Wishlist (Wall of Text)

Feature Requests and Game feedback
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I’ve been thinking for a while now and decided to put together a wall of text. Some of you (you know who you are) may be familiar with how long this will be.

This isn’t a Christmas wishlist. 1.0.8 is for Christmas, probably? I’m fairly sure most of this isn’t coming in 1.0.8.

I will also refrain from mentioning things to do with 1.0.8 content I know of. I am relatively uninformed as to how that is all being handled.

As it stands, a ton of this is probably being seen to already.

Website - mostly ease of access

  • Troop Leveling - list a ‘total’ amount of souls as another row on that table. Not sure why I didn’t point this out months ago. The number of times I brought out a calculator back in the day …
  • Troop List - if we can have a database in the game, we can have a database on the website. As in, something we can sort by more than just A-Z.
  • Troop List - troops need to list their type now, i.e. ‘Legendary Daemon Troop from Karakoth’.
  • Weapon List - honestly this has always been a problem area, this would benefit even more from a database than the troop list.

Game UI - streamlined user flows / quality of life

  • The Current (New-ish) PVP Menu - grouping Invade, Revenge and the Defender lineup MAKES SENSE, no doubts there, but burying Invade under another button added something else that needs to load on every one of our matches. Considering its going to be the #1 path in there anyhow… I don’t know. Reverting it completely isn’t the best idea, I realize space is at a premium on small mobile screens (I have an iPhone 4 myself). Open to suggestions on this.

  • Resource/Currency Display - this ties in to the rewards as well. Currently we have Gold, Gems, Souls, Glory, and Maps (and exp, but that’s a different case). More will come, probably. The main screen only shows us Gold and Gems, and interacting with those displays goes to the shop section to get more. Recently, we lost the ability to go directly to the rewards section of the store. Souls are only shown in the troop area, Glory is only shown in the rewards section, Maps are only shown in Zhul’Kari. Am I the only person who would like to see all of these things in one place?

  • Post-Game Messages - the series of things we have to click/tap through, is it really all necessary? We get 1. Victory/Defeat, 2. PVP Rank and Trophy +/-, 3. Rewards - bare minimum. Every time. This could be made into a single screen maybe? After the thousands of games played, we know what we get.

  • Special Offers - they need to be slightly less frequent or tied to something less frequent (such as opening the game). I’ve heard the official statements on this matter, and while I don’t disagree entirely, well, see above. Possibly make the button on the left-hand side of the screen super conspicuous to compensate, as long as it doesn’t interfere too much.

  • Troop Leveling - 1-15 in one go? I’m quite sure that’s going to be a thing in 1.0.8, but if it’s not… pitchforks.

  • Disenchant Threshold - higher than 4 (for reasons dammit), able to be set globally. I think that last part is being taken care of but I might be wrong.

  • In-Match Player Names - this is so self-explanatory. Just need to find a place to put them. But wouldn’t that be handy? I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve tried to remember who I was vsing - because I liked their team, or the opposite, or other reasons. Not that it helps at all, its just nice to know.

  • Edit the fifth - troop buffs include level 10 kingdom stat bonuses. Shows up when you click/tap on a troop alongside team buffs, and makes relevant stats on the troop green to indicate they’re being buffed. Basically, make those stats the same type of buff as the others and have all the same rules apply for better visibility.

New Content

  • More Evenly Distributed Troop Rarities - that’s awfully wordy. What I mean to say is (as I’ve said elsewhere recently) that some kingdoms need more Common and Rare troops (Divinion Fields), and others need an Ultra or an Epic or two (Khaziel, Sword’s Edge). This is, of course, due to the way troops have been being added to the game - based on the system of ‘troops + story + challenges = lvl10’. Seeing as that is no longer the case, expand some of the kingdoms who have received literally nothing due to that system. The bi/weekly event troops all being Ultra or higher rarity (because they’re obviously cooler) has only made things more … disparate. This could just be done by giving every single kingdom one more troop, or it could be done by filtering some Rares into the events. The latter option doesn’t really appeal, honestly.

  • Fill Out Troop Types - certain troop types are nearly impossible (save for Prismatic Orb crap) to make teams from since they only have 5-6 different troops and all use the same two or three colors. I’m trying not to use Marauders as a baseline but its pretty hard to ignore. Wildfolk have a similarly large number though. This could be done via my last idea or just through events, but things like Dwarves and Elves … you get the picture.

Balance

  • Prismatic Orb - pretty much the last super-effective gem spawner. Although Sheggra’s Heart is fairly reliable as well, Orb has far-reaching consequences what with the triple-anything + Orb teams. Reduce by 2-3 gems, as its been said plenty of times in the last week, and I bet it’ll be fine. As I said, it could have its cost lowered slightly to compensate.

  • Kingdom Stat Distribution - I honestly think these need to be changed around slightly. I’m talking about those of us who are maxed out here. The total amount is fine, but … there’s too much life, and possibly too much attack by a bit, and not enough armor. I can look at undead troops which I know to have a very low base health value, and right now that’s barely below their armor. Because its 4 armor and 9 health. It removes those troop’s identities as ‘high armor low health’ things. It also makes true damage way less useful, and is a hit to anything that scales off armor. As for attack… it turns piddly support-style troops into things that hurt, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. i.e. Alchemist, base 5 attack, now 10 from kingdoms. I would like to see something like -1 attack, -1 life, +2 armor.

  • Overall Balance Around Buffs - this includes the above kingdom stats and team buffs from kingdoms and troop types. Things still seem to be balanced around unbuffed troops, which is an issue when they all have 1.5-2x their base stats. Area of effect abilities in particular seem to be suffering - that 7-damage nuke now needs to be used 6-7 times to kill a Goblin team, for instance. I hesitate to suggest this, but that might be fixed by adding +1 magic to some other kingdom stat. Basically, everything is so large these days that the fastest way to burn through them is unvaryingly going to be from massive skull damage, what with everything running around with 12-16 attack. If nothing else, this is a more serious issue for people using unbuffed troops against buffed troops. Matchmaking fails sometimes.

  • Outclassed Troops - I’m not talking about ‘not the best’ or ‘not ideal’ or ‘hard to use’. I mean the ones that have a singular purpose, which some other troop is way, way better at to the point of them being totally overshadowed. Cockatrice > Nymph. Reaver > Knight Coronet. Faunessa > Lamia. I want to say Goblin > Satyr. I can see how some of these might be better than their superior counterparts in SOME fashion, but not the Nymph. Never that.

  • Useless Troops - the ones you feel like crap for getting from a chest. Commons have no excuse, with Goblins and Reavers and Rockworms running amok. Dwarven Miner, Ogre, Peasant, Poison Master - oh my god, Poison Master is a Rare.

  • Edit, the fourth - percentage-based bonuses from Kingdom levels and team kingdom/troop-type buffs, so lower rarity troops aren’t stupid and high magic troops can get something back finally. See discussion starting here.

Bugs - lest we forget

… I mean, I know you know about these. Obviously not a comprehensive list here.

  • Troops won’t sort by life.
  • Construct team armor bonuses don’t work.
  • Special Offer legendary troop picture is out of alignment.
  • Lots of AI troops - particularly newer ones - won’t always use their abilities when they should, instead taking another turn or two matching gems. Regardless of ones that have some conditions they’re trying to meet.
  • The #2 Guild is listed as ‘1.’ when viewed by a top guild. It goes 1., 1., 3., 4. etc. This is old. OLD.
  • Zoom function on the map via mouse-wheel is not a thing. (This was addressed in the patch notes, I’m just being thorough)
  • Level cap still exists… :wink:
  • Edit, the third - summoned troops don’t get bonuses properly. As demonstrated here.

Other Stuff I Couldn’t Categorize

Edit, the first.

  • We can still retreat from losing battles and not get a loss. Shouldn’t really be able to. This ties in to the next point, which is…
  • The defense system needs a serious buff or rework, seeing as the question ‘should I hard defend or let everything win’ is still being asked. It should be worth defending. The AI has enough problems as it is that you should be properly rewarded for making something that it can beat people with.

Edit, the second.
We still need to see heroes fit into kingdom/troop types… somehow. There was this thread, in which I said [quote]Something could be done to certain weapons to give the hero a race and/or kingdom while wielding them.[/quote]

Done for now. I will probably add more. Above is proof.

6 Likes
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Some pretty nice idées fortes, and with most of it I wholeheartedly agree. But

That is actually not true. You DO get a loss - meaning that you don’t get the extra star in your next match when leveling up PvP. You don’t lose a Trophy for your guild, however. And it doesn’t show up in the stats list of the PvP screen.

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If it does not show up, it is no loss. Simple logic, eh? :stuck_out_tongue:

I totally +1 those. Kind of my #1 from your wishlist

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+1 this is a great list. Especially the bit about the too much life and true damage being unattractive now. And the bit about all-hit nukes being weaker. Well LOTS of this wall of text are spot on.

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I concur it’s a great list! Couple others off the top of my head:

  1. Have your Home Kingdom also give the Hero that troop type for team purposes (for example Khaziel would make the Hero a Khaziel. Maybe add a racial bonus to the Hero selection screen to give another team bonus (the lion avatar could be a Wildfolk for example). This could make a Hero a bit more viable in team builds.
  2. How about making the Hunters Mark ability more powerful by having skull matches directly target the marked troop. Say I want to take out TSO in slot three I mark him with Dire Wolf or Orion then skull matches bypass the first two troops and hit the guy I targeted.
3 Likes
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Emos I love your suggestion on hunters mark :smile:

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With the shift towards skull damage/attack being the prime source of damage I doubt hunter’s mark needs any buffs right now.

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I would add:

  1. Guild section:
  • Better chat with longer msg, notification whenever someone post something (like with rewards from guild tasks)
    -Adding guild wars
  1. PvP
  • successful defending should give much higher rewards (maybe the gold opponent paid to start the battle?)
    -cutting down on end PvP screens as suggested and maybe adding some numbers to the exp bar, not just a picture of exp bar. (I like numbers. .)
  1. Troops
    -what I heard for 1.08 is pretty much what I would suggest so nothing here.
  2. Log in is really long, can’t it be shorter? :frowning:
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I am of the opinion that it should, at least, feel like a loss…

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Oh yeah almost forgot:
An option to send a private message, to a player (or couple of them?). Option to talk to people outside your guild should really be given to us, this is after all a multiplayer game.

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Yus!
You guys really are holding back numbers and details wherever possible :stuck_out_tongue:

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An excellent topic, and a well-thought OP voicing of lots of considered (if occasionally contentious) points.

I agree with almost all the suggestions and ideas here. Would desperately like to see lots more new content, especially new troop cards in the mix.

It’s easier to flag by exception, the only bits I disagree with:

Disagree slightly that all commons need to be viable. I don’t mind there being some rubbish troops, so that the rarer and better ones feel better when you get them. I even don’t mind my pack of 273 Dire Wolves (and counting…)

I agree with this - just wanted to add that while it’s possible to zoom in/out with page up/page down - these controls are the WRONG way round…!

Laters!

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The problem with displaying a lot of numbers to everything is that it puts off the more casual players as well as newcomers. It makes them feel like they’ll need to learn unnecessary things, or donate more time to playing just to stay privy.

Mobile games usually simplify numbers for this very reason. The more numbers someone needs to understand on a tiny screen, the less motivated they’ll feel to keep up.

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The solution is simple. They could just make it part of the ‘advanced’ display options (or whatever it is called) that you can turn on or off in the settings screen. It should be off by default and could be turned on for those who get turned on by this kind of numbers (2am here; that’s the best pun I could come up with at this time xD).

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First of all… :applauds:

A well-written treatise good sir. I agree with the vast majority of this. Most notably, adding more troops to flesh out what is available for each kingdom, streamlining post-game messages, and solving the problem of useless troops.

However, one thing jumped out at me:

Prismatic orb. I know this is being discussed in a couple places right now, but I’ll stick my two cents in here, since we’re doing wall of texts.

I don’t think it needs a nerf. In almost every other case that I found of transforming or creating gems of any color, either troop or weapon, the transform happens along with something else. The only exception I would make is for Eternal Flame, which is arguably just about as useful, if you like red mana anyway, and I don’t hear anybody clamoring to nerf that one. The closest I could find otherwise was Keeper of Souls, and he transforms them into skulls, not gems.

My point is, the weapon literally does nothing but generate mana. If the ally you select has two types, you don’t even get a choice about which one. So, yes, the ability to generate mana is great, and yes, it scales with buffs to magic, but really, it’s a legendary weapon, right? Shouldn’t it feel up to the task? It doesn’t give you souls, or gold, or do damage, or heal, or anything else. Just mana. And if it gets buffed and generates a whole board full of mana, then unless it’s teamed up with other generators, it will not make an infinite loop. At least, not a useful one, as if it keeps choosing itself it will literally do nothing but refresh the board.

I have not played any “3x troop plus orb” teams, though I do use the weapon in my primary lineup (@shimrra I recently invaded you with this team :wink:). All my troops use red, so I find it useful to try to get it to fill up more than one troop at a time. I have basically used this team since 1.0.7 launched, and personally, I’d say that maybe two thirds to three quarters of the time I get a useful layout of new gems. That is to say, a 4 or 5 (or more) lineup so that I get a lot of mana and another turn. But often enough, I don’t get much from it, and I sometimes don’t get anything to match at all - and I hand the enemy a set up for a good turn.

Now, I know recall bias might be influencing my memory of how often that sort of thing might happen, but the general feel I get is that using the orb has a reasonable chance that I might not get much out of it. For the mana cost, and the flexibility of using all mana colors, it feels satisfactory to me. Not overpowered, not weak, but just right. I’d say if you want to nerf it, add one or two to its casting cost, but please keep the gems generated as is. I know we are all a bit sore still about so-called gem spammers, and I liked webspinner teams about as little as anybody else. But if you take away the gem generation from a weapon that only does gem generation, what is left for it to do?

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I agree as much as humanly possible!

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The crappy commons could stay. Poison Master shouldn’t stay.

Prismatic Orb teams being as common as they are all points to Orb being the issue still. I know its not a 100% thing and nerfing it prevents some more interesting teams from working. Maybe its cost could just be raised, the new thing costs 22 for some reason. Not that I want to see Orb cost 22, that would be ridiculous.

As for numbers… while I definitely want to see more of them myself, we’ve got to remember two things. Firstly, that newer players might feel overwhelmed. Secondly, this all has to work on a mobile device. Of course, those concerns can be addressed by putting it in an optional ‘advanced’ layout (as suggested). Space issues can be dealt with by burying said numbers, such as how a load of info shows up on a troop when we click/touch them in-game.

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I would argue that it’s not so much an orb issue, as it is an issue where three of the same troop still get all the bonuses. The orb is there to cover all the other mana colors, with the nice addition of mana generation. And it’s relatively common since it’s relatively easy to get (for 100+ level players anyway). It’s a cheap and quick way to get high bonuses without having to craft a cohesive team from more disparate troops, which we’ve already established can be problematic due to troop type distributions. If we solve that problem, then I think we will see far fewer orb teams floating around.

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I would argue the exact same thing, and in fact did way back in the webspinner wars.

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I wouldn’t say the bonuses play as large a role as their synergy. For example, Skeletons. In a vacuum, they’re possibly well-balanced. Put three or four in one team, and you really need purple to make it work properly and it’ll never happen under normal circumstances aside from Sylvasi or Slime. And they’re both a little finicky, and you still have three colors that will screw you. But with the Orb, you can get all those Skeletons to fill at once, maybe 80% of the time, and chain their ability - which is the real problem. Four or five matches (factoring mana surges) with any other color will fill the Orb, the Orb will fill the Skeletons, and the skulls will wipe 1-2 troops.

Whereas a balanced team that has one or two Skeletons and no guaranteed mechanic to fill them is going to make skulls and hit once or twice, rather than obliterating things.

The issue is that the Orb enables all other mana to be used in order to chain troops with extra turns or some spawning mechanic that, when used in sequence, will likely get extra turns. This was the case with Webspinner-Goblin teams as well. Orb teams in defense are essentially going to work as intended, even though the AI is brain-dead.

Not that the bonuses are useless or anything. They help.

1 Like