Originally posted by gragatrim

I wrote this below before seeing the Q&A pop up, so I see you already plan on re-adjusting Marzimallow, but I still wanted to post it in case it helps in any way. Thanks for all the effort you are putting into this crusader! On that note, I guess there isn't much you need to say about the below, so anything you want to share about S4 of the dungeons?

I wrote a very long post with some of my thoughts regarding the current meta, but I wanted to post a smaller bit of data here. The concern shown over the amount of raw power Marzimallow gave the players I think possibly wasn't looked at with enough context. As a test I decided to fully stack Odile(which I never even need to come close to doing to reach area 15k) and see how much DPS I could get and compare it to the DPS another player had achieved using the exact same formation, just they had no relevant GLs, while I had GLs on Mindy, Langley, Tiernan, and Hildr. If you take a look at this image

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/803334517997699082/812854864853729300/unknown.png

Specifically the bottom right with a DPS of e2953, that is the max they were able to get with that formation(it is using a pre-mime fromation, so mindy is actually miming langley+odile).

Now if you take a look at my formation, exact same crusader(sure a bit more mats and some 5th runes, but the bulk of the difference comes from the GLs)

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/803334517997699082/826394827679465492/unknown.png

I was able to achive e6201. Below you can see roughly how much DPS I could get in a stable formation

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/803334517997699082/826238922614767676/unknown.png

When I finally level capped Jiao it was around e4750.

So as you can see, we already have the power that Marzimallow was giving us, if we want to stack Odile for an hour(but why bother since we can cap with much fewer stacks), and if you are lucky enough to have had RNG give you a shot to purchase the important golden gear for certain crusaders. Keep in mind if I had the golden fish gear for Sashimi, I'd probably have gotten roughly e400 more DPS out of that formation.

So yes, while Marzimallow seemed very OP, all they actually did was level the playing field a bit between the full GL players and the non-GL players. It would have allowed us to finally break out of the constricted propagation meta that we are currently in, and would have ushered in what I assume would be many weeks of testing to determine the new optimal formations. I hope something can be done to bring some power back to Marzimallow, and if you've got a few minutes to read my long post I hope you find it helpful in understanding how the players(well, at least this player) think about the game.

Originally posted by genner13

Hi Erika. Hope you are all ok. I have a question regarding the Agent nerf: why? It wasn´t necesesary, only goes to make longer farming.

Despite all of that, have you consider to do a mantis for gardeners, it's been a long time since we have a guardian character. I watched these movies last weekend, i haven't do it before, and I think she has some intersting quirks that can translate cool into a crusader

Originally posted by TFahab

Since the Marzi topic is covered, I'll ask this one: why were Agent 79's abilities modified?

Originally posted by Cassius335

Hey Erika,

1) If you're going to do an objective where only one ability can do damage (as Eat Your Carrots does with Biff's Carrot) please ensure that one thing is activated automatically at start. Having to manipulate Gold Find & burn warps just to get out of Area 1 was not pleasant...

2) Can you unnerf Ricochet please? It's Agent 79's best (and main) trick and 100% bouncy-bouncy is a thing of beauty (especially when combined with the likes of Arachnobuddy and Greyskull who can really pump out the blasts...). If we can't have it at 100%, maybe a cap at 80-90%?

Originally posted by EvilHoodieNinja

Hey Erika! Long time player. While this is super out of season (By a year or so) I was out when Morrigan the Furious was introduced. About three years ago during your 65th Q&A I requested a leprechaun DPS. I'm happy that my suggestion was finally fufilled! :D I'm offically putting in my request for a new support leprechaun, a leperchaun robot, a leprechaun angel, and a leprechaun demon so in another three years I can tote that it was my suggestion if any of them are made :P

Originally posted by invento_kave

I have experienced a baffling phenomenon: a mission failing when 100% of the requirements were fulfilled. Is there still a small chance of failure even at 100%? Was it a trick of the eye? I'm roughly at 2200 missions completed.

Originally posted by TheKnoticalMenace

Hello, Erika! I want to say thank you for giving us the very first Animal Crusader that has the Clicker tag! (Of course, it's a skin for RoboRabbit, but still! That's awesome!)

Anyways, is there a possibility that there will be a small update that is performance-related? I really don't like it when there are a lot of numbers popping up when there's a lot going on. So, will there be an option to disable gold text and health text?

Hopefully you can understand what I said.

Also, marshmallows! They're brutally delicious.

Originally posted by staryteresy

Hi Erika,

I have a question: version 0.287 from 25.03.2021 - Added Gear and Recruit missions for Odile, Ursula, Pascal and Rosoideae. But I don't have any new gear upgrade missions for those crusaders. Why?

Best regards, Piotr

Originally posted by isawbones

Hi Erika,

Have you considered having a set of beta testers who are super active in the community? A lot of games have a small subset of active players they can bounce ideas off of and test new things before they come out. This might help you and the team avoid things like Marzi and Crow before they ever go live to everyone.
We want the game to be as awesome as possible so please bounce your ideas off of us and we will give your our honest feedback.

Originally posted by billyjoe99

Hi Erika,

Thanks for the code.

I'm sure you'll get a few comments today about Marzi, but here's my contribution.

For a short spell it looked like we had something new to play with, something to get us out of the prop/GL rut that we've been in for some time, but then that was sadly removed from us within a day on some belief that it was to OP. This belief is however unfounded as many can get e5000/e6000 DPS already with what we have, so Marzi was going to make very little difference to people in that respect. Please consider putting it back the way it was and then maybe engage with the community as to ideas as to how to get away from the current meta.

A79, why was she nerfed, if the only reason was to make hippo farming evening longer than that seems a little petty, more so given the nerf of Marzi, which would have given people a chance to reduce/abandon such farming. Please revert back to the way she was.

Can you change the description on Mindy's mimc ability as it no longer copies all formation abilities as there are some can that can't be mimed.

How about a new sprint talent that increases the number of boss areas skipped, say 4 levels so that it skips 2/3/4/5 boss levels at a time, doesn't need to be cheap.

Challenges, I know it's been asked for before, but can we have some sprint, could just be a new talent, 100 levels each skipping 25 levels. Again, doesn't need to be cheap. You could also combine it with a change in the reward structure, so that the further you go the more frequently the tokens drop rather than the best drop rates stopping around token 80 and getting stuck at 35 levels per token from token 102 onwards.

Also on the subject of challenges, could you give some thought to ditching tetris and coming up with something new. Also perhaps you could now add tier 2 crusaders to Blast from the Past.

Many thanks

Originally posted by TFahab

I apologize in advance if those sounds more negative than intended, intricacies of text-based communication and whatnot. But that answer brings a couple more questions to mind.

#1, does anyone from the CNE/CoTLI team check the discord? It's widely used by a fairly decent number of players who rapidly test and figure things out (and submit bug reports where they feel necessary), and this particular interaction has been around long enough that it was part of all the "0 DPS" forms used to charge Odile since about a day after Odile was released.

#2, and I know this might be asking to peek too much behind the curtain of game development, but does anyone on the team play the game? It seems like a significant number of crusaders released over the last year have had to be significantly tweaked within days (if not hours) because of unanticipated interactions that could have been caught by play-testing, or lacking that if there's not resources for a robust-enough test environment, at least by playing the game enough to get a solid understanding of how the crusaders interact with each other. This could go back to question #1, as it seems the players are doing all of the play-testing for new crusaders/talents/etc., but figured I'd ask.

Originally posted by DoctorNovakaine

Hi, Erika. Thanks for the chest code.

You mentioned in another reply that you were going to be brainstorming with the team for dungeons Season 4 ideas. If I might make a suggestion: why not get some player feedback as well? I think we'd all be interested to hear what different ideas you have and to provide our opinions about what might work better or might not feel so good, from the standpoint of people who are playing and paying.

One interesting idea I've heard about is difficulty scaling, where the difficulty increase per wave and the subsequent rewards could be adjusted to a variety of levels. Maybe not in a strictly 1:1 sense, but perhaps like a 5% reward boost for a 25% difficulty boost or something like that.

I saw you mentioned only using a subset of crusaders for dungeons in another reply. I'm not so sure this would come off well, as it sort of defeats the purpose of dungeons as an alternative to challenges, which already have limitations like that. But if you were considering it, maybe it could be set as an optional challenge with a different tier of rewards compared to just using the full formation, rather than obligating it for everyone? There are quite a few players out there wanting to do dungeons who aren't nearly capping them and it feels like crusader restrictions would hit them worse than the players who are already at the top of the game.

I think this would be a useful thing to have a dialogue with the player base on, as there is definitely a desire for some additional variety but not all variety is desired variety. And it would be helpful to get voices from players at various stages, too, as players in early stages might feel differently than those in later ones.

Originally posted by bippyarg

Grag just posted a very good illustration of the power available in the game without marzimallow, if you have the correct GLs. When Marzimallow was released, I thought you were doing a very clever meta reset that breaks you out of the GL dominated propagation pre-mime setups.

As released, Marzimallow certainly did that. We are able to build competitive forms without the huge propagation chains and hence without the complete GL domination.

But you nerfed Marzi to the ground, as it were, and now you are looking to add more power back. If you do this, please do the tests, with the real meta forms, and different amounts of GLs to get a truly competitive crusader. Getting e4000 to e5000 is really not a big deal. You don't need more than e2980 to cap dungeons so everyone is already just hitting 15k and the meta is about getting there as FAST as you can. Odile allowed even newish players to cap dungeons at the cost of stacking for an extra half hour per run.

In next season's dungeons you can add in scaling that requires e4000, 5000 or even 6000 to cap rewards, and having a powerful crusader like (release version) Marzi would be a good introduction to those levels. If Marzi is too powerful for T1-5 objectives and just makes everything trivial, make a simple global rule that disallows T6 and higher crusaders from being used in T1-5 content. T1-5 are already fully solved by the community with pre-T6 crusaders, so you wouldn't actually be hurting new players, they have the benefit of the community solutions.

Ideally, Marzi would've been introduced in the final two weeks of the season rather than the middle, but here we are. Go for it, change Marzi back, really shake up the Meta (which I'd imagine from a financial sense, is getting necessary, from CNE's perspective). With a locked-in stagnant meta, you will rapidly run out of GLs to sell that "matter" and most of the community will not likely buy "useless" GLs, other than a few whales, I'd imagine.

Originally posted by These_Panda_878

Hello, Erika.

• We want to see revamp of underperformed crusaders after Marzimallow nerf.
• Agent 79's Richochet ability should not be mimicked and propagated.
• Let's hope for UI revamp for crusader missions that would make it easier with roster of crusaders rather than single row.
• Hoping for next 5th tier objectives in Grim's Idle Tales and beyond. I would like to see I Like Potatoes with abilities, speed buffs and legendary item effects disabled for I Like Potatoes 5th tier objective as an example.
• I can't wait for next bunch of 8th tier talents and the future 6th tier talent of active tree will be seen but no concrete plans as of yet and we are not ruling out any ideas.

Originally posted by Gourou666

Quick thoughts to share. Even if most of those have already been said previously.
In the last months, the meta has been mostly fixed. No major change, just some small adjustments.

We had lots of new crusaders that went out almost as fast as they went in.
None could fit in the meta except for a few hours/days till they have been "updated".

Generally, when I start a dungeon run, I first charge Odile for about 1h (2h now because Agent 79's Ricochet Training), then I sprint till area 5,000 for one hour... Then I load my DPS team and let my speed team run for about 8 hours till area 15,000.

Thanks to the Discord community I could learn a bit about the propagation chains and their constant efforts allowed me (and others) to reach area 15,000 "easily" in dungeons runs.
For some players, it is not difficult to reach e3,000 DPS and run to area 15,000. I even reached area 19,000 for fun once, even if it is totally useless and time consuming.

As the dungeons are the only reliable source of idols for advanced players, by far more rewarding than regular free plays, we are already forced to go for dungeons race twice a day. Sprinting for 5,000 areas take one hour, but running for 10,000 areas take quite some time, in addition to the time we have to spend to charge Odile. So it is currently impossible to do more than 2 runs a day, 14 runs a week (minus one if you try to earn enough tokens from the weekly challenge).

After the dungeons came out, we have to do the same thing again and again... Charge, sprint, DPS, wait 8h, start over.
Adding more firepower won't favor veteran players who can already easily run to area 15,000.
However, it may help less advanced players to catch up. And the new T6 saddlers are rather disappointing in terms of raw power.

Originally posted by RocketsBlastingOff

Ugh, I have such superhero burnout, specifically Marvel shit burnout. I know it's too late at this point, but like... Maybe move on to other things to parody.

Originally posted by tl93

Thank you for the code.

About season 4, if the change is an addition to what we already have, then it could be good.

If the change is a replacement, then I am skeptical.

To me, if we keep the current (3) bonuses and add however many bonuses, then the new bonuses could be tailored to the restrictions and hopefully are at least marginally better than the original (3) bonuses. Regardless, a player would be able to chose which bonus on each run.

Any tailoring though, will be difficult given the different formations available. Perhaps the bonuses could be spread over a subset of the 10 formations and that subset could be doubled or tripled, 4 or 5 forms doubled or 3 forms tripled, and however many bonus options (6? from 3 old and 3 new) are spread among the form instances.

Originally posted by Global-Quantity3849

Thanks for the chest and I hope you all have a great Easter :)

Originally posted by VioletHem

Hi Erika,

Does CNE know how many people own certain sader and if said sader is in an active formation? Could you make a system where the more people have a certain sader in an active formation, the less bonus benefit it applies? If you're using a less popular sader, then the greater bonus effect it would give. If the goal is to try and make more saders useful (and have people buy packs for those saders), then you could try and develop a variety of metas with few saders in common. Perhaps certain saders have a penalty if they're grouped with certain other saders (so the opposite effect of Nate and Natalie). If you posted the population of a certain meta, then people could focus on builds that say focused on leprechauns or animals or robots, since there's more bonus benefit going from a less popular meta at the current time.

Originally posted by dimitrius5naj

Erica, hello!

Thank you so much for introducing the option I proposed - the third Gold Epic - as a reward for completing campaigns. It is very nice. I would be very happy if the acceleration of experience gain and the multiplicative bonus to the chance of triggering probabilistic abilities are also sooner or later implemented in the game!

But it's damn unpleasant that you again tie the passage of campaigns to Enchantment Points. This is stupid! They are not needed anywhere else! The increase in DPS from them is tiny, even if special crusaders with a bonus are taken (Mushroom, Mummy and Halloween demon). Yes, this is part of the game and is useful for squeezing the most out of your DPS! But why bind crusaders with certain Enchantment Points above a certain level? IT'S PASSING!

Thanks for the code!)

Originally posted by cavalornus

Just wanted to thank for fixing steam achievements, now I'm 98/99 and gonna "climb Everest" ;) Have a nice day

Originally posted by VioletHem

Erika,

Would it be hard to have boosts that would affect a mission? Like spend this boost to add 5 or 10% to a mission success after putting in your saders. Maybe offer them in the challenge shop and use challenge coins to buy boosts or sell them in packages say 50 boosts for $3.99.

Originally posted by dimitrius5naj

Yes, I would like to gain experience faster. In addition to being one of the DPS multipliers, some Legendary improvements are tied to it. For example - Detective, Nate and Littlefoot. Not that they are very often taken, but in situations where there are no alternatives for them (campaigns with a choice of tags and challenges), and the total DPS from this is significantly reduced - I would like at least a minimal decrease in this effect.

No, this is the chance of triggering probabilistic abilities (Fire Rain at Phoenix, Skeletons at SkeleTom, Storm recharge at Mushroom, etc., etc.). Gourmet is, unfortunately, the only amplifier of its kind, and there are a lot of restrictions (by tags, slots and other factors) where it may not pass. So if there is a talent that somehow increases the chance of such effects being triggered, it will be just great.

Well, yes, it is good for points. And for those who scored on them because of their minimal influence on the total DPS - this is harm. And for new players. Just think - to build up several hundred Enchantment Points for almost one and a half hundred crusaders, it's a piece of cake! Especially in 11 days. Although, this is sarcasm, sorry. I still think that if you want to interest the players, help them, and just please, then the introduction of a talent that provides a certain minimum level (say - the same 600 units) Enchantment Points of ALL CRUSADERS IMMEDIATELY will be an excellent solution. With great respect, dimitrius5naj.

Originally posted by haydabre

Is there a "complete all" option introduced that I am not aware of? Or I misunderstand the answer?