...
No, they're giving us a Gift to acknowledge International Women's Day. I don't even know why people are trying to connect every Offer or Announcement to Act 6. The game is not revolving around one decision people don't like.
Perhaps if you had installed a 5* basic arena a year ago like you really should have then maybe the community would be more understanding of this decision. But my options for acquiring 5* champs is either just keep grinding slowly as I have been or open my wallet. The 5* featured arena caters only to the elite players who have money to spend for refreshing champs.
I'm excited for Act 6 in the sense of new content, but sad because they put a requirement which negates and makes certain champions no longer usable in the story quest beyond Act 5. I believe they need to increase the 5* drop rate and the price of 5* (instead of 10K perhaps drop it to 4K). I believe if Kabam stands by their decision and ignore the community there could potentially be an exodus of players who are tired of Kabam ignoring their legitimate concerns. This decision feels like a step backward.
Your getting worse and worse used to get 1020 4* shards after every chapter in monthly quest , now we only get 900??? HEY ! Why don’t you just give us 3 star shards while your at it ???
That is the problem nobody understands their rational. We are not asking for an incomprehensible answer we want to understand why they choose to make this decision
It makes perfect sense to me, and to be blunt I don't think most of the people claiming to not understand it actually don't understand it. They just don't agree with it, and can't wrap their minds around the fact that some people do things for reasons they don't agree with, so they must be lying or obfuscating when they express those reasons.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
I’m not one to complain about free stuff but.........
With everything going on in this thread...... I spit my drink out all over my keyboard at work. Thanks for the laugh!
Maybe they need send out another package which says 4*s are trash here is a 5* and 6* crystal. Of course that most likely won't happen.
If people are waiting for an in-game Email with everything they need to do Act 6, that'll likely be a long wait.
I'm not asking for a simple give me everything to beat Act 6 instantly, but instead something to help people be able to even compete especially if they are banning 4*s.
So I can bring a Rank 1 Level 1 unduped 5* Antman to Act 6, but I can't bring a 5/50 Sig 99 4* Archangel.
In all seriousness, @Kabam Miike would you guys consider gating it by challenger rating instead of star level/rarity?
i.e. 4* 5/50 and 5* 3/45 and above only?
My point is, you guys invented challenger rating to essentially say a 5/50 is the same power level as a 3/45. They take similar amount of catalysts to rank, and have similar stats. Yet the way you are gating Act 6 doesn't take this into consideration. You can bring an extremely low level 5*, but not your most powerful 4*.
I am personally not for any gating, however I think this would be a good compromise. It would be more about making sure players have the right roster for the job, and less about who is getting lucky with 5* pulls.
I like this. If you are going to gate it at all, gate the content to Challenge Rating >= 90 or 100.
So I can bring a Rank 1 Level 1 unduped 5* Antman to Act 6, but I can't bring a 5/50 Sig 99 4* Archangel.
In all seriousness, @Kabam Miike would you guys consider gating it by challenger rating instead of star level/rarity?
i.e. 4* 5/50 and 5* 3/45 and above only?
My point is, you guys invented challenger rating to essentially say a 5/50 is the same power level as a 3/45. They take similar amount of catalysts to rank, and have similar stats. Yet the way you are gating Act 6 doesn't take this into consideration. You can bring an extremely low level 5*, but not your most powerful 4*.
I am personally not for any gating, however I think this would be a good compromise. It would be more about making sure players have the right roster for the job, and less about who is getting lucky with 5* pulls.
I like this. If you are going to gate it at all, gate the content to Challenge Rating >= 90 or 100.
Humm... would be even better if you had to become a Summoner Level 70... might actually give me a reason to use all those XP Boosts....
I'm wondering if the people complaining about this have done every other piece of content in the game 100% yet. This has been advertised as the final Act to the story. They probably intend it to be done after all other content is completed.
I can empathize with those with terrible RNG though. I like @Hulk_77 post above about Challenger Rating being a requirement rather than star level.
I've done everything in the game 100%. Act 5. LOL. Variant.
I have 101 5* champs
I have 13 6* champs
My total hero rating is 1.18M
My Prestige is 10.2K
I'm in an ally that\s top 30 in AQ
Do you consider me worthy enough to voice my hatred of this stupid rule?
Lol sure. I bet you're ready for Act 6 though despite the gate.
@GroundedWisdom okay buddy. We get it, you’re on the payroll.
Not on the payroll at all. I just don't agree with the dramatics. It's not the end of life as we know it, people will get through it with their 5*s. It's just a roadblock. We've seen a number before.
I agree. I play to have fun, and I'll be jumping in with my 5*s on Day 1.
That is the problem nobody understands their rational. We are not asking for an incomprehensible answer we want to understand why they choose to make this decision
It makes perfect sense to me, and to be blunt I don't think most of the people claiming to not understand it actually don't understand it. They just don't agree with it, and can't wrap their minds around the fact that some people do things for reasons they don't agree with, so they must be lying or obfuscating when they express those reasons.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
You do know forums points aren’t based on word count, right?
That is the problem nobody understands their rational. We are not asking for an incomprehensible answer we want to understand why they choose to make this decision
It makes perfect sense to me, and to be blunt I don't think most of the people claiming to not understand it actually don't understand it. They just don't agree with it, and can't wrap their minds around the fact that some people do things for reasons they don't agree with, so they must be lying or obfuscating when they express those reasons.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
You do know forums points aren’t based on word count, right?
So I can bring a Rank 1 Level 1 unduped 5* Antman to Act 6, but I can't bring a 5/50 Sig 99 4* Archangel.
In all seriousness, @Kabam Miike would you guys consider gating it by challenger rating instead of star level/rarity?
i.e. 4* 5/50 and 5* 3/45 and above only?
My point is, you guys invented challenger rating to essentially say a 5/50 is the same power level as a 3/45. They take similar amount of catalysts to rank, and have similar stats. Yet the way you are gating Act 6 doesn't take this into consideration. You can bring an extremely low level 5*, but not your most powerful 4*.
I am personally not for any gating, however I think this would be a good compromise. It would be more about making sure players have the right roster for the job, and less about who is getting lucky with 5* pulls.
I like this. If you are going to gate it at all, gate the content to Challenge Rating >= 90 or 100.
They aren't gating to power level of the champs, but rather (to oversimplify a lot) the effort required to acquire them. A 5/50 has similar strength to a 3/45, but the 3/45 is much harder to acquire.
That is the problem nobody understands their rational. We are not asking for an incomprehensible answer we want to understand why they choose to make this decision
It makes perfect sense to me, and to be blunt I don't think most of the people claiming to not understand it actually don't understand it. They just don't agree with it, and can't wrap their minds around the fact that some people do things for reasons they don't agree with, so they must be lying or obfuscating when they express those reasons.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
While you can rationalize this the majority of the playerbase cant because this gate has separated the community into 2 groups. Those willing to spend to get 5 and 6* champs from crystals and those who wont. They are basically saying if you want new content you need to meet the requirement by buying the crystals that have a 5% drop rate of a useable champ while at the same time telling players they are trying to maintain balance and an enjoyable experience. for those of us who have completed all other in game content to be told that half or more of our profiles are now worthless is unacceptable. Again I'm fine with spending on a game I feel is enjoyable but this forced spending with poor rng odds is not right. Rationalize it how you want but I'd like a response from kabam explaining why they feel it's right to create this gate and force loyal players and customers away from their game.
So I can bring a Rank 1 Level 1 unduped 5* Antman to Act 6, but I can't bring a 5/50 Sig 99 4* Archangel.
In all seriousness, @Kabam Miike would you guys consider gating it by challenger rating instead of star level/rarity?
i.e. 4* 5/50 and 5* 3/45 and above only?
My point is, you guys invented challenger rating to essentially say a 5/50 is the same power level as a 3/45. They take similar amount of catalysts to rank, and have similar stats. Yet the way you are gating Act 6 doesn't take this into consideration. You can bring an extremely low level 5*, but not your most powerful 4*.
I am personally not for any gating, however I think this would be a good compromise. It would be more about making sure players have the right roster for the job, and less about who is getting lucky with 5* pulls.
I like this. If you are going to gate it at all, gate the content to Challenge Rating >= 90 or 100.
They aren't gating to power level of the champs, but rather (to oversimplify a lot) the effort required to acquire them. A 5/50 has similar strength to a 3/45, but the 3/45 is much harder to acquire.
Not hard at all...38 minutes left to get that increased chance 5* Ghost just now. It’s only money.
That is the problem nobody understands their rational. We are not asking for an incomprehensible answer we want to understand why they choose to make this decision
It makes perfect sense to me, and to be blunt I don't think most of the people claiming to not understand it actually don't understand it. They just don't agree with it, and can't wrap their minds around the fact that some people do things for reasons they don't agree with, so they must be lying or obfuscating when they express those reasons.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
While you can rationalize this the majority of the playerbase cant because this gate has separated the community into 2 groups. Those willing to spend to get 5 and 6* champs from crystals and those who wont. They are basically saying if you want new content you need to meet the requirement by buying the crystals that have a 5% drop rate of a useable champ while at the same time telling players they are trying to maintain balance and an enjoyable experience. for those of us who have completed all other in game content to be told that half or more of our profiles are now worthless is unacceptable. Again I'm fine with spending on a game I feel is enjoyable but this forced spending with poor rng odds is not right. Rationalize it how you want but I'd like a response from kabam explaining why they feel it's right to create this gate and force loyal players and customers away from their game.
At the end of the day, my perspective is all I can offer in a public forum, and it is a perspective informed from long before MCOC was an idea on a whiteboard. But if every perspective that disagrees with yours is something you're just going to dismiss as "rationalization" then I have no idea why Kabam or anyone else should spend any time "explaining" anything to you. You don't want explanations, you just want target dummies to shoot at.
So I can bring a Rank 1 Level 1 unduped 5* Antman to Act 6, but I can't bring a 5/50 Sig 99 4* Archangel.
In all seriousness, @Kabam Miike would you guys consider gating it by challenger rating instead of star level/rarity?
i.e. 4* 5/50 and 5* 3/45 and above only?
My point is, you guys invented challenger rating to essentially say a 5/50 is the same power level as a 3/45. They take similar amount of catalysts to rank, and have similar stats. Yet the way you are gating Act 6 doesn't take this into consideration. You can bring an extremely low level 5*, but not your most powerful 4*.
I am personally not for any gating, however I think this would be a good compromise. It would be more about making sure players have the right roster for the job, and less about who is getting lucky with 5* pulls.
I like this. If you are going to gate it at all, gate the content to Challenge Rating >= 90 or 100.
They aren't gating to power level of the champs, but rather (to oversimplify a lot) the effort required to acquire them. A 5/50 has similar strength to a 3/45, but the 3/45 is much harder to acquire.
Not hard at all...38 minutes left to get that increased chance 5* Ghost just now. It’s only money.
Shhh, don't tell anyone but I just snagged one of those crystals without having to spend money. However, it seems harder to get a 5* from them than you thought: mine only had a 3* in it. Maybe I need to try harder next time.
That is the problem nobody understands their rational. We are not asking for an incomprehensible answer we want to understand why they choose to make this decision
It makes perfect sense to me, and to be blunt I don't think most of the people claiming to not understand it actually don't understand it. They just don't agree with it, and can't wrap their minds around the fact that some people do things for reasons they don't agree with, so they must be lying or obfuscating when they express those reasons.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
While you can rationalize this the majority of the playerbase cant because this gate has separated the community into 2 groups. Those willing to spend to get 5 and 6* champs from crystals and those who wont. They are basically saying if you want new content you need to meet the requirement by buying the crystals that have a 5% drop rate of a useable champ while at the same time telling players they are trying to maintain balance and an enjoyable experience. for those of us who have completed all other in game content to be told that half or more of our profiles are now worthless is unacceptable. Again I'm fine with spending on a game I feel is enjoyable but this forced spending with poor rng odds is not right. Rationalize it how you want but I'd like a response from kabam explaining why they feel it's right to create this gate and force loyal players and customers away from their game.
At the end of the day, my perspective is all I can offer in a public forum, and it is a perspective informed from long before MCOC was an idea on a whiteboard. But if every perspective that disagrees with yours is something you're just going to dismiss as "rationalization" then I have no idea why Kabam or anyone else should spend any time "explaining" anything to you. You don't want explanations, you just want target dummies to shoot at.
Actually I'd prefer a rational answer rather than mindlessly following like a sheep but whatever works for you. Just because you don't disagree with kabam's decision doesn't mean the rest of the community cant Express our dislike and ask for answers. I am not saying I will agree with the answer given but I'd like to hear a logical answer from them not just your interpretation of why you agree with them. This is the same thing that happened after 12.0 was released and if not for summoners asking for explanations or asking for kabam to reverse or modify the decisions they made we would not be having this conversation because the game would more than likely not exist
That is the problem nobody understands their rational. We are not asking for an incomprehensible answer we want to understand why they choose to make this decision
It makes perfect sense to me, and to be blunt I don't think most of the people claiming to not understand it actually don't understand it. They just don't agree with it, and can't wrap their minds around the fact that some people do things for reasons they don't agree with, so they must be lying or obfuscating when they express those reasons.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
You do know forums points aren’t based on word count, right?
Dr. Zola
Funny, but it was one of the more objective analyses presented by the forum.
I think this is the time for Kabam to finally start rolling out the 5* and 6* older champions that don’t exist that the summoners use. And I mean to the featured and basic pools like the others, not just in FGMC. SW, Thor, DS, BW, Wolverine, Gamora, War Machine, etc. if you’re going to create these random progress gates based on rarity and not something more meaningful like Challenger Rating, then you should make all champions available across all rarities. There is zero reason for you not to add those champs when you have champs like Omega, Ghost, Domino, and CAIW. It makes no sense to keep them exclusive to 4* tiers.
That is the problem nobody understands their rational. We are not asking for an incomprehensible answer we want to understand why they choose to make this decision
It makes perfect sense to me, and to be blunt I don't think most of the people claiming to not understand it actually don't understand it. They just don't agree with it, and can't wrap their minds around the fact that some people do things for reasons they don't agree with, so they must be lying or obfuscating when they express those reasons.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
They are basically saying if you want new content you need to meet the requirement by buying the crystals that have a 5% drop rate of a useable champ while at the same time telling players they are trying to maintain balance and an enjoyable experience.
I give my thoughts because of statements like this. That is not what they are basically saying. It’s your interpretation of what they said that isn’t based on anything other than the fact you don’t like their stance. If fine with disagreeing with them. I don’t agree with it. But don’t concoct conspiracy theories and attribute them to Kabam.
Comments
Kabam has sold millions of dollars worth of 4* rank up material, and you will be cutting off or devaluing that revenue stream in the future by banning 4*s. It also sets a dangerous precedent for the community as, if we let this go unchallenged, we can only expect all of our champions to essentially be on a timer for not only their utility, but their eligibility. Why would I spend another dollar to run on this hamster wheel if there is no consistent value in what I’m purchasing, even if it is subject to the inflation of Kabam releasing higher star tiers.
I want this game to be a success, for Kabam to make money, and for MCoC to be around for a long time. The current model we’re previewing here is unacceptable.
Right after seeing the response regarding the restrictions for act 6 I honestly feel like its a poor explanation and is so contradictory and does not justify the decision.
- Its mentioned they are doing so to prevent a frustrating player experience. Well if anything this will increase the frustration. Players open their crystal and don't get the champ they need or want now means they are blocked from possibly doing content because they aren't lucky enough. E.g. requiring a bleed immune champ but because their luck is bad they haven't pulled one , or pulled a colossus. Meanwhile they have a Iceman, Sentinel, Vision etc sitting in their 4* roster.
- They talk about how rarities are used in arena and needing a big roster to be competitive. Well Arena is optional game play and is not the main story quest. The story quest is the main progression in the game and all other aspects are extras that are added for the short term to give players something to do once they complete the story mode. The main story should simply be locked behind a completion of the previous act and upon completing the act the new act is available to play. Also all the other gated progression things are normal progression markers. Once you start the game and do act 1 you are able to do the monthly beginner quest which you do alongside act 2 which when completed puts you in a position for normal and act 3 difficulty. Also when rarities have been used before it has always been in a way where it was pretty open for the majority of players to play and was a way to challenge our skill. This puts a block which isn't based on proper progression but more to do with spending money and being lucky in crystal openings.
- Then they talk about tuning and talking about variant and how lesser used champions could stand out. So on the one hand you want us to level and rank up a wider range of champions like hawk eye to help with 1.1 but if you don't have a 5* version you will likely to turn to a 4* version as he is probably the best option in that pool for that role. But on the other hand with the requirements of act 6 that shifts away from widening our roster to focusing on getting the same champs we might be using as 4* as 5* and ranking them up.
- You say you do it as a way to track progression because after level 60 there is no way to distinguish if you have played 7 months or if you played 2 years. Well surely 100% act 5 is a good indicator of where you are at in the game in terms of progression. You can be a fresh level 60 and buy loads of crystals and have a better roster then a 2 year level 60 veteran. This type of restriction /gate is basically a pay to play.
- "it allows us to build a more tightly-constructed experience around a more specific box of play styles" well no it doesn't as you are taking away from play styles. E.g Ghost, The thing, Blade, Medussa to name a few that have certain way to play them to their best potential which relies on synergies . How Many people do you think have all the required synergies to play these champions in the way they are being played as 5* and above ?. This also means certain champions will sit around and not be ranked up and used until their synergy team has been acquired e.g. Antman
"Making one-size fits all content for an immense player toolbox can lead to things being more watered down and general, rather than the specific moments we can make when we know the lower and upper limits of each player as a matter of fact." Well I mean you are basically saying this has to be done with 5/6* so yeah it is to an extent one-size fits all and as stated certain champion play styles will be used less thus creating a more general play style. I mean the fact a player has progressed to act 6 is more then a better indicator of his limits as opposed to the number of 5* he has.
-"I myself am going to have a hell of a time with the Avengers leg of the Recon Missions." This is fairly easy for most players looking to progress to act 6. The fact you don't have any decent avengers/Guardians and will struggle to do this suggests you are not playing end game content so are not really in touch with those players. Perhaps it was an attempt at light hearted humor and you actually aren't struggling. But using this example, how would you feel if this was restricted to 5* only. Its permanent content so no rush. You get say 2 5 stars a month. your chance to pull a 5* avenger is 16% (19/114). Lets say best case scenario after 6 crystals you are sure to get one so 3 months later you have an avenger, great good for you. But you could have bad luck and lets say you spin 84 crystals before you get your first avenger. So after 42 months you have your avenger, "yay" you can now do the event. The avenger example is comparable with say a bleed immune champ for those bleed nodes.
if 4* were included and say each month you get 6 of them, the best case scenario you get an avenger in the first month worse case scenario 10 months ( based on if you had to open 84 to get 1).
so you can see you could get a situation that from the moment you get your first 5* it will take you 42 months to get a specific champ to tackle bleed nodes in act 6.
Also this example had a higher probability of chance compared to something like incinerate/cold snap/ Shock immune champ.
Sure you could get past stuff by just chucking units/revives/potions at it but then it comes less of a skill based game and more farm lots of units and potions etc to get it done, which means the game becomes more geared to the spenders and hard core players and less the casual player
I have wrote a lot more then i set out to but i just felt the need to say this as i don't like this direction.
p.s. excuse any spelling and grammatical errors, this was typed in haste.
Game development is always trying to implement compromises among a large number of often opposing priorities and criteria. Almost everything you do as a game developer has at least one really good reason to *not* do it, but you're doing it because there are more reasons to do it than not. To try to accommodate all of those differing priorities you often end up with something that doesn't absolutely honor one priority to the exclusion of all others, which can be used against you when players claim that what you did obviously doesn't "correctly" implement any clear priority.
This game has always had progression gates. A progression gate segregates players into those on one side of the gate and those on the other side of the gate. Whenever you implement a gate, some players will complain when they find themselves on the wrong side of the gate. But that's working as intended: that's the purpose of the gate. If everyone who wanted to be past the gate was past the gate, the gate's worthless.
The gates in the game have generally, but not completely, been implemented from the bottom up, because the nature of the game is that it has grown upward in complexity and difficulty (it can't really be otherwise). The earliest gates could use simple metrics that existed in the game, for example level gates. But as the game continued to grow upward, those metrics simply "ran out" and they had to resort to other progression metrics to continue to gate the game. Uncollected, for example, is a novel (in this game) gate: it isn't just a prerequisite to get to the next piece of content, it unlocks a lot of other development opportunities in the form of enhanced crystals and higher reward monthly content. Importantly, this kind of gate didn't exist until it did: it set the precedent that the devs were willing to add new kinds of gates to the game.
Level is an obvious metric that measures progress. Which content you complete is another one. But another measure of progress that has always existed in the game is roster strength. It factors into prestige which influences AQ rewards (and at one time prestige was *the* metric for progress for level-capped players). It has in the past been the metric used to calibrate things like compensation packages based on progress. It is a highly imperfect metric of progress, but it was *used* in the game.
The devs wanted a new progress gate leading into Act 6 and the ones that had been used previously were seen as inadequate. They didn't want it to be a trivial prerequisite like do 5.1 and you get to do 5.2. Prerequisites aren't progress gates, because there's no well-defined barrier to overcome beyond just keep playing (players can argue that this should be sufficient, which is tantamount to saying no progress gates should exist at all, but that's a separate complicated argument).
The obvious option is roster-based progress gates. But prestige is too narrow and player rating is too disconnected from actual progress. If the top five champs is too small and counting everything is too large, then measuring a subset of the top champs would be a reasonable compromise between the two. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way would be to extend prestige to a larger number of champs; say there was a fifteen champ version of prestige, and it took a certain minimum rating to enter Act 6.
This sort of thing emphasizes rank ups, because it doesn't matter how many champs you have, what matters more is how highly ranked they were. And rank up decisions are heavily influenced by which champs you pull randomly from crystals - some are more "deserving" of rare rank up materials than others. Back before Alliance War was really important and AQ was the primary game in town, players often ranked up champs with the highest rating, not the ones they wanted to play the most, because prestige was emphasized by AQ.
I wouldn't want to repeat that situation, and I'm guessing the devs don't want to either. So it is worth looking for an alternative to roster-metrics that emphasize ranking up the highest rating champs. But if we aren't going to use a ratings lock, is there a softer way to do it? Sure: we can limit which champs the players can bring in, so that instead of emphasizing reaching the highest possible rating with rank ups, the game instead tends to reward players with the widest rosters, from which those players will have more options available from the entry limits.
The entry limit can't be too low: it can't simply be "everything 4* and higher" or even "everything CR100 and higher (which includes 5/50 champs)" because that makes the options pool too large: the progress gate isn't rewarding particularly large rosters, because the limit allows almost anything (among players for whom Act 6 is even a possibility). It could be CR110 and higher, or it could be 5* and higher. And of those two options, once again 5* and higher deemphasizes high rank ups relative to CR110.
To me, this all seems entirely reasonable. I'm not saying it should necessarily be convincing for anyone else, only that a reasonable person could reach this conclusion. And yes, there are side effects that many players would argue are unacceptable, such as the impact on synergy tactics. But the question of whether those are acceptable or unacceptable is a value judgment, not an objective conclusion. Two different reasonable rational actors can differ on that judgment. The devs may simply have a different option. That isn't something you can demand someone "justify" or explain to one's satisfaction.
Dr. Zola
the community into 2 groups. Those willing to spend to get 5 and 6* champs from crystals and those who wont. They are basically saying if you want new content you need to meet the requirement by buying the crystals that have a 5% drop rate of a useable champ while at the same time telling players they are trying to maintain balance and an enjoyable experience. for those of us who have completed all other in game content to be told that half or more of our profiles are now worthless is unacceptable. Again I'm fine with spending on a game I feel is enjoyable but this forced spending with poor rng odds is not right. Rationalize it how you want but I'd like a response from kabam explaining why they feel it's right to create this gate and force loyal players and customers away from their game.
Dr. Zola