Well my loyalty is going down really. I counted the loyalty from the unopened crystals in the equation of loyalty evening out. But the updated costs don't lead me to make interesting choices between AW and AQ, it leads me to just make an alt so I can do both. And with the biggest source of loyalty coming from War, it hurts alliances who would prefer to just focus on AQ. Conceptually I understand the changes and why they were made, but it pushes burnout more than it pushes fun in my opinion. I think Kabam can do a better job at moving the game forward in a way that doesn't burn players out.
Hypothetically speaking, Kabam could take the players' psychology out of the equation. Instead of using high costs to step progress they could put alliances on rails. They could limit alliances to no more than one Map 7 per week, no matter how much resources they have. Then six months later they could increase that limit to two. Then they could look at resource earning averages and if those supported it they could increase that limit to three. They could take the spending costs out of the player's hands and put everyone on a max budget. No one would be allowed to push harder for more resources to unlock more Map 7s than anyone else, so there's no more rat race to push for higher donation spending.
That creates the stepped progress you generally want to have, while also eliminating the possibility for players to push past reasonable limits. It also takes control out of the players' hands. That's not a coincidence. Burnout is a function of players given the opportunity to push higher than healthy. You eliminate burnout in only one of two ways. You make it impossible to push that high, or you make it worthless to push that high. This makes it impossible. We could also cap Map 7 rewards with throttles which would make it worthless to push too high. There are games that exist that do one or both of these. But are either of these a good idea?
Hopefully my reply here doesn't post twice. I typed something up, hit post comment and it looked like it didn't send. So going to try again:
Putting a hard limit taking control away from players is one option. Increasing the ramp up in difficulty is another. And I'm sure there are other creative ways to impose a limit on how frequently players can run map 7. I'm sure there are ways to even give back some other type of control if some control is taken from players too.
Your comment about players burning out from pushing higher than healthy is something I agree with in some areas of the game, like arena, but when it comes to something like map 7, I think creative solutions can help to create something fun and challenging while lowering the burnout a bit.
It's impossible to completely get rid of the burnout while adding difficulty, but for example, lower the AQ entry cost, but sell items for players that need it. Sell AQ energy refills (without increasing the time needed to naturally get through the map). Sell an item that brings you back to the start of the map so that you can cover for someone who needs the night off of AQ or if you took the wrong path by accident. Sell AQ specific boosts. And if these items costs too much, then players need to work harder on their fighting skills, their organization skills, and time management.
I think these skills that players develop over time is something that should be challenged with higher level maps, and not necessarily how well you can grind resources. And I'm someone who enjoys resource management and thinking about how best to get the various resources we need. I like the interesting choices that need to be made with them. I'm not asking for that to go away. I'm not asking for donation costs to be removed entirely. But I do think things have gotten out of hand here and maybe there are better ways to move the game forward.
@Kabam Miike it’s good to hear you guys are addressing the purchasing of map cost resources from bots and the like.
I gather from this release that 7x5 every week isn’t the intention for nearly any alliance, as legitimately farming those resources is almost impossible. But similar to AW, the significant increase in rewards for finishing at the top incentivizes some to break the rules. If any alliances are buying resources from bots, those playing fairly will never be able to compete.
Have you given any thought to adjusting the rewards from arena grinding so the cost can be achieved by those willing to invest reasonable time? If the answer is “no”, then when can we expect Kabam to level the playing field by punishing those alliances who gain an unfair advantage?
@Kabam Miike it’s good to hear you guys are addressing the purchasing of map cost resources from bots and the like.
I gather from this release that 7x5 every week isn’t the intention for nearly any alliance, as legitimately farming those resources is almost impossible. But similar to AW, the significant increase in rewards for finishing at the top incentivizes some to break the rules. If any alliances are buying resources from bots, those playing fairly will never be able to compete.
Have you given any thought to adjusting the rewards from arena grinding so the cost can be achieved by those willing to invest reasonable time? If the answer is “no”, then when can we expect Kabam to level the playing field by punishing those alliances who gain an unfair advantage?
Why aren’t you actually mad at that? Instead of other players?
How about you address the real issue with those that make the game?
It is steep, but it is not a typo! Map 7 is meant to be High Risk, High Reward and a pretty big investment to run!
That's the thing; it's not a big investment to alliances that buy "donation drops" from 3rd party players. If these "black market donations" aren't addressed then there will be no legitimate alliances placing highly in AQ anymore
We are working to address this behaviour. I don't have any details right now, and can't share much on what we're doing anyways, but we haven't forgotten about that.
I just want to chime in on this comment without making any accusations. Others have already brought up what the "problem" is but the blame seems to fall on the alliance's behavior like it's solely their fault. I don't think you should disallow alternate accounts to come in and donate for an alliance then leave. If you allow players to have multiple accounts, those players should be able to do anything within the game that they want with those accounts.
The problem that should be targeted is *HOW* these alternate accounts get their resources. What means are they using to populate resources on that account. If you were to find any problem or illicit behavior there, that right there is what you should target and not the alliances. I know it's a fragile subject with lots of input from both sides, but just saying that it's a grim road to go after alliances rather than the real SOURCE for this behavior.
Map 6 is still linked to arena grinder and staying attentive all day due to energy requirements and linked nodes . It has nothing to do with being skilled . Terrible game design . In this case, yoh really are catering to the top 50 alliances
For those only running MAP-5 and Below... Will anything be done to allow Leaders to refund Treasury Battlechips back to members since there is 0 cost to run Map-5 now ? Or possibly just make that a feature Leaders can do for any of the 3 Treasury accounts (if an alliance has built up an over abundance). Allow disbursement EVENLY to all members of XX amount of a category ? Or would this cause problems with higher alliances who have been getting “outside donations” from 5-minute members (“dark treasury”), and be an unintended way for them to skirt the spirit of fairplay ? Maybe if it were only applicable to Battlechips (the “free” category for 5 and below) it would avoid the higher problem (which seems limited more to Loyalty costs).
ALSO, just to clarify.. Does the GLOBAL CLASS BUFF boost apply to our own attackers, or does that apply to the Map Defenders, or to EVERYONE (attackers and defenders alike) ?
When map 6 was introduced it was repeatedly sold to us on the concept that it was not intended to be ran every day. However it did not provide a reason not to run it every day for those trying to get the highest rewards. Many alliances ran a day or two to allow them to get t4cc every other week. But a few, and even more now do 6x5. So if there isn't a difficulty barrier to 7x5 then it will be ran by the top alliances. Money gating the donations will force out free to play players. If that happens I expect you to no longer market this as a free game.
When map 6 was introduced it was repeatedly sold to us on the concept that it was not intended to be ran every day. However it did not provide a reason not to run it every day for those trying to get the highest rewards. Many alliances ran a day or two to allow them to get t4cc every other week. But a few, and even more now do 6x5. So if there isn't a difficulty barrier to 7x5 then it will be ran by the top alliances. Money gating the donations will force out free to play players. If that happens I expect you to no longer market this as a free game.
There are 52 weeks in a year and 46 AQ cycles in a year. Assuming tier 3 war (think it’s safe to say 7x5 will at least compete there) with a 50% win rate, 1000 loyalty per war crystal earned and other sources of loyalty like the help system and 1 day events. You’ll earn 2.09m loyalty a year and spend 2.3m loyalty on AQ. That’s a difference of 210k loyalty over the year or a 10% loyalty deficit. Is that deficit made up from sources unaccounted for (like free AQs) or larger than accounted for (like war down time)? Calling it a money gate is jumping the gun.
Putting a hard limit taking control away from players is one option. Increasing the ramp up in difficulty is another.
Increasing the ramp up difficulty isn't a solution. It is converting the problem from one thing into another even more problematic thing.
You can make content more or less difficult, but difficulty is extremely tricky to use as a progress gate all by itself. You generally find that you're surrounding difficulty with other resource-based gates, and then you're farming resources again.
You mention this yourself:
It's impossible to completely get rid of the burnout while adding difficulty, but for example, lower the AQ entry cost, but sell items for players that need it. Sell AQ energy refills (without increasing the time needed to naturally get through the map). Sell an item that brings you back to the start of the map so that you can cover for someone who needs the night off of AQ or if you took the wrong path by accident. Sell AQ specific boosts. And if these items costs too much, then players need to work harder on their fighting skills, their organization skills, and time management.
This eliminates entry costs and replaces them with booster-like costs. And this presumes that the difficulty ramp up is high enough to actually make those boosts all but mandatory. If it isn't, then this sneakily replaces the gate with a turnstile that skilled enough players can simply pass through unimpeded. And then it is no longer gated progress.
The ultimate problem with making difficulty a true progress gate is that all progress gates don't exist in isolation: they are paired with the means to eventually traverse them. If resource costs are the gate, then ways to earn the resource are the method of traversing them. If you try to eliminate excessive farming and replace that with difficulty then the question becomes how do you engineer difficulty so that it functions properly? Some people will just happen to be able to "skill" their way past that difficulty gate, while others might find it basically impossible.
Some might say that's perfectly fine, but then all you're really saying is that the game developer shouldn't actually be trying to manage progress; just make an obstacle course and if the players shoot through it, whatever. But that's simply not how games like this are managed. You can suggest it, but no one will ever take the suggestion.
As someone that I think has excellent meta-gaming resource management skills, can you think of a specific gating hurdle that 4Loki would be able to get past once, maybe twice a week, but would settle for that and wouldn't try to get past every single day, if not in week one than as quickly as possible? Because if you and your alliance would make every attempt to get past the gate as quickly as possible, and presumably so would all other top alliances, then the gate either becomes ineffective or just as much as source of burn out as anything else.
Is the loyalty cost a typo by any chance? It's not just a small increase from what alliances who are currently running 6x5 are paying, it's nearly double.
Current 6x5 is 34,000 and 7x5 is 50,000. That’s about 50% though. Dunno if ya’ll dip from extras or account for the 8day cycle and 7day week of donations to Reduce the cost to 28,000.
Yeah I was doing the math in my head instead of looking at the charts which is why I said nearly double. But a 50% increase is still too much for a resource that isn't farmable. This is just leading to less fun and more burnout.
Somewhat yeah.
But here is something else to think about when comparing to 6x5. *Assuming the numbers and sheets i have are correct.
77666 is less donos.
77766 is +5k loyalty, less BCs.
77776 is +10k loyalty, less BCs, +100k gold.
And 77777 is +16k loyalty, same BCs and +166k gold.
Looking at it from there the increased costs are mostly in running 7 on the final 2 days which would be going harder on map 7 than almost all allies did when map 6 was introduced.
I understand what you are saying. I'm sure Kabam thought the same thing with these changes. But at the end of the day, it's way more efficient to farm up resources on an alt to cover the costs and just run 77777 than sacrifice map 7 days. Running all map 6 has been fine without making an alt, but my loyalty is at a stand still. It doesn't go up, doesn't go down, and that's with occasionally skipping out on the 3 minute boosts.
At the end of the day it will all be possible to do, and do legitimately, but is it healthy for the game? Not in my opinion.
While the loyalty costs to run 7x5 are beyond what an individual can earn in a week. I have to ask are you opening your war crystals? They contain a significant amount of loyalty which would make your loyalty rate artificially low.
What are other loyalty expenditures you’ve had in the past?
Should it be 7x5 and war boosts? Could it be 7x5 or war boosts? Or like all areas of the game (most games), if you want to do everything you’re going to need a lot of time or money.
Well my loyalty is going down really. I counted the loyalty from the unopened crystals in the equation of loyalty evening out. But the updated costs don't lead me to make interesting choices between AW and AQ, it leads me to just make an alt so I can do both. And with the biggest source of loyalty coming from War, it hurts alliances who would prefer to just focus on AQ. Conceptually I understand the changes and why they were made, but it pushes burnout more than it pushes fun in my opinion. I think Kabam can do a better job at moving the game forward in a way that doesn't burn players out.
They're pushing to get end game p2f players out. They want the rewards and costs high enough that people will pay to get them. Making the end game easy without having to spend doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint.
I've always wondered if there was going to be a point where you would have to make a hard decision about sticking w/ 4loki (either change allys or change how you play to cover the costs/prestige). It looks like that day might come, unfortunately.
Is the loyalty cost a typo by any chance? It's not just a small increase from what alliances who are currently running 6x5 are paying, it's nearly double.
Current 6x5 is 34,000 and 7x5 is 50,000. That’s about 50% though. Dunno if ya’ll dip from extras or account for the 8day cycle and 7day week of donations to Reduce the cost to 28,000.
Yeah I was doing the math in my head instead of looking at the charts which is why I said nearly double. But a 50% increase is still too much for a resource that isn't farmable. This is just leading to less fun and more burnout.
Somewhat yeah.
But here is something else to think about when comparing to 6x5. *Assuming the numbers and sheets i have are correct.
77666 is less donos.
77766 is +5k loyalty, less BCs.
77776 is +10k loyalty, less BCs, +100k gold.
And 77777 is +16k loyalty, same BCs and +166k gold.
Looking at it from there the increased costs are mostly in running 7 on the final 2 days which would be going harder on map 7 than almost all allies did when map 6 was introduced.
I understand what you are saying. I'm sure Kabam thought the same thing with these changes. But at the end of the day, it's way more efficient to farm up resources on an alt to cover the costs and just run 77777 than sacrifice map 7 days. Running all map 6 has been fine without making an alt, but my loyalty is at a stand still. It doesn't go up, doesn't go down, and that's with occasionally skipping out on the 3 minute boosts.
At the end of the day it will all be possible to do, and do legitimately, but is it healthy for the game? Not in my opinion.
While the loyalty costs to run 7x5 are beyond what an individual can earn in a week. I have to ask are you opening your war crystals? They contain a significant amount of loyalty which would make your loyalty rate artificially low.
What are other loyalty expenditures you’ve had in the past?
Should it be 7x5 and war boosts? Could it be 7x5 or war boosts? Or like all areas of the game (most games), if you want to do everything you’re going to need a lot of time or money.
Well my loyalty is going down really. I counted the loyalty from the unopened crystals in the equation of loyalty evening out. But the updated costs don't lead me to make interesting choices between AW and AQ, it leads me to just make an alt so I can do both. And with the biggest source of loyalty coming from War, it hurts alliances who would prefer to just focus on AQ. Conceptually I understand the changes and why they were made, but it pushes burnout more than it pushes fun in my opinion. I think Kabam can do a better job at moving the game forward in a way that doesn't burn players out.
You've brought up some really good points today, and I want to tell you that we've already started discussing your concerns here. I don't have any more to add than that right now, but just wanted you to know that we're not ignoring you or your concerns, and are going to discuss this more after we look into some stuff.
They're pushing to get end game p2f players out. They want the rewards and costs high enough that people will pay to get them. Making the end game easy without having to spend doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint.
I can't speak directly for Kabam, but most free to play games would give anything to have a Brian Grant as a player, because the fundamental monetization strategy for free to play games is not to squeeze as much money as possible from every single player, it is actually to attract as many players as possible with the understanding that a percentage of them will convert to paying players. Being able to claim that little or nothing of the game is stuck behind a paywall is one of the best ways to attract new players.
Putting a hard limit taking control away from players is one option. Increasing the ramp up in difficulty is another.
Increasing the ramp up difficulty isn't a solution. It is converting the problem from one thing into another even more problematic thing.
You can make content more or less difficult, but difficulty is extremely tricky to use as a progress gate all by itself. You generally find that you're surrounding difficulty with other resource-based gates, and then you're farming resources again.
You mention this yourself:
It's impossible to completely get rid of the burnout while adding difficulty, but for example, lower the AQ entry cost, but sell items for players that need it. Sell AQ energy refills (without increasing the time needed to naturally get through the map). Sell an item that brings you back to the start of the map so that you can cover for someone who needs the night off of AQ or if you took the wrong path by accident. Sell AQ specific boosts. And if these items costs too much, then players need to work harder on their fighting skills, their organization skills, and time management.
This eliminates entry costs and replaces them with booster-like costs. And this presumes that the difficulty ramp up is high enough to actually make those boosts all but mandatory. If it isn't, then this sneakily replaces the gate with a turnstile that skilled enough players can simply pass through unimpeded. And then it is no longer gated progress.
The ultimate problem with making difficulty a true progress gate is that all progress gates don't exist in isolation: they are paired with the means to eventually traverse them. If resource costs are the gate, then ways to earn the resource are the method of traversing them. If you try to eliminate excessive farming and replace that with difficulty then the question becomes how do you engineer difficulty so that it functions properly? Some people will just happen to be able to "skill" their way past that difficulty gate, while others might find it basically impossible.
Some might say that's perfectly fine, but then all you're really saying is that the game developer shouldn't actually be trying to manage progress; just make an obstacle course and if the players shoot through it, whatever. But that's simply not how games like this are managed. You can suggest it, but no one will ever take the suggestion.
As someone that I think has excellent meta-gaming resource management skills, can you think of a specific gating hurdle that 4Loki would be able to get past once, maybe twice a week, but would settle for that and wouldn't try to get past every single day, if not in week one than as quickly as possible? Because if you and your alliance would make every attempt to get past the gate as quickly as possible, and presumably so would all other top alliances, then the gate either becomes ineffective or just as much as source of burn out as anything else.
Map 7 is tough. Really tough. It's very possible (and very likely) that my alliance won't be able to clear 7x5 from the start and I'm alright with that.
I still think there are other changes that can be made outside of just increasing the cost though. Because if map 7 is tough enough to pull top alliances away from only considering AW for rank ups (it should be, and that's why map 7 is exciting), then we should be able to push our rosters in that direction without thinking, "Well, we can't afford the donations when we get there anyway." I think a lot of what you said here makes sense, but I also think the other game modes and systems do a lot to help with the issues you brought up. Some skilled players might be able to get through map 7 no problem, especially after doing a lot of planning work and building their rosters for it, but then maybe they lose some of their power in war, and that's a trade off they have to make. Or maybe their prestige suffers because they ranked for utility instead of prestige whereas another group of even more skilled players can rank for prestige and use weaker champions to get by.
Just to comment on some of the other comments in this thread and what people might be thinking: I'm not voicing these concerns because I feel like it will be impossible to keep up as a F2P player. I'm just giving feedback on one specific part of this update that I strongly feel has a lot of room for improvement. Whether someone spends or not, the extra donations, especially of something that can't be farmed, will definitely burn people out. There's a lot of good in this update otherwise.
Making sure, but with the Glory Store... some people in my alliance I think are maybe misunderstanding this. How I'm understanding it is that we'll have access to fully formed t1, 2 and 3 class catalysts (of the same class as the t4cc fragments for that day) all of those, EVERY WEEK. As in on every tech day, we'll be able to buy one of each of those class catalysts. However, from what I understand, my alliance mates are reading that as t1 one week, t2 the next, and t3 after that, and then reset that cycle. Can I have confirmation on which one is correct?
We briefly mention it in the post, but Map 6 will now reward up to 7,000 Gold per Battlegroup completion. Map 5 will still award Battlechips but since it no longer costs any, you'll end up in a net positive amount of Battlechips by running Map 5
Having played this game since beta, back when Captain Marvel had her hair showing & not the mask, I still don't understand why we can't get more than just gold on the return for completion of map 6. Yes, I understand that receiving gold is a new option for a map that didn't return anything at all, but in all honesty, we should get a return back on everything, more so with loyalty since that's the one resource that's as easily attainable as the others, with the exception of "hitting the help, winning AW matches, a few minimal claimable rewards from events, & the AW win/loss crystals" but even then, it's not like we get much from any of those sources either. The cost per player in Map 6 now will be:
292K Gold
30K BCs
21K Loyalty
receiving "up to" 7K gold back per day is a joke, if I receive the full 7K (since it's "up to") comes out to 35K in total, & quite honestly it's insulting, especially if players have to put up 292K for all 5 days, they should get back at minimum 73K gold which is 25%. With the amount of time we all put into your game, in spite of all your mishaps throughout the years since launching this game, I don't think it's too much to ask for you guys to reconsider the payout structure of resources used when completing the map. We should get something back for all resources used, ESPECIALLY LOYALTY! The same can be said for Map 7 too. It doesn't matter what the rewards are for these maps, it doesn't hurt your company to not bleed us dry of resources by giving a small % back, it's just good business. This will probably fall on deaf ears, but whatever, I've said my piece.
When map 6 was introduced it was repeatedly sold to us on the concept that it was not intended to be ran every day. However it did not provide a reason not to run it every day for those trying to get the highest rewards. Many alliances ran a day or two to allow them to get t4cc every other week. But a few, and even more now do 6x5. So if there isn't a difficulty barrier to 7x5 then it will be ran by the top alliances. Money gating the donations will force out free to play players. If that happens I expect you to no longer market this as a free game.
There are 52 weeks in a year and 46 AQ cycles in a year. Assuming tier 3 war (think it’s safe to say 7x5 will at least compete there) with a 50% win rate, 1000 loyalty per war crystal earned and other sources of loyalty like the help system and 1 day events. You’ll earn 2.09m loyalty a year and spend 2.3m loyalty on AQ. That’s a difference of 210k loyalty over the year or a 10% loyalty deficit. Is that deficit made up from sources unaccounted for (like free AQs) or larger than accounted for (like war down time)? Calling it a money gate is jumping the gun.
You know as well as I do, that loyalty does not solely get used for AQ donations. Loyalty is also used for buying the class specific and alliance war specific boosts. For the players that are constantly taking the boss in order not to timeout they have to use every boost that they can. How is the free to play player expected to make their donations when they can't donate loyalty with units because the conversion badge is money gated?
When map 6 was introduced it was repeatedly sold to us on the concept that it was not intended to be ran every day. However it did not provide a reason not to run it every day for those trying to get the highest rewards. Many alliances ran a day or two to allow them to get t4cc every other week. But a few, and even more now do 6x5. So if there isn't a difficulty barrier to 7x5 then it will be ran by the top alliances. Money gating the donations will force out free to play players. If that happens I expect you to no longer market this as a free game.
There are 52 weeks in a year and 46 AQ cycles in a year. Assuming tier 3 war (think it’s safe to say 7x5 will at least compete there) with a 50% win rate, 1000 loyalty per war crystal earned and other sources of loyalty like the help system and 1 day events. You’ll earn 2.09m loyalty a year and spend 2.3m loyalty on AQ. That’s a difference of 210k loyalty over the year or a 10% loyalty deficit. Is that deficit made up from sources unaccounted for (like free AQs) or larger than accounted for (like war down time)? Calling it a money gate is jumping the gun.
You know as well as I do, that loyalty does not solely get used for AQ donations. Loyalty is also used for buying the class specific and alliance war specific boosts. For the players that are constantly taking the boss in order not to timeout they have to use every boost that they can. How is the free to play player expected to make their donations when they can't donate loyalty with units because the conversion badge is money gated?
You don’t need boosts to do those things, you choose to use boosts for those things so I cannot follow the argument that loyalty is required to do play AW.
You haven’t shown 7x5 requires a conversion badge.
When map 6 was introduced it was repeatedly sold to us on the concept that it was not intended to be ran every day. However it did not provide a reason not to run it every day for those trying to get the highest rewards. Many alliances ran a day or two to allow them to get t4cc every other week. But a few, and even more now do 6x5. So if there isn't a difficulty barrier to 7x5 then it will be ran by the top alliances. Money gating the donations will force out free to play players. If that happens I expect you to no longer market this as a free game.
There are 52 weeks in a year and 46 AQ cycles in a year. Assuming tier 3 war (think it’s safe to say 7x5 will at least compete there) with a 50% win rate, 1000 loyalty per war crystal earned and other sources of loyalty like the help system and 1 day events. You’ll earn 2.09m loyalty a year and spend 2.3m loyalty on AQ. That’s a difference of 210k loyalty over the year or a 10% loyalty deficit. Is that deficit made up from sources unaccounted for (like free AQs) or larger than accounted for (like war down time)? Calling it a money gate is jumping the gun.
You know as well as I do, that loyalty does not solely get used for AQ donations. Loyalty is also used for buying the class specific and alliance war specific boosts. For the players that are constantly taking the boss in order not to timeout they have to use every boost that they can. How is the free to play player expected to make their donations when they can't donate loyalty with units because the conversion badge is money gated?
You don’t need boosts to do those things, you choose to use boosts for those things so I cannot follow the argument that loyalty is required to do play AW.
You haven’t shown 7x5 requires a conversion badge.
The people not using those boosts do not stay in tier one alliance war, they are not in alliances competitive enough to attempt 7x5. Those boosts are required right now in alliance war at the highest end. The people who don't use them, don't stay in those alliances very long. Summoner's right now use the conversion badge just to be able to stay afloat with donation and boosts usage. Increasing that load is only going to make that more prevalent. There isn't a single person in tier one alliance war who isn't boosting.
When map 6 was introduced it was repeatedly sold to us on the concept that it was not intended to be ran every day. However it did not provide a reason not to run it every day for those trying to get the highest rewards. Many alliances ran a day or two to allow them to get t4cc every other week. But a few, and even more now do 6x5. So if there isn't a difficulty barrier to 7x5 then it will be ran by the top alliances. Money gating the donations will force out free to play players. If that happens I expect you to no longer market this as a free game.
There are 52 weeks in a year and 46 AQ cycles in a year. Assuming tier 3 war (think it’s safe to say 7x5 will at least compete there) with a 50% win rate, 1000 loyalty per war crystal earned and other sources of loyalty like the help system and 1 day events. You’ll earn 2.09m loyalty a year and spend 2.3m loyalty on AQ. That’s a difference of 210k loyalty over the year or a 10% loyalty deficit. Is that deficit made up from sources unaccounted for (like free AQs) or larger than accounted for (like war down time)? Calling it a money gate is jumping the gun.
You know as well as I do, that loyalty does not solely get used for AQ donations. Loyalty is also used for buying the class specific and alliance war specific boosts. For the players that are constantly taking the boss in order not to timeout they have to use every boost that they can. How is the free to play player expected to make their donations when they can't donate loyalty with units because the conversion badge is money gated?
You don’t need boosts to do those things, you choose to use boosts for those things so I cannot follow the argument that loyalty is required to do play AW.
You haven’t shown 7x5 requires a conversion badge.
The people not using those boosts do not stay in tier one alliance war, they are not in alliances competitive enough to attempt 7x5. Those boosts are required right now in alliance war at the highest end. The people who don't use them, don't stay in those alliances very long. Summoner's right now use the conversion badge just to be able to stay afloat with donation and boosts usage. Increasing that load is only going to make that more prevalent. There isn't a single person in tier one alliance war who isn't boosting.
High level AW isn’t required to play high level AQ. Furthermore loyalty is something you earn early on before you go into high tiers so it’s entirely possible to bank lots of it before entering into that level of game play. Now if you’ve been frivilous with that resource that’s not a a money gate but something like many other areas where if you’re wasteful your behind but it still doesn’t make it a money gate. Also those boosts come from war crystals.
Anyways Miike said they are looking at things, map7 isnt even here yet and we’ll get a free week where most allies will likely find they are not really going to be donating 50k a cycle while earning 45k a cycle.
@Kabam DK One of the concerns during Map 7 Beta testing was the Omega Miniboss having a three-minute timer. Has Kabam decided to implement three-minute timers for all Map 7 nodes?
The "do you bleed" buff worries me, cause kabam may accidentally forget and end up putting a bleed immune champ on that node, making the fight literally unwinnable.
Is the loyalty cost a typo by any chance? It's not just a small increase from what alliances who are currently running 6x5 are paying, it's nearly double.
Current 6x5 is 34,000 and 7x5 is 50,000. That’s about 50% though. Dunno if ya’ll dip from extras or account for the 8day cycle and 7day week of donations to Reduce the cost to 28,000.
Yeah I was doing the math in my head instead of looking at the charts which is why I said nearly double. But a 50% increase is still too much for a resource that isn't farmable. This is just leading to less fun and more burnout.
Somewhat yeah.
But here is something else to think about when comparing to 6x5. *Assuming the numbers and sheets i have are correct.
77666 is less donos.
77766 is +5k loyalty, less BCs.
77776 is +10k loyalty, less BCs, +100k gold.
And 77777 is +16k loyalty, same BCs and +166k gold.
Looking at it from there the increased costs are mostly in running 7 on the final 2 days which would be going harder on map 7 than almost all allies did when map 6 was introduced.
I understand what you are saying. I'm sure Kabam thought the same thing with these changes. But at the end of the day, it's way more efficient to farm up resources on an alt to cover the costs and just run 77777 than sacrifice map 7 days. Running all map 6 has been fine without making an alt, but my loyalty is at a stand still. It doesn't go up, doesn't go down, and that's with occasionally skipping out on the 3 minute boosts.
At the end of the day it will all be possible to do, and do legitimately, but is it healthy for the game? Not in my opinion.
While the loyalty costs to run 7x5 are beyond what an individual can earn in a week. I have to ask are you opening your war crystals? They contain a significant amount of loyalty which would make your loyalty rate artificially low.
What are other loyalty expenditures you’ve had in the past?
Should it be 7x5 and war boosts? Could it be 7x5 or war boosts? Or like all areas of the game (most games), if you want to do everything you’re going to need a lot of time or money.
Well my loyalty is going down really. I counted the loyalty from the unopened crystals in the equation of loyalty evening out. But the updated costs don't lead me to make interesting choices between AW and AQ, it leads me to just make an alt so I can do both. And with the biggest source of loyalty coming from War, it hurts alliances who would prefer to just focus on AQ. Conceptually I understand the changes and why they were made, but it pushes burnout more than it pushes fun in my opinion. I think Kabam can do a better job at moving the game forward in a way that doesn't burn players out.
You've brought up some really good points today, and I want to tell you that we've already started discussing your concerns here. I don't have any more to add than that right now, but just wanted you to know that we're not ignoring you or your concerns, and are going to discuss this more after we look into some stuff.
@Kabam Miike You guys said the same thing last time map costs were brought up. You still haven’t addressed the original reason why Map 6 costs were so high (which has since been eliminated).
There is no reason Map 7 costs should be this exhorbitant.
Like I pointed out earlier, if the Kabam team actually takes the time to see how much the cost per map translates to time, you will realize it is not close to reasonable.
It’s about time Kabam actually does something that’s for the player base. You won’t reduce energy timers for whatever reason. You keep ramping up the difficulty for AW. Now you are raising map costs again with no discernible reasoning.
If you want us all to just quit the game, you are doing a fantastic job of it because that’s where all these changes are leading to.
This is not ok. Brian Grant May be way more diplomatic, but where has that gotten anyone in the community?
After speaking with quite a few of the other leaders of the top 10-15 alliances, this is pretty much a common sentiment. Player burnout is at an all time high. Just today 3 alliances have broken up including the one that got #1 in gifting.
If you continue to go down this path, you will reap what you sow.
Sincerely,
Doc JC
Leader ISO8A
PS - Pay attention to your player base before it’s too late.
Quite frankly why does it even cost anything to open maps?
You are getting your money from pots regardless.
You want to know why there’s a black market? Because Kabam made it that way.
Kabam is the only one making the divide. Every single alliance should be able to play map 7 if they wanted. Map costs should never have been a deterring factor to begin with.
Difficulty and organization to run the map should be the only factor to whether an alliance can complete a map. That Kabam has put in these ridiculous map costs to begin with is something I’m shocked more people don’t push back on. It’s ridiculous.
You spend items on AQ?
Chill man. I'm quite sure with Kabam doing away with the black market, things will work itself out as alliances have to make a choice.
The black market isn’t a problem of the players it’s a problem kabam created with map costs.
Gold accumulation is barely different from when it was a four star game and we are ranking up 5 and 6 stars and have massive costs with map 7.
Battlechips accumulate the same way. They’re a way to get gold. You need to spend BC on the map which also costs you gold.
Loyalty accumulation is the same as before. I’ve stated this as a problem over and over. Miike says to BG they are discussing it now. Well, BG apparently is way more important than everyone else who has said it for at least a year. The fact that it’s just being discussed now is something they makes me embarrassed for you.
Is the loyalty cost a typo by any chance? It's not just a small increase from what alliances who are currently running 6x5 are paying, it's nearly double.
Current 6x5 is 34,000 and 7x5 is 50,000. That’s about 50% though. Dunno if ya’ll dip from extras or account for the 8day cycle and 7day week of donations to Reduce the cost to 28,000.
Yeah I was doing the math in my head instead of looking at the charts which is why I said nearly double. But a 50% increase is still too much for a resource that isn't farmable. This is just leading to less fun and more burnout.
Somewhat yeah.
But here is something else to think about when comparing to 6x5. *Assuming the numbers and sheets i have are correct.
77666 is less donos.
77766 is +5k loyalty, less BCs.
77776 is +10k loyalty, less BCs, +100k gold.
And 77777 is +16k loyalty, same BCs and +166k gold.
Looking at it from there the increased costs are mostly in running 7 on the final 2 days which would be going harder on map 7 than almost all allies did when map 6 was introduced.
I understand what you are saying. I'm sure Kabam thought the same thing with these changes. But at the end of the day, it's way more efficient to farm up resources on an alt to cover the costs and just run 77777 than sacrifice map 7 days. Running all map 6 has been fine without making an alt, but my loyalty is at a stand still. It doesn't go up, doesn't go down, and that's with occasionally skipping out on the 3 minute boosts.
At the end of the day it will all be possible to do, and do legitimately, but is it healthy for the game? Not in my opinion.
While the loyalty costs to run 7x5 are beyond what an individual can earn in a week. I have to ask are you opening your war crystals? They contain a significant amount of loyalty which would make your loyalty rate artificially low.
What are other loyalty expenditures you’ve had in the past?
Should it be 7x5 and war boosts? Could it be 7x5 or war boosts? Or like all areas of the game (most games), if you want to do everything you’re going to need a lot of time or money.
Well my loyalty is going down really. I counted the loyalty from the unopened crystals in the equation of loyalty evening out. But the updated costs don't lead me to make interesting choices between AW and AQ, it leads me to just make an alt so I can do both. And with the biggest source of loyalty coming from War, it hurts alliances who would prefer to just focus on AQ. Conceptually I understand the changes and why they were made, but it pushes burnout more than it pushes fun in my opinion. I think Kabam can do a better job at moving the game forward in a way that doesn't burn players out.
You've brought up some really good points today, and I want to tell you that we've already started discussing your concerns here. I don't have any more to add than that right now, but just wanted you to know that we're not ignoring you or your concerns, and are going to discuss this more after we look into some stuff.
@Kabam Miike You guys said the same thing last time map costs were brought up. You still haven’t addressed the original reason why Map 6 costs were so high (which has since been eliminated).
There is no reason Map 7 costs should be this exhorbitant.
Like I pointed out earlier, if the Kabam team actually takes the time to see how much the cost per map translates to time, you will realize it is not close to reasonable.
It’s about time Kabam actually does something that’s for the player base. You won’t reduce energy timers for whatever reason. You keep ramping up the difficulty for AW. Now you are raising map costs again with no discernible reasoning.
If you want us all to just quit the game, you are doing a fantastic job of it because that’s where all these changes are leading to.
This is not ok. Brian Grant May be way more diplomatic, but where has that gotten anyone in the community?
After speaking with quite a few of the other leaders of the top 10-15 alliances, this is pretty much a common sentiment. Player burnout is at an all time high. Just today 3 alliances have broken up including the one that got #1 in gifting.
If you continue to go down this path, you will reap what you sow.
Sincerely,
Doc JC
Leader ISO8A
PS - Pay attention to your player base before it’s too late.
"Where has that gotten anyone in the community?"
A great question. Here's your answer. In the space of 8 hours - by posting his concerns publicly, democratically, and honestly, he was able to get a response from Kabam saying they will be looking into it.
Seems to me, that got the community far further than posts that are so salty they should be sold at a fast food restaurant.
Burnout is definitely a reality. I don't disagree with your point there. Where I do disagree is whose fault it is. Whenever you have a top of anything - it requires time, energy, effort, and will, of course, burn some people out. It's the top for a reason. You want to address burnout in a more legitimate way? Let's do that.
In the meantime, BG got the community a foot in the door about the loyalty concern and ensured the conversation is happening. More than most tried to do with strong-arming.
Comments
Hopefully my reply here doesn't post twice. I typed something up, hit post comment and it looked like it didn't send. So going to try again:
Putting a hard limit taking control away from players is one option. Increasing the ramp up in difficulty is another. And I'm sure there are other creative ways to impose a limit on how frequently players can run map 7. I'm sure there are ways to even give back some other type of control if some control is taken from players too.
Your comment about players burning out from pushing higher than healthy is something I agree with in some areas of the game, like arena, but when it comes to something like map 7, I think creative solutions can help to create something fun and challenging while lowering the burnout a bit.
It's impossible to completely get rid of the burnout while adding difficulty, but for example, lower the AQ entry cost, but sell items for players that need it. Sell AQ energy refills (without increasing the time needed to naturally get through the map). Sell an item that brings you back to the start of the map so that you can cover for someone who needs the night off of AQ or if you took the wrong path by accident. Sell AQ specific boosts. And if these items costs too much, then players need to work harder on their fighting skills, their organization skills, and time management.
I think these skills that players develop over time is something that should be challenged with higher level maps, and not necessarily how well you can grind resources. And I'm someone who enjoys resource management and thinking about how best to get the various resources we need. I like the interesting choices that need to be made with them. I'm not asking for that to go away. I'm not asking for donation costs to be removed entirely. But I do think things have gotten out of hand here and maybe there are better ways to move the game forward.
How exactly do we get that again? 7k loyalty a week?
I gather from this release that 7x5 every week isn’t the intention for nearly any alliance, as legitimately farming those resources is almost impossible. But similar to AW, the significant increase in rewards for finishing at the top incentivizes some to break the rules. If any alliances are buying resources from bots, those playing fairly will never be able to compete.
Have you given any thought to adjusting the rewards from arena grinding so the cost can be achieved by those willing to invest reasonable time? If the answer is “no”, then when can we expect Kabam to level the playing field by punishing those alliances who gain an unfair advantage?
Why aren’t you actually mad at that? Instead of other players?
How about you address the real issue with those that make the game?
I just want to chime in on this comment without making any accusations. Others have already brought up what the "problem" is but the blame seems to fall on the alliance's behavior like it's solely their fault. I don't think you should disallow alternate accounts to come in and donate for an alliance then leave. If you allow players to have multiple accounts, those players should be able to do anything within the game that they want with those accounts.
The problem that should be targeted is *HOW* these alternate accounts get their resources. What means are they using to populate resources on that account. If you were to find any problem or illicit behavior there, that right there is what you should target and not the alliances. I know it's a fragile subject with lots of input from both sides, but just saying that it's a grim road to go after alliances rather than the real SOURCE for this behavior.
Class Buff is ONLY to you
Increasing the ramp up difficulty isn't a solution. It is converting the problem from one thing into another even more problematic thing.
You can make content more or less difficult, but difficulty is extremely tricky to use as a progress gate all by itself. You generally find that you're surrounding difficulty with other resource-based gates, and then you're farming resources again.
You mention this yourself:
This eliminates entry costs and replaces them with booster-like costs. And this presumes that the difficulty ramp up is high enough to actually make those boosts all but mandatory. If it isn't, then this sneakily replaces the gate with a turnstile that skilled enough players can simply pass through unimpeded. And then it is no longer gated progress.
The ultimate problem with making difficulty a true progress gate is that all progress gates don't exist in isolation: they are paired with the means to eventually traverse them. If resource costs are the gate, then ways to earn the resource are the method of traversing them. If you try to eliminate excessive farming and replace that with difficulty then the question becomes how do you engineer difficulty so that it functions properly? Some people will just happen to be able to "skill" their way past that difficulty gate, while others might find it basically impossible.
Some might say that's perfectly fine, but then all you're really saying is that the game developer shouldn't actually be trying to manage progress; just make an obstacle course and if the players shoot through it, whatever. But that's simply not how games like this are managed. You can suggest it, but no one will ever take the suggestion.
As someone that I think has excellent meta-gaming resource management skills, can you think of a specific gating hurdle that 4Loki would be able to get past once, maybe twice a week, but would settle for that and wouldn't try to get past every single day, if not in week one than as quickly as possible? Because if you and your alliance would make every attempt to get past the gate as quickly as possible, and presumably so would all other top alliances, then the gate either becomes ineffective or just as much as source of burn out as anything else.
They're pushing to get end game p2f players out. They want the rewards and costs high enough that people will pay to get them. Making the end game easy without having to spend doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint.
I've always wondered if there was going to be a point where you would have to make a hard decision about sticking w/ 4loki (either change allys or change how you play to cover the costs/prestige). It looks like that day might come, unfortunately.
You've brought up some really good points today, and I want to tell you that we've already started discussing your concerns here. I don't have any more to add than that right now, but just wanted you to know that we're not ignoring you or your concerns, and are going to discuss this more after we look into some stuff.
I can't speak directly for Kabam, but most free to play games would give anything to have a Brian Grant as a player, because the fundamental monetization strategy for free to play games is not to squeeze as much money as possible from every single player, it is actually to attract as many players as possible with the understanding that a percentage of them will convert to paying players. Being able to claim that little or nothing of the game is stuck behind a paywall is one of the best ways to attract new players.
Map 7 is tough. Really tough. It's very possible (and very likely) that my alliance won't be able to clear 7x5 from the start and I'm alright with that.
I still think there are other changes that can be made outside of just increasing the cost though. Because if map 7 is tough enough to pull top alliances away from only considering AW for rank ups (it should be, and that's why map 7 is exciting), then we should be able to push our rosters in that direction without thinking, "Well, we can't afford the donations when we get there anyway." I think a lot of what you said here makes sense, but I also think the other game modes and systems do a lot to help with the issues you brought up. Some skilled players might be able to get through map 7 no problem, especially after doing a lot of planning work and building their rosters for it, but then maybe they lose some of their power in war, and that's a trade off they have to make. Or maybe their prestige suffers because they ranked for utility instead of prestige whereas another group of even more skilled players can rank for prestige and use weaker champions to get by.
Just to comment on some of the other comments in this thread and what people might be thinking: I'm not voicing these concerns because I feel like it will be impossible to keep up as a F2P player. I'm just giving feedback on one specific part of this update that I strongly feel has a lot of room for improvement. Whether someone spends or not, the extra donations, especially of something that can't be farmed, will definitely burn people out. There's a lot of good in this update otherwise.
Having played this game since beta, back when Captain Marvel had her hair showing & not the mask, I still don't understand why we can't get more than just gold on the return for completion of map 6. Yes, I understand that receiving gold is a new option for a map that didn't return anything at all, but in all honesty, we should get a return back on everything, more so with loyalty since that's the one resource that's as easily attainable as the others, with the exception of "hitting the help, winning AW matches, a few minimal claimable rewards from events, & the AW win/loss crystals" but even then, it's not like we get much from any of those sources either. The cost per player in Map 6 now will be:
receiving "up to" 7K gold back per day is a joke, if I receive the full 7K (since it's "up to") comes out to 35K in total, & quite honestly it's insulting, especially if players have to put up 292K for all 5 days, they should get back at minimum 73K gold which is 25%. With the amount of time we all put into your game, in spite of all your mishaps throughout the years since launching this game, I don't think it's too much to ask for you guys to reconsider the payout structure of resources used when completing the map. We should get something back for all resources used, ESPECIALLY LOYALTY! The same can be said for Map 7 too. It doesn't matter what the rewards are for these maps, it doesn't hurt your company to not bleed us dry of resources by giving a small % back, it's just good business. This will probably fall on deaf ears, but whatever, I've said my piece.
You know as well as I do, that loyalty does not solely get used for AQ donations. Loyalty is also used for buying the class specific and alliance war specific boosts. For the players that are constantly taking the boss in order not to timeout they have to use every boost that they can. How is the free to play player expected to make their donations when they can't donate loyalty with units because the conversion badge is money gated?
You haven’t shown 7x5 requires a conversion badge.
The people not using those boosts do not stay in tier one alliance war, they are not in alliances competitive enough to attempt 7x5. Those boosts are required right now in alliance war at the highest end. The people who don't use them, don't stay in those alliances very long. Summoner's right now use the conversion badge just to be able to stay afloat with donation and boosts usage. Increasing that load is only going to make that more prevalent. There isn't a single person in tier one alliance war who isn't boosting.
Anyways Miike said they are looking at things, map7 isnt even here yet and we’ll get a free week where most allies will likely find they are not really going to be donating 50k a cycle while earning 45k a cycle.
@Kabam Miike You guys said the same thing last time map costs were brought up. You still haven’t addressed the original reason why Map 6 costs were so high (which has since been eliminated).
There is no reason Map 7 costs should be this exhorbitant.
Like I pointed out earlier, if the Kabam team actually takes the time to see how much the cost per map translates to time, you will realize it is not close to reasonable.
It’s about time Kabam actually does something that’s for the player base. You won’t reduce energy timers for whatever reason. You keep ramping up the difficulty for AW. Now you are raising map costs again with no discernible reasoning.
If you want us all to just quit the game, you are doing a fantastic job of it because that’s where all these changes are leading to.
This is not ok. Brian Grant May be way more diplomatic, but where has that gotten anyone in the community?
After speaking with quite a few of the other leaders of the top 10-15 alliances, this is pretty much a common sentiment. Player burnout is at an all time high. Just today 3 alliances have broken up including the one that got #1 in gifting.
If you continue to go down this path, you will reap what you sow.
Sincerely,
Doc JC
Leader ISO8A
PS - Pay attention to your player base before it’s too late.
You spend items on AQ?
Chill man. I'm quite sure with Kabam doing away with the black market, things will work itself out as alliances have to make a choice.
Gold accumulation is barely different from when it was a four star game and we are ranking up 5 and 6 stars and have massive costs with map 7.
Battlechips accumulate the same way. They’re a way to get gold. You need to spend BC on the map which also costs you gold.
Loyalty accumulation is the same as before. I’ve stated this as a problem over and over. Miike says to BG they are discussing it now. Well, BG apparently is way more important than everyone else who has said it for at least a year. The fact that it’s just being discussed now is something they makes me embarrassed for you.
"Where has that gotten anyone in the community?"
A great question. Here's your answer. In the space of 8 hours - by posting his concerns publicly, democratically, and honestly, he was able to get a response from Kabam saying they will be looking into it.
Seems to me, that got the community far further than posts that are so salty they should be sold at a fast food restaurant.
Burnout is definitely a reality. I don't disagree with your point there. Where I do disagree is whose fault it is. Whenever you have a top of anything - it requires time, energy, effort, and will, of course, burn some people out. It's the top for a reason. You want to address burnout in a more legitimate way? Let's do that.
In the meantime, BG got the community a foot in the door about the loyalty concern and ensured the conversation is happening. More than most tried to do with strong-arming.