/help/bug report

[Luminaar]

I really wanna know the backstory to capping orbs at 30, as that's an interesting choice considering the 5 orbs icon would at least be more fitting for a cap of 50.

I don't have that info, sorry. I can tell you that 30 was the upper limit during Alpha.

Once I heard the in-game announcement that stars for farm shards will no longer count toward Top Builder ranking, I thought "great, now I can go back from rank 45 to the Top 30 or 20 where I started out". Then I see Vir is still #1 with 12k stars gained exclusively from farm shards. They have almost nothing else. I don't understand it. Help me out?

They're no longer counted since it was implemented, but the change wasn't retroactively applied. As mentioned by Lurk, you'll notice this next season.

Also, there are tangible rewards being a Top Champion with the glory you earn. Are their for ending a season in the Top Builder list, too?

Glory rewards aren't position specific, and are instead based on your personal glory. If there are numerous players reaching 1million in a season, then they all get the top seasonal chest regardless of the position finished. There isn't an equivalent for Builders, as unlike Glory, rewards for receiving more Stars are given out at certain star thresholds, rather than once a season.

[MycroftHolmes]

Subject says it all. If I die and exit to reset my skillpoints or just come back later, or if I'm not satisfied with a run and want to start over, this happens, often:

[Luminaar]

If I die and exit to reset my skillpoints or just come back later, or if I'm not satisfied with a run and want to start over, this happens

Cheers for the screenshot. The TL;DR version is "glory is being added when you leave the Shard, but orbs are still gainable if you didn't reach the portal."

We want players to be able to progress, even if they're not able to finish a level. You gain glory regardless of whether or not you succeed at completing a shard. You can have unlimited attempts to gain glory once you've started a shard, by choosing to replay it if you die/exit. After exiting the shard, the glory of your most recent attempt is added to your score and your glory gain for that shard is marked with a tick until it resets.

We can't give glory for a shard multiple times though! Since you can replay a shard at any time, we stop players from glory farming a single shard (by failing a shard intentionally for example) and repeatedly entering/grinding/exiting the same level. As orbs are only added when you enter the portal however, the orb counter will show orbs as available on repeated playthroughs until you succeed at completing it, resulting in the screenshot scenario.

[MycroftHolmes]

If I die and exit to reset my skillpoints or just come back later, or if I'm not satisfied with a run and want to start over, this happens

You gain glory regardless of whether or not you succeed at completing a shard... After exiting the shard, the glory of your most recent attempt is added to your score and your glory gain for that shard is marked with a tick until it resets.

This is what I was after. So in other words don't exit for any reason until you are satisfied with the Glory gain, and if you can't win use the class switch option instead.

I feel like this should be a loading screen tool-tip until it becomes common knowledge. That and informing players about chests not "adding" more Orbs to a full cleared shard vs. one with few to none. Hmm, but the loading screens don't take very long (only the initial launch one would maybe give time for this idea). Please don't extend load times because of this!

[Cassiopeia]

Did orb drop rates decrease recently? I'm playing my
game-recommended shards, but I'm only working out 19-21 orbs from them, when just last month I was consistently getting 28-30 orbs from my game-recommended shards.

These shards are level 32-35. For some reason I'm not seeing higher shards on my game-rec list, even though I know I can beat level 38 shards if I come across them.

Is there a relationship between player level, shard level, and orb drop rate? If orb drop rate is at all dependent on player level, then I'm going to stop opening packs. I've opened so many packs that are useless for me yet increase my player level. If I'm getting orb reduction because of that, it seems like a big design flaw.

[Cassiopeia]

Your orb drop rates and glory-by-shard-difficulty formula doesn't work well for campaigns right now. I just spent 30+ minutes going through a game-rec campaign that was only dropping 1-2 orbs per shard and meager glory returns. Why was this recommended to me if it is so below my level that the returns are wasting my time?

If there aren't enough high-level shards in the game right now to meet high-level needs, I think the game designers need to start injecting the game with more difficult shards.

Because of the steep dropoff in glory and orbs in the past month, I've gone from a daily player to a maybe a twice-a-week player, only checking in for double and triple quest completion.

Again, trying a 30-min campaign today felt like a great waste of my time. Perhaps there should be some sort of limiting factor in that shards designers can only add to a campaign shards that are within a certain difficulty range of each other.

All I know is that, as a player, I completed about 10 shards in that campaign, all I got one to two orbs per shard, and 14 orbs for completing the campaign. This campaign was recommended to me by the game. Yet I only learned about 30 orbs total poor 10 shards. If I just picked the recommended ones from individual shards, I would have earned 200-300 orbs in that same amount of time. That's a huge difference.

I understand that part of the reason campaigns were created was so that players can tell a longer story over multiple shards. Me personally, I have not found good campaigns that tell a good story yet. Further, even if it did tell a good story, I, as a player, would still want to be rewarded for my time via orbs and glory.

[Cassiopeia]

If I die and exit to reset my skillpoints or just come back later, or if I'm not satisfied with a run and want to start over, this happens

You gain glory regardless of whether or not you succeed at completing a shard... After exiting the shard, the glory of your most recent attempt is added to your score and your glory gain for that shard is marked with a tick until it resets.

This is what I was after. So in other words don't exit for any reason until you are satisfied with the Glory gain, and if you can't win use the class switch option instead.

I feel like this should be a loading screen tool-tip until it becomes common knowledge. That and informing players about chests not "adding" more Orbs to a full cleared shard vs. one with few to none. Hmm, but the loading screens don't take very long (only the initial launch one would maybe give time for this idea). Please don't extend load times because of this!

I also dislike this feature in that when I retry the shard after accidentally exiting it, I don't gain any additional glory and have to wait a full week to try again. There are times when I am clicking on the screen trying to select a baddie to attack and then I died and the death screen pops up and my clicking ends up selecting the exit button. Perhaps if there was a one second pause between a person dying and the exit or retry buttons becoming available to be clicked on, then I and other players would not accidentally click on exit or some other button they didn't want to click on because it showed up right when you're trying to click on something else (like a baddie you were trying to kill).

[Cassiopeia]

I saw the announcement to hop onto your discord and chat or communicate with Monolisk through that. However, your discord is full of trolls. I don't feel that I can have a productive conversation with the game designers and other players until the trolls are cleaned up and kept in check.

[MycroftHolmes]

Did orb drop rates decrease recently?
... I've opened so many packs that are useless for me yet increase my player level. If I'm getting orb reduction because of that, it seems like a big design flaw.

So the quick answer is "no" the rates themselves haven't changed, but "yes" as your player level increases the shards you used to see 25+ orbs from will be giving you less and less the more levels you go up.

Recent changes to the game have been put in place I believe to encourage players to stop level-capping themselves and start creating higher level shards. Earning glory grants passive skills which technically force you to level up, even without opening packs. Higher level shards now "earn" more stars via multipliers based on their level. 3 stars on a level 9 shard adds 3 stars to the author's account, while 3 stars on a level 30 shard adds 9. Even a 2 star rating would earn them double the stars.

In theory, it is a fun way to gently let the player base know that, while it may be fun to play that same shard every week for 30 Orbs indefinitely, they never intended for shard growth to stagnate and eventually reach a 'soft-cap' that almost no one goes beyond.

Of course it takes time for these players who will be pushed up anywhere from 5-20 levels per month to produce this desired higher-level content, and in the meantime you will have a subpar recommended shard list no doubt.

Measures you can take to offset this 'penalty', as it must seem like to you now, are to stop buying Hero and Universal packs. Either save up your Orbs or buy Creator packs (and build some shards of your own with them, preferably ones that are challenging for you to clear and publish). Also, choose a favorite Hero class and - outside of quests - stick to it. In my experience 35 skill points on one hero levels you up a lot less than 20 skill points on all 5 heroes. And that hero begins to feel so powerful you won't want to play the other ones anymore anyway.

Eventually you'll see shard levels normalize, and you can go back to whatever way of playing feels best for you. On the other hand, if you weren't getting any good items - just XP - from spending your Orbs anyway, you could just play shards that are fun for the simple joy of playing, and not worry about the rewards at all.

If you come down to my level and try out mine, be sure to leave comments on what you think. If I don't implement suggestions into my current shards, I tend to keep the feedback in mind as I create new ones. So even if you aren't building shards, you are helping shape ones that others build.

[Cassiopeia]

If you have the regular and golden version of an item that are being buffed by another item (ex: both versions of Red Knight's Pride being buffed by Chain of Might), then, on the character page, the buff shows doubled. Characters do not receive the double buff. It is just a visual bug. If you dismantle either the golden or regular item (I dismantled the golden version), then the visual bug goes away.