Ruskin's Journal

Community Content
101

I was lucky enough to pull C2.Lianna! It got me thinking about how old my roster is when it comes to five stars. My recent heroes by release date.

C2.Lianna: April 2023
Turgruk: April 2023
Gilligan: March 2023
Viselus: February 2023
C2.Isarnia: September 2022
Grace: September 2022
Klaern: July 2022
Aino: June 2022
Silvaria: April 2022
Kravekrush: February 2022

3 HOTM so far this year is pretty nice as are the ones from last year. But of the ten most recent heroes I’ve received, 2 aren’t leveled yet, 3 I have no plan to level, and two more are leveled with no intention of embleming/limit breaking any time soon.

It’s interesting hearing about frustration with the meta changing. It’s a world so different than mine. I’m at a point where many season 3 heroes (even without costumes) could be nice upgrades on my team, let alone seasons 4 and 5.

I don’t necessarily expect this to pick up anytime soon. Fated Summons has helped me pick up some solid heroes around my current strength. Soul Exchange has been even more helpful.

C2.Lianna is probably my best hero right now. It’s weird as I test some of these heroes in beta with my roster. Often at 4/80 they are better than anything I can use. Keeps me dreaming.

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102

Nice idea to show and summarize about the last ten 5* heroes.

Here are mine:

04/23 : C2 Leonidas
Have a maxed Leo already so started working on the costumes immediately. Will do a second if I get more darts.

04/23 : Turgruk
Will be maxed, already at 3/55.

03/23 : Gilligan
Got three of him despite not doing many pulls in March. Two for SE and the 3rd will be waiting for a long time to be ascended.

03/23: Skadi from FS
My first real minion counter so aready maxed +3, monk emblems are a bottleneck for me.

03/23: costumed Ares
Started work slowly, will he maxed.

02/23: Killhare from HA10
Have the costume and an idea of a team to put her in, so will max her after Turgruk if nothing better comes around in purple.

01/23 : Zhuge Liang
Already maxed+16, need more Sorcerer emblems.

01/23 : Khagan from lunar new year portal. My first, but will probably go to SE.

12/23 : costumed Krampus.
Maxed, +19 emblems, two times limit broken.

12/22 : Ariel from FS
Already maxed +19 emblems.

12/22 : Bai Yeong from HA10
Waiting for darts.

11/22 : Morax
Maxed but no emblems.

That were 12 but two from HA10 and two from FS.

Looking back, 11 new unique heroes in 6 months is not too bad for a ftp.

Happy gaming

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103

Interesting that you went based on acquisition whereas I was looking at hero release date. That would add heroes like Loki, Skadi, Malosi, and Milena to my roster.

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105

The other day I saw a post from a known troll asking for advice on who to level. I was partially tempted to give the worst possible response. I thought maybe it would stick it to the troll.
Ultimately I couldn’t do it.

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106

What do you think about Aino ??

I (luckily?) pulled her from blue CoE but thought she is too vanilla (I even prefer Suzuna) so havent leveled her yet

Ps. I dont have Suzuna - I use C2-Kiril as my main Blue healer

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107

I have C2.Kiril and Aino. If I could only have one for raids, I’d choose Aino. C2.Kiril gets more use in other aspects.

I like Aino for the cleanse first part of her special. The mana status effect is there, but It’s not the main reason I use her.
I use C2.Kiril more for when I am worried about getting one hit by an enemy or know I can play the long game so the boosted health and defense buff helps keep me alive.

If I had to choose one, I’d choose C2.Kiril because I find overheal so valuable in so many other aspects (as well as the versatility the costumes provide and it’s cheaper). But for wars only, Aino is more valuable for how often I need a cleanse (especially a priority cleanse).

Suzana is interesting, but it all comes down to if you’re okay with self and nearby healers. I hate them. Brynhild is the only one I use and I only use her in a team with Hanitra and Alberich against a team with no healers and hit alls. I could use Suzuna in a similar role.

But I’m not confident I’d use Suzuna if I got her. I just find heal 3 heroes to be too limiting for what I need as I want a healer to heal my team. The rest of her kit is pretty nice. I’d probably use her most in rush war.

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108

Thanks for the great reply! I will try to give Aino a chance after I finished priority blue projects (Loki and XHD)

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109

you are good and kind :slight_smile: I get the temptation though! I totally do.

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110

I hit level 101 today. I hit level 100 on April 4. I haven’t explicitly tracked how long it took to level in a while, but here it is…about a month and a half. With seven months left in the year, incresingly difficult XP levels to hit, and a return to office, maybe I’ll be 105 by the end of the year.

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111

nicely done, congrats on hitting the big level 100!! (also good to know that even at that level, it didn’t take a crazy big amount of time to level up)

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112

I started playing a new game about a week ago (I’ll refer to this as New Game 2 or non Match 3 game as I refer to other games I play above). They just announced a new hero. It comes with a blog post from the company including full details of their special, family, and all bonuses. It has base stats and fully upgraded stats. And it has gifs of their animations.

I’ve long felt SG is poor at creating buzz for their releases. They have beta, which drives most of the buzz. Even New Game 1 puts a 30 second youtube video showing the hero in action. I’ve previously suggested Soul Exchange be released in the week or so ahead. Either one hero a day for 20 days, or do one from each tier for 5 days, or one tier for three days. Do something.

We have all of this data mining now (thank you), but why does SG fail to market it’s own product? Is there some study that shows getting players to do this marketing is better?

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113

When the game launched and caught on big, active players would take initiative to fill the gaps not covered by the Developer.

It’s up to the Developer to manage the situation:

• Exercise control over the creation process, and have ownership over content created OR

• Let the situation flourish unabated and just focus on collecting money. This was the approach taken by SGG then.

For new heroes released, Beta players marketed them via different platforms (Forum, Facebook, YouTube, etc etc )

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114

I can’t believe I missed this thread before @Ruskin505 , as I am fairly often in the forum (of course, lately I have only looked for SE news).
I didn’t have time to read all, but what I have been reading has been good discussions and points.
Will keep and eye out.

Game well and may the RNG be with you!

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115

Level 102! Today is June 26. Hit 101 on may 18. So it took less time to get to 102 than 101? Strange

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116

I quit the other match 3 game I was playing.

Early in 2022, SG released their sneak peak for the year including the addition of dragons to the game. I had seen several ads for another game with a dragon and I started playing that game with the sole intention of better understanding potential dragon dyanmics for Empires and Puzzles.

Well about 17 months later of playing that game, I stopped. I got to a point where I wasn’t having fun. Thought I’d give myself the month of July to figure it out. It took 2 more days and I realized I didn’t want to keep playing.

It’s now been a week since I last played.

What’s interesting, is this game had several aspects that make it better than E&P, yet here I am still playing E&P. This other game has daily arena payouts. I generally could rack up >3K gems each week. And a ten pull only cost 1980 gems in this game. You also had better featured hero odds, and multiple pity timers including a guaranteed feature hero pull. All of those improvements to summoning are desireable.

Heroes and weapons could spawn tiles of the color you want. It solves RNG by giving you guaranteed tiles. Again, something that could be desirable.

Yet, the game wasn’t as fun. They definitely went down the “difficult is fun” route. Strong teams were near unbeatable (talking about 15+ attacks to kill an enemy and that includes a W3K like stacking effect). There was no path to more fun in my mind. So I left.

I’m happier.

There are times I am not doing anything and I think this would be a good time to play. But I won’t get back into it.

So as much as we complain about E&P, it’s still better IMO.

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117

thanks for sharing your thoughts @Ruskin505 , as someone whose only mobile game is E&P, it helps to learn more about experiences in other games

I’d definitely prefer a game with more reasonable difficulty, than one that is way way tough (even if it does come with things like spawning tiles of the color you want!)

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118

:rofl::joy: I know which game you are referring to.

I stopped playing cos it got tedious figuring out the different layers of hero empowerment.

I was also busy with other games so I had to cull something.

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119

It’s not just that as BlackZed points out

E&P has certainly increased in complexity in the four plus years I’ve been playing. But I understand the dynamics much better than I do for this second game.

I think there were quite a few of us E&P folks who played this second game. But I don’t know how many are still playing this alternate game.

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120

I don’t know anything about this other game you are playing, but I have played a LOT of games in my time. And a game that leads to a 6 month playing period for me must have something pretty exceptional to keep my attention span. It is something that doesn’t happen often. And somehow thorugh peaks and troughs I am still going strong in E&P, now with 2 very distinct accounts.

I have always thought that if E&P were to increase summoning odds or mat drops (in any significant way) that it would actually lead to the end of the game for many. Frustrating as it is the difficulty of accessing new heroes and levelling them up to a point where they are better than whatever you had before is what I think keeps people engaged in the long term.

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121

I went exploring. Game A is on cruise control now (:joy::rofl:) and this game is on “Casual”.

Watched an Ad. Realised that it’s the game that my nephew played for awhile. It was interesting but I didn’t have capacity for it then.

Turned out to be a 2021 release, and is now owned by Zynga. Don’t recall it being a Zynga game then so this may be a “recent” change.

It’s more or less similar to EP minus the match 3. Merge is big here. Typical Zynga monetisation is all there. With POV too. :joy::rofl:

It’s Day 4 or so for me.

If you are on a look out for a casual game, this can be interesting. It’s Top Troops.

Should be possible to go F2P in this game.

I used my first 300 gem summons and secured a legendary 5* healer. :joy::rofl: I never experienced this type of luck in EP so I took that as an encouraging sign.

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