I see your point, but there are many other great teams that are quick and fun. I personally don’t use TDS much now, plus I think that only one team can’t face all of the current meta.
Your choice is a strategy itself, in some way
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“Using one team” is mostly influenced by TDS being a lucky pull and I don’t have any other meta-relevant troops to play. Each week I save up my seals for the day my guild trips 10k seals, and at roughly that interval I get enough gems to buy a big bunch of gem keys.
I think it’s really easy, at endgame, to forget this isn’t a game where you can overcome “I don’t have Queen Mab” by doing any particular thing. If I had reasonable moves I could make to increase my odds of getting particular troops, I would. But the only thing I can do is “acquire keys” and “hope”.
So I don’t really agree my choice of team has anything to do with strategy at this point. Maybe later. But I write about what I know. I’ve seen that Sea Troll and the Krakens or whatever team and it’s a pain in the ass once it goes off. So is goblins. So is Psion. So is every other damn meta team.
Every match is like two Combo decks facing off in Magic: the Gathering. We both know if the other one pulls the trigger first we’re toast. We both know we don’t have any tools to stop it. So the only thing we can do is have faith in the shuffle and see what happens. There’s a reason they intentionally stopped enabling Combo decks like Storm.
But I’ve been told in other threads this looping and filling is part of what makes GoW fun. Me, I’d like to see some anti-looping mechanics like:
- Troops that self-buff every time the opponent makes a 4 or 5 match.
- Troops that do damage every turn the opponent takes.
- Skills that scale their damage based on number of cascades in the previous turn.
Etc. That’d be strategy: “Do I bring in my anti-looping team for this one?” It might even encourage fewer looping teams.
To me the oddest part is people give a flip about their defense team win rate. It looks like the devs want to encourage you to lose on defense so you get revenge matches. The easiest way, I think, to flip that around is to stop showing players their defense losses. You can’t optimize what you can’t see, and you aren’t incentivized by things you don’t see.
Anyway, ugh, I’m bitter.
I used to be behind a lot of these things but when I posted them there was a lot of thumbs up, then a shift to “Wait no, but I like looping teams!” I don’t have anything in particular I want out of the game anymore. There’s something strangely satisfying about playing a TDS team. I get some gold, I toss it at guild tasks, every week I get a shot at maybe improving my team. Whatever. Sometimes I find an attractive place to throw $5 and I inch closer to a VIP level that matters.
I wouldn’t say I’m happy with the game, but I also can’t name many F2P games where I’d say I’m “happy” after the honeymoon period.
I’m only disappointed in kraken, he never devours anymore for the player but as soon as the ai has 1 it’s devour all the time.
I agree the ridiculous cascades and convinent skull drops are back.
Now that I know more, I agree with your choice. TDS is the best for farming souls and achieve victories against stronger opponents. I know I wrote that cascades are necessary, but I, like anyone else, hate them. And it’s not only cascades of course, but looping teams are sometimes like that: the first one getting to the trigger wins.
Some levels ago I used to get very disappointed and I couldn’t understand why a game could get a player to feel so miserable. I think I went real bitter on the forum. I still don’t know how AI and RNG actually work, but if your team is weaker, there’s a higher chance of getting it.
Defenses teams are beaten most of the times, largely. That’s because the range of choices we have exceeds that of the AI. Ok, it’s not chess, I give you that, and as you said, choices are strategy. Leveling up your troops, traits and kingdoms will allow you more choices and consequently more strategy.
Personally the best I got came from the glory chests. I haven’t been lucky with the gem chests.
I agree with you with stop showing defense losses and there’s one thing for sure: if you like to play and if you are in the right guild, there’s no way you won’t hit the top sooner or later.
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A Giant Spider could have taken the Greens and converted them into Purples for you. A Hellcat could take the Purples and convert them to Reds. An Azura could’ve used the Purples to explode mana for everyone; a Captain Skullbeard could’ve used the Greens to explode mana for everyone.
Deciding what to bring in your deck is the strategy - if you want to reduce the impact of random gem arrangement / availability, then bring a deck that can create the colors you need. Once the game starts, deciding which moves to take is the tactical portion, as opposed to strategic, but there’s absolutely a strategic element that’s within your control. Yes, there is also a randomness element that’s out of your control, but your strategy can plan for that.
I’m not arguing with your feelings - I totally understand why you’re frustrated - but there are tools to at least minimize the pain points here.
Things like that would definitely be cool as new elements.
That’s always been one of the weirdest things in the game to me. I can’t even wave it off as “emergent gameplay” because it’s not emergent; it’s an immediately obvious consequence of that design decision. I don’t have any answer for you here, heh.
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(speechless, just watch)
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And still, you were one skull drop away from winning.
Seriously though, I think one problem with the so-called combo-breaker is that it only kicks in when certain repeating conditions exist. For example, when a single troop that creates gems casts in succession to self-loop. I don’t believe it does anything when several troops are used in combination to supportively loop. In other words, the kind of chain that you show in your video has enough variety in it that the combo-breaker doesn’t see a problem and won’t intervene.
It isn’t like Jarl, Webspinner or Anariel self-looping repeatedly by spamming their own spell to fill themselves with mana and cast again. That kind of thing gets a full-stop from the combo breaker which will, after a few loops, deliberately place the newly created gems so as not to give an extra turn.
If I’m wrong about how the combo breaker works, I’m sure someone will correct me.
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Did you catch the part where it showed that these are rare untraited troops that I lost to? Had I somehow still won the match then I’d still think it’s behavior I haven’t experienced in… Well ever. After playing the game for a year and a half.
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Honestly, no, I didn’t catch that, but the danger with those troops is all in the spells, not the traits. I know that particular Goblin lineup has the potential to do that kind of thing every time I face them, and they frequently do, even if I use a Mab to limit their ability to link.
My point was more that the combo-breaker, as I understand it, isn’t intended to do anything about that, since that team doesn’t rely on self-looping mana generators to hold their turn. Your best bet is to bring your own combo breaker (i.e., Mab, Bone Dragon, Borealis, etc.) into that battle, rather than relying on some mysterious lines of code to save you from RNG.
Cant retreat in GW though …
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14 to 18 consecutive moves for the AI are now so frequent that I almost don’t even notice. And this is so wrong! 