Official Response to the Hollow Boss Discussion

[Lsmjudoka]

I just read through the Hollow boss discussion thread in its entirety. The discussions that frequently happen in WoB social are too fickle for me to really want to discuss things about this in social right now, but since this is a serious discussion, you guys deserve a response here. I'll try to address everything I remember from the thread and other general concerns.

1) Rumors of Shinigami knowing boss spawn location/time
I don't know where this came from, but this is absolutely not true.

To elaborate: The only time I tell people if the boss is in the time range where it can spawn at any 5 min interval, I tell both races, like one time a couple weeks ago on a Friday night. And I don't even know the location of the boss until it spawns, it's rolled randomly, and I don't tell people that; Though if the boss has already spawned and both races are fighting it, then if someone asks in social I might tell them because the information is already available to both races.

2) Something I've overlooked I need to acknowledge - Enjoyment, not just fairness
I apologize that it's taken me so long to fully realize the existence and importance of this, but I'll say it here: One factor I didn't consider when I put in this system was the fact that fighting the boss with additional resistance is not enjoyable, for multiple reasons. Regardless of whether it's fair for both races, it's not fun, and since this is a game, that's a problem. I've been a little too caught up in making sure things are "fair" and haven't stopped to think about it being fun. Because it really doesn't matter if things are fair or not, if it's not fun. I will address how this affects the solutions I've been pondering in a later section.

3) Bias/Taking a side/How this relates to me as an individual admin
I've gathered that the collective feeling from you guys is that I'm taking the side of the Shinigami. I've tried to explain this before, but I need to try and say it as clearly as I can: I understand that you guys feel that way, and I'm not saying your feelings aren't significant, they affect how fun it is to play the game. But I can promise you I have no bias towards the Shinigami, and the only reason I'm doing any of this adjustment/handicap stuff is to try and ensure that they can be competitive too. I want both races to enjoy the game and have a fighting chance at competing with the other. To that end it doesn't benefit me or WoB to favor one race over the other, and I have no interest in doing so.

4) Some history of the boss system from my perspective:

When the boss system first came out, the Hollows took the first 3 out of 4 bosses, and the majority after that. This was in equal parts due to the Shinigami not being organized and the Hollow having more power (particularly in the high-level rank 8 which has the highest damage potential on the boss). I had anticipated during design that the Hollows would probably kill the boss stronger, as the Hollow have twice as many active members in the top 10, and some lv150s that aren't just at lv150, but way over it in terms of stats (cap is 2x the stats required for lv150). I was originally planning to do an automated balance system that would adjust the boss based on multiple factors, things like how many race points each race gained in a month, how many successful invasions they were able to do, how many boss kills they had in a month, etc. However that system wasn't done before release. When the Hollows first started taking most of the bosses, the Shini largely lost hope. They were already pretty discouraged from being frequently invaded by the Hollow and pushed into their barracks, and leaving things to where the Hollow had more of an advantage was driving them to quit. I took two actions at this phase: Talked to the Shini and encouraged them to keep fighting the boss, but to try and organize and fight it as a group, get everyone involved since they didn't have as strong of people but they had more of them. I also implemented and announced a boss defense boost against Hollows, as well as an earlier notification for Shinigami; However there was a bug which prevented the first part from actually working, so for the following couple weeks the boss actually had no difference. During this time period the Shini did get more active, more organized, and fought the boss, and they ended up taking most of them. This caused many Hollow to get discouraged due to the sheer numbers of the boss. I had a long discussion with Dorm about inspiring Hollow to fight the boss and not get discouraged just because the Shini had gotten organized, but to get more organized too. I also changed the notification systems so that Shini and Hollow received the notification at the same time, 10 minutes after the boss spawned. That allowed for a race to get a head start on the boss if they were active about scouting it and the other race wasn't. I don't remember exactly what I did with the handicaps at the time, but it was not until a week or so later that I discovered they had never been working in the first place. At that point, the newly organized Hollows had been smashing the Shinigami in terms of bosses. I fixed the bug and activated the defense boosts. Over the next few weeks up until now, I've tweaked them up and down a few times, generally if both races get a roughly equal number of bosses I leave them alone, if one race gets a majority of bosses over a few days, I'll increase or decrease them depending on which race it was (If Shini got multiple bosses, I'll lower them, if Hollow got multiple bosses, I raise them). My statement about the boosts during this time span was something like "I am not talking about specifics of the catchup mechanics %s, because it tends to just cause arguments". Which was vague but true: However apparently this made it sound like there were no catchup mechanics active, and for that I apologize. Lack of transparency is an issue with this system I intend to correct going forward.

4b) There was a recent incident which brought a lot of this back into discussion where I was running my stream and playing LoL with some friends including Orosan, who is a moderator on WoB, as well as talking with them on Skype. Orosan was on WoB and complained that she'd gotten a boss spawn message but didn't know if it was fake or not. This has been happening for some reason when the defender boss has been killed and the invasion is still occurring, a message will appear saying the Kyoto boss has spawned, when it really hasn't. I checked, saw the boss had spawned, went to the square it was at and found Shinigami and Hollow both fighting the boss. Then I told her that the message was not bugged, and the boss had spawned. She went to the boss' location and started fighting as well, after a few minutes by the time the boss had gotten to around 50% hp, the battle was pretty close, at ~45/55 Shini/Hollow. The Hollow had gotten around 70% of the recent bosses, and I hadn't touched the handicaps in a few days. Lulu from WoB was on the skype call, heard that the boss had spawned, and went to go fight. With the combination of Hollows taking the majority of recent bosses and me inadvertantly informing a Hollow who wouldn't have otherwise known about the boss resulting in the likelihood that the Shinigami would probably lose, I did something I shouldn't have: Adjusting the mechanics in mid-fight. I acknowledge this is not something I should have done, and my attitude around it and the comments I made on stream were entirely unacceptable. Writing this out I realise this is probably a large part of what causes most of you to believe that I am biased towards the Shinigami. I wrote a section above about bias so I'll leave the explanation there, and beyond that try to show you that I'm not with actions rather than words.

5) Necessity of the boss
Some people have stated that since the Hollow are stronger and get a large majority of the bosses when there are no handicaps, I should not have put the boss in in the first place. I disagree: PvP and actual activities were very dull before the boss. If you were lucky you'd get 2-3 PvP in Kyoto catching people at the font, or you could invade and maybe if you were lucky get 1 kill on someone asleep at the switch but most people would be left in their barracks.

What's the point of all the training you do day in and day out if you never have anything to fight for? Nowhere to prove your strength? No real battle between the Shinigami and the Hollow?

Adding in the boss did give something to fight over and made Kyoto more fun, even if only for 1-2 hours twice a day. The adjustments to try and give the Shinigami a way to catch up however, clearly made it not fun. This I will address in the next point:

6) Actions I'm taking:
Effective as of 11:20 pm server time, I've disabled the defense adjustments on the boss. Screenshots are below:

http://prntscr.com/6ej28g
http://prntscr.com/6ej2hh

Since screenshots are pretty easy to fake and one could argue that I could upload that, show you, then put the handicaps back on and upload without telling anyone, and since I realize my trust with you has been damaged, if at any time you do not believe me and feel that the boss defense is unfairly slanted towards one race, tell me and I will turn on my stream and demonstrate by turning off damage randomness, fighting the boss as one race, then switching races and using the equivalent move on it. If any part of that is unsatisfactory, please let me know.

Catchup Mechanics?
I will be looking to add ways to help the Shinigami catch up to the strength of the Hollow, if they put in the effort. However, none of these will involve the defense of the World Boss in Kyoto. Instead, that will serve as more of a barometer to gauge the current combat potential of each race. To repeat: The defense of the World Boss (currently "Legendary Vaizard") in Kyoto will never be slanted towards a certain race again. As mentioned above, if you ever doubt this is the case, I will live stream to prove it.

Some options for catchup mechanics I'm considering:

-The race that is behind receives a higher and/or longer boss boost
-Individual race bosses that spawn in your home areas, you would compete for the individual rewards and boss boost (no race point gain). Race that is behind would get either more spawns of these, or larger/longer boosts from it (note: would not replace the World Boss in Kyoto)

To elaborate on the "race that is behind", I still don't have the system tracking metrics for this in, but the current plan is for them to involve race points gained per month from all sources, world boss kills, invasions, and defender boss kills.

[straywolf174]

Not sure i should reply to this, but thanks Lsm, i trust you'll make things right!

[LuluViBritannia]

Lulu from WoB was on the skype call, heard that the boss had spawned, and went to go fight. With the combination of Hollows taking the majority of recent bosses and me inadvertantly informing a Hollow who wouldn't have otherwise known about the boss resulting in the likelihood that the Shinigami would probably lose, I did something I shouldn't have: Adjusting the mechanics in mid-fight.

For some reason when I read this, I think you make it sound like I would not have fought the boss if you had not informed me of the boss spawn. However, in my defense, I'd just like to leave this here so that anyone who does think that I would not have joined the fight because I was playing League, can think again. http://prntscr.com/6eluks

As always, I had WoB and SC running in the background and check on it occasionally after every 10-15 mins or so to hit a new training and do feeds. So yes, I would have participated in the boss fight even if Lsm did not say in the Skype call that the boss had spawned since not only did I have WoB running on the background but also because Dorm notifies me of every boss that spawns. As seen in the picture, he notifies me, I reply that I am on my way however, I do also include what Lsm did and continue the conversation on there. However, due to events as of late, I have been notified however, I have not participated in any boss fights because of this "fair balance" killing the fun out of the game.

With that I do not plan to respond to this thread again.

Thank you,
Lulu

[orosan]

Is it possible for us to have a counter where it displays how many times shini/hollow have slain the boss, sometimes it feels like either side has taken much more bosses, perhaps in the Central HQ.

and perhaps show us what the boost/duration is.

[Lsmjudoka]

Yes, I am planning a page that will show some idea of who has taken the last X number of bosses, as well as the top 5-10 people in damage on the last boss.

[Zinis_Rahl]

This has now become reality. Thanks Lsm. I'm looking forward to the future you plan for the boss system.

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