Please discuss responses to Game Design Process questions here.
So here’s a disturbing thought I just had…
We learned that SGG is refreshing all of the monthly challenge events. That’s great for providing new, fresh play. And we learned that there will be new event heroes. What’s going to happen to the old event heroes? While some of these heroes, like guardian Owl, can safely be retired into the trashcan of hopeless heroes, many others are considered among the best in the game: e.g. Guinevere and Panther. Are those heroes going away? Or are they merely being changed or, perhaps if they are solid heroes, simply preserved? After all, how could you run an Avalon event without King Arthur and Queen Guinevere?
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I’ve been wondering about that too since our call ended. It was on my mind again yesterday when someone asked when the Grimforest heroes would next be available.
So far the premise has been that all heroes — even HOTM — are eventually available again.
It seems potentially problematic to me if some heroes (or at least particularly good ones) are permanently retired from rotation.
But at the same time, with the plan being for E&P to last for many years, it seems sort of inevitable that some heroes will eventually stop being offered, or at least have more limited availability.
I’m guessing SGG might not know the answer to that yet either…
Unrelated, @RakeJay, look at this: 
First - very please that they are going to revamp some of these. While challenge events was the specific question, clearly at least one of the seasonal events could use a good spruce as well
I doubt they will retire any hero, some people use GO for example. How would you comp them for taking him away? And Guardians still has some of the best heroes in the game, and still attacks a lot of pulls - I suspect they will focus more on ones like Pirates that I’m sure isn’t pulling its weight in revenue generation.
Haha people sleepin on my owl… smh, at least we got the guin and panth right
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With race, we have a bit more work to do. Even at the beginning of the game, we chose Bane to be a lead character of the original cast, but we’re trying to be more systematic about race and body shape; that’s part of the plan.
We are trying to get more elderly heroes in the game (such as upcoming Hero of the Month, Margaret). Not the easiest thing in the world, even in the fantasy world genre.
[…]
Kira : We’re especially trying to have a diverse representation of women in the game. Sometimes there’s less armor than some would like; last year we introduced three skimpily clad women in a row and we learned our lesson from that. It’s something we talk a lot about, and we have a very international team here at SGG. There is always a debate within the office. I quite like our female characters; I think they’re super powerful and great, but I’d like an old maid.
It’s not especially surprising that they are aware of this stuff and are taking it all into account, but it is definitely reassuring.
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By “retire” I was thinking “no longer make available for summoning” not “stripped from your roster.” There’s no reason to do the latter. But if they completely rework an event and have new heroes for that event, why would they keep around the old heroes (to be newly summoned)? Hmm, hmm.
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ahh…yes indeed why.
If say the number of challenge event heroes are doubled, the new ones could be mixed into the boss levels. And of course, all could remain available in the event summon portals.
Honestly, I think with a bigger pool of event heroes, maybe the the boss levels could change up from time to time. Keep the top players on their toes!
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@Kerridoc, thank you for splitting out the discussion, this makes it much more sane to respond to…but for continuity, how about editing in the answers here along with the questions instead of just a link, so the the dev answers/statements are closer to the discussion?
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I will be glad for the event summon tokens. Besides intermittent drops, all Eht prizes from the events could be changed into Event summon tokens. Make it rain!
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Would a good number of players not feel like “left out” if some old heroes good or bad are permanently retired? Particularly if you keep fighting such heroes in the system and not ever, ever have chance of pulling them, take for example Guin, GM, say Hel or even GO is retired…
My suggestion would be, even with development of new heroes SGG should keep a portal for summoning old heroes once or twice a year., or be it as it is in Atlantis.
But why retire old heroes anyway? Is not as if they require any regular maintenance!
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As the events are currently structured, there is space for five and only five boss heroes. If you kept around, say Guardian Owl, then added a new yellow five star hero, you now have six event heroes. Do you restructure how the events are played? Or will Owl simply not have a role of the event, but be available for summonses?
Currently, I supposed there are about 10 stages, some bosses appear in some stages and not in some, however if there are 6 bosses, three different bosses could appear at stage 9 and 10, the two most dificult levels!
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I think we will have a challenge event summons token once we do a refresh of the whole thing. The challenge events are the only portal that doesn’t have a free way to draw, which we’d like to add.
To me the old event heroes would still be available for summons, even with with event tokens, while the new ones will replace them on the event’s top tier’s reward.
I am very happy that a plan to update/refresh all current events is under consideration. After multiple top 100 finishes I just finished #5 in legendary, and it was as much fun as a root canal. The challenges should be about getting good runs with great boards with beautiful waves of tiles killing the minions and the bosses. Instead, it is about getting one great board and using items for the rest. The boss specials and colors don’t even matter! The team composition is nearly all mono, whereas it should be that you can at least be competitive by careful team planning with 3-2 or 2-2-1 distribution addressing multiple minion colors and boss colors.
I am not the only one who feels this way. In fact, even UCLAPack and Dator (who popularized the winning methods) said this would be their last event.
There are some excellent ideas in this thread:
In addition, there is a thread in the beta forum about “ROW Bugs, Balance and Design” dated Feb 2
Here are some of my favorite ideas modified from UCLAPack and Wharflord’s posts from those threads:
–Change the match score formula to reward making multiple large tile clearing matches rather than just an average tile to move ratio. This would eliminate the “one great board” method.
–Make a scoring cost to using items. Perhaps the first two items wouldn’t cost much, but if you cleared a wave or more with dragon bombs and regular bombs and axes your score would not be competitive. I like this solution because folks who need the items for survival can still use them and those people aren’t worried about their scores.
Before you implement this, please test it in beta. Unlike other event testing, the scores should be shown. In order to limit any advantage beta players have, perhaps only one or two levels should be available, and the score changes should be explained to all players.
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Great summary. In addition to those two changes, i would increase the number of minion waves from two to three, while reducing minion’s health by, say, 25%. This change would further cut back on the carpet-bomber approach and put a higher premiium on board skills.
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In the answer to Question 19, Kira mentions: “I didn’t realize how little known Danzaburo was outside of Japan, he’s quite famous.”
As someone who has used Danzaburo A LOT due to not having a better option, I’ve developed a fondness for the little guy. I’d like to know where I can find out more about his origins and significance in Japan. I’m American, and honestly, I just assumed the devs were like, “What can we do that we haven’t done yet? How about a badger with a little hat?” 
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See here:
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And according to