Gotham Knights recently got an update that introduce numerous new features and cosmetics to the game. There are new skins, colorways, and most importantly two new game modes. The first mode is showdown, where two players can refight a buffed campaign character such as Mr. Freeze or Harley Quinn for some extra rewards.
The second game mode is called Heroic Assault. This game mode allows four different players to take on an arena-like mission together and face multiple waves of enemies. While the premise of this game mode may seem perfect at first glance, it has been a point of contention since its release. With the inclusion of Heroic Assault, players have noticed a few negative aspects of the game mode itself. Heroic Assault even goes so far as to imbalance Gotham Knight's loot system.
Heroic Assault Can Be Repetitive
Heroic assault is an arena-like mission that allows four players to band together in order to complete objectives and fight off rounds of enemies. There are 30 floors in total that players will need to make it through, not too unlike completing a multi-leveled tower in Mortal Kombat. Only each level will be filled with both enemies and tasks that need to be taken care of, like shutting off terminals or escorting cargo to a safe location. Although Heroic Assault can be taken on solo, the last handful of floors can be challenging enough even with a team.
Despite the challenge of the last few floors, most of the floors are quite manageable. In fact, once players learn the pattern of each floor, they may not find too much variety from there on out. Fighting off goons and securing an objective is about the extent of the content in Heroic Assault, which can start to get repetitive. Having a team to play with is certainly appreciated, and almost endless combat can be fun, but having more variety between each floor could make the whole team a lot happier. Even the last floor doesn't exactly offer a huge boss fight as a conclusion but instead gives more important cargo to protect: Starro, trapped in a tank.
Perhaps a final note on the mode's repetitiveness could be on the map designs. Gotham itself is filled with a dynamic atmosphere. Always dark and mysterious yet vibrant in its own way, with crime around every corner. In Heroic Assault, however, players are subjected to fighting in what appears to be some assortments of dark, empty rooms and abandoned mining facilities. While these rooms have no doubt been tailored to the spacial needs of a four-person party and numerous waves of enemies, the feeling of each room still leaves something to be desired in comparison to the rest of Gotham.
Heroic Assault Wastes Player's Gear
The biggest problem with Heroic Assault is the way loot has been implemented into the game mode. Completing all 30 floors with a team will essentially guarantee some good rewards and level 60 gear every time. However, Heroic Assault can be accessed fairly quickly by any player, even if their gear is nowhere near level 60, and they have plenty of campaign left.
This means that by including such good rewards in Heroic Assault, it makes all other content redundant. After finishing just one game, players may start to see other challenging missions lack necessary loot for a mission to feel properly rewarding. Even the most challenging showdown missions will only give loot that is on par with that of heroic assault, making this new game mode necessary rather than optional for progression.
On top of this, many players have noticed some of their loot like blueprints disappearing from their inventory after playing through Heroic Assault. Instead of allowing an inventory to fill up, the game's system will now delete blueprints, mods, and the like that are considered obsolete and irrelevant. This means if players have a mod that they care about or a blueprint they plan to take care of later on, but it is only level 50, it may be automatically deleted after playing Heroic Assault to make room for the new level 60 gear. It's clear that although the new updates and game modes hold promise, there are still a few kinks that need to be worked out and players should be aware of them until future patches.