Heroes & Troops
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Why is there a color imbalance in a player’s roster? I have lots of 5-star heroes in three of the five colors. Checking with other alliance members they see the same issue.
- TIM: Something that has just happened organically, we always try to balance this but trying to push this too hard can cause bigger problems.
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Can you explain how mana accumulation works for defending heroes?
- JOEL: The defense heroes gain mana for each Troop that hits them. With combos, the amount of mana diminishes with each match in the combo. The defense team also gets a bit of mana at the end of the turn.
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Will there be more attention to release more 3/4 heroes?*
- TIM: We always aim to have some of them especially for Story Seasons. However, there are currently no plans to add more than what we have at this point.
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What is the design reasoning/choice behind releasing a slow minion creator (Noor) when Bera/Freya create strong minions at fast speed + buffs/ailments + mana cut?
- TIM: High level - always aim for variety instead of pure ‘race for ultimate power’. So slower heroes must also be in the game, though not everyone will be ‘optimal’. Of course, we try to buff these heroes later - but very important to not do the buff via speed up, even if players see it as the only option > this way we’d end up with only fast heroes in the game, which is boring!
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When making new heroes, have you considered making unique skill heroes instead of pumping their power to insanity?
- TIM: We actually aim for that a lot - but unique skills are actually often perceived by players as being less useful as they ultimately may be since, well, they are unique and often less direct in use! So it’s pretty common to get really negative feedback from unique skills! But it’s a balancing act, and we always aim to have one or more in new events and hero sets.
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Have you considered retraining hero costumes, since only one is needed for an unlimited number of heroes?
- TIM: Interesting idea, and not something we have considered yet. But we’d be hesitant to add further complexity to costumes (it took a long while to get players accustomed to them as they are)…
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Are there any plans to update the Daily Summons Portal / when will S2 and S3 heroes be added to the portal?
- TIM: Daily Summons is something we’re probably not touching. But summons for S2 and Older Challenge Events are something that may be changed next year though (there’s just so much more new things in play and we don’t soon have a place for them with how things are usually run!), so something may change there next year.
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What’s a hero that you thought would hit it off well with the player base but ended up ignored?
- JOEL: Norns is one that I knew was a niche hero suitable for specific situations but it never really hit off. At the time I made the design there were a lot of defense teams that had a purple or yellow tank accompanied by 2 flanks of the opposite element so I wanted to make a hero that was really good in those battles. Sadly when Norns came out the meta had shifted and there weren’t many of those teams to fight in raids.
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Considering the high amount of support for adding 4 Atlantis / event etc. Heroes to hero academy, could this be on the table?*
- JOEL: We’re adding more 5* heroes to Hero Academy in version 39, including Rana, Yunan, and Roc. There are currently no plans to add Rare or Epic heroes to Hero Academy.
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What’s a hero that you thought wouldn’t be popular but ended up being in the meta?
- JOEL: Wilbur is definitely one whose popularity surprised me. When I made the design I just wanted to try out a new twist on an existing mechanic. Season 2 heroes were probably the first heroes I ever worked on so it might partially be because I wasn’t yet so familiar with the game. Something more recent was Bera. I knew that’s a good hero, but couldn’t see how prominent they would become in raid defenses.
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Are there plans to change/improve troop leveling?
- TIM: A good one! This one is almost a Quality of Life thing that kind of makes sense to address at some point - but it’s also mentioned really seldom so it’s just really low on priority even for discussions. We did want troops to be really slow to level up just to avoid the need to add more power/complexity to them…which is working ok from that point of view, but yeah if we’d have time to look into this we’d probably ‘tune up’ this somehow nowadays.
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Will there ever be an actual fix to the duplicate 5 issue?*
- TIM: We have been discussing this here, it’s definitely not an easy one to solve but we have some ideas.
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Are there any plans to extend the range of heroes that can go out from TC20?
- JOEL: There are currently no plans to extend the range of heroes that can go out from TC20, but there are plans for additions to Hero Academy.