Non-whale players weigh in, what did you think of banquet this year?

Hello everyone, it’s been a long while.
Firstly, I hope you’ve all been well.
Secondly, what did you all think of banquet?

Do you think it was a bit much and tipped the scales to an unobtainable level for most?
Balanced rewards across the board, even for just casual spenders?
Weigh in with your two cents, I’m genuinely curious to hear what you all have to say.

Comments

Ercarret

I liked it. I think it succeeded in three important areas: the main Banquet crystals, the Jubilant crystals, and the Realm event tier rewards. The only thing that I felt was underwhelming was the ranked rewards. They're not objectively bad, but so many people pushed so hard that it was difficult to get anything especially worthwhile without putting down some serious cash. I put in over 40k points (which is probably about what I've put in in the last three years combined), but still only ended up in the top 10%. To cap off an event where I think I r4'd eight or nine champs with two 4-5 6* gems felt…yeah.

Not that it came as a surprise. As the Realm awards started ramping up, you could feel the community going hard and just pushing forward. While I aimed higher than I ended up at, I always suspected that I'd land where I did in the end.

But like I said, that was the only thing that I felt was underwhelming. I really liked the rest of the event.

One thing that I would like to see changed next year, though: while it was nice to have an extra avenue to earn some free crystals, please don't tie them to an alliance event next year. As an alliance leader, I feel like it puts me in a weird position. I typically declare December to be a grace month of sorts where everyone can just take whatever time off they need due to the holidays, without having to worry about any alliance stuff. But if Kabam then launches an alliance event (even a fairly low-effort one) where you can earn up to about an Odin's worth of Banquet crystals, I suddenly have to rally the troops again so that we don't end up losing out on a very significant source of both points and actual rewards.

I'm not opposed to an alliance event as such, but I would rather have it in November and then have the rewards carry over in some fashion to the Banquet. I don't want to hound my alliance mates about moving in AW during Christmas and New Year's (and especially not after having explicitly said I wouldn't).

But aside from those little nitpicks, I had a great Banquet. It really showed me how much mileage you can get out of diligently saving up your units throughout the year. I wasn't entirely free to play, but I felt very much like a little goldfish in a sea of whales and dolphins. Somehow that still worked out great for me. I haven't had a Banquet feel this account-changing for me since it was called the Gifting Event back in the day.

rcm2017

Just one feedback from my side, the SBC should have contained a bit more shards imo. Like sometimes when you open a single SBC hoping for a jackpot pull and when it is the opposite maybe a few more shards like 1k 7* or 1k titan shards may feel like a consolation and not so bad.

Other than that it was amazing event.

The_One

It was my first banquet and I thought it was great.

My only "gripe" was the rank rewards. They gave so many 7* shards, titan crystals and champion selectors along with materials to rank them then gave 6* rank up gems that'll likely not get used because of all the 7* stars.

That's maybe a little entitled but it is what it is.

Other than that I loved banquet.

I used 10400 units right at the start that I'd saved, I bought the banquet crystal bundle and 1 Odin during the bonus units offers.

With exchange rate it cost me about £125.

My 7* went from 12 unawakened to 54 with 7 awakened and 4 rank 4 with resources for a couple more (excluding T6CC, we all need more of them).

TLDR; banquet was a massive success for me.

vicmasterr

For those people who don't have spare money to spend in the game (me), this banquet wasn't worth the time I spent on grinding arena for units. Absolutely wasn't 😭🤷🏻‍♂️

So, for me this game has just become about squeezing the most profit from an average player, not about time investment or skill

Jerichoharris

Banquet was great for my account. Like many I was a bit surprised by how the rank rewards panned out, but that’s not on Kabam.

The flip side to rank rewards is that if they’d followed a similar pattern to previous years we’d have never reached the milestones we did. I think you have to offset any disappointment in rank rewards with an appreciation that we got more rewards through milestones than we might have expected.

Chuck_Finley

I thought the format was really good. Enjoyable to open crystals, the results of the rank rewards speak for themselves. For me personally, my account grew a lot… got all the keys to get all box champs. Now at 27 rank 4 champs.

I knew I wasn’t going to be dancing in the ranks that mattered, and it made the rank rewards feel unexciting. The banquet milestones (i got all but the last SBC) were amazing.

Luck? Well… I didn’t have too much of that. Everyone else it appears was swimming in sig stones or can’t use all the T7B they acquired. My jubilants were mainly titans (which are sitting unopened until March) and the dreaded 7 star nexus. It just felt terrible to get those. The few champs I wanted never showed of course, and putting 20 sigs on the likes of superior Ironman for the equivalent of 4,500 units ultimately made me quit opening crystals for fun at the end despite have a lot more units to spend.

Would I change anything? Maybe make that 7 star nexus class based just to increase the odds of getting something useful. Otherwise, I hope they follow the same pattern next year,

DannyB01

I really loved this banquet. I’m a dolphin for sure so have all the rare chase champs etc, and feel like after this event that’s most of what differentiates my account now. There was SO much catching up done by casual players, it was perhaps even too much. Great to see how everyone had loads of fun though. I’m at 45 R4s now and kinda lost the interest in extra R4s, and now a lot more folks will have 30 R4s in their BGs rosters so I feel like there’s not so much to show for my spending over the course of the year anymore. First world problems though.

I started with 31k units, and put $400 into offers for units to get more crystals. I’m honestly shocked that I still only ended up top 2-3%, it’s staggering that there’s well over 5,000 players that dropped that kind of money on the game this year. If I could change one thing, Kabam would look at that distribution and make the ranked rewards a bit spicier outside of the top 1%, as it seems top 3% were still spenders.

TLDR: great event overall, devalued my spending over the course of the year and shocked how high the rank reward cutoffs were.

N8buckeye08

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2916449#Comment_2916449

I actually think it would be better if it was a class “Epoch Nexus”. The 7-star pool is so small… I’m chasing just a few champions and this would make it a small chance of actually pulling something I want.

Aleor

As a f2p

1 - the gap with spending players increased. I had to fight accounts with r5 7*s in bgs a week before the rank rewards, will only get worse now

2 - I don't really get why people say it was fun. You just spend some money to buy milestone rewards and open some crystals, there was no any fun content to play

3 - I'm glad I had almost enough units to get abs, I'm very sad I had to grind arena, which is the most boring mode on the game. I also would prefer new champs just being added into crystal over a year lock, as I didn't get nimrod and hulking from the key thing, but got all the useless x23, Jane, Valkyrie

Kade7175

My only "gripe" is the lack of t6cc. Giving 30 t6b and t4a and even t7b, but then only 12 t6cc became a real pain point. I have 22 t4a and 6 t7b in overflow that I'm probably going to lose due to no t6cc and iso. Iso is also something that I desperately need. I made it to uru in bgs so I don't have any of that currency to buy from that shop. I used all my glory, I'm waiting on coliseum rewards to use radiance and glory on t6cc and iso. I completed all side quests and used all currency from those on iso and t6cc but I'm still severely lacking for my account needs. It's gonna feel pretty rough watching those cats expire. The iso pack from the regal ravagers was so nice. It's be awesome for that to come back and maybe a side quest with some t6cc. But overall i cannot say enough good things about banquet this year. I mean I have very first world problems. And those are good to have.

Rayhagan19

Banquet was…fine. The best thing it had going for it was that it was better than last year. Some of the additional stretch goals in realm felt lazy. We have jubilant crystals frequently dropping 20K titan shards while the goals have 10K over 4 levels.

As someone who finished top 1% individually and falling 2K short of a top 2600 based on some of the numbers in the forum, I’m left frustrated wondering if the extension cost me the next reward tier (I know crystals stopped being sold but they were still being popped.)

I’m a mid tier spender, and for people who put up 80K plus and got 2-3% I feel for all of you.

In a future banquet where we’re crushing rewards as a community, I’d like to see the rank rewards improve with it, keep adding to those tiered outputs as we grow.

At the end of the day I’m not unhappy, but I do think the rank rewards and later realm rewards weren’t commensurate to the community output.

I also think that this banquet showed more than ever that the gap between F2P, and spenders is growing all the time, again, I spend, I also grind. I feel that I’m further from the whales than ever; and the F2P like my wife are further away from me than ever.

More and more it’s no longer different classes of the same game, it becomes a whole different game.

Seyuoh

Im glad i made this post, because seeing this perspective amongst the others; gives me a new idea of how people like to enjoy the game.
It always genuinely fascinates me, to learn how others play games like this- and find enjoyment in it in different ways than I do.
Thank you for your responses!

spiderknight616

I loved it so much. I saved 24k units over the year and it was so so worth it. Went from 5 to 15 R4s, got all my dream champs from the banquet box and realm milestones plus that mf Punisher from Jubilants (craziest RNG) and max sigged my top champs with more to come from T5As. Could not be happier

CheeseMaster482

Got some pretty good rewards for minimal points/effort: 7.7k. Outside of ranked rewards, the crystals were absolutely trash. I only ever opened 3 Jubilants (1 from drop and 2 from grace) and all I got were 2 statcasts, 20k titan shards, and t5a. I did like that the SBCs gave a lot of t4a though.

WhatsGoodEnglish

Some of you would call me a whale because I maxed out the web track $1k spent, but I know people who didn't over $5k so I'd consider myself more of a dolphin. I grinded Arena all year and I started out with about 38k units which would have gotten me all the realm milestones without spending a single dollar so I think that was a massive W.

Most of my compliments for the event have already been said in this thread, so I'll just focus on the few things I feel are areas for improvement. The web track rewards could have been better. The R4 gems were at $700 and $900. I feel like one of them should have been placed in the $400 to $500 range. I think the first appearance selector for Abs or Kingpin should have been the $800 reward and either a rare champ selector or R4 gem specifically for those two champs would have been the final reward.

The crystals should also have included tier 3 basic alloy and more class alloy. They were a little imbalanced as far as relic materials are confirmed. I have a stash full of tier 1 celestial alloy that I will struggle to use before it expires about a month from now.

Those are really my only complaint. It felt like decent value for the money (maybe because RNGesus favored me more than some players). I came back to this game about 13 months ago and it felt like a great bookend to rebuilding my account

JESUSCHRIST

I hate that the realm milestones were drip fed to the players, you can’t really plan ahead bcos you thought that’s the last milestone, I can go do something else during the holidays, especially towards the end when you see 1 milestone at a time

Ppl have a life, some just want to get it done and over with, not wait for you to show the milestones in pieces

BringPopcorn

People have this weird false knowledge of what a "whale" is. There really isn't that many whales in the game, there might be heavy spenders and whales for some other players perspective. They might spend as much as others make in a month; but they are not necessarily whales.

This banquet was great anyway.

Usagicassidy

I enjoyed Banquet this year and felt, for the most part, that it was a mega success.

My account grew significantly, and more than that, I had fun, which I can't say for the last few years of Banquet at least.

Even while admittedly having a blast with the event, feeling a fun part of the community and my alliance, etc, the RNG gods did not bless me one bit. While I got some champions I didn't have before, awakened some I've been dying to, and seeing a lot more R4, not once did I get what would be considered a spicy reward from the Jubilants. No keys, no rare champion selector, no shiny, no Punisher, and my Banquet box pulls were Valkyrie, Jane, and X-23, and a shiny X-23 again from the stretch goals.

That stings a bit. And I get it, it's all a roll of a die, but to spend so many units (25k) and a bit of real money ($80), I don't think I 'lucked' into anything - all that to say I didn't get anything juicy but I STILL consider the banquet a success and fun and enjoyable for me this year.

Only other wish (for future years) is still further increased Rank rewards and more brackets. I hit 49.5k points and was in the 6-10% rewards bracket and the 2-5 was just above it so I missed it, but people that only hit 30k points were also in my same bracket.

Searmenis

-The banquet was way better than the last 3 years. We got our units' worth crystals.

-Rank rewards sent the message to low spending players, loud and clear: don't spend a single dime for them. You won't get a good placement.

-Keep adding milestones is a big problem for f2p and casual spenders, you can't measure the amount of units you will aproximately need beforehand. Plus, greed. Not in the spirit of the season.

-Hoping Kabam will use their new millions to fix something in the game. Like I do every year but my wish never comes true.

BringPopcorn

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2916747#Comment_2916747

Only thing they really need to fix is a few selectors, I ended in the same bracket you were. Yay 4-5 6* rank up gem... I would have been better off even with 5 sig stones than a 6* rank up gem.

DareMartin

I thought it was good - better than last year.

I’d saved up 26k units over the year - I would have had more if I hadn’t spent a ton to get Dark Phoenix mid-year. I ended up spending some money, mainly because I’d earned a bit of spare cash recently.

I got most of what I wanted out of the Banquet. Plenty of nexuses - and I wanted my first 7* r4 and ended up with 9.

The only downside is that most of the crystals I bought were disappointing - 5ccs or 100 7* crystal shards. I don’t really care about battle casts either.

Next year it would be good to get more awakening gem shards and at least 1k 7* shards.

OldManHop

It was alright... Got lots of new champs and R4's.

Ranked rewards were kinda lame and anticlimactic after all those milestones, though. Like, I just spent over 30,000 units... what am I gonna do with 6* 4-5 gems?

Ghostface33

It was 10x better than last year and the addition of the Jubilant crystal was nice, although pulling that 7 nexus was gut wrenching it was fun. I dropped 40K units and spent 0 cash and managed to up my R4s from 15 to 29 and picked loads of champs i missed from previous spending events. Have not been ISO broke in years. Back to grinding arena

FrostGiantLord

It was alright. I only had 7000 units saved, so there wasn't much in it for me. I only spent 4k, since I likely couldn't have reached any of the major milestones anyway. Jubilant crystals were the best part, but I felt the SBC drop rates were still pretty underwhelming

BraderBob

… it was way better than last year.

Interesting to see how would they top that this year …

Amorphis

I've been playing since 2018. I remember the Giver era, and then the first Banquet. And I can confidently say I've never been as sad as I was after this New Year's event. Many say this Banquet is significantly better than last year's, and maybe so. But how is it better? The crystal drops themselves have only improved slightly.
The bulk of the awards were from the stages. In my opinion, Greater Gifting Crystals was the best Kabam ever. You could get much better rewards from those crystals without having a large number of units.
At the same time, there was a spirit of Christmas and New Year holidays; clan members gave each other gifts and rejoiced.
Now the Banquet has turned into a race to see who can pour the most real money into the game. But why is this happening? Back in the 2023 Banquet, I took 1% of 22,000 units. All by hand, without any donations. Now, that's fantastic!
There's a huge gap between players who spend money on the game and regular players. Why not split the rewards for stages between those who donate and those who beat the arena and accumulate units?
I think it would be fair and honest for everyone. Right now, it looks more like a war between supermarkets and small businesses.

What we have in the end:

80% of Superior crystal drops are terrible.

Jubilant crystal drops are 50/50.

The rank rewards for stages (unless you're rich) are so ridiculous that the entire community is already talking about it.