Changes I view as critical to the continued success of this game

[wrothgar]

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.

[Grimparadox]

Oh hey someone i fight fairly often. Cant type a full response now but I agree with pretty much everything you said. We really need to be able to chat with friends. We also need more dev communication. It sucks that they silenced metahub who was providing us normal players with data mined leaks.

[Akerond]

Important and Urgent
That was my suggestion:

Predetermined answers to send to other player after a battle …like gg(good game),you were lucky… ,
i like your team… ,ohh so many stuns… etc etc

50/50 chance to avoid 100% damage has to go
That was my suggestion :

Evasive and Cloak too RNG,make it have 60% and 70% reduction to damage for 3/2 turns(can be nullified)

Non-trophy battles
That was my suggestion :

Two way tournaments the ranked tournament and the one i just want to battle for incubators

But i support and like all your suggestions

[Jonny5]

Agreed, I hope they listen… but I doubt they will.

[John_Wayne]

I agree with it all.

Clans would be cool with replays and maybe generic programmed responses like others have suggested for post battle. Like good match or similar type stuff. But only post match. Like go to your recent opponents and send a generic message type of post match.

I could care less if dodge/cloak/evasive went away. People will just find something else to blame for losing battles. I tire of all the complaints about it currently anyway.

And yes yes yes to level synced content. Did I mention yes to this???

All are wonderful suggestions. Thanks for the post.

[rckosek]

These are great! I think some epic only battles or rare only battles would be nice too… All players use the same Dino’s deeming everything else useless

[CaptainNewbs]

The problem is this: You have spent some time writing this post but unless ludia reads it, its falls on death ears, not enough players will comment to show their approval and as mentioned ludia struggles to communicate.

That said I agree with most your points.

[Syg]

Guild/clan is under development. It’s in apk codes.

[Syg]

And before all these suggestions, fix existing bugs first.

[Cighal]

They silenced Metahub? I must have missed this somehow somewhere… o.O

[Grimparadox]

During the beta and first month or so after release meta hub would post data mined info. Then ludia “partnered” with them. This means they get all of the info, but can only post it when ludia says they can. So no more leaks. Really sucks for us.

[Cighal]

Ahh, that’s what you meant…and yes, it does suck big time.

[quakeur]

A well formed post with nice suggestions. I agree with a lot of them especially the ones that make the game’s visibility even bigger : replay for battle, showcase that would make it easier to create content.

For the trophies one, I’m agree that the number of players in each is a little bit ridiculous (it was not that hard to return to arena 9 but arena 10? Hopefully the exclusive is not interesting at the moment…). They need to adjust that but they also need to improve the gap between arena. The minimum guaranteed dna should be increased between arenas. Not only it will reward players for playing the most, it will also take down derank a scourge for new players…

On the topic of dodge, I’m against removing it. Battles don’t need to be more predictable, the maximize the potential gain is a way more interesting and deep strategy than just reading walk-through matchups. I don’t want that in this game.
I will defend it, even if I use less of them than I used to. I prefer more reliable Dino but I’m fine with letting someone his time to shine by defeating me with lucky strike (and it happens to me sometimes, allowing me to make a 0-100 match-up a 5-95 one)

Bugs need to be addressed too and communication is fine at the moment. They improved since the launch of the game (was not that great for the worldwide launch release for example) and I’m sure they are going to improve even more.

For tournaments, I wrote someday ago about it and my opinion is the same : I’d rather have main tournament as it is right now, rewarding player for investing time/money and another one with lesser rewards but still worthy without fixed level teams : Idea : Tournaments for everyone,

Good and well written suggestions @wrothgar this is the kind of content I like to see around

[MAXIMUMcaffeine]

Finally someone with the cred to lay it out there. Many of us who are stuck in sorna or lower see that top 500 end game disappearing on the horizon with no chance to ever get close. Heck, even moving forward 1000 trophies seems like it’ll take years to achieve.
I hope ludia listen because like you, we’re also getting bored of this crap

[Black_Roija]

These are all beautiful suggestions that would make this game a lot more enjoyable.
Hopefully they slowly add some of this stuff because after seeing this, I’m definitely going to feel like something’s missing.

[fsufian]

Agree with most suggestions.
Except for the nerfing part - removing the Dodge/Evasive moves. To me that’s the most unpredictable part of a battle - which makes it interesting.
Personally I am not a fan of the Dodge/Evasive moves. Seldom use the moves. But at times, it may prove to be helpful in winning battles (or losing……).
For Indoraptor and Indominus, we have Monomimus to counter.
For Monomimus, we have Monomimus to counter……

[Janx]

Well done. I agree with you.

[Uomobot]

I agree on everything, great suggestions!

[Granty555]

I’d settle for fixing the constant disconnects

[Sherwin]

Thanks for posting these suggestions. These are all great. I like how you refer to Clash Royale: those guys have it all figured regarding (competitive) battling and community socializing. I dont understand why Ludia needs to reinvent the wheel, when a lot can be taken and learned already from other immensely popular games like clash royale and clash of clans and pokemon go. And yes, indeed, this game will nevet be as popular or be an e-sport if they keep up witu the dominant RNG outcomes.
I hope Ludia listenings and reads this thread before they lose more bored players: gaining new players will always be more difficult than retaining current players: i hope they know this. Unfortunately chances are, some moderator will read this thread and nothing will happen as they are not game developers or do not have sufficient lower within the company to make something happen.