Stage One of PVP Arena Beta Has Begun

[aur0ra85]

Pro'bly not, I'll have to disappoint you :P Ari is a good fella, we just share unfortune of being on the same peninsula

You missed the pun but I'm okay with that lol.

[Sparton_LOTB]

What is the intended Sands of War refill timer?
I've seen it jump from 15mins to 32mins and to 38mins to refill one SoW...?

The sand recharge time right now is 1 every 45 minutes. It does do something wonky where the first energy you spend could take anywhere from 1 second to 45 minutes for the next one, though (a bug that occurs for Sands of Time, too... but the campaign energy has a much shorter time, so it's less likely to notice it). That said...

Think there's a bug with the timer, timer reset to 48min after last Arena battle. It keeps getting longer.

That's definitely wonky. I'll pass that along to be investigated.

Is there a timeline, which countries will join the Arena ?

We don't have a specific plan, sadly. It largely depends on how the feature scales with our tech as more people use it (especially during the event reset period), so we can't say if and until something goes wonky and we find out if it'll be risky to expand the beta pool further.

Just picked that up. The devs may want to consider adjusting that to make a point difference between wins and losses. Maybe offensive losses deduct 50% of the points the offensive team wins. Otherwise it will be frustrating to wake up to a 100% loss of yesterday's gains.

We'll take the points thing into consideration. As fewer and fewer people get to high point amounts, it'll be harder for them to get more points over time, but we still want an engaged player to be able to be making more progress than they're losing, so we'll keep an eye on how that shakes out with actual play patterns.

I get that the top tier players will always be those that refresh with ironite, but you should be able to have decent, moderate progress without playing 24/7.

Yeah, that's part of the reason why we have the long Sands of War recharge time right now... we want to see if this feels accessible to more people without needing to come back every hour or two to feel like you have a chance at keeping pace.

For end game players most of us will be able to beat AI versions of each other's teams with little trouble.

Well, the awful skill shard bug on auto is actually making beating defenses a fair bit easier right now (since the AI is always playing on auto... so they're not getting skill shard investment taken into account). The app store update that is just propagating to people's app stores now has a fix for this at least, so be aware after you update!

Just noticed something-when you adjust your offense team in PVP it also changes your campaign team (and vice versa). To me it would be nice to keep these totally separate and not allow one to change the other (too much back & forth adjustments required this way).

Yeah, it looks like we fixed before release the bug of your campaign team being copied over for your PVP attack team, but missed fixing it the other way. I'll make sure we have that logged to get fixed sooner rather than later.

[BillLion]

Yeah, that's part of the reason why we have the long Sands of War recharge time right now... we want to see if this feels accessible to more people without needing to come back every hour or two to feel like you have a chance at keeping pace.

Appreciate all the replies, Sparton. And I wholeheartedly agree with THIS. I love that there'll be more to keep players engaged AND that it doesn't have to go to the other extreme of being a total grind-fest. Thank you for working to strike the balance there.

[RCarter]

Just picked that up. The devs may want to consider adjusting that to make a point difference between wins and losses. Maybe offensive losses deduct 50% of the points the offensive team wins. Otherwise it will be frustrating to wake up to a 100% loss of yesterday's gains.

Last game I played with an asynchronous PVP set up like this one had a difference in points won and lost.

I think it was something like 10 points for an attack victory, and a deduction of 3 points for a defensive loss. I don't remember how many points gained for a defensive victory, because it was so rare.

It worked out pretty well. You kept some progress.

[Schadenfreud-0217]

Ah, you lucky bastards got into the beta! And I'm still stuck farming Skill Shards all day long

[Schadenfreud-0217]

Also, question:
Do you have to only kill Eddie again to win/lose or do you have to kill the allies too?

[konstifik]

Last game I played with an asynchronous PVP set up like this one had a difference in points won and lost.

I think it was something like 10 points for an attack victory, and a deduction of 3 points for a defensive loss. I don't remember how many points gained for a defensive victory, because it was so rare.

It worked out pretty well. You kept some progress.

I think I would actually prefer if it stays the way it is. If the net of an attack victory and a defending loss is positive, you can just spend ironite on SoW to get as many games as possible. As long as you keep on winning the attacks, you wouldn't have to worry about defense. So I think it would risk getting too much of a pay-to-win-situation and too little about good team building and strategic thought.

The way it is now, you have to both think hard about your defending team and also put some thought into who you choose to attack and which attacks on you that you want to retaliate against.

[konstifik]

I've only been in the beta since this morning but I have to say it proves to be a lot of fun so far. This is gameplay that requires some thought, in contrast to the mindnumbing (auto)farming in the dungeons. Not only because of the more advanced teams you fight, but also because the random starting turn (and the fact that the starting team gets less power points from the start) which forces you to plan for two different scenarios. It also gives a whole new dimension to the team building part of the game. What characters to evolve, what talismans to level up and even where to put your skill shards are now different questions compared to when we only had PVE.

Also a lot of fun when you get to take on players that you know from the forum and/or from your troopers. I have so far beat slauki (who was quick to beat me back) and one or two of my troopers.

[Heavy1974]

I must admit that i am a bit jelaous...
Hope Germany comes soon to play it

[hold]

Also, question:
Do you have to only kill Eddie again to win/lose or do you have to kill the allies too?

I asked that question before and it is "last man standing" ... killing just Eddie does not do the trick.