ANB Ability Timelock Suggestion

[Terranisaur]

Thanks for putting on these 3 ANB events they were fantastic. After going through all three I only have one major suggestion that I feel would make the events feel better. In all three events I found myself excited to play the new event, only to realize that actually playing the event was bad for my progress! This was a really unfortunate feeling, as waiting till late in the week to do most of the playing is a disappointing way to start my weekend, and overall feels wrong. What I mean is that since abilities are timelocked, the player has a great incentive in a fixed playtime format to start the event and only play enough to start unlocking a few abilities and get enough gold to upgrade the abilities. This makes a huge difference as waiting several days for abilities to upgrade can hugely increase your damage and give you a real advantage in the event.
I would like to propose a fix for this issue, that would still incentivize players to pay for gems and trial packs, but also make it so players can simply play the event when they want and be excited about it. The fix is to make it so abilities upgrade based on event time spent in levels, rather than overall event time. So, while a player is in a level and their 12,9,6 hours are counting down, their ability upgrades would also be going, and not any other time. This would require abilities to upgrade faster for events, or have tomes drop more often to compensate for the lack of time to upgrade abilities.
Hopefully there is a solution to this problem that does not require too much development work! I would love to hear what other people think about this issue, and if anyone else has any solutions besides the one I came up with.

[Ozymandius]

Actually, the incentive is to purchase one of the large event packs that gives "books of learning" that will allow you to skip the waiting game. I cannot remember the exact numbers but the largest event pack provides around 30-40 hours of upgrade time. Maybe someone has a screen shot of event packs to clarify? If a player purchases the large event pack, opens both ability upgrade slots, and uses gems to push through the first 5 ability upgrades, the books of learning will allow them to get the most important abilities for that hero class unlocked and leveled up on the first day. That would allow a player to push through the lower levels faster to reach the higher trials where more books of learning are dropped more frequently.

Since books of learning are dropped during game play, you can "technically" argue that the event is not play to win. However, a player can purchase books through an event pack and also get the same book drops during game play, so the advantage clearly is in favor of those who purchase an event pack. I suspect that many of those near the tops of the leaderboards purchased one or more event packs to skip the waiting game. I do not see the game developers removing the event pack option since it is probably a major source of revenue for them, especially with the three level ANB format.

The only other way to level the playing field is to make events pay to play. Everyone would pay the same entry fee in gems (either saved up or purchased) and receive the same event pack, with no other event pack purchases allowed during the event. The event pack would also include the same amount of gems, gold, and crafting materials as well, so the event account would be completely separate with no gem upgrades other than those from game play. Crafting recipes would all be opened during the event and crafting perks would be the same level for all event players. The only thing that would separate the players during the event would be game skills and strategy.

Then if the Devs can just figure out a way to shut down the game exploits used by cheaters, we could finally have a "new beginning" event worthy of the name.

[BalthasarHohenheim]

I'm not sure why but many beginners seem to miss the fact, that you can instantly finish a ability for a moderate amout of gems. Buying the event packs for Books of Learning is a very bad idea. For the purpose of evaluation a event pack you should consider books of learning to be worthless, since none of the packs offer enough to upgrade even a single ability to level 10.

The top players usually just directly uprade important skills to 10 via gems. I cost about 1100 Gems per ability for level 10 and about 600 gems for level 9. For each class there are 2-3 Abilities that you need at 10 since they gain extras at that level (Shockwave for Warrior, Blizzard/Immolate/ArcLightning for Mage). So event packs aren't actually of interest here.

A truly fair ANB would be one with everything unlocked (including extra Ability upgrade slots), no Medals or Mastery Levels and all gem related mechanics disabeled. But such an event wouldn't be profitable and therefore will never be.

[Terranisaur]

I think my post was misunderstood by both of the comments above. It has nothing to do with pay to win , fairness, or buying packs in the current format, unless you're suggesting we all go out and spend $90 per event to finish all ability upgrades the first day. Playing minimally at the start of the week is always going to give you a good advantage even if you spend money on a few of the event packs.

[yaddab]

I think my post was misunderstood by both of the comments above. It has nothing to do with pay to win , fairness, or buying packs in the current format, unless you're suggesting we all go out and spend $90 per event to finish all ability upgrades the first day. Playing minimally at the start of the week is always going to give you a good advantage even if you spend money on a few of the event packs.

I consider cooking abilities as an "idle" part of the game, for normal play it does not matter but for ANB I can keep 1 or 2 cooking while I work and sleep. As Ozzy said that fact books drop during game play, does in and of itself mean that your skills are upgrading faster during game play than when you are offline.

I think you are sort of looking for a format where you can upgrade a reasonable amount of abilities to a workable level in 6 hours - the mathemagicians on the forum can deal with that, but it does not seem feasible to me.

[BAgate]

I think what the OP is trying to say is that the 'ideal' way to go is to play just enough to reach a level that unlocks skills and then wait while those skills advance and then play most of your time late in the week. While that is strategically optimal it isn't very satisfying and doesn't fit everyone's schedule. So he would like some mechanic that would not penalize him for playing more early in the week.

[Terranisaur]

BAgate got what I was saying, thanks for clearing that up!

[Ozymandius]

I think what the OP is trying to say is that the 'ideal' way to go is to play just enough to reach a level that unlocks skills and then wait while those skills advance and then play most of your time late in the week. While that is strategically optimal it isn't very satisfying and doesn't fit everyone's schedule. So he would like some mechanic that would not penalize him for playing more early in the week.

The only way to do that now is to use the books of learning to upgrade abilities or to purchase ability upgrades using gems. Most players are using some combination of those two options already. There aren't enough hours on the event clock to just count active play time towards ability upgrades. I don't think that many players would be happy having to make their final push with abilities that are only around level 4 or 5, especially since the Celestial box awards are in the higher trials where having key abilities upgraded makes a big difference. I doubt that we will see shorter ability upgrade times, since the longer times incentivize players to spend gems and buy event packs.

I agree that it would be nice to play more at the beginning of an event, but limiting ability upgrades is probably not the way to do it. Maybe adding in some sort of countdown timer that awards more XP, gold, and gemstones on day 1, followed by a lesser bonus on day 2, and finally getting down to the regular 50% bonus on the final day of play. That would allow players to maximize the opening weekend of an event. It would not likely change the results all that much as experienced players would simply adjust their strategy, but it would allow newer players to level up their hero faster.

Alternatively, the event could just start on a Monday instead of Friday to allow players to make their final push during a weekend instead of a workday.