Q&A with Game Designers - Spring 2021 Edition (Discussion Part II)

[sleepyhead]

Initial thoughts:

Good - a lot more questions answered than I expected, and thanks for organizing them by theme/topic. Good job. I did like the personal look into the rosters and gameplay of the devs.

What I would like to see more of - more reasoning behind the “no plans to do this now!” type answers.*

Phrase of the year: GAME ECONOMY

Things that stood out:

1. Limit breakers were non-negotiable from the beginning
2. No, you won’t get Atlantis / Valhalla / Event etc. 3s and 4s in Hero Academy, ever
3. No, Valhalla Forever gnomes will never “only” drop coins, and VF rewards won’t be increased, because it’s bad for the game economy
4. new heroes! new events! that’s what makes players happy! a new season every year!!
5. oh but by the way, we do want to do something about new players’ paths in the game…
6. … but at the same time, too many people getting too many of these new heroes, is bad for the game economy!

*disclaimer: I am perfectly aware that SG is a business/corporation; that they are not required to disclose all the reasoning behind business decisions to us; and that my wish may not be realistic. I know I’ll almost certainly get people commenting, “that’s an unrealistic wishlist, keep dreaming, blah blah.” But if we never ask, we never get answers, so there.

Summary

Other things:

• 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.

Why though? There are challenge event tiers and raid tourneys specifically for Rare and Epic heroes. And many players want this. So why are there no plans? Not high enough on the priority list? Additions are planned for Hero Academy, so why not consider Rare/Epic heroes from older seasons/events (e.g. Atlantis?)

especially when we have something like this:

• How do you envision filling the gap between new players and old players?
  • TIM: Thanks to the, from our point of view, very mellow power creep in the game we’ve not had to really think about this before this year. But this is now something we have on the agenda. We do not know the scope of things needed for this - but it would be interesting to at least see what could be done to make the path for new players a bit easier and/or faster.

Wouldn’t greater availability of some of those heroes help with that?

or is it because of this

• Are there any plans to improve the hero academy to provide better value to players, such as; adjusting the odds on the legendary training, changing some of the less popular training options to make them more useful ( such as HA levels 5 or 8), or allowing the building to run 3 functions at the same time similar to the Alchemy Lab?
  • TIM: Not specifically no. I know that this is and has been a major ask from a lot of players, but we just have to be very careful with the economy of the game, and giving better value, in the sense that it’d be way more effective for free collection of heroes, is something that is very risky for us to try to do.

basically: too many players getting these nice heroes = bad for game economy?

like with this:

• Any possibility that the gnomes found during Valhalla Forever can drop coins only (like the dragons during Atlantis Rises)? I’m confident that most players would prefer coin drops only.
  • TIM: Most likely not - we want to keep changing the formula a bit between seasons and as noted earlier the Atlantis Rises set a precedent that does not quite work when used elsewhere.

so don’t expect to get too many tries for more Valhalla heroes…

… especially as now we’re going to get a new Season per year…!

What season was the hardest to create and why was that particular theme chosen?

• TIM: Season themes probably are a bit easier now since we know each has to be different enough from the previous season…I mean season 2 was something where it was still a bit uncertain if we’d even really need a season 3, but now that we see that yeah, we should definitely have a season for each year it’s more of just choosing a theme and making sure we stay within the idea there, just so that it’d be nice and fun then to come up with the next one. Season 3 was really solid since the Norse mythology is so vast…but I wanted to avoid the obvious with Season 4 thus this bit more eccentric mix of Jules Verne-inspired characters. Season 5 is going to be a bit more familiar in some ways, as you’ll see later this year:)

this also stuck out for me… apparently not many players are leaving the game?

• The longevity of this game is dependent on being able to attract new players when older players retire. At the moment, with a glut of 5 heroes, emblem classes, costumes and the upcoming ‘Limit breaker’ what are the developer’s plan to help reduce the chasm and help new players catch up and be able to compete with those who have been playing for 3+ years?*
  • TIM: The new player’s path is something we will indeed focus on next year, but there’s really not much to share yet on that (we haven’t decided on the steps yet). A point perhaps to make here is that we’ve got, generally speaking, an exceptionally low degree of players retiring which actually is the reason for us to introduce all the mentioned new features - we really, really want to ensure the players who want to get more out of the game after 4 years can do so, it’d be a terrible shame to lose these players really!