**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.
Fix backdraft intercepts already
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Comments
Consider the case of when parry timing broke shortly after 12.0. That turned out to be a problem with an engine upgrade. The new engine worked subtly different than the previous one, and that altered the timing of the game in certain corner cases including sometimes parry. You can't perform a bisection in this case. You also can't revert the engine upgrade because you probably have six months of meta-layer customization sitting on it, plus all the new content in the pipeline. Reverting the engine to fix parry would basically unroll the game half a year. You can't fix the engine either, because the engine isn't "broken." To fix it you have to change the way the animation data (or the mechanics timing engine data, or something similar) is designed to fit the new engine, which in effect requires you to learn the subtleties of the new engine and redesign those elements from scratch.
This problem is almost certainly not exactly that, but I'm offering it as a specific example of the kinds of bugs that can come up in software like these kinds of games that you can't solve with the techniques you usually use with more monolithic software.
In this case, if the problem is in the AI, most game AIs have action potentials in a matrix or a weighting array. It is just a bunch of numbers that sort of "encourage" the AI to do certain things in certain situations. If the AI is now more aggressive bouncing out of the corner and that's what's interfering with backdraft intercept, there won't be a way to just put that behavior back because it wasn't put in in the first place. It is just what happened when the weights were what they were. If in the intervening six months not only have the weights been changed but the AI module has also been changed under it, you couldn't just revert the weights back to where they were, because the older weights wouldn't necessarily work with the new AI engine. You'd have to roll back the AI engine as well. Which is now much more problematic: they may need that engine to do other things the game currently relies on, and the main engine might have also been changed in ways that make a roll back no longer possible.
Keep in mind that the game isn't monolithic software: most of what you see isn't in "code" that you can "bisect" in that sense. Most of the game is numbers in Excel, being pushed into metalayer customization modules running on top of a core framework engine, all of which are constantly in flux. Even if you could somehow magically know the precise change that introduced the change in behavior, six months later it could be completely impossible to roll back.
I know that's not what you want to hear. You want to hear that since Kabam was slow to fix this problem and it has existed for a very long time, that they should all the more make it a priority to fix quickly now. But the practical reality is that the longer a bug like this persists the more likely it can get surrounded by cruft that makes it more difficult to fix in many cases. It is entirely possible, from my experience, that the problem today isn't even the original problem, in the sense that fixing what broke six months ago might not actually fix the problem in the current game today.
To be clear, this is just the technicals. I think the bigger problem Kabam is, or at least should be talking about is how they should be handling all of these kinds of "non-ability" behavior issues moving forward. As I mentioned previously, all evidence suggests that Kabam tracks "ability and effect" stuff one way, and "cosmetic" stuff in a lesser way, and these critical elements in the middle like animations, sequence timing, and AI behavior have fallen through the cracks. That needs to be fixed, holistically.
Remember when Kabam talked about "player-facing" changes? I believe that got translated internally into "abilities and effects." Because Kabam keeps changing AI, and not treating that like it is a "player facing" change, even though it very obviously is. We now have a lot of evidence that critical animation timing is another such thing. I'm hoping they are reviewing how they treat all of this stuff with an eye to changing their philosophy on a fundamental level.
If we got only one response from Kabam with that level of detail, it would be a miracle
They should be informing every player via in game mail. Their own golden boy Dorky Dave teaches their players how to backdraft in videos early on(which they push). He was just on their summoner showdown talking about backdrafts(which he coined the term for *pats himself on the back*) Therefore they should be letting all those players know of the issue as its presented to them(6 months ago). This would stop players from trying to use it in a way they are used to. This would stop them from wasting all their resources and/or possibly quitting the game since they keep blaming themselves. This is not their fault.
They need to confront the elephant in the room. Magik. Everyone ranked Magik based on this interaction. Just like everyone ranked She-Hulk based on her interaction. Ignoring years of rank ups and expectation of a champion isn't good and just another reason folks give up on this game/company/hope. If they want to leave it as is Magik needs to be a conversation on the table. It's not like folks ranked up Starlord for backdrafting so please dont even try to counter with the debate that anyone could do it.
Lastly I was in uncollected today and there were multiple fights on rage paths and unblockable finale where backdraft would normally be used to avoid item usage. None of it could be used now. Mind you I, a player who 100% everything, could do it just fine. But to the average bloke they are getting royally screwed here.
Parry not working, dashes not working, backdraft intercepts not working, AI reacting mid-combo or instantly punishing your specials. THIS IS SUCH A MESS!