Lilith will remove manuals for AE8 [AE4-7, HF1-3 videos at bottom]

Every Abyssal Expedition brings a fresh puzzle for Esperians to solve collaboratively, but time consuming and technical elements now dominate the mode, frustrating players who previously enjoyed it and maddening those who don’t. To address complaints, Lilith plans to remove the ability to manually time hero ultimates ("manuals") and retry boss hits during future AEs.

tl;dr Last few AE were way too hard, manual was a big part of, but manual is also fundamental to making AE "competitive" and removing it will destroy the mode. Please support us in asking for QoL and better boss testing instead. Sweet manual videos at the end, just skip if you get tired of the text wall.

In an ideal world, AE boss fights let us enjoy the frame-level complexity of the fighting genre with aesthetic-idle controls. Repetitive elements should be minimized - although the search may be difficult, once the solution is found, executing it should be no great challenge. This ideal has been broken. But fixing legitimately frustrating issues by removing skill will lead to new problems and a broken mode. Lilith should solve these problems with long-requested QoL and balance changes instead of neutering its most "fair/competitive" option.

I think the community mostly falls into three camps:

  • Majority of community, who doesn't care much but views this like a lab nerf (might as well reduce time spent). Let’s make a deal - in exchange for your support in keeping our game mode alive, BnB will provide top100-quality, f2p-friendly AE guides, BEFORE ranked, with only simple manuals or auto. You can already find what you need in the crowdsourcing discord https://discord.gg/Dbcza3zq or on Cero's youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/Cero_GT/videos (neither are affiliated with BnB)
  • AE-oriented guilds/players, with opinions ranging from “well that sucks” to “end of the game”
  • Spenders who perceive the effort required is too significant AND feel entitled to top ranks

Please note that all opinions and “us/we” pronouns refer to BnB management specifically. We asked for feedback of course, but other mentioned guilds didn’t sign anything. Additionally, please do not downvote anyone adding a thoughtful comment, even if they're against manuals.

AE6-7 took too much time and effort.

  • Excessively hard manuals with large payoff (50-100%+ dmg increase)
    • Primary source of friction - players who don’t focus AE are upset at the time commitment needed to be average. This is completely legitimate - whales should be able to buy simple and effective damage options.
    • Extreme pressure on a few high-dedication guild leaders, leading to burnout/guilds collapsing. Phenomenon similar in CN/Global.
    • Lack of help with testing within guild
    • Extensive time spent assisting members who can't log in when needed
    • Can’t test relic/hp%, increases pressure to solve problems live in beta
    • Lack of community resources and information
  • Drama and poor pre-beta testing disrupted the normal beta-ranked cycle for AE7
    • AE7 beta boss initially contained a multitude of broken (previously) F-tier heroes, causing Lilith to revert to an “earlier” boss stat profile. So we basically played repeat AE6.
    • To be clear: these adjustments aren’t campaign/pvp, it’s just event balance.
    • Normally, the devs watch our attempts and quietly tweak heroes to make the best comps run smoothly / penalize weird RNG comps and heroes. That wasn't sufficient for AE7, since we got essentially a new and untested boss a few days into beta.

AE in general contains high-effort mechanics, some unnecessary

  • 24hr boss respawn requires constant coordination at odd hours and disrupts work/sleep, going against AFK design principles
    • I provide a comprehensive solution for this on boss 1-4 later!
  • Hours spent sending repetitive or RNG solo heroes and teams with simple manuals
    • Solved by basic QoL that we need for campaign anyway
  • Fine tuning builds to investment levels (IMO strategic, inline with game design)

But Manual is fundamental to the appeal of AE/HF

Spenders have a solid advantage in AE, but tend to squander it. This induced competitiveness is a lot of the fun - even s400-500 f2p can compete for top 100 with the right plan and dedication. This phenomenon is fun for whales too, since the competition is trying and is a legitimate threat, unlike other modes.

Here's a chart to visualize this. Power percentile is a proxy for spend/account level (.50 power percentile = 50% of ALL players in AE6/7 have more account power than you, and 50% have less). So the graph is roughly whaling vs dmg. Damage is scaled for time - if a players guild finishes with 25% of the AE left, they get a 1/.75 damage multiplier. For AE7, I gave accounts a (random) boost based on estimated Zolrath damage used >40% on boss 5.

Graph showing Account strength = more damage holds, though AE6/7 have high variance. CR has basically the same shape, except that there's almost 0 variance (since you keep max dmg). https://imgur.com/amd7Vqj

Now for some Q/A format, since non-AE players seem confused by our feelings here:

It’s a p2w gacha, why should f2p compete with whales?

  • This “punching up” dynamic in AE is the EXACT reason many players are attracted to AFK Arena and are casual in other gachas. I don’t think any f2p expects to outdamage Hashimaru, but it’s super rewarding for vip12 to perform like vip14!!
  • Damage bands typically break down as follows:

Typical damage bands in AE. Yellow band + good plan is top20 competitive. https://imgur.com/NlRahzb

  • Because of AE7 meta repeat + 3 OP awakened heroes + awakened inaccessibility, the “Low Spender/f2p” tier separated completely. Changes to Time Emblem acquisition are necessary to re-engage f2p with the mode (and the game in general)
  • In AE7, because of the extreme difficulty, skilled players moved up half a tier and low effort players fell an entire tier. This caused people to feel badly about their result.
  • Some players had the necessary information, tried really hard and STILL performed below their expectations. That shouldn’t happen, there is no place for “high effort bad results” in AFK.
  • Thus, experience deteriorated for a variety of players, especially whales and f2p.

Only whales care about this, normal players aren’t affected

  • Manuals benefit smaller accounts more than whales, since recent features give more mitigation (via high def%) than damage, which (in the general case) stabilizes teams.
  • The lowest viable manual invest is STRICTLY lower than auto (auto is a subset of the options available w/ manual)
  • If you can’t delay or accelerate an ult by a few seconds, you need exactly the right haste breakpoint for the build to work. This can require investments above e60/e80 or 18f haste. Super bad for non-whales
  • Even if your guild was mostly auto and chill before AE6, I GUARANTEE your guild management had cases where they had to manual a bit to fix teams with weird or missing investments. Or just let players fail.
  • CR is a good preview of what to expect with full auto AE. Everyone has the same teams, but low spenders deal with higher rng and often literally lose 1B+ if they’re missing a single hero in a wave. Breaking into significantly higher tiers on a regular basis is impossible.
  • There's an interesting phenomenon in every AE: whales consistently under-perform their account and damage possible with community info. This effect is obvious, but much smaller than the baked-in account advantage.

AE6 guild results - avg account strength vs avg damage. Downward trend indicates guilds with lower spenders are closer to reaching their potential https://imgur.com/bD3REcq

AE7 guild results - avg account strength vs avg damage. Downward trend indicates guilds with lower spenders are closer to reaching their potential https://imgur.com/qFMhgm1

  • Notice that top whale guilds dropped vs expectation in AE6/7 by about ~25-50b. A practical equivalent is if 18-36 accounts hit at 75% of potential. Majestic Floofs is actually an outlier guild for AE6, unfortunately we captured images with ~2hrs left and missed their run. Sorry lol.

^algorithm tl;dr if anyone cares: local regression of time-scaled player dmg on power, using time-scaled damage, guild rank bins (1-20, 21-40, etc.), and guild rank as the distance metric. Data is down-weighted if there's "proof" the performance is out-of-line (either too high, which can be specific guilds finding a team, or too low, which means account didn't live up to potential).

But the rest of the game is casual/chill/afk and krakens dominate

  • AFK Arena appeals to a key demographic: competitive gamers who got busy and don’t have time for ladder, raids, etc. They value skill expression, but lack free blocks to practice/grind. Using myself as an example, I can play AFK and chat for hours asynchronously, but queuing for a few league games can seriously disrupt my day (since I can’t tab out).
  • This subset of the community engages in “non-chill” behavior outside of AE
    • Macroing campaign stages for hours
    • Pushing 600+ trift floors f2p
    • LC players testing PvP comps 8+ hrs before matches
    • Using all resources on CR breakpoints for maximum RoI
  • 80%+ of people active on discord or reddit are “trying too hard” in some mode or playstyle. So I’d just ask you to imagine how you’d feel if (/when) your favs were trashed.

Basic features and QoL can reduce time by 80%+ without affecting skill ceiling

  • QoL features we should have had in 2021 (some nice in campaign too)
    • “Timed sweep” - allow sweeping a run while repeating timings and ults exactly. Save HOURS of micromanagement.
      • “Copy timed sweep from ally” - allow sweeping a run from a battle report, using exactly their timings and ults.
    • “Skip from here” - allow skipping to the end after the necessary main battle component is complete (drez silas after inject). Full auto or no ults depending on setting
    • “Decline/Accept battle result” - allow player to reroll (Decline, -4 stamina) or keep the damage (-48 stamina). Removes the need to watch your phone or use airplane mode (which wastes time and kicks folks off conference calls)
    • “Toggle hero auto ult” - let us prevent specific heroes from ulting while auto is on. 90% manual reduction for Eironn and Zolrath teams in AE7.
    • Add rosa QoL to more heroes (silas, raine, numisu, mortas)
  • Other changes with a dramatically positive impact on time spent
    • Tune down mishka if she’s A team (ALL heroes are adjusted for AE, its NBD)
    • Select relics and boss HP%. What’s the point of a sim that only works for half the comps?
    • Immediate respawn timer - start the 24hr respawn timer as soon as someone damages the boss. This will let guilds casually kill boss 1-4 across time zones
      • To encourage steady progress, stop the timer based on remaining boss %hp. Respawn can run down to 18hr at 75% hp, 12hr at 50% hp, 6hr at 25% hp, etc.
      • Because 0% is not always the “critical point”, this could be scaled for QoL. E.g. clock goes to 12hr at 75%, 0hr at <50% (respawns on death).
      • Result: Guilds can execute kills 1-4 over a 24hr window without anyone needing to wake up at 3AM, find free time at work, etc.

These major changes would reduce time and frustration significantly

  • Give global guilds pre-beta AE access to find broken shit. Top CN guilds got early access to Marsha - and failed to find broken solos like Merlin, Ulmus, Titus, Thoran, Rigby, etc, which global testers found within 30 minutes. This caused the AE7 boss stats revert and AE6 meta (ft creeps with shields!) repeat. Why are global guilds excluded?
  • “Sweep damage from last battle” - popular, but I think people underestimate how much we would abuse this. If there is uproll potential, it’d be worthwhile to try 5% success RNG manuals, then sweep 20 times. Very time consuming and annoying.
    • There are also edge cases like sweeping w/ changing HP (probably need to disable sweep after boss transforms). Perhaps limiting # of sweeps to 2-5 would help.
  • Add target prioritization (wave/boss). A lot of annoying manuals are because e.g. Treznor ults the wrong direction if you don’t press his ult exactly right. AE7 examples:
    • Ult wrong direction: Queen, Rigby, Eironn, Estrilda, Grezhul
    • Ignore wave for no reason: (Eorin, Cecilia, Lucretia, other melee cele)
    • Undesirable attempt to wave clear with autos (Raku, Audrae)
  • Tweak scaling to favor timeout comps over burst teams/solos
    • Aggressive ATK scaling forces manuals because teams need to burst, or have stacked support kits and perfect setup
    • Aggressive DEF scaling forces solos because hero DPS drops drastically after 15s. 20s+die beats 2 heroes+small buff+timeout!
    • Heroes with HP% or DEF reduce/pen/ignore scale forever, while others basically stop doing damage, which limits the # of viable carry heroes. I thus think “DPS stacks” (boss stats based on last 15 seconds of damage) would encourage consistent teams and discourage burst/solos. Most important manuals would be for early setup, after which we can auto+4x.

Removing manual exacerbates most current problems with AE

  • With no cancel, you get 20 tries per hero to test comps that don’t work in the sim (<50% maim, <40% zolrath, etc.). Good luck!
  • Behavior changes at different relic levels (easier to fix with manual)
  • Smaller accounts will have literally no options if they are below a certain level
  • Because guilds are (correctly) interpreting no manual = CR = pure pay2win, lower spending players will struggle more to join (and stay in) higher ranked guilds
  • Only “tuning” options are removing gear and decreasing tree, which hurt damage
  • Frustrating cyclic behavior- once you invest a bit too much, your damage decreases with investment for a while before going back up. Have fun debugging this (and this is the nicest, most ideal scenario):

even in an ideal scenario, auto teams have higher breakpoints and do less dmg except at specific levels https://imgur.com/hdpkSVR

  • It’s not uncommon for heroes, especially solos (Izold best example) to fail with too much investment. This can happen for the A team too - in AE5, antandra e60+ had awkward auto timings and lost 600-700m per hit with hodgkin A. You can’t fix this without a manual. Nobody should build heroes for auto AE until they’re sure it won’t mess up the team.

Breakdown of manuals throughout the AE

The point of this section is just to showcase manuals importance throughout the AEs, and demonstrate how each proposed QoL fix saves massive amounts of time. Hopefully chronological order helps everyone remember the old bosses. Please observe that 90%+ of manuals BnB has run in past AE/HF can be executed with low effort using this recipe (with QoL):

  • EITHER press hero ult at a specific timing until end. Then sweep w/ timings QoL and accept/reject
  • OR (if setup rng/conditional) do setup for run, then sweep to end and accept/reject

​

AE S4 - Ezizh

  • Drez Grez - E Drez OP

Delay drez ult to live extra cycle! Matches luc dmg with 5.4cele! https://imgur.com/nQSjmzs

  • Lyca Rosa https://streamable.com/bo9jg8 burn lyca ult so you can rosa->lyca the wave. actually worked auto with 47sust but less dmg
  • Eironn Talene https://streamable.com/2uhqcm (hold ults until totem spawn, then heal+clear) . f2p variant- never ult talene since she won’t regen hp, will keep healing the team)
  • Silas Vurk https://streamable.com/ioxnkb (chain vurk->silas for QoL, E+ vurk!)
  • Pop Raku dims (450m+, p2w obviously, ult pop twice per wave, raku no ult [QoL helps]).

HF S1 - Adrax

  • GB - theowyn dodge https://streamable.com/kiqouv
  • GB - sync at start then auto https://streamable.com/vjzt3j could use timing or skip + accept/reject QoL
  • CHD - space ults 15s to use artifact (timing/skip QoL), LB - delay belinda until shield down, Wilder, delay Eironn until shield down. There was also a timed Gorvo team.

AE S5 - Balancer

link has full explanation

HF S2 - Oelus

  • Mauler Wombo https://streamable.com/au7rec tidus->eironn->mishka->ant keep frame frozen and eironn starts autoing before the clock changes
  • Moonlight (sadly retired, this guy was insane. Cloud) https://streamable.com/jnvdw2 silas ult zol, pray for lucky. 6 lucky = do 3B, but 2 lucky = 2B is more normal. Targeting and selected auto QoL.
  • Hashi CHD B https://streamable.com/c7af73 - atalene off, ult ant before boss deals dmg, could use auto QoL
  • Wilder auto, but Dolphin and below needed manual to fix an overheating issue. Eironn e60 died early and did less damage.

AE S6 - Balancer repeat

does up to 1B with manual, 300m on auto. https://imgur.com/yEEaLw8

Auto off at :44, hold eironn until crystal gone, then auto back on https://imgur.com/fhh3e33

HF S3 - Poison Dragon

AE S7 - Marsha

5B+ with OP manual https://i.imgur.com/nQSjmzs.png

If you're still with me, thanks for reading this post of doom, and I sincerely hope that you find inspiration in all the amazing tactics our community has found over the years! Please post any helpful suggestions or feedback in the comments.