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My F2P Story, Progress and my thoughts on Act 6.4 Rewards
Saiyan
Member Posts: 730 ★★★★
I just saw Brian Grants F2P video on the act 6 rewards and it made me think "I'm in the same category as him but much less advanced as he is so why not get some opinions". I do think the rewards suck for 100% of act 6 and even completion just as most players but even so just completion alone will give me a big boost as it'll allow me to R2 2 6 stars (assuming I get 2 more good ones) or R5 3 5 stars. They really should have added more tho. Even tho the rewards for my game is gonna make a big difference I get that other end game players and spenders feel slighted and so I do I actually as the effort needed to 100% act 6 isn't worth the rewards honestly and it makes me not wanna 100% till maybe 2021 or later.
When you look at the pic above on my top champs what do you think? Where in the game do you think I've reached being F2P? (I've spent .99 cents in MCOC but that was back in November of 2016 by accident which was just before 12.0 which made me never want to spend again).
My roster is indeed very limited as you can see and I actually stopped playing for a full year mid 2018 and came back mid 2019. When I left, Variant wasn't a think and when I came back up to V3 and Act 6.2 was already out so I had stuff to do The reason you may be wondering why I have 2 R2 6 stars and not focusing on 5 Stars first is because since I took a full year off I wanna play catch up so I decided to focus on the future of the game. Yeah I can't awaken them as I don't buy any offers or get the good deals but so far it's been working for me.
You also may be wondering why I have some champs ranked him like OG Cap for example who btw is sig 140 and I ranked him before any variant came out meaning full resources. I enjoy playing him, he's fun and no one really gives credit to taking 0 damage on blocks and with a synergy or two he can block forever and just "keep it up all day" no problems. Yeah the fight WILL take all day but he does it still. Also he's good vs 6.2's Champion. How? Well if he takes 0 damage on block then the last 10% is a joke as you can just stay in the corner, block everything and evade specials at your leisure plus the extra long parry stun duration also gives you more than enough time to breath and take the fight at your pace. He works all over act 6 also. Maybe you're wondering about Hawkeye also. When I beat 6.3 I had finally awakened him after him being my very first R4 champ way back in 2017 so I figure why not. I use him all the time, he's VERY valuable to my team and now he's awakened. Also I'll be even more odd and say in the Avengers movie Hawkeye is my favorite character of all of them followed my Cap and I've enjoyed both in the Cartoons, Movies, Comics, etc so more reason to rank the champs I find FUN and I enjoy (we forget that it's a game to escape life and have fun so often).
Plus I could care less about prestige as I don't even do AW anymore and even if I do with my alliance it's at a much lower rank so it's no hassle because I've done high ranked AW and that grind isn't for me anymore. Same with having to rank champs you don't even like just to add up some numbers overall. I don't even grind arena which I assume many would think. When I stopped in that year of playing I got married so the time is much less and arena isn't something I can do. The last time I really grinded was for the love juice arena and got to 1.5m last week for the first time in years in the 4 star basic just for fun to see how it was and it was ok but that time I don't have anymore.
So far I've beaten up to Act 6.3 so I'm waiting for 6.4, 100% Act 5, did the easy path in LOL and have 0 interest in doing the rest ( i have Aegon at R1 with an awakening gem but again, no interest), 100% V4 (Hulk Rags cut DPX and Electro up) and I'm working on 100% of V2 and V3 which aren't to far as both are about 70-80% done, I'm leaving V1 for now to build a bigger roster first. I'm confident I can 100% act 6.1 with this roster since the hard fights are easy as Morningstar sleep walks through CB. Plus I went back to 6.1 the other day and was shocked to see attack values of 4K+, I forgot it was so much easier compared to 6.2 and 6.3. 6.2 can wait cuz of the gates and my roster. I'm more confident in doing more in 6.3 as the boost helps and the lack of gates meaning I can use alot of champs.
You don't NEED to spend to be an end game player or have this game as your job or even grind arena either but all those do make a huge difference and I thank the people that do spend or this game wouldn't be here. You don't even need the "best champs in game" to beat things also (they help way more tho) as you can see from my roster) so don't get to dishearten by the game. Remember to play for FUN and not to have the best "insert number or level here" or else you won't have fun, get burnt out and just resent the game also.
So, opinions?
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Comments
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
Brian makes money from YouTube by helping other players be better at the game.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
IMO, BG proves that it's impossible for a f2p player to keep up with
I like his videos, I subscribe to his channel. He seems like an awesome dude. Just disagree with his opinion.
Because technically I'm at the end of the story that Kabam have made and done alot of the special quest also.
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.
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.
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.