The Prologue Initiative: A Fresh take on Acts 1-4
MCOC Team
Administrator, Admin [en] Administrator › Posts: 599
Greetings Summoners!
We’re very excited to announce that at long last, we are ready to launch our revamp of the early game Story Quests! These changes will be going live on November 3rd, after the server maintenance at 8pm PT
As we mentioned a while back in the Spring/Summer 2021 Dev Diary, “The early MCoC experience hasn’t seen much love over the past six years. While we’ve made some Champion changes and improved a few fights, the first few Acts of The Contest need some work. It’s a new age, and our best needs to be on show”.
As The Contest has grown and evolved, it has become more complex and the early game has not kept up in preparing new Summoners for the challenges the Battlerealm has in store for them.
We had 2 Major Goals in this revamp:
To many of our Veteran Summoners, this information won’t mean much, but for those that are still working on these Early Acts, it could mean that your experience is about to change. Read on for a more detailed look at the changes.
However, Summoners that have not Explored the Quests but had some progress made will now have to Explore the quests again completely if they would like to obtain the Exploration rewards. While this might sound daunting, the overhaul of these acts means that it should be much quicker and easier to do.
While Act 4 needed some work, it also contains some of the most iconic fights in the history of MCoC, like the Venom Boss and the Superpowered 1-Star Spider-Man (Symbiote), so instead of tearing it down completely and rebuilding it, we took a more measured approach.
For most Summoners, their progress will not be affected in Act 4. However, if you have not fully explored the Act and some of the paths you have completed were removed, you may notice a change in your completion percentage.
We will be pushing the updates to Acts 1-4 during that maintenance period.
We’re very excited to see how these changes will affect new players, and maybe even some of our more experienced Summoners that might give this content another run!
We’re very excited to announce that at long last, we are ready to launch our revamp of the early game Story Quests! These changes will be going live on November 3rd, after the server maintenance at 8pm PT
As we mentioned a while back in the Spring/Summer 2021 Dev Diary, “The early MCoC experience hasn’t seen much love over the past six years. While we’ve made some Champion changes and improved a few fights, the first few Acts of The Contest need some work. It’s a new age, and our best needs to be on show”.
As The Contest has grown and evolved, it has become more complex and the early game has not kept up in preparing new Summoners for the challenges the Battlerealm has in store for them.
We had 2 Major Goals in this revamp:
- Set the foundation for us to do a better job of teaching Players the fundamentals of the Game
- Streamline Acts 1-4 to accelerate the progression of Players
To many of our Veteran Summoners, this information won’t mean much, but for those that are still working on these Early Acts, it could mean that your experience is about to change. Read on for a more detailed look at the changes.
Acts 1-3
Say goodbye to the old Acts 1-3, and hello to a completely brand new streamlined experience!- Acts 1 and 2 now consist of 1 Chapter of 6 Quests each.
- Act 3 now consists of 2 Chapters of 6 Quests each.
- Rewards have been overhauled to better prepare Summoners for the next step in Story Content
- Unit Rewards have been redistributed across Quest, Completion and Exploration, but should be roughly the same as before
- There have been changes made to encounters and Bosses to better fit the theme of the Narrative.
However, Summoners that have not Explored the Quests but had some progress made will now have to Explore the quests again completely if they would like to obtain the Exploration rewards. While this might sound daunting, the overhaul of these acts means that it should be much quicker and easier to do.
Act 4
Act 4 is infamous for being a daunting challenge. Its numerous long paths and overlapping branches were created in a time where Players just needed more to spend their time and energy on, but with the many additions to The Contest over the years, its become a relic of the past that we are ready to make more accessible to Summoners encountering it for the first time.While Act 4 needed some work, it also contains some of the most iconic fights in the history of MCoC, like the Venom Boss and the Superpowered 1-Star Spider-Man (Symbiote), so instead of tearing it down completely and rebuilding it, we took a more measured approach.
- Removed a number of paths across the act, to reduce the number of times a quest must be played for full exploration
- Reduced the number of fights on many paths
- Removed Hidden information across the Act
- Reduced Buff potency in some of the Quests
- Replaced or Removed some of the more punishing Buffs
For most Summoners, their progress will not be affected in Act 4. However, if you have not fully explored the Act and some of the paths you have completed were removed, you may notice a change in your completion percentage.
Wednesday, November 3rd Downtime
In order to prepare for this update, we will need to take the game down for maintenance after we have had a chance to enforce the v33.0 update. Because we do not like to do this the day after a release, in case of issues, we are moving the downtime to Wednesday, November 3rd.We will be pushing the updates to Acts 1-4 during that maintenance period.
We’re very excited to see how these changes will affect new players, and maybe even some of our more experienced Summoners that might give this content another run!
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