Dragons Are The New Webspinner!

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
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Been playing since last update and here a few things I noticed and this is meant to be constructive criticism because I love your game.

First off, I have to say that trying to create a balance in a game like this must be a truly daunting task if not almost impossible.

The very nature of having a tiered card system already creates a caste type system with more common card become worthless and legendary cards are over-powered compared to lower tiers. A tier system is already counter-productive towards balance and diversity.

I have read post saying that there are plans in future updates to allow players to upgrade all cards to higher tiers. That’s a really cool idea! Again, that seem like a godly task trying to create a good balance so if you can pull it off, my hats too you!

  1. The end game changed from webspinner builds to dragon builds. Over half of the games I play I am against a 4 dragon build. Goblin builds are the next most common. Jarl Firemantle in the next common build and that’s pretty much the whole game now. I also see some exploders mixed into the above three.

  2. Granted this is more diversity than mostly webspinners but still feels limited. I myself can wins 19 out of 20 games using a dragon build anyways. But there isn’t really any point in using anything but a dragon build if you have the cards.

  3. A huge amount of time went into creating glorious number of player weapons but now it’s more advantageous to leave the main character out of the build since replacing it with a card yield better team bonuses.

  4. I like the idea of team bonuses but they feel like an after-the-fact implementation like; phase 1, dragons are super powerful so they should have lots of attack and health. Phase 2, add team bonuses and now all dragon builds have crazy superpower and phase 1, let’s make goblins not too powerful but give them extra turns. Phase 2 – now with team bonuses, goblins are super powerful.

  5. I don’t bother to use the “scout” thing because I know I can own anything with dragon build anyways, so what’s the point?

Ultimately what would be nice to see when you invade other players is;

  1. A wide diversity of builds to go up against, so each game feels different.

  2. Some type of Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beats Paper, Paper beats Rock system that it’s impossible for me to create a single build that can win 99% against all other builds. Maybe if there were 10 different major build strategies, I would have to 10 different teams to beat them and the “scout” function would have a use.

So, I am not going to complain and scream “nerf the dragons bonuses” since I have dragons and can beat them anyways. I do think that lower level players without dragons will have very little chance of beating a 4 dragon build if they don’t have dragons.

That’s my 2 cents. Perhaps you are already working on this in future updates, but build diversity is definitely something that would make the game more interesting to me.

I would love for there to be so many potentials for good combinations of builds that I could spend hours experimenting with different combinations of troops to make new and unique builds. Before the update, webspinner was just so powerful that too many people were using it and there wasn’t enough diversity. Now after the update, dragons and goblins have become so powerful I am just not seeing much diversity.

One other note:

I have been using a Bone Dragon build. Ouch! That really hurt when you cast that card and don’t get matches. That makes sense, it should hurt. So I am careful and try not to cast the bone dragon until there either tons of skulls already on the board or until I can cast it against an enemy with an insane amount of armor. Which makes sense too! But you have it coded so there is a random chance that bone dragon will miss, just because there is that random chance. I have had times where the I cast Bone Dragon on an enemy with 18 armor and Miss! The whole screen is 60% skulls but bone dragon still missed and the enemy wipes out my whole teams with match after match of 4 skulls. That does not make sense. There should be a point where the screen has so many skulls and the enemies armor is so high, that in a truely random situation, the chance of missing would be 1 million to 1. Meaning, at some point, it should be safe to cast the card because a miss is just silly. I have even had a number of time where the card missed twice in a row; bad luck. Hope that makes sense.

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With all of the attack bonuses, my entangle team has been the most consistent:

Hydra
Swamplash
Swamplash
Green Seer

Holy banner for +2 yellow, 3x monster bonus, and 2x Mist of Scales bonus.

With enemies that have over 15 attack, entangle has gotten a lot more useful. I’ve taken full barrages from Sheggra and Bone Dragon that matched half the board in skulls, and only did 3 damage total.

If both the Swamplashes fill, they can do 44 damage to the random enemy entangled by Green Seer, which will kill just about any troop in the game. Once Hydra gets taken down to low life, he can do 44 damage by himself. Also, having three entangle troops goes a long way to keep Hydra alive as long as possible once he is low life.

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I feel like the bonuses are almost a preview / test to 1.0.8. I expect many troops will be seeing a full balancing with 1.0.8, and 1.0.7 is almost a beta test of some 1.0.8 features to see how they impact the balance.

I like the idea of bonuses. I can see where it intends to increase diversity, but it misses the mark. Dragon, Daemon, and Goblin bonuses seem to have much more impact than human or wildfolk bonuses.

I wish they had a way that would display all the bonuses affecting an opponent’s card. I think I must be seeing cards where my opponent has full maximum kingdoms, plus troop, and city bonuses. I’ve seen goblin teams with 13-15 attack and life around 33-35. Those are not squishy fragile goblins that need the extra turn boosts.

Many weapons and troop abilities don’t scale in balance with the new bonuses. Some became much too strong, like Webspinner, others took the troops from borderline playable to too far under the power curve.

I do feel like a sucker for selling off duplicates of some Legondaries. I never thought I’d have a reason to run 3 Jarl in one army, or see a reward for 4x Venoxia.

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Hey Esoxnepa,

When you are in battle, if you click on an enemy troop. It will display all of the bonuses that the enemy teams has over on the left of the screen. So you can actually see all the bonuses they are getting.

And yes, a goblin with an attack of 15 and a 33 health is pretty uber-goblin.

I like you didn’t save all my legendary cards after I got just 1. Ouch!

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I dont know man, in some ways I think you’re right, but in others, I think you’re wrong.

I like the bonuses and think they are a step in the right direction towards troop diversification, the problem is that there arent enough types of bonuses and you end up seeing those armies like goblins and dragons that are crazy strong.

Another thing that ill say is that I feel like you CAN spend hours upon hours making teams and experimenting with them. I know thats exactly what Ive been doing since 1.07 came out. I honestly think there are MORE tems that work now than there was before.

I think one part of the problem that you see is that people want to not just win but win FAST because of the unavoidable grindy-ness of games like this, and thats why you end up seeing so many of the same teams. They win FAST while tons of other tems just WIN but it might take a while.

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Before the update I managed to level up all troops to level 15 using a Valkyrie build which included The Silent One.

I would silence the enemies team and then see how many times I could fire off Valkyrie to collect souls. It probably took me more than six months using that build to level up all the troops.

It was a very “slow build”. I basically only had one card that could deal any real damage. I could still win most of the time and I only used my Hero as tank to take skull damage while I could filled up my mana and kept casting Valkyrie.

So, I have played slow builds.

I haven’t tried that build against a four dragon team yet, but I don’t think I would be able to fare as well. The high attack on dragons is a real game changer with some cards starting at 16 damage per hit before buffs. So I don’t think my Hero would be able to tank the random skull hit long enough to keep casting Valk.

Now I am using a dragon troop and damn is it fast. Many games last just over 1 minute. Using one of the two Skull Spammer dragons, I can sometimes take out an enemies entire team in just one to two turns.

One of the points I made on the original post is that no one build should be able to win 99% of all battles and Goblins or Dragons can do that with ease. Before the update, webspinner builds could do that with ease as well. There should be some Rock-Paper-Scissors factor like Dragons trump Goblins, Goblins Trump Constructs, Constructs trump Dragons so there are no “One ring to rule them all” type builds.

Another way to look at it is, everything powerful should have some weakness or Achilles’ Heal.

Sure, I could fiddle around and find different builds that I could possibly win with, but why would I bother when I know I can use a Dragon or Goblin build and quickly “rule them all”? Especially, if it is going to create slower games when theoretically, I should have gold to farm to upgrade cities!

Again, my admiration to the devs for trying to balance it all out, it would be incredibly difficult. I am sure each time a major change occurs, players will quickly find card combinations which can “rule them all”. I do think that in some cases, some cards can be too powerful, like webspinner was and they need balancing.

Keep in mind too, that I am at the end-game with all the cards leveled up, all cities leveled up, etc. I am sure when I invade, I mostly get higher level players. The starting game or middle game is probably not nearly as plagued by four dragon teams and 4 goblin teams.

One other thing,

It took me like 9 months to get to level 250ish using the slow build and collecting souls to level up all my troops. It probably took me only about 1 month to get to level 475 using fast builds and taking advantage of double experience weekend.

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I feel you are trying to say two different things here and your message is getting lost.

You say you want to be able to try out build after build but then You say “why would I when I can win much more often and faster”.

The fact of the matter is you CAN play build after build many with an over 90% success rate. It’s just all in how much time do you want to spend learning it and playing it?

I think the ultimate point you want to make is that you want that “rock paper scissors” feel, am I correct? Your other points it could be argued are kind of moot by your own admission, so is this the real heart of your question?

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My original points were;

  1. That it would be nice when you hit the invade button if you get a wide variety of different builds to plays against; i.e. diversity.

  2. Right now 70 percent of upper level defense builds are Dragons or Goblins, plus maybe 10 percent Jarl builds and 10 percent exploders. Less than 1 in 10 fights has something unusual.

  3. It would be nice if there were no “one ring to rule them all” builds that could easily win 99% of the time. This would force me to create different builds to counter the variety of different builds I would go up against. This would give a reason for having so many team slots. Right now, I only ever need to use one slot.

  4. As long as there are few overpowered “one ring” builds that can beat anything and everything that are thrown against them, we will never see much diversity when we hit the invade button because most players will use them.

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Well I think it’s in the nature of games like these to have certain decks rise to the top and be the ones played the most, and I don’t think it is something that can be “fixed”. If dragons were changed so that they weren’t the most commonly played, ANOTHER team would become that. It’s just the way that these kind of games work. Ala M:tg, hearthstone etc.

You also don’t HAVE to use the same team. I feel like you are hurting yourself more by stating that. Yes you can always use the “win every time” build, but you don’t HAVE to, and you will still have a great experience.

Perhaps the nature of defending teams itself is the problem. Maybe there is some way to change how defending works so that you would see more diversity.

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I STILL don’t understand why people put up strong defenses. Gold-wise it’s way better to loose every time you get invaded. Invading costs somewhere between 250-500 gold (or even more sometimes) and the yield is the same as when you ‘take revenge’ and only pay 50 gold to start a battle. That’s why you will find only one Fortress Gate when you invade me. :smile:

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This speaks of another problem with defending that should be looked at.

Why do people put up strong defenses? I know I have a "fun"defense team up to give people an interesting fight when they invade me.

It seems to me that defense is the real issue with this whole thing, and that there should be done changes made to address it. What do you guys think?

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I suppose the ‘gold stolen’ should be an amount painful enough to want to put up a real defense. :smile:

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I don’t think that really addresses it. There should be something in place that makes it desireable to set up defenses, and multiple types of defenses so that the game game doesn’t get stale and we run into the issue that OP is bringing up…

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Yes, that is the inherent difficulty in a “card” type battle game.

That is also why people talk about “balance” and why cards gets adjusted so some are “nerfed” and others are “buffed” and hopefully when adding cards, the new card contribute to better balance and more diversity.

It’s the balance of cards (and card combinations) that allows for diversity and the introduction of overpowered cards (and card combinations) that destroy the diversity.

And that’s why I said, I don’t envy the developers being a position where they have to somehow manage to keep things balanced. It’s a very complex problem that takes a lot of thought and as I pointed out, anytime players can find some overpowered card combination, they are going to do it!

Ultimately, I think balance has to be built into the game design. I am sure most of the devs thoughts when adding new cards into the game has to be how to keep things balanced.

I also think when developing such a game some sort of balance strategy would be necessary from the beginning. For example; one approach could be to balance out colors. You have the team bonuses for color give better bonuses than team bonuses for troop types. This is because having a team mostly of two or three colors gives one an inherent weakness.

Basically each gem color becomes a distinct side and when you have distinct sides, you can create balance for each side. I believe Magic the Gathering works that way to some extent. That doesn’t mean you would never mix gem colors either. It does mean you would probably favor one color heavily and combine with maybe two other colors, but always remain weak on two sides.

My original thought was that the game was better balanced before the implementation of team bonuses with the exception that some of the spamming cards needed to be nerfed. The team bonuses basically unbalanced the game for dragons and goblins specifically because they made these two card combination way more powerful than most other card combinations.

Again, It’s the balance of cards (and card combinations) that allows for diversity and the introduction of overpowered cards (and card combinations) that destroy the diversity.

Judging form the post about potential features added in the next major update, It sounds like the Devs are already well aware of this issue and are planning to address it.

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Responding to a few of the above points…

I’ve never seen the point in setting different Defend teams to the team you use - I think it should default to the most recent team you invaded with… I also pretty much agree with @MarvelKit that actually you want to be invaded and lose, for the cheap revenge battles.

I disagree with the OP that dragons became the new Webspinner on two counts:

  1. I’m meeting a fair variety if pvp teams - yes, some dragons, goblins, still some jarls and webspinners, but a lot of randomness at the moment

  2. if I do meet a 4x dragon team, I can still win pretty easily - whereas in the olden pre-107 days, you could really lose to a Webspinner that got into a loop

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Just wanted to say that as long as the computer is on the other side controlling the other team, this kind of stuff is going to happen (unless the computer has some serious AI programmed in). When I control my Goblin team, I’m doing the winning 99% of the time as you mention. When the computer is controlling it via Defends, I’m losing 100% of the time (so far with the tracking wins/loss on). So obviously the player who’s invading me can beat it with whatever team he’s got.

So until players can go head-to-head with each other, I don’t think this will ever go away.

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@psychetruth Thanks, I went and confirmed it is probably someone with all their kingdom’s maxed, and not just the goblin/dragon buffs.

Pre-1.0.7 I never really bothered to look at my opponents level. The bonuses for a max kingdom just weren’t enough to be any deterrent.

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My defense team is Trent- Orpheus Dischord - Faunessa-Alchemist. Some mornings I see 3-4 defense wins. Better chance at defense win if you have a team that is different. I am not going to give other guilds easy trophies.

Defense team should get the gold the attacker spent to attack instead if just 1 glory, and a trophy. And get it even if attacker retreats or closes game.

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The problem that I have with cards that are easier to win with, is that so many opponents start to use them which makes me feel robbed of my ability to use different strategy and skills that I have cultivated with my gaming experience. I am forced to play the same strategy over and over to win. It just gets old and boring so quickly, whether it is webspinner or a dragon or a goblin, etc… It just seems less engaging and less about my skill or ability.

So I agree with wanting more diversity of builds to go up against, instead of seeing the same teams over and over again.

Something seems to be missing although it is hard for me to put it into words. But when I compare this game’s troops to other games with troops that I enjoyed playing (grant it they were not card games, more rpg), I can’t help but notice that I could take the same troop and customize it and make it unique to my own style of fighting. Grant it, the troop card stayed within it’s own realm of superpower, but it was flexible enough to make it unique.
It seemed that hardly ever bump into another opponent who had the same troop that I had and that also used the exact same abilities added to that troop that I had to mine.

Example; if a troop was an magician, and his ability was to throw magic at his opponent, you could choose between throwing a lightning bolt at your opponent, or magic sand, or fire balls shooting out from the tip of their wand. Not the best analogy but maybe you can get the jest of what I am trying to say. Either way, with the ability to change how a troop used it’s powers, it gave the element of surprise in the battle field, along with the added ability to learn more interesting strategies that I could actually use against my opponent just by customizing my own troop.

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Thats the thing ive been trying to say in this post. You dont HAVE to play the same thing over and over. There are literally tons of builds that can win. If you are playing the same thing over and over, it’s by choice.

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