Map 7 Links Are Overly Aggressive
GodMan114
Member Posts: 45 ★
Kabam Team,
While there is the potential that this post is going to fall on deaf ears, I feel like it's a shot in the dark worth taking... if it can prevent me from retiring.
As you may or may not know, lots of top-tier folks retire, and often times these folks are your biggest spenders. The average guys are okay with spending less time and money, so they remain in the mid-tier gaming realm as there is much less stress. These guys are less likely to retire.
With the launch of Map 7, there's a lot to discuss, but rather than make this in increasingly long post where many will not read it, I'm going to keep it brief and to the point, with these comments:
I'm really leaning towards brevity here to increase the chances of you realizing this main point, so...
TL;DR
Decrease the amount of Map 7 links or be prepared to lose top-players (revenue). It's only a matter of time.
While there is the potential that this post is going to fall on deaf ears, I feel like it's a shot in the dark worth taking... if it can prevent me from retiring.
As you may or may not know, lots of top-tier folks retire, and often times these folks are your biggest spenders. The average guys are okay with spending less time and money, so they remain in the mid-tier gaming realm as there is much less stress. These guys are less likely to retire.
With the launch of Map 7, there's a lot to discuss, but rather than make this in increasingly long post where many will not read it, I'm going to keep it brief and to the point, with these comments:
- The amount of links is absurd, and a bad business model by Kabam -- it seems way too greedy. Perhaps you're trying to get people more addicted to the game, but whatever the reasoning, it is likely to do more harm than good. You've already upped the difficulty to match the rewards, so why create a system that requires too frequent of participation in a small period of time? You've given us 5 energy, so that at times one can have a 5-hour break during business or school hours. You need to respect your community, so they can respect you back.
- The amount of Map 7 links is affecting lives more negatively than ever before. We all know real life should take priority, but let's not be fools in thinking that we all have a perfect handle of this. Many of us don't (that's not to say we're not decent at it), yet we still try to find a balance that keeps us happy, relatively speaking. There is a strong population of fathers (ok mothers too), and students here. The smaller population of single folks who don't have kids are the only ones who have the best chance to keep up. Let's not be delusional here.
- This game is not just in for U.S. players. It's worldwide. How can you not expect this to become a problem by mandating 10 lanes among 10 players of players that are global? Yes, sometimes we have a guy who actually needs to sleep while he's linking others across the globe. Let's be real here! Map 6 was tough enough, but we managed. Map 7 links is pure negligence in design.
- Folks are going to retire, and the ones you are affecting are the top-tier folks; again, these are the folks who are likely your biggest spenders.
- I've already seen folks retire.
- You will lose revenue, but you may not know it. It would behoove you to take this into consideration. Fact: Accounts get sold, mostly top-tier accounts. An account being sold means you've lost a top-tier spender who built a top-tier account. Eventually, one of the folks that bought one of these accounts moved up by making the purchase. That person may have sold his lower-tier account to an lower-tier player, so your system only sees lower-end accounts becoming inactive. I doubt you see top-accounts go inactive, which means you have no idea you just lost a top-spender. I may get some hate from people for mentioning this, but let's be honest here. Kabam knows this happens, and they can't stop it.
- I'm contemplating retirement more than ever.
I'm really leaning towards brevity here to increase the chances of you realizing this main point, so...
TL;DR
Decrease the amount of Map 7 links or be prepared to lose top-players (revenue). It's only a matter of time.
9
Comments
We're finding solutions, but none of them are great. You guys have to realize the level of chaos you're creating by giving us three tiers of difficult fights, all of them energy intensive and all of them exclusively made up of paths that need to unlink others and be unlinked themselves at least two separate times.
Yes, people can just accept the new challenge isn't for them and play easier maps. Many will. What you need to understand is that many of those people will decide the lower rewards price them out of competitive war and AQ forever, and therefore they lose their incentive to spend. Pretty much forever, unless they buy another account, which of course means their money is going somewhere other than into your coffers. It may not be a quick process, but you guys are setting up some dangerous chain reactions for yourself down the road.
People do not want AQ to be a daily chore. They want to be able to check in for AQ 2 or 3 times a day, clear their 5 energy, and move on with other areas of their lives or other aspects of the game.
More links also means more stress for officers. Ignore this at your own peril, but to the extent that alliances form the bedrock of the game, officers form the bedrock of alliances. The more officers you cause to retire from the ever-increasing stress that this game demands, the more alliances you will cause to fall apart. For every alliance that disbands, you can be sure that some of the 30 are retiring.
The difficulty is within the strategy you employ to clear the map, you do this by planning your assualt and knowing which fights are best made difficult by taking them linked instead of waiting for the link to fall to make the fight is easy. I’m not saying they all have to be linked take downs but identifying those that can be taken linked is the difficulty. Properly planning your path and understanding the fights is the key.
Everything was great until Map 7. I enjoy playing it, and the difficulty is acceptable and fun, but again it's the links and needing to check in way more often than ever before. There's no way that a big portion of the higher-tier population doesn't feel similarly about Map 7.