Alliance Quest Miniboss and Sentinel Refresh - April 2018 - Discussion Thread [Updated April 13]

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  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,550 ★★★★★
    I mentioned in a couple other Threads that, memes aside, SG and Clops could be useful. They both have Armor Break capabilities. If anyone cares to use the suggestion, be my guest. Now, before anyone clocks me on suggesting people Rank "Garbage Champs", I don't suggest anyone Rank for AQ alone in general, unless they want to. I'm not big on Ranking for any one reason alone because the game is always changing. Just thought I would give a couple suggestions that people wouldn't normally consider.
  • General_VisGeneral_Vis Member Posts: 138
    If the changes were made at the start of a new season we’d have a reasonable expectation that our rank up choices will be good for a longboard period and by the time the next AQ season after that starts we would have had ample time to build up more resources.

    As things stand we have no inclination of how long these changes are going to last. It’s privably fair to say Sentinels will be here for next AQ but they minibosses are a complete mystery.

    For example, I have a R3 Luke Cage who I could take to R4 as a Morningstar killer, but I have no idea how long she’ll be around. Granted LC isn’t exactly a bad rankup even if / when she is removed, but when resources are still scarce you want to make sure your rankup choices are the best option.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,634 Guardian
    Is this a forum or a chat room? Seems the later.

    Back on topic, my opinion on Sentinels: they still are harder than symbiods, beggining with the fact they are immune to poison and bleed. I used to use Wolverine, Gwenpool and Voodoo...

    Actually, I find that Wolverine is a viable attacker for Sentinels, with two conditions. First, at higher prestige you will likely fight to the end of the clock and time out, which means you will have to deal with the half-health penalty. This creates a couple of complications. You need to be able to fight Sentinels well enough that you remain at or near full health consistently. If you regularly lose a lot of health, that combined with the time out penalty will probably kill you. Also, if you end the fight very close to defeating the Sentinel, you won't really have a lot of time when you try again to heal back the penalty. You actually have to make sure you don't consistently end fights with Sentinels having only a little health left. You actually rather they have enough health for you to have enough time to heal back.

    Second, because you are unlikely to kill the Sentinel quickly, you are very likely to have to survive many SP2 attacks, and eventually unblockable SP2 attacks. If you can't reliably evade SP2, Wolverine is unlikely to be a viable option for you due to insufficient damage.

    Voodoo is actually still a decent option for certain types of Sentinels if you use power burn. This can keep the Sentinels from using special attacks for most of the fight, and keeping Sentinels power burned significantly reduces the difficulty of the fight. Even if Sentinels were vulnerable to poison, I would still recommend focusing on power burn instead when using Voodoo.
  • Chicano509Chicano509 Member Posts: 24
    420sam wrote: »
    So, you are making it more difficult yet not adjusting anything like rewards or even glory? Can I ask why? How does this benefit the players?

    As we said in that post, we are working on a full refresh. We are not at a place or time where we can increase the rewards or fully refresh the mode right now.

    If you have time to make the maps harder you have time to buff the rewards.

    I totally agree, if you have time and effort to change the content like the Sentinel-loids then the equal response should be to change the rewards. A simple adjustment like offering rank down tickets to the community for your error Kabam.

    The lack of communication builds dis-trust and lack of respect for the entire community.

    Chicano509
  • Chicano509Chicano509 Member Posts: 24
    This is just a shameless cash grab. This is significantly harder without an increase in rewards. Don't even try to rationalize this, Mike, no one is going to believe this was meant for any reason other than to increase the difficulty and gouge more cash from us.

    From what I understand of main the content harder is understandable, but must equal the rewards. Example @Kabam Miike ... what would happen if you were given a harder job and job title..but not the rewards. I also understand that you @Kabam Miike do not control the game, but please communicate with your colleagues and the errors.

    A simple option for resolution would be to offer a rank down tickets for each class and apologize. I think the entire MCOC community would appreciate a fair communication with respect.

    Chicano509
  • Chicano509Chicano509 Member Posts: 24
    Well of course they'll change up the difficulty without updating the rewards; how else can they hope to milk players for more money.

    This should've been saved for an entirely new season of AQ when you were ready to have updated rewards. If it's such a chore to balance that, don't put the more annoying part of the deal out first and hope the community would roll over and show their bellies.

    I totally agree .. big thumbs up !!!

    Chicano509
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,634 Guardian
    Well of course they'll change up the difficulty without updating the rewards; how else can they hope to milk players for more money.

    Although this was posted a while ago it was recently quoted (directly above) and it seemed odd to me back then in a way I couldn't put my finger on, but can now.

    Making AQ more difficult without increasing AQ rewards is not an especially good way to make more money off of the players. When you make AQ more difficult you increase the probability of the players needing to spend resources (and ultimately money in some cases) to complete AQ regardless of the rewards. What the rewards can do is create an incentive to actually spend those resources. The higher the rewards, the more incentive there is - we saw that with alliance war season one.

    In the expert tier most alliances were completing most maps 100% I believe. So no matter how you change the rewards, you can't force the alliances to try to do much more than they were already doing. The only way you can force alliances to try to do more is to first make AQ more difficult so 100% completion is less likely for the same effort. But to actually encourage players to make the additional effort, recent history says you should also increase the rewards.

    Increasing the difficulty and the rewards could make them more money because you are creating an opportunity for spending and creating an incentive to do so. Increasing the difficulty without increasing the rewards would be a much less effective way to make them more money, because some fraction of players would not see the point in spending without the extra incentive. Increasing the difficulty without increasing the rewards and then decreasing the difficulty without altering rewards is clearly not an attempt to make more anything.
  • CoatHang3rCoatHang3r Member Posts: 4,965 ★★★★★
    Im curious if the reduction of sentineloids SA to level 1 with their attack and HP also being reduced will have a significant enough impact on scoring to cause allies to fall short of the final milestone they used to be capable of reaching. Tmk scoring is based on the PI of champions contained within the map and SA, Ap and HP all impact the PI. Gunna be a little silly and cause a new round of complaints if that is how it actually works out and people lose out on glory and crystals they used to be able to obtain.
  • IrohrIrohr Member Posts: 254 ★★
    CoatHang3r wrote: »
    Im curious if the reduction of sentineloids SA to level 1 with their attack and HP also being reduced will have a significant enough impact on scoring to cause allies to fall short of the final milestone they used to be capable of reaching. Tmk scoring is based on the PI of champions contained within the map and SA, Ap and HP all impact the PI. Gunna be a little silly and cause a new round of complaints if that is how it actually works out and people lose out on glory and crystals they used to be able to obtain.

    Good question. But in all honesty, I know of a good number alliances that would normally score 100 mil get reduced to 90 mil when the sentinels were introduced. I don't think it'll be that much of a difference though.
  • KpatrixKpatrix Member Posts: 1,055 ★★★
    CoatHang3r wrote: »
    Im curious if the reduction of sentineloids SA to level 1 with their attack and HP also being reduced will have a significant enough impact on scoring to cause allies to fall short of the final milestone they used to be capable of reaching. Tmk scoring is based on the PI of champions contained within the map and SA, Ap and HP all impact the PI. Gunna be a little silly and cause a new round of complaints if that is how it actually works out and people lose out on glory and crystals they used to be able to obtain.

    I was under the impression that sentinels were already less points than symbis were anyway. Symbis were52-53k max while I never saw a sentinel over 51k and change.
  • AhnafTheGiraffeAhnafTheGiraffe Member Posts: 1
    This just might be me but did anyone not get their season one rewards because I didn't

  • LeseLese Member Posts: 5
    I'm not buying the idea that the sentinel got nerfed. They hit harder than day 1 previous AQ. I'm sure we'll hear more complains later.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,550 ★★★★★
    They've been changed. Definitely not the same on my end.
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  • NihungNihung Member Posts: 108
    edited April 2018
    Jaded wrote: »
    Really doesn’t matter what you say because you have clearly skipped over the part that I don’t use the trinity on war attack days. Also where I reside is irrelevant to the point. Still facing 80k health sentinels on day 5 with out blade. And I will still make it through easily enough.

    The point of the matter is it’s easy for anyone to come here and say how easy it or how difficult it is. While we all argue among ourselves about the difficulty of alliance quests (which is pointless) we shouldn’t be letting kabam make these changes without an increase in prizes. Since they are behind on all rewards in the game except for alliance wars now they made it even worse.

    What I am capable of doing isn’t a reflection of what happens to everyone across all tiers of game play. I am well aware of the alliance issues. I am not advocating to keep sentinels the same or make them harder. But I’m also not advocating for them to be “nerfed”. I am advocating that the changes should never have happened without every aspect of alliance quest changing including map layouts and prizes.

    @Jaded

    Must admit, despite the nerfing of Sentinels, I'm still not happy. Sentinel has to be the worst designed character ever implemented in MCOC.

    MCOC have created some absolutely beautifully animated characters in the past. For me I love the way Medusa and Archangel play, absolute MCOC triumphs. Even Spidergwen for her infamy has some nice animations, but Sentinel's are like latrine's of MCOC.

    Also, still doesn't address also the issue that armour break champs are basically what you need in AQ. That is wrong.

    I do agree however, rewards or some sort of compensation needs to be put in place.


  • DraenathDraenath Member Posts: 237
    Stop whinging, they seem to be fine now... if not a little too easy
  • Vincew80Vincew80 Member Posts: 196 ★★
    edited April 2018
    We’re running map 6 for the 1st time today. Yes, it’s more difficult & it’s still much more enjoyable than facing sentinel after sentinel. Maybe one day kabam will understand it’s a game & it’s supposed to be fun regardless of the difficulty each ally can handle. Sentinels aren’t fun in the least bit, no matter what nerf they place on them. But, what do we know.. we just play their game. On a side note I was able to solo both voids with no potions as of yet & can’t with Morningstar due to the limited champs available on her with power gain. Another job well done kabam.
  • Speeds80Speeds80 Member Posts: 2,017 ★★★★
    In fighting with Ultron against a skill sentinel, if I 3 hit combo him and swipe back, he can l1 and hit me before I can block from my swipe, just did it multiple times, so I should double swipe, but that builds charges then I need to double swipe to avoid the l1 after I have double swiped, building more charges. They have unfair dynamics, they’re still a bad move, day in day out 6-10 times a day, they need to lose the ability to build charges from swiping back
  • Pr0t0t7p3Pr0t0t7p3 Member Posts: 187
    Dear Kabam. While your intention was to simply replace symboids with sentinels making game play the same/equal you seriously missed the mark which you sort of admitted. So you tweaked the sentinels minimally to compensate for this new AQ. After day 1 of this new AQ I still have to say you have once again missed the mark. The sentinels are in no way on a level with symboids no matter what you do. They are still completely messing AQ up making it absolutely NOT enjoyable and a rather loathsome part of the game. When seasoned vets are still losing champs and forced to use items on day 1 SOMETHING IS BROKEN!!!!! It's time to go back to the drawing board. Stop adding content and FIX WHAT IS ALREADY BROKEN. This game is seriously becoming hated and driving long time players to retire. Pardon my words but you really need to get your **** together. FIX the sentinels or get rid of them from AQ.
  • Primmer79Primmer79 Member Posts: 2,968 ★★★★
    Good job with the fix. Day 1 seems about on par difficulty wise, minus them being immune.
  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Member Posts: 9,264 ★★★★★
    Agreed, primmer. So far (touch wood) it’s been a similar difficulty. I’ve just changed my team to deal with them, Nebula shuts down the sentinels with her charges, quake destroys mystic ones and x23 carries me through the rest.
  • Primmer79Primmer79 Member Posts: 2,968 ★★★★
    Agreed, primmer. So far (touch wood) it’s been a similar difficulty. I’ve just changed my team to deal with them, Nebula shuts down the sentinels with her charges, quake destroys mystic ones and x23 carries me through the rest.

    X23 has carried me. Tried out my shiny new 6* KG for the hell of it, im not impressed. Ultron still works for me, just longer fights.
  • BadroseBadrose Member Posts: 779 ★★★
    honestly I didn't see any significant change. Class advantage good, no class adv still bad.
  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Member Posts: 9,264 ★★★★★
    Badrose wrote: »
    honestly I didn't see any significant change. Class advantage good, no class adv still bad.
    Take someone with class advantage then, you have 3 paths take three class advantages for the ones on your path. If you have more than 3 classes of sentinel on your path, switch with someone so only have 3
  • KenshioKenshio Member Posts: 162
    make them smaller or bigger and wider , they are really annoying right now ...
  • Speeds80Speeds80 Member Posts: 2,017 ★★★★
    Seriously though, you took the easiest defenders in the game (short range specials like bw, iron fist, easily avoidable kang and sw. and replaced them with possibly the hardest, I know everyone is saying they are manageable, I can’t disagree, but they will never be anywhere as easy as aq used to be.
  • RunawaytrainnRunawaytrainn Member Posts: 9
    They claim the sentinels were a replacement that was supposed to keep AQ at the same level just different.. way off the mark ... tbh they still seem way more powerful than any one of the symbs were. Oh well I know the cash grab is not gonna work on me, I'm spending less now not more :)
  • Dj_mphDj_mph Member Posts: 72
    So i know that the sentinels got nerfed, but now in day two of AQ i noticed the big thing for me is that it doesn’t matter if they are hard or easy, it’s just boring!
    The great fun before was watching the symbiods bleed and seem to take real damage.
    Also it’s not a robot thing as fighting Ultron or Vision is Fun. Maybe if you added something like after so much damage an arm falls off or they start to smoke or something.
    I don’t know maybe it’s me but since may of 2015 I’ve never been so board with AQ until now. It’s stale and the sentinels are the reason. Please do something to fix this.
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