**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

A semi-hot take on recent content from a mid-game player's perspective

2

Comments

  • VendemiaireVendemiaire Posts: 2,178 ★★★★★
    Make Act completion the same but exploration more challenging and memorable.
  • PseudouberPseudouber Posts: 748 ★★★
    I totally agree. I just don't want them to start making content like Variant 1 again end the high attack values to where you slip up once and you're done. That's just not fun. I actually like Variant 7's difficulty and don't mind when things are a bit easier. I don't want to end up paying to pass stuff or use all my units or whole stash of items for 1 fight then need a month to get it back up. It gives me a chance to use champs I don't always use that are not totally ranked up when I want to make it more of the challenge I'm looking for. That's what I don't get about all of these people saying it too easy. Use lower-ranked champs or 4*'s if you want it to be more challenging!! They should provide bonus rewards for people using 4* like they did with Cav EQ. This is simple enough and will give people the challenge they are looking for. All complaints Fixed!
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,554 Guardian

    Use lower-ranked champs or 4*'s if you want it to be more challenging!! They should provide bonus rewards for people using 4* like they did with Cav EQ. This is simple enough and will give people the challenge they are looking for. All complaints Fixed!

    Well, not all of them. Some people appreciate things like the 4* Cav objective. But some people complain that such challenges are not progressional. In other words, they spend all this effort building up their 6* rosters, but the game gives them nothing to unleash that power on, making the pursuit of them seem hollow.

    This is both an understandable complaint, and a very difficult one to address practically. In some MMOs I played in the past, the way the developers addressed this kind of problem was to make a literal end game, a part of the game disconnected from the rest of the game that operated under completely different rules and completely different progressional ladders that would allow players to unleash their maximal characters at full power against content that could stand up to them, and generate rewards that were worthy of that kind of effort because those rewards could not be used outside of the end game dimension where they would wreck havok on the game balance everywhere else.

    Such a thing is not easy to do in a game like MCOC for a variety of reasons, much of them due to the fact there's no real "world" to partition in MCOC.
  • IKONIKON Posts: 1,334 ★★★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    Your view on this is pretty well-written. Only complaint from me is that 16r5's is not a mid-game player. Now I explored Act 7.1 with 4r5s and 1 6r1. That should be the definition of a mid-game player.

    I tend to roughly gauge player strength by what content they've done, or theoretically could do. A highly skilled player with a smaller roster could have the same strength as a lower skilled player with a larger roster overall. So I don't think roster alone is a good judge of where a player is in the game's progress.

    Now, anyone with 16 r5s that has also completed Act 6 through 7.1 is almost certainly not a mid-tier player. The actual middle is probably in the general range of players working through content from 5.1 through 6.1 or so. Below Uncollected is roughly the lower tier players, people entering Act 5 through people who just crossed the finish line of Cavalier in 6.1 are in the rough middle, and everyone working on 6.2 through 7.1 are in the upper part of the game. Maybe not exactly, but approximately.
    This genuinely surprises me. The end game near the end of 2019 was probably around rosters of that size. So has the end game has stagnated to a point where there's no growth over a year and a half? Or is my view of endgame just totally warped.
  • AdevatiAdevati Posts: 437 ★★★
    I want to know how many of the people that say V7 was so easy have 3 or more of: AA, Warlock, Quake, CapIW at 5r5 or 6r2+
  • AdevatiAdevati Posts: 437 ★★★
    edited April 2021

    Adevati said:

    I want to know how many of the people that say V7 was so easy have 3 or more of: AA, Warlock, Quake, CapIW at 5r5 or 6r2+

    Every fight and path in variant 7 is doable without any of these champions
    That provides nothing to my point. My suspicion is that most people that claim V7 was easy, especially those that felt the need to complain on the forums about the difficulty, completed it with at least 3 perfect counters and OP tier champs at a max level.

    The realm of possibilities is irrelevant to that.
  • DeaconDeacon Posts: 4,034 ★★★★★

    Abyss of Legends. there's your "hard" content. Kabam specifically stated that their intent was NOT for it to be completed in a day but rather a long time.

    What happened though? These so called "end game" players finished it within a day(s). So the answer isn't making hard content .. it's actually just making more content at a faster clip. I mean it doesn't really matter because whatever is released will be done in a day for some weird sense of bragging rights or what not.

    There are few people complaining that actually pace themselves from what I gather. The folks mainly complaining are the first day finishers of content. No one is forcing them to finish content so quickly. So for them of course there's nothing to do.

    Act 6 was (and still is in some regard) terribly designed .. even post adjustment. That type of content isn't fun. Why? Because it's stupid hard for no apparent reason other than bad design.

    Act 7 is the meat of this game's story progression to me. I loved it. Call it easy or whatever but it was in line with proper progression and is arguably what Act 6 should have been.

    Anyway ... I just don't buy into the "this needs to be mega level titan storm hard" for people to be pleased. I think people should relax and try to enjoy the game as opposed to being first to finish.

    I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Abyss isn’t “hard” content, as in, the fights aren’t technically hard. They are long, they are a challenge because the abyss is an endurance test.

    If you take any abyss fight and put it on 500k health, it is easily soloable by 99% of the end game players. Modok with an easily avoidable power sting? Solo. Thor ragnarok with a bit of power gain? Solo. Sym supreme only able to crit 20 times? Solo.

    The challenge of the abyss is endurance like I’ve said before. That itself is a challenge, it is hard. But abyss is not the hard content end game players are looking for.

    And so what if people complete something on the first day? There always will be. But it’s not everyone -I consider myself an end game player, it took 9 months to explore abyss and I loved the challenge of it. What does it matter if people do it the first day? That’s not everyone.

    You say you don’t buy into the game needing to be hard for people to enjoy it. Ok, this is an opinion. I do buy into this, I enjoy hard content. I respect your opinion, I would hope you could extend the same courtesy to respect mine.
    lol I put quotation marks around "hard" for a reason because I understand it's more or less a patience battle and unit battle but the fact remains that Kabam intended for it to be "hard".

    and of course mate I respect your opinion as do I anyone else's. apologies if you thought it was some direct attack .. it wasn't .. i wasn't even responding to anyone in particular just sharing MY opinion of which I hope people can respect as well.

    I don't really care how people find enjoyment in the game ... i think that was the point though ... try to enjoy the game in whatever fashion you can instead of it being an indictment on Kabam because I actually think they've hit a stride lately with good content.

    the game has issues no doubt but i think the content issues are self inflicted depending on how you play.
  • hermherm Posts: 415 ★★

    Hey guys, I’m Sal Hudson and I’m here to have a little bit of a discussion with you guys about recent content. But as you might have read from the title, this is from the perspective of a mid-game player. “Why does that even matter?” you may ask. Well, it kinda doesn’t, but I thought that since I’m somewhere between mid-game and endgame that it would make my take interesting to read about.

    So what is my take?

    I’ll tell y’all in a sec, but first, let’s analyze content released before the backlash. Firstly, 6.4. Niche as hell in some parts. But it was tough. I actually love 6.4 in it’s current state. Not too much changed, besides the absurd attack. However, there are some people that do like stupid attack values! There was also the 7.1 beta (the first one), that didn’t technically get released, but it was scheduled to. Essentially, it was 6.4 with bosses that were even more niche, attack that was even more absurd, and content that was VERY hard.

    Then the backlash happened. People expressed that they were pissed about the content design, me included. Then Kabam came and completely changed things for the better!

    Or did they?

    As of late, the forums have been FLOODED with complaints about the game being too easy. Prior to the backlash, it was the other way around. “The game’s too hard!” “Too restrictive!” etc. Of course there are always gonna be upset people, regardless of the content, but still. So here comes my (somewhat) hot take on the two types of content design:

    I think both of them are bad.
    Now before y’all destroy me with comments about nothing of relevance, let me define my definition of ‘bad’ in this instance. Both had their major flaws and there’s no arguing that. The old content design was overly punishing imo. Kabam seems to be extreme with their content design, so we seem to only get one or the other. Do we NEED punishing content in game? Hell yes! But if that’s the only content you get, it can start getting frustrating for those just trying to do fun content.

    But that statement goes both ways, too.

    You cannot realistically tell someone who loved the old game design to just ‘get over it’ because it benefits most players. Neither should the people who loved the old game design tell people who complained about hard content to basically “F off”. But I wanna take some time to empathize for those who love hard content. Since the backlash, what content have we gotten guys? Well we’ve gotten v6/7 and 7.1. I can confidently say that as a mid-game player with slightly above average skill that none of those pieces of content are hard.

    V6 was half a cheese fiesta and half of some somewhat specific content. But the hardest fight in the variant was a… stacked version of terrax? V7 is EASIER than 6! Now granted, I had a lot of fun with both, but v7 is a joke, difficulty wise. You might as well just hand me the expo shards now with how tricky it is. 7.1 is similar. I feel like 7.1 was a new beginning, so I will cut slack there. But 7.1 was also too easy. For reference, I did 7.1 expo within a week of release, with like 16 champs at r5+.

    Now here’s a question: If a mid-game player finds recent content super easy, can you take a WILD guess at what deep endgame players feel like rn? If you read the forums and actually put yourself in their shoes, you know already. If you’re still in the dark, they probably feel like people who like fun content, pre-outrage. Like the content is just dull and dry and there’s no way to get something that you enjoy. That’s not healthy.

    So what do I propose as a solution? And if you’re about to say, “wait for 7.2 or SOP”, don’t. I was on the 7.2 beta. Did every path. Some paths up to 4 times. It’s not hard. I soloed one of, it not the hardest fight in there first try. SOP has been delayed so many times, it’s not even funny anymore.

    So anyways, my solution is a BALANCE! An alternation of sorts.

    Essentially, every other piece of content that comes out follows each design philosophy. If big content was to drop every 2 months, then every 4 months, each side should get something to satisfy them. For people who love super fun content, that could be a fun variant. For the sweats, it could be summer of pain. If you wanted to take that a step further, each variant could alternate between being fun and being restrictive.

    I personally think that’s a good solution, because it could finally end the drought that deep end-gamers are in, while retaining fun content that people enjoy. What are you guys’ thoughts on this? But before I go, one last thing. Let’s use our heads in the comments please. Empathize for both groups of people.

    I would not consider you a mid-game / mid-tier player lol. But yeah I can agree with this
  • TheTalentsTheTalents Posts: 2,254 ★★★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    Use lower-ranked champs or 4*'s if you want it to be more challenging!! They should provide bonus rewards for people using 4* like they did with Cav EQ. This is simple enough and will give people the challenge they are looking for. All complaints Fixed!

    Well, not all of them. Some people appreciate things like the 4* Cav objective. But some people complain that such challenges are not progressional. In other words, they spend all this effort building up their 6* rosters, but the game gives them nothing to unleash that power on, making the pursuit of them seem hollow.

    This is both an understandable complaint, and a very difficult one to address practically. In some MMOs I played in the past, the way the developers addressed this kind of problem was to make a literal end game, a part of the game disconnected from the rest of the game that operated under completely different rules and completely different progressional ladders that would allow players to unleash their maximal characters at full power against content that could stand up to them, and generate rewards that were worthy of that kind of effort because those rewards could not be used outside of the end game dimension where they would wreck havok on the game balance everywhere else.

    Such a thing is not easy to do in a game like MCOC for a variety of reasons, much of them due to the fact there's no real "world" to partition in MCOC.
    If Kabam starting bringing more 4 star rank up gems I think people wouldn't mind the 4 star challenge. My issue is that I don't want to waste the resources I can use on my 5 and 6 stars on a 4 star. And 10% random t5cc isn't enough incentive.
  • Wicket329Wicket329 Posts: 2,902 ★★★★★
    Adevati said:

    I want to know how many of the people that say V7 was so easy have 3 or more of: AA, Warlock, Quake, CapIW at 5r5 or 6r2+

    I have all of those champions at 5/65 and used only AA on my initial run, but could have just as easily not used him. I like AA, I see a lane clearly designed for him, I use him.

    But again, for the millionth time, most of the people who found this content easy aren’t asking for *this specific piece of content* to be harder. We are asking for *other* difficult content to be released. The point of this conversation is not to say that V7 needs to be made harder, it’s to say that there needs to be at least some kind of future content that is harder than V7.

    Obviously the devs aren’t about to go back in and restructure a variant at this point, nor should they. I want V7 to remain as it is. I don’t mind if every future Variant remains targeted at this difficulty. That’s fine! I just want something else that is calibrated for a higher difficulty as well.

    I really don’t know how many times we have to say that we know we are the minority and we don’t want to take anything away from the majority. We just want something else to work with. Suggestions have been made all over the forums about what that something else might be. We’ve pointed towards content that we enjoyed, so we’re not just complaining for the sake of it without offering solutions. And whatever form this new content takes, it will be something will at some point in the future benefit today’s mid-game players. We’re looking for content that will preserve the longevity of the game. That’s all.
  • WorknprogressWorknprogress Posts: 7,233 ★★★★★
    I'm never typically bothered by Variant difficulty. What I am curious about is how many do we need targeted at "progressing players"? There's already 7 R5s available just from Variant gems, not to mention all the other resources. At what point are people no longer the target demographic?

    I love the rankup gems to rank 5*s for basically no cost so it certainly doesn't bother me at all. Just curious at what point should the target shift if at all. If someone can have double digit R5s just from doing Variants are they even who the content is aimed at anymore? If not, who are they even aimed at?
  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Posts: 9,254 ★★★★★

    I'm never typically bothered by Variant difficulty. What I am curious about is how many do we need targeted at "progressing players"? There's already 7 R5s available just from Variant gems, not to mention all the other resources. At what point are people no longer the target demographic?

    I love the rankup gems to rank 5*s for basically no cost so it certainly doesn't bother me at all. Just curious at what point should the target shift if at all. If someone can have double digit R5s just from doing Variants are they even who the content is aimed at anymore? If not, who are they even aimed at?

    I suppose it could shift when "progressing players" start to shift to wanting to rank 2 their 6*. Then we will start to see 1-2 random class 2017 or 18 6* rank up gems
  • TheTalentsTheTalents Posts: 2,254 ★★★★★

    I'm never typically bothered by Variant difficulty. What I am curious about is how many do we need targeted at "progressing players"? There's already 7 R5s available just from Variant gems, not to mention all the other resources. At what point are people no longer the target demographic?

    I love the rankup gems to rank 5*s for basically no cost so it certainly doesn't bother me at all. Just curious at what point should the target shift if at all. If someone can have double digit R5s just from doing Variants are they even who the content is aimed at anymore? If not, who are they even aimed at?

    I think that time is now. A lot of my teammates are now finishing abyss because everything else is completed. I think we're in line for another Abyss type of content or a jacked up 7.2. Anything less would not be ideal at this point.
    People are saying that 16 r5's isn't mid tier, and there's players like myself who aren't even whales who have 13 r3 6 stars. So if 16 r5's isn't even mid tier than what am I with 13 r3 6 stars? We're certainly on two different levels but at this point we might as well be the same due to the content available.
  • I'm never typically bothered by Variant difficulty. What I am curious about is how many do we need targeted at "progressing players"? There's already 7 R5s available just from Variant gems, not to mention all the other resources. At what point are people no longer the target demographic?

    I love the rankup gems to rank 5*s for basically no cost so it certainly doesn't bother me at all. Just curious at what point should the target shift if at all. If someone can have double digit R5s just from doing Variants are they even who the content is aimed at anymore? If not, who are they even aimed at?

    I think that time is now. A lot of my teammates are now finishing abyss because everything else is completed. I think we're in line for another Abyss type of content or a jacked up 7.2. Anything less would not be ideal at this point.
    People are saying that 16 r5's isn't mid tier, and there's players like myself who aren't even whales who have 13 r3 6 stars. So if 16 r5's isn't even mid tier than what am I with 13 r3 6 stars? We're certainly on two different levels but at this point we might as well be the same due to the content available.
    interesting you base it "on your teammates".
    We only give our opinion here, DNA has also said this, kabam looks at the data. If people arent bothering with the content, they then make a change.
    Act6 nerfs were done not because folks complained on here, it was because nobody was playing act6, so that was a loss of revenue for them. If the demographic stops playing variants, we will see a change.
    My personal opinion is I like variants just to rank up my 5* for free. I can rank up trash just to play around with their abilities.
  • IKONIKON Posts: 1,334 ★★★★★
    edited April 2021

    I'm never typically bothered by Variant difficulty. What I am curious about is how many do we need targeted at "progressing players"? There's already 7 R5s available just from Variant gems, not to mention all the other resources. At what point are people no longer the target demographic?

    I love the rankup gems to rank 5*s for basically no cost so it certainly doesn't bother me at all. Just curious at what point should the target shift if at all. If someone can have double digit R5s just from doing Variants are they even who the content is aimed at anymore? If not, who are they even aimed at?

    I think that time is now. A lot of my teammates are now finishing abyss because everything else is completed. I think we're in line for another Abyss type of content or a jacked up 7.2. Anything less would not be ideal at this point.
    People are saying that 16 r5's isn't mid tier, and there's players like myself who aren't even whales who have 13 r3 6 stars. So if 16 r5's isn't even mid tier than what am I with 13 r3 6 stars? We're certainly on two different levels but at this point we might as well be the same due to the content available.
    interesting you base it "on your teammates".
    We only give our opinion here, DNA has also said this, kabam looks at the data. If people arent bothering with the content, they then make a change.
    Act6 nerfs were done not because folks complained on here, it was because nobody was playing act6, so that was a loss of revenue for them. If the demographic stops playing variants, we will see a change.
    My personal opinion is I like variants just to rank up my 5* for free. I can rank up trash just to play around with their abilities.
    Sure the data factors in, but you will never convince me that Seatin and the userbase revolt to 7.1 OG Beta were not the catalysts to changing direction.
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