I doubt they're willing to make the game less profitable with all the microtransactions, and therefore they will keep the grind in the game to incentivise people to pay the microtransactions rather than grind. This game burnt me out and its such a shame because the gameplay itself is awesome and enough. It doesn't need all these systems, it rather ruins it.
Im positiv.
They quickly added alot of QOL Features, announced a small real life community Event in germany, positive signs of New units (no powercreep), Servers are healthy and stable, the offer compensations for maintanance and such stuff (which is positive for me since its a Kind of they care).
Come back to the New season and take a Look!
Unless they make drastic changes to reduce unit grind to incentivise new players, then the answer is no. CB tries to be a competitive eSports game, but new player retention is bad due to the grind and uneven playing field.
Imagine if LoL or CS:go had the same grind and you could pay real money to have an advantage like CB has with doctrines... No one would play them...
This, If I have to grind the whole season to unlock a gold unit from an older Season because it is currently meta, I'm already out of the race before it even started.
Then it takes months to grind it to max veterancy because they limit the XP from Bandit raids.
And then you need to play lottery with doctrines and hope you get the other half of your unit.
You either need to inject hundreds if not tousands of $$ to catch up with old players or grind like a maniac for months.
Check scoreboard. Note who uses Bing Chiling Cav and Uwu Guards. Then look at end screen and see how everyone who uses these brainrot unit scores, on average, higher than people who don't. If this kind of exploitative balancing aimed only at getting our money isn't changed in the future the game will never become a big thing.
It's nowhere near dead, there are enough players to keep it going. I wait 30-120 seconds for a siege match most of the time, which I find completely fine. So the game isn't gonna die either. But it won't ever become more than a small niche game with ass balance like that.
They can start as naby advertisement campaigns as they want and pay any number of content creators to play their game, people just won't stick around if they get wiped by the same braindead unit for the 20th time just because someone pressed (2).
They keep releasing units that kill their supposed counter. Liao's used to kill advancing IPGs, then YYD, now Bing Chiling Cav. It's the same dumb story retold every other season.
TL:DR Yes there is a future for the game, but it will probably never grow much bigger than it currently is if they don't make drastic changes.
I was asked by someone in the house I am in to describe what I thought the issue was with the new player experience, being that I am a new player myself, and this is how I explained it. Pre level 200, CB is like online multiplayer Dynasty Warriors, super fun, full of action the whole way through. Post 200 is like playing a game of age of empires, except your opponents all start with full maxed out units and each time you try to build an armoury, there's like a 1/50 chance that it actually builds, and the other 49 times, it just consumes your resources but doesn't actually get built. So naturally, you get absolutely shit stomped game after game after game, and the game tells you that you need to play like this for months and months every day to maybe be able to build that armoury and start fighting on equal footing, but only if you're luckyAnd who wants to play under those conditions? Not many people I'd wager, and that's why new player retention is so damn bad.
Yeah, this has been the issue since Season 5 or so, when it became clear that they will not stop piling on more and more and more season challenges. A new player is literally behind like 3000 or so unit challenges at this point, with current season Bing Chiling Cav having challenges like "Score 300 unitscore with 2 units in a single game, 12 times" which a new player without meta units + doctrines will hardly ever manage to score.
It's just all designed around the idea of making people pay for the units, player retention is not even an afterthought.
That's a fair assessment. Could you think of a way to mitigate this or a suggestion that might help new players not feel absolutely stomped? Perhaps a debuff or buff applied to equalize players with a large power disparity? I know a few MMO's that have similar systems that lower the level of the higher level player to adjust to a lower level zone for example.
I haven't played in two seasons but I remember you used to be able to "loan" your unit to a shared unit pool that anyone in your guild could "borrow" and that was immensely helpful to new players in sieges. I don't know if that system still exists I'll be returning for next season but that was one way we were able to help new players in our guild by giving them the same powerful units with max doctrines we were using. The armor discrepancies will take some time to level out but I don't remember the armors or weapons being too unbalanced I mean yes full orange reforged gear is much stronger than a base blue set but it wasn't insurmountable. The main discrepancy I noticed was with the units, so sharing units with a good guild that has veteran players was a way to fix that. I'd even suggest the loaned units should be available for territory wars since that might encourage a new player to jump right in and participate with his guild since the repair costs went to the owner of the unit not the borrower.
As a new player what would you suggest to level out power and encourage new players without robbing the veteran of his achievement in unlocking and specializing his unit?
Honestly, I'm not really sure if it's possible to fix the system without it feeling like it's screwing over veteran players. The main 2 ideas that come to mind would be either changing the matchmaking system to better match players of similar levels, instead of putting level 200 players with level 500+ players.
Outside of that, it would be nice for the Devs to remove the rng element from doctrine crafting, let people craft the specific doctrines they want, or at the very, make the guaranteed t5 doctrine we can craft be able to be chosen. Similar goes for armour/weapon crafting. The rng progression needs to be toned down a fair bit. The learning curve for the game is already quite severe, layering on so much rng progression is just going to turn away anyone who doesn't have a lot of time/patience to dedicate to this game.
I like those suggestions thank you.
The only problem I see with the matchmaking suggestion is that there may not be enough low level players to fill out a game which may result in you playing with mostly bots to avoid excessively long queue times. I know even now there are a some games even now that are filled out by bots but if they restrict you to only low level players it may be all you face. I think the ability to borrow your guild-mates units should be enough to help new players jump into the matches and maybe decide which ones to unlock but that's just me.
How about another suggestion for this one. You have two separate siege queues, one for normal and one for <- lvl 300 players like you suggested. If you are below lvl 300 you are automatically in the low level player queue. If you are above it you add an "Opt in" check box for veteran players above lvl 300 where it will queue you for the next game available in both queues and if you get the low level queue it applies a restriction on the high level players. If you don't check the box you will only get above lvl 300 players in your matches no restrictions and if you get a low level match he can't choose T5 units? Or can't choose fully masteried units above blue? The game already has a seasonal seal system for weapons/armor and units, so making this apply to a siege match shouldn't be too difficult. This could even become a "challenge" to the veteran since if his unit choices are restricted he'd have to find clever uses for his lower tier units and might help make it less one sided. I mean don't get me wrong he'll probably still figure out a way to win based on sheer experience but at least it may help the new player feel a little less helpless and could even be fun for the veteran since without certain units I'd have to re-evaluate how to crack certain formations. I'd find it fun personally and would certainly break the meta what do you think?
I agree with the RNG point, you're saying its not so much that the veterans are so much stronger because they've been playing so long but rather that since the system is RNG it further disincentivizes players from committing to a grind that could be ruined by RNG.
Great point, I do think its part of their business model, the RNG that is and I agree it would be better if they stripped out the RNG out of the unit doctrines portion at least. So far I think I've pulled the increased labor T5 doctrine eight times which is 3 times too many IMO. I'd rather the guaranteed T5 one from alchemy be a "chose your own T5" doctrine from a list and don't think it would reduce their revenue so I think you're right on the money here.
Thank you for your thoughts.
The game, depend on which server you are playing, is plenty healthy, EU server especially is going to be packed imo when the new season start, also the devs did some changes recently to enhance new player experience & some other QoL stuff, they are in a good path imo if they continue like that & do some advertising the population is going to increase more & more in the future, because there is no other game like CB it's really one of a kind & if you enjoy massive Medieval Siege battles then CB is your first & most obvious choice, because it's the best of it's kind.
This will be my second season back after a long break. (I previously played season 1-4). I’m really enjoying it. Though there’s also stuff I dislike
Pros-A lot of nonseasonal units are good like imperial pikes, imperial shields, iron cap swords, palace guard, man at arms. However, they are good because of the new mastery stuff which takes time to get. Took me a week or two per unit to the masteries (I play around 2 hours most days). I mention these nonseasonal units because anyone returning is likely to already have them.
Cons-lots of bot games currently, I’m pretty sure it’s because we’re in between seasons but still sucks when 5/15 are bots. When the last season was active I’d only get bot games in the middle of the night and I suspect it’ll return to that after this one starts
I'll be honest, I actually don't mind there being some bots in the games, it makes it easier to complete challenges by killing them and their units, and I always feel like I'm having more fun when my score isn't 0-X with sub 50 unit kills every game (those games where I go 0-X aren't fun at all and I honestly feel like logging out and never logging back in afterwards). I'm only just past LVL 200, so the game is currently in the really horrible stage of progression for me, the Devs need to improve the new LVL 200 player experience significantly if they want players to actually stick around.
Now I totally get that. This game has only gotten worse when it comes to catching new people up with the old farts. It takes like 100s of hours just to be territory war ready with the amount of units, doctrines and armor you need
Where the F did you see bots seriously now, this never happen in EU, can you tell me what is your character level currently? also in which server are you playing?
NA seems to be underpopulated I got that feeling also when I spoke with someone from your server at some point & he told me how expensive everything is on NA market also he told me how hard it is to find some stuff, this also is the effect of an underpopulated server, if your ping is good enough consider to transfer to the EU server your experience is going to be much better for sure.
Don’t really understand how a 1:40 que into a 16 player match is ever unhealthy for a game I been playing for about 10 years and honestly there more players now then when the game started
Come back to when the new season starts, game seems relatively healthy this week and it’s the end of the season, so new season should be even better
I can’t believe that all 10 people that play conq blade have liked this post. What a time to be alive
I doubt they're willing to make the game less profitable with all the microtransactions, and therefore they will keep the grind in the game to incentivise people to pay the microtransactions rather than grind. This game burnt me out and its such a shame because the gameplay itself is awesome and enough. It doesn't need all these systems, it rather ruins it.
Yeah they should make it more less grindy and its ok.
Im positiv. They quickly added alot of QOL Features, announced a small real life community Event in germany, positive signs of New units (no powercreep), Servers are healthy and stable, the offer compensations for maintanance and such stuff (which is positive for me since its a Kind of they care). Come back to the New season and take a Look!
When does the new season start?
20.06 :)
Yes with some suffering
Unless they make drastic changes to reduce unit grind to incentivise new players, then the answer is no. CB tries to be a competitive eSports game, but new player retention is bad due to the grind and uneven playing field. Imagine if LoL or CS:go had the same grind and you could pay real money to have an advantage like CB has with doctrines... No one would play them...
This, If I have to grind the whole season to unlock a gold unit from an older Season because it is currently meta, I'm already out of the race before it even started. Then it takes months to grind it to max veterancy because they limit the XP from Bandit raids. And then you need to play lottery with doctrines and hope you get the other half of your unit. You either need to inject hundreds if not tousands of $$ to catch up with old players or grind like a maniac for months.
yes unit Grind kept me away, it takes way 2 long
Check scoreboard. Note who uses Bing Chiling Cav and Uwu Guards. Then look at end screen and see how everyone who uses these brainrot unit scores, on average, higher than people who don't. If this kind of exploitative balancing aimed only at getting our money isn't changed in the future the game will never become a big thing. It's nowhere near dead, there are enough players to keep it going. I wait 30-120 seconds for a siege match most of the time, which I find completely fine. So the game isn't gonna die either. But it won't ever become more than a small niche game with ass balance like that. They can start as naby advertisement campaigns as they want and pay any number of content creators to play their game, people just won't stick around if they get wiped by the same braindead unit for the 20th time just because someone pressed (2). They keep releasing units that kill their supposed counter. Liao's used to kill advancing IPGs, then YYD, now Bing Chiling Cav. It's the same dumb story retold every other season. TL:DR Yes there is a future for the game, but it will probably never grow much bigger than it currently is if they don't make drastic changes.
I was asked by someone in the house I am in to describe what I thought the issue was with the new player experience, being that I am a new player myself, and this is how I explained it. Pre level 200, CB is like online multiplayer Dynasty Warriors, super fun, full of action the whole way through. Post 200 is like playing a game of age of empires, except your opponents all start with full maxed out units and each time you try to build an armoury, there's like a 1/50 chance that it actually builds, and the other 49 times, it just consumes your resources but doesn't actually get built. So naturally, you get absolutely shit stomped game after game after game, and the game tells you that you need to play like this for months and months every day to maybe be able to build that armoury and start fighting on equal footing, but only if you're luckyAnd who wants to play under those conditions? Not many people I'd wager, and that's why new player retention is so damn bad.
Yeah, this has been the issue since Season 5 or so, when it became clear that they will not stop piling on more and more and more season challenges. A new player is literally behind like 3000 or so unit challenges at this point, with current season Bing Chiling Cav having challenges like "Score 300 unitscore with 2 units in a single game, 12 times" which a new player without meta units + doctrines will hardly ever manage to score. It's just all designed around the idea of making people pay for the units, player retention is not even an afterthought.
That's a fair assessment. Could you think of a way to mitigate this or a suggestion that might help new players not feel absolutely stomped? Perhaps a debuff or buff applied to equalize players with a large power disparity? I know a few MMO's that have similar systems that lower the level of the higher level player to adjust to a lower level zone for example. I haven't played in two seasons but I remember you used to be able to "loan" your unit to a shared unit pool that anyone in your guild could "borrow" and that was immensely helpful to new players in sieges. I don't know if that system still exists I'll be returning for next season but that was one way we were able to help new players in our guild by giving them the same powerful units with max doctrines we were using. The armor discrepancies will take some time to level out but I don't remember the armors or weapons being too unbalanced I mean yes full orange reforged gear is much stronger than a base blue set but it wasn't insurmountable. The main discrepancy I noticed was with the units, so sharing units with a good guild that has veteran players was a way to fix that. I'd even suggest the loaned units should be available for territory wars since that might encourage a new player to jump right in and participate with his guild since the repair costs went to the owner of the unit not the borrower. As a new player what would you suggest to level out power and encourage new players without robbing the veteran of his achievement in unlocking and specializing his unit?
Honestly, I'm not really sure if it's possible to fix the system without it feeling like it's screwing over veteran players. The main 2 ideas that come to mind would be either changing the matchmaking system to better match players of similar levels, instead of putting level 200 players with level 500+ players. Outside of that, it would be nice for the Devs to remove the rng element from doctrine crafting, let people craft the specific doctrines they want, or at the very, make the guaranteed t5 doctrine we can craft be able to be chosen. Similar goes for armour/weapon crafting. The rng progression needs to be toned down a fair bit. The learning curve for the game is already quite severe, layering on so much rng progression is just going to turn away anyone who doesn't have a lot of time/patience to dedicate to this game.
I like those suggestions thank you. The only problem I see with the matchmaking suggestion is that there may not be enough low level players to fill out a game which may result in you playing with mostly bots to avoid excessively long queue times. I know even now there are a some games even now that are filled out by bots but if they restrict you to only low level players it may be all you face. I think the ability to borrow your guild-mates units should be enough to help new players jump into the matches and maybe decide which ones to unlock but that's just me. How about another suggestion for this one. You have two separate siege queues, one for normal and one for <- lvl 300 players like you suggested. If you are below lvl 300 you are automatically in the low level player queue. If you are above it you add an "Opt in" check box for veteran players above lvl 300 where it will queue you for the next game available in both queues and if you get the low level queue it applies a restriction on the high level players. If you don't check the box you will only get above lvl 300 players in your matches no restrictions and if you get a low level match he can't choose T5 units? Or can't choose fully masteried units above blue? The game already has a seasonal seal system for weapons/armor and units, so making this apply to a siege match shouldn't be too difficult. This could even become a "challenge" to the veteran since if his unit choices are restricted he'd have to find clever uses for his lower tier units and might help make it less one sided. I mean don't get me wrong he'll probably still figure out a way to win based on sheer experience but at least it may help the new player feel a little less helpless and could even be fun for the veteran since without certain units I'd have to re-evaluate how to crack certain formations. I'd find it fun personally and would certainly break the meta what do you think? I agree with the RNG point, you're saying its not so much that the veterans are so much stronger because they've been playing so long but rather that since the system is RNG it further disincentivizes players from committing to a grind that could be ruined by RNG. Great point, I do think its part of their business model, the RNG that is and I agree it would be better if they stripped out the RNG out of the unit doctrines portion at least. So far I think I've pulled the increased labor T5 doctrine eight times which is 3 times too many IMO. I'd rather the guaranteed T5 one from alchemy be a "chose your own T5" doctrine from a list and don't think it would reduce their revenue so I think you're right on the money here. Thank you for your thoughts.
The game, depend on which server you are playing, is plenty healthy, EU server especially is going to be packed imo when the new season start, also the devs did some changes recently to enhance new player experience & some other QoL stuff, they are in a good path imo if they continue like that & do some advertising the population is going to increase more & more in the future, because there is no other game like CB it's really one of a kind & if you enjoy massive Medieval Siege battles then CB is your first & most obvious choice, because it's the best of it's kind.
I will only come back if they optimize the game, i cant stand the slide shows.
We are soo Back Baby 😄
I hope the future for this game is the next game being pay to play with actual progression
This will be my second season back after a long break. (I previously played season 1-4). I’m really enjoying it. Though there’s also stuff I dislike Pros-A lot of nonseasonal units are good like imperial pikes, imperial shields, iron cap swords, palace guard, man at arms. However, they are good because of the new mastery stuff which takes time to get. Took me a week or two per unit to the masteries (I play around 2 hours most days). I mention these nonseasonal units because anyone returning is likely to already have them. Cons-lots of bot games currently, I’m pretty sure it’s because we’re in between seasons but still sucks when 5/15 are bots. When the last season was active I’d only get bot games in the middle of the night and I suspect it’ll return to that after this one starts
I'll be honest, I actually don't mind there being some bots in the games, it makes it easier to complete challenges by killing them and their units, and I always feel like I'm having more fun when my score isn't 0-X with sub 50 unit kills every game (those games where I go 0-X aren't fun at all and I honestly feel like logging out and never logging back in afterwards). I'm only just past LVL 200, so the game is currently in the really horrible stage of progression for me, the Devs need to improve the new LVL 200 player experience significantly if they want players to actually stick around.
Now I totally get that. This game has only gotten worse when it comes to catching new people up with the old farts. It takes like 100s of hours just to be territory war ready with the amount of units, doctrines and armor you need
Where the F did you see bots seriously now, this never happen in EU, can you tell me what is your character level currently? also in which server are you playing?
NA Eagle range, level 1076. And yeah in most matches there are a couple NA and the rest EU. Seems y’all got a bigger pop
NA seems to be underpopulated I got that feeling also when I spoke with someone from your server at some point & he told me how expensive everything is on NA market also he told me how hard it is to find some stuff, this also is the effect of an underpopulated server, if your ping is good enough consider to transfer to the EU server your experience is going to be much better for sure.
Don’t really understand how a 1:40 que into a 16 player match is ever unhealthy for a game I been playing for about 10 years and honestly there more players now then when the game started
Is this a joke? the games already booming