Should champion buffs affect older content?
Anly
Member Posts: 615 ★★
There have been times in the past where champs that get buffed increased the difficulty of older content, content that was already there prior to their buff, why should when you do a quest affect your ability to complete it and why do players that have already completed it get to have an eaiser time?
Champs arent changed in rol abyss and lab but thats not the case for everything else? And i can only hope thats also not the case for eop and the gauntlet.
Champs arent changed in rol abyss and lab but thats not the case for everything else? And i can only hope thats also not the case for eop and the gauntlet.
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While some champions were easier in older days their counters were also less
Now we have more counters to their buffed counterparts too
So not only will you no longer be able to use champs that did not exist when the content was released, you will also have all your champs temporarily de-ranked to the highest rank that was achievable when that content was released. It isn't fair that players were limited to 6* rank 2s when 6.1 came out, and now players can blast through it with rank 4s. No Herc, no 7* champs, no Sigil potions.
Oh wait, on second thought that's a horrible idea.
The champions in Labyrinth and Abyss in general do not change when champions are updated, because those are in fact different champions. That isn't our Red Hulk with buffs, that's a completely different Red Hulk. Buffing Red Hulk doesn't automatically buff Ex Red Hulk any more than it buffs Captain Marvel. But when the player version of the champion is used in content, most of the time that version changes along with the player version, because it *is* the player version. And the idea that buffing those champions somehow disadvantages future players ignores the fact that future players always have *enormous* advantages in running content in general. They always have the benefit of more public knowledge and experience, they have the benefit of having access to champions that did not exist when the content was created and can much more easily counter the content, they have the benefit of having access to higher rarities and ranks that did not exist when the content was originally balanced. We don't consider this unfair in general, this is just how the game evolves over time. Complaining about one tiny ripple upstream against the huge current downstream of player advantages seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
And as you admit, they have more crystals anyway which does increase chance to get good champions. 2 attempts is more likely than 1 to get a viable option. Just because both are "up to fate" doesn't mean one isn't more likely
I'm sure there are players that felt that Act 7 was easier for them than Act 5, simply because when they tackled Act 7 they had a better roster, relatively speaking, than when they tackled Act 5. For them, Act 7 was easier. But we don't say that well, maybe Act 7 is easier than Act 5. Act 7 is objectively harder regardless of individual anecdotes.
But this is also a self-annihilating argument. If you argue that allowing players to bring stronger champs at stronger ranks doesn't reduce the content difficulty because some players might not have those things, then I can argue that updating the defenders doesn't necessarily make it harder, because you're assuming that the players will have a harder time with the updated defenders. But that depends on their roster. If RNG says the content doesn't get easier, then RNG says the content doesn't get harder either.
One crystal is random. But across dozens and hundreds of crystals, statistics follows distributions. If you want one specific champ and they are in the featured crystals, you could get any one of the twenty four champs in the crystal when you open one crystal. However, if you open ten the odds of getting the champ you want isn't still one in twenty four, it becomes about one in three. If you open twenty, the odds become more than one in two. And if you open fifty, you now have almost 90% chance to get what you want.
Or you can throw your hands up, say its all RNG so nothing is guaranteed, and open basics. Which many people do. And as a result, nine out of ten of the former group get the champ they want, and three out of ten of the latter group do. Those players were all subject to the same RNG, but their decisions changed the outcome nonetheless.
My crystals are just as random as any other players'. However, my roster is not.
Building roster is a part of beating content. If a player joins today, Act 6.1 is impossible for them because they don't have 5* or 6* champs. The difficulty is literally infinite. Part of the process for tackling it is to build their roster to the point where they can tackle the content. When the content first launched, the best you could do then was much lower than the best a player can do now. Whether the player had low skill or high skill, the best they could do was a roster of 6* R2. Today they can theoretically bring 6* r5. They can bring 7* champs. And with that extra power comes more flexibility in which champs they bring. When Act 6.1 came out, there was a lot of discussion about which champs had enough damage to take on Crossbones. Today, that's less of an issue. Not every 5* R4 had enough damage. But a lot of 6* R3s have plenty enough.
More options means there are more ways for *everyone* to build their roster into an Act 6-clearing roster. More ways means less dependence on RNG, quicker acquisition of the minimum requirements, and more flexibility to supplement lower skill levels. These are benefits that everyone accrues. There's no reason to only count the players who just happen to have the additional options on day one.
they dont have the option to get that champ, they have a chance to, they have a option to purchase crystals, what they get from them isnt up to them
Yes there is less of a dependence on rng with each new addition to the roster but the rng hasnt gotten to where you could actually argue this point since a majority of crystals you open are gonna suck it feels like there are another set of odds entirely when opening a crystal, 80% chance to get a bad champ and 20% to get someone good, i mean kabam has already proven they know what champs are good and which are not and with the whole paragon crystal fiasco with the odds seeming fishy it makes me suspect that there could be other places where that is true aswell, since you usually work with stuff like this can you confirm or deny this?
I could make the argument to progress lock defender changes in eq but that would be taking it to far, all in all good points made by everyone 👍
For example, Act 5 is debatably the first truly difficult piece of story content for new players. The first 4 quests in chapter 1 use Flare, Life Transfer, and Breakthrough as global nodes. All of those nodes benefit any attacker you want to take into the quest, while Life Transfer and Flare can end you if you're not careful. But of course, Kitty, Herc, Ghost, Corvus, Gladiator Hulk, and much more have greater benefit in those quests. None of which were released until after Act 5 dropped. You can use almost any champion you want, but none of the most viable options existed at the time, so new players are much more likely to get through that same content much faster and easier.
And then onto Act 5.2. I personally believe 5.2.4 is the hardest quest for new players in all of act 5, as Masochism was such a struggle for me at the time. I personally used Sabertooth with the Killmonger synergy as my counter to Masochism, but after doing some research I've heard of a lot of different champions that make Masochism very easy to deal with. Those being: Nick Fury, Proxima Midnight, Toad, Jubilee, Captain Britain, Archangel, Warlock, Apoc, Bishop, Storm, Ghost, Quake, Storm X, Omega Red, BWDO, Gorr and White Magneto. That's not all, but these are just 17 champions that counter Masochism better than most. Can you guess how many have either been buffed or released since this quest went live? Can ya? It's 15. Only two of those champions, Archangel and Quake, were just as viable in 2017 as they are today.
So not only have we gained at least 15 champions capable of tackling that single quest with ease since players were tasked with taking it on for the first time, we can now farm crystal shards much faster, giving us more chances at better pulls.
And even then, I'm still using a 6* Sabertooth in Act 7, just as I did with a 4* Sabertooth in Act 5. Because this game finally allows us to use our diverse rosters, of meme tier to beyond got tier champions, for some of the highest level content in the game.
That "80% chance to get a bad champ" might have been true in 2017. But today, a friend of mine who just started his account a few months back is tackling 5.2.4 with 6* rank 1 Nick Fury, Knull, and Goldpool, 4* rank 4 Apoc and 5* rank 3 Blade, entirely free to play. None of those champions were available at the time of Act 5.
Afterall, would it be "fair" if new players used their Galans against old, unbuffed champs like Spidergwen? Ir'd just make old content trivial.
So for the sake of some balance, I think it's only fair to buff the old content too.