Trial Team Feedback

Feature Requests and Game feedback
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Hi folks,

I hadn’t seen any posts actually talking about this yet so I personally decided to start a thread for it.

Obviously there’s a lot of feedback about the Trials, but in this thread I wanted to talk about the Trial Team feedback but refocus it a bit into:

If you were building the teams for each Kingdom’s mechanics the way they’re described in game, what teams would you build for everyone to use?

I know many people mentioned wanting Weapons, if you feel like sharing your ideas can you include an example without the Weapons as well?

I hear what you’re all saying about the difficulty being too hard and the teams not being synergised enough, but it’d also be great if we don’t just get feedback about what you don’t like, but also about what you specifically want to see as well.

Trials are staying, but as always we watch to see how the update goes and are open to rebalancing as needed. So if there’s something you specifically WANT on your Trial Teams, let’s go I’m all ears :slight_smile:

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I don’t know what you’re asking for here?

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Coming from someone that has built at least 3 new teams a week every week for 5+ years. The short answer is I wouldn’t.
The game is not well balanced enough to have 4 specific troops from each kingdom thst can scale properly against the opponents you are requiring in the game.
No one thinks strategy and synergy when designing troops. In fact your designers do the the opposite to make sure teams from a kingdom can’t be OP.
So now you’ve released a game mode that puts a spot light on that fact.

The more freedom you can give players the more enjoyable their experience with the game will be. You guys took class trials (the worst game mode) and doubled down on it by removing the hero and making players use 4 troops resulting in kingdom trials and epic trials.

Trust me, I would love to help fix your mess. It is literally my job in the real world to address logistical matters. But the mode was designed so that the troops can be bought with gems. So you’re not going to let mythic or legendary troops be used. Therefore you’re always going to be sending in players with a knife into a gun fight.

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@Kafka i feel like a few parameters for these suggestions would be helpful:

Could we use mythic troops or just up to legendary? Can we use more than 1 legendary troop? Can we use faction troops? Can we use tarot cards? Can we use weapons and the kingdom class? Some of the kingdoms have classes that really make teams from that kingdom work (like Geomancer).

Is there flexibility with the enemy teams? Drifting sands single cast may not seem terrible on paper, but putting you at the mercy of skull fall against an opponent who has a 25% devour chance can wreck you real quick. Likewise a fire effect team against fireproof defenders doesn’t show off the mechanic.

Can we have different teams for normal trials and epic trials? Epic trials don’t let you purchase the troops and would be a better showcase for mythics. Some things that demonstrate well at lower levels do not scale well up to level 350.

I think ahead of each week you’re going to need to seriously test the epic trial team and make sure it’s ready. I don’t mind a challenge but a trial that can only be beaten through extreme luck isn’t fun. If you got to pick a perk every time you lost for your next attempt you could persist your way through it as opposed to it just being completely impossible at your level. It should also be noted that destroy gems mana generators (thrall/Marilith/angry mob/bogstrider) play very differently for early vs endgame players with big +Magic bonuses.

I think you can iterate you way for the new trials to be compelling content, but a baseline understanding of what is and isn’t allowed to be used would be a very helpful framework.

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Vulpphire Hunter is a legendary, so they definitely allow at least 1 legendary to be used. But I haven’t seen one with a mythic.

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I don’t actually have any parameters as this was purely me on my own back starting this thread to ask so I could give the team more detailed feedback about what players might want to improve the experience if they had more say in the teams.

I can’t promise anything will be changed but I think it’s going to be easier if I have something to bring specifically other than just the negatives (which I will still report back of course).

I would say sky is the limit and we will work it out from there?
Personally, I would probably avoid faction troops given the offers are more likely to be helpful for newer players who won’t unlock the underworld for sometime.

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I didn’t see any offers to buy it with gems after completing the last 3 standard trials nor epic trials. I thought I read in the patch notes that the troops could be bought with gems but maybe I misread?

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I’ll try to give a lot of feedback on this… there’s a lot of wrong. But in the time it takes to comb it over, tell this to the team.

Please beat your own Epic Trials with these teams before even dumping it on the players, thanks.

(and I don’t mean with Dev shortcuts either)

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we want: free choice of troops / weapons from everything we have ready to use. no limitations.
wow, who could’ve thought it is that simple, huh?

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I’m sure all the trials are doable. Some may take 100 or 1000 tries before stars align finally. But it still counts, right? Have fun! /s

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Depending on player stats, some of these… I’m not so sure.

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Troop type and weapon synergy is important, and I think showcasing the classes is really important as well. It’s one of the things that makes each Kingdom unique and gives each kingdom a very different feel.

I feel like epic trials should include mythics. It would be a good way to showcase them for players that don’t have them and with only one Kingdom having an epic trial per week it shouldn’t be overwhelming.

I also think it could be really interesting if you had 3 enemy teams to choose from. It’d make it more puzzle like because you’d have to understand the matchups and how to use certain troops in combination against others. One of the enemy teams should probably even be the type of enemy that you really can’t beat with the team you’re given.

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Just match skulls and don’t let them hit ya, simple! 4Head

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5 level mythic with no traits for those who has not found it yet wont do a thing at all.

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yeah, but… you can’t stop them from taking mana, which means you can’t stop them from casting at some point if their team has the colors, which also means eventually you’re going to lose troops even if you take 50 turns worth of skulls back to back.

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@Kafka

Edit: I already give up. There’s far too many problems. It is basically every kingdom.

You expect people to win with a 3 generator/1 King Highforge setup? Khaziel
You expect people to win with a 3 generator/1 Psion? Darkstone

3 generator only works when the 4th troop has power to do it all alone when finally filled. Tesla, Zuul’Goth, Worldbreaker, Queen Beetrix, Yao Guai. etc. Not some wimpy scatter damage troop.

Putting 2 exact color troops on the team. What are you trying to teach?

Bone Dragon and Keeper of Souls? Khetar
Paladin and Holy St. Astra? Whitehelm

You want people to learn from themes, but those themes include a full team of One cast only troops?? That’s next level bad team building. See: Drifting Sands

You want people to make summon only teams like Dragon Claw? What even are you supposed to do there? A good team is not pray Baby Dragon does something useful. wtf.

These themes are half-assed in so many kingdoms. 2 random skull troops = skull theme? sure. See: Grosh’Nak

You want me to rage my team for… very minor boost ratio and that’s a theme? See: Urskaya

Scatter Damage is a theme? Is your dev team out of its mind? Do they know Scatter damage isn’t actually very good when you’re having your magic total being split randomly between 4 targets? See: Suncrest. Hell, the only storm as a theme troop it has is Heronath that makes Green… for itself. What a mess of a Kingdom.

Speaking of Suncrest and other Kingdoms, if this is a vehicle for new players, why are you dumping 4 troops of the same color on the same team? That’s more of an advanced team building skill when you’re more comfortable with making teams with all colors.

Suncrest again: Taloca is clearly the win condition, but it is blocked on Yellow and the team banner does MINUS BLUE. Who chose that???

Banners again: Using the kingdom’s banner is stupid if you’re not using the color on the team: See Adana. Is this what you want to teach new players?

…

I gotta stop. I’m getting worked up seeing a game I’ve played for 1/4th of my life being handled by an incompetent team of designers who probably couldn’t even play through the stuff they’re putting out. Saying I’m irate now is an understatement. If your own untalented hacks don’t care about this game, why should anyone?

The only team worth a toss is Hellcrag and that’s because Chalcedony is braindead easy to use and the full team is Construct. Even Vulpacea couldn’t copy/paste that success formula and added an irrelevant non-Wargare common.

I’ll give them credit (I don’t even know if its sarcasm or not). They didn’t bother to put the 3rd slamdunk ez Chalcedony/Todd troop: Seekra Darkwood in Zhul’Kari and opted to use a suboptimal damage to all enemies troop Spinnerette (it’s not even 1:1 magic damage) and Night Terror as its only two damage troops, Night Terror not even being immune to its own Web gimmick. Meanwhile, 2 of the 4 enemies on the enemy team is immune to said Web Gimmick. Bravo.

I’ll provide one more bonus team breakdown.

I’m sure the designers are proud of the Blackhawk team. They made a gold theme and Bonnie Rose does boosted damage based on Gold. Job done!

In the process of forcing that team together, they forced 4 blue troops together to lessen the efficiency of the team. There’s only 1 trait that benefits gold (2 gold on 4 or 5 gem match). It has the Pirate troop on the team, but couldn’t bother to put 4 Rogues on the team. Did all of the budget go to Khetar’s 2 Legendaries?

Hammerhead is completely out of place on this team. Yes, it has a 4 team bonus of Blue, but sacrifices basically the entire team to do that and is not even gold based to follow the theme.

Since the gold cap doesn’t go above 100, at 3:1 boost ratio, Sharkey is 100% worthless. Wooboy, if I work my ass off, I can do 33 more scatter damage when the enemy team has 300+ life and 300+ armor by the epic trials during kingdom week?

It’s not even hard. It leaves actual viable Rogues off the team. Deck Hand for generation? Captain Skullbeard for generation? Captain Macaw for 50% Rogue mana start + Greedy trait? Lil’ Johnny Bronze with the Merchant Trait to help Bonnie and create skulls so Pirate isn’t a waste of time? I don’t even like Quickpaw Jack, but that’s still a ton better than Hammerhead and Sharkey. Red Charlotte is a gold themed troop. Why not her? Scurvy Seadog for generation + gold? Captain Saltclaw so the team can actually have some slow damage potential?

That’s 7 troops that’s already more effective than what we have. Some of them still aren’t good, but what Blackhawk has now is pitiful. Drop the forced gold theme and skip the rogue theme and we can put actual decent troops like Kraken on the team and actually have something real.

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Just throwing together 4 troops that share a theme doesn’t work.

I mean, self destruct is a theme in the game - but throwing 4 self destruct troops on a team would mean certain loss.

Gem conversion is a theme, but 4 gem converters aren’t very likely to win either.

Having already finished all the challenges, I can’t look at the actual teams but if you want to teach players something, build a working team and give them hints on how to use it.

The Great Maw, for example, is fantastic to
A) eliminate a dangerous enemy
B) boost the attack and other stats of the maw

Now throw in troops that use that to some extent and you’ll have a fine team.

Problem is, not every kingdom has troops that synergize with the general idea of a team/theme (which is why we players usually don’t build kingdom teams unless we’re forced to by restrictions).

But you get the general idea I hope.

Right now, this teaches players nothing but frustration.

If I was a new player and was unable to win with teams the devs have specifically designed, I’d think I was too stupid to play the game. I wouldn’t consider that the devs threw together themed teams that don’t scale or have any synergy and are therefore bound to fail.

Many newer players could give up over this. Just saying. That’s possible income you’ll lose.

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Are these teams made by the devs or were they auto generated with 4 troops from that kingdom?

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You could fix one troop to match what you were looking at as a theme like Great Maw. The player then has to build the team around that troop. This could be limited to the kingdom in question with the hero class locked as others have mentioned. Then you still get the theme and get players to learn how to synergise teams for specific play styles. Currently players get penalised for not having a troop which at this stage is highly visible in Vulpacea give the kingdom is so new.

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Thanks for soliciting this feedback. Please pass this along, if you can:

The current design is going to cause a flood of complaints and frustration at reset every week. A majority of the kingdoms are essentially impossible, and players will lose patience with the game design and quit.

On topic: A good start would be building the teams around a template, like
2x generator/converter
1x damage dealer
1x source of scaling

which will obviously vary a lot by kingdom. Building for minor synergy is not really going to work within a kingdom vs enemies with 4x your stats. Teams need looping and consistent damage.

An even better, AND EASIER, option, would be to let players build a team of their choice from kingdom troops. I understand that this cannibalizes the original design (let new players use troops they don’t own, and ask them to pay for them), but there are so many problems with the original design that it should be completely abandoned. I don’t want to be rude to anyone here, but this feature is really very bad as currently implemented. Many of the teams look randomly generated.

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