Thanks. I’m a great believer in the restorative value of the sabbatical. I also like New Year’s Eve.
6 Likes
Did you just counter my counter with the very same argument? 
Here’s the point. There are complaints here that there seems to be an endless stream of complaints about how the raids work. All those complaints are countered mainly by the same group of veterans that hang out here. Which one is the vocal minority? Is there a vocal minority at all? Who knows. But the stream of complaints must be coming from somewhere, there must be a reason for it, wouldn’t you agree?
About understanding the game, let’s say for arguments sake that is all about that. If you release a game and too many players just don’t understand it (or part of it as seems to be the case here), there’s a problem just the same.
Heh, heh - yup.
Is that true? I’m not so sure. We see some complaints about how raids work, but not so many compared to, for example, hero summoning, chest contents, Alliance Wars or general ascension item availability. Based only on the volume of grumbling, it might be fair to conclude that raiding is one of the better loved aspects of the game.
But perhaps you are right, and there is an “endless stream” of complaints, coming from new players and countered by “veterans”. Might that not suggest that the problem is just one of learning the system?
I don’t see it as a bad thing that it takes a while to understand how something works. I might even argue that in an age of Instagram influencers and instant ramen, it taking a few days to learn the ropes of raiding is a virtue of the game.
4 Likes
I was going by comments made in this very thread. If you say that it are relatively few complaints compared to other issues, than this is probably true. Although many of the issues you mentioned seem to come down to “I’m not getting enough goodies”, which is understandable, but by design no doubt. If you want to compare, then it should be against other issues that are about the actual game play, like your alliance wars example.
It’s not a bad thing at all, generally speaking. But this is about a subgame of an otherwise much simpler game and that makes it different IMO. The expectations are different. People who start playing typical 3 in a row games are not looking for a learning curve and when they play the provinces, their expectations are pretty well met. They don’t expect such a big difference when it comes to the one on one fights we find in raids and in alliance wars
1 Like
You make an insightful point - the added challenges of raids and AW might put some players off. For me personally, those challenges are a big part of what has kept me around: if everything was as simple as farming the provinces then E&P would not have held my interest. It’s possible others feel the same way as me.
I guess the question is whether you retain more players than you scare off, with raiding. I’m in no position to assess whether it is a net positive or net negative, but it bears observing that E&P is very successful compared to most simpler match 3 games. Maybe the complexity of raiding is one reason for that success.
4 Likes
There is an endless stream of complaints about just about every aspect of the game. And there always will be no matter what. There are a lot of people that think they should win 100% of time, get every item and hero they want when they want it and want to live in an entitled world. If it doesn’t work that way for them, then its broken. This is 75% of the threads in this board in a nutshell.
3 Likes
Perhaps. The real challenge though would be to satisfy both groups. But I can see how that would be quite a challenge indeed.
My best wishes for 2019 by the way 
2 Likes
For everybody else also the very best for 2019! Make it a fantastic year!
2 Likes
+10 Moderator points for extra polite forum etiquette
3 Likes
But in every raid there’s a loser as well as a winner. Yep, call me captain obvious. And if we won all the time it would be as exciting as farming 8-7 for recruits. You have to risk losing to enjoy a win.
I also suspect the veterans are defending the raiding system because practice and experience go hand in hand with enjoyment. There was a thread floating around where people posted their total raid wins, they’ve won far, far more raids than I have won and lost combined.
(Personally, I have complained about some of the match-ups newer players get, the cup range is painful for beginners. I stand by that after watching my son wade through his first month of raiding, and he did eventually give up on it.)
There is definitely a steep learning curve, and the cups system is by no means perfect, especially since dropping cups is both easy and profitable. I’ve given a lot of thought to ways it could be adjusted to minimize the flaws, but I haven’t been able to develop a full proposal yet. Stay tuned.
2 Likes
With your son giving up raiding he lost unfortunately two oportunities.
-
No raid chest to fill so he is loosing resources.
-
He stoped learning and improveing about raiding.
One of the most important things to understand about raiding whan you start out.
Fight against every team you meet. ( maybe with the exception of the most obvious cup dropers )
At first the goal is not to win it is to kill at least one hero so you slowly but surely fill your chest.
I almost gave up on raiding to when I started out but when I changed my goal from winning to just kill at least one hero frustration got a lot les. 
After some time just geting some heroes wasn’t enough for me because I had improved and wanted more……
1 Like
I agree with you completely, but he stopped playing altogether so resources and learning were moot anyway. If he has more patience in the future he may come back but I wasn’t going to buy pulls for him to get through that entry level gauntlet.
Usually I would push the learning issue, but, even though he can fill a chest, but it takes a lot more flags (and time) than at higher brackets. Players with 2 and 3 star teams end up against maxed 3 and 4 star teams down there at the bottom. At least in the alliance he was in a lot of people were avoiding raiding altogether.
So my point was really that that the power difference can feel a lot stronger in the lower brackets than it does where I’m at in the middle (platinum). I won’t make any guesses about diamond, I have made some short visits there and am always glad to go home… for the time being anyway
One idea I’ve been kicking around is a slight tweak to matching, combined with an improved raid tutorial at the outset. Most of the frustration I see comes from one of two sources. The first one is a lack of understanding of how raiding actually works, the matchmaking and the mechanics. The second is consistently being matched with players who appear significantly more powerful than you.
An improved raid tutorial would address the first issue, at least somewhat. It would need to explain clearly and succinctly how opponents are chosen and how the cup awards are determined. It would need to cover how each team gains mana and how both normal and special attacks work. It should mention that buffs and debuffs override others of the same type, and that the AI goes from left to right. It should also stress that team power levels are only a rough approximation, not a hard and fast determination of who should win.
A tweak to the matchmaking would address the frustration of being overmatched, especially at lower levels. Currently, you’ll be matched with someone who has within 300 cups of your total. This mechanism is easily manipulated by dropping cups to give much easier matches, thus allowing the stronger players to prey on the weaker ones and fill their chest without fear of being revenged. A couple of small tweaks to matching could change that without requiring a large change in the coding. First, make raid arenas a reflection of the highest cups a player has won, rather than their current cups. If you’ve won enough cups to hit Platinum, you’re a Platinum player regardless of your current cup total. Your raid chest tier would still be determined by your current cup total. Once your raid arena is determined, your pool of available matches will be drawn from players who are no more than one tier lower AND within 10% of your current cup total. So for example, if you’re currently in high Gold at 1750 cups, but raiding up into Platinum to open your chest, you’re a Platinum player. Your raid opponents would be players from Gold, Platinum or Diamond arenas with a current cup total of 1750 +/- 175, or 1575-1925. If you decide to drop cups down to 1000, your opponents would then be chosen from Gold arena or higher players with a current cup total of 900-1100. You’d be facing other cup droppers with easy defenses, so you’d still be able to fill your chest, but they’d have a fair chance at revenge. You wouldn’t be matched up with Silver arena players at all.
7 Likes
How about a graded scale for the cost of a reroll, ranging from where it is now to free if the total TP difference is greater than x?
That could be workable too. Maybe base it on your raid arena
1 Like
My point wasn’t that I wanted to win all the raids or even that I didn’t win enough of them. What I meant here is that raids are the only part in the game where you can actually win something measurable to compare yourself with other players and thus that there’s a reason for not wanting to forget about them all together.
That sounds like a well thought through idea. Not bad.
One thing though. Since I think a month or two I noticed a dramatic change in matchmaking for the better. Not sure if something has changed in the game or if this has something to do with the fact that I’ve gotten quite a bit stronger in a relative short time and crossed the 3k tp boundary.
I’ve been wondering about something else too. Nobody here seems to recognize the ‘lousy boards’ scenario. In stead there’s a lot of ‘understanding the game’. Can I ask you how you would approach this situation:
First off, I probably would have brought a different team. You only have 1 real hitter (Grimm) and 4 support characters. I’d have brought Kiril and Grimm, Chao instead of Wu, and a different red hitter instead of Elena. However, if that’s the team you have, that’s what you work with.
I’d match the 3 purple on the right side top, to set up the red diamond. Depending on what tiles fall in after that, I might fire it off to clear out the reds and charge up Elena.
2 Likes
And that’s why I need more practice in “understanding the boards”. I didn’t even see that and I was focused more on what to do on the left side to avoid charging Sabina while trying to get a more favourable board.