Engaging the players

[Killy]

Broadly speaking there are three types of players in any game: brand new players, casual players, and powergamers.

The new player experience is pretty good for a few days/ a week. While the tutorial is wing played and the story mode (which you're expanding). Trying out PvP and learning the game is fun.

After that people decide to either quit or become casuals or powergamers, depending on how close a fit the game is to their ideal and to their psychology, plus things like time etc.

I think the casual gamer experience is OK but a bit stale. The excitement in this game, especially for casuals, comes from opening chests to get new loot, levelling up the good loot and trying out new team comps. There's limited opportunity to open Rare chests for casual gamers because it takes so long to get gems. If it takes 2 days to save up 100 gems to open one chest that's too long for a lot of people. Then of they wait and get a bad item the decision to quit sets in for a few, and keeps building over time. You're doing a good thing by dropping Rare chests in PvP and quest loot, but this is quite grindy for a casual. I think what you're missing here is a way for players to get more excitement quickly and relatively easily. Basic chests are pretty good for this but the highest loot seems to be a rare item. Not gonna help a casual compete.. You're also missing a way to turn casuals into powergamers. This is where a competitive PvE event or mode with unique loot can work well. They can invest time but not money and earn good loot. They may then decide to spend a little at the end to ensure they get something good.

The powergamer experience is quite dull. These players crave competition to get value from their purchases and that's where the excitement is for them. The only competitive mode in the game at the moment is the PvP ladder. This isn't much fun as there's no leaderboard visible, there's no unique loot to show off how great you are, and PvP in general becomes quite stale after a while. Chat wipes are bad for all players but especially powergamers as they want a place to talk more about the game. In-game chat is really poor. I'd suggest setting up an official Discord group and advertising it in-game. I've also noticed a few players in my guild have stopped being active for days now. These were powergamers who are taking a break or have quit.

The reason I'm saying this is because I wanted to let you know what I've experienced through my player journey, and say what I've seen. I still enjoy the game and I'm excited to see what's coming, but I can see other players getting bored or just not finding any point to the game. I think you can fix this with a few changes. I'm keen to hear what others think too.

[Master of Clan X]

Basic chests are pretty good for this but the highest loot seems to be a rare item. Not gonna help a casual compete..

The items in the game are balanced so rare items are just as good as epics and legendaries (once the specials are unlocked and most rares have all specials unlocked). We deliberately designed the game not to be pay to win. However it seems that if that effort is not recognized, we might as well just give equipment better stats based on rarity.

You're also missing a way to turn casuals into powergamers.

Guild wars. Work in progress.

there's no leaderboard visible,

WIP

Chat wipes are bad for all players but especially powergamers as they want a place to talk more about the game. In-game chat is really poor.

It's photon chat server, it sux, we're changing it.

[Master of Clan X]

I think the casual gamer experience is OK but a bit stale. The excitement in this game, especially for casuals, comes from opening chests to get new loot, levelling up the good loot and trying out new team comps.

We're looking at ways to make the core of the game more fun (the battles).
More jobs, more skill variety would improve that.
Adding battlefields with different elevations would improve that.

But beyond that, we've been looking into even more fundamental design changes that could make a turn-based game more dynamic and fun.

I'd suggest setting up an official Discord group and advertising it in-game.

We could do that. It'll basically be a chat but on Discord?

[Master of Clan X]

Official Discord > https://discord.gg/YwkxASb