Best Of

GW is literally here just to derail the conversation and give them an excuse to close the thread, he has been doing it for 10 years. Not worth arguing with.

The best buff for Blade is Danger Sense against all champions, with synergies that enhance its potency. This will make him a valuable asset in the current meta.

On the one hand, story arc content is as easy or easier. On the other hand, everything else isn’t. We no longer have choose your own adventure difficulty on monthly, and new champs show up there. AQ is pretty static but raids are a significant step up, and raids seem to be getting less optional all the time. Side quests, battlegrounds, alliance war, all seem to be getting more complex in terms of both champion complexity and mental workload.

And defenders are not the only way in which new champs create a hurdle for new players. Complex attackers can be just as off putting as complex defenders. As I said, I don’t think we’re there yet, but I think we do keep edging in that direction, and let’s face it: none of us are all that good at judging what new players will and will or tolerate. We can change gears if veterans are unhappy. But the first sign the game has become unapproachable to new players might be the day we stop retaining them, and that might be too late to do anything about it.

Even hyper complex end game can make the game less approachable to new players. No one is making Act 3 guides; the first time anyone encounters MCOC might be someone’s Eternity of Pain video or Act 8.4 video or even Elder difficulty run through. That stuff showcases the game. We certainly can’t water that stuff down just to make it look approachable, but it’s all pieces to the puzzle. If you see the end game, then you see what you have to do monthly, then you see what the latest champs look like, is this what someone is going to want to start playing? Fortunately for us, right now the answer seems to be yes. But certainly there is a limit.

What makes this complicated is in small chunks, it’s all reasonable and even logical. It’s all individually designed to address specific problems in specific ways. I can’t fault any one thing (in spite of the many people who can). But the whole, taken together, does leave me concerned.

That is the $200 million dollar question.

The fact is the people saying the players are enabling this are basically correct. It isn’t that the players want ridiculous defenders per se, but they want awesome champs “out of the box” and we judge today’s champs based on yesterday’s champs. Yesterday’s champs are already yesterday. And it is impossible to make increasingly strong attackers without making strong defenders that need those attackers. Without defenders with unique asks, there are no good attackers that don’t just do what everything else already does.

It isn’t just the whales. The game is powered by players chasing things, and the whales are just the biggest monetization part of that. But at all levels from the most casual F2P to the biggest whale, if there isn’t something new to chase, there’s no reason to play the game beyond a certain point.

If I had a solution I’d propose one, but the truth is I’m not sure what would simultaneously work given the current game environment and be acceptable to the current player population. Which kind of tells me either one has to change or both do.

People think the day of reckoning is people will get mad at annoying defenders and quit. But I don’t think that’s as likely as some people do. Players stick with the games they play through all sorts of challenges. There’s no game in existence where the number one past time isn’t griping about it. I think the real looming problem is the approachability problem. Every game as a service ultimately needs to keep attracting new players. Players who don’t have the same investment we do. People who will walk away at the first sign of a major impediment because they have no reason to stay, and see no path forward. I personally think we aren’t there yet, but we are moving in the direction of the game not being approachable to new players. And that’s an existential threat to the long term future of the game. We can all sit around and debate what we want and need, what we think is worth it or not worth it. What’s fair to F2P and what is necessary for the whales to keep investing in this game. But those guys? The people who are the future of this game? That’s not debatable. If the game isn’t approachable the overwhelming majority of them won’t play, and there’s nothing we can do to keep them if they don’t give the game a chance.

Depends on how Kabam defines middle of the month for November. Cyber Week shouldn't start until the 28th

If there is a red icon on you which looks like a slow debuff, you can't dex, and have to block.

I mean that’s a pretty damning metaphor. Either way I think the larger point is if you keep upping the potency of the product then customers will OD and stop using the product… which is the current direction that is trending

Only 1 of those 4 is truly BS. The rest just had the misfortune of being shoved straight into a tactic pool in AW that supercharged them. Yes, there are BG nodes that can make bullseye, enchantress and onslaught unplayable. But that doesn't happen as often as serpent or even dark phoenix now. So the argument that defenders need to OP to expand the design space is bogus. It's a lack of creativity on the designers most likely due to deadline constraints and other economic pressures at Kabam.

Sauron doesn’t degen you when bleeding, but he is poison immune, massively reduces bleed damage, and is immune to power steal, so against him your bleeds do very little, you can’t switch them into poisons with your heavy, and you can’t power steal to spam specials and/or build prowess with that hack, so he ends up being really tanky against Steve.

Definitely with the wrong nodes he can be a nightmare to deal with.

Guardian shouldn’t be too bad if you can nullify his armor buff, because he can’t autoblock without it. If you get him early and don’t have that prefight up he could be a slog though.

I have just joined an alliance with my second account, anyone know if there’s any cooldown time before your points contributing to the alliance milestones?