Feature Idea - Arcane Blender

I’m actually ok with farming as a concept. It’s the “price” we pay for not using real dollars. That’s cool. Devs gotta make some dosh.

I just don’t like BORING farming, and farming on drop rates so low that make me feel like I might as well not be playing at all. Honestly, there’s no reason farming needs to be boring. I loved farming the arena for souls back before traitstones came out. It was different every time, and I could buy a troop I thought was interesting at the end.

I don’t like playing GoW while watching TV. Apart from the distraction issue for myself, I don’t feel it’s fair on my wife who has to put up with the screen glow shining next to her. Plus as stated, I don’t think a game that relies on another form of entertainment to make it palatable is a good game. Make the farming fun, improve drop rates, problem solved.

My initial post about the Arcane Blender was a suggestion I thought would be cool that I think a lot of people would like. I’ve got like 1 or 2 of every type of arcane. They’re useless in those quantities.

How’s that idea? Let me call it “Quick Battle”. All you do there is battling a random team from a internal list. That would prevent repetitive battles.

This mode drops all traitstones by default, but you are able to turn off certain colors to get the traitstones you want.

Not really spectacular for a minigame but at least it sounds better than farming the same challenge over and over. Thoughts? @Sirrian @Nimhain

Not bad. I’d try it for sure.

Definitely better than challenge farming.

Say what? Do you actually remember how it was when you started? You couldn’t possibly have been able to get all the troops you wanted in your first day, week, or even month of playing. You probably had to go by for quite a while with only a subset of troops, gaining more randomly as time goes by. I know I had less than half of the legendaries after a whole year of playing. Even if your situation was better, it still couldn’t have been as easy as you claim it to be.

The only real difference is you couldn’t ‘farm’ for a specific troop by playing the same level over and over, as you can now with traitstones. So how about pretending that you can’t, going for PvP/Arena which you enjoy, and gaining random traitstones as you go, just like you did troops?

I didn’t. It took me ages to find all the legendaries from chests. But I wasn’t farming for legendaries was I? I was farming for souls. You also have to remember that the pool of troops was much much smaller.

I was 2 legendaries short after a few months of playing - webspinner and bone dragon were my last 2. I was fine with the rate at which I obtained them. They were awesome and they were damn rare.

Nowhere did I claim that it was easy. I said it was EASIER. Stop putting words in my mouth. I stand by what I said, the introduction of traitstones has created an environment that doesn’t encourage the creation of new and interesting teams because arcane stones are simply to hard to farm for.

And I can’t do as you suggest because, as I have said many many times, the drop rates on arcanes are so low that to actively look for them is incredibly frustrating. I actually get far more of them from chests - but unlike a new troop under the old scenario, one arcane sitting around in my inventory won’t do squat. If I got a legendary, I could build an entire team around it. You can’t do much with a single arcane drop.

I’m not even sure you know what you’re arguing about anymore mate.

Are you saying drop rates on arcanes are ok?
Are you saying farming is fine in its current state?
Are you saying my blender idea is bad?

Drop rates wouldn’t be the problem, nor would the farming if it just needed less of arcanes. You need so much to trait, just trying to farm them kills all the fun. I would love too to try some teams, but I can’t since I can’t force my self to spend days on just doing the stupid challenges over and over. . I just do PvP and if anything drops ok. If nothing droops, at least I fought for real.
But the main reason drop rates obviously suck is that I (and as far as I know most of the other players) are drowning in minors/majors (especially majors) and struggle to get any decent amount of runic, not to mention arcanes. . And I’m drowning in them without ever paying for gold chests (I would have even more if I did buy those chests).

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What I’m saying is:

  • Farming for arcanes is currently not viable at all. It looks like an option, but it’s not. You better just drop the idea unless you’re a masochist (no offense intended).

  • The rate you can trait troops (even without targeted farming) is not that much worse than the rate you got them to begin with (at least that’s my experience). I believe it’s fine to trait troops when you can, and build teams with what you have, while ignoring what you don’t have - just as you did with missing troops.

  • Arcane drops are indeed quite low, but so are legendary troop drops. Rare things are supposed to be hard to obtain. Sure, I would like to have more arcanes, but I would also like to have all legendaries at day one. What I want does not automatically make for a good game design.

  • I don’t think your specific blender idea is any better (or any worse) than other methods proposed in the past (such as splitting/combining stones etc.), but I also don’t think that’s really the question here. If the devs decide that traiting epics+ should be easier, they have many ways to do that already (starting with better drop rates). If they think it shouldn’t be easier, then giving ideas how to make it easier is pointless.

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fair enough on most of your points.

I guess then so are forums if we aren’t going to discuss things :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s exactly what we are doing. I think.

I have no problem with you suggesting things. Many suggestions by the community were actually picked up by the devs, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t pick yours - if they ever decide they want to make traiting easier. Problem is, they currently don’t seem to think it’s needed, so convincing them of that comes before suggesting ways to do it.

Maps drop everything from common trait stones to arcane trait stones and getting more than one from maps comes down to skill timing and luck, I say luck cause you never know what might drop from the top. We only have one troop that makes maps but outside of her we need to rely on luck. You don’t need to farm challenges for trait stones to get a chance for 1 when maps can net you guaranteed more than one if you are good at playing maps. (maps play differently than other parts of the match 3 parts of the game.) I would like to see a feature to turn my already growing supply of trait stones into other trait stones but that is just me. I know that arcanes have low drop rates but that is due to their rarity. Personally i want minor trait stones to drop more than major and major to drop more than runic and runic to drop more than arcane and arcane to drop more than celestials but i can not confirm whether they do or if drops are perfectly random across the board. Another method of getting trait stones is welcomed by be but i do not think we actually need it and staff might think so too. They already added a function to get more trait stones so adding another would be redundant.

I think what this really raises is the need for a system that creates more diversity in gameplay. What we need is some sort of Daily/Weekly challenge system, where you can face tons of different compositions, including stuff like Mega Bosses, that are also an effective place to grind. Something akin to PvP, but less Goblins and not just for Gold.

The bottom line is that grinding is the nature of the beast in basically any RPG, and especially in F2P, so it’s not going anywhere. The discussion keeps focusing on ways to reduce the grind but what people neglect to consider is that doing so hurts the revenue of the game (since paying is how you’re supposed to reduce the grind) and, more importantly, jeopardizes the long-term viability of this game. If this were Clash of Clans or Summoners War or something like that, this wouldn’t matter. They make boat loads of money. But that isn’t the case with Gems.

What we really want is things that make the grind more enjoyable and less monotonous.

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Exactly!

Good post.

Xbox and ps4 have this and pc/app does not and i for one think it would help those who do not enjoy the grind. (i enjoy the grind because i love using maps to hell with what trait stones i get as long as i get them.)

I don’t mean tasks. I mean battles with new troop combos, gimmicks like you have to use certain troops or certain colors don’t give mana, and with stuff like Mega Gorgotha, or Raid Bosses. Stuff that really mixes up the gameplay, not breadcrumbs.

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I hope we get another mega boss to fight. What if they did it like elsword where there would be a kingdom that shows up temporarily for events (call it primal darn it) where we have to fight a raid and rewards are given based on participation. (both individual and for everyone.)

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Cool idea, but I’m looking for something more dynamic that rotates, preferably daily, and would be fairly automated/turn-key on the dev end. Just a bunch of different variables that get shuffled every day like have to use a certain troop type or color or a certain color doesn’t give matches or whatever. Could also be a bunch of pre-loaded teams that it draws from. Stuff like that so we can get variety every day.

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Well, I’m lucky here because I like treasure hunting, and you cam buy oodles of maps with glory, a lot of which you get back.

I do think traitstones drop slowly compared to troops - sure, you can miss that one legendary troop for months, but you have lots of others.

But I also think they are much less necessary. You can make plenty of fine teams without traits (and on ordinary troops, the first one or two traits are easily affordable, albeit not quite so affordable as maxing level with souls)

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