Questions for Devs Responses: March 2022

[Loutre]

Player Questions for Devs March 2022

• Any plans to increase the amount of refreshes and stat buffs?
  • [PBLudwig] No plans to increase the amount right now. We’re prioritizing getting back to a healthy cadence and want to start introducing the more expansive kit refreshes soon.
• Would it be possible to increase the mod upgrade pieces from Invasion and Challenger rewards? Increase the hero chip rewards from Challenger?
  • [PBLudwig] Definitely! We are always looking to keep rewards relevant throughout the game but changes take time. Right now we are focused on adjustments to the Megabit economy but hope to look into these ones soon.
• When will the Wish Crates return to the Game?
  • [Loutre] They’re back today!!
• How much life do you think the game has left?
  • [Polaris] Short answer: A lot! Long answer: There’s a ton of Disney heroes that we’d love to add to the game and new movies and TV shows being released all the time. There’s no shortage of heroes we can add. We’re currently working on new and fun ways to use heroes, even if they aren’t in the current meta, which we think will give the game years more fun for new and current players.
• Any change in plan for Red Skill Cost?
  • [PBLudwig] Potentially! We are collecting a lot of feedback from the recent dev Q/A and Red Skills is a topic we’re looking into right now.
• When a hero is selected as an assist in a friend campaign, they will not appear as an enemy. But it has changed. For example, in the Bagheera-Baloo campaign, they have Nemo as an assist, yet he still appears as an enemy. Is this intended or just simply overlooked?
  • [PBLudwig] I noticed this the other day as well while looking through some stats! I feel this was a change that happened a while ago but I’d have to do a little more research as to why. It could just be a bug in the tool we use for these.
• In the past several months, new heroes have settled into a pattern of sign-in or prize wall. Are there any plans to vary from this pattern?
  • [Polaris] Yes!
• What are your favorite obscure Disney movies? Obscure Disney characters?
  • [PBLudwig] We had a running thread in our chat the other week about our favorite Disney Channel original movies, do those count? Mine was a tough choice between Brink! and Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century.
• Could the drops in gold crates and diamond crates be refreshed?
  • [Loutre] This is possible, but we’d love to hear more on how you would all like to see them refreshed.
• How badges are given to heroes?
  • [PBLudwig] We use a series of tools to give out badges to Heroes but that is a small part of a complicated system that we’re hoping to make better in the future.
• Could exclusive heroes like Sign-In, CW crate, and others appear somewhere else ex Wish Crates?
  • [Loutre] No current plans for this as they’re intended to be exclusive for people collecting them from those sources for limited time. They will also become more widely available as time goes on.
• Product wise in terms of Disney Heroes, what would you at PerBlue say be the reason for why new people and playing players should play Disney Heroes beside the fact of the Disney characters?
  • [Polaris] I think the narrative in the game is amazing and make it a lot of fun to move through the campaign and unlock all the friendships. Our hero design team also has done an incredible job creating unique kits for heroes and skills that are fun and exciting to use. Something else that’s important to us as a company is building community. Through guilds and the forums you are a pretty great community who has a passion for the game and the Disney characters.
• What plans are there to bring back older players who may have moved on from Disney Heroes, but might come back if they feel the game is more interesting again?
  • [Polaris] It is very difficult for us to reach out to players who have left. One thing we do see is people returning when the icon is updated. We have a project that’s currently in design that will make it easier for us to communicate with players and engage with people who may stop playing.
• Has a live PvP mode ever been considered as a fun additional mode?
  • [PBLudwig] Yes! We’ve considered some pretty wild ideas in the past haha!
• What was the reason you at PerBlue decided to focus on the Battle Pass before Guild Perks or new Heist levels?
  • [PBLudwig] This work began at the beginning of December, shortly after our new design team had just started. As the team was transitioning there was a lot of refocusing towards not only what to work on, but how to work on it internally. The Battle Pass is something we’ve identified as a problem and have wanted to fix it for a very long time. It’s also a system that is fairly understood among designers as opposed to other systems in our game like Heist. We chose to work on the Battle Pass since it was something the team all agreed needed fixing and had little “spool up” time on the design side. Hope that helps to add more context to the decision.
• What’s your favorite animation in the game?
  • [PBLudwig] Kermit waving his arms is :chefskiss:
  • [Polaris] Kronk’s trap door!
• Creep Surge has gone from one of the game modes I most enjoyed to the one I most dread, solely because of the preponderance of teams with Zeus(Ha), Ian, and Mary(Lo), heroes with a limited number of counters (particularly if paired with good support like Mad Hatter or Joy). When over half of the first four regions contain one or more of those heroes, that makes it very hard to clear waves and advance the rewards tier. Have y’all noticed any change in surge participation over the recent past? Are there any plans to look at that mode, perhaps by limiting heroes to one team per region or somehow allowing mercs to be used by more than one player?
  • [PBLudwig] Haven’t noticed any significant changes in recent participation rates but I’m sorry to hear that you’re enjoying the mode much less recently. We don’t have any current plans set for Creep Surge, our focus in the short term here is on War and City Watch. However, I suspect some of the same pains we’ve heard about City Watch apply to Creep Surge as well so maybe we can get some improvements in the works for both modes.
• Capping skill points at 29 may have made sense when the max hero level was around 100 or so, but now that it’s 295 it’s really annoying. It’s possible to buy skill points with diamonds, either directly or through Skill Point Consumables, but at the cheapest price of 8 diamonds per SPC, that’s still something like 750 diamonds just to level up one new hero. Is there any chance at increasing the skill point cap, or making SPCs more readily available in contest rewards?
  • [PBLudwig] Skill Points and Red Skill Economy are the next two areas we’ll be looking into after Megabits.
• Are there plans to offer Badge Booster Crates as rewards or prizes in other areas of the game, or is the redistribution complete?
  • [Loutre] We do have plans on adding more events that can have Badge Crates as prizes, but do not have any current plans to add significant more numbers of Badge Crates to game rewards.
• When the Friendship Mission system was redesigned, Polaris mentioned possibly increasing the number of missions as the number of heroes increased. Now that we’ve had more than 50 heroes added to the game since the refresh, is this still something that might be considered?
  • [PBLudwig] Yes! This is definitely something we can look to improve in the future.
• Is there a plan to clean up the game from players using autoclickers?
  • [Loutre] We have a way in-game currently that puts players who are using autoclickers into a list and when support has extra time they check this list and send out warnings and bans as needed

[The_Real_Numi]

What I found very interesting there

@Loutre

Could the drops in gold crates and diamond crates be refreshed?

• [Loutre] This is possible, but we’d love to hear more on how you would all like to see them refreshed.

I have been thinking a while about those.
Back when the cap was around R9-R10, the diamond crates could give almost all necessary bits to get the hero to R9. And gold crates can in the long term get any hero to R0. (well, excluding some orange plan bits and some orange bits in early Orange ranks).

Maybe it’d be enough to give Gold Crates the badge bits/full badges drops from Diamond Crates? That would make them useful generally for <R9 badges, which I consider somewhat early game now that the cap is Y12.
Diamond Crates could have the later-game stuff, aka possibly give all full purple and orange badges, while also dropping red bits. The former two would be enough in the long term to raise hero to Y2, while the red bits would satisfy till Y9.

And it could be possibly intertwined with some Guild Perk that lowers the stamina cost to raid in the first, say, 30 Chapters to like… 3?

@Loutre

Has a live PvP mode ever been considered as a fun additional mode?

• [PBLudwig] Yes! We’ve considered some pretty wild ideas in the past haha!

Lemme hear more lol.

@Loutre

[PBLudwig] Haven’t noticed any significant changes in recent participation rates but I’m sorry to hear that you’re enjoying the mode much less recently. We don’t have any current plans set for Creep Surge, our focus in the short term here is on War and City Watch. However, I suspect some of the same pains we’ve heard about City Watch apply to Creep Surge as well so maybe we can get some improvements in the works for both modes.

I guess you could try… well unsure how to say it, but… limit the characters usage to 1 per run? Thinking as there are 15 fights with 5 heroes each in CW - that’d be 75 heroes.
And 27 fights with 5 heroes in Surge - that is 135 heroes.
Since we have over 175 heroes now, it could be possible, but I assume tough to program.
Or… well as long as it won’t be fighting Zeus line, Zeus Line, Zeus line, Ian line, Shego line etc. repeatedly it would be fine?

@Loutre

[Loutre] We do have plans on adding more events that can have Badge Crates as prizes, but do not have any current plans to add significant more numbers of Badge Crates to game rewards.

[JustMe]

I just wanted to add in a few points of my own/questions that could get answered. 1) Do you think there could be a way to add a guild advertising chat to the chat lists? This way people who want to promote their guild can have an easier time doing so, instead of trying to find a Facebook/Discord group or “flooding” chat with it. 2) Are there plans to add in new tiers/rewards to the guild rewards? 3) When it comes to specific weekly challenges. Some are focused on specific teams, for example using only Incredible Heros. Is there a way in the search menu that you guys could add so we can easily find these specific Heros? I’ve been playing sense ALMOST the very beginning (started like the middle of the 1st year) so I currently have all heros.

[Knight_Hedgehog_1]

@Loutre

Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century.

I would love Zenon characters. Proto Zoa and Powerline should release an album together.

[Jody_Caviness]

@Loutre

This work began at the beginning of December, shortly after our new design team had just started.

Ah, OK; something I read in the previous Q&A (September '21) made me think that the game had been fully staffed just before that Q&A took place. Good to know.

@Loutre

We’re prioritizing getting back to a healthy cadence and want to start introducing the more expansive kit refreshes soon.

Fair enough. I’m not sure how feasible this would be, but I’d still like to see two older heroes worked on each month: one getting a simple stat buff; one getting a more complete refresh, whether it involves just adding or increasing effects from their skills, or involves a complete reworking of their skills like the Queen of Hearts.

@Loutre

I think the narrative in the game is amazing and make it a lot of fun to move through the campaign and unlock all the friendships.

The campaign narrative is pretty good, and a definite improvement over the several months of “go to a new area, find a dev note, fight creeps, leave the new area”. Still, I get the feeling it’s now designed to go on indefinitely, with no ending being planned. And while I’ve enjoyed quite a few friendship stories, most players will only get to experience a relatively small percentage of those stories.

@Loutre

Our hero design team also has done an incredible job creating unique kits for heroes and skills that are fun and exciting to use.

This, along with the graphics, strikes me as the game’s strong point currently. Even heroes I’m not familiar with can have skills that I find fun to use in the game, so I suspect people with only minimal Disney knowledge can also have fun with the various characters.

@Loutre

However, I suspect some of the same pains we’ve heard about City Watch apply to Creep Surge as well so maybe we can get some improvements in the works for both modes.

Well, Creep Surge teams are pulled from (active?) Arena teams, while City Watch pulls from Coliseum, so depending on what’s done with City Watch, it may be possible to apply those changes to Creep Surge.

@Loutre

We do have plans on adding more events that can have Badge Crates as prizes, but do not have any current plans to add significant more numbers of Badge Crates to game rewards.

So a good news/bad news answer. Personally, the period of time when we were potentially getting 45 crates a week from contest progress rewards, plus a variable number from the Prize Wall and one or two other sources, was the most fun I’ve had in this game since those early Invasions with the shockingly-generous rewards. I know we won’t be getting that many crates again consistently, but I hope we can at least get reasonably close to that number.

@Loutre

Yes! This [increasing the number of friendship missions] is definitely something we can look to improve in the future.

Very good news indeed, and while I’m sure it’ll take a while to get to this, I hope we might hear more about it by, maybe, the end of the year.

[The_Real_Numi]

@Jody_Caviness

So a good news/bad news answer. Personally, the period of time when we were potentially getting 45 crates a week from contest progress rewards, plus a variable number from the Prize Wall and one or two other sources, was the most fun I’ve had in this game since those early Invasions with the shockingly-generous rewards. I know we won’t be getting that many crates again consistently, but I hope we can at least get reasonably close to that number.

Seconding this.

@Loutre

[Loutre] This is possible, but we’d love to hear more on how you would all like to see them refreshed.

@The_Real_Numi

Maybe it’d be enough to give Gold Crates the badge bits/full badges drops from Diamond Crates? That would make them useful generally for <R9 badges, which I consider somewhat early game now that the cap is Y12.
Diamond Crates could have the later-game stuff, aka possibly give all full purple and orange badges, while also dropping red bits. The former two would be enough in the long term to raise hero to Y2, while the red bits would satisfy till Y9.

Returning a bit to this - maybe have a guaranteed 1 random Red Skill Chip per Buy 10 and 10 per Buy 100 on Gold Crates?
And 5 of them per Open 10 of Diamond Crates.
Something on the top of my mind that I thought about.

[Your_Name]

I just spent 150 Memory tokens on the Memory market to refresh the shop and its not refreshing and took tokens that I needed to upgrade Zeus. Please fix this issue as soon as possible as I need to refresh the market for some faster way to move up and keep up with other players.

Thank you,
Your_Name

[Malibarry]

Hi, I was wondering when you guys will introduce characters like Mei from turning red? Or any of the encanto family, who have magic powers that will translate well into the game.

Or gravity falls characters. All the characters from that show have great abilities that I would love to see.

Disney has made a ton of great movies and shows that I don’t see represented.

This new update is a character is a side villain in a show that aired 15 years ago. I loved Kim possible, but it took me looking up who he was to even remember. It would be one thing if Kim possible wasn’t represented, but that isn’t the case. I appreciate that the main characters are there, but this is too many.

It saddens me that the popular shows and movies aren’t getting properly repersented.

[ALDT]

Encanto and Turning Red will be added soon, About 6 - 9 months since that movie came out

@Malibarry

Or gravity falls characters. All the characters from that show have great abilities that I would love to see.

Gravity Falls characters cannot be added 'Cause copyright.

Live Chat 2/21

We can go pretty far! And we do and will over time! One thing that’s not always obvious to players (or even to us) is which shows/movies/etc. that Disney actually owns. Some shows, like Gravity Falls for example, are licensed by Disney (not fully owned). There can be many different kinds of licensing agreements, some that are more friendly to us being able to use the characters and some less. So we always ask to see if it’s possible.

[Malibarry]

Thank you for the response, this does help a lot. I love this game and just wanted to see my favorite characters!