GREE: What can YOU do to fix this game

[Saint-BEL]

Dear Gree,

By now I hope you fully realize your mistake in executing this new update, I myself had a very frustrating war weekend. I do believe you will be hard pressed in finding a lot of people who really consider this an actual improvement. But please bear with me on this post cause I do want to give some ideas on how you may actually improve the situation, which all things considered might not even be so difficult to do. This is going to be a lengthy post though.

First of all, I want to clearly state why for me personally this update is a complete failure. In my 9 months of enjoying myself in this game, yes all you oldies i'm very fresh in the game, I have seen maybe a maximum amount of 10 strong weapons or armor being released and I do take the weekly items in account. Until now this wasn't a big deal cause with gems or lots of luck in a box event you could get your one desirable strong item for killing those monsters effectively. I do admit that all this time I wondered why you could stockpile so much gear when the stats were so weak compared to units. Units or building a strong army was off course the foundation of the game, the stronger the army, the stronger you will become.
Now I do think that implementing an extra use for gear was a good idea, but needless to say your implementation could hardly be more dissapointing. In 9 months I managed to build an account with 175million attack giving me decent chances in war, but in 9 months I hardly ever had a chance of building a decent stockpile on gear. Which with the new update leaves me in quite a nasty situation. With the new update you have 2 stats that are basicly decided by your gear, army equipment and hero strength. So the balance of the game has entirely shifted, units are no longer the foundation of the game, gear is. BUT you have never given people a fair chance of getting gear, especially newer people. Which leaves the situation as such, 175million attack but hardly any gear loses against any old player who competed in infinity sword event. I have no chance competing against over 45k army equipment, NO CHANCE AT ALL!

Now as I said in the beginning I do have some ideas to improve the current situation. Make it a bit more logical, compared to the old system as it were. So here goes.

First of all: Make one stat created by units and ONE stat created by gear and make your battle calculation on those. With this renewed battle calculation make the outcome of the battle for 70-80 percent decided by your units stats. After all, for all these years this was the FOUNDATION of your game. You can't just switch the playing field and expect your customers to just keep on playing.

Secondly: If you want to implement a more important role for gear, make sure everyone has a chance of actually getting gear that is worth mentioning. I'm not sure if you realise but the gear you can get from vouchers or crafting in general is complete rubbish, it needs at least a factor 10-20 increase to be worth using for most items.
Following the gear, if crafting is so important I do expect you to release much more ways of getting chest or actually a way of obtaining certain materials. I think of buying in shop with gold, having some sort of workshop where you can let some material be created over time, much possibilities but at least SOMETHING.

Thirdly: Even with crafting there is still the issue of no decent way to actually get good gear on any interesting method. Vouchers are nice and all but are slow to get and building gear like this will simply take ages and isn't very competitive. But for me personally you already have in the game what you need to create a good method of obtaining gear, namely TRIALS.
As you did with units, you can do the same with gear. They are there for everyone, the more active you are the more benefit you can get from them. And they can give a competitive way for new and old players to increase their gear strength efficiently. Just give any player an option to get gear or units when starting a trial. And please make the gear at least worth getting not like with crafting. To make guild event and related vouchers more worthwhile though, attach bonuses to them. Faster material creation, faster crafting, more chance of improved crafting results, possibilities are virtually endless.

To conclude I do hope you will make some changes fast cause I'm afraid that otherwise you will lose a whole lot more then players, you will lose income from those who spend. Cause really, why spend much on a game that flips over the way it works at random anyway.

Hopefull to see some improvements very quickly, and I sincerely hope you do realize now that you need the change the way you "create" new ideas. Something in your game development team is seriously wrong.

Kind regards,

Saint-BEL

[JamieF]

Wow, this is one true story. Amen!

[Saint-BEL]

Well thank you JamieF.

At least one person who bothered to read it all :p

[Cheats]

With your story above, I can see that you are really serious about this game.

[DragCro]

Some equipment as weapons and armour you can get by farming maps.
Some are stronger than those that you have in store.
Some weapons that have decent stats you can buy with hero points in the store.

[Skyraiders]

just a thought.....you could take all those useless old gear and either use exsisting equipment as material to upgrade your better gear or set up some kind of trade center where you can trade 100 knifes for a shortsword ....100 shortswords for a longsword...ect

this will effectively allow you gree to use in game material without having to implement something brand new and would give the player a chance to get rid of the 10000000 extra equipment that does not get equipped by your 1500 army troops

this would also reduce the amount of data used in the servers and allow more space to run the game better.

great post Saint!!!

[Arahant]

Some equipment as weapons and armour you can get by farming maps.
Some are stronger than those that you have in store.
Some weapons that have decent stats you can buy with hero points in the store.

DragCro, I do understand you are still trying to put a smiley on very big screw up by GREE. I am one of the whales and even us were taken by surprise with this dynamic, without even a single notice prior to the war.
People used intel rooms for target acquisition but the new dynamics changed this completely because now the attack/defense stats are rendered useless by the new dynamics.

There is not a single weapon in the store that will make any significant difference to your stats on weapons and armors so please do not propose this to people as if this was a viable alternative.

Farming maps for weapons and armor; is only productive at the last maps (the barrens, and so on) and these drains your energy and gives you extreme XP.

GREE's previous game dynamic forced most of us to generate a mini account, because they punished us really badly CP wise as we were High level players, now with the new dynamic they killed all the minis that they have created, all those people who formed streak teams back in the days with their minis and spends thousands of dollars (thats right thousands of dollars) got a nice screw you from GREE. I am not complaining I have really good stats as a whole in KA, but many people don't have these and you are killing free players as well as paid customers, I know 9 people who left the game this war weekend due to your new dynamics. I don't know what you are guys doing over there, but you do realize you are killing the game right?

Dragcro, you appeared to be nice person, I know your posts before you were Mod, and you have slightly more change towards GREE, I understand you need to be on their side and maintain a positive composure, but pls do not blindly defend them; because there are way too many of us playing this game since May 2012, and way too many of us know the difference between FUNZIO days and GREE day. No disrespect to you mate, but this was a really wrong time for you to have opt for Mod position. Good luck, because with the state of how things are, you are going to need it mate.

[Arahant]

Saint-BEL that was one of the sensible post in this forum, and I LIKE TO THANK YOU for taking the time to write that. But don't presume that it will have any effect, because its falling on deaf ears.

[the_bob]

The first thing Gree can do is allow us all to have one respec of our skill points since they went and changed the way those points worked without any warning.

[Clementine]

Hello Saint-BEL! Thank you for such a well written, thoughtful, and constructive post. There are some interesting ideas in your post. We are going to pass this thread onto the Developers for consideration. While we of course can not guarantee any changes, it is important for the team to see this.

[RandomUser]

The first thing Gree can do is allow us all to have one respec of our skill points since they went and changed the way those points worked without any warning.

Sort of...

They did change things, but in some ways, they made how they use skill points more transparent. In the past, it was completely obscure how army attack and defense points impacted the game. Now, you have some numbers that you can see how they rank up against opponents and more clearly see how they help determine winners and losers.

I agree with everyone that the timing of this was quite poor and lacking in any sort of clear explanation, but I don't feel as much sympathy for people who invested all their skill points in hero strength. You reaped the benefit of that for a good long time. People who invested in army attack and defense before it because clear how important hero strength was were at a disadvantage for quite a long time, despite all the money they invested in the game, too.

[BillyGates]

Nice post.

Another point I wanted to make is the devs completely overlooked level 200+ (or people that didn't care about gaining XP) that completed a lot of the basic maps and farmed maps for weapons and gold. They could do this with the lvl 200 cap and there was no penalty on this.

For people under level 200 now, there's no hope in ever competing with high-level players in weapons and armor.

It really would have been better off by having the crafted items behave differently (a separate battle calculation for them) than including previously obtained army weapons and armor that generally had become useless, suddenly relevant.

Radically changing game dynamics puts a lot of question into how things will work and why bother getting units if you don't know how they'll be used, and if they're worth the money and effort obtaining them.

[Saint-BEL]

Hello Saint-BEL! Thank you for such a well written, thoughtful, and constructive post. There are some interesting ideas in your post. I am going to pass this thread onto the Developers for consideration. While we of course can not guarantee any changes, it is important for the team to see this.

Thank you for your reply Clementine.
I do hope that some changes will be made soon and I have seen some other interesting suggestions on the forum as well.

Guess we will have to wait and see now :)
Please keep us updated if possible.

[Vile Lynn]

Hello Saint-BEL! Thank you for such a well written, thoughtful, and constructive post. There are some interesting ideas in your post. I am going to pass this thread onto the Developers for consideration. While we of course can not guarantee any changes, it is important for the team to see this.

But then the developers read ALL of the forum anyway :)

[Acadian]

your absolutely right on the 200 plus guys farming a lot more weapons, us newer guys have never done it, to add to the posts here, 3 things that would really help the game now. 1. being able to see how many weapons we have again, it disappeared with the update. 2. a drop down menu to purchase weapons/armor in bulk, my phone lags so much now it literally took me 3 hours and about 8 restarts to buy 1500 boots. 3. ability to upgrade more than one building at a time for the newer guys w/o having to pay 100.00 like the recent time your finally offered it after the whole year I have played. The old school members of my guild can upgrade 7 or 8 at a time, I can only do one, my income is sooo lacking and I like the new building quests but we cant work on our bases and do that at the same time, I was raiding to make up the difference, now I cannot raid due to my lack of weapons I didn't know I would need.

[Alexius]

Nice post.

Another point I wanted to make is the devs completely overlooked level 200+ (or people that didn't care about gaining XP) that completed a lot of the basic maps and farmed maps for weapons and gold. They could do this with the lvl 200 cap and there was no penalty on this.

For people under level 200 now, there's no hope in ever competing with high-level players in weapons and armor.

It really would have been better off by having the crafted items behave differently (a separate battle calculation for them) than including previously obtained army weapons and armor that generally had become useless, suddenly relevant.

Radically changing game dynamics puts a lot of question into how things will work and why bother getting units if you don't know how they'll be used, and if they're worth the money and effort obtaining them.

This 100% characters

[Jnsolberg]

Nice post.

Another point I wanted to make is the devs completely overlooked level 200+ (or people that didn't care about gaining XP) that completed a lot of the basic maps and farmed maps for weapons and gold. They could do this with the lvl 200 cap and there was no penalty on this.

Billy, the penalty for the level 200s was lower cp of every war except this last one. The 200s had to make more hits than the lower level pees just to score the same points. Now it's a little bit of payback.
And you can catch up to them by working the maps for loot. Just like they did.

This war, my level 200s scored the same cp per win as my LLP

[the_bob]

Billy, the penalty for the level 200s was lower cp of every war except this last one. The 200s had to make more hits than the lower level pees just to score the same points. Now it's a little bit of payback.
And you can catch up to them by working the maps for loot. Just like they did.

This war, my level 200s scored the same cp per win as my LLP

Like I explained to you in the other thread, it isn't all about CPs. It's also about trying to keep your level low so you don't push yourself into the raiding crosshairs of some of the more formidable people in this game. Every level above about 160 that you get the more you will be raided by the big shots. There are far fewer of them below that level.

I'm not one of those people who sets timers to collect my big payout buildings. I have the app open almost constantly since I don't use my iPad for much of anything else anymore so I tend to catch my buildings becoming ready within an hour or so, but that's enough time to be cleaned out.

[Jnsolberg]

Like I explained to you in the other thread, it isn't all about CPs. It's also about trying to keep your level low so you don't push yourself into the raiding crosshairs of some of the more formidable people in this game. Every level above about 160 that you get the more you will be raided by the big shots. There are far fewer of them below that level.


Lol, I've been high levels for so long, that I forgot what a shock is was the first time I was raided by a high level peep. (I think I was around level 168).

[Jnsolberg]

Gree, you have some explaining to do!

1). We have this new game logic for determining who wins battles, but we have no idea how it really works!

We do know that it uses unit attack and defense, equipment attack and defense and Hero attack and defense. But we do not know the ratios.
Is it 34%, 33%, 33%?
60%, 25%, 15%?
20%, 60%, 20%?
Something else?
Is defense weighted heavier than attack?

To spring this on us with no explanation the day before a war was unconscionable.

I've seen a plea for one stat that will help us to understand who will win a battle or raid. That would be a GREAT thing to do. Keep the unit, equipment and hero stats, so we can work on improving them, but roll them into a "master stat" so we can determine the outcome of battles better. Right now it's just a roll of the dice. But wait, we've never gotten an explanation.

2). I don't see any value for the vouchers we worked so hard to get during guild events. A Pumpkin Head, without a boost, worth 13/13 for 39/39 in the Icabod Chain Raid Boss event instead of the previous RB prize of the Cutthroat Cultist 302k/177k unit with a +3% alliance size increase? It seems that you have lost touch with reality. Or maybe you just haven't explained how the pumpkin head is better. I sure don't see the pumpkin head as being worth much of anything at all. But wait, we've never gotten an explanation.

3). The individual rewards in the war were a joke. I won a Wand of Affliction 68/45. My oldest game has 138 weapons stronger than that. Of course, it did replace a weaker weapon, but not much of a gain that I can see. But wait, we've never gotten an explanation.

4). Skill points. I never saw any use for attack or defensive skill points. So I never got any. Suddenly, that all changed. But wait, we've never gotten an explanation.

5). Crafting. So far, all I can see are some weak weapons and some new foot and head gear. Since we didn't have any before, they do increase hero attack and defense a little bit. Better for killing mobs, and less need for Hero skill points. But the weapons and armor are not very good. You can buy stuff in the store and get better stuff dropped on the maps. So far, I done see much value to crafting. We have had a bit of vague info, but it's not very helpful.

If you want to keep your existing customer base, you need to be forthcoming with more info. I've played this game for almost 3 years, and have spent more money than I should have, but I guess I enjoy it and the many friends I've made here in KA. But I never recommend this game to any of my RL friends. I'm too embarrassed about the level of incompetence from Gree: Bugs, ignoring your customer base, lack of communication, terrible customer support.

Maybe this is your chance to turn it around with the new features, but wait, we need some explanations.

[the_bob]

Lol, I've been high levels for so long, that I forgot what a shock is was the first time I was raided by a high level peep. (I think I was around level 168).

There's a guy somewhere around the 160 mark with 1.2 billion who pops in from time to time to grab my level 9 manors. Big stats don't even phase me anymore, I just don't want to see more than a couple of them at my level. :p

[Gal]

your absolutely right on the 200 plus guys farming a lot more weapons, us newer guys have never done it, to add to the posts here, 3 things that would really help the game now. 1. being able to see how many weapons we have again, it disappeared with the update. 2. a drop down menu to purchase weapons/armor in bulk, my phone lags so much now it literally took me 3 hours and about 8 restarts to buy 1500 boots. 3. ability to upgrade more than one building at a time for the newer guys w/o having to pay 100.00 like the recent time your finally offered it after the whole year I have played. The old school members of my guild can upgrade 7 or 8 at a time, I can only do one, my income is sooo lacking and I like the new building quests but we cant work on our bases and do that at the same time, I was raiding to make up the difference, now I cannot raid due to my lack of weapons I didn't know I would need.

Hear, Hear!

I accidentally used all of my gems last night clicking on the wrong item in the store while trying to buy 1500 Basic Artifacts. I also have 2 players (yes, I play many accounts) only able to update one building at a time which significantly limits the IPH and thus the ability to improve any stats due to always being low on gold while trying to upgrade the current LTB - no ability to upgrade any of the other buildings simultaneously.

I also missed out on the stone armor, when that was available, for one of my players.

It's not clear the impact skill points or anything else has on the new numbers used in calculations, nor how those calcs are weighted.

There are several things that one should be able to purchase in bulk - weapons, armor and WALLS to name a few.

The commas/showing the numbers in millions in a/d disappeared making the A/D numbers somewhat unreadable during war. Please add this back in ASAP.

Please have a way to sort through your inventory and know how many total weapons you own, for example
If ally strength impacts any of these numbers, please let us have an easy way to sort (and remove) those as well.

Two last comments (I'm reiterating comments in other posts):
1) Please do NOT release major changes just before war. It almost always causes things to break and causes more good players to step down due to frustration
2) Please please please release a FAQ explaining the new numbers - how they affect success in raids/attacks and how to increase each number.

[E-I]

Hello Saint-BEL! Thank you for such a well written, thoughtful, and constructive post. There are some interesting ideas in your post. I am going to pass this thread onto the Developers for consideration. While we of course can not guarantee any changes, it is important for the team to see this.

Translation: Thank you for caring enough to write some great suggestions that our developers will never, ever, ever read.

[Shade CBD]

Translation: Thank you for caring enough to write some great suggestions that our developers will never, ever, ever read.

Is made me laugh so hard. Unfortunately, that's pretty much true.

[Shade CBD]

Thank you for contacting Kingdom Age Support.

Skill points invested in attack and defense provide a behind-the-scenes bonus to your combat resolution. These benefits cannot be seen by either attacker or defender in an effort to add a bit of chance and mystery to player versus player (PVP) combat. Please let me know if you have any further questions.


A response from support about the stats becoming worthless. All the money, or time, or effort we poured into this game now has become just another lottery event...like the impossible to open boxes that gree loves to give people. Restore our stats gree! I can see major refunds from Apple on the horizon.

[discprodigy]

Another suggestion, please add some separators for stats again or return to the xxx.xx M format again. The text is small on iPhone devices and could be made more readable for all.

Also, any update to the schedule listing start times for quests would be appreciated as well.

Hell while I'm at it, some more clarification on levels of crates and crafting items as the building is unlocked would be nice.

[Jnsolberg]

Tap the triangle on that advertisement post to report it and get that peep banned!

[Shadows]

Tap the triangle on that advertisement post to report it and get that peep banned!

I always do and it's always a different account with the same old shyte!

[Tadaaah]

Lots of opinions in this thread. Thanks OP for the well-thought posts.

Retro-spec is always 20/20 as they say. There are definitely some items we can note from this update to help in the future.

Would y'all be up for the idea that when we do an update, we provide notes that not only have the changes, but also have a little explanation as to why that change is made?

[Valid or]

Lots of opinions in this thread. Thanks OP for the well-thought posts.

Retro-spec is always 20/20 as they say. There are definitely some items we can note from this update to help in the future.

Would y'all be up for the idea that when we do an update, we provide notes that not only have the changes, but also have a little explanation as to why that change is made?

The more information the better. Less confusion when it's release.

[Adm. J(K96)]

Lots of opinions in this thread. Thanks OP for the well-thought posts.

Retro-spec is always 20/20 as they say. There are definitely some items we can note from this update to help in the future.

Would y'all be up for the idea that when we do an update, we provide notes that not only have the changes, but also have a little explanation as to why that change is made?That's all anyone in any of your games forums have been asking for many many months now. What's going on? When's it goin on? How does it work? And not an hour or two before either.

[Jnsolberg]

Lots of opinions in this thread. Thanks OP for the well-thought posts.

Retro-spec is always 20/20 as they say. There are definitely some items we can note from this update to help in the future.

Would y'all be up for the idea that when we do an update, we provide notes that not only have the changes, but also have a little explanation as to why that change is made?

OMG! PLEASE explain the changes! This is the biggest issue we have. If we had some explanation BEFORE the war, we would not have been as upset, and not as many peeps would have quit the game.

[Saint-BEL]

In the AMA it has been mentioned by someone that the formula's for the calculation wouldn't be given, not even part of it to avoid confusion.

But I have the request to still do so, with a small legend. Not all of us are complete inaware of the mysteries of math and I personally have a strong affinity for these kind of things. So yes, I do want to see what the formulas are :)

(Didn't know where to put this really)

[the_bob]

Would y'all be up for the idea that when we do an update, we provide notes that not only have the changes, but also have a little explanation as to why that change is made?

You know the answer to that already. Any other software developer puts out release notes with every update. The ones you do in the App Store aren't detailed enough. They need to be posted here on the forums. Further, pretty much any game developer announces patches in advance with the exception of emergency bug hotfixes.

[Saint-BEL]

Since the tread with questions has been closed I will give a remark here once more.

In one post Derez explained why pumpkin head would be same strength of stats as normal raid boss unit completion with following explanation.
If a 300k unit is going into an army stat that is at 10mil + it is adding approx 3% to that stat. So if a 40 unit is going into an equipment stat that is 1k that is roughly 4%. Seeing as this is no longer one giant stat that you are adding to you have to view them as totally different power amounts with different relative values.
link to the post (http://forums.gree.net/showthread.php?101974-AMA-Hero-Equip-and-Crafting&p=1423131&viewfull=1#post1423131)

sadly for me this is an incorrect way to compare the unit and item. You base your calculation on total stats of a player but that is very dependent on both the player and the bonuses he has gathered. Therefor your comparison only makes sense for the specific case you mentioned. Different stats will result in different percentages making it obvious that it isn't a mathemical based solution.

If you compare the unit from last raid boss (when there was a unit) it has a total stats of around 400k. Take that the average unit for players is something of 100k attack and defense this results in a total stats of 200k. Note that for an average unit this is already FAR above most players since you have 1500 units in battle. But anyway this is still the double of stats.

Take the pumpkin hat now, 26? total stats. Well from weapons and armor loot i think it isn't to hard to get an avarage gear of at least 50 total stats (and i do believe im seriously underestimating this). So the pumpkin hat is only half the reward compared to the average of gear.

This results in me saying that your reward for raid boss is seriously lower than before, even though my comparison is still based on player strength, unless like Jnsolberg asked before there is something more going on in the background that would explain this difference. Else I stick to the believe as I wrote in the first post of this topic that items from crafting should increase a certain factor (maybe not 10-20 as I originally wrote) but at least 5.

Saint out!

[Jnsolberg]

Since the tread with questions has been closed I will give a remark here once more.

In one post Derez explained why pumpkin head would be same strength of stats as normal raid boss unit completion with following explanation.
If a 300k unit is going into an army stat that is at 10mil + it is adding approx 3% to that stat. So if a 40 unit is going into an equipment stat that is 1k that is roughly 4%. Seeing as this is no longer one giant stat that you are adding to you have to view them as totally different power amounts with different relative values.
link to the post (http://forums.gree.net/showthread.php?101974-AMA-Hero-Equip-and-Crafting&p=1423131&viewfull=1#post1423131)

sadly for me this is an incorrect way to compare the unit and item. You base your calculation on total stats of a player but that is very dependent on both the player and the bonuses he has gathered. Therefor your comparison only makes sense for the specific case you mentioned. Different stats will result in different percentages making it obvious that it isn't a mathemical based solution.

If you compare the unit from last raid boss (when there was a unit) it has a total stats of around 400k. Take that the average unit for players is something of 100k attack and defense this results in a total stats of 200k. Note that for an average unit this is already FAR above most players since you have 1500 units in battle. But anyway this is still the double of stats.

Take the pumpkin hat now, 26? total stats. Well from weapons and armor loot i think it isn't to hard to get an avarage gear of at least 50 total stats (and i do believe im seriously underestimating this). So the pumpkin hat is only half the reward compared to the average of gear.

This results in me saying that your reward for raid boss is seriously lower than before, even though my comparison is still based on player strength, unless like Jnsolberg asked before there is something more going on in the background that would explain this difference. Else I stick to the believe as I wrote in the first post of this topic that items from crafting should increase a certain factor (maybe not 10-20 as I originally wrote) but at least 5.

Saint out!


Originally Posted by Derez
If a 300k unit is going into an army stat that is at 10mil + it is adding approx 3% to that stat. So if a 40 unit is going into an equipment stat that is 1k that is roughly 4%. Seeing as this is no longer one giant stat that you are adding to you have to view them as totally different power amounts with different relative values.


Ok, thank makes a little sense. But what is the ratio of units and equipment and Hero strength?
Purple Squirrel

This doesn't take into account boosts for your units.
My lowest level game:
583m attack
47k EQ attack
1259 Hero attack

Beast attack + 379%
Alliance attack +27%

A 300k attack beast +379% = 1.437m + 27% alliance attack = 1.824m
That's a unit increase of @ 3%
Pumpkin head 13 attack = .002% increase in EQ attack and @ 1% increase in Hero attack.

For the pumpkin head to be close to equal to the 300k unit, the ratio between equipment and units would have to be around 1500 to 1. I don't think that is the case. Lol
At least it helped hero attack, but now I have a better head gear, so my Hero can't even use it.

[_Mas_]

Dear Gree,

By now I hope you fully realize your mistake in executing this new update, I myself had a very frustrating war weekend. I do believe you will be hard pressed in finding a lot of people who really consider this an actual improvement. But please bear with me on this post cause I do want to give some ideas on how you may actually improve the situation, which all things considered might not even be so difficult to do. This is going to be a lengthy post though.

First of all, I want to clearly state why for me personally this update is a complete failure. In my 9 months of enjoying myself in this game, yes all you oldies i'm very fresh in the game, I have seen maybe a maximum amount of 10 strong weapons or armor being released and I do take the weekly items in account. Until now this wasn't a big deal cause with gems or lots of luck in a box event you could get your one desirable strong item for killing those monsters effectively. I do admit that all this time I wondered why you could stockpile so much gear when the stats were so weak compared to units. Units or building a strong army was off course the foundation of the game, the stronger the army, the stronger you will become.
Now I do think that implementing an extra use for gear was a good idea, but needless to say your implementation could hardly be more dissapointing. In 9 months I managed to build an account with 175million attack giving me decent chances in war, but in 9 months I hardly ever had a chance of building a decent stockpile on gear. Which with the new update leaves me in quite a nasty situation. With the new update you have 2 stats that are basicly decided by your gear, army equipment and hero strength. So the balance of the game has entirely shifted, units are no longer the foundation of the game, gear is. BUT you have never given people a fair chance of getting gear, especially newer people. Which leaves the situation as such, 175million attack but hardly any gear loses against any old player who competed in infinity sword event. I have no chance competing against over 45k army equipment, NO CHANCE AT ALL!

Now as I said in the beginning I do have some ideas to improve the current situation. Make it a bit more logical, compared to the old system as it were. So here goes.

First of all: Make one stat created by units and ONE stat created by gear and make your battle calculation on those. With this renewed battle calculation make the outcome of the battle for 70-80 percent decided by your units stats. After all, for all these years this was the FOUNDATION of your game. You can't just switch the playing field and expect your customers to just keep on playing.

Secondly: If you want to implement a more important role for gear, make sure everyone has a chance of actually getting gear that is worth mentioning. I'm not sure if you realise but the gear you can get from vouchers or crafting in general is complete rubbish, it needs at least a factor 10-20 increase to be worth using for most items.
Following the gear, if crafting is so important I do expect you to release much more ways of getting chest or actually a way of obtaining certain materials. I think of buying in shop with gold, having some sort of workshop where you can let some material be created over time, much possibilities but at least SOMETHING.

Thirdly: Even with crafting there is still the issue of no decent way to actually get good gear on any interesting method. Vouchers are nice and all but are slow to get and building gear like this will simply take ages and isn't very competitive. But for me personally you already have in the game what you need to create a good method of obtaining gear, namely TRIALS.
As you did with units, you can do the same with gear. They are there for everyone, the more active you are the more benefit you can get from them. And they can give a competitive way for new and old players to increase their gear strength efficiently. Just give any player an option to get gear or units when starting a trial. And please make the gear at least worth getting not like with crafting. To make guild event and related vouchers more worthwhile though, attach bonuses to them. Faster material creation, faster crafting, more chance of improved crafting results, possibilities are virtually endless.

To conclude I do hope you will make some changes fast cause I'm afraid that otherwise you will lose a whole lot more then players, you will lose income from those who spend. Cause really, why spend much on a game that flips over the way it works at random anyway.

Hopefull to see some improvements very quickly, and I sincerely hope you do realize now that you need the change the way you "create" new ideas. Something in your game development team is seriously wrong.

Kind regards,

Saint-BEL

Great thread :D agree with u