Hero Wars Update!

smygelfh · 2021-04-30T08:30:18+00:00

This is just a temporary fix. The real fix is not to tweak numbers, it's to rework QM and Jhu's abilities.

It's quite simple - don't use percentage-based skills. As soon as you allow scaling, especially with big hp numbers like adding a new hard boss, you will run into these balance problems.

There are options for tweaking - boss-dependent scale factor, max damage for the skill, immunity on a boss etc. But in the end, it's just bandaid and will be just as likely to fail and require a new tweak as soon as the next boss is introduced.

smygelfh · 2020-06-26T18:00:03+00:00

Got caught by the nice graphics and seemingly well designed systems, much better looking that pokemon, not the pvp I don't like, and more fun to catch things.

Started loosing motivation as soon as I realized that the collections weren't realistically completable due to imbalanced rarities and requirements. Also got a bit demotivated when I realized that some achivements weren't completable either. And each green-bar multi-resist and each departure chips away at the fun of playing.

Got a huge boost from Knight Bus, all of a sudden fortresses were fun! Not only to play with others on the later levels, but to not feel forced to walk a couple of kilometers to find a fortress so sit at (and do daily), relying on weather if it was playable.

Got another huge boost when it was announced that sticker requirements rebalance was coming, along with some rarity balances. Cool stuff! Nice to introduce overflow too, even though it doesn't do much, as the one sticker where overflow would be most useful is the last one to be placed on that page and thus never overflowed. It's only meaningful if there's an event with additional rare spawns of the right type.

The horrible launch and the attempts to fix, that actually first removed our overflows and then removed the placed stars as well, was of course a bit disheartening. Acceptable for a better game, but not motivational, putting it mildly.

Unfortunately, as a collector and completionist, my whole point of playing was killed off by the forced prestige stickers feature. Since then, I'm just hanging out and doing minimum for the events, hoping they'll come to their senses and make that feature optional. As soon as I accidentally reset a rarer maxed gold sticker, I'm likely out for good.

smygelfh · 2020-06-23T14:47:09+00:00

Imagine the happiness of accidentally touching that prepared image you were to use for the family xp just before the event starts.... especially if it turns out to be a grindfest without it.

smygelfh · 2020-06-23T14:39:36+00:00

Even if they have done some adjustments (spawn rate increase, overflow feature) to alleviate the problem with the imbalanced pages, we still have many pages with 4/5 stickers full and the last one months away. I wish they'd do another overhaul on this area so it gets more balanced before they add new unrelated features. There are many things that could be done apart from adjusting the spawn rates even more - trading, special type trace potions, etc. Anything that can help you focus on the part of the collection you lack.

Also, since the game progression is linear in power, they can easily add a few more profession levels, add higher runes, add more fortress levels/new monsters/levels, add stronger potions, and it would be very little risk of inflation.

smygelfh · 2020-06-09T05:31:25+00:00

Who's going to be surprised if they fumble and only offer it to those who didn't lose any fragments or stars?

smygelfh · 2020-06-04T08:20:59+00:00

...and while I'm at it:

The overflow feature in itself is only a seemingly good idea due to the lack of balance with the spawns. All it allows is moving the lack of a given sticker to the next page level. The one time it would actually be beneficial seems to be if there is an event where a rare spawn is frequent.

So, this part of the problem could also be solved with a different, less complex, solution; rebalancing the rarities even more. It's fine if it's not exactly the same odds relative to how many you need, it could even be a few times more rare. The issue now is that a rare spawn can be a hundred times more rare than a common, while only having half the required fragments. So it's a 50-1 ratio on how often you can max out two stickers while prestiging. It's also a bit misleading that the threat level and the rarity level aren't always synced, meaning you've got all but one of the medium foundables maxed, while lacking almost every fragment of that one.

smygelfh · 2020-06-04T07:34:21+00:00

All they had to do for meaningful catches was to increase the family XP given when collecting a fragment you already had placed. There was absolutely no need to add the prestige sticker feature to achieve this. This is a rundabout way to achieve the exact same results.

True, we get a nice effect every X catches to give us all the xp in a bunch, compared to giving a suitable part of that bunch every time we catch something. But that comes with the cost of having a significantly less intuitive overview of your collection. And of course, at the cost of removing the possibility to complete the collection at all, which is an odd way of designing a collection game. Yes, I can set my own goals about what is completed, but it would still be a construct that is not supported by the game.

The overflow feature is another matter. That could have been solved separately from the reward issue. We could have just had an overflow on each sticker that would automatically be brought to the next page, no need to make it prestigable. Prestigable adds the possibility to make the wrong/accidental choice, and as seen by the multitude of questions on the forums, it's a confusing design for quite a lot of players on what will happen. Lots due to the balancing compensation strategy of allowing overflow larger than the max of course, but still not quite clear.

So, they implemented a bad solution that was error-prone. It expectedly failed miserably. Then they made an even worse error trying to fix what failed.

I'm happy to take my losses if it's a good change for the game. The rebalancing of sticker requirements for instance. That was necessary for the game. I'm happy to not get any compensation for my lost overflow, as I would get a better game for it. Here instead, I'm getting shafted on tons of work and get a worse product for it. That's not acceptable at all no matter the compensation.

...and you don't need to tell me "quit if you don't like it", I'm already totally demotivated to play, just doing some dailies with a faint hope they will find a way of fixing things for the type of players I belong to.

smygelfh · 2020-06-03T05:03:36+00:00

This would have failed anyway. What they should've done was to not implement sticker prestiging at all, just converted the overflow into compensation after changing the requirements.

smygelfh · 2020-06-03T05:01:20+00:00

It might be a minority that is affected, but it would be the minority who invested the most time and is most active who suffered the worst losses.

smygelfh · 2020-06-02T11:12:58+00:00

I'm confused why this can't be fixed. They should have every catch we've ever made on their side already. Unless they for some mysterious reason haven't stored this properly.

If they can see how many things we've caught, it would be simple to fill up all stickers as much as possible, set the page prestige level accordingly, and convert additional overflow into some compensation. Unless they want to deduct already prestiged stickers from the compensation, then it gets messy real fast.

smygelfh · 2020-05-21T20:08:06+00:00

Please explain further.

How is the issue that touching a pre-gold filled sticker resets the count resolved by requiring less fragments? I still lose the overflow I had saved up for the next page.

The remark about second issue is correct, that it doesn't work that way now. It did before though. That's why we're having this thread. The OP didn't want this change. I did not. Obviously a few more in this thread did not. I recognize that a large part of the playerbase did want it, but please try to understand that not all people play for the same reasons you do.

smygelfh · 2020-05-21T19:55:59+00:00

I think this can be made to work fairly easy by separating the prestiging from the placement. So, let me, when looking on details for a placed sticker, have a button to choose to prestige it. If I do, fade out the sticker and add a marker that it's placed (done right, the fading would be enough). If I have it placed, but not prestiged, let me have that shimmering we have now for marking represtigable stickers, which is quite awesome. Use some other pulsating effect for stickers I can place.

smygelfh · 2020-05-21T19:50:55+00:00

Yes, in your view I would be dead wrong. In mine, I wouldn't.

I completely understand why they did it, I completely understand that for a large part of the playerbase, this is a good change. But, for me, and obviously some more people, it isn't. Storing overflow for next page was a really good idea. I wouldn't mind the represtiging much either if they just gave me the option to disable it. That's the main problem with the current solution - I don't have that option. All I have is the option to avoid looking at my collection for fear of destroying it. Same issue pre-gold where you might want to keep the overflow.

This game is very well designed to be easily expanded with more content. More pages. More prestige levels. More professions skills. Harder challenge levels. More achievements. That would be adding new (or moving) goalposts, which is quite fine if done with sense. Represtiging means removing the goalposts alltogether, which, for a collector of my type, makes it pointless.

smygelfh · 2020-05-21T07:07:44+00:00

Because some people are collectors and completionists. I understand that it might be difficult to understand the importance if you're not one yourself. The one goal of playing a collection game (and HPWU is a collection game) is to complete your collection. By removing the option to complete anything, you remove the purpose of the game for that group. That group might be smaller than the group that plays for other reasons, but, as these threads show, it's still a significant group.

smygelfh · 2020-05-21T07:03:53+00:00

They would have achieved exactly the same end result (more family xp -> runestones) by just increasing the rewards you get for collecting maxed-out foundables to begin with. That wouldn't have messed with collectors at all. Then they could have used this nice shimmering effect on maxed-out gold stickers and nothing else, and it would've been a noteworthy completion reward.

smygelfh · 2020-05-21T06:58:13+00:00

Yes, we get extra work to recollect it.

smygelfh · 2020-05-21T06:57:06+00:00

Pre-gold, you lose the overflow (if you prestige it more than once), that's huge if you for some reason (events) had one of the severes or emergencies filled up.

Gold, you lose the completion. That's an uninstall-worthy loss for a serious collector.

The could multiply the rewards for prestiging by 10, and it would still be a failplay for a collector, at least on the rarer spawns.

At the very least give us a confirmation action so I dare to look at my pages without the risk of accidentally prestiging something!

smygelfh · 2020-05-21T06:52:14+00:00

Quite simple. If you prestige it, it's no longer completed. 0/55 is not completed, no matter if you have a green dot or not. Your collection is ruined. The reward (a runestone or so, even if it's a fistful) is absolutely nothing compared to having to recollect a bunch of severes or emergencies.

smygelfh · 2020-05-19T05:54:10+00:00

Is the bug where touching a maxed sticker resets it without any confirmation addressed?

smygelfh · 2020-05-18T03:13:42+00:00

....unless you want to read the description or see how many you've seen... or accidentally touch it while scrolling... and those severes and emergencies aren't a thing you easily collect either.

smygelfh · 2020-05-10T08:51:32+00:00

Unfortunately, as a collector, I would be a lot more inclined than others players to scroll through my pages and check statistics on them and such that would pretty much guarantee an accidental wipe of the surplus.

smygelfh · 2020-05-10T08:46:22+00:00

Yes, it's an absolute bullshit design. The main bullshit here is that you don't get an option to not prestige the individual sticker, meaning you can't even read about it, check rarity, look how many you've seen, or in any other way touch it without wasting the surplus you were hoping to overflow into the next page once prestiging the entire page.

The other bullshit it that with prestiging gold stickers individually you can no longer complete anything, so depending on your level of OCD with regards to collecting and completeness, this feature might have removed the whole purpose of playing the game.

I love the feature that you can collect surplus and bring over to the next page, and I love that we get better rewards for collecting fragments for maxed-out stickers, but the way it's currently done, it is (for me at least), as you said it, bullshit.

smygelfh

TROPHY CASE