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Wheel Of Fate--What Went Wrong?

FrostGiantLordFrostGiantLord Member Posts: 2,337 ★★★★
Kabam's latest piece of endgame content, the Wheel Of Fate, has received a mostly negative reaction since its launch, with many seeing it as an incredibly overhyped piece of content that could be considered one of, if not the worst endgame/everest-type content that Kabam has ever released. From the feedback given by content creators and the rest of the playerbase, as well as my own experience, I've singled out a few key reasons that I believe were responsible for this event's failure, and what could be done to fix this mess.

The first and most prominent factor of the Wheel's failure is the incredibly limiting restrictions placed on the champions that can be brought into the quest. When Kabam first announced that the Wheel would force us to play with certain tags, I, along with many others, assumed that this would be sort of like the restrictions placed on certain endgame quests from previous years (SoS, WoW, AoA, EoP, etc), where these tags would cover a sizeable amount of champions, which would force players to rank up certain champions, but wouldn't seem too limiting. The Wheel takes this concept and cranks it up to 11, with most of these defenders having only 1 or 2 viable counters within the given tags, which makes it near impossible for players with even relatively large rosters to participate (which is, you know, the demographic that endgame content should be aiming towards, instead of the whales and the top 0.1% of the playerbase). As a Valiant player with a medium-sized roster, I'm unable to even touch this content, as I simply don't have the niche champions necessary to counter some of the defenders. I've seen this sentiment echoed in many Forum threads and by Youtubers like Seatin, where their rosters are simply unequipped for this type of content, and are forced to splurge Units and money on brute-forcing with bad, underleveled counters.

The rewards given for the completion of this content, while decent on their own, are also not worth it in the slightest. The rewards for the first quest are absolutely abysmal for the effort, planning, and roster size that is required. The rewards for the subsequent quests are decent, but if you have the roster and resources to complete all 3 quests, they're probably not worth the effort either. The Wheel Of Fate lies in a sort of limbo state, where neither group wants to touch this piece of content or finds it worth their time.

However, both of the points I've stated above link back to a single problem: the quest's design itself. The main problem lies in the defenders you have to fight, with many of them only having a select number of counters on their own (Serpent, Bullseye, Enchantress), and the node limits just make these fights all the more frustrating to deal with. Even without these specific fights, the defenders are also gargantuan, having healthpools upwards of 2.5 million health in the first quest alone, and node combinations that serve to limit your viable options even further. Don't know if this sentiment is echoed by anyone else, but this quest feels a lot like the BrutalDLX from a few years back, only with bigger, badder defenders, annoying nodes, and roster restrictions that give me actual claustrophobia.

Despite all the clowning I've done in this post, I genuinely believe that, in concept, the Wheel Of Fate isn't a bad idea, and could be drastically improved with just a few simple tweaks. A hard Crucible-like piece of content where players are forced to upgrade and learn specific counters in order to progress sounds really interesting on paper, and I feel like this quest really hasn't lived up to its full potential. The first tweak that I would make is to make tag requirements less limiting (perhaps tags that belong to 30 or more different champions), to allow for players with less developed rosters to meaningfully participate. If Kabam's goal with this quest was to force players to utilize champions they otherwise wouldn't have used before, I would also remove the 7* champions-only restriction, because I think that just defeats the whole purpose of forcing players to explore their rosters. I would also tone down the defenders to make them less of a slog to fight, and remove Bullseye, Serpent, and Enchantress from the quest entirely because nobody likes them. The nodes in the quest could have also allowed for more interactivity from the player, like with the Necro charges in the Necropolis. Finally, I'd also tune up the rewards a little bit (particularly for the first quest to encourage players), and to make it just a little bit more rewarding for casuals.

Overall, I was incredibly disappointed in how the Wheel Of Fate turned out, and I really hope that Kabam learns their lesson this time and doesn't pull something like this ever again. Kabam has always been quite receptive to community feedback, so we'll have to see how they respond to this community backlash, but I still have faith that Kabam can find a way to go about endgame-type content in a more fun and positive way.
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Comments

  • FrostGiantLordFrostGiantLord Member Posts: 2,337 ★★★★

    They said it was aspirational content, so the way it's structured isn't an issue with that in mind. The real problem is the rewards are only barely relevant for right now. In a few weeks/months the rewards will be severely outdated so the whole the aspirational aspect is thrown out the window from the get go.

    Fix the rewards so it stays relevant and worth the time and resource investment for a long time and a lot of the problems go away.

    Yeah, I definitely agree. These rewards will be available for everyone by the time the July 4th deals roll around
  • PT_99PT_99 Member Posts: 6,362 ★★★★★
    edited June 12
    Dog rewards.

    If rewards were top and account changing then no one would've complained about content being difficult or restrictive.

    Necro was hard,
    Epoch Ares literally made people cry but they still did it because rewards were crazy hot.
    WoF rewards are meh and the selector is one of the most stupid selector, every end game players attempting WoF already have every single hero in that.

    I think selector could be heroes from one of those omega days like exclusive heroes, Redguardin, ProfX etc
  • JohnnooooooJohnnoooooo Member Posts: 298 ★★★
    I genuinely feel like there's 2 things they could do. based on the rewards now, open the restrictions up, alot.. if you want to keep it as it is, let torch be in the selector and then put him in the July 4th for the pay 2 win desperados, and that's it, the only 2 places to get him.. ide personally smash this out happily if torch was in the selector as it would always stay relevant.. kinda like the CCP rewards for stark Spidey, massacre and spidy99, it's always going to be relevant..
  • SirGamesBondSirGamesBond Member Posts: 8,071 ★★★★★
    PT_99 said:

    Dog rewards.

    If rewards were top and account changing then no one would've complained about content being difficult or restrictive.

    Necro was hard,
    Epoch Ares literally made people cry but they still did it because rewards were crazy hot.
    WoF rewards are meh and the selector is one of the most stupid selector, every end game players attempting WoF already have every single hero in that.

    I think selector could be heroes from one of those omega days like exclusive heroes, Redguardin, ProfX etc

    Oh!! so you don't need serpy anymore... rip
  • FrostGiantLordFrostGiantLord Member Posts: 2,337 ★★★★

    I genuinely feel like there's 2 things they could do. based on the rewards now, open the restrictions up, alot.. if you want to keep it as it is, let torch be in the selector and then put him in the July 4th for the pay 2 win desperados, and that's it, the only 2 places to get him.. ide personally smash this out happily if torch was in the selector as it would always stay relevant.. kinda like the CCP rewards for stark Spidey, massacre and spidy99, it's always going to be relevant..

    Yeah, but then there'd be a whole other mess 'cause the people who already completed it would be whining that it wouldn't be "fair". My thoughts are just to buff the rewards, and provide everyone who already completed it beforehand with due compensation for anything they missed out on
  • JohnnooooooJohnnoooooo Member Posts: 298 ★★★

    I genuinely feel like there's 2 things they could do. based on the rewards now, open the restrictions up, alot.. if you want to keep it as it is, let torch be in the selector and then put him in the July 4th for the pay 2 win desperados, and that's it, the only 2 places to get him.. ide personally smash this out happily if torch was in the selector as it would always stay relevant.. kinda like the CCP rewards for stark Spidey, massacre and spidy99, it's always going to be relevant..

    Yeah, but then there'd be a whole other mess 'cause the people who already completed it would be whining that it wouldn't be "fair". My thoughts are just to buff the rewards, and provide everyone who already completed it beforehand with due compensation for anything they missed out on
    Well, slightly different scenario but I feel it’s relevant. I did epoch in the first few days, it turned out ares was bugged, and those that had already completed it, got a revive and potion compensation package, because the ares we fought was a lot harder than the current ares. The concept of this isn’t new, so ide imagine this could be an option
  • JESUSCHRISTJESUSCHRIST Member Posts: 2,323 ★★★★★
    Thanks to youtubers, we can see how restrictive quest 2 and 3 are

    If not you would have wasted your time completing quest 1 only to find out you can't complete quest 2+3

    Quest 1 rewards aren't worth it at all and quest 2+3 are so restrictive that you literally need all the 2024 7* champions at ranked 3 to be viable and that's limited to the biggest whales in the game
  • FrostGiantLordFrostGiantLord Member Posts: 2,337 ★★★★

    Personal opinion after giving it a try and wanting to have my own personal opinion on the quest. The design is lazy. The difficulty comes from options to use, not the execution itself. You can try to loosen nuts and bolts with a pair of pliers I guess, is not the best tool, probably strip the nuts, and it will get done. Now is it fun to work like that? Nope is not. Specially when you have a box full of tools and someone just decided to lock them.
    Everest content is supposed to be challenging, removing or limiting is just a lazy way of making things more difficult.

    I honestly agree. I wish that endgame content could be more like story content now, with Weapon node-like mechanics and different ways of dealing damage. Adding these RPG mechanics would make this type of content much less of a slog, and would bring a new dimension to playing these quests
  • Graves_3Graves_3 Member Posts: 1,896 ★★★★★

    Personal opinion after giving it a try and wanting to have my own personal opinion on the quest. The design is lazy. The difficulty comes from options to use, not the execution itself. You can try to loosen nuts and bolts with a pair of pliers I guess, is not the best tool, probably strip the nuts, and it will get done. Now is it fun to work like that? Nope is not. Specially when you have a box full of tools and someone just decided to lock them.
    Everest content is supposed to be challenging, removing or limiting is just a lazy way of making things more difficult.

    Most of their new Everest content is recycled. There are few pieces of new things added sporadically but most of their end game content is not. The last full fledged brand new end game content was necro which was about 2 yrs ago. Now this has even trickled down to monthly content. A valiant event quest is just same defenders from lower quest with champ swap node. Side quest has used same rewards and same format for more than a year now.
    Something has changed and it’s looking more and more like they have lost their creative edge. Once in a while they hit a jackpot like ares but that’s too few and far between.
  • CheeseMaster482CheeseMaster482 Member Posts: 251 ★★★
    Kabam should have released this when the new title dropped and there wasn't a major sale in a couple of weeks. At least then, the content could have stayed relevant for at least a couple of months
  • Emilia90Emilia90 Member Posts: 4,043 ★★★★★
    Graves_3 said:

    Personal opinion after giving it a try and wanting to have my own personal opinion on the quest. The design is lazy. The difficulty comes from options to use, not the execution itself. You can try to loosen nuts and bolts with a pair of pliers I guess, is not the best tool, probably strip the nuts, and it will get done. Now is it fun to work like that? Nope is not. Specially when you have a box full of tools and someone just decided to lock them.
    Everest content is supposed to be challenging, removing or limiting is just a lazy way of making things more difficult.

    Most of their new Everest content is recycled. There are few pieces of new things added sporadically but most of their end game content is not. The last full fledged brand new end game content was necro which was about 2 yrs ago. Now this has even trickled down to monthly content. A valiant event quest is just same defenders from lower quest with champ swap node. Side quest has used same rewards and same format for more than a year now.
    Something has changed and it’s looking more and more like they have lost their creative edge. Once in a while they hit a jackpot like ares but that’s too few and far between.
    Most of their new Everest content is good. The seasonal endgame stuff we had last year, epoch this year, ordeal. Even if you don’t like this quest they nailed it with the rest
  • BringPopcornBringPopcorn Member Posts: 9,746 ★★★★★
    Emilia90 said:

    Graves_3 said:

    Personal opinion after giving it a try and wanting to have my own personal opinion on the quest. The design is lazy. The difficulty comes from options to use, not the execution itself. You can try to loosen nuts and bolts with a pair of pliers I guess, is not the best tool, probably strip the nuts, and it will get done. Now is it fun to work like that? Nope is not. Specially when you have a box full of tools and someone just decided to lock them.
    Everest content is supposed to be challenging, removing or limiting is just a lazy way of making things more difficult.

    Most of their new Everest content is recycled. There are few pieces of new things added sporadically but most of their end game content is not. The last full fledged brand new end game content was necro which was about 2 yrs ago. Now this has even trickled down to monthly content. A valiant event quest is just same defenders from lower quest with champ swap node. Side quest has used same rewards and same format for more than a year now.
    Something has changed and it’s looking more and more like they have lost their creative edge. Once in a while they hit a jackpot like ares but that’s too few and far between.
    Most of their new Everest content is good. The seasonal endgame stuff we had last year, epoch this year, ordeal. Even if you don’t like this quest they nailed it with the rest
    Graves has a point though. We know Ares is comming back, GM and Thanos have been used repeatedly. All those EoP and things were the same thing 1 weekly then put them in a quest, and then combine all of them
    This one they just decided to increase difficulty by removing attackers
  • Zacharias10719Zacharias10719 Member Posts: 188 ★★★
    edited June 12
    shield311 said:

    They said it was aspirational content, so the way it's structured isn't an issue with that in mind. The real problem is the rewards are only barely relevant for right now. In a few weeks/months the rewards will be severely outdated so the whole the aspirational aspect is thrown out the window from the get go.

    Fix the rewards so it stays relevant and worth the time and resource investment for a long time and a lot of the problems go away.

    "Aspirational content" as if pulling specific champions isn't complete rng, so we're aspiring for good luck now?
    Well, yeah. Thats how this game has always operated though. If you didn't have Kate or aegon for necro when it dropped then your options were limited. There were threads full of people opening loads of class 6* crystals trying to pull them so they could do the run. We're always relying on rng.
  • Frumpy_geezerFrumpy_geezer Member Posts: 304 ★★

    Emilia90 said:

    Graves_3 said:

    Personal opinion after giving it a try and wanting to have my own personal opinion on the quest. The design is lazy. The difficulty comes from options to use, not the execution itself. You can try to loosen nuts and bolts with a pair of pliers I guess, is not the best tool, probably strip the nuts, and it will get done. Now is it fun to work like that? Nope is not. Specially when you have a box full of tools and someone just decided to lock them.
    Everest content is supposed to be challenging, removing or limiting is just a lazy way of making things more difficult.

    Most of their new Everest content is recycled. There are few pieces of new things added sporadically but most of their end game content is not. The last full fledged brand new end game content was necro which was about 2 yrs ago. Now this has even trickled down to monthly content. A valiant event quest is just same defenders from lower quest with champ swap node. Side quest has used same rewards and same format for more than a year now.
    Something has changed and it’s looking more and more like they have lost their creative edge. Once in a while they hit a jackpot like ares but that’s too few and far between.
    Most of their new Everest content is good. The seasonal endgame stuff we had last year, epoch this year, ordeal. Even if you don’t like this quest they nailed it with the rest
    Graves has a point though. We know Ares is comming back, GM and Thanos have been used repeatedly. All those EoP and things were the same thing 1 weekly then put them in a quest, and then combine all of them
    This one they just decided to increase difficulty by removing attackers
    Not just this but the healthpools and nodes just are boring and long. I have a R4 Nefaria and it takes over 4 minutes to finish Gorr. I'm using Overseer on Dazzler and it's just bait sp1 and spam sp1 and takes 10 minutes. If this were like the crucible and you could go into other quests while working on this one, I might consider doing it, but for now it's just too tedious. I've got plenty of revives for the ones I don't have the best match ups on but I'm not spending 2 hours to complete 12 fights.
  • Graves_3Graves_3 Member Posts: 1,896 ★★★★★

    Emilia90 said:

    Graves_3 said:

    Personal opinion after giving it a try and wanting to have my own personal opinion on the quest. The design is lazy. The difficulty comes from options to use, not the execution itself. You can try to loosen nuts and bolts with a pair of pliers I guess, is not the best tool, probably strip the nuts, and it will get done. Now is it fun to work like that? Nope is not. Specially when you have a box full of tools and someone just decided to lock them.
    Everest content is supposed to be challenging, removing or limiting is just a lazy way of making things more difficult.

    Most of their new Everest content is recycled. There are few pieces of new things added sporadically but most of their end game content is not. The last full fledged brand new end game content was necro which was about 2 yrs ago. Now this has even trickled down to monthly content. A valiant event quest is just same defenders from lower quest with champ swap node. Side quest has used same rewards and same format for more than a year now.
    Something has changed and it’s looking more and more like they have lost their creative edge. Once in a while they hit a jackpot like ares but that’s too few and far between.
    Most of their new Everest content is good. The seasonal endgame stuff we had last year, epoch this year, ordeal. Even if you don’t like this quest they nailed it with the rest
    Graves has a point though. We know Ares is comming back, GM and Thanos have been used repeatedly. All those EoP and things were the same thing 1 weekly then put them in a quest, and then combine all of them
    This one they just decided to increase difficulty by removing attackers
    I donno if AW showcase counts as end game but even that is a bunch of war fights that is inspired by the community’s choice of defender node combo with all masteries enabled using 90 mastery points.
  • Graves_3Graves_3 Member Posts: 1,896 ★★★★★
    Emilia90 said:

    Graves_3 said:

    Personal opinion after giving it a try and wanting to have my own personal opinion on the quest. The design is lazy. The difficulty comes from options to use, not the execution itself. You can try to loosen nuts and bolts with a pair of pliers I guess, is not the best tool, probably strip the nuts, and it will get done. Now is it fun to work like that? Nope is not. Specially when you have a box full of tools and someone just decided to lock them.
    Everest content is supposed to be challenging, removing or limiting is just a lazy way of making things more difficult.

    Most of their new Everest content is recycled. There are few pieces of new things added sporadically but most of their end game content is not. The last full fledged brand new end game content was necro which was about 2 yrs ago. Now this has even trickled down to monthly content. A valiant event quest is just same defenders from lower quest with champ swap node. Side quest has used same rewards and same format for more than a year now.
    Something has changed and it’s looking more and more like they have lost their creative edge. Once in a while they hit a jackpot like ares but that’s too few and far between.
    Most of their new Everest content is good. The seasonal endgame stuff we had last year, epoch this year, ordeal. Even if you don’t like this quest they nailed it with the rest
    I did give credit to necro as the original content albeit with a recycled boss. And ordeal was just a bunch of boss fights from act 7 with only added node for champ swap. Are you saying ordeal was creative and original content? My criticism was that it’s recycled. Epoch is again a bunch of recycled fights with ares boss who I said was the jackpot in terms of creative excellence.
  • MonubeanMonubean Member Posts: 176 ★★
    Kabam went wrong, as per usual
  • PT_99PT_99 Member Posts: 6,362 ★★★★★
    edited June 12

    PT_99 said:

    Dog rewards.

    If rewards were top and account changing then no one would've complained about content being difficult or restrictive.

    Necro was hard,
    Epoch Ares literally made people cry but they still did it because rewards were crazy hot.
    WoF rewards are meh and the selector is one of the most stupid selector, every end game players attempting WoF already have every single hero in that.

    I think selector could be heroes from one of those omega days like exclusive heroes, Redguardin, ProfX etc

    Oh!! so you don't need serpy anymore... rip
    How you know my inner secrets?
    A mole in discord.
  • SirGamesBondSirGamesBond Member Posts: 8,071 ★★★★★
    PT_99 said:

    PT_99 said:

    Dog rewards.

    If rewards were top and account changing then no one would've complained about content being difficult or restrictive.

    Necro was hard,
    Epoch Ares literally made people cry but they still did it because rewards were crazy hot.
    WoF rewards are meh and the selector is one of the most stupid selector, every end game players attempting WoF already have every single hero in that.

    I think selector could be heroes from one of those omega days like exclusive heroes, Redguardin, ProfX etc

    Oh!! so you don't need serpy anymore... rip
    How you know my inner secrets?
    A mole in discord.
    You commented that right here somewhere.
    I'm a fellow needer,needie...
  • ItsClobberinTimeItsClobberinTime Member Posts: 6,589 ★★★★★
    edited June 12
    The tags, that's the main thing. The nodes themselves aren't anything too crazy but the tags just pushed the whole thing to another level of annoying. The 7* only restrictions are fine, and I do agree tags should be somewhat restrictive but not to this point cause it's ridiculous not everyone whales out in the game. I play regularly, I am an endgame player but my Titan luck has been arse and I haven't pulled Spiral instead I pulled Gentle four times so I can't do that Serpent unless I use Leader lol same thing for the Gorr in Quest 2 I don't have Void or Wong so now I'm completely roadblocked there all because my crystal luck as been arse and I haven't pulled either of them.
  • TotemCorruptionTotemCorruption Member Posts: 2,941 ★★★★★
    PT_99 said:

    PT_99 said:

    Dog rewards.

    If rewards were top and account changing then no one would've complained about content being difficult or restrictive.

    Necro was hard,
    Epoch Ares literally made people cry but they still did it because rewards were crazy hot.
    WoF rewards are meh and the selector is one of the most stupid selector, every end game players attempting WoF already have every single hero in that.

    I think selector could be heroes from one of those omega days like exclusive heroes, Redguardin, ProfX etc

    Oh!! so you don't need serpy anymore... rip
    How you know my inner secrets?
    A mole in discord.
    You've mentioned it like 10 times on the forum.
    I even became emotionally invested in you getting that 7* Serpent.
    Did you finally pull him from the basic or is WoF just not worth doing regardless?
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