I genuinely don’t understand the level of vitriol for some of these challanges. The rewards are not game breaking. There is very little fear of missing out if you don’t do them, but the rewards are a nice badge of honour if you do. What they do is act as a test for those with incredibly high skill levels or those with a bank balance that lets them unit man through if they don’t have the skill but want the glory anyway.
If you don’t want to rank up your Ant Man or Black Widow or use Sig stones, then don’t. Save your rank up resources for battlegrounds? WOW or 8.4, and rank up champs for this challenge in year or 2 when you can afford to use Sig stones and tank up mats for it. Or let it be left uncompleted like most have with the 4* Starlord Labyrinth Carina.
I don't care about flags, I care about ideas. I get that most people are affected by such things, it is only human. But I've been on the internet for literally forty years. I'm a veteran of USENET. I am a Teflon coated titanium gilded asbestos brick.
The content creators who designed the challenges all love the game. They all did a good job designing good challenge content. Fin was on drugs when he designed his, but even his is interesting. It is aspirational. I would like to think that one day I will be able to do it, but if not, then not. It just means I am not one of the top 1% of the top 1%. Almost no one is.
People who don't like it should be free to say so. People who decide they won't tackle it for whatever reason should also be free to say so. But the irrational hatred towards the game and its developers is unconscionable, and the contempt towards the content creators is inexcusable. And anyone saying well, it is to be expected when XYZ is in my opinion equally at fault. I regularly step into controversial topics and I expect blowback when that happens. I know what I'm signing up for. But the challenge designers did not deliberately step into murky waters, unless you consider making anything for this game to be risky business.
People have often accused me of being a Kabam defender, but I never consider myself one. I never defend Kabam as an organization, I defend ideas, decisions, design logic. I defend the things I would do myself, or things I think would be reasonable for a professional coworker to do. But I don't mind explicitly defending players in the player community trying to contribute to a game that they, and presumably most of us, love.
They did nothing wrong. Not one single thing. And anyone who has a problem with them as creators has a problem with me, because every single piece of content they created is something I think adds to the game. Yes, even Fin's. And every second coming after me is time not spent going after the challenge designers. To me, that's a trade I will make every day. I don't think Lagacy, Karatemike, or Fintech necessarily need my support, but they have it anyway.
Every time I have had an opportunity to contribute to the games I was playing has been a great experience, including this one. I think more players should have that opportunity. The idea that a single person might hesitate to do so because of the treatment the challenge creators experienced makes me feel a tiny bit sad, and a little more ashamed.
Yes but the challenge isn't impossible with those champs or everyone will just Herc it to death. We all know that's what will happen. Peoples idea of strategizing is whether they choose Herc or Aegon.
Also, champ specific content is also part of how they make things more difficult because of the revive farming.
Very true. But again, there isn't really a whole lot of strategizing (what your main point was before) when they give you the champs you're allowed to use. Champ specific content isn't that unreasonable if given rank up materials as rewards in other challenges. I'd rather spend my rank up materials on champs that I plan to use for more than just one challenge. Especially the avenger one where there are 5 champs that I would need to take from r1 up to at least r4.
Honestly, after thinking about it more, I’d say that r3 is probably sufficient. R3 was the top available rank when Gauntlet originally released, so it’s enough to get the job done. I remember my first run involving some maxed out 5* champs.
You’re forgetting something crucial here. MSD was using a 7* Mojo, Fintech was using the highest level mojo available to him.
Karate Mike? He used an r5 ascended Zemo. These challenges were done with the instrument “calibrated” to the max possible rank. This sets the bar higher than it should and in my opinion should have been the first red flag before approving the content seeing as rank up resources/signature stones weren’t given for theses specific champions.
How are we suppose to have enough sig stones for Black Widow or 6* mojo when sig stones are still scarce in 2024?
The only counter argument I can see here is “its permanent content” which is just a band aid fix type of response and not actually addressing the fact these creators used the highest possible rank.
Also, people used rank 3 and 5* for EOP when revive farming was still available...
It is not a counter argument because it is no argument at all. It is a simple statement of fact.
The content is playtested to ensure it is doable at all. It is playtested to test the difficulty of the content, not the strength and skill of the playtester.
Playtesters test content with all sorts of advantages most players won't have, because the point is not to see how good the testers are. It is to see how difficult is, and to make sure it hasn't been made impossible to do.
If the testers tested with max rank champs, that means any player could replicate their roster with enough time. And that's all that matters. The idea that they were supposed to test with some "average" roster completely misses the point of challenge content. It isn't content intended for everyone to be able to do, or even everyone in the target audience. It is meant to be something aspirational, that most players, even those it was *intended* for, have to build towards. And that means build skill, build roster, and even build resources.
People say "oh, the designers tested with max rank champs" as if that matters. It doesn't. If you don't have what they had when they tested it, then that becomes part of the content: getting it. However long that takes.
Perhaps there's some misguided morality thing happening here. That if only the designers were "forced" to use my roster, they wouldn't be so quick to judge me when I say it is too difficult. Which is a funny Kafka trap. If you can't do it, you have no right to judge its difficulty. If you can do it, you don't understand the plight of people who can't.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to do them all. But I don't just accept the fact that the playtesters might have used max champs to test it, I *expect* them to do so. I would *demand* that they do so, because if they didn't, they have no idea if they made "challenge" content that someone can just spend some catalysts on the right champ to cheese. Doing anything else would be dumb.
You see this as a "band aid" because you are operating under a false assumption: that acquiring champs and ranking them up to do content is a necessary evil that shouldn't have a large influence on how players approach content. It is not. Acquiring and ranking champs is not just something that happens in the game, it is a fundamental part of the game. Chasing champs, however long it takes, and ranking them up, however long it takes, is just as much a part of doing a content as tapping on the screen to make the defenders fall down.
Aspirational to build towards a rank 5 thor, antman, black widow etc when r5 gems are extremely rare as it is?
The content was tested using Rank 3s & Rank 4s. You do not need Rank 5s to do content that was released before you could even Rank 4 a 6 star - especially when every single fight in the quest has a perfect counter on the team if you play into the proper strategy 🙂
Yes but the challenge isn't impossible with those champs or everyone will just Herc it to death. We all know that's what will happen. Peoples idea of strategizing is whether they choose Herc or Aegon.
Also, champ specific content is also part of how they make things more difficult because of the revive farming.
Very true. But again, there isn't really a whole lot of strategizing (what your main point was before) when they give you the champs you're allowed to use. Champ specific content isn't that unreasonable if given rank up materials as rewards in other challenges. I'd rather spend my rank up materials on champs that I plan to use for more than just one challenge. Especially the avenger one where there are 5 champs that I would need to take from r1 up to at least r4.
Honestly, after thinking about it more, I’d say that r3 is probably sufficient. R3 was the top available rank when Gauntlet originally released, so it’s enough to get the job done. I remember my first run involving some maxed out 5* champs.
You’re forgetting something crucial here. MSD was using a 7* Mojo, Fintech was using the highest level mojo available to him.
Karate Mike? He used an r5 ascended Zemo. These challenges were done with the instrument “calibrated” to the max possible rank. This sets the bar higher than it should and in my opinion should have been the first red flag before approving the content seeing as rank up resources/signature stones weren’t given for theses specific champions.
How are we suppose to have enough sig stones for Black Widow or 6* mojo when sig stones are still scarce in 2024?
The only counter argument I can see here is “its permanent content” which is just a band aid fix type of response and not actually addressing the fact these creators used the highest possible rank.
Also, people used rank 3 and 5* for EOP when revive farming was still available...
It is not a counter argument because it is no argument at all. It is a simple statement of fact.
The content is playtested to ensure it is doable at all. It is playtested to test the difficulty of the content, not the strength and skill of the playtester.
Playtesters test content with all sorts of advantages most players won't have, because the point is not to see how good the testers are. It is to see how difficult is, and to make sure it hasn't been made impossible to do.
If the testers tested with max rank champs, that means any player could replicate their roster with enough time. And that's all that matters. The idea that they were supposed to test with some "average" roster completely misses the point of challenge content. It isn't content intended for everyone to be able to do, or even everyone in the target audience. It is meant to be something aspirational, that most players, even those it was *intended* for, have to build towards. And that means build skill, build roster, and even build resources.
People say "oh, the designers tested with max rank champs" as if that matters. It doesn't. If you don't have what they had when they tested it, then that becomes part of the content: getting it. However long that takes.
Perhaps there's some misguided morality thing happening here. That if only the designers were "forced" to use my roster, they wouldn't be so quick to judge me when I say it is too difficult. Which is a funny Kafka trap. If you can't do it, you have no right to judge its difficulty. If you can do it, you don't understand the plight of people who can't.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to do them all. But I don't just accept the fact that the playtesters might have used max champs to test it, I *expect* them to do so. I would *demand* that they do so, because if they didn't, they have no idea if they made "challenge" content that someone can just spend some catalysts on the right champ to cheese. Doing anything else would be dumb.
You see this as a "band aid" because you are operating under a false assumption: that acquiring champs and ranking them up to do content is a necessary evil that shouldn't have a large influence on how players approach content. It is not. Acquiring and ranking champs is not just something that happens in the game, it is a fundamental part of the game. Chasing champs, however long it takes, and ranking them up, however long it takes, is just as much a part of doing a content as tapping on the screen to make the defenders fall down.
Aspirational to build towards a rank 5 thor, antman, black widow etc when r5 gems are extremely rare as it is?
Aspirational to give BW 200 sig stones when sigs are still scarce (dont say BGs shop because that specific trade hasn’t been updated in ages and even with it , a ton of other BGs or War champs want the sig more.
I never said its evil to rank up champions in the game but for people that are F2P like me, resources are limited and BGs is the main game mode with the most consistent rewards .
However, BGs has a ton of p2w players, to maintain my rank, I need to prioritize sig stones and rank up material on those champions.
I was hoarding my t6cc for the longest time under the assumption r5 gems would be more available but guess what? We’ve only seen them in a loyalty offer and Necropolis. Next i assume is 8.4.
Are you telling me you would r5 those avenger champions over champs that are actually not useless outside of the current challenge (bw does have use but is outclassed by other skill champs) ?
Look at the main thread on carinas, and tally up all the people that talked about how resources for rank up and sigs etc could have been given to make these challenges more viable
Yes, yes, maybe but probably not, twelve.
If only it was easier, it could have been easier. And the more people like you say it is impossible or impractical, the more I want to do them. Because except for the KG piece, the rewards are fleeting. But doing something people say can't be done is forever.
I was originally going to just do one Act 7 challenge and be done with it. But all the hate towards it convinced me I should give the Gauntlet ones a go, because even though the last time I entered the Gauntlet it was a disaster, all the early hate towards it made it seem a lot more attractive.
And now I'm thinking maybe Fin's are worth a long term shot. I don't have the skill or the roster to do those, but as a long term project just being able to say I did it is worth more than the rewards in it. In fact, I'm going to buy a couple crystals, see if I can land 7* Mojo with units.
I have never used Tigra or Jabari, I don't have Mojo highly ranked, and I don't think many have any of the Avengers ranked up. All that being said, when I first saw the challenges I was rather pleased that Kabam was finally adding content that would be incredibly difficult to complete, would force decisions regarding resource scarcity, and would force the use of champs I personally have never used or rarely used. I am excited that at some point I will break my phone during the Warlock fight (need a new one anyway) while I try to become a competent Tigra player. The rewards themselves aren't overly exciting and that is a huge win because it in no way prevents anyone from progressing in game should they choose not to do it. For the last two days these challenges have been hammered on the forums and although I understand some of the frustrations, I cannot for the life of me understand why it is so problematic for some players to forgo these challenges if they dislike them this much. For all of the fails Kabam has had in the past, inviting content creators to craft challenges for the community is not one of them. I may never complete these challenges, but in no way does it hinder my ability to play the game's regular content or progress and that I consider a big win.
PS - Fintech's challenge seems to be the most difficult and I think that makes sense considering he is in fact the reigning world champ. Well played Lags, Fin, and KM.
Yes but the challenge isn't impossible with those champs or everyone will just Herc it to death. We all know that's what will happen. Peoples idea of strategizing is whether they choose Herc or Aegon.
Also, champ specific content is also part of how they make things more difficult because of the revive farming.
Very true. But again, there isn't really a whole lot of strategizing (what your main point was before) when they give you the champs you're allowed to use. Champ specific content isn't that unreasonable if given rank up materials as rewards in other challenges. I'd rather spend my rank up materials on champs that I plan to use for more than just one challenge. Especially the avenger one where there are 5 champs that I would need to take from r1 up to at least r4.
Honestly, after thinking about it more, I’d say that r3 is probably sufficient. R3 was the top available rank when Gauntlet originally released, so it’s enough to get the job done. I remember my first run involving some maxed out 5* champs.
You’re forgetting something crucial here. MSD was using a 7* Mojo, Fintech was using the highest level mojo available to him.
Karate Mike? He used an r5 ascended Zemo. These challenges were done with the instrument “calibrated” to the max possible rank. This sets the bar higher than it should and in my opinion should have been the first red flag before approving the content seeing as rank up resources/signature stones weren’t given for theses specific champions.
How are we suppose to have enough sig stones for Black Widow or 6* mojo when sig stones are still scarce in 2024?
The only counter argument I can see here is “its permanent content” which is just a band aid fix type of response and not actually addressing the fact these creators used the highest possible rank.
Also, people used rank 3 and 5* for EOP when revive farming was still available...
It is not a counter argument because it is no argument at all. It is a simple statement of fact.
The content is playtested to ensure it is doable at all. It is playtested to test the difficulty of the content, not the strength and skill of the playtester.
Playtesters test content with all sorts of advantages most players won't have, because the point is not to see how good the testers are. It is to see how difficult is, and to make sure it hasn't been made impossible to do.
If the testers tested with max rank champs, that means any player could replicate their roster with enough time. And that's all that matters. The idea that they were supposed to test with some "average" roster completely misses the point of challenge content. It isn't content intended for everyone to be able to do, or even everyone in the target audience. It is meant to be something aspirational, that most players, even those it was *intended* for, have to build towards. And that means build skill, build roster, and even build resources.
People say "oh, the designers tested with max rank champs" as if that matters. It doesn't. If you don't have what they had when they tested it, then that becomes part of the content: getting it. However long that takes.
Perhaps there's some misguided morality thing happening here. That if only the designers were "forced" to use my roster, they wouldn't be so quick to judge me when I say it is too difficult. Which is a funny Kafka trap. If you can't do it, you have no right to judge its difficulty. If you can do it, you don't understand the plight of people who can't.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to do them all. But I don't just accept the fact that the playtesters might have used max champs to test it, I *expect* them to do so. I would *demand* that they do so, because if they didn't, they have no idea if they made "challenge" content that someone can just spend some catalysts on the right champ to cheese. Doing anything else would be dumb.
You see this as a "band aid" because you are operating under a false assumption: that acquiring champs and ranking them up to do content is a necessary evil that shouldn't have a large influence on how players approach content. It is not. Acquiring and ranking champs is not just something that happens in the game, it is a fundamental part of the game. Chasing champs, however long it takes, and ranking them up, however long it takes, is just as much a part of doing a content as tapping on the screen to make the defenders fall down.
Aspirational to build towards a rank 5 thor, antman, black widow etc when r5 gems are extremely rare as it is?
Aspirational to give BW 200 sig stones when sigs are still scarce (dont say BGs shop because that specific trade hasn’t been updated in ages and even with it , a ton of other BGs or War champs want the sig more.
I never said its evil to rank up champions in the game but for people that are F2P like me, resources are limited and BGs is the main game mode with the most consistent rewards .
However, BGs has a ton of p2w players, to maintain my rank, I need to prioritize sig stones and rank up material on those champions.
I was hoarding my t6cc for the longest time under the assumption r5 gems would be more available but guess what? We’ve only seen them in a loyalty offer and Necropolis. Next i assume is 8.4.
Are you telling me you would r5 those avenger champions over champs that are actually not useless outside of the current challenge (bw does have use but is outclassed by other skill champs) ?
Look at the main thread on carinas, and tally up all the people that talked about how resources for rank up and sigs etc could have been given to make these challenges more viable
Yes, yes, maybe but probably not, twelve.
If only it was easier, it could have been easier. And the more people like you say it is impossible or impractical, the more I want to do them. Because except for the KG piece, the rewards are fleeting. But doing something people say can't be done is forever.
I was originally going to just do one Act 7 challenge and be done with it. But all the hate towards it convinced me I should give the Gauntlet ones a go, because even though the last time I entered the Gauntlet it was a disaster, all the early hate towards it made it seem a lot more attractive.
And now I'm thinking maybe Fin's are worth a long term shot. I don't have the skill or the roster to do those, but as a long term project just being able to say I did it is worth more than the rewards in it. In fact, I'm going to buy a couple crystals, see if I can land 7* Mojo with units.
I never said its impossible, i just think Fin dropped the ball with his and completely missed the mark. Theres dozens of comments on the other thread that elaborate in detail how both his challenge and his response on forums are “Elitist” and aimed for like 1% of the community.
Fin talks about needing to adjust masteries in between fights, this is something that’s usually done in high level Masters War. Why is that atmosphere brought to a challenge like this? I understand its meant to be a hard objective and to test skill, but in Fin’s perspective , that “audience” is 1% of the community. If you think I’m wrong, feel free to do some research. We’re even expected to turn Willpower off for a single fight of his objective which is just borderline non sensical to me.
Pepe is a top player but had to drop 16 revives with Mojo just for the Warlock alone. Fin didnt even comment about the Mojo fight on his forum post btw, just said that only for Tigra challenge all fights are “soloable”. And as you know, he used the highest rank Mojo available to him, which is still an exclusive 7*.
I honestly can’t see how the team gave the green light on his objective. Given the level of difficulty and absurdity the challenge invokes, 5k Titan shards would’ve made sense to have in the rewards just for his 2 objectives
Yes but the challenge isn't impossible with those champs or everyone will just Herc it to death. We all know that's what will happen. Peoples idea of strategizing is whether they choose Herc or Aegon.
Also, champ specific content is also part of how they make things more difficult because of the revive farming.
Very true. But again, there isn't really a whole lot of strategizing (what your main point was before) when they give you the champs you're allowed to use. Champ specific content isn't that unreasonable if given rank up materials as rewards in other challenges. I'd rather spend my rank up materials on champs that I plan to use for more than just one challenge. Especially the avenger one where there are 5 champs that I would need to take from r1 up to at least r4.
Honestly, after thinking about it more, I’d say that r3 is probably sufficient. R3 was the top available rank when Gauntlet originally released, so it’s enough to get the job done. I remember my first run involving some maxed out 5* champs.
You’re forgetting something crucial here. MSD was using a 7* Mojo, Fintech was using the highest level mojo available to him.
Karate Mike? He used an r5 ascended Zemo. These challenges were done with the instrument “calibrated” to the max possible rank. This sets the bar higher than it should and in my opinion should have been the first red flag before approving the content seeing as rank up resources/signature stones weren’t given for theses specific champions.
How are we suppose to have enough sig stones for Black Widow or 6* mojo when sig stones are still scarce in 2024?
The only counter argument I can see here is “its permanent content” which is just a band aid fix type of response and not actually addressing the fact these creators used the highest possible rank.
Also, people used rank 3 and 5* for EOP when revive farming was still available...
It is not a counter argument because it is no argument at all. It is a simple statement of fact.
The content is playtested to ensure it is doable at all. It is playtested to test the difficulty of the content, not the strength and skill of the playtester.
Playtesters test content with all sorts of advantages most players won't have, because the point is not to see how good the testers are. It is to see how difficult is, and to make sure it hasn't been made impossible to do.
If the testers tested with max rank champs, that means any player could replicate their roster with enough time. And that's all that matters. The idea that they were supposed to test with some "average" roster completely misses the point of challenge content. It isn't content intended for everyone to be able to do, or even everyone in the target audience. It is meant to be something aspirational, that most players, even those it was *intended* for, have to build towards. And that means build skill, build roster, and even build resources.
People say "oh, the designers tested with max rank champs" as if that matters. It doesn't. If you don't have what they had when they tested it, then that becomes part of the content: getting it. However long that takes.
Perhaps there's some misguided morality thing happening here. That if only the designers were "forced" to use my roster, they wouldn't be so quick to judge me when I say it is too difficult. Which is a funny Kafka trap. If you can't do it, you have no right to judge its difficulty. If you can do it, you don't understand the plight of people who can't.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to do them all. But I don't just accept the fact that the playtesters might have used max champs to test it, I *expect* them to do so. I would *demand* that they do so, because if they didn't, they have no idea if they made "challenge" content that someone can just spend some catalysts on the right champ to cheese. Doing anything else would be dumb.
You see this as a "band aid" because you are operating under a false assumption: that acquiring champs and ranking them up to do content is a necessary evil that shouldn't have a large influence on how players approach content. It is not. Acquiring and ranking champs is not just something that happens in the game, it is a fundamental part of the game. Chasing champs, however long it takes, and ranking them up, however long it takes, is just as much a part of doing a content as tapping on the screen to make the defenders fall down.
Aspirational to build towards a rank 5 thor, antman, black widow etc when r5 gems are extremely rare as it is?
Aspirational to give BW 200 sig stones when sigs are still scarce (dont say BGs shop because that specific trade hasn’t been updated in ages and even with it , a ton of other BGs or War champs want the sig more.
I never said its evil to rank up champions in the game but for people that are F2P like me, resources are limited and BGs is the main game mode with the most consistent rewards .
However, BGs has a ton of p2w players, to maintain my rank, I need to prioritize sig stones and rank up material on those champions.
I was hoarding my t6cc for the longest time under the assumption r5 gems would be more available but guess what? We’ve only seen them in a loyalty offer and Necropolis. Next i assume is 8.4.
Are you telling me you would r5 those avenger champions over champs that are actually not useless outside of the current challenge (bw does have use but is outclassed by other skill champs) ?
Look at the main thread on carinas, and tally up all the people that talked about how resources for rank up and sigs etc could have been given to make these challenges more viable
Yes, yes, maybe but probably not, twelve.
If only it was easier, it could have been easier. And the more people like you say it is impossible or impractical, the more I want to do them. Because except for the KG piece, the rewards are fleeting. But doing something people say can't be done is forever.
I was originally going to just do one Act 7 challenge and be done with it. But all the hate towards it convinced me I should give the Gauntlet ones a go, because even though the last time I entered the Gauntlet it was a disaster, all the early hate towards it made it seem a lot more attractive.
And now I'm thinking maybe Fin's are worth a long term shot. I don't have the skill or the roster to do those, but as a long term project just being able to say I did it is worth more than the rewards in it. In fact, I'm going to buy a couple crystals, see if I can land 7* Mojo with units.
I never said its impossible, i just think Fin dropped the ball with his and completely missed the mark. Theres dozens of comments on the other thread that elaborate in detail how both his challenge and his response on forums are “Elitist” and aimed for like 1% of the community.
Yes, you never said it was impossible. Does that bear any relevance to my post, or is this just an aside?
Yes, there's lots of people who detail how his challenge misses the mark. There are also people saying Mike's challenge also misses the mark, and also people saying even Lagacy's is completely bonkers. And that's not as an aside, that is my response to people who mention how many people say something, without referencing the quality or relevance of their objections.
Fin's challenge is not aimed for the top 1% of the players. I would say it is aimed at the top 0.1% of the players. Maybe a thousand players in the entire game total. How much content should the top 0.1% of players get in the section of the game targeting the top tier of players in the game? Zero? The last time something of that relative difficulty came out, it was probably the Maze. So like two things in the past eight years. That seems much less than 0.1% of the total development time expended on content in this game.
Is aiming 0.1% of the content development resources at the top 0.1% of the players "elitist?" That's a subjective judgment. Why is it elitist to make content for the top 0.1%, and not elitist to make content for the top 1% or the top 10%. What's the cutoff for elitism? Most people seem to look down and draw the line six inches in front of where they are standing.
Also:
I don't when I'm going to be able to use him, but I really, really enjoyed getting him. Gives me something to aspire to.
For example take baran zemo challenege, just deal as much as damage as possible, then die and start from again, There is no skill factor, Take avengers challenge, They ask us to rank up mid champs for rewards that aren't even worth it.
This is just blatantly 100% incorrect.
With skilled play, every fight in the Avengers challenge can be soloed (I will give a crisp $20 bill to the first person to solo Dragon Man, but -) Every fight except for Vision could be soloed in the Zemo challenge (same $20 for Dragon Man here)
The skill factor is absolutely there. Take some time to fully analyze the challenge and you will see that. You aren't required to like the objective, but implying that it's a revive fest is disingenuous at best.
Let’s just ignore the fact, that this challenge is going to be a revive fest for over 99% of the players that are eligible for it, unless they wait the time they will go in with a team of 7* r3+ Avengers, by the time that any rewards will be completely irrelevant. This challenge along with few others in this set, is overtuned, same as the 4* Labyrinth challenges in Carinas set 1. And that’s not just my personal opinion, that’s the overall opinion of the community. It wasn’t your fault and it’s really nothing personal with you, you were asked for a hard challenge and you delivered. The fault was from the Kabam employee who was responsible, and gave the green light for this.
I'm not sure why everyone seems so hellbent on completing the challenges right away, and therefore mad that they don't have the requisite champions ranked and sig'd up yet. I don't either, but I've begun to rank them up, sig them up. Right now there's so much going on in the game that I personally don't care if I have to wait a bit before I've got my roster ready for most of these challenges. I'll knock out Lagacy's challenges fairly soon, then I'll probably tackle Mike's the next time there's a lull in the game, and finally I'll do Fintech's when....well, I'm not sure. It's been a while since I used Tigra so I'll have to relearn her, but I'm kind of looking forward to that challenge despite it seeming monstruous right now.
I dislike super hard roster checks in timed content, but it's completely fair for permanent content in my opinion. Furthermore, I kind of enjoy knowing exactly who I'll bring into the various challenges. I don't have to theory craft anything. It's all laid out on the table and I can invest my resources accordingly.
For example take baran zemo challenege, just deal as much as damage as possible, then die and start from again, There is no skill factor, Take avengers challenge, They ask us to rank up mid champs for rewards that aren't even worth it.
This is just blatantly 100% incorrect.
With skilled play, every fight in the Avengers challenge can be soloed (I will give a crisp $20 bill to the first person to solo Dragon Man, but -) Every fight except for Vision could be soloed in the Zemo challenge (same $20 for Dragon Man here)
The skill factor is absolutely there. Take some time to fully analyze the challenge and you will see that. You aren't required to like the objective, but implying that it's a revive fest is disingenuous at best.
Let’s just ignore the fact, that this challenge is going to be a revive fest for over 99% of the players that are eligible for it.
Bluntly, it wasn't designed for that group of players. It is an optional permanent objective for a quest that was released 3 years ago - and as you said, was geared toward players who have been craving a difficult challenge.
Comparing it to the 4 Star Labyrinth Challenges (which genuinely FORCES you to use dozens of revives) when these can be completed in under 10, once again, is disingenuous.
Yes but the challenge isn't impossible with those champs or everyone will just Herc it to death. We all know that's what will happen. Peoples idea of strategizing is whether they choose Herc or Aegon.
Also, champ specific content is also part of how they make things more difficult because of the revive farming.
Very true. But again, there isn't really a whole lot of strategizing (what your main point was before) when they give you the champs you're allowed to use. Champ specific content isn't that unreasonable if given rank up materials as rewards in other challenges. I'd rather spend my rank up materials on champs that I plan to use for more than just one challenge. Especially the avenger one where there are 5 champs that I would need to take from r1 up to at least r4.
Honestly, after thinking about it more, I’d say that r3 is probably sufficient. R3 was the top available rank when Gauntlet originally released, so it’s enough to get the job done. I remember my first run involving some maxed out 5* champs.
You’re forgetting something crucial here. MSD was using a 7* Mojo, Fintech was using the highest level mojo available to him.
Karate Mike? He used an r5 ascended Zemo. These challenges were done with the instrument “calibrated” to the max possible rank. This sets the bar higher than it should and in my opinion should have been the first red flag before approving the content seeing as rank up resources/signature stones weren’t given for theses specific champions.
How are we suppose to have enough sig stones for Black Widow or 6* mojo when sig stones are still scarce in 2024?
The only counter argument I can see here is “its permanent content” which is just a band aid fix type of response and not actually addressing the fact these creators used the highest possible rank.
Also, people used rank 3 and 5* for EOP when revive farming was still available...
It is not a counter argument because it is no argument at all. It is a simple statement of fact.
The content is playtested to ensure it is doable at all. It is playtested to test the difficulty of the content, not the strength and skill of the playtester.
Playtesters test content with all sorts of advantages most players won't have, because the point is not to see how good the testers are. It is to see how difficult is, and to make sure it hasn't been made impossible to do.
If the testers tested with max rank champs, that means any player could replicate their roster with enough time. And that's all that matters. The idea that they were supposed to test with some "average" roster completely misses the point of challenge content. It isn't content intended for everyone to be able to do, or even everyone in the target audience. It is meant to be something aspirational, that most players, even those it was *intended* for, have to build towards. And that means build skill, build roster, and even build resources.
People say "oh, the designers tested with max rank champs" as if that matters. It doesn't. If you don't have what they had when they tested it, then that becomes part of the content: getting it. However long that takes.
Perhaps there's some misguided morality thing happening here. That if only the designers were "forced" to use my roster, they wouldn't be so quick to judge me when I say it is too difficult. Which is a funny Kafka trap. If you can't do it, you have no right to judge its difficulty. If you can do it, you don't understand the plight of people who can't.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to do them all. But I don't just accept the fact that the playtesters might have used max champs to test it, I *expect* them to do so. I would *demand* that they do so, because if they didn't, they have no idea if they made "challenge" content that someone can just spend some catalysts on the right champ to cheese. Doing anything else would be dumb.
You see this as a "band aid" because you are operating under a false assumption: that acquiring champs and ranking them up to do content is a necessary evil that shouldn't have a large influence on how players approach content. It is not. Acquiring and ranking champs is not just something that happens in the game, it is a fundamental part of the game. Chasing champs, however long it takes, and ranking them up, however long it takes, is just as much a part of doing a content as tapping on the screen to make the defenders fall down.
Aspirational to build towards a rank 5 thor, antman, black widow etc when r5 gems are extremely rare as it is?
The content was tested using Rank 3s & Rank 4s. You do not need Rank 5s to do content that was released before you could even Rank 4 a 6 star - especially when every single fight in the quest has a perfect counter on the team if you play into the proper strategy 🙂
The more I look over the iron man bW and so I do think that’s one is great a lot of counter for those trick fights the zemo I frankly can’t say alot just that I don’t enjoy zemo probably because no idea to use so that’s one get a orange pass fintech I do think it benefit if it was another place where u could use a 5 stack team even if it was only with tirgra and jabari panther sorry for any spelling errors. No hate towards anyone you’re all human you designed a challenge and it is a challenge no problem I understand i not mean to beat every single thing
The problem is not saying "do it with x champ", The problem is, the content is nothing mote than revive , deal as much as damage possible die and repeat.
For example take baran zemo challenege, just deal as much as damage as possible, then die and start from again, There is no skill factor, Take avengers challenge, They ask us to rank up mid champs for rewards that aren't even worth it.
Im looking forward to every single challenge except zemo, he's been shoved down our throats for far too long. For some while I was thinking to upgrade OG BW for nostalgic reasons. She is sig 20 rn, but with selectors I can get her to 100 and I'll dump remaining 100 sigs on her for the challange and I love it. I like antman outside BGs. IM was a good buff. Don't really want to upgrade many 6*s available as 7*s outside few. Lags challanges are for TB players. Fins challanges are actual challanges with all of The Champions I like.
And then comes the controversy king. None of my Zemo rarity is past r1 I don't hate Zemo as a champion, I disagree with Zemo being presented as The single most Greatest champion, overhype. This is just a personal issue against Zemo propoganda.
I'll be doing this challange too and I probably have to take him r4. But I'll never R5 him. I'm willing to spend extra units on this challenge. Wish I can lock Zemo in a container and drown it in Bermuda triangle.
Yes but the challenge isn't impossible with those champs or everyone will just Herc it to death. We all know that's what will happen. Peoples idea of strategizing is whether they choose Herc or Aegon.
Also, champ specific content is also part of how they make things more difficult because of the revive farming.
Very true. But again, there isn't really a whole lot of strategizing (what your main point was before) when they give you the champs you're allowed to use. Champ specific content isn't that unreasonable if given rank up materials as rewards in other challenges. I'd rather spend my rank up materials on champs that I plan to use for more than just one challenge. Especially the avenger one where there are 5 champs that I would need to take from r1 up to at least r4.
Honestly, after thinking about it more, I’d say that r3 is probably sufficient. R3 was the top available rank when Gauntlet originally released, so it’s enough to get the job done. I remember my first run involving some maxed out 5* champs.
You’re forgetting something crucial here. MSD was using a 7* Mojo, Fintech was using the highest level mojo available to him.
Karate Mike? He used an r5 ascended Zemo. These challenges were done with the instrument “calibrated” to the max possible rank. This sets the bar higher than it should and in my opinion should have been the first red flag before approving the content seeing as rank up resources/signature stones weren’t given for theses specific champions.
How are we suppose to have enough sig stones for Black Widow or 6* mojo when sig stones are still scarce in 2024?
The only counter argument I can see here is “its permanent content” which is just a band aid fix type of response and not actually addressing the fact these creators used the highest possible rank.
Also, people used rank 3 and 5* for EOP when revive farming was still available...
It is not a counter argument because it is no argument at all. It is a simple statement of fact.
The content is playtested to ensure it is doable at all. It is playtested to test the difficulty of the content, not the strength and skill of the playtester.
Playtesters test content with all sorts of advantages most players won't have, because the point is not to see how good the testers are. It is to see how difficult is, and to make sure it hasn't been made impossible to do.
If the testers tested with max rank champs, that means any player could replicate their roster with enough time. And that's all that matters. The idea that they were supposed to test with some "average" roster completely misses the point of challenge content. It isn't content intended for everyone to be able to do, or even everyone in the target audience. It is meant to be something aspirational, that most players, even those it was *intended* for, have to build towards. And that means build skill, build roster, and even build resources.
People say "oh, the designers tested with max rank champs" as if that matters. It doesn't. If you don't have what they had when they tested it, then that becomes part of the content: getting it. However long that takes.
Perhaps there's some misguided morality thing happening here. That if only the designers were "forced" to use my roster, they wouldn't be so quick to judge me when I say it is too difficult. Which is a funny Kafka trap. If you can't do it, you have no right to judge its difficulty. If you can do it, you don't understand the plight of people who can't.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to do them all. But I don't just accept the fact that the playtesters might have used max champs to test it, I *expect* them to do so. I would *demand* that they do so, because if they didn't, they have no idea if they made "challenge" content that someone can just spend some catalysts on the right champ to cheese. Doing anything else would be dumb.
You see this as a "band aid" because you are operating under a false assumption: that acquiring champs and ranking them up to do content is a necessary evil that shouldn't have a large influence on how players approach content. It is not. Acquiring and ranking champs is not just something that happens in the game, it is a fundamental part of the game. Chasing champs, however long it takes, and ranking them up, however long it takes, is just as much a part of doing a content as tapping on the screen to make the defenders fall down.
Aspirational to build towards a rank 5 thor, antman, black widow etc when r5 gems are extremely rare as it is?
The content was tested using Rank 3s & Rank 4s. You do not need Rank 5s to do content that was released before you could even Rank 4 a 6 star - especially when every single fight in the quest has a perfect counter on the team if you play into the proper strategy 🙂
This is clearly a guy who has no idea what a Sig 200 Thor can do, Mike...
Mines r4 Ascended, and whilst I'm no great shakes as a Battlegrounds master, I don't think I've lost a match attacking with Thor in four seasons.
Challenges like yours are a way of giving some extra value to older champs; and once people use them in those challenges, they may realise that they're useable in other content, too...
Comments
If you don’t want to rank up your Ant Man or Black Widow or use Sig stones, then don’t. Save your rank up resources for battlegrounds? WOW or 8.4, and rank up champs for this challenge in year or 2 when you can afford to use Sig stones and tank up mats for it. Or let it be left uncompleted like most have with the 4* Starlord Labyrinth Carina.
Case in point.
I don't care about flags, I care about ideas. I get that most people are affected by such things, it is only human. But I've been on the internet for literally forty years. I'm a veteran of USENET. I am a Teflon coated titanium gilded asbestos brick.
The content creators who designed the challenges all love the game. They all did a good job designing good challenge content. Fin was on drugs when he designed his, but even his is interesting. It is aspirational. I would like to think that one day I will be able to do it, but if not, then not. It just means I am not one of the top 1% of the top 1%. Almost no one is.
People who don't like it should be free to say so. People who decide they won't tackle it for whatever reason should also be free to say so. But the irrational hatred towards the game and its developers is unconscionable, and the contempt towards the content creators is inexcusable. And anyone saying well, it is to be expected when XYZ is in my opinion equally at fault. I regularly step into controversial topics and I expect blowback when that happens. I know what I'm signing up for. But the challenge designers did not deliberately step into murky waters, unless you consider making anything for this game to be risky business.
People have often accused me of being a Kabam defender, but I never consider myself one. I never defend Kabam as an organization, I defend ideas, decisions, design logic. I defend the things I would do myself, or things I think would be reasonable for a professional coworker to do. But I don't mind explicitly defending players in the player community trying to contribute to a game that they, and presumably most of us, love.
They did nothing wrong. Not one single thing. And anyone who has a problem with them as creators has a problem with me, because every single piece of content they created is something I think adds to the game. Yes, even Fin's. And every second coming after me is time not spent going after the challenge designers. To me, that's a trade I will make every day. I don't think Lagacy, Karatemike, or Fintech necessarily need my support, but they have it anyway.
Every time I have had an opportunity to contribute to the games I was playing has been a great experience, including this one. I think more players should have that opportunity. The idea that a single person might hesitate to do so because of the treatment the challenge creators experienced makes me feel a tiny bit sad, and a little more ashamed.
You do not need Rank 5s to do content that was released before you could even Rank 4 a 6 star - especially when every single fight in the quest has a perfect counter on the team if you play into the proper strategy 🙂
If only it was easier, it could have been easier. And the more people like you say it is impossible or impractical, the more I want to do them. Because except for the KG piece, the rewards are fleeting. But doing something people say can't be done is forever.
I was originally going to just do one Act 7 challenge and be done with it. But all the hate towards it convinced me I should give the Gauntlet ones a go, because even though the last time I entered the Gauntlet it was a disaster, all the early hate towards it made it seem a lot more attractive.
And now I'm thinking maybe Fin's are worth a long term shot. I don't have the skill or the roster to do those, but as a long term project just being able to say I did it is worth more than the rewards in it. In fact, I'm going to buy a couple crystals, see if I can land 7* Mojo with units.
PS - Fintech's challenge seems to be the most difficult and I think that makes sense considering he is in fact the reigning world champ. Well played Lags, Fin, and KM.
Fin talks about needing to adjust masteries in between fights, this is something that’s usually done in high level Masters War. Why is that atmosphere brought to a challenge like this? I understand its meant to be a hard objective and to test skill, but in Fin’s perspective , that “audience” is 1% of the community. If you think I’m wrong, feel free to do some research. We’re even expected to turn Willpower off for a single fight of his objective which is just borderline non sensical to me.
Pepe is a top player but had to drop 16 revives with Mojo just for the Warlock alone. Fin didnt even comment about the Mojo fight on his forum post btw, just said that only for Tigra challenge all fights are “soloable”. And as you know, he used the highest rank Mojo available to him, which is still an exclusive 7*.
I honestly can’t see how the team gave the green light on his objective. Given the level of difficulty and absurdity the challenge invokes, 5k Titan shards would’ve made sense to have in the rewards just for his 2 objectives
Yes, there's lots of people who detail how his challenge misses the mark. There are also people saying Mike's challenge also misses the mark, and also people saying even Lagacy's is completely bonkers. And that's not as an aside, that is my response to people who mention how many people say something, without referencing the quality or relevance of their objections.
Fin's challenge is not aimed for the top 1% of the players. I would say it is aimed at the top 0.1% of the players. Maybe a thousand players in the entire game total. How much content should the top 0.1% of players get in the section of the game targeting the top tier of players in the game? Zero? The last time something of that relative difficulty came out, it was probably the Maze. So like two things in the past eight years. That seems much less than 0.1% of the total development time expended on content in this game.
Is aiming 0.1% of the content development resources at the top 0.1% of the players "elitist?" That's a subjective judgment. Why is it elitist to make content for the top 0.1%, and not elitist to make content for the top 1% or the top 10%. What's the cutoff for elitism? Most people seem to look down and draw the line six inches in front of where they are standing.
Also:
I don't when I'm going to be able to use him, but I really, really enjoyed getting him. Gives me something to aspire to.
This challenge along with few others in this set, is overtuned, same as the 4* Labyrinth challenges in Carinas set 1.
And that’s not just my personal opinion, that’s the overall opinion of the community.
It wasn’t your fault and it’s really nothing personal with you, you were asked for a hard challenge and you delivered.
The fault was from the Kabam employee who was responsible, and gave the green light for this.
I dislike super hard roster checks in timed content, but it's completely fair for permanent content in my opinion. Furthermore, I kind of enjoy knowing exactly who I'll bring into the various challenges. I don't have to theory craft anything. It's all laid out on the table and I can invest my resources accordingly.
It is an optional permanent objective for a quest that was released 3 years ago - and as you said, was geared toward players who have been craving a difficult challenge.
Comparing it to the 4 Star Labyrinth Challenges (which genuinely FORCES you to use dozens of revives) when these can be completed in under 10, once again, is disingenuous.
For some while I was thinking to upgrade OG BW for nostalgic reasons. She is sig 20 rn, but with selectors I can get her to 100 and I'll dump remaining 100 sigs on her for the challange and I love it. I like antman outside BGs. IM was a good buff. Don't really want to upgrade many 6*s available as 7*s outside few.
Lags challanges are for TB players.
Fins challanges are actual challanges with all of
The Champions I like.
And then comes the controversy king.
None of my Zemo rarity is past r1
I don't hate Zemo as a champion, I disagree with Zemo being presented as The single most Greatest champion, overhype. This is just a personal issue against Zemo propoganda.
I'll be doing this challange too and I probably have to take him r4. But I'll never R5 him. I'm willing to spend extra units on this challenge. Wish I can lock Zemo in a container and drown it in Bermuda triangle.
Mines r4 Ascended, and whilst I'm no great shakes as a Battlegrounds master, I don't think I've lost a match attacking with Thor in four seasons.
(not that I'd object to Thor getting a buff)
Challenges like yours are a way of giving some extra value to older champs; and once people use them in those challenges, they may realise that they're useable in other content, too...