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Thoughts on death in the contest?
SmoothyMoves
Posts: 8 ★
Hey guys, first post here, and I’ve played the game for a little over 8 years if you include breaks and time away. I’ve had a lot of fun connecting to the community via livestreams and such. There are a lot of things I really do love about what Kabam has done with the game and I’d agree it’s possibly the best it’s ever been for f2p players
That said I sort of struggle with the idea of what you guys did with revive farming. I’ve made sure to actually read up on the forums about the issues and the actual logistics of it. A r2 7* can auto farm into act 5 and so forth. I myself am a Cavalier and will be TB soon since coming back to the game. What I guess I struggle to come to terms with is how you guys at Kabam have decided to “fix” the issue: You’ve tuned many aspects of the game to make sure people can’t or at least make it difficult to engineer accounts with progression based rewards and I love that. I’d love to make sure you know Jax this isn’t a post to hate on kabam and what not I want to make sure I give flowers where they’re due and you guys definitely deserve a lot.
All that to say with the changes in revives it sort of leaves me a little confused. On one hand exploitation of the game and its mechanics isn’t ok and players who are achieving valiant and completing content at seemingly unnatural rates it leaves you guys in a tough spot. That said the way you’ve addressed the issue has had more impact on middle of the pack or average players more so than the people who are completing all your content. The second is consumables are a part of any successful game and to remove the access the way you’ve done, at least in my experience and games I’ve played, isn’t a recipe for success. The way you’ve tuned progression for rewards has had me thinking about potentially doing consumables in a similar way. Ie as a Paragon, revives will spawn frequently but only in chapters and quests in between the last title they achieved and the current one. Thronebreaker -> Paragon. Only showing up in Act 7 or 8 but frequently. It would mean that revives though more accessible would require more effort and sometimes complex and extensive rosters to go get them due to node difficulties. It would stop the auto farming and abuse of the system based on how much content you’ve achieved. At least in my mind this would make “death” at least more meaningful without punishing a larger portion of the base and the more average players. This would also be the same for cavaliers Act 5 chapter 3 -> Act 6, and Uncollected/Conquerer and so on and so forth. Maybe not just for revives but consumables as a whole
For those who made it this far I appreciate you taking the time to read the post. I’d love to hear what are people’s thoughts on the matter and if you guys at kabam read this I’d love to hear what you think, and if you guys are really set on keeping the decision to handle it the way you have the same.
If you’re here and you want to criticize please save your time and energy. Kabam overall has been great to us f2p players and bashing them the way I’ve seen on the forums is kind of sad. This post is because I’m concerned about this matter, the way they’ve handled it, and the fact I don’t think it’s beneficial for the game long term. I’m sure they’ll do something to balance it in the comings months in some form but I thought I’d weigh in as I’m a huge fan of the game. Ps sorry I couldn’t make the battlegrounds event!
That said I sort of struggle with the idea of what you guys did with revive farming. I’ve made sure to actually read up on the forums about the issues and the actual logistics of it. A r2 7* can auto farm into act 5 and so forth. I myself am a Cavalier and will be TB soon since coming back to the game. What I guess I struggle to come to terms with is how you guys at Kabam have decided to “fix” the issue: You’ve tuned many aspects of the game to make sure people can’t or at least make it difficult to engineer accounts with progression based rewards and I love that. I’d love to make sure you know Jax this isn’t a post to hate on kabam and what not I want to make sure I give flowers where they’re due and you guys definitely deserve a lot.
All that to say with the changes in revives it sort of leaves me a little confused. On one hand exploitation of the game and its mechanics isn’t ok and players who are achieving valiant and completing content at seemingly unnatural rates it leaves you guys in a tough spot. That said the way you’ve addressed the issue has had more impact on middle of the pack or average players more so than the people who are completing all your content. The second is consumables are a part of any successful game and to remove the access the way you’ve done, at least in my experience and games I’ve played, isn’t a recipe for success. The way you’ve tuned progression for rewards has had me thinking about potentially doing consumables in a similar way. Ie as a Paragon, revives will spawn frequently but only in chapters and quests in between the last title they achieved and the current one. Thronebreaker -> Paragon. Only showing up in Act 7 or 8 but frequently. It would mean that revives though more accessible would require more effort and sometimes complex and extensive rosters to go get them due to node difficulties. It would stop the auto farming and abuse of the system based on how much content you’ve achieved. At least in my mind this would make “death” at least more meaningful without punishing a larger portion of the base and the more average players. This would also be the same for cavaliers Act 5 chapter 3 -> Act 6, and Uncollected/Conquerer and so on and so forth. Maybe not just for revives but consumables as a whole
For those who made it this far I appreciate you taking the time to read the post. I’d love to hear what are people’s thoughts on the matter and if you guys at kabam read this I’d love to hear what you think, and if you guys are really set on keeping the decision to handle it the way you have the same.
If you’re here and you want to criticize please save your time and energy. Kabam overall has been great to us f2p players and bashing them the way I’ve seen on the forums is kind of sad. This post is because I’m concerned about this matter, the way they’ve handled it, and the fact I don’t think it’s beneficial for the game long term. I’m sure they’ll do something to balance it in the comings months in some form but I thought I’d weigh in as I’m a huge fan of the game. Ps sorry I couldn’t make the battlegrounds event!
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Comments
To put this into context. Right now, without using any of the revive farms that will be impacted by revive farm nerfs, a F2P player can accmulate about 68 revives minimum to tackle any piece of end game content, like say Necropolis. That's before spending any units which themselves you can earn for free through just playing the game, and before buying any offers like the quest or act completion offers, and without counting any revives a player might accumulate other than L1 and L2 solo revives.
68 is not the ceiling, it is the floor. It is possible, without using revive farms other than the apothecary, to do even better, by managing 22hr events, by not claiming certain rewards, by taking advantage of free to play offers. A hundred is not out of the question.
What games give you an even better ability to blast through progressional and end game content than that?
With games such as clash of clans, the progression required is easily visible and takes longer but the amount of effort and lack of skill gap to achieve those goals makes it doable. Tower defence games and games like candy crush have to find a balance of challenging enough you can’t progress in a few weeks but still possible enough to make progress. The problem is MCOC is visible progress and people feeling like they have the ability to make progress in the game is much more difficult because of the limited metrics. Progress for casual players is pulling a super cool 5 or 6 star hero they wanted. Or progressing through quests and new bosses. For some it means progress in battlegrounds and achieving new milestones.
All of this really requires 3 resources. Energy, revives, and units. Energy the contest has in large part, excess. Units, which are easier to farm now than ever, though the units store still overpriced for purchasing units. Kabam likely won’t devalue units so as a more casual player $7 CAD gets you 3 revives. For some that’s not even enough to beat the collector in Act 5. So if you’re not encouraging people to feel like buying units is a low commitment and valuable investment, what resource that’s finite, do you need to progress or feel like you’re capable of progression? Revives. Not in crazy excess and I’m not saying make it easy. Farming in act 6 can take 20 mins to complete. So 20 mins to farm 1 revive, potentially on a difficult mode?
You can’t really compare it to other games because this type of game isn’t successful. Look anywhere on top charts for the AppStore this game is an outlier. So the metric by which you need to let people progress, visibly, or the feeling of, will be different
MCOC is not like most mobile games to be sure. It contains side scrolling fighting, but it is not a side scrolling fighter. It is built upon gatcha collection mechanics, but it isn’t exactly a gatcha game either. It most resembles massively multiplayer progressional RPGs, albeit with a lot of restrictions in teaming, geometry, and non-combat gameplay. But the core of the game strongly resembles MMORPG progressionals. This is something I can compare and contrast to, as I have a lot of experience with those games. How they manage consumables, and relatedly how they manage death and defeat, are very well studied grounds. In that space, I believe I can make a very strong case that if anything, MCOC is too generous compared to peers. But if you’re comparing MCOC to some other type of game when you assert they’ve curtailed consumables too much, I’d like to know what those games are and whether I’m familiar with them or alternatively can learn how they work.
My address in the last post was relevant because I’m not discussing how fast or slow people can progress through end game content the way content grinders have been doing, but rather my entire premise and case is that what keeps players playing a game is driven from the feeling or accomplishment that comes from progressing; and I fear that with this change you’ll see a drastic halt in that for the regular more casual base.
Part of it comes into conflict with what they’re trying to do next. Which is monetize their f2p base with giveaways and ads. It’s really smart but you need to keep the more casual f2p players playing for that to work long term. People who are f2p who are already paragon or end game content aren’t leaving the game. They’ve invested as much time as they have because they don’t plan on quitting and wasting it.
So if you would please take the time to address a solution or just say you disagree and move on. If you don’t agree with the premise that’s more than ok but you don’t need to address a tiny piece of information as some argument for the other thought.
So I'll throw your question back to you-- can you name me a game in the market right now where f2p players are gated by 6 months of resource collection for a single piece of content?
I personally can't think of a single game where this is true, and I'm ashamed to admit that I've played a significant number of f2p/gacha games over the years. Most of the popular f2p games right now have under a 1-2 month cycle, even for their hardest content.
You mentioned MMOs, like WoW or FF14, and even their most hardcore, top-end raids typically have an expected clear of 3-4 months before the next raid comes out. And these are monthly subscription games that are heavily incentivized to get you to stay subscribed as long as possible. The fact that the expected time gate for the necropolis is almost double of these types of games should really give you pause.
So please help explain what you mean by "ability to blast through progressional and end game content" Because from my perspective, and compare to every other game on the market, 6 months is not blasting through anything.
Also it doesn't really take 68 revives to do it unless you are using Aegon
People have done runs that cost 30-40 revives and some have done it in even less
It's a mix of skill and resources
Also 6 month is a viable time window for a content which will always be there
I farmed around 2000 units in a little less than a month by just getting the first 3 milestones in arena and doing 22 hr events
That is 50 revives for about 30 hours time spent over the course of 30 days
That's a pretty good value if you think about it
Also 6 months is the time required to completely explore necropolis but most people don't explore content unless they are competing at the top of the game which (*looks at Brian*) F2P's don't
So let's be realistic and tone it to 70 revives. Pair with 10-20 minutes of Arena farming daily then I'll say Necro and any hard content in game is perfectly achievable, sure it'll mean you can no longer brute force it and that's what Kabam wants to stop, stop players from brute forcing everything in a week or two
The “time gate” to fully explore Necropolis, even for a F2P player, is not six months. First of all, there’s no rule that says an F2P player needs 68+ revives to do a Necropolis path. It can be done in much less with sufficient roster strength and skill. As Necropolis is the highest end game content in the game, there’s no presumption that anyone other than the strongest players will be able to get through it easily or at their convenience.
If you’re an F2P player and you want to do Necropolis as fast as possible in terms of calendar time, you’re not going to take the Aegon-bash route. You’re going to use Shuri or Wong or some other team that might be harder and/or slower, but is more efficient with resources. You’re going to use guides and videos and practice your skills before entering, and you’re not going to simply blitz the content throwing revives at it. You’re going to do it in 50 revives, or 40, or less.
And then you’re going to use saved up units for revives, or grind them if you foolishly spent them all as a free to play player who can’t otherwise buy them to replenish them. You’re going to use the 4hr crystals you saved up for health potions and the occasional revive, which you would be saving up if you were a F2P player concerned about efficiency and resource management.
Between Apothecary, 22hr events, and unit grinding/saving, you’re going to be able to get much more than two revives per day. Four or five is well within reach, and a more dedicated arena grinder can do much better than that. A highly skilled F2P player could conceivably do a path per week. That’s six weeks, not six months, to explore Necropolis.
If you want to do it fast and free, the presumption is you’ll do it skillfully and intelligently and manage resources properly. The maximum possible resources you *could* use if you had to is a totally different subject. And anyone suggesting that players should be able to do it both using the maximum amount of possible resources *and* in a relatively short amount of time while doing that is simply asking for something ridiculous.
I can’t think of a game where there’s a six month time gate to complete end game content for the targeted player base, because not even this one has such a thing.
you keep it in stash, in that "green garbage box which turns red" thing.
Likewise, I'm a bit puzzled why you've suddenly decided to include units into the discussion. I thought we were talking about the limitations of the revive economy? What was the point of discussing "*maximum* amount of resource you can bring to bear on content" if you're including unit resources, which is uncapped? Again, by your logic, a player can farm units for 5 years and bring 2000 revives into necropolis. Or 50 years and bring 20k revives. How is that a relevant metric for how generous the game is?
I do some arena, not much by a true grinders standard.
I couldve explored necro in week one but didnt, because I resource manage.
Revive nerf sucks but its not the end of the world that some make out.
The key, as it is with all things (gold, iso etc) is resource management.
In terms of what’s possible, we look to capacity, because that’s what’s possible. But when we look at time limitations, we have to look at all avenues available to the player to maximize speed, not just one single one in isolation. Inventory caps what’s possible, but it isn’t the dominant tractor on how fast content can be done.
A game has to find a balance between user initiative finding guides and info on the internet as well as readily available ways for people to not need to go searching for that info. You take the position that everyone should care about the game the way you do and search ways to use the system and stack excess revives through other channels.
FYI - I’m somewhere in between casual and someone who grinds the game seriously. No I’m not making this post because I need more revives — I just hit Thronebreaker an hour ago and only used 3 team revives and a couple 20% ones. I spent a few days just trying to learn grandmaster and I think I restarted 11 times on the quest before giving it my winning run
So all this to take information for I don’t think it’s beneficial for the majority of players who are more casual and don’t care enough to go find every exploit online.