Will there be a thronebreaker difficulty in the near future
Ultragamer
Member Posts: 580 ★★★
I was wondering since we have Cav and UC difficulty I was wonderigg by if a thronebreaker difficulty may be in the works with better rewards than Cav difficulty
Post edited by Kabam Porthos on
15
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Adding a new difficulty tier is like adding a new menu item at McDonalds. McDonalds doesn't add new menu items when you've eaten everything on the menu and are bored. They add new menu items when it benefits McDonalds as a whole. Similarly, a new difficulty tier isn't about handing people who are bored want more rewards and can easily skate through Cav difficulty a more rewarding map.
Thronebreaker difficulty will change a lot of things everywhere. It changes the Thronebreaker resource economy. It changes the operational workload for designing monthly content. It will probably force a similar side quest difficulty extension. It may force them to consolidate one of the lower difficulties away - they removed one to reduce the total workload of monthly difficulty, which is why there's no Beginner difficulty anymore.
Keep in mind also that Thronebreaker difficulty isn't going to be just a little harder than Cav for people who want something a little harder. TB difficulty is going to be three to four times harder than Cav, just as Cav was three to four times harder than UC and UC was three to four times harder than Master. It would be completely unmanageable to have a blizzard of difficulty tiers above Cav, each a little harder. The game can only support five or so difficulty tiers. Those five have to encompass everything from the player who just started today to the highest difficulty you represent. If we have several tiers above Cav, we can't have any tiers below Cav. Cav would have to be the difficulty tier people start with on day one. Which is impossible.
My guess is that the devs are thinking about Thronebreaker difficulty, but not really close to actually implementing it. If they were, I suspect they would have saved R4 materials for TB/Legendary+ difficulty, and not leaking them out in Legendary side quest rewards now.
Just based on previous timelines and game progression, it would probably be around the end of this year at the earliest. It would be a huge step up if they added it now and probs not one the game could handle.
My opinion—backed up by playing through adjustments to the game since December 2014–is that changes happen slowly and often after the player base has already begun to lose interest.
More observation than criticism, from this player’s perspective desirable improvements frequently arrive too little and too late. Availability of old favorite champs in rarities above 4*/5* is one example. Others include things like changes to masteries (Pittance, Scouter lens, Pure Skill—sure, masteries are due an upgrade this year, but it’s been a forever wait), updates to everything from quest crystals to solo crystals and objectives to EQ rewards, potions…it’s a long list. I viscerally hate the idea of wish crystals, but even something like that has been “coming soon” for a while. I expect them to arrive at a time and in a fashion that is less than exciting.
To be fair, that’s not always the case—one example would be recent changes to the Sigil, which were pretty decent and arrived just as I decided to discontinue mine. Changes there have forced me to actually think about whether dumping money into Sigil is worth it.
But the totality of it suggests wishing for TB difficulty isn’t a good use of energy. Hope for a bunny instead.
Dr. Zola
Anytime soon - No
What's your opinion on the need for a new progression title with present state of the battlerealm?
Heroic should be 1 energy all the way , masters should be 1 energy until ch3 where it peaks at 2.
As to whether we need a new top tier progression title? I don't think we need one. Thronebreaker is becoming more accessible all the time, but there's still only a small fraction of players that are TB right now, and more importantly there are even fewer who are really ready for a TB+ title. I would be surprised if more than 2-3% of the players in the game were TB, and of those players I would be surprised if even 10% of them would be genuinely ready for TB+. We're just seeing the beginnings of stabilization of the prestige race with R4 availability, and TB+ would immediately shake that up again, if for no other reason than TB+ would be heavily monetized, as all top tier everything is.
When TB first came out I felt the absolute earliest we would likely see the next progression title would be when R5s became available if not later. I now think it is more likely the next progression title comes along when whatever the next progression path above 6* champs is announced (i.e. 7* champs, or some alternative roster progression mechanic). I think by then the early game acceleration to Uncollected will be mostly completed and the playerbase will be sitting at a much higher average, UC will be commonplace and Cav will probably be the center of mass for the playerbase, and enough players will be TB that the top 10% of TB will still be a lot of players, enough to be worth spending developer time distinguishing.
And I'm bookmarking this thread in case I need to pull out the Told You So in the future lol