Valiant Force Forum

I think the game has been steadily losing players for the past few months; even the number of views for the forum's patch notes is less than before. The numbers for global VF pre-registration are on the low side (and honestly I don't think VF is ready yet - you will get a negative backlash if you release this game in its present state to a global audience as initially players will enjoy the game for the first few weeks but eventually get frustrated, disappointed and quit, and the American market will be more vocal than the SEA or TW market, which means you get even more negative publicity).  

I think any game designer would want to maintain/increase the benefit and fun factor while reducing the frustration and repetitiveness of their game. This will ensure a healthy player base for their revenue and profits. The returns/enjoyment of the customer should be commensurate with the amount of time, energy and money spent, otherwise the customers will leave. Of course, it's not always easy to strike this balance and "fun" can be quite subjective but that's why you have a bit of something for everyone, or you focus only on a specific group of players -- however, I understand that mobile games are generally casual-friendly.

Developers are focusing on relatively unimportant matters such as Rune Merge and Hero Merge when they need to be focusing on more critical areas, as they botched up the implementation/execution of the most recent big changes to the game, namely Summoners and Guild Raid (hyped up "beta" testing on live server to the whole user base which destroyed guilds, OMG, and Leon/Theia to a lesser extent). If your ship is sinking, you don't go and upgrade the IT systems of the ship. You need to be making changes similar to the implementation of Valianite to reduce player frustration. 

There have been so many good suggestions in the forum but I don't see developers working on many of them, or you are taking too long. I think you need to improve the following ASAP:

1. Valiant Revamp: Making old heroes obsolete so quickly is one of the surest ways to frustrate and kill the fun for players. I'm guessing this is a bit of firefighting because it should not be taking you this long to come out with the Valiant revamp when you ought to have known how summoners would have affected the gameplay and balance of the game, especially in arena. I still find it hard to believe your internal testing didn't pick up how stupidly overpowered the summoners could be. (And why must you make us wait 3 secs each time we summon?)

2. Introduce new content and do a better job with it. The events introducing the last 5 summoners are all more or less the same thing. Leon/Theia was a fantastic opportunity to improve player stickiness/retention and introduce some new gameplay and storyline elements (lots of ideas in forums), but it was basically a repeat of what we'd seen before. Theia's 5* aura was especially disappointing. 

3. Fix the Guild Raid in-game communication and rewards system. You are the first RPG I've ever played that still doesn't have a fully functioning in-game chat so many months later after release. Not all players even know that there is a guild chat function; no info/tutorial for it when you first start playing. Also, many of us TOLD you from the beginning that having a tiered internal guild reward system was a bad idea but you didn't listen and now we are experiencing those problems. This does not bode well for the future of the game.

4. Reduce the amount of repetitiveness in the daily quests e.g. gold mine X 3 or 6 or whatever. I know this is in the works already but hurry up and implement it, please. Also hope you will improve express ticket functionality as previously suggested. The Guild Raid is also rather grindy/repetitive. Just give us 1 raid key a day and reduce the boss HP accordingly. It gets boring to have to run it twice a day every day--I no longer look forward to doing so-- especially when it can take weeks to months to see any improvement to your party. The game should be built to fit around our daily lives; not the other way around.  

5. Your expectation management and communications to the player base about gameplay changes... For example, are we supposed to expect that eventually our old heroes will become obsolete? Or managing expectations for 100% event quest completion which is RNG-dependent and is inconsistent with earlier messages sent when players first start the game where we are conditioned to be able to complete 100% of all quests. Furthermore, Rune Merge is not relevant to most of the player base, so why did you hype it up so much unless you want players to be disappointed? Even Hero Merge is rather disappointing and expensive; the only part that makes sense is for the 5* hero part, where you can either get a useful 5* hero or a 5* fodder for aura re-reroll, but it's more costly than doing 400 premium gem summons or leveling up a 5* fodder (except job keys). And the soul binders can't be used as training fodder either.

6. There are still some basic design issues that haven't been addressed which have been mentioned in the forums. For example, certain classes are just not used that often such as healers or mystics; it's mostly ranger/warrior (with a bit of guardian). And somehow shadow's best role is to be a gold miner? In Legendary Story Mode, healers and guardians still suffer from the same problem as before. By the time they are able to heal or taunt (5-7 turns later), most, if not all of the team is already dead -- enemy mobs crit often and can even one-shot 3-4K defense heroes (the boss). Players have to artificially rebalance the game by keeping 1 last mob alive while waiting for the turn counter to pass by before entering the boss round; or are forced to build the team aggressively (e.g. trigger teams) to kill off the monsters before they kill the party, since balanced or defensive team compositions don't work.

7. Packages in the shop are too pricey.... I really would like to support the game but I feel so turned off whenever I see those prices. ~$150-180 for a partially decked out hero (and we can't choose summoners from the selector)? So a team of 5 heroes will cost $900+?? Yet the game is designed in a way where we can't keep using the same 5 heroes? How many of you would spend that kind of money yourselves on a mobile game? You know how much content one can get for that kind of money playing other MMORPGs from other companies? 

Great art, voices and music can only do so much. 

Hi there, I need to immediately respond to you on your first statement before reading the rest.

I personally recommended the team to put the Patch Notes on Facebook so more players can access it more easily rather than having to open a web browser. Thus, the views that may not have gone here are obviously there. -_-

Hi there, I need to immediately respond to you on your first statement before reading the rest.

I personally recommended the team to put the Patch Notes on Facebook so more players can access it more easily rather than having to open a web browser. Thus, the views that may not have gone here are obviously there. -_-

Yep, most of my guild mates and other players in my news feed mostly check for patch notes via Facebook Page.

On my part, I do agree with most of Lightwind's saying. While it's every game's target to be globally known and played, it's imperative to make the game stable before presenting it to the international public. Be it on technical side or game balance side.

 For example, take a look at Tree of Saviour. It was so riddled with bugs back when it's first launch globally. While many people still rooting for it, the bugs and many other problems had already made a lot of players skeptical about the game. I don't know about other countries, but here in my country (at least the city where I live in), while it caused some hype during initial release, I no longer see people playing the game on the public gaming center.

I do not want Valiant Force to be ended up the same way.

A lot of things still need to be addressed first.
Even up to now I still see the bugged display of Cybella Grand Ranger assuming bow stance when she is wielding certain type of crossbow, specifically those that have off hand weapon as a part of their set.

Anyway, just expressing my concern. Not because I want to nitpick, but because I genuinely care. Otherwise, I won't even think about writing a fanfic about this game if I do not have any feel of attachment to it.

More power to you guys!

1. Agree that the valiant revamps is taking a long time, but one will hope that with the amount of time spent they will get them right/useful again. And not be like Raid where they spent many weeks and still didn't get it totally right. (Linked with 3.)

2. Agree. Have been saying they need better story and dialogue writers for some time now. Non progressive event stories, events which are haphazardly written and contains no links to each other or to the main story are weak at best. 

3. Linked with 1. Agree. While some of the changes for raid are positive, spending so many weeks and then coughing back to us the same exact loot system (with minor adjustments) as what was being complained about feels really f up.
Although, i don't really agree they don't have a fully functional in game chat. They do have one - it's just that it's so well hidden that it feels like a ticker rather than a chat if a new player don't explore the UI.

4. Agree on the repetitiveness and express tickets. Neutral on the 1 raid key per day part.

5. Agree with your statement about " expectation management and communications to the player base about gameplay changes". 
However, disagree with your following point about 100% event completion - as i have mentioned previously too, the previous 100% event chest you always like to mention is the current 80% event chests for the summoner events. The new 100% chest with event hero is a new tier of rewards. You are really nitpicking when you say they are inconsistent with earlier messages when those messages you mentioned are clearly before the summoner era. Things and plans can change. 

And if you argue that they mention they will like to try to give each player an event hero for the summoners era, that's true too, they are doing that, but you got to be GOOD ENOUGH to earn it of course. They didn't say they'll give you these event heroes for nothing, did they?

Also disagree where you say you "are conditioned to be able to complete 100% of all quests", hence, are of the thinking that if you are able to complete 100% now, it should be taken for granted that you can complete 100% in the future. Where is the challenge if you know you can always do the same thing if you can do it previously?

Rune merge and hero merge are features that you can choose to use it or not use it. Quite obviously, Rune merge is an end game feature that's really more useful for people who are swimming in 4 stars runes. Hero merge is much more encompassing and useful to anyone able to clear at least legendary 19-3 and beyond.

Both of these features are nice to have, if you can't utilise Rune merge or hero merge at this time, you'll be able to in the future, they are not running away seriously.
And why are we limiting who the devs develop features for? They can jolly well develop different new features for different targeted audience as they like. if it's not relevant to a particular audience now, it may be in the future. 

Although they could try, but the honest reality is that not everything they implement must/can encompass all groups of players (noob/early game/mid game/late game/end game/F2P/P2P). It will be very hard to do that. If all they do is implement noob/early game features, how do they retain their late game/end game players? Similarly, the reverse is also true. Hence, all games will implement features that will appear more friendly to different groups of people. It's up to you the player to ascertain whether that is meant for you or not (if not, then probably when you are more advanced in the game). 

Constant complaining about the devs releasing a certain feature that doesn't fit you as the target audience reeks of sour grapes. I too, don't find Rune merge useful at my current stage, but i don't keep complaining about it. When i'm finally at that stage (swimming in 4 stars runes for example), then i will take advantage of the feature. Right now, for those who can take advantage of the feature, it is useful for them.

I mean it's not like the devs are constantly releasing only loped-sided features for one particular group all the time - if they are, then they seriously deserve the bashing/complains but right now, honestly, i don't think they are guilty of that

So, having disagreed with almost all your arguments for this point, why did i agree with your first statement? I feel the devs and their PR team has been poor to communicate to players about changes and possible changes. Numerous people can give feedback about an issue(s) in the forums for so many weeks but we hear nothing from them acknowledging the possibility of looking into the issue. While, some of these complains are really subjective and not substantiated, and gets ignored, i would understand. But if it's a widespread issue, example, how the summoners were OP in arena, we basically heard nothing / don't see any response from the devs/PR that they are possibly looking into it until many many weeks later. Keeping quiet is usually not a good PR move. I see we have a more active MiloD now who is trying to fulfill that role but my feeling is that communications in general can still be improved from the VF team to their players.

6. Agree. Guardians and Healers are currently really weak sauce in PVE. Of coz there's exceptions like Kahuna and Matilda, but those 2 don't really excel at the "healer" role.

Hi there, I need to immediately respond to you on your first statement before reading the rest.

I personally recommended the team to put the Patch Notes on Facebook so more players can access it more easily rather than having to open a web browser. Thus, the views that may not have gone here are obviously there. -_-

It is perfect but why there are no recent news on board? Anyway "sneak peak" from  facebook

P.S. MiloD and Satsuki will be providing some teasers throughout this week to keep everyone excited as well! Keep a lookout here with us!
Here’s the list of teasers that will be happening throughout the week in no particular order!
- Valiant’s Revamp
- Characters/Heroes
- Grow your heroes even further...
- Enter into the unknown...
- 5 Heroes per battle? How about more?

Where is announced daily event revamp?

- Grow your heroes even further...

Is that 6* heroes ? Then it is mean that all 40 5* will became useless junk. Or what kind of growing we should expect?

I had the plans to LB my Ronan to 40 and then switch to LBing the Vincent but now ...

However, disagree with your following point about 100% event completion - as i have mentioned previously too, the previous 100% event chest you always like to mention is the current 80% event chests for the summoner events. The new 100% chest with event hero is a new tier of rewards. You are really nitpicking when you say they are inconsistent with earlier messages when those messages you mentioned are clearly before the summoner era. Things and plans can change. 

And if you argue that they mention they will like to try to give each player an event hero for the summoners era, that's true too, they are doing that, but you got to be GOOD ENOUGH to earn it of course. They didn't say they'll give you these event heroes for nothing, did they?

Also disagree where you say you "are conditioned to be able to complete 100% of all quests", hence, are of the thinking that if you are able to complete 100% now, it should be taken for granted that you can complete 100% in the future. Where is the challenge if you know you can always do the same thing if you can do it previously?

Rune merge and hero merge are features that you can choose to use it or not use it. Quite obviously, Rune merge is an end game feature that's really more useful for people who are swimming in 4 stars runes. Hero merge is much more encompassing and useful to anyone able to clear at least legendary 19-3 and beyond.

Both of these features are nice to have, if you can't utilise Rune merge or hero merge at this time, you'll be able to in the future, they are not running away seriously.
And why are we limiting who the devs develop features for? They can jolly well develop different new features for different targeted audience as they like. if it's not relevant to a particular audience now, it may be in the future. 

Although they could try, but the honest reality is that not everything they implement must/can encompass all groups of players (noob/early game/mid game/late game/end game/F2P/P2P). It will be very hard to do that. If all they do is implement noob/early game features, how do they retain their late game/end game players? Similarly, the reverse is also true. Hence, all games will implement features that will appear more friendly to different groups of people. It's up to you the player to ascertain whether that is meant for you or not (if not, then probably when you are more advanced in the game). 

Constant complaining about the devs releasing a certain feature that doesn't fit you as the target audience reeks of sour grapes. I too, don't find Rune merge useful at my current stage, but i don't keep complaining about it. When i'm finally at that stage (swimming in 4 stars runes for example), then i will take advantage of the feature. Right now, for those who can take advantage of the feature, it is useful for them.

I mean it's not like the devs are constantly releasing only loped-sided features for one particular group all the time - if they are, then they seriously deserve the bashing/complains but right now, honestly, i don't think they are guilty of that

So, having disagreed with almost all your arguments for this point, why did i agree with your first statement? I feel the devs and their PR team has been poor to communicate to players about changes and possible changes. Numerous people can give feedback about an issue(s) in the forums for so many weeks but we hear nothing from them acknowledging the possibility of looking into the issue. While, some of these complains are really subjective and not substantiated, and gets ignored, i would understand. But if it's a widespread issue, example, how the summoners were OP in arena, we basically heard nothing / don't see any response from the devs/PR that they are possibly looking into it until many many weeks later. Keeping quiet is usually not a good PR move. I see we have a more active MiloD now who is trying to fulfill that role but my feeling is that communications in general can still be improved from the VF team to their players.

Hi Pat437, 

Wow, thanks for taking the trouble to respond so thoroughly to my post. I used those various examples to highlight my main point about the communications/expectation management but those examples are certainly not meant to be the focus of this post. I believe those topics have their separate discussion posts. Nevertheless, I do appreciate your seconding my main point and I want to clarify certain matters. I am not complaining that every feature or addition to the game must cater to the entire player base or please everyone. And I certainly appreciate the efforts of people like MiloD, of course. Neither do I expect to get the event hero every time, nor do I think I'm entitled to one. (But of course, I will feel disappointed if I don't get the event hero after rolling 4000 gems on it across two accounts -- but I accept that is the nature of the beast for gacha games, just like lottery or casino.)

Perhaps the best way to illustrate what I actually mean would be to show you what I would have done instead for each of those examples. Not every player can look at a new feature and be able to tell whether it suits them or not, especially new players who can find it very overwhelming (and exciting at the same time). No need to set them up for disappointment unnecessarily, right? 

1. 100% Quest Completion Expectation Management: Set the current 80% milestone as 100%. The current 100% event hero part set it to "Bonus Milestone". State that it will be extra challenging due to both RNG and difficulty (e.g more difficult that Legendary Act 4). Then players will know what they are getting into. I've seen posts about how frustrated/disappointed other players got when they went all-out to try to complete the event quests -- they'd spend real money, sacrifice sleep, spend gems on extra energy but could not get enough drops to complete it. Why would they continue to play the game after that? Note that the mechanics/loot is not changed at all. Just change the wording/angling of the content. 

2. Rune Merge Feature -- As more experienced players, it's obvious to you and me that it's meant for late game, but it's not going to be obvious to everyone. So if I were the devs, I would just state that it's an advanced player feature so that new players will not get the wrong idea that it's for everyone and get frustrated/disappointed. Right now, the implicit message is that it is for all players. Some newer players may start trying to merge the runes and only realize half-way through the extremely high cost/near-practical impossibility of doing so. But by then, they'd have spent the resources on this project instead of on more immediate priorities such as core hero team/garrison. And their progression would have been set back significantly.

3. Hero Merge Feature -- Same problem as 2. If you are a newer player, frankly, you should not be spending your limited resources on this part yet, yet the game enables you to do so with the 1* and 2* soul binders, etc. There is barely enough training fodder for your core team. Then they'll find out eventually that they should have focused on other areas -- and get frustrated/disappointed. 

There are already enough "pitfalls" in the game when you are first new to the game e.g. upgrading 1* or 2* equipment to +15. I made my fair share of newbie mistakes too (I think there was a community post about this), so there's no need to add more. I know it's not easy to strike that balance between rewards/challenge/fun/relaxation vs effort/resources/making players come back for more.

The "secretive" guild chat system also hinders players from learning from their guildies as there are still players to this day who never respond in guild chat at all, even though they contribute to the guild and are active. I suspect they don't even know it exists because it's hidden away in one little corner of the game. And the rest of us guildies have no other way to reach out to them... can't send them in-game mail which would be very obvious as they would get a notification in their post office. 

Hi there, I need to immediately respond to you on your first statement before reading the rest.

I personally recommended the team to put the Patch Notes on Facebook so more players can access it more easily rather than having to open a web browser. Thus, the views that may not have gone here are obviously there. -_-

It is perfect but why there are no recent news on board? Anyway "sneak peak" from  facebook

P.S. MiloD and Satsuki will be providing some teasers throughout this week to keep everyone excited as well! Keep a lookout here with us!
Here’s the list of teasers that will be happening throughout the week in no particular order!
- Valiant’s Revamp
- Characters/Heroes
- Grow your heroes even further...
- Enter into the unknown...
- 5 Heroes per battle? How about more?

Where is announced daily event revamp?

- Grow your heroes even further...

Is that 6* heroes ? Then it is mean that all 40 5* will became useless junk. Or what kind of growing we should expect?

I had the plans to LB my Ronan to 40 and then switch to LBing the Vincent but now ...

Hi there,
I do hope you pay attention to the new posts that will be coming up in a few days. Let me keep you in suspense a little while longer!

1. Agree that the valiant revamps is taking a long time, but one will hope that with the amount of time spent they will get them right/useful again. And not be like Raid where they spent many weeks and still didn't get it totally right. (Linked with 3.)

2. Agree. Have been saying they need better story and dialogue writers for some time now. Non progressive event stories, events which are haphazardly written and contains no links to each other or to the main story are weak at best. 

3. Linked with 1. Agree. While some of the changes for raid are positive, spending so many weeks and then coughing back to us the same exact loot system (with minor adjustments) as what was being complained about feels really f up.
Although, i don't really agree they don't have a fully functional in game chat. They do have one - it's just that it's so well hidden that it feels like a ticker rather than a chat if a new player don't explore the UI.

4. Agree on the repetitiveness and express tickets. Neutral on the 1 raid key per day part.

5. Agree with your statement about " expectation management and communications to the player base about gameplay changes". 
However, disagree with your following point about 100% event completion - as i have mentioned previously too, the previous 100% event chest you always like to mention is the current 80% event chests for the summoner events. The new 100% chest with event hero is a new tier of rewards. You are really nitpicking when you say they are inconsistent with earlier messages when those messages you mentioned are clearly before the summoner era. Things and plans can change. 

And if you argue that they mention they will like to try to give each player an event hero for the summoners era, that's true too, they are doing that, but you got to be GOOD ENOUGH to earn it of course. They didn't say they'll give you these event heroes for nothing, did they?

Also disagree where you say you "are conditioned to be able to complete 100% of all quests", hence, are of the thinking that if you are able to complete 100% now, it should be taken for granted that you can complete 100% in the future. Where is the challenge if you know you can always do the same thing if you can do it previously?

Rune merge and hero merge are features that you can choose to use it or not use it. Quite obviously, Rune merge is an end game feature that's really more useful for people who are swimming in 4 stars runes. Hero merge is much more encompassing and useful to anyone able to clear at least legendary 19-3 and beyond.

Both of these features are nice to have, if you can't utilise Rune merge or hero merge at this time, you'll be able to in the future, they are not running away seriously.
And why are we limiting who the devs develop features for? They can jolly well develop different new features for different targeted audience as they like. if it's not relevant to a particular audience now, it may be in the future. 

Although they could try, but the honest reality is that not everything they implement must/can encompass all groups of players (noob/early game/mid game/late game/end game/F2P/P2P). It will be very hard to do that. If all they do is implement noob/early game features, how do they retain their late game/end game players? Similarly, the reverse is also true. Hence, all games will implement features that will appear more friendly to different groups of people. It's up to you the player to ascertain whether that is meant for you or not (if not, then probably when you are more advanced in the game). 

Constant complaining about the devs releasing a certain feature that doesn't fit you as the target audience reeks of sour grapes. I too, don't find Rune merge useful at my current stage, but i don't keep complaining about it. When i'm finally at that stage (swimming in 4 stars runes for example), then i will take advantage of the feature. Right now, for those who can take advantage of the feature, it is useful for them.

I mean it's not like the devs are constantly releasing only loped-sided features for one particular group all the time - if they are, then they seriously deserve the bashing/complains but right now, honestly, i don't think they are guilty of that

So, having disagreed with almost all your arguments for this point, why did i agree with your first statement? I feel the devs and their PR team has been poor to communicate to players about changes and possible changes. Numerous people can give feedback about an issue(s) in the forums for so many weeks but we hear nothing from them acknowledging the possibility of looking into the issue. While, some of these complains are really subjective and not substantiated, and gets ignored, i would understand. But if it's a widespread issue, example, how the summoners were OP in arena, we basically heard nothing / don't see any response from the devs/PR that they are possibly looking into it until many many weeks later. Keeping quiet is usually not a good PR move. I see we have a more active MiloD now who is trying to fulfill that role but my feeling is that communications in general can still be improved from the VF team to their players.

6. Agree. Guardians and Healers are currently really weak sauce in PVE. Of coz there's exceptions like Kahuna and Matilda, but those 2 don't really excel at the "healer" role.

To Pat and LightWind,
Thank you for your responses. I would now like to address some of the first two points. 
1. The first batch of heroes that you guys enjoyed with on Valiant Force were developed over a period of many months. To make huge changes to this many heroes, while learning from our experiences with respect to balancing has caused us to be much more cautious in what we want to release. Take for example in the Valiants Revamp threads. Many players have many idealistic points and opinions on how Valiants should be without realizing how these pointers may break the game. It is up to the team in charge of balancing to check each feedback, think through the feasibility and say "I'm sorry, this will break the game" and move on from there. Many many players are going to be disappointed, while many others will rejoice. Yet I assure you, the Valiants that we are releasing will not be drastically overpowered. They will be (hopefully) well-balanced since our dev team quarrel over something as small as 10% damage difference when we do our testing.
2. With respect to storyline, I believe many of you "experienced" players have already (unfortunately), gone past our story mode and are not able to experience the changes made to the story. I am personally hoping and pushing for the stories to be put in an accessible place for players to see it as and when they want in the future. I too agree that some of our lore has potential which we have yet to explore. Please continue to let your voices be heard so that I can push for these changes.
Currently, MiloD is working hard on other aspects of the game as well! I will continue to pay attention to the community, but do understand that I'm not in the position to reveal every single detail that I know

So many player leave since talissa and sven come, if VF could rebuild valiant skill, why they cant nerf sven and talissa? Thats more effective I think