Thronebreaker Requirements... 8 Months Later

BitterSteel

Pulyaman said:

DrZola said:

The entire progression title system evidences a lack of planning. It’s not a bad thing to have titles (aside from the way it leverages envy and the desire for validation to drive things like offers), but in my opinion many of the problems result from poor planning and ad hoc implementation.

Neglecting Elder’s Bane (which at the time was a significant pain) but sticking Cav at 6.1 completion was the start of the problem. From an outsider’s perspective, the creation of Cavalier appeared to be a decision driven by the desire to sell crystals. Perhaps that’s why its placement seems so odd in game to me.

TB suffered from its own set of implementation issues. Given where the game is today, it is probably too easy to attain.
However, if it required Abyss or Act 6 explore, I can attest that there are quite a few veteran players who play and spend regularly (but have no interest in making a career out of MCoC) who would have lost interest. Perhaps that group isn’t sizeable enough to worry about, but I tend to think steady, reliable customers are important to sustaining the game.

I tend to think more titles should have been part of the answer, because it would separate the player base with more granularity. For example, exploration of all Variants (or at least 1-5), explore of LoL, explore of at least part of Act 6 (through the Champion for example), roster requirements (R5 5*’s and R3 6*’s or at least x T5c formed)—these are all ways to distinguish among Summoners without tying it to something like Abyss. Applying a more nuanced approach could have even led to tiering within the TB title, which I think would be a good thing.

Some of what I believe endgamers who have done all available content miss is that they are likely a small minority of players. If Kabam wants to provide an additional title beyond TB for them, I’m fine. But I think setting TB aside for those players only would have forced the team to water it down eventually anyway.

Dr. Zola

I agree with the elder's bane comment. Ideally, I would have liked Kabam to lock act 6 behind elder's bane title. It would have forced people to grow their roster before trying out act 6 and would have resulted in much less complaints about the class and star gates. Throne breaker should have been locked behind act 6 exploration and should have ignored the 6star rank 3 requirement, unless you are planning to give a T5cc selector at the end of the exploration. Let's face it, T5cc was largely rng dependent even after exploration of act 6. You could explore every content other than Abyss and still get shafted by rng. Even in abyss, we saw people getting 2 T5cc of the same class that they did not want after exploration.

I think the class element of the TB title is to encourage deeper rosters. If you have 4 6* per class, you aren't the target for TB and you're unlikely to have a God tier of each class. If you're deeper in the game you're more likely to have a desired rank 3 from each class. But you can also rank up a lower tier champion if you really want TB.

Personally I disagree that this is a good idea, but I understand the reasoning.

H3t3r

Demonzfyre said:

H3t3r said:

Demonzfyre said:

Etjama said:

Worknprogress said:

Etjama said:

Vendemiaire said:

A lot of summoners wanted to be TB as soon as possible, while their accounts were not ready due to either RNG or lack of content done.

See that was my only problem with the title. No one should be deemed unready because of RNG. Even if your roster is horrible, skills or quite frankly, units would always get you through the content you needed to get through for the progression titles. Then suddenly you could have a great roster combined with both skills and units, and there's a pretty good chance it's still not enough to get you what you need? That never sat right. Gladly, the RNG aspect has since been somewhat solved imo.

RNG was only ever a factor if you were doing bare minimum. Even at the very beginning of the title I saw very few people who had been running map 7 AQ complaining about RNG. If you weren't doing what you had to do to accumulate as much t5cc as possible already, RNG wasn't the problem the player was.

Lots of people don't have the time to be in a Map 7 alliance due to linked nodes across the map having to be taken down at different times, but that's another problem that should be solved soon with the AQ update. Time investment has always been an aspect of improvement in this game but missing out on a whole title that greatly improves almost all rewards, including Cyber Monday/July 4th just because you don't have the time to run Map 7 in AQ is pretty ridiculous. And you did say "very few", not "no one". So there were people doing the absolute maximum still getting screwed by RNG. That really doesn't happen anymore due to more selectability.

I don't know where people get the idea that Map 7 is so time consuming. Map 6 is worse time wise since each mini boss is linked. Map 7 mini's aren't linked by the paths. My BG has been in section 2 since 4:48pm CST and I'm not glued to my phone to move every time I get 1 energy. There are days where I can get to section 3 before I even get to bed. They reduced the timers to 45 mins as well which also moves things along. I think most people would be surprised how quickly you can clear map 7 vs other maps.

Honestly my biggest complaint with aq is its boring. Running the same paths weeks on end.

Does your alliance not allow you to switch paths?

I mean. I just find aq in general boring. I get new paths every once in a while. Hopefully raid bosses or whatever they announced last year can make a difference.

TrashyPanda

I'll reiterate my old thoughts then:

TB wasn't made for us, it was made so Kabam could target deals at players that had far exceeded available content due to bad planning. They don't care about you as individuals; we're all just numbers to be averaged out for the machine. Shocking, I know.

There were better options from a game design perspective, but TB gating was more of an emergency patch because deal-days were coming.

Unfortunately, the difference between a new Cav and TB could be so huge that a lot of veterans got cut out, which also cut out a lot of spending. I'm interested to see how they handle the deals this year.

Pulyaman

BitterSteel said:

Pulyaman said:

DrZola said:

The entire progression title system evidences a lack of planning. It’s not a bad thing to have titles (aside from the way it leverages envy and the desire for validation to drive things like offers), but in my opinion many of the problems result from poor planning and ad hoc implementation.

Neglecting Elder’s Bane (which at the time was a significant pain) but sticking Cav at 6.1 completion was the start of the problem. From an outsider’s perspective, the creation of Cavalier appeared to be a decision driven by the desire to sell crystals. Perhaps that’s why its placement seems so odd in game to me.

TB suffered from its own set of implementation issues. Given where the game is today, it is probably too easy to attain.
However, if it required Abyss or Act 6 explore, I can attest that there are quite a few veteran players who play and spend regularly (but have no interest in making a career out of MCoC) who would have lost interest. Perhaps that group isn’t sizeable enough to worry about, but I tend to think steady, reliable customers are important to sustaining the game.

I tend to think more titles should have been part of the answer, because it would separate the player base with more granularity. For example, exploration of all Variants (or at least 1-5), explore of LoL, explore of at least part of Act 6 (through the Champion for example), roster requirements (R5 5*’s and R3 6*’s or at least x T5c formed)—these are all ways to distinguish among Summoners without tying it to something like Abyss. Applying a more nuanced approach could have even led to tiering within the TB title, which I think would be a good thing.

Some of what I believe endgamers who have done all available content miss is that they are likely a small minority of players. If Kabam wants to provide an additional title beyond TB for them, I’m fine. But I think setting TB aside for those players only would have forced the team to water it down eventually anyway.

Dr. Zola

I agree with the elder's bane comment. Ideally, I would have liked Kabam to lock act 6 behind elder's bane title. It would have forced people to grow their roster before trying out act 6 and would have resulted in much less complaints about the class and star gates. Throne breaker should have been locked behind act 6 exploration and should have ignored the 6star rank 3 requirement, unless you are planning to give a T5cc selector at the end of the exploration. Let's face it, T5cc was largely rng dependent even after exploration of act 6. You could explore every content other than Abyss and still get shafted by rng. Even in abyss, we saw people getting 2 T5cc of the same class that they did not want after exploration.

I think the class element of the TB title is to encourage deeper rosters. If you have 4 6* per class, you aren't the target for TB and you're unlikely to have a God tier of each class. If you're deeper in the game you're more likely to have a desired rank 3 from each class. But you can also rank up a lower tier champion if you really want TB.

Personally I disagree that this is a good idea, but I understand the reasoning.

My reasoning for act 6 exploration only was under the assumption that by the time you do that, you should have a decent set of 6 stars. Not god tier in every class, but good enough for rank 3. When I completed abyss, my only option for R3 was corvus from cosmic, Warlock and Guardian from Tech. I sucked at other classes. I had options like Red hulk from science, Unduped sunspot unduped OR from mutant. But I really did not want to take them to R3. I was lucky that I got cosmic and took up Corvus. By the time I explored act 6, I had better options in all classes except Mutant. So, my roster grew very quick from exploration.

DrZola

At this point, I would suggest turning attention to what the role of progression titles in the future should look like as opposed to a post mortem on TB, although analyzing the TB shortcomings can be helpful too.

I’d vote for more titles, more granularity, less emphasis on roster rankups held hostage by pRNG, more opportunities to distinguish the very top players as well as the most loyal.

Dr. Zola

BitterSteel

DrZola said:

At this point, I would suggest turning attention to what the role of progression titles in the future should look like as opposed to a post mortem on TB, although analyzing the TB shortcomings can be helpful too.

I’d vote for more titles, more granularity, less emphasis on roster rankups held hostage by pRNG, more opportunities to distinguish the very top players as well as the most loyal.

Dr. Zola

It’s hard to know what to tie titles to though?

Prestige? What about people who don’t do AQ?

Account rating ? What about people who don’t rank up 4*?

Number of 6*? What about people who go for featured? If you go basic 30k gets you 3 6* rather than 2 from featured

GinjabredMonsta

I think TB was rushed out too soon. I think with the timing it was tied for upcoming holiday sales, but they should have waited a bit longer till things were more ready for it

Mr_Platypus

Might seem very minor but I do believe future titles should have a requirement to have 100% past story content.
Personally don’t think act 6 should’ve been opened up until act 5 was 100% done, but maybe making players return to explore these past acts they’ve skipped over before they can get whatever title is coming next should be required to slow down the people that are rushing through titles

DNA3000

DrZola said:

At this point, I would suggest turning attention to what the role of progression titles in the future should look like as opposed to a post mortem on TB, although analyzing the TB shortcomings can be helpful too.

I’d vote for more titles, more granularity, less emphasis on roster rankups held hostage by pRNG, more opportunities to distinguish the very top players as well as the most loyal.

Dr. Zola

You're unlikely to get it. More is not automatically better for two reasons. First, progress tiers aren't just for segregation, they are also progress incentivization. If there's too many progress tiers the difference between the one you're in and the next one higher is lower, and the incentive to push forward is also lower. There's always going to be tension between segregation and incentivization, and that will act to limit the number of progress tiers.

But the larger barrier to high granularity progress titles is the simple fact that every one of them creates additional work for the devs, and that places an absolute limit on the number of them they will want to manage over time. In fact, you could make the case they already have too many to pay enough attention to: the lower tiers are far more cosmetic most of the time than the critical ones of Uncollected, Cavalier, and Thronebreaker.

When the devs added Cav difficulty to EQ, they eliminated Beginner. More difficulties had reward balancing issues and also there's more workload associated with them, so the devs could only add one by eliminating another one. They aren't likely to ever eliminate a progress tier, but they can pay less attention to one whenever they add another, which is what would happen if they added more tiers.

If you ask the devs for X, where X requires continuous developer time to maintain, they are going to ask you what Y are you willing to give up. Because there's no extra dev time to spend on anything. Every minute you ask them to spend on slicing the 1% of the playerbase into tenths of a percent is going to come from them taking those minutes away from something else that is happening now. And dev time is not perfectly fungible either, because different devs work on different things. To get X, you cant just give up any random Y you don't care about. Chances are, if you're interested in X, you'll have to give up a Y you also care about.

The biggest constraint on game changes is not what the devs can do, or even what they are willing to do. It is what they have the time to do. And from the outside, everyone tends to assume things take far less time than they actually take.

hungryhungrybbq

Kill_Grey said:

Definitely sad for those people who have a tier 5 cc of a particular class and not a single 6* in such class!

If someone has zero 6 star in a particular class, they haven't been playing the game nearly enough to have the highest progression title. It was not geared towards them. I know folks keep citing that the tile is rng based.. but it's been repeatedly explained over and over and over, that the point wasn't rng. The point was that it's geared towards players who have completed enough high end content/played the game long enough that rng is no longer a factor. I've been grinding 6* shards since UC difficulty first came out with the Modok event. I've 100% all story and Variants..etc. I've played map 7. This is why I already met the requirements when it came out without being dependant on rng. Been playing the game daily for 4+ years. That's why. But there are folks who don't explore content.. just do easy path as far as they can go, don't play map 7 and don't know what the first UC EQ looked like who want the highest progression title geared towards them? Why? It's the highest available title. I'm sure when the next title comes out.. there will always be complaints.

It's ridiculous how easy it is to get 5 and 6* shards now days. I see posts with people exploring act 4 with a 4/55 complaining about the energy cost.. what? We used 4/40 4* champs from 2015-16, with Slashed Tires Juggs and 3 energy per tile... Having paid our dues and played the game for so long should be worth something. I can see why players who have been playing for 3-5 years are offended when someone who has been playing for 1 year wants the same title as them. Can you not?

hungryhungrybbq

Mr_Platypus said:

Might seem very minor but I do believe future titles should have a requirement to have 100% past story content.
Personally don’t think act 6 should’ve been opened up until act 5 was 100% done, but maybe making players return to explore these past acts they’ve skipped over before they can get whatever title is coming next should be required to slow down the people that are rushing through titles

This. The problem is that the longer the game exists/the more content is available, the more we see newer players just skipping through everything. And feeling entitled to end game titles because they did the easy path of each quest. It's sad to watch, it's changing the game. Exploring content is how we gain valuable experience and learn different skills and strategy. While also building our account over time.

DNA3000

Mr_Platypus said:

Might seem very minor but I do believe future titles should have a requirement to have 100% past story content.
Personally don’t think act 6 should’ve been opened up until act 5 was 100% done, but maybe making players return to explore these past acts they’ve skipped over before they can get whatever title is coming next should be required to slow down the people that are rushing through titles

Two problems with that. One: imagine what players would say today if you forced them to 100% Act 2 before they were allowed to start Act 3. Even the devs probably don't want that to happen. But then where do you draw the line? Act 6? Act 4?

Two: the current design philosophy for stuff like the story arc content is for the paths to have a wide range of requirements and difficulty levels. This is reasonable so long as a player cannot get hung up on a particularly difficult path for them that has path requirements their roster doesn't contain suitable counters for. RNG limitations are significantly softened around the edges when players don't need every counter, they just need enough counters to complete the content, and then can take longer to randomly acquire the holes in their roster necessary for the paths they are stuck on to eventually achieve full exploration.

If progress always requires 100%, this will have the side effect of compelling the devs to water down story arc content, because the design requirement will cease to be make paths that most players can find at least one path through to being make all paths such that most players will find all paths doable in a reasonably short amount of time. By forcing the players to do everything, you are also forcing the devs to make everything doable under shorter champion acquisition time constraints.

Right now, the game allows players to push for completion first, and then take their time with exploration. I think that's a good thing. It means players can pace themselves through the content. They don't have to rush to do everything to open the door to the next thing, and then get stuck waiting for the next thing with nothing to do. This also means some players never do exploration but constantly whine about having to wait for the next thing or complain the next thing is too hard. But I think requiring full exploration throws the baby out with the bath water. We'd be penalizing players playing the game reasonably just to go after the players abusing the privilege of optional exploration.

Mr_Platypus

DNA3000 said:

Mr_Platypus said:

Might seem very minor but I do believe future titles should have a requirement to have 100% past story content.
Personally don’t think act 6 should’ve been opened up until act 5 was 100% done, but maybe making players return to explore these past acts they’ve skipped over before they can get whatever title is coming next should be required to slow down the people that are rushing through titles

Two problems with that. One: imagine what players would say today if you forced them to 100% Act 2 before they were allowed to start Act 3. Even the devs probably don't want that to happen. But then where do you draw the line? Act 6? Act 4?

Two: the current design philosophy for stuff like the story arc content is for the paths to have a wide range of requirements and difficulty levels. This is reasonable so long as a player cannot get hung up on a particularly difficult path for them that has path requirements their roster doesn't contain suitable counters for. RNG limitations are significantly softened around the edges when players don't need every counter, they just need enough counters to complete the content, and then can take longer to randomly acquire the holes in their roster necessary for the paths they are stuck on to eventually achieve full exploration.

If progress always requires 100%, this will have the side effect of compelling the devs to water down story arc content, because the design requirement will cease to be make paths that most players can find at least one path through to being make all paths such that most players will find all paths doable in a reasonably short amount of time. By forcing the players to do everything, you are also forcing the devs to make everything doable under shorter champion acquisition time constraints.

Right now, the game allows players to push for completion first, and then take their time with exploration. I think that's a good thing. It means players can pace themselves through the content. They don't have to rush to do everything to open the door to the next thing, and then get stuck waiting for the next thing with nothing to do. This also means some players never do exploration but constantly whine about having to wait for the next thing or complain the next thing is too hard. But I think requiring full exploration throws the baby out with the bath water. We'd be penalizing players playing the game reasonably just to go after the players abusing the privilege of optional exploration.

I don’t think requiring full exploration should be required to unlock the next act. But I think it should be required at times for certain titles.
So I don’t think anyone should be able to unlock thronebreaker or future titles for example without elders bane, the next title after Thronebreaker, should, among other prerequisites, require breaker of thrones title.

Mr_Platypus

hungryhungrybbq said:

Mr_Platypus said:

Might seem very minor but I do believe future titles should have a requirement to have 100% past story content.
Personally don’t think act 6 should’ve been opened up until act 5 was 100% done, but maybe making players return to explore these past acts they’ve skipped over before they can get whatever title is coming next should be required to slow down the people that are rushing through titles

This. The problem is that the longer the game exists/the more content is available, the more we see newer players just skipping through everything. And feeling entitled to end game titles because they did the easy path of each quest. It's sad to watch, it's changing the game. Exploring content is how we gain valuable experience and learn different skills and strategy. While also building our account over time.

Honestly some of the new guys in my current alliance have highlighted this issue massively this season, so much so that it’s negatively impacting the alliance as a whole, hard to win when 5-6 guys with rosters just as capable as everyone else have skills that would struggle to get them through act 5 and rack up an alliance worth of deaths between them.
And yes, you’re right they could’ve been removed and if it was up to me, they would’ve, but it’s not and unfortunately (and impressively for that matter) all but 2 of the guys replacing some of our retirees have suffered from massively underdeveloped skills so not all could be replaced apparently.

Timone147

I still the requirement is a poor game design. As a non spender it will never sit right It will always be the thing that the announcement pushed me into a 3-4 month break from the game and never playing high level AQ/AW.

Though I will say that has allowed me to find the game fun again I will always say that feeling like you have to rank a champ you don’t want to gain access to a different tier is not good design. Should have always been linked to content and skill. Completing content moving you through a tier felt like an accomplishment. Eventually I ranked a Thing I still don’t use for throne beaker. If not though I still would be awaiting on a champ I personally find worthy of using over a 5* version with higher sig.

It’s easier to get t5CC(of course even easier to buy he title) but even now with that I’m still sitting on a cosmic T5CC I’ve had for over a year and a skill T5CC I’ve had since just before the title came out. I’m just finally about to form my mutant and mystic for champs I really have that are worthy.

Also for perspective I have 40 the 6* and only 4 of them currently would I definitely r3(of course 2 are mutant)at current sig and 1 is a maybe.

Demonzfyre

Timone147 said:

I still the requirement is a poor game design. As a non spender it will never sit right It will always be the thing that the announcement pushed me into a 3-4 month break from the game and never playing high level AQ/AW.

Though I will say that has allowed me to find the game fun again I will always say that feeling like you have to rank a champ you don’t want to gain access to a different tier is not good design. Should have always been linked to content and skill. Completing content moving you through a tier felt like an accomplishment. Eventually I ranked a Thing I still don’t use for throne beaker. If not though I still would be awaiting on a champ I personally find worthy of using over a 5* version with higher sig.

It’s easier to get t5CC(of course even easier to buy he title) but even now with that I’m still sitting on a cosmic T5CC I’ve had for over a year and a skill T5CC I’ve had since just before the title came out. I’m just finally about to form my mutant and mystic for champs I really have that are worthy.

Also for perspective I have 40 the 6* and only 4 of them currently would I definitely r3(of course 2 are mutant)at current sig and 1 is a maybe.

What does being a non-spender have to do with Thronebreaker? You don't have to spend to be TB.

It's a title, it's not forced on you. No one's making you get it. No one makes you rank a bad champ to get the title. You wanted the title so bad, you ranked up a champ. That's on you. That's your choice.

The title was meant for 7.2 or later when Act 7 was supposed to be 100x more difficult. They can't tie a title to content going forward because that new content will never be hard enough to warrant a title. Act 7 is no where close to being skill based. So much in 7.1 that helps you in fights.

hungryhungrybbq

I do agree that Kabam now faces a design challenge here. In an effort to increase their new player retention rate, they have made linear advancement faster than it's even been in the past. Unfortunately, it's created a sense of entitlement and an expectation to be able to continue down this path of relatively quick progression. And it's also led some players to believe that if they've successfully completed the easy paths in an act (initial completion) that they should now be equipped to tackle the next act.

False, the game was never designed that way. If you look at the 100% rewards for each act, they are geared towards giving you what you need to tackle the next act. What is often forgotten now, is that the EXPERIENCE of exploring the previous act is also designed to prepare you for what's ahead. I'm sorry, but you just won't be as good of a fighter, puzzle solver or have the same roster depth if you aren't paying your dues and exploring the content.

For us "old timers", we explored the content because sometimes there wasn't any new content to do. So I get that as the game gets older/more content available to complete via one-time-run-through, it's going to present a challenge to make exploration appealing. Tbh, I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. But, I for one am grateful that I started playing during a time where exploration was sometimes the only option if you wanted to progress further. It's made me a much wiser, stronger player. I'm not really super talented at video games in general. I'd say more like average at best. I'm only good at this game cause I've played it daily for 4 years. If I wasn't good at it at this point, something would be seriously wrong 😂. While raw talent at videos games will certainly go far in this game, you also need experience.

Mr_Platypus said:

hungryhungrybbq said:

Mr_Platypus said:

Might seem very minor but I do believe future titles should have a requirement to have 100% past story content.
Personally don’t think act 6 should’ve been opened up until act 5 was 100% done, but maybe making players return to explore these past acts they’ve skipped over before they can get whatever title is coming next should be required to slow down the people that are rushing through titles

This. The problem is that the longer the game exists/the more content is available, the more we see newer players just skipping through everything. And feeling entitled to end game titles because they did the easy path of each quest. It's sad to watch, it's changing the game. Exploring content is how we gain valuable experience and learn different skills and strategy. While also building our account over time.

Honestly some of the new guys in my current alliance have highlighted this issue massively this season, so much so that it’s negatively impacting the alliance as a whole, hard to win when 5-6 guys with rosters just as capable as everyone else have skills that would struggle to get them through act 5 and rack up an alliance worth of deaths between them.
And yes, you’re right they could’ve been removed and if it was up to me, they would’ve, but it’s not and unfortunately (and impressively for that matter) all but 2 of the guys replacing some of our retirees have suffered from massively underdeveloped skills so not all could be replaced apparently.

rischio

I've always been in favor of the requirements. Running AQ7 with epic nodes gives a steady income of crystals, along with the glory store. 6s are more accessible (and also were 8 months ago).
Blaming it on RNG like this is not an RNG game makes no sense to me. If Kabam gives you lemon... 😀

I had 2 6s R3 back then, I have 6 of them now.

I think throne breaker is a good marker of player progression. I like the fact that you don't just have to complete something to get it, but it also gives a measure of the strength of the roster. If you play the hard content consistently you will get there.

Bottom line the devs knew where the game was going so the community should have trusted them 8 months ago.

My 0.02$

rischio

Etjama said:

Vendemiaire said:

A lot of summoners wanted to be TB as soon as possible, while their accounts were not ready due to either RNG or lack of content done.

See that was my only problem with the title. No one should be deemed unready because of RNG. Even if your roster is horrible, skills or quite frankly, units would always get you through the content you needed to get through for the progression titles. Then suddenly you could have a great roster combined with both skills and units, and there's a pretty good chance it's still not enough to get you what you need? That never sat right. Gladly, the RNG aspect has since been somewhat solved imo.

I politely disagree. Beating the hard content is RNG dependent as well. Try running AOL without a max level Ægon and a fistful of other necessary heroes.
On the other hand I find it more likely that you draw a champion worth ranking for the catalyst you have. That is way easier than getting the catalyst that matches your few options.
If you have a small 6s roster, you shouldn't be throne breaker.
That is what takes the RNG out of the equation.

I have 60 6s, 6 of them R3, 2 mystic, 1 scientific, 1 skill, 1 tech, 1 cosmic. And I still have more that deserve R3 waiting for dupes and 1 T5CC scientific. More or less every time I formed a catalyst I had someone to rank up. And I'm not lucky, it's just that strength is in numbers.

DrZola

DNA3000 said:

DrZola said:

At this point, I would suggest turning attention to what the role of progression titles in the future should look like as opposed to a post mortem on TB, although analyzing the TB shortcomings can be helpful too.

I’d vote for more titles, more granularity, less emphasis on roster rankups held hostage by pRNG, more opportunities to distinguish the very top players as well as the most loyal.

Dr. Zola

You're unlikely to get it. More is not automatically better for two reasons. First, progress tiers aren't just for segregation, they are also progress incentivization. If there's too many progress tiers the difference between the one you're in and the next one higher is lower, and the incentive to push forward is also lower. There's always going to be tension between segregation and incentivization, and that will act to limit the number of progress tiers.

But the larger barrier to high granularity progress titles is the simple fact that every one of them creates additional work for the devs, and that places an absolute limit on the number of them they will want to manage over time. In fact, you could make the case they already have too many to pay enough attention to: the lower tiers are far more cosmetic most of the time than the critical ones of Uncollected, Cavalier, and Thronebreaker.

When the devs added Cav difficulty to EQ, they eliminated Beginner. More difficulties had reward balancing issues and also there's more workload associated with them, so the devs could only add one by eliminating another one. They aren't likely to ever eliminate a progress tier, but they can pay less attention to one whenever they add another, which is what would happen if they added more tiers.

If you ask the devs for X, where X requires continuous developer time to maintain, they are going to ask you what Y are you willing to give up. Because there's no extra dev time to spend on anything. Every minute you ask them to spend on slicing the 1% of the playerbase into tenths of a percent is going to come from them taking those minutes away from something else that is happening now. And dev time is not perfectly fungible either, because different devs work on different things. To get X, you cant just give up any random Y you don't care about. Chances are, if you're interested in X, you'll have to give up a Y you also care about.

The biggest constraint on game changes is not what the devs can do, or even what they are willing to do. It is what they have the time to do. And from the outside, everyone tends to assume things take far less time than they actually take.

I would imagine there’s a balance, and I would suggest that the gap between Cavalier and TB could have handled another substantive stepping stone or two. There’s an enormous gap between one run through 6.1 and completing 6.4. Still more gap between one run past the GM and slogging through Act 6 paths to 100% it.

Serious question: in a game with dozens on dozens of meaningless titles and rarely used modes, is adding a meaningful title at the mid-point of future story content really too taxing? And by meaningful I don’t mean a whole new EQ level—just a way to flag progress that could potentially be used to delineate players, tier offers, etc. I’m clearly not a programmer, but I doubt Kabam is stuck with a couple of guys coding the game in basic on their Apple IIe’s.

And even if it is slicing only the top 1-2%, isn’t that a sweet spot for the game—where play and spend is most frequent? I think I’ve got a pretty solid roster, but when I look at guys like @Worknprogress , I realize we aren’t even playing the same game. Why should we be at the same progress level?

Dr. Zola

Mauled

This has always been a title that was going to get easier with time. At the time it required act 6 exploration etc. To realistically become TB, but now with Cav MEQ etc. It’s far more accessible as it was always going to be.

There just needed to be a bit of patience from people and a recognition that not everyone is at the same level of progress, which is still the case. OP has 2 R3, I have 8, others have way more. We all different