Game Update - November 14th 2016

[Eagleknight]

I find that if I grind underworld madness and keep on top of secret levels, I get enough upgrade runes. The last 10 levels of a 5* talisman is tough, but otherwise, it does take time, but they get there eventually. But I guess the question is, is it better to have the bottleneck in the upgrade runes, or in the evo runes? At the moment, it definitely is the upgrades for 5* runes. At lower levels though, they seem to jump quite quickly. Personally Im not sure which I'd prefer. But right now it feels to me much better than it was previously!

I just finished my 50'troopers for the day ran all of them on powerslave. I didn't even have enough materials to level 1 talisman from lvl 30 to lvl 45 very sad. What good is it to have evo runes when u can't lvl the damb tailisman.

I love what the devs are trying to do but every increase to fix a bottleneck or shortage creates another one. That is not fix its a shell game.

[Kaijester]

The days of Powerslave are over for me...I'm getting a healthy amount if runes from Underworld Madness and just upgraded another 10 level on my 5* health talisman.

[Reeb99]

I'm also showing 1 short on the 5* character achievement, and like everyone else, I've unlocked Grim Reaper Eddie.

Also I do my rune farming on underworld madness, Gold farming on Matter of Life and Death, and then just specialized material farming wherever needed.

[Eagleknight]

I usually farm mater of life and death or game of death. However today I ran 50 powerslave and should have got some runes but the drop rate was low.

On the 5* achievement it may be GR cause I'm seeing 92/93.

[aur0ra85]

I'll try this again. I spent 30mins writing and my post disappeared.

I have retired from gameplay due to what I believe is an inherently broken drop rate system. I literally has stacks of 5* xp runes and sold them to create inventory space for evo runes. The bottleneck needs to be gold and not upgrade materials. I feel attempting to balance the drop rates for thousands of players on different development paths is an exercise in futility. I feel that if gold were the bottleneck, like the game team promised a while ago, it would be a very simple matter of balancing the system as even if certain items were rare, you'd be willing to sell them for more gold. I feel that a gold bottleneck would solve the current inventory issues, it would produce a system that is not pay to win, but more pay for convenience because even if I had hundreds of talismans and all max characters, I could get beat up in the arena by someone with max skill shards. It's not a pay to win system. From a free to play perspective, by throttling the gold in the system, the devs can control how fast a free to play player develops their account. I feel like trying to balance the drop rate would be simplified by a gold bottleneck because devs could simply add or remove gold from a tuning update. I also feel like all of the hundreds of man hours creating new characters, and rebalancing and reworking current ones is a completely moot point if I cannot use more than a handful of characters due to the talisman bottleneck. I am truly puzzled as to why this system has not been changed, and the only logical reason I see is that the dev team is actively hindering our progress. I have 25+ level 100 toons, and the ability to use about 5 or 6 consistently, in addition, I only have enough talismans for about 5 eddies (I have 10?). Realistically at this rate, I will never use more than a half dozen toons, as every Eddie has a different synergy with a different set of allies. What is the point of having 80 characters, and what is the point of me upgrading them to max level? The frustration is real. I also feel this item bottleneck issue costs the dev team profits.

I grinded out a max Clash of Clans account over the course of two years, once it was maxed, the real gameplay began and I spent more time on it than ever before. I don't grind for fun, I grind to eventually play the way I want when I want.

In addition to the above mentioned change, I would personally like to see the game be more social and an in game chat, and in game email system added using the troopers as contacts. After all, all games are more fun when played with your friends.
Lastly, a deleted trooper cannot be re-added, which may become a dealbreaker for me anyway if the drop rate is fixed. Most of my troopers have deleted me due to inactivity (I understand lol).

There was originally more in this post, but I need sleep now. Please don't take my criticism too harshly, it's just how I feel about this game. For all the artwork and all the fun is not worth the broken drop system.

[Eagleknight]

I'll try this again. I spent 30mins writing and my post disappeared.

I have retired from gameplay due to what I believe is an inherently broken drop rate system. I literally has stacks of 5* xp runes and sold them to create inventory space for evo runes. The bottleneck needs to be gold and not upgrade materials. I feel attempting to balance the drop rates for thousands of players on different development paths is an exercise in futility. I feel that if gold were the bottleneck, like the game team promised a while ago, it would be a very simple matter of balancing the system as even if certain items were rare, you'd be willing to sell them for more gold. I feel that a gold bottleneck would solve the current inventory issues, it would produce a system that is not pay to win, but more pay for convenience because even if I had hundreds of talismans and all max characters, I could get beat up in the arena by someone with max skill shards. It's not a pay to win system. From a free to play perspective, by throttling the gold in the system, the devs can control how fast a free to play player develops their account. I feel like trying to balance the drop rate would be simplified by a gold bottleneck because devs could simply add or remove gold from a tuning update. I also feel like all of the hundreds of man hours creating new characters, and rebalancing and reworking current ones is a completely moot point if I cannot use more than a handful of characters due to the talisman bottleneck. I am truly puzzled as to why this system has not been changed, and the only logical reason I see is that the dev team is actively hindering our progress. I grinded out a max Clash of Clans account over the course of two years, once it was maxed, the real gameplay began and I spent more time on it than ever before. I don't grind for fun, I grind to eventually play the way I want when I want.

In addition to the above mentioned change, I would personally like to see the game be more social and an in game chat, and in game email system added using the troopers as contacts. After all, all games are more fun when played with your friends.
Lastly, a deleted trooper cannot be re-added, which may become a dealbreaker for me anyway if the drop rate is fixed. Most of my troopers have deleted me due to inactivity (I understand lol).

There was originally more in this post, but I need sleep now. Please don't take my criticism too harshly, it's just how I feel about this game. For all the artwork and all the fun is not worth the broken drop system.

I agree something has to be done about the bottleneck. It sucks you are taking a break, but I understand. The bottleneck is now the runes for lvling up tailismans. I have been farming for hours. I tried powerslave madness 50 times with a very low drop rate. I switched to matter of life and death and game of death a full sands of time each. The drop rate is just bad.

I get excited every time there is an update to fix stuff but it's like one problem just replaces another one.

I am actually worried that I made a mistake trying to reach the 100 5* achievement today. I burnt through all my reserves and now I can really see how bad drop rates are because I have space to keep new mats.

I just don't understand why to improve one thing something else has to be messed with.

I don't think it's intentional but it's really becoming a real pain. It's bad when you play as much as I do and you can't lvl things.

I also think that finding the needed 3* colored runes for evolving my last few characters will take
A long time.

I really feel for the casual player or new player.

I have to add I really appreciate the hard work of the devs and send thanks to Sparton for putting up with all the complaints and nitpicking. It's just really easy to get frustrated when you put so much into a game you like and you feel like you can't reach your goals.

[Esquatcho]

I also think that finding the needed 3* colored runes for evolving my last few characters will take
A long time.

As someone who has been dealing with insuffcient mats for a long time, the 3* colour evo runes are fine now. Upgrade runes are a different story. But the best place for those are definitely underworld madness. They high level upgrade *'s seem on be much more likely there.

I think this needs to be a broader discussion about where the bottlenecks in the game need to be. For the people saying its upgrade runes, if they get more, then there will just be a bottleneck somewhere else. Meanwhile, you cant just keep increasing drop rates.

So to tweak things, the question is what should the bottleneck be? 3* rainbow evos? Gold? 3* coloured evos? Actually I might make a poll!

[Ddrak]

The problem for me are blue evo runes (3* in particular), the only places where they drop are the first two world, where there's no other worthy reward.

[Ringe666-7406]

Well, they can simply remove leveling shards from the campaign since we are getting loads of them in dungeon... Seems quite simple to me, plus no need to remove gold...

[MrFreeze]

These guys can tweak numbers til the game dies. Honestly I'd like to see something new at this point. Auto farming the same levels over and over is slowly making me lose interest. Most of us can beat everything in the game pretty easily. If your like me, all your doing is leveling up characters for pvp or sacrifice or anything. Devs you guys should take a week off right after you push pvp. Your gonna get hell about it regardless of how good or bad it is. Thanks for the effort. Tweaking is great where it's needed but let's move forward please