Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Kabam, Marvel Contest of Champions, MCOC, Netmarble

Marvel: Contest of Champions Under Fire by Fans Again for Character Changes

It seems like at least twice a year, developer Kabam and the players of Marvel: Contest of Champions go head to head over major differences in the way they think the game ought to be run. This time around, the complaints include character balance reworks as well as some tension between the top paid players and the regular low-spenders and free players. To add insult to injury, the game has also been under emergency maintenance after an abundance of service drops since the latest update rolled out.

Much like the 12.0 updates which pushed the game's meta too far, too fast, the latest update to the game has done quite the same thing. Back last year, we talked with Kabam about the MCOC  12.0 kerfuffle, and they promised not to push the game meta quite so far next time around. That promise really didn't last long, however.

The latest changes, v 19.0, have included major reworks to Archangel, Magik, Mordo, and Drax. However, some major cheating allegations were levvied against major players, who were given seven-day bans. Many in the Contest of Champions community felt that these bans were far too lenient, and the cheating allegations have continued to pile up ever since.

For a more in-depth rundown of all the concerns, this recent video from popular Marvel: Contest of Champions YouTuber Seatin Man of Legends does good job covering the many reasons for the proposed boycott.

While many players have been taking to social media and Kabam's internal support ticket system to relay their concerns to the developers, they also decided on a blackout day protest. The idea is that all players will not log in on July 6th, forcing Kabam to listen to their complaints with a full day of no logins and no spending. However, the timing has become something of a concern.

After all, tomorrow is July 4th, and the game will see major sales on in-game microtransactions. So putting the log-out protest on the 6th gives big spending players time to take full advantage of the sale while still lodging a protest. Naturally, the lower-spending and free tier players find this rather suspect. After all, mobile game devs have little reason to listen to complaints from those tiers, as it is the Whales who control the real power. And with them spending on July 4th and 5th, the log-out day won't have as much impact.

So while the idea of a community-wide blackout is a fantastic tactic for a community protest, players will have to put their money where their mouths are to make it stick.

Needless to say, the game's reddit is a rather interesting place at the moment. However, many of the core Alliance War issues have been addressed with emergency maintenance last Friday. Thus, there are quite a few non-boycotters now, meaning the boycott will be further divided — and that's not great for the #BoycottMCOC2018 crew.

Unfortunately, it looks like we'll have to wait until Friday to see how well the boycott pans out.

We've reached out to Kabam and Netmarble for comment and will update as we hear back. Meanwhile, Marvel Games' Bill Rosemann has made his feelings about Marvel: Contest of Champions pretty public by only retweeting the Ant Man and The Wasp crossover information and mostly sticking to his love for Insomniac Games' Marvel's Spider-Man.

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