devtrackers.gg
This is your opinion, and it’s very well thought out. BUT you don’t see the things the devs do. So you don’t know what of that is true. And if all goes down they can always bring things back, but it takes time to balance things out
That’s pretty much it… And even though people can’t track the same data we do (player retention, monetization, active players…) we try to be really open and transparent with our communication (just watch any of the “time to explain” episodes and you’ll see)
The thing is that the last 3 updates (or 4 if you count the Starr Road update) created huge positive sentiment in the community, which we believed it would also reflect in our game growth, but it didn’t, and we had to try a different strategy even if this would mean sacrificing some of the positivity we’ve built together. I’m also using only the last updates as reference, but there are a lot of learnings in every update we ever dropped
When we release all those changes at the same time, it’s because they are all hypothesis that we need to prove by trying with our player base. The more “bets” we have, the higher the chance of one of them to stick/work
All the changes have a logic behind it, but whether they are proven to be true or not, the player behavior will tell - and most likely it won’t show up in less than a week
And just to be clear, this doesn’t mean we are ignoring the popular opinion, this is extremely useful because depending on what works or not in this update, we can improve upon with the guidance of your feedback
problem is a lot of this update either just seems rushed or have strange reasoning behind it
the gamemode removal makes no sense, it was supposed to improve mm but the problem of mm isn't the smaple size it's that trophies do not indicate skill anymore
in 600 trophies skill is very varied you can go from the most cracked player ever to someone who has no clue of what he's doing and every change in ladder made it worse
total trophies just made the mm measier and made it so high total trophies peopel get matched with low total trophies peopel while they fight against a bunch of people with average amount of total trophies
the average 40k is simply not twice as good as the average 20k yet mm seems to treat it that way for example
all the change did was make the game feel drier and anyone who liked those modes simply played less
i mean if you came into a restaurant to eat fish and that restaurant stopped ordering fish you wouldn't suddenly go oh well i will eat other things that the restaurant serves no you will simply stop go to that restaurant
so all this did was make people who played the less popular mode play the game less while bassicly not changing the experience of the people who play the popular modes.
the level up change is hard to argue that it isn't a cash grab especialy since we barely get any compensation to progress easier because getting level 11 is still ridicilously hard only reason people didn't complain before is because level 10 brawlers still got the job done and are much easier to obtain but now you're forced to get level 11 to fight in a fair environment the only reasonable argument i heard is that because that the 2nd gear slot got moved to level 8 in favor of hypercharge there would be even less reasons to get level 11 but this wouldn't be a problem if every brawler had hypercharge which i will get to in a sec
and it doesn't help that sp's and gadgets that just had flat amounts of damage or healing got massivly nerfed in this update and all we got is "don't worry it will be fixed next update"
this was something that should've been done a long time ago with level 11 but never happened and now that stats are messed with in general we still gotta wait? like yeah i get it it takes time but take your time then no one said this update gotta come out right now cause rn a bunch of sp's gadgets and gears are significantly weaker just because
and lastly hypercharge why is it only on 6 brawlers?
it's just an unfair advantage to those brawlers and makes the game less fun because why care about that feature if you don't play any of the 6 brawlers that got it
it especialy feels unfair if the brawler is meta defining and makes balancing messy because how do we balance hypercharge? should hypercharge brawlers be stronger then every brawler in the game or should they be more in line?
it just makes balancing messy
imo the update should've been delayed significantly
idk how much time hypercharge was worked on but i rather have no update for 4 to 6 months so the feature can be perfectionised then deal with major imbalanment and bassicly nothing changing for me because none of the brawlers i main got hypercharge
We did have less time for this cycle than for any other update in the year - since there’s a 1 month break in between, but even though, we didn’t have to crunch and there was no need for overtime or late hours working (or at least not much :p) So I wouldn’t say rushed, because we delivered what was in the scope
If the reason seems strange, then I’m here to explain why and we’ll have another time to explain specific about this update
Game modes - Sample size is one of the main problems with matchmaking, since it only expands the range when it doesn’t find the “perfect” matchup Brawl also has way too many options and it could be overwhelming for some players (this isn’t an assumption, it’s the results of many focus groups we ran + occasional feedback we’ve seen from new players)
The analogy of the restaurant kinda works, because you are not seeing from the perspective of the owner of the place, why did they remove that option? Is it because only few people order it and they are having to buy extra ingredients and it’s not compensating? Would the restaurant benefit from a more “lean” menu and optimize their processes?
The point is, there’s a reason for the change and whether it’s the best for the game or not, we’ll have to wait and see - reacting to the popular request might be as damaging as you are suggesting this change to be
Power level - Im with you that this change is probably the most controversial towards our current players, but the hypothesis make sense still. To be fair, it could have waited a bit more to be bundled with the gadgets/SP/gear changes
But the theory is simple - when you upgrade a character in the game, the goal of the game is to show the player that you actually became stronger, so if you fight the same enemy before and after leveling up, you’ll see a difference and it’ll motivate you to go through If you are on the other end - it’ll encourage you to upgrade your characters so you can beat challenges you couldn’t before A 5% difference was too little of a change and we wanted the player to feel the benefit of upgrading at every single level Of course that’s just the theory and doesn’t take skill into the equation, which is thing does make a big difference
Thing is, the hypothesis exist, would this change encourage more players to upgrade their Brawlers and, if they are able to, buy a bundle or the pass to get more resources? Upgrading and collecting Brawlers are the core monetizing pillars for Brawl, and we’ve been neglecting the upgrade part for too long tbh If this does move the needle and grow our game, whether is making people more engaged or making more people to spend, then it made sense, but this isn’t something we’ll see on day one. It’s a long term goal which justifies why 2 months of imbalance is tolerable
As for the hypercharge, if we could, we would release to all brawlers in one go - but not releasing an update it’s a worst for the business Brawl is highly dependent on fresh content and to prepare content for 4 or 6 months we would require even more time We already tried this strategy also (we released smaller updates for a while) and the popular feedback was “all updates are the same, gives us something new” so with all the cards on the table, we believed that introducing HC bit by bit was the best option we had at our disposal, even at the cost of a messy meta for a couple of months
Anyway, I’m not trying to change your point of view to be honest and I completely understand where you are coming from, so I do appreciate the honesty, but hopefully a bit more of context might help. And if my favorite fish dish is not available anymore, I’d probably also try another item from the menu :D
I like most of the new changes in the most recent set of changes you guys have made . I appreciate the fact that you guys, unlike CR, are attempting to change the game and make it appealing to others, and not just strictly revenue based.
Everyone makes mistakes, but we all learn from them.
The one small caveat I didn't really like with the most recent update, was the removal of heist, bounty, and hot zone. I am fine with removing bounty if we have wipeout, but I honestly think heist is a favored game in the community.
If players don't want bounty and hot zone back, please add duels. It is certainly one of the few game modes I can play that is purely skill based, and is an alternative to the currently toxic high trophy showdown matches. You can't survive in the game without teaming with others.
And duels is fairly popular, and I was disappointed not to see it last season.
Besides that, the update is really solid. I haven't seen a single token doubler in my star drops since the update so far. Chuck seems delightful and pearl has adorable voicelines.
Keep up the great work!
Heist is definitely not a favorite in the community though, that’s why it got removed, haha
I understand it could definitely be the favorite mode of some people, but the problem we were trying to solve was not removing modes players don’t play that much, it was actually reducing the number of options so it doesn’t get so overwhelming for casuals and increases the MM pool in all trophy ranges, so unfortunately, the modes we removed were the least performing ones, it wasn’t personal :(
Let’s see how it goes though, if it does affect us negatively, I’m sure we can reiterate. But if it does make more player to engage more with the game, we’ll have to find another alternative to please both sides… either way, time will tell!
I get that sometimes you need to take risks in game development for the greater good of the game, but even considering that, some of the changes in this update make no sense.
For example, why leave non-percentage based star powers, gadgets, and gears, all of which have been effectively nerfed by 25% thanks to the increased level gap, in this state?
I know the Brawl Stars team is working to make them all percentage based in the next updates, but is it really THAT hard to convert a number to a percent to the point of justifying leaving them in this weakened state? Of all the problems that could give developers tons of trouble to solve, crunching numbers shouldn't be one of them, especially when you consider the existence of calculators.
Speaking of the increased level gap, I only have one question about it; why? Are gadgets, gears, star powers, and the newly added hypercharge really not enough of a reason to level up your brawlers? Yes, lower levels can still win if they have the skill advantage, but that doesn't change the fact that the maxed brawler ultimately has the advantage in every single way.
Also, I know that you've already stated in the recent Brawl Talk that control based games like Heist and Hot Zone were very unpopular, but it really isn't clear if you mean that they are only slightly less popular or SIGNIFICANTLY less popular than the other game modes. I can see why they would be less popular among casuals, but I personally never felt like it was to the extent that it took especially long to get into a match.
If it's the latter, then why would you bring possibly THE MOST control based game mode in the history of Brawl Stars, also known as Siege? It also doesn't help that it's the one game mode that is notoriously disliked by causals. I personally like Siege quite a lot, but it seems like it shouldn't have been brought back at all given the info about control based game modes supposedly being less popular.
In my honest opinion, I think you should really explain the intentions behind the changes in this update in more detail. I don't have anything against taking major risks, but risks need to be handled very carefully (they wouldn't be called risks otherwise) and I believe that most players are confused more than anything about many of the changes of the recent update.
Don't take this the wrong way though, I still love Brawl Stars and I believe it will hold a special place in my heart for a very long time. It just hurts the most when concerning changes come from something you actually care about rather than something everyone agrees is an absolute laughing stock.
I’ve just answered those in my other replies here on the thread! But since the answers are getting quite long, I’ll use the space to tease that we’ll go deep into the reasoning of all the controversial changes in our next time to explain! So hopefully I’ll be able to count on your ears there!