Will there be a thronebreaker difficulty in the near future

I was wondering since we have Cav and UC difficulty I was wonderigg by if a thronebreaker difficulty may be in the works with better rewards than Cav difficulty

Comments

DNA3000

Eventually, sure, but near future? I doubt it.

Adding a new difficulty tier is like adding a new menu item at McDonalds. McDonalds doesn't add new menu items when you've eaten everything on the menu and are bored. They add new menu items when it benefits McDonalds as a whole. Similarly, a new difficulty tier isn't about handing people who are bored want more rewards and can easily skate through Cav difficulty a more rewarding map.

Thronebreaker difficulty will change a lot of things everywhere. It changes the Thronebreaker resource economy. It changes the operational workload for designing monthly content. It will probably force a similar side quest difficulty extension. It may force them to consolidate one of the lower difficulties away - they removed one to reduce the total workload of monthly difficulty, which is why there's no Beginner difficulty anymore.

Keep in mind also that Thronebreaker difficulty isn't going to be just a little harder than Cav for people who want something a little harder. TB difficulty is going to be three to four times harder than Cav, just as Cav was three to four times harder than UC and UC was three to four times harder than Master. It would be completely unmanageable to have a blizzard of difficulty tiers above Cav, each a little harder. The game can only support five or so difficulty tiers. Those five have to encompass everything from the player who just started today to the highest difficulty you represent. If we have several tiers above Cav, we can't have any tiers below Cav. Cav would have to be the difficulty tier people start with on day one. Which is impossible.

My guess is that the devs are thinking about Thronebreaker difficulty, but not really close to actually implementing it. If they were, I suspect they would have saved R4 materials for TB/Legendary+ difficulty, and not leaking them out in Legendary side quest rewards now.

Squirrelguy

Short answer: it may be on their radar, but all signs point to it being a while before implementation.

Just based on previous timelines and game progression, it would probably be around the end of this year at the earliest. It would be a huge step up if they added it now and probs not one the game could handle.

DrZola

I can’t imagine the team implementing that any time soon.

My opinion—backed up by playing through adjustments to the game since December 2014–is that changes happen slowly and often after the player base has already begun to lose interest.

More observation than criticism, from this player’s perspective desirable improvements frequently arrive too little and too late. Availability of old favorite champs in rarities above 4*/5* is one example. Others include things like changes to masteries (Pittance, Scouter lens, Pure Skill—sure, masteries are due an upgrade this year, but it’s been a forever wait), updates to everything from quest crystals to solo crystals and objectives to EQ rewards, potions…it’s a long list. I viscerally hate the idea of wish crystals, but even something like that has been “coming soon” for a while. I expect them to arrive at a time and in a fashion that is less than exciting.

To be fair, that’s not always the case—one example would be recent changes to the Sigil, which were pretty decent and arrived just as I decided to discontinue mine. Changes there have forced me to actually think about whether dumping money into Sigil is worth it.

But the totality of it suggests wishing for TB difficulty isn’t a good use of energy. Hope for a bunny instead.

Dr. Zola

AMS94

Will there be - Yes
Anytime soon - No

GoDlyZor

The game can only support five or so difficulty tiers. Those five have to encompass everything from the player who just started today to the highest difficulty you represent. If we have several tiers above Cav, we can't have any tiers below Cav. Cav would have to be the difficulty tier people start with on day one. Which is impossible.

Why can the game only support 5? Is it based on design time for developers or on reward availability and limiting those resources? If the latter then just because there are tiers above cav does not mean they have to remove lower ones for everyone. They have the technology to present certain aspects of the game or unlock them based on progression. They could make it so every player can only see certain tiers. Aside from the comment of people starting with cav on day one.. I do think a TB EQ difficulty just doesn't really make sense at the moment. Although, the effort (time+energy not necessarily difficulty/skill) that goes into completing cav does make the rewards seem less and less enticing as time goes by.

What's your opinion on the need for a new progression title with present state of the battlerealm?

GoddessIlias

Adding a new difficulty tier is like adding a new menu item at McDonalds. McDonalds doesn't add new menu items when you've eaten everything on the menu and are bored. They add new menu items when it benefits McDonalds as a whole.

Ok but when are the McRib and the international menu items coming back cuz that waffle shake highkey slapped

Pikolu

The game can only support five or so difficulty tiers. Those five have to encompass everything from the player who just started today to the highest difficulty you represent. If we have several tiers above Cav, we can't have any tiers below Cav. Cav would have to be the difficulty tier people start with on day one. Which is impossible.
Why can the game only support 5? Is it based on design time for developers or on reward availability and limiting those resources? If the latter then just because there are tiers above cav does not mean they have to remove lower ones for everyone. They have the technology to present certain aspects of the game or unlock them based on progression. They could make it so every player can only see certain tiers. Aside from the comment of people starting with cav on day one.. I do think a TB EQ difficulty just doesn't really make sense at the moment. Although, the effort (time+energy not necessarily difficulty/skill) that goes into completing cav does make the rewards seem less and less enticing as time goes by.

What's your opinion on the need for a new progression title with present state of the battlerealm?

I'm pretty sure it is the servers can't handle having more than 5 tiers. I could be wrong though, but the servers are under enough stress as is atm.

BuggyDClown

It will come for sure but I don't think it will be in near future. Rewards management in relation to difficulty and whinning of Players etc etc will be taken in account and it will consume some considerable time. So it better late than half cooked dish

xNig

Lol. Can’t wait for the whining posts of players who jump into the next difficulty too early and declare it as a “money grab” and “rewards not worth the time and effort spent”.

Fit_Fun9329

I think yes but not soon. Can imagine that this future difficulty will be influenced by act 7 things like paradox stuff

PowerOfACandle

They can just upgrade the present ones to manage the workload. There are no completion rewards for master, uc and cav difficulty and the exploration rewards are also kinda outdated.

Mauled

If the don’t introduce a new difficulty they could at least reduce the energy cost in normal, heroic and masters. I made an alt and thought about exploring heroic but the last 2 quests are far more than a single refill in energy for each line so you’ve got a choice of half finishing a quest or burning through refills like they’re going out of fashion. By the time you can explore heroic without annihilating your stash of refills the month is either over and you’re thinking of master now or the rewards aren’t relevant because you’ve surpassed that difficulty.

Heroic should be 1 energy all the way , masters should be 1 energy until ch3 where it peaks at 2.

DNA3000

The game can only support five or so difficulty tiers. Those five have to encompass everything from the player who just started today to the highest difficulty you represent. If we have several tiers above Cav, we can't have any tiers below Cav. Cav would have to be the difficulty tier people start with on day one. Which is impossible.
Why can the game only support 5? Is it based on design time for developers or on reward availability and limiting those resources? If the latter then just because there are tiers above cav does not mean they have to remove lower ones for everyone. They have the technology to present certain aspects of the game or unlock them based on progression. They could make it so every player can only see certain tiers. Aside from the comment of people starting with cav on day one.. I do think a TB EQ difficulty just doesn't really make sense at the moment. Although, the effort (time+energy not necessarily difficulty/skill) that goes into completing cav does make the rewards seem less and less enticing as time goes by.

What's your opinion on the need for a new progression title with present state of the battlerealm?

The why of it is probably operational in nature. Which is to say, however it is the devs create and maintain difficulty tiers, that's all the I/O they can reasonably support. A new progression/difficulty tier adds more work to everyone: the monthly quest designers, the side quest designers, even the monetization people that structure offers. It adds more data for the developers to monitor - they have to constantly monitor these difficulties to make sure they are functioning correctly. The difficulty/progression tiere aren't just arbitrarily lines being drawn between players, each one adds substantial workload. What the bottleneck(s) are specifically, I don't know. But I know they exist, because otherwise Kabam wouldn't have eliminated a difficulty tier. Developers are reluctant to delete things from the game they spent time making in the first place. There has to be a good reason for that, bordering on a forcing reason.

As to whether we need a new top tier progression title? I don't think we need one. Thronebreaker is becoming more accessible all the time, but there's still only a small fraction of players that are TB right now, and more importantly there are even fewer who are really ready for a TB+ title. I would be surprised if more than 2-3% of the players in the game were TB, and of those players I would be surprised if even 10% of them would be genuinely ready for TB+. We're just seeing the beginnings of stabilization of the prestige race with R4 availability, and TB+ would immediately shake that up again, if for no other reason than TB+ would be heavily monetized, as all top tier everything is.

When TB first came out I felt the absolute earliest we would likely see the next progression title would be when R5s became available if not later. I now think it is more likely the next progression title comes along when whatever the next progression path above 6* champs is announced (i.e. 7* champs, or some alternative roster progression mechanic). I think by then the early game acceleration to Uncollected will be mostly completed and the playerbase will be sitting at a much higher average, UC will be commonplace and Cav will probably be the center of mass for the playerbase, and enough players will be TB that the top 10% of TB will still be a lot of players, enough to be worth spending developer time distinguishing.

DNA3000

Adding a new difficulty tier is like adding a new menu item at McDonalds. McDonalds doesn't add new menu items when you've eaten everything on the menu and are bored. They add new menu items when it benefits McDonalds as a whole.
Ok but when are the McRib and the international menu items coming back cuz that waffle shake highkey slapped

The regional item I want put on the standard menu is the pumpkin pie I've seen in the Midwest occasionally. Man that thing was awesome.

Little_Crocodili29

I'll put my guess on the table: TB MEQ will come 2 years after we've had a new title other than TB.

And I'm bookmarking this thread in case I need to pull out the Told You So in the future lol