Quote:
We've been reading all your feedback and concerns about Limbo and changes to the overall endgame. I spoke with the dev team and wanted to try and give you more insight.
Here's the first and foremost thing that's important to understand. The leveling/XP curve in Marvel Heroes is closer to traditional action RPGs, than traditional MMOs. We do not expect every player to hit the level cap of 60. In fact, we expect it to be a rare occurrence. For most people, reaching 50 should be more than enough play-time (for many, 30 will be just fine). If you hit 60, you have essentially out-leveled the game. You've exhausted everything.
We realize this is a big shift in thinking for many of you, especially if you've played a lot of other MMOs. You expect the game to guide you to the level cap, and often that the endgame should 'start' when you reach that cap. For Marvel Heroes, endgame begins when you finish the story. We want our endgame to be fun, absolutely, but it's essentially still catering to the action RPG fan - with, we hope, a certain amount of MMO difference included.
Let's talk about Limbo in that context. Limbo has been a topic of discussion in the community and with the designers here for a while. We saw the same play patterns you did:
- You would join a Limbo challenge in progress, only to find that there were few other players there, and most of the early waves were gone. Result: you had an extremely tough boss fight with few people.
- You would join a Limbo challenge at the beginning, but then many people would leave before it was over to 'catch the next one' - as Limbo takes about 25m to play, and it was resetting at 20m.
We needed to solve these issues. The patch should help - by increasing the reset time to 30m, thus discouraging players from leaving early, and by preventing people from joining a late-stage (post wave 3) Limbo challenge in progress. We hope as a result, the number of times you end up in a 'broken' Limbo challenge should decrease significantly.
Ah, but why were people playing Limbo in the first place? The XP, of course. And here's the issue we know is hardest to deal with.
Yes, we did reduce the experience bonus in Limbo "to be more in line with other endgame modes". That quoted part is the primary reason. Limbo was giving way too much experience in comparison with Daily Missions and Group Challenges. You would be a 'total n00b' to play anything other than Limbo if you're going purely for XP, right? As a result, you'd burn out playing the same mode over and over - which could be a really bad experience with the issues listed above.
We want people to enjoy the endgame as a whole, and not to feel turned off from playing any of the different modes because one mode is 'the only choice'. Now, even post-patch, Limbo does remain the best mode to play if you're just after XP. Is that the plan forever and ever? No - more on that below.
We've heard the argument we should "just raise the XP in all the other modes instead of lowering Limbo". The reason why we're not is our overall goal - to have a leveling curve, especially post-30, like an action RPG. We're not trying to prevent you getting to level cap, but our belief is that it should be tough. That philosophy isn't going to change. (The team is still reviewing the XP gain in the other endgame modes though, and there may be changes there in future. And no - our aim here was not to force anyone into buying boosts. An easy dig, but it's not true. The leveling curve is modeled around not needing boosts.)
Endgame should allow you to progress and have fun doing it, and not be about repeating the same Survival Challenge forever, especially when it's advantageous to game the system. We hope these changes, while they might seem a little harsh, encourage everyone to play a variety of endgame modes.
Having said all this, we know you want more from endgame, and the development team is working on bringing it to you. In design and production now are many things you've asked for, including additional endgame modes, improved PvP and perhaps the most desired change of all... difficulty modes. (Including, we hope, a 'hardcore' mode too.) More details on those future plans soon - some are a way out, but that's where we're headed.
I hope this gives you a bit more insight; we're working on ways to talk more on this, and want to hear more constructive feedback - we're all listening.
