MiriamRowan's Unofficial BC Live Report - 19th December, 2018

Presenters: Masta Don (MD) and Wrkshp Warrior (WW)

Next events: 6 day Christmas Raid then Crystal Siege.

Christmas raid will be 6 days long.  Raid boss will be leaf, multi-boss (may or may not be the same element, MD can't remember) and time based. TvT monsters will be the same element this time. Variety grab will be active for the event.  Merging will be on and traders will be active.  All reward monsters will be evolved.  

Event monsters active for the Christmas Raid will be: three different sets, similar to what BC did during Halloween. One will be a very, very old set from the first ever holiday event, then the set from batterysargent (nutcracker) set, then a set with hollyknight and bunch of leaf ones will be active.   Later confirmed: MysterBox will be active, yes.

Batterysergeant set: https://bcrank.us/catalog/?q=Pwnguin,Squire-rrel,Corkporol%20Nutmeg,Battery%20Sergeant

Mysterbox set: https://bcrank.us/catalog/?q=Caribell,Holidoe,Hartwarmer,MysterBox

Hollyknight set:  https://bcrank.us/catalog/?q=Forestsprinter,Froppy,Arbordog,Hollyknight

The CS following the Christmas event will be shorter to get us back on the regular event schedule. (MiriamRowan's guess: 4 days).

Take regular mobs out of event spins? No, but thank you for asking/suggesting/commanding.

Images on Trading website? BC has talked to the person who uploads the images for the trading site, who he believes had been away on vacation.  MD will follow up with them on this.

Missing Second Evolution? MD is writing it down again. He had started looking at the one mentioned but thinks he became sidetracked. It's very time consuming to do.

Damage Cap update?  BC has done adjustments and gets fewer and fewer reports of this being a problem. If it still effects you, send a support ticket with your account name and the monsters used and when it happens. They can then set it up to test why it's happening in that specific situation with your monsters.  Recently the clues given by damage cap players actually led to BC finding a bunch of hackers, which was a good bonus.  The cap issues are all related to the actives being more powerful in the game than they should be, but BC won't nerf the actives.

BC will look into the dominion visual bug on android phones that max out and don't show the actual damage done on a tower beyond a certain number.   There is a specific person who will need to look at that.

Shield Crusader again for the pvp r epics given in spins?  MD is writing this down.

Leader boards were shown.

Trading second evolutions? Not anytime soon.

Facebook issue? BC has looked into this but duplication has proven difficult. MD believes it has been fixed. It's only effected people who have been bouncing through lots of accounts. BC is trying to figure it out but it seems to be a problem with the way Facebook interacts.  MD doesn't believe that the FB energy is broken for everyone because BC doesn't get constant reports about it.  BC has been having various issues with Facebook over the past year.  Depending on the issue people are asking about, some are sporadic and some have been corrected.

Second evolution reversal?  It's on BC's list and is being discussed to see if it's something BC wants to do.

Holiday star drop rate?  This is the same drop rate for last holidays, Easter, and valentines.  However, BC will be doubling the holiday star drop rate from tomorrow.

The more information that QA has to look through makes it easier to find problems.  They need to work on the pipeline in order though. It's like a giant 2-3 lane highway, they have to deal with the things at the front of the line first.

New items in Avatar Spins?  Not for the January update, but the update after that, will have pipelined changes. It's not sure what will be completed in time, but one of the things that will be addressed around then is avatar spins.

Energy for ultimate spins? Everyone can wait another 24 hours to find out.

Double code? Check back in two weeks to see if that's done, but it won't be today due to the 12 Days of Christmas codes.

Kicked out during PvP? It may be a server connection error. The easiest way would be to clear the cache on your phone. That's MD's best guess, it wouldn't be server side if it's happening that way.

No, Troop Wars and Coliseum won't be back anytime soon as people didn't play them.

No, Ironknight and Ironlord will not be removed from having bonuses CT events. It's important to have monsters that have a regular bonus, and these are the monsters for raids and CT.

Team Brawl will be coming back, but not very often as it feels so similar to Battle Royale and players don't prefer it. BC likes the diversity, but players seem to prefer the random troop matching of BR better.

BC is looking at ways of making reward monsters more useful in the game.  TW is old and boring for the vast majority of players (not veterans who love it). It is more likely that BC will run an event without any event monsters.  Less than 5% of players play TW.

Troop wars - the pet is dead instantly and then players are individually hitting against the flag. WB, players coordinate with farming. Dominion and Team Brawl feel different and that makes them fun.

It's not officially "no troop wars" but it won't happen that soon because of how poorly players participated in Coliseum.  They will sometimes put in veteran favourites, just not soon.

The way MD gauges failures isn't just event spins, but also the participation of players.  TW doesn't have much participation since the event monsters don't have much purpose.  CT only had one set of monsters active and the event was really popular with participation.  Coliseum had many sets of monsters and players weren't active at all.  How many players are active, how often they're active, etc.  Players were coming in and literally only hitting one time to claim the easy benchmarks and then stopping.  Participation metrics don't take into account how much players spend.  The events that are avoided is that low participation events, even though they're popular among the big spenders.

Players with event monsters spent a lot of money to create their team. BC wasn't to create an event without event monsters so players will use their reward monsters. But if BC ran BR without event monsters, then the players with BR event teams won't be happy.

It's an overall design issue in BC. Reward monsters were so powerful that once players had them, other players couldn't catch up to them.  So BC created event monsters so that beginners could spin a few event monsters to help contribute to their troop and compete.  BC has now become a game about event monsters and event strategies.  BC wants to have areas where reward monsters are important and other areas where beginners can spin event monsters to compete. R-boosting created another gap where reward monsters became significantly strong again.  BC is discussing all of this.

More incentive to buy energy? It's too hard to reprogram the energy for gold, so BC has virtual chests that has bonuses to increase the value when players buy gold this way.

BC once tried a Tournament of Champions with top players invited to join, and no event bonuses worked. IT had horrible results as they didn't do it in a good way. MD would like to see it done well in the future.  It's fun for MD to think about, but BC doesn't have the capability to do this currently.

Make LT an event?  BC has considered this. They could have it where troops need to complete LT as often as possible during an event duration.  It's not possible yet.

MiriamRowan's unofficial BC Live Report - 5th December, 2018

Presenters: Wrkshp Warrior & Masta Don

Next events: Celestial Towers then Dominion (with specials on the drops, not stones)

CT boss last time was wind. This time it will be rock.  Monsters with an active event bonus will be 3 subsets of raid monsters, all wind, plus the "knight looking one".  Multi target boss, and Masta Don is checking to make sure we don't experience that weird bug at the start again this time (where the raids were initially single target).   Boss will be multi wave. Merging and Traders will be back for CT.

Coliseum will never be run again. Masta Don had to write in a variety grab in the middle of the event to keep things interesting. Very little participation was recorded for energy use.  Many people only hit like 5 times and then decided that they were done for the event.  Masta Don doesn't understand why players asked for it.

Banning players?  There are lots of steps before players are banned. It takes four different phases of double checks before players are banned. It is never for no reason. Sometimes people end up in suspicious groups due to who they hang around with. For instance, this one troop that invited all these shady players in, and BC considered simply banning the troop as a whole.

More new events? New events are rough. Despite what players say about old events, very few events get as much participation compared to the older events like raid/WB events, Battle Royale, Dominion and Crystal Siege.   BC could perhaps introduce more raid style events. Masta Don doesn't feel that we need any more match based events because it's a bit rough.

Stackable PvP Energy at the Trader? This wasn't meant to be there. So many players spent a ton of tokens on it as fast as they could, stacking up to around 8k energy.  These transactions will be undone - energy will be removed and tokens returned.  

Things to spend PvP tokens on?  From the glitch today, BC has become aware that there aren't many things for players to spend their PvP tokens on, and some players have earned a lot of them.  Masta Don is considering adding wings and old vanity items into the PvP trader as newer vanity items appear in the leader boards.  Ideally BC would like to give us more things to spend our PvP tokens on instead of us stockpiling them.

Why were these players accused of exploiting the PvP energy when BC made it available for in game trading? "Exploiting" wasn't a term Masta Don used and isn't accurate, but it was disappointing how quickly some players decided to claim it. Masta Don is sorry that Yulun described it as exploiting.  The energy shouldn't have been there and everyone knew that it shouldn't have been there.  It's not exploiting in that sense, but there aren't many words to describe someone who takes advantage of something they know wasn't meant to be that way and does so as quickly as possible.   It wasn't meant in the way of players deliberately doing something wrong, but players knew it would have been corrected. It wasn't meant to imply that players did something wrong.

Christmas raid will be a normal length event.  (24 days for the Christmas raid was only a joke).

Dominion won't have deadshot in the prizes this time. It may be crush for Dominion. Masta Don will take a look.

A bunch of players may have been banned from BCG for... Masta Don will talk to support about it... if they felt that people were trying to orchestrate  some big thing with others who feel the same way, then it's best that it's shut down because it can cause a bigger problem. For a lot of players it's not orchestrating because they want to do what is right but that they want to get people really riled up for their own self interest.  Back in the day, BC had a lot of people who did this.  Several hackers, for example, as soon as they were banned would go onto Facebook and try to get people riled up and create issues. Support might have been a bit sensitive to that. BCG doesn't just ban people for no reason or for just asking for a clarification or something. Masta Don is sorry if players felt that it was undeserved, but it's the way they stop things from getting away from their control.  Wrkshp Warrior: "bans are always deserving".

Bc won't bring back stackable energy for Pvp. The more ways that players have to accumulate energy that is easily farmed, the more alt accounts pop up. BC has recently done a lot of changes, especially in regards to tracking players who are duplicating monsters or trading monsters or hacking grabs and then trading monsters. BC is catching a lot more of these players now since they're able to track them and what BC is finding is that these players run 10-15 accounts and all they do is harvest energy on them, and trade monsters between these accounts.  One way that BC can minimize this is to control how easy it is to get easily farmed energy on alt accounts.

BC doesn't have any plans to produce sellable products related to the game.  They tried it a couple of years ago.  For the t-shirts, they sold them for $10-$15,  made about 90c in profit,  and international players  were charged something like $60 for shipping. Everyone was making money except BC, and players were being charged a fortune that should have only cost them $20.  BC isn't a manufacturing company. For it to have been cost effective, BC would have to buy 10000 shirts and then hope to sell them all.

Crystal Siege problems? Masta Don is making a note to have QA will look into it. Masta Don didn't know there was an issue with losing guardian bonuses or no trophies.  He does know that at the start there were issues regarding the servers.  Different worlds(?) of the servers crashed, so they rebooted. And another time everything crashed.

BC does want to get more players playing BC. They're looking at making their whole first time user experience much better and rewarding for new players... but without giving reason for veteran players for creating 50 new alt accounts.

When will Bogtacle get a sevo? Masta Don is writing it down and will look into it.  He thought BC was up to date with sevos, but this one may have been missed.

No more stones in Dominion. That was a huge mistake.

Can we claim 10 energy from Cool Luke instead of hitting with 5 energy? Masta Don doesn't like the 5 energy cap limit. It was when there was a lot more energy in the ecosystem. It's one of the things that BC is looking at as they examine ways to make the game more appealing for newer users help beginner player retention.

Images of the newer mobs for the trading website? BC will look into this.

Could there be more energy redeem options (like 50/100/500/1k, etc)? BC will look at energy redeem options. Ideally Masta Don would like the energy redeem options to be higher for veteran players, to reduce the number of alt accounts. However this may dissuade new players from playing as they'd be at a disadvantage. It's a bit of a double edge sword.

When BC was created, a huge aspect of it was intentionally social, a huge aspect was the monster collection aspect, and a huge aspect of is built into troops for events.  90% of games out there are built around solo players. BC is heavily pushed for players being in troops and having communication systems in place for troops and for socializing. A big part of Masta Don's design was wanting to bring a game that was a bit like Pokemon and a bit like World of Warcraft, and put it all onboard.

Leader boards were shown for Coliseum.

Trading crystals?  Not at the moment.

Masta Don will look into the new weapons that only have 2 jewel slots instead of 3.  He thinks this is just an error as all higher level weapons should have 3 slots.

Can energy regen beyond 5, perhaps to 10? Energy cap has being considered in the past as this would help new players as well as looking at the general inventory for new players.  These are felt to be a bit rough for new players.

Single element vs Dual element? BC has heard of this, as well as putting normal legendaries back in. A lot of people like a simple attack setup.  BC is looking at a better system for all players. They're also looking at stability.

How do we ask questions about event bugs - BCG shuts off commenting, BC Live can be too far away to wait for, etc?  It's not usually the people asking the questions who are the issue, but the players following up on the issue.  There's a difference between good actors and bad actors. We see it every day in the world, where some people may legitimately have a problem with something and ask about it, but then tons and tons of people latch onto those posts and fill it with negativity. Support needs to balance both groups of people, and people asking legitimate questions can get caught in the crossfire of it.  Masta Don will talk with support about this.

New single element monsters? Masta Don is writing it down.

Cost of Merging? Masta Don doesn't think it's a bit too expensive... he guesses that it is a bit too expensive.  It's more a high end thing to fine tune our monsters, which is the reason why it's so expensive. It's more for players who want their Skyrin to have the best stats.

Trophies for farming during World Boss events? Masta Don is writing it down. BC will look at this for world bosses. In a perfect world, the game wouldn't be so divided and there wouldn't be a need for farmers and hitters. However, BC knows that this is needed for lower PR players.

5 matches had issues in CS?  Masta Don knows for a fact that only 3 matches had issues, not 5 matches.  Masta Don is sorry about it. He feels very powerless with server issues.  When servers crash or players are disconnected, there is little he can do, but to try to correct it from the other end of the phone.

Unevolving monsters? BC has had issues where duplicate monsters had been traded and then someone else received them an evolved them. The evolved monster then is treated by BC as a duplicate monster that shouldn't exist.   BC can't allow these to be unevolved as then there would be double duplicates and it would be bad. It would be a nightmare to do.  The best BC could do would be to have a trader who would take an evolved monster and give you back two unevolved monsters.

Farming problems with holiday stars? BC rebooted the holiday stars and haven't seen any reports for farming issues since then. Holiday farming should be working now. Let BC support know if you are still experiencing issues. Masta Don will check the drop rates and see if we're just not seeing holiday stars as maybe the drop rates are too low.  It will be going through December, so the drop rates aren't especially high and maybe people are getting too much bad luck on them so far.

Really old monsters aren't seen much in the ecosystem.  The only way to introduce them back into the ecosystem right now is to add them into spins, but it becomes problematic as they need to be entered manually. BC is looking at redoing the grabs to make this easier.

Players who took advantage of the stackable PvP energy will have that removed and their tokens returned.  The transaction will be undone.

Real crowns for girl avatars please as they only get headpieces but boy avatar get crowns?  Art team will be talked to about this.  Masta Don has a strong dislike that all of the avatar items are gender dependent. Unfortunately the boy and girl avatars have been designed slightly differently and the clothing for one gender can't be worn the shape of the other gender, according to Art.

Avatar grabs are on BC's list. The grabs in general do need to be rebuilt. This is a massive task, and the grabs touch everything in the game. BC is trying to find ways to make it work.

Duel element monsters aren't good? You can't say that dual element monsters aren't good as they have all the same functionality of the base element monsters plus a bonus with the second element.

Raid event monsters rotate through having bonuses in different raid events. To be honest, helmet monsters probably won't have a bonus again. That was just a horrible, horrible, "not my decision" to create those ones.  Basically BC was going to invent a new event but they realized about 10% of the way in that it was going to cost them lots of resources to build, and they already had the monsters, so they pushed those monsters out anyway.

Players commented that some actives weren't good with duel element?  BC actives unfortunately have way too much power compared with gem matching, but no one will let Masta Don return to a gem based setup.

Can we eliminate shielding in Dominion?  Masta Don has brought that up multiple times in the past.  His thoughts on defensive measures is that playing defense is not fun. There should be an attack bonus, not a defense bonus. Just hurting your opponent isn't as exciting as having an attack bonus yourself instead.  He's written it down and will bring it up again.

Pao is still here but he's just very busy. So if there really are 1000 shares for a code then he will be dragged in to have his head shaved. It's been going for over a year and players have only come close once.

Bring back the 20 energy code? Masta Don and Wrkshp Warrior didn't realize that we didn't get a code when streams weren't on.  BC will make sure that we either get 20 energy codes during BC Live or that a 10 energy code will be given out during the alternate weeks. 

Christmas raid will start on a Thursday but will end on the 26th, making it one day extra in length so that it doesn't end on Christmas itself.

BC won't be removing damage caps completely any time soon, as BC needs a way to mitigate players doing ludicrous things with hacks.