How Adaptive EQ rewards work

There still seems to be a lot of confusion as to how the new Adaptive EQ rewards actually work. Most of the confusion surrounds one of three basic areas: how are rewards earned, how much am I supposed to get, and how does prestige affect rewards. I have carefully investigated all three, here's a primer for everyone still uncertain. Note: for those that do not want all the detailed explanation, there's a summary at the end.

First, all EQ rewards are now milestone-based. That means you don't explicitly get rewards for completing or exploring any of the maps. Instead, there's a special reward you can earn called Etherion. Each Etherion earns you one point in the EQ milestone reward track. There are ten milestones in the EQ reward table for Contender through Thronebreaker, and sixteen total milestones in the EQ reward table for Paragon and Valiant. It takes 24 Ehterion to reach milestone 10, and 30 Etherion to reach milestone 16.

You earn Etherion by completing paths. Each path in Classic earns one Etherion. There are 24 total paths in Classic (two maps with three paths, two with four, and two with five) so if you only do Classic paths and you fully explore all of Classic, the maximum possible rewards you can get at any progression tier is milestone 10 - and all the milestones below that (these are normal milestones, not peak milestones, so each one you reach grants you those rewards immediately). From Contender through Thronebreaker, that is all you can do.

Paragon and Valiant have an additional option, they can choose to do Elder difficulty. The way Elder difficulty is pretty simple. There are six Elder paths, each one corresponding to one of the Classic difficulty maps. For each Elder path you do, the game automatically flags that Classic map as fully explored, and awards you any remaining Etherion from that map. You also get one bonus Etherion.

Let's say you did one completion run of Classic (which you need to do to unlock Elder). That would mean you would have six Etherion (one from one path on each Classic map). You then unlock Elder, and do the first path of Elder. Upon completing that first Elder path, the game flags Classic map 1.1 as explored. You had already done one of the paths, so there were two left. They will now be flagged explored as if you did them (you can actually go back and see the map will show 100%, even though you only did one path) and you would get the two remaining Etherion from that map. You'd also get the one bonus Etherion from completing an Elder path. So now you went from 6 Etherion to 9 Etherion (6 from Classic completion, 2 from autoexploring Classic 1.1, and 1 from the Elder completion bonus).

If you fully complete Elder, you will automatically get all 24 Etherion that you would have gotten from Classic exploration plus 6 bonus Etherion for a total of 30. This would max out the EQ milestones and get all possible rewards.

Note: there is no additional benefit to be gained by doing additional Classic paths. Regardless of how many you do, doing the corresponding Elder path just flags all remaining paths that haven't yet been done as explored. So since Classic 1.1 has three paths and three Etherion, you can only ever squeeze three Etherion from that map, plus the one bonus from doing the Elder path associated with that map. If you fully explore Classic and *then* do Elder, you'd still get four total (three from the Classic map, one bonus from Elder). Elder will flag all uncompleted paths as explored, but since they are all already explored, this will do nothing extra. So don't do more than one Classic path per map if you intend to do Elder. There's no benefit at all.

All Elder does is auto-explore Classic, plus give you one more Etherion per path. That's why doing Elder generates more rewards. That is the *only* reason Elder generates more rewards. Doing Elder gives you the ability to earn more Etherion which allows you to complete more milestones and thus get more rewards.

The EQ reward screen shows either Classic or Elder rewards depending on which button (at the upper left) is selected. For progressions lower than Paragon, Classic is the only option. For Paragon and Valiant, you can see Classic or Elder rewards. The total rewards on that screen are the summary of all the milestones you can possibly get if you do the maximum possible. For Classic, that is fully exploring Classic which gives a total of 24 Etherion. That screen shows a summary total of all milestones up to milestone ten (24 Etherion). If you select Elder, the summary shows the total of all milestones possible which is all milestones from one to sixteen (30 total etherion). The two screens are different because Elder shows the additional rewards from milestones 11 through 16. That's the only difference between the two. Both show maximum possible rewards if you explore Classic, or fully complete Elder.

A specific point of confusion is that some people think that doing Elder gives you all the rewards in the Classic screen *and* all the rewards in the Elder screen. This is false. Classic shows all possible Classic rewards. Elder shows all possible Elder rewards including the fact that you automatically get all Classic rewards. It is the total possible rewards for doing Elder.

Finally, how does Prestige affect rewards. There seems to be come confusion around the preview buttons. At the lower right are two selectors, one for Progression and one for Prestige. These are preview selectors that allow you to see what your rewards would be if you were at that progression and at that prestige. For every player these selectors show the same progression and prestige options with one exception: the player's current progression and prestige are always listed as an additional option. So you can see your rewards, and what rewards you could get if you were some other progression or some other prestige.

The confusing part is some people think those preview options are the *only* options that exist. In other words, if you're a Valiant at say 27100 prestige, there is no benefit to getting higher prestige until you go all the way up to 28500, because there are no preview options in between. This is false. In fact, EQ rewards increase more or less smoothly with prestige. Increasing prestige by any amount will increase your rewards by a corresponding amount. Now, some rewards only increase by certain amounts. There's no way to get half of an AG crystal, for example. So some rewards only increase in jumps. A lot of shards and fragments only increase in multiples of 100 or 500. Also, some rewards have maximum caps, which means above a certain prestige they will no longer increase at all. But taking that into consideration, any prestige increase will increase your rewards. EQ rewards do not have "tiers."

For example, my current prestige is 26480. This is in between "tier" 8 (25900 prestige) and 9 (27100 prestige). Note on my screen, my own prestige is numbered "9" because it falls between 8 and 9, so its number "squeezes" in between, and all other values are bumped up one number. There are 40,300 T7 Basic catalyst fragments awarded for Elder completion at 25900 prestige and 41800 T7 Basic fragments at 27100 prestige. At my prestige, which is in between those two at 26480, I get 41,000 fragments. My prestige is in between the two "tiers" and my rewards are also in between those two prestige values.

To summarize:

- EQ rewards are awarded in milestones
- You get one point per Classic path.
- Doing the corresponding Elder path awards all the Classic points plus one more.
- The reward screen shows the maximum possible rewards if you do the maximum possible. This is full Classic exploration if the button is set to Classic, and full Elder completion if it is set to Elder (Elder only exists for Paragon and Valiant). The reward screen is just a summary of the milestones. It is not extra rewards.
- Rewards scale with Prestige. Scaling is not limited to the prestige listed in the preview options. Higher prestige in between listed options will generate more rewards in a roughly continuous fashion.

Further clarification:

- Elder has higher rewards because Elder paths give bonus Etherion, which means you can earn more milestones. This is the only reason Elder has more rewards. Elder milestone rewards are identical to Classic milestones. It is just that Classic exploration alone cannot get them all.
- The Elder rewards shown in the reward summary screen are not on top of Classic rewards. Classic shows all possible rewards if you explore Classic. Elder shows all possible rewards if you complete Elder. This already includes the fact that doing Elder awards all the Classic milestones as you go.
- Increasing prestige improves rewards even if you cannot "reach" the next tier shown on screen. Those are just arbitrarily selected preview options. There are no actual prestige tiers.
- EQ rewards are awarded as you reach reward milestones. This happens as you complete paths. You do not need to claim EQ rewards. Individual milestones shown in the reward milestone screen award as you reach them. There are no special "completion" or "exploration" rewards for EQ any more.

Comments

Usagicassidy

I'd say a massively large part of the confusion is how non-user friendly and unintuitive the design/UI is, which continues to be an absolute failure of the design team, harkening all the way back to the universally hated "Quick Heal" button and weirdly placed/logo'd "team heal" button which isn't even what it looks like.

One major point of confusion that I've seen numerous posts about is "why didn't I get the rewards I was supposed to for the milestone" when in fact, they are looking at the rewards for the NEXT milestone. I'll show you an example:

You can see I have just completed a Quest in Elder, which takes me to this completion window. I can see rewards, shards, Selector crates, etc - but these are NOT the rewards I just got. The rewards I just received aren't shown to me or displayed, BESIDES any "Selector" rewards from that milestone, because those pop up immediately and only those show up for you to make your selection.

You can see here next to the "Flag 16" that it says IN PROGRESS so these are not rewards you have yet. I don't know about you, but I like to SEE what rewards I've just gotten, without having to go into the EQ page, click view rewards, and scroll to the final milestone that says 'claimed'.

The design needs to be A LOT more clear, because the confusion is real.

But ANOTHER reason that there's confusion about the rewards received overall, is that the bump from full Classic exploration rewards and Elder rewards doesn't seem to reflect what Kabam has stated the idea and objective of them to be.

For example, in my 'bracket'/tier, if I look at Titan shards, I see 8,900 shards. Wow, that sounds great - and it is - but then you look at the Classic rewards and it's 5,400 for hitting all the milestones. Which makes the DIFFERENCE between Classic rewards and Elder rewards only 3,500 more for doing Elder - which is supposed to be the big stretch Valiant Guantlet style challenge with the best rewards. I know that when you complete Elder, you get it all so the full 8,900 - but when you see that it's 5,400 for doing Classic and only 3,500 for doing the Elder stretch, it feels like it devalues and de-emphasies the whole point of what Elder was meant to be.

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2879823#Comment_2879823

The fact that the UI has a lot of confusing parts is indisputable: that's why I'm making this post in the first place. Less so everyone reads it now, and more so I have something to point to the next fifty million times someone asks a question over the next few years.

As to the reward bump, it is important to realize, as I think most people don't, that the vast overwhelming majority of players who do Elder will only do a single completion of Classic. That's important, because when you compare Classic reward to Elder rewards you are comparing Classic exploration rewards to single completion of Classic and Elder. Elder does not give you 3500 more Titan shards. You're in between prestige 5 and 6 and I don't want to calculate the prestige numbers for 8900 shards, so let's just use the example of prestige 21600 (prestige level 5). The Elder rewards show 8400 Titan shards and the Classic rewards show 5000 shards, a difference of 3400 shards. But that does not mean you are getting 3400 more shards. You're getting 3400 more shards compared to a player who fully explores Classic. You are doing a single completion of Classic, and then doing Elder. When you do that you will get to milestone 4 (6 Etherion) after your Classic completion run, which generates zero Titan shards. Titan shards do not show up until milestone 7 (15 Etherion). Your Elder run will generate all of the Titan shards while you're doing them. A player who does Classic exploration will not start getting Titan shards until they finish their 15th path out of 24. If they explore each map in turn, that would mean they would not start getting Titan shards until they started doing paths in Classic 3.1.

If we had to explore Classic first to get 5000 Titan shards and then do a completion of Elder to get 3400 more, that would in fact be ridiculous. But that's not the case. We do just 6 out of 24 paths of Classic, which generates zero Titan shards, then do a completion run of Elder that generates all 8400 Titan shards (in this case). When you say you're only getting 3400 more shards for doing Elder, that's true if you want to explore Classic first. Then you would be getting 5500 for Classic and 3400 more for doing Elder. But who's going to do that?

Now, you could make the case that regardless, Elder is much harder than Classic (it is the same number of fights as exploring Classic but under much more difficult conditions and parameters) so the rewards should also be far higher. But that's not generally how progression rewards are designed and balanced. Rather, they are balanced around normalized value. Consider a player A for whom Classic difficulty is just within their ability to do consistently, but Elder is far outside of that. Now consider a different player B who is much stronger, for whom Elder is as hard to them as Classic is to player A. In terms of their player experience, they are experiencing roughly the same relative challenge. The difference is one is stronger than the other. How much more rewards should the stronger player get just for being stronger? If we decide that twice as strong gets twice as much rewards, we have an exponential reward curve. Those don't work at the top of the game. They can work in the middle of the game, but at the high end they break down. There's no way to accommodate that sort of exponential growth curve. Players much stronger cannot get proportionately higher rewards. So having Elder grant something like 60% more rewards even if it might be, say, twice as hard to do for any given player, is not unreasonable. Whether its perfect is a matter of opinion, but its probably not absurdly far off.

BigBlueOx

I just think it’s distasteful how the community prestige can affect others rewards, therefore putting the whole community into a prestige race. There’s really nothing that’s gonna make me like that decision as that doesn’t really jive with what I think about an adaptive difficulty