I have to look at the Season news later, because I was too excited about the changes to the game itself to absorb them properly. But here’s my feedback on the game changes:
Followers and Reforging
The Follower changes look absolutely amazing. Their new abilities seem useful in exactly the right ways, and the levels at which and ways in which they improve make sense and seem like they will make upgrading Followers rewarding. The way the abilities are divided up among the Followers makes sense too, and was nicely done. Reforging seems to be everything players were hoping for (I have lots and lots of words I could say about this, since I’m really happy about it, but these ones sum it up). (Also, I like the new graphics representing the new system.)
The one big question is the cost (I’m guessing it’s still being debated, which is why it wasn’t included). That could make or break the system. Equipment creation and reforging being instant makes me nervous that it’s going to have a super high cost. Hoping that’s not the case, and the cost will be reasonable. (If it’s relevant, when it comes down to it, I’d prefer lower cost but waiting over really high cost but instant. Instant is very nice, but not at the price of an inflated cost.)
Eveline being updated to reflect the new changes is good, but hopefully she’s still on the list of followers to be revamped in the future so she can actually be useful.
Darkhunter was originally supposed to be part of this update. Guess he’s being reworked in the future instead? That’s fine, but it would be nice if you told us directly when you change from what you told us you were going to do (‘we planned to do x but are doing y instead’ or even just ‘we aren’t doing x anymore because of reason z but are still deciding what to do instead’). I didn’t quite understand what the line about him (‘…with future support for Darkhunter for Rune and Scroll crafting’) meant, but I’m hoping that it means he’s getting reworked. And hopefully he’ll also be able to give Glyphs, as he wouldn’t be very useful (with the game’s current system for Runes, Scrolls, and Glyphs at least) if he just gave Runes and Scrolls. End game players get plenty of runes and scrolls from chests (and are walled by Glyphs) so they’d have little use for him.
I think the only other thing I have to say about Followers and Reforging is: could we maybe have either no chance or a severely reduced chance to get off element attributes when rerolling (for example firestrike on an ice weapon)? That was one of players’ main frustrations with attributes. And the rerolling of the new system will definitely help in getting around that. But it would be even better if we didn’t have to deal with getting those terrible attributes in the first place.
Offers
The ‘create your own offers’ is actually a pretty neat idea. This is a great improvement to offers! I’m actually kinda sad I won’t be able to experiment with any of these as a player with limited cash to spend. Also, hopefully these are reasonably priced, since I can see that being an issue (based on how overpriced everything in the game generally is).
Maybe as an extension of this idea, for some of the holidays you could have an event or two (like the recent mini holiday one that was focused on doing certain things such as fighting x number of battles) where the ultimate reward is a customizable bundle like for the offers (but with more limited options)? That would give f2p players a taste of using bundles, maybe coax some players who are on the fence about certain offers into seeing their value and purchasing, and make the rewards for those more exciting.
Shard and Relic Changes
I was super, super excited after reading about these changes. I had hoped for a consolidation of upgrading resources similar to this, but thought it was one of those ideal dreams that would never happen. So to hear that that type of change was actually happening was amazing! I think this will make the game a lot easier for new players to understand, and help older players not have to spend so much time on resource management.
The way the changes are being done (with the conversion and the way things are being renamed) seems optimal to me. So pretty happy.
Now we just have to see how it plays out in-game. There might be some unintended wrinkles with the new system that come up and have to be ironed out, but overall it looks like it will feel quite good and be a big improvement.
Also, as a side note, I like the new relic designs a lot.
I wish the shard designs had been changed up a bit if they were going to represent the entire category of shard, as they’re fitting but a bit simple (for example, the armor one uses the Greater Armor Shard, which has a shield on it, which I always found cool, but at the same time it seems it should have looked fancier if it’s representing the entirety of armor shards. However, if shards had existing ones, then I think the ones chosen were generally the ones that were the most fitting out of the available options, so nice job there.
One question for this: are the methods by which players obtain things or drop rates going to be changed as part of this? I’m having a bit of trouble imagining how acquisition of things would work, since I don’t think it could stay exactly the same. Could it?
Inventory Tweaks
THE TILES ARE BIG NOW!!! As I told my kingdom, that news is exciting enough to deserve caps. Thank you 1000x over for changing this.
The name is also big and readable now. Though level and power level for gear is still a bit small and weirdly placed. The break of the bar in the middle is an improvement over what was first shown though. Perhaps at minimum these two things can just be stretched to take up a bit more horizontal space? That would both make them slightly bigger (and thus more readable) and a bit better places so they seem less like they’re just floating oddly. No names on the sets actually equipped on the hero still, so memorization of which piece is which is still required there. Also, players often want to be able to share their sets, and no text on equipped gear is a major drawback when understanding each other’s builds.
As for the borders, the new fancy corners are cool, and I like the way the border for the rare items is a very pretty shade of blue-silver. Epic, Legendary, and Mythic items all having gold borders, with just the gems in the corners changed, makes it hard to tell them apart just based on border. It would be nicer if they followed the model of the rare borders better (purple-gold or purple-silver for Epics, gold or orange-gold for Legendaries and red-gold borders for Mythics) Also, in the case of some of them (like middle image in gear vault), the corners extend too far out, making the image look circular instead of square.
Detailed vs non-detailed is still eh (I think the insistence on making text optional instead of a standard will prevent the detailed view from being as nice as it could be, and that it has already had an effect in how the detailed view was designed) but I guess now stats on how many players use detailed vs non-detailed view will be available. So we’ll see what the data says. (I’d actually be quite interested, even just for the sake of the knowledge itself unrelated to anything else, to see the stats on this.)
The hero model is still a major focus in the equip screen, and the overall poor layout is still the same, which makes it still a downgrade from 1.2 for me. Bigger tiles for the equip screen as well are extremely nice, but don’t help enough with the core issues. I’m really hoping this is just one thing that there wasn’t enough time to fully work on (which is understandable).
Perhaps you can give us one or two specifics of things you wanted to work on in the inventory screen but weren’t able to as examples? Your vision as devs and our vision as players has been so different that I think we’re all a little worried about what the end goal/vision is still. Knowing a bit more detail would help a lot with this.
Autoplay Changes
Ooh, those changes sound great! They fix one of my biggest problems with autoplay, and I also like the way they’re implemented, with the option to turn them on and off.
Now if a minimum match limit for the AI would be implemented (my other biggest pet peeve with it is how it sometimes only does one match, and often does just two, causing you to lose often just because of the limited damage and mana even when you’re more than powerful enough to beat the fight) and autoplay enabled for multiplayer (perhaps even just for fights where you outpower the fight by a certain amount) all of my issues with autoplay would be fixed. 1/3rd of the way there! But in the meantime, I’m definitely going to be enjoying this change a lot.
Kingdom-Related Changes
You can see what kingdom players are from now! That’ll be great.
And I like that Kingdoms are only advertised to players once they hit lvl 10. I think that change will help reduce the number of guilds who have slots filled by players who try out the game and then leave.
Minions and Food
This is an application I never thought of for food at all, so it’s very interesting. It seems like it would work well, in theory at least. It’s a use that’s very nice, but not mandatory, so early-game players can still save food to level their Followers without missing out on anything.
Could food perhaps be used to reduce a minion’s cooldown time as well? I think I’d find that an even more useful application of food.
Also, yay about the higher base food cap.
Bug Fixes
Yay, spell icons are being fixed! No more spells with the same icon! (At least, this is what I understood this to mean.)
Warlock Brimstone buff is being fixed, good. As well as some of the freezing bugs for battle.
Aww, the visual glitch I’ve been having for at least a month and a half now wasn’t mentioned at all in the known errors or in the fixed bugs. I keep hoping it gets fixed soon, because it’s really annoying me.
Glaring Omissions
Now time for some not-so-good stuff: the stuff the update, once again didn’t address.
Inventory Space
Inventory space isn’t mentioned at all. And isn’t fixed or changed… yet again… How long has it been since we were promised this ‘shortly’ now? And yet again, months later, such a major issue for players isn’t addressed at all, even to mention it’s still being worked on. That’s two updates in a row now where it hasn’t been mentioned at all. It was ridiculous last time. It’s even more so this time, if it’s even possible for it to be so.
Yes, we understand that whatever new system you want isn’t ready. But you can’t just leave things the way they are right now and expect players to deal in the meantime. You have to at least offer us a temporary solution. If nothing else, just temporarily increase our inventory slots until the new system can be developed. But we need something. Please. I can’t even be excited for the new seasonal gear because I don’t have any space for it, and I’ve heard other players say similar things. I don’t even have enough space for my regular sets, as my post from September should have illustrated. For the game to continue to function well, we need more inventory space.
And we need communication about what’s going on with this.
Battles Screen
So we’re going to be stuck with the terrible Battle Screen with half of the stuff hidden and everything jammed on the same page for another month or two? Please no, I don’t think I can take it that long. Can we get some sort of temporary change? Even just downsizing the icons so they all fit on one page? Or making more than one tab and dividing stuff between them? It doesn’t have to look great or be an amazing innovation. Just be more functional than what we have now.
Gear Upgrades Automatically Set At Max Upgrade Level
This topic originally came up in March. We’ve had numerous promises to fix this since then (Kefka in the March topic outright says he has enough feedback to put in a QoL request), but no tangible results. Despite numerous complaints such as this one.
Legitimate question: is it really that hard to just not have it default to the max level? What’s been the wait on doing anything about this? Especially when it’s such a massive issue with players and has the potential to make them quit the game out of frustration.
Music Bugs
One is the issue that some players have had all the way since official launch where they have no music. The other is the victory music loop issue (which was fixed then revived again). Neither of these bugs will be fixed in the upcoming update, and they’re not mentioned at all in the notes. Please let us know what’s going on with them.
Mana Cap
T0 PVP is ruining the arena right now and making it not worth it to put effort in. Players were promised that the devs would at least consider it, but there’s been no news since then. And with this update, there’s a ring that has a chance to fill mana, which swings the meta even more towards T0. Someone from my kingdom had the perfect quote about why T0 sucks: they said it “seems like a contempt of the game’s most fundamental principle, matching gems…”. We play the game to match gems, not cast spells asap. And we don’t play it to be frustrated at the arena either. So please, put a mana cap into place like players have been begging you to do for a very long time now, so the game can stay about matching and stay fun. It would take one line of code wouldn’t it (something like ‘if starting mana >! x, starting mana = x (where x is standing in for whatever amount is ideal for mana to start at (probably 1 below the lowest possible spell cost))?
Kingdom Defense Fixes
After all of the promises about Kingdom Battle fixes, another update has come without any changes. Or even any solid plans. You asked for feedback at one point, and we all gave it. And then… you just didn’t bother to implement any of it. Not even the small, simple changes. How long until we get an Overkill mode, and other Kingdom Defense fixes?
Other Disappointments
- Bottom navigation isn’t being changed at all, so it’ll still be a pain.
- No text returning for the icons in the top nav bar.
My list of what I need at minimum to keep playing was:
- Larger icons (for everything that was made smaller, such as the chests, gear, etc)
- relocated gear button
- Battles not being all on one screen and requiring scrolling
- More info on gear, spell, and minion icons (name added back at minimum)
- Sorting being similar to 1.2 again (can sort items by type of equipment without having to select a slot on your character first, sorts not only greying things out, no more multiple taps on the same thing doing something different for each tap, etc.)
Out of these, we’ve gotten larger icons for gear (not for chests or anything else I think) and more info on gear, spells, and minions icons. So 1.5 out of 5 (I’ll be generous and say 1.75 out of 5 because bigger gear icons were a big deal). … I just don’t think I can bear dealing with the game without these changes. I’m still playing a fair amount, but I’ve noticed I’m playing less than I used to, when I was always in the game, just because I can’t stand the new UI.
I mean, can’t the gear icon be moved to the right side at minimum? That’s not a hard change, and would make a big difference.
Conclusion
So altogether, we got some great changes that were absolutely amazing. And I’m really excited for the update now! You devs have clearly been working hard, and it shows.
And yet other changes we’ve been promised didn’t even get a mention. We deserve to be kept updated when plans change at minimum.
On the bright side, perhaps, just maybe, amidst all the bug squishing you might have time to slip in one or two changes that wouldn’t take much work but would mean a lot to players? Such as increased inventory slots, tabs or shrunken icons for the battles section, a fix to the auto maxing when upgrading, etc. Even if not, communication on the list of things I gave hadn’t been mentioned in the patch notes would be highly appreciated!