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| Author | Campaign difficulty algorithm is an unfair dynamic long term |
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Now before people automatically see a negatively framed statement and conclude immediately that I am moaning and take a counter stance, please here me out.
Fairness is about giving people an equal footing, as much as is possible. Now in this I can claim no personal issue, I was active at the time when all campaigns were first released and had as much opportunity to do them when they were comparitively easier as anyone else (granted not much funds at that time or castles, though that is to do with my wallet and not game design). In my mind that is all fair and above board.
However, the difficulty of these very quickly ramps up, and as far as I can see keeps on doing so and I see no reason for it to drop. Theoretically I believe that the difficulty only drops when a player loses 3 times to a level, something which players in general work quite hard to avoid, and is therefore a rare event, particularly on the top difficulty. The consequence of this is that players have to wear more and more arts to nudge a win, when at the point of first release they could win them in just shop arts.
Now lets extrapolate forwards and add in some other general game trends. Event arts will gradually and incrementally get better, they have to otherwise they have low value and it makes people feel disappointed and unhappy and therefore increases the risk of them leaving. Currently the best readily available arts are the imperial arts, which will not be available to any significant level to newly joining players. Over time it will come to a point when the only way to win a campaign is by renting rare arts, or using imperial arts, or possibly through being very lucky. At this point most players will just do it on medium and ignore the top difficulty.
This seems rather unfair to new players (whom I assume the game would want to attract and not put off) as it will be basically almost impossible for them or crazy expensive (they will not have been able to get imperial arts)
As such I think there should be a cap of difficulty at a fixed percentage above whatever the base line was when it was released, or perhaps past lets sat 40% above the original start difficulty on campaign release the factor that decreases the difficulty (if there actually is one) is increased. | | I agree, admins have been told but don't seem to care.. | I agree, admins have been told but don't seem to care..
Overall though the imperial arts cause a lot of problems. I don't think it was a very good idea. | the idea of campaign difficulty goes up for each OTHER PLAYER finish it is stupid in the first place. (dont ban me for capitalization, it is required to highlight)
campaign is like classical story mode, you play in your own alternate dimensions. imagine if a single player game such as ..... (due to rule can't mention other games) implemented our campaign system.
oh some genius kid in south korea already beat the game in hardest setting, better ramp up the difficulty even more for EVERYONE in the next mandatory patch.
wow someone in U.S beat it with lot of in game purchase and after 287 tries, guess we need to increase the difficulty again. | I recently got a series of 120's in the first campaign(the oldest online campaign) without using any of the rare set (set obtained from chests).
Best artifacts used are ...dungeon ring, I guess, only in one or two battles.
Sometimes a full set of Beastbane (~1500gold per battle) is enough to beat the toughest difficulty.
So from my point of view, what the topic discussed is mainly nonsense. The difficulty has increased, yet is indeed beatable.
Notice that you only need to save 32% of your troops to obtain three stars. Not 100%. | There must be some misunderstanding about the dynamic balancing.
The campaign difficulty increases, if and only if, you win a battle in the FIRST try with remaining troop eligible to earn THREE stars.
In other words, the difficulty doesn't increase when:
1) You tried twice or thrice(or more, and the difficulty will drop) to beat it.
2) You beat it with very little troop remaining.
I experienced very weird difficulty in some factions, where Normal difficulty is far harder than Hard difficulty. I didn't complain anything, but wore full and tried my best to gain 120 scores. | | The campaign's do fulfill an economic role in ensuring event arts are needed to complete at a high level. As such these get used more and so run down on durability, deleting the stocks empire wide and so maintaining the price levels and interest in event arts. Without this dynamic these arts would often have little use. In my mind they should have started harder and not increased, or only negligibly. This maintaining the need for event arts, but without craziness. | To Swift girl: You misunderstood the point OP was making.
What he means, that every time a player beats a campaign, it gets harder, according to our current system. This makes it unfair for newer players.
If for example a new campaign comes out and group of players (lets call them players A) can beat it with shop arts and get max points, difficulty of the campaign raises for other players, thus newer players (players B) will have harder time beating it and will have to invest more gold into better gear.
In the end, Players A will get same progress as players B, but will have to spend less on it just because they did it earlier, which is kinda unfair for something like a campaign.
Eventually the difficulty will raise so hard the campaign wont be beatable without powerful arts like Imperial or rare ones, thus making it unbeatable for new players.
I imagine something like a new item sale being uneven for players (faster ones get it cheaper), but for something like a Campaign, everyone should fight at similar difficulty.
I experienced very weird difficulty in some factions, where Normal difficulty is far harder than Hard difficulty.
Thats because more people finished the campaign on normal than hard, thus normal suffering from more difficulty boosts and becoming harder than hard (another reason current system is bad) | for Aurelija:
If it were "unfair" for newer players. Please not that:
"Older players" have no access to full pirate set, to leader set, to empire set or to dungeon set, no "upgraded faction-specific rare sets", even ring of cold was not affordable for everybody.
I remembered when at Level 16 and beating some of the early campaigns, the best I could use were heavy temporal sets, which, when viewed with today's point, was even inferior to a full shop set in some cases. | Depends on level perhaps, for your lvl 18 lesser players hence lesser boost of difficulty.
For my level, its almost impossible to beat them at just normal arts; instead not even 'easy' with good proper arts combo. Almost 50% times 1st attempt is a loss bcos its settlement and troops selection dependent. ( Only older campaigns ).
New one is still easy. On day of all castle, i completed it with dwarf with only shop arts.
However, for older campaigns i completely agree with OP. Thats the reason why i dropped the idea of doing potential WG3, because it needs more than 'just good' arts. | Potential AG3*
And btw arts like great temporal staff, some pirates, order of light, stalker cloak etc. still doesn't give easy wins ( not for all battles, some are still easy ). | "Older players" have no access to full pirate set, to leader set, to empire set or to dungeon set, no "upgraded faction-specific rare sets", even ring of cold was not affordable for everybody.
Does it? Tamer arts are 2 years old, I don't think AG is much older than that. Most of these arts are very good, the axe is still the best weapon, the cloack one of the best defensive cloacks, dungeon ring the only ring which gives morale. Then the survilurg arts are still some of the best, especially mage ones and are older than AG.
Well, that's a bit pricey but then you still have cheaper ones like the general rings, the temporal signet ring which is still a must even with inferior stats, the PvP event necklaces (order of X), or even thief pendants or old medals which give luck, morale and extra parameters,...
If you knew where to look at you could get much better than shop arts. In fact the new sets are strange, like the pirate gives KN/SP that is not useful most of the time (too few for magic or too much KN even for hybrid) and is not even so good (hat and armor are sub-par, cloak only good because of range resist). | | In general I've given up on the AG- if too many people complete it, PvP will become more difficult. But the AG is the only possible use for these event arts, apart from survilurg attacks, isn't it? so I might try them just to finish those off. | In general I've given up on the AG- if too many people complete it, PvP will become more difficult. But the AG is the only possible use for these event arts, apart from survilurg attacks, isn't it? so I might try them just to finish those off.
Some events allow non shop but not enchants. It is not common though. | | i recently did the first campaign with a few factions and got close to 120 scores. Similar to Swiftgirl, I also found it doable with reasonable arts. I didn't use full pirate set or temporal set at all. I used only ROC, SOC, the clover, the cheap dungeon or robber arts, and sometimes the leader helmet/armor. So from my experience, the difficulty didn't increase that much, and the guild is working fine. | | But you are like level 21 and only around 100 people to complete compared to thousands? | That's why I am waiting to be cl 21 to play them. :D
Hope none else have tis plan too. :p | Simply using player tables as a rough guide of campaigns completed - massive simplification since only looking at whole levels.
Level 21 : 27 AG2 44 AG1
Level 20 : 32 AG2 61 AG1
Level 19 : 35 AG2 87 AG1
Level 18 : 34 AG2 66 AG1
Level 17 : 31 AG2 58 AG1
Level 16 : 17 AG2 62 AG1
In this it would not support the notion of a larger number of ones completed at lower levels, however I think the population at lower levels that have completed some campaigns but not got AG1 is probably much larger. For example those players with only one main doing it for just that faction - though I cannot easily access that data to make an assessment.
If I take my own situation as an example, while I am currently CL17 with 1037 AG points, these come from 169 at CL14, 467 at CL15, 216 at CL16 and 185 at CL17
Therefore even though there are arguably more with AG2 and AG1 at higher levels, it is not unlikely that these were gained at lower levels, thus perhaps having spikes of difficulty lower down. Certainly I am confident that many many battles are to all intents and purposes impossible with shop arts, and very very difficult with good stats and arts. |
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