Thank you for confirming you really listen to your player base 🙈🙉🙊

Of course the Hydra mechanics are not changed. If somebody finds a way to beat the Hydra, other game mechanics like masteries are changed, to prevent the players to be successfull.

I am sorry, but with this is not really good advice. It is just a way of telling the players that you are going to further on ignore the feedback of the player base. 

It is not that the player base does not understand the mechanics of Hydra...I have the impression that most of the player base does understand it much better than your own game designers. 

And the core problem stil is: You need way too much time to play Hydra, Hydra is wayy too much depending on RNG and no strategy will work against an overdose of RNG.

Sorry to have the opinion, but statements such as yours do not really convince players...these statements seem to be a part of the problem as at least for me they show that the concerns and feedback of the player base is mainly ignored. 

I have watched a lot of your CC's YouTube videos on hydra. I just watched Hell hades video this morning : https://youtu.be/RF_Fp2D7AdI

He is not even bothering for the most part with hydra himself. I don't really know the rankings of your content creators but I'm pretty sure HH is one of the biggest ones.

Also most strats involve using dutchess and trunda, two champions I'm sure almost everyone has.

Other than that shamael "cheese" was nerfed in what the second week? Because you can't have people beating it too easy right?

I don't want to be doom and gloom over this aspect of the game beacuse at the end of the day I will collect the champion fragments and a few pieces of stoneskin set along the way, but this kind of content feels rushed and not thought out and rather unenjoyable. I have seen no positive feedback honestly and in think the mark was missed.

This looks like a canned response that has not in any way taken on board what people are saying.

I like it :)  Yes I am only hitting end chest on Normal currently but the fact that Plarium was considerate enough to allow me to get frags for the Legend champ even at this level makes it worth it for me

I said this before and I will say it again speaking for myself. When I know I am getting a Legend champion at the end  of the tunnel I never  mind the grind and you can have all my chances at and shard pulls for that matter

Plan for the head of mischief to always eat your team?

Waste of time giving you lot feedback - don't you get it?  We aren't doing it because it's a total nightmare

No doubt the Legendary Mithrala is a motivation to play the Hydra....but the important question is: Will you continue enjoying Hydra after you obtained Mithrala and spent the time running Hydra to get Clan Gold, Clan XP and some artifacts?

Just second reading the post and want to give some reactions:

If I plan my strategy according to the heads skill set, keep the heads the same after regrowing. Otherwise I have to plan for all heads or rely on RNG. Regarding the current situation, this statement of yours is not fitting the situation

If time goes by and champions will apear that make the fights against Hydra more efficient, this holds two fatal statements for me. Either way you have released the Hydra without the champions being in the game to fight it properly, which is bad game design or you are at the moment not even knowing what could be good strategies. As an example for the later I want to point out Hex-champs which were announced as being a solution only to vaporize in the face of the Head of Decay.

Your statement about getting familiar with the core mechanics is actually insulting. The problem is not the missing knowledge, it is the bad mechanics.  

If you point to the CC's videos, you should perhaps also acknowledge that the vast majority of the CCs has the same opinion as voiced here...that Hydra is frustrating, overly RNG based and a waste of time after Mithrala.

On a additional note...you should also note the reactions to Swift Parry, Reaction Gear and now Stoneskin...the overall feedback is very negative. Not only from the player base but also from CC. 

They get it - they just won't acknowledge they get it!

Stoneskin can change (damage) the arena, as I said before there is a vid by a CC with an empowered (+4) Martyr in Stoneskin, she wipes Platinum arena teams solo due to her Counterattack, no speed so in a two round cooldown she basically keeps counterattacking the opposition and keeps SS up all the time

Seems to me they are changing (for the worse) to many of the base mechanics of the game, empowerment, guardians, stoneskin are all detrimental to the original game design, enrichments to games are good as long as they don't throw the balance out, e=which I frear in time these will

I don't like it or dislike it yet.  But the only person that likes it in this thread is probably the only one spending money on the game.... just saying

I think the time to do it 3x a week wouldn't be that bad if they implemented some additional QoL to reduce time elsewhere in the game.  Global super-raids in all content 24/7 would be a nice start -- I can dream.  

Hydra is the only end-game content other than Tag and Plat Classic, and we know how much the forum likes PvP :)

Hi there. 

Let me answer your concerns one by one. The Hydra at the lower levels of it’s difficulty has higher chances to re-grow the same head. So as I’ve said earlier, Hydra at Normal difficulty is much easier to fight with the champions with a restricted skill set.  

Moving towards the statement that the Boss was released without the means to fight it. I think you can see the screenshots in our community, as well as we see it from our data, that the endgame players are beating Nightmare difficulty and receiving the top chest in 1 key with the existing champions. Of course, it is a difficult task and requires skills and preparation. So to make it more accessible, we are planning to release champions with a Hydra-targeted skill set.

As it goes for the Hex debuff. We are reviewing it’s performance, but it is the player’s choice to use it against the Head of Decay or not.

Hydra is the most challenging content in the game, it was designed that way on purpose. As for Mithrala, she will not be “the only reason” to beat the Hydra. We will announce the changes in the rewards after collecting Mithrala, when more players will collect her. 

As it goes for the CC videos I was referring to, please, check the following: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4JKUyYAdas

https://youtu.be/r7IClNylMbc
 

By endgame you mean your krakens and whales 

First off, thanks for the long answer. I do not share all your points of view, but I appreciate the effort you take to answer. 

I know that some endgame players can 1 key Nightmare Hydra....I even know how they do it. One of the possible answers is a +4 Trundra hitting the decapitated Head of Torment. I can assure you, that I have enough knowledge about the Hydra Heads to 1- key Normal and Hard Hydra (my clan has not advanced to brutal). 

Stil the time needed to do this is way too long and it includes several times of restarting to get the correct heads regrowing even  on normal or hard. I am happy you included some links for CCs videos which are very helpful. They underline your position about the possible team compositions very well...and they underline my position of the RNG overload. MurderInc says himself, that you should probably reset your entire key if you are getting the head of decay in the first regrowth (~8:45). For me, this is not a strategy to work against this head...this is just pure admission that the RNG factor beats any strategy. But we might differ in this opinion. 

For me, it does not sound like a challenging content, if the solution to a challenge appearing is: Restart your key, hope for better RNG. But as I said..we might differ in this...

Regarding Mithrala and the future announcement of changes....sorry, but I have heard so many vague announcements of Plarium concerning features like QoL improvements of tavern (which have not been implemented yet), about bombs or hexes being viable (not at the moment) about champions getting not crazily overpowered (which a team of four +4s is in my opinion) or explanations that are basically insulting (after more than a year we give you a mediocre legendary and a trash epic instead of 6 sacreds and 6 5*-chickens so you can understand the Hex-mechanic [the normal player understands a 4-lined text block about Hex and does not need to play for more than a year to understand this mechanic]) that those announcements have lost a lot of credibility for me.  And even announcing the changes obviously do not guarantee an implementation in the game (tavern upgrades, reduce time to need to play etc...).

So, thanks again for the long answer. I appreciate if you give some detailed info like the videos you were referring to, as they give details which can be discussed, but it is very difficult to discuss based on some vague future announcements nobody knows yet. I think a good example here is the Clan Shop. Plarium did announce that the Yannica fragments will not be replaced by another champ...they will be replaced by 4* glyphs. This is a concrete announcement and I think 95% of the players are very disappointed about this...

A statement that something will be announced in the future...just leaves no room for a discussion and ends it.

@Thea - I think you're missing the point of most of the complaints.

The problem with Hydra is not the difficulty. The problem is the tediousness of it. We do not want to be spending 30-60 minutes on this fight, on manual. We just don't. DT Hard is fine for spending a lot of time, because once you beat a stage, you don't have to beat it again until next month. Hydra requires you to do this three times a week.

I'm an endgame player. I've got all dungeons on auto, all faction wars cleared, UNM on full auto, DT normal/hard complete, and am pushing for Silver 4 3v3 this week. All that said, I'll say it again. I simply will not spend an hour or two three times a week, on manual. End of story. If this is the path you want to take, so be it, but you're losing a large chunk of your player base by pursuing it. If your goal for Hydra was to provide endgame players like myself with things to do, you have failed completely.

I want to thank everyone for remaining polite even if you disagree with what Thea has said. We will compile the complaints and opinions and report them as always. 

One other suggestion:

Rework the boss HP/rewards, and make it one key per week instead of three. That would open it up to a much bigger playerbase, and also alleviate the problem of needing to invest so much valuable time.

OR

Keep it at three keys, but make the cycle reset only once per month instead of once per week.

PS: Misread what you wrote Harbby, which is why I deleted my response to you :)

No point in firing off, it's not our opinions that matter though, they know it's not right when the CC have done videos detailing exactly what we've been saying, and in the comments for those videos more disatisfaction 

It's a mess, they know it, the CC's know it, we know it, they just won't admit it

I'm sure they want to keep the 3-key-system, to build us three different teams per rotation. But I like your suggestion to make that fights only once a month. The weekly period is much to short. 

Hydra is just on top of every other content. Content Creators made videos about how long it takes to play the game months before Hydra was released. Now it's the same content + Hydra. Superraids are only active once in a while.

I am not a dev or content creator but based on my observations Hydra was intended to take advantage of dupe and underutilised heroes. For example, inquisitor isn't really useful anywhere else in the game but is a dominating force in hydra, removing fears automatically and turning them into extra hits.

I personally find the Hydra content extremely dull and time consuming.  It gives the kraken, min maxers and content creators something extra to do in game to "beat" but based on my guild participatin and general community feedback, it really was content no one wanted.

Doom Tower was on the other hand an excellent addition to the game that offered rewards and a feeling of accomplishment... Hydra does not achieve any good feels and only delivers frustration...

The top priorities for the devs should be:

1. Review all low tier legendary heroes; they should be moved to the epic slot or alternatively be balanced upward. A legendary hero represents a time investment of 2+ months or if pay to win $300, there should be no crappy legendary heroes. My friend quit after getting Elagius as his first non-freebie legendary and even spent some $$ on the game.
2. Reduce the chance on duplicate legendaries, no collector of heroes in a game that boasts a vast hero roster wants to see the same legendary hero over and over again. I have 6 Iron Bragos but don't even have a valkyrie or dracomorph yet?
3. Implement a meaningful PvP system, this cannot be achieved without resolving items 1 and 2 (hero diversity and balance is the key).

As it stands player churn seems to be at an all time high, lots of long time players dropping to 30+ days unplayed in my guild. I've reduced my spend considerably as I don't get any excitement after hitting another dupe legendary, knowing there is still a high number that I would like to collect that I will never get because the hero you get is based on pure RNG with the odds of getting specific heroes dropping with every new legendary hero release, even on 10X events.

This is the current state of RAID and the approach the devs have taken with trying to create content that justifies the broken summoning system is having the reverse affect (eg hydra and the "dupe" system) - people are spending less and quitting. 

They don't need me to tell them that, the numbers are there.