With a new SOTG post hopefully impending, I just thought I’d go through the feb post and see where things have been, or maybe haven’t been, met.
State of The Game - February 2020
Some of the things we learned from last dev chat:
We need to do a better job closing the gap between casual and serious players/payers.
This has happened in some ways but gotten worse in other ways. The main barrier to parity is the rate and power of new heroes that dominate as soon as they are out. It’s not possible for casual players to work on these heroes quickly.
Some hero power creep is okay, but we need to watch out for heroes who are truly OP.
This hasn’t really been improved on.
Some game modes are getting a bit stale: Either too easy, too boring and/or the rewards are falling behind.
I hope that these are still under review, one of the biggest culprits for this is Invasion and the best way to make it less boring and the rewards worthwhile was just removed (Gizmoduck). It’s now once again boring and not worthwhile.
We need to make sure we keep bugs and event issues as infrequent as possible, and squash them as fast as possible when they do pop up. This is more important to most players than new development.
I haven’t noticed any less issues - one could even argue that there are more issues than ever popping up with every new update recently.
The friend system, especially missions, need a revamp in a big way.
We’ve seen a preview of this in the Guild Leader section, and it looks promising. It’s been quite a long time since that was planned out, though - I hope it’s coming soon, rather than soon™.
You love the story, and would love a way to re-read it.
I suspect that this isn’t in the pipeline as it has no real monetary value, but would still be a nice addition.
We want to address all of the points mentioned above and more in the coming year. Our biggest challenge currently is what order to tackle them in.
With 1.15 through 1.15.4’s release in December and February, we’ve addressed a fair number already:
Began to address player gaps with more stamina, improved Trials rewards.
This did happen, but with the increased stamina has come increased farming costs due to complex compound badges.
Global Release of Red Skills.
This did happen, and they are enjoyable but it takes too long to work on as many as we’d like, especially given the rate of cap increases. The fundamental design flaw of level-based red skills hasn’t been acknowledged.
Improved Invasion rewards.
Adding more rewards via more tiers does not improve them, unless those tiers are achievable by the masses. The individual tier rewards themselves are no better than they have ever been.
Added the ability to make custom Invasions (which we debuted recently)
These were somewhat interesting and offered different rewards. We haven’t had one in quite a while - why are they so infrequent?
Made disconnects in Guild War less painful.
This happened, and I haven’t heard of too many cases of guilds abusing it. 
Adding new difficulty levels in Heist.
This happened, however the hardest difficulty is still boringly easy with heroes in the mid-reds or above.
Moving forward in 1.16 we want to tackle:
Releasing Arena & Coliseum Challenger Seasons.
This happened, and they have largely been a success. I enjoy them much more than the old system, and the rewards are good. However, the issue of reviving / invincible heroes needs addressing - and that does not mean simply introducing 1 hero (ie. QOH) who can deal with it. That turns it into a competitive advantage, when it should be considered a broken mechanic. The quick fight point rewarding should take revives into account - maybe consider their new life as an extra hero to earn points from.
Adding new difficulty levels in Creep Surge.
I think this has happened.
Global Release of Diamond Quest.
I assume this happened, though don’t play on other servers. It’s still overpriced in my opinion, and the rewards are too generic with no contribution towards the next Diamond Quest.
Adding new Guild Perks to help maxed out guilds.
This happened, but even after purchasing all the consumables we are quickly maxed out again before the week is over. More consumables would be great!
In 1.17 we’re planning to:
Introduce an updated Creep Surge: We’re working on an “endless” version where your guild can decide how much they want to do and get more rewards for it! No more choosing a number of waves that’s too easy or too hard.
This happened, and I think after a few revisions we’ve finally got to a point where the rewards are fair compared to the old surge system. There are still a few good suggestions on the forum to improve it further (reward the base gold straight away !!!11!1!!!1), but I’m no longer disappointed in it. I would mention though that the opponent teams often seem too difficult across the board - far too many meta lines appear.
Expand our collections and cosmetics in a fun new way (more to come)
The cosmetic collections was initially terrible, but after the points / tiers rework it became much more palatable. I still don’t think enough cosmetics crates are available without direct purchases - or that the dupe drop rate is too high - but it is what it is. I’m more of a collector than an “I want that extra 0.5% HP”, so if the stat bonuses had to be reduced in order to reward more cosmetics, that would be fine with me.
Improve the selection of heroes available at the start of the game for new players.
I don’t know if this has happened or not, but have noticed that new heroes seem to be more readily available on newer servers indicating that it has. As long as this can be done without upsetting the server balance (seeing as the newer heroes are usually incredibly strong), that’s fine.
- discuss!