Well…
First thing, is it just me or are others also seeing this:
Before the update there was only Loading Assets progress bar, after update that Logging In thing appeared right in front of usual Loading Assets - 2 different accounts on 3 different devices, so it’s not my imagination.
Of course, I can’t say with a hundred percent certainty because I haven’t measured with a stopwatch but it feels like game takes longer time so start now than it did before the update.
Secondly, missing images seem to be sorted for now on my mobile, but it didn’t happen without a long winded story to tell. Sit down around the campfire, kids, and listen up…
Summary
I went to Google Playstore and proceeded to update (since it never updates automatically on my phone) - the usual images (newest bounty troops and such) were still missing.
Somebody filed a bug report about a visual issue, this one, I think
[Fixed] 7.0 Broken Graphics
The fix was rolled out, game downloaded a small snippet of data when I fired it up to collect tribute and - lo and behold! - almost all images were gone without me even lifting a finger.
Almost 900MB of downloaded assets later there are no more missing images, but it will probably only be so until next Bounty on August 11 when normal service resumes.
Others have already said good and reasonable things about unreasonable changes to certain game modes, so I won’t repeat it again; suffice to say that I side with them.
People have already talked in length about the disaster that is visual upgrade and new look of cards, but a few breadcrumbs from me…
Functionality must come first and aesthetically pleasing (which is a highly subjective matter in itself, so what devs think is aesthetically pleasing is not necessarily what players thing is aesthetically pleasing) should always take back seat. I’ll take ugly card with with the information I need readily available over Mona Lisa that gives me no necessary information.
Fortunately, new look does not cause me health issues and I can even see stuff (on mobile and laptop and desktop) but it is much harder to follow and discern necessary information than before the update.
Things that, at the very least, must go as soon as possible:
- That blue flashy abomination when troop is ready to cast - everybody already knows that troop is spell-ready when the image changes from portrait to spell picture. There is absolutely no need to shove constant annoying blue animation down our throats. Maybe the devs enjoy living in a stroboscope, but I sure don’t;
- Mana rainbow background for spell descriptions;
- Mana rainbow sidebar on the cards;
By the way, this Reflect effect on enemy team is really something:
Perhaps your professional internal testing team (we’ve been told repeatedly that you have one) might spend less time on Australian holidays and more time on their pay-job?
P.S. Dang, almost forgot the most pathetic thing now - trait diamonds.
Unless you know all trait of respective troop by heart (and, by extension, all traits in their correct order for all troops), those diamonds provide no useful information whatsoever.
If before update we only had to memorize some essential pictures (for example, Stealthy, Impervious, Eagle Eye, Godslayer) to assess situation with a single glance at the enemy team, after update we might spend whole day staring at the enemy team still would be none the wiser - there is not a single drop of useful information revealed in those pesky diamonds.