Post 2.0 Improvement wish list

well, you are apparently luckier than I.
I did not receive a single arcane traitstone from my almost 400 games that it took to get to rank 80ish.
The fact that I didn’t largely added to my burnt out and disappointed feelings towards the ladder.

Needless to say, I won’t be doing that again.

You should see my post on how PvP is working… it might be good to have some of these comments in that thread for others to consider.

I too this week put in what I consider rediculous amounts of time into PvP, but I won’t be putting that quantity in ever again. It was too much to get to top 100. At one point, I was in the 70s and went to bed last night at 84 only to find I earned a single trait stone so getting bumped to the 101-200 bracket I’m sure. I didn’t really care as I already knew the rewards were less than impressive… and I also knew, as designed, I’d never put that much TIME into it again. It’s a bit of a joke how much time is required for someone like me (father of 3, husband, professional employee, etc). This game turns into a job if you want to get to the arcanes in PvP. As noted in the other thread, they could impliment any number of PvP changes to address the time, but don’t know if that even appeals. It seems from a select vocal few, they are fine with it, and from others, they don’t care for the time required and will never participate or attempt to get to top spots, and I can appreciate why.

If the arcanes were available in other aspects of the game, say in mini-game loot tables, folks wouldn’t feel like all they had was impossible pvp grind time, or challenge grind time… or grinding for glory in pvp so they could purchase whatever was in the rewards chest that week… grind, grind grind… it would be far better if there were other fun events that were simply rewarding arcanes in their loot tables without being a simple grind.

Adding arcanes to TH would be nice, as would also making sure those completions counted toward your leveling up of your class… as it stands, I don’t ever want to play TH as it takes far longer to get less out of it. I cannot get player level out of it… class level won’t come out of it, and rewards from it are lessor than what I can do just playing PvP and contributing to the guild… so, why bother? I guess they could add an auto roll button, then I would go in, roll quickly, and get out… but I would prefer they just improve the value of TH for the time it requires.

Other mini games added and arena more profitable… or multiple arena types were perhaps other types in other kingdoms are more profitable for focused on stones or gold… or whatever for that kingdom would be great.

In short, they just need other in game and less grindy sources of arcane traits to keep it enjoyable, to keep the folks playing who play this game for many aspects, but don’t want to be grinding and cant or don’t want to put the PvP time in weekly.

Agreed, hope the devs have an ear to the thread.

You can get arcanes from TH.

Fair enough, and good point. Yes, you can and I have… but the severe random nature of it could be reworked I guess is what I’m thinking. Starting with green chests, it would be nice to see the arcane traits chance improved, or when you get the red chests, the arcanes are more improved in drop rate chance, and vault just guarantees one plus whatever else it pops… afterall, it’s a vault!

PS - seems the devs are doing somthing in the form of adding trait stone access to the game, as they mention here:

I’m impartial to the news. it’s as vague as it always is.

Vague perhaps, but specific enough to see they are addressing items folks are more than vocal about. When the guys at mid and top are feeling the grind, still needing arcane traitstones, and burn out is setting in… I think the devs see they have a good initial hook and folks enjoy the progression, but ‘grind’ is an aweful mechanic to keep players interested. It’s the the death nell for any game. See this thread for more:

Dev’s seem to see a need for better servers, more / faster / stable updates, more of what players are looking for such as - addressing the arcane trait stone availability issue, which plenty of players see as a problem. That probelm is only compounded by regular release of troops and with mythics being added. Resources are now in even greater demand, and the fun of the game should be maintained as paramount, not grind. Perhaps the dev’s see and are taking some actions accordingly. I’m encouraged.

There is no traitstone availability problem. Just play the game and get in a good guild.

Grinding is a part of many RPGs. Final Fantasy series and Pokemon series. Arguably, the juggernauts of the Eastern World, are grindy. While your Mass Effect and [insert] Bethesda game of the Western World are not. In this case, pick your poison.

You mean the handful of forum members? Gotcha.

I have to diasagree here. Resources are resources. Resources are inherently vital to any ecosystem, at any given time. Moving on, the game is becoming easier for the player. You have more troops to gain stars for kingdoms. That are less souls needed and less resources needed. If you are a completionist, like me, then it is the inverse of the aforementioned.

There we go with that “fun” again. I don’t mind “grindy” games. Video games are innately fun. A game not measuring up to your standards is your opinion.

The developers have always improved the game based on 3 pillars.

Taken from:

Discussion about pay-to-win frustrations

Insert quoted by @Sirrian

The core of it goes like this: good design needs to be built on 3
PILLARS - player feedback, designer intuition/experience, and hard
statistics/analytics. Each of those pillars is of equal value. As soon
as you lean on one too hard, you get problems… and that’s kind of what
you’re implying in your post, but it’s not the case here.

Lean on analytics too hard? You get the strip-mining you mentioned.
Lean on designer feedback too hard? You add features that lose your core audience, and don’t work with your business model.
Lean
on player feedback too hard? You skew the game features to cater to the
most vocal players,and you either go broke by giving too much away, or
alter the difficulty to cater for a minority.

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@Koolbiird Thanks for the detailed response. I appreciate your candor. It’s a forum, I’m just here to present questions and ideas.

Well, if you are correct… I’m happy the dev’s are then just gifting us a new feature to improve arcane traitstone availability. From my experience of forum, RL friends and respondents to youtube vids, seems there are more than an handful who would share in that appreciation.

Cheers,

As someone who is slowly losing the fight against the grind, and taking into consideration the major updates, it seems like the devs are leaning too much on hard stats and player feedback even though those things should balance each other. In the last 2 major updates alone it was obvious that the devs had implemented a lot of user generated suggestions.

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@killerman3333 ,

Sorry to hear grind is getting to you. I think a game with simple combat system but this breath of characters not to mention kingdoms, seems to have a huge untapped potential.

Imagine each kingdom with different ‘global’ or environmental effects… not something as simple as improved or decreased mana surge chances, but a global effect chance… say up north, constant freeze effect in play - both sides… always (unless you are immune), how would that alone change your play style?

What if you were in a red/brown heavy lava area… and a constant burn effect was in play, both sides, unless your character was immune? Plus - whatever mana bonus’s they might add? What if water link was nullified in this kingdom too?

Now, what if you could customize a default defense for all kingdoms, or you could customize a defense team, by each kingdom? What defenses would you put in place then?

What if PvP rewards were based not on your ladder performance against all others… which they could keep that too, but what if you were rewarded based on your performance, in each kingdom? And then pvp rewards were based on how you did in each kingdom, vs others attacking that kingdom… and each kingdom also afforded different reward tables?

Heck, you might all the sudden use more of those 200+ troops available to you, as certain cards get bonuses in certain areas and certain environmental effects are in play, and now you actually care where you are fighting - not just what their team is made up of.

I’m only spit balling some ideas, which all talk to various points at the beginning of the thread… and it’s only one idea how they could make the ‘global conflict’ and tap into the fiction they already have started with so many character cards and kingdoms… and it doesn’t even begin to get into the special mini-games they could have (like arena or treasure hunt) found at each kingdom that players could explore.

I applaud the dev’s for considering all the options, looking at where they came from with puzzle quest, and where they are going with Gems. It seems like a very compelling growth path and world that they could do so much with.

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If there’s a grind for traitstones, it’s a grind for glory. The only practical way to get Arcane traitstones is to be patient (waiting for an event week and blowing glory) or rich and slightly-less-patient (waiting for a Legendary bundle or Arcane bundle for the color you care about to show). Every other approach leads to madness, burnout, and table flipping. I most definitely do not recommend challenge grinding, and (if you have access to them) even the 2x VIP chest payout is too scattershot to justify unless you really don’t care what kind of Traitstone you’ll get.

No, video games are not innately fun.

A lot of games–this one included–know that feelings of progress, satisfaction and accomplishment trigger the release of hormones like dopamine. Basically, the natural version of opoids.

“You did good!” “You win!” “What an accomplishment!” —> hormones —> addiction.

There are lot of ways to hook people on games. If the means by which a video game ropes people in is FUN the people who made it should feel very, very proud of themselves. They’ve done something special.

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The game is fun but i have had a goal in mind that i am working on finishing and as far as your suggestion goes, it would make the game harder and in hardness comes challenge. I normally dislike legendary troops, heck anything higher than epic except for tyri. I have a general love for rare and below troops thinking mana cost is just as important as the effect. I am trying to get the glory kingdoms to level 9 and i am only missing 7 of them at the moment. I also am missing 30 troops over all which happen to be epic and above in rarity. I pushed the wall to hard and for that i wasted my energy while it would not move. I made progress in the game but for every week that passes, that progress gets smaller and smaller. I like the grind, but i have to know when to stop. I will be a shadow player of the game so i can keep tabs on it and maybe i will come back and put a lot of effort into it again but it is only a game, there is nothing wrong with saying it beat me.

Yes, video games are inherently incentive-based systems. Games are expected to be rewarding. Receiving rewards are “fun”. Those rewards are “fun” incentives. So, video games are inherently incentive-based systems which are “fun”. “Fun” is a by-product of playing a video game. Just like a story has a protagonist that the entire story revolves around; the “fun” is an inherent model that the game is built around.

In conclusion, "A game begins with “fun” and ends with “fun”.

I can agree with your use of “fun”, with quotation marks.

Because if you need the quotation marks, you’re not really talking about fun anymore.

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You capitalized it. Now, what are talking about? Still fun or fun or fun or FUN…“fun”.

There kind of is, actually. That statement makes it sound like the “goal” of the game (and by extension, the developers who made it) is to “win” over their player base by outlasting their interest somehow, as if it were some sort of endurance race. The game is a game, no more and no less. You play it while it is fun, and when it is no longer fun, you stop.

The goal of any (small, independent) development team is twofold: first, of course, they are a business and need to make money to put food on the table of the contributors. Second, and still quite importantly, they want to develop a game experience that is fun, that people can have positive experiences with, can share with their friends, and can brighten their day. There’s nothing directly antagonistic about either of these goals, and positioning your burnout as “the game won” is unfair to the people who put in a ton of effort to maintain the freshness and enjoyment factor of their (very simple, on the surface of things) video game.

All love affairs eventually settle, and with a video game, you aren’t beholden to anything. You can limit your game time to a minimum if you wish to pace yourself. You can walk away when it is no longer fun. You can come back whenever you want. If you decide to give it another go, and find yourself enjoying it again, then that’s when the game has “won.”

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When it comes to video games, could be any of the above (or none).

I think it’s fair to say video games are supposed to be fun. And some of them are. But just keeping people playing is not a sure indicator.

great commentary in this thread. I agree with the sentiment that Lyya and others have said, challenges are simply not a viable solution to gathering more than a few very specific traitstones. I’ve spent a large amount of time grinding them, and find it incredibly unrewarding. Grinds are great when the payoff makes the hours spent feel well spent, and I can not see a scenario in which grinding out traitstones for any troop Epic or higher would be satisfying. Epics simply require too many Arcanes, and the majority of the traits granted via those stones are underwhelming, at best.

One of the sorely under-represented characteristics of this game, is the variety of troop configurations. When met with either traitstone gating or in the case of hero classes a gem/time gate, the desirability to try new configurations falls drastically.

I’d love to see traits active in Arena, simply turn them all on, regardless of if you have them yourself, possibly even mixing in the chance to play an Epic or legendary troop too. Arena could be an excellent avenue for players new and old to experience lesser used troops, and traits. I find myself playing Arena, not for the rewards, but to add some variety to my opponents.

I still grind them while talking to one of my friends via steam voice chat. While diong this I only notice half of the game happening since I’m more focusing on my friend. My gameplay gets pretty much autopiloted, which makes the grind less of a chore. I never grind otherwise. Still agree with the unrewarding part.

Not only that, most troops are epic. I just unlock the first trait for points and save Arcanes for the legendaries.

EDIT: The jump between ultras and epics is pretty ridiculous. You need 12 arcanes for epics and 3 for ultras. 6-8 arcanes for epics would be totally fine. I consider legendaries with their 16/18 arcanes worthwhile (in general) because you get an unique legendary trait. Could be still shorted by 1-2.

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