Dev Q&A Question Gathering Time!

Oh hey, this looks really nice! No more green buttons = Awesome!
I do hope you include the tooltip/questionmark to show what traitstones can be found in explore, though - for new players, it might be incredibly helpful to see that, for example, Celestials can drop anywhere as well and also the runic colors and how much the chance is increased. Just a picture of the Arcane in question might not be enough.

Also slightly worried that the white text might be hard to see in kingdoms with a brighter background, the titles don’t seem to have the darker black behind them. But overall, I definitely approve - everything that gets rid of the button is very welcome. (But bordering the text would be even better)

…And if any of that was said in the stream I’m sorry, I couldn’t watch it. u_u

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Now that does look like a nice UI can’t wait to see more previews of it.

Yep - that’s a problem in Silverglade & Glacial Peaks for sure. We add a darkened gradient behind the text though, and it looks quite clear.

Also the tooltip for traitstones is on our to-do list

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I think it looks a lot nicer.

May I suggest that you make Kingdom the largest area and include a meaningful summary of Kingdom Power, Mastery, Skill Bonus, Tribute, etc? This would smooth out the annoyance of not being able to see Kingdom progress at a glance on the Map anymore. Also I would hazard to say that will be, for the lifetime of most players, the part of a Kingdom they reference the most often so it should take up the most area.

The Quest area is a relatively insignificant aspect of this game beyond capturing new players. And since you can only go through each Quest chain once, that real estate is going to be a permanent waste as the player progresses. Same concept for Challenges (yes people go back but not really). I think these two are unnecessarily prominent.

Both challenges and Quests could show some visual level of progression at a glance.

Explore could show a lot more information like the name of the Traitstone and a summary of Traitstones that can be found in that Kingdom’s Explore.

A good improvement on looks, but please work on making the interface usable and more importantly, something that conveys meaningful information at-a-glance with the fewest required interactions.

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Was the question about event keys answered?

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Yes; basically, “maybe more opportunities in the future, no plans to change the event key payout significantly.”

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Thank you @Lyya

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Agreed. I also dislike the current lack of clear information about progress on the map… But I think the best way to solve that is to solve it on the map, by fixing the visuals there.

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Asking here since apparently this is the place to do so for people unable to watch the stream: Anything about if auto-sidescrolling will be done away with/changed? The nausea it causes is my absolute main problem at this point in the game, so I am really interested if it was addressed.

Sirrian talked to this, saying that they were taken by surprise that the automatic horizontal scrolling was causing issues for people, as they have people in office that are sensitive to motion (I think) and that they were not affected. IP2 may add an option to disable this movement if it remains an issue for folks despite us having access to the skip button.

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@sirrian any reason why you can’t put every mythic in the soulforge? At least can you please rotate them so we can see them every month?? I am ready to craft stonehammer but i can’t cause it didin’t show up in 6 weeks Now this is really frustrating to have to wait even if i got the ressources to craft it.

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Thank you so much!

@Sirrian
I really hope the option to disable the sidescrolling will get added! I seem to be unable to skip at least some of the movement, no matter how fast I click and that’s true for both mass-chest-opening and the reward screens at the end of battle. The only thing I basically do in the game right now is explore since that usually ends with only 4-5 rewards which doesn’t cause scrolling…

I am a bit prone to motion issues, but usually not that much. I think this particular issue comes from the fact that - in my eyes -
a) There is not much sidescrolling in the game otherwise/the brain isn’t used to it; it’s instead used to things come from above (gems falling down)
b) The motion is not fluid enough, but happens at different speeds (start/stop when skipped or bit-by-bit when watching it)
c) The reward “cards” appear from a different direction (they pop in from above, no matter how subtle), causing my brain to get messed up by two movements at once which constantly switch

I hope that explains a bit why it’s causing me issues… not sure if helpful. I have no issues if there’s less than six rewards appearing (so no sidescrolling), so it’s not the look of the reward cards or the movement of them dropping in, but purely the sidescrolling.

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When doing explore and challenges when are you going to put us in the screen for the next battle instead of returning us to the map?

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Yeah big flashing green/yellow button QUIT or CONTINUE would be awesome

Hi NudgeBoy, good to see you. I am doing good, thanks! Lets hope you are right and cross our fingers that we soon will get the two new classes to mess around with, I barely can wait. :wink:

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.

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I totally agree. Quests, Challenges and Explore being battles are better if grouped together. The kingdom informations being in the biggest area improves the access/visibility.

I’m not sure if it would suit the team’s tastes @Sirrian, but maybe using three tabs on the left of the bigger area could be enough to display all information we need:

  • Kingdom Crest, Level and Lore. (Could leave the “troop’s cicling” animation on this one.)
  • Kingdom Tributes and Income.
  • Power.

Well, at least i prefer clicking/touching tabs than scrolling bars up/down, left/right or “Konami code”…

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Thank you for doing this! :blush::cat2:

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I watched the replay of the Stream from the other day, and one thing that I noted was how they talked about a lot of the Interface being reserved for things they haven’t really told us about. So to some degree we have to trust they heard us and have more plans than we can infer from that screenshot!

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Wow, that’s an impressive write-up! Thanks for doing the diligence, will save a lot of questions from folks who can’t watch the video (or who want to be able to search for answers).

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