2019 Retrospective: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[drrchmnd]

I will agree with this pretty much all the way. Just got a couple of things to add to it.

The following statement is in the description on the Google Play site. I am also gonna bet its in the apple description also.

Why is Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast free to play?
We want every Iron Maiden fan and every mobile gamer to be able to enjoy our game! You can fully enjoy the game without ever spending a penny! Battle it out and earn every element of the game through sheer victory on the battlefield, or speed up progress by purchasing Ironite in the Vault.

Unfortunately this statement is no longer true. There are aspects of the game that the only method of completion is to pay for it. Until they put in auto purchase/sell/key redemption (etc) features so we can buy SoT, sell junk talisman, and continue on in XXX key restricted dungeon so the game can play itself there are going to be a lot of grind events that people will not complete. And isn't the point of a game to have fun even if it is work? Not to be going how do I manage to complete this task that task while there is this task and so on ad nauseam.

I will agree that there are some real issues surrounding specific characters and how they are being used in PvP (ie arena). When we are talking about gauntlet and PvE that is another story completely. Gauntlet has its own set of issues that are more related to craptastic code and code implementation than anything else. Basically how talisman implementation takes place and rampant AI cheating. Which also includes how talisman (and character passives) interact with each other and cause some very interesting secondary effects that are not supposed to happen. PvE yeah there are issues but that almost always goes back to talisman and passive interaction issues. With exceptions like not paying attention to what brave talisman on two characters might cause to happen or D Lilith managing to revive herself about 10 times or watching a character get an extra 10+ turns or... I think you get the idea. And yes most of what I just said also happens in Arena and Gauntlet also. A good chunk of the issues that happen in the game are well intended character traits that are not completely thought through. No character should have a 100% affect or trait because it causes things to break. And as far as I am concerned 50% is seriously pushing it especially if it can keep re-triggering itself. Which is where a diminishing rate of re-triggering should come in to play.


Back to the PvP or Arena issues. I have been thinking about this for awhile and I have commented on this a few times. As far as the changes I am suggesting below the only place I would want to see this implemented is in the Arena, everything else would stay the same.

I am in favor of a complete Arena rebuild. As it is Arena is not able to be won by anyone and everyone. About the only way to win is to have a team of top echelon characters and talisman. Yes there is a time and SoW commitment in there along with other things that I am forgetting and just not mentioning. Toss in the lovely arena event that we just had and its even more annoying. So yeah I think Arena needs to be completely rebuilt in a manner that actually levels the playing field out a bit. There isn't a way to completely level it out nor should there be. People who invest the $ and time etc should be able to reap the benefits of such investments. But it should be set up so those of us who can invest the time, SoW, have a competent team, have the ability to counter top echelon teams, and a bit of luck can beat it. It should be a strategy type item not a I have the impossible to beat talisman and characters.

Back in the beginning of the game the characters were set up with a point value (I don't know if this has been removed or not because I can't see it). I don't think I ever encountered a situation where I had a team that had more points than I could field. Which makes me think that this point or value assignment to characters wasn't really for the main story but for when the Arena was introduced.

I would like to see this brought back into play specifically for the Arena. Where you can only field a team that has a combined value of X points. Using the first post in this thread as an example BHE with M Fortune, D Lilith(maxed), MChild (maxed). Lets say this is the current top echelon team. You wouldn't be able to use it because your points would be over. Lets say 25 points is a top tier character. BHE, Lilith and MChild would definitely fit the bill here. MFortune might be a tier 2 with a value of 20 points. That would give us 95 points on this team. So where should the line be as far as team point value? With 4 characters that would be a max of 100 points but it would be all top tier and not change anything. How about 80 points. That allows you to have 2 tier 1 for 50 points and 30 points to round things out. Or 1 tier 1 (25) with 2 tier 2 (40) and 1 tier 3 (15). Or any other combination of 80 points.

This would help immensely in evening things out but lets take it one set further.

A point set up for talisman. Same basic concept as above. The only difference would be in having 2 point totals. One for the character and one for the team overall. Tier 1(20) would be things like Starfire and Labyrinth. Tier 2(15) would be more like Orbit and Venom. Tier 3 (10) along the lines of necropolis. Tier 4(5) say comet, lightning, explosive. Tier 5 (0) would be health, holy, endure and such. With an arena max of 25 points per character and 80 per team. This won't eliminate all of the more annoying talisman combinations at all but it would eliminate some. Especially when things like Angel start showing up as a cosmic talisman. (Labyrinth and Angel is very annoying in my opinion.)

Can also outright eliminate specific combinations of talisman in the Arena. If this talisman is worn this one can't be etc..

Another item that could also be tossed into the mix is add some negative aspects. And this is where I think one of the biggest fails has happened. With very few exceptions (characters and talisman) there are no negative effects generated by talisman or character combinations. How to make the labyrinth talisman a questionable item to use is simple. Add a clause to it that there is a 10% failure rate where all attacks hit you and cause 50% more damage than normal. Or say The Prisoner and The Alchemist despise each other and if used on the same Arena team it lowers the entire teams atk and magic by 25%.


Basically the wtf to do with new players is the million dollar question. It is also one of the absolute hardest to address and can cause a LOT of animosity within a player base. Think about it like starting out brand new in WOW. How in the hell do you catch up with people that have been playing for 15+ years? Answer is you don't until you have put in a lot of time and such. But they can use that because of the amount of content in the game that will take a new player a long time to play through. My understand is there are also a number of methods of catching up to a point are there but thats all I can say. The biggest issue is the problem of what do you do after you have done everything in the game? I.e. endgame problems. With WOW the answer is release another update with a new story line with new quests etc etc etc. Change the player dynamics and allow for a higher level cap and add in new and unique abilities that only max lvl characters can access and so on and so forth. And yes I know that the lvl cap is being squished in WOW with the update this year.

Unfortunately I don't think anyone at NF/Navigator/50cc really has put any real thought into it. Because if they had we might have 3 or 4 new worlds opened up along with additional story lines and a game that doesn't crash servers. In a nut shell the only thing it appears they are looking at is the immediate (short term) financial aspect of it. When you change screens and a pop up appears EVERY TIME trying to sell you some pack or another it makes ya wonder.

A new player can not compete in the Arena effectively. They story line play through for most new players will end at Night City because they probably won't be able to play through it because they won't have the right characters to do so. So literally 2-3 months after picking the game up they are going to put it down unless they really really like it. And they have the $ to burn to allow them to catch up.

Basically what did NF/Navi do when there wasn't anything left to do was release endgame content. The lets see if we can squeeze a few more months out of the game if people spend money on some of this stuff. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. At this point in time there is NO game other than a cycle of endless grind and repetitious monthly quests. With the end result being the same 2-4 new characters with a new talisman or 2 and the same exact issues from one month to the next.

What do they need to do to fix this is simple but expensive for them. Pretty much they need to put everything on hold for a few months. Rebuild the game and correct the myriad issues that plague game play. Chart out a story line direction for where they are going to go for the next year which has to include opening up 2-3 new worlds. Realize there has to be a balance between end user content and enabling new players to advance to become end users. Put an effective PvP environment together that allows anyone to win it not just end users with all the toys.

And enough about me... So how yall doing?

[MuzakMaker]

stuff about team point values in the arena

I made a comment in another thread about this. I would love to see team point values come back in to play. I personally would go a step further and only have one point maximum combined for characters and talismans.

Simplified example

Want to use four powerful characters and 4 powerful talisman sets. Too bad.

Let's say you can only have 3 top tier of anything. Now you have to think do I want top tier characters with mediocre talismans, 3 mediocre characters with 3 top tier talisman sets, or maybe some combination like 1 powerful character with a top tier talisman plus a top tier character with mediocre talisman or vice versa.

Not only will this drive more strategy for arena it will also break up the monotony of seeing the same thing in all 10 slots of your attack list.

[drrchmnd]

I made a comment in another thread about this. I would love to see team point values come back in to play. I personally would go a step further and only have one point maximum combined for characters and talismans.

Simplified example

Want to use four powerful characters and 4 powerful talisman sets. Too bad.

Let's say you can only have 3 top tier of anything. Now you have to think do I want top tier characters with mediocre talismans, 3 mediocre characters with 3 top tier talisman sets, or maybe some combination like 1 powerful character with a top tier talisman plus a top tier character with mediocre talisman or vice versa.

Not only will this drive more strategy for arena it will also break up the monotony of seeing the same thing in all 10 slots of your attack list.

Strategy is exactly what is missing in arena. For all I care make the opposing teams talisman visible. But yeah 3 top tier char with 2 or 3 top tier talisman and forced to use a total gimp that might actually get in your way? Priceless.

Biggest reason I am for a dual point set up is to make it hard to have 3 top tier chars with top tier talisman. 2 top tier and talisman with 2 other mid tier and good talisman sure. 3 top tier char with 2 top tier talisman and the rest mid or lower sure... Anything to cause a person to have to change up the set up. And even better it would almost force you to change up the setup for each battle.