Hey everyone,
I greatly enjoyed the Q&A stream, and I hope you did too. While there was some great stuff in there, I also spotted some problems.
Here’s some of the questions I asked but didn’t get answered, plus some other stuff.
- “It makes me sad that I’ve totally forgotten most of the story quests, – they were such fun. Any thoughts on opening them up with no rewards and optional battles? Just for the fun of the dialogue.”
The reason I asked it this way is because Sirrian has said he doesn’t want to make quests replayable unless there’s some kind of new reward attached. I want to replay it just to experience the story again – no need for any new rewards or goals at all. I suspect Sirrian may not realise the attraction of this – assuming I’m not the only one.
- “Will we get a Class for Wargare, Elemental or Construct?”
Hearing that there will be no new kingdoms (I thought making space for new kingdoms was the primary motivation for changing the map in 4.0?!), and that we won’t double up on classes, this becomes a really big issue. Especially because an Elemental Class would be brilliant for certain teams (not in PvP, but in other modes). And… poor, neglected Wargare. 
- “How do we know why someone just posted a team to Global? There’s no way to caption it, and Chat moves fast.”
I just think this will be a big problem and it’s worth starting to think about a solution right now. I like the way Discord does it when posting images.
- “Can we stop non-Treasure troops dropping from Chaos Shards once they’re fully maxed?”
This is really a psychological issue. Obviously, dropping more Treasure Troops is not the answer, but substituting small chunks of Glory (for example) would easily stop the groans. 
- “Why do the Adventure Board and Team Management dialogue introduce GUI elements that are not present anywhere else in the game?”
I didn’t ask this on-stream, but I feel some of this breaches very fundamental GUI design rules. Which is especially odd when it would be so easy to fix.
Specifically:
a) Pale buttons on Team Mgt should have standard backgrounds.
b) Team code looks like a text box but isn’t; make it look like a button.
c) Green right-arrow on Adventure Board has a totally unexpected behaviour.
d) Lower adventure board panels lead to battles, which is totally unexpected if you don’t already know.
- My question that couldn’t be understood was a couple of off-the-cuff ideas for making Pure Faction Delves easier.
Specifically, since adding Hero to the team with no restrictions would make it too easy (Sentinel with Mang can solo most level 500 Delves, with a bit of luck), my idea is to allow Hero but with tight restrictions. The primary benefit is that you don’t need to add a new troop to the Faction (maybe a new weapon, for option b).
Here’s some specific – and independent – ideas, on a similar theme:
a) When in a Delve, if all troops are Pure Faction, activate the Talents of the Class assigned to that team, even though the Hero isn’t in the team.
b) Allow Hero in the team, but it must use a specific weapon, or a weapon from a Kingdom tied to the Faction – or the Faction weapon, or a new Faction-only weapon.
c1) Allow Hero in the team, but force the player to use a specific Class.
c2) Maybe Hero must use the Class weapon, or a weapon of the Class weapon colour.
-
We have some new resource issues now.
a) Using Diamonds to craft previous event weapons is very, very painful for early end-game players like me: we really need those Diamonds for Mythics! (I’m still missing 19! Not counting duplicates.)
Contrary to what Sirrian said, there is a hard cap for how many Diamonds we can earn, detailed here: Gems of War Quick Reference Tables
Random Gnomes do not drop enough Diamonds to significantly affect this.
Short answer is, we need an increase in Diamond drop rates to compensate for the poor choice (my personal opinion) for how weapons are brought back. I’m afraid Soulforge feels to me like a lazy and inappropriate choice, that also disadvantages newer players.
b) If there’s no longer a limit to the number of Doom weapons, we need a new way to get Forge Scrolls.
Prior to Potions messing it all up, my Guild got on ToD leaderboard three times (near the bottom), yet we did not get enough Forge Scrolls to max the weapon. To a completionist, it’s really painful to think that we will never be able to max all Doom weapons. 
- End-Game Resource Sinks.
I worry. I think both Potions and Epic Battles would have been a perfect end-game resource sink (for Traitstones, or anything else). Both opportunities have been missed.
I believe a proper, effective, end-game resource sink must give a useful benefit that is, above all, temporary. I hope the reasons are obvious.
- Tacet’s question about increasing High-Level Delve rewards.
Personally, I don’t think the problem is as big as Tacet does. I think it makes perfect sense to stop doing Daily Delves once every Faction is maxed.
It takes around 8,000 Chaos Shards (usually less) to get four of each Faction Troop at Mythic. Any Chaos Shards spent beyond that are only because you want more Treasures for your Hoard. Even then, I’m sure reaching Hoard Level 200 won’t require more than about 20,000 Chaos Shards per Faction (probably far less).
I have 40,000 Chaos Shards, simply by doing all Faction Events (some at 4am, all Tuesdays at Tier I) and doing lots of farming of Warrens. When do I stop the farming? Probably once I have all the other Delves to L500 (haven’t had the time).
Anyway, my point is, if you do the maths, I believe there is a break-even point where weekly Faction Events alone can get you enough Chaos Shards to cover all future needs. So there’d no longer be any need to do Daily Delves. This could come as a relief to many end-game players!!!
If there’s still a problem, the simple solution is to increase the number of Chaos Shards gained during weekly Faction Events (or even Faction launch events alone).
- Sign-off
What do other people think? Which points do you agree with? Which do you disagree? Do you have better solutions to some of the issues?
PLEASE DO NOT DISCUSS ISSUES I HAVEN’T MENTIONED – THEY CAN HAVE THEIR OWN THREAD. (Just to keep things neater.)
I kind of see two options (other than leaving it alone) with Daily Delves: either they increase the rewards for higher levels so we stop farming Warrens; or they provide an alternative so we don’t have to do Daily Delves at all once all Factions are L500. I think I would prefer the latter. I’d be quite happy to do zero Daily Delves if we got enough Chaos Shards from Tuesday Faction Assaults to keep pace with new Faction releases. Unfortunately, that number is about 8,000 Chaos Shards per month. So it’s probably a bit more than they can give us (would make for a very long Tuesday!). I don’t know how they would make Daily Delves fun to continue once they’re done.
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