Friday, February 15, 2019
Basic Introduction to Merging
Merging is a way to increase the statistics and change the zodiac of a monster you value.
Many players use it to increase the statistics of an event monster (by merging with a reward monster), or to correct a non-PE monster.
Merging requires two maxed monsters of the same rarity and evolution level.
Monster A is the monster you want to keep, but you want to change its statistics and zodiac.
Monster B is the monster whose statistics and zodiac you want to transfer. This monster is destroyed in the merging process.
If both monsters are reward monsters, then the final merged version of Monster A will gain the best of both monsters r-boost points. For example, if Monster A has 1/3/5 and Monster B has 2/1/6, then the final merged Monster A will have 2/3/6.
While merging is open, you will be able to merge one monster per day, refreshed each reset.
Merging Costs
Super: 50k stones, 4 super crystals
Ultra: 75k stones, 2 ultra crystals, 2 super crystals
Epic: 100k stones, 2 epic crystals, 2 ultra crystals.
(Crystals can all be level 1, no need to max them)
Best merging results are achieved when your monster is at its highest evolution level. If you choose to merge first and then evolve/sevo, its final statistics won't be as high as merging after that evolution.
To merge your monsters, use the Facebook login at support.pennypop.com and then select merging from the top menu. You will be asked to select Monster A and B from your inventory. It can help to rename your monsters first so you can easily identify them here. If your monsters aren't shown as options for merging, check that they are maxed first.
Questions and Answers...
Do actives and passives change? No, Monster A retains its original active and passive.
What happens if Monster B has bound equipment? Merging completely ignores the bound equipment and it will be destroyed in the merging process too.
Can I keep Monster A's zodiac? No. However, by choosing a monster with the same zodiac for Monster B, the final merged Monster A will also have the same zodiac.
If Monster A is an event monster and Monster B is r-boosted, will the event monster gain those r-boost points? No, event monsters can't be r-boosted.
How do Dual Element Monsters work?
Dual element monsters have a primary element (shown first) and a secondary element (shown second). I'll be using a wind/water monster in this example.
The active of a dual element boss is always in the primary element. For a wind/water monster with snipe, the snipe will always be wind. If it had swap, then all hearts will turn into wind gems.
The difference with the monster comes from gem matching. It's possible to have gems both in the primary and the secondary element causing your dual monster to attack, and their combined damage will show in the numbers that overlay on your monster. The combo bonus will then be added to that number.
Note that there is a visual glitch here in that the color of the damage will be that of the last primary/secondary gem matched. Ignore this - the game is calculating the right things! When your attack is shown to be hitting an enemy, any elemental bonus from either the primary or secondary components will be added into the number displayed on your screen. Again, ignore the color shown, as the numbers will be correct with any bonus applied to the right gem matches.
For example, if you have two 3 gem wind matches and one 3 gem water match in a single turn, and your attack hits a fire monster... the numbers shown post-attack will include an element bonus for the water gem match only. If this attack was to hit a rock monster instead, the two wind matches will gain an element bonus but the water match won't.
The active of a dual element boss is always in the primary element. For a wind/water monster with snipe, the snipe will always be wind. If it had swap, then all hearts will turn into wind gems.
The difference with the monster comes from gem matching. It's possible to have gems both in the primary and the secondary element causing your dual monster to attack, and their combined damage will show in the numbers that overlay on your monster. The combo bonus will then be added to that number.
Note that there is a visual glitch here in that the color of the damage will be that of the last primary/secondary gem matched. Ignore this - the game is calculating the right things! When your attack is shown to be hitting an enemy, any elemental bonus from either the primary or secondary components will be added into the number displayed on your screen. Again, ignore the color shown, as the numbers will be correct with any bonus applied to the right gem matches.
For example, if you have two 3 gem wind matches and one 3 gem water match in a single turn, and your attack hits a fire monster... the numbers shown post-attack will include an element bonus for the water gem match only. If this attack was to hit a rock monster instead, the two wind matches will gain an element bonus but the water match won't.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
MiriamRowan's Unofficial BC Live Report - 13th February, 2019
Presenters: MastaDon (MD) and WrkshpWarrior (WW)
Next events: Valentine's Raid, then Battle Royale
Valentine's raid - Laboratory of Love, believed by MD to be
rock. When BC repeats an old event, then
they need to use the element of the boss that was used back then, so it's rock
again. The element of the bosses used to
be determined by art, and it's been caused by the weird rotation that was
started a long time ago to correct balances.
It used to work well but since BC has started reusing old events, then
the order of the elements can be in a strange order instead of a balanced
rotation. Only two sets of past
Valentine's event monsters will have a bonus active, to reduce the number of
monsters being sold before predictable events.
(CNY event monster trading was significantly higher than regular trading
for full event teams). Valentine's
tokens will start dropping during the event and will keep going until the end
of the month. You can probably guess
which event monsters will have their bonus based on the boss being rock.
Not receiving game notifications? MD suggests a reinstall of your game.
A full audit of every reward monster is underway in the
game, so that MD knows when they were first given out and which ones don't have
second evolutions.
All events are currently aimed to be 5 days long, except
where holidays timed with the ending of an event.
Pictures are now on the trading website. Time was allocated for this and they had it
done with this week's update.
Single element reward monsters are possible for the next update.
Sometimes there is a delay for art though as they may be working on something
else. Art knows that BC wants some
single elements.
Can female avatars receive crowns? Art likes to
differentiate things and seem to dislike giving the same items to both gender
avatars. MD will talk to art to make the representation solid.
Yes, support tickets can currently be sent with anyone's
IGN. MD will remind BC that they need to work on this.
Ironlords being too strong with their event bonus compared
to the event monsters active in raids?
MD will look into balancing this.
CS being extended another day? MD wasn't impressed to be
told about this on the Monday himself.
Crafting new equipment?
Soon is relevant. Not as soon as MD would like. He's trying to get it as
soon as possible. It's based on BC's production pipeline. They need to
prioritize what BC needs done first, but too many things need to be done
"soon". Things that involve
art like monsters get the priority.
Expand the tiers on the leader board? MD dislikes where
leader boards are at where they are now. MD can't make them better without
upsetting lots of people. He should be
reducing the tiers of the leader boards due to the player base, but he doesn't
want to do that. They definitely won't
be expanded.
Wedding themed avatar costumes? MD will suggest this to art.
Not getting avatar spins?
Don't worry, these will accumulate and you'll soon be like the players
who have all the items and can't use the spins.
Hacker videos? BC
looks at these videos and try to work out how they do what they show themselves
doing. Often these players are banned
several weeks later. They want you to
buy their tools, or download them in exchange for your personal information.
They won't tell you that their account was banned two weeks later.
Can we adjust the bonus on event monsters? BC is looking at lowering the bonuses in the
future, but they're aware this may upset players with event teams. The gap between event monsters and normal is
too big. It makes competing for new players too difficult to compete, and
devalues mythics and legendaries. The
gap is large because of both the event bonus, but also about 20% comes from
merging. The event bonus is the primary
problem here. But BC doesn't want to
badly affect the event teams that veterans have worked on.
Elements of event mobs in CT was terrible? Good feedback, thank you.
In a perfect world, MD would like the pieces of a costume to
be won in different ways, with only one rare piece available for top
tiers. The others would be obtained in
other ways.
R Monsters in U-spins?
BC's grabs are programmed under an archaic method which makes it
difficult to include reward monsters. MD
wants the ability to stick all monsters in the grabs: event, reward and normal
monsters. Right now it can't be done,
but it's been slated for later down the road.
Right now, MastaDon currently needs to select reward monsters
individually and then there is a limit on how many can be added. This is why there are usually only 5.
BC telling players ahead of time which raid monsters will
have a bonus leads to weird trading before an event, and BC doesn't know which
trades are legitimate and which ones are for monsters bought for money.
Leader boards were shown for CT and CS.
PvP was promised for this stream, but Wrkshp Warrior says
he's a terrible liar and doesn't have the game installed on the stream device
for today. He promises double PvP next stream.
Season's were one of the most horrible things that BC ever
did. These won't be coming back. This leader board system only rewarded the
best players to help them become better.
The top people ended up getting an enormous amount of stuff while
players at the bottom received almost nothing.
Season benchmarks have been considered though.
Troop Wars? Since
Coliseum had such bad participation, BC is reluctant to run Troop Wars since it
tends to also have poor participation.
Troop Wars won't be back in the near future.
Event monsters taken out of trader? Some players may want to trade away monsters
used in raid events instead of holding onto them for the past year. MD will consider increasing the type of trade
monsters so that it's more balanced and not so many offers for event monsters
come up.
Having more than one account in BC is fine. You're not
giving yourself a competitive advantage but are hopefully having more fun in
the game. This is within reason though.
Having 400 alt events isn't okay, for example. Trading between alt accounts is also
okay. MD's issue comes when people use
programs to create dozens upon dozens of accounts. That's where he starts to draw the line.
Why are tier 1 individual tiers rewarded with so many
monsters? This is caused by inflation
over the years. BC needs to have the
large number of monsters to encourage players to fight for first position. MD
admits that the number of monsters in the leader boards are now ludicrous and
way too many monsters are given out. BC
would need to find another thing to put into leader boards to have players
fight as hard, in order to reduce the number of monsters given out.
PvP fixes? Low
priority right now for BC.
BC Live finished without a code being released, but one was quickly added to the comments after the stream.
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
MiriamRowan's Unofficial BC Live report - January 20th, 2019
Presenters: Wrkshp Warrior (WW) & MastaDon (MD)
Next events: Crystal
Siege (with merging and traders) then Celestial Towers.
MD has seen a picture of the CT boss, but he hasn't checked
to see his element. The boss looks "kind of fire". MD can't remember though. There seems to be some fire and rock and ice
in the picture. MD can't tell. He's a giant boar looking guy. He doesn't look like a leaf boss, but it
could be any of the other elements. BC
is still testing the event currently. The
previous Chinese New Year's CT event monsters will be active. (For valentines
raid, it will be the past valentines event monsters)
Valentine's raid event may be after CT if everything is
ready by then.
Merging and Traders will be on for CS. There is a chance that merging and traders
might stick around for a few events as the lunar new year and Valentines are
huge around the world. Valentine's will likely have a special kind of grab,
like all the other major holiday events.
Will BC start giving us 20 energy per BC Live each
week? No, it won't be raised above 10
energy and we should blame Yulun for that as she's in charge of codes.
Can 2 Leader boards be shown on streams? No, this won't be happening. One leader board
gets shown on the stream and the other should be posted on Facebook after that
event.
Barrier in prizes? MD
will try to remember this.
Arts and animation were out for a period during the
holidays, so for now updates will only be for monsters. For the new zone, the zones and their quests
and the raid parts have been planned out, but everyone needs to be back from
vacation before work can start on this.
Pictures on Trading Website?
This has been shipped over to the server guys, as the previous people couldn't
do these changes. It will be done with
the next update. Yes, they are working
on this.
Single element reward monsters may be added into the mix in
future reward monster prizes, but it won't be in this current batch of events.
Why didn't we earn trophies for farming in Sanctiflyer? MD thinks that there might have been a problem
with farming during Sanctiflyer.
PvP? This cuts into
their workflows, and so it needs to be organized into their pipelines. No fixes for PvP are being worked on
currently as priorities are elsewhere.
Android Dominion Tower Bug - this is a device sided fix as
it's something to do with how android processes numbers.
BC has a small team and is a very small company, aiming to
grow slowly. Any money that comes in goes to staff and growing slowly. Fewer people, work more efficiently and scale
up. This does create a slower growth to
the company.
New event? BC won't
be working on a new event currently. After they get new monsters in, they want
to work on a new story zone and a new raid zone. The raid zone will allow for
better crafting of equipment.
Troop prizes for PvP?
No, one strong PvP player would carry their troop so this won't happen.
BC doesn't like certain aspects of the existence of event
monsters, but changing it is now too high risk, especially after players have
spent so much to gather these mobs.
Leader boards were shown for Dominion FFA and Sanctiflyer.
Second Sevo for Starclaw?
MD will find out if they have one.
Sometimes they have become lost between art and animation though. MD will double check.
Dual elements on raid bosses won't happen as the potential
for bugs is absurd.
Next update will have the CT new stuff and possibly some new
second evolutions but it depends on what is finished from animation and tested
on time. Unfortunately holidays have
caused delays with new content.
Reroll for only actives or passives? Not likely. The more important reroll option
is zodiac rerolls.
The new story zone will have a raid zone that will drop items
that allow players to craft the higher level (bound) equipment, but this is all
part of what they're working on and won't be in the next update.
Avatar spins? BC
wants to separate out the costumes into individual pieces and put all of these
into the spins so that they can be won over time. There would also be boxes of stones that
would give players with all avatar items a reason to keep spinning.
Yes, WW has spent all of January practicing PvP. Next BC
Live he will start playing against us.
Equipment? MD wanted
to give bound equipment to the older mobs to catch them up with the newer
higher powered monsters. This wasn't popular with players to receive the older
monsters. BC is still debating more of a
rebalancing of stats. For example, there could be a range of stats for each
monster so that there wasn't ever a definite "best" monster for each
rarity. Merging has kind of already
solved this though. Some of MD's favourite
monsters are from 2 years ago, but he can't really use them as they're not
strong enough. They would like to
rebalance the monsters, but without penalizing those who already have good
monsters.
Lots of time is spent on animation. Even adding small vanity
items to monsters is a nightmare scenario for development. So much time would be spent making a t-shirt
look right on all the monsters that there would be no sense putting that time
into something so small.
Yes, CT was originally planned to time in with the Chinese
New Year, but it wasn't quite ready in time, so Crystal Siege is coming in
first.
BC tries to mix up the passives so that players can level
their passives. Most people are only
aiming for one active each event, and the others are usually considered to be
feeders anyway.
New actives and passives will not happen anytime soon. There
is usually a backlash for these. For players to be interested, they need to be
powerful, but players would prefer their teams to still be relevant. Players can submit new ideas for this, but
most would require rebuilding how actives and passives work, so BC is unlikely
to do this.
The percentage chances of passives won't be changed as BC
gives out so many monsters in the event prizes to help us do this.
Raid bosses are set so that they aren't too hard or to
easy. If bosses are set too hard then
participation drops dramatically. World Bosses
are a good solution as players will eventually reach the right difficulty for
them.
Statistically, no, you're unlikely to ever land on a lucky
tier. They're so hard to get.
Friday, January 25, 2019
Cool Luke Chart
The chart below was correct on the 20th of December, 2017, when it was posted by Yulun on Battle Camp Global. If anyone notices any changes, please let me know. :)
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
MiriamRowan's BC Live Unofficial Report - 16th January, 2019
Presenters: Masta Don and Wrkshp Warrior
Next events: Dominion FFA then Sanctiflyer
Merging and traders will be back for Dominion FFA. One of the reward actives will be crush, and
definitely not deadshot this Dominion FFA.
MastaDon can't deny that they went a bit "scorched
earth" for rather minor offenses, but he'll let us know more later in the
stream.
BC looked at every person who was banned, regardless of
whether they'd sent in a request. As Masta Don looked through all these people,
he started to feel bad. Especially when he saw the names associated with the
accounts, instead of just numbers. Some of the people were banned for
relatively minor instances for hacking. For example, if someone used to hack so
that they could farm insanely quickly, then this isn't the same as spinning the
grab a thousand times without spending.
Neither is okay though. Because
some players have used them for so long, so was banning them without a warning
fair? Auto-farming isn't good, for
example, but it's not as bad as other
forms of hacking. So BC is allowing these players back, but if they do this
again then that will be treated as their second strike and they'll then be
banned. As an example, most players know
about the refund thing they can do every hour. Players shouldn't be doing this, but Masta Don
doesn't really care. BC will consider
the degrees of wrongness, instead of being black and white on bans. Stuff that is game breaking, will be banned. People who are using a quality of life thing,
won't be treated the same, as long as it's not ruining the game or affecting
others then it will be a warnable offense for the first time. After that warning though, they'll be banned
if they continue to use these "quality of life" hacks. (It wasn't refunds/backouts that caused bans,
but it happens constantly when people don't like the match they're on. The
banned issues are much worse than this).
BC unbanned a bunch of players. They prefer that no one hacks, but
they'll treat lesser offenses in a more minor way. Generally all players know what they did was
wrong, they just didn't know it was a bannable thing to be doing. A member of
management will check the degrees of offenses before players are banned from
here on. Note that everyone who had been
banned definitely had been doing what they did on purpose, it's just a matter
of degrees of how bad they were.
No update on Damage Cap. Server did make some changes
recently to help with mythics, but MD is not sure if it will have fixed
everything.
BC won't be increasing the maximum number of gifts in the
inbox. It's too much of a load for
server to store more gifts.
Support will also be looking at older bans.
Holiday events are usually reused, unless they were ugly
monsters. CT will be Chinese New Year.
It will come up around the same time as the lunar year.
BC is looking at the overall balance of the game to keep
both long time spenders happy, as well as giving new players an opportunity to
repeat.
Dominion tower android cap - this is device specific, and
getting time for the android guys to look at this is difficult.
BC will look at the event monster buffs. The purpose of the
event monsters is so that beginners can spin these monsters and compete
immediately. This is a fundamental
design flaw in the game.
Leader boards were shown.
2nd and 3rd troops were not read out loud due to a warning from Masta
Don.
Reward monsters not having the right number of jewel slots.
This is a quality of life thing so it's a low priority compared to hack
detection.
Team Brawl was delayed in this past event rotation. It's
still not a popular event. BC is evalutating
whether there is something that BC can change about TB, but for now it will not
run for a few months.
There will likely be something special with Valentine's
events spins, as well as general grabs, during that event.
BC is trying to advertise for more players. They're trying
to make getting into the game and ramping up more appealing, without
encouraging more players to start alts.
Evolved rewards won't happen very often as this takes away
some of the fun for players.
Troop Wars won't be in the rotation very soon.
Another update will be coming soon, before Chinese New Year. This won't include much of what Masta Don has
talked about in the past due to holidays and staff being on vacations. Crafting
of equipment and a new raid zone (similar to Lost Temple) will hopefully come
out with the following update.
Coliseum has been "taken out back and buried". It
will pretty much never happen again.
Masta Don is curious about having an event where the bosses become
progressively harder (this is just an idea though and not something planned on
happening), but Coliseum will not happen again.
No, Masta Don won't be removing level 1 jewels from
benchmark prizes.
Doing new events is extremely time intensive and takes both
design, client, server, and art teams. A
new progression raid zone and improving the damage cap would be a bigger
priority, along with increasing the content in the game.
League events will not be coming back. They can't be run at
the same time as PvP, and taking PvP away from those who love PvP just feels
wrong. Leagues still do function in the
programming, they're just not going to be active in the foreseeable future.
Masta Don has yelled at the person who is responsible for
updating the trading pictures and they should be working on that this week.
Crafting bound/new equipment. Masta Don is planning on getting the new raid
area in, and those might drop items to allow crafting to occur.
Rewards in event goals can cause bugs, where players don't
receive their items (such as specials). VIP points haven't ever had this
problem, so that's why they're being used so often currently.
Sacrifice glitch will be fixed when BC spends some
meaningful time on pvp, which is an intentional non-answer.
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
MiriamRowan's Unofficial BC Live Report - 19th December, 2018
Presenters: Masta Don (MD) and Wrkshp Warrior (WW)
Next events: 6 day Christmas Raid then Crystal Siege.
Christmas raid will be 6 days long. Raid boss will be leaf, multi-boss (may or may
not be the same element, MD can't remember) and time based. TvT monsters will
be the same element this time. Variety grab will be active for the event. Merging will be on and traders will be
active. All reward monsters will be
evolved.
Event monsters active for the Christmas Raid will be:
three different sets, similar to what BC did during Halloween. One will be a very,
very old set from the first ever holiday event, then the set from batterysargent
(nutcracker) set, then a set with hollyknight and bunch of leaf ones will
be active. Later confirmed: MysterBox will be active, yes.
Batterysergeant set: https://bcrank.us/catalog/?q=Pwnguin,Squire-rrel,Corkporol%20Nutmeg,Battery%20Sergeant
The CS following the Christmas event will be shorter to get
us back on the regular event schedule. (MiriamRowan's guess: 4 days).
Take regular mobs out of event spins? No, but thank you for
asking/suggesting/commanding.
Images on Trading website? BC has talked to the person who
uploads the images for the trading site, who he believes had been away on
vacation. MD will follow up with them on
this.
Missing Second Evolution? MD is writing it down again. He
had started looking at the one mentioned but thinks he became sidetracked. It's
very time consuming to do.
Damage Cap update? BC
has done adjustments and gets fewer and fewer reports of this being a problem.
If it still effects you, send a support ticket with your account name and the
monsters used and when it happens. They can then set it up to test why it's happening
in that specific situation with your monsters.
Recently the clues given by damage cap players actually led to BC
finding a bunch of hackers, which was a good bonus. The cap issues are all related to the actives
being more powerful in the game than they should be, but BC won't nerf the
actives.
BC will look into the dominion visual bug on android phones
that max out and don't show the actual damage done on a tower beyond a certain
number. There is a specific person who
will need to look at that.
Shield Crusader again for the pvp r epics given in
spins? MD is writing this down.
Leader boards were shown.
Trading second evolutions? Not anytime soon.
Facebook issue? BC has looked into this but duplication has
proven difficult. MD believes it has been fixed. It's only effected people who
have been bouncing through lots of accounts. BC is trying to figure it out but
it seems to be a problem with the way Facebook interacts. MD doesn't believe that the FB energy is
broken for everyone because BC doesn't get constant reports about it. BC has been having various issues with
Facebook over the past year. Depending
on the issue people are asking about, some are sporadic and some have been
corrected.
Second evolution reversal?
It's on BC's list and is being discussed to see if it's something BC
wants to do.
Holiday star drop rate?
This is the same drop rate for last holidays, Easter, and
valentines. However, BC will be doubling
the holiday star drop rate from tomorrow.
The more information that QA has to look through makes it
easier to find problems. They need to
work on the pipeline in order though. It's like a giant 2-3 lane highway, they
have to deal with the things at the front of the line first.
New items in Avatar Spins?
Not for the January update, but the update after that, will have
pipelined changes. It's not sure what will be completed in time, but one of the
things that will be addressed around then is avatar spins.
Energy for ultimate spins? Everyone can wait another 24
hours to find out.
Double code? Check back in two weeks to see if that's done,
but it won't be today due to the 12 Days of Christmas codes.
Kicked out during PvP? It may be a server connection error.
The easiest way would be to clear the cache on your phone. That's MD's best
guess, it wouldn't be server side if it's happening that way.
No, Troop Wars and Coliseum won't be back anytime soon as
people didn't play them.
No, Ironknight and Ironlord will not be removed from having
bonuses CT events. It's important to have monsters that have a regular bonus,
and these are the monsters for raids and CT.
Team Brawl will be coming back, but not very often as it
feels so similar to Battle Royale and players don't prefer it. BC likes the
diversity, but players seem to prefer the random troop matching of BR better.
BC is looking at ways of making reward monsters more useful
in the game. TW is old and boring for
the vast majority of players (not veterans who love it). It is more likely that
BC will run an event without any event monsters. Less than 5% of players play TW.
Troop wars - the pet is dead instantly and then players are
individually hitting against the flag. WB, players coordinate with farming.
Dominion and Team Brawl feel different and that makes them fun.
It's not officially "no troop wars" but it won't
happen that soon because of how poorly players participated in Coliseum. They will sometimes put in veteran
favourites, just not soon.
The way MD gauges failures isn't just event spins, but also
the participation of players. TW doesn't
have much participation since the event monsters don't have much purpose. CT only had one set of monsters active and
the event was really popular with participation. Coliseum had many sets of monsters and
players weren't active at all. How many
players are active, how often they're active, etc. Players were coming in and literally only
hitting one time to claim the easy benchmarks and then stopping. Participation metrics don't take into account
how much players spend. The events that
are avoided is that low participation events, even though they're popular among
the big spenders.
Players with event monsters spent a lot of money to create
their team. BC wasn't to create an event without event monsters so players will
use their reward monsters. But if BC ran BR without event monsters, then the
players with BR event teams won't be happy.
It's an overall design issue in BC. Reward monsters were so
powerful that once players had them, other players couldn't catch up to
them. So BC created event monsters so
that beginners could spin a few event monsters to help contribute to their
troop and compete. BC has now become a
game about event monsters and event strategies.
BC wants to have areas where reward monsters are important and other
areas where beginners can spin event monsters to compete. R-boosting created
another gap where reward monsters became significantly strong again. BC is discussing all of this.
More incentive to buy energy? It's too hard to reprogram the
energy for gold, so BC has virtual chests that has bonuses to increase the
value when players buy gold this way.
BC once tried a Tournament of Champions with top players
invited to join, and no event bonuses worked. IT had horrible results as they
didn't do it in a good way. MD would like to see it done well in the future. It's fun for MD to think about, but BC
doesn't have the capability to do this currently.
Make LT an event? BC
has considered this. They could have it where troops need to complete LT as
often as possible during an event duration.
It's not possible yet.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
MiriamRowan's unofficial BC Live Report - 5th December, 2018
Presenters: Wrkshp Warrior & Masta Don
Next events: Celestial Towers then Dominion (with specials on
the drops, not stones)
CT boss last time was wind. This time it will be rock. Monsters with an active event bonus will be 3
subsets of raid monsters, all wind, plus the "knight looking one". Multi target boss, and Masta Don is checking
to make sure we don't experience that weird bug at the start again this time
(where the raids were initially single target).
Boss will be multi wave. Merging
and Traders will be back for CT.
Coliseum will never be run again. Masta Don had to write in
a variety grab in the middle of the event to keep things interesting. Very
little participation was recorded for energy use. Many people only hit like 5 times and then
decided that they were done for the event.
Masta Don doesn't understand why players asked for it.
Banning players? There
are lots of steps before players are banned. It takes four different phases of
double checks before players are banned. It is never for no reason. Sometimes
people end up in suspicious groups due to who they hang around with. For
instance, this one troop that invited all these shady players in, and BC
considered simply banning the troop as a whole.
More new events? New events are rough. Despite what players
say about old events, very few events get as much participation compared to the
older events like raid/WB events, Battle Royale, Dominion and Crystal Siege. BC could perhaps introduce more raid style
events. Masta Don doesn't feel that we need any more match based events because
it's a bit rough.
Stackable PvP Energy at the Trader? This wasn't meant to be
there. So many players spent a ton of tokens on it as fast as they could, stacking
up to around 8k energy. These
transactions will be undone - energy will be removed and tokens returned.
Things to spend PvP tokens on? From the glitch today, BC has become aware
that there aren't many things for players to spend their PvP tokens on, and
some players have earned a lot of them. Masta Don is considering adding wings and old
vanity items into the PvP trader as newer vanity items appear in the leader boards. Ideally BC would like to give us more things
to spend our PvP tokens on instead of us stockpiling them.
Why were these players accused of exploiting the PvP energy
when BC made it available for in game trading? "Exploiting" wasn't a
term Masta Don used and isn't accurate, but it was disappointing how quickly
some players decided to claim it. Masta Don is sorry that Yulun described it as
exploiting. The energy shouldn't have
been there and everyone knew that it shouldn't have been there. It's not exploiting in that sense, but there
aren't many words to describe someone who takes advantage of something they
know wasn't meant to be that way and does so as quickly as possible. It
wasn't meant in the way of players deliberately doing something wrong, but
players knew it would have been corrected. It wasn't meant to imply that
players did something wrong.
Christmas raid will be a normal length event. (24 days for the Christmas raid was only a
joke).
Dominion won't have deadshot in the prizes this time. It may
be crush for Dominion. Masta Don will take a look.
A bunch of players may have been banned from BCG for...
Masta Don will talk to support about it... if they felt that people were trying
to orchestrate some big thing with others
who feel the same way, then it's best that it's shut down because it can cause
a bigger problem. For a lot of players it's not orchestrating because they want
to do what is right but that they want to get people really riled up for their
own self interest. Back in the day, BC
had a lot of people who did this.
Several hackers, for example, as soon as they were banned would go onto Facebook
and try to get people riled up and create issues. Support might have been a bit
sensitive to that. BCG doesn't just ban people for no reason or for just asking
for a clarification or something. Masta Don is sorry if players felt that it
was undeserved, but it's the way they stop things from getting away from their
control. Wrkshp Warrior: "bans are
always deserving".
Bc won't bring back stackable energy for Pvp. The more ways
that players have to accumulate energy that is easily farmed, the more alt
accounts pop up. BC has recently done a lot of changes, especially in regards
to tracking players who are duplicating monsters or trading monsters or hacking
grabs and then trading monsters. BC is catching a lot more of these players now
since they're able to track them and what BC is finding is that these players
run 10-15 accounts and all they do is harvest energy on them, and trade monsters
between these accounts. One way that BC
can minimize this is to control how easy it is to get easily farmed energy on
alt accounts.
BC doesn't have any plans to produce sellable products
related to the game. They tried it a
couple of years ago. For the t-shirts,
they sold them for $10-$15, made about
90c in profit, and international players
were charged something like $60 for
shipping. Everyone was making money except BC, and players were being charged a
fortune that should have only cost them $20.
BC isn't a manufacturing company. For it to have been cost effective, BC
would have to buy 10000 shirts and then hope to sell them all.
Crystal Siege problems? Masta Don is making a note to have QA
will look into it. Masta Don didn't know there was an issue with losing
guardian bonuses or no trophies. He does
know that at the start there were issues regarding the servers. Different worlds(?) of the servers crashed,
so they rebooted. And another time everything crashed.
BC does want to get more players playing BC. They're looking
at making their whole first time user experience much better and rewarding for
new players... but without giving reason for veteran players for creating 50
new alt accounts.
When will Bogtacle get a sevo? Masta Don is writing it down
and will look into it. He thought BC was
up to date with sevos, but this one may have been missed.
No more stones in Dominion. That was a huge mistake.
Can we claim 10 energy from Cool Luke instead of hitting
with 5 energy? Masta Don doesn't like the 5 energy cap limit. It was when there
was a lot more energy in the ecosystem. It's one of the things that BC is looking
at as they examine ways to make the game more appealing for newer users help beginner
player retention.
Images of the newer mobs for the trading website? BC will
look into this.
Could there be more energy redeem options (like
50/100/500/1k, etc)? BC will look at energy redeem options. Ideally Masta Don
would like the energy redeem options to be higher for veteran players, to
reduce the number of alt accounts. However this may dissuade new players from
playing as they'd be at a disadvantage. It's a bit of a double edge sword.
When BC was created, a huge aspect of it was intentionally
social, a huge aspect was the monster collection aspect, and a huge aspect of
is built into troops for events. 90% of
games out there are built around solo players. BC is heavily pushed for players
being in troops and having communication systems in place for troops and for
socializing. A big part of Masta Don's design was wanting to bring a game that
was a bit like Pokemon and a bit like World of Warcraft, and put it all onboard.
Leader boards were shown for Coliseum.
Trading crystals? Not
at the moment.
Masta Don will look into the new weapons that only have 2
jewel slots instead of 3. He thinks this
is just an error as all higher level weapons should have 3 slots.
Can energy regen beyond 5, perhaps to 10? Energy cap has
being considered in the past as this would help new players as well as looking
at the general inventory for new players.
These are felt to be a bit rough for new players.
Single element vs Dual element? BC has heard of this, as
well as putting normal legendaries back in. A lot of people like a simple attack
setup. BC is looking at a better system for
all players. They're also looking at stability.
How do we ask questions about event bugs - BCG shuts off
commenting, BC Live can be too far away to wait for, etc? It's not usually the people asking the
questions who are the issue, but the players following up on the issue. There's a difference between good actors and
bad actors. We see it every day in the world, where some people may
legitimately have a problem with something and ask about it, but then tons and
tons of people latch onto those posts and fill it with negativity. Support
needs to balance both groups of people, and people asking legitimate questions
can get caught in the crossfire of it. Masta Don will talk with support about this.
New single element monsters? Masta Don is writing it down.
Cost of Merging? Masta Don doesn't think it's a bit too
expensive... he guesses that it is a bit too expensive. It's more a high end thing to fine tune our
monsters, which is the reason why it's so expensive. It's more for players who
want their Skyrin to have the best stats.
Trophies for farming during World Boss events? Masta Don is
writing it down. BC will look at this for world bosses. In a perfect world, the
game wouldn't be so divided and there wouldn't be a need for farmers and
hitters. However, BC knows that this is needed for lower PR players.
5 matches had issues in CS?
Masta Don knows for a fact that only 3 matches had issues, not 5
matches. Masta Don is sorry about it. He
feels very powerless with server issues.
When servers crash or players are disconnected, there is little he can
do, but to try to correct it from the other end of the phone.
Unevolving monsters? BC has had issues where duplicate
monsters had been traded and then someone else received them an evolved them.
The evolved monster then is treated by BC as a duplicate monster that shouldn't
exist. BC can't allow these to be
unevolved as then there would be double duplicates and it would be bad. It
would be a nightmare to do. The best BC
could do would be to have a trader who would take an evolved monster and give
you back two unevolved monsters.
Farming problems with holiday stars? BC rebooted the holiday
stars and haven't seen any reports for farming issues since then. Holiday
farming should be working now. Let BC support know if you are still
experiencing issues. Masta Don will check the drop rates and see if we're just
not seeing holiday stars as maybe the drop rates are too low. It will be going through December, so the
drop rates aren't especially high and maybe people are getting too much bad
luck on them so far.
Really old monsters aren't seen much in the ecosystem. The only way to introduce them back into the
ecosystem right now is to add them into spins, but it becomes problematic as
they need to be entered manually. BC is looking at redoing the grabs to make
this easier.
Players who took advantage of the stackable PvP energy will
have that removed and their tokens returned.
The transaction will be undone.
Real crowns for girl avatars please as they only get
headpieces but boy avatar get crowns? Art
team will be talked to about this. Masta
Don has a strong dislike that all of the avatar items are gender dependent. Unfortunately
the boy and girl avatars have been designed slightly differently and the clothing
for one gender can't be worn the shape of the other gender, according to Art.
Avatar grabs are on BC's list. The grabs in general do need
to be rebuilt. This is a massive task, and the grabs touch everything in the
game. BC is trying to find ways to make it work.
Duel element monsters aren't good? You can't say that dual
element monsters aren't good as they have all the same functionality of the base
element monsters plus a bonus with the second element.
Raid event monsters rotate through having bonuses in
different raid events. To be honest, helmet monsters probably won't have a
bonus again. That was just a horrible, horrible, "not my decision" to
create those ones. Basically BC was
going to invent a new event but they realized about 10% of the way in that it
was going to cost them lots of resources to build, and they already had the
monsters, so they pushed those monsters out anyway.
Players commented that some actives weren't good with duel
element? BC actives unfortunately have
way too much power compared with gem matching, but no one will let Masta Don
return to a gem based setup.
Can we eliminate shielding in Dominion? Masta Don has brought that up multiple times
in the past. His thoughts on defensive
measures is that playing defense is not fun. There should be an attack bonus,
not a defense bonus. Just hurting your opponent isn't as exciting as having an
attack bonus yourself instead. He's
written it down and will bring it up again.
Pao is still here but he's just very busy. So if there
really are 1000 shares for a code then he will be dragged in to have his head
shaved. It's been going for over a year and players have only come close once.
Bring back the 20 energy code? Masta Don and Wrkshp Warrior
didn't realize that we didn't get a code when streams weren't on. BC will make sure that we either get 20
energy codes during BC Live or that a 10 energy code will be given out during
the alternate weeks.
Christmas raid will start on a Thursday but will end on the
26th, making it one day extra in length so that it doesn't end on Christmas
itself.
BC won't be removing damage caps completely any time soon,
as BC needs a way to mitigate players doing ludicrous things with hacks.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Coliseum Nov/Dec 2018 - Raid and Event Monster Table
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
MiriamRowan's Unofficial BC Live Report - 20th November, 2018
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.
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
MiriamRowan's Unofficial BC Live Report - 7th November, 2018
Presenters: Wrkshp Warrior & Masta Don
Next events: Battle Royale (with merging and traders) and
then Serpenta ("Sky Boss 3").
Players asked for stones for Dominion so much that Masta Don
did it for us. Masta Don suspects that players were apparently trolling him - asking
for stuff to get Masta Don to do it, knowing it would be unpopular and get him
into trouble. Next Dominion will be back to specials as these are definitely
preferred. (Stone boosters not working
was a surprise to BC, and they discovered this during testing that they cannot
work with the tower mechanics. BC couldn't do anything about this.)
Tower damage displayed during Dominion on Android? (Android has a maximum integer value that can
be displayed, and often top troops are exceeding this and can't see their
actual damage done). BC will look at
this, it's slated for client and server to have a look at. This is a higher priority over purely visual
problems as it has an impact on how the event runs.
Any updates for people damage capped? Damage cap requires
server to take time to fix this. Server is currently working on hacking tools,
figuring out how hackers are doing what they're doing, finding hackers and
going into their logs to discover what they're doing, and then fixing this. All
of this takes time and manpower. This is a priority for now, and comes before
damage cap.
Arena isn't coming back soon. BC has started discussing
Arena though, which means that it's possible to return in the future. The raid
boss mechanic didn't seem that popular and the simulated (not live) PvP, so BC
will bring it back in a more interesting way. They're trying to see how they can
make it feel more like traditional PvP. It's not in a state to be returned to
the game currently. When it comes back,
it will be with corrections and fixes.
Coliseum has been talked about. It could possibly return in
December. Team Brawl is currently scheduled for December but this is too close
to BR, so they could possibly swap Coliseum in instead.
Pvp sacrifice bug? This has been on BC's list of things to
fix for a long, long, long, long time. There have been other problems to fix as
a priority lately. Their primary issues
have been: bug and hacking fixes, more frequent updates and monsters and
costumes. Avatar grab returning is a priority too. PvP will be fixed to become fair and fun, but
only when PvP becomes a super big priority.
PvP is boring right now as it's not very rewarded. Many games have PvP as their primary focus
and so they incentivize PvP highly with rewards. This makes PvP fun because it's an end goal
and players are rewarded for doing well in it.
Right now, you're not rewarded much for PvP and this has become a vicious
cycle. BC can't put big rewards for PvP while the sacrifice (and other)
glitches exist. But BC can't prioritize
fixing these glitches because not enough players play PvP because there aren't
big rewards for it. It's all a vicious
cycle. PvP is buggy because it's not prioritized, but it's not prioritized
because people don't play it because it's buggy. BC prioritizes where they can, and it's the
things they need to immediately fix, and these are the areas where more players
are participating heavily. Masta Don
knows that more people would play if they fixed the bugs, but they need to
prioritize on what players are participating in now with their resources,
compared with what they want people to have fun doing in the future.
Next Troop Wars? Masta
Don is considering TW vs Coliseum. There
was very little participation last TW. It made veteran players very happy, but
participation wasn't even close to the next worst performing of all the other
events. If TW can't outperform even a
bad event like Team Brawl, and that isn't very popular with players... Coliseum
is more likely to run before TW again.
Troop Wars is not dead. It will
be slated in where BC can fit it and when it won't negatively impact the game. Ideally it could come after a big surge of
beginner players so that BC can see how they interact with it too.
Needing to log back into the game after closing it? There was a bug recently with Android that
automatically fixed when Android updated their system (fixed on Google's end
automatically). It wasn't a bug with BC but Android itself. Make a support ticket if this keeps happening
to you.
Google login missing?
No, BC didn't take this away. It should still be there.
Missing Monsters? For support stuff, unfortunately support
needs to check on these issues themselves.
Recently BC has been hammering down on hackers and tracking people. The
problem is that many hackers try to implicate other people through bad
trades. (MiriamRowan's note: It sounds
like hackers hack to get good rewards, then trade their monsters away. BC
removes the monsters, but it's the innocent recipients of these monsters whose
monsters seem to go missing for no apparent reason). It's a bit of an issue, so
it's probably taking longer for support to track all that stuff. Keep on at support and they'll probably get
back to you as soon as they can on it.
Support won't literally be ignoring you, but it takes time to check.
Facebook friends gifting issue? This is still on BC's list to fix.
Leader boards were shown for Dominion FFA.
An event where reward mobs have bonus? BC has tried this in the past and have
received a lot of hate mail for it, mostly from players who have put a lot of
effort into creating event teams. Masta
Don wouldn't do that. BC has instead looked
at the overall role of event monsters in the game. BC wants to create other
ways for reward monsters to have usefulness without essentially turning them
into event monsters. Event mobs are
extremely powerful, beyond reward monsters. Power levels should ideally be a bit closer.
For example, an epic event mob should allow you to excel, but a super event mob
shouldn't beat a team with legendary reward monsters. So it's something that's always come out and
there are so many of these monsters out there, and the effort that players have
put into actual event teams needs to be considered.
Masta Don is aware that reward monsters are traded to gain
event monsters. If this game didn't have
trading, it would save Masta Don many headaches. But the game does have trading and they
thought that trading would be a good idea, and Masta Don is now eternally
punished for it. It was introduced so that players could trade to get the right
zodiacs for their team. Back then it seemed like an awesome feature. The only
repeatable monsters back then were the TW mobs. It was when BC made more
repeatable monsters that trading has caused them headaches.
10 energy code was displayed.
Can we Craft bound equipment soon? Maybe soon....? It's a feature that Masta Don wants to time
in with the Valentine's update during January. This update always includes the
Chinese New Year CT event, which is in early February, so the Valentine's
update would be before this.
Better rewards? Masta
Don recently compared the leader boards to those that were offered 3 years ago.
Inflation has been incredible and the current leader boards are so much better
than they used to be.
New land and badges?
BC is talking about this and are considering adding another map zone and
another raid zone like Lost Temple.
Avatar spins? BC is
unique in that you can't win the same item twice. This meant that everyone
received everything once and then couldn't win anything more. Now they're considering offering stones if
you receive a duplicate item. Possibly 350 stones, for example. They could bring back all avatar pieces this
way. BC will be looking at the new avatar grabs holistically. They could bring
back pieces of old trader outfits or wings from event rewards, for
example. This will make everything a
bit more accessible to everybody and bring more value back to the avatar grabs.
Exclusivity can create high value for items, but if it's out of reach for the
majority of players due to the large power base of veterans. This can hurt
newer players as they don't believe they can achieve these items within six
months of playing. BC struggles with
this a lot internally.
Currency revamp could come during the Valentine's
update. BC wants to make it so that all
monsters can be in the grabs, with increased chances for some monsters.
More than level 70?
BC does have plans for this but it will be matched with when they have
the new land ready for us to explore.
Yes, Masta Don acknowledges that BC does have time to create
a new land but not to fix PvP. Most MMO games
(like World of Warcraft) have about 70% of their players playing events, and
40-50% playing PvP. There's a weird overlap where 20% of players play both
events and PvP, and only 30% of players are exclusively playing PvP. So events become the focus because this is
what the majority of players play. Unfortunately down the road, the more events
are the focus, the less and less players play PvP, so it becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy. "In a
way, Don killed PvP, but in fairness it was Don's decisions years ago that
slowly led to the dying of PvP".
BC won't nerf sacrifice during PvP as they'd then have to nerf
it in all areas of the game. (MiriamRowan's note: nerf = reducing the
effectiveness of something in a game). Sacrifice is not often used in events,
but some newer players have them in their teams, and so BC won't reduce the
ability.
Increase stone drop for farming in LT? Don can add it to the
list but it won't be worked on for ages.
Can BC improve servers?
It's not that BC needs to upgrade the servers. Early on BC created their
programming quickly but it's not optimized. BC is working on re-optimizing
everything to work better with the servers.
They built too many things too quickly ages ago and are now paying heavily
for it now.
Don's favourite monsters are all of the phoenix
monsters. He only knows them by their
server name: the Dark Phoenix and the other one that was released with the
turtle boss. He's a huge mythology buff.
This is his personal bias.
Wrkshp Warrior closed with: Remember to bug Yulun with all
your feature requests.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)











