Post Dev Q&A Discussion!

[Leviathan]

Discuss our answers from the Dev Q&A here (https://forum.ironmaidenlegacy.com/showthread.php?12065-Dev-Q-amp-A-Post-your-questions-here!)!

Edit: Matt, Kaz and Llexi will continue to respond to questions they missed over the next week or so.

[Astronura]

I'll admit, this was a fun Q&A session, and while some responses were not clear enough, we have gotten a better idea of where the wind blows.

[Patrice-1201]

None of my questions were answered :-(

[Ironstyle]

I'll admit, this was a fun Q&A session, and while some responses were not clear enough, we have gotten a better idea of where the wind blows.

*where the wild wind blows.

Also, I agree. This was pretty decent. Learned some new things and now looking forward to some of the slightly hinted at new content.

A little sad they didn't actually address Sparton's absence...

[Yup]

I would like to address this from Matt....



Once and for all: there is no boost applied to the defending AI team in the arena, as far as any person working on the game is aware. I went and had a chat with the engineers who built our most recent improvements to the arena system just now to confirm this. The AI used by the defending arena team is identical to the AI used by your team on autoplay.


I think there is a disconnect between Devs and users here....

I would agree that the AI used in the arena is the same as the AI used by a player.. I've always felt the AI is the AI... BUT... and here's where there is a disconnect... PLAYERS are NOT typically using AI in the arena.... therefore the AI on the defense team is getting FAR MORE accuracy than MANUAL players actually experience. THIS IS THE BOOST which is always referred to. There's never been any insinuation, from me at least, that there's a "special AI" somewhere. No. Merely that the AI gets, as you put it, "Streaky" runs of success which players, manually playing your "game" will NEVER, ever, ever experience. Therefore the AI pretty much ALWAYS has an advantage over manual play.

Some have figured out that you actually win MORE if you tap the auto-play button as soon as match starts.. why? Because then it is the streaky AI against the streaky AI rather than non-streaky player vs the streaky AI.

[edsel]

I would like to address this from Matt....



I think there is a disconnect between Devs and users here....

I would agree that the AI used in the arena is the same as the AI used by a player.. I've always felt the AI is the AI... BUT... and here's where there is a disconnect... PLAYERS are NOT typically using AI in the arena.... therefore the AI on the defense team is getting FAR MORE accuracy than MANUAL players actually experience. THIS IS THE BOOST which is always referred to. There's never been any insinuation, from me at least, that there's a "special AI" somewhere. No. Merely that the AI gets, as you put it, "Streaky" runs of success which players, manually playing your "game" will NEVER, ever, ever experience. Therefore the AI pretty much ALWAYS has an advantage over manual play.

Some have figured out that you actually win MORE if you tap the auto-play button as soon as match starts.. why? Because then it is the streaky AI against the streaky AI rather than non-streaky player vs the streaky AI.

I knew this warranted a response from Yup as I read it! The AI boost is REAL

[Delegreg]

I would like to address this from Matt....



I think there is a disconnect between Devs and users here....

I would agree that the AI used in the arena is the same as the AI used by a player.. I've always felt the AI is the AI... BUT... and here's where there is a disconnect... PLAYERS are NOT typically using AI in the arena.... therefore the AI on the defense team is getting FAR MORE accuracy than MANUAL players actually experience. THIS IS THE BOOST which is always referred to. There's never been any insinuation, from me at least, that there's a "special AI" somewhere. No. Merely that the AI gets, as you put it, "Streaky" runs of success which players, manually playing your "game" will NEVER, ever, ever experience. Therefore the AI pretty much ALWAYS has an advantage over manual play.

Some have figured out that you actually win MORE if you tap the auto-play button as soon as match starts.. why? Because then it is the streaky AI against the streaky AI rather than non-streaky player vs the streaky AI.

I've read somewhere that autoplay has a perfect hit chance of 35%. I'm pretty sure most of the players here can't score a perfect once out of every three attacks consistently. That's one thing.

[Amarthir]

5898

Seems pretty clear to me.

[Yup]

It's not merely perfect hits.. All accuracy is better for the AI.. echo fires more often and more times, blocking works better.. effects inflict more often.. the AI has generally a 15-20% better chance of performing an action than anyone manually playing does... you can ONLY even that out by auto-playing all PvP matches.


And rather than giving me shit.. you might want to actually read my response above.

The response was basically.. "I assure you the app uses the same 2005 Prius to drive to the store. It's not any faster or better than any other 2005 Prius. If you have a 2005 Prius, it's the same.".... when in all actuality on manual play.... players only have a skateboard... and aren't going to keep up with a Prius regardless.

[Astronura]

They should implement some sort of non-streak feature where if you or the enemy continuously gain/inflict, say, a 25% chance status effect, then that character cannot do so again until the second turn. Just an idea.

[Yup]

I've suggested that.. Cap all "extra turns" at a maximum of 3.. that's what players on manual experience. Things like that. They could write limits into the Ai (which would effect the AI for both player and app) to prevent the increased "streakiness". That implementation was somewhat eluded to by Matt - but understandably the "when" is another matter.

[Astronura]

I wonder. Does anyone here think that the Devs were being honest or no?

[Yup]

I think they were .... even if a couple responses did paint things with a slight "marketing twist" :) I don't think they are inherently, or purposefully, deceptive ever. They are human though and can mis-read or misunderstand the same as any of us. :)

I do think they, much like anyone in a creative endeavor, can be "too close" to their work and not fully understand player sentiment or perspective at times.

[Muzzleloader]

Was there ever an actual question regarding how many extra turns may he triggered? If it was I missed reading the post.

Last gauntlet season I came across a green bot that had 3 extra turns by itself, then raven fired off gave the bot another turn. It then had 2 more extra turns. This may be even worse than mag lilith in her heyday.

[HK-47]

I've suggested that.. Cap all "extra turns" at a maximum of 3.. that's what players on manual experience. Things like that. They could write limits into the Ai (which would effect the AI for both player and app) to prevent the increased "streakiness". That implementation was somewhat eluded to by Matt - but understandably the "when" is another matter.

Is this cap just for the Arena? Because my Gunner Dog with Echo Talismans can get like 7 extra turns sometimes

[Esquatcho]

Id just like to say thanks. And how good was this concept art (https://forum.ironmaidenlegacy.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=5894&d=1564092041)!?

Oh and THIS was really interesting! Makes a lot of sense, as someone who it not top echelons, I do notice that some rounds in Gauntlet I do quite well and then the next round it seems a fair bit tougher. I think I actually appreciate this, its just good to know about it now!

The difficulty of the Gauntlet is based on your account strength. This basically allows newer players to at least start to play and enjoy Gauntlet up to around Grade A. At Grade A, difficulty becomes tiered and is the same for everyone (it scales from a given account power level up to the max account power level at SSS, with some variation created by the selection of opponents and filtering of characters and talismans from the list to, as best as possible, avoid repeats).

[Muzzleloader]

Does extra turns stack from its abilities and talisman as cited by HK-47?

[Matt_LOTB]

All accuracy is better for the AI.. echo fires more often and more times, blocking works better.. effects inflict more often.. the AI has generally a 15-20% better chance of performing an action than anyone manually playing does... you can ONLY even that out by auto-playing all PvP matches.

To be clear, there is no accuracy boost applied to the AI. The % chance of any effect triggering is exactly equivalent for the same action performed either manually or by AI.

[Astronura]

Hold on. I have a feeling that the extra turn effects are not actually working properly. For example, my Tailgunner Eddie's special states that it can grant extra turns only when I kill an enemy, but I've had experiences where he does so without killing anyone.

[MuzakMaker]

I did appreciate the answer I got considering the combating of bugs surrounding all the updates. I never meant to insinuate they were bad at their jobs, just curious about how they're approaching it. I'm on a dev team of 12 for an account base of 12+ million. I personally know the struggles that can happen when your user base is much larger than the team and how well they are at hitting scenarios never even thought of in development.

I am curious what was meant by:


...why do we sometimes see characters wearing talismans they couldn't normally equip? That seems unfair and believe me, it's hard enough already.

This is a bug. Unfortunately we have not been able to reproduce it in house and so have created tools to allow us to better monitor and catch the issue on live, as it happens very sporadically and doesn't appear to have a consistent repro case. It is VERY high on our list of things to fix and was only second to the Arena Disco hang and Gauntlet Reset issues, which were recently tracked down and fixed.

This happens to me so often I just assumed it was a feature. Is it not able to be forced to happen, or are they not even seeing it when they themselves play gauntlet(as they said they are playing the game all day)?

[Muzzleloader]

I also took it for granted that opponents in gauntlet could use any talisman set, especially in SS and SSS. The problem that many see is when they can have 2 sets of talisman that are 5 or 6 sets each, unless they have cosmics with these augements.

They also indicate that they try not to have almost duplicate teams in SSS levels. Its almost a given, the first team in SS and SSS are the same.

[Yup]

To be clear, there is no accuracy boost applied to the AI. The % chance of any effect triggering is exactly equivalent for the same action performed either manually or by AI.

Sorry. As someone who has played this application for a couple years I am going to have to respectfully call "bull". My personal, first-hand experience is that the AI gets roughly a 15% accuracy increase over the (manual) player.

This can definitively be proven by running random number generator with a % chance of duplicates.... run it at 35% chance of duplicates and you see what the player experiences.. run it at 50% chance of duplicates and you see what the AI gets. As posted previously, if the player wants an EVEN MATCH, then the player MUST run the match on auto-play to take advantage of the extra 15-% the AI gets.

The player is ALWAYS at a disadvantage compared to the AI. Everyone who has played PvP for a period of time knows about the AI advantage... you stating it isn't there simply makes it all look like a cover up. Hordes of players are NOT imagining things. There's a REASON players complain that Viper's reported "50% chance" to counter is ACTUALLY countering almost every time....

Ina room full of people... is it the majority who sees a problem that are mistaken..... or it is the lone individual denying the problem that is mistaken?

To be clear, I don't expect anything to change. it is rather insulting to see players treated as if they are "stupid" or "imaging things" when many players experience the same thing. You can tell me the Earth is flat until you are blue in the face..... but logic and personal experience tells me otherwise.

Also.. you contradicted yourself is your own post, Matt.. "It's the same...." ... then a sentence later... "we know the Ai is 'streaky'.." so yeah.... you seem to be tellin' stories. Which is it? the same or "streaky"? Because players don't get any sort of "streaky" behavior.

[MuzakMaker]

I also took it for granted that opponents in gauntlet could use any talisman set, especially in SS and SSS. The problem that many see is when they can have 2 sets of talisman that are 5 or 6 sets each, unless they have cosmics with these augements.

I could have sworn I had seen 3 sets of 3 which just isn't possible even if they have a cosmic. The problem was I thought it was intended so I didn't bother to screenshot and report because I just assumed it was part of the difficulty ramp up.

[rags-6094]

The other disadvantage we have is that even when played on auto the highlighted character (who our team will attack) on the defence team will always fall in a sequence from Eddie to the extreme left /middle/ right.
So even on auto we are at a disadvantage, I played on auto for a while but I pretty much always manually do the arena now, to me that’s my entertainment, it is the complement of all the farming, and mind numbing auto play we must do to secure new characters and Talisman.

[AhabsHarpoon]

I want to know when we can have a QnA with Customer Service.....

[Inishmore]

5898

Seems pretty clear to me.

Thanks, you made my day Amarthir

[slauki]

loved the q/a session and i think the devs were as honest as possible. people want to belive what they want to belive no matter if you argue against it. but for marvel strike force the devs confirmed that there is a defense boost to make up for the AI being AI. they also said this is industry standard.

but if matt here says there is no AI boost then i want to belive it.

and for those who don't: well you will never get another answer to that question from the devs, would be nice to accept it.

what i took away from the q/a:

1. the devs have plans for the next years which is cool, so the game will be around a bit longer
2. the devs have a great sense of humor
3. and they are passionate about the game and want to create a great game, but they are a very small team which makes things difficult.

i'm more positive about the game for now.

[osiris0000]

I would like to thank you Matt, for sharing the concept designs! They look great. Nice to know Odin is joining the God forces too.

Also, cannot wait to see gunner and assassin ox souls! :)

[Blade]

loved the q/a session and i think the devs were as honest as possible. people want to belive what they want to belive no matter if you argue against it. but for marvel strike force the devs confirmed that there is a defense boost to make up for the AI being AI. they also said this is industry standard.

but if matt here says there is no AI boost then i want to belive it.

and for those who don't: well you will never get another answer to that question from the devs, would be nice to accept it.

what i took away from the q/a:

1. the devs have plans for the next years which is cool, so the game will be around a bit longer
2. the devs have a great sense of humor
3. and they are passionate about the game and want to create a great game, but they are a very small team which makes things difficult.

i'm more positive about the game for now.

Great post Slauki and I came more or less to the same conclusions.
It was really interesting to read through the q&a and I enjoyed many of the dev's comments and their sense of humor. I'd say it was a great thing, much better than I assumed to be honest. Many answers were quite long and comprehensive with a nice mixture of understanding, explanations, often with a clear yes/no and the sneak for future stuff creates excitement for what is to come.

I was a bit shocked by the huge numbers of bugs that were already solved so that it seems like most of the other (many) bugs we see right now are known, but there seems to be no way to solve them. All of that consumes a lot of time for the people working on these things and I understood that this is also the reason why many other things are not addressed yet. Seems like we all still need a big portion of patience and indulgence, which isn't always easy!
Another thing that was surprising is that the carzy Talis on Gauntlet enemies are a bug. To me it was clear that this was to a bug, but intended, as it was reported right from the first day of Gauntlet, there was no bug-confirmation yet, and I see it in almost every fight. If Kaz is really playing the whole day, he should see that aswell, although we all get different teams (was there a question about it, whether this stays like that or not?).

The thing with the AI boost is tricky. I always said that I can understand that this exists to a certain degree, as it is needed to compensate the (sometimes) stupid AI decisions (which is not that bad anymore I'd say, e.g. if a character could be killed with another hit, the enemy tend to do it now, even if it is a character with class disadvantage). Marvel seems to be a bit more transparent on that point, as Slauki wrote. We all know it is there, and we might need to accept it. We could record some videos to clearly show that the AI has advantages in almost every part of a battle, from the coin toss to the "who gets the small% debuff chance applied on", the "who get's the healing or the extra turns", to the trigger rates of all skill and talisman effects.
I was curious to see how they deal with that question. If they would have said something like "it is somewhere in the code, we don't know, can't find or access it" or "it's a company secret", this would have been a conformation of the existance and this would also mean that they should be able to change it. This would result in a lot of discussion again, so it probably was the "best" solution to insist on saying it does not exist. Guys, just turn it down a bit, secretly, with the next update or so, or stepwise over a couple of updates, and nobody will talk about it again :)

[slauki]

one thing i forgot to ask, maybe someone will be so kind to answer this:

how many people play this game one a regular basis, so several times per week?

would love to see some kind of permanent q/a section if it's not too much work for you guys and gals.
at least it would be nice to these kind of things more frequently, since you made a lot of goodwill through this.

[infinite dreamer]

I really enjoyed the Q & A. They revealed way more than I expected. They have quite a long term plan for the game. Thanks again to them for doing the Q & A. Sounds like new content may be coming around October (silent planet maybe?) Also, sounds like Stranger in a Strange Land, Live After Death and Infinite Dreams :D Eddies are in the works. Concept art is always cool to see as well. Good question slauki, curious how many people play the game?

[Matt_LOTB]

Also.. you contradicted yourself is your own post, Matt.. "It's the same...." ... then a sentence later... "we know the Ai is 'streaky'.." so yeah.... you seem to be tellin' stories. Which is it? the same or "streaky"? Because players don't get any sort of "streaky" behavior.

You have misquoted me here. What I said was:


The AI used by the defending arena team is identical to the AI used by your team on autoplay.

That said - we are aware that the RNG system used by the game is streaky. This is something we would like to eventually address. the streakiness of the RNG does mean that a character, might, for instance, see a string of low probability successes or failures on a given chance based effect. However, this streakiness is equally applicable to the player and enemy teams.

The only coded imbalance in arena is that the player that goes second gets additional power to offset the disadvantage of being attacked.

The AI and the RNG are not the same thing. The RNG can be streaky, but it is streaky for everyone, player and AI alike. You are exactly as likely to get a string of successful effects as the AI is given the same actions. The AI has no advantage here. We did not at any point design nor implement such a weighting system. As above, the only balancing effect we applied to arena battles was to give the player that goes second more power with which to use abilities.

[fred10141988]

Discuss our answers from the Dev Q&A here (https://forum.ironmaidenlegacy.com/showthread.php?12065-Dev-Q-amp-A-Post-your-questions-here!)!

Edit: Matt, Kaz and Llexi will continue to respond to questions they missed over the next week or so.

Hello, Leviathan. About the talismans system, I think devs could reference the mods system of Warframe.

Warframe designs that very well, and I think their mods are really like our talismans. Thank you.

[druid138]

Thanks for the Q&A session, Matt, Kaz, and Llexi! I really appreciated hearing your thoughts about the current state of the game and plans for the future. I've never been more optimistic about the future of the game.

[Yup]

You have misquoted me here. What I said was:



The AI and the RNG are not the same thing. The RNG can be streaky, but it is streaky for everyone, player and AI alike. You are exactly as likely to get a string of successful effects as the AI is given the same actions. The AI has no advantage here. We did not at any point design nor implement such a weighting system. As above, the only balancing effect we applied to arena battles was to give the player that goes second more power with which to use abilities.



Okay.. but that makes little sense if you play the "game". There NO WAY any player EVER gets echo to fire more than 4 times maximum on manual play.. even with 4 perfect hits.... However, the AI gets 6-7-8 turns with Echo OFTEN.

It also doesn't explain why.. a battle can start.. and there's NO WAY ON EARTH I'll win. The AI teams goes first is just keeps getting every buff, every counter, every "possibility" and I get none or next to none. Battle takes several minutes. I lose. 5 seconds later I fight the same team with the same allies all with the same talismans.. the AI goes first again.... on my first turn... and I kill the ENTIRE Ai team in one or two hits. The varying in difficulty MUST be accounted for somewhere. If my team can beat another team in such rapid fashion, then why doesn't it all the time????

This is what has had be essentially "done" with PvP.. there's really almost no logic to it.. no way to get better.. no strategy.. it all seems purely based upon who the AI decides will win. Yes fight more and you clearly get better stats for other fights... but the complete lack of consistency has yet to be explained, other than that the AI gets some advantage at some point.. or my team gains a DISadvantage -- something like my relics are not counted for this match..... then the next match they are. Or there's some "crap shoot" as to how may relics count... some variable.. variance to try and create more "randomness" in battles.

[SinGularity-8786]

Matt_LotB: "In the mean time, we have been trying to make sure that any event packs stay in the store for at least 24 hours after the end of the events, so you have some grace period."
Sadly it didn't work with the frontier talismans for ffe fragments. They disappeared the same moment you got the fragments rewarded.

[Delegreg]

Okay.. but that makes little sense if you play the "game". There NO WAY any player EVER gets echo to fire more than 4 times maximum on manual play.. even with 4 perfect hits.... However, the AI gets 6-7-8 turns with Echo OFTEN.

It also doesn't explain why.. a battle can start.. and there's NO WAY ON EARTH I'll win. The AI teams goes first is just keeps getting every buff, every counter, every "possibility" and I get none or next to none. Battle takes several minutes. I lose. 5 seconds later I fight the same team with the same allies all with the same talismans.. the AI goes first again.... on my first turn... and I kill the ENTIRE Ai team in one or two hits. The varying in difficulty MUST be accounted for somewhere. If my team can beat another team in such rapid fashion, then why doesn't it all the time????

This is what has had be essentially "done" with PvP.. there's really almost no logic to it.. no way to get better.. no strategy.. it all seems purely based upon who the AI decides will win. Yes fight more and you clearly get better stats for other fights... but the complete lack of consistency has yet to be explained, other than that the AI gets some advantage at some point.. or my team gains a DISadvantage -- something like my relics are not counted for this match..... then the next match they are. Or there's some "crap shoot" as to how may relics count... some variable.. variance to try and create more "randomness" in battles.

Hey yup, some bits of coder knowledge that might help understand those things.

Computers aren't designed to handle randomness, be it to create it or to handle it. Everything comes down to a series of 0 and 1 that makes sense, nothing is random.

When a coder needs to 'generate' a 'random thing' it all boils down to getting a 'random number'

Getting a random number is done by calling some bit of code that tries to ba as random as possible, but in fact, isn't.

Most random generating bits of code are actually giving out a series of precalculated numbers, the series is so complex it looks random.

To further increase randomness most use what we call a 'seed' which is the starting point in the complex series.

This is done for each random thing needed (whether you hit or not, effects proc'ing, shields, amounts of damage, etc)

When you see more streaks when the play is faster (like in autoplay) it often is because the 'seed' used is based on your devices clock, so really fast play uses really close seeds, giving really close results (streaks).

What needs to be done is probably change those seeds. But to do that you need to do it globally (you can't just change the seed once, it needs to be done for each and every random thing generated in the game so it's consistent everywhere). It's easy if from the start you have isolated your random number generation in a single place, but since it's a rather common small code block, chances are it's been copied and pasted and refactoring it now is a significant task.

Depending on how the various historical coders have behaved and cooperated, you might also find out that actually modifying the slightest thing can be tricky and cause strong side effects.

Or even worse, the team could be dependent on some third party number generator that they have no control over and that's so strongly tied to the code it can't easily be replaced.

Here you go, just wanted to shed some lights on the maybe's, hope that helps you understand Matt's answers and stance.

Now, where I actually understand and agree with you is, since this game's release, there's been ample reports and ample time to undergo those tasks that are detrimental to the player's experience.

I've enjoyed the Q&A, got some answers, some confirmations and some grey zones, but what shocks me the most is the team's stance or attitude.

First of all, problems are just temporary, be patient because we don't have enough ressources to go as fast as we want.

And that should alleviate all our concerns.

Grinding 12 hours per day during some events ? Be patient. Losing to impossible teams ? Be patient. Not getting due rewards ? Be patient. New content ? Be patient. Bugs ? Be patient. Need info ? Be patient.

We have an active community that would actually be okay to help the team, alleviate their workload, test things out, build things around the game to answer people's requests, and the answer is... Be patient we'll do it ourselves.

I find it kind of sad.

The second part though terrifies me.

All their errors, miscommunications, failures and bugged content that cost hundreds of players things that they spent dozen of hours building or good dollars buying, all those should just be forgotten and forgiven, because you know, they work hard, and it's only a game.

They came out on that AI boost thing like it was a personal attack, they find we are salty, but we should handle losing value, however indirect, smile and say ' that's ok, they're working hard and it's just a game '

In the end, they're saying the players that felt robbed, cheated or stinged by their shortcomings are the bad guys.

And that terrifies me....

[The Educated fool]

The Q and A was cool, and definitely left me feeling better about the game than I have in a while. I agree with those who said that it was fun to see the sense of humour being brought to the answers. Specifically, thanks, Matt for answering my questions so succinctly! The Dumb & Dumber meme gave me a chuckle. :cool:

That said, succinct as your three yes answers were, telling me that there was a chance that the things I proposed might happen in the future, they were... rather vague, all the same. ;)

To keep your answers succinct, in terms of follow-up, how about tossing out a few odds of the things I mentioned actually happening? :cool:

From one to ten, what are the odds...

1. Of The Prisoner
2. Of the Corrupt General
3. Of Warrior Troll
4. Of Angel of Fear

seeing returns to their original states?

5. Of The Nomad
6. Of the Allied General
7. Of The Witch Doctor

getting tweaks?

8. Of seeing additional talismans added as rewards to the Brave New World Dungeons?

9. Of seeing characters initially added to the game as purchase-only (Sirius, Gangland Eddie) available to earn, or purchase by other means?

I eagerly await your succinct clarification, good sir. :cool:

Up the Irons!

- TEF

[druid138]

Reading through the Q&A again, is Matt_LOTB hinting at a Halloween new content release here (note the italics)?

5902

[Yup]

stuff...


I'm not completely ignorant regarding coding.. surely something built on a seed is a library or function which is then called from al the "various bits of code". An "include" if you will..... So, one change results in updates across the app.

But of course, there's no way to know that everything was built properly to begin with.

And I agree, they attitude about the entire thing is what I find really annoying. I mean a Q&A where if you don't bow down and just blindly accept everything it's YOUR fault... nice customer service... I know I can be "challenging" or present and stick to issues which other MAY want simply swept under the rug.. but that doesn't mean I'm intentionally trying to be difficult.. I simply don't accept "squirming" as an answer easily -- it's always clear to me when I hit on an area the devs would rather not detail or go into.. they avoid it hoping it'll go away rather than answer anything forthright. -- just like they will continue to avoid my questions regarding difficulty variable for battles. I'm nto asking for ANY proprietary secrets.

[thealchemist]

I missed most of this so only speed reading up on it now. Here are my takes and input.

Seems Silent planet won't be happening this year, which is a little disappointing since its been nearly 2 years since BNW came out. But it does sound like its not just another dungeon and more complex so hopefully worth the wait. Maybe its part of the medium/longer term plan to provide a way of farming for cosmic talisman material? I only suggest this since the word "cosmic" is a similar astronomical theme to a "silent planet" but hey I could be wrong like I usually am...

On a similar vein an update to BNW must be on the board imo. Not so much the graphics but like was mentioned a dungeon for each class so we can obtain gunner and assassin class talismans and runes easier. Every time I try to get purple or yellow runes I tend to end up with more of blue and green instead. It would also allow the ability to farm some of the talismans that have been released since BNW went live that aren't available anywhere else at the moment. And there has been lots of them! I dont expect the high powered ones like warlord but ones like shadow or power or ghost etc. Finally some new characters could be added such as Gunner and Assassin Robo Scouts to complete the makeover?

The other thing that was brought up was ability to convert items. The "Fusion" idea has got legs. Pretty sure it was brought up years ago, maybe by Slauki or Osiris perhaps? Player trading would change the economy but fusing/converting items wouldn't. Need more 3* evo runes? Simply convert X amount 1* and X amount 2* evo runes into X amount 3* evo runes as an example. If something like this was to be implemented I'd like to see it include talismans especially cosmic. Got a heap of pointless white T1s? Fuse them into a white T2 or T3 instead. Or combine it with a blue T1 to make a purple T1? Of course the level and evolved state of a talisman and their effect would have to come into play (and some limit would need to be in place, like only whites and blues could be converted or whatever) but their resell value is basically non-existent at the moment so something else needs to come into the game that allows us to reduce the number of white T1s or talismans with the same effect that also gives us value for our resources spent on gaining these talismans.

Finally it was mentioned its in the pipeline regarding cosmic talisman evo material but I hope we can gain more 1 and 2** T1 cosmic evo runes in the shorter term, not just Ashes of Ice, Demons seeds etc. Either through events (maybe a sac event that rewards catalyst souls as a bonus per higher tier sacrifice for a change from the event souls or hearts) or items can be purchased using other resources such as ironite/gold/etc. As the evolution and similar events reward the same number of T1/T2/T3 evo runes but we end up with A LOT more T1 talismans than T2 or T3. Also maybe an adjustment in the evolution events rewarding extra T1 runes as reward could be in order? I bring this up because I have several T1 talismans that I cannot evolve just once due to lack of T1 evo runes. I get ashes of ice, book of life, etc are meant to be somewhat rare so its harder to evolve these to their max level but the fact its basically not possible to level up and evolve a T1 beyond level 10 due to this is a sore point to me.

[Ace]

The worst product ever by the Iron Maiden strikes again. Bugs of the week: neverending extra turns by the Raven Witch, not working talismans in the arena, same opponents after refreshing challenger list in arena, and the "normal" bugs of course. Bravo, bravo, bravissimoooooooooo !

[MetalKing]

=The other thing that was brought up was ability to convert items. The "Fusion" idea has got legs. Pretty sure it was brought up years ago, maybe by Slauki or Osiris perhaps? Player trading would change the economy but fusing/converting items wouldn't. Need more 3* evo runes? Simply convert X amount 1* and X amount 2* evo runes into X amount 3* evo runes as an example. If something like this was to be implemented I'd like to see it include talismans especially cosmic. Got a heap of pointless white T1s? Fuse them into a white T2 or T3 instead. Or combine it with a blue T1 to make a purple T1? Of course the level and evolved state of a talisman and their effect would have to come into play (and some limit would need to be in place, like only whites and blues could be converted or whatever) but their resell value is basically non-existent at the moment so something else needs to come into the game that allows us to reduce the number of white T1s or talismans with the same effect that also gives us value for our resources spent on gaining these talismanse.

I brought up the idea of fusing characters about the same time I suggested build your own Eddie. The fusion would allow you to fuse similar characters anything with the same name but different class; and pick out abilities of your choice on the fused character. It would still be one of the two classes unless the designers allow characters to belong to more than one class. In addition it would be at the experience level that the sum of the two characters experience would allow. A 20th level and a 50th might make the new character a 65th level. Artwork would be a choice of whatever two characters you fused unless the designers created special artwork for something they designed as a fusion possibly for an event. 10_25-17 I suggested guilds.

[thealchemist]

I brought up the idea of fusing characters about the same time I suggested build your own Eddie. The fusion would allow you to fuse similar characters anything with the same name but different class; and pick out abilities of your choice on the fused character. It would still be one of the two classes unless the designers allow characters to belong to more than one class. In addition it would be at the experience level that the sum of the two characters experience would allow. A 20th level and a 50th might make the new character a 65th level. Artwork would be a choice of whatever two characters you fused unless the designers created special artwork for something they designed as a fusion possibly for an event. 10_25-17 I suggested guilds.

While I do remember your post about a build your own Eddie, the initial idea I was referring to was purely about resources. As with RNG you tend to end up with lots of one type of resource and lack in another. Trading of items was brought up first but has been knocked on its head due to it would change the economy of the game and open up possibility to exploit. Whereas converting or fusing resources you already own wouldn't change the economy and would give players the option to get their hands on some resources they lack instead of relying on RNG. Its either that or the devs increase the drop rates of these resources but they have always been reluctant to do that so...

Back to your idea, maybe a one time event where you could either fuse 2 Eddies together or somehow "build your own" by selecting which skills you want, talisman slots etc would be interesting to say the least. Would it be feasible though, not sure. I know other games have a similar function but my fears are around bugs. I would imagine a fused character would have twice the bugs of a normal one lol And then this forum would have a melt down...

[Natasmai]

The worst product ever by the Iron Maiden strikes again. Bugs of the week: neverending extra turns by the Raven Witch, not working talismans in the arena, same opponents after refreshing challenger list in arena, and the "normal" bugs of course. Bravo, bravo, bravissimoooooooooo !

Ok, so what characters were you using and what talisman did they have on? Because Raven Witch can legitimately take enough extra turns to wipe an entire team. So can Magma Eddie for that matter.

[infinite dreamer]

I forgot to ask at the time, but I was wondering if there are plans for any non-Eddie gunners or sentinels in the works that have fury moves? Pretty sure Horus is the only sentinel with one and I don't think any non-Eddie gunners have a fury move. Wrathchild looks like he has a passive I think. Unless I'm forgetting someone? Also, it would be great if they brought back the limited time free entry BNW dungeon events like Dismay No More.

[MetalKing]

Any more dev answers? They said they would be answering the rest of the questions that came in on time within a week, (7 days is tomorrow). I've checked back on the q and a thread. Perhaps there is another link that someone knows of?

[Yup]

If course not.. if they didn't answer something they WANT you to forget about asking.

They carefully avoided answering anything which may actually impact their standing with users... or lower their income due to the misrepresentation which is so prevalent in the app.

[IronWarrior]

Ok, so what characters were you using and what talisman did they have on? Because Raven Witch can legitimately take enough extra turns to wipe an entire team. So can Magma Eddie for that matter.

Assassin Anubis! I've seen him get 16 turns in a row twice now... Not so cool :(

[Ip4]

Assassin Anubis! I've seen him get 16 turns in a row twice now... Not so cool :(

not 16 it was 35 in a row few times in arena...

[Mario.Ahner]

"Once and for all: there is no boost applied to the defending AI team in the arena, as far as any person working on the game is aware. I went and had a chat with the engineers who built our most recent improvements to the arena system just now to confirm this. The AI used by the defending arena team is identical to the AI used by your team on autoplay."

Did you ever think about the possibility, that there could be a bug involved (ok, I know, LotB is almost bug free and everything is working like it should). But there were once relics, that should only work in gauntlet, but also worked in arena. Maybe that gauntlet advantage crawled silently and secretly to the arena?