I agree with everything OP has said and other comments. What is the point of a story mode more than half the player population can never experience (except through watching end game youtubers)? I've been gaming for over 3 and a half decades from console to PC to mobile and this is the first game I've seen take this punitive approach to what is supposed ot be the core of the game.
Act 5 wasn't easy as the time you arrive at it, but it also wasn't impossible. I just beat the Champion 6.2 last week, after putting it off for half a year because of how stressful it looked & sounded. Got him down..after about 2k units. That's no fun ad I have a pretty good roster. I can't imagine someone who doesn't. In its current state i'll not even try to explore.
Make the side content for end game players (Cav difficulty, Challenges, more variants) and yes I like this idea of tiered story mode and retroactive balancing for act 6. I hope this steep power creep in defenders and nodes is halted and scaled back as we move forward, and this along with other QoL issues in the general Game Feedback thread are really listened to.
Everyone loves this game - you keep your players happy and the money will keep rolling in kabam.
Precisely. A huge number of us really love the game and the work you put into it, and we’re happy to keep spending- as long as it remains an enjoyable experience. It’s difficult to justify spending when it feels like a chore or a punishment.
I’m not sure how I’ve missed this thread until now.
But I love it. And I appreciate the time, effort and care put into it, @DNA3000 , because it attempts to quantify aspects I often find frustrating about the game’s current state.
What you call the “gotcha” aspect of the Champion fight captures the point where the game began to feel mistuned to me. It makes sense for content to stretch players, but that stretch needs precedent and needs to follow a kind of progressional logic.
For me, the Champion fight lacked any of that. It was ultimately “fun,” I suppose—so much so, in fact, that I‘ve opted to forego that particular brand of enjoyment a second time. But there wasn’t any real way to prepare for it by doing other available content nor was there a set of analogs that made the Champion fight “make sense” in light of Act 6 and before. It simply felt like taking my lumps.
I confess I’m not an “early adopter” of content. I suspect my approach isn’t much different from yours: I like to analyze, plan, watch a video here and there and get input from game “colleagues.” I often wait until I have the right counter or set of counters—for things like Variant 1, for example, I’m just now pushing through while all the other Variants are long done.
But that’s Variant. Act 6 and beyond (and all Story mode) shouldn’t operate like that. Repairing foundational issues requires a more holistic approach than just fixing a few things here and there.
But it gets at the core of what causes me to log on, look at Story maps I haven’t done, and then sigh and sell some iso before logging back off.
No one talks about the core issue of the "The Champion" fight. His Sp1 doesn't allow you to dex every time. They placed the dex in the smallest of windows purposefully and left it that way. If it was a fair fight that would be different but if you don't dex within a micro second of the headbutt it doesn't count. As much as they altered the fight for MS, BWCV, and Shehulk they have to know this already and all the extra units people wasted on doing it still won't amount to the people that are being left out. Poor strategy.
No one talks about the core issue of the "The Champion" fight. His Sp1 doesn't allow you to dex every time. They placed the dex in the smallest of windows purposefully and left it that way. If it was a fair fight that would be different but if you don't dex within a micro second of the headbutt it doesn't count. As much as they altered the fight for MS, BWCV, and Shehulk they have to know this already and all the extra units people wasted on doing it still won't amount to the people that are being left out. Poor strategy.
Actually, there's a couple moments when you can dex, but of course a lot of people aren't going to be experimenting a lot in that fight if it is costing them units to try. Which is ironic, because without experimenting you can lock yourself into trying to do it in the hardest possible way, or rather in a way that a particular player just happens to find difficult.
There's at least one point, and I think maybe more than one, where you can dex SP1 in the middle. It is hard to describe, but I can show it in the cap I took of a successful run.
Check the dex that happens around 2:13 - 2:16. Immediately after his initial foot stomp charge, you can theoretically dex the next move. I did it more than once in earlier attempts, so I don't think it is an anomaly. It comes down to spacing. Depending on your spacing, the best window of opportunity on a specific SP1 might be at the end, or it might be in the middle. If you're at the right distance where the first foot charge doesn't hit you, but you're also close enough, you can immediately dex the next move.
I think the most important lesson, which took me a lot of units to learn, is if it doesn't look right don't try to force it. Reset and try again, and wait for the right opportunity. You can't make it happen, or at least I'm not good enough to make it happen, but I'm good enough to keep the fight alive and try to hang around long enough and close enough to eventually have opportunities open up. If you only wait for head butt windows, you can end up eating too much block damage before you get all five, but if you find multiple windows you have several spacings that can work without putting you in too much jeopardy. But it mostly comes down to waiting for the right spacing, and then dexing the right move with that spacing.
This is part of why I think it isn't the fight that is the problem. it is the context of the fight, where it is expensive to experiment, and there's no skills build up to it, that are the real problem. If the game gave a way for players to learn how to do this kind of thing, and made it easier (cheaper) to just give it a try, and not just one specific strategy they were told to use, the fight would be much more reasonable for players to try to learn. It would still be a very high difficulty challenge, but at least there would be a path to figure out how to do it that didn't involve tons of units. Maybe it would still be too difficult, but certainly it would be more reasonable to think players could learn enough about the fight to bring themselves up to its level.
When I beat him I used Thing (HT and Man-Thing synergy) and the most difficult aspect was allowing myself to get hit. I practiced in other fights with getting hit and then adding dexes into the mix was trivial. If I had CAIW or some other champ that called for real skill, it would have been much more frustrating.
When I beat him I used Thing (HT and Man-Thing synergy) and the most difficult aspect was allowing myself to get hit. I practiced in other fights with getting hit and then adding dexes into the mix was trivial. If I had CAIW or some other champ that called for real skill, it would have been much more frustrating.
I don't have 5* Thing, or I probably would have tried that first. You do also need high sig for that option, right? Otherwise all the unstoppable in the world won't prevent you from being squished by the Champion when he goes in to hit you. I would imagine max protection and going unstoppable would make that fight a bit easier.
When I beat him I used Thing (HT and Man-Thing synergy) and the most difficult aspect was allowing myself to get hit. I practiced in other fights with getting hit and then adding dexes into the mix was trivial. If I had CAIW or some other champ that called for real skill, it would have been much more frustrating.
I don't have 5* Thing, or I probably would have tried that first. You do also need high sig for that option, right? Otherwise all the unstoppable in the world won't prevent you from being squished by the Champion when he goes in to hit you. I would imagine max protection and going unstoppable would make that fight a bit easier.
Yep. I got him, maxed him, practiced, beat The Champion and I haven't gone back.
Actually, there's a couple moments when you can dex, but of course a lot of people aren't going to be experimenting a lot in that fight if it is costing them units to try. Which is ironic, because without experimenting you can lock yourself into trying to do it in the hardest possible way, or rather in a way that a particular player just happens to find difficult.
There's at least one point, and I think maybe more than one, where you can dex SP1 in the middle. It is hard to describe, but I can show it in the cap I took of a successful run.
Check the dex that happens around 2:13 - 2:16. Immediately after his initial foot stomp charge, you can theoretically dex the next move. I did it more than once in earlier attempts, so I don't think it is an anomaly. It comes down to spacing. Depending on your spacing, the best window of opportunity on a specific SP1 might be at the end, or it might be in the middle. If you're at the right distance where the first foot charge doesn't hit you, but you're also close enough, you can immediately dex the next move.
I actually got this "multi-prowess" with Symbiote Supreme the first time I tried the 10% phase - got 2 prowess in one sp1, but then the block damage killed me soon after.
For those who manage to get the new Sorcerer Supreme like I did this is the best way to do it - take the blocked hits & regen and dex where you can, during the first chops, go back in and dex the headbutt.
Or just take all the hits except the last. Similar to using Thing except you have to ensure there's enough health to survive each hit to recover 70% of it.
But even with Sorcerer supreme it is a real problem fight if you haven't been able to practice. I spent a lot of units in forced experimentation, figuring out not only how to dex him, but how she interacts with that dex re animations. I recall Dorky Dave had a big issue because Quake's dash animations didn't allow dexing the sp1 properly and he had to spend resources figuring out how to do it using the Champion's sp2.
It would really benefit from the fight being similar to the Thanos quest as you said earlier - no fights but power stone Champion for the last chapter. At least even if you got wrecked you didn't waste time & resources simply reaching him.
Comments
Act 5 wasn't easy as the time you arrive at it, but it also wasn't impossible. I just beat the Champion 6.2 last week, after putting it off for half a year because of how stressful it looked & sounded. Got him down..after about 2k units. That's no fun ad I have a pretty good roster. I can't imagine someone who doesn't. In its current state i'll not even try to explore.
Make the side content for end game players (Cav difficulty, Challenges, more variants) and yes I like this idea of tiered story mode and retroactive balancing for act 6. I hope this steep power creep in defenders and nodes is halted and scaled back as we move forward, and this along with other QoL issues in the general Game Feedback thread are really listened to.
Everyone loves this game - you keep your players happy and the money will keep rolling in kabam.
But I love it. And I appreciate the time, effort and care put into it, @DNA3000 , because it attempts to quantify aspects I often find frustrating about the game’s current state.
What you call the “gotcha” aspect of the Champion fight captures the point where the game began to feel mistuned to me. It makes sense for content to stretch players, but that stretch needs precedent and needs to follow a kind of progressional logic.
For me, the Champion fight lacked any of that. It was ultimately “fun,” I suppose—so much so, in fact, that I‘ve opted to forego that particular brand of enjoyment a second time. But there wasn’t any real way to prepare for it by doing other available content nor was there a set of analogs that made the Champion fight “make sense” in light of Act 6 and before. It simply felt like taking my lumps.
I confess I’m not an “early adopter” of content. I suspect my approach isn’t much different from yours: I like to analyze, plan, watch a video here and there and get input from game “colleagues.” I often wait until I have the right counter or set of counters—for things like Variant 1, for example, I’m just now pushing through while all the other Variants are long done.
But that’s Variant. Act 6 and beyond (and all Story mode) shouldn’t operate like that. Repairing foundational issues requires a more holistic approach than just fixing a few things here and there.
But it gets at the core of what causes me to log on, look at Story maps I haven’t done, and then sigh and sell some iso before logging back off.
Dr. Zola
There's at least one point, and I think maybe more than one, where you can dex SP1 in the middle. It is hard to describe, but I can show it in the cap I took of a successful run.
Check the dex that happens around 2:13 - 2:16. Immediately after his initial foot stomp charge, you can theoretically dex the next move. I did it more than once in earlier attempts, so I don't think it is an anomaly. It comes down to spacing. Depending on your spacing, the best window of opportunity on a specific SP1 might be at the end, or it might be in the middle. If you're at the right distance where the first foot charge doesn't hit you, but you're also close enough, you can immediately dex the next move.
I think the most important lesson, which took me a lot of units to learn, is if it doesn't look right don't try to force it. Reset and try again, and wait for the right opportunity. You can't make it happen, or at least I'm not good enough to make it happen, but I'm good enough to keep the fight alive and try to hang around long enough and close enough to eventually have opportunities open up. If you only wait for head butt windows, you can end up eating too much block damage before you get all five, but if you find multiple windows you have several spacings that can work without putting you in too much jeopardy. But it mostly comes down to waiting for the right spacing, and then dexing the right move with that spacing.
This is part of why I think it isn't the fight that is the problem. it is the context of the fight, where it is expensive to experiment, and there's no skills build up to it, that are the real problem. If the game gave a way for players to learn how to do this kind of thing, and made it easier (cheaper) to just give it a try, and not just one specific strategy they were told to use, the fight would be much more reasonable for players to try to learn. It would still be a very high difficulty challenge, but at least there would be a path to figure out how to do it that didn't involve tons of units. Maybe it would still be too difficult, but certainly it would be more reasonable to think players could learn enough about the fight to bring themselves up to its level.
For those who manage to get the new Sorcerer Supreme like I did this is the best way to do it - take the blocked hits & regen and dex where you can, during the first chops, go back in and dex the headbutt.
Or just take all the hits except the last. Similar to using Thing except you have to ensure there's enough health to survive each hit to recover 70% of it.
But even with Sorcerer supreme it is a real problem fight if you haven't been able to practice. I spent a lot of units in forced experimentation, figuring out not only how to dex him, but how she interacts with that dex re animations. I recall Dorky Dave had a big issue because Quake's dash animations didn't allow dexing the sp1 properly and he had to spend resources figuring out how to do it using the Champion's sp2.
It would really benefit from the fight being similar to the Thanos quest as you said earlier - no fights but power stone Champion for the last chapter. At least even if you got wrecked you didn't waste time & resources simply reaching him.