Announcement regarding the War machines (by Holyday Studios)

[Holyday Studios]

Hi everyone.
We are writing this post to inform you about the situation of the war machines. For a long time the most anticipated change that was required into the game was to rebalance the war machine system, so I would like to tell you that:

We heard you.

A little history for those who are not aware of the issue.
Right now war machines unlock based on the engineer level, and the engineer level increases when you are leveling up war machines. Every time a war machine gains 1 level the war machine gets 100xp. So you should level up your weaker war machines that you do not even use in the battle in order to gain the benefit of the war machine level. In theory it makes total sense.

What is the issue here? The issue is the leveling system. So, when you open a Jewel chest you get components that you need to level up war machines, the problem is that the more war machines you have, you have a disadvantage as the components distribute to more making it harder and harder to level up your squad.

Some players found a work around however. Instead of using the components to level up their war machines they just open the jewel chests, collecting great numbers of components on a smaller number of war machines. Doing this process for months gives them an advantage to the war machine campaign.

However it’s not what we had in mind when we designed the mechanism. Hoarding chests and not using the components for months while it’s optimized, is not fun. So for several months now along with the game design for other mechanisms we always had in mind that we need to find a solution in order to make it fun again. And here we are. We found a pretty good one.

We are remaking the system.

So what changes?
The war machine unlock will be independent to the leveling of the war machines. Instead the Jewel chests will drop 3 new items. Energy cores, Chaos Turbines and Mana reactors. Once you collect the necessary amount, a war machine will instantly unlock. So you won’t have to hoard chests as it’s irrelevant from now on. A note here, these new items will be irrelevant to the components, it's a new category of items that will drop from jewel chests.

But how does this make things better you might ask?

We introduce a new functionality, the favorite war machines. So once you unlock the 6th war machine you will be able to select your 5 favorite ones. When you open jewel chests, 80% of the components will be distributed to the 5 favorite ones and the remaining 20% will be distributed as today. This way you will be able to focus on your favorite squad or level up a different squad once you unlock a new war machine. A note about the system is that either you will have 5 selected or none at all and equal distribution will apply. This way the 1 war machine strategy will no longer be possible.



We decided to expand the system as well and giving more meaning to the engineer level.

Engineer level
Once this patch goes live the engineer will gain more functionality. Every 6 hours he will generate a new currency, Tools which depends on the engineer level. Once you have enough you will be able to use these tools to increase the rarity of the war machines.

War machine rarity
In order to increase the rarity of a war machine, you will need a specific war machine level for each rarity plus a number of tools.
Once a war machine increases its rarity it will provide significant bonuses to itself but also to the rest of the war machines.

Those will be:
* Increase of that war machine attributes
* Increase of all the war machine attributes
* Increase of the chance to trigger the special ability of that war machine
* Increase the Mechanical fury

Mechanical Fury
This is a new attribute that boosts all the attributes of all war machines after the logarithmic calculations for the arena attributes.

War machine rebalance
At the same time we will rebalance war machines a bit. We give more value to some weaker war machines making battles more balanced and creating more complex squads compared to a focus on single target attack on the enemy tank.


The estimated delivery of this patch is on January.

[Sashti Hawke]

This is a great decision and I am looking forward to it... Although, due to the complete revamp of the system - there should be a one time reset of all War Machines to level 1 refunding all upgrade material. This would be an ideal solution (and fair).

[pirro]

its sounds all cool however one of the major pain points is the war machines using the same currency as the personal tree therefore having to decide to level up and leave the other feels bad is there any plan on attacking that problem?

[Jerry]

That is quite a shift. I think, I'll need to see this in action to judge on it.

I hope, you'll end the overlap of expedition tokens as well with that. It is incredibly frustrating to have to choose between war machines and tree of life, when the former requires more or less constant leveling just to keep up with updates and arena competition.

[Razvan]

Instead devs playing with mecanics wich players allready love and knowhow to doit, and probably most of the sales ingame are around expedition tokes soo u may badly doing wrong for u, why u dont put that devs ass at work and creating new content in game like tower of domination or that building from guild wich have no purpose ...or new things ingame....how about that?!

[Jerry]

Originally posted by Holyday Studios:

The estimated delivery of this patch is on January.

Do you think, you can stay on schedule with this one, or does it look like you should plan in a few more weeks for safety? I'm holding back on war machine upgrades and chests since the announcement, so I'm starting to fall a little behind.

[★彡 🅼🅰🅲🅸🅴🅺]

DEVS... Did you really find the worst problem here? Not the number of blueprints we get and the same currency as for priv tree? So if smb is not buying TONS of currency will have even worse, cause you kill 1 machine tactic giving simply NOTHING to make it easier for not whaling players... WHERE is yours "it would be much easier" cause I don't see it!

[UnNaMeD]

Originally posted by ★彡 🅼🅰🅲🅸🅴🅺:

DEVS... Did you really find the worst problem here? Not the number of blueprints we get and the same currency as for priv tree? So if smb is not buying TONS of currency will have even worse, cause you kill 1 machine tactic giving simply NOTHING to make it easier for not whaling players... WHERE is yours "it would be much easier" cause I don't see it!

As a f2p with 4 machines or a whale with 1 machine, I see this:
Currently, with going solo machine, you're going much faster than with more machines. There's no denying that, it's the absolute optimal progress. However, even with a solo machine, you will unlock more machines, to the point where I have a lvl 200 Firecracker and 4 other machines lvl 1. If I upgrade my Firecracker once more, I will unlock a 6th machine and that will completely halt my progress for months but I have the option now not to upgrade my machine and just sit on the components piling up until I can reach a desired level target level for my Firecracker.

With the new system, the option to pile up materials goes away since opening chests will unlock more WMs, which means we don't get a say anymore when a new machines comes and get the materials for itself. However, with the new system comes the "Favourites" machines. You select 5 machines and they get 80% of the materials.
That means, up to your 6th machine, the gameplay stays globally unchanged. And after the 6th machine, the favourites machine system will allow you not to have to wait for months to continue progressing.
With just that, you could say it's even more fluid to go solo machine, since you'll only be 20% slower to progress with a solo machine, so they are just making it even more convenient to go solo machine?

Well, yes and no.
Solo machine will keep you with a very low engineer level (mine is 19 while people who played as much as me have it more than twice higher).
Ok, what about the engineer level? The rarity system. Now, we have a motivation to push our engineer level because that will allow up to upgrade the rarity of the machines, which will boost the machine itself, every other machine as well, and PvP specifically.

While I don't have the numbers for the new systems yet, I see solo machines only get 20% slower, and I see that pushing more machines to get a higher engineer comes with rewards that may be more interesting than a solo machine.

[Jerry]

Arena mode is still a huge daily dose of frustration. Sitting for 5-10 minutes, forced to watch a non-interactive scene, that randomly determines how much rewards I will get, is annoying when winning and even more so when losing.
And the fact, that the rewards for those on top make them successively stronger, does not make it better.

[★彡 🅼🅰🅲🅸🅴🅺]

Originally posted by UnNaMeD:

Originally posted by ★彡 🅼🅰🅲🅸🅴🅺:

DEVS... Did you really find the worst problem here? Not the number of blueprints we get and the same currency as for priv tree? So if smb is not buying TONS of currency will have even worse, cause you kill 1 machine tactic giving simply NOTHING to make it easier for not whaling players... WHERE is yours "it would be much easier" cause I don't see it!

As a f2p with 4 machines or a whale with 1 machine, I see this:
Currently, with going solo machine, you're going much faster than with more machines. There's no denying that, it's the absolute optimal progress. However, even with a solo machine, you will unlock more machines, to the point where I have a lvl 200 Firecracker and 4 other machines lvl 1. If I upgrade my Firecracker once more, I will unlock a 6th machine and that will completely halt my progress for months but I have the option now not to upgrade my machine and just sit on the components piling up until I can reach a desired level target level for my Firecracker.

With the new system, the option to pile up materials goes away since opening chests will unlock more WMs, which means we don't get a say anymore when a new machines comes and get the materials for itself. However, with the new system comes the "Favourites" machines. You select 5 machines and they get 80% of the materials.
That means, up to your 6th machine, the gameplay stays globally unchanged. And after the 6th machine, the favourites machine system will allow you not to have to wait for months to continue progressing.
With just that, you could say it's even more fluid to go solo machine, since you'll only be 20% slower to progress with a solo machine, so they are just making it even more convenient to go solo machine?

Well, yes and no.
Solo machine will keep you with a very low engineer level (mine is 19 while people who played as much as me have it more than twice higher).
Ok, what about the engineer level? The rarity system. Now, we have a motivation to push our engineer level because that will allow up to upgrade the rarity of the machines, which will boost the machine itself, every other machine as well, and PvP specifically.

While I don't have the numbers for the new systems yet, I see solo machines only get 20% slower, and I see that pushing more machines to get a higher engineer comes with rewards that may be more interesting than a solo machine.

Thanks for the LONG description of your thoughts... Strange that you mentioned nothing about 2 most problems I wrote - currency and blueprints. I mentioned WHALE conected to currency you are using to upgrade machines...Simply most players wanted to change in that subject not the tactics. For sure creating one machine strat is not caused by smb who doesnt like upgrading them but by smb who sees problems with currency... I have now materials to upgrade several machines but dont have currency for them... I calculated that for now I need 450k of currency to use all my matts while I give almost all in machines and my solo tree is standing with 0 upgrades. To be fair Im not f2p player - Im eco :) So I buy events for example (especially x2 currency from guild expedition), have amulets for that also. So for me that change is nothing - cause for me there is no problem with materials - ofcourse when you have 10 machines you cant get matts for you favorite machines so easy BUT THE CLUE IS SAME AS IN AWAKENING HEROES! UPGRADE ALL to get ALL THE BONUSES not to choose 2. Awakening system is the same - low level/new heroes gets more chance to awaken than high level. Same with machines - if you have new machine you will get materials mainly for that machine...but you dont have mats to upgrade them... SO FOR ME (as I said - not f2p player - im eco supporter the company) I was looking for a change with currency not changing strats...Maybe the problem is in all the expedition system. Map evaluated - new ranks, more missions, more resources gained and more missions done in the same time. Guild expeditions are the same as when game launched. Maybe the problem is with that? Maybe we should get more guild expeditions with ranks which you get by leveling your solo tree? For sure that would be helpfull and please make a way to do more expeditions in 1 time - its strange when I have high rank on map and can at least START all missions in less than 2 hours but sometimes I need 4-5 hours to do 5 guild expeditions... Dont understand why there are so many ranks on map and you get so many units to do missions but guild expeditions are still the same.

So If developer cant change the prices to level up machines maybe its high time to do changes in guild expediotins... Smth like - every 10 levels of priv tree you get 1 more expedition and every 20 levels you get 1 more unit to do expeditions... So when reaching level 10 priv tree you have 6 expeditions, at level 20 - 7 and can do two at one time,level 30 - 8, level 40 - 9 and 3 units to do them etc... It could help with currency and leveling machines and priv tree... For now - there is a big problem with balancing it - simply even with making 3 rounds a day (im trying to do even 4 a day mostly) Im missing TONS of currency...