State of the Nation - Summer 2021

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Welcome Troopers to another State of the Nation!

The last 8 months have been incredibly busy with tons of awesome stuff happening in the game. We’ve celebrated the 40th album Anniversary of Killers, released the first two parts of The Isles of Avalon, had two amazing collaborations with Amon Amarth and Lacuna Coil and implemented a number of player requested improvements including expanded inventories and changes to Brave New World.

This Fall and Winter seasons are going to be huge! Iron Maiden’s 17th Studio Album, Senjutsu, is set to release on September 3rd! We’ll be supporting it with incredible in-game content, including a new Mega event, powerful new characters and a thematically aligned Raid Boss...

3rd Raid Boss Incoming!
We’ll be launching our 3rd Raid Boss in September, though it’s not who you may expect! Our original plans had us looking to release the Celtic god, Cernunnos, which many Troopers correctly guessed based on the styling of the 3rd Raid Bosses banner. However, in light of the upcoming album, we seized the opportunity to align our 3rd Raid Boss with Senjutsu’s themes to fully celebrate Iron Maiden’s first new studio album release in 6 years.

We’ve designed this latest Raid Boss to be a truly formidable opponent who wields the power of the sun. Can you guess who it is?

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For those who were looking forward to Cernunnos, don’t despair! We still intend to launch this character in some form in the future.

Raid Boss Reward Updates

In addition to a new Raid Boss, we’ll be making a couple other updates to this feature. Specifically we’ll be updating the number of points required to reach SSS rank from 1 million to 5 million points, with other levels scaled up accordingly.

Raid Boss has been available as a feature for nearly a year and half now, and is due for rebalancing. Reaching SSS should be a bit of a challenge and it has become increasingly easier for the majority of active clans to triple the 1 million mark within the week with a relatively low amount of effort. This rebalancing is especially necessary as the ecosystem of the game has shifted. Some of the things we looked at in making this decision was that more powerful characters have since become more widely available (monthly mega event characters, Clan Gods etc.), there are now more ways to get Sands of Blood since we launched the feature, and powerful talismans like Clan themed 5-sets have been added to Clan Medal Souls.

This rebalance will also touch upon rewards to make them even more enticing! We’ll be rebalancing the different tiers of weekly rewards, as well as improving the Odin and Baphomet drop tables. This September will also see us adding powerful Deadly Sin themed talisman sets to the Clan Medal Souls: Lust, Gluttonous, Envious, Prideful, and Wrathful, as well as adding the following Talismans to the Clan store (100 tribute each, all subtypes): Midgard, Giant, Amulet, Asgard and Runic.

Avalon Part 3 Coming This Fall!
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The 3rd and final part of the Isles of Avalon will be launching this fall! Expect more quests, the conclusion of the Avalon storyline, two additional difficulty settings and Skull Quests. Bonus: Complete the Isle of Avalon on all three difficulty settings, and you’ll earn a free Eddie!

Frontier Store changes incoming!

Later this fall we plan to make some changes to the Frontier Store. Many of the characters on offer have been available for years. In the interest of improving the offers in other areas of the game, as well as freeing up more space in the Frontier Store we will be making the following changes at the end of October:

• Trooper Eddie, Lady Azov, Bastion, and Warlord characters will be moved to the Trooper Store and be made available for Trooper Badges
• Eternity Eddie, Clairvoyant, Wrath and Beelzebub characters will be moved to the Arena Store and be made available for Iron Coins.

These 8 characters will be removed from the Frontier Store at the end of October and will be placed in the locations stated above at the end of November. We wanted to give everyone enough time to make a plan and buy any of the characters that will soon be shifting over.

We’ll also be making a couple new additions to the store in September! Expect to see Paschendale Eddie and Professor Parabiosis in the Frontier Store for 8000 and 4000 Frontier Coins respectively.

The Frontier Store will continue to shift into early 2022. We will of course give a couple months notice ahead of any changes to allow for adequate preparation!

New Player Survey!

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We put out our latest player feedback survey last week. Have you participated yet? We’d love to hear from you. Survey responses have helped guide a lot of our work for events, features and improvements in the past.

Be sure to join in today: https://forms.gle/QSGPmxXgUeTco8aZ6

We’ll be accepting responses until August 20th!

That’s all for now Troopers! We can’t wait to show you what we have in store for the Senjutsu release, as well as our plans for Halloween, Day of the Dead and Christmas!

Up the Irons!

It will take a moment to digest all of this but thank you for giving us a ton of extra time to deal with frontier shop shift. I think some are still shaky after that soul rebalance that came with only a few hours of notice.

UPdate: Did some quick math, new 5 Million target is impossible without buying extra blood even in a full clan even without having to clear the lower levels.

30 members * 5000 points for clearing bap * 21 naturally occurring blood = 3.15 Million

This new boss will have to be nearly 8000 points or hopefully we start getting more blood fast.

As a member of a clan who easily hits that 1 million, I like the idea of getting better rewards, but the new top tier should still be obtainable without everybody in the clan buying blood (especially since it seems ironite has really dried up in raids as of late).

Well, this is a lot to take in; lots of good, some bad.

For one, Senjutsu mega event sounds awesome. Really looking forward to the Eddie from the video and this new Raid boss, who I assume is Amaterasu if we are going off Senjutsu's themes.

Avalon Part III is looking to be exciting; I am really curious as to who this new Eddie could possibly be. We already have King Arthur and Merlin, so I'm not sure.

Frontier store changes are cool; it'll be nice for newer players to be able use the other currencies for the Eternals and Trooper characters.

Finally, Raid Boss changes. I'm gonna say straight out; not a good change in my mind. Yes, raid bosses are kinda pushovers with certain clans and raiding doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get to 1 million. Increasing it 5 times though for SSS? Too much in my mind. I understand that certain clans have decided to go for astronomically high scores, but that doesn't represent the majority of clans, especially new players. Kinda ridiculous to increase everything because of a few players. However, the sins talismans being added are a nice change, and I hope the changes to the drop tables give everyone some more great rewards.

Overall, 2021 has gone well so far for LotB in my mind, but we shall see how it continues into the remainder of the year. Up the irons.

On the point of raid bosses:

Even if this new God gives out as much as 10k, we're still going to have the same stale-ness that is currently plaguing raids.

Once you can clear Bap X, that's all you clear because it gives the most points and best rewards.

I'd argue make all the bosses give 10k and rework the reward drops so that players fight the boss that drops the loot players want.

Quote:

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We’ve designed this latest Raid Boss to be a truly formidable opponent who wields the power of the sun. Can you guess who it is?

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Amaterasu?

1 million raid points to 5 million is a massive jump. You say current raid boss rewards will be adjusted, does that include raid paints upon defeating them? An increase in the points awarded for the lower bosses would definitely make them more appealing and mean that clan members who are newer/have less strong characters and teams are actually able to contribute more to the total rather than relying on the clan members with full teams being able to just take out Baphomet X a dozen or more times each.

Are we ever going to see a Bespoke Cosmic for Baphomet and other awakenable toons that haven't got one

Senjutsu! From the review I read it's going to be epic. Steve wrote 4 new 9min+ songs and I can't wait to see the content we get from those alone on top of the other 6 amazing tracks! Also excited to see if the new Mega event starts on album drop day or waits a month. I'm hoping for the former.

All right, I've moved to another game (gfl) but sure, let's see if this s.o.n. is convincing.

Oh no, Amaterasu instead of Ra. My day is already ruined.

Raid boss rework: Currently you just rush to baph X because it's the best one for rewards and that's all that matters. Multiplying the requirements by five isn't game balancing, it's just creating sponges because you don't know how to halt whales and powerplayers, and end up hurting small time players. As usual.

Frontier store: less toons, and you add an Eddie (I guess that makes sense) and some OC fanfic guy that looks like crap and hasn't been seen since his event. FC store remains an event only expenditure.

Yes, I skipped Avalon. Arthurian legend is not medieval, it's set after the Romans left Britain, steel plate wasn't a thing. A Welsh/Pictish theme would do far more justice than a post Norman invasion, late medieval English theme.

Let's see if the Senjutsu Eddie ends up being a 75 soul toon with how things are going. I love the band, but you guys are a difficult bunch to root for.

"now more ways to get Sands of Blood..."

Currently sitting on 32k in Tributes. How about letting us buy SoB using Tributes since there is nothing else worthwhile to spend them on?

Just further to my post above, I think that they ought to make the lower raid bosses give a proportionally higher reward than they currently do in terms of raid points. People should be able to get points for the clan no matter what their ability and the individual rewards in terms of what people get for completing the bosses that are within their ability should then be scaled by level with the clan rewards giving everyone a good boost each week.

Basically, everyone gets individual rewards based on the level of boss they can beat, but the clan as a whole all get higher level rewards if everyone contributes, no matter what level they compete at.

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Originally Posted by kkkreg5

"now more ways to get Sands of Blood..."

Currently sitting on 32k in Tributes. How about letting us buy SoB using Tributes since there is nothing else worthwhile to spend them on?

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Well, you sort of can. If you buy the fragments for all of the norse characters every week, you can exchange them for SoB.

If you increase the raid points needed for SSS, it just means that clans will only want veteran players who can beat the bosses and lower level players will get kicked because they can't pull their weight.

I am part of a mixed-level clan and I am ok with that because the higher level players can put in the effort and get the team to SSS every week; we don't clear it by a huge margin but we make sure that all players get good rewards and it helps the newer players advance. If the scoring system/tier requirements change and you can only hit SSS by having a clan full of dedicated boss-killers I only see that as being bad for the game.

Trooper and arena store looks great although that's gonna suck for lower leveled people as troopers ain't always used

Raid bosses love the and agree with it I'm in a clan where 4 members basically make the clan get SSS the rest are too green to help much but that's a problem of its own

Correct GrimDusk! For a grand total of 60 per month plus natural refills and other once a month offers and if you have enough of those frags. There is also the occasional drop from Tribute souls but for me, that's rare. Most of the "vets" have enough teams to do close to 100 runs a week if enough SoB was available.

I'm just saying we can purchase SoT and SoW with other in game currency or straight up cash. If I'm not mistaken, we can't do that for SoB as of now.

Given all these changes, things that would be nice to see:

Better ways to see which of your troopers are not running your toons every day:
* Afaict the Last Seen always refers to how long since that person has been in game (useful when choosing the person as a trooper), not since they've actually run your trooper (useful ongoing). Makes it hard to see who is simply not reciprocating and giving you back trooper badges.

Same also goes for clans:
* The detail someone can see doesn't seem to tell you if they're checking in, running raids, etc. I am pretty sure that even clan leaders see no difference to the rest of the clan in that respect. Makes it hard to see who isn't participating at all or hammers hard during events but otherwise totally slacks off (eg: not even checking in), even if it's just so someone can check in on them or see if they can spread their effort about.

Redeeming some souls in the book is too costly in gold coins:
* Things like Mythical Clan souls for example, which feed back into participation in clan events. The top end of this cost needs to be ramped down a bit, and the rest scaled to suit. The bottom end is fine, but if you plot all the costs on a graph (simply ordered by cost), the slope is too aggressive IMO.

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Originally Posted by Cefiar

Same also goes for clans:
* The detail someone can see doesn't seem to tell you if they're checking in, running raids, etc. I am pretty sure that even clan leaders see no difference to the rest of the clan in that respect. Makes it hard to see who isn't participating at all or hammers hard during events but otherwise totally slacks off (eg: not even checking in), even if it's just so someone can check in on them or see if they can spread their effort about.

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You're correct. Clan leaders don't get any more information than everyone else. Checkin gives 1 contrib and spending a sands of blood gives 3. We can generally tell who's raiding (they get at least 10 contrib a day) but we can't tell if they're doing no damage to Odin1 or fully killing BaphX.


I REALLY liked DragonMat's suggestion to make lower level raid bosses give more raid points. Giving lower level people a way to contribute meaningfully is good for everyone.

Can we consider not needing to kill the lower level bosses to unlock the upper level ones? I've got two wonderful team players in my clan who clear the way every week, but I'm sure that's not common. It would be much better to let us fight whichever boss we want from the start. Imagine if we had to fight through LoL 1-9 every day before we could do 10. It wouldn't be fun, and it's not fun for Baph.

And, finally, the hardest part of raiding is the drudgery of moving our talismans around for each fight. The second hardest part is all the scrolling required. Moving talisman sets as sets would improve things immeasurably. And having a flag we could set on our characters and then sort by it would solve a ton of problems. I'd flag all 120 of my baph characters and cut my scrolling down 4 fold.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kkkreg5

"now more ways to get Sands of Blood..."

Currently sitting on 32k in Tributes. How about letting us buy SoB using Tributes since there is nothing else worthwhile to spend them on?

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This would be useful!👌

Also, while we're talking about changes to raid rewards, I'd like to request that clan souls stop having the option to give the talisman sets that we can buy in the clan store. It's always a disappointment to get banner or tower, etc.

Hello!
First thing I want to joke...
Thank you, developers, for the involuntary extension of summer. Indeed, in the game about the third part of the plot of Avalon it is written, which is expected at the end of summer. Since when in Britain the September - summer month I do not know... This, in Russia, is such a thing as "Indian summer" (just September). Don't steal! It's not good.)))
Regarding the new boss and the change in rating from 1 million for SSS to 5 million is quite adequate. Unless it would be nice to also make a rebalance in plus for clans, namely, an increase in the maximum possible level (with an increase in the maximum possible number of clan members) - from 20 to 25 (from 30 to 35 members, respectively) and an increase in the maximum number of blood sands (5 to 7 or 8).
Thank you for your attention.