The thing is, the goal in AW is to NOT DIE. Ideally revives should be useless. We want potions so we can reduce the chance at us dying, not revives that are only useful when we are losing
The problem is that while this is true, this is a much harder problem to solve at the highest competitive levels. In effect, health potions are a way to buy points. At lower competitive levels, we can simply tell players you have only so much resources to do that, but if you use them up you'll just have to take the L. The problem with that is that if you run out of resources completely, you could be stuck for an entire season unable to even consistently finish paths, which makes the game mode either a turn off because people have to let their alliance down completely, or because they have to spend a lot more than they wanted to. Players cannot decide how much to spend on war without getting into very uncomfortable situations. Inexpensive revives (and preferably unlimited by the item cap) offers an option for players to participate without that Sword of Damocles hanging over them. It is a much better situation for the vast majority of players.
At the highest competitive levels, really tier 1, the meta has squeezed that choice to the point where potions are used basically in a mandatory and proactive way to not just reduce the chance of dying, but to attempt to eliminate it completely. On the one hand, that's expensive. On the other hand, if you make it cheap then potions themselves become pointless. And not only that, but without correspondingly large changes to the design meta, that won't help tier 1 players, because if the devs can't chip you down because you have unlimited health potion usage (effectively), then they'll redesign the maps so that the fights don't damage you, they kill you outright by scaling the difficulty higher and higher until they get a death count that's satisfactory.
Before you tackle the problem of expensive health potions in tier 1, you have to tackle the fundamental problem of how the devs intend to allow tier 1 alliances to fight it out. The current design meta is to increase difficulty until enough deaths happen for most wars to be decided on scoring and not tie breaking, and so that a single death is not usually the overt single deciding factor. Cheap potions would have the side effect of making tier 1 war vastly harder under those design conditions. It is that root situation that in my opinion needs to be tackled, and it is a problem that has been around for years. The high cost of potions is just an inevitable consequence of that problem which is catching up to players now.
The thing is, the goal in AW is to NOT DIE. Ideally revives should be useless. We want potions so we can reduce the chance at us dying, not revives that are only useful when we are losing
The problem is that while this is true, this is a much harder problem to solve at the highest competitive levels. In effect, health potions are a way to buy points. At lower competitive levels, we can simply tell players you have only so much resources to do that, but if you use them up you'll just have to take the L. The problem with that is that if you run out of resources completely, you could be stuck for an entire season unable to even consistently finish paths, which makes the game mode either a turn off because people have to let their alliance down completely, or because they have to spend a lot more than they wanted to. Players cannot decide how much to spend on war without getting into very uncomfortable situations. Inexpensive revives (and preferably unlimited by the item cap) offers an option for players to participate without that Sword of Damocles hanging over them. It is a much better situation for the vast majority of players.
At the highest competitive levels, really tier 1, the meta has squeezed that choice to the point where potions are used basically in a mandatory and proactive way to not just reduce the chance of dying, but to attempt to eliminate it completely. On the one hand, that's expensive. On the other hand, if you make it cheap then potions themselves become pointless. And not only that, but without correspondingly large changes to the design meta, that won't help tier 1 players, because if the devs can't chip you down because you have unlimited health potion usage (effectively), then they'll redesign the maps so that the fights don't damage you, they kill you outright by scaling the difficulty higher and higher until they get a death count that's satisfactory.
Before you tackle the problem of expensive health potions in tier 1, you have to tackle the fundamental problem of how the devs intend to allow tier 1 alliances to fight it out. The current design meta is to increase difficulty until enough deaths happen for most wars to be decided on scoring and not tie breaking, and so that a single death is not usually the overt single deciding factor. Cheap potions would have the side effect of making tier 1 war vastly harder under those design conditions. It is that root situation that in my opinion needs to be tackled, and it is a problem that has been around for years. The high cost of potions is just an inevitable consequence of that problem which is catching up to players now.
if the game mode is not about competition, then it becomes uninteresting. so why play the mode that is not interesting because it is too costly and expensive, if you can forget about it and not play it because of the lack of fun and competitive spirit. and the competitive spirit and pleasure of the game is killed by the abundance of stress that the developers throw us into. the stress of cost and expense, the stress of feeling like you're letting the team down. thus, trying to put players in an uncomfortable situation, increasing costs, developers will only increase the outflow of players and a decrease in interest, which is already weakening enough. after all, what will happen from next season will look like this - whoever wins will be able to buy enough items, whoever loses - well, okay, we are not interested in you, whoever needs to will buy. but losing doesn't always mean that people spend less. they can spend a lot, but by reducing access to loyalty, with each war they will be able to buy fewer and fewer potions, thereby gradually leaving the map, losing interest. that's what these changes will lead to. thus, the AW mode will gradually be forgotten and become unnecessary. So people will play AQ and BattleGrounds, and no one will care about the war. Because it brings too much stress and is unnecessarily expensive. the game has already lost a lot of players in the past just because of the inability to solve problems with AW. it's only going to get worse now.
Remember how someone said: If the costs outweigh the pleasure, it's time to jump off. I think this phrase fits our situation.
That's selective. If people are playing at the highest level, then there's a certain amount of cost associated with being the best. Finding an Alliance that is less stressful is always an option.
So no changes were made to the cost of potions? So for example, we can buy 2 l4 health potions for 40k loyalty (or less than the amount we receive for 1 win, tier 5) or, I can just let my champ die and spend 1 loyalty to revive 40% of health? I am just going to pick Havok as an example. A 6* r4 Havok has 46k health. Let's say I go into a fight with 8% health. I spend 40k loyalty on 2 l4 potions to bring him up to 46% health... why would I spend 40k loyalty on potions when I can just let him die, spend 1 loyalty and revive him to 40%? Yes it is a death, but it is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper.
This is definitely a step in the right direction, but still WAY of the mark.
Also, I am fairly certain most of the concerns we summoners had was with the cost of loyalty to HEAL our champs in AW, not revive them. Why was the only changes made to revives?
A kill possibly matters for victory. I'd kick someone if he chooses k.o. over healing.
That's selective. If people are playing at the highest level, then there's a certain amount of cost associated with being the best. Finding an Alliance that is less stressful is always an option.
Yes, everyone who finds AW expensive can find another alliance that's less stressful. Yes it's an option. But on the other side of the coin is when you leave that you did like - interest and fun just go away. And when it's gone - why spend time on things that you ain't interested on? So the next there will go away is you. Game need this scenario ? Game needs to make itself only pay to win game? Or it's in the main the place where fans can have fun and good time? There's no both ways. There can be only one of these. Or the path in the middle. And it was there until the glory store got closed to buying potions for AW. I mean the time where there wasn't such a big health pools like R4 have. We played AW and AQ. While the mid season was on we were spending and buying some potions during those couple of weeks. And for the next month we were using em', meanwhile adding in our stash another portion of potions from glory store. And everything was fine. Until now. So the real solution is to decrease the cost of potions so we can return to the old scenario when we were collecting items in the midseason and in the season we were using our stash. They don't wanna reduce the cost, they are trying to increase the amount of loyalty but not much. how good is this decision ? I don't think so. I thing we need two option together: increase the loyalty and decrease the cost of potion. Invulnerability boost costs 10k loyalty and 9500 health potion costs 20k loyalty. Invul boost can help you save 10-50k health based on how many fights this boost was on and potion heals you only 9500k health in only one fight. And help your alliance mates per day gives you 1k loyalty. These simple calculations show us that they don't know what they are doing and how the real cost of items should be like. and the most big problem is they are trying to resist to hearing us. they heard that potions need to be monetized so they are adding 10k loyalty boosts for units. But don't wanna hear us and decrease the cost of potions. Where's the logic? I don't know. Yes find another not so enjoyable alliance is an option. Bad option, but still an option. Which is so close to an option to quit the game. Which was already choosen by many other players. So one of the possible future of the game is more players find an option to change something. Quit. Kabam wants it? I think no. Me don't want it too cause I like this game and I want it to be as good and as fun as possible. What can be only with communication between Kabam and players. But in reality they listen us only when people lost the interest. And it will happen. Sooner or later.
That's selective. If people are playing at the highest level, then there's a certain amount of cost associated with being the best. Finding an Alliance that is less stressful is always an option.
Yes, everyone who finds AW expensive can find another alliance that's less stressful. Yes it's an option. But on the other side of the coin is when you leave that you did like - interest and fun just go away. And when it's gone - why spend time on things that you ain't interested on? So the next there will go away is you. Game need this scenario ? Game needs to make itself only pay to win game? Or it's in the main the place where fans can have fun and good time? There's no both ways. There can be only one of these. Or the path in the middle. And it was there until the glory store got closed to buying potions for AW. I mean the time where there wasn't such a big health pools like R4 have. We played AW and AQ. While the mid season was on we were spending and buying some potions during those couple of weeks. And for the next month we were using em', meanwhile adding in our stash another portion of potions from glory store. And everything was fine. Until now. So the real solution is to decrease the cost of potions so we can return to the old scenario when we were collecting items in the midseason and in the season we were using our stash. They don't wanna reduce the cost, they are trying to increase the amount of loyalty but not much. how good is this decision ? I don't think so. I thing we need two option together: increase the loyalty and decrease the cost of potion. Invulnerability boost costs 10k loyalty and 9500 health potion costs 20k loyalty. Invul boost can help you save 10-50k health based on how many fights this boost was on and potion heals you only 9500k health in only one fight. And help your alliance mates per day gives you 1k loyalty. These simple calculations show us that they don't know what they are doing and how the real cost of items should be like. and the most big problem is they are trying to resist to hearing us. they heard that potions need to be monetized so they are adding 10k loyalty boosts for units. But don't wanna hear us and decrease the cost of potions. Where's the logic? I don't know. Yes find another not so enjoyable alliance is an option. Bad option, but still an option. Which is so close to an option to quit the game. Which was already choosen by many other players. So one of the possible future of the game is more players find an option to change something. Quit. Kabam wants it? I think no. Me don't want it too cause I like this game and I want it to be as good and as fun as possible. What can be only with communication between Kabam and players. But in reality they listen us only when people lost the interest. And it will happen. Sooner or later.
The problem with that argument is it only goes as far as balance. It's supposed to be a certain amount of stress because it is, after all, a competition. It's not Alliance Play. It's Alliance War.
That's selective. If people are playing at the highest level, then there's a certain amount of cost associated with being the best. Finding an Alliance that is less stressful is always an option.
Yes, everyone who finds AW expensive can find another alliance that's less stressful. Yes it's an option. But on the other side of the coin is when you leave that you did like - interest and fun just go away. And when it's gone - why spend time on things that you ain't interested on? So the next there will go away is you. Game need this scenario ? Game needs to make itself only pay to win game? Or it's in the main the place where fans can have fun and good time? There's no both ways. There can be only one of these. Or the path in the middle. And it was there until the glory store got closed to buying potions for AW. I mean the time where there wasn't such a big health pools like R4 have. We played AW and AQ. While the mid season was on we were spending and buying some potions during those couple of weeks. And for the next month we were using em', meanwhile adding in our stash another portion of potions from glory store. And everything was fine. Until now. So the real solution is to decrease the cost of potions so we can return to the old scenario when we were collecting items in the midseason and in the season we were using our stash. They don't wanna reduce the cost, they are trying to increase the amount of loyalty but not much. how good is this decision ? I don't think so. I thing we need two option together: increase the loyalty and decrease the cost of potion. Invulnerability boost costs 10k loyalty and 9500 health potion costs 20k loyalty. Invul boost can help you save 10-50k health based on how many fights this boost was on and potion heals you only 9500k health in only one fight. And help your alliance mates per day gives you 1k loyalty. These simple calculations show us that they don't know what they are doing and how the real cost of items should be like. and the most big problem is they are trying to resist to hearing us. they heard that potions need to be monetized so they are adding 10k loyalty boosts for units. But don't wanna hear us and decrease the cost of potions. Where's the logic? I don't know. Yes find another not so enjoyable alliance is an option. Bad option, but still an option. Which is so close to an option to quit the game. Which was already choosen by many other players. So one of the possible future of the game is more players find an option to change something. Quit. Kabam wants it? I think no. Me don't want it too cause I like this game and I want it to be as good and as fun as possible. What can be only with communication between Kabam and players. But in reality they listen us only when people lost the interest. And it will happen. Sooner or later.
The problem with that argument is it only goes as far as balance. It's supposed to be a certain amount of stress because it is, after all, a competition. It's not Alliance Play. It's Alliance War.
We talk about the mobile video game, you remember? The game must not be more stressful than life
I don't play war seriously at this point. I think overall pro player move. You can always do more so don't feel compelled to stop but definitely a step in the right direction.
That's selective. If people are playing at the highest level, then there's a certain amount of cost associated with being the best. Finding an Alliance that is less stressful is always an option.
Yes, everyone who finds AW expensive can find another alliance that's less stressful. Yes it's an option. But on the other side of the coin is when you leave that you did like - interest and fun just go away. And when it's gone - why spend time on things that you ain't interested on? So the next there will go away is you. Game need this scenario ? Game needs to make itself only pay to win game? Or it's in the main the place where fans can have fun and good time? There's no both ways. There can be only one of these. Or the path in the middle. And it was there until the glory store got closed to buying potions for AW. I mean the time where there wasn't such a big health pools like R4 have. We played AW and AQ. While the mid season was on we were spending and buying some potions during those couple of weeks. And for the next month we were using em', meanwhile adding in our stash another portion of potions from glory store. And everything was fine. Until now. So the real solution is to decrease the cost of potions so we can return to the old scenario when we were collecting items in the midseason and in the season we were using our stash. They don't wanna reduce the cost, they are trying to increase the amount of loyalty but not much. how good is this decision ? I don't think so. I thing we need two option together: increase the loyalty and decrease the cost of potion. Invulnerability boost costs 10k loyalty and 9500 health potion costs 20k loyalty. Invul boost can help you save 10-50k health based on how many fights this boost was on and potion heals you only 9500k health in only one fight. And help your alliance mates per day gives you 1k loyalty. These simple calculations show us that they don't know what they are doing and how the real cost of items should be like. and the most big problem is they are trying to resist to hearing us. they heard that potions need to be monetized so they are adding 10k loyalty boosts for units. But don't wanna hear us and decrease the cost of potions. Where's the logic? I don't know. Yes find another not so enjoyable alliance is an option. Bad option, but still an option. Which is so close to an option to quit the game. Which was already choosen by many other players. So one of the possible future of the game is more players find an option to change something. Quit. Kabam wants it? I think no. Me don't want it too cause I like this game and I want it to be as good and as fun as possible. What can be only with communication between Kabam and players. But in reality they listen us only when people lost the interest. And it will happen. Sooner or later.
The problem with that argument is it only goes as far as balance. It's supposed to be a certain amount of stress because it is, after all, a competition. It's not Alliance Play. It's Alliance War.
We talk about the mobile video game, you remember? The game must not be more stressful than life
Yes, but that also depends on the individual. Some people go hard. Some stay in their lane. Some people play light.
Also, I am fairly certain most of the concerns we summoners had was with the cost of loyalty to HEAL our champs in AW, not revive them. Why was the only changes made to revives?
I don't believe this is actually the case. This is the case among the most highly competitive players, but not across all players. I believe there are (at least) three major pain points when it comes to war costs. Among the top tier competitors, the primary cost pain point is the high cost of burning resources at maximum levels constantly to maximize their effectiveness in war. That's boosting, and that's constantly topping off health to reduce the chance of dying to the absolute lowest possible. There is absolutely no thought to balancing costs at this tier, at least most of the time.
Then there are mid-tier players that do not boost constantly, do not heal constantly, but are more likely to die, both because they aren't spending on potions constantly and also because they tend to be lower skilled players. These players are not as harmed by high health potion costs, because their potion use is more flexible: they can use them, or not, situationally. Dying once or twice is also not the end of the world for most players competing at this level. The more serious problem is the fact that mid-tier alliances tend to be more heterogenous. Tier 1 alliances have nothing but tier 1 players. But a tier 6 alliance might have tier 4 caliber players and tier 8 caliber players. The tier 4 players will be cruising along, while the tier 8 players might be suffering high potion and revive costs. Some of them might be ultimately kicked, but most mid tier alliances are not going to just kick everyone who dies slightly more often. They might prefer to keep the alliance together and tolerate the lower caliber players. But the problem is those players can item out and literally be unable to complete paths. This is a much more stressful situation. Losing is one thing, failing to even complete your path is another.
At this tier, low cost (and unrestricted) revives would help a great deal. They would allow players to keep their alliances together and play together even if they have to take losses. Remember: in alliance war you don't lose forever, you just lose until you drop to a level where you start to win. Eventually they will stabilize at a tier where the average player is fine, the highest players are cruising easy, and the lowest players are struggling. But with cheap revives, they won't be forced to spend anything while they are struggling. They can just do their best and keep going.
My guess is for every tier 1 alliance, there are twenty mid tier alliances like this.
Finally, there are the alliances that have no problem with alliance war costs, because they've decided to straight up give up on the game mode because of its various problems. Many of these alliances have simply decided that given the issues with alliance war, AW is simply not worth its costs. But with cheap revives, there's now a "free to play" alliance war option. Or rather, a much more realistic one. At the moment, you can choose to play completely for free, if you're willing to just stop where you die and quit. But that's unpalatable to many players for many reasons. There's now an option where an alliance can choose to do "zero spend alliance war" even if they have a wide range of players, and without forcing players to just die in front of a difficult fight and quit the game mode.
This might be the biggest potential win of the cheap revives. The whales in this game come from the free to play players. People pick up the game, decide they like playing it, and then just a few people out of every hundred decide to spend on it, which is how the game survives. If this game became hostile to free to play players, eventually it would have no whales either. The competitive war players also have to come from somewhere. If a player never gets to play war because their alliance hates it and refuses to touch it, many such players will never know if they like it. And most players can't or won't just jump directly into a competitive alliance just to try war out. The people who love alliance war comes from the group of players that like alliance war, and the players who like alliance war comes from the group of players that play alliance war. If you want a healthy game mode, one of the things you have to do is be accessible to the playerbase.
Cheap revives recreates something that used to exist before war seasons. It creates a reasonable on ramp for more casual free to play alliance war. Psychologically, that was much harder post-seasons. Cheap revives should help open that door again.
The people who say this doesn't fully address tier 1 concerns are right: it doesn't. It is one step in addressing the negative effects of the high costs of war. It tackles the easiest problems (in my opinion) in that they have the least controversy surrounding them - assuming you're willing to accept the thought process behind them. The issues surrounding balancing the high costs of top tier competition while preserving the high level competition is a trickier problem to solve, and probably won't be fully solved immediately. Tier 1 players do die occasionally, and when they die reviving and returning to full health was an immense burst of cost. The cheap revives will significantly lower that cost. It takes some of the pressure off, but not all of it. But some is better than before.
So no changes were made to the cost of potions? So for example, we can buy 2 l4 health potions for 40k loyalty (or less than the amount we receive for 1 win, tier 5) or, I can just let my champ die and spend 1 loyalty to revive 40% of health? I am just going to pick Havok as an example. A 6* r4 Havok has 46k health. Let's say I go into a fight with 8% health. I spend 40k loyalty on 2 l4 potions to bring him up to 46% health... why would I spend 40k loyalty on potions when I can just let him die, spend 1 loyalty and revive him to 40%? Yes it is a death, but it is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper.
This is definitely a step in the right direction, but still WAY of the mark.
Also, I am fairly certain most of the concerns we summoners had was with the cost of loyalty to HEAL our champs in AW, not revive them. Why was the only changes made to revives?
A kill possibly matters for victory. I'd kick someone if he chooses k.o. over healing.
Yeah, I lead an alliance as well. We are in tier 5, so 1 death isn’t the end of the world. I guess you choose to kick people for a death, I however do not.
I also understand that this is a GAME. For some, it would be “better” for them to die and save the loyalty (or units). I’m not advocating just dying and then reviving for significantly less, but it is a better use of loyalty.
Also, I am fairly certain most of the concerns we summoners had was with the cost of loyalty to HEAL our champs in AW, not revive them. Why was the only changes made to revives?
I don't believe this is actually the case. This is the case among the most highly competitive players, but not across all players. I believe there are (at least) three major pain points when it comes to war costs. Among the top tier competitors, the primary cost pain point is the high cost of burning resources at maximum levels constantly to maximize their effectiveness in war. That's boosting, and that's constantly topping off health to reduce the chance of dying to the absolute lowest possible. There is absolutely no thought to balancing costs at this tier, at least most of the time.
Then there are mid-tier players that do not boost constantly, do not heal constantly, but are more likely to die, both because they aren't spending on potions constantly and also because they tend to be lower skilled players. These players are not as harmed by high health potion costs, because their potion use is more flexible: they can use them, or not, situationally. Dying once or twice is also not the end of the world for most players competing at this level. The more serious problem is the fact that mid-tier alliances tend to be more heterogenous. Tier 1 alliances have nothing but tier 1 players. But a tier 6 alliance might have tier 4 caliber players and tier 8 caliber players. The tier 4 players will be cruising along, while the tier 8 players might be suffering high potion and revive costs. Some of them might be ultimately kicked, but most mid tier alliances are not going to just kick everyone who dies slightly more often. They might prefer to keep the alliance together and tolerate the lower caliber players. But the problem is those players can item out and literally be unable to complete paths. This is a much more stressful situation. Losing is one thing, failing to even complete your path is another.
At this tier, low cost (and unrestricted) revives would help a great deal. They would allow players to keep their alliances together and play together even if they have to take losses. Remember: in alliance war you don't lose forever, you just lose until you drop to a level where you start to win. Eventually they will stabilize at a tier where the average player is fine, the highest players are cruising easy, and the lowest players are struggling. But with cheap revives, they won't be forced to spend anything while they are struggling. They can just do their best and keep going.
My guess is for every tier 1 alliance, there are twenty mid tier alliances like this.
Finally, there are the alliances that have no problem with alliance war costs, because they've decided to straight up give up on the game mode because of its various problems. Many of these alliances have simply decided that given the issues with alliance war, AW is simply not worth its costs. But with cheap revives, there's now a "free to play" alliance war option. Or rather, a much more realistic one. At the moment, you can choose to play completely for free, if you're willing to just stop where you die and quit. But that's unpalatable to many players for many reasons. There's now an option where an alliance can choose to do "zero spend alliance war" even if they have a wide range of players, and without forcing players to just die in front of a difficult fight and quit the game mode.
This might be the biggest potential win of the cheap revives. The whales in this game come from the free to play players. People pick up the game, decide they like playing it, and then just a few people out of every hundred decide to spend on it, which is how the game survives. If this game became hostile to free to play players, eventually it would have no whales either. The competitive war players also have to come from somewhere. If a player never gets to play war because their alliance hates it and refuses to touch it, many such players will never know if they like it. And most players can't or won't just jump directly into a competitive alliance just to try war out. The people who love alliance war comes from the group of players that like alliance war, and the players who like alliance war comes from the group of players that play alliance war. If you want a healthy game mode, one of the things you have to do is be accessible to the playerbase.
Cheap revives recreates something that used to exist before war seasons. It creates a reasonable on ramp for more casual free to play alliance war. Psychologically, that was much harder post-seasons. Cheap revives should help open that door again.
The people who say this doesn't fully address tier 1 concerns are right: it doesn't. It is one step in addressing the negative effects of the high costs of war. It tackles the easiest problems (in my opinion) in that they have the least controversy surrounding them - assuming you're willing to accept the thought process behind them. The issues surrounding balancing the high costs of top tier competition while preserving the high level competition is a trickier problem to solve, and probably won't be fully solved immediately. Tier 1 players do die occasionally, and when they die reviving and returning to full health was an immense burst of cost. The cheap revives will significantly lower that cost. It takes some of the pressure off, but not all of it. But some is better than before.
This is Avery fair point. Having said that, bugs are still VERY relevant. Watch any CCP war videos and you see them. I have experienced them, others have as well. So now, a buggy game is not only costing me a death, but inevitably a ton of loyalty to heal my champ back up.
My alliance runs “causal war”. We try to win, we do revive, heal and boost when needed. And yes, we are mid tier with a wide variety of skill. Some of us use 1 or 2 boosts and that’s it. Some use boosts, potions and revives every war. This “new” system is not balanced. If I need to heal a champ, I still have to spend 75k loyalty. If a tier 1 player needs to heal his champ, he is spending 75k loyalty. The difference is they are getting enough loyalty to heal up multiple champs each war, I am not. Yes yes, I could “get better” or move up. Point is, I don’t want to. I enjoy low stress causal war. I still need to finish my path and we need to clear the map.
This is a step in the right direction, as I said. But until they make potions more affordable or more available (add them to the victor crystal maybe), AW will still be impossible for the majority of players to move up in.
Maybe insignificant But I think if pots can made percentage base, it may solve some issues. Or just introduce them along with regular pots. R4 and r3s have large hp pool than 5/65s. It may not solve everything but I feel I can change something good towards the players.
Any plans on adding something else in the Loyalty Store, that isn't AW related, in the future?
This is pretty much pointless for those who are sitting at millions and millions of loyalty. The only "interesting" thing to buy there right now would be 20 additional levels on a 6-star Unstoppable Colossus
Any plans on adding something else in the Loyalty Store, that isn't AW related, in the future?
This is pretty much pointless for those who are sitting at millions and millions of loyalty. The only "interesting" thing to buy there right now would be 20 additional levels on a 6-star Unstoppable Colossus
I always thought if Glory was used for rank up materials, Loyalty should be used to gain champions or at least crystal shards.
The revives are pretty pointless for me since I don’t die in war. I do like the increased loyalty per war. Will the loyalty be this high for off season wars as well per win? Haven’t run an off season war in a long time so I’m not quite sure the answer there. If so we’ll be running a lot more off season.
We run G1/2 in Tiers 6-8 in my alliance. Been there for 4 years and love my alliance mates. This change doesn't help us enough. We boost for most fights and we need to heal for most fights. Every war we play is decided by 1-2 deaths, and many times by diversity. Hence, we use 3-4 or more health potions and multiple 3 min boosts per war. Getting 25k-35k loyalty per war is pretty crappy for us. We need either the same amount as top tier wars or we need lower potion costs. It's that simple. Happy to discuss further with any Kabam rep that wants the info. Be well.
If you won't change the above, consider... Add the level 3 or 4 AW health potions with a 20% drop rate to the superior crystals. This way we can get boosts and AW health potions from there as an alternative.
I guess for me, since compensation I have watched alliances item out trying to get through our well sorted defence when it's likely no one in our tier would spend that many units and since we cannot 100% the map this new change makes it harder for us to win since we rely on strong high ranked defenders to stop the opposition from beating the boss given the boss kill is worth so many points.
Placing 2* defenders from dodgy alts just to minimise diversity points loss already annoys me.
Yes, having a short BG should disadvantage us against a full BG, which it does if the opponent decides to take as many tiles as possible (and I'm ok with that) but 6r3 defenders on boss island vs 5r4 attackers (some not even that high) should be worth something, now that advantage is gone with the revives as they are now.
We will probably stop ranking pure defenders because of it.
Disclaimer: I don't take war that seriously, find it boring and haven't played at all this season because I was waiting to see what happened when compensation pots ended. Turns out it will be way worse for us.
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At the highest competitive levels, really tier 1, the meta has squeezed that choice to the point where potions are used basically in a mandatory and proactive way to not just reduce the chance of dying, but to attempt to eliminate it completely. On the one hand, that's expensive. On the other hand, if you make it cheap then potions themselves become pointless. And not only that, but without correspondingly large changes to the design meta, that won't help tier 1 players, because if the devs can't chip you down because you have unlimited health potion usage (effectively), then they'll redesign the maps so that the fights don't damage you, they kill you outright by scaling the difficulty higher and higher until they get a death count that's satisfactory.
Before you tackle the problem of expensive health potions in tier 1, you have to tackle the fundamental problem of how the devs intend to allow tier 1 alliances to fight it out. The current design meta is to increase difficulty until enough deaths happen for most wars to be decided on scoring and not tie breaking, and so that a single death is not usually the overt single deciding factor. Cheap potions would have the side effect of making tier 1 war vastly harder under those design conditions. It is that root situation that in my opinion needs to be tackled, and it is a problem that has been around for years. The high cost of potions is just an inevitable consequence of that problem which is catching up to players now.
Remember how someone said: If the costs outweigh the pleasure, it's time to jump off.
I think this phrase fits our situation.
Then there are mid-tier players that do not boost constantly, do not heal constantly, but are more likely to die, both because they aren't spending on potions constantly and also because they tend to be lower skilled players. These players are not as harmed by high health potion costs, because their potion use is more flexible: they can use them, or not, situationally. Dying once or twice is also not the end of the world for most players competing at this level. The more serious problem is the fact that mid-tier alliances tend to be more heterogenous. Tier 1 alliances have nothing but tier 1 players. But a tier 6 alliance might have tier 4 caliber players and tier 8 caliber players. The tier 4 players will be cruising along, while the tier 8 players might be suffering high potion and revive costs. Some of them might be ultimately kicked, but most mid tier alliances are not going to just kick everyone who dies slightly more often. They might prefer to keep the alliance together and tolerate the lower caliber players. But the problem is those players can item out and literally be unable to complete paths. This is a much more stressful situation. Losing is one thing, failing to even complete your path is another.
At this tier, low cost (and unrestricted) revives would help a great deal. They would allow players to keep their alliances together and play together even if they have to take losses. Remember: in alliance war you don't lose forever, you just lose until you drop to a level where you start to win. Eventually they will stabilize at a tier where the average player is fine, the highest players are cruising easy, and the lowest players are struggling. But with cheap revives, they won't be forced to spend anything while they are struggling. They can just do their best and keep going.
My guess is for every tier 1 alliance, there are twenty mid tier alliances like this.
Finally, there are the alliances that have no problem with alliance war costs, because they've decided to straight up give up on the game mode because of its various problems. Many of these alliances have simply decided that given the issues with alliance war, AW is simply not worth its costs. But with cheap revives, there's now a "free to play" alliance war option. Or rather, a much more realistic one. At the moment, you can choose to play completely for free, if you're willing to just stop where you die and quit. But that's unpalatable to many players for many reasons. There's now an option where an alliance can choose to do "zero spend alliance war" even if they have a wide range of players, and without forcing players to just die in front of a difficult fight and quit the game mode.
This might be the biggest potential win of the cheap revives. The whales in this game come from the free to play players. People pick up the game, decide they like playing it, and then just a few people out of every hundred decide to spend on it, which is how the game survives. If this game became hostile to free to play players, eventually it would have no whales either. The competitive war players also have to come from somewhere. If a player never gets to play war because their alliance hates it and refuses to touch it, many such players will never know if they like it. And most players can't or won't just jump directly into a competitive alliance just to try war out. The people who love alliance war comes from the group of players that like alliance war, and the players who like alliance war comes from the group of players that play alliance war. If you want a healthy game mode, one of the things you have to do is be accessible to the playerbase.
Cheap revives recreates something that used to exist before war seasons. It creates a reasonable on ramp for more casual free to play alliance war. Psychologically, that was much harder post-seasons. Cheap revives should help open that door again.
The people who say this doesn't fully address tier 1 concerns are right: it doesn't. It is one step in addressing the negative effects of the high costs of war. It tackles the easiest problems (in my opinion) in that they have the least controversy surrounding them - assuming you're willing to accept the thought process behind them. The issues surrounding balancing the high costs of top tier competition while preserving the high level competition is a trickier problem to solve, and probably won't be fully solved immediately. Tier 1 players do die occasionally, and when they die reviving and returning to full health was an immense burst of cost. The cheap revives will significantly lower that cost. It takes some of the pressure off, but not all of it. But some is better than before.
I also understand that this is a GAME. For some, it would be “better” for them to die and save the loyalty (or units). I’m not advocating just dying and then reviving for significantly less, but it is a better use of loyalty.
My alliance runs “causal war”. We try to win, we do revive, heal and boost when needed. And yes, we are mid tier with a wide variety of skill. Some of us use 1 or 2 boosts and that’s it. Some use boosts, potions and revives every war. This “new” system is not balanced. If I need to heal a champ, I still have to spend 75k loyalty. If a tier 1 player needs to heal his champ, he is spending 75k loyalty. The difference is they are getting enough loyalty to heal up multiple champs each war, I am not. Yes yes, I could “get better” or move up. Point is, I don’t want to. I enjoy low stress causal war. I still need to finish my path and we need to clear the map.
This is a step in the right direction, as I said. But until they make potions more affordable or more available (add them to the victor crystal maybe), AW will still be impossible for the majority of players to move up in.
But I think if pots can made percentage base, it may solve some issues. Or just introduce them along with regular pots. R4 and r3s have large hp pool than 5/65s. It may not solve everything but I feel I can change something good towards the players.
375 units for an invul boost lol? That’s what, £15 for a 3 minute boost?
Just like @Kabam Miike admitted that Cyclops is the most effective champ
If you won't change the above, consider... Add the level 3 or 4 AW health potions with a 20% drop rate to the superior crystals. This way we can get boosts and AW health potions from there as an alternative.
Placing 2* defenders from dodgy alts just to minimise diversity points loss already annoys me.
Yes, having a short BG should disadvantage us against a full BG, which it does if the opponent decides to take as many tiles as possible (and I'm ok with that) but 6r3 defenders on boss island vs 5r4 attackers (some not even that high) should be worth something, now that advantage is gone with the revives as they are now.
We will probably stop ranking pure defenders because of it.
Disclaimer: I don't take war that seriously, find it boring and haven't played at all this season because I was waiting to see what happened when compensation pots ended. Turns out it will be way worse for us.