Maugrim Woods Rework... Rework... Rework (!)

Note that this would do nothing to stop M/M/DB/BD. I like @Rasper’s idea philosophically (it doesn’t make sense for there to be 4 named troops on a team, and most Epic+ troops have unique names) but I agree with @Sirrian that it is far too late to make a change that constrains player choice to this degree. People would justifiably mad, especially people who put down money to 4x a Mythic.

5 Likes

Until something better comes out or they discover an unbeatable combo…

Am I the only weirdo that is actually enjoying fighting against 4x Kerberos? Seeing how high Mab’s magic can get from all the Arcane activations? Way more fun than battling Manticores. I was hoping it would last a few more days.

4 Likes

Sir, you are … fortunately.

2 Likes

I rarely if ever use more than one of the same troop on a team, but I hate the idea of being restricted because people are a little bit upset over certain recent (bugged) teams. Multiple copies of a troop are not the real issue here, and I don’t think we have anything to gain by adding restrictions. I made a (non-bug exploiting) team that used a couple Kerberos, just for fun, and never subjected anyone else to fighting it. Why should my options be limited? So long as defenses “incentivize” winning, and the best way to win is to grief people, we are going to have annoying teams out there, and they will be copy pasted ad infinitum.

Yeah, I actually find it pretty fun now and again. I was using valk/valk/mab/mercy and seeing how many turns I could go before I eventually got a team wiping cast. Or using my own Kerberos and seeing how many I could devour. Or using courage and skull spam and seeing how big I could get. I figured if it was going to be a thing for a while, I’d at least have some fun with it. I only saw it 3 times in PvP, but I fought it a bunch more through a “friendly” match from someone on the leaderboards just so I could test what was triggering what. It definitely would have gotten old, eventually, though. Oh well, back to quick wins I guess.

I hope Gate Guardian gets restored to its original 100% glory when it reverts to “on enemy death”, so I can at least have my old Kerberos team back. I have several, admittedly more powerful ones with the new Kerberos, but I miss my old team.

1 Like

Hooray! I’m surprised nobody uses him up front, since the attack buff is the primary benefit of devour, isn’t it? But it’s not like many people used him at all prior to this week. He doesn’t have any way of causing burning himself, so it’s not the most convenient trait for him, but arcane seems far more useless, or possibly even detrimental for him, since it increases the chances of killing with his spell instead of devouring. It will be nice to have another necromancy troop that has some offensive potential for soul farming though!

On the various changes and points here…

  • Kerberos needed some kind of fix, but I really don’t like this one: summon on enemy death is useless
  • could he just have a trait that blocks all summon and revive effects?
  • Warg summons a Dire Wolf: good fix
  • I’ve long supported the idea of unique troops in a team only, I think this would have helped a far more stable and varied game
  • and it’s not too late to add it…
  • a last slightly random point: too many soul making or necromancy troops are red/purple, that function/trait needs spreading around more diversely
4 Likes

Put me in the camp that would love to see troops restricted to one time per deck. That would eliminate a lot of the super frustrating stuff that’s been going around lately like 2 x Courage and 4 x Kerberos.

2 Likes

I desperately wish that Gate Guardian was 60+% chance to devour summoned troops. I mean, Kerberos guards the gate they’re coming out of, right?

Edit: this would also differentiate Infernal King’s resurrection from oldWarg’s summon. Both happen on death, but only one would trigger Gate Guardian.

3 Likes

I would LOVE that!

While not directly related to on-death events, I posted a video of the Lion and Tiger hero weapon bug that showed exactly what the bug was and under what conditions it happens, reproducible at my end 100% of the time. A dev responded that they couldn’t reproduce it. It was quite baffling.

1 Like

Post deleted

New game mode, Wack-a-wolf!

Yep - I remember when we were testing for that one. I didn’t test it myself, but I trust the guy involved to have followed the steps, and believe him when he said he’d tested it many times and not been able to repro it.
I think we’ve seen it 2-3 times total in thousands of test games here in the office, and never when we’re looking for it.

We’re pretty sure there’s a timing issue involved, when situations like this occur, and have a good idea what’s causing it. For the tech folk out there, there is a poorly implemented state machine in the spell system that relies on timers rather hard-and-fast state changes to advance its state. It went unnoticed in the initial release, but popped up when spell effects became more complex.
A fix is tricky, and has a little risk involved that it will cause a worse problem. So, after the fix, we need a LOT of QA on the spell system. If it were a simple fix, we would have done it a while back, but as I mentioned above, we’re going to make a big attempt to address this one for 2.2.

Actually - believe it or not - it is very closely related to many of the on-death problems with traits, though some of those are a separate issue.

5 Likes

Very interesting. This explains many of the odd bugs I’ve seen.

Are these network latency issues or related to the device?

I ask because I’ve given up on using any of the “Move” weapons, because they are all bugged for me. Both for those that move the hero, and ones that move enemies. I’d love to use them, but they almost never do what the language on the weapon says.

i love it :smiley: moar necro pease :grinning:

1 Like

It has to do with the scripting language. It’s probably a racing condition that becomes more obvious as effects get more complicated. I bet they aren’t seeing it because they are probably simulating games without the graphics / sound effects being displayed.

1 Like

^ This
(Race Condition for anyone who’s interested in nerdy code stuff and doesn’t know what it is)

We do actually play with sound on & off, but different hardware configurations, cause different latencies on different events/actions in the game, and all of a sudden you’ve got yourself into an untested state.

I’ve seen some terrible things over the years where engineers try to fix problems by adding in delays, and (time permitting) I usually slap them in the ear and tell them not to do it. :imp: This one got away from us though.

8 Likes

So a funny thing about testing… There’s a lot more to it then people think. I thought I’d post an insiders point of view on someone who’s tested software for almost 20 years.

So there’s a test plan. In the test plan, there are test cases. A test case is a list of tests that test each feature of the game. For instance, a test case could be titled “Mana from Gems” and it would include tests to ensure when you match 3 gems, you get the right mana. 3 gems with a mana surge, get the right mana. 4 gems, right mana. Another test would be make sure 4 gems never get a mana surge. 5 gems, correct mana. 5 gems with mana surge, right mana. And then do it ALL again making sure your getting bonuses from troops, mastery, troop combinations, traits, and the list goes on. And all this is just testing mana. I don’t know the internals of the game, but I could probably write 100 test cases just for mana.

So with what I pointed out above, think about the amount of testing a new or reworked creature takes, I’m guessing the thing that made kerberos broken was each time one kerberos died, the other 3 all had the chance to summon a new one. Not just the one that died.

it would be interesting to know how many test cases something like this has :slight_smile:

1 Like

As a console player, as much as it sucks having to lag behind the mobile version. It’s times like this where being a console player is a boon rather then a bane.

1 Like