Candy Crush -- Gone Medieval (or "My thoughts on the game")

Game Discussion
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TL;DR “Meh, Caveat Emptor”

Preamble

Somewhere, some way my life must have gone terribly, awfully wrong to get stuck in the freemium loop of match-3 games. I’ve been a whale in some games (spent thousands) and in this game I’ve already spent a couple hundred. Here I am, a middle-aged dude playing with cartoons and spending hours upon hours grinding on a game with no end and stuck in the realm of ‘fun-adjacent’'…

But outside of the fact that I was doing much better before I installed puzzle quest 3… I’ve come to accept that I’ll always play these in some form or another. And this one is, at least, better than the loot-box dependent games that are solely PTW and only the biggest spenders get the special pictures… (“heroes” or “characters”). I truly believe I could get everything at Mythic if I just remain patient. DISCLAIMER I have impulse control issues

I got my kids into the game. 7, 11, 16 & 17. It gives us something to talk about. I’m building their characters because I’m a mean daddy and only let them play video games for 1-2 hrs weekly.
(Meanwhile I am a dutiful tap-rat, autoplaying each day at work).

Character Building

I like the option to build one of each class

I HATE THAT THE SPELL BOOK IS CLASS-SPECIFIC… but I get it. Just feels like a fake way to move the goal-posts, because I like switching between characters

I like the math battle with the gear, to figure out what works best.

I love that the initial run for each character class gives gems.

I do not like that it’s a trial and error situation where it’s easy to mess up and this game has such a small footprint in the arena (unlike Empires & Puzzles or Gemstone Legends in a prior life)— And wish that I had asked more questioned earlier on.

I think the extra skins are appropriately behind a paywall. Also, I never change mine. Because i don’t care what clothes my cartoon has on. But I don’t really like the whole character switching bit. I can’t explain why, I don’t have a good suggestion to change it… but you can’t give love to all the characters and have a life. Wish the ultimate spell could be swapped out… so you didn’t have to change the character and go through the game loading / reloading.

Drops, Loot, Offers

I think the drops are fair. People disagree-- they always whine for more, but I get glyphs, runes, etc at a rate that seems appropriate. If I don’t like it… I make the (stupid) choice to pay for it.
Sure there are bad deals, but gotta drain the money from the whales, so … cool.
I LOVE the x2 crowns deals and mourn my misuse of crowns-- again, wish I’d been more patient and used my crowns better instead of wasting them.

I’ve learned better how to spend my real dollars

1- VIP is stupid. Not worth it. it’s just like putting another bucket out to catch rainwater… I think it needs to be overhauled and that the people who like VIP are misguided and blind.

2- Ultimate Season Pass? If you gotta buy something… it does make seasons infinitely more fun. But… give me an option to buy more tokens after I’ve exhausted 9. Please?

3- Quest Pass / Quest Pass Ultimate x2 – THE ABSOLUTE best deal in the game. If you want to spend, like this game, and want to keep playing it at a rate that won’t get you stuck behind a major bottleneck-- get it.

4- Daily Crowns offer – second best deal in the game.

5- $5 USD Flash Deal for 500 crowns – Please do that again.

Crown costs in the shop – Never worth it. Sorry. Waste of money.

I could go on, but this is the bottom line – what I would have benefited from when I started the game— “What do I buy for the best value, and how much is it?”

Roughly $30 USD per month – Quest Pass Ultimate & Crowns Deal.

PVP (otherwise known as "fill the board with one gem as much as possible and kill the enemy slowly to earn 60-70%")

It’s bad. Worst I’ve ever seen in a freemium game.

  1. It is too easy to build a stunlock character and win.
    2.Opponents are still too repetitive, repeats or requires rematches (the opponents)
  2. Almost totally favors the attacker (what are a couple of minions gunna do against a halfway-coherent combo of spells?)
  3. Opponent autoplay is … well embarrassing. I like to win, but when I see obvious rows (to stun) being missed, huge skull combos that would be a killshot avoided for off-color matches? Well, I guess that explains why my defender record is almost the polar opposite of my attacker record.
  4. And what is the deal with the literal impossibility to climb the leaderboards due to poor available opponents? I’ve had several instances where I’ve had 10 battles at 60% bonus score and been 4000-5000 away from the top spot (at a distant second or third place).

so… yeah. PVP has sooo much work to do.

Non Story / Season Battles, adventures & events

Good enough. wouldn’t change it. always want more. but… adequate.

Seasons & Story Mode

I think seasons in their current form need to be retired / relegated to archive in favor of a new ideal:

I think a new map should be opened… after the initial story, it would be great to have the chance to do it at a higher difficulty (like seasons) and then have story mode part 2 - ~15 new chapters with 3 difficulty levels.

Otherwise, it’s good. I never care about the character interactions or script. but that’s just me.

Materials. The absolute most frustrating freemium commodity
  1. T4 Relics - STaaaahhhhhppppp with the extra types of relics. its too many. Consolidate, please
  2. Glyphs - Meh. okay.
  3. Sharts - Meh. okay.
  4. Food - Running out of use for it other than chests.
  5. Gold - Almost always at cap.
  6. Iron - Need more ability to earn / generate more.
  7. Gems - Need a bigger, steadier stream.

So there you have 'em. My unsolicited, unasked for impressions of the game.

Thoughts?

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Great review. Spot-on in many points, and your journey is very similar to mine. I wasted quite a bit of time/money early on with bad decisions.

Without a great Kingdom I probably would not be as engaged.

If you are not getting the top 10 opponent battles at 70% you will not be at the top of the leaderboard. Once you are doing that you will want to compare your top 10 with your kingdom-mates and friends to figure out what you are missing and why. The format is flawed for sure, but there is a method to the madness that is available for everyone to figure out.

The PvP format is not great and it is a huge time-sink. I would recommend just getting into the top 50/100 and playing your matches as fast as possible for the honor.

Good luck out there!

4 Likes
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You just nailed it … Kudos

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Yeah im almost always in top 10. Most of the time over 60% on my opponents. Theres just only so many points i can get if i dont get the higher level opponents.

I do appreciate the guidance though, as i usually just stop when im over 60%. Truthfully it gets tedious to spend 10 min filling the board with gems, triggering hero effort, activating ultimates… and making sure i have something to punch through those that regen ridiculously— usually eldritch blast burns them to death.

I run a warlock with a night set, 2 dragon pieces, khaz pants/gloves and watcher pauldrons, and a skull ring, then i use darkness dark ice eldritch blast and tentacle slap (in case rng doesnt give me a stun)
Would appreciate thoughts on improvement. First thing i may swap is a khaz helm and bloodfang blade (or the new eldritch weapon coming up to match watcher pauldrons)

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I have found that the Warlock has too much trouble keeping the opponent alive and getting the non-slap stuns.
Credit to @HigureTheStillWind for turning me towards the Assassin. The assassin ultimate really helps with getting row-based stuns when RNG gets you, it also helps with match 9’s and heroic effort. Most people run it with night blade, but I prefer Vampiric Touch for the healing. It can be tough to punch through some defenses, but the 3 stack ultimate will give the spell a lot more oomph to get you through.
Gear-wise I just run Royal 4, Trarg helm, Night 2-piece, and a level 1 ranged weapon when possible.

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The general feeling was before the update you needed a gear score of 2,800 or over to be gaurenteed to be offered all the opponents that would give you the highest scores. Not sure what the number is now, but it will be lower given that spells no longer contribute to that number. The devs say your opponents are based on your perceived difficulty. Keep farming and you will get there… Eventually :wink: but understandably depressing for the moment.

EDIT,: ultimately I do the same as the people answered below. I don’t nearly have the time it takes to challenge the top of the PVP leaderboards (doing the 33 battles a day is too much time) so I just aim for top 50 and be happy with that. If I hadn’t been playing for so long and wasn’t as powerful as I am I would just aim for top 100 or whatever you can do.

Also, I have no idea which kingdom you’re in but there are some very helpful kingdom discords out there for which you don’t even need to be a member of that kingdom.

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Wow, great and detailed analysis. Thanks for sharing your views on the game!

As @00h00m said I find Assassin to be the best class to get 70% in PvPs. Whenever it is possible I run Royal II, Night I, serpentine ring and khazdhuli helm. Spells: darkness, dark ice, channel darkness and night blade (Vampiric touch when I really need that extra healing). However, even with all opponents beaten at 70% it is not guaranteed you will get first place due to out of league matchups. So I decided to give up on it and just do fast battles to farm honor and get into the top 50.

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Like many of us. There’s not enough hours in the day as it is, so to waste a couple of them spent trying to aim for 70% where the rewards don’t justify the effort seems….well, there’s other games out there to play too!

I treat the PVPs how some people treat food shopping: get what you came for, in and out as quickly as possible.

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So… at the risk of being thematic… i sunk my teeth into the warlock fully with this new spell book and didnt go to the assassin at all. But— i will take your advice, esp since i have mostly lego purple gear, with 5 mythics. Level 1 weapon is something i have not tried. I have noticed on elite i do well, because my weapons are weak.

Right now im in platinum open, gold elite and silver restricted. I just got tired of going for the gold each time with new gear, but now that i have mostly epic/lego sets for each color i am getting back into it.

Also— anyone annoyed that the buccaneer set favors blue matches? Esp when green spells are king and there are no good blue merc spells?

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Thanks for your reply. I was at 2800 gs before the update on both my accounts. Now just under 2300. I do well, am of average intelligence and research adequately— but theres just something to be said for open discourse.

My issue with not joining discord (or being active here until this week) is because i was avoiding prior pitfalls. I was very heavily into empires and puzzles, wrote silly stories on the forum, brought my alliance from 1000 to top 100, then stepped down as leader and helped it get to number 1 (as i was trying to lessen my time in game)—- was constantly in top of leaderboard on pvp, etc…… and my bank account cried because i spent a ton. I often feel embarrassed that these psychological hooks capture me— the feigned sense of community, the wink-wink “we dont care if you spend” mentality that inspires FOMO… but then I cut myself slack because I am human and human tricks work on humans—- plus I CAN stop if I want to.

Problem is, as a creator—- I am procrastinating and avoiding writing my books/creating music because that requires more focus than a life with 7 kids and a full time job allows.

Long winded way of saying—- youre absolutely right, the resources are there… Ive just been slow to use them because I am avoiding bad habits as well. But probably will at least dive into this community some.