**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.
Upcoming Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw Balance Changes
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Plus, Kabam said that they would review champs three months after release, not announce reviews three months after release, and they gave no indication as to how long these reviews last. The process would be to start the review on or around three months after release so you have three months of usage data, there would be some time when the analysis took place (which includes time that it might take to wait for a window of available time to open up with the required designers), they would have to decide if there was anything needing to be addressed, and also in what direction those changes would generally take place, they would likely announce that such changes were coming at this point, and then work on designing and testing those changes, then fold them into the release pipeline.
Cull entered the game in mid May. Three months of data get collected by mid August. They announced Cull was being changed in mid September. That's an entirely reasonable timeline for a process that itself is relatively new. Given the way game development is pipelined, one month for resources to complete their current tasks and freed for the review, plus collecting the data mining reports, plus review time, plus brainstorming the basic outline of changes, is a relatively normal amount of time. They also reviewed three champions, and almost certainly waited until all three were reviewed before making their announcement, so that one month encompasses three champion reviews not one.
I think Kabam needs to do the right thing to their player base and just increase Cull's block proficiency, it would actually make him a better champion than he is now even if he loses 25% damage.
I'm not sure what you mean by doing the right thing, but thus far nothing has been indicated other than that they find his Damage more than others in some capacity. We don't know what changes are being considered yet.
Also, what I posted was not in any way a hypothesis. Hypotheses are possible explanations for the facts, not possible deductions from those facts. An induction or deduction from the facts is the exact opposite of a hypothesis.
1) While it may be common in dev circles, I don’t find the shareware analogy convincing. It’s hard to conclude a champ is just a new or better version of the game—it’s another version of champs you already have which is...something, but not exactly the premium upgrade from shareware.
But...I like the idea of shareware for new champs. Everyone should get a limited use “shareware” version (not a 2*!) that allows them to test drive and determine if they want to spend time and resources on the real one when it gets released...which also provides a lot more real world data for the team a lot quicker. Maybe make them only available for testing in a rewards-free shortened RoL/LoL setting—then we do away with the fiction that we aren’t “testers” at the same time we allow people to make informed “purchase” decisions.
2) Downstream balance changes are fine. But for changes to be “downstream,” you actually have to get down the stream a little. A 3-month mulligan gives the team little incentive to get things right the first time and creates all kinds of uncertainty for the player base. That’s more of a simple dev fudge factor than downstream balancing.
3) I keep hearing things like “QA can’t be perfect,” “QA can’t predict the future.” I agree. Crazy, esoteric champ uses are always going to pop up in a maniacal community like this one.
But you’d have to be pretty credulous to believe that no one on the game team realized a ramped up Cull the Damage Dealer might actually deal a lot of damage.
Always enjoy the exchanges. I know you wouldn’t put so much thought into your posts if the game didn’t matter to you.
Dr. Zola
Don't argue and yelling them, your comment will be deleted and you will be warned. Now you can see most of players do not argue with them, everyone know what happened and I think everyone know how to do the next. Couple of my game friends who spent lots of money before already told us, they will quit after this season finish, more my game friends stop spend money. Kabam don’t care about what we said here, but I think they do care about money and profit, so we do what we need to do, let them to choose, there is no point to waste time argue with someone.
In that situation, there's two ways to avoid breaking that limit. The first way is to monitor the game to see if anything breaks the limit, and fix it if it does. But there's another way: you can simply make sure everything you design is nowhere near the limit, and nowhere near the margin for error of design. In other words, if you aim every champ at "average damage" you're extremely unlikely to ever make a champ that has "too much damage." It is still possible, but it would happen far less often.
It does also mean that everything is less different, and there's much less variability in the game. You can't afford to push the envelope on anything, you can't even touch envelopes for fear of drifting anywhere near the limit where you have to take action, if the overriding goal is to avoid ever taking action.
So in this situation, you'd be forced to choose between two alternatives: changing existing things, and angering some players who have those things, or making everything less interesting in general, so everyone always gets what they expect, but they never get certain things because the designers are not allowed to make them, even though they are perfectly acceptable to have in the game. This has very difficult to predict deleterious effects on the future of your game. Maybe you trade having no one unhappy anymore with having no one particularly happy either.
Whether Kabam is thinking this directly I can't say. But it is something I would worry about. Same. I find your posts generally thoughtful, whether I agree with them or not. I think the forums would be better off with a hundred Zolas, even if they were all ganging up on me to disagree. I think the idea of test drive is worth discussing, but beyond the scope of the thread.
I believe that if a champion is unbalanced, it should be based on a set of rules used as a checklist to review before launching.
Understandably, not everything can be check,but there must be a minimum and each champion must be released with this minimum. And damage is something that developers can easily test.
Kabam needs to improve how these champions are released. They started with HT and Anihilus, they both need a buff, two of the next three need some adjustment (they tried to fix cull several times) and the following are IW and namor that has already been "fixed", and who knows what they are going to do with the last
The amount of bug with which the content is released is surprising
McDonald's is a Corporation. I spent a brief stint working there at 16 years old, many years ago. Protocol was that you had to upsell every Order without fail. Do you think I cared if people Super Sized their Order? No. I cared if I kept my job. I got paid the same whether someone bought a Big Mac, or walked out and flipped me the bird.
Things being the way they are atm, I can see how this new approach makes sense from Kabam's perspective in terms of the gameplay itself being broken by a new champ's unforeseen interaction once they are in the live environment. I want to be excited for new champs, but this three month testing period says to me that the new champs may be better or worse, from a player's perspective, in 3-6 months. Not very exciting when what you're looking at is potentially an unfinished product. I have never thought about new champs in this light, but OK; I can live with "waiting to see" if this is how they want to do things moving forward. I'll just wait til the dust settles and be happy or not if I pull this new champ from a basic knowing that what I have in my roster is a finished product.
I'm even OK with thinking that if I were to spin some first run FGMCs, get a new champ, and take them up to r5/r2 that I am beta testing this new champ for them. I'd be happy to give feedback here on the forums knowing that the data I was providing by playing this shiny new, freshly ranked champ was helping in the Dev's final development process. I understand that hundreds of players playing with this new champ makes data collection much more efficient for Kabam. OK, cool. This all sounds reasonable to me so far....but....
Considering all of the above, and also considering that this data collection is happening right now as I type, I think that if I decided to put time, money, and in-game resources into this new champ, it should at least be worth a RDT if the data that I helped provide led Kabam to the conclusion that the champ needs toned down.
This at the very least would be something to hedge my bet against if I were to go for this new champ via crystals or arena using time and/or earned/purchased units. I understand that I wouldn't get any time or real dollars back, it's the in game resources that I really want to protect. RDTs provide this protection. It seems like more than a fair exchange between Kabam and it's customers/beta testers if you are releasing and we are obtaining a champ that may not be "finished". I'm not saying I like it, but it is clear that that is what has been happening.
Help me help you Kabam!
So I'm suggesting that if Kabam expects us to purchase or grind for, and then test an unfinished product, at least give us a safety net. I have spent money on this game. I will continue to spend if they:
1. Honor their word re: notice before champ hits basic.
2. Incentivize me to help them gather data on a new champ by issuing RDTs for champs they adjust down.
Anything short of this and I just don't see myself ever getting a FGMC, or a vast majority of their offers in the future.
Really? Mike, do you guys really think that? Do you know why people spend money to buy the champions? Why people love these champions? Because we think they are the best, they are much better than other champions! They can make us play the game easier!
I am sure there are lots of fans of “Spider-Man Miles”,”Iran Man”. Do you really think these fans will spend lots of money to have these champions? Only because we love them? We don’t love these trash champions at all IN THIS GAME!
Kabam should have an idea of good matchups, bad matchups and so forth with their own testing. Release a beta for each new champ one month in advance with no/1 per tile energy requirement, give everyone access to an appropriate rank champ (based on roster/prestige/other) that reflects their position ingame and use that data to tweak prior to release the following month.
if the community is to provide the data for potential tweaking of new champs it should not be at the communities cost.
My on topic question would be, what content is Cull wrecking that warrants the damage reduction?
Doesn't require a spreadsheet or an in depth discussion about code. Just a little transparency.
I'm not a fan of the new direction of the 3 months after a champ is released, after you've seen how good they are and and after you've spent plenty of money on crystals. They will review and make balance changes.
This should be done before they're released to avoid this whole dilemma. This is intended to maximize profit from crystals and then make changes....from a consumer perspective it doesn't make sense ....if anything it disincentivizes the need to buy fgmc's.