My F2P Story, Progress and my thoughts on Act 6.4 Rewards

For those of you who disagree, answer me this question:

What's the difference between Kabam and Brian Grant?

Kabam creates content. Some people give Kabam money for offers and the Sigil, etc., that Kabam provides within the content they create.

Brian Grant creates content. Some people give Brian Grant money during the content he creates.

The only difference is that only one of the above actually makes the game and needs to pay employees to do it

Kabam Lyra

We appreciate the feedback, but please keep it focused directly on the game and refrain from anything that could be considered insulting toward individual players.

Demonzfyre

For those of you who disagree, answer me this question:

What's the difference between Kabam and Brian Grant?

Kabam creates content. Some people give Kabam money for offers and the Sigil, etc., that Kabam provides within the content they create.

Brian Grant creates content. Some people give Brian Grant money during the content he creates.

The only difference is that only one of the above actually makes the game and needs to pay employees to do it

Bad analogy. The comparison is what can be achieved if you don't spend money. One of the biggest myths is that you have to spend money to do well in this game. Brian Grant proves it as well as OP.

Brian makes money from YouTube by helping other players be better at the game.

I dont get it, do you consider yourself an endgame player?

For those of you who disagree, answer me this question:

What's the difference between Kabam and Brian Grant?

Kabam creates content. Some people give Kabam money for offers and the Sigil, etc., that Kabam provides within the content they create.

Brian Grant creates content. Some people give Brian Grant money during the content he creates.

The only difference is that only one of the above actually makes the game and needs to pay employees to do it
Bad analogy. The comparison is what can be achieved if you don't spend money. One of the biggest myths is that you have to spend money to do well in this game. Brian Grant proves it as well as OP.

Brian makes money from YouTube by helping other players be better at the game.

It's an apt analogy, for this simple reason:

You don't need to spend money to do well in this game. True.

What is also true is that you don't need to watch YouTube to get good or improve at this game.

Both entities are providing services that individuals choose to use, or not. People choose to pay, or not.

Kerneas

I enjoyed reading your post and while your situation isn't the best one, I agree that despite Kabam saying that the rewards will be distributed more equally throughout the Act and the final rewards won't be a banger, this is just plain disappointment.

However, comparing a content creator on YT and the company that develops the game he plays is quite stupid imo. It's like saying "CEO and receptionist both contribut towards functionality of a company and both communicate with people, so they are quite the same, except the CEO has to pay his employees and gets more money for it"

Edit: nvm, I confused two ppl together. First paragraph goes to op, the second to first comment

I enjoyed reading your post and while your situation isn't the best one, I agree that despite Kabam saying that the rewards will be distributed more equally throughout the Act and the final rewards won't be a banger, this is just plain disappointment.

However, comparing a content creator on YT and the company that develops the game he plays is quite stupid imo. It's like saying "CEO and receptionist both contribut towards functionality of a company and both communicate with people, so they are quite the same, except the CEO has to pay his employees and gets more money for it"

No, that's not accurate. CEOs are employees UNLESS they created the company, as well. They aren't necessarily the owners of the company. Unless they are, they don't "pay" anyone.

Say a person starts a business tomorrow. That business is, say...putting videos on YouTube. Just say that is what a person does. That person can either create the videos or hire people to do it. Right? Make sense?

How does that person who created the company make money? By putting videos up. Make sense?

Just because that one person who starts their business tomorrow is a smaller entity than a company that has 200 employees and has made videos for YouTube for five years doesn't mean the first one isn't a business.

Thinking of only the big one as a business is not accurate.

MattMan

Here’s the thing though, Brian Grant is “free to play” in the sense that he never exchanged cash for product/service with Kabam.

BUT

He played the game beyond full time hours for years, far more hours logged than the average “free to play” player. That time is a currency that translated to more resources (gold, battle chips, champions, iso, catalysts etc) than any “normal” free to play player would ever get really. Not knocking it, he has a YouTube channel and it is/was his profession, but his “free to play” perspective is badly skewed.

Here’s the thing though, Brian Grant is “free to play” in the sense that he never exchanged cash for product/service with Kabam.

BUT

He played the game beyond full time hours for years, far more hours logged than the average “free to play” player. That time is a currency that translated to more resources (gold, battle chips, champions, iso, catalysts etc) than any “normal” free to play player would ever get really. Not knocking it, he has a YouTube channel and it is/was his profession, but his “free to play” perspective is badly skewed.

That's true, but I'm not sure it is relevant. We're talking about the rewards for 6.4 and Act 6 as a whole, and in that context the average free to play player's opinion, and in fact that of the average player in general, isn't very relevant. It is certainly not very informed, as they are nowhere near attempting that content and can't even envision what their game progress or the game itself will look like when they eventually get to it. They are certainly entitled to an opinion, but I don't think I'm going to be giving it any substantial weight.

The question is really is Brian Grant typical of the average free to play player who is in striking distance of completing Act 6? And I suspect he probably is still on the high end of those players, but not wildly so. In fact you could argue that as much as BG's Youtube activity is a net benefit to him relative to the average free to play player, it is potentially a disadvantage to him when compared to all Act 6-tier F2P players. After all, if I was a F2P player trying to overtake BG, I would have the advantage of not having to spend any time making Youtube videos.

I'm not saying BG represents all F2P players or even all top tier F2P players. There was no such election I'm aware of. But I am saying his opinion is relevant to the conversation, as a high tier F2P player whose opinion shouldn't be marginalized just because he has a Youtube channel.

Saying BG's opinion is skewed is like saying everyone who asks for Cavalier difficulty is skewed, because they don't represent the average player. They don't, but the opinion of the average player is only tangentially relevant to the question of whether there should be a Cav difficulty, how hard it should be, and what its rewards should be.

Plus, I've never understood the position that if someone plays the game a lot, they shouldn't be considered a "normal" free to play player. I mean, what's the cutoff? Two hours a day is a normal free to play player, but four hours a day is an abnormal free to play player? That's placing an unreasonable, and frankly ridiculous restriction on free to play players. Free to play players don't spend. To say that they are also not allowed to try to replace spending with grinding or we'll question their free to play status is unjustifiable.

Here’s the thing though, Brian Grant is “free to play” in the sense that he never exchanged cash for product/service with Kabam.

BUT

He played the game beyond full time hours for years, far more hours logged than the average “free to play” player. That time is a currency that translated to more resources (gold, battle chips, champions, iso, catalysts etc) than any “normal” free to play player would ever get really. Not knocking it, he has a YouTube channel and it is/was his profession, but his “free to play” perspective is badly skewed.
That's true, but I'm not sure it is relevant. We're talking about the rewards for 6.4 and Act 6 as a whole, and in that context the average free to play player's opinion, and in fact that of the average player in general, isn't very relevant. It is certainly not very informed, as they are nowhere near attempting that content and can't even envision what their game progress or the game itself will look like when they eventually get to it. They are certainly entitled to an opinion, but I don't think I'm going to be giving it any substantial weight.

The question is really is Brian Grant typical of the average free to play player who is in striking distance of completing Act 6? And I suspect he probably is still on the high end of those players, but not wildly so. In fact you could argue that as much as BG's Youtube activity is a net benefit to him relative to the average free to play player, it is potentially a disadvantage to him when compared to all Act 6-tier F2P players. After all, if I was a F2P player trying to overtake BG, I would have the advantage of not having to spend any time making Youtube videos.

I'm not saying BG represents all F2P players or even all top tier F2P players. There was no such election I'm aware of. But I am saying his opinion is relevant to the conversation, as a high tier F2P player whose opinion shouldn't be marginalized just because he has a Youtube channel.

Saying BG's opinion is skewed is like saying everyone who asks for Cavalier difficulty is skewed, because they don't represent the average player. They don't, but the opinion of the average player is only tangentially relevant to the question of whether there should be a Cav difficulty, how hard it should be, and what its rewards should be.

Plus, I've never understood the position that if someone plays the game a lot, they shouldn't be considered a "normal" free to play player. I mean, what's the cutoff? Two hours a day is a normal free to play player, but four hours a day is an abnormal free to play player? That's placing an unreasonable, and frankly ridiculous restriction on free to play players. Free to play players don't spend. To say that they are also not allowed to try to replace spending with grinding or we'll question their free to play status is unjustifiable.

I guess when people say average free to play they mean someone whose job doesnt center around the game I guess. Personally this discussion in relation with Act 6 is kinda irrelevant, I am seeing it in perspective of a non super whale(someone who cant just buy every offer or be at the top in gifting or legends) and the rewards didnt hit the mark for me.

I guess when people say average free to play they mean someone whose job doesnt center around the game I guess. Personally this discussion in relation with Act 6 is kinda irrelevant, I am seeing it in perspective of a non super whale(someone who cant just buy every offer or be at the top in gifting or legends) and the rewards didnt hit the mark for me.

I have a completely different perspective on the rewards, and it is not a common one. I see the value of rewards primarily in terms of their utilitarian value. The rewards associated with becoming Uncollected, for example, have value in terms of making the rest of Act 5 and the Uncollected difficulty easier. That's how I conceptualize progress: I do this, I get this, the next step gets easier. If it is not easy enough I do that, I get more of that, and the next step gets even easier. Those rewards matter because they elevate my capability to get to the next thing. That's how I've always looked at the rewards in progressional games.

So where am I going to use the rewards for fully exploring Act 6? There's no Act 7 yet. So in some sense those rewards are actually not as valuable to me as UC rewards were to me, or even Cavalier rewards were to me (in a relative sense: if Kabam wants to hand me a bunch of rank 3 materials I would of course put them into immediate use), and wouldn't be no matter how high they went (to a point). That's always been how I see the end game, and not just in this game. It is a moving target in the game, but where ever it is at any moment in time, its rewards are always going to be lackluster in a utilitarian sense. If you try to make up for that by making them intrinsically game changing, it takes too much rewards to be judged as game changing by the people at the very top. So in response I'm in no hurry to get those rewards, which means the eventual cost to me to get those rewards is going to be much lower than if I charged after them now. Which means my return on investment is going to be much higher.

This glosses over other things like the prestige race, but without getting overly long, I know I'm not alone in seeing rewards like this, and I also know very few people who do see rewards like this tend to give public feedback about it - because it is a very unpopular perspective. The bottom line is I tend to agree with a lot of what's being said about the rewards being lackluster, but I also understand that they kind of have to be, insofar as if I was in charge I would probably be doing something not all that different in broad terms.

I also know that in this particular case my opinion doesn't really matter at all. The cold reality is that nothing I say is going to make the devs feel any better about how they designed the rewards (and I'm not saying they are perfect, just within the wide range of what I would expect), and if the devs decide to compromise their design decisions by adjusting to public opinion mine still won't matter because it is an extremely tiny minority. So I've largely stayed out of that discussion.

Neotwism

Can we please do as Kabam Lyra asked and keep this about the original post and not about BG. The OP isn't talking about him in the post and barely mentioned him.

Can we please do as Kabam Lyra asked and keep this about the original post and not about BG. The OP isn't talking about him in the post and barely mentioned him.

The OP literally watched a video and created a post. That video was created and posted publicly.

I understand that it shouldn't be made personal -- that's fine. But you might as well close the thread if you can't reference what was publicly said and is the impetus of the original post

You can't have it both ways, where on the one hand we talk about how much a person helps other players, but on the other hand you can't talk about other stuff that is posted

This matters because the OP is, indeed, talking about the rewards for Act 6. People have varying opinions on them, which is their right.

But someone being F2P, and/or advocating on behalf of the F2P experience, is being used as a reason why rewards should be less, more or the same in the game, and I have a real problem with that.

Why? Because that can impact my gaming experience, and I have a right to comment whenever someone tries to use their status to negatively impact mine.

PitPenguins

Here’s the thing though, Brian Grant is “free to play” in the sense that he never exchanged cash for product/service with Kabam.

BUT

He played the game beyond full time hours for years, far more hours logged than the average “free to play” player. That time is a currency that translated to more resources (gold, battle chips, champions, iso, catalysts etc) than any “normal” free to play player would ever get really. Not knocking it, he has a YouTube channel and it is/was his profession, but his “free to play” perspective is badly skewed.

Agreed. BG really is a bad example to use to 'prove' what a f2p player is capable of. He quit his job to play the game and make videos on it and not that he got a new job (or whatever his opportunity is) he had to step out of 4loki and out of the endgame competitive aw/aq. Even if he not gotten his new job he even said that he probably couldn't stay with 4loki because he couldn't get enough r3s to keep up with the top 10 prestige.

IMO, BG proves that it's impossible for a f2p player to keep up with

MattMan

nobody has made anything personal, just discussing BG’s viewpoint.

I like his videos, I subscribe to his channel. He seems like an awesome dude. Just disagree with his opinion.

Neotwism

nobody has made anything personal, just discussing BG’s viewpoint.

I like his videos, I subscribe to his channel. He seems like an awesome dude. Just disagree with his opinion.

This post isn't about BG viewpoint. It's the viewpoint of the OP. Just because they saw a vid and it gave them the idea to post their experience and opinions doesn't have anything to do with the vid they watched. I could watch a vid about the titanic and it gives me an idea to start a vid about luxury cruises. The ship sinking has nothing to do with my idea of luxury cruises. Same thing here. The vid by BG isn't the point of the thread. It's about the OP.

Saiyan

I dont get it, do you consider yourself an endgame player?

Am I not what's considered that? What would you consider Endgame then? Tier 1 in AW? Map 7 in AQ? 100% LOL?

Because technically I'm at the end of the story that Kabam have made and done alot of the special quest also.

Saiyan

I'm not sure how this thread got changed to being about BG but I suppose it's because I used his name so I get that. His video just made me want to give my perspective on the game.

I do agree that he doesn't really show how the average F2P can progress or things like that because this game/youtube is his job (still no website I see BG) so he has it alittle different than most F2P players but he is still F2P in terms of monetary value.

I'm not sure the point @ESF was trying to make also. I don't recall comparing BG to Kabam so I don't get that.

Since the topic has shifted alittle to what and what isn't the "average F2P player" then wouldn't I be considered that and what I've done in game give a better representation? Tho I've fallen behind due to not playing for a year.

As I said also, the act 6 rewards will give a BIG boost to my personal roster even just completion but like most players (who are vocal), would have wanted more. I saw that they are considering increasing the rewards which I'm all for.

Demonzfyre

I'm not sure how this thread got changed to being about BG but I suppose it's because I used his name so I get that. His video just made me want to give my perspective on the game.

I do agree that he doesn't really show how the average F2P can progress or things like that because this game/youtube is his job (still no website I see BG) so he has it alittle different than most F2P players but he is still F2P in terms of monetary value.

I'm not sure the point @ESF was trying to make also. I don't recall comparing BG to Kabam so I don't get that.

Since the topic has shifted alittle to what and what isn't the "average F2P player" then wouldn't I be considered that and what I've done in game give a better representation? Tho I've fallen behind due to not playing for a year.

As I said also, the act 6 rewards will give a BIG boost to my personal roster even just completion but like most players (who are vocal), would have wanted more. I saw that they are considering increasing the rewards which I'm all for.

I doubt theres a way to quantify what an average f2p player is. That spectrum is wide ranging.

I'm not sure how this thread got changed to being about BG but I suppose it's because I used his name so I get that. His video just made me want to give my perspective on the game.

I do agree that he doesn't really show how the average F2P can progress or things like that because this game/youtube is his job (still no website I see BG) so he has it alittle different than most F2P players but he is still F2P in terms of monetary value.

The irony is BG isn't even an example of the best possible progress an F2P player can make (nor do I think he even tries to be). I did the calculations for that a while back, and he is significantly *below* those numbers. The only reason I've never posted that analysis is because while it is an interesting mental exercise, it would just get bogged down into silly debates about irrelevant points when it comes to a best case analysis.

The most efficient gameplay that an F2P player can do is arena grind, specifically for champion shards and for (milestones) units. Especially units. Units gets you into Cavalier crystals for free and gets you into a position to do higher content sooner than later (since you can now afford to spend units on potions and boosts to clear content). This would be the most efficient way to increase total rating directly (which depends more on the number of champions you have than how ranked up they are) and indirectly the most efficient way to maximize prestige (via top tier rank up materials in end game content). BG is not doing this, because this is not how he wants to play. But an F2P player focused on maximizing progress would.

It is kind of amusing to me that the problem some people have with the guy who spends weeks trying to clear Act 6 itemless and doesn't grind out all the milestones in all the arenas every week is that he has too much unfair advantages over "average" players.

Incidentally, it also amuses me more than I can describe when I hear someone - anyone - complain or remark on how Cavalier crystals have skewed the game towards spenders and simultaneously either doesn't buy them with units or recommends people not to buy them. No rational person can believe both things. But people don't play rationally, they play by gut instinct. Which tends to be horrible.

I guess when people say average free to play they mean someone whose job doesnt center around the game I guess. Personally this discussion in relation with Act 6 is kinda irrelevant, I am seeing it in perspective of a non super whale(someone who cant just buy every offer or be at the top in gifting or legends) and the rewards didnt hit the mark for me.
I have a completely different perspective on the rewards, and it is not a common one. I see the value of rewards primarily in terms of their utilitarian value. The rewards associated with becoming Uncollected, for example, have value in terms of making the rest of Act 5 and the Uncollected difficulty easier. That's how I conceptualize progress: I do this, I get this, the next step gets easier. If it is not easy enough I do that, I get more of that, and the next step gets even easier. Those rewards matter because they elevate my capability to get to the next thing. That's how I've always looked at the rewards in progressional games.

So where am I going to use the rewards for fully exploring Act 6? There's no Act 7 yet. So in some sense those rewards are actually not as valuable to me as UC rewards were to me, or even Cavalier rewards were to me (in a relative sense: if Kabam wants to hand me a bunch of rank 3 materials I would of course put them into immediate use), and wouldn't be no matter how high they went (to a point). That's always been how I see the end game, and not just in this game. It is a moving target in the game, but where ever it is at any moment in time, its rewards are always going to be lackluster in a utilitarian sense. If you try to make up for that by making them intrinsically game changing, it takes too much rewards to be judged as game changing by the people at the very top. So in response I'm in no hurry to get those rewards, which means the eventual cost to me to get those rewards is going to be much lower than if I charged after them now. Which means my return on investment is going to be much higher.

This glosses over other things like the prestige race, but without getting overly long, I know I'm not alone in seeing rewards like this, and I also know very few people who do see rewards like this tend to give public feedback about it - because it is a very unpopular perspective. The bottom line is I tend to agree with a lot of what's being said about the rewards being lackluster, but I also understand that they kind of have to be, insofar as if I was in charge I would probably be doing something not all that different in broad terms.

I also know that in this particular case my opinion doesn't really matter at all. The cold reality is that nothing I say is going to make the devs feel any better about how they designed the rewards (and I'm not saying they are perfect, just within the wide range of what I would expect), and if the devs decide to compromise their design decisions by adjusting to public opinion mine still won't matter because it is an extremely tiny minority. So I've largely stayed out of that discussion.

Where are you gonna use Rank 3 6 stars? Abyss which is tuned for that, AQ to get better rewards, AW to have an easier time and do better, in Act 7 which isnt very far off, to prep for cavalier difficulty later this year. I dont see how this is any different to Act 5 introducing rank 5 options.

I dont get it, do you consider yourself an endgame player?
Am I not what's considered that? What would you consider Endgame then? Tier 1 in AW? Map 7 in AQ? 100% LOL?

Because technically I'm at the end of the story that Kabam have made and done alot of the special quest also.

You are most definitely not endgame sir. I have completed twice as much as you have and I still dont consider myself endgame. Endgame is a player who has finished every content except the latest. So you will need to explore all the variants(surprised you havent as they are quite easy comparatively), explore Act 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 and LoL(that has been out for years) and explore abyss(since this is the latest content you can be quite flexible. I explored every content in this game except for 4 paths in abyss and 2 quests in 6.2 as well as 1 chapter in variant 1. As soon as I finish the latter 2 I can call myself an endgame player until 6.4 drops. You are still not endgame and if you are then a huge number of players in this forum are endgame if thats all it takes to be on lmao.

TLDR: Endgame player is someone who is extremely close to finishing everything there is to the game currently. The term is quite flexible but you are wayyy too far from that and there is a huge gap between me and you and me and true endgame players.

PitPenguins

I dont get it, do you consider yourself an endgame player?
Am I not what's considered that? What would you consider Endgame then? Tier 1 in AW? Map 7 in AQ? 100% LOL?

Because technically I'm at the end of the story that Kabam have made and done alot of the special quest also.

Sorry, but you aren't an endgame player. You aren't too far off but you've still got a lot of content to complete and higher tiers of AQ/AW to reach before becoming an endgame player.

I'm not sure how this thread got changed to being about BG but I suppose it's because I used his name so I get that. His video just made me want to give my perspective on the game.

I do agree that he doesn't really show how the average F2P can progress or things like that because this game/youtube is his job (still no website I see BG) so he has it alittle different than most F2P players but he is still F2P in terms of monetary value.

I'm not sure the point @ESF was trying to make also. I don't recall comparing BG to Kabam so I don't get that.

Since the topic has shifted alittle to what and what isn't the "average F2P player" then wouldn't I be considered that and what I've done in game give a better representation? Tho I've fallen behind due to not playing for a year.

As I said also, the act 6 rewards will give a BIG boost to my personal roster even just completion but like most players (who are vocal), would have wanted more. I saw that they are considering increasing the rewards which I'm all for.

Some earlier posts were removed.

I guess when people say average free to play they mean someone whose job doesnt center around the game I guess. Personally this discussion in relation with Act 6 is kinda irrelevant, I am seeing it in perspective of a non super whale(someone who cant just buy every offer or be at the top in gifting or legends) and the rewards didnt hit the mark for me.
I have a completely different perspective on the rewards, and it is not a common one. I see the value of rewards primarily in terms of their utilitarian value. The rewards associated with becoming Uncollected, for example, have value in terms of making the rest of Act 5 and the Uncollected difficulty easier. That's how I conceptualize progress: I do this, I get this, the next step gets easier. If it is not easy enough I do that, I get more of that, and the next step gets even easier. Those rewards matter because they elevate my capability to get to the next thing. That's how I've always looked at the rewards in progressional games.

So where am I going to use the rewards for fully exploring Act 6? There's no Act 7 yet. So in some sense those rewards are actually not as valuable to me as UC rewards were to me, or even Cavalier rewards were to me (in a relative sense: if Kabam wants to hand me a bunch of rank 3 materials I would of course put them into immediate use), and wouldn't be no matter how high they went (to a point). That's always been how I see the end game, and not just in this game. It is a moving target in the game, but where ever it is at any moment in time, its rewards are always going to be lackluster in a utilitarian sense. If you try to make up for that by making them intrinsically game changing, it takes too much rewards to be judged as game changing by the people at the very top. So in response I'm in no hurry to get those rewards, which means the eventual cost to me to get those rewards is going to be much lower than if I charged after them now. Which means my return on investment is going to be much higher.

This glosses over other things like the prestige race, but without getting overly long, I know I'm not alone in seeing rewards like this, and I also know very few people who do see rewards like this tend to give public feedback about it - because it is a very unpopular perspective. The bottom line is I tend to agree with a lot of what's being said about the rewards being lackluster, but I also understand that they kind of have to be, insofar as if I was in charge I would probably be doing something not all that different in broad terms.

I also know that in this particular case my opinion doesn't really matter at all. The cold reality is that nothing I say is going to make the devs feel any better about how they designed the rewards (and I'm not saying they are perfect, just within the wide range of what I would expect), and if the devs decide to compromise their design decisions by adjusting to public opinion mine still won't matter because it is an extremely tiny minority. So I've largely stayed out of that discussion.
Where are you gonna use Rank 3 6 stars? Abyss which is tuned for that, AQ to get better rewards, AW to have an easier time and do better, in Act 7 which isnt very far off, to prep for cavalier difficulty later this year. I dont see how this is any different to Act 5 introducing rank 5 options.

If all you got out of my post was that it is just that simple, either I did not use enough words or none of them mean what I was taught they mean.

I guess when people say average free to play they mean someone whose job doesnt center around the game I guess. Personally this discussion in relation with Act 6 is kinda irrelevant, I am seeing it in perspective of a non super whale(someone who cant just buy every offer or be at the top in gifting or legends) and the rewards didnt hit the mark for me.
I have a completely different perspective on the rewards, and it is not a common one. I see the value of rewards primarily in terms of their utilitarian value. The rewards associated with becoming Uncollected, for example, have value in terms of making the rest of Act 5 and the Uncollected difficulty easier. That's how I conceptualize progress: I do this, I get this, the next step gets easier. If it is not easy enough I do that, I get more of that, and the next step gets even easier. Those rewards matter because they elevate my capability to get to the next thing. That's how I've always looked at the rewards in progressional games.

So where am I going to use the rewards for fully exploring Act 6? There's no Act 7 yet. So in some sense those rewards are actually not as valuable to me as UC rewards were to me, or even Cavalier rewards were to me (in a relative sense: if Kabam wants to hand me a bunch of rank 3 materials I would of course put them into immediate use), and wouldn't be no matter how high they went (to a point). That's always been how I see the end game, and not just in this game. It is a moving target in the game, but where ever it is at any moment in time, its rewards are always going to be lackluster in a utilitarian sense. If you try to make up for that by making them intrinsically game changing, it takes too much rewards to be judged as game changing by the people at the very top. So in response I'm in no hurry to get those rewards, which means the eventual cost to me to get those rewards is going to be much lower than if I charged after them now. Which means my return on investment is going to be much higher.

This glosses over other things like the prestige race, but without getting overly long, I know I'm not alone in seeing rewards like this, and I also know very few people who do see rewards like this tend to give public feedback about it - because it is a very unpopular perspective. The bottom line is I tend to agree with a lot of what's being said about the rewards being lackluster, but I also understand that they kind of have to be, insofar as if I was in charge I would probably be doing something not all that different in broad terms.

I also know that in this particular case my opinion doesn't really matter at all. The cold reality is that nothing I say is going to make the devs feel any better about how they designed the rewards (and I'm not saying they are perfect, just within the wide range of what I would expect), and if the devs decide to compromise their design decisions by adjusting to public opinion mine still won't matter because it is an extremely tiny minority. So I've largely stayed out of that discussion.
Where are you gonna use Rank 3 6 stars? Abyss which is tuned for that, AQ to get better rewards, AW to have an easier time and do better, in Act 7 which isnt very far off, to prep for cavalier difficulty later this year. I dont see how this is any different to Act 5 introducing rank 5 options.
If all you got out of my post was that it is just that simple, either I did not use enough words or none of them mean what I was taught they mean.

Feel free to do both, doesnt matter what anyone else has to say