#1 - The time-consuming Trooper grind

[Sponholz]

Hi all!!!

My 2 cents here:

Facts to take into account:
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- Most, but not all, Troopers are Eddies.
- You usually have 3 slots already open, 2 for Eddies and 1 for a non-Eddie character (Keeping your Eddie and a good char to clear the level you want).
- 2:1 Ratio is good, the only possible scenario where this would fail is if your Trooper list have 18 non-Eddies Troopers out of the 53 total. (Very unlikely IMO).

My suggestion:
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Let us bring 3 Troopers at once. How would this work in such manner that don't hurt either players and/or NF? Simple:
- Nothing would be needed to change for group layout, there is already 3 extra slots if you have a 5* Eddie and a 5* non-eddie char, chances are you can easily clear most of the early stages really quickly with this 2 chars alone.
- Charge 4 SoT per extra Trooper used.
- 4 SoT is a balanced cost for either the 4 SoT and 5 SoT stages.
- This would give the option to the player if he wants to farm materials/gold/xp using one Trooper at a time, or speed things up to 3x
- Why don't charge 5 SoT per extra Trooper on 5 SoT stages? Well you will be cutting the rewards for playing the lvl, so in fact you are losing loot while speeding Troopers used.
- Why charge 4 SoT per extra Trooper on 4 SoT stages? Well if you are playing a 4 SoT stage my guess is you don't wan't to farm anything besides maybe gold on Powerslave, and just want to speed things a little, and since a lot of players already run Powerslave for all their Troopers this would be fair to NF as well, in terms of SoT usage.

I am, and always will be in favor of leaving the option to the player.
Do you want to farm for mats? Play one Trooper at a time.
Do you want to send and get all the Troopers badges? Play three instead.


I hope that I made myself clear, sometimes is hard to explain very well and in the most detailed way I can.

Cheers! Ed!

[Amarthir]

I don't know about the idea of only increasing the trooper limit. If they do that, we wouldn't be able to earn as much resources as we normally would. I have a hard enough time stacking up gold, I wouldn't want to earn half as much simply because I'm too lazy to play the game after the troopers are ran.

However, this would be countered if they also introduce a x2 gold option in the store.

[<Keg>]

The idea that Askora and kkkreg5 brought up is good. It would solve the problem of not giving the badges to your troopers (what actually takes a long time) to dedicate the time to grind other stuffs in the game (Brave new World, Arena, etc).
But i like more the idea that Ian mentioneted. I think the same since the beggining of the game. It's easier just allow to use more than one trooper per battle. This could be something unlocked based on the progression of the campaing. At certain progression you unlock on more slot of trooper per battle, bringing up to two troopers, and going on until you reach 100% of the campaing, where you earn the right to use up to 6 troopers per battle. We still need to grind manually, but the process will become a lot of faster.

[Askora]

Please don't mistake me. By no means am I trying to take credit for this idea. I recall Lulero bringing up "1 click" badges in another thread. The question is the amount of programming envolved...

No worries man. Saw you'd posted it was someone else's idea and I'm the same way. Not trying to claim full credit, just suggesting my thoughts on how that kind of system could work.

Cheers!

[Mariner-1212]

Hi all!!!


...lots of good stuff......


I am, and always will be in favor of leaving the option to the player.
Do you want to farm for mats? Play one Trooper at a time.
Do you want to send and get all the Troopers badges? Play three instead.

I hope that I made myself clear, sometimes is hard to explain very well and in the most detailed way I can.

Cheers! Ed!

I really love this point of leaving it up to the player, and I think marrying Ian's point of unlocking it after certain milestones (which Keg perfectly summed up) could provide the best all around scenario.

I think the key here for NF is that by charging the extra 4 SOT per additional Trooper used, they won't be losing anything at all. Trooper farming is sped up, but the option to buy that SOT refill will still be in play, for those of us that wish to knock it all out in one sitting. And it removes the need to add an additional store item like mentioned in my earlier post.

I also like the idea brought forward from kkkreg/askora/et.al regarding the one-click payout to your Troops. The part I struggle with on it is that I want the badges that I earn by playing as well, and it doesn't solve anything for me in terms of cutting down on time. I think I'd get lazy and end up sending the badges everyday and not run mine as much, which means I'm getting only half of what I want. I would rather have a solution that gets us all paid in full, while taking much less time... just because I know how lazy it would make me. On the flip side, completing your Trooper obligation in one click is excellent for when you're just too busy to get into it.

Maybe Amarthir's Ticket concept does exactly this - a full payout to your Troopers for the day, but not to you. Or as MisterEly said, you pay ironite for a wipe for the day that gives all 2500 badges (ironite buys the clear tickets).

All good ideas, on their own and combined.

[Sponholz]

The idea that Askora and kkkreg5 brought up is good. It would solve the problem of not giving the badges to your troopers (what actually takes a long time) to dedicate the time to grind other stuffs in the game (Brave new World, Arena, etc).
But i like more the idea that Ian mentioneted. I think the same since the beggining of the game. It's easier just allow to use more than one trooper per battle. This could be something unlocked based on the progression of the campaing. At certain progression you unlock on more slot of trooper per battle, bringing up to two troopers, and going on until you reach 100% of the campaing, where you earn the right to use up to 6 troopers per battle. We still need to grind manually, but the process will become a lot of faster.

Only reason I don't think something like this would pass is:

Each Trooper used = SoT used. (Revenue for NF must be taked in consideration here. and I imagine that refills takes a big part on that).
If you take the current system into account, 53 Troopers converts to 212 SoT used (4 SoT Stages) and/or 265 SoT used (5 SoT stages).
If you allow for more Troopers to be used free-of-SoT-cost, that would convert in: (lets take the 6 Troopers suggestion).
9 Runs total needed.
36 SoT needed to use all your Troopers on 4 SoT Stages
45 SoT needed to use all your Troopers on 5 SoT Stages

This is a HUGE gap in terms of SoT usage.

This is not considering LoL and BNW in which I believe nothing should change IMO 1 Trooper only.

Hence why I suggested the SoT cost per extra Trooper.

Cheers! Ed.

[Patrice-1201]

My view is that we should keep it simple and balanced.

Allow up to n Troopers per battle for n*SOT and n*rewards but please increase SOT to 100.

[Yup]

I think 100 isn't enough. +20 isn't going to really make any sort of impact. I say merely do a daly refill.... refill SOT and SOW at the daily rollover.. actually you get about 50% SOW through daily achievements.. increase achievement rewards so you also get 50%-100% SOT via the 7 daily achievements rather than 4-10 SOT currently. Or... every 1MIL/500K XP.. refill SOT.

.. and possibly let SOT roll past 80 the way SOW do....

[Dank Brew]

I think 100 isn't enough. +20 isn't going to really make any sort of impact. I say merely do a daly refill.... refill SOT and SOW at the daily rollover.. actually you get about 50% SOW through daily achievements.. increase achievement rewards so you also get 50%-100% SOT via the 7 daily achievements rather than 4-10 SOT currently. Or... every 1MIL/500K XP.. refill SOT.

.. and possibly let SOT roll past 80 the way SOW do....

I think it would be a good idea to just give a full sot Refill for the daily challenges being finished. Of course, if you don't need it don't claim it yet. Or just reset SOT along with the daily reset. I hate when the skull quests appear and i don't have SOT lol

[Sparton_LOTB]

I haven't had a chance to read this whole thread yet, but I'll set aside some time later today to do so.

What I would like to clarify is we definitely view this subject as a priority and are working towards a solution, but I have no problem pivoting direction on the exact solution if something jumps out in this thread as a better plan then what we're currently thinking.

Additionally, these are the major considerations I'd outline for the solution to this problem:

• Don't Enable Faster Progression: We want to allow players to be able to get their Trooper Badges quicker/easier, but we do not want players to be able to bring multiple troopers in to carry them through PVE content faster. This is different from the idea of being able to use multiple troopers in levels the player has already proven they've mastered.
• Don't Allow for Easier Grinding in Difficult Content: We don't want players who only have 3 star and 4 star characters bringing in multiple troopers to carry them through Lord of Light X, or Garden of Life IX, etc. We've built the game with the expectation that a handful of powerful troopers will help you punch a bit above your weight to get things like your first handful of 3 star Evo Shards for evolving a character to 5 stars a bit quicker than without troopers, but we do not want to substantially shortcut that progression.
• This Shouldn't Require Constant Real Money/Ironite Investment: The current expectation for an engaged player is they stay on top of their Skull Quests, spend most of their daily Sands of Time in Cosmos worlds, then spend a bit extra in Lord of Light or Brave New World for their rewards, all without needing to spend Ironite to use all 50 Troopers. Players can spend Ironite to instead grind more in Lord of Light or whatever instead of the Cosmos, but we don't expect players to do that every day. Whatever solution we add, we don't want players to feel the need to be constantly spending real money or Ironite to maintain their social obligation to their troopers; we view improvements in this area to be of self-evident value for our most engaged players and don't want them to have consider anything more than their time.

This is our current thoughts from the dev team on the subject, but as I noted above, we're happy to hear the communities thoughts as well.