I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
Boy am I upset I ranked up my favourite champions as 6*. I wish someone had told me how easy variant content was going to be so I could have left them rank 1 level 1 in order to use them in challenging content.
If kabam makes content that is hard for the people who want hard content, it is always in the game. If you can’t do it right away then you can come back to it. You satisfy the endgame by giving them a challenge, you satisfy the others by giving them something to work to and complete later.
If kabam makes content that is too easy for the end game players, then they are disappointed and never get their challenge. What’s the point ranking champions if you can’t use them in serious content? And then coming to the forums to voice concerns and they get told to just use 4*, an artificial, useless challenge that brushes off and doesn’t address any issue.
What are you looking for in a challenge? Can someone from the too easy group please describe a proper challenge so we can understand what the basic expectations are?
If you want to take maxed out 6 stars but not lesser rarities, why? Presumably it's because of the strength, rarity, and cool sports car factor. But they make the content too easy, so easy that you blast through it immediately. You (general, not you specifically) want more of a challenge, right? Normally the challenging content requires dancing around, picking your spots and not getting hit. Correct? Not much challenge if you can just bumrush through. What's wrong with the suggestion of using 3 and 4 stars if everything is too easy with 5 or 6 stars? Stakes are raised since getting hit will kill you and you get almost the exact same champ functionality so you aren't really missing out there. I guess you might miss out on some synergies, but that's an added layer of difficulty, right?
This here: this addresses why not just use lower ranked champions. Releasing a higher difficulty as they mention here would mean the same nodes, but higher health. That’s longer, not necessarily more difficult.
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight. There is nothing more difficult about that, just longer. A 50 hit difficult fight that is challenging because of the nodes is leaps and bounds more fun than a 100 hit fight with one node.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun.
The absolute biggest point here, variant content is permanent! You don’t have to do it straight away if it is too hard for you. Go away, come back stronger. Learn, don’t just complain.
Variant 7 is objectively easier, or at the very least, as easy as variant 1. That means in 3 years the only step up in endgame content is act 6 and Abyss. The reason there’s been less end game content is that a vocal minority who can’t do something have the attitude that if they can’t do it then it shouldn’t be in the game. There’s no concept of growth as a player.
Thanks for posting this. This does help.
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight. Is champ selection another problem? Maybe there's another champ that would meet your challenge needs. If Archangel reduces the fight to parry-heavy with no real challenge, maybe don't use him.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun. Is it that you want more room for error, and that would be more fun? So you don't want the fights to just be a longer version of the same fight but you also don't want to use a champ with too little room for error. Maybe don't use the optimal champ that makes the content so easy. That way you still have the benefit of the larger health pool but you might have a more engaging fight.
This here: this addresses why not just use lower ranked champions. Releasing a higher difficulty as they mention here would mean the same nodes, but higher health. That’s longer, not necessarily more difficult.
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight. There is nothing more difficult about that, just longer. A 50 hit difficult fight that is challenging because of the nodes is leaps and bounds more fun than a 100 hit fight with one node.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun.
The absolute biggest point here, variant content is permanent! You don’t have to do it straight away if it is too hard for you. Go away, come back stronger. Learn, don’t just complain.
Variant 7 is objectively easier, or at the very least, as easy as variant 1. That means in 3 years the only step up in endgame content is act 6 and Abyss. The reason there’s been less end game content is that a vocal minority who can’t do something have the attitude that if they can’t do it then it shouldn’t be in the game. There’s no concept of growth as a player.
Thanks for posting this. This does help.
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight. Is champ selection another problem? Maybe there's another champ that would meet your challenge needs. If Archangel reduces the fight to parry-heavy with no real challenge, maybe don't use him.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun. Is it that you want more room for error, and that would be more fun? So you don't want the fights to just be a longer version of the same fight but you also don't want to use a champ with too little room for error. Maybe don't use the optimal champ that makes the content so easy. That way you still have the benefit of the larger health pool but you might have a more engaging fight.
the point is that the difficulty we want isn't just from how much damage you take from parrying, or how low your health pool is, or how many hits it takes to take the opponent down. it's about the node combinations, how much thought you need to put into what teams you need to bring in, figuring out how you're going to play out the fight battle strategy-wise, etc.
Kabam really doesn't have a choice anymore. If they make something challenging all they'll get is people complaining the rewards aren't worth the effort from people who probably aren't ready for it. This group tends to be the larger group.
If they don't make it challenging at all then people fly through it and are bored again in a day or 2. And those same types say the rewards aren't worth the effort.
No matter what they do, it's going to get complaints. Content a lose/lose for them.
It is true that people will complain no matter what, but I think what people tend to forget is that game developers don't just listen to complaints. In fact, they tend to have the opposite problem. It is very rare that player complaints radically changes the way the game is developed on their own. Almost every time players think a complaint has changed the game, there's actually been some behind-the-scenes number crunching that has driven the process.
Content doesn't get easier or harder just because players complain. Data drives that much more. The devs see what players play and what they don't play, how well they do and how well they don't do. None of us really knows how strong the players are overall, across the entire playerbase. But the devs do, because they see how well we do the content, and ultimately the game is made for all of those players collectively.
I'm not saying Variant 7 has the right difficulty or the wrong difficulty. What I am saying is that what has probably affected Variant 7's difficulty the most has been our track record on the other Variants, not forum complaints about difficulty being too high or low.
Look I read all the complaints last year on how the game can improve. We asked Kabam to make sure we don't have too much attack, we can use many alternate champions, we wanted nodes that if we play right you get rewarded. That is exactly what variant 7 is for the most part. People are mad.
I also read them. I also wrote them. I'm telling you I have direct knowledge that such feedback matters, but only when it aligns with the devs own interpretation of how the game is being played.
Or to put it another way, what we say is feedback. But what we *do* is also feedback, and the devs listen to that feedback even more. It just isn't visible in a public forum for us to see as well.
Here's an example. After 12.0 did Dr. Strange suck? The overwhelming public sentiment was that yes, he did, and no one wanted to bother with him anymore. However, I was a bit skeptical because the one piece of hard data that I possessed said the players as a whole disagreed: his rerun arena cutoff scores. They were significantly above average for a rerun post 12.0, and significantly above other champs believed to be underperforming.
The devs know the publicly expressed sentiment, but they also have even better data than I have on how much he's actually pursued and used, or was back then. Which do you think the devs felt reflected Dr. Strange's true relative value among the playerbase as a whole back then. It was more the latter than the former. I'm not guessing.
I got to disagree. Dr. Strange was a huge champ back in the day and people who didn't have him always wanted him which is why the arena scores was probably so high. That nerf made him practically useless. Back in the day regen was all the ragewhich is why Blade ran the game for so long, also SW, also Dr. Strange. That is no longer the case but when strange's regen was nerfed people stopped using him all together for the most part. Arena scores don't reflect that. When it comes to arena you got to factor in hype, prestige, utility, difficulty etc.
The arena score was just one data point, as I said. The devs have the actual usage data, which showed that the players who said he was useless and thus not being used by anyone was wrong.
The devs aren't going to come on the forums and correct people with graphs and charts. Instead they are just going to assume that the people who are absolutely certain something is happening that the game data says is definitely not happening simply have impaired judgment and thus lack credibility.
I'm always puzzled when people assert certainty about things they can't possibly be certain about, while being judged by invisible people who have all the answers in the back of the book. It seems to me to be highly counterproductive if you're trying to convince those invisible people to listen to your ideas.
I have a long history of being right when it comes to this game and I didn't need actual verified data to be right. To name multiple occasions that I've been right and are currently documented in my past history on the forums are the following.
1) Champion 6.2 nerf 2) Epic mods nerfs from AQ to hulk buster and the range of difficulty in said nodes. 3) The original act 7 being nerfed. I was in the beta and told them that it needed to get scraped if the game wanted to continue at this pace. You were also in those threads but you may not remember me.
There are others but that is a short few that you don't need verified evidence to claim, but if you play the game and have any type of knowledge on how certain changes can hurt the business it was clear and obvious what needed to change.
Not to be deliberately flippant, but I can make a list a mile long of all the times I was "right" but also a random number generator is going to be right half the time. In fact, a random number generator could end up right more than half the time, because if you don't make statements with temporal certainty you have all of eternity to become right. I could pick any random thing in the game and say "this needs to change" and since everything eventually is changed, I will always be eventually right. But that's not the same thing as actually being right in context.
When Strange was nerfed in 12.0, I said the healing was over-nerfed at the time and based on the context of how other heals were adjusted and the strength of heals in general, compared across the entire game, the proper strength for Strange's heals should be at least three times stronger than in 12.0 as the absolute floor. I posted a detailed analysis of this. In 12.0.1, Strange's heals were adjusted upward to about 3x their 12.0 strength. I don't think the devs read my post and took my calculations; rather I believe I arrived through calculations at the same place the devs eventually arrived through their own datamining and review. I consider that one to be a bullseye not because I just predicted that something would change, but in precisely what way, and in a very specific time frame, how it ought to be changed to be a balanced adjustment. I also nailed the Parry adjustment, and precisely *how* it should be adjusted and why (by placing it outside of DR calculations), significantly no one else did (although to be fair, I was one of very few people who understood how DR even worked back then).
I don't mind playing dueling resumes, but I think it isn't terribly productive in this case, as what's being discussed is not who's right or wrong, but what the devs believe. I often speculate on what the devs believe, based on my prior experience working with game developers. In some cases, though, I just ask them.
And I do remember you in the original Act 7 beta. I thought your comments were insightful in some key areas.
This here: this addresses why not just use lower ranked champions. Releasing a higher difficulty as they mention here would mean the same nodes, but higher health. That’s longer, not necessarily more difficult.
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight. There is nothing more difficult about that, just longer. A 50 hit difficult fight that is challenging because of the nodes is leaps and bounds more fun than a 100 hit fight with one node.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun.
The absolute biggest point here, variant content is permanent! You don’t have to do it straight away if it is too hard for you. Go away, come back stronger. Learn, don’t just complain.
Variant 7 is objectively easier, or at the very least, as easy as variant 1. That means in 3 years the only step up in endgame content is act 6 and Abyss. The reason there’s been less end game content is that a vocal minority who can’t do something have the attitude that if they can’t do it then it shouldn’t be in the game. There’s no concept of growth as a player.
Thanks for posting this. This does help.
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight. Is champ selection another problem? Maybe there's another champ that would meet your challenge needs. If Archangel reduces the fight to parry-heavy with no real challenge, maybe don't use him.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun. Is it that you want more room for error, and that would be more fun? So you don't want the fights to just be a longer version of the same fight but you also don't want to use a champ with too little room for error. Maybe don't use the optimal champ that makes the content so easy. That way you still have the benefit of the larger health pool but you might have a more engaging fight.
the point is that the difficulty we want isn't just from how much damage you take from parrying, or how low your health pool is, or how many hits it takes to take the opponent down. it's about the node combinations, how much thought you need to put into what teams you need to bring in, figuring out how you're going to play out the fight battle strategy-wise, etc.
So the node combinations are too simple/non-lethal/guided to bring the challenge you want to make the content worth your time? I think that still leads to you increasing the challenge yourself by using the non-optimal options if the optimal options make it too easy. I do that myself for the more repetitive side event stuff to keep it interesting.
Kabam really doesn't have a choice anymore. If they make something challenging all they'll get is people complaining the rewards aren't worth the effort from people who probably aren't ready for it. This group tends to be the larger group.
If they don't make it challenging at all then people fly through it and are bored again in a day or 2. And those same types say the rewards aren't worth the effort.
No matter what they do, it's going to get complaints. Content a lose/lose for them.
To be fair most of the time when they rank up the difficulty the rewards really aren’t worth the effort, sometimes they are tho
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
How are people left behind? Once they develop the rosters, they can also do the most difficult content. By that logic, Kabam cannot create any content since someone will always be left behind. There needs to be a goalpost for anyone to work towards. As it is, only AW seems to be the difficult content available for people who have explored everything.
Goalposts require "skill". Roster breadth need not qualify for that. Difficulty is also subjective, what may be difficult for someone may not be for someone else. How do you quantify that? Make it "difficult" that you hope the players will be able to gain those "skills" later on? "skills" reduce items but lets not forget, a bunch of players will not be doing act6 at all. These "hard" pieces of content are better off as limited time events with decent rewards, the main lure being "the challenge of it".
But people also need to develop the skill to tackle the difficult content. I am not saying there should be content geared towards end game players completely. But when I see the comment that you can use 3 stars to complete content, it just makes me wonder if the R3 rank ups I make are only useful for AW and not for actual content. I am currently exploring V1, its very frustrating, but its also very interesting to do.
Some folks will never be able to do it. Some will just skip it, is that a goal for content? @DNA3000 had a good thread about difficulty of act5 vs act6 a while back, id refer you to that. Don't get me wrong, I love tough content. I love it so much i have two accounts doing every piece of content completely differently. But in the end, if you artificially boost difficulty by adding punishing attack values/health values, that is no different than using 3*. Feeling content is too easy? stop using champs that "bypass" nodes (looking at you quake). Then lets see how many of the tryhards keep their statements.
The point is not that Variant 7 could be easy. Point is that I am going to 100% it in a couple of hours and after that there is anything else to do in this game.
To that id say, arena.
Ah, yes. Arena. That place where, famously, I can use my top tier champions and flex my skill as a player. Maybe come up with a unique synergy team for this 7000 PI Iron Man? Maybe I’ll use a clever playstyle to defeat this unnoded Jane Foster. The world is my oyster!
Less sarcastically, as a player who has completed all of the content in the game, what am I grinding arena for? I have no need for 5* champions anymore, so no point in aiming for a top spot. I have no content to clear that would need items, so a unit grind doesn’t seem terribly appealing outside of trying to build-up for big sale events like July 4th. And, I cannot stress this enough, arena is *painfully* boring. I’ve worked in literal jails that looked more fun than a weekend arena grind. I’ll pop in every now and again to complete a solo objective or something, but good god do I hate arena.
I mean, isnt that an endless form of content? Is content meant to "flex" your skill as a player or give you enjoyment? What gives you enjoyment, the ability to flex, or ability to use different champions to finish a piece of content. As to why you would grind arena, units. I have finished all content myself. I grind arena to keep units ready for offers, and the next abyss/ the next hard piece of content. I am not a Kabam apologetic, but the company is giving out pieces of fun content now, which i can use multiple various options to complete. That for me, is fun.
I’m not asking for endless content, I’m asking for enjoyable content. If you choose not to see a difference between the two, I cannot lead you to it. You mentioned in another comment that you’re doing V7 with 4* champions. It is wonderful that you enjoy playing through content with lower ranked champions, and I mean that sincerely. I hope that everybody finds the thing in this game that keeps it fresh and fun for them. But I and many other players do not find that particular means of increasing difficulty fun or interesting.
My favorite thing in this game is the puzzle-solving. Discovering that perfect counter, figuring out a playstyle or tactic that gets you through a tricky encounter. I always point to the moment I figured out to backdraft intercept the Grandmaster during his final enrage phase, or when I managed to pull off the heal reversal takedown on Abyss Darkhawk as prime examples of times I really enjoyed the game. Figuring out how to game the mechanics in such a way to accomplish the goal gets that dopamine flowing for me. That’s what I’m looking for in new content. Fights that test my timing, or my positioning, or my game-sense, or whatever. That’s what makes this game great for me, and what I hope to see more of. And none of that can be found in the Arena.
I totally understand the drive and need. But I also understand limitations to design and requirement of balance. I have also completed all pieces of content currently, and have nothing else to do myself. So i take challenge when i can, however I can. But, a majority of the player base enjoys "fun" content, and i do agree those are fun. Challenging content locks out a large portion of the players for the time being, which, while it gives them time to work on, can also be a huge hindrance to game experience. Case in point, Act6. Act6 is a huge hurdle, and even now, a lot of players just do not want to do that piece of content. That is a design failure, how much ever folks like us like that sort of content. Complaining does nothing to change that. I would thus rather have temporary content like the maze, drop from time to time. Arena is just means to an end.
As someone who went through all variants on a mini account with limited roster recently, i can safely say variants are just getting easier. There are no two ways about it.
You just start with the latest and progress all the way to v1. That’s how difficulty is. Nothing to do with roster progression.
Honestly, while I'm not saying V7 is super hard or anything, that doesn't mean much coming from you or any other higher end or even end game player. Lagacy and BG did one run to reach Cav with their mini's with basically **** rosters other than a couple high level champs. Doesn't make it easy for others. You're end game. Done with Abyss, Done with Act 6 before nerf, Done with all content in game. And you do T3 wars at the very least. So even if you have a limited roster, you have the skill to manage with it.
dude that just means that midgame players need to get better. With how 7.1 was, people rnt getting that challenged.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
Boy am I upset I ranked up my favourite champions as 6*. I wish someone had told me how easy variant content was going to be so I could have left them rank 1 level 1 in order to use them in challenging content.
If kabam makes content that is hard for the people who want hard content, it is always in the game. If you can’t do it right away then you can come back to it. You satisfy the endgame by giving them a challenge, you satisfy the others by giving them something to work to and complete later.
If kabam makes content that is too easy for the end game players, then they are disappointed and never get their challenge. What’s the point ranking champions if you can’t use them in serious content? And then coming to the forums to voice concerns and they get told to just use 4*, an artificial, useless challenge that brushes off and doesn’t address any issue.
there weren't any new or unique nodes, and as u said chapter 3 was just long and boring with that crit resist
7.1 was fun. Add extra nodes that prevent miss, add true strike, and redo. Youd be surprised how many folks will struggle when they "actually" play the node.
it was fun but it was easier than act 6 completion. 100% act 7 didnt give me anywhere close to the satisfaction of completing act 6
I think he was talking about using ghost and quake. I actually don't use either champs. I never bothered to perfect them because I find quake too boring and while ghost can be fun, he is not the champ I like to use. So, the nodes you suggested will not affect my experience in the slightest. @pseudosane
If you have other content still remaining, you do have stuff to do. "easy" is a relative term. What would you find tough?
I did not talk about other content. But since you asked, I have Lol and aol exploration, v1 exploration and v7 exploration. I have the champs for all the legends content, just not the time commitment to do it.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
Boy am I upset I ranked up my favourite champions as 6*. I wish someone had told me how easy variant content was going to be so I could have left them rank 1 level 1 in order to use them in challenging content.
If kabam makes content that is hard for the people who want hard content, it is always in the game. If you can’t do it right away then you can come back to it. You satisfy the endgame by giving them a challenge, you satisfy the others by giving them something to work to and complete later.
If kabam makes content that is too easy for the end game players, then they are disappointed and never get their challenge. What’s the point ranking champions if you can’t use them in serious content? And then coming to the forums to voice concerns and they get told to just use 4*, an artificial, useless challenge that brushes off and doesn’t address any issue.
What are you looking for in a challenge? Can someone from the too easy group please describe a proper challenge so we can understand what the basic expectations are?
If you want to take maxed out 6 stars but not lesser rarities, why? Presumably it's because of the strength, rarity, and cool sports car factor. But they make the content too easy, so easy that you blast through it immediately. You (general, not you specifically) want more of a challenge, right? Normally the challenging content requires dancing around, picking your spots and not getting hit. Correct? Not much challenge if you can just bumrush through. What's wrong with the suggestion of using 3 and 4 stars if everything is too easy with 5 or 6 stars? Stakes are raised since getting hit will kill you and you get almost the exact same champ functionality so you aren't really missing out there. I guess you might miss out on some synergies, but that's an added layer of difficulty, right?
I mentioned earlier in this thread some examples of fun challenges, including the backdraft intercepts against the Grandmaster and pulling off the narrow timing of the heal reversal using Torch against Abyss Darkhawk. Another example from the Abyss is Korg, who I learned to use light attacks to close distance so I could break his rock shield with Aegon without taking damage back from it. These are fun because they required me to really think about the game. I had to figure out when the best time was to eat Darkhawk’s sp1 into the block was to build smolders as compared to pushing him to his sp2 to start in on his regen cycle.
I want a fight that makes me think, not a fight I can do after a night of popping open cold ones with the boys. Coming at the same fight with a weaker champion doesn’t make the problem any more difficult to solve, it just makes it take longer.
Yesterday I thought of a node combination that we haven’t seen in this game (that I remember) that I think could provide an interesting challenge. Bleed Vulnerability, Do You Bleed (this one is optional, not sure how I feel about it. Maybe slap this on for the last fight of the lane?), Shifting Immunity, and Empowered Immunity.
So now you’ve got two ways of tackling it. Either use a champion who has super short duration bleeds so that the enemy doesn’t have many of them stacked on when the immunity shifts, or use somebody who has bleed and power control abilities. The nodes don’t have to be bleed-centric, you could swap out the damage over time debuff that the fight is themed around. Or you could do a whole lane of different DoT themed fights. There’s a lot of potential for playing around with it. But this is what I mean by challenging content. Something that makes you really have to sit down and think about how you could use your roster to play against it, and you have to execute with precision.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
Boy am I upset I ranked up my favourite champions as 6*. I wish someone had told me how easy variant content was going to be so I could have left them rank 1 level 1 in order to use them in challenging content.
If kabam makes content that is hard for the people who want hard content, it is always in the game. If you can’t do it right away then you can come back to it. You satisfy the endgame by giving them a challenge, you satisfy the others by giving them something to work to and complete later.
If kabam makes content that is too easy for the end game players, then they are disappointed and never get their challenge. What’s the point ranking champions if you can’t use them in serious content? And then coming to the forums to voice concerns and they get told to just use 4*, an artificial, useless challenge that brushes off and doesn’t address any issue.
What are you looking for in a challenge? Can someone from the too easy group please describe a proper challenge so we can understand what the basic expectations are?
If you want to take maxed out 6 stars but not lesser rarities, why? Presumably it's because of the strength, rarity, and cool sports car factor. But they make the content too easy, so easy that you blast through it immediately. You (general, not you specifically) want more of a challenge, right? Normally the challenging content requires dancing around, picking your spots and not getting hit. Correct? Not much challenge if you can just bumrush through. What's wrong with the suggestion of using 3 and 4 stars if everything is too easy with 5 or 6 stars? Stakes are raised since getting hit will kill you and you get almost the exact same champ functionality so you aren't really missing out there. I guess you might miss out on some synergies, but that's an added layer of difficulty, right?
I mentioned earlier in this thread some examples of fun challenges, including the backdraft intercepts against the Grandmaster and pulling off the narrow timing of the heal reversal using Torch against Abyss Darkhawk. Another example from the Abyss is Korg, who I learned to use light attacks to close distance so I could break his rock shield with Aegon without taking damage back from it. These are fun because they required me to really think about the game. I had to figure out when the best time was to eat Darkhawk’s sp1 into the block was to build smolders as compared to pushing him to his sp2 to start in on his regen cycle.
I want a fight that makes me think, not a fight I can do after a night of popping open cold ones with the boys. Coming at the same fight with a weaker champion doesn’t make the problem any more difficult to solve, it just makes it take longer.
What about finding and using the non-optimal options? Are you including those in your group of weaker champions you don't want to use? For me, seeing if I can do it with a different champ than the usual group that people use for everything can add another layer to the content when I'm bored or don't want to rank up the usuals when I don't like their playstyle.
Yesterday I thought of a node combination that we haven’t seen in this game (that I remember) that I think could provide an interesting challenge. Bleed Vulnerability, Do You Bleed (this one is optional, not sure how I feel about it. Maybe slap this on for the last fight of the lane?), Shifting Immunity, and Empowered Immunity.
So now you’ve got two ways of tackling it. Either use a champion who has super short duration bleeds so that the enemy doesn’t have many of them stacked on when the immunity shifts, or use somebody who has bleed and power control abilities. The nodes don’t have to be bleed-centric, you could swap out the damage over time debuff that the fight is themed around. Or you could do a whole lane of different DoT themed fights. There’s a lot of potential for playing around with it. But this is what I mean by challenging content. Something that makes you really have to sit down and think about how you could use your roster to play against it, and you have to execute with precision.
Reminds me of when Domino was fresh and new and people were looking for champs that could avoid her degen. The easier solution was using some of the OG champs because their aa super sucks on everything and her degen would be refreshing constantly but for almost no damage.
I agree that from what ive run so far it does seem easy. However for the guys that are complaining its too easy you can make it a challenge for youselves if you REALLY want to make it difficult. Run it with 4 stars or r1-2 5 stars and challenge yourselves if you feel so strongly about it. It would be nice to see more difficult content come out for endgame players as someone who has completed everything myself but lets not make the difficulty so difficult that ONLY endgame players can complete it and everybody else gets left behind
Boy am I upset I ranked up my favourite champions as 6*. I wish someone had told me how easy variant content was going to be so I could have left them rank 1 level 1 in order to use them in challenging content.
If kabam makes content that is hard for the people who want hard content, it is always in the game. If you can’t do it right away then you can come back to it. You satisfy the endgame by giving them a challenge, you satisfy the others by giving them something to work to and complete later.
If kabam makes content that is too easy for the end game players, then they are disappointed and never get their challenge. What’s the point ranking champions if you can’t use them in serious content? And then coming to the forums to voice concerns and they get told to just use 4*, an artificial, useless challenge that brushes off and doesn’t address any issue.
What are you looking for in a challenge? Can someone from the too easy group please describe a proper challenge so we can understand what the basic expectations are?
If you want to take maxed out 6 stars but not lesser rarities, why? Presumably it's because of the strength, rarity, and cool sports car factor. But they make the content too easy, so easy that you blast through it immediately. You (general, not you specifically) want more of a challenge, right? Normally the challenging content requires dancing around, picking your spots and not getting hit. Correct? Not much challenge if you can just bumrush through. What's wrong with the suggestion of using 3 and 4 stars if everything is too easy with 5 or 6 stars? Stakes are raised since getting hit will kill you and you get almost the exact same champ functionality so you aren't really missing out there. I guess you might miss out on some synergies, but that's an added layer of difficulty, right?
I mentioned earlier in this thread some examples of fun challenges, including the backdraft intercepts against the Grandmaster and pulling off the narrow timing of the heal reversal using Torch against Abyss Darkhawk. Another example from the Abyss is Korg, who I learned to use light attacks to close distance so I could break his rock shield with Aegon without taking damage back from it. These are fun because they required me to really think about the game. I had to figure out when the best time was to eat Darkhawk’s sp1 into the block was to build smolders as compared to pushing him to his sp2 to start in on his regen cycle.
I want a fight that makes me think, not a fight I can do after a night of popping open cold ones with the boys. Coming at the same fight with a weaker champion doesn’t make the problem any more difficult to solve, it just makes it take longer.
What about finding and using the non-optimal options? Are you including those in your group of weaker champions you don't want to use? For me, seeing if I can do it with a different champ than the usual group that people use for everything can add another layer to the content when I'm bored or don't want to rank up the usuals when I don't like their playstyle.
To an extent. The champion still has to actually be fun to use. For example I have a 6* r3 Terrax because I enjoy his playstyle, and Silver Surfer will be my next cosmic r3. I’m choosing them over CMM and Corvus, who I also already have in my roster and are largely bench-warmers, because despite being the less popular/optimal choice I enjoy them more. If I recall correctly, I also did the John Mulaney challenge with a non-standard team, although I don’t remember who exactly was on it. I remember using Venom a fair bit. But I will not be ranking up my 6* OG Iron Man because he’s just boring to play.
I’m a big proponent of ranking up who you enjoy playing with rather than what the meta dictates you need, and I love finding uses for my fun rank ups. But the problem is that there are so few places in game to let a player really run wild with these ranked up champions.
Yesterday I thought of a node combination that we haven’t seen in this game (that I remember) that I think could provide an interesting challenge. Bleed Vulnerability, Do You Bleed (this one is optional, not sure how I feel about it. Maybe slap this on for the last fight of the lane?), Shifting Immunity, and Empowered Immunity.
So now you’ve got two ways of tackling it. Either use a champion who has super short duration bleeds so that the enemy doesn’t have many of them stacked on when the immunity shifts, or use somebody who has bleed and power control abilities. The nodes don’t have to be bleed-centric, you could swap out the damage over time debuff that the fight is themed around. Or you could do a whole lane of different DoT themed fights. There’s a lot of potential for playing around with it. But this is what I mean by challenging content. Something that makes you really have to sit down and think about how you could use your roster to play against it, and you have to execute with precision.
Reminds me of when Domino was fresh and new and people were looking for champs that could avoid her degen. The easier solution was using some of the OG champs because their aa super sucks on everything and her degen would be refreshing constantly but for almost no damage.
Starlord was my go-to answer for her. Every hit that didn’t proc a fury got her degen going, so it was constantly resetting and weakening.
Realistically I don’t think they want to bump the rewards so they won’t raise the challenge to drastically to quickly. So much feedback in the last year in rewards matching challenge so I’m glad they are listening to that.
Honestly The majority of people who breeze through this could complete even if it was harder and would do so as well. We have extremely developed 5* roster and either fairly developed or well developed 6* rosters with a slew of R5 and R2 or R3 champs. When you have all champs in the game and all the counters at the base comparable level for the game then ya it’s typically easier.
They won’t just inflate the rewards here as then they would have to in other content as well to match or surpass like for Act 7. Other option is inflate the challenge which would not feel fun to grind harder for the same.
I wish they would but they won’t risk the game economy to do so. With the crawled rate of progression through tiers of champ power over the last 2-3 years this is inevitable to some degree unless you go back to punishing design of Act 6 original.
Without increased rewards though I would not want it harder for the sake of “challenge”. I and many others don’t need to white knuckle this game every time I play it and if I do I want to be getting something at the end that feels really worth it.
Kabam's biggest mistake was letting people's roster outpace the content.
I think they should make more content like V4, except harder. Much, much harder. Hell, make an absolute hell-mode 3*-only variant. It'd give a reality check to people who bust through these things with God-tier 6r3, or even 5r5s.
If there's anything that rando-incursions have taught me, it's that most people suck at this game. It's incredibly weird handholding players with a trio of 6r3 gods, but it's less uncommon than you'd expect.
Everyone complained when 7.1 beta was first launched vs the final product. It was brutal some paths had only one counter. That is why it is easy now, have you done 6.2.5 it was worse than that. Wish they had more fights like the final boss of 6.4.6. They did say they are planning something harder for endgame players.
Miike said clearly in the past that variants are for endgame players. It clearly isn't that way difficulty wise, but they are supposedly the endgame target. How many times and with how much content can we say "no, not for you, wait your turn" and expect that portion of the playerbase to stay engaged in the game?
Conversely, why should all content be geared toward the midgame player?
It’s a tiny portion of the player base that feels this way. Anyway if it was harder, you’d be complaining that you spent all this time ranking up champs and now struggle with variant content.
You are incorrect in how I'd feel, but not worth arguing that point. Also, I don't consider myself to be in the endgame group, so I think the problem with this content is that it is tailored for me to steamroll instead of giving me a target to move my account toward.
Lastly, then what content SHOULD endgame players get? It was supposed to be variants- a point in my post you chose to ignore. So if not variants and not story, then what? The season of pain that is coming "soon"? That's neither fair nor realistic. Why can't there be different content for everybody and we just accept when content is not designed for us?
Variants are not for end game players in 2021. Maybe two years ago they were. Obviously the top end of the player base has evolved their rosters to a point where what was hard in 2019 is not hard now. But there are still tons more people behind you skill/roster-wise who find the variants hard, so why punish them?
IMO Kabam is under no obligation to provide you with what you seek, when IMO you represent a tiny fraction of the player base who has the roster/skills to clear all content.
I'm old enough to remember when I was a round 1 Act 7.1 beta tester, and the community freaked out about how hard it was, so Kabam reworked their entire game node dynamic to put nodes that can help you as well as ones that bite you. And now, from my reading of the forums and from my own opinion, players think Act 7 is pretty fun. Still challenging to explore.
I don't find V7 easy, but also not ridiculously hard. You obv feel different. If you want challenge, then use four stars instead of your stacked roster.
Also, Kabam is not responsible for keeping you entertained 24 hours a day. If there isn't any content for you right now, then do some chores, play with your dog, take a walk in nature, do your homework. MCOC is a game, not a lifestyle.
Kabam's biggest mistake was letting people's roster outpace the content.
I think they should make more content like V4, except harder. Much, much harder. Hell, make an absolute hell-mode 3*-only variant. It'd give a reality check to people who bust through these things with God-tier 6r3, or even 5r5s.
If there's anything that rando-incursions have taught me, it's that most people suck at this game. It's incredibly weird handholding players with a trio of 6r3 gods, but it's less uncommon than you'd expect.
Everyone complained when 7.1 beta was first launched vs the final product. It was brutal some paths had only one counter. That is why it is easy now, have you done 6.2.5 it was worse than that. Wish they had more fights like the final boss of 6.4.6. They did say they are planning something harder for endgame players.
Miike said clearly in the past that variants are for endgame players. It clearly isn't that way difficulty wise, but they are supposedly the endgame target. How many times and with how much content can we say "no, not for you, wait your turn" and expect that portion of the playerbase to stay engaged in the game?
Conversely, why should all content be geared toward the midgame player?
It’s a tiny portion of the player base that feels this way. Anyway if it was harder, you’d be complaining that you spent all this time ranking up champs and now struggle with variant content.
You are incorrect in how I'd feel, but not worth arguing that point. Also, I don't consider myself to be in the endgame group, so I think the problem with this content is that it is tailored for me to steamroll instead of giving me a target to move my account toward.
Lastly, then what content SHOULD endgame players get? It was supposed to be variants- a point in my post you chose to ignore. So if not variants and not story, then what? The season of pain that is coming "soon"? That's neither fair nor realistic. Why can't there be different content for everybody and we just accept when content is not designed for us?
Variants are not for end game players in 2021. Maybe two years ago they were. Obviously the top end of the player base has evolved their rosters to a point where what was hard in 2019 is not hard now. But there are still tons more people behind you skill/roster-wise who find the variants hard, so why punish them?
IMO Kabam is under no obligation to provide you with what you seek, when IMO you represent a tiny fraction of the player base who has the roster/skills to clear all content.
I'm old enough to remember when I was a round 1 Act 7.1 beta tester, and the community freaked out about how hard it was, so Kabam reworked their entire game node dynamic to put nodes that can help you as well as ones that bite you. And now, from my reading of the forums and from my own opinion, players think Act 7 is pretty fun. Still challenging to explore.
I don't find V7 easy, but also not ridiculously hard. You obv feel different. If you want challenge, then use four stars instead of your stacked roster.
Also, Kabam is not responsible for keeping you entertained 24 hours a day. If there isn't any content for you right now, then do some chores, play with your dog, take a walk in nature, do your homework. MCOC is a game, not a lifestyle.
Kabam is under no obligation to release content for anyone. What we have here is a subset of customers explaining that their wants are not currently being met. It's up to them what they do with that information.
I will never understand the vitriol to players saying there isn't any content to keep them engaged.
Kabam really doesn't have a choice anymore. If they make something challenging all they'll get is people complaining the rewards aren't worth the effort from people who probably aren't ready for it. This group tends to be the larger group.
If they don't make it challenging at all then people fly through it and are bored again in a day or 2. And those same types say the rewards aren't worth the effort.
No matter what they do, it's going to get complaints. Content a lose/lose for them.
It is true that people will complain no matter what, but I think what people tend to forget is that game developers don't just listen to complaints. In fact, they tend to have the opposite problem. It is very rare that player complaints radically changes the way the game is developed on their own. Almost every time players think a complaint has changed the game, there's actually been some behind-the-scenes number crunching that has driven the process.
Content doesn't get easier or harder just because players complain. Data drives that much more. The devs see what players play and what they don't play, how well they do and how well they don't do. None of us really knows how strong the players are overall, across the entire playerbase. But the devs do, because they see how well we do the content, and ultimately the game is made for all of those players collectively.
I'm not saying Variant 7 has the right difficulty or the wrong difficulty. What I am saying is that what has probably affected Variant 7's difficulty the most has been our track record on the other Variants, not forum complaints about difficulty being too high or low.
Look I read all the complaints last year on how the game can improve. We asked Kabam to make sure we don't have too much attack, we can use many alternate champions, we wanted nodes that if we play right you get rewarded. That is exactly what variant 7 is for the most part. People are mad.
I also read them. I also wrote them. I'm telling you I have direct knowledge that such feedback matters, but only when it aligns with the devs own interpretation of how the game is being played.
Or to put it another way, what we say is feedback. But what we *do* is also feedback, and the devs listen to that feedback even more. It just isn't visible in a public forum for us to see as well.
Here's an example. After 12.0 did Dr. Strange suck? The overwhelming public sentiment was that yes, he did, and no one wanted to bother with him anymore. However, I was a bit skeptical because the one piece of hard data that I possessed said the players as a whole disagreed: his rerun arena cutoff scores. They were significantly above average for a rerun post 12.0, and significantly above other champs believed to be underperforming.
The devs know the publicly expressed sentiment, but they also have even better data than I have on how much he's actually pursued and used, or was back then. Which do you think the devs felt reflected Dr. Strange's true relative value among the playerbase as a whole back then. It was more the latter than the former. I'm not guessing.
I got to disagree. Dr. Strange was a huge champ back in the day and people who didn't have him always wanted him which is why the arena scores was probably so high. That nerf made him practically useless. Back in the day regen was all the ragewhich is why Blade ran the game for so long, also SW, also Dr. Strange. That is no longer the case but when strange's regen was nerfed people stopped using him all together for the most part. Arena scores don't reflect that. When it comes to arena you got to factor in hype, prestige, utility, difficulty etc.
The arena score was just one data point, as I said. The devs have the actual usage data, which showed that the players who said he was useless and thus not being used by anyone was wrong.
The devs aren't going to come on the forums and correct people with graphs and charts. Instead they are just going to assume that the people who are absolutely certain something is happening that the game data says is definitely not happening simply have impaired judgment and thus lack credibility.
I'm always puzzled when people assert certainty about things they can't possibly be certain about, while being judged by invisible people who have all the answers in the back of the book. It seems to me to be highly counterproductive if you're trying to convince those invisible people to listen to your ideas.
I have a long history of being right when it comes to this game and I didn't need actual verified data to be right. To name multiple occasions that I've been right and are currently documented in my past history on the forums are the following.
1) Champion 6.2 nerf 2) Epic mods nerfs from AQ to hulk buster and the range of difficulty in said nodes. 3) The original act 7 being nerfed. I was in the beta and told them that it needed to get scraped if the game wanted to continue at this pace. You were also in those threads but you may not remember me.
There are others but that is a short few that you don't need verified evidence to claim, but if you play the game and have any type of knowledge on how certain changes can hurt the business it was clear and obvious what needed to change.
Not to be deliberately flippant, but I can make a list a mile long of all the times I was "right" but also a random number generator is going to be right half the time. In fact, a random number generator could end up right more than half the time, because if you don't make statements with temporal certainty you have all of eternity to become right. I could pick any random thing in the game and say "this needs to change" and since everything eventually is changed, I will always be eventually right. But that's not the same thing as actually being right in context.
When Strange was nerfed in 12.0, I said the healing was over-nerfed at the time and based on the context of how other heals were adjusted and the strength of heals in general, compared across the entire game, the proper strength for Strange's heals should be at least three times stronger than in 12.0 as the absolute floor. I posted a detailed analysis of this. In 12.0.1, Strange's heals were adjusted upward to about 3x their 12.0 strength. I don't think the devs read my post and took my calculations; rather I believe I arrived through calculations at the same place the devs eventually arrived through their own datamining and review. I consider that one to be a bullseye not because I just predicted that something would change, but in precisely what way, and in a very specific time frame, how it ought to be changed to be a balanced adjustment. I also nailed the Parry adjustment, and precisely *how* it should be adjusted and why (by placing it outside of DR calculations), significantly no one else did (although to be fair, I was one of very few people who understood how DR even worked back then).
I don't mind playing dueling resumes, but I think it isn't terribly productive in this case, as what's being discussed is not who's right or wrong, but what the devs believe. I often speculate on what the devs believe, based on my prior experience working with game developers. In some cases, though, I just ask them.
And I do remember you in the original Act 7 beta. I thought your comments were insightful in some key areas.
Everything in game doesn't change. None of the previous acts have changed much outside act 6. The things that I'm right about aren't just random guesses but if you want to reduce it down to that to make your argument then have at it. I don't even think we really disagree because I often have hopped on your posts and support your conclusions. So I'll end the back and forth now.
Kabam's biggest mistake was letting people's roster outpace the content.
I think they should make more content like V4, except harder. Much, much harder. Hell, make an absolute hell-mode 3*-only variant. It'd give a reality check to people who bust through these things with God-tier 6r3, or even 5r5s.
If there's anything that rando-incursions have taught me, it's that most people suck at this game. It's incredibly weird handholding players with a trio of 6r3 gods, but it's less uncommon than you'd expect.
Everyone complained when 7.1 beta was first launched vs the final product. It was brutal some paths had only one counter. That is why it is easy now, have you done 6.2.5 it was worse than that. Wish they had more fights like the final boss of 6.4.6. They did say they are planning something harder for endgame players.
Miike said clearly in the past that variants are for endgame players. It clearly isn't that way difficulty wise, but they are supposedly the endgame target. How many times and with how much content can we say "no, not for you, wait your turn" and expect that portion of the playerbase to stay engaged in the game?
Conversely, why should all content be geared toward the midgame player?
It’s a tiny portion of the player base that feels this way. Anyway if it was harder, you’d be complaining that you spent all this time ranking up champs and now struggle with variant content.
You are incorrect in how I'd feel, but not worth arguing that point. Also, I don't consider myself to be in the endgame group, so I think the problem with this content is that it is tailored for me to steamroll instead of giving me a target to move my account toward.
Lastly, then what content SHOULD endgame players get? It was supposed to be variants- a point in my post you chose to ignore. So if not variants and not story, then what? The season of pain that is coming "soon"? That's neither fair nor realistic. Why can't there be different content for everybody and we just accept when content is not designed for us?
Variants are not for end game players in 2021. Maybe two years ago they were. Obviously the top end of the player base has evolved their rosters to a point where what was hard in 2019 is not hard now. But there are still tons more people behind you skill/roster-wise who find the variants hard, so why punish them?
IMO Kabam is under no obligation to provide you with what you seek, when IMO you represent a tiny fraction of the player base who has the roster/skills to clear all content.
I'm old enough to remember when I was a round 1 Act 7.1 beta tester, and the community freaked out about how hard it was, so Kabam reworked their entire game node dynamic to put nodes that can help you as well as ones that bite you. And now, from my reading of the forums and from my own opinion, players think Act 7 is pretty fun. Still challenging to explore.
I don't find V7 easy, but also not ridiculously hard. You obv feel different. If you want challenge, then use four stars instead of your stacked roster.
Also, Kabam is not responsible for keeping you entertained 24 hours a day. If there isn't any content for you right now, then do some chores, play with your dog, take a walk in nature, do your homework. MCOC is a game, not a lifestyle.
I really enjoyed this post. I want harder content as well but the over the top exaggeration on what's easy is annoying to be honest. The difficulty matches the rewards, in my opinion with what all the rank up gems provide I would say the rewards are better than the actual difficulty. To me what would be more productive is to introduce side events that that only a small percentage of players could do. Meaning lets make Thronebreaker actually Thronebreaker to where you feel the difference in having r3 champions because to me this is more about expiring items and exclusivity than actual difficulty.
My view is that RNG is baked into this game's core design, so there is limitations in how to create content that is difficult for the majority as well as the quote unquote endgame players.
For example: Energize nodes makes a somewhat difficult fight for a Joe Fixit player, easy for a Magik player, and laughable for a Quake player. If you add on class/champion restrictions, it makes it more difficult for some players with a limited roster, or not any difference for a player with an expanded roster.
It seems like 6.4 Grandmaster is the poster child for acclaimed difficult content as it is not roster (RNG) based but skilled based. But if you have that type of fight in a lot more content it becomes less special (and may become a chore).
If you gate content for players only with an expanded roster (Eg. Thronebreaker) to make difficulty specialized for an expanded roster, it is still affected by RNG of rank up materials and so is the degree of difficulty can swing wildly. A Thronebreaker with R3 Doom, Aegon, Magneto does not compare to Thronebreaker R3 Guillotine, Ronin, Beast. You could then argue that the 5-star R5s would likely make them more comparable, but then you are defaulting into the "just use 4-stars for difficulty" argument.
The thing that nobody on the forums knows, is whether the 'difficulty' makes business sense for Kabam (percentage of players that engage, percentage of players that complete, percentage of players that explore, percentage of players on forum saying 'too easy/hard' vs percentage of players not on forums).
Just look at the Kabam offers - they are all uniformly terrible, but there is some business reason for Kabam to keep offering them.
Comments
If you want to take maxed out 6 stars but not lesser rarities, why? Presumably it's because of the strength, rarity, and cool sports car factor. But they make the content too easy, so easy that you blast through it immediately.
You (general, not you specifically) want more of a challenge, right? Normally the challenging content requires dancing around, picking your spots and not getting hit. Correct? Not much challenge if you can just bumrush through.
What's wrong with the suggestion of using 3 and 4 stars if everything is too easy with 5 or 6 stars? Stakes are raised since getting hit will kill you and you get almost the exact same champ functionality so you aren't really missing out there. I guess you might miss out on some synergies, but that's an added layer of difficulty, right?
If I use a 4* archangel on the bleed path in variant 7, that will be a 45 hit fight instead of a 15 hit fight.
Is champ selection another problem? Maybe there's another champ that would meet your challenge needs. If Archangel reduces the fight to parry-heavy with no real challenge, maybe don't use him.
Another point backing why not just use lower champions, the risk of getting killed in one combo isn’t necessarily the challenge we want. If you fight winter soldier with a 2*, you’ll get killed in 1 combo, that is not fun.
Is it that you want more room for error, and that would be more fun? So you don't want the fights to just be a longer version of the same fight but you also don't want to use a champ with too little room for error.
Maybe don't use the optimal champ that makes the content so easy. That way you still have the benefit of the larger health pool but you might have a more engaging fight.
When Strange was nerfed in 12.0, I said the healing was over-nerfed at the time and based on the context of how other heals were adjusted and the strength of heals in general, compared across the entire game, the proper strength for Strange's heals should be at least three times stronger than in 12.0 as the absolute floor. I posted a detailed analysis of this. In 12.0.1, Strange's heals were adjusted upward to about 3x their 12.0 strength. I don't think the devs read my post and took my calculations; rather I believe I arrived through calculations at the same place the devs eventually arrived through their own datamining and review. I consider that one to be a bullseye not because I just predicted that something would change, but in precisely what way, and in a very specific time frame, how it ought to be changed to be a balanced adjustment. I also nailed the Parry adjustment, and precisely *how* it should be adjusted and why (by placing it outside of DR calculations), significantly no one else did (although to be fair, I was one of very few people who understood how DR even worked back then).
I don't mind playing dueling resumes, but I think it isn't terribly productive in this case, as what's being discussed is not who's right or wrong, but what the devs believe. I often speculate on what the devs believe, based on my prior experience working with game developers. In some cases, though, I just ask them.
And I do remember you in the original Act 7 beta. I thought your comments were insightful in some key areas.
I want a fight that makes me think, not a fight I can do after a night of popping open cold ones with the boys. Coming at the same fight with a weaker champion doesn’t make the problem any more difficult to solve, it just makes it take longer.
So now you’ve got two ways of tackling it. Either use a champion who has super short duration bleeds so that the enemy doesn’t have many of them stacked on when the immunity shifts, or use somebody who has bleed and power control abilities. The nodes don’t have to be bleed-centric, you could swap out the damage over time debuff that the fight is themed around. Or you could do a whole lane of different DoT themed fights. There’s a lot of potential for playing around with it. But this is what I mean by challenging content. Something that makes you really have to sit down and think about how you could use your roster to play against it, and you have to execute with precision.
I’m a big proponent of ranking up who you enjoy playing with rather than what the meta dictates you need, and I love finding uses for my fun rank ups. But the problem is that there are so few places in game to let a player really run wild with these ranked up champions.
Honestly The majority of people who breeze through this could complete even if it was harder and would do so as well. We have extremely developed 5* roster and either fairly developed or well developed 6* rosters with a slew of R5 and R2 or R3 champs. When you have all champs in the game and all the counters at the base comparable level for the game then ya it’s typically easier.
They won’t just inflate the rewards here as then they would have to in other content as well to match or surpass like for Act 7. Other option is inflate the challenge which would not feel fun to grind harder for the same.
I wish they would but they won’t risk the game economy to do so. With the crawled rate of progression through tiers of champ power over the last 2-3 years this is inevitable to some degree unless you go back to punishing design of Act 6 original.
Without increased rewards though I would not want it harder for the sake of “challenge”. I and many others don’t need to white knuckle this game every time I play it and if I do I want to be getting something at the end that feels really worth it.
IMO Kabam is under no obligation to provide you with what you seek, when IMO you represent a tiny fraction of the player base who has the roster/skills to clear all content.
I'm old enough to remember when I was a round 1 Act 7.1 beta tester, and the community freaked out about how hard it was, so Kabam reworked their entire game node dynamic to put nodes that can help you as well as ones that bite you. And now, from my reading of the forums and from my own opinion, players think Act 7 is pretty fun. Still challenging to explore.
I don't find V7 easy, but also not ridiculously hard. You obv feel different. If you want challenge, then use four stars instead of your stacked roster.
Also, Kabam is not responsible for keeping you entertained 24 hours a day. If there isn't any content for you right now, then do some chores, play with your dog, take a walk in nature, do your homework. MCOC is a game, not a lifestyle.
I will never understand the vitriol to players saying there isn't any content to keep them engaged.
For example: Energize nodes makes a somewhat difficult fight for a Joe Fixit player, easy for a Magik player, and laughable for a Quake player. If you add on class/champion restrictions, it makes it more difficult for some players with a limited roster, or not any difference for a player with an expanded roster.
It seems like 6.4 Grandmaster is the poster child for acclaimed difficult content as it is not roster (RNG) based but skilled based. But if you have that type of fight in a lot more content it becomes less special (and may become a chore).
If you gate content for players only with an expanded roster (Eg. Thronebreaker) to make difficulty specialized for an expanded roster, it is still affected by RNG of rank up materials and so is the degree of difficulty can swing wildly. A Thronebreaker with R3 Doom, Aegon, Magneto does not compare to Thronebreaker R3 Guillotine, Ronin, Beast. You could then argue that the 5-star R5s would likely make them more comparable, but then you are defaulting into the "just use 4-stars for difficulty" argument.
The thing that nobody on the forums knows, is whether the 'difficulty' makes business sense for Kabam (percentage of players that engage, percentage of players that complete, percentage of players that explore, percentage of players on forum saying 'too easy/hard' vs percentage of players not on forums).
Just look at the Kabam offers - they are all uniformly terrible, but there is some business reason for Kabam to keep offering them.
Also this looks like it is a roaster test as well. I don't see a problem with it.
Just would have loved some more stuff geared to 6* champs.