nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Was Ascension a Mistake?

Polygon

I had suspicions early on that they would use Ascension as means of monetizing the game as if they were 8 star champs in disguise with the exclusiveness of the champs.

Now after this HoF event where people have not just A1 but A2 champs like Dust and Knull, and this new BG meta where all non ascended defenders are worthless (big waste to anyone who took up champs like Serpent or Yelena to rank 5) , I must ask what happened?

It was in last years stream around Cyber Monday where Karate Mike said they were going to bring champion monetization down in terms of cost and overall performance of the champs (like Skrull or Yondu), but 2026 has been showing the complete opposite.

Comments

WednesdayLength

What do you mean in disguise? They were open from the start that ascension was a different approach to a new progression level

AlayanZ

One thing I realized about how they are managing ascension is that it will be harder and harder to evaluate a champion, because there will be different ascension levels based on how much someone spends or when will kabam make the tokens available.

Stellar Forged Starlord for example? Why can we bring him to ascension lv1 but not lv2? What are the plans for future levels? Will champions like Maestro and Chavez have more tokens when lv 3 comes to the game? Metamorphosis champions? What if I spend some money and get Attuma to lv but not Knull, when will more Knull token become available?

Polygon

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2959221#Comment_2959221

With ascension being out, it feels like low or casual spenders don't matter anymore and that its just about big spenders now.

The featured titan champ which are newest design being limited to top spenders

Dust/knull , two highly sought BGs defenders having A2 ascension

The upcoming BGs meta mandates you to have a lot of ascended champs in your deck

List goes on

BringPopcorn

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/415830/was-ascension-a-mistake

It was a lie in disguise, they are not monetizing the champ, they monetized the champ upgrade accessory.… Maybe it helps them sleep better at night, who knows.

Lost____one

As A small to medium spender, you can choose to spend more or less in future.

Buttehrs

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2959291#Comment_2959291

NO, really?

DNA3000

Honestly, I have no idea what you're referring to.

No one should have "suspicions" about Ascension being 8 star rarity in disguise. That is precisely what they are, at least in simplified terms, and no one is making any attempt to hide that fact. I've been saying this since the instant they were announced. And all rarity releases going back to the beginning of time are explicitly intended to reset the champion chase - for both in-game pursuit and monetization purposes. That's always been true. Ascension is not different in that regard.
I have no idea what you mean by the BG meta making non-ascended defenders worthless either. Two ranks of Ascension offer slightly less than one rank up of power. In other words an R4 A2 is not more powerful than an R5. And I don't see anything in the upcoming meta descriptions that would overweight ascension over rank ups. Maybe I overlooked something, but off hand I can't think of what that might be.
I also don't understand why you seem to be implying that Ascension is only something favoring big spenders. I haven't actually spend much at all since banquet, and I haven't spent cash on Ascension itself. What I have been doing is tracking my Ascensions relative to my 7* acquisition rate (because I also have that data going all the way back to 7* rarity release). In general terms, my Ascension acquisition rate has been slightly faster than my 7* champion acquisition rate, which is about what I was expecting given the way Ascension channels are structured. Ascension favors spenders only in the sense new rarities have always offered progression advantages to spenders.

I think a lot of the issues people have with ascension are due to confusion: there's a lot more moving parts to Ascension relative to new rarities. And there is the dust situation. But honestly, I have no idea what your complaints are with regard to Ascension because everything you have hinted at here is something I cannot observe myself in the game. Ascension is not slower than 7* rarity roll out, it is not more expensive, and it is not more necessary for the game than the initial roll out of 7* rarity. We're currently in the same transition period every new rarity passes through when it first launches: the chase is more for show, and for future potential, than any actual major benefit today.

Syndicated

is not a mistake, but kabam should make less distance between F2P and whale players, we could get champion ascend tokens with crystals, like titan champ ones for titan shards, just the ascension token, so we can grind to get dust and class tokens to get the ascension reward

WednesdayLength

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2959244#Comment_2959244

This just feels needlessly obtuse. Obviously when future ascension levels arrive we will have access to more tokens, and likely when we require more tokens per rank the amount of tokens we can acquire generally will increase, just like crystal shard acquisition goes up over time

WednesdayLength

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2959279#Comment_2959279

Dust and knull were attainable at least at a1 completely for free with some rng, and arguably the best defenders in the ascension pool are still either in the base pool or the super duper box, both free to acquire.

The titan didnt even exist for months after 7 stars were added to the game.

People said the exact same thing about 7 stars, its not my fault you have a short memory

MrSanguini

Counterpoint: Ascension levels are weaker by design to reduce this power gap.

When 7 stars were introduced (and if 8 stars were thrown out instead of ascension) the power gap grew by 3 ranks- the newest star rarity is usually the strength of a R3 version of the last.

Ascension 1 grows the power gap by less than half a rank, and ascension 2 by a little less than 1 rank.

So how exactly is this any worse than prior new rarity releases??

Herbal_Taxman

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2959323#Comment_2959323

Regarding BGs, he’s probably referring to the season 39 meta that applies degen to all non-saga defenders. This saga pool is mostly ascended champs with a few exceptions.

Shrodinberg

A big issue to is when we'll have passed the 7r6 era, we will not be able to choose who we want to rank up that will only be who you pull.

And choosing who you rank up is a big part of this game and the community.

Getting rid of that don't seem to be a good choice i think

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2959461#Comment_2959461

It is a concern of mine in theory, but in practice it is not a hard issue to solve. If Kabam sees that the player base wants this sort of agency once we've collectively reached R6, they can simply eliminate the token requirement for certain ascension tiers. For example, they could make A5 and A8 require champion specific tokens, but A6 and A7 not require those tokens. Players would have to gain the RNG tokens to get to A5, but they would have the agency to decide which ones then went to A6 and then A7. Once there they would need tokens to get to A8 again, no different than how rarities used to work.

Also right now it is the RNG champion specific tokens that are a bit of a bottleneck in terms of needing them first while dust is in some ways all too plentiful. But in the future Kabam could invert that, make the champion tokens relatively easy to get and make the actual bottleneck one of the generic resources, so we have a wide choice of champions to ascend because we already have the tokens, but we have to choose which ones to ascend with the limited supply of this other resource. That's potentially a lot trickier to balance I feel, but it is possible.

In theory, they could also make tokens that were in between champion specific and completely generic. They could make, say, a 2023 token that could be used to ascend any 2023 release champion from A2 to A3, or a Fantastic Four token or whatever.

I have no idea if Kabam is actually considering any of these things, this is entirely my speculation, but the system appears to be flexible enough to do stuff like this in the future. We're only seeing the simplest iteration of it at launch.

SgtPoliteness

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2959323#Comment_2959323

You noted that A2 is roughly equal to one rank-up. But it's also coming in combination with those rank-ups, so using standard R3s and R4s vs Ascended R5s is going to be about on par with facing an Rank 6 champ.

Toproller

An a2 R4 champ is stronger than an R5 as their challenge rating is 260 vs 240.

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2959527#Comment_2959527

Challenge rating doesn't improve your stats, it reduces opponent stats and only stats affected by DR. So things like attack and health are unaffected, along with things like Fury bonuses which are direct attack bonuses.. So it is not easy to make any statements about the relatively effectiveness of 260 vs 240 CR. It won't necessarily make you kill the opponent faster or survive them longer. It would depend greatly on the extent to which the target you're fighting relies upon stats that DR affects and to what degree.

For example, if you attack something with a lot of armor, higher CR would lower their effective armor strength and allow you to kill them faster. But if you attack something with a lot of regeneration, higher CR would have essentially no effect. Meanwhile if your target has a lot of precision your higher CR would lower their incoming crit rate. But if the target just had a lot of fury, you'd notice no change in incoming damage.

Toproller

Thanks for that explanation, I thought challenge rating affected all stats and not just select ones