R2, you guys have just lost all your freaking marbles.. I'd apologize for the abrasiveness of that statement, but after everything that's gone on between Crystal Saga, Wartune, and the rest for the last almost-year, I've lost the need for manners.
Wartune currently is the focus, however. For a few reasons.
Since the inception of the Holy Seal and Talents, the game has become stupidly unbalanced and generally un-fun. The Stun, more than anything, I should clarify. Had you left Holy Seal as only a passive element with no more purpose than unlocking your stronger side Talents, or better still instead of adding the mandatory Attack/Stun, made Holy Seal a passive and given players a 6th Skill Slot in its place with which to further adapt their battle strategies and Skill Builds, that would have been much better. The Stun breaks the game mechanic in a way that it should not have been. It offers no strategy, it serves no purpose, and the coding for the Stun is immensely broken in that, even when the Stun has passed, it completely interrupts a player's Skill usage. I've been hit with the Stun myself, it lasted a single turn, but with no indicating icons or the like it took several turns for me to even become able to cast a basic non-command attack. All Skill icons were unresponsive, mashing each button only seemed to make said broken effect last longer. This is, and I cannot stress this enough, a very stupid, broken, completely unnecessary feature. If the purpose of the Holy Seal and its Stun was to serve as a stand-alone Attack with a chance for a Stun, why does the description not list an attack function? When I see something the Holy Seal, something required to level to a certain point in order to unlock other Talent skills, I expect it to only work as just that, something that is there and serves no purpose other than to be leveled enough to unlock and upgrade other skills. Giving players a 6th Skill Slot would have sufficed much more than this piece of ****. Or you could have even made it a skill which, when activated, gives your basic Skills (the Mage attack Lightning Bolt, for example) a 1% chance to Stun at level 1, and increasing to no higher than a 15-20% chance at best, for a couple of turns tops. This is smart thinking, so I'll kindly ask R2 to tell me why they either didn't think of this, or did think of it but decided to give us what we currently have instead, a terrible ****-up of good concepts.
As well, when did Customer/Player Support go so horribly down the crapper? I'm certain I'm not the first person who's had this issue, which I ticketed and was almost effectively brushed-off over as it happened AGAIN just today. Minutes left on a City Protection buff, either put there via Token or Plunder, but none the less still in effect. However, despite said Protection being in effect, my city is Plundered by another player, in defiance of all logic and gameplay coding. Funny thing is, it never happened until the Three Plunders event quest for obtaining Ores. I and others reported it, it's still not fixed, it's happening almost routinely now. And since a players' AI Bots are not programmed to use their Holy Seals as attacks, it's fairly easy for anyone with a stronger Seal to simply abuse this Protection bug, get in under the buff, Stun and demolish. And since the Protection is still in effect at this time, it continues to count down normally, not resetting or increasing in time. And I'm sorry, but when you brag every Maintenance on all your games about the fixing of typos being among your accomplishments, but you forget the 'are' in "we are working diligently" in your response to my ticketed concerns, I just can't trust your ability to fix any issues or release events without breaking something else in the process. And if I have to get started on the lag that magically grows worse every Maintenance/Event/Update, people will cry.
Then there's other in-game **** that makes this game as bad in terms of reputations (individual, staff, and otherwise) as Crystal Saga. Spawn Camping is disabled in Battlegrounds, though players do try to glitch their way inside said Spawns only to be rubber-banded back out, but it's allowed in Guild Battle? Sure, only idiots, the total failures at CoD who think camping with a Sniper Rifle gives them good bragging rights about their K/D ratios, do this, but what's the point? You get nothing from it, points in Guild Battles are not tallied from PvP, but only from controlling Mystery Towers and how much damage people do to Ward Towers. But just like in Crystal Saga with Sengolia and Land Grab, R2 refuses to deny these Campers access to the Spawns, and make things slightly more fair for all. Which, as I just pointed out, is very, VERY stupid considering the Wartune Battlegrounds already has such a measure coded and programmed into it. So which R2 Staffer wants to come forward and raise their hand and explain why they believed it would be a good idea to have it there, but not everywhere else in all your other games? There's even more where that came from, but I'll save it for later if R2 keeps doing things like this that just beg for a rant..
Now for the greed. $4,000 USD is what you are asking people to pay in order to get the best of your latest Soul Crystal event? Are you people mental, or is the fact you've merged Wartune with Kongregate and Crystal Saga with Aria really a sign you've realized all too late what you're doing is self-destructive and you need such an extreme saving grace? 90% of all Crystal Saga events are cash-related now, Wartune's events aren't too far behind. In order to get more than one King's Bounty in this event, cashing in bulk has practically been a requirement of players, their saving grace that ensured them even one being the 20 Group Arena runs (one day of which was ruined for anyone working the 9-5 who couldn't make second Group Arena, and R2 of course decided NOT to do anything to compensate them for that), and the daily Mount Whipping. In fact, the event to obtain 60k/63k Battle Rating for the Hall of Fame was a testament to how greedy R2 is. I give props to those who succeeded, but to R2 I facepalm, so you make an event that gives only a minute few such special treatment, but you shaft the rest of your players? I'm on Server 1, there's only one or two fortunate enough to gain the rewards from even the 60k, let alone the 63k. That has made a good number of players quit due to aggrievation, rightly so. Others, most of whom are some of our server's best in terms of battle strength and wallet depth, are quitting because of things like this Soul Crystal event, even they realize how utterly greedy and ignorant it is. Server 1 is becoming less self-sufficient by the day because of this, I've noticed others as well are in the same boat. Milking the same few uber-cashers for money like you have on Crystal Saga is backfiring on you because you've obviously failed to realize their pocketbooks are not infinite. And when you constantly ask for more of their money in the form of such cash-heavy events, but give them relatively nothing sufficient to their spending and break everything in the process, they typically get just annoyed enough, especially when their requests for more appropriate items/etc. for their purchase amounts go fundamentally ignored, to leave and deprive you of their money. This causes a downward spiral much like what has occured with Crystal Saga, the top cashers go elsewhere fed-up with all the ****, R2 continues to merge and make servers and other things they really can't afford to upkeep properly, soon every event and otherwise becomes cash-oriented and everything just generally sucks until not even the tumbleweeds remain.
In short, get off your duffs R2, you've all but killed Crystal Saga and now you're practically repeating the **** with Wartune, I give Broken Realm and Castlot each a couple more weeks before they start to notice much of the same things, if they haven't already. If your goal is to drive all your players away and your bank accounts drier than *insert incredibly dry-based comparison here*, I'd say you're succeeding all too well. If that's not your goal however, I'd suggest getting to work, after all none of your players are paying you to break your games and make them simply generally un-fun to play. I'll also suggest players of all of R2's games stop contributing any more than the standard $8 for VIP, if even that, until R2 actually shows us they're serious about making their games fun for all, and are not just eyeballing us all like walking wallets/purses for the purpose of filling their coffers with nothing substantial to show for it.
End rant.
Wartune currently is the focus, however. For a few reasons.
Since the inception of the Holy Seal and Talents, the game has become stupidly unbalanced and generally un-fun. The Stun, more than anything, I should clarify. Had you left Holy Seal as only a passive element with no more purpose than unlocking your stronger side Talents, or better still instead of adding the mandatory Attack/Stun, made Holy Seal a passive and given players a 6th Skill Slot in its place with which to further adapt their battle strategies and Skill Builds, that would have been much better. The Stun breaks the game mechanic in a way that it should not have been. It offers no strategy, it serves no purpose, and the coding for the Stun is immensely broken in that, even when the Stun has passed, it completely interrupts a player's Skill usage. I've been hit with the Stun myself, it lasted a single turn, but with no indicating icons or the like it took several turns for me to even become able to cast a basic non-command attack. All Skill icons were unresponsive, mashing each button only seemed to make said broken effect last longer. This is, and I cannot stress this enough, a very stupid, broken, completely unnecessary feature. If the purpose of the Holy Seal and its Stun was to serve as a stand-alone Attack with a chance for a Stun, why does the description not list an attack function? When I see something the Holy Seal, something required to level to a certain point in order to unlock other Talent skills, I expect it to only work as just that, something that is there and serves no purpose other than to be leveled enough to unlock and upgrade other skills. Giving players a 6th Skill Slot would have sufficed much more than this piece of ****. Or you could have even made it a skill which, when activated, gives your basic Skills (the Mage attack Lightning Bolt, for example) a 1% chance to Stun at level 1, and increasing to no higher than a 15-20% chance at best, for a couple of turns tops. This is smart thinking, so I'll kindly ask R2 to tell me why they either didn't think of this, or did think of it but decided to give us what we currently have instead, a terrible ****-up of good concepts.
As well, when did Customer/Player Support go so horribly down the crapper? I'm certain I'm not the first person who's had this issue, which I ticketed and was almost effectively brushed-off over as it happened AGAIN just today. Minutes left on a City Protection buff, either put there via Token or Plunder, but none the less still in effect. However, despite said Protection being in effect, my city is Plundered by another player, in defiance of all logic and gameplay coding. Funny thing is, it never happened until the Three Plunders event quest for obtaining Ores. I and others reported it, it's still not fixed, it's happening almost routinely now. And since a players' AI Bots are not programmed to use their Holy Seals as attacks, it's fairly easy for anyone with a stronger Seal to simply abuse this Protection bug, get in under the buff, Stun and demolish. And since the Protection is still in effect at this time, it continues to count down normally, not resetting or increasing in time. And I'm sorry, but when you brag every Maintenance on all your games about the fixing of typos being among your accomplishments, but you forget the 'are' in "we are working diligently" in your response to my ticketed concerns, I just can't trust your ability to fix any issues or release events without breaking something else in the process. And if I have to get started on the lag that magically grows worse every Maintenance/Event/Update, people will cry.
Then there's other in-game **** that makes this game as bad in terms of reputations (individual, staff, and otherwise) as Crystal Saga. Spawn Camping is disabled in Battlegrounds, though players do try to glitch their way inside said Spawns only to be rubber-banded back out, but it's allowed in Guild Battle? Sure, only idiots, the total failures at CoD who think camping with a Sniper Rifle gives them good bragging rights about their K/D ratios, do this, but what's the point? You get nothing from it, points in Guild Battles are not tallied from PvP, but only from controlling Mystery Towers and how much damage people do to Ward Towers. But just like in Crystal Saga with Sengolia and Land Grab, R2 refuses to deny these Campers access to the Spawns, and make things slightly more fair for all. Which, as I just pointed out, is very, VERY stupid considering the Wartune Battlegrounds already has such a measure coded and programmed into it. So which R2 Staffer wants to come forward and raise their hand and explain why they believed it would be a good idea to have it there, but not everywhere else in all your other games? There's even more where that came from, but I'll save it for later if R2 keeps doing things like this that just beg for a rant..
Now for the greed. $4,000 USD is what you are asking people to pay in order to get the best of your latest Soul Crystal event? Are you people mental, or is the fact you've merged Wartune with Kongregate and Crystal Saga with Aria really a sign you've realized all too late what you're doing is self-destructive and you need such an extreme saving grace? 90% of all Crystal Saga events are cash-related now, Wartune's events aren't too far behind. In order to get more than one King's Bounty in this event, cashing in bulk has practically been a requirement of players, their saving grace that ensured them even one being the 20 Group Arena runs (one day of which was ruined for anyone working the 9-5 who couldn't make second Group Arena, and R2 of course decided NOT to do anything to compensate them for that), and the daily Mount Whipping. In fact, the event to obtain 60k/63k Battle Rating for the Hall of Fame was a testament to how greedy R2 is. I give props to those who succeeded, but to R2 I facepalm, so you make an event that gives only a minute few such special treatment, but you shaft the rest of your players? I'm on Server 1, there's only one or two fortunate enough to gain the rewards from even the 60k, let alone the 63k. That has made a good number of players quit due to aggrievation, rightly so. Others, most of whom are some of our server's best in terms of battle strength and wallet depth, are quitting because of things like this Soul Crystal event, even they realize how utterly greedy and ignorant it is. Server 1 is becoming less self-sufficient by the day because of this, I've noticed others as well are in the same boat. Milking the same few uber-cashers for money like you have on Crystal Saga is backfiring on you because you've obviously failed to realize their pocketbooks are not infinite. And when you constantly ask for more of their money in the form of such cash-heavy events, but give them relatively nothing sufficient to their spending and break everything in the process, they typically get just annoyed enough, especially when their requests for more appropriate items/etc. for their purchase amounts go fundamentally ignored, to leave and deprive you of their money. This causes a downward spiral much like what has occured with Crystal Saga, the top cashers go elsewhere fed-up with all the ****, R2 continues to merge and make servers and other things they really can't afford to upkeep properly, soon every event and otherwise becomes cash-oriented and everything just generally sucks until not even the tumbleweeds remain.
In short, get off your duffs R2, you've all but killed Crystal Saga and now you're practically repeating the **** with Wartune, I give Broken Realm and Castlot each a couple more weeks before they start to notice much of the same things, if they haven't already. If your goal is to drive all your players away and your bank accounts drier than *insert incredibly dry-based comparison here*, I'd say you're succeeding all too well. If that's not your goal however, I'd suggest getting to work, after all none of your players are paying you to break your games and make them simply generally un-fun to play. I'll also suggest players of all of R2's games stop contributing any more than the standard $8 for VIP, if even that, until R2 actually shows us they're serious about making their games fun for all, and are not just eyeballing us all like walking wallets/purses for the purpose of filling their coffers with nothing substantial to show for it.
End rant.
hahaha
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