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RE: =AQ= Frostval Season of Gifting Returns

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12/27/2024 10:08:04   
Demonlordhal
Member
 

 Honestly I've been donating trying to get ztoken donations considering there's 3 million donated. I want it to buy the guardian package mostly. And if I get extra, buy good items like a tent.
Post #: 126
12/27/2024 12:03:21   
Heroes of the Scape
Member

It's a token donation dry period right now. Always happens during 90% of the donation drives. It will pick back up the last couple days
AQ  Post #: 127
12/28/2024 1:23:38   
1stClassGenesis
Member

I pose a question to the AQ staff -- is the change to a 3-week long Frostval event significantly more taxing due to having to "compress" a set across 3 weeks instead of 4? I applaud this move, but if it is not sustainable, I wonder if a more elegant solution exists.

While we did hit the community milestone goal significantly early this year, the fact remains that there is more than a month to go, with predicted patterns showing that the next 4 weeks will see very little donation activity, with only the Verdant Earth Frostval Crown up for grabs until the last days when donations will pick back up for final standings. It is my earnest hope that the event duration shortens going forward, with my personal ideal being 3 weeks long (4, being generous).

I do maintain my position that donation by Gold Cap% and only by max levelled players would be a net good going forward, as detailed here.
Post #: 128
12/28/2024 13:20:10   
chaosnecro
Member

I enjoyed a windfall where I hit over 1B gold through donations. I'll be passing along the holiday spirit again tomorrow after I get myself a few gifts .
AQ  Post #: 129
1/8/2025 0:28:55   
Bu Kek Siansu
Member
 

 http://forums2.battleon.com/f/fb.asp?m=22419578
quote:

Frostval Season Begins
Decorate the BattleOn Tree 2024: A snow-covered BattleOn can mean only one thing - the Frostval season has arrived! Yulgar has replaced the fountain in BattleOn with a new tree just waiting for a player with an eye for decorations. So team up with Robina to find the best and brightest decorations to make your BattleOn Tree a shining beacon of joy. Frostval is one of AQ's oldest holiday traditions, and a favorite among players, as there are tons of rare and powerful items to collect all month long.


Sir, may we have a Frostval Tree Decoration Painting,
if it's possible to holdon the FTD for 1 week longer
since it includes ( new ) Weapon variants, Shield,
Spell and why not as the others have Paintings?


< Message edited by Bu Kek Siansu -- 1/8/2025 1:05:48 >
Post #: 130
1/8/2025 0:49:58   
Progseeks
Member
 

 Every frostval painting should have Decorating the Battleon Tree as its first quest.
AQ  Post #: 131
1/8/2025 1:04:46   
Bu Kek Siansu
Member
 

 I just found it out myself.

Ohh my bad, thanks, Progseeks.

Post #: 132
1/18/2025 15:57:52   
Sapphire
Banned


 I know the contest isn't over, and we are in a typically slow period , but I have to say, the changes to the contest have and will prove to heavily favor the most dedicated players (gold farmers) and whales (tokens). I believe recent changes were meant to be for everyone, but I truly think in many ways it's done the exact opposite.

For starters, when the gold contest changed from a top X contest to a gold drive, there were many players who liked the change because it created a QoL change. And while I argued against this, I was ultimately not too bothered by it because I never farmed for gold, and never will. LY, I simply mostly collected gold storage boxes which helped me outfit my alts as I leveled them to 150 earlier this year.

The change from giving the donations to any char who played and was eligible to a random char who happened to play that day, has had terrible consequences. For those who play alts only on occasion, they will not be able to make use of those donations FOR the contest if they had planned to in the past. For anyone who wanted to play for 5 or 10 minutes on an alt, they might get a gold donation that is useless for the contest. I have played my alts still on many of these days and the result is disaterous for donations received. While they're being distributed to those who have less than 10 chars more than those with 10 chars, the end result for the future is simply this: Staff have re-ignited the perceived need to gold farm again. That argument for a QoL improvement just fell by the wayside. In fact, the super casual player no longer has a chance to reach top X for the gold contest due to this change, and only the hardcore has a remote chance. Since there's no other way to transfer gold outside of the gold chest in the guardian shop, this new system is even worse than 2 years ago. At least back then, playing on multiple chars for 1 b attle could gift super casual players enough gold to have an outside shot. The drive portion is a decent reward I suppose, but gunning for the elemental variant isn't in the cards for any casuals.

So they've gone from rewarding the hardcore, to rewarding everyone, to rewarding the hardcore again.


As for the token side, those who played 10 chars per day could potentially get access to top 50. While this was perceived as 'not fair' to those who have less than 10 chars, I think the argument that anyone can get 10 chars to L25+ had some merit. Now that token donos are being gifted to anyone that simply plays 1 single char just as evenly as anyone else, the overall donations will be way down. This system has forced this into a whale-off. Only actual whales who spend money now have a shot at prizes. This is exacerbated by the fact these contests usually run concurrent to additional token promos. There's zero chance for anyone else to get any of these top items, now. Before, there was a chance as long as you played 10 chars and did your due diligence.

Since this is a business, if staff feel as though making this more of a whale-off than before will help generate more token sales, then fine, but I'm beginning to think if non-whales were able to compete for top 50, it was pushing whales to buy more to ensure they make it. Now, we're going to find out how much to buy to be safe and that's going to be a predictable enough.

Again, I think this change might have simply ensured whales win always.


And none of this even brings up the fact that the change happened AFTER the contest began, rather than being transparent on the front side well in advance and let everyone know what's coming. It would have altered my strategy and I'm sure others as well.


I think these current systems can potentially be ok, but more has to be done for future contests.

< Message edited by Sapphire -- 1/18/2025 16:02:12 >
Post #: 133
1/18/2025 16:57:28   
Dardiel
Member

On the topic of daily farming I would like to mention that it'd be pretty great if we could get something that's a bit more player-friendly; the current best strategy by far is to just oneshot whichever monster gives the most gold and is easily accessible, functionally leading to something like 63 turns of doing the same thing over and over until you hit your caps. It's pretty mind-numbing and I can imagine it contributing to burnout or potentially even wrist problems for those that care enough to farm daily. I wonder about the feasibility of like a quest or void boss that takes longer to finish (eg the boss takes the full 20 turns, with strong but decaying plot armor) but gives the full daily rewards (both gold and the 55 tokens, and potentially a lot of XP for the players that are in the grinding phase of going from 135 to 150) to reward players in a more fun way that uses more gameplay mechanics instead of just asking them to click 4 buttons every 15 seconds for half an hour per character.
Post #: 134
1/18/2025 19:34:43   
Aura Knight
Banned


 This system has so far been an absolute atrocity. I regret having donated in the past because I could have had tokens now. The expectation I've come to have is I'd replenish all I gave in the next event. Boy did I get a rude awakening. Previous system had no true flaws, anyone could make eligible accounts, we all can get vaults and opportunity loss for the people who put forth less effort is no excuse to ruin the enjoyment experienced by others. Fairness standards should not be set for those who choose to do less. I truly believe the only correct course is to return to the old way.
AQ DF AQW  Post #: 135
1/18/2025 22:43:21   
Gateless
Member

@Sapphire The issue with your position is the simple fact that Gold Donation Contests are patently intended to favor gold farmers, by design. And Token Donation Contests are intended to favor whales, again, by design.

While the actual donated currencies should absolutely be distributed in as even and fair of a manner as possible, the rewards themselves are patently intended to favor the aforementioned parties, by design.

These former two issues are not the problem with AQ's gifting contests to begin with—rather, incentivizing player engagement with mechanical permarares is, in my opinion, atrocious on principle.

It's a negative-sum game where nobody truly wins or ends up satisfied (unless you're that 1 player out of the entire playerbase that has not only whaled their butt off, but done so for decades on end with no breaks).

AQ is in fact the only AE game that does this, and unfortunately we have no indications of this precedent changing.


I will even go as far as to say that customs are not the problem, contests favoring farmers and whales are, again, not the problem.

The problem is and has always been the rewards having a significant impact on actual gameplay; that is impossible to predict ahead of time and consistently analogous to a dice throw.

In short, AQ's player engagement is coming at the heavy cost, of the playerbase essentially being forced into a negative-sum game on a bi-yearly basis.

(Strictly speaking, this is a model that in the long-term favors no one—not even the developers. Because while incentivizing engagement, it simultaneously incentivizes many players to quit for good, on the basis of "you just can't win.")


And frankly even this problem, as atrocious as it is, would not be quite as atrocious if there were an IODA-like system in AQ. However, the developers have already said on multiple occasions that they aren't willing to implement such a thing.

I personally don't see a problem, if it was priced high enough, handled in the same way as Custom Faces, and made clear that the single item granted through such a system is given as is, even if said item was outdated and subject to change in the future.

The problem is and has always been, for lack of a better way of putting it, the developers simply acting in a manner as if permarare items (especially the problematic ones) don't exist. And it should be obvious that simply not looking at a problem does not make it magically go away.

< Message edited by Gateless -- 1/18/2025 23:58:07 >

_____________________________

“Thus, because the wise do not find that an illusory horse and elephant are a horse and an elephant, they do not qualify as nonexistent, but because they are found by fools, they qualify as existent.”
Post #: 136
1/19/2025 0:40:33   
  Lorekeeper
And Pun-isher

 
quote:

This system has so far been an absolute atrocity. I regret having donated in the past because I could have had tokens now. The expectation I've come to have is I'd replenish all I gave in the next event. Boy did I get a rude awakening. Previous system had no true flaws, anyone could make eligible accounts, we all can get vaults and opportunity loss for the people who put forth less effort is no excuse to ruin the enjoyment experienced by others. Fairness standards should not be set for those who choose to do less. I truly believe the only correct course is to return to the old way.


The severe flaws of the previous system were explained extensively in a prior page that you may recall participating in. Compiling for everyone's benefit:

quote:

The requirement to keep ten alt characters active every day rather than investing the same amount of time into actually progressing in the amount of characters one would normally play, be it one or several, is onerous and unfair. It's awful to tell a returning player that they need to farm 9 more characters to level 25+ and multiply their playtime tenfold to stand a chance in a gifting contest that's about generosity in the first place. It's also an important measure in the context of the RNG system being used. Flash is very far from having the best RNG, and every year has shown anomalies where some IDs continually get rolled for gifts while other eligible ones receive none over multiple years.

A more equal distribution of gifts is inherently fairer to the community as a whole, and the second best counter we can manage to sticky RNG, as otherwise we'd only be able to tackle that by making an entirely new game in a different engine. By rolling an account and then a character, there are two RNG components instead of a single point of failure, and if a player should find that their preferred character appears to be bizarrely unlucky in receiving gifts, they can let it go inactive for 24 hours.

There is certainly room for further QoL improvement, and we will continue to improve the gifting events. However, if we were to entertain the notion that to experience any reduced benefit from an unequal situation is to be punished, then we would have to similarly say that the prior situation was a punishment on everyone who didn't know to maintain ten alt characters. And we would not be so callous as to accuse the other party in a discussion of having pursued unfairness and their favorable odds coming at the expense of a reduction of other people's odds. It would be an arbitrarily negative framing.


As you may also recall from that thread, you were asked to present your points in it in a manner other than insulting other players. Resuming that behavior in another thread while rephrasing the insulting statement into a derisive reinterpretation of other people's actions is not acceptable. Please drop that behavior for good and attempt to exercise good faith towards your fellow players going forward by kindly ceasing to dismiss all possible reasons to not have ten separate active characters as a choice to do less.

Edit: Wording fix, added missing link.

< Message edited by Lorekeeper -- 1/19/2025 1:09:00 >
Post #: 137
1/19/2025 2:17:07   
Aura Knight
Banned


 I'm allowed to be upset. I understand the intent behind the change but the consequence of it is what irritates me. People who don't take advantage of opportunity cannot be the same ones change is made to help most. I feel absolutely slighted by this update and though I have a lot of characters, a main reason I played them was these donations. What began as token gathering fodder characters turned into variations of playstyles which still bring me excitement. Why wouldn't others prefer to experience that? I just don't get it.

quote:

drop that behavior for good and attempt to exercise good faith towards your fellow players going forward


I don't appreciate the assumption that I've exercised any bad faith. My behavior is appropriate given my true anger is still in check. Don't worry I won't crash out here. I've got no interest in sacrificing my forum account over a situation which might correct itself.
AQ DF AQW  Post #: 138
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