I KNEW, I could just feel that it was something like this. I know that you can't always trust feel and the eye-test, so your quantitative analysis, even with limiting factors, is obviously what people should point to.
But I have played video games on almost every single platform invented. There's only a few platforms I have missed since the 1970s. I have cleared content in all kinds of games, difficult content. Fast twitch, RPG, strategy. All kinds.
And I KNEW that Act 6 was a different beast from pretty much anything I had seen. Just getting Cavalier -- which, like you, wasn't that bad -- but a few fights made me raise my eyebrows. Then watching the Brit, I remember thinking that a lot of people aren't clearing this, ever.
You said it very well: It's not that it's impossible. It isn't. It can be done. Others have. I know I can do it.
It's just, like I said to you before, I knew that me being able to clear it isn't the answer, because I knew just by watching the Brit that a ton of people wouldn't ever get through it
The amusing thing is I set out to prove this idea wrong. I thought the difficulty in Book 2 (beta) was too high, but I wasn't convinced it was stupidly high like some people were suggesting. But the more I tried to prove that idea wrong, the more ammunition I came up with to support the notion that something was very wrong. Finally, I decided to break down and attack what I thought was the ultimate core of the issue. If the difficulty of Book 2 is too high, how strong a roster would it take to reduce the difficulty to normal? After all, that's how we deal with difficult content, right? Just build up a higher roster, rank stuff up, and eventually even the odds.
When my mental calculations said that the correct roster to tackle Book 2 was going to be an 8* champ, I realized something was very, very wrong. As you say, intuition isn't always correct, and the eye test can be skewed by the player looking. But the numbers are much more objective, especially when you consider that the numbers are underestimating relatively difficulty by a huge amount. It doesn't factor in any of the tricky nodes.
Ultimately, you have to go where the numbers take you.
@DNA3000 really curious what do you do in your real life? Hands down you are amongst the most prolific forum members out there..As usual, tremendous piece of analysis..
In real life I'm an IT professional. Although that doesn't really capture it all.
DNA sums up my own thoughts regarding this matter perfectly so I'm not going to rehash any of that. The only thing I'd add is the cheesing content discussion that was also brought up in beta. ( by DNA)
If players, even end game players cheese content, isn't it fair to ask if the players actually tackled the content? So often, the response to countering node combinations is Ghost it or Quake it. Both of these champs have mechanics that allow them to circumvent many node combinations and thereby drastically reduce the difficulty. That doesn't make those players wrong for doing it... but it does tie into this dramatic spike in difficulty. Did the player tackle the content in the intended way it was designed? Only the devs can really answer that
I should point out, I love both Quake and Ghost. They just make everything far easier than the intended difficulty and are in some form cheese to content.
In a way, as weird as it sounds Act 6 is designed to be ‘cheesed’ as that means you’ve taken in champion X because their kit interacts perfectly with champion Y and the node combinations put before you. Now I dare say that I’m doing Kabam too much credit if I suggest that they thought ‘aggression: fury - this could be funny with Electro and Heimdall’, instead I think they throw a series of nodes/champions together and assume somebody’s going to figure it out.
This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if you could circumvent the problem with ‘good’ gameplay, there’d be the niche, funny solution and there’d be old fashioned button mashing - a celebration of roster and/or skill.
This is taken away when you know that the design is actually punitive - damage limitations etc. - and combined with such ludicrous attack values that unless you’re quaking/ghosting you basically need to farm WS for an hour before a quest run or play perfect with Cap.
—— I think players have got to a stage where health pools don’t matter so much now - most of us probably rarely flinch at seeing 2-300k health pools. Instead our eyes are immediately drawn to the attack values and any power gain/BS associated with the fight.
One of the most enlightening post in the forums and one of my favorites. I'm in the last quest of Act 6, i.e the Grandmaster fight. Throughout my journey, whenever I scout the map, I'm just filled with amazement. How could someone possibly design this, what's their intent or goal? Your analysis gives us an overview of what we are dealing with. It doesnt matter it's not 100% accurate. You dont have all the info. Well done @DNA3000 !!!
Can Kabam redeem themselves? ABSOLUTELY!!! Can they still satisfy their player base? A BIG YES!!! Will every single player be happy? NO WAY!!!
This is a simple mobile game with few control buttons, namely: Tap, Swipe(Back & Forward) and Hold. Yet, it's many champion mechanics and game modes give it a tremendous room for creativity. Kabam have to get smart and creative, there are so many ideas that will make the game both fun and profitable.
If they're lacking ideas, they can just invite the player base to come-up with one idea each for particular mode. In other words, I can only pick a mode like AW and share my ideas. Of course the player base is huge, they can select a few. Even better make it a tournament where the best idea(s) gets a prize like what some corporations or companies do. Not monetary, it could be a game character or item. Setup an team that will review these ideas to select the best, or set it up for a vote with the community.
This analysis you've done is about as far as an external party can realistically do -- we don't have access to the data Kabam likely does. It would be great for Kabam to share some internal quantitative data regarding player progress, similar to how they shared information to support the champion rebalances earlier this year.
Yes, it would be interesting. But then again, I had some very important questions about the data they shared regarding balancing, questions related to the fact that several of their graphs could not possibly be correct (because if nothing else they were contradicting each other) and they never responded to any of them. So even if they did share data, if they don't respond to clarifying questions it would be questionable data at best. Still, I would kill for direct access to their back end data.
Or even their front end data. My original plan was to gather data on *all* the paths in the story arcs, but just gathering it for one fight per path per map per chapter per act took a significant amount of time and also half my energy refills. You can't collect that data without moving to the fight (you can see global buffs, but not defender rank and level data). This would be trivial to do with direct access to their map spreadsheets, but very tedious doing by hand.
All questions about their data and analysis from benign to 'what is that gibberish supposed to mean because it doesn't mean what you apparently think it means' were vigorously, studiously ignored. I'm of the opinion that if you can't or won't defend or explain your data process, you shouldn't have released it.
Perfectly said DNA3000. Us community have been arguing this for some time. Don’t see how kabam doesn’t address this like after act4 Juggs. Time will tell...
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no where left to go, but to nerf champs. Keep pulling the thread and the whole thing will fall apart.
Kabam tried gates, gates based on rarity, on class, to not only stop champions from stream rolling, but to stop players from using synergys as well. They tried crazy node combinations, champion specific locked fights. They tried boosting the ais stats. They tried pay to win with cavilar crystals. What is it exactly that players want? For it to be variant 1 difficultly? Nah they want variant 4? To be labyrinth or abyss difficulty, again no they want Realm of Legends. Do they want book 2 to be like act 6, no they want act 5. Kabam developers at this point can not win and the whole thing comes around full circle again back to 12.0. It’s either too hard or too easy and someone will be mad. Nerf all the champs and seatin and the whales will be unhappy. Slightly scale back the content and the general mid tier player base will be unstatisfied. Make the content too easy and the whales will only grow bigger and the free to player still wont be able to catch up. Make the content too easy and it’ll be burned though too fast and players just the same will be bored because Kabam cant churn out the content fast enough and all of this is just surface level to the magnitude of problems and variables.
Too many players as stated multiple times want too many things. It’s obvious free to players, whales, end game players, mid tier players, youtubers, BG, Lagacy, Seatin all want something different. There’s is no unified voice or community so who does Kabam pander to? Likely the whales and the whales with cavalier crystals and prestige have always clearly gotten their way because theyre the only ones crazy enough to go crazy over a game with all the cheating, the back stabbing, manipulation and sabotaging. How crazy? To the point of crime with fraudulently acquired units. They won’t walk away as easily as the causal player over difficult content when they already put themselves through aw and aq as it is. They have the power, the money and the voice and what have they done with it? Did seatin or any of the YouTubers stop 12.0 nerf? No. Did players walk away and whole game continued to grow? Yes. What will be, what is different this time? Story quest should be hard like abyss, it’s end game content. That’s the drive or it should be, but in reality its prestige which is why whales put up with it and it’s all for the rewards.
If anything is to be salvaged it should be a united front to rework arena, eq, aw, aq and to push for more game modes to keep players engaged and growing at a reasonably rate. This whole thing has been co-opted by too many people and too many voices for too many different reasons and will ultimately amount to nothing if the community does not actually come together and decide what they want, but too many players are scared of saying what they really want and are towing the line. How many youtubers have actually backed ilac and his crusade. That alone should be easy, but nothing. This whole thing has to be more then just a an uncontrollable monstrosity of a roaring tidal wave of nothing but Kabam bashing where all voices are lost and no nuances exist.
Rant over.
At this point, I am starting to agree with nerfing champs. If nerfing the top champs means no more Act 6 type bull***, than I am all for it. I want this game to thrive as long as possible, even if it means my Doom and Aegon and Ghost and the likes won't be as good. Then again, if they nerf the top champs, the game will die pretty much instantly, I think, as most, if not all, of the top players will leave.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no where left to go, but to nerf champs. Keep pulling the thread and the whole thing will fall apart.
Kabam tried gates, gates based on rarity, on class, to not only stop champions from stream rolling, but to stop players from using synergys as well. They tried crazy node combinations, champion specific locked fights. They tried boosting the ais stats. They tried pay to win with cavilar crystals. What is it exactly that players want? For it to be variant 1 difficultly? Nah they want variant 4? To be labyrinth or abyss difficulty, again no they want Realm of Legends. Do they want book 2 to be like act 6, no they want act 5. Kabam developers at this point can not win and the whole thing comes around full circle again back to 12.0. It’s either too hard or too easy and someone will be mad. Nerf all the champs and seatin and the whales will be unhappy. Slightly scale back the content and the general mid tier player base will be unstatisfied. Make the content too easy and the whales will only grow bigger and the free to player still wont be able to catch up. Make the content too easy and it’ll be burned though too fast and players just the same will be bored because Kabam cant churn out the content fast enough and all of this is just surface level to the magnitude of problems and variables.
Too many players as stated multiple times want too many things. It’s obvious free to players, whales, end game players, mid tier players, youtubers, BG, Lagacy, Seatin all want something different. There’s is no unified voice or community so who does Kabam pander to? Likely the whales and the whales with cavalier crystals and prestige have always clearly gotten their way because theyre the only ones crazy enough to go crazy over a game with all the cheating, the back stabbing, manipulation and sabotaging. How crazy? To the point of crime with fraudulently acquired units. They won’t walk away as easily as the causal player over difficult content when they already put themselves through aw and aq as it is. They have the power, the money and the voice and what have they done with it? Did seatin or any of the YouTubers stop 12.0 nerf? No. Did players walk away and whole game continued to grow? Yes. What will be, what is different this time? Story quest should be hard like abyss, it’s end game content. That’s the drive or it should be, but in reality its prestige which is why whales put up with it and it’s all for the rewards.
If anything is to be salvaged it should be a united front to rework arena, eq, aw, aq and to push for more game modes to keep players engaged and growing at a reasonably rate. This whole thing has been co-opted by too many people and too many voices for too many different reasons and will ultimately amount to nothing if the community does not actually come together and decide what they want, but too many players are scared of saying what they really want and are towing the line. How many youtubers have actually backed ilac and his crusade. That alone should be easy, but nothing. This whole thing has to be more then just a an uncontrollable monstrosity of a roaring tidal wave of nothing but Kabam bashing where all voices are lost and no nuances exist.
Rant over.
At this point, I am starting to agree with nerfing champs. If nerfing the top champs means no more Act 6 type bull***, than I am all for it. I want this game to thrive as long as possible, even if it means my Doom and Aegon and Ghost and the likes won't be as good. Then again, if they nerf the top champs, the game will die pretty much instantly, I think, as most, if not all, of the top players will leave.
And that’s the inherent issue that DNA’s post doesn’t really go into (yet). Even though attack and health values are spiking at rates unseen of in previous Acts, the champs that are getting released are seeing very similar spikes in attack power, whether it be through crit rate ramp ups, guaranteed crits, crit damage spikes, or crazy amount of either natural attack spikes or multiple fury stacks. With these spikes in attack power they are keeping up with story content.
The only issue is that health values on these champs are not keeping up to the attack spikes. So even though you technically can keep up with the new material using your characters with high levels of attack, you are severely punished for mistakes. Add a layer of some nodes and abilities that cause damage for just existing and content difficulty can spike through the roof. Then we have the dichotomy between the “get gud” players and those that cry foul about difficult content as a result.
Then there is the RNG element of actually pulling the champs with the crazy damage spikes required to keep up with the content mixed into this. Those that can’t keep up with the luck of others fall behind in content.
Does that mean champs that are now overinflated on attack value need to be toned down? Who knows, but it seems too late at this point to go back.
Would having more Mastery points and new masteries close the gap?
For example: Slow -if you have a good champ, no need to waste on a point on it -if RNG has been harsh, you have an option.
Maybe even make the health/attack/etc masteries meaningful. Amp them up, so you might actually want multiple points in them.
They could then functionally bring old champs up to date, reduce the effects of RNG, make Act 6 accessible, and finally fill in the "coming soon" masteries.
Would having more Mastery points and new masteries close the gap?
For example: Slow -if you have a good champ, no need to waste on a point on it -if RNG has been harsh, you have an option.
Maybe even make the health/attack/etc masteries meaningful. Amp them up, so you might actually want multiple points in them.
They could then functionally bring old champs up to date, reduce the effects of RNG, make Act 6 accessible, and finally fill in the "coming soon" masteries.
In conjunction with better self-synergies and better use of hashtag attributes, new masteries and additional points could invigorate the game as people rediscover their roster.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no where left to go, but to nerf champs. Keep pulling the thread and the whole thing will fall apart.
Kabam tried gates, gates based on rarity, on class, to not only stop champions from stream rolling, but to stop players from using synergys as well. They tried crazy node combinations, champion specific locked fights. They tried boosting the ais stats. They tried pay to win with cavilar crystals. What is it exactly that players want? For it to be variant 1 difficultly? Nah they want variant 4? To be labyrinth or abyss difficulty, again no they want Realm of Legends. Do they want book 2 to be like act 6, no they want act 5. Kabam developers at this point can not win and the whole thing comes around full circle again back to 12.0. It’s either too hard or too easy and someone will be mad. Nerf all the champs and seatin and the whales will be unhappy. Slightly scale back the content and the general mid tier player base will be unstatisfied. Make the content too easy and the whales will only grow bigger and the free to player still wont be able to catch up. Make the content too easy and it’ll be burned though too fast and players just the same will be bored because Kabam cant churn out the content fast enough and all of this is just surface level to the magnitude of problems and variables.
Too many players as stated multiple times want too many things. It’s obvious free to players, whales, end game players, mid tier players, youtubers, BG, Lagacy, Seatin all want something different. There’s is no unified voice or community so who does Kabam pander to? Likely the whales and the whales with cavalier crystals and prestige have always clearly gotten their way because theyre the only ones crazy enough to go crazy over a game with all the cheating, the back stabbing, manipulation and sabotaging. How crazy? To the point of crime with fraudulently acquired units. They won’t walk away as easily as the causal player over difficult content when they already put themselves through aw and aq as it is. They have the power, the money and the voice and what have they done with it? Did seatin or any of the YouTubers stop 12.0 nerf? No. Did players walk away and whole game continued to grow? Yes. What will be, what is different this time? Story quest should be hard like abyss, it’s end game content. That’s the drive or it should be, but in reality its prestige which is why whales put up with it and it’s all for the rewards.
If anything is to be salvaged it should be a united front to rework arena, eq, aw, aq and to push for more game modes to keep players engaged and growing at a reasonably rate. This whole thing has been co-opted by too many people and too many voices for too many different reasons and will ultimately amount to nothing if the community does not actually come together and decide what they want, but too many players are scared of saying what they really want and are towing the line. How many youtubers have actually backed ilac and his crusade. That alone should be easy, but nothing. This whole thing has to be more then just a an uncontrollable monstrosity of a roaring tidal wave of nothing but Kabam bashing where all voices are lost and no nuances exist.
Rant over.
At this point, I am starting to agree with nerfing champs. If nerfing the top champs means no more Act 6 type bull***, than I am all for it. I want this game to thrive as long as possible, even if it means my Doom and Aegon and Ghost and the likes won't be as good. Then again, if they nerf the top champs, the game will die pretty much instantly, I think, as most, if not all, of the top players will leave.
I think the simplest solutions for Kabam at this point are to nerf champions or split story mode into divisions like eq except limited to two difficulties, one for end game, another for the general player base or final Kabam needs make a statement about whether or not act 6 and plus is for everyone or just end gamers.
Which ever it’s for doesn’t really matter as long as they do a better job at reworking content and designing new content specifically designated for every player so no one gets left behind.
Mastery adjustments make all your champs stronger though. So all your champs that are already better than your others still would be better relatively after more masteries.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no where left to go, but to nerf champs. Keep pulling the thread and the whole thing will fall apart.
Kabam tried gates, gates based on rarity, on class, to not only stop champions from stream rolling, but to stop players from using synergys as well. They tried crazy node combinations, champion specific locked fights. They tried boosting the ais stats. They tried pay to win with cavilar crystals. What is it exactly that players want? For it to be variant 1 difficultly? Nah they want variant 4? To be labyrinth or abyss difficulty, again no they want Realm of Legends. Do they want book 2 to be like act 6, no they want act 5. Kabam developers at this point can not win and the whole thing comes around full circle again back to 12.0. It’s either too hard or too easy and someone will be mad. Nerf all the champs and seatin and the whales will be unhappy. Slightly scale back the content and the general mid tier player base will be unstatisfied. Make the content too easy and the whales will only grow bigger and the free to player still wont be able to catch up. Make the content too easy and it’ll be burned though too fast and players just the same will be bored because Kabam cant churn out the content fast enough and all of this is just surface level to the magnitude of problems and variables.
Too many players as stated multiple times want too many things. It’s obvious free to players, whales, end game players, mid tier players, youtubers, BG, Lagacy, Seatin all want something different. There’s is no unified voice or community so who does Kabam pander to? Likely the whales and the whales with cavalier crystals and prestige have always clearly gotten their way because theyre the only ones crazy enough to go crazy over a game with all the cheating, the back stabbing, manipulation and sabotaging. How crazy? To the point of crime with fraudulently acquired units. They won’t walk away as easily as the causal player over difficult content when they already put themselves through aw and aq as it is. They have the power, the money and the voice and what have they done with it? Did seatin or any of the YouTubers stop 12.0 nerf? No. Did players walk away and whole game continued to grow? Yes. What will be, what is different this time? Story quest should be hard like abyss, it’s end game content. That’s the drive or it should be, but in reality its prestige which is why whales put up with it and it’s all for the rewards.
If anything is to be salvaged it should be a united front to rework arena, eq, aw, aq and to push for more game modes to keep players engaged and growing at a reasonably rate. This whole thing has been co-opted by too many people and too many voices for too many different reasons and will ultimately amount to nothing if the community does not actually come together and decide what they want, but too many players are scared of saying what they really want and are towing the line. How many youtubers have actually backed ilac and his crusade. That alone should be easy, but nothing. This whole thing has to be more then just a an uncontrollable monstrosity of a roaring tidal wave of nothing but Kabam bashing where all voices are lost and no nuances exist.
Rant over.
At this point, I am starting to agree with nerfing champs. If nerfing the top champs means no more Act 6 type bull***, than I am all for it. I want this game to thrive as long as possible, even if it means my Doom and Aegon and Ghost and the likes won't be as good. Then again, if they nerf the top champs, the game will die pretty much instantly, I think, as most, if not all, of the top players will leave.
I think the simplest solutions for Kabam at this point are to nerf champions or split story mode into divisions like eq except limited to two difficulties, one for end game, another for the general player base or final Kabam needs make a statement about whether or not act 6 and plus is for everyone or just end gamers.
Which ever it’s for doesn’t really matter as long as they do a better job at reworking content and designing new content specifically designated for every player so no one gets left behind.
This expains it better
Either Kabam makes act 6 and forward way easier for the average general player base, whales and end gamers burn through it and get bored or it’s just too hard for everyone and everyone complains. If it’s easier whale and end gamers can then redirect those rewards to war which should be more skill based anyway. Not sure where aq should fall since the biggest complaints are too long timers or too little energy on top of the excessive resource cost and repetitive monotony. So aq shouldn’t necessary need to change as much as war.
Some people are of the opinion that story mode is for all players so it shouldn’t be too much harder then act 5 with act 6 being nerfed, while others want a harder challenge. The division between endgame players and mid tier players is way too wide here. Whales don’t care either way since they’ll do it anyway having put up with any and all craziness that Kabam throws at them like current aw and aq demands. If it’s made easier then Kabam needs to make content besides abyss that challenges end game players. This would be new game modes, reworking aq, aw and eq, but making a monthly eq to challenge end game players is way harder then making a quarterly or bi yearly story mode.
The other side of this is that story mode should be hard, while eq becomes more accessible with better rewards to placate mid tier players who can’t do act 6 and beyond, with a cavalier level eq for endgamers. Aq/aw should accommodates everyone based on their level of skill or some sort hybrid of this. The point being Kabams needs to do a better job at designating and compartmentalizing content so all players don’t get bored and no one gets left behind.
The reason most mid tier players don’t complain about abyss is because they know it’s not for them so it doesn’t invite challenge, while story mode is left ambiguous.
Mastery adjusts would be amazing too. If they don’t want to change act 6 and plus stats they can just boost preexisting masteries like the health pool ones, attack, block and etc. These can be locked in act 6 and plus or for all content. Something along these lines.
At this point, I am starting to agree with nerfing champs. If nerfing the top champs means no more Act 6 type bull***, than I am all for it. I want this game to thrive as long as possible, even if it means my Doom and Aegon and Ghost and the likes won't be as good. Then again, if they nerf the top champs, the game will die pretty much instantly, I think, as most, if not all, of the top players will leave.
I don't think nerfing champions is a solution to the difficulty curve issue. I mean, if a thing is OP, it should be balanced, and if that means it needs to be nerfed then it should be nerfed.
But I think if that's an issue at all, it is an issue for the end game content; stuff like the Abyss. Should the Abyss be an Aegon-fest? Maybe, maybe not, but that's an end game discussion. The end game is different, and we can have different expectations for end game players. They should be tested to a higher and more difficult standard. And we can expect them to work harder to get the optimal champs for the highest difficulty situations.
But in the core progressional content, I think nerfing the strongest champs would be counter-productive on its own. We'd just be lowering the strength of players' rosters, which doesn't hurt end game players as much as it hurts the average player. The content is already very hard compared to what they have now. If we think champion power creep is getting too high, we still need to address the problem of what to do with the content if we lower the roster strength of players already struggling.
So nerfing champs isn't an option. How about we buff them?
After cavalier, starting at 6.2.1, make it so you have an extra node on which you can select a buff to your champ. Almost exaclty like incursions. I know that if they made it with a lot of different buffs it would take as much work as reworking act 6 as a whole.
So the only buff to select could be named something cool like 'Captain america's shield' and state: '+x% (or +x flat value) physical resistance/block proficiency'.
Why not just lower attack values? Well the upside to this is they can use the feature in the future if they see that it works. If certain lanes/fights are still problematic they can put new buffs before that fight. Compensate people that already got through that lane/fight.
This is a very shortsighted solution for the high attack values and doesn't adress any node issues in act 6, I know.
I also know it doesn't adress any of the core issues. But it could be one step in the right direction, a babystep maybe.
So nerfing champs isn't an option. How about we buff them?
After cavalier, starting at 6.2.1, make it so you have an extra node on which you can select a buff to your champ. Almost exaclty like incursions. I know that if they made it with a lot of different buffs it would take as much work as reworking act 6 as a whole.
So the only buff to select could be named something cool like 'Captain america's shield' and state: '+x% (or +x flat value) physical resistance/block proficiency'.
So nerfing champs isn't an option. How about we buff them?
After cavalier, starting at 6.2.1, make it so you have an extra node on which you can select a buff to your champ. Almost exaclty like incursions. I know that if they made it with a lot of different buffs it would take as much work as reworking act 6 as a whole.
So the only buff to select could be named something cool like 'Captain america's shield' and state: '+x% (or +x flat value) physical resistance/block proficiency'.
Damn that completely flew over my head. Boosts and incursion hacks sound like different things but they have the same effect, buff a champ. What probably made it sound different in my head is that a boost in mcoc is only effective for a certain time. I should have specified that I meant a boost/hack until you quit the quest or end the path. But now I'm arguing details and going way too far from the main discussion lol.
I really like that 2 difficulty concept (with compensation for completed content) btw!
Mastery adjustments make all your champs stronger though. So all your champs that are already better than your others still would be better relatively after more masteries.
Not necessarily. If they made attribute masteries in a similar fashion to class masteries, the breadth of the improvement could be limited. If mastery changes/fixes/additions made Corvus 5% better but BPCW 30%, I take that trade all day.
Mastery adjustments make all your champs stronger though. So all your champs that are already better than your others still would be better relatively after more masteries.
Not necessarily. If they made attribute masteries in a similar fashion to class masteries, the breadth of the improvement could be limited. If mastery changes/fixes/additions made Corvus 5% better but BPCW 30%, I take that trade all day.
That requires hand tuning of the masteries in the general case, and it doesn't take more work to boost BPCW by 25% rather than buff both by different amounts. But then you're kind of implementing champion-specific skill trees.
Clever design can try to do this implicitly, somehow magically buffing BPCW more than Corvus because of some property of Corvus that makes his high performance also less likely to get the buff. For example, just to make up something armor breaks would help BPCW more than Corvus because of mechanical reasons. But to multiply that kind of cleverness in an interesting and non-repetitive way across all champions, would be a non-trivial exercise.
Mastery adjustments make all your champs stronger though. So all your champs that are already better than your others still would be better relatively after more masteries.
Not necessarily. If they made attribute masteries in a similar fashion to class masteries, the breadth of the improvement could be limited. If mastery changes/fixes/additions made Corvus 5% better but BPCW 30%, I take that trade all day.
That requires hand tuning of the masteries in the general case, and it doesn't take more work to boost BPCW by 25% rather than buff both by different amounts. But then you're kind of implementing champion-specific skill trees.
Clever design can try to do this implicitly, somehow magically buffing BPCW more than Corvus because of some property of Corvus that makes his high performance also less likely to get the buff. For example, just to make up something armor breaks would help BPCW more than Corvus because of mechanical reasons. But to multiply that kind of cleverness in an interesting and non-repetitive way across all champions, would be a non-trivial exercise.
I never claimed it would be easy button automagic parity time. It's going to take some effort, but I don't think as much as people are indicating and I don't think it would take as much time and effort as individually hand reworking every old champ that sucks. I was following up on the idea that new masteries would improve all champs and therefore they would maintain their relative positions so it shouldn't be done.
The problem isn't that there're a few champs that are really good, the big problems are that there are too many champs that super suck for the content and the content is too hard. Some champs can rise to greatness from stacked combination effects and some may stay just OK. None will be worse though.
Mastery adjustments make all your champs stronger though. So all your champs that are already better than your others still would be better relatively after more masteries.
Not necessarily. If they made attribute masteries in a similar fashion to class masteries, the breadth of the improvement could be limited. If mastery changes/fixes/additions made Corvus 5% better but BPCW 30%, I take that trade all day.
That requires hand tuning of the masteries in the general case, and it doesn't take more work to boost BPCW by 25% rather than buff both by different amounts. But then you're kind of implementing champion-specific skill trees.
Clever design can try to do this implicitly, somehow magically buffing BPCW more than Corvus because of some property of Corvus that makes his high performance also less likely to get the buff. For example, just to make up something armor breaks would help BPCW more than Corvus because of mechanical reasons. But to multiply that kind of cleverness in an interesting and non-repetitive way across all champions, would be a non-trivial exercise.
I never claimed it would be easy button automagic parity time. It's going to take some effort, but I don't think as much as people are indicating and I don't think it would take as much time and effort as individually hand reworking every old champ that sucks. I was following up on the idea that new masteries would improve all champs and therefore they would maintain their relative positions so it shouldn't be done.
The problem isn't that there're a few champs that are really good, the big problems are that there are too many champs that super suck for the content and the content is too hard. Some champs can rise to greatness from stacked combination effects and some may stay just OK. None will be worse though.
I think the main idea is to boost the stats of all champs either through masteries or nodes, maybe both and bringdown the stats in act 6+. Its to help average players push forward, not necessary in the interest of making champs good.
As you stated it would help all champs making the games easier for end game players, but just the same mid tier players need the help. End game players and whales will come ahead anyway if act 6+ is to be made accessible to the average players. The goal is to keep endgamers engaged and not bored through other content. The goal for the average players is to not get left behind a wall like act 6.
Mastery adjustments make all your champs stronger though. So all your champs that are already better than your others still would be better relatively after more masteries.
Not necessarily. If they made attribute masteries in a similar fashion to class masteries, the breadth of the improvement could be limited. If mastery changes/fixes/additions made Corvus 5% better but BPCW 30%, I take that trade all day.
That requires hand tuning of the masteries in the general case, and it doesn't take more work to boost BPCW by 25% rather than buff both by different amounts. But then you're kind of implementing champion-specific skill trees.
Clever design can try to do this implicitly, somehow magically buffing BPCW more than Corvus because of some property of Corvus that makes his high performance also less likely to get the buff. For example, just to make up something armor breaks would help BPCW more than Corvus because of mechanical reasons. But to multiply that kind of cleverness in an interesting and non-repetitive way across all champions, would be a non-trivial exercise.
I never claimed it would be easy button automagic parity time. It's going to take some effort, but I don't think as much as people are indicating and I don't think it would take as much time and effort as individually hand reworking every old champ that sucks. I was following up on the idea that new masteries would improve all champs and therefore they would maintain their relative positions so it shouldn't be done.
The problem isn't that there're a few champs that are really good, the big problems are that there are too many champs that super suck for the content and the content is too hard. Some champs can rise to greatness from stacked combination effects and some may stay just OK. None will be worse though.
I think the main idea is to boost the stats of all champs either through masteries or nodes, maybe both and bringdown the stats in act 6+. Its to help average players push forward, not necessary in the interest of making champs good.
As you stated it would help all champs making the games easier for end game players, but just the same mid tier players need the help. End game players and whales will come ahead anyway if act 6+ is to be made accessible to the average players. The goal is to keep endgamers engaged and not bored through other content. The goal for the average players is to not get left behind a wall like act 6.
More champs that are useful would really help average players if Kabam makes the content easier.
I still think multiple Challenge completions from Act 1 on would keep endgame players going for a while. Those players that are complaining about being bored after racing through new content Day 1 will never be truly satisfied and stop complaining. The best Kabam can do is give them a Nuk and something shiny to keep them distracted. Something like the Xtreme Challenge Completion Points leaderboard and The Watcher's Book of Multiversal Records™. I'm picturing something like Most hits to defeat Winter Soldier in 30 minutes.
Great OP @DNA3000 - not in the beta but everything I've seen so far makes me think once/if I finish act 6 i'm going to take a long break from story mode if it doesn't get dialed down a ton.
Would having more Mastery points and new masteries close the gap?
For example: Slow -if you have a good champ, no need to waste on a point on it -if RNG has been harsh, you have an option.
Maybe even make the health/attack/etc masteries meaningful. Amp them up, so you might actually want multiple points in them.
They could then functionally bring old champs up to date, reduce the effects of RNG, make Act 6 accessible, and finally fill in the "coming soon" masteries.
I like this idea and have seen it alluded to before. Release the mastery tree to help us overcome these crazy attack ratings & nodes, so that even champs that are not OP can be made feasible options. A said before health pools aren't such an issue as it just means longer fights, but knowing one slip means starting over/reviving isn't fun with crazy nodes or attacks bigger than champion health pools.
I don't believe the developers want/expected Act 6 cheesed. Otherwise, we would not have seen all the Nerfs for 6.2.6 Champion counters (she hulk, etc). They seem to only want the content as is, or harder.
One way out is to improve progression, but they already limited that (100% Act 6 rewards compared to rewards for every other Act).
Mastery improvement is the only avenue, I can see, that aligns with their other plans.
In terms of masteries it would be nice to see poison/incinerate/shock equivalents of a Deep Wounds. I think that could add a bit more to punch to a lot of champs.
I think the core of the issue is in the lane design - players can handle attack values (reluctantly), and health pools (we all have WS in a cupboard under the stairs). There are too many punitive node/champion combinations that make so much of Act 6 unplayable except for a certain 5 champions or whatever.
Lanes that enhance your champions by a theme - eg Spiderverse lane and Venom gets 2x buff procs - but don’t hinder you would allow you to explore the full potential of your roster without actually penalising your for not bringing certain champions. In this case if you took Venom or another Spider champ you’d be able to tear it up, but you wouldn’t get a penalty for not bringing one.
Comments
When my mental calculations said that the correct roster to tackle Book 2 was going to be an 8* champ, I realized something was very, very wrong. As you say, intuition isn't always correct, and the eye test can be skewed by the player looking. But the numbers are much more objective, especially when you consider that the numbers are underestimating relatively difficulty by a huge amount. It doesn't factor in any of the tricky nodes.
Ultimately, you have to go where the numbers take you.
Excellent work as ever
This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if you could circumvent the problem with ‘good’ gameplay, there’d be the niche, funny solution and there’d be old fashioned button mashing - a celebration of roster and/or skill.
This is taken away when you know that the design is actually punitive - damage limitations etc. - and combined with such ludicrous attack values that unless you’re quaking/ghosting you basically need to farm WS for an hour before a quest run or play perfect with Cap.
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I think players have got to a stage where health pools don’t matter so much now - most of us probably rarely flinch at seeing 2-300k health pools. Instead our eyes are immediately drawn to the attack values and any power gain/BS associated with the fight.
Can Kabam redeem themselves? ABSOLUTELY!!!
Can they still satisfy their player base? A BIG YES!!!
Will every single player be happy? NO WAY!!!
This is a simple mobile game with few control buttons, namely: Tap, Swipe(Back & Forward) and Hold. Yet, it's many champion mechanics and game modes give it a tremendous room for creativity. Kabam have to get smart and creative, there are so many ideas that will make the game both fun and profitable.
If they're lacking ideas, they can just invite the player base to come-up with one idea each for particular mode. In other words, I can only pick a mode like AW and share my ideas. Of course the player base is huge, they can select a few. Even better make it a tournament where the best idea(s) gets a prize like what some corporations or companies do. Not monetary, it could be a game character or item. Setup an team that will review these ideas to select the best, or set it up for a vote with the community.
Like I said, tremendous room for creativity.
Nice work.
The only issue is that health values on these champs are not keeping up to the attack spikes. So even though you technically can keep up with the new material using your characters with high levels of attack, you are severely punished for mistakes. Add a layer of some nodes and abilities that cause damage for just existing and content difficulty can spike through the roof. Then we have the dichotomy between the “get gud” players and those that cry foul about difficult content as a result.
Then there is the RNG element of actually pulling the champs with the crazy damage spikes required to keep up with the content mixed into this. Those that can’t keep up with the luck of others fall behind in content.
Does that mean champs that are now overinflated on attack value need to be toned down? Who knows, but it seems too late at this point to go back.
For example: Slow
-if you have a good champ, no need to waste on a point on it
-if RNG has been harsh, you have an option.
Maybe even make the health/attack/etc masteries meaningful. Amp them up, so you might actually want multiple points in them.
They could then functionally bring old champs up to date, reduce the effects of RNG, make Act 6 accessible, and finally fill in the "coming soon" masteries.
Which ever it’s for doesn’t really matter as long as they do a better job at reworking content and designing new content specifically designated for every player so no one gets left behind.
Either Kabam makes act 6 and forward way easier for the average general player base, whales and end gamers burn through it and get bored or it’s just too hard for everyone and everyone complains. If it’s easier whale and end gamers can then redirect those rewards to war which should be more skill based anyway. Not sure where aq should fall since the biggest complaints are too long timers or too little energy on top of the excessive resource cost and repetitive monotony. So aq shouldn’t necessary need to change as much as war.
Some people are of the opinion that story mode is for all players so it shouldn’t be too much harder then act 5 with act 6 being nerfed, while others want a harder challenge. The division between endgame players and mid tier players is way too wide here. Whales don’t care either way since they’ll do it anyway having put up with any and all craziness that Kabam throws at them like current aw and aq demands. If it’s made easier then Kabam needs to make content besides abyss that challenges end game players. This would be new game modes, reworking aq, aw and eq, but making a monthly eq to challenge end game players is way harder then making a quarterly or bi yearly story mode.
The other side of this is that story mode should be hard, while eq becomes more accessible with better rewards to placate mid tier players who can’t do act 6 and beyond, with a cavalier level eq for endgamers. Aq/aw should accommodates everyone based on their level of skill or some sort hybrid of this. The point being Kabams needs to do a better job at designating and compartmentalizing content so all players don’t get bored and no one gets left behind.
The reason most mid tier players don’t complain about abyss is because they know it’s not for them so it doesn’t invite challenge, while story mode is left ambiguous.
But I think if that's an issue at all, it is an issue for the end game content; stuff like the Abyss. Should the Abyss be an Aegon-fest? Maybe, maybe not, but that's an end game discussion. The end game is different, and we can have different expectations for end game players. They should be tested to a higher and more difficult standard. And we can expect them to work harder to get the optimal champs for the highest difficulty situations.
But in the core progressional content, I think nerfing the strongest champs would be counter-productive on its own. We'd just be lowering the strength of players' rosters, which doesn't hurt end game players as much as it hurts the average player. The content is already very hard compared to what they have now. If we think champion power creep is getting too high, we still need to address the problem of what to do with the content if we lower the roster strength of players already struggling.
After cavalier, starting at 6.2.1, make it so you have an extra node on which you can select a buff to your champ. Almost exaclty like incursions. I know that if they made it with a lot of different buffs it would take as much work as reworking act 6 as a whole.
So the only buff to select could be named something cool like 'Captain america's shield' and state: '+x% (or +x flat value) physical resistance/block proficiency'.
Why not just lower attack values? Well the upside to this is they can use the feature in the future if they see that it works. If certain lanes/fights are still problematic they can put new buffs before that fight. Compensate people that already got through that lane/fight.
This is a very shortsighted solution for the high attack values and doesn't adress any node issues in act 6, I know.
I also know it doesn't adress any of the core issues. But it could be one step in the right direction, a babystep maybe.
I really like that 2 difficulty concept (with compensation for completed content) btw!
Clever design can try to do this implicitly, somehow magically buffing BPCW more than Corvus because of some property of Corvus that makes his high performance also less likely to get the buff. For example, just to make up something armor breaks would help BPCW more than Corvus because of mechanical reasons. But to multiply that kind of cleverness in an interesting and non-repetitive way across all champions, would be a non-trivial exercise.
The problem isn't that there're a few champs that are really good, the big problems are that there are too many champs that super suck for the content and the content is too hard. Some champs can rise to greatness from stacked combination effects and some may stay just OK. None will be worse though.
As you stated it would help all champs making the games easier for end game players, but just the same mid tier players need the help. End game players and whales will come ahead anyway if act 6+ is to be made accessible to the average players. The goal is to keep endgamers engaged and not bored through other content. The goal for the average players is to not get left behind a wall like act 6.
I still think multiple Challenge completions from Act 1 on would keep endgame players going for a while. Those players that are complaining about being bored after racing through new content Day 1 will never be truly satisfied and stop complaining. The best Kabam can do is give them a Nuk and something shiny to keep them distracted. Something like the Xtreme Challenge Completion Points leaderboard and The Watcher's Book of Multiversal Records™. I'm picturing something like Most hits to defeat Winter Soldier in 30 minutes.
Otherwise, we would not have seen all the Nerfs for 6.2.6 Champion counters (she hulk, etc).
They seem to only want the content as is, or harder.
One way out is to improve progression, but they already limited that (100% Act 6 rewards compared to rewards for every other Act).
Mastery improvement is the only avenue, I can see, that aligns with their other plans.
I think the core of the issue is in the lane design - players can handle attack values (reluctantly), and health pools (we all have WS in a cupboard under the stairs). There are too many punitive node/champion combinations that make so much of Act 6 unplayable except for a certain 5 champions or whatever.
Lanes that enhance your champions by a theme - eg Spiderverse lane and Venom gets 2x buff procs - but don’t hinder you would allow you to explore the full potential of your roster without actually penalising your for not bringing certain champions. In this case if you took Venom or another Spider champ you’d be able to tear it up, but you wouldn’t get a penalty for not bringing one.