Valiant Force Forum

I haven't read any of the other threads on this board, so some of my suggestions may have already been offered by other players in some form or another. In most instances, I'll first be offering my own personal thoughts about an issue and then offer a suggestion on how to fix said issue. And finally, before I start rambling, I would just like to say that I'm not a stranger to mobile gaming, or gaming in general. To the other players that might read this and go "But other (mobile) games are doing this exact same thing!" or "This is the norm for mobile games!", I would like to simply reply with: "Why is there a need to follow what they're doing?". 


1) The narrative.
I've had an issue with this particular point ever since I started playing on launch, but this particular event drives the point home. 'Why are you guys locking story and dialogue behind high difficulty quests (namely Legendary, and now the new Master difficulty)?' Lolstory m i rite? But no, the story, character and world building is one of the most important aspects of any game in my opinion. Locking some of the narrative behind difficult quests that not all players can clear easily just denies said players the chance to be more invested into the story and lore of the game. I realise that I may be in the vast minority of players that actually cares about and reads the dialogue, but there ARE some of us who would appreciate the opportunity to read the narrative without losing a limb for it.

- There is a simple way to fix this issue: Limit the event's story to Heroic difficulty. Legendary and Master difficulty could just be a rehash of the "final battle" of the current event with additional enemies, or bosses with higher stats. This way, you satisfy both players who're looking for a challenge, and players like me who just wants to enjoy the story.


2) Costumes.
a) I imagine you get a lot of requests for this feature, but I'll say it again: 'Allow the players to select our preferred costume without losing the stat boost that comes with the premium one(s).' As it stands, to get the boosts in stats, we're forced to equip the premium ones regardless of our preferences. This particular point wouldn't be an issue if the other costumes are purely cosmetic, which brings me to my next point:

b) 'Remove the stat boosts from premium costumes altogether.' This is how you tell a game is slowly heading towards the ever precarious territory of 'Pay to Win'. The issue is not that the stat boosts that comes with the costume are minor, but that there is a stat boost at all. I understand that income is important for a company to function, but not via means like this. This is quite a literal interpretation of the phrase 'paying for power', however minor said power might be.

- As for my suggestion, I'd like to see stat boosts for costumes removed altogether, and the prices for current and future costumes to be reduced to 200 or 300 gems. This way, all we're paying for is a cosmetic change, and players aren't forced to purchase a costume they might not like just for the stat boost. And lets be realistic, not all costumes that your artists design will be a winner or a hit with the players.

c) This is a personal gripe, but also building on my previous point: 'Limit the purchase of costumes to gems only.' The current cost of the Black Swan costume for Faye at 15 Valianites is way too high. Assuming that all x10 summon rolls you make are losers (not a single 5* potential), it takes 2000 gems at the minimum to obtain 15 Valianites, and that's not a paltry sum. In the first place, Valianites are used to offset unlucky RNG rolls, and that's all it should be used for. If future costumes are introduced this way, Valianite essentially turns into a super premium currency, which isn't the way it should be. The valianite shop system currently implemented in the game is fair and acceptable. Do not screw this up.


3) The current event system.
The current event system has grown to be extremely monotonous. Underneath all the aesthetic changes, each event is basically the same thing. Players are essentially repeating what they've been doing for the last event albeit with slightly different hero line-ups and event bosses. The only real breath of fresh air we've had so far is the Twin Frost Ascension event. The multi part bosses introduced in Ancient Awakening and Elemental Chaos is a step in the right direction, but horribly implemented. The "parts" of those bosses are essentially no different from individual enemies currently in the game.

- I've read the post of the game's 2017 roadmap and I'm generally excited for the features to come, but my suggestion is this: 'Dedicate more manpower into the completion of the stated features instead of having your creative team design a new event every 2 weeks that barely impacts the game.' As an artist myself, I can tell you that ideas are a dime a dozen, but good ones require careful thought and planning. At this rate, your creative team is turning into a machine that churns out content every few weeks with little artistic value. Give your guys a chance to catch their breath. We (the players) do not always need a new event to directly follow the preceding one. I, along with many other people, would like to see something with more longevity instead of hi bye events that goes as quickly as it comes.


4) Guild Changes
a) 'A complete revamp of the World Guild Skill tree'. As it stands, the World skill tree is completely worthless. The boosts are extremely minor and does not meaningfully impact the PVE experience at all. Any competent guild will have maxed out the Guild tree first, and by then, guild levelling slows down to a relative crawl, making the skill points too valuable to add to a skill tree that does basically nothing.

- At the very least, make the effects of the skill tree apply to events as well, but I'd still recommend a complete revamp. Something like a '+X% increase in drop rate' would fare far better than the minor gold and EXP boosts.

b) 'Allow Guild Officers to edit the Announcement board'. Is there a reason why Guild Officers can't do it? I would rank being able to kick members above the ability to edit the Announcement board, but that's just me.

c) 'Better guild infrastructure'. The entire guild infrastructure needs to be revamped. Hardly anybody in my guild uses the current guild chat function mainly because it's flooded with 'Player name has upgraded equipment name to +X' or 'Player name has acquired X from Y'. Why is there a need for these messages to exist in the same place as the guild chat, or at all? A simple suggestion to improve the current system is to do away with the above messages entirely, and make the chat icon light up in a different color anytime anybody types something new.


These are all that I have at the moment, but I'll update this continuously as I see a need to.

First of all, I would like to thank to the one who spent a lot of time in writing this suggestion(s), you, ZeroKaiser. Even though it is a wall of text, it is well written and all details are well presented, which all information can be easily absorbed and understood. While this is your first post on this forum, you did make a clear approach and I really appreciate that, in my view at least.

Regarding on your points:
1.Narrative

I would like to point out some facts that,
A) This game does not focus much on the element of story.
B) Since this is a game based on progressing through stages, so it make sense to link the story to all quests, from the beginning to the end,
and C) Having the final piece of the event's story locked inside the last stage can motivate players to put more effort to clear the last stage.

Yes, some player especially new player or casual player may have trouble clearing high difficulty stage, but they can simply look for alternate source to learn about the story.

I doubt the developer would consider this suggestion because the structure of a story usually has 3 parts: introduction, encounter of boss, defeating boss. If developers were to squish them into 1 or 2 stage, a stage would probably consist of at least 3 round, which makes grinding later on more breath taking. One remedy to solve this is create more stages though, which rarely happens based on previous events (with the exception of tower event).

2.Costume

Point a - There is nothing I can point out from this one, just cosmetic and yes it is.

Point b - Yes it can be somewhat p2w but remember that costume can be obtained in a way other than monetary, which I think is completely fine. Disabling stat boost effect would probably stop most of the people from buying the costume because the people who don't care of the look or stick with the original art would find it very wasteful to spend the resources needed to obtain new costume, which can reduce the sales number of new costume by a lot, which in turn the developers would find developing new customs meaningless.

Point c - I personally feel alright about 15 valiant for faye custome. As long as costume can be obtained by means other than monetary. Remember that its permanent addition and the bonus stat is pretty small, so it won't affect too much on the gameplay, and a player can always wait until the appropriate time to obtain it.

3 Current event system

On this suggestion, I agree with you that continuous "grindy" events are tiresome. However I understand that they need to keep the contents fresh, and also make them less grindy and interesting by increasing energy cost and boss type. A major update in a monthly basis may or may not works well too. We just don't know if this pattern has never been put in used in the official server.

4 Guild changes

Point a - I have the same thought with you too. The 3rd skill tree is just too mediocre, even the gold/exp boost from every week doing have any significant effect. Those guild skill seriously need some big buffs.

Point b - I agree with you, in case of guild officer went rogue, they could always kick all guild members before leaving, which can be troublesome although it is very unlikely to happen.

Point c - Yes the announcement of "Player has xxxx from xxxxx" is not important, only stuff like valiant summoned from premium summon would probably necessary because it is a very rare event and everyone could chat about it.

I'm typing with my phone, so there might be some error in my statement as I can only see a small portion of texts at a time. Hope you guys don't mind about the wall of texts.

3 Current event system

On this suggestion, I agree with you that continuous "grindy" events are tiresome. However I understand that they need to keep the contents fresh, and also make them less grindy and interesting by increasing energy cost and boss type. A major update in a monthly basis may or may not works well too. We just don't know if this pattern has never been put in used in the official server.

Wow, really? Increasing energy cost and boss type (with what, different skills?) makes it "less grindy and interesting"? Cos you can grind less with high energy cost? Kudos to you; infallible logic right there.


Besides, have they even tried having "a major update on a monthly basis"? Like you and most naysayers, they have simply dismissed the idea and opted for these monotonous biweekly reskinned events and honestly, even with this supposed roadmap, I don't see any impactful changes in sight with regards to how these biweekly events are going to be held.

3 Current event system

On this suggestion, I agree with you that continuous "grindy" events are tiresome. However I understand that they need to keep the contents fresh, and also make them less grindy and interesting by increasing energy cost and boss type. A major update in a monthly basis may or may not works well too. We just don't know if this pattern has never been put in used in the official server.

Wow, really? Increasing energy cost and boss type (with what, different skills?) makes it "less grindy and interesting"? Cos you can grind less with high energy cost? Kudos to you; infallible logic right there.


Besides, have they even tried having "a major update on a monthly basis"? Like you and most naysayers, they have simply dismissed the idea and opted for these monotonous biweekly reskinned events and honestly, even with this supposed roadmap, I don't see any impactful changes in sight with regards to how these biweekly events are going to be held.

Wow wow wow. Hold that aggressive stuff right there, keep this thread going peacefully, we don't want to start another keyboard-warrior-championship here. I have my reasons for saying so.

How do you define grind?
Simple definition of grind = Someone do the same thing over and over to achieve something.

Energy Usage
Older event usually cost 5/7/10 energy, which force a player to do at least 28/20/14 rounds to use up all their energy for the grind based on energy gained by waiting for the clock (excluding other sources of energy). In comparison, nowadays the events cost 5/10/15, so a player would only have to do at least 28/14/9 rounds to use up all their energy for the grind.

Less playable amount of round = less grind.
Simple enough?

You may argue that the reward isn't good enough so a player would have to do more round to grind more and gain "equal" reward as previous one. I have 2 points which perfectly makes this point irrelevant.

1. People don't really want to gain extra energy using gem or so. They just want to spend up all their energy they have at the moment and make sure no energy is left unused.

2. There can never be a way to compare how good is the reward of a event compared to other event's reward. This lead to my next explanation.

Reward
When the rewards in a bazaar is not identical to another bazaar's rewards, it is impossible to compare. It can only be compared if the 2 bazaar have identical rewards regardless of their level of rewards (e.g. rune ticket, gold, gem vs rune ticket, gold, gem, and with no other different item except the level of reward of the said reward examples).

In older event we are able to get gem chest/gold chest/energy chest (aka Halloween event). Which is arguably very nice if you are able to amass a lot of event drops to exchange. In the events nowadays, no chests, only 2-5star ticket, and people complain "there is nothing to change". Has the event's reward became worse? I would say no, simply because:

1. New features are added and therefore causing some reward less useful and less significant.
- This is especially true when comes to 1-5star hero ticket. In old time, the only way to change faith is to use 5* as fodder, but now we can use pixie, which can be obtained from valianite shop. Now the only purpose of 5* fodder is to reset aura direction, making the 1-5* hero ticket less important to spam.

2. Bazaar has to be constantly changing to keep the contents fresh, and in the process removed some of the desired rewards of players.
- New rewards like heirloom, rune of (specific type) ticket, some random goodies have all been added. If you really want to compare the reward overall, I would say the rewards have become better (man, no one can say heirloom set and stun potion are useless).

So in overall the energy cost and rewards ratio has been not much changes. With more energy cost comes with better rewards, and less grindy.

Of course, all my points are irrelevant and invalid if you don't mind spending money to buy energy for more grind. If that is the case, in your perspective your grind level is basically same as before.

And my reaction to your words.

To "Kudos and infallible logic"
- I will take that as a compliment.

To "Naysayers who deny monthly update"
- Perhaps you didn't go through my post thoroughly, I never been biased to biweekly events or monthly event, I said it is possible for monthly event to work well, but we will never know until the game has adopted the system, because without doing so there's simple no enough sample size to test it. I'm ok with biweekly or monthly equally as long as it is not repetitive.

To your post
- Keep the toxic words to yourself, its not like everyone except you are too dumb understand how is the game going.