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Alliance mission rewards need an urgent rework
Terminal
Posts: 789
Rewards have changed, and I'm thoroughly confused.
Milestone and rank reward rewards are so poor I don't even think there's any point to even doing alliance missions.
Rewards need to feel meaningful based on the power level required to get enough points to reach those milestones.
Currently, they do not match up.
Here are some calculations of how things work out:
Milestone 1 = T1 Basic spark
[15,000]
Milestone 2 = T1 Basic spark
[25,000]
Milestone 3 = T1 Basic spark + T1 class spark crystal
[40,000]
Milestone 4 = T1 Basic spark + T1 class spark crystal + T2 Essence (125)
[105,000]
Milestone 5 = T1 Basic spark + T1 class spark crystal + T2 Essence (250)
[157,500]
Milestone 6 = T2 Essence (500)
[250,000]
Milestone 7 = T2 Essence (750)
[300,000]
Milestone 8 = T2 basic spark + T2 class essence (500) crystal
[360,000]
[MASSIVE POINT JUMP]
Milestone 9 = 100 alpha essence + T2 class essence (500) crystal
[645,000]
Milestone 10 = 500 alpha essence + T2 class essence (500) crystal
[765,000]
Milestone 11-16 = points are too high, doesn't matter.
The minimum points an alliance can earn if they do map 2 on the lowest difficult with 3 groups getting 100% every day for five days is about 290,000 points (milestone 1-6).
Minimum difficulty gives less than half a shard per day and you just miss Milestone 7, so maybe increase the diff a tiny bit so you at least get that, Diff 3. bots are about 350-500 power. Play well with your maxed 2* or steamroll with your 3*. This gives around 340,000. So that's about the normal standard.
Having to organise for 5 days, multiple times per day (to take out links etc) with up to 18 other people and a minimum of 12 (because lanes split in to 4) does really not seem worth a pile of rewards I can get from just collecting 4h crystals and using a couple of hours of energon in a daily mission with just 1 bot.
OK, so what about if our alliance wants a challenge for their 3* rank 3 bots? Lets look. We would need to do increase the difficulty to a level where the bots are 800-1000 power. That's about 129,000 points per day. No steam rolling, have to wait for links to go down. What milestone would we hit? Only milestone 9. So we lose 3 of our 3* bots for 5 days and the only extra thing we get for our efforts is 100 alpha. This makes no sense at all. Raid offers up to 1200 alpha per day for 3 bots.
And then the 500 alpha? add another +200-400 power to the enemies. This is getting in to the territory of needing rank 4 3*, which means you need the alpha in the first place to fight on that level.
Milestone 11-16 requires such an absurd amount of points the bot strength you would need for every person doesn't justify doing it for the reward it offers.
There are no meaningful rewards at all once the difficulty shifts to needing 3* bots. There are incredibly low value rewards for doing 100%x3 for 3 days on map 2. It doesn't feel special. This whole reward structure needs a rework.
Ranks have also changed with the % rank completely removed and the rewards getting a major nerf.
18 people's time and effort to organise and co-ordinate for 5 straight days is being seriously and majorly undervalued by Kabam and being treated like a joke. It feels like a tacked on, unsupported feature that just makes it extremely difficult to participate in other areas of the game for 5 days a week. Anyone that can afford to lose 3 bots for a week without taking a hit to how they do story, spotlights and raids etc doesn't even need the alliance mission rewards, they're completely useless to that person. Honestly, what do I need 5 basic T1 sparks and 1 T2 spark for? I can get that playing once or twice a day with 1 bot.
Kabam, what type of player are you targeting with Alliance missions? Maybe people with 2* that aren't maxed and nothing else? What about people with 3*? There's nothing in it for them. Please support and target your entire player base. Players in the early, mid and late game. Where is the risk/reward ratio? Where is the encouragement to increase the difficulty?
Milestone and rank reward rewards are so poor I don't even think there's any point to even doing alliance missions.
Rewards need to feel meaningful based on the power level required to get enough points to reach those milestones.
Currently, they do not match up.
Here are some calculations of how things work out:
Milestone 1 = T1 Basic spark
[15,000]
Milestone 2 = T1 Basic spark
[25,000]
Milestone 3 = T1 Basic spark + T1 class spark crystal
[40,000]
Milestone 4 = T1 Basic spark + T1 class spark crystal + T2 Essence (125)
[105,000]
Milestone 5 = T1 Basic spark + T1 class spark crystal + T2 Essence (250)
[157,500]
Milestone 6 = T2 Essence (500)
[250,000]
Milestone 7 = T2 Essence (750)
[300,000]
Milestone 8 = T2 basic spark + T2 class essence (500) crystal
[360,000]
[MASSIVE POINT JUMP]
Milestone 9 = 100 alpha essence + T2 class essence (500) crystal
[645,000]
Milestone 10 = 500 alpha essence + T2 class essence (500) crystal
[765,000]
Milestone 11-16 = points are too high, doesn't matter.
The minimum points an alliance can earn if they do map 2 on the lowest difficult with 3 groups getting 100% every day for five days is about 290,000 points (milestone 1-6).
Minimum difficulty gives less than half a shard per day and you just miss Milestone 7, so maybe increase the diff a tiny bit so you at least get that, Diff 3. bots are about 350-500 power. Play well with your maxed 2* or steamroll with your 3*. This gives around 340,000. So that's about the normal standard.
Having to organise for 5 days, multiple times per day (to take out links etc) with up to 18 other people and a minimum of 12 (because lanes split in to 4) does really not seem worth a pile of rewards I can get from just collecting 4h crystals and using a couple of hours of energon in a daily mission with just 1 bot.
OK, so what about if our alliance wants a challenge for their 3* rank 3 bots? Lets look. We would need to do increase the difficulty to a level where the bots are 800-1000 power. That's about 129,000 points per day. No steam rolling, have to wait for links to go down. What milestone would we hit? Only milestone 9. So we lose 3 of our 3* bots for 5 days and the only extra thing we get for our efforts is 100 alpha. This makes no sense at all. Raid offers up to 1200 alpha per day for 3 bots.
And then the 500 alpha? add another +200-400 power to the enemies. This is getting in to the territory of needing rank 4 3*, which means you need the alpha in the first place to fight on that level.
Milestone 11-16 requires such an absurd amount of points the bot strength you would need for every person doesn't justify doing it for the reward it offers.
There are no meaningful rewards at all once the difficulty shifts to needing 3* bots. There are incredibly low value rewards for doing 100%x3 for 3 days on map 2. It doesn't feel special. This whole reward structure needs a rework.
Ranks have also changed with the % rank completely removed and the rewards getting a major nerf.
18 people's time and effort to organise and co-ordinate for 5 straight days is being seriously and majorly undervalued by Kabam and being treated like a joke. It feels like a tacked on, unsupported feature that just makes it extremely difficult to participate in other areas of the game for 5 days a week. Anyone that can afford to lose 3 bots for a week without taking a hit to how they do story, spotlights and raids etc doesn't even need the alliance mission rewards, they're completely useless to that person. Honestly, what do I need 5 basic T1 sparks and 1 T2 spark for? I can get that playing once or twice a day with 1 bot.
Kabam, what type of player are you targeting with Alliance missions? Maybe people with 2* that aren't maxed and nothing else? What about people with 3*? There's nothing in it for them. Please support and target your entire player base. Players in the early, mid and late game. Where is the risk/reward ratio? Where is the encouragement to increase the difficulty?
14
Comments
These rewards took t2 alpha out of milestone for top alliances as well...
I agree Jon, new Alliance missions look like a complete waste of time for top alliances.
So what milestone will we get to? Current multiplier is 5.75x. So, at least 8, maybe 9 or 10. Okay, yeah, that kinda sucks, but still worth it for the crystal shards and potential rank rewards. And I know our leader has at least 1 4* at rank 2, so we may have more of those in another week or 2 and start getting up into the 20's for the map level. And we still don't even have 18 people in our alliance yet!
Last thing, with some reasonable organization and dedicated team, you only end up taking about half a day to get 100% on all 3 groups, so not really losing 3 bots all day long. Arenas are totally playable regardless, raids are far more rewarding, even if you lose every other one, and personally, I end up farming the daily missions anyway to get more T2 sparks for ranking up, so the more T2's the better!
Anyway, I definitely wouldn't object to better rewards for just about anything, but I'd say it's not that they're ignoring mid-game people, just rewarding dedicated teams with good leadership.
most of us have 2-3 rank 4 3* bots.. that is what Kabam wants you to achieve. They made alphas easier to obtain already so once u get the bots.. go into lvl 25-30 territory for better rewards. If your alliance is still doing easy mode 10-15 then maybe it's time to question yourself why are you still in it (when you have several rank 4s)
I agree the milestones should be adjusted a bit as Alpha shards are easier to obtain. They should level it up slightly so that it's worth the time, bots, and effort doing higher difficulty when compare to raiding for the Alpha shards. Some players could choose raiding over AM which is not what should be intended here (they have less rank 4 3*s so they choose that route).
T3 basic spark shards need to be easier to obtain too.. Maybe the devs made it rare now as a wall to prevent us from upgrading too fast.
And what potential rank rewards are you referring to? Have you seen that they've changed? Do you think you're going to get top 5 rank? Everything gets pretty garbage past 5-10 and it's all the exact same stuff as the milestones, the same stuff we get more of from dailies.
So for 5 days efforts co-ordinating with 4 other people and needing a minimum of 12, you get 5 T1 basic sparks and 2 T2 basic sparks. You can get that in 1-2 days from raids and 4h crystals. You could only collect 4h crystals for 5 days and get more rewards.
I don't understand your point about "just rewarding dedicated teams with good leadership." Look at the rewards, they're doing no such thing. How is what you're getting a reward worthy of something that takes multiple people having to log multiple times per day for FIVE straight days.
If you're not getting enough T1 and T2 sparks from dailies and raids and feel you need extra from alliance mission then you're doing something wrong.
You're proving my point exactly, you're using rank 4 bots for diff 11 (although rank 3 should be enough), T1 basic sparks are only useful for 1* and 2* bots and a few mods, why would you need or want 5 more per week for all that effort, do one raid or a daily and get T1 sparks. They already spam us with T1 sparks in other places. It's not helping you get more powerful.
Try diff 20+ if you want milestone 10.. but why would you want to do that challenge for 5 days for 600 alpha? What's the point? There's no point.
You want milestone 11? Get 2000 alpha? Try diff 30 like Dav. He isn't even going to get milestone 12! A reward worth a day and a half of raids, but they would already need the alpha in the first place have bots effective at that level. It's catch 22 and makes no sense. The risk is not worth the reward.
If you want Milestone 12, (100 out of 10,000 needed T3 essence), you need around diff 40 and fight 2k bots. It's absurd and utterly pointless. Who has 2k bots and needs ONLY 100 essence? How is that useful for them? It's not. At all.
In no way, shape or form is there any value in doing alliance mission for the 'rewards' for anyone that has anything better than a 2* bot.
Risk/reward and power/prize ratio is WAY off, like they haven't even thought about what people need to get that reward and if the reward is meaningful to that level of player. And the fact that it's a co-ordinated team event spanning multiple days requiring multiple log ins per day is not being valued at all. It has the lowest rewards in the entire game when it should be the highest.
Players gotta be patient at it and not expect things to always go their way. That said I do hope for better rewards when reaching milestones in AM. Right now it doesn't scale right when compare with rewards obtained from raids.
What part of the reward is worth it? I'm not sure what you mean by patience. Do you mean patience to get rank 4s to do diff 30 like you? To get less alpha than someone can get using rank 3 bots in raids?
If it's not going the players way, whose way is it going? It sounds like you're saying some rewards are just bad and we should accept it.
Look at all the milestone and rank rewards. Consider the power needed to get said rewards. Then consider how useful (or useless) those rewards are for the player with said power.
That said, I figured out you'd have to get all 3x100% at an average diff of 17.5 to get to milestone 9. We got up to 12 last time, so it'll probably take another 2 weeks to get good enough to do 17-18. And you're absolutely right - now that you can easily get 1200 alpha essence a day just from raids, 100 is ludicrous. I stopped bothering with the stopgap alpha spark missions because they only award 100 for 45 energy!
So once I took a minute, looked at our actual numbers, and read your reply, you're absolutely right. That said, I'm optimistic that this will be fixed. The fact they recognized alphas were too insanely difficult to get, responded with a quick-fix with the alpha missions, then the 1200/day you can get now, and T3 basic used to be impossible or maybe non-existent and now I've got 1/2 of one and don't even have a 4* yet! So I think they will fix it. Excellent analysis and thanks for the additional explanation in your reply.
Last week, we got through difficulty 15 just fine. We tend to go up by 1 each day, not counting non-AM days, so today we started at 16. Sometimes we skip one, sometimes we do the same one again, but on average we go up by about 1 each AM day, or 5 a week. That also gives us a couple days in between to level up and do solo missions and such, and it seems to have worked out nicely. This week, our alliance leader managed to rank up her best 4* (Ironhide - love him!) to rank 3 & got him to level 30, which gave him a rating of 1610 (forged some too, I think), and the rest of our team almost all has 3x 3*s maxed out. So we should do an average diff of 18 this weekend, which will get us to milestone 9 a week earlier than I expected!
That said, the early (MS-1 to MS-10) rewards still suck, I wholeheartedly agree. After that, though, things get interesting:
Milestone 11 = 2000 alpha spark essence
[930,000]
Milestone 12 = 2500 alpha spark essence + T3 essence (100) --> Now we're talking! This is what gets a 4* bot to rank 3 and beyond, although you'll need to have some already there by now, which is doable by other means.
[1,125,000]
Milestone 13 = T3 essence (200)
[1,335,000]
Milestone 14 = T3 essence (300)
[1,650,000]
Milestone 15 = T3 essence (400)
[1,905,000]
Milestone 16 = T3 essence (500) + 1000 T2 alpha spark essence! --> Was this always here? I didn't ever look this far, so I assumed this wasn't even in the game yet. Need this to get a 4* to rank 4!
[2,340,000]
Milestone 17 = T2 alpha essence (2000)
[2,805,000]
Milestone 18 = T2 alpha essence (3000)
[3,300,000]
Milestone 19 = T2 alpha essence (4000)
[4,050,000]
Okay, so that all looks awesome, but... how in the world can we ever get there??? The numbers are insane, right? Actually, no. The key here is that the multiplier progression is geometric rather than arithmetic. Each difficulty level gives you an increased multiplier of 5% over the previous. Sounds like a tiny amount, but it ends up making those huge numbers actually attainable, like earning compound interest in a savings account. (I apologize if I sound patronizing - I'm not trying to be; I'm just aware the readers of these posts may be of widely varying ages, so I don't want to lose anyone here.)
So let's start with the lowest difficulty, as in the first post of this thread, and assume you get all 100% for 5 days for a total of around 290,000 points. Here's what you should get for the same completion rate if you just did the same level 5 times, at 10-level intervals (rounded to nearest 1,000 points):
Diff 1 = 290,000 [MS-6]
Diff 10 = 450,000 [MS-8]
Diff 20 = 733,000 [MS-9] (Almost MS-10!)
Diff 30 = 1,194,000 [MS-12] (Realm of the awesome rewards)
Diff 40 = 1,944,000 [MS-15] (You'll have at least 3x 4* bots at 3/5 30/30 by now, ~1500-1700 ratings)
Diff 50 = 3,167,000 [MS-17] (Almost MS-18. You should have at least 3x 4* bots at 4/5 40/40 here)
Diff 55 = 4,042,000 [MS-19] (Well, close enough, anyway)
@Davien above says his team is doing level 30. Could we be doing 30? Well... maybe so. We're going slowly so some newer members, who don't have 3x 3*s maxed yet, can catch up. Once we all do, and some with 4*s at 2/5 20/20, we should be able to do difficulty levels 30-35. By then, through other means (as there are other ways of getting T3 essence before you get to Milestone 12 here), we'll have more than just the one 4* 3/5 30/30. So with 3 each of those (eventually), we should be able to get up past diff 40.
At avg. difficulty 44, you hit milestone 16. So far, this is the only way I've seen of getting T2 alpha spark essence. Hopefully there will be other means by the time we get up there, but regardless, this will get your 4* bots to rank 4, which should eventually get you up to difficulty 55/56, and I have no idea what's required to get 4*s to rank 5, but I imagine if it's currently actually impossible, the mats will be added in the coming months.
At our current rate, we should get to difficulty 45 in about 6 weeks, and milestone 16 in 7 weeks (because you have to *average* 44 or higher). And we could theoretically hit milestone 19 in about 9 weeks. All this is assuming the difficulty/time curve doesn't get sharply steeper as it gets more and more difficult to rank up and level up 4* bots. That could slow us down somewhat, but I still see the current final milestone as achievable. And based on the last 3 months, I think they will make the rewards better and better and make T3 essence and T2 alpha essence easier to get in the next ~3 months or so. Just in time for them to come out with 5* bots! Yay!
--Mars.
So yes, [MASSIVE POINT JUMP] indeed! Give us MS 8.3 & 8.7, please, Kabam!
P.P.S. (Sorry, keep thinking of things to add.) Our alliance name is Insomniac Nerds [N3RD]. To the surprise of absolutely NOBODY who read my last incredibly nerdy late-night post! XD
Not sure how you came to these figures, but I can assure you they're not correct. The 411 Infobot links to a spreadsheet that shows which milestones you'll achieve at which AM difficulty (assuming you run the same difficulty each day in a 5 day AM, and every BG clears 100%).
Beginning with MS6 at map2 d1, the progressions are:
MS7 @ d2
MS8 @ d4
MS9 @ d16
MS10 @ d21
MS11 @ d27
MS12 @ d33
MS13 @ d40
MS14 @ d48
MS15 @ d54
MS16 @ d63
Or to use your approach of ever 10 levels, the MS progressions in 10s is: 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16 (you started to go wrong at d.30)
If you don't have the 411 bot, search "TFTF 411 Bot" as a new contact in Line, and add it as a friend. It has loads of great info about the game and is made and maintained by a handful of players
Here are the enemy ratings:
12 - diff 33 - 1.5k
13 - diff 40 - 1.9k
14 - diff 48 - 2.3k
15 - diff 54 - 2.6k
16 - diff 64 - 3.3k
So at diff 44 you're on milestone 13, not 16.
Based on the new data, how do you feel?
Cheers. I'm not the only or even the main person who works on the 411 and I certainly didn't create it. I just help recently with some of the data collection and updating some details like this. There's 6-7 ppl who do different parts of it, and others contribute from time to time
(sorry about the multiple posts above, there was something wrong with the way the forums were loading in my browser and my posts weren't publishing, then suddenly published multiple times)
Yes but it is not a decision for a member to decide.. it's a collective one. Kabam needs to revamp the rewards to make it easier for alliances to achieve and to motivate them to take it seriously (such as putting in 3*/4* shards as well, and lvl 3 basic spark shards - most high in demand).
You said it yourself.... many alliances running lower than needed am that they are overqualified for because rewards don't match effort for most
We're not talking about Alliances at the top end of the spectrum. This is in regards to the players playing at lower levels of difficulties. We're not going to make all the resources needed to Rank Up available right away and quick and easy, but are attempting to encourage players to try for something that they are more capable of.
As you noticed many alliances are running AM difficulties far below their ability. There's an obvious reason. The return on your bots is not worth locking them up. It's called opportunity cost
If you're not running d.27 or higher, there's scarcely any point commiting any of your top 5 bots to AM at the moment. You're better off re-running the story mission over and over until you have at least 6 3* at r4 (enough to do a useful level in AM and still complete raids).
So instead, ppl would be keeping their top 5 bots for story mission, their next 3 for raids, and their C team for AM
The fault is you guys haven't understood how marginal returns work. You've stacked all the marginal benefit in the top 1-2 ranks, and the marginal return for the extra bit of effort at other ranks is close to zero.
I haven't used an item in AM for a month except one day where I convinced a team mate to let me practice against Megatron with class disadvantage just for fun (I threw 10 free t1 repairs at the fight). My entire BG has scarcely used any items in that time. Because why bother? We were ranked 5th in AM until the rewards changed. We're basically coasting now because why waste money on nothing but ego. The marginal return is already junk by rank5, it isn't worth anything at all below d27.
This is a pervasive problem with Kabam's pricing strategy. You massively over price things so only a small fraction of your player base is willing to spend. That fraction becomes absurdly powerful relative the rest, and everyone else either accepts they're playing a game where there's no relative upwards mobility or they give up and do something else.
A smother marginal return curve that's more constantly linked to marginal cost would solve all these problems. But you guys provide an essentially linear marginal cost curve with an exponential marginal return curve. The point where they intersect and returns begin to outway costs is only at the far high end of the cost curve. And so ppl play AM far below their ability
MS9 = 100
MS10 = 500 (cumulative: 600)
MS11 = 2,000 (cumulative: 2,600)
MS12 = 2,500 (cumulative: 5,100)
To get those Ms you need to run difficulties 16, 21, 27, 33 respectively.
If you run d26, you're only getting 600 t1ae, which will get you a single spark in 16 weeks! Who would bother? Especially when you can get as much in 8hrs from raiding!!!! The opportunity cost of AM is absurd at that level, so obviously no one will bother at anything below 27.
You might think the answer is to cut rewards in the raid shop, but a) you will have an uproar on your hands because people really hate having things taken away (that's why you're always better to reduce rewards through inflation, not reward cuts), and b) it will just lock in the gap between people who already have more t1a than they can use and people who are still stuck behind the alpha wall.
So the answer is to increase marginal rewards at lower AM difficulties. I suggest through a combination of improved lower MS rewards and more gradual rank reward progressions (after all, you guys want competition to drive spending, right?)
Look at the higher end MSs as well. T3b is the new t1a...
MS12(d33) = 100
MS13(d40) = 200 (cumulative: 300)
MS14(d48) = 300 (cumulative: 600
MS15(d54) = 400 (cumulative: 1,000)
MS16(d63) = 500 (cumulative: 1,500)
So at d54 it takes 10 weeks to get a t2b. Right now, only 5 alliances are at that level. But why bother stretching yourself when it costs a bucket load to maintain and you can get 5,000 t2b thrown in to a Grim? T2b in AMs don't incentivize effort, they incentivize coasting. Again, because neither your cost curves nor reward curves are linear