So like many of us I updated my game yesterday only to sign in and be completely overewhelmed by what our beloved game had become. My first impression was like many of you in that it was terrible and ruined the game.After going through everything I realized it was not all bad, in fact there is a lot of good stuff in it. The purpose of this thread, and hopefully why it will be different, is that I really want to highlight the good and bad in a constructive way so that maybe a compromise can be made by the devs.
I am going to break down a few of the features and fixes by themselves before giving an all around assessment.
First, The biggest complaint. Headaches playing a match. I read many people saying this and assumed many were being a bit overdramatic (as I was in my initial reaction) and it was not as bad as I thought. After actually playing a few matches I actually started getting a pressure headache behind my eyes. I thought maybe it was just because I was looking for it to happen so I logged off and went to bed. This morning I logged in again and after just a few matches I started getting the same headache. This is not something I feel even after many hours of playing any video game. I think its the gray shade boxes behind each gem forcing my eyes to focus harder? I am simply guessing as I am not an eye doctor, but as I try to focus on a group of gems it starts to blur fairly heavily.
If nothing else changes I hope at the very least they revert that back to a solid background or whatever changes they made to the board that could be causing it. I can learn to live with most things, but physical discomfort is not one of them,
Now to break down a list of good and bad.
Good: I love that your guildwar defense record is shown. Great addition and enough said.
Bad: Why remove the gw score being shown at the end of each match? Seems like an uneeded omission.
Good: I do like the new reward breakdown (including the new artwork for resources and rewards). Very clean and nice.
Bad: Troop card redesigns. this is a mixed bag for me. I don’t mind the change to the overall, but the text for its stats and the symbols being white just looks terrible and harder to read.
Good: New troop filters. thank you for allowing me to filter dual colors and dropdowns. Much easier to use.
Bad:The world map…This is kind of a double edged sword as well. I don’t mind the changes to the visual style, but again, the plain white menus, text and icons make everything seem jumbled and harder to distinguish. This also goes for the menu icons for mail, events, pvp etc.
Good: I actually like the chat. I am not saying its better or worse, but I like that I have more options for sizing.
Good: Ai sliders removed. They were a great idea, but fell flat and really made no sense what the settings meant. I would be happy in the future to have a reworked system put back in, but for now…props.
Good: Gemmatching nerf…I loved decimating teams with Kracken as much as the next guy, but I think we can all agree it was not working in the spirit in which it was intended.
bad: Wisp…This may need more testing, but I think you missed the mark on this nerf. I personally think fast should have went away. They still basically fill two with one surge of red or purple and after two casts with mab it can really cripple your team. They still fill pretty damn quick as well. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I still think this troop is basically broken.
All in all I think this update is not as bad as I initially thought, but there are a couple things that are gamebreaking that I hope are addressed quickly. I cannot play if I get headaches every time I play a match. This cannot wait even another day.
I think with some tweeks to the text overlay and iconography this wont be as doom and gloom as a lot of us seem to think.
Of course opinions vary, and I clearly have not covered all the good or bad so please, keep the discussion going. I only ask that for every complaint you offer either a good point to counter, or an idea to make that flaw better. And if you disagree with me, that’s ok as well. Let me know.
Sorry it was a little long, but I really wanted to be as fair as possible.