Community Update - September

[SunWu]

Why would spawntrapping get fixed? It needs knowledge and some micromanagement to pull of, most of the time only to get a small advantage. How is that comparable to a building wich lets you skip a whole tier, large parts of the game?

Bad Harvest? One position on one map profiting from a mechanical exploit is ,,more powerful'' than a card wich is used in 1/3 of ALL PVE DECKS? I don't like to throw that word around but this to me is textbook whataboutism.

I don't like how pure shadow was nerfed in PVP. But i absolutely understand it was necessary and see that balancing can't consider my own little feelies all the time. Imagine me coming here like ,,Why shadow mage nerf? There's still a wall on Layesh wich can reach a well if built by opponent! Why is that not fixed instead?''

[Misery]

The Amii Monument nerf is pretty brutal. As a new player, I have really appreciated having monument available for the times I get stuck on a map or want to try something new. It's sad to see a useful card be neutered, especially since I saw the whole "we don't want to nerf anything"  said so often. I understand it is very strong, but trying out new decks when they aren't upgraded and have minimal card charges was much easier knowing you have a bit of a get out of jail card. Now I will just have to grind more. Seems a shame to nerf something that exists only in PVE

[Fimion]

2 hours ago, SunWu said:

Why would spawntrapping get fixed? It needs knowledge and some micromanagement to pull of, most of the time only to get a small advantage. How is that comparable to a building wich lets you skip a whole tier, large parts of the game?

Bad Harvest? One position on one map profiting from a mechanical exploit is ,,more powerful'' than a card wich is used in 1/3 of ALL PVE DECKS? I don't like to throw that word around but this to me is textbook whataboutism.

I don't like how pure shadow was nerfed in PVP. But i absolutely understand it was necessary and see that balancing can't consider my own little feelies all the time. Imagine me coming here like ,,Why shadow mage nerf? There's still a wall on Layesh wich can reach a well if built by opponent! Why is that not fixed instead?''

A small advantage? What have you been smoking? lol Bad Harvest is basically the only cPvE map i play but spawntrapping is very powerful there you can easily completely disable the entire southern exit by placing an Ice Barrier+Skyelf and if you keep casting Glaciation on the upper wall you almost have unlimited time. You dont need to be skilled to pull that off anyone can do it. But like i said im not a big cPvE player maybe spawntrapping is less powerful on other maps.

Now lets talk about rPvE Expert+ it is without a doubt more powerful than Amii Monument there. There are maps where your T2 is very close to T3 and without spawn trapping you couldnt even build your T2 because the spawn waves would pull enemies from T3 to your T2. And this doesnt just apply to close T3 bases alot of times there  are also close T2 side bases where spawntrapping allows you to go T2 much faster.

Amii Monument can be useful for rPvE Expert+ when you have a close base at T4 or a boss enemy but usually it doesnt give you much of an advantage. Spawntrapping on the other hand can win you the match especially when you have a slow and weak teammate who cant clear the T3 base alone.

On 2 player rPvE Expert+ maps spawntrapping is even more powerful there are maps where you have absolutely no chance without spawntrapping while Amii Monument is useless because T3 and T4 are in one place. 

And nobody is forced to use Amii Monument so if certain cPvE maps are too easy for you with Amii Monument then just dont use it.

[SunWu]

I don't know why you make such a fuss about spawntrapping..you can like..just don't use it, you know?

But seriously, the amii monument discussion has been going on for years and still your best argument for keeping it's current state is: ,,there's more important things``?

[Fimion]

28 minutes ago, SunWu said:

I don't know why you make such a fuss about spawntrapping..you can like..just don't use it, you know?

But seriously, the amii monument discussion has been going on for years and still your best argument for keeping it's current state is: ,,there's more important things``?

I think you misunderstood me im not completely against changing it i just dont want it to become some useless shit tier card. And i believe there is nothing wrong with spawntrapping like you said if you dont like it dont use it but the same thing applies to Amii Monument in my opinion.

 

Edited September 2 by Fimion

[Jodekoek]

7 hours ago, Misery said:

The Amii Monument nerf is pretty brutal. As a new player, I have really appreciated having monument available for the times I get stuck on a map or want to try something new. It's sad to see a useful card be neutered, especially since I saw the whole "we don't want to nerf anything"  said so often. I understand it is very strong, but trying out new decks when they aren't upgraded and have minimal card charges was much easier knowing you have a bit of a get out of jail card. Now I will just have to grind more. Seems a shame to nerf something that exists only in PVE

Before you know it a large portion of PVE will feel all too easy, so enjoy it while it is most possibly to enjoy the game; when it is challenging! 😄

Personally, I am still waiting for the option to play the game from a fresh start without having to delete my main account!

[Navilac]

What if you change the requirements of the Amii-Monument from 3 to 4 orbs. Then you don't have the tier 3 skip problems neither the game breaking problems. But passionate deck builders can still use 5 orbs and come up with unique deck ideas. Rookie Example: 4 regular fire orbs and 1 additionaly nature orb to get heal abilities... and so on.

[Reuven]

19 hours ago, WindHunter said:

We stated at the end of the Amii Monument explanation that we commit to no further major rework nerfs on existing cards. This means we will not be nerfing Enlightenment now or in the future.

Isn't this just going to funnel everything into Enlightenment ? also speedruns are going to be rekt after this change all of them use amii afaik

[Majora]

15 minutes ago, Navilac said:

What if you change the requirements of the Amii-Monument from 3 to 4 orbs. Then you don't have the tier 3 skip problems neither the game breaking problems. But passionate deck builders can still use 5 orbs and come up with unique deck ideas. Rookie Example: 4 regular fire orbs and 1 additionaly nature orb to get heal abilities... and so on.

I think you might be misunderstanding the new Amii Monument design. The situation you are describing is possible with the new design; say you build 4 regular fire orbs on the map, you can set the Amii monument to nature. 
 

9 minutes ago, Reuven said:

Isn't this just going to funnel everything into Enlightenment ? also speedruns are going to be rekt after this change all of them use amii afaik

Enlightenment is a double nature card compared to a neutral card that slots into every deck. It also is different in the sense that it does not freely allow another color, but rather forces you to spend it on single cards every time you activate it. While some players will opt to switch, the play patterns are different enough to warrant changing one but not the other. While we did consider changing enlightenment as well, community feedback was heavily in favor of nerfing monument, but not Enlightnement. 

As for speedrunning, except for Soultree and Bad Harvest, the top runs don't use Amii monument. 

[Oops]

8 hours ago, SunWu said:

I don't know why you make such a fuss about spawntrapping..you can like..just don't use it, you know?

I understand that this answer was referring to @Fimion's answer, but it seems the point I was formerly trying to make, got drowned a little in the discussion heat. Afterall, I can build my counter argument to this on a similarly illogical assumption - "I don't know why you make such a fuss about Amii Monument..you can like..just don't use it, you know?". Just doesn't make sense.

 

8 hours ago, SunWu said:

But seriously, the amii monument discussion has been going on for years and still your best argument for keeping it's current state is: ,,there's more important things``?

And regarding this part - yes and no.

The "Yes" part:

Yes, there are definitelly more alarming issues that should be addressed first (see my previous answer), because some of the bugs are literally gamebreaking. Just take the following example of a Slave Master run for an idea:

1, A regular player pops an Amii Monument in his deck and plays it. By skipping T3, he is able, FOR EXAMPLE, to drop his time from 30 minutes to 24 (mind you, we are dealing with an average player, or players, here). Cool, he made it faster, saved some time, the card was utilized.

2, A dude that knows you can skip freeing prisoners in the top left corner, as the spawned Ravenheart doesn't attack them and gets stuck. Firstly, he summons a couple of wyrms and/or skycatchers and clears the entire right side, triggering Mo without even touching any of the prisoners on the left. Then he finishes the map by dragging Mo and the single camp of prisoners from the right side to the portal and voilà, he is done. Doing this exploit, you just jumped from 30 minutes, to like 11-12. And not only you don't have to defend crap in the south, as you have plenty of time to work with, you dont need your starting orbs anymore either, because you built your flying army already and there is no need to defend whatsoever. Oh, you also finished the map in ~1/3 of the average play time... 

So you tell me which is worse - being knowledgeable about an exploit practically guaranteeing top positions on monthly ladders, or a speedup card that's just a bit too popular, making your time faster. Remember, that over half of the maps have a similar BS method to follow.

 

The "No" part:

No, Amii Monument is indeed a card that is too popular, and a change is most definitely on the table and I agree fully that it needs to be nerfed. But as mentioned in a bunch of messages from multiple users before, its a purely PvE-based card that does NOT affect player-to-player gameplay, thus it is not breaking the gameplay, it just makes one of the players on the current map to skip T3 (remember that the proto argument for this change is to increase popularity of T3 cards). It is also ridiculous how the nerfing aspect in this particular use case is, simply put, a complete revocation of the utility that Amii Monument originally provided. If you have an issue with its immediate "power creep", hell, either make the orb ridiculously hungry for power (250 to build, 500 to activate without void refund, or something similar) or make it a timed building (like building it, and after 20 seconds automatically destroying it on a 3+ minute cooldown) or just blatantly pop a 5-minute cooldown on the card after it's built. Or something else entirely. But here it's a complete remodeling of what the card does (or provides). That's not a nerf, that's a new design of the card.

____________________________________

What would you say if a similar discussion were taken on a different card? Imagine if I had the balls to suggest that Mine is too OP and should be moved to T2, while increasing its cost. And I dare you to show me a single regular PvE deck that starts with fire T1 without a Mine in it. Outrage, right? 

Edited September 2 by Oops

[Vrizz]

20 hours ago, Fimion said:

Before you ruin amii monument and turn it into a shit tier card that nobody uses better use your time to add a new and original card to the game...

I can guarantee you that basically nobody will use amii monu anymore maybe some people will mess around with it on easy difficulties for a while but thats it.

I know how you suffer and I felt the same. To support your switch to the new era, please make a list of all t3 cards that people will start to use now instead of going t2->t4. 

As some speedrunners said, Amii Mon nerf won't hurt speedrunning on most maps. And if that is so, I am thankful for the times of OP card and now I am open to refreshed and new Battleforge that I can finally learn again.

Testing runs on new maps and with new cards made my mind explode of how much freshness this brings to the game. You will see. 🙂 No more mindless facerolls on keyboard for always-the-same-patterns-with-same-decks! 

Edited September 2 by Vrizz

[Carofex]

I will give 100k BFP to the first player who gives me a replay of Bad Harvest solo on expert difficulty. The Replay must be playable after the Amii-patch, so only the nerfed Amii-monument is allowed. Additionally: No bug-abuses, no relying on rare situations. Spawn-traps are allowed.

 

https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/11959-bounty-for-pros-bad-harvest-solo-after-nerf-of-amii-monument/

 

Edit: There are already at least one replays to find on youtube from yesterday. So my fears are not fundamental and I cancel my challenge

Edited September 2 by Carofex

[Eres]

Just want to add my small part to amii monument discussion. But first - thanks for the new content and all your hard work! 🙂

I think Amii was especially useful to new players. I have been using it myself to get past some maps. But when you get better cards or learn maps you realise you don't need it. Yes - removing its ability forces new players to play maps the way it should be played. But on the other hand It is also not that strong. Every map can be broken but I understand your point that you need different cards.

I am fine with change. I already think of some usages for changed version so I am bit curious how it will go.

Small note: Occasionally I use Amii monument just because it is cheaper (with construction hut).

For the current balance - I find energy cost still bit too high. But I think of 2 possible interesting changes:

• get building cost back to 250 (or 200) but make orb cost free or very low. This gives ability to easily change orbs and gives more opportunities / fun
• change building to T2. This might be very interesting but not sure if will break game again. 😄

 

So tldr my thought: Was it breaking some gameplay? Yes. Did it need nerf? Not sure.

[Carofex]

If Expert Bad Harvest solo isnt playable any more I recommend changing the archivent for soloing all expert maps.

 

[SunWu]

6 hours ago, Oops said:

I understand that this answer was referring to @Fimion's answer, but it seems the point I was formerly trying to make, got drowned a little in the discussion heat. Afterall, I can build my counter argument to this on a similarly illogical assumption - "I don't know why you make such a fuss about Amii Monument..you can like..just don't use it, you know?". Just doesn't make sense.

I was semi joking because he was rambling about bugs/abuse of mechanics and then referring to amii monument with the argument: you can ignore it, i thought starting my next paragraph with ,,but seriously'' made that clear. It is of course a stupid argument, if you wanna have anything resembling balance, ,just ignore OP stuff'' is not an argument.

6 hours ago, Oops said:

Yes, there are definitelly more alarming issues that should be addressed first (see my previous answer), because some of the bugs are literally gamebreaking. [...}

 

What is more alarming is definetly subjective. A lot of people consider amii monument gamebreaking. If you consider amii monument gamebreaking, it's defeintly more important because a lot more people use it day to day in every PVE there is.

 

6 hours ago, Oops said:

What would you say if a similar discussion were taken on a different card? Imagine if I had the balls to suggest that Mine is too OP and should be moved to T2, while increasing its cost. And I dare you to show me a single regular PvE deck that starts with fire T1 without a Mine in it. Outrage, right? 

Mine to T2 wouldn't be too crazy considering how strong it is. But the crucial difference is that mine isn't a neutral card wich let's you skip T1 completly and you have 19 slots for T2-T4 cards, there's levels to imbalance. Playrate is still a good indicator if something is too strong, one card leading to 30% of players discarding a whole tier of possibilies is just sad.

[Riviute]

Amii monument was controversial from the start and honestly it just invalidated almost every single t3 card. And there are so many fun cards to use from t3. You had to be a little bit more tactical in your deckbuilding. I look forward to that change even though I've used it plenty myself and will certainly miss it at some points. But sometimes more impactful changes are needed for the health of a game. Anyone remembers how back in the days enlightenment was only 175 unupgraded? It was bonkers and got changed, its still being used to this day. Maybe this change that is currently being made is not the most ideal one, I can't tell because I don't know sh1t about balancing, but it doesnt't mean that further changes can be applied in the future.

But most importantly I am superhyped for all the new content. Can't wait to see what you've been brewing all this time, and once again:

Thank you all for your hard work, I'm very impressed by your dedication to this project!

[Metagross31]

Try to think about the Amii Monument changes from the perspective of a game designer or a map maker. You put endless hours into designing and balancing a new map with a very cool T3 section or you design a T3 concept of a faction with lots of cool possible interactions, just to see people skip it entirely with a single card. That probably feels like the gamedesign equivalent of making a fancy 3 star dinner and buying some expensive wine just to see your guests drown the Food in tons of Ketchup and chugging the wine down with coke.

You can see a decent number of community maps and many past events, which ban Amii Monument for that reason. The most extreme example of this in my oppinion though is Soultree, where you skip the only real enemy base with buildings on that map by cheesing it. I really hope this will be fixed with this update as well.

[TREX]

Will the alltime speedrun records be reset with the amii monument nerfs? 

Edited September 3 by TREX

[Volin]

33 minutes ago, TREX said:

Will the alltime speedrun records be reset with the amii monument nerfs? 

That was confirmed on Discord, yes.

I mean at least for some maps/modes thats kinda mandatory imo

[Majora]

40 minutes ago, Volin said:

That was confirmed on Discord, yes.

I mean at least for some maps/modes thats kinda mandatory imo

To clarify:

There will be a new category for records since the patch, so you have the new best possible times aggregated there."

[TreyDog3]

The future of Skylords is bright ❤️

[You will win with me]

On 9/2/2024 at 4:09 AM, Misery said:

The Amii Monument nerf is pretty brutal. As a new player, I have really appreciated having monument available for the times I get stuck on a map or want to try something new.

   You probably know the card anyway, but if not, I recommend "Enlightenment" as an alternative 🤗

[DieToPlay]

On 9/2/2024 at 7:38 AM, SunWu said:

I don't know why you make such a fuss about spawntrapping..you can like..just don't use it, you know?

wait, hold up! so when I said it, it's all wrong and i'm stupid but when you say it, it's fine. What is this madness...

[Cocofang]

It is obviously poking fun at the fact that this sort of argument can be flipped around on pretty much anything and is therefore ultimately vapid.

[Dolewan]

It's clear to everyone that the Amii Monument needs a nerf. But changing the card entirely is just too much.
There could have been so many solutions to the Amii Monument problem:

• Increasing the construction costs to 350
• A warning at the start of the match that you are playing with Amii Monument and that this is not in the interest of the map designers.
• A checkbox that the Map leader can use to set whether to use the card or not.

Or all 3 things combined.

With the idea you have for the rework, you could design a new card. The idea of the effect is not bad.
But of course you had to choose the variant that would divide the community.

By implementing this rework, you are putting the project at unnecessary risk because, as mentioned above, you are dividing the community.

Why did Windhunter even announce the change to the Amii Monument in the Balancing Discord without being willing to find a compromise? That's almost the worst thing about the whole story, that the balancing team didn't approach the players who were dissatisfied with the proposed Amii Monument change to find a solution that everyone was happy with. The whole thing was a win-lose situation(in German "Friss oder Stirb"; a community project shouldn't be run like that when making such big changes.

Edited Saturday at 12:59 PM by Dolewan