**WE ARE NO LONGER Temporarily Reverting Tier 1 War Ban System**
After further discussion, the game team has made the decision not make adjustements to the ban system.
The previously proposed fix would have resolved the issue for Summoners who are on the cusp of T1/T2 play, and negatively impacted Alliances more securely in T1. Instead, we recommend that cusp Alliances switch to Manual Placement to your members to place the allotted 5 Ban Champions limit there.
Apologies for the back and forth, and for any confusion.
After further discussion, the game team has made the decision not make adjustements to the ban system.
The previously proposed fix would have resolved the issue for Summoners who are on the cusp of T1/T2 play, and negatively impacted Alliances more securely in T1. Instead, we recommend that cusp Alliances switch to Manual Placement to your members to place the allotted 5 Ban Champions limit there.
Apologies for the back and forth, and for any confusion.
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They have a choice of utilising the revamped glory store or putting effort into AW, unless you’re one of those people who has a million alts to gift loyalty at Chinese New Year, or the very few people in the world who can play itemless T1 AW.
We get 100%, and spend 130%, thereby going into the red, or we will have to play without any boost / potion
Second off, you're not really accounting for T1 war players when you talk about not healing to full or fully boosting. In T1 wars where a single death can be the difference between making masters or not, the expectation is to fully heal and boost up for every single fight. Not doing so is, for all intents and purposes, completely out of the question and will lead to reprecussuons from officers. The largest issue I and other T1 war players have brought up with the new changes is that you're simply not able to spend loyalty on potions/boosts AND the high tier items in the upcoming store. If you spend your loyalty on T3A and T6B, you're forced to use units for items, and if you use your loyalty on potions/boost, you aren't left with anywhere near enough to be used in the store.
This just widens the gap between f2p/low-spend players in high tier war and dolphins/whales, because if f2p/low-spenders use their loyalty to sustain item use, they aren't able to keep up with the dolphins/whales who are able to also make those large loyalty purchases. Couple that with the extremely lacking state of masters rewards atm, and it's theoretically more rewarding for a f2p T1 player to play in T3/4 and spend all of their loyalty on the big ticket items. We're effectively being offered the choice at being able to continue competing with the best at the hindrance of account growth, or not being able to compete.
I agree with you, some of these changes are sounding the death knell of competitive AW.
It should work like glory now that they moved potions to the loyalty store. For that to happen they need to change how much we are awarded or reduce the cost of things or a combination of both.
No one is saying that everyone should be able to wildly spend as much as they want but there should be a way to always have loyalty while maintaining a stash of items.
U guys do realize that besides being a game ... Kabam runs a business...
Yes the cost against loyalty gain is not equal...
BECAUSE THEY WANT YOU TO SPEND UNITS...
Buying 1 lvl 4 potion a day shouldn’t make you loyalty poor. You should be able to sustain a manageable stash and still have loyalty to spend on other stuff when needed.
1 lvl 4 potion a day is 7,300,000 loyalty a year
2 boosts a war is 240,000 a season 10 seasons? That’s 2,400,000 a year. Just those 2 things is 9,700,000 a year.
I feel like buying 1 lvl 4 potion and 2 boosts a war should be very easy to maintain and purchase. Compared to what you can purchase with glory this is WAY less. We should also have plenty of loyalty on top of these purchases to buy something else when needed. I feel like a bare minimum of loyalty should probably double the cost of these minimal items. 19,400,000/12 = 1,616,667 loyalty a month
So, to sustain that either they need to lower the cost of items drastically or provide a lot more loyalty awards or both.
The challenge is glory is priced and awarded with reasonably priced numbers. Loyalty is priced like it Monopoly money.
What isn’t accounted for is that, because of the loyalty store, people will want to hoard their loyalty and not spend them on boosts game wide. So the overall number of deaths in war, even in T1, will start to increase as people boost and pot less.
This will result in the entire spectrum of alliances remaining constant, excluding those that are overly expending their loyalty on items as they become unable to maintain their position in a mode that now requires genuine skill, rather than rainbow boosts and crazy potting, to minimize deaths.
The thing about “keeping up” with whales, it’s impossible given how offers are designed. It’s so straightforwardly obvious that big spenders will always get to the peak first, while the others lag behind, in terms of champs, prestige (sig stones), and even AW.
I get what you’re saying about f2p/low spenders v whales/dolphins in higher tier AW. Thing is, this actually provides a more even playing field for f2p/low spenders who possess genuine skill since more players are less likely to want to spend their loyalty on boosts to gain an advantage.
Maybe using an analogy might explain it better.
There is a competition that allows the use of performance enhancing drugs (boosts and pots). Since inception of this competition, some players have been using these drugs to make themselves perform better than they would have without the drugs.
Then the organizer massively increases the price (and opportunity cost) of the drugs.
Expectedly, the first group that complains will be the druggies that are reliant on the drugs to sustain their performance.
But because of the expensive price tag, people will start avoiding these drugs and simply speaking, almost everyone will be clean and it will provide a more level playing field for those who are clean, since they’re not playing against a 45% more powerful version of the opponent.
Lastly, about the small group of people who continue using the drug despite its high cost. If the reward of the competition is high, it will still be rewarding for them to continue being drugged. But if the reward isn’t decent compared to the cost, it provides a disincentive to continue.
(Okay, end of analogy)
What I think the motive behind this move by Kabam is, it’s actually to change the entire war culture of boosts + pot for every fight as it’s been around since forever (which is why we are only getting a rewards boost later this year and not together with the changes).
Only after everyone has weaned off the “drugs” and settled into their equilibrium war ratings where they should be, then Kabam introduces the new rewards to reward the genuinely skilled players who are at the top (which fits into the narrative of AW being a skill based mode instead of a p2w, which it arguably is now).
Whales - steroids
Competitive players - legal supplements
I don’t think we should try to guess the secret intentions of Kabam since no one knows what that is. We should look at what is currently happening with the game specifically with Loyalty. Glory store functions well and works. Loyalty store doesn’t.
Maybe they wipe all loyalty from the game. Give everyone 15k loyalty and then price everything on Loyalty along the same lines as Glory and the loyalty you earn is based on the Tier you’re in with war. I think they could mimic the glory store with the loyalty store.
There would be people who melt down about about it but they can announce when it will happen a week or 2 before hand and everyone can spend whatever loyalty they have .
This would probably help free up space in Kabams servers as well
In essence, Kabam has reworked Loyalty from a currency used for boosts, health pots and revives into a currency used for its own rewards. That's fine in and of itself - actually, it's tremendous for a lot of people who don't regularly spend their Loyalty on boosts and pots (*waves*) - but for it to be worth spending Loyalty on those in-War resources instead of the new in-store rewards, the actual rewards at the higher tiers of AW need to increase drastically.
Otherwise, why not simply remove the health pots and boosts altogether? Let Loyalty be a currency used solely for its own rewards and make AW itemless for all. Then you wouldn't have to balance those two uses of Loyalty against each other. I'm not saying I think that's a solution actually preferred by anyone, but I suspect that that is where we'll land until Kabam introduces a reason for people to use Loyalty to push higher in AW again.
If Kabam had tabled this change until they'd revamped the regular season rewards, I think a lot of the outcry could have been avoided (assuming the rewards bump was good enough). But no, the reward changes are coming out in a weird order. I suspect that it all looks alright to Kabam, who can see the full picture; but it's important for them to understand that none of us can see how it'll eventually pan out - because they haven't explained their full-picture plan yet. They're just parceling it out seemingly out of order and it's not surprising that it's leading to frustration, disappointment, and anger.
I don’t understand how Kabam can think this makes sense….
Loyalty Store - AW potions and champion shards
They both run with a cap of 15k or maybe increase to 20k? The prices of the items coincide with each other.
How much sense does that make?
Loyalty Store - AW items and champion shards
Didn’t want to just think only potions but glory is AQ store and loyalty be a AW store
What I’m meant was, if everyone doesn’t boost and pot up, the competition doesn’t change, skilled players perform better (as they should), everyone plays their best and it’s more fair to everyone since the field is much more level.
Given that now there’s a store, Kabam will be relatively more hesitant to increase loyalty as it can be directly translated to rewards, which will affect balance.
Imagine starting the glory store when people have hundreds of thousands of glory saved up.
People would be like…. Thank you Kabam for making this game better and I appreciate the heads up so I could use my loyalty and how generous to gift us all a a new loyalty store with a maxed cap!
I get that their are people who just don’t have the capacity to understand what that change would do for them and the game but why would anyone make decisions on those peoples thoughts?
Or maybe Kabam figures out a way for players to gain loyalty at a much higher rate. If those high priced items are going to have a replenishment rate than loyalty rewards will have to be giant! Maybe 5-10mm a season added into the overall rewards tiered might work