JWA Boost 2.0 Q&A - More Information on the upcoming Boost Changes

Explorers! As we have reported previously we know Boost 2.0 will be coming with the surprise update 1.10. This update will go live on Tuesday, October 22 if the recent maintenance announcement is correct. When they originally announced Boost 2.0 they gave the community the opportunity to submit questions. Today they release those questions and answers in a Boost 2.0 Q&A. We'll go over some of the questions and answers and what we believe it means for the game. In the questions, SBP's stand for Stat Boost Points. 

Question
How many SBPs will I need to spend to increase one Tier?

Answer
100.

Implications 

So this is what we have been wondering ever since Boost 2.0 was announced. How much it will cost for each tier. We know the cost will be linear so it will cost 100 boosts to go from Tier 1 to Tier 2 and 100 boosts to go from Tier 19 to Tier 20. Here is a side by side comparison of what that means in terms of your team. 

From the images above we can see the cost difference is quite significant. While we will be getting a refund of all our boosts they won't "cost" the same in the new system. Tier 8 (46%) cost 510 boosts in the current system and that will only get you to Tier 5  (12.5%) in the new system. So that means you are going to see less powerful creatures overall. But if you look at the cost of the last tier, you will also see in the end (last tier) it will cost the same. It will just take longer to get there. And honestly, we don't think that is a bad thing. 

Question

How do Sanctuaries Level Up interact with Stat Boosts 2.0?

Answer

After Stat Boost 2.0, the Sanctuary Level Points bonus from Stat Boosts will have been adjusted to consider this change (since it is impossible to max out every stat anymore). Each creature will give around 20% more Sanctuary points. In the end, a maxed-out creature (Level and Stat Boosts) will give the same amount of Sanctuary points as before.

This will also help players at low Levels as their creatures also generate 20% more Sanctuary points.

Implications

As an alliance that has a shared sanctuary, we are constantly trying to level up, this seems like a positive change. Right now, you benefit from boosted dinos in the sanctuaries and this is going to allow us to gain even more sanctuary points early in the life of the sanctuary. Make sure and check out our article on Shared Sanctuaries for more information on how this can be helpful to you and your alliance. 

Question
Will there be a feature where you can reset a creature’s Boosts? For example, you boost a T. rex up, then you want to boost the Indominus rex up while removing the T. rex from your team. Since you won’t be using the T. rex anymore, it would be very nice if there was a feature to remove all Boosts from a creature to use on a different one.

Answer
That’s precisely what we’ve done with the player-driven refund option.

However, instead of paying any resource (such as HC or Coins) to perform this operation, you now “trade-off cost” by having half of the SBPs back. This is similar to RPGs in which you get only half the item’s worth back when you sell it. When you spend SBPs, you are still investing in a creature.

We don’t want to create an ecosystem where players can, with no consequence, ping-pong their Stat Boosts from one creature to the next as often as they wish–if that was the case, we would have made slot-based items that you could move from one creature to the next in one operation.

Implications

This system will allow you to "play" with your team a little bit. There will still be consequences for levelling something and then deciding you don't want that creature anymore. But at least you won't have a fully boosted dino riding the bench. Just be thoughtful of this as you decide where to place your boosts. You can get them back, but at half the cost. 

Question
You need to implement another way where you can get Boosts via a hard grind. Players who play free to play but grind much more than others get an advantage, such as Booster special quest, walk xy km, use event (100?), etc.

Answer
Yes. You will be able to collect 100 SBP every week by completing the weekly SBP Strike Event and completing all 7 Daily Battle Incubators. In addition to this, you will be able to collect more SBP in the 15 minutes battle incubators.

In the coming weeks, there will be more events where you can find more SBP such as in Supply Drops and Enhanced Supply Drops.

Implications

Since the boost system is now linear, everyone will have the ability to boost at least 1 dino's stats through normal play. They have said they will continue to have boosts for sale in the store, so those wishing to purchase boosts will also still be able to. This features seems to allow F2P players more of an opportunity to boost, however. The cost will seem more significant at the beginning, but you won't have to wait as long to boost to a higher level as you do now. 

Question
I would like to easily see the Tier of Boosts on my Dinosaurs as well as for opponents when battling. Is that coming too?

Answer
This is definitely something we would like to implement but we have not yet had the chance to fit it into our packed production schedules.

Implications

While you can see boosted stats in battle, you aren't able to see the current tiers. It sounds like this is something they are looking to add in the future, however and that should help when sizing up an opponent. 

Question
I’m not very fond of this change. I have spent a good amount of real money to get my Boost and get my creatures where they are. Are we getting in-game cash compensation for what we spent?

Answer
You will not get hard cash. All applied SBPs will be removed from creatures and put in your inventory. Then, you will get all the SBPs in your inventory multiplied by a bonus, regardless if you have acquired them via gameplay or the in-game store. Once the release is live, you will be able to spend these refunded-and-multiplied SBPs on any creature you wish.

Implications 

This means you should def start taking screenshots of your boosted dinos and calculating what you should be getting back. We have a handy boost calculator tool that can help with that. It looks like in addition to all of our boosts they will be multiplying all of your boosts by an unknown amount. We have not received any confirmation on what that multiplier is, but we are hoping it makes it easier for people to apply boosts to most of their team (even if it's just a couple of tiers). 

Question
If a creature is at Level 30, will it be possible to reach Tier 20 in each stat (HP, Attack, Speed) simultaneously, or will the “Boost Ceiling” prevent a creature from being “Maxed Out” in every aspect simultaneously?

Answer
With a creature at Level 30, the maximum amount of Tiers (the total sum) that you can have on your creature is 30. This means that you could have a balanced creature with Attack 10, HP 10 and Speed 10 (for a total of 30 Tiers) or you could have a skewed creature (such as an Attack 15, HP 15, Speed 0 for your Dracoceratops). You cannot have 20 Attack and 20 HP, because that sum would be 40 (which is higher than the maximum Level of 30).

Making such choices over your roster of creatures is part of the customization aspect that we want players to be able to express. Such a Level-based ceiling means that if you focus on one attribute, it’s at the cost of another attribute.

Implications

This is confirmation that the total number of tiers will not be able to exceed the actual dino level. And it will be impossible to have a fully maxed dino in all stats. This will go back to the core mechanic of the game. Grinding for DNA and levelling creatures accordingly. So a level 21 Thor will not be able to have the same max tiers at a level 25 Thor. We will still see a variety of dinos and levels as the arena shakes out so be patient as people will be trying to figure out where to invest their boosts. 

Question
I think that health and attack boost should also be pure added values, not percentages. One tier would be +30 attack and +60 health or something like that so maximum would be +600 attack and 1200 health.

Answer
We have thought about flat attribute increases when initially designing Stat Boosts. The reason why we chose percentage increases is because these increases are scalable with creature Level and still encourage the player to play the base game (collect DNA, Level up the creature) in order to increase their creature’s attributes over time.

If we had flat attribute gains, you could either gain too much (because +100 is way too strong at your creature Level) or too little (because +100 is too insignificant at your creature Level). Keeping percentages lets us have a constant baseline of creature power-by-Level and power-by-stat-boost-tier.

Implications 

Similar to the question above, they are encouraging players to get back to the base gameplay. They intended boosts to be an additional feature that could help players out but not the end all be all of the game. Increases of stats based on percentages encourage people to continue to get out there and try to level their dinos and their team. 

Question
I think this Boost system will lead to a situation where “fast” creatures become useless. Fast creatures require Boost to increase speed but slower creatures are designed so that they do not need speed. As such, you can use all your Boost on Attack and HP and this leads to slower creatures being much stronger compared to fast creatures with Boost than without Boosts.

Answer
As a battle designer, I welcome the opportunity to add value to Tanks by having the slow, healthy and strong creatures be excellent counters to speedy ones (since they don’t invest any speed boost, they can afford some of their Level-based budgets on more HP and more attack). I also expect that chompers will be excellent to counter those tanks. And what counters the anti-tank chompers? High damage (and speedy!) creatures. Especially those that distract. Believe us, speed will still matter.

To get you started thinking about the speed factor, tell us what’s better: a Velociraptor with 15 attack and 15 HP Boosts, or its opponent, a Velociraptor with 15 attack, 14 HP and 1-speed boost? Who wins? The fastest one, that’s who. Extrapolate that way of thinking, and having more speed than speedy creatures will be worthwhile. Between you and your opponent, who will apply the most speed Boosts to their creatures in order to keep that speed advantage?

That said, there will be a Stat Boost reset that comes with this change, which will allow you to redistribute your Boosts as you best see fit for your team.

Implications 

Honestly, we don't believe the new boost system will change much in terms of speedsters. People will still boost their speedy dinos to keep up with the other speedy dinos. Yes, there are some "classes" of dinos like tanks that benefit from not having speed boosts, but we are also hoping this will stop the unnecessary boosting of creatures that aren't meant to be fast (looking at you 150 speed Thor and 142 speed Tryko). And remember you only have so many total boosts you can apply so we'll have to wait and see how things like Erlidom and Dilorach do in this new world. 

It will be interesting to see how Boost 2.0 shakes up the arena. Talking to some of the top players, many of them will be waiting to boost their creatures as they figure out what most of the other players decide to do. We will hopefully have an article out soon about what creatures benefit from what boosts. And make sure to check out our article we posted on where the dinos fall with different boost setups according to the Sim. Also make sure to check out our discord where we have a team building channel as well as a boost help channel. We'll keep you updated as more information comes out and we can't wait to see how the arena looks after the reset tomorrow!