Game Balance Issue

[JamesDragonrider]

It doesn't make sense to me to have nation features that can only be used once or twice a month...
Specifically: our nation is bringing in 180 gold per hour, after spending a week taking cities, and having accumulate nearly 10% of the map.
4,320 nation gold per day.

After the first use of the feature to siege an enemy city, which is for free, but gives 0 bonuses, the next use costs 30k gold just to set up.
That means this feature can't be used for another week, even without bonus.
This feature should, IMO, be free to set up, as it is useful for communicating to the nation where the nation is headed, when many players can't read the chat box.

While the siege was running, we accumulated nearly twice the normal participation of other attacks without it, or about 120 heros vs the normal 30-60 we get.

To actually get buffs runs another 10k to 50k gold for each of the 3 buffs, or up to 180k to launch a full attack now.
Is it really the developer's intent that this only be used once every thousand hours? That's about 40 days.

You would think that the features were giving some huge benefit that would require it to be limited to less than once a month, but it only buffs troops for 1 battle.
By contrast: the ring gives a buff about once ever 4 days, which also seems a bit long for the little that it gives, especially as many battles last longer than the 1 hour the ring gives.

Since the benefits are available to all: it doesn't make sense to me to limit them to being insignificant due to the long time between uses.

I would suggest that:
- Nation Siege be free when no buffs are added, so that it can be used as a communication device effectively.
- Buffs be reduced in cost to a level that a nation of average size could use it once per day with a full buff, so about 10% the current cost.
- Eleven Ring recharge be sped up 4x, so that it can be used once per day.
- Eleven Ring duration be increased to 4 hours, so that it can be in effect for the roughly 4 hours battling the central city in age 3.
(Note: many battles in age 4 last significantly longer than even 4 hours.)

Consider that if there are 12 players attacking with 10 heros each, you have 120 heros attacking once every 20 minutes, or 3 times each in the duration of the ring.
That's not even the number of heros sent to the center during the big battles, that's just a coordinated attack in an every day battle, and the ring is a non-factor due to the short duration.

[JamesDragonrider]

Another area where the game seems unbalanced is the mounts, which start out requiring 18 stones per star, then jump to 38, then to 720.
I was fully expecting the 720 to be a 1 time thing at the end of each level where the mount "tiers up" and then return to a reasonable level such as the 38.

There is no rational reason for the cost to jump by more than an order of magnitude.

By doing so: most of the means of acquiring stones become meaningless,
The stones are sold in the special event shop in groups of 50, but it would take 15 of them to gain 1 star, and it takes many stars to gain a full tier.

The reward for gaining these stars within a tier is only about 7 troops per hero, so basically meaningless. By this point the heros each have 1400-2100 troops.
We're talking weeks of farming world boss to gain 1% increase in troop strength, while other activities offer significantly faster growth.

If the 720 were limited to the jump to the next tier, then the progress returned to a reasonable value, like 38, I think it would encourage more gem purchases from the shop, as well as make the grinding more meaningful. The effort for progress should be a steepening curve, not a brick wall you run into that discourages further play, and a high attrition rate on the servers.

[R253550417]

This was spoken about and discussed on an early posting and on Discord and nothing has changed in the 3 yrs. Sorry but you've wasted your time for nothing....

[JamesDragonrider]

It takes 70 chips to make 1 purple gear item, plus 100 for first star, 200 for 2nd, 450 for 3rd, 750 for 4th, and 1250 for the final star. This isn't for a full set, this is just 1 piece.
This isn't the final set, it is just the set before, which is to be replaced, and it takes 2,820 chips to make one. If we're talking the weapon or armor, you can get 3x8 = 24 chips per day.
That's 120 days to make 1 piece, and you have up to 20 heros you're using. Even if we are only talking the first 5, that's 600 days to make them for all of the 5 heros.

Unless you're at the very top, you wont be making both weapon and armor at the same time, so we're talking 1200 days, or 4 years, to make a "throw away set".

The amulets and rings are even worse, as you get way too few chips from the merit shop, so must use every other means at your disposal to try and come up with the rest of the chips needed, but they will still lag behind weapons and armor. This means you wont be using anything other than arena to acquire the needed chips.

And since you wont be making the purple and gold sets at the same time, this means you either wont finish your purple sets, or you will delay starting on gold sets for 4 years while you finish up your first 5 purple sets.

The gold sets are slightly worse, taking 190 days to make 1 piece, and with the higher cost: you are even less likely to be making both armor and weapon at the same time.
1900 days is simply too long to grind, especially after 600+ days making a throw away set. This doesn't even take into account the grinding for the grey, green, and blue sets.

This is the type of heavy grinding that makes a game not worth playing long term. Maybe rebalance the game to make a full 5 star set of gold gear within a year. Better yet: make a set every 2 months for the top grinders. It would still take a couple of years to make sets for all 20 heros in play.

Having said this: I don't really care if you fix this balance issue or not, as they have not been fixed in 3 years, and so I've run out of tolerance.
I'll be moving on to better managed games, but I hope this is the kick in the pants you need to actually fix some of the glaring issues you've had for years, and then maybe the player base will improve, and your profits along with them.