Stormcaller Hero Class spoiler

Agree with this wholeheartedly, something that is available as a first tier talent should never, ever be the third trait. I was looking forward to this class, as I ran Stryx early game and Bard class with great results, thought perhaps it would bring something that would breathe new life into Taloca… this on the other hand, will insure that I continue using Bard or Titan when I get the whim to use my Stryx.

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Thought I’d revive this topic since there’s been a bit more recent discussion and to avoid derailing and respect the topic of Salty’s Gems of Streaming thread.

Recent relevant context:

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You’ll need all 3 traits for a hero class to complete kingdom power 13 demands. But as long as you do not have 22 Suncrest troops and any Suncrest pet at level 20, you may postpone buying 3rd trait.

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The stream was fun but Salty’s response was disappointing considering she made it sound like she’d prepared a response.

The gist of her response was something like this PARAPHRASE, you can go scrub through the stream if you want the quote:

“Sorry, not my problem. I’m not the person who designs things. I passed along your feedback to this person who I cannot name. They shrugged. That’s the extent of my powers so stop talking to me about it.”

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That’s a very bad sign for me that a person who responsible for game design does not understand players, does not care about players experience and completely ignores reasonable feedback from players.
I care about the game and while I don’t agree with some of the Devs/publishers decisions (e.g. Deeds in flash offers) I can understand their reasons. But I’m completely discouraged how they handled unreleased obvious bad design decision which is not related to any purchases. Even if that class went through QA stage and not in the current pipeline just admit the mistake and promise to fix in the future. But no, despite feedback from players, nothing going to change.
I’m emotionally down after it.

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I agree; this sends the message that there’s no point in players providing feedback on upcoming changes.

This is so obviously a mistake/bad design, was pointed out months in advance, and could be fixed so easily - just paste in any third trait that already exists on another troop. Something like +1 mana when matching X gems would be fine. If a situation that’s so black and white doesn’t warrant a change or explanation, more subjective things like delve issues (+50% to hoard stats doesn’t change underlying problems) are a lost cause.

I think it’s important to not single out any one dev here. It seems likely that fixing this just wasn’t specifically any person’s job, and so it kept getting overlooked as everyone worked on assigned deadlines. That happens all the time when teams work on projects, especially ones that release continuously as a service.

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Disdain…

I think the name ‘stormcaller’ and storms is the issue here though. It’s going to have some storm scenario.

I’m probably going to trait it, just not using it in pvp or gw, unless it’s got other things going for it, prolly be levelled in challenges or delves.

Basically IP2 is becoming like Bethesda.
They feel their players enjoy the game enough that they won’t care about bugs to a certain extent nor poor design choices.
Basically they just expect you’ll complain, but continue to play and/or pay. :man_shrugging:
(That’s clear to me now given the stubborn choice not to alter Storm Caller.)

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How about “Gain 1 to all stats each turn while a storm is active”?

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Or hell, what every type needs…
Stryx start battle with 50% Mana.
27fo1v

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I think it just comes down to laziness. They wanted a storm related trait (which is a nice idea) but instead of creating a new one which would take some time and coding, just did a copy/paste.

“Thundersnow”
All Stryx start with 75% Mana
(Stryx will still be worthless, but may make Phoenicia an okay Mythic.)

King of the flock

Deal 5 damage to a ramdom enemy on 4 or 5 matches, boosted by ally and enemies stryx x1.

Or make it true damage hehe

The absolute most bare minimum change they’d need to do that isn’t just a copy/paste job:

Trait #3: Storm Soul
Conjure a random Storm at the start of every turn.

Is it an ideal trait? no
Is it at least something unique? yes

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Match THREE or more gems, summon a storm of that color.

With cascades, it’d still be random :face_with_monocle: But at least it’d be funny.

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So a question to Salty: what would it take for this to actually change? Is there any feedback, actions, or anything that we as players can do or say?

We know that Salty didn’t design this, or has actual influence over a change, but we know that she knows the people who do.

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According to the latest spoiler, the 3rd trait was changed to “Storm Soul: Conjure a Lightstorm when my turn begins”.

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Historically speaking, there’s only been two things that get something changed.

The first is a forum thread with 500+ posts that spans six months or longer. These are long and laborious. They’re where at least half the reason I apparently can’t not be an asshole on the forums come from. It doesn’t matter if you’re fighting to get a game crash fixed, a handful of people are going to appear and violently oppose you with nothing but ad hominem and never stop.

The second is new, we’ve only done it once, and I worry it’s got an even heavier price. It involves completely hijacking the hype for a new version. We did this for 4.4.5. When Salty’s preview stream ended, the very first posts started the campaign to address old weapons. Half a dozen spin-off threads were spawned. I still meet people who aren’t aware of features that 4.4.5 brought because nobody had any chance to see the release.

There are a lot of bad feelings that come out of either approach. It’d be so much nicer if the devs and players had a constructive relationship built out of early previews and iterative feedback cycles. Stormcaller didn’t need to be an OP class. We just needed some dev to tell us, “We don’t intend for this to be a powerhouse class so yes, we picked bad talents for it. Keep in mind sometimes things just exist to be a resource sink. We’re working on some new and cool hero talents for some future classes, but for now expect moderately disappointing ones.”

We rarely get thoughtful comments about game design like that. We just get vague gestures at things like “long pipelines” or “the difficulty of supporting multiple platforms”. Those aren’t things I asked for as a player, so I don’t like hearing them. Something I’ve learned about working with people is they deal with “no” better if instead of outright saying it, you present a good alternative instead. That’s what I did above. “Stormcaller’s a dud, but I promise this quarter there’s a class you’re going to be excited about.”

(The trick there is you HAVE to deliver once you make the statement.)

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Third trait has been changed

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It got changed? Oh, and I was coming here with the best idea but I guess I am late! (though I’m happy it got changed)

Third trait: if a storm is active, give all allies that match the color of the storm +1 to all stats

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