State of the game

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 : )

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So basically, you want empires & puzzles 2.

The list you have here has a lot on it. That in developer speak is going to take a long time to do / change unfortunately time is the developer’s most precious currency. Remember how long S2 took to roll out? That should help with perspective.

As far as events go I can probably say there won’t be changes. The farms and mines are slow as, well, they’re farms and mines! That’s how they work. Upgrade as much as possible and always upgrade your storages first. This gives you bigger returns on levels and farming. Raid. specificaly raid for ham or iron or both! Trophies are cool but they don’t feed your army or build.

Remember there are people playing two years longer than you have. Ask them about the good old days. There wernt any. Players starting today have a WAY bigger game to work with. For good reason.

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Without feedback I guarantee there will no be improvement.

With feedback they should listen whether they take action is another thing.

Some of the above should be a quick fix.

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Ok so I really understand what @Edamer is saying and if you don’t agree it’s your choice. I understand what you are saying also. IMO would I like for most of what he said to change? Of course I would but being realistic I know it’s not. Doesn’t change the fact that things must evolve with time. I sure hope you don’t believe (example) that the job you work at should start everyone at the same pay from 5 years ago. Times change so do everything else. Again I don’t honestly believe that all of what he said Is going to happen but some of it needs to be addressed for this game to continue moving forward.

The good old Union Jack :slight_smile:

Very well articulated.
The rarity of 4* ascension items is the biggest issue for me as
even if you have good luck with summoning you can’t ascend a lot
of your hard-earned 5* heroes. I’m having almost disgraceful luck in obtaining them over the last few months.
It is definitely making me spend less on summoning.

I’m glad somebody else noticed how often enemy heroes survive with only a few hp left. It makes the gameplay feel artificial.

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They rotate rare titan.

After they lengthen the duration to 5 days, it did become closer to pay to win.

Maybe they should have lower the trials energy? :thinking:

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The point about the advanced buildings producing so little has been irking me considerably — I was behind in food storage. You would think that upgrading the advanced to above 1 would be the most efficient way to get food storage capacity up. But level 19->20 gives a lot more storage than 20->Advanced or even Advanced 1->Advanced 2. The advanced mine upgrades give a tiny return on iron per hour, while at the same time putting your mine out of commission for several days. The returns, while they will be “necessary” for the upgrades, are incommensurate with the resources put into them.

And stronghold 22 and 24 are just money(iron) and time sinks as designed at the moment, as they will not let you do anything that 21 and 23 couldn’t do.

So much this lol. This is generally good advice for gameplay too with the way the game is.

I agree with everything mostly.

Although I see your point of spending money through continues and the tournament offer on Sundays, these tournaments aren’t P2W. If you don’t lose 4 times, then you have the same number of attacks as everybody (5 each day) who chose to continue with gems after defeated. Even if you lose 4 times and are defeated, it’s not really worth continuing, as it won’t drastically improve your loot tier due to the limit on attacks.

To answer one of the last points:

Because elemental chests are RNG (as you pointed out above) then theoretically the probability of getting one sooner increases the more you skip the chests, since you get a roll to see if you get an elemental chest each time the next one spawns.

But I must stress; it is a probability!! Not a guarantee that you will get one. So it’s luck whether you skip or not.

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I like a lot of the points made. I guess I’m just not really following on the loot ticket thing. Farming 12/9 on auto is obviously a lock for most of us. Therefore, it is ok to use the Auto Feature.

So you can use Loot Tickets as a simple convenience on those to save on time. Or, if you barely beat an advanced level, such as some mid to high level Hard Mode S2s, you can then use the LTs to “punch up” on what’s farmable.

Hi @Edamer

For a ‘rant’ that’s a pretty good effort, pretty reasonable and I’m sure will hit a nerve with many players.

Hero Slots - I’ve managed with just the free slots for ages but am now considering using my hard earned gems. This is because I am now keeping duplicates in case they can be used in hero academy and my roster is increasingly cluttered.

I didn’t know that the price increased. I agree that does seem unreasonable and unnecessary.

Tournaments - are only as p2w as anything else. I normally finish in top 5 or top 1 without paying gems and have a completely free roster.

World energy - my cap is up to 40 after about 18 months and it’s fine, I can complete everything without pressure. Where would the bottle neck be? There is a lot more content now, which is great but clearly some people are struggling.

Elemental Chests - I don’t mind the range, I like the surprise and anticipation.

Advanced buildings…I haven’t got past harpoons yet, but I’m not relishing building more barns for the next few months!

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Personally I think these are great points you make. I’m what I would imagine is classified as a big spender for this game, and many of these little things are pain points for us as well.

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Blockquote
Hi @Edamer
For a ‘rant’ that’s a pretty good effort, pretty reasonable and I’m sure will hit a nerve with many players.

Thank you it was meant to be constructive of course i don’t expect every one to agree with everything it just my take on the game. If just some feedback i think could help the game.

Blockquote
I didn’t know that the price increased. I agree that does seem unreasonable and unnecessary.

it goes to 100 and then 150 tbh I will not pay 150 I don’t know if it continues to rise. It’s my fault I am a hoarder and a collector I quite like the idea of having one of each chr i collected beyond 1 and 2 of course but it’s not feasible so abandoned although i still want to keep one outside the standard heroes.

Blockquote
Tournaments - are only as p2w as anything else. I normally finish in top 5 or top 1 without paying gems and have a completely free roster.

It’s a fair point I just view anything as pay to continue as more of a pay to win dynamic.

Blockquote
Elemental Chests - I don’t mind the range, I like the surprise and anticipation.

I see you point for me i don’t do too badly, but I know people in game have such bad luck and for me it really doesn’t have to be there for this item to even the field.

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DaveCozy

Do elemental chests appear more often when you let a timer expire than rushing it, seems to be my experience.

Blockquote
Because elemental chests are RNG (as you pointed out above) then theoretically the probability of getting one sooner increases the more you skip the chests, since you get a roll to see if you get an elemental chest each time the next one spawns.
But I must stress; it is a probability !! Not a guarantee that you will get one. So it’s luck whether you skip or not.

What Im trying to say is I skip most of the time to get as many chests as possible, but now and again if i get timing right I will let the timer go by itself

It is when I let it expire without skipping I see an elemental chest I can’t actually recall when last I got one by skipping, its just an observation no hard evidence it just seems odd. Just wondered if any else had noticed same.

My view is if you have to pay to continue you’re likely not that competitive in the tournament anyway. It is possibly P2W in the sense that emblemed heroes give you an advantage, especially in the 3* tournaments that F2P’ers like me tend to have no emblemed heroes. But overall still RNG that determines much of the outcome.

I do agree that the price of hero slots is too high.

Ascension materials are too rare, but for me as a casual F2P I have not run into a bottleneck where I have no hero levelling project in a given colour yet. Probably because I am lazy in farming and run mainly TC11 for feeders.

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It does raise as mine are 200 now

Every 5 purchases, the price goes up 50 gems. Some people are now at the level where it costs 250 or 300 or 350 to add more slots.

If it’s worth it to a person, they will buy. If it isn’t, they won’t.

Game wants you to feed and level up heroes, then summon more and level more. Game does not want to encourage giant collections of dozens and dozens or hundreds of heroes. You want this from the game, game lets you do it - but you must pay.

Continuing can dramatically increase your loot, not sure why you said otherwise. I’ve continued day 2 of a tourney and finished top 1%. Had I not continued I would’ve been bottom 50%

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I’d say most ppl don’t farm 12-9 at all.

8-7 on the other hand is run on auto by most of us.

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