Kabam have clearly made up their mind about this. Maybe they have a reason for it (Crossing fingers isn't anywhere near enough). But honestly. Complaining on these forums is becoming saturated. Either take action, or stop whinging the same stuff that has already been complained about. Kabam can clearly see how many people they have made unhappy and just complaining constantly isn't going to change anything (at this point).
Voicing our opinion that we dislike this move can convince them to change their mind. So no, people shouldn’t just accept it and say nothing.
Why are you guys offering 4 STAR deals when you can't even use them in ACT 6??
(Which, by the way, is stupid.)
Get a clue Kabam.
How many people gearing up for act 6 were going to spend $100-$150 on a 4* deal even if we could use 4*s? It's a garbage offer like most of the offers but I don't see that act 6 has much to do with it. The timing is comical but that's about it.
This is just insulting now. I don't care if this wasn't made with the Act 6 stuff in mind or not; the timing was horrible. It just further proves that they are wildly disconnecting with the community if they thought releasing this was okay right in the peak of this controversy.
I love this game. Is an understatement I actually love this game being able to interact with marvel characters awesome fighting animations and such. After getting LOL down, I could not have been more hyped for act 6 to be released as soon as possible. The update came and yeah it was a bit disappointing to see that 4*'s are not allowed in but I could look past that seeing as my roster is half way decent. But then the reports of potentially moving to exclusively 6*'s, Kabams lack of ability to listen to the concerns of the community and just the shear disrespect that they have shown with this latest max 4* bundle. I can honestly say that I wish the announcment for act 6 never came. I was enjoying this game so much up to this point where it seems it has become a war between the community and Kabam. Please Kabam make this right, just freaking listen and respond with some legit reasons, stop beating around the bush for **** choices. I want to enjoy this game as much as I did before all of this ****.
Apologies, but it does seem there is no sense of urgency to calm the player base. Almost the opposite, like antagonizing it with the 4* deals in the face of just having devalued them so much, the future gates probably prohibiting even 5*’s from certain paths, glitches without acknowledgemen, promotional video content on kabam twitter account laughing at the expense of our crystal opening frustration trying to meet your champ * rating requirements even for synergies...I’m trying to understand. Truly am.
😬is it that this game is about to shut down in the near future and you’re trying to grab as much cash as you can before the end???
Hi, can you explain why you’ve banned 4* champs from Act 6 and now throw out max sig full rank up offer for 4* champs?- are you just doing this to wind us up?? Could you be anymore blatant???
No, I do not work for them, and all this slander has gotten way too out-of-hand. Marketing done in advance has been confirmed on numerous occasions by several Mods.
Ok can you all just stop for a little bit? Not every part of the game revolves around Act 6. The 4* offer is clearly not targeted at endgame players Also nowhere did anyone state, that the gates will require a team of 5 6* champs so stop talking or getting angry about an issue that doesnt even exist yet
1) Story mode has never been gated by champs, only by talent and resources. This change isn't appropriate for what story mode is, frankly.
2) They announced it one week before. It's stupid and thoughtless. They could've made this announcement around the holidays, when we had special events, t2a on monthly calendars, and increased 5-star shard availability. "Don't worry, Summoners! We're increasing the availability of 5-star shards and rank-up resources in the few months leading up to the release of Act 6!" Are people happy? Eh, probably not. Mutinous? Probably not, and that's good enough.
3) @Kabam Miike responded acknowledging more gated content in Act 6. This was poorly handled for a few reasons. That content won't be out for months, by which time rosters will improve. Also, he says there will be "paths" in future content that operate that way. Well, there's a WORLD of difference between paths requiring certain things and champs being barred entry completely. There's also a world of difference between a path (required for 100% exploration) and a blanket requirement that impedes a first-run completion. No one would've reacted this way if each chapter in 6.1 had a path or two that were 5+ stars only. Hell, I bet many would've been okay if there was even a single path where 4-stars were eligible.
4) The idea that the content "requires" these level champions is simply a lie, and we all know that. 4-star, 5/50 champs are easy to get to high (max, frankly) sigs these days. My 5/50 Medusa has a 10% attack and HP deficit compared to my 3/45 unduped. Once she starts stacking furies, she hits harder than the 5-star, and on the off chance I screw up, autoblock is nearly automatic. Even compared to a duped Medusa, my sig 99 4-star will perform certain tasks better than a 3/45 with a sig in the 20-40 range.
5) Jacking up everyone's synergies is just a way to artifically nerf top-tier champs. It really couldn't be more transparent.
I'm not an endgame player, by any means - LOL and Variant remain untouched - but I'm Gold 1 war / Top 1200 AQ and I've got 9 champs that are 5-star 4/55 or 6-star. I've got 12 more champs at 3/45, and aside from clear niche uses (Medusa against Sentinels, immunities, etc.) they simply aren't as good as my 5/50's.
Ok can you all just stop for a little bit? Not every part of the game revolves around Act 6. The 4* offer is clearly not targeted at endgame players Also nowhere did anyone state, that the gates will require a team of 5 6* champs so stop talking or getting angry about an issue that doesnt even exist yet
At this point, its not about the fact that not everyone is ready for act 6 the point is that kabam straight up came out and said 4*'s are not powerful enough and we need to limit them as their reasoning for taking them out of act 6. Definetily sounds like a conflict of interest when they release a offer like this.
I have taken all that into consideration in my post and have stated the resources available to to average player as of today and have tried to show the progression of a player from this instance in time not 2 years ago etc because if i did there would be less resources for ranking up and getting 5*. The rewards for completing content is a fixed amount. these are never adjusted to match the progress of the game. The same is also true of arena and EQ's.
I would also say that the 2 5* crystals a month is right for the average player ( including special side events). It takes completing master and UC to form 1 5* crystal. I do AW and i also farm up milestones in arena 4* basic as often as i can but due to the time i would say I don't this every arena cycle. I would say i am a little more active then your average player as i can log in several times a day to do arena etc. Others play when they aren't working etc. I achieve 2 1/2 5* Crystals a month.
Act 5.4 was released December 2017 so it has been just over a year since we could get our champs to r5. Uncollected was introduced a year ago today. so as i stated with the rewards you are looking at 8 months to take a champion from r3 to r5. So in the time of uncollected where we had t2a and t5 basics you would by now have a minimum of 3 t5 Basics fully formed 4 t2a lets say for argument sake we have managed to get an additional 8 t2a from calaender logins, side quests etc.
The above is however dependent on completing every UC and being UC and finishing Act 5 as soon as it came out etc.
So its not really unreasonable to say that after 1 year since uncollected people have been able to r5 another champion. So taking away from RNG people will have 2 r5/65 champions they have choosen to bring up. Some may have gotten lucky with their 4-5 gem and so have 3.
Now where are the t2a coming from apart from those listed in my post to allow the average player to have lots of r4's?
You misread my iceman comment. I didn't say he was the only counter he was an example, i stated certain champs would counter that fight and used him as an example, to highlight my situation in that i did not have a counter for this fight at 5* until recently which took 2 years to get. I am fully aware that there are others such Emma Frost, Dormammu, Omega Red, Nebula, Ghost etc However out of 114 champions in the 5* pool there is 9 counters ( maybe i missed 1 or 2) so that gives us a 8% to pull a counter.
Agreed. It's 8-10% to pull a counter, of which a few of them are relatively old (which means we have had alot more chances to pull them, even at 8-10%), and with dungeon crystals, we are given a higher chance to pull someone we actually want, in exchange for effort in doing dungeons.
Also your comment of phasing out 4*s in comparison to my 3* example is not the same. One factor in phasing out 3* was the ease to get 4* to a higher rank then the 3*. R3 4* better then R4 3*. To do the same i.e. getting a 5* to r4 is not easy. on average takes 4 months of farming for t2a to do that. If you refer to my calculations of t2a accumulated over the last year since uncollected that is a potential of 3 r4 instead of r5 any champ. A r3 5* is the same as a r5 4* So why would you replace the 4* with the 5* if its the same thing. Add into the mix that duping a 4* and max sigging is alot easier then 5* is part of the reason people have not replaced their 4* for r3 5*s.
I think you've gotten it slightly incorrect here. A 4* R3 is slightly better than a 3* R4 but only slightly. Similarly, a 5* R3, not R4, is slightly better than a 4* R5. To rank up a 5* to R3 only requires T1A, T4B and T4CC, same resources to get a 4* to R5. As such, since we phased out 3*s when 4*s were made very much more available, given how much more available 5*s are today, wouldn't it make sense for 4*s to start being phased out as well?
That's fair, everyone will view the change differently and is entitled to their opinion. Well if you don't protest to something coming in effect its harder to get it changed. An example is the whole debacle with those 2015 gems and not undoing the rank ups of those who exploited the bugged gems. If we don't say nothing now then the developers will continue to develop content around that, which has already been made clear to us in that further on into A6 they will add 5/6* restrictions gates.
I agree. I believe almost everyone in the beta test for A6 has sounded out that gating A6 behind 5/6*s were a bad idea but Kabam still decided to do it anyway. There might be other reasons that they did not mention to us for not doing so, be it GMC sales, mistake with making synergies too powerful, etc etc. We don't know for now, and I doubt they will tell us.
Yeah people will always look at different ways around certain nodes/challenges , e.g. using loki to take down 5.4 Ultron. But taking damage from something you have no control over is even less fun. The counters all don't work the same way. So Corvus you will still take damage but just won't die from it so you will have to be very aggressive and intercept alot. This is a different play style compared to Emma frost which will need to you constantly keep yourself in a state where the enemy has more power then you so throwing your sp1 straight away so you stay in Diamon form. Omega red will just thrive with the bleed and place lots of spores. Cap IW with synergy can purify debuffs. these are all different counters but they are counters. Not having any of these means you approach that fight with the strategy fight do damage die revive and heal up and repeat. Is that really an fun ?
I believe the 3* Loki takedown of 5.4.6 Ultron was potentially one of the triggers for this gating. It was creative, it was flashy, it was cool, but it also bypassed the purpose of having a 5.4.6 final boss when he could be taken down by a 3* so easily.
On your last comment about approaching the fight with the strategy of die/revive/heal up/deal as much as you can. I believe this relates to roster breadth. As mentioned above, there's a 8-10% chance to pull one of the 9-10 champs from each 5* crystal that you can use to handle that node champ combination. With 5*s being made much easily available, as much as the % remains relatively similar (it drops a little every month but not a lot), having more pulls will help.
In addition, there are about 10 paths per quest in 6.1. That node champ combination is probably on one path in one quest. There are another 59 more paths to do. Given the energy requirement, it's suffice to say that people will spend some time on the entire chapter. True, there will be those who will be stuck on more than 1 path, but I'm very sure each quest, similar to UC, will feature a relatively easy path that will make the initial completion achievable for the majority of the playerbase going for it.
It's only exploration that might be an issue but as I mentioned in my reply to Dr Zola, the rewards for Exploration isn't great and doesn't change where players stand in any substantial way. With the rewards, players can neither R3 a 6*, nor have their prestige affected much by having an additional R4. At the very most, whoever 100%s the chapter first gets an additional 1/3 T5B compared to others who haven't. From that perspective, there is no rush to explore the chapter as fast as possible. FOMO is very real, and so is that illusive feeling of "I'm losing out to the players above me", which, IMO, is the fuel for all the rage and anger shown on the forums.
Lastly, to assure those who are worried that the bosses of each quest is someone that you need a specific counter for (which will result in you not being able to complete the quest and proceed to the next and finally completion), that is not the case. You'll need specific counters for individual paths, some clearable with skill, some made easier with the correct counters. But for all bosses, you only require skill to beat them.
I wouldnt mind those. Maybe then Id be able to Rank Down Champs so I could Rank Up Champs I could actually use for Act 6.
Rank down tix might be a decent idea here with a twist. You get a set number of generic 4* RDT, you can use it on a r5 4* only and you get a 2-->3 5* rank up gem. I've held off on ranking say 5* SL to r3 because I've had the 4* forever and I wasn't planning on a r4.
Along with that the "adjustment" package could contain a generic 3-->4 crystal as well or other goodies. Still wouldn't address the issue of folks who just don't have suitable candidates for ranking. And having recently pulled 6* AM I am familiar with the pain.
I still think they did this to raise the difficulty of Act 6 without raising the difficulty the usual way with even more nodes and larger health pools.
HAVING TO bring in a 6* champ, means you can’t bring in a 5* in its place 🤔🤪
But you can still use 5* champs for the rest of the team. 5* champs aren't going to be useless in Act 6.2-4
You don’t know that....
You dont know that it doesnt work like that and I'd interpret Miike separating the whole team with just one class and teh rarity requirements means that the latter wont be for whole teams
@Voltolos I see, so you’ve played Act 6 and are confirming that I don’t need to worry. Got it.
I can only go by what they tell me, and all they’ve told me is that x amount will be required to be brought to get past the gates. So, if they require 3 6*’s I’ll be good, if they require 4, I’m stuck. 🤷🏻♂️ Also, I hope my meme tier 6* doesn’t keep me from bringing in my awesome synergy I need cuz I can’t fit them on my team.
@Voltolos I see, so you’ve played Act 6 and are confirming that I don’t need to worry. Got it.
I can only go by what they tell me, and all they’ve told me is that x amount will be required to be brought to get past the gates. So, if they require 3 6*’s I’ll be good, if they require 4, I’m stuck. 🤷🏻♂️ Also, I hope my meme tier 6* doesn’t keep me from bringing in my awesome synergy I need cuz I can’t fit them on my team.
Cool.
I usually just complain about things that I know will be a problem. Just assuming that the worst happens and getting angry about that is unhealthy
HAVING TO bring in a 6* champ, means you can’t bring in a 5* in its place 🤔🤪
But you can still use 5* champs for the rest of the team. 5* champs aren't going to be useless in Act 6.2-4
You don’t know that....
You dont know that it doesnt work like that and I'd interpret Miike separating the whole team with just one class and teh rarity requirements means that the latter wont be for whole teams
I never claimed to know it would or wouldn’t work. I claimed you don’t know how the rest of act 6 looks. Don’t change my words to fit your narrative.
Agreed. It’s an extremely unpopular decision with only the barest of justifications offered thus far. I doubt any of that is going to change regardless of how many posts show up in this thread. And as long as players dump resources into snowball’s-chance FGMCs, there’s no incentive to change anything.
Dr. Zola
The only way Kabam can reconsider the decision on 4* restriction is if most people refuse to do Act 6.1 when it drops. But we know it won’t happen as the players will flock to conquering it. So, not only Kabam is going to ignore complaints here but the company is in a SAFE POSITION to do so!
I don't think you understand the purpose of a progress gate. The purpose is to initially limit the number of players capable of crossing the gate. Most people will be incapable of doing Act 6 initially whether they want to or not, which is intentional. Boycotting content the developers are explicitly saying they are trying to limit the number of people capable of blasting through it would be entirely unproductive.
You are right, I do not understand the inner nuances of game development. I have no experience in it. I am just a regular player. What I was trying to say above--my educated guess, no hard evidence--was based on how Kabam responded to Map 7 complaints. Map 7 gated in two major ways: the high cost of donations and increased number of linked nodes. The purpose of the gate, the argument went, was to limit the number of players doing Map 7 for the time being. Many people complained here in the forums. Kabam went ahead. You might have heard, however, that after 3 weeks of running Map 7, Kabam decided to introduce some changes, significantly reducing the number of linked nodes. Why did they do so? Out of a good heart? Did they realize all of a sudden that placing so many linked nodes was too punishing to players? Or was it because the number of players willing to put up with the stringent requirements turned out to be even lower than they expected? I do not know for sure but my gut feeling suggests the latter.
Two things. First of all, the cost of Map 7 and the linked nodes of Map 7 both "gate" Map 7 but not in the same sense of the word. The cost of Map 7 is a resource gate: you have to gather enough resources in different areas of the game to afford to do Map 7. The presumption is that most players won't be able to sustain those costs, and thus will have to pick and choose when (if ever) to do Map 7. The linked nodes in the map are a form of difficulty gate: they place a specific challenge to overcome within the map, coordinating player activity to run the map efficiently. What we're talking about here is a progress gate: locking players out of certain content unless they have a certain kind of higher progress roster.
When you said earlier "The only way Kabam can reconsider the decision on 4* restriction is if most people refuse to do Act 6.1 when it drops" that's almost certainly not what happened with Map 7. In fact I would argue that the reverse happened: more alliances were (and are) running Map 7 than they anticipated, and that they thought the map costs would limit. The problem became one of burnout. Players like to say that the players always know what's best for them, but that's completely false: they generally don't. The links are incredibly annoying and also place a heavy meta-gaming burden on the players - they force players to make themselves available to play the game constantly, separate from any actual gameplay requirements. That shouldn't have been a problem, because players were not expected to run Map 7 constantly. But as I argued when the map costs were first revealed, history says that's not how the top players in any game behave. They will push to unreasonable degrees to play the highest, most rewarding content, as much as possible, to their own detriment. Top players have no throttle.
If I had to guess, I would say the links were reduced in Map 7 to prevent burnout, not to make the map more accessible. And they had to do that because for all the complaints about the costs of running Map 7, they were still set too low to be any barrier at all to top alliances just running Map 7 over and over again. Basically, and of course this is a bit of a simplification, its not that too few players were playing Map 7, too many were playing Map 7 and killing themselves doing it.
Of course, Kabam is expecting that only a small number of players will be attempting Act 6. But they should be expecting some percentage--however small it is--of players attempting it, right?
That's a true statement, but that's also a good refutation of your earlier statement "the only way Kabam can reconsider the decision on 4* restriction is if most people refuse to do Act 6.1 when it drops." They fully expect most people to not do it, when it initially drops. They probably expect that number to slowly rise over time as more players cross the threshold of having a strong enough roster. So deliberately not doing the content when it first drops is indistinguishable from what they expect. Even worse, it can actually make the situation look even better than it is. It would be good if some players attack the content immediately, and more do over time. That upward curve would suggest to any game developer that the gate is working correctly. But the reverse: some people do it immediately, and fewer people continue to attack it over time, might suggest a problem: the gate might be too harsh, and the only people capable of doing it are veteran players with such large rosters they are already way over the gate.
If a player that *can* do it, decides to deliberately not to it to make some kind of statement, that would lower the number of people doing it immediately. If some percentage of those players eventually cave in and do the content, the number of people doing the content will rise over time due to those defections. That can actually make a broken curve look like a working one. Ironically, if players wanted to make a statement that would show up in datamining, all the players capable of doing Act 6 at all should immediately attempt it at launch. That would deplete the playerbase of players able to do Act 6 and sitting on the sidelines, which means the number of players that "cross the gate" and enter Act 6 would be lower than expected, which could prompt Kabam to reexamine the gate.
Given that the developers have created a game that I am still interested in playing daily after 2.5 years - I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Comments
So no, people shouldn’t just accept it and say nothing.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Summoner.
😬is it that this game is about to shut down in the near future and you’re trying to grab as much cash as you can before the end???
Not every part of the game revolves around Act 6. The 4* offer is clearly not targeted at endgame players
Also nowhere did anyone state, that the gates will require a team of 5 6* champs so stop talking or getting angry about an issue that doesnt even exist yet
1) Story mode has never been gated by champs, only by talent and resources. This change isn't appropriate for what story mode is, frankly.
2) They announced it one week before. It's stupid and thoughtless. They could've made this announcement around the holidays, when we had special events, t2a on monthly calendars, and increased 5-star shard availability. "Don't worry, Summoners! We're increasing the availability of 5-star shards and rank-up resources in the few months leading up to the release of Act 6!" Are people happy? Eh, probably not. Mutinous? Probably not, and that's good enough.
3) @Kabam Miike responded acknowledging more gated content in Act 6. This was poorly handled for a few reasons. That content won't be out for months, by which time rosters will improve. Also, he says there will be "paths" in future content that operate that way. Well, there's a WORLD of difference between paths requiring certain things and champs being barred entry completely. There's also a world of difference between a path (required for 100% exploration) and a blanket requirement that impedes a first-run completion. No one would've reacted this way if each chapter in 6.1 had a path or two that were 5+ stars only. Hell, I bet many would've been okay if there was even a single path where 4-stars were eligible.
4) The idea that the content "requires" these level champions is simply a lie, and we all know that. 4-star, 5/50 champs are easy to get to high (max, frankly) sigs these days. My 5/50 Medusa has a 10% attack and HP deficit compared to my 3/45 unduped. Once she starts stacking furies, she hits harder than the 5-star, and on the off chance I screw up, autoblock is nearly automatic. Even compared to a duped Medusa, my sig 99 4-star will perform certain tasks better than a 3/45 with a sig in the 20-40 range.
5) Jacking up everyone's synergies is just a way to artifically nerf top-tier champs. It really couldn't be more transparent.
I'm not an endgame player, by any means - LOL and Variant remain untouched - but I'm Gold 1 war / Top 1200 AQ and I've got 9 champs that are 5-star 4/55 or 6-star. I've got 12 more champs at 3/45, and aside from clear niche uses (Medusa against Sentinels, immunities, etc.) they simply aren't as good as my 5/50's.
On your last comment about approaching the fight with the strategy of die/revive/heal up/deal as much as you can. I believe this relates to roster breadth. As mentioned above, there's a 8-10% chance to pull one of the 9-10 champs from each 5* crystal that you can use to handle that node champ combination. With 5*s being made much easily available, as much as the % remains relatively similar (it drops a little every month but not a lot), having more pulls will help.
In addition, there are about 10 paths per quest in 6.1. That node champ combination is probably on one path in one quest. There are another 59 more paths to do. Given the energy requirement, it's suffice to say that people will spend some time on the entire chapter. True, there will be those who will be stuck on more than 1 path, but I'm very sure each quest, similar to UC, will feature a relatively easy path that will make the initial completion achievable for the majority of the playerbase going for it.
It's only exploration that might be an issue but as I mentioned in my reply to Dr Zola, the rewards for Exploration isn't great and doesn't change where players stand in any substantial way. With the rewards, players can neither R3 a 6*, nor have their prestige affected much by having an additional R4. At the very most, whoever 100%s the chapter first gets an additional 1/3 T5B compared to others who haven't. From that perspective, there is no rush to explore the chapter as fast as possible. FOMO is very real, and so is that illusive feeling of "I'm losing out to the players above me", which, IMO, is the fuel for all the rage and anger shown on the forums.
Lastly, to assure those who are worried that the bosses of each quest is someone that you need a specific counter for (which will result in you not being able to complete the quest and proceed to the next and finally completion), that is not the case. You'll need specific counters for individual paths, some clearable with skill, some made easier with the correct counters. But for all bosses, you only require skill to beat them.
Cheers.
Along with that the "adjustment" package could contain a generic 3-->4 crystal as well or other goodies. Still wouldn't address the issue of folks who just don't have suitable candidates for ranking. And having recently pulled 6* AM I am familiar with the pain.
I still think they did this to raise the difficulty of Act 6 without raising the difficulty the usual way with even more nodes and larger health pools.
I see, so you’ve played Act 6 and are confirming that I don’t need to worry. Got it.
I can only go by what they tell me, and all they’ve told me is that x amount will be required to be brought to get past the gates. So, if they require 3 6*’s I’ll be good, if they require 4, I’m stuck. 🤷🏻♂️ Also, I hope my meme tier 6* doesn’t keep me from bringing in my awesome synergy I need cuz I can’t fit them on my team.
Cool.
When you said earlier "The only way Kabam can reconsider the decision on 4* restriction is if most people refuse to do Act 6.1 when it drops" that's almost certainly not what happened with Map 7. In fact I would argue that the reverse happened: more alliances were (and are) running Map 7 than they anticipated, and that they thought the map costs would limit. The problem became one of burnout. Players like to say that the players always know what's best for them, but that's completely false: they generally don't. The links are incredibly annoying and also place a heavy meta-gaming burden on the players - they force players to make themselves available to play the game constantly, separate from any actual gameplay requirements. That shouldn't have been a problem, because players were not expected to run Map 7 constantly. But as I argued when the map costs were first revealed, history says that's not how the top players in any game behave. They will push to unreasonable degrees to play the highest, most rewarding content, as much as possible, to their own detriment. Top players have no throttle.
If I had to guess, I would say the links were reduced in Map 7 to prevent burnout, not to make the map more accessible. And they had to do that because for all the complaints about the costs of running Map 7, they were still set too low to be any barrier at all to top alliances just running Map 7 over and over again. Basically, and of course this is a bit of a simplification, its not that too few players were playing Map 7, too many were playing Map 7 and killing themselves doing it.
That's a true statement, but that's also a good refutation of your earlier statement "the only way Kabam can reconsider the decision on 4* restriction is if most people refuse to do Act 6.1 when it drops." They fully expect most people to not do it, when it initially drops. They probably expect that number to slowly rise over time as more players cross the threshold of having a strong enough roster. So deliberately not doing the content when it first drops is indistinguishable from what they expect. Even worse, it can actually make the situation look even better than it is. It would be good if some players attack the content immediately, and more do over time. That upward curve would suggest to any game developer that the gate is working correctly. But the reverse: some people do it immediately, and fewer people continue to attack it over time, might suggest a problem: the gate might be too harsh, and the only people capable of doing it are veteran players with such large rosters they are already way over the gate.
If a player that *can* do it, decides to deliberately not to it to make some kind of statement, that would lower the number of people doing it immediately. If some percentage of those players eventually cave in and do the content, the number of people doing the content will rise over time due to those defections. That can actually make a broken curve look like a working one. Ironically, if players wanted to make a statement that would show up in datamining, all the players capable of doing Act 6 at all should immediately attempt it at launch. That would deplete the playerbase of players able to do Act 6 and sitting on the sidelines, which means the number of players that "cross the gate" and enter Act 6 would be lower than expected, which could prompt Kabam to reexamine the gate.