Future State of Game

What do you think about future of the game?
Summoners Opinions💡

Comments

I honestly think Kabam is going in a pretty good direction with the game right now. With the recent Banquet, Kabam has managed to bridge the skill gap between endgame players and the rest of the playerbase really well. I can confirm this, since I achieved Thronebreaker only with the help of the resources I obtained during the Banquet event.

The recent side quests have also given plenty of decent rewards, and were definitely an improvement from the often repetitive side quests of early 2023. There has also been the release of Necropolis and the Starry-Eyed side quests, which were nice additions for endgame players.

When it comes to bugs, there's still a fair amount of frustration, but it's definitely better than last year's situation. I'm quite confident with the game currently, and I think it's just gonna get better from here.

captain_rogers

Ohio

PT_99

I honestly think Kabam is going in a pretty good direction with the game right now. With the recent Banquet, Kabam has managed to bridge the skill gap between endgame players and the rest of the playerbase really well. I can confirm this, since I achieved Thronebreaker only with the help of the resources I obtained during the Banquet event.

The recent side quests have also given plenty of decent rewards, and were definitely an improvement from the often repetitive side quests of early 2023. There has also been the release of Necropolis and the Starry-Eyed side quests, which were nice additions for endgame players.

When it comes to bugs, there's still a fair amount of frustration, but it's definitely better than last year's situation. I'm quite confident with the game currently, and I think it's just gonna get better from here.

Finally someone who posted comment after deleting the stuff in brackets.

SmasherM86

I'm not optimistic, The champion pool is growing insanely, it will become much harder to pull your favorite champs, A.I is becoming crazy good and gameplay sucks as a result, Marvel it self is not doing so well in movies and series...

[Deleted User]

The game hardly runs as it is let alone thinking about what's going to be added into it.

6 months is how long it took for this company to figure out how to give people back a few mastery points, and their new Raid mode has been an embarrassing flop of a game mode nobody likes.

I think Kabam should go back to basics, fix the AI, and stick with what made the game great to begin with.

They are trying to take on too much and in the process, the game as a whole has suffered tremendously.

Sundance_2099

I know it's been a year, but it's still makes me mad how they spiked the difficulty in the lower level SQ and EQ. I still contend that it is ludicrous for Proven to have 3* champions with health pools equivalent to a rank 3 5* because of a goddamn 600% health boost global node. These global health boosts in Contender, Proven and Conqueror difficulties should be reduced by a minimum 50%, if not more. They have in no way pushed me to get to Uncollected. I moved to get to Uncollected solely because my sister, who only started playing last April, got to it inside about 6 months and I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and do it. I am not an intensive player of this game, I am happy being at a lower progression level, I happily play Proven EQ as it's at a skill level I can manage, but it frequently annoys me that I should in theory be able to do Conqueror, but I can't because the higher health boosts and my struggle to get more champions to higher ranks means I can't complete the higher difficulty event I should, notionally manage.

[Deleted User]

I know it's been a year, but it's still makes me mad how they spiked the difficulty in the lower level SQ and EQ. I still contend that it is ludicrous for Proven to have 3* champions with health pools equivalent to a rank 3 5* because of a goddamn 600% health boost global node. These global health boosts in Contender, Proven and Conqueror difficulties should be reduced by a minimum 50%, if not more. They have in no way pushed me to get to Uncollected. I moved to get to Uncollected solely because my sister, who only started playing last April, got to it inside about 6 months and I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and do it. I am not an intensive player of this game, I am happy being at a lower progression level, I happily play Proven EQ as it's at a skill level I can manage, but it frequently annoys me that I should in theory be able to do Conqueror, but I can't because the higher health boosts and my struggle to get more champions to higher ranks means I can't complete the higher difficulty event I should, notionally manage.

If you cannot beat the Collector within a month, then you genuinely aren't trying at all, not being mean, that's just how it is.

Going for it would be to do it in less than a week.

Raganator

I was very hopeful after the stellar second half of 2023.

That said - 2024 has started in a very rough place. Raids are currently a train wreck. AW tactics are brutal. The AI is atrocious right now. All of which make the game not fun. We went through a period in this game several years ago where the devs seemingly just tried to make things extremely difficult and punishing rather than challenging and fun. I thought we had gone past that point, but it seems we are returning to a past era. So I'm a bit worried about the direction.

I won't rehash in depth all the issues with raids, but briefly - my biggest two issues: (1) why do i suddenly need to log in every single day, (2) RNG in the loot boxes.

AW + Raids have me thinking its time to find a BG focused alliance for a while - play when I want and not be frustrated with the above stated issues.

EdisonLaw

I’m looking forward to the future, they just need to fix the various issues such as the Raid problems, AI behaviour, etc.

BringPopcorn

Farming units to finish exploring Necro, only thing to look foward to improve my account. Not much to do.
Every reward seems stale, even the last 2 paid events (CM and Banquet) were extremely underwhelming.

Schnoodle

@Toproller89 on the topic I still haven’t got my act 5 comp. It’s completely useless to me now.

Shadow_Shooter

I feel like it’s a two way current for Kabam. Considering their past performance, just when I start believing in Kabam, they just make a very strange controversal decision about the game and it pretty much erases all the good things I’ve felt about the game… Like them first admitting issues with AI and creating a sticky post to invite feedback, then a month later deleting that sticky post…

Emilia90

2023 was a phenomenal year for the game and Necro is some of the best content they’ve ever put out. That being said, I’m not sure where 2024 will go yet. Champ releases have been good so far, SQ is the best in a while, but raids and AI behavior are still a big issue

DNA3000

I know it's been a year, but it's still makes me mad how they spiked the difficulty in the lower level SQ and EQ. I still contend that it is ludicrous for Proven to have 3* champions with health pools equivalent to a rank 3 5* because of a goddamn 600% health boost global node. These global health boosts in Contender, Proven and Conqueror difficulties should be reduced by a minimum 50%, if not more. They have in no way pushed me to get to Uncollected. I moved to get to Uncollected solely because my sister, who only started playing last April, got to it inside about 6 months and I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and do it. I am not an intensive player of this game, I am happy being at a lower progression level, I happily play Proven EQ as it's at a skill level I can manage, but it frequently annoys me that I should in theory be able to do Conqueror, but I can't because the higher health boosts and my struggle to get more champions to higher ranks means I can't complete the higher difficulty event I should, notionally manage.

My rule of thumb is that the average MCOC player is going to be moderately challenged by an EQ map where their five champ team is either the roughly the same relative strength as the minions of the map or one rank lower. In other words, if the map minions were all 5* R3s, a player that brought a team of a mix of R3s and R2s would be moderately challenged by that map overall (this is factoring in the fact that the boss will be substantially stronger).

Conqueror's minions have roughly the same power level as 6* R1 champs or between 5* R4 and 5* R5 champs. Which means I would expect a conqueror EQ map to provide a moderate challenge to a average Conqueror player who brought a mix of 6* R1 and 5* R4-ish champs, maybe with an R3 or two thrown in there, or something similar.

This does not mean that the average player who brought such a team would easily cruise through the map, nor does it mean all Conqueror players should be able to do it easily. The game does not guarantee that all Conqueror and higher players can do Conqueror EQ easily, nor would all Thronebreaker players find TB difficulty to be easy. Some would find it easy, some would find it very difficult, but the average player would find it a moderately difficult challenge with a sufficiently strong team scaled to the content.

The question is: does the average Conqueror player have a roster that can assemble a team of 6* R1s and 5* R3s and R4s to do Conqueror EQ? When it first came out, of course not. But these days? I suspect that is in fact the average firepower possessed by Conqueror players. When I did these precise calculations for Proven difficulty, I presented them to the devs and asked two question: one: did these estimates seem reasonable, and two: does that imply that the average players are actually bringing those kinds of teams into the content these days? The answer to both questions was Yes.

There is no shame in wanting to play casually, even hyper casually. If that's what you enjoy doing, you should continue to do it. But the game is scaled to the average players, not the extreme ones, and Conqueror difficulty in EQ is not intended for all Conquerors to be able to do. It is intended to provide the average conqueror with the average conqueror roster a *significant* but not *insurmountable* challenge. A very casual player might find such a level of challenge beyond what they are comfortable with.

This isn't a change from the original game. That is what the original target of those difficulty tiers was. The problem was that roster inflation rapidly caused the players to get out of sync with the designed difficulty, and it wasn't continuously tuned to match. It had simply gotten to the point of being ridiculously trivial compared to what most players were bringing to the content.

FrostGiantLord

I know it's been a year, but it's still makes me mad how they spiked the difficulty in the lower level SQ and EQ. I still contend that it is ludicrous for Proven to have 3* champions with health pools equivalent to a rank 3 5* because of a goddamn 600% health boost global node. These global health boosts in Contender, Proven and Conqueror difficulties should be reduced by a minimum 50%, if not more. They have in no way pushed me to get to Uncollected. I moved to get to Uncollected solely because my sister, who only started playing last April, got to it inside about 6 months and I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and do it. I am not an intensive player of this game, I am happy being at a lower progression level, I happily play Proven EQ as it's at a skill level I can manage, but it frequently annoys me that I should in theory be able to do Conqueror, but I can't because the higher health boosts and my struggle to get more champions to higher ranks means I can't complete the higher difficulty event I should, notionally manage.

I definitely agree. I was in your shoes for quite a long time. From the first time the EQ changes went live, all the way to around June, I struggled to even complete the Uncollected EQ, and was forced to complete the Conqueror EQ instead. If you check my in-game profile, you'll find plenty of Common titles, most of which were obtained during this period. However, after I got my first few 6* r2s, the Conqueror EQ slowly became to easy for me, and I could do the UC EQ consistently again. While I do agree that the lower level EQs are pretty difficult for their target demographic, I think this was a smart move on Kabam's part, as it forced new players to quickly improve and bridge the skill gap between endgame players and the rest of the playerbase.

HungaryHippo

I think the AI will kill the game for most new players. Try starting a new account and see how difficult it is to bait specials. If I wasn't speeding through content as a Valiant on the main, I'd have quit out of frustration.

DNA3000

I think the AI will kill the game for most new players. Try starting a new account and see how difficult it is to bait specials. If I wasn't speeding through content as a Valiant on the main, I'd have quit out of frustration.

Every time I goof around with new accounts what I discover is that the roster progression is so high in the early going that you can play with your feet and still get through the content ten times easier than the vets had it back in the day. They don’t need to bait specials because most things don’t last long enough to reach specials much less use them.

When I first started playing, players did not have DorkLessons or content guides or tier lists. The average player skill was such that even a straight up equal match up (where player and defender are about equal rank) was non-trivial. Today, on top of the roster advantage new players have, they also start far ahead of where veteran players did. And when vets roll new alts, they often forget that the stuff they do now, fighting defenders with six times the PI of their attackers, doesn’t scale downward perfectly. It can be much harder to pull off the same stuff on a new account that they routinely do on their top tier accounts. But new players are not attempting such shenanigans.

As far as I can tell, this game still attracts new players at a similar clip as it used to. Perhaps not quite as much, because it is getting long in the tooth, but not dramatically lower. I don’t think new players have a harder time, they have a significantly easier time than players in the past. The AI issues are really an issue for more sophisticated players. Most new players complain about running into fights they can’t figure out because they didn’t read the nodes. They complain they don’t have perfect counters to cheese everything. They complain they are not advancing as fast as they would like, because many of them think they should be able to catch up with the Valiants in a couple weeks. They don’t know the game *has* an AI, much less have any idea it can be problematic to sometimes work around.

HungaryHippo

Typed out a long response but apparently responses to you have to be vetted. Suffice it to say, as a week one valiant player, the AI has been just infuriating on my mini account (like baiting specials to time out in map 5 AQ).

DNA3000

Typed out a long response but apparently responses to you have to be vetted. Suffice it to say, as a week one valiant player, the AI has been just infuriating on my mini account (like baiting specials to time out in map 5 AQ).

I’m not sure what the date becoming Valiant has to do with anything, but as someone who got to Valiant on November 24th, and also as someone who regularly plays two lower alts including a Cav that does Map 5, AI has yet to cause significant issues for me on that map. And I’m often the boss killer on that map so that includes both minions and bosses.

HungaryHippo

Typed out a long response but apparently responses to you have to be vetted. Suffice it to say, as a week one valiant player, the AI has been just infuriating on my mini account (like baiting specials to time out in map 5 AQ).
I’m not sure what the date becoming Valiant has to do with anything, but as someone who got to Valiant on November 24th, and also as someone who regularly plays two lower alts including a Cav that does Map 5, AI has yet to cause significant issues for me on that map. And I’m often the boss killer on that map so that includes both minions and bosses.

Well you must be lucky then. I suppose everyone complaining about it including C4+ above streamers and even Kabam devs are all just unlucky then. Glad you've never had any significant issues with it.

TyEdge

I spent 21,000 units on cyber weekend and made the deliberate choice not to buy those garbage banquet crystals. I did enough for the 7-star crystal and I don’t even remember who it was.

I cleared two necro paths but couldn’t find the motivation to repeatedly run act 5 for another 70-100 revives.

I think my relationship to the game has changed in the past few months. I’m not as driven to push to GC in battlegrounds. I don’t want the stress of competitive war. What I’m about to say may just relate to me, but it feels like Kabam can’t figure out what the Next Big Thing is, and we’re getting dragged behind the bus as it fishtails down the road.

Relics! Battlegrounds! Raids! There are 260 champs in this game and now I’m having to deal with BG metas that require knowing which champs are vulnerable to what DOT…and I just find it more satisfying to punch through things with Hulkbuster.

I’ll probably coast along at 70% of my 2023 play level until 8.4 comes out, I’ll become valiant, then I’ll be left hoping they’ve update the in-game stores to make me feel like that’s a meaningful achievement.

Bugmat78

The future of the game seems to be making it as punitive as possible with little to show for the pain - Supercharged rouge AI*, AQ Raids, AW tactics - all geared to punish.

Necropolis was a bright spark that is already growing dim for me having explored it.

BGs has lost its thrill for me personally but at least I can say that mode is still going well (metas aside).

*intended or not it's there and it's been there for a long time now

DNA3000

Typed out a long response but apparently responses to you have to be vetted. Suffice it to say, as a week one valiant player, the AI has been just infuriating on my mini account (like baiting specials to time out in map 5 AQ).
I’m not sure what the date becoming Valiant has to do with anything, but as someone who got to Valiant on November 24th, and also as someone who regularly plays two lower alts including a Cav that does Map 5, AI has yet to cause significant issues for me on that map. And I’m often the boss killer on that map so that includes both minions and bosses.
Well you must be lucky then. I suppose everyone complaining about it including C4+ above streamers and even Kabam devs are all just unlucky then. Glad you've never had any significant issues with it.

You're assuming that I'm the exception. However, if the vast majority of players were having the same problem you mention, being unable to bait specials on Map 5 to the point of timing out, I'm pretty sure we would be hearing several order of magnitude more complaints.

A lot of people, including me, has noted certain situations where the AI behaves inconsistently or frustratingly. But consistently and frustratingly to the point of being unable to play effectively without considering quitting, that's likely to be an extremely rare complaint. You mention streamers complaining. But their streams themselves are direct evidence that such problems are not consistent and common. If they were, we could just pick a random streamer and a random stream from them and see consistent evidence of the problem you're describing at the magnitude you're implying. But when I watch streamed play, such issues are sufficiently uncommon to be noteworthy when they happen.

HungaryHippo

Typed out a long response but apparently responses to you have to be vetted. Suffice it to say, as a week one valiant player, the AI has been just infuriating on my mini account (like baiting specials to time out in map 5 AQ).
I’m not sure what the date becoming Valiant has to do with anything, but as someone who got to Valiant on November 24th, and also as someone who regularly plays two lower alts including a Cav that does Map 5, AI has yet to cause significant issues for me on that map. And I’m often the boss killer on that map so that includes both minions and bosses.
Well you must be lucky then. I suppose everyone complaining about it including C4+ above streamers and even Kabam devs are all just unlucky then. Glad you've never had any significant issues with it.
You're assuming that I'm the exception. However, if the vast majority of players were having the same problem you mention, being unable to bait specials on Map 5 to the point of timing out, I'm pretty sure we would be hearing several order of magnitude more complaints.

A lot of people, including me, has noted certain situations where the AI behaves inconsistently or frustratingly. But consistently and frustratingly to the point of being unable to play effectively without considering quitting, that's likely to be an extremely rare complaint. You mention streamers complaining. But their streams themselves are direct evidence that such problems are not consistent and common. If they were, we could just pick a random streamer and a random stream from them and see consistent evidence of the problem you're describing at the magnitude you're implying. But when I watch streamed play, such issues are sufficiently uncommon to be noteworthy when they happen.

Got literal a Kabam dev on stream saying the AI is so bad it makes them furious to talk about it. But DNA3000 assures us nothing is wrong… yep.

Twist1298

Typed out a long response but apparently responses to you have to be vetted. Suffice it to say, as a week one valiant player, the AI has been just infuriating on my mini account (like baiting specials to time out in map 5 AQ).
I’m not sure what the date becoming Valiant has to do with anything, but as someone who got to Valiant on November 24th, and also as someone who regularly plays two lower alts including a Cav that does Map 5, AI has yet to cause significant issues for me on that map. And I’m often the boss killer on that map so that includes both minions and bosses.
Well you must be lucky then. I suppose everyone complaining about it including C4+ above streamers and even Kabam devs are all just unlucky then. Glad you've never had any significant issues with it.
You're assuming that I'm the exception. However, if the vast majority of players were having the same problem you mention, being unable to bait specials on Map 5 to the point of timing out, I'm pretty sure we would be hearing several order of magnitude more complaints.

A lot of people, including me, has noted certain situations where the AI behaves inconsistently or frustratingly. But consistently and frustratingly to the point of being unable to play effectively without considering quitting, that's likely to be an extremely rare complaint. You mention streamers complaining. But their streams themselves are direct evidence that such problems are not consistent and common. If they were, we could just pick a random streamer and a random stream from them and see consistent evidence of the problem you're describing at the magnitude you're implying. But when I watch streamed play, such issues are sufficiently uncommon to be noteworthy when they happen.
Got literal a Kabam dev on stream saying the AI is so bad it makes them furious to talk about it. But DNA3000 assures us nothing is wrong… yep.

Truthfully it really depends on where you are in game. I have been communicating about overall issues with the game for years. All it was ever met with was trolling of it being lack of skills. Now that it's more widespread to the players the views are different. The game needs a overhaul in so many ways, but unfortunately I don't see it happening. I agree the difficulty switch was the first major change that had me worried, but as time went on things got progressively worse. I actually took a break from the game for years and I found my own way to have fun, but even that's fading away quickly. Just focusing on the top end players and what they want is not a good thing because it's such a small group. I agree that if they focused on gameplay and a refreshing the game would have staying power as it gets old.
The future is fading unless they put in some serious work.

ReignkingTW

AI hasn't been terrible for me, personally, but I've had issues baiting specials.

If you play something lower level like aq map 2 or Proven eq, it's completely different. It's extremely slow, I assume to make it easier for noobs.