Dear Devs: Please make a challenging mode of play

I agree - but you're just in the wrong game if you want to play at a high level (I'm assuming big chrome purchases) and be challenged. These types of games span free players to mega mega whales. So they have to balance content to something in between. If you are on either extreme, you may tend to find the game either too easy or too difficult and neither is a good place to be in. You're either bored or really frustrated.

In these games, and any game really, this is the P2P whale's curse. You outspend the content and difficulty level. I like to use chess as an analogy vs. these games as it's an age old game that's very well balanced with the pieces. If there were purchasable upgrades in chess...imagine how boring it would be if you eventually got to where you had a team of full queens. That would make the game stink as it would be too easy. The other option is you play other large whales that have all queens too...but then you're just fighting clone battles, which also stinks. Essentially purchasable upgrades in a game ruins the game aspect of it and the planned content. It makes $ though...so there they are :)

The sweet spot is low-spending or mid-spender maybe. Otherwise you'll have to decide if being #1 and having all the best stuff is worth making the game boring because of advancing too fast.

In these games I think mentally you always want to keep a carrot dangling out in front of yourself - if you spend enough, CG will let you eat all the carrots - but you won't have anything to eat later (work toward). This leads to whale burnout.

Good luck OP - I'd consider things in how you play. Probably only if guild wars come soon will you feel like your high level roster is being put to good use.

Lastly, this isn't a criticism, just an observation having been around these games a while - I'm a much higher than average P2P myself so this isn't a F2P / P2P war attack. Your complaint is valid, but it's something you'll want to consider in your playing style. Either way you need to find peace in your approach.

I agree with Johnny, the $50 spender (give or take) is the sweet spot for game enjoyment. The p2w spend hundreds or thousands to get everything maxed out right now, and conquer all of the content at light speed. That plan succeeds, then they become bored. The f2p will double their progress for well under $100, if they do it early.

As far as an additional challenge, HC had the Grand Arena, where you use three teams, and have to win 2 out of 3. Top players can hide between 1 and 3 of their teams depending on rank. You need to have a large bench, or at least 2 good teams and guess if their hidden team is op or cannon fodder, and match up accordingly. That was the most challenging part of the game for me. We should have a GA here as well.

"Yarzahn;56303" wrote:

I disagree that the enemy squads should be player squads, simply because you would be fighting the same comp over and over - it's bad enough we get that in arena. Maybe mix up player squads with a large pool of premade squads:

That sounds like a much better idea compared to all player squads; I hadn't thought about how FOTM Arena is. It would also be a good way to see synergies played out AGAINST you.

"TommySitt;56319" wrote:

As far as an additional challenge, HC had the Grand Arena, where you use three teams, and have to win 2 out of 3. Top players can hide between 1 and 3 of their teams depending on rank. You need to have a large bench, or at least 2 good teams and guess if their hidden team is op or cannon fodder, and match up accordingly. That was the most challenging part of the game for me. We should have a GA here as well.

Yet another good idea, and it would make Arena less of a snipe battle.

I don't think this would be good for the F2P crowd though; a lot of them only have a "top 5" squad

"RamzaBeoulve;56390" wrote:
Thank you for this post I have been preaching this exact thing. Endless battles is the answer and its not like it would be difficult go code. I am a dev and they already have the functionality required to implement a change like that pretty easily.

Here's hoping they implement that one at least; they can easily get rid of those garbage Events and put it in.

"JohnnySteelAlpha;56247" wrote:
I agree - but you're just in the wrong game if you want to play at a high level (I'm assuming big chrome purchases) and be challenged. These types of games span free players to mega mega whales. So they have to balance content to something in between. If you are on either extreme, you may tend to find the game either too easy or too difficult and neither is a good place to be in. You're either bored or really frustrated.

I'm not a whale, and I don't think I have any uber insights into strategy, and I'm also now getting very bored. For the amount of revenue this game takes in, updates are infrequent, and there is genuinely very little to do in the game. The change to GW has made this even worse.
There are many ideas such as the OP's that could be implemented with a minimum of development time. Yes I know, CG is "working on wonderful things for the future". So, we wait. But again, the lack of challenge right now is pretty palpable even if you aren't a big spender. There are many things they could implement quickly to keep us occupied. But they don't.
How about the challenges themselves? They have new modes that unlock at level 60/61/62 etc... and they can be autoed as soon as you unlock them. Why?

I agree with OP. GW is way too easy at high end gaming.

We need a Rancor. Or a quest to take out a Gundark nest. Or an endless fight mode where any character you kill is instantly replaced by another. Anything really.

For myself, it hasn't been so much about lack of challenge but, rather, more about lack of diversity.

I wish I could actually do the things the development guys keep referring to in their GW posts and other places concerning using multiple build strategies, etc. That is a fantastic idea! Too bad it simply is not possible in their current model.

You either are extreme P2P to get that diversity or you end up using the same 5-8 toons over and over for everything. If you are the P2P, you suffer from having the diversity but not enough other people with your diversity level so you keep fighting the same team setups far too frequently. PvE becomes your only change; however, the PvE game can never be at the hardcore P2P level as it would shut out too many players causing far to great a reduction in players (and, as such, more diversity loss).

So, I conclude the problem is with diversity and availability of it. If everyone had more access to a more diverse portfolio of meaningful toons for team building, the game would be far more robust in all game modes.

"Aluxendr;56598" wrote:

"TommySitt;56319" wrote:

As far as an additional challenge, HC had the Grand Arena, where you use three teams, and have to win 2 out of 3. Top players can hide between 1 and 3 of their teams depending on rank. You need to have a large bench, or at least 2 good teams and guess if their hidden team is op or cannon fodder, and match up accordingly. That was the most challenging part of the game for me. We should have a GA here as well.

Yet another good idea, and it would make Arena less of a snipe battle.

I don't think this would be good for the F2P crowd though; a lot of them only have a "top 5" squad

The Grand Arena would unlock last, maybe lvl 55-60. It worked well, since the players that hit the team lvl to unlock had similar capabilities. When you first start you can still rack up wins and reasonably high up the chain, and get some rewards. The whales will get there first, then some $50-$100 spenders, then lastly the f2p. F2p won't hit top 50 for a while, but they could certainly reach the top 100-200 in a week or two after the unlock. They would be facing off with others that lack a deep bench.

The other content in HC that I forgot about was guild raids (I think that was the name). Basically (and this requires a guild), each stage has a list of full gears that are dropped when completing a stage. The guild completes the stage, and whoever is first in the queue for the gear gets it. For example, If I'm in need for that purple computer thing to take a toon to lvl 7/purple, I would get in the queue (basically waiting in line) to get the next drop. The stage was an exact replica of a normal stage (LS/DS battle here), but the enemies have insanely high hp. It would take maybe 10 or more guild members to complete one battle, which would drop a complete gear. There was a ranking for most dmg in one attempt, and guild tokens were given out based on that. There was a shop to buy toons and gear specific to guild tokens. You also got guild tokens just for participating as well.

The main reason that I left HC was because I was finally catching up to the whales at the lvl 90 cap, which took me nearly six months to hit, and I even cracked the top 10 in my server a few times with less than $100USD spent overall, but then they raised the cap to 100, which would take the better part of a year to reach. Just for a goof, just to see if my old guild was still in the top 10, and they were, and the guild leader who I knew was lvl 97. My last purchase there was on 7/1/2015, when I was lvl 91. So, 7 months later I still would've been grinding for team lvl instead of building out my roster.

Hopefully we can avoid a lvl 80 cap raise until at least April or May.