[AMA] Ask The Developer Anything - December 18th - Soldier Equip

Please join us Thursday, December 18th, at 11:00am PST for our next Developer Ask Me Anything! Please join us in discussing and asking questions about the new Soldier Equip Feature, recently released with v5.0. This is your chance to ask how the new battles are calculated and find out everything you ever wanted to know about the new feature!

Representatives from the Development Team:

CrazyNerdGirl: Lead Game Designer
RhythmNBruise: Producer
Milburn Pennybags: General Manager

So as to allow those in other time zones to participate and this thread will be unlocked Wednesday at 4pm PST so that you may post your questions in advance. The Developers will arrive Thursday morning at 11:00am PST sharp and will be answering questions here for one hour! 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. Additionally, please remember that the Development Team is not responsible for Customer Support, so any Customer Support inquiries will not be addressed.

Sorry this opened up a little late, guys! Clementine's been super-busy today and I didn't realize it hadn't been done. We'll be back tomorrow morning to answer things, so please do post your questions now. (It lets us write better answers!)

1) Why isn't soldier equipment available in the store to buy?
2) Was it intended that everyone who collected all current equipment items to be +11 att and +16 def (solider equip). Makes it impossible to beat someone with solider attack if limited to 11.
3) Why can't we unequipped items after equip them? What if I wanted it to be blank?
4) When will pvp equipment be dropping?
5) Why was the same equipment recycled through two LTQs/FLTQ?

Thank you for doing this again, now that we've had a chance to play around with it some.

1. Game Center - is it safe to log out of one game center account and into another game center account to switch MW games on one device if you have multiple MW games but had different GC logins on their original devices due to the old Funzio Game Center ID thing?

2. Is Equipment "indestructible", or is it something that can be lost when attacking / being attacked?

3. Can Equipment please be added as a tab in the inventory list so we can see everything and the quantities of each item we have?

4. Recycling (add buildings) - The recycling option is fantastic, seems well thought out, and functions well. Thank you for the triple confirmation process! Now that we have inventory recycling, can we please add buildings to that process and remove the "sell" button from the popup when you tap on the building? This would eliminate the accidental selling of buildings, which is heartbreaking when it happens - as I know first hand, having lost a few LE buildings to lag and buffered taps.

5. There are several bugs in 5.0. I know several are being worked on, but some are very annoying -
5a) The "ghost" targets left from the previous map that was visited amidst the clutter from all the deprecated NPC targets that are on that map (makes it hard to select the target you actually want)
5b) The last raid done will splash the results again and again each time you hit an NPC target after raiding, as though hitting that NPC target is reliving the last pvp attack/raid performed.
5c) Probably most important, The Android stats issue - displays the wrong atk/def stats for a person's game both in the profile screen and in the attack/raid results screen. Is this just a display issue, can you verify that the battle formula is using their actual stats and not the stats they see in the battle results?

6. Tapjoy Videos - not sure if this is something you can even address, but it seems as though the tapjoy videos are served per device rather than per game account, so if I have 2 games linked the to same game center and switching between them on the same device, it seems that my allotment of videos is now such that I only get one allotment for the device even though there's 2 (or 3 or 4) game accts.

1 = What has finally been decided abut the the next WD, 3 days or 7 days?
1A = Is it possible to restructure WD like FLTQ (Normal "3 day event", Prestige "5 day event", Masters "7 day event") with rewards scaled like FLTQ or ILTQ?

2 = What will be done IF the unlucky locked out accounts can't be unlocked for WD?

3 = Lately your attempts to apologize or make amends for your errors don't coincide with the severity of the errors. Do you plan to raise the compensation bar for the loyalty the remaining customers continue to show Gree?

What's the latest on the droid stats error /glitch? Currently you can't see any boosts or units for prizes.

Can you help me and others with our lost accounts, ticket 2121444, also what if game is resistered to ios Go but I now play on android and no longer have ios device

This is a little off topic but the documents and data for this game is beyond ridiculous currently i am sitting at over 3gb is there any suggestions for lowering this requirement?

Why can't you guys remove the old enemy's from previous FLTQs and ILTQs from the maps? Can you maybe make all the enemys in the maps walk on a grid so we can stop accidently hitting them? Its quite frusterating.

Well I recycled all my non army units but looks like when I did I recycled some of the units for the box event where you have to collect 8 units. As it happens I'm now on 7/8 and the unit missing is one that was recycled. As a result the goal reset. I'm not concerned about missing out on the wrapper this time but I can see this same issue in future box events and with raid boss when you have to collect the 18 units for the personal reward.

Can you fix this moving forward so the goal does not reset like it did in my case once you collect the unit?

Since the forced data push today IOS devices have been taking longer to log in. Are you going to fix this soon?

I would like to see use of the original NPCs on the maps now and again. Maybe once a quarter or more. Can this happen?

I think the last time these NPCs were used was in the Axis of Evil LTQ this past January.

Lastly, can you confirm the date of the next raid boss? It looks like Santa so I'm assuming Christmas Eve or Christmas but either way it would be nice to know for planning.

Can you confirm if the WD Community event will be based on Battle Points or World Domination Points? The splash screen says BP, but other posts made make it sound like it will be WDP.

There are players who have taken over accounts for people that have retired or wished to consolidate down to one account. People do this so that a good account does not go to waste but people are finding that accounts they have given away to someone else are still showing up linked to their Game Center even though the account is on someone else's device. For example, person A had a high level player that they started in 2011 and a mini that they started in 2012. As people who play this kind of game often have multiple devices, most frequently a phone and a tablet they would have their HLP on the phone and the LLP on a tablet that could only be played on wifi. Time passes and person A no longer wants to play the HLP because the LLP has practically caught up to it in stats but is 150 levels lower. They give away their HLP to a friend who has recently started playing and once to advance quicker then would be possible as a new account. Once the friend takes over the HLP person A transfers the LLP from the tablet to the phone and makes it their main account. They are very happy to now only have 1 account. Then 5.0 comes out and person A downloads it. Upon doing so they quickly find that their old account that was given away shows under their Game Center ID. Even though the game is on someone else's device they can still see it and don't link to Game Center for fear of that causing the account to go back to them. What happens if they do link to Game Center? Will they effectively be taking the account back? Is there anything that can be done to prevent this? Will it be addressed in the next release? Is this type of account transfer prior to 5.0 a contributing factor to the lost accounts? Players giving their accounts away when they stop playing is a common practice and once the game has been moved to a new device can the lock out be prevented? Is it now impossible for someone to start multiple accounts when they are new to the game? Thanks!!

1. Is there ever going to be an option to delete/nuke an entire account????

2. Are players going to be able to view opponents equipment when ATKing, vice just seeing numbers???

1. Why are some factions, including my own, unable to get matched up in FL? The last 2 events have been this way and what are we to expect for the next?
2. Can we see a bp boost soon?
3. The rank insignia's have disappeared on my accounts???
4. bravo on the recycling. well done!!!!

1. How do soldier equip stack? Shows different value on battle screen than in profile.

2. Changing equipment is broken, gives server error now, can this be fixed asap?

3. Android boost and stat glitch, att value on battle screen shows up as negative, and att value on profile, attack and raid screen are all different. Impossible to scout for droids. And still missing those boosts, stacking error?

4. How about those commas?

1. What will the WD experience be when a player who has not updated to 5.0 attacks a player who has updated to 5.0 and vice versa?

2. If a player has not updated to 5.0 but has been participating in the ltqs to collect equipment will that equipment be in their inventory when they update to 5.0? Is that equipment taking effect when attacking even though they haven't updated?

What If anything is being done about the arjun tank glitch that there was, people with 2mil iph now have 100's of billions of cash and 100's of millions of valor. The game economy and balancing is ruined

1. On the Battle Outcome screen, why is the order of Army, Equipment, and Soldier stats different between iOS and Android clients? Also what's up with negative Army attack stats on Droid? Please fix the negative stats and consider making the order consistent between the platforms to avoid any confusion during WD!!!

Same account, ios:

https://i.groupme.com/720x480.jpeg.6...f2d88c4b.large
Droid:
https://i.groupme.com/1280x800.png.4...8531b37d.large

2. Speaking of consistensy. During WD events, the ordering of the other factions' player list has always been different between iOS and Android clients: while on iOS the list stays in the same order through the war, on Android the Defense Leader is moved down the list after being taken out, unpredictably changing the order of players. This leads to mixups when battling same name teams (Alex #15 on iOS may not necessarily match Alex #15 on Android). It would tremendously help team coordination if you manage to keep the player list ordering consistent across both platforms. Even better, add a position counter before each name so that we can identify player positions easily without having to count players while scrolling down.

3. Please post the battle outcome calculation formula to put this issue to bed once and for all. Unless the rules of the game are clearly defined, this is no longer a game, this is a gabmle.

In WD if multiple members are attacking the same player in the other faction at the same time does that effect the amount of WD points per Attack?

It's rumored that by attacking the same guy at once that this lowers the amount of points all players receive verses the amount that would be received if only one players was attacking at a time.

Hi,
My questions are:
o we cannot see what equipment we have gathered for soldiers,only the equipment that our Avatar is using,will we get feature to see what we have gathered?
o will equipment become Available to buy in store for Cash/Valour?
o could you Clarify how many soldiers per ally we need equipment for?
o why doesn't Equipment Have A Factor in Raids?when raiding I see a N/A?

when recycling, units with bonuses show whether I chose to filter by "in army" or not.

In PvP my attack stats show to four decimals places... How is that even possible? (not commas)

Battle calculations. The Kingdom Age did a pitiful job of explaining exactly how it all works. This community needs a clear and concise explanation of exactly how it works, what factors affect each stat (skill points, equipment, boosts, etc.), and a way to roughly determine the outcome of a battle ahead of time. If you guys think turning this whole thing into a toss of the dice makes it more realistic, you couldn't be more wrong. No army on earth takes uncalculated risks when going on the offensive. Sure there will always be randomness, but not to the extent that is being displayed here. Even gambling has more transparency in its odds. Customers are beyond livid with this now and expect real answers. Nobody wanted Gree to "add depth" to a game of tap tap tappity tap. Please don't worry about confusing us further with too much information, as keeping us confused has always been a top priority for Gree.

At first I would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to ask questions that will even be answered (in the majority). It really helps keeping the frustration low in this concern. Here my questions:


1. LOST / LOCKED OUT ACCOUNTS

• How do we get accounts back that were lost before version 5.0 came out and you didn't transfer as requested before the update?
• Will there be a solution offered to those, that have their account but can't connect to game center as they will lose them immediately? (I have 2 accounts on 2 devices and if I connect to GC I will lose one of these accounts --> I've tried that out, ticket pending.)
• Will there be a solution before WD for those players with legit accounts in limbo that have sent a ticket early and provided the needed information?

2. STATS / PVP CALCULATION

Please, please, please: explain the formula for the PVP attacks.

I, and i am sure I speak for a lot of players, don't care if there's a margin of let's say 20% on it that you might call randomness or GREE's secret sauce. We can and will live with that and add this security margin when attacking, even if it doesn't apply each time.

It is simply unacceptable to not know how it roughly works. I have 29b att, 10b def, 190/190 skill points, and 10/11 soldier equipment. If I lose to an opponent that has massively lower stats in almost all categories (and by massively I mean half the stats e.g.) I will simply stop attacking until I know why i lost, because there is not confident target anymore and I will harm my faction more with defensive losses than if I don't attack at all. And knowing that i scored over 400k WD points in the last WD means that you, GREE, will lose real life cash due to keeping me in the dark on purpose.

When is the next update coming out?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Clementine

Please join us Thursday, December 18th, at 11:00am PST for our next Developer Ask Me Anything! Please join us in discussing and asking questions about the new Soldier Equip Feature, recently released with v5.0. This is your chance to ask how the new battles are calculated and find out everything you ever wanted to know about the new feature!

Representatives from the Development Team:

CrazyNerdGirl: Lead Game Designer
RhythmNBruise: Producer
Milburn Pennybags: General Manager

So as to allow those in other time zones to participate and this thread will be unlocked Wednesday at 4pm PST so that you may post your questions in advance. The Developers will arrive Thursday morning at 11:00am PST sharp and will be answering questions here for one hour! 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. Additionally, please remember that the Development Team is not responsible for Customer Support, so any Customer Support inquiries will not be addressed.

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1. How come some of the most serious bugs reported over 2 and half years ago are still available in the game?
2. Why isn't game data encrypted?
3. What are the developers doing to reduce the cause and effect of the "Man-in-the-Middle" modifcations that continue to go on?
4. What software development model do Gree use? (Agile, Waterfall etc.)
5. Why do previously release fixed bugs recur in new releases?
6. In relation to question 1, how serious does Gree take user privacy?
7. When will manual transfer be re-enabled?
8. Do Gree use Prototyping and if so, who tests these prototypes? (In-house testers, dev team, normal staff, players etc.)
9. In relation to Support, what kind of game and game mechanics training do Customer Support staff recieve?

Are minimum participation in events going to be based on number of attacks?

Same questions as last time.

Is it possible to start/finish ALL events at the same time? WD start time seems to be fair for highest global markets.

Can WD wall hits be faction points instead of a pitiful amount of WD points? Would be easier for factions to see who actually does hit the wall.

game freezes when attacking people via the news feed.. This was introduced in 5.0

do wall hit count towards to min wd participation?

Where is my valor going when I recycle units, coz 90% of the time I'm not gettimg it?

forums.

1, Why do Gree games still rob players of energy and gold?

- gold in question 2.

- energy gets robbed by gree resetting maps... players hsve the rights to pre map. a real army would send troops to multiple locations to all hit same time... tho this is a game premapping was done by thousands long before LTQS was introduced...

-* it was a good way to make cash for buildings upgrades by getting things to -1 so when we regen we could hit all and upgrade with less chance being raided or attacked with unvauted cash. --- of course the game play has changed by how each person plays in their own lifestyles and timezones is still up to THEM how they choose to play.

If we have hit targets then they should stay hit or we lose our time, our energy and gain xp multiple times to re-hit damaging our games.

- also energy gets stolen when we try hit targets and the pop up says you have no internet. if we hit again 2 chunks of energy goes, if we exit restart the target might be down or it might be up but the energu is gone as it got to your server but not back to our games.

2, Why after over 2 years of asking is there no setting or "are you sure" button on ALL GOLD BUTTONS.

- either a setting for single press to use Gold or a setting which pops up "are you sure" os easy to do but of course the buttons in the games have aleays been placed so ots easy to mistap or multytap and as the game centres on targets and we players have to multy hit even more than ever... the delberate auto centre and placement of Gold button is easy to mispress with no eay to stop players being robbed.

3, Why do all Gree games that I know of discriminate against disabled people and people with various disabilities?

- having disabilities for example problems with arms and hands means its easy to accidentally press Gold buttons and get "robbed" in the game with no way to stopnor undo.

- An "are you sure" button for everything gold would lower this problem for players with these issues.

- There are also thousands upon thousands of people with visionary problems.

yes i myself feel discriminated against as do many people with health conditions and those who simply dont want eye strain and headaces

- not just disabled people but people of all ages and genres. Yet there are NO DISABILITY options to make text bigger in your games for example in comments or faction forums.

- Though it would be hard to impllement a larger text option for the actual game menus and things due to being part of the game design.

An option for larger text in other areas of the game or zoom feature could be implemented.

- As updates have gone on fonts have gotten so small even a microscope would now appear to be needed to play on a phone or low brand tablet nowdays.

- I suffer vision problems that cannot be fixed by simply wearing glasses and the fonts used in v5 are now microscopic.

4, Comments and Faction comments... the amount people can type should they even be able to see it, has been lowered so much that you cannot now post good intel good tips or even tell your friends your day or ask of theirs without having to make multiple posts and spam them.

- though many players now use external apps to chat and post intel. many thousands do not and COMMUNICATION is key part to any teams as well as just trying to chat with friends in game.

- By lowering as much as u have has damaged that key part for thousands upon thousands who rely on comments and forums for chat and game intel and leader commands. it needs to be at least 3-4 times longer.

5, Recycling has odd maths 8/16/24/33/41 when selling units that is example of $8 unit.

10*8=83 according to recycling.

- it also pays zero valor out so units are lost.

6, Bugs v5 is full of them as you are fully aware...

and thousands of players have lost their games due to gree bugs and gane centre errors and thousands do lose their games in other ways lost data. damaged devices. upgrading to new devices and so on.

i have some simple ideas that could possibly help those people. help players stop having to get stressed out and panic and complain again. help Gree save thousands of hours reading all those emails and tickets and all the weeks it takes you to recover each game.

but do Gree want people to help them? do your staff need ideas and help?

when so many thoudands of players try to help you and we get hurt and discouraged from reporting bugs and trying to help.

is it worth my time? to save yours? and make you rich? when ur already rich? and we continue to suffer?

you tell me.... what if i could possibly save you so much time and work you have to do for these things and others.

posting.. may edit later.

Can you reset all players faction points after each cycle or provide us with an option to so? It would be much easier to track player participation if you could reset the number to zero.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Edbl79

Can you reset all players faction points after each cycle or provide us with an option to so? It would be much easier to track player participation if you could reset the number to zero.

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Or provide the leader this option[

You can boot everybody to reset points but agree there should be an easier way.

Could officers keep their status when leaving and rejoining factions?

1 What formula do you use to when determining the attack and defense scores? Are the attack and defense skill pts.(pts you get when leveling up and add to your atk/def/energy/stamina) used when calculating this.
2 Does the new equipment stack?
3 Will you be able to buy equipment?

Thanks

Congratulation in general for the game. I like to play it, even if there are a few problems inside it.

My Question:
In attacking enemys now there are not only the attack and defense stats who are responsible for the result but also some combinations with the equipments. None of us understands
- how it is calculated
- what is important to know
- how it will be during wd
- etc.
Can you please make a practicle exemple for us, perhaps incl. print screens, with explanations, why and how which figure is calculated?

Many tanks.
Roger