Hands up here, count me in.
7 Likes
No
10 characters
5 Likes
After playing with them for 2 years, yes.
IF excessive Mana accumulation was the issue why not reduce raw chance across the board equally instead of singling out a single match (4) to penalize?
Stick it to the middle class I guess.
3 Likes
Nope.
Then again I prefer GoW when Luther was a badass. You know, before the game became a bizarre fruit machine where after a few lucky gem drops one wins or loses the match due to overpowered troops.
7 Likes
I don’t miss it. You already get a free turn on a 4 match.
2 Likes
I prefer it this way (without the Surge) though I was convinced I would like it better with the Surge when I heard it was added in. The extra mana just made a bad problem (out-of-control match swings) worse. Then again, I understand and respect that it’s a matter of personal taste; especially if you’re coming from Console, in which case you now have to get used to a slower pace.
7 Likes
Simple answer:
No
2 Likes
I miss it when im filling up my mana. But I don’t miss it for the AI.
5 Likes
Hahahaha no, leaving thread now.
5 Likes
I like it better this way and I think the game is better off overall, but I can’t deny missing it a tiny bit. Such is the case with any change that happens, especially when it slows the pace of the game overall. I also found myself feeling like something was missing after auto link spawners were fixed as well, even though I was the one lobbying hardest to get them fixed, especially since I needed to play hundreds of games using these specifically to figure out what the issue was. For a while, everything felt like it was moving in slow motion and it was hard to play more than a few games in a row, but eventually everything would “even out” again as I worked my way back into using some other teams that I actually had to pay attention for a short time (but then, because unity is still unity, eventually made my way back into spammy teams). And this was after a single week of having the game work a certain way. Had this been always the way I had played, it would have likely been much harder to recover.
This is why, overall, things like this need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Changing the entire landscape of the way the game works less makes it feel “fresh” and more “unstable”, especially if said changes then have to be repealed so that a large portion of the game doesn’t get swept to the side. And there are still other Unity things on the table that cause some extreme interactions that need to be addressed (blob matches, target lock, and cascades, specifically), and are causing some major overcentralization at the moment. It may have been the “intended” way to work from the start, but then you have years worth of content that was designed, balanced, and (presumably) tested in an environment where it didn’t work that way. This needed to be brought in line between the two versions immediately, one way or the other, and deal with the consequences at that time when it was still manageable. We would have likely been looking at entirely different mana costs and overall balance if every troop was designed and tested in an environment where match 4s could surge.
Basically, match 4 surges should have either been a thing for years with minor rebalances needed when it was introduced, or never been a thing at all. It was extremely careless to let such a big way in which the two engines differed exist for as long as it did while continuing to design troops around one set of rules and applying them to another. Console players have every right to be irritated here, but again, in the end, I think the game works better overall without the surges.
Blob matches still need to be addressed, one way or the other. The question is how. Will we get a reversion to the equally broken (in the other direction) blob match calculation of Adobe? A more sensible fix that moves them to a working halfway mark? An adjustment to troops that can cause huge blobs or benefit from them? Or just no adjustment at all? No matter what, someone is going to be unhappy, but the longer such an issue remains in flux, the worse it is for everyone.
TL;DR I miss match 4 surges only superficially, the removal of match 4 surges was for the best, and any future engine revisions need to be taken care of quickly before they cement as core gameplay and risk alienating larger groups of people if/when they do change
8 Likes
No thanks. It was a bad idea and I don’t understand why console players have it since the beginning whereas PC/Mobile players never have it…
1 Like
Nope
I can see that technically there’s no real reason not to get them… but the game is now too fast and too swingy with cascades and power creep troops…
I’m having trouble accepting a game which arbitrarily makes me lose a proportion of matches through utter RNG. May as well toss a coin at the start of the match.
Potentially surges on 4s could be put back if the cascades code was reversed back to actually replicate the adobe air days and prevalent balance issues and bugs were fixed more rapidly like they used to be
Possible that @mithran said similar and probably smarter things but that post was too long and dense to read 
I love what @Mithran has to contribute – it’s often quite insightful and thought out – so I’m ashamed to admit I too sometimes just blank out halfway through :S
4 Likes
Liked for the honesty.
I, also, don’t miss the surging 4-matches.
1 Like
I agree with you in theory only. But in reality the complete haphazard way they go about making this change is quite lazy. 4 surge was NEVER a problem for 15 months in reality playing the actual game*. Then they introduced Justice and combined with not over-righting colors it became a major issue.
Why pick on exclusively just match 4. Why not just create more silly rules that if the shape is an L or U then no surge, or if touching the border edge, then no surge… that would also “help”. /s
*“In reality”: it probably caused issues with the financial bottom line, by allowing for faster play.
PS: @Mithran your posts are exceptional, I’m just annoyed at the SUPER lazy change, not your comments.
2 Likes
Having been accustomed to the 4-surges since the game came out on console, I can say with all sincerity that I definitely miss them. It just feels so completely arbitrary to NOT have a chance for them. It’s been such an intrinsic part of our gameplay for the past couple years, this would be one of the rare occasions where I think they should have separate code bases.
My gut feeling is that most console players would feel the same way.
@einsteinle I’m not for separate versions, at all. But I fully understand your point.
The issue was for the entire life of the game 4 match would have the chance to surge, now its being singled out. I suppose cutting the chance out entirety does slow gameplay and this is directly tied into other recent gameplay changes. (reduced Gems in Guild Tasks, drastic reduction in LT rewards, etc.)
I don’t really miss them but I still firmly believe this was both a bad solution and the wrong solution.
In the game “bad things” happen if your defense team does not win frequently. Since the AI controls that team, trying to make a skillful or tricky team often means losing a lot. So players are incentivized to set up teams using a very small subset of teams the AI can stumble to a win on. If you don’t do this, you’re technically giving up prizes.
Mana surges from 4 matches probably represented maybe 3-5% of the total mana accumulated in those games. I don’t think a troop that needed 10-12 mana to loop becomes magically broken because it gets an extra mana maybe 30-40$ of the time. I think we can see evidence this is true because people are still complaining about the same teams doing the same things after the change. If it did something significant, we’d have seen some kind of change.
So intuitively and empirically I feel this fell under a category of bad-decision making that has jokes around it:
- We have to do something.
- This is something.
- Therefore we have to do this.
I’ve been beating a different drum for changes that would probably solve this problem. There are only a few ways to get players to stop using non-interactive teams on defense:
- Introduce troops with traits that trigger when the opponent takes extra turns and cause you to gain an overwhelming advantage if they loop several times.
- Cap the number of free turns one can get per turn.
- Introduce disproportionately large rewards for changing defense teams frequently and rotating your troops.
- PvP: Remove the “penalty” for losing on defense in PvP by equalizing win/loss rewards and not penalizing a player’s win rate because the AI isn’t as clever.
- GW: Encourage a diverse array of teams with an incentive and penalty structure:
- Maybe get a bonus, win or lose, for using troops from the current event’s kingdom/creature type.
- Perhaps the game should intentionally try to choose guild members with 4 different teams. To encourage this, the players who are selected should get a reward if and only if their team doesn’t “match” the rest of the selected players.
- Use telemetry data to rank troops by “usage”. Maybe the top 5% meta troops should get a 10% penalty on defense, rotating monthly based on data.
I’m still shaky on GW suggestions, I haven’t played it enough to have a feel for what will and won’t work. But in terms of the game in general, mana accumulation’s a small problem. I feel the bigger problem is, “I have no reason to make defense teams that are fun for other players to challenge, and in fact I am penalized if I do so.”
3 Likes
Let’s not start conspiracy theories. The change was made b/c we Mobile/PC players were extremely upset when it was introduced. Ultimately, a slower game benefits a smarter player more; being able to fill troops more easily actually reduces the skill involved, which benefits the dumb AI.
1 Like
Many good posts here. I adapted quite well to non 4 gem matches mana surges again, since PC/Mobile only had it for some weeks. I found both my Yasmine’s Chosen and Elemaugrim teams more interesting before, they went more smoothly and got more often filled up. Also matches was a little faster with 4 gem match mana surges, and more often than not human could use it to their advantages more often than CPU. Especially with chosen gem spawners and such. I hardly find any negativites with the 4 gem match mana surges.
1 Like