Heralds ATA 1/22 5:00pm PST (locked)

[InferiorPringle]

Sagebomb

Doc_Ray

are new ones to try that are uniquely demonic.

Ignoring all else, I do love things that are faction appropriate and demonstrated as such ^_^


*waits for more HoC mangas*

Seconded!
I actually have to read the canon mangas currently out now, but this is one of the things that's keeping me in the game.

[Starshine]

Doc_Ray

TeezyCat

Please tell Pan not to work so hard when he's sick.

I have been, and I have the email logs to prove it.

The man is just too dedicated to Gaia for his own good.

I see pan doing 1-2am updates, please tell him to et some sleep instead.

Applies to the whole team. Health is always more important.

[Sagebomb]

Divine_Malevolence

Man at arms OP.

true this in terms of numbers....but its not so much hes great...as much as a...."hes still cheap for a dragon round one summon".....which is sad XD

[prosopagnosiac]

Sagebomb

5-1~1~`/ 1f `/0() 1^141V7 (41V(31~ 71~115 15 17!

[Sagebomb]

Doc_Ray

TeezyCat

Please tell Pan not to work so hard when he's sick.

I have been, and I have the email logs to prove it.

The man is just too dedicated to Gaia for his own good.

I agree...all of his after midnight updates...you guys need to crack a whip on him.

[Doc_Ray]

InferiorPringle

Doc_Ray

The Death Dealer was moved to the front row as part of the drive to make each Herald feel more unique.

Wait -- why does both Death Dealer and Corwin have similar speeds? Is it balancing issues? Maybe to make up for what seems likeunderpowerment? And also, why so fast in the first place?

Also (sorry for the slew of questions) why did you remove Corwin's veteran? Not only was it a pretty playable trait of his, it makes him unique from Death Dealer's Drain special and Rakyl's former double damage/ current stun attacks.

Corwin's speed is due to his talent and skill in swordsmanship, as well as his tendency to trust his instinct. The Death Dealer's speed is due to simply being supernaturally quick.

Corwin's veteran stat was the victim of a combination of a drive for simplicity in the starter heralds and flavor concerns. Veteran's a fairly complicated mechanic, but Corwin is literally the first unit that most players see. Beyond that, it didn't make sense for a charismatic hero with years of experience to still be learning on the job.

[Panagrammic]

Yeah, having to refresh in a battle is absolutely not good. Part of the issue is that the problems are harder to track down -- you're having to deal with a context between two clients and a server -- so that's why they take longer to fix. Reporting them as they happen is the best thing that you can do. Hopefully we will get the glitches nailed down.

The animation control is supposed to turn off spell animations? Is that not working? I can't remember whether we pushed that out or not.

Resizing the map is on the "nice to have" list but falls under other stuff (including glitches).

I guess we could count a timeout as a penalty? There is some behavior here that we need to penalize (i.e., playing a game and then forfeiting if you don't like the card draw), so I don't think getting rid of the penalty entirely is the right thing.

Ginnjii

Incoming wall 'o text Pan. Sorry about facing all this waffling with the flu and on meds. That said..


..what's the priority on fixing most of the glitches in-game?

Honestly at times PvP is simply intolerable with the amount of refreshing one would have to do, and that's only if you notice something off with the map. Couple that in with the timer and the syncing and all of that, it does tend to be annoying.

So instead of tinkering with assets like packs and units to cater and fix in-game balance. What's the priority on fixing glitches, some of which have been around for ages? Is there anything we can do aside from send multiple bug reports via the in-game reporter?

This is a side-note of sorts but what about disabling most animation (Mana attuning, unit summon fx, etc.) ? Some of them are terribly laggy. Take Cloud of Curses for example, so would it be possible to have an option to forego the special animation for just on-screen text of some sort maybe?

Is there any way or are there plans to create options to adjust the resolution on the game? Maybe a resizer or zoom function? I'm talking about the main map/strat screen, not the battle phase one.

Finally, not so much a question but a tiny pet peeve. The recent forfeit penalty has led to people simply closing the game window and leaving the player hanging instead having to sit through four turns worth of timer bonding. I find this somewhat irksome and it really has surged since the penalty implementation and it seems to have done nothing to keep people from forfeiting or just closing the window. And since the issue of essence grant on mid battle forfeits has been solved, why penalize someone who wants out and essentially saves the time on both players? Could we maybe take a look at this?

As for the nerfs and such. I'd agree with most of them honestly, and if repeated attempts at balancing helps the game in the long run, I'm sure it's well deserved. Regardless of majority.

If any of the above's been answered elsewhere in greater detail, do ignore it and apologies for the repetition.

Aaaand. Please do get well soon!

[Sagebomb]

Rogue Phoenix Fire

I never pay attention to the gaia mangas and find them to be, in general, uninteresting to me. I'd love to see some more faction specific manga though.

As a dedicated gaia nerd, I like to keep on the pulse of all....though I did get a lil lost on the ians a vampire stuff a while back.

But yeah definitly looking forward to that. Peoples storys and what not...well dragons/demons/peoples storys.

[VKiera]

*lurks to keep up on information*

Pan get well soon, take lots of vitamin C!

[Sagebomb]

Ginnjii

Yeah I like proper chat...but I like to know enough to be able to "go there" if needed.

[gracewar7]

Erogenous Jones

Mr Scott....set engines to Rant Factor 4.....

Always kinda amazed how what people talk about the most passionately in the Forums seems to be mentioned with the greatest of deference and timidity in AtA type discussions...

I'd like to talk about the Pack yields and the escalating inverse relationship between investment and reward.

Pack prices went up dramatically last month while at the same time providing lower yields.

We screamed.

You guys said you heard.

And yesterday we get another Update that increases the time/cost of attaining quality Cards all the while guaranteeing nothing. stare

The system you've set up, imo, almost assures that casual players will never get a sufficient reward for their playing time to keep them interested in the game.

It seems to me that you've decided that the results of the hard-core players, those who play for extended periods on a daily basis and literally finish the game in weeks, need to be the benchmark by which you establish the rewards for the game, when in actual point of fact, (again, imo) what you really need to do is keep the legion of casual players playing.

The hard-core players are nomads....once they've burned out HoC, they'll move on and burn out the next game, whereas the motivated casual player could most likely play for months, provided he/she feels rewarded for his/her time.

If I had a question, I guess it would be, how do you decide who to target the game at?
Do you use previous results from in-house properties?
Do you study results for other properties outside of Gaia?
Do you hire consultants?
If you are modeling the reward for play system for HoC on other Gaia properties, was that model successful for those properties?

I hear a lot of moaning about RIG's and Alchemy, and to be honest, I seldom partake in one, and have never even touched the other becasue the rewards are simply not commensurate with the amount of time they would take to earn. I spend about two hours on the site every day, more on weekends, but I don't want that time to be nothing more than grinding.
I like to partake of a bit of everything that Gaia has to offer, and having limited time, I like to spend that time on pursuits I find rewarding.
Making HoC something that I would have to dedicate every last moment of Gaia time I have for quite possibly months, in order to succeed, is not, imo sufficiently rewarding.

Mr Scott...take us out of Rant....

It's been challenging communicating the payouts without actually disclosing the odds, but I'd like to point out that the time/cost of attaining rares and up went DOWN with the latest update, not UP. This has been misconstrued primarily because it's impossible for us to say what the difference between what is an occasional rare or a moderate chance of a rare when we can't talk numbers.

And to answer your questions, it's yes to all of them. HoC bears more resemblance to properties outside of Gaia and we look at other successful models and discuss them with our game designers. Frankly we've often been told that we're giving away too much compared to other online games. (No, I'm NOT making this up!)

Hope this helps!

[Panagrammic]

Thanks everyone for participating in our first ATA -- the thread's locked, although we'll be going through and answering some more questions. As always, we're reading the forums, so feel free to continue discussion / ask questions on the forum, as well.

[Panagrammic]

4] We have the next two factions kind of roughly sketched out but to be honest we often determine final powers and everything after seeing how the artists visualize the units.

5] Those units aren't out yet.

6] Yeah, we have a bunch of internal tools that we use for balancing.

9] Not immediately -- pretty sure the item artists are booked up with a sponsorship atm.

10] I will defer to [JK] on this as well.

11] I think a card contest would be very cool. Want to fix glitches first, though.

21] Good point, I'll ask sisk.

Gavyn the Mighty

I prefer the name HoC Council of Chaos. biggrin

1] I know you said you would try to get a roadmap out soon, any ideas one when it may actually come out?

2] How close is an announcement for the facebook version being ‘fully operational’?

3] After facebook, I believe the marketplace is next in line… any idea on a time frame for that at this time?

4] While working on all of these updates, etc… do you guys keep working on more cards on the side so that you won’t have to grind them all out when you want to release a few new cards?

5] With regards to Shintuoyu’s card icon thread (I mentioned this in the AtA and Pan wasn’t sure which thread I mentioned), these two icons and are these cards out?

6] I’ve made a statistical thread and a thread laying out the card stats for each card (a bit different from one another. I am wondering if you guys have made up something similar for reference when you go to make new cards up to get them properly balanced… or if you do it by ear, so to speak?

7] Any idea on when tiers may be adjusted or not? [As a level 60, I am fine with it where it is… due to lack of players still… but Lv.30s likely would like a 30-40…etc]

8] The new heralds look a bit smaller size wise then all other cards… why are they so small?

9] Do you guys plan to release another site wide ‘HoC Deck’ item with more clothing of our units? [Gavyn please?]

10] I was wondering if you guys would consider sharing some more of the artwork used in the game… like final images of the units that we could use as backgrounds or something? [Again, Gavyn please? Ha ha]

11] With respect to the card creator that Starshine got the code for and Kitty made into a lovely page… I made a thread a while back for a ‘user created card contest’ in the feature requests... with the addition to our forum of this card generator… it looks like something that may actually be doable in the future. Is it still something that could be considered once time is gotten for it?

12] What are your opinions on players playing the game solely for gaia gold?

13] As an extension, when players compare the worth of a pack or cards to gaian gold (via the conversion ratio), what all do you guys feel about that. Do you feel that an actual ‘Gaia Gold equivalent’ of a pack or a card exists? i.e. do you feel those arguments to be justified?

14] Do you guys plan on doing a lot more card stat adjustments anytime soon?

15] Kak’s defender still doesn’t work. – via ryry Kenny_McCormick ryry

16] Why was Master of Flames damage dropped so low to 40? I feel 50-55 would be more adequate. Prior to the update, MoF felt like a 30 mana unit, i.e. it could hold its own 1 on 1… now, it needs protection to even survive against similar cost units. Again, I feel that the 40 is too low. It is far more cost efficient to summon an 18 and 12 mana unit both instead of MoF now.

17] I sincerely hope that Raykl does not keep flight. Do you not feel it a bit unfair to give a herald (the unit which you start the game with) something as one sided as flight? It is basically unstoppable to prevent someone from portal rushing now. All they have to do is use Raykl. Heralds shouldn’t have flight 2 or movement 2… it is so bad that you can now portal rush Belphegor (nightmare) with it, and prevent the AI from even getting a single portal. If that isn’t imbalanced, I don’t know what is.

18] With all of these changes, is Krylyr, Void Scarab, etc. far behind?

19] With an increase in pack cost/decrease in amount of packs… would it be possible to adjust the card sellback prices to make it seem more worthwhile if you get bad cards from packs/bonus card… to say 1*, 2* at 100 and 200 essence?

20] Would it be more balanced for Raykl to have his HP stay the same, have scout instead of flight and return his special to the old version – via ryry Kenny_McCormick ryry

21] With the opening of HoC to the entire community, would it be possible to at least get a second moderator for the forum?