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

Chicano509

KevinFF1961 wrote: »

This is just a shameless cash grab. This is significantly harder without an increase in rewards. Don't even try to rationalize this, Mike, no one is going to believe this was meant for any reason other than to increase the difficulty and gouge more cash from us.

From what I understand of main the content harder is understandable, but must equal the rewards. Example @Kabam Miike ... what would happen if you were given a harder job and job title..but not the rewards. I also understand that you @Kabam Miike do not control the game, but please communicate with your colleagues and the errors.

A simple option for resolution would be to offer a rank down tickets for each class and apologize. I think the entire MCOC community would appreciate a fair communication with respect.

Chicano509

Chicano509

Nickerdoodle93 wrote: »

Well of course they'll change up the difficulty without updating the rewards; how else can they hope to milk players for more money.

This should've been saved for an entirely new season of AQ when you were ready to have updated rewards. If it's such a chore to balance that, don't put the more annoying part of the deal out first and hope the community would roll over and show their bellies.

I totally agree .. big thumbs up !!!

Chicano509

DNA3000

Nickerdoodle93 wrote: »

Well of course they'll change up the difficulty without updating the rewards; how else can they hope to milk players for more money.

Although this was posted a while ago it was recently quoted (directly above) and it seemed odd to me back then in a way I couldn't put my finger on, but can now.

Making AQ more difficult without increasing AQ rewards is not an especially good way to make more money off of the players. When you make AQ more difficult you increase the probability of the players needing to spend resources (and ultimately money in some cases) to complete AQ regardless of the rewards. What the rewards can do is create an incentive to actually spend those resources. The higher the rewards, the more incentive there is - we saw that with alliance war season one.

In the expert tier most alliances were completing most maps 100% I believe. So no matter how you change the rewards, you can't force the alliances to try to do much more than they were already doing. The only way you can force alliances to try to do more is to first make AQ more difficult so 100% completion is less likely for the same effort. But to actually encourage players to make the additional effort, recent history says you should also increase the rewards.

Increasing the difficulty and the rewards could make them more money because you are creating an opportunity for spending and creating an incentive to do so. Increasing the difficulty without increasing the rewards would be a much less effective way to make them more money, because some fraction of players would not see the point in spending without the extra incentive. Increasing the difficulty without increasing the rewards and then decreasing the difficulty without altering rewards is clearly not an attempt to make more anything.

CoatHang3r

Im curious if the reduction of sentineloids SA to level 1 with their attack and HP also being reduced will have a significant enough impact on scoring to cause allies to fall short of the final milestone they used to be capable of reaching. Tmk scoring is based on the PI of champions contained within the map and SA, Ap and HP all impact the PI. Gunna be a little silly and cause a new round of complaints if that is how it actually works out and people lose out on glory and crystals they used to be able to obtain.

Irohr

CoatHang3r wrote: »

Im curious if the reduction of sentineloids SA to level 1 with their attack and HP also being reduced will have a significant enough impact on scoring to cause allies to fall short of the final milestone they used to be capable of reaching. Tmk scoring is based on the PI of champions contained within the map and SA, Ap and HP all impact the PI. Gunna be a little silly and cause a new round of complaints if that is how it actually works out and people lose out on glory and crystals they used to be able to obtain.

Good question. But in all honesty, I know of a good number alliances that would normally score 100 mil get reduced to 90 mil when the sentinels were introduced. I don't think it'll be that much of a difference though.

Kpatrix

CoatHang3r wrote: »

Im curious if the reduction of sentineloids SA to level 1 with their attack and HP also being reduced will have a significant enough impact on scoring to cause allies to fall short of the final milestone they used to be capable of reaching. Tmk scoring is based on the PI of champions contained within the map and SA, Ap and HP all impact the PI. Gunna be a little silly and cause a new round of complaints if that is how it actually works out and people lose out on glory and crystals they used to be able to obtain.

I was under the impression that sentinels were already less points than symbis were anyway. Symbis were52-53k max while I never saw a sentinel over 51k and change.

AhnafTheGiraffe

This just might be me but did anyone not get their season one rewards because I didn't

Lese

I'm not buying the idea that the sentinel got nerfed. They hit harder than day 1 previous AQ. I'm sure we'll hear more complains later.

GroundedWisdom

They've been changed. Definitely not the same on my end.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Nihung

Jaded wrote: »

Really doesn’t matter what you say because you have clearly skipped over the part that I don’t use the trinity on war attack days. Also where I reside is irrelevant to the point. Still facing 80k health sentinels on day 5 with out blade. And I will still make it through easily enough.

The point of the matter is it’s easy for anyone to come here and say how easy it or how difficult it is. While we all argue among ourselves about the difficulty of alliance quests (which is pointless) we shouldn’t be letting kabam make these changes without an increase in prizes. Since they are behind on all rewards in the game except for alliance wars now they made it even worse.

What I am capable of doing isn’t a reflection of what happens to everyone across all tiers of game play. I am well aware of the alliance issues. I am not advocating to keep sentinels the same or make them harder. But I’m also not advocating for them to be “nerfed”. I am advocating that the changes should never have happened without every aspect of alliance quest changing including map layouts and prizes.

@Jaded

Must admit, despite the nerfing of Sentinels, I'm still not happy. Sentinel has to be the worst designed character ever implemented in MCOC.

MCOC have created some absolutely beautifully animated characters in the past. For me I love the way Medusa and Archangel play, absolute MCOC triumphs. Even Spidergwen for her infamy has some nice animations, but Sentinel's are like latrine's of MCOC.

Also, still doesn't address also the issue that armour break champs are basically what you need in AQ. That is wrong.

I do agree however, rewards or some sort of compensation needs to be put in place.

Draenath

Stop whinging, they seem to be fine now... if not a little too easy

Vincew80

We’re running map 6 for the 1st time today. Yes, it’s more difficult & it’s still much more enjoyable than facing sentinel after sentinel. Maybe one day kabam will understand it’s a game & it’s supposed to be fun regardless of the difficulty each ally can handle. Sentinels aren’t fun in the least bit, no matter what nerf they place on them. But, what do we know.. we just play their game. On a side note I was able to solo both voids with no potions as of yet & can’t with Morningstar due to the limited champs available on her with power gain. Another job well done kabam.

Speeds80

In fighting with Ultron against a skill sentinel, if I 3 hit combo him and swipe back, he can l1 and hit me before I can block from my swipe, just did it multiple times, so I should double swipe, but that builds charges then I need to double swipe to avoid the l1 after I have double swiped, building more charges. They have unfair dynamics, they’re still a bad move, day in day out 6-10 times a day, they need to lose the ability to build charges from swiping back

Pr0t0t7p3

Dear Kabam. While your intention was to simply replace symboids with sentinels making game play the same/equal you seriously missed the mark which you sort of admitted. So you tweaked the sentinels minimally to compensate for this new AQ. After day 1 of this new AQ I still have to say you have once again missed the mark. The sentinels are in no way on a level with symboids no matter what you do. They are still completely messing AQ up making it absolutely NOT enjoyable and a rather loathsome part of the game. When seasoned vets are still losing champs and forced to use items on day 1 SOMETHING IS BROKEN!!!!! It's time to go back to the drawing board. Stop adding content and FIX WHAT IS ALREADY BROKEN. This game is seriously becoming hated and driving long time players to retire. Pardon my words but you really need to get your **** together. FIX the sentinels or get rid of them from AQ.

Primmer79

Good job with the fix. Day 1 seems about on par difficulty wise, minus them being immune.

Primmer79

BitterSteel wrote: »

Agreed, primmer. So far (touch wood) it’s been a similar difficulty. I’ve just changed my team to deal with them, Nebula shuts down the sentinels with her charges, quake destroys mystic ones and x23 carries me through the rest.

X23 has carried me. Tried out my shiny new 6* KG for the hell of it, im not impressed. Ultron still works for me, just longer fights.

Badrose

honestly I didn't see any significant change. Class advantage good, no class adv still bad.

Kenshio

make them smaller or bigger and wider , they are really annoying right now ...

mostlyharmlessn

So now the first day with the new Sentinels....

My Opinion, too many of them. It's all sentinels all the time it seems. The syms at least were different.

AQ is just boring.

Again I think either half the number of Sentinels on the maps, or make them mini bosses.

It is tedious now to say the least.

Speeds80

Seriously though, you took the easiest defenders in the game (short range specials like bw, iron fist, easily avoidable kang and sw. and replaced them with possibly the hardest, I know everyone is saying they are manageable, I can’t disagree, but they will never be anywhere as easy as aq used to be.

Runawaytrainn

They claim the sentinels were a replacement that was supposed to keep AQ at the same level just different.. way off the mark ... tbh they still seem way more powerful than any one of the symbs were. Oh well I know the cash grab is not gonna work on me, I'm spending less now not more

unknown

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Dj_mph

So i know that the sentinels got nerfed, but now in day two of AQ i noticed the big thing for me is that it doesn’t matter if they are hard or easy, it’s just boring!
The great fun before was watching the symbiods bleed and seem to take real damage.
Also it’s not a robot thing as fighting Ultron or Vision is Fun. Maybe if you added something like after so much damage an arm falls off or they start to smoke or something.
I don’t know maybe it’s me but since may of 2015 I’ve never been so board with AQ until now. It’s stale and the sentinels are the reason. Please do something to fix this.

Vincew80

Unfortunately they don’t seem to care if aq is enjoyable. If they did sentinels wouldn’t have been introduced to aq in any form, nerfed or not. I thoroughly enjoyed playing map 6 or the 1st time yesterday instead of the boring, mundane, garbage that are sentinels. I’ve played a few mobile games over the past few years & this one takes the cake as far as being out of touch with what players want & enjoy.

mostlyharmlessn

AQ has jumped the shark it seems... It is in need of a refresh...but at least adpatoids and syms you fought one that was similar to another champ.

Sentinels it is just the same thing over and over with just minor ability changes... I used to love AQ... now it just makes me sad.

Kpatrix

Why are points down so drastically for sentinels ? They are 7-9k less than the symbis were on day 3 for us at 7.5k+ prestige we are only getting 44k and change vs. 52k for normal champs. For people who were just hitting certain milestones,this will prevent that from happening.

Kpatrix

Can we get a response on this ? The decrease in points from symbis to the first batch of sentinels to the current batch is huge, almost 9k per champ on day 3. We are all going to see much lower scores this week. Was this intentional or a result of the "fix" ? Day 2 and 3 should have different scores.

DNA3000

Kpatrix wrote: »

Why are points down so drastically for sentinels ? They are 7-9k less than the symbis were on day 3 for us at 7.5k+ prestige we are only getting 44k and change vs. 52k for normal champs. For people who were just hitting certain milestones,this will prevent that from happening.

Essentially, by adding a boat load of powers and abilities that make Sentinels harder, and then subtracting attack and health to reduce them back to reasonable difficulty levels, Kabam created a minion that is stronger but worth fewer points. Apparently the game does not weight things like triple power bars or signature abilities in its computation of the points a node is worth, but it does significantly weight attack and health.

The point drop you mention above is consistent with the Sentinels being worth about 85% of what they used to be worth, which is actually consistent with the drop in attack that the devs claimed they would reduce the Sentinels by. It might not be quite that straight forward, but I would bet that this is ultimately the base cause of the drop.

Kpatrix

Looks like day 5 will have about a 20k point difference between the sentinel on path 2 and the voodoo after him. If points are maxing out on day 2 for sentinels as it appears the case is now, we are looking at several million points between 3 battlegroups over 5 days. It may not be a big thing for most of us, but to take away a milestone for some groups that was reachable with symbis but out of reach with sentinels is an undeniable nerf in rewards.

It wont affect me alliance, but I'm sure there will be lots of complaints when people realize that not only were rewards not increased with the change, they were actually decreased by losing a crystal and glory.