Anyone else really dislike the addition of the Doomskulls?
As a long time player of GW and 20+ year veteran working in the game industry, I’m all for new features/gameplay items to keep the game fresh, but these have definitely diminished my enjoyment.
I find them overpowered and too frequent and when you’re already fighting against high level teams in Pet rescue/ Raid Boss/ PVP it often brings the game more down to luck than skill and that’s no fun at all. What’s the point of setting your team up to work in a particular way, only for your first troop to be killed off with a “lucky” Doomskull spawn loop?
Maybe a tweak to reduce the spawn possibility would rebalance, but in a game where the basic game mechanic was working so well it seems like a bad move. To me the Doomskulls seem like an unnecessary addition and just because it worked in a similar game, doesn’t mean it works here.
I hope the Devs can take another look at this feature of the game and work it out.
Wouldn’t say they are overpowered, necessarily. But they introduce yet another layer of randomness to the game (when they explode, the bonus damage doesn’t matter). I generally enjoy the game the most when I feel like I can actually use strategy, so I try to use teams that do so. Having these skulls around no matter what means I have no choice.
They are especially unwelcome since the gem drop formula seems to have gone bonkers ever since the engine update.
I think they could be quite an issue for new players as well. These skulls add 5 damage, yeah? So, let’s say an 8 attack troop gets ones, and matches a 3 pack of skulls, thats 13 damage. For an early game player, that is a dead or near dead troop in one attack.
These are included in things like Dungeons and Explore, which can be hard enough for a low level player to get through, as they were before. So, for low levels, the addition of these skulls can be almost instant kills against them. And, for us high levels, with Loopers and Explorers being the meta, these Doom skulls make that even worse.
All in all, I think they’re a nice theory, but not so great in practice.
Also, if I’m being honest, I’m pretty sour on this update, as a whole.
They are a thing that’s going to be very love/hate.
I feel like they have the largest impact on newer players, which is obvious enough I’m sure the devs talked about it. I have a feeling the result of that discussion came to, “You’re only a new player for a relatively short time.”
But as of right now, as someone entering “endgame”, I don’t feel like they changed things in a way that hurts. They cost me games faster in matchups where I’ve fallen behind 2 or 3 turns but those are games I’m already losing. They help me win faster in matchups where I’m far ahead. In-between, it evens out due to my high stats and the explosive nature of the teams endgame players use.
I can dish out more than 150 damage to enemy teams consistently from multiple troops on my team. I don’t think I can mount an argument that adding 5-15 damage to that on occasion is dramatically changing the game.
That may change as more Doomskull troops arrive but here’s my prediction:
Short-term, we’ll try out new Doomskull troops and decide Nyxbringer and Infernusbaala are still reliable choices.
Longer-term, we’ll probably see a new team with Nyxbringer levels of power.
That’s hard for me to complain about. The reason people complain about Nyxbringer is we really only have 3-4 teams with that power level. If we had 10 or 15 teams at that power level the game would be healthier. We can’t get there without adding new things.
So I’m “wait and see” but so far can’t say I think Doomskulls have had a major negative impact on my games. If anything I’m happy my matches end a couple turns faster.
So far i don’t mind them too much aside from them making tactical row destrucion/removal less useful, which is directly the opposite of what the game needs right now but what can you do…
But i dread the new kingdom and its troops flooding the screen with them, that is going to be insane. Ice Troll into Bloodhammer with running Doomstorm anyone?
@Jainus Since you are a Doomskull Veteran, i have a question. If you match multiple Doomskulls in one Skullmatch does the +5 damage stack for each DS in it, or is it +5 for each skullmatch involving any amount of DS?
I don’t mind them but the one burning question I have is what happens when you match 3 Doomskulls? Has anyone done this? Does the whole board explode? Is it an instant kill on the enemy team? Haha
Instead of oh hey I have uber mythic team FOTM and now I can faceroll all my matches, now it throws a bit a curve and that game you thought had in the bag is not so easy anymore.
Well i am not even sure i ever got more than one doomskull in a single skullmatch, that is why i am asking.
Phew Bloodhammer and Glaycion are going to be insane.
The goblin team are more annoying now with the little explosion doomskulls create, this is enough to keep looping again and again
And same for infernus, these doomskulls only giving him more power and i am suprise nobody cried for nerf yet lol. Well we might see more complains when GW start
This game has been mostly lottery for a long time. So more lottery is nice. I’ve given up trying to use my brains while playing a long time ago. Usually I just let my dog play the game, since her win/loss ratio is about the same as mine. Dr. Dre was so wrong with that song “b*hes aint st”.
I don’t think Infernus even profits much from the Doomskulls, he explodes/cascadextraturns half the time anyways.
But prepare yourselves for the Bloodhammer next kingdom, he is going to be a quadrouple Infernus by flooding the board with doomskulls, causing massive skulldamage + massive spelldamage + exploding literally the whole board, fun times.
