It’s 2026 - Why are we still locked out of the rest of the game when doing endgame content?
This is something I touched on briefly in a post a couple of weeks ago, but after actually sitting in an Epoch run right now, I feel like it needs to be asked more directly.
TLDR: I’m currently part way through the first #heroes Epoch gauntlet. I’ve cleared one lane and I’m a couple fights into the next, and realistically I’ve still got 16 endgame fights left (plus Ares).
That’s not a small task, that’s a huge time commitment not to mention extremely mentally taxing.
And we have to do it a second time for #villains.
And this is where the problem comes in.
Right now, because I’m in that run, I’m effectively locked out of the rest of the game… It means I can’t do:
• my daily quests
• end of week Sunday quest
• any side or event quests
• solo raids
• engage with new content (like 9.4 dropping today)
And what ends up happening (at least for me) is this:
“Unless I’m ready to attempt that, why even bother logging in?”
That’s genuinely how it feels.
If I’m not in the headspace to sit down and push through multiple high-stress fights, I just… don’t engage with the game much at all. Because I know the moment I load in, I can’t do anything else and I’m just stuck with that one big task.
I mean I might log in and complete my daily super event by using my ISO to upgrade champs and get my free units but that’s literally it most days and it sucks…
The thing is, this isn’t about the difficulty at all.
Endgame content is supposed to be hard. That’s fine.
Nodes, health pools, mechanics, planning - that’s where the challenge should come from.
But the current system adds something on top of that:
It forces you to ignore the rest of the game while attempting it.
And I don’t really understand why that’s still the case in 2026. The majority of people have commitments, families, work, lives outside the game, and don’t just have 4-5 hours spare to commit to a mobile game. Especially stressful endgame content like EPOC which requires a huge amount of mental focus.
Sometimes you just want to relax and do some story, or a solo raid, or run a fun side quest like the Hammer Toss we had last week…But we can’t.
What makes it more confusing is that we already have an example in-game that does this better: Crucible.
Crucible is long-form content. It requires planning, a deep roster, and a lot of fights.
But the key difference is:
you can dip in and out of it.
You can:
• do a few fights
• leave
• go do your dailies / side quests
• come back later when you feel ready to tackle it again
Because of that it feels way more accessible to actually attempt and complete over time, and crucible (fight wise) is arguably much easier than EPOC or Necro.
So the question is:
Why isn’t that same flexibility applied to other endgame content like Epoc gauntlet, Necro etc?
I’m not asking to run multiple endgame quests at once and I’m not asking for anything to be made easier. I like the challenge of endgame content fights.
I’m just asking:
Why can’t we have ONE long-form run active, and still be able to engage with the rest of the game around it?
Because right now, the system creates this weird situation where:
• The content is long
• The content is demanding
• And the only way to engage with it is to commit fully and ignore everything else
The first two are fine but the latter just leads to people putting it off.
And I think that’s the biggest issue here.
It doesn’t encourage engagement, it actually discourages it.
People don’t think:
“I’ll chip away at this over time”
They think:
“I’m not in the headspace for really intense fights, I’ll do this when I have a few hours free”
…and then they either just don’t do it at all or (at least partially) disengage from the game.
At the end of the day, the difficulty should come from the fights themselves, not from being forced to put the rest of the game on hold just to attempt them.
Curious what others think, because right now this just feels like a massively outdated system that doesn’t really fit how people actually play games in 2026.
