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My MCOC thoughts after quitting the game.
DoomGB
Member Posts: 47 ★
In this post, I’m just looking to share my opinion and thoughts on the game. I was a casual player a few years, back when Act 2-3 was the main piece of content. Got into Alliance events which was fun. However, I took a step back from the game some months ago, mostly because the game felt less ‘fun’. I’ll breakdown my thoughts and just know that this is my opinion and experience after years of playing MCOC and not general facts about the game. The way I view the game could be completely different to yours, and that’s okay. This post is from someone who preferred to be a casual player and not someone who was into competitive content, with the below points not really in any particular order.
Also, these thoughts are also inspired by watching numerous content creators over the years, so if you see something familiar, then there you go.
1. Story Content
MCOC’s story mode got me into the game. It wasn’t stressful, you could take your time, and you could really play around with your roster with very little consequence if things went bad. Sure, a fight could be annoying (pre-nerf Caltrops Juggs in early story mode for example) but over time you could make it through, again with little consequence in a casual setting. Story mode also felt like an adventure. On average it would take me min. 3-4 months to complete since paths were long, you’d farm resources in between, and there was a memorable boss at the end of the Act and there was a story if you were into reading that.
I can understand the current state of story content, but what does a player take away from it now? Currently you can complete new story content in the same amount of time it takes to do monthly EQ (3-4 days) and the boss fight isn’t very memorable. Sure, they’re designed well enough, but when it’s over, do you even remember the fight? Sure Act content in the past wasn’t always ‘balanced’, like Act 6 being bonkers out the gate with some dodgy node combos, but in my opinion, it was memorable. It kept you busy. It opened the room to different champions. Nowadays you rush through it because it’s very easy, with only the final boss maybe being a problem if you’re trying to get used the fight mechanics. So, what’s the point of story content? It’s like playing God of War but you complete the game in two hours.
2. Relics
When relics were announced, it was very exciting. When relics were released, it was very disappointing. In my opinion. Relics feel like solo synergies that we’ve seen before. They also involve a fair amount of reading and level up management. Another complicated thing to manage in the game. Relics didn’t expand on anything either. The main reason players equip relics is the striker, making a large chunk of what goes into the relic redundant, unless you’re paying attention to the bonus’s relics can give. Recently relics are being built into game mechanics, through nodes or champion abilities, but they don’t feel like something we’d naturally want to use, instead Kabam are finding ways to push us to use them.
Here are some examples of what I thought relics would or could be:
• Instead of the relic being a champion, it is some Marvel ‘item’.
• You could have a relic that’s Heimdall’s sword, Iron Man’s arc reactor, or even the Infinitiy stones could be relics. Image the Collector’s showroom from the Guardians movie.
• Each relic provides some abilities to a group of champions that says something about the relic itself, eg, Heimdall’s Sword (with the graphic being Heimdall’s sword) gives Asgardian tagged champions the ability to bypass Miss and Evade. Additionally, it inflicts a Bifrost debuff/passive effect that causes extra damage under some circumstance.
• Also you don’t rank or level up the relic. Any damage could be percentage based and you collect them (maybe from story quests or Everest content) and that’s it, no further management. And thr relic’s ability is in a simple paragraph or two, no extra tabs or slots. If you ‘dupe’ the relic from a crystal if they are in there, you get a large chunk of gold.
Relics felt like another ‘nothing’ item in MCOC. You get it, but it’s not very thrilling. Some relics are good (Mr Sinister for example) but generally they could have felt more like relics instead of just champion graphics with synergies. This may sound similar to the Heimdall sword example. But I think the relics being items has more of a story to it, you can introduce unique abilities and they’re faster to understand and can be broken if needed depending on how difficult it is to get the relic if you earn them through content, eg a boss challenge where you collect Infinity Stone relics.
3. Casual vs Competitive gameplay.
I first left the game after the Toad Eternity of Pain fight. I couldn’t spend 5 minutes baiting a special attack only to get hit by a SP3 or get hit by a special when going to hit into Toad’s block. I came back in December because I heard the gifting event had some hype to it. The hype didn’t pay off but it was cool to see my roster again. However I wanted a casual style of gameplay so I didn’t do any alliance events ( I used to be an officer and do not miss the days of spending 1-2 hours planning around nodes, timezones etc…). I wasn’t a big fan of BGs as it felt very grindy, stressful thanks to bugs and nonsense defenders. Didn’t enjoy Raids cause all you did was revive spam against a boss with an autokill mechanic that you could solo if you wanted to. So… what was there to do? Being a competitive player in MCOC is like running in a marathon where the finish line so constantly being moved. It never really ends. Even spending makes no sense. You’ll spend to keep your account competitive, but the resources you buy eventually depreciate very quickly, but you have to keep spending to a degree because if you don’t, your hard earned account will lose its competitive advantage. And you do this to play in a way where there is no finish line. Now BGs and AW is done on seasons, but those seasons feel so routine and quick, especially for AW, that when it ends, it begins again without much time to take in what you’ve done before you realise you have get back at it again. At least that was my experience, it’s probably very different for other players.
So after leaving behind competitive gameplay because it was stressful and repetitive, I realised there wasn’t much to do. EQ was outdated and boring. Story quest, which could otherwise keep you busy for 3-4 months, was boring and forgettable and you could do Everest content, but that usually involved resource farming which meant playing most the game modes which were either boring or stressful (eg, super daily event is really just a BG event because hitting all the milestones will eat your resources). I’m fine with games changing, after all it isn’t my game, but I felt like MCOC had a little something for everyone. Something casual if you just wanted to chill or something competitive if that’s what you’re into. Nowadays it’s just you either play competitively or you don’t, because if you don’t the game is rather boring.
4. Champion designs Part 1: Defenders.
Lately champions are become more complicated. To do what older champions do better, more recent champions have so much text that MCOC feels a novel or reading a very complicated installation guide for your WiFi enabled, AI capable kettle. However, we can choose which champions we want to use so that’s fine. But it’s recently defenders that help push me away from the game. Serpent, Bullseye, Enchantress, Onslaught, Science Cap Marvel etc…
Yes, over time these champions get counters and thanks to Content Creators we find ways around these defenders. But is it fun though? Is it fun though? The game does push you more towards competitive gameplay. There’s no content really that you can play with little stress or that doesn’t require lots of farming if you aren’t insanely skilled. So, when you play BGs and AW, what do you fight a lot? In my opinion, nonsense defenders. Switching off masteries feels like a lazy way to force a defensive ability. That’s what nodes are for (eg, Heal Block nodes). Eg, imagine if Science Cap Marvel instead inflicted you with a heal block or petrify each time you made contact with her if you had a debuff? You could still benefit from Willpower in whatever way suited you. An BGs and AW most players run Despair anyways, so you won’t be healing from much either, if only to offset the block damage.
And I must mention Serpent here. Serpent is a nonsense defender. Defenders have to be challenging yes, but do they need to strip the fun out of the experience? Serpent just punishes you for existing, with you having to dance around him hoping he plays ball. Now if you stick around long enough there will be ways around him. But the whole Serpent experience is to get out of there as soon as possible. Put Serpent behind you. And if you play competitively, you see Serpent everywhere. Which brings me to a funny point of the Serpent nerf the Community needed. It is confusing for a decent portion of the community to ask for a nerf, when most people are ranking Serpent for defence and long form content. If you’re targeting his defence kit for a nerf, then sure. But don’t put him in BGs or AW if the nerf has some much passion behind it. I’ve seen lot of videos about nerfing Serpent, but those folks have rank 2-4 7 star Serpents. Now I understand that to keep up with the game you have to rank up defenders. It’s just that I don’t think you have much room to complain if you’re ging to rank up the champion anyway. What is Kabam supposed to do then? Rank down tickets? Refunds?
I feel like if you really wanted to protest a champion, then don’t rank them up, leave them out if BGs & AW, and don’t do any quests that feature these champions. But it is a losing situation for the player. You don’t rank up Serpent, you fall behind if the meta calls for him. You rank him up despite how you feel about him because you have to. This is partially why I think Serpent and recent defenders are nonsense champions – they only serve to DIVIDE the community and make the game less fun. Despite how difficult a game can be, it still needs to be fun. Not stressful to its audience, which defeats the purpose of the game. How do you even design nodes around these defenders with the defenders themselves are walking quest nodes themselves.
5. Champion designs Part 2: Champion designs.
What I’ve noticed in recent champions is that Classes seem to focus more on countering other classes instead of having good, all-round champions. Now Class advantage was always a thing, but it’s become more champion specific. Eg, Red Skull having ability accuracy immunity to mutants. Why? Is he known as a mutant killer or enemy of mutants? I’m sure there’s a comic where he squares off against mutants, but this immunity feels oddly specific. Or Bishop & Storm having passive stuns against Skill champions. Are they X-Men or Anti-Skill champions? I guess what I’m trying to say is that it feels out of place in terms of a champion feeling like a comic book character if they have these very specific abilities that counter classes they otherwise aren’t known for fighting. Why does Iron Man randomly counter prowess? As an example, look at Apocalypse. The first mutant, encounters Celestial tech etc.. in the game it feels like you’re using a comic book version of Apoc – a bunch of random abilities that all work together. But the ability I want to reference Apoc’s 100% purification reduction. It counters skills champions great (although I don’t think it works against Cleanse – in my experience it sometimes worked then didn’t). You could say that it’s an anti-skill ability. Yet it works on every champion, unless you have increased ability accuracy like Longshot or ability reduction immunity. It’s a general ability that feels like it belongs to Apocalypse and not the Mutant Class. Imagine if Red Skull gained increased Ability accuracy based on his armour buffs. It would feel more like a Red Skull ability instead of a Tech class ability, and it would still fit in with the general properties of a tech champion to counter mutants. You could even word it that the Tesseract gives his armour ups increased ability accuracy. Warlock in another great example. Has abilities that counters mutants, but is a good all round champion. Why not have Bishop inflict his shrug off stun based on his prowess? It will still counter skill but also be a good, general skill.
6. Complicated and outdated stores.
It’s very easy for a store to become outdated. Kabam could update the BGs store today, but by tomorrow the Loyalty store is outdated. Would it not be better to just have one store? I’m sure this idea was brought up before. An idea would be to get rid of all the other currencies (battleships, tokens, loyalty, artefacts etc..) and have one currency that players earn from all the different game modes. That way Kabam just focuses on updating one store, and as a player you’re not missing out on a store you would buy from but can’t because you, eg, don’t play BGs.
7. Buying in-game items
I used to spend until I realised that whatever I bought lost its very a few months later. Instead, why not invest in more sigil champions? Sigil SW isn’t broken but is a great champion. She can always be buffed if she feels outdated. And a good champion always retains their value. Champion skins would also be cool. The idea of spending in MCOC is odd because buying is a commitment – if you spend a lot, you sort of then have to keep that trend because why else would you spend if not to grow a competitive roster? We have to be grateful to the big spenders for keeping the game going though, but I think even the big spenders deserve something more worth while to spend their money on. Sigil Doom, Sigil Iron Man etc…
8. Bugs and AI
I think we all feel the same way about this issue.
Overall, despite finally putting the game down, I still think MCOC is an amazing game. I’ve rarely seen a mobile game last this long, and despite my criticisms I think the folks as Kabam have done something really amazing here. We not only have a decade old game, but we have cool community, content creators and we get to experience comic book characters for free if we choose to. I do hope the game goes on for as long as it can and I’ll never forget using some of my favourite champions, like Apocalypse and Dr Doom. Good luck to all the players out there! And excuse any grammar and typos in the post. Although there will be less typos than there are bugs in the game (only joking only joking don’t hate me). But seriously, good luck to Kabam - hopefully they get the game where it needs to be and where the community needs to be, it is still an amazing game!
Also, these thoughts are also inspired by watching numerous content creators over the years, so if you see something familiar, then there you go.
1. Story Content
MCOC’s story mode got me into the game. It wasn’t stressful, you could take your time, and you could really play around with your roster with very little consequence if things went bad. Sure, a fight could be annoying (pre-nerf Caltrops Juggs in early story mode for example) but over time you could make it through, again with little consequence in a casual setting. Story mode also felt like an adventure. On average it would take me min. 3-4 months to complete since paths were long, you’d farm resources in between, and there was a memorable boss at the end of the Act and there was a story if you were into reading that.
I can understand the current state of story content, but what does a player take away from it now? Currently you can complete new story content in the same amount of time it takes to do monthly EQ (3-4 days) and the boss fight isn’t very memorable. Sure, they’re designed well enough, but when it’s over, do you even remember the fight? Sure Act content in the past wasn’t always ‘balanced’, like Act 6 being bonkers out the gate with some dodgy node combos, but in my opinion, it was memorable. It kept you busy. It opened the room to different champions. Nowadays you rush through it because it’s very easy, with only the final boss maybe being a problem if you’re trying to get used the fight mechanics. So, what’s the point of story content? It’s like playing God of War but you complete the game in two hours.
2. Relics
When relics were announced, it was very exciting. When relics were released, it was very disappointing. In my opinion. Relics feel like solo synergies that we’ve seen before. They also involve a fair amount of reading and level up management. Another complicated thing to manage in the game. Relics didn’t expand on anything either. The main reason players equip relics is the striker, making a large chunk of what goes into the relic redundant, unless you’re paying attention to the bonus’s relics can give. Recently relics are being built into game mechanics, through nodes or champion abilities, but they don’t feel like something we’d naturally want to use, instead Kabam are finding ways to push us to use them.
Here are some examples of what I thought relics would or could be:
• Instead of the relic being a champion, it is some Marvel ‘item’.
• You could have a relic that’s Heimdall’s sword, Iron Man’s arc reactor, or even the Infinitiy stones could be relics. Image the Collector’s showroom from the Guardians movie.
• Each relic provides some abilities to a group of champions that says something about the relic itself, eg, Heimdall’s Sword (with the graphic being Heimdall’s sword) gives Asgardian tagged champions the ability to bypass Miss and Evade. Additionally, it inflicts a Bifrost debuff/passive effect that causes extra damage under some circumstance.
• Also you don’t rank or level up the relic. Any damage could be percentage based and you collect them (maybe from story quests or Everest content) and that’s it, no further management. And thr relic’s ability is in a simple paragraph or two, no extra tabs or slots. If you ‘dupe’ the relic from a crystal if they are in there, you get a large chunk of gold.
Relics felt like another ‘nothing’ item in MCOC. You get it, but it’s not very thrilling. Some relics are good (Mr Sinister for example) but generally they could have felt more like relics instead of just champion graphics with synergies. This may sound similar to the Heimdall sword example. But I think the relics being items has more of a story to it, you can introduce unique abilities and they’re faster to understand and can be broken if needed depending on how difficult it is to get the relic if you earn them through content, eg a boss challenge where you collect Infinity Stone relics.
3. Casual vs Competitive gameplay.
I first left the game after the Toad Eternity of Pain fight. I couldn’t spend 5 minutes baiting a special attack only to get hit by a SP3 or get hit by a special when going to hit into Toad’s block. I came back in December because I heard the gifting event had some hype to it. The hype didn’t pay off but it was cool to see my roster again. However I wanted a casual style of gameplay so I didn’t do any alliance events ( I used to be an officer and do not miss the days of spending 1-2 hours planning around nodes, timezones etc…). I wasn’t a big fan of BGs as it felt very grindy, stressful thanks to bugs and nonsense defenders. Didn’t enjoy Raids cause all you did was revive spam against a boss with an autokill mechanic that you could solo if you wanted to. So… what was there to do? Being a competitive player in MCOC is like running in a marathon where the finish line so constantly being moved. It never really ends. Even spending makes no sense. You’ll spend to keep your account competitive, but the resources you buy eventually depreciate very quickly, but you have to keep spending to a degree because if you don’t, your hard earned account will lose its competitive advantage. And you do this to play in a way where there is no finish line. Now BGs and AW is done on seasons, but those seasons feel so routine and quick, especially for AW, that when it ends, it begins again without much time to take in what you’ve done before you realise you have get back at it again. At least that was my experience, it’s probably very different for other players.
So after leaving behind competitive gameplay because it was stressful and repetitive, I realised there wasn’t much to do. EQ was outdated and boring. Story quest, which could otherwise keep you busy for 3-4 months, was boring and forgettable and you could do Everest content, but that usually involved resource farming which meant playing most the game modes which were either boring or stressful (eg, super daily event is really just a BG event because hitting all the milestones will eat your resources). I’m fine with games changing, after all it isn’t my game, but I felt like MCOC had a little something for everyone. Something casual if you just wanted to chill or something competitive if that’s what you’re into. Nowadays it’s just you either play competitively or you don’t, because if you don’t the game is rather boring.
4. Champion designs Part 1: Defenders.
Lately champions are become more complicated. To do what older champions do better, more recent champions have so much text that MCOC feels a novel or reading a very complicated installation guide for your WiFi enabled, AI capable kettle. However, we can choose which champions we want to use so that’s fine. But it’s recently defenders that help push me away from the game. Serpent, Bullseye, Enchantress, Onslaught, Science Cap Marvel etc…
Yes, over time these champions get counters and thanks to Content Creators we find ways around these defenders. But is it fun though? Is it fun though? The game does push you more towards competitive gameplay. There’s no content really that you can play with little stress or that doesn’t require lots of farming if you aren’t insanely skilled. So, when you play BGs and AW, what do you fight a lot? In my opinion, nonsense defenders. Switching off masteries feels like a lazy way to force a defensive ability. That’s what nodes are for (eg, Heal Block nodes). Eg, imagine if Science Cap Marvel instead inflicted you with a heal block or petrify each time you made contact with her if you had a debuff? You could still benefit from Willpower in whatever way suited you. An BGs and AW most players run Despair anyways, so you won’t be healing from much either, if only to offset the block damage.
And I must mention Serpent here. Serpent is a nonsense defender. Defenders have to be challenging yes, but do they need to strip the fun out of the experience? Serpent just punishes you for existing, with you having to dance around him hoping he plays ball. Now if you stick around long enough there will be ways around him. But the whole Serpent experience is to get out of there as soon as possible. Put Serpent behind you. And if you play competitively, you see Serpent everywhere. Which brings me to a funny point of the Serpent nerf the Community needed. It is confusing for a decent portion of the community to ask for a nerf, when most people are ranking Serpent for defence and long form content. If you’re targeting his defence kit for a nerf, then sure. But don’t put him in BGs or AW if the nerf has some much passion behind it. I’ve seen lot of videos about nerfing Serpent, but those folks have rank 2-4 7 star Serpents. Now I understand that to keep up with the game you have to rank up defenders. It’s just that I don’t think you have much room to complain if you’re ging to rank up the champion anyway. What is Kabam supposed to do then? Rank down tickets? Refunds?
I feel like if you really wanted to protest a champion, then don’t rank them up, leave them out if BGs & AW, and don’t do any quests that feature these champions. But it is a losing situation for the player. You don’t rank up Serpent, you fall behind if the meta calls for him. You rank him up despite how you feel about him because you have to. This is partially why I think Serpent and recent defenders are nonsense champions – they only serve to DIVIDE the community and make the game less fun. Despite how difficult a game can be, it still needs to be fun. Not stressful to its audience, which defeats the purpose of the game. How do you even design nodes around these defenders with the defenders themselves are walking quest nodes themselves.
5. Champion designs Part 2: Champion designs.
What I’ve noticed in recent champions is that Classes seem to focus more on countering other classes instead of having good, all-round champions. Now Class advantage was always a thing, but it’s become more champion specific. Eg, Red Skull having ability accuracy immunity to mutants. Why? Is he known as a mutant killer or enemy of mutants? I’m sure there’s a comic where he squares off against mutants, but this immunity feels oddly specific. Or Bishop & Storm having passive stuns against Skill champions. Are they X-Men or Anti-Skill champions? I guess what I’m trying to say is that it feels out of place in terms of a champion feeling like a comic book character if they have these very specific abilities that counter classes they otherwise aren’t known for fighting. Why does Iron Man randomly counter prowess? As an example, look at Apocalypse. The first mutant, encounters Celestial tech etc.. in the game it feels like you’re using a comic book version of Apoc – a bunch of random abilities that all work together. But the ability I want to reference Apoc’s 100% purification reduction. It counters skills champions great (although I don’t think it works against Cleanse – in my experience it sometimes worked then didn’t). You could say that it’s an anti-skill ability. Yet it works on every champion, unless you have increased ability accuracy like Longshot or ability reduction immunity. It’s a general ability that feels like it belongs to Apocalypse and not the Mutant Class. Imagine if Red Skull gained increased Ability accuracy based on his armour buffs. It would feel more like a Red Skull ability instead of a Tech class ability, and it would still fit in with the general properties of a tech champion to counter mutants. You could even word it that the Tesseract gives his armour ups increased ability accuracy. Warlock in another great example. Has abilities that counters mutants, but is a good all round champion. Why not have Bishop inflict his shrug off stun based on his prowess? It will still counter skill but also be a good, general skill.
6. Complicated and outdated stores.
It’s very easy for a store to become outdated. Kabam could update the BGs store today, but by tomorrow the Loyalty store is outdated. Would it not be better to just have one store? I’m sure this idea was brought up before. An idea would be to get rid of all the other currencies (battleships, tokens, loyalty, artefacts etc..) and have one currency that players earn from all the different game modes. That way Kabam just focuses on updating one store, and as a player you’re not missing out on a store you would buy from but can’t because you, eg, don’t play BGs.
7. Buying in-game items
I used to spend until I realised that whatever I bought lost its very a few months later. Instead, why not invest in more sigil champions? Sigil SW isn’t broken but is a great champion. She can always be buffed if she feels outdated. And a good champion always retains their value. Champion skins would also be cool. The idea of spending in MCOC is odd because buying is a commitment – if you spend a lot, you sort of then have to keep that trend because why else would you spend if not to grow a competitive roster? We have to be grateful to the big spenders for keeping the game going though, but I think even the big spenders deserve something more worth while to spend their money on. Sigil Doom, Sigil Iron Man etc…
8. Bugs and AI
I think we all feel the same way about this issue.
Overall, despite finally putting the game down, I still think MCOC is an amazing game. I’ve rarely seen a mobile game last this long, and despite my criticisms I think the folks as Kabam have done something really amazing here. We not only have a decade old game, but we have cool community, content creators and we get to experience comic book characters for free if we choose to. I do hope the game goes on for as long as it can and I’ll never forget using some of my favourite champions, like Apocalypse and Dr Doom. Good luck to all the players out there! And excuse any grammar and typos in the post. Although there will be less typos than there are bugs in the game (only joking only joking don’t hate me). But seriously, good luck to Kabam - hopefully they get the game where it needs to be and where the community needs to be, it is still an amazing game!
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Comments
Timeline doesn’t hold together. Maybe homeboy got snapped and lost five years in the blip.
The bit I've highlighted in my quote is something which has been in the game for a while but isn't subtle anymore. My Alliance only does bits of low level AW but I'm considering giving up on AW entirely because fighting Serpent, Enchantress, Maestro and to a lesser extent Bullseye is just... boring. If you haven't got the perfect counter, get ready to die a lot and spam revives.
It's pretty clear that the champion design is often following a formula for release x champion, then 3 months or whatever release champion who is a counter to x. The counter often doesn't make much sense either from a comic/MCU lore standpoint.
I miss the days of general champions as the rule rather than the exception. Part of the fun was working out where they could offer a small competitive advantage against other elements of my roster. Having direct counters has taken that away.
still playing