General Gameplay
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“Do you ever consider updating some core game mechanics, like damage calculation formula, the way how color stacks impact the tile damage, the tiles combinations (power shards/dragon shields) etc. or is it a set in stone that those aspects of the game will never be touched, outside of some new features and events?”
- Tim: We’re very happy how the damage formula works, so touching it would be pretty counterintuitive. We had to do some future-proofing on it to ensure the formula would still work as intended when Heroes or enemies get notably stronger due to various reasons — but even that was primarily done to ensure the current functionality stays trustworthy no matter what.
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“What are the biggest changes to gameplay upcoming?”
- Tim: As always, we hope that upcoming features and Heroes make their mark and contribute to the game in meaningful ways. On that note, we hope that Monster Island — the co-operative Alliance adventure — will provide something completely new every month once it’s running at full capacity. The big dragon-related feature, which I can’t really say much more about quite yet, is also something that will hopefully add a new perspective to many familiar things, from Heroes to stages to PvP.
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“Another match3 game I play just added a 3x speed mode to all animations which greatly speed up animations. I know SG has said this can add strain on old devices. Is this any more possible now?”
- Joel: We’re not actively looking into adding a speed-up mode to the game. As with many other things, it will likely have both benefits and drawbacks, but considering how well our core gameplay works as it currently is, we don’t think adjusting it — even on a seemingly simple level (speed) — is really the best way to go.
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“In a game, where a lot of our time is spent on auto farming, are there any plans on making this less time consuming?”
- Tim: As said above, we’re not actively looking into changing how core gameplay or Loot Tickets work, at least as of now.
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“Is your team actively discussing any specific ways that the game can grow without requiring more and more screentime?”
- Tim: We do keep track of screen time, and from our perspective we’re actually extremely mindful of that aspect of the game. One could say that each player probably has something they would like to do quite a bit more of each day. For example, I’d really, really like to play more PvP daily, as I only really engage with Wars and Tournaments; I hope that we could get something extra to do every day on that front. But that is just my own personal preference on that very specific matter
- Tim: We do keep track of screen time, and from our perspective we’re actually extremely mindful of that aspect of the game. One could say that each player probably has something they would like to do quite a bit more of each day. For example, I’d really, really like to play more PvP daily, as I only really engage with Wars and Tournaments; I hope that we could get something extra to do every day on that front. But that is just my own personal preference on that very specific matter
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“When are you going to do some changes on daily-routine tasks/quests (they are still the same since the beginning of the game !) or add a new one to give the players some fresh air?”
- Tim: The daily Monster/Player/Titan tasks will most likely never be in need of a change, as those activities form such a core foundation. But the Path of Valor is — as I’m sure everyone recently noticed — something where we’d hope to make meaningful changes now and again, even in the future. Also, we are planning to do something with the standard quests as soon as we have some time to focus on it — it might take a little while, but we have a very clear plan for that front!
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“Why the higher lvl defeated titans this POV instead of just defeated titans? It hurts smaller alliances like my own. If I can’t finish the POV path then there is little chance I will buy it.”
- Joel: With PoV challenges, we want to have a variety of challenges for players to tackle — some easier, some harder. PoV is fairly lenient with its point system and it is not required to complete all tiers of all challenges to reach the end of the path. Of course, if it turns out that many players have issues completing the new path, we may review the point structure to see how it could be improved.
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“There is severe dis-trust in the forums regarding pretty much all the odds that are stated on the Hero cards: Special chances, talent/ability chances, passive chances. Can you issue a clear statement that you are using an honest, un-tweaked, good, well code-reviewed RNG for all those, using exactly the stated percentages for both the defenses and attackers?”
- Tim: I believe such concerns regarding RNG have been addressed several times already (though the last time may have been a long time ago)? From my perspective, I can say there is simply no need to tweak the chances in such ways in the game. It’s by far best to keep the system as simple as possible when it comes to RNG. This has been the case from Day 0 of the game’s development; the game is already so complex that doing anything unnecessary with any of the odds would just create problems for us.
- That being said, some individual specials or talents may have some unintended oddities that were not caught during testing. We definitely try to fix these when we become aware of them. But these are always issues concerning a specific aspect of some very specific thing, not a widespread underlying RNG problem, or anything that would be designed to specifically benefit either the defender or attacker. For example, I think we had a problem with a specific talent in Puzzle Combat that made a Hero’s odds of reviving suspiciously high. Indeed, in that case there was a clear and easily reproducible bug in there — it took a while to identify it, but things were absolutely clear once it was found.