ARRGGHHHHHH yeah i am frustrated with the game play.
Greetings and Salutations All,
This is a rant because I've really gotten annoyed with game play especially the last 6 months. The only response that most of us are getting from tech support and bug reporting is, Thanks we will add this to the list of things we are working on, and then not see it fixed months later or in some cases over a year. But hey we've had lots of (ie way too freaking many) events with lots of new toons and additional methods of trying to separate us from out money.
Currently about the only way you are really able to level toons up is via buying stuff. It is really REALLY fun seeing lvl 30 players with 5 star maxed toons, in terms of level, talismans and probably also skill shards. I am going to leave the dumbing of the game down over the last several patches alone. There isn't anything I can say about dumbing a game down that is even remotely polite. And doing it for the noobs who whine about it being difficult is the dumbest reason ever.
The drop rates of leveling items has gone from ok to crap to stupidly good, to virtually non-existent and numerous variations in between. Can we get this evened out? Than again the drop rates for most items (especially in the skull dungeons - more on that in a minute) is a fluctuating mess throughout all the dungeons. The variation of loot quality and quantity is very odd when compared to the sands of time costs. Again this is an item that was supposedly being worked on and being fixed. Maybe the entire sands of time concept needs to be revisited in regards to loot quality and quantity. This might require dropping or raising the cost of each dungeon throughout the entire game though. The cost for the skull dungeons is now much more reflective of the overall loot reward for sands of time cost. BNW doesn't match the reward for cost of sands and actual time to beat the boss.
The actual drop items in the skull dungeons (except the talisman ones) is improving more or less. I really do not need another freeze talisman. Seems that the talisman skull dungeons gets stuck handing out the same rewards time after time. Biggest differences are the number of talismans you get at a time (got 5 freeze talismans once, yeah I sold them). Currently it also seems the evo stuff has gotten odd in its drop rate and type. Used to be able to count on both talisman and character evo stuff going through all of the skull dungeons. Can't do that now. Seems to be slanted very hard to character evo items but not the star upgrade items.
The sands of time is a decent concept to keep a person from playing and beating everything at once. It is also appears to be a decent method of setting the loot quality and quantity in a dungeon. Except it just might be kinda outa wack. This is really noticeable in the BNW sections for the loot to cost ratio. And speaking of which actual time should be calculated into BNW rewards.
Biggest issue with the sands of time is we are stuck at 80. Level 100 with 80 sands of time max. If you figure just skull quests and the lords of light areas that adds up to cost over 80 sands of time. Skull quests now cost 44, lords of light are 70, BNW areas are 120. That leads us to either spend ironite and get a refill or put the game down.
Lets talk about talismans and the arena. They are broken when put together. The number of times I have seen extra turns both individually and group (without a character capable of either), shields not working or reflecting correctly, the prisoner not functioning correctly or other characters not functioning correctly with, characters starting out a turn with new buffs that are cast by another character at the end of the turn, other effects working inconsistently or not at all (esp the guard effect with red troll). That looks like a good list and I've probably forgotten a few. The prisoner interactions really screw up pvp. Both when there are 2 prisoners fighting or one and the red angel of whatever, its the extra turn if his team kills first that causes the problem.
And the arena. Other than talisman issues the next would be who goes first. I would love to see a breakdown of this cause I really have a problem believing my stats are anywhere near 50/50. Would recommend a change in this. Have four cards show up pick one and it determines who goes first. And yes have it where all 4 can be yes and all 4 can be no or any combination in between. Typically the team that goes first wins. That said I can go either and win more often than not with my standard line up BUT that same said line up can't win worth a flip when it's the defense setup. Kinda makes me wonder what the difference is other than I am playing and the defense is the AI is playing (which fluctuates between an IQ of 75 and 175). Speaking of the AI, it needs to be evened out among all the characters. It seems that certain characters are "smarter" than others. Or else its using the ability to see what the actual stats are for characters and picking the highest vulnerability for its attacks, which by the way would be cheating.
Something I haven't figured out is how certain effects affect characters. Example the Corrupt General has a max chance of 25% to stun when using the All Hail attack. Does this mean a random generator is running through a set of numbers and if it hits the right number a character is stunned and that is that. Or is the random generator generating a number that should stun but there is a save based on the magic resistance that can negate it allowing the character to not be stunned. Basically the question boils down to is there a saving throw or not to be stunned. Based on what I have seen I am going to say there isn't a saving throw. This brings up the next question of why in the heck not? Sorry but having my butt handed to me one too many times from being stunned or frozen (especially frozen) where 3/4 or 4/4 or 2/3 and 3/3 being incapacitated is freaking annoying. That should be a 1 in a million chance not a regular occurrence.
Which means there shouldn't be a single character with an innate incapacitating ability chance higher than say 40%. 75% is just well dumb and overpowered, especially since there isn't a talisman or character to negate that type of percentage (and there shouldn't be one either).
Moving the bonus dungeons to the skull dungeon and out of the existing dungeon worlds they were in wasn't a great move. Now why in the heck do we want to go back into the worlds once they are beaten? Other than "achievements" I can't think of a single reason to. Well other than to attempt to get a specific talisman or something along those lines. Along those lines the skull dungeon is still buggy for loading each dungeon, entering, and exiting the location.
Is it just me or is anyone else having an "End game type of experience" currently. Just seems that everything is brutally stagnant and nothing really happening. And on that note we should be no where near an end game type of experience with a game just over a year old. Oh and the 1 year anniversary sucked hard. 75 ironite and a couple rare souls... really? Well that's what I got and I was checking daily to see if there was something else for that week. So I either managed to miss it, it wasn't talked about or nothing else happened. No clue which of those it is either.
And a question I would like to ask, Was there a management change about 6-7 months ago that changed the entire direction of the game? If so, did this impact the dev team in majorly negative ways? Cause it would explain a lot things. Especially like why there are events every other week and the not very subtle how to separate people from money vibe.
In conclusion, Thank you for reading, commenting and so forth. The opinions here are mine and mine alone. You can happily share them or disagree with them and that's ok. But as far as the devs and such, people can someone stand up and tell the higher ups to chill on things while yall fix the damned bugs so that we don't get too annoyed and leave. The game is great, gameplay is decent (except for arena), character choices are good, and the potential is awesome. But when an update half breaks the game there is a problem. When there are numerous events and specials while bugs and issues dont appear to get fixed, there is a problem.
To paraphrase something I read at game release, We are going to make this game accessible for all players both those who buy things and those that don't. Can we get back to this???
Continuation and some info about the Companies involved in this game...
Crazypants, thank you for the link. It provided some rather good info.
And thank you everyone else who commented and such. Now for some follow up. Yes I am writing another rant about events in a few minutes.
Butr about the companies involved in IMLB itself. It is a little convoluted and complicated, but here is what I have dug up and so forth. There is some speculation in this but it is based on information available in the links already posted, linkedin, and the UK one I will post.
Ok, here we go.
There are 4 companies involved in this game. They are: Iron Maiden itself (mgmt company etc), 50cc, Roadhouse Games, and Nodding Frog. Iron Maiden and Phantom are input and such and really don't play much of a role other than to license the name etc. etc.. 50cc is as far as I can determine an I.P. Company aka Internet Presence Company. Very little about them that I have managed to find other than they predate - 2013 for 50cc- Nodding Frog -2014- and are supposed to be involved with some large names on the internet. Nodding Frog is probably a held company for 50cc. Meaning 50cc basically owns them but they are not the same company. Ceo is the same.
Roadhouse, which was based out of Vancouver BC, ran out of money last year due to change in online environment and companies changing what they wanted etc.. Roadhouse wrote the game and provided the initial developer work and related work. Nodding Frog, the game concept developer, took over the dev team in B.C.. This is what caused the couple 3 months of basically nothing happening in game than BOOM explosion of things. Most of which were not bug fixes. So during this time frame Roadhouse "became" Nodding Frog. Which of course means there were going to be the typical issues over compensation, who is in charge, management issues, and etc. etc.. This is all the normal items and issues after an incident like this happens. It also means that people probably left and there was turnover and so on.
From here we can pretty much all guess what happened. Things started to get settled down and there was implementation of a schedule of events, new areas/characters, and a hard budget. So we are probably stuck up against the budget aspect for bugs getting fixed and for the game to be profitable which provides us with a slew of insane/inane completion events and related. Those events are the lovely nickle and dime to make money since it is technically a free to play.
The following link provides some fascinating reading though. Especially when reading through the filling history and people sections. And yes this is publically available information that showed up in a search.
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09321859
My second biggest complaint about the events and lots of new characters is really really simple. How "balanced" are these new characters to the existing ones. Answer: mixed. Plus last I heard this wasn't Pokemon where we have to catch em all.
My Biggest complaint is that the bugs aren't getting fixed. It's always fun to see the ones that are supposedly fixed show back up because of an event. This shows a lack of time to verify updates/events and a complete disregard for fixing existing issues.
I am going to reiterate something I said earlier: Why are we effectively at end of game with a game that is only a year and a half old. Where are the actual updates and continuation of the story? BNW doesn't count as an update because it is basically an upgraded lord of light dungeon.
And that I think will wrap this up. Now to go write the rant about events, nickle and dime, and related.
