Suggestions for ANBs

[bojck]

Papa_jim: I laughed at your list of skilled and oh not so rich players. Can you show the amount of gems they have and how much they spent for the last few anbs?
Benedicto: Prove my points wrong, don't try personal attack or give lecture 'cause you don't know anything about my playing skills. What you wrote brought absolutely nothing to the discussion.

grand_wazoo:
Like I said, resetting cm is just a side suggestion for gold events to make these hardest challenges more balanced to everyone. If you studied the leaderboard last gold anb, you'd see the top 25 or so have their gears at 76-77 lvl, socketed and enchanted. Some posted pictures they reached lvl70 within 9 mins. That's not skills.
I don't have problems if crafting mastery is kept for anbs if it's too tedious or painful to the majority of players. But to me an anb (a new beginning?!) should be like that, a new slate on everything gold, materials, skills, so why not cm and/or gems?
Now to my point you struggle to understand. With the limitation of gems carrying over from regular account, us players need to think seriously more on how to play, and rich players will have to fork out money to the devs for some value packs if they really want those medals. A win-win for both sides.

When I started playing, there were nearly 50k players joining an anb event on 3 leaderboards. I'll let you count the number this time. One quits a game when it becomes repetitive, and that has become true to Eternium current format.

Hey man, it's one thing to have an opinion, and another thing to tell people that have already done something that they cannot do the thing they've done. We've explained many times how you can play without spending a cent on the game and still rank very high. For example, me and Splendor did 151 with xp gear with mage for the fun of it. This means you don't have to spend a fortune and craft all 77s to get top 25. I know for a fact that 157 is totally doable in ANB without spending any money on the game.

That said, I do agree it will be fun to have an anb with limited budget (not each one) - in fact we did a 2K gems challenge some time ago, and enjoyed it. Spoiler alert - results were just a few levels lower (at most) than with a bigger budget. Not saying budget is not important - it sure is, but not to the extent most people think.

Btw leveling to 70 fast takes a lot of skill as well as game and event knowledge. Sure, not nearly as much skill as pushing high trials, which is the most demanding part of the game, and the one that matters most for good placement both in season and anb. For the record, 9 minutes is not that fast, and again you don't have to spend any money on the game to do that.

Regarding crafting mastery - I've given a suggestion to reduce the xp from crafting low-level items to 0 and increasing the xp earned from more expensive items, so crafting progress is more 'organic'.

[Arhi]

"after 2 years of playing) is mediocre at best." I said tw seasons, not two years. And I spelled that I play casually. High trial season pushing requires dozens and dozens attempts on a single trial, not my idea of fun.

And I cant be bothered to envy the PC players their placement since I choose to play this game on mobile (dreaming of Linux portal, yes). This is a game, not a commercial competition. Champions spend at least twice as much time on it as I do, that's how you get to be a champion.

My argument stands. I don't spend money, play casually, have fun and break into the top 100. I know what I am doing, skills, metas, priorities, strategies, managing resources. I follow the rabbit hole divers to learn what they discover (wonderful things!). Etc etc etc.

And I know who the big spenders are and simply don't compare myself to them.

So I have just read through all of this thread. Now I am not going to add much more to what has been said. What I will do is agree with Tin Man regarding levelling up to lv70. In gold, I did it in 9 min and I finished in the top 50 as a BH. In the last silver league, as a BH, I levelled to 70 in 24 minutes and finished top 50. Gem spend for gold 10k, Gem spend for Silver 1200. So limiting the gems really won't make that much difference.

The change I would like to see is your gold from main transferring over to AnB along with your Gems. Grinding gold is boring as hell and doesn't really take up much event time, circa 1.5mil per 5 min investment. Its gold I go through more, making jewelry, buying tavern things, transmutation, combining, etc etc etc.

More things in perspective, in AnB bronze, it currently took me 40 min to lv70 as I am playing mage now (long time BH player). Still reckon I will get top 100 with less than 1k gem spend. This is me as an experienced player, however by no means a pro.

[Romme]

So wait you want everyone to start at crafting master 0 so they have a 0% chance to craft higher than a lvl71 item until they level crafting mastery past 25, which is very tedious and would take up a lot of unnecessary time...

[LodWig]

the fondest memory with the game is the beginning, when you struggled with not having any resources

It's easy to get back to this so enjoyable moments: just delete the account and start a fresh one.

[LodWig]

I'm not concerned at all with all these fire from old vets, because certainly the suggestions is not advantageous to them.

On the contrary. Your suggestions would help old vets (like me), especially if they have some medals. They would help whales (the true kind, money-spenders) a lot more though.

You dismiss all the back-fire are being from old vets, because you are unable to defend properly your propositions. Please offer counter-arguments (or better ones) to all that was said against.

But on the health of all players index fingers' side, I also think the crafting system could have a little easy fix.

Simpler: change the entire mechanism of gaining ML, or lower the crafting cost. Certainly not ask for it to be done and done again. That's a silly activity requiring no skills at all.

[Blingblingchaching]

Tin Man: The time for 70 will vary from one player to another because their medals (bonuses) are different. Only when you try without medals or a certain number of medals then it can be considered a "standard". Same thing for "good" time to clear a TL (like Romme did 105 in 3x sec) or your spending only 3hrs in gold anb to clear ~tl140 (guaranteed a spot in top 100 nowadays). I think you can change the title but can't take the medals off.

I'm not concerned at all with all these fire from old vets, because certainly the suggestions is not advantageous to them. Giving up that position of power is never easy. I'm glad that at least you agree that the game is grindy and repetitive. The difference is "what we do about it". I propose changes while you look for "rabbit holes" in order to go back to the game.

And hat off to you for having spent 200 on an anb event. It's never worth that much to me. You are the rare species that free to play devs must cater to if they want to prolong the game's life.

Finally, I respect your opinions although ours are opposite. If we can agree to disagree (instead of name callings), that's better than most Americans nowadays, you know that !?

[LodWig]

each 70 in anbs with ~3k gem spent upfront

I can't speak for her as I played only Hunters, but for this class the only materials from a legendary crate that is used to get to 70 is the Mithril (for epic unique trinkets), which is contained in a crate costing 200 gems. That is what was meant by "a tiny bit of a legendary crate". So, full unlock, one 200% booster, one Master Crafter's Crate, total 1945 gems. Only 1045 if not buying the third cooking slot.

after 2 years of playing

Two seasons. Less than 8 months.

is mediocre at best

I challenge you to do better.

let's say a gold lasting 360'

As gems can be earned with the out-of-event heroes, the playtime available is irrelevant. Also, lately most leagues lasts 10 days. That's enough to easily earn north of 2K gems. Way more if 5-starring.


I'm sorry but the more you write the more I'm convinced your knowledge of the game is mediocre at best.

[LodWig]

First it clearly shows that the number of active players is falling rather quickly.

That's not the number of players, that's the number of entries in the Bounty Hunter leaderboard for the event. I've managed to get the total number of entries across the nine leaderboards (three leagues, three classes) for all past ANBs:

1 27472
2 28283
3 44396
4 34097
5 30334
6 32821
7 43463
8 37592
9 33956
10 32619

I don't see anything alarming here.

So essentially you are a whale that devs gets no money from.

Oh that's a good one!

New (skilled) players have no chance to compete against you unless they pay to catch up.

They just need to be as patient and obstinate as I was when I begun. See how I learned to rank higher while spending less gems in bronze leagues. In latest events I chose to spend more for comfort, I'm confident (over-confident?) I could have ranked only slightly lower with one or two less legendary crates.

if one does, should the devs cater a bit to help him/her

Are you asking for more pay-to-win?

against the medal laden vets

Now that's another topic entirely. Do you think my medals are the reason why I can do top 25 in bronze with less than 500 gems? If so, don't you think only twice or thrice that gem amount would compensate for the medals? (Hint: gems can be used to socket gear and buy gemstones, one Power brilliant is worth the six first Glory medals, two are worth the 25 first.) Medals are overrated, and as somebody said a while ago: players don't rank high because they have medals, they have medals because they rank high.

Let's your skills shine.

Exactly which skills are needed here?

[Stusmith50]

Bling bling, is your proposal therefore to make the game pay to win??? Instead of farming for those gems and making small payments for small amounts of gems, you think he should buy them? I thought you originally complained that the game favoured rich players?? You've switched your argument around 180 degrees, saying we need players to be stopped from farming gems and buy them instead?
I think you need to learn a bit more about the game, it's a very simple game on the surface, but requires some deeper understanding to progress. This community will help you with that, even if you do stroke their fur the wring way sometimes!

[Blingblingchaching]

Gosh thanks again for your table. It's truly gold. Now if other vets have kept a similar table!!!

[Blingblingchaching]

You said 3 things: same top gears, but playing on a crappy tablet with crappy fingers makes you barely crack the top 100 instead of top 25-50. so it supports the claim that PC players hold a big advantage - everyone here knows that. 2: your 20' brag to each 70 in anbs with ~3k gem spent upfront ( after 2 years of playing) is mediocre at best. 3. In 9 days of an anb (let's say a gold lasting 360' one can get ~1.5k gems free from the system). So your points are???

[Blingblingchaching]

Lodwig: you are a pro! Truly admire your bookkeepings of each of your events! And your table is full of valuable information.

First it clearly shows that the number of active players is falling rather quickly. And with ~10k players in 3 classes (assuming generously 5% pay a bit to play each season like you) the revenue is fast approaching a critical level (barely enough to keep the game up).
Secondly the amount of gems spent for silver and gold anbs is equivalent to $50-80 value packs that the devs are offering during the events. So essentially you are a whale that devs gets no money from. New (skilled) players have no chance to compete against you unless they pay to catch up. I think very very few are buying those value packs (low tens? devs correct me if I'm wrong) , but if one does, should the devs cater a bit to help him/her against the medal laden vets?

now about CM leveling that everyone is fuming about: the fix is very simple if devs adds a feature (a scale) to allow for making multiple same items (up to the maximum number of available slots) at a time. With 48 slots unlocked, that can speed things up by at least 2 orders of magnitude. But I get it, it will cost more and mess up people calculations to reach level 50. Yes many will have to settle for lower ML due to gold/material constraints. That's why I only suggest this for gold anbs - supposed to be the hardest challenge. Let's your skills shine.

[Blingblingchaching]

Then you also should have no problems with my proposal of limiting amount of gems one can carry over to anb. Devs are selling 1.5k gem & a legend crate for $30 for anbs, but they didn't get that from your 7k spending.

[Blingblingchaching]

Stusmith50: on the contrary that exactly how devs can stay in business. Logwig's detailed table said it all. For gold (and some silver) anbs in order to be in top 25 or so he had used an amount of gems that devs are selling for $50 (their Titan's chest value pack). With the current setup they got none of it from him.