The Importance of Releasing Banquet Event Details in Advance
Riryoku
Member Posts: 99 ★
I know I’ll get some disagreements on this, but I feel the need to express my opinion about releasing the Banquet details just 2 DAYS BEFORE THE EVENT.
Many forum users have been asking why the information hasn’t been shared earlier, and some even get annoyed when others inquire about the Banquet—one of the most significant and highly anticipated events of the year. This is understandable; the anticipation surrounding the event is enormous. And it's clear why: unlike Cyber Week or the July 4th event, the Banquet is much more friendly to F2P players because of its unit-based scoring rather than real money.
Thanks to this, many Summoners start forming alliances well in advance to maximize their rewards, which leads to the main issue: why it’s so important to have this information ahead of time.
The primary challenge with these Banquet-specific alliances is how they affect recruitment for other alliances. To comfortably participate in the event, a Summoner must have been in their alliance for at least 14 days. While this rule helps prevent bad actors from exploiting others, it creates problems for alliances not planning to participate heavily in the Banquet and instead focusing on regular content (AQ, AW, BGs).
During those 14 days, recruitment becomes much harder because many Summoners are already committed to Banquet alliances, leaving fewer players available. This impacts AQ/AW modes, where new recruits need to participate before these modes begin. As a result, alliances may struggle to maintain performance, especially when they cannot replace underperforming members due to the limited pool of available players.
Another issue is setting minimums. Beyond individual Summoners wanting to know the minimums to decide whether to continue farming units in the Arena, alliances also need this information to establish recruitment requirements. Even alliances with limited participation in the Banquet aim to optimize their rewards by achieving all alliance milestones.
So why wasn’t this information released earlier, as it was last year? Perhaps Kabam didn’t consider it necessary this time, but I believe it’s related to Isophyne. I understand that, ultimately, the game is a business. Releasing a new character like Isophyne right before the Banquet incentivizes players to spend real money to get her. Isophyne appears to be an excellent counter to Serpent, but that utility depends on her sig ability.
Big events like this aren’t planned in a week—they’re likely finalized months in advance, alongside things like the 10x10 calendar. This is why I think Kabam delayed sharing Banquet details: to encourage players to spend money on Isophyne dupe before seeing her as a Realm Event reward. Of course, this is just my speculation, but regardless of the reason, it interfered with providing timely information about the Banquet.
Now that the details are out, there will be mixed opinions—some players will love it, while others will be dissatisfied, and that’s okay. You can’t please everyone. Personally, I like the fact that a large portion of rewards has been moved to the Realm Event. That said, I have a few suggestions Kabam could consider for next year’s Banquet to reduce inconveniences for alliances:
Many forum users have been asking why the information hasn’t been shared earlier, and some even get annoyed when others inquire about the Banquet—one of the most significant and highly anticipated events of the year. This is understandable; the anticipation surrounding the event is enormous. And it's clear why: unlike Cyber Week or the July 4th event, the Banquet is much more friendly to F2P players because of its unit-based scoring rather than real money.
Thanks to this, many Summoners start forming alliances well in advance to maximize their rewards, which leads to the main issue: why it’s so important to have this information ahead of time.
The primary challenge with these Banquet-specific alliances is how they affect recruitment for other alliances. To comfortably participate in the event, a Summoner must have been in their alliance for at least 14 days. While this rule helps prevent bad actors from exploiting others, it creates problems for alliances not planning to participate heavily in the Banquet and instead focusing on regular content (AQ, AW, BGs).
During those 14 days, recruitment becomes much harder because many Summoners are already committed to Banquet alliances, leaving fewer players available. This impacts AQ/AW modes, where new recruits need to participate before these modes begin. As a result, alliances may struggle to maintain performance, especially when they cannot replace underperforming members due to the limited pool of available players.
Another issue is setting minimums. Beyond individual Summoners wanting to know the minimums to decide whether to continue farming units in the Arena, alliances also need this information to establish recruitment requirements. Even alliances with limited participation in the Banquet aim to optimize their rewards by achieving all alliance milestones.
So why wasn’t this information released earlier, as it was last year? Perhaps Kabam didn’t consider it necessary this time, but I believe it’s related to Isophyne. I understand that, ultimately, the game is a business. Releasing a new character like Isophyne right before the Banquet incentivizes players to spend real money to get her. Isophyne appears to be an excellent counter to Serpent, but that utility depends on her sig ability.
Big events like this aren’t planned in a week—they’re likely finalized months in advance, alongside things like the 10x10 calendar. This is why I think Kabam delayed sharing Banquet details: to encourage players to spend money on Isophyne dupe before seeing her as a Realm Event reward. Of course, this is just my speculation, but regardless of the reason, it interfered with providing timely information about the Banquet.
Now that the details are out, there will be mixed opinions—some players will love it, while others will be dissatisfied, and that’s okay. You can’t please everyone. Personally, I like the fact that a large portion of rewards has been moved to the Realm Event. That said, I have a few suggestions Kabam could consider for next year’s Banquet to reduce inconveniences for alliances:
- Release Banquet event details well in advance, giving Summoners enough time to decide whether to switch to a Banquet-focused alliance or stay in their current one for regular content.
- Alternatively, eliminate the alliance event entirely and move those rewards to the Realm Event.
12
Comments
Kabam's priority is not in making it easy for players to move in and out of alliances whenever they want for whatever reason they want to. If anything, I would argue that Kabam wants players to stick with their alliances and not jump all over the place. They've actually relieved some of this pain with how they've adjusted the line-up of events starting and finishing, but they've also been clear that there may be scenarios where players have to sacrifice something if they're going to switch alliances. It doesn't always line up perfectly.
I'll echo what Crashed said the other day. We've known the most important information for awhile now - start date and the 14-day window. These things aren't new. Players had time to switch awhile ago, but they also want to have everything, which just isn't always possible. The timing delay isn't new and we've known the date for quite awhile now. Players that want to alliance hop to maximize rewards may have to sacrifice other rewards to do that, but it is their own fault if they wait until the last minute to make their move.
As far as units go, this info being released 10 days ago wouldn't have made a difference. Players could've MAYBE farmed an extra 5 or 6 crystals worth of units - nothing game changing unless RNG welcomes them with open arms. The problem is, players that wait for this info to farm units (which is almost certainly a small minority) are players that won't even farm that many units in such a short period of time because they don't make a regular practice of it. And players that do farm units regularly didn't need this news to incentivize them to farm because, as crazy as it sounds, they've known for years that this event requires units. The banquet comes the same time every year. Regardless of the details, players know they need units for it and if the news dropping is going to be what causes them to go farm units then they are really too far behind already for it to make any considerable difference.
Last year there were so many complaints on wanting Kabam to change the rewards and the info was released earlier. But this year, it's not like the milestones are that much different or different at all.
My point was that its not like a lot of players can come up with more units all of the sudden to move to a better place, is not like they can farm another 10k just because the information was released earlier.
If I left it at that it wouldn't have meant anything to anyone.
https://playcontestofchampions.com/news/the-grand-banquet-and-accolades/
How many players/Alliances of the total playerbase do this game of one Alliance for most of the year, and a Banquet Alliance in December?
Is recruitment actually a problem during December?
How many players/Alliances are in the top 25% where this sort of maximization of Banquet efficiency might matter? Clearly the answer is less than 25% of the total player base.
I'd argue that the "problem of lack of information on the Banquet" affects less than 25% of the playerbase (I'd even wager it is close to less than 10%).
And then even then, for those 25% of the playerbase, are they really fighting in the same pools where 1000-2000 unit difference in grinding would make a difference in their overall rank rewards? I'd wager that they would stay within the same cohort for rewards ranking regardless of if they had early Banquet information or not.
This way, there would be more Summoners uninterested in the event who might join regular alliances, making recruitment easier.
This comes from seeing some of my friends, who are alliance leaders and officers, struggling this year. They couldn’t replace underperforming members because there weren’t many free players seeking alliance—most Summoners were either already in Banquet alliances.
If they had released the information earlier or removed the alliance event, replacing it with the Realm Event, there would have been fewer issues with recruitment. I assume this year they decided to keep the event so that Summoners who have already switched alliances didn’t feel it was in vain (assuming they wanted to replace it with the Realm Event). However, as has already mentioned, they’re not obligated to perfectly align dates, and I understand that. That’s why I only suggested these changes for future events.
I'd say that, from my experience, them releasing rewards so near to the event is a blessing to stop top people from making their mind up and leaving because they think the rewards will change their decision on switching alliance(they rarely do), but by the time they have the rewards its later than ideal to leave their alliances and they stay.
Way more than 5% of players get top-5% rewards in the alliance banquet rank rewards.
The lower ranks are littered with alliances that may just have a few players, and many won’t spend beyond the included units. In some of these alliances, 2-3 players may be the only ones to get rewards.
Meanwhile, the alliances with a full 30 (and an active 30, at that) wind up with 30 players getting that alliance reward.