I posted once before about how there’s a lack balance between players of vastly different levels in light of the Kingdom Bonuses introduced in 1.0.7, but 1.0.8 seems to have ramped this up quite a bit. Thanks to the ability to level up troops above the previous cap of 15, players who had tons and tons of resources lying around can, in the short run, gain a huge boost by Ascending and leveling their troops like crazy.
Obviously, this will phase out over time as lower level players (who had no reason to store more than 4 of any troop before this, and every reason to disenchant) slowly catch up, but that’s going to be a long, long process. I just fought an all-dragon team owned by a player around level 450 (I’m close to 230) where pretty much every enemy troop had near 50 combined armor and health. I won, but frankly I was lucky and I’m not sure I could count on that happening again.
Basically what I’m getting at is that this provides yet another reason to allow some kind of limiter to the PvP so you can avoid having to “try another” through a bunch of players way ahead of you in the game. The updates keep making it harder for the lower level players to compete, and while there’s no way to avoid that completely, it seems like the scale keeps tipping more and more in one direction.
Case in point: I just fought a level 500 player with Webspinner x2/Hobgoblin/Gob Shaman, and I was using my most reliable team, Goblin/Goblin Shaman/Boar Rider/Hobgoblin (don’t have Webspinner yet…). This was after skipping 2 level 1000 players and a few who were 600+, by the way.
Now Webspinners are deadly, but I’ve been able to handle them for the most part. This time, though, because they were level 19 and had 18 attack, they could two-shot anyone, so just a little luck with skull matches and I basically have no chance, despite having Ascended my Goblin and Goblin Shaman once each and leveled them up to their max.
At this point I’m seriously considering going back to playing normal difficulty just so I don’t have to deal with the frustration. And the real problem here is that the more you discourage weaker players, the less they PvP, and that means other weaker players have fewer good options, and then they stop playing PvP and the problem compounds itself. Ultimately, it means the weaker players may never catch up and the imbalance is permanent, unless they want to fork over a small fortune in real money to make up some of the difference in time played.
It’s not pay to win yet, but it seems like it’s edging dangerously close to it.
There are, but who wants to spend 5 minutes weeding through high-level players to find them? Playing a game isn’t supposed to be about selecting “try another” until you find a fight you might actually win…
Matchmaking needs a serious overhaul that actually tries to produce a decent challenge based on the invade deck being used. Level bracketing may help some and is probably the “easiest” fix. But really the matchmaking system needs to account for matches similar in total team stats and trait levels.
I’m definitely not rich. But neither am I poor.
I’m level 165 or so.
I had 2 legendaries (not counting imps that you buy with glory) and with this patch surge of keys, I now have 4.
I have five level 10 kingdoms, which gives me +1 magic, +1 attack, and +3 health.
Without that, I’d be far worse than I am.
I can barely survive most battles.
I had to ditch my (now unreliable) slime team for my old 1.06 team (but replacing hero with slime)
I feel like I’m at the place now where all my opponents were before the patch - because the level ups I got imitate the kingdom bonuses they always had.
My opponents though, they all got to level up as well, buy some traits, ascend to epic, and still keep those kingdom bonuses.
Plus because I can’t afford to tithe, I will soon feel what advantage I have got slipping away from me.
I don’t know a solution, even a good hint, but really hope GoW does not start on the MPQ route where matchmaking made sure to erase any player progress, and progressively so. Evolving your roster was only good to summon you even stronger opponents with less chance to win, taking more time and usually more cost too while keeping the same rewards as less evolved players get,
The minimum for a system that uses rating and assigns stronger opponents by your strength is to scale the rewards. And massively so. Like all the ELO-based systems do, where having better rating allows to get to more elite tournaments.
As a patch I can re-suggest to put the difficulty selector near the engage button so the player has some minimal compensation at hand if the offer is bad.
Enhancing the retreat could help too, say have a few retreat or mulligan charges usable at start of the battle allowing escape getting back most of the entry fee, adjust team, difficulty or other stuff.
A big of the problem is that player level is now pretty much useless as an indicator of strength.
A player who drops $2000 (proverbial amount) can be level 20 but may have 12 maxed mythics with most kingdom bonuses and full teambonus, while the free player at level 150 is still struggling to level his 2 legendaries, getting a 2nd kingdom bonus and can barely make viable team with a bonus. (This may contain exaggeration, but it’s about the concept)
I don’t mind there being stronger and weaker players. I understand that the developers need to eat and promoting paying. I don’t mind losing once every few battles (heck, never losing is even worse, I do like a challenge), but having to spend a lot of time and gold cycling and scouting opponents until you get a match where you feel you have a chance is just no fun.
I’ve got a little more than half of my cities maxed, I have 0 mythics. I still crush just about every team I come across on normal mode with my main teams:
Skeleton (all epic with 1 trait)
Skeleton
Skeleton
Green slime
Eternal flame
Carnex
Hobgoblin
Behemoth
Anu scepter
Carnex
Gorgotha
Orion
I also use a goblin team that hasn’t been having any problems.
everything is deadly at lv19 and 20, not just webspinner. Actually I think the webspinner is nerfed because there is no magic bonus if u have 3 daemon troops in a team.
On top of that, the Goblin Shaman and the Banshee both use the same minor stone. I haven’t even chosen which of the two to improve yet, as they are both in my teams.
Fairly sure the fact you are/were not on normal difficulty is a bigger problem than whatever it was you were facing. I mean, whatever you were facing might’ve helped make it a problem, but still.
Yeah, but that in itself is less fun. On balance, I’d rather lose slightly more often and have all matches go quickly than have all matches take longer, because I’d still come out ahead.
The problem isn’t the magic, though, it’s the tendency to get skull matches through all the looping it does through green spamming.
@Shimrra: As I understand it the difference between Normal and Hard is cascades, not what kind of luck you get in terms of when you drop something that then gives the enemy a potential 4/5 or skull match. Assuming that’s true, my point still stands because the main problem isn’t the cascades, it’s the fact that I could have a cascade-less match but through sheer dumb luck lose because of the over-powered attack stat of the enemy troops, combined with the fact that they also have such high armor/health that it’s hard to take them out quickly.