**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

Upcoming Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw Balance Changes

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Comments

  • DalBot said:

    DNA3000 said:



    The difference between "the same old crowd" and yourself is the same old crowd doesn't need anything to change. You do. Only the side that wants things to change must sound logical and reasonable.

    Something I've learned over many years giving feedback to game developers is there is no other side. You're not in competition with the players who disagree with you. It is not like whichever side wins the forum argument gets to give the design team orders. There's only one side, and it is the game developers' side. They are the only ones that can change the game, and the only way for you to affect the game is to change the minds of the developers. Changing the minds of other players helps exactly zero. Winning arguments against them helps exactly zero. It can actually hurt, in fact.

    If you say there's no justification whatsoever for the devs' actions, you'll certainly get a lot of forum posters agreeing with you. But they can't help you. You'll probably get most if not all of the developers choosing to ignore you, and they are the only ones who could possibly help you.

    This seems counterproductive to me.

    Except that's completely inaccurate. Do you remember the 12.0 fiasco? What happened? Kabam made massive game changes in a bad faith manner and the community got up in arms about it. It was when we played rallied together to make it clear how wrong that was, that's when change happened. If happened BECAUSE the community came together unanimously.

    When we see the same parties time after time doing Kabams bidding by attempting to justify tactics that are completely unethical, it gives the impression that it is somehow acceptable. That's my issue with the usual suspects. They do what they do to try to derail topics and create a false sense of OK where OK doesn't exist.

    Players have power when we come together. To insinuate otherwise is showing your belly.
    I've already made my thoughts clear about how wrong this narrative regarding 12.0 is, but let's set that aside for a moment and presume you're correct. This only has any chance of working when it comes to situations where you can get a very large percentage of players to both agree with you and vocalize that agreement. These changes are most definitely not that kind of issue, and the more general question of future downstream changes are also very unlikely to be that kind of issue. If the only weapon in your arsenal are nuclear weapons, what do you do when you can't use them? Is your only option to make every issue into something a huge chunk of player community feels is an exigent threat to the game as a whole? How many times can you attempt that before people become completely numb to calling every problem an existential calamity? If this hasn't happened already?

    We saw this with 12.0 itself. Everyone was calling for a boycott for every little problem after 12.0, and were literally being laughed off the forums. If everyone on Earth agreed to do it we could start calling the sky green. But that's not going to happen, and saying "if only" is being silly.

    Your problem doesn't seem to be the forum posters who disagree with you. It is the thousands of players who simply don't care about the problem as much as you. And in my experience it is far easier to convince someone who disagrees with you to change their mind and agree with you than it is to convince someone who just doesn't care about what you care about to start caring. At least the people who disagree with you care enough to do anything at all. You can't even engage with the players who don't care, because they won't even tell you they don't care. Because they don't care.

    Also, I don't like framing things this way, but I think we would both agree that absent some very large protest, Kabam will do whatever it thinks it should do, even if there's going to be a large amount of disagreement on the forums. So again, absent a very large outside protest, if my strategy is to reach the developers with a reasoned argument and yours is to marshall the player community on the forums and we both succeed, who's going to win?

    Whatever else you might think about my posts, I don't as a rule suggest future changes to the game that I think the majority of players would likely oppose. I'll support an unpopular change after the fact if I agree with it, and I'll discuss unpopular changes if they are brought up by someone else, but I don't actively promote them. Call it hubris, but I don't believe this would be fair.
  • @DNA3000 I like how you said the part about even with large disagreement on the forums. Why haven’t they let the non forum community know their intentions of Cull? Why hasn’t there been an in game post stating Maw is being buffed, Cull is getting a tune down, and Ronin is the new cyclops? The forums don’t matter you’re right, but there are people who are going to update someday in the future and that’s going to be their first time seeing these changes.
  • WorknprogressWorknprogress Posts: 7,233 ★★★★★
    DalBot said:

    Menkent said:

    I'd be shocked if the community at large cared enough to rally around this like they/we did for 12.0. It just doesn't affect the average player they same way. 12.0 included huge nerfs to champs that a lot of people had been using regularly for a long time AND awful, game-breaking bugs. I'm on a 1M+ account and I don't have Cull as a 5* and just got Maw in the last week. The precedent it sets for screwing with us in the future is terrible and disgusting, but it's rather abstract to get Joe Average player to get out his torch and pitchfork.

    Or maybe the point is "If we allow this with X champ (Cull), it could happen to Y champ when you get them".
    I find it hilarious that you think the players have the ability to allow anything. I'm certainly concerned about the direction they could take with these changes but we have no clue what's getting changed and to what extent yet so I'm not about to react to something that doesnt exist yet. At this point all we can do is wait to see what is changed and what they do with the fact that plenty of people have paid for and ranked these champs.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,193 ★★★★★
    There's a difference between voicing something and allowing things. They could have just as easily stuck to not giving Tickets. Seeing as how was a bug and not a change to her intended design, that could have been possible. They CHOSE to give people the option as a grace because people weren't aware it was a bug. To say people control them in some way is just ignorant to any effort they make.
    Changes aren't always going to be additive. That's just not how balancing works.
  • Mixalis said:

    You keep regurgitating the same ol thing. Look up actual court cases that happened regarding tos.

    Since 2005, when the Marvel v NCSoft case was filed, I've kept up as best I can all the court cases regarding issues surrounding online games. To date, the only victory by a player suing an online game operator for damages treating their online accounts or purchases as tangible property I'm aware of was a single case in China. No western jurisdiction to date has such a victory, and no one I'm aware of has been able to link to a precedent where a player won in that specific situation.

    If you have such a case, I would be interested in reading the decision. If you can't find a public link, you can give me a case number or a lexis citation search that leads to it, and I can find it from there.
  • Lvernon15Lvernon15 Posts: 11,596 ★★★★★

    Maybe Cull will turn out much better after being tuned if he can gain significant sustainability at the cost of some damage, but this uncertainty is not good at all for the game.

    A rank five with suicides at 10 charges could do ~450k+ sp3 damage. That's a lot, but he was unusable in most areas and damage was his only utility.

    At the highest levels, nobody used him in Alliance War or Alliance Quest, or in Labyrinth or many lanes in Act 6. Cull was very niche. No immunities, no sustainability, and only worked under a very specific set of conditions: can he parry opponents, inflict armor breaks, and proc his own buffs? No to a lot of that.

    Procing his own buffs (rout/thanos' favors): buffet, fisticuffs, pilfer, tranquility

    Being able to parry: limber, stun immunity, debuff immunity

    Inflicting armor breaks: armor break immunity, debuff immunity, nodes that shrug off debuffs faster

    Cull was working as intended until a few months later they decided he wasn't. How is this system any good for players?

    He can’t really do 450k sp3 now, that was when he was bugged, it’s closer to 250k now, and also it takes a high sig and a lot of effort to get there
  • Lvernon15 said:

    Maybe Cull will turn out much better after being tuned if he can gain significant sustainability at the cost of some damage, but this uncertainty is not good at all for the game.

    A rank five with suicides at 10 charges could do ~450k+ sp3 damage. That's a lot, but he was unusable in most areas and damage was his only utility.

    At the highest levels, nobody used him in Alliance War or Alliance Quest, or in Labyrinth or many lanes in Act 6. Cull was very niche. No immunities, no sustainability, and only worked under a very specific set of conditions: can he parry opponents, inflict armor breaks, and proc his own buffs? No to a lot of that.

    Procing his own buffs (rout/thanos' favors): buffet, fisticuffs, pilfer, tranquility

    Being able to parry: limber, stun immunity, debuff immunity

    Inflicting armor breaks: armor break immunity, debuff immunity, nodes that shrug off debuffs faster

    Cull was working as intended until a few months later they decided he wasn't. How is this system any good for players?

    He can’t really do 450k sp3 now, that was when he was bugged, it’s closer to 250k now, and also it takes a high sig and a lot of effort to get there
    Trust me, I had him.

    When he DIDNT have the crazy damage bug, a rank 5 at sig 1 at 10 missions with a lot of armor breaks (15+ at least), and suicides he did 450k+ damage easily. Remember that sig doesn't matter if were doing attacks during his rout buff. Sig only increases damage during the fury stage.

    Here's a rank 1 6* which is slightly weaker than a rank 5 doing 480k+

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlXCSG-T2ZA
  • TaZ_4178TaZ_4178 Posts: 506 ★★
    Well kabam... just popped my 5* awakening gem and got cosmic... unfortunately took cull to rank 3 maybe 1.5 months ago and would have given it to him but with all this I guess it will just sit on the shelf since I still don't have hype medusa cap mar. Movie etc...retirement continues lol 😥😴😴😴
  • r3dyr3dy Posts: 30

    I doubt anyone is even checking these posts anymore, but here's my 2 cents.
    1. Publish/Post your data. That's transparency. Cull Obsidian was bugged for a LONG TIME. Not keeping his charges. Then when you guys fixed that, the damage got wonky and huge. Are you mistakenly looking at that?
    2. I have R5 Sig 200 5* Cull Obsidian. I use him for a lot of events, but I have to pump him with potions early on. Even then, he doesn't auto win. Pretty sure he's the perfect champion that you guys want. You are incentivized to buy/use potions on him.
    3. There are tons of nodes that easily counter Cull Obsidian. Spite, Fisticuffs, Rage, Caltrops, Thorns, Invade, That one that increases power gain for armor breaks, Buffet......

    Really. Post your data so other people can look at it and double check your work. Summoners already double check the champions for bugs after release.

    What do you understand by data? because what you ask makes no sense, transparency? for what??

    Dude, I don't agree with what Kabam is doing, I think they really need to do something about the lack of testing, but ask for data? to what end? What are you going to do with that ??? check it?? come on..

    let's stop with this, it's ridiculous to even ask for that
  • BPanther888BPanther888 Posts: 14
    What about colossus and old man logan buffs, its been a long time since you announced it
  • AndTavAndTav Posts: 261
    Is it to laugh or to cry?


  • dot_dittodot_ditto Posts: 1,442 ★★★★
    AndTav said:

    Is it to laugh or to cry?


    I'll answer that in 3 months .. ;)
  • Mr_WiffMr_Wiff Posts: 244
    M_virk said:

    I think at this point all we can do is wait for the changes to be announced. KABAM is clearly not interesting in responding to us about this at the moment and since we dont know what the exact nerf will be, we can only assume things. Corporate white knights will always defend kabam so there is no point arguing with them.
    Let kabam announce the nerf and we'll see if kabam is scamming the players or actually balancing the game.
    If kabam truly wants to balance the game then cull will be rebalaced instead of being nerfed. If his damage is reduced a bit but his block prof. is increased then it's a fair trade and that would be a proper rebalance.
    But if they straight up nerf his damage then at that point kabam is just scamming people by selling solid champs and then changing them so people would be more enticed to spend more money on newer OP champs they release at that point in time.

    What I've been trying to say though I'm probably labelled a corporate white knight. When all I have been saying is wait for further announcements before you pick up the pitch fork. I certainly wouldn't stop ranking champs out of fear that is blowing this out of proportion.
This discussion has been closed.