So do y’all plan on giving everyone who spent money to get cull there money back ? Say the people that spent 500-1000$ to pull this champ and then carried him to rank 5. You gonna refund them their money ? Highly doubt it, how about the time people spent to get him in arena can you give that back as well ? Didn’t think so, I’ve been apart of this game since the month it came out and I’ve always loved it but y’all keep this up y’all will lose a ton of people including me. What if you paid your car off then the dealership came and took it and gave you a suckier one that you didn’t want. Wouldn’t like that would ya? I understand balance I really do but all cull has is damage, take that away and he has nothing. Doesn’t have immunities, no utility, takes forever to ramp up. That is all, do the right thing please. I’ve enjoyed the game for a long time.
the money will not be returned because the adjustment will be 3 months later to avoid asking for a refund by apple since its refund policy is 90 days for what the apple users said
Interesting speculation, but I don’t think that’s why the re-evaluation occurs at 3 months.
It occurs at three months for the simple reason that the shorter the period after release that the review occurs, the less representative the data is. Beyond a certain point the review is both increasingly meaningless, and also increases the chances that the future downstream data (say, from a year after release) shows problems the earlier one didn't, forcing Kabam to change the champion twice rather than once. Even three months is pretty short, because champions haven't even had much of a chance (if any) to drop from basic crystals yet.
You don't know the reason why Kabam choose 3 months any explanation is on speculation on your part. It's really 6 months when you break it down. It is 3 month announcement, even though Cull is far past 3 months and you get the changes 3 months later for a total of 6 months.
I'd bet Dollars to Cents that he's making an educated guess.
So do y’all plan on giving everyone who spent money to get cull there money back ? Say the people that spent 500-1000$ to pull this champ and then carried him to rank 5. You gonna refund them their money ? Highly doubt it, how about the time people spent to get him in arena can you give that back as well ? Didn’t think so, I’ve been apart of this game since the month it came out and I’ve always loved it but y’all keep this up y’all will lose a ton of people including me. What if you paid your car off then the dealership came and took it and gave you a suckier one that you didn’t want. Wouldn’t like that would ya? I understand balance I really do but all cull has is damage, take that away and he has nothing. Doesn’t have immunities, no utility, takes forever to ramp up. That is all, do the right thing please. I’ve enjoyed the game for a long time.
the money will not be returned because the adjustment will be 3 months later to avoid asking for a refund by apple since its refund policy is 90 days for what the apple users said
Interesting speculation, but I don’t think that’s why the re-evaluation occurs at 3 months.
It occurs at three months for the simple reason that the shorter the period after release that the review occurs, the less representative the data is. Beyond a certain point the review is both increasingly meaningless, and also increases the chances that the future downstream data (say, from a year after release) shows problems the earlier one didn't, forcing Kabam to change the champion twice rather than once. Even three months is pretty short, because champions haven't even had much of a chance (if any) to drop from basic crystals yet.
You don't know the reason why Kabam choose 3 months any explanation is on speculation on your part. It's really 6 months when you break it down. It is 3 month announcement, even though Cull is far past 3 months and you get the changes 3 months later for a total of 6 months.
I don't know the specific reason why Kabam picked 90 days instead of 91 days or 89 days, this is true. However, I do know the environment in which they have to make this decision based on a reasonable assumption that Kabam datamines like everyone else does, plus what everyone here knows about how champions enter the game. So while I can't say the precise thought that was in their collective heads when they made their choice, I can say with reasonable certainty what trade off they were considering when they were making their choice. The longer the interval the more representative the data, but also the longer that issues have to persist in the game.
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.
So do y’all plan on giving everyone who spent money to get cull there money back ? Say the people that spent 500-1000$ to pull this champ and then carried him to rank 5. You gonna refund them their money ? Highly doubt it, how about the time people spent to get him in arena can you give that back as well ? Didn’t think so, I’ve been apart of this game since the month it came out and I’ve always loved it but y’all keep this up y’all will lose a ton of people including me. What if you paid your car off then the dealership came and took it and gave you a suckier one that you didn’t want. Wouldn’t like that would ya? I understand balance I really do but all cull has is damage, take that away and he has nothing. Doesn’t have immunities, no utility, takes forever to ramp up. That is all, do the right thing please. I’ve enjoyed the game for a long time.
the money will not be returned because the adjustment will be 3 months later to avoid asking for a refund by apple since its refund policy is 90 days for what the apple users said
Interesting speculation, but I don’t think that’s why the re-evaluation occurs at 3 months.
It occurs at three months for the simple reason that the shorter the period after release that the review occurs, the less representative the data is. Beyond a certain point the review is both increasingly meaningless, and also increases the chances that the future downstream data (say, from a year after release) shows problems the earlier one didn't, forcing Kabam to change the champion twice rather than once. Even three months is pretty short, because champions haven't even had much of a chance (if any) to drop from basic crystals yet.
You don't know the reason why Kabam choose 3 months any explanation is on speculation on your part. It's really 6 months when you break it down. It is 3 month announcement, even though Cull is far past 3 months and you get the changes 3 months later for a total of 6 months.
I'd bet Dollars to Cents that he's making an educated guess.
I understand what a hypothesis is. You nor @DNA3000 speak for Kabam. Just making that clear though i appreciate the logic in your defense.
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.
So do y’all plan on giving everyone who spent money to get cull there money back ? Say the people that spent 500-1000$ to pull this champ and then carried him to rank 5. You gonna refund them their money ? Highly doubt it, how about the time people spent to get him in arena can you give that back as well ? Didn’t think so, I’ve been apart of this game since the month it came out and I’ve always loved it but y’all keep this up y’all will lose a ton of people including me. What if you paid your car off then the dealership came and took it and gave you a suckier one that you didn’t want. Wouldn’t like that would ya? I understand balance I really do but all cull has is damage, take that away and he has nothing. Doesn’t have immunities, no utility, takes forever to ramp up. That is all, do the right thing please. I’ve enjoyed the game for a long time.
the money will not be returned because the adjustment will be 3 months later to avoid asking for a refund by apple since its refund policy is 90 days for what the apple users said
Interesting speculation, but I don’t think that’s why the re-evaluation occurs at 3 months.
It occurs at three months for the simple reason that the shorter the period after release that the review occurs, the less representative the data is. Beyond a certain point the review is both increasingly meaningless, and also increases the chances that the future downstream data (say, from a year after release) shows problems the earlier one didn't, forcing Kabam to change the champion twice rather than once. Even three months is pretty short, because champions haven't even had much of a chance (if any) to drop from basic crystals yet.
You don't know the reason why Kabam choose 3 months any explanation is on speculation on your part. It's really 6 months when you break it down. It is 3 month announcement, even though Cull is far past 3 months and you get the changes 3 months later for a total of 6 months.
I'd bet Dollars to Cents that he's making an educated guess.
I understand what a hypothesis is. You nor @DNA3000 speak for Kabam. Just making that clear though i appreciate the logic in your defense.
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.
Neither one of us claimed to speak for Kabam. What I was saying however, was that his hypothesis would be an educated one. 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.
So do y’all plan on giving everyone who spent money to get cull there money back ? Say the people that spent 500-1000$ to pull this champ and then carried him to rank 5. You gonna refund them their money ? Highly doubt it, how about the time people spent to get him in arena can you give that back as well ? Didn’t think so, I’ve been apart of this game since the month it came out and I’ve always loved it but y’all keep this up y’all will lose a ton of people including me. What if you paid your car off then the dealership came and took it and gave you a suckier one that you didn’t want. Wouldn’t like that would ya? I understand balance I really do but all cull has is damage, take that away and he has nothing. Doesn’t have immunities, no utility, takes forever to ramp up. That is all, do the right thing please. I’ve enjoyed the game for a long time.
the money will not be returned because the adjustment will be 3 months later to avoid asking for a refund by apple since its refund policy is 90 days for what the apple users said
Interesting speculation, but I don’t think that’s why the re-evaluation occurs at 3 months.
It occurs at three months for the simple reason that the shorter the period after release that the review occurs, the less representative the data is. Beyond a certain point the review is both increasingly meaningless, and also increases the chances that the future downstream data (say, from a year after release) shows problems the earlier one didn't, forcing Kabam to change the champion twice rather than once. Even three months is pretty short, because champions haven't even had much of a chance (if any) to drop from basic crystals yet.
You don't know the reason why Kabam choose 3 months any explanation is on speculation on your part. It's really 6 months when you break it down. It is 3 month announcement, even though Cull is far past 3 months and you get the changes 3 months later for a total of 6 months.
I'd bet Dollars to Cents that he's making an educated guess.
I understand what a hypothesis is. You nor @DNA3000 speak for Kabam. Just making that clear though i appreciate the logic in your defense.
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.
Neither one of us claimed to speak for Kabam. What I was saying however, was that his hypothesis would be an educated one. 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.
When I say doing the right thing, I'm saying protect the game and their pocket books. People do not trust spending on new champions right now so I'm not saying it for my sake.
So do y’all plan on giving everyone who spent money to get cull there money back ? Say the people that spent 500-1000$ to pull this champ and then carried him to rank 5. You gonna refund them their money ? Highly doubt it, how about the time people spent to get him in arena can you give that back as well ? Didn’t think so, I’ve been apart of this game since the month it came out and I’ve always loved it but y’all keep this up y’all will lose a ton of people including me. What if you paid your car off then the dealership came and took it and gave you a suckier one that you didn’t want. Wouldn’t like that would ya? I understand balance I really do but all cull has is damage, take that away and he has nothing. Doesn’t have immunities, no utility, takes forever to ramp up. That is all, do the right thing please. I’ve enjoyed the game for a long time.
the money will not be returned because the adjustment will be 3 months later to avoid asking for a refund by apple since its refund policy is 90 days for what the apple users said
Interesting speculation, but I don’t think that’s why the re-evaluation occurs at 3 months.
It occurs at three months for the simple reason that the shorter the period after release that the review occurs, the less representative the data is. Beyond a certain point the review is both increasingly meaningless, and also increases the chances that the future downstream data (say, from a year after release) shows problems the earlier one didn't, forcing Kabam to change the champion twice rather than once. Even three months is pretty short, because champions haven't even had much of a chance (if any) to drop from basic crystals yet.
You don't know the reason why Kabam choose 3 months any explanation is on speculation on your part. It's really 6 months when you break it down. It is 3 month announcement, even though Cull is far past 3 months and you get the changes 3 months later for a total of 6 months.
I'd bet Dollars to Cents that he's making an educated guess.
I understand what a hypothesis is. You nor @DNA3000 speak for Kabam. Just making that clear though i appreciate the logic in your defense.
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.
Neither one of us claimed to speak for Kabam. What I was saying however, was that his hypothesis would be an educated one. 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.
When I say doing the right thing, I'm saying protect the game and their pocket books. People do not trust spending on new champions right now so I'm not saying it for my sake.
Protecting the game really has very little to do with their pocket books. Protecting the game is exactly what these changes are doing in the long run. I agree that having the consumer in mind is an important aspect of business, but the Devs aren't really concerned with financial aspects. Their concern is Programming. With that comes making decisions with the best interest of that in mind. If issues arise where they find a way to maximize efficiency and reduce the amount of work moving forward, they're likely going to look at that. There's a fine line between feedback and threatening them with not spending. What's best for the game from a design point of view is their concern, and that is their only concern as far as their jobs go. I would have great concern if their primary focus was foregoing improvement to appease spenders.
So do y’all plan on giving everyone who spent money to get cull there money back ? Say the people that spent 500-1000$ to pull this champ and then carried him to rank 5. You gonna refund them their money ? Highly doubt it, how about the time people spent to get him in arena can you give that back as well ? Didn’t think so, I’ve been apart of this game since the month it came out and I’ve always loved it but y’all keep this up y’all will lose a ton of people including me. What if you paid your car off then the dealership came and took it and gave you a suckier one that you didn’t want. Wouldn’t like that would ya? I understand balance I really do but all cull has is damage, take that away and he has nothing. Doesn’t have immunities, no utility, takes forever to ramp up. That is all, do the right thing please. I’ve enjoyed the game for a long time.
the money will not be returned because the adjustment will be 3 months later to avoid asking for a refund by apple since its refund policy is 90 days for what the apple users said
Interesting speculation, but I don’t think that’s why the re-evaluation occurs at 3 months.
It occurs at three months for the simple reason that the shorter the period after release that the review occurs, the less representative the data is. Beyond a certain point the review is both increasingly meaningless, and also increases the chances that the future downstream data (say, from a year after release) shows problems the earlier one didn't, forcing Kabam to change the champion twice rather than once. Even three months is pretty short, because champions haven't even had much of a chance (if any) to drop from basic crystals yet.
You don't know the reason why Kabam choose 3 months any explanation is on speculation on your part. It's really 6 months when you break it down. It is 3 month announcement, even though Cull is far past 3 months and you get the changes 3 months later for a total of 6 months.
I'd bet Dollars to Cents that he's making an educated guess.
I understand what a hypothesis is. You nor @DNA3000 speak for Kabam. Just making that clear though i appreciate the logic in your defense.
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.
Neither one of us claimed to speak for Kabam. What I was saying however, was that his hypothesis would be an educated one. 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.
When I say doing the right thing, I'm saying protect the game and their pocket books. People do not trust spending on new champions right now so I'm not saying it for my sake.
You don't speak for the players, and you don't know what the players actually think, and you don't know what impact this will make on the game. You only know what a tiny number of players claim to think. Anything else is a guess. Did you not feel compelled to clarify both situations earlier?
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.
What does concern me is an “adjustment” program that feels like it foists the burden of testing content on the community without oversight of the game team or meaningful protection for paying customers. Long term, that’s not good for the “health of the game.”
Dr. Zola
The entire free to play games industry is founded on the premise "give as little value as possible for cash purchases." That seems like a suicidal business model, but that's a surface evaluation. The constellation of consequences that logically follow from that apparently insane premise have created the most profitable business model for games in all of history.
It may seem like balancing based on player performance in effect means no one can evaluate anything based on how it is designed, because external unpredictable factors can ultimately change it at any time, but the logical consequences of that premise are just as non-trivial and ultimately beneficial. At least, that's my opinion based on studying this issue for a very long time before ever playing this game.
There's probably two Ph.Ds and a game design book in there somewhere.
The Ph.D I would pick is the subject of playerbase self selection. The short version is that when we talk about games like this having "players" and "paying customers" that implies those are relatively static groups. But in fact there's constant turnover in both. The players and paying customers of tomorrow may not even have heard of the game yet today. Every decision you make must balance serving your current players and customers without cutting off your future stream of players and customers. And things beneficial to current players and customers can be detrimental to future players and customers.
The game you make has to attract the kind of players you need to make the game you need to make to attract the kind of players you need to make the game you need to make.
The long term health of the game isn't about making current players and customers happy, it is actually more about making sure this constraint is met. Making the current players and customers happy is a short term gain. But most of those players and customers won't be here in the future, because that's the nature of free to play games. You have to make them happy *and* make future players happy, and the kind of game you make to make current players happy "chooses" who those future players will even be, because the game you make will only attract certain kinds of people.
Actually, I forgot I hate school. So someone else can do that Ph.D.
Just got around to this...fair points all, but something I would point out is that this isn’t exactly a new approach.
The business model you describe sounds a lot like one that has long been a staple of used car lots, door-to-door salesmen and back lot jewelers: give as little value as possible and keep relying on another crop of suckers to walk through the door.
The idea that sectors of the mobile gaming industry may have married a variant of that model with popular cartoons and addictive content shouldn’t be a revelation.
What I think is novel, however, is the notion that a company can sell/lease a product and change it unilaterally just a few months post-release under the premise that it’s unable to reliably test that product (as Miike has more or less suggested).
It is understandable if the game has gotten too complex to make sure content gets vetted thoroughly. MCoC has come a long way from 2014. There are probably several ways the community would be willing to collaborate with the team to help make products work as intended prior to their release.
But if good QA under the current release schedule is difficult—and recent issues with bugged introductions, erroneous descriptions and unintended interactions (fresh off a beta) suggest it might be—then the answer should be easy: if it isn’t ready, don’t sell it.
I’m hopeful Cull ultimately improves, but that isn’t the core issue for me. Regardless of what happens here, I’m adamantly opposed to a process that, in my opinion, virtually promises more incomplete or unfinished content with little to no recourse for the players.
Dr. Zola
A lot of people compare the free to play model with bad business practices because they see the items that are sold as the "product." But you have to remember that it is the game that is the product, not the items in it, and Kabam gives that product away for free.
The free to play model isn't about finding "suckers." It is about giving something away completely for free and finding people willing to pay for that completely free thing just to get a slightly better version. The model isn't like "back lot jewelers." It is actually closer to the old shareware model, where developers gave the software away for free hoping people would be willing to pay for a better version of that thing.
Plus, I'm going to keep repeating this as often as it is ignored. While QA can always be better, no level of QA that can possibly exist can prevent downstream balance changes, because downstream balance changes in a data driven online game are determined by the players, not the design. For downstream balancing to be avoided, it is not enough for QA to predict how well something *can* perform. They would have to predict with precision how players who don't even exist as players yet *will* perform when using those things. That's beyond human capability.
Not everyone agrees with the entire model, of course. The sad part isn't that many players disagree with the model, it is the belief that there are alternatives. Every game you think does this differently, almost certainly doesn't. I remember when people were saying how Netmarble's purchase of Kabam was going to change fundamental things about how the game operates for the better, and now people think the Netmarble purchase fundamentally changed how the game operates for the worse, and in fact the Netmarble purchased fundamentally changed none of those things, because no one does this differently: not Kabam, not Netmarble, not anyone.
I'm honestly not sure why you think anything Kabam is doing in this regard is "novel." It isn't just novel, it is predictable. I'll go farther, it isn't just predictable, it has been predicted. Most of this stuff I've been saying is standard practice in the MMO world for pretty much my entire time on the forums, because this is so un-novel it is ancient history. I'm pretty sure when Sentry came out I actually explicitly stated that waiting for the long term datamining before adjusting entities wasn't how most MMOs did it these days: there's usually a post release balancing pass, and then everything goes into general population where everything is periodically reviewed overall.
Kabam has two options, not one. They can try to do what you think is right, or they can do what everyone else does and accept that the players who can't accept it will eventually stop playing. All they have to do is count on the fact that there are far more players willing to accept games that operate under these parameters than there are players who are unwilling.
We can probably keep boring everyone else forever, so I’ll make this short(er):
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.
So do y’all plan on giving everyone who spent money to get cull there money back ? Say the people that spent 500-1000$ to pull this champ and then carried him to rank 5. You gonna refund them their money ? Highly doubt it, how about the time people spent to get him in arena can you give that back as well ? Didn’t think so, I’ve been apart of this game since the month it came out and I’ve always loved it but y’all keep this up y’all will lose a ton of people including me. What if you paid your car off then the dealership came and took it and gave you a suckier one that you didn’t want. Wouldn’t like that would ya? I understand balance I really do but all cull has is damage, take that away and he has nothing. Doesn’t have immunities, no utility, takes forever to ramp up. That is all, do the right thing please. I’ve enjoyed the game for a long time.
the money will not be returned because the adjustment will be 3 months later to avoid asking for a refund by apple since its refund policy is 90 days for what the apple users said
Interesting speculation, but I don’t think that’s why the re-evaluation occurs at 3 months.
It occurs at three months for the simple reason that the shorter the period after release that the review occurs, the less representative the data is. Beyond a certain point the review is both increasingly meaningless, and also increases the chances that the future downstream data (say, from a year after release) shows problems the earlier one didn't, forcing Kabam to change the champion twice rather than once. Even three months is pretty short, because champions haven't even had much of a chance (if any) to drop from basic crystals yet.
You don't know the reason why Kabam choose 3 months any explanation is on speculation on your part. It's really 6 months when you break it down. It is 3 month announcement, even though Cull is far past 3 months and you get the changes 3 months later for a total of 6 months.
I'd bet Dollars to Cents that he's making an educated guess.
I understand what a hypothesis is. You nor @DNA3000 speak for Kabam. Just making that clear though i appreciate the logic in your defense.
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.
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.
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.
Let's set aside the question of whether there are in fact data design rules internally, and whether that's even a good way to manage an online game. Let's simply suppose that somehow, in some manner, the game developer does have some limit beyond which they would consider a champ to be dealing "too much damage" in some unspecified way.
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.
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
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
Noted. I will never spend a single dollar or even units for any champ. This system only allows players to get hurt in terms of resource management and real world money lost. In other words, it only allows for kabam to steal from us. To have people spend money on a product advertised a certain way, only to be changed at your discretion at any point in time is completely unethical, and an extremely large display of disrespect.
Cull was out about 6 months before that announcement buddy.
They said they would inform the community before release, they havent done that once, they release a champ then wait awhile then tell them the champ is getting nerfed, they dont inform the community that they have released a champ that is broken or under tested they wait til people have spent tons of gold and iso than tell them their favorite champs are getting "rebalanced" it would be nice if they would rebalance champs that actually need improvement before nerfing champs that are useful, how many useful champs they gonna nerf before the entire dynamic of the game changes. You cant determine which champs are useful, I've got T4Bs sitting in my stash because I cant decide which champ to improve worrying their gonna get nerfed because they are useful
Money-based? Yes. The company makes money. The Devs? Don't see that money. They receive a Salary for doing their job. That job isn't centered around money. It's centered around Development. There's a misconception that the entire company is a money-centric, single entity. That their every internal decision is about money. That's not accurate. Not in the least. 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.
I personally don't have a problem with any re-balancing of ANY champ at ANY time. If it diminishes the usability of the champ in any way by lowering damage output, defensive attributes, etc, then I would expect them to issue a RTD as they have done in the past.
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.
I personally don't have a problem with any re-balancing of ANY champ at ANY time. If it diminishes the usability of the champ in any way by lowering damage output, defensive attributes, etc, then I would expect them to issue a RTD as they have done in the past.
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!
A rankdown ticket isn't enough in this case. People spent actual money to get Cull and raise him to sig level 200. A RDT wouldn't make it right at all. Best bet is to improve him defensively so he is sustainable in end game content and then you can lower his attack power. Option #2 would be to just leave him alone completely, anything outside of that will lead to continuous outrage in the community and it will be well before the 3 months.
I don't disagree. I think we all thought Cull was safe seeing as how he was in the basic. This particular situation does call for more imo. I'm just saying that if we knew the risk ahead of time and knew that by taking the risk, we'd at least get RDTs for going out on a limb for a new champ, it would be a bit easier to swallow moving forward. As of today, we get nothing.
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.
I know there will be a lot of questions about Rank Down Tickets and Compensation for changes, and there already are some. As a reminder, we did say that we will approach these on a case by case basis, and will not be able to make any comments on this yet, because we don't know what Cull's balance pass will look like at all yet.
Also, remember that these changes are restricted to Tuning updates, and are will not change any abilities or utility. Our intention is that if you love your Champion now, you should still love them after.
Our intention is that if you love your Champion now, you should still love them after.
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!
Imagine you’re one of the people who don’t read the forums. They have no idea that Cull is being tweaked in the future. In game emails to everyone should be SOP.
I really like the idea of being able to pre-test champs. I am not a spender.
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 okay with the 're-balancing' of any champion if it means making them still a great option and helps improve them in other areas.
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.
As DNA suggested, I don't think they're looking at "X amount of Damage". It's not even necessary to comb the data to see he can hit hard. For me, the key part of the comment is the comparative one. They said he does more than any other higher-end Champs. I don't think that's necessarily the amount of Damage in total he's capable of. I think it's some other factor. In any event, what it suggests is that he varies from other Champs in a degree they're not comfortable with.
Comments
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.