[AMA] Ask The Developer Anything - December 3rd

[Clementine]

Please join us Wednesday, December 3rd, at 2:30pm PST for our next Developer Ask Me Anything! Please join us in discussing and asking questions about current features and future development.

We will once again be joined by:

Derez: Lead Game Designer
WaffleKing: Producer

This time we are trying something new so as to allow those in other time zones to participate and this thread will be unlocked Tuesday at 5pm PST so that you may post your questions in advance. The Developers will arrive Wednesday at 2:30pm sharp and will be answering questions here for two hours! The thread will then be locked at at the conclusion of the AMA. We'll answer as many questions as possible.

Remember any posts that violate the Forum Code of Conduct will be removed. Furthermore, any post that attacks, insults, implies insults, harasses the Development Team will result in an immediate and permanent ban. Please keep everything on topic and constructive.

[Clementine]

You may now begin posting your questions for the team to answer tomorrow at 2:30pm PST!

[Cloud22]

I have two questions for ya

1. Will there be any chance of materials for crafting being sold in the stores for gold and honor? As it is right now there really is not enough materials going out to do much crafting. Would love to see materials we could buy or new head/shoes/artifacts in the store!

2. What is the deal with these new individual conquest rewards? A chest with a unit with no bonus is a pretty terrible reward for the money people spend in conquest. I would recommend going back to way it was or give out items with boosts with it to make those prizes more ideal.

But I really do appreciate you guys doing this again. Thanks

[Jnsolberg]

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

What are the ratios between unit stats, equipment stats and Hero stats?

You said that you would work on a new way of showing us how a battle is won. Any progress on that before the war? I don't want to go through all the confusion that we had last war again.

Our Conquest Attack bonus did not work during the last war. We've been working hard to win Conquest Attack bonuses for this war. Will it work this time?


2). Skill points are broken. Attack and defense effect units, equipment and Hero. Hero Strength effects nothing, except the damage one does to a mob. When will this be fixed?


3). I don't like all the chests for prizes, both for the ILTQ in the war and in the Epic Boss, Raid Boss and box events. One of our memebrs finished top 200 in the war, and got a lousy unit, mad of course without a boost. Not much incentive to spend gems there anymore. Too much randomness. If I wanted to gamble, I can get a casino app, or just visit Vegas!


4). Please don't use the new stats in the EB or RB events. At least until you get the bugs out, and we understand the new metrics. You will lose a large portion of your customer base if you bring out the kind of chaos we had in the last war.


5). I like the new loot (like the ring and health and energy refills) in the RB event. When can we see a Trial Quest for equipment instead of units?
Of course we could farm for equipment if we didn't have non stop Trial Quests. Lol

[Lys]

1. With the advent of the new stats, there seems to be a major lack of ability to attempt to farm mobs for the best weapons and armor... as all of our energy is going into the trials that have taken the place of every other form of individual LTQ. Are there plans to attach gear as a % chance drop from the Trials mobs, or?

2. War Rewards, especially the individual ones... I spent most of the gems I had remaining helping my guild out, and I got something like, three chests. Not a single one of them yielded something new I could equip, and there were no bonuses attached to those items... major insult, and a waste of time and gems there.

3. Back to the voucher gear... I saw the basis of those items was the % increase of the hero versus comparable % increase of the army stats. However, the lack of any bonuses on a single voucher was a massive slap in the face. Not to mention the fact that I am already replacing all of those voucher items between Raid Boss DROPS and Crafting Items... at a Level Five building. We're talking items that have been invalidated that were earned via Raid Boss, Epic Boss, Chest Random Events, Guild Quests, Individual quests... do you see the concern here? What, if any, plans will you take for us to not feel like we wasted all of our time on those vouchers? Because we did.

4. Hero Skills... WHAT ARE THEY FOR, WHAT DO THEY DO, AND WHEN CAN WE BLOODY RESET THEM?! Caps for emphasis. There has been no breakdown as previously mentioned, and without a reset, I am stuck with an army of 1.7 billion attack losing fights to those with 500 million army defense simply because I didn't get the chance to put points into Hero Attack and Defense skills. Not to mention the fact that Hero Strength doesn't seem to affect anything at all, which is where ~95% of my skill points have gone... And there is a war in less than 3 days.

5. New stats in Raid Boss and Epic Boss. Please, for the love of god, tell us that you're going to hold off on even trying this until you can get #4 worked out... The last thing I want to go through is an event with a boss health still hitting ~2.147 billion, and all of a sudden we're all doing thousands of damage due to calculation errors. Please say that you're going to check, double check, triple check, send it out for a fourth check, then do a fifth check before even considering a deployment?

6. Crafting Building. So, some folks do use gems to speed things up. Energy Refills, 20 Gems. Battle Health Refills 25 gems. Buildings, something like 5 or 10 gems per hour... So why is it that the crafting building's crafting is a speed up cost of 5 gems per minute? This is beyond absurd, was this an error, or?

7. The boxes for bloody everything in a cycle. Can we please avoid this again in the future? If I wanted gambling, I'd go to the Gulf Coast and go bounce around the tables or machines there. The Rare % chance is simply too low, and overall, I'd say between Raid Boss and Epic Boss alone, the stat gain was down ~ 30%, of not more, because of this switch. Not to mention this currently running Box Event... You think I'm going to spend gems for that?

8. Nestled Box Events (Thanksgiving Related Box Quests). Please, please, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD... can you NOT put the item being opened in the item pool? It should be that if one spends those 20 gems, then they're guaranteed an item. However, using 20 gems on a Durtucken to get a Core, then opening said core to get a Durtucken... well, I just pissed 20 gems away with nothing to show for it. Plus, this made the unit collect quest downright impossible to complete. While the innovation was there, some serious issues were present. Any plans to do an event like this again, and if so, will you look at NOT having us get the item that we can go and spend 3 energy killing a goblin at the Crossroads to get?

[Timmygammer]

Here are a couple I have from me and my fans. Hopefully you guys can answer all, thank you for your time. :)

1- When is the "Epic Boss Contest" & "Epic Armor Contest?" and you can I get more info about it.

2- Will there 6-stars armors in the future and if so what will it look like, and will it have special visual effects?

3- Is there going to be something such as 6-stars armors? if so, when can we expect it?

4- Can I have more Information about upcoming Rings & Amulets?

5- How high will the X Chest go up to? 10X? 15X? 20X? (ex. Thanksgiving chest was 10X)

6- Will there be dual element Heroic Mode in the future?

7- Will there be any kind of armor trading in the future?

8- What are you attending to do new next year in the game, 2015?

9- Will you fix the raid point issue? where the top guilds have negative score since they reach point limit.

10- Why are some free gems video offers not give any thing?

11- Why so many wars? like weekends, and weekdays.

12- Will there be a expansion in the future for your kingdom or more Buildings?

[c0t0d0s0]

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

What are the ratios between unit stats, equipment stats and Hero stats?

You said that you would work on a new way of showing us how a battle is won. Any progress on that before the war? I don't want to go through all the confusion that we had last war again.


Yes. Please explain the logic behind determining the battle outcome.

Is it even possible to know with a fair degree of certainty if we're going to win or lose the battle, given that we know our own Unit, Equipment, and Hero stats and our opponent's defense stats? It's been said that the algorithm also takes into consideration opponents' attack stats which are unknown to us. Obviously this adds an element of gamble to the outcome. It's also been hinted that this may change.

Please explain how the algorithm really works. If you could post the exact formula behind it, this would settle this issue once and for all!

Having to play the game without knowing the rules is frustrating to say the least.

[Gendur]

GEM REFUNDS/ INTERFACE ISSUES
In so many places the game forces us to click many times which from time to time causes us to spend gems unintentionally. For example: splash screens when starting up with "limited units", accidentally selling buildings while collecting gold, buying 100's of gear in equipment store due to lag or miss click it is too easy to spend gems, this has happened several times to me and tickets invariably end with "sorry no refunds". Please find a way to remove this annoyance. 99% of the items that can be bought with gems are completely useless with a ridiculously bad cost/benefit ratio, why are they even in the game if not to trick the players out of gems?

HERO SKILLPOINTS
We need a clear explanation, exactly how it affects army/equipment stats and hero stats.

WAR, INDIVIDUAL REWARDS
Chests would be more acceptable if (like in guild rewards) all the rewards are earned up to the rank achieved.

[acarlylefr808]

Is it possible in the future to sell units and materials we no longer use?

[Saint-BEL]

1. Because of the constant need to spend all your energy towards trials it is very hard to get decent gear from attacking mobs, will you implement chances that you can choose whether or not gear will be dropped with trials. As a prize or from the mobs, either way some additional way is needed.

2. All though I understand the need to cool down stats inflation, nowadays there are hardly any stats boost that are being given out. Will there be other means of acquiring those in the future, or should we just stick with it that those that have the highest multipliers now are simply untoucheable? (Not taking gear in account)

3. Would it be possible to implement some sort of list where we can actually see what our strongest 1500 units, weapons, armor and so on are?

4. Crafting is nice and all but the ways of obtaining materials for crafting are, as is the issue with gear in general, VERY slow. What do you plan to improve or increase this?


Sorry for sloppy post but I didn't have much time today.

[plavine]

1)Just some explanations on which stats and skill points affect which aspect of the game would be helpful . Is hero strength and Attack count the same ?? I added my recent skill points to Attack and defense instead of hero attack .
2) still not sure what is included in the pve Attack damage number . Yes , my damage inflicted went up , but so did the attack value of the weapons . I have a 200 point Attack bonus ( 100 for Cupid's bow and 100 from another unit ) there is no way these bonuses are being counted my high damage is 596 ( my weapon is 270 of it ) .

[Lucas HQ]

1) Is there going to be a skill point reset before war? (Or is this never going to happen?)
2) I like the idea of implementing a list in KA to see our 1500 best armor/units, can this be added in the future?
3) change individual reward during war please, why would I gem to earn a stupid box with a chance to earn a unit that will contribute 0% to my stats..
4) when can we upgrade the workshop from crafting to L10?it's not even worth wasting materials now as we barely have any

[Totalwar]

When is Gree going to enable the players to transfer the game again.why don't you use game centre to save games and the account swapping would end over night and Kingdom Age would be tired to our Apple Acount not the device.

Why do we have so many war bonuses like I have five now All temp only used once.please can we have some permanent bonuses back.

Why are war rewards so poor they used to be really good sorry they getting pathetic.

[discprodigy]

Box Events:
What are your plans to revise or improve the odds at moving from 9/10 to 10/10 for these events. Many do not gem these events any longer after shelling out 2-3K gems only to miss the last unit or last box item. It's borderline ridiculous to have that minute of a chance to finish while other "lucky" individuals spend not a single gem and are left with all items.

Player Base:
What are your plans to help bring in new players? You yourself have mentioned a shrinking player base, and ostracizing older players with odd battle calculations or penalty for skill point allocation; while at the same time making some event near impossible for small guilds or new players to be successful finds that your bath tub full of water has a leak that we as the remaining player base have yet to see fixed. Poor analogy I know but you get the point.

Hackers/Unjust Players:
There are still many players that have excessive units, doubled buildings, etc. outside of the normal playing rules. Do you have any actionable plan to remove these players from the game? There are multi-billion stat players that have earned their way to the top via great amounts of spending, while others unjustly hack the game to achieve these types of results. I will not name any names, but in top guilds it is well known who has justly earned their place, and who has not.

[Captain Buck Slayer]

Its about to start :)

[discprodigy]

Another quick question, what are you doing about fixing the news feed always showing "moments ago" for attacks, and not showing a notification when you are attacked/raided?

[Clementine]

The Devs have arrived and are ready! They will be answering questions starting NOW! Remember it takes some time to write up responses, so you will start seeing answers shortly.

P.S. You can't see it, but Derez is dressed all snazzy (including a trilby hat), just for you guys.

[Tadaaah]

Here are a couple I have from me and my fans. Hopefully you guys can answer all, thank you for your time. :)

1- When is the "Epic Boss Contest" & "Epic Armor Contest?" and you can I get more info about it.

2- Will there 6-stars armors in the future and if so what will it look like, and will it have special visual effects?

3- Is there going to be something such as 6-stars armors? if so, when can we expect it?

4- Can I have more Information about upcoming Rings & Amulets?

5- How high will the X Chest go up to? 10X? 15X? 20X? (ex. Thanksgiving chest was 10X)

6- Will there be dual element Heroic Mode in the future?

7- Will there be any kind of armor trading in the future?

8- What are you attending to do new next year in the game, 2015?

9- Will you fix the raid point issue? where the top guilds have negative score since they reach point limit.

10- Why are some free gems video offers not give any thing?

11- Why so many wars? like weekends, and weekdays.

12- Will there be a expansion in the future for your kingdom or more Buildings?

Hi Timmy,

This AMA is for the Kingdom Age game. The K&D AMA will be later this month.

[discprodigy]

Hi devs, looking forward to your answers to the many ?'s the community has

[Derez]

SELLING MATERIALS AND STORE UPDATE

For additional ways to get materials besides quest rewards, we are working on making additional interactive buildings similar to the Crafting Workshop that will allow players to get materials as they need them. In addition to this, we have been working on was to make more interactive buildings so that player kingdoms are more useful and less features are hidden away in the endless amount of menus.

We will be adding some Hero Equip items to the store for purchase. We did not want to do this right away as it would have taken away from the new crafting feature but we will try to have them in soon.

[Waffleking]

Hello All

Sorry we have not posted yet. We are going through all of your questions. First off I wanted to say thank you for participating again in our AMA. It means a lot to the development team to see so many players actively trying to make this game better and help us with your comments. Drez is going to address a bunch of your concerns about game mechanics but in the mean time I will try to answer some of the questions posted here.

Battle Calculation percentages:
A lot of our players have asked about how this works and because of your feedback in the last AMA we went back and looked at some of our numbers. The team has been able to make a few adjustments to the formula and I would like to give you the percentages of Armies, Armies equipment and Hero Equipment.

Armies are up to 55% of the battle calculation.
Army equipment is up to 27% of the battle calculation
Hero Equipment is up to 18% of the battle calculation

This means that if your army is way better than the person you are attacking you have a chance of winning up to 55% of the total outcome of the battle with just your army. The closer the power of the armies the more important the other two calculations become.

Thank you for your feedback in the last AMA, we have adjusted these numbers from the originals and feel like these address the concerns of players losing to much smaller size armies. We would obviously like your feedback if you are still experiencing issues with much larger armies not winning against much smaller armies.


Battle Outcome:
We are still working on showing the users a new battle outcome screen that will help clarify some of the confusion. We really do want to create something that informs the user exactly how and where they need to improve but this has been taking us some time. We also have had a ton of other brand new features in development that we are really excited about. We will be working on this battle outcome screen in the new year. We are sorry for the delay but we want to make sure we get it right before releasing it to you. We will also release this in a new beta when it is ready and would love players to participate in it when the time comes.

[Waffleking]

Equipment drops in Trials:

Lys thank you for your feedback we really appreciate you taking the time to let us know what bugs you guys so we can make changes and try to address your concerns.

We also agree that having mobs in trials drop gear would be awesome. We are working on updating trials to expand upon the systems we have now and will look into a way that gear can be acquired through trials.

Also understand that we try to have certain events feed into others, so by doing trials, quests and Epic Boss this makes you better at competing in say, Raid Boss by rewarding the player army units. Competing in a Raid Boss will reward you crafting and hero equipment, making you better at participating in trials, quests and Epic Boss. The idea is that by competing in all events you become a better well rounded player that can be effective in all our events. If the only way to get better at a certain event was to play that event it would mean that players would never really get better at that event.

[Derez]

CONQUEST INDIVIDUAL LEADERBOARDS

I understand the complaints that the rewards on are not as good as they used to be and I am not going to claim that they are comparable without the bonuses. The main reason for this change is that Conquest is a guild focused event and we felt that the best rewards should come from the accomplishments of the guild which were no longer happening. With the new Hero Equipment and crafting features we felt that this was a good place to feed into the stats and improvements of the individual players / heroes.


LACK OF ITEMS WITH BONUSES

We have mentioned issues with stat inflation many times and players have agreed that they see it as an issue. The biggest cause of this problem has been all of the bonuses and not actually the inflation of the stats on the units. Adding 10% to all infantry attack quickly causes the game to become unbalanced and creates issues with players no longer to be able to compete with each other if they miss out on a single event. While we are going to continue to give items with bonuses they will be scaled back from what they were before which makes them more valuable to the players who earn them.


REWARD CHESTS

These have taken the place of the low level rewards that most players found to be useless and the power levels are actually higher on average. We have also added a collection wrapper for getting all of these items which does actually offer a bonus, giving players who are participating in the majority of the events a chance to get another great army unit. This is still new and something we are working with the design of but will continue something similar going forward. I saw a request on the forums to add other items in to the chests which we will look into doing as well for future conquest cycles.

[Waffleking]

Voucher Gear:
This gear was much better than any gear that was offered in the initial launch of the new feature. The gear you are "replacing" is not being thrown out and is actually now being equipped by your armies and is still quite effective. At this time we do not plan on releasing bonuses on hero equipment.

Crafting Speed Up:
We also agree that this is a bit too expensive and we are going to adjust this in one of our upcoming versions to be more in line with our other speed up systems.

Nesting Box Events:
Thank you for your feedback on this new event. We will adjust this to NOT drop tokens that you can farm off of mobs.

[Derez]

SKILL POINT UPDATE

First of all here is the breakdown of what each of the skill points affects:

Attack - Current PVP / Raiding, Raid Boss, Conquest (all army attacks)
Defense - Current PVP / Raiding, Conquest (all army defense)
Hero Strength - PVE (trials, and world map attacks), New Epic Boss (any hero calculations)
Stamina - Boosts total amount of stamina

We are working on the new item that will allow players to re-spec all of their skill points. Unfortunately this is a larger than expected task and requires a version update which we are planning for early next year. Because of the inflation in stats since the launch of the game these currently offer little change to most battle calculations. We are looking at revamping these to make them more useful in the current version of the game and hope to do it at them same time that we offer players the stat reset. Details about this will be posted on the forums prior to its release.

[Silent follower]

SKILL POINT UPDATE

First of all here is the breakdown of what each of the skill points affects:

Attack - Current PVP / Raiding, Raid Boss, Conquest (all army attacks)
Defense - Current PVP / Raiding, Conquest (all army defense)
Hero Strength - PVE (trials, and world map attacks), New Epic Boss (any hero calculations)
Stamina - Boosts total amount of stamina


You write here Army Attack for Conquest(all army attack) and Army Defense for Conquest(all army defense). But where do you categorize Hero Attack/defense? Based on the current game behaviour they also get their stats from the Army part. Is it also in your mind part of the Conquest(all army att/def)? I have a small problem in understanding why my Army skills affect my Hero stats in Conquest, and not Hero Strength. Comments?

[Waffleking]

When is Gree going to enable the players to transfer the game again.why don't you use game centre to save games and the account swapping would end over night and Kingdom Age would be tired to our Apple Acount not the device.

Why do we have so many war bonuses like I have five now All temp only used once.please can we have some permanent bonuses back.

Why are war rewards so poor they used to be really good sorry they getting pathetic.

Hello TotalWar

In the upcoming build you will now be able to transfer your own accounts to new devices iwhich should go live next week. We did not want to release this new build during or before a major war so expect to see a new update sometime next week that has game center account transfers enabled.

[Jomama1]

Ok - so you want better guild rewards - then please explain the rationale behind the top ten reward for this upcoming war. Nearly everyone in a top ten guild has the ability to upgrade multiple buildings already. Why make the top ten bonus useless???? I think this needs to be fixed.

[Totalwar]

Hello TotalWar

In the upcoming build you will now be able to transfer your own accounts to new devices iwhich should go live next week. We did not want to release this new build during or before a major war so expect to see a new update sometime next week that has game center account transfers enabled.


Thankyou this will save a great amount of time FOR GREE Customer Support and will make our experience of Kingdom Age much better.

[Derez]

NEW EPIC BOSS

The next Epic Boss event will be rebalanced to use only Hero Equip stats (+ Hero Strength + Hero Attack Bonus.) We felt that out of all of our current events this one fit best with the new focus on Hero Equipment and makes the most sense seeing as the UI shows your hero fighting the boss.

Having a better idea as of where player stats are with the new hero items it should help us in making a more balanced event which has been an issue in the past. Seeing as hero attack numbers are far lower than armies you can expect to see a lot lower health numbers for the boss.

There may also be some changes to the quest structure but the overall event will be pretty much the same as it has been.

[Derez]

Ok - so you want better guild rewards - then please explain the rationale behind the top ten reward for this upcoming war. Nearly everyone in a top ten guild has the ability to upgrade multiple buildings already. Why make the top ten bonus useless???? I think this needs to be fixed.

This is a fair point. It is a very powerful bonus that I know a lot of players have been asking for but you are correct that the players at the top of the list will already have one if not more of these boosts. With the war in the next few days it may not be able to be changed in time but we will look into it (the change may not appear until close to the time that the event starts.)

[Totalwar]

I have 9 building upgrade bonuses already and I am top 25 guild I think this bonus be better aimed at top 75 or below.I do agree this bonus is needed but at a much lower level then top 10.

[Lys]

This is a fair point. It is a very powerful bonus that I know a lot of players have been asking for but you are correct that the players at the top of the list will already have one if not more of these boosts. With the war in the next few days it may not be able to be changed in time but we will look into it (the change may not appear until close to the time that the event starts.)

I know you may consider it a powerful bonus, but who really needs this bonus are the newer players, who haven't had a chance to get them. Honestly, the largest thing that bonus [currently] applies to is Income Per Hour and the ability to participate in the LTBs each cycle... this +1 Upgrade reward should theoretically be available at the lowest level for this reason, or how I see it.


NEW EPIC BOSS

The next Epic Boss event will be rebalanced to use only Hero Equip stats (+ Hero Strength + Hero Attack Bonus.) We felt that out of all of our current events this one fit best with the new focus on Hero Equipment and makes the most sense seeing as the UI shows your hero fighting the boss.

Having a better idea as of where player stats are with the new hero items it should help us in making a more balanced event which has been an issue in the past. Seeing as hero attack numbers are far lower than armies you can expect to see a lot lower health numbers for the boss.

There may also be some changes to the quest structure but the overall event will be pretty much the same as it has been.


The new Epic Boss I've got some concerns about, mostly the new stats factor. I'm in the low 180s, and by far and large I've got some solid equipment, and crafting a pair of Boots soon to give me the best [current] equipable items. However, my Hero Attack and Defense is quite small still in comparison to others, I've seen some close to 10k in that regard, while I'm around 1500 or so. How will this, and having 90% of my skill points in Hero Strength, affect the Epic Boss and damage output?

[Derez]

You write here Army Attack for Conquest(all army attack) and Army Defense for Conquest(all army defense). But where do you categorize Hero Attack/defense? Based on the current game behaviour they also get their stats from the Army part. Is it also in your mind part of the Conquest(all army att/def)? I have a small problem in understanding why my Army skills affect my Hero stats in Conquest, and not Hero Strength. Comments?

Hero stats are no longer part of your army. This is one of the current confusions with hero equipment rewards not being as good as army units. In the past it was all one stat and with the last update army, army equipment, and hero were broken out onto their own. So armies are not affecting hero stats directly, with the one exclusion of EB Attack Bonuses will be applied so that we do not devalue those bonuses that players worked so hard to collect.

[Waffleking]

Is it possible in the future to sell units and materials we no longer use?

We are looking into ways that we can allow the players to "use" their old units and materials but will not be ready until much later next year.

[plavine]

My hero strength is 462 - I have a 200 point Attack bonus which I have been told is used for both PvP and pve attacks . Yet my high damage caused on enemies is 596 . Is the 100 point bonus from Cupid's bow not counted since it isn't my strongest weapon any more ?? In my bonus area it says 200 Attack bonus , I think it should count regardless .

[[JAG] Ryan]

hmm you said its more complicated to allow a skill point relocation or reset and it will take till the new year for that change. However the current skill points asigned to army attack or defense are affecting not only our army equip stats but also our hero stats. The metrics of 55%, 27% and 18% are not reflecting peoples playing contribution in past without a chance of correction as many people used their skill points in hero strength, means all those have a huge disadvantage now and they are not happy with the current situation.

Isnt there any way that you value the army unit stats much higher till you sort out the skill point reset for all? As that seems the only fair way to handle this in the meantime.

Also what happened to the raiding boost all players had in last years? it seems that it dissappeared with the new change. Raiding is fun for many people and now they lose to people they used to raid vice versa for many months. Without that previous boost it takes a fun factor away for them. Any plans on adding that previous boosts for raids back?

[Cloud22]

Thanks for all the good info, much appreciated!

But as lys said I am really worried bout this new epic boss plan. Sounds like a terrible idea to make hero strength the only factor for boss damage. Really makes no sense why you would do that.

Also any ETA on when we can expect new materials and items in the stores?

[Clementine]

Hello Folks! Thank you for joining us for the Developer Ask Me Anything! We really appreciate your participation. We are locking this thread, however our Devs will try and answer any unanswered questions over the next few days! Look for more of these in the future, with our next one sometime in January!

[Derez]

I know you may consider it a powerful bonus, but who really needs this bonus are the newer players, who haven't had a chance to get them. Honestly, the largest thing that bonus [currently] applies to is Income Per Hour and the ability to participate in the LTBs each cycle... this +1 Upgrade reward should theoretically be available at the lowest level for this reason, or how I see it.




The new Epic Boss I've got some concerns about, mostly the new stats factor. I'm in the low 180s, and by far and large I've got some solid equipment, and crafting a pair of Boots soon to give me the best [current] equipable items. However, my Hero Attack and Defense is quite small still in comparison to others, I've seen some close to 10k in that regard, while I'm around 1500 or so. How will this, and having 90% of my skill points in Hero Strength, affect the Epic Boss and damage output?

The Epic Boss stats will mostly take into consideration what is currently craftable as that is some of the best hero items in the game. Also craftable items are accessible to all players making them a good reference point while giving players who earn more powerful items from events like Conquest a bigger advantage in this event.

Off the top of my head I feel like 10k might be out of the current legitimate stats but this was also an issue for players in the current model with one player having armies that are far more powerful. Again, with hero stats being in a more controlled state we hope that we can make this event more balanced for all players than it previously was.

[Derez]

Thanks for all the good info, much appreciated!

But as lys said I am really worried bout this new epic boss plan. Sounds like a terrible idea to make hero strength the only factor for boss damage. Really makes no sense why you would do that.

Also any ETA on when we can expect new materials and items in the stores?

I agree that EB being based strictly off of the Hero Strength skill would be a terrible idea.

Epic Boss will be based around Hero Equipment, as in the items that you have been crafting and using for trials and PVE. The Hero Strength stats do feed into that final number giving players with stat points in that skill a slight advantage.