Best Of

Tldr: skill issue, doesn't want to learn how to play the game, is a paying customer so should be handheld, also one line about the game working for some reason like it changes the crybaby rant above it somehow

Is this a novel? Who writes this much and expects strangers to go through all of it?

The complexity, champ knowledge needed and skill required scale is getting way out of control for the average paying customer that wants to just play a marvel fighting game with good graphics, collect and rank up champs and have some fun along the way.


Remember the good old days , play quest , get stuff, spin crystals, get new dudes, play more stuff , get more stuff, level up and rank up your dudes , repeat!!!.. you know, fun stuff, big yellow/red numbers and champs that played at their full potential without BS nodes or damage protection while you smashed, tapped and swiped while chatting it up with the wife watching TV.

The crux of your feedback is I think this. And it is a valid complaint. The game is not what it used to be. But I believe you are seeing the game through rose tinted glasses, because the game is, and always has been, a moving target. A static game is a dead game. So it is important to consider not just what the game was, but what direction it was originally moving in.

Up until about Act 6, the game was a much simpler game. It did not lean into what Kabam calls "RPG-like" mechanics. In the very early stages of the game, the game was almost completely one-dimensional: higher attack was all that mattered on offense, and blocking was all that mattered on defense. Hit, block, that's it. This was the age of Starlord and perfect block synergy teams. But even then it was moving, in the obvious direction of more damage, more damage mitigation. Defenders were scaling up in difficulty by making them hit harder and have gigantic piles of health the player had to chew through. This was the direction of the game. More numbers, bigger numbers, practically without limit.

The devs tried to introduce new difficulty mechanics, but in a world where numbers scaled so high, and champion design was itself very one-dimensional, you had situations where any non-standard difficulty mechanic either introduced a skill hurdle no one had any experience with (think 6.2 Champion) or roster checks that were extremely narrow (think Acid Wash Mysterio). The game simply wasn't designed to allow for anything else other than a billion points of attack and a gazzilion points of health to grind down.

The game you look back on with nostalgia contained the seeds of its own destruction. This all came to a ahead in the post Act 6 era with the Act 7.1 beta, where the roster checks were extremely narrow, and the defender boosts were astronomical. Even Kabam understood, before the mass complaints started coming in, that there was no way the game could continue on its original trajectory. They had data that showed Act 6 itself was acting as a roadblock to player progress, on top of the mass defections by a sizeable fraction of 7.1 beta testers.

I'm not sure when the seeds were planted to change direction, it probably happened before 7.1 beta, but 7.1 beta definitely accelerated and crystalized that new direction in both champion design and content design. The idea became rather than scale up, scale outward. Instead of just a few champs being the best attackers and the best defenders, absent extremely tricky nodes, the game would focus on diversifying the champion roster and changing the content so that rather than just have binary roster checks, it was balanced more around rewarding some options while penalizing others, so there was a range of possible roster options to choose from. And we can see with the current Act 7, 8, and 9 designs that by in large they succeeded at that: complaints about Book 2 chapters are far lower than they were for Act 6. There are more options available to players, and those options don't just escape node penalties, in many cases they benefit the player over and above that. Players are rewarded for having optimum roster choices. There is a lot more carrot to the roster chase than just running away from the sticks.

However, this does come at a cost. The post Act 6 world has become the new norm, and with that players now judge everything on the *easiest* examples of post Act 6 design. And simultaneous with the change in content design was a deliberate expansion of end game content, which is something else that there was a dearth of until the post Act 6 world. Players can now see what the net effect is when the current roster design methodology and the current content design methodology meets top tier end game content difficulty. The much wider roster checks become narrower, the skill thresholds become higher, and the RPG-like node designs become more complex. Just as the old school design methodology when pushed far enough became a horrible numbers grind, the current design school when pushed far enough becomes a highly complex affair that can exceed many players' mental headspace. For me, that happens when I'm asked to keep track of too many timers in fights, for example.

Thing is, we're never going back. Ever. The direction we're heading in is a consequence of the place we are now, just like the direction we used to be heading was a consequence of where we were then. Just like with the old game, we're reaching (in my opinion) some limits of how far the game can push players to accept increasing levels of complexity - roster complexity, node complexity, fight design complexity. However, this is largely happening in the end game now, not in the core progressional game. The vast majority of the game is still monthly EQ and story Act content. The fact is, while you say:

First of all, I feel like I am of the "more casual group not represented in these channels" that spend significantly on this game for 10 years, playing in the back ground, watching YT to find a way to beat the guy or do the thing that has to do damage to the the dude... not a top skill player just a customer trying to enjoy the game. I am 7.7 mil account -1430+ champs- Valiant player my roster is significant and robust but my skill is very average, champ knowledge is mid. Cant dex worth a damn.

You are in fact far, far away from the average player, much less the typical casual player. The problems you are seeing are probably affecting a tiny percentage of the player population. The vast majority of the player population, casual, average, is still trying to catch up to you. They are still seeing a game that hasn't reached that breaking point in complexity yet (at least, not in the same way). Those who are, are still among the fastest progressing players in the game. And frankly, the game can afford to tolerate slowing them down while they decide what's next.

This is probably not what you want to hear, but on the one hand, the issues you see are in fact real issues that the game will eventually have to deal with. But on the other hand, they are currently affecting the players they sort of are intended to affect. This game is not going to be an ultra casual play with one eye on the screen type game ever again. It was never going to be such a game for long no matter what, as it was moving away from that literally from day one. Unless you want to live in the arena, that is, in which case you'll at least have tons of units to show for it. And before the problems you're seeing actually start to impact the real average progressing players, Kabam will have to make adjustments. But the days when the players at the end game could simply idle through mindless fights while waiting for the next progression title are long gone, and never coming back. The game is not going to lose hundreds of thousands of players due to the problems the end gamers see, because they are never going to see them. But the end gamers are always going to be seeing some variation of them, because that's what it means to be an end gamer. We're always going to be out in front, and always seeing the difficulty horizon first.

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DNA,

Sounds like you have a pretty good grasp on what's going on and thanks for that explanation it helps gain a bit more perspective. I understand players of all different levels of progress are seeing a different game and different challenges which makes it even harder for each other to empathize with another.

I have all the deathless champs and completed the deathless saga but not all the deathless carinas. It kept me engaged but not all of it was fun, but I endured and embraced the suck to get the thing.
I completed the crucible and enjoyed the entire thing. More like this should be developed
I have made one pass through Act 7, and Act 8 and have not even started Act 9. Nott because they were hard but I didn't have the time when they came out. Now i don't want to fight the bosses at all. so there they sit. And no i cannot even farm the revies like those did when it came out.

Right now I am completing and enjoying Act 7. parts i didn't finish.

I have not interest in fighting the most recently developed boss fights with phases and several things to line up to do damage.
I wish they would keep Story content more like EQ, pretty straight forward so you can progress when needed and normal folks have something to do as well. NO B.S Boss you cant damage. Like you mentioned its too much to mentally focus on to do the thing to line up the thing to do damage before you die. Yes skill related but it costs time and resources to practice because there is no Boss duels to develop skill, you have to pay and fail and pay and fail until you learn. That's intentional. Why not let players practice boss duels in a limited fashion to develop the skill required without having to do a whole lane and quit when you fail.

After reading your insights I can say i suppose my biggest disappointment is that the hardest and most challenging content is repeatedly and intentionally being copy and pasted into all areas of the contest when it used to be easy to avoid.

If you didn't like EOP content , it was not to hard to just skip it. Don't like long form content (Necro, Abyss)? Ok skip it.

But now that is harder to avoid. Definitely if you want to keep up with your peers in an ally or risk having to drop to lower stuff.

This Ares boss and EPOCH content sounds horrible so i will abstain from that content even though it will have the best rewards available.

Maybe they should just keep some areas of the game fun and still rewarding to keep others engaged, Everything doesn't need to be unit grab.

Calculating how many units and revives you think you will need to clear one path of content is the new norm and without revive farming like the many players did before. That is not skill, that is resource management.
Funny how many players claim others have "skill issues" but forget they too used revives and maybe even units to get the content done. Farming 150 revies before you do something is not skill, its smart planning.

Could probably at least keep the B.S. bosses (no damage, mini game, wounded, nonsense and nodes the makes your champs abilities useless) in the hardest content and out the Story quests, monthly EQ and SQ. Don't hide chase items (saga deathless pieces) that folks must complete in only the hardest stuff some **** carina challenge. Not fun