Idea: vary Events by player / incentivise defences

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

So here’s an idea.

Pre-amble

Biggest recurring gripe with this game in my 2.5 years playing it has always been the lack of variety of PvP enemy teams. Yes, a meta will emerge, but a game with 350 troops should be able to get more than 10 of these viable in the end-game. The nature of the game, and dumbness of the AI, means that people will put up insta-kill or other grief defences as the only real way to passively gain any rewards from defence wins - as well as just being plain nasty :slight_smile:

Weekly events were supposed to stir this up. I posted some ideas on this in another recent thread: New Events that actually change something

Here’s a variation on that, with a further idea.

The Big Idea

Well maybe not that big. But cue drum-roll…

Let’s set it up so that each player gets a different event and set of bonuses and defence incentives, or rather, each player gets one of five (or six, or eight, or ten) events. The events are much the same as the current ones, but also offer rewards for changing your defence.

Every player will have a unique player ID number in the great gems database, so just reduce this modulo five and we have the player base split into five parts. Each part gets a different event, and the events can cycle as they do now.

But what about new troop events?

Easy enough. Each week a new troop appears and part of the weekly event is linked to that new troops as it is now.

Some examples please?

Meet @Jainus, @Shimrra and @Esslee, three upstanding citizens of Krystara.

Week 1:this week’s troop is Bone Naga

Jainus gets the events:

  • Mist of Scales troops get +25% stats
  • gain +souls for using Bone Naga on invade teams
  • do treasure hunt with Raven to get Snots for prizes
  • Adana troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for defence games with 4 unique Mechs on your defence

Shimrra gets the events:

  • Mist of Scales troops get +25% stats
  • gain +souls for using Bone Naga on invade teams
  • do treasure hunt with Raven to get Snots for prizes
  • Forest Of Thorns troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for defence games with 4 unique Fey on your defence

Esslee gets the events:

  • Mist of Scales troops get +25% stats
  • gain +souls for using Bone Naga on invade teams
  • do treasure hunt with Raven to get Snots for prizes
  • Karakoth troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for defence games with 4 unique Daemons on your defence

Week 2:this week’s troop is Sir Dwayne

Jainus gets the events:

  • Sword’s Edge troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for using Sir Dwayne on invade teams
  • destroy blue troops in explore with Tau to get Snots for prizes
  • Khaziel troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for defence games with 4 unique Dwarfs on your defence

Shimrra gets the events:

  • Sword’s Edge troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for using Sir Dwayne on invade teams
  • destroy blue troops in explore with Tau to get Snots for prizes
  • Blighted Lands troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for defence games with 4 unique Daemons on your defence

Esslee gets the events:

  • Sword’s Edge troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for using Sir Dwayne on invade teams
  • destroy blue troops in explore with Tau to get Snots for prizes
  • Maugrim Woods troops get +25% stats
  • gain +Glory for defence games with 4 unique Wargare on your defence

…and so on…

Results

Hey presto, instant variety in defence teams. Suddenly there are tons more different line-ups to invade.

As a side benefit, stipulating 4 unique ones to get free Glory (or other things) means fewer single-troop defences (which do peeve many people) and fewer 4x broken troop cheese defences (which do peeve everyone).

I don’t think this is that hard to code. The events are already there. The server just needs to send the five events to the game client and the client shows the one that matches your player ID modulo five. Simples, even a meerkat could do it.

18 Likes
2

This, to me, is the heart of the matter. Players need to be incentivized to offer up unusual defenses or else they’ll stick with what is most likely to earn a win (and the extra 2 glory it currently provides).

I just pity the poor sod who draws “with 4 unique merfolk”.

7 Likes
3

Anything to help with the monotony… I mean, its fun for a day. By the end of the week we are going to loathe Kerberos.

4

I think this is a great idea. It would probably also help eliminate the one troop defense fad as well.

2 Likes
5

the idea to give different bonuses to different ppl is cool, but please not all ‘4 unique’ troops of the kind!

dont you agree that will be too weak to make ppl consider it?
make it 2, or 3 unique and you will open possibilities to work with

or even go further:
request 2unique of type A plus 2 unique of type B :slight_smile:

6

That’s debatable… :grin: JOKING!

7

Great idea @Jainus.

I would love if they added this. However, I agree with Anna that 4 unique could be really difficult for certain types and be a complete turn off. Perhaps, they could offer a bonus that scales. So, you get a big, juicy bonus for using 4 unique troops of that type and smaller bonuses for using less.

3 Likes
8

I really, really like this idea - also I think the bonus does need to be glory (or an extra gem or two) as the other resources are more easily obtainable.

Could even go down to individual troops maybe - but would be harder to implement.

Imagine, you’ve got bonuses for knights so your running them then you come up against a player that’s got bonuses for using Bunni’Nog! Battle of the Ages ensures… :grin:

1 Like
9

I don’t like you the complete lack synergy in your events, you have 2 kingdoms at the same time. Awful idea (wish I could down vote)

I do like offer REWARDS for defense, a lot! This needs to happen. And has been brought up for over a year or more. Even if its not scattershot (every player being unique) any rewards would be better than the current design of 0 Defense rewards. Fantastic!

10

Meaning no +50% for anyone, i think it is the best part about the whole idea :wink:

4 Likes
11

In addition after 2 years of experience doing Tasks: 4 of anything is NOT good. 3 unique seems to be the right amount.

All this has been discussed and proposed before… but do I like not reading about GW so :thumbsup:

2 Likes
12

@Jainus

The only thing I would say is that the defense-based incentives would HAVE to be significant.

There is a good portion of the player base that blows off incentives already - they don’t do events, they don’t do maps, and they run meta teams on defense all day and night simply because they can.

So in order for a system like this to work it really has to be too good to turn down.

1 Like
13

I’ll make a post actually on topic here. 4 of one type for defense could be rough, as some combos are just arguably better than other troop types. If the rewards are meaningful enough to make people want to participate, then I’m worried how mindless PvP would become. There would be no true challenge anymore I feel like.

14

Is it really a challenge though? Or is it just whether or not the dice roll goes the AI’s way?

I honestly don’t find GW challenging at all. Certainly not anymore than PVP. The losses just matter more.

15

I don’t find it very challenging now. And to my point, I was mostly referring to Ranked PvP and not GW.

I can’t recall the last time I lost to an all goblin team, so by making someone field a goblin team for the rewards, that makes it basically a 100% win for me. That could get boring if winning becomes that easy. But the forums lately want winning to be that easy.

16

I’m one of the most vocal about this things and I don’t really care about winning at all. I care about seeing more than 1% of the total troops in this game.

3 Likes
17

Love the general idea of players having different bonuses and incentives. But I also agree that it might be hard to create a legitimate defensive team with 4 unique troops. However, you could just change the incentive to encourage more of the unique defensive troops by using a stackable % bonus. Make it something like “+75% for each unique Wargare” for example, so if you would normally get 1 glory instead you’d get 2, 3, 4, or 6 glory depending on how many you used (obviously specific % could be tweaked). EDIT: And re-reading my change, I guess it could even be simplified to just a static bonus per unique troop, like “1 glory per unique Wargare used”. Sorry for over-complicating things :wink:

18

I rather like the idea, it could mix things up a bit. but I don’t think it’s practical. It means a whole lot more work for the devs, having to come up with 5 different, somewhat balanced event groups each week. Or if they just quickly throw something together, you could end up with one player group having an amazingly good event while another would get a useless one. And I can imagine it causing a different kind of frustration for players - having to face a broken OP team sucks, but having to face it without having the ability to use the same broken OP team yourself is worse.

I do like the two kingdoms at a time though, that could be applied to the events we have now - the 50% bonus creates some ridiculously OP troops. If it was 25% and on two kingdoms, I think you’re more likely to see a better mix of troops used in PvP.

1 Like
19

what if it was seasonal:

  • there is a set of 5 types that will be favored in defense
  • for that 5 weeks each player can choose one type for each week, in order the want but have to take each type once (rewardng for using 2 or 3 tunique troops of favored type)
  • to add to that favored type player chosen, each week second favored type is determined by weekly event (rewarding for using one or two of the event type)

in total requiring to use 4 unique troops that would fill the 3&1 or 2&2 uniques if the types listed :slight_smile:

so it means for 5 weeks you could see those 5 types but different each week as the combination of event type+favored type will differ depending on the type ppl chose to match

i think that would bring quite some variety while didnt directly decide for ppl who can have an op team and who doesnt :stuck_out_tongue: the ppl would decide themselves

20

I had a different idea, that might encourage HUGE variety. I dislike typing long posts so here the short version. Sorry for the detour @Jainus

All tropes are assigned a 5 Star rating based on the previous weeks (or 2 weeks) usage/popularity in 20% brackets. This is displayed when choosing your Defense team. Setting your teams using very uncommon (bottom bracket) troops earns BIG bonuses. Using a top 20% troop earns 0. Middle brackets vary accordingly.

Win or loose you get something (Wins are worth more) per battle defended. This is on top of the usual.

Reward will need to be refined to encourage some players to experiment, and allow others to run their usual grief. Variety is the goal.

5 Likes