Map 7 Links Are Overly Aggressive

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:

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.

Comments

Daddylonglegs93

T3 is the most ridiculous one. T1 has lots of links, but you can also use a backup if needed. T3, everyone has their own path, and any given path can have links from up to three others, two of which are themselves linked by a fourth and fifth. Essentially the entire last part of the map is so locked together that if you don't have ten people awake and moving within the same set of hours, you're out of luck. We have an Australian player who sets alarms to clear nodes in t3. In the past, he probably would've just switched alliances, but where can he go? Most alliances have at least a majority in the US or Europe, the US especially, and alliances like that will mostly be waking up at his midnight or later. And then AQ ends at his 7 am. And yet, unlike with map 6, there isn't a single lane that starts out unlinked so he can burn all his energy and go to sleep. There also isn't a single lane that doesn't link others (not just at the beginning but later on after being unlinked itself), so he can't just do it all by waking up early when we're otherwise done.

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.

unknown

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Ultra8529

There is absolutely no point in having so many links. Make the fights tough (as they are) and that should be enough to deter people from doing map 7 who aren't up to mark.

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.

unknown

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Mike_2020

They don’t care and they don’t play the game. It would be hilarious if 10 random people that worked at kabam would try to do this map during work hours.

Blezzzzzzzzz

The OP is spot on. Once again, in the face of constant obfuscation, this community responds with clarity and concise remedies. The game team made a commitment be more transparent and address community concerns more effectively after the 12.0 update. Please address theses concerns ASAP.

Choimo

The amount of links is too much. I love the game and playing with my friends, but map7 is causing me to seriously consider retirement. The difficulty of the fights is fine. It’s the amount of links. We can’t all always play the game at the same time.

Cobs

I agree with the OP, map7 goes to far. Im not sure what the target audience is for map7 but I have been in a masters alli the last 4 season and run full map6 and can honestly say that the time needed for map7 is just to much imo. If its not for end game players like me then who is it for? All it will do is inevitably make more and more players retire. Its a shame being chased away from a game we love (and spend on).

CoatHang3r

Few fight’s are actually difficult if you play at a high level with a large roster which is what the map appears to be designed to challenge.

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.

Hell'sGate

It is getting very difficult to keep up with the game due to the need for constant logins. I hope the developers look at the players.

GodMan114

Dranit wrote: »

It is getting very difficult to keep up with the game due to the need for constant logins. I hope the developers look at the players.

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.

Hell'sGate

apparently the sea kabam will not take any action!

NiteAndDae

Currently, we are running Map 7, and it's going fairly smooth. That being said, the officers and leadership are pouring an enormous amount of time into planning and strategy, so I'm merely there to clear my lanes on time, so it's easy for me. While the Map 7 crystals have the potential to be better than Map 6, if an ally chooses to instead just run map 6, they could still stay competitive, so there is no necessity to run Map 7 just yet.