ANB needs to be fixed. Click here to find out how.

[duckel]

I want to state some problems with the current ANB design. By now everyone should have realized how you gotta spend lots of gems to even reach TL100, let alone to compete for the top spots. This is especially true for mobile players and those that are not super efficient with leveling.
I want to emphasize which gem costs, design choices and disadvantages appear under the current system.



New players are hindered big times by even participating in higher TLs due to the enormous gems costs for skill upgrade slots. 400+900 gems is a lot for a fresh player. Of course, you may think that there are books and everything is fine. But in reality you can only find a reasonable amount of 3h books from TL80+. Without the 2nd research slot, you won't even reach TL 80, unless you substitute the slot by directly paying gems for the ability upgrades.

Finding XP gear early on is too limited, especially in story mode. Note, that this is the route that beginners with few gems naturally take, to get the minions. I had exactly 1 XP gear drop from 1-60 in story mode within like 100 drops. This is unacceptable. I had however streaks of 5+ life regen drops...To substitute xp drops, you gotta spend gems on crafting crates. A nono for beginners (remember research slots).

So that leads us to the next problem:
Stat distribution. Every friggin piece got life regen, block, dodge, gold, and whatnot. Sure you can craft for a piece without crap stats. thats what the big spenders can do if you need 4*70 greater essences for a legendary set piece. or you can reforge (if you have lots of gems). but that is again limited to one slot, where I most of the time find stuff with 2 useless stats. This also leads to a shortage of fire essences and oversupply of water essences.

Now comes the big thing. 75% of the top100 are cheaters that exploit certain game mechanics to gain set gear, sockets, crafting material, gems, save time. These occupy the LB since Bronze #1. Developers havent banned players clearly exploiting bugs and mechanics. At the same time the stupid legit people dump their coins to compete fornthe medals.

To adress all these issues, the following actions need to be taken to make ANB a reasonable competition:

Decrease research slot costs to around 50+200 gems.
Establish essences parity.
Increase XP drop ratio in story mode.
Decrease distriburion of life regen, block, dodge stats significantly (95%).
Decrease extra gold stat distribution a little (like 60%).
Remove master crafter crates from ANB.
Maxbe even limit maximum of gems you are able to spend during an event.
Ban exploiters and past exploiters, plus fix exploits.
Actively identify and stop people from botting gems and materials.
Increase communication with the community.

These are just a few things that need to be adressed and i am sure there are a few more needed to bring the event to a fair ground.

[Primus]

Absolutely agree with every point.

[lmcelhiney]

I want to state some problems with the current ANB design. These are just a few things that need to be adressed and i am sure there are a few more needed to bring the event to a fair ground.

A fairly-done explanation of what we all face (minus those who exploit in some way). These are not just issues for new players nor just with the ANBs. I do not believe it is the goal of the developers to make this a level playing field for all different skills. I believe, also, that there is no expectation that medals and other rewards should be an expectation for all players. There is, however, an expectation that each individual player develop their skills and knowledge base to achieve higher levels, faster.

With the full awareness that there are many ways to SCAM the game and share exploits with others, I would STILL rather that the developers work to increase the value of the game for the rest of us, rather than spending their limited resources in policing the member base and plugging holes. Finding and fixing exploitable code has a limited ROI, as the new code just becomes a challenge to be re-attacked. (Hint: look at the Virus protection cashflow model on your computer OS of choice.)

A significant part of what we need to do is is to work with the resources which the RNG offers during an ANB. Many have fine tuned their skills to understand and work with what is given to achieve success. (The ANBs might be a way to test run functionality to see what it would offer to the game.)

[Spyclown]

It looks and sounds like you wrote this in a "rage quit" moment, We all know that feeling!

Facts:

• ANB events are NOT geared towards greenhorns.
• To be competitive in ANB one NEEDS to spend Gems and/or cash.


IMO:

• Your Success is dependent on your play style and ability to use the resources on hand
Stated: you had "like 100 drops" and only 1 piece had +XP on it. (Solution: Sell some of those pieces to the vendor and use gold to reforge one of those worthless stats to +XP on your green and blue gear.)

• Know what you want prior to opening and using the custom Ephemeral boxes.
During Bronze and silver ANB it's a safe bet due to the amount of play time allotted that those purple pieces will be replaced - Why not stack +XP gear on them for a some quick CPs?

• Custom Ephemeral Jewelry - Choose wisely.

• Stat distribution: Every piece sucks - yep, welcome to the club. One reason when finding that perfect stated piece is so rewarding.

• Save your gems in preparation for ANB events!! Do your daily quests, farm story levels, and save, save, save.

• To be competitive, one will need to spend 1500 gems minimum.


As a 100% legit player and typically finishing in the top 100.. Your statement: 75% of the top 100 are cheating in some way shape of form is ludicrous.

I don't agree that the changes you are proposing NEED to be implemented to make ANB a reasonable competition.

However I would like to see: A price reduction on the ability slots as other "things" have reduced pricing during ANB (Inventory space).


This ANB is a new format and is overall an improvement over the previous. There are still balance patches and tweaking to be had.

[Morgan Davies]

Gems exist, you can't wish them away so you can be in the top 10.

New players should not be in the top ranks. You should build up your characters to the point to where they are bringing in gems/day.
5 daily quests plus 50 ads plus 100 gems/day for supporting the developers gives you 450 GEMS EVERY DAY!!!!

I've been in the top 10 these last 2 ANBs and I don't cheat or hack or anything. I play the game, go into the event with 2-3k gems (1 week of farming) and own some ****.

Not only that but I posted how to do it.

As per your xp gear. If you buy 2x50 gem crates, you can craft full blue xp/power gear for every slot all the way up to lvl 50+ in 30 minutes of played time. Buy a couple more and you are set thru 70. Then literally use all the ephemeral rewards for xp gear all the way to TL100 in 1.5 hours played time. Voila all done for no more than 1600 gems total.

So, 1600 gems is a little more that 3 days of gem farming. I feel like that's very reasonable for 2 C-Boxes.

Learn the intricacies of the game before you call nerf and cheat and hackers. If you aren't willing to farm some gems, you don't deserve to be in the top ranks. That all being said, some people spent way too much money to just buy gems and better xp gear for the event. Would like to see them in their own bracket or something. Takes away from the spirit of competition.

[Alica2122]

I am quite average player (ranking around 200 in each ANB) but I do not agree with most of the proposals.

High gem costs? every day, each player can get around 400 gems (5x50 gems from ads, 100-120 gems from daily quests, some from drops and daily rewards). If the drop rate of ads is around one per minute (discussed somewhere else), one hour playing in each day is sufficient to get all the gems. And the cost of 2nd skill slot is 400 gems, it is just about one hour playing. Many players do not open 3rd slot.

Difficult to finding XP gears? Looking at the leaderboards, it is easy to see that most of players still use ephemeral items to get TL100. Use the ephemeral wisely.

High cost of crafting? If they craft some gears, they mostly craft rare, or epic, not legendary. And the cost of rare/epic gears are quite reasonable.

75% top players cheating? there may be some cheaters, but they should be absolute minority. As I am quite average player, I can reach rank 200 easily, there is no reason that better players cannot reach higher ranks. I needed 1h30 to reach lvl 70 while other can do in 30-45min. For examples see the videos from Fendy to see how good players can play. Learn from them, ask them if needed.

[BAgate]

My 2 cents on ANBs:

1) essence distribution is definitely broken. Smoothing this out is a must.

2) In a time limited event, having to farm gold is boring. Maybe increasing the passive gold boost to 150%.

3) give newbies something to do. Create an alternative path. For those not good enough to push trials, let them run story mode. Give a jewelry box for completing normal and heroic and an old fashioned custom legendary box for completing legendary difficulty.

4) When reforging items, let us reforge the set it belongs to (or item within it) as one of the options. Finding a great piece of gear but of the wrong set, or finding a great weapon that is the same as one you already have instead of its pair is a killer.

5) Don't know how feasible this would be, but when a silver or gold event is ongoing, give everyone who didn't get a ticket a war supplies event they can run instead.

[ShotDead]

Gems exist, you can't wish them away so you can be in the top 10.

New players should not be in the top ranks. You should build up your characters to the point to where they are bringing in gems/day.
5 daily quests plus 50 ads plus 100 gems/day for supporting the developers gives you 450 GEMS EVERY DAY!!!!

I've been in the top 10 these last 2 ANBs and I don't cheat or hack or anything. I play the game, go into the event with 2-3k gems (1 week of farming) and own some ****.

Not only that but I posted how to do it.

As per your xp gear. If you buy 2x50 gem crates, you can craft full blue xp/power gear for every slot all the way up to lvl 50+ in 30 minutes of played time. Buy a couple more and you are set thru 70. Then literally use all the ephemeral rewards for xp gear all the way to TL100 in 1.5 hours played time. Voila all done for no more than 1600 gems total.

So, 1600 gems is a little more that 3 days of gem farming. I feel like that's very reasonable for 2 C-Boxes.

Learn the intricacies of the game before you call nerf and cheat and hackers. If you aren't willing to farm some gems, you don't deserve to be in the top ranks. That all being said, some people spent way too much money to just buy gems and better xp gear for the event. Would like to see them in their own bracket or something. Takes away from the spirit of competition.

^ This ! Everything I wanted to say ! I have tried spending a lot of gems, doesn't works. I know my limitations and I know that I'm not a great player, I'll never be in top 10, 25 or maybe even in 50 but getting 2 CBox doesn't needs too many gems if you know how to do it.

[BardPitt]

I want to state some problems with the current ANB design. By now everyone should have realized how you gotta spend lots of gems to even reach TL100, let alone to compete for the top spots. This is especially true for mobile players and those that are not super efficient with leveling.
I want to emphasize which gem costs, design choices and disadvantages appear under the current system.



New players are hindered big times by even participating in higher TLs due to the enormous gems costs for skill upgrade slots. 400+900 gems is a lot for a fresh player. Of course, you may think that there are books and everything is fine. But in reality you can only find a reasonable amount of 3h books from TL80+. Without the 2nd research slot, you won't even reach TL 80, unless you substitute the slot by directly paying gems for the ability upgrades.

Finding XP gear early on is too limited, especially in story mode. Note, that this is the route that beginners with few gems naturally take, to get the minions. I had exactly 1 XP gear drop from 1-60 in story mode within like 100 drops. This is unacceptable. I had however streaks of 5+ life regen drops...To substitute xp drops, you gotta spend gems on crafting crates. A nono for beginners (remember research slots).

So that leads us to the next problem:
Stat distribution. Every friggin piece got life regen, block, dodge, gold, and whatnot. Sure you can craft for a piece without crap stats. thats what the big spenders can do if you need 4*70 greater essences for a legendary set piece. or you can reforge (if you have lots of gems). but that is again limited to one slot, where I most of the time find stuff with 2 useless stats. This also leads to a shortage of fire essences and oversupply of water essences.

Now comes the big thing. 75% of the top100 are cheaters that exploit certain game mechanics to gain set gear, sockets, crafting material, gems, save time. These occupy the LB since Bronze #1. Developers havent banned players clearly exploiting bugs and mechanics. At the same time the stupid legit people dump their coins to compete fornthe medals.

To adress all these issues, the following actions need to be taken to make ANB a reasonable competition:

Decrease research slot costs to around 50+200 gems.
Establish essences parity.
Increase XP drop ratio in story mode.
Decrease distriburion of life regen, block, dodge stats significantly (95%).
Decrease extra gold stat distribution a little (like 60%).
Remove master crafter crates from ANB.
Maxbe even limit maximum of gems you are able to spend during an event.
Ban exploiters and past exploiters, plus fix exploits.
Actively identify and stop people from botting gems and materials.
Increase communication with the community.

These are just a few things that need to be adressed and i am sure there are a few more needed to bring the event to a fair ground.

I spend ~1100 on average per league ( 3x 200% xp 100k gold and 2nd slot for upgrades ) tried running without the second upgrade and finished TL 100 in 3 hours on playtime on warrior.

tldr.: if you're an ok player you can go as low as 700gems to make TL 100 within 3 hours.

[MarkHark]

As per your xp gear. If you buy 2x50 gem crates, you can craft full blue xp/power gear for every slot all the way up to lvl 50+ in 30 minutes of played time. Buy a couple more and you are set thru 70. Then literally use all the ephemeral rewards for xp gear all the way to TL100 in 1.5 hours played time. Voila all done for no more than 1600 gems total.

So, you mean crafting a complete set of blue gear (I assume we're not talking unique/set gear, else we'd also be needing a celestial crate) right from start, and then new replacements at intervals until we reach level 50? Not sure I get enough fire essences for that from just two crates.
How often and at which levels do you suggest replacing old gears for newly crafted ones?

[ShotDead]

So, you mean crafting a complete set of blue gear (I assume we're not talking unique/set gear, else we'd also be needing a celestial crate) right from start, and then new replacements at intervals until we reach level 50? Not sure I get enough fire essences for that from just two crates.
How often and at which levels do you suggest replacing old gears for newly crafted ones?

Not sets, just XP gear and jewellery. TBH it seems like waste of resources crafting blues till some 15-20 lvl. You can craft XP greens till then and make blue later. Remember you get essences from the salvage also Plus the chests given as milestone rewards may drop a XP gear. I think a total of 5-7 crates are enough for crafting after every 5-10 levels.

[lmcelhiney]

I spend ~1100 on average per league (

Please, when you choose to quote a previous message in a thread, edit it to only a sentence or two, which is directly appropriate to the point you are making. Everyone can scroll upward to see the original message and having a duplicate in your message really dilutes what you want to emphasize. Thank you!

(Just my point, I speak for no one else. ~No one else would let me speak for them! )

[lmcelhiney]

My 2 cents on ANBs:

1) essence distribution is definitely broken.
2) In a time limited event, having to farm gold is boring.
3) Newbies...For those not good enough to push trials, let them run story mode.
5) ... a war supplies event they can run instead.

Well-said.

1) Essences are the replacement for the previous plethora of gear drops. They need to be of value! Having 1000s of Silver Ore does no one any good...
2) Having to farm gold is not only boring, but "dangerous" to your ability to actually progress.
3) Everyone can run Story Mode. The only definite rewards are gems for the first 5 runs of a story at each level AND experience/CL. A reward at the end of N/H/L would be reasonable. (BTW: N/H/L does not pertain to the Stanley Cup! :-)
5) Typically, a War Supplies event is run before an ANB. I support having one before Bronze, Silver and Gold for everyone, not just those who have no ticket to the next event.

[Morgan Davies]

Essence distribution is not ANB specific. When they changed the drop rates of Deflect, %gold, and maybe dodge% too?...they didn't compensate for the saturation of water essences that would put in the game (roughly double everything else). I regularly am salvaging entire inventories of legendary gear and it always yields double water essence.

I have a feeling they are waiting to determine what 2nd stat you cannot go without when crafting the perfect XP farming gear for warriors. For BH it is XP/CD so to make a legendary piece you need double fire essence (70 Greaters) for one piece if you want those both stats on it. I don;t play a warrior so I am not sure what that stat it, but once the meta is set in stone for warrior XP grinding, you will likely see a certain stat change to fire essence.

The reason I think all this is because it makes those people buying the 2500 gem boxes buy double since they will onyl be able to make 1 piece of gear that method instead of two.

Huge theory I am aware, but it makes sense to me.

[lmcelhiney]

Certainly a good theory.

It is very easy to make the assumption that the current developmental changes to Eternium are for revenue stream only and not to improve game play. (Many posters have expressed a similar view.)

A counter-proposal is to look at the change to Ad boxes. The marketing of advertisements to this member base was/is a huge revenue stream and possibly brought in a similar amount of money to the sale of items for cash within the game. Why, then, would the developers limit that revenue stream by controlling the number of Ads to 50/account/day?

I am sure that the cost for individual in-game purchases are designed to bring in a certain potential revenue, but that comes down to the player's choice. However, according to posted messages, most folks appear to desire the greater number of "free" gems available, in trade for their time, and many report that they would gladly view many more than now allowed.

Overall, it is difficult to make a case for revenue being the reason for every change in the game...