Do you actually play against real people?

[Abyssion]

I am just wondering, because it seems like everything in play mode and arena are just bots? From reading these discussions on Steam I seem to get the same feeling that u mostly meet just bots. And don't take me wrong, I am not hating that it's bots, I am just hating that there's a lack of clarity if they're bots. How can I tell they're bots?

[Mihnea]

Right now, the majority of online matches are against bots because there aren't a lot of players online simultaneously. You can meet other people, but it depends mostly on when you play - for example, we have more people online when it's evening in the US.

If the server cannot find a human opponent for you within a certain interval (30 seconds for ranked/unranked, 60 seconds for arena), you get a bot (we think this is better than not being able to play at all). It doesn't say anywhere when the opponent is a bot, but you can usually tell from a few things. The easiest to spot is that their rating never changes, and it's a round number, such as 1200, 1400 etc. Also, there are usually around 4-5 bots for each rating range, so if it's easy to see when you keep running into the same opponent, and he has the same rating every time.

The situation will improve as the player base grows, and we hope that PvP matches will become more commonplace soon.

[Abyssion]

Originally posted by Mihnea:

Right now, the majority of online matches are against bots because there aren't a lot of players online simultaneously. You can meet other people, but it depends mostly on when you play - for example, we have more people online when it's evening in the US.

If the server cannot find a human opponent for you within a certain interval (30 seconds for ranked/unranked, 60 seconds for arena), you get a bot (we think this is better than not being able to play at all). It doesn't say anywhere when the opponent is a bot, but you can usually tell from a few things. The easiest to spot is that their rating never changes, and it's a round number, such as 1200, 1400 etc. Also, there are usually around 4-5 bots for each rating range, so if it's easy to see when you keep running into the same opponent, and he has the same rating every time.

The situation will improve as the player base grows, and we hope that PvP matches will become more commonplace soon.

Of course it is better, and it's cool. I noticed that I've played against same guys with same rating (150, 200, 250, 300 and such) so I assumed that's one way to spot them.

Well one thing worries me, getting the Resilience?(the one that requires winstreaks) perk is going to be nightmare for people who won't get to play against these bots as much. I had 6 win streak until I lost one (to a bot of course), and getting 11 win streak against bots doesn't sound that bad, but against real players it's gonna require ridiculous amount of luck for you to not get horrible matchup and so on. Thankfully it seems like resilience perks might be the worst ones at the end of the day.

Since I've already started might as well keep going, the entire progression system worries me for a PVP game. Practice matches don't give gold infinitely, and while they can give a sizable amount to begin with, it's possible you're gonna get stuck easily, or just will lose alot to people who already have items to have a decently built character. Only saving grace for this is arena where you play on equal footing, but at the chance of losing gold. It's of course possible you guys might be aware, and are leaving it in the state it is because of bots being 90% of the opponents you get to play.

Otherwise gameplay is fun, especially when you do not feel like either side is particularly too strong vs. the other one (again most noticeable in arena) and seems like you can fit your playstyle quite easily with 4 fairly variable classes and tons of equip, really cool game and I found myself to enjoy it alot.

I also want to mention something you surely heard a ton of times, but hovering instead of click + hold for details is kinda required and more options wouln't be bad (music slidebar, perhaps resolution and windowed/fullscreen option).

[Mihnea]

We're glad to hear you're having fun in the game. :)

It's true that having more human opponents will make the game harder, so we may have to tweak some rewards and thresholds as the community grows. The values we have now are not set in stone, we are constantly watching how people progress at all stages of the game and trying to balance things to be fair and fun.

There are several mechanisms which should make it hard to get stuck. The practice missions give enough gold to be able to level up a character and have a decent item build for starting on the ladder. If you get stuck at a later point, you will drop in rating and start meeting weaker players, giving you more chances to win again. Most daily quests can be completed without winning, so that's an additional source of gold. And if you make some really bad decisions at the beginning and realize it quickly, there's a reset progress option. Hopefully all this will be enough to guard against getting completely stuck, but again, if we see players starting to struggle, we'll adapt.

We have hover tooltips on our to-do list, but we're a small team and so far we had more pressing things to take care of. We already have options for fullscreen/windowed and for turning off the music - press the gears button on the left edge of the screen to access the settings menu. We don't see the point in adding an option for changing the resolution, as it will not affect the performance of the game.

See you in the game!

[The Worst]

I can't imagine how this game will be harder against people. After hitting 2509, I promptly lost 300 rating points between Agnea, Sir Vasod, Sandrameli, and that other Crusader bot with insane healing (2500 rated.) I have what I consider to be pretty decent builds in all four classes, which I will detail in a moment, yet none of them can manage a win rate over 50% vs. these bots.

Agnea is, so far as I can tell, only beatable by Witch and Berzerker, which can dispel the rising offhand damage. My Crusader with Divine Aegis? The 30% never kicks in when it needs to. Not won once with him. Has to be a parry build either way or the damage will add up and kill you before you can reliably dispel. Yet I'm sure if I made that build, I wouldn't crit nearly as often. I still feel RNG is biased towards AI, but then I haven't played a human in 4-5 days since I think at my rank only Cipher still plays.

The two Crusaders...I have no idea how to counter 300+ points of healing. The Manticore weapons won't reduce their max life total enough to catch up - the problem isn't that they're constantly topped off, it's that once they hit Last Stand, they constantly heal back out of it (while damaging me.)

Sandrameli...well, I've got the best win rate against her, although it relies on hitting repeatedly and doing everything possible to never hit for over 24. Anyhow, my builds;

Crusader - Reforged Grond, Divine Aegis, Holy Relic, Spirit Wolf's Pelt. (Also have Durendal, Holy Shell, Dragon Soul, Champion's Hold, Relic of Bravery, and Mithril Spike) Cruelty 4/5, relies on 20+ point crits from stacking Grond and Pelt. Decent defence, damage, and normal Crusader healing. Can't play vs. Sandrameli, occasionally nails Sir Vasod (35-40%), can sometimes race Agnea due to AP denial if DA's 30% kicks in, but I'd call that 25-30%. Did great up to 2300 rating.

Assassin - Frozen Blade, Sharur (high crit rate, 1 AP), Malevolent Shard, Seal of Reckoning. AP denial build, have dropped people to as low as 80 life before they got a turn with < 1 AP with enough luck. Cruelty 4/5, Seal works well with Numbing Poison. Intend to do a Witch build with it where Seduce should work nicely with it. Have gotten over 100% crit before. Generally use Recover for Stealth + 45% Evade since Sharur triggers from Stealth to draw tokens. Also have access to Voodoo Needle and Holy Shell because of builds in other classes. Can rarely (10-15%) race Agnea if Evade cancels a large hit, tear up Sandrameli well if no hits exceed 24, bloody useless against the Crusaders since they heal enough to get to Last Stand, then I die from reflected damage unless maybe if I have a Backstab/Disarm handy.

Witch - Voodoo Needle, Dragon Eye, Malevolent Shard, Vicious Shard, Cruelty 4/5 - crits to force discards for opponent, draws for self. 8 damage on each hand, some AP restoration/cost reduction foolery, also have access to Ice Blade, Dragon Soul, Reinforced Steel Gloves, Polished Emerald Orb, Seal of Reckoning. This build simply doesn't have enough to do to stop the other ones. The discarding is a minor setback since they get the tokens back eventually anyhow (the Crusaders do anyhow, since they drag the game out), my healing can't keep up with the Crusaders, all I have to stop Agnea is two dispels and no way to block damage in the mean time (although this has won once or twice, just by virtue of the dispel being supremely important) although I have a good game against Sandrameli since she really doesn't stop me from doing much. I think a 2H build with parry could do well against the Paladins since dispelling Diamond Armour would turn some losses into wins. My gut is to grab Demon Spine and try to match them in healing, but I don't have many ways past the damn shields like Assassin does.

Berzerker - two builds; the Dirtybob with Ice Blade, Jormungand Scale, Reinforced Steel Gloves and 5/5 Resilience. Rubbish against the shield-wielding Paladins unless Resilience feeds me a LOT of BB tokens, but manages near 45-50% against Agnea and Sandrameli. Other build is Reforged Grond, Viking Shield, Mithril Spike, and Spirit Wolf Pelt with 4/5 Cruelty - similar to the above Crusader build, relying on Grond crits, both builds are good at getting around shields either via reflected damage and/or Blood Bath disabling them. Sandrameli wrecks me pretty easily since almost any of my buffs + a crit triggers Red Witch Charm, but I need the buffs on non-crits to race her. Also have access to gear mentioned in other builds above.

Only other idea I've got is some Longinus Blade build where I bleed the Crusaders out to death, but as they've got 2 Cleanse, I don't really see that happening either. Am I just really bad at this game and got lucky to get this far, missing some obvious builds, or what?

[Gerula]

Hey there,

Your builds and theory crafting is spot on and i see that you have found, so far, answers to your "problems". The fact that you need to adapt, playing more builds, during the ladder climbing, is intentional. We want to teach the players that the game is not about only one build or class, and the key to success is to know what and when to play it.

Usually there are a lot of counter builds/items, for each class, but this doesn’t means that’s the only way to move on the ladder, by hard counters. Beside what is obvious, the RNG, there are a lot of optimizations during the play versus each class, especially versus the bots (which will always behave the same).

On the next patch we added lots of bots to the ladder. We hope to have a better resolution and diversity in terms of what builds/class you will meet. In other words, more balanced builds, like yours, will have a smoother experience.

Don’t forget to check our forums, lots of cool info there:
https://forum.makingfun.com/forum/ironbound

[Abyssion]

Originally posted by Gerula:

Hey there,

Your builds and theory crafting is spot on and i see that you have found, so far, answers to your "problems". The fact that you need to adapt, playing more builds, during the ladder climbing, is intentional. We want to teach the players that the game is not about only one build or class, and the key to success is to know what and when to play it.

Usually there are a lot of counter builds/items, for each class, but this doesn’t means that’s the only way to move on the ladder, by hard counters. Beside what is obvious, the RNG, there are a lot of optimizations during the play versus each class, especially versus the bots (which will always behave the same).

On the next patch we added lots of bots to the ladder. We hope to have a better resolution and diversity in terms of what builds/class you will meet. In other words, more balanced builds, like yours, will have a smoother experience.

Don’t forget to check our forums, lots of cool info there:
https://forum.makingfun.com/forum/ironbound

Does this mean I will kinda have to play all 4 classes, or am I fine with just focusing on two? 'Zerker and Crusader are two that I am not particularly interested in alot of time, except in arena where I just kinda hop around everything. But in normal ladder I think I am gonna focus on Witch and Assassin more (well currently I am quite at the beginning so focusing only on Assassin, but I like Witch too).

[Gerula]

My bad, i wasn’t so clear. You can play one build and do fine. You can play one class with two builds and do fine. What I was trying to say, is that you need to play more builds/classes for the best performance.

The best performance is a bit a hard to define at the moment, with bots on ladder. Later on, I hope, flexibility, will be the key skill, how a player will adapt, find and play “all rounded” builds.

For now you can reach 3k rating with a couple of builds, of the same class, incrementally. So don’t worry, if you play two classes its perfect. As an inside note, assassins are doing pretty good at 3k

[Abyssion]

Originally posted by Gerula:

My bad, i wasn’t so clear. You can play one build and do fine. You can play one class with two builds and do fine. What I was trying to say, is that you need to play more builds/classes for the best performance.

The best performance is a bit a hard to define at the moment, with bots on ladder. Later on, I hope, flexibility, will be the key skill, how a player will adapt, find and play “all rounded” builds.

For now you can reach 3k rating with a couple of builds, of the same class, incrementally. So don’t worry, if you play two classes its perfect. As an inside note, assassins are doing pretty good at 3k

Also speaking of builds, what exactly is the Cruel Conjurer arena build supposed to be good for? Magic damage doesn't seem to increase damage of DoTs, and there's like only 3 spells that benefit from it, Freezing Blast, Magic Missiles, Dark Ritual? Am I just not understanding something?

[Gerula]

The magic damage bonus is secondary to the build. Like all critical hit builds, it’s something straight forward, the skill is to know when to maximize your weapon output and while doing that you can inflict extra magic damage with the spells you mentioned. The build is doing fine if played only like a pure melee build.

[Abyssion]

Originally posted by Gerula:

The magic damage bonus is secondary to the build. Like all critical hit builds, it’s something straight forward, the skill is to know when to maximize your weapon output and while doing that you can inflict extra magic damage with the spells you mentioned. The build is doing fine if played only like a pure melee build.

Ah, so I was actually overthinking it. Fair enough, thanks. I might try it again, but I still think I prefer Master Conjurer :)

[The Worst]

Well, I've got at least one build idea for each class I haven't tried yet, but there's a limit on how much gold I generate when I'm losing roughly half my matches. :p

Longinus Blade seems pretty good against non-Crusaders (possibly with Beast Nail offhand?), the aforementioned Demon Spine healing build. Attack most turns, and if an enemy signals or uses a buff that applies to a future attack, choose that turn to throw spells and hope your Parry sucks up the buffed attack. Also think there's a worthy dual wield Zerker build with the Scale, possibly using gear to buff opponent's crit rate + resilience to generate BB tokens. Witch I also want to play around with Black Pearl/Jar of Horus/Unicorn Horn/Blade of Fortune. Highly RNG dependent but sounds like chaotic fun. Crusader has a few more weapons I want to try. Sadly, a lot of the shields don't inspire me. Assassin shield options actually excite me more.

Anyhow, at some point I'll need to go get 50k gold to try all this...

[Abyssion]

Originally posted by Wargasm:

Well, I've got at least one build idea for each class I haven't tried yet, but there's a limit on how much gold I generate when I'm losing roughly half my matches. :p

Longinus Blade seems pretty good against non-Crusaders (possibly with Beast Nail offhand?), the aforementioned Demon Spine healing build. Attack most turns, and if an enemy signals or uses a buff that applies to a future attack, choose that turn to throw spells and hope your Parry sucks up the buffed attack. Also think there's a worthy dual wield Zerker build with the Scale, possibly using gear to buff opponent's crit rate + resilience to generate BB tokens. Witch I also want to play around with Black Pearl/Jar of Horus/Unicorn Horn/Blade of Fortune. Highly RNG dependent but sounds like chaotic fun. Crusader has a few more weapons I want to try. Sadly, a lot of the shields don't inspire me. Assassin shield options actually excite me more.

Anyhow, at some point I'll need to go get 50k gold to try all this...

I wonder, do you have the 3x gold buff, or are you just playing alot of arenas (or way too much ranked without the buff)?

[The Worst]

Oh I've got the buff. Balls, I would have given up on the game without it, despairing at how many matches I'd need to play to do even one decent build. 50 wins just to experiment with most of the high power trinkets? Yeah, no.

[Abyssion]

Originally posted by Wargasm:

Oh I've got the buff. Balls, I would have given up on the game without it, despairing at how many matches I'd need to play to do even one decent build. 50 wins just to experiment with most of the high power trinkets? Yeah, no.

That's why I focus on playing arena to get the gold for my stuff, it's not that bad. I think Arena is really good for those who do not want to / cannot pay.

[The Worst]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/867366666492080661/3E3C8F9BAC90454E4E38E0F1EEB91B64B6701D51/

212 healing. It's a credit to my kit here that this didn't go 40+ turns. 15 minutes! This was the "insane healing Crusader rank 2500" I mentioned earlier. I only won this because of the removal of gradual damage from drawing while on 0 tokens. Sheesh, what a goober.