**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Comments
I watch people pull top level 5* champs weekly while it takes me months of opening 5* Crystal's to finally get one that is worth something. This game is too luck dependent without a completely open form of loot progression to endlessly gain resource on our time for barriers like this.
More traditional rpg/mmorpg games allow for grinding to achieve certain goals. Like in destiny luck is a big part of the game... but I can endlessly grind engrams to decode to get what I need eventually. This is not true of 5 and 6 star shards(or any resources really). There is a hard limit to rewards in this game so you cant overcome bad luck without time(not playtime but physical time) which is not a good formula with these champ requirement additions imo. I thought variant was wrong with this and this is even further a step in the wrong direction in the current loot system.
I get the goal but the system is built to be punishing and alienating as a result because the randomness of the loot structure combined with the hard stop of how much loot you can aquire.
Act 6 is some of the most challenging content to date, and the perils within require only the strongest Champions of The Contest. Chapter 1 will contain CHAMPION REQUIREMENTS that will restrict the Champions you use to ONLY 5 and 6-Star Champions.
Adding my voice, the 4 star ban is stupid. Remove the requirement
An interesting thing would have to allow only 1 and 2 stars champs with strong opponents, making act 6 skill based.
But the 4 star ban is indeed not very wise...
Dr. Zola
I'm also more in favor of single hurdle gates than lockouts. One idea I think has a lot of merit is an idea I heard Brian Grant mention in a recent stream. He proposed the idea that the 5*/6* prerequisite being something that players could either unlock or somehow mitigate. For example (and this is my thoughts, not his, although there is overlap) you might require the first run through to be restricted to 5* and 6* champions, but perhaps different paths could have keys like Act 5.3 that unlock the ability to use, say, 4* Skill champs, or 4* Spiderverse champs in your team. Alternatively, Act 6 could award Act 6 special currency that you could use in a special store to unlock certain additional types of champs. Since everyone is different, players could work towards unlocking their own specific needs, like (lower level) Quantum champs or Bleed immune champs or whatever. There would be some additional strategy to how you ran different paths to then make additional runs progressively easier, or at least have more options.
I'm not *opposed* to the straight up 5*/6* gate, in that I think it is just a hurdle to overcome that isn't terrible to overcome. On a *technical* level I think it is fine. But on a *psychological* level, I think players are much more willing to accept hardship if they think they can work through it to get to some better result at the other end. The Act 6 gate probably looks to most players less like a speed bump, or even a hurdle, and more of a constant cost. You can't "overcome" it, and giving players the means to overcome a hurdle tends to make hurdles far less controversial.
I'm a firm believer that the best game design is invisible. When it works right, players hardly notice it is there. You can't always do that, but it should always be the standard to strive for.
To answer your question directly, I think the gate is a good idea in the sense that I believe it does things that will ultimately be beneficial to the game as a whole. On the other hand, I think the gate picks a fight with the playerbase that I don't think is a good idea, because I think it could be avoided.
Some are arguing that this is a measure of progress, because it takes a lot of skill to do content with lower champs. But that's a different kind of progress, and not the kind of progress being discussed here. Relatedly, some people are asking (partially rhetorically) why *can't* Act 6 be "about skill." It is in part about skill, as is Act 5, and Uncollected difficulty, and lots of other higher tier content. But no part of this game is about pure skill, because this game is a champion collecting game that is built on a foundation of building rosters. Building rosters is a fundamental element of the game that can be a metric for measuring progress. "Skill" is a tool players use to play the game, but it is not a direct measurable quantity for gauging progress quantitatively in this game.
There are always exceptions, but in general in the core content of the game you won't tend to see the game taking away the highest rarity champs because the very value of those higher rarity champs is that you can use them to make the content easier. The game also rewards skill, but it is not going to reward skill *above* the reward for possessing higher rarity champs.
Otherwise big dogs would complain that is too easy and less advanced players would still complain it's too hard and unfair. People without a LoL champ would complain. Corvus users would complain. In short, it would be about what it is now just with different topics.
No win situation here. Interesting that they gated it this way, but that's likely the rationale.
They alluded to Variant class gates and its intent to force summoners to come up with alternative solutions (ex. Hawkeye for power control), but no good reason, no reason at all was provided for restricting lower rarities in Act 6.
I am sorry, but that response wasn't just good enough, it wasn't a response at all
Second, and most importantly, the reasoning provided is a straight up lie. 5/50 champs have 10% lower attack and health than a 3/45 champ. Because of the prevalence of 4-star sig stones and crystals, it’s much easier to reach a high sig level with those champs. It’s also easier, based on volume of pulls, to obtain high quality champs.
Finally, with the importance of unique synergies in the game, depriving summoners of the choice of using, say, a 5/50 Spark with 4/55 Blade doesn’t serve any purpose besides creating crystal cash grabs.
Hey look! There’s a day-long crystal sale. What a coincidence. I’ve only pulled 13 consecutive 3-stars from FGMCs. I’m sure this’ll be fine.
While the response is appreciated it really answers nothing, it dances around the topic completely and shows how out of touch with the player base of your game you really are.
Whilst we the community can appreciate that some content needs to be gated there are good and bad ways of doing this and not allowing 4* is the worst way of gating content.
4* heroes form a valuable part of i’d say 90% of people’s rosters and to completely eliminate the use of such champions segregates those people from those that throw bundles of cash at you and creating this rift will damage a great game.
If this is the path you are going to go down then you need to change many other facets of the game.
The game is largely based on RNG with your chance to pull a 5* hero from crystals offers and GMC being extremely low and then if you are lucky enough to get a 5* you have further RNG determining what champion you get. When it comes to 5* crystals while garaunteed 5* as you are more than aware there are desirable and less desirable champions.
If you are making 4* worthless to the player base moving forward then you need to address how people obtain 5* champions. The rewards for everything through the game will need to be adjusted to facilitate your new direction.
Example:
PHC need to include 5* and drop out 2*
All 4* reward shards need to change to 5*
All 5* reward shards need to change to double or change to 6*
Let’s not forget ranking up once again is gated behind RNG in that you have to get the right class catalysts to be able to rank champions up and some classes for everyone lag behind others in acquiring said resources.
With this new gate PHC, GMC, 4* offers are all now worthless for the most part and people will not take up these offers which will hit your bottom line.
4* arenas have become pointless now? Why bother doing something for a champion that you can use for synergies if you can’t now use it?
This decision will send a ripple effect through the contest.
Kabam is a business and we get that but has no one there thought of the obvious? This change will turn more players away from the game than anything else and hit your bottom line.. Did no one in your meetings consider that if the content in Act 6 is THAT hard that if you allow 4* champions the player is already at a disadvantage in tackling the content and that will likely result in more uptake of revives and potion purchases? If you are looking at the bottom line with this change you missed the obvious...
I think the player base has already indicated a far better gate than 5/6* champions only in things like requiring elders bane or 100% Act 5.
For you to drop this bomb on your playerbase 1 week before release shows a complete disregard of forethought on your behalf and a lack of understanding of your core players.
I have generally always been able to find positives in your choices which usually cause community unrest but I’m sorry to say this time I’m at a loss.
I hope you look at this further and decide on a different way to gate content.
-Brutus2099
There’s a saying - Don’t judge people by their words, judge them by their actions. Seems like the 4* Gate for act 6 is nothing more than a GMC sales campaign.
i went to sleep at 3am.
woke at 11am.
just spent 20mins reading 158 posts.
sad thing is its all the same.
people are saying the same thing over and over.
people are just not happy.
wat i do know is this.
kabam have just released the perfect test to know wat affect this has on revenue.
they know the community is pissed.
so they spam out crystals.
if they make no $$$$ they know they have really **** up.
if they make a lot of money they can carry on as it doesnt matter there is unrest as the business model is still doing its job
Lol