How often should ANBs run?

[Tin Man]

So, what are your feelings about the frequency of ANBs?


Disclaimer: This is not really a poll but the ANB topic requires a poll to post. I thought I would just use this as an example. I have never created a poll and thought it would be interesting to see what is involved.

[Kristoff]

What if you're okay with the current frequency, but don't mind delays since they give you a bit of a breather from time-to-time?

[Tin Man]

You are such a nonconformist infidel! A pox upon your RNG for this War Supplies!

[Kristoff]

Tin Man LOL! I love you too!

[Guest]

Need a choice saying, "abandon AnB and replace with a new event". Not as though a dev will listen one iota.

[Kristoff]

Tin Man Can I change my vote? I voted before your new options got added.

[Tin Man]

Kristoff I thought I changed my vote in a past poll but I do not seem to be able to change mine in this one. I could turn on allowing multiple votes.

I am new to this. I am clueless.

I would like to change mine as well.

[Arawn]

I imagine the devs like running them as often as possible since it probably generates revenue. As this is the only way to acquire celestial items it benefits the players to have them run as often as possible as well. The events are optional so anyone can always sit out whenever they choose to. I'll probably sit out this next gold

Never really understood the point of war supply events though as they don't give you an option to farm gems. That is the one item that is needed for the ANB events

[Ozymandius]

War Supply is one of the ways that new players can earn Glory.

[Felonious C]

I think there should always be one running.

[Ozymandius]

It seems to be a very fine line. For experienced players, ANBs are the only part of the game that still has much appeal. Other than ANBs, I mostly just run daily quests to build up gems for the next ANB. For me, a "season" consists of a few runs to push my hero up one or two more trials using new gear and CLs that were earned from ANBs. ANBs also offer a chance to start over from scratch without the headaches of having to open crafting recipes or build crafting mastery. I have no desire to go back to the olden days of yore when ANBs were only a few times a year, but I would quickly tire of having ANBs running every week. I would be bored with ANBs already were it not for the many player-inspired challenges on Discord. BTW, I am still lobbying for adding a 3 hour Platinum event into the current ANB mix. Based on what players can achieve in 3 hours, it no longer seems like too short of a time period for an ANB event.

I think that the alternate routes that the Devs could use to spice up the game would be to:

1. change seasons to a "start from scratch" ANB type event with a brand new hero [instead of just reusing the same old boring hero with the same old boring gear season after season].
2. introduce a new challenge for each ANB event (e.g., Shield Warrior Challenge, where only shield warriors are tracked on the event leaderboard [to introduce some variety in player experience they could switch out a new non-meta gear set for each event]; or Live off the Land where crafting gear is switched off for the event and you have to play with what gets dropped; or any of the other interesting challenge ideas from Discord).
3. Add new gear pieces that can only be earned by completing ANB challenges (i.e., replace CT boxes with new functional gear pieces or trinkets that cannot be crafted).

Ultimately, adding new gear or tweaking existing gear sets is what keeps the game interesting, so I hope the Devs are busy working on new gear, balancing tweaks, or on adding the allusive new hero class...

[Felonious C]

I don't understand why people are putting so much thought into these posts. The devs aren't going to do anything. Besides collect money.

[Ozymandius]

Actually, over the years, the Devs have made a number of changes to the game that were based on player requests in the forums. The current leaderboard split is one recent example. Another recent example is the last balancing upgrade where no gear sets were nerfed [all changes involved buffing underused gear]. Unlike previous balancing upgrades, the old meta builds are still playable, though not as competitive as they once were. Although the changes do not always work, such as the Arena, the Devs have at least tried to deliver on a lot of ideas from the player community.

[lefkal]

it should only last two days [for example starting on Saturday morning and ending on Monday morning. and who wins and what wins. so we would have a lot of time to deal with the season that due to the championship we are far behind in it

[Ryan Brach]

I think as far as frequency goes, what we have now is fine. I would even welcome an increase (Bronze and War Supplies aren't my jam...if we could get to gold and silver faster, that would be ideal for me, personally) in frequency/less "downtime" between them. I suppose the way I see it, is if you feel there are too many/too close, you have the option of not participating...whereas if you feel there aren't enough/too slow, you're SOL.

I'd also like to add that I really like Oz's suggestions. Unfortunately in pretty much any game's competitive play, the community will figure everything out, and it ends up becoming very one-dimensional. In this game I guess we call it "meta". Mixing things up by restricting a certain element, boosting another, randomizing, etc. would be quite interesting, and more or less force players into new(er) styles of play. I could see ideas like this receiving a fair amount of pushback, however. Maybe make it elective (Gold ANB 74, Standard or Special <Insert gameplay quirk here>), or maybe have a more rare ANB type event solely for that purpose (Once every six months or something). Maybe require players to have hit some sort of benchmark to even qualify (Top 500 Master league finish x2, Completed TL 140, CL 2000+, etc.) - I could see that making it more "special", drive competition leading up to it, etc. Maybe also make rewards or drops more juicy or unique (I rember playing UO in the late 90's-early 2000's where special events would do just that).

Just spit-balling here...

[Ryan Brach]

To add to this...I personally have only "completed" 1 ANB out of the 7 or so I've done. This last silver I left nearly 6 hours on the clock. I'd welcome a "Platinum" (working title" ANB with 3-4 hours of play time. Maybe run it Monday through Friday or something. Maybe use it to put a twist on the rule set as mentioned in previous posts.