Subdue or Sumbit Contest

What was asked of us as players:

• Tours - mostly reasonable contest superstar requirements, and no nodes that stood out as overly ridiculous. Challenge tours definitely good for a change of pace.
• Feud - new perks lower damage output but kickout steps, which were good for kicking out of those gaudy numbers in previous feuds, have stuck around and effectively neuter anybody trying to go a more defensive route with double armor and/or protect gem setups.
• Faction Contest - an excessive amount of SmackDown talent up to even max the event, let alone try to compete in leaderboards for Shayna shards.
• Shop offers - the return of paid steps to once again encourage big spenders to destabilize feud leaderboards that are already under intense scrutiny.

What we as players received in return:

• Subdue or Submit cases: Arguably one of the most pathetic rewards I've seen in quite some time. A good roll from these bags would only give you a 3-star bronze poster, and likely of a character that was never good before the feud perks changed and certainly wouldn't be now. But the common rolls resulted in, at most, 20 shards for very outdated characters. There wasn't even a chance to hit a jackpot for large amounts of useless shards that could be thrown into the converter like previous rewards of this nature. A waste of finger dexterity to open the ones that landed in our inventory.
• One of the worst warscore competition milestone tracks I've seen. It's one thing to take the competition for the poster in leaderboards out of the equation, but the goal for reaching 40 million was one of the least appealing things I've seen in some time. Even if I didn't have the Tech Shayna poster, I'm not sure that I would have pushed for 40 million anyway. No semi-rare plate, not even 10 shards for a recent release, just all Shayna(s) or nothing. What's going on here?
• Solo contest and faction contests that are equally empty. I guess there are some high-spending, high-warscore players that are going to get the new Shayna. But other than that it's a decent amount of econ and not much else, maybe 200-250 shards at most spread out among a variety of posters that this game has left in the dust. Only five factions maxed the faction contest, and other than the leaderboard competition, they really didn't get jack. And what good are the extra shards that we compete for if you decide to just randomly throw in a very old card in the warscore competition instead of previous events where shards like Becky GOAT and King Woods have been available?

What can change?

• Make the warscore chase mean something. You've got the new perks that slow down people from abusing coding in the game with super subs - now remove the paid steps, put the poster back in the leaderboard, and watch commitment to playing your game grow. I could see an argument that maybe there will always be a subset of players that will grind no matter what, but I would hope that a good development team would try to develop for more than an audience of 100-200 players and think bigger.
• For players that don't chase, reward their loyal play to 40 million with a variety of meaningful rewards. Try to establish a rotation in the way that the scrimmage shard shop for showdown rotated throughout the months recently - maybe each warscore competition will have a designated "new-ish" reward, a designated "legacy" reward, and honestly, just roll a die and throw a plate in there. More people will play if they feel like it's worth their time. It's really simple. And if you don't like putting up shards for newer cards? There's a million currencies you could churn out instead. Boss breaker currency? Maybe a 6-star bronze token? Heck, even a jackpot of C/B-tier shards at 40 million would at least be something.
• Understand your own tier system and tweak rewards accordingly. If Beth Phoenix, a B-tier, is in the rewards, I should reasonably expect to get more than 20 shards of her at a time from these Subdue or Submit cases. Those 20 shards translate to less than a half shard toward a six-star evolve. And even the A-tier shards that we were getting from those cases didn't add up to more than a shard at a time in most cases.

The tour requirements weren't bad.

How about you let me grind for a 1* card I don't have in the last milestone of the warscore competition? Make it the rarest card from the MLC from 1 year previous.

I feel that Scopely greed is more important the fun factor for the players. 1st of all you changed the perk structure this month and superstars who dominate last month couldn't measure up this fued. Unless you have certain superstars with low charge moves with high damage you're not going to be competitive.

I had double MP trainers equipped and level 7 defensive perks, and yet I was facing opponents who were turn 1, despite my perks which didn't appear working due to the fact everyone that I faced had all their moves charged, and if not their extra turn strap fired off until their moves were charged and boom match over. The gem board ALWAYS favored my opponent, I never had a match that would charge my moves all the matches on the board were for the opponent if I had red and purple moves equipped the matches on the board were green & blue or if I a match that would charge my moves a 5 match would fall in place for the opponent filling there moves and game over. It's incredibly frustrating.

Pulling a featured poster is impossible, I watched a live stream of someone doing a 40 pull and the best they got was 5 star bronze fuse of a superstar who's been in game for 2 years and obsolete by today's standards and 10 shards of the debut character. Really makes you want to spend huh?

It's funny how many top superstars I faced, and supposedly rare, for example since I only have like 700 Liv Morgan shards, and facing her being consistently at disadvantage with poor boards and low charge moves my health was constantly erased before I could even get a move off.

Also, superstars don't scale well at all a top superstar in the 5 star silver era didn't scale to 5 star gold and isn't a top poster anymore. For example Bianca Belair & DX Army Chyna aren't exactly top tier anymore either the damage isn't high enough or the moves are too high charge to be able to be effective.

Also the milestone rewards haven't scaled since the early days of the game. 10 of any color TP is barely worth any effort. 10 TP is helpful for a 1 star poster, we're in the 6 star era now. We need 1000 tp to max a move at 5 star gold. So 3000 to max the primary color moves, and 2000 for each of the other 2 color moves. 10 TP is a long way from 2000 to 3000 necessary to max the moves to go to 6 stars. And literally every shard bag I have received dropped shards to characters I already have but not worthy of going to 6 stars and with the stupid 4000 shard requirement to go 6 stars and garbage conversation rate of any thing less than A Tier. Ugh.

Having a reskin of Shayna is OK, though another Women's Modern Striker does not seem to be what is missing in the Women's lineup. For example, there are very few solid Powerhouse Modern Women talent by comparison. Her addition highlights the gaps more than fills a roster need.

Inconsistencies in messaging and event planning is a big miss. It would be one thing if things aren't solid when the blog releases, its another to have things like Steps not being available highlighted as a key competition point, only to have them for sale a few hours later. That is at best, poor communication between teams, and at worse a blind attempt at additional monetization. This is one of those situations where less would have been more - don't convey gameplay relevant changes until they are solid. The change away from feud steps to boss coins is another unneeded change that doesnt seem to fit a goal or purpose.

The tours and event competitions were solid and accessible, however the rewards are lackluster and barely make the time investment worthwhile. Then the faction event ends earlier than expected, while the coin up event begins later than expected. This removed our ability to maximize the spend of IGC.

Feud Event: Overall, the game seemed more stable with less connection or gameplay issues, thats great. Nothing worse than a bad gameplay experience. That said, the Warscore competition felt very tedious with minimal rewards both for the milestones and leaderboards. Then the rewards earned are random enough that they arent useful, so why bother?

IMHO

This weekend feud was trash......Here's some of my takeaways.

Roster Rows - The rows were hard to fill for non whales. Every row had some character that is heavily sought after. The bottom row having play or pain was ridiculous. That lead to people putting 50k feud teams with 2 5sg and 2 trash (4sb etc...). So if you have decent 5ss and you load up your team, you ended up with ~50K talent. Since Scopeley's feud matching algorithm must not do any deep analysis on match making (comparing stars inside the talent level) it was super unbalanced leaving me sometimes sitting for 10 minutes cause of the one 5sg I couldn't take out with poor Carmella (she was a work horse this weekend.....sooooo slllloooowwwww now) . With only getting 4 opponents and then having to sit for 10 minutes killed my score (among other things see below).

Perks - I don't know about any cheating or exploits so I don't know why TF they had to put us back in the damn stone age. I definitely will not balance my perks next time. I thought level 5 on both sides (offense and defense) would be a good strategy, I find that was detrimental. I was left with my usual turn 1s into turn 2 (because of the MP boost not being another +1) but if the opponent had higher offensive perks they hit their moves turn one. That caused me to burn props.....which are outrageous to get now anyway. I should have just pumped my offense side way up for this feud and disregarded the defensive perks.

Stairs - How in the hell was the stairs supposed to work???? I got one stair case from the portal. I was thinking Saturday night that my score was going up to slow to hit the higher milestones. Then, I saw the offer on the portal for 24.99 which had 2 stairs!!!! In the game, in the perks section the next level with the stairs was 1 stair. I figured if they were selling the stairs in a pair of two and they gave away one in the portal for free then the two steps I bought should take me two levels higher.....WRONG!!! Now I have an extra stair case in my inventory that I wasn't able to use!!! Should I ask for a refund of my purchase Scopely?????

Bonus and Score - I think I can say for sure this was the worst feud in terms of score. In the last 5 feuds I have hit 40+ million WAR SCORE (not contest score) the raw score in the feud faction rankings. That easily throws you into the last contest milestone.......I hit 14 million and was exhausted. I know I need to work on my feud promoters now for sure, because the one time win bonus is not cutting it. If you have every class feud promoter maxed you basically are getting the bonus back.

Scopely, I think you missed the head of the nail on this one, in fact, you aint even working on the right house!!! This needs some human eyes and some people at scopely to actually play the game and see why this is trash!

This feud was not as good as the last ones. At first, changing the perks was a step in the wrong direction. Especially for players who don't have the top superstars or the top belts, it just takes very long to win a match. So playing is less fun, feuds were the highlight in the past, this one was boring.

Tours were fair, as always depending if you have the bonus characters. Only highlight this weekend was winning enough fights to advance to level 19.

Slog of an event. Less than average enjoyment for me.

Debut character: card art and model much better than deformed Cody model, good job kudos for that! Personally, I only see her useful in tours, pvp elements, only if you have bells and whistles attached. (Side note: why introduce submission and special gem person when the feud perks are gutted? I welcome a change in feud perks but this feels intentional and not in a good way).

Solo contest: tours had good points in them, the css were fine. I would like to see points come from the warscore, not the leaderboard.

Faction contest: straightforward, but a bit restrictive. Smackdown requirements and you don't unlock Otis out of his tokens? Pretty scummy of you.

Warscore competition: that whole portion was 80% misinformation. Wrong warscore, and added steps.

Loot: it's a debut loot I don't expect to see much change.

Rewards: underwhelming, is an understatement. The slog to get to get to poor bags with minimal shards and resources was also scummy. I'd like to see a prizewall for individualised rewards for your effort.

3/10.

This event and the overall changes surrounding it would make this one of the worst events in recent memory unfortunately.

The only good thing that I can say about the event was that there was plenty of potential bonus points available in the warscore competition.

The majority of the feedback I have is about all the negatives of the event itself

1) I fully understand the blog is subject to change and that changes do happen. However this is happening more and more frequently and that is not good business. If changes are made to the blog the least that can be done is a tweet to check out the updated blog or an in game message to players about the updated changes. Communication goes a long was to making the players understand.

2) Again with this event listing the max faction reward shards under the free shard section is extremely disingenuous as most people who play the game will likely end in the 100-200 range most of the time. This is a massive difference when attempting to chase a card. I am not against having shards in the leaderboard but i am fully against displaying it in a way that does not make people feel like they are likely to get alot more shards then they will would be appreciated.

3) The available free shards appears to be shrinking more and more with each passing event. Most people, even if they had all the bonus characters and were in a lower level faction would be looking at like 1100 shards from this event. That in no way encourages anyone to pull the loot for a shard recruit. That is a ridiculously steep hill to climb. The main goal should be to balance keeping lower level players wanting to do pulls with keeping those who spend alot happy. It appears that adding in the 6s token to the tour will accomplish the later but currently nothing is motivating the former.

4) Paid shards and loot shards are getting to also be less and less with each passing event. Even with an event max, all possible bonuses and an event max you would still be looking at like 1680 shards. This feels very low historically compared to previous events in the past. Shards also seem to be harder and harder to come by in pulls as well. Even with them seemingly featured inside of every single tier on the loot they appear to come in 5-10 at most and many 40 pulls not even getting a single shard. Guaranteed shards are a motivation to pull and feel like you are accomplishing something with a pull. Spending a hundred bucks and getting 5 shards does not make anyone want to pull the loot again.

5) Solo contest maxes are costing more and more with each passing event. I can see the attempt to make it look like tours/etc are getting people a huge portion of the needed points. See 8m out of 10m this event. This however ignores that with, say, 100th in the warscore comp you would still need close to 500 pulls to max the event. This combined with the limited amount of shards you get from maxing make this feel punishing and extremely unfair.

6) The warscore competition did not feel like it had much value for the amount of the work needed to get to 40m and the leaderboard rewards did not feel useful as well. After needing more time to complete due to issues that will be listed later the rewards were not equal to the effort needed. The ultimate straps and plates in general feel like an afterthought in the game with how long they have been in the game and how we only have defensive plates that dont work on pins basically. This means those rewards are basically useless in their curent state. Having to spend like 6-8 hours to max this event have have basically no previous chase shards and a fairly limited amount of this chase do not make people want to continue to grind. Even the leaderboard rewards are minimal after you get into the 100th place area. What value is there in 120k points when you need 2m more to max. The difference between 100th and like 400th was only like 40,000 points and that is basically meaningless for getting even another solo milestone. In general feeling like the effort put forth gaining decent rewards will encourage people to play and engage more and this can cause people to spend more/etc.

7) Faction rewards outside of the leaderboard were paltry. This is mostly in reference to the chests that were in the tours and the milestones. These might have been the worst chests we have ever had. We use to be able to get 25-50 shards for semi recent chases. These cases providing next to nothing for shards for very old characters and at best 3s posters is just bad. Players will always look at previous events for what they can get and this just looks horrible in comparison to almost any previous event

8) Feud perk changes. I fully understand wanting to get people away from the certain sub meta that has developed but in doing so you destroyed 99% of other possible builds. Starting with the subs though, you basically took them from being t1 wins to being extremely limited in use. Which if that was the goal is fine but at the same time you released a mlc that uses 3 subs and literally the weekend chase was called the submission magician. These ideas literally do not match with each other. Outside of destroying subs you also managed to greatly reduce almost every possible build for almost everyone else. First weakening multiply gem strength is a huge hit to raw gem damage when attempting to pin 6s. This may be fine on this feud since most dont have 6s women but come mens feud thats a huge difference. Next removing all gem creation and reverting it back to colored gems only. This means with both maxed perks that you will generate a single color gem more. This both means color gem generation is still useless and people who would greatly benefit from snowfall, pyro, countdown, juggernaut, etc gems are significantly less useable. Next is removing the MP on match perk which would allow higher charge moves to be viable. This means anyone with an over 10mp move is going to have a very hard time recycling and maintaining their moves. Then add to this that defensive perks are basically useless in their current state outside of making a match last even longer, which isn't a thing anyone wants. More health steal is not really useful since we currently don't have anyone with a good enough health steal to be viable. Heal gems healing for more is equally as useless since anyone who floods the board with heal gems is actively punished by game mechanics since they arent doing any gem or kickout damage as is so healing doesnt matter that much. All of these things combined made a huge portion of characters much harder and less fun to play. I hope this will be looked at for future feuds since male feuds will only make this issue worse.

Overall there is a lot that can be done to make these events better and more fun for players to play in and I hope you see all the feedback from many players and make them.

Weekend events like this make it easier to not spend, not engage, and not care. There is nothing offered in the faction events that make anyone in a top 20 faction care. The communication continues to be piss poor and not align with the blog. There's obviously still cheating, but the feud rewards are so bad, why bother.

The card is great, but you guys should at least make it close for those who want to spend. Poor event all around. Listen to people in TH. Listen to content creators. Listen to people in the forums. what you're doing now is not working.

Here is the biggest problem I have with this process.

There is a forum post specifically about the problems (and positives) of this last weekend contest and feud.

Will Scopely send an in game communication to everyone explaining that they understand the problems and have immediate plans for fixing them? Based on most prior mistakes I am left to think that will not happen.

In that case, what is even the point? To provide a forum where players can leave feedback and feel as though their thoughts and concerns are heard while not getting actual resolution to the problems in game?

This could be fixed if Scopely would have in game communications more often to let the player base know they are heard. Maybe there can be an ask me anything for the game with Scopely developers and they could explain decisions and resolutions.

These situations more often than not lead to Scopely just ignoring the issues and the players. Not acknowledging issues is a sign of not owning the issues. Lack of accountability shows a lack of consideration for the impact on the base.