Dev Q&A - Post your questions here!

[Leviathan]

Hello Troopers,

Welcome to our first ever Dev Q&A!

The Devs have begun to answer your questions! They'll be answering from 10am-4pm PT today!
Here’s how we will be doing it:

• The first 3 replies in this thread will be dedicated to the dev answers so you don’t have to go scrolling through several pages to find them all. Each reply will contain answers from a different person.
• We’ll be ‘quoting’ the questions we answer within these replies, so everyone is able to follow along and see what and who has been answered.
• We’ll be going into the thread as we answer your questions and editing the original post to signal that it has been answered. If we see duplicate questions, we’ll be editing these comments to include a link to the reply with the answer.

Here are the devs you will be hearing from throughout the day:

Available from 10-4pm PT:

Kaz - Legacy of the Beast’s Designer - Answers will be found here!
Matt - Legacy of the Beast’s Producer - Answers will be found here!:

Available from 11:30-1:30pm PT:

Llexi Leon - Iron Maiden Management's Creative Director - Answers will be found here!

We will do our best to answer everyone’s questions within the time frame allotted. Thank you for your patience!

Q&A Ground Rules:

Please phrase your questions as clearly as possible. If your post does not contain a clearly identifiable question, it may not be addressed.

We expect everyone to follow our Rules and Regulations. Please take the time to read through and familiarize yourself with this code of conduct. Posts that break the rules, especially those that contain the following elements, will be deleted from this thread:

• Harassment; insulting or abusive language
• Posts that are made simply for the purpose of trolling

Discussion Topics!

We’re here to answer questions you have regarding the Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast game, comics, tour, figurines etc.!

Not sure what to ask? Sends us questions regarding upcoming features, character ideas you’ve been putting together, battle tips and events!

And while you’re here, we’re curious about a few things as well!

• How did you find about the game?
• Were you an Iron Maiden fan first, or was the game an introduction?
• How long have you been playing?

Feel free to include your answers to the questions above, or simply submit your own questions! We’ll work hard to answer as many inquiries as we can.

[Matt_LOTB]

http://i.imgur.com/vXRlODe.gif

Ahh, after ten thousand years I'm free! Time to answer questions!

Hi Everyone, I'm Matt_LOTB. I'm Producer on Legacy of the Beast. I've been with the game since it first entered production, in various roles- so if you've been with the game for a long time, you may remember me. If you're newer, nice to meet you

Let's get cracking.

-m

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Are there any plans to try and sort out the inconsistencies in PvP?

i.e. Talisman passives only working after character revival for the AI team.

Let me assure you that inconsistent ability behaviour has not eluded our notice. With every update we try to include as many ability fixes as we can fit in. However, The abilities system underlying the game is large, complex, and carries with it a high potential for unexpected outcomes - touching the system carries a lot of risk. We have been working internally over the last few months to make our processes and tools moe robust in order to take risk out of making changes to this system, and it's our hope that we can start addressing some of the more fundamental underlying issues that have been been pain points for you through the life of the game.

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When will improvements to the inventory system be available, if ever?

Better sorting, finding, viewing talismans on characters, selling.. etc.

These ideas and many others are in our product backlog. I can't give you a timeline for development, but we are constantly trying to fit a wide range of quality of life improvements into our updates, based on our available development bandwitdh and our current development priorities.

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Have you guys considered Carlos's "skin" idea, originally discussed here? Generating revenue by selling cosmetic-only enhancements could generate more income without directly affecting player balance. Thoughts?

We have considered some very similar ideas, yes! There are a number of reasons that we haven't proceeded down that path yet - but in general the answer for any given "why haven't you done [X] yet" is going to be "because, with the information we had on hand at the time we made a development decision (in terms of technical feasibility, development cost, player feedback, etc.), we thought something else was more important to the future of the game, the playerbase, or various internal requirements". We don't always get those decisions right, but we do try our best.

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Will there be another chance to get currently unavailable past event characters like Number of the beast and Virus Eddie?

It probably would not be a wise use of development resources to build a character only to have it only appear once in the game forever.

(NOTB Eddie is available in Heroic souls [on rotation], and Virus Eddie can be obtained from the Viral Frontier dungeon).

I can't provide any details about plans for specific other characters, but it would be unusual for any character to be locked away for eternity.

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1. Obvious question, when will we expect new content to come out? Is there an approximate timeline for Guilds, Silent Planet, Isle of Avalon etc?

It's Tricky to promise you a specific timelines for any of these, and obviously things could change our plans, but I think we'll have at least one Treat up our sleeves before too much longer.

2. There are so many characters and talismans in the game, will we see a sort of library of every released character/talisman set and where/how to get them?

This is a feature I'll confirm we're working on, but it has no release timeline. We agree that it's an important information piece that would go a long way to helping players at all stages find their way through the game.

3. It's a shame that most of the old Eddie's are so behind the times compared to the newer ones. Back in the day, there would be big makeovers for the old ones to compete with the new ones. Will we see more tuning changes to old Eddie's soon? Meaning Viking, Vampire Hunter, Beast, Trooper, etc.

This is Kaz question, so I'll let him answer.

4. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that more work needs to be put into character and talisman management. Gauntlet is such a chore mostly because of the constant swiping around to find the Talismans you need and swiping around for the characters you want to use. Could we see something more akin to a search bar or a grid to drastically reduce the amount of time to move things around?

Improving Talisman management is pretty high on our priority list. We've had features to address it bounce on and off of our development backlog a couple of times. This is one of those instances where we have wanted to make improvements for a while, and every time we've tried something else came up that took precedence. We'll get to it eventually.

5. The Frontier keys have been a cool addition to the game, but with the high Sands of Time cost to play, it doesn't make the rewards worth it. Could we please bring down the cost to play from 15 to like 5 or 6?

6. I love the cosmic talismans, I think they're a fantastic addition to the game. But it's too difficult to max them out and when you get 3 or 4 or more per month and you can only max out MAYBE one of them. So how do you plan on tackling this issue with bottlenecking materials?

These are Kaz questions, too.

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Guilds:

- Can you please tell us a little more about this feature?
- Do you have any time frame for the release of this game mode?
- and if you could give us an overview of functionality? (Ex. Member numbers, raids, basic plan of implementation, etc.)

I don't have that kind of detail to share, I'm afraid. Guilds is near the top of our priority pile, and something that we see as bringing a lot of value to the game - both in terms of functionality and in terms of helping to build and reinforce the social and community aspects of gameplay that the game currently lacks for. When we are ready to implement, I think you should expect guilds to come online in phases. I don't anticipate that all the functionality associated with guilds is likely to appear in a single release.

New Worlds:

- What is the plan of the new worlds, how “soonTM” can we expect these new worlds to be released?

Soon™.

(We have plans, which I think Kaz will talk about, but no timelines in mind other than "Ideally a lot less time than it took us to get Night City into the game")

Game Future Plans:

- What is the expected game life? Can we expect the game to be alive for years to come?
- Is the game going to continue to be “Event based” or are there other plans for the game?

We'd all like to keep this game going and growing for as long as it remains feasible to do so. We have no current plans to sunset at any point in the future.

The game will continue to be "event based" to the extent that there will continue to be events running regularly in the game, but we are looking at ways to streamline this process, so that we aren't reliant on as many events, or as much event specific content in order to keep the game fresh and exciting to play. We have already begun to pull back on the number of events we're running each month.


I'm cutting a couple questions here because they've been answered elsewhere.

Arena and Gauntlet:

- I know this has been addressed many times, but player are still concerned about defense boosts in Arena, can you expand on that? Is there in fact a Defense boost in accuracy and power in Arena?

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.

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.

- How about the issue of talismans sets on Gauntlet? There are many, many instances of characters wearing 3 or 4 different sets of talismans in Gauntlet. Instances like The Nomad wearing Primordials and Vipers at the same which in normal game play is impossible since both are a 5 or 6-set and he can only wear Red Talismans.

Kaz has answered this elsewhere. It's a bug.

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Will we see shorter lengths between new worlds to play going forward?

That's certainly the plan.

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Is there a possibility to post time remaining for temporary in store purchases. I have missed out a few times by not paying attention to event end times.

Actually, yes! We recognize that this has been an issue in the past, but although we had timer functionality in the store, it was a real bear to configure and set up for every pack. however, more recently we have built some new tools to aid with store set up, and it should be manageable to bring the timers back as a component of these improvements.

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.

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Q1 How difficult would it be to incorporate those features (Advisory Summary Screens, Intuitive intelligence etc..) to help people out? I think this is better articulated by the user zamasu above in the section 'in-game functionalities'

It's always a question of effort vs. priority. We're working on some features to address these issues which we've talked about in other posts.

Q2 If you couldn't implement these the next best solution in my opinion would involve developing some sort of API to access your details on the servers, say for example could i get my current details exported in a JSON file so i can ingest it into a platform like Splunk and get the answers to the questions i need answering - do i have a eddie or ally with this skill, do i have this talisman in my inventory if so is assigned or not etc.. Would an API call feature be possible?

An API call feature is not something we'd be looking to implement. (Please have mercy on our servers )

Q3 Any plans to introduce band members as characters or notable people in the world of Iron Maiden such as Rod Smallwood as enforcer of the Underworld!

You may recognize Bass Eddie as having been inspired by Steve Harris, we have some more plans along these lines in store.

Q4 The band are almost all in there mid 60's how do you see the future of the game enduring if Maiden sadly decide to call it a day? I can't see them retiring in the next 5 yrs unless circumstances change (you never know) but they couldn't in my opinion do their stuff like the Rolling Stones in their 70's as it is far more demanding physically and technically.

We fully expect Iron Maiden to outlive everyone in the studio, TBH.

Q5) Do you have any plans to introduce a world based on the iconic Somewhere in Time cover in future releases.

Yes.

Q6) A bit personal and of topic but if you are fans of the band (which i know some of you are) were you disappointed that the band have ignored the Kingdom of the Sands world on the LOTB tour in favour of keeping too many band personal favourites in the set focused on the War and Underworld themes! The consensus is that Kingdom of the Sands was left out to avoid the Alexander the Great debate! Powerslave is suited but has been played recently on the Book of Souls tour!

We think the set they've chosen to reflect their history, and the game is absolutely killer. Maiden has so much musical history, they've got to pick and choose carefully. We can't wait until the come to town so we can experience it for ourselves.

Q7) What game engine did you use to make the game and what tools do your artists use to build environments and design characters?

The game was built in Unity. Our Artists use Maya, ZBrush, SubstancePainter, 3D Coat, all to varying degrees. (Advice from the artists is "tools can change, but Life Drawing skills are forever".)

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Will you change your direction regarding In-game purchases with real money??

We are constantly re-evaluating our pricing and offers - we want to create great value at reasonable prices, for players of many different kinds.

I heard about the idea of adding in-game announces(of 3rd party stuff), if it's real, will this impact the actual costs of real money offers in the store??

I assume you're referring to in game advertising here? It's something we've considered, but it's not currently in the roadmap.

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As a fellow developer I am curious what steps are being taken (or planned to be implemented) to address the constant bugs that are found shortly after each update?

I know not all can be caught during QA due to the player base being much larger, but it seems those who try to participate immediatley have either a huge advantage (like with the intro of trooper dungeon prices being a Frontier Coin generator) or at a steep disadvantage (game unplayable due to disconnects or errors that aren't resolved until hours later).

So, first off, I want to assure you that event bugs are really frustrating for us too.

There are a whole host of causes that underly some of the bugs that you're referring to. Some of them have had to do with process. Some of them have had to do with data and variable configuration. Some of them have had to do with our toolset. Some of them have had to do with our QA bandwidth. Some of them have had to do with how our various game environments (QA, Dev, Production) are set up, and truthfully, some of them are human error.

Along with all these various causes come a bunch of possible solutions, some of which are more feasible than others.

For instance, rebuilding our entire environment structure, or replacing our variable delivery service are significant undertakings that would potentially offline a lot of core development work while we were to undertake them.

However, concrete steps we have taken include:

- improved tooling: in recent weeks we have completed development on a number of key QA tools that will substantially increase our QA team's capacity to locate and identify issues with event data and assets. Not only does this have the benefit of making our event testing more robust, it also takes significantly less time, so QA is able to focus more of their effort on other aspects of the game.
- Double-check process: we have additionally implemented a recurring double-check process supplementary to our QA sign-off to catch and correct any human error or configuration problems long before the events go live. This should help to prevent a lot of that early jank you refer to, wherein the event behaves differently for the first couple hours than it does for the rest of the event.

One of the big takeaways I want to assert here is that our QA team are incredibly diligent and hard working. They do their absolute best to ensure that bugs are found and everything in the game is as it should be. They do so with a small team, enormous scope, limited resources, and smiles on their faces. We continue to try to build out the tools and resources they need to make their jobs more manageable, but the QA team deserves a huge amount of credit and thanks for the work they've done and continue to do.

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Can we get save-able teams please? It'd be nice to have 10 (or so) teams, pre-saved in groups for all the standard areas of the game.

I'm envisioning something like a button to "select from saved teams" that loads up a screen of the teams (eg: similar to the new Arena opponent select UI) that will load in those characters.

While I know the number of Allies can change in some parts of the game, and some battles have restrictions, this can be worked around by simply not loading those extra characters that don't match the restrictions, or leaving the last slot open (or dropping the last character).

Note: Whatever you do, allow us to NAME the saved teams. I can see myself with 3 identical looking groups, because I have dupes of characters pre-loaded with different talisman sets for different situations, and it'd be nice to be able to name them appropriately!

We'd certainly like to get a feature like this into the game, but it's not on the roadmap right now. In the shorter term, we would like to get your Frontier Dungeon teams saving, so that they are at least preserved.

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1) We know that rebuilding from the "ground up" is not possible, but can the bugs please be addressed? Passives not working correctly and the AI boost that we have been told does not exist but can plainly see when playing arena.

I've kinda addressed this in another answer, but I'll approach it again here:

We include significant numbers of bug fixes with every release we ship. Task tracking reports that our July game client included 281 Closed bugs, in addition to the feature work we delivered in that release. Our June Client included 192. Since the beginning of 2019, the team has resolved more than 1850 known bugs.

However, some bugs are tougher than others, and some would be very difficult to fix without a refactor of the system they affect, or without introducing an incredible risk of knock-on effects. We do what we can with the capacity we have and the risk profile we're willing to accept in a given release. If there's been a persistent bug that has been present in the game for a long time and which the community is vocal about, it's very likely that there is a reason it hasn't been addressed. We aren't looking at these bug reports and just shrugging them off.

2) Cost of in app purchases. I'm am considered a "whale" by most forum members here. I think that more income could be generated simply by reducing costs. Maybe more options to purchase some characters outright instead of the endless grind. Those that want to can still grind, those that don't can purchase. Is this a consideration?

We have provided several characters for direct purchase at this point (Gangland Eddie, and Sirius being two prime examples) and it's likely we'll continue to provide some characters through that avenue as we move forward. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but we are constantly re-evaluating our pricing levels, and watching player purchase behviour to drive our pricing approach.

3) What are the long term plans for this game?

Long term we intend to continue to grow and support the game. We have plans for additional worlds and narrative content, new major game features, new characters and talismans, quality of life improvements, and some other cool surprises in store through the rest of the year and in years to come.

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Do you play your own game? How often?

I'm in the game pretty much daily. I don't think I've ever seen Kaz not playing it.

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I wanted to make a suggestion: How about a Gauntlet Top 3 Winners acknowledgement, like the Arena weekly winners get. You should have more obvious/ frequent display of Top 3 place winners , more than just on the Facebook page and the very rare pop up image when in the Arena. Having the winners image in both Arena and Gauntlet respectively, and when we login to the game.... thus creating more awareness and an interest to compete. More recognition will fuel more competition.

Ha, so, about that. The reason that the pop-up for the arena winners is so inconsistent is because popping it in game is a manual process that relies on a messaging delivery service we use. it's time consuming, and given it has to be set up manually, it's rarely the highest priority of the day when we get into the office on Monday mornings. Additionally, we only have so many available trigger poijts available in the game where we can activate these messages, so we run into problems of available visual real estate if we want to publish even more messages.

This is something we'd like to address in future, both by adjusting how we handle in game messages and the services we use to deliver them, as well as automating the weekly winner callouts so they don't have to be activated manually. Unfortunately, it's just never our top priority. One day, I hope.

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I noticed there is a storyline characters still missing from the bos. Is there any chance to add it up to the bos? Cheers Attachment 5878

R.I.P. Magic Voidling. 2016-2018.

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2. Will we see a PC release of LoTB?

I can't say yes, but I won't say no. For the forseeable future our focus is the mobile game.

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1. Is there any chance that we might see this with some of the ally characters?

Yes.

2. Is there any chance we might see additional talismans added as rewards to the Brave New World Dungeons?

Yes.

3. Is there any chance we will eventually see characters initially added to the game as purchase-only (Sirius, Gangland Eddie) available to earn, or purchase by other means?

Yes.

https://imgur.com/gallery/NOtSkd3

Yes.

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Are there any plans to make a version of the game available offline?

No.

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A simple question : is it planned a Trade Shop between players (or troopers) ? Like trading dupes characters that others can't get (i.e I sac already 1 Charlotte, 3 x Gunner Krampus, 2 x Major Malakohv, 2 x Samourai) or talismans to complete legs (I have several Troopers like 6 or 7 but I can't complete a Frontier or Siege)

Not really, no. Unfortunately, trade systems have significant potential for abuse and need to be designed and built very carefully in order to avoid exploitation. Implemented incorrectly such a system could stand to undermine the entire game economy.

That said, we have explored some other, similar systems that would allow players to provide each other a leg up without directly trading specific items.

In the nearer term, we'd like to get something like a mailbox into the game, so that there's at least a single place for players to collect rewards. That would be a prerequisite feature to any kind of player gifting system.

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would you consider including a "low graphics" option in the settings at all in future?

So, this actually exists in the game already, but it's all done under the hood. The game will automatically adjust it's graphical settings (to a degree) based on the grade of the device it's playing on. Truth be told, though, we haven't updated our spec classifications, nor our minimum device spec in some time, so it's quite possible the game thinks your device is better able to handle certain settings than it actually is.

Making this setting toggleable is something we could consider in the future.

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Here is my question: Is there a way and has it been considered to make the Auto-play manageable by the player?

It's definitely something we've considered, but it's not a priority.

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1 - Do you have mythology related content / chars planned for the future?

We do have some plans of this sort, yeah, depending on the mythology in question. Norse, Classical, Greek mythology all appear in our roadmap at various points. Here's a little concept art I can share to illustrate

2 - As a big fan of Corrupted Ox Souls, it is sad for me to see there is only warrior, magus and sentinel ones out there. Is there any plan releasing Gunner and Assassin versions?

This is certainly something we could look into.

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1. Whats the general outline and story plot moving forward after Isle Of Avalon?

https://imgur.com/gallery/W7TZHuO

2. When is Isle Of Avalon coming out?

When it's ready.

2. Is Brave New World going to get updated scenery and environment updates soon or is this already planned for a later release in the game?

This isn't in the roadmap at the moment.

4. Will we see the return of other Devs like Mia and Sparton on the forum to help answer our questions or are they helping in other areas of the game?

I don't know what you're talking about. Sparton is right here.

5. Any update on the in game wiki?

It's being worked on (answered elsewhere).

6. Can we have some more Lexi Leon videos on the official Legacy Of The Beast channel talking about latest releases of characters, content and updates. I think this will benefit players a lot.

Llexi, what do you think?

7. What are some future planned worlds coming after the Silent Planet.

https://imgur.com/7qoeLc3

8. Are we going to hear Bruce singing more often in the game?

I think Llexi answered this one.

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If this is supposed to be the official forum for the game why is content posted on other social media like Facebook and Twitter that doesn't show up here in the official forum?

The short answer is "time". The medium answer is that this forum is essentially intended to be the place for discussion of Legacy of the Beast, whereas social media is our place for promotion of Legacy of the Beast. The long answer is the we are creating specific media and content tailored to the platform it is intended to be presented on and for the audience that inhabits each platform.

That said, our social media manager agrees that you have a great point about the character information posts, and we can look at bringing those into the forum in future.

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-What's your take on the game community ? Do you find us useful, helpful, playful, or itchy?

https://imgur.com/gallery/yicy9

-What are your plans regarding the community ? There have been calls for a wiki team but no followup, many of us have developped or are developping tools, wikis, guides, spreadsheets, related to the game, do you plan on helping out or is it an inconvenience ?

Truthfully, our community team is very small, and our resources very limited. The team has had a number of community engagement plans and initiatives they've hoped to implement over the last several months, but those plans get pre-empted when something goes wrong, or direction changes. The time that our community team would spend working on something like the community wiki site or supporting community issues gets tied up in responding to customer service tickets. I know they'd love to be helping out with this kind of thing, and internally we do our best to try and limit the amount of impact game issues have on the Community team. However, as evidenced by the giant red signatures of participants in this very thread there is a CS backlog, and I'm sure you'd agree that responding to those tickets has to take top priority.

-What do you think of a closed beta group to help you test new stuff before release ? They could operate in a secluded environment so the actual game doesn't get polluted.

We have released features under restricted beta launches before, and will likely do so in future. The idea of a public test realm is not a bad one, but it's not easily workable. We come back to the idea from time to time.

-What about a player sponsorship program, where experienced players help out new players for in-game or merch rewards?

We would love to initiate a program or feature of this sort, but it's not something we have capacity for either in CS or in feature development right now.

-Do you have plans to refactor all those "blocking" designs that hinder you in bug-solving ? If so do you have deadlines for that technical debt resorbtion.

We do have plans, we do not have deadlines in this regard. We are serving our tech debt where we can, and prioritizing how we address it based on the best return to the game for the development investment necessary to action it.

-Are you planning on opening the game data via sharing elements such as data files, official wiki or a public game API (already asked but rephrased)

Not presently. (already answered, but rephrased )

-How many of you actually play the game more than a couple minutes per day ?

much of the team is playing the game constantly.

Do some of your testers actually play the full events and do you gather metrics on things like time consumption for a task or average drop rates ?

Yes.

A simulation engine would work wonders for automated testing but is the content actually tested by more than one person ?

Yes, but you're right that automation of many of these testing tasks would work wonders - and we are improving our tooling as we go.

-Do you plan on explaining the rules of matchmaking for arena and gauntlet ? How are team or roster power calculated ?

We plan to bring a greater degree of visibility into team power to the game in a future update. We will likely not go into specific of how this power rating is calculated, but it will be much more available to the player.

-Do you feel you are honestly communicating enough info to the community ? If so, do you understand why there are so many negative feedbacks regarding that topic ?

We have clearly had some communication missteps over the course of the year so far. We have, however, also run aground of problems where we communicate honestly with the community, and our statements are not accepted as true. One of the purposes of an event like this Q&A is to help rebuild that bridge and establish some trust that we, as a dev team, are listening to what you have to say, and to provide you with some of the information that guides our decision making process. We all want the same thing - a great game we love to play.

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Why we did not get Necropolis as Charlotte and The Ancient Mariner in the Arena Store fragments?

They're coming! they're just a little delayed.

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With the addition of so many new tals ,can we expect more tal slots in the inventory?

Potentially - the limitation here is the quantity of data being transferred between the game client and the server, as well as the amount of data being stored. It's not a technically impossible problem to overcome, but it's something we're fairly cautious about making changes to without significant load testing.

Wouldnt you make more money by lowering the store costs? Im not sure about anyone else but i would never even think about a purchase of 100 dollars.

We've addressed this elsewhere, but it's not that straightforward. We have to try to hit a sweet spot between conversion and revenue. Reducing a pack from $100 to $20 means that we have to sell 5 of the $20 pack to equal only one of the $100 pack, and the data we have tends to show that that relationship between price and purchase quantity is not linear.

We regularly experiment with various aspects of packs, including price and value of goods, and use that to guide our pricing models.

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- Are there mechanics in place to purposefully generate lost battles for the player to deter repetitive farming of specific dungeons/levels?

(i.e I can pretty much run any dungeon/battle on auto just fine.... However there are some dungeons which seem to specifically generate a defeat after several runs. A defeat against the same characters with the same talismans that has been winning for the last 20 runs.)

- To phrase the above differently... do specific battles have a "difficulty" variable which determines how easy/hard that specific battle for that specific run may be for a player? Meaning.. battle 2 of the Sentinel Cosmic Dungeon.. does battle 2 to have a variable which may make it more difficult than the previous or next time that same battle is encountered during previous/subsequent dungeon runs?

Nope. Sounds like your auto-battle team just isn't a 100% auto-battle team

- Are you aware of, and if so, are you trying to correct the consistent crashes which have been occurring on iOS since the March update?

We are! We've been working on it and trying to plug holes to mitigate the issue ever since.

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Will the birds be available again?

Probably not at this point, but it's not up to us.


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Has there been any thoughts of having rotating arena 'maps?' I swear that when I first started playing there was one arena environment and then it was changed to the 'Tour' environment. Don't get me wrong, I love the details in the 3 different versions of the 'Tour' map but I think it would be great to have some variety in the maps.. maybe randomly play a different map when you load in or rotate monthly.

We've definitely thought about this. And you're right, you probably did see a different environment when you joined the game. I think, over the years we've had three or four different PvP Arenas. Given that Maiden is still on tour, we're continuing to use the Tour arena, but the possibility of changing venues opens up again once the tour concludes. We'll see.

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When offering items that can only be purchased with particular soul fragments, could you please provide the NAME of the particular soul? A lot of the fragments are starting to look similiar (at least to me). Regardless of the player's quality of vision, I think it would be beneficial to ALL players. Thanks.

I agree. Accessibility features are important to a number of members of the team (myself included), and I think this is a good idea. there are some associated tech limitations, but maybe we can do something to help solve this. I'll look into it.

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How can we get rid of a few single frags that are not enough to convert to precious souls?

We've been tossing ideas around in the office to resolve this very problem. This lives on our quality of life backlog. Hopefully we'll get to a solution for it soon.

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Also, will Final Frontier Eddie be replaced by a new character after Gauntlet Season 5 or so in the near future?

Final Frontier Eddie is intended to be the long term chase character across seasons in the gauntlet. That will remain true in future seasons. However, we will continue to debut new season specific characters each season.

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Are there any plans to revitalize some of the long standing in app purchases? Lots of the ironite and heroic fragment items are pretty underwhelming when you compare them to what you can get for free these days. if I have extra money I wouldn't mind spending it on this game as long as I'm buying something that is worth the purchase.

Yes, we are looking at refreshing some of our older store offerings. I wouldn't expect it all to happen at once, but we'll be updating things over time. You might have noticed that the Essence Chaser pack recently had it's contents updated to improve the value there, and I know we have some additional refreshes coming down the pipe in a future update.

Will there be more communication in the future?

We always strive to communicate clearly and effectively. Hopefully you find the results satisfactory.



Cheers!
-m

[Kaz_LOTB]

Kaz's Answers will go here.

Will there be a way to acquire Reaper / Trooper talismans WITHOUT running the Infernal Dungeon or spending money/ironite?

Yes. They may be featured in events and offers as many Talismans are.

What % of Maiden lore do you think has already been covered, and what % remains to be introduced in the future?

It's hard to say what percentage has been covered, as there is always new content being created (i.e. we are always discovering something new that could be brought to life in the game in some way, such as new Maiden T-Shirts featuring cool Eddies, commissioned artwork by talented artists like Dan Mumford, and so on.). At the very least, in our eyes there is still a TON of content and themes left to explore (years worth). What's amazing about Maiden's catalog is how many diverse time periods and mythologies it touches, opening up entire pantheons of characters and lore related to the songs to explore.

Regarding the overall game mechanics, there has been a huge increase in the "arms race" lately, with introduction of extremely powerful characters and talismans. Could you please share your thoughts on that?

As any live service game grows, some degree of power creep is inevitable. The main reason why is that players always want new ways to play or things to do, which requires new content to support it that wasn't there at the beginning of the game when it was first designed. This can end up creating a larger degree of asymmetry and mixed strategies that emerge and inevitably some content will end up underpowerd or overpowered based on the strategies that become dominate in a given time (a.k.a. whatever the Meta becomes).

Getting the balance perfect in any game is difficult, but it's exponentially more so the more content you have and we are indeed a content heavy game, because that is the primary way we keep the business running. We have been looking at other ways to generate revenue that do not rely as much on a constant treadmill of content that will help slow the rapid shifts in the meta, but not all of those initiatives are in play yet and some are going to require more work and fine tuning to balance community sentiment and our business needs (such as Frontier Keys, Guilds, and other unannounced features) in order for it to finally reach a good pace.

At the very least, when it comes to balancing all of the content we do create, we use 3 main approaches:

A.) Adding Trade-Offs - We try to ensure that content has some inherent trade off so that it's not the single answer to all of the challenges present in the game (i.e. the health stats of a high damage character might be low or they might lack some important utility for a given game mode).

B.) Creating Counterplay - When it comes to PvP focused content, we want to make sure there are various ways to counter the content, which helps reduce its overall power (i.e. Using Marks, Doom, Ghost, and other highly specialized characters vs Labyrinth / Eclipse / Viper Talismans, etc.).

C.) Buff / Nerf Content - If we've found that a certain piece of content (Character or Talisman) is just too dominant / underpowered in terms of both win and play rates over an extended period of time, despite having things like counterplay introduced, then we will ultimately choose to adjust that content to maintain a healthier competitive environment. We also do go back and amp up some of the weaker allies and Eddies on a constant basis, but of course there are only so many we can get to each release depending on where all the resources have been committed for a given release.

The end goal, from my stand point, is to make sure there is a purpose and place for as many characters and talismans that exist as possible for our various player groups (Early, Mid-Stage, Late Game, and Elder players across the various game modes). This will ultimately mean some content IS intended to be a bit weaker or stronger based on player progression and the game mode it is intended to be used in. Not all content is actually meant to be strong in PvP.

It's a shame that most of the old Eddie's are so behind the times compared to the newer ones. Back in the day, there would be big makeovers for the old ones to compete with the new ones. Will we see more tuning changes to old Eddie's soon? Meaning Viking, Vampire Hunter, Beast, Trooper, etc.

This is somewhat answered in my response above, but to clarify, the answer is Yes. We always try to get some updates and tuning adjustments in for characters every month, which often includes improving older Eddies as well.

The Frontier Keys have been a cool addition to the game, but with the high Sands of Time cost to play, it doesn't make the rewards worth it. Could we please bring down the cost to play from 15 to like 5 or 6?

We will continue to monitor the reception and performance of these dungeons and will indeed adjust the costs if it makes sense. More likely though, they will just be balanced to grant better value for the time and cost added to the dungeons as they are intended to be an easy way to convert resources like Sands of Time into other, more valuable, resources (e.g. Frontier Coins, Sands of War, Talisman Soul Fragments, High Value Talismans, etc.) so the Sands of Time investment can only go so low in order to maintain an overall balance of resources in the economy. I hope that makes sense.

I love the cosmic talismans, I think they're a fantastic addition to the game. But it's too difficult to max them out and when you get 3 or 4 or more per month and you can only max out MAYBE one of them. So how do you plan on tackling this issue with bottlenecking materials?

We are looking to increase the number of Cosmic Evolution Materials you can get from both the Cosmic Talisman Dungeon as well as the number of opportunities you have for acquiring them in our Monthly Events.

What is your process when it comes to the difficulty of the Gauntlet?

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).

...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.

Guilds:

- Can you please tell us a little more about this feature?
- Do you have any time frame for the release of this game mode?
- and if you could give us an overview of functionality? (Ex. Member numbers, raids, basic plan of implementation, etc.)

The high-level design summary is along the lines of:

- Create and Recruit members to your guild (between 15 to 30 members)
- Battle powerful Gods together with your guild to obtain their blessing.
- Wield the power of the Gods in combat versus other Guilds.

As Matt mentions, this will not all be available at the launch of the feature, but is the ultimate vision for the experience we are creating for guilds. It will come online one part at a time and is intended to include critical social features like Chat, Resource donation, and unique shop items and rewards exclusive to Guilds.

The first phase of Guilds is currently looking to launch this year, though I can't give specific dates.

Game Future Plans:

- What is the expected game life? Can we expect the game to be alive for years to come?
- Is the game going to continue to be “Event based” or are there other plans for the game?

That is the expectation, yes. Years!

As far as the second question, Events will always be a part of the game, but we are looking for other ways to engage players and give them new ways to play without piling on so many events. Initiatives like Frontier Keys and a soon to be revealed feature, as well as new game content that is more infinitely repayable, such as Silent Planet, are all part of this.

Event Dungeons
I love the event dungeons, i do the grind to get the max achievements, spending ironite to do so and have no problem with that
The Problem though is the rewards are woeful...

For our monthly character dungeon events, we've been continuing to improve the reward structure to ensure that there are multiple tiers of payouts (low, mid, and high fragment rewards) so that more players are able to walk away with something new from the event. We'll continue to adjust and expand on that idea so that eventually, if you complete all the event challenges, you will guaranteed walk away with something new from the event.

Souls and Frag cost increases
The Cost of Gold to summon souls was put up, i can sort of understand this to a degree but at the same time the number of frags to get the souls went up as well...why were those increased and by such a large amount, without increasing the chances to get more to mitigate the increase?

It's actually the opposite, we have, over the last year, dramatically increased the amount of rewards flowing into the game. At this time last year, players were hardly obtaining rewards like Ironite, Frontier Coins, Souls, Fragments, 4* essence value, etc. at the current rates they are now. The tuning change was to better balance this inflation such that it didn't cannibalize the value of the overall economy and still allow us to maintain granting these rewards at good rates.

Will you change your direction regarding In-game purchases with real money??
I mean, I have spend cash in some kind of razonable offers, like the Sirius Dog, some packs and etc, BUT the usual prices in the whole store have ridiculous prices for any player with just a little of integrity and morals...

I think Matt is answering this one, but I'll just add that we have a variety of price points that offer different value. Some people actually prefer to buy things in bulk (like Ironite) as oppose to doing it piecemeal, because they want to go ham in the Cosmic Talisman Dungeon all month, non-stop, like me. Others may prefer a direct character purchase at a lower price point, like Sirius, and so we try to offer that as well. But most interestingly, most people who play the game don't spend any money at all and enjoy it perfectly fine.

The point is, the game is free to play and is, for the genre, one of the most generous games in terms of rewards or the need to actually spend any money to make progress or acquire useful and iconic characters for players to enjoy. I mean, I wish we could give everything away for free and still somehow be able to produce content and keep the game servers up and running, but it's not really economically viable. Early days even things like Kickstarter or a donation system were considered, but unfortunately wouldn't actually cover the cost of operating a game studio, as many Kickstarter projects have come to learn :/

Nevertheless, we are always open to feedback on what people like and don't like about our offerings and attempt to do our best to adjust and provide value at the level various players appreciate.

Speaking of Nomad talisman slots . . . Why does he have red slots when he deals true damage? Any chance we can see a change to purple in a tuning update?

The main reason is that most players use Echo Talismans on the Nomad at the moment, so we're hesitant to change the current strategy of so many when it works well for them. We've mainly changed Talisman Slots in the past of characters that are not used as much or are underpowered and would benefit greatly from the change without creating a new imbalance. That being said, there is a feature on the horizon that would allow us to open up the talisman slot restrictions on certain characters, like the Nomad, so that players can experiment with new builds, but keep any strategies they currently use if they would like (this would not be something that will for sure apply to every character, but just a few select characters).

Why are there so many elements for evolving cosmic talismans?

One of the goals for the Cosmic Talismans, which we haven't quite finished executing on, was to give players the opportunity for more unique and customizable builds as well as to embark on a distinct adventure to complete those builds. While we have been seeing lots of diversity and creativity in the Cosmic Talisman use, we're still a bit behind on adding in the unique farming areas where you can acquire specific materials in bulk (such as Black Rain, Ashes of Ice, etc.)

The point of this is to create different motivations to play different challenges and areas in the game and break up the monotony of only grinding the one dungeon or quest all day, every day. That's part of the rational of why there are the distinct materials, but I can understand the current frustration off not being able to adequately pursue the completion of your specific Cosmic Talisman at this time.

In the short term we are increasing the drop rates of these materials in the Cosmic Talisman Dungeon (which is meant to be a more general source of evolution material) while we continue to develop the locations that will allow players to farm specific evolution materials.

My question is will there be some way to play a certain amount of time without tying my phone is so long and still be able to progress in the game?

We have had discussion about an "auto-complete" currency or "familiars" system that would allow players to strategically auto-complete certain content (such as your Trooper Runs, Skull Quests, Auto-Arena, etc.), but it is currently further down on the priority list since we are working on larger initiatives like Silent Planet, Guilds, Avalon, etc.

That being said, we have been generally making moves to reduce the time commitment required from the game by lowering the number of Events running and adding in features such as Frontier Keys that allow players to engage with the game at their own pace.

Are there ANY plans it make playing trooper badges faster? Easier? I feel i should need to expel all SOT merely to send Trooper badges.

As mentioned in my post above, there are features further down the design backlog to potentially address issues like this, but they will not likely be something we can action on in the short term.

How do you decide what 'themes' to have for each month? Some like the tour are obvious, but what's the process for other months? Similarly, will there be another Mega-Event? Personally, I loved the Gods Of Powerslave and Night City events, so it would be awesome to see something like those again!

We're always looking at what we haven't thoroughly explored and what can bring a new or different flavor to the game than what currently exists when it comes to new themes. We have a huge backlog of possible worlds. characters, and talisman ideas that we discuss for months in advance of making them. We get input from Maiden as well in terms of what they would like to see and we plan around and balance the various interest of all the creative voices involved to come up with a final roadmap of content.

You will definitely be seeing more Mega Events. One potentially quite soon...

How do you decide on the characters that you can earn from Gauntlet?

Gauntlet characters are intended to be the most recognizable characters from Maiden Lore (who don't already exist in the game in some form), so we always are looking at iconic songs and imagery that most Maiden fans can identify by name or otherwise.

[/B] Will there ever be another Eddie which will eventually replace Final Frontier?

The Gauntlet is currently the home of Final Frontier Eddie, in the same way the Trooper Feature is the home of Trooper Eddie and Eternity Eddie is tied to the Arena, so he won't be going away. However, a longer-term cast may be added to expand his world at some point which would give other characters a home there as well (similar to the Eternals in the Arena).

Designs of the characters - How do you go about this? Of course there's the Eddies and The Beast, and some of the themed characters like the Gods of Powerslave too, and they all have a "base" to work off of (Album art, official posters, mythology, history, etc). However, for the characters that don't have this "base", how do you go about designing them?

Our talented artists work hand in hand with designers, such as myself, to come up with ideas about the world and gameplay concepts for the characters and then produce concept art that marries the themes and imagery from the songs and lore with the expected gameplay or use in the game. This is then sent over to Maiden for feedback and goes through some iteration until it is finally signed off. From there, we build and implement the character for the game.

There was the visual revamp to Wicker Man Isle, but will other worlds receive this treatment? If so, which worlds, and will there be any visual updates to some of the older characters?

We definitely would like to revamp some of our older worlds, likely continuing in sequence with Kingdom of the Sands, Battlefield, and then Underworld. This would ideally improve updates to the characters, similar to Wicker Man Isle.

What has been the most interesting/enjoyable character, dungeon, level, etc. to make? Do you have favourite designs? Is there anything you would personally change if you could?

We probably had the most fun with the 2018 Christmas Dungeon as there were a lot of interesting Easter Eggs featured in that level. I, personally love the Ferryman's design as well as the Shadow Wickerman that came with him. In terms of something I would change, it would mainly relate to the complexity of our gameplay systems and lack of communication and / ease of use of things like our inventory system. I know I'm not alone on that here, so hopefully all of these get sorted out in a reasonable time frame.

You asked for character ideas, and one character I would love to see would be a Tears of a Clown Eddie (even made my own design, lol). Any chance of him or something similar in the future?

I wouldn't count it out

Why does every aspects of the game rely on grinding?
(Related to the question above) Why can't you introduce an instant/swipe concept instead of auto-replay.

I'll attempt to break this down as best I can.

In many games, particularly RPGs, there a concept of level progression (usually acting as a vehicle to take players from a weak power state to a strong power state). The purpose of this progression is to pace out the player's growth and gameplay experience such that when you start the game you can tackle a certain amount of content up to a point at which you need to diverge and "grind" to level up and take on the next layer of content, which grants higher levels of rewards but takes more effort, resources, and skill to obtain.
This is mainly a pacing tool used to give players the sense of development as they advance further and deeper into a game. When you start a new game, it doesn't feel like a grind because you have a consistent feeling of advancing and new things to discover beyond each challenge wall.

At a certain point, players inevitably reach an "end game" state where their level caps out (dependent on the game) and the value of the rewards remains consistently high (relative to their early player state), however, the amount of time / skill /effort to reach the highest tier of rewards doesn't actually decrease. On top of that, if the actual gameplay objectives or activities remain the same and it doesn't feel like there are new things to discover behind each challenge, this can lead to the feeling of "grinding".

So, the general structure and meta of our game has had a very similar development in this regard and there are aspects of it that have become a bit of a grind. One of the ways that we look to improve this feeling is to introduce different gameplay activities or create meta-goals that break up the need to do one thing a thousand times and provide players with a new experience. The Gauntlet is one example of this, the ultimate vision of Frontier Keys is another (the idea of taking your own journey at your own pace). In addition, with the upcoming reduction and removal of miscellaneous "grinding" Events and more interesting Event Challenge Types, we hope to improve this aspect of the game in the short-term.

As mentioned above, we have some ideas to reduce the investment for things like running Troopers and routine tasks further down the road, but our focus right now is to get new and different gameplay experiences introduced into the game that we feel will have a bigger impact all around.

Why are characters and talismans still introduced in a really high rate although it was said that the pacing would decrease.

See some of my answers in posts above.

Are there any plans to make arena more enjoyable and faster again? Back in the days arena was the best mode in the game, but i know some people who barely touch it at the moment.

The "meta" will constantly shift so long as new content gets added to the game, as per some of my explanations above, but what's interesting is that, right now, the time to clear battles heavily varies between players and is largely based on the specific strategies each player is using.

I should also note that the engagement with Arena is actually higher right now than it has ever been outside of running and Arena event, possibly due to the new revamp. All that said, we definitely want to make sure fights don't drag on too long and if we do find that to be the case for players on average at certain tiers, we will address it.

In general, we just try to create answers and balance out dominate strategies based on win/play rates, so you can expect to continue to see tuning changes and content focused in that direction.

Some character seem to have lower drop chances than others. Seems like newer chars (executionerd
eddie for example) have other drop% than other 4* assassin toons, is this true?

It's true that not all characters drop with an equal rate, but this is mainly for characters that are given in the story campaign and not really with other content. You also have to pay attention to the size of the pool for a given class. The larger that specific pool of characters, the lower the chance you will see any specific character within that pool.

What will be the next big addition to the game contentwise, silent planet, isle of avalon or something else? can you tell us a bit more about what we can expect there? Will it be "just another world" or something with more longterm motivation like gauntlet?

Silence Planet is currently in front of Avalon, but there is other "content" planned ahead of that. Silent Planet is definitely more than just another world. It's a resetting monthly challenge with its own metagame that is unique and different from other dungeons or worlds in the game.

Do you have plans to introduce the trenchcoat eddie (stranger in a strange land) as special version of cyborg eddie? I'd love to see this

Yep. It's being saved for a very special piece of content down the road atm

Will we get a new GUI with more filters to find talismans on our toons easier?

Yes. It is in our quality of life backlog.

Why you do bugfixing instead of recoding the whole game?

Because after 5+ years of code piling on code, that would take about 5+ more years.

Why you develop new toons instead of tuning the old ones?

We do both. See some of the answers and explanations in the posts above.

I've got only one but for me very very important question:
Can you develop a separate brave new world dungeon for each talisman color ? So 5 dungeons instead of 3 ? It's not good when you're searching for runes of a specific color and the drops are the color you don't need ...

Something we can consider, yes.

Good Questions.
Can we convert *shards to ** shards or *** shards? Maybe 10x* shards --> 1x ** Shards.

I believe there is an event planned in the coming months that will allow you to do something like this. We also have some ideas for a "Fusion" feature that will build upon Sacrifice, but it's too early to really comment much on that.

Any chance of an Infinite Dreams Eddie soon? He'd look awesome on his motorcycle next to Wrathchild and Charlotte.

Yes! Part of the inspiration behind doing Wrathchild on a bike was to allow players to take a whole biker team and ride through Night City. It's one of the characters on our list to do for sure.

I was wondering if you can create a way to 'lock' talismans to prevent them from being sold by mistake? And a 'remove all' option would really speed up moving around talismans, especially for gauntlet.

We currently have these or similar features in our Quality of Life backlog and they are nearish the top. So yes, they will hopefully become the priority after the current load of features are wrapped up.

Can you please create a exchange in the store WITH NO LIMITS to convert common souls, gold, trooper badges into something, anything useful...

We've begun to add common soul purchase options to many upcoming events and you will be able to sink around 5K common souls a month on various valuable items and resources if you are sitting on them.

Can you increase the Pack Rates for souls

I assume you mean Drop Rates? Our base drop rates are not up for changes any time soon, as it causes the whole economy of the game to shift, which is a large undertaking. Instead, we try and provide more focused opportunities for players looking to obtain specific characters they may be missing from their collections. Also, due to soul fragments dropping from each Rare / Epic Soul, you are always guaranteed a 4* and 5* Character at a consistent rate based on the number of that souls you open. We also attempt to add this to any event souls that we can and, as mentioned above, will be looking to do so even more in the future where content and event design allows.

How exactly is character generated when you open souls? It is possible to get 4-5 same Liliths in a row. There must be some kind of tuning. How the random numbers are generated?

I don't have the code in front of me, but it essentially randomly selects one of the characters in that loot table with an equal chance. We know that some players will get unlucky and so we include Frontier Coins in souls like this that allow you to purchase the Lilith of you choice if you run into a string of bad luck. There are other bad luck protection features we have in the backlog, but have not gotten an opportunity to action on as of yet, that might also help with this,

[Leviathan]

Llexi's Answers will go here.

It's cool that the LotB universe has grown to include real-world merch, and I hope it continues to expand. One question I have about that is related to the marketing side of things. In particular, there doesn't seem to be a single, authoritative source for all the related merch: comics, including exclusive variants, figures, apparel, even the pinball machine. ... Or can we expect an easier time in the future finding out about all this stuff?

Glad you're digging all the way we're exploring the Legacy Of The Beast universe - It has been a bit disparate over the last year while we've been putting all this together. Moving forward I think we'll look to share all things LOTB direct through the official social media channels, be that facebook, twitter, instagram, or even the official forums. So if you're following LOTB's channels, you'll hear about everything we're cooking up for 2020 and beyond, whether it's in the game or manifesting in the real world!

MUSIC QUERY: Do you have access to the entire Maiden music catalogue for use in game? If so can we have more variation in the music used - maybe a pick your own album option for each world or dungeon? Would it not be really cool for you guys to get the band to do a song based on the game so you have your own theme song that goes with the game opening or in the background? I have often wondered why you could not sort this and the song could either be featured on a new greatest hits CD or as a bonus track on a Maiden album CD? This would be a big deal for all fans if you guys had 'exclsuive' access to the song for a few weeks? A very big win if it could be done and pretty sure it would pull in a load of new fans to at least try the game - maybe not have it as a tune you can download for a short while - only in game you can hear it perhaps?

COMICS QUERY: Not sure if covered but - I actually really like the comics and glad to see these becoming more easily available in the UK (Forbidden Planet for me). Will it always be the case that these come out after things are released on here - Isle of Avalon for example - is that to be the next comic theme? Any chance that you release the comic first and then the themed area so we can get a taste for what migth be coming?

PLATFORM QUERY: Think it was asked before but are there any plans to push this game out into other platforms like Facebook Gameroom/PC? I would like to see it on a bigger screen with out the need for some bluestacks style thing (which I dont want to use).

Music - Originally we worked very closely with Steve Harris to pick out and remaster all the tracks for the game that were befitting of the various worlds and stages, a lot of the versions you hear in the game are actually quite unique - in some cases unreleased live mixes that aren't available anywhere else. We didn't want to compromise the integrity of the studio recordings by messing with those mixes, which would have been inevitable since we have to remove lyrical content, slice and loop sections, in addition to EQing to make room for the in game audio effect. Unsurprisingly this was a pretty monumental task! We do incorporate new tracks where time and scheduling permits, particularly for the new worlds and dungeons like Night City - fortunately we have a lot of lead time for that kind of thing and we can work with Steve to get it right - it's more tricky when the band are busy on tour for example, to collaborate in that way and source the live recordings and get input on the mixes, etc. So whilst we do have access to a vast catalogue of amazing material, unfortunately it's not as easy as cutting and pasting it into the background - the soundtrack in LOTB is an unsung hero of sorts, it was all built from the ground up from selected recordings and mixed bespoke for the game, so even if you're hearing a familiar riff, I assure you we didn't just rip it from the album - as iconic as those recordings are, it wouldn't be a cohesive experience if we just dropped them into the background - that would be more like playing the game on mute and listing the the record in the background, which is cool too, but not quite the same cohesive experience!

Comics - The comic narrative tends to follow the game and is often developed/scripted in tandem. The comic wouldn't really be able to lead with Avalon for example unless we made a lot of assumptions which may well change in the game and lead to two very distinct takes on the story! The ideal for me would be to have the new worlds launch at the same time as the supporting comic series, but that's got it's own set of challenges! For now we'll continue to make the best comics we can and it's great to hear you're enjoying them, we're certainly doing out best to increase distribution, particularly with the graphic novel editions, which are now available almost everywhere thanks to Amazon, and of course a unique version with a intro from Rod and foreword from Bruce is available from IM directly at the tour merch stands or via the official shop!

Platform - certainly something we've talked about, no immediate plans but LOTB is a deep RPG with a ton of features and would certainly lend itself well to the PC demographic in my opinion. We're busy polishing up the visuals on all the worlds in the game, which began with Wickerman Isle, and I think once that process is complete we might be in a better position to think about other platforms given the graphical capabilities of hardware beyond mobile, we wouldn't want to port a mobile game to PC and have it 'look like a mobile game' - it would have to be a great game on PC in it's own right.

4. There was the visual revamp to Wicker Man Isle, but will other worlds receive this treatment? If so, which worlds, and will there be any visual updates to some of the older characters?

7. Quick question on merch - Will we see more figurines and pins? I would love to see more of these with some of the newer characters, especially Final Frontier, Alexander, more of the Gods, Charlotte, etc.

8. Finally - Do you think there'll ever be another tour if more worlds/lore are explored? (Missed the London shows, very gutted lol)

Yup, we're going to work through all the worlds and the revamped areas are looking amazing, excited to see that revealed in game as we progress. Certainly we have polished up some early launch characters like Holy Smokes Eddie and The Clairvoyant, no doubt we'll continue that trend if it seems like anyone in particular needs a tune up!

More figures and pins are coming - working on some amazing new statues too which I'm particularly excited about.

That's really up to the band themselves but they've been hugely supportive of the game and the tour throughout the USA this year really has an unprecedented level of integration in game, building on last years tour program - who knows what the future holds!

8. Are we going to hear Bruce singing more often in the game?

We're working on something with Bruce right now, so we might be hearing a lot more from the air raid siren in-game...

I'm curious about the potential for Lovecraft-inspired characters.

In the context of Maiden, I think of the tombstone in the Live After Death cover art. Also, Lovecraft "reported" that The Alchemist John Dee allegedly translated the Necronomicon, but it was never published and only fragments remain.

Any chance we could see something Lovecraft-inspired in the game soon?

Tonally it's a great fit and i'd love to do more with these themes within the LOTB universe, certainly it's about time Live After Death Eddie made an appearance!

Will there be an "atlas book" containing all the ever existing characters, eddies, talismans and effects ever implemented in the game, for collection purposes and maybe achievements?

Absolutely, been working on this for a while... coming soon and all that

Is there a chance of more future time rift levels based off yet unused albums such as a future world for somewhere in time, or an ice world for seventh son of a seventh son. And could there also be a guitar Eddie based off Dave Murray

Eventually we'd love to get around to exploring all of the album lore, there are even some early explorations of a world for Somewhere In Time - it was one of the first worlds we looked at in terms of art concepts, but ultimately it didn't serve the initial story arc to jump into that specific future London setting, but i'm sure we'll get a chance to realise that eventually, especially now that we have our own Night City interpretation of London to rebuild in the future! Always keen to add more guitar wielding Eddies \m/

Have you ever thought of creating events / games in Europe or allover the World,where all the fans of the game can participate, and maybe the winners have the possibility to have some gadget, or shirt of the event?

Yes, i love the idea of this - certainly i want to be able to reward the community for playing and those competing at high level who are really committed to the content we produce, it would be great to offer some real world prizing for the players completing those end game challenges. We're on our way to tidying up the PVP matchmaking aspects of the game an incorporating a guilds feature which will allow for regional, national, and global competitions - with these features in place we'll be in a great position to create unique event memorabilia for participants and top prizes for winners, etc. In the meantime we hope to run more social and community contests that don't necessarily rely on gameplay engagement, but are certainly focused at players and fans who follow the LOTB news and social media channels.

[Yup]

Will there be a way to acquire Reaper talismans WITHOUT running the Infernal Dungeon or spending money/ironite?

During it's initial release I ran the Infernal dungeon to complete achievements and not one single talisman dropped. I would rather NOT spend FC on keys and then large amounts of SOT to run the dungeon more with only a possibility of talismans dropping. The possibility was understandable and acceptable when other achievements could be earned for the same effort. However since all achievements have been completed and no talismans were gained, it seems largely fruitless at this point.

I suspect the same question may be applicable to the Trooper Dungeon since drop rates were changed there as well. I am aware that, during the Trooper dungeon release event, talisman drops may have been considerably MORE than what was intended.

Leviathan Edit: Hi Yup! Kaz has answered your talisman question here.

[Yup]

Are there any plans to try and sort out the inconsistencies in PvP?

i.e. Talisman passives only working after character revival for the AI team.

Leviathan Edit: Hi Yup! Matt has answered this question here.

[druid138]

Hey guys,

Thanks for doing this Q&A, and thanks again for bringing this awesome game to life. I've been playing since about 5 minutes after the launch three years ago, and I love it more every day. I've been a Maiden fan since I was 12 (30 years ago), and never in my wildest dreams did I imagine a game like this would exist.

I'm curious about your thoughts regarding the overall long-term direction of the game. In particular, what % of Maiden lore do you think has already been covered, and what % remains to be introduced in the future? Also, regarding the overall game mechanics, there has been a huge increase in the "arms race" lately, with introduction of extremely powerful characters and talismans. This is the first game like this that I've played, but it seems that this rate of power creep can't continue indefinitely. Could you please share your thoughts on that?

Keep up the great work guys!


Leviathan Edit: Hi druid138! Kaz has answered your questions here!

[Yup]

When will improvements to the inventory system be available, if ever?

Better sorting, finding, viewing talismans on characters, selling.. etc.

Leviathan Edit: Hi Yup! Matt has answered this question here.

[druid138]

I understand the fine balance between generating much-needed revenue to support the game on one hand and making the game pay to win on the other hand. In general, I feel like a decent balance exists (assuming you guys are generating enough revenue).

You guys recently introduced a couple characters that were purchase-only (Gangland Eddie and Sirius). They were not OP, so this definitely didn't create a pay to win situation (except maybe an advantage for Gauntlet). But, since one of the characters was an Eddie, I know there was some backlash.

Have you guys considered Carlos's "skin" idea, originally discussed here? Generating revenue by selling cosmetic-only enhancements could generate more income without directly affecting player balance. Thoughts?


Leviathan Edit: Hi druid138! Matt has answered your question here!

[fanghorria]

Will there be another chance to get currently unavailable past event characters like Number of the beast and Virus Eddie?


Leviathan Edit: Hi fanghorria! Matt has answered your question here!