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Roster depth vs height and how it applies to solo content:

The older an account (veteran players), the deeper it will be, naturally.. it's not a difference in account building strategy - an older account has simply been through multiple rarity phases in the game and by default will have a larger amount of the previous rarity ranked up going into the next rarity

Now, newer players can build deeper rosters, for sure.. but at this stage it will be with the current rarity (7 star) as the cut off point for 6 star viability has been reached when R4-7 was released (at least their viability in competitive content such as AW and BG).. but if 8 stars are ever released, the cycle will repeat at some point and the players who downloaded during the 7 star phase of the game will have much deeper rosters than someone who downloads during the 8 star phase of the game.. and on and on, etc.

- Kabam wants newer players to keep playing, of course
- Newer players want to progress quickly, of course

But while a good roster "height" (decent amount of highest power level - R4-7) can be achieved in a relatively short time.. roster "depth" (a larger number of champs at the 2nd or 3rd highest power level for the sake of more options to use in different game modes) takes more time

Roster depth is always preferable in competitive modes such as AW and BGs of course.. for obvious reasons - you need options

I do play AW competitively, but I'm casual in BGs.. but when I do play BGs casually to get the basic rewards what I often run into in the ban phase is I see a few R4 at the top, but scroll down to see R2 for the rest.. I'm at a complete advantage here even though I don't have a ton of R4 relative to the others because the rest of my deck is R3..not because I ranked for BGs (I actually usually rank for AW) but it's just a natural byproduct of being an older account

Roster depth is not a new ask for solo content.. it's always been there in some form or another (usually in the form of a variety of RPG asks in the past).. but what is new, is that recently Kabam is using what I call "single use" or champ swap style formats as a way to tune up content now.. which I actually understand once I thought it through

How do you tune up a the difficulty on a piece of content in 2025? Where there are so many powerful champs running around - you essentially have 2 choices:

- crank up the attack and HP to punishing levels *and* crank up difficulty of the node sets (spoiler alert.. many players would hate this 😂)

- limit the use of the most powerful characters in the game to single use

Once I really thought it through.. I realized why single use format has been implemented lately (there are characters in the game who can crush solo content easily in a lot of cases if they are allowed to do multiple fights
Example: in Classic Skill EQ.. my Rank 4 Moleman did the entire quest, plus the boss by himself.. because he was allowed to in the traditional multi use format.. I brought 4 other champs, but had no need to even use them.. obviously there are many examples of this in the other classes (characters who can just stomp through the quest)

How would you tune this up? So, I completely understand why single use format is being implemented recently.. players want powerful champs.. who wouldn't? Kabam knows this and releases more powerful champs now than they used to.. but there has to be a way to balance the content around this new design philosophy

Now, what is the byproduct of this? In a nutshell.. it makes roster depth essentially mandatory instead of just preferred
As a result, newer accounts that previously used the top of their roster to complete solo content (as the characters were allowed to do unlimited amounts of fights) are now immediately met with a struggle in single use format.. and I completely understand the frustration at the change as it's probably very jarring

The question becomes: Should an account that is 6 months old have the same amount of ease of completion of content that a 6 year old account does? Well, that's probably a heated topic 😂.. but, the jarring effect that changing content from multi-use to single use has on newer (more height than depth) accounts and the dissatisfaction that happens as a result will have to be solved in one way or another

I hope we come up with a great solution that works for as many people as possible

My initial thoughts:

- tune the attack rating down
- instead of 15 fights with one class based theme.. divide each section into a different theme, so more of the beneficial nodes can be utilized and we can plan out each section according to the different champs we have in a given class