AQ Map Cost Rationale

Wfpkstevezilla

With AQ maps being free again this week, I always wonder what the direct reasoning is behind having map costs. The difficulty of the maps themselves remove the possibility of less powerful alliances from completing tougher maps. Maps 1-4 are already free. As an officer who monitors treasury, it would be a huge community boost to never have to worry about that again. Both from the perspective of officers having to verify everyone donated, to all members not having to pay attention to a nuisance of a weekly task. I understand as an aggregate that it drains the collective gold in the game by a substantial amount which benefits Kabam. However, if Kabam can afford to let maps 1-4 be free, can you ever consider removing a purely annoying feature of the game and make AQ maps free of cost permanently? It would be an absolutely massive quality of life change.

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Wfpkstevezilla

Fredhorst23 said:

100% this. Can I throw in 30 minute timers again? Been barking up that tree for years, maybe someday itll stick.

I actually think the 30 minute timers would allow less active alliances to be competitive. I'm ok with maybe 45-50 minute timers but 30 minute timers was too much in my opinion.

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DNA3000

Wfpkstevezilla said:

With AQ maps being free again this week, I always wonder what the direct reasoning is behind having map costs.

If you want to know what the reasoning it, that's pretty simple. It always comes down to two things in any game like this: currency sinks and failure costs. Basically, games like this put in currency sinks, typically at the highest levels of optional difficulty, to act as a soft-gate to that content. This is a global currency balancing process: the more you have the more you tend to spend, the less you have the less you can spend, and that excess currently in one part of the game get converted into resources in a different part of the game. Think of it like a voltage potential, with the content being a resistive load between the two. Current flows from the high voltage to the low voltage, pushing across the resistance that is the content between the two.

Failure costs are there so that players don't just try to do the hardest thing possible and take whatever rewards they get. If content has all reward and no cost, then sometimes it is better to sometimes succeed and sometimes fail at the high content than always succeed at the low content. Failure costs alter that equation. Instead of getting a thousand points for winning and zero for losing, you get two thousand for winning and drop a thousand for losing. That changes the decision making process on which thing to do.

That's what the reasoning is. If you want to debate the reasoning, you'll have to find a Kabam game developer to do that, as every game developer's defense of their specific implementations are unique to them. Good luck finding one to take up that argument.

Wfpkstevezilla

Fredhorst23 said:

How about 45 minute timers but start aq with full energy?

A small change would be fine I guess but I really just want the costs removed.

zuffy

30 minutes timer is a change in quality of life.