Knights & Dragons Weekly Feedback (2/17/15)

Hello Knights & Dragons Community!

This thread is for you to post your valuable feedback on Knights & Dragons. Every Tuesday we will sticky a new weekly feedback thread so you can conveniently post your opinions on the game. This thread will not only give you an easily accessible place to share your thoughts with us, but it will also consolidate your feedback making it more efficient for Community staff to gather and report to the Development Team.

When providing feedback, please keep it constructive, on-topic, non-inflammatory, and break it down into the following categories:

• In-Game Events
• Customer Support
• Community Support
• Game Stability & Issues

Please note that this thread is not a substitution for reporting bugs and issues to Customer Support.

Thank you,

The GREE Community Team

Relic please read my pm thank you.

First of all thank you for taking the time to read what we post. I hope that my rather lengthy post will find your attention & that you may consider some of the things posted.
All of the below is a mixture out of my own opinion and points brought to me by members of my subguilds & friends. Literally all styles and level of play are taken into consideration.

Game related:

• Guild Wars:

• Declares for Epic Wars: This has been an issue since quite a while. The Guild setup features 15 leadership positions and 25 regular commander Positions. Whilst I think it is good that the Leaders get boosts (This is different in other games, so it definitely pays off to try hard in your guild on KnD!), I feel that the Leaders should be given more responsibilities. I am speaking of an ideal system where the guild can't function if these 15 people (all, not one) are inactive. This is similar to the Raid-System, where a High Commander or above is the only one that can either Scout a Raider or set an Auto-Scout. Now to the issue with the ever so scary Declare-Button. Not only is it very easy to tap it by accident, also are rogues mostly caused by commanders and newer members. This can be fixed using a very easy verification-process.
  
  I) Only High Commanders and Above can Declare War
  II) Once Pressed, a confirmation has to be pressed, similar to the energy-refills, where once you click the top corner you still need to confirm you actually want to do this.
  I understand that a rogue here and there is not a big issue and my own guild personally has had this happen once in approximately 10 Months. However I see a lot of frustration with especially free to play guilds if this happens. Some of my Subguilds for example are experiencing this and it is causing so much stress that the entire game fun is destroyed, as they will need to Gem to balance this out. Not everyone can do that and it would be wonderful if GREE would realize this & perhaps implement such a system.
  
  This can now obviously be taken further with some nice details like an Auto-Declare Timer for Epic Wars and Blitz Wars, say a guild sets to start a new declare every 150 Minutes, ergo 90 minutes after the last declare. This would be something I would love to see as it would make it a lot easier to coordinate & plan ahead. Not only would people be able to optimize their Energy spending, but perhaps it would lure out one or another refill more if other guilds perform stronger. I for one love good and straight up fights and I hate when the opposing team takes 40 minutes to shoot out our sent just because one of their members couldn't keep his fingers still.
  
  
  
• War duration of Epic Wars: This is something I have seen done right by you in the past and it is a bit sad that you have reverted to your old System. I don't want to be completely honest here in my thoughts of 72 hour wars as your recent efforts don't deserve the negativity. However, I must really question whether you feel that having not just 72 hour wars itself, but also having them reach into the working weak to tempt some people (This is their choice, but they do feel pressured into it, which I personally don't advocate but do find sad) to take either an early leave or just call in sick. I know this is surely a portion of less than 0.1% of players, but I have seen it happen and this is because due to the social aspect of the game people care so much about their guild's performance they would do this *Glad I have never done that*. In December, you ran 48 hour wars and you stuck to it for raids. Personally I would rather have 48 hour Epic Wars and 72 hour Raids, but the community will hate me if I voice this. The issue remains: An Epic War isn't set up so that you can play whenever you have a second. For that to happen your guild must be ready and coordinated. It takes more effort and thus to have it reach into the working days (Personally I work Sunday and Monday anyway, so for me 66% of an Epic War are working days) which causes stress and thus unhappiness. I would generally think that a good chunk, at least 90% of total players, and 100% of Top 10/25/50 runners would rather have both war segments last for 48 hours only. I spoke of this last week I think: The scores will NOT change. Trust me. Seeing how Top 10 guilds operate ever since Blazestone (November 2013?) I can tell you that Day 2 of wars are so unpopular that it is just a waste of a day. In fact I would go as far as saying that the first 12 hours of an Epic War essentially lock down the Top 10 nowadays. This is due to strips, but doesn't change the fact that a third day is just tiresome, obsolete and unnecessary. It doesn't help us players and it surely doesn't help you as a company. Whatever you are theorizing in regards to this, please over think it. The change from 72 hour to 48 hour raids have shown the same thing. Scores didn't drop. The Epic War scores won't drop. In fact I think that they might increase as less time = each moment matters more. If I am undecided as to refill my energy or not, I am more likely to do it in a 48 hour war than in a 72 hour war, considering I may have 2 hours left in the former and 26 hours in the latter.
  I hope this makes sense and trust me it would relief the player base so much without hurting you. Please do re-trials of your December-January schedule to test this. We all enjoyed this. Really.

• Guilds & The Guild interface Update:
  First of all, please let me praise your Guild update again. Good job. It gives it all a very nice detailed touch. The whole Guild System now really seems to matter as active guilds attract active players. It is not, like before, thrown into the game solely for wars. Thank you. However, there are some issues with this update and they should be addressed.

• Guild activity System: I love this. When I now stalk for setups of other guilds using your search tool (The best, means I don't need to add 1 player of each top guild), I can see who is how active. This means that if I would be looking for a guild, knowing I will (can I say this?) half-ass it, I don't need to look for a guild on 100%, but that 70 or 80% will suffice for my playing style. Here comes however the major issue with this update: It seems imbalanced and not thorough right now. Small example: Whilst someone fought In yesterday's war (I saw the player score points.), it logged him as "inactive". I also noticed that anyone that had more than 8 hours (I here assume a 12h cutoff to be 'inactive', merely stating the highest displayed time was 8 hours) was shown as inactive. This had us at 67% activity for a while (During dead hours - Pretty happy). However, when speaking to some allied guilds, I was sent screenshots of someone displayed as last active 4 days ago, and some 20 hours ago. How can it be that a player which hasn't spent a single energy the entire war, nor logged on the game since (then) Thursday was shown as active, and my player online just then wasn't? It would be great to
  
  I) Get intel on the actual way of tracking activity. Is the cutoff 12h, or 24h? Is it a certain action in-game?
  II) To balance this and also unify it. What good is this system if it differs from guild to guild, unless
  III) It is built so that a guild is charged and held responsible to their past standards, under which circumstances it would be very hard to maintain 100% activity for a top guild, without an actual bonus of some sort for the guild. IF this is the case, I would like a Tier system of some sort, Activity level A, B, C, D and E with respective ranges of 0-100%. This would seem logical given it is actually that way. If not, please fix this issue.
  
  
• Chat Function: The guild chat and generally chat function in KnD is very poor at this given point. Often it disconnects randomly and I have noticed that at times I need to press more keys to be able to send a message (The 'send' button is greyed out prior to doing this). Some ideas could be:
  
  I) A world-chat in segments to prevent Spam using the current guild system. Player A wishes to Apply to join the global chat of Guild v. If Guild v accepts Player A he may be briefed and talked to, instead of just spam-applying to the same guild over and over again. As the guilds could add and remove players from this chat list, they could be responsible for anti-spam. I know that a main reason for the lack of a global chat is exactly this and I must say any phone game I have played has had a very terrible global chat system which is complete junk and spam. The above could fix it.
  II) Improvements on the Guild-Chat itself such as: Prepared (or preset) war calls, more displayed messages than 2 (3-4) and color coding of messages to keep the overview.
  
  Overall I must say this is a minor issue, but I feel it is yet one that needs to be addressed.
  
  
• Inviting people out of Guilds: Another issue in the new Guild System is that you can, using the Friends list, invite people which are currently part of a guild. I understand where you are coming from, but please either remove this feature or let the player turn it off from inside the guild. There isn't more to be said about it. This is the one major issue I see in this great update and I hope you resolve it. Thank you.

• Other Game related issues

• Armor Slots: This is only a brief reminder. I raised this last week so I will only say the following on it:
  
  I) It is an issue for many High level players. We need at least One armor slot per Level we gain, please.
  II) Perhaps a revamp where instead of slots for armor we get 50-100 (depending on level) slots for different armor. Meaning, I can have 12 Moontides and they only occupy one space in my armory (given they are the same level, example 1 or 99).
  This would really be great. Anything in that direction would help the High Level Player Base massively.
  
  
• Arena Rewards: Those were buffed recently from very shabby rewards to solid rewards. We are now at a point where spending 3k, 4k, 5k or even 6k Gems for something like a Cryptid+ just isn't worth it. I know players will still spend this for the achievement, but it would be awesome if you could re-bump these rewards with either old war epics (current level: After Guardian, before Bonesaw). This would be really nice for the people spending these insane amounts as it is something special. Everyone can have a Cryptid+, but how many people could show off a Harlequin+? Currently 40 given none of the old DK Squad that won this war has quit the game or fused it away. This is also something minor, but optimization is always good and needed. I hope you can look into this.
  
  
• Epic Boss: This is something I have seen mentioned here on the forums a few times now and it makes absolute sense. With the recent updates of Amulets and Rings, getting the Epic Boss+ Armor (which is quite usable for Middle-Level Players, as they outdo some epics) is too easy. A few things that you could change in order to spark the general Epic Boss activity are:
  I) Buff the Epic Boss, make it harder to achieve. Especially the jumps at 15, 43 and 60 have to be more prominent.
  II) The placement rewards really need to be reworked. I can't propose a proper change to this, but it should be at least 75% of the rewards earned in the Arena for the same Tier
  I am a player that has stopped defeating the Epic Boss just because there is no point. I don't need the EB+, so the only thing motivating me would be II. I feel this applies to many spenders and I hope you can work out something for this.
  
  
• Friend Battles: How many times must I have heard the line "It was a friend battle, it doesn't count?" in the past year? To be to the point, I don't understand why you can't add Guild & Position Bonuses to Friend Battles AND Arena to make it more challenging. This would really bring a fun aspect back to the game that has been lost. 1 Year ago I used to fight all my friends daily. Nowadays I don't because most of the time I wouldn't even need 2 Knights to defeat them and the turnout for the time invested isn't great either. This can be fixed by buffing points earned for it OR increasing the general difficulty.
  
  
• Amulets and Rings: Despite some disagreeing, as it widens the P2P vs. F2P gap I must say I love the concept of these pieces of equipment to improve existing armor. It has been something I wanted to see for a while and I love it, despite not having the best sets and thus facing disadvantages at times - This is what makes the game fun and challenging. However, there is one issue and that is Silver-Star fusions. I did not count, but there are far too many Silver-Tiers involved to be able to fuse good 'bling' when being a Free to Play player. If this could be adapted to say 2 or 3 stages instead of the 5-6+ currently existing, you give a F2P the chance to feel a sense of achievement when fusing his very own 3* after hours (and I mean hours.) of work. This is essentially the setup of any game: You pay, or you work hard. However, the fusion is unfair in a sense that you will need to put in too much time. It just isn't fair and this is from the perspective of a P2P player.

Customer Support:

• Reaction Time: This is the major weakness, other than the amount of unrelated and automated responses, of the Customer Support. At times it may take weeks to get through just to then be fed off by an automated response that is not relevant to the concern in any possible way. A good example of this is the recent issue with the 'Bling'-Chest which has returned to KnD just 45 minutes ago (woah, you can stalk How long I took from hereon now! Scary ;) ): Whilst some people have instantly received their Equipment-Boosters, some have not. These have then either received them, or not. I know of some which have received this before the weekend, some which received them today and some which are still pending. I don't know how many people there are working on Tickets and honestly I don't want to do their job. Reading angry emails when it isn't your fault and enduring the hate, flame and more must be terrible. However, this is then something that the company needs to address. From personal experience, the biggest frustration isn't caused by automated responses themselves, but the fact they take weeks to receive. This compared to other companies is different. Maybe GREE could implement a Live-Support system. This might give the players hope and thus create tolerance if the Support takes longer here and there. Currently there is no tolerance and I am sad to say there shouldn't be. I know the Customer Support staff is doing their best, but something needs to change.

Community Support:

I don't have much to say other then that you all seem to be dedicated and do a pretty solid job. You get rid of the dozens of spam-threads in no time and you are always polite, understanding but accurate in your judgement. Thank you for supporting, on whatever base you are doing it.

Game Stability and Issues:

• Video Offers: This has been an issue for quite some time now. All in all, it isn't working. Either Videos aren't paid out or they are distributed unequally. My vote is, either fix it with Fyber or remove this all along. It is no good for your staff to spend time they could use in answering important issues on another ticket saying "I didn't get my 2 Video-Gems". This is all to say on this subject.
  
  
• Server Stability: At least once per war the servers crash for a few minutes. I don't know why. It surely shouldn't be because they are over-lasted. If they are, get new servers please. It is very frustrating having to Gem up because you stole 15 minutes (1/4) of a battle. Thank you for understanding.
  
  
• Better Connectivity: Many players feel that the connection required to access parts of the Game like the Guild interface and Wars are too high. It would be cool if you could look into optimizing this, even if only a bit. Thank you.

Here goes the weekly post. I hope it all made sense & I am happy to answer any inquiries you have in this thread or via PM.
Again, this is a clash of (mostly) my own opinion on the game and some headers of friends and members of my guild family.

In general I must say I am happy with what you are doing & it is definitely going into the right direction.
Good job recently, GREE.

Cheers;
~ Phill

wow, extensive list up there ...

just a few small points to add:

1) Unintentional guild switch trap: one guy in our guild accidently left the guild with the new guild seeker's feature. One click on "Join Guild" was enough, and without any further warning or step he was flushed out of our guild and applied at the other one. It took quite a few steps for him to make it back to us.
This should be fixed. Actually, the "Apply" button should not show for players who already are members of a guild. They should have to leave first, and only then find the 'View Guild' and 'Join Guild' buttons enabled.
I'm sure that 5-10% of the so-called 'guild seekers' out there are actually homeless souls who have lost contact to their former guilds (apart from the lurkers and fishy 'alliance recruiters').

2) Smelt Armor Trap: 'Select All' is a very dangerous button! It is easy to tap it by accident, especially during a 'run' of smelting many armors in a row. I think it should be completely removed, or at least 2 warning messages added if someone clicks it.

3) Remove Friends Trap: please also add confirmation buttons when deleting friends from the friend list (these super small delete buttons are way too easy to hit...and they trigger without reconfirmation)

4) Declare War Trap: you know it, it has been requested to fix this for months.

Can we get blitzes back? Or introduce something new for guilds to do to receive fusion boost armor/rings/amulets.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by roookey1

wow, extensive list up there ...

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HA!

Just putting out the idea again to exchange shards for better crafting materials. They are only good for crafting the lowest level armor, which is economically idiotic, and everyone obtains thousands of them with nothing to do with them. At least let us use them to obtain the materials needed to craft better armors.

Can i have my vid for gems button back? My main still has the button but on my alt it's gone. Max of 3 vids per day isn't using it to much. There are a lot more who's button is gone.

Also when i want to go in friendslist, it takes some seconds more then before update. And it's not just for friendslist, also going to EB and more

Edit: After rebooting the button is gone from main as well

Obviously most people's free video gem buttons are not working which I know is something that is trying to be corrected.

Would like to see limitations on armor slots removed since there really is no limit to how many armors you can have, you just can craft any if your past your limit. Along with this I would also like to see another armor smelting event, it has been awhile since the last one.

Please give us some kind of update on your intentions for fusion wars, wether they are being removed all together, revamped, or just less frequent. Unless they are being revamped, I don't think it is a good idea to reduce how often they are done or remove them completely. This limits lower level players on their ability to improve in the game. Also I would like to see either a fusion war for armor fusion boosts and rings and amulets boosts, or maybe just combine them and give out both as rewards for a fusion war instead of doing separate ones.

When the free gem video button is fixed I would also like to see KnD partner with Tapjoy again.

And the last thing, make it so only HC and up can declare in wars or make it so the GM can decide who can and can't declare. Players joining and rogue declare multiple times and not even participating is a big problem lately. Also to fix this issue you could just allow the GM to kick people during wars, this would also prevent leechers from getting the rewards.

Phil has provided a pretty comprehensive summary of stuff that I would like to see implemented in the game, particularly the suggested changes for declaring in guild wars. Just to add to what he has mentioned

Guild wars/raids

1.) Seeing as rings and amulets are becoming such a big feature in the game it would be good to see them as rewards for guild wars and raids. Even in the arena

2.) The new guild interface and options are all great and the implementation of them into the game was well executed.

3.) The top 25 rewards for guild wars and raids are now very good, this is great and i would love to see it continue.

However, I could be wrong but this appears to have been done at the expense of being able to fuse the armors 3 months after release in chests. This just widens the gap in strength between free to play players and players that spend to get good epics. Being able to fuse one reasonably up to date epic if you were lucky gave players who are not as invested in the game a good chance to compete against players and guilds that run t25/t10 who have a collection of strong armors. Especially with the additions of rings and amulets these stronger players can just blow the average player away in terms of their knights stats. It would be nice to see the release schedule for fusible epics return to what it use to be.

Armorsmith

1.) It feels like the thousands of shards/items that all players have for crafting armors that they are never going to use just clog up space in the armorsmith. These craftable armors sit there untouched for many players and are just in the way in general. I would like to see a feature where you could either trade them in for something (say better crafting materials or gold) or just throw them away with no gained reward.

Smelting: I don't smelt anything since I don't need the gold. However during the event that provided keys I was using my armor smiths constantly just to have gear to smelt. Could you bring a smelting event back or give random chance at loots (more than just the fusion stones).

Thing I enjoy getting (note: I am level 400 with too much gold, materials, maxed epics, fusion stones and have been playing this game for too long);

Key all sorts; they can covert to rings/amulets, gems
rings/amulets; I still enjoy receiving them since I use them to level my higher end rings
Gems; lifeline of the game
Free energy: EB, arena, raid or war energy always enjoy receiving them as gift or promotion.
Materials for crafting legendary armors; I enjoy this a little less now since the heroic mode has me collecting more mats then I can craft.

A separate tab in the "Messages" section of the guild. One for Information, one for Guild Invitations (from other guilds), and one for Requests to Join Guild

I'm a GM, and have received invitations from other guilds, some of which I don't even meet their guild requirements.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by roookey1

1) Unintentional guild switch trap: one guy in our guild accidently left the guild with the new guild seeker's feature. One click on "Join Guild" was enough, and without any further warning or step he was flushed out of our guild and applied at the other one. It took quite a few steps for him to make it back to us.
This should be fixed. Actually, the "Apply" button should not show for players who already are members of a guild. They should have to leave first, and only then find the 'View Guild' and 'Join Guild' buttons enabled.
I'm sure that 5-10% of the so-called 'guild seekers' out there are actually homeless souls who have lost contact to their former guilds (apart from the lurkers and fishy 'alliance recruiters').

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I see that I am not the only one who feel for this TRAP.

http://forums.gree.net/showthread.ph...d-Gree-Support