Alliance Quest Miniboss and Sentinel Refresh - April 2018 - Discussion Thread [Updated April 13]

Summoners,

We've just announced a small refresh of Alliance Quests that will start April 2nd. This will include new Minibosses, and a farewell to our Symbioid friends!

Read all about it, then ask your questions!

UPDATE:
We've just posted an update in regards to your feedback on Alliance Quests. This post includes some adjustments to Sentinels and Alliance Quests that will be coming with the next series (Starting April 18th). Take a look right here: http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/62626/upcoming-adjustments-to-alliance-quests-april-18th-2018

Comments

Vincew80

Sentinels aren’t difficult but they’re long boring fights... gonna be great fighting them 10 times an aq. Morningstar is the main one I have an issue with specifically the 2nd fight. Good luck not timing out unless you have a heavy hitting, bleed immune, power control champ... way to pigeonhole our options. Overall, it seems like they put no thought into it other than their pockets... which I won’t be helping to fill until they actually listen to the fan base.

Fuchin

Gotta realize Kabam is a biz just trying to find new ways to make money. Once anything is mastered they move the ball to make money. First Perect Block, next 12.0, now that everyone’s adjusted to not using Thor, SW, Doc.... they had to kill wolverine. The only way to do that after the backlash from 12.0 is to do it backdoor by making most of the map bleed immune.

Pyran1

What you guys are calling a “refresh” looks like a colossal money grab from my end. No extra reward given while difficultly ramps up for no real reason other than to alleviate boredom, which hasn’t been accomplished. Now we are just bored and frustrated.

MC_CARKA7

ive played this game since the early days..and never have i been closer to quiting it

the sentinels are a joke..even if rewards increase it isnt the same..sure changes are more than welcome, but to lose a champ against a mystic sentinel on the first day of AQ?i dont know its just not ok..

and no response from Kabam..so strange but yet so predictable

Oneslydogg

This could have all been avoided with beta testing. If they let’s select players fight sentinels with stats from day 1-5 they would have seen how overwhelmingly power they can be. Unfortunately kabam likes to do live tests, where we are all forced to deal with this **** until they see actual live results and adjust from there.

Bdgoodrum91

Don’t like the update? Make sure you go to the App Store and leave a 1 star review. Remember when they tried to nerf all good champs like BW SW and Thor and ruined them? That didn’t last long when the app went from 5 stars to 1 star. What a disgraceful grab for more cash kabam. You all should be ashamed.

BigDaddyJoe

Looks like this is just trying to be shoved under the rug to let it pass. Let people vent and eventually everyone will shut up about it while accepting the change

CurtisLow

Day one and I see wolverine is no good anymore. Iron Man wouldn’t regen. Sentinels have changed aq for the worst. At least their abilities. I’m trying Iceman, SW and I don’t know who for day 2.

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DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

It's only hard because it's new.

Its harder because it is harder. It would be an exaggeration to say tons of people are going to quit over it, but anyone who thinks Sentinels are not harder than Syms either has a very peculiar psychological aversion to Syms or has no idea how to judge difficulty in the game. And I say that without exempting the developers from that statement.

The point I'm trying to bring home is we will adjust, and it doesn't usually take that long.

I understand your point. However, that point is orthogonal to the question of whether the content is now harder. Regardless of whether it is easier or harder, you can almost always say that. It doesn't contradict, or even address, the question of whether the content is harder in an unjustifiable way.

More importantly, if your point is that people will adjust, then I don't see why you would try to make that point by saying "it's only hard because it's new" because that statement is false, and doesn't support your point at all.

It's not false to say that. It's a challenge because we're not used to the Sentinels being in AQ. It will just take time to adjust. The Sentinlels themselves are new, as in their move set, but there's nothing particularly new or challenging about them, aside from their Immunity, and a couple distinct characteristics.

Except for the distinct ways in which they are different, they are exactly the same. I'm not sure if you're supposed to be agreeing or disagreeing with me here. All the ways in which Sentinels are more difficult than Syms are just distinct ways in which they are different.

Just for reference, though, those distinct ways in which they are different include increased attack rating against everything except their superior class, adaptation changes that make secondary effects trigger on block and making all special attacks unblockable, and class variations that typically have either power gain, regeneration, debuff immunity, or attack rating increases. These abilities are all comparable to medium level node buffs. In other words, to say that the Sentinels are *only* difficult because they are new is tantamount to saying doubling the strength of all the node buffs on the AQ map only makes the map more difficult because those node buffs would be new.

DeathBringer77

Love all the Non disclosed changes made to AQ. Lumber added to mini bosses, AI got much quicker. AI avoids parry 10x more than last week. Sucks when you run a path for multiple months and then noticed a ton of changes on day 1 that weren’t announced. Between this and all the mod alliances in aw with no action from kabam, this is the last straw for me. Great game ruined by an incompetent group of developers and game team that absolutely doesn’t understand the player base

ON12355

If you put so much effort to create a content that actually works instead of deleting comments that only refer the facts, well, maybe you wouldn't suck and didn't get those negative comments...Try to think about that...

Primmer79

DeathBringer77 wrote: »

Love all the Non disclosed changes made to AQ. Lumber added to mini bosses, AI got much quicker. AI avoids parry 10x more than last week. Sucks when you run a path for multiple months and then noticed a ton of changes on day 1 that weren’t announced. Between this and all the mod alliances in aw with no action from kabam, this is the last straw for me. Great game ruined by an incompetent group of developers and game team that absolutely doesn’t understand the player base

I mean, limber is right in the announcement. I noticed that right away with NC because I thought "Well, better kill him or switch him quick"

ChefSkallywag

Can’t wait to see the shitstorm they are gonna get on day 5 or aq

Zlander1013

Hey I just tried the new difficulty and it appears to be drastically more difficult with almost no effort needed to face the symbiosis compared to the sentinels with their double immunity and move sets such as power lock power steal on attacks or their purify into fury buffs then wit their slightly harder to dodge specials that apply effects through block and an be unblockable even without full analysis charges. Yet still is seen as not a high enough jump in difficulty to qualify for a higher reward tier dosnt seem fair for all the players who are not super far in your game but want to get into but have higher difficulty and have to change their entire team set up

ChefSkallywag

Lane 7/7/7

Mystic - ||
Science - ||
Tech - |
Skill - ||||
Cosmic - |

This is my normal route in map 5. That’s 10 Sentinels I have to fight. 4 of which are completely immune and 2 have very high MD. Not to mention power burn/steal. Attack increase and decrease (for the player) and unblockable sp2.... yeah it’s not any more difficult than before

Zlander1013

Zlander1013 wrote: »

Hey I just tried the new difficulty and it appears to be drastically more difficult with almost no effort needed to face the symbiosis compared to the sentinels with their double immunity and move sets such as power lock power steal on attacks or their purify into fury buffs then wit their slightly harder to dodge specials that apply effects through block and an be unblockable even without full analysis charges. Yet still is seen as not a high enough jump in difficulty to qualify for a higher reward tier dosnt seem fair for all the players who are not super far in your game but want to get into but have higher difficulty and have to change their entire team set up

I would also like to point out that I understand that it can be difficult to keep things balanced in a game like this but I feel as though you should have people tearing things like this for all levels because people who have had this game since the game fame out my not notice much of a difference in difficulty but as it moves on down to people with less experience and a smaller less leveled or diverse roster it effects them more and more which I feel should be looked into with maybe a increase in rewards or just a tuning down of the sentinels abilities just a bit to be more in line with the difficulty of how it use to be as this has a lasting effect on not just rewards for a week or two for people to get used to it but people who are less prepared may move down a tier leading to them getting even less from alliance quest while so many try to do aq for needed rewards like t4cc

CurtisLow

The sentinels need to be tweeked. They’re too hard to beat. Don’t make the special 2 unblockable. Reconsider immunity to incinerate.

ItsTheBroski

JayJT wrote: »

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Vydious I think what the community would like to see is an intelligent response to all of the negative feedback. A sincere, thoughtful, smart response. Let's face the facts, almost noone likes this change for a lot of reasons. I could understand if it was 50/50 half the community likes it and half the community doesnt, then yeah push the idea out there. But it's closer to 90/10 against. You're forcing a change to the game that a very high percentage of the player base doesnt want. Fighting sentineloids isn't just more difficult, it's just not fun in any way. I'm literally dreading this change bc there is absolutely no fun in fighting sentinels. It's just tedious and chorelike.

All I ask, is for an intelligent non sarcastic smart ass response, that highlights all of the concerns the playerbase has

I will give one as a new discussion. Will have it up in an hour or so.

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

It's only hard because it's new.

Its harder because it is harder. It would be an exaggeration to say tons of people are going to quit over it, but anyone who thinks Sentinels are not harder than Syms either has a very peculiar psychological aversion to Syms or has no idea how to judge difficulty in the game. And I say that without exempting the developers from that statement.

The point I'm trying to bring home is we will adjust, and it doesn't usually take that long.

I understand your point. However, that point is orthogonal to the question of whether the content is now harder. Regardless of whether it is easier or harder, you can almost always say that. It doesn't contradict, or even address, the question of whether the content is harder in an unjustifiable way.

More importantly, if your point is that people will adjust, then I don't see why you would try to make that point by saying "it's only hard because it's new" because that statement is false, and doesn't support your point at all.

It's not false to say that. It's a challenge because we're not used to the Sentinels being in AQ. It will just take time to adjust. The Sentinlels themselves are new, as in their move set, but there's nothing particularly new or challenging about them, aside from their Immunity, and a couple distinct characteristics.

Except for the distinct ways in which they are different, they are exactly the same. I'm not sure if you're supposed to be agreeing or disagreeing with me here. All the ways in which Sentinels are more difficult than Syms are just distinct ways in which they are different.

Just for reference, though, those distinct ways in which they are different include increased attack rating against everything except their superior class, adaptation changes that make secondary effects trigger on block and making all special attacks unblockable, and class variations that typically have either power gain, regeneration, debuff immunity, or attack rating increases. These abilities are all comparable to medium level node buffs. In other words, to say that the Sentinels are *only* difficult because they are new is tantamount to saying doubling the strength of all the node buffs on the AQ map only makes the map more difficult because those node buffs would be new.

I was agreeing with you in the sense that they're challenging, but the larger issue is the resistance to change. So, I was agreeing with both of us. I suppose if you took my original response as a literal absolute, that would seem incorrect. In any case, I think it's being exaggerated. Symbioids mimicked other Champs. Sentinels add another layer, but it's really not that hard to get used to. Having fought a few of them myself, their style is becoming more predictable. I'm fine with no increase in Rewards. That's my view.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

It's only hard because it's new.

Its harder because it is harder. It would be an exaggeration to say tons of people are going to quit over it, but anyone who thinks Sentinels are not harder than Syms either has a very peculiar psychological aversion to Syms or has no idea how to judge difficulty in the game. And I say that without exempting the developers from that statement.

The point I'm trying to bring home is we will adjust, and it doesn't usually take that long.

I understand your point. However, that point is orthogonal to the question of whether the content is now harder. Regardless of whether it is easier or harder, you can almost always say that. It doesn't contradict, or even address, the question of whether the content is harder in an unjustifiable way.

More importantly, if your point is that people will adjust, then I don't see why you would try to make that point by saying "it's only hard because it's new" because that statement is false, and doesn't support your point at all.

It's not false to say that. It's a challenge because we're not used to the Sentinels being in AQ. It will just take time to adjust. The Sentinlels themselves are new, as in their move set, but there's nothing particularly new or challenging about them, aside from their Immunity, and a couple distinct characteristics.

Except for the distinct ways in which they are different, they are exactly the same. I'm not sure if you're supposed to be agreeing or disagreeing with me here. All the ways in which Sentinels are more difficult than Syms are just distinct ways in which they are different.

Just for reference, though, those distinct ways in which they are different include increased attack rating against everything except their superior class, adaptation changes that make secondary effects trigger on block and making all special attacks unblockable, and class variations that typically have either power gain, regeneration, debuff immunity, or attack rating increases. These abilities are all comparable to medium level node buffs. In other words, to say that the Sentinels are *only* difficult because they are new is tantamount to saying doubling the strength of all the node buffs on the AQ map only makes the map more difficult because those node buffs would be new.

I was agreeing with you in the sense that they're challenging, but the larger issue is the resistance to change. So, I was agreeing with both of us. I suppose if you took my original response as a literal absolute, that would seem incorrect. In any case, I think it's being exaggerated. Symbioids mimicked other Champs. Sentinels add another layer, but it's really not that hard to get used to. Having fought a few of them myself, their style is becoming more predictable. I'm fine with no increase in Rewards. That's my view.

All changes are exaggerated by the players. But saying the difficulty is unchanged is an equally stretched exaggeration. My problem is primarily with Kabam, that should never under any circumstances distort or exaggerate a game change. They have a higher professional standard to adhere to than complaining players.

Also, these kinds of changes are almost never made "just to change things up." They know why they made them, I know why they made them, and its a bit disappointing that their position on full disclosure has once again found its way to the bottom of the bird cage.

Kpatrix

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

SpiritOfVengeance wrote: »

The thing is kabam it aint the actual changes that are annoying it is the fact that we have had to change up our team by wasting more resources and we recieve the same rewards for it.

I guarantee if you had helped us by deranking some of our champions so that we could try prepare for it and we had some reward changes then we wouldn't mind the new enemies. You would have the couple comments that would still hate but the amount of hate that is being pushed your way would of been turned into something like "awesome new changes and we can prepare for it the right way".

That's why it's useful to Rank more than the same, few Champs. It's also probably best to Rank for more than one reason.

I'm going to call you out on this as the resources to rank 5* are so hard to get. You aren't going to get t1 and t2a over night.

Having said that, I haven't had any issues with the sentinels. They may be a bit trickier than the symbis but all in all they aren't that bad. We will adapt just like we have with all the other changes. I did make a point in running extra paths through the eq to get in more practice, but as of now I've had no problems. Once we hit day 4&5 I'll decide if it's harder.

Yarah_Dahile

Ok I managed to do ok on skill sentinels.

However are mystic sentinels meant to nullify abilities when hitting a blocked opponent? That seems a bit excessive. And cosmic ones are nasty with the power gain. Especially since they often store power to sp3 when baiting and then sp2 immediately followed by a sp1

CurtisLow

I can say coldsnap was ineffective. Ultron couldn’t beat one. That’s two 5/50 champs lost to one sentinel. That never happened against symboids. Now I’m forced to use resources. That’s not good when that happens. There’s something wrong. They shouldn’t be that hard to beat. I beat them on master quest, and those should have been harder to beat.

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Yarah_Dahile

Cold snap works for me? What sentinel were you fighting?

GroundedWisdom

Kpatrix wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

SpiritOfVengeance wrote: »

The thing is kabam it aint the actual changes that are annoying it is the fact that we have had to change up our team by wasting more resources and we recieve the same rewards for it.

I guarantee if you had helped us by deranking some of our champions so that we could try prepare for it and we had some reward changes then we wouldn't mind the new enemies. You would have the couple comments that would still hate but the amount of hate that is being pushed your way would of been turned into something like "awesome new changes and we can prepare for it the right way".

That's why it's useful to Rank more than the same, few Champs. It's also probably best to Rank for more than one reason.

I'm going to call you out on this as the resources to rank 5* are so hard to get. You aren't going to get t1 and t2a over night.

Having said that, I haven't had any issues with the sentinels. They may be a bit trickier than the symbis but all in all they aren't that bad. We will adapt just like we have with all the other changes. I did make a point in running extra paths through the eq to get in more practice, but as of now I've had no problems. Once we hit day 4&5 I'll decide if it's harder.

When I look at Ranking, I consider what will be most useful to me all-round. Especially when dealing with rare Resources. I don't usually Rank a Champ for one specific game mode, especially when that game mode is not a permanent fixture like Storymode. The game changes. It will continue to change. Which means Champs that served me in the past may not serve me later on.

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ItsTheBroski

True man