Community Update - September

[Kubik]

Have you ever tried Google translate? It produces swear words every 3 or 4 sentences, so there is no way I would use it to translate something to language I do not know, with any hopes the result would have even similar meaning to whatever I put in.

And what would be a point of such topic, if no one would actually read it, because reading conversations on forum is terrible compared to Discord.

[This Is Halloween_2]

19 hours ago, Vysnia said:

Honestly I dont think that this card needed that drastic change. Slight changes like power costs or building/activation times, or making it ultra rare etc are ok, but thats too much.
 

Changing a card's rarity is not a nerf, it's just a way of gatekeeping a part of the community out of it, and it is absolutely not a way to solve a problem.

On 9/2/2024 at 12:09 PM, Majora said:

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.

And you are limited to 4 charges, and contrary to amii monument which makes you save energy (at some point you'll get to your T4, and there it's 300 not 250 in energy), you have to spend 240 additional energy  per T4 card you wish to play (with 24 not being recovered in the void), and it would destroy batariel as well as some NNNS decks currently in rpve.

 

However for amii I'm interested to know if the dev have tested to put the cost of amii to 350, or any other "slight" nerfed proposed by the community that didn't involve removing the T2-->T4 possibility (like Amii monument blocking the void return of the player while it's built) and what were the result of these tests. Just curious, I'd like to know your feedback on your tests.

Edited September 9, 2024 by This Is Halloween_2

[Majora]

25 minutes ago, Fimion said:

Just use Google Translate its not that complicated.

Shutting down the forums would be a pretty bad idea just make an official topic in the Cards section of the forum where people can discuss your proposed changes.

We did this in the past, it didnt work. Which is why we moved the balance discussions to discord (about a year ago already I believe?)

It would greatly benefit the conversation if you assume we are trying to do best for the game (even if you disagree with it), instead of assuming we are using loopholes and/or making it harder to discuss balance changes to force our opinions into it. 

[Fimion]

1 hour ago, Kubik said:

Have you ever tried Google translate? It produces swear words every 3 or 4 sentences, so there is no way I would use it to translate something to language I do not know, with any hopes the result would have even similar meaning to whatever I put in.

And what would be a point of such topic, if no one would actually read it, because reading conversations on forum is terrible compared to Discord.

Then just ask players or staff members to translate it for you im sure there are plenty of German French and Russian players here.

You are probably right not many people would read balancing topics on the forums but it still couldnt hurt in my opinion.

The best solution in my opinion would be like i said to add a poll in the news tab so nobody could possibly miss it.

[Metagross31]

3 hours ago, Fimion said:

Then just ask players or staff members to translate it for you im sure there are plenty of German French and Russian players here.

There are actually not that many translators working on the project and there is already lots of stuff to translate (e.g. every single card chage, new card, outcries and storybook entries for the new maps, new menu options etc.

Trying to translate every single proposed change that may or may not make it into the game together with the reasoning behind it into all of these languages and updating it whenever that proposal changes is just not feasible.

[Fimion]

1 hour ago, Metagross31 said:

There are actually not that many translators working on the project and there is already lots of stuff to translate (e.g. every single card chage, new card, outcries and storybook entries for the new maps, new menu options etc.

Trying to translate every single proposed change that may or may not make it into the game together with the reasoning behind it into all of these languages and updating it whenever that proposal changes is just not feasible.

Ok thats understandable but would it be possible to add a poll to the news tab + description in english?

I believe its important to inform as many players as possible about balancing changes especially big ones and let them vote whether they want those changes or not.

In the case of Amii Monument i just dont believe that the majority of players want it to be changed but i could be wrong of course.

[Cocofang]

8 hours ago, This Is Halloween_2 said:

However for amii I'm interested to know if the dev have tested to put the cost of amii to 350, or any other "slight" nerfed proposed by the community that didn't involve removing the T2-->T4 possibility (like Amii monument blocking the void return of the player while it's built) and what were the result of these tests. Just curious, I'd like to know your feedback on your tests.

Nerfing the power cost does not solve the myriads of design issues the card introduces. All it would do is introduce extra waiting time. You could continue to increase the cost, adding more and more waiting time, until you reach a tipping point and the card becomes too slow to use at all. There is a difference between nerfing a card and punishing the player with boredom for using it. Unlike typical RTS games, Skylords is much more momentum based.

Blocking void return could lead to a straight up match loss. And if you can disable Amii Monument to avoid that after playing your T4 army, then you'd still not have much incentive to play any T3 units and still stomp the T3 sections of a map with T4 units. A huge roster of cards remains overshadowed. And you'd still not fully address the problem of warping T1, T2 and T4 power because of the ability to free up deck slots and bulk up thanks to Amii.

The core issues with the card are that it allows for a tier skip, with all the effects this has on deckbuilding and global card viability, and that it is neutral in combination with that.

2 hours ago, Fimion said:

poll

What would a poll regarding that matter tell you? That people don't universally enjoy nerfs? Mind-boggling revelation.

Can you name me some other games that balance based on polls? Or any interview/presentation with a dev or designer that advocates for that practice? Could you think of any reason why that's not very common?

[Fimion]

19 minutes ago, Cocofang said:

What would a poll regarding that matter tell you? That people don't universally enjoy nerfs? Mind-boggling revelation.

A poll would tell me what BattleForge players want an what they dont and you people should absolutely do what the majority of players want.

Of course it shouldnt be just a yes or no poll it should include multiple options and players should decide which one is the best.

Btw if i remember correctly it was like that during EA times werent there Watch Lists with polls where players could vote which cards they want to be changed?

Edited September 9, 2024 by Fimion

[Cocofang]

Right, right. So how is that game doing?

[Fimion]

4 minutes ago, Cocofang said:

Right, right. So how is that game doing?

It wasnt doing better or worse than SkylordsReborn EA just decided to shut it down because it wasnt profitable enough.

Arent the player numbers of SkylordsReborn declining too?

Edited September 9, 2024 by Fimion

[Dutchy]

12 minutes ago, Fimion said:

and you people should absolutely do what the majority of players want.

Sorry, but this sentence is just funny to me.

As said earlier, polls are not the right way to determine balancing.

I hope you realize we can't fulfill everyone's hopes and dreams and unfortunately have to displease some people, as is everything in life. If you try to please everyone, nobody will be pleased in the end. 

After all these messages back and forth, I hope you realize why we made the decisions we did. 

Just now, Fimion said:

Arent the player numbers of SkylordsReborn declining too?

Can confirm they are not.

[Fimion]

10 minutes ago, Dutchy said:

Sorry, but this sentence is just funny to me.

As said earlier, polls are not the right way to determine balancing.

I hope you realize we can't fulfill everyone's hopes and dreams and unfortunately have to displease some people, as is everything in life. If you try to please everyone, nobody will be pleased in the end. 

After all these messages back and forth, I hope you realize why we made the decisions we did.

You are just doing what you and a bunch of other people on Discord want and of course you cant please everyone but you should at least try to please the majority of players remember you work for the players and not for yourself or at least thats how it should be.

Just like the absolutely unnecessary Decomposer and of course the Batariel nerf only you and a bunch of other people wanted that but definitly not the majority. One man army Batariel decks are ruined nobody uses them anymore at least not on Expert+ and the Decomposer nerf was also a horrible decision people made alot of good suggestions but you only did what you wanted.

 

Edited September 9, 2024 by Fimion

[Dutchy]

1 minute ago, Fimion said:

and of course the Batariel nerf only you and a bunch of other people wanted

Not sure if with "you" you are referring to me personally, but why would I want to nerf a card I wrote a whole guide on? 

1 minute ago, Fimion said:

horrible decision

That's your opinion. 

[Fimion]

1 minute ago, Dutchy said:

Not sure if with "you" you are referring to me personally, but why would I want to nerf a card I wrote a whole guide on? 

By "you" i meant the skylords team not you personally.

1 minute ago, Dutchy said:

That's your opinion. 

Most definitly the majority of players opinion but we will never find out since they were never asked.

[Dolewan]

 

I wonder if you had fun with this game so far? Why should the fun of one group be optimized, but in doing so completely destroy the fun of the other group? There has to be a way to please both groups and not just one.

23 hours ago, WindHunter said:

If the reasoning we provided is itself somehow not sufficient, we have years worth of feedback to support every conclusion we presented. We have testimonies from players who said they quit because of Amii Monument and many others who asked us to nerf it specifically because they cannot stop themselves from using it despite not wanting to. We have the data to show it has an absurdly high playrate for a T3 card and that most other T3 cards have correspondingly low playrates. And it is not like any of this came out of nowhere, the problems with Amii Monument have been discussed for years. When the balance discord opened back in 2019, some players were begging the devs to remove Amii Monument from the game before the rerelease, or at least to lock it behind so massive a wall that the vast majority of the playerbase could not touch it. Clearly, for these players, "just don't play it" was not a sufficient response to what they knew the card did to their own ability to play and enjoy the game as they liked (it ought to be obvious that compulsion is not just the providence of drugs, but that many things in life have this almost involuntary-pull upon a person). After all, their calls for the card's removal were hardly related to its competitive nature.

As mentioned by Cocofang, when we presented these changes several months ago to players on our balance discord, we also wanted to change Enlightenment. The goal was to remove Tier skipping from the game entirely. But we did not just force it through. We presented the team's reasoning and the community responded. There was a solid majority of people who supported the Amii Monument change, with some mild trepidation that the new iteration might not be strong enough (and if it is not, we will buff it, but playtesting data looks good). On the other hand, while a majority of players were willing to trust us about Enlightenment, most did not actually want to see it changed. They could understand and support the Amii Monument changes, it was obviously a cheat card, but Enlightenment had many more restrictions on it and had been part of the game since its inception, to lose it now would seem to be losing something essential to Skylords Reborn. We listened to the players and have since promised not to change Enlightenment. This was the compromise. If that is not enough, we also pulled back on proposed changes to Architect's Call originally intended for this patch after we received mixed community feedback. These instances show that the feedback system is working. 

Also, frankly, it is unreasonable, uncharitable, and insulting to think that we did not bother to talk to players, look at data, and
carefully weigh all available options before making a change of this magnitude. You can disagree with our conclusion, but only a person who wants a reason to complain would ever read such malicious incompetence into our choice, and it says much more about them than it does about us or the changes presented.

It may be that there are players who have stopped playing because of the Amii Monument. But I can promise you that after the nerf, there will also be players who will leave the game.
With a checkbox that is activated by default that you don't allow an Amii Monument and if you uncheck it, a warning appears that the style of play with an Amii Monument is not desired by the designers, you could easily avoid the problem that someone feels forced to play with an Amii Monument.

Enlightment, the tier skip, has been in Battle Forge from the start. Removing this would destroy the spirit of the basic Battleforge. Furthermore, Enlightment is only really strong in specific scenarios, but such scenarios exist for almost every card. Furthermore, you have left open the possibility that Enlightment could be changed in the future. That is not what I call a trade-off.

You also showed an unwillingness to approach the opposing players by not making any changes to your Amii Monument rework to get the opposing side on board.
You could even have taken a player from the opposing side into the balancing team to work out a solution that would satisfy both sides. Asking Mr. Empty, who was once part of the dev team, or me, who is part of the map testing team, would have been a good choice here.  

Simply saying that a large proportion of players want this change without providing any proof that this is the case is simply not honest.

 

47 minutes ago, Fimion said:

A poll would tell me what BattleForge players want an what they dont and you people should absolutely do what the majority of players want.

Of course it shouldnt be just a yes or no poll it should include multiple options and players should decide which one is the best.

Btw if i remember correctly it was like that during EA times werent there Watch Lists with polls where players could vote which cards they want to be changed?

I have already expressed the idea of the election in the Discord, but I was also rejected for it. 
As a Swiss, I can only support a vote. A decision that can be demonstrated by a publicly verifiable number is much more likely to be accepted.
You just have to give people all the information, the pros and cons, and of course allow the opposition party to express their views. You don't have to do it the American way with a loudmouth on a podium. Instead, both parties write their position in a document that is made available to everyone. Then the players can also make an informed decision about what they prefer.

[This Is Halloween_2]

Well well, a lot of hard talk on Amii change...

 

And except for that guys, what do you think of the rest of the announcment ?

Any opinion on the new energy core card ? Abilities dealing enough dmg or not ? Health cost too high/good ?

On the change to the elusive passive for amii ? Is it a good/bad idea, is the up to T3&4 enough/too much ?

On my side, I don't think energy core abilities should have an additional energy cost (as mentionned in the post), and i'm not sure the dmg is enough. When I look at things like ember strike and do the comparison (or fire sphere for the last ability) I find it underwhelming. Outside of unholy hero combos, the dmg is really low. Contrary to a spell, you need ground presence to spawn it, you have to wait 15s (no undazed spawning like ember/colossus), you have to spend 140 energy on a high orb restriction card (2S-2N), and it's only useful in a combo with 1 specific other card. Currently, I'm a bit unconvinced.

What are your though on that ?

[Cocofang]

The new cards are continuously being tuned as we speak. So we'll see what kind of numbers they eventually hit live with. If, after release and everyone gets their hands on them, they turn out to perform in undesired ways they will receive a balance pass of course. Hopefully they'll be interesting in all sorts of compositions.

[Volin]

On 9/9/2024 at 2:21 AM, UltDragon said:

Amii Monument changes are a buff to my Comet Catcher + Skyelf Sage deck, nice 🤩

I don't care too much about Amii nerf, but the above post shows why I think the new design is just terrible.

A good deck builder plays aboves deck currently with an Amii Mon switch, not taking the 4th map orb. The amii change is a therefore a huge nerf to a good Comet Catcher/Sage deck.

Now we can have 5 Orb..."decks". Yeay.

 

But as Majora and WH already said, we can't have everyone agree on this topic anyway. 

[Mr.Pepi]

Thank you for the Amii Monument nerf, I really like these changes.

[Fundus]

When people get angry about Amii Monument and Batariel nerf they should also think of all the good things the Skylords Reborn team has done for Battleforge. They have buffed so many weak cards and also added many good ones and Battleforge is without a doubt in a much better state than it ever was before. I strongly oppose the Amii Monument nerf and of course the Batariel nerf too but i am still very thankful for all the good things the Skylords Reborn team has done so far.

[DieToPlay]

18 hours ago, Fimion said:

You are just doing what you and a bunch of other people on Discord want and of course you cant please everyone but you should at least try to please the majority of players remember you work for the players and not for yourself or at least thats how it should be.

Just like the absolutely unnecessary Decomposer and of course the Batariel nerf only you and a bunch of other people wanted that but definitly not the majority. One man army Batariel decks are ruined nobody uses them anymore at least not on Expert+ and the Decomposer nerf was also a horrible decision people made alot of good suggestions but you only did what you wanted.

 

You should stop trying, it's a war you can't win. In the end we have no power compared to them, they can do w/e they want. If one day they wake and want to delete t4 because it's making the maps too easy, they will.

[xfreezy]

I wholeheartedly agree with removing the T3 Skip from the game, so the change to Amii monument is welcome. I agree with the reasonings presented by WindHunter as to why the changes were made, and how the devs interacted with the feedback while still doing what they think is best for the game in the long run.

[Vrizz]

Tip of the day from me as Vrizz, not GM: whichever opinion you have, it would be smart to first play the game after patch release for e.g. two weeks, experience changes and then decide instead of guessing in virtual theoretical world, no? 😎 

Edited September 11, 2024 by Vrizz

[Volin]

4 hours ago, Vrizz said:

Tip of the day from me as Vrizz, not GM: whichever opinion you have, it would be smart to first play the game after patch release for e.g. two weeks, experience changes and then decide instead of guessing in virtual theoretical world, no? 😎 

No need to build 5 Orb decks for me. Something you can cook in theory pretty easy, isn't it?

[Vrizz]

14 hours ago, Volin said:

No need to build 5 Orb decks for me. Something you can cook in theory pretty easy, isn't it?

Wasn't theory - I played and experienced several runs in old campaign, new campaign and rpve with new amii mon and 5 orbs and was a lot of fun - somehow eye opener for me of how many trillions of new combinations I have access to now. I was the biggest Amii Mon change skeptic and took a lot to convince me, letting me express frustration, but a lot of reasons and finally giving it a chance (and then trying myself) convinced me. 🙂

Yes, it requires to somehow surrender "mindless playing optimal decks over and over". At the same time - feels like a new game now and I love it.

Edited September 11, 2024 by Vrizz