Presenters: Wrkshp Warrior & Masta Don
Next events: Crystal Siege (6 days) then Coliseum
Crystal Siege will be 6 days long so that BC can get back
onto their normal schedule of events ending on Tuesdays. The previous event (Serpenta) was shorter so
that CS could start before the US Thanksgiving holiday, this will minimize the
number of players who are inconvenienced so they can spend time with their
families (BC employees can enjoy the holiday with the fewest people having to
come into work to start the event). Merging and Traders will be active during CS.
They intend to keep bringing these back every second event for us. There won't
be any big changes to the functionality to this CS (BC considered this but opted
out of it to keep the event stable), it will run as per normal. There will be some very aggressive promotions
at the start of the event though.
Event monsters haven't been decided yet for Coliseum. It will be based on the bosses that will be used
in this Coliseum, plus a couple extra.
The final list of bosses used this time hasn't been finalized yet. Some
of these may be from the last Coliseum, some may be from the Coliseum before
that, and some may be ones that haven't been used in either Coliseum. Masta Don
still hasn't finalized the list. Coliseum will function the same way as last
Coliseum, but without all raid monsters having a bonus, only selective ones. There are five monsters (bosses?) in the
coliseum and the monsters having a bonus will be related to these. Masta Don may do some additional monsters but
this has not been decided yet.
Arena? Not this year. Maybe first quarter (Jan/Feb/March)
next year?
Leveling system for passives instead of probability? BC has
talked about this and the probability system came with the original design of
the game. The issue that came up with this is with the UI (user interface), and
would have required a UI redesign. Right now BC's UI is more convoluted than it
needs to be. Adding in a feature that shows how far along you are for r boosting
(or passives?) was too far out there, compared with a simple percentage of
success or failure. That decision was
made a long time ago, but that's why it's there.
Evolved mobs in the reward tiers? This was a feature in the ten day events. When
shorter events returned, the unevolved reward monsters returned too. BC has talked about bringing PE r monsters
back in a limited capacity, specifically for Christmas.
Mythic monsters only have better stats than legendaries, can
they be made better so that they can be r boosted beyond 99 points? Mythics are truly the best in game especially
once fully leveled up. But being so good, they're also scarce. BC has had an issue in the game, since the
beginning of the game, where some ultras are more powerful than some epics,
depending on their actives and passives, and additionally ultras were easier to
level up their passives. So it's one of
those things where Mythics are the best in game but they're harder to level up
there, whereas legendaries have an earlier cap.
Banning players and duplicate monsters? BC investigates anything related to duplicate
monsters. For example, there were a few players that BC was investigating. They
had contacted BC about monsters vanishing from their inventory. BC looked into
it and found out that most of these were duplicate monsters. BC looks into
these and depending on how long ago trades happened, it can be easy to identify
or it can be a lot more work - like forensic accounting of tracking. BC understands that many players with
duplicate monsters ended up with them through trades. This is just how BC is
handling it nowadays. BC isn't actively
ban players if they are found in possession of duplicated monsters, as BC
doesn't know whether they were scammed or whether they created these monsters
themselves. Once BC determines which is which, the players found to be creating
these duplicates are then banned.
BC has looked at adding boosters to a trader. They have also
looked at, in an ideal world with the necessary server and client capacity, allowing
the breakdown of any item into a resource that could be traded for other
resources. Essences are a good example of breaking down a monster to be able to
craft an egg. Instead BC would be looking at being able to break down any
resource in the game into a universal resource and then having a trader for
that. That's on the table but requires a
great deal of server and client work and requires a fairly massive overhaul of
the game. So it's a high-risk high-investment item, which is why you don't see a
lot related to breaking things down or trading boosters.
BC enhances individual rewards on rotation. Sometimes they
double the troop rewards, or increased lucky tiers in the individual rewards,
or double crystals in the troop reward, or double the epics in the individual rewards.
It's more of a random set up. Evolved
monsters in that reward setup - they're the highest value which is why BC won't
use them as tiered rewards. More players
participate when they see evolved monsters in the tiers, which is why they
reserve them for special occasions like holidays. BC can possibly look at
adding in more rotations, but it's been fairly obvious that players respond
best double troop tier prizes and increased lucky tiers.
What is BC doing for players for Christmas? This hasn't been
fully finalized as yet. They will be doing something similar to last year with
their 12 Days of Christmas promotion.
They may do some extra stuff on top of that.
How many players are currently playing BC? BC can't exactly answer that. It's kind of a
constant churn of players at the moment because BC has been around for so long.
When BC does their advertising, they advertise to millions and millions of
people, some of whom still play the game or have quit. It's harder to get players back in those
scenarios. As BC grows, it becomes
harder and more expensive to acquire new players, which is why they're seeing
everything being very, very flat (regarding their player base). BC is trying new methods to grow and it's
about how effective they are. BC is also looking at their first time user
experience to make it more attractive for new players to come in. Right now
it's a very, very long route for beginner players to get to the point where
they can compete heavily and BC is evaluating that. Another problem is the way the game operates
at a fundamental level, which is that various power degrees of monsters. It is
ridiculously difficult for a new player to hit that level. When everything was created it was balanced
around the players at that time. The
balance in the game for new players has been lost as the game has grown. BC is
hoping that making changes to their first time user experience will then create
a better retention and acquisition of players. This is what BC is doing to help
us with recruitment of players down the road. They're focusing more heavily on
making sure they don't do anything stupid in the process so that they won't
make it very, very attractive for current players to create 12 alt accounts.
Leagues within events?
This is very difficult to do. At best BC may introduce leagues into
events late next year. It's just very difficult with the way things were built
and the event structure doesn't interact with leagues. It will require the almost rebuilding how the
event leader boards operate.
Get players to join and keep playing because no one wants to
trade PE supers anymore? BC is looking
at ways to get new players to join and that's one of the things they're looking
at. PE supers are one of the most fun
things for beginners to get because it involves raiding heavily and raiding is
naturally fun. But no one wants them for trading because it takes away the fun
and also by the time players reach the point where they can trade these, they
already have acquired them. BC is looking at stuff like this as well.
4.8.00 release had boonbird and boonhawk event epics that
were never used in the game? This was related
to a farming monster that was created and the code for the acquisition of tokens
on the monster causes issues. They can't release it until they fix that code
with it.
Yes, BC is looking at random energy in the 12 days of
Christmas. This is one of the things they are looking at.
Benchmark prizes aren't likely to be enhanced - both from spending a certain amount of energy or acquiring a certain number of trophies. The reason is that benchmarks are problematic. The players who need them the most, are players on the low end (like new players), and so the early benchmarks are important. But for higher level players, the prizes are insanely easy to acquire because their power levels are massive. It's very difficult to balance benchmarks without it being a system of almost benchmark leagues, where the higher your power rating the harder it would be to obtain the prizes. BC will definitely not be doing this.
Advancing the story of the game? BC is looking at, and hoping that this will
happen with the Valentine's update. It's
going to be tight though. Masta Don is wanting
to get both new raid and the story enhancement in the same update, but
the raid gets the priority and the story may be delayed. The holiday season will also cause tons and
tons of people to take vacations.
Will all new reward monsters be dual element or will we see
single elements again? Masta Don prefers
single element monsters himself. But it's hard to sell the idea of new reward
monsters that will have less utility than the other new monsters.
Yes, BC has considered a new type of item to help level up
passives. What it would be is a new type of special if they add it.
Crystals won't be able to be traded in the near future. This
is intentional as crystals gate progression to a point and BC likes to make
sure that players can't just load up one account and then second evolve
everything.
More endgame content for veteran players? Introducing very challenging stuff is really
hit and miss. As Masta Don nerfs stuff, the
participation level goes way, way higher. What he'd like to do is creating more
exclusive challenging content, similar to how Lost Temple was when it was first
released. It's not something that BC is prioritizing as
BC is focusing on improving their first time user experience so that new
players can catch up with veteran players much quicker.
It's not necessary for players to build dual element teams.
Personally Masta Don still uses single element monsters because his monsters
are solid and he likes the style of them more. He goes more for aesthetics than
power.
Drop rates for event monsters? They are currently higher than they have
historically been. It may be that the
player has had a run of bad luck or it's possible that the pool of event
monsters is big and you're looking for a specific one (like WB where you might
get a different WB event monster).
BC can look at Cool Luke energy but this probably won't be
adjusted anytime soon.
Troop Wars won't be until probably the first quarter next
year. It'll likely have to be in January if it's going to come because in February
it will be the Chinese New Year CT and then the Valentines raid.
800 million trophy BR benchmarks was too high last
time? BR has had the same benchmarks
forever. BR benchmarks are so high because players with full event teams playing
against the highest trophy opponent can easily reach these trophies. BC should have done the trophies for this
event differently.
Historically last year BR's top place was 600 million for
the top player, with most not reaching over 400 million? For most events this year it's been 800 million.
Masta Don will take a look at this. Maybe it was something that happened after
they added Team Brawl and that one was copied over.
Single event monsters will become really weak soon if new
ones aren't introduced? BC will bring
this back to the discussion table and see if they want to bring in a mixture of
single and dual element new monsters. BC
has also talked about whether they want to bring in a "fourth"
(third) final evolution. This may be a better use of time than creating more new
monsters, but right now BC doesn't want to hit that kind of power burst.
More storage? BC has
looked at this quite a bit, especially as many veteran players have their
storage filled up. BC will look at it again.
Why can't BC just release single element monsters? BC can't do this simply because some players
prefer single element monsters. Anytime
BC does something there is what is called an opportunity cost. If he has an artist work on two monsters, he
has to make a decision as to making the two monsters that the most players
want. In that case, if he creates both
as single element monsters or one single element and one dual element, and only
10% of players want single element monsters, that monster will be a bust. Players
won't be enthused, and it will make a mess of things. So they can't do it just
for those who are collecting in small niche of monsters. BC hasn't done single element monsters in a
while though, so perhaps they can create a limited batch with a alternating structure.
Stones won't be returning to Dominion because that's an
example of when Masta Don listened to one person on stream.
Serpenta leader board shown.
Fifth place on the individual tiers has a name that apparently
translates from Korean into "rump meat" in English according to
Google Translate and Masta Don.
10 energy per ultimate spin? This is probably something that
BC will consider for Christmas.
Will BC have a Black Friday gold sale? Players will need wait until Black Friday to
see... probably.
Serpenta had a lot of bugs?
BC will look at the support tickets and see how many bugs they had. Masta Don will look into this. Generally when
BC has bugs like that it's related to server scaling and so it's very difficult
to track down. Masta Don will see how many support tickets were received to see
if it was specifically Serpenta bugs for QA to look at or the more likely
server scaling issue.
Better top 3 troop rewards?
Masta Don knows about how players in the top troops sell empty places in
their troop (and other "shady stuff"), so BC won't be enhancing troop
rewards in events.
Mast Don is aware that there have been a lot of bugs. That's
why BC hasn't had much time for developing new content. When the game was originally developed, they
spent a lot of time creating new things without necessarily fixing old things. People at BC didn't listen to Masta Don. They
are now paying for it. BC is working on
all the bugs to try to increase stability.
Why is energy hard to accumulate in the game? If a player
had quit for a while they might not know that a while back BC had some issues
and made some mistakes with sales and also favored newer players a bit
more. What happened was a bunch of
hackers and a bunch of alt accounts and alt accounts that farmed up energy like
mad. As a result, BC changed spins to odds based for everyone and energy became
a bit tighter. BC was inundated with a
bunch of people that were just being bad actors. Masta Don doesn't blame them as he optimizes
everything, and so BC essentially allowed it to happen. BC is looking at this
and as BC fixes up all the bugs, and ban hackers, and take care of loop holes, then
BC is planning on loosening up on energy.
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