Here’s your Marvel Contest of Champions news brief for Monday, May 25, 2020.
Schedule Notes: Round 2 of the 4* Doctor Doom and Hawkeye Featured Arenas at 1pm EST. Summoner Sigil Owners, your Solo Event, Gold Quest, and items on a 7-day timer and the Featured 5 Star Crystal in the Black-ISO Market reset at 1pm EST. 100% Roster Availability until Alliance War attack resumes at 2pm EST. The Alliance Quest Series begins at 3pm EST. There will be no map cost for this series. The Alpha Arena begins at 6pm EST. UMCOC Podcast, Live on Discord at 8pm EST.
Rich & I discuss the week that was in MCOC, including the Road Map reveal, the AQ Time-Out issue, and what Kabam needs to do with regards to communication to move the game forward to a more positive place.
Next week in Marvel Contest of Champions Red Guardian officially joins The Contest as the Featured Arena Champion!
I hope you and your family are staying safe during these difficult times.
Alliance Wars Seasons We are currently in Alliance War Season 18. Rewards will lock on Friday, June 5 at 6pm EST, and the season will end on Tuesday, June 16. Season 19 is tentatively set to begin on July 1.
Full Roster Availability (No AW/AQ): 100% champion availability starting at 2pm EST on Sunday, May 24 through Monday, May 25 at 2pm EST.
Sunday, May 24: Sunday Arenas begin at 1pm EST. 100% Roster Availability beginning at 2pm EST.
Monday, May 25: Round 2 of the 4* Doctor Doom and Hawkeye Featured Arenas at 1pm EST. Summoner Sigil Owners, your Solo Event, Gold Quest, and items on a 7-day timer and the Featured 5 Star Crystal in the Black-ISO Market reset at 1pm EST. 100% Roster Availability until Alliance War attack resumes at 2pm EST. The Alliance Quest Series begins at 3pm EST. There will be no map cost for this series. The Alpha Arena begins at 6pm EST. UMCOC Podcast, Live on Discord at 8pm EST.
Tuesday, May 26: Forum Downtime is scheduled for 11am EST. Longshot enters the Basic Pool at 1pm EST. Server Maintenance at 11pm EST.
Wednesday, May 27: No schedule updates.
Thursday, May 28: Round 1 of the 4* Red Skull and Red Guardian Featured Arenas begin at 1pm EST. Incursions Milestones reset at 2pm EST. The Tier 4 Basic Arena begins at 6pm EST.
Friday, May 29: No schedule updates.
Saturday, May 30: The Alliance Quest Series ends at 3pm EST.
Kabam has just posted an updated short-term Road Map in response to recent criticisms of the game. Let’s break it all down, and I’ll share my take on the changes.
Good – Book 2 Act 1 Delayed
The Book 2 Act 1 Beta received overwhelming criticism for its fight difficulty, node combinations, and path structure. Acknowledgement that this content needs significant a change of direction before going live is an excellent start.
Good – Back Issues (Variant 5) Moved Up
Variants are my favorite kind of story content. I know many of us hoped Variant 5: Blood and Venom would have been released earlier in the year, but it seems clear Kabam wanted to focus development time on Book 2. Now that Book 2 is temporary on the shelf, they are shifting gears and bumping up the release of Variant 5 from September to August. This is a piece of content I’m very excited to see because of the continual improvement we’ve seen in Variant design, and that fact that the story focuses on Venom and Guillotine, two of my favorite MCOC champions.
Mixed – Alliance Quest Update
The Alliance Quest update is a bit of a mixed bag. The shift to Tickets will be a good one, as it reduces Officer stress, lowers donation cost, and will have a significant impact on the viability of arena bots. The donation issue for Alliances that run split Maps does need to be sorted out though, as they are hurt by the current change.
When it comes to the day-to-day of Alliance Quest, we’re going to get more of the same. None of the quality of life suggestions like reduced timers, a reduction in paths on the Map, or an increase in the energy cap are being instituted, or even talked about at this time.
What we are going to see is a reward update in July for v27.2, which is good, but coming with it will be a refresh of the maps. The biggest change will be the introduction of a higher level of Alliance Quest modifiers, which will offer the chance to earn Tier 5 Class Catalyst Fragments, presumably from the Honor Rewards.
While some see a refresh as good, as it updates what they consider a stale game-mode, others like the predictability of Alliance Quest. Changes tend to lead to an uptick in potion use, at least in the short term.
To be blunt, it’s just going to get harder. Kabam appears to be doubling-down on Defense Tactics. While admitting that Defense Tactics haven’t currently met their design goals, the development team seems convinced there is an opportunity to make them work. Instead of scrapping them, they are going to introduce more to deal with. If the new Defense Tactics are under-powered, everyone will still gravitate toward the most difficult one. If they somehow balance them, and they are all as difficult as Flow currently is, then there will be even more deaths in war then there are now, because players won’t get enough experience fighting all the different defense tactic/defender/node combinations, leading to even more deaths.
The one “player-positive” change, a boost to Attackers with the same hashtag as the active Defense Tactic when fighting against a defender boosted by the Defense Tactic is a Band-Aid fix at best.
For those like myself who are convinced the current design of Alliance Wars is inherently flawed, there is nothing to look forward to here. At this point, I’m in favor of scrapping the mode and rebooting it with a smaller scale PvP as Brian Grant has been suggesting for years.
Good – Alliance Leadership Tools
As an Alliance officer I’m very excited for these updates! We’ve been asking for years for the ability to assign Battlegroups. The fact that a member can have a different AQ and AW assignment is excellent. Hopefully path assignments are next. The ability for leadership to view the rosters of members in-game is also a great time-saving feature, especially for lower-tier alliances that don’t rely on third-party communication apps.
Good – Abyss Rewards Update
While we don’t know what the update will be, this is great to hear. There are too many stories of Summoners 100% exploring Abyss and having the satisfaction of their accomplishment diminished by RNG rewards. Since anyone who has already completed Abyss will receive the updated rewards when they go live, some people are going to get a nice bonus.
What did you think of the Road Map update? What does Kabam still need to work on? Leave a comment below.
Kabam has just announced some significant updates to how Alliance Donations will work. Let’s break it all down.
What’s Changing?
Kabam is changing how alliances will pay for Alliance Quest Maps. The Alliance Treasury is going away. All Maps will be free to open, but if you want to play Maps 6 or 7, each individual member of the battlegroup will need to purchase Tickets that will be redeemed for admission to the Map.
How Will Tickets Work?
– Tickets are used enter Map 6 or 7 – Individual Summoners must purchase their own Tickets. – Entry cost is per Summoner, per Map, per Day. – Tickets can be purchased with Gold, Battlechips, Loyalty, Units, or Cash. – Ticket cost will scale during the AQ period if you continue to purchase with the same resource. It will be cheaper to use multiple resource types. – Tickets can not be donated or transferred to other Summoners – Tickets live in your Resource Summary. They do not expire, and have virtually no cap. – The total cost of donations for Summoners is going down. – There is no additional cost to run AQ Modifiers.
The good news is the donation cost for Alliance Quest is going down, and has been eliminated for those running Map 5.
If your Battlegroup runs Map 6×5 you will need 75 Tickets to play the full cycle (15 per day). If you evenly divide your Ticket purchases between Gold, Battlechips, and Loyalty (25 Tickets with each resource) you will spend:
If your Battlegroup runs Map 7×5 you will need 150 Tickets to play the full cycle (30 per day). If you evenly divide your Ticket purchases between Gold, Battlechips, and Loyalty (50 Tickets with each resource) you will spend:
– The Treasury is going away. Those resources will disappear. – Kabam will review every Summoner’s donation history over the past 4-5 months. Summoners who have a positive donation balance (meaning they donated more resources than the maps they ran) will receive Tickets as compensation. Summoners with a negative balance receive nothing. – The will be two free weeks of Alliance Quest during the transition.
What’s The Timeline On All This?
May 22 – Alliance Treasury Locks May 25 – Alliance Quest Series Free June 2 – Alliance Quest Series Free June 3 – Summoners receive Tickets for refunded donations June 10 – First Alliance Quest Series requiring Tickets
Why Is This Change Good For The Game?
– Alliance Leadership will no longer have to track donations or rely on the honor system. The responsibility is now on the individual Summoner to have the resources for their Tickets. – Alliances will no longer be able to purchase “resource-dumps,” they will have to grind for their own donations. – Because this new set-up prevents “resource-dumps” this should have a significant impact on arena bots, as there is now no way for the people running the bots to sell resources.
What Could Be Improved?
– Leadership has no way of seeing the Ticket Balance of individual Summoners in-game. This could lead to issues where a Map is started, and a member of the alliance does not have Tickets available and is unwilling to purchase more. – There is no way to share Ticket cost within the Alliance. For example, if an Alliance ran a 7-6-5 setup currently, in the past the Alliance could easily divide the total cost of AQ by 30 people so everyone pays the same. In the new set-up, the Map 7 Battlegroup will pay twice the donations of the Map 6 Battlegroup, and the Map 5 Battlegroup will pay nothing.
Frontline: MCOC 