I spend the bulk of my time in game and what got me hooked what how much fun the game was. The futher I've progressed, the more I've found the game is less enjoyable and the video by Seatin and KT1 have pretty much encapsulated my experience.
I sincerely hope that Kabam can come up with a solution
I don't want to be the person to say that the game is dead but the game is in operation room right now and kabam really has to perform the surgery or we might lose the patient because it's bleeding whales
@GroundedWisdom with all due respect, you’re not even elders bane yet. I agree that reworks take time and effort, but your stance on act 6 isn’t based in truth or fact, and you are simply providing two words of disagreement with people who are writing entire paragraphs on why act 6 content is unfair
You can keep trying to call me out, but I'm going to participate regardless of game progress. My thoughts are based on an understanding of the progression of content, the game overall, and an understanding of the processes and goals. I'm also not emotionally invested, so my thoughts are detached and not serving an end goal. Storymode becomes increasingly restrictive via Nodes and counters. The introduction of Act 6 brought a new level of restriction. Rarity. The purpose of this is really multifaceted. First, it adds another layer of challenge. As much as people argue that it's not challenging, it's still harder for people who don't have what they need. The second aspect is separating people based on game progress via their Roster. This is valuable because of things like Reward balance, future content, and leads into the third aspect. Longevity. It extends the goal of completion over time for people who still need to work on what they don't have. That's completely logical for permanent content. Whether people think it's too much or not is not my debate. What I'm stating is the overall goals and the purposes of having things like Gates in place. The entire argument stems from the restriction. I highly doubt as many people would argue against those two infamous Fights if they could use restricted Champs. It would just be another challenging Fight.
And this is where I as an endgame player and minor Youtuber have to wade in on this and tell you with all honesty that I disagree with you on matters such as the 6.2 gate restrictions. For these simple reasons:
1. Yes, I was able to power my way through in the end based on my roster and skill set
2. At my level, I seek the next big challenge and welcome any punishment thrown my way to further push myself, but
3. I have to wholeheartedly empathize with the wider community by agreeing that certain restrictions like gates in 6.2 are just outright restrictive and prevent any player from truly expressing himself by just skill alone. I felt gates truly sucked the joy out of most of 6.2, and when you make a game not fun to play anymore, then what purpose is there in playing said game that’s supposed to allow you to derive fun & joy in the first place?
That’s my 2 cents as an endgame player on this matter. My perspective is derived from personally experiencing & overcoming all endgame content and still feeling that certain aspects are totally unnecessary and unjustified.
@GroundedWisdom with all due respect, you’re not even elders bane yet. I agree that reworks take time and effort, but your stance on act 6 isn’t based in truth or fact, and you are simply providing two words of disagreement with people who are writing entire paragraphs on why act 6 content is unfair
You can keep trying to call me out, but I'm going to participate regardless of game progress. My thoughts are based on an understanding of the progression of content, the game overall, and an understanding of the processes and goals. I'm also not emotionally invested, so my thoughts are detached and not serving an end goal. Storymode becomes increasingly restrictive via Nodes and counters. The introduction of Act 6 brought a new level of restriction. Rarity. The purpose of this is really multifaceted. First, it adds another layer of challenge. As much as people argue that it's not challenging, it's still harder for people who don't have what they need. The second aspect is separating people based on game progress via their Roster. This is valuable because of things like Reward balance, future content, and leads into the third aspect. Longevity. It extends the goal of completion over time for people who still need to work on what they don't have. That's completely logical for permanent content. Whether people think it's too much or not is not my debate. What I'm stating is the overall goals and the purposes of having things like Gates in place. The entire argument stems from the restriction. I highly doubt as many people would argue against those two infamous Fights if they could use restricted Champs. It would just be another challenging Fight.
And this is where I as an endgame player and minor Youtuber have to wade in on this and tell you with all honesty that I disagree with you on matters such as the 6.2 gate restrictions. For these simple reasons:
1. Yes, I was able to power my way through in the end based on my roster and skill set
2. At my level, I seek the next big challenge and welcome any punishment thrown my way to further push myself, but
3. I have to wholeheartedly empathize with the wider community by agreeing that certain restrictions like gates in 6.2 are just outright restrictive and prevent any player from truly expressing himself by just skill alone. I felt gates truly sucked the joy out of most of 6.2, and when you make a game not fun to play anymore, then what purpose is there in playing said game that’s supposed to allow you to derive fun & joy in the first place?
That’s my 2 cents as an endgame player on this matter. My perspective is derived from personally experiencing & overcoming all endgame content and still feeling that certain aspects are totally unnecessary and unjustified.
If that's how you feel, I'm not disagreeing. I never actually said I thought they should be in place. I just explained the reasoning behind them. I tend to agree on some level because Cavalier Rewards shouldn't be given to Players who aren't far along enough yet. That would just fast track them and bypass several steps in progression.
Thanks for the feedback. Please remember to keep your conversations civil though. Any attacks on each other or volatile comments will be deleted. As an open Forum, disagreements will occur, but that doesn't give license to break the forum rules.
As for the subject at hand, everybody is welcome to their own opinions, and there's a lot of great feedback in that video, and in your responses. Building new content in this game is not easy, nor is it quick. We're always looking at what you guys have to say, and where possible, we plan it into our roadmaps down the line. We planned on giving you guys a glimpse of what's on the horizon in a week or two, but I can see about moving that up.
We're always working to come up with new and interesting things for you all to do in-game, and deliver a constant stream of new content every month. We're also always looking at ways we can improve the existing content for everybody. We've worked on a bunch of Quality of Life stuff, some of which has already come out, and some of which is coming pretty soon (Battlegroup assignments at last!)
Less than a month ago we launched Incursions, one of the craziest, most ambitious projects that we'd ever undertaken. That took 8 to10 months from concept to release, depending on when we decide the start of that concept phase is. The reaction to that was great, and it's motivated us to look around for other areas of improvement, but identifying what we want to do, and then going through an ideation period, planning, building, testing, etc., takes a lot of time. It also takes a specific set of skills. We can't ask one of our designers to build a new game-mode, no less than we could ask a member of the Community team to model and texture a new Champion. I wish we could move faster, but we can't. It's physically impossible, and even more difficult given the current world situation.
I see a lot of conversations about Book 2 Act 1 Chapter 1 (Act 7), and one of our Quest Designers will be making a post for our Beta Testers on the feedback so far in a day or 2. But Act 7 has already seen changes made to it while it's still in Beta testing. We've reduced the Attack Boost twice, and that's only to address one pain point. We know there are others, and we appreciate all of the (constructive) feedback that we've received. The point of a Beta Test is to identify these pain points before the content is live in a test environment so that we can improve the final product and have it in its best shape possible.
Alliance Quest and Alliance War are 2 very important parts of this game. We know there are a lot of opinions about them, and we sure as hell are not ignoring them. We just don't have anything to say on them at this time. You'll see an update to Alliance Quests in the next couple of months that include an update to Rewards, AQ Modifiers, and Mini-Bosses. AW will see a small refresh soon as well, but that doesn't mean we're not already thinking about our next big change.
Just because we haven't made the specific change you want, doesn't mean that we haven't discussed it, or looked at the actual root cause. What the issue looks like on the surface isn't always what it is at the root. There's also so many of you, with different priorities and concerns. Just look through this thread and see the spectrum of different ideas and asks. Many of them contradict each other, and many have no appeal to somebody else. Even the video that was posted and the OP's comments are VERY different.
Again, we welcome the feedback, and we're going to discuss it. In fact, I'm going to make sure we discuss this all today. I probably won't have anything to come back with, but I can promise that I will make these points known.
I'm horrified that incursions took 8-10?!?!?!? MONTHS?!
They're a small improvement over Dungeons, but roughly the same QoL improvement would have been to make hero cooldowns 12 hours, increase payouts, and improve the store. And that's like a month tops.
Eight to ten months from concept to release for a system like Incursions would be average for an online game like this. And if they did what you suggest instead would have been "roughly the same" I would be spending the same amount of zero time on Dungeons. I at least run incursions occasionally now. So you might want to keep your day job.
Seatin makes some points I think are valid and some I think are not as valid, but I think even he specifically states that he's not a representative player of the game. Most of the problems he's experiencing are problems of his own creation. The game does get repetitive and boring if you spend a fortune buying everything and try to do the content immediately upon release no matter how hard or expensive that is. I mean, that's his job at this point. The number of players Seatin directly represents probably would fit in a Greyhound bus.
I think we do a disservice to Seatin's feedback if we oversimplify and suggest that his problems are anyone else's problems. Some of his problems are impossible to fix. Anyone who tackles the game the way he does is going to run out of things to do, period, and have little to look forward to, period. We need to set Seatin (and everyone like him) aside and ask for what situations is Seatin the canary in the cage, and try to address those for the majority of players. Remember that for every person that says Act 6 is a nightmare, there are at least a hundred that say Act 5 is a nightmare. If you think that everyone who says Act 5 is obviously too hard is just wrong, but everyone who says Act 6 is too hard is just obviously right, you're really part of the problem.
People asking for more - more rewards, more champions, more resources - aren't taking Seatin's experience to heart. His problem isn't that he doesn't have enough of those things, he has all the things. If every single 6* champ in the crystals was a "god tier" champ, everyone would just get to where Seatin is faster. That's a temporary fix, it makes lower tier players progress faster, but accelerates them to the wall quicker. If only Act 6 was less difficult, Seatin would still be bored. He's already beaten it.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that it is the content itself that is insufficiently rewarding. Not in terms of how much stuff we win, but rather in terms of how psychologically rewarding it is to beat it. For example, simply due to the difficulty level many players felt Infinity Thanos was an unfair fight. But for the players for whom the difficulty was appropriate, many felt that beating him was a reward unto itself. The content gave players a psychological reward separate from the in-game stuff rewards. No one piece of content can appeal universally to everyone, but that *kind* of content is very important to the long term health of the game and its players. It is content players look forward to seeing and beating, completely independent of rewards. The problem is that Kabam saves that content for the extremely rare fight, like the Grandmaster fight or Infinity Thanos. Yes: they take longer to design, I get that, but there's a continuum of complexity, and that kind of content has to be the goal. Every fight can't be the Grandmaster, but every fight could have some kernel of Grandmaster or Infinity Thanos genetics (I almost said DNA) within it.
When it comes to burn out, at least in my opinion (In-game) rewards are not the problem. Absolute difficulty is not the problem. Seatin proves you can have all the rewards and beat all the difficulty and still be burned out. But every player can face the same problem as Seatin at different levels of the game. For every player there is a plateau of resource earning and skill progression where, if things don't stall out completely, they do slow down dramatically. For those people, more rewards and lower difficulty doesn't solve anything: it just pushes them to a higher place where they will face the same problems. We know that, because sitting near the very top is someone who spends an almost unlimited amount, has virtually unlimited resources, and can defeat the highest level of difficulty, has nowhere higher to go and still faces the exact same problem as a player stuck on Act 5.1.
Seatin's problems are unique to the kind of player he is. But there's a variation of the problem at all levels of the game. That tells me the problem isn't absolute difficulty and it isn't rewards. Those are just temporary things that just put you into a higher tax bracket in the game. The fundamental problem is the content must be rewarding to play on its own, so that the game offers the right amount of challenge and difficulty at every level of the game. But that would take a fundamental paradigm shift in how content is created for the game. In the current paradigm, weird and interesting fights are the rare exception; they are the culmination of something. They need to increasingly be the meat of the game.
This is of course an oversimplification, but I think the fundamental problem that lies within Act 6, within AW, within a lot of parts of the game, even to some small degree in crystal openings, is that the game is too punishing and not enough rewarding. Act 6's difficulty tends to be more about punishing the player for doing something wrong than rewarding the player for doing something right. Alliance war is 99% punishment 1% rewarding which is why so many players hate it. Even the complaint about high value crystals like 6* or 5* crystals is, in effect, that players feel "punished" for some rolls and insufficiently rewarded for others. These are all different problems, and I'm not sure there's even a good fix for the crystal one, but they all have at their root the idea that players feel more punished for the bad and not rewarded for the good. And I mean that in a mental-state way, not in terms of material rewards.
The goal of the game should be to try to make the players feel good about accomplishing something, not feel bad about failing something. And while those are two sides of the same coin, that doesn't mean you can't skew that coin in one direction. I posted several threads about that very idea in the past.
I kind of like how the title of this thread was changed to general feedback.. considering the whole reason for this is that feedback isn't listened to by the company..
Please re do act 6.2 and that champion boss With the whole gates system and some of those nodes it’s sheer BS or Atleast just the champion boss and some of the incoming nodes @Kabam Miike Being a F2PP it’s down right complicated to do some of the content even after potion farming!!! It’s frustrating
Fyi, I did Abyss completion and Act 6 completion and 6.3 exploration - thank the rng gods for a dupe 6* Blue Cyclops and all the useless 5* I’ll never take / if i take beyond R3. Cavalier crystals rewards - sigh - I got 1 5* - Ironfist.
I was so disappointed with the results because after so much content completed and so much work to get champions that have no impact on my ability to clear content. The ratio of decent champs to bad ones in 5/6* crystals is demoralizing giving me little hope when doing the mathematical probabilities of a good champ to improve my roster. I guess I should try to finish 6.2 and 6.4... but why? You’re nerfing BW and MS so my roster will suck more for The Champion... and more champions that won’t do anything for me?
Bleh.
(This is after 3 months of Doom featured 5* crystals - 30 or so.. but that’s a post already made but man, back to back to back frustrations isn’t fun)
I have played this game for somewhere around 4.5 years and overall I enjoy the game, but there are some things that are getting really stale. Act 1 was very enjoyable when I first started playing and Act 2 was very enjoyable though it took forever to grind iso as was before duped options. Act 3 was super challenging with a crazy hard Thanos fight, but was very rewarding. Act 4 was really, really long, and cost a ton of power (3/square), yet it was actually fun and challenging. Act 5 was interesting as I managed to get uncollected fairly easily, but exploring it took me forever as I got roadblocked on 5.2.4 exploration forever due to no good bleed immune champs. The collector fight was a clown fest and Act 5.3 was a bit drag due to the attack diminished for class. Thankfully, 5.4 was a super fun chapter. This is where the problem begins. Act 6 is not fun at all. I got cavalier somewhat easily, though I had to revive through crossbones. Act 6.1 starts the don't get hit meta that has become MCOC. Up until Act 6 you could take a few hits and most likely come out alive even with lower level champs. Act 6.2 was too ridiculous, I stopped playing Act 6 overall. Than I started playing variant because I was done with story mode progression. Variant was fun to complete, and I began exploration and there is so much garbage in the nodes that it becomes un-fun. I have the beta option for Act 7, but it's terrible and will not be happening, probably ever. ROL, LOL, and AOL are all somewhat enjoyable, but overall the content needs complete re-work both in event quests and story mode really needs a complete revamp. Side note: One of the funnest things I have done was have a second account and replayed all the way through cavalier.
I see some in here discussing specifically the story mode and about natural progression. That naturally it gets harder and harder as one progresses. That book 2 naturally should therefore be harder. Well that's one way to approach it.
There of course is another. A way I genuinely feel is far better for the long term health of the game.
I have some friends irl who are devs (not for this game for others) and I've asked them about some things that make their lives difficult when developing and both of them said developing end game content. It's hard because after a time you kind of pigeon hole yourself into a corner. This game has the unique opportunity to avoid that pitfall. I bet if you asked some of the devs designing these act 7 nodes they'd say it is difficult and really stifles their creativity because pigeon holed.
Say for example, kabam went in an entirely different direction. Started over with 2* for act 1, did 3* for act 2 e.t.c all the way up to 6* rank whatever for the final acts.
Think about what you could do. Design entirely new nodes... you could even start stacking those node combinations in later acts. In essence training your players HOW to play around these nodes for the later acts.
Players would feel as though they were progressing and devs would have more creative freedom rather than simply cranking up the numbers. You could make entry contingent upon completing book 1 if that really worries you. I mean possibilities are endless. The opposite csb be said for cranking numbers up.
There are players who will beat whatever you put out within a week. You can't design towards them. They'll always beat whatever you throw at them. You need to design that content for the masses. Design end game stuff separate from story mode. Story keeps players feeling like they're getting somewhere.
What kabam really needs is a game mode that addresses retention. They've already installed the most used (bulky almost all games) method to keep players invested. It's called alliances. They need to address and create a new mode of ava/war that people are interested in. It's near impossible to design story stuff fast enough and of a high enough quality to keep both end game players and the masses happy and satisfied. War on the other hand runs itself once you have an good one.
That's why I think kabam has missed three mark. Just my .02
Once the anger and debate has settled down it would be great for Kabam to communicate their feedback to the concerns we as a community have raised. I know Kabam mike posted earlier in this thread, but a further detailed update addressing key topics would go a long way to easing concerns (or make them worse, depending on the feedback I guess).
Communication between developers and their player base at a time like this is important. I enjoy this game and I want it to keep progressing positively, but I’ve always felt Kabam could do more to interact with their player base
I really agree with all Seatin says. I have been playing the game over 5 years and the last 2 in one of the top 30 teams in war. At the start the game had fun and I was really enjoying it ( that’s why I keep playing so many years ) but the last year Kabam has turned the game in a river of trash and making even and even more difficult so the players (that are already addicted) reach to a point of spending and spending! Everything sucks...unbelievable nodes in Act, war that sucks, siphon, flow, bugs etc. And in the end after spending time and money in game they give trash players all the time and make you running after shadows. The better of all this is that they call it luck! So I must have been very lucky by opening 20 times Drax but never an Aegon. They only listen to ONE thing...MONEY. Stop paying, stop playing and they will be forced to make changes as every company that respect their customers should do. So one last thing...BRAVO SEATIN! My respects!
There's an unfortunate precedent with that frame of mind. It's been done. 12.0. Then every point thereafter, it's the same dying suggestion. 12.0 fizzled because even after the team was listening and making compromise, it was pushed for demands of total obedience, and it negated its own purpose. If memory serves, certain YouTube Influencers were fueling said rabble at the same time. If you listen to anything I say, it's that there is an inverted U (for those familiar with the term) that happens with situations like these. A certain amount of push is productive. Anything past that it becomes counterproductive and in most cases, deconstructive. Voicing concerns is one thing. Demanding that expectations are met with the threat of leaving is manipulation.
I understand but they ain't listening. I think this is the only option kabam left us.
Define listening. That's not the same as giving people whatever they want.
So we just wait and they keeping doing the same mistake again? I really don't find any other option than this
Listening means listening. Faults or not, this game takes in more feedback than any other I've ever seen. The problem is they can't always guarantee everything people want to see. What they have done, and proven this over the years, is they take in what people want and work it in as much as they can possibly do within the limits of their own overall goals and workings. It's a machine of sorts. Listen to feedback, confer with the data, compare it to what the plan is, and adjust as much as is congruent with the plan. It's a give and take, and they give more than any other I've seen. Most other games are a Suggestion Box. Listening doesn't mean doing whatever people want. It means doing the best they can to accommodate, and that's not always a yes or no.
There's an unfortunate precedent with that frame of mind. It's been done. 12.0. Then every point thereafter, it's the same dying suggestion. 12.0 fizzled because even after the team was listening and making compromise, it was pushed for demands of total obedience, and it negated its own purpose. If memory serves, certain YouTube Influencers were fueling said rabble at the same time. If you listen to anything I say, it's that there is an inverted U (for those familiar with the term) that happens with situations like these. A certain amount of push is productive. Anything past that it becomes counterproductive and in most cases, deconstructive. Voicing concerns is one thing. Demanding that expectations are met with the threat of leaving is manipulation.
If I may jump in. I agree with you that the message has probably gotten through and at this point everyone stating the same thing is irrelevant. It is probably more productive just to leave a sign of support to seatins video or petition (see seatins “ time for 1 star reviews” video). I also think that it is important to make your opinions known when there’s a problem. We all make the joke about the collector (he here to collect your units) but we let that go buy. Same thing with the ultron boss, crazy boss rushes, the champion, random nerfs, locked maps, alliance war being broken. Lack of material to rank up more champions, 4 star ban, and out of date content(summoner advancement, basic tier quest). Also, I see a lot people making a comment about it taking a long time to create/fix new content. Most of these are not new problems or problems that they couldn’t see coming. Just my 2 cents. I welcome any disagreement
I just wanna have fun. I really really loved Grandmaster fight and Variant 4 design.I like to have options, I don't want to be limited. I'm so SO tired of seing fights that makes me want to quit the game. I can only hope that Sabretooth won't go live with nodes he has now.
Problem ; Why should an endgame player play incursions who has most of 5* champs in the game ? Solve ; They can add a new crystal guarentees us 5* champs with %20 chance of a 6* champion. That way they can give endgame players a reason to play the incursions.
Problem ; Summoner advancement, weekly calendar they are outdated. They don't meet the needs of players. Solve ; Summoner advancement rewards can be changed to a solo misison depending summoner's prestige. Higher the prestige,higher the rewards. It's time to introduce cavalier crystal shards and give them to Cavalier summoners in weekly calendars.
There's an unfortunate precedent with that frame of mind. It's been done. 12.0. Then every point thereafter, it's the same dying suggestion. 12.0 fizzled because even after the team was listening and making compromise, it was pushed for demands of total obedience, and it negated its own purpose. If memory serves, certain YouTube Influencers were fueling said rabble at the same time. If you listen to anything I say, it's that there is an inverted U (for those familiar with the term) that happens with situations like these. A certain amount of push is productive. Anything past that it becomes counterproductive and in most cases, deconstructive. Voicing concerns is one thing. Demanding that expectations are met with the threat of leaving is manipulation.
I understand but they ain't listening. I think this is the only option kabam left us.
Define listening. That's not the same as giving people whatever they want.
So we just wait and they keeping doing the same mistake again? I really don't find any other option than this
Listening means listening. Faults or not, this game takes in more feedback than any other I've ever seen. The problem is they can't always guarantee everything people want to see. What they have done, and proven this over the years, is they take in what people want and work it in as much as they can possibly do within the limits of their own overall goals and workings. It's a machine of sorts. Listen to feedback, confer with the data, compare it to what the plan is, and adjust as much as is congruent with the plan. It's a give and take, and they give more than any other I've seen. Most other games are a Suggestion Box. Listening doesn't mean doing whatever people want. It means doing the best they can to accommodate, and that's not always a yes or no.
But what you said is clearly not working and it should. They should "do their best they can to accomodate" but they are not so you know what to do.
Who says they're not. See: "can't always guarantee ".
6.2 gates are certainly an easy target to complain about, but I feel paths in 6.3 and onwards are far worse. They may not have an explicit class/rarity gate, but they have nodes that are FAR more restrictive. Things like acid wash, thunderstruck, can't stop won't stop, your options are way more limited in my opinion. And so far, it seems like book 2/act 7 is going to be following that route.
I think this is different though. This is not a suggestion or petty problems. People are losing interest due to the direction of the game and the way the content is being design for us to play. The direction the game team is going may not be the right direction and I think many hope this can and will be changed. This is a lot of people and long time supporters of the game that are feeling this way.
In the last year I would say content has not been as fun but more so designed to be painful. I used to play the game and shoot for itemless. I had to concede this method of play as the game design changed to prevent this from even being reasonably feasible unless you wanted to endlessly rerun. The fights became punishing and designed to just whittle you down through one mean or another. The goal did not keep in mind fun of the player base and that was clear. The challenges shifted to unfair on many accounts.
We love this game but it is turning to a chore verse fun as the content is becoming overly painful and the rewards for that pain is just more pain. P2W is becoming the Norm and you can get so much further by spending than actually playing the game. It’s not a slight advantage to spend tons of money it’s basically the only way to actually get guaranteed progression anymore. People can actively buy there rosters now with cav crystals and these massive unit “deals” they have been rolling out. The rng aspect is intended to drive p2w for players. Even content clearing doesn’t give anything guaranteed to make your account stronger but you can buy it with enough units.
Without a change I don’t think the planned direction of the game holds up in its current form because larger groups of player are contemplating leaving. It’s the worst I’ve seen it in the many many years I’ve played the game. That includes following 12.0 as well.
Also if you remember variant 1 started in this same direction but the direction was changed and variants have become more and more fun. Though some of the same mistakes exist in every variant as well(1* hulk gate and no reliable way to get 1*)
Well seems like seatin had the same idea on the state of the game as myself. Just made the decision to take a step back prior to his vid for the same reason. Act 6 is boring and rewards arent worth it, Act 7 seems to be much of the same if not worse, AQ is repetitive, AW is the same 50 champs with rng based rewards and a dominant defense tactic, EQ is the same to the point where i blindly bring my top 5 champs and explore it and finally the champions released so far have been really meh. I usually buy the featured crystals from the black market but havent for the past 2 rotations. I really hope the game changes for the better in the next few months and I can go back to loving this game.
Comments
I sincerely hope that Kabam can come up with a solution
1. Yes, I was able to power my way through in the end based on my roster and skill set
2. At my level, I seek the next big challenge and welcome any punishment thrown my way to further push myself, but
3. I have to wholeheartedly empathize with the wider community by agreeing that certain restrictions like gates in 6.2 are just outright restrictive and prevent any player from truly expressing himself by just skill alone. I felt gates truly sucked the joy out of most of 6.2, and when you make a game not fun to play anymore, then what purpose is there in playing said game that’s supposed to allow you to derive fun & joy in the first place?
That’s my 2 cents as an endgame player on this matter. My perspective is derived from personally experiencing & overcoming all endgame content and still feeling that certain aspects are totally unnecessary and unjustified.
Seatin makes some points I think are valid and some I think are not as valid, but I think even he specifically states that he's not a representative player of the game. Most of the problems he's experiencing are problems of his own creation. The game does get repetitive and boring if you spend a fortune buying everything and try to do the content immediately upon release no matter how hard or expensive that is. I mean, that's his job at this point. The number of players Seatin directly represents probably would fit in a Greyhound bus.
I think we do a disservice to Seatin's feedback if we oversimplify and suggest that his problems are anyone else's problems. Some of his problems are impossible to fix. Anyone who tackles the game the way he does is going to run out of things to do, period, and have little to look forward to, period. We need to set Seatin (and everyone like him) aside and ask for what situations is Seatin the canary in the cage, and try to address those for the majority of players. Remember that for every person that says Act 6 is a nightmare, there are at least a hundred that say Act 5 is a nightmare. If you think that everyone who says Act 5 is obviously too hard is just wrong, but everyone who says Act 6 is too hard is just obviously right, you're really part of the problem.
People asking for more - more rewards, more champions, more resources - aren't taking Seatin's experience to heart. His problem isn't that he doesn't have enough of those things, he has all the things. If every single 6* champ in the crystals was a "god tier" champ, everyone would just get to where Seatin is faster. That's a temporary fix, it makes lower tier players progress faster, but accelerates them to the wall quicker. If only Act 6 was less difficult, Seatin would still be bored. He's already beaten it.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that it is the content itself that is insufficiently rewarding. Not in terms of how much stuff we win, but rather in terms of how psychologically rewarding it is to beat it. For example, simply due to the difficulty level many players felt Infinity Thanos was an unfair fight. But for the players for whom the difficulty was appropriate, many felt that beating him was a reward unto itself. The content gave players a psychological reward separate from the in-game stuff rewards. No one piece of content can appeal universally to everyone, but that *kind* of content is very important to the long term health of the game and its players. It is content players look forward to seeing and beating, completely independent of rewards. The problem is that Kabam saves that content for the extremely rare fight, like the Grandmaster fight or Infinity Thanos. Yes: they take longer to design, I get that, but there's a continuum of complexity, and that kind of content has to be the goal. Every fight can't be the Grandmaster, but every fight could have some kernel of Grandmaster or Infinity Thanos genetics (I almost said DNA) within it.
When it comes to burn out, at least in my opinion (In-game) rewards are not the problem. Absolute difficulty is not the problem. Seatin proves you can have all the rewards and beat all the difficulty and still be burned out. But every player can face the same problem as Seatin at different levels of the game. For every player there is a plateau of resource earning and skill progression where, if things don't stall out completely, they do slow down dramatically. For those people, more rewards and lower difficulty doesn't solve anything: it just pushes them to a higher place where they will face the same problems. We know that, because sitting near the very top is someone who spends an almost unlimited amount, has virtually unlimited resources, and can defeat the highest level of difficulty, has nowhere higher to go and still faces the exact same problem as a player stuck on Act 5.1.
Seatin's problems are unique to the kind of player he is. But there's a variation of the problem at all levels of the game. That tells me the problem isn't absolute difficulty and it isn't rewards. Those are just temporary things that just put you into a higher tax bracket in the game. The fundamental problem is the content must be rewarding to play on its own, so that the game offers the right amount of challenge and difficulty at every level of the game. But that would take a fundamental paradigm shift in how content is created for the game. In the current paradigm, weird and interesting fights are the rare exception; they are the culmination of something. They need to increasingly be the meat of the game.
This is of course an oversimplification, but I think the fundamental problem that lies within Act 6, within AW, within a lot of parts of the game, even to some small degree in crystal openings, is that the game is too punishing and not enough rewarding. Act 6's difficulty tends to be more about punishing the player for doing something wrong than rewarding the player for doing something right. Alliance war is 99% punishment 1% rewarding which is why so many players hate it. Even the complaint about high value crystals like 6* or 5* crystals is, in effect, that players feel "punished" for some rolls and insufficiently rewarded for others. These are all different problems, and I'm not sure there's even a good fix for the crystal one, but they all have at their root the idea that players feel more punished for the bad and not rewarded for the good. And I mean that in a mental-state way, not in terms of material rewards.
The goal of the game should be to try to make the players feel good about accomplishing something, not feel bad about failing something. And while those are two sides of the same coin, that doesn't mean you can't skew that coin in one direction. I posted several threads about that very idea in the past.
With the whole gates system and some of those nodes it’s sheer BS or Atleast just the champion boss and some of the incoming nodes @Kabam Miike
Being a F2PP it’s down right complicated to do some of the content even after potion farming!!!
It’s frustrating
I was so disappointed with the results because after so much content completed and so much work to get champions that have no impact on my ability to clear content. The ratio of decent champs to bad ones in 5/6* crystals is demoralizing giving me little hope when doing the mathematical probabilities of a good champ to improve my roster. I guess I should try to finish 6.2 and 6.4... but why? You’re nerfing BW and MS so my roster will suck more for The Champion... and more champions that won’t do anything for me?
Bleh.
(This is after 3 months of Doom featured 5* crystals - 30 or so.. but that’s a post already made but man, back to back to back frustrations isn’t fun)
There of course is another. A way I genuinely feel is far better for the long term health of the game.
I have some friends irl who are devs (not for this game for others) and I've asked them about some things that make their lives difficult when developing and both of them said developing end game content. It's hard because after a time you kind of pigeon hole yourself into a corner. This game has the unique opportunity to avoid that pitfall. I bet if you asked some of the devs designing these act 7 nodes they'd say it is difficult and really stifles their creativity because pigeon holed.
Say for example, kabam went in an entirely different direction. Started over with 2* for act 1, did 3* for act 2 e.t.c all the way up to 6* rank whatever for the final acts.
Think about what you could do. Design entirely new nodes... you could even start stacking those node combinations in later acts. In essence training your players HOW to play around these nodes for the later acts.
Players would feel as though they were progressing and devs would have more creative freedom rather than simply cranking up the numbers. You could make entry contingent upon completing book 1 if that really worries you. I mean possibilities are endless. The opposite csb be said for cranking numbers up.
There are players who will beat whatever you put out within a week. You can't design towards them. They'll always beat whatever you throw at them. You need to design that content for the masses. Design end game stuff separate from story mode. Story keeps players feeling like they're getting somewhere.
What kabam really needs is a game mode that addresses retention. They've already installed the most used (bulky almost all games) method to keep players invested. It's called alliances. They need to address and create a new mode of ava/war that people are interested in. It's near impossible to design story stuff fast enough and of a high enough quality to keep both end game players and the masses happy and satisfied. War on the other hand runs itself once you have an good one.
That's why I think kabam has missed three mark. Just my .02
Communication between developers and their player base at a time like this is important. I enjoy this game and I want it to keep progressing positively, but I’ve always felt Kabam could do more to interact with their player base
Problem ; Why should an endgame player play incursions who has most of 5* champs in the game ?
Solve ; They can add a new crystal guarentees us 5* champs with %20 chance of a 6* champion. That way they can give endgame players a reason to play the incursions.
Problem ; Summoner advancement, weekly calendar they are outdated. They don't meet the needs of players.
Solve ; Summoner advancement rewards can be changed to a solo misison depending summoner's prestige. Higher the prestige,higher the rewards.
It's time to introduce cavalier crystal shards and give them to Cavalier summoners in weekly calendars.
In the last year I would say content has not been as fun but more so designed to be painful. I used to play the game and shoot for itemless. I had to concede this method of play as the game design changed to prevent this from even being reasonably feasible unless you wanted to endlessly rerun. The fights became punishing and designed to just whittle you down through one mean or another. The goal did not keep in mind fun of the player base and that was clear. The challenges shifted to unfair on many accounts.
We love this game but it is turning to a chore verse fun as the content is becoming overly painful and the rewards for that pain is just more pain. P2W is becoming the Norm and you can get so much further by spending than actually playing the game. It’s not a slight advantage to spend tons of money it’s basically the only way to actually get guaranteed progression anymore. People can actively buy there rosters now with cav crystals and these massive unit “deals” they have been rolling out. The rng aspect is intended to drive p2w for players. Even content clearing doesn’t give anything guaranteed to make your account stronger but you can buy it with enough units.
Without a change I don’t think the planned direction of the game holds up in its current form because larger groups of player are contemplating leaving. It’s the worst I’ve seen it in the many many years I’ve played the game. That includes following 12.0 as well.