[AMA] Ask The Developer Anything - December 4th

[Clementine]

Please join us Thursday, December 4th, at 10am PST for our next Developer Ask Me Anything! Please join us in discussing and asking questions about upcoming features and updates, particularly those related to update 5.0.

Representatives from the Development Team:

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

This time we are trying something new so as to allow those in other time zones to participate and this thread will be unlocked Wednesday at 5pm PST so that you may post your questions in advance. The Developers will arrive Thursday morning at 10am sharp and will be answering questions here for an 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.

[Clementine]

You may now begin posting your questions for the team to answer tomorrow at 10:00am PST! Please remember to follow our Code of Conduct and Terms of Service, and please keep this thread limited to questions only, not discussion.

Additionally please try and be specific in your questions, and if someone else has already posted your same question, please be aware of that! Questions about Customer Support or of that nature will not be answered here, as these folks are not part of that team.

[Kefa]

Questions for new release "AMA":

Thank you so much for doing this. I do still hope that you will consider doing another live Q&A on day 2 or 3 of the extended WD event so that players can ask relevant questions as they come up during the event, when they count most. I also still suggest that you consider doing a live Q&A room on Groupme during a full day of the WD event with a knowledgable individual available during business hours to answer live quesions, since that is a venue where a large percentage of players communicate. You will need to coordinate a day in advance, though, in order to get a room expanded large enough to accomodate the number of people you would want to allow in the room.

Here are my questions from what I've seen/read so far:

1. Game Center: I have multiple Modern War characters (4) on multiple iOS devices, and all 4 devices share a common Game Center login for use with other games. It seems now that if I attempt to link my Modern War game to my Game Center account, it could/will potentially cause major problems for me and other players in my situation.
1a) is this correct? and, if so,
1b) how do I manage multiple Modern War game accounts when their respective devices share a single Game Center account? (I am not willing to create multiple Game Center accounts since the devices need to share one common Game Center account for other purposes)

2. Army Attack / Defense: Will we be able to see our rival's total Army atk/def strength in the rival profile prior to attacking/raiding? Will we see this number in raid results?

3. Equipment your soldier isn't using: Will we be able to see our rival's total Equipment atk/def strength equipped by their army in the rival profile prior to attacking/raiding? Will we see this number in raid results?

4. Soldier Power Attack/Defense: Will we be able to see our rival's Soldier total atk/def strength including equipment in the rival profile prior to attacking/raiding? Will we see this number in raid results?

5. New Battle Mechanic: Will it be possible at all to determine with any percentage of confidence whether a player will be able to win an attack against a target or rival prior to blindly attacking, or is it going to be a matter of having to spend health just to find out, trusting that the system must be correct in its calculations regardless of what I can see?


6. Will the old "skill points" that we've already allocated now affect the outcome of a) PvP attacks? b) PvP Raids? c) WD Attacks?
If so, how and how much?
If so, also, will we be able to see our rival's skill point values in the rival profile prior to attacking/raiding? Will we see this number in raid results?
If so, also, how soon will we be able to reallocate our skill points, since we have as many as 900 skill points that have already been alocated with strategy that will no longer apply since it's been changed? (personally, if skill points do apply, and we are not allowed to re-allocate prior to them applying, isn't that pretty unfair?)

7. Unit Recycling: When I tested the inventory recycle feature, it didn't work correctly. The units were successfully removed from inventory, but the cash was never credited. Has this been addressed?

9. We know Apple takes time to approve uploads before they are released to the public, but when will 5.0 be uploaded from Gree to Apple?

Old/Other Business:

8. NPC target Partial Progress: When a target such as the Augmented Assassin at the Mountain Pass map requires 5 hits at 1,129 energy each (5,645 energy total) for one kill, and a player's energy capacity is only 3,000 (or less), does it make sense to not support partial progress for such a target when it cannot be defeated all at one time without spending gold on energy refills? Allot of players require as much as 30 hours just to generate enough energy to kill that one target, so when Gree say's, "we don't support pre-staging", isn't saying "progress may get reset" the same as saying, "You can't be allowed to kill this target without using gold"? I know Gree say's it doesn't support "prestaging", and we did see allot of partial progress get reset during this past FLTQ, but from our standpoint it really doesn't seem fair if partial progress on any target doesn't persist indefinitely.


10. I have what I believe are some good ideas for making the game more fun for the players without removing the monetization value. Where can I submit these ideas other than the public forum, where someone might actually glance at them to consider whether they are worth exploring?

Thanks again. This sort of thing goes a long way to helping players feel like they are valued by the company they are supporting.

[RhythmNBruise]

1. Game Center: I have multiple Modern War characters (4) on multiple iOS devices, and all 4 devices share a common Game Center login for use with other games. It seems now that if I attempt to link my Modern War game to my Game Center account, it could/will potentially cause major problems for me and other players in my situation.
1a) is this correct? and, if so,
1b) how do I manage multiple Modern War game accounts when their respective devices share a single Game Center account? (I am not willing to create multiple Game Center accounts since the devices need to share one common Game Center account for other purposes)

The account transfer feature, which requires Game Center or GooglePlay linking, is designed to allow you to link as many Modern War games as you have to one Game Center or GooglePlay account, and then access all your games from any device you have linked. (You will have to restart the game after you link each account to get them all to show up on all the devices, due to technical limitations of the linking system.) You will be able to access the account switching feature through the Settings menu. (There is also a cross-platform account transfer feature using codes, but in order to access multiple accounts on one device you will need to link both devices to either Game Center or GooglePlay).

9. We know Apple takes time to approve uploads before they are released to the public, but when will 5.0 be uploaded from Gree to Apple?

The build has been uploaded to Apple. We’re currently ensuring everything on the back end is fully ready to go. Barring any unexpected occurrences we expect to get this out to you next week.

8. NPC target Partial Progress: When a target such as the Augmented Assassin at the Mountain Pass map requires 5 hits at 1,129 energy each (5,645 energy total) for one kill, and a player's energy capacity is only 3,000 (or less), does it make sense to not support partial progress for such a target when it cannot be defeated all at one time without spending gold on energy refills? Allot of players require as much as 30 hours just to generate enough energy to kill that one target, so when Gree say's, "we don't support pre-staging", isn't saying "progress may get reset" the same as saying, "You can't be allowed to kill this target without using gold"? I know Gree say's it doesn't support "prestaging", and we did see allot of partial progress get reset during this past FLTQ, but from our standpoint it really doesn't seem fair if partial progress on any target doesn't persist indefinitely.

While we don't officially support progress made against NPCs before the event goes live (which is why we don't guarantee that any progress made during that time will be preserved), you shouldn't be seeing progress lost that was made during the official event time. If you do see that, please contact support ASAP so we can look into it.

Thanks again. This sort of thing goes a long way to helping players feel like they are valued by the company they are supporting.

You're welcome! Thanks for participating!

[CrazyNerdyGirl]

Questions for new release "AMA":
5. New Battle Mechanic: Will it be possible at all to determine with any percentage of confidence whether a player will be able to win an attack against a target or rival prior to blindly attacking, or is it going to be a matter of having to spend health just to find out, trusting that the system must be correct in its calculations regardless of what I can see?

The old battle mechanic had a random factor in each battle (in real life, the outcome of battle is not guaranteed), but this will occurs less under the new system.

The actual calculation is a bit complex. Overall, in each category your attack versus their defense is the most important part of the calculation. Your army strength is 50% of the battle outcome, army equipment is 30%, and soldier equipment strength is 20%. Each portion of the calculation (army strength, army equipment strength, soldier strength) is computed separately so functions more like a ratio. For example, if you’re 20% stronger on the army and 10% weaker on soldier and army equipment you should win the battle; however, if you’re 20% stronger on the army and 50% weaker on soldier and army equipment you should lose the battle.

The new system seems easy for players to eyeball and understand the battle results, but we are always looking at ways to improve new features.

[CrazyNerdyGirl]

Questions for new release "AMA":
6. Will the old "skill points" that we've already allocated now affect the outcome of a) PvP attacks? b) PvP Raids? c) WD Attacks?
If so, how and how much?
If so, also, will we be able to see our rival's skill point values in the rival profile prior to attacking/raiding? Will we see this number in raid results?
If so, also, how soon will we be able to reallocate our skill points, since we have as many as 900 skill points that have already been alocated with strategy that will no longer apply since it's been changed? (personally, if skill points do apply, and we are not allowed to re-allocate prior to them applying, isn't that pretty unfair?)

We did not change the way skill points work in the battle calculation at this time. We likely will increase their importance (which players have correctly guessed has eroded over time due to inflation in overall stats) once we have the ability to allow players to reallocate their stat points.

[AdamInToronto]

Are there any plans to provide options to increase GUI performance on older devices (eg. disabling or reducing quality of raid animations)?

[RhythmNBruise]

Are there any plans to provide options to increase GUI performance on older devices (eg. disabling or reducing quality of raid animations)?

We're always looking for ways to improve performance. The animation system touches many areas of the game, so we approach changes to it very cautiously, but I can ask the engineers to take a look. We're hoping that the account transfers feature will let players migrate to newer devices, if they have them available.

[Jaded Fusion]

Can we have a on/off button for events? Leader can turn off the fltq so no one can hit it but continues to run in the background.

Can we have a on/off button for ALL animations in game? Ie raiding, hitting npcs

[Milburn Pennybags]

Can we have a on/off button for events? Leader can turn off the fltq so no one can hit it but continues to run in the background.

Can we have a on/off button for ALL animations in game? Ie raiding, hitting npcs

We currently don’t have any plans to allow leaders to disable faction events. Could you let us know more about why you’d like to see this?

We'll get to the animations in another response since a lot of people asked about it.

[Jaded Fusion]

We currently don’t have any plans to allow leaders to disable faction events. Could you let us know more about why you’d like to see this?

We'll get to the animations in another response since a lot of people asked about it.

There can be alot of movement of members in & out of factions. If a leader could turn off goals we wouldn't have members missing out on prizes by accident. For example - doing a FLTQ a member could have a low level account as their main but doesn't use it hit faction goals, instead they bring in a old high level account to do kills.

with the movement people can sometimes get lost in transition taking time to come back. Or goal finishes before their main gets back in.

[Milburn Pennybags]

There can be alot of movement of members in & out of factions. If a leader could turn off goals we wouldn't have members missing out on prizes by accident. For example - doing a FLTQ a member could have a low level account as their main but doesn't use it hit faction goals, instead they bring in a old high level account to do kills.

with the movement people can sometimes get lost in transition taking time to come back. Or goal finishes before their main gets back in.

Thanks for the clarification. That makes a lot of sense, and it's something we'll look into.

[DEWIN NUTTIN]

1) Is it possible to eliminate the animations, or allow the player to choose to eliminate animations?

2) If someone is doing LTQ and is required to attack "Unkown Warrior" with a value of 10 a total of 100 times, thereby expending 1,000 energy, is it possible to just allow the player to simply allocate (or burn) 1,000 energy instead of being forced to tap, tap, tap 100 times?

3) You now schedule a WD event about every three weeks. The event runs three days. Why not schedule a WD event weekly and let it run two days? If you did schedule it to begin Saturday at 1:00 or 2:00AM, ending Monday at 3:00AM, you'd be running the event a total of 8 to 9 days each month, rather than the 3 or so you currently schedule the event.

[Milburn Pennybags]

1) Is it possible to eliminate the animations, or allow the player to choose to eliminate animations?

2) If someone is doing LTQ and is required to attack "Unkown Warrior" with a value of 10 a total of 100 times, thereby expending 1,000 energy, is it possible to just allow the player to simply allocate (or burn) 1,000 energy instead of being forced to tap, tap, tap 100 times?

3) You now schedule a WD event about every three weeks. The event runs three days. Why not schedule a WD event weekly and let it run two days? If you did schedule it to begin Saturday at 1:00 or 2:00AM, ending Monday at 3:00AM, you'd be running the event a total of 8 to 9 days each month, rather than the 3 or so you currently schedule the event.

RE 2: This is a great idea, and something we’ll consider in the future, although it’s not on our current development roadmap.

RE 3: We’ve definitely considered this, and will continue to keep the idea in mind. We’ve heard mixed reactions from the players on whether this would be welcomed or not. A lot of players have expressed to us that they enjoy having the full cycle building up to the big event, but other players have indicated they’d prefer more shorter events. It’s not currently in our plans, but if there was really positive player reaction to the idea we’d be more likely to do this.

[Cody21(DockbotSupport)2.0]

1) After the new update, what exactly will determine winning/loosing, what will be the % effect of each category that has an effect on the outcome of the battle, and will we be able to see all of these factors in the battle results popup?
2) What will be the new factors on how many points you receive from a single hit during WD, and in what % do these have an effect on the points?
3) Is there also a % random factor added to the above questions?