PvP: Attrition

[Mariner-1212]

Great thread. Congrats Gmac, Nicko and Slauki!

All of the ideas and recommendations here have been great, and NF needs to pay attention. I won't complain here because I've done that enough.

So here's a proposed fix to what I see as the longterm problem (aside from Bug fixes being the obvious #1).

Gamers, Maiden Fans that aren't gamers, new players, endgamers, we all share at least one thing - The desire/need to be creative. This game needs to focus on that for longevity.

#1. Things need to perform AS ADVERTISED. Moves/passives/talisman moves need to do exactly what they say. When you find out one doesn't, fix it immediately. Every day that something isn't working like it should, you're pissing someone off for spending those skill shards, or not having a fair chance to be competitive. Once all things operate like they're supposed to, players can be more creative in setting up their teams.

#2. Go back and fix the Eddies. All Eddies should be useful in the arena, or at least most of them. Cyborg Eddie is a God in the world of Maiden fans, and shouldn't be so easy to go up against. Some need small tweaks, some need bigger Buffs (Shaman and Viking), some just need an AI tweak - but all should be made more useful. This allows more creativity in the team compositions for endgame players, who at the moment are almost given no choice but to put in VHE if they want to make a run for it. Nicko and others have been extremely creative in team composition and I think we'd all agree that it's one of the most fun parts... and I think we'd get even more variance with this buff happening.

#3. Create the 7th son level, and introduce a character called Moonchild. Give one to everyone for free, at the start of the level. Yeah, you read that right. Free. This toon initially has NO MOVES and all talisman slots are locked and gray. It can't attack. You need to create a team that will protect him through the level. When you first start, there's an intro story and you get to choose his/her gender and appearance from a list of 7 different looks (7 for each gender, so 14 total). When you finish the first level, you decide it's class (each class determines the toon's final base stats and a single talisman slot). When you finish a certain number of levels, you can unlock another talisman slot (will always be 5 open slots, one base color slot based on class chosen). Finish a few more, and you get to choose a move for him from a list of 7. Continue on, unlocking slots and adding another move from a new list of 7 (so 14 move options so far), and customize your toon exactly how you want. Final screen is a fight against Eddie's head (Can I Play With Madness) or maybe some beast that is freezing the land - come up with something. Upon defeating it, you get to choose a fury for your Moonchild from a list of 7. You can get more Moonchildren from souls, or from badges, IC, etc. So you've now introduced a character that promotes creativity. The good or the evil, which path will he take? You can even change up some of the move offerings from time to time, to keep it fresh.

#4. Create challenges that allow players to change a single talisman slot color on a toon. For example: You need to go through a level start to finish without dying (but can revive) and without changing your team (maybe like the length of the Ailing Kingdom, maybe longer). If you succeed, you are able to change one color slot from one of the toons you brought with. This opens up infinite possibilities for all level players, and fosters creativity.

The game needs to focus on giving players the ability to be creative. New worlds are great but they are static - once they're completed, it's back to farming. For you (NF) to make money and keep players, there needs to be a reason for endgamers to keep playing. If you give players the ability to customize characters, you've just opened up a world of replayability and potential. I'm not even going to get into the possibilities with selling new 'looks' for these toons, etc. But the money will be there, and so will the players.

[Kardas]

Congrats to Nicko, Slauki, Caretaker, and the rest of the Top10, as well as Gmac for his eleventh Eternal win!

As for the stuff in this thread, I pretty much agree with all/most of it. I read the previous thread as well, but I've been so busy that I can't get to the forum that often.

As for the current meta, I can see how it's bad that there's only one Eddie and about 7 characters worth using on defense (with a few more on offense), but it has one great advantage: being able to use only one team or something so you can play fast (more about that below).

As for the people saying VHE needs to be nerfed: I can see their points, yeah, VHE is pretty strong (compare him to the very similar Grim Reaper, and VHE is a lot more flexible than ol' GRE). However, there's one very big thing that has dominated the meta for months now, and VHE is only the latest in the chain. That said, a big part of what makes VHE so good is that Guards and Immortals are the perfect complement to him. They up his damage well enough (compare to GRE), and keep him alive long enough to cast that all important Fury. VHE's big weakness is his fragility. This Talisman combo eliminates all together.
Revivers and reviving.
When I started PVP, my only Reviver was Grim Reaper (VHE was bad back then and I won't even mention Pharaoh Water Spirit). Then I got GCR during the Anniversary event. By using her my win % went from the low 80s, to fluctuating between the low to mid 90s, and hasn't dropped since. Sure, GCR has gotten nerfed, but that gave way to the infamous Immortal VHE combo. That and Clairvoyant has also become more usable, though I lack her still.
You might have read my recent permadeath guide, and, like me, may have concluded that part of the reason Revivers are so rampant in the meta is because the counter strategy sucks.
tl;dr Revivers are really really good in PVP and it's probably because there's no easy way out against them.

And now for more personal stuff:
This week. Hoo boy. Having a day job and LotB is hard. Especially if you want to get all free SoW and SoT. I've come to realize it's possible, but you won't have much time for anything else. I could've probably still gone for the Top25, having reached Top29 and all, but my week's been really tiring, so I didn't bother. That and my offense percentage has been suffering, with trying to reach all free SoW. Though crashes and bad luck probably also played a role.

I admit the burnout's getting to me too. I've been missing doing something else with my free time other than LotB, so I have been thinking of going casual for the next month or too.
Depends on how I'm feeling by the time we reach October though.

[Caretaker]

First of all I'd like to congratulate... well... me for taking 5th.
It was a slow week, I suppose first of all because of ironite draining events that came in a row, and I took it, nothing better to do with a broken leg.

Congratulations to the podium, well deserving folks up there and I was glad to see them there.
Many tnx to Nicko for the thread and all of you here on your opinions and thoughts with hope for a good future of the game and us the players, community members.
Many tnx to Carlos for his table and keeping track of all arena weeks, love the thread with posters.

in the tone of the thread... I stated long ago that imo, we the 'old' players are not the future of Legacy, and the game should care more about new players and playerbase making it in the arena and in the game all around, but it's obvious that we are not ready to completely throw in the towel just yet and we want and know there must be more (although as seen on the list some great members are gone, still plenty of 'legends' in their own way roam this worlds and the new ones are rising). That night city is there in the shadows since the beging, as was bnw (which I kinda like how it turend out, and it has potential, not minding bugs and stuff) and I know I want to see it alive while I'm around. And I agree beyond any doubt that the new features in this game brought it up by far since the dawn of time.

From posts above, I liked the ideas of diversity and creativity in composing teams. With a little comment/opinion on that... for me it became all about defensive usability in arena. One can go with a lot of different and great attacking teams if you have no luck with souls, but the defense is what makes you or breaks you. And ppl stick to what seems to work.

I saw Slauki's idea of a fifth toon on def in another post, could be fun for a week or so, but soon it would be same defs all around.

And I think that 'balancing' took it too far long ago when it became all about naturality/stars. It was just supposed to mark their rarity. Now, chasing rare + op toons is the only way to get you high. PvP-wise. No creativity there just get them and put them out!

I'm gonna swollow this if I see undiscovered potential of demon spawns in Arena (old toons are all known op non, or if they were hitting too hard for their stars - nerfed, remember ags or blue allied, and that bothered me, nerf on explosive shields on troll and visions take didn't bother me) - If the toon is not at least 4* with the set of skills you need, you can go and bbq it with hope of a good one. So what to do about that?

[druid138]

Congrats on another Eternal gmac!

And, congrats to Nicko and slauki for their place on the podium!

Regarding Attrition, it's really discouraging to see so many great players so frustrated. I agree with many of the points raised in this thread. The devs have a lot of concise feedback here.

I'm in it for the long haul. For me, the game has always been, first and foremost, about the characters and their archetypal significance - both the Eddies and his allies.

To that end, there are two things I'd like to emphasize and request.

First, make more of the characters useful and important in different situations. That would add variety and provide incentive for end-game players to have very diverse teams. More Missions are one way to achieve this. Another way would be to create events where only certain types of characters could be used. For instance, a new short map that must be cleared using only Undead Soldiers or Dogs or Harpies or Egyptian characters or you name it. I believe Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes does something like this, but I'm not positive.

Second, bring out new characters more often. I'm sure there is a stockpile of them being created for Night City and The Silent Planet. And, while introducing new characters with the new worlds is ideal, I'd like to see more frequent ad hoc releases of both individual and groups (e.g., Valkyries) of characters. It would also be cool to see some of the new characters offered via Achievements.

Mariner - your Seventh Son concept is fantastic. I'm sure something like that would be complicated to implement, but it would add such an incredible dimension to the experience.

Also, while we're at it, I was thinking about two new character classes: Orange and White.

Orange could emphasize flexibility and creativity (similar to Mariner's Moonchild idea). They could embody Potential. Maybe all stats would be balanced, but all talisman slots would be open.

I'm still thinking through the White. They could embody Transcendence, but I'm not sure what that would translate to.

[Sparton_LOTB]

A'ight, so tasks in the office kept me and Kaz more tied up than we thought we'd be all this week, so my apologies for taking this long to finally pop in and respond...

Player attrition is always gonna be a rough subject. It would be great for every player to want to stick around and play the game for as long as it's servers run... but there's a lot of reasons for why someone would want to step away, temporarily or permanently. And in all honesty, the rate at which new content has come out, the stability of some features, and the main competitive feature being very demanding in terms of time and execution (without a whole lot of variety or mixups)... I can understand some people wanting to leave the game, temporarily or permanently. I don't like it, and me and Kaz constantly puzzle over how we can keep plates spinning while cooking up new ways to challenge and motivate our players, but there's always too much to do and not enough time, so we just buckle down and do the best we can do.

I don't want to paint a grandiose and optimistic picture of the future. I'd much rather do than merely promise, and I think our plans leading towards the end of the year and into the future will shape up to something exciting for our players, both from a gamer standpoint and from an Iron Maiden fan standpoint. In addition, we're becoming better at working with getting features out and making needed changes to the architecture of the game; key hires and the ability to start getting the right people on the right tasks means stability and fixes are becoming more of an ongoing process than something that people are pulled off of constantly, so I hope this is reflected not just in our patch notes, but in the sentiments shared by you, our players. And all while that is happening, we as designers are laying out the plans for future content and features that will continue to bring the lore of Iron Maiden to life in new and exciting ways.

At the end of the day, the development team appreciates your honest and constructive feedback. We understand fatigue and content concerns, and I hope you'll be happy to see what we have coming up, in both the short and long term.

(And yes, I do seek these threads out and give them a read every week they come out. I know Kaz and some other developers do, too.)

[Patrice-1201]

Thanks Sparton and I see that we are keeping you up quite late judging from the time stamps
On your posts ;-)

[Bradata]

Thank you, Sparton! I really hope that you are cooking something nice in the kitchen 'cause many of us are getting killed by the latest updates and I mean mainly the path that the game took with all these non Iron Maiden features lately. I'm a very stubborn guy and probably that's what kept me in the game but even you noticed that many long time players are dropping like tree leaves during fall season. As someone wrote already, we are turning into collectors of characters and that's all. I have over hundred 5* toons and many are just getting dust from seating on the bench, I simply am getting bored as probably most of us. All we need is new worlds and dungeons to make us stay.
Thanks!

[aXe]

Thanks, Sparton. Sounds like some great plans for the future.

[druid138]

Thanks, Sparton! I appreciate your open and honest insights. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have planned!