As a player without alt accounts because I don't care to or want to mess with it, I don't understand players who have problems with them. Why does it matter if a player is "gifting" themselves in the end? If they put in the time and effort to find a work around that doesn't break the TOS (which alt accounts clearly don't), there shouldn't be any problems with them. It's just one account gifting another. The only problem people have is that it's the same person giving and and receiving the gift? So what? If that person puts in work to make that happen why shouldn't they get the benefit of their work? Have you never bought yourself something you worked for? I just really don't understand the problem... 🤷♂️
It's also a terribly stupid idea to make this a "trading" event (although I understand a lot of times players agree on gifting a certain amount of units worth of items beforehand). If players choose to return a gift out of kindness, gratitude, or even obligation, there is nothing wrong with that and I think all the more of that system. But to make it MANDATORY completely kills the vibe of the event. It is a gifting event, it should remain that way.
Because the way units are handed out, they can be accrued more efficiently across multiple accounts. It’s a windfall you can’t get from handling your main.
3 rounds with max 4-stars gets me 26 units. 3 more rounds on the same account gets 0, because I won’t reach 150,000 points yet. Meanwhile, 3 rounds on an alt nets me 26, then 26 more if there’s a third account. 9 rounds on my main is worth 39 units. 9 rounds across three alts is 78.
Logging in gets me 100 per month, but I can get 100 per account. I can use one item or do one arena fight to ensure 3-day rewards (200ish per month depending on alliance activity). I can get daily level up rewards, EQ completion and more. For that matter, I could do 30 paths of EQ and get completion rewards on 5 accounts. Meanwhile 30 paths on my main only provides me with exploration for one account.
How much time investment is this? Do you have a break up of what it entails on each account with the amount of units you can potentially grind out? You are probably correct about little time you need to grind 3 rounds of arena with max 4* champs and 100 units from login calendar but how long do you need to grind to get 3 maxed 4*? As far as alliance events are concerned, if you are just doing 1 arena fight or spending 1 item, you will get the boot even from a low but active alliance. Forget about individual daily events. If your account is uncollected or higher, you can’t get those easily unless you actually spend time grinding them out. But according to you what is the time investment required?
Alright, here’s what I’ve done -
I had an old account in mothballs. I took the 4-star Hercules and used the trade-in store to get an AG. I became uncollected and level 40. Between 2021 gifting and some good luck, I had enough champs to get a first clear on variants 5/6/7 and reach cavalier. So now I’ve got a ridiculously topheavy cavalier roster.
I coast through map 4 with a few moves a day (you can take the minis noded) and autofight quests when I can’t play tough content. I get the hero use and level up units. I get all the 3-day units. If I get a better Sinister counter, maybe I push for TB (clearing 6.4 is enough).
So I’m definitely playing the account some but not on anything challenging. Whatever that is.
But that’s on one account. You claimed people can do this just to farm units on several alt accounts and funnel them to their mains during gifting. That’s not possible with minimum effort. To be of any significant benefit, it takes a massive time commitment. If somebody invests that much time, it’s ok to get those rewards. They have earned those. And I am talking about legitimate alt account grinding. If somebody is using bot farm or grinding units to sell, kabam does need to take action against those rather then arbitrarily set excessively restrictive limits on who can/cannot gift.
Whichever way you lean, the point is there isn’t some massive gain/exploit by alt gifting.
Your math has some gaps. I've seen gifting farms. I've reported them, and I've had them sent to me (whereupon I've reported them). They are gigantic. And if it took 12 human hours to create one such alt, then I've personally seen individual farms that would have taken tens of thousands of hours to create them. They don't take 12 hours of actual human effort to make, unless the person running the farm is capable of raising the dead to use as free labor.
Moreover, you don't even have to be a mega bot farmer to gain the benefits of unit transfer. I have alts that I just let hum all year long, some of them years old. If you are willing to level up small-time alts over an entire year, rather than try to blitz them all at once, they don't take that long to level up, because throughout the year you will get opportunities to shortcut the process. I have experimental alts in their teens with 5* champs. It would take them a lot less than 12 hours to blast through the low Acts. *If* I chose to use those to funnel units to my main, those units would be almost free.
In fact, just off the time of my head I can think of a way to cut the time to level up alts at least in half, that does not use bots, does not use exploits, does not violate the TOS, and I absolutely will not post here. But if I'm the only person who has thought of it, that would be ridiculous. It is simply too obvious for sufficiently nefarious minds.
The math used to "prove" unit redirection isn't actually economically viable seems to overlook the obvious real world examples of it being economically viable. Usually, people vastly underestimate the profitability of the activity, or seriously overestimate the cost of doing this if cost was all you cared about. Yes, there are people "doing it normally" that would find the economic benefit far lower than what is possible. But unfortunately, those are not the people the rules are made to constrain.
No one is talking about methods against TOS. So I don’t know why you’re using bot farms to discredit my quick estimates. Kabam explicitly said, just last year, as long as units were gained by legitimate means, gifting to main accounts was allowed.
Why would I list 12 hours of grinding and opportunity cost if I’m talking about bots?
That's the point. You say "there isn’t some massive gain/exploit by alt gifting" but then the only option you analyze are completely conventional play. You don't consider someone playing unconventionally but within the TOS, and you don't consider someone playing in violation of the TOS but in a manner that might not be caught. All of those are options that would make alt gifting far more economically viable in a way that would be describable as either "massive gain" or "exploitive."
You ask why you would list 12 hours of grinding and opportunity cost if you were talking about bots. Why would you list only clearly non-exploitive activity and then state that the results were not exploitive? To say there's no opportunity for exploit by only looking at non-exploitive behavior would be a moot exercise.
ISo this brings us back to the original arguments made every year. Do you believe legitimate grinding of alts for gifting is fair? If not, why? For the popular complaints: Because it’s against the “spirit”? Kabam endorsed it. Because it gives players an unfair advantage? It really doesn’t when considering opportunity cost as I outlined above.
Asking if it is "fair" is missing the point. We don't ask if grinding the arena is fair. It is allowed. Gifting from alts to main accounts is allowed. But that doesn't mean that all gifting from alts to mains is not exploitive. Actions are not judged in isolation, but in circumstance and situation. The arguments made last year were that if gifting from alts to mains is allowed, it should be allowed under all circumstances. All or nothing. But that's not how the game works, or for that matter how anything else works anywhere else. That argument is a feeble attempt at rules lawyering.
The general rule, which any reasonable game developer would almost certainly agree with, is that if resource transfers are allowable at all, they are generally only allowable when the relative circumstances surrounding such resource earning are sufficiently comparable between accounts that the effects of that economic transfer are within reason. There's a lot of judgment in such a rule, deliberately so. But no reasonable designer would ever say that something is always allowable under al circumstances, and asking the question if gifting from alts is fair without context is in effect asking for the same thing: a decision on allowability without the associated circumstances. The only answer is: it depends.
Could have used a TLDR with this part at the start of the post. Snark aside, you’re grasping at straws here. Yes it’s been allowed, but it’s never been an all or nothing situation. Never stated by Kabam or players. What’s been inferred last year and that I would assume most players think, is that it’s allowed in the spirit of fairness. Meaning, farm bots, breaking of TOS are not something I would condone. But it can and should be dealt with on its own, while letting the event run for legitimate players, wether they put in the work to grind alts or not. It would be enlightening to know how much of the player base is actually playing/gifting unconventionally as you put it. I would think it’s a minority not strong enough to break the economic balance of the game.
Could have used a TLDR with this part at the start of the post. Snark aside, you’re grasping at straws here. Yes it’s been allowed, but it’s never been an all or nothing situation. Never stated by Kabam or players. What’s been inferred last year and that I would assume most players think, is that it’s allowed in the spirit of fairness. Meaning, farm bots, breaking of TOS are not something I would condone. But it can and should be dealt with on its own, while letting the event run for legitimate players, wether they put in the work to grind alts or not. It would be enlightening to know how much of the player base is actually playing/gifting unconventionally as you put it. I would think it’s a minority not strong enough to break the economic balance of the game.
The operators of the game appear to disagree with you. Or so I’ve been told.
Economic balance is also not the only priority. It’s unclear if it is even the most important. Two others are probably significantly more important, as they would be to most other game operators. First, there’s the general corrosive nature of the acquiescence, real or otherwise, to exploiters and cheaters. As a general principle, it is true that enforcement should be focused on the cheaters and not blanket the playerbase but that’s not always possible or practical. The need to proscribe narrowly has to be weighed against the harm caused by those who escape detection or punishment.
Secondly, there’s the meta effect of sending the wrong message that pushing the envelope in these areas is acceptable by default. At some point this becomes problematic, and the time to act is not when it crosses the line, but before the general attitude gets ingrained that pushing the envelope in this direction is normalized.
As to the notion that I’m “grasping at straws” I’m not sure what straws you believe I’m grasping at. That implies you think I’m either guessing or wildly speculating about what I wish to be true, when I’m simply stating the facts as I understand them, as someone that has discussed many of these issues with the devs directly, both on the economic balance side of the equation as well as the technical enforcement side.
I feel sad for new guys who decide to start playing this game in December for 1 reason or another. Think like that for a moment. He picks up the game, likes the animation, story content, then he joins an alliance and then boom he finds out that he's unable to participate in gifting event. All because pro players decided to make 10 20 alts to "gift" to their main. For last year, I blame a certain youtuber who calls himself "F2P". He put out the alt farming techniques on his channel, motivating everyone who were not having alts, to make their own alts. So kabam did what they had to do, made a restriction because of the alts. And guess what, the new guy who just picked up this game in December, decided to ditch the game. Same story will repeat again this year because another "skilled" youtuber made another video recently! So new restrictions will be alive again. Just think, a new guy who has never played this game before has 15ish days to become Uncollected and level 45ish to be eligible for this year's gifting event! SMH.. And then people wonder why new guys are not playing this game?!!
People who started in December last year got a free 4-star Hercules and a calendar that wasn’t progression based and still gave bonus rewards. They are FINE.
We'll be providing more information about this in the coming weeks.
For now, I will say: There are changes to this year's event.
I know you said in the coming weeks, but patience is not a virtue I possess in large quantities. Should we expect to know participation requirements sometime this month?
I'm not exactly on a soap box about it, and I understand that some people have been giving to themselves for years, but it's not something I see as a priority for the Event. The point of the Event is the spirit of giving, to Alliance Members, to friends, etc. It's not really about boosting our mains.
I'm not exactly on a soap box about it, and I understand that some people have been giving to themselves for years, but it's not something I see as a priority for the Event. The point of the Event is the spirit of giving, to Alliance Members, to friends, etc. It's not really about boosting our mains.
It seems like it’d be a money loser in some ways. If these accounts have farmed units, Kabam doesn’t make money off them and the accounts and players satisfy their need for gifting crystals.
in my first couple months in the game (4 or 5 years ago), when I didn't know the difference between loyalty and glory, and didn't know that life could be better than my bronze. When I got onto a silver (3?) alliance, there was someone very generous, who gifted me a few alliance potions/revives. He refused to take a gift back / kept resending me even more.
That's the spirit of giving. It isn't labelled the "trading event" or the "try to cheat the system" event.
I'm not exactly on a soap box about it, and I understand that some people have been giving to themselves for years, but it's not something I see as a priority for the Event. The point of the Event is the spirit of giving, to Alliance Members, to friends, etc. It's not really about boosting our mains.
You can always gift yourself too while you gift others. Pamper thyself!!
I'm not exactly on a soap box about it, and I understand that some people have been giving to themselves for years, but it's not something I see as a priority for the Event. The point of the Event is the spirit of giving, to Alliance Members, to friends, etc. It's not really about boosting our mains.
You can always gift yourself too while you gift others. Pamper thyself!!
Well that's why I prefaced it by saying I'm not on a soap box. I don't gift myself, but I respect that others do. I'm simply saying the spirit of the season is giving.
I'm not exactly on a soap box about it, and I understand that some people have been giving to themselves for years, but it's not something I see as a priority for the Event. The point of the Event is the spirit of giving, to Alliance Members, to friends, etc. It's not really about boosting our mains.
I'm not exactly on a soap box about it, and I understand that some people have been giving to themselves for years, but it's not something I see as a priority for the Event. The point of the Event is the spirit of giving, to Alliance Members, to friends, etc. It's not really about boosting our mains.
I'm not exactly on a soap box about it, and I understand that some people have been giving to themselves for years, but it's not something I see as a priority for the Event. The point of the Event is the spirit of giving, to Alliance Members, to friends, etc. It's not really about boosting our mains.
You can always gift yourself too while you gift others. Pamper thyself!!
Well that's why I prefaced it by saying I'm not on a soap box. I don't gift myself, but I respect that others do. I'm simply saying the spirit of the season is giving.
Understandable and I fully agree that it is the season of giving, that being said some people such as myself are often very giving to others throughout the year and sometimes it's a good reminder to treat yourself to something nice once in awhile
I feel sad for new guys who decide to start playing this game in December for 1 reason or another. Think like that for a moment. He picks up the game, likes the animation, story content, then he joins an alliance and then boom he finds out that he's unable to participate in gifting event. All because pro players decided to make 10 20 alts to "gift" to their main. For last year, I blame a certain youtuber who calls himself "F2P". He put out the alt farming techniques on his channel, motivating everyone who were not having alts, to make their own alts. So kabam did what they had to do, made a restriction because of the alts. And guess what, the new guy who just picked up this game in December, decided to ditch the game. Same story will repeat again this year because another "skilled" youtuber made another video recently! So new restrictions will be alive again. Just think, a new guy who has never played this game before has 15ish days to become Uncollected and level 45ish to be eligible for this year's gifting event! SMH.. And then people wonder why new guys are not playing this game?!!
With this logic that new guys aren't playing because they can't gift to 2+ year old accounts, then lets have Kabam heavily give them gifts this year just for playing, but also prevent these new accounts from gifting 3+ year old accounts because that is so fun for the "new" players.
It would be great to give us a heads up. Last year, the account creation cutoff predated the announcement iirc. I’m fine if that’s the case here but hopefully they let us know soon.
Thursday puts us four months from Christmas. Friday marks this thread being two weeks old.
I know that’s a long time, but if the requirements are going to change substantially for eligibility (and that’s how it sounds tbh) then it would be great to announce early. Even if you set the account creation date at the time of announcement, having as much time as possible to reach progression milestones is big for QOL.
I was just thinking to myself... been a while since we've heard an update on this. But I wasn't going to post something like the above until then next round of announcements (this Friday or next?) about upcoming content. In additional to this, I would think there would be rumblings about some of the following coming soon:
I feel like we are due a lot of information about upcoming things: when is 8.1 coming? EOP: it was originally announced as a series for I believe 4 or 5 total cycles (we are finishing number 2)... will it continue into 2023 (I really hope so), update on battlegrounds / relics / other game modes. Not all of them... but the last couple months have been very boring, and even when something was released like Gauntlet... its effectively a 1-day binge, not really something to keep you going for the month like a variant of 8.1 getting released.
Some "hint" about why the economy has shifted so much (e.g. an announcement that you may want to save your 6 star max sig crystals because "soon" 7 star shards will start rolling out and you may want to wait until those are available).
Some hint at either the "day of the deadpool" coming back (sale to buy stuff with gold) or a trade in store that actually includes 6 star AG / maybe 5 star -> 6 star sig crystal trade in.
And don't get me started on AQ/AW fixed/improvements, we are now 1 week into the "season" (maybe more accurate to say 3 weeks left)... so shouldn't be too much longer (maybe early Sep) before we get that update too.
Thursday puts us four months from Christmas. Friday marks this thread being two weeks old.
I know that’s a long time, but if the requirements are going to change substantially for eligibility (and that’s how it sounds tbh) then it would be great to announce early. Even if you set the account creation date at the time of announcement, having as much time as possible to reach progression milestones is big for QOL.
I too am hoping for an announcement soon about this as this is going to affect a lot of legit grinders. Hopefully, it includes a boost to the GGC rewards yet again.
Thursday puts us four months from Christmas. Friday marks this thread being two weeks old.
I know that’s a long time, but if the requirements are going to change substantially for eligibility (and that’s how it sounds tbh) then it would be great to announce early. Even if you set the account creation date at the time of announcement, having as much time as possible to reach progression milestones is big for QOL.
I too am hoping for an announcement soon about this as this is going to affect a lot of legit grinders. Hopefully, it includes a boost to the GGC rewards yet again.
The creation of the catalyst store and loyalty store really creates a dilemma for gifting. I don’t think you can sell a ggc for 300 that can spit out a t2a that costs 60 units. It’d make the event a real bummer.
Thursday puts us four months from Christmas. Friday marks this thread being two weeks old.
I know that’s a long time, but if the requirements are going to change substantially for eligibility (and that’s how it sounds tbh) then it would be great to announce early. Even if you set the account creation date at the time of announcement, having as much time as possible to reach progression milestones is big for QOL.
I too am hoping for an announcement soon about this as this is going to affect a lot of legit grinders. Hopefully, it includes a boost to the GGC rewards yet again.
The creation of the catalyst store and loyalty store really creates a dilemma for gifting. I don’t think you can sell a ggc for 300 that can spit out a t2a that costs 60 units. It’d make the event a real bummer.
I am not sure it will be a big dilemma for kabam. Last year we had T4B in the crystal at 300units.
Thursday puts us four months from Christmas. Friday marks this thread being two weeks old.
I know that’s a long time, but if the requirements are going to change substantially for eligibility (and that’s how it sounds tbh) then it would be great to announce early. Even if you set the account creation date at the time of announcement, having as much time as possible to reach progression milestones is big for QOL.
I too am hoping for an announcement soon about this as this is going to affect a lot of legit grinders. Hopefully, it includes a boost to the GGC rewards yet again.
The creation of the catalyst store and loyalty store really creates a dilemma for gifting. I don’t think you can sell a ggc for 300 that can spit out a t2a that costs 60 units. It’d make the event a real bummer.
I am not sure it will be a big dilemma for kabam. Last year we had T4B in the crystal at 300units.
I see what you’re saying but there wasn’t a permanent place to go get it in exchange for units.
Comments
You ask why you would list 12 hours of grinding and opportunity cost if you were talking about bots. Why would you list only clearly non-exploitive activity and then state that the results were not exploitive? To say there's no opportunity for exploit by only looking at non-exploitive behavior would be a moot exercise.
Asking if it is "fair" is missing the point. We don't ask if grinding the arena is fair. It is allowed. Gifting from alts to main accounts is allowed. But that doesn't mean that all gifting from alts to mains is not exploitive. Actions are not judged in isolation, but in circumstance and situation. The arguments made last year were that if gifting from alts to mains is allowed, it should be allowed under all circumstances. All or nothing. But that's not how the game works, or for that matter how anything else works anywhere else. That argument is a feeble attempt at rules lawyering.
The general rule, which any reasonable game developer would almost certainly agree with, is that if resource transfers are allowable at all, they are generally only allowable when the relative circumstances surrounding such resource earning are sufficiently comparable between accounts that the effects of that economic transfer are within reason. There's a lot of judgment in such a rule, deliberately so. But no reasonable designer would ever say that something is always allowable under al circumstances, and asking the question if gifting from alts is fair without context is in effect asking for the same thing: a decision on allowability without the associated circumstances. The only answer is: it depends.
Snark aside, you’re grasping at straws here. Yes it’s been allowed, but it’s never been an all or nothing situation. Never stated by Kabam or players.
What’s been inferred last year and that I would assume most players think, is that it’s allowed in the spirit of fairness.
Meaning, farm bots, breaking of TOS are not something I would condone. But it can and should be dealt with on its own, while letting the event run for legitimate players, wether they put in the work to grind alts or not.
It would be enlightening to know how much of the player base is actually playing/gifting unconventionally as you put it. I would think it’s a minority not strong enough to break the economic balance of the game.
Economic balance is also not the only priority. It’s unclear if it is even the most important. Two others are probably significantly more important, as they would be to most other game operators. First, there’s the general corrosive nature of the acquiescence, real or otherwise, to exploiters and cheaters. As a general principle, it is true that enforcement should be focused on the cheaters and not blanket the playerbase but that’s not always possible or practical. The need to proscribe narrowly has to be weighed against the harm caused by those who escape detection or punishment.
Secondly, there’s the meta effect of sending the wrong message that pushing the envelope in these areas is acceptable by default. At some point this becomes problematic, and the time to act is not when it crosses the line, but before the general attitude gets ingrained that pushing the envelope in this direction is normalized.
As to the notion that I’m “grasping at straws” I’m not sure what straws you believe I’m grasping at. That implies you think I’m either guessing or wildly speculating about what I wish to be true, when I’m simply stating the facts as I understand them, as someone that has discussed many of these issues with the devs directly, both on the economic balance side of the equation as well as the technical enforcement side.
That's the spirit of giving. It isn't labelled the "trading event" or the "try to cheat the system" event.
I know that’s a long time, but if the requirements are going to change substantially for eligibility (and that’s how it sounds tbh) then it would be great to announce early. Even if you set the account creation date at the time of announcement, having as much time as possible to reach progression milestones is big for QOL.
I feel like we are due a lot of information about upcoming things: when is 8.1 coming? EOP: it was originally announced as a series for I believe 4 or 5 total cycles (we are finishing number 2)... will it continue into 2023 (I really hope so), update on battlegrounds / relics / other game modes. Not all of them... but the last couple months have been very boring, and even when something was released like Gauntlet... its effectively a 1-day binge, not really something to keep you going for the month like a variant of 8.1 getting released.
Some "hint" about why the economy has shifted so much (e.g. an announcement that you may want to save your 6 star max sig crystals because "soon" 7 star shards will start rolling out and you may want to wait until those are available).
Some hint at either the "day of the deadpool" coming back (sale to buy stuff with gold) or a trade in store that actually includes 6 star AG / maybe 5 star -> 6 star sig crystal trade in.
And don't get me started on AQ/AW fixed/improvements, we are now 1 week into the "season" (maybe more accurate to say 3 weeks left)... so shouldn't be too much longer (maybe early Sep) before we get that update too.