**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Comments
The entire Chapter, not so much.
I think it would be a much needed breath of fresh air if Kabam would start Book 2 easier than the end of Act 6. Other games like Diablo do this as well. After you build up to the end of an Act and take down the boss, you go to a new Act and for the first 25-50%, it's actually easier than the previous act. This will allow people to regroup, unwind, go back to just enjoying the game and having some fun, and give them time to build up so when the content scales up to be harder again (harder than Act 6 in this case), the players are more ready for it and have also had the much needed break so they're not just burned out from this non-stop march of grinding/dying to harder and harder content. This would also mean that if Kabam wants to keep some of their Book 2 content from the Beta, they can (though I do hope they rethink some of the nodes anyway...) so it isn't a complete waste of their time, but they can introduce that level of difficulty in say, Book 2 Act 1 Ch 3 instead of right at Book 2 Act 1 Ch 1.
Kabam is in a hard spot - They are a company in the business to make money. Rolling out new champions is the one way to do it. Personally I think they are making it more difficult on themselves by adding more champions rather than making the resources the selling point to make $$. 6 new champs a year would still make the game interesting and keep the longevity of the game. I still dont have champions that were created over a year ago and I've dropped some serious cash on this thing.
I come from WoW (World of Warcraft) was there since the release. I'm much older now and cant sit in front of a PC, hence this game, goes with me wherever I go. One of the things Blizzard did for the community was to make content for end game players... very difficult. After time... they started to nerf content to let more people experience the satisfaction of completing that content, then nerfing it more, and more. This gives a stage for everyone. Right now, Kabam you are doing the opposite!! Early clearings were made easier with the heal "bug" from Claire and Morningstar for people with much higher skill and are going to make it harder on players already struggling or havent got there yet!! What are you thinking?!?
I dont have a high amount of skill but I like the challenge. Ive seen too many people clear the hardest content to be rewarded with laughable champion pulls. yet people with insane luck are pulling some of the best champions. Youve created this mess Kabam... I dont feel sorry for the position you have put yourselves in, but you better find a way to right the ship and fast. People are going to be dropping and fast.
@Kabam Miike
My only ask is the following: when you take our feedback back to your team, please tell them not to be afraid of reinventing content. Things like lowering attack or buffing rewards may only serve to paper existing cracks in the game. Take our main pain points, come up with novel solutions, then get our feedback so that we can all take a step in the right direction.
To put it another way, there's a feeling that difficulty should come with a reward, and for many people the only way to express that thought is to ask for more in-game resource rewards or lower difficulty. But I think what most people don't consider is that there's a way to change the ratio without lowering difficulty or increasing in-game stuff, and that's by making content that is intrinsically rewarding to defeat. That "high" so to speak is a reward unto itself, and if the combination of in-game stuff and psychological reward is high enough, it can be appropriate compensation for higher intrinsic difficulty. Which means there's a two for one here: make content that is more interestingly difficult, and you both raise the intrinsic difficulty *and* increase the "rewardingness" of the content as well.
Sometimes the thing people complain about is the only language they have to express the problem. Sure, *some* people don't want difficulty in any form. In a progressional game, we really can't help them: we have to direct them to Farmville. But there are a lot of people who do want interesting difficulty, but are being crushed by repetitive or punishing difficulty.
I can offer an example from my own gameplay that I also mentioned in the Beta. The way I do content, I try to beat it with what I would call "minimal items." I don't necessarily try to go pure itemless, but I also do not spend through. If I can't do it with maybe a passing potion or two, I generally restart and try again. And again, and again, and again. That's just how I roll. I do that because I want to beat the content, not spend past it. For me, beating the content with tactical skill and strategic management (i.e. twitch and roster growth) is the thing, and the more difficult the content, the more satisfaction I get out of eventually beating it.
But sometimes, a path is constructed in such a way that, for me, makes this actually cheap, as in without any satisfaction. When discussing the super-high attack in Beta, there are paths where whether you survive to the end is as much luck as skill. Restarting the path over and over may look like I'm trying to beat the path skillfully, but it can also turn into luck-shopping. I just keep restarting until I get *lucky* not until I get *better*. At that point the difficulty ceases to have any satisfaction to it: I'm not psychologically rewarded for beating it, because I didn't really beat it. RNGesus beat it.
If i didn't have the game design language to express the feeling I have when I test a path like that, the only thing I could probably say is "that path is too hard." It isn't: paths even harder can lack that problem, can deliver that psychological high of beating it, and yet I won't complain about that path being "too hard" even if objectively it is much harder.
There's another thing I mentioned in the beta that I think is appropriate to mention here. I questioned whether the point to the high difficulty is to simply find a way to cheese it. If the devs are perfectly fine with players cheesing the paths with the right roster, then in a sense they don't care if players face that difficulty. It is really leaning more towards a gate: have (and figure out) the right champs, and you can face much lower difficulty for the same rewards. Now, some cheese is going to find its way into the game unintentionally, but is it really unavoidable and unintentional, or do the devs actually, in some sense, "want" us to find those work arounds. Because if they do, the difficulty is in some sense artificial. It is more complicated than that, but that's the crux of it.
I play in a casual alliance, we run map 5 and compete in alliance war at around the gold 1/2 boundary. I’ve completed act 6 and I’m working on exploration there while I save up the units to give the abyss a run. I’m happy enough at this level and I’m not aiming to be at the top in any aspect of the game. I did a legends run in one of the event quests a few years ago and was lucky enough to make the cut. So that’s about the level I’m at if it helps add some perspective to my opinion. I spend occasionally but not religiously.
Firstly, on a whole, I still enjoy the game. Aspects have become stale, and can sometimes feel unrewarding and overly challenging but there have been hits and misses in the content, so I’m always looking forward to the next thing to do. I’m looking forward to act 7… but I don’t think I’ll enjoy it. Which makes it likely to be a huge disappointment. The difficulty is out of control. Somewhere along the way ‘challenging to beat’ became ‘easy to lose’, and that is simply not fun. Playing this game’s endgame content can be best summed up in one word; stressful.
Whether it’s having the right champions to combat specific nodes efficiently, being gated out of using the few champions you might have to help you try fighting those nodes in any way you want to try or simply knowing that if you slip up once, you’re dead and will likely have to spend money (a fair bit of money too, I might add) to recover or chalk it up as a loss, start over, and hope to play perfectly next time. This knowledge that even if you have the ‘right’ champions, you’re going to have to play perfectly is sometimes enough to put people off even trying. It’s exhausting and frustrating. There are a few key issues with this which I’m going to try and outline and put forward my suggestions on possible fixes.
Problem 1; what is story mode? It used to be your path to progression. Progress you needed to make in order to complete more challenging content elsewhere, difficult (but short) special events, higher difficulty AQ maps, permanent challenging content like RoL/LoL, higher difficulties of the monthly event quests. This has flipped totally since the end of act 5. Now, you complete other content to get the rewards you need to try and get through the story mode. The issue with this is that the ‘throwaway’ content is boring. It is boring because it is not challenging and it is not challenging because people need to do it to make slow progress. This also, in turn, makes the story stale. It’s too difficult and too annoying, and once you’ve completed it you have nothing to use your rewards on. When the most challenging content in a game like this is the permanent content, it’s going to get stale. The road to progression, currently, is not good. When was the last time an endgame player struggled in a boss challenge? Or needed tips to beat an event quest boss? The monthly events (including the special events like rifts etc) have become a daily grind that you need to do complete because they’re your primary source of progression, only you will never progress enough to make beating something like act 6 a fun experience.
Solution; switch it up. Story should be long, interesting and rewarding, it should introduce you to new mechanics and encourage you to find ways to beat those mechanics. Story should allow you to play with whichever champions you want. It should punish you if you’re unprepared but it must never feel impossible, or that you’ll ‘return to it in a few months or years’. Your challenge then becomes the monthly events. Make them hard, give us more Nameless Thanos, give us more boss rushes that are actually difficult, give us something to make use of the story rewards we have earned. If we can’t beat it one month, we’ll have something new to try next month. This helps ‘future proof’ difficulty. I get the feeling you’re currently trying to make sure act 6 will still be difficult in 6 months, 12 months, 2 years time… and that’s just silly. Increase that difficulty gradually via the monthly challenges instead. In my view it should go like this;
1. Completing story content provides the rewards needed to continue further into the story, and allow you to begin to attempt some difficult…
2. Monthly content. This should be a challenge, rewarding enough to be worth the trouble, and providing a more gradual ramp up in difficulty over few months, providing resources to be able to tackle…
3. Actual endgame content. This is your labyrinth, your abyss, your longterm goals. Here we need trophy champions, not just for legends runs but for getting through the content, exclusive profile pictures and titles and rewards that encourage further roster expansion.
Which brings me to problem 2.
Problem 2; what is ‘difficult’? Part of the problem here is that there is such a range of champions, and such a variation in their usefulness. However, the current system of designing content around a handful of the ‘best’ champions creates a level of frustration unlike anything else I have seen in any game I have played. The content should not be borderline impossible for the best champions in the game. Pulling the best champions in the game should not be your key to even having a chance at completing content, it should simply make clearing that content ‘easier’. A word that’s probably frowned upon. Any champion in the game, at the appropriate rank and level, when played well, should be able to allow the player to progress. Certain content should be very difficult with Joe Fixit, and relatively easy with Ghost, but no content should be impossible with Joe Fixit and still almost impossible with Ghost.
Solution; you need to have ‘good’ champions and ‘bad’ champions but you should be aiming the majority of the content at the mid-range of champions. Content should be challenging for Hulk, very challenging for Groot and not too bad for Corvus (for example). You’ve also got a fantastic range of utility that the lower ranked champions have in their toolkits but none are ever used because frankly, it’s a waste of time to even try. Champions only get ranked up if they’re the best at something, this is such a shame. Don’t be afraid of some content being too easy for some champions, because if it isn’t, it will be impossible for others. As it stands, You could probably remove half of the champions in the game and no one would miss them. This means that nodes which have been designed with one or two specific counters in mind need to go in the bin, they should not exist in any of the content. Massive attack ratings that destroy you in a few blocked hits should be restricted to challenging monthly events or longterm endgame content only, if at all. Massive health pools are a fun challenge, massive attack ratings are not. Most fights in the current ‘endgame’ aren’t worth healing up for… it’s more economical to just revive to 40%, die, and try again, because whether you have 40% or 100% health, you’re probably going to die in one combo - what’s the point? The fights with big health pools, interesting nodes, but reasonable attack values are your best in the game (see all of act 6 compared to the grandmaster fight…) Use that as a base. When we were all completing act 3 and 4, it was tough at the time. Our opponents had higher health pools and hit a bit harder than us, but the difference was nowhere near as absurd as it is now. You can’t future-proof the difficulty of Story content, nor would you have to if it’s your major source of progression. Get creative with it, add buffs and fun mechanics, give people the opportunity to swap out champions as with incursions. Start with making it unique and fun, even if its easy, and add from there. Test it yourselves. Give the worst player in your company the best champions and see if they can complete the content, give the best player the worst champions and do the same - when both are just about able, you’ve nailed it.
Problem 3; offers and spending. This needs a bit of an overhaul. Your ‘offers’ are bad and too expensive. This creates a huge divide in players with a lot of money who are willing to spend on the game and players without a lot of money, which in turn exacerbates the issue you have with nailing the difficulty. I appreciate that you need to make money, and that you need methods of attracting wealthy players and keeping them interested in spending, but this should not come at the expense of the less fortunate who still want to play and support your game. I feel like while the introduction of Cavalier crystals might have provided a huge boost to your income in the short term, it has steadily, heavily contributed to a lot of the problems in the game currently. You can’t take them out of the game at this point, nor I feel, would you want to, but there is another solution.
Solution; sales. Not like your current sales where you just bundle extra items into cash offers a few times a year, but instead real, regular sales. Get an Odin’s for $20, 1 day only, limited to 1 purchase. A full 6* crystal for $30 (available depending on your progression) and so on. Affordable to many more players than the current offers, being limited will not deter the wealthy from buying outside of sale periods, but it will encourage those with less to spend a little and also get a chance to buy some progress. Units to help clear content or open a few cavalier crystals, full crystals and shards are still a gamble, but if you address the difficulty it would be worth a gamble. Anyone remember potion sales? Again, great for pushing through content. Maybe make the offers that appear after clearing content more affordable and not absolutely terrible? Update the unit offers, no one is buying a 4* for 2,500 units. At the time this offer came out, a 4* took as long to save up for as a 6* does today. Make it a 6* for 2,500 units and people would buy it.
Problem 4; crystals. Your featured crystals are trash, mate. I’m still relatively amazed you got away with the changes you made to featured crystals. It was always a massive cash grab to push people towards cavaliers, and so unashamedly blatant. It’s amazing to think that 15,000 shards a few years ago gave you a 1 in 5 chance of getting a specific featured champion, a slightly higher chance of getting something from the ‘featured pool’ but then also a chance of getting any champion in the game. Compare this to what we changed to, usually around 18 hand selected garbage tier, worthless champions from before 2017, 2 or 3 ‘featured’ champions that wouldn’t be so bad to have, 1 featured champion that you really want and a few featured duds. I don’t care what gymnastic reasoning you came up with at the time to try and suggest this was good for the player, but get out of here. It’s awful.
Solution; stop being so ‘Kabam’. You’re not known as a generous company to your customers, it’s kind of a joke. But the extent of your greed in this case has severely hampered player progression and enjoyment. Saving up for a featured crystal these days is a bad idea unless you have everything you want in the basic pool. It used to be exciting to save up shards, and yes, it was likely that you would be able to save up enough shards to get the new champion you wanted, given a few months, but the amount of shards people can gather are more limited than the amount of units people can spend, so you made it a lot harder for the free to play players to get the new champions but did not hamper the spending players in the slightest. There are two solutions here. The first being to maintain the number of featured champions but to make the featured pool actually good. Only put good champions in there, you could even increase the cost if you want to limit the availability. Rotate them, keep the new champions but only add champions that are useful. The second option is to revert to the old system. In order to make sure the ‘whales’ keep spending, I have a further idea to this point. Remove shards from cavalier crystals. If you dupe a champion from a cavalier crystal all you should get is the dupe level on that champion and gold/iso. No shards, no max signature crystals, nothing like that. In conjunction with this you could (should have a long time ago) add a mercy system. Think outside the box, encourage people to spend rather than forcing them to.
Problem 5; alliance content. This is the last problem I’m going to mention and the one I’m least familiar with. It seems to me no one is happy with the current alliance quest and alliance war game modes. I don’t find either particularly enjoyable and I don’t know many people who do. I also don’t really know what purpose they’re serving, but whatever purpose they were designed to serve, they’re not doing it anymore. I enjoy my alliance a lot, but that’s because of the people in it, not the content we’re completing, it’s repetitive, demanding and unrewarding, even at our level, so I can’t imagine what it’s like at the top.
Solution; revamp the whole thing. Maintain consistent content such as AQ and AW, update the rewards and perhaps simplify them so that they take up less time. Which would give you an opportunity to add other, more fun events. Why isn’t there a boss that shows up with a huge health pool and 24hrs to take down once a week? You could even theme it, so magneto could show up and you might need to use your x-men champions, for example. Leaderboards for damage dealt, good rewards… something new. I’m sure there are other, better ideas, but that’s where I’m going to leave this rambling.
All these problems combine to leave the burnt out and bored feeling. Bad crystal pulls, no way to guarantee progression, the path to progression is muddled, the void between rosters of spenders and non spenders is expanding rapidly, with content being created in the most part for the spenders, leading you to go to extremes to make content challenging. Alliance content is demanding, repetitive and unrewarding it seems to serve little purpose.
To sum up, get creative, don’t be afraid to fail. Introduce things, take things away, find out what works and what doesn’t. Get faster at tweaking things and fixing things, and play the game yourselves. Cater to the majority of your player base, give the whales something to spend their money on but not at the expense of the rest of your customers.
Move fast and break things.
You clearly work in the kind of environment I do, where nobody in management is trying to hear “months” for solutions when customers — either potential or existing — are frustrated in the now
What am I doing with this pull?
Won’t help me anywhere. Okay I got some gold. So what? 🤷🏼♂️