In theory of course. But it is also discussed on the forum and on tacets youtube channel which are both fairly accessible.
Forums and Youtube channels have a āshelf lifeā though. If you donāt catch it when itās posted, youāre much more likely to miss it. As opposed to @Lyyaās webpage, where it would be static and constant.
What do people think of spells that summon other troops? Take Giant Spider for example - personally I dont want a spider swarm to be summoned on my team.
Definitely annoying. Probably more annoying than mana drain, IMO. The issue is that nobody uses summoners at the high levels because theyāre not that good comparatively to direct damage dealers.
And people saying that everything is fine as it is are also very little representativeā¦
My point is: If things are left as they are, if Manticore becomes (if it isnāt already) the new top troop of the meta, soon we will need something to just counter it, and it would be probably widely used on every defensive and ofensive team, and this kind of power creep or as Barney Sttinson would say: āNew is always better!ā can do some harm on the game longevity.
Reaching a āperfect imbalanceā to have a lot of good troops and a number of reasonable counters to almost any combination is hard, but taking Manticore as example it is challenging to find a reasonable good counter to it that itās not another Manticore. Having Impervious is one of the problems since it nulifies a lot of possible counters like Entangled that could stop at least the attack increasing.
So is it really everything fine with this troop when itās really hard to design a future troop, or rework old ones, that can counter it in some sense without resorting to the same strategy?
āDrain itās mana before it can drain yours.ā
āDevours it before it can devour you.ā
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Itās not that people saying everything is fine (who said that anyway?), itās a simple rule in support - the vast majority of respondents are responding to complain. You very rarely get contacts from a customer that is happy, only from those that are unhappy.
When you combine the fact that a very small minority of the global player base participates in these forums with the fact that of those that do, a very small minority is unhappy with certain troops, it comes near to proving implicitly that the vast majority of players donāt see it as an issue, whether they actually state it or not. If it were really that big of an issue, there would be thousands, hundreds, or even dozens of complainants. As it stands, thereās a handful and theyāre largely the same people that do this every time a new troop is released.
The contention that Manticore is overwhelming the meta simply isnāt true, not for 99% of the people that play this game. The end-gamers may be suffering from it but this isnāt a meritocracy. Their opinions donāt matter more simply because theyāve played longer than other people.
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Spoken like a true master debater.
Fair play.
Ok, and what about the rest of my post? Does it matter enough to be debated?
Leaving Manticore as it is until it becomes the new āGoblinsā to the point that every team has at least one and the diversity is null to every player, since the troop is not that hard to obtain, will it be ok to change the troop then?
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It doesnāt matter enough to be debated because youāre proposing a hypothetical - what IF it becomes the new Goblins?
The original poster posited that it IS the new Goblins. It has already come to pass, therefore your hypothetical is kind of moot.
Iām sorry but this argument just doesnāt stand up to basic logical scrutiny.
End-game meta + Maw = OP
End-game meta + Mercy = OP
End-game meta + Manticore = OP
Itās pretty obvious that the common denominator is the END-GAME META. Focus on curing the disease, not cutting off the nose to spite the face.
The economics of F2P games, and really all live games, is such that all balancing has to be based around end-gamers (except when it might fundamentally ruin the early game experience). Something like 5% of players are payers, and something like 50% of revenue comes from 1% of players. These payers are by-and-large end-gamers, so itās vitally important that you keep them happy so the money continues to flow in. When youāre trying to run a successful F2P business, the balancing has to be done around the end-gamers/payers.
You can scream and shout about how itās an end-game-only problem, but an end-game-only problem is a problem fundamental to the long-term viability of the game and studio. This is very much a case of pragmatism trumping idealism.
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Why are end gamers spending so much when they already have nearly everything
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Without some kind of actual confirmation from @Sirrian or the other devs, I openly reject your assertion that end-gamers make up the bulk of the revenue. In fact, it flies in the face of reason to suggest that people that can no longer progress in the game are paying real money for items that really only contribute to faster progress. Getting to the end-game in GoW does not require spending any real money at all, only vast amounts of time. Iāve spent over $100 to this point and just passed level 500.
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To support the development of the game so that it stays around, and continues to evolve, and be fun to play. Those are my reason for spending money.
So when something enters the meta game that starts making all the matches very stale, it removes a major reason to spend money.
Right now, I am holding out and seeing what changes the Guild Update will bring. PvP is very stale, and Manticore on defense limits the ability to play weaker, but fun, teams.
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Long term viability of the game, and thus the developer, are highly dependent on the game remaining fresh and exciting, receiving regular updates, and introducing new strategies and mechanics.
Kind of hard to do those things when a small group of players complain about every new thing thatās introduced as āruining the metaā.
What level are you by chance?
When we consider nerfs/buffs, we take 3 things into account in equal measure:
- Player feedback (forums & social media & game chat)
- Data recently accumulated from millions of games over many different level ranges
- Our feeling/vision/experience as designers
When 2 of those things clearly agree, weāll make a change.
So, having said that, hereās our current thinking on Manticoreā¦
-
His Mana Cost is a bit low. When we were creating him, our gut feeling was 11 points. However, he had 3 things which generally were regarded as not-so-greatā¦ Impervious (folks were nervous about it pre-2.0.1, but post 2.0.1 it still wasnāt seeing much use) Empowered Mana Drain (Spirit Fox wasnāt seeing much use), and self-buffing (Tau, anyone?). So we knocked a couple of points off his cost to make him a little more attractive.
-
Overall, heās the 15th most popular troop for defense, doesnāt even rate in the top 50 for offense. On defense, heās not at ALL popular until you hit level 200, and not really common until level 500. Still not used nearly as much as Maw was though. Anyway, this data indicates a mana-cost change is NOT the correct responseā¦ since it hits ALL levels. More likely a change to trait 2 or 3 might make more sense for higher level play, but thatās a tricky oneā¦ it has a fair chance to remove him from play altogether, which is NOT what we want. Something like Empowered to Fast would be worth considering perhaps.
We DO also need to take into account that heās still a relatively new toyā¦ troops in the high level ranges always have a bit of an upswing in popularity for a month or two after release. -
Feedback so far has been mixed, but slightly more on the negative side, mainly from high levels, and mainly due to him slowing down play.
So weāre currently in a situation where our data points are suggesting that a small nerf or counter is good for end-game, but weāre not yet getting a clear picture of what that change should be.
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Your arguments are not totally credible too since you throw numbers assuming a scenario that people are ok with Manticore as it is just because:
- They are not using the forums to support a change or not.
- They are not sending complaints to the customer service.
The way i see it is more likely:
āNew is always better!ā = OP.
āNew is always better!ā = OP.
āNew is always better!ā = OP.
- Maw with more than one chance to devour was a new defining meta.
- Mab with easy extra turns and damage to all troops scalating with Arcane Trait was a new defining meta.
- Manticore/Khorvash/Mana Drain in general are a new defining meta?
Two out of three seems a reasonable patternā¦ And the changes made to the first two cases had an indirect impact on the third:
- To avoid Devour and Mana Burn from still being too dominant they improved Impervious, adding more value to an already powerfull trait.
- Manticore having Impervious just limits the counters you can use against it, notoriously to the point that itās better to use Manticore on ofense. And thatās what is making team compositions dull/boring.
To some players itās fine to keep using the same teams in order to have fast victories as some sort of proof/validation that they are ābetterā at resource grinding, to others itās fine to have longer battles as some sort of proof/validation that they are ābetterā at strategy on a Match-3 gameā¦
To each their own, but using your assumption that the End-Game is the problem i would like to ask:
- What happens if the End-Game becomes unoriginal/boring/dull? People would stop playing it right? We donāt want it, i suppose, right?
A change is needed like it or not, if they will introduce a troop that drains X mana of all enemies and adds it to their own or if they will just rebalance Manticore, and a few others, i honestly donāt know.
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[quote=āIvar, post:57, topic:11469, full:trueā]
Your arguments are not totally credible too since you throw numbers assuming a scenario that people are ok with Manticore as it is just because:
- They are not using the forums to support a change or not.
- They are not sending complaints to the customer service.[/quote]
Actually, thatās basic statistics and industry best practices. Iām not pulling that out of my ass, thatās the experience of software and technology companies the world over, for the last 40+ years.
[quote=āIvar, post:57, topic:11469, full:trueā]
The way i see it is more likely:
āNew is always better!ā = OP.
āNew is always better!ā = OP.
āNew is always better!ā = OP.[/quote]
Except that literally nobody has said that, certainly not me. Just because I refuse to believe 2+2=5 does not mean I believe 2+2=3. Weāre not dealing in binary here, where only 2 opinions are possible.
[quote=āIvar, post:57, topic:11469, full:trueā]
- Manticore having Impervious just limits the counters you can use against it, notoriously to the point that itās better to use Manticore on ofense. And thatās what is making team compositions dull/boring.[/quote]
Except that Sirrian just stated that he isnāt even in the top 50 of offensive troops, so obviously itās not better or at least nobody but you has figured that out.
As for teams being dull and/or boring, thatās HIGHLY subjective. Iām not arguing FOR anything, Iām simply arguing AGAINST the idea that every time a new troop comes out, it needs to be changed because somebodyās sense of nostalgia gets offended.
[quote=āIvar, post:57, topic:11469, full:trueā]To each their own, but using your assumption that the End-Game is the problem i would like to ask:
- What happens if the End-Game becomes unoriginal/boring/dull? People would stop playing it right? We donāt want it, i suppose, right? [/quote]
What if? According to a lot of people here, it already is. Why they keep playing, Iām not sure.
Level 1000. I missed the loophole timeframe for 1001. 
When this reaches console
Defense has monster manticore?
Hi!! Empowered gobchomper says hi!! double damage versus monsters.
Or defense has attack increasing via frenzy or corruption etc then faunessa say hi!! and bye!!