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Removal of Revive Farming and the Apothecary Discussion
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I like where this thought process is going.
A real compromise. Good stuff.
You claim that some days between 300-500k revives were farmed. There is a reason for that need to farm! So many of us rely on that even for story progression. Please rethink this choice!
Members of my "target group" may or may not quit. But I've outlasted all the other people making that claim before, and I'm confident I'll do so again, with my stagnant account falling farther and farther behind all the other accounts who have vastly stronger rosters than I have and have progressed far beyond me in content.
And one more thing. There are players like me that regularly farm revives to complete content. However, I *also* belong to a different group of players, because I'm more than one thing. The group that likes challenges. Doing EoP in four revives is not a challenge when everyone else is blasting through it with twelve. If everyone else is going to blast through it, so will I, and I will spend my valuable time elsewhere. But when SoP first came out, I spend a *ton* of time trying to do it itemless. To the point of doing completely crazy things, and not always successfully. But before it was fashionable to simply smoke the content because everyone should be able to do so, I spent dozens of hours trying to get the solo, because it was fun. Because it was uncommon, because I didn't feel like I was wasting my time on a trivial exercise. I didn't feel that way with EoP, because by the time EoP rolled around, people were treating EoP like a broken ATM. It was much harder, and it would have taken tremendous effort for someone of my skill level to even attempt it. It wasn't worth it.
Maybe with revive farming gone, it will become worth it again. Maybe challenge content will no longer be designed to be revive-fests when most people can't simply throw unlimited revives at the content. Maybe they will return to being designed for players who want a challenge. There are a lot of us out there, but most of us are not stupid enough to express that thought on the forums in a controversial thread. A lot of the time, it is just me.
Maybe that's what bothers you the most, and maybe that's why you have to put yourself into a privileged spot in the aggrieved hierarchy. You don't think with revive farming gone, players won't be unable to do the next Carinas. You're worried they will. You just won't be one of them.
We'll see. If you're still around then.
Now, when Kabam designs end game content, there are a number of different variables that have to get balanced between themselves. First of all, what's the point even of "Everest Content?" It isn't normal progressional content. It isn't content that is intended for the average player to be necessarily able to complete. Not even the average end game player. It is intended to be a challenge that most people fail, at least the first time. It is intended to stand there as a test for end game players to attempt to conqueror when they've done everything else. It is not a stepping stone to something else: you don't climb Everest to reach the ladder that takes you to the Moon.
Although the intent is for the content to not be a stepping stone to something else, it inevitably is in an indirect sense, because you have to provide sufficient rewards to entice players to tackle it (usually, but that discussion is a separate thing entirely). What could possibly entice end game players who have done everything and also mostly have everything? It has to be a reward difficult or impossible to get anywhere else.
But if we place rewards like that in the content, it *must* be sufficiently difficult that very few players can actually complete it, at least initially. That number can slowly grow over time, but if it is too high, those rewards become economy distorting. So we increase the difficulty of the content high enough so that only the strongest players with the strongest rosters and the best strategy can complete it.
What about revives? If players use revives, they can lower the difficulty. To some degree, that's fine, but beyond a certain point unlimited use of revives lowers the difficulty too low. So just cap the number of revives and call it a day, right?
Cap them to what? If we make the cap very low, then it is possible that the vast majority of players will *never* attempt the content ever. That's problematic because there are only so many dev hours in the day. You presume that even Everest content will be done by the top 1% of 1%, but eventually that number will grow to the top 1% or maybe top 5%, because it is otherwise impossible to cost justify having a team of developers work on content only a few dozen players will ever complete.
You also have to consider monetization of the game. While you don't *want* players to just spend their way through, if players are consistently prevented from spending where *they* feel its appropriate, you will threaten the revenue base of the game. To repeat: you don't *want* them to spend, but you can't *completely block* their spending. So where you place the cap is an extremely complex question, and one that will have to be revisited with every piece of content you make.
You might say, well this is easy, just do X. Nope, that's not how this works. Kabam is not a hive mind, Kabam is a company with different developers in charge of different things with different ideas and different responsibilities. If you want to implement an item cap on Everest content, you will have to justify that specific cap. You will have to convince the content designers that that cap is appropriate for that content. You will have to convince the game economy people that it is consistent with the game economy, and the monetization people that it is not one too many straws on the monetization camel's back. There are a lot of people who have a say in how an item cap will affect all parts of the game, and they all don't have to agree with you. And you will have to do this over and over again with every piece of content you create.
Even *if* they wanted to implement an item cap, that's not straight forward or easy. And you still have the question hanging out there "why do we have an easy to autopilot infinite revive farm in the game?" It isn't just affecting Everest content, that's just the most obvious and most detrimental symptom. If you're going to tackle that symptom anyway, why not tackle it at its source, and eliminate all side effects simultaneously?
So just because they didn't implement an item cap, doesn't prove they have other motives than the stated one, and doesn't prove its about making money. It just proves this is a complex balancing problem, like most balancing problems, and the *obvious* solution was to tackle it at the source.
1 -100k players getting 3 a day.
2 -50k players getting 6 a day.
3 -25k players getting 12 a day.
4 -10k players getting 30 a day.
5 -5k players getting 60 a day.
Looking at that breaks down, IMO the first three are a small enough revive number to matter. Scenario 4 is enough revives to matter but it's only 2% of players. Scenario 5 isn't very feasible and it's only 1% of players.
Is this really that big of an issue?
But the real noticeable thing was how "easy" EoP was described as being compared to SoP. In real terms, EoP was much more difficult than SoP. But the attitude was almost completely reversed in the interval between the two. SoP was treated as something if you couldn't do, you just weren't good enough. EoP was often described as something everyone should be able to do (within the target audience of course), unless they were unwilling to put in the time to get it done.
The potion arms race has been going on for a very long time: that's not new. What I think is new is that farming finally won outright.
And I didnt even consider the units yet, so I dont think anybody is going to go low on revives, but you will have to obtain them from other ways instead of just auto farming Act 2 and 3, and you will have to prepare yourself more for each impossible fight so you are more efficient than ever, and I was preparing myself to do the Carina Challenges 3 and some of the Carina Challenges 2, I am affected by this change but the fact that Im not able to farm revives, what Im going to do? Just farm them from other areas and wait a little more to do that content.
And the point that people make about "Yeah but top players need to do it as soon as possible", dude, Kabam waited a ton to drop this Everest Content, you think you wont have time to farm units and 4h Crystals and Revives for the next Everest Content? You will have time enough, Im pretty sure, and If you are at the top players, then you dont need really revives because you have most of the content done, and the one they release usually is not that hard to need more than 10 revives maybe? And thats already a ton of revives.
I think people is looking at this change like they are not getting any revives besides the ones they buy, when that is not going to be the case.
And I was watching ContestChampion and BG himself talked about this, he said that he did all the content this years without the revive farming, so he thinks that we will be fine, and he is a F2P player, Im not gonna talk about this anymore because I think if you really think about this, you will notice that its not really that big of a deal, makes things slower but not that much
What constitutes frenzied? If it was trivialized, what was your reasonable expectation that the farmers failed to meet? What makes for spamming revives? Would you consider me immediately reviving twice in the span of a minute at the first fight after going in and getting killed by their initial combo twice in a row while my champ stands there unresponsive, spamming? What if the same thing happened on almost every fight?
Go for it. Won't miss what I didn't know about and I likely wouldn't be able to complete it anyway without having enough revives to feel comfortable even starting it.
That's what it read like to me.
Maybe a 2nd effort that tries a little harder (at all) to evoke a positive reaction and provides some clarification would be good.
A couple factors at play there. The vocal minority on YouTube, Twitter, and here misrepresent the difficulty of content. "It was pretty easy. It only took like 3000 units and I was able to get my 34th rank 4 with the rewards" or "It wasn't so bad, I just farmed a couple hundred revives in the middle of the work day (so I could record a perfect run for my channel or plow through it for maximum Day 1 views)."
The overstatement of the power of Hercules. "Just use Hercules. What? You died? With Hercules? You're hopeless, I guess." Hercules is the next "Just Quake it" "Just Ghost it" "Just Corvus it" "Just Aegon it" "Just Scarlet Witch it"
I don't begrudge these players who find the game easy, but it is worth pointing out that their experiences are not likely the same as the majority of players.
A.k.a how many days exactly do i have to farm for abyss last 2 paths?
P.s How is the world would i be able to do abyss with like 30 revives if i cant farm more? I am really worried i may never be able to explore abyss now. I will not put 5000 units into abyss when there will be like 2 generic awakenings and a CHOOSE THE CHAMP YOU WANT crystal for 5000 in july or october.
I was able to get him down.
Now with revive farming, I can complete content and feel good and have fun playing the game. If I have to go back to the days of using units to revive, instead of buying offers, then I don’t know if I want to keep playing.
I spend about $500 a year on the game. I guess that is not enough to keep the lights on. Just tell us you are hurting for money instead coming up a long winded story and “compromise” that only benefits you.
I would call it a “dollar democracy”. It’s the consumer that keeps MCOC running, if this decision causes players to allocate their money elsewhere, it’s quite obviously not the correct decision on Kabam’s part.
I agree that they don’t have to submit to all our demands (we do make some absurd requests at times), but if they release the revive nerf and apothecary quest without any improvements it would suggest deafness towards the communities opinion. We aren’t asking for 5 lvl 3 revives per day, but 1 lvl 1 revive a day and some level 1 potions is honestly useless for most players.
This way you stop the "spamming" of everest content going forward while still keeping the effort made in this new apocethary relevant.
As it stands the players who haven't done the eop gauntlet etc etc will be at a bit of a disadvantage when they do go to do the content as theyve not being able to farm them revives like those who have already done it that way. If something like I suggested was to happen the current existing content that many have "spammed their way through" would still be an option for them to do the same way.
Everyone wins 🤷♂️
How are we supposed to clear content that takes 50 revives when the stash limit is 15? And the 4 crystals drop 1 revive every 200 crystals.. maybe make this much larger so we can save over months to clear content?
What if you actually look at the health potions, take some basic math classes and realize they are worthless with R4 6* or higher. An entire stash of potions to heal 1 champ.
So many on the verge of quitting. Please stop making this decision easier for us.
We are, all of us who discuss the game publicly, a tiny, practically inconsequential minority of the full playerbase. Until we start to tilt the playing field in a direction. Nobody cares if twelve people on the forums thinks Star Lord is the best champ in the game. Until a few dozen people blindly follow them, and cause a few hundred friends and alliance mates to start chasing him, causing even more players to assume that where they go the herd should follow.
We only see the forums, the Reddit, the tiny tiny speck of tweets that float by. The devs see what all the thousands of players of the game are collectively doing. They also don't care what a few dozen people do, but they do care when they start to see the herd move.
It is also very hard to overstate the power of Hercules in this context. He is not the totality of the problem. However, for a lot of content the totality of the problem is that unlimited revives makes the impossible just expensive, and Hercules makes the expensive cheap. Unlimited revives is allowing people to take their math final home with them. Hercules is handing them a calculator with the test before they leave.