Hirez Roundup #8

Today, I’m going to ruffle some feathers I imagine. This one will be a bit shorter than normal, but I’m going to talk briefly about Cards Unbound primarily. I know it’s getting a lot of flak and negative attention about the possibility of quickplay becoming P2W, but hear me out.  Also, I don’t think it’s a perfect system, please be aware of that too. I actually don’t have any real SMITE news this week, and just focusing on OB64. The only big thing for SMITE that I saw was the changes to level requirements for modes, which I love, by the way. Friday, we’ll know more I believe. Let’s try and be positive.

Okay, so it’s been a pretty venomous week. I had the nerve to play the Paladins PTS on Bottom Tier recently and felt only a minor bit of the backlash that I believe the Hirez Devs/Community Team has felt. I understand being upset about a system that you feel/deem to be unfair. But that’s no reason to flame, threaten and belittle the messengers. The community team for Paladins has no doubt seen an absolute slew of harassment. As an aside, yes, it’s their job to receive feedback. But it’s not their job to be dumped on because you aren’t happy. They’re still people, so let’s try and remember that. I’ve seen some of it first-hand, even on non-related posts to OB64. I get it. There are some problems with the system. But this shows me that the Internet at large has no idea how to give feedback. Simply saying “This is bad” or “This is P2W” or “I hope your house gets set on fire you dirty fucking scumbag” is not feedback. That’s being a jackass.  So, I’m going to help you out. The way you give feedback is by being polite, concise. You inform the proper people why it’s bad to you. You have to give information that’s pertinent. How many chests did you open and get nothing useful? What are some ways they could keep the system and make it less frustrating? I mean, one of the things I suggested was to have the Champion Chests let you unlock them through gold/vip points, so you could get cards however you like.

It was rough going, getting cards at first.

One of the big thing that was missing from the system in the early preview was the Champion Chests, which you could unlock simply by playing the game as that champion. They also added in later the ability to buy them for 1 Crystal to see what they look like, but as of this writing, the PTS is presently down so I do not have any idea what the changes are. But as soon as I do, I’ll make sure to let you guys know. But I do know they’re working on it and looking into making it a system that players will enjoy and not feel it’s P2W. Let me be perfectly clear though: I do not feel the system is perfect as it is. But I get the idea of what they’re trying to do. The purpose is to make Quickplay a fun, over-the-top mode where insane, incredible things can happen. It does have “progression” though, which is a pretty foul word these days. For this to drop around the same time as the Battlefront backlash though, pretty dreadful timing. I will say I played a fair amount of the PTS, and no matter how broken the other teams were, with good teamwork, map awareness, and skill, we won. I won far more than I lost, without having tons of level 4/5 cards.

I do think it needs some adjustment, some changes to make it accessible, and not a soulless, frustrating grind, because as I’m about to show you in my email, I unlocked well over 300 chests, and received very little from them. The numbers required for upgrades are dreadful. I feel like Legendaries should not be upgradable though. Those cards are already pretty damn strong.  That much I do agree with. But I’d argue that ranked is now grind free, and far more balanced. People have said “With all cards at 3, builds are going to be the same and bland!” and I just don’t agree. There are a lot of cards that get more powerful and will be more viable than ever before. Sure, you won’t have level 5 cards there. But there are so many cards that simply don’t get used because it’s not worth using them at 1 or 2 points. So I’d argue, and this is just my opinion, that Ranked is better than ever. There is one bit of criticism that I do think is fair though. One of the things about Casual Mode is that it’s to get people ready to play ranked, and if they get crushed by people with nothing but 4/5 cards, they’ll wind up leaving or playing less. A solution? Make Quickplay an “Arcade” style mode, and keep Casuals to learn the game. But this is what I sent to Juju, my thoughts on Cards Unbound. It doesn’t come from the place of a shill or sycophant like some people are bound to say, but my sincere thoughts on the system as a whole. This feedback was before Champion Chests were added, which definitely helped.

The matches weren't really that bad though, to be honest.

This was gold/silver versus Platinum/Diamond (the other team).