Hello everyone. I'm Kevin, the dev who tries to wrangle the Crusaders beast, and today I'm your Q&A host.

Today's code for 2 Jeweled Chests is MIEN-JUFF-KLED-WOOL

And some notes:

• Song of Thrones was erroneously enabled a few days early, without Tier 4 objectives. Your tokens will be reset when the event begins properly (this Thursday, the 9th)
• We'll likely be changing the way Free Plays increase the bonus of other Free Plays. Seems I underestimated players' willingness to do the most boring option: grinding sprint runs.
  • Update: I had the impression that these runs were quite disliked, but it would seem not. I'll shelve this for now and focus on other things.
• We're looking to add a new feature (probably ruby-based, at least in part) later this month.
• I'll be away for the first half of June, so non-event updates will be a li...

Hello and welcome to Q&A 143, the spectacular sequel to Q&A 142!

I'm Kevin, the technical developer for the game. And, while Erika has taken over the bulk of design work, I try to chip in there too. I'm also working from home, because I don't want to start an office epidemic.

Click here for the previous Q&A

Today's chest code is THEF-EBRU-ARYB-LUES

Updates and Musings:

• Merci's Mix-Up runs until Feb 26th
• Hermit's Premature Party will start on March 7th.
• Superhero Spring Tier 4 will start on March 28th.
• Nate's Candy Conundrum will start on April 18th.
• Currently we...

Welcome to the weekly Q&A!

I'm Kevin, the developer in charge of—by now—most things in Crusaders. I'm here to A your Q. I'm also terrible at reddit formatting, so please bear with me.

To start things off, here's a nice promo code for two jeweled chests that Erika whipped up for me: KEVI-NISA-WESO-MEYO (expires Dec 4th at 9:59:59AM, PST)

And some notes off the top of my head:

• I did some work on the servers last week, and they seem to be much happier now.
• We're adding a whole whack of talents soon. These will add to the current tiers, so there should be something for everyone.
• We've just deployed a fix for Android users being unable to open the Kongregate panel. Seems we overlooked that component in upgrading to Google's new required SDK.
• The Nate Before Christmas begins in a couple weeks.
• Oops, this is a bit late huh?
• (edit) The new reddit for...

Come on down to the weekly Q&A, where questions and answers live together in harmony.

My name is Kevin, and I am responsible for updates to PC, mobile, backend, data, and now design for the game. So I should be equipped to handle questions about pretty much anything. It's a busy time.

Some notes:

• Development on the new feature for Rubies is well underway (try to save 31,000)

• The Sasha's Schoolhouse Scourge event is returning September 13.

• We're looking at introducing a new event mechanic, starting with the first Tier 4 event in October.

• Campaign 9 is underway, roughly slated for a release this year.

• More Tier 3 11th objectives will be dropping soon, around the rest of the updates.

As usual, I'll be actively answering questions for about an hour, and will return sporadically throughout the rest of the day. Ask awa...

Hello and welcome to the weekly Crusaders Q&A, where questions meet answers.    

I'm Kevin, the developer tasked with keeping the CotLI boat floating. I manage the Flash client, server backend, event data, and now the mobile client. So, if there's a technical issue, I'm probably the one to ask. I also add a lot of the flavour text, so if an item's description ruined your day then blame me.    

As usual, I'll be trying to answer questions actively for the first hour or so, and then I'll check back over the rest of the day. Ask away!    

Note: I've just deployed a Flash client this morning that should leak much less memory. Let me know how that works for you.

Hello and welcome to the weekly Q&A, where any question can be asked, and some will be answered.

I'm Kevin, the dev who keeps the Flash boat floating. I'm happy to take any kind of question from quantum mechanics to political analysis, but I'm best able to answer those concerning the Crusaders Flash client.

As is the custom, I'll try to be around actively for an hour or so, then pick away at things over the rest of the day. Sorry if I take some time to get to things. I need to get this event stuff working!

Hello everyone. Welcome to the weekly Q&A, where any and all Crusaders question may be asked, and perhaps some will be answered.

I'm Kevin, the current Flash developer on Crusaders. I'm best suited to technical questions, but I'm happy to provide hot takes on all subjects.

In the usual fashion, I'll be actively answering questions for about an hour, then I'll be checking back periodically over the rest of the day.

Ask away!

No, nothing to announce on that front right now :)

There is a limit on the lowest RAM the game can support. If it's under a certain threshold, the game (like other games too!) will struggle to cope...

Nothing in the hopper to announce at this time! ;) We like your thinking.

Yes! More lore would be awesome. I think that's something we'd all love to do as some of those characters have been around for five years now. Bringing them across was kind of like having spin-off movies for The Avengers. Sort of.

At the moment, we don't have anyone to spend time on fleshing out the back stories but would love to get to that.

Nothing to report at the moment but we'll update you as soon as we can!

Since starting, I've had to learn a tonne of new skills including Photoshop and HTML. It's been great to continually add new strings to my bow. I REALLY like working with technology that outputs something I can share with people.

Previous roles I've had, I wouldn't have had to actually write the newsletter or create the banners. It's been really good for the old brain.

Another part of the job is metrics. My background is Arts at university but working in video games ever since the launch of FIFA Ultimate Team and FIFA Online it has required marketing that has a huge analytics component. I've had to get very comfortable with a number of analytics platforms and spreadsheets.

I love poring through data trying to understand how any campaigns I put together are working.

That'd be the holy grail of making it a personal experience based on individual ability.

I saw a really great puzzle for Battlefield once. The final step still required individual player input https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuuzmOXL1bc

However, I'll give that idea some more thought and see if there's a way to do it that doesn't pull people from doing the important stuff in keeping Crusaders running.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll share that with Justin and the team. We do annualise the events so it's reasonable to assume certain things we do but as for the data mining maybe it's something we can better mitigate against. The clever people on the team will be able to help answer that.

We hear you! So, "soon" should be something we can confidently deliver within two to three weeks.

However, if I understand the context of the question, we can probably do more to identify words that help us communicate realistic timelines :)

:)

1) Totally. Mobile marketing is (a) very reliant on charting via Apple/iTunes support at launch (b) having the available marketing budget to take risks on acquisition spread over 30, 60, 100, and even as long as 300 days. Not a lot of companies have those kind of resources.

After much discussion and analysis here, it really comes down to making a visually appealing game that is on-trend to get the attention of the editorial team who manage the iTunes store. That'll enable you to get a feature.

Compounded with that is that you have to have confidence that your game is going to retain and monetize well to take risks on early acquisition to keep you in the charts and recoup your marketing expenses back anywhere up to a year or more later.

2) The biggest open door is probably finding new and creative ways to work with platforms like Humble Bundle, OrlyGift, and other giveaway websites. They've been really important for us. That's more for PC/Steam though.

Nice! That's good to know there's an appetite for that kind of stuff to sell. I'll raise with the team (I don't control the sales) and see what they think.

Hey Tass. You guys are way too clever for me! We definitely would like to do more. The hardest thing is actually balancing the puzzles so that everyone has a chance to engage and feel like they have a fair crack at solving them.

The amount of work I put into the last one was quite significant and it was solved within minutes!

If time and money were no object I would LOVE to do a really sophisticated campaign like the Lost (TV show) where they had online cryptic clues, or Jay Z's album launch where he hid lyrics at real locations all around NYC.

However, there's also a question of how much does the quiz/puzzle actually start to become it's own beast and distract from the game. Lots of food for thought.

Short answer would be, nothing in the hopper but would love to do a new one time permitting.