[September Patch Feedback Thread]

1 hour ago, Cocofang said:

Anyone else got a couple replays to check out that demonstrate that the Enlightened Bata deck does or doesn't work?

There is no need to do that, just take a look at what Volin (a truly experienced player who has a history of being objective and sound) wrote above which sums everything up quite well. For really difficult modes and speed Bata is dead as of now, end of story.

[September Patch Feedback Thread]

Here is another voice stating Bata nerf was too much and agreeing with the comments by certain Skylords in this thread already on the current viability of these particular decks (and yes, there were multiple ways to play the former Bata, regular one with orb change to two shadow orbs, green peace or even a plague one, etc, very rarely it included a Nature start though...). 

Thanks to Windhunter above acknowledging the level 10 thing, because Bata to me is only really viable upto level 6 nowadays (after some unofficial personal biased testing yesterday), after that other deck types take over. So, on the most difficult maps (read a lot of LS, some Twilight, etc) other choices are now (much) better.

On the replays shared above, to me Bata was cleary outperformed in the ones I checked, no question about it. Most evident one was the Grimvine + Fire Sphere combo, kinda funny to see really, Bata just dancing about as he has always done and BOOM, all of a sudden camp was cleared...and not by Bata.

Some personal notes, I have a full deck library, 10% of this library are Bata decks, the rest are other non-Bata decks I played a lot too. So, Bata was only one part of the game before but gone nowadays and I am really sad one of the most fun ways to play this game is obsolete. I will keep the decks hoping he will some day reemerge to the burning Devil he once was...

[QOL and multiple accounts]

1 hour ago, Cocofang said:

So instead of you and Ponni bitterly jerking each other off, go come up with some specifics, do a breakdown for pros/cons and start your other topic already.

I wonder when the mods will come in and start moderating this thread? Maybe I should start being insulting and rude too?

// Ponni

[QOL and multiple accounts]

1 hour ago, Volin said:

nah, period! (nice style btw)

A beginning Vet will progress so fast. I remember that we did some BG9s the first day and BG10 was done 3 days after reset. And the Dec solo map was crazy hard iirc (t3 Orb in tower range, Stonekin). 3 Days to beat one of the hardest BaFo content around - insane slow indeed ... /s

Ofc will a new player that is new to the game start slower, make mistakes and will progress slower, but isn't that natural and how things should be?

You can start high lvl pvp right away from the start and build almost any strong pve deck within a week(!) or less. The best and most wanted ultrarare cards can be achieved in around one week. Really I can't see that the progress is slow.

But I think that has to do much with attitude too.

Btw did you guys see the reserve system, it almost looks like you don't, as you act like there was no incentive/rewards at all for playing after completing your dailies. I don't know, but these 100-250 extra bfp per day are welcome to me.

And you said to me that you think 6-12 months for a complete(!) collection would be long...I wonder if you know what you are talking comparing this with the old P2W BaFo. Are you aware how many thousand bucks this would have been on the EA servers?

Well, speak with newbies on the server, which I have done a lot, and it is from there I make these comments. They are not just stated because I would liked to have had all cards from the re-release day. Many I have spoken with are not around any longer...people won't spend weeks and months any longer which is needed to get anywhere in this game. You can accept this or not but the facts are the following:

- Checked last night, 160 people online.

- Boosters opened last two days, 3500

Ever so declining from the re-release day, expected, yes, but is it enough to keep the game at good terms with new players. I would say not.

Again, for an experienced player (like you and me who now have all cards, for me after around 500 ingame hours) it is not a problem. But tell that to a newbie, yeah, after 2-4 months you can start to be competitive with 1 or 2 really good decks and after 6-12 months you have a full collection. They will just laugh and leave...

As a final comment, we have left EA behind us since many years now and I dont understand why we still compare things with that time. Actually, to me it was better under the EA years because then you could progress faster if you wanted. Now everone (except us vets then...) needs to follow the holy slow path.

// Ponni

[QOL and multiple accounts]

6 hours ago, Kilikem said:

you make an awful lot of assumptions my friend.

That is what they usually do in here in this particular subject, making assumptions look like truths. No real connection to how the game actually works and specifically then for new players. It takes too long for a new player to get into the game, period!

But, this is how they want it to be and stick with it because of unclear reasons...

Also just want to say this, for an experienced player this is usually not a problem, we know which cards initially are good to have in order to kick start things, but for a newbie it is a whole other story.

// Ponni

[QOL and multiple accounts]

11 minutes ago, Kilikem said:

wow. this coming from a dev? "if you don't like daily quests then don't play."

in WoW and most other games with daily missions you CAN complete all the daily missions. there is no reason to have an alternate account. in WoW you can continue to receive regular quests as well as gather numerous dailies. when a character is maxed out and has completed all their daily missions...they move on to a new account just like you said. NOT "because they are necessary" you said it was NECESSARY to make multiple accounts because of the LIMIT OF TWENTY DAILY QUESTS EACH DAY, thus players do so to continue to progress (even though players have MANY other rewarding ways to progress in WoW and your case is simply not true.) here we have a LIMIT OF TWO QUESTS EACH DAY and instead of being NECESSARY to make new accounts it is a BANNABLE OFFENSE?! do you see how iron that is.

have you even read what i said? i guess the above post is right. 

 

There is no point in arguing anything about this particular thing, eg. grinding like crazy until you get bored out of your senses and leave. It has been done multiple times in the past and still the devs and others claim this is the way to go, not realizing in the making we have lost a lot of potential new map breakers...but I give you kudos for trying!

// Ponni

[Shrine of War]

18 hours ago, shroomion said:

two fire orbs one neutral and the effect only works for the player using it. that way it will not interfere with cards that gain power when you have a bigger void pool and it might be a reason for the devs to expand on that possible playstyle instead of killing it off like it was done with shrine of martyrs (which is now admittedly not a bad card at all..i just also liked the mechanic and idea of the old one as well)

Which existing cards today were you thinking on considering a bigger void pool? There arent that many existing today to my knowledge, only Time Vortex (shadow) and Backlash on top of my head...without checking card database details more...

// Ponni

[Decomposer]

10 minutes ago, Draconnor said:

I played with him today - and in this exact game we had "that one" feeder.

sysly - if "necessary gold farming" is argument for keeping current status quo - then infinite gold may be a good option.

Yeah, now we are talking! More gold to everyone!! 

[Decomposer]

1 hour ago, Draconnor said:

For last FOUR games played on BH exp last 2 days I had TWO games with "Whoops - guys - its not speed? But i have feed deck only". While the second time game creator had deck named "ITS NOT RUN". Decomposer problem or not - its terrible how the first (unlocked to new players) big map advertises the game.
 

so 1 for every 12 games is normal...

Yes, quite normal with the fact that figure represents, a quick way for people to generate gold. If this map would not have been a gold farming map, how much would it really have been played? Most players would have turned to the next map which generates gold the fastest and easiest, until gold is no issue any longer. In the end I think it would have been equally difficult to find people to play this map even if Decomposer were to be "fixed".

// Ponni  

[Decomposer]

34 minutes ago, Xamos said:

That´s actually insane

Indeed, but not surprising, considering the main use of this map today, gold farming. I am actually surprised it was not a higher figure, Now there are still a lot of people trying to beat the map the good old-fashioned way! 

Thanks @Zyna will crunch the numbers as soon as my boss goes for lunch!

// Ponni

5 minutes ago, Volin said:

Wow, what a revelation.  Some of the numbers are really hard for me to explain, like the quite high values for PtD. I can see that on PtD the Decomposer would make for good farming, but I've never seen it before in any random group. It's already hard enough to do a proper round of PtD with 3 unfeeded runners on each map.

Even harder to understand is the 41% value for rpve9, though ofc we are not speaking of feeding here at all.

Love such statistics, happy to see more of them. @Zyna@Majora

 

In rpve9 a lot of people are using Decomposer when at t2 or t3 to get power back for themselves, so a quick notion there is that it is not so surprising. In fact there people are using it as intended...

// Ponni

[Decomposer]

7 hours ago, Cocofang said:

Arguing about what problem takes priority won't change anything about Decomposers issues. Also there are problems with both the reward system and this card that very clearly have nothing to do with one another.

Orb tiers are force multipliers. A boosted players power grows exponentially because of that. The performance of one player then completely overshadows what an entire team could do otherwise. Nothing else in the game can transfer energy between players. Decomposer being utilized fundamentally warps how the entire round plays out. What is the „opinion“ here?
And where is the connection to the reward system when stating, in addition to the previous points, that the power of a card not always being tied to the amount of use-cases or Decomposer and its power being T1.

One would assume if even people defending and relying on a tactic to achieve the fastest times say that it's broken or even a mistake then its power is truly unreasonable.

Generally games are balanced around top play, not top players. Top play being min-maxing a game, therefore highlighting what is actually too good and what is too bad. This then seeps down into regular play, which is one of the contributing factors why a meta emerges. In that way speedrunning exposes broken and overpowered mechanics. It identifies outliers. When something is seeing consistent play at the top, the question is usually not "Is it strong?" but "What makes it so strong? And is it too far above the rest?"

As was already said, if carrying inexperienced players is supposed to be the aspect worth preserving there are plenty of other ways to do it. And as long as the spearhead player doesn't hog all resources then the things learned from watching can probably be applied to a broad spectrum of scenarios. It's of course not completely void of transferable knowledge but funneling on the other hand is a very specific tactic and therefore a lot of what you learn from it only applies to funneling. Everything a carry achieves is first and foremost enabled by having such excess energy. The execution, no matter how skillful, is only possible because of that.

Decomposer also doesn't really have anything to do with unit/building/spell focused decks. What it does is simply supercharge one player and whatever deck gets used. Nor is the existence of the current iteration of Decomposer necessary for people to learn and understand the game.

Bringing other T1 cards to the discussion, even those that find usage outside of T1, seems like a big stretch. Where would we even rate the ability to transfer energy, and the snowball effect it can enable, in terms of tiers? Granted a big part of its current power is being able to skip ahead immediately. But just as a concept, surely it would be higher than mere T1. T3 possibly? Akin to how current Shrine of War can negate the void-return system in many circumstances, making the 90% energy return near instant? How Enlightenment can circumvent the rule that you have to have certain orbs? Amii Monument changing the rule of having to claim T4 on the map and the amount of orbs available? It'd probably be in that type of echelon. Yet it's T1, making it stand out even more.

Saying that farming would be gone anyway because people eventually own everything is such an odd point to make. What does that even mean? Almost seems like an existential angle. Why bother doing anything, eventually we will reach technological singularity and the AGI takes over.

There is no single stat to rule them all, like play rate, either. Play rate of a card tells you nothing except … well, how often a card is played. You learn nothing from this number aside from that. You don't learn when it is used, why it is used, how it is used, how it affects the game when used, with what other cards it gets used, etc. Stats are not the end, they are the beginning. Stats also do not show how limiting the current Decomposer can be going forward because of its excessive strength that is always looming and always demands to be considered.

As for wanting to dismiss Decomposer being a potential trouble maker in 2v2/3v3 PvP, I wonder where we should be inclined to make the cut-off point in terms of relevant population. Because if one were to argue that considering PvP in this matter is unimportant because it's just a small fraction of the community then the logical conclusion of that reasoning is that the handful of speedrunners that rely on Decomposer are equally negligible. After all, a repeat-argument is that if map rewards were changed then Decomposer would stop being a problem for regular play, retaining its status as a speedrunning tool. Which would mean it was solely preserved for a faction of the community. So, I'm unsure where that argument is supposed to lead us.

Taking Expert difficulty, meant to be the most challenging in the game, as the benchmark for accessibility, is odd.
Maybe the problem is that new players notice Expert difficulty is unlocked right from the start. Creating the expectation that they can tackle it right out of the gate.
There are a few Expert maps that border unfairness (after all, the initial business model aimed to push people into buying more and stronger cards) and I am not against adjustments at all but it IS the highest difficulty.

Not so sure if mud slinging about authority is the thin ice we want to tread on. Plenty could be said there.

Reworking gold payout to be based on in-game time like BFP payouts ignores card upgrades once more. They are effectively gold payouts and would these be regulated? Also, might as well just rename the game to "Encounter with Twilight"-lords at that point, as that is pretty much an open secret.

Will only respond to a few points from this mega post, because, well, my employeer will probably start to complain I am spending too much time in this forum.

Arguing about what problem takes priority won't change anything about Decomposers issues. Also there are problems with both the reward system and this card that very clearly have nothing to do with one another.

- Yeah, in multiple posts in here and in Discord you are talking about deflecting behaviors of others, in my opinion you are doing the exact same thing here. Not looking at things being tied together could and will cause unwanted side effects, like new players (and possibly old ones too) turning their interest away to something else...

Also, I will continue to refer back to statistics until they are presented, then we will see how big the problem you want to resolve is. As I have stated before, once the statistics are presented I might even consider to swap sides in this discussion depending on the outcome. You might come out on top there then, I suggest you contact @Zyna and ask for this information and present it to us.

Decomposer also doesn't really have anything to do with unit/building/spell focused decks. What it does is simply supercharge one player and whatever deck gets used. Nor is the existence of the current iteration of Decomposer necessary for people to learn and understand the game.

- Well, it was simply an example trying to point out there are multiple ways to play the game. You want us to play it in fewer ways...

As for wanting to dismiss Decomposer being a potential trouble maker in 2v2/3v3 PvP, I wonder where we should be inclined to make the cut-off point in terms of relevant population. Because if one were to argue that considering PvP in this matter is unimportant because it's just a small fraction of the community then the logical conclusion of that reasoning is that the handful of speedrunners that rely on Decomposer are equally negligible. After all, a repeat-argument is that if map rewards were changed then Decomposer would stop being a problem for regular play, retaining its status as a speedrunning tool. Which would mean it was solely preserved for a faction of the community. So, I'm unsure where that argument is supposed to lead us.

Not so sure if mud slinging about authority is the thin ice we want to tread on. Plenty could be said there.

- Indeed, while you are the expert and self appointed authority here then how should we do it? Destroy things for which community of players? It is an assumption, but I would say that the PvE speedrun community in itself is larger than most parts of the PvP community...

// Ponni

[Decomposer]

32 minutes ago, GreenSapphire said:

So what exactly is the amount of hours you want people to spend before they beat expert maps for the first time? How many people do quit because they notice this game is way too much grind and way too repetetive? 

Well, I am pushing 300+ hours since re-release, opened ~250 boosters and I own ~420 cards, all fully upgraded (charges still missing of course for a lot of them) with 750000 gold to spare, no need to Decompose things any longer! 

// Ponni

[Decomposer]

18 hours ago, Cocofang said:

See below:

Again, account progression and map rewards are different issues that just happen to overlap with Decomposer.

- No, everything is tied together. The "problems" we see now with Decomposer are only symptoms of a larger issue. Of course we could only pinpoint each and every issue by itself, but I do not believe that is the right way to do it. But if we then are to pin point every issue for itself then start from the other angle instead with rewards and progress mechanics of this game which is more urgent I believe. 

The problem with Decomposers function not being intended is just a small faction of the entire deal and not a main point. Although I highly doubt it would still be able to do what it does, had the game not faced an early decline and death. The question is what effects the card has.

- Strangely then it always circle back to what is written on the card when discussing the points here. Anyway, we will never know what would have happened should the game have survived the terrible EA years.

The second the Decomposer tactic is used a good chunk of the game (if not all of it) plays out significantly different to the point where it isn't even vaguely comparable to a strategy without it. Supercharging one player has huge ramifications. The fed player has much more agency in the round and can progress at a much faster rate. Meanwhile every point of energy transferred from the feeding players equals less agency for them.

- Get some stats out in how many matches this card actually is played for a win and we could possibly have another direction of this discussion. 

Since orb-tiers function as force multipliers (every point of energy spent on a higher tier nets greater results) the boosted players power grows exponentially as they use their advantage to skip ahead. That reaches a point where one players performance vastly overshadows what otherwise could be done by the entire team without Decomposer.

- Again these opinions on what the game is or what it is not...referring back to the point above, how much of a problem is it, is the card available in all decks all the time? 

It also interferes with two parts of the game that no other mechanic can: The starting power of each player is theirs alone and players cannot trade power they have acquired.

- Who has told you that this is how it is supposed to work? Is there a manual or instruction that I have missed reading?

This shows that the Decomposer tactic fundamentally warps the game when it is used.

- Cannot argue on this as it is correct.

It is so strong that even people that rely on it as a speedrunning tactic to achieve faster times on certain maps made the admission it's broken. But it is a tool that significantly boosts performance, so where things drift apart again is that some people want to keep it because its power is what they desire. A repeat argument is that some fastest times on multiplayer maps could no longer be achieved without Decomposer and by a big margin at that. So if that is true then there is absolutely no question about its excessive power.

- I dont have all necessary information to way in on this one, but I suppose a four player setup on BH possibly could render a very fast time too, with one runner, one going T2 helping the runner out with certian things and two feeders/supporting figures of some sort, without Decomposer...there are 8 orbs in the starting area of BH and to my knowledge you only need 4 (or possibly 3 looking at the current fastest time?) to win the map.

Something being too strong is also not always related to it seeing play everywhere and all the time, that's a misconception. Niche tactics can be unreasonably strong when their circumstances align. Because what matters is how it plays out when it can be utilized. Nobody would argue Enlightenment is a weak card because it can be used to prematurely summon Emberstriker or because it isn't very useful on maps where T3 and T4 are very close to one another. Or, just to illustrate the point further with a different example, say in a team VS team egoshooter players only buy cheap pistols in one round but a certain pistol is much more powerful than others. So despite this strong pistol not seeing use in rounds where all kinds of weapons can be bought, it's still too strong within its niche.

- It is also a misconception calling out things being too strong actually being too strong, in game and in the forum there is this throwing OPs around you without really understanding the mechanics and practice needed to get things right. Not everyone will succeed in their first try with these strategies, not even their second try will be successful I dare to say. You need to invest a lot of time in order to perfect it for it to be successful and strong in the end. This notion on "everything is so easy with this and that", well, strangely enough then why do we only see a rare few people on top of the leaderboards? I understand not everyone wants to do the speedrunning stuff and they want to play their one deck. But, taking away things from people evolving the game is not really how I would consider things. 

Now, with Decomposer there comes this feeder/farming thing, meaning anyone can succeed completing a map just by spawning troops. But then I suppose we should stop the carry aspect which is there in pretty much every multiplayer map. I have played so many matches with people that I and usually one or two of my friends have carried to a victory, is that a bad thing? They have hopefully learnt something and the next run they do they might contribute more or even succeed on their own.

You mostly measure its power by its effectiveness when there is an opportune situation to use it. Those circumstances being more plentiful only elevates an issue further. Similarly, while the Decomposer tactic cannot be used on singleplayer or maps where orbs (and their necessary force multiplier) are too far apart, when the situation allows for it, it provides power like nothing else.

- Yes, it does.

Additionally, all of that has to come with the consideration that Decomposer is a T1 card. That means that one of the most powerful tools in the game, that can entirely warp how a round plays out, and intersects with the fundamentals on how energy works between players, is available at the very moment you start a map. If you'd compare tactics within their respective niches is there anything even vaguely similar to the power the Decomposer tactic enables? The argument that finishing times for maps would be much slower implies not.

- I have thought about this one too, however I do not see the problems like you that sharing power is a problem. To me, and others, its a feature. But, it is a very strong card for being a T1, agreed, there are others too though, like Motivate, Surge of Light and Suppression which in certain setups can turn the tide, but perhaps not as strong as Decomposer I grant you that.

And, like I stated previously, the tactic can always find its way into average play and warp it with its power and influence. Attempting to preserve it by changing other things in the game to accommodate it would mean that it's still there, waiting to be a problem again.

- Sure, however, I see no problems with that, to me the problems here (eg. the BH farming stuff) is a thing that over time will not be a problem any longer. With how the reward system is setup, as long as the gold is needed it will be a "problem". But, is it not natural that people also learn how things work and then fine tune their game getting better in understanding how things work? Do we not want newbies and others to grow in this game and get better? Also one thing I really want to mention here, not everything about this game is unit centric, there are so many combos you can do with buildings and spells. I have decks which are both, but most decks of mine tend to be spell centric with the support of buildings and units. Point then is there are multiple ways to play this game, which changes like this and others I fear might come is that in the end we all should build huge armies waiting at T4 for 5 mins before we start the end game.

Not to mention it would always have to be considered when making future balancing/progression decisions. A repeatedly brought up concern is how PvP balancing limits and affects PvE balancing. But what about how a mechanic like this would unjustly limit design space on multiple fronts for the entire game? What can, cannot and must be changed because of how it would interact with this excessively strong mechanic is a question that will always have to be considered. And if something is missed the game is in shambles once more until that is addressed.

- Referring back to the point above on stats for the use of this card, is it used in all matches played I can agree we have a problem, if it is only a fraction we will only try and solve a problem because of opinions. If it is somewhere in the middle we can continue this discussion. 

Finally, to touch on the aforementioned PvP again, it was already noted that Decomposer can be problematic in 2v2 and 3v3. Orbs are accessible from the start and therefore the force multiplier by one player ascending tiers faster could prove oppressive. It's simply not meta yet but that can change.

- Now I will be extremely bold and post a very unpopular thing (referring back to the initial sentence of the start posting of this thread). Looking at the statistics, 0.8% of all multiplayer matches played PvP and PvE are 2v2 and 3v3, in fact, only 3% of all matches played in this game are PvP. I will then state I think we need to get our priorities straight here when it comes to what we should do sorting out "problems" in the game for whom. 

All of these problems have nothing to do with account progression and only with Decomposer.

- Well, that is one opinion, my opinion is the opposite, a lot of things/problems cannot be separated from each other. 

// Ponni

[Decomposer]

10 minutes ago, SunWu said:

Possible paradox: 2-3 min BH runs make some new people grind more than less. New players see/hear how easy it is to get gold and a shiny rank with these runs and stop caring about the rest of the game and don't check out other maps and modes. I don't think that's a good introduction to this game. Yeah, old players dont want to grind, but we're still on the same page when we say we want to get and keep new players, right?

Absolutely, more players are needed and they need to stay. I truly believe a lot of new players also do not want grind, but then again I know about quite a lot of old players who really enjoy the grinding so it is not a labeling made easy...

[Decomposer]

38 minutes ago, SunWu said:

Fully understand that Gold/XP distribution is the problem of this tread and not decomposer, still i think you made some flawed arguments.

Nobody said that the problem is playing the game as it's not intended (complaints about amii monument go more in that direction). The problems stated were more about the consequences of totally unbalanced XP/gold rewards for 2-3 min BH runs wich a lot of new players do now since they heard of it. And a card being a certain rank in most played cards doesn't make it problematic or unproblematic. I'm sure amii monument isn't in the Top 50 and a lot of people have complained about it. I'm even more sure decomposer wasnt intended to be what you say. Doesn't it even say ,,own units'' on the card lol?

I think the real problem and some possibly good solutions have been pointed out, but i still wanted to give my 5 cents cause you're all jumping on him and some arguments here i found to be rather weak.

I have followed most of the discussion, both here and in Discord and from what I can see a lot of the comments come back to what is intended or not. Mostly then given what is written on the card. My comments on "intended" then is the opposite of this, just because that is not how the card actually works today, intended or not. I was simply (but perhaps a bit complicated) trying to state that the current way it works is not a problem, instead the problem for this discussion is the setup around how gold (mainly) is being farmed on the BH map, for example. 

1 minute ago, Cocofang said:

Two entirely separate issues are being conflated here. With gold/XP progression is mostly being used as a deflection to protect Decomposer.

Say Decomposer was fixed. Instantly the times to finish certain multiplayer maps would rise because it is by far one of the most powerful tools there is to speed up progress. Undoubtedly a new "most efficient" way to get gold would surface. It would be noticeably slower than currently. Maybe it would even be achievable through regular play. Passage to Darkness comes to mind. Or rPvE9. The point is that the margin between the "most efficient" way to farm gold and the "average" way would be significantly smaller. For now.

However what a Decomposer fix wouldn't protect from would be some other speedrunning tactic/strategy finding it's way into the "mainstream" and being now used to finish maps quickly for massive gold returns, exploiting the current gold/XP reward system once more.

So now say gold/XP returns were changed. First of, it's important that the reward system is intuitive. So some messy formula that gives you a % of whatever gold for orbs or objectives or whatever is nonsense. But it's not impossible to rework the system, maybe the initial implementation just didn't hit the mark. Let's assume a new reward system gets implemented that is both intuitive and simple (maybe something with bounties on side objectives or placing gold chests in key locations) but also does not reward the same gold/XP simply for finishing maps as fast as possible. That would immediately discourage straight forward goldfarming.

However, something I have not seen talked about a lot are upgrades. Rare and especially Ultra Rare upgrades are expensive to unlock so it incentivizes people to instead play their respective maps. Even if someone got very low gold/XP for b-lining a map as fast as possible, they'd still be rewarded with upgrades. Would you then tie getting upgrades to in-game actions? Getting the ones you want is already slow because of RNG and distribution among players. Leaving an upgrade on the map would be a big hit to progression.

Something else to consider with strictly tying gold/XP rewards to objectives/chests/whatever is that a pressure would emerge for all participants to go for these key points. We have already seen that in the beginning with the Passage to Darkness gold chest achievement. People were constantly pushing to open all chests and complain after the match if something was missed.

Also, if only gold/XP rewards were changed and Decomposer would retain its current function it would just be a matter of time until it rears its head again to be a problem once more. Instead of farming gold/XP, people could continue farming upgrades with it. Or maybe eventually a strategy emerges where, even with a changed gold/XP reward system, you'd be able to finish a map exceptionally fast while also hitting most objectives. Speedrunning tactics constantly trickle down into regular play in this game. You'd always have to be on the lookout, all you'd do was to push back the problem.

 

Both the current gold/XP reward system for maps and Decomposer are separate issues that happen to overlap here. Addressing only one will just result in the other becoming a problem again somewhere down the line.

Just to be clear, there is nothing to fix with Decomposer, it is a common misconception that recently has popped up because people do not want to spend hours and hours and hours getting somewhere in the game. Maybe we did in 2009, but that is a long time ago now...

Otherwise I sort of agree with you, but it differs on a crucial part, I do not see any problems with things going quick in this game. I cannot understand why people want the ever so boring grinding activities to be a central feature of this game. Also, there are a limited set of maps, they are analysed to the extent that a lot of them are found to be broken. Changing card attributes will only do so little to "correct" this in the long run (for PvE that is then...). So, if focus instead could be on the real problems instead I would be happy, for example:

- After the first few months of re-release hype, we are almost down to number of online people of the pre-reset era.

- Grinding is not a key success factor of this game, I am quite certain it will scare people away. I have played with a lot of newbies which played a few weeks and then they have never been online again...

- etc, etc,

// Ponni

[Decomposer]

19 hours ago, Draconnor said:

And you missing my point.

You write about... true speedruning? that is what? 5% of players? Less?

And i'm writing about social pathology that affects more than a half new players... and bunch of old ones that have problem with playing normal BH. If any potential new player will be forced to be "no fun zombie feeder" then we definetly won't have new players that will love the game - but maybe few new smarties with no teamplay skills. It's simple as that.

Addressing the symptoms rather than the "disease" will not help in this case as @wanky points out above. Please ask yourself the question, why do people resort to these gold runs on BH? My answers to this question are the following:

- Quick gold is needed to enjoy the game with fully upgraded cards. I suppose then a 3 minute run (a common BH gold farm time) is preferable to a 15 minute run (a common casual rpve 9 run) to get ~4000 gold. You will get 5 times the amount of gold doing this, case closed.

- If you have a deck consisting of 3 UR, 3 R, 3 UC and 11 C cards, it will require 185525 gold, this is then either 2h19mins of BH play or 11h40mins of rpve9. One of my favourite decks consist 4 UR, 7 R, 4 UC, 5 C, which equals BH time, 3h18 mins or rpve9 time, 16h40mins. That is then for 20 cards, then there are another 500+ cards to upgraded, on top of my head then I take the 185525x25 and then you end up with a shitload of time spent to upgrade cards, case closed.

If you wanna fight stuff then fight this, it takes too long to get places in this game. Fighting Decomposer will only lead to other ways to get quick gold. Then in the end everyone will reach a threshold when gold becomes useless and then farming runs on BH (and other maps) will be obsolete.

For the card then and for me personally, without a few runs in BH as a feeder, some runs on other maps as a "runner" I have hardly ever used Decomposer. To me it is generally a pretty useless card, still I defend it as it brings a nice niche use in extreme speedruns with the feature "power sharing". For the void manipulation factor there will always be better solutions, I believe, as T1 usually is over in a matter of minutes...

In fact, it would be interesting to see the usage of this card in the total number of matches played. I asked @Zyna for these stats in Discord but have not received any replies to it yet. So, I go back in time a bit with a reference that Kubik posted like a year ago (before the reset yes...) where card usage was shown in matches played:

https://gist.github.com/Kubikx/189d173c337e4d996382cc59b0bf7919

There Decomposer is on place ~115 of most played cards in matches. I guess that figure is roughly the same today so what is the problem here really? People are not playing the game how it is "intended" to be played? How is it then intended to be played? Until we see proof of this card being used in every match played every day all the time, only then I could start agreeing we have a problem card. Now it is only a niche card, viable for a limited set of activities, such as speedrunning for best times and farming gold, as it was "intended"...

// Ponni

[PvE Contest#3 Ocean until 30.04.21]

21 hours ago, LEBOVIN said:

Make sure the starting island is cleared (units+towers around your t2 orb) before having the end countdown started. Please let me know if this fixed the issue for you and the game does no longer crash, so we can deploy a solution soon.

That seems to have done the trick, twice in a row now with no crash, thanks!

// Ponni

[Ocean end game - game crash]

NAME: Ocean end game - game crash
DESCRIPTION: Once the end game has started game crashes, sometimes right after ship from every location and sometime when there are only a few ships left. So, it is unfortunately not 100% consistent when game crashes and it does not happen every time so I cannot really say whether it can be reproduced or not.
REPRODUCIBILITY: See above.
SCREENSHOT: Error message upon crash: 
LOG: Are attached...
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: N/A

log_gd.txt crashdata.mdmp _log_proxy_latest.log

Att aching an additional log file...

_log_proxy_29.log

[PvE Contest#3 Ocean until 30.04.21]

16 hours ago, wanky said:

I'm pretty sure that with a little practice and understanding of the map as it is constructed, anyone can get well under 25 minutes.
With a little grind, even under 20 minutes, with any colour. 
Keep in mind that the top times that are currently in the ranking are the result of several hours in a row several evenings until you have the final tactics and could play them out as intended.

The ~14-15 mins runs are just crazy... : ) Will be really nice to see the replays once contest is over!

At best I think I can come down to a ~20 min run, so not even remotely close to the best times...anyhow, the game effectively stops me over and over again in the end game with this bloody message:

Anyone else having these problems or is it just me? Last run now, 4 ships left to kill and then game crashes...will post it in the bug section too.

// Ponni

[Excluding cards PvE]

On 3/6/2021 at 2:02 PM, AtheistXVII said:

Add possibility to exlude / ban  3 cards while creating RPvE game.
I would love to enjoy full game with a lot of units from different factions and have a real fun fights which are challenging.
All i see is Solo Batariel with enlightenments and Infected spell combo or overpopulated twilight bugs from Infected tower in every 2 games of 3 games i play and its not fun anymore.
 

I sort of agree, and I like to play "fun decks", but there are a few things I think needs to be brought into the discussion:

1. There are a lot of noobs out there, which I like because it means new people are finding this game, and in order to actually come out with a win over the map I usually feel the need to use a "high end" deck.

2. Given the reward system, at least with the gold, it is more beneficial to finish a map in 12 mins than 20 mins. This I hope will ease up over time when more and more people will not have a need for gold any longer...

3. There are, as mentioned earlier in the post, already ways to come around this. Chatting with your fellow team mates or even finding friends with the same interests as you would be a better solution to this.

4. There are possibilities to play solo, on all maps pretty much, campaign maps and rpve 1p (of course...!), 2p and 4p (perhaps not all levels though on the latter two...). Then you can decide the premise completely on your own.

So, I feel there are more important things to focus upon for the developers and there are ways around this. I hear what you say though and hopefully things will get better soon. In the meantime ping me in-game and we can play some meme/fun decks if you want! : )

// Ponni 

 

[Decomposer]

22 hours ago, Alishmass said:

so is the case with decomposer (though im not saying it should or shouldnt be rebalanced)

but i think Batariel is even worse than all of them.

since it is super op almost everywhere.

for example in rpve. it easily clears a base that another player would need to send 5-6 t4 units. you all know how it is, no need to explain.

Agree and like your comments, just a slight off topic "correction" that a lot of people seem to forget. Bata in himself is rather useless, at least in tough end camps in rpve. Reason he is being "op" is a combination of his own features and the supporting cards, like Life Weaving, Unholy Power + Hero, Frenetic, Infect, Nether Warp, Regrowth, Disenchant, Earthshaker,  Curse of Oink, etc, etc, etc. Without these cards Bata is mediocre at best...

Edit: Sorry, forgot to mention the enablers here, eg. the "horrific" void manipulation features, FoF + Cultist Master or SoW...they are a big reason to Bata being so called "op".

// Ponni

[Shrine of War]

39 minutes ago, Danol said:

If (and thats a big if) this one card is absolutely neccessary for rpve 10, then rpve 10 needs to be rebalanced. That applies even if SoW remains unchanged, because such a design is just a fail.

Btw no I'm not "wrong but right", simply because I never made a claim about rpve 10 that I could even be wrong about.

 

Haha, "a big if", "rpve 10 needs to be rebalanced", you can still prove me wrong you know. Heck, I could even join you for a few tries for the sake of it. Ping me ingame and lets try it, then we could learn something perhaps.

Anyhow, discussion is over here for my part, I will trust the Skylords balancing team do have all knowledge required, including 4p level 10. 

// Ponni

[Shrine of War]

8 minutes ago, Danol said:

I don't even see how this is relevant to the discussion? If a map is impossible to beat without one specific card, then thats a problem with the map. A card being mandatory would be a proof that it's op, because it explicitly shows that no other card has comparable power. So even if you're right you'd just proven yourself wrong about SoW.

 

Wow, I am right but wrong? So, that must mean you are wrong but right?

For the sake of it, as you do not think it is relevant, should we then scrap 4p level 10 or what? Or how do you want to solve it?

// Ponni

[Shrine of War]

4 minutes ago, Danol said:

Somehow I did not notice this comment before, so my response is a bit late. Whatever ...

Just slightly reducing the return (without further changes to the buff) would not bring it in line with the others. Goind with the 15% refund per kill, you can still get 100% refund every 30s.

Take a look at what would happen if all my suggestions were implemented and only one player with SoW is on the map (basically the worst case for SoW). Everyone still gets a 100% return of void power every 60s for the cost of 150 energy (you'd need 28 kills for that, which is doable in 30s, especially in a 4 player map - just 7 kills per player). Shrine of Memory gives one player 84% return in 60s for 200 energy. Shrine of Greed gives everyone 75% over 60s for 200 energy. (For comparison: Without any of these, you'll get back 45% of void power over 60s.) SoW would still give the most void power for the least energy cost of these 3 shrines, for every player on the map.

Shrine of Martyrs could yield more, but also restricts your playstyle more, so I'm okay with that - opportunity costs are significantly higher, so it should yield more.

Can you do something for me? Prove to me that you can, consistently and not like every 10th try, beat a 4p rPvE level 10 map without current SoW (or for that matter a team of 4 players doing FoF + Cultists). Once you prove that it actually can be done consistently, lets continue this discussion.

// Ponni

[Shrine of War]

1 hour ago, Danol said:

Yep, you're absolutely right. With 2 SoW in a game, the void power mechanic might as well not exist at all. The same applies if other void power shrines get buffed to the level of SoW. Void power was meant to impose a delay on power reusage, that is obviously not working if you can get your void power back nearly instantaneous.

A simple comparison: Without any buffs, the void power regeneration is 1% per second, so to regenerate 99% of void power you need 459s. With Shrine of Memory constantly up it takes 152s. With SoW, it's 21 units killed. 5.25 kills per player on a 4 player map. How long does it take 4 players to kill 21 units on average, while on t3? Even if it took 30s it's still 5 times as powerful as Shrine of Memory. Even if you have only 1 SoW it totaly outperforms Shrine of Memory. It does not require the attention of Furnace + Cultist Master, it does not require specific cards/playstyles like Shrine of Martyrs, but also outperforms both and can be splashed easier. That's just insane. All that for a meager 300 energy, the cost of one (!) Great Wyrm.

But, of course, there are always those people who think too much is not enough.

Oh btw: Buffing the other void power refund options is not power creep, that's a power avalanche. It would be easier to just remove the whole void power mechanic, reduce spell cost by 90% and make units refund 90% of their power immediately upon death, because that's basically the same effect.

Because they serve the same purpose: Void power management.

Please stop it now. This void manipulation has been there from the start of the game, I guess it was developed as a feature. Funny then 12-ish years later we found this to be a problem...

// Ponni