Dev Diary: Cavalier Difficulty in 2021 and Beyond - New Buffs for February!

Summoners!

Everybody's favourite Balance Designer and sick beast of a gamer, Kabam John, has taken some time to jot down some thoughts on Cavalier Difficulty, what we've seen so far, and what's to come in the future! There's also a sneak peek at the new Buffs coming in the Cavalier Difficulty Event quest in February!

Read the post here!

Comments

Chikel

I mean it doesn't directly affect me that much, but the Tech one is super annoying. I mean the only tech champs that i can think of that inflict Armor Break in their normal kit are IMIW, Iron Man, Iron Patriot, War Machine, and Hulkbuster. And I would really only use Hulkbuster in the Cav EQ

Yondu as well

Ken1378

These are worse than the last version of support buffs. Why would they waste a bunch of time on this? The Skill and the Tech support buffs benefit too few champs (champs that most people would have ranked up, anyway). And with Kabam planning to change things again in a few months, it's likely not worth it to rank up some of the lower tier champs either. And if you don't bring in champs that can take advantage of these support buffs, then the time to complete just goes even longer. Which is the main complaint most people have besides the rewards. Pretty much a big FAIL.

Moot4Life

@Kabam Miike can you plz atleast change the 10% t5cc crystals to a selector. Its frustrating getting troll rolled when you are so close to forming a t5cc and achieving thronebreaker. Please consider adding a selector.

Wouldnt that let you get a t5cc in 10 months at the minimum?

Mr_Platypus

So a few thoughts.
1. Skill node looks pretty ****, unless falcons lock on and Nick fury above 5 charges applies the node, in which case it’ll be tolerable.
2. Tech changes don’t look great.

Now regarding rewards, would a selector be game breaking? And by selector I mean similar style to those that are in the top ranks of the solo event ranked rewards.
So remove the T5b from rewards and in its place on the exploration rewards have a selector where you pick:
T5b - same amount as is currently available
T2a - 36k - 54k fragments

StevieManWonder

Who cares? Without a change in the rewards, any change you guys make to the content is meaningless

SkyLord7000

I like the change. It makes Cav EQ feel like less of a grind.

However, I think that rewards should be looked at too. If nothing else there should definitely be more ISO in the game.

Soulreaver42

These new nodes are way more difficult than the current Cav EQ nodes. If you don't want to change the rewards like the player base is asking, then fine, but why the hell would you then make it more difficult? You say you want it to be less time consuming to complete and/or explore Cav EQ, but these changes make it more difficult and therefore more time consuming. This is ridiculous.

Odachi

The nodes help/ nodes don't help is irrelevant to making an extra difficulty of event quest less monotonous if there are still 7 lanes on the last map.
That's all that needs to change, the old easy difficulty was an edited version that had less lanes so we know it's already doable.

WillieB

None of this stuff, changing nodes, making it quicker, matters until they buff the rewards. Many of us players have been saying the rewards were trash the day the announced Cav difficulty and they are even worse now 5 months later.

When Uncollected dropped those rewards were great and everyone was hyped to explore it, they certainly didn't "break the game". Buff the Cav rewards and then we can talk, otherwise this is all a waste of time and resources for we players and the Kabam staff. Harsh but true.

odishika123

Nah this is just something we dont need
More stress abeg No

Fellow Nigerian?

DNA3000

Bunch of guys who are only interested in the rewards and not the experience. Seriously what do you all play this game for?
This is not a Nintendo game from the 80's where the thrill was to beat the levels, those games had an ending and did not require you to obtain rare materials to increase the effectiveness of a character.

Even do this game has Role Playing game principals and ideals, it still is nothing close to those games, nor it should, since, again those games have an ending and this doesn't, which is part of the allure, having a continuous story and lore in it (even do a good amount of people could care less about that)

So, I know you have no interest in an answer cause clearly you and other individuals like you (most famously a certain bespectacled and follicly challenged top player) LOVE difficulty just for the experience and for the enjoyment that brings, rewards mean nothing, however the player base is not the 1000 elite players in top top alliances in the game, of which a handful are “popular”. The player base consists of average day to day players, and the average player likes to be rewarded so...

Ta da!

They can have the chance to get better champions, increase their level and their abilities, because that is satisfying to the great majority of the player base, which is not the elite, but the mid tier player of this game. So, as hard as this seems to be for you to understand, if you took a second to think about the majority, instead of the minority, you would understand this.

Feel free to use whatever passive-aggressive, condescending and mockingly sarcastic remarks and dismissive snide one liners to brush aside my clearly unfounded and cognitively impaired arguments.

The mid tier players of the game you're talking about have no access to Cavalier difficulty or rewards. I don't see people complaining about how the Heroic and Master rewards are so outdated for 2021, but Master difficulty is probably where the average mid-tier players are probably playing.

The issue also is not one of rewards or no rewards, but rather whether rewards need to keep going up and up and up. Nobody is playing Cavalier for no rewards. They are playing Cavalier for rewards that are massive compared to Uncollected or Master rewards. The *only* people for whom Cavalier rewards can possibly be anything other than ginormous are not average mid-tier players. It is actually only those "1000 elite players in top top alliances" that could possibly be objectively judging the rewards subpar.

Seraphion

Kabam pls.

Easy solution:

Make the 10% T5CC a selector (its still 10 months for 1 fully chosen)

=> this would show that you dont spit on cavalier players like when you showed us the CW deals and help them get to thronebreaker

The argument with "game economy balance" is down the drain with that gifting rewards.

Put in at least 7,5k 6* shards (so we earn a fully 6* from cavalier + uncollected)

Up the 6* sig stone crystals from 10 to 15-20.

Boom everybody happy. Really not that hard

UnDEADGamer

So here's my thoughts on the matter, I think this is a great buff to the mystic chapter and alright but not great for cosmic, tech and mutant. My big issue comes with science and skill
Science was hands down the best chapter previously, maybe a bit easy in some cases but you did stoll have to bring a champ that applies debuffs, at least enough to get the vulnerable, but now its going to be a game of chance whether or not it's good, and it limits the use of other classes to just poison immune which alright whatever, overall I think science was better off as it was, but thats my two cents

As for skill this is a significantly worse node, only about 8 skill champs benefit from the node itself, 2 of the best options are a little less reliable for it and the best option is a champ some may have ranked and some may not, not to mention the second half of the node, all champs having a chance to evade, gets countered by very few champs in the skill class, and even less outside so you're kinda stranglehold into using the node options and hoping that nothing on the path is a hard counter to them

ItsDamien

Bunch of guys who are only interested in the rewards and not the experience. Seriously what do you all play this game for?
This is not a Nintendo game from the 80's where the thrill was to beat the levels, those games had an ending and did not require you to obtain rare materials to increase the effectiveness of a character.

Even do this game has Role Playing game principals and ideals, it still is nothing close to those games, nor it should, since, again those games have an ending and this doesn't, which is part of the allure, having a continuous story and lore in it (even do a good amount of people could care less about that)

So, I know you have no interest in an answer cause clearly you and other individuals like you (most famously a certain bespectacled and follicly challenged top player) LOVE difficulty just for the experience and for the enjoyment that brings, rewards mean nothing, however the player base is not the 1000 elite players in top top alliances in the game, of which a handful are “popular”. The player base consists of average day to day players, and the average player likes to be rewarded so...

Ta da!

They can have the chance to get better champions, increase their level and their abilities, because that is satisfying to the great majority of the player base, which is not the elite, but the mid tier player of this game. So, as hard as this seems to be for you to understand, if you took a second to think about the majority, instead of the minority, you would understand this.

Feel free to use whatever passive-aggressive, condescending and mockingly sarcastic remarks and dismissive snide one liners to brush aside my clearly unfounded and cognitively impaired arguments.
The mid tier players of the game you're talking about have no access to Cavalier difficulty or rewards. I don't see people complaining about how the Heroic and Master rewards are so outdated for 2021, but Master difficulty is probably where the average mid-tier players are probably playing.

The issue also is not one of rewards or no rewards, but rather whether rewards need to keep going up and up and up. Nobody is playing Cavalier for no rewards. They are playing Cavalier for rewards that are massive compared to Uncollected or Master rewards. The *only* people for whom Cavalier rewards can possibly be anything other than ginormous are not average mid-tier players. It is actually only those "1000 elite players in top top alliances" that could possibly be objectively judging the rewards subpar.

All of that is untrue, because I can still have all the content done and have a more than vast roster to complete Cavalier, yet I will always be mid-tier.

Because I don't partake in the elite exclusive content of tier 1 Wars, of map 7 AQ's. Skilled Cavalier players can do the EQ fine as well and even for them these rewards are inferior.

No amount of word essay wizardry will justify this, you write about rewards going up and up, yet it seems like all rewards is this game are outdated, SA, 3 day quests, arena milestones, but of course for you, and a small elitist minority, the rewards are fine, how dare us want these areas to be improved, considering they haven't been touched since 2017.

Nice essay do, seems like you love to write and reading your ostensibly verbally grandiose monologues.

No one ever has ever said that End Gamers are the ones who do Tier 1 Wars or Map 7 AQ. It's pretty universally said that End Gamers are those that are able to 100% Act 6, Act 7 and Abyss.

Rewards will always eventually get outdated. That's what happens in a live service game.

mgj0630

I don't think gonna love the changes, but I am curious to see how it shakes out.

Tech is the one I'm most interested in. I have a 6* R3 Sentinel that I've never used in Cav EQ. Sad to see the benefit reduction to the likes of Warlock, G2099, and Guardian, but kinda stoked to finally have a reason to use Sentinel there.

unknown

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unknown

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Lt_Magnum_1

How about reducing energy requirements and reducing the paths on Normal and Heroic?

StrayPool

MCOC was the first mobile I picked up, and since that time I've sampled a handful of others, running anywhere from 3 to 6 years altogether. And comparing them all to each other, while one of them has absolutely horrendously low odds of random good pulls, I can hard confirm that they all blow MCOC out of the water in all other ways. New characters/units get introduced, oftentimes with unique abilities that no one else has - the entire meta is constantly changing, but with so many new toys to collect and play with, the devs involved know that players will need a greater abundance of resources to fuel the virtual engines of war.

Tl;dr: time goes on, content grows, rewards grow at a commensurate rate.

I'm a f2p, been Cav for several months now. And not once since becoming it have I felt the EQ was worth the hassle for a handful of not-quite-complete prizes that I could get elsewhere with far less headache just by waiting. The engagement ain't there, so I'm never tempted to roll up my sleeves and grapple with the game itself. To me, that can't be anything other than a bad sign: "Players don't see the point in playing" would be a hell of a bit of bad press to have going around, right?

And difficulty is good, it's grand - as long as it's not just for the sake of being difficult and wasting time. Shell out something to really coax people into these cage matches you so love to set up and I'd imagine a lot of folks like me would be rendered (if only temporarily, because it's always temporary around here) silent.

Colinwhitworth69

Well it seems like immortal Abom is absolutely butchered with the science node. A shame

It’s good and bad. One buff removes his poisons but the other gives him a huge attack increase because of the removed poisons. Maybe you can take advantage of the dynamic to gain the 300 percent attack and then hold block rather than parry and dex, to try to get openings?

Hieitaku

My (nothing special) version of its TLDR:

Shamir51

So clearly no one is happy with this whole thing, and it's not just a "Oh well you can't please everyone" moment because clearly everyone agrees on at least one piece of criticism that's been brought up today, so please take that to heart and go back to the drawing board on at least 1 or 2 things...

This feels like a "Don't Fix What Isn't Broken" moment for some of these, the Current Skill Node for example is Great for Every Skill Champion because Everyone has Parry on top of any other Debuffs the Champions have on Base but that New Skill Node set is Far too Limiting (which you said you were trying to get Away From) and is Useless if the Enemy doesn't have any Base Evade or when you run into someone with an Immunity to one or more of the Debuffs and you don't have another Correct Debuff or True Strike Champion.

Do you even read the nodes in the current EQ? The skill one isn’t any debuff. It’s any damaging debuff. Not sure why you keep banging on about parry being a viable debuff currently.

Then again, it’s much easier to simply rant and rave.

C’est la vie.

Hdjsjdjdj

Why these nodes are bad
1.Science: 85% res = instant death
2.Skill: How many skill chams have easy access to those debuffs?
3.Mutant: 30% proc chance but only for 10s. So its only active 50% of the time?
4.Mystic: Stun immue? Really? Only taking off 2.5s of a 15s buff? Really?

Vendemiaire

I love using Immortal Abomination for the Science Quest! But now the buff will hurt him more than help him. Ugh...

BitterSteel

Well it seems like immortal Abom is absolutely butchered with the science node. A shame
It’s good and bad. One buff removes his poisons but the other gives him a huge attack increase because of the removed poisons. Maybe you can take advantage of the dynamic to gain the 300 percent attack and then hold block rather than parry and dex, to try to get openings?

We’ll see, it may be hard to keep his toxic aura up. But he’ll hit hard on basics I guess

DNA3000

Bunch of guys who are only interested in the rewards and not the experience. Seriously what do you all play this game for?
This is not a Nintendo game from the 80's where the thrill was to beat the levels, those games had an ending and did not require you to obtain rare materials to increase the effectiveness of a character.

Even do this game has Role Playing game principals and ideals, it still is nothing close to those games, nor it should, since, again those games have an ending and this doesn't, which is part of the allure, having a continuous story and lore in it (even do a good amount of people could care less about that)

So, I know you have no interest in an answer cause clearly you and other individuals like you (most famously a certain bespectacled and follicly challenged top player) LOVE difficulty just for the experience and for the enjoyment that brings, rewards mean nothing, however the player base is not the 1000 elite players in top top alliances in the game, of which a handful are “popular”. The player base consists of average day to day players, and the average player likes to be rewarded so...

Ta da!

They can have the chance to get better champions, increase their level and their abilities, because that is satisfying to the great majority of the player base, which is not the elite, but the mid tier player of this game. So, as hard as this seems to be for you to understand, if you took a second to think about the majority, instead of the minority, you would understand this.

Feel free to use whatever passive-aggressive, condescending and mockingly sarcastic remarks and dismissive snide one liners to brush aside my clearly unfounded and cognitively impaired arguments.
The mid tier players of the game you're talking about have no access to Cavalier difficulty or rewards. I don't see people complaining about how the Heroic and Master rewards are so outdated for 2021, but Master difficulty is probably where the average mid-tier players are probably playing.

The issue also is not one of rewards or no rewards, but rather whether rewards need to keep going up and up and up. Nobody is playing Cavalier for no rewards. They are playing Cavalier for rewards that are massive compared to Uncollected or Master rewards. The *only* people for whom Cavalier rewards can possibly be anything other than ginormous are not average mid-tier players. It is actually only those "1000 elite players in top top alliances" that could possibly be objectively judging the rewards subpar.

All of that is untrue, because I can still have all the content done and have a more than vast roster to complete Cavalier, yet I will always be mid-tier.

Because I don't partake in the elite exclusive content of tier 1 Wars, of map 7 AQ's. Skilled Cavalier players can do the EQ fine as well and even for them these rewards are inferior.

No amount of word essay wizardry will justify this, you write about rewards going up and up, yet it seems like all rewards is this game are outdated, SA, 3 day quests, arena milestones, but of course for you, and a small elitist minority, the rewards are fine, how dare us want these areas to be improved, considering they haven't been touched since 2017.

Nice essay do, seems like you love to write and read your ostensibly verbally grandiose monologues.

My alliance is currently tier 11, and we currently do 5/4/1 AQ. And if you're going to denigrate people expressing themselves with the written word, to avoid hypocrisy perhaps you should try advocating for more rewards with interpretive dance.

unknown

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Andrario

You want us to invest in garbage champion again to just complete or explore cav again kabam ?
Nice try to grab some unit
Cancel this update

magnus_xix

Stupid move
Nobody ever ask it
You make us invest in previous champion useless
Dont you even learn from past mistakes ?
Here we go again, another blunder in beggining of the year
**** happen again

That's not true. There were many poeple complaining about the previous nodes getting boring and stale and wanted new nodes.

SimpleHero

For tons of players like me who made our rank up decisions based upon Event Quest nodes that up until now always reoccurred each month (ie Buffed Up, Diss Track, etc.) will Kabam being providing any rank down gems?

In my opinion, this would be greatly appreciated by the player base and only fair for our hard work ranking up champs that could tackle the nodes you’re now putting on the back burner.