The community rep responded a bit today, though it’s mostly of the “we’re reconsidering this and that based on feedback and data metrics” (need to be logged in there to view this):
Limbo Changes and Endgame Goals [rep Rockjaw’s responses]
https://forum.marvelheroes.com/showthread.php/37792-Limbo-changes-and-endgame-goals?p=416241#post416241
Most hopeful part near the end…
Rockjaw: Difficulty modes are absolutely coming, so that’s covered. The endgame ideas you have are good, and there are more modes planned
Little more over here (same thread):
https://forum.marvelheroes.com/showthread.php/37792-Limbo-changes-and-endgame-goals?p=413181#post413181
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.
One thing he seems to make clear is they want/expect people to play several heroes. imho and others, even with the recent patch increasing drop chances, it just doesn’t seem like hero drops happen often enough and that combined with the generally high hero prices (I still think Black Widow for about $5.99 is a steal right now, but that’s an exception) seems to funnel most players into playing one or two characters up into the 40s-50s where the dearth of any variety of things to do is turning many folks off.
Now if it was a Diablo-type non MMO, you’d probably just head right back into a higher difficulty level version of storyline stuff around L25-26 and start over. And then maybe at 45-50 you’d complete that, and then you’d do it again at another difficulty.
I know Rockjaw said difficulty modes are planned – I’m not sure I know of a technical way they can pull that off in an MMO; you could maybe tune up all the instances in difficulty (storyline [as the terminals do to some extent], and just the routine mini-instances/dungeons), but I’m not sure how you’d make the open game zones a different difficulty - since that impacts every player running around in them - unless you instanced a zone version for, say, L25-L50 characters only. It’ll be interesting to see how Gazillion handles that.
imho, this is part of the tough challenge of trying to sell a hack’n’slash clickfest as an mmorpg. Players of the latter generally have a very different set of expectations. They’ll generally keep taking a character through the game as the dev adds more content and raises the level cap; but they don’t usually expect to get the character to a level cap and then have to do everything all over again. They may want to do certain instances repeatedly for the loot, which I guess is what Limbo and the terminals are trying to do.
I guess in a perfect world Gazillion would’ve gotten another year to add storyline content, build up the endgame in variety and rewards, and flesh out the PVP. But like seemingly all MMOs, at some point the publisher says, “Release it now, we need revenue.” That may or may not be true, but I’ll stand by my theory in the absence of inside info. :-)