The Future of Content(Pretty Long)
This month we saw the release of the heavily anticipated Act 7 and Variant 6. It has left quite a few ‘endgame players’ unsettled, due to the lack of overall difficulty. Act 6 left many people who did the pre-nerf Act 6 exploration(including myself) feeling unsatisfied and unchallenged after exploring Act 7 Chapter 1. I’ll be honest, I was one of those people. And Variant 6 was not really hard content, if you have 3* or 2* versions of a select 5 champions you could pretty much explore the majority of it.
Overall, I found Variant 6 extremely easy; that said, I have Magneto, Doom, Apocalypse, Venom, and Ghost all as a 5/65 or higher champion. However, if you have a 2* Magneto/Rhino, 2* or above Venom, and a semi-decent(5/50 or above) Ghost, it was still insanely easy. I have 2 accounts-- one that is very endgame and spends a little, and a Free-to-Play account. I did V6 Exploration pretty quickly on my main, it still isn't explored, but there aren’t any “challenging” lanes left. Not that any of them were challenging except for the What’s Yours is Mine path, which wasn’t hard, it was just brutally niche. I also did a clear on my second account(Which for anyone wondering, is •Lil Puff•). I haven’t done any other variants on this account, and at the time I had only done content up to 6.2.3. I did not have any rank 5 champions and my villain team consisted of 4/55 Ghost(sig 40), 4/55 Mags(Sig 0), 3/45 VTD(Sig 0), Varied, Varied. I used a 2* Venom to cheese my way through some paths, Magneto to cheese some others, and just used ghost for the rest. It was my first variant, and it was also itemless. The rewards for V6 compared to the difficulty were pretty unproportional. Which is nice, especially for smaller accounts. I got an r5 gem and enough t5b to get a second r5. If I had the iso, I could get 2 r5s(1st and 2nd) from V6 alone.
So V6 may have been fun, but it definitely isn’t “endgame” content. Not that variants are generally, but V5 was significantly harder in my opinion.
I also found Act 7 pretty easy, especially compared to Act 6. There were not very many “challenging” paths. When you did a path, there was usually a node that just made the other node irrelevant. This makes the content SUPER fun, but also quite easy. Of course, content is supposed to be fun, but it also needs a challenging aspect to it. And of course, no one likes niche fights that are brutal without a select few champions. But sometimes content like that is needed in order to block certain people. Not fights that are literally impossible without a few champs. But things like the “90% less damage unless” where you can either wait for the right champ or grind through with someone and have it take a long time. Things like that are a test of skill. The rewards of Act 7 were pretty odd. The rank up materials in the rewards were extraordinary. But there was far too little T2A, and the number of shards we got compared to the number of rank-up materials was not right. I finished and was overflowing on t5b with about 8 in the stash. But I had only gotten 2 6*s formed from the rewards, and they were both pretty rubbish, so I was just left to wonder, what now?
I blew through Act 7 in 2 days flat. Partially because I was bored, but mostly because I had tons of items expiring. Everyone talks about how “Endgame players blitzing content is the problem” but when Kabam released Abyss and then promises something similar about half a year later and flakes, there is nothing to use items on. Act 7 and V6 are not something that should require many or any revives. So when they released the Act 6 compensation, I received an additional 20 or so energy refills on top of the 15 I already had. And I had revives galore as well. So I could have waited a month and then claimed it, and then been forced to use the refills on Monthly EQ in January/early February, but we know Kabam isn’t releasing any huge content in the next month or two. So most Endgame players blew through Act 7 because it was pretty easy, and we had way too many refills.
So overall, Kabam has been releasing quite fun, but quite easy content over the past month. So that leaves me wondering, when are we going to actually see the Early June of Pain? That has the most potential to be an endgame piece of content. Cavalier EQ surely isn’t endgame, variants never have been endgame and they still aren’t, and story content is no longer endgame.
But of course, The Early June of Pain could still be blitzed like other content right?
I think this game needs a different type of “endgame content”. For example, a quest for Thronebreakers(or a different requirement) that entails Act 6 level opponents with challenging nodes that aren’t very niche, but still very challenging. But with some sort of twist, like an itemban, or a limit of a 1 or 2 champion team limit, or a gate that allows only 3*s or below. Any combination of something like that.
This would cause people with massive rosters to have to use champs that are lower, or very few champs, or have to do it without a heal or anything. This would make the content more accessible to all and it could make content that is equally hard for more people and only can be blitzed by skill.
Another idea I had is instead of releasing a challenging quest all at once(like Act 7 released 6 quests of 6 paths each all at once), Kabam could release 2 paths a day or something like that that literally makes it impossible to blitz.
I think Kabam was spot on with the fun aspect of Act 7. But it wasn’t hard, which left many with every revive they went in with. Kabam’s postponing of the June of Pain definitely caused many people to be aching for endgame content. I think that the content they have released is really good, but there needs to be a balance of challenge and fun. I think the way Act 7 is going is perfectly fine, but we need something else that is more challenging. Even something kind of niche, because it would be harder.
Anyways, that’s just my two cents, thanks for reading.
