They're catering to millions of people and trying to find a recipe that most will enjoy. And yes, some groups will be disappointed or never satisfied on both ends of the spectrum (too hard vs too easy). But if they go ultra hard, others will be just as disappointed. It's a lose, lose situation so they look for a medium... the 80/20 rule or whatever analogy you care to use.
I don't want ultra hard content that causes me to pull my hair out or only be able to finish with tons of units because of "fun and interactive damage". I do want to be challenged, but I also want to have fun and not be stonewalled on content that is so extreme, only a small percentage can ever complete it (without going ham on units/items/spending) because that's demotivating.
Those who want extreme content are never going to be satisfied. They'll beat it, get rewards that push them even higher up the food chain and then they'll want more and more.
This is where tournaments and challenges should come into play. High score wins for the best of the best. I think that's what they intended with ally events like AQ and AW but they're stale now too. We need more summoner showdown types of events with arcade like high score point systems.
Otherwise, if you want crazy difficulty, hit up OG Donkey Kong, Pacman or Ghost&Goblins and come back when youve finished them completely. We'll see you in about...never, cause they get so hard almost no one can beat them and they stop being fun for most people as a result.
Super hard does not equal super fun. The act 6 and early act 7.1 feedback is proof of that in the MCOC world.
Kabam's biggest mistake was letting people's roster outpace the content.
I think they should make more content like V4, except harder. Much, much harder. Hell, make an absolute hell-mode 3*-only variant. It'd give a reality check to people who bust through these things with God-tier 6r3, or even 5r5s.
If there's anything that rando-incursions have taught me, it's that most people suck at this game. It's incredibly weird handholding players with a trio of 6r3 gods, but it's less uncommon than you'd expect.
it doesn't matter the difficulty of the content because of the whales who complete it no matter what on the first day. they paint a very unrealistic picture of this game to the people who simply "watch" and perhaps for some on the message boards.
when Abyss came out and it was done in a day, the mystique of it diminished. now, people think spending 3K+ units on something is somehow not hard?? i'd say heck yeah it is. i still haven't done Abyss. and don't plan to anytime soon. i just don't see the fun in spending 3K+ units on something for just a clear .. not exploration.
Kabam is unfortunately creating content now to keep pace with a few select pockets of players. Variant 7 is fun to me. it's not the most difficult but at the same time, it's not the easiest. there are some challenges .. those will scale of course depending on skill and roster.
There's a lot of ways to design challenging, skill-first content that can't be bought2victory or steamrolled with maxed out gods. Here's an easy example for a variant:
- Make it hard. - Limit entry to 3* champs; can't steamroll with a moped. - Make it hella hard. - Limit item usage based on difficulty; can't completely remove this or Kabam makes no money. Let's say, limit item usage to 5 as a baseline. - Make it so hard that MCoC receives an ESRB AO rating. - Did I mention make it hard, because it should be made hard.
I don’t want to use and rank my 3*, I want to use the champions I’ve been working to r3. Why should I bother rank 3ing a champion if they steamroll through everything? I don’t do AQ seriously so I don’t need high prestige.
At the moment my rank 3s steam roll everything content wise in the game. I don’t want them on the bench.
Make it hard relatively for a rank 3.
If you can make content hard for 3*, you can scale that up so it would take the same amount of hits with a rank 3, same nodes, same relative difficulty.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
I’ve only done the first two chapters but yes, I agree. Exploration looks especially easy compared to all the other variants. Most of the lanes for exploration are just as easy as the completion lanes.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
How are people left behind? Once they develop the rosters, they can also do the most difficult content. By that logic, Kabam cannot create any content since someone will always be left behind. There needs to be a goalpost for anyone to work towards. As it is, only AW seems to be the difficult content available for people who have explored everything.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
How are people left behind? Once they develop the rosters, they can also do the most difficult content. By that logic, Kabam cannot create any content since someone will always be left behind. There needs to be a goalpost for anyone to work towards. As it is, only AW seems to be the difficult content available for people who have explored everything.
Goalposts require "skill". Roster breadth need not qualify for that. Difficulty is also subjective, what may be difficult for someone may not be for someone else. How do you quantify that? Make it "difficult" that you hope the players will be able to gain those "skills" later on? "skills" reduce items but lets not forget, a bunch of players will not be doing act6 at all. These "hard" pieces of content are better off as limited time events with decent rewards, the main lure being "the challenge of it".
Well I explored it all within the first 8 hours and used 4 revives that I could've saved if I just restarted the path. It was very easy, yes. But it was so freakin fun. I'll take some fun content with great rewards any day. But hopefully we get some challenging content in the very near future.
Kabam's biggest mistake was letting people's roster outpace the content.
I think they should make more content like V4, except harder. Much, much harder. Hell, make an absolute hell-mode 3*-only variant. It'd give a reality check to people who bust through these things with God-tier 6r3, or even 5r5s.
If there's anything that rando-incursions have taught me, it's that most people suck at this game. It's incredibly weird handholding players with a trio of 6r3 gods, but it's less uncommon than you'd expect.
Everyone complained when 7.1 beta was first launched vs the final product. It was brutal some paths had only one counter. That is why it is easy now, have you done 6.2.5 it was worse than that. Wish they had more fights like the final boss of 6.4.6. They did say they are planning something harder for endgame players.
Miike said clearly in the past that variants are for endgame players. It clearly isn't that way difficulty wise, but they are supposedly the endgame target. How many times and with how much content can we say "no, not for you, wait your turn" and expect that portion of the playerbase to stay engaged in the game?
Conversely, why should all content be geared toward the midgame player?
It’s a tiny portion of the player base that feels this way. Anyway if it was harder, you’d be complaining that you spent all this time ranking up champs and now struggle with variant content.
The point is not that Variant 7 could be easy. Point is that I am going to 100% it in a couple of hours and after that there is anything else to do in this game.
The point is not that Variant 7 could be easy. Point is that I am going to 100% it in a couple of hours and after that there is anything else to do in this game.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
How are people left behind? Once they develop the rosters, they can also do the most difficult content. By that logic, Kabam cannot create any content since someone will always be left behind. There needs to be a goalpost for anyone to work towards. As it is, only AW seems to be the difficult content available for people who have explored everything.
Goalposts require "skill". Roster breadth need not qualify for that. Difficulty is also subjective, what may be difficult for someone may not be for someone else. How do you quantify that? Make it "difficult" that you hope the players will be able to gain those "skills" later on? "skills" reduce items but lets not forget, a bunch of players will not be doing act6 at all. These "hard" pieces of content are better off as limited time events with decent rewards, the main lure being "the challenge of it".
But people also need to develop the skill to tackle the difficult content. I am not saying there should be content geared towards end game players completely. But when I see the comment that you can use 3 stars to complete content, it just makes me wonder if the R3 rank ups I make are only useful for AW and not for actual content. I am currently exploring V1, its very frustrating, but its also very interesting to do.
The point is not that Variant 7 could be easy. Point is that I am going to 100% it in a couple of hours and after that there is anything else to do in this game.
To that id say, arena.
Ah, yes. Arena. That place where, famously, I can use my top tier champions and flex my skill as a player. Maybe come up with a unique synergy team for this 7000 PI Iron Man? Maybe I’ll use a clever playstyle to defeat this unnoded Jane Foster. The world is my oyster!
Less sarcastically, as a player who has completed all of the content in the game, what am I grinding arena for? I have no need for 5* champions anymore, so no point in aiming for a top spot. I have no content to clear that would need items, so a unit grind doesn’t seem terribly appealing outside of trying to build-up for big sale events like July 4th. And, I cannot stress this enough, arena is *painfully* boring. I’ve worked in literal jails that looked more fun than a weekend arena grind. I’ll pop in every now and again to complete a solo objective or something, but good god do I hate arena.
Well I explored it all within the first 8 hours and used 4 revives that I could've saved if I just restarted the path. It was very easy, yes. But it was so freakin fun. I'll take some fun content with great rewards any day. But hopefully we get some challenging content in the very near future.
Didn't find a single thing about it fun personally. It was boring limited content with any "difficulty" being tied up in making fights artificially slower, usually leaving you with the best bad option choice, or just use Quake for a lot of stuff in ch3 which is about as poor of content design as I can possibly think of. It's easily the worst designed Variant since V1 imo.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
How are people left behind? Once they develop the rosters, they can also do the most difficult content. By that logic, Kabam cannot create any content since someone will always be left behind. There needs to be a goalpost for anyone to work towards. As it is, only AW seems to be the difficult content available for people who have explored everything.
Well to me Variant has never been intended to be the most difficult content. Isnt that what abyss and lol was for? I think variant should be accessible to most of the player base to build to content such as abyss or act6/7 etc. And i agreed with the fact there should be more difficult content avaliable but i dont think thats what varients are intended to be
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
How are people left behind? Once they develop the rosters, they can also do the most difficult content. By that logic, Kabam cannot create any content since someone will always be left behind. There needs to be a goalpost for anyone to work towards. As it is, only AW seems to be the difficult content available for people who have explored everything.
Well to me Variant has never been intended to be the most difficult content. Isnt that what abyss and lol was for? I think variant should be accessible to most of the player base to build to content such as abyss or act6/7 etc. And i agreed with the fact there should be more difficult content avaliable but i dont think thats what varients are intended to be
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
Boy am I upset I ranked up my favourite champions as 6*. I wish someone had told me how easy variant content was going to be so I could have left them rank 1 level 1 in order to use them in challenging content.
If kabam makes content that is hard for the people who want hard content, it is always in the game. If you can’t do it right away then you can come back to it. You satisfy the endgame by giving them a challenge, you satisfy the others by giving them something to work to and complete later.
If kabam makes content that is too easy for the end game players, then they are disappointed and never get their challenge. What’s the point ranking champions if you can’t use them in serious content? And then coming to the forums to voice concerns and they get told to just use 4*, an artificial, useless challenge that brushes off and doesn’t address any issue.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
How are people left behind? Once they develop the rosters, they can also do the most difficult content. By that logic, Kabam cannot create any content since someone will always be left behind. There needs to be a goalpost for anyone to work towards. As it is, only AW seems to be the difficult content available for people who have explored everything.
Well to me Variant has never been intended to be the most difficult content. Isnt that what abyss and lol was for? I think variant should be accessible to most of the player base to build to content such as abyss or act6/7 etc. And i agreed with the fact there should be more difficult content avaliable but i dont think thats what varients are intended to be
When introduced, they were meant to expand the endgame experience, as per the blog post.
When introduced, 3 years ago, before abyss and act 6 or 7. There is quite a lot that has changed in the game since then. 90 percent of the player base complain and say that act 6 is too difficult and its very champion specific with nodes that dont reward the player but when they release 3 variants that give you the option of using a variety of champions with nodes that reward the player people say its too easy. To me the problem isnt this specific content being too easy becasue i think it needs to be playable by the majority of the player base there needs to be MORE content released that covers a wide variety of difficulty whilst still giving people the oppurtunity to build their rosters to tackle it. Maybe another difficulty of this content needs to be released or they need to release more than Varients and story content to fill the void we all have after the first week of the new EQ.
The irony is that the most people that tell the endgame players to use 3 stars and 4 stars to make content more challenging are the same people saying they won't explore act 6. I want variants to be atleast as difficult as act 6 so that people can explore that and use the resources to explore act 6.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
How are people left behind? Once they develop the rosters, they can also do the most difficult content. By that logic, Kabam cannot create any content since someone will always be left behind. There needs to be a goalpost for anyone to work towards. As it is, only AW seems to be the difficult content available for people who have explored everything.
Well to me Variant has never been intended to be the most difficult content. Isnt that what abyss and lol was for? I think variant should be accessible to most of the player base to build to content such as abyss or act6/7 etc. And i agreed with the fact there should be more difficult content avaliable but i dont think thats what varients are intended to be
When introduced, they were meant to expand the endgame experience, as per the blog post.
When introduced, 3 years ago, before abyss and act 6 or 7. There is quite a lot that has changed in the game since then. 90 percent of the player base complain and say that act 6 is too difficult and its very champion specific with nodes that dont reward the player but when they release 3 variants that give you the option of using a variety of champions with nodes that reward the player people say its too easy. To me the problem isnt this specific content being too easy becasue i think it needs to be playable by the majority of the player base there needs to be MORE content released that covers a wide variety of difficulty whilst still giving people the oppurtunity to build their rosters to tackle it. Maybe another difficulty of this content needs to be released or they need to release more than Varients and story content to fill the void we all have after the first week of the new EQ.
Yes, but you said they were never intended for end game players, and that is provably false.
I think we are beyond a point where Variants can be and should be endgame difficulty. It's not and it's unfair to Kabam to amp the difficulty up for it. Variants then loose their trademark fun. What Kabam should do is to give either a new difficulty to Variant or to give challenging content on a regular basis.
This here: this addresses why not just use lower ranked champions. Releasing a higher difficulty as they mention here would mean the same nodes, but higher health. That’s longer, not necessarily more difficult.
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight. There is nothing more difficult about that, just longer. A 50 hit difficult fight that is challenging because of the nodes is leaps and bounds more fun than a 100 hit fight with one node.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun.
The absolute biggest point here, variant content is permanent! You don’t have to do it straight away if it is too hard for you. Go away, come back stronger. Learn, don’t just complain.
Variant 7 is objectively easier, or at the very least, as easy as variant 1. That means in 3 years the only step up in endgame content is act 6 and Abyss. The reason there’s been less end game content is that a vocal minority who can’t do something have the attitude that if they can’t do it then it shouldn’t be in the game. There’s no concept of growth as a player.
Kabam's biggest mistake was letting people's roster outpace the content.
I think they should make more content like V4, except harder. Much, much harder. Hell, make an absolute hell-mode 3*-only variant. It'd give a reality check to people who bust through these things with God-tier 6r3, or even 5r5s.
If there's anything that rando-incursions have taught me, it's that most people suck at this game. It's incredibly weird handholding players with a trio of 6r3 gods, but it's less uncommon than you'd expect.
I agree but Kabam is in a hard spot thou because End game players with stack Roster complain about content being too easy but forget that they have most God tier at 6 star rank 3 and all the boost , now the average player might find the same content as challenging because of their roster, when you have content that roster dependent you will have these issue where if you have the God tiers the content will be easy and if u don't then it will be hard, i do believe there is more average players than end game players everyday there's new players coming to this game and less old player returning so kabam has to look at that statistic and make content that everyone can take a part of sooner than later or what you will have is a player download the game grind then hit road block and delete the game example variant 1 i know alot of players that's yet to even try that but finish all the others , what's the point of making content no one want to play or a content that only 20 % of players is excited for because they have all the 6 stars and looking for a challenge.
Comments
I don't want ultra hard content that causes me to pull my hair out or only be able to finish with tons of units because of "fun and interactive damage". I do want to be challenged, but I also want to have fun and not be stonewalled on content that is so extreme, only a small percentage can ever complete it (without going ham on units/items/spending) because that's demotivating.
Those who want extreme content are never going to be satisfied. They'll beat it, get rewards that push them even higher up the food chain and then they'll want more and more.
This is where tournaments and challenges should come into play. High score wins for the best of the best. I think that's what they intended with ally events like AQ and AW but they're stale now too. We need more summoner showdown types of events with arcade like high score point systems.
Otherwise, if you want crazy difficulty, hit up OG Donkey Kong, Pacman or Ghost&Goblins and come back when youve finished them completely. We'll see you in about...never, cause they get so hard almost no one can beat them and they stop being fun for most people as a result.
Super hard does not equal super fun. The act 6 and early act 7.1 feedback is proof of that in the MCOC world.
At the moment my rank 3s steam roll everything content wise in the game. I don’t want them on the bench.
Make it hard relatively for a rank 3.
If you can make content hard for 3*, you can scale that up so it would take the same amount of hits with a rank 3, same nodes, same relative difficulty.
Less sarcastically, as a player who has completed all of the content in the game, what am I grinding arena for? I have no need for 5* champions anymore, so no point in aiming for a top spot. I have no content to clear that would need items, so a unit grind doesn’t seem terribly appealing outside of trying to build-up for big sale events like July 4th. And, I cannot stress this enough, arena is *painfully* boring. I’ve worked in literal jails that looked more fun than a weekend arena grind. I’ll pop in every now and again to complete a solo objective or something, but good god do I hate arena.
When introduced, Variants were meant to expand the endgame experience, as per the blog post.
If kabam makes content that is hard for the people who want hard content, it is always in the game. If you can’t do it right away then you can come back to it. You satisfy the endgame by giving them a challenge, you satisfy the others by giving them something to work to and complete later.
If kabam makes content that is too easy for the end game players, then they are disappointed and never get their challenge. What’s the point ranking champions if you can’t use them in serious content? And then coming to the forums to voice concerns and they get told to just use 4*, an artificial, useless challenge that brushes off and doesn’t address any issue.
This here: this addresses why not just use lower ranked champions. Releasing a higher difficulty as they mention here would mean the same nodes, but higher health. That’s longer, not necessarily more difficult.
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight. There is nothing more difficult about that, just longer. A 50 hit difficult fight that is challenging because of the nodes is leaps and bounds more fun than a 100 hit fight with one node.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun.
The absolute biggest point here, variant content is permanent! You don’t have to do it straight away if it is too hard for you. Go away, come back stronger. Learn, don’t just complain.
Variant 7 is objectively easier, or at the very least, as easy as variant 1. That means in 3 years the only step up in endgame content is act 6 and Abyss. The reason there’s been less end game content is that a vocal minority who can’t do something have the attitude that if they can’t do it then it shouldn’t be in the game. There’s no concept of growth as a player.