Dev Diary: Amping Up Alliances

Summoners!

We've got some big plans for the future of Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars! From QOL updates, to changes with AQ Timers, find out what's coming in the Future of Alliance Modes in our latest Dev Diary!

You can read it on our blog here!

Please Note: We are still collecting Feedback on Alliance War Nodes. There won't be any updates on those in here at this time.

Comments

Xanderayne

In the short term road map there was mention of updated to the map 5 AI. This mention has been notably absent from both the Prelude to the Road Map and in this posting today.

Is this a simple oversight or are these changes off the table?

Xanderayne

In the short term road map there was mention of updated to the map 5 AI. This mention has been notably absent from both the Prelude to the Road Map and in this posting today.

Is this a simple oversight or are these changes off the table?

I should add, here is the quote from the "MARVEL CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS: SHORT TERM ROADMAP"

In early July, we’ll be giving Alliance Quests a Mid-Season revamp that will refresh encounters, change up rewards, and add a new tier of Alliance Quest modifiers that will reward Summoners brave enough to take them on with high tier materials like Tier 5 Class Catalyst Fragments! We’ll also be updating the AI of opponents in Map 5 to match the AI of Map 6 and 7.

Aomine_Daiki10

In the short term road map there was mention of updated to the map 5 AI. This mention has been notably absent from both the Prelude to the Road Map and in this posting today.

Is this a simple oversight or are these changes off the table?

Map5 is free maybe they forgot about it.

DNA3000

I agree with you @DNA3000 but I am not certain that is how kabam views it

Your uncertainty is probably well justified.

Rockypantherx

TL:DR version: “Changed many things, really. In a global sense, streamlining, the whole ongoing enterprise of it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DtR3Oyq5a8

Yup alright you win comment of the day.

Markjv81

Although 45 minute timers are great, it feels like you aren’t making them 30 minutes purely because that’s what majority of players ask for. It just feels like bare minimum again, players asked for 30 so will just make it 45 so it looks like we are giving them at least something. There doesn’t seem to be a logical reason to choose 45 over 30.

Mase1127

Although 45 minute timers are great, it feels like you aren’t making them 30 minutes purely because that’s what majority of players ask for. It just feels like bare minimum again, players asked for 30 so will just make it 45 so it looks like we are giving them at least something. There doesn’t seem to be a logical reason to choose 45 over 30.

For some reason, they are obsessed with forcing us to log in numerous times per day to clear AQ/AW.....

These changes still help alleviate the pressure, hopefully the link/node improvements do so even further although there is of course no timeline for that....

AW is still a disaster and these undisclosed changes that should happen prior to s19 are going to determine if more people quit or stay. Gotta believe we won't get any of that info till post-July 4th as they are trying to appease everyone to spend with promises and no actual info/dates.

NoOnexRO

So... everything was pushed to post THIS?
THIS is your great answer?
Oh my... waste after waste. Another roadmap of a roadmap.
Honestly I don't even care. I will play in my own way, so will all my friends in our small alliance.
Waiting for good changes is the most stupid thing in this game.

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Markjv81

No reward changes in plat4 and down. Well i will skip this season it seems. All the other changes are good.
@CometEarth they said they understood that gold and below weren't rewarded enough I believe?

Plat 4 is above gold....

DNA3000

Although 45 minute timers are great, it feels like you aren’t making them 30 minutes purely because that’s what majority of players ask for. It just feels like bare minimum again, players asked for 30 so will just make it 45 so it looks like we are giving them at least something. There doesn’t seem to be a logical reason to choose 45 over 30.

The logical reason to choose 45 over 30 is that it is a compromise between 60 minutes and 30 minutes. Someone somewhere at Kabam thinks lower timers are damaging, and there are players that also feel that way, and even though I think they are trivially provably wrong, Kabam may feel overall they have to honor that perspective in this case with a compromise.

I don't think that's the best trade off, but it is not an illogical trade off. I think the fundamental idea that more energy is harmful is illogical, but it isn't necessarily illogical to sometimes give illogical players a compromise rather than just ignore them entirely. If we get *enough* to mitigate timer issues and they think they were not completely ignored, I'm fine with moving on and seeing where we are with the new energy system before considering if it is good enough.

GroundedWisdom

I still can't get behind shocking the system into different Matches unless there's some type of system to prevent people from being overpowered by Matches they will never win, and something in place to stop the Tanking in Tiers 6 and below. There are ways this could have been mitigated properly without doing it at the expense of Alliances who work just as hard, and whose only fault is they're not the highest Alliances. These people will have their Season sacrificed just to change the syatem, when a better option for Rewards was possible. Perhaps that's what was implied with the attention to Brackets in the future, but at the moment, I still feel compelled to voice my concern. I appreciate the positives coming.

CometEarth

No reward changes in plat4 and down. Well i will skip this season it seems. All the other changes are good.
@CometEarth they said they understood that gold and below weren't rewarded enough I believe?

Yeap their exact words were "address them in the future" .The future can be a very long time and the season start next week and based on the thing on the list it wont be on this season. I hope i am wrong.

Markjv81

Although 45 minute timers are great, it feels like you aren’t making them 30 minutes purely because that’s what majority of players ask for. It just feels like bare minimum again, players asked for 30 so will just make it 45 so it looks like we are giving them at least something. There doesn’t seem to be a logical reason to choose 45 over 30.
The logical reason to choose 45 over 30 is that it is a compromise between 60 minutes and 30 minutes. Someone somewhere at Kabam thinks lower timers are damaging, and there are players that also feel that way, and even though I think they are trivially provably wrong, Kabam may feel overall they have to honor that perspective in this case with a compromise.

I don't think that's the best trade off, but it is not an illogical trade off. I think the fundamental idea that more energy is harmful is illogical, but it isn't necessarily illogical to sometimes give illogical players a compromise rather than just ignore them entirely. If we get *enough* to mitigate timer issues and they think they were not completely ignored, I'm fine with moving on and seeing where we are with the new energy system before considering if it is good enough.

Maybe my wording was incorrect or I didn’t explain myself properly, I agree with what you said, I also think 45minute timers plus increase starting energy and cap will make a huge difference and is probably good enough, it just seems 30 minutes wouldn’t have changed it all that much more.

Gamer

Although 45 minute timers are great, it feels like you aren’t making them 30 minutes purely because that’s what majority of players ask for. It just feels like bare minimum again, players asked for 30 so will just make it 45 so it looks like we are giving them at least something. There doesn’t seem to be a logical reason to choose 45 over 30.
The logical reason to choose 45 over 30 is that it is a compromise between 60 minutes and 30 minutes. Someone somewhere at Kabam thinks lower timers are damaging, and there are players that also feel that way, and even though I think they are trivially provably wrong, Kabam may feel overall they have to honor that perspective in this case with a compromise.

I don't think that's the best trade off, but it is not an illogical trade off. I think the fundamental idea that more energy is harmful is illogical, but it isn't necessarily illogical to sometimes give illogical players a compromise rather than just ignore them entirely. If we get *enough* to mitigate timer issues and they think they were not completely ignored, I'm fine with moving on and seeing where we are with the new energy system before considering if it is good enough.

Generally I’m personally don’t like everything one kabam this with AQ I’m really liked I’m ofcasse had hoped the cap was raised to 8 energy then the star energy culd be 5. And then leav the 1 huers it wil meant u can sleep to ofcasse 6 huers is like a nor

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TheBigFatPanda

The Pre-enrollment for a AQ will not be ready until at least 2021. So, the officers still have to be attached to their phones at the end of a AQ in order to start a new one right away. Little disappointed in this timeframe.

Sunny2

You guys did nothing to improve on wars. It was work/horrible before and still horrible now. Let me preface this with i have played upto plat 1 (now gold 3 semi retired 1 bg war and even that's getting too frustrating). I have a radical solution but would lead to a qol and would make alliance war less stressful and I think more fun. Get rid of seasons. Divide the rewards you would have given in seasons into each individual war based on tiers, bgs, and completion. That way it takes the pressure off war. If you lose a few it happens it doesn't sink 4 weeks of play. If u r facing an alliance thats killing u u don't have to go crazy killing the boss. If its holidays or ppl are on vacation and you want to do a week of 2 bg (during what previously would have been during seasons) so what? Ppl would still have to earn those rewards but it would be alot less stressful and less like a second job.

TheBigFatPanda

Also, would have liked to see all 3 minis on the map and you get to choose which one to fight. Could add a requirement that each mini needed to be fought each week. For instance, on map 5, you can choose to fight Red Skull 3 of the days, but you have to fight Mister Fantastic and Human Torch at least once. This could be applied to each section. Hopefully, this is part of the Choose of Your Adventure thing they are planning

Mr_Z

I Love the changes to alliance quest energy timers & cap. Given all the emergency maintenance this week, is there any reason we can't change the timer immediately? @Kabam Miike

LeNoirFaineant

A lot of the AW stuff sounds like a wishlist I'm not putting much faith in.

That's a fair point. I'm optimistic that they will at least improve war even if all their goals are not fully realized. Their goals have changed for the better which should result in positive change. I need to see the changes before I care about war again but I'm optimistic lol.

LeNoirFaineant

Bro what? Now when I emptied the Alliance Energy I could be free for like 4h 55m but now the timer is even reduced to 4h 25m to check again and again...... That'll create the pressure to move because I have energy, at least increase the energy cap to 10, please
I can't tell if this is serious or not, so I'm going to assume it is serious. First, the only reason to feel compelled to move when energy is full is because you don't want to waste energy. But under the new timer you have almost 25% more energy to complete the map. In effect we started with three and then got potentially 24 more energy one per hour. You can't really use the last one as it arrives when AQ ends, so you had 23+3=26 energy. If you slept eight hours, you'd lose an additional three energy as if you played efficiently and burned all your energy before you went to sleep you'd recharge five and then lose three. So your total energy budget was 23 energy. (I suspect we start with three to counterbalance the three we lose over an eight hour sleep period).

Under the new AQ energy rules, we will start with four, we cap at six, and we recharge in 45 minutes. That means our daily energy budget gives us 24 / 0.75 = 32 energy from the timer, plus 4 to start, equals 36. Once again, call that 35 as you can't use the last one. Over an eight hour sleep period we would gain 8/.75 = 10.7 ~ 11 energy, we'd cap at six and lose 5. So our total energy budget is now 30. Net, players have gained seven points of energy.

Whatever reasons people have for believing they should now use energy faster and more frequently, they are wrong. This isn't Brewsters Millions: you don't get credit for using more energy. You just have to complete the map. You now have more energy, and you get it faster. This is 100% an advantage for all players everywhere under all conditions so long as they don't completely use their minds and just play reasonably. Anyone who turns this into a negative is doing it to themselves, and I recommend they avoid doing that out of their own self-interest.

Exactly. Everyone benefits from this unless they convince themselves that they need to move faster for no reason. I've wanted 30 minute timers for years but I'll take the compromise. We can now login less, do more fights when we do login, and if someone can't login or drop a node on day one it doesn't have to result in everyone scrambling and getting on often day 2.

Chrisco66

Aq stuff sounds promising. Still staying away from aw this season

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Kade7175

Aw rewards are trash for plat and below!! Where is this buff that was spoken of ?

Kapitz

I think tie breakers could have prevented a lot of misery.

Or Kabam could just add a scoring metric that would be almost impossible to tie on to split the difference... Something like "Attack Efficiency" where the alliance that has a lower overall time spent in fight/less damage taken/some other metric gains additional points. It could even be structured in a way that it only comes into play in the event of a tie in the existing score system.

That's just the first thing that pops into my mind thinking about it. But the upshot is, there's plenty of hypothetical ways for Kabam to ensure a war always results in a 'W' for one team if that's what they want. Somewhere along the line, Kabam forgot that they have more tools at their disposal than just "Increase Difficulty" -- as true for War as for the rest of the game.

Worknprogress

Just to hop in, I really wish Kabam would be more specific with some of these changes and when they plan on being implemented. I completely understand that they've only just begun brainstorming some of these items, so they're not going to have a complete idea regarding timetable.

But things like AQ timer changes sound as though they are past the inception stage. When can we see those? And while I like the idea of AQ officer tools (setting maps ahead of time and seeing future variations) some of this seems possible to implement now. Why not do it in 2 parts, with an immediate patch, and another later on with more advanced tools?

I say this not to complain or harp on the past, but because I think setting reasonable expectations on time frames is extremely important. Especially with this next roadmap, it's supposed to discuss more control on the RNG. I think it's crucial to know when we can expect to see changes to the current crystals as well as if any changes are coming at all.

They said the timer changes would be July, so sometime within the next few weeks if I had to take a stab in the dark

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