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

Jesse0013

AQ starts in approx 16 hours and no update from Kabam @Kabam Loto @Kabam Miike @Kabam Wolf @Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious

Actually, you guys continue to merge all new threads in here but won’t say anything. What happened to “keeping your community informed and involved” after the 12.0 debacle. Tell us you don’t care and no changes will be made, tell us you don’t read any of our comments, tell us.....something.

Displeased and disheartened player

unknown

This content has been removed.

NinjaiX

We should all just do map 3 until they say something

BitterSteel

Are kabam wrong or lying when they say aq hasn’t got harder?

Which would be worse?

charaderdude2

Zeke_the_Xbot wrote: »

Yep glad to see Sentinel AI is set up with a what like .01-1% chance to use specials. They seem to have an unmarked L2 Bias. Spend several attempts trying to bait the L1 only to miss time and evade get comboed and they get their L2 and low and behold they are more then happy to spam that ability.

Wasn't that the same with symbioids?

Blitzkilla420

so no update eh @Kabam Miike ?

Loco24x7

@Kabam Miike I guess AQ going as is today @ 3pm EST typically on major topics such as this and that so many comments on players quitting there is always constant communication.

crystaldsmith

I don't mind the double immunity. I think 5x5 should be challenging.

It's that on top of nullify, power gain, purify, analysis charges, sp 3 (which relentlessly causes sp 2 followed by sp 1) and going unblockable. Sp 2 is really hard to execute evading every time. As a mini they'd be hard enough, but fighting them 10+ times each AQ is nuts.

They're way to overpowered as a regular recurring thing. Remove them or nerf them. Why not change up all the other predictable champs that are in the same place every single round? Add new champs, a larger diversity of champs. Add new boosts. You could increase the difficulty reasonably, and made the game fresh and more diverse.

You did none of that. You made it way harder, with no extra incentive, and you didn't make it fun or exciting at all. You made people want to quit. We've already lost 2 and are at risk of a 3rd. People can't pull their weight anymore. You've demoralized millions of players.

I'll never spend another dollar, I can only hope everyone else does the same. We're happy to enjoy your free content, though. I'm sure you don't mind keeping that up for us for free.

DarkestDestroyer

DNA3000 wrote: »

DarkestDestroyer wrote: »

Stephen_Lynch wrote: »

My alliance is a 15 million rated alliance we have been doing map 5x5 for past year 100% every time. You added Sentinels and all of a sudden we struggled to get through the first section without using pots and day 4 had a BG not finish. We also have had 4 people quit the game and 5 more waiting until the end of our war we are in to finish. But no you didn’t make it harder. You just killed Wolverine because he heals too much and you don’t get enough people buying alliance pots. Be honest @Kabam Miike this is a way to increase difficulty. I know there are counters. But symbiods don’t need counters. There for you did increase the difficulty and you know you did. Get rid of the stupid sentinels. They are annoying as hell. I did the halls of healing everyday and stocked up knowing it was going to be rough. I maybe use 1-3 pots on day 4 and 5. I use all 15 pots day 2 and 3. Only fights I lost on were sentinels that can hit me even when I’m blocking and all there many other annoying abilities.

@Stephen_Lynch you can still use wolverine and regen against them you know?

They hardly have any health it’s a simple fight.

I’m so mind blown by all the outrage

Its now an observable fact that the combined changes to AQ have made it a huge quantum leap harder for a large percentage of the players. Precisely why it is happening is debatable, but that it is in fact a huge difficulty jump is no longer debatable. The question now is what to do about it. If you don't understand how it could be more difficult, that's simply a fundamental limitation of your ability to engage in the details of the situation.

I'm saying this as someone whose alliance materially benefitted from the change. We jumped over 200 places in AQ standing last week even though we scored fewer points. That doesn't impact my ability to see that the change would have a large negative impact on players as a whole. And as Kabam's official position was and still amazingly is that there was no intent to increase difficulty beyond novelty, it is entirely understandable that players would be upset about a change that clearly went completely overboard what it was described to do.

If the devs say a change will do X, and it actually does something completely different than X, and that change materially harms the playing experience of a large percentage of the players, and the devs refuse to even acknowledge this is actually happening I would expect those players to react strongly negatively. I don't see how anyone's mind could be blown by the obvious and predictable. It is doubly annoying when the devs were so obviously wrong it is difficult to invent an excuse that allows for that level of wrong to happen by accident.

Dude just because they can’t bleed or be poisoned doesn’t make them more difficult to fight.

Yeah the mini bosses are slightly difficult but when there are 10 people with 3 champs each it’s easy to defeat them, they all have various counters, NC is bugged so he won’t evade.

I mean instead of trying to sound clever why not give a solution? What is it you want done?

BigDaddyJoe

@DarkestDestroyer I believe there has been a sh!t ton of possible solutions given out here in the hundreds or thousands of comments in this thread. The problem is they aren’t being read or even addressed at that. It’s really aggravating when there’s hardly no comments from the game team or mods addressing our concerns. Our alliance was even shakin up people leaving. This is no joke here. People are dropping out

Primmer79

can't wait to kill more sentineloids today! EZPZ

BillLisBack

Primmer79 wrote: »

can't wait to kill more sentineloids today! EZPZ

Warning: Do not feed the trolls

Barogs

There's a lot of complaining about these sentinels, and I can see why people are struggling against them, but after two weeks of fighting them everyone will get used to them and get through them just fine. However, the calls for increased rewards are 100% warranted. AQ rewards have needed a revamp since the new AW map was released. There are so many aspects of the game that need a reward update (quest crystals, gold rewards, aw rewards, map crystals just to name a few) but this thread is strictly AQ. AQ is a total grind and should be rewarded as such. But it seems the sentinels are making things harder for allies to complete the map and to be honest, I am just fine with that. It's a competitive game and if you can't handle the difficulty, scale it back or don't play. Every champ has a strategy to beat them, sentinels are no different. However, my perspective on aq rewards being updated remains the same: rewards need to be increased and changed

Chimpyboy

Being able to use DOT attack options most certainly makes the fights easier. You can poison/bleed, and let those do the work, instead of having to attack more, bait more specials, etc. The fights are over quickly. The sentinel fights I'm finding are taking at least 2x as long - esp on days 3/4/5. The longer the fights go, the more chip/block damage you can take, and the more opportunities there are the screw something up and get hosed. Plus the less health you have left for the other fights....so now you gotta be more on-point for those fights as well - it's ramped up the stakes for all the fights, not just the sentinels.

Players had been running similar AQ teams in my group for a long time - now they are finding their normal options aren't as effective. So they are either left to bring in other options they may not be as comfortable playing - (and some that may now give them a new disadvantage against non-sentinel opponents on their paths) - or left them scrambling to bring up some 4* they had sitting at 3/30 b/c they didn't see the need to bring them to 5/50. So now they're having to use resources on those rank ups (if they even have them), instead of being able to save those items for a 5/6* rank up in the future.

Primmer79

BillLisBack wrote: »

Primmer79 wrote: »

can't wait to kill more sentineloids today! EZPZ

Warning: Do not feed the trolls

But I'm hungry

Barr

Kabam why are you guys being so silent! The community is talking to you asking for any type of help or communication, when you treat your customers this way is how businesses go under. Get on here and say something.

mostlyharmlessn

Ad0ra_ wrote: »

Hey everyone! Wanted to drop in and let you know that we are paying close attention to everyone's feedback about the new changes to Alliance Quests. We understand that these updates have caused a shakeup to Summoner’s existing strategies and rosters. As we've noted previously, although our intention was not to explicitly increase the difficulty of the new Sentinel fights compared with the previous Symbioid encounters, we understand that the new abilities and immunities they possess require a pretty sizable change in approach, or outright prevent some older strategies.

The Game Team is keeping a close eye on the data behind the scenes to get a complete picture of how these changes have affected players across all tiers of the game. This information goes hand in hand with the important feedback everyone has given here on the forums and will help us as we move forward. Please be patient as we review this round of Alliance Quest data and determine where action may be needed.

And, as always, please be mindful of the forum rules when posting. We want to hear your feedback and criticism, but it must be provided in a clear, constructive way.

Thank you for your passion!

Well here's a big part of the problem, you stated it right in your response...

You are looking "BEHIND THE SCENES"

This is like taking a car to a mechanic because it has a rough ride. The mechanic opens the hood, starts the car, but doesn't drive it. Says it looks ok, I'll adjust the idle timing though to make it smoother. The mechanic never looks to see that the wheels are unbalanced and the alignment is out of wack.

The wheels unbalanced and alignment out of wack here. That's what the community is telling you.

The visual adjustment for the sentinels is partially to blame here. When fights occur and you are used to the screen being one way, then you resize it visually, the cues are now off. The dash back in relation to the screen is different, and the markers where you are used to taking an action are different. The visuals alone make the mechanics of the game different for JUST those fights.

Letting the sentinels go from shooting off an Sp2 right into an Sp1 is another thing that is just wrong... they can do it without a break in between so you just get clobbered.

The amount of damage you take from an SP2 is off the chart, it's up there with the mini bosses by day 3.

In one fell swoop you've made champs like Wolverine, Blade, ect less useful in AQ.

The motions of the sentinels is different in that it seems you should be able to interrupt/intercept them, but you just flat out miss them. This could be because of the display change I mentioned above, or it could just be that is how you programmed the AI for them when fighting in AQ.

It seems that once again Kabam did not think about how these changes would impact day to day playing.

Spurgeon14

Primmer79 wrote: »

BillLisBack wrote: »

Primmer79 wrote: »

can't wait to kill more sentineloids today! EZPZ

Warning: Do not feed the trolls

But I'm hungry

😂😂😂

unknown

This content has been removed.

Stagedear85

khehmist wrote: »

Seems like Kabam believes the Sentineloids aren't a problem and that people will adjust quickly. Guess all the people that quit weren't paying customers.

MCOC has a few techiclal and game play issues, but the biggest problem is how over managed it is. Being so obvious about how little Kabam cares about anything compared to their revenue is really insulting. It's hard to want to put time and money into the game knowing it supports Kabam.

well said, ive had 3 good members from my alliance that's been with us for 2 years quit this week and they spend quite a few dollars on the game, they quit because they feel kabam only care about the money and when this game was first introduce it was more player base now its about business all the deals and the fixes that has occur , there's issues still under investigation for the 9 months but every week there's new deals but no update on these on going issues and as soon as you say something that's not complementing kabam they close it and send you a message saying you're not being constructive its like kabam only want to be praise.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Dtl7714

Especially since they addressed nothing. The only thing they did was count their money, I mean collect behind the scenes data.

Kabam Lyra

Hi all!

I just wanted to thank you for your continued feedback. I know you are all anxious for updates from us, and I totally understand why as we are going into a new AQ week. But please hang in there and be patient as the Game Team is looking at and analyzing the behind the scenes data that has been gathered so far. When we have any more meaningful information to share with you about the changes, we will. Thanks!

Stagedear85

I'M happy they actually reached out however i wonder if they're going to do anything about the potions and revives alot of people wasted just to complete these, i ran through all my hall of healing potions already not only that but now we doing get the milestones 20% revives anymore. thanks however for responding and i hope these issue gets revolve soon @Kabam Lyra

Jamag

Kabam Lyra wrote: »

Hi all!

I just wanted to thank you for your continued feedback. I know you are all anxious for updates from us, and I totally understand why as we are going into a new AQ week. But please hang in there and be patient as the Game Team is looking at and analyzing the behind the scenes data that has been gathered so far. When we have any more meaningful information to share with you about the changes, we will. Thanks!

In other words, we are doing nothing or very little as changes are working as intended

unknown

This content has been removed.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Carmel1

I really don’t understand what you are trying to do becsuse to me it looks like you are testing our pertinence with how far can you go and what else you can do before we smash the phone and say goodbye to this game for ever.
It is just a small change of adding this empty node on path 7 (section1 - far right - map5) and I’m sure most people didn’t even notice it, but you changing something and fail to report it (again!!) is unbelievable!
To bad you fail in something simple like this.

Primmer79

Why was there an extra move added on route 7 map 5? @Kabam Miike

BigDaddyJoe

Extra move wth like that path wasn’t long enough lol