Sinister labs worth the effort?

Are the sinister labs worth the effort?

Comments

These are bad choices... where's the option for, "the rewards are ok considering it's essentially free, but it can be a headache with some of the nodes so as long as you do it without using items, it's not bad?"

DNA3000

These are bad choices... where's the option for, "the rewards are ok considering it's essentially free, but it can be a headache with some of the nodes so as long as you do it without using items, it's not bad?"

I would say the rewards are well worth shooting for, but not worth spending on if you can't complete the difficulty without spending units or an excessive amount of potions. It is better to give up on a path and only lose 1/60th of the total rewards of that tier, and just move on.

So far, I've completed Epic successfully every day, but there have been days when I've been on my last entry pass and burning a lot of extra randomizers to guarantee I pull a good combo. But other days have been easier, and I've barely used any randomizers so it evens out. For those that aren't short of gold, I would recommend buying randomizers every day, whether you need them or not, so your stash is constantly full of them. So if you get that really horrible luck day, you have like fifty of them in reserve. Because they expire in only seven days if you wait until you need them to buy them, you'll have much less to work with.

EvilEmpire

It’s nice to have something to play alternative to requiring energy 🤷‍♂️ Rewards could be better I guess. I have a pretty diverse 5/65 roster so I don’t find most of it too bad but I can definitely understand how some would find the difficulty kind of ridiculous for the pay off.

Rougeknight87

I’m not pretending I talk for everyone but is the goal of these side quests really to make the player base disengage? Sounds like a pretty bad business strategy.
The obvious goal of the quests is to appeal to players that want more challenging content. And the rewards aren't as bad as some people are claiming. I'm earning 5* shards much faster through the labs than I do through, say grinding arena. Grinding arena is the easy but slow way to do that. The labs, as long as they are (and I think they are probably too long by a couple fights per path), are the difficult but fast way to get similar rewards. That is a reasonable trade to me in general. Again: I'm not saying the content is perfect, I'm saying it does appeal to some players and it does have reasonable rewards compared to other repeatable alternatives.

And giving those kinds of options to the players willing to take advantage of them is in fact a pretty reasonable game operation strategy. It would be a bad business strategy to completely ignore that subset of players.

What percentage would you put on the amount of players playing this game who genuinely enjoy grinding arenas at? I mean I’ll grind arenas for milestones and units/gold regularly but I also detest that part of the game. I understand it’s worth though relative to my progression so I suck it up and get it done.
I’d venture to say the actual amount of players out there who enjoy that grind would be a pretty small %. Think it’s smarter from a business perspective when designing content to have it appeal to a more broader variety of player but hey what would I know, I’m not pretending to be an expert in these types of decisions, I’m just genuinely interested in who the devs are targeting with the epic labs.
As I said in another post the loot for the epic labs in particular (leaving out the 5* shards which given RNG their worth is determined by what you pull or need) is defiantly underwhelming. If it was targeted at a cav level player then I’d say the difficulty of them is around about right, but are the rewards enough to keep the majority of people interested over a 30 day journey considering the time sink and monotony? 10th of a T5B and 10th of a 6* RNG put crystal? No thanks.
So for me personally it’s both failed to engage me to complete it with how hard/fun it is and also failed to engage me with the reward on offer for how much time I’d be putting into it over the cycle of the event, again I’m not talking for everyone just an opinion.

DNA3000

What percentage would you put on the amount of players playing this game who genuinely enjoy grinding arenas at? I mean I’ll grind arenas for milestones and units/gold regularly but I also detest that part of the game. I understand it’s worth though relative to my progression so I suck it up and get it done.
I’d venture to say the actual amount of players out there who enjoy that grind would be a pretty small %. Think it’s smarter from a business perspective when designing content to have it appeal to a more broader variety of player but hey what would I know, I’m not pretending to be an expert in these types of decisions, I’m just genuinely interested in who the devs are targeting with the epic labs.

The *game* should be targeted at a broad set of people, but it is impossible to target all of the individual pieces of content at a broad set of people, because there isn't such a thing as what the majority of players want: everyone is different. So the only way to target a broad range of people with the game as a whole is to add individual pieces of content to the game, each one of which might only really appeal to a small number of players, and make sure that each individual piece of content targets different groups of people so a wider range of people get something. That's why we have different game modes. Most players don't like all of the game modes, but the game doesn't intend to have everyone like every mode. It tries to offer a variety of modes to attract a wider audience.

Austin555555

Not worth the effort what so ever

LibertyPrimeV1

Are the sinister labs worth the effort?

The Master Rewards are ok for the difficulty, but the Epic Rewards don't seem big enough for the large jump in difficulty so I'm kind of in between good and bad... At least it costs 0 Energy though, that part is Great.

Rougeknight87

What percentage would you put on the amount of players playing this game who genuinely enjoy grinding arenas at? I mean I’ll grind arenas for milestones and units/gold regularly but I also detest that part of the game. I understand it’s worth though relative to my progression so I suck it up and get it done.
I’d venture to say the actual amount of players out there who enjoy that grind would be a pretty small %. Think it’s smarter from a business perspective when designing content to have it appeal to a more broader variety of player but hey what would I know, I’m not pretending to be an expert in these types of decisions, I’m just genuinely interested in who the devs are targeting with the epic labs.
The *game* should be targeted at a broad set of people, but it is impossible to target all of the individual pieces of content at a broad set of people, because there isn't such a thing as what the majority of players want: everyone is different. So the only way to target a broad range of people with the game as a whole is to add individual pieces of content to the game, each one of which might only really appeal to a small number of players, and make sure that each individual piece of content targets different groups of people so a wider range of people get something. That's why we have different game modes. Most players don't like all of the game modes, but the game doesn't intend to have everyone like every mode. It tries to offer a variety of modes to attract a wider audience.

So who do you think the epic labs are targeted towards? And do you think the reward for the epic labs is a relative enough reward for the targeted audience considering the time and accumulative difficulty of the event as a whole?

DNA3000

What percentage would you put on the amount of players playing this game who genuinely enjoy grinding arenas at? I mean I’ll grind arenas for milestones and units/gold regularly but I also detest that part of the game. I understand it’s worth though relative to my progression so I suck it up and get it done.
I’d venture to say the actual amount of players out there who enjoy that grind would be a pretty small %. Think it’s smarter from a business perspective when designing content to have it appeal to a more broader variety of player but hey what would I know, I’m not pretending to be an expert in these types of decisions, I’m just genuinely interested in who the devs are targeting with the epic labs.
The *game* should be targeted at a broad set of people, but it is impossible to target all of the individual pieces of content at a broad set of people, because there isn't such a thing as what the majority of players want: everyone is different. So the only way to target a broad range of people with the game as a whole is to add individual pieces of content to the game, each one of which might only really appeal to a small number of players, and make sure that each individual piece of content targets different groups of people so a wider range of people get something. That's why we have different game modes. Most players don't like all of the game modes, but the game doesn't intend to have everyone like every mode. It tries to offer a variety of modes to attract a wider audience.
So who do you think the epic labs are targeted towards? And do you think the reward for the epic labs is a relative enough reward for the targeted audience considering the time and accumulative difficulty of the event as a whole?

I implicitly answered both questions earlier, but to answer directly: the labs in general are targeted at players who want more challenging content. And the rewards seem roughly reasonable with the difficulty level, although they might be lower than I would want compared to the time involved. I'm fine with the rewards compared to the difficulty, but I would probably shorten the maps by one or two fights per path.

1_ShuNeu_1

Ive been letting the dice expire
I couldn't care less to do them as they stand

Dshu

I only do Master for 250 5* shards a day, Epic is WAY too difficult considering it's targeted for Uncollected players, not Cavalier. The only reason I am doing Master is because I can cheese most of the fights with 4* Ghost + synergies and Archangel
This - not that I want to cheese anything but it's way too hard in epic unless you have a roster stacked with (the right) 5/65s.

I don't understand why people insist it requires 5/65 champs to complete epic. I've run it with rank 5 4*s and have yet to use any pots. I think I've quit twice because I didn't like the opponents and or nodes along any given path. My team consists of sl void sentinel archangel and blade every day. All 4* rank 5 champs. It's a fun little challenge to see if you can assemble a 5 champ team to take on 95% of the bs nodes in the game. I don't see the rewards being earth shattering enough to waste any pots on and really most of the node combos my team has a champ to deal with 2/3 of the negative nodes per fight

DNA3000

I only do Master for 250 5* shards a day, Epic is WAY too difficult considering it's targeted for Uncollected players, not Cavalier. The only reason I am doing Master is because I can cheese most of the fights with 4* Ghost + synergies and Archangel
This - not that I want to cheese anything but it's way too hard in epic unless you have a roster stacked with (the right) 5/65s.
I don't understand why people insist it requires 5/65 champs to complete epic. I've run it with rank 5 4*s and have yet to use any pots.

If I tried to do that I think I would end up dead before the end of the path more than half the time, but I also don't go in with nothing but 5/65s either. I use 4/55s and even some 5/50s. I have a 5/50 Namor that I bring in just in case I get a strike-back-y kind of node combination that I would rather fight through than reroll. He doesn't even need to kill the node, just bring it down enough that I can finish it off with something else. Trading a 4* Namor for one problematic fight in Epic is a decent trade, and there's no extra rewards for finishing with everyone still alive.

TKS87

I still try to do them, but I don't use resources on them. Sometimes I clear them, sometimes I don't. I'm not going to go over the top for those rewards. On the flip side though, if I can get them I'll take whatever I can get. In my opinion, the rewards aren't worth a ton of resources but I figure I might as well try. And as long as I don't expect to much out of em, I don't really get too worked up over it. Overall though, the labs are certainly at the bottom of my list for side event quests.

Bring back trials!!!

spidey31415926

For clarity this post is pertaining to the epic side of sinister labs. Master part of labs isn't that bad but epic is an insane jump with very little reward. IN MY OPINION

Mathking13

I think the rewards are not too bad. Pretty similar to those of the Negative Zone Bounty Missions.
But I just don't enjoy the Labs events enough to really care about doing it.

BenQcSlayer

I don’t bother doing this event this month. For me it’s to time consuming and from my past experience, these event where we receive extra 5* shards only gave me meeeh champs in the past.

LeNoirFaineant

I think the rewards are not too bad. Pretty similar to those of the Negative Zone Bounty Missions.
But I just don't enjoy the Labs events enough to really care about doing it.

I got way more t5 basics from the last lab than it is possible to get from this version. This version takes much more time. Plus no sig stones. If you run it every day the rewards add up but they are still not worth it.

unknown

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Bulmkt

Master lvl it’s worth it for the ALPHA 2 cats

The rest aren’t worth ones time

Dshu

For clarity this post is pertaining to the epic side of sinister labs. Master part of labs isn't that bad but epic is an insane jump with very little reward. IN MY OPINION

The rewards aren't huge but they are free. It costs nothing to attempt it. If you try and crash and burn so be it. Just quit and go again. Definitely not worth using resources on but it's hard to say the rewards are too low when the cost is zero. It's better than the unstable rifts that mostly gave the lowest rewards for 70 energy or whatever it was

raffster

I apologize for saying this but Sinister Labs is very dependent on your roster, especially Epic level. RNG also plays a critical role who you’re up against. Yesterday was a breeze with an R4 5* ArchAngel.

The rest of my team are R5 5*s. So far I’ve been able to do all Epic and Master runs with no items used but has to exit game if the opponents are difficult. Also occasionally used the boosts.

Lormif

Are the sinister labs worth the effort?

one good, 2 bad options, seems the post was made to be biased.

DrZola

Allowing 10 unrestricted entries a day is probably the best thing about these Labs. On Epic, if I get terrible nodes (and I often do), I just back out and reset again—sometimes several times.

No energy is also a major plus.

If I don’t complete all of Epic, who cares? I’ve used perhaps one L1 revive and then only because I screwed up on a boss with 1% health remaining. The rewards are so-so at that level for upper-level players and not worth burning items.

Master for the upper-level Summoner is pretty straightforward. But I can see how it would be challenging for a smaller roster in a way similar to Epic for me.

The boosts are curious items. In Trials of the King, there were obvious uses for them. I don’t think I’ve used more than 1-2 the entire time these Labs have been up, and in many cases I don’t see how they are helpful. That’s kind of a missed opportunity.

Where these Labs disappoint most is the number of fights, especially when you run Epic. I don’t have Ghost or some of the uber damage champs, which means they become a time-suck. Six fights at as much as 5 minutes a fight is simply too long. And if you keep rolling terrible node combos at fight 5 or 6, you’ve invested 20+ minutes for zilch.

All in all, the ten unrestricted entries help a lot. But the number of fights and node combos mean these Labs can still be a total slog. Not a complete miss, but needs tweaking for the next iteration.

Dr. Zola

Edit: Poll options are an absolute joke. There should be a “Meh they are allright” choice, which is what I would have preferred.

Werewrym

The boosts are curious items. In Trials of the King, there were obvious uses for them. I don’t think I’ve used more than 1-2 the entire time these Labs have been up, and in many cases I don’t see how they are helpful. That’s kind of a missed opportunity.

I mentioned something to this affect in the main thread for this event. The big problem I see with these boosts is that they are designed to counter specific champs, however, the real difficulty in this event comes from nodes on those specific champs. For example that evade boost could be great for fighting someone with difficult specials to evade, but if that champ has slashed tires, or thorns, or any number of difficult nodes it's not going to matter how much evade you have.

What I think should have happened is boosts that counter some of the general difficult themes we see in nodes. There's a lot of nodes that cause thorns damage on contact with the opponent. A boost that say gave an indestructible buff for X seconds after taking thorns damage and has a cooldown of Y seconds. Not OP but definitely more useful than most of the boosts we got with this event.

DrZola

The boosts are curious items. In Trials of the King, there were obvious uses for them. I don’t think I’ve used more than 1-2 the entire time these Labs have been up, and in many cases I don’t see how they are helpful. That’s kind of a missed opportunity.
I mentioned something to this affect in the main thread for this event. The big problem I see with these boosts is that they are designed to counter specific champs, however, the real difficulty in this event comes from nodes on those specific champs. For example that evade boost could be great for fighting someone with difficult specials to evade, but if that champ has slashed tires, or thorns, or any number of difficult nodes it's not going to matter how much evade you have.

What I think should have happened is boosts that counter some of the general difficult themes we see in nodes. There's a lot of nodes that cause thorns damage on contact with the opponent. A boost that say gave an indestructible buff for X seconds after taking thorns damage and has a cooldown of Y seconds. Not OP but definitely more useful than most of the boosts we got with this event.

I just tested an Epic path with 3/4 of the boosts up and running. Ultimately died at right before boss at Magik with Hurt Locker, Safeguard and Icarus nodes—mainly from Limbo damage. Boosts helped once that I could tell (regen from DoT damage).

Shrugged and decided to get another cup of coffee and wait to see what rolls out after 1PM today.

I’ve got 6 more entries left, but that’s 20+ minutes gone already on top of hitting AQ, situating AW D, running a quest for Completion and dropping 6* into a few arena rounds.

Dr. Zola

SDP

Takes me ten minutes to run master everyday. Have some other stuff I’m working on, so sacrifices must be made. Super easy. Decent rewards, and if I’m feeling frisky I run Epic a few times for the challenge. Itemless of course. If I make it, cool. If not. No biggie.

A majority of this community seems to not want a challenge, or even a decent game. They want Gwen goes to the movies. An utterly mind-numbing event that gave you a 5* crystal. They just want mindless garbage to open more garbage more frequently, and then complain about said garbage as much as possible. I fail to see the point in that, but I am certainly in the minority.

Every little thing must cater to the fragile masses....

Rougeknight87

Takes me ten minutes to run master everyday. Have some other stuff I’m working on, so sacrifices must be made. Super easy. Decent rewards, and if I’m feeling frisky I run Epic a few times for the challenge. Itemless of course. If I make it, cool. If not. No biggie.

A majority of this community seems to not want a challenge, or even a decent game. They want Gwen goes to the movies. An utterly mind-numbing event that gave you a 5* crystal. They just want mindless garbage to open more garbage more frequently, and then complain about said garbage as much as possible. I fail to see the point in that, but I am certainly in the minority.

Every little thing must cater to the fragile masses....

🙄

unknown

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SDP

Rewards are not spectacular, but thats 1k 5* shards and 5400 T2 frags in 4 days for just Master. Its fair.

Epic isnt worth it imo, but I run a few of these if I have time to kill.20 6* shards arent gonna make a difference, but over time itll be the equivalent of finishing a UC event. The extra 175 5* shards is nice as well.

It’s all about the T2A for me. I’ll take it all.

BriceMiester

worth playing but not paying, especially since the content is locked based on story progression and the price is the same for everyone, I would say if your high enough level to take advantage of the offers than you probly are beyond needing those offers and if your low enough level to need those offers your not able to take advantage of them, so thanks Kabam for Bending everyone over with No Spit