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Does the game have too many champions now?
TP33
Member Posts: 1,773 ★★★★★
So I was playing BGs recently and came to realise that there were quite a few new champs which I just had 0 idea how to play or play against. I just went “eh whatever” and went to watch some DLL deep dives in the background whilst grunting arena (i know I’ve got way too much time on my hands I need to get a job 😭😭)
Still going through these i thought to myself “how did I miss all these champs?” I mean all the new 2024/2025 champions look really good and fun etc so why did I know so little about so many of them? I thought I kept up to date with the game but I guess I was wrong.
After thinking a bit more I realised that it’s becoming harder and harder to get really excited for new champion releases for me. I mean back when I started playing in June 2018 champion releases felt important. I mean how is it I can place exactly when I started playing? Well it’s cause I remember that it was during the addition of domino, a champion who seemed really huge for the game and who I chased. I mean I still remember warlock coming out and wanting him for ages and finally getting him as my second ever 6* the day he entered the basic pool (I even saved the crystal for the day)
Champion releases used to feel huge and impactful and you would chase these champions for months and months to get them. Think of Doom, Spider Ham, Sunspot and Warlock, in fact any of the champions released in 2019/2020 were massive events. Namor, Stealthy, Human Torch, Nick Fury, and all of these champions have seemed to stay relevant (to varying degrees) even 5/6 years later.
Now that could just be because I used to be able to play 3/4 hours a day in high school but the past couple years with exams and now university I’ve had less time for the game, I’ve definitely been less engaged recently. However I also think in part it is because there are just so many different champions in the game, it’s hard for new champions to really make a splash.
I mean thinking back to 2020 every new champion was branded as “god tier” and had some form of ability/utility that was new or much needed in the game. They instantly gained relevance and once they made it into the basic, were everywhere in PVP modes, everyone was using them in story or special content (back when that stuff was hard in the trenches of act 6). Having or not having the new champions was super consequential to ones roster and success.
On the other hand now some champions just fail to make an impact. For me Spiral was one of these. I think I fought her in the event quest, although i can’t remember if I bothered with that one. After that I don’t think I fought against her until the recent AW showcase, I literally had to read her abilities in that quest to work out what was going wrong for me. Sure I’d seen her in a few BG decks, and maybe once or twice she was drafted and used, but even then I can’t remember. The most surprising part was that when looking recently at my own roster I filtered by 7* R1 mystics to see who would be my next rank up, shockingly it turned out I had my own 7* spiral! How did I not even know I had a nearly brand new champion whom I must have pulled from a titan? How did this not even occur to me? And it’s not even as if spiral is a dud champion, in fact she seems a quite good dual threat champion well worthy of a R3.
I mean we’re at something like 300 champions now. That’s 90,000 unique matchups, 99% of players won’t even have that many fight wins. Do we really need 2 more every month? I mean look it’s a tried and tested formula, it’s not going anywhere any time soon, it’s been going for 10 years and will continue to do so. In terms of reworks kabam are focusing on doing massive rehauls over a long time rather than small tune ups (anyone else remember that era of 2 buffs a month, all of which are now almost irrelevant?) so it’s not like they’re gonna be doing a 1 + 1 every month any time soon. Still it takes Onslaughts, Serpents or bullseyes to make a big splash as new champions. This feels tough on summoners, basically the only way to be a relevant new champion is to be a crazy good defender, the only way to be a crazy good defender is to have some unique IP/uncounterable (as of time of release) defensive threat. There are so many offensive champions that it’s difficult to create a defensive threat without making them completely unkillable, and there are so many good defenders that it is difficult to create a good offensive champion which is not a do it all one man army nuclear bomb.
I don’t know what the solution to this is, maybe it’s fine for the game to be this big, i mean one idea for a quest that I think would be really cool is to have some form of gauntlet which featured every champion in the game, no nodes, and you still only get 5 team slots (or it can be even more limited to 3 or 4 in a harder difficulty to really test summoners) just to see what kind of hiccups or problems would entail. Do others feel the same? Or are you all keeping up with every champion release. Is it that we’ve had some mediocre releases most recently, i mean not every champion can be god tier maybe that’s also a good thing? I’m not sure, I just know that the game feels very different to how it did 5 years ago, for better or for worse…
Still going through these i thought to myself “how did I miss all these champs?” I mean all the new 2024/2025 champions look really good and fun etc so why did I know so little about so many of them? I thought I kept up to date with the game but I guess I was wrong.
After thinking a bit more I realised that it’s becoming harder and harder to get really excited for new champion releases for me. I mean back when I started playing in June 2018 champion releases felt important. I mean how is it I can place exactly when I started playing? Well it’s cause I remember that it was during the addition of domino, a champion who seemed really huge for the game and who I chased. I mean I still remember warlock coming out and wanting him for ages and finally getting him as my second ever 6* the day he entered the basic pool (I even saved the crystal for the day)
Champion releases used to feel huge and impactful and you would chase these champions for months and months to get them. Think of Doom, Spider Ham, Sunspot and Warlock, in fact any of the champions released in 2019/2020 were massive events. Namor, Stealthy, Human Torch, Nick Fury, and all of these champions have seemed to stay relevant (to varying degrees) even 5/6 years later.
Now that could just be because I used to be able to play 3/4 hours a day in high school but the past couple years with exams and now university I’ve had less time for the game, I’ve definitely been less engaged recently. However I also think in part it is because there are just so many different champions in the game, it’s hard for new champions to really make a splash.
I mean thinking back to 2020 every new champion was branded as “god tier” and had some form of ability/utility that was new or much needed in the game. They instantly gained relevance and once they made it into the basic, were everywhere in PVP modes, everyone was using them in story or special content (back when that stuff was hard in the trenches of act 6). Having or not having the new champions was super consequential to ones roster and success.
On the other hand now some champions just fail to make an impact. For me Spiral was one of these. I think I fought her in the event quest, although i can’t remember if I bothered with that one. After that I don’t think I fought against her until the recent AW showcase, I literally had to read her abilities in that quest to work out what was going wrong for me. Sure I’d seen her in a few BG decks, and maybe once or twice she was drafted and used, but even then I can’t remember. The most surprising part was that when looking recently at my own roster I filtered by 7* R1 mystics to see who would be my next rank up, shockingly it turned out I had my own 7* spiral! How did I not even know I had a nearly brand new champion whom I must have pulled from a titan? How did this not even occur to me? And it’s not even as if spiral is a dud champion, in fact she seems a quite good dual threat champion well worthy of a R3.
I mean we’re at something like 300 champions now. That’s 90,000 unique matchups, 99% of players won’t even have that many fight wins. Do we really need 2 more every month? I mean look it’s a tried and tested formula, it’s not going anywhere any time soon, it’s been going for 10 years and will continue to do so. In terms of reworks kabam are focusing on doing massive rehauls over a long time rather than small tune ups (anyone else remember that era of 2 buffs a month, all of which are now almost irrelevant?) so it’s not like they’re gonna be doing a 1 + 1 every month any time soon. Still it takes Onslaughts, Serpents or bullseyes to make a big splash as new champions. This feels tough on summoners, basically the only way to be a relevant new champion is to be a crazy good defender, the only way to be a crazy good defender is to have some unique IP/uncounterable (as of time of release) defensive threat. There are so many offensive champions that it’s difficult to create a defensive threat without making them completely unkillable, and there are so many good defenders that it is difficult to create a good offensive champion which is not a do it all one man army nuclear bomb.
I don’t know what the solution to this is, maybe it’s fine for the game to be this big, i mean one idea for a quest that I think would be really cool is to have some form of gauntlet which featured every champion in the game, no nodes, and you still only get 5 team slots (or it can be even more limited to 3 or 4 in a harder difficulty to really test summoners) just to see what kind of hiccups or problems would entail. Do others feel the same? Or are you all keeping up with every champion release. Is it that we’ve had some mediocre releases most recently, i mean not every champion can be god tier maybe that’s also a good thing? I’m not sure, I just know that the game feels very different to how it did 5 years ago, for better or for worse…
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Comments
Our desires will only be fullfiled when=
- Kabam launch Pyro or Kangaroo, as 1st Australian champ
- Lizard
- Yelena
- HammerHead
- The Executioner
- Shalla Ball (with FF4 movie)
- Franklin Richards
- Cassandra
- Madam Web
- Ka-Zar
- Blackheart
CGR the insane nuke, Doom the special spam lock, Hercules the unkillable, Torch the melter, Thing the annoying unstoppable, Nick fury the double health hero, Kitty the phaser, Magento the tech nuker,
These days I feel like the uniqueness is missing.
Sure we got Enche and Serpent but their uniqueness is used to annoy players instead of benefit them.
If this continues, it becomes more and more of a cash grab. It will alienate new and casual players (including those who spend some amount of real money) and only cater to whales who can upgrade their decks immediately with new counters that are released.
I do think that BGs focused design for champions (designing champions to be BG defenders/counters/attackers) takes away from their potential (for example Gentle is extremely limited in utility because it is designed with a Bullseye BGs framework), but overall new champions is not an issue*.
*Note that I mean it is not an issue for current players. For new players, it can be daunting to learn about all the new mechanics that are put out.
I think some of that sensation has to do with the crystal introductions via the Titan and its very slow turnover rate. Depending on when a champ is released via monthly EQ relative to the Titan turnover cadence, it sometimes feel like you see a new champ in monthly EQ and then they don’t become available for months and months.
Don’t know what they can do to help it at this point. The game is just old, there are way, way more champs than most people will ever want or need to use with regularity.