Unpopular Opinion: League Challenges Should Require Solo Completion

Every league, the forums and Reddit light up with the same tired complaints:

"This challenge is too hard!"
"League content is overtuned!"
"This boss fight is unfair!"
"This needs a nerf!"

But let’s be honest, most of this is coming from players running junky ZHP builds that collapse the second an enemy breathes in their direction. No defenses, no investment, no mechanical understanding, and instead of adjusting their build or learning the game, they just dump a stack of Divines into carry services and cry when the content isn’t trivial.

Challenges used to mean something.
Back in the day, seeing someone with a full challenge set was a “whoa, this guy’s a monster” moment. Now? Everything from Uber boss kills to map completion is up for sale. It’s all on rotation in carry discords, and the MTX has gone from badge of honor to glorified participation trophy.

Sure, it's “whatever” on the surface, but when people who refuse to put in any effort start complaining that even basic encounters are “too hard” while running the same unoptimized dumpster fire of a build over and over again...
Maybe they shouldn’t be walking away with free MTX like they earned something.

Next league, challenges should require solo-only completion.

No credit if another player enters your instance, No kill credit from tag-alongs or co-op cheese.

You want the reward? Do the content yourself. Period.

I’m not even saying lock challenges to full SSF mode, though honestly, I’d be down for it. Let trade league stay, but if we’re being real? Trade league challenge rewards have become meaningless when buying your way through them is the norm.

Since SSF still has its own issues (and isn’t everyone's cup of tea), the better solution is clear, carefully word challenge requirements to banish carry runs.
Solo instance only. No help. No shortcuts.

That alone would separate those who actually engage with the game from those just paying to opt out of playing.

You shouldn’t be able to run a zero defense, no-scaling, scuffed build and still walk away with a full set of league rewards just because you dumped Divines into carry services or auto-completion Discords.

And if we’re being completely honest, we’ve all seen this movie before.
From pure ZHP meme builds with not a single defensive layer complaining about getting one-shot... often, to players copy-pasting a Mageblood PoB and forgetting the part where they don’t actually have a Mageblood, then acting shocked when tougher enemies delete them in two frames.

If that stings?
It probably applies to you.

The game isn’t too hard, some of you just don’t want to earn your progress anymore, and honestly, it’s more than time that GGG should reconsider how they design these challenges.

Player services have been a thing since beta but I find it's also pretty obvious who plays in groups and who doesn't based on the time it takes them to hit 36 or 40. A lot of that though is because Challenges are rarely 'challenges' anymore. They're just grinding. Which groups do faster.

I haven't even started this league yet but over the past few years they've also notably increased the time investment for challenge rewards. 100 Labs was always the best laugh.

AT least they stopped with the stupid 38 Challenge mark.

L take -1, nobody wants to be forced to play SSF. That's a boring playstyle where everything is grindy and takes way too long.

People can play the game however they want, and carry services even for stuff like bosses and voidsotnes are a huge part of the SC Trade economy. That isn't going away lmfao

If I wanna throw 6 divines at someone for 30x T17 completions, I will happily do so and have fun while doing it. Same for uber bosses, even though I could do them myself after spending some more divs on gear. It still takes skill to do challenges fast you know, to solely focus on them and figure out the best,fastest and most optimal ways to do them. And sometimes those ways are going to TFT or trade 820 and whispering some people for carries lol

And people can play whatever build they want, this is a game. Who cares if someone wants to delete bosses in 1 second,trivialize all content and ignore all mechanics? We all deserve the freedom to choose how to enjoy this game.


I've even given challenge carries for Black Knight's challenges where you had to not get hit by his abilities during Settlers to random people in 820 chat by the way. That one and the Catarina "don't get hit by statue's banana beam" challenge. Was inviting 5 other people every time I got those bosses and giving it to em for free, because that's just fun to do as a part of the SC community. And some people were cool and even gave me tips when I never asked for any currency.

You might not like the truth, but many people love the concept of buying carries and doing carries, for challenges,for bosses and even for labyrinth.



And as far as I'm concerned, I still did the challenges. I have still completed them, doesn't matter how. I feel the exact same sense of achievement when I buy a carry as I do when doing a challenge myself, there is 0 difference between the two because I simply do them in the fastest and easiest way possible, whatever that may be.



Also what the person above this comment said, most challenges are just boring grinds now. It's just "do X maps with Y mechanic" etc. etc. and even I was able to speedrun them in 6 days without grouping. The only carries I bought was 4x Uber Boss kills and 30x T17 completion. And Maven+Uber Elder voidstones I guess.

Just make the boss quests for your stones solo only. That'd probably be a good place to start.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

You want the reward? Do the content yourself. Period.

Then GGG better make sure their challenges aren't some stupidly niche conditional requirement that may be difficult if not impossible to achieve based on the build archetype you're using.

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Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

Then GGG better make sure their challenges aren't some stupidly niche conditional requirement that may be difficult if not impossible to achieve based on the build archetype you're using.

Isn’t this already the case though? We don’t really have oddly specific challenges that can only be done with certain archetypes or builds. Like, any league mechanic, boss fight, or even stuff like invitations can be done with pretty much any build. Mapping, T17s, Ubers, literally any build can handle those. Sure, some builds might need more gear than others, but in the end, it’s not impossible for any build to reach that level without needing mirror-tier gear. Plus, there are plenty of challenges to choose from, so Ubers aren’t even required for the full set of skins unless you’re going for 40/40.

It mostly comes down to gear and skill, and overcoming those challenges yourself would push players to actually work towards it rather than just bypassing everything with a carry. Looking at the community and some indivuduals , it would honestly be a good change to encourage players to improve their gameplay and character-building skills, instead of complaining that the game is too hard while relying on carries at all times. It’d be a good shift to make those players actually earn the MTX rewards, rather than just demanding the game be made easier for them while they skip the hard part entirely.

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Henide#3803 wrote:

People playing with friends in a multiplayer game ? How very horrible.

Oh yeah, the carry market is booming because everyone’s just hanging out with their best friends, right? Lol. It’s not like changing challenges would affect that at all... unless your “friends” are the ones charging you for a carry. lol

While I completely agree with your premise, OP, or at least as I interpret it:

"The ability to buy challenge completions completely devalues them,"

I disagree with your conclusion/solution. You want GGG to not count challenges unless you complete them in SSF, because that would be a more pure completion of the challenge.

I want people to realize that challenge completion is absolutely meaningless, and serious people don't actually care about the number next to someone's name.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

I disagree with your conclusion/solution. You want GGG to not count challenges unless you complete them in SSF, because that would be a more pure completion of the challenge..

Nobody said it should be SSF exclusive. I think you might have misunderstood the suggestion.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

I disagree with your conclusion/solution. You want GGG to not count challenges unless you complete them in SSF, because that would be a more pure completion of the challenge..

Nobody said it should be SSF exclusive. I think you might have misunderstood the suggestion.

If you aren't going to make it SSF exclusive, there's absolutely zero point in your suggestion. There's no functional difference in someone buying challenges and buying a broken build which can AFK the challenges.