The difficulty increase is ridiculous

Agent_7 · January 19

Saru2244 said:

From my point of view, you have to wait with a final assessment until all changes are there and then you have to see how they relate to each other. It's a little too hard at the moment, but I'd be disappointed if I got the new 7* and then again didn't have any decent content to use.

Let’s say that’s true. It remains problematic for a couple of reasons:

1. Why would you scale the content before the character adjustments are made? Conversely, perhaps it was timed coming out of the Banquet event as others have suggested - but that assumes that everyone was just gifted 6* versions of every champion they would need to clear specific content and they were able to rank them up accordingly. Unrealistic expectation.
2. It still doesn’t account for what a new player sees coming into the game. They’re given some titles as they progress through early game content and see that as the benchmark. If they go to EQ and that same exact title is tuned to a different standard, it’s completely disconcerting.

Viking_St3v3 · January 19

Freakyd said:
Feeling like I'm to blame for skewing kabams data.
I'm cav but should be TB. Tried grandmaster nearly a year ago for the first time and not really had time since. Can complete the path with whole team in tact but waiting for chance to save units as I sucked at GM fight. Also have a 2nd account at UC but don't really play it anymore except in AQ but still have a small roster with 2 R3 6*s. I'm in a 50+mil ally and doing my bit and enjoying the time I get on the game.
I was running through UC EQ and then Cav when I had time.
Just to add, not being able to autofight is a pain as I get a lot of spare energy and I had just started to burn it up collecting units for my GM fight.
Looks like I'm not alone if kabams data is anything to go by. If I put the same time into the game now, I will get less rewards...which is a bit s#*t
Not looking for opinions on my skill or how I should progress, just showing up as one of the guys hanging around with out of balance progress/roster

This is 100% me as well. I have no time and rarely the desire to tackle the GM. I am on the last chapter and am 98% TB or whatever it is. I have everything I could need in inventory and the champs to do it. But the thought of sitting in front of my phone, researching what I need to do is not my idea of fun. I would 100% UC for something to do and do one thing run of cav. That was good enough for me like 85% of the time. If I had more time and was willing to deep dive into nodes and bring counters for EQ then I would. But most of the time it was not a priority. Kabam I think needs to realize that a large portion if not the majority are like this. Have put time into the game for 8 years, don’t want to give it up because of that investment but are sort of stuck as the content up until the GM is doable with the GM for a lot of players is a roadblock that they just don’t want to do. It saying it should be nerfed again. It’s just the reality. It’s a long fight that requires you to do specific things. I can’t be bothered. I just like to punch things in a videos game because it’s frowned upon punching people in real life

El_Capo · January 19

has Kabam said anything else new about this issue? @Kabam Miike

Kennyb2 · January 19

Auto fight not working as it’s supposed to again! If only Kabam spent half as much time on fixing the bugs in it’s game as it does on trying to fleece it’s players then this game would be amazing!!!

Nalak8 · January 19

Nameless_IW said:
Hello All,

Can someone please confirm Thronebreaker and Cav EQ difficulties have been toned down ???

Please let me know.

Looks like the boss is the same but the attack and health for the champs along the path have been reduced. This is TB difficulty.

Ironman3000 · January 19

I haven't seen a difference. With everything currently in-game, the last thing I want to do is actually play the lower levels when I want to burn energy while having to do other things. QOL went right out the window.

GroundedWisdom · January 19

ADDIS0N said:
Honestly, I can understand why many player’s accounts might be way out of balance with their progression. This is purely speculation on my part, but I get the feeling most players just like to have fun with the game. They don’t want it to be stressful and they don’t want to burn through every single item they have saved (and maybe even spend cash on top of that) for a title they don’t really care that much about. And when their account gets strong enough to clear content that “used” to be hard when their rosters were worse, they’ll do that when they’re more than ready … or they just won’t and will continue to grow their account and play when they have time. Many comments in this thread seem to substantiate this.

My account was basically “frozen in time” over the last two years since I stepped away. I powered through to get the TB title within a few months after it was released and that was a couple years ago.

As my TB level account stands now in addition to my current skill level, there’s no way I’ll be able to 100% TB this month. I made a single pass through, but it was not fun and cost WAY too many resources for a monthly EQ.

I’m occasionally trying other lanes to see if full completion is in my future, and many of the fights only take a single mistake before you lose a champ. That Longshot in 3.2 is going to make me bust my iPad over my knee. 😆 A single missed dex and you’re dead. Especially not fun with the dropped inputs issue still happening.

I finished Cav 100% last night and I’m honestly not sure if I’ll do UC this month. I might, but the rewards don’t seem worth the time, to be honest. At this point, my account is in this weird zone where I’m TB in title only. I have a little skill, a roster that’s frozen in time, and many incredibly complicated champs that im still trying to learn.

I’m a long way away from 100% TB completion capabilities without a major investment in money or resources. With that said, I’m happy to throw some cash at Kabam here and there during special events, but I refuse to pay just to 100% the monthly event quest.

Well, it is possible that the higher Accounts have affected the data, as was speculated here, but I would have to know what skew they were taking into account as well so that's an if. In terms of Accounts being out of balance, there's no question that the game has evolved and that earlier Accounts are more advanced than they used to be. That much is inevitable, and it's been the way.
The game is constantly growing and evolving. Change is really the only constant. Balance is all about maintaining some sort of homeostasis that allows a reasonable pace, which can be a balancing act, but with a game that has a multitude of complex moving parts, it's necessary for the longevity.
I'm sure some people feel the same way, that they just want to have a light involvement and challenge, and not go too deep into it. However, EQ isn't the same as Story, and it's never been. It's a month-to-month piece of content that has always varied to some degree in terms of challenge. It's evolved, and it will continue to evolve over time to meet the needs of the people at that stage.
As to whether they're done adjusting, I have a suspicion it will change next month as well, but I don't know for sure. What I suspect more is that the final outcome will probably not look exactly like it did last month, so it's reasonable to expect some form of increase. The amount that's appropriate remains to be seen.
I see both sides honestly. I see the need for growth, and I also see the need for it to be increased just enough as is necessary and possible for people to adjust to.
When we're talking about need versus want, need comes first. The need is for the content to be in line with what it should be. The want is for it to stay breezy for the "Auto Club". Which, included myself, to be honest. I'm just less bothered by it. I've been doing content that isn't even at my level anymore, so I could take it or leave it.

GroundedWisdom · January 19

*To be clear, I meant some form of increase compared to last month. I suspect they may reduce it more moving forward. Time will tell.

Wozzle007 · January 19

I’m at paragon so in all honesty the difficulty at the lower levels doesn’t impact on me. But I’ve felt it’s necessary to advocate throughout the post of why I believe the is bad for newer players, those less skilled and those with less time. As a by product it’s also bad for those who’ve invested time and effort to create massively tuned rosters but can’t auto fight content we’ve always been able to.

I don’t like the response from Kabam. I don’t personally care if people have massively overturned accounts doing the content but not the level higher.

You don’t sell everyone Ferraris but then increase the speed limit because everyone can drive faster.

I think this is the byproduct of the backlash from the champion rebalancing program. Kabam didn’t want to nerf champions because of the backlash they would receive so instead are making the content more difficult. That’s absolutely fine if it’s new content, like act 8.2 that’s coming up or the new EOP that’s dropped. But MEQ and side quests are not new content. It’s the same content that just re-spawns each month with variable characters.

There are some people in this thread who can apply a certain logic to the decision. Logic or not I don’t like like what like they’ve done. I’m not anybody to this game or the community but my monthly unit deal expired today and I’m not buying it anymore. Same when my sigils up.

Fubbie · January 19

As a lower player, I'm certainly feeling the crunch of the new difficulty on EQ

Tarzan041 · January 19

GroundedWisdom said:

R_jay0027 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

7714dtl said:

GroundedWisdom said:
That's also not a personal quip so much as it is the result of seeing people argue against umpteen things on here, that we grew into and were better off for in the end.
Is it people argiing with umpteen things or you arguing with umpteen people? Seriously, you dont have to argue with every person whose opinion differs from yours in a thread. Especially a big thread.
I'm free to express my opinion, like everyone else.
Except you are trying to defuse their points of view.
No one is talking to you! They are letting their point of view be know to Kabam. Not you!
This Forum is first and foremost here for us to discuss the game amongst ourselves. It's not just a direct outlet to Kabam. If we express our views on here, people can and will discuss them.

Express your views, leave everyone else alone.

GroundedWisdom · January 19

If people don't want their opinions discussed among others, this isn't the proper place to express them.

Thecurler · January 19

My only gripe is a lot of the latest content is annoying.
Not bothered if the difficulty ramps up a bit. I guess Kabam needs to do that as our roster’s get stronger.
But making fights long and annoying is no fun at all.

Thiartc · January 19

Did anyone notice that the units in the 1st sets of difficulties went up to 160 and 165 from 150?

Dshu · January 19

GroundedWisdom said:
If people don't want their opinions discussed among others, this isn't the proper place to express them.

Unfortunately unpopular opinions will get you attacked by keyboard warriors as you are well aware by now.

7714dtl · January 20

GroundedWisdom said:
If people don't want their opinions discussed among others, this isn't the proper place to express them.

So someone who is always saying that they are free to express their opinion is telling people not to express them.

And you believe that you have some mission to discuss(argue would be the correct term) every opinion that differs from yours just so you can keep repeating the same opinion incessantly throughout a thread.

You have taken hypocrisy to whole new level

Gambl0r · January 20

7714dtl said:

GroundedWisdom said:
If people don't want their opinions discussed among others, this isn't the proper place to express them.
So someone who is always saying that they are free to express their opinion is telling people not to express them.

And you believe that you have some mission to discuss(argue would be the correct term) every opinion that differs from yours just so you can keep repeating the same opinion incessantly throughout a thread.

You have taken hypocrisy to whole new level

Dude, responding to that senseless narrow minded tool is just a waste of time and effort at this point. Take all of his posts, average all the emoji reactions his posts got, and would bet the course over 99% is the disagree or LOL response.

Yet here he is, posting freely, aimlessly and spitefully. He obviously has the kabam protection node, with his primary goal to detract any opposing behavior/opinions that may reflect negatively on the company. I understand that role, but its really annoying that he knows so little about the actual content and mechanics of the game, with zero perspective and empathy.

Its a lame joke that's gotten so last week with the community

GroundedWisdom · January 20

7714dtl said:

GroundedWisdom said:
If people don't want their opinions discussed among others, this isn't the proper place to express them.
So someone who is always saying that they are free to express their opinion is telling people not to express them.

And you believe that you have some mission to discuss(argue would be the correct term) every opinion that differs from yours just so you can keep repeating the same opinion incessantly throughout a thread.

You have taken hypocrisy to whole new level

I don't believe I told anyone not to express their views. I said if the goal is to leave opinions unchallenged, this is the wrong place for it. Anything that's posted is up for discussion. That means you, or I, or anyone else.

LeNoirFaineant · January 20

I don't understand how this thread is still going lmao

DNA3000 · January 20

djr17 said:

DNA3000 said:

Agent_7 said:

DNA3000 said:

Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that players lingering in lower difficulties, amongst other factors, might be a consideration for Kabam. But it really gives the shaft to players who are in their appropriate progression.
This is a bit of an open question, and one I've discussed and thought about off line. My initial reaction was there was no way progression tier players could possess the champions I calculated as being appropriate for the content in those EQ tiers. However, I was told by Kabam (and they acknowledged this in more general terms here) that the champion strength I calculated as necessary was what they datamined players actually bringing to the content. Which begs the question: where are they getting them from?
Reading this sparked something. In their data mining, did they eliminate the people autofighting with 5 & 6*s in their calculations of what the average player brought, or did they not, and that is what caused in the 'bigger increase than intended'

My understanding of what Kabam did is that they datamined the players partitioned by progress tier, not by which EQ tiers they were doing. Which is to say, the difficulty of Proven is not based on, say, what strength of champs people were bringing to Normal difficulty. Instead, it is based on what people of the Proven progress tier were bringing into content in general, both in EQ and in things like the story Act content. Their data said (for example) that Proven players were bringing champions of roughly CR90 caliber (i.e. 4/40s and 5r2s) or a bit higher on average, and thus the difficulty was tuned for that level of strength.

Remember: although people are lining up the new difficulty tiers with the old ones based on the rewards they are giving out, there was no Proven difficulty before. It happens to give the same rewards as a previous EQ difficulty tier, but its actual content difficulty is not based on what used to give those rewards but on what they believe Proven people can do today, based on how much stronger they are today than when many of us were Proven years ago.

If hypothetically there were some Proven players who happened to whale themselves into giant rosters and were autofighting through content, that would have been incorporated into the original difficulty design. The current one which is slightly toned down is (apparently) their way of trying to reduce the difficulty in proportion to the percentage of way outside the norm anomaly players that existed in the data that were atypical. But the majority of the players of the game are probably close to the center of mass for each difficulty tier.

GroundedWisdom · January 20

R_jay0027 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

7714dtl said:

GroundedWisdom said:
If people don't want their opinions discussed among others, this isn't the proper place to express them.
So someone who is always saying that they are free to express their opinion is telling people not to express them.

And you believe that you have some mission to discuss(argue would be the correct term) every opinion that differs from yours just so you can keep repeating the same opinion incessantly throughout a thread.

You have taken hypocrisy to whole new level
I don't believe I told anyone not to express their views. I said if the goal is to leave opinions unchallenged, this is the wrong place for it. Anything that's posted is up for discussion. That means you, or I, or anyone else.
Again you are absolutely free to express you points of view.

But you are condescending, and repeatedly tell people their points of view are wrong, while quoting them. When they have no interest in a dialogue with you.

You can simply state what you believe, which we all know is Kabam is bestis ever.
And not be so combative with people, and then play the victim card when you don't like how you have challenge.

Have discussions with your friends on here. Express you points of view. But learn and accept most people don't want to discuss or debate with you specifically. Ok

I don't need permission to discuss anything on here. I don't need people to make personal judgments on my character. I certainly don't need to have anyone turn a discussion into a delitany about me as a person.
There are Moderators for a reason, and when I say something out of line, they're here to deal with it. I don't need a Kangaroo Court on my participation. The fact is, I stay on topic. I discuss the points that are made, and I share my own perspectives on what's been said. It's not personal. It's a discussion.
So once again, I'm going to get back to what we're here to discuss. I've had my share of people turning these conversations into a slingfest
towards me, and I have spent all the reactions I will on it. It's inappropriate. People need to stick to the topic.

GroundedWisdom · January 20

DNA3000 said:

djr17 said:

DNA3000 said:

Agent_7 said:

DNA3000 said:

Now, the devil is in the details. I thought the original difficulty release was way too high, and I still think it is a bit too high. That's an argument about the details. But the process itself I have no problem with. What's happening is a logical and inevitable consequence of all the acceleration that has been pumped into the game over the past two years. People can not like it, and they can disagree with it, but these changes are in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Players are going to have to adjust to them as the new normal.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that players lingering in lower difficulties, amongst other factors, might be a consideration for Kabam. But it really gives the shaft to players who are in their appropriate progression.
This is a bit of an open question, and one I've discussed and thought about off line. My initial reaction was there was no way progression tier players could possess the champions I calculated as being appropriate for the content in those EQ tiers. However, I was told by Kabam (and they acknowledged this in more general terms here) that the champion strength I calculated as necessary was what they datamined players actually bringing to the content. Which begs the question: where are they getting them from?
Reading this sparked something. In their data mining, did they eliminate the people autofighting with 5 & 6*s in their calculations of what the average player brought, or did they not, and that is what caused in the 'bigger increase than intended'
My understanding of what Kabam did is that they datamined the players partitioned by progress tier, not by which EQ tiers they were doing. Which is to say, the difficulty of Proven is not based on, say, what strength of champs people were bringing to Normal difficulty. Instead, it is based on what people of the Proven progress tier were bringing into content in general, both in EQ and in things like the story Act content. Their data said (for example) that Proven players were bringing champions of roughly CR90 caliber (i.e. 4/40s and 5r2s) or a bit higher on average, and thus the difficulty was tuned for that level of strength.

Remember: although people are lining up the new difficulty tiers with the old ones based on the rewards they are giving out, there was no Proven difficulty before. It happens to give the same rewards as a previous EQ difficulty tier, but its actual content difficulty is not based on what used to give those rewards but on what they believe Proven people can do today, based on how much stronger they are today than when many of us were Proven years ago.

If hypothetically there were some Proven players who happened to whale themselves into giant rosters and were autofighting through content, that would have been incorporated into the original difficulty design. The current one which is slightly toned down is (apparently) their way of trying to reduce the difficulty in proportion to the percentage of way outside the norm anomaly players that existed in the data that were atypical. But the majority of the players of the game are probably close to the center of mass for each difficulty tier.

Interesting. Thanks for clarifying that. I thought they would be looking at where Players were at as well, but I thought it was a valid point.

TyEdge · January 20

Kabam Jax said:

Bocksarox said:
My main issue with this is that the difficulty increase was not communicated, and if it was, it was done so quietly that many people didn't realize it was happening. Seems like this was an attempt to try to get in more difficult content without people noticing by hiding the changes behind some sort of rebrand. Maybe the plan was "push it through and deal with the backlash". That plan has never worked well in the past and contributes to a major reason players don't trust Kabam in the first place. Kabam promises continued transparency, then goes and does something like this. To top it off, there was no increase in rewards to the lower difficulties that got harder. This is discouraging, to say the least.
The difficulty rework was communicated in Inside the Contest, in the same place as the TB difficulty announcement.

This is a really disappointing reply coming from you, since you were the one in the video. That video focused on scaling cavalier for newly Cav players and providing a new challenge for TB/P players. The closest thing you get to “communicating” the rework was nebulous language about difficulty matching progression title.

If you don’t communicate appropriate expectations, you don’t communicate at all. It would’ve been easy to avoid half of this consternation by telling people in November or December that “when TB hits, we will be rescaling all difficulties. This may reduce your ability to autofight quests and you’ll find some of the early difficulties are scaled up while cavalier has become easier.” That’s all it would’ve taken.

What we got from you was “a new challenge for experienced players and a more consistent rampup for progressing players.” Respectfully, that was a swing and a miss.

Dshu · January 20

At what point in proven does it become impossible to autoplay?

Tarzan041 · January 20

Still nothing was fixed, it's still almost the same as it was. This game is starting to go down hill fast. People are not going to pay to get through a monthly quest. People are not going to do more work for the same rewards. This might not have been as bad if you had bumped the rewards. The difficulty increase wasn't needed or wanted by most players. Most of the whales don't care about uncollected anyways.

e_mac · January 20

Kabam Jax said:
Hey Summoners,

Filling in some details for you all:

The overall intention when adjusting difficulties:
"We wanted players' opponents to more closely match the power we (incorrectly) assumed those players had at their disposal. To get an idea of that power, we pulled data on what Rank/Rarity of Champion players were using in Monthly Content based on their PRG vs. The Difficulty they were playing in (Uncollected playing in Cavalier Difficulty vs. Uncollected player in Uncollected Difficulty). There was always the risk this data was overinflated by players sitting in a PRG longer than they were supposed to (especially in Uncollected and Cavalier) but we hadn't estimated how much they were hurting the high volume of players who were fresher to that difficulty."

This discovery is what lead to the follow up adjustment yesterday. The result was, "threat levels 1-3 had their health tuned down for the [side] Quest, and all difficulties of EQ had their health tuned down, with some attack modifications on Contender, Proven and Conqueror EQ."

Looking at EQ specifically:
"The champs in the early quests of some difficulties may have higher attack than they used to. The champs in the later quests though actually have less attack than they used to when looking at the old (December) tuning. We bumped up the baseline a bit but flattened stuff out as the EQ progresses."

To massively over-simplify... if we were to give each quest a difficulty value between 1-5, previous iterations would have been 1-2-3-4-5, now we're looking closer to 2-2-3-4-4.

It's just not fun anymore Jax. EQ was already 80% chore/ 20% fun before. Now it's 100% chore. Even with the tuning you did, it's still way too long to complete.
I used to complete two lanes back to back, now after one i'm putting my phone aside.
If your intention is to keep players off the game, then you're in the right direction.
Not everyone wants a challenge every corner. Some of us like to grind a bit too.

Dragoon81 · January 20

I know of plenty of players that have 13k+ accounts sitting at Cav still so if the method of rebalance was to use Progression level vs what content they are doing while there are accounts at 11k that are Paragon. I mean.

The difficulty increase is ridiculous

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