@GroundedWisdom It's because people are frustrated, and maybe they should be. I guess we interpret general game feedback as anything that is going to be added to the game too. I agree that there are people who aren't in the Act 7 beta who really don't understand the problem with it, but for the people who are in the beta, like yours truly, we just want to spread awareness on a broader spectrum.
@GroundedWisdom It's because people are frustrated, and maybe they should be. I guess we interpret general game feedback as anything that is going to be added to the game too. I agree that there are people who aren't in the Act 7 beta who really don't understand the problem with it, but for the people who are in the beta, like me, we just want to spread awareness on a broader spectrum.
I didn't really mean to direct it at you. I just meant in the general sense, and I was replying to you because you seem to be civil. Lol. I understand the part about sharing concerns. That's fair. I just don't think that solidifying reactions to something that isn't set in motion is necessarily reasonable. It's still being worked on. I think that's one of the downsides to information going out too easily. If it was me, I'd have an NDA for the Beta. In terms of burnout, and this isn’t to say that the points made here aren't valid, that's bound to happen when people get to a certain point. Especially when you're talking about playing for 4-5 years or more. That happens. It isn't a sign the game is dying, as is being implied here. That's dramatic. Over time, you're going to have interests that wane, you're going to hit a wall, you're going to run out of steam. Some change focus. Some take a break. Some quit. Just the nature of the beast. Things go on.
Just because you list a couple decent ones does not make everything else okay. Lmfao!
What ain't quality content then?
Act 6. Act 7. The Maze. Some of which I doubt you play.
This will be my final reply to you and your like. Have a good one.
Act 6 was semi-enjoyable. There were a few fights here and there that I could do without, but overall it was decent.
Act 7 ain't even out yet gurl.
Abyss is actually not bad. Yeah, it's a grind, but in a fun way. I take it you don't like long fights that test your skill do you?
So you chose to argue with a piece of content that barely supports your point, a piece of content which kind of refutes your point, and a piece of content that is nonexistent?!?!
And I quote "Just because you list a couple...does not make everything else okay. Lmfao!" Right back at ya sis.
Abyss is not a test of skill, it is a test of endurance, ability to either grind units or buy units, and a test of whether or not you have Aegon, Torch, Fury (though personally I found him to be relatively worthless), and Doom/Sym Supreme. If you have those champions and a stack of about 7K units, congrats! You cleared a path of Abyss. There is no skill required beyond the most basic 'don't get hit'. It's go in, do roughly 250 hits, die, revive, repeat.
Are the rifts not quality content? Are Variants not quality content? Are Incursions not quality content?
Rifts aren’t. The only reason why this time around they’re good is because of the chronometer. Variants are. Incursions are only good as a source of gold since the Incursion crystals are trash, out of the eight or so I have got, I have only gotten one good champion out them.
Bad luck then.
I mean... that's my point. That's literally my entire point. Bad content=content that relies on luck
Act 6 is already ridiculous with the first chapter having double PI of our champs along with crazy nodes. Now moving on to Act 7, the first chapter has normal enemies at 4x the PI of our top champs.... Plus crazy nodes.
The problem isn't the PI. When i was playing act 5 the enemy PI was more than 3x of mine and I still had fun. The problem is the CRAZY attack values. If you mess up and get caught in a 5 hit combo, you're screwed. If you get hit by a special attack, you're screwed. If your champ doesn't have high block profiency, you're screwed. These attacks values are an obvious cash grab attempt by kabam, by ramping up the difficulty to 200%, and making sure only extremely skilled players and whales can get through. Act 6 literally isn't fun, and a wise man once said:
the best content Kabam have put in this game to date has been Variant 4
the requirement to use champs from all Star rating levels was excellent and they need more it.
Except it was so easy that almost everyone with a decent roster can explore it.
That's the whole point, and it's the number one reason people aren't happy with the Gates. It makes the content not for everyone. Everyone and their dog got through Uncollected. It's not even a challenge now. All people need to do is look up some YouTube and they can do it within a matter of months of starting the game. It's also worth pointing out that Seatin makes content that caters to a certain demographic learning how to get through content, and that's most likely a motivating factor for the stance against Gates. However, it's not meant for the average Roster. (I don't even want to get into 2*s in Book 2.)
There would have been nothing wrong with kabam making 2* viable in Book 2. In fact it would have been entirely consistent with their constant claims of wanting summoners to use more of their rosters and not just in arenas or niche content like variants
I don't agree with that line of thinking at all. Progression-wise, I don't expect to use lower Champs in progressively higher Story content. While I will agree that the Gates between Act 5 and Act 6 are extreme, I don't see going backwards as something that logically happens. There are many ways to create content for lower, unused Champs. This isn't one of them that I see. To be perfectly honest, it leaves me scratching my head.
Ahh but your vision is too narrow kabam could and probably should have installed progression gates based on roster size. For example a summoner would have to be level 60, have completed (not explored) acts 1-6, have (x) amount of 5* champs and (x) amount of 6* champs before accessing Book 2. They could even take it further and say the PI of your 5* and above roster must be (x) amount. This would ensure players would have progressed far enough to tackle more difficult content while preventing the average player from accessing content meant for end game players.
A very serious buff to rewards would motivate players to progress their roster rather than focus on ranking up a handful of champs to complete content. It also prevents those who are lucky with RNG and those who throw thousands at cav crystals from accessing content too early because even if you get champs you still would have to rank them up plus progress through other content first. Kabam already has a broad progression gate on incursions as well as the monthly AQ.
A progression gate would also give kabam the freedom to start over with Book 2 allowing sufficiently experienced players to use more of their rosters without the worry that new or average players would access it and progress too fast.
There's still going to be a certain amount of waiting for specific Champs. That's part of the RNG structure. I'm sure making it 2* oriented means everyone has everything they need, but there's no logical reason to regress to using 2*s in it. The game is one that's based on RNG. It's been that way for 5 and a half years. The second we start discussing removing that element, we start talking about deconstructing the entire game itself and designing a new one.
Again your thinking is too narrow. If kabam allowed players to use their 1/2/3/4* champs across the first 3/4 chapters Of book 2 while offering rewards meant to build their 5/6* rosters for the latter chapters it would help to combat the RNG. Kabam could easily create node combinations that would make the game challenging even using 1-4* champs variant 4 proved this. Just because the story progresses doesn’t mean kabam has to trap itself in an insane upward spiral of difficulty. Besides what’s the point of forcing players to hold on to their lower star champs on the off chance they’ll have a use for them once or twice a year? Why continue to have them in rewards?
You don't think 3-4 Chapters which use 1-4* Champs and give 6* Rewards is a bit too much? Asking for something along the lines of using Champs on the shelf is reasonable. 4 Chapters of it is pretty much pushing it.
V4 you use lesser rarities and gain 6* shards and rank up gems so
I don't know why people keep comparing Variant to Story. Variant is a special type of content and it isn't even in the same wheelhouse. There may be some ideas that can be used in Story, but the two are mutually exclusive and not at all a reflection of each other.
What exactly do you mean by that? I genuinely don't follow.
Variant 4 is endgame oriented content designed for lower rarity champs. In the confines of suggesting act 7 to work similarly it makes all the sense to refer back to variant 4 to point out the validity of the suggestion.
They don't need to be the same type of content to compare them in this context.
The danger rooms essentially provided the baseline design concept for variant 4 and they had nothing to do with neither variant content nor story content.
Variant was a throwback to an EQ previously released. It's a standalone piece of content that may be designed with End-Game, but it's still a standalone that can be designed more freely. Story has its own continuity and line of progression and Rewards to consider. It's built up over Chapters and Acts, and not as liberally designed as Variants. People may enjoy Variants. That doesn't mean everything can be just like them.
No one is even saying that... It's about the baseline concept of content.
"Like variant 4" is short for "sharing certain aspects of variant 4". In it's core, variants, story content, monthly content, all of them are a map with nodes and enemies.
Just as danger rooms and variant 4 are completely different pieces of content but share inherit base design aspects, act 5 and act 6 are essentially the same type of content , but are wildly different in their design.
There's way more similarities between act 6 and variants as there are between act 5 and act 6.
We're talking gameplay design, not the reason a certain piece of content has to even be in the game.
We're talking about the next level of story content in Book 2. I agree that there is room for elements of the same parts to make it interesting, but 4 Chapters of 1-4*s, as per what began this debate, is not realistic. They're not the same content. People keep comparing them on the basis of the Rewards, but they have very different design goals.
Again ignoring the precedent for lower star champs in the early chapters set in Book 1. Again ignoring that a progression in story does not mean that there has to be a progression in difficulty the way kabam has introduced act 7 in the beta. A challenging and fun experience can be made with lower star champs that can justify end game rewards. You’re either Lack imagination and are too closed minded to the idea or simply unwilling to admit that you are wrong
I think it is important to note here that as probably the first person to use the phrase "progressional content" on the forums, the point to calling content "progressional content" is not that it progresses the story and not that it progresses the difficulty. Rather, progressional content is called progressional content because it parallels core game progress. And at the moment, game progress is dictated by three things in game: levels (to a point), progressional titles (past that point), and roster development. The story arc content is progressional content because the content contains either implicit or explicit landmarks to progress. Because roster development is fundamental to progress in this game, progressional content will, for the most part, require rosters that are further "upward" not restricted "downward" to smaller levels. There can be exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions.
The fundamental difference between Variant and the Story arcs is the story arcs must reflect for the most part how rosters progress, which is upward towards higher rarity champions. Content like Variants or the Abyss don't have that requirement, and can make up any restrictions in roster that they want.
The whole reason why 5* and 6* champs are more coveted by players is that they intrinsically stronger than lower rarity champs (in general) and that is only true if you can actually use them that way. That doesn't have to be everywhere, but the one place where that has to be true is in the core progressional content. Because that's the *definition* of progressional content.
To put it another way, if you starting restricting people from using their 5* and 6* rosters in the Story arcs, they would cease to be progressional content. Because you couldn't use your fundamental upward roster growth in it. Then the question would become, what is the core progressional content of the game?
In a perfect world the game would be one long progressional ladder, where completing Act 6 gave you exactly what was necessary to tackle Act 7, then Act 7 would give you exactly what was necessary to tackle Act 8, and so on. But no progressional game is perfect like that (at least no multiplayer one) so there exists non-progressional content to among other things give players a variety of things to do and to pause at one progressional rung of the ladder while they build up the skills and resources to tackle the next rung. The core progressional content is not normally where you make detours in progress, because that's not what it is there for. It is there to drive progress forward. If that is not its primary purpose, it isn't progressional content.
Progressional content doesn't have to get subjectively harder: some games don't do that. But progressional content always pushes progress forward, within the context of that game's progress.
I agree with your views on professional content to an extent. However Kabam trashes your theory that content isn’t being designed with future champs in mind.
When did I say that? Like, ever?
Usually I'm saying more the opposite, and gathering a bunch of disagree and lol flags while doing it.
the best content Kabam have put in this game to date has been Variant 4
the requirement to use champs from all Star rating levels was excellent and they need more it.
Except it was so easy that almost everyone with a decent roster can explore it.
That's the whole point, and it's the number one reason people aren't happy with the Gates. It makes the content not for everyone. Everyone and their dog got through Uncollected. It's not even a challenge now. All people need to do is look up some YouTube and they can do it within a matter of months of starting the game. It's also worth pointing out that Seatin makes content that caters to a certain demographic learning how to get through content, and that's most likely a motivating factor for the stance against Gates. However, it's not meant for the average Roster. (I don't even want to get into 2*s in Book 2.)
There would have been nothing wrong with kabam making 2* viable in Book 2. In fact it would have been entirely consistent with their constant claims of wanting summoners to use more of their rosters and not just in arenas or niche content like variants
I don't agree with that line of thinking at all. Progression-wise, I don't expect to use lower Champs in progressively higher Story content. While I will agree that the Gates between Act 5 and Act 6 are extreme, I don't see going backwards as something that logically happens. There are many ways to create content for lower, unused Champs. This isn't one of them that I see. To be perfectly honest, it leaves me scratching my head.
Ahh but your vision is too narrow kabam could and probably should have installed progression gates based on roster size. For example a summoner would have to be level 60, have completed (not explored) acts 1-6, have (x) amount of 5* champs and (x) amount of 6* champs before accessing Book 2. They could even take it further and say the PI of your 5* and above roster must be (x) amount. This would ensure players would have progressed far enough to tackle more difficult content while preventing the average player from accessing content meant for end game players.
A very serious buff to rewards would motivate players to progress their roster rather than focus on ranking up a handful of champs to complete content. It also prevents those who are lucky with RNG and those who throw thousands at cav crystals from accessing content too early because even if you get champs you still would have to rank them up plus progress through other content first. Kabam already has a broad progression gate on incursions as well as the monthly AQ.
A progression gate would also give kabam the freedom to start over with Book 2 allowing sufficiently experienced players to use more of their rosters without the worry that new or average players would access it and progress too fast.
There's still going to be a certain amount of waiting for specific Champs. That's part of the RNG structure. I'm sure making it 2* oriented means everyone has everything they need, but there's no logical reason to regress to using 2*s in it. The game is one that's based on RNG. It's been that way for 5 and a half years. The second we start discussing removing that element, we start talking about deconstructing the entire game itself and designing a new one.
Again your thinking is too narrow. If kabam allowed players to use their 1/2/3/4* champs across the first 3/4 chapters Of book 2 while offering rewards meant to build their 5/6* rosters for the latter chapters it would help to combat the RNG. Kabam could easily create node combinations that would make the game challenging even using 1-4* champs variant 4 proved this. Just because the story progresses doesn’t mean kabam has to trap itself in an insane upward spiral of difficulty. Besides what’s the point of forcing players to hold on to their lower star champs on the off chance they’ll have a use for them once or twice a year? Why continue to have them in rewards?
You don't think 3-4 Chapters which use 1-4* Champs and give 6* Rewards is a bit too much? Asking for something along the lines of using Champs on the shelf is reasonable. 4 Chapters of it is pretty much pushing it.
V4 you use lesser rarities and gain 6* shards and rank up gems so
I don't know why people keep comparing Variant to Story. Variant is a special type of content and it isn't even in the same wheelhouse. There may be some ideas that can be used in Story, but the two are mutually exclusive and not at all a reflection of each other.
What exactly do you mean by that? I genuinely don't follow.
Variant 4 is endgame oriented content designed for lower rarity champs. In the confines of suggesting act 7 to work similarly it makes all the sense to refer back to variant 4 to point out the validity of the suggestion.
They don't need to be the same type of content to compare them in this context.
The danger rooms essentially provided the baseline design concept for variant 4 and they had nothing to do with neither variant content nor story content.
Variant was a throwback to an EQ previously released. It's a standalone piece of content that may be designed with End-Game, but it's still a standalone that can be designed more freely. Story has its own continuity and line of progression and Rewards to consider. It's built up over Chapters and Acts, and not as liberally designed as Variants. People may enjoy Variants. That doesn't mean everything can be just like them.
No one is even saying that... It's about the baseline concept of content.
"Like variant 4" is short for "sharing certain aspects of variant 4". In it's core, variants, story content, monthly content, all of them are a map with nodes and enemies.
Just as danger rooms and variant 4 are completely different pieces of content but share inherit base design aspects, act 5 and act 6 are essentially the same type of content , but are wildly different in their design.
There's way more similarities between act 6 and variants as there are between act 5 and act 6.
We're talking gameplay design, not the reason a certain piece of content has to even be in the game.
We're talking about the next level of story content in Book 2. I agree that there is room for elements of the same parts to make it interesting, but 4 Chapters of 1-4*s, as per what began this debate, is not realistic. They're not the same content. People keep comparing them on the basis of the Rewards, but they have very different design goals.
Again ignoring the precedent for lower star champs in the early chapters set in Book 1. Again ignoring that a progression in story does not mean that there has to be a progression in difficulty the way kabam has introduced act 7 in the beta. A challenging and fun experience can be made with lower star champs that can justify end game rewards. You’re either Lack imagination and are too closed minded to the idea or simply unwilling to admit that you are wrong
I think it is important to note here that as probably the first person to use the phrase "progressional content" on the forums, the point to calling content "progressional content" is not that it progresses the story and not that it progresses the difficulty. Rather, progressional content is called progressional content because it parallels core game progress. And at the moment, game progress is dictated by three things in game: levels (to a point), progressional titles (past that point), and roster development. The story arc content is progressional content because the content contains either implicit or explicit landmarks to progress. Because roster development is fundamental to progress in this game, progressional content will, for the most part, require rosters that are further "upward" not restricted "downward" to smaller levels. There can be exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions.
The fundamental difference between Variant and the Story arcs is the story arcs must reflect for the most part how rosters progress, which is upward towards higher rarity champions. Content like Variants or the Abyss don't have that requirement, and can make up any restrictions in roster that they want.
The whole reason why 5* and 6* champs are more coveted by players is that they intrinsically stronger than lower rarity champs (in general) and that is only true if you can actually use them that way. That doesn't have to be everywhere, but the one place where that has to be true is in the core progressional content. Because that's the *definition* of progressional content.
To put it another way, if you starting restricting people from using their 5* and 6* rosters in the Story arcs, they would cease to be progressional content. Because you couldn't use your fundamental upward roster growth in it. Then the question would become, what is the core progressional content of the game?
In a perfect world the game would be one long progressional ladder, where completing Act 6 gave you exactly what was necessary to tackle Act 7, then Act 7 would give you exactly what was necessary to tackle Act 8, and so on. But no progressional game is perfect like that (at least no multiplayer one) so there exists non-progressional content to among other things give players a variety of things to do and to pause at one progressional rung of the ladder while they build up the skills and resources to tackle the next rung. The core progressional content is not normally where you make detours in progress, because that's not what it is there for. It is there to drive progress forward. If that is not its primary purpose, it isn't progressional content.
Progressional content doesn't have to get subjectively harder: some games don't do that. But progressional content always pushes progress forward, within the context of that game's progress.
I agree with your views on professional content to an extent. However Kabam trashes your theory that content isn’t being designed with future champs in mind.
When did I say that? Like, ever?
Usually I'm saying more the opposite, and gathering a bunch of disagree and lol flags while doing it.
Your response made me LOL so hard my wife asked me what the h*** I was doing 😅😅
Apparently, per the beta forum Kabam has listened to our feedback on Act 7 and is going to revisit it. They also said they’ve heard us on a host of other issues brought up in this thread but will have to take time to digest it all before commenting on those concerns
If Kabam is listening, please explain one major thing to us outside of gameplay... In these tough times with COVID and all, why are there absolutely no discounts, specials, and giveaways for these rough times?
Why is it, that during these tough times, when everyone is home and on social media, games, and TV, that Kabam has only seemed to capitalize with more and more "deals" -- of which none are provided at a discounted rate?
Shame on you, as a company. Every other corporation has made best efforts to help the community. I'm keeping my gameplay complaints out as most have touched upon it.
But... on a positive note, I do love incursions. Bravo there (being totally honest).
they are a mobile game company. Find me a mobile game that gives free stuff during covid-19. They need to keep the lights on in a time where no one is spending. And you want discounts?
Uh, candy crush is giving free stuff every day since this started. Unlimited lives being one of them. Candy crush. Lol
Not saying we should be expecting free stuff or what the OP said, but stating that no other games are doing it is flat out wrong. and like someone else said, they did give us free energy refills already.
I'm explicitly not commenting on the "free stuff during quarantine" thing, but I do want to say that games like Candy Crush are fundamentally different from games like MCOC because there's a much greater focus on player competition in MCOC than in idle-burning games like Candy Crush. When everyone gets more stuff in Candy Crush that's a tide that lifts all boats. But "stuff" in MCOC doesn't just have a single player benefit, it has balance repercussions across the game. When you give away champs in MCOC today, those could be the defenders you face in AW tomorrow. People explicitly complained about that after the Cinematic crystal caused everyone to be facing five IMIWs in every war.
On a more subtle level, game content and game difficulty is balanced around measured averages. Even if AW and leaderboard AQ didn't exist, if you handed out a bunch of strong champions to half the players the other half would be impacted indirectly because those other players, now stronger, would bring up the curve on performance. Everyone else would be penalized without realizing it. That's why even when you have a situation like the current one, making things cheaper in the stores isn't a "pro-player move" like some would describe it. It amplifies what the spenders get and in effect makes things more difficult for the non-spenders as a result. Or just the people who spend less.
it is easy to say Kabam should help "the players" by either giving things away or making cash offers cheaper in these times. But there are unintended consequences of doing that which are being generally overlooked. You aren't helping "players" when you make cash offers cheaper. You are helping some players and hurting others. And you're helping big spenders gain an advantage over smaller spenders. It is perfectly legitimate for those people to get advantages for their spending. But how do you justify them having a larger advantage over other players now of all times? You're just as easily sending the message that Kabam is going to help spenders even more than before, and if you were either a free to play player or a light spender, you now need to spend more to keep up.
That doesn't happen in Candy Crush.
On the other hand, you could just give a bunch of stuff away completely for free. That helps everyone, right? Yes. But it also devalues playing time and spending. If everyone is getting more stuff for free, that means the players who play more are getting a lower advantage for that extra play time (or harder play) than they were before. And people spending are now getting a lower advantage for spending than they were getting before. How do you justify that?
Unlike in Candy Crush, there's a relationship between free stuff, gameplay stuff, and purchased stuff. The ratio of gameplay stuff to purchased stuff determines how much you value players just playing the game and how much you value the spenders keeping the game alive. The free stuff either dilutes that relationship or magnifies it. And no matter how you change those ratios, you are helping some players and hurting others. There's never such a thing as a universal reward that helps all players, because the way the game works we're all judged against each other, whether we want to or not. The difficulty in the Uncollected monthly quest? That's not set by some formula or some developer just guessing. *We* set that difficulty, by virtue of how many of us succeed and how many of us fail it. That tells the devs how hard it is. If the game handed out more stuff and we all got stronger, UC would get harder to compensate.
A lot of people talk about how games like this are "treadmills" and they usually use that term in a derogatory way. And yet I don't think *any* of them really understand what that means. Because all of them think that you can increase rewards to escape the treadmill. None of them seem to understand the treadmill is *powered* by rewards.
As I said, this has nothing to do with whether Kabam should offer in-game something something during the current quarantine conditions. That's a complex question. All I'm saying is that the way rewards work in a games like MCOC is different than how they work in other games that are unlike MCOC, and in a game like MCOC there's no such thing as a free lunch. Everything you do, everything you give away, everything you sell, helps some and hurts others. There's no universal benefit. So this is never a simple question of Kabam helping or not helping players.
I'm an endgame player and will NOT be doing act 6 100% it’s beyond ridiculous and not commensurate with the rewards. Just a money pit no matter what champs you have.
I couldn't do act 6 100% even if I wanted to lol. Judging by the time it took me to complete act 6, by the time I would finish, humanity would already be extinct.
Apparently, per the beta forum Kabam has listened to our feedback on Act 7 and is going to revisit it. They also said they’ve heard us on a host of other issues brought up in this thread but will have to take time to digest it all before commenting on those concerns
I don't think it is appropriate to repost things directly from the Beta, but the impression I get from the Beta post is that Kabam is going to take a step back and reconsider their original plan to make quick iterations of story content that resorted to more brute force and special counter fights, and completely revisit Book 2 to target it to a slightly more nominal class of player (i.e. not just the absolute top tier players) and try to use more psychologically rewarding node combinations that are less punishing. They specifically said they were going to probably disappear for a while (with regard to Book 2), implying they really want to spend more time rethinking how the content works.
Also, all of this is completely separate from the more general issues being brought up in this thread. The feedback in the beta was snowballing in this direction before this thread started, and I think the devs need to think about this thread completely separately from the Beta thread which is a much more specific targeted response to the beta tester complaints and comments.
Really its two fold on the content outpacing player progress.
1. The story modes are definitely moving faster upward in difficulty than our rosters are allowed to progress. This is by design and can be ok as while This is frustrating but if the content is meant to be eased into other than whales then it can work. Rosters need to be allowed to grow at a reasonable pace to clear this content though(it is not years though, that is not reasonable) but that leads into the second point.
2. Kabam has waited way to long to introduce a new monthly difficulty level, new difficulty in event rewards, and is not progressing the earnable in game reward fast enough to reliably progress toward a point you can clear the content. So what we are left with is either story content that is overtuned from what we want to be fighting(for years) and EQ that is laughable in difficulty and doesn’t have rewards that help faster enough with the over tuned content. This generates a feeling of 0 growth month on month toward actually progressing.
As a result Act 6 is content that for many a year later even 6.1 exploration is out of reach. Some of us decide we will take it on the chin and push through the horror that is 6.2 and act 6 exploration but many just wont(why do it if it’s not fun). I have current and former ally mates that can’t be bothered to even grind it because IT IS NOT FUN. They don’t see the point and don’t see any near future that they do clear the content because the effort doesn’t match the reward with there current rosters and won’t for well over another year at least(by then rewards will be outdated too).
My honest assessment. The game is being hard throttled toward spending. It’s why we still don’t have a new difficulty with more rewards multiple years after uncollected difficulty was released. It’s why events aren’t being updated, 5* sig stones aren’t being released widely yet, best way to acquire niche counters is buying cav crystals, and then In general the daily quest rewards are just being left in 2016 for the most part.
I know this is a taboo subject to bring up because its bait for the very vocal "get gud" crowd to pounce and let everyone know how good they are. But it needs to be said. The difficulty of the game is ramping up way too high compared to the ramp up of our champions.
Act 6 is already ridiculous with the first chapter having double PI of our champs along with crazy nodes. Now moving on to Act 7, the first chapter has normal enemies at 4x the PI of our top champs.... Plus crazy nodes.
Personally, I don't think the problem is 6.1. I think the problem is the difficulty curve from 6.1 to 6.4. It is steeper than it should be if it was just progressional content. The problem is Kabam designed Act 6 as if it was end game content, because it was the highest story quest at the time. But doing so means the difficulty curve is so steep that two years from now when it isn't end game content "normal" people trying to go from Act 5 to Act 6 are going to run into a wall.
To be honest, that sort of happened with Act 5 as well, with the difficulty jumping upward steeper than I would expect from 5.1 to 5.4. It just didn't seem that way to many of the players doing the content because players built up their rosters fast enough back then to keep up. But that was due to an anomaly where 5* champs were being accelerated into player hands much faster than it should have been. Which is the reason why 6* champs exist now: 5* champs diluted themselves into ubiquity.
Kabam is not making the same mistake with 6* champs, but they continued developing Act 6 as if they were. And that's why the difficulty curve is so steep. It is tuned to the top tier player rosters, not typical player rosters.
But the devs are in fact revisiting Book 2 (Act 7). There's an announcement in the beta forums to that effect, where Kabam is announcing that they aren't just going to be tweaking things here and there based on feedback, but is going to completely reexamine everything about Book 2. Attack, node combinations, specific defender placement, the whole enchilada. So there's hope that the difficulty curve will reset to a more "normal" level.
Everyone is so right. Trying to comprehend how and why they got it wrong. It all points to money grab. But, not everyone will buy that. Some may, but for how long. Now I'm considering quitting. As an officer, I can't get guys to commit to the game, other officers saying same thing. Now it makes sense, some players are almost done with the game. I may just just retire after Act6 initial clear...3 quest to go. Could it be Kabam themselves are trying to flash mcoc down the toilet?
Problem is at the current pace we are years away from R5 6*. And I disagree with your premise that Act 6 is like Act 5 but just ahead of its time.
Act V gave you the rewards for a r5 5*. But was fairly easy to clear with R5 4*(yes I did this with minimal revives). With skill in Act V you could overcome. I
Act 6 gives you rewards for r3 6* by the end. So on the logic it should be tuned to at most r3 6* and clearable minimal revives by a skilled player by r4 5* to have a similar difficulty as Act 5. This is not true.
The difficulty does not scale the same and if it was meant for r4 or r5 6* then the rewards don’t match because someone in the world where they have an r4 6* they are using to clear Act 6 will not care about the rewards anymore as they will be pretty low on the totem pole by that time.
Holy cow I can't read everything in this post. I made it through about 12 pages before giving my two cents. I get where Seatin is coming from. The game has some problems that will drive people away. People talking about act 6 and 7....smh. I was selected for act 7 beta along with lots of other people but I never opened it. Figured it was more of the same and I wasn't going to be motivated anytime soon for it. Doing act 6 feels more like an obligation more than something fun to do. So I get where lots of people are coming from. I'm also happy for the people enjoying the game as it is but there's always room for improvement, that to me seems to point of the thread is improvement. I've been playing for several years, somewhere in the early updates like 5 plus or minus. So I've seen some odd things. Now some people will call bullsnot on my next statement. I don't think crystal RNG is true RNG. I'm pretty sure it's weighted towards certain champs depending on whatever Kabam feels like is best for profit. You're more likely to get useless champs than champs that will actually help. Out of 50 six stars my only dupes are trash champs I'll never use. No one in their right mind can argue that they aren't weighted. I realize the point of the game is to keep you coming back and chase more crystals but if out of 50 six stars you only use one or two then something is wrong. What's the point of chasing the next crystal when you already know it's going to be trash. I still really like the game but yes it has some problems that need to be addressed if Kabam still wants us to show up. Last thing. War is a mess, way to much effort for the rewards. I think the rewards are probably about right, maybe a little low, but for the most part fine. If the rewards are "fine" then the difficulty/effort is out of balance. The difficulty levels don't really change until tier 5 then they ramp up pretty quickly. Pretty much the same difficulty levels from tier 11 to 5. Lots of ways to spread out the war maps. Anyway just my 2cents. Good luck everyone. Happy hunting
I just don't think that solidifying reactions to something that isn't set in motion is necessarily reasonable.
There's a well-studied psychological phenomenon where when someone reads words or listens to someone else, there's a part of their brain that is calculating the most likely words that will come next, like Google search autocomplete. Brains do this to help language comprehension. That's how you can understand someone speaking to you in a loud environment where you really aren't hearing every word clearly. When the words that come next aren't in your list of what's likely to come next, there's a jarring mental hiccough that happens.
I mention this because it is rare for this to happen more than once in a single sentence, and it happened to me three times in this one sentence. Once catches my attention. Twice makes me think I've misread something. Three times makes me do the FAST test to see if I'm experiencing a stroke.
I could rephrase it if you like. Lol. I'm familiar with the phenomenon. It's the reason we can read sentences that contain some letters in the right place, and others jumbled.
I was trying to find a more gingerly approach to saying that it makes no sense that people are ready to quit over something that isn't even finished yet.
War-flow: I spent way to many units, to much money, time earning units and resources (like glory that could have went to rank up materials). Then all my stress was paid off with season rewards: 3rd Dupe of 5* Mordo & a shiner new 6*.., Beast. Anyone clearing the monthly EQ with Mordo and Beast? People got YouTube videos of their abyss runs with beast? So, content comes out horribly wrong, communtiy outraged, wait a season to fix, throws off the work to reward ratio, which drops even more in value because of horrible RNG that gives you a handful of bad champs that won’t work especially for niche end game content. I think a couple 5* nexus crystals & a 6* nexus should be minimum compensation for the flow screwup. Or a couple 3-4&4-5 5* rank ups and a 6* 1-2 rankup.
1 Stop screwing people by manipulating RNG to keep a few good champs out of peoples reach. 2. Improve champs so there’s a larger pool of good champs and people aren’t as disappointed with rewards and RNG 3. Give us more V4 like content where we can use that deep pool of 3& 4 stars we liked to play but can’t use on most other content (no not the monthly 2-star run where I have to fight the same 4 fights 30+ times-boring) 4. Stop making content that’s only bearable if you have 4 specific champs. If more champs were useful we wouldn’t dread popping Mordo’s and Beasts and would be happier with rewards. 5. All crystals should be nexus crystals, at least if I get ****, I can pick my favorite ****. (0ne mans trash, another mans treasure) 6. Give sig stones for duplicate champs with sig higher than 20, instead of taking them to sig 40. Hey I can’t use an iron patriot sig 40, but if I got 20 tech sig stones, I’d be slightly less disappointed. Or give a chance to sell duplicated 5 or 6* champs instead of increasing signature. i.e. if I pull a dup Miles Morales 6*, Give the option to take 20 Sig stones and 2500 6* shards to or 20 sig stones and some T5 or T2A shards, do something to try to dull the pain of bad champs from crystals
Also, Make rankups easier, maybe I wouldn’t be pissed about pulling lesser or mid grade champs, if I could rank them, but I gotta save that for the 4 or 5 champs that clear content, even if I really like playing silver surfer, I can’t rank him, cause i need Aegon for labyrinth and SS for this boss and Quake for this lane, and etc. Rank up gems are cool but 80-95% of outdated 2015s aren’t fun. Make Rank up gems for different years and higher levels. Keep your 100 6* shards On the monthly event, and show me a 2018& 2019 Rank Up gem 3-4 and 4-5. Then maybe I could rank up some mid grade champs I like to play with and wouldn’t be so disappointed. You could even do a mix of mid grade champs in rank-up gem crystals like mercs or fire champs or champs with blades like some of champion crystal deals. Rank up gem crystals can be more than class specific. Maybe drop or get rid of some of the layered rank up materials. Maybe I could use some T1A & T4B on some low/mid grade 5*s if I was lent saving for a 6*r2 & 5*r5 champs. No ones paying for T4B or T1A to rank that high of champs, so ur next t gonna loose money to let us use those resources on lower grade champs. Short story is people won’t be as disappointed with some mid grade champs if they could rank em up and use them, make resources more available or even specifically targeting champs and that aren’t top level niche busters and maybe more of the community would be less dissapointed by some of the champs.
so reworks are hard..., Not every champ needs reinvented. OG guilly is good champ, to bad her abilities go down the higher rated champ she fights- beef up block pro, damage and maybe beef up the heal and fix the soul ratio. Fixit joe is a great idea, update some stats and then have his buffs apply quicker, second buff last longer, and boost all the buffs, I think only 1 is complete **** and Might need replaced. Dormamu has good power control but takes so much damage, it shouldn’t be hard to bring stats up a little and beef up his Health block prof. A lot of champs could less drastic changes that would make them contenders and abate some “crystal disappointment”. These less dramatic changes to base numbers should take little time to build, test and rollout.
Also “steal” abilities from popular champs. Example- AA’s stacking bleed and poison to neurotoxins and ability accuracy is great. Why couldn’t storm do freeze damage with heavy and a long or stacked shock on sp1 that can be combined into a new debuff, that lowers ability accuracy up to 100%. Using similar mechanics. Should make the task a little easier and having some reworked champs and it’s similar abilities to top champs means you don’t have to wait to get just 1 champ and less chance of niche content. Why shouldn’t a champ with death evade already get revamp to be closed to NIck Fury, then you wouldn’t hear people complaining cause they have to wait to get NF to clear something cause they can use their reworked, I dunno, Hela or Punisher.
yes i also getting bored i stoped doing arena for sometime i am level 60 for long time there are no new mastrys which will make the game easy in away they should bring some big changes to game which will make the game easy .and the aq is ok but war is getting very bad the dev are not trying to make the easy in anyway
I appreciate the Kabam Mike response, I really do because I believe it's genuine. Here is the problem.
MCOC while being the most technically proficient skill based game you can play with excellent design, development and a dev team that is just off the charts talented have missed one crucial point. Players want progress and they dont want that progress to take months.
Something needs changed immediately to speed up progress. Get rid of the gold bottleneck, make Crystal's that limit the champs in them to 15 or fewer and make awaking gems and stones more available.
You may think if you do this, the game could die, I'm here to tell you in my opinion if you don't do this the game is going to die.
Too slow, too much of a slog and progression is at a turtle's pace and it's boring af. There are too many games right now that offer so much more for less the time investment and are fun.
Make a change Kabam, I promise you, if you don't, you pull up right behind Blockbuster video. Great concept, very bad at adaption.
Comments
I understand the part about sharing concerns. That's fair. I just don't think that solidifying reactions to something that isn't set in motion is necessarily reasonable. It's still being worked on. I think that's one of the downsides to information going out too easily. If it was me, I'd have an NDA for the Beta.
In terms of burnout, and this isn’t to say that the points made here aren't valid, that's bound to happen when people get to a certain point. Especially when you're talking about playing for 4-5 years or more. That happens. It isn't a sign the game is dying, as is being implied here. That's dramatic. Over time, you're going to have interests that wane, you're going to hit a wall, you're going to run out of steam. Some change focus. Some take a break. Some quit. Just the nature of the beast. Things go on.
Usually I'm saying more the opposite, and gathering a bunch of disagree and lol flags while doing it.
On a more subtle level, game content and game difficulty is balanced around measured averages. Even if AW and leaderboard AQ didn't exist, if you handed out a bunch of strong champions to half the players the other half would be impacted indirectly because those other players, now stronger, would bring up the curve on performance. Everyone else would be penalized without realizing it. That's why even when you have a situation like the current one, making things cheaper in the stores isn't a "pro-player move" like some would describe it. It amplifies what the spenders get and in effect makes things more difficult for the non-spenders as a result. Or just the people who spend less.
it is easy to say Kabam should help "the players" by either giving things away or making cash offers cheaper in these times. But there are unintended consequences of doing that which are being generally overlooked. You aren't helping "players" when you make cash offers cheaper. You are helping some players and hurting others. And you're helping big spenders gain an advantage over smaller spenders. It is perfectly legitimate for those people to get advantages for their spending. But how do you justify them having a larger advantage over other players now of all times? You're just as easily sending the message that Kabam is going to help spenders even more than before, and if you were either a free to play player or a light spender, you now need to spend more to keep up.
That doesn't happen in Candy Crush.
On the other hand, you could just give a bunch of stuff away completely for free. That helps everyone, right? Yes. But it also devalues playing time and spending. If everyone is getting more stuff for free, that means the players who play more are getting a lower advantage for that extra play time (or harder play) than they were before. And people spending are now getting a lower advantage for spending than they were getting before. How do you justify that?
Unlike in Candy Crush, there's a relationship between free stuff, gameplay stuff, and purchased stuff. The ratio of gameplay stuff to purchased stuff determines how much you value players just playing the game and how much you value the spenders keeping the game alive. The free stuff either dilutes that relationship or magnifies it. And no matter how you change those ratios, you are helping some players and hurting others. There's never such a thing as a universal reward that helps all players, because the way the game works we're all judged against each other, whether we want to or not. The difficulty in the Uncollected monthly quest? That's not set by some formula or some developer just guessing. *We* set that difficulty, by virtue of how many of us succeed and how many of us fail it. That tells the devs how hard it is. If the game handed out more stuff and we all got stronger, UC would get harder to compensate.
A lot of people talk about how games like this are "treadmills" and they usually use that term in a derogatory way. And yet I don't think *any* of them really understand what that means. Because all of them think that you can increase rewards to escape the treadmill. None of them seem to understand the treadmill is *powered* by rewards.
As I said, this has nothing to do with whether Kabam should offer in-game something something during the current quarantine conditions. That's a complex question. All I'm saying is that the way rewards work in a games like MCOC is different than how they work in other games that are unlike MCOC, and in a game like MCOC there's no such thing as a free lunch. Everything you do, everything you give away, everything you sell, helps some and hurts others. There's no universal benefit. So this is never a simple question of Kabam helping or not helping players.
Also, all of this is completely separate from the more general issues being brought up in this thread. The feedback in the beta was snowballing in this direction before this thread started, and I think the devs need to think about this thread completely separately from the Beta thread which is a much more specific targeted response to the beta tester complaints and comments.
1. The story modes are definitely moving faster upward in difficulty than our rosters are allowed to progress. This is by design and can be ok as while This is frustrating but if the content is meant to be eased into other than whales then it can work. Rosters need to be allowed to grow at a reasonable pace to clear this content though(it is not years though, that is not reasonable) but that leads into the second point.
2. Kabam has waited way to long to introduce a new monthly difficulty level, new difficulty in event rewards, and is not progressing the earnable in game reward fast enough to reliably progress toward a point you can clear the content. So what we are left with is either story content that is overtuned from what we want to be fighting(for years) and EQ that is laughable in difficulty and doesn’t have rewards that help faster enough with the over tuned content. This generates a feeling of 0 growth month on month toward actually progressing.
As a result Act 6 is content that for many a year later even 6.1 exploration is out of reach. Some of us decide we will take it on the chin and push through the horror that is 6.2 and act 6 exploration but many just wont(why do it if it’s not fun). I have current and former ally mates that can’t be bothered to even grind it because IT IS NOT FUN. They don’t see the point and don’t see any near future that they do clear the content because the effort doesn’t match the reward with there current rosters and won’t for well over another year at least(by then rewards will be outdated too).
My honest assessment. The game is being hard throttled toward spending. It’s why we still don’t have a new difficulty with more rewards multiple years after uncollected difficulty was released. It’s why events aren’t being updated, 5* sig stones aren’t being released widely yet, best way to acquire niche counters is buying cav crystals, and then In general the daily quest rewards are just being left in 2016 for the most part.
To be honest, that sort of happened with Act 5 as well, with the difficulty jumping upward steeper than I would expect from 5.1 to 5.4. It just didn't seem that way to many of the players doing the content because players built up their rosters fast enough back then to keep up. But that was due to an anomaly where 5* champs were being accelerated into player hands much faster than it should have been. Which is the reason why 6* champs exist now: 5* champs diluted themselves into ubiquity.
Kabam is not making the same mistake with 6* champs, but they continued developing Act 6 as if they were. And that's why the difficulty curve is so steep. It is tuned to the top tier player rosters, not typical player rosters.
But the devs are in fact revisiting Book 2 (Act 7). There's an announcement in the beta forums to that effect, where Kabam is announcing that they aren't just going to be tweaking things here and there based on feedback, but is going to completely reexamine everything about Book 2. Attack, node combinations, specific defender placement, the whole enchilada. So there's hope that the difficulty curve will reset to a more "normal" level.
Could it be Kabam themselves are trying to flash mcoc down the toilet?
Act V gave you the rewards for a r5 5*. But was fairly easy to clear with R5 4*(yes I did this with minimal revives). With skill in Act V you could overcome. I
Act 6 gives you rewards for r3 6* by the end. So on the logic it should be tuned to at most r3 6* and clearable minimal revives by a skilled player by r4 5* to have a similar difficulty as Act 5. This is not true.
The difficulty does not scale the same and if it was meant for r4 or r5 6* then the rewards don’t match because someone in the world where they have an r4 6* they are using to clear Act 6 will not care about the rewards anymore as they will be pretty low on the totem pole by that time.
I get where Seatin is coming from. The game has some problems that will drive people away. People talking about act 6 and 7....smh. I was selected for act 7 beta along with lots of other people but I never opened it. Figured it was more of the same and I wasn't going to be motivated anytime soon for it. Doing act 6 feels more like an obligation more than something fun to do. So I get where lots of people are coming from. I'm also happy for the people enjoying the game as it is but there's always room for improvement, that to me seems to point of the thread is improvement.
I've been playing for several years, somewhere in the early updates like 5 plus or minus. So I've seen some odd things. Now some people will call bullsnot on my next statement. I don't think crystal RNG is true RNG. I'm pretty sure it's weighted towards certain champs depending on whatever Kabam feels like is best for profit. You're more likely to get useless champs than champs that will actually help. Out of 50 six stars my only dupes are trash champs I'll never use. No one in their right mind can argue that they aren't weighted. I realize the point of the game is to keep you coming back and chase more crystals but if out of 50 six stars you only use one or two then something is wrong. What's the point of chasing the next crystal when you already know it's going to be trash. I still really like the game but yes it has some problems that need to be addressed if Kabam still wants us to show up. Last thing. War is a mess, way to much effort for the rewards. I think the rewards are probably about right, maybe a little low, but for the most part fine. If the rewards are "fine" then the difficulty/effort is out of balance. The difficulty levels don't really change until tier 5 then they ramp up pretty quickly. Pretty much the same difficulty levels from tier 11 to 5. Lots of ways to spread out the war maps. Anyway just my 2cents. Good luck everyone. Happy hunting
1 Stop screwing people by manipulating RNG to keep a few good champs out of peoples reach.
2. Improve champs so there’s a larger pool of good champs and people aren’t as disappointed with rewards and RNG
3. Give us more V4 like content where we can use that deep pool of 3& 4 stars we liked to play but can’t use on most other content (no not the monthly 2-star run where I have to fight the same 4 fights 30+ times-boring)
4. Stop making content that’s only bearable if you have 4 specific champs. If more champs were useful we wouldn’t dread popping Mordo’s and Beasts and would be happier with rewards.
5. All crystals should be nexus crystals, at least if I get ****, I can pick my favorite ****. (0ne mans trash, another mans treasure)
6. Give sig stones for duplicate champs with sig higher than 20, instead of taking them to sig 40. Hey I can’t use an iron patriot sig 40, but if I got 20 tech sig stones, I’d be slightly less disappointed. Or give a chance to sell duplicated 5 or 6* champs instead of increasing signature. i.e. if I pull a dup Miles Morales 6*, Give the option to take 20 Sig stones and 2500 6* shards to or 20 sig stones and some T5 or T2A shards, do something to try to dull the pain of bad champs from crystals
MCOC while being the most technically proficient skill based game you can play with excellent design, development and a dev team that is just off the charts talented have missed one crucial point. Players want progress and they dont want that progress to take months.
Something needs changed immediately to speed up progress. Get rid of the gold bottleneck, make Crystal's that limit the champs in them to 15 or fewer and make awaking gems and stones more available.
You may think if you do this, the game could die, I'm here to tell you in my opinion if you don't do this the game is going to die.
Too slow, too much of a slog and progression is at a turtle's pace and it's boring af. There are too many games right now that offer so much more for less the time investment and are fun.
Make a change Kabam, I promise you, if you don't, you pull up right behind Blockbuster video. Great concept, very bad at adaption.