Time for Some Brutal Honesty
CM Popeye
Community Manager Posts: 1,308
Hey guys, I am starting this discussion to get your brutally honest feedback regarding our game. I would like to know what you really think, and what you would like to see changed. You can also let me know what you like about the game as well. My goal here is to find some common game features that need to be addressed in order for us to make the game reach its full potential. Like I said, be brutal but keep it clean please.
-Popeye
-Popeye
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The game idea and the strategy are nice and also can be improved. Through out all the time i have played this game i will put all improvement ideas here. This will be probably TL ;DR
- Testing before releasing. This should be your top priority. Everyone can do mistakes while coding but to have new bugs every time then u really need a good bug testing team
- Regarding castle burn, My idea to improve it is to make 2 shields. The one the protect the castle from being attacked which is nice one. And another one for burning and also make the burning shield for like 1 day unless the player broke it through attacking.
- Making the game boarders clear to the players to see. I have been over 5-6 months and i always face problems when i try to port away (unless i am doing it with gems)
- The support team need to understand the value of troops to the players in the war game. When u compensate us with some coins and gems. That is never equal to the huge amount of tier 5 we lost.
- I never forgot about the need for a warning in game before maintenance. I am not supposed to be at forums 24/7. Most of the games does this
- Troops that stops for no reason specially at ice kingdom. The troops always tends to get stoped by a marauder which spawned in their route.
- The constant refresh which i have noticed due to bad connection. But u should give the player a margin to time out and reconnect.
- The hero experience and rewards that pop up after battle should be like the quests. They pop up when i open castle view or when i click on them to open.
There is more but that's all i can think of for now-Popeye
For alliances
- a fast way of sending messages to all members would be nice either for the leadership or for all players
- an alert when someone is attacked. I know that appears in the lower left box but if I have 3 heroes out doing stuff then that is easily missed
For outside the alliance.
- some form of non-alliance group chat or friends list based chat. Regardless of whether grouping of alliances (hives, etc) are good or bad, they are part of the game, having a toggle to a chat window that you and non-alliance people can join whether it is a free for all, invite or friend list based chat would help and allow people to spend more time playing and less time composing messages often to multiple people at a time.
- if you add something like a friends list (ie outside alliances) then adding a way to send a messages to multiple people there too.
BornToGo
- honor rank 20 to recruit tier 3 units is a bit out there when if you don't play every single day you go backwards.
things liked2. Gradual troop desertion after food runs out instead of instant loss. The troop desertions should be at a rate comparable to the amount they were negative in food production when food ran out. Should continue until food production and consumption are equal again. troop desertions should also be spread equal over the different tiers of troops on hand.
3. An "All retreat" button would be nice.
4. While protecting the little ones is nice... they ought to give up that protection if they are bold enough to hit a larger player (someone well outside their level) for lets say 24hrs. During that time the larger player(s) that were hit can go smack the little offender back with no honor loss plus the ability to gain honor at a flat level. It would help keep the little ones hitting other little ones and not used just to catch the big heros. And it would promote more people to level higher rather than stay low. This place is like "Forever 21"
5. Allow more characters in the text window of the Alliance Overview.
6. Develop diplomatic relations. Peace, War, Allied, Neutral. Add a text tab so alliances that are allied with each other can text each other (maybe leaders only). Have allied castles names green.... enemies names red. Make it so allies can't hit each other... this would help prevent honor swapping... make them earn it. Make a benefit to being allied so they actually do it... like allies being able to defend other allied castles or fights.
7. Put up a test server.
8. Allow more than one construction to go on at the same time. Helps development and castle repairs. Maybe one extra construction/repair per 10 levels.
9. Change the equipment system so each hero has an inventory (smaller). Once the item is placed in a hero's inventory from the castle inventory.. only then can it not be swapped between heros. But most importantly.. allow the equipment to be removed from the hero and placed back in the hero's inventory.
10. Fix the "invalid position" when reinforcing/attacking. That's very annoying.
11. Non-combat castle support slots... for placing troops inside someone's castle for protection while they rebuild.
To be brutally honest I'm finding hard to find anything positive to say for the past 24 hours. Whilst it's nice to have new features added from time to time I think you need to spend more resource fixing bugs in the existing features.
I lose hundreds of troops & unit boosters nearly every night because of a known bug - customer support say it's being investigated. I have requested compensation & awaiting a response. This problem is a real pain and it needs fixing.
24 hours and counting for a server upgrade and still cannot login - problem reported, awaiting a response. Come on guys you need to invest in making your upgrade infrastructure a bit smoother - people don't want this sort of outage each time you upgrade.
And better communication to set your players expectations - if it's going to take a few hours put a message that says it's a few hours and not a few minutes. If things go pear shaped & people are going to be affected put out announcements on the website. Also a 10 to 15 minute in game warning before there is any server maintenance so you don't start an attack & allow time to tidy up what your doing.
...Rant Off
Other than that I find the game extremely enjoyable and very addictive - maybe 24 hours without it is why I feel so grumpy.
One enhancement that's not been mentioned would be the ability to choose where to place troops and boosters rewards won in the tournament - at the minute they automatically placed in High. It would be good to be able to choose to allocate them to Ice or Marsh.
11. PROMOTE people to LEVEL UP - In addition to my previous suggestion on temporary loss of protections.. maybe tie the troop recruitment to honor rank AND actual level. i.e. Not being able to make tier 3 troops until level 30 AND honor rank 22.... tier 4 troops at level 40 AND honor rank 25. Or, prohibit low levels from hitting higher ones... lets say... 11 levels and more over... give a "This Hero is much too powerful for you, you will be crushed" message. Or, Remove or considerably lessen honor gain for hitting someone 11 levels or more above your level.
If people feel the need to make an lower level alt OR not level up at all... to get an advantage... then the game mechanics are really messed up. Simply removing the protections of a lower level player (which is honor loss for higher level players) for 24 hrs for hitting ANY player 11 levels and above your level would remove almost all that advantage. Put the choice of being "bullied" on the lower level player/alt instead of forcing the higher level players to just "take it".
This also does not hinder their play at all. there are plenty of targets to hit within their level range.
1. The ads and award pop ups interfere with attacks where timing is important is a problem. Have a icon show on the side somewhere. THe refresh with poor connection such a a mobile hot spot makes the game unplayable. May i suggest a low graphics option in settings or some other setting that makes game more stable and not so sensitive to split second drops in connection. Every drop it refreshes and puts you in high so you really can not play because by the time you get back to where you were it drops again.
2. There should be a storage for rewards. Having 1K troops drop in high randomly is a problem for those of us that run a tight margin on food. Let us save them up and pop them when we need them such as after a burn or attack / faction war.
3. Allow a market for resources.
4. Better communication in alliance and a global chat. Officers should be able to mass message the alliance. It forces all to use raid call or team speak to play or similar.
5. Leadership needs to be able to hand over lead to who they choose and need more options of ranks
6. Forming alliances is a big part of the game and need a way for members to visually see who are friend and who is foe Especially since there is such a poor ability for leadership to inform members of no hits. Also should be a way to declare war for which extra points like in faction wars are given.
7. The issue of the lower / alt accounts hitting and not being able to hit back is a problem. It encourages large players to have baby alts to do dirty deeds.
8. Also this should be a simple fix. PLEASE for those of us with older eyes the ICE world is VERY difficult on the eyes. Could we please do something about the visual there? I find I am not the only one who finds this world very hard on the eyes to play.
All this shopping list of wants / wish list just shows how much we play and time invested. SOooo great game and fun platform which I think we all would love to see a little better of course and grow and attract new players.
Cho lo pee (US1) makes several good points, especially with regard to:
The disappearing gem troops problem MUST be solved.
1. The ads and award pop ups interfere with attacks where timing is important is a problem.
2. There should be a storage for rewards. (maybe instead of awarding them outright, free instant recruiting as needed.)
4. Better communication in alliance and a global chat.
7. The issue of the lower / alt accounts hitting and not being able to hit back is a problem.
8. Fix the visuals in ice, for God's sake.
But I think the leader already has the option to designate their replacement, because I did so on accident once, LOL! Leader can select any player to boot, make deputy, or make leader, all in the same window.
Also, good work on the Shield of Peace changes, which appear to be tied to the amount of damage taken. ON the first burn carried out I received 3 hours Peace, but after breaking it to defend my alliance, the next burn put me at 6 hours. (Was really funny watching those guys line up after 2 hours to wait for my lights to go out so they could hit again - and wait....and wait...and wait....)
-Popeye
-Popeye