Devblog 2.69 - Alliances / Challenges

Hello, everyone! Today's devblog follows up on our September 8th livestream about the changes we're making to alliances and challenges. Our goal today is to take a more detailed look at the reasons for these changes, but also to talk about what we're planning to do next. In the interest of total transparency, we'll also be sharing some data from the game and your responses to our last survey about challenges – data that was very helpful to us in zeroing in on the first set of changes that we'll be presenting in this post. So let's get started!

Alliances

As you probably recall, the alliances update was introduced five-and-a-half months ago. Since then, lots of alliances have been created. Here's some data from the last 3 months:

General Information

• 4,667 alliances created.
• About 45,000 characters joined an alliance, 78% of whom were level 200 characters.
• Median alliance size: 7 members.
• 36% of alliances have only one member – probably players who wanted to test out the alliance system, but then never followed up.
• Median size of alliances that control at least one territory: 40 members.

Data on fights (AvA triggering, KOTH phase)

• Distribution of points earned:
  • 15% through fights
  • 22% through map control
  • 63% through Scouts
• Defenders win in 66% of all fights.
• A KOTH phase is triggered by an attack 51% of the time, and by recycling only 4% of the time.
• Role distribution: see table.
• The biggest KOTH in the last 3 months involved 165 participants in 19 different alliances.
• On average, KOTH fights involve 3 alliances / 7 players.
• Top 3 most competitive areas:
  • Crucible of Fortunes
  • Sakai Plain
  • Snowy Forest
• Top 3 least competitive areas:
  • Servitude's Galley
  • Kerub's Temple
  • Silent Wrecks

Note: the numbers don't add up to 100% because players who change roles during a KOTH fight are counted in multiple categories.

Our takeaways from these numbers

• Considering the proportions and the level of challenge associated with this feature, we think it makes sense that the majority of characters who have joined an alliance are level 200.
• We're surprised to see that alliances with no territories have barely one-quarter as many characters (looking at the median values) than alliances that control at least one territory. And indeed, one of the problems mentioned in your earlier feedback was the loss of the community aspect (so-called PvM alliances). The limitation on the number of members in an alliance should certainly have reduced the potential size of these networks, but should not have eliminated them completely.
• While we hoped that fights would be the main source of points obtained in KOTH events, the data clearly shows that this is not the case with the current system.
• Defenders still emerge triumphant most of the time, despite the removal of tools to prepare for fights. Territories are now more likely to change ownership. Overall, we're pleased with this dynamic.
• Regarding roles, we see that many characters join a KOTH with no specific role (cannon fodder), then sometimes change roles during the AvA fight, most commonly to the Scout role. We consider this role to be overrepresented. The low percentage of Champions was expected, as this role's gameplay is aimed at particularly optimized players. The Seer role was designed to counter the Champion, so it makes sense to see that these roles are represented at similar levels. We're surprised at the low percentage of Sentinels, as their primary role was supposed to be countering Scouts.
• We're not surprised by the relative competitiveness of different areas, which closely matches the existing tendencies in terms of farming. So players are particularly inclined to take advantage of the experience and recycling bonuses in these areas.

What Is Being Changed

Our goal is to attract more players to AvA. To achieve this, control of a territory needs to be sufficiently attractive compared to the cost of conquering it. Taking the data above and your feedback into account, we've focused our first set of changes on 2 main areas:

• Profitability: Many of you told us that AvA now requires too much investment (in kamas and in game time) relative to the potential gains. To address this, we've made the following changes:
  • Changes to prism recipes to make them less expensive. The goal is to minimize any obstacles that might discourage players from trying to capture a territory.
  • Increased experience bonus for controlling a territory (from 25% to 50%). The goal here is to make controlling territories more attractive. We hope that areas that are normally neglected because they're considered less profitable in terms of XP gains will now see an uptick in interest.
    • Going forward, although nothing is set in stone yet, we're considering other bonuses that might be linked to loot or to the maximum number of perceptors in a controlled area. However, we're also trying not to fall back into the problems of the old system, with exclusive bonuses for certain players that created frustration for other players who weren't able to take advantage of those bonuses.
  • Increased invulnerability period for a territory captured by an alliance that doesn't control many territories. Here, we want players who have made the effort to capture an area to be able to enjoy its benefits for a longer period of time.
  • Finally, we've noticed that nuggets are starting to be overgenerated since the update. To avoid a drop in nugget prices, we've reduced the recycling bonuses when an alliance has a prism or controls adjacent territories.

• Fights: The alliance system is a system that we think of as being primarily PvP. Yet PvP fights have now been relegated to a secondary role here. We want to rebalance this situation, for example by reducing the impact of points acquired outside of combat during the KOTH phase. For perceptors, we want to give attackers a greater chance of winning. To achieve this, we've made a number of changes:
  • Reducing the impact of Scouts, who had taken on an outsized role in KOTH mode compared to fights, by reducing the maximum values for the number of Scouts per alliance in KOTH and the number of points accumulated and stored. Our goal isn't to completely eliminate the interest of this role, but to make it less profitable than fights.
  • Changing the point at which elasticity is calculated: As a reminder, this calculation is used to grant a points bonus or impose a points penalty at the end of a fight, based on the difference in points between the two alliances taking part in the fight. Previously, the points difference was saved at the start of the fight, so the elasticity figure didn't account for any changes in the difference between the two alliances' point totals. The points difference is now checked at the end of the fight to better reflect the alliances' ranking in the KOTH, and to provide a real advantage to "underdog" alliances.
  • Perceptor balancing: While the changes made in the update created a real incentive to use perceptors in fights (as was our goal), their power is now too great, thereby giving defenders too much of an advantage. Our objective now is to improve attackers' chances in order to incentivize attacks on perceptors. Spell casting conditions (mainly for support spells) have been modified, and perceptors' base characteristics have been reduced. Perceptors' equipment has not been modified, and can make up for the loss of characteristics if the alliance chooses to invest in its defense.

Additional changes will be made later in the year based on your feedback. However, we want to make sure now that these changes are going in the right direction to restore players' interest in alliances. A survey will also be made available in-game in October to ask how you're feeling about these changes and about any remaining expectations you have.

Challenges

In the update on July 4, major changes were made to the game's XP and drop mechanisms (elimination of idols, increased value for challenges, balancing of drop rates, etc.). At the same time, new special achievements specific to each boss were added. Here are a few figures we've collected since the update (for the past 3 months):

• Challenges:
  • Note: the challenge success and failure rates do not take account of whether the challenge was chosen by the player or selected at random. Therefore, a certain percentage of failures are due to challenges that were simply ignored by the player.
  • 104 million challenges were offered in combat. 61% of them failed.
  • "Versatile" is the most frequently attempted challenge in fights (58% failure rate).
  • "Scanty" is the least frequently attempted challenge in fights (95% failure rate).
  • "In the Line of Fire" is the most frequently succeeded challenge (25% failure rate).
  • "Mirror" is the most frequently failed challenge (95.5% failure rate).
• Special Achievements:
  • 13,200,000 dungeon achievements were offered. 55% of them failed.
  • LeChouque's "Swappin' Swabbie Swatter" is the most frequently succeeded special achievement (30% failure).
  • Koutoulou Larva's "Musical Chairs" is the most frequently failed special achievement (97% failure).
  • Misery's "Abject Opulence" is the achievement succeeded by the smallest total number of players (470 players).
• For dungeon keeper (boss) resources: It's very difficult for us to know exactly how many of these resources are in circulation, especially since counting all resources in player characters' inventories would count inactive players too, thereby counting resources that are no longer in circulation. Therefore, we concentrated our investigation on resources generated since March 31, 2022 (18 months ago). The analysis was split into 2 groups:
  • Level 1 to 190 dungeon keeper resources:
    • Before the announcement of update 2.68: imbalance between generation and destruction, in favor of generation (about 2 times as much).
    • Between the announcement and update 2.68: the announcement that boss resources would be removed from achievements had only a minimal impact.
    • Since update 2.68: there is an approximately equal balance between generation and destruction. The stock of resources in this level range is therefore very stable.
  • Level 191 to 200 dungeon keeper resources:
    • Before the announcement of update 2.68: imbalance between generation and destruction, in favor of destruction (about 40% more, on average). In fact, daily generation was about 20% higher on average, but ingredient savings bonuses (Almanax) were generating huge waves of resource destruction that canceled out the generation side.
    • Between the announcement and update 2.68: player behavior changed (+37% generation of dungeon keeper resources and -38% destruction), thereby creating a stock of these resources on all servers.
    • Since 2.68: The imbalance grew in favor of destruction (about 53% more destruction than generation per day). Ingredient savings days further increase this gap. Thanks to the stock still available on the servers, this dynamic allows us to gradually draw that supply down. However, we're keeping our eye on supply and price fluctuations to decide on any potential changes to this balance in the months / years ahead.
    • The average sale prices for resources have remained relatively stable, with the exception of level 200 dungeons, which have seen a slight decline in prices since the update.
    • Today, 78% of dungeon keeper resources are acquired via achievements (vs. 85% before the update).

• 33% of players said their habits had changed since the update. In practice, when players need a new piece of equipment, more players are now buying resources directly from a Marketplace instead of obtaining them by themselves. More generally, players use Marketplaces much more often to acquire resources (before the update, they did so mainly through achievements).
• 65% of players did drop-farming sessions with the goal of selling the resulting resources at a Marketplace.
• Comparison:
  • Time spent on drop-farming sessions: 55% -> 48%. Also, 67% of players said that their drop-farming sessions were less profitable than before, and 23% said they were still equally effective.
  • Attempt challenges in every fight: 96% -> 86%
  • Use prospecting equipment: 67% -> 64%
• 42% of players always used idols.
• Drop rates: see table at right.
• Challenge options:
  • 47% of players use the drop bonus and 15% use the experience bonus ("it depends" for 36% of players).
  • The choice between the 2 types of bonuses is an easy one for 62% of players.
  • 72% of players use the option to choose challenges.
• 27% of players use Temporal Anomalies for their drop-farming sessions and 37% use the Almanax.

What Is Being Changed

Based on the data presented above and on your feedback on the subject, here are the changes we've made:

• The survey results and in-game data confirmed that challenges are a robust alternative enjoyed by our players. However, they don't seem to provide enough of an advantage to adequately make up for the loss of idols. Therefore, the base rates for all challenges have been increased by 50%. As a result, the bonus granted by a challenge can now exceed 180%. Even so, please note that our goal is not to bring drop rates back to the same level that could previously be reached through the use of idols.
• As seen in the survey results, however, rare and quest resources in particular are a problem for a significant number of players. We have therefore increased the drop rates for rare resources (from 1.2% to 2% for rare resources, and from 0.6% to 1% for resource protector resources). As for quest items, rare and common rates will now follow the same pattern as for monster resources (2% for rare and 12% for common). However, quests are filled with special cases linked to the specific design intentions of each quest. We're well aware that the use of idols severely distorted those design intentions, allowing players to circumvent certain restrictions in a very natural way. Therefore, we'd like you to tell us which specific quest items you're finding too difficult to obtain. Each request will be examined on a case-by-case basis, but we reserve the right to leave certain drop rates unchanged if we don't feel a change is necessary in this or that case. Also bear in mind that drop rates are not the only factor we can adjust to help reduce your frustrations. For example, we can also look at changing the required quantities for these items.
  • In this devblog, we also wanted to look in greater detail at a quest item that many of you currently consider to be the most problematic of all: the Paragon of Power (Vulbis Dofus quest). The comparative table shown here summarizes various scenarios for this item.

• • For rare resources, the drop rate reaches 17.1% with improved optimization (300 PP, 135% challenge bonus and 80% anomaly bonus).
• In parallel to the changes to bonuses, we also identified a number of largely unused challenges. While the difficulty of a challenge should reflect the reward granted for completing it, we don't want our challenges to discourage our players before they even try them. Therefore, the "Elemental Mystique", "Untouchable", "Tireless", "Unbroken Line" and "Faraway So Close" challenges have been disabled until further notice.
• As for Temporal Anomalies, they have long been neglected by players because they didn't offer as much of an advantage as idols. With the changes we've made recently, more players have started to give them a second look. We want to continue increasing their role in the game by modifying the odds of an anomaly opening. Going forward, then, areas will reach higher bonus percentages and open less quickly to allow players to take advantage of the increased bonuses.
  • Before: max bonus outside of an anomaly was 70% and odds of an anomaly opening were between 50% and 70%
  • After: max bonus outside of an anomaly is 80% and odds of an anomaly opening are between 70% and 80%
• Finally, we have made some changes to the Turquoise Dofus quests. This Dofus is a key element in players' progression toward level 200 when they're in the level 160 range. Whereas players could previously choose their idols in fights based on their team composition, the new idols' effects are simply imposed on them, and are generally more restrictive than the old versions. To reduce the resulting difficulty spike, we have modified the effects of the quest idols required for the following dungeons: Kimbo, Sphincter Cell, Korriander, Obsidemon and Kanigrula. The other quest idols have been kept as-is, since we felt that their difficulty was appropriate for Primordial Dofus quests aimed at level 160 player characters. In addition, the recipes have been modified to make them less costly. Remember as well that quest idols can be obtained in exchange for idolokens.

Conclusion

We hope that this devblog post has made our perspective on the current situation clear. Through these changes, we hope to bring the situation in-game more closely in line with your expectations, while also capitalizing on the new aspects introduced in the last two updates. These changes will arrive in the game with update 2.69 on September 26.

Needless to say, we're still eager to hear your feedback. Please feel free to share your feelings (whether positive or negative) in the comments to this devblog so that we can adjust or improve the points that are most important to you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you soon in the World of Twelve!