Best Of
Re: Max Dupe Crystal.
Guess your first 7* max sig pull. Crystals don't exsist for them unfortunately.
Crystals Tab
champion related crystals
relic related crystals (relics, alloys, etc)
rank up material (catalysts, sig stones, etc)
special/other (catch all for everything else including crystals with a mix f the above)
Re: Adaptive EQ (warning this post contains, at least in part, some positive feedback)
Exactly what I was telling my alliance mate , the idea is great, it's the execution where this failed.
Some minor tune ups for Elder will make this not just enjoyable but also a bit tricky to try new things..
kus234
Adaptive EQ (warning this post contains, at least in part, some positive feedback)
And yeah, a lot of us veterans have the old "These kids today.. in my day we walked to school barefoot in the snow, uphill.. both ways.." (did Variant 1 with 2017 5 stars, etc.) mindset sometimes 😂 but honestly there have been many great improvements to the game on the whole over the years
So, anyone who has been playing for even 3-7 years will know that EQ has largely been behind the curve for endgame players for years at this point.. meaning the rewards and difficulty were always at least one progression level behind.. though Kabam did try to supplement it with other things
But, I can remember when Uncollected EQ first came out (MODOks release I think) and it was difficult for me relative to my progression and to the attackers available at the time, etc. But.. I used items to complete it because the rewards were worth it (again, relative to my progression) and this marked a time when EQ was tuned correctly imo, both difficulty and rewards
But, as the years went by EQ began to fall further and further behind the curve of the player base (difficulty and rewards not high enough for endgame)
And we all begged and pleaded for Kabam to start keeping EQ current and relevant (adding new, higher levels more frequently)
First piece of positive feedback is: they finally tried to actually give us what we have been asking for.. and also created a system that automatically updates EQ for every player.. indefinitely
So, it's actually an amazing idea and I want to give credit to Kabam for taking the time to work on it and roll it out.. is it perfect? Nope, it's not haha.. but I think it's great that they tried
I also appreciate the huge challenge that is attempting to make as many players happy as possible - it's not easy, not at all.. so I hope folks will have patience if they need to work a few things out.. because I'm excited about the *idea* of a permanent solution to the long standing issue of EQ that becomes outdated quickly
As for the actual content itself.. so far my feedback is:
1) If we are using one persistent health bar for 16 fights, maybe tune the attack rating down a hair? I actually think the health stats are ok.. because the idea behind the class based quests is that we seek and use damage modifiers that are provided in the nodes (some of the fights took me 45s)
2) Instead of having one node set theme for all 15 fights - use a different theme for each section
Because in a single use format for our champs, we're going to have different sub sets within each class that are good for different themes (something that used to rotate month to month and that made more sense when we could use a champ more than once - traditional 5 champ team).. but if each section is a different theme (Mutant A, Mutant B..) we could plan our sections in advance to use those best for each section within each class based quest.. this would be more fun and allow for more utilization of the class based damage modifiers
Finally, I want to say that I do understand why single use format has been implemented recently.. it's because it's harder to tune things up without it.. for example, I cleared the Classic Skill quest with literally one champ for all the fights plus boss.. and ended at 75% on that champ with all 4 of the other champs on team untouched lol.. Rank 4 MoleGod just basically stomped on the whole quest and the same can be said for certain champs in other classes - so, how to you tune this up? When one champ can clear an entire quest when you can use them for each fight?
You'd have to drastically tune up attack and heath values *and* start cranking up the node sets.. right? Issue is this.. a lot of players will hate this 😂.. so I actually see why single use quests were implemented tbh, that way you can still keep the relatively simple node sets that even include pro player damage modifiers.. all is to say that it's not easy to tune something up, while also keeping everyone happy
But I'm glad they are actually doing something to solve the issue of outdated EQ.. the effort is appreciated and I hope they come up with a more popular solution
As for the content
Elder EQ thoughts
1) The shared health pool (not healing from champ swap) felt appropriate as a creative way to make valiant gauntlet harder than thronebreaker instead of just making the defenders way stronger, but now with the combo of high defender attack AND a shared health pool, it feels like too much. These rewards are nice for monthly content but they’re not 100 revives nice.
2) The nodes carried over from thronebreaker eq don’t feel appropriate in a crucible-style quest, and not benefiting from the beneficial aspect of the node makes these health pools feel like a long slog. I’d suggest reworking the nodes to be less champ-specific, or just remove the beneficial part of the nodes and lower the defender health pools to compensate.
3) The requirement of having to do a path through classic difficulty to unlock elder difficulty isn’t a huge deal imo, I can live with it, but I don’t see the point of it either. To me classic was mostly effortless and just adds on extra time, and feels like a lazy way to force more play time. I’d recommend removing this requirement and just giving players the choice of doing one or both.
Overall I feel like elder eq has high potential to be a fun rewarding game mode I look forward to doing every month, but it needs some tuning adjustments and node updates. Thank you!
Re: My issue with Adaptive difficulty
Bottom Line, don't mess with what ain't broken.
They need to bring back the old EQ. It was less than 6 months since they introduced Valiant and already it went they way of the dodo bird. What's worse was that it was well received.
If they want to ADD another EQ challenge like this one, then feel free to. Personally, I welcome it. They problem is they didn't ADD it, they replaced the old one with it.
If I spend my time (no longer spend $$ on kabam) advancing my roster, then I expect things to get easier. Hence, ADDING new challenges for me to progress. But when u take away something tried and true, u get this massive uproar. Solution is very simple, next month bring back the old while adding the new and let the players decide.
FYI - this month's challenge is very tedious, especially when the enemy has such ridiculous health and attack values. And it doesn't help when the rewards r worth poop.
My argument has always been, let the rewards match the level of difficulty. This new EQ challenge failed miserably. And I'm not complaining from position of one of those who can't do it. I've explored Classic up to half way through Jessica Jones. I did use a few revives but I'm doing a lot better than I thought I would. It helped that I have the right strong heroes. But now that I've taken a closer look at the rewards, I don't know if it's worth my time or effort to continue or just abandon it.
Just curious, when do u get rewards?
Do u get it for completing classic?
Exploring classic?
Or do u have 2 go alllllll the way?
doctorb
My issue with Adaptive difficulty
But there's only one Adaptive difficulty.
The idea of adaptive difficulty is to eliminate difficulty tiers, and instead have a monthly EQ that can grow with you. You get stronger, it gets stronger. You move up, your rewards move up. Whether they hit the target correctly, in theory that's great. The problem is there is no target to hit. If there exists a player twice as skilled as me (and there are) there is no difficulty you can design into Adaptive EQ that will properly challenge us both. I can eventually have the same roster, but I will never have the same skill. Or maybe I'm a casual player will less time. I am not likely to grow into a player with more time. Or maybe I'm a casual player that doesn't want to stress on content. I'm not likely to grow into someone that does.
There has always been a choice. Just because you're Uncollected, doesn't mean you have to do UC EQ. You can do lower tiers if you want. You can pick your difficulty level. You will get less rewards, but that's your choice. You can choose to play the game casually if you want. You can choose lower difficulty if you just aren't that good. Remember, almost half the players in this game are below average. If Adaptive difficulty targets the average player, that means half the players can no longer do monthly EQ. And that's a problem.
When I did my Act 6 difficulty analysis, there was a central point to all of it. The point was that things like Labyrinth, Abyss, Eternity of Pain, can be whatever difficulty the devs set. Whether its hard for the top 20% or top 10% or top 1% is a matter of design choice. But the story arcs were, and still mostly are, the main progression path to the game. They can't be balanced around what the top 20% can do, because that leaves the bottom 80% nowhere to go. Now, you do have some leeway with story Arcs: if you aim for the average player, below average players could try to "outlevel" it. They can grow much stronger than the average player gets before tackling it, to level the playing field. This has limits, but it can happen, and you don't have to aim for the very bottom of the playerbase as a result.
But you can't outlevel Adaptive EQ. Its designed to grow with you, so you can't make it easier by growing stronger. It will grow stronger with you. If you can't do it now, you might never be able to do it no matter how much you progress or how strong you build your roster.
What happens to the bottom 25% of the playerbase? What happens to the bottom 10% of the playerbase? I'm perfectly fine telling them they might never do the Grandmaster's Gauntlet. But monthly EQ *has* to be accessible to everyone. It is a central part of the game.
Maybe elder is too hard. Maybe classic needs more rewards. But none of that will matter if most of the playerbase can't do monthly EQ, because I doubt they'll stick around. But we also can't make Adaptive so easy that 90% of the players sleep walk through it with mediocre rewards. Really, we need difficulty modes.
We need an adaptive difficulty that asks the player: so, who are you? Are you MSD? Okay, here you go. Are you an average player? Here's your difficulty. Are you just looking to cruise casually? Well, we will let you do that also. We need something that can be fast, can be easy, can be simple to do. Its fine if it is harder and more rewarding for the players who can and want to do that. But while it is great that Adaptive scales with roster strength, that grows with me as I grow, we also need Adaptive to scale with the player. We have different tiers of roster. We also have different tiers of player. Adaptive needs to include as many of them as possible. Adaptive should grow with the player, but it needs to first know who that player is.
Whatever else happens, in my opinion if Adaptive doesn't scale with player, it is going to be a very serious long term problem for the game. No reward buff fixes this. No difficulty tweak fixes this.
Adaptive scales with roster. It must also scale with our players.
Everything else is tuning. But in my opinion, this is fundamental.
DNA3000
Re: ADAPTIVE EVENT QUEST - DIFFICULTY & FUTURE
As for the response from Kabam - appreciate the communications and hearing the player base as it comes to EQ and the new setup. As a Valiant FTP I enjoy monthly EQ so much. It’s fun, helps with stocking up on mats, shards, gold and sig stones. It’s a. The past few months have been a great tune up imo. I don’t mind the champion swap and class restrictions that much- I manage to clear the content and it’s enjoyable for me.
With that being said as someone who loves EQ - this change is probably the worst update I’ve seen in a long time and I’ve been here for 10+ years. As others mentioned it’’s a drain on time, resources, and chase. I just cleared the normal mode and got a premium hero crystal and some t2cc. I don’t know how cav, or TB players will even fair with those health pools in normal mode also. Crazy. The Elder difficulty is horrible. Bleed nodes, stupid high health pools and attack ratings. This will be the first month in 6 years I haven’t finished/explored EQ. I can’t afford the revives or energy let alone use a mutant roster that is 80% not immune to bleed and poison DOT. Blade’s chip damage was nuts on my bleed immune 7* R3 Dust. 7* R1’s and below melt 50 seconds in to each fight.
All of this to say- thanks for the response but we are day 2 into a new month of EQ. If I’m reading this correct- there won’t be any re-tunes, or updates until next month? That’s crazy. I’ve stayed in game for every shenanigan, outrage, scandal, compensation or even lack thereof. I think I’ve posted to forums like 5 times over the life of my account. As a FTP player I have a high tolerance for grinding through and also pretty low expectations as to what this game provides an account like mine. But this is one of the wildest negative impact an update has had on my game play / account. I’m progressing through all the act 9 content, clearing all daily/monthly challenges, battle grounds etc but new EQ has always been the highlight of the month especially in the days where I was just grinding to try and become uncollected, Cav, TB with the slowest rank up materials acquisition ever.
Is there a way where this can be resolved in some form or level of playability for the month until the issues get sorted? I genuinely can’t believe the EQ rewards given to Cav, TB, Paragon, or Valiant for the energy spent to progress to elder. Literally the first total net-negative in EQ I’ve ever had playing EQ. One month till resolve is honestly just bad customer service, PR, and IT.
I also echo the sentiment as everyone else when it comes to prestige, the changes, and that it’s all tied to EQ progression/rewards? Why was any of this green lighted? Someone or multiple people HAD to know this was going to be horrible and either they were pushed back on or someone in the top offices has shown again that they don’t care at all about the customer base until it affects their revenue. There’s 100000 lessons Kabam has had the opportunity to learn from in the last 10 years from Kabam Mike scolding everyone one forums, to silent nerfs, and hundreds of other ways the loyal base has been slighted and ignored over the years. I don’t love losing 5k prestige but I can deal with it, we’ll see how the change works but tying that to EQ and rewards and just changing so much of the game in one update shows how out of touch the company is with the players.
Re: Are you skipping EQ this month?
I may 100% the classic and leave the Elder.
This is not funny at all and I don’t want to waste time to collect 1/10 of what should be the correct reward.
L79G
Re: Adaptive EQ: The philosophical problem and a proposed solution
Couldn’t agree more. Very thorough post! Also think the relic event should’ve never been alliance based as well to add on to all the recent talk about EQ. Kabam has heard some of the concerns - but is still missing the point that it’s not just the difficulty that’s screwed up with this new EQ
