Introducing Alliance Quest Modifiers

Greetings Summoner,

The challenges of our Alliance Quests continue to evolve and change! Starting November 15th a new feature will be coming to Alliance Quests!

Alliance Quest Modifiers

Alliance Quest Modifiers are optional Buffs that Alliance Leaders and Officers can add to Alliance Quest Maps to increase their difficulty, and earn bonus rewards for completing the Map.

Alliance Quest modifiers are meant to act as a stepping stone for mid-tier Alliances to graduate to higher difficulties, and give higher-tier Alliances new content to engage with.

How do they work?

When an Alliance Quest Event is running, Alliance Leaders and/or Officers will have the option to select a Global Buff that will affect all encounters on the Map. They can choose a Buff for each Battlegroup that is participating.

An Alliance will always have the option to not choose a Global Buff, however they will surrender any bonus Points they would have gained from participating in this feature.

There are three tiers of Buffs: Normal, Heroic, or Master. Normal Buffs are best suited for Maps 1-3, Heroic and Master for Maps 4-7.
Each tier contains 5 Buffs, enough for one Buff per day of an Alliance Quest series. You can look forward to more Buffs being added in the future.

These Alliance Quest Modifier Buffs increase the difficulty of the Alliance Quest Map, but Alliances are rewarded with ”Honor” and earn bonus Points when completing Maps with these Buffs selected.

Honor and Bonus Points?

Honor Points are Points that Alliances gain from completing Maps in Alliance Quest Events when they have chosen an Alliance Quest Modifier. Using a Modifier that you haven't used this week will earn your Alliance more points each Quest. Additionally, the higher difficulty Map you run, the more points the Modifiers will earn.

The greater variety of Modifiers you use throughout the series, the more Honor Points you will earn. To reach the highest Honor Milestones, you’ll need to use all 5 Alliance Quest Modifiers throughout the series on Map 7.

Bonus Points are additional Points an Alliance earns for choosing Alliance Quest Modifiers that go towards Rank Rewards.

The Buffs
Normal:

+45% Armor: The Defender gains +45% Armor Rating from the start of the fight
Sadist - 1: This Defender gains +10% Attack for each Debuff on them.
Opportunist - 1: This Defender gains +10% Attack for each Buff on them.
Physical Resistance 40%:The Defender gains +40% Physical Resistance Rating from the start of the fight
Plagued Mind -1: Attacker's Power is drained every 30 seconds.

Heroic:

Soft Guard - 1: Each Blocked attack reduces Block Proficiency by 2%, up to a maximum of 80% reduction.
Feats of Power: When the Defender is above 1 Bar of Power, gain a Fury Buff. When the Defender is above 2 Bars of Power, gain a Precision Buff. When the Defender is at 3 Bars of Power, gain a Cruelty Buff.
Role Reversal: The Class Relationships on this Node are reversed.
Optimist: Gains Fury, Armor Up, and Health Steal as long as they remain below 25% HP.
Pessimist: Gains Fury, Armor Up, and Health Steal as long as they remain above 75% HP.

Master:

Brute Force: If the Attacker hasn't landed a hit in 6 seconds they begin to Degenerate, losing 100% of their total Health over 30 seconds. Landing a hit removes the Degeneration and resets the timer. The strength of this Degeneration is affected by Class Relationships. (150% over 30 seconds with Class Dis. and 50% over 30 seconds with Class Adv.).
Dismay: Whenever the Attacker loses their highest achieved Combo in a fight, they gain a Degeneration Debuff that deals damage every second equal to 10 times the lost Combo.
Hurt Locker: Using the same type of Special Attack twice in a row gives the Attacker a Delayed Blast charge for {2} seconds which may be removed by landing a Heavy Attack. If the Blast expires, the Attacker takes {1}% of their Health as direct damage.
Bane: Whichever Champion lands the first hit will place a Curse on the opposing Champion which deals {1}% of their current Health as Direct Damage per second. Whenever a Champion with the Curse strikes the other Champion or if the Curse has been on the same Champion for {2} seconds, it passes to the other Champion.
Special Delivery: The Attacker begins the fight with {0} Combo charges which are lost with each landed basic attack. Launching a special attack resets the charges & if all charges run out, the Attacker suffers Degen equal to {1}% of the Defender's attack rating over {2} seconds and then the charges are reset.

Honor Milestones
The Top Honor Milestone can only be earned by using all 5 Master Alliance Quest modifiers in a single series on 5x Map 7.

Alliance Quest Modifiers are a completely optional addition to Alliance Quests, and will be available on November 15th, as well as an update to the Glory Store and Rank Rewards, and an update to many Alliance Quest Mini-Bosses! More information on those are coming soon.

Comments

Doc_oc

It seems like modifiers aren't working properly.. we playing map 5 on 2 bgs and map 6 on 3rd bg..
But it seems like honor points and honor bonuses are broken on map 6.. honor points are lower on map 6 as compared to map 5.
@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Lyra @Kabam Porthos

SummonerNR

Display-Bug only, telling you incorrect potential BG3 points. What is actually being given after AQ day ends seems to be the Correct Amount (and not the lower amount it was displaying beforehand).

And same Display-only Bug happens in BG 1/2 as well if you switch up doing different days on different buff Difficulty levels. Switching Difficulty tells you in advance that points will go back to column-1 (day-1) Points, but after AQ ended it actually gave points from correct Column (Day).

Worknprogress

Does anyone know if these bonuses are cumulative or peak bonuses? Do you get 7.2M day 1 of map 7 for 3 bgs and 3 master buffs and then get 21.6M for the 5th day? Or do you just get 21.6M on top of the series score for all 5 days?

unknown

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SummonerNR

...
Does anyone know if these bonuses are cumulative or peak bonuses? Do you get 7.2M day 1 of map 7 for 3 bgs and 3 master buffs and then get 21.6M for the 5th day? Or do you just get 21.6M on top of the series score for all 5 days?

The Bonus Points (above chart) are cumulative, for each day, times each BG. So YES for your example.

The Honor Points themselves (chart below) for each day and BG are also cumulative, although the final Milestone reward for Honor (last chart below) is indeed a Peak Milestone.

SummonerNR

Honor charts...

Worknprogress

...
Does anyone know if these bonuses are cumulative or peak bonuses? Do you get 7.2M day 1 of map 7 for 3 bgs and 3 master buffs and then get 21.6M for the 5th day? Or do you just get 21.6M on top of the series score for all 5 days?
The Bonus Points (above chart) are cumulative, for each day, times each BG. So YES for your example.

The Honor Points themselves (chart below) for each day and BG are also cumulative, although the final Milestone reward for Honor (last chart below) is indeed a Peak Milestone.

That's what it was looking like based on our score at end of day 4. Was just curious if that was supposed to be the case. That's some pretty serious score inflation to raise a map 7 alliance by 70+ million points and then call then optional

JMAN337

@Worknprogress you are totally right. For the upper tier alliances the modifiers are in no way optional. Thankfully the nodes are not that bad. We ran them all week no issues.

DNA3000

...
Does anyone know if these bonuses are cumulative or peak bonuses? Do you get 7.2M day 1 of map 7 for 3 bgs and 3 master buffs and then get 21.6M for the 5th day? Or do you just get 21.6M on top of the series score for all 5 days?
The Bonus Points (above chart) are cumulative, for each day, times each BG. So YES for your example.

The Honor Points themselves (chart below) for each day and BG are also cumulative, although the final Milestone reward for Honor (last chart below) is indeed a Peak Milestone.

That's what it was looking like based on our score at end of day 4. Was just curious if that was supposed to be the case. That's some pretty serious score inflation to raise a map 7 alliance by 70+ million points and then call then optional

I think that's a matter of context. In the general context of the game, the modifier system is optional. For the vast overwhelming majority of players, the modifier system is optional. If you're in a competitive AQ alliance, the system isn't optional, but only in the sense that nothing is optional in a competition where the goal is to win (or place high, or whatever). Once you pick your goal, everything you need to do to accomplish it is, from your perspective, not optional.

But I don't think it is fair or noteworthy to knock a game developer for describing a game feature as optional when it isn't optional for competitive players, simply because nothing is optional for competitive players if their desire to compete is high enough.

Worknprogress

@Worknprogress you are totally right. For the upper tier alliances the modifiers are in no way optional. Thankfully the nodes are not that bad. We ran them all week no issues.

Same here but I just dont see how they could call them optional for any alliance running map 7. You're not going to put out that resource expenditure and then leave 70m points on the table

SummonerNR

Just putting the Modifier Buff Lists up here as well, and maybe have all 5 screencaps on same thread page for people to reference ...

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SummonerNR

@khehmist , it looks like you are able to still advance to the next “Unique Day” even if you change to a different Difficulty Group of buff. (display on screen of potential Bonus/Honor Points will not reflect that currently, but looks like the actual progression of unique points is what was awarded when I tried that)

One might argue that doing a Heroic for first 4 days, and then jumping to a Master for just the last day should not necessarily award you that 5th Day Master worth of Points. But it also wouldn’t seem right if they were to drop you down to the 1st day Unique Master Points Level on that day-5 after 4 days of Completion.

But it’s not really gonna affect high alliances one way or another, as they most likely are going to run all Master Level each day anyways.

Mid-Tier ally's may decide to run something like 4 days of Heroic buffs (maybe leaving out Soft Guard ?) and running 1 day of Hurt Locker from Master (seems like the easiest Master Level buff).

DNA3000

@khehmist , it looks like you are able to still advance to the next “Unique Day” even if you change to a different Difficulty Group of buff. (display on screen of potential Bonus/Honor Points will not reflect that currently, but looks like the actual progression of unique points is what was awarded when I tried that)

One might argue that doing a Heroic for first 4 days, and then jumping to a Master for just the last day should not necessarily award you that 5th Day Master worth of Points. But it also wouldn’t seem right if they were to drop you down to the 1st day Unique Master Points Level on that day-5 after 4 days of Completion.

Actually, that's exactly what I expected the system to do. Allowing players to gain day 5 magnified points for a higher tier by first running a lower tier doesn't make sense to me. In other words, the system would be saying that running the same Master modifier five days in a row would award less points than running four Normal modifiers followed by a Master modifier. That's completely nonsensical.

Because there seems to be visual and other bugs this week, I'm not entirely sure what the game is actually doing and what it is supposed to be doing. But based on how the points are described in the announcements, the only logical thing that should happen is that the number of bonus points you get should be based on how many unique modifiers of the same tier you are running. If today you are running a master tier modifier, you should get master tier points. How many should be based on how many unique master modifiers you've run to this point, including the current one.

If it is actually advancing rightward on every different modifier, even if they are in different tiers, that's horribly broken. Because in that kind of system, if you can run some but not all of the master tier modifiers, the system basically *forces* you to add lower tier modifiers rather than repeat a master tier modifier, or lose points. That is just plain crazy.

SummonerNR

I was thinking that maybe the fairest for when switching Difficulty groups would be to keep you in the same “Unique Column” as previous day. Sort of a middle ground between being able to advance to next column vs having to drop back down and restart column for a different difficulty.
But thought that would be to convoluted to suggest.

Keep in mind that lower ally's would still have to have WIN in those previous days, and by day-5 their Prestige would have jumped up quite high. So if they want to then run a Master Buff on day-5 they are sort of running above their heads a little.
And they’re not really competing against high end ally's anyways.

DNA3000

I was thinking that maybe the fairest for when switching Difficulty groups would be to keep you in the same “Unique Column” as previous day. Sort of a middle ground between being able to advance to next column vs having to drop back down and restart column for a different difficulty.
But thought that would be to convoluted to suggest.

Keep in mind that lower ally's would still have to have WIN in those previous days, and by day-5 their Prestige would have jumped up quite high. So if they want to then run a Master Buff on day-5 they are sort of running above their heads a little.
And they’re not really competing against high end ally's anyways.

I'm not sure this is a "lower ally" thing. Consider this: not all modifiers in the same tier are equally difficult. Even if they were, not every modifier would be considered equally difficult by every player. So lets say that an alliance feels comfortable running Hurt Locker, Bane, and Special Delivery, but they aren't comfortable running Brute Force or Dismay. They could run Bane, SD, HL, HL, HL, which would be five Master modifiers in one week. They would get the modifier bonus for Master x 1, then Master x 2, then Master x 3, then that same bonus again for the last two days. Let's say this is a Map 6 alliance. The bonus points would be 1.8M, 2.7M, 3.6M, 3.6M, 3.6M. That's a total of 15.3M bonus points.

If instead they did two Heroic modifiers first, then they would have Heroic, Heroic, Bane, SD, HL. This sequence awards 1.6M, 2.4M, 3.6M, 4.5M, 5.4M, for a total of 17.5M bonus points, if the unique modifiers ignore tier. This sequence awards more bonus points, even though it is unquestionably an easier sequence. If you can't do every modifier in a tier, you're better off adding lower tier modifiers than repeating a modifier in the same tier. But I don't see how this makes sense. It is almost like a defender diversity situation, where you're being rewarded for running different modifiers, even if they are easier. In fact, the point difference is so high, it would be better to run two *Normal* tier modifiers and then three Master, than run five Master but two duplicates.

If you can only run three of the Master tier modifiers, you are better off filling in your week with two of the weakest modifiers in the lowest tier than repeat any Master tier modifier. Does that seem like a reasonable property for the modifier system to have? And this doesn't just affect top tier alliances running Master mods, the same thing would be true for Heroic and Normal mods as well: you're better off running two Normal and three Heroic than run five Heroic but duplicate some.

Maybe it is even more problematic for Heroic level alliances, because one of the Heroic mods is Role Reversal, which confers almost no difficulty change at all. So an alliance could run four Normal tier mods, and then run Role Reversal on day five and pick up the day five multiplier for the Heroic mod, without having to actually run five days of Heroic mode (in fact I came up with a modifier strategy based on this assumption but without this method of calculating points in another post).

Hutch6114

Can you please tell us what you are thinking of doing about the issues with the modifiers. Since we couldn’t start ours on day one we are missing 15 million AQ points and around 9500 honor points. This makes this whole excercise pretty pointless. We miss out on the honor t5b and the bulk of honor t2b, which are the main reason we did the modifiers. Any answers or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Or should we submit a ticket? Thanks!

DNA3000

@khehmist , it looks like you are able to still advance to the next “Unique Day” even if you change to a different Difficulty Group of buff. (display on screen of potential Bonus/Honor Points will not reflect that currently, but looks like the actual progression of unique points is what was awarded when I tried that)

So just as a data point, I went back and checked our alliance. I did not actually screengrab anything, but going from memory on day 2 for my own battlegroup I applied a Normal mod just to see how the system worked, then I applied three different Heroic mods in days three through five. On day five the AQ panels are telling me I'm getting the point bonus I would expect for three Heroic mods, not four (this is while the day is running, not prior to start). So it seems that at least for my alliance and my situation, the Normal mod granted Normal column 1, then the Heroic mods granted Heroic column 1, 2, and finally 3. I did not change maps during the week. But if other players are seeing something different, it is possible the game isn't calculating this consistently in all situations.

Actually double checking the points totals is difficult in my alliance because every battlegroup runs a different map and different modifiers. So that's a bit tricky in my case.

Hutch6114

Thi

This is from day 5 for us.

RoninMan

AQ just finished and still no word on how this affected people? Some of us weren’t able to utilize the new system so what happens to us?

SummonerNR

@DNA3000 , “while the day is running” is where it apprears as if it is just displaying the wrong forecast for how many pts you would be getting.

Let us know once full History is in Completed tab, for your particular BG what Points you actually got during each of the 5 days. Hopefully you’ll see that the points column continued to advance no matter if switching between different Difficulty buffs.

SiriusBreak

Honestly, I'm very confused as to how the Honor Point system works. We ran 5x5 all 3 BGs, a different Heroic Modifier each day and only rounded out with 14k. Now I was under the impression that we'd round out with 21k. At least according to the charts and the calculator made MutaMatt. Now, am I missing something?

joke1004

The honor bonus points are not calculated correctly. We should be over 400 mil but it says 397... something is bugged there

Nos4atu

What happened to the AQ? It ended abruptly in the middle of a 2bg, map3&5 for us and didn’t give us credit. Doesn’t even show in our history??

SummonerNR

Doesn’t look like Day-5 has been fully completed yet, no daily AQ mail rewards yet, so probably also why Bonus/Honor have not been added in yet, and why some ppl can’t use heroes yet (if they had not already released them by stepping on boss node earlier).
My History does not have day-5 populated yet.

So hopefully just a few more minutes needed ??

SiriusBreak

Doesn’t look like Day-5 has been fully completed yet, no daily AQ mail rewards yet, so probably also why Bonus/Honor have not been added in yet, and why some ppl can’t use heroes yet (if they had not already released them by stepping on boss node earlier).
My History does not have day-5 populated yet.

So hopefully just a few more minutes needed ??

Yeah I just noticed this as well. So I guess we'll see. Our ending points jump by 3 million between 3 PM (EST end time) and now. So maybe the rest of the honor points will show up. We shall see. Weird stuff.

SparkAlot

Can you please tell us what you are thinking of doing about the issues with the modifiers. Since we couldn’t start ours on day one we are missing 15 million AQ points and around 9500 honor points. This makes this whole excercise pretty pointless. We miss out on the honor t5b and the bulk of honor t2b, which are the main reason we did the modifiers. Any answers or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Or should we submit a ticket? Thanks!

Yes, we REALLY need a answer on this, lots of alliances could NOT do AQ modifiers for the first 2 days, so it screws up the point totals at the end of Day 5.

How will Kabam fix this issue to make it fair for all the alliances that missed out?

unknown

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unknown

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Grub

@Kabam Miike

Please fix aq before you guys send out more incorrect rewards.

Day 5 isn’t being counted.

No daily rewards came out, nor is it in the history.