On Tuesday, June 26, 2018, season 2 of Alliance War for the free-to-play mobile game Contest of Champions came to a close. This marked the end of two months of intense battles, trying to move up the ladder and claim those prizes that would help every man, woman, and child in an alliance get better fighters. It also marked the start of a two-week respite from the Alliance War seasons.
It also came with announced changes by Kabaam.
Some of the changes were pretty big. The seasons were being made shorter. Instead of a season lasting almost 2 months, Kabaam is giving us 4 week seasons with 2 weeks in between each season.
Some of the changes seem relatively small. They’ll be giving more rewards for the Gold 1 tier.
You can read all about the changes here, on Kabaam’s forums.
But one change, in particular, created such backlash that even Kabaam had to address it the very next day.
Kabaam was removing the diversity points completely.
Diversity points give extra points per battlegroup for each defender that they don’t duplicate in that group. Have a Void? Well, if that’s your only Void, you get bonus points. The points weren’t much, but when both teams are clearing their entire map, the points can mean the difference between victory and defeat. So much so that for two entire seasons, people had spent money and effort ranking up champs they might normally not use just to create a diverse defense.
The shock of what Kabaam was doing was immediately felt in the forums as well as online chat groups found on places such as Reddit. An immediate boycott movement was started (#LogOutMCOC) calling for all players to refuse to log in on July 6 (however some people noticed that the log out was not scheduled for July 4 which is widely known as one of the big purchase/sale days for Contest of Champions).
And Kabaam listened. The very next day (shortly after midnight), a follow-up announcement was posted by Kabaam Miike: “After discussing these concerns, we’ve decided to reverse our decision to remove Defender Diversity points from Alliance War scoring”.
This was clear indication that Kabaam was, at least, paying attention to the community. However, many feel they have not gone far enough. The other changes to the maps are still in effect and while it may make the easier tiers even more easy to complete the maps, it makes the higher tiers even more difficult to complete maps. People are still complaining and the organization behind the boycott is still wanting it to happen.
If you want to read the full letter, you can check out their reddit discussion here.
Time will tell if the boycott will be successful or if Kabaam will continue to make changes at the fans’ behest.
For those of you who play Contest of Champions, what are your thoughts? Are people overreacting or is the boycott necessary to reign in Kabaam? Let us know in the comments.
Follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook!
Join our Age of Social Media Network consisting of X-Men, Marvel, DC, Superhero and Action Movies, Anime, Indie Comics, and numerous fan pages. Interested in becoming a member? Join us by clicking here and pick your favorite group!