Why the meta game has no 'soul' - (too much grinding needed for experimentation)

#1

While I know that some people are not fond of the recent changes bringing the ability to increase the rarity of cards and the trait system, because it has created 2-3 very strong teams, I was thinking about why the meta game is so static considering there really is huge variation in teams available right now.

I think it just comes down to the cost of experimentation. It is too high.

Since souls are needed to raise troop level, and realistically you need troops to be at least level 10+ if not at least 15+ to be viable fairly quickly (75 levels maybe?), there really is no ability to do anything other than go with what is known to be effective.

I have lots of ideas for great troop setups and new configurations, but even in the high 100s with a good Valk soul farming team with Celestial Armor, it just takes too long to train up new teams and see if they would be viable. So you stick to goblins or true damage or what you know works most of the time and go back to farming PvP for gold to raise towns, as that becomes a priority, not souls.

We no longer are burning extra troops for souls, but the soul economy has not changed. While I get that it is an avenue for monetization, the reality is that being able to play with more variations of troop setups is better for the meta game, but that needs more flexibility in getting troops up to play level.

#2

My biggest roadblock is lack of team slots. 20 is not enough.

#3

Agreed.
And since the “souls-required-per-level-curve” doesn’t look like anything now (see image below), I’d expect devs to update it so it would make more sense… and incidently went cheaper on levels 10 to 15 where the cost is almost the same all the way…

demCurves.png913x402 16.9 KB

#4

I’ve been talking about this since the beginning of the game. This is not new, and is exacerbated by traits and how you farm for traits.

#5

Amen! I got plenty of team ideas around the new traits, but I just can’t open those traits (on Legend or Epic troops, since trait costs are INSANE) …

More team slots would also help, because remember we now need soul farm teams, gold farm teams, PvP invade teams, PvP Defend teams and some slots for “Experimentation” as well …

My suggestion would be to add “Experimentation” team slots, maybe 1 at level 50, 2 at level 250 and 3 at level 750 where the troops you place in “Experimentation” slots have all their traits and levels unlocked for any “Challenges” that team competes in (it would be unfair to allow fully leveled and traited teams in PvP, but it can’t hurt to “Experiment” on challenges where rewards are negligible) …

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#6

Either that or have the Experimental teams be used in PvP to test its effectiveness but you would get no or minimal rewards from a match. It wouldn’t show up on the opponents stats either.

#7

How about 2 “Experimentation” slots, one labeled “Offense” and one labeled “Defense”. And you can test by playing O vs D, for no rewards at all. Not only would it let you try out builds, but it would let you see how the AI plays them too to see if it would work as a PVP defend team

#8

Wouldn’t it just be easier to make it easier to get souls or traits?

#9

That reduces the longevity of the game by removing the grind. Which means they need to add more content with further goalposts to keep people interested, furthering the divide between New and Old players.

#10

Those goal posts simply have to be more troops. Easy peasy. More troops = more things to grind for.

And I’m not saying make it EASY to grind resources, just make it less soul-crushingly time consuming.

#11

I have thought about the cost of levelling up troops as well. Even if you take an average of 3000 souls to max the troops level out ( and some are a thousand higher) and 160 troops ( IF you’re lucky enough to have all the cards) . . . .

That works out to 480 000 souls! That is a lot of game time farming for nothing but souls! Especially when there is a cap on the amount you can receive per battle or challenge even with the addition of Celestial armour, difficulty level on Warlord 2 and troops like Valkyrie that gather souls.

This example is working on the assumption that you want to max out your kingdoms power as well as level but the numbers are crazy high.

Talk about a grind.

#12

Since they’re experiment troops fully leveled and trained up (or customized to your liking) could make it so that an experimental game earns you no resources, you’re simply playing to either test out an idea or to just have fun with a fully kitted out team. You would use your regular earned troops in regular matches to earn stuff like we always do.

#13

I have stopped playing for now, because is’t too much grindy.

They could at least add possibility to level troops by just playing or in defenses. Similar to how is hero leveling. That way we would have reason to more often change teams.

#14

This game needs more grinding mechanics. I like grind stones and think we need more grind for stones. Perhaps a mini game to grind out stones?

#15

We also need an Alchemist / Valkyrie kind of unit creating glory. I would love to see that.

#16

I’ve tried various Invade teams that don’t use Valkyrie and feel they just don’t generate souls fast enough for the time spent.

I have a couple other teams that don’t use Valkyrie in mind that I’d like to try – I am playing this game for fun, after all. And when I have enough souls to level them up, I will try them.

But, I will probably go back to playing whatever’s my fav Valk team, because if I don’t, I won’t have enough souls for the next team idea that I think would be fun enough to be worth trying.

There’s a lesson here for the devs. :-/

Addendum: there’s a minority of troops that I’m sure I will never play so I’ve disenchanted the extra copies of them. For the rest, disenchanting feels too costly.