***** Kang (The Conqueror) *****

DAZ0273

@Scofie said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@ArchusMonk said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@Bowgentle said:
If people want to use a slow team on a non-repeatable node on a single enemy, let them.

I'm not talking about from player perspective but Devs. If I was a programmer and my mini Boss is defeated without one move even needed then I would be embarrassed myself. Perhaps they don't care, I don't know but I would.

I understand your bigger picture point, but I don’t understand why you’re worried about the specific node in question. Even when I was punching up, every “boss node” was a joke. I would sometimes struggle with the CN or 5e, but never these mini-bosses. I never considered them to be a challenge - just free rewards for completing 1 complete circuit of the map. Your argument would hold more weight if you were concerned about how Kang is trivializing CN’s. I save several minutes of time using a Kang team on CN’s. I don’t even use Kang on the mini-boss because it doesn’t save me any time over my standard pick 3 PVE team.

That was just an example from yesterday's play tha jumped out at me - of course he makes CN pointless also. He trivialises everything. I also had my first 3* Kang appear in a red on PvP. So it isn't even just the 5 version.

I use the 3* version in PvE because I've only got 2 blue covers for the 5* so far. CN competed 3 times in about 2 mins, including one retreat. HE died on the last run but had enough to win with just IM40 and 3Kang when the tiles expired. And I normally hate that CN.

Yup. The players are the winners so it is hard to really bang any drums or light any fires. Will the Devs remain content with this? No idea. They have let Winfinite teams (old Devs and new) exist although none are as fast as this (and getting faster in the Fun Team Thread!) Guess we wait and see. In the meantime might as well enjoy.

captainheath

@Tony_Foot said:

@Bowgentle said:

@HoundofShadow said:
When the dev increases the difficulty levels, players are going to cry.

Welcome back, dear Strawman.
We've missed you.

Is he wrong though? If the time to clear went up from 20 minutes to 40 because they added health and match damage to a rebalanced CL10 you can bet there would be a lot of rage.

I personally would welcome it, the current CL10 becoming 9 and 10 being harder with slightly better rewards for my time. But I’d also welcome one node on the last day that scaled infinitely so you had to use as much of your roster as possible and find ways to keep trying to clear it.

Or they could just make CL10 much harder and reduce the required clears by one. I think though people have played so long on auto pilot it wouldn’t be welcomed without a massive rewards increase.

I think you could even change the current CL10 to like CL7 and add three tiers.

Bowgentle

I mean the easiest way to make PVE harder is to finally run Simulator again.
I don't know why that was shelved, it was the only PVE with challenging nodes.

DAZ0273

We have the first run of EotS coming up which will need brand new Challenge and 5* nodes and a new Boss event, so I guess we can see if the Devs have any plans to shake things up. We don't even know what the reward structure is going to look like, so next week will be interesting.

Edit: Oh and it isn't beyond reason to suspect Kang may be the new Boss.

Bad

@DAZ0273 said:

Edit: Oh and it isn't beyond reason to suspect Kang may be the new Boss.

As if it was a team of thanos galactus and abraxas. The final outcome will be another easy boss, annoying to the most.
They didn't repeat heroic again, because of the complaints and/or data tracked.
I've already played 2 gacha games (or freemium if it's easier to call them), running for many years and having plenty of options more for endgamers.

Sekilicious

@Tony_Foot said:
Or they could just make CL10 much harder and reduce the required clears by one. I think though people have played so long on auto pilot it wouldn’t be welcomed without a massive rewards increase.

I am on board with making PvE harder but take less time. I disagree with Hound that most people would vent at the difficulty (though every thread about the puzzle gauntlet being unplayable proves that I am the one incorrect on this). Even with the dreaded immortal team it has been pointed out a few times it isn't about difficulty. It is the number of times we have to grind through difficult nodes to get rewards.

entrailbucket

@Tony_Foot said:

@Bowgentle said:

@HoundofShadow said:
When the dev increases the difficulty levels, players are going to cry.

Welcome back, dear Strawman.
We've missed you.

Is he wrong though? If the time to clear went up from 20 minutes to 40 because they added health and match damage to a rebalanced CL10 you can bet there would be a lot of rage.

I personally would welcome it, the current CL10 becoming 9 and 10 being harder with slightly better rewards for my time. But I’d also welcome one node on the last day that scaled infinitely so you had to use as much of your roster as possible and find ways to keep trying to clear it.

Or they could just make CL10 much harder and reduce the required clears by one. I think though people have played so long on auto pilot it wouldn’t be welcomed without a massive rewards increase.

The other thing they could do is give us an option. Create a CL10.5 that's way harder with fewer clears, with the same rewards as CL10. Let players choose which one they want, but make sure both options are equal.

Edit, 5 seconds after posting: the problem with this is that the power level has gotten to the point that they cannot make difficult fights. Think about it -- even before Kang, we have plenty of combos that can win 100% of the time against enemies of infinite level with minimal thought.

HoundofShadow

Making nodes much harder by also making the AI smarter has been my suggestion for the past couple years, and it includes reduction in the number of clears and grinds needed.

Unfortunately, we've reached a state where players want to feel that they are beating "challenging" nodes, where in fact, the difficulty level is medium at best. These are the list of events I remember that received some hate and they were challenging:

1) Original Fight for Wakanda
2) Places of Powers (because the dev didn't reveal the details on how to maximise the best rewards. Instead, the players have to work together to figure out the way)
3) Boss events with limited character selections (BCS)

Players expect great rewards for beating "challenging" nodes. Let's be honest, even if the dev increases the difficulty for scl 10, players will ask the dev to increase the buff level by 200-300 levels, and we'll be back to the same old request of how the "buffed" SCL 10 are not challenging.

DAZ0273

@Bad said:

@DAZ0273 said:

Edit: Oh and it isn't beyond reason to suspect Kang may be the new Boss.

As if it was a team of thanos galactus and abraxas. The final outcome will be another easy boss, annoying to the most.
They didn't repeat heroic again, because of the complaints and/or data tracked.
I've already played 2 gacha games (or freemium if it's easier to call them), running for many years and having plenty of options more for endgamers.

If it is Kang I would expect maybe some sort of countdown dynamic that can send a character away and perhaps if all get sent away Kang wins type thing. I doubt it will be hard but assume Kang himself would at least be immune to the away status.

No idea though, pure speculation.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
I mean the easiest way to make PVE harder is to finally run Simulator again.
I don't know why that was shelved, it was the only PVE with challenging nodes.

It's almost certainly due to their engagement metrics. Lower tier players just didn't play Simulator at all -- even in CL10 there were way fewer brackets that filled much more slowly. Always remember that we don't matter, the devs are concerned with the 95%, not us (the top 5%).

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:
I mean the easiest way to make PVE harder is to finally run Simulator again.
I don't know why that was shelved, it was the only PVE with challenging nodes.

It's almost certainly due to their engagement metrics. Lower tier players just didn't play Simulator at all -- even in CL10 there were way fewer brackets that filled much more slowly. Always remember that we don't matter, the devs are concerned with the 95%, not us (the top 5%).

Well now the 95% have 3* Kang so no reason not to run it again.

Bad

Yeah, we could be the 5% . But the game has been running for 9 years, it's pretty possible that a lot of players own a powerful roster.
I'm playing for half the time, my top character doesn't reach lv 500 yet, and I feel there is no challenge for me.
Design Nightmare levels, make them appear with sparks, thunders, flames or skulls, but do something for strong players!
If everyone skip them, no problem.
Perhaps in time when people decide to grown up stronger more people will engage it.

captainheath

I agree. The old gauntlet type of event that went away a long time ago was a motivator. Could I develop my roster to beat it? That was fun.

It was also fun back when the four star DDP started and it was a challenge to actually win a legendary with an undercovered toon.

entrailbucket

@Bad said:
Yeah, we could be the 5% . But the game has been running for 9 years, it's pretty possible that a lot of players own a powerful roster.
I'm playing for half the time, my top character doesn't reach lv 500 yet, and I feel there is no challenge for me.
Design Nightmare levels, make them appear with sparks, thunders, flames or skulls, but do something for strong players!
If everyone skip them, no problem.
Perhaps in time when people decide to grown up stronger more people will engage it.

Yeah, so the problem is: how do you design a "nightmare" level right now?

You can maybe make a fight where one of the cheesy infinite teams can't win, but at this point there are like 8 or 10 of them. If one won't work, we can all just switch to a different cheesy infinite team. These teams can beat enemies of infinite level 100% of the time.

There's simply no way to make a fight difficult now.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@Bad said:
Yeah, we could be the 5% . But the game has been running for 9 years, it's pretty possible that a lot of players own a powerful roster.
I'm playing for half the time, my top character doesn't reach lv 500 yet, and I feel there is no challenge for me.
Design Nightmare levels, make them appear with sparks, thunders, flames or skulls, but do something for strong players!
If everyone skip them, no problem.
Perhaps in time when people decide to grown up stronger more people will engage it.

Yeah, so the problem is: how do you design a "nightmare" level right now?

You can maybe make a fight where one of the cheesy infinite teams can't win, but at this point there are like 8 or 10 of them. If one won't work, we can all just switch to a different cheesy infinite team. These teams can beat enemies of infinite level 100% of the time.

There's simply no way to make a fight difficult now.

Using the current win conditions now in PvE that's true. But if they were designing a CL11 (Nightmare level etc) and they changed the rules of how PvE worked for that new CL that wouldn't be true.

For example they could remove the use of supports and boosts (so team up powers only), allow no stuns (like they do in the 4* character intro battle) and set it so you have to win the battle in X number of turns. Stuff like that would add a new level of challenge. They could also modify how damage (match/power) works so that damaged characters do less damage (say at 75% health you do 75% power/match damage, at 50% you do 50% power/match damage and at 25% you do 25% power/damage) to throw in another new wrinkle. Tons of stuff could be done increase the challenge or get players to think outside the box/create new teams etc.

KGB

entrailbucket

You're right. I was remembering the Gauntlet, which had really difficult fights that operated without breaking the rules of the game. That's why Gauntlet can never come back.

With the level of power that players have access to now, you'd absolutely have to change the rules to make a fight difficult.

I really don't know how that would go over though. You'd have to make it explicitly optional (and, potentially, non-optimal) or the level of salt they'd get from the usual suspects ("this is terrible for the future of the game!!!") would be overwhelming.

Scofie

I guess you could run Gauntlet with the limit that once you had won with someone in the roster, you couldn't use them again. So it's really a longer term strategy/depth of roster-type event than a 5*Kang aways everyone (in a flaky attempt to be even slightly on topic).

Phumade

What made Gauntlet hard was the no mirror characters. The main point to remember was that we had much more limited attack "Vectors" (I simply mean playstyles like, Special Tiles, Nukes, Stun lockers, away etc). So the game could exclude a "playstyle" with good team construction. In the current environment, we have so many different avenues to attack and finish a match that the "no mirror chars" isn't really relevant for end tier accounts.

Bad

It's even simpler, I said it before.
Just add a win condition on a pve node, kind of like puzzle gauntlet.
Win condition of this CN: one enemy must be downed with an AoE power.
Now try it, many winfinite teams are out.

allen_koholic

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@bladewing said:
What do you guys mean by constantly processing?

I don't have 5*Kang yet, so I can't check.

Do you mean, like banners popping up every turn? Does it slow the game down?

Yeah, it's not a significant amount of delay, but it's a delay. The banner pops up every turn, sometimes multiple times a turn, depending on what you do. I'm not sure if there's an animation because I have those turned off.

No animation beyond the banner, just advises you that Realm Shift is doing...something? No idea what.

Has this been addressed? It's popping even when he's stunned.