Announcement

**Terranisaur** · 11-25-2019, 05:51 PM

Hello. I'm a casual / competitive player and I like all of the proposed changes... good ideas!

I am a player with less time and resources to dedicate to the game, but I liked that in the past I could still be competitive. With the ever-increasing crafting item levels it's isn't even worth my time to try, for the players that spend a lot (and exploit a lot) are going to have a huge advantage over me anyways. To me, I think settling on a system where more serious players with huge gem banks (and exploiters) have an advantage, but it is more minor. How about 10-20% damage/stats more than me? To me thats fair; they should place higher if they have similar skill. Right now I feel like they are sitting at 50% or more in combined damage/stats and it's simply overwhelming. I 'thought' we were getting high level celestial cubes that I could use on weapons to achieve just what I mentioned above - at least my weapons would be similar, so they would have an advantage in CL and other stats, but I could still be competitive. Right now I feel like I'm just going to get bullied by exploiters as well, so there's no point in putting too much effort into anything. In sum, give players a chance to be competitive without exploiting and let skill/experience play a bigger factor in ANBs (disabling medals is a good idea as well).

Overall, I enjoyed the ANB, especially the new difficulty, and better item drops. It made getting items feel more meaningful, crafting epics felt more meaningful as well. I think continuing to innovate and come up with new and fresh ideas in these ANBs is a great idea, like with the ephemeral crafting, because overall the ANB is about the same experience every time, and doing things to keep it fresh makes it more fun and interesting. If I just stick to playing and focus on the event and having fun, while ignoring the cheaters, I have a great time, so thanks! (I did get burned a bit by the 'extra time' announcement that never came, but meh I still had fun

, what more can I ask for in a video game.)

**Christian Lamine** · 11-25-2019, 05:52 PM

Originally posted by Adrian (Developer) View Post

...only 20 players out of 1500 were using a deprecated client. So we didn't get through with the ANB extension.

Erm, I don't know if you took a look into the bug section while gold was running. The extension shouldn't have to be intended for the players using deprecated clients - it should have compensated those that got struck by a trial progress reset. Handing out an extension to all participants and with that also to players that managed to get an ease to their trials is like actually rewarding them for exploiting, granting them more time to exploit that bug. This is utter nonsense.

**Blacklisted** · 11-25-2019, 05:55 PM

I like this game very much, but some points are not good at all.

I don't like the way how things are communicated. Very often the community has Informations before it is official writen here.
I also don't like that it is very hard to find informations about the game mechanics. For example actuall Patch notes.
I don't like it that there are still bugged/useless items in game.

My ideas for anb events:
they should be the same for everyone. It should be a competition of your gameplay an not a competition of the amount of gems/money you are able to spend.

No medals in anb, no gems from Main Account in anb.
make empheral items legendary and available at the point you reach lvl 70.
So everyone has the same Chance to reach higher trails.

**1580** · 11-25-2019, 06:01 PM

For the crafting, if the temporary ephemerals are salvageable, then I think it's still acceptable. If not, user might have a felling that waste too much resources in temporary exist item just to get celestial and medal. I think ephemeral crafting will cost many testing to apply since you need to find the point that the cost of craft not too high and not too low, user also need to familiar with the new stats combinations that less 9 stats compare to legendary.

It's better that the ephemeral craft interface open the level selection until max level, or nearer to level cap in ANB, so that less try and luck depending on ephemeral crafting. Please remember also decrease the gem cost for the socket making for ephemeral(better around 10).

If user got enough time and luck, they still able to get their set from trial above 75-80. The craft ephemeral will have less advantage compare to the legendary drop(can reforge if useless stat=1) except weapon, as it got one more damage variable need to be consider by user. User will use the crafted ephemeral and wait for the suitable legendary drop to switch.

If want fun, crafted item can add some more extra funny special effects and increase available combinations(Like Diablo).

May I ask, will item cap increase to 80 in next season?

For medal rewards, I disagree with those disable suggestions. Stats given in medal is not very big, it's just around stat on 1 Lv 10-20 item, and it's difficult to have big increase on medal after you already got a few medal(Stats increase per medal get is low). User who don't have much medals actually can craft better equipment in beginning, and purchase the socket jewel to socket, higher crafting in begining wouldn't cost too much gems. For me, medal just help us to decrease the beginning crafting spends, I can craft more green uncommon rather than blue rare. If use the 200% exp booster, user can reach Lv 10+ in 10 minutes+, then the single stat from medal is just same as 1 stat from any item, would be a big different. If use gems for the foods from tavern, they might reach Lv 10+ earlier.(a little bit expensive, 25 gems(gold)/food/10 minutes, I didn't purchase them in beginning leveling) For those already Lv 30-40+, the medals enhance already not big enough, And that level can easily achieve in 15-20 minutes.

If disable the medals during event, then the medal stat on normal mode should be increase. Since I think most of us run the ANB are targeting the medals, not celestial (if already got a lot of Celestial boxes) and experience(not very useful for those who already CL around 2000 in main account), if medal become meaningless, the intend of us to plan to spend gems and times to achieve higher rank will decrease (I think so). If decrease the usage of medals, mean MF need to add other special rewards(Don't be skin
.....) for Rank Achievement to maintain attractive of rank pushing.

My ANB Gold BH this time only end with around CL 700, might only increase a few level in main account, but cost me around 6 200% and 4-5 100% exp booster (Less meaning in experience for ANB gold since difficulty increase, don't know what will happen if in bronze and silver which got more times).

For the difficulty, I think Bronze and silver still got big chances to get into 100 for celestial since time is longer, but, it's really bored to farm for so long time with the current difficult curve where useless drops take a lot of time(farming before trial 75).

The booster rewards for trials achievement 80-100 in Gold may be can downward a little(required achieved level) or separate a little downward to decrease our cost on boosters. In this gold, I think most of us reach 100 plan to use the remaining time for pushing, not farming anymore. In bronze or silver, still need to push to 100 in middle of farming, if want to use the booster rewards to decrease gem spends in boosters.

The farming around trials 60 - 70 mainly give useless epic and 1 hour book of learning, it cost time for us there before move forward to farm 75 - 80, which higher chances in legendary and 3 hours book of learning. So, compare to the previous patch difficulty, the time user able to farm around 80 is backward, resources get from salvage lesser, and the skill also upgrade slower(I remember my BH in this bronze left many book of learning after all skill max). Will feel bored if don't have any surprise middle of long time farming.

By the way, any changes in trial environment? Really sad when hero kill by tree chopping or not responding area(Like some area around Kara, wouldn't effect on click, can't move there with directly clicking) especially on high level trials with tough boss. Sometimes our hero not respond on click when want to dodge big amount of attacks(think because of tree and other environment, less occurs in previous patch), and sometimes bravely run too far into mobs group when we change the location of mobs by Eileen or magnet trap(As the current targeted mobs might be move too far from hero).

**Asad Butt** · 11-25-2019, 06:22 PM

The ephemerals should be salvageable, so that the mats are not lost. They should cost less and return the same or more, so there's an incentive to crafting them. Your explanation for increased trial difficulty that, "we want the progress in trials to feel more rewarding, and we think that can be achieved by having a steeper difficulty curve", with all due respect, seems very made up. If the trial difficulty curve is less steep, the leaderboard will actually better reflect the players' standing with respect to others. Basically, the curve should look like this: http://mathonweb.com/help_ebook/html...fungraph09.gif and not like this: http://mathonweb.com/help_ebook/html...nctions61b.gif .

**Tin Man** · 11-25-2019, 06:52 PM

Originally posted by Adrian (Developer) View Post

No, the time increase proposal was due to users using a deprecated client. Unfortunately we couldn't fix the trial progression reset in time during this event. On our priority list to fix it for the next events.

Okay Adrian (Developer) I am pretty sure that what you have written is clear but really, really, really want to make sure before I explode. You proposed adding two hours the Gold #3 ANB because you found out there were players out there using software versions earlier than v1.4.38. Your proposal for dealing with these players using older, easier software was to give them, along with everyone else, two additional hours to play the event. So you were going to grant two additional hours to the same players that already were able to overwhelm their peers because the trial levels of the older version are easier? So you were going to give players using the old version an additional two hours to farm Trial Level 100 for experience, gear and Books of Learning when so many could not even get to Trial Level 80?

Your logic astounds me if what I said above is accurate. Why would you ever even consider giving more time to everyone because some players are using the wrong software version to their advantage and have already been able to destroy their competition? I have to say that even considering giving time extensions because of players using old software versions to their own advantage should make the player base even more incredulous than the uproar caused when the players thought that the proposed extension was due to the trial progress reset bug.

I understand why you would not add the additional two hours when you looked into the matter further. Why on Earth Dream Primer would have ever considered that a good resolution is beyond me.

**Arionthe** · 11-25-2019, 07:54 PM

Ideal ANB experience (1) and the reality of Freemium mobile game revenue model (2) needs to exist in some kind of uneasy marriage. I will layout 2 and 1 in this post and suggest ways for an acceptable compromise.

2): ANB needs to be a gem sink. Eternium is already rather generous in terms of how it hands out the premium currency (gem). This generosity (7k/month easily without paying, 10k/month with a small sub) does mean that gem sinks need to be in the game in order to keep the lights on for the game to get continuous improvements. ANB is a big part of it. I estimate that I spent about 4000 to 4500 per ANB between all the slot unlocks, reforges, boosters (just a few), and small crate (yes I only buy 1 small crate at the very beginning). The 2500 gem legendary crate does give ppl a significant leg up. However the big spenders should have some advantages so those big gem purchase items should stay in the game for those that choose to spend.

1):
a) Gold farming is experience killing during ANB. It's a must due to the cost of crafting jewelry as well as part of the crafting cost in pursuit of lv77s. For ANB, our precious gametime is better spend on playing the game, gathering the exp, building out the character.

b) Jewelry crafting is also a PITA. Sitting there constantly clicking on 840 gold crafts that will result in things inevitably gets junked since the main acct has better is not a good use of ANB game time (even if the timer doesn't tick down during this soul sucking experience).

c) Rush to lv70 and then wait for 5 days for skills to cook might be efficient but clumps the ANB playing time towards the last couple of days. RL can often intrude. Would be nicer to have a more evenly spaced out playing time during ANB.

d) RNG has too large of an influence in a timed competition especially for those that can't have too many shots at crafting that perfect weapon.

Suggestions:
1) Double Ephemeral Jewelry boxes. You can two necklaces, four rings. This way you can have 1 set for xp and 1 set for push. Eliminate the need for jewelry crafting entirely. It adds nothing to the ANB experience. Heck this can be a small gem sink too. Sell Ephemeral jewelry box for 250/500 gem each. Even a cheapskate like me will gladly buy it as soon as I reach hometown to make my ANB experience better.

2) eliminate the need for specialized gold farming. Re-running SM for 100s of times is nobody's idea of fun. Those don't take too much of the event timer but a drastic time sink for RL. With jewelry crafting removed, see 1), the need for gold has dropped significantly. However crafting's gold cost can still make one's eyes bleed. I see that one of the proposed changes is dramatically lowered crafting cost for ephemeral crafts. That could work.. but honestly why not remove gold cost for crafts during ANB, period. Basically make the only gold sink those stew/food that grants 10min of minor buff. The idea is don't make players get out of trial grinding just to get gold. So reduce the need for gold to the point where the gold yielded by TL is sufficient.

3) Make emp gear box legendary instead of epic. Epic was fine when the top level gear was only lv70. Now with 77s in existence, lv70 legendary is really just baseline items. Especially with the planned lowering of crafting costs, emp gear importance will shrink like the unmentionables during a skinny dip in the dead of winter. So players get a baseline gear to start their TL grinding.

ANB experience really starts at the TL. Everything leading to it are just drudgery one has to get through. Allow the players to hit TL as soon as they can and never make them get out of TL will make for a better overall ANB experience.

4) Grant a milestone reward at Lv70 that instantly levels a skill to 10, another at TL10, and finally a third at TL20. Often times players are waiting for 2-3 skills to hit Lv10 before starting the bulk of their ANB playing (skill cooking). This accelerates this process so the ANB playing time can be more evenly spread out for the event duration.

5) Instead of tickets, make a ranking entrance fee to participate in ANB instead. Everyone can play in ANB for free but only those that pay the ranking entrance fee will have their final results ranked. Bronze: 500 gems, Silver: 1k, Gold: 2k. This is the explicit gem sink also as a compensation for giving players 3 accelerated Lv10 skills (how many gems does it take to take it all the way to lv10?) in 4).

Adrian (Developer) for your consideration

**Shilien** · 11-25-2019, 08:23 PM

+ making the craft cheaper during ANB
+ saving the existing difficultly and Celestial points

- nerfing medals is a clear absurd because that is what we competed higher for, we deserved these by a large amount of efforts we put, and we should better still have the medals in the event.
- crafting ephemerals during the event will prevent many people from socketing and enchanting their sudden legit lucky gear. I have no joy to lose anything I earned by my time and legit playing only because you still haven't figured out how to avoid tricky crafting of several people.
- I, personally, can't understand why didn't you come up and tell the community that you've just reconsidered giving additional hours and I feel people's frustration even if I didn't need or want those hours. The lack of communication never ends well.

! I propose to equal the boost % of gold and gemstones during the event.

**Anjaeka** · 11-25-2019, 08:37 PM

I agree with other comments about the need to reduce time spent cooking abilities during ANB. A drastic increase in BOL, additional upgrade slots, and reduced gem cost to upgrade would all be good solutions IMO.

Arionthe I also agree with you about jewelry crafting. Any ring or necklace I craft during ANB is pure junk that ends up getting sold. I don’t spend gold for random stats, so I end up spending gems and just accept whatever value I get on the first roll. That means that my non Ephemeral jewelry is pretty much worthless outside of ANB and is just a gem suck.

I don’t think rookie players are ever going to be able to compete for LB positions against veteran players in ANB. Perhaps it would be beneficial to include some really nice bonuses and awards for players who choose to stick to Story Mode. Maybe a big gem bonus/CE’s for completing Normal and increasing for Heroic and Legendary. As it stands, it’s not advantageous to do any of the quests in Story Mode if you want to compete on the LB. it takes too much time and the rewards aren’t high enough. This would give new players something that they can succeed at and also give them rewards they can use to buff their regular characters. Back when playing time wasn’t limited during events, we were able to spend time in Story Mode and get rewarded for it. Now with very limited play time, we pretty much have to stick to trials to get any rewards.

**Jeverzon** · 11-25-2019, 08:49 PM

I stopped unbelieving in Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy long, long ago. Extollances of innocence as far as "money grabbing" are concerned are vastly offset by the amount of effort put forth that had that very effect. Any mouthings that it was an unintended consequence ring hollow as a result and I'll believe it when I see concrete proof otherwise.

Want to take a step towards correcting this opinion? Simple. Make Titan's Marks craftable with salvagable materials & gold. But...that's not going to happen and we all know it.

Want to take a different step then? Promise the players the there will me no further major changes to the game (Eg: gear cap rises, difficulty rises, etc) that would essentually make the game harder and/or necessitate tossing their present gear and create new gear. But...this too is not going to happen either and we all know it.

Now at this point it's proven only this: The changes made to the game have benefited a small few at the expense of the rest for whatever reasoning those changes might have had in their making.

And yet, I still find myself hoping the game might improve at some point in spite of it's present condition. So even though I might not believe in Santa Claus I still believe in reasons the myth was created. So I hope that somehow the spirit of this game might continue, dispite the present course it seems to be taking.

**MtDoom** · 11-25-2019, 09:10 PM

Thanks for opening this thread and soliciting feedback. I greatly appreciate your efforts to keep updating the game to keep it fun for all levels of players, to reduce cheaters/exploiters, and to make it better generally. Some updates will be less than perfect, and PLEASE try to avoid major bugs as in recent past events, but overall thanks for keeping this game dynamic!

Here's my two cents.

No ephemeral crafting, PLEASE! Being able to keep 1 or 2 gear items from the event and transferring them into my main account is one of the few prizes for playing the event. As a top 50 player with TL over 2000 in my main account, there are very few rewards for gameplay, inside or outside of events. Please don't take this one away.

Alternative solutions:
1) Just keep weeding out the cheaters via game updates and post event review, as you are already doing, with better and better effect. Thank you for removing offline crafting - this has resulted in dramatically fewer obvious cheaters this time around. Ideally, all cheating would be eliminated within the event, not after, but I suspect this will never be completely achievable.
2) Increase in-game gear drops to compensate for the increased TL difficulty. This will make crafting a little less critical. During the most recent ANB event, I found less than a handful of usable item drops during my progression and during endgame grinding and pushing. For me, it meant that the ONLY way to get good gear was to craft.

Medal rewards: OK with me to disable them within ANB events. I have several medals now (yay!), but as others have said, they don't really give much real bonus in gameplay. I'm happy to give it up during ANB events. Because season events are so long in duration, it doesn't make sense to disable medals for season events - otherwise, what's the point of the medal at all? If a lot of players want to keep their medal buffs, consider dropping the buffs by 50% or more during ANB events - but that may be just too complicated.

Celestial items. Please keep them. Again, they are one of the few rewards left for advanced play. And they are an even more exciting reward for beginning or intermediate players. However, please consider higher level celestial items. Even with maxed stats and added vitality, a level 70 celestial item doesn't compete with any crafted item when you are guaranteed to get at least a level 71 with a single roll. I was unaware there were any celestial transforms during ANB events - only 2 celestial items. Perhaps I am uninformed or it may have just been a typo.

Trial level difficulty: Great move! I think this adds a lot more potential strategy to higher level gameplay. Grinding experience at TL 100 is no longer a given, since it is much harder. Now players must decide to grind at higher levels for better drops or lower levels for faster experience. Yes, it is frustrating, but it adds more decision making into the game at higher levels.

Communications: Thanks again for communicating with us mere players! Forums are fine for discussions. But please use in game mail (as you have in the past) for significant final decisions/updates (such as increased TL difficulty).

Jewelry: 2 sets, during ANB events, please. Grinding for gold in order to craft jewelry is no fun, particularly when playtime is limited.

Thanks for the great game.

**DazednConfused** · 11-26-2019, 12:55 AM

I just wish we would have known that we weren't getting those two hours before the event ended. So much confusion. I left time on my clock in good faith.

**BAgate** · 11-26-2019, 01:41 AM

Re: medals - the reason people who don't have them think they are so great is because no one can see the diminishing returns until they have them. Let people click on a medal and get a details dialog that shows what the benefit is for the next 10 medals would solve this problem. I'll admit I thought they were terrible when they were released, but now that I have a few and see how little benefit subsequent ones are I don't have as big of an issue. The only other thing would be to mix up which medals are received as rewards. Keeping certain medals for only the elites creates a divide. The difference between the top and the middle should be number, not type.

Jewelry - You have been telling us this will get reworked for years. Maybe bump that up the list.

Items - as long as crafting is RNG based then what you do doesn't matter, progress will still be based on luck. The difference between a good lvl77 weapon and even a good lvl 75 is huge, between 77 and 71 is titanic. Either go back to each lvl requires a set amount of resources or find some way to give everyone good weapons. Even making crafting cheaper reduces ANBs to a coin flip. Are you lucky or not? For example, I've never crafted a lvl 77 ever, even in main. Others have done it multiple times. In an ANB that disparity in luck makes a HUGE difference.

resources - the biggest roadblock I ran into this last ANB was gold. There just isn't time to farm. If you want crafting, the cost has to be cut DRASTICALLY. Further, why is the essence economy still so unbalanced? Either remove the gold cost for converting essences (make it just 3 or 5 to 1) or switch dodge from being water to air.

difficulty - I actually kind of like the fact that not everyone gets all the rewards. Most people can hit 80 and get one celestial something, but only the top people can hit 100 and get a 2nd. I would just bump some of the boosters to being rewarded earlier. I frequently find that I get those 90-100 TL booster rewards too late to use them, so they go to my main account. Not really what I want from ANB rewards.

What I'd like to see is an alternative path in ANBs. If you don't want to push trials, or just aren't good enough, give rewards for story mode. Maybe bags of gold and basic crafting crates for finishing each act on normal difficulty, more gold and better resource crates for finishing heroic difficulty, and 300 gems and some gemstone packs for finishing legendary difficulty. Make running story mode a couple times in an ANB a way to gather resources for beginners.

**Nhat** · 11-26-2019, 02:16 AM

Arionthe pointed out the issue that all these suggestions and changes are attempting to address, but I feel I should mention it explicitly => What is the INTENTION of ANB? What is the event meant to be providing to the players? And what "tests of skills" makes a player "worthy" for rewards?

We can go around tweaking and changing forever, but without a proper aim, it will simply continue to be so...

For me, ANB originally provided what it claimed, that "New Beginning" experience - I'm back at level 1, going through and seeing how high I can get within the time limit... using the knowledge I've gained from normal gameplay... most players starts on the same level (except for Gems accumulated, which serves as a way to "even things" with paying players, I suppose...)

Then things changed with the Crafting System, and then again with Medals, things now carry over from the normal game - players no longer starts on the same level, and thus the whole "New Beginning" is lost, and there's a separation between new and "veterans". Yes, I've read most of the arguments for having Medals in ANB, I stand by my opinion and still will never use them.

To me, ANB is NOT the place to be experimenting, it's where you put the results of all those experiments to the test, pedal to the metal, flooring it and charge! Hit those milestones for the rewards to either help you charge further, or to use for your NORMAL game.

But that also bring up another issue, what is considered "rewarding" for normal game now? Why should players spend their time and efforts in ANB in the first place?

For the "veterans", the only thing of real worth to players are Celestial Transform - but even then, you're going to need a lot of crafting to hope for that level 77 to even use the CT on...

Medals are the other goal, they boost your heroes and thus allow you to push to higher trials. I simply feel they have no place within ANB, Seasons is another thing - since that's for your existing heroes, where there are already all those gear and level advantages between new and veterans anyway...

For the newer players, there's currently the Custom Rare Jewelry boxes, and you'll also potentially get a fully unlocked Hero... but maybe there should be something here to help them "catch up", gear/resource wise... I would much rather compete on "skills", than simply winning because I've been playing longer and thus have better gear and/or stats, but that's just me...

So, what is the "ideal" ANB experience for the players?

Would starting all players at level 70, all skills at level 10, 9x lvl 77 Ephemeral Legendary cubes and 3x level 70 Ephemeral Legendary jewelry pieces be feasible? The only thing that matters is which gear you decide to go with and how you handle your trials... Would that be "fun"? I don't know, it feels like that's what everyone is pretty much heading to anyway, all other things are simply "prep work" to get there, and are also opened to exploitation...

Going back to the original topics:

Crafting:

Depends on what you actually mean by "Ephemeral Crafting"... since the only way to remove the "luck" factor (real or exploited) is to make it FIXED level and stats, otherwise, this changes nothing.
Also, new players will still not have all the required recipes to even think about "experimenting" anyway, and the disparity between the Crafting Mastery level is also another factor.

So, unless you're planning to address the Crafting Levels, recipes, levels and value of crafted items - simply reducing costs and making it Ephemeral solves nothing.

Trial Difficulty:

How you want the difficulty to be for the rewards is up to you, I've always thought that potential end game gear rewards shouldn't be "easy" to get - as many have been claiming for a while...

**NoSuchReality** · 11-26-2019, 02:44 AM

I played a little bit when I saw another forum comment on Gold being open to all. Playing cold, unaware of the changes and not really looking to maximize, I was only blundering around at TL70 with two hours on my clock left when then event ended.

For all the changes I did see which are welcome, it is still essentially the exact same game facing the exact same core problem. That problem simply is exploits.

Exploits ranging from tweaky play to borderline hack.

JIMHO, if you want to "fix" the ANB tournaments, you need to eliminate the incentive to game the game. Things like abandoning a level loses part (maybe 50%) of the experience gained. XP farming effectively is a critical part of the game, XP farming nuking the first mob and abandoning, is a Pavlovian response. In addition, if the attack issue is still there where you can get faster than your rated attack speed that needs fixing too.

These types of learned ANB and game behavior really, IMHO, wreck the tournament experience for many.

Announcement

Proposed ANB changes draft #1 [discussion]

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