Kabam's going through a GRINDY phase and my alliance is experiencing EXTREME BURNOUT
Let's take a look at the more recent modes and events of the past 2 months
1) Dimensional Arcade: Concert of Champions
2) An Incursions event where you did 15-25 rooms twice
3) Solo Coliseum
4) Alliance Coliseum
5) Not Poker Lunar Event
6) Special Extended BGs
1) Dimensional Arcade: CoC - In order to complete all the objectives you need to use each character 18 times (72 times total). And this is if you were able to reach the end without losing your lives. With the issues at release it definitely caused me some deaths and just trying some things out so 72 runs is the MINIMUM. Aside from those objectives we also had score objectives. We had to reach 1.6 Million on Muspelheim for example. The issue with that is that no matter how skilled you were it was literally impossible to reach that score without farming stars. I don't know the exact numbers but I completed the objective after 200 stars. I don't know if this was intended or not but the most efficient way to farm stars was just to do the first level over and over again. This was supremely boring but at least it got me the stars I needed. And then there's the time. I would say the average time each level took was 2.5 minutes. 72x2.5 = 180 or 3 hours. I suppose not the worst time investment and the rewards were pretty good but all those issues at the beginning really put a damper on the mode.
2) Incursions - Personally, Incursions is one of my favorite nods. I really like using different champs with different hacks and overall I find it fun. When you ask people to do 2 runs of 25 rooms that's just too much. That's 150 fights if things go well and you don't get roadblocked to where you need to start over. You need to spend a bunch of time planning and being careful so it's not a quick process.
3) Solo Coliseum - Just an inferior form of EoP in my opinion. There's no reason to use any champion other than the one that can get you the most healthbars. And once you figure out who that is (either from testing yourself or suggestions from others) it's just the same fight over and over again until you get 80 healthbars down. I was able to get 17 healthbars off Crossbones with Wong. I felt pretty good about that. But then I realized I had to do that at least 5 more times if I could match that and many more if I couldn't. Overall fun mode that didn't take too much time by itself.
4) Alliance Coliseum - way waaaaaay worse than Solo. The defenders have all been insanely annoying from the constant powergain of Adam just killing you with sp3 or constantly throwing sp1 or throwing sp2 which you need to wait out, to nefaria with near impossible to dex specials and if he threw 1 sp1 the run was over, to Arcade with his autoblocks and stun immunity. You can get an amazing run but it doesn't matter, you must grind out this game mode for HOURS AND HOURS to get to podium level 3 on all 5 podiums. Or just pay for it I guess. My alliance nearly didn't reach the milstones and a few of them just couldn't do the mode. When Kabam initially pitched this mode I was excited for it because I thought it would be a simple fun alternative to AQ. But AQ would take you about 15 minutes per day. This mode is too hard and too long for what it's demanding from Alliances. The rewards are definitely very good.
5) Not Poker Lunar New Year Event - Boring, RNG based, unrewarding, and also requires hours and hours. The milestones go up to 136,000. I've played it for 2.5 hours already and am only at 47,000. So I'd need to play it for at least another 5 hours to reach the top. And then Kabam wants us to do this grind an additional 2 times? Aside from the milestones up to 6,000, so far I have gotten nothing but gold and iso.
6) Extended BGs - It's no secret that BGs are not in a great place right now. The game mode feels very stale. It didn't help that players were compelled to do A LOT of BGs with the extended season with the extra rewards. This meant spending much more time than usual in the Bgs.
On top of these events we have the other daily chores in the game
1) Daily Quests - Takes about 30 minutes on autoplay
2) Normal Bgs - Could take 15 minutes if it goes well or much longer if it doesn't
3) Solo Raids - About 5-10 minutes
4) AW - Takes some planning but also usually about 8-20 minutes
5) Arena - Hours on the high end (I don't do this anymore except to get the 4* version of the new champions
6) Raids - Could be a bit grindy but over a week it doesn't take so much time.
7) Normal incursions - once or twice a month for a few hours
8) EQ - Much better and faster without the choice nodes
These individual modes don't take so long and aren't too grindy by themselves but combined with everything else it's just so overwhelming now.
And then we are going to have the other extra modes coming soon as well.
1) 9.4
2) Saga Showcase
3) AW Showcase
It really does seem that the intention is to spread players thin. I understand that players don't "need" to get max milestones on everything but the psychology of players will push them to wanting max milestones and it feels really bad not to reach those milestones. Also it's a slippery slope of not wanting to get max milestones to not caring about a few more milestones to then not caring about any milestone and then not doing the mode altogether. This has already happened to me for Poker and BG etc... and I would say this is the main issue pushing me and my alliance members away from the game as a whole.
I think that the core of the game is brilliant and one of the best I've ever played but it's just going in a direction I can't keep up with anymore.
