I like this post a lot, but I disagree that t4cc isn’t a major bottleneck.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the devs stopped treating T4CC as a fundamental high tier bottleneck. For a time it was harder to get than T1A than T4CC and even now its availability is no longer consistent with being a high tier rank up bottleneck. It could be *a* bottleneck for a particular player, just like T4B can be, but its original function as being a rare pursuit resource was eliminated when they allowed them to be dispensed in the game widely.
The problem from my perspective is the change from very rare to relatively common happened so fast the playerbase didn't really have a chance to follow a scarcity curve upward: instead we just blinked and they were everywhere (at least in relative terms). So we haven't experienced what it is like for something to slowly transition from rare to uncommon to common. And I believe that is part of the reason why the moment T5CC arrived in the game people were pushing from day one to get enough to make it immediately usable. People were *literally* saying there's no point to them existing if they couldn't use them right now.
We're sort of cutting off the shallow tail of the exponential curve, and jumping immediately to the tipping point part of the curve when we do that.
I have examples for days. 4 stars gave more than enough iso and hasn't increased with 5 and 6 stars and all the maps used to give back a certain amount of balttlechips and gold to alleviate the costs.
I was working on an analysis on this but I set it aside due to some issues that prevented me from reaching a reasonably simple to state conclusion. But I dug up my notes to point out a few things regarding this "duplication resource" issue.
4* champs drop 24 T5 ISO bricks, which is about 120k of ISO "points" per duplication. 4* champs require about 176,327 ISO points (minus things like overkill) to rank from rank 1 to rank 5. So it takes about 1.5 4* dups to rank up a 4* champ, in terms of ISO.
A 5* champ requires 537462 ISO to rank from rank 1 to rank 5 but drops the same amount of ISO. So that's almost 4.5 dups of 5* champs. That seems worse. But this ignores something. We aren't restricted to using only ISO from 5* dups to rank up 5* champs. We can also use ISO from lower rarity dups, like 4* champs.
When we were ranking 4* champs, we needed about 1.5 dups of 4* champs of ISO. But we could have also used ISO from 3* dups. 3* dups drop two T5 bricks or 10k. So we needed 1.5 4* dups, or we could also use about 18 3* dups, or some combination of the two. 3* dups help, but not all that much because they drop so little.
5* dups, on the other hand, benefit a lot from lower 4* rarity dups. 5* champs need 4.5 five star dups, or also 4.5 four star dups, or some combination thereof. So the question is how many 4* champs does a player open compared to 5* champs? I honestly don't know. But I can calculate the break even at what point earning the ISO from duplication is about as easy for 5* champs as it used to be for 4* champs. It is about 2.75. In other words, if the average player gets three times as many 3* champs as 4* champs, and three times as many 4* champs as 5* champs, then the extra assist from duplicating 4* champs makes it easier to rank up 5* champs using 5* and 4* dups than it was to rank up 4* champs with 4* dups and 3* dups.
In other words, 5* champs are not necessarily more expensive to rank up in ISO costs just because 5* dups don't drop way more than 4* champs. in fact, the high amount of ISO you get from 4* duplication helps both 4* rank ups and 5* rank ups.
This oversimplifies a few things and I haven't done the math to draw a conclusion here, but this is suggestive of the notion that players who think 5* champ duplication doesn't generate enough ISO and that's why they are ISO-constrained (a similar argument goes for gold because the costs are similar and you can sell ISO) might be in the bind they are in because they don't consider 4* champs to be "relevant" to their progress and so avoid making any attempt to acquire them.
I have examples for days. 4 stars gave more than enough iso and hasn't increased with 5 and 6 stars and all the maps used to give back a certain amount of balttlechips and gold to alleviate the costs.
I was working on an analysis on this but I set it aside due to some issues that prevented me from reaching a reasonably simple to state conclusion. But I dug up my notes to point out a few things regarding this "duplication resource" issue.
4* champs drop 24 T5 ISO bricks, which is about 120k of ISO "points" per duplication. 4* champs require about 176,327 ISO points (minus things like overkill) to rank from rank 1 to rank 5. So it takes about 1.5 4* dups to rank up a 4* champ, in terms of ISO.
A 5* champ requires 537462 ISO to rank from rank 1 to rank 5 but drops the same amount of ISO. So that's almost 4.5 dups of 5* champs. That seems worse. But this ignores something. We aren't restricted to using only ISO from 5* dups to rank up 5* champs. We can also use ISO from lower rarity dups, like 4* champs.
When we were ranking 4* champs, we needed about 1.5 dups of 4* champs of ISO. But we could have also used ISO from 3* dups. 3* dups drop two T5 bricks or 10k. So we needed 1.5 4* dups, or we could also use about 18 3* dups, or some combination of the two. 3* dups help, but not all that much because they drop so little.
5* dups, on the other hand, benefit a lot from lower 4* rarity dups. 5* champs need 4.5 five star dups, or also 4.5 four star dups, or some combination thereof. So the question is how many 4* champs does a player open compared to 5* champs? I honestly don't know. But I can calculate the break even at what point earning the ISO from duplication is about as easy for 5* champs as it used to be for 4* champs. It is about 2.75. In other words, if the average player gets three times as many 3* champs as 4* champs, and three times as many 4* champs as 5* champs, then the extra assist from duplicating 4* champs makes it easier to rank up 5* champs using 5* and 4* dups than it was to rank up 4* champs with 4* dups and 3* dups.
In other words, 5* champs are not necessarily more expensive to rank up in ISO costs just because 5* dups don't drop way more than 4* champs. in fact, the high amount of ISO you get from 4* duplication helps both 4* rank ups and 5* rank ups.
This oversimplifies a few things and I haven't done the math to draw a conclusion here, but this is suggestive of the notion that players who think 5* champ duplication doesn't generate enough ISO and that's why they are ISO-constrained (a similar argument goes for gold because the costs are similar and you can sell ISO) might be in the bind they are in because they don't consider 4* champs to be "relevant" to their progress and so avoid making any attempt to acquire them.
5*s aren't necessarily skyrocketed rank costs though, it's 6*s which take even more than 5*s.
Also the iso isn't exactly what I'm talking about as far as using iso for rankups. If 5 and 6* dupes gave more iso then players would have more at their disposal that they could live with selling. Selling iso is a major source of gold for a lot of players and would help alleviate some of the issue with gold at least some players that don't necessarily have as much time for arena seem to have. Granted a lot of people are just lazy and don't want to do arena.
I think bare minimum is apart of their business strategy
Honestly, I don't see what Kabam is doing with MCOC any different than I've seen any other game studio do with any other game as a service. Anyone that wants to quibble details is free to do so, but the way they manage rewards is in broad strokes exactly what I would do, if my intention was to try to avoid killing the game I was working on and moving to Virginia to find another job.
People think Kabam treats rewards as limited when they are actually unlimited and you can give out as much as you want. But actually, rewards are limited. For any given progression point there's only so much rewards that are meaningful, and then start diminishing in value. Ask any high end player who claims 5* champs don't interest them anymore if diminishing reward value is a thing. You could argue that the game should now be giving those players more 6* champs since 5* champs don't mean as much, but you could just as easily argue that the game mistakenly gave them too much 5* champs in the first place and erased their value.
Mathematically speaking there are two problems. The first is you can only push the top of the game upward so fast. Which means you can only add higher tier rewards so fast. In between ratchets, you only have so much rewards you can hand out, beyond which you can still hand them out but no one will care. The second is reward curves only go upward and not downward, and for psychological reasons they have to increase exponentially. People don't appreciate linear reward increases. Increasing rewards from 100 to 110 means more than increasing rewards from 1000 to 1010, even though that's the same increase. If you increase rewards from 100 to 110 today, you'll be increasing them from 1000 to 1100 tomorrow, which is an exponential increase.
So you have a pile of rewards from which you're handing them out to players, and however much you hand out today you have to hand out exponentially more tomorrow. And if you ever run out, for a particular player, you're just out. There's no way to "create" more, because the bottleneck is not reward creation, it is reward devaluation.
So ALL game studios are more cautious with rewards than players think they need to be. And before someone says "yeah but" whatever you could possibly say after "yeah but" is just a detail. I'm not arguing details. Everyone has a different opinion on details. Every player, every developer. What I'm describing is the source of the motivation for why be conservative at all. If you're a game developer, you can piss off the players who want more rewards and maybe lose them, or you can saturate the reward system and piss off even more players. And too little rewards always has a solution, too much has no solution. So if employment is something you're addicted to, being conservative is a much better career move than being aggressive. If you're going to err, you're going to err on the side of having problems that are solvable.
No amount of videos is going to convince a developer to do anything different. You can convince them to increase the rewards in the game of course, on a case by case basis. But you're never going to convince them to think about rewards in anything other than a conservative way, at least not the ones actually in charge of balancing rewards. Because contrary to what most people believe, game developers are not out to make a quick buck, because they don't make any of that revenue personally. Game developers want to have a job making games, and preferably the same one for as long as possible unless they like moving a lot. So their goal is generally to keep the game running for as long as possible. And no game developer is going to risk their employment over any player's resource conjectures.
I wouldn't.
I think there's a lot of ways to improve the reward system, some I've suggested and some I'm still working on. But I'm not operating on the premise that the developers are just irrationally stingy. If I believe that, I wouldn't bother. Because there'd be no point in trying to suggest improvements to such people. The devs have to have logical reasons for doing what they do, or my feedback would be completely worthless.
I agree with most of your opinion on this, especially when you say the real reward should be doing the content. The fact that we so desperately rely on rewards to make it feel worthwhile is an issue with game design more than it is with the rewards themselves. That said, there are essentially two kinds of compensation:
1) Compensation for completing content (aka rewards). These need to be enough that as you progress they slowly get better, but if you speed them up too much you will break the game.
2) Compensation for Kabam errors. These don't have to be huge, but they need to be appropriate, and resolve the potential issue. We recently had two such instances: In the first instance, summoners lost all of the intel they had saved up. To remedy the issue, Kabam gave us 10k intel, which was deemed to be the amount it would take to run all tier 4 rifts they would have been able to run without the bug. By doing so, they completely remedied the worst case harm the bug could have caused, and everyone else got to benefit (those who bought the daily specials are a different issue that still needs to be resolved).
The second such issue that came up was the Captain Marvel bug. I'm sure most people here know the issue and the compensation, but there were two glaring holes in the compensation: First, they gave revives. Many of the people who have exlored the abyss have no use for those revives for quite some time. Second, anyone doing research would have known the fight was bugged and would not have bothered trying a mystic champ. Those people didn't get any compensation, even if they had a mystic champ to use and elected not to waste them in a futile effort. Both sets of these issues with the compensation for this bug demonstrate a minimalist approach which I find somewhat baffling. The compensation to these players is entirely out of touch and useless to a large portion. This is not an isolated incident, either. When Kabam identifies an error they have a responsibility to identify the affected parties and issue an appropriate and meaningful compensation.
I should point out that a lot of people took issue with the 10k Intel grant, as there were many corner case issues where players claimed some players gained a significant advantage over other players for various reasons. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with those statements, but we can't judge the Intel compensation as objectively better than the CM Abyss, as there's two different perspectives to consider here. Some players think of this in terms of what they hypothetically would have gotten verses what they did get: if everyone gets more than originally intended everyone should be happy. But other players judge this in terms of relative benefit: if they were getting more than someone else before compensation and now they are getting proportionately less, even if they are still getting more overall, they judge that as being unfair. You can't generally satisfy both sides with limited time and resources.
As you say, there were two different strategies to dealing with the CM bug. Do you choose to give the same compensation to everyone whether they experienced the issue or not on the assumption that the issue affected everyone whether they avoided it or ran into it? What do you tell players that think that's unfair, that people who didn't even see the problem still get compensated for it? And if you try to mollify everyone by just giving out way more rewards, then what do you tell players who come along after the compensation, who claim they deserve to have an opportunity to get those compensation rewards. In effect you've created a temporarily extra difficulty with extra rewards, and now are taking it away. This would be a non-issue, except you've added a substantial reward package for technically "completing" it.
As I keep pointing out, this is not a question of what is fair to the players vs Kabam. People say if it is Kabam's fault then "the players" should get whatever compensation makes them whole, and then some. The compensation should err on the side of the players. But Kabam loses nothing from high compensation. The unfairness is actually between the players, as if bug compensation is worth *more* than the bug costs, that means every player that experienced the bug comes out ahead of all other players. It is basically rewarding players who rush into content hoping to snag a bug, and players who don't play the game that way are disadvantaged.
I actually tend to notice that compensation for bugs that affect everyone tend to be "surprisingly" generous, while bugs that affect only a small group of players tend to be "stingy." I wonder if this is the reason: Kabam is more comfortable lifting all boats when there's a game-wide compensation package, but more uncomfortable rewarding a small group of players for just happening to run into a bug first.
As far as Abyss rewards go, people went for the quick clear/exploration because of prestige and Kabam's enticement for fast clears with Legend rewards.
I personally think the Legends system is totally broken. Worse than broken, it encourages broken behavior besides. I've been advocating for a "challenge mode system" that would create replay opportunities: allow players to replay existing content with additional challenges. *Part* of the idea is to completely replace the Legends system of awarding rewards to players who blitz through the content fastest with a system that grants rewards to players who complete the content in better more skillful ways. I would rather give a Legends title and rewards to players who took time to study the content and find ways to complete it with minimal potion use, say.
And we don't have to have only one set of Legends titles for any particular piece of content either. Monthly content comes and goes, but we could offer a Legends title for, say, Variant 2 where the first 100 to complete without using potions or revives gets a special title and some rewards. And then next quarter we could give a different Legends title and rewards for the first 100 to complete Variant 2 with an all Guardians of the Galaxy team with minimal potion use so you couldn't just spend through it fast. Just for example.
*Part* of the end game could be revolving challenge modes for different pieces of content. We could also tie it to the accomplishment system so many the first 100 get a legends-like title, but *everyone* could do the challenge at their own pace for at least some end-game appropriate rewards. It is a lot easier and quicker to make a challenge mode for existing content than make all new content, so end game players would get access to more content and more appropriate rewards.
The issue is really when they added 6* to cavalier crystals. It massively opened the divide between the top end and everyone else. I'm a spender and I've spent quite a bit in the game but if you compare my 6* roster to basically anyone in top 10 AQ/AW it's not even close. My alliance is currently top 25 in AQ/AW. A friend of mine had over 80 6* last time I asked. I have 34. Now he spends more than I do so he should have a much more diversified roster than me.
The issue is they opened the floodgates if you spent enough. Then they didn't really up the intake of 6* shards from content. I am not saying that they should be as readily available as 5* are currently, but at my level I'm lucky to form one a month at best and it's entirely dependent on the side quest. The only content I have left to explore is Abyss. Outside of AW and the monthly EQ/side event I have no where to get 6* shards reliably. So my roster stagnates because after 2.5 years 6* shard availability still is pretty low.
Do I think 6* champs in the Cavalier crystals are broken? No, I don't think so, at least no more broken than anything else in the game. First of all, the reality of F2P games is we have to give the big spenders something to spend their money on or there's no game, and unfortunately that thing can't be accelerated 5* champ rosters because they are already saturated on those. That's a separate issue, but that ship has sailed. So it has to be 6* champs. At the moment it takes, on average, 20000 units of Cavs to get one 6* champ. But that's just one way to get a 6* champ from Cavs. Let's say we're talking about the spendiest of the spenders. They probably have practically complete 5* rosters. They might even have a high percentage of them max sig by now. Suppose we eliminated 6* champs from the Cavs. They would still be getting one 5* champ on average every 1800 units of Cavs. And those generate something between 275 and 550 6* shards from duplication. If we *only* consider those, then it takes between 32700 and 65000 units of Cavs to generate a 6* crystal from duplication shards. If we roughly split the difference (and factor in 5* crystals from 4* duplication), then at least one third of all the 6* champs a big spender gets from Cavalier crystals comes from 5* duplication and two thirds comes from direct 6* pulls. At the 5* roster extreme, it could be as many as 40% of all 6* champs that come from Cavalier crystals actually coming from 5* duplication and not 6* direct pulls.
In other words, if 6* champs in the Cav crystal is broken, Cavs without 6* crystals are probably also broken for the biggest spenders. But it is a kind of broken we probably have to accept if we aren't going to start charging subscriptions.
Cavalier crystals are unlikely to get any cheaper, but 6* shards from content are almost certainly going to go up over time, especially as they move to both Cavalier difficulty in EQ and Epic++ (whatever) in side quests. Content always starts lower, because content rewards inflate, or at least expand over time (meaning: a particular piece of content doesn't always increase its rewards over time, but at least there usually ends up being more opportunities to earn higher rewards). But cash offers (and unit offers) tend to improve much more slowly. Which is why I keep saying I'm glad so many people think Kabam's cash offers are "outdated." They are supposed to be. It might be small consolation, but I do think the cash vs grind balance in the game is not bad, even for 6* champs. It is only at the very extremes where this is not true, because there's only 24 hours in the day but a whale can spend an unlimited amount of money. But I think that also means any reasonable limits we try to place on those highest of the high will be futile. We can only drive them away, but we can't completely tame their spending.
The issue is really when they added 6* to cavalier crystals. It massively opened the divide between the top end and everyone else. I'm a spender and I've spent quite a bit in the game but if you compare my 6* roster to basically anyone in top 10 AQ/AW it's not even close. My alliance is currently top 25 in AQ/AW. A friend of mine had over 80 6* last time I asked. I have 34. Now he spends more than I do so he should have a much more diversified roster than me.
The issue is they opened the floodgates if you spent enough. Then they didn't really up the intake of 6* shards from content. I am not saying that they should be as readily available as 5* are currently, but at my level I'm lucky to form one a month at best and it's entirely dependent on the side quest. The only content I have left to explore is Abyss. Outside of AW and the monthly EQ/side event I have no where to get 6* shards reliably. So my roster stagnates because after 2.5 years 6* shard availability still is pretty low.
Do I think 6* champs in the Cavalier crystals are broken? No, I don't think so, at least no more broken than anything else in the game. First of all, the reality of F2P games is we have to give the big spenders something to spend their money on or there's no game, and unfortunately that thing can't be accelerated 5* champ rosters because they are already saturated on those. That's a separate issue, but that ship has sailed. So it has to be 6* champs. At the moment it takes, on average, 20000 units of Cavs to get one 6* champ. But that's just one way to get a 6* champ from Cavs. Let's say we're talking about the spendiest of the spenders. They probably have practically complete 5* rosters. They might even have a high percentage of them max sig by now. Suppose we eliminated 6* champs from the Cavs. They would still be getting one 5* champ on average every 1800 units of Cavs. And those generate something between 275 and 550 6* shards from duplication. If we *only* consider those, then it takes between 32700 and 65000 units of Cavs to generate a 6* crystal from duplication shards. If we roughly split the difference (and factor in 5* crystals from 4* duplication), then at least one third of all the 6* champs a big spender gets from Cavalier crystals comes from 5* duplication and two thirds comes from direct 6* pulls. At the 5* roster extreme, it could be as many as 40% of all 6* champs that come from Cavalier crystals actually coming from 5* duplication and not 6* direct pulls.
In other words, if 6* champs in the Cav crystal is broken, Cavs without 6* crystals are probably also broken for the biggest spenders. But it is a kind of broken we probably have to accept if we aren't going to start charging subscriptions.
Cavalier crystals are unlikely to get any cheaper, but 6* shards from content are almost certainly going to go up over time, especially as they move to both Cavalier difficulty in EQ and Epic++ (whatever) in side quests. Content always starts lower, because content rewards inflate, or at least expand over time (meaning: a particular piece of content doesn't always increase its rewards over time, but at least there usually ends up being more opportunities to earn higher rewards). But cash offers (and unit offers) tend to improve much more slowly. Which is why I keep saying I'm glad so many people think Kabam's cash offers are "outdated." They are supposed to be. It might be small consolation, but I do think the cash vs grind balance in the game is not bad, even for 6* champs. It is only at the very extremes where this is not true, because there's only 24 hours in the day but a whale can spend an unlimited amount of money. But I think that also means any reasonable limits we try to place on those highest of the high will be futile. We can only drive them away, but we can't completely tame their spending.
I agree with this analysis. At the point of introduction of Cavs, 5* R5s were barely available (if at all) and 6*s just gave big spenders the second highest tier available to everyone, which they have an abundance of (5*R4s and arguably weaker without enough sig levels).
Honestly I feel that the main issue with content nowadays is that players have too fast an accelerated progress rate, and earlier levels have been made trivial by attaining champs that outrank the content.
For example, there are multitudes of players who are Cavalier without Elder’s Bane. That, in itself, is a problem.
One suggestion I gave Kabam a long time ago, during 6.1 beta, was to gate story content and rank up resources. What I meant was to only allow players to access their next tier rank up materials upon clearing the quest that first granted it.
For example, T2A was first available upon the exploration of Act 4. This means players shouldn’t be allowed to spend T2A before acquiring it through A4 Exploration. Similarly, T5B upon A5 exploration, and T5CC upon A6 completion. Special quests such as Abyss should follow the same format too (eg, T5CC as quest rewards = clear a story quest that rewards T5CC to access it). Resources earned through AQ and AW can be locked until attained through story as well.
Although this slows down progress, it gives new players time to hone their skills, build their resources (and gold), and shifts the focus from “reward acquisition” to generally “enjoying the game”.
(On a side note, offers can also be tiered to different progression levels.)
Generally, what this means is, as players progress through story content, they unlock harder quests, stronger champs and rarer rank up materials.
The issue is really when they added 6* to cavalier crystals. It massively opened the divide between the top end and everyone else. I'm a spender and I've spent quite a bit in the game but if you compare my 6* roster to basically anyone in top 10 AQ/AW it's not even close. My alliance is currently top 25 in AQ/AW. A friend of mine had over 80 6* last time I asked. I have 34. Now he spends more than I do so he should have a much more diversified roster than me.
The issue is they opened the floodgates if you spent enough. Then they didn't really up the intake of 6* shards from content. I am not saying that they should be as readily available as 5* are currently, but at my level I'm lucky to form one a month at best and it's entirely dependent on the side quest. The only content I have left to explore is Abyss. Outside of AW and the monthly EQ/side event I have no where to get 6* shards reliably. So my roster stagnates because after 2.5 years 6* shard availability still is pretty low.
Do I think 6* champs in the Cavalier crystals are broken? No, I don't think so, at least no more broken than anything else in the game. First of all, the reality of F2P games is we have to give the big spenders something to spend their money on or there's no game, and unfortunately that thing can't be accelerated 5* champ rosters because they are already saturated on those. That's a separate issue, but that ship has sailed. So it has to be 6* champs. At the moment it takes, on average, 20000 units of Cavs to get one 6* champ. But that's just one way to get a 6* champ from Cavs. Let's say we're talking about the spendiest of the spenders. They probably have practically complete 5* rosters. They might even have a high percentage of them max sig by now. Suppose we eliminated 6* champs from the Cavs. They would still be getting one 5* champ on average every 1800 units of Cavs. And those generate something between 275 and 550 6* shards from duplication. If we *only* consider those, then it takes between 32700 and 65000 units of Cavs to generate a 6* crystal from duplication shards. If we roughly split the difference (and factor in 5* crystals from 4* duplication), then at least one third of all the 6* champs a big spender gets from Cavalier crystals comes from 5* duplication and two thirds comes from direct 6* pulls. At the 5* roster extreme, it could be as many as 40% of all 6* champs that come from Cavalier crystals actually coming from 5* duplication and not 6* direct pulls.
In other words, if 6* champs in the Cav crystal is broken, Cavs without 6* crystals are probably also broken for the biggest spenders. But it is a kind of broken we probably have to accept if we aren't going to start charging subscriptions.
Cavalier crystals are unlikely to get any cheaper, but 6* shards from content are almost certainly going to go up over time, especially as they move to both Cavalier difficulty in EQ and Epic++ (whatever) in side quests. Content always starts lower, because content rewards inflate, or at least expand over time (meaning: a particular piece of content doesn't always increase its rewards over time, but at least there usually ends up being more opportunities to earn higher rewards). But cash offers (and unit offers) tend to improve much more slowly. Which is why I keep saying I'm glad so many people think Kabam's cash offers are "outdated." They are supposed to be. It might be small consolation, but I do think the cash vs grind balance in the game is not bad, even for 6* champs. It is only at the very extremes where this is not true, because there's only 24 hours in the day but a whale can spend an unlimited amount of money. But I think that also means any reasonable limits we try to place on those highest of the high will be futile. We can only drive them away, but we can't completely tame their spending.
I agree with this analysis. At the point of introduction of Cavs, 5* R5s were barely available (if at all) and 6*s just gave big spenders the second highest tier available to everyone, which they have an abundance of (5*R4s and arguably weaker without enough sig levels).
Honestly I feel that the main issue with content nowadays is that players have too fast an accelerated progress rate, and earlier levels have been made trivial by attaining champs that outrank the content.
For example, there are multitudes of players who are Cavalier without Elder’s Bane. That, in itself, is a problem.
One suggestion I gave Kabam a long time ago, during 6.1 beta, was to gate story content and rank up resources. What I meant was to only allow players to access their next tier rank up materials upon clearing the quest that first granted it.
For example, T2A was first available upon the exploration of Act 4. This means players shouldn’t be allowed to spend T2A before acquiring it through A4 Exploration. Similarly, T5B upon A5 exploration, and T5CC upon A6 completion. Special quests such as Abyss should follow the same format too (eg, T5CC as quest rewards = clear a story quest that rewards T5CC to access it). Resources earned through AQ and AW can be locked until attained through story as well.
Although this slows down progress, it gives new players time to hone their skills, build their resources (and gold), and shifts the focus from “reward acquisition” to generally “enjoying the game”.
(On a side note, offers can also be tiered to different progression levels.)
Generally, what this means is, as players progress through story content, they unlock harder quests, stronger champs and rarer rank up materials.
It's unusual to see you type this long without saying "git good" lol. But I agree that the power creep in the game has allowed new players to progress insanely fast. That is one reason for most of the complaints. But I disagree that allowing players to not use resources that they gain by completing content to not be used is a good idea. They could expire for one thing. One of the main reason people exploring abyss or act 6 are irritated is that they are not able to use the resource they get from completing content because of rng. Forcing the same is just going to get people riled up. I do like the idea of making gates based on exploration. Exploring act 1 opens up act 2 , exploring act 2 opens up act 3 and so on. It forces people to either do arena for units and energy refills or buy the same for money, Either way, they will gain more experience and will make them learn the basics and "git good" so to speak.
... One suggestion I gave Kabam a long time ago, during 6.1 beta, was to gate story content and rank up resources. What I meant was to only allow players to access their next tier rank up materials upon clearing the quest that first granted it..
This is an interesting option that Kabam could indeed take. Don't know how they would implement it now but there are some advantages to it.
As a counter, exploring the same map time and time again can be, well, really boring. There are little to no rewards for exploring a map for the second, third, fourth etc time - yes, it's working towards the exploration goal but it's still monotonous. Most of the story maps have so many paths exploring isnt fun. Act 4 Exploration particularly comes to mind, but that's just my opinion.
There is another opportunity here, to look at rewards from a story and progression perspective. Kabam could actually support this more by a better reward system for exploration.
So,two parts to this. First of all, any quest completion in Act 4 (which isn't the first completion or exploration) should have a token reward like 100 4 star shards. Act 5 should be 200 5* shards and then Act 6 should be 6* shards, up until the map is explored. This could encourage a slower progression through the chapters.
Secondly, Kabam could support this by offering 'Story Crystals' for exploring content. I'll give an example for Uncollected.
So, at Act 5.2 exploration, then at Act 5.3 exploration etc give out as a reward a crystal containing just 5* champs that were appropriate for story progression?
Champs in this crystal could be something like Aegon, Archangel, Black Widow (Claire Voyant), Brother Voodoo, Captain America (Infinity War), Corvus Glaive, Doctor Doom, Domino, Ghost, Guillotine 2099, Morningstar, Namor, Nick Fury, Omega Red, Quake, Spider-Man (Stark Enhanced), Warlock, Wasp. No Arena fodder, all useful to support getting Elders Bane and to then reaching Cavalier.
Maybe this story crystal could also appear as an occasional offer? Or maybe as a Christmas gift, that sort of thingy
If Kabam wanted to slow progression down, that's one way of maybe doing it and giving something back at the same time.
My complaints have nothing to do with how fast people are progressing or the gap between us and whales. I think it is good business for players who picked up the game less than a year ago to become Cavalier. I don't think the complaining would stop regardless because people would still want access to the best rewards whether their Cavalier or not.
I think part of the problem is that non whale end game players measure their accounts against whales and non end game players measure theirs against end game players. This creates a strange and skewed perception leading to mass dissatisfaction. I personally started to enjoy the game way more when I stopped measuring my progression against others, before then I always had this sense of wasting my potential and being left behind which made me more competitive and unhappy.
I also think too many player reach beyond their abilities because they want what’s available and all that’s available is done in the service of whales which really mucked up the players own idea of what player progression should be vs Kabams.
Just because somethings available doesn’t mean it should be or is available to anyone and everyone and I say this with act 6 plus, and more specifically map 7 in mind. After the whole Corvus debacle players were saying map 7 was impossible without him and maybe that’s the point, same with the time and energy constraints. Just because map 7 is there along with its rewards doesn’t mean it’s should be completed 100% all of the time by all of the players or even at all so it’s gated in its own way for only those really committed and with the right skills. I think initially Kabam didn’t expect for so many alliances to actually complete map 7 which would explain the item use limit. I also feel like Kabam would rather players grow into their content more naturally and gradually, but that mentality is long gone and dead in the players mind due largely to Kabams own fault, ironically enough .
The problem isn’t that people are ranking to fast or two slow. The problem is the content sucks. Act six is a train wreck, there is so much trash in the champion pool and so few worth anything. And saying they crystals come to fast. Well I get one useable champ roll, mostly dupes of five stars once a month.
And six stars well since they came out I have 3 useable champs out of 45-50 rolls in the six star pool.
Imo, the problem is patience. People are very much used to steamrolling through content, a piece of content becomes “too difficult” the moment they can’t get through it. They don’t have the patience of most veterans to slowly but surely clear the content.
A4 was long, we still got it done at 50% higher energy than currently, whilst using much lower ranked champs, right?
Difficulty is, and always will be, a relative measure.
The issue is really when they added 6* to cavalier crystals. It massively opened the divide between the top end and everyone else. I'm a spender and I've spent quite a bit in the game but if you compare my 6* roster to basically anyone in top 10 AQ/AW it's not even close. My alliance is currently top 25 in AQ/AW. A friend of mine had over 80 6* last time I asked. I have 34. Now he spends more than I do so he should have a much more diversified roster than me.
The issue is they opened the floodgates if you spent enough. Then they didn't really up the intake of 6* shards from content. I am not saying that they should be as readily available as 5* are currently, but at my level I'm lucky to form one a month at best and it's entirely dependent on the side quest. The only content I have left to explore is Abyss. Outside of AW and the monthly EQ/side event I have no where to get 6* shards reliably. So my roster stagnates because after 2.5 years 6* shard availability still is pretty low.
Do I think 6* champs in the Cavalier crystals are broken? No, I don't think so, at least no more broken than anything else in the game. First of all, the reality of F2P games is we have to give the big spenders something to spend their money on or there's no game, and unfortunately that thing can't be accelerated 5* champ rosters because they are already saturated on those. That's a separate issue, but that ship has sailed. So it has to be 6* champs. At the moment it takes, on average, 20000 units of Cavs to get one 6* champ. But that's just one way to get a 6* champ from Cavs. Let's say we're talking about the spendiest of the spenders. They probably have practically complete 5* rosters. They might even have a high percentage of them max sig by now. Suppose we eliminated 6* champs from the Cavs. They would still be getting one 5* champ on average every 1800 units of Cavs. And those generate something between 275 and 550 6* shards from duplication. If we *only* consider those, then it takes between 32700 and 65000 units of Cavs to generate a 6* crystal from duplication shards. If we roughly split the difference (and factor in 5* crystals from 4* duplication), then at least one third of all the 6* champs a big spender gets from Cavalier crystals comes from 5* duplication and two thirds comes from direct 6* pulls. At the 5* roster extreme, it could be as many as 40% of all 6* champs that come from Cavalier crystals actually coming from 5* duplication and not 6* direct pulls.
In other words, if 6* champs in the Cav crystal is broken, Cavs without 6* crystals are probably also broken for the biggest spenders. But it is a kind of broken we probably have to accept if we aren't going to start charging subscriptions.
Cavalier crystals are unlikely to get any cheaper, but 6* shards from content are almost certainly going to go up over time, especially as they move to both Cavalier difficulty in EQ and Epic++ (whatever) in side quests. Content always starts lower, because content rewards inflate, or at least expand over time (meaning: a particular piece of content doesn't always increase its rewards over time, but at least there usually ends up being more opportunities to earn higher rewards). But cash offers (and unit offers) tend to improve much more slowly. Which is why I keep saying I'm glad so many people think Kabam's cash offers are "outdated." They are supposed to be. It might be small consolation, but I do think the cash vs grind balance in the game is not bad, even for 6* champs. It is only at the very extremes where this is not true, because there's only 24 hours in the day but a whale can spend an unlimited amount of money. But I think that also means any reasonable limits we try to place on those highest of the high will be futile. We can only drive them away, but we can't completely tame their spending.
I agree with this analysis. At the point of introduction of Cavs, 5* R5s were barely available (if at all) and 6*s just gave big spenders the second highest tier available to everyone, which they have an abundance of (5*R4s and arguably weaker without enough sig levels).
Honestly I feel that the main issue with content nowadays is that players have too fast an accelerated progress rate, and earlier levels have been made trivial by attaining champs that outrank the content.
For example, there are multitudes of players who are Cavalier without Elder’s Bane. That, in itself, is a problem.
One suggestion I gave Kabam a long time ago, during 6.1 beta, was to gate story content and rank up resources. What I meant was to only allow players to access their next tier rank up materials upon clearing the quest that first granted it.
For example, T2A was first available upon the exploration of Act 4. This means players shouldn’t be allowed to spend T2A before acquiring it through A4 Exploration. Similarly, T5B upon A5 exploration, and T5CC upon A6 completion. Special quests such as Abyss should follow the same format too (eg, T5CC as quest rewards = clear a story quest that rewards T5CC to access it). Resources earned through AQ and AW can be locked until attained through story as well.
Although this slows down progress, it gives new players time to hone their skills, build their resources (and gold), and shifts the focus from “reward acquisition” to generally “enjoying the game”.
(On a side note, offers can also be tiered to different progression levels.)
Generally, what this means is, as players progress through story content, they unlock harder quests, stronger champs and rarer rank up materials.
It's unusual to see you type this long without saying "git good" lol. But I agree that the power creep in the game has allowed new players to progress insanely fast. That is one reason for most of the complaints. But I disagree that allowing players to not use resources that they gain by completing content to not be used is a good idea. They could expire for one thing. One of the main reason people exploring abyss or act 6 are irritated is that they are not able to use the resource they get from completing content because of rng. Forcing the same is just going to get people riled up. I do like the idea of making gates based on exploration. Exploring act 1 opens up act 2 , exploring act 2 opens up act 3 and so on. It forces people to either do arena for units and energy refills or buy the same for money, Either way, they will gain more experience and will make them learn the basics and "git good" so to speak.
Lol. It depends on whether or not someone is asking for it. 😂
I think bare minimum is apart of their business strategy
Honestly, I don't see what Kabam is doing with MCOC any different than I've seen any other game studio do with any other game as a service. Anyone that wants to quibble details is free to do so, but the way they manage rewards is in broad strokes exactly what I would do, if my intention was to try to avoid killing the game I was working on and moving to Virginia to find another job.
People think Kabam treats rewards as limited when they are actually unlimited and you can give out as much as you want. But actually, rewards are limited. For any given progression point there's only so much rewards that are meaningful, and then start diminishing in value. Ask any high end player who claims 5* champs don't interest them anymore if diminishing reward value is a thing. You could argue that the game should now be giving those players more 6* champs since 5* champs don't mean as much, but you could just as easily argue that the game mistakenly gave them too much 5* champs in the first place and erased their value.
Mathematically speaking there are two problems. The first is you can only push the top of the game upward so fast. Which means you can only add higher tier rewards so fast. In between ratchets, you only have so much rewards you can hand out, beyond which you can still hand them out but no one will care. The second is reward curves only go upward and not downward, and for psychological reasons they have to increase exponentially. People don't appreciate linear reward increases. Increasing rewards from 100 to 110 means more than increasing rewards from 1000 to 1010, even though that's the same increase. If you increase rewards from 100 to 110 today, you'll be increasing them from 1000 to 1100 tomorrow, which is an exponential increase.
So you have a pile of rewards from which you're handing them out to players, and however much you hand out today you have to hand out exponentially more tomorrow. And if you ever run out, for a particular player, you're just out. There's no way to "create" more, because the bottleneck is not reward creation, it is reward devaluation.
So ALL game studios are more cautious with rewards than players think they need to be. And before someone says "yeah but" whatever you could possibly say after "yeah but" is just a detail. I'm not arguing details. Everyone has a different opinion on details. Every player, every developer. What I'm describing is the source of the motivation for why be conservative at all. If you're a game developer, you can piss off the players who want more rewards and maybe lose them, or you can saturate the reward system and piss off even more players. And too little rewards always has a solution, too much has no solution. So if employment is something you're addicted to, being conservative is a much better career move than being aggressive. If you're going to err, you're going to err on the side of having problems that are solvable.
No amount of videos is going to convince a developer to do anything different. You can convince them to increase the rewards in the game of course, on a case by case basis. But you're never going to convince them to think about rewards in anything other than a conservative way, at least not the ones actually in charge of balancing rewards. Because contrary to what most people believe, game developers are not out to make a quick buck, because they don't make any of that revenue personally. Game developers want to have a job making games, and preferably the same one for as long as possible unless they like moving a lot. So their goal is generally to keep the game running for as long as possible. And no game developer is going to risk their employment over any player's resource conjectures.
I wouldn't.
I think there's a lot of ways to improve the reward system, some I've suggested and some I'm still working on. But I'm not operating on the premise that the developers are just irrationally stingy. If I believe that, I wouldn't bother. Because there'd be no point in trying to suggest improvements to such people. The devs have to have logical reasons for doing what they do, or my feedback would be completely worthless.
Unfortunately, I cannot agree with you that such a business strategy is a good way to extend the life of the game.
Your reasoning doesn't take into account the key factor: the level of customer satisfaction and people's emotions. You may know the numbers, but I don't think you understand people too well.
People want to be well rewarded for their efforts and want to get new things. And they don't want to wait months for a new thing, a new 6 star for example.
That's the way it is and you won't change it.
If you give too little to people for too long and too expensive, they will eventually leave you frustrated and angry.
In my opinion, this is what is happening right now in this game.
Such a strategy does not prolong this game, it only destroys it. This is the moment in time when Kabam gives too little and it damages the game.
A bare minimum is not enough if you want to keep customers with you, you have to give more from yourself. Maybe not every time, but certainly more often than less often.
Want a logical argument for developers to make changes to the game?
I haven't spent money on this game for weeks. And I won't spend them until I get more value and better rewards. If you want my money, give me more. And if you don't do it, then I will not only stop spending but also stop playing.
I find it interesting the dichotomy between comments like "git gud" and "people are progressing too fast". If people are able to use skill to overcome challenges (i.e. they "got gud"), why should they have to arbitrarily wait to move forward?
I find it interesting the dichotomy between comments like "git gud" and "people are progressing too fast". If people are able to use skill to overcome challenges (i.e. they "got gud"), why should they have to arbitrarily wait to move forward?
If they had really gotten that good they wouldn't be stuck or think that Act 6 is "impossible". People have greatly inflated opinions about their own skill when it comes to Act 5. When you're flying through it with new meta 5*s at R4 and R5, there really isn't much that's actually difficult and you're not far off in PI from your opponent. Then you get to Act 6 which some actually challenging nodes and much stronger opponents and all of a sudden the content is a "cash grab joke".
I find it interesting the dichotomy between comments like "git gud" and "people are progressing too fast". If people are able to use skill to overcome challenges (i.e. they "got gud"), why should they have to arbitrarily wait to move forward?
Undoubtedly there's always going to be people who tear through anything that comes out. If they released something that was literally undoable, there would be several broken fingers from all the complaints. The disparity rises when the numbers of people who say it's being pushed too high is much greater than the people saying it's fine as-is. Are we talking about the top 10%? 5%? 1%? If you're designing content like Story that's made to be grown into, and you're using the top 5%'s challenge level as your gauge, you run into the problem that DNA3000 pointed out. Then there's the point that people generally don't go out of their way to say something is too hard for them unless it genuinely is. In general, people don't complain because they just want easier Rewards. Conversely, there's always someone going out of their way to say "Git gud.".
I find it interesting the dichotomy between comments like "git gud" and "people are progressing too fast". If people are able to use skill to overcome challenges (i.e. they "got gud"), why should they have to arbitrarily wait to move forward?
We need more choice instead of chance. I know everybody's always worried about "well you can't let everybody have a corvus glaive" well guess what, all the top players and end players already do. Stop dangling the carrot Kabam.
So you want to let people choose which characters they get? I'm all for limiting the champ pool, but not for directly choosing a champion.
Agreed. The smallest pool a crystal should be is ten champs, like incursion crystals. RNG is a pain, but it is necessary for the game I think.
The pool doesn't matter, just increase the odds to target a certain champion. The featured 5* crystal that has the 20% drop rate for a champion should return. They started tailoring content around certain champions and then removed our ability to target champions. We need that crystal now more than ever.
Comments
The problem from my perspective is the change from very rare to relatively common happened so fast the playerbase didn't really have a chance to follow a scarcity curve upward: instead we just blinked and they were everywhere (at least in relative terms). So we haven't experienced what it is like for something to slowly transition from rare to uncommon to common. And I believe that is part of the reason why the moment T5CC arrived in the game people were pushing from day one to get enough to make it immediately usable. People were *literally* saying there's no point to them existing if they couldn't use them right now.
We're sort of cutting off the shallow tail of the exponential curve, and jumping immediately to the tipping point part of the curve when we do that.
4* champs drop 24 T5 ISO bricks, which is about 120k of ISO "points" per duplication. 4* champs require about 176,327 ISO points (minus things like overkill) to rank from rank 1 to rank 5. So it takes about 1.5 4* dups to rank up a 4* champ, in terms of ISO.
A 5* champ requires 537462 ISO to rank from rank 1 to rank 5 but drops the same amount of ISO. So that's almost 4.5 dups of 5* champs. That seems worse. But this ignores something. We aren't restricted to using only ISO from 5* dups to rank up 5* champs. We can also use ISO from lower rarity dups, like 4* champs.
When we were ranking 4* champs, we needed about 1.5 dups of 4* champs of ISO. But we could have also used ISO from 3* dups. 3* dups drop two T5 bricks or 10k. So we needed 1.5 4* dups, or we could also use about 18 3* dups, or some combination of the two. 3* dups help, but not all that much because they drop so little.
5* dups, on the other hand, benefit a lot from lower 4* rarity dups. 5* champs need 4.5 five star dups, or also 4.5 four star dups, or some combination thereof. So the question is how many 4* champs does a player open compared to 5* champs? I honestly don't know. But I can calculate the break even at what point earning the ISO from duplication is about as easy for 5* champs as it used to be for 4* champs. It is about 2.75. In other words, if the average player gets three times as many 3* champs as 4* champs, and three times as many 4* champs as 5* champs, then the extra assist from duplicating 4* champs makes it easier to rank up 5* champs using 5* and 4* dups than it was to rank up 4* champs with 4* dups and 3* dups.
In other words, 5* champs are not necessarily more expensive to rank up in ISO costs just because 5* dups don't drop way more than 4* champs. in fact, the high amount of ISO you get from 4* duplication helps both 4* rank ups and 5* rank ups.
This oversimplifies a few things and I haven't done the math to draw a conclusion here, but this is suggestive of the notion that players who think 5* champ duplication doesn't generate enough ISO and that's why they are ISO-constrained (a similar argument goes for gold because the costs are similar and you can sell ISO) might be in the bind they are in because they don't consider 4* champs to be "relevant" to their progress and so avoid making any attempt to acquire them.
As you say, there were two different strategies to dealing with the CM bug. Do you choose to give the same compensation to everyone whether they experienced the issue or not on the assumption that the issue affected everyone whether they avoided it or ran into it? What do you tell players that think that's unfair, that people who didn't even see the problem still get compensated for it? And if you try to mollify everyone by just giving out way more rewards, then what do you tell players who come along after the compensation, who claim they deserve to have an opportunity to get those compensation rewards. In effect you've created a temporarily extra difficulty with extra rewards, and now are taking it away. This would be a non-issue, except you've added a substantial reward package for technically "completing" it.
As I keep pointing out, this is not a question of what is fair to the players vs Kabam. People say if it is Kabam's fault then "the players" should get whatever compensation makes them whole, and then some. The compensation should err on the side of the players. But Kabam loses nothing from high compensation. The unfairness is actually between the players, as if bug compensation is worth *more* than the bug costs, that means every player that experienced the bug comes out ahead of all other players. It is basically rewarding players who rush into content hoping to snag a bug, and players who don't play the game that way are disadvantaged.
I actually tend to notice that compensation for bugs that affect everyone tend to be "surprisingly" generous, while bugs that affect only a small group of players tend to be "stingy." I wonder if this is the reason: Kabam is more comfortable lifting all boats when there's a game-wide compensation package, but more uncomfortable rewarding a small group of players for just happening to run into a bug first.
And we don't have to have only one set of Legends titles for any particular piece of content either. Monthly content comes and goes, but we could offer a Legends title for, say, Variant 2 where the first 100 to complete without using potions or revives gets a special title and some rewards. And then next quarter we could give a different Legends title and rewards for the first 100 to complete Variant 2 with an all Guardians of the Galaxy team with minimal potion use so you couldn't just spend through it fast. Just for example.
*Part* of the end game could be revolving challenge modes for different pieces of content. We could also tie it to the accomplishment system so many the first 100 get a legends-like title, but *everyone* could do the challenge at their own pace for at least some end-game appropriate rewards. It is a lot easier and quicker to make a challenge mode for existing content than make all new content, so end game players would get access to more content and more appropriate rewards.
In other words, if 6* champs in the Cav crystal is broken, Cavs without 6* crystals are probably also broken for the biggest spenders. But it is a kind of broken we probably have to accept if we aren't going to start charging subscriptions.
Cavalier crystals are unlikely to get any cheaper, but 6* shards from content are almost certainly going to go up over time, especially as they move to both Cavalier difficulty in EQ and Epic++ (whatever) in side quests. Content always starts lower, because content rewards inflate, or at least expand over time (meaning: a particular piece of content doesn't always increase its rewards over time, but at least there usually ends up being more opportunities to earn higher rewards). But cash offers (and unit offers) tend to improve much more slowly. Which is why I keep saying I'm glad so many people think Kabam's cash offers are "outdated." They are supposed to be. It might be small consolation, but I do think the cash vs grind balance in the game is not bad, even for 6* champs. It is only at the very extremes where this is not true, because there's only 24 hours in the day but a whale can spend an unlimited amount of money. But I think that also means any reasonable limits we try to place on those highest of the high will be futile. We can only drive them away, but we can't completely tame their spending.
Honestly I feel that the main issue with content nowadays is that players have too fast an accelerated progress rate, and earlier levels have been made trivial by attaining champs that outrank the content.
For example, there are multitudes of players who are Cavalier without Elder’s Bane. That, in itself, is a problem.
One suggestion I gave Kabam a long time ago, during 6.1 beta, was to gate story content and rank up resources. What I meant was to only allow players to access their next tier rank up materials upon clearing the quest that first granted it.
For example, T2A was first available upon the exploration of Act 4. This means players shouldn’t be allowed to spend T2A before acquiring it through A4 Exploration. Similarly, T5B upon A5 exploration, and T5CC upon A6 completion. Special quests such as Abyss should follow the same format too (eg, T5CC as quest rewards = clear a story quest that rewards T5CC to access it). Resources earned through AQ and AW can be locked until attained through story as well.
Although this slows down progress, it gives new players time to hone their skills, build their resources (and gold), and shifts the focus from “reward acquisition” to generally “enjoying the game”.
(On a side note, offers can also be tiered to different progression levels.)
Generally, what this means is, as players progress through story content, they unlock harder quests, stronger champs and rarer rank up materials.
One of the main reason people exploring abyss or act 6 are irritated is that they are not able to use the resource they get from completing content because of rng. Forcing the same is just going to get people riled up.
I do like the idea of making gates based on exploration. Exploring act 1 opens up act 2 , exploring act 2 opens up act 3 and so on. It forces people to either do arena for units and energy refills or buy the same for money, Either way, they will gain more experience and will make them learn the basics and "git good" so to speak.
As a counter, exploring the same map time and time again can be, well, really boring. There are little to no rewards for exploring a map for the second, third, fourth etc time - yes, it's working towards the exploration goal but it's still monotonous. Most of the story maps have so many paths exploring isnt fun. Act 4 Exploration particularly comes to mind, but that's just my opinion.
There is another opportunity here, to look at rewards from a story and progression perspective. Kabam could actually support this more by a better reward system for exploration.
So,two parts to this. First of all, any quest completion in Act 4 (which isn't the first completion or exploration) should have a token reward like 100 4 star shards. Act 5 should be 200 5* shards and then Act 6 should be 6* shards, up until the map is explored. This could encourage a slower progression through the chapters.
Secondly, Kabam could support this by offering 'Story Crystals' for exploring content. I'll give an example for Uncollected.
So, at Act 5.2 exploration, then at Act 5.3 exploration etc give out as a reward a crystal containing just 5* champs that were appropriate for story progression?
Champs in this crystal could be something like Aegon, Archangel, Black Widow (Claire Voyant), Brother Voodoo, Captain America (Infinity War), Corvus Glaive, Doctor Doom, Domino, Ghost, Guillotine 2099, Morningstar, Namor, Nick Fury, Omega Red, Quake, Spider-Man (Stark Enhanced), Warlock, Wasp. No Arena fodder, all useful to support getting Elders Bane and to then reaching Cavalier.
Maybe this story crystal could also appear as an occasional offer? Or maybe as a Christmas gift, that sort of thingy
If Kabam wanted to slow progression down, that's one way of maybe doing it and giving something back at the same time.
I also think too many player reach beyond their abilities because they want what’s available and all that’s available is done in the service of whales which really mucked up the players own idea of what player progression should be vs Kabams.
Just because somethings available doesn’t mean it should be or is available to anyone and everyone and I say this with act 6 plus, and more specifically map 7 in mind. After the whole Corvus debacle players were saying map 7 was impossible without him and maybe that’s the point, same with the time and energy constraints. Just because map 7 is there along with its rewards doesn’t mean it’s should be completed 100% all of the time by all of the players or even at all so it’s gated in its own way for only those really committed and with the right skills. I think initially Kabam didn’t expect for so many alliances to actually complete map 7 which would explain the item use limit. I also feel like Kabam would rather players grow into their content more naturally and gradually, but that mentality is long gone and dead in the players mind due largely to Kabams own fault, ironically enough
A4 was long, we still got it done at 50% higher energy than currently, whilst using much lower ranked champs, right?
Difficulty is, and always will be, a relative measure.
Unfortunately, I cannot agree with you that such a business strategy is a good way to extend the life of the game.
Your reasoning doesn't take into account the key factor: the level of customer satisfaction and people's emotions. You may know the numbers, but I don't think you understand people too well.
People want to be well rewarded for their efforts and want to get new things. And they don't want to wait months for a new thing, a new 6 star for example.
That's the way it is and you won't change it.
If you give too little to people for too long and too expensive, they will eventually leave you frustrated and angry.
In my opinion, this is what is happening right now in this game.
Such a strategy does not prolong this game, it only destroys it. This is the moment in time when Kabam gives too little and it damages the game.
A bare minimum is not enough if you want to keep customers with you, you have to give more from yourself. Maybe not every time, but certainly more often than less often.
Want a logical argument for developers to make changes to the game?
I haven't spent money on this game for weeks. And I won't spend them until I get more value and better rewards. If you want my money, give me more. And if you don't do it, then I will not only stop spending but also stop playing.
Then there's the point that people generally don't go out of their way to say something is too hard for them unless it genuinely is. In general, people don't complain because they just want easier Rewards. Conversely, there's always someone going out of their way to say "Git gud.".