I’m sure this has been discussed already, but just weighing in on some thoughts for improving the kingdom leveling. Logically it seems like it should look more like this:
Track 1: troop related (troop levels, traits, elite levels, shiny levels, astral spire trees minus hero tree)
class leveling has to be rewarded. It’s a huge part of completing the game and was a huge part of grinding to level kingdoms already.
tasks already achieved (e.g. 2500 faction renown) should not be road-blocked by the randomness of shiny tokens and keys.
This would involve completely dismantling the current track 3 and replacing it with something more achievable. Elite levels and shiny levels can be added into advanced / higher level Track 1 tasks (maybe around Kingdom level 40-50?), and underworld renown tasks get integrated with Pet / Weapon track 2 tasks. Track 3 becomes strictly hero related tasks.
Personally, I am so happy class leveling beyond champ level 20 isn’t required. For a casual player this takes approximately forever.
If you already did it, you were already rewarded. The conversion respected all the previous KPL work we had done, and usually put us in better shape than we were.
So my two cents in the jar as well. Cheers and happy gemming!
Well, acquiring elite levels and shiny keys takes approximately forever too. And unlike grinding classes, you have no control over shiny token drops. The game is 100% about grinding and completion. If you’re a casual player, you will never complete it…so what’s the difference? If you play it every day, you would be discouraged.
I would predict that it’s a matter of time before they announce that class leveling factors in somehow.
Personally, I feel like they should have just gone back to the way KPL was calculated before tasks were even a thing. Each little advancement gave you XP. No tasks, no need to go to the kingdom to collect the award. Just modify it to the current game. Leveled a troop from 10 to 11? 15 XP. Leveled the troop to 12? 15 XP. Bought a trait? 30 XP. Got a new pet? 30 XP. Leveled the pet to 2? 15 XP. You could add whatever kingdom related aspect of the game at whatever XP total you want and it’d work: class owned/leveled, weapon owned/tempered, troop advanced, pet leveled, faction advanced. It’s infinitely expandable and easier to calculate. With a built in limitation.
My two cents: I hate the crystal system. I hate that you can ignore collecting kingdom assets in favor of getting the crystals to advance the kingdom. I’m okay with the population idea, but it could have been implemented better.
To me, the biggest difference between class and shiny levels is that class leveling is “active” and shiny leveling is “passive.”
Active meaning you must use the class to the exclusion of other classes you prefer. You must do this for what, 5000+ battles? And you must do it again. And again. You finally got one to level 100, what if you like that class? Gotta stop using it because the next one needs to be leveled. Some classes suck. This is actively, directly impacting your team and gameplay and it is not fun.
Passive meaning the pursuit of shiny keys does not force you to play one specific class/weapon/troop/etc for 5000 battles. You work towards this through a variety of events, or I suppose now through PvP. It does take forever, but it does itself, and it doesn’t get stale so fast.
I expect this is easy enough to understand if the reader wants to understand. But if someone wanted to argue that the events which reward shiny keys are still restricted, I would say to them, the restrictions are in place whether you want/earn shiny keys or not, so the KPL requirement has no bearing on the restriction.
Restricting yourself to a specific class is not a natural requirement, and therefore is an additional restriction fabricated by the KPL requirements. That’s why I feel like it’s more of a pain in my tookus than shinies.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk, have a nice day.
I get not wanting to use crappy classes. I guess you could make a similar argument asking why waste traitstones, orbs and souls leveling up crappy troops you never intend to use? Just to level the kingdom, it is similarly a waste of time and resources by the same logic. It feels punative in a way that getting to level 100 was required and now it’s just absent. So many players spent so much time doing what you described, grinding these third rate classes just to complete it and get kingdoms to level 20. If we’d known they would remove that entirely, I doubt anyone would’ve done it.
Maybe one option would be just award XP for the tasks regardless of what order they’re completed, like Pyriel suggested. Add back class leveling and let people choose whether to do it or not. And for something like faction renown, give us our full XP for hitting 2500 independent of shiny keys and other bottlenecks.
This appears a similar argument, but it is not. This is again a passive effort in that you don’t have to use those troops in order to upgrade them. Imagine the pain if you had to individually use each troop a certain amount of battles in order to level/trait it. That’s how the class thing works. Not sure why one would want to argue it anyway, my point is very simple, but it’s still not the same argument.
Logically, you were not punished and didn’t lose anything. The progress you made via class levels was respected and converted fairly. Example: If you got (old) KPL to level 20 thanks in part to lv 100 classes, plus KL 15 let’s say, you were converted to Prestige level 30. If you had not leveled the class at all, you would at best have (old) KPL 10, and get converted to Prestige level 20.
So you were given 10 entire prestige levels for the effort in every single kingdom with a leveled class.
Plus, after the conversion it is highly likely that you could gain further levels through already completed tasks, newly accessible tasks, and converted deeds → crystals. But that’s a secondary non-punishment. The primary non-punishment is the awarding of 10 Prestige levels.
This honors the time you spent, the levels you earned, and relieves us of the need to speculate on whether players would have done it or not had they seen the future.
I did hate the bottlenecks. I can’t really say if I hate the crystals more or less. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. My suggested system removes both.
I would argue that grinding hours and hours to earn traitstones for unused troops is not entirely passive. You might not have to use the troop, but you do have to spend time in order to level the troop with resources you could spend elsewhere.
In defense of the crappy classes, you actually can level them up quite quickly and efficiently in PvP. You get 2 xp per battle and can choose the weakest of 3 opponents. Honestly the way the AI works, I’m not convinced that my win rate changes all that much switching from Level 40 barbarian to Level 100 geomancer or elementalist. If you have end game dragons, you can almost swap out any hero class and do quite well.
For a game that is all about grinding and obsessive completion of tasks, it’s frankly unimaginable that class completion grants you nothing. It can’t last like that going forward and I predict they will change it eventually. Players should get something for doing it, just like before, that’s all I’m saying.
It’s funny too because today’s class trial is still active…what’s the point?
Is it possible that they disincluded the classes because they view them as unbalanced and broken (in some cases), and this will cause most people to stop using them, which gives them the excuse to just remove them from the game or update them to correct a long standing mistake?
Maybe that, or maybe they’re planning to add it later for advanced prestige levels after knocking out renown, etc. I wonder if it was just a mistake? It seems so obvious that it should be added, maybe it was an oversight.
I’m just going to acknowledge that I took the time to understand your reply. At this point you either understand my stance and my arguments or you don’t, but I’ve taken enough of our time. It’s clear to me we have different perspectives on what the game is about. And that we both have love for the game.
I could maybe get on board with that, provided that the soul cost to get to 100 isn’t greater than what you’d earn in ~ 5k battles when farming class XP. That does raise the question of having to use sub-par or unoptimized teams in other game modes to farm souls. It’s an interesting thought.
Cheers and happy gemming!
