Dungeon Feedback

[DarwinX]

Thanks for the explanation @Kafka. The explanation helps, but I still think it falls short of what we, the audience, are looking for.

The original message was light on details. I can kind of understand that. It was also accompanied by the message that nothing would be done to “fix” Dragonite/Dungeon for 4 months. Given how quickly the bug was fixed, having another message to tell us that nothing could be improved was painful.

The root problem is that Dungeon just isn’t fun in its present form. A game that you lose 90% of the time isn’t fun to play. A game that you lose 90% of the time and is not based in skill is even more frustrating. Locking critical resources behind the game makes everyone feel compelled to play, and makes the losses sting that much more as we all try to complete our troop collections again. We, the community, tried desperately to turn it into a game, so that we could apply some skill to it and do better. This was changed very quickly, and even though I understand the reason we’re still left with a mode that is way more frustrating than fun.

The community has a lot of end-game players who are trying to get whatever new content is released. Putting new content behind several layers of RNG that do not involve player skill isn’t enjoyable, and that’s why there’s just as much (if not more) criticism about the Dragon Egg randomness die as there is about Dungeon itself. You can only max your troop collection by being lucky, not good.

Hoard Mimic is another culprit here with the troop locked behind 3 layers of RNG. I can marginally get better by running Explore 12 faster but it’s on average 6000 battles to get it (I think, maybe more since the drop rate isn’t public knowledge, with some people getting it very quickly, and others taking far far longer). It’s not fun chasing it and makes spending resources or even $$ on the game to keep up with the latest less desirable if some content will remain out of my grasp unless I am lucky.

There’s a lot of ways this could be improved, and I’m not partial to any particular solution. Just no more slot machines.

[NerdieBirdie]

This statement really needs to be seen.

[Stratelier]

@Dust_Angel

where was your in-house testing team? They should have caught this 100%, so how come they didn’t?

Because it’s effectively invisible on a per-user-day basis, without massive data aggregation over time? This also implies that dungeon arrangements weren’t necessarily logged on the serverside, because that’s the first source of aggregate data the devs should have been monitoring.

(Ideally, they already were, noticed the patterns before we did, someone pointed out “this pattern wasn’t intentional” and began scouring/testing the actual code to figure out what went wrong where. Thus, the very short timeline between the user tool and the fix could legitimately be just coincidence.)

[mitamata]

@Kafka I appreciate the added insight. Sounds like a mistake was made (normal, no reason for concern) that wasn’t caught before going to production (major cause for concern). I hope a lesson was learned and more resources are put into testing in the future.

I just wanted to reiterate something that someone else put perfectly:

@Fourdottwoone

Players aren’t asking for more Dragonite, players are asking for less frustration.

^ THAT

[CaptainAwesome]

Just saying, that we realized the pattern the first time after nearly 200-250 posts. This is such a low database and only shows how much they test their stuff.

Not

at

all

[Shaylynn]

@Kafka

and the overwhelming majority of our players (tens of thousands of Adventurers) don’t use any external tools or even read the forums, community discord servers or even our help center despite links in game. So they didn’t have access to the same information

Please explain, how you can say this in ONE context but week after week after week, since the beginning of the World Events you do not put the score mechanics INGAME. For that “the overwhelming majority of the players (tens of thousands of Adventures)” has to go outside the game for that information…

[Raistlin]

Is it sad given my luck so far that I’d be happy with 10% perfect runs. What a shitshow!!!

[Eika]

@awryan

I have been a GM for 5 guilds for 5 years now.

5 guilds for 5 years, you should have gotten acknowledged by the President. I am just drowning of the thoughts about managing one guild.

[Zadr053]

I think the expression you want is “regression toward the mean”.

[Stratelier]

Here’s a quick idea: Currently the “Gem Dragon Egg” is 500 Dragonite and an (assumed) fair RNG to which Dragon you get.

But how about this instead:

• Because each Gem Dragon appears only one day a week, crafting a Gem Dragon Egg on that day gives you a better probability of getting that specific Dragon? (e.g. if it’s Monday, then you get say a 25% chance of Sapphirax vs. a 15% chance for each of the other five)
• On Sundays (which are “colorless”) the Gem Dragon Egg is completely random but the crafting price is also reduced (say, 400 Dragonite instead of 500).

In the meantime, I’ve previously stated that I’m not a Dragonite hunter, and will never opt in at all for the top-tier Dungeon offers (Cursed Runes and Dragonite), except maybe if Cedric dropped that 300 Gem prize from a Gnome Vault run. (Last time it happened I spent it on a few Event Shop tiers, but I couldn’t say which event it was.) The 50-Gem offer of more colored Jewels pretty much monopolizes my weekly Gem budget already…

[Taisiakat]

First I know you are just one person on a team so this isn’t directed at you. Thank you for posting but it does nothing to fix an already broken system that gets worse and worse.

@Kafka

if we give too much Dragonite it will cause the Dragons to become early and common collectables and we really wanted them to be more special than that.

I think we’ve heard this before - Lets say The Apocalypse team or the Guardians or GOSH Mythics in general.

overwhelming majority of our players (tens of thousands of Adventurers) don’t use any external tools or even read the forums, community discord servers or even our help center despite links in game

I think your company is misguided if you think that the majority of the active players are not gathering and discussing. There are private Discord channels that have 100s to 1000s of GoW players on that discuss all kinds of stuff. To get to them you have to know someone who invites you.

More so - there are Google docs, private FB Groups, email lists - some of them have died off but there are so many places that players discuss strategies, organization, ideas.

Reason I stopped posting to this Forum for almost two years was because it was unfriendly and not helpful.

The last few months I noticed a group of folks who want to make the game fun again, and actually not have to join an over zealous guild to get nagging questions answered.

I still think ‘fixing’ this ‘bug’ was a bad move on the company’s part. I also don’t see organizing solutions as cheating. We organize our Tower runs, GWs, and Delves.

This is why the economy balancing in this instance

May I remind you all there is no ECONOMY in this game. Unlike card games and other online RPGs/WWPGs/Guild player systems - you can not sell, trade or give anything you own in this game to another player in this system.

Therefore THERE is no economy, other than someone’s inflated marketing ideas of what someone may pay real money for to get ahead only to find out that - it isn’t going to get you ahead, because there is no real end game here since the goal posts keep being moved with new kingdoms, events, and worthless cosmetic pets.

I feel very sorry for anyone who starts now. Between 8 years of mythics alone and I think 4+ years of pets that are no longer showing up to get… it is not something that makes sense now.

[sylverscale]

@Kafka

Some of you already have 6 Dragons after only 5 weeks - you are speed racers!

I don’t know what that statement is meant to do for people who have not been so lucky - but as someone who just got the 3rd copy of the same dragon it just frustrates me.

I don’t feel a great wish to try again or that I made a step towards a goal. I’m just disappointed and have closed the game for now.

[igniteice]

@igniteice

Monday: Trap
Tuesday: Trap
Wednesday: Boss, Boss, Boss
Thursday: Treasure, Trap

Tomorrow? I don’t know.

Friday: Trap.

[Moriad]

Might not be luck so much as willingness to spend gems.

[Aragorn1]

I agree, that statement to me was the most insulting. I don’t have a single dragon because I am not paying for Dragonite. If they really wanted the dragons to be rare them they wouldn’t have SOLD Dragonite for gems, which for some equates to actual cash. The wonderful tool(that I didn’t get a perfect run from) wasn’t expediting getting dragons. The purchase button did and I don’t blame any of the people who could afford the gem sink to get them. I can’t imagine spending all those gems and getting a duplicate right away.

[Moriad]

Exactly.

If you can buy it, it’s not special.

[WhoDat]

Six days in the row first pick is a trap. Crazy but, I am not mad any more.

Unfortunately, two of my close friends quit the game already because of the dungeon. I asked them why? they said that it made them feel disappointed and down because they start their day in GOW with the dungeon.

[RootsSeed]

That happened to me, only 1 perfect run so far, got 2 blue dragons then a green and a yellow. I didn’t get mad because when I’ve got the duplicate, I noticed that my amount of gems didn’t suffer much probably because of tributes. But what got me wondering was someone saying that they don’t know how to program randomness properly and it made sense.

[danac]

@TheIdleOne

Don’t want to be “that guy”, but you touched on a Dragonite Gnome and targeted crafting, but not the actual pity Dragonite part of things, despite saying it here.

what they should have done in the first place- make targeting and gnomes available, but reduce the dragonite handed out- even by gems- so that getting any dragons would take more than 5 days if you were lucky and 10 if you weren’t.

by adding all the extra rng, they have dissuaded a large proportion of the population from participating.

[Moriad]

The design has certainly prevented me from caring about acquiring the dragons at all. They’re no different in my mind from a mythic offered directly for sale.

The whole debacle has led me to care far more about the lousy implementation than about the rewards themselves.