Easier content or better rewards
Milan1405
Member Posts: 952 ★★★★
Hey guys, I've seen a lot of discussion about 8.2 rewards and a lot of range with some people saying they are happy with them, while others are saying they are very underwhelming. A good point is that act content is now far easier than challenges like EOP, so kabam can't really put the same level of rewards in. So that begs the question, would you prefer harder act content (like act 6 pre nerfs) and kabam give us better rewards (ie more r5 materials and 7star shards would be nice) or easier content and lesser rewards like how it is now? Personally I think the idea for act 6 was actually very good (complex paths, interesting new nodes and ideas) but executed horrifically with subpar rewards and unnecessary restrictions, gates were too restrictive etc, and kabam are too afraid to put out difficult act content again; however, with all the new broken champs which have come out since then I think there's a lot of merit to the idea that act content should be harder (but not ridiculously specific like a few act 6 nodes) and kabam should offer rewards more in line to the top of the game, since more 6 star shards or rank 4s doesn't really make much of a difference to most top tier players. Also worth mentioning that I also think that the most recent act should cater to the high end of paragon players since thats where all the big spenders are, and though I'm not a whale myself, it's very important that they stay interested in the game. If spending declines drastically, kabam will have to increase the stuff spenders get and there will be a significantly bigger difference between them and f2p. So please share your opinion down below.
Easier content or better rewards 103 votes
More difficult act content and better rewards
53%
55 votes
Keep the difficulty the same and accept rewards won't be as good
46%
48 votes
0
Comments
They are not a exciting for high end players, but the difficulty of the content is low for them also.
Kabam can’t give very good rewards, for easy content that is accessible and beatable even by TB players.
To be honest, the turn to easier story content with Act7 was fun, but Act8 seems like a repeat of it.
The quests paths feel too generic.
I’d like a change to non generic paths and quests (Act6 like), with moderate, not very hard or very easy, difficulty.
In my opinion Act6 after first nerf, was the silver lining of where story content should be, in terms of design and difficulty.
Also, I’m pretty sure my opinion belongs to the minority.
Content difficulty and content rewards are two puzzle pieces that have to fit everywhere. There isn't some simple rule that says if you make content harder you can put more rewards in it and vice versa. Making the rewards appropriate for the content difficulty is just one design criteria, and not even the most important one is most cases. If you were to, say, double the difficulty of Act 8.2 and double the value of the rewards, you could simultaneously make 8.2 too difficult and too rewarding. Too rewarding for those who can do it, too difficult considering all the players who could no longer do it at all.
When the devs designed 8.2, they looked at the difficulty progression from Act 7 to Act 8.1, and the current state of the end game and near-end game player population, and projected approximately where Act 8.2 should be. They also looked at the state of players who have already completed 8.1 and designed progression appropriate rewards for the average state of those players, taking into consideration the permanent nature of the content. And then they tried to make sure those two things met in the middle.
You can make 8.2 easier or harder, and that won't change the appropriateness of the rewards for post 8.1 players. You can change the rewards for 8.2, but that won't change the difficulty progression of the content. While there is some consideration given to the general rule that harder content should have higher rewards, that's a general principle, not an equation that governs the specific rewards for specific content.
Also I do not think most of the community would agree with the idea that rewards from act 8.2 should be based off progression in act 7 and 8.1. A player who has done 8.1 exploration and plays infrequent aw or bgs has nowhere near the same needs as a player who places celestial and plays top of masters in aw. If 8.3 now takes a year to come out for example and bgs or aw/aq rewards receive buffs in that time then there should be absolutely no way previous act rewards should come into play for deciding 8.3 rewards. It should be based on what the top players need which is, right now, more r5 resources and 7 star shards.
I'm also greatly oversimplifying for discussion purposes. All the details you've mentioned, and more, are factored into such design decisions. They are, in fact, implicitly covered by the statement "They also looked at the state of players who have already completed 8.1 and designed progression appropriate rewards for the average state of those players." But at the end of the day, 8.2 gets one set of rewards. The game doesn't auto-customize for every individual player. There is one single set of rewards 8.2 will contain, and it will not be perfect for any one player, but the best estimate for what one single set of rewards should be to best fit the target audience of those rewards.
The difficulty of 8.2 is not something that can be set arbitrarily as story arc content is part of the core progressional content of the game. This was something that was heavily discussed and debated back when I posted about the story arc difficulty curve in the game. Story arc content must account for the typical player being able to navigate from Act 5 to Act 6 to Act 7 to Act 8. We can't set the difficulty of 8.2 based solely on the players doing it now. The players doing it now are disproportionately among the strongest players in the game, and would likely be among the strongest players in the game at any time in the future. The desire to have the most recent act content scale to the day one players is what turned the story arc content difficulty curve exponential, made Act 6 a bottleneck for most players, and made the original Act 7 difficulty borderline ridiculous, when seen through the eyes of most players.
The focus on the most recent act content being seen not as end game content for end game players, but as progressional content that must stand the test of time as being appropriate for all players in the long run, is a mindset the devs actively switched to starting in Act 7 and retroactively applied to Act 6 to some degree. They aren't going to reverse course on 8.2 just because a few players think it would be a good idea in a forum poll. This is a fight that was fought on a much larger scale than that already.
Honestly, the thing that I dont get are the Event Quest and Side Quest rewards. Since the "bump" in difficulty for EQ that we're all well aware of but with the rewards staying the same, I haven't 100% a single level during any of the quests.
With the side quests on the other hand, the rewards generally seem to be very good for the amount of effort put in. For example, with this month's side quest - headaches of concept and execution aside - I like that I can put in far less effort to get substantial rewards. Whereas in an Event Quest, once you've run the whole thing once, you dont truly get any benefit until you've run the whole thing 6-8 times more to get the Exploration rewards.
Does anyone else feel this way? That the SQ is where you want to spend your time because it actually feels worthwhile, while at the same time the EQ isn't "worth" the 100% completion sometimes?