TL;DR: my first rant.
If the frequency was changed this badly, it may need to be tuned again.
I’m comparatively new but based on player comments and my own early experience, it’s going to be a complete PITA to ascend one hero and that’s just 5^3 or 4^4, and 5^4 is even worse.
I don’t mind their being relegated to wanted chests and titan battles and rare quest rewards, but I can’t believe this is working as intended as I haven’t seen any game to date that slowed progression down by this much, even epics in Everquest back in the day took about a few weeks to a month, and we did that all of once per character (which realistically was once period)… and you weren’t stuck on that as there were other progression path items that could be chased. Here in some cases, if your luck is bad, it’s a concrete wall and that’s poor design.
I really hope the developers look at the data and address it in one of three if not more ways:
- Higher Frequency of drops
- Make warm cloak for example the only (or maybe one of two) of the items needed to get a large number of for all heroes, and just remove the others from the loot table and multiply the frequency of said warm cloak by 6 or whatever.
- Item conversion vis a vis Alchemy lab, this idea is frankly brilliant as it can reward directly time playing the game and remove some of the RNG element.
I’m willing to believe this is unintended consequences, but it’s something which realistically should be addressed… while I understand the need for progression and for that to take some amount of time, with how the RNG works you might get close but not quite on all of your heroes after months of effort, and in even more extraordinarily bad luck, not close at all.
This is a phone game, not a career: similar expectations in terms of duration for advancement is a bit ridiculous.