**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Regarding the new difficulty
Cornflake04
Posts: 26 ★
I know people have valid points as to why it is restricted to level 60 for entry. However I find it a bit unfair due to the fact that a player, not even uc could farm xp from act 4 and get there with little skill or roster development. As a player who is cavalier and reached 6.2.6 at lvl 54 I think that anyone who has achieved cavalier through skill and a developed roster should be allowed entry. This is made to help create the full event quest designated for cavalier players after all. Just my opinion.
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Comments
That however, is just silly. Basically assuming that there's anyone that's been playing the game long enough to actually get into Act 6 (if they actually finish all the previous content especially) and can't beat a fight until they basically have the same stats as the opponent is ridiculous. You even go up against higher rated opponents in arena and people basically sleep through that. Toss some nodes on top of a similar matchup and that's what it takes for people to beat it? Come on.
It also ignores "why" difficulty is difficult, because if you decide you're going to be the arbiter of who's difficulty complaints are legitimate and whose are not on personal judgment, you've left the realm of useful analysis.
That's pretty much what it looks like it says and is basically the only bullet point anyone keeps throwing around about it.
Also if you're playing Act 4 with champions available at the time it was released at ranks available at the time, one thing you'll definitely build more of is ability. When you roll through it and act 5 with domino, ghost, Corvus, etc... It's no wonder people haven't got a clue what theyre doing on the back side.
The fact that people actually do Act 6 without 8* champs, and the fact that 8* champs don't exist should imply that Act 6 wasn't designed to be completed by 8* champs. It was designed to be completed by the highest skill players with rosters close to the power ceiling at the time it was implemented. The article spends a lot of time, but apparently not enough, highlighting what happened in Act 5, and tried to extrapolate whether the same thing could happen in Act 6, and the numbers say it can't, without presuming ridiculously high rank champs.
A lot of people do quote the one thing, which I've tried to correct twice in a podcast and a livestream. They are probably hearing about the article second hand or not actually reading it completely. Which one was your particular issue?
I agree that attack values were overtuned in 6.3 and 6.4 in particular. That was also a direct response, along with ridiculous nodes, to the insane backlash they got from gates. So instead they tried to figure out a different way to accomplish the same thing and slow newer players down and only just made the whole thing worse for everyone.
Act 6 is/was very difficult and I personally don't have a problem with that. A whole lot of it was fun for me personally. You've brought up multiple times about story content shouldn't be a roadblock. That's typically true and something I have absolutely no issue with, but this false idea that act 6 was the first time story content was difficult is just silly. Everyone that thinks this is the case needs to go back and start knocking out act 5 with 4/40 4*s that were available at release.
Is it on par with act 6? Probably not, I don't know. My abilities and roster aren't remotely close to what they were then so it's pretty hard to judge. The ability to get a new champ and rank them immediately through avenues like the glory store and offers weren't available then though. Even if you got a brand new 4* you weren't immediately flying through act 5. Now, you can do it in a week. That's a huge problem. All you have to do is look at the people complaining about a level cap on a side event made to end game difficulty testing. People aren't even close to level 60 and are complaining they can't do the new side event. How in the world is that not an issue?
The problem with Act 6 is that this is not true. So even though Act 6 repeats the same problem of Act 5, but to a much higher magnitude, the tools to solve it don't exist. The guys that needed that one 4/55 to do Act 5 is bringing in something two ranks higher than the 4/40s that are the hard mode Act 5 roster. But Act 6 is pushing even strong players to bring in teams of 4/55s and 5/65s; its difficulty is some hybrid in between to start, and probably climbs into needing 5/65s towards the end for all but the highest skill players. Two ranks higher than that doesn't exist in the game. A 5/65 is basically a 6* rank 2. Rank 3 isn't one rank higher in the same way it was for 5*, because Kabam cut the rank bonus in half (about) above rank 2. Best guess is a rank 4 would be the rough equivalent of "one rank higher" than 5/65. Two ranks higher would be a rank 6, which also doesn't exist: that is entering hypothetical 7* territory. Asking someone to wait to rank up a 4/55 for Act 5 is like asking someone to wait for 7* champs to do Act 6, especially the back half.
And that *only* accounts for the attack/health node bonuses. It doesn't account for the crazy situational fights, which stress players even harder (which is where the 8* champ remark comes from, which I've come to regret). So yes, Act 6 isn't throwing a unique problem to players in a general sense. Act 5 presented a similar problem of git gud, or grow higher roster. The problem with Act 6 is, in a sense, the devs just won't give us the same higher roster. What players would need to reduce Act 6 to be a similar, if incrementally harder challenge than Act 5, Kabam won't give us. That's what makes Act 6 fundamentally different. Same problem, perhaps, but with the half the tools taken away to solve it. Leaving Act 6 only doable by players that can make due with half the tools: git gud.
Trying to do Act 5 with 4/40s is actually an interesting experiment. Definitely worth trying to compare to the experience of doing Act 6 with suboptimal roster. I did some of that to prepare for the post, as part of measuring ranks and bonuses. Not the whole thing: I didn't have time for that. Just a few early fights to see how it went.
I'm not not holding what players have available to them against them but it does create a problem down the line. If you're using overpowered and overranked champions for content designed years ago, when you get to the more current content it's obviously going to seem disproportionately difficult as you've never gone up against content with champions it was designed for.
At that point, it just becomes a question of where should "story content" be tuned and what expectations of players should it have. They tried to emphasize roster breadth with Act 6 and honestly I think they went too far since they made zero changes to champion acquisition. I still understand what they tried to do and why and it doesn't mean it was broken content.
The group of players they're trying to please with one thing is far too vast in my opinion. You have to have a tier of content with the newest and best resources for those willing to push but also have to have an avenue for other players to get to that point eventually. If they dropped story content difficulty and also the rewards to a tier below the top level stuff I think you'd still have the same problem but with people complaining about different content instead.