đŸ§Ș The Beta Beat (v30) – Hero Balance Updates; Updated Alchemy Lab; Hero Academy; Updated Sand Empire Seasonal Event; Updated Path of Valor; New Season 3 Heroes; Jun/Jul/Aug/Sep HOTM – Sharing the Big Picture on What's Going on in Beta

Gameplay Help & Tactics
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@Ornery

WOW!!! :astonished:

That was
 probably
 no, definitely
 one of the most beautiful, accurate, and amazingly brazen posts I have read on here for a while (possibly ever?).

KUDOS, sir (or madam)!

I have “toned down” my own tone lately, because I felt that my previous aggressive tone was falling on deaf ears and just resulting in me getting flagged and personally attacked.

But you have certainly lived up to your forum handle, and in brilliant fashion (in spite of English not being your native language).

You are NOT only speaking for yourself.
You have my full support as well, for whatever that is worth.

THANK YOU!

It takes guts to speak the truth, and you certainly have those guts.
Your post here deserves thousands more likes.

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Well, thank you for your kind words, folk. :relaxed:

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I’ve been biting my own tongue lately. Wanting to call out SG for all of their
 what I would consider to be bad decisions. But also wanting to remain here on the forum, still wanting to play the game, not wanting to alienate or irritate other posters with my excessive negativity, because that usually always draws backlash (at least in my case).

But you basically said what a lot of us are thinking.

I don’t think it’s toxic to call out a game company when they’re moving in the wrong direction
 is it? I think it’s just speaking the truth. I don’t want this forum to always be full of negativity, but the burden is on the game developers themselves to make the community happy. If they’re failing to do so? It’s certainly not our fault. It’s their game. They have decided to ignore the community, decided to ignore their own hand selected beta testers, and just do whatever they want
 and not expect to get backlash from it? They brought this on themselves.

If other people want to block my posts, and block posts from others saying the same thing, because they think we’re just trying to bring the game down? Well I’m sorry, friends
 but if you are hell bent on blocking every single post from anyone who has a negative thing to say about this game? You are eventually going to have to block everyone.

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It’s a delicate matter – negativity, sincerity and constructivity. There’s a lot of and/versus relating them to each other.

Some – someone would say many – posts are negative, often stemming from very subjective thoughts about either what the game should be and/or the failure to understand general or specific factors. And sometimes people just need to vent. And are there just not enough aspects of this game warranting that? (That’s a rhetorical question. And the answer is ‘yes’.) So, one might argue that a lot of negative posts are really a symptom of an underlying problem, making them somewhat relevant. :joy:

There’s also posts based on somewhat objective facts and circumstances, that are nonetheless nonconstructive, because they bring only frustration and vague statements to the table. (We’re in some cases back to symptomatic posts here, by the way.) (And by the other way – don’t you dare call this paragraph vague! I work hard to make my general statements seem specific and on point!)

Anyway – I think it’s important to separate negative posts – meaning A) plainly nonconstructive (and maybe toxic) post – from B) different forms of provocative and argumentative posts, earnest posts and even depressing but factual posts.

Some people seem to make a distinction only between happy = good and sad = bad posts – sad posts being anything negative or critical. You can’t argue with that kind of logic, so 


You say SG has a lot of responsibility in this matter. I couldn’t agree more. But I’ll leave that for another post. :sweat_smile:

Oh, by the way – not that this comes as a shock to anybody taking the time to read this negative post (see what I did there?) – I want to emphasize that many, if not all, of us writing those category B posts, really care about the game. We spend a ■■■■■■■■ of time in the game – and we (from time to time) spend a ■■■■■■■■ of time here, on the forum, hoping to contribute to the game.

And we’re greeted mostly with silence. And the consolation by people just like us. And the spite of others, telling us to stop being victims. 
 We’re really nothing more than a support group for people in a bad relationship. :joy:

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I understand your dilemma, if you make it too easy to get heros then the big spenders/spenders might spend less. and you lose revenue however if people keep getting useless duplicates then it stops the motivation of pulls and reduces spending to.

I think allowing trading would be a good way to go here. Obviously this would hurt your bottom line if you allowed trading for free. However if you charged a certain amount of gems to be determined then had trades where one could trade a five star for a five star, or a five star for 6 four star ascention items you could probably make a profit vs your current position on the gems you charged per trade. just have it so the players can propose the trade to another and that person can say yes or no. once both players click yes and spend the gems you get the gems and thus players can be incentivised to load up on gems.

I currently have 3 Isarnias and two Elenas I could put them into the last level of hero academy for a lottery pull at a better hero, and since they are season 1 this would not be a big deal, however putting anything other then a season one five star in to get the standard season one five star does not seem like a great idea.

I would gladly trade one or two of my dupes for six mystic rings. I am sure there are players in the community who would gladly do that trade with me. if you had a global chat for this feature and then I agreed the exchange and we both spent 1000 gems on the exchange you got 2000 gems from us which is like $20 of topping up and I think most of the player base would be happy.

Also trading four stars could be the same sort of thing but like 500 gems etc Just allow players to trade but charge gems and have some way to block people if you dont want to trade with them and they troll spam you for trades lol.

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The issue with trading is that it opens up to a number of abuses:

  • Opens up the possibility for a black market to develop around in-game items/heroes, something which opens up the company to legal liabilities, like being a medium for money laundering, inadvertently supporting terrorist activities or drug cartels or hostile state actors, etc.
  • Opens up the possibility of people trading with their alternate accounts, shattering the action economy. We already know that people have alt accounts; people openly talk about them on this forum, Reddit, etc. Allowing trades will let people with these alt accounts to consolidate all their assets into a single account.
  • Devalues the non-special offers on the app. Once trades are initiated there would be little incentive to buy the less valuable options offered: instead of buying 2000 gems from the store, you could instead buy 5 Atlantis Offers from alt accounts and transfer them to a main account.

Trades are thus an interesting idea, but will almost certainly never happen.

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That is essentially what I’m trying to be here.

I try to offer constructive criticism to SG, telling them what I don’t like, why I don’t like it, what I think they could try to do instead
 not just mindless angry venting, I wouldn’t waste my time complaining if I didn’t think there was a possible solution to the problem. There are obviously many possible solutions to practically everything that people come here to complain about. The main problem is that SG doesn’t seem to listen or care.

I also wouldn’t waste my time complaining if I thought this was just an overall bad game. I think it is a fun game that has a lot of potential to be even more fun, but many of the things they choose to focus on are things that I think mostly make the game less fun. Which is absolutely counterproductive to the very basic idea of what games are supposed to be.

Today, I officially added the hashtag “NoSpend” to my alliance name. That is not meant as an insult to people who like to spend, it’s not an attempt to “defund” SG and put them out of business entirely, it’s not a passive aggressive way to suggest that F2P players are superior to P2W players, nothing like that.

When I come here to discourage spending, it’s because I don’t want people to hurt their own finances chasing heroes that realistically, they have no chance of getting. I’m trying to save people from themselves and their own tendencies to keep putting more money in that slot machine, even though deep down they probably know that they shouldn’t, because they tell themselves that “my luck has been horrible so far, but I’m going to get that hero soon, I just know it! I just need to keep feeding the beast!”

Stop feeding the beast.

It doesn’t care about you. It’s just going to take your money. Maybe you’ll get lucky if you feed it enough. Then maybe a month later, they’ll nerf your hero, or come out with a new hero that can easily counter yours, and then here you are again faced with the same dilemma. Should I go spend a bunch more again for a tiny chance to summon the next hero? It never ends. You’re now stuck in a never ending spending loop that is going to drive you either mad or into bankruptcy, whichever comes first.

You can still play the game for free, and enjoy it for what it is. Accept the fact that you won’t be able to get everything. Can still continue to complain about stuffs
 in fact, I highly encourage people to do just that. In a productive, constructive sort of way. Not by attacking other players with different opinions. I don’t even recommend attacking the developers themselves - in spite of the fact that their own bad ideas are the ones that led us to frustration
 we’re highly unlikely to convince them to see our side if all we do is lash out against them. “You catch more flies with honey,” etc.

Besides
 if you’re so mad at the game devs that you are driven to an anarchistic desire to see them utterly destroyed completely? You do not belong here. Find yourself another game that doesn’t infuriate you so much. I’m still here because I don’t want to destroy them; on the contrary, I’m trying to keep them from destroying themselves.

Oh, and also here to provide a little bit of comic relief and a sympathetic shoulder to cry on for those who are still brave and persistent enough to hang around and post here. :slightly_smiling_face:

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money laundering how? its in game currency not cash i did not say they should allow us to give cash to other people. However maybe people could arrange paypal purchases where we pay one and another real money for an unfair trade.

By the same likes though Amazon Ebay and any other exchange for goods on the whole internet needs to be closed down pronto due to money laundering. I just do not see that as a valid argument unless you want to start saying we should close down Ebay.

what would be the massive deal if people did consolidate heros between accounts?

no i said you would need to spend gems to trade. i did not mention about players changing gems atlantis coins etc between accounts or been able to trade this i mentioned heros and ascention items.

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This is one of the oft ignored aspects of the game IMO.

We usually classify players by the amount of money they spend here as F2P, C2P, and P2W. Sometimes we distinguish between levels of participation, i.e. casual/relaxed (waste plenty of flags) and active (use every flask and almost every flag). Some other times we also look at experience and dedication, i.e. rookie (0-6 months), experienced (6-24 months), and seasoned veterans (2+ years). (Arbitrary numbers for illustration purpose)

That’s dozens of different categories of players right there when you combine them. And each one feels entitled to determine what the game should do. It would be great if we all agreed but since most of our interests conflict, I don’t see how we can.

Somewhere in this thread, someone calculated that it would take over 2 years for a new player starting today to get to level 10 of HA and start trading for old HOTMs or Season 2 heroes. So this clearly is not meant to entice new players, no matter how much they spend or play. It clearly isn’t meant for most casual players since it’s too much of a chore to start using it successfully. And ultimately it clearly isn’t meant for P2W players who either already have most of the heroes offered, or otherwise are P2W because they don’t want to grind like the others.

Which leaves only F2P or C2P experienced or veteran players who are dedicated to this game.They already have the buildings so it will only take them a few months to upgrade HA and AL fully, and they also have the resources to start taking advantage of it. And in the end, have shown plenty of dedication and loyalty to this game.

And honestly, I see it as a nice thank you to that particular group of people for their dedication and loyalty. Simple as that. It’s not too much so it doesn’t threaten the gap between P2W players and the rest, and it doesn’t increase significantly the gap between rookies and the rest.

I know we all want to have more and we believe we are entitled to more but as with everything else, this is all about balance. New players need to see that they can catch up with experienced players and paying players need to see that they’re getting value for their money while the others in between can see that they can get closer to the top through their hard work.

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I appreciate you looking for the positives in the cards that are dealt.

But I consider myself in this player base category you defined and I do not see anything about Alchemy Lab or Hero Academy as something that resembles a service of appreciation to me. It’s not about entitlement but rather masking a long awaited/desired feature in a farce of utility which is honestly more of a resource sink than functional game feature.

Using these two buildings are more “I’m capped at food & iron and don’t really have anything to spend it on so F it let me give this a whirl”

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^ditto

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

  • F2P, 18 months in the game
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QFT. +1 here.

dogwbazooka

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Just curious, how long would you estimate it will take you to get everything that SnG are asking to be done before you can actually get some kind of an attempt from the HA?

I’m 10 months in with a 2nd builder the whole time and I think I’m at least 6 months away. I haven’t even started to upgrade the Lodge or AL yet also

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Out of curiosity, what would you recommend for HA and AL?

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AL has been messed up for so long
and I boo anyone in our alliance who builds it that I don’t even remember what I dreamed it could be:

My initial gut reaction/amendment for HA is found here:

I still feel it’s a fairly reasonable request but at that time event heroes were not included. I would just throw them into tier 10 with HoTMs (HotM/Event for HotM/Event)

SGG did take my use of the word “retrain” and implement it into what has gone live.

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thanks for asking. I don’t know, others here have done the math but I’m personally too lazy to do it (I do enough math n my day job). But my Stronghold is only at Level 22.

Someone did the math, and it takes 82 days to get Hero Academy all the way up to level 10
 assuming you already have Stronghold Level 25! And also assuming your food and iron storages are leveled enough to cover the build and research costs


So
 I’m not holding my breath :upside_down_face:

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Well, actually it is from the moment you start upgrading SH25. But you need ALL food and iron storages maxed out in order to use the last level


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Not a bad suggestion. On a first glance, it seems to me that the current final version is not far off yours, up to your T8 (which I find a bit confusing as I don’t know what you mean by “old troops”. One could even make an argument that some levels are actually better considering the lesser times but that depends on our priorities. (I don’t care for troops for example but many of my friends do.)

Your T9 is basically the current T10 without the chance to convert a legendary hero to a HOTM or event hero and the main difference is your suggestion for a T10 level dedicated to HOTMs.

One obvious flaw here is that there is no chance to train a legendary hero into a HOTM or event hero for those who don’t have a HOTM but enough vanilla 5*s from TC20.

But I’m also curious about your proposed T10. Most of my friends have perhaps 2-3 extra HOTMs they have not maxed. Assuming they successfully convert them into better HOTMs within a month or two, wouldn’t your T10 become unusable by them?

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You make a valid point that my suggestion has flaws.

I would counter by saying I made that up in 5 minutes after seeing how SGG configured HA, while the developers have had over a year since they announced the feature originally to sort out how to make this thing work. (See: Announcement link below showing HA last May/June)

Addressing your point on tier 10 being functional long-term (not becoming obsolete) perhaps Level 10 includes ability to feed 2 vanilla or 1 HotM/Event/S2 for 1 HotM/Event/S2.

Anyhow not here nor there. I appreciate you trying to be a positive player
I won’t excuse SGG in the process.

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Preach:))) 20 characters

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