Hello Seth and Drew! The tiebreaker is a really great idea!! :)
Could you please tell us what are the cards that could potentially get a buff, nerf or rework on October 7th? So far we only know about the witch rework, but I’m curious to see what other changes you have in mind!
P.S. a bowler buff would make my entire year :)
not in season 4 but we have been playtesting one potential bowler buff (increased elixir but more damage to buildings) and it’s feeling pretty good!
Tiebraker sounds like it makes damage spells even more important than they are right now.
I predict that we will see another spell tower damage reduction some time after the change goes live
this is one of the reasons we want to release it outside of ladder first, because there are a whole bunch of ways it could affect the meta. seth was discussing this exact thing (a spell tower damage reduction) as a potential side effect to having this.
it’s one of those things where it’s both exciting and scary to see what this change will bring, but seth has a bunch of answers for most situations which we are confident will restore balance if needed!
Read moreCan we talk about Witch?
First things first, witch is absolutely not in need of a nerf. It has a very low use and winrate (in GCs) for a reason, it's rather weak and has a lot of (hard)counters.
However with that being said, I feel like witch is too much rock-paper-scissor based.
If I have a valk and place it against a witch, I counter the witch for a 5 elixir positive trade (since the valk essentially has full health). Which in most cases, can be game.
If I have a Pekka and place it against a witch , the witch counters the Pekka for a 7 elixir positive trade (since the witch has full health). Which, again, in most cases can be game.
I can't think of any other cards in the game that can get such a huge positive or negative elixir trade by simply putting it down. Obviously every card has counters and every card counters other cards. However, I feel like the witch currently is too strong against single hitters and too weak against anything deal...
yep, we are looking at a rework for witch in season 4!
Can you hint any balance changes or more update news for next month?
we will be releasing more update news towards its release, and as for balance changes - keep an eye out for what we do with the witch!
That sounds like a great system to solve the drawing issue (albeit it will still be possible to draw in global tournies with both sides consenting). With that out of the way, do you guys ever plan on addressing the lack of incentive to play the first card? Top level matches can sometimes go until double elixir time without playing any cards, and that’s no fun.
that’s always a hard one - we’ve thrown around a few ideas and one that seemed interesting was slightly reversed hearthstone opening of giving an extra elixir to the person who makes the first move.
but as we aren’t a turn based game it’s hard to get a ‘fair’ answer to incentivize going first. queue spamming a card as soon as the game starts etc.
we don’t have any plans to change this at the moment. maybe we could do a trial in CRL or tournaments where it seems to be a bit more prevalent but for now it’s not a massive priority!
thanks for the question
Hey Reddit,
I'm here with some info on what we’ve been working on and what you can expect in the coming month!
We have an update slated for the end of September, AND we are gearing up for a spooky Season 4, launching on October 7th.
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Something we are introducing in the September update will be a tiebreaker.
Tiebreakers will be going into all game modes except 1v1 Ladder (Trophy Road) and will mean that draws will almost always no longer be possible.
If they perform as intended and we see positive results, we will also then extend tiebreakers to 1v1 Ladder in the future.
u/Supercell-Seth (our friendly neighborhood game designer) has shared his thoughts on the topic:
“We have been discussing draws in the team for a long time. It...
Read more External link →What's the status of this bug?
Please update us
so we looked into this, and the bug part is when it is communicated that you get star points.
what happens is you are still given XP (so you aren't losing out) but not star points.
but the information given to the player is incorrect as it tells you you earn star points in this scenario (instead of the XP that you are earning)
as thrilling as this is to watch, it's something we are patching out in the next update. enjoy your relaxing common card animations while you still can!
hey, can you DM me some more info (like your ticket ID or your player tag/s) so i can take a peek? thanks.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to your nephew!
can you DM me their player tag?
So can we expect a big update next season?
i cant reveal much right now - but we'll be dropping an update before season 4 starts that will have a bunch of new stuff & QoL improvements
we will be fixing this issue in season 4 - more news to be announced this month. no need to stage a mutiny just yet!
this is such a great concept! i'd play the hell out of this irl
Seems like range is fixed to 4 now.
This is just a visual bug - the card info screen only displays both values if they are at least 1 tile different. The projectile still travels 4.5 tiles
I think the real problem of executioner is the speed of the first attack..
This is tied to the range - if he has more time to start a swing, he's more likely to complete it. We decided to not increase the load time because we didn't want to overdo it and end up making him OP. Just fix the two most glaring problems - not killing fireball bait like Flying Machine, and making his minimum range not cartoonishly short.
Im kinda shocked they made it not 3.5, but 4 tiles. That’s pretty neat
Kills spirits AND flying machine. Just what I asked for
Also probably even kills ice spirit too. Still has a long attack wind up but its a lot more manageable
The reason we decided to go with 4 is that his old minimum was 4.5 - we want our reworks to be different but still feel familiar to players. The much shorter minimum range felt wrong to many existing Executioner player, so this change should make him feel/player much like before his rework.
The team may rework Zappies, though it may be difficult.
But a straight up buff? Hell no. We been there. That's why it was nerfed in the first place.
His opinion doesn't need to coincide with ours, and the whole team works TOGETHER to build the game. They had an AMA and said it themselves.
Unfortunately... Seth is the frontman who takes ALL the blame from the stupid 15 yr olds.
As for the community? Fok dat! We have shown multiple times our opinions are worth jack shit.
Zappies are definitely on the 'probably rework' list. We had one rework in testing but it didn't feel great and existing Zappies players didn't feel like it was an improvement. So we went back to the drawing board with a different rework but that starts the timeline all over again with playtesting.
Read moreDear Seth,
I’m not saying you don’t deserve this, but I’m also not saying the change wasn’t a mistake. I do think that Executioner is definitely going to an extremely low use card now, but I’m open to the idea that it will find a place in the meta. But let me ask you this: Why Rework Executioner of all cards? Even if it had low use and win rates, why not pick cards that people already complain about like Wizard, Witch (I’m glad you said that she is expected to be reworked in October, hopefully maybe Night Witch too?!), Elite Barbarians (you’re precious rework to them did not work and made them worse in the community’s eyes), Bowler (I’m glad you also said you were thinking of buffing him. He deserves it! All he needs is the Princes to NOT be immune to Knockback anyone with damage and/or hitspeed and/or health buffs to make up for it! I know you said it’s because it would be a kill joy to the card, but let’s make things consistent so it does not confuse other players! It’s e...
Hey JC, thanks for your well-written reply.
We made a big list of cards in the beginning to rework and Executioner was a popular choice (when I did a twitter question he came up often as well). At the time we locked in on Exe for September, Baby Dragon was peaking in usage and we wanted to prioritize splash attackers because the meta needed more diversity in that role. Executioner was always going to be the hardest of the reworks because splash attackers are so hard to balance, but we will get him balanced and continue the march of fixing cards that are not finding a spot in the game.
I agree the Elite Barbs rework did not go far enough, that was one of the reasons we decided to commit to much braver changes and deal with the consequences as they come up. We have learned a lot from the last few days and that increases the chances of success in the future :)
I have a feeling his alt might get banned soon as well lol
me too
Read moreWhy would you do such a drastic rework to the Executioner right before CRL ? If you really don't want balance changes to not interfere with CRL, you could have just waited an extra month and everything would have been alright.
Announcing such a rework to make an emergency nerf when the update drops is a really bad idea, i thought you learned your lesson with the Royale Recruits... they were bad at 8 elixir during testing, and you changed it to 6 elixir right before the update drops, which made them OP. Now, the exact opposite happened with Executioner: It was really strong before this emergency nerf (the playerbase didn't test pre-emergency nerf Exe but basing on this exact same nerf, i guess he was indeed very strong), and just as the update drops, you kill the card.
About the ladder levels, this just seems to be a really bad excuse to me for such a reaction. Not only does many troops have drastic interaction changes at only 1 level of difference, but it is an inhe...
CRL runs for many months out of the year - CRL will still be running next month as well, so we don't want to hold all balance changes (or limit ourselves to only tiny changes) for 3-6 months out of the year.
I do agree that perhaps in this case we should have trusted our data and playtesters and not overreacted to the community response, but that is the challenge of trying to balance player feedback with internal data. We will continue to evaluate the changes and see what we can do. I can pretty much guarantee next month's rework will go out as-tested regardless of what social media's reaction is.
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