Game Designer AMA Part 2 (The Answers to Friday’s Questions)

Hey Everyone!
(Link to original Thread: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=180959)

DISCLAIMER: I will be around for 1 hr (Until 7 p.m. PDT) after posting to talk on this forum post but feel free to keep the conversation going after I leave!

Firstly: Wow!

I was amazed to see so many comments and questions. Since mid-day Friday there have been over 150 comments and over 2k views on the original forum post calling for questions.
What this means is that based on this level of interest I will continue to do these style of posts in the future.

Throughout making this post I have been writing with the intention of "Under promise, over deliver" I apologize is some of the answers are very vague and seem political.

Secondly: Your feedback and comments are super valuable! I would love to hear ideas to further the conversation on these topics but particularly I would love to hear what you think of this style of post in general. What did you like? What would you like changed for next time?
 
But let’s get into it! I have grouped your questions into 5 main sections (in no particular order):

• General Questions
  PvP
  Clan Related
  Epic Battle Related
  Event Related

Since I cannot answer all your questions this time and for fairness purposes I have chosen to answer 1-2 Questions from each section.

General Questions:

Q:“Will we be seeing more developer interaction?” - IA-CrazyRuggy
 
A: Yes. I will be doing another AMA in two weeks but also expect me to be posting on forums more often. Here are a few of the current best ways to currently get in contact with me: Wall me in game, write on forums, or write into support.



Q: “What is the official procedure for the community to raise good ideas to the development team? Any plans to create a thread for the developer and player base to discuss round the clock?” -__Individually_Idiosyncratic__

A: For official procedure for the community to raise ideas: let’s use Ideas and Feature Requests together (link: viewforum.php?f=18). Post there for me to see and have a record for later reference. Although I won’t be able to comment on every post, I will be able to read them. Expect me to comment often and let’s see how that goes. If we find it isn’t working we’ll plan a different way of communicating.

As for any plans to talk ‘round the clock. There is something I am currently working on but at this point it’s a little early to comment on besides to say I am looking for a channel to talk informally with more players than just our moderators.



Q: “Almost a year and half since VKs and Mods added. Update on that?”  Sethosaurus_
 
A: Picking moderators and Valiant Knights is a very challenging task as it is a wedding of sorts. It’s not something we take lightly. But I am happy to open the conversation up about this topic so I will be jumping into the post by Kezzer so we can talk more about it there. Let’s plan on talking throughout the next week and see where that takes us.



PvP:

Q: “Could we possibly do a smaller version of the ASW for players in the top 10k-20k?” Cobra

A: This is an idea we are looking at. We like the historic prestige attached to All Star Wars, and it won’t be seeing a change to it’s availability for players at this point. But we are playing around with some ideas that create a similar experience as All Star Wars but include other players who maybe didn’t get to participate in All Star Wars for some reason. That’s all I can say right now!



Q: "Are you guys working on anything related to increasing participation in PvP blitzes?” -Rio-

A: There are things we are working on but nothing for the short-term. Sorry! There are a few reasons for this but mainly it’s that other aspects of the game are taking most of our intention. If there are reasons you feel like that shouldn’t be the case or would like to raise some specific concerns I am very interested in having that conversation!



Epic Battle related:

Q: “Does the developer team plan on coming out with any more Eb's soon? Or any promo eb's like ROTWB and HTE?”  Cobra

A: This is one of my main focuses right now along with 1 or 2 other short term goals. I have been working on getting the pipeline to create new EBs a lot smoother as I know the itch for new Epic Battles will not be satisfied with just the release of the next Wrath of the Sveruganti Epic Battle. But I am excited to say the next Wrath of the Sveruganti EB will be launched around the same date as Saga part 6. (Unless something goes horribly wrong between now and then. I will keep you all posted if that starts feeling like it’s going to happen)



Q: “Rebalance the game that make some sort of sense? Lots of lower tier EBs that no one does. Take time to make adjustments to the game before adding more and more garbage at the high end.” Wordwaster

A: I am really glad someone asked this question as this is something I was hoping to have a chance to talk about. As Wordwaster mentioned the game currently has about 12 tiers of Epic Battle Series. But there is a predominant strategy in the community towards doing the first few tiers, skipping the middle, then moving onto the last few. We love putting the strategy into our players hands and allowing them to come up with play styles that fit their goals and schedule but right now the current experience is feeling a little stale.

We have a few ideas we’re excited about to make this A: make more sense (as Wordwaster says), and B: Provide interesting variety and differences in play. This is not a small fix for us and we want to make sure we get it right. What that means is we’re not going to rush it to get it out into your hands but we are going to continue working at it and it is a current focus of the team. What I will say is we’re looking at updating the growth curve and making these middle Epic Battle worth hitting again but we are also looking at making all new content that even further empowers our players to make play style choices. As it is still in a relatively early phase I don’t want to tip you off too much to what those changes are as creating expectations when we don’t know if the ideas have legs yet is not something I want to do. But I want you to get a little excited now knowing that the team is working hard to make these changes hit your hands as soon as possible.



Q: “Can you give a explanation to the rebalance of drops for the last event as its a complete oposite to the dictionaries definition of balanced.” xS__aNaCondUa__xS
 
A: Another question I was hoping would be asked! Over the course of the Saga Series we started to notice our biggest players were completing Epic Battles doing only a few actions and getting near to full - and in some cases full - drops towards the end of event rewards. I won’t say exactly how much it was taking but it was feeling way too easy for these players to get Maximum Rewards. In Kingdoms At War we want our bigger players to be able to do things they couldn’t do when they were smaller: challenge bigger monsters and enemy kingdoms, carry their friends to victories, flex in world chat, etc.

For event drops and events we want our bigger players to be able to get lots of rewards so they can reach the highest tier rewards, but like all players, this should take work and isn’t given out for free. With Saga Part 5 we updated our drop payouts to better reflect those goals but I don’t love the direction that it has taken. Our intentions were good but players whose drops we did not want to affect as much got hit hardest. The big players now have to put in a little more work to get the higher reward tiers which we like, but the players hit hardest were those just under the bigs nipping at their heels. The medium-big players saw a big dip in event drops after successfully completing the Epic Battle which was not explicitly our intention. This is something that will change with Saga Part 6. Event drops should be seeing a balancing update to better reflect our intentions.

In specifics for Saga Part 6 this means that players of both builds, Spy and Attack, should be seeing more similar event drops. And that the amount of work required for players of different sizes should be a little easier to understand and not feel quiet as jarring as this last update.



Clan Related:

Q: Clan Loyalty. -> Credit lots of people for bringing it up so I will speak about it in general sense.

A: Clan Loyalty is always in the discussion when we are talking in the office. One of our main long-term goals is to increase clan loyalty but we want to produce it somewhat organically somewhat incentavized. What I mean by that is we could incentivize players to stick in a clan by let’s say giving them a big enough plunder bonus, like 1 Million Percent bonus if you have been in the clan over a month, such that it’s worthwhile to stay and significantly punishing to leave. But does that feel good? Sure you’re in a clan now and not leaving, but do you really want to be here? Have we made the game better by making you stay in that clan?

What we want to do as we move towards better Clan Loyalty is we want to make sure we not only make it being in the same Clan Rewarding, it’s also fun and we’ve made the game better. Some long terms ways we hope to achieve this is remove some of the pain points that cause players to leave Clans. Short-term though expect us to keep playing around with incentives, and maybe evening spicing up our event structure.
 


Event related:

Q: “Why is every single event the exact same thing? Are you scared to try something new?” -_Triky_-

A: Challenge accepted ;P

 

I just want to say thank you to everyone. I've been reading through all the comments to this post and it's been fantastic how kindly you have welcomed me.