Regarding the so-called "improvements" you've been making recently...

[Goofball]

Please stop "improving" the combat system. It's not needed. Alpha is much more important than beta and omega? Randomize the combat order. Problem solved, without butchering everything.

If you're determined to "improve" the game away from its casual roots, create a server for that version, and leave the original server sane. Don't ruin what has been a wonderful game for the (semi-)casual players, just to cater to the other groups.

Most players have likely already found a tower balance that works for them. Maybe they alwways try for the highest rank they can reach, or maybe they skip alternating weeks, in order to accumulate kobans faster. Personally, I am lucky enough to have started early enough to be able to consistently rank in the top 15 of the highest tier, and often reach the top 4, despite being entirely f2p (If you introduced a $1-5 1-off purchase that would allow players to convert non-mythic books and gifts into their component points, I'd gladly pay for that). Regardless of a given player's choices, your changes keep making us/them have to reevaluate our path. That's not a good thing in a casual game.

Tl;dr version: Leave the game as is. Either make a new server for the rpg version, or fire the new planner/developer.

[Elster]

You are aware of the point that it is not your game, right? The owner can do whatever he wants to the game. You don't have to like the changes, but it is what it is. Nothing is forcing you to play that game, you can just move on and find something that you like better.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Elster

[lepidocter]

Hi.

they should FIRE the development guy as one user come to the forum and say that as an early player that spent nothing so far, so counting as a cost for the  company, lament that he cannot obtain the best rewards in the game easily.

Now please figure out this dialogue.

-Pjotr, I have bad news. You're fired.-

-W-what? I'm with you by 10 years! I married your sister!-

-User Goofball isn't happy about reading the changelog and change his strategy.-

-Oh no, but... he's that guy that spent 55 euro just this month?-

-No, he did spent actually nothing in years. But you know... is Goofball. The one that tell us that the actual problem with combat was not randomizing.-

-It wasn't! The issue was once you got the best girls, you had no incentive to boost any others! Please, don't fire me!-

-Yeah, he's also the guy that didn't read the changelog and didn't figured out how the new element system worked. But you know... he's Goofball. I have to fire you immediatedly.-

-Can I bring home my family shots from the office?-

-Your office was burned down and I did everything in my power to cancel your existance from national registers. I've also asked the removal of your sexual organs. Now go.-

-...-

-Pjotr?-

-...what else?-

-Bring the trash with you, please-

(add sad violins music here)

No, really, just read the changelog and figure out the system, you'll spot that practically nothing changed consistently. Higher scores win on lower scores. Elements play only on very rare circumstances (and probably even less they thought for!).

Edited October 21, 2021 by lepidocter

[MrFluffy1]

17 hours ago, lepidocter said:

... you'll spot that practically nothing changed consistently. Higher scores win on lower scores. Elements play only on very rare circumstances (and probably even less they thought for!).

That's not true. If you only take the best 7 girls and don't have a balanced team, you lose very often. The combat system has become more complex and takes more time. Mere fighting power alone no longer counts.

[Goofball]

@elster & lepidoctor

To be clear... feedback is only acceptable if it is in keeping with the beliefs of the reader, or comes from a non-f2p player? That doesn't seem like the best way to get a realistic idea of what the players think, and certainly isn't the best way to keep the f2p players, whose participation keeps the game from devolving into 'wallet heroes', where players compete to see who can give the most money to the devs.

Games that go that route tend to die. I have yet to hear of a game that caters only to whales, while managing to keep a large player base over time. Once the non-whale players quit, the whales don't have anyone to lord it over, and the interest at dominating the game with money decreases. This leads to the whales migrating to another game, and the abandoned game dies.

Certainly, my phrasing of firing the new dev was a bit extreme. The way the changes have been implemented in recent months is, too. They add a feature, then, when the feature does precisely what it was intended to do, they remove/nerf it.

They added mythic girls. That gave players with kobans/cash coming out their ears an advantage. Then they changed the combat system, making mythic girls less relevant.

They added the love letter things, so that people who were a few shards away from getting a girl could get her. Then they removed them, because people were able to get girls from whom they were missing a few shards, thus decreasing their exclusivity.

They added temporary places of power, with a pretty good chance of getting the one that can give kobans. Then they added enough variations that getting the koban-granting one was like hitting the lottery.

As such, while firing might be a bit extreme, they really are coming across (at least to me), as having at least two opposing agendas, and this leaves the game looking a bit like a teddy bear that's being fought over by two kids. Regardless of which kid ends up with the larger piece of the bear, it doesn't seem likely to remain intact for all that long. 

EDIT: If at least two devs think that my perspective has absolutely no value, say so in this thread. I'm giving my feedback because I think it has value, not because I have a deep and abiding love for typing.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Goofball
Didn't want to make a new post for my addendum

[lepidocter]

@Goofball

The F2P base that mantain a game alive is a reality on casual web browser app, but not exactly in the universe of 18+ games.

As an example, a competitor company ask me something around 100 euro each 2 weeks to compete in normal events and drop... nothing. No extra pictures, no extra stuff, you just have an edge in a PvP event. To notice A LOT of people pay such sum.

You can think or belief whatever, but I worked in web marketing: you don't want a smart customer, you want a compulsive one. Such compulsive individuals make the game alive by spending without any critical sense.

And that game is way older than Harem Heroes. Still living, still online, still mantained, even if declaratively PAY TO PLAY (not even "to win").

Sentiments doesn't matter, a 18+ game is not a mainstream app you can quote wherever, you can't do commercials, you also pay a lot of extra fees for distributing adult material, you simply DON'T KNOW and you seems like a kid that lament Nintendo policies (not your fault, is just a trend that's hard to extrapolate).

KK is, de facto, a moral and ethical company that avoid such derive the most it can. You CAN play for free and you can obtain a lot of satisfaction as a F2P... but  you cannot obviously create a fairyland for free. Someone have to pay for the excellent job, and should have some more. If not, why pay?

As for your latest lament on ambiguity, and again the apocalypse of a game crashing if it doesn't fit your standards, it's like telling Magic:the Gathering was fated to die soon as they created new expansions.

23 minuti fa, Goofball ha scritto:

They added mythic girls. That gave players with kobans/cash coming out their ears an advantage. Then they changed the combat system, making mythic girls less relevant.

They added the love letter things, so that people who were a few shards away from getting a girl could get her. Then they removed them, because people were able to get girls from whom they were missing a few shards, thus decreasing their exclusivity.

They added temporary places of power, with a pretty good chance of getting the one that can give kobans. Then they added enough variations that getting the koban-granting one was like hitting the lottery.

Mythic girls are still relevant. But your interpretation was wrong since the start: directly from the patch note that introduced them, Mythics weren't supposed to be critical on combat, with just around 10% more strenght. They were and are just "the ending prize for high level effort". So, the new combat system is instead more fitting their idea.

You miss the meaning of the word "exclusivity", apparently. Date tokens made Mythics obtainable by less effort, so less exclusive. Again, that fit.

And the PoP are now 9 instead of 6, and that was the plan. Anyway, why they should give you free kobans? For whatever reason? You're friendly? Cool? Sexy? Anyway, I'm collecting at least 24 kobans each PoP roll.  They are extras, I don't understand what you're lamenting. They give you less of what previously they gifted to you?

 

So... do you want to continue?

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by lepidocter

[Goofball]

Quote

26 minutes ago, lepidocter said:

@Goofball

The F2P base that mantain a game alive is a reality on casual web browser app, but not exactly in the universe of 18+ games.

As an example, a competitor company ask me something around 100 euro each 2 weeks to compete in normal events and drop... nothing. No extra pictures, no extra stuff, you just have an edge in a PvP event. To notice A LOT of people pay such sum.

 

I didn't know that. I thought that a p2w game was a p2w game, regardless of the rating. Thank you for the correction.

 

27 minutes ago, lepidocter said:

@Goofball

 

You can think or belief whatever, but I worked in web marketing: you don't want a smart customer, you want a compulsive one. Such compulsive individuals make the game alive by spending without any critical sense.

And that game is way older than Harem Heroes. Still living, still online, still mantained, even if declaratively PAY TO PLAY (not even "to win").

Sentiments doesn't matter, a 18+ game is not a mainstream app you can quote wherever, you can't do commercials, you also pay a lot of extra fees for distributing adult material

 

Again, I had not known about those differences with an adult game. Thank you for informing me.

Quote

34 minutes ago, lepidocter said:

@Goofball

 

You CAN play for free and you can obtain a lot of satisfaction as a F2P... but  you cannot obviously create a fairyland for free. Someone have to pay for the excellent job, and should have some more. If not, why pay?

 

You are, again, correct. I hadn't intended to imply that everything should be provided for free. I was responding to the combined sentiments of elster and yourself, which appeared to boil down to "f2p players have no right to provide feedback." I'm not sure how much of the p2w model translates to adult games, but I really can't see the whales sticking around in a free player vacuum. As such, it seems to me that the company would want to have at least some feedback from those who play for free.

 

49 minutes ago, lepidocter said:

@Goofball

 

As for your latest lament on ambiguity, and again the apocalypse of a game crashing if it doesn't fit your standards, it's like telling Magic:the Gathering was fated to die soon as they created new expansions.

 

I'm kind of impressed with your ability to misunderstand my statement to this degree.

Obviously, the game can continue without any given player. Ignoring feedback from the largest segment of the player base (people who don't spend enough to be called whales) still seems like a bad idea. I happen to be a part of that segment of the player base. Make sense? Game doesn't have to fit my standards. That said, your initial response asserted that my comprehension skills are lacking (perhaps based on my suggestion that casual players might not enjoy having to regularly change how they play a casual game?). Saying that casual players might not want to relearn the combat system on a regular basis doesn't mean I failed to read the change log.

You also took my (admittedly extreme) 'fire the guy for excessive overhauling of the game', and re-wrote it into an even more absurd 'do everything in your power to make his life miserable, because a random player said so'. Can't say as how that can be read as anything other than "I don't like this poster having/expressing an opinion, so I'll do my level best to make him look like a moron." Your earlier insertion of new (to me) facts was useful. This was just spiteful, and added nothing.

 

Regarding the mythic girls, I'll let you in on a bit of a secret: When you're competing for the top spots in the game, a piddly little 10% increase in stats can mean a difference of thousands of kobans per week. Even if the devs said they weren't supposed to be critical in combat, they still made a noticeable difference at the top. That was almost eliminated when they changed the combat system.

 

I understand what exclusivity means. I also understand that a rate of 600+ tokens per mythic shard (iirc), combined with the tokens only dropping during the first event of the month, at the rate that they dropped, meant that you only had a realistic chance of using tokens to get a mythic girl that you were already very close to getting. Unless the plan was to never have a mythic girl show up a second time, the change in exclusivity wouldn't have been that great. A player with 90 shards for a mythic girl would need a month or two to get enough tokens, and that, when they were repeating mythic girls, would have been about long enough (I think. Not really good with time) for the girl to show up again.

 

Places of power spots increased from six to nine. The possible spawns, on the other hand, massively increased, making it much less likely to have the koban one spawn. While they certainly don't owe me, or any other players, free kobans, much less for the sarcastic reasons you mentioned, the point that you wrote off with "your latest lament on ambiguity" was legitimate feedback on how their actions, combined with the order in which they appeared, made it seem as if there were two opposing devs/factions. If they don't care about that, fine. If that appearance is something they wish to avoid, however, they might see my feedback, and, if enough other players mentioned having the same perception, the devs might start tweaking in smaller increments. That possibility is as much reason for me to mention their apparent tug-of-war as any dissatisfaction with it.

[jelom]

1 hour ago, Goofball said:

a rate of 600+ tokens per mythic shard (iirc)

Yes, memory fades quickly, it was 90 date tokens for a mythic girl shard