**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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A plea, and deeper, respectful discussion about the gifting removal and overall status of Resources
Vale84
Posts: 308 ★★★
Let me me blunt. This won't be a short post. This wants to be a deeper analysis of the current situation of the game after the removal of gifting. I will start with 2 main points:
1)WELL DONE. This was a long plague that despite being beneficial to almost all players, was depending on frauds. HAving them coming from couple people wanting a quick buck or being purely money laundering from Asian, European or any other Region, this needed to stop.
2)At today, there is a ongoing "no spending week" movement. While i do understand the removal of gifts means more issues than goodies for summoners, i can't agree with it. By no means we should support any kind of fraud, and i am referring not to fraud toward kabam, rather fraud moeny being laundered in an online game.
With that said, there ARE problems arising. And what follows wants to be not a flame, but a reasonable critique to the current system and state of the game from resources perspective.
As start, let's be honest and brutal: fraud odins and units HAVE SUSTAINED the game for the last years. By no means summoners would be able to compete for higher AQs, or AWs without Donations being dropped, or potions/revives being purchased at lower price. None but maybe 2% of the current player population would be able to afford the full impact of donations+potions+revives+boosts. With this i am not saying this practice was good, but i'm saying, and stating, that it's been the pillar of the MCoC "society", and without it, there wouldn't be enough sustain ingame for summoners to play like they did last years.
From this, i'm certain that the other side of the medal brought Kabam to record and acquire data on their events which wasn't resembling the true status of the game. With this, i mean having a noticeable lower revenue that probably expected due to people being able to access cheaper units for their accounts. That is a problem for both Kabam and playerbase, as it probably gave Kabam the wrong idea and pushed them towards adding difficulty, weird nodes, and combination of characters or matchups being probably harder than needed to cope up with the unexpected loss of revenue (the so called wallet nodes, bs nodes, and unavoidable dmg nodes).
On another side, having this "fake" return of data, my guess is Kabam never really thought or felt like overhauling the POTION/REVIVES system. If summoners were able to clear content in a much easier way then predicted (we're still talking buisness and revenue here ofc) why would they need to add further ways of obtaining said resources. Makes sense.
We are all aware that revives were made "casual" and impossible to farm consistently, if not trough milestones. Among them, only 20% and 40% are obtainable ingame. Same goes for potions, where even random drops from content like VARIANT, ACT 5-6 and similar only nets up to a lv 3 potion. Lv3 potions are the highest tier of heals consistently farmable ingame (RoL mainly), and are by far obsolete with the amount of HP r4 and r5 5* have.
With that said, i'd like to take a step further into MCoC structure: MCoC is, and will still be, a FREE TO PLAY game with micro transactions to support the developer. There are many many free to play game which arised in popularity in the gaming community (i won't make names). Every single one of them either gets income from selling "looks" or "boosters". meaning they either give players the opportunity to customize accounts or directly sell them "faster account improvement" in forms like better weapons, better resources, and so on.
In MCoC's case, the second one is the leitmotif, where you purchase micro-transactions in order to boost your account and speed up the process of building it stronger.
In most of cases, and MCoC is no exception, you sell "TIME". You trade less time spent ingame obtaining those resources in exchange for your money and an istant availability. Which is still in the domain of "fairness".
But here comes the hurdle: NONE, or very FEW of F2P games not only sell "Boosters", but also "basic items". That's where i feel MCoC is responsible, partially, into fueling up fraud units sellers.
BY NO MEANS, IN ANY GAME, BASIC ITEMS SHOULD BE BARRICATED BEHIND MICROTRANSACTIONS. And sadly, MCoC is exactly there in terms of HEALING.
We have a potion and revive system ranging from lv1 to lv5. Both for Revives and Heals. That's already two separated items needed to heal. Of those 2 items:
REVIVES: Can't be farmed and appear randomly in quests with low cadency. Rewarded in milestones for individual and ally's events. Of those, only LV1 and LV2 are obtainable ingame. Rest can only be purchased through microtransactions.
POTIONS: Random drops from fights in all content, can be farmed consistently in RoL mainly (time consuming), but only LV1, LV2, and LV3 potions are currently available ingame. LV4 and LV5, both team and single ones, can be only purchased through micro transactions. Lv1-2-3 are by now obsolete and will be even more obsolete with the advent of 6* rankups.
And this is a very HUGE deal.
That's exactly the reason why for years the "Black Market" has flourished to those levels. To the point it had to shut down. BASIC ITEMS shouldn't be hidden behind paywalls by no means. But let me rephrase better:
IT'S FAIR TO SELL BASIC ITEMS IN MICROTRANSACTIONS AS LONG AS THE SAME ITEMS ARE OBTAINABLE INGAME FOR THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF TIME INVESTED.
That MUST be the main rule. As i said above, microtransactions are purchases of "TIME", allowing you to skip the "farming" and gaining access to ISTANT rewards.
But what to do when the rewards you can purchase in 1 minute CAN'T be farmed in many hours through ingame content? Players should be rewarded for the time invested ingame being it farming or clearing content. You can't clear content without farming, unless you purchase "boosters" and cut the line, which is fair given you're giving sustain to the developer.
But that's a one way situation while it should be a two ways one.
-I will save time purchasing microtransactions for what i need
or
-I will not invest money but my time to gain what i need through ingame free drops.
Putting a CAP, or a BAN, to the level of items being farmable ingame is EXACTLY what made fraud units so abused. If i can't afford 100 bucks for an odin, and there's nothing over lv3 potions to obtain with hours and hours of farming, what should i do, considering what i farm in 10 hours will be ok for 5 fights, given how the content has skyrocketed to new levels as the game progressed?
Fraud units answered those demands.
From a certain point of view, Kabam is responsible of what happened. Not factoring in this HUGE thing (no paywalls on basic items, again) has brought the game where it is.
That is why closing down gifting was and is A GOOD CHOICHE. but it isn't nearly ENOUGH.
Dear Kabam, i don't have better words to put this in, but right now you're cutting legs to 90% of your playerbase, despite doing the right thing. That's why:
1) Cap on potions levels MUST be revoked, and you need to create "FARMING SPOTS" of different tiers to allow summoners to trade "TIME" for "ITEMS".
2) Revives needs to be farmable at a consistent rate, adjusting difficulty of farming spots based on revive levels.
3) SELLING potions and revives is still ok, as long as you can obtain ingame what you can buy, without bracketing differently.
4) POTION LEVELS AND REVIVES levels need a COMPLETE OVERHAUL: we're at the point 75% of healing is absolutely useless.
5) Have potions SCALE UP with titles, whereas progressing through ACT4, 5, and 6 wih the related titles and higher tier of ingame items obtainable potions and revives scale too.
Else, there gonna be dark days ahead. We all love this game, and the least we want is people boycotting it, or the population getting halved.
PS: the very same argument can be made for donations. Loyalty, battlechips, Gold all need a better farmability, and that too can be tiered with titles and acts progression up to currently cavalier. a node paying up 100 gold for a act 1 new account runner should net 1000 gold in every content for a cavalier running it, for example. Same goes for grey ISO and anything basic in the game.
Hoping to have kept my wall of text decent and respectful, i'd like to hear other's opinions as well as the mods point of view.
Regards.
@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Lyra @Kabam Porthos
1)WELL DONE. This was a long plague that despite being beneficial to almost all players, was depending on frauds. HAving them coming from couple people wanting a quick buck or being purely money laundering from Asian, European or any other Region, this needed to stop.
2)At today, there is a ongoing "no spending week" movement. While i do understand the removal of gifts means more issues than goodies for summoners, i can't agree with it. By no means we should support any kind of fraud, and i am referring not to fraud toward kabam, rather fraud moeny being laundered in an online game.
With that said, there ARE problems arising. And what follows wants to be not a flame, but a reasonable critique to the current system and state of the game from resources perspective.
As start, let's be honest and brutal: fraud odins and units HAVE SUSTAINED the game for the last years. By no means summoners would be able to compete for higher AQs, or AWs without Donations being dropped, or potions/revives being purchased at lower price. None but maybe 2% of the current player population would be able to afford the full impact of donations+potions+revives+boosts. With this i am not saying this practice was good, but i'm saying, and stating, that it's been the pillar of the MCoC "society", and without it, there wouldn't be enough sustain ingame for summoners to play like they did last years.
From this, i'm certain that the other side of the medal brought Kabam to record and acquire data on their events which wasn't resembling the true status of the game. With this, i mean having a noticeable lower revenue that probably expected due to people being able to access cheaper units for their accounts. That is a problem for both Kabam and playerbase, as it probably gave Kabam the wrong idea and pushed them towards adding difficulty, weird nodes, and combination of characters or matchups being probably harder than needed to cope up with the unexpected loss of revenue (the so called wallet nodes, bs nodes, and unavoidable dmg nodes).
On another side, having this "fake" return of data, my guess is Kabam never really thought or felt like overhauling the POTION/REVIVES system. If summoners were able to clear content in a much easier way then predicted (we're still talking buisness and revenue here ofc) why would they need to add further ways of obtaining said resources. Makes sense.
We are all aware that revives were made "casual" and impossible to farm consistently, if not trough milestones. Among them, only 20% and 40% are obtainable ingame. Same goes for potions, where even random drops from content like VARIANT, ACT 5-6 and similar only nets up to a lv 3 potion. Lv3 potions are the highest tier of heals consistently farmable ingame (RoL mainly), and are by far obsolete with the amount of HP r4 and r5 5* have.
With that said, i'd like to take a step further into MCoC structure: MCoC is, and will still be, a FREE TO PLAY game with micro transactions to support the developer. There are many many free to play game which arised in popularity in the gaming community (i won't make names). Every single one of them either gets income from selling "looks" or "boosters". meaning they either give players the opportunity to customize accounts or directly sell them "faster account improvement" in forms like better weapons, better resources, and so on.
In MCoC's case, the second one is the leitmotif, where you purchase micro-transactions in order to boost your account and speed up the process of building it stronger.
In most of cases, and MCoC is no exception, you sell "TIME". You trade less time spent ingame obtaining those resources in exchange for your money and an istant availability. Which is still in the domain of "fairness".
But here comes the hurdle: NONE, or very FEW of F2P games not only sell "Boosters", but also "basic items". That's where i feel MCoC is responsible, partially, into fueling up fraud units sellers.
BY NO MEANS, IN ANY GAME, BASIC ITEMS SHOULD BE BARRICATED BEHIND MICROTRANSACTIONS. And sadly, MCoC is exactly there in terms of HEALING.
We have a potion and revive system ranging from lv1 to lv5. Both for Revives and Heals. That's already two separated items needed to heal. Of those 2 items:
REVIVES: Can't be farmed and appear randomly in quests with low cadency. Rewarded in milestones for individual and ally's events. Of those, only LV1 and LV2 are obtainable ingame. Rest can only be purchased through microtransactions.
POTIONS: Random drops from fights in all content, can be farmed consistently in RoL mainly (time consuming), but only LV1, LV2, and LV3 potions are currently available ingame. LV4 and LV5, both team and single ones, can be only purchased through micro transactions. Lv1-2-3 are by now obsolete and will be even more obsolete with the advent of 6* rankups.
And this is a very HUGE deal.
That's exactly the reason why for years the "Black Market" has flourished to those levels. To the point it had to shut down. BASIC ITEMS shouldn't be hidden behind paywalls by no means. But let me rephrase better:
IT'S FAIR TO SELL BASIC ITEMS IN MICROTRANSACTIONS AS LONG AS THE SAME ITEMS ARE OBTAINABLE INGAME FOR THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF TIME INVESTED.
That MUST be the main rule. As i said above, microtransactions are purchases of "TIME", allowing you to skip the "farming" and gaining access to ISTANT rewards.
But what to do when the rewards you can purchase in 1 minute CAN'T be farmed in many hours through ingame content? Players should be rewarded for the time invested ingame being it farming or clearing content. You can't clear content without farming, unless you purchase "boosters" and cut the line, which is fair given you're giving sustain to the developer.
But that's a one way situation while it should be a two ways one.
-I will save time purchasing microtransactions for what i need
or
-I will not invest money but my time to gain what i need through ingame free drops.
Putting a CAP, or a BAN, to the level of items being farmable ingame is EXACTLY what made fraud units so abused. If i can't afford 100 bucks for an odin, and there's nothing over lv3 potions to obtain with hours and hours of farming, what should i do, considering what i farm in 10 hours will be ok for 5 fights, given how the content has skyrocketed to new levels as the game progressed?
Fraud units answered those demands.
From a certain point of view, Kabam is responsible of what happened. Not factoring in this HUGE thing (no paywalls on basic items, again) has brought the game where it is.
That is why closing down gifting was and is A GOOD CHOICHE. but it isn't nearly ENOUGH.
Dear Kabam, i don't have better words to put this in, but right now you're cutting legs to 90% of your playerbase, despite doing the right thing. That's why:
1) Cap on potions levels MUST be revoked, and you need to create "FARMING SPOTS" of different tiers to allow summoners to trade "TIME" for "ITEMS".
2) Revives needs to be farmable at a consistent rate, adjusting difficulty of farming spots based on revive levels.
3) SELLING potions and revives is still ok, as long as you can obtain ingame what you can buy, without bracketing differently.
4) POTION LEVELS AND REVIVES levels need a COMPLETE OVERHAUL: we're at the point 75% of healing is absolutely useless.
5) Have potions SCALE UP with titles, whereas progressing through ACT4, 5, and 6 wih the related titles and higher tier of ingame items obtainable potions and revives scale too.
Else, there gonna be dark days ahead. We all love this game, and the least we want is people boycotting it, or the population getting halved.
PS: the very same argument can be made for donations. Loyalty, battlechips, Gold all need a better farmability, and that too can be tiered with titles and acts progression up to currently cavalier. a node paying up 100 gold for a act 1 new account runner should net 1000 gold in every content for a cavalier running it, for example. Same goes for grey ISO and anything basic in the game.
Hoping to have kept my wall of text decent and respectful, i'd like to hear other's opinions as well as the mods point of view.
Regards.
@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Lyra @Kabam Porthos
2
Comments
To give an example, someone with a 6* r2 Captain America Infinity War in their profile shows Cap IW having 33,854 health. A 30% champion's boost and 25% attack boost puts Cap IW at 52,473 health. Fully healing 52,473 health in Alliance War takes 8 single level 4 alliance potions with a level 3 alliance team revive (1,165 units for 52,200 health), or 8 single level 4 alliance potions and 1 single level 3 alliance potion with a level 2 alliance team revive (1,045 units for 52,650 health). Please consider reviewing the points listed in the OP's post, especially #4.
The natural limitation placed on Items is not a justification for the actions that led to the Badge being frozen. Nor do I consider it a seguay to a conversation about how people will not be able to function now without the discounted, bootlegged Items. Simply put, they weren't meant to function with them in that availability. There are reasons to those limitations, including prices, Item Caps, and other forms of limitations. What we have here is a situation where people exploited the Feature to increase availability beyond what it was meant to be, only it also had the added layer of Fraud. They weren't meant to have half-priced Gifts. They weren't meant to have access that easily. Point blank.
In addition you can farm potions, not revives as easily, but you can farm pots. I think they need higher level pots that you can get from higher level instances but that is about it.
"Your 6* r2 fully boosted attacker died twice in war? No problem, heal him/her up for $170+":
- 52,473 X 2 = 104,946 health
- 7,800 health (level 4 alliance team potion) X 14 = 109,200 health
- level 4 alliance potion = 360 units
- 360 units X 14 = 5,040 units
Do I think that the Pots could use an overhaul? Most likely. What a Level 1 Rev does isn't very much. Mind you, I work well under pressure, so I can most often push a Kill with one. However, I do not agree with associating that conversation with the exploitation of the Badge. Frankly, I find it irreverent to what the real issue is. It's akin to having a conversation about the prices of Store Items because someone robbed it. Horrible, actually. It takes light away from how wrong the real issue is. Stealing is stealing. it is not justified and excused by prices.
Whether or not they decide to revisit the price of Pots is entirely up to them. It's their call if they want to set the prices and usefulness of them to what it is now. It could even be part of the design, to make it expensive to Rev and Fill higher Rarities actually acts as a balancing factor. It means people are going to rely on skill more and make more of an effort not to die. I wouldn't object to a revision. I just don't agree with using something so wrong as a platform for said conversation. There are much larger issues associated with it, and to suggest, even remotely, that this is their fault because of the outdated system, is just ignorant to how serious it is.
Expensive things are a form of soft cap. Instead of disallowing them completely, the expense is intended to force players to rationally and objectively limit their use to only those situations that they can save up for, or that warrant that expense. The problem is if you let players do something, some players will set themselves on fire to do it.
I find it amusing that people think these things are expensive because Kabam wants to make a lot of money on them. They are expensive to deter people from buying them except rarely. They aren't designed to be a major source of revenue. If they wanted to get rich on potions, they would remove the potion cap and make them *cheap* so that everyone would buy them, and force their opponents to buy them. And whatever else Kabam is bad at, they are very obviously very good at monetizing the game. This situation is not accidental, and they aren't making a mistake. They expect most people to not buy a ton of these potions. They just can't stop the players who spend far more than they themselves want to, because they feel they "have" to, then burn out and decide to stop spending.
If I thought Kabam was as good psychologically as they are with monetization, I'd suspect they were playing a long game here and *expecting* players to burn out. That has some interesting long term benefits that would only generate a metric ton of lol flags if I were to speculate openly on them.
What makes you think the economy was mainly from the blackmarket? Maybe you or people you know used to buy discounted units, but that doesn't speak for the majority. Only Kabam knows who received lots of gifts from bot arena accounts.
If Kabam's resources (battlechips, gold, units,etc) were cheaper before, the black market would still exist, since botting and selling things at a discount to launder money/commit fraud would still have buyers.
My hypothetical example of fully healing a max boosted 6* r2 champion was intended to highlight how the current Alliance War potions/revives system is ill-equipped to maintain the current champion meta. By current champion meta I mean both the current health pool potential of end-game rosters and the upcoming changes coming to Alliance War starting in Season 10. Starting Season 10 players are going to need precise champion counters for certain AW node/defender combinations, an example of this being if an alliance places Mister Sinister on a "Crit Me With Your Best Shot" node. Quake may be the only champion that can reliably solo a 5/65 Mister Sister for that fight if her concussion mechanism bypasses how that node requires critical hits to do damage, since critical hit rate and heal block aren't game mechanics commonly (if ever) found in an MCOC champion.
In other words, if Kabam is going to design game content that demands 1 to 2 specific champions to conquer without breaking the bank, at least provide players with in-game resources that don't cost between a Triple-A game's DLC and 50%+ the value of a next-generation console's when players make a mistake.
Now I think everyone can agree that potion scaling is long due for a revamp, where it’s been the same potions used when 5/50 4* champs were the max to now people having 10+ 5/65 5*s and coming right around the corner R3 6*. The sudden removal of the gifting badge coupled with the lack of anything being done to potions might finally send me to retirement. Been playing a long time, masters / top 3 every AW season since they came out. But I’m nearing that tipping point where I feel others are too. Not even a new potion tier will solve the problem, because that new potion will be just as expensive to scale. While the issues with credit card fraud are certainly grounds to remove the gifting badge, it’s unfortunately led to unintended (or intended) consequences of disrupting the game’s ecosystem.
In most wars, if my champions are KO, they stay KO because I do not have the units/glory to revive & heal them back. I almost never use revives/heal pots in AQ.