Are we going to discuss the subject, or are we here to talk about me? This is getting monotonous. If you have any counterpoints to anything I've said, by all means discuss. I'm not responding to any more generalizations and accusations because that's not why we're here. End of.
Buddy, at the very start of this thread you were saying people should "grow into the changes in difficulty". Then after it got tuned down you immediately changed your mind to "it was overtuned". That alone speaks volumes lol not only does it prove you accept and agree with anything Kabam does but it also proves my initial point, you disagree with everyone just to defend Kabam, no accusations here just facts.
Yes, I support the content being adjusted when necessary. I also felt it was overtuned. Those aren't mutually exclusive ideas. The fact that I agreed with both sides is overlooked, but I don't care. I also commented that it needs to be appropriately-tuned. Which is always a process starting out. It's about tuning it in a way that meets the objectives, but isn't overly-powerful in a way that is too much for people to adjust to. We're talking about practical versus principle. I don't agree that it should never change on principle, or that any changes must be met with Rewards increases. Not when it's still in the process of getting it where it needs to be. You think the reactions are negative now, try adding more Rewards then taking them away when you readjust it. I understand why they're an afterthought. Not to mention it compounds work. On the practical side, I get why it's important to revise content, in ways I've already gone into. The game has grown. Revisions aren't always one way, easier content, more Rewards. Sometimes it involves adding more challenge to meet the capabilities and needs of Players. Now, the sweet spot for that is the variable that needs to be aimed for, but I don't agree that it shouldn't be done on principle. That's just being resistant to change. I'm pretty sure that's a clear stance.
If they really wanted to make the lower difficulties harder, why the hell didn't they just increase the rank/level of the defenders?
First of all, my understanding is that the goal wasn't explicitly to make the lower difficulties harder per se, it was to realign the difficulty tiers to the progression tiers, and then to make then as hard as the data suggests they should be to be appropriate to those tiers. As the data Kabam had said in effect that Proven or Conqueror players are a lot stronger today than they were when difficulties were originally created, the content difficulty was designed to match that new normal. I'm not saying they did this precisely correct, I'm simply stating that was the intent as I understand it.
If you look at the difficulty maps, each difficulty contains a different rarity. Contender contains 2* champs, Proven contains 3* champs, and so on up to Thronebreaker which contains 7* champs. This was obviously done deliberately to standardize on the rarity in each difficulty tier and make them different from each other. It is what it is: it wasn't necessary, but I can see why the designers might want to do that. But with that design change they needed to use nodes to adjust the difficulty in each tier, because the older tiers were not designed that way: they were designed more organically with different situational usage of rarity.
The entire exercise is essentially a difficulty soft reboot. Proven is not harder than it used to be, because there was no Proven before. Naming difficulties after progress titles doesn't happen until Uncollected, and the *meaning* of calling the tier after that progress title was not "Uncollected players should be able to do this just fine." The meaning of new difficulty tiers was also vague and ambiguous originally, and also organically developed over time. As we saw when new difficulty tiers were added, doing so completely redefined the meaning of older tiers at the same time, which was also confusing to many players. Why does Master get easier when Uncollected is added? If Master meant something specific to a specific group of players, it wouldn't. Ditto Uncollected and Cavalier.
And just to tackle the other elephant in the room, why not increase rewards if difficulty is being increased as well? Because difficulty is not being increased specifically to make the content harder than originally intended. It is being increased to target what it should always have been, given the increases in player strength over time. While difficulty is a moving target, because player power is a moving target, the rewards in the game follow a completely different set of economic and progressional constraints. There's a belief that rewards should be tied to difficulty. Harder content should have higher rewards, and thus increasing the difficulty should increase the rewards. But that's not the most important game design rule. In fact, I would argue there's no such rule at all. Difficulty should be appropriate to the target players' power, and rewards should be appropriate to the target players' progressional appropriateness, and those two don't have to be tied together.
Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that players lingering in lower difficulties, amongst other factors, might be a consideration for Kabam. But it really gives the shaft to players who are in their appropriate progression. The PI and Health Pools alone are well beyond the levels they are allegedly geared towards. If the quest difficulty is not going to be consistent with progression level, they probably shouldn’t be named that way in the first place.
I can say though, that as a Cavalier player comfortable that my skills are in line with that progression with a roster probably a bit higher, the retuned UC level, at least in Chapter 3, was pretty challenging. Cavalier even more so. Am I clearing them? Yep. Do I feel tremendous amounts of empathy for UC players trying to clear UC, Conqueror trying to clear conqueror, etc? 100% even after the “retune”. That’s just not balanced to what should be expected of a roster at those respective levels and it seems like (I could be wrong), most are still in agreement with this and aren’t ok with this “new normal”.
As an aside, this misalignment would equally and secondarily affect auto-play for players above those progression levels as well.
I'm sorry but i still find this hilarious...and i will repeat myself .. Saw so many posts during CM and banquet event... See them in global.. people with conqueror or UC titles.. with god tier new champs... 6* 5*.. even some ranked.. which is kinda ridiculous based on their progression.... Well where exactly are u planning to use those pulls?...cause honestly UC is not that hard... Cav kinda got nerfed.. even the description of each chapter got simplified ... IE: cav 1.1 Science 40% atk rating... Skill -40% it doesnt get any simpler than that...
I'm sorry but i still find this hilarious...and i will repeat myself .. Saw so many posts during CM and banquet event... See them in global.. people with conqueror or UC titles.. with god tier new champs... 6* 5*.. even some ranked.. which is kinda ridiculous based on their progression.... Well where exactly are u planning to use those pulls?...cause honestly UC is not that hard... Cav kinda got nerfed.. even the description of each chapter got simplified ... IE: cav 1.1 Science 40% atk rating... Skill -40% it doesnt get any simpler than that...
This argument is not valid because for certain matches like Absorbing Man you need the right counters, not just any God tier. You go in with a r2 6* Galan in UC difficulty and you won't be able to outdamage his regen. Your comment may apply to those that pulled God tiers and that can indeed counter most of the nodes and opponents but you can't just generalize cause not everyone had that same luck. Sounds more like you're just mad that they're allowing newer players to progress faster.
I'm sorry but i still find this hilarious...and i will repeat myself .. Saw so many posts during CM and banquet event... See them in global.. people with conqueror or UC titles.. with god tier new champs... 6* 5*.. even some ranked.. which is kinda ridiculous based on their progression.... Well where exactly are u planning to use those pulls?...cause honestly UC is not that hard... Cav kinda got nerfed.. even the description of each chapter got simplified ... IE: cav 1.1 Science 40% atk rating... Skill -40% it doesnt get any simpler than that...
What percentage of conqueror or uncollected people got these god tier new champs as 6*5* in relation to the overall number of uncollected and conqueror summoners after the banquet event? If you have the data please share it with us.
If they really wanted to make the lower difficulties harder, why the hell didn't they just increase the rank/level of the defenders?
First of all, my understanding is that the goal wasn't explicitly to make the lower difficulties harder per se, it was to realign the difficulty tiers to the progression tiers, and then to make then as hard as the data suggests they should be to be appropriate to those tiers. As the data Kabam had said in effect that Proven or Conqueror players are a lot stronger today than they were when difficulties were originally created, the content difficulty was designed to match that new normal. I'm not saying they did this precisely correct, I'm simply stating that was the intent as I understand it.
If you look at the difficulty maps, each difficulty contains a different rarity. Contender contains 2* champs, Proven contains 3* champs, and so on up to Thronebreaker which contains 7* champs. This was obviously done deliberately to standardize on the rarity in each difficulty tier and make them different from each other. It is what it is: it wasn't necessary, but I can see why the designers might want to do that. But with that design change they needed to use nodes to adjust the difficulty in each tier, because the older tiers were not designed that way: they were designed more organically with different situational usage of rarity.
The entire exercise is essentially a difficulty soft reboot. Proven is not harder than it used to be, because there was no Proven before. Naming difficulties after progress titles doesn't happen until Uncollected, and the *meaning* of calling the tier after that progress title was not "Uncollected players should be able to do this just fine." The meaning of new difficulty tiers was also vague and ambiguous originally, and also organically developed over time. As we saw when new difficulty tiers were added, doing so completely redefined the meaning of older tiers at the same time, which was also confusing to many players. Why does Master get easier when Uncollected is added? If Master meant something specific to a specific group of players, it wouldn't. Ditto Uncollected and Cavalier.
And just to tackle the other elephant in the room, why not increase rewards if difficulty is being increased as well? Because difficulty is not being increased specifically to make the content harder than originally intended. It is being increased to target what it should always have been, given the increases in player strength over time. While difficulty is a moving target, because player power is a moving target, the rewards in the game follow a completely different set of economic and progressional constraints. There's a belief that rewards should be tied to difficulty. Harder content should have higher rewards, and thus increasing the difficulty should increase the rewards. But that's not the most important game design rule. In fact, I would argue there's no such rule at all. Difficulty should be appropriate to the target players' power, and rewards should be appropriate to the target players' progressional appropriateness, and those two don't have to be tied together.
Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
One thing I have seen brought up - but not directly addressed - is the impact on QOL
I didn’t find the increases “directly” difficult per se. No extra planning. AI not any different. Nodes not “extra” as it were. My approach didn’t need to change.
But the healthpool issue I can’t seem to get around. 50 hits became 75 and 12 minutes for clearing became 16.
I can’t see that being good. For me it’s not. I am not going to increase my time for any reason. My opinion - such as it is- is that most people probably have timing rhythms. Lunch break. Coffee break. Etc. This completely changes that and I can’t see that in any way benefiting either kabam or the player base if it leads to less engagement
What percentage of conqueror or uncollected people got these god tier new champs as 6*5* in relation to the overall number of uncollected and conqueror summoners after the banquet event? If you have the data please share it with us.
They don’t know, but they got opinions. It goes something like this:
1. It’s easy for me. Git gud. 2. I saw it on the internet so it must be true.
Clearly the Banquet event was like Oprah. Every player at every progression level now has God Tier R4/R5 6* so there’s no excuse for not being able to beat brand new never before seen bosses at your respective progression level for the same rewards you were getting previously.
I'm sorry but i still find this hilarious...and i will repeat myself .. Saw so many posts during CM and banquet event... See them in global.. people with conqueror or UC titles.. with god tier new champs... 6* 5*.. even some ranked.. which is kinda ridiculous based on their progression.... Well where exactly are u planning to use those pulls?...cause honestly UC is not that hard... Cav kinda got nerfed.. even the description of each chapter got simplified ... IE: cav 1.1 Science 40% atk rating... Skill -40% it doesnt get any simpler than that...
What percentage of conqueror or uncollected people got these god tier new champs as 6*5* in relation to the overall number of uncollected and conqueror summoners after the banquet event? If you have the data please share it with us.
What number of conqueror and UC players are legitimately complaining in here then?.. cause most of the people are complaining about not being able to auto play it 🤣
What percentage of conqueror or uncollected people got these god tier new champs as 6*5* in relation to the overall number of uncollected and conqueror summoners after the banquet event? If you have the data please share it with us.
They don’t know, but they got opinions. It goes something like this:
1. It’s easy for me. Git gud. 2. I saw it on the internet so it must be true.
Clearly the Banquet event was like Oprah. Every player at every progression level now has God Tier R4/R5 6* so there’s no excuse for not being able to beat brand new never before seen bosses at your respective progression level for the same rewards you were getting previously.
2+2=5
Here is what i can tell u from reading other posts.. its an example.. I saw many people complaining about the last boss.. Absorving Man... How his regen was insane.. how they restarted several times... How they team revived and healed back to max health but as soon as they join the fight it would start regening back to full... People who said i took Galan, Doom, QS.. and every other top champ possible... Yet NONE of them named a healblock or reverse healing champ... Now is that really a difficulty issue?
Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that players lingering in lower difficulties, amongst other factors, might be a consideration for Kabam. But it really gives the shaft to players who are in their appropriate progression.
This is a bit of an open question, and one I've discussed and thought about off line. My initial reaction was there was no way progression tier players could possess the champions I calculated as being appropriate for the content in those EQ tiers. However, I was told by Kabam (and they acknowledged this in more general terms here) that the champion strength I calculated as necessary was what they datamined players actually bringing to the content. Which begs the question: where are they getting them from?
The Act content itself doesn't really have the materials necessary. Big sales contain such material, but the percentage of players that either spend cash or grind enough arena to have large unit hoards is a relatively small percentage of the playerbase as a whole. That leaves content like AQ or Battlegrounds, possibly Incursions.
Which is possible: AQ rewards are independent of player strength: you get what everyone else gets regardless of what you do. Our own alliance is very heterogenous, and we run 653. The players running map 3 get the same rewards as the players running map 6. Once upon a time, such alliances were rare. Alliance war forced alliances to be a lot more homogenous, and you couldn't split up AQ as we can now. Plus map costs made map splitting more socially complex.
If I assume Kabam's data is correct, then it would seem that alongside a lot of the players that might be parked at lower progress tiers, advancement in the lower tiers for more active players is a lot faster than it used to be, not just in champion acquisition, but also in champion rank up possibilities, due to much higher resource availability. And this is difficult for veterans like many of us to measure, because the only way for us to see it is to roll new accounts, and when we play them we advance much faster than the average player would due to higher experience. So we run into higher tier content earlier in our roster development than the average player. As a result, we see higher difficulty than the average player does.
To figure out if Kabam's difficulty adjustments really are appropriate for the average player, we would have to simulate the behavior of the average player. That means doing content at their pace, ranking up at their pace, and being less aggressive in moving up to higher reward tiers as they typically are. And that's not easy for most of us to do, because nobody wants to play the game significantly under speed, because that's boring.
What percentage of conqueror or uncollected people got these god tier new champs as 6*5* in relation to the overall number of uncollected and conqueror summoners after the banquet event? If you have the data please share it with us.
They don’t know, but they got opinions. It goes something like this:
1. It’s easy for me. Git gud. 2. I saw it on the internet so it must be true.
Clearly the Banquet event was like Oprah. Every player at every progression level now has God Tier R4/R5 6* so there’s no excuse for not being able to beat brand new never before seen bosses at your respective progression level for the same rewards you were getting previously.
2+2=5
Here is what i can tell u from reading other posts.. its an example.. I saw many people complaining about the last boss.. Absorving Man... How his regen was insane.. how they restarted several times... How they team revived and healed back to max health but as soon as they join the fight it would start regening back to full... People who said i took Galan, Doom, QS.. and every other top champ possible... Yet NONE of them named a healblock or reverse healing champ... Now is that really a difficulty issue?
I think we need to separate the difficulty changes in general from the every-so-often complaints about particularly tough bosses. Players have been complaining about unfair EQ bosses since Ice Phoenix. We go months with bosses that are relatively straight forward to kill, and then every once in a while we get a few that actually require actually specific counters and counter-tactics. AbMan is not a hard boss. His specials are not the hardest to dodge. And champs like Void melt him like gelato in a pizza oven. But you have to read his description, think about his abilities and nodes, and maybe practice against his specials in a lower difficulty first. Just like we used to do for many other tricky and difficult bosses.
The fact that you have to actually stop to consider the fight in UC, and not say Cav, is somewhat out of the ordinary, but not unprecedented. And given how the game is moving in the direction of more "RPG-like" content (as Kabam likes to describe it) means introducing players to such content earlier in their development is not a bad idea. Many people have been saying for a while now ever since the game started making large changes to content and progression that the game really starts at UC now. There's a lot of truth in that. And increasingly, the game will start in UC, by introducing players in UC to the skills they will need if they hope to ever get past UC.
What percentage of conqueror or uncollected people got these god tier new champs as 6*5* in relation to the overall number of uncollected and conqueror summoners after the banquet event? If you have the data please share it with us.
They don’t know, but they got opinions. It goes something like this:
1. It’s easy for me. Git gud. 2. I saw it on the internet so it must be true.
Clearly the Banquet event was like Oprah. Every player at every progression level now has God Tier R4/R5 6* so there’s no excuse for not being able to beat brand new never before seen bosses at your respective progression level for the same rewards you were getting previously.
2+2=5
Here is what i can tell u from reading other posts.. its an example.. I saw many people complaining about the last boss.. Absorving Man... How his regen was insane.. how they restarted several times... How they team revived and healed back to max health but as soon as they join the fight it would start regening back to full... People who said i took Galan, Doom, QS.. and every other top champ possible... Yet NONE of them named a healblock or reverse healing champ... Now is that really a difficulty issue?
You realize most new UC players don't have an extremely diverse 5* (and 6*) roster with tons of different options and counters for everything right? If they don't have a good heal block or poison champ how exactly do you expect them to take out that Absorbing Man without potions and boosts?
Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that players lingering in lower difficulties, amongst other factors, might be a consideration for Kabam. But it really gives the shaft to players who are in their appropriate progression.
This is a bit of an open question, and one I've discussed and thought about off line. My initial reaction was there was no way progression tier players could possess the champions I calculated as being appropriate for the content in those EQ tiers. However, I was told by Kabam (and they acknowledged this in more general terms here) that the champion strength I calculated as necessary was what they datamined players actually bringing to the content. Which begs the question: where are they getting them from?
Reading this sparked something. In their data mining, did they eliminate the people autofighting with 5 & 6*s in their calculations of what the average player brought, or did they not, and that is what caused in the 'bigger increase than intended'
Happy to report that changes to EQ and SQ difficulty tuning have been made in-game. As previously mentioned, you will still notice an increase to the difficulty but it should be much more approachable now.
This didn't really solve anything. I'm joining others in boycotting any purchases. Time is money and I don't have enough of either for the game to be taking both. Higher difficulty EQ and SQ takes more time, and auto fight is a completely useless feature especially if it's just going to be used against us in the future with all the data mining on easier difficulties.
Others have said this before but the main acts are the portion of the game where new challenges and higher degree of skill should be focused on. EQ and SQ should be a place for those of us to grind, earn rewards, build rosters and hone skills to keep progressing through the main story. That's your "sweet spot." This just tastes like black licorice.
Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that players lingering in lower difficulties, amongst other factors, might be a consideration for Kabam. But it really gives the shaft to players who are in their appropriate progression.
This is a bit of an open question, and one I've discussed and thought about off line. My initial reaction was there was no way progression tier players could possess the champions I calculated as being appropriate for the content in those EQ tiers. However, I was told by Kabam (and they acknowledged this in more general terms here) that the champion strength I calculated as necessary was what they datamined players actually bringing to the content. Which begs the question: where are they getting them from?
Reading this sparked something. In their data mining, did they eliminate the people autofighting with 5 & 6*s in their calculations of what the average player brought, or did they not, and that is what caused in the 'bigger increase than intended'
Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that players lingering in lower difficulties, amongst other factors, might be a consideration for Kabam. But it really gives the shaft to players who are in their appropriate progression.
This is a bit of an open question, and one I've discussed and thought about off line. My initial reaction was there was no way progression tier players could possess the champions I calculated as being appropriate for the content in those EQ tiers. However, I was told by Kabam (and they acknowledged this in more general terms here) that the champion strength I calculated as necessary was what they datamined players actually bringing to the content. Which begs the question: where are they getting them from?
Reading this sparked something. In their data mining, did they eliminate the people autofighting with 5 & 6*s in their calculations of what the average player brought, or did they not, and that is what caused in the 'bigger increase than intended'
I wondered this also.
I'm glad you've said this about autofight because if they haven't taken it into account (maybe it's not set up to log when if/when autofight is activated) it could be badly skewing the data.
Positives first - the game team made an alteration quickly and Kabam Jax was on the ball with getting updates to us as quickly as he could.
While I get the arguments for revisiting the difficulty levels across EQ/SQ content, I have to agree with the majority who say it's still overturned. For me the numbers are still a good 20% or so (noting that it's more complex than just a number) above what I'd expect to / hope to see.
We see a great deal of caution when it comes to the likes of champion buffs etc (and understandably so). With this difficulty reworking it doesn't appear to have had a similar level of caution shown. Fights take longer; a difficulty upgrade but not necessarily a fun upgrade.
Feeling like I'm to blame for skewing kabams data. I'm cav but should be TB. Tried grandmaster nearly a year ago for the first time and not really had time since. Can complete the path with whole team in tact but waiting for chance to save units as I sucked at GM fight. Also have a 2nd account at UC but don't really play it anymore except in AQ but still have a small roster with 2 R3 6*s. I'm in a 50+mil ally and doing my bit and enjoying the time I get on the game. I was running through UC EQ and then Cav when I had time. Just to add, not being able to autofight is a pain as I get a lot of spare energy and I had just started to burn it up collecting units for my GM fight. Looks like I'm not alone if kabams data is anything to go by. If I put the same time into the game now, I will get less rewards...which is a bit s#*t Not looking for opinions on my skill or how I should progress, just showing up as one of the guys hanging around with out of balance progress/roster
Clear as hell the community is BEYOND PISSED!!! Thread is getting STUPID long, yet no response the garbage “ we nerfed it a bit”. Didn’t nerf enough! Not where it has always been for YEARS!!! U increased it by like 30-40% and increased rewards by ABSOLUTE 0?!?! Ridiculous and reprehensible!!! Typical. Rewards for how it used to be should’ve increased by 20% every year. That’s right 20% every year. That means 5yrs from now rewards should DOUBLE! 90% don’t play for 5yrs. 5yrs ago? 6* were t even a thing. Now? 6* are very prevalent, so they should be as easy to get as 5* were 5yrs ago. Add all the BROKEN aspect of the game (inputs, lag, skipped frames, LOADING ISSUES, etc.. add all that on top of this increased difficulty for ZERO reason, and rewards that still didn’t increase?? Rewards should be 50% what they were like 2yrs ago to keep pace with progressing
Kabam always so dam stingy as hell with rewards!!! Never realizing the more ppl accounts grow, the more likely they are to play Act 6 or 7, which will obviously make them a lot of money from ppl playing and trying to finish harder content!!! They always look at a short term loss, versus a long term gain! Game so broken, so many ppl pissed, yet they change NOTHING?!?! Don’t even answer the ppl? All we get is the “meta data” said make it a lot harder (even what was normal and heroic) from top To bottom difficulty?? Meta data didn’t say almost the exact same dam thing 2yrs ago??? I call BS!!!
Here is what i can tell u from reading other posts.. its an example.. I saw many people complaining about the last boss.. Absorving Man... How his regen was insane.. how they restarted several times... How they team revived and healed back to max health but as soon as they join the fight it would start regening back to full... People who said i took Galan, Doom, QS.. and every other top champ possible... Yet NONE of them named a healblock or reverse healing champ... Now is that really a difficulty issue?
That would be a roster management issue on their part. Took me very little time to figure out that Void was MY best option there and it worked for me in UC and would expect it will at Cav too (I haven’t started Chapter 3 yet in Cav).
But there is still a scaling and consistency issue across levels of progression. I just can’t see where a true UC level player is going to fare well against the UC level content, particularly when they may not even have the specific roster options to deal with those very specific challenges.
Reading this sparked something. In their data mining, did they eliminate the people autofighting with 5 & 6*s in their calculations of what the average player brought, or did they not, and that is what caused in the 'bigger increase than intended'
Bingo. I don’t think you can just put a blanket “average” on it and call that a proper benchmark. But it would have been possible to filter their data set by progression level and that would likely have given a more suitable result. And they may have done that, but if they did, then very likely there’s a large population within the game opting not to progress. And that would support my assertion that it gives the shaft to the players who are growing into their progression level.
Feeling like I'm to blame for skewing kabams data. I'm cav but should be TB. Tried grandmaster nearly a year ago for the first time and not really had time since. Can complete the path with whole team in tact but waiting for chance to save units as I sucked at GM fight. Also have a 2nd account at UC but don't really play it anymore except in AQ but still have a small roster with 2 R3 6*s. I'm in a 50+mil ally and doing my bit and enjoying the time I get on the game. I was running through UC EQ and then Cav when I had time. Just to add, not being able to autofight is a pain as I get a lot of spare energy and I had just started to burn it up collecting units for my GM fight. Looks like I'm not alone if kabams data is anything to go by. If I put the same time into the game now, I will get less rewards...which is a bit s#*t Not looking for opinions on my skill or how I should progress, just showing up as one of the guys hanging around with out of balance progress/roster
I don’t think it’s a “blame” thing. And I don’t think it’s an easy job for Kabam. Being in IT, I’ve watched data sets get skewed for a variety of reasons over the years and even the best analytics people (my wife is one of them and she’s pretty damn good - but she gets it wrong sometimes) make mistakes in their interpretation of the data.
I’m probably close to ready to make a TB push myself. Just need some of the niche options to deal with certain content (e.g. just starting out, I’ve been struggling with Dormammu in 6.2.1, so I’m working on Negative at 5* rarity to hopefully help with that).
That GM quest looks equally fun and equally frustrating. I’ve watched videos and it seems great conceptually but will likely take tons of practice to master. Those are the kinds of challenges I can get behind, but can also see where some of the casual player base would eye roll and move on.
With the whole question of whether the new difficulties are appropriate or not, I would like to point out the following: You shouldn't see the evaluation as purely static. Ultimately, the question of difficulty is one that is subject to development or process. Right now we have bigger changes coming up with the Relics and the upcoming introduction of 7* Champs. Content that might be a little too heavy today can be just right tomorrow with a matching 5* or even 6* - Relic or a 7* - Champs. Of course, I can't say for sure either, I don't have a 6* - Relic or a 7* - Champ yet either. But my expectation would be that Kabam has priced in these very soon upcoming changes when determining the new difficulty and since the new difficulties are already there but the 6* - Relics or 7* Champs are not yet, it is for me currently quite normal that you have to stretch more to play the content. I'm curious how it will behave when all the other innovations are there and whether the difficulties then don't fit better with the respective Rossster.
From my point of view, you have to wait with a final assessment until all changes are there and then you have to see how they relate to each other. It's a little too hard at the moment, but I'd be disappointed if I got the new 7* and then again didn't have any decent content to use.
Comments
I also commented that it needs to be appropriately-tuned. Which is always a process starting out. It's about tuning it in a way that meets the objectives, but isn't overly-powerful in a way that is too much for people to adjust to.
We're talking about practical versus principle. I don't agree that it should never change on principle, or that any changes must be met with Rewards increases. Not when it's still in the process of getting it where it needs to be. You think the reactions are negative now, try adding more Rewards then taking them away when you readjust it. I understand why they're an afterthought. Not to mention it compounds work.
On the practical side, I get why it's important to revise content, in ways I've already gone into. The game has grown. Revisions aren't always one way, easier content, more Rewards. Sometimes it involves adding more challenge to meet the capabilities and needs of Players. Now, the sweet spot for that is the variable that needs to be aimed for, but I don't agree that it shouldn't be done on principle. That's just being resistant to change.
I'm pretty sure that's a clear stance.
If you look at the difficulty maps, each difficulty contains a different rarity. Contender contains 2* champs, Proven contains 3* champs, and so on up to Thronebreaker which contains 7* champs. This was obviously done deliberately to standardize on the rarity in each difficulty tier and make them different from each other. It is what it is: it wasn't necessary, but I can see why the designers might want to do that. But with that design change they needed to use nodes to adjust the difficulty in each tier, because the older tiers were not designed that way: they were designed more organically with different situational usage of rarity.
The entire exercise is essentially a difficulty soft reboot. Proven is not harder than it used to be, because there was no Proven before. Naming difficulties after progress titles doesn't happen until Uncollected, and the *meaning* of calling the tier after that progress title was not "Uncollected players should be able to do this just fine." The meaning of new difficulty tiers was also vague and ambiguous originally, and also organically developed over time. As we saw when new difficulty tiers were added, doing so completely redefined the meaning of older tiers at the same time, which was also confusing to many players. Why does Master get easier when Uncollected is added? If Master meant something specific to a specific group of players, it wouldn't. Ditto Uncollected and Cavalier.
And just to tackle the other elephant in the room, why not increase rewards if difficulty is being increased as well? Because difficulty is not being increased specifically to make the content harder than originally intended. It is being increased to target what it should always have been, given the increases in player strength over time. While difficulty is a moving target, because player power is a moving target, the rewards in the game follow a completely different set of economic and progressional constraints. There's a belief that rewards should be tied to difficulty. Harder content should have higher rewards, and thus increasing the difficulty should increase the rewards. But that's not the most important game design rule. In fact, I would argue there's no such rule at all. Difficulty should be appropriate to the target players' power, and rewards should be appropriate to the target players' progressional appropriateness, and those two don't have to be tied together.
Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
I can say though, that as a Cavalier player comfortable that my skills are in line with that progression with a roster probably a bit higher, the retuned UC level, at least in Chapter 3, was pretty challenging. Cavalier even more so. Am I clearing them? Yep. Do I feel tremendous amounts of empathy for UC players trying to clear UC, Conqueror trying to clear conqueror, etc? 100% even after the “retune”. That’s just not balanced to what should be expected of a roster at those respective levels and it seems like (I could be wrong), most are still in agreement with this and aren’t ok with this “new normal”.
As an aside, this misalignment would equally and secondarily affect auto-play for players above those progression levels as well.
Saw so many posts during CM and banquet event... See them in global.. people with conqueror or UC titles.. with god tier new champs... 6* 5*.. even some ranked.. which is kinda ridiculous based on their progression....
Well where exactly are u planning to use those pulls?...cause honestly UC is not that hard...
Cav kinda got nerfed.. even the description of each chapter got simplified ... IE: cav 1.1 Science 40% atk rating... Skill -40% it doesnt get any simpler than that...
Sounds more like you're just mad that they're allowing newer players to progress faster.
I didn’t find the increases “directly” difficult per se. No extra planning. AI not any different. Nodes not “extra” as it were. My approach didn’t need to change.
But the healthpool issue I can’t seem to get around. 50 hits became 75 and 12 minutes for clearing became 16.
I can’t see that being good. For me it’s not. I am not going to increase my time for any reason. My opinion - such as it is- is that most people probably have timing rhythms. Lunch break. Coffee break. Etc. This completely changes that and I can’t see that in any way benefiting either kabam or the player base if it leads to less engagement
1. It’s easy for me. Git gud.
2. I saw it on the internet so it must be true.
Clearly the Banquet event was like Oprah. Every player at every progression level now has God Tier R4/R5 6* so there’s no excuse for not being able to beat brand new never before seen bosses at your respective progression level for the same rewards you were getting previously.
2+2=5
I saw many people complaining about the last boss.. Absorving Man... How his regen was insane.. how they restarted several times... How they team revived and healed back to max health but as soon as they join the fight it would start regening back to full... People who said i took Galan, Doom, QS.. and every other top champ possible... Yet NONE of them named a healblock or reverse healing champ... Now is that really a difficulty issue?
The Act content itself doesn't really have the materials necessary. Big sales contain such material, but the percentage of players that either spend cash or grind enough arena to have large unit hoards is a relatively small percentage of the playerbase as a whole. That leaves content like AQ or Battlegrounds, possibly Incursions.
Which is possible: AQ rewards are independent of player strength: you get what everyone else gets regardless of what you do. Our own alliance is very heterogenous, and we run 653. The players running map 3 get the same rewards as the players running map 6. Once upon a time, such alliances were rare. Alliance war forced alliances to be a lot more homogenous, and you couldn't split up AQ as we can now. Plus map costs made map splitting more socially complex.
If I assume Kabam's data is correct, then it would seem that alongside a lot of the players that might be parked at lower progress tiers, advancement in the lower tiers for more active players is a lot faster than it used to be, not just in champion acquisition, but also in champion rank up possibilities, due to much higher resource availability. And this is difficult for veterans like many of us to measure, because the only way for us to see it is to roll new accounts, and when we play them we advance much faster than the average player would due to higher experience. So we run into higher tier content earlier in our roster development than the average player. As a result, we see higher difficulty than the average player does.
To figure out if Kabam's difficulty adjustments really are appropriate for the average player, we would have to simulate the behavior of the average player. That means doing content at their pace, ranking up at their pace, and being less aggressive in moving up to higher reward tiers as they typically are. And that's not easy for most of us to do, because nobody wants to play the game significantly under speed, because that's boring.
The fact that you have to actually stop to consider the fight in UC, and not say Cav, is somewhat out of the ordinary, but not unprecedented. And given how the game is moving in the direction of more "RPG-like" content (as Kabam likes to describe it) means introducing players to such content earlier in their development is not a bad idea. Many people have been saying for a while now ever since the game started making large changes to content and progression that the game really starts at UC now. There's a lot of truth in that. And increasingly, the game will start in UC, by introducing players in UC to the skills they will need if they hope to ever get past UC.
Can someone please confirm Thronebreaker and Cav EQ difficulties have been toned down ???
Please let me know.
Others have said this before but the main acts are the portion of the game where new challenges and higher degree of skill should be focused on. EQ and SQ should be a place for those of us to grind, earn rewards, build rosters and hone skills to keep progressing through the main story. That's your "sweet spot." This just tastes like black licorice.
Positives first - the game team made an alteration quickly and Kabam Jax was on the ball with getting updates to us as quickly as he could.
While I get the arguments for revisiting the difficulty levels across EQ/SQ content, I have to agree with the majority who say it's still overturned. For me the numbers are still a good 20% or so (noting that it's more complex than just a number) above what I'd expect to / hope to see.
We see a great deal of caution when it comes to the likes of champion buffs etc (and understandably so). With this difficulty reworking it doesn't appear to have had a similar level of caution shown. Fights take longer; a difficulty upgrade but not necessarily a fun upgrade.
I'm cav but should be TB. Tried grandmaster nearly a year ago for the first time and not really had time since. Can complete the path with whole team in tact but waiting for chance to save units as I sucked at GM fight. Also have a 2nd account at UC but don't really play it anymore except in AQ but still have a small roster with 2 R3 6*s. I'm in a 50+mil ally and doing my bit and enjoying the time I get on the game.
I was running through UC EQ and then Cav when I had time.
Just to add, not being able to autofight is a pain as I get a lot of spare energy and I had just started to burn it up collecting units for my GM fight.
Looks like I'm not alone if kabams data is anything to go by. If I put the same time into the game now, I will get less rewards...which is a bit s#*t
Not looking for opinions on my skill or how I should progress, just showing up as one of the guys hanging around with out of balance progress/roster
To bottom difficulty?? Meta data didn’t say almost the exact same dam thing 2yrs ago??? I call BS!!!
But there is still a scaling and consistency issue across levels of progression. I just can’t see where a true UC level player is going to fare well against the UC level content, particularly when they may not even have the specific roster options to deal with those very specific challenges.
Data is a tricky animal. GIGO.
I’m probably close to ready to make a TB push myself. Just need some of the niche options to deal with certain content (e.g. just starting out, I’ve been struggling with Dormammu in 6.2.1, so I’m working on Negative at 5* rarity to hopefully help with that).
That GM quest looks equally fun and equally frustrating. I’ve watched videos and it seems great conceptually but will likely take tons of practice to master. Those are the kinds of challenges I can get behind, but can also see where some of the casual player base would eye roll and move on.
From my point of view, you have to wait with a final assessment until all changes are there and then you have to see how they relate to each other. It's a little too hard at the moment, but I'd be disappointed if I got the new 7* and then again didn't have any decent content to use.