I enjoy the game; however, it seems to me that every single time I come up with a team or strategy, the rug gets pulled out and it becomes inviable.
It is like magic: I play around with combinations, find something efficient that begins to win and invariably, I logon to find the team has stopped working effectively. I peer at the screen frowning and start looking through the card stats to answer the question: “what on earth have they done now.”
I used to post regularly on our guild forum about what I considered to be interesting strategies and new combinations with which I was playing. The builds would usually have themes and rather odd names like, “Who Let the Dogs Out?” or Bilbo’s “Confusticate and Bebother” approach or even, the dreaded “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” team. But those posts have trickled to a stop because… well, why bother? Give it a few weeks and the strategy will be nerfed into oblivion.
And incidentally, this is not relating to the latest nerf (whatever it may be, and oh I am certain that it may be), but is a trend that is getting most exceedingly tiresome. I am not sure what the answer is–balance is important. But I am growing weary of fielding mediocre teams that used to have some punch.
I leave you with a quote from The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo realized that Middle Earth was about to be nerfed beyond reason by the Dark Lord Sauron:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
There. I feel better. I have said my peace. Good day, and may a brighter sun rise and shine upon Krystara.
So you were taking the strongest cards and building around them? The cards that have gotten balanced were ones that a lot of people used because they were much stronger then others.
For every card being nerfed, makes one or more cards more useful.
Thanks for sharing, a long and lucid post… but I utterly disagree with you… balance changes are not made arbitrarily and not made because a combination/troop is good… changes are made when the combination/troop is* too good*… be that mechanically broken, or just so much better than any other suitable comparison that everyone would use it…
It’s a long-standing debate on this forum. Maybe we can all gang up in tribes, nerfers and nonerfers…
[quote=“Mariox, post:2, topic:1747, full:true”]
So you were taking the strongest cards and building around them?[/quote]
Good points, thanks. It is true that sometimes I used the strongest cards I could find. However, even my builds without these became exceedingly unattractive because they had none of the new troop combination bonuses. This omission plus nerfs really takes its toll on a both the synergy of the cards and the suggested strategy.
Yes! Sign me up for this battle!
Definately! During the impending battle, let’s remember Mitheithel’s important safety tip
In conclusion, I had planned to send the devs a crate of Tobold Hornblower’s finest “Old Toby” to calm their desire to nuke the cards with a new nerf. I haven’t yet, because I worry that after a good run with Old Toby, they might release an update including the Sword’s Edge Peasant wielding a giant, many-hued, multifaceted magical haybale that launches squawking, incendiary chicken gem exploders.
From what I have seen, there seem to be two types of nerfs.
The first is actual balancing. Throwing a wrench into the gears of a combo that is too powerful in AI hands and is ruining fun times for the human players. Gem creators (or Webspinner specifically) would be the best and most recent example of that.
The second type is a little shady. It’s usually fixing a “problem” that few consider a problem, and seems instead designed to make the team take longer to win a match. Hobgoblin getting his damage nerfed by 1 and cost upped from 9 to 11 is the best example I can think of off the top of my head. It wasn’t even announced by the devs, and I didn’t notice until I’d been playing with the team for a while and realized matches were taking forever to finish.
I don’t know. Totally giving Sirrian and Nimhain the benefit of the doubt on it, but I wouldnt be surprised if the publisher tracks statistics like which cards are used the most in the top 10% of shortest matches and demands nerfage so players aren’t making money “too quickly.”
Kind of disagree here. I don’t mind balance changes but as a very long time high level/professional gamer across numerous games time and time again I’ve watched devs nerf as a gut reaction and it’s rarely if ever warranted. It’s often a case of an over nerf. Recent nerf on the prismatic orb is a prime example. I’m particularily annoyed because I just started playing and I purchased a bundle that had the orb specifically for the orb and it was essentially a bait and switch as it was nerfed about 2 weeks later. The orb is ok but it really doesn’t provide incentive to use the hero, it certainly isn’t worth what I paid for it less than a month ago, and it’s not really a legendary feeling weapon. The larger issue is duplicate troops receiving bonus not the orb or at least not nerfing to being useless. Possibly the bonus’ being too good.
To be fair, both the weapon and Legendary provided in any given $50 bundle are counted as “freebies” rather than what you’re actually paying for. (That being the two large amounts of currencies.)
I’ve already given my opinion on nerfs/balancing etc. So I’ll spare that rant, but I will say that a nerfed troop could be just as likely buffed in the future, it really all depends on the direction the game takes next.
Considering we’ve still got 10-11 more kingdoms to go, along with only being on 1.0.7 at the moment, there’s still plenty of time for weapons and troops of any color to see change again.
That’s unhelpfully cynical… bait and switch? you think the nerf was a ploy to get you to throw real money at something that would be useless? Oh dear… sorry to hear that. I believe you are wrong, and compared to all the shamelessly money-grabbing dross out there on iOS, I’ve seen this game’s culture work very differently…
Personally I do agree that the Orb nerf went a bit too far, but it did need something… there’s a whole thread on that…
I expect that will get amended soon.
There are fewer incentives to use the hero at the moment, true, and that will get worse in 108 as the hero won’t be getting traits. I believe that in 109 and beyond that will be sorted out, and one day the hero will be very powerful/interesting to use - but it will take time, as the devs have only finite time and resources. If we all paid $50 to even start the game, a la Blizzard model, then the devs would be doing this all much faster, much bigger and very differently…
Spell’s boost ratio was decreased to 3:1 (5:1 previously)
Makes his True Damage feel more true. (Presently use 2x him on my Defense team, with Banshee and Grave Knight. Would replace one with Crimson Bat if I had it. =P)
But yes, that’s a good example of a change that doesn’t undermine the one previously made.
You kind of straw manned me there and ignored the other sections.
Well putting on my business anlayst hat as this is something I do for a living. Unless they’re totally inept they were looking at balancing the prismatic orb when it was offered. Unless they’re totally clueless about business or player base they know full well that stating you get these as bonus’ isn’t the reason a lot of people make the purchase of the bundle it’s because of the legendary or weapon over the other bonus items.
So lets assume that they were planning to nerf it. Offering it in a bundle especially when it was a popular weapon being talked about is definite incentive for a new player to purchase the bundle. It helps balance things out for them. Now they nerf that a week maybe 2 later and that player who was willing to spend money starts to question whether it’s a good idea to do so. Yes nerfs/buffs can happen but should you be offering a troop or weapon that is currently popular and you plan on nerfing in the near future as a bundle? It makes poor business sense. Now if this was a total spur of the moment nerf then that’s worse news because it means they’re not thinking things through. Netherrealm studios is notorious for that and they lose a lot of their potental player base because of it. To their credit they have high level meta players on the payroll and do take some input from them but don’t always listen and often it ends up poorly as a result. Doing something like this without considering the consequences is poor business decisioins. Instead of causing a player they want to have a good feeling they instill a distaste. Between ps4 and the app in about a month of play I’ve spent close 500-1000 and I likely would spend more if they were doing weekly deals on the app like they do on the ps4. I’m not a player or person a developer wants to alienate I’m a player they want to encourage because I’ll generate a consistent revenue stream for them. I’d typically buy a bundle just to support the game but after that I’ll only buy one if I really really really want something in the bundle or it’s an amazing deal.
If you want to get cynical try working in the business and playing professionally for years in the business. Try watching time and time again people who really aren’t at that level and who aren’t objective crying about nerfs without really exploring the game and options. Try watching time and time again as those nerfs end up opening things up for other strategies that are even stronger that would’ve been balanced if the nerf didn’t happen. It’s more common than you’d think and the reaction of we’ll just nerf that too gets old and eventually drives players away. Especially when you consider that currently there is no pvp this is purely pve. No matter how you dress it up you’re playing the AI and they can’t play your team the way you would and can be counterproductive to strategies with their basic logic of match 4 then match skulls then do abilities.
With their current model I think they’re on the road to mediocre but mildly consistent income. They have gone away from what the top earners in the similar TCG category have done such as allowing trading. I’ve never played a TCG app that didn’t allow trading. No pvp, events (rotating store to spend glory on is not an event), no social aspect are not things that will attract the majority of players. The social aspect of the heavy weights or former heavy weights from cygames rage of bahamut and marvel war of heroes is a major driver for recurring purchases and it’s really lacking here. There is no reason to join a guild other than you get bonus free stuff when others spend gold potentially making items like keys discounted and giving a source of gems. Thats great but really isn’t a reason to communicate with the guild or get organized. Hopefully that will change but hard to say.
Of course I could be off base here and the goal of 505 isn’t to make a lot of money and grow the player base. There are plenty of things they could do better and ways they could do it and I’ll happily toss out ideas that I know for a fact work with similar business models as opposed to the typical whine and complain about it.
In the end I enjoy the game but I know myself and I know I’ll burn out quickly with how they’re currently running things. With some changes they could grow the player base, increase customer satisfaction, and increase revenue. They have pretty amazing customer service though and that’s something none of the heavy weights have. They refunded an accidental purchase of an “event” troop on ps4 and let me keep the card. Of course it’s one of the worst cards in the game but oh well kudos for that.
Your first post was rather brief so sorry if I misjudged it.
I can’t agree with all of your views, but thanks for sharing given your useful inside knowledge of the industry.
I do suspect that anything that rings badly in the events/sales/nerfs you see here will be more cock-up than conspiracy. Remember GoW has a very small team and they can’t see/think of everything.
I do think @Sirrian should read your post for the possible warnings (not that I agree with all of them).
Just invaded on the “current” maruder ream (rocket, rider, shaman, hob), 40 life, 20 armor, 20 attack and 70% of traits activated. Perfect design for glass cannons.
No. I don’t want another round of nerfs, just showing what we have.
The main problem I see is that we still have the majority of cards designed for pre-1.03 era. With all the changes inserted the lazyest way possible: 10->15 lev by adding stock 2/2/1/2 or whatever, now another 5 levels with 4/4/0/4. Global kingdom bonuses for a dozen more life and armor, with team bonuses on top.
The magic was left mostly unchanged, and where even the small increase had actually effect were changed to not even use magic.
This means most of our abilities are blast from the past, like fighting armored tanks with bows and arrows. I recall old times watching out for Luther, if he got activated to add +3 maybe even +4 attack to all, it was like gg. Now it’s a drop in the ocean.
A costly AOE damage used to decimate the enemy team, that is no longer the case. You payed through the nose to deal 20 pts to the enemy team and nothing came close – now a random skull drop does more.
The game has a list of like 150 troops but maybe a handful of them is only play-worthy. All due to lack of following up in the design the effect of the new shiny additions.
And the last 3-4 major updates show it is not even considered, along with the “stop and fix” to address the debt, only new bells and whistles dominate. (Which are actually interesting – but only for a day or 2, then we’re back to square -2).
I agree with pretty much all of that. The levels have just been, y’know, tacked on … anything not involving some crazy damage buff and skulls has fallen behind fairly massively.
It has not escaped my notice that, for instance, every single troop gets +1 attack and +1 magic at lvl 15.
And kingdom stat buffs are completely out of proportion as well. We’ve got troops like Carnex, who used to have 2/3 of his total health in armor, now an even split because health gains are higher. And basically all of Khetar’s troops.
With all the leveling and ascension bonuses and kingdom bonuses being so lazily “the same”. Every troop will basically have similar stats when maxed.
Unit that has high armor and low health? Unit with low attack and powerfull ability? Unit with high attack and crappy ability? NOPE - when you start maxing your troops, everything will just be the same ubiquitous unit. No more lore, no more flavour, just health / armor / attack stats being evenly slapped onto everything.
@pasa’s points are valid. I don’t think nerfing is the answer but all those bonuses have utterly changed the meta game, and by far the best abilities now are skull and attack generators… best bet is to whack up the magic stat, and maybe look at how stat bonuses are distributed… there was another thread suggesting percentage not absolute gains, which I have very mixed views on…
One point may be that the vast majority of players are further down the level / collection curve and don’t have everything levelled and enough bonuses to see the loss in the meta-game… but for those of reaching the high end of having lots of stuff, the variety is dwindling I guess…
One other point - not sure this belongs in this thread - perhaps if others agree we could have a new thread on it?
