Each war get 1 of each war boost free,..and take that stupid 3 day timer cap of off the boosts. Like seriously?…I can only buy a invulnerability boost or a regen once every 3 day??…sure,..whatever.
Let's stay focused on the main topic, peeps. Which is feedback on how to undo / improve on the terrible MAP 5 update...
To be honest, I believe the main issue with Map 5 is the ramped up and unbalanced defenders. Some paths are at the difficulty I expect, while others, like path 6, are ridiculous. The nodes are less of a big deal, and the path reductions themselves are already fine: we don't need need even more path reductions from here. Unfortunately reassessing every single fight on the map for appropriateness might be a time consuming fix, but I don't think anything else will really do.
I would agree with the sentiment that burnout is at an all time high.
I was hoping the changes to Map 5 and 6 would make people WANT to graduate from 5 to 6, but instead it’s had the opposite effect and on top of things made map 5 less enjoyable.
While the focus on QOL stuff is nice, the content itself just doesn’t engage the middle class enough
I run a main on map 6 and an alt on map 5. My biggest complaint is how long the fights take now. I think lowering health pools would be greatly beneficial. I'd say lowering attacks but understandable to maintain it. We have more backup available should we make that inevitable mistake and the 5 hit combo KOs us. However health pools are making the fights take forever.
I would agree with the sentiment that burnout is at an all time high.
I was hoping the changes to Map 5 and 6 would make people WANT to graduate from 5 to 6, but instead it’s had the opposite effect and on top of things made map 5 less enjoyable.
While the focus on QOL stuff is nice, the content itself just doesn’t engage the middle class enough
They originally claimed they were making these maps easier to encourage people to move up but most of us could tell before the maps were even live that they were going to be harder based on the released list of new enemies and nodes effects, why Kabam was incapable of knowing this also is beyond me.
My alliance has lost a bunch of players recently as well. Most, if not all, who left the alliance did so not to join other alliances but because they were quitting the game. I know multiple other people in my alliance are currently contemplating quitting as well.
Hardly anyone in my alliance seems to care about the new mode so all we have is a still bugged game with harder AQ and no weekly compensation to help with the compounded issues.
I think Kabam identified a real problem with the game - story mode created a world where the older a champ was, the more you’d see them. A champ who was released in 2019 isn’t in acts 1-5.
Unfortunately, they’ve identified AQ as a place to compensate instead of arena, EQ/SQ, and war.
They say they wanted a progression to help people grow and progress towards map 7/8. What they’ve created instead is a difficulty cliff where any dingdong can buttonmash his way through map 4, and map 5/6 can stonewall them.
Just piling on. So many good recommendations. I have been running map5 for years. The list of items on here should be enough for you guys to address. I'll focus on a couple things specific to map5. The AI, dropped inputs and the like are for other chats right?
Time of fights. I run the exact same team and my fight times went from sub 30 seconds to over a minute. I've had some fights nearly time out. I've never dealt with that on non bosses. It's a frustrating combination of lack of crits, health pool increases, and AI sitting in the corner or not firing off sps.
Defense attack, losing or nearly losing my champs from a single 5 hit combo (that's magically 4 of 5 crits) or a sp intercept that takes me from 100% health to 25%
AI Defense recovering from missed heavy, knock down or intercepted.
All these little things keep adding up guys. Your communications and transparency to AQ have been very frustrating, but I was pleasantly surprised a mod actually hopped on this thread.
Mid level AQ is a box to check. I'm one of the path eaters. Clear 3 lanes and take a boss down. I am the guy hopping on in the parking lot before work and again on lunch break. A doubling of fight time may seem very insignificant to you guys, but it's hard to not take this stuff as the exact opposite of the QOL focus of late.
You made a step forward with the map adjustment, but then wrecked that progress with your adjustments.
Just my opinion...
Now the real question is will you guys do anything?
Just piling on. So many good recommendations. I have been running map5 for years. The list of items on here should be enough for you guys to address. I'll focus on a couple things specific to map5. The AI, dropped inputs and the like are for other chats right?
Time of fights. I run the exact same team and my fight times went from sub 30 seconds to over a minute. I've had some fights nearly time out. I've never dealt with that on non bosses. It's a frustrating combination of lack of crits, health pool increases, and AI sitting in the corner or not firing off sps.
Defense attack, losing or nearly losing my champs from a single 5 hit combo (that's magically 4 of 5 crits) or a sp intercept that takes me from 100% health to 25%
AI Defense recovering from missed heavy, knock down or intercepted.
All these little things keep adding up guys. Your communications and transparency to AQ have been very frustrating, but I was pleasantly surprised a mod actually hopped on this thread.
Mid level AQ is a box to check. I'm one of the path eaters. Clear 3 lanes and take a boss down. I am the guy hopping on in the parking lot before work and again on lunch break. A doubling of fight time may seem very insignificant to you guys, but it's hard to not take this stuff as the exact opposite of the QOL focus of late.
You made a step forward with the map adjustment, but then wrecked that progress with your adjustments.
Just my opinion...
Now the real question is will you guys do anything?
Totally agree. Well said. I almost timed out on a regular fight in section 1 last night. That’s just insane. The lack of “transparency” on this matter is beyond frustrating at this point. And the we’re taking it back to the team response does does absolutely nothing for us. We know when we’re being brushed to the side. The amount of guys in my alliance joining is increasing and the amount of actual play time is getting less and less. And to reiterate the “transparency” aspect. Nothing is being addressed in a helpful way. Increased A.I., AQ, inputs, compensation. I mean seriously what is the deal?
I dont wanna sound like a ass here, but I dont get why people are complaining about map 5 atm. I love the changes with fewer fights in total. I dropped down from a map 7 alliance to a map 5 because I dont have enough free time these days, and so far its felt great. Short paths that I can clear in one go, and without some of the nodes and fights from map 7 that could frustrate the hell out of me.
I'm going out on a limb here.. but if you were doing map 7 I assume your account is pretty stacked.
Map 5 is a mid level map for progressing players. Let's say Cav level. 5* content. Sure you can have a TB or Paragon who's doing map 5 for reasons, but if they find it easy it doesn't mean it's well balanced for the intended player base that map caters to the most.
Especially when there's been zero increase in rewards for allis doing map 5.
Yeah my account is ok i guess but nothing more than that (my prestige is still low), and as I said I wasnt trying to be an ass or anything of the sorts. But before I moved to the map 7 alliance I was doing the old map 5. And the reason i commented was because I havent actually noticed the new map 5 being harder than the old one.
Oh its harder.
It wouldn't be easy to see for someone used to map 7, any more than it would be difficult for an Olympic athlete to tell the difference between five push ups and twenty. It is four times harder, but not for someone for whom both amounts are trivial.
I was doing Map 5 when the maps changed. On my main, I could *see* the difference, but I couldn't *feel* the difference. I'm just way overpowered for Map 5 in general. But on my little alt, where I'm often using rank 4 (5*) in AQ and my choice of attackers is far lower, I could feel the difficulty jump more. Moreover, I could observe the change in difficulty among alliance mates for whom map 4/5 are much closer to the sweet spot of difficulty.
But the big thing is that the path difficulty on map 5 is much more uneven than it used to be. Some paths are not really all that much more difficult, while some paths are dramatically more difficult because they were updated with particularly tougher defenders. For example, path 6 stage 1 in Map 5 seemed to be a lot harder than average on Map 5 when I was doing it. Not quite as bad as path 1 stage 2 on Map 6 (relatively speaking) but much harder nonetheless.
Another thing to keep in mind is that alliance potions are fairly expensive. Difficulty doesn't have to get overwhelmingly high for players to notice. You get chipped up in normal quests and you pop a potion or revive and go on. You make a single mistake in AQ and you're going to be paying a lot for it. Any AQ map that isn't trivially easy starts getting expensive very quickly. A map you can do with your eyes closed but has just a couple defenders that can sometimes catch you off guard just once goes from being a free map to an expensive map in the blink of an eye, even if it is still mostly "easy."
For a lot of alliances, it only takes a couple of potions a day to wipe out most of the glory they are going to earn in the entire AQ week. If you're judging difficulty by map cost, it doesn't take much difficulty to be too much difficulty.
Are people not bringing heal champs to AQ? Seriously, a single BWCV, King Groot, Angela, ibom or Diablo can clear all 5 days of AQ on their own (minus a counter for a mini or boss at times) and gives room for 2 other path or fight specific champs.
All we do is run map 5 in a 61K ally and haven't touched a potion or revive (other than using up freebies before they expire just because I didn't want it to expire for nothing) in a year - despite input issues.
If you're running map5 or lower and tossing glory at potions, you're punching above your weight... Likely due to ally pi/prestige. Someone with an ok roster in a high prestige ally could be facing stronger opponents than if running the same map in AQ with a lower prestige ally. The results are stronger defenders for more glory, but if you have to put that glory back into potions, what's the point?
We just hauled 4150k glory running 554x5 with the same modifier every single day. 100% itemless every day despite usually taking at least q mini and/or the boss. All glory invested into rank up. If I move up to map 6,7,8 but glory input ends up being less due to having to heal up, I'd definitely move back down for less stress and more glory.
Are people not bringing heal champs to AQ? Seriously, a single BWCV, King Groot, Angela, ibom or Diablo can clear all 5 days of AQ on their own (minus a counter for a mini or boss at times) and gives room for 2 other path or fight specific champs.
All we do is run map 5 in a 61K ally and haven't touched a potion or revive (other than using up freebies before they expire just because I didn't want it to expire for nothing) in a year - despite input issues.
If you're running map5 or lower and tossing glory at potions, you're punching above your weight... Likely due to ally pi/prestige. Someone with an ok roster in a high prestige ally could be facing stronger opponents than if running the same map in AQ with a lower prestige ally. The results are stronger defenders for more glory, but if you have to put that glory back into potions, what's the point?
We just hauled 4150k glory running 554x5 with the same modifier every single day. 100% itemless every day despite usually taking at least q mini and/or the boss. All glory invested into rank up. If I move up to map 6,7,8 but glory input ends up being less due to having to heal up, I'd definitely move back down for less stress and more glory.
Not sure the point of your post. We're talking about the increase in difficulty and was it necessary. What's your position on that?
Yeah Sauron and toad are tough for map 5, the class specific nodes are causing grumpy alliances and making all the boss link nodes on the seventh node on the second section was a stink move, not the QOL improvements that we were promised, basically you are making that section compulsory to check in twice mid aq day or the whole alliance gets stuck. day in day out 5 days a week, so still havng to ping alliance mates after they just checked in a Few hours beforehand, good vibes are low in the alliance the bugs are rampant and people are leaving, the difficulty has been raised but we didn’t care while we were getting so many free potions from compensation
I’ve recently moved alliances from one that was running maps 4/4/3 to a 5/5/7. I can’t comment on the changes to map 5, but what I do know is the difficulty leap from 3 to 4 is minimal compared to 4 to 5 - which is significant. I’m a bang average player but I could sleepwalk through map 4, map 5 has been a real eye-opener and the difficulty gap between the 2 is big. It doesn’t make for an easy transition.
Are people not bringing heal champs to AQ? Seriously, a single BWCV, King Groot, Angela, ibom or Diablo can clear all 5 days of AQ on their own (minus a counter for a mini or boss at times) and gives room for 2 other path or fight specific champs.
All we do is run map 5 in a 61K ally and haven't touched a potion or revive (other than using up freebies before they expire just because I didn't want it to expire for nothing) in a year - despite input issues.
If you're running map5 or lower and tossing glory at potions, you're punching above your weight... Likely due to ally pi/prestige. Someone with an ok roster in a high prestige ally could be facing stronger opponents than if running the same map in AQ with a lower prestige ally. The results are stronger defenders for more glory, but if you have to put that glory back into potions, what's the point?
We just hauled 4150k glory running 554x5 with the same modifier every single day. 100% itemless every day despite usually taking at least q mini and/or the boss. All glory invested into rank up. If I move up to map 6,7,8 but glory input ends up being less due to having to heal up, I'd definitely move back down for less stress and more glory.
Not sure the point of your post. We're talking about the increase in difficulty and was it necessary. What's your position on that?
It didn't make a difference, doesn't seem any more difficult - just different and my ally adjusted just fine. Still not using items. Just bringing the right champs and fighting at a level that fits my roster. Using heal champs mitigates the need for items when I do miss a parry or something, but the fights are so routine, that's almost never. Those that are struggling now, are punching above their weight, like I said before.
I've drawn the attention of the dev team to this post for some (mostly) constructive feedback on issues surrounding Map 5. They wanted me to say thank you for the information you all have provided!
The team has been focused on making adjustments to AQ Map 6, which will be in place for the next AQ cycle. Once they're finished with that, they will be exploring the information here!
So, summoners, we won't have information on specific changes for a bit, but the dev team is aware of the general consensus surrounding AQ Map 5!
The changes were implemented to 5 the same time as 6 and for the same reason, money grab. Seriously? How else can you in anyway justify making any of the content more difficult, when half or more of the player population cannot control their champs because of the input issues? And it is doable but clear they want us not just to earn glory, but to pay for it as well.
I've been in a chill map 5 alliance for years now. This map 5 is amazing. It's super quick and easy. Guys get tied up in the evening with work or vacation or families it's no big deal. We don't need all 10 to get to the 2nd miniboss before bed.
Curious what the start prestige is for the guys saying it's too hard, and what champ/rank are you using for AQ?
Thank you for taking the time to share your frustrations!
The changes made to Map 5 were implemented at the same time as the changes to Map 6, so let me reassure you that we did not make changes to punish players for moving to Map 5.
We're eager to take more information to our dev team, so let's focus on finding a solution here. In your opinion, what changes would help make Map 5 more approachable or enjoyable?
Reinstate aq compensation because inputs are still janky.
Edit - to the point of making people actually want to do aq, the rewards for completing each aq should be improved for more immediate satisfaction. Instead of mats and glory at the end of the week’s aq, award some glory for each aw completed too.
Throw in some chests in each lane in phase 3 to incentivize completing all lanes. A map crystal doesn’t do this. But if there’s a chance for a 6s shard or a 2% t5 or t5cc, people are going to actually want to play aq instead of just playing it like you’re a kid eating your vegetables.
You could base the chests on alliance prestige or aq prestige or something so it’s a reward appropriate the content the alliance would play at.
This is just beyond ridiculous now. Timing out on the second fight first section on day one. And on top of that AI is not throw specials. What is being done?
on day 5 I’m nearly timing out with an r3 apocalypse, doesn’t feel like map 5 should be this Grindy, not just on ihulk, the ultron bots are nearly as bad, and some defenders where you have to bait l1 are taking forever as well, nearly timed out on toad yesterday, so today I probably will
I've drawn the attention of the dev team to this post for some (mostly) constructive feedback on issues surrounding Map 5. They wanted me to say thank you for the information you all have provided!
The team has been focused on making adjustments to AQ Map 6, which will be in place for the next AQ cycle. Once they're finished with that, they will be exploring the information here!
So, summoners, we won't have information on specific changes for a bit, but the dev team is aware of the general consensus surrounding AQ Map 5!
Comments
I was hoping the changes to Map 5 and 6 would make people WANT to graduate from 5 to 6, but instead it’s had the opposite effect and on top of things made map 5 less enjoyable.
While the focus on QOL stuff is nice, the content itself just doesn’t engage the middle class enough
My alliance has lost a bunch of players recently as well. Most, if not all, who left the alliance did so not to join other alliances but because they were quitting the game. I know multiple other people in my alliance are currently contemplating quitting as well.
Hardly anyone in my alliance seems to care about the new mode so all we have is a still bugged game with harder AQ and no weekly compensation to help with the compounded issues.
Unfortunately, they’ve identified AQ as a place to compensate instead of arena, EQ/SQ, and war.
They say they wanted a progression to help people grow and progress towards map 7/8. What they’ve created instead is a difficulty cliff where any dingdong can buttonmash his way through map 4, and map 5/6 can stonewall them.
Time of fights. I run the exact same team and my fight times went from sub 30 seconds to over a minute. I've had some fights nearly time out. I've never dealt with that on non bosses. It's a frustrating combination of lack of crits, health pool increases, and AI sitting in the corner or not firing off sps.
Defense attack, losing or nearly losing my champs from a single 5 hit combo (that's magically 4 of 5 crits) or a sp intercept that takes me from 100% health to 25%
AI Defense recovering from missed heavy, knock down or intercepted.
All these little things keep adding up guys. Your communications and transparency to AQ have been very frustrating, but I was pleasantly surprised a mod actually hopped on this thread.
Mid level AQ is a box to check. I'm one of the path eaters. Clear 3 lanes and take a boss down.
I am the guy hopping on in the parking lot before work and again on lunch break. A doubling of fight time may seem very insignificant to you guys, but it's hard to not take this stuff as the exact opposite of the QOL focus of late.
You made a step forward with the map adjustment, but then wrecked that progress with your adjustments.
Just my opinion...
Now the real question is will you guys do anything?
Map 5 is a mid level map for progressing players. Let's say Cav level. 5* content. Sure you can have a TB or Paragon who's doing map 5 for reasons, but if they find it easy it doesn't mean it's well balanced for the intended player base that map caters to the most.
Especially when there's been zero increase in rewards for allis doing map 5.
It wouldn't be easy to see for someone used to map 7, any more than it would be difficult for an Olympic athlete to tell the difference between five push ups and twenty. It is four times harder, but not for someone for whom both amounts are trivial.
I was doing Map 5 when the maps changed. On my main, I could *see* the difference, but I couldn't *feel* the difference. I'm just way overpowered for Map 5 in general. But on my little alt, where I'm often using rank 4 (5*) in AQ and my choice of attackers is far lower, I could feel the difficulty jump more. Moreover, I could observe the change in difficulty among alliance mates for whom map 4/5 are much closer to the sweet spot of difficulty.
But the big thing is that the path difficulty on map 5 is much more uneven than it used to be. Some paths are not really all that much more difficult, while some paths are dramatically more difficult because they were updated with particularly tougher defenders. For example, path 6 stage 1 in Map 5 seemed to be a lot harder than average on Map 5 when I was doing it. Not quite as bad as path 1 stage 2 on Map 6 (relatively speaking) but much harder nonetheless.
Another thing to keep in mind is that alliance potions are fairly expensive. Difficulty doesn't have to get overwhelmingly high for players to notice. You get chipped up in normal quests and you pop a potion or revive and go on. You make a single mistake in AQ and you're going to be paying a lot for it. Any AQ map that isn't trivially easy starts getting expensive very quickly. A map you can do with your eyes closed but has just a couple defenders that can sometimes catch you off guard just once goes from being a free map to an expensive map in the blink of an eye, even if it is still mostly "easy."
For a lot of alliances, it only takes a couple of potions a day to wipe out most of the glory they are going to earn in the entire AQ week. If you're judging difficulty by map cost, it doesn't take much difficulty to be too much difficulty.
All we do is run map 5 in a 61K ally and haven't touched a potion or revive (other than using up freebies before they expire just because I didn't want it to expire for nothing) in a year - despite input issues.
If you're running map5 or lower and tossing glory at potions, you're punching above your weight... Likely due to ally pi/prestige. Someone with an ok roster in a high prestige ally could be facing stronger opponents than if running the same map in AQ with a lower prestige ally. The results are stronger defenders for more glory, but if you have to put that glory back into potions, what's the point?
We just hauled 4150k glory running 554x5 with the same modifier every single day. 100% itemless every day despite usually taking at least q mini and/or the boss. All glory invested into rank up. If I move up to map 6,7,8 but glory input ends up being less due to having to heal up, I'd definitely move back down for less stress and more glory.
We're talking about the increase in difficulty and was it necessary. What's your position on that?
I’m a bang average player but I could sleepwalk through map 4, map 5 has been a real eye-opener and the difficulty gap between the 2 is big. It doesn’t make for an easy transition.
I've drawn the attention of the dev team to this post for some (mostly) constructive feedback on issues surrounding Map 5. They wanted me to say thank you for the information you all have provided!
The team has been focused on making adjustments to AQ Map 6, which will be in place for the next AQ cycle. Once they're finished with that, they will be exploring the information here!
So, summoners, we won't have information on specific changes for a bit, but the dev team is aware of the general consensus surrounding AQ Map 5!
More info on this as it comes up!
And it is doable but clear they want us not just to earn glory, but to pay for it as well.
Curious what the start prestige is for the guys saying it's too hard, and what champ/rank are you using for AQ?
Reinstate aq compensation because inputs are still janky.
Edit - to the point of making people actually want to do aq, the rewards for completing each aq should be improved for more immediate satisfaction. Instead of mats and glory at the end of the week’s aq, award some glory for each aw completed too.
Throw in some chests in each lane in phase 3 to incentivize completing all lanes. A map crystal doesn’t do this. But if there’s a chance for a 6s shard or a 2% t5 or t5cc, people are going to actually want to play aq instead of just playing it like you’re a kid eating your vegetables.
You could base the chests on alliance prestige or aq prestige or something so it’s a reward appropriate the content the alliance would play at.
nearly timed out on toad yesterday, so today I probably will