Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28801439-20160808174017/@comment-29349735-20160809031546

If you don't mind me ranting a bit, I want to make clear exactly what my issues are with William's addition to the Advanced Training Hall.

In a vacuum, I have no issues with William. He amounts to about a 2x to 3x boost over a regular archwitch there, which is totally surmountable for a player willing to put in the extra hours to grind it out. As some have mentioned, people who can do advanced should have some advantage over those who could not, and this alone is something I'm okay with.

What pushes this issue into problem territory are a series of event cards (Hiragi, Mummu, HH, and HG) that were never released again after their conception around eight months ago. These cards are complete game-changers, as you can easily tell by the people commenting with "lol it's so easy to rank 100/300" everywhere in this wiki. I've experienced this a bit with Bambi on archwitches - even if I remove the 340% extra point boost, I'm still looking at easily enough to rank around 100 without much playing; against someone that can field powerful Hiraga teams (2 million points per advanced encounter!), it's already hard as hell for ANYONE without such a team to even approach this kind of possibility.

William acts as a multiplier to this, allowing these players to double their earnings. People are already reporting an average of 4 million points per key. A newcomer could buy keys until his face is blue and grind the hell out of everything, and he would never, ever be able to beat a Hiragi player who plays for maybe 10 minutes just because he missed out on an event.

Which would still be okay, if ranking was still treated as this "end-game" thing that is for players to aspire to...instead of MyNet steadily moving important event rewards into becoming RR only.

Just three events ago, anyone can get a Herb Wing or a Radiant Cinderella. Anyone can get a single copy of the laurel needed for Celestial Oracle just by completing the event map, or a few events ago nab a Heroic Gilgamesh item by getting some progress points. Sure, there was this RR card with a cool design, but it never really hurt a newbie player that much to just skip these. Starting with the Mika event, though, there hasn't been a single amalgamation item that wasn't locked behind rankings, which means that newbie players can no longer get cards like Celestial Oracle or Herb Wing to really help their deck. Heck, eventually any amalgation item that was remotely useful started getting locked behind T300 rankings instead of the more accessible T1000, which - combined with this sort of thing - locks a great swath of players out of ever getting these cards.

This is a problem.

We all know that new players depend on these events to advance their decks, and slowly but surely MyNet is choking out their options. By making the gap for ranking THIS HUGE to the point that an old player could effortlessly shut down a newer player without even trying, while simultaneously locking important rewards under RR only, MyNet is making it ridiculously difficult for a new player to advance their deck. While newer players are driven away by this gap, the experienced players with their multiple salvo decks see that they can rank 100 without even playing much and are disincentivized to purchase anything. This is absolutely silly no matter what way you look at it.

From my perspective, there are three choices that MyNet can take to resolve this:

1. Periodically re-release team salvo and 10x hit cards, NOT as a RR reward.  It doesn't have to be Hiraga or HH or have the amazing 50% passive, as long as it has the important primary skills and can be amalgated from FAW drops or something. This ensures that, at the very least, newer players won't be permanently locked out of ever ranking, and can work on slowly building towards the experienced players like how a good game is supposed to operate. This also includes other important cards for team-building, like buffers and unleashers, and periodically a more exotic card like Herb Wing.

2. Either get rid of the William bonus, or greatly decrease Overkill bonuses.  Both of these options retain some form of advantage for a advanced EH player with powerful overkill teams while not making the gap impossible to cross. If a beginner has to play 2x or 3x as much to get the same amount of points, that's okay; if it's 10x-20x like it is now, there's a major problem.

3. Return to the old way of getting amalgamation cards.  Make it so that everyone gets a copy of amalgation cards from completing the map or from X progress points, and give rankers an extra copy. Trophy RRs can remain as they are, but should remain mostly inconsequential in their abilities. If important cards are locked behind a ranking wall that newer players simply cannot cross, that'll ruin the game's progression entirely.

You don't need all three (and shouldn't implement all three), but any of these options would restore game balance and make the game fair for the tons of newer players who you totally want to keep, rather than drive away by erecting an impossible wall before them.