Suggestions

Blight
95

Mostly because right now you often need a bunch of communication to make the exchange happen, and only helps in more specific cases, or relies on the giver to judge whoever needs the money the most. This way the process is more streamlined, as giving players can just dump anything they don’t need into the common pool, and takers can get those resources immediately whenever they need them.

It’s not exactly a buff (^^). More of case of cutting out the need for communications again, so players can play optimally (since in an optimal scenario, the high elf player would be borrrowing that mana anyway).
Still, elf-mage players will reaaally like this system methinks :smiley:

96

Not just Mana, but Blind Justice’s Valor. And yes, that suggestion was inspired by my request to “borrow” mana to fuel the High Elf. And endgame situations where half the players have excess resources and are trying to find out which players still need Gold/Mana/etc & how much. As for it “buffing” the High Elf, I’d be fine with that. First, as Starry_Wisdom linked a few weeks ago, I like the design theory of “optimized play should be fun”; less busywork borrowing resources from everyone is more fun. Also, if High Elves become too powerful with a system like that, then it means they are broken themselves, rather than broken because of the resource pool system. The resource pool system does nothing that a group of players constantly checking the game every 5 minutes (and pausing when they can’t) couldn’t do.

Speaking of which, the endgame in large maps probably needs some tweaking. It seems like half the players are too far away from the remaining zombies to do much other than wait 2 days for their forces to reach the battlefields & donate all their resources to the other players. Just not sure how to fix it yet.

97

Maybe some kind of teleport system? Something which allows you to, say, buy an upgrade in a town which allows other people to teleport their troops to that? And it could only be unlocked after certain requirements (No zombies around for the last few days, a certain player-to-zombie strength ratio, killed all zombies in your starting area, other things).
Or maybe you could recruit from allied player’s towns if they allowed you to? Like the banner units, but with towns?

98

What about if a player could give you towns or banner units. As a way of “inviting” you over to their area.

99

It would help a bit, but I don’t think it would solve the overall problem.
We can already deploy heroes at allied banners, so being given banner unit’s doesn’t really help (unless it somehow allows you to deploy all heroes, instead of race-specific ones).

Receiving a town would allow you to participate more, but you’d still have the problem that most of your production is too far away to be of any use. You would also have to raise a completely new force over there, which can also take some time. Having such a transfer option would be useful in other scenario’s though.

Having said that, the zombies are kinda suffering from the same production-distance problem, so for a mopping up situation it might work reasonably well. If the zombies are still a significant force in the late-game (say, theyve taken over a third of the map in one corner), then a fast-travel system might give the players way too much of an advantage.

100

Considering what a big part of the game Trading and Diplomacy are, I think a third end-of-game badge (like Zombie Slayer and Soul Savior) would be cool; one for “most resources donated” in some way. I think this would be a straightforward way to encourage extra cooperation.

There are two obvious hurdles that I see:

  • The relative values of the different resources would have to be normalized somehow.
  • In a naive, “amount donated” system, two players in a 3+ player game could donate all their resources back and forth for as long as they want to make sure one of them receives that badge. So the actual value being compared would have to be something like “net trade deficit”, e.g. total_given - total_received.
  • Near the end game, there could be a rush to see who can give away the most stuff. I’m not sure how to resolve this cleanly.
1 Like
101

Hey @DrBwaa This is a cool idea.

I have plans for a badge system where players can reward each other for being good allies (for 1 hero coin)

We have a similar system in Neptune’s Pride and I think it’s a really great way to do achievements in a multiplayer game. If they other players enjoyed playing with you, they will give you a badge. Players with lots of badges are good players because they are fun to play with.

Jay.

1 Like
102

I have always enjoyed the NP badge system, and I think tying it into Hero Coins in Blight makes perfect sense. Sounds great!

I’ve been bouncing an idea around in my head, in the spirit of facilitating cooperation. Is there some way players could set their current timezone (or just their normal active times of the day) in their game profile, so that information (localized, maybe) could be visible to other players in-game? It would help a lot to be able to look at a player’s screen and see not only how much gold they get each day, but also something on the order of “is this person going to be awake in time to send me the Mana I need?” We seem to cover a pretty wide range of time zones among just the most active players, and knowing when people are likely to be available would be a huge help when making cooperative plans.

Availability Indicators.2.png717×829 264 KB

Availability Indicators.1.png490×939 103 KB

1 Like
103

Thats an interesting idea.

104

I love the idea of a turn based option for multiplayer. This is what I proposed to my current go-to player group and they liked it.

First, the goals we had that led to our solution:

  1. Turn-based to avoid having to check in too regularly (especially important as I often play with coworkers and we like the idea of being able to control when we can play)
  2. Not dependent on the host to control (one big weakness to the current skip option)
  3. Not limited to 6-hour jumps (the second reason why the 6 hour skips is never used. This is because things are not on a 6 hour cooldown, and many things happen in-between that can make or break a good game)
  4. There are NO rewards or penalties for jumps of any time period

Our proposed solution

  1. Game can be toggled back and froth from real-time, to entirely turn-based
  2. Players take their turn and then select the maximum number of hours they would like to jump from a pulldown, or entering any number from 1 to 24
  3. When the last player to enter a time to jump has done so, then the game immediately jumps to the LOWEST hour selected and all players wanting to act in that hour get a turn. Those players take that turn then select an new jump period, as in point 2 above
  4. Game jumps to the next awaited hour, point 3 above is repeated, and so on until the game ends

Example:
Players Adam, Ben, Charlie, and David begin a game. The game is set to turn-based. All players take their first turn.

  • Adam finishes his turn, but notices his unit will arrive at a town in 2 hours. He selects a time jump of 2 hours at max to take advantage of that.
  • Ben does much the same, but his journey will take 3 hours so he selects that
  • Charlie deploys and begins a 12 hour journey with a unit. He also begins training for 6 hours. He wants to use that trained unit immediately after its trained, so he selects 6 hours.
  • David is a pro and being a cocky braggart he decides he wants to do nothing for 24 hours to let the other players see how quickly he’ll catch up. Nobody seems to like David, but it’s his choice. He is the last to select from the pulldown, but he selects 24 hours.

This would go down…

Game Start:
Game jumps ahead 2 hours as soon as David has entered his time as he was the final player to do so.
2 hours in:
Only Adam selected a minimum of two hours, so he takes a turn and then selects a jump of one hour (which means he’ll act again in the game’s 3rd hour).
3 hours in:
Adam and Ben take a turn. Both select 3 hours as the next minimum jump
6 hours in:
Adam, Ben and Charlie take a turn. Charlie sets a timeframe of 6 hours, Adam and Ben choose to wait 12 hours
12 hours in:
Charlie takes a turn and chooses 6 hours wait again, when he’ll be able to deploy and train.
18 hours in:
Adam, Ben and Charlie take a turn. They’re all waiting for 6 hours after this turn has ended.
24 hours in:
Adam, Ben, Charlie and Dave all take a turn. They’re all happy as none of their time or resources were wasted, they all shared control instead of needing to pass everything by their host, nobody had to wake up at 3am to deploy troops or use a card’s ability, and they all feel as though they’ve learned something today: Dave’s about to get his ass kicked by zombies and he has only himself to blame.

I’d be interested to hear how others might improve this.

105

Interesting idea @Challak

It’s kind of like, dont disturb me until the time ticks around till when I wanted it.

I think it could really work for some groups of players but I think in public games the clock would be stopping every couple of hours, and you would have players only checking in once or twice a day and the game would really drag.

I totally agree that just jumping 6 hours is lame as well because although some things are on a 6 hour rotation, there are a lot of things that are not.

I’m quite happy with the single player mechanic where you have to pay valour to make small jumps, and earn valour by making large jumps so I would like to support that somehow in multiplayer.

Ie if you make a 4 hour jump. Every player will have to pay 2 valour.

Perhaps the jump could be the smallest voted amount, and we let players go into negative valour? (But you can’t vote for something smaller that what you can’t personally afford?)

106

This is interesting because for me (and those I’ve played with) this would never be seen as a problem, just an understandable element of a solution that resolves the (IMO) bigger issues I’ve outlined above - the biggest being:

  • 6 hours being too much to skip (and lose)
  • Fully real-time requiring a far too active level of engagement (people seem to complain a lot about having to check in every hour of every day or else feel like they’re letting others down or playing sub-optimally)
  • Penalties and rewards for time jumps feeling like an unfair/unnecessary penalty when it’s really just a way to ensure you can play the game when you (and your group) want to play

For that last one, I’m surprised to hear that the penalty to jump shorter time is a favored mechanic. Again, it speaks to different ways of playing and vastly differing playstyles and so, in a way, highlights a design choice as to which playstyles will and can be supported - and so, in many ways, what sorts of players will be attracted to and end up being loyal to the game in the longer term.

These are all decisions that do, and should, rest in the hands of the designer, but if you want feedback on your suggestion I’d say this (based on my thoughts and the six players I’ve reached out to who seem to share my play preferences)

  • We prefer waiting for players to take their turn and knowing its the trade off for the game waiting when it’s my turn, rather than feeling like our hand and schedule is forced at all times
  • We prefer jumps of time treated as a “fast forward” on the real-time so we can get more play in during the time spans when we can play, rather than knowing that we either play real-time or play sub-optimally
  • We prefer jumps in time to be a choice we make based on our schedules, rather than on how much we want or need our hard-earned valor

Once again, please know that I fully understand the position you’re in, and so I would add that this doesn’t have to be the default, but another option players can choose based on their play styles and the (sometimes quite demanding) realities of their schedule.

107

One problem I noticed with the current UI is that it is rather burdensome to check the status of the ability timers of a large stack of units.

The lightning bolt icon easily identifies which units are ready but if I want to know how many units will be ready in say two hours, I have to select each individual unit and look at the timers.

To improve this, I would propose to change the lightning bolt icon to indicate the progress on the timer for each unit. This could mean changing the icon into an actual progress bar or having a set of different icons for discrete steps on the timer, e.g. 25%, 50%, 75% and fully loaded.

1 Like
108

Is there a particular reason the Combat Log only shows your own combats? I feel like it should show everything, and maybe indicate with color or some other marker which combats your forces participated in.

109

Yep, I’ve had that feedback a few times, that it would be intresting to see other players combats, but I need to expand the messaging API a little to allow you to pull combat messages for the whole game rather than those just addressed to you.

110

Some potential ideas of varying complexity:

Keyboard shortcuts should appear if you press ? (SHIFT + /) like Gmail or (CTRL + /) like Slack depending on whatever you prefer. I think this is a easy way to remind yourself, without having to click Menu -> Help -> Keyboard Shortcuts.

Stylistically could add transparency across all the menus background colors, somewhere between 60-70% would do. Feels less like you are leaving the game every time you open a menu as you can still see underneath. A couple times, in chat, especially I have wanted to be able to see what someone is talking about in the game, but I have to keep opening & closing chat, especially on mobile / tablets.

Theme colors for menus that you can pick would be nice as well (someday in the future) I’d love to have a Dark Black or Red theme instead of the Blue.

For the single player missions on the main menu you should change the circle skull icon based upon the level of completion (different symbols for normal, hard, nightmare) so that you can identify what you’ve completed. Probably should also display your best completion rate for each level when you click into the map so you know where you need to improve.

Adding a preview image to each of the maps so that you don’t have to load into a game each time both for multiplayer and Single player maps. Lets you get a feel if you want to play that scenario.

Profile pages for users. Allow you to click into them from high scores. This would help build community, you can see the information when you are in game, but it would be cool to see more about who theses high scorers are.

Game History / Replay Systems these are long term projects enough said for now.

2x (or Nx) speed in multiplayer games. This could be limited to an Admin function in custom games. This would be ideal for if a group of folks were getting together to play.

Maybe a search function / overview page of the immortals that exist on a map. Very useful if you need to know how many Immortal Elves are on the field for the Undead Ents to feed on. I was thinking search might be nice so you can find the hydras and dragons really quickly!

111

Adding to that “preview of map”: please, tell me when I am selecting cards in the start, if there are even any settlements of that race.

112

I idea for a Dward card.

I was thinking since dwarves lack a cavalry and there is only one gnome card, maybe we can have some gnome cavalry like in the pictures below. From a Lore point of view we could have the gnomes use bears or ponies/horses as a way to give the dwarves mounts.
I know the idea for dwarf players is that they are slow but strong but you got the Forge Urchin and Gnome cards who are slightly faster.
I’m suggesting for these Gnome Riders to be in between, not as strong as lets say Wolf Riders or Knights but faster than a Forge Urchin to get some good speed going for collecting settlements or speedy assaults.
Just my two cents.

DSCF8559.jpg1600×1326 346 KB

1 Like
114

Give them ponies and Tolkien will have a good time.

1 Like
115

Not sure if it was suggested before.

So, I’m really tired of one simple truth - we all live in different part of the earth ( the developer is Australian, I’m Latvian… It’s goddamn farthest corner of the world -.-) and many other players in God knows where else. Almost every game starts at late night when I must go sleep, or else I can’t function properly next day.
And so I have idea:
Implement some kind of system or algorithm, where players set in their profile their least preferred game starting time window. Then calculate the total average of most uncomfortable 3 or 4-hour span, where the game can’t start yet. And if all players assemble in such window: the game is suspended till that average window is passed. Then it’ll go as usual. First, hours of the game are quite important IMO and it’s a huge bummer to wake up and notice how much hours are wasted.

Also - About page has copyright of stone age year :slight_smile: and strange 2 dots in end of sentence.

2 Likes