A semi-hot take on recent content from a mid-game player's perspective
Sal_Hudson
Member Posts: 15 ★
Hey guys, I’m Sal Hudson and I’m here to have a little bit of a discussion with you guys about recent content. But as you might have read from the title, this is from the perspective of a mid-game player. “Why does that even matter?” you may ask. Well, it kinda doesn’t, but I thought that since I’m somewhere between mid-game and endgame that it would make my take interesting to read about.
So what is my take?
I’ll tell y’all in a sec, but first, let’s analyze content released before the backlash. Firstly, 6.4. Niche as hell in some parts. But it was tough. I actually love 6.4 in it’s current state. Not too much changed, besides the absurd attack. However, there are some people that do like stupid attack values! There was also the 7.1 beta (the first one), that didn’t technically get released, but it was scheduled to. Essentially, it was 6.4 with bosses that were even more niche, attack that was even more absurd, and content that was VERY hard.
Then the backlash happened. People expressed that they were pissed about the content design, me included. Then Kabam came and completely changed things for the better!
Or did they?
As of late, the forums have been FLOODED with complaints about the game being too easy. Prior to the backlash, it was the other way around. “The game’s too hard!” “Too restrictive!” etc. Of course there are always gonna be upset people, regardless of the content, but still. So here comes my (somewhat) hot take on the two types of content design:
I think both of them are bad.
Now before y’all destroy me with comments about nothing of relevance, let me define my definition of ‘bad’ in this instance. Both had their major flaws and there’s no arguing that. The old content design was overly punishing imo. Kabam seems to be extreme with their content design, so we seem to only get one or the other. Do we NEED punishing content in game? Hell yes! But if that’s the only content you get, it can start getting frustrating for those just trying to do fun content.
But that statement goes both ways, too.
You cannot realistically tell someone who loved the old game design to just ‘get over it’ because it benefits most players. Neither should the people who loved the old game design tell people who complained about hard content to basically “F off”. But I wanna take some time to empathize for those who love hard content. Since the backlash, what content have we gotten guys? Well we’ve gotten v6/7 and 7.1. I can confidently say that as a mid-game player with slightly above average skill that none of those pieces of content are hard.
V6 was half a cheese fiesta and half of some somewhat specific content. But the hardest fight in the variant was a… stacked version of terrax? V7 is EASIER than 6! Now granted, I had a lot of fun with both, but v7 is a joke, difficulty wise. You might as well just hand me the expo shards now with how tricky it is. 7.1 is similar. I feel like 7.1 was a new beginning, so I will cut slack there. But 7.1 was also too easy. For reference, I did 7.1 expo within a week of release, with like 16 champs at r5+.
Now here’s a question: If a mid-game player finds recent content super easy, can you take a WILD guess at what deep endgame players feel like rn? If you read the forums and actually put yourself in their shoes, you know already. If you’re still in the dark, they probably feel like people who like fun content, pre-outrage. Like the content is just dull and dry and there’s no way to get something that you enjoy. That’s not healthy.
So what do I propose as a solution? And if you’re about to say, “wait for 7.2 or SOP”, don’t. I was on the 7.2 beta. Did every path. Some paths up to 4 times. It’s not hard. I soloed one of, it not the hardest fight in there first try. SOP has been delayed so many times, it’s not even funny anymore.
So anyways, my solution is a BALANCE! An alternation of sorts.
Essentially, every other piece of content that comes out follows each design philosophy. If big content was to drop every 2 months, then every 4 months, each side should get something to satisfy them. For people who love super fun content, that could be a fun variant. For the sweats, it could be summer of pain. If you wanted to take that a step further, each variant could alternate between being fun and being restrictive.
I personally think that’s a good solution, because it could finally end the drought that deep end-gamers are in, while retaining fun content that people enjoy. What are you guys’ thoughts on this? But before I go, one last thing. Let’s use our heads in the comments please. Empathize for both groups of people.
So what is my take?
I’ll tell y’all in a sec, but first, let’s analyze content released before the backlash. Firstly, 6.4. Niche as hell in some parts. But it was tough. I actually love 6.4 in it’s current state. Not too much changed, besides the absurd attack. However, there are some people that do like stupid attack values! There was also the 7.1 beta (the first one), that didn’t technically get released, but it was scheduled to. Essentially, it was 6.4 with bosses that were even more niche, attack that was even more absurd, and content that was VERY hard.
Then the backlash happened. People expressed that they were pissed about the content design, me included. Then Kabam came and completely changed things for the better!
Or did they?
As of late, the forums have been FLOODED with complaints about the game being too easy. Prior to the backlash, it was the other way around. “The game’s too hard!” “Too restrictive!” etc. Of course there are always gonna be upset people, regardless of the content, but still. So here comes my (somewhat) hot take on the two types of content design:
I think both of them are bad.
Now before y’all destroy me with comments about nothing of relevance, let me define my definition of ‘bad’ in this instance. Both had their major flaws and there’s no arguing that. The old content design was overly punishing imo. Kabam seems to be extreme with their content design, so we seem to only get one or the other. Do we NEED punishing content in game? Hell yes! But if that’s the only content you get, it can start getting frustrating for those just trying to do fun content.
But that statement goes both ways, too.
You cannot realistically tell someone who loved the old game design to just ‘get over it’ because it benefits most players. Neither should the people who loved the old game design tell people who complained about hard content to basically “F off”. But I wanna take some time to empathize for those who love hard content. Since the backlash, what content have we gotten guys? Well we’ve gotten v6/7 and 7.1. I can confidently say that as a mid-game player with slightly above average skill that none of those pieces of content are hard.
V6 was half a cheese fiesta and half of some somewhat specific content. But the hardest fight in the variant was a… stacked version of terrax? V7 is EASIER than 6! Now granted, I had a lot of fun with both, but v7 is a joke, difficulty wise. You might as well just hand me the expo shards now with how tricky it is. 7.1 is similar. I feel like 7.1 was a new beginning, so I will cut slack there. But 7.1 was also too easy. For reference, I did 7.1 expo within a week of release, with like 16 champs at r5+.
Now here’s a question: If a mid-game player finds recent content super easy, can you take a WILD guess at what deep endgame players feel like rn? If you read the forums and actually put yourself in their shoes, you know already. If you’re still in the dark, they probably feel like people who like fun content, pre-outrage. Like the content is just dull and dry and there’s no way to get something that you enjoy. That’s not healthy.
So what do I propose as a solution? And if you’re about to say, “wait for 7.2 or SOP”, don’t. I was on the 7.2 beta. Did every path. Some paths up to 4 times. It’s not hard. I soloed one of, it not the hardest fight in there first try. SOP has been delayed so many times, it’s not even funny anymore.
So anyways, my solution is a BALANCE! An alternation of sorts.
Essentially, every other piece of content that comes out follows each design philosophy. If big content was to drop every 2 months, then every 4 months, each side should get something to satisfy them. For people who love super fun content, that could be a fun variant. For the sweats, it could be summer of pain. If you wanted to take that a step further, each variant could alternate between being fun and being restrictive.
I personally think that’s a good solution, because it could finally end the drought that deep end-gamers are in, while retaining fun content that people enjoy. What are you guys’ thoughts on this? But before I go, one last thing. Let’s use our heads in the comments please. Empathize for both groups of people.
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Comments
I don't necessarily want the crazy high attack values back, it's more that given current content and previous content, I'll take the latter.
I believe I saw it suggested elsewhere, but I'll expand on the idea of objectives to bridge the end game experience.
Something like "complete a path in chapter 2 of Variant 5 without a mystic on the team" could be interesting, and relatively easy to add.
I'm absolutely fine with 7.1 being the way it is, and I'm fine with variants the way they are. I just know there needs to be hard content somewhere. If kabam don't want that to be variants or act content then fair enough. I'm someone who enjoyed the challenge of act 6, it really challenged me as a player to get better and learn more about the game. It's because of that I'm the player i am today. I want to see something that comes along and really knocks me off my feet with how challenging it is to me. I want to have to go away, practice and come back because of how technically I need to approach the content.
That's what exploring act 6 did for me, I spent 5-10 minutes before every path studying each fight and working out who works there, who do I need for this. At the moment 7.1 and variants I spent 30 seconds looking at the champions on the path and bringing almost whoever i wanted.
The problem is, a lot of the endgamers are absolutely fine with variants being easy and 7.1 being easy as long as they have content to challenge them. But since it's not there, and we then we ask for our challenging content- we get told to just use 4* for it. There's no empathy our way, when we fully admit there should be content for everyone.
If you guys want hard content maybe you guys are looking for something like some harder boss rushes or something similar to the maze. Kabam puts the out more often and maybe they can please some of you guys.
Act 7.2 and beyond hasn't even came out yet.
These masochists need to chill out...and crack a cold one..
Not all end game content should be painful.
Not everyone likes to play controller throwing games like dark-souls.
If mcoc turns into that I'm ejecting
But like I’ve said a thousand times. I’m fine with act 7 being easier- just don’t expect end game players to look forward to 7.2 as a challenge. The person I replied to was implying 7.2 was going to be harder and maybe a challenge. I somehow doubt it with the communication kabam have given about not wanting story content to be the difficult content anymore.
Especially as you are in the beta too.
And you are clearly well above average skill too.
You're end game.
I honestly don't see it happening; 6r3s were a mistake. Maybe some special event here or there like the recent incursion push or SoP, but the rewards will be underwhelming 'cause Kabam desperately wants to put this genie back in the bottle. Well, unless you're satisfied with a title and bragging rights.
As a company, Kabam will focus on pleasing 2 groups: the whales, and the majority. Whales are actually easy to please, surprisingly. That leaves the majority -- which for the purpose of Kabam's bottom line is probably mid-to-late tier Cav players.
Not saying it doesn't suck, but bad design don't usually get better when you double down on it.
U did 7.1 within a week,
Ur liking of 6.4 says that u've probably explored it as well, or at least a significant part of it
And u were on 7.2 Beta as well
I'm assuming u're probably a thronebreaker as well, or very close to being one
I'm failing to understand how do u consider urself a mid-game player when clearly u're very well past that level.....???
Endgame doesn't just mean playing high tier AW, AQ7, & having a lot of R3 6* champs
Imagine if all the game content was above what you could do, wouldn’t you find that boring? Not really able to do any of the content? And imagine coming to the forum and giving feedback on it, and a bunch of people at different points in the game just told you you’re wrong, stop complaining, it’s definitely not too hard.
Empathise, talk to people, realise others have different view points and experiences. It will help you grow as a person.
Those who want dark souls esque content, how about v1 level restrictions, 14k+ attack, every month with act 7 health pools, global "psychic true strike" (bye ghost and quake), a nightmare mode of cav EQ and you only need one pass through, there is an orange title for completion and purple for exploration and no other rewards.
Msd, bero, swedeah and others would do it.
AND they would do it, for just the bragging rights and title.
As many people above me have said, nobody who is asking for more challenging content wants to take anything away from the people who like the challenge level as it is. We all agree that Variants are good as they are and that the trajectory of Act 7 can stay as it is.
Personally, I like the idea of having one part of the game that can be done with a lower end roster so that you can get the materials and champions you need to go after the more challenging content. I’m okay with Variants and Acts being that more accessible content.
But we are asking for that other content to work on as well, in addition to (not in replacement of) the content you all love. For example, there are several fights in Abyss that can be one-shot, and those were my favorite fights. Bishop was especially fun because you had to get really good (and lucky) about making him sit at his sp3 without just obliterating you. Perfecting Darkhawk’s rotation to reverse his healing was extremely satisfying. Korg, although not being a one-shot fight, was also a lot of fun for me when I learned about using Aegon’s light attacks to shimmy in close enough to hit Korg after a heavy without dashing in with a medium.
These fights made me better as a player, and they were some of the best moments I can point to in this game. I’m sure there are countless others, but these are recent so they stand out. More recently than this, however, have been two variants and 7.1. They did not scratch this itch. They are not the content that players like me, who like to play around with things like timing and spacing in a match, have been looking for. Again, that’s totally okay and does not need to change! But it does need to be built on to include something for us.
This doesn’t solve the problem, but a cool idea would be a quest set up like incursion rooms where you’re allowed a certain number of items per room and that gets refreshed after a certain point. 3 fights in and your 5 item cap is replenished, thereby encouraging players to heal up before moving into the next quest section
I think it's a very good option to aid in making actually 'difficult' content actually difficult.
Act 6 is not an example of wildly high attack. That's actually a misinterpretation of what was going on. Act 6 was just one point along a design methodology that used scaling attack and health as the dominant way to scale difficulty. Act 6 is not something unique, it is basically using the same fundamental design philosophy as Act 5 and Act 4 and Act 3. No one says that Act 3 suffers from ridiculous attack values. But Act 3 is using the same attack value escalation. We don't *see* it because our own progress advances faster than that. We only start to see it a little in Act 5 and a lot in Act 6 because the exponential rise in scaling values overtakes many of us there. Act 6 is just where the curve overtakes *most* players. But not all of them. It overtakes a few in Act 5, and some would have been overtaken in Act 7. If we didn't change anything, eventually *everyone* would have been overtaken.
The new design philosophy doesn't abandon attack scaling altogether. It simply no longer focuses on attack and health scaling as the primary driver of difficulty scaling. Instead the new design philosophy resorts to node interactions which add *some* base difficulty and also a roster check component to difficulty. The idea being instead of the content being wildly harder universally, how much harder it is depends on your roster and your knowledge of the game. It could be a little harder, or it could be a lot harder. Relative to Act 6, a strong enough roster and player knowledge can even make Act 7 easier than Act 6.
But that doesn't mean the new design philosophy is *intrinsically* easier. We're seeing it in its infancy, and at a point where it is trying to roughly approximate Act 6 difficulty with a system that is itself presenting a wide range of difficulty to different players based on their progress.
As a picture is worth a thousand insightfuls:
This is an oversimplification, but originally with attack and health scaling dominating a high percentage of the intrinsic difficulty of fights, the range of difficulty players experienced was narrower in the past. Not that narrow, but that's the best I can do in MSPaint in two minutes. Originally Act 6 was going exponentially upward, but it was only continuing the curve that existed going all the way back to Act 1 (for a more numerically accurate version of this, see: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/196950/what-does-the-mcoc-story-arc-difficulty-curve-look-like/p1 where I use actual numbers and stuff). The modified/nerfed Act 6 flattened that curve somewhat. The design philosophy that now is seen in Cavalier EQ and in Act 7 uses attack scaling less, and node combinations more. It is *trying* to continue the curve that the modified Act 6 lays out, but because its design presents a "wider" difficulty range to players based on things like their roster depth and skill set, it is perceived as sometimes harder but often much easier. But the design philosophy is not intrinsically "easier." Eventually, Act 7 with its current design philosophy will be harder for everyone than Act 6 is for anyone (always exceptions, but mostly).
Because Act 7 has to "connect to" Act 6 in terms of difficulty and because it is much wider, there's an illusion that the design philosophy always generates, or is intended to generate, easier content. But it isn't, and alternating between that philosophy and the old one doesn't really make sense for that reason. The temporary glitch in perceived difficulty is just the price to pay for changing the way difficulty itself works in the game.
Why is "wider" better? Because the problem is not the difficulty curve itself, it is the difficulty curve compared to our own progress curve:
If you were a top tier player, your progress curve was outracing the difficulty curve, and Act 6 wasn't a problem. If you were a pretty good player, you were probably fine until Act 6 started to overtake you and things got progressively more difficult. If you were an average player, Act 5 was already escalating and Act 6 was a nightmare. All these different kinds of players demand a different difficulty curve, but there can only be one difficulty curve. By making the difficulty curve wider, and making roster depth a significant part of that width, a single difficulty "band" can address a wider range of players.
This won't help many players playing today. In fact, it makes things even worse for the top tier players *of today*. But it does make things better for the top tier players of the future. Because those guys will be able to push through content faster, their progress curve actually "flattens" relative to todays top tier players - they reach and plow through content quicker, so their curve extends farther to the right relative to how fast they open crystals and acquire champions. In effect, they will look more like the average players of today, not because they are going upward slower but because they are traveling to the right even faster. As they reach Act 7, if they reach it so fast their rosters are tiny they will see a more difficult Act 7, and if they reach it slower they will see an easier Act 7 because of roster growth. In a small way, the content will "autotune" to how strong they are, on the assumption that stronger is likely to also be faster.
And that's why the game designs content in the current way, for higher tier content, and that's why it can appear like a step backward.