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[sambojin]

Strangely enough, the community stayed fine after global release too. So we can't always blame everything on the Americans

The in-game messaging system is just enough to get by on. They added a "Sorry" option for when you stuff up too. It happens.

Some things don't necessarily mean what you think they would. If someone says "Leave it to me!" and runs off, it means they're going to wait by the portal while you all finish off whatever's left (it's both a safety and speed-up option).

There's a few others as well. Depends on context. Everyone usually congratulates each other at the end of a run, etc. But everyone is polite in actual chat as well (before raids and in guild chat. Even with non-English speakers, just saying "Hi" is common to say g'day before you start).

So try it out. It's one of the few games I can actually recommend putting some time into on mobile. It's always fun, but it's not a "time commitment" game. Play when you want, as much or as little as you want. You do get rewarded for playtime, but it's not a necessity to have a nice little 10 min jump-in once in a while, just to bash some dungeons. Remember that you will get raided, constantly and successfully. It doesn't mean you suck, it's just what you do in this game, even to friends sometimes



Think "Clash Royale" on quick-fun, with a better core-gameplay loop (two actually, dungeon raiding and dungeon creation, but dungeon raiding is the main loop), that doesn't pretend p2w means "competitive". Jump into a high level raid, or a low level one, whatever. Learning, gametime/RPG-levelling and skill gets you by, rather than "I bought 4000 packs of competitiveness and am still in a lower bracket". There are no brackets here.


If you enter "level appropriate" rooms, you'll get your fair share of experience by killing stuff, which will level you up more quickly. Very quickly, until lvl 30-40 or so. If you enter "way higher than your level" rooms, you'll get bugger-all XP, because the higher level people (with better equipment), will be killing everything 10X quicker than you. But there's no wall between newbie and end-game content, because raiding content is all user-created, and anyone can jump into any room.

It's nice like that. You can scab gold and mana if you need to, but you're going nowhere character-level-wise if you do, unless you can actually help. There's times for both.

And when you do get destroyed by a low level group with a level 50+ destroyer along with them, don't worry too much about it. It's not actually predatory. They were probably just making sure that their guild could summon them and jumped into a room. Or they were randomly helping that group, and you probably lost considerably less trophies and resources due to them doing so. So yeah, you lost. But they didn't need your cash or trophies, they were just doing stuff. A lot of shit evens out in this game. Take it into context, and know how often the reverse happens to them. Enjoy your mana and gold from all the high-level raids you died in.

What goes around, comes around. Sometimes in ways you'll never know. As long as you're enjoying it, it's fine.

BANDAI NAMCO match-making "balance" might be exactly what the mobile platform needs. Like Dark Souls, but not as salty

[Aklyon]

Strangely enough, the community stayed fine after global release too. So we can't always blame everything on the Americans

[sambojin]

Wow. They've removed the trophy penalty for when you log out accidentally (such as by receiving a phone call or hitting your home button mid-raid).

The first time or two anyway. After that, you're probably purposefully dropping your connection, so you'll get the penalty as normal. This is great. It used to be incredibly frustrating before to be penalized by something like that.

These recent updates have pretty much covered every gripe I've had in the above posts. Well done Bandai Namco!




The only one left is the "log-in tax" of having to reset your traps and legendary creatures after being raided. Unfortunately, that's kind of a central mechanic in the "mobile experience" and helps keep players active. Kind of.

The only solution I can see would be to lower your mana mine's output by a certain amount (or percentage) for each type/number/level of legendary creature and have them be auto-resummoned after every raid, maybe with the option to turn the portals "on" or "off" in case you don't want to pay that amount continuously to have your legendary summons always online. Which also gives more use for long-term shields you can buy with gems. Turn them off when you're sitting on a stash you want to build, but are away for the weekend, turn them on when you're actively playing. The same could be done for traps with gold mines.

I personally think it would make the game more fun, while still making legendary creatures expensive. Losing 60%-90% of your mana mines' output would encourage raiding, but would make room setups far more reliable. I don't think it would stunt the economy, because you also get sizable mana rewards for successful defenses (from player tombstones). Guild summons would still need to be summoned manually, so player activity is still rewarded. But I'd much rather run against fully operational hard dungeons, than against half strength easy ones with no legendary creatures to fight in them. It would make your own defense more useful too, even if you can't log in for a day or two.

More experience vs certain setups and overall challenge is a good thing I think, and traps are very cheap right now to reset, while legendaries are just expensive and continuous housekeeping. With different amounts or percentages of mana mine output paid for different creatures (at different levels), you'd probably see a bit more variety in what you fight against as well. You could go cheap or expensive, but you'd always know that you can rely on them to be there, even if you do lose a lot of free mana to do so.

A fairly steep cost per hour out of your mining capacity for legendaries could be just as expensive as a flat re-summoning cost, but far more useful and balanced from a "player experience" perspective. It also gives more reason to upgrade your mines fairly early on, leading to a better rounded dungeon creation path.

[Aklyon]

I usually end up with more stored mana than gold anyway, it could work.

[sambojin]

I'm the reverse, but I'm not as active a player as I used to be. Plus, my dragons cost 135k mana to resummon, and a good guild member is about 155-190k, so that's ~300k mana to make sure I have a full defense after each raid.

But it's not so much the cost that bothers me, that's still pretty cheap (mana mines cover the dragon summoning costs easily anyway), it's having to log-in to reset my creatures each time. Guild summons aren't that big of a deal on room setups, because they're always varying, and are optional on cost and effectiveness.


I have to sleep sometimes, and work sometimes as well. I'm pretty sure others do too. Raiding a de-populated dungeon feels like a waste of my time and isn't challenging at all. But it's not the other player's fault. They might have a life too.

I'm pretty sure most players would prefer to raid any dungeon at full capacity, regardless of the owner's ability to log-in just before you hit them.

[sambojin]

They just fixed replays! I mean, right now, done. Version 7.1 just got released.

It's only on android right now, iOS is still awaiting "new version approval" on the store.

I've gotta admit, these developers are working their arses off. Over 1 million android players and probably a similiar amount of iOS players can't be wrong, especially on a Not p2w game. It's a rarity.

And a fun one at that, with good commercial quality content.

[crazyabe]

PTW

[sambojin]

Pointed the developers through their facebook page to this thread. Got a response within 8hrs.

Probably best to post/message any thoughts to them there, at:
https://m.facebook.com/FortressLegends/

Maybe. Facebook links are weird. That should take all ID out of the linky. Hopefully. I hate facebook/gameplay collusions. There's none in-game on this, but their facebook page is probably the best webpage to get swift response from the developers or customer service.

But there is literally no facebook/friend-sharing shit in this game. It may need an internet connection (all raiding content is stored server-side), but there's no bullshit hoops to jump through. I like that. I'm pretty particular about it.



This is a game. It needs no permissions on your phone. It might not work if you don't have an internet connection, but it didn't pre-suppose your gifted authority on anything to make it work. That this game can work with that level of permission makes me look at other games and wonder why? This game is more complex than them. Yet it required no Google/Apple level permissions on download......

[Aklyon]

Some devs are just better at minimal permissions than others. If they also use a facebook page as a rather awkward-sounding support page, then I suppose its their choice.

[sambojin]

There is, in theory, other ways of contacting them. Their facebook support says "usually within 1hr", but that they managed it in under 8hrs to say "Thanks. We passed it on to the dev team" is pretty good for a large developer.

Or a good developer supported by a big publisher. It's still a rarity to have feedback so quickly from the big boys.


That there's only in-game (probably not legally binding in your jurisdiction) permissions asked from their software is a good thing too. I actually can't give up my rights as an Australian citizen, regardless of fake agreements or the TPP. They are my consumer rights under law, legally bound to me. But they didn't infringe on them.

Them replying within one customer-support-worker shift at work ain't too bad for a reply time either. Better than most.

[sambojin]

Version 7.1 is now out for iOS as well, so everyone has replays again.

The dark troll raid event is just about over. There's 2 hrs or so to go. I missed about half of it, being sick, but I might just make top 250. Did a marathon run today, went up about 140 places, so I hope I don't just get pipped at the end. I want my snazzy free armour


(found out you get free stuff if you do up to 100 troll raids. I'd done about 80. So I just grinded out 20 troll kills in under an hour. Got all my free stuff. If I never see a giant troll again, I'll be a happy man.....)

[sambojin]

The fine art of being a good guild summon, and the LCS.

A few Diablo 2 players will know about the LCS. The Lying Character Screen. This game has a bit of that too, but since many game mechanics are still opaque, we don't know why or how.

My guild summon has 591 attack as a two-blader, at 131 equipment cost. This is cheap.

It has 400'ish dps (lcs), but if I put the "Rush Up!" skill on it, it has 1378dps. But it doesn't. Even if I were playing the character (not as a defensive summon), I can't press that skill and melt dragons and high level broadsword users in 3-4 seconds.

Or can I?

But I also have 3.4% attack vs "Boss NPCs". Are people attacking my dungeon, ie: PCs, "Boss NPCs" from a defensive perspective? When I attack other dungeons, they're boss NPCs, so surely they're bosses when they attack mine?

Do I have 611 attack against anything relevant defensively?

I also have 4.8% extra monster crit chance. Am I a monster? Is my guild summon a monster in my dungeon? I know it doesn't change my dps on my LCS, but should it?


Anyway, so many questions due to opaque mechanics. I'm kinda happy with my cheapo guild/defensive summon anyway, but I really like knowing these things.

[sambojin]

Also, as an unthought of thing: The class that gets huge boosts to armour, HP and attack got even bigger boosts due to all the free items from the troll raid.

Which makes having 3 of them in a raid massively overpowered if they're of a high level with good gear.

Which makes 3x broadsword users in a raid the new Decoy on broken level shit. High level ones with decent equipment anyway (which we all got from the troll raid). Horribly overpowered and no dungeon can defeat it. Huge damage, huge AoE damage, huge effective HP, no downsides.


Unless you really mess it up, you can't lose with 3 broadsword users with good equipment. They scaled better than anything, and our dungeons haven't scaled at all comparably to them. Nor has any other class due to bswords running on basic, not secondary, stats.

[sambojin]

Just recently got an update to version 8.0. There's a new character class (which I haven't tried yet, but it's a boxer/katar using class that is all about the crits), higher levels on dungeon stuff/monsters and a new raid event.

This time it's a giant skeleton pirate that we're fighting, with a bit more strategy to the battle than "whale on it constantly". A little bit, but that's still the basic gist of it. Ranged classes do pretty well though, rather than the broadsword-or-go-home thing that the dark troll was. It's quite fun.


My dungeon will never be finished at this rate...