@Saltypatra. Whilst I believe that you are doing your utmost to convey our universal dissatisfaction, it is completely clear that it is falling on deaf ears. Faction events are getting harder and more and more time consuming so how are we supposed to believe “that the team want to do something about it?” It’s very obvious what the first step needs to be; ALL future factions should allow a 3 fight level completion. This 5 fight debacle is just showing us the finger. Pretty artwork and floor lay outs are all very well and good but we are past caring. We want minimal fights…period. how is that so difficult to implement? The more “long term” changes you mention are clearly not high on the agenda whereas hammering the players is very much THE AGENDA. Not only are we forced to endure repetitious factions, we are now practically obligated to use ONE EXPLORE FARM TEAM over and over and over to attempt to recoup the gold that you ripped from the game in 4.7. There are over 700 troops and I find myself using hardly any of them in the majority of my play. That’s purely down to you guys: repeated bad faction design, excruciating levels of monotony, colossal time and resource investment, constant secret squirrel nerfing etc etc. I’ve never seen such a cohesive community viewpoint on any other subject but nothing is being done to alleviate the situation. And that’s been the case for over a year.
Exactly … Pretty sure I’ve been saying all this for that long as well. Except in some cases I’m a month early on the feedback since beta. They don’t listen to me anymore apparently.
When the Epic tasks were first announced, there was a post that beginner to mid level guilds weren’t supposed to focus on completing Epic tasks, as they were would benefit more from completing the Basic tasks.
Unless I take this out of context, I’d say Faction delves weren’t meant to be fought with hoards less than 300. Why else make them go to 1000?
And since the Tues Faction event rewards end at 70k points (I think. My memory fails too often), players were meant to stop playing at that point. Anyone continuing on to 500 is not playing the game as intended. More nerfs incoming.
Although, I did get 104k gold from a lvl 9 chest today. I forgot to screenshot for posterity. My bad.
Hoard 300 or 1000. I would never do one. Gold is too hard to come by.
It’s been suggested before, but this is a good place to mention it again.
Setting your Home Kingdom means your Hero is “from” that Kingdom. At least allowing us to use the Hero in Pure Faction battles would make things a little easier because we’d have better weapons to use.
I will keep it simple, two changes that would go a long way toward making this better.
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On Tuesday event, allow player to start at 20 or at the next level they need to clear.
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Allow Hero to count as part of faction team when class is set to associated kingdom.
For some reason I thought hero kingdom was based on class for quite some time now.
Maybe because that would make sense 
That’s because it is based on class. Rockwell was mistaken.
Shhhhh, maybe the devs will forget and we could use titan and other great classes everywhere.
I agree that it is an unhealthy and that is a very bad design. I will never do it again.
And I didn’t even aim at level 500. I just played ~200 Delves battles and felt sick from the unhealthy time pressure caused by hundreds of spent gems.
I think we will neither get the hero for pure faction nor a free choice of starting levels in events, because I can see that everything would be too easy and delves wouldnt be the obviously intended gold sink anymore.
But what about a tiny little tweak to help players like me, who are trying to beat Dark Pits pure faction for more than a week now on hoard level 309 (!!!)?
Just give us more sigils that are only viable for factions on level 500 without maxed renown and after one successful run, all other sigils are removed for that day.
Nobody could use them for efficient farming. Right now I cant farm at all, because out of my 3 sigils I lose one because of a stupid skull cascade, another because of bad rooms and the last one in the final room when I am close to winning, but run out of luck again.
I cant see a way, that this would break anything, other than being able to farm shards and gold again, so I can sink them in the next kingdom that is blocked by a faction pet. So no harm done on the economy, but still a better chance for players to target factions for maxed renown. People might even consider to spend more gold on hoard levels, because the decision between farming vs. pure faction runs is no more.
Or am I missing a point, that would require months of testing?
I did my first one day fraction run last week and yes it is unhealthy (as are the 3 day!) but either one day or three day events with potions are the only reasonable way to complete certain delves. I feel like the community is asking for an easy pass and the delves want to make this an endgame achievement. One way to help solve this would be to count each final room kill on level 500 delve attempt from an all fraction team with no potions as a +1 to the fraction delve. This way players would still have to drop some gold into their delves high enough to reach the final room, but would also be able to slowly make progress towards using an all fraction, no potions team. I am currently 34th on the PC delve leaderboard and have done multiple delves without potions so I have spent a lot of time in the delves recently. I realize this is not the perfect solution that the community is looking for (i.e. quick and easy) but getting +1 or more to my hoard each day would really help my progression on some of the level 500 no potion, all fraction runs. Additionally, this would help the developers show the community that content is not being hidden behind an unhealthy pay wall.
Just my 2c.
Not sure that final comment is fair. The ‘content’ here is level 500. This is not hidden. It’s how to solve the problem of completing it.
I do agree that paying gems for potions does make it easier, but your idea is equivalent to spending gold on raising hoard which is “playing it as it was intended” and already possible to do.
But since we got an extra gold-sink players must prioritise where they spend their gold. Elite tasks, and extra resources, or more hoard and (likely) continuing frustration. Hmm. Is that even a choice?
So that means players must play more to achieve both ends. I think that might just be what they want. If players are to be given any other route to beat 500 with a pure team then I do not think it will come without a gem cost to the player to pay for short-cutting that play time.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
I’d pay real money, or a very high gem equivalent, to make a potion permanent for a faction. Times 33 or however many factions there will be. Delves without potions aren’t fun for me. Delves with potions are a chaotic blast. I’d pay for it, and if it’s “expensive” I’d just budget for it.
There is a simple solution to this that still gets people to spend the gems without players having to spend 10+ hours in a day after working all day to complete a delve. Give the option to buy potions for a single delve faction. Players can slowly progress to level 500 at their own pace and then when they get to 500 they can purchase as many extra potions as needed to complete their pure faction 500 run. The cost can be exactly the same as it would be for a Tuesday delve so the game is still going to get a player to sink 2500+ gems to complete the faction, but without people wasting an entire day of their lives. Also this eliminates a player spending over 3k gems only finding they run out of time to complete pure faction and deciding to quit the game over it.
But what do I know. This all makes too much sense for it to actually become a thing, because when I suggested it in the live stream I was told the devs would not be using any of our suggestions because they already had a plan in place. But if they have a plan in place why hasn’t it been implemented? Why can’t they tell us what this “plan” is to calm the community down on what is a very hot topic that people are extremely upset about.
I did the Tuesday delve last week and did manage to complete it buying 5 tiers I believe, but I won’t be doing anymore Tuesday delves. I’ll just do them as the new delves come out so I have 3 days to complete them which while still time consuming is much more reasonable.
I think the reason nothing is going to change is now many people write a post in this format:
{Paragraph describing reasonable complaints and solutions.}
*“I’ve purchased at least 5 tier 7s for every faction up until now but no more, this is the last one, I swear. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seventeen times, well, uh… argh I don’t want to fall behind, sure, NEXT time will be the last.”
Tuesday Faction event is completable in about 45 minutes … if you just want rewards and don’t really care about individual delve rewards, which are fungible anyways:
Full proof method:
Buy Tier 2. Fully explore each level until you get a Raven, then immediately kill the boss. Go straight to boss on the next level too - as there has never been Ravens on two consecutive floors in my (limited experience). Then go back to fully exploring until you get a Raven again. You should end up with 1 sigil remaining and full rewards. Tier 2 is only purchased for the explosion - just to speed it up a bit more. T1 should be sufficient, but probably adds time to the overall event.
For a full faction run (2500):
Simply need to buy Tier 7 x 8. You will need to buy 1-2 more tiers if the # fights between first room and boss room is less than 3. Go straight to boss room in each level - you should ™ get enough ravens to fully complete to 500 - with ~4 sigils left over to defeat the full delve room.
In levels 20-250 or so, pick a team that is near insta-kill. Such as a doom weapon, TINA or some other equivalent. 260+ get a fast them that instakills - ZG, HKI, or similar with 3 generators or of some sort.
In Fang Moore (last week), I bought T7x10 - had 6 sigils left over when I hit 500. Because of the miserable faction team, I had to buy 1 more T7 to finish.
Full time in delve (sans faction team) was ~4 hours. Faction team was about an hour, due to its slower speed and general aggravation.
Not speaking to “healthy” or not; but I’d only do Tuesday Full Faction team if I need to full max the faction (say, 800 to 2500) - I would not do it take a faction from 2000 to 2500. So, for me, “Sunken Fleet” on Feb 4th will the last one where I do a heavy purchase. Others, I’ll try to max out without potions during dailies.
I think this is also why people are getting more and more frustrated. At first, faction runs just seemed poorly designed. These days, it’s getting harder not to see them as deliberately exploitative.
“Let’s make a faction with little direct damage and random spells, where each option is worse than other troops’ guaranteed spells. Will they still spend thousands of gems? Great, let’s make the next one even harder.”
I’m sure this is unfair to the designers, but I just don’t understand how the upcoming faction exists otherwise.
I think that while the developers play the game; they are not aggressive end gamers and as such, do not spend the time to try the delve at 500. I imagine testing happens ~100 or so, where the faction team(s) probably seem pretty reasonable, no matter how poorly they function.
Because I get the feeling that any further posts here are futile, I decided to give my feedback via another channel: the app store.
“Long time player here, who once gave 5 stars. Now 1 star. After the development over the last few months, I cannot recommend to pick up this game anymore. In the beginning you are tempted to spend real money all the time. Dont do it, it doesnt pay off. Because once you reach mid or end game, all further progress is blocked behind endless farming (months and years, not hours) or ridiculous difficult fights. It is all about quick money from new players, but the fun does not last.”
Maybe thats the way to speed up the “iterating, testing and update schedule” for delves (aka greedy publishers) and do something about the boring and broken PvP and Explore.