For KABAM to say, "if you have enough energy to farm revives and restores is not a priority..." is a massive understatement. You have added otherwise pointless extensions to all of the event quest levels, such as the one move after defeating the final boss, made a signifigant portion of the eq unplayable on auto and we get "not a priority"? Just say it outright! "We are not going to add more energy because we want to signifigantly reduce or eliminate altogether, farming for free supplies!" You could add, "and for the same reason! We will not be improving player a.i! It is costing us money!"
Its the SAME AMMOUNT OF ENERGY EVERY MONTH REGARDLESS OF THE SHAPE OF THE MAP
Again, we have Levels for a reason. There's enough Energy within a month to complete the content within our own range. If we want to do everything, we're going to have to use earned Resources, or money if we choose. That's reasonable. What's not reasonable is expecting the game to provide everything to do everything, without further effort.
For KABAM to say, "if you have enough energy to farm revives and restores is not a priority..." is a massive understatement. You have added otherwise pointless extensions to all of the event quest levels, such as the one move after defeating the final boss, made a signifigant portion of the eq unplayable on auto and we get "not a priority"? Just say it outright! "We are not going to add more energy because we want to signifigantly reduce or eliminate altogether, farming for free supplies!" You could add, "and for the same reason! We will not be improving player a.i! It is costing us money!"
For some perspective here, I added up the energy costs of exploring each difficulty tier. For the top three tiers - UC, Cav, and TB - it takes 1435 energy to fully explore those. The lower three - Contender, Proven, and Conqueror - it takes 1303 energy (due to using a 1/2/3 energy cost pattern instead of 2/2/3 for the higher tiers). If someone wanted to literally fully explore everything, that would cost 8214 energy. This is not something you can easily do with only standard available energy. The amount of energy a player can reasonably expect to use per day given eight hours sleep and very efficient play is about 230 per day for a level 60. That's 160 energy during a 16 hour day and only 70 energy for the eight hours sleeping (due to the energy cap). That amounts to 6900 energy in a 30 day month (this assumes the player does not subscribe to the Sigil, which increases energy recharge rates).
It is, however, essentially identical to the energy cost to explore everything except Contender, which (for someone that is capable of running TB difficulty) contains trivial rewards and in particular no units. And this does not factor in any energy refills a player might earn during game play, such as from solo or alliance events or other activities.
Now this does require very energy efficient play, but you'd expect to require very efficient play to fully explore everything. And this only affects Thronebreakers, or rather players doing TB difficulty. Players incapable of doing TB tier difficulty (or fully exploring it) would only be on the hook for 5476 energy if they fully explore Proven through Cavalier. This is well within the energy budget of a free to play player, and even allows for substantial potion farming.
And as other people have already pointed out, 1435 energy is more or less consistent with how much energy it has generally taken to explore a higher difficulty map for a very long time.
For KABAM to say, "if you have enough energy to farm revives and restores is not a priority..." is a massive understatement. You have added otherwise pointless extensions to all of the event quest levels, such as the one move after defeating the final boss, made a signifigant portion of the eq unplayable on auto and we get "not a priority"? Just say it outright! "We are not going to add more energy because we want to signifigantly reduce or eliminate altogether, farming for free supplies!" You could add, "and for the same reason! We will not be improving player a.i! It is costing us money!"
For some perspective here, I added up the energy costs of exploring each difficulty tier. For the top three tiers - UC, Cav, and TB - it takes 1435 energy to fully explore those. The lower three - Contender, Proven, and Conqueror - it takes 1303 energy (due to using a 1/2/3 energy cost pattern instead of 2/2/3 for the higher tiers). If someone wanted to literally fully explore everything, that would cost 8214 energy. This is not something you can easily do with only standard available energy. The amount of energy a player can reasonably expect to use per day given eight hours sleep and very efficient play is about 230 per day for a level 60. That's 160 energy during a 16 hour day and only 70 energy for the eight hours sleeping (due to the energy cap). That amounts to 6900 energy in a 30 day month (this assumes the player does not subscribe to the Sigil, which increases energy recharge rates).
It is, however, essentially identical to the energy cost to explore everything except Contender, which (for someone that is capable of running TB difficulty) contains trivial rewards and in particular no units. And this does not factor in any energy refills a player might earn during game play, such as from solo or alliance events or other activities.
Now this does require very energy efficient play, but you'd expect to require very efficient play to fully explore everything. And this only affects Thronebreakers, or rather players doing TB difficulty. Players incapable of doing TB tier difficulty (or fully exploring it) would only be on the hook for 5476 energy if they fully explore Proven through Cavalier. This is well within the energy budget of a free to play player, and even allows for substantial potion farming.
And as other people have already pointed out, 1435 energy is more or less consistent with how much energy it has generally taken to explore a higher difficulty map for a very long time.
You've forgot a lot of energy that you get from being part of an alliance. up to 60 per 24 hours by requesting help and a whole energy refill from the 3-Day alliance events. You also get a small energy from most of the 24 hour events. Furthermore, you haven't mentioned free crystals which offer a ton of energy and questing crystals also offer a very small amount. I believe there is an energy refill in the monthly calendar as well.
For KABAM to say, "if you have enough energy to farm revives and restores is not a priority..." is a massive understatement. You have added otherwise pointless extensions to all of the event quest levels, such as the one move after defeating the final boss, made a signifigant portion of the eq unplayable on auto and we get "not a priority"? Just say it outright! "We are not going to add more energy because we want to signifigantly reduce or eliminate altogether, farming for free supplies!" You could add, "and for the same reason! We will not be improving player a.i! It is costing us money!"
For some perspective here, I added up the energy costs of exploring each difficulty tier. For the top three tiers - UC, Cav, and TB - it takes 1435 energy to fully explore those. The lower three - Contender, Proven, and Conqueror - it takes 1303 energy (due to using a 1/2/3 energy cost pattern instead of 2/2/3 for the higher tiers). If someone wanted to literally fully explore everything, that would cost 8214 energy. This is not something you can easily do with only standard available energy. The amount of energy a player can reasonably expect to use per day given eight hours sleep and very efficient play is about 230 per day for a level 60. That's 160 energy during a 16 hour day and only 70 energy for the eight hours sleeping (due to the energy cap). That amounts to 6900 energy in a 30 day month (this assumes the player does not subscribe to the Sigil, which increases energy recharge rates).
It is, however, essentially identical to the energy cost to explore everything except Contender, which (for someone that is capable of running TB difficulty) contains trivial rewards and in particular no units. And this does not factor in any energy refills a player might earn during game play, such as from solo or alliance events or other activities.
Now this does require very energy efficient play, but you'd expect to require very efficient play to fully explore everything. And this only affects Thronebreakers, or rather players doing TB difficulty. Players incapable of doing TB tier difficulty (or fully exploring it) would only be on the hook for 5476 energy if they fully explore Proven through Cavalier. This is well within the energy budget of a free to play player, and even allows for substantial potion farming.
And as other people have already pointed out, 1435 energy is more or less consistent with how much energy it has generally taken to explore a higher difficulty map for a very long time.
You've forgot a lot of energy that you get from being part of an alliance. up to 60 per 24 hours by requesting help and a whole energy refill from the 3-Day alliance events. You also get a small energy from most of the 24 hour events. Furthermore, you haven't mentioned free crystals which offer a ton of energy and questing crystals also offer a very small amount. I believe there is an energy refill in the monthly calendar as well.
I did. Deliberately so. This is the conservative estimate, which doesn't including things other players might complain they don't have or don't acquire.
An end game player, doesn't need to explore all the event quests, I've found a good balance this month was 100% thronebreaker and cavalier, complete all the others and fully explore the 1 energy chapters of the others. This gets you the best rewards and over half the units with not too much energy cost.
It's meant, i have plenty of energy for side quest, battlegrounds and some revive farming, although battlegrounds really only needs the elder marks from progression and alliance milestones.
On top of this units really aren't hard to come by, the game is very generous with them if willing to grind a few hours a week, so it's not unreasonable to use some for energy.
Up until fairly recently, you could participate in everything the contest had to offer. With the recent addition of some pretty major game modes/content, Summoners are now having to prioritize their participation. This isn't a bad thing, because it means there's more to do! But it has caused discomfort for some people who feel they're not able to do everything and are "missing out on rewards." It's a situation that's in constant flux, and is always being monitored.
To help alleviate this discomfort, the game team provides alternate ways to participate in content that don't require energy. That's why Elders Marks exist in BG and why they are distributed at regular intervals as you progress through the Victory Track.
Furthermore, and this is the biggest one (even if Summoners don't like to hear it), there is an abundance of free-to-access units in the game. They are provided to allow Summoners to buy things like revives and potions and energy refills.
I understand that many Summoners (myself included) want to save units for crystals and champ rolls, but hoarding units instead of using them for revives/potions/energy refills creates a self-imposed knock-on effect of feeling like you have even less energy. When the game team is considering energy usage for Summoners, I can assure you that the energy you use for revive farming (which is not an intentional usage for those paths) is not prioritized.
Up until fairly recently, you could participate in everything the contest had to offer. With the recent addition of some pretty major game modes/content, Summoners are now having to prioritize their participation. This isn't a bad thing, because it means there's more to do! But it has caused discomfort for some people who feel they're not able to do everything and are "missing out on rewards." It's a situation that's in constant flux, and is always being monitored.
To help alleviate this discomfort, the game team provides alternate ways to participate in content that don't require energy. That's why Elders Marks exist in BG and why they are distributed at regular intervals as you progress through the Victory Track.
Furthermore, and this is the biggest one (even if Summoners don't like to hear it), there is an abundance of free-to-access units in the game. They are provided to allow Summoners to buy things like revives and potions and energy refills.
I understand that many Summoners (myself included) want to save units for crystals and champ rolls, but hoarding units instead of using them for revives/potions/energy refills creates a self-imposed knock-on effect of feeling like you have even less energy. When the game team is considering energy usage for Summoners, I can assure you that the energy you use for revive farming (which is not an intentional usage for those paths) is not prioritized.
You claim that there's "plenty of free-to-access units", not only is that not true, people shouldn't have to choose between doing content or saving for events
Up until fairly recently, you could participate in everything the contest had to offer. With the recent addition of some pretty major game modes/content, Summoners are now having to prioritize their participation. This isn't a bad thing, because it means there's more to do! But it has caused discomfort for some people who feel they're not able to do everything and are "missing out on rewards." It's a situation that's in constant flux, and is always being monitored.
To help alleviate this discomfort, the game team provides alternate ways to participate in content that don't require energy. That's why Elders Marks exist in BG and why they are distributed at regular intervals as you progress through the Victory Track.
Furthermore, and this is the biggest one (even if Summoners don't like to hear it), there is an abundance of free-to-access units in the game. They are provided to allow Summoners to buy things like revives and potions and energy refills.
I understand that many Summoners (myself included) want to save units for crystals and champ rolls, but hoarding units instead of using them for revives/potions/energy refills creates a self-imposed knock-on effect of feeling like you have even less energy. When the game team is considering energy usage for Summoners, I can assure you that the energy you use for revive farming (which is not an intentional usage for those paths) is not prioritized.
You claim that there's "plenty of free-to-access units", not only is that not true, people shouldn't have to choose between doing content or saving for events
Why not?
Games are about player choices. We get resources, we choose how to use them.
This came up most obviously when the Glory store arrived. Unlike with other resources, we know *exactly* what Glory was intended to do, because we actually *saw* what was removed when Glory was added. Map crystals containing various tiers of catalysts were removed and glory and the glory store was added. The *obvious* purpose for Glory was to give players agency. Instead of getting only the catalysts they would earn from the maps they did, players could now choose which catalysts they decided to buy using Glory.
Cue the "glory is not for T1A, it is obviously for X" where X was whatever reward the player wanted. Players complained that they shouldn't be required to spend glory on lower tier catalysts, they should be allowed to spend all of it on the most expensive stuff, and if they needed lower stuff Kabam should not force them to spend glory on it.
Which defeats the whole purpose of the Glory store, which was to give players a choice on what to spend it on based on what they needed.
The units available in the game from gameplay are no different from Glory, or any other resource. Its there for players to decide how to spend. You can choose to spend it on resources to help you clear monthly content, or save it to spend on future offers, or accumulate to take a run at challenge content. You're *supposed* to choose. It is *supposed* to be a significant non-trivial choice.
As to whether there are easy to access free to play units. The easiest units for grabs are in the arena. It takes three arena rounds to get 26 units from the Trials. That's just a couple minutes of almost zero-effort fights. You can do this twice a week. That's 52 units a week, 208 units a month, for basically no effort and completely free to play. Just shy of seven energy refills worth of units per month. In revive farming terms, that's about fifteen farmed revives per month.
Even for someone who hates the arena, six arena rounds a week is a trivial ask. And for just a few more minutes per week you should be able to get the first two milestones in the basic and featured arenas, which is an additional 30 units per cycle. That would be 112 units per week, about 450 units per month, 5824 units per year. That's without counting battlechips, which would amount to about half a million per year at this pace, which would be an additional 900 units per year on average.
That's an average of 560 units per month for minutes a day of trivially easy fights. No infinite streak, no deathmatches, no real hard fights of any kind. A few minutes in the morning, a few at night. The units in the monthly EQ would just be icing on the cake.
So why was an additional space added after defeating the map boss in event quests....?
Here you just beat the boss, so now needlessly waste 3 more to exit the map.
The extra space was originally added to some of the maps a while back to allow for things like some triggering dialog. The map needs that extra space to allow for that sort of logic.
The maps have an energy budget. They are constructed to account for that space. If the space wasn't there after the boss, that space would just be moved to before the boss so the energy cost would be the same.
The Kabam economy designers do not sit around a desk asking the map designers to add an unnecessary map spot so they can take 21 more energy from the players in a month.
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It is, however, essentially identical to the energy cost to explore everything except Contender, which (for someone that is capable of running TB difficulty) contains trivial rewards and in particular no units. And this does not factor in any energy refills a player might earn during game play, such as from solo or alliance events or other activities.
Now this does require very energy efficient play, but you'd expect to require very efficient play to fully explore everything. And this only affects Thronebreakers, or rather players doing TB difficulty. Players incapable of doing TB tier difficulty (or fully exploring it) would only be on the hook for 5476 energy if they fully explore Proven through Cavalier. This is well within the energy budget of a free to play player, and even allows for substantial potion farming.
And as other people have already pointed out, 1435 energy is more or less consistent with how much energy it has generally taken to explore a higher difficulty map for a very long time.
I'm more concerned how lengthy 6 EQ difficultites have become.
It's meant, i have plenty of energy for side quest, battlegrounds and some revive farming, although battlegrounds really only needs the elder marks from progression and alliance milestones.
On top of this units really aren't hard to come by, the game is very generous with them if willing to grind a few hours a week, so it's not unreasonable to use some for energy.
Games are about player choices. We get resources, we choose how to use them.
This came up most obviously when the Glory store arrived. Unlike with other resources, we know *exactly* what Glory was intended to do, because we actually *saw* what was removed when Glory was added. Map crystals containing various tiers of catalysts were removed and glory and the glory store was added. The *obvious* purpose for Glory was to give players agency. Instead of getting only the catalysts they would earn from the maps they did, players could now choose which catalysts they decided to buy using Glory.
Cue the "glory is not for T1A, it is obviously for X" where X was whatever reward the player wanted. Players complained that they shouldn't be required to spend glory on lower tier catalysts, they should be allowed to spend all of it on the most expensive stuff, and if they needed lower stuff Kabam should not force them to spend glory on it.
Which defeats the whole purpose of the Glory store, which was to give players a choice on what to spend it on based on what they needed.
The units available in the game from gameplay are no different from Glory, or any other resource. Its there for players to decide how to spend. You can choose to spend it on resources to help you clear monthly content, or save it to spend on future offers, or accumulate to take a run at challenge content. You're *supposed* to choose. It is *supposed* to be a significant non-trivial choice.
As to whether there are easy to access free to play units. The easiest units for grabs are in the arena. It takes three arena rounds to get 26 units from the Trials. That's just a couple minutes of almost zero-effort fights. You can do this twice a week. That's 52 units a week, 208 units a month, for basically no effort and completely free to play. Just shy of seven energy refills worth of units per month. In revive farming terms, that's about fifteen farmed revives per month.
Even for someone who hates the arena, six arena rounds a week is a trivial ask. And for just a few more minutes per week you should be able to get the first two milestones in the basic and featured arenas, which is an additional 30 units per cycle. That would be 112 units per week, about 450 units per month, 5824 units per year. That's without counting battlechips, which would amount to about half a million per year at this pace, which would be an additional 900 units per year on average.
That's an average of 560 units per month for minutes a day of trivially easy fights. No infinite streak, no deathmatches, no real hard fights of any kind. A few minutes in the morning, a few at night. The units in the monthly EQ would just be icing on the cake.
Here you just beat the boss, so now needlessly waste 3 more to exit the map.
The maps have an energy budget. They are constructed to account for that space. If the space wasn't there after the boss, that space would just be moved to before the boss so the energy cost would be the same.
The Kabam economy designers do not sit around a desk asking the map designers to add an unnecessary map spot so they can take 21 more energy from the players in a month.