There is a simple solution that could allow 4* into the act 6. Create a global node that behave slightly like an enrage timer in LoL. 5* and 6* can avoid it but anything below receives a penalty, nothing is restricted but using 5* and 6* gives you an advantage (or remove the disadvantage, depends how you look at it)
You say you take feedback of players seriously so if that is really the case, you need to reconsider decision to ban 4stars from being used in act6, because it is very clear that it's what every single endgame player wants.
I honestly don’t care about the synergy aspect of it (which is what many players are complaining about). I just want to be able to use my 5/50 4* and mind you they are still useful. I wouldn’t have been able to easily breeze through the final ultron boss of 5.4.6, many uncollected bosses, and other content without my 5/50 void. Hulk and BW really helped with poison lanes and spiked armor, and AA was so useful for modok from 5.4.4. If we have specific counters to some champs as 4*, why shouldn’t we be able to use them? Thoughts?
If their player level system was far bigger, or just infinite with repeating xp values per level; then they prolly would've just put a level cap on it. And 'level capping' content is a pretty common and core design strategy for many games.
But now since they have such a low cap on player level, and there's no actual metric of player experience or progression, this is their way of locking content towards the group of players they're designing the content for. They've tried using player prestige as indication of progression before, and that's probably a worse idea to implement here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not too happy that a hard lock like this is the way they separate playerbase. If they could spend more time on it, they probably could come up with a better metric than this to judge player's progression. And even if they couldn't come up with a better metric, there's better ways of implementing this metric itself, like giving a huge damage boost to 5* and 6* and designing the content around that, or a damage reduction to 4*, or some enrage timer -esque mechanic; I could go on.
Kabam clearly wants some sort of a lock though, and I highly doubt that they're gonna be able to come up with a different one and implement it(plus testing), by the time act 6 launches. A future synergy slot is just a suggestion to make their hard lock viable while not causing a secondary, more prominent issue than just fighting with 4*, which is synergy teams. And it adds a cool feature to the game. If they're able to come up with a new metric and replace the hard lock later, that would be pretty cool too.
After a good amount of 5*, one's luck would need to be pretty **** not not get any decent ones. And my luck is pretty **** too, I have 60+ 5*, but I only have 3 champs from 2018 as 5* and that too, they're VtD, IMIW and Proxima(who I pulled today). Bad luck with champs is a pretty common issue in this game. But eventually, some usable ones do drop, and since this is permanent content, those few with really crazy bad luck can still attempt it in the near future.
But making synergy teams in 5* isn't so inevitable as just getting usable 5*, and that's the real issue that I take a problem with, for the state of the game.
You are gating it based on RNG, something that has never been done before.
Having good champs was always rng based. Uncollected and act 5 isnt possible to do with 3 stars except with extreme skill. So if you can do act 5 with 3 stars you will be albe to do act 6 with bad 6* champs
You are gating it based on RNG, something that has never been done before.
Having good champs was always rng based. Uncollected and act 5 isnt possible to do with 3 stars except with extreme skill. So if you can do act 5 with 3 stars you will be albe to do act 6 with bad 6* champs
No you won’t because those 3* were especially strong for act 5 such as having regen or being specific counters
@Kabam Miike Can you guys let us know if Beta testers were restricted to 5 and 6 Stars only? Was there any discussions to raising the level bar? Not sure how cutting half a roster allows you to track anything more if as you say "lost a numerical value of your time and experience in the game." If you don't raise the Level cap how will you track my time and experience?
Gating to this level has never been done in progression based content (aka acts 1-5, LOL, RTTL, variant and ROL). If this is going to stay, are we now going to see all current champs not at 5 star coming next week so we can actually use the synergies. I would love a 5 star vision ( double immunity + Power control) that doesn’t cost $500. Or I have a better idea, listen to your consumers and let them play the game that pays your salaries.
I know buying crystals has always been a bad gamble, but I find it funny that, AFTER completing content where you're only allowed to bring 5* and 6* champs Kabam is making a special crystal available to purchase that has a 50% chance for a 3* and a 38% chance at a 4*......."Nice job completing our hardest content, wanna buy something we won't even let you use?".....you have to admit, their troll game is on point!
I honestly don’t care about the synergy aspect of it (which is what many players are complaining about). I just want to be able to use my 5/50 4* and mind you they are still useful. I wouldn’t have been able to easily breeze through the final ultron boss of 5.4.6, many uncollected bosses, and other content without my 5/50 void. Hulk and BW really helped with poison lanes and spiked armor, and AA was so useful for modok from 5.4.4. If we have specific counters to some champs as 4*, why shouldn’t we be able to use them? Thoughts?
Kabam is presenting us with a new challenge. You might need to work on your roster a while before doing Act 6. I know I will. If they had made Act 6 just a somewhat harder version of Act 5, the veteran players would be done with it in a week or two and then demanding something else. This will keep everyone busy a while. No problem with that, IMO.
To be honest it looks like they are trying to slow down completion of Act 6 possibly to extend the life of the game. I'm sure for some people it sucks that they can't try to complete it now due to their roster but if it extends the life of the game without losing those people I think it could be a good thing. Now if it backfires and they lose those people then the game's shelf live will be cut in half. So not sure which way its going to go.
To be honest it looks like they are trying to slow down completion of Act 6 possibly to extend the life of the game. I'm sure for some people it sucks that they can't try to complete it now due to their roster but if it extends the life of the game without losing those people I think it could be a good thing. Now if it backfires and they lose those people then the game's shelf live will be cut in half. So not sure which way its going to go.
Exactly. People quitting will affect Kabam’s analysis of future releases and help those who stay (e.g., me).
No one is forcing you to complete it within few days of it's release. Take your time build you 5* roster and then try.
Sure, let me just go and buy that power lock champ i need? This build your roster line is absolutely absurd. You have no control over your roster other than grinding away at a game for hours on end, in hopes of getting something worthwhile. Or spend a ton of real money!
You are gating it based on RNG, something that has never been done before.
Having good champs was always rng based. Uncollected and act 5 isnt possible to do with 3 stars except with extreme skill. So if you can do act 5 with 3 stars you will be albe to do act 6 with bad 6* champs
most people that are doing act 5 with 3* it is for the synergy so what your saying doesn't make sense. if they needed that synergy to help them like hiemdahl synergy than now you cant use it. I would say if you are going to implement a major change like this than act 6.1 should remove 1*-3* and give us time to enjoy the content and put a disclaimer saying 4* will not be allowed starting at 6.2 and beyond. This gives us plenty of time to decide if we want to spend money on crystals, grind for characters etc. @Kabam Miike
I guess there is no reason to upgrade 4* champions at this point. If you arent grinding for the end game then what are you grinding for? Thanks kabam, ive wasted so much of my resources that I should have been saving for 5* champs I dont even have yet.
I guess there is no reason to upgrade 4* champions at this point. If you arent grinding for the end game then what are you grinding for? Thanks kabam, ive wasted so much of my resources that I should have been saving for 5* champs I dont even have yet.
They’re still useful if you’re not in a position to grind for end game. Plus they’re useful for plent of non-Act 6 content.
Thank you all for the discussion on this topic. There’s been a lot of constructive feedback and thoughts, and it’s been valuable to us for considerations and internal discussion. We wanted to be clearer with our intentions, and better clarify why we want to do this and how it aligns with our past direction in the game.
This is not the first time we’ve hard-gated something behind a form of progression. We use gates liberally, oftentimes to prevent players from having frustrating experiences in content beyond their capabilities, but also because we’re game developers and we have some intended play experiences in mind that we--through both iteration and personal gameplay experience--believe smooth out the ride and make the whole thing as enjoyable as possible.
At level 50-60, it's easy to forget that for much of an early player’s experience they are bumping into padlock icons all over the quests menu:
- A multitude of our arenas cannot be played without specific Champion rarities, and to be competitive requires a lot of them. - Normal and Heroic difficulty event quests are locked behind levels 12 and 25, respectively. - Master was, for a long time, gated monthly behind the 100% exploration of its Heroic counterpart. - Uncollected difficulty requires not only reaching level 40, but completion of Act 5, Chapter 2. - Even entering Beginner asks you to be level 6!
And this is just looking at the monthly event quests. Dungeons need you to have a sizeable count of certain rarities before you can access the very same ones. Side Quests follow similar locking mechanics to the Monthly Events, and we’ve used gating methods both inter-quest (Dimensional Rifts and their shards) and more explicit (Danger Rooms rarity requirements, the current Recon Missions) to craft a specifically targeted experience or to more tightly tune the content we’re making.
On the topic of tuning, that is our goal when using more stringent requirements in quests. Back Issues #1 used this explicitly with the Class requirements; we did this so we could build areas in each quest where lesser-used Champions could stand out--Hawkeye’s power drain capabilities in Chapter 1, Quest 1, for example--and be important for strategy where they normally would not. We’re aiming to do similar things in Back Issues #2, with a different approach. (More on that soon!)
One reason we do this is because of how progression changes over time. Once you’ve achieved Level 60, we lose a numerical value of your time and experience in the game. The gap between a fresh 60 and a veteran 60 can be massive, just like in many other MMO games. One of the best ways we have to continue using those gates as both protective and progression measure is targeting the baseline strength and breadth of your roster.
Act 6 (and other content) is built with specific challenges in mind. The requirement of 5 and 6-Stars is a broader application of the idea, but it allows us to build a more tightly-constructed experience around a more specific box of playstyles. Making one-size fits all content for an immense player toolbox can lead to things being more watered down and general, rather than the specific moments we can make when we know the lower and upper limits of each player as a matter of fact.
Lastly, this is permanent content. When we place strict requirements on a Side Quest, it’s a gold rush; there’s only ~30 days to build or enhance a team for the quest in question, and it can be a real crunch to get it done. (I myself am going to have a hell of a time with the Avengers leg of the Recon Missions.) Act 6 is going to be around forever. If you can’t get into it right away, that’s alright. It’ll wait for you!
Again I appreciate the discussion around this, and when we say we’re taking your feedback we mean it. When there are lots of opinions and discourse around a topic like this, we take it seriously. I’ve already had two meetings today to chat about it with a variety of teams. I hope my points better explain our stance on gating content, and why we feel comfortable doing it here in the way we are.
Since the 4* attack and health pool are much lower when looking at a 5 or 6* champion, you’re more than likely to not use the 4* for more difficult content but sometimes the champion or ability you need is only available to you as a 4*. Why punish players who don’t have deep pockets, time to grind arena, or horrible crystal pulls by restricting them to using their 5 and 6* only?
I understand what they are trying do here but it still doesnt make much sense. There are skilled players who have stacked 4* rosters and rely on those champs because they don’t have the right champs as a 5/6*. This restriction doesnt really affect me all that much but at the same time, we don’t even know what Act 6 looks like at the moment so it’s hard to tell if we would even need to use our 4*. Best if we wait it out until next Wednesday to see what Act 6 has in store for us.
I guess there is no reason to upgrade 4* champions at this point. If you arent grinding for the end game then what are you grinding for? Thanks kabam, ive wasted so much of my resources that I should have been saving for 5* champs I dont even have yet.
They’re still useful if you’re not in a position to grind for end game. Plus they’re useful for plent of non-Act 6 content.
Cfree, I do agree with your comment. 4* champs will still be used for AW and AQ. But my 4* champs have brought me through Uncollected, Act5, labyrinth and the majority of realm of legends. So Act6 is going to be harder than Realm of Legends? I still use 3* champs just for synergies. I have 4* champs ive leveled over 5* just because they were awakened. Seems like a huge money grab, why would it matter to them what champ I use to beat their content?
So.....maybe I missed it, but there was supposed to be some kind of statement or clarification from the game/devteam with regards to the champ requirements in act 6, specifically the exclusion of 4* champs.....?
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But now since they have such a low cap on player level, and there's no actual metric of player experience or progression, this is their way of locking content towards the group of players they're designing the content for. They've tried using player prestige as indication of progression before, and that's probably a worse idea to implement here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not too happy that a hard lock like this is the way they separate playerbase. If they could spend more time on it, they probably could come up with a better metric than this to judge player's progression. And even if they couldn't come up with a better metric, there's better ways of implementing this metric itself, like giving a huge damage boost to 5* and 6* and designing the content around that, or a damage reduction to 4*, or some enrage timer -esque mechanic; I could go on.
Kabam clearly wants some sort of a lock though, and I highly doubt that they're gonna be able to come up with a different one and implement it(plus testing), by the time act 6 launches. A future synergy slot is just a suggestion to make their hard lock viable while not causing a secondary, more prominent issue than just fighting with 4*, which is synergy teams. And it adds a cool feature to the game. If they're able to come up with a new metric and replace the hard lock later, that would be pretty cool too.
After a good amount of 5*, one's luck would need to be pretty **** not not get any decent ones. And my luck is pretty **** too, I have 60+ 5*, but I only have 3 champs from 2018 as 5* and that too, they're VtD, IMIW and Proxima(who I pulled today). Bad luck with champs is a pretty common issue in this game. But eventually, some usable ones do drop, and since this is permanent content, those few with really crazy bad luck can still attempt it in the near future.
But making synergy teams in 5* isn't so inevitable as just getting usable 5*, and that's the real issue that I take a problem with, for the state of the game.
(forgot to quote your comment.)
I understand what they are trying do here but it still doesnt make much sense. There are skilled players who have stacked 4* rosters and rely on those champs because they don’t have the right champs as a 5/6*. This restriction doesnt really affect me all that much but at the same time, we don’t even know what Act 6 looks like at the moment so it’s hard to tell if we would even need to use our 4*. Best if we wait it out until next Wednesday to see what Act 6 has in store for us.