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Wheel Of Fate--What Went Wrong?
FrostGiantLord
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.
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.
33
Comments
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.
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
Everest content is supposed to be challenging, removing or limiting is just a lazy way of making things more difficult.
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
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.
This one they just decided to increase difficulty by removing attackers
A mole in discord.
I'm a fellow needer,needie...
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?