Why are players stubbornly not progressing?
JESUSCHRIST
Member Posts: 146 ★
I saw a 4 million account rating Thronebreaker and a few 5 million+ account rating Paragon
We also have 14 days old account FTP Valiant by a youtuber showing us that it is possible with good skills in playing
So why are these players refusing to progress in game?
Share your thoughts on this
We also have 14 days old account FTP Valiant by a youtuber showing us that it is possible with good skills in playing
So why are these players refusing to progress in game?
Share your thoughts on this
Why are players stubbornly not progressing? 88 votes
Progression is too difficult for some players so they are stuck
32%
29 votes
They can't be bothered with progression
48%
43 votes
Other reasons, please specify with comments
18%
16 votes
1
Comments
Getting to Paragon isn't that difficult actually
Those players that do the speed runs didn't beat the Collector for the first time with a roster of 6R3 champs. They did it with 4*, maybe some 5R2 or 3. Nowadays a new player's roster outpaces what is needed for content so significantly that it trivializes the content and actually creates a skill gap. Newer players smash Act 5 content with high level 6* (and even 7*) and the sheer power of the champs more than makes up for their skill. As a result, they don't learn proper reading of nodes, they don't understand champ interactions, and they become convinced that PI is the end all be all of whether or not a fight is doable. The fights are easy because they are bigger, then harder because they are smaller. The beefy rosters don't help in preparation for the skill requirements of Act 6, so they get stuck.
Then Kabam goes and adds a workaround for TB and now they don't even have to beat Act 6 to get rewards that are sometimes even shared at the Valiant level. They can now access the highest EQ and SQ, better stores across the board, and they can continue to build up a sizeable roster with far too easy access to 7* all while never having to beat the hard fights.
Kabam wants players to move through the progressions quickly to move to the top, but they've also created a scenario where players build up their roster too much and their skill too little, so they get stuck.
This doesn't apply to all new players, but this is the reason for a lot of them. And then you've got some players that just like to take their time or maybe just don't have the time (or skill) to progress. As long as they're having fun, who cares? It's really only the ones who don't/can't progress and then complain about things that need to sort themselves out.
It started with Uncollected title being created by Kabam
Followed by Cavalier, Thronebreaker, Paragon and Valiant but what is the purpose of progression other than to segregate players into different tiers and now we have quite a few tiers
Is it a necessary device in game to have these progression tiers?
Does it serve the purpose of differentiating a player's skill level in game?
Reasons why cavs aren’t tb : Act 6 is arguably the hardest act in the game for where you should be, I’m sure it’s easier now. It’s difficult for some rosters to complete, with all the specific champions nodes.
Tb not being paragon : they aren’t bothered with progression, they don’t care because they are also casual.
Paragon not being valiant : one reason is rewards, the reward difference is close enough that you don’t really want to hit it unless you chase the title, other reason is because it is harder to hit then paragon and tb, because you need 2 r3s and many paragon players don’t even have one, however during this Black Friday sales you can technically buy valiant, with enough money and barely enough catalyst. Oh and of course the help of the webstore milestones
It’s more about chasing better rewards. The more you chase, the more you play. That’s kind of the point of the game: getting players to aim for the next big title. Some people might think the older titles don’t matter anymore, but when they first came out, they were just as big a deal as Valiant is now.
When I was Uncollected last year, I thought I’d just chill, max out my 5-star roster, and play Battlegrounds. But then I noticed items were coming in slow, and Cavalier players were getting better stuff. So, I pushed for Cavalier , Thronebreaker and then Paragon. At first, I thought I’d stop at Paragon—Necro was super hard for me. But after four months, new options came out, and I managed to hit Valiant to stay in the top reward group.
Honestly, I think players who aren’t progressing are hard casual. Maybe they’re grinding arena or slowly building up their roster. As for all the complaints you see on the forums, it’s mostly a small group of players being vocal about everything.
Boxing is not about skill, boxing is about boxing. Being skilled at throwing and dodging punches is not enough to win boxing matches. You can get tired, you can get worn down. Your opponent can simply outlast you and they can win. How is this possible if boxing was only about skill? It isn’t, but boxing is not about skill. Boxing is about boxing. You win if you perform better than your opponent. You can hit harder, you can hit more often, you can take hits better, you can have better conditioning, you can simply outlast your opponent. You can knock your opponent out, or you can win on points. A win is a win.
We don’t differentiate players in MCOC by skill. We differentiate them by what they accomplish in the game, regardless of how they accomplish it. Accomplishment is the thing.
Progression in MCOC is structured around two kinds of accomplishment: content completion and roster development. When the game was younger and much simpler, progression was structured primarily around XP-based account level growth, but the game eventually outgrew that for the most part and shifted to content completion with the introduction of the Uncollected title, and then to an extent with the Cavalier title and more so with the Thronebreaker title roster growth was added.
Why this is done is, to oversimplify a bunch, because the core engine of progression in MCOC involves giving rewards for completing content which allow players to grow their roster which allows them to tackle harder content. This cycle of progression only works when the game can present reasonably tuned content to players for reasonably tuned rewards. The game can’t make customized content for every single player, so it has to create a smaller set of targets that attempt to cover the entire player base to the best possible degree. Progression tiers are essentially those targets.
It is more complex than that, because there are other game design factors that go into progression tiers. But this is not anything new: MMOs were dealing with these design decisions twenty years ago. Heck, the roots of progression tiers in MCOC go right through progression tiers in MMOs and all the way back to character levels in PnP games like Dungeons and Dragons. Fifty years ago, when games were being played with graph paper and dice, progression tiers had the same two primary purposes: to give players something to play for, and to give game operators a way to judge appropriate content and rewards for those players.
I probably stayed there for a year or so before even remembering that there was a story mode. When I did, I went back and to my surprise, absolutely crushed much of Act 6 (still before the nerfs - my progress was because I'd built up my roster a ton in the other game modes, which made everything much easier). After that I really liked Act 7 which in turn led to greater rewards which progressed my roster even further, and things kind of rolled on from there. I really started feeling that the gap between me and all of the youtubers whose guides I'd followed up until then was starting to close, and nowadays I don't feel like there's a particularly huge gap at all.
My point is that it's very possible to have a lot of fun with the game without necessarily beelining through the progression tiers. When you become Cavalier or whenever it is that basically everything in the game is open for you to explore, you can have a grand old time even if you don't touch the story mode much at all.
( especially when you’re trying to play catch up on progression tiers).
That’s why when new story content drops i dive right in,..no waiting for youtube guides or what have you, and i will do the same when 9.2 drops…100%.
After the introduction of the alternate route to progression by rank-ups, we both got Cavalier by ranking our 6*s. My sister's then got TB through that, but I haven't yet.
Neither of us want to push on because we can't be arsed with all the complicated nodes and shid.
With Kabam providing a fasttrack, it gave me the means to obtain the resources to develop the roster to tackle the story content. Without it, I wouldn't even have considered Act 5.
Finally, work and family; the real life.