Kabam's view on Abyss?

With the Abyss being out for a while now, I wonder how do the authors/devs evaluate it?

From my perspective: it was said that Abyss won't be completed nor explored in the next weeks. In reality, it took about 48 hours to explore it and about a week to explore for the top endgame players. On the positive note, those who pushed on Abyss used a lot of units, which surely generated a nice income. However, the Abyss was an argument in the discussion about releasing new content, in which Kabam repeatedly said that Abyss is their main goal now. So they potentially postponed some projects by a couple of weeks to feed the endgamers some content to play. Anyway now, a mere weeks after Abyss release the endgamers are back to hating everything that isn't viable for them in terms of progression. So from my perspective, it didn't help to solve the eternal "I have nothing to play in mcoc anymore" problem at all.

So now my questions for Kabam employees:

How would you evaluate the Abyss? Did it fulfill your expectations?

Did the abyss generate more money than you invested in it? Did it pay off? (A daring question for sure)

Do you overall evaluate is as a success? Or did it generate more problems than before?

Comments

xLunatiXx

I was waiting for someone to talk about this. Looking forward to their answer.
Also about the locked camera for the so called "labyrinth environment" lol. Community warned them it would be useless just a pain in the ass checking on another website. But hey...
They clearly missed the mark if you compare their expectations about difficulty to what it really is. Which also explains the complain about act6 rewards since they were supposed to be earned before abyss.

Duke_Silver

Personally, I think it’s a cool quest by itself. However, as the third installment in the “of legends” quests, I find it somewhat of a failure.

PsyLife

It’s been put together horribly. What did Abyss do that was different to anything else? They should have taken away the damage caps, but if you hit for more than 85K, they lose 10 abyss charges.

PsyLife

Not to mention the fact that it’s a copypasta of labrynth.

Mirage_Turtle

Cavalier crystals and greater gifting crystals being available for purchase made basically all champs/resources available for anyone willing to spend for them. This wasn't an option for Realm/Labyrinth.

I think the release of Cavalier Crystals and Greater Gifting Crystals has eliminated the chance to ever have any content go unbeaten for more than a week again.

However, I don't know that it's fair to say it was a failure. Sure, there are some big spenders who completely explored the content very quickly. But it'd say it'll take the other 98% of the player base the weeks/months/years that the devs intended for the content to take. The whales blowing through content certainly isn't the typical experience for most players.

xLunatiXx

Yeah no damage cap and a complete new design, new mode to finally have some usage for champs like proxima. Unless they clearly admit proxima was poorly designed lol.

Duke_Silver

Call me crazy but I would’ve liked to see insane (insane) rewards held behind 30m health champs. No damage caps. Just free range for champions like Proxima. Throw enigmatics in and boom, hard and long content.

Mcord11758

the miss from what I see is duplication of champions. there really is no excuse for this, there are so many available. makes no sense certain champs appear more than once.

KattohS

I hope my fellow summoners are not trying to get kabam to bump up Abyss difficulty because that is what I think I’m hearing each time an abyss discussion surfaces.

TheTalents

I don't know where they get the Abyss is easy from. The amount of units you have to use to fully explore is still a ton and theres no way to one shot anything outside of Human Torch with mystics.

Don't tempt Kabam just because you completed the content already. It also helps justify the rewards of not having a t5cc selector as well.

xLunatiXx

Dont worry about it Kabam never changes content that has already been released. People already got their rewards etc.

Mhd20034

Imagine a 30m collector

Mirage_Turtle

I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, but the bolded part isn't true.

Void can one-shot Darkhawk, Joe Fixit, and Howard the Duck
Ronan can one-shot Red Skull
Doom can one-shot Bishop and Cull Obsidian
Star Lord can solo Karnak
She-Hulk and Stealth Spider-man can one-shot a number of champs

So I agree, it's not easy. But Torch certainly isn't the only one who can get a solo in Abyss.

Kerneas

From what Kabam announced and said, I was honestly expecting more. Maybe it's just me. It isn't easy, but it feels easier that what they said it would be.

TheTalents

Thank you for correcting me on that one. But yes it is not as hard as expected, I'm a lot more comfortable with saying that than saying its easy. I have a 6 star r2 dupped x35 Aegon that I'm waiting to boost with sigs and take to r3 hopefully with the new act 6.4 buffed rewards so I just don't want anybody putting things out that can help Kabam justify crappy rewards.

DNA3000

There's very little chance of Kabam adjusting either the difficulty or the rewards of an event like this at this point. But any statement of opinion that the rewards are "crappy" are going to be completely overwhelmed by the statistics of the numbers of people both attempting it and successfully completing it. I would bet anything that way more people are attempting it, way more people are spending on it, and way more people are completing it than Kabam's wildest upper predictions. That tells them the rewards are more than high enough for the difficulty.

TheTalents

We don't know the answer to that so I wouldn't assume anything. Most players are doing initial completion. Outside of the top 300 players there are very few that have fully explored it.

I have 3 people in my alliance with initial clear and they are far from top players but they have 0 plans to explore it anytime soon. That is the difference that I'm talking about in rewards. I can do initial clear today myself but waiting on 6.4 because with the initial clear you do not receive a for sure t5cc in the class that you want so I got a 1/6 chance to completely waste my time and resources. With content of this magnitude anything outside of a sure bet will never be deemed good rewards.

StevieManWonder

I found the Abyss to be very easy (Other than Mephisto and IMIW, though that was largely due to not having Torch), though I have only done the easy path @TheTalents. Most fights, you can merk down with Aegon and a few revives or with Doom and revives. The difficulty of the Abyss comes from the amount of time it takes to grind out the units for it since the fights really aren't that hard, just long and expensive. I went in with 7,650 units and walked out with 2,755. It took me about two-three months to grind out those units. I'm sure that I could fully explore the Abyss by the end of the year grinding for units or fully explore it in a week if I thought spending 1,000 dollars on units would be a good idea. Abyss is a test of endurance, not skill

TheTalents

I disagree with your statement completely. I think the fact that it takes a bunch of units to complete it makes it by definition difficult.

Worknprogress

Go through luke cage and come back and tell me that's an easy fight

Worknprogress

But yes, MOST of the difficulty comes from the time/cost investment required currently and from the specific counters needed for certain fights. There are much trickier fights throughout Act 6, they just dont have 3-6 Million health

um0p3pisdn

I disagree with your disagreement to his opinion entirely.

A requirement to revive ad nauseam does not mean it's difficult at all. You're allotted an amount of hits/blocked hits in a fight before kabams rules state the fight is over because you've met the quota of hits given or taken.

Outside of a select few fights, the skill level required to complete the abyss is fairly mediocre. Are there some difficult fights, sure. Just because a majority of the fights aren't solo-able doesn't mean it's "difficult content" in the slightest.

For clarification, I've 100% The Abyss.

Mhd20034

Can’t you solo him easily with stealth suit spidey or she hulk?

Worknprogress

Easily? That's quite debatable. Plus whether you can afford to bring those champs on your team completely depends on the path. I never used either of them, just did it all 3 times with Aegon

um0p3pisdn

Luke Cage is a pretty straight forward fight, I used Stealthy all 3 times I fought him. It's definitely a long fight but there are more difficult fights spread through the contest imo

6.2 The Champion (boss) is something I'd consider a difficult fight. You have the ability to solo the fight with a variety of champs as well, (Doom, Symbiote Supreme, She-Hulk, etc.) and it's not a 30 minute grind fest compared to AoL ex. Luke Cage

Worknprogress

I said the same thing, there absolutely are harder fights throughout Act 6. That doesnt mean every fight in AoL is "easy" though. For one, the longer the fight, the more likely someone is to make a mistake. That's the whole reason most endgame players run suicide masteries.

Abyss was far easier than most of us expected but there's a difference between being easier than lofty expectations and just being easy.

um0p3pisdn

I agree there's a difference between lofty expectations and just being easy.

I also agree Luke Cage is a much "harder" fight with Aegon vs using Stealthy.

I don't think the length of the fight plays a major role in the difficulty of it, does it add a little . . .. maybe. I equate it to beating ROL Winter Soldier with a 3* champ, sure it's a longer fight but it doesn't make it much more "difficult".

I didn't find AoL difficult as a whole, compared to act 6 or even LoL. Yes there are difficult fights, but the majority are a bore fest of getting to the hit cap, dying & reviving. rinse & repeat. IMO it's simply annoying that Kabam set up AoL in such a way, that you have a maximum amount of damage you can do. Lets say that amount is 40% of total health, depending on the champ you're using and how well you play doesn't matter, because using the right champ and playing perfectly, you'll still only be able to chip away 40% health.

That's a generalization, there are some fights that are solo-able but the majority currently aren't. I do understand that impatience made it more expensive using resources or actual money. My point is that just because it's more expensive doesn't mean it's more difficult, it means you have to do more of the same, and "difficult" doesn't come to mind, "tedious" does.

Worknprogress

We're on the same page for the most part. I definitely was not a fan of the new "enrage timer" and think it's a cheap design personally.

I just think the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the opposite direction from pre-release. It's far from the most difficult content in game for sure. I still wouldn't call it easy. Highly skilled players that have all other content completed probably don't find the difficulty that hard to manage at all, but your average player that's say barely cavalier and hasn't explored LoL would probably really struggle with some of the fights at least.

um0p3pisdn

Yeah I get yah

Not a fan of the "enrage timer" either. It's forced spending, as in: at minimum you're forcing unit farming as a requirement from the start (ie arena), at maximum purchasing units.

I wouldn't call AoL easy, I also wouldn't call it "difficult", although I did call it mediocre. In terms of end game content its towards the bottom for difficulty and towards the top for the expense imo.