Face-to-Face With the Developers — Hot Topics Q&A (March)

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Hello everyone! Welcome to another Face-to-Face With the Developers!
In this Face-to-Face With the Developers, we'll be looking at some of the most hotly-discussed issues in the community. Thank you to everyone who reached out to us! We hope we'll be able to answer your most burning questions.

Please note that many of the topics we’ll discuss are still in the early stages and not final plans. This is a chance for us to gather your feedback, so if you have any ideas or questions, feel free to fill out the survey in the end. Your input is invaluable as we refine our plans for the future!

Q1: Can you tell us more about your plans for merging kingdoms?
A1: At our Vietnam meetup, we discussed our future plans for consolidating low-activity kingdoms. We received a ton of helpful feedback from the governors, and after analyzing the suggestions we received our dev team came up with a preliminary plan:

1. Special "Merger Stories"

• Your kingdom will only be eligible for merging if it has completed its first Season of Conquest story and has a very low number of active players.
• If selected for merging, your kingdom will only have one story it can register for in its next Lost Kingdom (King of the Nile, though this may change).
• The gameplay of this special "merger story" will be the same as a regular Season of Conquest story, but at the end of the season there will be a "merger period" (currently planned to last for around 5 days). During this time, your kingdom can form a team with other kingdoms participating in a merger story, even if they're in a different Lost Kingdom. At the end of the merger period, your kingdom and its teammates will be combined into a new kingdom.
  Additional Notes:
• Merger stories will only open if there are enough eligible kingdoms to form a matchmaking pool. If there are too many eligible kingdoms, more merger stories will open as needed.
• Your kingdom can choose to skip a merger story, but it will count as failing to sign up for a story.
• If a kingdom fails to find a team or a team's active player count is still too low, the system may intervene.

2. New Kingdom Naming
   Merged kingdoms will have a new kingdom number and name, separate from those of its constituent kingdoms.

3. New Kingdom Map
   Merged kingdoms will have a new map. On this new map:

• All Holy Sites and Passes will be temporarily closed, gradually unlocking as the Kingdom Chronicles progress.
• All Alliance Fortresses, Alliance Flags, and Alliance Resource Centers will be removed. All resources used to build them will be refunded.

4. Other Events

• During the merger period, certain kingdom-wide ranking events (e.g. Mightiest Governor) will be paused.
• Merged kingdoms will not be able to sign up for KvK for two weeks after merging.
• New events will be launched in merged kingdoms to help them quickly rebuild.

5. This Face-to-Face won't go into how other kingdom assets (e.g. special immigration points and Vacation Permits) and kingdom stats (e.g. rankings) will be handled. Stay tuned for future announcements that'll go into more detail on this subject.
   Above is our preliminary plan for kingdom mergers. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them with us via the survey at the end of this article.

Q2: What new game modes are you planning to add?
A2: We're currently developing a new game mode, tentatively called "Supreme Strife".
In this game mode, the top Season of Conquest governors will be able to form cross-kingdom teams, battling other teams for control of Holy Sites on a brand new map. This game mode is tentatively scheduled for every weekend.
Like KvK battles, combat in this game mode can result in your units being severely wounded or killed. At the end of each match, however, you'll be refunded a large portion of your dead units and resources/speedups for healing severely wounded units.
Besides regular item rewards, members of the champion team will receive a rare, limited-time title they can display.
The official name and specific rules for this game mode are subject to change.

Q3: Armament transmutation is too difficult. Do you have any plans to optimize the system?
A3: Our original plan was to implement an armament "fusion" system, which would work like this: If Armament B has a valuable attribute (e.g. Cavalry Attack +3.2%), you can fuse it with Armament A, with a 50% chance to replace one of Armament A's less valuable attributes (e.g. Gold Gathering Speed) with the valuable attribute.

Our hope was that this would increase the value of armaments with only one good attribute, as they could be used to gradually improve your other armaments, which would in turn make armament events and chests more rewarding.
However, we've encountered a number of problems in the design stage:

1. Currently, it's relatively easy to obtain an armament with a single 2.5% or even >3% attribute, and the max possible attribute bonus is only 3.5%. If this armament fusion system is launched, the gap between armament attributes will rapidly close, and many governors will be able to very quickly max out their armaments. We aren't sure how receptive governors will be to such a balance-shifting change.
2. Transmutation Stones, Transmutation Crystals, and this new armament fusion feature would all be systems in service of armament attributes, and the coexistence of all these separate systems runs the risk of making things overly complicated.
   Due to these issues, we have yet to determine a final plan or launch time for the armament fusion system. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, we'd love to hear them.

Q4: What are your plans for improving QoL in the future?
A4: Our plan for QoL improvements can be divided into two levels: systems and events.

1. On the system level, we want to reduce the burden of everyday activities. For example, we're currently considering adding the ability to automatically attack Barbarian Troops and search for Barbarian Forts while you're logged in.
2. On the event level, our priority is to optimize the basic experience of participating in events (e.g. adding a one-click button to claim all event rewards). We also plan to optimize specific events based on community feedback (e.g. Alliance Mobilization, Golden Kingdom, etc).

Q5: Acquiring new armaments in S2 is unrewarding. A lot of armaments seem useless until SoC.
A5: The Season of Conquest adds many new commanders with new combat mechanics. With these commanders and their mechanics unavailable in Season 2, a lot of the armaments designed for them seem useless. We're currently planning to release certain SoC commanders prior to S2, while also adjusting the skills of some of these commanders to better fit the combat environment of S2. Our hope is that this will allow governors to familiarize themselves with these new mechanics earlier, allowing them to plan out their commander and armament development in advance.

Q6: High damage makes KvK battles way too fast. I have to constantly form new troops and spend tons of resources. Are you planning on adjusting the pace of combat?
A6: The addition of new commanders and equipment has caused combat to deviate from our original design. As such, we're currently planning on making the following adjustments:

1. In regards to overly-high damage causing battles to be too fast, we're currently calculating in-game damage statistics. Based on these calculations, we're trying to optimize the pace of KvK battles by adjusting KvK buffs and Crystal technologies.
2. In regards to excessive resource requirements, we've already launched a feature that refunds healing resources at the end of KvK. We're also considering adding a reoccurring event where you can trade Building and Research Speedups for Healing Speedups.

Q7: Kingdom Bugle messages can't be closed, and they block unit type selection when forming a rally. How do you plan on fixing this?
A7: This issue will be resolved in the next update.

Q8: Will you be adding new accessories for Combo and Smite commanders?
A8: We're currently in the design process. There'll be more info soon.

Q9: Can you add the ability to have a separate equipment loadout for Canyon game modes? It's very tedious having to manually switch my equipment every time.
A9: This feature will be implemented in the next update.

Q10: Will you continue to optimize the automatic title appointment feature?
A10: We're delighted to see how well-received the automatic title appointment feature has been, but we've also received a ton of helpful suggestions for how to improve it further. Features we plan to add include: the ability to give up titles early, more options for title durations, the ability to set a City Hall level requirement for applications, and more.

Q11: Kingdom and alliance management is too much of a pain. Will you be adding features to reduce the burden?
A11: Due to the wide variety of kingdom/alliance management styles, our previous optimizations have focused on universal issues (e.g. automatic title appointment, alliance passlists, etc).
As we've continued to discuss this issue with the community, however, we've come to the conclusion that our QoL improvements thus far have been far from enough.
As such, we'd like to ask our governors to fill in this survey https://q.lilithgame.com/deliver?sid=67cad59921900e005a6fa172 so that we can collect additional feedback and suggestions for future improvements.

That's all for this edition of Face-to-Face With the Developers. If you have any feedback about what we just discussed, or any suggestions at all, feel free to contact our customer support team or share them in the community. We're always keeping an ear out for governor feedback.

Thank you for supporting Rise of Kingdoms. Have fun and enjoy the game!

RoK Group

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