Kabam should have at least opened the details of this move to the community and collected feedback (kind of like beta testing) before implementing it. This feels like a classic case where they found a few good reasons why the idea seemed to be a good one and went on with it without asking enough questions why it may not work as well as they imagined it would.
With such significant side effects to this change, one has to wonder if: 1. They didn't know, which implies their incompetence. 2. They knew but couldn't do anything to address the side effects, which implies their negligence. 3. They knew but wouldn't do anything to address the side effects, which implies their deviousness or maliciousness.
Well, which one is it?
Here's why, i promise you, they didn't announce this ahead of time and instead just immediately locked donations: because if there was a gap in time between the announcement and the change, then you'd have a bunch of mercs that jumped in and immediately donated whatever they had so it would be converted to tickets. From the standpoint of stopping treasury dumps there couldn't be a warning period.
But the bigger issue is that they made stopping 1 final big treasury dump a bigger priority than pleasing the other 99% of alliances that aren't in the top 1% and that don't pay mercs to treasury dump. Just like taking away gifting badges, Kabam has made another decision that negatively affects the majority to stop a practice participated in by a very small minority - instead of just banning the minority.
No. Just no. They could have easily announced this via an in-game message and declared a cutoff at the exact point that message is sent out after which no donations will be refunded/compensated to account for exactly what you described.
That reason would be extremely poor and to be frank just idiotic.
Kabam has stated that their driving force behind the changes was to stop merc treasury dumps. That was priority #1 for them. So then it's easy to speculate with a high degree of accuracy that their reasoning for not giving the community a heads of up the coming change, despite previously promising transparency on future changes, is also tied to merc treasury dumps. I didn't say that it wasn't idiotic...this is Kabam we're talking about here.
Allow members to donate tickets that they purchase (or are given back from treasury) to the ally.
Give ally leaders the means to allot tickets to members as they see fit.
This means map 5 players can still donate tickets for map6/7 players to use in an equitable rotation with map6/7 players allowing all members to contribute when running multi map aqs.
Not a perfect solution, but i think a solution like this solves more problems than the minor ones it creates...
Kabam should have at least opened the details of this move to the community and collected feedback (kind of like beta testing) before implementing it. This feels like a classic case where they found a few good reasons why the idea seemed to be a good one and went on with it without asking enough questions why it may not work as well as they imagined it would.
With such significant side effects to this change, one has to wonder if: 1. They didn't know, which implies their incompetence. 2. They knew but couldn't do anything to address the side effects, which implies their negligence. 3. They knew but wouldn't do anything to address the side effects, which implies their deviousness or maliciousness.
Well, which one is it?
Here's why, i promise you, they didn't announce this ahead of time and instead just immediately locked donations: because if there was a gap in time between the announcement and the change, then you'd have a bunch of mercs that jumped in and immediately donated whatever they had so it would be converted to tickets. From the standpoint of stopping treasury dumps there couldn't be a warning period.
But the bigger issue is that they made stopping 1 final big treasury dump a bigger priority than pleasing the other 99% of alliances that aren't in the top 1% and that don't pay mercs to treasury dump. Just like taking away gifting badges, Kabam has made another decision that negatively affects the majority to stop a practice participated in by a very small minority - instead of just banning the minority.
I agree with the reasoning behind not informing the playerbase and immediately implementing it. Then the 2nd issue you pointed out is indeed a concern which relates with the 2nd point I was trying to make, which was they didn't do enough to make sure that the majority, those who aren't the target of the fix, is not negatively affected.
The hole in the system was created, albeit unintentionally, by them and any solution to address that should have minimal to zero negative effects to the players who are not exploiting it. So they're probably both negligent as well as devious in this case.
Although I support this move from Kabam because personally I have tons of gold but this is a bad idea. Kabam obviously did not think this through and yet they release this move. Use your brains Kabam, please!!!!! If uncertain, ASK the community. It has way past the "dumb" threshold.
The best solution is sometimes the easiest. Remove entry costs to all maps and you’re done.
Exactly this, instead of wasting your development time on a ticketing system, spend it on things that players actually want. I am still shaking my head with how proud they were with incursions and how long it took for them to develop instead of the many many other possibilities.
This has the added benefit (For kabam) of people pushing to do maps that might be out of their depth, and in turn spend on revives and heals.
First there is entry fee for map 4. Then they removed it. Then entry fee for map 5. Then they removed it. Why dont they remove entry fee for map 6 and 7 too? Then no donation cheating. At least remove map 6 entry fee because I dont think many people have to pay to get enough resource for map 6.
First there is entry fee for map 4. Then they removed it. Then entry fee for map 5. Then they removed it. Why dont they remove entry fee for map 6 and 7 too? Then no donation cheating. At least remove map 6 entry fee because I dont think many people have to pay to get enough resource for map 6.
That’s a good point, most of the mixed bg alliances are running a combo of 5/6 so this would solve the majority of issues in relation to that
I think I understand the twin problems that Kabam is trying to solve, i.e., treasury dumping and arena bots. The timing, i.e., the beginning of an AW season makes sense since most of the dumping probably takes place in the off season. The lack of notice also makes sense since this is meant to be a hard disruption to unwanted behaviour.
I see two concerns that Kabam needs to meet in order to restore a sense of fairness:
1. The promise of alliances being able to do split maps needs to be upheld. The idea that players will pay differently but be rewarded the same runs counter to the ethos of being in an alliance. A way is needed to make both payment and reward the same in order to keep things in balance for most alliances.
2. The timeframe for determining how many tickets to give to each player needs to be their entire game history, not just 5 months. 5 months is arbitrary and we've seen posts from long-lived alliances who have been planning in terms of years, not just months. I think giving tickets based on players' entire game history will help alleviate the sense that regular players are losing out in this.
There was simple solution that I don't think anyone mentioned: Move the treasury into the AQ start screen, so it's only active and able to donate after AQ starts. After AQ ends, treasury is inactive. No reason for the ticket system. But i do like that they allow using just 1 or 2 resources to pay for AQ. Scaling costs is stupid though. Using loyalty earned in AW to pay for AQ is another stupid thing. Loyalty should be earned based on what scores you put up in the 3-day alliance events.
Better idea: Make it a "Ticket treasury" only available for each individual day of AQ. Alliance starts aq on day1, 766. For all 30members to participate, 600 tickets would need to be donated to that day's "Ticket Treasury". Now, each member can donate their share of 20, or one member donate all 600, or anything in-between. You can only join a BG if at least 20 tickets are in the treasury. This allows alliance members to equally share the cost as they equally share the rewards, and also allows you to cover entry for a friend until they can get you back. Max out the treasury capacity based on what map combinations are run that day and lower it each time a player enters a BG. So for the above example it would be 600 max and lower it by 20 each time a player joins. This way no unnecessary tickets would be donated.
Launch of AQ is an inconvenience as it is. At least Alli management knew what resources were available before starting each map.
Why complicate an already outdated system even more with the introduction of tickets that individual members have to purchase before each AQ?
The leader or an officer has to log in and watch the game like a hawk for the end of the AQ mail to arrive, restart the app, then set the different battlegroups with their different globals. Each day we lose 10 minutes + from one AQ to another, not to mention someone has to be "on call" so that everyone has decent time to clear the maps.
The community has asked Kbm to improve this with the introduction of an Enlistment system for AQ, as there is for AW, and an Automatic start coz you know, ppl have lives...
There was, as usual, a great suggestion from @DNA3000 in a thread that got the standard non answer from kbm and is now buried.
Although this idea was also sugested many times in the recent mega Feedback Thread.
Is it too much to ask that you make this game fun and easy to manage? We're passionate about the Marvel brand, we like hanging out with our alli mates, the game mechanics are nice. But listen to community and stop dumping bs on on your costumers. There is only so much we can take.
Ya at this point, I’m waiting for the kabam email that says “heard you community! We understand how unfair it is for mixed AQ alliances to place burden on some players for cost; while others have no cost.. we have decided to rectify this by allocating rewards based on the contributions of the individual players.. we are very excited about this idea and hope you find it to be a suitable resolution. Keep sharing your thoughts.. it helps us to know how you feel” 🤦♀️
Free maps period would make sense the ticket system is going to destroy my alliance we have been running since the start we run 655 and split the donations to help everyone. Now all the burden is on the map six guys.
Free maps period would make sense the ticket system is going to destroy my alliance we have been running since the start we run 655 and split the donations to help everyone. Now all the burden is on the map six guys.
One problem i see with free maps is everyone would then play map 7 and they have no obligation to clear the map, since a map 5 alliance playing map 7 can earn more by just reaching the second mini boss. AQ is meant to be explored.
Free maps period would make sense the ticket system is going to destroy my alliance we have been running since the start we run 655 and split the donations to help everyone. Now all the burden is on the map six guys.
One problem i see with free maps is everyone would then play map 7 and they have no obligation to clear the map, since a map 5 alliance playing map 7 can earn more by just reaching the second mini boss. AQ is meant to be explored.
well you are half right, they will earn more just by reaching the second miniboss, but because they are putting in their strong champs which they might want to use in questing or for other content, they likely still have the incentive to explore the map and free up their champs. That is of course, unless they use a team they are ok with leaving stuck in AQ
Free maps period would make sense the ticket system is going to destroy my alliance we have been running since the start we run 655 and split the donations to help everyone. Now all the burden is on the map six guys.
One problem i see with free maps is everyone would then play map 7 and they have no obligation to clear the map, since a map 5 alliance playing map 7 can earn more by just reaching the second mini boss. AQ is meant to be explored.
well you are half right, they will earn more just by reaching the second miniboss, but because they are putting in their strong champs which they might want to use in questing or for other content, they likely still have the incentive to explore the map and free up their champs. That is of course, unless they use a team they are ok with leaving stuck in AQ
That is exactly what would happen. We tried map 6 once and we got stuck at second mini, but found that we got more points that what we would get by exploring map 5. All we had to do was go in with our second or even third team, bring in average champs, reach second mini and wait for aq to reset. We would lose out on the rewards for that day, but the weekly reward would make up for that. We don't do that of course because the fun is in beating mini boss and boss. But I am saying, if it was free, you would be under no obligation to complete or explore
Better idea: Make it a "Ticket treasury" only available for each individual day of AQ. Alliance starts aq on day1, 766. For all 30members to participate, 600 tickets would need to be donated to that day's "Ticket Treasury". Now, each member can donate their share of 20, or one member donate all 600, or anything in-between. You can only join a BG if at least 20 tickets are in the treasury. This allows alliance members to equally share the cost as they equally share the rewards, and also allows you to cover entry for a friend until they can get you back. Max out the treasury capacity based on what map combinations are run that day and lower it each time a player enters a BG. So for the above example it would be 600 max and lower it by 20 each time a player joins. This way no unnecessary tickets would be donated.
Worse idea actually. The main reason they introduced the tickets is to stop loaders. Your method above allows that to continue.
My off-the-top-of-my-head solution to mixed map alliances (unsure if anyone postedsimilar before):
Create a similar system to the daily map crystals or honour rewards geared towards rewarding the individuals who have to stand the cost of buying tickets to do higher maps - let these crystals give t2a, t5cc or t5b fragments.
it is then an incentive for people to keep playing map 6 & 7 and "carrying" the rest of alliance members (like myself ) who just want to do map 5.
So
Shared weekly rewards - glory and the same crystals based on finishing position
Special daily crystals only for those buying tickets and doing maps 6 & 7
Remove donations as a whole and get rid of this ticket system. Just let us play!! Problems solved for everyone. I think Kabam has much more pressing issues to address then our entry fee to for a particular game mode.
@Kabam Miike I’ve read the comments here but I can’t find an answer to this question : What will happen for the treasury in global ? We run full AQ6, we had 26M gold left for example, what will happen for this ? It’s especially unfair for those running AQ5...
Free maps period would make sense the ticket system is going to destroy my alliance we have been running since the start we run 655 and split the donations to help everyone. Now all the burden is on the map six guys.
One problem i see with free maps is everyone would then play map 7 and they have no obligation to clear the map, since a map 5 alliance playing map 7 can earn more by just reaching the second mini boss. AQ is meant to be explored.
Make the final boss kill give a ton more points. “Issue” fixed.
No matter what system kabam implements, people are going to leverage it to maximize their agenda no matter if the agenda goes along with “how it was intended or not”... you cannot mitigate every contingency to control human behavior... especially if the system is broken... who cares if alliance runs map 6 to the 2nd mini.. that works for them... who cares if an alliance clears full.. again it aligns with the goals of the alliance...
Kabam apparently needs to find an alcove for the super aggressive competitors and build them something they can play and stop shoving down stream a crappy system that interferes with the of joy of the majority of the player base.... let the 1% pay to compete and get rewards befitting that competition.. close out loops holes for cheaters and let them have at it ... and then leave the rest of us in peace to enjoy the game and hang with our alliance peeps
@Kabam Miike I’ve read the comments here but I can’t find an answer to this question : What will happen for the treasury in global ? We run full AQ6, we had 26M gold left for example, what will happen for this ? It’s especially unfair for those running AQ5...
To me one of the easier fixes of AQ is lowering the timers to 30 or 40 minutes. That would allow AQ to move faster and give people a chance to participate in AQ and enjoy their life. 55 minutes is too long to wait for energy. Either that or shorten AQ to three days. But the most realistic choice is lowering the timers because kabam have done it before when kabam has had maintenance situations that affected AQ times. So it can be done. It would improve the quality of life for summoners in this one fix imo. People agree or do you enjoy 55 minutes timers?
Comments
It's obvious that they didn't think.
Allow members to donate tickets that they purchase (or are given back from treasury) to the ally.
Give ally leaders the means to allot tickets to members as they see fit.
This means map 5 players can still donate tickets for map6/7 players to use in an equitable rotation with map6/7 players allowing all members to contribute when running multi map aqs.
Not a perfect solution, but i think a solution like this solves more problems than the minor ones it creates...
I agree with the reasoning behind not informing the playerbase and immediately implementing it. Then the 2nd issue you pointed out is indeed a concern which relates with the 2nd point I was trying to make, which was they didn't do enough to make sure that the majority, those who aren't the target of the fix, is not negatively affected.
The hole in the system was created, albeit unintentionally, by them and any solution to address that should have minimal to zero negative effects to the players who are not exploiting it. So they're probably both negligent as well as devious in this case.
This has the added benefit (For kabam) of people pushing to do maps that might be out of their depth, and in turn spend on revives and heals.
Then entry fee for map 5. Then they removed it.
Why dont they remove entry fee for map 6 and 7 too? Then no donation cheating. At least remove map 6 entry fee because I dont think many people have to pay to get enough resource for map 6.
I see two concerns that Kabam needs to meet in order to restore a sense of fairness:
1. The promise of alliances being able to do split maps needs to be upheld. The idea that players will pay differently but be rewarded the same runs counter to the ethos of being in an alliance. A way is needed to make both payment and reward the same in order to keep things in balance for most alliances.
2. The timeframe for determining how many tickets to give to each player needs to be their entire game history, not just 5 months. 5 months is arbitrary and we've seen posts from long-lived alliances who have been planning in terms of years, not just months. I think giving tickets based on players' entire game history will help alleviate the sense that regular players are losing out in this.
But i do like that they allow using just 1 or 2 resources to pay for AQ. Scaling costs is stupid though.
Using loyalty earned in AW to pay for AQ is another stupid thing. Loyalty should be earned based on what scores you put up in the 3-day alliance events.
Alliance starts aq on day1, 766. For all 30members to participate, 600 tickets would need to be donated to that day's "Ticket Treasury". Now, each member can donate their share of 20, or one member donate all 600, or anything in-between.
You can only join a BG if at least 20 tickets are in the treasury.
This allows alliance members to equally share the cost as they equally share the rewards, and also allows you to cover entry for a friend until they can get you back.
Max out the treasury capacity based on what map combinations are run that day and lower it each time a player enters a BG. So for the above example it would be 600 max and lower it by 20 each time a player joins. This way no unnecessary tickets would be donated.
Why complicate an already outdated system even more with the introduction of tickets that individual members have to purchase before each AQ?
The leader or an officer has to log in and watch the game like a hawk for the end of the AQ mail to arrive, restart the app, then set the different battlegroups with their different globals. Each day we lose 10 minutes + from one AQ to another, not to mention someone has to be "on call" so that everyone has decent time to clear the maps.
The community has asked Kbm to improve this with the introduction of an Enlistment system for AQ, as there is for AW, and an Automatic start coz you know, ppl have lives...
There was, as usual, a great suggestion from @DNA3000 in a thread that got the standard non answer from kbm and is now buried.
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/1047187/#Comment_1047187
Although this idea was also sugested many times in the recent mega Feedback Thread.
Is it too much to ask that you make this game fun and easy to manage? We're passionate about the Marvel brand, we like hanging out with our alli mates, the game mechanics are nice. But listen to community and stop dumping bs on on your costumers. There is only so much we can take.
Create a similar system to the daily map crystals or honour rewards geared towards rewarding the individuals who have to stand the cost of buying tickets to do higher maps - let these crystals give t2a, t5cc or t5b fragments.
it is then an incentive for people to keep playing map 6 & 7 and "carrying" the rest of alliance members (like myself
So
- Shared weekly rewards - glory and the same crystals based on finishing position
- Special daily crystals only for those buying tickets and doing maps 6 & 7
Just an idea so don't shoot me.What will happen for the treasury in global ? We run full AQ6, we had 26M gold left for example, what will happen for this ?
It’s especially unfair for those running AQ5...
We hope you’ll send a refund !
Kabam apparently needs to find an alcove for the super aggressive competitors and build them something they can play and stop shoving down stream a crappy system that interferes with the of joy of the majority of the player base.... let the 1% pay to compete and get rewards befitting that competition.. close out loops holes for cheaters and let them have at it ... and then leave the rest of us in peace to enjoy the game and hang with our alliance peeps
But the most realistic choice is lowering the timers because kabam have done it before when kabam has had maintenance situations that affected AQ times. So it can be done. It would improve the quality of life for summoners in this one fix imo. People agree or do you enjoy 55 minutes timers?