If season 7 needed to end by a specific date, you could have simply made the season itself shorter and kept the off-season 2 weeks...
I remember the special event quest that introduced Loki, it was a much shorter duration than our regular monthlies. Just adapt the season rewards in consequence.
And it's not a player preference so much as a player need for some downtime. And I know not everyone feels like a break is required, but there are a lot of players who feel it is.
A shorter AW seasons seemed nice. A short break seems helpful to keep the fun going, but it creates a tough situation. The shorter AW seasons have made it a viscous cycle of pulling in selfish scrubs.
For example, season ends, and our rank doesn't go up. Oh no, now a player wants to leave for greener pastures. Rewards for AW seem smaller and rank is more vital than ever (nevermind that it's half as long as before and rewards aren't any different than before), so it makes sense on the surface. Heck, AQ is pretty stagnant, so AW is everything.
Except this player isn't giving his alliance much notice. It was 2 weeks, now it's only 1 week break! That means we need to recruit more heavily and perhaps pull in scrubs. Those scrubby players just want rewards, they may not even be qualified to play in that AW tier. But they got lucky on a pull, or used mooched rank up mats to look good. A few weeks later, we realize that player is a scrub: they don't perform so we gotta kick them; or they leave at the end of season, because their failures couldn't be overcome by us good players often enough.
So now our alliance gets stuck in lower ranks. The game doesn't offer great recruiting tools. It's hard to differentiate players who are good from the scrubs. So it's a blind battle against every other alliance for players wanting to jump ship all at once. And now it happens in a smaller window thanks to this (now shorter) break.
My team used to be G1 regularly, and even hit P3 one time. We are great friends who played from the start of the game. But the cycle of churn is getting harder to battle, so we have fallen to G2 for 2 seasons now. And I'm sure the chester deranking was a part of it.
As the game gets more tiring for some, old friends get retire or join higher teams, and we have harder times finding new friends. I've got old friends who left waiting for us to get a better rank to re-join us. No one likes losing - I can't blame them. The patience for running an alliance and for recruiting is heavy. But as alliances merge, steal recruits, blast ads, it's to avoid imploding and losing friends.
Wow, lots of comments and opinions here. Kabam I hope you are listening to your players. Let me tell my story.
We have been a plat 1/2 alliance for most of 2018. We are spenders, maybe not the biggest whales but enough to place 142 in gifting event so we are certainly paying some bills at headquarters for Kabam. What we experienced after the 1 week offseason between 5 and 6, ruined our alliance. We had around 14 members leave to either retire or find a new home after placing just below master in season 5. Many of us were feeling burnt out but it was nothing compared to the issues of having only 1 week to replace those members. There was not even time to properly recruit and vet new members. Our season started a mess. No time for crews to learn how to mesh, no time to find the bad apples. After a terrible season 6 filled with replacing members left and right to fix the issues, we made the decision to disband our alliance moving forward.
These are end game players spending real money on the game, Kabam. Your choice in offseason shortage will cause you to lose revenues down the road. Please consider these implications.
Also, 👋 hey @CoatHang3r nice to see you picking fights in forums 😂.
A longer break is need especially with the events that are coming up and you have 13 champs locked into AQ and AW and trying to do the events it takes its toll.... the struggle is real! As said before by someone we are tied to the game after all its a free game right. Right?
My suggestion to make war more enjoyable and less stressful would be simple. Make it similar to AQ. Every week include milestones for points earned that provide war crystals/other rewards and give rank rewards based on your point total. The points will be reset every week. It gives alliances the choice week to week to decide how much resources they should put into AW. Also, seasons put a psychological strain on alliances. Get rid of titles and advertised tiers. If god forbid an alliance drops down to gold 1, the alliance can't recruit anyone of value. People leave after the season is over causing chaos to replace quality members before the next season. This system would put an end to that.
For all its faults I see zero point to making AW more like AQ. We already have AQ. The whole point of AW is to provide content to the players that want more direct and stronger competition. That doesn't mean the setting of that competition is perfect or couldn't be improved, but eliminating direct competition - which includes by necessity competition pressure - as the primary design motivation for *all* aspects of AW is.
It is pointless to have a pale shadow of competition in AW. Either we accept that the whole point to AW is that competitive pressure - which does NOT mean that the current system implements that competitive pressure in the best possible way for the game - or we be honest and say that the players that want it don't get to have it, because the cost it extracts on everyone else is too high to let them have it.
That's honest game design. You are never going to please everyone, and it is silly and futile to pretend otherwise. You say you feel it is a good idea to provide that style of gameplay to the segment of the playerbase that wants it, and you expect that those who do not enjoy it as much are capable of managing their gameplay appropriately, or you say the players that want it are not a priority for you to address with suitable content.
Fact is, either you narrowcase your content targeting all of it at one narrow slice of all players, or you try to give something for everyone even if much of it isn't appealing to most of them. Personally, dungeons aren't my thing: I rarely participate in them. But that's not because I think they are intrinsically bad, they are just problematic for me personally. I would never advocate changing them to be specifically to my liking just because I don't play them much, nor do I think it is wrong for the game to include things that might not be my cup of tea. If I liked everything, that would imply to me the game was casting too narrow a net.
Whether the breaks should be longer or shorter doesn't intrinsically change the fundamental nature of AW competition. You can want that competition and still want longer breaks or even no breaks. But the solution to problems within the competition can NEVER be to eliminate that competition, while simultaneously claiming that it makes alliance war "better." Eliminating the focus on direct competition and competitive pressure doesn't make it better, it replaces it with something completely different. You might as well simply eliminate Alliance War. And if you do, have the guts to tell the players that like alliance war that they don't matter, that what they want they can't have, not even in just one segment of the game, because it makes other players sad.
I think they messed this up. like why is AQ still going on? We got a lot of ppl in limbo right now and a lot of people who are in alliances they plan on leaving because of AQ. this really sucks.
Longer break is flat better. I assume AQ is changing and AW will be secondary. The short break makes it a pain especially after the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve AW.
Every season brings retirement and guys wanting a break. They need to be replaced. One week isn’t enough time nor does it allow us to practice other lanes.
Love the fact that no one from HQ has chimed in.
I give this a day until a boycott thread shows LOL
My suggestion to make war more enjoyable and less stressful would be simple. Make it similar to AQ. Every week include milestones for points earned that provide war crystals/other rewards and give rank rewards based on your point total. The points will be reset every week. It gives alliances the choice week to week to decide how much resources they should put into AW. Also, seasons put a psychological strain on alliances. Get rid of titles and advertised tiers. If god forbid an alliance drops down to gold 1, the alliance can't recruit anyone of value. People leave after the season is over causing chaos to replace quality members before the next season. This system would put an end to that.
For all its faults I see zero point to making AW more like AQ. We already have AQ. The whole point of AW is to provide content to the players that want more direct and stronger competition. That doesn't mean the setting of that competition is perfect or couldn't be improved, but eliminating direct competition - which includes by necessity competition pressure - as the primary design motivation for *all* aspects of AW is.
It is pointless to have a pale shadow of competition in AW. Either we accept that the whole point to AW is that competitive pressure - which does NOT mean that the current system implements that competitive pressure in the best possible way for the game - or we be honest and say that the players that want it don't get to have it, because the cost it extracts on everyone else is too high to let them have it.
That's honest game design. You are never going to please everyone, and it is silly and futile to pretend otherwise. You say you feel it is a good idea to provide that style of gameplay to the segment of the playerbase that wants it, and you expect that those who do not enjoy it as much are capable of managing their gameplay appropriately, or you say the players that want it are not a priority for you to address with suitable content.
Fact is, either you narrowcase your content targeting all of it at one narrow slice of all players, or you try to give something for everyone even if much of it isn't appealing to most of them. Personally, dungeons aren't my thing: I rarely participate in them. But that's not because I think they are intrinsically bad, they are just problematic for me personally. I would never advocate changing them to be specifically to my liking just because I don't play them much, nor do I think it is wrong for the game to include things that might not be my cup of tea. If I liked everything, that would imply to me the game was casting too narrow a net.
Whether the breaks should be longer or shorter doesn't intrinsically change the fundamental nature of AW competition. You can want that competition and still want longer breaks or even no breaks. But the solution to problems within the competition can NEVER be to eliminate that competition, while simultaneously claiming that it makes alliance war "better." Eliminating the focus on direct competition and competitive pressure doesn't make it better, it replaces it with something completely different. You might as well simply eliminate Alliance War. And if you do, have the guts to tell the players that like alliance war that they don't matter, that what they want they can't have, not even in just one segment of the game, because it makes other players sad.
Making seasons shorter wouldn't take the competition out of the game. It would greatly lessen the pressure for many people while still allowing those looking to push competition to do so.
My suggestion to make war more enjoyable and less stressful would be simple. Make it similar to AQ. Every week include milestones for points earned that provide war crystals/other rewards and give rank rewards based on your point total. The points will be reset every week. It gives alliances the choice week to week to decide how much resources they should put into AW. Also, seasons put a psychological strain on alliances. Get rid of titles and advertised tiers. If god forbid an alliance drops down to gold 1, the alliance can't recruit anyone of value. People leave after the season is over causing chaos to replace quality members before the next season. This system would put an end to that.
For all its faults I see zero point to making AW more like AQ. We already have AQ. The whole point of AW is to provide content to the players that want more direct and stronger competition. That doesn't mean the setting of that competition is perfect or couldn't be improved, but eliminating direct competition - which includes by necessity competition pressure - as the primary design motivation for *all* aspects of AW is.
It is pointless to have a pale shadow of competition in AW. Either we accept that the whole point to AW is that competitive pressure - which does NOT mean that the current system implements that competitive pressure in the best possible way for the game - or we be honest and say that the players that want it don't get to have it, because the cost it extracts on everyone else is too high to let them have it.
That's honest game design. You are never going to please everyone, and it is silly and futile to pretend otherwise. You say you feel it is a good idea to provide that style of gameplay to the segment of the playerbase that wants it, and you expect that those who do not enjoy it as much are capable of managing their gameplay appropriately, or you say the players that want it are not a priority for you to address with suitable content.
Fact is, either you narrowcase your content targeting all of it at one narrow slice of all players, or you try to give something for everyone even if much of it isn't appealing to most of them. Personally, dungeons aren't my thing: I rarely participate in them. But that's not because I think they are intrinsically bad, they are just problematic for me personally. I would never advocate changing them to be specifically to my liking just because I don't play them much, nor do I think it is wrong for the game to include things that might not be my cup of tea. If I liked everything, that would imply to me the game was casting too narrow a net.
Whether the breaks should be longer or shorter doesn't intrinsically change the fundamental nature of AW competition. You can want that competition and still want longer breaks or even no breaks. But the solution to problems within the competition can NEVER be to eliminate that competition, while simultaneously claiming that it makes alliance war "better." Eliminating the focus on direct competition and competitive pressure doesn't make it better, it replaces it with something completely different. You might as well simply eliminate Alliance War. And if you do, have the guts to tell the players that like alliance war that they don't matter, that what they want they can't have, not even in just one segment of the game, because it makes other players sad.
Making seasons shorter wouldn't take the competition out of the game.
The obvious point some people seem to be missing - You don't have to compete in seasons. If the one week break isn't enough this season then go easy or don't compete at all, you don't have to push every time. The rewards are pretty good but not so great that missing out on them once is going to leave you stranded.
That's great in theory. The reality is that deciding to not run the season would cause many alliances to have even more turnover or break up entirely as many would go to alliances that were running the season.
That just sounds like you're refusing to accept your limitations. Either play or pay more to keep up, or accept where you are in the game and adjust accordingly. There are plenty of alliances out there with great people who go at all different paces.
The obvious point some people seem to be missing - You don't have to compete in seasons. If the one week break isn't enough this season then go easy or don't compete at all, you don't have to push every time. The rewards are pretty good but not so great that missing out on them once is going to leave you stranded.
That's great in theory. The reality is that deciding to not run the season would cause many alliances to have even more turnover or break up entirely as many would go to alliances that were running the season.
That just sounds like you're refusing to accept your limitations. Either play or pay more to keep up, or accept where you are in the game and adjust accordingly. There are plenty of alliances out there with great people who go at all different paces.
We are a platinum 2/3 alliance and have been every season. Not interested in pushing to plat 1 but often have a few who want to go play plat 1/master for awhile after a season so we have to replace 2 or 3 guys. One week makes that difficult. No one in my alliance is happy with the one week break but if we decided we were going to take a season off, many would leave for alliances that weren't taking a break, so it's not an option. It has zero to do with playing above our level or accepting our limitations.
The obvious point some people seem to be missing - You don't have to compete in seasons. If the one week break isn't enough this season then go easy or don't compete at all, you don't have to push every time. The rewards are pretty good but not so great that missing out on them once is going to leave you stranded.
That's great in theory. The reality is that deciding to not run the season would cause many alliances to have even more turnover or break up entirely as many would go to alliances that were running the season.
That just sounds like you're refusing to accept your limitations. Either play or pay more to keep up, or accept where you are in the game and adjust accordingly. There are plenty of alliances out there with great people who go at all different paces.
We are a platinum 2/3 alliance and have been every season. Not interested in pushing to plat 1 but often have a few who want to go play plat 1/master for awhile after a season so we have to replace 2 or 3 guys. One week makes that difficult. No one in my alliance is happy with the one week break but if we decided we were going to take a season off, many would leave for alliances that weren't taking a break, so it's not an option. It has zero to do with playing above our level or accepting our limitations.
It is an option, you and others clearly don't want to miss out on rewards which is why you'll complain rather than actually change your goals. The alliance won't stay together forever and if everybody isn't pulling in the same direction it's going to end sooner rather than later anyway
What about shortening war season to 3 weeks? Then we can have a week off and it will fit nicely inside a month to coordinate with other content releases that are also usually monthly.
What about shortening war season to 3 weeks? Then we can have a week off and it will fit nicely inside a month to coordinate with other content releases that are also usually monthly.
That would come with a proportional decrease in rewards, just as the prior shortening of the season did. I'm sure that would cause a major uproar.
Well here's the thing, now that we many have voiced their desire for a longer break, the data needs to back that up. One way would be to encourage your alliance to not partake in the first of week of AW and give yourselves a break. If the data doesn't show that players need to take a break, then Kabam has little to go on when it comes to actually giving the player base a break.
I'm not sure what Kabam should specifically look for in the data that would demonstrate that burnout was something that needed to be addressed. You can't just focus on individual alliances, taking note of when they disband or stop participating, say, because there are lots of potential reasons for that which aren't necessarily the fault of the game design. But if you look at too broad of a statistical view the problem could be completely obscured. Consider that burnout is likely to be much more prevalent among alliances currently in the higher brackets - Gold 1 and higher, say, and certainly Gold and higher. But they represent only a small percentage of all alliances, maybe 10%. If a percentage of them burn out, that's a very small percentage of all players. And it is difficult to see that a larger percentage of high bracket alliances are burning out because the brackets are mandatorilly filled with rankings. In other words, whether the burn out rate is 2% or 20% or even 90% among the high bracket alliances, next season there will still be exactly 1500 alliances gold or higher. There will always be 1500 alliances gold or higher. There will always be 20 master alliances, even if all the "current" master alliances literally quit cold turkey tomorrow.
To put it another way, we might participate more or less but unless the change is catastrophically large (which is very unlikely) Kabam will be handing out the same amount of rewards to the same amount of alliances next season. That can hide any damage that burn out is causing. Even season by season comparisons would have to be very clever to quantify the problem in statistical and not anecdotal terms.
I've always been skeptical about datamining these kinds of things, not because I think datamining gives the wrong answers but rather because I don't often see game developers using it correctly. I don't trust anecdotes either, but anecdotes might be the best insight we currently have into the problem. Not necessarily good insight, just the best available.
Just adding our voice to the choir. 1 week break isn't sufficient. We are gold 1 and wouldn't want to go any higher than that. Not with the current state of AW. Too much stress and BS without enough reward. But, we do it for gold 1 so that it can be more forgiving and less stress. The break is needed to recharge, regroup, and recruit. 1 week doesn't cut it, plain and simple.....
There is absolutely no logical reason given as to why we need a shorter down time this off-season. Weigh the lack of benefit against the cost to your player base and the decision is obvious.
AW rewards are getting less and less valuable every seasom FYI. You can't keep pushing the player base forever
I completely agree. As a leader/officer it is next to impossible to keep my alliance motivated without a break. Theyre all sick of the pressure and the spending necessary to compete. Please just give us an extra week at the very least. The game has been great lately. There's a lot of new content. We just played all the way through the holidays. We need the down time to keep players interested.
AW rewards are getting less and less valuable every seasom FYI.
If that were really true, people wouldn't keep pushing harder to get them and burn out would solve itself. The problem is that they are perceived to be valuable enough to push to extremes to get them and that perception appears to be not changing by any measurable amount. And their perceived value is for all intents and purposes their actual value in the context of alliance war burnout.
You know, I'm wondering if we are fighting the wrong fight. It seems unlikely to me they would change the AW schedule at this short date. It is possible, but the more time passes the less likely this becomes. But the announcement says "there will once again not be any Global Buffs applied to Season 7 or 8." That implies they have already created the schedule for season eight.
Perhaps we should be asking what the off season schedule is going to be between season 7 and season 8, while it is still over a month away.
Well here's the thing, now that we many have voiced their desire for a longer break, the data needs to back that up. One way would be to encourage your alliance to not partake in the first of week of AW and give yourselves a break. If the data doesn't show that players need to take a break, then Kabam has little to go on when it comes to actually giving the player base a break.
I'm not sure what Kabam should specifically look for in the data that would demonstrate that burnout was something that needed to be addressed. You can't just focus on individual alliances, taking note of when they disband or stop participating, say, because there are lots of potential reasons for that which aren't necessarily the fault of the game design. But if you look at too broad of a statistical view the problem could be completely obscured. Consider that burnout is likely to be much more prevalent among alliances currently in the higher brackets - Gold 1 and higher, say, and certainly Gold and higher. But they represent only a small percentage of all alliances, maybe 10%. If a percentage of them burn out, that's a very small percentage of all players. And it is difficult to see that a larger percentage of high bracket alliances are burning out because the brackets are mandatorilly filled with rankings. In other words, whether the burn out rate is 2% or 20% or even 90% among the high bracket alliances, next season there will still be exactly 1500 alliances gold or higher. There will always be 1500 alliances gold or higher. There will always be 20 master alliances, even if all the "current" master alliances literally quit cold turkey tomorrow.
To put it another way, we might participate more or less but unless the change is catastrophically large (which is very unlikely) Kabam will be handing out the same amount of rewards to the same amount of alliances next season. That can hide any damage that burn out is causing. Even season by season comparisons would have to be very clever to quantify the problem in statistical and not anecdotal terms.
I've always been skeptical about datamining these kinds of things, not because I think datamining gives the wrong answers but rather because I don't often see game developers using it correctly. I don't trust anecdotes either, but anecdotes might be the best insight we currently have into the problem. Not necessarily good insight, just the best available.
Well we have given them the feedback, if the data shows a drop off in play and drop off in item use, drop off in logins ect it sends the message they have "missed the mark" and will be more likely to take suggestions more seriously.
Keep in mind one of the ratings for how popular a game is in their respective stores is the login count. How many times a day a person logs in contributes to the popularity ratings of a game.
A drop off in the number of alliances match making will show in the data fewer alliances are doing aw especially if there's not a matching drop off in AQ.
So much self inflicted agony for rewards. What’s the use of getting rewards when you burn out and quit shortly?
I haven't seen an MMO forum that didn't pose this question. No one ever seems to have an answer. The people capable of answering the question don't have the problem. The people experiencing the problem are incapable of understanding the answer.
@mostlyharmlessn - that's nice in theory. But here's the reality. It's simply not gonna happen. No one wants to go into the season 1 week behind points wise. You skip even 1 war, you might as well skip the whole of it because you just shot yourself in the foot points wise.
No one wants to, but the reality is if the points and rewards really mean that much then it really doesn't matter what Kabam does.
Taking part is simply condoning what they are doing.
The obvious point some people seem to be missing - You don't have to compete in seasons. If the one week break isn't enough this season then go easy or don't compete at all, you don't have to push every time. The rewards are pretty good but not so great that missing out on them once is going to leave you stranded.
That's great in theory. The reality is that deciding to not run the season would cause many alliances to have even more turnover or break up entirely as many would go to alliances that were running the season.
That just sounds like you're refusing to accept your limitations. Either play or pay more to keep up, or accept where you are in the game and adjust accordingly. There are plenty of alliances out there with great people who go at all different paces.
We are a platinum 2/3 alliance and have been every season. Not interested in pushing to plat 1 but often have a few who want to go play plat 1/master for awhile after a season so we have to replace 2 or 3 guys. One week makes that difficult. No one in my alliance is happy with the one week break but if we decided we were going to take a season off, many would leave for alliances that weren't taking a break, so it's not an option. It has zero to do with playing above our level or accepting our limitations.
It is an option, you and others clearly don't want to miss out on rewards which is why you'll complain rather than actually change your goals. The alliance won't stay together forever and if everybody isn't pulling in the same direction it's going to end sooner rather than later anyway
Yes, I suppose blowing it up is an option... When I said it wasn't an option I figured context would make it clear that I didn't believe that it literally wasn't an option. Thank you for pointing out the obvious. I think the one week off season is a bad idea for many reasons and I have provided feedback accordingly. That's sort of what the forum is for. If it makes you happy to call it "complaining" than have at it.
My alliance is not a hugely competitive alliance but I hate alliance wars, I avoid them when at all possible but the first couple of aw seasons we tried to get in the mix, but starting it after only 1 week is just crazy, kabam u realize we still have lives, families, responsibilities that we have to take care of, as much as you'd like it the game is not our lives, for most of us, I think a 2 week break isn't even enough, I say take a month break from wars, between seasons, if kabam was creative and thought this thru they could schedule new different content in the month off and we'd have the time to play and enjoy the new content, but instead u want us to do alliance quests, dungeons, the monthly quest, side quests, possible act 4 or 5, realm of Legends, labrynth of Legends and alliance wars, plus grinding in arenas and grinding catalysts for ranking up champions and trying to come up with gold, for some of us that's still a problem. I'd love to check out the dungeons, don't have time, still haven't finished act 4, don't have time, still trying to get uncollected, DON'T HAVE TIME!!! KABAM IF U WANNA KEEP UR SUMMONER, GIVE US THE BREAKS WE NEED.
Also u give us something great like the the 2* arena to get 5* shards, which is a grind, but we appreciate that, but then u always turn around with a backhand slap like announcing only 1 week between seasons, it seems like it's the gang that can't shoot strait at the offices of kabam, does 1 floor not speak to the other floor, just curious.
Comments
I’d prefer Seasons work around these and similar events.
I remember the special event quest that introduced Loki, it was a much shorter duration than our regular monthlies. Just adapt the season rewards in consequence.
And it's not a player preference so much as a player need for some downtime. And I know not everyone feels like a break is required, but there are a lot of players who feel it is.
For example, season ends, and our rank doesn't go up. Oh no, now a player wants to leave for greener pastures. Rewards for AW seem smaller and rank is more vital than ever (nevermind that it's half as long as before and rewards aren't any different than before), so it makes sense on the surface. Heck, AQ is pretty stagnant, so AW is everything.
Except this player isn't giving his alliance much notice. It was 2 weeks, now it's only 1 week break! That means we need to recruit more heavily and perhaps pull in scrubs. Those scrubby players just want rewards, they may not even be qualified to play in that AW tier. But they got lucky on a pull, or used mooched rank up mats to look good. A few weeks later, we realize that player is a scrub: they don't perform so we gotta kick them; or they leave at the end of season, because their failures couldn't be overcome by us good players often enough.
So now our alliance gets stuck in lower ranks. The game doesn't offer great recruiting tools. It's hard to differentiate players who are good from the scrubs. So it's a blind battle against every other alliance for players wanting to jump ship all at once. And now it happens in a smaller window thanks to this (now shorter) break.
My team used to be G1 regularly, and even hit P3 one time. We are great friends who played from the start of the game. But the cycle of churn is getting harder to battle, so we have fallen to G2 for 2 seasons now. And I'm sure the chester deranking was a part of it.
As the game gets more tiring for some, old friends get retire or join higher teams, and we have harder times finding new friends. I've got old friends who left waiting for us to get a better rank to re-join us. No one likes losing - I can't blame them. The patience for running an alliance and for recruiting is heavy. But as alliances merge, steal recruits, blast ads, it's to avoid imploding and losing friends.
We have been a plat 1/2 alliance for most of 2018. We are spenders, maybe not the biggest whales but enough to place 142 in gifting event so we are certainly paying some bills at headquarters for Kabam. What we experienced after the 1 week offseason between 5 and 6, ruined our alliance. We had around 14 members leave to either retire or find a new home after placing just below master in season 5. Many of us were feeling burnt out but it was nothing compared to the issues of having only 1 week to replace those members. There was not even time to properly recruit and vet new members. Our season started a mess. No time for crews to learn how to mesh, no time to find the bad apples. After a terrible season 6 filled with replacing members left and right to fix the issues, we made the decision to disband our alliance moving forward.
These are end game players spending real money on the game, Kabam. Your choice in offseason shortage will cause you to lose revenues down the road. Please consider these implications.
Also, 👋 hey @CoatHang3r nice to see you picking fights in forums 😂.
For all its faults I see zero point to making AW more like AQ. We already have AQ. The whole point of AW is to provide content to the players that want more direct and stronger competition. That doesn't mean the setting of that competition is perfect or couldn't be improved, but eliminating direct competition - which includes by necessity competition pressure - as the primary design motivation for *all* aspects of AW is.
It is pointless to have a pale shadow of competition in AW. Either we accept that the whole point to AW is that competitive pressure - which does NOT mean that the current system implements that competitive pressure in the best possible way for the game - or we be honest and say that the players that want it don't get to have it, because the cost it extracts on everyone else is too high to let them have it.
That's honest game design. You are never going to please everyone, and it is silly and futile to pretend otherwise. You say you feel it is a good idea to provide that style of gameplay to the segment of the playerbase that wants it, and you expect that those who do not enjoy it as much are capable of managing their gameplay appropriately, or you say the players that want it are not a priority for you to address with suitable content.
Fact is, either you narrowcase your content targeting all of it at one narrow slice of all players, or you try to give something for everyone even if much of it isn't appealing to most of them. Personally, dungeons aren't my thing: I rarely participate in them. But that's not because I think they are intrinsically bad, they are just problematic for me personally. I would never advocate changing them to be specifically to my liking just because I don't play them much, nor do I think it is wrong for the game to include things that might not be my cup of tea. If I liked everything, that would imply to me the game was casting too narrow a net.
Whether the breaks should be longer or shorter doesn't intrinsically change the fundamental nature of AW competition. You can want that competition and still want longer breaks or even no breaks. But the solution to problems within the competition can NEVER be to eliminate that competition, while simultaneously claiming that it makes alliance war "better." Eliminating the focus on direct competition and competitive pressure doesn't make it better, it replaces it with something completely different. You might as well simply eliminate Alliance War. And if you do, have the guts to tell the players that like alliance war that they don't matter, that what they want they can't have, not even in just one segment of the game, because it makes other players sad.
Every season brings retirement and guys wanting a break. They need to be replaced. One week isn’t enough time nor does it allow us to practice other lanes.
Love the fact that no one from HQ has chimed in.
I give this a day until a boycott thread shows LOL
Making seasons shorter wouldn't take the competition out of the game. It would greatly lessen the pressure for many people while still allowing those looking to push competition to do so.
Thanks for agreeing? I guess?
That just sounds like you're refusing to accept your limitations. Either play or pay more to keep up, or accept where you are in the game and adjust accordingly. There are plenty of alliances out there with great people who go at all different paces.
We are a platinum 2/3 alliance and have been every season. Not interested in pushing to plat 1 but often have a few who want to go play plat 1/master for awhile after a season so we have to replace 2 or 3 guys. One week makes that difficult. No one in my alliance is happy with the one week break but if we decided we were going to take a season off, many would leave for alliances that weren't taking a break, so it's not an option. It has zero to do with playing above our level or accepting our limitations.
It is an option, you and others clearly don't want to miss out on rewards which is why you'll complain rather than actually change your goals. The alliance won't stay together forever and if everybody isn't pulling in the same direction it's going to end sooner rather than later anyway
That would come with a proportional decrease in rewards, just as the prior shortening of the season did. I'm sure that would cause a major uproar.
I'm not sure what Kabam should specifically look for in the data that would demonstrate that burnout was something that needed to be addressed. You can't just focus on individual alliances, taking note of when they disband or stop participating, say, because there are lots of potential reasons for that which aren't necessarily the fault of the game design. But if you look at too broad of a statistical view the problem could be completely obscured. Consider that burnout is likely to be much more prevalent among alliances currently in the higher brackets - Gold 1 and higher, say, and certainly Gold and higher. But they represent only a small percentage of all alliances, maybe 10%. If a percentage of them burn out, that's a very small percentage of all players. And it is difficult to see that a larger percentage of high bracket alliances are burning out because the brackets are mandatorilly filled with rankings. In other words, whether the burn out rate is 2% or 20% or even 90% among the high bracket alliances, next season there will still be exactly 1500 alliances gold or higher. There will always be 1500 alliances gold or higher. There will always be 20 master alliances, even if all the "current" master alliances literally quit cold turkey tomorrow.
To put it another way, we might participate more or less but unless the change is catastrophically large (which is very unlikely) Kabam will be handing out the same amount of rewards to the same amount of alliances next season. That can hide any damage that burn out is causing. Even season by season comparisons would have to be very clever to quantify the problem in statistical and not anecdotal terms.
I've always been skeptical about datamining these kinds of things, not because I think datamining gives the wrong answers but rather because I don't often see game developers using it correctly. I don't trust anecdotes either, but anecdotes might be the best insight we currently have into the problem. Not necessarily good insight, just the best available.
AW rewards are getting less and less valuable every seasom FYI. You can't keep pushing the player base forever
If that were really true, people wouldn't keep pushing harder to get them and burn out would solve itself. The problem is that they are perceived to be valuable enough to push to extremes to get them and that perception appears to be not changing by any measurable amount. And their perceived value is for all intents and purposes their actual value in the context of alliance war burnout.
You know, I'm wondering if we are fighting the wrong fight. It seems unlikely to me they would change the AW schedule at this short date. It is possible, but the more time passes the less likely this becomes. But the announcement says "there will once again not be any Global Buffs applied to Season 7 or 8." That implies they have already created the schedule for season eight.
Perhaps we should be asking what the off season schedule is going to be between season 7 and season 8, while it is still over a month away.
So much self inflicted agony for rewards. What’s the use of getting rewards when you burn out and quit shortly?
Well we have given them the feedback, if the data shows a drop off in play and drop off in item use, drop off in logins ect it sends the message they have "missed the mark" and will be more likely to take suggestions more seriously.
Keep in mind one of the ratings for how popular a game is in their respective stores is the login count. How many times a day a person logs in contributes to the popularity ratings of a game.
A drop off in the number of alliances match making will show in the data fewer alliances are doing aw especially if there's not a matching drop off in AQ.
I haven't seen an MMO forum that didn't pose this question. No one ever seems to have an answer. The people capable of answering the question don't have the problem. The people experiencing the problem are incapable of understanding the answer.
No one wants to, but the reality is if the points and rewards really mean that much then it really doesn't matter what Kabam does.
Taking part is simply condoning what they are doing.
Yes, I suppose blowing it up is an option... When I said it wasn't an option I figured context would make it clear that I didn't believe that it literally wasn't an option. Thank you for pointing out the obvious. I think the one week off season is a bad idea for many reasons and I have provided feedback accordingly. That's sort of what the forum is for. If it makes you happy to call it "complaining" than have at it.