Pre 1.0.9 I tried out hard a couple of times but I found that I’d use either Normal (Arena, PvP, Quests) or Warlord IV (Challenges for the souls). Hard mostly felt like a bit more random, not much, but when I’m in the mood for Arena I’m not in the mood for a challenge.
As my evening of playing last night was mostly interrupted by disconnects, and my priority was in seeing the new kingdoms, I haven’t tried out 1.0.9 in Arena or PvP yet.
Theorizing, I suspect the biggest impact to be on Arena where it’s much more of a problem when you lose a game (let alone two). In all other environments you can choose your own team and if you don’t want to run the risk of losing to random chance, you can change your team setup accordingly.
I will update when I’ve done a few Arena’s.
But concluding, I suspect there to be two areas of problem:
Arena
Every lower level player in other areas because they don’t have the resources to change their team setup to accommodate. This is more of a conversion problem in my eyes.
I do also agree that there should be a PvP mode where you choose not to participate in the ranks and such in exchange for a lower difficulty (ie combo breaker on).
I’m a level 140, about six different legendaries and about three serious teams levelled up (and traited a little bit).
Actually for the part where we feel that the AI is luckier, I wonder if this is due to speed. If the AI turns were much faster, then it would be easier to accept if they were to play few turns in a row.
And I do like the idea of no combo at all (for either party) much more interesting than having it off.
I’d be fine with turning off the “lucky” drops universally as it doesn’t make the game fun to be punished out of the blue for no reason and with no recourse. It’s a digital kick to the nuts and nobody I know who plays the game likes it.
Playing on hard just means the odds are even between you and the AI
“Hard” used to be the default game mode
2 things on PvP right now :
Yes it makes sense to have an increasing difficulty through ranks, everyone reaching Rank 1 on day 1 isn’t / shouldn’t be a normal thing
I actually think the difficulty should scale all the way to Warlord 4 through the ranks
Now, that last point would mean someone reaching rank 1 would have to play Warlord 4 throughout the whole week. So, yeah, as it has been mentionned before, there should be ladder PvP (scaling difficulty for better weekly rewards) and regular PvP (no ranks, difficulty settings can be manually changed).
In the meantime, just remember that “Hard” mode should be called “Normal” mode and “Normal” mode should be called “Easy” mode. And thank the devs for going out of their ways to come up with a code to reduce luck induced drops during AI’s turn to even create that Easy mode…
You say that like it’s “normal” for the AI to get a Cascade of 6, with 4-5 Mana Surges and 1-2 Skull matches every turn while the player can get lucky to even get an Extra Turn.
@TaliaParks, I assure you that’s entirely a selection effect. We’ve had this convo many times, but the AI does not cheat. Everyone weighs negative cascades much more strongly the positive ones.
@Zelarith, agree with you 100%. I’ve said before that Normal should be Easy and give negative reward modifiers though I don’t think they’d ever do that now for fear of upsetting people.
I think my big concern now is how the rewards will change. I’m fine if they tinker with the weekly rewards and honestly think they should start from scratch with the current ranking system, but I think I may be in the minority there. My hope is that PvP is a little more competitive and the top-end rewards get better but the only thing I really care about is that the base gold payouts for PvP grinding stay unchanged.
I just remembered why I stopped following this really negative topic.
Look, PVP changes are next patch. I’m sure they’re going to totally rework all of this and people shouldn’t be getting worked up over how it is now. Especially given that, as many have said, it isn’t all that different anyway.
I shake my head when I read most forums today across all the games. So much “I hate having to wait” , “It is no fun not to win” , one wonders if the quote of “learning more from defeat than an easy victory” is even in their mindset.
I’ve noticed that is has become less ‘hit & miss’ playing on ‘Hard’ in 1.09, than in 1.08.
In 1.08 if the AI got a ‘lucky’ drop, then I’d lose at least two or maybe three troops due to True Shot & the inevitable Bone Dragon/Skeletons. Now, there are much fewer True Shot led teams, and a lucky drop may result in some spells and some mana fills, but rarely does it completely annihilate my team in one go. The AI generally got True Shot right (difficult not to), where as when casting spells, it often mis-casts.
However, my style of play insulates me a little from such mechanics as I usually have a Stone Skin troop in first position and play with a control deck. The AI generally only gets two or three turns in game (the AI must hate getting me in a battle ).
In response to the ‘waiting for AI’ issue - I’d like an option that could speed-up further the AI turn (2x or 3x the current). Not sure I would want 50x as was suggested earlier, as then I’d waste more time trying to figure out how the board had changed once it was my turn.
Yikes. No, thank you! I would be quite happy if difficulty affected the ladder ranking system to be introduced – larger reward in “ladder points” for playing against harder foes or something. However, I play GoW to relieve stress, not to induce it. If every fight were against triply-strong legendary/mythic fully-traited teams, I would basically stop playing the game until things reset for the week.
So you’re actually saying that you don’t get any cascades or no extra turns at all? That doesn’t sound very realistic, IMHO…
I know that I do get lucky cascades and extra turns, probably more than the AI, because it also depends on the type of troops you’re playing with. If you use gemchangers or gemspawners you’re much more likely to get lucky cascades, simply because there are simply fewer colours on the board.
And since I like playing with Valkyrie (level 650 here and still needing an insane amount of souls to level all my troops), I routinely get lucky cascades in PvP matches…
Oh, common, I’m not even lvl 500 yet and I’m pretty sure I could take anyone down on W4 if I pick the right deck (ok, and if I’m not unlucky during the match) !
What’s the point of scouting & countering if you can shoot down everyone with a single deck on lower difficulties?
You play against some god damn AI, grow some balls and outsmart them :v
Besides, that would be just to reach rank 1, then you could play free battles outside the ladder with the difficulty of your choice.
Sure, not everyone would reach rank 1, but what’s the point in having a rank one if everyone is rank 1 every day? Been playing for over a year and I’ve been rank 1 since day 1…
Anyway, let’s say at rank 10 you start playing on W1 difficulty, then rank 10 rewards would be the same as the current rank 1 rewards, so, if you don’t want to face Warlord difficulties, you could stop your ladder grinding right there !
Anyway, I know this unfortunately won’t happen as they’ve locked new players’ difficulty settings, so it’s unlikely they would now force difficulty on them…
Nope, not with you… that artificial increase in difficulty just by hiking stats feels unnecessary and unwelcome… many players will find that creates huge frustration and risk of losing… it’ll make battles far longer… and make any lucky AI drops have a pretty final game-swinging effect - more recall bias, perhaps, but more instant losses through bad luck…
I’ve mixed views about what might be fair or rightly challenging, and can sort of agree with your viewpoint, but am far more worried about making the game less fun, or the grind even slower, which are sure-fire ways to upset and lose players…
You might enjoy that challenge - I might, but would probably find it tiresome - and many players wouldn’t…
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