Q&A Text Summary
Will there be an increase in event keys earned per week?
Yes, they plan to give a little more but not too much more. They have some new features planned for next year that will include some event keys.
What are the devs thoughts on the scarcity of event keys overall and not having event keys available in glory bundles anymore?
Event keys were never meant to be available in glory bundles. It isn’t sustanable since end gamers have so much glory. They have to limit the amount of event keys so the game economy stays healthy and the developers can pay the bills.
There are still a large number of people expressing concerns about the UI and how it is preventing them from playing for extended periods of time due to health reasons. What further steps are you taking to address these concerns?
They added the skip button to mitigate some of the issues with side scrolling. If side scrolling remains a problem for people, they may add a setting to allow people to disable it in the future.
Any plans to make VIP rewards more rewarding?
They are discussing revamping VIP rewards. They could look at replacing glory keys with event keys (with exchange rates in mind). They need to run it by 505 Games (the publishers).
When are the dev’s going to bring back information denoting what Kingdom a troop is from? Without having to go to the troop menu and filter by Kingdom?
The shields were removed because they were too small on some devices and many players couldn’t match shields with kingdoms. They want to use the kingdom names instead on the troop cards. They are going through UI iterations at the moment.
Will you guys add bios for the troops in the game. We can read them in the forums on the day the troop is released,but no in game bio,just flavor text.
They would love to put a lore book in the game that would contain troop stories/bios. It could also expand on the world itself. They are investigating how to solve the problem from a UI perspective.
The console has rotating daily tasks, I thought by now PC would also have them, are they coming anytime soon to PC?
They want to go back and fix some issues/bugs with the task system before porting it to PC/Mobile. They also want to add some improvements/variations. They are reworking the event system next year, and daily tasks could probably fit into that. Sirrian would like to see:
Short term tasks: short and repeatable
Midterm tasks: can complete over a session
Long term tasks: can take 2 or 3 play sessions and has a really good reward
Do you plan to do anything to stop making us download 2.19 MB every single time we open the game?
It will be fixed in the next update.
When will Dawnbringer be removed from def teams in the arena??
Problems in the game get triaged. They address game/experience breaking problems first. In many cases, that includes server issues that prevent people from playing the game. They get priority. The next priority category is game annoyances like Dawnbringer in arena. So, they will be addressing the issue.
Any new character class incoming?
Two new hero classes are coming this week as part of the anniversary. The Bard class will be from Pan’s Vale [Day 3 of anniversary]. The Dragonguard class will be from Dragon’s Claw [Day 5 of anniversary]. There will be more classes in the future. One class per kingdom is the goal.
Are PC/Mobile/Console synced from now on?
Yes, all the platforms have synced content now.
Can we remove the cost of switching character classes, and add the option to use a specific class for teams, like guild defense and such? Maybe we would see the Hero played more.
They had a technical issue with setting different hero classes per team in Adobe Air for mobile (memory limitations). They don’t have the same problem with Unity. However, the back end on the server side is now constructed around the Adobe Air problem. In other words, to get around one technical problem, they introduced another technical problem. It’s called tech death in the industry. They’ll need to resolve that in the future.
Are there any plans for a new minigame that can be played an endless amount of times for resource gains? Possibly a higher tier minigame with a large resource sink to enter, but much higher rewards than other minigames.
They want to go back and improve arena and treasure hunt first. Eventually, they want to add a new mini game that gives something new and far removed. Perhaps, it could be something like alchemy that resembles minigames in “Puzzle Quest”.
Are there any plans to put crafting materials in treasure hunt?
Probably not. The crafting system works best if you can’t get endless amounts of materials. That’s the way it was designed. However, they may add crafting materials to a different minigame with a different structure.
Over the next year, would you like to push GoW to be more of a skill-based game, a more RNG-based game, or about the same as it is now?
Sirrian stated that he has always worked on games that are a mix of RNG and strategy. Part of being a great strategist is having some unknowns, nondeterministic things which you can’t tell how it will pan out. So, you have to hedge your bets if everything goes against you. To him, that’s the most exciting way to play a game. He likes a little bit of RNG. But, he doesn’t like a game where RNG takes over every single game. He likes it to be a little slanted towards skill over RNG. They want to look into adding more counters to increase strategy opportunities.
When will Pharos-Ra be craftable?
The system is totally random. They are looking into making improvements on how the mythics and legends are selected. Also, they may change troops around more than once a week. They may start communicating ahead of time what troops will be available so people can plan for them.
When will new guild wars troops be available?
Nimhain states that she is working on them. The art is done. The design is partially done but not working as intended. There is no ETA on a release date. They will probably be released next year.
Why have some weapons been available in $5 bundles multiple times like Sun & Moon, and some haven’t been available at all, such as Fire & Ice?
The weekly weapon bundle is tied to the event kingdom.
When will the soulforge get new craftable items?
Nimhain has been working on new elemental weapons. They will come out at the end of this year or early next year. The weapons are mana transformers. It allows the hero to operate like Alchemist, Giant Spider, etc.
Will we get new kingdoms for Apocalypse/Guardian/Imp?
They would like to say yes, but they are still trying to work out how that would work. For example, Apocalypse has all base mythics, and Primal has all legendary troops. So, they would need to balance them out with a mix of rarities.
Fun Fact: When the imps were introduced, they used to joke that the imps lived on a mystical island that was hidden in a corner of the map, and it would one day appear.
Have you reviewed the cost of money items in the store?
Constantly. They work more with the creative side. However, 505 Games looks at the economy and advises them. They want to clean up the shop. There are too many things in it. They want to tidy it up by making more of the popular packs and removing less popular ones. The death knight armor is a really popular pack that people buy.
Can you do a crossover with other games like “Streetfighter”?
They could do one. It’s a matter of finding the right fit. It would be nice to do it with another fantasy game. Perhaps, a portal opens between worlds. That would be fun.
Will you ever make dev cards?
Nimhain said she thinks they would be too powerful. Sirrian stated Luther is already his spirit animal. Realistically, they may make an event some day that lets the player fight a dev boss. Or, they may release weapons named after devs.
Will console have the ability to be linked with mobile?
Probably not. There are too many hoops to jump through for Microsoft and Sony. If they could have Microsoft gems, Sony gems and mobile gems, that could be fine. But, what happens with the gems you earn from free casts and how does that work? If they could solve that problem, they could revisit the topic. It’s not a trivial problem to solve.
There are problems with the new troop on consoles.
They can’t reproduce the problem in the office. They recommend going to the menu and quitting the application.
Will we get alternative visuals for troops (cough cough Christmas Mab)?
There are no plans for a Christmas Mab or other alternate troop art. But, they may consider alternate troop art cosmetics for purchase in the future. They think their userbase is big enough to consider paid cosmetics now.
They do have a Christmas mythic coming. Also, they want to bring skulls back for the holidays. They will need to build a feature into Unity to handle that. The art department has already made skulls for Cinco de Mayo, Fourth of July, Bastille Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Talk Like a Pirate Day, etc.
Community Troop News:
Nimhain is putting reference art together for Shoctopus. They will create a thread to keep the community up-to-date on the progress. They’ll show the concept art that they get back from the art team (pencil sketches, color art, etc). He should come out next year. It takes troops around 2 months to flow through the art pipeline.