I’m no stranger to competitive collective mobile games. I’ve placed been ranked top 10 in Builder Base in Clash of Clans, I’ve been ranked top 10k in Clash Royal (for multiple seasons), I’ve been well many thousands of trophies above the last arena for Castle Crush for many months, I often placed top 5 in daily PvP in dragon soul, I made legend in season 2 of hearthstone, etc.
I feel this provides me a good (if not unique) perspective into this game (plus the fact that I’ve been writing guides for nearly 20 years - http://www.lurkerlounge.com/cgi-bin/forum/forum.cgi?az=show_thread&om=200&forum=Armory&viewmode=all).
I am also consistently top 500 here.
All that qualification out of the way, here are the top changes I think are needed. I will use the well-known covey time-management grid to categorize these. I’ll only use two categories of the four:
Important and Urgent
Clans ADDRESSED
This game, all too often, feels like me vs a computer. There’s no chat, there are no taunts/emojis - you don’t even see who you are facing up front.
Now don’t get me wrong - I don’t WANT taunts (this game is rage-inducing enough already) nor do I want to chat with my opponent when I’m battling.
However! We need some sort of community feeling that’s not just the forums. I want to be able to chat with my friends that play easily. I want to be able to laugh at funny things, rant at RNG, celebrate victories with.
We need clans. Or guilds. Or packs. Call them whatever. But we need them.
Replays STILL OPEN
This is dependent on the above suggestion, but once we DO have it, we need a way to share our games with our family/friends other than mobile recordings. Allow us to comment on them as well.
Trophies need to be addressed. ADDRESSED
When you are more than a week into a 3 week tournament (read: more than 30% over already) and you STILL have the very vast majority of players not even in the second to last arena , something is very wrong. As of the time of this writing, there less than 100 people in arena 9. Don’t even get me started on 10.
Progression WIP
There are several ways to fix this (migrations, density, spawn frequency, making scents actually good, shop DNA, etc.) problem but it must be fixed: Right now I have no way of guaranteeing that my effort (or my money) will yield any kind of real progression. I’m getting tired of having 3k+ dna of one component of a hybrid, to never see the other. And I’m talking after spending a few hundred bucks, AND spending 10 hours a week hunting.
That’s stupid.
The paywall/progression wall should be levels , not unlocking. This is a proven method that gets you the cash you need to justify the game, and gives us the carrot we need to justify our time spent on it.
Right now it’s not there, and I’m getting bored. And I’m not alone.
50/50 chance to avoid 100% damage has to go. DISMISSED. FINE AS IS.
It’s not fun for anyone. It’s stupid. It throws strategy out the window and relies on luck. RNG is necessary, yes. But having entire game outcomes come down to this is ridiculous. Currently my deck has 3(!) cloak/evasive users in it. Why? Because it works. It’s too reliable. It’s too hard to counter.
And it’s not fun.
Get rid of it.
Important but not urgent
Need more community content. WIP
Heck, we need a Galadon. I know you can’t make that, Ludia, but you can do a better job of encouraging it. Replays would be a good start.
Dev communication OPEN
We really need some consistent, scheduled dev updates. Right now even though I know it’s not a black hole, it feels like a black hole. It doesn’t have to. You don’t have to visit the forums (though I’m sure you do), you don’t have to reply - but DO create a blog, an update, a dev minute - something. We want to be acknowledged, not just heard!
Level-synced content OPEN
Trophy counts and seasons are necessary in a game like this. But you also need tournaments. Or whatever you want to call them. Level-synced content, where we are all level 26 (for example) to rule out over-levelling. It should have an entry fee, and a loss system - so if you lose x amount of times you’re out. It should have progressive rewards.
This is so healthy for the game - and good for your own pockets. Retries after a few losses can be gated behind a paywall. See Clash Royale for this type of system, they’ve got it down. Castle Crush does a really good job too.
Non-trophy battles OPEN
Hearthstone was great at this. You had a hidden MMR, but no displayed trophies. You could get your dailies done in them (think victory incubator). Allowed you to just play around
Just a way to relax, and play with others, try out fun decks, etc.
**More than one deck slot.**OPEN
Seriously. Let me make a counterattack deck, a cloak deck, a troll deck. Let me try 3 different competitive decks without having to manually swap cards each time. I want to be able to compare/contrast different decks.
TV Royal equivalentOPEN
Once you have replays being stored, figure out how to share close games with everyone. It’s a great way to help deck-build, learn strats, and celebrate close victories.
Share a roadmap with usOPEN
We’d love to know what your future plans for the game are. I know I know we will hold you to the fire if you say “we want to do this” but then it doesn’t work - but I work in development, I can tell you that there are things you CAN share with us, and you SHOULD.
Thanks for reading.