Expert and Epic trial difficulties

Last week i tried Epic. Failed two of the days. This week i decided to try Expert. Needless to say that your definition of expert is laughable. Seeing how epic consists of 30k pi fights and very much quite the challenge for average players. Entering expert i was expecting at least 18 to 20k pi fights, instead we have 12k pi fights. You guys go from no challenge to super crazy challenging. I don't see how the average player can get better at this game when there is no in between. And if you're a player that has more than 3 rank 5 champs and a dozen rank 4, don't even bother replying. I only have 1 rank 5 and half a dozen rank 4. So of course the game is much easier for you. But think expert for the future needs to be a bit more challenging. For average players, it goes from boring to no fun. Just a thought.

Comments

MaatMan

half a dozen r4 or a dozen r4 is no different at all as you can only use 5 at a time.
just saying.
with 1 r5 and 4 r4 on your team you should be able to just manage epic as a challenge.

phillgreen

I snooze during expert and get smashed by epic.

I figure my roster and ability is just at a lousy point in between but my best 5* are at R2 and I have half a dozen 4r5

OnlyOneAboveAll

MaatMan wrote: »

half a dozen r4 or a dozen r4 is no different at all as you can only use 5 at a time.
just saying.
with 1 r5 and 4 r4 on your team you should be able to just manage epic as a challenge.

I agree if you managed to r4 the right champs

Anonymous346

Epic is doable even with 4*s, I only use 1 or 2 5*s on my team, and I play epic every day. You just need the correct champs for the node and champs that could be in there

MaatMan

Anonymous346 wrote: »

Epic is doable even with 4*s, I only use 1 or 2 5*s on my team, and I play epic every day. You just need the correct champs for the node and champs that could be in there

you must be extremely crazy skilled to do it with 4*.
i am not saying it is impossible but i find it hard to believe.
i did it everyday last week. it was hard but i got the job done.
but today. damn. i got demolished on the first fight with ST.

TheLegend27

Epic isn't worth the hassle. I can go into expert, play mindlessly, and win. I actually have to pay attention in epic. That's not worth the small boost in rewards.

JRock808

I did yesterday with a 5/50 AA. But it depends on who you get. First week on this day I got the most awful champ combinations. Getting OML is vastly easier than getting ST. Just more RNG awesomeness... it's all just getting to be too much.

B012

its not the difficulty is the lack of champs. today run with masochism and aggressive regeneration is piece of cake with even a 4 void, and a nightmare with others.
a friendly advice if you run on a mephisto and dont have a void just quit it dont bother

Stewman

I agree. The difficulty curve from Expert to Epic is pretty ridiculous.

Spurgeon14

TheLegend27 wrote: »

Epic isn't worth the hassle. I can go into expert, play mindlessly, and win. I actually have to pay attention in epic. That's not worth the small boost in rewards.

My thoughts exactly.

DrZola

Even with great champs, bad pRNG can wreck you on certain days in Epic. On Day 7, who knows? Even your boosts may kill you.

Expert, on the other hand, is straightforward—which makes me think there is either a struggle to dial the content in proportionately with the player base or content is simply being given an experimental run to see how it all works together. Either way, it can make for very discouraging play.

Dr. Zola

DNA3000

DrZola wrote: »

Even with great champs, bad pRNG can wreck you on certain days in Epic. On Day 7, who knows? Even your boosts may kill you.

Expert, on the other hand, is straightforward—which makes me think there is either a struggle to dial the content in proportionately with the player base or content is simply being given an experimental run to see how it all works together. Either way, it can make for very discouraging play.

Dr. Zola

Actually, expert/master is substantially lower than epic/uncollected because every tier of difficulty up to expert/master is on a single difficulty curve, but epic/uncollected is deliberately aimed higher. In fact the big jump between expert/master and epic/uncollected is not actually due to epic/uncollected being set way above expert/master, it is because expert/master was downgraded to align better with the lower levels when uncollected was introduced.

There's complicated reasons for doing this, but the oversimplified version is this: there can only be so many difficulty tiers. Right now we have five: beginner, normal, heroic, master, uncollected. There's an obvious target for beginner. They want the top difficulty to be about where uncollected is now to target the players at or soon entering the end game. They *could* then space the other three difficulties roughly evenly between them. But that would make the jump from beginner to normal and from normal to heroic too high. They want the progression links from beginner to normal to heroic to have a certain gap that is smaller. That takes priority, so those difficulties end up where they are. The only question then becomes where to put master: in between heroic and uncollected, or where you would "expect" master to be if you extrapolated normal and heroic. And Kabam decided to move master to that lower spot so that it would be easier to progress from heroic to master, even though it also makes it harder to jump from master to uncollected. The overall job from heroic to uncollected is going to be the same regardless, the only question is whether to make master harder or easier to reach, and they decided to make it easier.

This propagates to other content that isn't strictly progressional, like the events.

DrZola

DNA3000 wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

Even with great champs, bad pRNG can wreck you on certain days in Epic. On Day 7, who knows? Even your boosts may kill you.

Expert, on the other hand, is straightforward—which makes me think there is either a struggle to dial the content in proportionately with the player base or content is simply being given an experimental run to see how it all works together. Either way, it can make for very discouraging play.

Dr. Zola

Actually, expert/master is substantially lower than epic/uncollected because every tier of difficulty up to expert/master is on a single difficulty curve, but epic/uncollected is deliberately aimed higher. In fact the big jump between expert/master and epic/uncollected is not actually due to epic/uncollected being set way above expert/master, it is because expert/master was downgraded to align better with the lower levels when uncollected was introduced.

There's complicated reasons for doing this, but the oversimplified version is this: there can only be so many difficulty tiers. Right now we have five: beginner, normal, heroic, master, uncollected. There's an obvious target for beginner. They want the top difficulty to be about where uncollected is now to target the players at or soon entering the end game. They *could* then space the other three difficulties roughly evenly between them. But that would make the jump from beginner to normal and from normal to heroic too high. They want the progression links from beginner to normal to heroic to have a certain gap that is smaller. That takes priority, so those difficulties end up where they are. The only question then becomes where to put master: in between heroic and uncollected, or where you would "expect" master to be if you extrapolated normal and heroic. And Kabam decided to move master to that lower spot so that it would be easier to progress from heroic to master, even though it also makes it harder to jump from master to uncollected. The overall job from heroic to uncollected is going to be the same regardless, the only question is whether to make master harder or easier to reach, and they decided to make it easier.

This propagates to other content that isn't strictly progressional, like the events.

Makes sense, except for the experimental feel of the nodes in Epic. Even the AI seems confused about what’s supposed to happen at times, which I suppose is what makes it so epic.

Dr. Zola

V1PER1987

Last week I started out with 5 revives and about 85 free crystals. Today I’m all out of revives and free crystals due to all this trial nonsense. Epic is ridiculous. Forget challenging, it’s punishing. And for what? A few 5* shards? In my blindness I’ve realized I now have no revives left for EQ or possibly Act 6 if it’s released soon. And I have nothing terribly great to show for it. I’m taking a cue from the others here. Expert all day. Now to figure out how to get some revives.

DNA3000

V1PER1987 wrote: »

Last week I started out with 5 revives and about 85 free crystals. Today I’m all out of revives and free crystals due to all this trial nonsense. Epic is ridiculous. Forget challenging, it’s punishing. And for what? A few 5* shards? In my blindness I’ve realized I now have no revives left for EQ or possibly Act 6 if it’s released soon. And I have nothing terribly great to show for it. I’m taking a cue from the others here. Expert all day. Now to figure out how to get some revives.

That's actually the calculus players are supposed to be making: if it is a huge stretch to do epic, back down to expert because the rewards aren't *too* much lower.

Have you been stocking up on free four hour crystals? Those things are loaded with revives. At least in the sense that you can accumulate hundreds of crystals on a time scale of a few months and you're bound to get a lot of them by random chance.

Also, FYI they announced Act 6 was starting a beta yesterday: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/116715/act-6-chapter-1-beta-starting-today . If the beta is running for two weeks, a reasonable guess is that Act 6 might be a month or so away, unless show-stopping bugs are found by the beta testers.

Str

OnlyOneAboveAll wrote: »

Last week i tried Epic. Failed two of the days. This week i decided to try Expert. Needless to say that your definition of expert is laughable. Seeing how epic consists of 30k pi fights and very much quite the challenge for average players. Entering expert i was expecting at least 18 to 20k pi fights, instead we have 12k pi fights. You guys go from no challenge to super crazy challenging. I don't see how the average player can get better at this game when there is no in between. And if you're a player that has more than 3 rank 5 champs and a dozen rank 4, don't even bother replying. I only have 1 rank 5 and half a dozen rank 4. So of course the game is much easier for you. But think expert for the future needs to be a bit more challenging. For average players, it goes from boring to no fun. Just a thought.

I am one of those annoying players with 3 r5s and a dozen r4s, but i still totally agree with you. Love the epic difficulty (apart from sabretooth in wind trial) but on some match ups i still lose an r5 champ.

JRock808

DNA3000 wrote: »

Have you been stocking up on free four hour crystals? Those things are loaded with revives. At least in the sense that you can accumulate hundreds of crystals on a time scale of a few months and you're bound to get a lot of them by random chance.

The revive drop rate in uncollected free crystal is absolutely abysmal. Like low single digit % chance. It's not uncommon to open 100-200 and end up with just 3 or 4.

V1PER1987

DNA3000 wrote: »

V1PER1987 wrote: »

Last week I started out with 5 revives and about 85 free crystals. Today I’m all out of revives and free crystals due to all this trial nonsense. Epic is ridiculous. Forget challenging, it’s punishing. And for what? A few 5* shards? In my blindness I’ve realized I now have no revives left for EQ or possibly Act 6 if it’s released soon. And I have nothing terribly great to show for it. I’m taking a cue from the others here. Expert all day. Now to figure out how to get some revives.

That's actually the calculus players are supposed to be making: if it is a huge stretch to do epic, back down to expert because the rewards aren't *too* much lower.

Have you been stocking up on free four hour crystals? Those things are loaded with revives. At least in the sense that you can accumulate hundreds of crystals on a time scale of a few months and you're bound to get a lot of them by random chance.

Also, FYI they announced Act 6 was starting a beta yesterday: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/116715/act-6-chapter-1-beta-starting-today . If the beta is running for two weeks, a reasonable guess is that Act 6 might be a month or so away, unless show-stopping bugs are found by the beta testers.

Yes I did mention I had 85 saved up. I popped them all and got 1 revive so “Those things are loaded with revives” is not quite accurate. I’ve never gotten more than maybe 1-2 per 100 opened.

DrZola

V1PER1987 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

V1PER1987 wrote: »

Last week I started out with 5 revives and about 85 free crystals. Today I’m all out of revives and free crystals due to all this trial nonsense. Epic is ridiculous. Forget challenging, it’s punishing. And for what? A few 5* shards? In my blindness I’ve realized I now have no revives left for EQ or possibly Act 6 if it’s released soon. And I have nothing terribly great to show for it. I’m taking a cue from the others here. Expert all day. Now to figure out how to get some revives.

That's actually the calculus players are supposed to be making: if it is a huge stretch to do epic, back down to expert because the rewards aren't *too* much lower.

Have you been stocking up on free four hour crystals? Those things are loaded with revives. At least in the sense that you can accumulate hundreds of crystals on a time scale of a few months and you're bound to get a lot of them by random chance.

Also, FYI they announced Act 6 was starting a beta yesterday: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/116715/act-6-chapter-1-beta-starting-today . If the beta is running for two weeks, a reasonable guess is that Act 6 might be a month or so away, unless show-stopping bugs are found by the beta testers.

Yes I did mention I had 85 saved up. I popped them all and got 1 revive so “Those things are loaded with revives” is not quite accurate. I’ve never gotten more than maybe 1-2 per 100 opened.

I echo your sentiments. And @DNA3000 knows they aren’t “loaded” with them—he just misspoke. The odds are low as they are for most useful items needed from crystals.

Dr. Zola

CapWW2

Epic must be tone down asap

MaatMan

here is my thoughts on difficulty level.
this is a repost of part of my comment from another thread.
the whole difficulty scaling doesnt seem right IMO.
master should have never been reduced.
with the way new players gain 4* and 5* champs so easiy it is a very very quick progression from beginner to 100% heroic. like a couple of weeks. so really the difficulty of these couple easily be spaced out more.
i started a new account a while ago and within 3 weeks could autobattle some of heroic difficulty.

i see that a particular level of difficulty should match your progress in the game.
while you are struggling to do act 4 you will struggle to do master.
as you are pushing at the end of act 4 master will be more doable.
as you are beginning to work your way through act 5 master should be getting easier.
to the point where you are looking at becoming Uncollected master should no longer be a challenge as you are now looking toward your next step in progress.

once you become uncollected you should begin to get challenged by UC EQ.
as you are working your way through the rest of act 5 UC content should be getting easier.
to the point that once you become Elders bane UC should be relatively easy with a small element of challenge on the last couple of boss fights.

Once you are Elders Bane is when you should be looking towards embarking on what comes next.
which in my opinion should be Act 6 and an Elder difficulty EQ.
the Elder difficulty would then become easier as you make your way through Act 6.
So Elder difficulty would be impossible for newly Elder Bane summoners to do and would be designed to keep you challenged month to month even when using ur 5/65 champs.

MaatMan

i understand that end game players need and need content to do.
but the problem is rediculous atm for a large amount of players.
there is a huge percentage of players that get bored when they do expert difficulty as you can almost auto battle it.
yet have no chance at doing epic.
i understand the point is to grow ur roster and get stronger but with alot of content being released like this it leaves a seriously large amount of the player base in limbo being bored and frustrated and likely to just quit.

both aspects of the player base need to be kept happy and that is why i suggested things the way i have in my above post.
if difficulties are structured like that then everyone can have a difficulty that is appropriate.
cus right now tthe wayt things are someone is unhappy.
epic is made easier and endgamers are bored.
epic is kept as it is or made harder and a huge percentage of mid tier players are bored.

DNA3000

MaatMan wrote: »

i understand that end game players need and need content to do.
but the problem is rediculous atm for a large amount of players.
there is a huge percentage of players that get bored when they do expert difficulty as you can almost auto battle it.
yet have no chance at doing epic.
i understand the point is to grow ur roster and get stronger but with alot of content being released like this it leaves a seriously large amount of the player base in limbo being bored and frustrated and likely to just quit.

both aspects of the player base need to be kept happy and that is why i suggested things the way i have in my above post.
if difficulties are structured like that then everyone can have a difficulty that is appropriate.
cus right now tthe wayt things are someone is unhappy.
epic is made easier and endgamers are bored.
epic is kept as it is or made harder and a huge percentage of mid tier players are bored.

The problem isn't that your suggestion is intrinsically wrong, it is that you seem to think that the game isn't already exactly what you describe for a large number of players. Changing the difficulties in a way that would actualize your suggestion for the players you're thinking about would also destroy that situation for the players already in that situation.

Given identical rosters, two different players will perceive the same content with different difficulty. There will always be players that think that content is trivially easy, and some that think the content is impossibly difficult. You cannot hit the bullseye, because there's no bullseye to hit.

MaatMan

DNA3000 wrote: »

MaatMan wrote: »

i understand that end game players need and need content to do.
but the problem is rediculous atm for a large amount of players.
there is a huge percentage of players that get bored when they do expert difficulty as you can almost auto battle it.
yet have no chance at doing epic.
i understand the point is to grow ur roster and get stronger but with alot of content being released like this it leaves a seriously large amount of the player base in limbo being bored and frustrated and likely to just quit.

both aspects of the player base need to be kept happy and that is why i suggested things the way i have in my above post.
if difficulties are structured like that then everyone can have a difficulty that is appropriate.
cus right now tthe wayt things are someone is unhappy.
epic is made easier and endgamers are bored.
epic is kept as it is or made harder and a huge percentage of mid tier players are bored.

The problem isn't that your suggestion is intrinsically wrong, it is that you seem to think that the game isn't already exactly what you describe for a large number of players. Changing the difficulties in a way that would actualize your suggestion for the players you're thinking about would also destroy that situation for the players already in that situation.

Given identical rosters, two different players will perceive the same content with different difficulty. There will always be players that think that content is trivially easy, and some that think the content is impossibly difficult. You cannot hit the bullseye, because there's no bullseye to hit.

i can understand wat you are saying but from where i sit it seems to not be.
it seems that it was.
but then
i feel master mode was directed at end of act 4 begining of act 5 but then they made master easier. and now it seems to correlate with by the time u finish act 4 master is easy.
i feel UC was originally designed as i stated it should be but ha slowly been pushing further and further away.

so i feel wat kabam needs to do is introduce the elder difficulty, tone down UC bac to where it was 6 months ago, boost up master to where it was a little over 12 months ago.

i know i am not alone in this assumption. i have many players that feel the same. alot who are close to endgame lvl. Ie, elders bane, done one path of LOL, and doing varient,
as well as many players who have just done UC.
my ally is a mixed bag of players at varying progression so it helps get a bit of an idea.

so in short @DNA3000 i feel like this was kabams original intent however they have moved away from it in an atttempt to provide harder content for those end game players.
i think they need to introduce Elder difficulty and rebalance all the existing ones otherwise UC will keep getting harder for most, or more and more will complain they have no challenge as they increase thier rosters. one of two scenarios depending on if the keep increasing UC or leave it as is

MaatMan

also @DNA3000 i am not talking about balancing it to a particular player or players skill set / roster.
act 4 has a set difficulty.
act 5.1 and 5.2 have set difficulties
act 5.3 and 5.4 have set difficulties.
they clearly have a design.
the EQ difficulties should be tailored to match one and not tinkered with.

therefore regardless of ur skill or your roster.
if you find act 4 hard masters will be a b***h
if you find 5.2 easy, masters will easy.
if you find 5.3 hard, UC will challenge you.
if you find 5.4 easy, UC will be easy with the occasional exception

if you find 5.4 and UC easy, that is where Elders difficulty will come in and challenge the bejeezus out of you.

MrTicTac19992008

MaatMan wrote: »

i understand that end game players need and need content to do.
but the problem is rediculous atm for a large amount of players.
there is a huge percentage of players that get bored when they do expert difficulty as you can almost auto battle it.
yet have no chance at doing epic.
i understand the point is to grow ur roster and get stronger but with alot of content being released like this it leaves a seriously large amount of the player base in limbo being bored and frustrated and likely to just quit.

both aspects of the player base need to be kept happy and that is why i suggested things the way i have in my above post.
if difficulties are structured like that then everyone can have a difficulty that is appropriate.
cus right now tthe wayt things are someone is unhappy.
epic is made easier and endgamers are bored.
epic is kept as it is or made harder and a huge percentage of mid tier players are bored.

All through the game from the very start. You will find that you are in between difficulties. You at one point would have found Heroic so easy but then thinking Master is too hard. Why isnt there something in between Heroic and Master to suit because this is where my ability and roster currently is at.

I remember trying to do a completion of Master thinking this is impossible. That Hela wrecked me so much. This is now the case with the new side events with 'Epic' difficulty. I did epic a couple of times the first week but thought, not worth it so will do Expert. Expert is simple for me but I don't mind, rewards will help ensure next time a side quest comes around I will be hopefully in a better position.

MaatMan

MrTicTac19992008 wrote: »

MaatMan wrote: »

i understand that end game players need and need content to do.
but the problem is rediculous atm for a large amount of players.
there is a huge percentage of players that get bored when they do expert difficulty as you can almost auto battle it.
yet have no chance at doing epic.
i understand the point is to grow ur roster and get stronger but with alot of content being released like this it leaves a seriously large amount of the player base in limbo being bored and frustrated and likely to just quit.

both aspects of the player base need to be kept happy and that is why i suggested things the way i have in my above post.
if difficulties are structured like that then everyone can have a difficulty that is appropriate.
cus right now tthe wayt things are someone is unhappy.
epic is made easier and endgamers are bored.
epic is kept as it is or made harder and a huge percentage of mid tier players are bored.

All through the game from the very start. You will find that you are in between difficulties. You at one point would have found Heroic so easy but then thinking Master is too hard. Why isnt there something in between Heroic and Master to suit because this is where my ability and roster currently is at.

I remember trying to do a completion of Master thinking this is impossible. That Hela wrecked me so much. This is now the case with the new side events with 'Epic' difficulty. I did epic a couple of times the first week but thought, not worth it so will do Expert. Expert is simple for me but I don't mind, rewards will help ensure next time a side quest comes around I will be hopefully in a better position.

I dont think you quite undersrand wat i am saying.
I think you miss the point.
Point is there should always be something challenging for basically everyone.

The point is that they keep changing the bar. So someone who 3 months ago could do uncollected /epic difficulty no worries is likely to actually find it harder.

Personally i find UC monthly easy with the exception of the final bosses.
I find epic trial is a challenge but mostly doable.
But the problem is actually quite simple.

There is no balance in the difficulties.
It is not even a matter of one day veing harder then the next. But the difference in difficulty in the same level of difficulty for different players.
Random champs in the quest make it unpredictable and easy sometimes and others.

Last week i did the epic difficulty trial regen day no problems. No items nothing.
This week i lost my entire team on the first fight.

So you have the exact same supposed difficulty content but in fact there is no cosistency in the difficulty whatsoever.

I am not saying a particular difficulty is too hard and should be reduced per se.
But more that a balance needs to happen and difficulties need to match a particular level.

DNA3000

MaatMan wrote: »

also @DNA3000 i am not talking about balancing it to a particular player or players skill set / roster.
act 4 has a set difficulty.
act 5.1 and 5.2 have set difficulties
act 5.3 and 5.4 have set difficulties.
they clearly have a design.
the EQ difficulties should be tailored to match one and not tinkered with.

therefore regardless of ur skill or your roster.
if you find act 4 hard masters will be a b***h
if you find 5.2 easy, masters will easy.
if you find 5.3 hard, UC will challenge you.
if you find 5.4 easy, UC will be easy with the occasional exception

if you find 5.4 and UC easy, that is where Elders difficulty will come in and challenge the bejeezus out of you.

But as I said, that's simply impossible. The only way this could possibly work is if "regardless of skill or roster" everyone perceived difficulty identically. But they don't. And difficulty is not a linear thing. I could find Act 4 easy while you find it hard. That doesn't mean I will *always* find everything easier than you. It is entirely possible that for some new content you'd find it easy and I would find it hard. That's actually not only possible, it is *desirable* in any game trying to generating interesting content.

This is completely separate from the fact that for any given single player, that player's perception of difficulty is a moving target, because their skill and roster and game experience keeps changing.

I'm setting aside whether I agree with your boundary conditions (I don't think I do) because I don't think those are even achievable in theory, regardless of what those boundary conditions are.

LeNoirFaineant

@MaatMan if you got wrecked by the trials one day just quit and do it the next day. It's not much fun if the possibility of losing doesn't exist.

MaatMan

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

@MaatMan if you got wrecked by the trials one day just quit and do it the next day. It's not much fun if the possibility of losing doesn't exist.

i get wat you are sayin and of course that is what i do.
my point is there is no consistency in the difficulty.
one day can be a cake walk while another can be hard as hell.
wat people want is consistency in the difficulties.

those with good luck will have a much easier time than those with bad luck.
it is possible for players with less skill to have an easier time when when RNG controls the difficulty.