Was the first saga a fail?
Emilia90
Member Posts: 3,451 ★★★★★
Since we’re wrapping up saga one, I wanted to give my personal thoughts on it. Honestly, as pro-Kabam as I usually am, I can’t understand the thought process behind some of this stuff. It’s their first attempt at a saga type event but this seems like a pretty big misstep even for that
The first part of this saga was AW. Why? People hated this node and their solution was to tune the indestructible down from 5 to 3 and act like it’s good now? I don’t understand the thought process behind this meta. There were so many other things they could’ve done to encourage diverse attackers but this node felt unfun and made this mode even more stale than usual. If next saga has something similar to this, Kabam really hasn’t learned from their mistakes. Then they dragged this awful node into gladiators circuit as well. Definitely didn’t feel as bad here but I’m so tired of seeing this X-Magica stuff personally. I don’t really understand how people have so much feedback on how they didn’t like the node and their solution was to put it in other parts of the game that I actually enjoyed. It’s only GC though to be fair, so not as many complaints here.
The next part that I saw a lot of complaints about was saga incursions. If you love wasting time on complete rng that can roadblock you at any time, then this is your mode! Revives cost exorbitant amounts of units and you can’t get free ones for some reason. Remember the free revives in previous events that made them easier to get through? Well, you don’t get any of those. Also your champion pool is reduced to a few champs. Also the whole class based defender thing is only in certain zones. Have fun! Yeah…I don’t get the thought process here. I got through reviveless but it took me a ton of attempts (takes forever btw) so this is a big time sink. You can also just never get lucky and be roadblocked on every attempt
The chase champ was pretty great imo. I know a lot of people still aren’t familiar with NC after his buff, but he’s really good now. The problem is that there’s zero leeway for F2P, which would’ve been ok, but then they threw in incursions. Even if you do grind out the stones, there’s no way to dupe him or anything. Interesting decision on their part to make a 3 month grind just yield one copy of NC, but hey, maybe they’ll prove me wrong and give us some way to dupe him
The biggest W of this saga was honestly the traders outpost. I know a lot of people are disappointed in it, but it’s great for gathering resources. You can get millions of gold and a lot of T3A and T6B every week. They also came with a decent amount of shards + sig stones which were super useful for advancing my battlegrounds deck
Overall, kinda disappointed with the saga event. Cool concept, but way too much tedious work at the end of the day. Didn’t think the saga nodes were fun, didn’t think incursions were fun, and I’m praying that they make the next one good
The first part of this saga was AW. Why? People hated this node and their solution was to tune the indestructible down from 5 to 3 and act like it’s good now? I don’t understand the thought process behind this meta. There were so many other things they could’ve done to encourage diverse attackers but this node felt unfun and made this mode even more stale than usual. If next saga has something similar to this, Kabam really hasn’t learned from their mistakes. Then they dragged this awful node into gladiators circuit as well. Definitely didn’t feel as bad here but I’m so tired of seeing this X-Magica stuff personally. I don’t really understand how people have so much feedback on how they didn’t like the node and their solution was to put it in other parts of the game that I actually enjoyed. It’s only GC though to be fair, so not as many complaints here.
The next part that I saw a lot of complaints about was saga incursions. If you love wasting time on complete rng that can roadblock you at any time, then this is your mode! Revives cost exorbitant amounts of units and you can’t get free ones for some reason. Remember the free revives in previous events that made them easier to get through? Well, you don’t get any of those. Also your champion pool is reduced to a few champs. Also the whole class based defender thing is only in certain zones. Have fun! Yeah…I don’t get the thought process here. I got through reviveless but it took me a ton of attempts (takes forever btw) so this is a big time sink. You can also just never get lucky and be roadblocked on every attempt
The chase champ was pretty great imo. I know a lot of people still aren’t familiar with NC after his buff, but he’s really good now. The problem is that there’s zero leeway for F2P, which would’ve been ok, but then they threw in incursions. Even if you do grind out the stones, there’s no way to dupe him or anything. Interesting decision on their part to make a 3 month grind just yield one copy of NC, but hey, maybe they’ll prove me wrong and give us some way to dupe him
The biggest W of this saga was honestly the traders outpost. I know a lot of people are disappointed in it, but it’s great for gathering resources. You can get millions of gold and a lot of T3A and T6B every week. They also came with a decent amount of shards + sig stones which were super useful for advancing my battlegrounds deck
Overall, kinda disappointed with the saga event. Cool concept, but way too much tedious work at the end of the day. Didn’t think the saga nodes were fun, didn’t think incursions were fun, and I’m praying that they make the next one good
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Comments
Sagas have since then done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to advance or tie in any narrative plot points or themes. What is going on
This is very much my sentiment.
I think on paper it is a great concept, and as a player I was very excited to see and follow the narrative.
However the implementation and delivery of the concepts contain many miscalculated in imo.
AW Saga tactic was far too "challenging" with limited champs pool, that it end up need so many changes. One of the most powerful champs for the Saga became useless because of Double Medium Re-Parry (looking at your Wolfy).
BG Saga carried the same problem from AW (a little less, but still not enjoyable)
Incursion Saga - Well we have a multi threads about that - the lack of additional options to obtain Health items was not helpful either.
Lastly the chase fot NC, which again great concept but demand players to chase the runestone in these unbalanced contents (again like this Incursion), really killed players enjoyment and motivation for the idea.
It a really shame, and one can only hope that the next Saga, Kabam would implement some of the lesson learned from this Saga.
I agree with your points, but I do want to cynically call out the Mysterium/Trader Outpost side of things. Is it really a win? We are technically getting more resources than we would have without it each week, but wouldn't we normally have gotten very similar resources over the course of the Month (from SQ)? What I mean is that instead of the 1000 7-star shards a week from the Trader Outpost, in the past that would have just been added to the SQ rewards (maybe 2000 total shards for the month instead of the 4000 total from Trader Outpost)
I cynically feel (whether it is true or not) that we are receiving similar rewards we would have if Trader Outpost didn't exist, but it is now instead locked to a forced player engagement model - you have to log in every week to buy the resource, you have a relatively low maximum storage amount of mysterium with no overflow, etc.
Good concept poor execution.
Also kabam needs to understand that in order to tie things together they should do more than add champion tags. When I thought of a tie in I thought of an overarching story or theme that encompasses the entire game. For instance doing one game mode would benefit me or encourage me to participate in another game mode. I know some will say that is what the NC chase was about but then the question becomes is all that grinding for a single unawakened champ really worth it? A 3 month chase for a single champ is ridiculous to me.
But it was not so disruptive to people who didn't need anything new/different and could just ignore it.
I was in the latter group. So I consider this first saga, at the very least, to not be a fail at all.
Last War-mode was of decay so Titania carried big time but Xmagica? Big problem.
Extra resources from traders outpost was a nice bonus but main thing was to shift AW to diversify our rosters.
Without sagas we would be using the same attackers and defenders every season so for that part they did well... Aside from the tuning of the node at the beginning of the season.
I like the chase champion aspect, but agree the incursions part was a bit extreme. Something to help players on top of the 'choose your initial boost' was needed but I didn't bother in the end.
Would be nice if we could trade the stuff for 7 star shards at the beginning instead of end of the saga but understand why it's the way it is.
I like they tried to give things across all the different realms of the game to make you want to try them all (Battlegrounds, arena, quests, targeted quests, incursions) and if there was one you didn't like, you knew you weren't getting those stones. That's a solid way to push engagement over a few month span for many.
Incursions is a complete wildcard and probably the most difficult. The block penetration at higher zones is awful and no freebie revives or decrease in costs is a crime.
Then there’s battlegrounds. Probably a bit easier than the incursions run, but by far the most grindy requirement. This was an obvious attempt to manipulate participation into bgs, especially the first season which was before the rewards buff. Instead of taking a genuine look at the game mode and trying to improve it they stick some exclusive rewards behind it so you can’t miss out and have to play.
Kabam says this is a big game with lots of game modes and it’s up to the summoner to decide what modes they want to play. Then they repeatedly lock exclusive rewards behind the game modes many people enjoy the least. It’s deliberate.
I agree that having more ways of attaining the revives are definitely a right step, but that game mode is just way too RNG based. I've seen people spend 1-2k units just to get roadblocked and quit out. That can't be good for the health of the game