But when you have players like Swedeah and KT1 not interested in these challenges (i.e. exactly who they were designed for) I think it is a pretty unequivocal fail.
Were they who the content was designed for? That's a serious question. What makes them the target audience?
I'm pretty sure KT1 and Swedeah could both do all the challenges using fewer revives than me, that's not even a question. But what makes them more the target of the content than, say, me?
I like challenges. I don't succeed at all of them. I never completed the Maze. And while I technically completed the Grandmaster's Gauntlet, I wouldn't consider that to be a win necessarily, not because of the hilarity that ensued but rather the fact that I didn't take full exploration seriously enough.
I tried very hard to get solos for Summer of Pain and Eternity of Pain, but I didn't get many of them. However, I didn't complain about the difficulty, even though on a relative basis that content was far harder for me to do than it was for many of the stronger players in the game. But I still tried. And I set myself the goal of tackling Necropolis right out of the gate even though that was almost certainly not the smartest thing to do in terms of efficiency. I could have cut my revives in half, but I decided the fun of throwing myself in there was worth it.
Maybe those challenges aren't meant for them. Maybe they are meant for me. Not because I'm better than either of those players - I am most definitely not. But I'm willing to try, eventually, and I'm willing to fail, if it turns out I can't do it. Maybe that's who they are for. People who will try, and some will succeed and some will fail, but it is for those who want to try.
I honestly do not have a single shred of hostility towards any of the designers. They made a challenge, and they are all interesting challenges, and some I'm going to tackle soon, and some I might not tackle for a while, but I will at least attempt them all. And I'm not going to be mad if I fail. Or rather, I'm not going to be mad at the designers. I will probably get mad at my phone. But that's the extent of it. Maybe that's who the content is for.
In general I do not criticize players who have difficulty or need to spend to complete content: that is their personal decision to make, and if they do it within the limits they personally set for themselves, that's all that should matter to them.
Having said that, yikes.
@DNA3000 I know, I would have rather spent the 5,000 units on the 7 Star Be Mine Crystal or one of the Rank Up bundles in the store but I was so close to beating Abs man every time, down to like 20-30% only for him to revive back up to 70%. I restarted a couple times instead of reviving but that brought him back up to 100% and made it that much harder for me to take down. In the end, I don't know if restarting or reviving would have cost less, but I really wanted to know how much it would take for me to get him down, for science.
My take on WOW, CCP, and Necropolis (Yes, I know it's a long post. Mods you can merge into a larger thread if you feel appropriate)
TL;DR: WOW - I agree with the player backlash CCP Challenges - I do not agree with player backlash
In both cases, I think Kabam could make some tweaks Full Post
Context I am Valiant , playing since 2018, with a 7+ million rating (top 250). I have completed all permanent content and Carina's Challenges in the game prior to Necropolis and halfway through it. I consider myself an above average player, with many players much better than me out there, although there are some fights the "best" players struggle with that I can do handily. Maybe it's like that for others too, I am not sure.
For reference: all runs below were fully boosted with 30% Green boosts and various other boosts, and most, if not all, had strikers
Necropolis - I tried Necropolis at the Vancouver meetup and I was very scared after the first test fight against I think Diablo, but after Brian Grant ranked up and ascended his max sig 6* R5 Ægon, I did the same and the paths have been doable for me - I have completed 3 paths with Ægon, Proxima, Wiccan, Shuri and Heimdall. This is the first time that new content that has been released that I was able to do along with the other players without too much struggle. (For Context, I just finished Abyss of Legends a few months ago). I don't keep an exact count of resources used but I did each Necropolis path in about 100-150 revives or equivalent, or about 6,000 units. I didn't feel like there was any "roadblocks" and I was never really too frustrated - it was very fun - maybe slightly too easy (than Kabam wanted) with Ægon. This was my first time using Ægon consistently and I feel like I am better player for it now.
CCP Challenges Easy I did Lagacy's challenges within the first day or 2 with my 5* R5 Max sig, un-ascended Stark Spidey. The paths were easy and I had to use only a handful of revives for the Kang bosses. It was a very fun challenge and didn't cost a lot. I haven't played Starky in a long while and this reminded me why he was one of my favorite champs (not even counting the Blade trinity synergy with Ghost Rider)
Medium I just completed KarateMike's Classic Avengers and Baron Zemo challenges. These also took me about 150 revives or equivalent, or about 6,000 units on each path and that is with: Avengers: 7* R2 Sig 40 Iron Man, 7* R1 Sig 20 Hawkeye, 6 * R5 Black Widow, 6* R4 Thor and Ant-Man Baron Zemo - 6* R5 Max Sig, 5* R5 Max Sig, 4* R5 Max Sig, 3* R4 Max Sig, 2* Rank 3, Sig about 10.
Both challenges were fun for me, and even the scary fight (Sasquatch) was a breeze for Ant-Man. Not quite as easy for me with Baron Zemo, but doable. Even the 5* and 4* Zemo's put in a lot of work! I was surprised! Now I am better prepared to Zemo him in BGs, a dance club, or maybe one of the next Nercro runs.
If you watched KarateMike's stream, you know he did these in MANY less revives than me, but I had fun and had team revives to burn (I buy all the UC, Cav and TB EQ 1,000 unit offers).
I like that his challenges were all team based so that I didn't have to waste the team revives and that is why I did these challenges now even though they are permanent.
Hard Fintech's challenges seem the hardest and somewhat Team based with 3 slots each. I have a lot of Romance Team Revives and Potions left but there's no way I can do it now, especially with WOW. My single champion resources are depleted after WOW. That is what Kabam said, after all, and they were right. I had a lot of stuff in my inventory I saved for a rainy day, and this was it. I am now ranking up my Mojo's, Tigra's and Jabari's and saving resources to prepare to do this late next month. I don't know how to play Tigra well, and I don't like Jabari, but that's good - if it wasn't for Fintech (all hail the winner of the meetup), then I probably never would learn and who knows maybe I will learn to like!
WOW Just seeing Unstoppable with a Gamma objective made me think of She Hulk. I ascended my 6* R5 Max Sig She-Hulk. I spent probably 5,000 units to get this guy down just once and maybe 4-5 full energy refills in attempts. I am no MSD soloing with a 2* over here. What is funny is that my very first try I got him down to about 60-70% but he just regens so much that most of the next fights ended with him having more health. I wanted to take a break but because the boosts would expire, I found myself pushing even when I wasn't at my best and couldn't totally focus This fight was frustrating and while it cost me about the same amount of units as the others above, it was not fun, it was frustrating and felt like some of the older fights in this game that made me want to quit the game (Act 6.2 Champion, Act 6 Grandmaster, and Act 7 Gwenmaster). Also the fact that its only limited time, makes it feel even worse that I am not going to be able to fully complete all the objectives.
I also attempted Robots and Sinister Six but they did not go well - although I did better after finally defeating Abs man. I don't think I am going to make these objectives in time.
Conclusion It took me a lot of inventory items and many romance revives and potions to complete everything so far. I feel like that was intentional, in a good way, whether Kabam planned each path (except Lagacy's challenge) to cost me about the same amount. You see, I could have waited many months or years then completed Necro paths and Carina's Challenges with more stored resources but then the rewards would be less valuable. It look buying literally every Valentine's Day offer to get this done. Now not everyone can spend that much, but also not everyone has the time. I don't have or want to spend the time mastering this game with 2*s. I am also not the biggest whale but I spend a lot - and more and more as I get nearer to the top. I think its a good balance for me. And when Kabam says time isn't a relevant resource in the economy, they mean for them... your time doesn't make them any money. So unless you want to watch a 30 second ad after every arena.... )
I think the rewards are great - I just cant decide between 2 Starkys and 1 of each Spidey (sorry Massacre). And 2* Baron Zemo is great because I didn't have him yet, and is also part of the synergy!
Suggestions Abyss - Add a 6* Ultron Classic or another new trophy champ to the exploration rewards and send everyone who already explored one. That way it could regain some relevance today.
Necro - a little too easy with Ægon than what Kabam had probably planned, but its fun, and the Road to the Crypt was fun too. I wonder what WOW would have been like if it has the same? Maybe Kabam can share some WOW numbers and do a little something similar to Necro here, in hindsight. I also wonder if anyone spend more units than me.
WOW - I get what Kabam was trying to do but its just way too hard. Maybe stages like the bosses where his regen cant go above a certain amount, or maybe reduce the regen a tad bit. At the rate it is now, I wont be able to complete the other two objectives and that doesn't feel good for me, so I get what the players are saying here too.
CCP Challenges - they are fine in my opinion, but I think Kabam should have probably locked these to only to Valiant players - it would give people another incentive to get to that level and frankly if you are Valiant, you probably have a large roster with a lot of rank ups that you do just so the resources don't expire, and are good enough at the game where you would not complain about them. (I think the more that Kabam can do to tailor content and offers to a progression level helps). Like non Valiant's shouldn't even see it in the game, because even seeing something you can't do, can cause some anxiety and the backlash like what has been going on.
Nice insightful post
But I think for me, its was also the added Bullseye fiasco last month (EQ + Side Quest) and this month's Aunty Sand.... and her unavoidable sandstorm damage
In my opinion the problem with the CCP Challenges are the rewards themselves or better said, the lack of. Carina Challenges vol 1 and 2 were somewhat like these new ones and it's alright, they're not for everyone. For me personally I'd love to do the Lags one later this month. But I'm not touching the others in the near future (I love karatemike, but the guy loves Zemo way too much for my own sake).
Now regarding WoW. In my personal experience I stopped attempting that fight. I changed my masteries, r4 and ascended my Hulk, used every boost available and still couldn't defeat him. Used the few revives I had and almost all of my potions, decided to use units because I thought "he's at 18%, I can do it with just 1 more", got stuck in that percentage for a while, I screwed up and regeneated to 70%. Decided to stop. The rewards might be great, but titan shards come and go all the time, t6cc will become common, so really there's no pressure or anything. If I'm going to waste 5000 units/money might as well be on 4th July or cyber weekend
OP is a Kabam dream come true. Zero patience and money to burn! All hail Unitsman!
I grind all the arenas and 100% all EQ difficultly levels every month and never spend money to complete content - everything is usually done with my stash + the EQ offers bought with earned units. I did use the romance revives for the Baron Zemo challenge because they came with the unit packs I bought for fun otherwise I would have waited (hence why I just completed Abyss a couple months ago.I waited until I had the free resources)
But you make an excellent point about this game - Kabam isn’t selling champs, revives, units, or crystals … they are actually in the business of selling… patience. If one is patient or enough they can defeat everything free to play eventually (look at someone like Brian Grant) or you can spend to rush to be first (KT1, Seatin).
Damn bro, not everyone have 12k+ units and loads of revives laying around.
This whole post is nothing but a clear indication that Kabam did nothing but backtracked on their infamous promise of, "Content is extremely hard because there is revive farming, so we nerf, don't worry future content won't be TOO hard any longer."
You can get to about 12k too in 1.5 months by grinding arena and doing all the EQs, And in that 1.5 months, about 90 free revives from daily objectives and apothecary give or take + more revives from the 4 hour crystals.
This is how I do at least one path or so of endgame content every month, for free (not counting time).
Damn bro, not everyone have 12k+ units and loads of revives laying around.
This whole post is nothing but a clear indication that Kabam did nothing but backtracked on their infamous promise of, "Content is extremely hard because there is revive farming, so we nerf, don't worry future content won't be TOO hard any longer."
You can get to about 12k too in 1.5 months by grinding arena and doing all the EQs, And in that 1.5 months, about 90 free revives from daily objectives and apothecary give or take + more revives from the 4 hour crystals.
This is how I do at least one path or so of endgame content every month, for free (not counting time).
Damn bro, not everyone have 12k+ units and loads of revives laying around.
This whole post is nothing but a clear indication that Kabam did nothing but backtracked on their infamous promise of, "Content is extremely hard because there is revive farming, so we nerf, don't worry future content won't be TOO hard any longer."
😃
How on earth do you manage that? Isn't grinding that much arena far too time consuming, not to mention mind-numbingly boring? Personally, I struggle to do any arena at all or apothecary when I'm working or studying.
7m rating, 150 revives per path, buys all the EQ offers monthly, you'd have a different opinion about the content if you were not a whale. Just saying
I was going to comment on his revive (150) / unit (6k) usage for each path. KM's challenge is not exactly coming across as medium content in that light! That 6k/150 units could do 2 or 3 necropolis paths easily or the Wow Abs Man fight ten times with the #Robot objective.
Starting to feel the content creators may be brushing these objectives off as being a lot easier than they actually are if OP had such a high ranked team of avengers and max ranked Zemo and still needed to use 150 revives to get both of them done.
This content is starting to feel more and more like something that should’ve been released before the revive farm nerf (which was still a thing at the time when people used 6* rank 3 for Gauntlet and EOP, to refute Mike’s biggest counter argument on why he thinks the challenge is fair)
This is the crux of my arguments too the times I've posted on this
1. Rewards were meta then for doing similar content/challenges - these aren't 2. Revive farming was available - it isn't now so is more expensive to do 3. Rank up materials we will use are not being replaced by anything in the rewards
I am still probably going to do (most of) them, but only when convenient (eg when ranking og Black Widow to r4 sig 200 is cheap), and other meta rewards/events are done.
How on earth do you manage that? Isn't grinding that much arena far too time consuming, not to mention mind-numbingly boring? Personally, I struggle to do any arena at all or apothecary when I'm working or studying.
I grind arena while I am watching TV or talking on the phone - I don't even really think about it much. The only time I really can't do a lot of arena is when I am traveling or on vacation, but even then I try to get a few rounds in here and there to get a quick 50-100 units.
I only ever won a 5* champion once. A shout out to those people who grind arena who get the 6* and especially those that get rank 1 Warbound title. I can't even imagine that grind...
How on earth do you manage that? Isn't grinding that much arena far too time consuming, not to mention mind-numbingly boring? Personally, I struggle to do any arena at all or apothecary when I'm working or studying.
I grind arena while I am watching TV or talking on the phone - I don't even really think about it much. The only time I really can't do a lot of arena is when I am traveling or on vacation, but even then I try to get a few rounds in here and there to get a quick 50-100 units.
I only ever won a 5* champion once. A shout out to those people who grind arena who get the 6* and especially those that get rank 1 Warbound title. I can't even imagine that grind...
Doesn't it become annoying though? I used to grind arena but it was starting to feel like a second job as I was doing it when I was tired after work or uni and I just wanted to relax and watch tv. Or sometimes I'm simply too busy to grind arena and was squeezing it in just before bed or in the morning and I grew to hate it to be honest with you. For me, the truth is I'd rather just spend money or go without those extra units lol.
Comments
I'm pretty sure KT1 and Swedeah could both do all the challenges using fewer revives than me, that's not even a question. But what makes them more the target of the content than, say, me?
I like challenges. I don't succeed at all of them. I never completed the Maze. And while I technically completed the Grandmaster's Gauntlet, I wouldn't consider that to be a win necessarily, not because of the hilarity that ensued but rather the fact that I didn't take full exploration seriously enough.
I tried very hard to get solos for Summer of Pain and Eternity of Pain, but I didn't get many of them. However, I didn't complain about the difficulty, even though on a relative basis that content was far harder for me to do than it was for many of the stronger players in the game. But I still tried. And I set myself the goal of tackling Necropolis right out of the gate even though that was almost certainly not the smartest thing to do in terms of efficiency. I could have cut my revives in half, but I decided the fun of throwing myself in there was worth it.
Maybe those challenges aren't meant for them. Maybe they are meant for me. Not because I'm better than either of those players - I am most definitely not. But I'm willing to try, eventually, and I'm willing to fail, if it turns out I can't do it. Maybe that's who they are for. People who will try, and some will succeed and some will fail, but it is for those who want to try.
I honestly do not have a single shred of hostility towards any of the designers. They made a challenge, and they are all interesting challenges, and some I'm going to tackle soon, and some I might not tackle for a while, but I will at least attempt them all. And I'm not going to be mad if I fail. Or rather, I'm not going to be mad at the designers. I will probably get mad at my phone. But that's the extent of it. Maybe that's who the content is for.
But I think for me, its was also the added
Bullseye fiasco last month (EQ + Side Quest)
and this month's Aunty Sand.... and her unavoidable sandstorm damage
seems revives revives everywhere (insert Woody+Buzz lightyear meme)
Now regarding WoW. In my personal experience I stopped attempting that fight. I changed my masteries, r4 and ascended my Hulk, used every boost available and still couldn't defeat him. Used the few revives I had and almost all of my potions, decided to use units because I thought "he's at 18%, I can do it with just 1 more", got stuck in that percentage for a while, I screwed up and regeneated to 70%. Decided to stop. The rewards might be great, but titan shards come and go all the time, t6cc will become common, so really there's no pressure or anything.
If I'm going to waste 5000 units/money might as well be on 4th July or cyber weekend
But you make an excellent point about this game - Kabam isn’t selling champs, revives, units, or crystals … they are actually in the business of selling… patience. If one is patient or enough they can defeat everything free to play eventually (look at someone like Brian Grant) or you can spend to rush to be first (KT1, Seatin).
This whole post is nothing but a clear indication that Kabam did nothing but backtracked on their infamous promise of, "Content is extremely hard because there is revive farming, so we nerf, don't worry future content won't be TOO hard any longer."
😃
This is how I do at least one path or so of endgame content every month, for free (not counting time).
1. Rewards were meta then for doing similar content/challenges - these aren't
2. Revive farming was available - it isn't now so is more expensive to do
3. Rank up materials we will use are not being replaced by anything in the rewards
I am still probably going to do (most of) them, but only when convenient (eg when ranking og Black Widow to r4 sig 200 is cheap), and other meta rewards/events are done.
I only ever won a 5* champion once. A shout out to those people who grind arena who get the 6* and especially those that get rank 1 Warbound title. I can't even imagine that grind...