🧪 Early Information on Dragonspire (Overview) [Part of The Beta Beat v67]

Gameplay Help & Tactics
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107

thats the only way… it got so close last time… bbu happened… but spending resumed and momentum was LOST

108

No. Momentum was not lost. Enough decided to continue: NoSpend or spend less. The monthly AG numbers reflect that.

Small drop but meaningful. Enough to send a message to Zynga Mgt to intensify their rabid search for revenue.

If more hop on, Zynga’s solution to declining revenue won’t work as well as they think it should, and maybe Zynga will start reflecting on where they could have done more for players to keep them (at least) happily engaged, and not lose them.

109

I read your posts yah. Most of them if I can find them when I have time for Forum.

Apart from money, the most valuable thing that all of us are giving to Zynga is our time. The more we play, the better their player-related-reports.

Therefore, player can withhold money and time if he wants to.

#nospend can include not spending time on the game => exit. Be it temporary break, or permanent.

#spendless can include spending less time on this game.

This is what I do now :
• don’t obsess about MV to max my free loot. It is what it is.
• don’t reset chests. Don’t even bother to time WE usage to coincide with chests naturally resetting
• don’t bother with events that promise lack lustre loot for the effort required
• don’t fret about WE maxing out for hours on end
• RT flags sit there unused until I have no choice but to use some for POG

It’s a form of silent quitting, rendering a once treasured game back to what it should be: entertainment when I feel like playing it.

Consequently, my spend reduced as well. I have even started to forget to collect daily rewards. I am progressing well.

I know Zynga churns out reports on overall player activity and spend.

My withholding is a wee drop in the ocean. Other wee drops will join my wee drop. Those wee drops will grow into a much bigger movement, organically.

What you need to do is reach out to those that don’t read Forum : the Forum population is very small.

The player, who initiated a signed petition in response to the TV nerf, started outside of Forum, and then posted in Forum when he had amassed sufficient signatures. That didn’t work anyway. SGG (still at that point) just steamrolled over that.

“Education” by way of releasing info is the way to inform players to enable them to decide for themselves.

That is why I post updated revenue numbers when it’s useful. This way players who spend, know who they are financially supporting. Based on posts, many Forum readers spend. If they still choose to spend, that’s their decision. No right, no wrong.

You decide for yourself what you can do to help educate player base.

From my perspective: F2P are a force to be reckoned with because they are the big base on which P2P stand on.

All they need to do is boycott certain events that need mass participation:
• RT
• Challenge Events
• Alliance Events
• MT

Boycott need not be permanent. Say 2 weeks. And watch the participation numbers plummet, and watch how difficult it is for the competitive spenders to reach the rank they prefer.

If that works out well, can continue boycott for another 2 weeks. Some competitive players will feel frustration bad by then, and will react.

Will you be able to rally enough numbers ?

5 Likes
110

This is what I’m trying to figure out. Like what’s the strategy? They’re not doing much to stop the steady decline in long-term players. But can you imagine starting the game now?? It would be so overwhelming that I’d give up in a week. How the hell are they going to draw in enough new interest that is going to want to invest the time to figure all this stuff out? The gameplay is fun but is it THAT fun?

2 Likes
111

Some (spender) veterans have restarted as F2P, armed with knowledge gleaned from years of playing this game.

This game is more player-friendly these days:

• more freebies from Offers and MV
• some free summons from MS
• (recently) easier targets to achieve for POA
• usage of Time Saver for already completed Quests (only Catch is usage of Loot Tix)
• more Seasons to farm at discounted WE
• more Quests to earn non-farmable stuff (only catch is 1st completion)
• New Player freebie package, plus stuff for them to do to get more stuff to help them along

Zynga is still advertising this game though not as actively as before. So newbies should be able to catch up faster provided they diligently grind and grind.

Summon odds, being what they are, will always be the stumbling block. Newbies with “better luck” will find it easier to progress faster and will more probably stick with this game. It’s the same “story” for all players since this game started.

I had at least 2 spender buddies quit this game after trying hard for 2-3 years to get a relatively decent roster (based on the tier they were in and preferred to be).

It does look like Zynga/Take Two is running this game into the ground, to milk as much $$$ from it as possible. This game is 7+ years old, considered mature, and has undergone 2 rounds of ownership change.

Each round of ownership change increases the milking intensity as each new owner seeks to recover their purchase cost. This behaviour is normal for a business.

This game is unlikely to combust overnight unless TT/Zynga executes a cataclysmic move like another Big Balance Update like they did in Jan 2023 (think it was then) by indirectly nerfing all heroes released before 1-1-2021. This they may do come Jan 2025 to “force” players to use heroes issued after 31-12-2022 or worse, after 31-12-2023.

Enjoy the game while it still has a decent player base. :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
112

Lets give Staff a chance to see our opinions on the planned Dragonspire extension.

  • I am looking forward to new content
  • I am neutral at the moment
  • I am concerned but will wait for final release before deciding about my future with E&P
  • I stopped all spending and will most likely quit after it is released
  • I am disgusted and will definitely quit after it goes life
0 voters

Happy voting

5 Likes
113

My opinion doesn’t fit that neatly (I voted “concerned”); I suppose my own words would be something like

“I’d really much rather see a Season 6 or even an Untold Tales for S3 than what, by all indications, is essentially a reskinned restart layer to the game.

The addition of dragon copypasta does not increase my chance of spending, most likely decreases my already dwindling spending, and pushes me further down the spectrum of ‘how many parts of this game do I bother with as much’ increasingly toward ‘how much is it worth continuing to play this game at all.’ “

5 Likes
114

It is funny like no one needs this update. Who are waiting for it ? You juste have to start Ă  new game with some adds to your original base game. What a terrible move from SG and during this time, some QOL are always in standby mode.

In all other games like this one you have the x2 or x4 time during a fight. Here, you juste have to pay to gain some time, for me it is just a big f*** to the comunity because the devs literally way “we know that our game is slow so if you wanna spare some time you just have to pay and we are nice to offer you this option”

2 Likes
115

I voted “I am neutral at the moment”, but if there was an option of “I am concerned, but will wait for the final release” without the “before…’ I would vote for it. I don’t think this feature will decide my future in this game.

2 Likes
116

Nice poll to recap the opinions.

Although I am sure they will use their usage data to define the direction of the game, not the forum. How many people play which part of the game. This forum is a small, biased sample.

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117

With SG’s propensity to nerf, maybe stats like these will go down in pepperflames.

Mod edit: Beta image is removed.

< something I found on youtube :blush:

1 Like
118

Hate to point this out, but if you tripple the damage done, and tripple the health of the defender, it’s a total wash.

119

I am curious, we’re not allowed to post beta images etc which is fine, I understand, but how come on YouTube people can do it? Surely the devs know and know who they are, yet they continue to allow them to leak all this info?

Or are they given permission to do it or what? I am honestly not sure and I am confused

120

:man_shrugging: someone may use different IDs between the forum, the game, and other platforms.

121

It’s very easy to control on the forums, not so much on Youtube or elsewhere where they can’t delete what they want. And it would prolly be more work than it’s worth to figure out which beta account belongs to which Youtuber

122

They want it this way. The reason for the “no beta images” is to keep the players who don’t want to see them happy. The reason for tolerating them on YouTube is to keep the players that want to see them happy. Win-win.

123

So much this. Given that farming for Challenge coins is not uncommon, an in-game message where all players can actually see it seems like minimal customer service.

So between the “suggested team power always displays zero” visual bug, the brief “entire event locks up when a minion Special fires” gameplay bug, and now “no Special chest” population bug, that’s what, at least three bugs now in this one event?

Can we just finally ditch the whole dragons thing and get the actual base game and its events working (and maybe some significantly new gameplay content beyond a proliferation of new heroes and portals)?

5 Likes
124

You want them to throw the new gamemode they’ve worked on for years in the trash, so they can start working on a new gamemode from scratch? What are you even talking about lmao. How many years are you looking to wait?

125

I want SG to realize that

  • this “new” gamemode doesn’t seem to be going anywhere,

  • that where it is going, if it does, hardly seems actually very new (and seems to promise that, if anything, new content for the base game may slow yet further once it’s all-dragons-all-the-time),

  • that much of customer sentiment for the “new” content is not exactly high and that recent events have hardly made overall customer confidence in the “new”/reskinned content any higher (not least of all that Hero League, a reskin of raids/tournaments, went south, so how will a reskin of the whole game go?),

  • that all their concentration on introducing this new gamemode has been either introducing new bugs into the existing game, allowing them to slip through, or both,

  • and that instead of “an entirely new-not-new gamemode,” what we would like is (A) fixing issues in the current game (B) fixing existing gamemodes in the current game (e.g. Monster Island) and (C) generating new content possibly within the current gamemode (e.g. starting with something as modest as a Season 6 or even an Untold Tales for Season 3)

In short, I would indeed rather that SG toss the dragon reskin in the trash if it means stopping tossing the rest of the game in the trash, which is increasingly what the game has felt like for some time: endless ever-faster waves of new exponentially more powerful heroes, new portals, and new ways to keep re-re-RE-leveling existing heroes… and an increasing number of technical issues and QC fails, largely to the exclusion of much else.

I don’t want them to throw away years of work on a “new” mode to go work on an another “new”/new mode for years, I want them to work on the game as it is now (and, ideally, maybe consider something like actual game balance, which seems to have been increasingly shoved under the bus since at least the Big Imbalance Update).

2 Likes
126

Using a simple lens, it appears that moving forward may put many whales between a rock and a hard place. Consider the scenarios:

  1. Dragons in raids but not wars. Are players going to be pressured to stay in their 2400+ alliance? If players choose to skip dragons in this scenario, they may also have to leave their alliance to move to a kinder gentler world. Some alliances will be fractured beyond repair when it becomes harder to recruit from a more divided player base.

  2. Dragons are not allowed in raids, but are allowed in wars. Big question on what the heck matchmaking will mean? Will alliances put pressure on players to leave if win loss rates are all about who does or does not not have dragons. See above comments for negative impact on alliance structure.

  3. Dragons are allowed on both raids and wars. This would amplify the expected impact on the alliance structure. It is easy to envision that no dragons or yes dragons could be a criteria for alliance recruitment. Pause here to consider that a certain percentage of the player base would require no participation in new content. What software company views this as a desirable outcome?

  4. Dragons are not allowed in raids or wars. Well this becomes a big who cares.

I’m not saying that I’m perfectly correct in my vision of the future. But with some logical gymnastics, it doesn’t seem to be beneficial for the integrity of the game. It probably is a very cheap copy/paste to generate new content and no one was thinking too hard beyond that.

3 Likes