Best Of

Two things before we dive into it. One a bit of a longer post from me and two, new forum layout makes edits hard and my thumbs on a mobile keyboard makes typos likely, apologies for anything that looks off in advance. I hope meaning comes through.

I’ll start with the good news as that’s a quick and easy item to address. This is a step in the right direction and it is better than what we were presented with at the beginning of the month. But that’s about it sadly… so why is that?

Well, simply the design follows a fundamental flaw that seems married to the current direction of the contest and that’s challenging players through roster restrictions. We see this in new defender kit design requiring hyper specific counters, we experience this in every crucible like quest design (be it WoF, crucible or Elder EQ, and with the reintroduction of class gates into Story EQ (yes in 9.3 they are more decorative than restrictive but they could have easily been bugged).

Now this isn’t always a bad thing as the story quest crucibles are enjoyable content but it can be overdone like it was in Wheel of Fate or in certain champion defensive kits. That said in crucible and WoF this design still works as it helps make the quest feel like a string of EoP fights where the nodes are grossly different between fights and it opens up your roster strength to address it. In EQ though these nodes are roughly the same between all 15 fights and the class restriction closes off 5/6s of our rosters just making it feel repetitive. EQ feels this design feels bad because it really shines a huge spotlight on just how recycled the nodes are. Longer paths with more fights and larger healthpools make these 3-4 year old node/defender combos dull and EQ just feels more like a chore than a game. I’m actually yawning and droning off mid fight… that’s not an engaging design.

Then the single champion approach strips out exploring synergies teams or ramp up champs as well removing other ways one might try and create fun in the EQ. End of the day, it’s created a redundancy that makes AQ feel more creative… take that as you will.

Lastly, there’s this bizarre knock effect on the value of story content. Both of these EQ devalued 9.3 for me. 9.3 was shorter, easier to do and less punitive with lower attack values than EQ. As a result I feel like I coasted through the chapter like it was an entry level quest…. The tuning between these modes is just all wrong. What’s the point of an enfolding story in a game where the content accompanying that story gets progressively easier with every chapter now… I’ve never played a game like this… and I’m starting to really not like it. Then think about how this reflects on EQ… as a player I can blitz through and explore the entire set of story quests but potentially not even be able to run EQ with my roster? What message does that send guys?

I really think the team needs to stop pushing exploratory ideas out and spend ALOT of time thinking about the role of EQ and Story Quests going forward. Both modes are hurting and hurting each other at the same time and then hurting the overall player experience as a result.