Board Thread:Game Discussions/@comment-25097314-20140630233911/@comment-23870891-20140701053858

Magefireballs wrote: Suggestions for improving KnD

As someone who has played all kinds of games since the early 80s till now, I thought I’d give GREE a few suggestions that should vastly improve KnD; many of which would not require significant investment on their part.

''' 1. Level 100 = basis for all point calculations, matching'''

 a. Stop punishing people for leveling up. Level 100 players get far more points in Guild Wars than level 150 players and also get much easier Arena matches, and it gets worse the higher you go. Once you reach level 100, the calculation should be the same for all players level 100+

Benefit to Gree: This will stop a lot of frustration your long time players are currently having with the game, which should drastically reduce churn of your highest paying and most loyal customers

Gree Expense: shouldn’t be much. Just change the coding with one if logic statement: ex: if(level > 100, setlevelto100(same formula as now),same formula as now)

Benefit to players: No penalty to keep playing; for people already over 100, just convert their experience to the new levels and re-level them

 2. Soft cap of Level 100 / Levels past 100 should provide some benefit but each additional level should be significantly harder than the last (like the game Lineage or Diablo 3)

 a.          Each level past 100 should add +2 atk/def/hp

                                                                 i.         The current rewards are a joke, especially considering you ultimately are penalized for leveling in Arena (tougher comps) and Guild Wars (lower points)

 b. Each additional level should take 10% more experience than the prior level. This means level   149 to 150 will take 100 times as much experience as level 100 to 101.

                                                                 i.         I’d probably cap it at the cost of 100x the level from 100 to 101 as you’d be talking over a week of non-stop playing to get a level at that point

Benefit to Gree: This will provide incentive to keep playing the game besides just Guild Wars and provide an enormous time sink that will keep players logging in every day, throughout the day, just like you do for leveling

      Gree expense: should be very minimal. No new skins, maps, armor, etc.

Benefit to players: reason to log in and play; reward for playing

 3. Ability to prevent leechers in guild wars / Few different options here

<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:1.0in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1"> a.          Allow GM/GC/GS to set a minimum # of points for each war before it starts

<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:1.0in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1"> b.         And/Or Allow GM/GC/GS to set min # of attempts for each war before it starts

<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:1.0in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1"> c.          Allow GM to remove player before the war ends

<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:1.0in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1"> d.         Prior four 3 day war point totals are visible to Guild leadership

Benefit to Gree: Guilds become less frustrated with recruiting means guild less likely to break up which means less player churn (leachers / players may use gems more to hit minimum target)

Gree expense: Minor expense

<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Benefit to players: Obvious

I like a lot of your ides, but a few small critiques.

1) As has been said above, level 100 to level infinity are treated as the same. This is true in both arena and guild wars. I have fought in the arena constantly from level 10 to level 777 and from level 10 to lvl 89 on a second account. Through this I have only noticed 2 ways where the difficulty actually goes up in the arena.

a) Pre-level 100 it mostly has to do with armors. It is clear you are fighting people around your level but many players start to get epics and boss+ as you approach 100. This explains the difficulty spike at lower levels.

b) The more tier rewards one gets the more difficult the opponents one is given to fight. The people I fight while on a win streak of 1-8 are more likely to be weaker or the same strength as me. But win streaks of 20+ start putting you up against increasingly stronger players. As you approach streaks of 40 you are fighting the strongest the game has to offer. I do not know how Gree calculates this, but the few times I pushed that high this was the difficulty I ran into. This seems to apply to both pre-level 100 and post level 100.

The arena has a few balancing factors though.

a) It is important to remember that Gree has balanced the arena slightly by giving you access to guild rank and elemental bonuses while you are fighting people without these. This means you usually have a slight advantage going in.

b) One can also guide how well they do in arena by knowing guilds and tags. Fight people from guilds with little known names and chances are they will not be loaded with war epics. Also fight people only in the middle ground of rank (based on time of the week) If I see someone ranked 500+ in the arena, they are very active and thus likely strong. Rank 10000- and there is a chance they only care about guild wars. These people may be traps loaded with war epics. Fighting people ranked 500-10000 is the safest bet in my opinion. Combine these and getting higher streaks becomes a lot easier.

2) Many players hit level 110 and stop leveling, since there is no incentive to do so. To implement such a system would end up screwing half the player base over no matter how you look at it.

i) Reseting everyone to level 110 and implementing your system. Not rewarding the people for their lost levels or giving them poor rewards like armor or gold would alienate a lot of them. Giving them good rewards like high level armors or gems would alienate the people who stopped leveling cause of the lack of rewards.

ii) Convert everyones level to 110, then implement your system but allow the experience they earned to work towards the new levels. This would give the previously high level players a HUGE and unfair advantage.

iii) Basically it would be a damned if you do damned if you don't situation.

I personally would like to see the rewards improve for leveling though. Maybe give a boost armor every X levels, or an epic every 500 levels. Something huge to shoot for. I would love to see something like more armor slots every 100 levels.

3) Your "d" option is really useful. All the others though have a high chance of abuse though. Leechers only really matter at the upper levels, and the guilds who play there already have a system in place. You leech once, and you never fight top 25 again. At lower levels just boot them after one war and you never see them again. In my eyes guild wars only need 3 improvements:

a) More guardian types. Including dual elements. Monos are just sooooo...... meh.

b) Make it so that an option can be chosen that only HC+ can declare. A lot of the problems leechers can cause would be mitigated then.

c) Allow one to change their armor order from within the guild war menu without needing energy to enter the screen. (and separate arena order from war order).