If I were to look at the game and the player base as it is right now, I would lock people out of content by level to improve the player experience based on hero’s path progress or some such - something like
New players get explore levels 1-5, PVP T1 and T2
Lvls 500-800 unlock explore levels 5-10, PVP T3 and Underspire
I’m not sure on exact levels but the idea is to give new players access to things they can be succesful at so they will enjoy the game more and feel less frustrated. They get the satisfaction of unlocking higher levels of content. And maybe that will also make the game a bit less overwhelming. Maybe a middle tier is needed, also. I’m less sure about that.
I remember when I first started the game and I unlocked PVP, that became my main mode for hundreds or thousands of matches. Middle Enemy teams were about the same level, and thus scaled. Left side teams were genuinely weaker, and right teams harder, but not impossible. I’m thinking they still have PVP split up into level tiers at the lower level.
Explore is self unlocking. You can try higher levels for a challenge, but then go back down when you get trounced. It’s fine as is.
The one unbalanced thing is the world quests. The battles at the level they unlock are far too cruel, and take dozens of hours in levelling to pass.
So funny. PVP was impossible for me except on T1 when I started almost 3 years ago. But I wasn’t in a good guild and I didn’t have a discord account back then, so not too surprising! It was the first time I’d ever tried a game like this - I was not a gamer. At all. So nothing was familiar or reminiscent of some other game for me. So I would google stuff and find limited useful info that was largely out of date. I didn’t watch any streamers because back then I thought it was kinda like cheating and I should be able to figure it out on my own. Ha! So when I talk about new players, this is the perspective I am coming from.
I hear you about explore but in general I found the game to be completely overwhelming - too many advanced content choices. I kept reading that I should do explore 12 and I kept losing every time I tried. Doing lower level explores made me feel like a loser, too - like there was something that I just wasn’t getting because why couldn’t I win in E12? How was I to know otherwise? I almost quit quite a few times - sheer stubborness kept me going.
I didn’t understand why pet rescues were important and a single pet rescue would take me 30-60 minutes. When I finally unlocked the Underworld I was completely baffled. That was what led me to change guilds and start watching the streamers. The game wasn’t fun exactly, but it was challenging and that kept me going.
So you can see why I am in favor of streamlining some stuff and limiting choices in the beginning
The making things more accessible for newer players is just 1 of the benefits of banlist.
Even with seperation of player levels there is still the issue of certain teams that have no trouble sweeping by luck or by starting a cycle that even the AI can easily use.
That’s not fun and quite unhealthy for a game to have. Yes, people can just use these teams as well or get counters for it but that limits the options drastically of what people can play.
Main culprits are the Elementalist class and the Wand of Stars for this at the moment. Among some troops that when having copies are a problem. Which is why double troops would be good to not be allowed either. Nerfing troops like they did with the Journey troops makes PvE players suffer while a banlist wouldn’t have that problem.
Using the Central Spire as an everything goes kingdom still allows people to use broken teams while the surrounding ones would be more based on originality and less on luck or annoyance cause of cycles.
That’s why believe a banlist would be the best and easiest solution. As there is data that can be looked at to see what is causing issues and plenty of players have complained about certain combinations as well that can be taken into account.
Looping troops/weapons are baked into the game design. Unless you ban every single troop that can create a looping team, your suggestion will not work.
What about emerald tear/beetrix/mistralus/mercy? What about all the looping teams with Wisp? Ehecatl? Finesse? Ragereaver/Ferocity? Are we going to remove all Goblins from PVP? Learning to counter looping teams is part of learning how to play the game, It’s not impossible to do. It does require effort, though.
There’s a difference between a single troop/weapon that can loop on it’s own and running multiple copies of same troop to loop in comparison to a team that’s made to loop.
Putting a ban on the single loop things such as Queen Beetrix and Wand of Stars, put a same troop limit in place and not allow certain classes in every kingdom is what i believe would create more original teams and less annoyance in PvP. Without needing to balance troops that affects PvE alot as well. Which we have seen with the Journey troops. Putting a ban on those troops as they can easily cycle in PvP would make it possible to revert the changes made and make Journey nicer to do again.
I can understand people’s doubt on devs’ ability on maintaining ban list.
So, what about each player maintaining his own ban list? A list that “I won’t fight with and against these troops / weapons / classes”. When an item is added, he will not be able to use that item in his own pvp team, and will not face other players’ team using that item. If few opponents available due to this ban list (say, <10), the game can tell the player “Your choice of ban isn’t much popular”.
