End Game RNG Bottleneck
Dhops
Member Posts: 37 ★
I've put a lot of thought into why so many people seem ready to leave alliances behind or quit the game entirely recently and I think it stems from a disconnect that has been building over time between (1) the difficulty of content and (2) the rewards (and RNG associated with the rewards). Note that I'm an end game player and so this may not be true at all levels, but my roster of champions and resources is probably one of the top in the game and I am still seeing this growing disconnect that leaves a lot of players in limbo for what they can actually do to enjoy this game anymore.
I think the easiest way to describe the disconnect is from a resource allocation perspective:
6 Stars - 6* shards are still incredibly scarce to come by (a master alliance war season, for example, nets you less than 1 featured 6* pull), but despite this, 6*s are being added to the basic crystal at a pretty high clip and the "old" champions being added are, across the board, some of the worst champs in the game. All this is doing is diluting the pool of good 6* champs without an increase in shards to compensate. It shouldn't be the case that the basic 6* a year or 18 months ago gave you better odds at getting something good unless the 6* shard flow has increased to a level where the number of crystals you can open compensates. It hasn't so ultimately your 6* roster is harder to develop now that it was previously (unless you are a massive spender on CCs), which leads to a bad interaction with T5CC.
T5CC - T5CC are the current rank up bottleneck for the end game players and the scarcity of them is understandable, but the biggest issue here is that they are too RNG based (given the point on 6* roster development from above). The last two resource bottlenecks were T2A and T5B (none of which are class specific). Given the inability to develop a good 6* roster due to the lack of shards and the diluted pool, having a class specific bottleneck leads to the discrepancy where your development is double hit by RNG (prior bottle necks focused the RNG on only champion pulls and not the resource). With the combination, you can either get stuck by not pulling good champs, not pulling the right T5CC or both. That basically spirals into AQ prestige race problems which further exacerbates the disparity.
The easiest fix for the 6* / T5CC disparity is to increase the availability of 6* shards and stop adding the worst champions in the game to the 6* crystal (alternatively Kabam could actually rework those early champs on a timeline that isn't 6 months for one champ). You could manage this in a number of ways (allow incursions to have 6* rewards, increase AW rewards, add a new level of monthly content, or just generally increase 6* rewards in recurring content).
When you combine the above with the general difficult creep that is happening throughout the contest, there is less and less motivation to do anything other than go through the motions. AW added defensive tactics (which is solely an increase in the difficulty of AW and has had the effect of just creating one overpowered defensive node that everyone uses and limits the champions that can be used on attack), the Act 7 beta has not come up with creative ways of challenging people (just stick some new nodes with old ones and increase health), variant is still focused on 5*s, and AQ has reached the point where we are just going through the motions. Unless something changes soon, I expect we'll see a lot more end game players giving up in the near future.
I think the easiest way to describe the disconnect is from a resource allocation perspective:
6 Stars - 6* shards are still incredibly scarce to come by (a master alliance war season, for example, nets you less than 1 featured 6* pull), but despite this, 6*s are being added to the basic crystal at a pretty high clip and the "old" champions being added are, across the board, some of the worst champs in the game. All this is doing is diluting the pool of good 6* champs without an increase in shards to compensate. It shouldn't be the case that the basic 6* a year or 18 months ago gave you better odds at getting something good unless the 6* shard flow has increased to a level where the number of crystals you can open compensates. It hasn't so ultimately your 6* roster is harder to develop now that it was previously (unless you are a massive spender on CCs), which leads to a bad interaction with T5CC.
T5CC - T5CC are the current rank up bottleneck for the end game players and the scarcity of them is understandable, but the biggest issue here is that they are too RNG based (given the point on 6* roster development from above). The last two resource bottlenecks were T2A and T5B (none of which are class specific). Given the inability to develop a good 6* roster due to the lack of shards and the diluted pool, having a class specific bottleneck leads to the discrepancy where your development is double hit by RNG (prior bottle necks focused the RNG on only champion pulls and not the resource). With the combination, you can either get stuck by not pulling good champs, not pulling the right T5CC or both. That basically spirals into AQ prestige race problems which further exacerbates the disparity.
The easiest fix for the 6* / T5CC disparity is to increase the availability of 6* shards and stop adding the worst champions in the game to the 6* crystal (alternatively Kabam could actually rework those early champs on a timeline that isn't 6 months for one champ). You could manage this in a number of ways (allow incursions to have 6* rewards, increase AW rewards, add a new level of monthly content, or just generally increase 6* rewards in recurring content).
When you combine the above with the general difficult creep that is happening throughout the contest, there is less and less motivation to do anything other than go through the motions. AW added defensive tactics (which is solely an increase in the difficulty of AW and has had the effect of just creating one overpowered defensive node that everyone uses and limits the champions that can be used on attack), the Act 7 beta has not come up with creative ways of challenging people (just stick some new nodes with old ones and increase health), variant is still focused on 5*s, and AQ has reached the point where we are just going through the motions. Unless something changes soon, I expect we'll see a lot more end game players giving up in the near future.
36
Comments
We need some changes otherwise the high end game players will disapear ....
There is no way to take the time to go back and make all those champs useful. They should be subtracted from the 6 star pull and changed to shards or they need to massively bump up the shards given. Love that my war rewards amounted to Gamora and Pslocke.
Threads like this generally get shut down but the point made is valid. The other point is that 80% of their business comes from 20% of their base. Not sure why that 20% doesn’t get heard the way the other 80% thinks they do.
Two things are killing this game RNG and the scarcity of resources. To me, the best way to fix this is to either up the amount of resources or replace all crystals with nexus crystals.
And I must say I had enough of pulling IP or KG from featured crytals.
They should be nexus