The only facts we have are what Jax mentioned. We don't know if the pause in new relics are due to the player base being unhappy, whether they make money or not, or if they're just taking a look at the data instead of spending more time/energy/money on creating newer ones of the same (i.e. strikers only).
I'd like to think it's the last part, but who really knows other than the game team. If it really is to evaluate, then that's a great step forward. It makes a lot of sense considering the balancing program. Instead of releasing new relics, take a look at where they are now and make the necessary changes/adjustments to those before digging a bigger hole.
Ok pop quiz guys. A fictional company "Bakam" releases 5 new features in January.
Feature A Feature B Feature C Feature D Feature E
Nobody has any insight into how the features are performing, except the company itself. 6 months later, Bakam announces they are pausing and re-evaluating Feature D.
Which is the least successful feature this company has released in January?
For Feature A, vote Insightful below. For Feature B, vote Agree below. For Feature C, vote Like below. For Feature D, vote Disagree below. For Feature E, vote Awesome below.
Vote LOL if you're a troll who cant admit relics are a failure.
I don't mind relics. They're good for an extra stun or two, and are very helpful for stun immune situations.
The issue is I've yet to spend any resource to level up the relics i have, and for the purposes of an extra stun or two, don't really care about the star level. And, since they've removed spending for un-binding relics, other than a few nodes here and there, there's no successful monetization strategy that's stuck.
If this was an initiative from someone no longer here, most likely kiss it goodbye. If this is someone's hill to die on, there's a room full of devs scribbling stuff on a white board as we speak.
So you think something that isn't dying would be put off so they can figure out how to make them more appealing? The stuff that makes them money - champion acquisition being the number 1 thing - is that being put on hold to figure out how to make it more appealing? Do you see them turning off feature crystals or July 4th offers? There is no other way to look at this news other than Relics are a failure. If something is a success, you don't pause it to figure out why people aren't interested
So you think something that isn't dying would be put off so they can figure out how to make them more appealing?
Yes. See: Alliance Wars Season 43.
The stuff that makes them money - champion acquisition being the number 1 thing - is that being put on hold to figure out how to make it more appealing?
What data do you have to support this claim? How do you know champion acquisition is a bigger money maker than rank packages?
Do you see them turning off feature crystals or July 4th offers?
No. What does that have to do with anything?
There is no other way to look at this news other than Relics are a failure. If something is a success, you don't pause it to figure out why people aren't interested.
They never said they were stopping the cadence of relic releases because they are a failure. They simply said they are re-assessing where relics are going.
This post is chocked full of jumping to conclusions.
Oh, I didn't knew we can add color fonts. Wow
You don't know how much time i tried color fonts un the Game like i Saw lots of aliances with green descriptions and i never discovered how
Personally I really like relics. They're clearly far from the most game breaking facet in fights, but adding soft bonuses to increase champion kits is a cool idea and being able to extend combos with strikers is really great. I don't choose relic materials over crystal shards or rank up mats, because relics are by design meant to compliment champions and so are inherently less valuable than said champs. However, I certainly don't mind relic materials being added in with solo and alliance objective rewards. Every champ I reliably turn to for questing and the majority of my battledeck are equipped with them for pretty obvious reasons. Refusing to use them at all seems like an unpopular choice and really just puts you at a disadvantage in competitive modes against the majority of players who are using them, and to say they're an outright failure seems like a weird claim from someone who hasn't even tried them.
The clear negatives that I at least associated with relics are nodes like spiritualism that prove a detriment to players who do not use them, as well as frequent shortages of embers and alloys. In my mind, aspects like those are what Kabam would prioritize looking into while they pause any further development on new relics. The relics that exist already aren't going anywhere though.
And just as a side note, claiming that war is paused because of broken persistent placement, but ignoring the month-long pause to revitalize the game mode and introduce that system in the first place, seems pretty disingenuous. War was plenty successful and popular looking back to May and beyond, and yet the devs decided to revitalize it anyway.
You do not know how the majority of players feel about relics.
Kabam's actions prove me right though. Kabam knows how the majority feel. Relics aren't being used as much as kabam wants them to be. If they were, they wouldn't be paused for re-evaluation. Is that so hard to understand? What other successful parts of this game get put on hold?
Relics aren't being put on hold. New relics are being paused.
Technically, you're correct that any part of the game that is 100% successful in all respects wouldn't be paused in any way, because any part of the game that is 100% successful wouldn't be touched in any way at all. But many parts of the game that were not 100% successful but also not failures have had development or operation suspended while they re-evaluate it. It is just that such pauses are not always visible because only champions and relics have a continuous release schedule in that manner. If they pause development work on, say, alliance war, players don't notice because alliance war keeps on running. It is just that behind the scenes, the devs have decided to cease making changes to it until they reevaluate where they want to go. This has happened many times in the past for alliance war, alliance quest, and other parts of the game.
For good or for bad, games as a service are generally developed in an iterative lifecycle environment. Developers take their best shot, throw it at the wall, and see what sticks. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn't, and they are constantly taking a step back to see what parts stick and what parts don't. Sometimes that process is obvious: when it happens to something like Relics, there's a noticeable obvious pause in the release schedule that players will notice. But when it happens to game modes, it is less obviously noticeable. Except when players start to wonder to themselves "why hasn't alliance war been updated in forever?"
Also, Variants were generally seen as reasonably well received, but clearly they aren't popping out at the same cadence today as in the past. That's not automatically a reflection on them being a "failure" it is more likely there are only so many hours in the day and lots of other stuff being worked on. Summer of Pain appeared to be a success, enough to follow it up with Eternity of Pain. Where's EoP's successor? Does that mean EoP was a failure? Sometimes development pauses happen because the devs want to review and reevaluate, as in the case with Relics. But sometimes it is just because they decide to work on something else for a while and need the resources. Development pauses are not obvious signs of the success or failure of a game component without significant situational awareness, which most players don't possess.
You do not know how the majority of players feel about relics.
Kabam's actions prove me right though. Kabam knows how the majority feel. Relics aren't being used as much as kabam wants them to be. If they were, they wouldn't be paused for re-evaluation. Is that so hard to understand? What other successful parts of this game get put on hold?
That’s an infantile use of the word “prove”. Your critical thinking skills have a negative ability accuracy rate. Stop acting like you know things you do not.
So you think something that isn't dying would be put off so they can figure out how to make them more appealing? The stuff that makes them money - champion acquisition being the number 1 thing - is that being put on hold to figure out how to make it more appealing? Do you see them turning off feature crystals or July 4th offers? There is no other way to look at this news other than Relics are a failure. If something is a success, you don't pause it to figure out why people aren't interested
Back in the old days they did change stuff to make champion acquisitions more appealing, that's how we got signature abilities. Relics are still very much in an early (and unappealing) state, I'm glad they're taking time to work on making them better
Relics are not dying, and we are going to continue to develop content that rewards or might even require Relics in the future. They're also not being paused because "they're not performing well", regardless of what some very vocal people from a minority might be telling you.
Relics as they exist right now occupy design space that overlaps heavily with Champions, making them pretty time consuming to make. How do you create a Relic that benefits Champions abilities without adding new ones, and also make that affect a few Champions?
We want to take time to re-evaluate the design space that relics occupy, and see where they might land that would make them less challenging to design and not cut into the space that we've carved out for Champion abilities on their own.
Comments
My iron fist relic and vision relic, give really nice damage when they are summoned. Plus, the ant man relic is a bomb with Spider-ham like champs.
I'd like to think it's the last part, but who really knows other than the game team. If it really is to evaluate, then that's a great step forward. It makes a lot of sense considering the balancing program. Instead of releasing new relics, take a look at where they are now and make the necessary changes/adjustments to those before digging a bigger hole.
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The issue is I've yet to spend any resource to level up the relics i have, and for the purposes of an extra stun or two, don't really care about the star level. And, since they've removed spending for un-binding relics, other than a few nodes here and there, there's no successful monetization strategy that's stuck.
If this was an initiative from someone no longer here, most likely kiss it goodbye. If this is someone's hill to die on, there's a room full of devs scribbling stuff on a white board as we speak.
The clear negatives that I at least associated with relics are nodes like spiritualism that prove a detriment to players who do not use them, as well as frequent shortages of embers and alloys. In my mind, aspects like those are what Kabam would prioritize looking into while they pause any further development on new relics. The relics that exist already aren't going anywhere though.
And just as a side note, claiming that war is paused because of broken persistent placement, but ignoring the month-long pause to revitalize the game mode and introduce that system in the first place, seems pretty disingenuous. War was plenty successful and popular looking back to May and beyond, and yet the devs decided to revitalize it anyway.
Technically, you're correct that any part of the game that is 100% successful in all respects wouldn't be paused in any way, because any part of the game that is 100% successful wouldn't be touched in any way at all. But many parts of the game that were not 100% successful but also not failures have had development or operation suspended while they re-evaluate it. It is just that such pauses are not always visible because only champions and relics have a continuous release schedule in that manner. If they pause development work on, say, alliance war, players don't notice because alliance war keeps on running. It is just that behind the scenes, the devs have decided to cease making changes to it until they reevaluate where they want to go. This has happened many times in the past for alliance war, alliance quest, and other parts of the game.
For good or for bad, games as a service are generally developed in an iterative lifecycle environment. Developers take their best shot, throw it at the wall, and see what sticks. Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn't, and they are constantly taking a step back to see what parts stick and what parts don't. Sometimes that process is obvious: when it happens to something like Relics, there's a noticeable obvious pause in the release schedule that players will notice. But when it happens to game modes, it is less obviously noticeable. Except when players start to wonder to themselves "why hasn't alliance war been updated in forever?"
Also, Variants were generally seen as reasonably well received, but clearly they aren't popping out at the same cadence today as in the past. That's not automatically a reflection on them being a "failure" it is more likely there are only so many hours in the day and lots of other stuff being worked on. Summer of Pain appeared to be a success, enough to follow it up with Eternity of Pain. Where's EoP's successor? Does that mean EoP was a failure? Sometimes development pauses happen because the devs want to review and reevaluate, as in the case with Relics. But sometimes it is just because they decide to work on something else for a while and need the resources. Development pauses are not obvious signs of the success or failure of a game component without significant situational awareness, which most players don't possess.
Relics as they exist right now occupy design space that overlaps heavily with Champions, making them pretty time consuming to make. How do you create a Relic that benefits Champions abilities without adding new ones, and also make that affect a few Champions?
We want to take time to re-evaluate the design space that relics occupy, and see where they might land that would make them less challenging to design and not cut into the space that we've carved out for Champion abilities on their own.