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AQ changes shafting developing players

HoadyOZHoadyOZ Posts: 189 ★
in General Discussion
My understanding of AQ changes is that rewards are no longer shared between all alliance participants. You only get the rewards of the bg you participate in. For mid-level alliances like mine who run a “nursery” bg, developing new players by sharing Glory points, this is a bad outcome, and it’s bad for the future of the game. These guys will now have a longer grind to progress, will get frustrated and exit early. Elite alliances who don’t carry baggage, this won’t affect them at all. Dunno what the thinking is here.

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    Colinwhitworth69Colinwhitworth69 Posts: 7,185 ★★★★★
    Seems like a mean change that no one needed. With all the stuff that truly needs work in the game -- the AI, the controls, the bugs with champs and nodes -- that adding this little bit of punishment seems like a weird priority for you guys to be working on. Honestly, this was not well thought out.
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    crogscrogs Posts: 764 ★★★
    JT_Supreme said:

    Think it’s designed so there’s no more free riding which is good.

    Who's free riding. We have active players with small accounts that need all their Champs for questing. So we have one BG on map 2. But now no one will want to help that bg because there are better rewards in the other BG's. In fact it'll be harder now getting people to play map 3 as well as they'd rather get map 4 rewards. And many of us don't want longer maps that tie us to the game longer than we have to.

    Pretty much ruins the casual aspect of our alliance. It's a big F/U to create such an individual reward aspect to an alliance event.

    What makes your free ride theory any different than the bottom players of any alliance event? There's always people that do more in one aspect of the game and less in another.

    Sorry.. This is just BS.
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    DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,687 Guardian
    Colinwhitworth69 said:

    Seems like a mean change that no one needed. With all the stuff that truly needs work in the game -- the AI, the controls, the bugs with champs and nodes -- that adding this little bit of punishment seems like a weird priority for you guys to be working on. Honestly, this was not well thought out.

    It is actually extremely well thought out. The big problem is AQ raids. Map rewards are fairly modest: for most alliances especially heterogenous ones the bulk of the rewards come from the alliance wide milestone and rank rewards, which are still shared. But there's no way AQ raids could have any significant rewards if everyone in the alliance was going to get them even if they didn't participate at all. So they changed the system so that each battlegroup only gets the rewards for the map they do, but the entire alliance still shares the joint milestone and rank rewards. To compensate in part for this change, all rewards for all maps are going to be boosted during Raid week, so that battlegroups that don't participate in raids will still get more rewards during that week if they participate in AQ at all.

    Characterizing this change as either mean spirited or "punishment" is to me an extraordinarily unfair characterization. As someone who runs a heterogenous alliance (we run 653 in AQ now) I think this is a very reasonable change to make. The lower players in our alliance that do Map 3, or sometimes fail to enter AQ at all, are still going to be getting tons of rewards in exchange for a friendlier AQ schedule and fewer actual AQ participation days (five of eight is 62.5% active days, four out of seven is about 57.1% active days).
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    crogscrogs Posts: 764 ★★★
    SummonerNR said:

    Colinwhitworth69 said:

    Seems like a mean change that no one needed. With all the stuff that truly needs work in the game -- the AI, the controls, the bugs with champs and nodes -- that adding this little bit of punishment seems like a weird priority for you guys to be working on. Honestly, this was not well thought out.

    How would they implement giving AQ Map rewards to the entire alliance every day (or even just those who participate in AQ that day) if you have a setup where different BG's are running on different days ??

    Some days your people in BG3 would NOT receive Map rewards for what BG 1+2 did, if BG3 was not setup to run on all the same days that 1/2 are setup for.

    I guess, they could have potentially said “you will get Map reward on whatever your 1st day participating is”, based on all 3 BG's *first* days results.
    That could mean that BG3 (a Thurs-Sun BG) won’t get “day-1” map rewards until Thursday, even though it would be based on what BG 1+2 happened to do on Monday (plus their own BG3 on Thursday).

    With such issue, probably felt that basing it ONLY on the Day / Map / BG that you actually do would be best way to solve that.
    Umm... Maybe don't develop such a convoluted scoring/reward system for a team oriented event? Shocking idea I know. All it does is reward selfish individual behavior for a team oriented event because people won't want to help those in the lower maps that can't hang in the higher maps for whatever reason.
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    crogscrogs Posts: 764 ★★★
    Cat_Murdock said:

    HoadyOZ said:

    My understanding of AQ changes is that rewards are no longer shared between all alliance participants. You only get the rewards of the bg you participate in. For mid-level alliances like mine who run a “nursery” bg, developing new players by sharing Glory points, this is a bad outcome, and it’s bad for the future of the game. These guys will now have a longer grind to progress, will get frustrated and exit early. Elite alliances who don’t carry baggage, this won’t affect them at all. Dunno what the thinking is here.

    You will still share Glory/end of the week ranked rewards, you just won’t share map rewards (the bit of gold and whatnot for completion/exploration)
    And that's fair overall why for an alliance/team oriented event? Everything in this game is cumulative. And the lesser accounts in the game or those just wanting an easier AQ get penalized. Let alone the people being team oriented to help the lower maps finish. It's BS to create a varying individual reward structure for an alliance event.
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    DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,687 Guardian
    SummonerNR said:

    Colinwhitworth69 said:

    Seems like a mean change that no one needed. With all the stuff that truly needs work in the game -- the AI, the controls, the bugs with champs and nodes -- that adding this little bit of punishment seems like a weird priority for you guys to be working on. Honestly, this was not well thought out.

    How would they implement giving AQ Map rewards to the entire alliance every day (or even just those who participate in AQ that day) if you have a setup where different BG's are running on different days ??

    Some days your people in BG3 would NOT receive Map rewards for what BG 1+2 did, if BG3 was not setup to run on all the same days that 1/2 are setup for.

    I guess, they could have potentially said “you will get Map reward on whatever your 1st day participating is”, based on all 3 BG's *first* days results.
    That could mean that BG3 (a Thurs-Sun BG) won’t get “day-1” map rewards until Thursday, even though it would be based on what BG 1+2 happened to do on Monday (plus their own BG3 on Thursday).

    With such issue, probably felt that basing it ONLY on the Day / Map / BG that you actually do would be best way to solve that.
    That one is not as much of a problem, because right now everyone gets the benefit of their own map rewards and whichever maps the other BGs do. With staggered schedule if they chose to award map rewards to everyone, everyone would still get the rewards for their own maps and the rewards for everyone else's maps, just on different days.

    The real problem, as I mention above, is AQ raids. The devs might be okay with map 1 players getting map 8 rewards, but map 1 players getting raid rewards (which are likely to be end game tier rewards either initially or over time) is almost certainly a bridge too far.
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    DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,687 Guardian
    crogs said:

    Cat_Murdock said:

    HoadyOZ said:

    My understanding of AQ changes is that rewards are no longer shared between all alliance participants. You only get the rewards of the bg you participate in. For mid-level alliances like mine who run a “nursery” bg, developing new players by sharing Glory points, this is a bad outcome, and it’s bad for the future of the game. These guys will now have a longer grind to progress, will get frustrated and exit early. Elite alliances who don’t carry baggage, this won’t affect them at all. Dunno what the thinking is here.

    You will still share Glory/end of the week ranked rewards, you just won’t share map rewards (the bit of gold and whatnot for completion/exploration)
    And that's fair overall why for an alliance/team oriented event? Everything in this game is cumulative. And the lesser accounts in the game or those just wanting an easier AQ get penalized. Let alone the people being team oriented to help the lower maps finish. It's BS to create a varying individual reward structure for an alliance event.
    The alliance milestones are an alliance oriented event. Everyone shares those rewards. The alliance rank is an alliance oriented event. Everyone shares those rewards. The map rewards are a participation and accomplishment reward for the map. Everyone used to share those rewards because it was simpler, not because it was fair. But there is no legitimate way to make the case that this is an unfair punishment for lower players. I've been the leader of a heterogenous alliance for many years now. I've shepherded many lower progress and lower strength players. I deliberately structure my AQ maps so everyone can theoretically participate, and I don't punish players that can't always participate. I believe in heterogenous alliances helping players out and I've put my money and my time where my mouth is and tried to be as accommodating and helpful as possible. And I don't see the problem here at all.
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    crogscrogs Posts: 764 ★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    crogs said:

    Cat_Murdock said:

    HoadyOZ said:

    My understanding of AQ changes is that rewards are no longer shared between all alliance participants. You only get the rewards of the bg you participate in. For mid-level alliances like mine who run a “nursery” bg, developing new players by sharing Glory points, this is a bad outcome, and it’s bad for the future of the game. These guys will now have a longer grind to progress, will get frustrated and exit early. Elite alliances who don’t carry baggage, this won’t affect them at all. Dunno what the thinking is here.

    You will still share Glory/end of the week ranked rewards, you just won’t share map rewards (the bit of gold and whatnot for completion/exploration)
    And that's fair overall why for an alliance/team oriented event? Everything in this game is cumulative. And the lesser accounts in the game or those just wanting an easier AQ get penalized. Let alone the people being team oriented to help the lower maps finish. It's BS to create a varying individual reward structure for an alliance event.
    The alliance milestones are an alliance oriented event. Everyone shares those rewards. The alliance rank is an alliance oriented event. Everyone shares those rewards. The map rewards are a participation and accomplishment reward for the map. Everyone used to share those rewards because it was simpler, not because it was fair. But there is no legitimate way to make the case that this is an unfair punishment for lower players. I've been the leader of a heterogenous alliance for many years now. I've shepherded many lower progress and lower strength players. I deliberately structure my AQ maps so everyone can theoretically participate, and I don't punish players that can't always participate. I believe in heterogenous alliances helping players out and I've put my money and my time where my mouth is and tried to be as accommodating and helpful as possible. And I don't see the problem here at all.
    And for 8yrs it was that way. This way everyone worked together for the common goal. People that were only able to do the lesser map weren't penalized for it. People willing to help in the lower map also weren't penalized for doing it because it's a team effort. It's the point of an alliance. The minute you individualize rewards and penalize those doing the lesser maps you defeat the point. It might as well be a solo event.

    The bottom line is decreases the ability to do a variety of maps because people won't want to sacrifice the map rewards if they don't have to. Everything is cumulative in this game. It all adds up over time.

    If you're a more competitive alliance doing the same maps across BG's, it won't matter. Your members are also more likely to be at the same level or close to it. Other alliances aren't like that and take in a variety of players and do a variety of maps to make everyone happy.

    So great you're fine with it, as it probably doesn't really affect you and your alliance. But it affects ours and many others. Introducing variable individual rewards in an alliance event is just a bad idea when it creates selfish behavior and penalizes players. Plain and simple.

    Like with anything else in this game, when it doesn't affect them, they're generally fine with it.

    I can appreciate them trying to make AQ less of a boring chore which it still will be. But, being the broken record, introducing individual rewards that can punish players that can't do as challenging content and those that help them in an alliance based event is just dumb. They had how many years to try and improve AQ and that idea is first and foremost in their minds? Sorry, dumb. Might as well create percentage rewards based on how much each person contributes points wise to AQ. Drive the stake in a little deeper. Or start creating minimums for milestones in the weekly alliance events. It's not really any different.
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