Creating a Problem and Selling the Solution

[versed pecan]

Will start by saying I think the devs showed in season 1 that they are willing and able to listen to community feedback and criticism and make positive changes for the playerbase. A couple of examples would be the outpost rift spam clogging up global chat, within a week they implemented a rift spam filter. When people were in an uproar over unlimited inspirations, they walked back the change and even gave us a compensation gift.

The problem I have is with the selling of limited amount of multi-battles and team saves. EVERY player needs more saved team slots. EVERY player needs unlimited multi-battles. It's 2024 and if you expect people to want to grind your game (on PC or mobile), you have to remove any frustration barriers between the gamers and actually playing the game.

I was really disappointed to see that you are selling 30 daily multibattles and 15 saved team slots with the 3-ears contract for 5 dollars. As somebody who buys the battlepass to support the game I enjoy playing, it's a kick in the teeth to know that you are creating frustration problems and then selling the solution. It shows that you don't actually care about creating a good experience for ALL of your players... just the ones who spend.

Because of this, I will stop buying the battlepass. QOL should be a BASE GAMEPLAY IMPLEMENTATION. If you want to nickel and dime players for things that should already be in the game and available to everyone, I am going to stop supporting this game.

I will tell you the secret to making money in a game like this. MAKE A FUN GAME. That's it. If you make a game people want to play, then people will spend money. Make a game that doesn't disrespect people's time or try to milk them for a few dollars for basic QOL. I know it's only season 2 so there's time for improvement, but you only have so much time / good will from the players before they get bored or frustrated and quit.

[frail estuary]

I cannot honestly back up the term F2p (free to play) as I see what is happening now with power creeping but my other major concern was the creativity that seemed to have slacked this season with new content ending so quickly.

[versed pecan]

Yeah the power creep is pretty substantial. Even just in terms of the general level of competition for resources within a server. After the merge my server has like 10-15 more big spenders on it when before there was only a handful.

The other issue I have as a battlepass only spender is even s1 mechanics (rally, dauntless, wild etc.) are a pipe dream for me to try and put together one solid team of ANY of these, but then you add 3 new mechanics in s2 with all new legendary pairings / trios and suddenly the chances of me completing any reasonably decent team of ANY of the game's core damage mechanics reduces even further.

As each season goes on, it feels like only spenders or those who get really lucky will be able to put together reasonable teams to compete in events and bosses. There really should have been some overlap for new champions to work with old champions in some way. If they add another 3 new mechanics next season I'll know for sure they have lost the plot.

[frail estuary]

Totally agree.

[versed pecan]

Actually my initial plan with this game was to play my main and then create a new f2p every season to play through the fun early grind of the game vs. other new players for a month or so when the main's content was dry like during the 2nd month 3rd half month, but can't even do that because you have to play through all of season 1 to touch season 2

[frail estuary]

I been here since the first little 8 day beta, believe me seen it evolve. S1 was much fun. Sure there was a downside to it and some even brought up the power creeping then. I tried to be hopeful as I have invested a lot of time ( last August) waiting, supporting etc. I have to speak up now.

[versed pecan]

Yeah I get the feeling a lot of the players in my alliance are only still here due to sunk cost fallacy. Some of them have put quite a bit of money and time into their accounts so it's hard to walk away. One of the bigger spenders in my alliance quit earlier today however.

[frail estuary]

Yes many have. Especailly early on people. I have not invested alot of money and it is par for the course. But I WOULD have this season had things been more fun at the least. I cannot lie S2 has issues

[versed pecan]

Let's be honest, s2 is basically s1 but re-skinned with some new champs

certainly not worth going through a full reset and having to re-grind everything and then waiting day by day as the only challenging content (fae / pillars) is drip-fed to us by arbitrary time-gates.

Like we just had the highest difficulty weekly dungeons open a couple days ago and they were all full auto with the same team I use for vortex with no adjustments needed at all.

[frail estuary]

Exactly! Let's hope they continue with their initial concerns and prove to us once again they will be a great game going foward! Ever the optimist 😂

Tourney was a joke

[versed pecan]

If the only content that is challenging I have to wait and grind for 2 months every season just to play, I don't care enough to do that.

[frail estuary]

Same here Wix

[round folio]

need give more red crystal give very low crystal and the game convertet in pat to win i think this game is a different but all games gatcha is equal :S

[versed pecan]

From the start I was excited about seasonal reset but skeptical, as I knew that to do it successfully they would have to create a ton of content in a 3 month turnaround time. Very ambitious for any game dev team to do it well.

What I was worried about is what actually ended up happening. Season comes out with barely any new content and just timegates things to spread out what is actually like 3-4 weeks worth of content over a 3 month period.

A reset works only when the grind is enjoyable. It's a hard sell to get people excited to grind 10,000 more levels of goblin to level the same champions they have just leveled a couple months before, and grind the same bosses (slightly different) for gear they just had 2 months before.

If I think of successful seasonal games, they are successful because the grind content is mostly the enjoyable part. Finding gear is exciting, not a chore. Leveling up gives access to new skills and abilities and gameplay options and through skill systems has almost infinite replayability.

[frail estuary]

This is my first Seasonal game so I have nothing to compare it to in that aspect. However your comments are exactly the sentiment of many more every day. Which is unfortunate. I will remain until end of season and possibly beginning of S3 depending on what happens between now and then. I wish it all the success going forward. It was a fun learning experience at the least.

[versed pecan]

Yeah I'm hopeful as well, but I'm not sure if I'll make it to season 3. I want to, but when otherworld opens up I just am not having fun grinding the same bosses every day for 2 weeks that we fought for ardreth / utior event.

Especially since I had to start deleting save teams yesterday in order to build new teams, which is why I am writing this post in the first place. I'm already a bit disappointed by season 2 and then the game frustrated me with lack of save teams, but they are selling them for 5 dollars !

Now when I have to go back to farm that dungeon for the team I deleted it's going to remind me that HEY I ALREADY HAD A TEAM SAVED FOR THIS DUNGEON BUT I HAD TO DELETE IT BECAUSE GREED

[alpine pivot]

Same reason as you, battlepass was a nice thing to have and not necessary to enjoy the game, but having 15 additional preset slots is required to play the game as it is intended to be played, which is why it should be free and I don't plan on spending anytime soon if they keep those practices. They probably didn't realize how many presets are actually required.

[signal vault]

I'd argue they absolutely did. We originally only had 5 presets that were later expanded to 15, around the time Otherworld appeared in S1... which is exactly when we needed those additional teams.

Evidently 15 was not enough, so they decided to skim some money off of people by selling 15 more.

[alpine pivot]

On a second thought, they probably did

[hollow summit]

I've stopped buying the game pass too, nor inverting any more money on this game, 100% FTP, I really don't think this game as it is deserves any more of my money

Like Wix said I would stop playing but I've spent too much money, so i'll just keep going ftp till I have the guts to throw away all the invested or a miracle from devs

I've been playing King Arthur Legends Rise 100% ftp that's a really generous game I have 6 of 14 legendaries there already

[signal vault]

Let's be fair though, if you've played any other gacha (like Raid), Dragonheir is already considered very generous. I didn't get my first leggo in Raid until 120 days in. I'm about the same here, but instead I have 17 leggos. That's really a massive difference.

Honestly I think the mistake DH initially made was insufficient monetization. The fact that the packs are so meh discourages nonwhales from spending. So they're trying to find a way to get smaller spenders to put in a few bucks... but selling QoL really isn't the way to do it.

[versed pecan]

The only thing about raid, when I played, you didn't need 2-3 legendaries of the same type to make a good team. There were no mechanics restricting what champs are useful with other champs. On this game if you don't pull specific legendaries you are SOL for building certain types of teams.

Raid I could clear all the content with F2P champs and there was no real competition over resources with other players, so your progression was more personal. Sure there is cvc and that but Dragonheir has made these competitions the focal point of the seasonal progression grind with how arena rankings / weekly tournaments / vortex rewards / dungeon racing / hero ratings function with the whole server competing over these rank rewards.

Also raid gave you the opportunity to earn a free legendary every month through fusions. IDK if they are still f2p friendly but they definitely were when I played. They gave a lot of top tier champs through fusions.

About the only p2w aspect of raid is cvc and arena, and most players just ignore arena for most of the game until they are endgame and ready to get serious about finishing progress missions. You could get an account to gold 4/5 within a week or two as a f2p and farm 1-man defenses for maximum progression early on (idk if that changed since I played).

[signal vault]

Okay, that's true. Didn't think of that. One of the biggest struggles here is definitely the limiting factor of teams, both by affinity pairs and mechanic synergy. I think it makes for good teambuilding challenges but yeah it definitely is a massive limiting factor for smaller rosters.

While I do think ranking is a big deal in terms of rewards, it's really not that difficult to ignore them and just play at your own pace. I have some friends who are busy with irl and don't have the time to play much or compete for ranking, but they still enjoy the game on their own terms. They're just starting to farm Venom 8 in S2 now, both were in the initial wave of S2 servers.

I disagree with the Raid fusion thing. Yes, a dedicated player who can run their PC 24/7 to get enough points can easily get the fusion every month, but for many, the fusion is largely unattainable. And many fusions sucked and frankly even as a player who could do all the events without tapping into stored resources, the fusion was just so much added stress trying to complete events every few days. DH has a much more relaxed pace, I have a whole week to figure out what I want to do for my continental teams.

Raid also generally has a lot more trashy champs at all rarities so even pulling a leggo is not necessarily an exciting thing. At least the majority of leggos here are good and/or have some use... and of course there are always exceptions.

But overall my issue with Raid remains the time. I didn't quit because I disliked the game. I was a $10/mo low spend daily gem pack player in G4 Tag and finishing top 500 plat, so it's definitely possible to compete without whaling. I quit because the game did not respect my time and I was no longer willing to spend 3-4 hours a day on dailies, and Plarium refused to address many QoL issues.

If the devs are watching here, I think you guys would want to take note, because I'm definitely not alone in this. Charging for QoL is the most miserable decision possible.

[versed pecan]

Did you not use RSLHelper? You could set it up to pretty much automate the entire process for every event in the game outside of arena farming ones and summoning events.

While I totally agree I despise the amount of dailies raid eventually bloated itself with, something just doesn't feel right about the dragonheir grind. IDK if it's due to knowing your gear disappears every 3 months that makes dungeons not exciting or enjoyable for me, or maybe it's the time-gating of the good content, or it could be just a lack of challenging content / content in general that causes me to feel that way.

[brazen yacht]

u guys have sold me on raid sounds like a fun experience where you are not even playing the game X)

no wonder why people cry about manualing things in this game when you are used to being a vegetable and not using your own brain on a fully automated game

but ANYWAYS , the constant competing thing is why i play this game if they made this in solo progression game like what you described that raid is i would personally not play this for me it would have 0 reason to play , but you have your preference i get it.

[signal vault]

I didn't. With the value of my account, I wasn't really willing to trust 3rd party software... but you still need a dedicated PC running 24/7 anyways. I mostly play DH on my phone which basically isn't even an option with Raid

I did write some of my own scripts to automate stuff but those were troublesome so I only had a few

[versed pecan]

Ah yeah. I couldn't have played raid without rslhelper, just takes too much attention

You could have it swap food in and out and set it to use energy refills and stop when you achieved specific tournament points

[signal vault]

Yeah maybe i would've kept playing if I used rslhelper

Oh wow I didn't know that

That's quite impressive

[versed pecan]

so you basically set it up for the event that's running and tell it to stop when you reach the points you need, it autosells all the trash gear for you etc.

and then autoforge all your materials and sell the gear that doesn't meet your criteria for you during cvc, stuff like that

saved so much time / attention

[signal vault]

Dang that's really impressive... darn, maybe I should've tried it before quitting

[versed pecan]

takes a bit of time / work to set up properly though

[signal vault]

Well now I've not the interest to bother playing Raid again tho lol, so oh well

[versed pecan]

the other cool thing about it was you could dig through your entire account / champs / gear and see all their masteries and stats and how they are geared and everything else like that, look through all your artifacts and sort by different things all while you are running dungeons

so you have full access to your account while you're grinding to look at stuff

[signal vault]

o__0

[versed pecan]

i wouldn't have lasted past the first 2 months of raid without rslhelper

[signal vault]

Yeah it probably is a preference thing. I'm honestly a casual who competes only if it's convenient. I always play games on easy mode because I'm a noob

[brazen yacht]

and it's fine

[signal vault]

Guess I should be proud of lasting 3 years then rofl

[brazen yacht]

games like this are for smaller audiance which i am ok with

but it's made more for a player like me but i can see problems for casuals it has

[versed pecan]

I didn't say my preference is one way or the other

[brazen yacht]

not all games are made to appeal to the masses

[versed pecan]

I don't mind competitive games if they are well designed

[signal vault]

Competition is monetization in games like this. Without competition there's be very little motivation to whale

[versed pecan]

I enjoy the speedruns and competition in dragonheir

[brazen yacht]

same

[signal vault]

So there definitely has to be.

[versed pecan]

there's just not enough of it, and when they merged servers they forgot to expand some of the reward tiers

[brazen yacht]

i got 2k wyrm for speed run dungeons that's good for me

[versed pecan]

so suddenly i put in same effort and time and get less rewards

[brazen yacht]

i am not a whale so it feels good to get that

[versed pecan]

yeah i got 2100 on last set of speedruns

[signal vault]

I got 370 I think

[versed pecan]

but i shoulda got 4000 !

[signal vault]

Wow you guys are nuts

[versed pecan]

also top 10 team arena i was rank 1, 2 or 3 last season every week, this season i will not make top 10 for the free master scroll ever

not because i got worse or less competitive, but because they added another 10-15 high spenders in server merge

so 8 less master scrolls every season just cuz

plus the associated wyrm rewards that came along with it

[robust valve]

I just want to say that i played Raid for a long time and i still couldn't clear the highest stagees in all of the dungeons and i could not even scratch the Strongest Raid Boss, so i do struggle to believe you did all of that with a F2P account unless you had insane luck and pulled immortal teams (which need specific champions to work even more so than in DH) @versed pecan

I spent a bit of cash in the game too and i could never compete at anything. Arena, CvC, Events, the whales always roflstomped me. Everything costs more and is harder to obtain. If you really need a specific champion it's almost impossible to target farm him in any way and you don't get even half as many sacred than you get helios in DH.

Not to mention that you even have to pay silver to unequip gear...

Half of the events in the game are about competing with other players so not sure which version of Raid have you played 🙂

[versed pecan]

Well I have a f2p challenge series on YT where I recorded almost every day of progress on my f2p account, so feel free to watch, although I will warn you I make very long, unedited videos.

I got to gold 2 in tag team on that account before I quit around 340 days when I stopped playing. I cleared hard doomtower for the first time around day 80 or something and every month afterwards. I had lydia by around 200 days in IIRC on my first f2p which isn't the one I recorded. My second f2p was the one I made the series on, and I had special challenge rules where I had to finish each FW with only 1 epic unlock + free champs. I also cleared all normal doomtowers with basically rares + broadmaw.

Just like any other strategy team-builder game, there are different ways to overcome each situation, and there are a lot of rare and epic champs as well as Raid gives you a ton of free champs with fusions and logins etc. that can carry you.

Hard doomtower team of Arbiter / Scyl / Bellower / Drexthar can carry through almost all hard doomtower waves along with paragon to vs. the mortu-macaabs and a champ like venomage I think I used for the siphi rotos waves because I didn't want to use seer for 1-shotting.

On my f2p I consistently scored like 300k+ in CvC as well, since if you save all your resources that you get for two weeks on f2p and also buy tag refills and are high tag arena you get a ton of points, plus all FW21 on autofarm.

The majority of raid is not competing with other players for VALUABLE resources. You can progress and get by in the game perfectly fine by just farming 1-mans in arena. Don't even ever need to win a cvc the milestone rewards are good.

In Dragonheir if you aren't competing and you're not spending, you're losing a ton of resources and you're falling behind. Every week there are a ton of resources you are directly competing with other players for, in a way that Raid just doesn't have. Raid is a single player experience mostly.

[signal vault]

Not f2p for Raid but similar experience as a low spender, $10 daily gem pack only. Early game is tough without some luck of the draw, but once you move into UNM resources start accumulating. Raid rewards two things - either a thick wallet, or time.

I was the latter. I played for 3 years. G4 Tag, top 500 plat. Don't need much money, just use resources wisely. I call it Wait: Shadow Legends for a reason. Always gotta wait for the best time to do anything. But that value slowly adds up month after month after month.

I'm a much weaker PvE player though, I brute forced HDT with lucky pulls. I'm more of a PvP specialist.

[versed pecan]

If you rush normal hydra team asap and collect the mithra frags too, by the time you have arbiter and scyl and drex you'll have the champs needed to clear HDT mostly. Really just a venomage, a paragon, a bellower is good enough, and then for the bosses you can make f2p teams. I solo'd bommal 90 hard with templar60 for instance, although there are much better champs for him out now I'm sure. Lot of cheesy ways to clear bosses in raid.

[robust valve]

I would like to watch that, sure, i dont mind long videos as i currently work from home and always look for something on my 2nd screen 😛

is it Wix_RSL?

[versed pecan]

yeah

[versed pecan]

Ah yeah i remember now. I started that series with mystery shard only challenge and got arbiter on day 100, and then it turned into budget lydia challenge

was a long time ago

[robust valve]

You're a very determined and patient man, i might retract my earlier statement after just watching few of your vids. 🙂 Resstarting 1st turn of combat so many times...

I did however played the game long before this challenge, i did not have access to these free champs like Ronda for instance.

You also have been very lucky with your champs, you have some top notch ones in your roster.

[versed pecan]

yeah my first legendary pull was duchess, but I only used mystery shard champs up to arbiter for the challenge. It was my second time playing through the game on f2p I also had my first f2p account like a year and a half or more before that where I got arbiter on day 70ish or something. BGE did a showcase on it when I got the lydia WR see if i can find it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pWM5kQJ_7Y

[robust valve]

Nice dude, well done, i remember having big problems with obtaining Arbiter. I think there was some requirement involving arena that i struggled to fullfill.

Not certain as it was long ago.

but ye Dracomorph and Maneater, i remember trying to get either of these two, especially Maneater as it seemed to be easier of the two and never managed to get him.

Maneater would have skyrocketed my acc

[versed pecan]

yeah i got spooned pretty hard with lyssandra and draco first 2 legos on my first f2p playthrough. Made grinding the arena and dungeons so much easier. To beat WR at the time though you kinda have to get some luck

[robust valve]

Not retracting my statement, you were very lucky 🙂

still impressive commitement

[versed pecan]

Gotta think too I had no idea how to play the game when i started and didn't watch any YT content for like the first month. Since then I think the WR been beaten by a handful of days but it was solid at the time.

I think the budget lydia challenge was more impressive showcase of game knowledge though. I cleared Faction Wars with some really scuffed teams

[robust valve]

man no idea how u managed to get all of these leggos as f2p 🙂 keep watching that vid and the leggoes multiply and they are all solid pulls 🙂

and 2 maneaters 🙂

kinda makes me wanna play Raid again as there is so much challenge there and so much content

but eh, the scummy practices make me stay away from it

[versed pecan]

Yeah they've added so much powercreep into the game too and how long it takes to do dailies i just CBA anymore

the HH crew just started f2p 2024 3 month challenge and I was tempted to go back for another round but more i think about it just wasn't worth the time

[robust valve]

i sometimes log in

for the free champs

i think i didnt like the fact that they changed the log in rewards, that was what made me stop playing

[versed pecan]

I had finished all the PvE in the game and only thing left was fusions and a year of gearfarming if I wanted to progress meaningfully in arena

[robust valve]

i had 1 account that was f2p, lost access to it

started again properly and spent prolly around 500$, wasnt able to get very far tho