The Good and the Bad
Mr_Holl87
Member Posts: 334 ★★★
This post isn't so much for discussion, but rather a sort of open letter to Kabam, so I will be addressing Kabam directly throughout this post. This post is NOT intended to be toxic.
I've been counting down the days to the end of this three month Summoner Appreciation period, eagerly waiting to write a post about how absolutely incredible it is that you guys did this. I decided not to wait until the end. So first of all, I want to say THANK YOU. This appreciation was completely unexpected and you guys went above and beyond our wildest hopes and dreams and I simply cannot be more impressed and grateful for it. In comparison, Summoner Appreciation (SA) in the past has been, I think, A week long, and once it was a month long, and those were great too. But this three months? Again, no one could have imagined that and it truly revived the spirit of the game and community's appreciation.
The UMCOC Podcast has talked at great length in the past about your company needing to be more open and transparent with your community, and you have clearly heard and listened to them. Not only with this three month SA event, but even the info bomb that dropped this past week. The upcoming road map of the game you announced was AMAZING. I cannot remember the last time I've been this excited for a game's future, especially a mobile game. I play a lot of games, console, PC, single player and ever changing and improving MMO's. I play an MMO every single day and have been for five years and love that game and always look forward to future updates and content, always excited about what's to come. It's arguably my favorite game of all time. However, with the info you dropped this past Friday (I think), again, I've never been more excited for the future of any game. And it's not just me. The whole community is buzzing about it. We're STOKED, we're hyped and cannot wait. It does your company massive credit that you announced all this so early on as well, again, clearly listened to the UMCOC Podcast.
Throughout the last few months, I've noticed just how far you as a company have come, how much you've improved upon customer or consumer relations. Sure, there are the occasional outcries about certain things. I understand why people got upset about the Cull Obsidian thing, or the frustration regarding She-Hulk, but in comparison to events in the past, I feel like the community has been less angry about things like that than they have been in the past. I believe the reason for that is due to the fact that you have begun to seriously LISTEN to your community, you're making strides to keep players happy, even allowed champion specific rank down tickets for the She-Hulk adjustment, which didn't effect me but it still shows you're willing to work with people and not just take things away. (However, maybe rank down tickets specific to Cull would have been appropriate also, but again, this doesn't effect me because I don't have him, but I would understand people being frustrated if they spent real life money to acquire him either via crystals or arena grinding.)
All of these things and more show just how far you've come. The year of 2019 has been a magnificent rebuilding of the relationship between you, and your player base and I'm incredibly grateful for that. I've been very critical of you in the past, and it dawned on me recently just how well you have communicated and handled various situations, how much you've improved, and while I do tend to be critical and suspicious of you (or have been in the past), I believe credit should be given where credit is due. So I say this to you, Kabam, thank you for the strides you have taken over the course of this year, all the improvements and transparency and more. I hope you continue to operate in this fashion in the upcoming months and well into the future. Do this, and you will have support of fans and growth in your community for years down the line and who knows. Maybe even set a positive example to other "live services" gaming companies.
Now. This post is titled "The Good and the Bad" so there is a bit of a "but" in this post, but it's relatively small. And again, I don't want it to be toxic or angry.
In my opinion, this current boss rush was a massive failure. I wasn't one of those people who rushed to complete day one, I paid attention to the community and what they were saying about it and learned from them before jumping into it. I received advice and tricks and tools to properly use for certain fights. I had the day off today so decided I'd sit down and run it. I like the idea of the titles you implemented, titles referencing certain content creators who helped create the boss rush is brilliant and an AWESOME little wink to the content creators and all their fans, I simply love it. However, I will not be acquiring all six titles, as I barely managed to acquire one.
I started playing this game just two or three months after it launched almost five years ago, I've been addicted and played every day for the majority of that time. I've run almost all, if not all the special hard content, all the boss rushes, all the celebrity challenges, etc. I even completed these events before I had a five star roster, I had to rely on my undeveloped skills and four stars who weren't even rank five at the time. This boss rush was harder. It was the hardest thing I've come across in a long time. I've come a long way in my gameplay skills, I've come a very long way in my roster, but this boss rush was not pleasant.
As I mentioned, I did my research on this boss rush, I took advice from several people and took in the appropriate champs. I know a lot of people are griping about this event currently, and I know a lot of them are complaining about Domino. I honest had ZERO issues with Domino. My four star AA took care of her in one try. My issues came from Quake and especially Sym Supreme. I'm sorry to have to say this but this boss rush was not worth it. Again, I've been playing a long time, I've run all these types of events and completed them all, but this was the first one in this game's history that I almost gave up on, and it was because of SS. I was advised to take Starky for that fight, I have an unawakened five star rank four Starky. People told me to parry and stun lock SS. That didn't work, SS dashed back at the start of every fight and immediately built up his third special and launched it. On the rare occasion that I survived it, SS had already gained enough power to fill all three bars and immediately launched his third special AGAIN, twice in a row. I never even had a chance to dash in after the first one. I don't know if it was dumb luck regarding in fight RNG or what, but for whatever reason, SS REFUSED to attack me at the start of any fight, and ALWAYS dashed back, gained that third special before I could dash in, and it was game over.
This happened FIFTEEN times. On the sixteenth try, I promised myself it would be the final try, and if I didn't beat it this time, I was going to give up and forget about it and not complete it before the quest expires next week. I got lucky. I was able to do it and ultimately defeated the event. But this is a massive issue and failure in my opinion. I'm sorry, but a game simply cannot continue to allow mechanics where the AI can simply take the player out of the fight and defeat a dozen times or so. I literally didn't even get to play against the SS on those fights. Some of those nodes needed to be adjusted, it is simply unacceptable to force a player to eat special three damage and have no say in it. If this is the future of your boss rush fights or other difficult content, you will see less and less people playing them. I'm sorry to say it, but again, that fight was completely uncalled for and unacceptable. You've come a long way this past year, don't start to throw it away by creating cheap, impossible fights where you have a one in 14 mil chance at getting lucky and defeating. I simply cannot stress enough how important it is to stray away from fights like that in the future. I as a player, did everything correctly and everything within the limits a player can do and it wasn't enough. The message I received from this fight is that content moving forward is designed solely to be impossible, it is designed to make you fail no matter how good you or your roster is, it is designed to not even give you a fighting chance and force you to use revives and potions.
I activated that fight 16 times, but I only got to play one of those 16. That's how awful that power start/gain design was. I literally had zero chance to do anything with my champ for 15 fights. And that is a huge boss design failure. You HAVE to allow your players the opportunity to at least try. If I try and mess up, that's on me and I can handle that. But I wasn't even given a fair fighting chance, and that is unacceptable.
In conclusion, again, thank you for all you've done the past few months and honestly throughout this whole year. It has been great and exciting and I've seen so much improvement and cannot wait to see what's in store for the game in 2020. I look forward to continuing to play this game and building my roster. But please, learn a hard lesson from this boss rush event and remember that your community ALWAYS deserves a fighting chance. Don't take a **** on us again like you did with this boss rush. The five star shards are nice but almost not worth the frustration and resources spent to complete it.
I've been counting down the days to the end of this three month Summoner Appreciation period, eagerly waiting to write a post about how absolutely incredible it is that you guys did this. I decided not to wait until the end. So first of all, I want to say THANK YOU. This appreciation was completely unexpected and you guys went above and beyond our wildest hopes and dreams and I simply cannot be more impressed and grateful for it. In comparison, Summoner Appreciation (SA) in the past has been, I think, A week long, and once it was a month long, and those were great too. But this three months? Again, no one could have imagined that and it truly revived the spirit of the game and community's appreciation.
The UMCOC Podcast has talked at great length in the past about your company needing to be more open and transparent with your community, and you have clearly heard and listened to them. Not only with this three month SA event, but even the info bomb that dropped this past week. The upcoming road map of the game you announced was AMAZING. I cannot remember the last time I've been this excited for a game's future, especially a mobile game. I play a lot of games, console, PC, single player and ever changing and improving MMO's. I play an MMO every single day and have been for five years and love that game and always look forward to future updates and content, always excited about what's to come. It's arguably my favorite game of all time. However, with the info you dropped this past Friday (I think), again, I've never been more excited for the future of any game. And it's not just me. The whole community is buzzing about it. We're STOKED, we're hyped and cannot wait. It does your company massive credit that you announced all this so early on as well, again, clearly listened to the UMCOC Podcast.
Throughout the last few months, I've noticed just how far you as a company have come, how much you've improved upon customer or consumer relations. Sure, there are the occasional outcries about certain things. I understand why people got upset about the Cull Obsidian thing, or the frustration regarding She-Hulk, but in comparison to events in the past, I feel like the community has been less angry about things like that than they have been in the past. I believe the reason for that is due to the fact that you have begun to seriously LISTEN to your community, you're making strides to keep players happy, even allowed champion specific rank down tickets for the She-Hulk adjustment, which didn't effect me but it still shows you're willing to work with people and not just take things away. (However, maybe rank down tickets specific to Cull would have been appropriate also, but again, this doesn't effect me because I don't have him, but I would understand people being frustrated if they spent real life money to acquire him either via crystals or arena grinding.)
All of these things and more show just how far you've come. The year of 2019 has been a magnificent rebuilding of the relationship between you, and your player base and I'm incredibly grateful for that. I've been very critical of you in the past, and it dawned on me recently just how well you have communicated and handled various situations, how much you've improved, and while I do tend to be critical and suspicious of you (or have been in the past), I believe credit should be given where credit is due. So I say this to you, Kabam, thank you for the strides you have taken over the course of this year, all the improvements and transparency and more. I hope you continue to operate in this fashion in the upcoming months and well into the future. Do this, and you will have support of fans and growth in your community for years down the line and who knows. Maybe even set a positive example to other "live services" gaming companies.
Now. This post is titled "The Good and the Bad" so there is a bit of a "but" in this post, but it's relatively small. And again, I don't want it to be toxic or angry.
In my opinion, this current boss rush was a massive failure. I wasn't one of those people who rushed to complete day one, I paid attention to the community and what they were saying about it and learned from them before jumping into it. I received advice and tricks and tools to properly use for certain fights. I had the day off today so decided I'd sit down and run it. I like the idea of the titles you implemented, titles referencing certain content creators who helped create the boss rush is brilliant and an AWESOME little wink to the content creators and all their fans, I simply love it. However, I will not be acquiring all six titles, as I barely managed to acquire one.
I started playing this game just two or three months after it launched almost five years ago, I've been addicted and played every day for the majority of that time. I've run almost all, if not all the special hard content, all the boss rushes, all the celebrity challenges, etc. I even completed these events before I had a five star roster, I had to rely on my undeveloped skills and four stars who weren't even rank five at the time. This boss rush was harder. It was the hardest thing I've come across in a long time. I've come a long way in my gameplay skills, I've come a very long way in my roster, but this boss rush was not pleasant.
As I mentioned, I did my research on this boss rush, I took advice from several people and took in the appropriate champs. I know a lot of people are griping about this event currently, and I know a lot of them are complaining about Domino. I honest had ZERO issues with Domino. My four star AA took care of her in one try. My issues came from Quake and especially Sym Supreme. I'm sorry to have to say this but this boss rush was not worth it. Again, I've been playing a long time, I've run all these types of events and completed them all, but this was the first one in this game's history that I almost gave up on, and it was because of SS. I was advised to take Starky for that fight, I have an unawakened five star rank four Starky. People told me to parry and stun lock SS. That didn't work, SS dashed back at the start of every fight and immediately built up his third special and launched it. On the rare occasion that I survived it, SS had already gained enough power to fill all three bars and immediately launched his third special AGAIN, twice in a row. I never even had a chance to dash in after the first one. I don't know if it was dumb luck regarding in fight RNG or what, but for whatever reason, SS REFUSED to attack me at the start of any fight, and ALWAYS dashed back, gained that third special before I could dash in, and it was game over.
This happened FIFTEEN times. On the sixteenth try, I promised myself it would be the final try, and if I didn't beat it this time, I was going to give up and forget about it and not complete it before the quest expires next week. I got lucky. I was able to do it and ultimately defeated the event. But this is a massive issue and failure in my opinion. I'm sorry, but a game simply cannot continue to allow mechanics where the AI can simply take the player out of the fight and defeat a dozen times or so. I literally didn't even get to play against the SS on those fights. Some of those nodes needed to be adjusted, it is simply unacceptable to force a player to eat special three damage and have no say in it. If this is the future of your boss rush fights or other difficult content, you will see less and less people playing them. I'm sorry to say it, but again, that fight was completely uncalled for and unacceptable. You've come a long way this past year, don't start to throw it away by creating cheap, impossible fights where you have a one in 14 mil chance at getting lucky and defeating. I simply cannot stress enough how important it is to stray away from fights like that in the future. I as a player, did everything correctly and everything within the limits a player can do and it wasn't enough. The message I received from this fight is that content moving forward is designed solely to be impossible, it is designed to make you fail no matter how good you or your roster is, it is designed to not even give you a fighting chance and force you to use revives and potions.
I activated that fight 16 times, but I only got to play one of those 16. That's how awful that power start/gain design was. I literally had zero chance to do anything with my champ for 15 fights. And that is a huge boss design failure. You HAVE to allow your players the opportunity to at least try. If I try and mess up, that's on me and I can handle that. But I wasn't even given a fair fighting chance, and that is unacceptable.
In conclusion, again, thank you for all you've done the past few months and honestly throughout this whole year. It has been great and exciting and I've seen so much improvement and cannot wait to see what's in store for the game in 2020. I look forward to continuing to play this game and building my roster. But please, learn a hard lesson from this boss rush event and remember that your community ALWAYS deserves a fighting chance. Don't take a **** on us again like you did with this boss rush. The five star shards are nice but almost not worth the frustration and resources spent to complete it.
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Comments
Debuff Immune Quake? She had spite? Guess what, Dex back and trigger spite. Dodge her SP1 and punish. Easy game. Easy life.
The rest of the fights were easy. SS was not very fun. If I had experienced 15 straight like the OP I might not have a phone anymore lol.
Any fight where a player can do nothing and be wiped out is neither fun nor is it very interactive...
But I agree
The rest were fine and fun - they each had multiple counters, and none were like this one in which if RNG did not go your way, you are dead nearly instantly unless you have a high rank/star champion. The other nodes were well thought out and had fun interactions with the nodes. SS was... boring. Power gain on power gain on reduced power usage on specials
... zzzzzZzzzZzzzzZzzzzz.
KG - intercept me, or parry stun and kill me only during regen phases or else be forced to intercept anyways.
Domino - high damage that is not Ghost/Wasp/Corvus, or find a way to heal block me, be incinerate immune, and/or find ways to reduce my healing.
Quake - learn to punish SP1 and SP2 with Spite active or else face a very long fight.
Invisible Woman - learn how to fight her, and control when you want to do damage to heal back up with a slow degen on.
Taskmaster - learn how to maximize Icarus without taking huge degen damage, and minimizing debuffs triggered, or use a champ that can heavy without needing a parry.
SS - enough already said earlier. Just not very interactive or fun at all. Easy if you got lucky, dead if not. Kabam style. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
This should be the last of these. Put your own names to these, Kabam.
And while I made my thoughts on the design of all the fights known in a couple places, including in particular here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/160190/dnas-review-of-the-boss-rush-fights I'm personally pleased overall with how it turned out. That doesn't mean I think everyone else should love the content because that's a matter of preference, but I believe all the content creators put significant thought into making a fight they felt would be interesting, for their own definition of interesting. I think all of them would take exception to the characterization that the event was just a "poorly edited string of fights." What it is, is a representation of a wide cross section of what different people like and want in these kinds of fights, because we all don't want the same things.
When a map is supposed to represent a singular vision, the fights can and should be more cohesive. But when the intent is to showcase different players' viewpoints, it is more important in my opinion that the map represent that diversity in full, rather than attempt to shoehorn all the designers into the same kind of design.
I actually believe there is more opportunity for player involvement in content creation that the game could accommodate, and I made suggestions to that effect to Kabam during the design process. I'd like to see more players get this opportunity, not fewer, and I think the game has room for more of this kind of thing moving forward.
The fight mechanics were not dissimilar to v3 SS fight with huge power gain. Again Doc Oc cleaned him up without any issue.
I just wanted to drop in and let you know that I've read through your post entirely with great appreciation. It's clear from the way you're writing this all out and sharing your thoughts that you really do care about The Contest. Your feedback is greatly valued and I'll be making sure that it's shared with folks on our side beyond just me. It's also important to thank you for the compliments which can be found throughout this-- it's good to see that we've been able to communicate more in ways that have been appreciated by you and others.
We are always looking at ways to improve our communication AND The Contest so pieces like this are extremely helpful to us when it comes to feedback. So thank you again, Holl! This piece was very well written.