I fear this is another sign of a shift in focus to Battlegrounds and away from quest based content.
Uncollected is the minimum to access Battlegrounds and this will make it easier to get to that progression level.
The first warning sign to me was the Battlegrounds store being the best in the game by far and the other stores not being updated. The second sign was the lack of any endgame content for a long time. The third sign was the announcement that 8.3 will be cut in half. And now they are spending time remaking mid-game content in place of delivering endgame content.
The shift towards accelerating players to UC as the defacto start of the bulk of the game started long before Battlegrounds existed. And end game caliber content in this game tends to come in waves: people are literally always complaining that the devs are not working on end game content except when we're flooded with it.
I believe this is people seeing what they wish to see.
The issue also comes with the introduction of 8.3 as the first modern story quest with only 3 paths. We don't yet know if that's going to be a net positive change, but we do know that change is being made with the intention of diverting resources away from Act content and towards other content. I just hope BGs isn't the only other content they're diverting those resources towards.
I fear this is another sign of a shift in focus to Battlegrounds and away from quest based content.
Uncollected is the minimum to access Battlegrounds and this will make it easier to get to that progression level.
The first warning sign to me was the Battlegrounds store being the best in the game by far and the other stores not being updated. The second sign was the lack of any endgame content for a long time. The third sign was the announcement that 8.3 will be cut in half. And now they are spending time remaking mid-game content in place of delivering endgame content.
The shift towards accelerating players to UC as the defacto start of the bulk of the game started long before Battlegrounds existed. And end game caliber content in this game tends to come in waves: people are literally always complaining that the devs are not working on end game content except when we're flooded with it.
I believe this is people seeing what they wish to see.
Shooting stars was highly rewarding content, but it wasn’t hard or time consuming. In terms of this game having “stuff to do,” we’ve had one chapter of story mode in 2023, shooting stars, and the EoP finale/Carina.
I literally can’t think of the last time we had a bonus event along the lines of a boss rush or celebrity challenge. I am choosing not to count Lunar New Year for that. It’s not relevant to the type of content we’re discussing.
Recent summers have included Gauntlet, EOP and SOP. On top of that, we’ve lost functional war and AQ has become fatally unrewarding due to their stubborn refusal to update the glory store.
And I think you’ve said things that are at odds with each other - that we see what we want to see and that we’re flooded at times with endgame content. That’s ridiculous. You can track major releases and see when they were releasing story content and a variant a week apart or a month apart.
Some of those floods were designed to help the most advanced players be first in line for new progression titles or materials, like Carina v2 and 7.4.
The SoP/Gauntlet/EoP cycle was actually an anomalous flood of end game content that was unlikely to be sustainable. Most of the time, end game content arrives at a much slower pace. In fact the last time something like Gauntlet was released in the game was probably the Maze. And there have been only three "RoL-style" pieces of end game content added to the game in its eight year plus history (RoL. Labyrinth, Abyss). Outside of the burst of SoP?Gauntlet/EoP, end game content has always been relatively thin. Variants have come in burst, and the last variant was end of 2021.
You seem to be implying that I'm overestimating the amount of end game content that is added to the game, but that's the exact opposite from what I'm saying. Bursts of end game content are rare. The fact that we aren't living in one at the moment can't be used as proof of a shift towards Battlegrounds, when for this game that dearth of end game content is more likely to be due to the fact that it is Tuesday.
The current lack of war is not evidence of a move away from war, it is the exact opposite: it is recent development work on war that has caused the temporary interruption in war. That's certainly not evidence of a shift away from war and towards BG. And complaints about the glory store - specifically for higher tier alliances - is just a function of the fact that Kabam updates stores very slowly. Everyone agrees the BG stores have super high rewards - whether they are really high or too high is a debatable point - but it would be double counting (and triple counting and quadruple counting) to say that the high rewards of BG is evidence of a shift towards it, and the fact that the glory store lags behind it is *also* evidence of a shift towards BG.
I fear this is another sign of a shift in focus to Battlegrounds and away from quest based content.
Uncollected is the minimum to access Battlegrounds and this will make it easier to get to that progression level.
The first warning sign to me was the Battlegrounds store being the best in the game by far and the other stores not being updated. The second sign was the lack of any endgame content for a long time. The third sign was the announcement that 8.3 will be cut in half. And now they are spending time remaking mid-game content in place of delivering endgame content.
The shift towards accelerating players to UC as the defacto start of the bulk of the game started long before Battlegrounds existed. And end game caliber content in this game tends to come in waves: people are literally always complaining that the devs are not working on end game content except when we're flooded with it.
I believe this is people seeing what they wish to see.
It’s the complete opposite of what I wish to see so I hope I’m wrong.
Any one of those signs I mentioned by itself can be explained away. Putting them all together has me concerned.
Maybe it’s just timing but as you mentioned in another post, variants ended in 2021, last summer we had a lot of endgame-ish events going on. This year we have none of that, no boss rushes, and the announcement that 8.3 is cut in half. The last one is the biggest concern to me.
Again, I hope I’m wrong and this is just a content lull that happens to coincide with the other things and we’ll all be thrilled with how a shortened 8.3 turns out and 8.4 won’t be as far off. I just have a feeling that’s not the case.
I fear this is another sign of a shift in focus to Battlegrounds and away from quest based content.
Uncollected is the minimum to access Battlegrounds and this will make it easier to get to that progression level.
The first warning sign to me was the Battlegrounds store being the best in the game by far and the other stores not being updated. The second sign was the lack of any endgame content for a long time. The third sign was the announcement that 8.3 will be cut in half. And now they are spending time remaking mid-game content in place of delivering endgame content.
The shift towards accelerating players to UC as the defacto start of the bulk of the game started long before Battlegrounds existed. And end game caliber content in this game tends to come in waves: people are literally always complaining that the devs are not working on end game content except when we're flooded with it.
I believe this is people seeing what they wish to see.
Shooting stars was highly rewarding content, but it wasn’t hard or time consuming. In terms of this game having “stuff to do,” we’ve had one chapter of story mode in 2023, shooting stars, and the EoP finale/Carina.
I literally can’t think of the last time we had a bonus event along the lines of a boss rush or celebrity challenge. I am choosing not to count Lunar New Year for that. It’s not relevant to the type of content we’re discussing.
Recent summers have included Gauntlet, EOP and SOP. On top of that, we’ve lost functional war and AQ has become fatally unrewarding due to their stubborn refusal to update the glory store.
And I think you’ve said things that are at odds with each other - that we see what we want to see and that we’re flooded at times with endgame content. That’s ridiculous. You can track major releases and see when they were releasing story content and a variant a week apart or a month apart.
Some of those floods were designed to help the most advanced players be first in line for new progression titles or materials, like Carina v2 and 7.4.
The SoP/Gauntlet/EoP cycle was actually an anomalous flood of end game content that was unlikely to be sustainable. Most of the time, end game content arrives at a much slower pace. In fact the last time something like Gauntlet was released in the game was probably the Maze. And there have been only three "RoL-style" pieces of end game content added to the game in its eight year plus history (RoL. Labyrinth, Abyss). Outside of the burst of SoP?Gauntlet/EoP, end game content has always been relatively thin. Variants have come in burst, and the last variant was end of 2021.
You seem to be implying that I'm overestimating the amount of end game content that is added to the game, but that's the exact opposite from what I'm saying. Bursts of end game content are rare. The fact that we aren't living in one at the moment can't be used as proof of a shift towards Battlegrounds, when for this game that dearth of end game content is more likely to be due to the fact that it is Tuesday.
The current lack of war is not evidence of a move away from war, it is the exact opposite: it is recent development work on war that has caused the temporary interruption in war. That's certainly not evidence of a shift away from war and towards BG. And complaints about the glory store - specifically for higher tier alliances - is just a function of the fact that Kabam updates stores very slowly. Everyone agrees the BG stores have super high rewards - whether they are really high or too high is a debatable point - but it would be double counting (and triple counting and quadruple counting) to say that the high rewards of BG is evidence of a shift towards it, and the fact that the glory store lags behind it is *also* evidence of a shift towards BG.
I don’t think you’re representing the timeline correctly. Gauntlet fed into EOP in summer of 2021. Gauntlet was 3 weeks in June. SOP ran for 11 weeks after that. They overlapped maybe one week.
We had a break from various Pains from early Sept 2021 until May 2022 when EOP ran. EOP ran from May through January.
These are not bursts. These are steady flows. 3 months and 8 months.
Variants were released with a few months between them. We were promised more frequent releases, and that promise was abandoned for other pursuits.
I’m of the opinion that static content would be a welcome addition. If they just can’t design and develop it, then revisiting classic content is a way to do it.
I don’t necessarily *need* static content, though. I’ll settle for something like that Shang Chi challenge, or Mulaney, or that crazy boss rush that had like 31 champs. When is the last time we had literally anything extra thrown into a month? I may truly be forgetting something obvious but I can’t recall.
So I guess the following Gate Key chart is now R.I.P. ?? How about just applying these changes to Labyrinth as well, get rid of the locked camera of Lab. No sense keeping things “interesting”.
So I guess the following Gate Key chart is now R.I.P. ?? How about just applying these changes to Labyrinth as well, get rid of the locked camera of Lab. No sense keeping things “interesting”.
They already got rid of the fixed camera in Labyrinth
I'd rather they nerfed Contender and Proven monthly EQ, they're still ludicrous with 2 and 3 stars that have health pools equivalent to a r3 5* or r2 6*
Comments
You seem to be implying that I'm overestimating the amount of end game content that is added to the game, but that's the exact opposite from what I'm saying. Bursts of end game content are rare. The fact that we aren't living in one at the moment can't be used as proof of a shift towards Battlegrounds, when for this game that dearth of end game content is more likely to be due to the fact that it is Tuesday.
The current lack of war is not evidence of a move away from war, it is the exact opposite: it is recent development work on war that has caused the temporary interruption in war. That's certainly not evidence of a shift away from war and towards BG. And complaints about the glory store - specifically for higher tier alliances - is just a function of the fact that Kabam updates stores very slowly. Everyone agrees the BG stores have super high rewards - whether they are really high or too high is a debatable point - but it would be double counting (and triple counting and quadruple counting) to say that the high rewards of BG is evidence of a shift towards it, and the fact that the glory store lags behind it is *also* evidence of a shift towards BG.
Any one of those signs I mentioned by itself can be explained away. Putting them all together has me concerned.
Maybe it’s just timing but as you mentioned in another post, variants ended in 2021, last summer we had a lot of endgame-ish events going on. This year we have none of that, no boss rushes, and the announcement that 8.3 is cut in half. The last one is the biggest concern to me.
Again, I hope I’m wrong and this is just a content lull that happens to coincide with the other things and we’ll all be thrilled with how a shortened 8.3 turns out and 8.4 won’t be as far off. I just have a feeling that’s not the case.
We had a break from various Pains from early Sept 2021 until May 2022 when EOP ran. EOP ran from May through January.
These are not bursts. These are steady flows. 3 months and 8 months.
Variants were released with a few months between them. We were promised more frequent releases, and that promise was abandoned for other pursuits.
I’m of the opinion that static content would be a welcome addition. If they just can’t design and develop it, then revisiting classic content is a way to do it.
I don’t necessarily *need* static content, though. I’ll settle for something like that Shang Chi challenge, or Mulaney, or that crazy boss rush that had like 31 champs. When is the last time we had literally anything extra thrown into a month? I may truly be forgetting something obvious but I can’t recall.
How about just applying these changes to Labyrinth as well, get rid of the locked camera of Lab. No sense keeping things “interesting”.