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.
So after you read that amazing analysis from @DNA3000 , that tell us that act 6 is for 8* champs... your answer is to nerf champions? Do you know what people want? Some of them want variant 1, some of them AOL, some of thel LOL. But no ones wants to nerf our champs.
Now if they refunded me the thousands of units I used to actually take out the champion that would actually make a difference lol. But we all know that won't happen either.
This is a bit of a tangent, but my problem with the Champion fight is not that the fight is hard. It is really that it throws a completely novel challenge at players in a way they had no conventional way to learn how to deal with.
Progressional content should be about gauging progress. And it should be trying to teach players how to play the game, not gotcha-ing players with surprise content. The Champion requires very specific skills no one has any reasonable way of acquiring before that fight, outside of duels which help but which don't quite prepare players for the real thing.
If the Champion was the last fight in a set of such fights that got progressively harder going back to Act 5, I'd be fine with it. And if the Champion was the first fight on the map, so you could enter, try him, die, exit, and try again until you could gain the skills to beat him, I'd be fine with him also. No one should think the game has to hand you a victory, it can demand you get a stronger roster or a higher level of skill to beat it. But if the game is going to require a skill in the core progressional content of the game that everyone is supposed to be able to do, then there has to be an obvious path to learning that skill. The game either needs to teach us how to beat the Champion before we reach him, or it needs to make the fight itself something we can practice on. And even though I will admit the easy path to the Champion is surprisingly easy within the context of Act 6, it is still hard enough and long enough that the kind of repetitive practice most humans need to learn a skill is not practical in 6.2.6 unless you spend units.
Which is what I did. I tried to do that exit and redo the path thing, but I realized it was hurting my ability to learn from practicing the Champion himself. So I started reviving on the fight not to spend past him, but literally to give myself good practice opportunities so my brain and fingers could focus on and learn that one fight. I think those units were well-spent, in that I learned a lot about how I can, and cannot do that fight. I will, if and when I ever decide to do it again, do better. But that barrier to learning the skills in the first place are, I think, not right for progressional content.
If the dude ambushed you in the middle of the Abyss, whatever. That's end game content and it is intended for the best players in the game to beat. You can assume players with far above average skill and for that matter far above average determination to plow through the content. If the Champion was on a map like Infinity Thanos in a challenge map, I'd not only be fine with him, I probably would actually enjoy the challenge of beating that one fight on that one map. It isn't the fight itself that I find problematic, but the context of the fight. It is a difficult, novel fight with no precursor in a progressional map with a substantive difficulty and energy cost to reach. That combination is what's the problem for me personally.
Great post! I consider myself as a bit above average but not a top player and i'm stuck at act 6.2 for very long time. at least for now Act 6 seems like a wall i won't be able to pass as it doesn't tie to the progression of my champs (available champs, ranks and tricky nodes) i agree with you that there are enough contests for top players that has the skill or the money to spend, but story quest is something that need to be design for all and with a bit patience to be able to complete it. it doesn't feels like a bit patience will help here, so what are my options? to keep playing arena for years until a release of 8* ?
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.
So after you read that amazing analysis from @DNA3000 , that tell us that act 6 is for 8* champs... your answer is to nerf champions? Do you know what people want? Some of them want variant 1, some of them AOL, some of thel LOL. But no ones wants to nerf our champs.
I think what he is trying to say is something a lot of other players have said over time. That the reason why the content is difficult is because it has to counter OP champs. If Ghost wasn't so strong the content wouldn't have to be so difficult. Nerf Ghost, nerf Quake, and difficulty would come down.
Some of that is almost certainly true, but I don't think it is the most important issue. The numbers alone don't prove this, but they support the narrative that the content is being balanced not just for players with stronger rosters, but also players with higher skill levels. Which means if you were to somehow magically nerf all of the top performing champions, while this could cause the devs to lower content difficulty it would still be the case that aiming at the skill level of the top players would make the content still too difficult for average players. It is just that instead of being five times harder than they can do, it might be only three times harder. But that's still a problem, just a slightly less severe one.
And the law of unintended consequences says that for every player helped when you nerf the so-called OP champs and thus lower difficulty, you hurt a player who was only able to do the content with those OP champs and the combined change of nerfing their champs and lowering difficulty puts them overall in a worse position.
We do nerf champs that are so far off the scale that there's basically no choice. At least, as Kabam sees it. And I'm fine with that. But while we can argue over whether those champs are really high enough to deserve nerfs, I think almost no one would disagree that below some critical level even if the champ is higher than intended, it is nonetheless not high enough to deserve a nerf. Nerfs on champs that are already released should be a last resort. And if we're going to treat them as a last resort, we can't be using them as the first tool to use to try to moderate content difficulty.
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
@Worknprogress, I’d guess that Kabam would just keep the rewards that are already there for the regular difficulty as there are some basic progression gates that can be unlocked with stuff from Act 6. I feel like this challenge mode would reward different possible rewards than what are given today. (In my “challenge mode” I’d want the content to be shorter than the regular content but maybe have 2, 3, or 4 paths or something like that.) Rewards could be more Mastery Points, a special boost which gives your 6* double healing during adrenaline, Cav Crystals, titles, pfps, possible legend badges (maybe like “super legendary” badges idk), or just something that has never really been seen in the game. Usually the content being completed by roster, unit, and skill heavy people within the community. Adding this extra bonus stuff on top could just rewards them fro completing the challenge. (I feel like Kabam tried to do something like this during the Maze but it was just too short of an event for anyone to gradually work on overtime and figure out how to counter.)
I could be completely wrong, which is odd to type as this is all theoretical anyway, but I'd be shocked to see an additional higher tier of reward as opposed to the current ones being left for the "variant" and a lower tier being offered for the "normal" version.
What I’m saying is have different rewards. Those which no one has seen. Stuff like 3-4 Nexus 6*s should not be handed out period. That’s why I’m saying that the content should provide new stuff. (I got another example. Maybe if there is like a damage reduction in the next Variant you get a boost which removes that damage reduction.) Something that can be beneficial to the top tier players but not be completely game breaking.
I get that but I don't think there's really much you could offer that would actually entice that group of players to push through it. Additional mastery points could also absolutely be considered game breaking as well in some instances. There's definitely a reason we haven't received any for years.
So I think the only option is have the current rewards be for the higher difficulty and a lower set offered for the new one. All that does is create even more of a rift between the top and the rest in my opinion.
It's interesting to think about it and I'm curious if they could actually pull it off without just creating a different problem. I just don't see it happening with the difficulty getting slashed but the current set of rewards still being there. I know I wouldn't be particularly thrilled if they issued a reduced difficulty act 6 for the same rewards and then I got a title, a badge, or some cavs retrospectively.
The rewards for act 6 aren't good enough to cause a rift. The only rare item is a 6 star generic AG and 1 random t5cc. If I played an easier version of act 6 for relatively no units than I would just hop into abyss. I certainly can hop into Abyss and 100% it with the same amount of units I used to 100% act 6 and have some units leftover.
I'd personally be pretty upset at someone being able to get those same rewards for markedly less effort. Only way I wouldn't mind as much is if I didn't happen for at least around a year and I had already opportunity for me to earn the next set of rewards from Book 2 before the change happened. Even then it would leave a sour taste.
6* AGs and T5c are still massively rare and important items in the game.i just don't see anyway they could nerf the difficulty but not the rewards anytime soon without a massive backlash from those who've finished it already.
If they do tone down act 6 (and I think they should), I do think they should give units back to players that have completed that content. I'm just throwing a number out there like 80 units per path completed you get back. Then Kabam should just throw out a 6* sig stone deal for units and all those players will use their units for the 6* sig stones. No "crippling of the game's economy" as Kabam likes to talk about all the time.
To be fair, they did change act 4 venom big time from when it first came out. Is it still a challenge for new act 4 players? Yes but nowhere near as bad as it was. Slashed tires anyone? The precedent is there. No reason they cant do the same thing again with other story content.
If they do tone down act 6 (and I think they should), I do think they should give units back to players that have completed that content. I'm just throwing a number out there like 80 units per path completed you get back. Then Kabam should just throw out a 6* sig stone deal for units and all those players will use their units for the 6* sig stones. No "crippling of the game's economy" as Kabam likes to talk about all the time.
I don't think this would be a good place to consider compensation, at least not the way most players think about compensation. I think there's a better way to kill two birds with one stone: reward the players who did the content the hard way to begin with, while offering an easier path for future players. Let's assume we keep the rewards for Act 6 exactly where they are, and say those are the rewards you get for hard mode. When we make easy mode we have to give some smaller amount of rewards for the easy mode completion. But then players who do it after the changes will get two chances at rewards: they can do the easy mode first and grab the easy mode rewards, and then eventually do it again (if they can) for the hard mode rewards. That's more rewards than the people who cleared it originally got.
We could do the reverse and say anyone who already did Act 6 can go back and grind out easy mode for the easy mode rewards, but that seems kind of pointless to me. it is "fair" in the sense that both groups do the same effort and get the same rewards, but the situation isn't perfectly symmetric. People who do the content the easy way first have some practice before doing it the hard way that the original players didn't have. In this imperfect situation, I think we should acknowledge that obviously if they did it the hard way, they could have easily done it the easy way, and we don't want to force them to go back again. So we retroactively give the players who already completed Act 6 the easy mode rewards automatically, without having to grind them out.
I think this strikes a reasonable balance between giving the early players something for their trouble, without overly rewarding them for doing content quickly. As I mentioned in other posts, I think Kabam incorrectly rewards players for blitzing content as fast as possible (i.e. with Legends titles), when that's the exact wrong thing to do with players who are already blitzing through your content faster than everyone else.
I'm not saying it has to be this way. Kabam could choose to shake up the rewards also. But for purposes of discussion, I think adding rewards to Act 6 for easy mode, and then giving those rewards automatically and retroactively to any player that has already completed Act 6 in hard mode (including parts thereof) feels less like compensating players for design mistakes and more like rewarding players for good play, albeit in an unusual rebalancing situation.
@DNA3000@ESF@Lunae@Kapitz i don't understand that nodes combination is so weirdly done by kabam. Incursions zone 4 i had Mysterio as a boss and have nodes (Close encounter and Lifecycle). Just the worst at zone 4 sector 7 . How could someone go further. If kabam could add more of them They would add aspect of war and do you bleed also to this part. And Mysterio special attacks also cause distance and are time consuming too. Here You Go BOOM ... K.O.
@DNA3000@ESF@Lunae@Kapitz i don't understand that nodes combination is so weirdly done by kabam. Incursions zone 4 i had Mysterio as a boss and have nodes (Close encounter and Lifecycle). Just the worst at zone 4 sector 7 . How could someone go further. If kabam could add more of them They would add aspect of war and do you bleed also to this part. And Mysterio special attacks also cause distance and are time consuming too. Here You Go BOOM ... K.O.
The incursion nodes are somewhat randomized and not explicitly designed by a human (in terms of the combinations, at least that's my understanding), so all kinds of weird combinations can arise. But Incursions are designed to be side content intended to get really hard over time, and hard difficulty in an Incursion, as frustrating as it might be temporarily, doesn't put up a roadblock to progress for the average player. So that's a different problem than this thread is discussing. It could be better, but it doesn't hurt players as much when it isn't as good as it could be.
I haven't read the whole discussion, so I just will post a thing that troubles me personally.
As op said, average player can defeat a map of 3x stronger enemies. That is true, but yet the difgiculty goes up. And with the current content, there comes a factor I haven't seen in the analysis: ITEMS. The latest content is designed to not be doable w one team. If your 5 champs can defeat lets say 8 3x stronger enemies, for a map with 8 9x stronger enemies you could need 3 teams. Meaning that map like this would cost you 2 full revived teams plus the 1 you start with. The endgame stands firmly on players having to revive, heal and boost like crazy. Which I personally dislike
I did say once that story mode difficulty should not get so mind wrecking and annoying. It's for all players and that means casual players who kinda take a large amount of the player base.
Some just want to collect their favorite heroes and some like me wants to see what happens to Carina and yes we'd like something fun and exciting while playing through the quests. And I think act 5 captured this really well.
If you want to create stupidly difficult content for end game players, wouldn't it be better to do so with event quests. Sure some event quests might be tailored to both middle and end game players like boss rush and champion challenges while variants and specials like abyss and labyrinth are suited for end game.
How about a 2 month long cavalier difficulty event quest that has the difficulty level around that of act 6 or higher. (That way players get enough time to practice and try to complete it without rushing) with rewards tailored to end game players. The rewards could even be interchanged. First cav eq gives crystal shards and the next would give high tier catalysts.
@DNA3000 By far the best post I've ever seen. Good job in exposing with so much accuracy and beyond reasonable doubt what this company is doing. They know it too. Pretty sure this post will be burried like they did with the backdraft intercept and so many others. Damn clear no feedback is important for them unless it affects their bottom line. Wonderful people.
I've done just about everything in game and i will say i agree with you @DNA3000 1000% I've always ask why is a in game story mode which should be for all players is set at such a difficulty that its almost unplayable for average players, 6.2 I've only done one path just for completion and thou i have the roster to complete it i have absolutely no interest in doing so because it wasn't even fun or something challenging to me it was more of a head ache like u start and cant wait for it to be over, act 6.1 wasn't too bad and i like the concept they tried with 6.3 i just wish they would've tone the attack a bit and also have nodes that make sense, like a player shouldn't feel punish for not having one champ especially in a RnG game, every time i ask Kabam about the difficulty and why a story mode is only in place for end game players and not for the entire player base to feel like its something they're able to do without the stress factor, the response i get is "its a permanent content and to do it when you are able to" thou that's true by time the average player get to the point i think 8 and 9 stars will be available and also the gap between end game players and everyone else will increase even more. As a developer the smart way to do it is to have act 6 as a story mode with nice rewards nothing too crazy but make it so that you enjoy doing it and will try to go back and do it again and for the End Game player make Act 6 Grand master mode this one has better rewards but caters to end game players who is looking for a challenge, that way the average player can tackle the regular act 6 mode rank up champs and see if they want to take a shot at the Grand master mode. what you think about this @DNA3000 ?
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
This is always a potential problem but I would argue that if players get roadblocked in Act 6, or Book 2, then the problem becomes moot because it doesn't matter how much richer the rich get, if the poor stop progressing completely.
But I acknowledge this is a separate, and important problem to work on. Whenever you change or evolve difficulty, you have to consider how the reward balance should work. If we decide to treat difficulty of the core story content differently than we do now, we should also consider reevalulating how we apportion rewards to that difficulty as well. I don't claim to have an answer to that problem, in part because solving that problem depends on how we try to solve the difficulty problem first.
Therein lies the ultimate problem of having F2P players amongst P2P players. Now I’m not saying this is pay to win by any means, but there is always going to be a gulf in class between F2P and P2P. Up until the last year, Kabam have managed it extremely well - the likes of BG have been able to hold their own against the spenders if they’re good and willing to put in the work. I think that it’s only recently that the true difference has become apparent - I have to grind a week of arena for units to quest/back out repeatedly until I get it down, the spender can just spend. With the difficulty now at such at high bar you can probably count on one hand the people who have been able to get through all of Act 6 itemless so the speed at which people are progressing is driven financially now, which has the knock on into AQ/AW/ability to grind higher arena scores.
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
@Worknprogress, I’d guess that Kabam would just keep the rewards that are already there for the regular difficulty as there are some basic progression gates that can be unlocked with stuff from Act 6. I feel like this challenge mode would reward different possible rewards than what are given today. (In my “challenge mode” I’d want the content to be shorter than the regular content but maybe have 2, 3, or 4 paths or something like that.) Rewards could be more Mastery Points, a special boost which gives your 6* double healing during adrenaline, Cav Crystals, titles, pfps, possible legend badges (maybe like “super legendary” badges idk), or just something that has never really been seen in the game. Usually the content being completed by roster, unit, and skill heavy people within the community. Adding this extra bonus stuff on top could just rewards them fro completing the challenge. (I feel like Kabam tried to do something like this during the Maze but it was just too short of an event for anyone to gradually work on overtime and figure out how to counter.)
I could be completely wrong, which is odd to type as this is all theoretical anyway, but I'd be shocked to see an additional higher tier of reward as opposed to the current ones being left for the "variant" and a lower tier being offered for the "normal" version.
What I’m saying is have different rewards. Those which no one has seen. Stuff like 3-4 Nexus 6*s should not be handed out period. That’s why I’m saying that the content should provide new stuff. (I got another example. Maybe if there is like a damage reduction in the next Variant you get a boost which removes that damage reduction.) Something that can be beneficial to the top tier players but not be completely game breaking.
I get that but I don't think there's really much you could offer that would actually entice that group of players to push through it. Additional mastery points could also absolutely be considered game breaking as well in some instances. There's definitely a reason we haven't received any for years.
So I think the only option is have the current rewards be for the higher difficulty and a lower set offered for the new one. All that does is create even more of a rift between the top and the rest in my opinion.
It's interesting to think about it and I'm curious if they could actually pull it off without just creating a different problem. I just don't see it happening with the difficulty getting slashed but the current set of rewards still being there. I know I wouldn't be particularly thrilled if they issued a reduced difficulty act 6 for the same rewards and then I got a title, a badge, or some cavs retrospectively.
The rewards for act 6 aren't good enough to cause a rift. The only rare item is a 6 star generic AG and 1 random t5cc. If I played an easier version of act 6 for relatively no units than I would just hop into abyss. I certainly can hop into Abyss and 100% it with the same amount of units I used to 100% act 6 and have some units leftover.
I think the rift is actually caused by signature stones more than anything. Unless you’re willing to spend on sig stones it’s virtually impossible to max out a 5/6* champ. The knock on is that spender can get access to higher tier AQ/AW, usually amongst similar players, who are also willing to spend to smash content/prestige, so you get the rift through purchase of prestige.
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
This is always a potential problem but I would argue that if players get roadblocked in Act 6, or Book 2, then the problem becomes moot because it doesn't matter how much richer the rich get, if the poor stop progressing completely.
But I acknowledge this is a separate, and important problem to work on. Whenever you change or evolve difficulty, you have to consider how the reward balance should work. If we decide to treat difficulty of the core story content differently than we do now, we should also consider reevalulating how we apportion rewards to that difficulty as well. I don't claim to have an answer to that problem, in part because solving that problem depends on how we try to solve the difficulty problem first.
Therein lies the ultimate problem of having F2P players amongst P2P players. Now I’m not saying this is pay to win by any means, but there is always going to be a gulf in class between F2P and P2P. Up until the last year, Kabam have managed it extremely well - the likes of BG have been able to hold their own against the spenders if they’re good and willing to put in the work. I think that it’s only recently that the true difference has become apparent - I have to grind a week of arena for units to quest/back out repeatedly until I get it down, the spender can just spend. With the difficulty now at such at high bar you can probably count on one hand the people who have been able to get through all of Act 6 itemless so the speed at which people are progressing is driven financially now, which has the knock on into AQ/AW/ability to grind higher arena scores.
I've never understood the thought process that quests should be able to be done itemless always, especially soon after release. Now that doesn't mean I think people should have to spend thousands of units to finish content but the prevailing idea that item use is inherently bad doesn't make sense to me. There are multiple ways to build both items and units without spending. I don't understand people that think using those avenues are bad personally. There's a large difference between just brute forcing everything down with units and using available items for sure, but there seems to be at least a subset of players that have the expectation that all content even brand new end game content should be able to be done by the average player with absolutely no item use.
I'm not saying that's what you meant with the comment about people finishing act 6 itemless but it just kinda struck a cord with me
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
@Worknprogress, I’d guess that Kabam would just keep the rewards that are already there for the regular difficulty as there are some basic progression gates that can be unlocked with stuff from Act 6. I feel like this challenge mode would reward different possible rewards than what are given today. (In my “challenge mode” I’d want the content to be shorter than the regular content but maybe have 2, 3, or 4 paths or something like that.) Rewards could be more Mastery Points, a special boost which gives your 6* double healing during adrenaline, Cav Crystals, titles, pfps, possible legend badges (maybe like “super legendary” badges idk), or just something that has never really been seen in the game. Usually the content being completed by roster, unit, and skill heavy people within the community. Adding this extra bonus stuff on top could just rewards them fro completing the challenge. (I feel like Kabam tried to do something like this during the Maze but it was just too short of an event for anyone to gradually work on overtime and figure out how to counter.)
I could be completely wrong, which is odd to type as this is all theoretical anyway, but I'd be shocked to see an additional higher tier of reward as opposed to the current ones being left for the "variant" and a lower tier being offered for the "normal" version.
What I’m saying is have different rewards. Those which no one has seen. Stuff like 3-4 Nexus 6*s should not be handed out period. That’s why I’m saying that the content should provide new stuff. (I got another example. Maybe if there is like a damage reduction in the next Variant you get a boost which removes that damage reduction.) Something that can be beneficial to the top tier players but not be completely game breaking.
I get that but I don't think there's really much you could offer that would actually entice that group of players to push through it. Additional mastery points could also absolutely be considered game breaking as well in some instances. There's definitely a reason we haven't received any for years.
So I think the only option is have the current rewards be for the higher difficulty and a lower set offered for the new one. All that does is create even more of a rift between the top and the rest in my opinion.
It's interesting to think about it and I'm curious if they could actually pull it off without just creating a different problem. I just don't see it happening with the difficulty getting slashed but the current set of rewards still being there. I know I wouldn't be particularly thrilled if they issued a reduced difficulty act 6 for the same rewards and then I got a title, a badge, or some cavs retrospectively.
The rewards for act 6 aren't good enough to cause a rift. The only rare item is a 6 star generic AG and 1 random t5cc. If I played an easier version of act 6 for relatively no units than I would just hop into abyss. I certainly can hop into Abyss and 100% it with the same amount of units I used to 100% act 6 and have some units leftover.
I think the rift is actually caused by signature stones more than anything. Unless you’re willing to spend on sig stones it’s virtually impossible to max out a 5/6* champ. The knock on is that spender can get access to higher tier AQ/AW, usually amongst similar players, who are also willing to spend to smash content/prestige, so you get the rift through purchase of prestige.
High ranking AQ placements have always been relative to spending, that is far from a new occurrence.
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
@Worknprogress, I’d guess that Kabam would just keep the rewards that are already there for the regular difficulty as there are some basic progression gates that can be unlocked with stuff from Act 6. I feel like this challenge mode would reward different possible rewards than what are given today. (In my “challenge mode” I’d want the content to be shorter than the regular content but maybe have 2, 3, or 4 paths or something like that.) Rewards could be more Mastery Points, a special boost which gives your 6* double healing during adrenaline, Cav Crystals, titles, pfps, possible legend badges (maybe like “super legendary” badges idk), or just something that has never really been seen in the game. Usually the content being completed by roster, unit, and skill heavy people within the community. Adding this extra bonus stuff on top could just rewards them fro completing the challenge. (I feel like Kabam tried to do something like this during the Maze but it was just too short of an event for anyone to gradually work on overtime and figure out how to counter.)
I could be completely wrong, which is odd to type as this is all theoretical anyway, but I'd be shocked to see an additional higher tier of reward as opposed to the current ones being left for the "variant" and a lower tier being offered for the "normal" version.
What I’m saying is have different rewards. Those which no one has seen. Stuff like 3-4 Nexus 6*s should not be handed out period. That’s why I’m saying that the content should provide new stuff. (I got another example. Maybe if there is like a damage reduction in the next Variant you get a boost which removes that damage reduction.) Something that can be beneficial to the top tier players but not be completely game breaking.
I get that but I don't think there's really much you could offer that would actually entice that group of players to push through it. Additional mastery points could also absolutely be considered game breaking as well in some instances. There's definitely a reason we haven't received any for years.
So I think the only option is have the current rewards be for the higher difficulty and a lower set offered for the new one. All that does is create even more of a rift between the top and the rest in my opinion.
It's interesting to think about it and I'm curious if they could actually pull it off without just creating a different problem. I just don't see it happening with the difficulty getting slashed but the current set of rewards still being there. I know I wouldn't be particularly thrilled if they issued a reduced difficulty act 6 for the same rewards and then I got a title, a badge, or some cavs retrospectively.
The rewards for act 6 aren't good enough to cause a rift. The only rare item is a 6 star generic AG and 1 random t5cc. If I played an easier version of act 6 for relatively no units than I would just hop into abyss. I certainly can hop into Abyss and 100% it with the same amount of units I used to 100% act 6 and have some units leftover.
I think the rift is actually caused by signature stones more than anything. Unless you’re willing to spend on sig stones it’s virtually impossible to max out a 5/6* champ. The knock on is that spender can get access to higher tier AQ/AW, usually amongst similar players, who are also willing to spend to smash content/prestige, so you get the rift through purchase of prestige.
High ranking AQ placements have always been relative to spending, that is far from a new occurrence.
You can still be top 45 AQ alliance completely f2p. I'm a casual spender myself. I only spend on what I consider are great deals, kabam holidays, and to clear content. Top 45 is still really good for someone who doesn't spend. I know a guy that just got kicked from top the 20 AQ a month ago which is still really recent. I'm okay with that honestly. What I don't like is the freeze on older items that aren't the standard anymore. Why should someone with the skill not be able to have the max prestige for 5 stars due to a lack of availability? That is my only real issue with the prestige race.
To me, the biggest problem with act 6 is the block penetration or just the amount of damage that you take when you parry and to the point you basically can't just block, especially not a 4 or 5 hit combo. Yes there are definitely a few champs that make the content much easier but so many of the hard fights would be much easier if the block damage you took was a lot less. Take the champion fight for example. You can't get much practice and are limited by who you can use because you can't afford to take the block damage. Especially in the last 10% where the practice is needed. Most champs can't just use a 40% revive to get practice either, you have to heal up in order to get meaning practice in. Once you learn what you are doing, the champion was actually a really fun challenge.
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
@Worknprogress, I’d guess that Kabam would just keep the rewards that are already there for the regular difficulty as there are some basic progression gates that can be unlocked with stuff from Act 6. I feel like this challenge mode would reward different possible rewards than what are given today. (In my “challenge mode” I’d want the content to be shorter than the regular content but maybe have 2, 3, or 4 paths or something like that.) Rewards could be more Mastery Points, a special boost which gives your 6* double healing during adrenaline, Cav Crystals, titles, pfps, possible legend badges (maybe like “super legendary” badges idk), or just something that has never really been seen in the game. Usually the content being completed by roster, unit, and skill heavy people within the community. Adding this extra bonus stuff on top could just rewards them fro completing the challenge. (I feel like Kabam tried to do something like this during the Maze but it was just too short of an event for anyone to gradually work on overtime and figure out how to counter.)
I could be completely wrong, which is odd to type as this is all theoretical anyway, but I'd be shocked to see an additional higher tier of reward as opposed to the current ones being left for the "variant" and a lower tier being offered for the "normal" version.
What I’m saying is have different rewards. Those which no one has seen. Stuff like 3-4 Nexus 6*s should not be handed out period. That’s why I’m saying that the content should provide new stuff. (I got another example. Maybe if there is like a damage reduction in the next Variant you get a boost which removes that damage reduction.) Something that can be beneficial to the top tier players but not be completely game breaking.
I get that but I don't think there's really much you could offer that would actually entice that group of players to push through it. Additional mastery points could also absolutely be considered game breaking as well in some instances. There's definitely a reason we haven't received any for years.
So I think the only option is have the current rewards be for the higher difficulty and a lower set offered for the new one. All that does is create even more of a rift between the top and the rest in my opinion.
It's interesting to think about it and I'm curious if they could actually pull it off without just creating a different problem. I just don't see it happening with the difficulty getting slashed but the current set of rewards still being there. I know I wouldn't be particularly thrilled if they issued a reduced difficulty act 6 for the same rewards and then I got a title, a badge, or some cavs retrospectively.
The rewards for act 6 aren't good enough to cause a rift. The only rare item is a 6 star generic AG and 1 random t5cc. If I played an easier version of act 6 for relatively no units than I would just hop into abyss. I certainly can hop into Abyss and 100% it with the same amount of units I used to 100% act 6 and have some units leftover.
I think the rift is actually caused by signature stones more than anything. Unless you’re willing to spend on sig stones it’s virtually impossible to max out a 5/6* champ. The knock on is that spender can get access to higher tier AQ/AW, usually amongst similar players, who are also willing to spend to smash content/prestige, so you get the rift through purchase of prestige.
High ranking AQ placements have always been relative to spending, that is far from a new occurrence.
You can still be top 45 AQ alliance completely f2p. I'm a casual spender myself. I only spend on what I consider are great deals, kabam holidays, and to clear content. Top 45 is still really good for someone who doesn't spend. I know a guy that just got kicked from top the 20 AQ a month ago which is still really recent. I'm okay with that honestly. What I don't like is the freeze on older items that aren't the standard anymore. Why should someone with the skill not be able to have the max prestige for 5 stars due to a lack of availability? That is my only real issue with the prestige race.
Oh for sure. When I said high ranking I meant more that top 10 area. It's probably expanded to at least top 20 at this point though.
I still can't believe how few 5* sigs are available in game personally. Even if they want to reduce the amount early players have access to, tie them to titles/progression somehow. I legitimately do feel for f2p players when it comes to 5* sigs
I've done just about everything in game and i will say i agree with you @DNA3000 1000% I've always ask why is a in game story mode which should be for all players is set at such a difficulty that its almost unplayable for average players, 6.2 I've only done one path just for completion and thou i have the roster to complete it i have absolutely no interest in doing so because it wasn't even fun or something challenging to me it was more of a head ache like u start and cant wait for it to be over, act 6.1 wasn't too bad and i like the concept they tried with 6.3 i just wish they would've tone the attack a bit and also have nodes that make sense, like a player shouldn't feel punish for not having one champ especially in a RnG game, every time i ask Kabam about the difficulty and why a story mode is only in place for end game players and not for the entire player base to feel like its something they're able to do without the stress factor, the response i get is "its a permanent content and to do it when you are able to" thou that's true by time the average player get to the point i think 8 and 9 stars will be available and also the gap between end game players and everyone else will increase even more. As a developer the smart way to do it is to have act 6 as a story mode with nice rewards nothing too crazy but make it so that you enjoy doing it and will try to go back and do it again and for the End Game player make Act 6 Grand master mode this one has better rewards but caters to end game players who is looking for a challenge, that way the average player can tackle the regular act 6 mode rank up champs and see if they want to take a shot at the Grand master mode. what you think about this @DNA3000 ?
If I understand what you're saying, you're talking about creating a higher difficulty challenge mode on top of an easier base story mode. That idea has been discussed in a couple places including this thread, for example here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/1209646/#Comment_1209646. I think that's roughly what you're suggesting as well, more or less.
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
This is always a potential problem but I would argue that if players get roadblocked in Act 6, or Book 2, then the problem becomes moot because it doesn't matter how much richer the rich get, if the poor stop progressing completely.
But I acknowledge this is a separate, and important problem to work on. Whenever you change or evolve difficulty, you have to consider how the reward balance should work. If we decide to treat difficulty of the core story content differently than we do now, we should also consider reevalulating how we apportion rewards to that difficulty as well. I don't claim to have an answer to that problem, in part because solving that problem depends on how we try to solve the difficulty problem first.
Therein lies the ultimate problem of having F2P players amongst P2P players. Now I’m not saying this is pay to win by any means, but there is always going to be a gulf in class between F2P and P2P. Up until the last year, Kabam have managed it extremely well - the likes of BG have been able to hold their own against the spenders if they’re good and willing to put in the work. I think that it’s only recently that the true difference has become apparent - I have to grind a week of arena for units to quest/back out repeatedly until I get it down, the spender can just spend. With the difficulty now at such at high bar you can probably count on one hand the people who have been able to get through all of Act 6 itemless so the speed at which people are progressing is driven financially now, which has the knock on into AQ/AW/ability to grind higher arena scores.
I've never understood the thought process that quests should be able to be done itemless always, especially soon after release. Now that doesn't mean I think people should have to spend thousands of units to finish content but the prevailing idea that item use is inherently bad doesn't make sense to me. There are multiple ways to build both items and units without spending. I don't understand people that think using those avenues are bad personally. There's a large difference between just brute forcing everything down with units and using available items for sure, but there seems to be at least a subset of players that have the expectation that all content even brand new end game content should be able to be done by the average player with absolutely no item use.
I'm not saying that's what you meant with the comment about people finishing act 6 itemless but it just kinda struck a cord with me
Yeah I’ve got no problem with item use - ain’t none of us perfect and they wouldn’t exist if they weren’t there to use. I think it’s more about how there’s a lot of fights in Act 6 that are just item drains unless you have one of 2-3 champions. I think there’s a huge sub set of players that literally buy their way through content - you’ll see a fair few of the very high AQ alliances that can’t clear out G2 maps. It’s their prerogative to spend the money so more power to them if they got the coin to spend.
I know the pinnacle of any game is always going to be money led. Always has been, always will be. At the moment though with how the rewards are distributed it’s becoming more and more stark. I’m personally not overly bothered about AQ placement, but I would like increased access to sig stones short of dumping Odins on crystals for dupes or £50 offers that pop up periodically. That way at least more players can unlock the potential of their roster and if they’re inclined to run at prestige they can go that route, if they’re after utility instead they can go that way.
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
This is always a potential problem but I would argue that if players get roadblocked in Act 6, or Book 2, then the problem becomes moot because it doesn't matter how much richer the rich get, if the poor stop progressing completely.
But I acknowledge this is a separate, and important problem to work on. Whenever you change or evolve difficulty, you have to consider how the reward balance should work. If we decide to treat difficulty of the core story content differently than we do now, we should also consider reevalulating how we apportion rewards to that difficulty as well. I don't claim to have an answer to that problem, in part because solving that problem depends on how we try to solve the difficulty problem first.
Therein lies the ultimate problem of having F2P players amongst P2P players. Now I’m not saying this is pay to win by any means, but there is always going to be a gulf in class between F2P and P2P. Up until the last year, Kabam have managed it extremely well - the likes of BG have been able to hold their own against the spenders if they’re good and willing to put in the work. I think that it’s only recently that the true difference has become apparent - I have to grind a week of arena for units to quest/back out repeatedly until I get it down, the spender can just spend. With the difficulty now at such at high bar you can probably count on one hand the people who have been able to get through all of Act 6 itemless so the speed at which people are progressing is driven financially now, which has the knock on into AQ/AW/ability to grind higher arena scores.
Part of this I agree with, part of this I disagree a bit with. I think the difficulty curve exposes the power gulf that was always there. If my roster is ten times stronger than yours but the only difficulty that exists is Act 4, that difference is mostly superficial. My roster looks bigger, but it doesn't really do more (I'm oversimplifying, things like AQ prestige and AW have always exposed those kinds of differences to some degree). But when the content puts higher prerequisites for roster strength and breadth into play, then it makes roster strength differences a lot more obvious, and a lot more significant.
I think in all honesty that BG's problem (the one we're touching on here) is not as simple as it sometimes is characterized as. In absolute terms, BG is a good example of the very best that an F2P players can hope to achieve, which is a lot. This doesn't mean every F2P player can do what he does, because BG is in no way typical for F2P players; rather he gives an idea of where the ceiling is when you don't spend. And that ceiling is very, very high. But when people compare BG to "spenders" people sometimes imply that we're comparing BG's F2P play time against cash. But that's not the case, because we don't have an example of someone who just spends and doesn't also grind in the game a lot. Maybe there are such people, but we don't have specific examples to compare.
When we compare BG to the highest progress players, we're comparing F2P grinding verses spending *and* grinding. So of course, no one who does one should expect they are going to beat all the people who do both. The correct question to ask is, if you were to start an account now, and you only wanted to play minimally, how much cash would you have to spend to eventually catch up to BG. And I think it is a lot of cash. In my mind, BG is a good example of how the game treats F2P players fairly: it doesn't put up true paywalls that prevent a F2P player from progressing in any significant fashion. If the best an F2P player can ever hope to achieve is "only BG" I think that's pretty good. But contrawise, you can see spending does matter, because people who spend *and* play have a significant advantage over players who just play. I think BG's situation now is what I would expect it to be in a game that gives F2P players opportunities to succeed, but also gives enough incentives to spending players to keep a healthy amount of income coming in. But that's just my opinion.
I don't think Act 6's difficulty has warped progress across the playerbase too much yet, for the simple reason that the vast majority of players haven't gotten past Act 5 yet. At the moment, we have the very strongest players completing it, the second tier players down working through it (I'm in that tier), and everyone else still trying to get through Act 5 or lower. That's part of the reason why I think there's still an opportunity to make changes: changing the difficulty curve now would help the vast majority of players before they ever reached it. And honestly, while we can also discuss things like should we compensate players already in it if we make changes, let's face it: those of us already in it or past it are the players who least need material compensation. We're the strongest players in the game, relatively speaking, and we'll always have advantages over the rest of the playerbase. If changes help the rest and don't help us, we're all going to be okay. In my opinion sometimes the people at the top have to take the hit so the rest get a better game.
Put it another way. I would give up all my Act 6 rewards if in exchange I could redesign the difficulty of Act 6 for everyone else. I love rewards just as much as the next player, and I wouldn't give up my rewards lightly. But at the end of the day losing the Act 6 rewards wouldn't paralyze my progress indefinitely. Redesigning Act 6+ difficulty in a way that helps 98% of players and helps me exactly zero is a trade I would take in a heartbeat. I'd definitely shed a tear over those Act rewards. But I'd get over it.
I've seen a few people like the ideas that some like DNA and Brian have proposed of having a variant/challenge difficulty to story content (which actually I think is quite a good idea personally). One thing I am curious about is what sort of reward tier those of you that are pro this sort of idea would expect?
Obviously the current iteration would be considered the "variant" so that would be the higher reward tier, so what sort of things would players actually expect with quest difficulty significantly reduced? I myself couldn't see more than about what the current variant quests offer being offered. I'm just not sure that would actually be enough to appease the player base.
Wouldn't we just see more about "the rich getting richer" and the sort, as we already get that sort of thing pertaining to the variant quests when people haven't developed enough to complete them. The player may not be roadblocked in the story progression but I'd still assume, based on how reactions tend to go here, we'd just see constant posts about not being able to expand 6* rosters or get R3 6*s while those completing the higher difficulty were. Would a random 4 to 5 gem, a small amount of 6* shards, and some 5* crystals really be enough for most that are roadblocked by the current version of Act 6?
This is always a potential problem but I would argue that if players get roadblocked in Act 6, or Book 2, then the problem becomes moot because it doesn't matter how much richer the rich get, if the poor stop progressing completely.
But I acknowledge this is a separate, and important problem to work on. Whenever you change or evolve difficulty, you have to consider how the reward balance should work. If we decide to treat difficulty of the core story content differently than we do now, we should also consider reevalulating how we apportion rewards to that difficulty as well. I don't claim to have an answer to that problem, in part because solving that problem depends on how we try to solve the difficulty problem first.
Therein lies the ultimate problem of having F2P players amongst P2P players. Now I’m not saying this is pay to win by any means, but there is always going to be a gulf in class between F2P and P2P. Up until the last year, Kabam have managed it extremely well - the likes of BG have been able to hold their own against the spenders if they’re good and willing to put in the work. I think that it’s only recently that the true difference has become apparent - I have to grind a week of arena for units to quest/back out repeatedly until I get it down, the spender can just spend. With the difficulty now at such at high bar you can probably count on one hand the people who have been able to get through all of Act 6 itemless so the speed at which people are progressing is driven financially now, which has the knock on into AQ/AW/ability to grind higher arena scores.
I've never understood the thought process that quests should be able to be done itemless always, especially soon after release. Now that doesn't mean I think people should have to spend thousands of units to finish content but the prevailing idea that item use is inherently bad doesn't make sense to me.
I don't think most people think spending items is inherently bad, in the context of most discussions on the forums anyway. I think "itemless" discussions sometimes (not always) are touching on a deeper gameplay issue. I think most players don't have robotic consistency when they play. I sure don't. Some days I'm awesome. Some days I'm wearing the noob hat. I've had days when I've been possessed by the God of Intercepts, and days when I've been possessed by Stephen Hawking.
If a fight is something I can beat basically every time, even when I make the occasional mistake, then it can probably be beaten by a very skilled and consistent player without spending any items. If they *have to spend* items, then on anything but a great day I'm going to probably be spending lots of them.
So I think *sometimes* when someone complains that a fight can't be done itemless, they don't mean *they* can't do it itemless. I think they are trying to express the idea that the fight can't be done itemless even by extremely skilled players, and if they have to spend anything, the rest of us mortals will probably have to spend too much.
I'm not saying everyone who complains about itemless means this. But often I get the impression that's what they are trying to say. And this echos a complaint much stronger players (and myself) were expressing in the Book 2 beta, that when difficulty gets high enough in the wrong way, it seems like you can't just beat the content with skill, you need luck as well. And that translates into having to burn a lot of items, because no one is always lucky.
All this data. All these constructive comments. No affirmations or appreciation from the Mods? Seems strange. I know they’ve read it. Probably passed the it on. SMH
I would imagine if they are paying attention to this it is within the greater context of all the feedback being given about player concerns everywhere in the game, of which this is just one. Also, this isn't something any bug fix or even content tweak can address. This requires asking a very fundamental question that, the more I think about it, affects the larger game in a lot of ways.
In fact, the longer I look at the game through this lens, the more my opinions of every part of the game implementation seem to change to align with it. For example, this post: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/1218037/#Comment_1218037 is I would say a direct consequence of the change in perspective. When I looked at Act 6 5* gates through the eyes of someone calibrating the difficulty for high tier players, the gates made sense to me. When I look again through the eyes of someone seeing the content as intended for progressing players, the gates now make no sense to me.
I'm late to the party in that sense, but when the argument was that the gates penalized average players with smaller rosters, no one made the last hop argument that this should have been a mandatory requirement for any story arc content in the game. Now that I look at it that way, gates in Act 6 but not in, say, Variant content seems backwards. Variant is optional. Acts are core. The Acts should be where everyone gets to use everything they can, within reason. The optional content is where you can make crazy limits, use only 5* or use only 2*. Whatever, the sky's the limit in optional content. At least, that's how I see it now.
People talking about spending like it's equal to PayToWin/PayToSkip. That's the case if you're paying a merc. Otherwise, you still have to fight the fights, no matter if they're as long and painful as can be.
If you can get through an entire hardened story/event content itemless, that's taken a ton of planning and more luck than should be expected. Things need to go just right or you'll have to start all over.
When I get through an entire late Act 6 path itemless, it's unintentional and I'm typically nearly dead and dragging 3-4 corpses across the finish line with me and I got lucky with ai more than a few times. Nothing I'd want someone to watch replays of. Typically my number 1 and 2 option stood there like a shrub and got comboed to death immediately and I had to channel true divinity with Plan D. Just because you didn't use any items doesn't mean you skated through it backwards like a boss.
Comments
Progressional content should be about gauging progress. And it should be trying to teach players how to play the game, not gotcha-ing players with surprise content. The Champion requires very specific skills no one has any reasonable way of acquiring before that fight, outside of duels which help but which don't quite prepare players for the real thing.
If the Champion was the last fight in a set of such fights that got progressively harder going back to Act 5, I'd be fine with it. And if the Champion was the first fight on the map, so you could enter, try him, die, exit, and try again until you could gain the skills to beat him, I'd be fine with him also. No one should think the game has to hand you a victory, it can demand you get a stronger roster or a higher level of skill to beat it. But if the game is going to require a skill in the core progressional content of the game that everyone is supposed to be able to do, then there has to be an obvious path to learning that skill. The game either needs to teach us how to beat the Champion before we reach him, or it needs to make the fight itself something we can practice on. And even though I will admit the easy path to the Champion is surprisingly easy within the context of Act 6, it is still hard enough and long enough that the kind of repetitive practice most humans need to learn a skill is not practical in 6.2.6 unless you spend units.
Which is what I did. I tried to do that exit and redo the path thing, but I realized it was hurting my ability to learn from practicing the Champion himself. So I started reviving on the fight not to spend past him, but literally to give myself good practice opportunities so my brain and fingers could focus on and learn that one fight. I think those units were well-spent, in that I learned a lot about how I can, and cannot do that fight. I will, if and when I ever decide to do it again, do better. But that barrier to learning the skills in the first place are, I think, not right for progressional content.
If the dude ambushed you in the middle of the Abyss, whatever. That's end game content and it is intended for the best players in the game to beat. You can assume players with far above average skill and for that matter far above average determination to plow through the content. If the Champion was on a map like Infinity Thanos in a challenge map, I'd not only be fine with him, I probably would actually enjoy the challenge of beating that one fight on that one map. It isn't the fight itself that I find problematic, but the context of the fight. It is a difficult, novel fight with no precursor in a progressional map with a substantive difficulty and energy cost to reach. That combination is what's the problem for me personally.
I consider myself as a bit above average but not a top player and i'm stuck at act 6.2 for very long time.
at least for now Act 6 seems like a wall i won't be able to pass as it doesn't tie to the progression of my champs (available champs, ranks and tricky nodes)
i agree with you that there are enough contests for top players that has the skill or the money to spend, but story quest is something that need to be design for all and with a bit patience to be able to complete it. it doesn't feels like a bit patience will help here, so what are my options? to keep playing arena for years until a release of 8* ?
Some of that is almost certainly true, but I don't think it is the most important issue. The numbers alone don't prove this, but they support the narrative that the content is being balanced not just for players with stronger rosters, but also players with higher skill levels. Which means if you were to somehow magically nerf all of the top performing champions, while this could cause the devs to lower content difficulty it would still be the case that aiming at the skill level of the top players would make the content still too difficult for average players. It is just that instead of being five times harder than they can do, it might be only three times harder. But that's still a problem, just a slightly less severe one.
And the law of unintended consequences says that for every player helped when you nerf the so-called OP champs and thus lower difficulty, you hurt a player who was only able to do the content with those OP champs and the combined change of nerfing their champs and lowering difficulty puts them overall in a worse position.
We do nerf champs that are so far off the scale that there's basically no choice. At least, as Kabam sees it. And I'm fine with that. But while we can argue over whether those champs are really high enough to deserve nerfs, I think almost no one would disagree that below some critical level even if the champ is higher than intended, it is nonetheless not high enough to deserve a nerf. Nerfs on champs that are already released should be a last resort. And if we're going to treat them as a last resort, we can't be using them as the first tool to use to try to moderate content difficulty.
6* AGs and T5c are still massively rare and important items in the game.i just don't see anyway they could nerf the difficulty but not the rewards anytime soon without a massive backlash from those who've finished it already.
We could do the reverse and say anyone who already did Act 6 can go back and grind out easy mode for the easy mode rewards, but that seems kind of pointless to me. it is "fair" in the sense that both groups do the same effort and get the same rewards, but the situation isn't perfectly symmetric. People who do the content the easy way first have some practice before doing it the hard way that the original players didn't have. In this imperfect situation, I think we should acknowledge that obviously if they did it the hard way, they could have easily done it the easy way, and we don't want to force them to go back again. So we retroactively give the players who already completed Act 6 the easy mode rewards automatically, without having to grind them out.
I think this strikes a reasonable balance between giving the early players something for their trouble, without overly rewarding them for doing content quickly. As I mentioned in other posts, I think Kabam incorrectly rewards players for blitzing content as fast as possible (i.e. with Legends titles), when that's the exact wrong thing to do with players who are already blitzing through your content faster than everyone else.
I'm not saying it has to be this way. Kabam could choose to shake up the rewards also. But for purposes of discussion, I think adding rewards to Act 6 for easy mode, and then giving those rewards automatically and retroactively to any player that has already completed Act 6 in hard mode (including parts thereof) feels less like compensating players for design mistakes and more like rewarding players for good play, albeit in an unusual rebalancing situation.
Incursions zone 4 i had Mysterio as a boss and have nodes (Close encounter and Lifecycle). Just the worst at zone 4 sector 7 . How could someone go further.
If kabam could add more of them
They would add aspect of war and do you bleed also to this part. And Mysterio special attacks also cause distance and are time consuming too. Here You Go BOOM ... K.O.
If the guys (and girls) at Kabam only read one post this year (in addition to the general game feedback thread) this should be it.
As op said, average player can defeat a map of 3x stronger enemies. That is true, but yet the difgiculty goes up. And with the current content, there comes a factor I haven't seen in the analysis: ITEMS. The latest content is designed to not be doable w one team. If your 5 champs can defeat lets say 8 3x stronger enemies, for a map with 8 9x stronger enemies you could need 3 teams. Meaning that map like this would cost you 2 full revived teams plus the 1 you start with. The endgame stands firmly on players having to revive, heal and boost like crazy. Which I personally dislike
Some just want to collect their favorite heroes and some like me wants to see what happens to Carina and yes we'd like something fun and exciting while playing through the quests. And I think act 5 captured this really well.
If you want to create stupidly difficult content for end game players, wouldn't it be better to do so with event quests. Sure some event quests might be tailored to both middle and end game players like boss rush and champion challenges while variants and specials like abyss and labyrinth are suited for end game.
How about a 2 month long cavalier difficulty event quest that has the difficulty level around that of act 6 or higher. (That way players get enough time to practice and try to complete it without rushing) with rewards tailored to end game players. The rewards could even be interchanged. First cav eq gives crystal shards and the next would give high tier catalysts.
I think that it’s only recently that the true difference has become apparent - I have to grind a week of arena for units to quest/back out repeatedly until I get it down, the spender can just spend. With the difficulty now at such at high bar you can probably count on one hand the people who have been able to get through all of Act 6 itemless so the speed at which people are progressing is driven financially now, which has the knock on into AQ/AW/ability to grind higher arena scores.
I'm not saying that's what you meant with the comment about people finishing act 6 itemless but it just kinda struck a cord with me
I still can't believe how few 5* sigs are available in game personally. Even if they want to reduce the amount early players have access to, tie them to titles/progression somehow. I legitimately do feel for f2p players when it comes to 5* sigs
I know the pinnacle of any game is always going to be money led. Always has been, always will be. At the moment though with how the rewards are distributed it’s becoming more and more stark. I’m personally not overly bothered about AQ placement, but I would like increased access to sig stones short of dumping Odins on crystals for dupes or £50 offers that pop up periodically. That way at least more players can unlock the potential of their roster and if they’re inclined to run at prestige they can go that route, if they’re after utility instead they can go that way.
I think in all honesty that BG's problem (the one we're touching on here) is not as simple as it sometimes is characterized as. In absolute terms, BG is a good example of the very best that an F2P players can hope to achieve, which is a lot. This doesn't mean every F2P player can do what he does, because BG is in no way typical for F2P players; rather he gives an idea of where the ceiling is when you don't spend. And that ceiling is very, very high. But when people compare BG to "spenders" people sometimes imply that we're comparing BG's F2P play time against cash. But that's not the case, because we don't have an example of someone who just spends and doesn't also grind in the game a lot. Maybe there are such people, but we don't have specific examples to compare.
When we compare BG to the highest progress players, we're comparing F2P grinding verses spending *and* grinding. So of course, no one who does one should expect they are going to beat all the people who do both. The correct question to ask is, if you were to start an account now, and you only wanted to play minimally, how much cash would you have to spend to eventually catch up to BG. And I think it is a lot of cash. In my mind, BG is a good example of how the game treats F2P players fairly: it doesn't put up true paywalls that prevent a F2P player from progressing in any significant fashion. If the best an F2P player can ever hope to achieve is "only BG" I think that's pretty good. But contrawise, you can see spending does matter, because people who spend *and* play have a significant advantage over players who just play. I think BG's situation now is what I would expect it to be in a game that gives F2P players opportunities to succeed, but also gives enough incentives to spending players to keep a healthy amount of income coming in. But that's just my opinion.
I don't think Act 6's difficulty has warped progress across the playerbase too much yet, for the simple reason that the vast majority of players haven't gotten past Act 5 yet. At the moment, we have the very strongest players completing it, the second tier players down working through it (I'm in that tier), and everyone else still trying to get through Act 5 or lower. That's part of the reason why I think there's still an opportunity to make changes: changing the difficulty curve now would help the vast majority of players before they ever reached it. And honestly, while we can also discuss things like should we compensate players already in it if we make changes, let's face it: those of us already in it or past it are the players who least need material compensation. We're the strongest players in the game, relatively speaking, and we'll always have advantages over the rest of the playerbase. If changes help the rest and don't help us, we're all going to be okay. In my opinion sometimes the people at the top have to take the hit so the rest get a better game.
Put it another way. I would give up all my Act 6 rewards if in exchange I could redesign the difficulty of Act 6 for everyone else. I love rewards just as much as the next player, and I wouldn't give up my rewards lightly. But at the end of the day losing the Act 6 rewards wouldn't paralyze my progress indefinitely. Redesigning Act 6+ difficulty in a way that helps 98% of players and helps me exactly zero is a trade I would take in a heartbeat. I'd definitely shed a tear over those Act rewards. But I'd get over it.
If a fight is something I can beat basically every time, even when I make the occasional mistake, then it can probably be beaten by a very skilled and consistent player without spending any items. If they *have to spend* items, then on anything but a great day I'm going to probably be spending lots of them.
So I think *sometimes* when someone complains that a fight can't be done itemless, they don't mean *they* can't do it itemless. I think they are trying to express the idea that the fight can't be done itemless even by extremely skilled players, and if they have to spend anything, the rest of us mortals will probably have to spend too much.
I'm not saying everyone who complains about itemless means this. But often I get the impression that's what they are trying to say. And this echos a complaint much stronger players (and myself) were expressing in the Book 2 beta, that when difficulty gets high enough in the wrong way, it seems like you can't just beat the content with skill, you need luck as well. And that translates into having to burn a lot of items, because no one is always lucky.
In fact, the longer I look at the game through this lens, the more my opinions of every part of the game implementation seem to change to align with it. For example, this post: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/1218037/#Comment_1218037 is I would say a direct consequence of the change in perspective. When I looked at Act 6 5* gates through the eyes of someone calibrating the difficulty for high tier players, the gates made sense to me. When I look again through the eyes of someone seeing the content as intended for progressing players, the gates now make no sense to me.
I'm late to the party in that sense, but when the argument was that the gates penalized average players with smaller rosters, no one made the last hop argument that this should have been a mandatory requirement for any story arc content in the game. Now that I look at it that way, gates in Act 6 but not in, say, Variant content seems backwards. Variant is optional. Acts are core. The Acts should be where everyone gets to use everything they can, within reason. The optional content is where you can make crazy limits, use only 5* or use only 2*. Whatever, the sky's the limit in optional content. At least, that's how I see it now.
If you can get through an entire hardened story/event content itemless, that's taken a ton of planning and more luck than should be expected. Things need to go just right or you'll have to start all over.
When I get through an entire late Act 6 path itemless, it's unintentional and I'm typically nearly dead and dragging 3-4 corpses across the finish line with me and I got lucky with ai more than a few times. Nothing I'd want someone to watch replays of. Typically my number 1 and 2 option stood there like a shrub and got comboed to death immediately and I had to channel true divinity with Plan D. Just because you didn't use any items doesn't mean you skated through it backwards like a boss.