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

Chuckiebklyn

The adjustments coming all at one time has made getting through Quest almost impossible for some of us. Map3 shouldn't be that difficult; but it is.
Some of the characters are good at beating the Sentinels but I don't have all those characters and I can't get them using the lottery. And I won't be able to promote them if I can't finish quest, war and other quest.
THE GAME IS LOSING ITS LUSTER.

GroundedWisdom

BitterSteel wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Really. Based on what? Fighting them in EQ with Nodes on them? Based on their Immunity? They're going to be "harder" is not a quantitative analysis to adjust anything on. There's usually a reaction to every change. "Oh, well since the reaction is that it will be harder, we've decided not to go through with it.". Doesn't exactly fly. They need something to go on to make adjustments.

@GroundedWisdom I fought sentinels (minions) in uncollected, I have fought symbioids in quests as well. I can then comparatively look at both of them and realise that sentinels are clearly more difficult to fight. It’s not rocket science.

Adding them to AQ is the direction they chose to go. Having it that much more difficult wasn't what they wanted, which is why they made adjustments. Until they went live, it wasn't possible to gauge how much they had to make those adjustments. Whether people knew they would be harder or not is irrelevant. Adding them is the decision they made.

GroundedWisdom

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

They listened to feedback. That doesn't mean they could stop everything. They had to gather data to make adjustments. Once things are set in place, you wouldn't really find a total rollback. History shows this. They take the feedback as the data as apply it to the template implemented.

Had they listened they would never have pushed the server side update for AQ.

Had it been a client side update that would be a different story, there's a lot more moving parts and dealing with the play/app stores.

It makes me cring that there's no roll back plan for any software updates or a way to block a push to production. That's just dangerous development practices, but I digress.

There's a difference between taking in feedback and obeying orders. They haven't removed Sentinels. They're adjusting them. Their intentions weren't to have it as difficult. There was no way for us to gauge that until it went live. They're making adjustments to be closer to what they wanted.

You are right there is a difference.

Taking feedback they would have done a testing phase like LC/RH proposed update, and not a push to production without user acceptance testing.

There's absolutely no need to go live with a change like this without player based testing. They proved post 12.0 they have the capability to do UAT. If they are doing UAT and still released these changes then their player sample is severely flawed.

This was a situation is the same as the update to AW where the player based looked at the proposed changes, pointed out flaws in the plan which were ignored. The result was an absurd change that had alliances placing no to few defenders and winning.

The Beta Program is not working right now, which was explained at the beginning of the month. You can't reasonably expect them to not make any changes without consulting us first. It's their game. I don't consider Players trying to find a loophole to War as a flaw. Part of that whole bit was in protest to the changes. That loophole didn't last long. Regardless of how we feel entitled, it's their choice what they want to do.

Vincew80

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

They listened to feedback. That doesn't mean they could stop everything. They had to gather data to make adjustments. Once things are set in place, you wouldn't really find a total rollback. History shows this. They take the feedback as the data as apply it to the template implemented.

Had they listened they would never have pushed the server side update for AQ.

Had it been a client side update that would be a different story, there's a lot more moving parts and dealing with the play/app stores.

It makes me cring that there's no roll back plan for any software updates or a way to block a push to production. That's just dangerous development practices, but I digress.

There's a difference between taking in feedback and obeying orders. They haven't removed Sentinels. They're adjusting them. Their intentions weren't to have it as difficult. There was no way for us to gauge that until it went live. They're making adjustments to be closer to what they wanted.

You are right there is a difference.

Taking feedback they would have done a testing phase like LC/RH proposed update, and not a push to production without user acceptance testing.

There's absolutely no need to go live with a change like this without player based testing. They proved post 12.0 they have the capability to do UAT. If they are doing UAT and still released these changes then their player sample is severely flawed.

This was a situation is the same as the update to AW where the player based looked at the proposed changes, pointed out flaws in the plan which were ignored. The result was an absurd change that had alliances placing no to few defenders and winning.

The Beta Program is not working right now, which was explained at the beginning of the month. You can't reasonably expect them to not make any changes without consulting us first. It's their game. I don't consider Players trying to find a loophole to War as a flaw. Part of that whole bit was in protest to the changes. That loophole didn't last long. Regardless of how we feel entitled, it's their choice what they want to do.

We can reasonably expect them to actually test changes before implementing them. It’s extremely obvious to anyone who plays that they don’t do that. I don’t know a single person that said they feel the changes were for the better. Even the guys I know who don’t have problems dealing with sentinels don’t feel anything was changed for the better & that’s an internal problem with how kabam operates.

teekq

Looks like a lot of people will drop tier.

unknown

This content has been removed.

teekq

Usually over 100mil in aq everytime. We only scored 87mil this round. People get so intimidated with senti

unknown

This content has been removed.

BDLH

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

BitterSteel wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Really. Based on what? Fighting them in EQ with Nodes on them? Based on their Immunity? They're going to be "harder" is not a quantitative analysis to adjust anything on. There's usually a reaction to every change. "Oh, well since the reaction is that it will be harder, we've decided not to go through with it.". Doesn't exactly fly. They need something to go on to make adjustments.

@GroundedWisdom I fought sentinels (minions) in uncollected, I have fought symbioids in quests as well. I can then comparatively look at both of them and realise that sentinels are clearly more difficult to fight. It’s not rocket science.

Adding them to AQ is the direction they chose to go. Having it that much more difficult wasn't what they wanted, which is why they made adjustments. Until they went live, it wasn't possible to gauge how much they had to make those adjustments. Whether people knew they would be harder or not is irrelevant. Adding them is the decision they made.

It is relevant that the players knew it would be harder since it shows how disconnected they and you are from the real game, since apparently you and the mods spend your whole time in the forums instead of the game so wouldn't know the difference. You have dozens if not hundreds of comments by top tier players and alliances who have fought these same encounters countless times telling you before you released the changes there would be a major difference. Your company reps adamantly argue there is no difference with absolutely 0 evidence to support this. Shortly after it's released the data and evidence immediately indicates all the high level players were right and the mods and low level players were wrong. Again it does not mean any of the top teams are having trouble clearing, it means there was an objective difference in items used and deaths which Kabam has clearly confirmed. When you're used to clearing for free for months even a small number of items and extra deaths is a very significant indication that something has changed especially if they refuse to adjust rewards to match it. Obviously Kabam also agrees with this or the changes wouldn't be taking place.

And the few guys left still arguing that there is no difference between symbioids and Sentinels, why in the world would a huge for profit company retract all their statements looking like ignorant fools after weeks of arguing with the player base if all the evidence didn't point toward the same conclusion the rest of us already made. Now we have the company itself confirm there was a major difficulty difference, the vast majority of the player base agreeing to this, and a few random people claiming the opposite. Which side has more evidence?

We've jumped up over 100 rank keeping the same score right at 125M, meaning over 100 teams did not finish their maps. And these are not casual teams who randomly clear and not clear. At this bracket the scores and clearing percentage are nearly fixed with tiny changes each time another member adds another 5/65 or R2 6 star for a little prestige bump. ~120 teams in this bracket dropping off when they have never not cleared a map in months indicates something unless you're in make-believe land. Even the company itself making huge profits over the extra items these teams lost has agreed to the same conclusion.''

The fact that 1 or 2 guys feels there was no difference is incredibily insignificant compared to the 120 teams X 30 members each at a relatively high rank who could not clear maps like they've been doing for several months. Maybe to some weird awkward guys symbioids were actually harder, but these decisions are based on how the 99% of the player base feels as supported by their evidence, not the few who somehow felt symbioids were as hard or harder.

pseudosane

What Kabam fails to understand is, difficulty aside, Sentinels are incredibly boring to fight. Games need to be both engaging and fun to keep a captive audience. I am not captivated by these boring and tedious fights. Nerfing them somewhat and exposing them on the map does not increase the fun factor.

Kill sentinels off! They are boring to fight!! They are tedious to fight!!! They plain suck!!!!

I am looking for a game to replace MCoC because it is not fun anymore.

GroundedWisdom

99% of the Player Base is not an accurate statement. 99% of the Forum might be closer. Which is nothing new considering the majority of comments on here are complaints. It was harder for some. The fact that people are still arguing this is just repetitive and moot. If you think they changed a week or two of AQ just to make a couple bucks, then I'm afraid you have been watching too much Fox News. They're adjusting it. What's interesting to me is how people have become so comfortable in running AQ that they are personally offended at the thought of putting work into it. Nevermind the fact that they have so many Cats they can't use them and complain about the imbalance in Resources, even though they devote most of their time to getting Champs and Cats by focusing on Prestige only. No, has to be the game. Lol. Arguing with me about whether it was harder or not really serves no purpose. There are more than a couple people in the Player Base that weren't bothered regardless. The loudest voices are the ones that aren't happy.

BDLH wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

BitterSteel wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Really. Based on what? Fighting them in EQ with Nodes on them? Based on their Immunity? They're going to be "harder" is not a quantitative analysis to adjust anything on. There's usually a reaction to every change. "Oh, well since the reaction is that it will be harder, we've decided not to go through with it.". Doesn't exactly fly. They need something to go on to make adjustments.

@GroundedWisdom I fought sentinels (minions) in uncollected, I have fought symbioids in quests as well. I can then comparatively look at both of them and realise that sentinels are clearly more difficult to fight. It’s not rocket science.

Adding them to AQ is the direction they chose to go. Having it that much more difficult wasn't what they wanted, which is why they made adjustments. Until they went live, it wasn't possible to gauge how much they had to make those adjustments. Whether people knew they would be harder or not is irrelevant. Adding them is the decision they made.

It is relevant that the players knew it would be harder since it shows how disconnected they and you are from the real game, since apparently you and the mods spend your whole time in the forums instead of the game so wouldn't know the difference. You have dozens if not hundreds of comments by top tier players and alliances who have fought these same encounters countless times telling you before you released the changes there would be a major difference. Your company reps adamantly argue there is no difference with absolutely 0 evidence to support this. Shortly after it's released the data and evidence immediately indicates all the high level players were right and the mods and low level players were wrong. Again it does not mean any of the top teams are having trouble clearing, it means there was an objective difference in items used and deaths which Kabam has clearly confirmed. When you're used to clearing for free for months even a small number of items and extra deaths is a very significant indication that something has changed especially if they refuse to adjust rewards to match it. Obviously Kabam also agrees with this or the changes wouldn't be taking place.

And the few guys left still arguing that there is no difference between symbioids and Sentinels, why in the world would a huge for profit company retract all their statements looking like ignorant fools after weeks of arguing with the player base if all the evidence didn't point toward the same conclusion the rest of us already made. Now we have the company itself confirm there was a major difficulty difference, the vast majority of the player base agreeing to this, and a few random people claiming the opposite. Which side has more evidence?

We've jumped up over 100 rank keeping the same score right at 125M, meaning over 100 teams did not finish their maps. And these are not casual teams who randomly clear and not clear. At this bracket the scores and clearing percentage are nearly fixed with tiny changes each time another member adds another 5/65 or R2 6 star for a little prestige bump. ~120 teams in this bracket dropping off when they have never not cleared a map in months indicates something unless you're in make-believe land. Even the company itself making huge profits over the extra items these teams lost has agreed to the same conclusion.''

The fact that 1 or 2 guys feels there was no difference is incredibily insignificant compared to the 120 teams X 30 members each at a relatively high rank who could not clear maps like they've been doing for several months. Maybe to some weird awkward guys symbioids were actually harder, but these decisions are based on how the 99% of the player base feels as supported by their evidence, not the few who somehow felt symbioids were as hard or harder.

LBS

Jaded wrote: »

Mcord117 wrote: »

Jaded wrote: »

BDLH wrote: »

BDLH wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

We aren't ever going to be able to agree regardless on this. I will always personally feel that they weren't harder, just different. You are going to be opposite. They changed them and the community got what they wanted. It is what it is and nothing i'll ever be able to say will change yours or anyone of the same opinion differently.
Plus your last post was super long and no one needs to read that much on a mobile gaming forum lol

All the posters who claim there is no difficulty difference between the old and new AQ despite Kabam finally acknowledging this after weeks of the mods arguing that they were the same difficulty making them basically look like chumps. Why would the company retract all these statements from multiple mods from a thousand thread post arguing back and forth with the players if their conclusion wasn't the same as that of the overwhelming majority of the player base? My first instinct is to just assume all the ppl claiming there is no difficulty change are like the mods making these statements - they either barely play the game and spend more time makng posts, or play at a very low level so it is not so obvious to them. At a low enough map and prestige level probably nothing can feel that hard. All the guys arguing that there is no difficulty change despite the company itself acknowledging all their collected data indicates the opposite, why don't you post your war and AQ scores so we have some idea of what level of progression your opinion is coming from?

Most higher tier players are pushing through just fine but there is a definite difficulty difference and increased number of deaths and items used as confirmed by Kabam. We aren't complaining they are not beatable or not able to adjust to them, we are just stating the obvious which Kabam is finally agreeing to. So now we have the vast majority of the player base stating there is a difficulty difference and the developpers acknowledging such, then a few players claiming the opposite... Something smells fishy...

Funny how quiet it got from all the posters stating they find the Sentinels to be no different than the symbioids when asked to show what map and prestige they are fighting at. I guess doing Map 3 where their sig is already reduced to 1 and at tiny prestige levels may have something to do with it.

Actually I run in 5.5k starting prestige 5x5 and don’t have a problem with current sentinels. Day 4 I cleared lane 4 section 1 + Morningstar, section 2 lane 7, section 3 lane 1 + solo on Dormmamu.

Day 4 team consisted of 5* r5 blade + 4* r4 gr + 6* LC. But day 5 will be 5* r4 star lord + 6* Luke cage + 6* red hulk. And I will still complete my paths at 8.9k prestige day without health pots or revives. That is if I didn’t just jinx myself haha.

But all that said, I would say the changes were needed as not everyone will have my roster or abilities. Which is fine. Just thought I’d chime in.

Most people would struggle if using those champs. Slow down on patting yourself on the back

Sure whatever you say. Don’t hate the player that is better then you because they say they are better then you. Plenty of people will be better then the next. There is always someone better. But it’s beyond helpful to state that everyone is having difficulty with the sentinels currently. They are very boring to fight against but not difficult. Sorry to offend you. I’ll prepare myself for the slew of hate comments back at me. But hey truth hurts don’t it...

You are not offending me... but please give me a suggestion
I have no blade, no lc, no red hulk, no medusa, no starky, no gr, no woodoo, no Hype...
I have just my 4s wolvy, my 4s lord and my 4s Ultron
I always ended map5, and most of the times also an “hello” to the boss
By now, I’m not able to survive to the second sector
What can you suggest me to do?

Jaded

LBS wrote: »

Jaded wrote: »

Mcord117 wrote: »

Jaded wrote: »

BDLH wrote: »

BDLH wrote: »

Demonzfyre wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

We aren't ever going to be able to agree regardless on this. I will always personally feel that they weren't harder, just different. You are going to be opposite. They changed them and the community got what they wanted. It is what it is and nothing i'll ever be able to say will change yours or anyone of the same opinion differently.
Plus your last post was super long and no one needs to read that much on a mobile gaming forum lol

All the posters who claim there is no difficulty difference between the old and new AQ despite Kabam finally acknowledging this after weeks of the mods arguing that they were the same difficulty making them basically look like chumps. Why would the company retract all these statements from multiple mods from a thousand thread post arguing back and forth with the players if their conclusion wasn't the same as that of the overwhelming majority of the player base? My first instinct is to just assume all the ppl claiming there is no difficulty change are like the mods making these statements - they either barely play the game and spend more time makng posts, or play at a very low level so it is not so obvious to them. At a low enough map and prestige level probably nothing can feel that hard. All the guys arguing that there is no difficulty change despite the company itself acknowledging all their collected data indicates the opposite, why don't you post your war and AQ scores so we have some idea of what level of progression your opinion is coming from?

Most higher tier players are pushing through just fine but there is a definite difficulty difference and increased number of deaths and items used as confirmed by Kabam. We aren't complaining they are not beatable or not able to adjust to them, we are just stating the obvious which Kabam is finally agreeing to. So now we have the vast majority of the player base stating there is a difficulty difference and the developpers acknowledging such, then a few players claiming the opposite... Something smells fishy...

Funny how quiet it got from all the posters stating they find the Sentinels to be no different than the symbioids when asked to show what map and prestige they are fighting at. I guess doing Map 3 where their sig is already reduced to 1 and at tiny prestige levels may have something to do with it.

Actually I run in 5.5k starting prestige 5x5 and don’t have a problem with current sentinels. Day 4 I cleared lane 4 section 1 + Morningstar, section 2 lane 7, section 3 lane 1 + solo on Dormmamu.

Day 4 team consisted of 5* r5 blade + 4* r4 gr + 6* LC. But day 5 will be 5* r4 star lord + 6* Luke cage + 6* red hulk. And I will still complete my paths at 8.9k prestige day without health pots or revives. That is if I didn’t just jinx myself haha.

But all that said, I would say the changes were needed as not everyone will have my roster or abilities. Which is fine. Just thought I’d chime in.

Most people would struggle if using those champs. Slow down on patting yourself on the back

Sure whatever you say. Don’t hate the player that is better then you because they say they are better then you. Plenty of people will be better then the next. There is always someone better. But it’s beyond helpful to state that everyone is having difficulty with the sentinels currently. They are very boring to fight against but not difficult. Sorry to offend you. I’ll prepare myself for the slew of hate comments back at me. But hey truth hurts don’t it...

You are not offending me... but please give me a suggestion
I have no blade, no lc, no red hulk, no medusa, no starky, no gr, no woodoo, no Hype...
I have just my 4s wolvy, my 4s lord and my 4s Ultron
I always ended map5, and most of the times also an “hello” to the boss
By now, I’m not able to survive to the second sector
What can you suggest me to do?

My message wasn’t directed at you my friend. It’s unfortunate kabam maybe changes that have changed your game drastically.

Speeds80

2 leaders who’ve played for 2 years in my alliance quit today, on top of the 6 retirees last week, as has been said many times this was just the straw that broke the camels back, control and lag issues in war/ extra pressure with war seasons was a major factor too. Alliance rebuilds are draining, still up in the air whether we revert to 5x5 again, many leaders are saying the map 3s have been a nice break, there is no doubt kabam are always keeping a careful watch on revenue and how changes affect it, as with all spending optional games it’s a science balancing f2p with having a fair chance to play at a reasonable level if they put enough time in. I hope this exercise does make an impact that visible in their data, so the company learns to stop making such clumsy changes, and invests a bit more time into improving their customer listening skills/goodwill for once. quality control, better communication and fixing gameplay bugs would go a long way towards this

Mmx1991

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

It's probably wise not to fully depend on any Debuff.

Ya you're right.

No relying on debuffs, take them out. Intercepts all day long.

Not wise to rely on our buffs either so take them out too. Not regens no furies no problem.

Revives should cost a mortgage payment too. Better yet if we lose we pledge our soul to Kabam for eternity.

Anything else, sunshine?

GroundedWisdom

Mmx1991 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

It's probably wise not to fully depend on any Debuff.

Ya you're right.

No relying on debuffs, take them out. Intercepts all day long.

Not wise to rely on our buffs either so take them out too. Not regens no furies no problem.

Revives should cost a mortgage payment too. Better yet if we lose we pledge our soul to Kabam for eternity.

Anything else, sunshine?

When you have content like AQ that changes every Season, it's not wise to Rank specifically for that and expect one Debuff to carry you through. There are over 100 Champs in the game with a range of Abilities, and it's not reasonable to rely on Bleed all the way through every Season of AQ. Things will change from time to time, and you'll have to use other Champs. There's no such thing as a team that will beat all content indefinitely.

mostlyharmlessn

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

They listened to feedback. That doesn't mean they could stop everything. They had to gather data to make adjustments. Once things are set in place, you wouldn't really find a total rollback. History shows this. They take the feedback as the data as apply it to the template implemented.

Had they listened they would never have pushed the server side update for AQ.

Had it been a client side update that would be a different story, there's a lot more moving parts and dealing with the play/app stores.

It makes me cring that there's no roll back plan for any software updates or a way to block a push to production. That's just dangerous development practices, but I digress.

There's a difference between taking in feedback and obeying orders. They haven't removed Sentinels. They're adjusting them. Their intentions weren't to have it as difficult. There was no way for us to gauge that until it went live. They're making adjustments to be closer to what they wanted.

You are right there is a difference.

Taking feedback they would have done a testing phase like LC/RH proposed update, and not a push to production without user acceptance testing.

There's absolutely no need to go live with a change like this without player based testing. They proved post 12.0 they have the capability to do UAT. If they are doing UAT and still released these changes then their player sample is severely flawed.

This was a situation is the same as the update to AW where the player based looked at the proposed changes, pointed out flaws in the plan which were ignored. The result was an absurd change that had alliances placing no to few defenders and winning.

The Beta Program is not working right now, which was explained at the beginning of the month. You can't reasonably expect them to not make any changes without consulting us first. It's their game. I don't consider Players trying to find a loophole to War as a flaw. Part of that whole bit was in protest to the changes. That loophole didn't last long. Regardless of how we feel entitled, it's their choice what they want to do.

There's a standard development process which includes User Acceptance Testing. It's not about permission it's about ensuring the changes hit their mark and and doesn't have unexpected consequences. A testing type which Kabam has claimed to perform in the past. Their history has shown that their acceptance testing hadn't been working. If it had we would not have had so many debacles with their updates. That's where the beta test platform comes in.

It is reasonable to expect if a company can not properly perform testing on an update then the code should not be pushed to production.

With the AW points system, players telling a company there's a flaw, exactly what the flaw is and yet the update gets pushed out is not players looking for a loophole, that's just bad development practices.

Expecting a company to follow basic best practices including the testing they claim they do isn't being entitled, it's reasonable expectation of product that many people are paying for.

Mmx1991

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

That's just conspiracy.

You and that word again. I don't think you know what it means.

Speeds80

And LBS is exactly who I’ve been trying to talk about, we know gw isn’t as affected as he runs map3, very casually. it’s the mid level up and coming players who used to be able to handle map 5, to be honest with game progression map 5 had become doable with 1/2 right champs at a medium level and good gameplay, there was always a big time commitment and that was a good way to keep people hooked on map 5 without having to make it too hard, it also meant higher level players could keep doing story and war and leave their b team in aq on map 5, even with the nerfed sentinels I’m not sure it’s going to be doable for people like him, my r4 5* Ultron Barely made it through the top left path of map 3 on day 5 after running A very relaxed 55333 last week, 13k powergaining and stun shrugging sentinels aren’t fun to fight 4 in a row. I can’t imagine that with a 4/40. even with the nerf I don’t think those champs will clear map 5 anymore, give the sub 300k range players a couple rdts or stop the sentinels building charges if we have to double evade which of course is inevitable,

GroundedWisdom

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

They listened to feedback. That doesn't mean they could stop everything. They had to gather data to make adjustments. Once things are set in place, you wouldn't really find a total rollback. History shows this. They take the feedback as the data as apply it to the template implemented.

Had they listened they would never have pushed the server side update for AQ.

Had it been a client side update that would be a different story, there's a lot more moving parts and dealing with the play/app stores.

It makes me cring that there's no roll back plan for any software updates or a way to block a push to production. That's just dangerous development practices, but I digress.

There's a difference between taking in feedback and obeying orders. They haven't removed Sentinels. They're adjusting them. Their intentions weren't to have it as difficult. There was no way for us to gauge that until it went live. They're making adjustments to be closer to what they wanted.

You are right there is a difference.

Taking feedback they would have done a testing phase like LC/RH proposed update, and not a push to production without user acceptance testing.

There's absolutely no need to go live with a change like this without player based testing. They proved post 12.0 they have the capability to do UAT. If they are doing UAT and still released these changes then their player sample is severely flawed.

This was a situation is the same as the update to AW where the player based looked at the proposed changes, pointed out flaws in the plan which were ignored. The result was an absurd change that had alliances placing no to few defenders and winning.

The Beta Program is not working right now, which was explained at the beginning of the month. You can't reasonably expect them to not make any changes without consulting us first. It's their game. I don't consider Players trying to find a loophole to War as a flaw. Part of that whole bit was in protest to the changes. That loophole didn't last long. Regardless of how we feel entitled, it's their choice what they want to do.

There's a standard development process which includes User Acceptance Testing. It's not about permission it's about ensuring the changes hit their mark and and doesn't have unexpected consequences. A testing type which Kabam has claimed to perform in the past. Their history has shown that their acceptance testing hadn't been working. If it had we would not have had so many debacles with their updates. That's where the beta test platform comes in.

It is reasonable to expect if a company can not properly perform testing on an update then the code should not be pushed to production.

With the AW points system, players telling a company there's a flaw, exactly what the flaw is and yet the update gets pushed out is not players looking for a loophole, that's just bad development practices.

Expecting a company to follow basic best practices including the testing they claim they do isn't being entitled, it's reasonable expectation of product that many people are paying for.

They test. They don't have a fully running Beta Program that tests all content yet. As for what's involved with their processes, I do not know. Testing is a reasonable expectation, sure. It's not reasonable to expect them to forego any change people don't like.

Mmx1991

Speeds80 wrote: »

There is still a massive thing we have overlooked, swiping back should not build charges, I’m having to bait l1s until I build up dozens of charges, and to evade the l1s I need to use 2-3 swipes back, it’s still bs, they are an unfair mechanic

They're passive and getting them to bait is hard. Might take 7 total swipe backs to get them to evade, building up more charges. It's a cash grab.

teekq

Yap.! It’s annoying when you try to bait sp1 specially the mystic senti and you get cornered while you have fury on next thing you know they have sp2 and you have no where to go.

GroundedWisdom

Sorry, I don't see the constructive value in complaining endlessly about the company when I choose to play the game. Ruins my own experience.

Speeds80

If more people played at your relaxed level they probably would have a less emotional viewpoint of the game and probably enjoy it more, but some of these players have thousands of dollars invested in this game so they can be emotional, no need to wind them up questioning everytime they question kabams motives, nobody will ever win that argument, I’d rather see this topic stay on track unlike the dozens of threads I’ve seen you almost single handedly close down by questioning those who post from an emotional viewpoint. Seriously kabam I hope this did hurt your bottom line like I suspect it did, and hope you learn a lesson that customers are worth keeping happy to a certain extent, yes the game needs changes to keep us interested, but I think all these balance of alliance focus swings have upset alliances like mine who still haven’t decided what our aq maps will be and whether we will be war or aq focused, this is very unstabilisimg while we are trying to recruit replacements, hopefully the sentinels are much more manageable for the mid tier player with the changes, only next week will tell

Titan_A97

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

BitterSteel wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Really. Based on what? Fighting them in EQ with Nodes on them? Based on their Immunity? They're going to be "harder" is not a quantitative analysis to adjust anything on. There's usually a reaction to every change. "Oh, well since the reaction is that it will be harder, we've decided not to go through with it.". Doesn't exactly fly. They need something to go on to make adjustments.

@GroundedWisdom I fought sentinels (minions) in uncollected, I have fought symbioids in quests as well. I can then comparatively look at both of them and realise that sentinels are clearly more difficult to fight. It’s not rocket science.

Adding them to AQ is the direction they chose to go. Having it that much more difficult wasn't what they wanted, which is why they made adjustments. Until they went live, it wasn't possible to gauge how much they had to make those adjustments. Whether people knew they would be harder or not is irrelevant. Adding them is the decision they made.

First of all, I'd like to acknowledge your iron will and resolve. Your continued persistence to justify and follow up on your opinion despite receiving so much resistance is simply and truly something to be marvelled at; it's a trait that not many people have - especially under pressure.

That being said, I respect your opinion as it is valid and equal as any other, however, I have to disagree with that the added difficulty "wasn't what they wanted". I'm not saying or implying that Kabam intended to make it difficult more for us or to "milk the playerbase" (as some might put it). Rather it's the certainty and absoluteness of your opinion that I have to disagree with. Unless if you have some form of insider knowledge that the average player doesn't know about and/or have concrete evidence to back up this claim, you, I, or anyone else can't possibly know exactly "what they wanted" with absolute 100% certainty. However, if you do have insider knowledge or any definitive evidence to ensure your claim, then I would like to sincerely apologise to you for my accusations as clearly I'm the wrong party here.

My personal opinion (not fact), whether it matters or not, is that Kabam did know that there was some added difficulty by introducing Sentinels to AQ but after some considerable backlash and opposition, 'buckled under the pressure' and compromised with us players to reach a mutual agreement. Do I have any concrete evidence to back this claim? I will openly say that I don't and if you want to dismiss my opinion as invalid, biased or just straight up trash, it is more than fair and justifiable to do so. However, we are on the same boat here, I don't have any evidence to back my claim and you don't too so until someone or Kabam themselves reveal their truest intentions of adding Sentinels to AQ, my opinion, your opinion and frankly everyone's opinion is mere speculation - nothing can be said with absolute certainty.

GroundedWisdom

Titan_A97 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

BitterSteel wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Really. Based on what? Fighting them in EQ with Nodes on them? Based on their Immunity? They're going to be "harder" is not a quantitative analysis to adjust anything on. There's usually a reaction to every change. "Oh, well since the reaction is that it will be harder, we've decided not to go through with it.". Doesn't exactly fly. They need something to go on to make adjustments.

@GroundedWisdom I fought sentinels (minions) in uncollected, I have fought symbioids in quests as well. I can then comparatively look at both of them and realise that sentinels are clearly more difficult to fight. It’s not rocket science.

Adding them to AQ is the direction they chose to go. Having it that much more difficult wasn't what they wanted, which is why they made adjustments. Until they went live, it wasn't possible to gauge how much they had to make those adjustments. Whether people knew they would be harder or not is irrelevant. Adding them is the decision they made.

First of all, I'd like to acknowledge your iron will and resolve. Your continued persistence to justify and follow up on your opinion despite receiving so much resistance is simply and truly something to be marvelled at; it's a trait that not many people have - especially under pressure.

That being said, I respect your opinion as it is valid and equal as any other, however, I have to disagree with that the added difficulty "wasn't what they wanted". I'm not saying or implying that Kabam intended to make it difficult more for us or to "milk the playerbase" (as some might put it). Rather it's the certainty and absoluteness of your opinion that I have to disagree with. Unless if you have some form of insider knowledge that the average player doesn't know about and/or have concrete evidence to back up this claim, you, I, or anyone else can't possibly know exactly "what they wanted" with absolute 100% certainty. However, if you do have insider knowledge or any definitive evidence to ensure your claim, then I would like to sincerely apologise to you for my accusations as clearly I'm the wrong party here.

My personal opinion (not fact), whether it matters or not, is that Kabam did know that there was some added difficulty by introducing Sentinels to AQ but after some considerable backlash and opposition, 'buckled under the pressure' and compromised with us players to reach a mutual agreement. Do I have any concrete evidence to back this claim? I will openly say that I don't and if you want to dismiss my opinion as invalid, biased or just straight up trash, it is more than fair and justifiable to do so. However, we are on the same boat here, I don't have any evidence to back my claim and you don't too so until someone or Kabam themselves reveal their truest intentions of adding Sentinels to AQ, my opinion, your opinion and frankly everyone's opinion is mere speculation - nothing can be said with absolute certainty.

I have their comments and actions to base it on. Their official statements are as close to fact as any of us will come on the Forum, save for the actual timeline of events and actions, and those both support their comments. I see no reason to question the validity of whether they intedned to make it as difficult as it was because that is contrary to the statements and evidence. Furthermore, there are some who just breed mistrust because they are skeptical of anything they do, and I will not feed that. There is enough conspiracy, suspicion, and overall negativity on here, that it does not need my contribution. I'm sorry, but that argument comes up constantly, and it's a Catch-22. None of us will know anything beyond a shadow of a doubt in terms of their statements. We can however, examine the evidence with an open mind, rather than a jaded view. I choose to look for the validity, not to find errors in their statements. Which is why I'm labeled a contrarian. I am not among those who do not trust them. If I were, I would not spend my time playing the game or frequenting the Forum. If I don't agree with something to the point of absolute suspicion, I don't invest my time and energy into it.

mostlyharmlessn

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

mostlyharmlessn wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

They listened to feedback. That doesn't mean they could stop everything. They had to gather data to make adjustments. Once things are set in place, you wouldn't really find a total rollback. History shows this. They take the feedback as the data as apply it to the template implemented.

Had they listened they would never have pushed the server side update for AQ.

Had it been a client side update that would be a different story, there's a lot more moving parts and dealing with the play/app stores.

It makes me cring that there's no roll back plan for any software updates or a way to block a push to production. That's just dangerous development practices, but I digress.

There's a difference between taking in feedback and obeying orders. They haven't removed Sentinels. They're adjusting them. Their intentions weren't to have it as difficult. There was no way for us to gauge that until it went live. They're making adjustments to be closer to what they wanted.

You are right there is a difference.

Taking feedback they would have done a testing phase like LC/RH proposed update, and not a push to production without user acceptance testing.

There's absolutely no need to go live with a change like this without player based testing. They proved post 12.0 they have the capability to do UAT. If they are doing UAT and still released these changes then their player sample is severely flawed.

This was a situation is the same as the update to AW where the player based looked at the proposed changes, pointed out flaws in the plan which were ignored. The result was an absurd change that had alliances placing no to few defenders and winning.

The Beta Program is not working right now, which was explained at the beginning of the month. You can't reasonably expect them to not make any changes without consulting us first. It's their game. I don't consider Players trying to find a loophole to War as a flaw. Part of that whole bit was in protest to the changes. That loophole didn't last long. Regardless of how we feel entitled, it's their choice what they want to do.

There's a standard development process which includes User Acceptance Testing. It's not about permission it's about ensuring the changes hit their mark and and doesn't have unexpected consequences. A testing type which Kabam has claimed to perform in the past. Their history has shown that their acceptance testing hadn't been working. If it had we would not have had so many debacles with their updates. That's where the beta test platform comes in.

It is reasonable to expect if a company can not properly perform testing on an update then the code should not be pushed to production.

With the AW points system, players telling a company there's a flaw, exactly what the flaw is and yet the update gets pushed out is not players looking for a loophole, that's just bad development practices.

Expecting a company to follow basic best practices including the testing they claim they do isn't being entitled, it's reasonable expectation of product that many people are paying for.

They test. They don't have a fully running Beta Program that tests all content yet. As for what's involved with their processes, I do not know. Testing is a reasonable expectation, sure. It's not reasonable to expect them to forego any change people don't like.

A standard practice for any application development is:
Development (Make our changes here).
QA (make sure we didn't break anything obvious, quality assurance)
UAT (User Acceptance Testing make sure we didn't introduce unexpected side effects, general user impact testing).
Beta Testing (Larger pool of testing by users).
Production (Go live to everyone).

QA is where they should have caught bugs like extra nodes on maps. Visual glitches when screens change, math still works out for champs ect,.

UAT or Beta would have pointed out they missed their mark. Since, like you said, Beta was not working, then UAT needs to be more complete. Especially when touching any changes that is core to the game.

When people start yelling that this is going to do XYZ and that is bad... UAT testing needs to check that out, and if it turns out to be true which it often is, hold deployment.

This is no longer a fledgling game, it should be delivering based on better practices by now. It is a mature application offering and we should be demanding better. There is not way they are following these practices and still having the number of problems getting through. They shouldn't still be missing the mark so often, and they certainly should not still be releasing maps with extra lines anymore.

IF they are testing like they claim, then there's no excuse for many of these things which regularly occur.

This is why I can't buy that increasing the difficulty was not intended. a half decent UAT would have pointed it out right away.

BigDude

Everyone in here completely sells Kabam short on their ability to analyze trends and make changes that positively benefit their bottom line. They wanted to make it harder, because that makes them more money. It is understandable, but like any business they have to do enough to get more revenue but not too much to alienate the customer base. They went too far, but will there be compensation for the excessive item use? That is the question. Otherwise they win on both fronts.

unknown

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Galandriel79

Mcord117 wrote: »

I don’t see compensation coming. Halls of healing was compensation ahead of time which proves they knew the difficulty jump was there

This is why I believe they did know as well - working as intended in my opinion. Too many good players are leaving because of the ridiculousness of it as well which is ultimately going to hurt their bottom line which is why the "update" but I think that too much **** has gone on for too long and many paying players are going to look elsewhere. Congrats Kabam for killing a really good game. Already changed my app rating on it in apple store.