This post is primarily targeted towards Kabam. However I encourage everyone to read it and respond to it. Share your opinions. Make forum posts, make videos, post comments. Speak out. Even if you don't agree with the things I say, share your own feelings. Because to be blunt, MCOC is in a really **** spot right now.
With that being said, this is going to be a longer post. To make it more digestible, I am separating it into sections covering broader aspects of the game. So without further ado, let's get into it.
A Relentless Grind
The first major issue I would like to discuss is how grindy the game has become. The sheer volume of content or more accurately "chores" s a player has to complete in order to keep up in MCOC is staggering. Let's take a look at everything that an "active" account should be doing:
- Daily Quests
- Daily Super Event
- Battlegrounds Objectives
- Battleground Solo/Alliance Events
- Battleground Ladder Climbing (Get to Gladiator's Circuit + 200 points for max radiance)
- Monthly EQ
- Monthly Side Event
- Alliance War
- AQ/Colosseum/Raids/Rampant Evo
- Solo Raids (If you want to be consistently leveling up)
- Arena (If you want units)
All of these are things you need to be doing regularly, if not daily, if you want to keep your account "active". Additionally, this list doesn't add the myriad of mundane chores that also come with the game.
Consider the poker event we had not long ago, the goblin crystal event which require 42 battlegrounds matches to be completed, or when alliance and solo colosseum coincided. All of those were cases that made the game feel incredibly grindy.
Oh and once you do finish them and log off the game, make sure you hop onto Twitch for twitch drops. Because the grind never ends.
There's so much menial content to complete and requirements often feel bloated.
The worst part? You could forego all of it and just spend money. If you took two identical accounts and had one play non-stop for one year. Doing every piece of content. Being competitive and grinding arena, war, aw, aq, etc. And the other account only logs on during sales and buys every offer. I would bet money that the second account will be further along after the one year. Yes, spending should give players an advantage. However, grinding in the game and actually playing should also feel rewarding.
I think a few simple changes could help make the game feel lighter and keep it from being so dull.
- Monthly EQ: We should not have to complete classic difficulty to reach Elder. This was promised for January... It's April now.
- Solo Colosseum: Eighty points per boss fight is far too high. It makes the mode feel repetitive and the fights get boring real quick. I think lowering it to even sixty would be good.
- Alliance Colosseum: First of all, this should be a week long event. Why is it crammed into three days when every other AQ event is a weeklong endeavor? Additionally, the leveling needs to be adjusted or straight up removed. Right now, the best way to level your podiums without spending is to just go into the easiest difficulty with your most busted champ and try to knock out as many health bars as possible. It's glorified mashing. It's not engaging or fun. By the time you finish leveling your podiums you don't even want to do the actual fight, you just want to get it over with.
- Monthly Side Events need to be short. The Women's Day Event was great, short few fights, decent rewards. No new currency, no crazy objectives, no convoluted new mode. Just simple fun. More of that please.
- Add Auto Complete to Daily Quests. Not auto play, auto complete which just takes your energy and automatically explores the quest for you instantly. This was a feature of the old dailys.
- Let Player's start in Gladiator's Circuit: If a player reaches 200 points in the circuit. They should start the next season in the circuit already. The climb up through the track is a monthly chore. It's also not fun for anyone. High level accounts have to just spend a few hours to reach the circuit and accounts that belong in the victory track end up getting smurfed at the start of every season. It's a lose lose.
I know that even more can be done, but these are just some of the ways I feel like the game could ease the burden on its player base and make staying active a bit more bearable.
The Complete Lack of Balance
Honestly, the term Balance and MCOC shouldn't even be spoken in the same sentence. This game is ridiculously lopsided when it comes to champions and despite it having nearly 300 champions by now, only a small fraction of those are actually viable.
I do want to say, when I say viable, I mean for competitive game modes. Primarily BGs and AW and also AQ/Colloseum/Raids/Rampant evolution somewhat. The truth is solo content is doable with any champ.
With that being said, let me share a list with you.
- Serpent
- Onslaught
- DThanos
- SpiderWoman
- Jean Gray
- Nico Minoru
- Photon
- Captain Britain
- Yelena Belova
- Okoye
- Arnim Zola
- Spider Man Pavitr
- Hulking
- Serpent
- Abs Man
- Kingpin
- Nick Fury
- Mister Sinsiter
- Dark Phoenix
- Bastion
- Solvarch
- Karolina Dean
- Kindred
- Fantman
- Kushala
So what's so special about these 25 champs? These 25 champs are pretty much must haves for Battlegrounds and AW. I would bet money that all of the champs I listed above have 80+% usage in war and bgs. I even left out some more powerful champs for the sake of making this a conservative estimate.
The simple truth is that if you compete in this game, you are guaranteed to see these champs and if you don't have them, you are at an active deficit. So many BG matches are just mirror matches where you and your opponent's deck is almost identical. There is no reason to use other champs when characters of such power exist. AW is also practically a solved game mode where every node has a best defender and a best counter. So if you want to be optimal, you'll just rank those same champs.
MCOC doesn't just have a power creep problem. It has a power sprint problem.
If you want MCOC to be an active and competitive game, if you want people to get excited about watching and playing BGs and war then you need to balance the game. And I don't mean what we had before where we had to wait six months to a year just for a champ to not be touched. I mean active and consistent patches.
My suggestions for steps to help achieve this would be as follows:
1. Slow down champion releases. I know this may be controversial, but I don't think we realize how crazy it is that we get two new characters every month in this game. That breakneck speed is part of why power creep in this game is so rampant. Additionally, two new champs every month seems to be more than Kabam can handle. This is why I feel we often get champs that feel like they aren't properly tested. It's why so many champs are either crazy overtuned or mediocre and forgettable. So I think slowing down the champion release could solve these issues. It could be 1 new champ every month and in addition reworks/tune ups to old characters kits. Thus slowing down power creep while also bringing up old champs.
2. My second suggestion is seasonal or monthly patch notes. These could come with every new update or every new BG/AW season. These patch notes should contain relevant changes to the game. For example, maybe the first month we get changes like Nico Minoru no longer starts with buff immunity on defense, Serpent gets his power gain potency reduced, Dracula gets his degen numbers tuned up, Onsalught gets a 10% health nerf or something along those lines. What's important is that these changes aren't a finality. Instead they are something that is monitored and actively adjusted. For example, after the changes go live you see how the season plays out and make changes next season. It could be like, oh we noticed that the Nico change didn't impact her usage much on offense and her defense levels are healthy, so we will keep that change. But we also saw that Onslaught became far too squishy aso he will be getting a five percent health buff. Serpent is still dominant on defense so we are shortening his immortality, Dracula is doing good on offense, but still not used a lot so we'll buff his regen too, etc. Again, this kind of change would require alot of nuance, but ultimately, I think it would be amazing for the game.
3. My final suggestion is to make champion stats available. Kabam has statistics on champion use rates, win rates, lose rates, etc. I think making this information public will improve transparency and also make the community more receptive to champion changes. Let's look at Spider Woman, Kabam handled her nerf very poorly. Rather than being honest about the changes she received, they were very sketchy and to be blunt tried to gaslight the commnunity. This was why I believe they recieved so much backlash. If instead they were transparent and shared the reasons for her nerf, say for instance they shared the stats with us and told us clearly "Hey Spiderwoman has a 90+% use rate and 95+% win rate, you can see it clearly she's not healthy on attack so we're going to change her offensive kit" then the community would be more receptive. At the same time, it would let the community hold Kabam accountable. Take Serpent for example, Kabam wouldn't be able to just say "Oh he's fine he doesn't need a nerf" because the stats would be public and we could all see "Hey Serpent has 100% use rate and a 90% win rate on defense he isn't healthy". This change would be beneficial to both Kabam and the community.
Ascension Sucks Major Rocks
That's right. Ascension gets its own section in this post. I genuinely believe that Ascension is one of if not the worst addition to the game. I think Ascension was even worse than six stars on release. I won't delve too deep into Ascension. In short, Ascension sucks. It's far too monetized. Kabam has taken away a lot of agency from players and ultimately made the game a lot less fun to play. It's made people unexcited about champion pulls and rankups which is ultimately at the heart of MCOC. Ascension also came way too early in the game's lifecycle and was forced onto the playerbase.
Ascension needs major reworks in order to fit into the game. First of all, it has to be made much more available without needing to spend thousands of dollars. Secondly, players need to be able to choose what champs to ascend and you need to make champs who players actually enjoy ascendable. A vast majority of the currently ascendable champs are just undesirable.
The only way I can see Ascension working is for it to be based on the six star ascension model. Make Tier 3 Ascension Dust. Have that be the resource for ascension and make it universal so we can decide who to ascend. Make it available through content and have it be given out from Max Sig seven star pulls and Titan Dupes.
Additionally, make every champion ascendable. If you really don't want the strongest champions ascendable, then limit them. Instead of having a few dozen champs that can be ascended and making everyone else unascendable, make everyone ascendable and make only the few dozen busted op champs unascendable.
Unrewarding Rewards
If you look at the game now vs the game a few years ago, you will notice that we don't really get content with big exciting reward drops anymore. We occasionally do, like with the recent Carina's challenges but those are rare. Instead everything is being sold. Not just for money, though that definitely is an issue too, but I mean through currency.
In the past, the game followed a very straightforward formula of do content, get reward, have fun opening. Nowadays, most of the best rewards are in the shop. In the Radiance store and Essentia store. You play the side events and you get mysterium to go spend in another store. The simple process of complete quest and earn reward has faded away and we only get stuff like that when we get big solo content additions every few months.
Additionally, there are plenty of game modes where the rewards are just outdated. And this is an actual issue. The monthly event rewards are mediocre considering the grind it is to complete it. Most monthly side event rewards are negligible. Raids rewards are outdated, Alliance Weekly Events, Battlegrounds Event and Solo Battlegrounds Events feel like nothing.
Alliance War I think is one of the worst cases. AW is the most demanding game mode. You need to plan the most, it has some of the hardest fights and the mode has the highest stakes in the game. Not to mention all the boosts and coordination AW takes. For all of its work, the AW rewards are meh. The Radiance is nice, until you look at the store and see that Platinum players are getting like 2 Tier 7 Basics every season and like 10k seven star shards. Which is insane. Alliance Colosseum which is a 3 day event has better rewards than an entire war season.
Seven star crystals are virtually worthless to endgame accounts and honestly, even Titan crystals aren't all that. If you're an endgame player Titan crystals are fun to open one day every few months when the crystals update. It's absurd, the Titan crystal is meant to be the highest tier of reward, but honestly, they aren't even exciting to get anymore.
I think we definitely need to see more exciting rewards added to the game and we need to see a lot of game modes have their rewards updated.
My biggest proposal is for a Titan Crystal rework. Now hear me out, the Titan Crystal should give a secondary similar to the jubilant crystals from banquet. Obviously, the rewards would need to be toned down but imagine this. You open a Titan Crystal you get a champ from that pool and in addition you have a chance at some additional rewards. Stuff like half a T7B, 1k Seven Star Awakening Gem Shards, 30 Sig Stones, 10% T5A fragments, 5k 7* Relic Shards, Ascension Mats, etc.
It would make it so that even if you had every champion in the Titan Pool you would be motivated to still open the crystals. I think with an addition like this you could even make it so Titan Shards reset with the pool, that way players are more incentivized to open their crystals instead of just hoarding them for months.
Basic seven stars also need a rework. Firstly, Max Sig Pulls need to be more rewarding. They should at the very least give 10 or 20 class sig stones. Additionally, I think it's time for Seven Star Dual Class Crystals. The pool is big enough that its nearly impossible to pull the champs you want from it. Having a way to target champs would make seven star shards feel somewhat better to get.
Aside from those suggestions I think Kabam just needs to introduce more rewards that could get players excited. Ascension certainly wasn't it but there could be other things. Maybe introduce a "First Edition Awakening Gem" a super rare reward but if you manage to get one you can give any champ of your choosing that First Edition glow.
Bottom line, the game needs to feel more rewarding.
Bad Faith and A Complete Lack of Trust in Kabam
The community doesn't trust Kabam. There's no two ways about it, Kabam over the past few months to a year, has committed numerous acts that have damaged their reputation with the community. Everything from the balancing fiasco's to horrible months like September 2025 to the release of ascension and essentia and more. It just feels like Kabam is constantly doing more bad than good.
The worst part, Kabam doesn't communicate. "Oh but yes they do! They share information and hold live streams and..." Ok, yes, Kabam does share information with the player base but I want you to consider how they do it. Communication from Kabam follows a few distinct patterns.
1. It's completely one sided. Kabam is rarely talking WITH us. Instead they are talking TO us. It's not a conversation its a lecture, they do all the talking and we can only listen. It takes huge and massive outcry for them to even slightly acknowledge the community's feedback.
2. The most important announcements come last. Kabam claims to communicate, but if you pay attention, what we often get is a lot of filler content and then the most vital information is dropped on us days or at most a week before release. For example, Ascension, yeah they announced it months early and made consisten posts about champions who could be ascended. But the important info on how we could get ascension materials and how available those would be, we didn't get that until the very last minute. Same with essentia. Announced and hyped up early but the important information like conversion rates and store prices? Not available until release! It's intentional too. There's no doubt about it. They purposefully leave the most critical information until the last minute so that the playerbase doesn't have time to react negatively to it before release. So yeah, Kabam communicates technically, but really they don't.
I could say so much more about the issues with Kabam's communication. I could mention how tone deaf they often sound. Consider the live streams, where rather than address any actual issues in the game they just tries to upsell the game and act like MCOC is doing amazing. Do they ever read chat? Yes, but only to cherry pick one or two messages talking up the game amongst a sea of criticism that gets ignored.
I could also mention that manipulative and borderline gaslighting manner in which Kabam talks to us. Consider the Spider Woman nerf. That was communicated as a nerf to her on defense! They were just blatantly lying about wanting to nerf her on offense. Or consider Ascension, where Kabam has done this wonderful thing of trying to scare the community with the threat of eight stars. Again, ascension is communicated as "Well its this or eight stars and you don't want eight stars right? so this is good! you have to love it!". The worst part is that its so blatant.
If all of that wasn't enought how about the fact that they don't even listen to people in the CCP? You have some of the most dedicated and knowledgable players who are willing to help you for FREE and you don't listen to them. Of course not, the CCP is there for one thing and one thing only. Free publicity. Kabam doesn't care if all of their content creators criticize them, they just want those creators to keep making videos about new champs so they can sell better.
So yeah, Kabam honestly has no credibility anymore and the constant abuse of the community has made it so that without major action and changes from them, it's hard to believe in them or to even trust them.
Everything Else
I could probably list dozens more problems, but this post is long enough. So just consider all of these issues and think about the fact that these issues and all the issues above, exist simultaneously in the game. Thus they make MCOC feel exponentially worse than any individual problem could on its own. I didn't even mention stuff like the constant bugs in the game, the insane lag, or the fact that it feels like this game has no quality assurance. The contest feels like a mess right now. They keep experimenting and most of their experiments fail. There is no consistency and it's hard to want to keep playing the game.
I know this post has sounded extremely negative but I want to reiterate, I LOVE THIS GAME. I've been playing MCOC for nearly a decade and I want to be able to play it for another 10 years. However, with its current state, I can't even imagine making it to the end of 2026. This post above all else is my attempt at helping enact change. To anyone whose reading this, I encourage you to speak out as well. If you're on the forums, chances are you're probably a fan of this game too. Make posts. Make videos. Comment. Talk. Share your thoughts and help make MCOC the amazing game we all know it can be!
