Aether Raids General Thread

[Baldrick]

25 minutes ago, Alexmender said:

I thought that my awful score of 3,120 would leave me around top 30k this week because I made a ton of mistakes when I was trying to get a feel for the mode but right now I'm around top 10k. Guess having a dedicated team for this really makes the mode pretty easy (Siegbert/Lolizura/Veronica/Bonus is a pretty solid team with good reach to get those Aether pots).

I'm 20 points behind you, and I thought I'd lost my chance at a throne. I just hope there isn't a load of people saving their Aether for the last day.

[Ice Dragon]

42 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

I mean that was just the offensive team being badly built + played badly.

Horse Lyn in place of Klein gives you a 100% safe opener in: kill Aether Fountain, get danced, move up 1 square so Selena doesn't attack you. Afterwards snipe Cherche for free---dance Horse Lyn with Azura and then move Horse Lyn to where Azura had been---and the team will start running towards you to get destroyed. Cordelia will even conveniently block Olwen for you while leaving Selena high and dry 2 squares from everyone else.

There doesn't need to be any changes to the team at all, assuming Cherche doesn't have Iote's Shield. Assuming Fjorm has Reposition, the player should have simply taken the extra turns to play it safe. Klein can snipe Cherche, get danced, and be Repositioned out of Selena's range without any issues.

[Ice Dragon]

Well, fuck my life. I was 1 Aether store short of getting my last run in because enemies are too good at suiciding on my units.

So now I'm stuck at 3,500 Lift, which is one run short of the maximum possible reward for this season. Someday I'm going to be exactly 10 rocks short of an upgrade and will rue this day.

Edited November 18, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Nanima]

While the mode has some very good ideas, I just can't bring myself to like it. Limiting battles to the extent that they are means mistakes are punished way too harshly. I'll probably be finishing this round with a rank in the 40-50ks because of this system. It makes catching up to the big leagues completely impossible, since by the time you somehow manage to crawl into the 3ks of lift, the others will be way ahead of you again. No other mode does this. Arena has it's own crappy system, but at least Dueling Swords can be tripped over all the time, meaning you can juat restart your run whenever you make a mistake. Other modes can be redone even easier. Aether Raids kicks you out over the smallest thing and it takes a lot of the fun away.

[MonkeyCheez3K]

Not even a season done (well, technically I am done since I dont have any aether left) and I think I'm gonna hate it as much as Arena, while AA will remain as the "most fun" of the PvP modes (how sad is that?). Hate the very limited amount of daily runs, hate having so much aether left that is just 3 units short of another run and wasted for the season, hate the snowball system of people ahead staying ahead since it correlates with the upgrade stones, hate the initial shitshow with the calculations on how much a match costs in aerther, hate the growing number of really obnoxious defense teams due to bad design choices like healers, hate the turn limit (even though I know why it's there), hate the bonus system that now also applies to buildings I might not want to build. And what  do I like? The potential of individual map designs giving a lot of variety that immediately falls flat when it becomes tedious with the focus on aether reserves.

I wish I could share the hype a lot of people have for this mode, but I just can't. Out of curiosity, though, am I the only one who finds it atrocious that upgrading your buildings is bound, as mentioned, by a snowball system where the lead gets further ahead with rewards and leaves the rest further behind the longer this will go on? In Arena you can catch up with other modes and rewards, here the extra stones will be a permanent bonus against anyone in lower tiers for all upcoming seasons. Sorry if it was discussed before and I just didn't read it. I've been more passive lately with the game and in the forums while I try to figure stuff out.

[Stroud]

3480, I made 1 true mistake this day. I could have at least 3520. Oh well. And I also belong to those who may be 10 rocks short next season.
At least I think I am in the top 3k.

[Zelgius]

I finished my runs for today, so I think I'll redo my teams to include the next bonus units so I don't forget to do it later. 

Building up spare Aether stones is going to be tough. I was hoping to save for an additional unit for my defence team, but I'll need to get the Tactics Room for offence.

Edited November 18, 2018 by Zelgius

[NekoKnight]

Wow, I'm 20 lift away from the next tier and 3 Aether away from another match. I'm going to lose a ton of lift next season for this completely arbitrary system and the ridiculous Aether costs to start a match. 38 Aether just gone.

[Usana]

Well that is me all tapped out. Final score shall be 3300. I hope it is enough to stay in top 10k. I had hoped to be top 6k, but that dream pretty much died from me trying to play such a mode at work.

@MonkeyCheez3K The leftover Aether is gonna bug the crap out of me. They could at last have it carry over in some way. Maybe convert leftover Aether to feathers or something at the end of the season. This would make it a feather generator for those who don't want to play it but are willing to 'check in' once a week. I don't think that it is too bad though since it isn't a huge chunk of feathers. Though that does depend on how big our storage gets.

@Fleugana Sadly for you these types of games, whether mobile or website based, are heavily designed around getting you to log in once per day. They need those eyeballs on their app. I figure in the past when stamina type games were on web browsers it was probably influenced by ad revenue, more often folks check in, the more ads are seen. Not sure why it transitioned over to mobile apps without ads. Maybe daily check ins induce more spending?

On 11/13/2018 at 12:52 PM, bottlegnomes said:

One seems a bit low, given we get ~6500 feathers a month just from logging in and doing ever-present dailies. Maybe like 5? That works out to 150ish a month meaning you can get about one copy of a character you haven't bought much a month. Plus 5 is much nicer a number than 1, but then again, I still want to punch a wall because early on I ended up not having an even number of feathers, and that 4/9 will haunt me forever.

If I'm taking your phasing too literally, ignore all that.

Somehow I completely forgot to respond to this earlier this week. I was basically just comparing it to the 100 daily feather quest for winning arena duels(since that would be its equivalence). That alone would take just under 7 months to get the feathers needed to promote to 5*. Whereas 1 stone per day would be roughly 5 months for the 150. But of course that cost goes up. So 200  would be about the same and anything beyond it would take longer than it does to go from 4*-5* from the daily. Of course there always could and should be other sources, but I was just suggesting something like that daily win arena duel quest. I would definitely prefer 5 myself, but seems like IS is kinda stingy on the daily quests if we go by that feather one.

[Ice Dragon]

Okay, now that one season's gone by (I mean, I can't play anymore until tomorrow, so the season's effectively over for me now), here are all of my thoughts.

 

The basic premise of this mode is good. It's a mode where you build your own map, which is fun, can use pretty much whatever units you want, which is fun, and typically feel good about yourself when you win flawlessly, which is fun.

And that's about it for things that are good.

 

The actual map objectives are horrible. The objective of each map is "keep yourself and at least one enemy alive until you can break both Aether stores, then kill the last enemy," which is counter-intuitive and just dumb. This also leads to one dominant map archetype, which is to hide the Aether stores in the back corner behind your units so that it's nearly impossible to reach them without accidentally killing all of the units first. This is stupid.

The map variety is also pretty bad, mostly because of the objective. There is absolutely no reason to use any map other than Spring Breeze because walls are the only terrain type that no unit can pass through (fliers go over mountains, forests, water, and lava), and this map has more walls than any other map. In particular, using the fortress as an additional wall tile, you can make it nearly impossible to reach the top-left corner of the map without the attacker having to go through all of your defense units.

If you do like the gameplay in this mode, well, too bad, because you can really only two or three maps a day, even less as you climb up. At the current Aether regeneration rate of 50 per day, once you're around 10,000 Lift, you can really only play three maps every two days (two daily free maps and one map using Aether). And if the Aether Fountain gets the ability to be upgraded in the future, well, we run into the next two problems.

The acquisition rate of resources (rocks and dew) is absolutely fucking glacial. If you want to build or upgrade something, have fun saving resources and not doing anything with them for weeks on end. This can be ameliorated by adding additional sources of resources, like quests or event rewards, but that hasn't happened yet.

Furthermore, the resources coming only at the end of each season and only in discrete chunks means being 10 rocks short of building something means you're stuck waiting a whole week before you can finally build it while others who either saved resources or have a higher acquisition rate will be able to build up a week (or more if the cost is high) earlier.  There are several points where as soon as you reach specific milestones, you jump way ahead of people who are just barely behind you. For example, if you reach Tier 11 and have 300 rocks lying around, you get an extra defense or offense team slot. If you didn't save up rocks, you're now noticeably behind players who did. Tough luck.

The daily free run is a terrible idea. Yes, it means you're guaranteed to be able to play at least one map per day. On the other hand, it forces you to play at least one map per day if you want to actually keep up. At least with Arena and Arena Assault, I can do my run on any day of the week. At some point this will just start feeling like a permanent Grand Conquest event minus the shitty Grand Conquest maps.

Cumulative scoring is a terrible idea. This pretty much guarantees that players who place poorly at the start or players who have just started the game are never going to be able to reach the highest ranks. Yes, at some point really high up, the rate at which you lose Lift due to losses will balance the rate that you gain Lift from not being able to play the mode due to the Aether cost, but even if you catch up, you're always going to be lower on structures and structure levels. Arena has a scoring system that is similar to cumulative scoring, but is way better because it caps lower (every Arena tier below 17 pretty much doesn't exist for any halfway competitive player because one of my friends contently stays in Tier 17 by soloing with the Askr+Fjorm bonus unit and no teammates) and doesn't feed into itself as strongly (more rocks feeds into Aether Raids performance more directly that more feathers and orbs feed into Arena performance).

Defense losses are actually a complete crapshoot. This is not because of how easy or hard it is to make a map that can successfully defend, but because it's entirely possible to go a full day without getting a single challenge by just sheer dumb luck. I have no idea how matchmaking works in this mode, but something is clearly wrong when I played 37 maps, but only got challenged 17 times. And had at least two (maybe three, not completely sure) days with zero challenges.

The "Give Up" button is completely worthless except for if you really just give up on this game mode and want to do something else. Since Aether is a very, very limited resource, there's no reason a half-competitive player is going to want to just waste it. Either make giving up not cost Aether (which is kind of a bad idea) or make the button not exist (if you really want to give up, just enter the match and surrender, which accomplishes the exact same thing).

 

Things I would change about the mode:

Rework the entire competitive aspect of it. I honestly don't know how, though. The fact that all maps are worth the same number of points regardless of difficulty makes it really hard to actually make a meaningful, yet fair, scoring system.

Rework the limitation system. How depends on how the competitive scoring is reworked, but the current Aether system and daily free run is wholly unsatisfying to work with as a player.

Add practice matches. Allow players to challenge players on their friends list and randomly matched players for no cost and with no rewards or penalties to either player.

Add rocks to quest and event rewards.

If we're keeping the Aether storage structures, restrict them from being placed on the top-most row.

 

55 minutes ago, Usana said:

Not sure why it transitioned over to mobile apps without ads. Maybe daily check ins induce more spending?

The stamina system is not so much a way to force players to log in to the game, but a way to time-gate content so that players don't just blow through everything all at once (or are forced to pay to do so).

Obviously, the stamina system in Heroes ceased to be functional when they just started giving out stamina potions like Halloween candy and making certain nodes cost zero stamina.

Edited November 18, 2018 by Ice Dragon

[Stroud]

So I guess the 3k cutoff will be at 3,500 or 3,480? I don't know how the activity will change through the day, but if my rank rises 150 ranks each hour until the end I will not be in the top 3k. xD
Enough crying because of my messup today.

At first, I like this mode and it gives me ideas of building units with skills I never would otherwise. But of course it needs adjustment. This mode will punish any inactivity and that is what I dislike. I know that through events we force ourselves to play it regulary to not miss anything. Another additional mode with that will increase the shore we feel in a longtime run.
Maybe they really should tune AA down to 5 fights.

I messed a bit up with my buildings, I know exactly that I did not choose the most effizient way, that will hunt me the next seasons a bit along the low income. And I fear the time we have to  fight against 5-6 units. But I will see.

Players who set a good start will have the advantage in the long run. more stones more builds and we really need another grail income. with 50-60 grails a week it will take 10 seasons to get 1 copy of a unit which needs 500 grails. But this has not much to do with the mode itself.

Well, I will see. Overall this has potential and I really like experimenting on my defense team. But it needs improvement. 

[Diovani Bressan]

Hm... the topic's creator should change the Topic's name, because it's not a "first impressions" anymore...

[Eilanzer]

@Stroud for me they should remove AA from the game...or revamp arena with aa in one new mode less boring (and with the lock mode from aether raid) ( ・∀・)っ♨

[Stroud]

8 minutes ago, Eilanzer said:

@Stroud for me they should remove AA from the game...or revamp arena with aa in one new mode less boring (and with the lock mode from aether raid) ( ・∀・)っ♨

They could really change it out if they come up with something new awesome. There have been days I did more AA runs, but now I only do 1 full run each week and don't care about my rank like these days. But of course, they need to give us something alternate which is more fun. 

[Maaka]

Managed to make it to 3,700 lift. Thankfully the change in aether cost allowed me to get there even though I missed 4 aether from completely forgetting about aether structures on an early morning match. I did make the mistake of building a ton of useless defense structures, so unless we get some stones from quests or something, I may be down a 5th unit in my offense team for this next week. Hopefully this next season isn't quite as stressful.

[dethneer]

6 minutes ago, Maaka said:

Managed to make it to 3,700 lift. Thankfully the change in aether cost allowed me to get there even though I missed 4 aether from completely forgetting about aether structures on an early morning match. I did make the mistake of building a ton of useless defense structures, so unless we get some stones from quests or something, I may be down a 5th unit in my offense team for this next week. Hopefully this next season isn't quite as stressful.

Congrats! That is one impressive score

Too tired to do my runs today on account of no sleep, will try to do it when I wake up later and hope I don't miss the deadline before the season ends in which case FML

[TheWill]

If they keep adding new additions, making balance changes and such, I'd really like the modes. 

I'd particularly like new structures, especially one that punishes horses and dancers. That'd be a god send for both defense and offense. Having enemies suicide before you cna break both aether pots is incredibly frustrating. I'm thinking of building up a gravity healer just for the sake of it...

[Maaka]

12 minutes ago, TheWill said:

If they keep adding new additions, making balance changes and such, I'd really like the modes. 

I'd particularly like new structures, especially one that punishes horses and dancers. That'd be a god send for both defense and offense. Having enemies suicide before you cna break both aether pots is incredibly frustrating. I'm thinking of building up a gravity healer just for the sake of it...

If you managed to pull a Loki, she is one of my favorite units to use because she can lock down most ranged units to 1 movement. Even at -hp, she can still get to 48/49 hp with her A skill and an hp or hp/stat seal. Good enough to stop a Reinhardt, Veronica or brave Lyn for a while. Of course, if you run into an all melee team, she is useless, but she definitely made it much easier for me to get the aether structures and stop being quad teamed while baiting horse teams.

[bottlegnomes]

@Usana That's a good point. I was thinking of it as being the sole source so it'd have to match up, but your way does line up better. Rather than having a relatively large amount from one source, introduce multiple sources.

Edited November 18, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[mcsilas]

Darn, I shouldn't play when I'm tired, I forgot to check armoured boots on some Hectors..

Looks like I won't get the rank that gives 100 stones.

Also I guess I should u[date the Amphorae to level 3 before the season ends and ignore the Fortress upgrade for now?

[Rhein]

I hope they rework some of the offense buildings or give us a way to exchange them for another. In one of my accounts, I made the mistake of building the healing (O) building and it's completely useless.

For me, the battles became the same that in arena, meaning that the defense teams only have the same combination of units and it's worst than in arena because there is no restriction to the units in the teams, aside from the bonus unit.

I hope they accept the feedback and improve this mode. It is a really good idea of a mode, but there is a lot of things that need improvement. 

[Usana]

2 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

 

The stamina system is not so much a way to force players to log in to the game, but a way to time-gate content so that players don't just blow through everything all at once (or are forced to pay to do so).

Obviously, the stamina system in Heroes ceased to be functional when they just started giving out stamina potions like Halloween candy and making certain nodes cost zero stamina.

Sorry I think I was unclear. When talking about 'stamina type' I was just trying to define a game category that I am not sure the name of. Games with something akin to stamina to gate that can be pvp or pve or adventure or rpg or whatever. All have a stamina like feature and in my experience many employ daily rewards of some kind to encourage daily logins. I am not sure what the actual category for such games is called. Used to play a bunch of text web based ones that had a similar system way back in the MUD days. And during the late 90's I had just begun to assume ads were one reason for daily logins Encouraging daily logins would lead to more pageviews and ad impressions than if you just let people play on the weekend. Hopefully that is a bit clearer. I was mostly just saying that expecting one of these types of games to set things on weekly timers for those who only want to play on the weekend is a bit of a lost hope. Daily timers is where it has been for these type of games as far back as I can remember. Not sure if it is just 'traditional' these days or if metrics indicate higher player engagement/purchasing of in game items/resources when urged to log in daily vs weekendly.
 

Regarding Heroes and stamina sometimes I wonder why they even bother pretending it is a thing anymore. Maybe it slows new players and keeps them from burning themselves out early on?

54 minutes ago, TheWill said:

If they keep adding new additions, making balance changes and such, I'd really like the modes. 

I'd particularly like new structures, especially one that punishes horses and dancers. That'd be a god send for both defense and offense. Having enemies suicide before you cna break both aether pots is incredibly frustrating. I'm thinking of building up a gravity healer just for the sake of it...

Yeah there have been many times where I have wanted gravity. The Tactics room may end up being rather useful. And it is the bonus next week so. . . crap. I just realized I will only be able to afford O or D not both.

 

[Vaximillian]

2 hours ago, Eilanzer said:

for me they should remove AA from the game...or revamp arena with aa in one new mode less boring (and with the lock mode from aether raid) ( ・∀・)っ♨

If arena assault is more fun for me than ayther arena, then something is wrong with ayther arena.

Ayther arena is just arena with buildings, worse maps, worse objectives, worse pressure, worse availability, and worse cancer.

[redlight]

I find Aether Raids not to consider making players construct variety for team buildings. Just cancer and more cancer. Can we get a unit banlist every season or something?

[Raven]

Finished up with 3,540 Lift, with 35 Aether still in the tank.

60 Lift away from the max Lift reward possible for this season. That was simply down to my own incompetence and having 3 deaths through the whole run.

I probably could've gotten in one more run if I was able to get a few more reserves destroyed throughout the whole season, but I'll take a seat in the top 1,000, for what it's worth.