Was the first saga a fail?

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

Comments

Raganator

I am also a bit confused by sagas. It was claimed they would provide a means for Kabam to tie different areas of the game together. It didn't do that at all. It just said: Use these champs in game modes for three months. Not really sure that "ties things together". But at the end of the day, the goal is to make money, so perhaps they did that with the sales offers early on in the event plus the rank up gems being available and the ability to awaken the champ through buying daily offers.

Ortoun

Hopefully the biggest win of sagas will be getting some of the whales to seed higher in VT next season when the deathless piece is there for making it to GC.

captain_rogers

The AW tactic was a big letdown. One of the biggest blunders made by kabam. The tactic is absolutely bs and just made AW unplayable. Almos everyone I know resorted to 1 loyalty wars

Priyabrata

I'm completely confused, as far as I remember they mentioned the saga would serve the purpose of a narrative tie in for different game mode, the only narrative theme we had going on was that single motion comic when the X magica saga started.

Sagas have since then done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to advance or tie in any narrative plot points or themes. What is going on

Emilia90

I'm completely confused, as far as I remember they mentioned the saga would serve the purpose of a narrative tie in for different game mode, the only narrative theme we had going on was that single motion comic when the X magica saga started.

Sagas have since then done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to advance or tie in any narrative plot points or themes. What is going on

This was a big part of it too. Did they even have a plan on what to do with this? Saga’s seemed like a really cool concept and they barely did anything consequential with it. It felt so haphazardly thrown together

pseudosane

They have good ideas, i think the initial tie ins didn't go as panned. Hopefully it does improve as time goes. The first, though i loved the champ pool, felt very grindy to me. I loved the concept though.

Fryday

@Emilia90 ,

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.

Sundance_2099

I play EQ, SQ, AQ and some arena. This saga stuff has barely touched them if at all, so it's been a big ol' swing and a miss to me. Like all it's been for me is the SQ and getting mysterium and then getting the shards bundles.

altavista

I made a post on how the 'Deathless chase' was a much more successful version of what Sagas is trying to be. The NC chase that is part of Saga fails to be as effective, whether it be due to locking parts behind undesirable game modes (like Saga Incursions) or just due to the simple fact that the NC chase doesn't tie into anything itself (unlike individual Deathless champions building towards a Deathless Avengers-esque team to face Deathless Thanos).

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.

ahmynuts

I think it's a good concept on paper, like many others do; it's just fallen victim to the most classic of Kabam blunders, which is an almost irrecoverable botched launch period before things are (hopefully) changed for the better in future iterations

Emilia90

I think it's a good concept on paper, like many others do; it's just fallen victim to the most classic of Kabam blunders, which is an almost irrecoverable botched launch period before things are (hopefully) changed for the better in future iterations

Yeah that’s fair. I didn’t really like their responses to AW or incursions though. They botched both and essentially doubled down on it despite the complaints. I don’t agree with “not everyone will be able to do it” as a response in this scenario. They could have added revives to incursions and tuned the AW tactic down more to make it bearable. Hopefully the learn but their responses to both make me worried

Ultragamer

I really enjoyed saga the tactic was easy to manage. Gave a free 7* nightcrawler who now is a good and fun champ and made doing some content more enjoyable

bdawg923

I played the game as if the saga didn't exist. They usually do events or objectives which tell you which champs to use or fight, so I didn't really see the difference. Except now they call is a saga. Cool? It didn't encourage me to play any other game modes I don't normally play. It didn't prevent me from playing game modes I usually play. Literally nothing for me would've changed in game if there was no saga. I really didn't see the point of it tbh. Didn't like it, didn't hate it. Completely indifferent to it. I don't think they realize the game's problems run deeper and calling something a saga won't magically make everyone be happy with the game.

Wakandas_Finest

Like with most things Kabam does….

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.

M0NKEYNUTS

It was something new and introduced something different to those who were looking for that,

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.

Emilia90

It was something new and introduced something different to those who were looking for that,

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.

I liked the concept, and new and different is great, but not when some parts were executed so poorly. I am glad that it didn’t spill too far outside of AW, but I think they could make sagas a million times better. Like I said, I liked some parts, but the parts that were bad were pretty bad. Ahmynuts was on point with his analysis though. Kabam usually fumbles the first iteration of content like this incredibly hard and then recovers nicely. As long as Kabam actually listened to the feedback from this saga, saga 2 has potential to be great

PT_99

Friendly reminder that there's high chances of this X-magica returning into Alliance War-mode "solo quest" in one of those SoS type of event. 😘
Last War-mode was of decay so Titania carried big time but Xmagica? Big problem.

Vegeta9001

It had promised for sure, but with the meta defenders paired with the awful tactic I feel it's soured everyone's taste in the subject.

Priyabrata

It was something new and introduced something different to those who were looking for that,

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.

Name checks out

Ultragamer

Friendly reminder that there's high chances of this X-magica returning into Alliance War-mode "solo quest" in one of those SoS type of event. 😘
Last War-mode was of decay so Titania carried big time but Xmagica? Big problem.

It wouldn’t be that bad since bans wouldn’t be active you can run kushala, iceman, bishop, domino, Wiccan and many more of the very useful tactic champs

SandeepS

I didn't mind it so much.

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.

spidyjedi84

Eh. I got a 5 star Nightcrawler with many signature levels to him (didn't try for the six or seven star, since I wasn't Thronebreaker or higher). Having those signature stones to chase was fun. Nightcrawler isn't game breaking, but he has great utility. I'm reserving judgment on this sagas until I see a full year of these events as to if it's doing what Kabam was wanting or not.

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.

Nemesis_17

The NC chase ruined it for me. I don’t usually like to speak for others, but in this case I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that I think very few people genuinely enjoyed chasing 7* night crawler. The side quest and para gauntlet stuff was mostly fine, it’s not incredibly grindy. But I can’t say the same about the rest of the criteria.

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.

Polygon

If theres one thing I'd love to see is that they discontinue the Saga Incursions altogether and just put those added rewards in a different game mode.

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