Journey is about fighting increasingly stronger battles. Each battle won significantly raises the level of all subsequent opponents, while keeping the base score the same. There are two factors that reduce effective scores as battles get tougher, losing troops and taking more than 10 turns. Those combined can cost players up to half the points.
Journey worked out so far due to the Pathfinder troop. Its spell deals damage and creates up to 15 gems (16 when shiny) of the same color, allowing players to reliably keep the turn while slowly whittling opponents down. This no longer works for the Journey next week, the upcoming Pathfinder troop Adelwing has been nerfed to only create 10 gems (11 when shiny) and need much more mana. Casting the spell is highly unreliable, it will miss more often than not, handing over a favorable board to the opponent and likely resulting in a loss at higher levels. Adelwing will be a liability to have in the team, a liability that has to be included due to the Pathfinder trait.
Under current conditions I expect Journey next week to be an utterly frustrating experience for everyone. Lower level players will no longer be able to participate well (or even at all), without a looping team they donât have the firepower to fight rapidly increasing opponent levels. Higher level players wonât be able to compensate overall significantly lower guild scores without going deep into shop tier 7 and level 1000 opponent territory.
Some ideas to prevent the upcoming train wreck:
Make Adelwing similar to previous Journey troops, even just adding another gem ot two wonât be enough. I guess the nerf is to make Pathfinder troops less dangerous as PvP opponents, so this might not be the preferred option.
Lower reward thresholds by at least 50%. The thresholds are already set too tight without the nerf, Journey is by far the toughest guild event to complete.
Scale points by opponent level, by at least (level x 0.2%). This results in double points at level 500, triple points at level 1000.
Drop the scoring penalties for losing troops and taking more than 10 turns. Wonât be enough on its own.
Significantly reduce the rate at which opponents grow in level. Wonât be enough on its own.
As ive said previously, Raid Boss, World Events, and Invasion all have pretty good positive scaling for score, where the deeper you play into them, the faster your score climbs. Tower of doom has no score scaling, and puts a lot of pressure on the guild to scout and cooperate (not a terrible thing on its own, but would be nice to have a better in-game way of doing this).
Journey, however, has negative scaling for score⌠which is baffling, The farther you go in a journey, the more likely you are to lose points, with no way to increase them, making the earlier fights infinitely better than the later ones. This, coupled with the fact that journey has the highest score requirements for completion (understandable with the books of deeds in it) makes it incredibly difficult for a guild to make up for some members that may be struggling more than others.
I agree that the current scheme for journey troops is not great for the enjoyment of the game, and probably needed to be changed, but this CANNOT happen without making actual changes to the journey event to bring it in line with the others score-wise. Hopefully either this is being taken into account by the team, or the spoiler gets updated to be closer to the previous journey troops.
As a reminder the first journey with Hawthorne was TERRIBLE, and i donât even remember the journey with Deathclaw, I must have completely blocked it out.
*points towards the 20.000 miles achievement* Good luck with that for those, who still miss it.
I mentioned before though, that pathfinder troops of this looping spell pattern can not be introduced forever. Once we get around to Wildfolk and Mystic, it gets into gamebreaker territory, as they can then be paired up with Beetrix (and in the latter case with Elementalist too), which would be close to unstoppable.
Once again, it shows that the game is overtaking itself due to an event heavily increased in frequency. If it was still running on a 4-6 months schedule, we would not have reached a critical point in years. Giving us this nightmare mode every five weeks was a mistake, even with the book rewards making a little bit up for it.
And it took more than one finger, a one troop team and blind glasses to do.
Which is all you need for the chalcedony clones., thatâs why they need gone, and all the ones in-game already nerfed.
As there helping people lose braincells.
Or restricted in power to the Journey mode in some way.
Not just a bit. Scoring only (barely) works because Pathfinder troops keep on looping reliably, for dozens of turns. Take that away and the entire reward structure breaks down. I guess Journey might actually be more fun when not having to rely exclusively on the Pathfinder, up to getting finger cramps. For that to work out opponent levels have to be MUCH lower, scoring needs a SERIOUS bump and the Pathfinder should possibly contribute something better than a Hail Mary youâd have to be very desperate to risk even a single time.
Simple solution: Instead of giving double magic for specific troop, like other events, pathfinder events give double gem creation for the featured troop.
So, in journey event, the pathfinder is a badass, able to help keep the team going and get the scores necessary for the stupidly high reward tiers, but after the event it becomes just another mid-tier troop, useful in some setups, but not so OP it overshadows other troops.
Or maybe just grant an extra turn in Journey mode instead. Doesnât count towards the 10 turn penalty and prevents misfires from helping the opponent.
The easiest thing they could do is not continue to artificially inflate every game modeâs progression, so that enemies do not scale every new battle.itâs every mode and itâs old.
Have a hardcap on level. No faffing about with specifics for game modes, it will go wrong.
Journey also only seems to supply the 2 books you need for the kingdom to 16 itâs fought in. Iâve asked before to give 1 extra book so there is progression for players.
Iâm not really sold on a hard cap, Iâd rather see increased points for tougher battles (instead of lowered points for tougher battles, as it is now). Itâs okay if battles get more difficult, Journey just needs to lighten up a lot. Other modes assist players in going against higher level troops:
Invasion has Siegebreakers, which deal huge amounts of damage against towers. High level battles are exclusively against towers.
Raid Boss has Godslayers, which deal huge amounts of damage against bosses. Battles have 1 high level boss and 3 low level minions.
World events have medals, which multiply damage output by up to a factor of 5.8.
Journey has Pathfinders, which assist players by chaining multiple turns. Without reliable chaining, itâs like running those other events without their intended assistance tools, and on a turn limit on top.
Itâs a nice sentiment, but I donât see a good means for actually implementing this in a way that is restricted to the event itself. By design, there are NO passive traits able to change how any spell functions in battle.
except Hawthorne. And it created the other problem, that chaining infinite turns isnât limited to the mode they were designed for and breaks game balance literally everywhere else.
Being able to use Godslayers in the Daily Dungeon (or vs. any team with Boss troops, e.g. Gem/Cosmic Dragons) is a good thing.
Being able to use Siegebreakers vs. Leonis Tower is a ⌠limited usecase, but still a good thing. (Why are the invasion towers themselves unobtainable?)
Being able to never give your opponent a single turn is patently NOT a good thing. You canât spell âcounterplayâ without âplayâ!
True. But this is about the Journey event. If they render the one tool useless that allows players to participate on par with the other events, something has to give. It doesnât really matter what they change, as long as the end result isnât fighting massively overpowered opponents with 3 heavily restricted troops plus a dead weight, for dimishing points.
Guys instead of thinking, yay the events easier with this journey troop , and 2 more books is all I care about.
Think of the overall picture, these troops outside of journey, make the game awful, boring , stupid and not wanting to play it.
If they can be blocked outside journey events , then fine.
Otherwise think of the bigger picture, take the hit on the rewards, letâs get them out the game.
Because use your imagination, a journey troop for every troop type, every colour. Thatâs the future.
A troop thatâs used non stop in. Doom and PvP. Thatâs the future.
Itâs game breakable, for anyone that wants to play this game, using more than one finger.
Thank you @Fourdottwoone for posting this and also for giving great suggestions on improvements.
The next Journey event is going to be much harder, but the following one is even worse with a troop that generates a colour that isnât even one of itâs colours.
Here the troop uses Yellow/Green and it is generating Purple.
As stated above, with the enemy stats getting harder but the point scoring remaining the same, and then nerfing the looping troop makes this event extremely frustrating to play.
Look, you can dislike the troop all you want. I hate fighting against them. But i enjoy using them, they allow me to play very passively while doing something else. With the current state of journey, they are a necessity. I would rather they change journey than keep this type of troop, but they cannot both keep journey the way it is AND get rid of this troop scheme. I completed the 20,000 miles with hawthorne and it was absolutely horrific.
The wonderful thing about this game is if you donât want to use specific troops, you donât have to (outside of the guild events). Honestly though, journey troops and the elementalist class should probably just not be allowed in PvP. They really do make the game mode worse.
