Riviute

Maps: I kind of dont like the idea that speedruns have a higher value than general player experience, but I'm also not a competetive player in regards to Speedruns. Maybe my opinion there is in the minority. I mean if bigger changes are made to certain campaign maps, maybe we could have like an option that would allow us to play classic versions of campaign maps. That way map speedruns would remain. Balancing Discord: I dont really like Discord so Im not very active there and dont have much insight about the things that have been talked about there. Unholy Power: Yea with units like mountaineer that would overlap, but maybe if you hover your cursor over the current active ability it could not only show the time remaining but also the strength. Vileblood: Your probably right, but its still one of my most hated enemies to take on in all the rts that I have ever played. The damage feels unreasonable to me. Power Pickups: Dwarven Riddle gives you extra power? I mean I rarely play that mission, but this seems to be tied to a key map objective that you are gonna do anyway. Im talking about something that is very optional but helpful. So if they already exist then it went over my head and I apologize, but I feel like they could have a bit more presence in the game. But I also could be absolutely wrong about all of this, wanted to talk about the things I thought about for a while so its just my two cents here.

This is a list of things that I suggest for the game, most of them are very minor and dont require their own topic, I apologize if any of these have been suggested before but I wasnt aware of them. If these are missing something crucial then I'm sorry since I might overlook things that are obvious to the devs. Maps Encounters with Twilight is a really good introductionary mission. Its slowpaced not too demanding, some bases to take down, an option that allows you to approach the mission how you want it by either defending against an attack wave of doom or assaulting the big base. To finish things of you have a boss. Viridya tells you that you need to take care of the spirits otherwise they empower the Wrathgazer but this mechanic is completely nullified by the fact that you have access to knockback. Could we give the spirits knockback resistance so you have to pay a little more attention to them? In the mission Sunbridge, is there a possibility to move some power wells and monuments? This is still a very early mission and I have seen many times how new players got overwhelmed here. On player 1 side if he builds up the wall the entire defensive army of the T3 comes to play and the T4 is so darn close to the boss room, that even if you defend it well can trigger so many units swarming out of that base to attack you, but new players probably still have to take down the shrine objective so Mora is invicible and its a losing battle no matter what. Could we place the T4 to the left side and the Twilight Archers at the T3 a bit to the right so they dont trigger anymore when the Wall is built. On player 2 side the T3 is in a very tought spot, to be exact the top power well. If that well is built and an attack wave approaches the entire T4 defensive camp pays you a visit and its very hard for new players. I would either change the placement of the top power well or change the attack path for the enemy, that they go the left path directly to the fortress, so that it actually has a purpose for the player to build. In the Mission the Soultree on expert difficulty, there is a stonekin rageflame in the enemy twilight base... why is he there? Cards Is there a possibility to add range radius whenever you try to build a tower? So that you can see how far the range actually is, would help especially with those that have unique ranges like the bombard or hammerfall. Game tells you 50m but I have no clue what 50m are ingame. I am personally a big fan of the Moloch, alongside Sunderer my most favorite fire unit. But even I can admit that it has its flaws, I once heard that there were plans of a rework of this card, honestly dont feel like it needs that, I love the way it is, but I wish it would have an active ability that makes use of its volcano on its back. Like a minor version of the inferno spell that can also hit air. Something like that and it would be perfect. Could we overhaul the description of what the card Unholy Power does? I played this game for years and still dont get what this card exactly does, what does strength mean? Appearantly its 50% damage more to enemies and 50% less damage taken for the value of 3000 strenght, but how is that power depleted and is there a way to show the player how much of that is left? Enemies Please nerf the npc twilight vilebloods, the npc enemies that you find in various missions. Their acid is just way too busted imo. it just shreds through units and buildings alike, either nerf it in general or that it cant affect buildings anymore. Talking about npc nerfs, I still feel like lost souls is way tougher than any of the other npc factions that can show up in rpve. Lots of long range stuff with dancers and vigils but also some obnoxious buildings and a lot of abilities that limit the players freedom, like using skills, activating spells or even having ranged attack downright deactivated. Whenever I see lost souls in rpve i instantly quit out and start a new one until I dont have souls. Or like in the season when I have to do map of the week or month or whatever and I realize its souls... I just quit. But this might as well be a Me Issue. Maybe they could use some more units that are less impressive than the ones we already have, like some S sized units, because I actually really look that I have a varied composition and that I counter everything, but as soon as I see souls, my S counters become almost obsolete. They just feel really oppressive to me and if the only answer to deal with them properly is to use the third ability of the incredible Mo, then I feel like somethings wrong here. Something different Have you ever considered to put in Power pickups into the game? They could share the model of the goldchest but coloured white in the same tone as the crystals within the power wells, though can only be opened if no enemies are around. They could just straight up give you some power, it doesnt need to be a lot waging from 50power up to 300power (or something like that) It would be another tool balance pve maps and could also be used for player created content like custom maps. One map where it could be used would be nightmare shard, in the middle of that map there is an area with two power wells, but its in the middle of two paths were the twilight witches go so its a nightmare to defend, maybe remove the wells but put pickups there. Some powerwells on certain maps are just in unfortunate locations that you need to clear first and then also defend while being completely optional makes certain power wells just never being built in the first place and I feel like Pickups could offer a nice solution.

Really grateful for the difficulty changes, thank you devteam!

I havent tried that challenge yet, but for the big frozen wave, Stone of Torment does wonders. Using the human defenders to support Viridya also helps. Though Im not an expert.

There have been multiple like these right? Any idea how long this will go? Roughly?

The new voices are wild, cool new card too, at first glance seems overpowered but I'm an idiot so what do I know. Really excited :D

So maybe this is why my Card (the priestess of despair) for the Card Contest was only silverranked, a t2 shadow unit that can heal its allies. Because you already had one lined up. (Just maybe though, maybe I also just suck at balancing cards xD) Super excited for all of this new stuff even though I probably will not get very far in this season. You guys are doing great and I wanna shout out a big thank you to the devs! :D

Kind of shocked that my priestess of despair only got silver, I was so proud of it, but oh well. But to see that not a single one made it to platinum makes me feel slightly better. I am still very grateful for the event so thanks to all the people organizing it and the judges who had to go through so many ideas. I hope to see this event again in the future, which I believe is very likely considering it was the second contest already. I am already working on my new idea for the next time. :D

First of all really excited about this event, glad it returns. I got a question, if I would design a size M unit but take a size S unit as a model but upscaled, does that still look good? Since we already are able of downsizing like the forest elder model down to the hellhound, but does it vice versa look at least decent? Im asking because I dont wanna suggest a model that already exist inside of a faction if you know what i mean.

Honestly a bit sad to see another Nature Promo, now we already have four but I can also understand since Forest Elder is so darn popular. Would have loved to see a Promo Twilight instead but I can live with this. Thank you guys for the update and continued hard work and passion :D

It goes up to 8 million? I'm at 230 000 and I thought I was very far cause I spend so much time on a daily basis :O

Only did it on advanced so far, played a twilight deck starting with fire, strikers and mines worked pretty well. Went for wheel of gifts, incredible mo and some static defense on every tier except t1. Also fathom lord worked quite nicely for the abominations when they respawned, paralyse them and they are no issue anymore. No clue for expert though. Btw, would have been funny if the boss revived as well :D

Maybe allow the player to create their own categories, like RPVE or Seasonal, and then you can add a tag to your decks that automatically arranges them in these categories. Then you could toggle your categories and it only shows the ones with these tags.

Hey guys, I would like to talk About an issue that I feel like gets bigger and bigger, but at the same time its probably something that only affects a small group of players yet I still believe its important to talk about. Now before I talk about the main topic I just wanna mention how grateful I am to the dev team that brought this game back to life. When it was shut down all those years ago I was constantly looking for private servers or similiar games until I found this project. I watched the progress with great joy and excitement and when I was invited into the closed beta it was one of the best days ever. But its not just that you brought back the game, you added new stuff to it as well! New cards, new maps, events, dailyquests, the reservesystem and even changed a lot of the original stuff. The new Ravenheart for example is still one of my most appreciated buffs in the game so far and its only one of many. Sure there have been things that can be seen as controversial, like the Batariel change or the Amii Monument nerf, and even if I miss the old Amii Monument from time to time, I still think it was a healthy choice. And if I really wanna use the old stuff again, thats were the legacy server comes in. So no matter what I'm about to say in this topic, because its gonna sound like I complain a lot and I'm very whiny, just know that this is like the ONLY THING that I could even complain about and I absolutely believe that you guys are doing a phenomenal job here. (Just imagine I'm patting you guys on the back right now, cause you deserve it) Lets dive in, what is that issue that I have in Skylords Reborn. Simply put... the Difficulty. When it comes to RTS games I'm not very skilled, I love playing them but usually I am just as bad at them like in egoshooters where I constantly blow myself up with my own friggin grenades. I love the freedom these games offer, the army compositions, the creativity in approach and the epic battles. Its my most favorite genre, but I'm just not one of those microgods who has an APM of over 9000 and escpecially in more complicated missions where you have to have your eyes at thre or four different spots at the same time I tend to miss out on one of the most important aspects of RTS, the Spectacle. Hard missions can be very hectic and it at times can feel more like a checklist, like ok now I have to do this, then this guy dies, then I have to be at my base for the attack at 3min 40, you get the idea. Even nowadays I always feel that the graphics and visuals of Skylords Reborn hold up, it still looks nice and it sounds great but when things get stressful you tend loose sight of these things. When I play RTS games I strangly play them just for the sake of relaxation or creativity, I still love the impact the inferno spell has, I still love to combine soulshatter + frenetic assault + infect + plague even though I know its overkill or just build a massive rootnetwork that goes across the entire map. I can understand why people enjoy high difficulties in these games, discovering the map, coming up with plan, fail, rework the plan, try again and succeed. There is a feel of accomplishment when you overcome such an obstacle but for these challenges I just have different games like monster hunter or elden ring. So when new maps were added (the two new twoplayer missions) I was overjoyed and a bit disappointed at the same time. Cool new missions, new stuff, new story but then... oh... no standard difficulty. Thats not a new thing right? I mean there were missions already in the game that didnt have a standard difficulty, Behind enemy lines, Dwarven Riddle, Insane God and Guns of Lyr. But just because thats how it used to be doesnt mean it was healthy for the game. (sorry now comes the complainy stuff) Even though the two new maps Unexpected Visitors and Into the jungle have been out for quite a while, I only recently got to play them for the first time with my nephew. I wanted to save this one to explore and experience it together and it was... rough. There is a bunch of mechanics and events shoved into the first one with the lost souls and it was quite overwhelming. Its a lot of stuff after you get your T2, the enemy overall power level was also very high and oppressing. The voice actors (by the way did a great job with their acting) tell you about the mission, but its really hard to keep track if you arent super fluid with english which in this case was my nephew and I had to try to tell him on the fly what was going on but even I couldnt keep track. We reached the amii city but never went T3, we couldnt, we were overwhelmed. Also we ran into the trap with the two power wells on the side that are ridiculously strong defended. So yeah, we didnt make it and lost. Further attempts only lead to frustration until I gave up and looked up a guide online to figure out what we were supposed to do. Appearantly there was even an optional area with frost units that you could go for and get some assistance, I knew that there was more in that area but I just didnt know. Only after looking at that guide we were able to beat it. And quite frankly I dont think thats how it should work, I mean it was an advanced mission so I guess the devs expect you figure it out and there are many people who can do that, but thats just not me. I wished so so so hard for a standard difficulty, just so I can adjust myself to the map. Campaign missions in other games never had a situation were the game just said "Alright buddy, playtimes over, we are taking this big ol hammer and shatter your beloved buttons for easy and normal difficulty, now there is only the hard difficulty and the pain difficulty level, grow a pair of balls will ya?" That is still just so strange to me, I cant imagine I am the only one who played Dwarven Riddle for the first time and was just completely flabbergasted and what the hell was going on, why is it so hard??? The same goes with insane god, that map broke me and my buddy back then, everything is fine until you get to your T2 and then its just complete madness. Experiencing missions that already have a hard setup without lower difficulty options feel problematic to me, I never liked this designchoice and I never will. Why cant we just get used to the map, the layout, the mechanics first and then tackle the higher difficulties, I know there are some hardcore gamers out there who just jump in and go for highest difficulty right away, but I cant do that. (Just fyi, into the jungle felt easier but also wasnt first try) The thing is that the new campaign maps isnt the only place where that happens. I dont really know when it happened but I am also not the biggest player of 12 player maps but those dont have standard difficulties anymore as well??? I mean, I get it, its already tough enough to find 12 players to play ascension, but if you need it on advanced but once again you see the map has one lobby open and its standard difficulty again, that can be frustrating. I think I heard something before (not sure if its a rumor or not) but there was an idea of splitting up ascension into 3 four player maps and passage to darkness turned into a single 4player mission, which I think would still be the healthiest thing to do. Removing the standard difficulty however still felt like the wrong thing to do. I just have to wonder at this point, is this the direction going forward? Are all future missions gonna be advanced/expert exclusives? I mean which game has ever removed a difficulty option? There are games that in fact added new ones just for accessibility. In Warcraft 3 Reforged (I know, this is rough one to think about) they not only added a Story difficulty but also gave the Nightelfs in the Sentinels campaign two new units, a short ranged support unit that can use the shaman spell Bloodlust and a massive Wildkin with chaos damage that is meant to be a counter for the very spooky Naga Royal Guards. I also played the turn based strategy game Songs of Conquest and initially the devs were set on the idea "This is a game for experienced Heroes of Might and Magic 3 players and barely have and handholding." So there were no difficulty options, but even experienced Homm3 players like Lexiav were struggling to beat the campaign, now the devs changed things around and now there are 7 difficulty options, which of course is easier to design in these kind of games cause they only needed to give them like handicaps to their economy but still its impressive and much appreaciated by the community. Now I am aware that difficulty scaling in RTS isnt an easy topic. Sometimes there were just ridiculous jumps in difficulty, like the first mission of the undead in warcraft 3 frozen throne expansion were you have to stop the humans from fleeing in three seperate areas while attacking and destroying the villages. Or the infamous dreaded mission 18 in the original Stronghold 1, where you have to siege the castle of the Pig with almost only melee units and barely any ranged, even on easiest difficulty, many people could only beat that one through save scumming including me and I love Stronghold. Even on standard difficulty in Skylords, Nightmare Shard always felt like a huge step in difficulty same goes for Blight. But Skylords is very different compared to other RTS games, what makes the difficulty here so unique? The biggest difference is the Techtree basically, lets compare Starcraft 2 with Skylords. In the first three missions Liberation Day, Outlaws and Zero Hour you only unlock 3 things, the Marine, the Medic and the Bunker. Thats it. Thats how more classic rts campaigns work. In Encounters with Twilight however (which I will just call the first mission) you technically already have T4, you can summon the Tempests, Emberstrike or even the Giant Wyrm. You can go T4 right from the get go, its like imagine you could go for rip off Battlecruisers without any upgrades in Starcraft on Mission 1. The difficulty has to be scaled around the fact that you always can be at endgame tech and that makes it difficult to balance. On top of that, we also have multiplayer campaign missions for two or four players and that also needs to taken into consideration when it comes to mapdesign and enemy selection. And there is also so many cards that you need to keep in mind that could ruin a map through cheesing or they circumvent important triggers and stuff. But the thing is I dont think it would be that hard to add a standard difficulty, changing enemies to lower tier ones, delay attack waves, weaken preplaced enemies or change map depended timers. (I think I make it sound too easy, but I feel like creating a harder difficulty is rougher than a lower one) The thing is the shift of difficulty is also seen in events or in this current season that we have. First off, I LOVE the idea of seasons and I think its very well done, though I do wonder if it means that all new cards in the future will be introduced in seasons or if we will ever have cards outside of a season again. The point system feels good and rewarding but at the same time, I look at the Nightmare challenges and instantly think... Yeah I'm not getting those. So of course I take a look at the regular challenges and there are some that I can do but others already put me in a bad spot, like slavemaster? on advanved? only fire? NO BUILDINGS? I like playing fire every now and then but I'm not confident that I can beat this one with only fire units and spells. I dont wanna be a burden to other players when attempting it with a random player cause I suck. So I a little bit of these challenges and some of the repeatables and thought, okay I guess I have to rely on the repeatables until I realized that their goals become bigger the more often you complete them its bigger jumps now like at first 30000 power in spells for a couple points, now its 40000 for the same amount. So what does that mean? Is is gonna grow infinitly? Is there a limit? Do I at some point have to destroy 8000 buildings for 4 season points? I'm a Monster Hunter player, I dont mind the grind, but even for me this seems kinda rough. But again, maybe I am just one in tenthousand who thinks like that and cannot deal with these challenges that well. Well what do I hope for? What would I change? Of course I'm not a game designer, but I think would add standard difficulties to all maps just for accessibility and a learning tool. Regarding the season I think would grant the player the option to just cancel one of the challenges through a buttonpress that give him access to a similiar challenge but on a lower scales with lower rewards. Or add maybe one or two more challenges that also could be done on standard difficulty, make them tedious or grindy, I dont mind like beating Ravens End on standard without T4 or Encounters with Twilight on Standard while only using Medium Units. Or maybe let us just speedrun a mission on Standard and give different rewards on how fast you just like with the rpve map. I think there is still a lot of potential for things like that. I am also aware that the season basically just started and there is still a lot of time left, but I just wanted to share my concerns with you. Again, its a problem that doesnt affect many players, and I do respect and love everything the devs did for the game, its in the best state it has ever been in imo. A game that still brings me so much fun and joy, and is completely kept alive by the community and some volunteers is something I have only experienced once, and that was the Horn of the Abyss team that did something similiar to heroes of might and magic 3. I just wanna take the time right now to applaud the devs, the designers, community managers and everyone else for this incredible peace of hidden gem in video game history. PS: I wrote all of this in one go and hope I kept the grammar mistakes to a minimum, thanks for reading and sorry for it being so much. :)

Are the repeatable challenges gonna reset each month or are they gonna keep growing until the end?