The ability to sort and filter troops / weapons is much appreciated, and I think that condensing Invade / Defend into one section for PvP improves clarity. However, I would like to make a few suggestions:
The ability to invert sorts would be helpful. For example, sorting troops by their rarity, but with Common troops at the top (maybe to see what one could get as Arena picks?). Highest first is an understandable default, but inverting would be nice and also allow condensing the two “Name” sorts into just “Alphabetical”.
The ability to apply multiple sorts at once would be useful, but probably more complicated. For example, take “sort by level” and then “sort by rarity” to bring one’s maxed Legendary troops to the top, followed by other Legendary troops in descending level order, followed by maxed Epic troops, …
Sorting by amount of mana used would be nice (to look for a troop that fills up quickly, say).
Armor should be consistently referred to as “Armor” or “Defense”. Having one in the sort list and the other in troop descriptions is confusing.
The “Hero” in the “Troops” section should be renamed to “Weapon” or “Hero Weapon”, because that’s really what it acts on. (This would also make the reason that it’s not in the “Hero” section much clearer.)
Having the banners with their troop lineups beside the display of all the troops one has can be useful to see the context of a lineup while inserting a troop, but it’s also really cramped. There’s no room to display a team bonus until one clicks on a card to see details of that troop, most of the banners aren’t visible at any one time, and the banner section is just taking up space if one wants to focus on one’s troops (to disenchant or see what troops one’s missing). I suggest having the option to focus on a team (removing the view of other troops in favor of showing more details about the team and its bonuses at a glance, plus the other banners to swap between teams while staying in that view) and the option to focus on one’s available troops (removing the team view to leave room for showing more troops at once). These are definitely somewhat analogous to the old team and troop screens, but those were useful!
This would be less useful for weapons, but it might be convenient and easy to implement to have the option for both, at least when scrolling through one’s weapon options to remind oneself of what’s available.
The troop / weapon cards are now too small to read clearly without clicking on them to enlarge, at least in my experience, even while playing in full screen (which I usually don’t do). Having a toggleable option to enlarge the cards in the list display would be very helpful - for now I’ve had to resort to clicking on every card. (Actually writing “Human” / “Undead” / … rather than using symbols with no explanation is much appreciated though.)
Speaking of toggleable options, the ability to change the speed of animations for gems dropping and attacking via skulls would be nice. Right now it feels both too fast and odd because the gem movement animation (even for the AI) is slower, leading to the feeling that everything suddenly speeds up after a match is made.
While I’m glad that maxing out a troop’s level no longer removes the visual indicator of its rarity, the visual indicator of “this troop cannot be levelled further” is also useful (when considering what troops to level as an investment in future teams vs. whatever Souls will be used for in future, etc.). Perhaps recoloring the star above the level on a troop card would work as a new indicator?
It would also be convenient to have a visual indicator of the (rough) level of each enemy troop at a glance. (I tend to click on every enemy troop and read through its card at the beginning of a battle, but I’m sure not everyone does.) Possibly a different border style depending on the troop level? (Which would also get applied to allied troops for consistency and ease of implementation.)
Having said all that, I appreciate your work on the game and that you’re trying to improve it for all of us.
The speed really needs to be an option. Some people like myself hate it, and it has no bearing on balance so it could be made a preference with little trouble. Hopefully sooner rather than later–I can’t stress enough how awful this one change is, and it should have been made optional or left alone.
Suggestion: change the team bonuses so that they only count distinct troops. That would bolster interesting teams and rein in degenerate ones with three or four of the same troop.
Yeah, I have been thinking the same thing, but there are some teams that already used two of a particular troop, and to me, it would be unfair to those teams to only count distinct troops.
Certainly only counting the first two of any particular troop towards bonuses seems like a good start to discouraging 3xautumnal imp or 4xwebspinner teams.
@actreal A fair point. For what it’s worth, my current favorite team has four distinct troops that have nothing in common and thus has no team bonuses, so the new system has been unfair to it as well.
“Duplicates don’t count toward team bonuses” would be simpler and easier to understand than “Third or fourth of a troop don’t count toward team bonuses”.
Another option would be to introduce a negative bonus for duplicates, e.g. -1 to all stats for including the same unit twice, -1 mana on all matches for including the same unit three times, opponent goes first for including the same unit four times. Might not be a popular decision though.
No disagreement on that point. Zelfore gives a good example too. Certainly fewer bonuses would be much better than getting the same bonuses but also getting penalties for duplicated troops.
I really heavily disagree about getting a penalty for duplicates. Before this update, there was no incentive to use duplicates at all, unless in some highly specific teams such as two goblins that fills really fast. You were actually more often than not in the “losing” sides for it, since it usually meant you wouldn’t cover all mana colours. With the update, you’re not penalized, and it forces people to try all kinds of new troop combos that they might have not tried before. I think it’s really cool.
Problem is that some of those new troop combos seem broken to a point that will discourage players from playing once enough players start adopting them. The main culprit appears to be the infinite turn combo, I’d expect a spike in builds that will snowball much earlier and much more reliable than before, now that self-feeders can be boosted to an even higher level of efficiency. Going by the number of players that retreat right away whenever they encounter such a build it should probably get addressed in some way. No good ideas though, except maybe to disable the additional turn you get for matching four or more gems, once you’ve fired off a skill. Or to completely rework those troops that chain too well under the new bonus system.
The duplicate unit teams are getting out of hand, and I think aren’t what the patch was meant to do. I just recently got my wife playing this game, but last night she ran into SO MANY multiple webspinner/venoxia teams that she said it just wasn’t fun any more and put the game down! I don’t think potentially losing players is what they want!
This update made the more annoying teams (Venoxia/Webspinner self-charging spam) off the charts irritating. I’ve been playing since the beginning and honestly can’t remember feeling like I just want to put the game down and not pick it up again before. Every match turns into “watch multiple webspinners green spam for 5 minutes until you’re dead”. I’m also finding that at level 300, I keep getting matched with level 800+ people, which wasn’t much of an issue previously (because the difference between a level 300 and 800 was a bit of mana mastery, no big deal) but now they have massive boosts to all stats, presumably because their kingdoms are all maxed) and its a struggle against even mundane teams.
I like the interface changes, and I think the ideas are good. I just think the balancing has been thrown totally the wrong direction and its sucked a lot of the fun out of the game.
I would also suggest to possibly make the “Hero” count as all colors of mana for bonuses, so we can actually use a weapon that isn’t Prismatic Orb without feeling like we are hurting our team. I’d even go so far as to make the “Hero” count as all troop types (monster/daemon/construct/etc) for bonuses as well, again so it doesn’t feel like we are being penalized for using it.
Edit: I would add Celestasia to the “needs to have something done about it” list with Webspinner and Venoxia. I just spent 5+ minutes watching it heal itself repeatedly and had to quit out of the match. Anything that creates it’s own mana color needs to be changed, honestly.
Anything that creates it’s own mana color needs to be changed, honestly.
This is my main suggestion to fixing all of these infinite loops troops. No troop should create its own mana ever. Mana creators aren’t the problem, the fact that they create the very mana they need to create more mana is.
The main issue is that certain troops can self feed, since they generate their own mana. The new system is making it worse, because now there are new ways to boost the magic stat (and the number of gems created, since thats tied to the magic stat with Venoxia and Webspinner), which makes them even more likely to create a match 4/5 and keep going. Venoxia and Webspinner in particular were already at the threshold where they were reasonably likely to get another turn; a few more points in the magic stat makes it almost certain.
Just for giggles, I tried a Venoxia x3 + Celestia group and its ridiculous once it gets going, and I don’t even have the Karakoth magic point. You just hit cast over and over and over until the enemy is dead.
Webspinner needed a nerf before the patch. But she was reasonably manageable because she didn’t have insane health and you could sometimes control her by keeping green off the board. Now with all the boosts to health and armor and magic there is almost no way to kill her fast and even an empty board is likely to screw you once she goes off. And there is no time this game is less fun than watching 2-3 webspinners just cast over and over and over while you can do nothing.
I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe leave them as is, but using their spell automatically ends the turn to give the other team a chance. Maybe their gem generation should simply be a flat number, not tied to the magic stat. Maybe they generate a different color mana.
