Hydra is end game content. But you are correct, it is a gear check similar to beating hard DT.  I think its the best content, tag arena is a close second. 

I respectfully disagree for two reasons.

1) I do fine in DT hard.  I get to floor 90'sh or so, but I haven't beaten it yet as the gear requirements up that high are pretty intense.  I'm also comparing this to Hydra normal, which should be nowhere near as hard as DT hard.

2) DT hard is fun.  So is tag arena.  Hydra is NOT fun at all.  It's a useless activity with poor rewards, and it's a failed attempt at content.  Hydra just makes no sense at all for 95% of people who play Raid.

A few things:

Using DT hard or really almost any piece of content to compare to Hydra - even normal, since it's meant to come after UNM CB - seems arbitary. It is even more of a gear and champion check than DT hard due to forcing you to having some specific champs, or specific types of champs. That is before RNG even comes into play.

With regards to DT Hard, we've seen each successive rotation become harder, too. So I think as new PvE content gets added it should be harder, but not punishing like Hydra is due to the mechanics and potential to flat out waste your time on a run. 

You don't necessarily need those kinds of stat thresholds on each champion you're running in Hydra, there are ways around that. Hydra doesn't need to be deleted, it needs to be fixed. Removing content from the game is not the way forward, if you want people to stick around. 

I say this all as someone who is in a clan that doesn't have mandatory Hydra hitters, as we all complain to each other in PMs the whole time, usually about Mischief/Decay/Blight showing up. We down Normal every week and I'd say we're on our way to Hard soonish. 

Also, I'd be curious to see what you've got going on champs wise, OP - if you care to and don't mind. 

There's a lot that is wrong with your statement.

1. You can't in the same breath say "i do fine in DT hard" and also say "i get to floor 90ish or so". That's like saying "i do fine in CB, i'm able to do brutal". DT hard really only starts getting truly difficult on the last 20-30 floors, when the waves start getting ultra high speeds and resists.
2. Hydra is intended to be endgame content. The easiest level on Hydra should be compared to a harder level of CB than UNM.
3. Hydra rewards are absolutely *not* poor. Mithrala is god-tier in arena, the two gearsets that are dropped are amazing in arena, and the other rewards are nothing to scoff at either.
4. Hydra isn't intended for 95% of the people who play Raid. I'd even go so far as to say it's not intended for 99% of the people who play Raid.

All that said - the only part I won't disagree with you on is the "not fun" part. I agree it's not terribly fun. But I think that's more a fault of the rest of the game being too time consuming, and not the Hydra fight itself being a problem.

Hydra is in no way intended to be at a difficulty level that begins after UNCB and DT hard upper floors.  They would not have made Hydra available to accounts that are in the early to mid game if that was the case.  It's just different content, with different mechanics, that's intended to be end-game material (like UNCB and DT hard are).  If I really am wrong here...then Raid should re-work Hydra so that I'm right.

The rewards are very niche and geared to platinum arena, so yes, the rewards are actually bad for the majority of players.

And getting to floor 95 on DT hard should be "fine".  I never said I am awesome there, or that I destroy it, or anything of the sort.  I would argue that floor 60-70 in DT hard is considered "fine".

The point here is that Hydra has missed the mark in many ways, and the boss legitimately has been bad for the game.  I'm glad you agree about the fun part, otherwise I would have thought you were just as nuts as the boss 😉.

I can't find a specific post, but I can 100% guarantee you that Hydra is indeed intended to be for UNM+ players. This has been stated by Plarium several times. Why they chose to not gate it behind any other content walls, you'll have to ask them.

A quick list:

Tyrant, Tatura, Archbishop, Demytha, Madame, Shamael, Umbral, Geomancer, Royal Guard, Doompriest, Vogoth, Ninja, Stag Night...those are the main ones I try rotations with.

I just got the normal chest today in fact, by making my Shamael slow with resistance.  Still only got 6M on the first run.  Still pretty rough.

I know it's my gear.  I struggle to get my resisantance and speed high enough to be legit against this boss.  If it was fun, and it didn't cost so much silver just make teams, I would put more effort into it.

Only 1 or 2 % of players have done DT hard, i am not sure creating content for less than 1% of the players is a great idea?

As for the rewards, personally feel its underwhelming, certainly for content that is supposed to be harder than CB i dont think the rewards are as good as CB

Couple of questions actually

Those with mithrala- how are you finding her and have you tried her with thea? i have a thea in the vault and thought they might work together.

Secondly once you have a mithrala what happens to the rewards? do u get more fragments? can u have more than 1?

Hydra is a bad business decision for Raid.  And if they really did intend for it to be for what...1% of players...it's an even worse business decision.  

If the rewards were better than CB, and the fight was fun, then the interest in Hydra would be high and people like me wouldn't post threads like this.  You absolutely know that CB rewards are WAY better than Hydra rewards.  In fact, DT rewards are better too.

I feel like Raid intended Hydra to make spenders spend because they thought the intense difficulty and RNG would pull them in.  And some are, but very few, the rest just don't enjoy the boss or the rewards.  It's actually costing the company money because people are playing less, or leaving.

This thread is interesting for someone who is struggline to get out of Silver Arena.  There are common aspects.  For me, getting to Gold seems like walking on the Moon.  But, I know that with time and patience I will get there.  Isnt it the same with all game content?  We love to bitch on the way up and then like the feeling once we get to the top.  

Maybe game managers are getting rich off Hydra.  It sound like something that whales would not like because its very strategy intensive.  It doesnt seem like an easy task to accomplish just with $$$

Are you sure about that, re: 1% and that being a useful metric here? 

1.6% of players have beaten Hard DT. In theory, there should be more scaling. Not arguing the flaws of Hydra, mind you. Just somewhat arbitrary measurements here. 

And again, the rewards are arguably better than CB due to Mithrala/Stone Skin. You can argue that changes after one gets Mithrala. I suppose there is an argument for how much a late game player values Stone Skin/Mithrala vs. shards/books, so perhaps it's not a case of being better, just weighted differently.

Without seeing the rest of your roster - and I think you suspect this - you do have at least one good comp available for Hydra on this rotation. if not other rotations. Just a matter of time investment and gearing, which I can definitely sympathize with. 

I think the 1% number of "players " is grossly low. Probably more like 5 to 10. The denominator, total players, is way lower than what people think. The big numbers thrown around i bet include bot farm accounts that never end up being played.

And the number of customers is certainly even lower. 

New content is always geared towards late gamers, new players shouldn't be focusing on it anyways. Lack of content for midgame is a non issue imo. 

I would be amazed if 5% of players play for a year or more.

And i think the vast majority of players will not complete DT hard in less than a year, as a long term veteran you may not realise what a significant  gear check DT hard is for most players 

But we do not see the figures, we are both guessing at the end of the day

i think you've hit the nail on the head regarding the rewards. they're great in the short term, but don't hold their value. mithrala is obvious; she's a one and done, so she stops being a motivator as soon as you have her. 

stoneskin is pretty similar. it's objectively a great armor set, but how many champions do you really expect to put in stoneskin sets? i'm currently at one and don't expect to go much beyond that and i feel like most accounts are only going to have a couple of champs at most. once you have those few outfitted, you might occasionally swap out for a better piece but on the whole, stoneskin is no longer a draw. compare that to the gear from cb. i've got dozens of champions that use cruel and immortal sets and i expect that trend to continue for as long as i play this game.

protection is more viable since it's useful in all areas of the game, while stoneskin is pretty focused on arena. that said, i still don't see myself using it much although here it's more of a supply/demand issue. i get maybe 5 or 6 protection artifacts a week and 90% of them get sold imediately. to get the maximum value from protection artifacts, you really want a full 6 pieces on a champ and after almost 6 months of hydra i could maybe do that for one champion if i use a couple substandard pieces of gear.

now, compare the above (plus the clan xp and gold, which are nice but not really a huge draw) to the rewards from cb. the armor, as mentioned,  is much more frequently applicable than either hydra set, but far more importantly i will always need more shards and more tomes. adding those into the hydra rewards would go a long way towards motivating people to hit it more frequently.

As mentioned Plarium see this as 'end game' but open it up at level 45 creating an obvious dichotomy, 45 is not end game and few at 45 will have 18 champs capable of even attempting hydra so they try and get wiped out and get frustrated

I don't think it's the rewards that put folk off, it's the time it takes and due to the awful rng, the fact that if mischief devours you might as well start over, a head with life barrier devours you might as well start over, the heads remove debuffs, steal buffs, spread buffs are on a way to short cooldown and the god awful 'speed' each round takes - things you can't do anything about, if there is a way to get a devoured out of the mischief that has life barrier I haven't found it apart from start over

Or just defining players differently.  The relevance of the metric is rooted in the definition of the numerator and denominator. 

If you accepted a definition of "active players " as :

Played game in last 7 days

Tenure 30+ days

Not a bot

Now if we replicate the above for customers, the percentage will further increase significantly. And this is the number that is of importance. 

Oh if you only consider active players over a month old the percentage rises.

Point taken on customers.

The 30 days was arbitrary, I have no idea what engagement metrics are for this industry.  But XX% of news always is a high attrition number.  

I like hydra. It is the the only content in game where you can do well with having optimal party setup and great but not outstanding gear as long as you want to play it on manual and pay attention to heads, their skills and trying to figure out what comes next.

It contradicts the auto-everything nature of gacha games in general, perhaps that's why people don't like it.

P.S though I agree that there should be easy level with only 3 heads, unlocking it at lvl45 makes no sense at all.