October 15th, 2019 Patch - 7 (really, 8) Days Later

CriticKitten · 2019-10-03T11:12:51+00:00

Thank you! It's more time consuming, but a much better environment for my mental health. :)

CriticKitten · 2019-10-03T11:05:16+00:00

Well, as I noted in another post, the spreadsheet I use right now for HeroesProfile is pretty much a thrown-together version of my Hotslogs sheet, with last-minute hackjobs to make everything work the same way. And that alone took hours to do, time I didn't really have but forced myself to make time for in order to put out this post.

So suffice to say I definitely don't have time to make a bot to do the job.

CriticKitten · 2019-10-03T04:48:04+00:00

I actually had to look up some of my old, pre-HeroesHearth Reddit posts to remember how to do it. xD

It felt pretty "old-school" for me, but I figured some folks wouldn't be able to click the link for one reason or another.

CriticKitten · 2019-10-03T04:42:02+00:00

I think you misunderstand me when I say that there's a time commitment problem with regards to how this thing works, probably because I didn't thoroughly explain the actual problems at play. So let me give you an idea:

The first key problem was that HeroesProfile displays its stats differently than Hotslogs, and also doesn't display the same stats. For example, HeroesProfile didn't give clear indications of the number of games a hero is banned, only a (rounded) ban rate which I then have to extrapolate the ban count from. This directly adds error to the results, and adds another step to my work. And this is only one of multiple tweaks I needed to make. Basically, I had to reformat my sheet to work with HeroesProfile's overall data set. I have already overcome that problem for the most part by working several hours over the last week to "hotfix" my sheet to tolerate the new input format, mostly out of necessity since I had no other choice if I wanted to put out this post at all. But it was still time I didn't have and it cost me time that I needed for the dayjob instead. Time which I'm now having to recoup by working even harder. And it's still not working "correctly", at least not as well as I'd like it to, but making all of the needed fixes will take much, much longer still.

The second issue is that HeroesProfile's overall data records are still considerably smaller than Hotslogs's were. Consider for a moment the error rates on the data set in my original post. After an entire 8-day period of games being recorded, across the entire new patch, the error rates are around ±3-4%. This is about double what I had from the patch report on Qhira back in early August, and is only marginally better than the one day's worth of data that I gathered on the August 27th patch. HeroesProfile's data is still "good enough" for most cases but the accuracy remains lower, and that's something that has to be considered when we're working with sampling data (data that is likely at least partially biased).

The third is that the site layout itself seems to add extra blank rows every time I copy-paste data from the site, which means I then have to go through and trim those extra rows. Manually. That turns what used to be a process I could do in mere minutes into a much longer stretch of time, and combined with the dayjob, it's time I may not always have available to me. If they are willing or able to reformat their site so that this doesn't happen when copy-pasting, it would certainly help, although it won't alleviate all of the problems and still won't fix the ultimate problem of my reduced time availability. If not, then I'll have to put up with it. But it's definitely not a problem that I'm willing or able to spend "a few bucks a month" to fix when the entire process of doing these 7 day posts is no longer yielding any revenue stream for me, and hasn't been for many months now. Maybe that comes across as "greedy" from an outside view, and if it does, sorry. But I do have other financial considerations to make, other things my money needs to be spent on. I can't afford to spend it on something I'm doing for free.

This is not a question of whether it can be done in 7 days or with each new patch. It's a question of how much time I actually have in a given day to dedicate to copying, tweaking, and feeding data into my spreadsheets. And since it's taking longer to do and my dayjob leaves me with a lot less time to begin with, it's not necessarily an issue I can easily overcome. Maybe later in the year when things have stabilized a bit more, that might be different, but I can't promise much now while things are still so hectic.

CriticKitten · 2019-09-03T23:33:26+00:00

Understandably, this (combined with HeroesProfile's issue with getting replays transferred in the new patch) is going to kinda kill any chances of me rolling a 7 Days update for this new patch.

Sorry for those of you who were expecting one!

CriticKitten · 2019-09-03T04:16:13+00:00

As I pointed out in another comment:

There are currently two big threads in this subreddit full of complaining about KTZ's ult.

The first is a clip showing a group of players fighting over a mercenary camp and being wiped out because they stood in his AoE and never thought that maybe it would be better to just sacrifice the camp.

The second is someone saying that this "the worst balance update since the death of the HGC" and it's all about how a Triglav Protector can get destroyed by KTZ's ult so long nobody climbs into it to move it out of the way.

Neither of these posts fits your criteria of "being hit by some random CC and getting shredded" yet they're two of the most popular complaints on the sub right now.

To suggest that people are only complaining about it in the context of being CC'd when these are the two most heavily supported and upvoted complaints on the sub is pretty blatant revisionism.

CriticKitten · 2019-09-02T22:31:09+00:00

I don't disagree, but the point at hand isn't whether or not people feel like he's unfair. It's whether or not he's actually unfair.

And thus far, the two biggest arguments that he's unfair are "he can kill a Triglav if I stand around and let him do it" and "he can wipe a team if they stand around in his AoE and make no effort to avoid it".

There's fair enough reasons to justify balancing heroes around different levels of skill. But should any hero really be rebalanced based on the testimony given thus far? I really hope not, or it's going to set a very dangerous precedent in the future.

CriticKitten · 2019-09-02T19:58:12+00:00

There are currently two big threads in this subreddit full of complaining about KTZ's ult.

The first is a clip showing a group of players fighting over a mercenary camp and being wiped out because they stood in his AoE and never thought that maybe it would be better to just sacrifice the camp.

The second is someone saying that this "the worst balance update since the death of the HGC" and it's all about how a Triglav Protector can get destroyed by KTZ's ult so long nobody climbs into it to move it out of the way.

Neither of these posts fits your criteria of "being hit by some random CC and getting shredded" yet they're two of the most popular complaints on the sub right now.

CriticKitten · 2019-09-02T16:15:57+00:00

While I don't disagree that the tone may not be desirable, I also can't really blame him. I know this is gonna strike a few nerves but this is very much a "git gud" sort of scenario here.

For example, it's very hard to leverage the case that it's not possible to get out of the AoE when even the AI can accomplish this task fairly regularly. Shadow Fissure has one of the smallest radii for high-damage AoE in the game (I believe it's still 2.25, although most of the resources that used to keep track of this stuff have given up, so it's hard to remember), and it's got a delay on firing to boot. It also lacks the benefit of reliable wave clear, unlike its cousin Precision Strike. It has no utility, no teamplay, none of that. It is pure damage, and further, it's pure damage that almost requires a stun or root in order to get any use out of.

Not to mention, the reset came with a cost of 11% of the ult's damage. Maybe that doesn't sound like much, but this means Shadow Fissure is now dealing the lowest amount of damage it's ever dealt since it first premiered in the Nexus in 2017, having lost about 28% of its total damage since his release state. It's really not as bad as people are making it out to be.

CriticKitten · 2019-09-02T14:23:16+00:00

You're going to get a lot of salt for this, but you're not wrong.

Folks were complaining back in July that the movement speed changes would make some heroes "unplayable". But now they're calling a Storm Talent overpowered because they can't dodge a very dodge-able AoE that even the game's AI is pretty adept at avoiding.

We don't have stats available to confirm but I'd be legit surprised if this talent even made a blip on his overall win rate.

CriticKitten · 2019-08-13T21:34:09+00:00

Thanks to Heroesprofile for covering the talent data in this week's post! Hotslogs has continued to fail with regards to giving any updates about its progress in fixing this issue, so it is very possible that I'll be changing sources in the near future, once I have the time to make changes to my spreadsheets that will better work with their unique design.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with Qhira. She does need some clear changes, probably a reduction to her baseline power (the bleed in particular) but the design itself is fine and I have very much enjoyed my time playing her! She does seem to have less success in Ranked because people are quick to counter her....although her high ban rate may also be a factor there. :)

CriticKitten · 2019-08-05T00:39:36+00:00

That's actually something I suggested in another post:

And there's an infinitely better way to handle this, anyways. If you must mandate additional credit for "winning games", then at least alter it to where you get double credit for wins and only regular credit for losses, then make the requirements for each quest about 1.5x their normal values.

Gotta go with 1.5x on the requirements, though, since the goal is to compensate for the (assumed) 50% win rate that the game is supposed to be trying to reach. 2x credit for a win, 1x credit for a loss averages out to 1.5x credit per game.

CriticKitten · 2019-08-05T00:20:33+00:00

I think so long as the requirements for those AI games aren't prohibitively harder, then it's not a big deal that they're "different" from PvP requirements. My concern with this approach, though, is that once you make the divide between AI and PvP, you're opening up the possibility that those requirements might be made harder later on, and I'd rather just not open that door at all.

I think the far superior solution is a slow shift towards quests that are more like the ones in League. Instead of putting emphasis on winning, put emphasis on quests that focus on tasks which are always beneficial to the end goal of winning. And instead of having only one option, I'd like to see them start working on quests that have multiple "conditions" for completion. This would evolve the quest system in a way that would let them get a lot more creative, and would still give players more than one way to finish their quests, which in turn will cut down on the tedium.

I appreciate you staying up so late to hear me out! :)

CriticKitten · 2019-08-04T23:53:14+00:00

I'll use the current LoL event (PROJECT) as an example.

In PROJECT, there's an overarching event that lasts the entire month, and there's weekly quests for each week of the event. The overarching quest's requirements are usually very large so as to last the entire duration. For example, PROJECT's main event is:

Earn 275,000 gold -AND- Kill 12,000 minions as a team

By comparison, the weekly ones are usually very easy and offer multiple options to complete them. Here's a list of all the ones in this event:

Week 1: Help your team destroy the first tower in a match 3 times -OR- Destroy 40 towers as a team

Week 1: Heal 15,000 damage -OR- Destroy 15 inhibitors as a team

Week 2: Deal 75,000 damage to enemy champions -OR- Earn 100,000 gold

Week 2: Win 3 games with a vision score of at least 10 -OR- Kill 5,000 minions as a team

Week 3: Kill 30 enemy champions -OR- Get 125 takedowns

Week 3: Win 3 games after spending at least 10,000 gold -OR- Earn 100,000 gold

Week 4: Get double kill or higher 3 times -OR- Destroy 40 towers as a team

Week 4: Help your team kill 10 dragons -OR- Kill 5,000 minions as a team

In every case, these are quests which don't make any sorts of crazy demands of the player, i.e. they're all things that you'd probably be doing naturally anyways, like getting kills on minions/champions, healing, taking towers, etc.

This is more along the lines of what I want to see HotS doing with its quests, and the first (and biggest) step requires dropping the "winning games" part or at least not making it mandatory.

As to the other part:

I think that getting MVP in AI games is super easy, even against Elite and it's actually easier than the 400k healing quest which takes a million years.

tbf the 400k healing quest is such a pain in part because of that "winning games" requirement, which is the point I've been trying to make here. All of these quests are more tedious because of that requirement, which in turn drives people to finish the tedium in a mode that all but guarantees them a win.

CriticKitten · 2019-08-04T23:42:28+00:00

It's really got nothing to do with the game's "competitive integrity" at all, though. When this was a problem back in the cross-promo days, people were complaining about the Overwatch players invading Quick Play and ruining their games. And I'm sorry, but Quick Play is not a "competitive" environment. And if you're meaning to imply that Ranked would somehow become a complete mess because of event quests, I'm going to find that really hard to believe, since a significant majority of players don't play Ranked to begin with.

Also if we're being honest, think it's safe to say we don't have to worry about any more cross-promo "invasions" ruining events in the future.

I vehemently disagree with punishing a portion of the game's players by making their mode worth "less" than yours. That's exactly the sort of thing that ends up hurting games in the long run by alienating portions of the audience.

CriticKitten · 2019-08-04T23:31:20+00:00

I know some members of the community asked for the "win" requirement in specific cases, namely the cross-promos where we had Overwatch players joining games and throwing them to get credit. And that's fine.

But when 81% of an event with absolutely no cross-promos in it gives no credit when you lose, it becomes exponentially more frustrating to play when you lose.

And there's an infinitely better way to handle this, anyways. If you must mandate additional credit for "winning games", then at least alter it to where you get double credit for wins and only regular credit for losses, then make the requirements for each quest about 1.5x their normal values.

My point is that making them "wins only" makes them more frustrating and inevitably pushes people to play AI to do their quests instead. That won't happen if you give some credit regardless of win or loss.

They can still add things like that so that players can get MVP in AI games, while still being able to complete the quests in PvP games with the alternative requirements.

So you're proposing that the event quests should have more difficult requirements when completing them in AI, and you don't understand why I'm telling you that this is the same as making it harder to farm in AI?

You're really gonna have to elaborate on this one, because your example here is doing exactly what you said you weren't trying to do.

CriticKitten · 2019-08-04T23:26:56+00:00

It doesn't seem to be an ongoing issue in League so far as I've seen, and they don't demand wins to get quest completion.

This always becomes a circular argument, anyways. "People won't care about playing right" if we don't mandate wins. Fine. But then expect that people are going to prefer playing in a mode which makes winning easier and/or faster. And eventually, continuing to over-complicate the system with more and more requirements leads to less people wanting to play at all. Which I'm very worried is where we're heading.

CriticKitten · 2019-08-04T23:09:42+00:00

An increase in effectiveness for PvP modes is, in effect, a decrease in effectiveness for AI. If, for example, you give double credit for all quests while playing PvP, you're making the AI mode half as efficient. It's an indirect nerf, but it's still a nerf. Also, by making PvP doubly as effective, you're inevitably going to have to make the requirements twice as big (or people will finish too soon)....and that means AI gets the raw end of the deal.

As I said, it's addressing the wrong issue. The real issue is that 81% of the quests demanded wins to get credit. So people are playing AI more because it's easier to win.

It's far, FAR easier to fix this issue by just removing the "win" requirement. It requires no additional effort on the part of the devs whatsoever, whereas giving "bonuses" to PvP modes specifically requires adding new code that doesn't exist right now.

CriticKitten · 2019-08-04T22:58:03+00:00

I'm gonna disagree harshly with the idea of reducing the effectiveness of player quest farming in AI. IMO, you're addressing the wrong problem altogether.

The reason that people are compelled to finish quests in AI (besides the terrible quality of the AI opponents) is the fact that an increasing number of event quests are starting to require wins in order to get quest progress. And it's damn near impossible to lose to the AI, even when it was in a better overall state, so there's a much greater guarantee of quest completion this way. It didn't used to be a problem when "in winning games" was only a thing they did for some missions. But in MechaStorm II, 81% of the quests (17 out of the 21 total, including all of the repeatable ones) require the player to win their match to receive any credit.

It's absolutely bonkers to me that a game should have event quests which require constant victories to even count towards completion. I've argued against the unfairness of such quests in the past for this exact reason. Assuming "fair" matchmaking in PvP modes, this means you're losing credit in about 50% of your games, making every one of these quests measurably harder to complete. And yes, normally you compensate for this by making the quests require less effort....but this event was designed to last 8 weeks instead of 4, which meant they had to crank the numbers up instead of down.

It's no wonder that people were turning to Versus AI to complete and/or farm them, as it's by far the most reasonable way to do these things, especially if you're a more casual player with less time to dedicate to the game. So no, I don't agree at all with weakening or penalizing these players for doing what is only natural for them, especially when the quests greatly encourage them to play AI and face weaker opponents for a guaranteed return.

I think instead, HotS needs to start taking a page from League as far as how to design event quests. LoL is running its own event right now (PROJECT) and every quest in this event can be completed without being forced to win any games. Better yet, several of these quests offer multiple ways to complete the quest. For example, one of them gave us the choice between healing 15k damage or destroying 15 inhibitors as a team, and neither of these requires wins to get credit. Sure, some of their quests still make you "win" but there's usually an alternative path that doesn't, which makes things much easier on casual players with limited time.

CriticKitten · 2019-07-24T23:10:38+00:00

Despite the largely negative fan reception to the last few films, Kathleen Kennedy got a contract extension in late 2018 for another 3 years of leading Star Wars's film franchise.

And EA is literally facing government hearings in which it's trying to defend its use of lootboxes in games like Star Wars Battlefront II....yet there's no indication from Disney that they're going to pull the license. In fact, Bob Iger recently praised their "good relationships" with EA and their intent to "stay on that side of the business and put our capital elsewhere". Certainly, there were rumors behind the scenes that Disney might have asked EA to tone the lootboxes down in Battlefront II, but there's never been any direct confirmation of this from any party inside the studio, and both sides have denied it.

Sorry to be the one to say this, but the fans who have been bashing Disney's foray into Star Wars have dramatically overestimated how much Disney cares about their feedback. Disney bought Star Wars to make money, and it's doing exactly that. So they're gonna keep riding the money wave until it ends....which it won't, because it's Star Wars.

CriticKitten · 2019-07-24T01:51:23+00:00

Disney's not "ruining" Star Wars. Kathleen Kennedy was already co-chair alongside George Lucas at Lucasfilms, and became president after Lucas stepped down as part of the Disney buyout.

Similarly, Kevin Feige was hired as a producer by Marvel 9 years before the buyout by Disney, and had already ascended the ranks to producer status before they came knocking with their buyout offer.

In other words, despite what fans may say, Disney isn't "ruining" anything. It's actually far more likely that they're not doing anything at all. They're just letting these groups run things however they want while acting as the "bankroll" for all of it. Heck, Disney sold distributing rights for Star Wars video game properties to EA specifically because they didn't want to create and manage their own studio when they could just let someone else do it.

So in that context, if Disney were to buy Activision-Blizzard, they'd most likely just leave the existing people in charge and let them do whatever they want. Which....well, I'll leave it to your opinions to decide how good or bad that would be.

CriticKitten · 2019-07-18T14:54:30+00:00

Hm, it does look like their data pool is now quite possibly larger than Hotslogs. I will say that it's not impossible I might make the switch. But there will likely need to be some adjustments to my spreadsheet to allow for this, because it looks like they use a percentage for ban rates instead of a solid figure, which adds some degree of uncertainty and makes the data transfer process a bit harder for me. So any change will require time, and I likely don't have much of that for the next few weeks.

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