It is indeed a game and I too like to play it to get away from some of life’s stresses. As an avid player of the game I am indeed extremely grateful to @zephyr1 or his excellent Beta Beat posts that allow all players to here about how upcoming developments are coming along, it is the best part of the forum right now and I would greatly hope that this discussion does not discourage its continuance.
What I am sadden about is that from the following Community Guidelines for this forum I had been led to believe that the tone of the forum is meant to be welcoming and that during our discussions we should endeavour to remain respectful of other posters even when we completely disagree with them:
Give constructive feedback and discuss openly any game-related subjects, as well as community related improvement ideas. Give examples on how you would improve the game & community.
Be respectful. Think before you write, ask yourself how would you feel if someone wrote this to you. Welcome all new community members and players. Remember that we all were newbies once.
Ask questions. Feel free to ask questions and strike up conversations with others.
Encourage others. If you see another player struggling, cheer them up!
It is these points in particular that led me to believe that I have just as much right as anyone else to have my say and opinion on a game I love to play and that whilst my disability means I struggle to remain concise people would be respectful enough to just skip them if they didn’t want to read them.
My genuine desire from the moment I posted in the original thread was to just express my opinion and analysis and leave it at that. As people should appreciate my lengthy posts take a long time to write and I’d much prefer to be doing something else (like playing the game) with that time. As such I confined myself to responding only to those directly replying or quoting me and to clarify points with people who have mischaracterised anything I have written.
I have refrained from responding to others not addressing me as they themselves are just as entitled to an opinion as myself and going hand-in-hand with freedom of expression (within the bounds of the forum rules) is the freedom to not listen to that expression, as such I never assume that someone has read what I’ve previously written (especially as the length can be off-putting) and would not seek to shove it down their throat.
That may have been your intention but I respectably put it to you that you fell well short of making that point in a respectful manner. In your first post responding to me you attempted to straw-man me by inventing something I didn’t say to call me a fool and then proceeded in your next post to say you couldn’t be bothered to read what I wrote and proceeded to make further assertions that I didn’t make. Opting to not listen to and proceed to straw-man/mischaracterise your opponent falls well short of respectful debate and respecting your opponent – which I will add also falls well short of the community guidelines of being respectful, you are not exempted from being respectful because you’re in the privileged position of being a beta tester – that only continued to deteriorate further with subsequent posts. Whilst I attempted from the beginning to listen to and respond to each of your points in the beginning I regret towards the end as the posts worsened that I let my own standards of respectful commentary slip for which I’ve apologised and do so again I put it to you that you had no intention of treating me respectfully from your very first response for which I regret as I have been asking for a proper discussion on the issue. I would also add at this point that had it not been for your continued attempts at putting words in my mouth forcing me to clarify my positions to ensure they are fairly represented many of the long winded replies to you could have been avoided for as I say at the beginning of the post I would rather have been doing many other things with the time it took to compose the responses.
Despite your claim not only do I understand that others have done analyses of their own but I’ve BEEN ASKING FOR SAID OBJECTIVE ANALYSES REPEATEDLY!!! I posted my analysis of Neith as I was concerned that her nerf had left her underpowered and the community guidelines clearly encourage us to ask questions. Rather than address my concerns with any of those analyses you decided to dismiss and mock them and proceed to tell me I should take your subjective opinion as a beta tester as gospel. Not only does that not answer the questions and concerns I put forward but is condescending and disrespectful. Whilst no such objective counter-analysis was ever presented the onus would have been on both of us to treat each other with mutual respect even if we opt to disagree with the other’s assessment.
I regret we have been unable to create a mutually respectable dialogue between us and in its absence I agree there is nothing more that can be gained by continuing it further.
Thanks for enquiring on this I am very grateful (On the topic of gratitude I am also very grateful for @Halifax’s recent posts, thanks). I have noted that those doing the flagging have not been doing so consistently throughout this thread, especially as I can identify a post that clearly breaches not only the Community Guidelines but potentially also the terms of service that those freely flagging away at my posts didn’t bother with. Due to the nature of it I’m not publicly highlighting it and am seeking clarification privately through a support ticket as recommended earlier to check for reasons/justifications I’m unable to see.
The Forum should absolutely be a place where everyone can (civilly) express any opinion, and where all players have equal opportunity to make and argue their viewpoints.
I agreed to volunteer as a moderator precisely to assist in upholding that environment.
As volunteer moderators, we can’t read every post on the Forum, so we rely on our fellow Forum members to flag posts that may be of concern for being inappropriate, off-topic, or containing other potential issues. So it’s both helpful and appropriate to flag any posts you ever see that are of concern or may have been missed.
It’s also definitely useful to contact Support about any Terms of Service questions/issues, or in cases where you need assistance that transcends what we can do as volunteer moderators, so I’m glad you reached out to them.
I’m glad you enjoy those threads and find them helpful!
Neith is neither OP or underpowered, but I (a beta tester) won’t pull for her because she’s partially redundant. I don’t need a 3rd (Joon and Drake) yellow that’s best feature is blind.
I’m only pulling for heroes that give me something I don’t have, and she’s not providing that.
I think to say she needs a buff is a bit much, but to each their own.
I think it is important to know that SGG ignored all of the beta tester feedback on the Alchemy lab. They released it anyway, in the condition it is in.
When a company ignores the feedback of their beta testers, something is seriously wrong and needs to change.
My main account has neither Drake nor Joon. (While my alt account has 1 Drake and 3 Joon, go figure). I’d like to draw until I have at least 2 Neith, and I’m advocating that she is much more balanced now. I’m more interested in the health of the game than making my own roster overpowered.
I was expressing my personal feelings about whether I would pull for her. Not sure what that has to do with the “health of the game”.
I said she was neither underpowered or overpowered. So either you chose to ignore what I said, or you are trying to pick a forum fight over literally nothing.
Either way, I’m personally still not pulling for her. Good luck to all those that do.
I could really puke!!! Another Hero which was interessting gets nerfed because Beta tells so… Its really irritating. Is it because the Tops are afraid of stronger Opps? Or is it to keep others down because they paid to much for theire Heroes and dont want them to become weak?
I don`t know.
I really hope that SG or Zynga or whoever is allowed to tell something gets that nuts to bring out something that is NOT Beta tested! They always tell us that they “love competition” but how if they take the breath of newcomers?!
All Betas and theire friends are allowed to prepair themselfes for Events, Tournaments, Titans or Heroes.
So where should the “normal” Player stay?!
Beeing happy about a new Hero coming up and destroyed dreams of getting stronger?!
That really sucks!!!
Top players will have Neith if they want her, they don’t care about others getting good heroes. Either pull for her or not, but don’t blame Beta testers if you aren’t getting better.
For what it’s worth @MysterySpin
I always find your posts informative whether i agree with them or not. There’s typically more than just opinion in your posts.
I hope you continue to post and dont let the opinions of a few give you a negative vibe of the whole forum community
I’m still playing catch up in this thread and out of likes as usual but i do feel most sides involved made valid points even if i had to dig through the back n forth bickering involved to find them
No worries I haven’t disappeared completely, given how long it takes me to compose some of my posts/great walls of text I tend to do a sort of mental cost-benefit analysis as to whether to bother posting or not. This generally means I’ll keep out of discussions unless there’s an aspect or angle that I think is being missed – and is significantly important enough to the community/game to outweigh the inevitable time drain from not just the original post but also any potential responses needed especially given that questioning whether something has been missed in the formation of what might at the time be the majority opinion often has the unfortunate consequence of drawing the attention of anyone who can’t separate ideas from people meaning they see questioning a position they have as a personal attack and are incapable of changing their mind having made their position part of their identity. And given how on a daily basis I get to see how futile those sorts of arguments are living in a country that’s essentially created tribal identities around positions in a referendum any point I may have has to meet a high standard of importance for me to justify risking such a time drain.
Fortunately though most of the time many others have already raised points similar enough to what I’d say and in more succinct manners more likely to get read that I can sit back and devote time elsewhere.
So in short I am lurking in the background reading most things still mainly keeping a head down unless called upon (shall give my views on the Emblem post when I’ve a little more time to do it justice) or see very good reason to post .
I’ve hidden this next bit as I’ve no intention of re-arguing about the particular hero any further but wanted to raise this consideration for those thinking of going after Neith purely for the average speed all-team blind in case these latest points weren’t brought up in her thread as it may affect how hard they may want to go for her. If people still want her afterwards then great I wish them all the best getting her, just thought it better if people are fully informed before they pull as the reason I’ve argued about Neith as much as I’ve done previously is I hate to think of people wasting money or hard earned gems and tokens chasing a hero that they then find disappointing so if they’re still happy after it all then I’m happy for them also.
Neith and changes to costumes
Though I will declare that having awhile ago agreed to disagree on the point of Neith I’ve not bothered following that thread any more as having already made my case there’s nothing more to gain from it and is now firmly in the too high time cost in my assessment but I do hope that that discussion is now considering the implications of the Third Beta Costume Bonus. I only raise this here now because part of me is worried that it hasn’t been considered as it had been my concern all along that those saying her build is fine are doing so based on the meta 2 years ago by comparing her to the Classic 5* then rather than the meta today where she appears underwhelming next to her peers released around this time and the upcoming buffs the classics are going to get from their costumes.
The effects of costumes can’t be ignored as the current iteration’s 5% costume Mana Boost will mean that Classic 5* Slow heroes will now be able to shave 2 tiles off charging their skills when combined with a Lv.29 Mana troop (which granted sounds out of reach for many now we must remember that the AMA in March implied the Hero Academy might allow us to produce more troops so more people will be able to get Lv.29 Mana troops) turning them into Average speed heroes. Now whilst we don’t yet have an idea of what costumed Justice’s special will look like the stat bonuses from the costume also apply to the regular version of that hero and so regular Justice with those stat boosts and level 29 troops will arguably be a better option for those who want an average speed all-team blind hero as:
Justice will go from the 11th bulkiest hero in the game to THE bulkiest hero in the game with the defence and health boosts from the costume, meanwhile Neith is around Rana’s bulkiness level (and less bulky than Zimkitha that I notably compared her to in one of my analyses). (Apologies for the presentation of these two spliced together screenshots not being clearer, I abandoned plans for a public release of this tool awhile back before the more user friendly GUI was completed and have just been using it as a text interface myself but to summarise the number next to the hero is a bulkiness value which is roughly calculated using the hero’s stats and a modified version of the damage formula. They’re listed in order of the calculated bulkiness. NB. Costumed Justice and Neith are the only unreleased heroes in the data-set used.)
Justice has the better blind percentage than Neith so will avoid more hits (-40% vs -35%).
Justice already does more special damage that will only increase with the attack stat boost further (Neith does less damage than Hu Tao).
Neith’s advantages over regular Justice with Costume boost stats and Lv 29 Troops are that you can shave 1 further tile off Neith’s charge speed if you give her the troops instead, better tile damage and the mild 10% mana cut.
With all this in mind I personally still believe that Neith as a minimum needs her mana cut buffing to 20 or 25% as she’s currently undercooked for the current meta in my opinion but that’s besides the point. I hope this all re-assures those who’d like to get an Average speed all-team blind hero that you don’t need to pull for Neith to get that, the Costume gate seems like it will roll around at least monthly so you’ve also got more chances to get Justice’s costume when she eventually gets one so don’t feel pressured to pull just for Neith, especially if the Hero Academy does allow for troop production.
If i have to say, our “beta-testing” is more free advertising.
I mean, it is not completely useless, but it’s clear there’s a parallel testing runned by professional testers that probably have more weight then us.
Sometimes they shown they listen to us, but it’s not really clear for me if it is just a way to “control” the crowd or real interest in our suggestion.
What’s clear for me is that there are some limits they do not what to exceed no matter the feedback.
Probably their idea of Alchemy lab was as a mimimal requirements the actual version.
No intention at all to do something “more free” then this no matter what.
So listen or not, this is the best they can give to us.
Take or leave.
