New Building Idea: Hero tavern – Hire Heroes Temporarily

Hey all

I’ve been mulling over this idea for a new building for quite some time now and I’m wondering what other people might think about it.

basically, my suggestion is for an advanced upgrade to a house to make it a tavern. the long and short of it is that in this tavern there is a chance for travelling heroes to stop by and a player can rent their services for raiding/map progression/titan fights. heroes available will rotate randomly, rarity of those heroes available will depend on the level of the building, and the number available to choose from will also depend on the level. as for the level of the heroes themselves, that will depend on other factors.

rationale: i’m at a point in the game now where the vanilla heroes available aren’t really exciting. today i was thinking a lot about which of the remaining s1 5 stars i’m looking forward to and frankly, only one or two seem like they’d fit on my team well. i realize that it’s a crap shoot that i’ll ever be able to own the heroes i’d really like within my budget, but i’d love the chance to try out and see how some heroes might interact with my teams and get a feel for them. i’m sure there are reasons why s2 and hotm aren’t released in tcs yet (if they ever will be), but it would still be nice to have a chance to play with these heroes for a short time.

additionally, there are some pretty big holes in my teams when it comes to hero classes for trials. i’d love a chance to temporarily have a non-blue/purple paladin or wizard for some trials for example. yes, i understand that getting these heroes from the RNG tc is part of the long term fun of this game, but it would be nice to have a chance to complete some of the final level trials a little more often.

anyway my thought for the building would be something like this

available at stronghold 10, with 10 levels of upgrades. further levels of the building require higher levels of stronghold, to make these heroes available to mid level players without letting them get too much of an advantage. heroes become available starting at rare, with maybe 1 available at the start. they rotate (“leave to journey elsewhere”) and get replaced by new heroes after some time (time can be randomly determined to add some random chance, but still allow for each hero to participate in a trial before leaving). each upgrade would add more spaces for rare heroes. at level 4 epic heroes would be available (“fancier quarters are available for them”), starting at one and increasing in number every 2 levels, and at 7 legendary heroes would become available, starting at 1 and increasing at levels 9 and 10. at level 5 a chance to have s2 and event heroes would be possible (maybe 20% chance, improving by 5% per level?), and at 10 hotms would be a possibility (maybe 25% chance?). to add a chance for revenue (but keeping the building ftp friendly), players can have a chance to refresh the heroes available once a day using gems - otherwise the heroes will rotate randomly as suggested above

using these heroes: to use a hero, a player can select them from the tavern and pay a (small) fee of food and iron. i hate the idea of adding gems here but maybe for hotms a small gem fee might be part too to prevent abuse/complaints from players who spent a lot to get them (like 10 gems or something). this will make the hero available for use like any other hero in the player’s pool. the hero will be available for the time window that it was in the tavern for - think of it like the hero agrees to sell his/her services for the time they’d be in the tavern anyway. however, to actually use a hero in battle will cost an escalating amount of food and iron each use. 3 star heroes will cost little to select, and their escalation rate will be small, allowing low level players a chance to fill a hole for raids or basic level progress early in the game, and effectively allowing high level players unlimited use due to resource abundance, while 5 stars and hotms will be extremely expensive, effectively limiting their use to specific levels/titans/1 or 2 key raids. i think it’s best not to be able to assign these heroes to defense roles, but i think that’s just to make things easier - with escalating cost per use players would find themselves with a hole in their defense after a random time and i think that’s unnecessarily complicated. could also cap the tavern use so that only one hero per rarity level (or maybe just one hero at all) could be used at once to prevent abuse? i think also tavern heroes would be prevented from participating in alliance wars and raid tournaments, but events/challenges i think would be fair game

hero leveling: i think for ease of use heroes should come fully ascended but with a random level and their special also randomly leveled, but this is something i haven’t thought a ton about and would easily be amenable to changing. i’ve thought too about heroes earning xp for each battle they’ve fought, and the tavern having a mechanic to “remember” how much experience you’ve earned for each rarity of hero - rarity as opposed to each individual hero so that you can continue to improve them with ongoing use. maybe ascension level is something that would improve with levelling the tavern as well, maybe having instead having 20 levels and at various thresholds changing the odds of getting a hero of x rarity and y ascension, so that players can’t just get a free fully ascended five-star all the time. i think this potentially starts to get complicated pretty quickly, but i’d be happy to leave it to the devs/community to hash out this aspect

anyway thoughts on this?

@Slxpluvs You might find this idea interesting

And welcome to the Forum, @Sailorsaturn!

2 Likes

this seems like it would be really hard to make it useful and not OP or useless. Super fine line. I’m not a to player by any stretch of the imagination, but even for me, I have no incentive to “rent” a non-maxed hero. It just seems the feature would either be limited to useless heroes all the time or OP heroes all the time.

I’ve been mulling over a similar thing with renting heroes the past couple of weeks though, I was thinking of borrowing heroes from alliance members.

This is so much better than the idea I suggested!

A tavern would be great flavor.

Rotating heroes would be great, too.

They should always be leveled, with emblem count either 0-10 (ftp) or 5-15 (ctp) - even 3*.

Now let’s see if I can ruin it by talking $$. Lol.

For costs, I like you’re idea of the first fight for a cheap price, but increasing in escalation. Not ham and iron, but gems in the range of 1 to 3 gems for the first hire (keeps value for ptp players and doesn’t lock out low level players). After three or six hires during the same visit, prices should be in the 100 gem range - enough to add value to the character. So gem cost over hiring sequence: 3, 6, 14, 32, 70, 150, 320, 650, etc.

Each hire cost increase could be offset by longer contracts by one fight each extension (e.g. eight fights for 650 gems/ 36 fights for the whole series listed)

An additional cost could be a recharge fee. So, if the visiting hero came once a week, leaving after a few days. Usually, have the room need a recharge time for cleaning. Have the room open sooner for a fee.

Could have items left behind (make the room cleaning have a chance to end with finding a single extra item you might find in mystic vision - e.g. a gem or two emblems, etc.). Could be extra funny if 3* had a higher rate of rare item drop.

I like the idea, a bunch. I understand the concern that there is a fine line between useful and OP. i also like the idea that it could be usable by f2p and c2p, so I’m not a fan of the idea of gem costs.

I only started playing this game in January this year, but have been taken by it already. A little disappointed I didn’t download sooner. I’m not sure whether this idea has been proposed previously, but here goes…

We all know pulling 5* heroes is not easy and powering them up to the maximum level takes a lot of time, not least because of the special ascension materials required which are hard to come by.

My idea is for maxed out 5* or 4* heroes (either emblems or no emblems) to be made available for limited use (e.g., number of battles (e.g., one battle) or time limit (e.g., one hour from first use) from first use)) in a number of different ways. Given the rarity and power of these heroes, a battle limit (e.g., only one use) might be preferable.

These “mercenaries” / “hero for hire” can be awarded through one or more of the following:

  • Tournament loot
  • Titan loot
  • War loot
  • Challenge event loot
  • Summon (separate portal)
  • Other special events

The hero (mercenary) awarded will be drawn at random from the large roster of heroes from previous events etc… and can be used in any battle. Team Power capacity will still apply, so a newbie can’t suddenly field a team of maxed out 5* mercenaries.

I think incorporating this function into the game will enrich the game-playing experience, giving players the opportunity to try out heroes they’re unlikely to have. As players can also use gems (x100) to summon these mercenaries, SG can also make €$¥£ directly from this, but the increased dimension offered through this function will increase the longevity of the game and hence monetisation in the longer term.

Enough of the “sell” to SG…, but I really think this function would be good for both F2P and spenders alike.

Let me know what you all think.