RockerSlam Contest

Over all the contest was great. Points were easy to come by. The feud wasn't great for the obvious reasons.

Man, that was a rollercoaster. Again, glad I waited until the event was over to do this because holy mackerel, that compensation package.

• Rewards were all well and good, and I found myself getting into the bonus milestones even without spending much at all - of course, the events of the weekend may have played a part in things, but I'm certainly not going to complain. Shards weren't super abundant but that was presumably going to be remedied by the rankings, and was remedied in general with the compensation. In particular, I did want to hit upon the war score contest real quick - I found the ultimate strap at 25 mil and the ultimate plate at 40 mil was actually a perfect way of sorting out those high-end rewards, as ultimate straps are desirable and useful to most players on their own, but the plate itself is an especially nice incentive to those really wanting to burst out, but you don't feel incredibly put out if you can hit 25 mil but not 40 mil. Highly recommend reusing the model going forward.
• Putting the lion's share of points into the matches was nicely complemented by the fact that the majority were in the normal milestones and not the contest bonuses - shards and the like should be the main incentive there, and they were for the most part here. That being said, making the first tour be Beefcake only was a bit confusing because who would willingly level up Beefcake (even though yes, the hell mode boss was only 5SB, I do appreciate that), and the Sunday tours were kinda dire even with the contest superstars but I got them done in the end so whatever.
• I liked the war score bonuses for feud in particular - a large variety of tag teams with at least one member being obtainable (for the most part), and a decent number of points while not requiring you to slap a guy on your roster for 25 matches. I'd even say the requirements weren't too bad, with Riddle being somewhat common really saving that middle row from being unfair. Only having one set of stairs with it being free stairs was also really nice.
• I know there's a thread to talk about how feud went, but I'm only making one post this week, so it's all going here - I do appreciate that the update earlier in the week was looking to fix some of feud's long-standing issues, but this once again showed off the lack of QA going on with the game in a big way. Even outside of the outages (feud ran fine after it all got resolved from what I played), I feel like matchmaking was particularly borked and I found myself staring down the barrel of a good number of all-5SG rosters when I specifically tune my crew to avoid such teams, and simultaneously I was paired up against guys who wouldn't stand a chance against my guys. That being said, the response exceeded my expectations, and in particular I did like that the team did properly tell us that they screwed up and they would make good on it - it was really refreshing to hear after a few months of incidents like this. The really good compensation rewards (500 Warrior and Shawn shards?!) did help a lot, though.
• The 'Featured is shards or the poster' format is where hope goes to die. That's all I gotta say about that.

• Leaderboard Changes - This was a horrible change for grinders and a good change for big spenders. Having analyzed the final leaderboard, only 5 players could earn the poster from Warscore points. The other 45 places were all decided by loot coins. Unless you finished Top 3 in warscore, you would end up right on the edge of the top 50. If this format returns for future events, we need a better balance of rewards. I'd suggest that each rank (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th-10th, and 11th to 20th) should receive an additional 500,000 solo points compared to the rewards for this contest.
• Solo Event - The actual contest here was very good. Fun tours which got players around the 8m mark for free. Although the changes to the guaranteed poster could have been better implemented, hitting additional bonus milestones through the Warscore event was a very nice change. Of course this isn't possible for a large percentage of players, but it is an interesting change to promote more competitive gameplay and chasing rank.
• Steps - I feel like this was a once-off but it was nice to see a feud without steps. As has been covered multiple times, having a powerful roster with all the gears, straps, medals, trainers, coaches, etc. is already enough of a competitive edge, so playing straight up without a scoring and gem boost from spending is how feuds should work.
• Shawn - Maybe out of the team's hands but this really should have been a Legend's era release.
• Technical issues - No need to dwell on this one too much, but the feud should have been shut down when the extent of the issues was realized, and it certainly should not have been extended. The rewards could have been redistributed in a future event. Continuing the feud in its completely broken state was really unnecessary and probably the worst overall experience I've had in 5 years of the game.
• Compensation - Very generous. The top-leaderboard players got the short end of the stick on this one, but for the community overall this was an excellent package and I think quite fair given the issues.

Overall, I hope this weekend serves as a wake-up call and changes are made off the back of this. Events are repeatedly being released with major errors or completely broken. "Nobody is working" is still an astonishing response to me and I hope we never hear that again. Contrary to belief, most of us don't want to complain; we just want to enjoy a properly functioning game.

Good : The sheer amount of bonus points you could earn in the faction feud was AMAZING! It shaved tons of time depending on what milestone you want to end up, so I definitely think this should be carried to the "regular" faction feud every month.

I really liked the ultimate strap and plate as a reward for the respective 25m and 40m reward, that was awesome and really worth grinding for.

Bad : I agree with IRL and others about the milestone rewards being changed from a guaranteed card to incorporating spenders. There should be a grind portion, and a spend portion so that both sides are happy. I'm never in the top 20 so it's a moot point for me, but I got 51st in the warscore competition and still ended up 125 shards short on Shawn even after the compensation package was done.

Last but certainly not least.... The Rockers version of Shawn Michaels is a legend era, there's no way he was New Gen.