(Pt. 2) Has Conqueror's Blade cost you $280 to play? Was it worth it? - An in-depth review

[<ChaChi!>]

HERO TRAINING

I find it frustrating that if I want to try out a hero class, it is impossible for you to change your skills when you enter the “Master at arms” training site. You must leave the site, change the skills, then enter the training battle again. WHY?!

Please add a menu in the training yard that allows you to change skills without having to exit. I wanted to experiment with other skills and combos, and I had to constantly exit and enter. What a pain!

Furthermore, all skills for all classes should be unlocked and at ones’ disposal in the training yard. You’re trying out a class, you must know what skills they have and what they can do even if it’s just to see if you’re going to like them.

My other suggestions for the training yard are to make it possible to:
1. Add and remove the number of AI heroes you want to fight,
2. Choose their difficulty level,
3. Choose their class,
4. Join with friends,
5. Battle with and against friends in training yard.

HORSES CANCELLING SKILLS

This is a quick one. When you try to use you Ultimate (melee) skills on a player and they call their horse, the Ultimate doesn’t connect, or grab the player. Should horses cancel skills? Because many people use them to cancel them. A couple of suggestions:
1. The “horse call” should be delayed for 3 – 5 seconds, maybe. As it should not be used as a getaway vehicle so quickly.
2. Perhaps you call the horse, but you don’t automatically mount it. It appears a few feet away from you and you must interact with it to mount.


DOCTRINES

I really like this system, and I like that they are trying to implement this bonus-adding items to the game, but it has been poorly executed in my opinion.

One thing that I dislike about the doctrine system is that they’ve implemented doctrines that are unit specific, instead of class specific. I think I know what they’re trying to accomplish; they want people to try out other units, or specific units and venture out of their “favorite” units.

I don’t agree with this at all. Having class specific doctrines was an excellent idea and it should’ve stayed like that. Now, there’s this Tier 4 Doctrine that “reduces cooldown of ability by 20%” but only for Berserkers (one of the new Season VII units) instead of being for Sword and Shield unit class, so that I can use it on a unit that I already have, already know how to use and want to keep using.

It’s almost like nerfing base or old units by making new units automatically faster and stronger.


RUNES

Oh, boy. What a disaster this is. By far, a great idea very poorly implemented.

Introduced in Season VII (current season) runes are like doctrines, but for your hero’s gear. They are divided into 4 rarity levels and are used to buff your character. However, the way they were made accessible to players was abhorrently implemented, with no thought behind it at all.

You unlock these runes every 3 season levels your character gains. Every time you hit the target level you unlock a set of them. At first, they seem great, but then you realize that the higher tier runes, the gold ones, are class specific. Which is TERRRIBLE!

Players constantly complain that heroes are not balanced; this hero is best, this one is trash, and the developers decide to implement a system that makes unique runes for hero classes polarizing the community even more. Of course, players are going to think some runes are better than others, and that some classes are now even more overpowered, and others are even further down the garbage chute.

The final mistake was adding certain gold runes per set unlocked. Meaning, not every class got a gold rune at the same time. Certain classes got their runes earlier than others. Poleaxe, Shortbow and Nodachi hero class got a gold rune at level 5, where the Dual Blades and Maul classes had to wait until level 40 to see their first gold rune.

All the runes should have been for all classes, like the rest of the runes. The gold runes should be renamed to be applicable to all the classes. This way: 1. All players can get the same buffs, 2. They all get them at the same time, and 3. You take a step toward equalizing the game.


LACK OF ARMOR/GEAR DIVERSITY/GEAR DROP

This one is also very quick and painless; it goes hand in hand with the Runes section of this review. There are only 4 gear sets in the game per class. That’s it. (not counting lower-level trash, of course)

The developers are going in the right direction with the added runes, although poorly implemented. Why not add more gear? Implement 10 more gear sets, all with different stats, for each of the 3 classes of armor (light, medium and heavy).

Good gear is extremely hard to come by in the game. Most of what people use was crafted, using even more hard to find “schematics”. Gear doesn’t really “drop” in battles. I think this is a big mistake.

Add more gear to the game, with differing stats and appearances, and give them to the people that are playing your game! …. Which is a great segue for next section.


IN GAME PURCHASES/COST TO PLAY - $280+?!?!

For a “free-to-play” game this is the most expensive in-game market set up I’ve even seen. It’s true, you don’t have to pay to play the game. But if you want to have fun, or try to be competitive in any way, or get some of the cool stuff you better drop that wallet and drop it hard!

I hear you though. If you’re paying more, you should be getting more stuff.

I’m not talking about the cost of the battle pass or the premium account, regardless of the scam that system is. I’m talking about the cost of the skins, cost of consumables, “bundles” and items in game.

Let me first explain to you what I like to do when I see a “free-to-play” game that I’m interested in. I go in knowing it’s going to come in with needed in-game purchases at some point, so I’m ready. After I play it for some time (and I’m still enjoying it) I ask myself: what would I have paid for this game that would be fair? Whatever number I give it, that’s how much I put into the in-game market to get some goodies and no more.


I did it with this game and I have to say, I’m glad I didn’t go through with the transaction. Let me tell you why.

I decided that an appropriate price (the price I would pay) for Conqueror’s Blade would be $20-25. I think that is very fair if not very generous. Diablo III cost me $29 when I bought it and it gave me years of enjoyment. Not only enjoyment, but I never got as frustrated when playing Diablo as I do every time I play Conqueror’s Blade.

So that day I said to myself, this game is going to get $20 of my dollars today, let’s see what all I can get. JACK! That’s what you can get with $20. Don’t get me wrong, you can buy stuff, but you can’t buy anything worthwhile.

Battle pass of $10, and 30-day premium account for $10. No thanks! What else? One hero skin or attire for $10 -$20? 3 or 4 skins for units? Mind you, an experienced player can have over 80 units in their barracks. Good luck!

You CAN’T unlock a single, full unit to add it to your barracks for $20. Let me explain for those that don’t know: every season they come up with new units. To get those units you need to complete a set of pages (no less than 3), each page with a bunch of quests (no less than 6). You can skip a quest if you pay $1 (100 gold in-game currency).

The cheapest unit from season VII needs 4 pages, each with 6 quest that need to be completed. So, $24. The cheapest unit in season VI needs 3 pages, but with 8 quests each. So, $24. Contrast that to a Gold, Tier 5 cavalry unit, like the Keshings that have 9 pages and I believe 8 quests each. So, you would need $72 to unlock this unit for the game. Granted, you can complete the quests, and not pay anything but this show the mindset of the company, doesn’t it?

So, no. I didn’t spend a single cent in the game after I saw how their in-game prices were set up, and I know I’m not the only one. I’m not the only one who wanted to put money in the game and backed out after seeing the lack of value for my real dollars.

Which got me to a deeper realization that the only people, the people paying these prices are the truest of fans, the most loyal players… these are the people getting taken for a ride, because they love the game.
This is how companies do it, this is how they get you to pay more money for a game than it is worth. And the bill keeps coming…

If you’ve played the game since the release and you always get the battle pass and the 3-month premium account, which is short of $40, but let’s say is $40. Each season is 3 months and they’re on the 7th season. You, the guy who’s been loyal since the beginning, have paid this company about $280 to enjoy mediocre rewards through the battle pass and premium account. If you saw this game in the steam store today for $280, would you buy it? That’s how much you’ve paid, though. I’m sad. Maybe not you, but this is true for some people.

Can’t imagine how much more they’ve paid considering some skins and item purchases here and there.

I have a friend that would say: “They got to make money somehow.” I ask you, is this the way?


BUNDLES BEFORE BUGS

Will you look at that? While I’m typing this review, a new update came up for the game called: “UNLOCK SUNKEN TREASURE TROVES WITH FORTUNE’S BOUNTY!”.

I want to pull a quote from this: “The more Sovereigns you part with, the more rewards you’ll unlock.” What a weird way to say: spend more, “get” more. Sovereigns are the in-game gold you buy with real money. About 100 gold per $1.

The last reward on the list of this new promotion states that if you spend 10,000 Sovereign gold (or $100) in in-game purchases, the reward for your loyalty and support is “Eat Drumstick (Emote)” and “Pieces of Eight (Title)”.

Wow, where do I swipe my Credit card?

I was going to talk about the “Hussar Bundle” fiasco. How almost every server was broken, nothing was working properly, units that have been “coming soon” still nowhere to be found, game glitches, unbalancing issues needed to be addressed, but yet they still find the time and money to design, create and promote new skin bundles for “everyone to enjoy” at the low, low price of $39.99 or whatever that was.

Priorities, right?


HOUSES AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION

I believe the game would benefit from a more equal distribution of players in houses. I know a lot of people are not going to be with me on this one but hear me out.

You have only a handful of top houses and alliances that recruit all the best, high level players to steam roll everyone else in the game. So maybe, 3 – 5 top houses that can fight with and give each other a hard time, and 500 other houses of lower-level players that have no chance, basically.

I’m sure that’s super fun for the 1000+ players to steam roll through all the lower-level players and houses and feel big and bad, but I ask you people specifically, where’s the challenge in that? It’s equivalent to showing up with aircraft, missiles, tanks, and machine guns to wage war on an indigenous village, with stick and arrows, whilst talking smack to them. Must be very rewarding. I'm exaggerating, but you get the point.

There should be a better, fairer way to have these territory battles between such different houses and alliances. My suggestion is the following:
1. There should be a lower limit, much like the prestige/level needed to take over a city, that prevents huge houses with 1 million prestige and 600 high level players on their roster, to fight and take over a level 1 village with a house of 16 level 100 players.
2. This way you have houses that are similar in strength fighting with each other, being able to gain more prestige, to reach the threshold needed to fight bigger houses and grow. Almost like weight class in boxing.

Territory wars will be fairer and more fun (more like, less frustrating) for everyone involved, including the lower level players. Maybe my suggestion sucks, but there's got to be a way, right?



CONCLUSION

Play at your own risk. You might like it, but you might get hooked and overpay for a broken game with no fix in sight.

Don’t get it twisted, I love the game concept and idea and I still very much want to play, and I would if I didn’t already know that the game is currently broken, that the developers are more focused on finding more and more ways to get more of your money, instead of trying to make the game experience better and more enjoyable.

Booming Games, get a grip or sell the game. I ask, can you please give a damn about the players?

Again, If I didn’t care about the game or what happened to the game in the future, I wouldn’t have written this review. I want it to get better, I want it to be welcoming, balanced, and enjoyable.

If you made it this far, thank you! Thank you for giving your time to read the review that took me hours of my time to write.

I hope someone is "listening".

Chach!

[Oldashanti]

Thats a lot of good stuff. I like most of the proposals. In Fact some of these are running through my head for some time. One of the best review/suggestion threads ive seen in a long time.
I do have a different view when it comes to the Costs. Thats the way the F2P industrie works. There is no limit when it comes to spending money. If people like us, real Gamers, get into one of these games we will Ante up. Premium and Season Pass. so 10 bucks a month and 10 Bucks for 3 months is about couple for the course. Thats what i pay for my favorite game and I came to peace with that.

After that, they will tempt us to spend all money they can get. In this area CB does a good job. So far they refused to earn money with the pay to win factor. Yoiu get pay 2 progress and can spend thousands on optics and gimmicks. Let them get rich with the impatience and lack of disciplin of the people.

What they should do is use the damn money to make the game better. Attack Server Problems and Bugs, let the support do quality work in the shortest time possible and admit mistakes and fix them.
We pay good money for that.

[<ChaChi!>]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I understand that's how the F2P games works. I miss the days when you bought a game and you had 100% of the game.

I wish there was a price tag on Conqueror's Blade. You pay it, and you got the game and all it's goodies.

[AbusadoR]

what about today its gonna be funny