I want to see improvements/ways to reduce the amount of playtime needed per day. Currently, with a maxed out water mill + lunch/dinner bonuses + marketplace/wishing well/etc, you can get maybe 300 energy a day. Add to that the daily mine/tower/capitol + arena + dailies + guild raid, it now requires some 2-3 hours daily to use up all of the available resources daily optimally.
This has actually driven a few friends to quit the game, because the time commitment required is too great. This is supposed to be a mobile game, where players can take 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there to do some stuff once in a while. Not a part-time requiring 3 hours a day.
A good place to start would be to reduce energy given out per day (maybe 1 energy every 15 minutes instead), nerf the watermill, increase energy requirements of everything by double, give out less energy bonuses, and rebalance express tickets to not be so horrible at giving out 3x2* XP potions that nobody would actually use them, and allowing them to be used on mine/capitol/etc. Reduce the energy storing cap from 500 to double your current energy maximum.
I agree with you, it's taking up a lot of time daily and I'm currently contemplating to quit because of this
huge time commitment.
The fun part of this type of game is to come out with strategy to defeat strong enemies and clear event achievements. And to do that, you need a huge arsenal of units and equipment you can use. However in VF,
training units takes up a lot of resources. It takes me 1.5 weeks of resources to train out a single 5* +2 unit, only to have that
unit obsolete in a few weeks time. Furthermore, there's
RNG to screw you up in faith and aura placement which require 5* unit to fix. And then there're still equipment, another resource sink.
(This is pretty much the reason why players follow the meta and there's no variation in the arena, because no one other than the whales can afford to build other units.)
If I don't put in the time commitment, I won't be able to get the resources to upgrade my units; this means that I won't be able to progress in the game and might as well just quit; but if I put in the time commitment, I will be sacrificing my real life which is not worth it over a game. It's obvious which path players will take and that is to quit the game. I would have quit if it wasn't for the money I put in at the start of the game.
So I wish VF would follow these suggestions:
1)
Cut down the time players spent on the game without compromising on the rewards they will get.
- Let players use express tickets on daily quests.
- Let players use express tickets on event quests when they clear all 3 trials.
- Reduce the number of arena orb to 1 per 2 hours while double the points and bloodstone given.
- Let players skip the battle start animation (event hero bonus, ally bonus, wave).
- Have a button to skip battle start and skill animation automatically.
- 3x speed.
2)
Let players build their team more easily
- Less resources needed to train unit from 3* to fully limit break.
- Less resources needed to upgrade equipment.
- More rewards from event (bazaar, loot, ladder, achievement).
- Allow player to use 5* potential unit to reroll aura and faith.
3)
Don't let players effort be wasted
- Revamp old heroes and Valiant, especially Kiera and Darrion,
- If new event hero is overpowered, do what Granblue fantasy did. Fix it as soon as it is reported and then refund the players who summoned during that period their gems. Though some profit will be lost, it is still better than having players lost faith and quit the game.
- Have a wider pool of units (including 3* and 4*) that will gain bonus stats during event.
- Gift should not have an expiry date.
4)
Minimize the impact of RNG (Valiante is one good solution)
- Show the drop rate so players can better accept their luck.
5)
Others
- Better storytelling. Most players just skipped through the dialogue and are unable to view it again. It will be best if there is a separate node to view the story.
- Better raid system.
- Better chat system.
VF developers need to put in a lot of effort to rebuild the community. It's better to milk little from a large community than to milk a lot from the whales and ignore the rest of the dwindling community. The latter will eventually lead to downfall like many other games of similar potential.
