To start with I am a casual player I spend some money but not free or big spender just to give an insight. I would guess that the majority of the money made by the game comes from the casual purchaser, not the big time spenders to which the game appears to favour. I have no jealousy it’s just how I play.
Now my take on the game.
I see a lot said about range I have my own thoughts but without a real logger in game, and no will to count tiles manually I will not go into this, however some things should not be range at all so let’s begin.
Titans - Seriously how hard is it to rotate. yellow/purple/red/green/blue. This is the fairest for all members of an alliance as different people have different strengths it’s also more interesting. So what happens now, Purple/Purple/Purple/Yellow/Yellow/Yellow/Yellow/Red/Purple etc etc. This would be so easy to fix and should have been the case from day one.
Elemental chests - Why are these based on range and luck? This should be a simple calculation, one every 10 chests or 20 chests whatever number you want to make it but not luck based I really feel for some people in getting these to appear. Again, simple to fix and should also of been the case from day one. Not everything has to be RANGE!
Hero slots - Why do you penalise people for levelling and staying with the game reducing the amount of slots given as a reward for higher levels. I have never known a game penalise loyalty before.
Hero slots2 - Why do you charge more and more for expansion slots why not let people have one of each hero, they have earned them and should be reasonably able to store them should they want to.
Hero slots3 - This is linked to previous 2 you want people to spend money you want people to summon more and more heroes, then you limit the slots they have available by making it more expensive the more you have, I am sure there is some business logic to annoying your fan base I’m just not sure what it is.
Ascension items - Level 3 ascension items do not appear to be too bad maybe gloves and compass could be a little better, however this is again when range is messed up I have 2 trap tools and over 20 of everything else. There should be a mechanic to solve this. I know you are working on it just make it not the travesty you were beta testing requiring diamonds, I will not use diamonds to convert something I have earnt into another item that I was just unlucky not to get. The cynic in me would be convinced the programming to purposefully making an item rare just to earn diamonds by converting to another item. Look at what is happing with gambling within games and new laws coming.
Ascension items2 - Why are 4 stars so rare, it has taken me 8 months of playing to get the items required to ascend one 5 star from each colour. Again this makes no business sense there is no will for me to summon any other heroes, there is zero need for me to spend money on diamonds to pull that new hero because I’m now looking at another 8 months away from being able to level them. By which time the heroes of today will be weaker than the heroes in 8 months so I may as well just wait. Your losing churn money in a big way, you need to drastically increase the frequency of these so as to make summoning heroes be of some meaning. Because until I get the required items I will not summon at any event beyond doing it for free because there is no point logically.
Tournaments - These are basically pay to win, that’s fine if you designed them this way. The way they are implemented I have no interest in them it’s basically almost a dead feature. Except for a couple of days, you get some more raid shots to fill the chest. I am not sure if this is what you wanted this big upgrade to be but that’s the way it is for the majority of your players. Even looking at the pay to win people I’m am not sure the rewards are great enough for the big spenders to bother with either I could be wrong.
Advanced buildings1 - Wow I am not sure what you were thinking with these mines and farms give such minimal increases which you will probably at some point lose because you will need to convert something for the new buildings. They take an incredible amount of time to build and give such little resources it will take months to earn it back, you need to increase the amount they give by a factor of 4 they are meant to be advanced!. If the build time should be so long give some payback. The current implementation is beyond terrible chests should not be the main source of a resource.
Advanced buildings2 - Iron and food storage why are they advanced when the increase between levels is smaller than the standard levels? What exactly are you gaining be making people store such little amounts more? This is something I really can’t figure out it offers almost no advantage making people store artificially less food or iron. Just increase the costs for the other advanced buildings and let people store more. You do realise that people store food in the TC?
Advanced buildings3 - TC? why isn’t there one I’m still using mainly level 2 and 11 to produce heroes. 19 is nice but mainly the main source is level 2. Many of the current levels remain unresearched because they are so useless. there needs to be a new level 2 and new level 11 to improve levelling, the current game design was based on release people have a lot of heroes compared to then, the game design needs to keep up again no point spending money on new heroes or slots if I can’t level my current ones.
Energy - The game has moved on; heroes are coming at us thick and fast if you can evolve them see above. New quests all the time requiring more and more energy, which is all good, but the energy required is still based on the design of the original game it is not enough. The best introduction to the game I have seen is Atlantis rises reducing the energy and increasing the rewards actually feels more fun, the negative side is outside of those 3 days the rest of the plod feels much less fun a real drag. You need to look at the energy, game wide either increase the energy regained or lower it for events and the like but it is not balanced correctly at the moment.
Loot tickets - why do these even exist you know it’s not fun to repeat the same thing over and over on something you have already completed. It should be standard to automatically complete a level already completed this more than anything will me quit the game repetition is not fun I wonder how many people left due to this. Loot tickets can be kept to use as double loot for a level they are used one which makes more sense given the name.
Season Events - Have a long hard look at the energy required and the loot received vs the rest of the game it is so unbalanced it’s amazing that you haven’t fixed it yet. The hard part is only worth doing because of the 4 star carrot at the end something that is available in other quests every couple of week but much less effort. The normal levels are not worth doing at all. There are Seasonal they happen 4 times a year the loot should be substantially better or the energy required substantially less.
Some random musings but no evidence so i won’t go into detail just wondering if others notice the same
Why when raiding do I leave heroes with 5hp or less so often is there some code making this happen, it happens so frequently it surely cannot be my bad luck. I even got one down to zero once before war heal saved him then killed my entire team!
Do elemental chests appear more often when you let a timer expire than rushing it, seems to be my experience.
If you made it this far you did well but thank you
Now I have got this off my chest I feel much better : )