I made a post about arena buff,They butter AT LEAST buff the arena mile stones and increase the multiplayer to get to the mile stones faster. IF NO UPDATE came to arena or mastery,then i will quit this (Game) it wasn't worth my 4 years of investment i am a 4 year old player and had not pulled 5* himdal or hypiron for that 6.2 sinster boss. I could EASILY defeat sinster 6.2 if 4* where allowed because i have both of these characters as 4*.
I want to be clear, if a champ is usable I have no issue with them being in the 6* pool, I own 6* red skull and KG and I’m fine with that, will they get ranked up past 1/25? Not likely, but they have their uses and I’m ok with that. But OG cap is useless. And isn’t needed in the pool, especially as we already have CapIW and WW2 Cap.
Please rethink the game economy and how you are looking at this from a rewards and scheduling. Today’s event release is just another example. Where you are at right now and where the player base think we should be and are ready to be is way to far apart. We have been sitting in the same place for a long time with basically small inches forward from a regular in game availability standpoint for the last year. Especially on some specific resources(like sig stones and 6* shards). T5 basic availability is definitely improved but others stand still. The content and growth from offers is so far outweighing the pace of the in game economy.
This seems like an area where way too much analysis has been done to squeeze every penny out of the in game economy but in doing so has really squeezed also out the fun, growth, and feel of progression the game once has.
I also feel this compounds in the delay of new difficulty levels like the introduction of a new level like cavalier way to long because the worry about the in game economy. This has resulted in another disconnect where monthly the content is basically useless from offering a fun challenge and decent progression standpoint and then the Act 6 content is more painful and requires more focus/energy then somewhat casual play can dictate.
Really I feel like I haven’t had content to play that was challenging but not stressful to play since variant 4 launched. And yet this and challenge type content is being cut down more and more.
There's always going to be a need for bad champs. They're put there to balance out the "good" champs.
I don't think that is true. But I'm not sure of the best way to explain the subtle distinction.
Let me try this. There is no game design reason why there should be "stronger" or "weaker" champs per se. However, there *is* a very strong game design reason to ensure that for any one player, that one player *desires* some champs more than others. If they are all equally desirable, that's problematic, because psychologically valuation is relative. If they are all equally desirable, they will eventually all become equally undesirable. If the game was full of nothing but "god-tier" champs, those god-tier champs would all be meh in time.
Having said that, there's no game design reason why every single player should *agree* on the order of desirability, and that changes everything. If every champ had strong uses, but we all disagreed about which uses were ultimately more valuable, that would be perfectly fine. In fact, that should be the ultimate goal. Every player would have a priority of preference and wouldn't get bored with champions, but every champion would have its followers. But this is a tricky thing to achieve. We're still debating endlessly over which Starcraft race is the best, so it is an achievable goal in theory. But in practice, this takes very solid design fidelity.
A long time ago I used to play hex board games, and one of my favorites was a game called Ogre. Off and on, I've been studying this game for literally forty years. The fact that we're still arguing over which side has the advantage in *that* game is impressive. But also it is my go-to example whenever someone says that "balance is impossible." This game is one of the best teaching aids for what "balance" even is (it isn't synonymous with equality in any form) and how even the most asymmetrical game in existence can present a choice to players for which there is no correct choice and everyone disagrees over the best choice.
If the Ogre can be balanced against the army in terms of the meta game, then champions can be balanced in terms of different people choosing different champs as the best without any of them actually being the best.
Not saying it is easy, and I'm not even saying Kabam itself is capable of doing it. Only that it isn't impossible. And there's hints of it in the game. Killmonger is seen as fantastic by some, average by others. Crossbones is another such champion. It is possible to make champs that are impossible to say are "bad" but nevertheless polarize the players in terms of whether they are worth pursuing and investing in. That sort of thing is better than "good" and "bad" champs but produces similar psychological results.
TL:DR, just kidding. But to sum it up, what DNA3K is saying is that for us to appreciate certain champs there have to be champs that are not as strong in comparison, it’s all about relativism. Anyways @DNA3000 you sound like an academic from your mannerisms, and I’d wager that you’re from a related field of biomed/biotech.
Edit: it’s all about having an element of subjectivity within this relativism if you know what I mean.
There's always going to be a need for bad champs. They're put there to balance out the "good" champs.
I don't think that is true. But I'm not sure of the best way to explain the subtle distinction.
Let me try this. There is no game design reason why there should be "stronger" or "weaker" champs per se. However, there *is* a very strong game design reason to ensure that for any one player, that one player *desires* some champs more than others. If they are all equally desirable, that's problematic, because psychologically valuation is relative. If they are all equally desirable, they will eventually all become equally undesirable. If the game was full of nothing but "god-tier" champs, those god-tier champs would all be meh in time.
Having said that, there's no game design reason why every single player should *agree* on the order of desirability, and that changes everything. If every champ had strong uses, but we all disagreed about which uses were ultimately more valuable, that would be perfectly fine. In fact, that should be the ultimate goal. Every player would have a priority of preference and wouldn't get bored with champions, but every champion would have its followers. But this is a tricky thing to achieve. We're still debating endlessly over which Starcraft race is the best, so it is an achievable goal in theory. But in practice, this takes very solid design fidelity.
A long time ago I used to play hex board games, and one of my favorites was a game called Ogre. Off and on, I've been studying this game for literally forty years. The fact that we're still arguing over which side has the advantage in *that* game is impressive. But also it is my go-to example whenever someone says that "balance is impossible." This game is one of the best teaching aids for what "balance" even is (it isn't synonymous with equality in any form) and how even the most asymmetrical game in existence can present a choice to players for which there is no correct choice and everyone disagrees over the best choice.
If the Ogre can be balanced against the army in terms of the meta game, then champions can be balanced in terms of different people choosing different champs as the best without any of them actually being the best.
Not saying it is easy, and I'm not even saying Kabam itself is capable of doing it. Only that it isn't impossible. And there's hints of it in the game. Killmonger is seen as fantastic by some, average by others. Crossbones is another such champion. It is possible to make champs that are impossible to say are "bad" but nevertheless polarize the players in terms of whether they are worth pursuing and investing in. That sort of thing is better than "good" and "bad" champs but produces similar psychological results.
TL:DR, just kidding. But to sum it up, what DNA3K is saying is that for us to appreciate certain champs there have to be champs that are not as strong in comparison, it’s all about relativism.
They don't have to be weaker, they just have to be sufficiently different that you and I would argue endlessly over which was better. A healthy meta here would be one where we don't all agree. We don't all agree on which champs are the best, which is good. But we kinda all tend to agree on which ones are the worst. And that's a problem.
This thread has turned into a vent thread, with no new information coming out.
I thought the purpose of this thread was to establish some sort of communication with the decision makers, and it basically has been a one way street.
If we are waiting on Kabam for a more official response, then why not lock this thread until that happens?
The purpose of every thread on the forums that isn't an announcement thread (which are locked immediately) is for players to have the opportunity to discuss things with other players. Every other purpose is a secondary purpose. The devs might be reading, the devs might be taking the discussion into account, but the purpose of this thread was and is to allow players to discuss the state of the game with each other.
Content like this is generally in the pipeline for months. I wouldn't assume anything in MODOK's labs would reflect any of the recent discussion yet.
Yes I agree but given the current community outrage it should of been something they should of and could changed
Fair enough. But I'm pointing out the content has been in the queue for months not to say it is immutable, but rather that it is a judgment call that reasonable people could disagree on as to whether it should be changed on the fly while the forward looking roadmap is still being discussed. It doesn't prove they aren't taking the feedback discussion seriously.
Having a conversation isn't a guarantee that everyone will be happy with everything moving forward. We're going to like some Events more than others, and that's been true as long as there have been a variety of Events. Some are more lucrative than others. Rewards add up over the year overall. It's virtually impossible to balance the awards over the year and still make everyone satisfied, but what they try to do is have something for everyone. As always, we have a choice to gauge whether we consider it worth the effort for us personally. Side Events are not mandatory, nor are they required for normal workings of the game. They're bonus content that run alongside the Event Quest.
Having a conversation isn't a guarantee that everyone will be happy with everything moving forward. We're going to like some Events more than others, and that's been true as long as there have been a variety of Events. Some are more lucrative than others. Rewards add up over the year overall. It's virtually impossible to balance the awards over the year and still make everyone satisfied, but what they try to do is have something for everyone. As always, we have a choice to gauge whether we consider it worth the effort for us personally. Side Events are not mandatory, nor are they required for normal workings of the game. They're bonus content that run alongside the Event Quest.
I wouldn’t call did events “bonus” we have one every month so they are a pretty regular thing, a new boss rush would be considered “bonus” also they are never catering to cavalier players in really any event so they are clearly not trying to valence the rewards of cavalier players with those of uncollected players, also it is not often we see events as difficult as modok’s labs tend to be with rewards this bad and saying rewards add up over a year doesn’t make sense, I knew that is how addiction works and a year is like 1/5 of the game’s lifespan so that is much to large of a scale to look at it through
Who said anything about addiction? It's about managing how much Resources can be acquired over the course of the year. They're not just arbitrary numbers. Also, they are bonus content. It's not required to do them for the EQ. The opposite is sometimes true, actually.
There's always going to be a need for bad champs. They're put there to balance out the "good" champs.
I don't think that is true. But I'm not sure of the best way to explain the subtle distinction.
Let me try this. There is no game design reason why there should be "stronger" or "weaker" champs per se. However, there *is* a very strong game design reason to ensure that for any one player, that one player *desires* some champs more than others. If they are all equally desirable, that's problematic, because psychologically valuation is relative. If they are all equally desirable, they will eventually all become equally undesirable. If the game was full of nothing but "god-tier" champs, those god-tier champs would all be meh in time.
Having said that, there's no game design reason why every single player should *agree* on the order of desirability, and that changes everything. If every champ had strong uses, but we all disagreed about which uses were ultimately more valuable, that would be perfectly fine. In fact, that should be the ultimate goal. Every player would have a priority of preference and wouldn't get bored with champions, but every champion would have its followers. But this is a tricky thing to achieve. We're still debating endlessly over which Starcraft race is the best, so it is an achievable goal in theory. But in practice, this takes very solid design fidelity.
A long time ago I used to play hex board games, and one of my favorites was a game called Ogre. Off and on, I've been studying this game for literally forty years. The fact that we're still arguing over which side has the advantage in *that* game is impressive. But also it is my go-to example whenever someone says that "balance is impossible." This game is one of the best teaching aids for what "balance" even is (it isn't synonymous with equality in any form) and how even the most asymmetrical game in existence can present a choice to players for which there is no correct choice and everyone disagrees over the best choice.
If the Ogre can be balanced against the army in terms of the meta game, then champions can be balanced in terms of different people choosing different champs as the best without any of them actually being the best.
Not saying it is easy, and I'm not even saying Kabam itself is capable of doing it. Only that it isn't impossible. And there's hints of it in the game. Killmonger is seen as fantastic by some, average by others. Crossbones is another such champion. It is possible to make champs that are impossible to say are "bad" but nevertheless polarize the players in terms of whether they are worth pursuing and investing in. That sort of thing is better than "good" and "bad" champs but produces similar psychological results.
TL:DR, just kidding. But to sum it up, what DNA3K is saying is that for us to appreciate certain champs there have to be champs that are not as strong in comparison, it’s all about relativism.
They don't have to be weaker, they just have to be sufficiently different that you and I would argue endlessly over which was better. A healthy meta here would be one where we don't all agree. We don't all agree on which champs are the best, which is good. But we kinda all tend to agree on which ones are the worst. And that's a problem.
And that’s the issue I would add, this is your ideal, unattainable scenario. It will never happen as in all the fighting games from MVC, SF4 & 5, Guilty Gear, DBFZ to Mortal Kombat that I’ve played you always have characters segregated in tiers according to how strong they are in comparison to others. It’s just how fighting games should be built, on strengths and weaknesses and not just about pure differences. This is the meta of fighting games, which I have been a veteran of for decades.
Hello everyone, my name is Sarkis, I'm an endgame player who's been playing for 3+ years. I'm not a whale spender, also not a f2p player since I buy the sigil (which has become useless at this point though) and the 750 (or so) units offer per month.
I would like to try to state the problems of the game that are being mentioned over and over again by lots of players and influencers on forums, social nets and youtube. These are all synthesized by feedbacks I reed, watch and hear + my personal experience. Don't be shy Maybe this will help Kabam realize what people want most of all and ask them to pay attention to.
1. Time. It takes Kabam too long to make any change. I realize that this is not a short process, but it doesn't look like it should take THIS much time. We've been waiting for problem solutions for such a long time and people get bored of it and just go to another games. We've been waiting for crystal updates, Cavalier dificulty, arena changes and so on for a long-long time and we still don't know when they're gonna come live.
2. Rewards. We're in 2020 now, the content gets harder and harder, we have act 6, AoL, 6* 3/45 defenders on AW, map 7, etc. The game develops, players need more and more rewards, it's pretty natural for all f2p endless games. But sometimes when we see rewards for side quests or anything else, it feels like the rewards are from 2017-2018. The developers should be awared of the 6* meta, this means players need more shards, sig stones, rewards in general.
3. Outdated crystals. I've been talking a lot about this - AW victory/defeat crystals, solo crystals, shard crystals, etc. These haven't been updated for years! Come on, we need relevant rewards from those.
4. Expensive offers. I'm a player from Russia, in most of the cities/towns except from the biggest ones average salaries vary from 200$ to 500$ per month. 3100 units cost 100$, and it's not even a big amount of units, completing aol cost me 6k units. Exploring is gonna cost something about 20-30k units which is 800-1000$ which means most of the people in my contry can't afford to buy if they have a real life and don't spend 24/7 on arena. I'd be happy to be able to donate more since in general I love this game and I would like to support the developers, but for me this is a robbery. I'm pretty much sure this is not only in Russia, this is about lots of countries. The sigil and the monthly 750 units thing for 10$ are good examples of something that most of the people can afford without taking any advantage over whales. I believe having some advantage by spending money is natural, but make the offers more attractive to most of the players.
5. Units. The previous paragraph leads to the problem of units. Nowadays there are really few ways of getting units in this game except for donating and grinding arena. Maybe adding units into side quests, event quests or even making a separate unit quest would be a good idea.
6. Arena. Arena is insanely boring and stale. No updates for a while, lots of routine work, impossibility to get a 5* champion without 24/7 with refreshing heroes make it the most boring place in the game. I believe the vast majority of players hate doing it, but they have to cuz of units. I personally do 1 million point to get some units every Monday and Thursday and forget about the arena till the next Monday. I have to turn on a YouTube video, watch a movie, listen to music or talk to someone not to feel extremely bored and annoyed with it. I get something like 200-250 units every week with this + some amount from crystals, but now I'm on the stage of exploring act 6. Thanks God I've mastered Quake, and got 90% of top champions, this saves me tons of units, but I know that most of the players can't play Quake on a high level (who in my opinion is my main units saver) or don't have ghost/aegon/nick fury/doom and some specific counters for some paths. Moreover, I can (in most of the cases) use intercepts, heavy bite, re-parry and other useful mechanics, but it took me 3 years to master this, and even with this I have to spend 100-200 units for just a a single path. I know endgame players who spend 500-600 units because of absence of practice, intercept or heavy bite tactics, champions for 1 path. Units should be cheaper and more available in my opinion.
7. 5* and 6* crystals. I know there are lucky, unlucky players and players with average luck on opening crystals. If we're talking about 5* crystals, I'm an average player. Probably every 10th-20th 5* gives me something at least not useless. As for the 6* crystals, I'm among the unlucky players since I've opened 25 6* crystals and the only useful champion was Human Torch who was in my very last opened 6* crystal. The rest are complete useless unplayable characters who aren't able to complete any difficult content. I believe nexus crystals are the best thing you've ever created in the game. In my opinion you should be able bo buy them with shards at this stage of the game. Let them be more expensive, let's say 20 shards, so people have a choice - get 2 random champions or 1, but less random for the same price. It's pretty fair, expensive enough not to force people to buy only these crystals, but gives players choice and an option to get something they want. As for featured crystals, they are in most of the cases are just a joke. They cost 1.5x time more, but sometimes provide more chance to get a bad champion than a usual crystal. The ratio 20%/80% of good/bad champions for 1.5x more cost is just ridiculous. This should be in worst key scenario 50/50, or even 70/30 not to leave people disappointed by this amout of shards they spend.
8. Bad champions. We all know that there are some tiers of champions in this game like so-called beyond god tier, god tier, etc. They are pretty conditional, but most of the players realize that let's say Dr. Doom and Iron Fist are both mystics, but they're not even close in the matter of utility. You can use Doom in 90% of the game content and easily beat most of the champions/nodes while it's impossible to beat these with Iron Fist without tons of revives. You're limited with the amount of champions you can bring to a quest/war/mission, so you have to choose the ones that have more utility and make you spend less resources, unless it's a very easy mission and you just enjoy playing your favourite character. What I'm trying to say is not that all the champions should be as good as the top ones, but they at least need to have someting specific to make you choose them in certain situations. There's no single situation in the game where I'd go for Iron Fist over Dr. Doom or let's say Electra over Nick Fury. These are just 2 examples, but 70% of the extisting are either completely unplayable or just worse than the other champions of the same class in all the cases. A good example of a champion who is below god tier but has some abilities that make him playable in some situations is Hulk Ragnarok. I'd prefer Quake, Human Torch, Wasp, Cap America IW, She-Hulk, Void over him in most of the cases. But if there's a champion or a node that inflicts poison and let's say passive damage over time effect, he is the best choice! In my opinion every champion should have at least 1 or 2 abilities that make him good/very good/the best in at least specific cases.
9. AW and AQ. I believe the developers do pretty good job on updating rewards and difficulties for AW and AQ, the biggest issue I can see atm is the Flow. Any single node that works with increasing defenders energy should either not exist or not give this much energy. You can find a counter to a champion, you can find a counter to damaging buffs/debuffs and lots of things. You can't find a counter to champions that just don't use their sp1 and sp2 (just because they don't want) and go to sp3 within 5 seconds. There are not many champions that can deal with this and nowadays we have Quake, Magic, Doom, Guilly 2099, Ghost trinity and a couple of other champions being the only (or at least the ones that can deal with most of the champions and nodes) counters to Flow.
If you've read to this point, you either must be very patient hehe.
All I say is not truth of the highest instance, you may agree or disagree with some points, but I feel like I've noted the biggest problems that lead to the fact that players and content creators leave the game. This is pretty much all I can remember by this time, feel free to add something you think I've missed, constructive criticism is welcome.
Hope Kabam will respond something to this so we know they realize the problems and work on solving them, have a good day everyone!
Who said anything about addiction? It's about managing how much Resources can be acquired over the course of the year. They're not just arbitrary numbers. Also, they are bonus content. It's not required to do them for the EQ. The opposite is sometimes true, actually.
So I would argue this is false because while technically it’s not required EQ and side events are an integral part of this game. They have been running this way for years. To cut back on these or stop would not be stopping bonus content but core gameplay content from the game.
Just because someone doesn’t “need” to do the content doesn’t mean it’s “bonus” content. Just deciding to end EQ/Side events tomorrow would be a fundamental change to the core concept of the game and would have very large effect on the overall gameplay loop and core reason many people log in.
Most player probably don’t even remember a time before EQ and some also don’t remember a time before a monthly side event.
At some point a regular content cycle drops doesn’t become bonus content it becomes core gameplay content. This is true even if at first it was pitched at “bonus” content at kabam. Once it’s been part of the gameplay loop long enough it is no longer bonus but part of the regular content cycle.
Now I think we all know there is a need for a cavalier difficulty event quest, and that some side events are just flat out rubbish, like this month’s, but there are other issues endgame players like myself face when it comes to event quests, and that is that all the rewards are catered to the progressing later game players even in the highest difficulty.
Let’s look at rifts, the top rewards in there were a 5* awakening gem, 5 star shards and 6* shards, all of this is good, but it’s highly unlikely to provide any major benefit to an endgame account, you’d have to get extremely lucky both in the rifts and crystals to get a significant boost. 5* shards t5b t2a are all old news for top players, and 6* shards are worthless 80% if the time due to the chanpion pool and specifity of endgame content.
The resources we need are just not in events, those resources being: 6* sigs, t5cc fragments and 6 star awakening gems, and also large quantities of 5 star sigs so non spending endgame players can have a larger variety of high sig 5 stars.
Now I know you can’t just go adding large amounts of those resources in events, you can’t just throw a 3% chance at a 6* ag in rifts or a t5cc in the modok store, but you can provide us with small-moderate amounts of sigs and t5cc, like this month, add the option to buy 10 6* sigs and 10 2% t5cc fragments, nothing major, nothing that takes the flare from rewards in content like abyss, but something that will benefit us in a significant way in the long term
Now the issue with this, is that the current top milestone is cavalier, and there’s a huge disparity between people with this title, so rather than making a new title, add new difficulties, I know cavalier eq needs work to tune the difficulty, but side quests are also a problem, they’re capped at a level that almost all new cavalier players, and most uncollected player can easily explore. Add in a new side quest difficulty, an example for these labs, 50-70k rated opponents, 4-5 buffs, something that’s a challenge even for top players, bu have the option of endgame rewards after it.
This is in the view of an endgame player, and obviously there are other issues with the game and other problems that would arise with these ideas, but it’s a necessary step for the future of the endgame, big content is 1 time, and once it’s done we enter a dead period where we are just waiting around and preparing for the next chapter of story mode or the next abyss, and event quests are the solution, both side events and cavalier eq, that is what will make the endgame interesting in the long term.
I hope you take this into consideration and are considering this sort of thing for your medium term roadmaps
(This is a copy paste of a post I’ve made, thought it also deserves to be here)
Now I think we all know there is a need for a cavalier difficulty event quest, and that some side events are just flat out rubbish, like this month’s, but there are other issues endgame players like myself face when it comes to event quests, and that is that all the rewards are catered to the progressing later game players even in the highest difficulty.
Let’s look at rifts, the top rewards in there were a 5* awakening gem, 5 star shards and 6* shards, all of this is good, but it’s highly unlikely to provide any major benefit to an endgame account, you’d have to get extremely lucky both in the rifts and crystals to get a significant boost. 5* shards t5b t2a are all old news for top players, and 6* shards are worthless 80% if the time due to the chanpion pool and specifity of endgame content.
The resources we need are just not in events, those resources being: 6* sigs, t5cc fragments and 6 star awakening gems, and also large quantities of 5 star sigs so non spending endgame players can have a larger variety of high sig 5 stars.
Now I know you can’t just go adding large amounts of those resources in events, you can’t just throw a 3% chance at a 6* ag in rifts or a t5cc in the modok store, but you can provide us with small-moderate amounts of sigs and t5cc, like this month, add the option to buy 10 6* sigs and 10 2% t5cc fragments, nothing major, nothing that takes the flare from rewards in content like abyss, but something that will benefit us in a significant way in the long term
Now the issue with this, is that the current top milestone is cavalier, and there’s a huge disparity between people with this title, so rather than making a new title, add new difficulties, I know cavalier eq needs work to tune the difficulty, but side quests are also a problem, they’re capped at a level that almost all new cavalier players, and most uncollected player can easily explore. Add in a new side quest difficulty, an example for these labs, 50-70k rated opponents, 4-5 buffs, something that’s a challenge even for top players, bu have the option of endgame rewards after it.
This is in the view of an endgame player, and obviously there are other issues with the game and other problems that would arise with these ideas, but it’s a necessary step for the future of the endgame, big content is 1 time, and once it’s done we enter a dead period where we are just waiting around and preparing for the next chapter of story mode or the next abyss, and event quests are the solution, both side events and cavalier eq, that is what will make the endgame interesting in the long term.
I hope you take this into consideration and are considering this sort of thing for your medium term roadmaps
(This is a copy paste of a post I’ve made, thought it also deserves to be here)
+1.
Well written and yes, it’s a small step to implement an additional difficulty for the side quest, but a significant one.
Idk if Kabam staffs are reading and working on this thread anymore? No replying, no improvement on the new quests.
I'm sure they are still reading and working on this thread. They won't reply unless they have something to say and as for the new quests, they were already in the works before this thread started.
Comments
IF NO UPDATE came to arena or mastery,then i will quit this (Game) it wasn't worth my 4 years of investment i am a 4 year old player and had not pulled 5* himdal or hypiron for that 6.2 sinster boss.
I could EASILY defeat sinster 6.2 if 4* where allowed because i have both of these characters as 4*.
But OG cap is useless. And isn’t needed in the pool, especially as we already have CapIW and WW2 Cap.
This seems like an area where way too much analysis has been done to squeeze every penny out of the in game economy but in doing so has really squeezed also out the fun, growth, and feel of progression the game once has.
I also feel this compounds in the delay of new difficulty levels like the introduction of a new level like cavalier way to long because the worry about the in game economy. This has resulted in another disconnect where monthly the content is basically useless from offering a fun challenge and decent progression standpoint and then the Act 6 content is more painful and requires more focus/energy then somewhat casual play can dictate.
Really I feel like I haven’t had content to play that was challenging but not stressful to play since variant 4 launched. And yet this and challenge type content is being cut down more and more.
Edit: it’s all about having an element of subjectivity within this relativism if you know what I mean.
I thought the purpose of this thread was to establish some sort of communication with the decision makers, and it basically has been a one way street.
If we are waiting on Kabam for a more official response, then why not lock this thread until that happens?
There has been little to no communication, and all the concerns are just ignored.
You can see by the rewards of the latest MODOK side quest that they are not taking anything on board
I'm not a whale spender, also not a f2p player since I buy the sigil (which has become useless at this point though) and the 750 (or so) units offer per month.
I would like to try to state the problems of the game that are being mentioned over and over again by lots of players and influencers on forums, social nets and youtube. These are all synthesized by feedbacks I reed, watch and hear + my personal experience. Don't be shy Maybe this will help Kabam realize what people want most of all and ask them to pay attention to.
1. Time. It takes Kabam too long to make any change. I realize that this is not a short process, but it doesn't look like it should take THIS much time. We've been waiting for problem solutions for such a long time and people get bored of it and just go to another games. We've been waiting for crystal updates, Cavalier dificulty, arena changes and so on for a long-long time and we still don't know when they're gonna come live.
2. Rewards. We're in 2020 now, the content gets harder and harder, we have act 6, AoL, 6* 3/45 defenders on AW, map 7, etc. The game develops, players need more and more rewards, it's pretty natural for all f2p endless games. But sometimes when we see rewards for side quests or anything else, it feels like the rewards are from 2017-2018. The developers should be awared of the 6* meta, this means players need more shards, sig stones, rewards in general.
3. Outdated crystals. I've been talking a lot about this - AW victory/defeat crystals, solo crystals, shard crystals, etc. These haven't been updated for years! Come on, we need relevant rewards from those.
4. Expensive offers. I'm a player from Russia, in most of the cities/towns except from the biggest ones average salaries vary from 200$ to 500$ per month. 3100 units cost 100$, and it's not even a big amount of units, completing aol cost me 6k units. Exploring is gonna cost something about 20-30k units which is 800-1000$ which means most of the people in my contry can't afford to buy if they have a real life and don't spend 24/7 on arena. I'd be happy to be able to donate more since in general I love this game and I would like to support the developers, but for me this is a robbery. I'm pretty much sure this is not only in Russia, this is about lots of countries. The sigil and the monthly 750 units thing for 10$ are good examples of something that most of the people can afford without taking any advantage over whales. I believe having some advantage by spending money is natural, but make the offers more attractive to most of the players.
5. Units. The previous paragraph leads to the problem of units. Nowadays there are really few ways of getting units in this game except for donating and grinding arena. Maybe adding units into side quests, event quests or even making a separate unit quest would be a good idea.
6. Arena. Arena is insanely boring and stale. No updates for a while, lots of routine work, impossibility to get a 5* champion without 24/7 with refreshing heroes make it the most boring place in the game. I believe the vast majority of players hate doing it, but they have to cuz of units. I personally do 1 million point to get some units every Monday and Thursday and forget about the arena till the next Monday. I have to turn on a YouTube video, watch a movie, listen to music or talk to someone not to feel extremely bored and annoyed with it. I get something like 200-250 units every week with this + some amount from crystals, but now I'm on the stage of exploring act 6. Thanks God I've mastered Quake, and got 90% of top champions, this saves me tons of units, but I know that most of the players can't play Quake on a high level (who in my opinion is my main units saver) or don't have ghost/aegon/nick fury/doom and some specific counters for some paths. Moreover, I can (in most of the cases) use intercepts, heavy bite, re-parry and other useful mechanics, but it took me 3 years to master this, and even with this I have to spend 100-200 units for just a a single path. I know endgame players who spend 500-600 units because of absence of practice, intercept or heavy bite tactics, champions for 1 path. Units should be cheaper and more available in my opinion.
7. 5* and 6* crystals. I know there are lucky, unlucky players and players with average luck on opening crystals. If we're talking about 5* crystals, I'm an average player. Probably every 10th-20th 5* gives me something at least not useless. As for the 6* crystals, I'm among the unlucky players since I've opened 25 6* crystals and the only useful champion was Human Torch who was in my very last opened 6* crystal. The rest are complete useless unplayable characters who aren't able to complete any difficult content. I believe nexus crystals are the best thing you've ever created in the game. In my opinion you should be able bo buy them with shards at this stage of the game. Let them be more expensive, let's say 20 shards, so people have a choice - get 2 random champions or 1, but less random for the same price. It's pretty fair, expensive enough not to force people to buy only these crystals, but gives players choice and an option to get something they want.
As for featured crystals, they are in most of the cases are just a joke. They cost 1.5x time more, but sometimes provide more chance to get a bad champion than a usual crystal. The ratio 20%/80% of good/bad champions for 1.5x more cost is just ridiculous. This should be in worst key scenario 50/50, or even 70/30 not to leave people disappointed by this amout of shards they spend.
8. Bad champions. We all know that there are some tiers of champions in this game like so-called beyond god tier, god tier, etc. They are pretty conditional, but most of the players realize that let's say Dr. Doom and Iron Fist are both mystics, but they're not even close in the matter of utility. You can use Doom in 90% of the game content and easily beat most of the champions/nodes while it's impossible to beat these with Iron Fist without tons of revives. You're limited with the amount of champions you can bring to a quest/war/mission, so you have to choose the ones that have more utility and make you spend less resources, unless it's a very easy mission and you just enjoy playing your favourite character. What I'm trying to say is not that all the champions should be as good as the top ones, but they at least need to have someting specific to make you choose them in certain situations. There's no single situation in the game where I'd go for Iron Fist over Dr. Doom or let's say Electra over Nick Fury. These are just 2 examples, but 70% of the extisting are either completely unplayable or just worse than the other champions of the same class in all the cases. A good example of a champion who is below god tier but has some abilities that make him playable in some situations is Hulk Ragnarok. I'd prefer Quake, Human Torch, Wasp, Cap America IW, She-Hulk, Void over him in most of the cases. But if there's a champion or a node that inflicts poison and let's say passive damage over time effect, he is the best choice! In my opinion every champion should have at least 1 or 2 abilities that make him good/very good/the best in at least specific cases.
9. AW and AQ. I believe the developers do pretty good job on updating rewards and difficulties for AW and AQ, the biggest issue I can see atm is the Flow. Any single node that works with increasing defenders energy should either not exist or not give this much energy. You can find a counter to a champion, you can find a counter to damaging buffs/debuffs and lots of things. You can't find a counter to champions that just don't use their sp1 and sp2 (just because they don't want) and go to sp3 within 5 seconds. There are not many champions that can deal with this and nowadays we have Quake, Magic, Doom, Guilly 2099, Ghost trinity and a couple of other champions being the only (or at least the ones that can deal with most of the champions and nodes) counters to Flow.
If you've read to this point, you either must be very patient hehe.
All I say is not truth of the highest instance, you may agree or disagree with some points, but I feel like I've noted the biggest problems that lead to the fact that players and content creators leave the game.
This is pretty much all I can remember by this time, feel free to add something you think I've missed, constructive criticism is welcome.
Hope Kabam will respond something to this so we know they realize the problems and work on solving them, have a good day everyone!
Just because someone doesn’t “need” to do the content doesn’t mean it’s “bonus” content. Just deciding to end EQ/Side events tomorrow would be a fundamental change to the core concept of the game and would have very large effect on the overall gameplay loop and core reason many people log in.
Most player probably don’t even remember a time before EQ and some also don’t remember a time before a monthly side event.
At some point a regular content cycle drops doesn’t become bonus content it becomes core gameplay content. This is true even if at first it was pitched at “bonus” content at kabam. Once it’s been part of the gameplay loop long enough it is no longer bonus but part of the regular content cycle.
Let’s look at rifts, the top rewards in there were a 5* awakening gem, 5 star shards and 6* shards, all of this is good, but it’s highly unlikely to provide any major benefit to an endgame account, you’d have to get extremely lucky both in the rifts and crystals to get a significant boost. 5* shards t5b t2a are all old news for top players, and 6* shards are worthless 80% if the time due to the chanpion pool and specifity of endgame content.
The resources we need are just not in events, those resources being: 6* sigs, t5cc fragments and 6 star awakening gems, and also large quantities of 5 star sigs so non spending endgame players can have a larger variety of high sig 5 stars.
Now I know you can’t just go adding large amounts of those resources in events, you can’t just throw a 3% chance at a 6* ag in rifts or a t5cc in the modok store, but you can provide us with small-moderate amounts of sigs and t5cc, like this month, add the option to buy 10 6* sigs and 10 2% t5cc fragments, nothing major, nothing that takes the flare from rewards in content like abyss, but something that will benefit us in a significant way in the long term
Now the issue with this, is that the current top milestone is cavalier, and there’s a huge disparity between people with this title, so rather than making a new title, add new difficulties, I know cavalier eq needs work to tune the difficulty, but side quests are also a problem, they’re capped at a level that almost all new cavalier players, and most uncollected player can easily explore. Add in a new side quest difficulty, an example for these labs, 50-70k rated opponents, 4-5 buffs, something that’s a challenge even for top players, bu have the option of endgame rewards after it.
This is in the view of an endgame player, and obviously there are other issues with the game and other problems that would arise with these ideas, but it’s a necessary step for the future of the endgame, big content is 1 time, and once it’s done we enter a dead period where we are just waiting around and preparing for the next chapter of story mode or the next abyss, and event quests are the solution, both side events and cavalier eq, that is what will make the endgame interesting in the long term.
I hope you take this into consideration and are considering this sort of thing for your medium term roadmaps
(This is a copy paste of a post I’ve made, thought it also deserves to be here)
Well written and yes, it’s a small step to implement an additional difficulty for the side quest, but a significant one.