Time Management Shouldn't Be The Main Focus of Alliance Quest

Can anyone come up with good reasons why the main source of "difficulty" and "challenge" for Alliance Quest comes from time management? Whenever the player base brings up issues with AQ the response we get from Kabam is always the same: Time management is extremely important and they won't be making any changes. I don't understand why they are so set in stone about this design.

From Kabam's perspective:
- The amount of time AQ takes does not impact their income. AQ energy cannot be purchased in any way.
- Fight difficulty is what leads to players buying units and potions/revives and can remain unchanged.
- Having 8/9/10 paths ensures that even with plenty of time/energy it's simply impossible for more skilled players to clear the map for lesser skilled players, again leading to players purchasing items.
- Linked Nodes and Bosses are there to ensure cooperation between alliance members.
- Designed to get players logging in every few hours, however almost every other game mode encourages players to do the same making this requirement redundant.

From the player's perspective:
- Time management doesn't represent a fun or rewarding challenge to overcome.
- Anyone can overcome this "challenge" by waiting. There is no skill involved, no room to improve, and you're champion roster has no impact on your ability to combat it.
- Conflicts directly with how people schedule their lives. Work, sleep, family, and activities mean people generally have a very hard time logging in as often as the mode asks.
- Conflicts with the global nature of the game and discourages having a mix of alliance members from around the globe due to scheduling and time zone issues.
- Puts pressure on players to share their accounts so they don't hold back their alliance.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying time management shouldn't play a role in AQ at all, I just wish it wasn't the main focus of the mode. AQ can require up to the full 24 hours to complete with near constant activity from the entire battle group simply because of how limiting energy is which is kind of an absurd amount of time when you think about it. I would much rather Alliance Quest be rewarding for it's fight difficulty and the ability of an alliance to cooperate instead of being almost entirely reliant on how good 10 people are at logging in every 3 hours throughout an entire day.

I truly hope that Kabam changes their stance on AQ and opens themselves up to feedback regarding this mode. This mode could be so much more rewarding and enjoyable to play. At the end of the day we all want the game to be better and I think changing AQ would be a huge step toward that goal.

Comments

DNA3000

becauseicant wrote: »

I would much rather Alliance Quest be rewarding for it's fight difficulty and the ability of an alliance to cooperate instead of being almost entirely reliant on how good 10 people are at logging in every 3 hours throughout an entire day.

Except time management is the fundamental way alliance members cooperate.

The answer to your question is probably that the solo quests are entirely focused on your ability to finish fights. The only reason cooperative alliance content exists is to challenge groups of people in a way the solo content doesn't. For that reason, a fundamental aspect of the alliance quests and wars is coordination and time management. That is why that content exists: to present that challenge. The difficulty of the fights is actually secondary to that: it has to be difficult enough to make the cooperative aspects of the content challenging (if it was too easy it would be impossible for anyone to get into trouble on a path and potentially create a problem for the alliance as a whole).

When this topic comes up in cooperative or "raid-like" content in MMOs, it is often asked why everyone can't just do what they are capable of doing at their own pace: why can just one person screw it up for everyone else. And the answer is always the same: that's the whole point of that cooperative content. To require cooperation. If everyone can go at their own pace and no one can hold up or otherwise negatively influence the other players, it isn't cooperative content: it is solo play with a joint scoreboard.

In either case, while I cannot speak to Map 6 because I don't run it, Map 5 doesn't require ten people logging in every three hours all day. If that ever happened in my battlegroup, I would assume my alliance mates were replaced with alien clones.

KML15

Exactly, you have not ran map 6 with the normal one hour timers. It is an absolute headache trying to coordinate and rally people to move as soon as they can. Run map 6 a few times and come back and let me know if it is the difficulty that is the problem, or the time restraint to 100% the map. Map 5 only requires 8 people at the most. Map 6 you need all 10 for virtually the whole map (once you factor in the longer outside lanes that need a kick start).

I've always felt the whole "on the clock" approach with AQ was rather dumb. I would much rather have them extend the maps a few sections and there be no energy what so ever.

becauseicant

DNA3000 wrote: »

Except time management is the fundamental way alliance members cooperate.

What I'm trying to argue is that it doesn't have to be. There are many ways to encourage and require cooperation and working together that hardly involve time management at all. In fact AQ already has three methods of doing this that are quite effective without feeling artificial or unskilled: Paths, Linked Nodes and Bosses. If you were to take energy out of AQ altogether would the map be able to be finished alone? Of course not, it would still require a great deal of cooperation and communication without the barrier of being forced to wait for what seems like no reason a lot of the time. Is the ideal solution to remove energy? Probably not because that puts too much pressure on players to clear AQ all at once right when it opens, but I don't think the opposite situation we are in right now where you need to schedule your life around AQ to stay competitive is the ideal design either.

DNA3000

becauseicant wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Except time management is the fundamental way alliance members cooperate.

What I'm trying to argue is that it doesn't have to be. There are many ways to encourage and require cooperation and working together that hardly involve time management at all. In fact AQ already has three methods of doing this that are quite effective without feeling artificial or unskilled: Paths, Linked Nodes and Bosses. If you were to take energy out of AQ altogether would the map be able to be finished alone? Of course not, it would still require a great deal of cooperation and communication without the barrier of being forced to wait for what seems like no reason a lot of the time. Is the ideal solution to remove energy? Probably not because that puts too much pressure on players to clear AQ all at once right when it opens, but I don't think the opposite situation we are in right now where you need to schedule your life around AQ to stay competitive is the ideal design either.

That depends on your definition of cooperation. As games generally define cooperation, cooperative efforts generally require coordination to distinguish themselves from solo play that just happens to occur in the same place. For example, if three players combine to defeat a boss you can say that is cooperative, but it is cooperative only in the least interesting way. Hypothetically speaking, that task is no different from several players independently scoring points. It is like alliance event milestones. That task can be theoretically performed even if the players make no effort to work with each other in any way.

Taking energy out of the equation dramatically lowers the amount of communication and cooperation required to almost zero. Even if players randomly enter the map at random times, having unlimited energy means everyone can progress an unlimited amount until either a boss or a buff node is reached, and while there are some parts of the map that require some tiny amount of coordination, that amount of challenge is neutralized by the fact that those dependent paths are only interesting if failure to pass them within a certain amount of time leaves no time left for the rest of the map. With unlimited energy you could almost literally pass stage two of map 5 with less than an hour to go and still finish the map. As a practical matter, that means all of the dependencies on the map can be eliminated with random entry by players.

I'm not saying the energy timers are perfect. I've advocated for them to be lowered myself more than once. But saying that time management itself is not necessary to make the maps a cooperation challenge is just not true. Without them entirely, the rest of the map devolves to a set of almost unrelated single player challenges linked mostly by the fact that they are tracked on the same map.

As to your assertion that the game requires people to schedule their lives around AQ, I don't, so by definition it is not necessary. I therefore cannot address the issue of the game forcing that requirement upon the players, because I believe the premise of that assertion to be false. The fact that some players do that doesn't mean it is necessary to do.

MEŦAPħҰS

aq is great as is and i completely disagree with the op's players' perspective.

- Conflicts directly with how people schedule their lives. Work, sleep, family, and activities mean people generally have a very hard time logging in as often as the mode asks.
- its all about priorities. this game should be at the bottom of the list you provided of daily living. obviously, this is a fun and addicting game to get involved in, if its a hobby (as it is for most) players will make time to play. if your ally is asking you to sacrifice sleep or time with family, or risk your employment; its time to find another ally.

- Conflicts with the global nature of the game and discourages having a mix of alliance members from around the globe due to scheduling and time zone issues.
- nope. timers do not discourage this at all. in fact, aq can usually get done quicker with players in different time zones across the globe. this falls under your leader, officer or bg leaders ability to plan and manage. a little research into time zones and player availibility can get your bg running smooth. *ive managed a bg with players in the US, europe, middle east, asia amd australia. i took over for a player that was asking players to sacrifice sleep to clear fights. once i became familiar with the player base and timezones, we had no issues operating with-in each others schedules.

- Puts pressure on players to share their accounts so they don't hold back their alliance
- i dont feel pressured to share acct info. ive played map 5 and 6 and never had issues playing with-in aqs time constraints. this all ties back into planning and managing.

- Anyone can overcome this "challenge" by waiting. There is no skill involved, no room to improve, and you're champion roster has no impact on your ability to combat it.
- not sure how you overcome timers by waiting, but there are a lot of ways to improve time management; whether its in game or in daily life events.

AQ can require up to the full 24 hours to complete with near constant activity from the entire battle group simply because of how limiting energy is which is kind of an absurd amount of time when you think about it.
- i dont know anyone playing aq for a full 24 hours. 5 fights at ~5100-8500 prestige, at most, takes 15 minutes of activity. im US based and can usually get 10-12 fights in before heading to bed, thats 30-36 minutes of activity max. i move when im able. if i have something planned, i communicate with my bg and live my life.

maps 1-5 are incredibly easy to navigate through with a semi committed grouo of 10.

map 6 was meant to be difficult in every way possible. if any player doesnt like the head ache, dont play it. i know the potential reward brackets or map 6 crystals are appealing, but t4c is so easy obtain these days it really isnt necessary.

anyway....sorry to rant on your rant. i hope none of this came across as rude, if it did it wasnt my intention.

Greenstroke

IMO, AQ runs should be capped at 5 runs per "week" (like it already is) but with a minor change, besides having a 24h timer to finish a single AQ it could be infinite, there would still be a 1h timer on energy etc, but meaning that if you finish, like lets says map 5 in 20h you could start another right away and so on but you could only do it 5 times no matter how much you would have time after you finish the last one. So meaning you wouldnt have to speed your way through AQ to get that Completion crystal, but still you kinda need to in order to get enough points to stay in the desired bracket.
So that way you can complete Maps with a slightly longer time and not to worry that can the last Guy log in in the last 2 mins to explore the last nodes to get this done 100%.
I get that the idea is to make you spent as much time in this game as possible, but sometimes in the baddest of moments real life just gets so hectic that theres no way you could log in the last, like 2h.

Gwendoline

I actually always had issue with the forced start time that you have. Because if you don't start asap, you don't have a decent amount of time for day 5. Even with starting right when you're able to, the last day of AQ never has 24 hours.

It always made me think you should have 6 days to start five aq's. Every alliance could adjust their start time to something that works for them and still have 24 hours for each aq. Then there is a 2 day forced aq break to keep the schedual the same (and to keep the days on which you run your aq's change each week, which seems to be the point of running it on an 8 day schedual). AQ rewards go out at the end of 6 full days, instaid of at the end of 5 days. It would give alliances more freedom already, being able to start it later or earlier or never do it on sunday or whatever else that might suit the alliance.

My alliance would benefit a lot from being able to start it just 1 hour earlier. Maybe a little bit more to make sure that even day 5 starts before 8pm UK time. I know an asian alliance that would benefit a lot too, because their day 5 is always crazy short right now. I've been in an (almost) all US alliance that would wait with starting aq until it was evening for them (sucked ass for me, because that ment it would start at 2 or 3am my time) and it made day 5 super short.

The lack of flexibility with the start time is what I've always seen as a bigger problem then the energy. It work so against each other. We're saying there is no need for a higher energy cap or faster refills, because time management is part of it, but at the same time we're not really free to pick our ideal start time either. If I choose to wait 22 hours, so that we have an ideal start time, I'm shooting myself in the foot and will have less then 2 hours for the fifth aq. That's obviously not happening, so we have to adjust to the start time Kabam has set for us.

GroundedWisdom

The entire basis of the design is geared towards coordination and cooperation. That's the point of being in an Ally, to work together. The point of an AQ is to work together for a common goal. The design of it is such that it allows for completion for a variety of lifestyles and schedules. It's not simply meant to be finished as quickly as possible. It's also the responsibility of the Ally to communicate with each other and accommodate scheduling and availability. It's to the discernment of the Ally to decide if it can finish a Map 5 or 6 given the availability of the Players, and whether it wants to run one or not. The Allies are the ones who place requirements on themselves. Meaning it is not a must that people be present 24/7, and every Map 6 must be completed. That's a standard that the Allies place on themselves. The number one issue people have is a lack of patience for the system. Waiting for people to move, waiting for Energy, etc. That's a byproduct of working with others. We have to wait and allow people to play as they can. It's not meant to be a full-time job, and to be that stressful. In fact, the more planning ahead of time, the less stressful it is. I can't agree with changing the design for everyone because some have a lack of patience, organization, and judgment.

vucachon

you forget that AQ is not just a quest, but a competition. There are timers and move caps which force a competitive team to be on point to ensure they reach maximum points allotted.

Aside from that, that's why there are prizes for completion and exploration! you are rewarded for your teamwork and skill... and for some, their money!

I've been playing AQ since inception and i like 30 minute energy. i just want to finish the map and get it over with, so no one has to worry if tomorrow morning "Tom" will be able to go "take a ****" at work to finish up the lane/node/boss.

But hey, it's our alliance's fault for having a member that has a job. Tom needs to manage his work hours better.

GroundedWisdom

vucachon wrote: »

you forget that AQ is not just a quest, but a competition. There are timers and move caps which force a competitive team to be on point to ensure they reach maximum points allotted.

Aside from that, that's why there are prizes for completion and exploration! you are rewarded for your teamwork and skill... and for some, their money!

I've been playing AQ since inception and i like 30 minute energy. i just want to finish the map and get it over with, so no one has to worry if tomorrow morning "Tom" will be able to go "take a ****" at work to finish up the lane/node/boss.

But hey, it's our alliance's fault for having a member that has a job. Tom needs to manage his work hours better.

No. Tom is responsible for his job before a game. The Ally is responsible for knowing what they are capable of doing when Tom has to work.

becauseicant

MEŦAPħҰS wrote: »

- i dont feel pressured to share acct info. ive played map 5 and 6 and never had issues playing with-in aqs time constraints. this all ties back into planning and managing.

I know much of this discussion is based on personal experience so we're gonna have different perspectives, but from what I've seen in the top 300 alliances there is a lot of pressure to share your account to make everyone's lives easier.

MEŦAPħҰS wrote: »

- not sure how you overcome timers by waiting, but there are a lot of ways to improve time management; whether its in game or in daily life events.

Let me try to explain it in a different way. The time it takes me to progress through an AQ map is essentially the same as it was 3 months ago or even 6 months ago because I am a very active player that logs in every few hours, meaning that a lot of the time I'm sitting on zero energy with the roster, skills, time, and willingness to play more AQ however I have to wait for my energy to recharge. There is no mechanic in the game that I can utilize to overcome this other than waiting. It makes your advancement in the game feel pointless in a way because no matter how much you've advanced, past a certain point it doesn't help you "conquer" this mode any better.

This is just off the top of my head but there are probably fun and interesting ways Kabam could implement some kind of method to give you more energy or shorten your energy timers based on your progress in the game and player skill:
- Let players select a "hard mode" that makes the fights harder but gives you increased energy rate.
- Have an optional side boss or path that when taken down by your group gives you an energy boost, refill, or rate gain
- If you complete a fight with 1.5 minutes left or more you get 1 energy
- If two or more linked nodes drop within 1 minute of each other you get 1 energy per linked node dropped
- Every 10 fights your battlegroup completes without getting hit gives everyone 2 energy

Cooperation is a big part of AQ so any mechanic like this that somehow involves your alliance working together could work really well in rewarding teamwork and game progression.

MEŦAPħҰS wrote: »

- i dont know anyone playing aq for a full 24 hours. 5 fights at ~5100-8500 prestige, at most, takes 15 minutes of activity. im US based and can usually get 10-12 fights in before heading to bed, thats 30-36 minutes of activity max.

To clarify I meant the time it takes from when the map opens to when it is 100% clear. I am not referring to the actual amount of play time spent fighting or moving on the map because like you said that part actually takes very little time.

Threedeadkings

Instead of incessantly asking Kabamm for 30 minute timer AQ, you can try and lobby for 5/5 at the start of AQ instead of 3/5. Doesn't lessen the wait but it sure helps to kick start your day's campaign. Any summoners from GMT+6,7,8,9,10 would attest that it a royal pain to be up at 3am to play AQ. As I've highlighted earlier, it doesn't solve the issue but it certainly helps to kick start your day's campaign.

Second, I personally feel summoners should lobby for energy accrual function at AQ. It doesn't need to be up to 10, but up to 8 (3 more after 5/5) should suffice for any players to catch up where they left off/or when they start AQ. The issue with 5/5 is it hinders recharge whilst you rest (it's almost akin to punishing you for going to bed and sleep for 10hours). It wouldn't be an issue if you can buy refills but AQ and AW do not have that feature but solely reliant on time charge.
Note: I shall not go into buying Recharges. It's a bad idea imho.

Third, it is high time for Kabam to revisit AQ map layout especially the relationship between linked node placement and the affected node. The answer that AQ is designed based on 1 hour timer is somewhat outdated imho. There is also an urgent need to relook at the amount of empty nodes laced across the maps. An AW styled map would be highly desirable with linked node moving in a singular and coherent manner.

AQ can be a lot of fun for summoners instead of just 'wait and fight' x 5 days or a pure prestige race.
With a growing roster, it would be interesting if Kabam wil consider increasing champions slots for AQ from 3 to 5 based on map difficulty. Map 1 and 2 can remain as 3. Map 3 and 4 at 4; whereas map5 and 6 can go to 5.

While considering the additional champions slots idea, Kabam may well tinker and add some zest to AQ. For example, Kabam can introduce daily class champ bonus points if you bring and use them at AQ. It forces summoners to tinker with their roster and use multiple champs instead of that select few to compete at AQ.
Ie: say it's Skill/Science day. summoners will get bonus points (say +1%) if they were to use champs of these class to defeat their enemies (mini and boss included).

Milkthewhales

They've just started selling AQ energy in transformers for 30 units escalating up so expect to see that arriving any day now. It will be dressed up as them trying to help us out. Remember to fetch the ****

1haunted_memory

I love the 30 minutes timers!!!!! wish they would always be 30 minutes