State of the game

[WalleWu]

These are personal opinions from my point of view, so they are free to be discussed as long as it is done in a proper manner. I do not want this to be a HHG bashing thread or similar.

Just a few words to my account. I am a VIP 1 at about 750k with all heroes platinum and have been playing since the global release about a year ago. While not beeing in end game, I consider my account good enough to get a taste of what the end game players experience and therefore can give my opinion towards it.

That should be enough of an introduction, so lets start with the issues I have with the game.
 

1.) Bucket:

Just to make it clear. I do understand that HHG needs to make money and that new heroes are a common way to get players to spend it. But how it is done with Bucket is just to much.
It costs 30 Euro to obtain Bucket. If he is worth that, has to be judged by everyone on his own. I do not need to have a new hero within a week or two for free, even if some heroes would be a cash exclusiv it would be okay, if they are not mandatory to comprehensibly. succeed in any game mode.
While we propably can agree that Bucket is a medicore hero and therefore you do not have much of a value by owning him in PvP, missions or raids, he is mandatory to play bounty. It is not about the damage he deals, but that you need him to kill some bountys. Since you can not kill them, it leads to a pile up of Bucket bountys and therefore you can not spawn new bountys until they escape.
While in many top alliances players are willing to pay the 30 Euro, most of the casual players are not. If he would be obtainable for gold through chests, as the new heroes were before. Or if the coop raid is released late, so you need to use two or three resets to get him in time, it would be comprehensibly. Many casual players propably buy the 5 Euro crate and get some daily gold or buy a big stack of gold every few month to spend it as they need it, on a new hero for example. But casual players will not invest 30 Euros of cash into just one hero.

Conclusion: The way Buckets release is handeled will intimidate many casual players and therefore they will quit. Since the largest part of the players are casual, it will reduce the player base drasticaly.

 

2.) Bounty:

Aside from the Bucket trouble, bounty got less enjoable since the release of high geared bountys. To kill of plat+5 bio bounty is just painful and no fun at all. It is hard to kill mech and energy too, but you at least have some proper damage dealers with an element advantage against them. Anyway, an opponent without a weakness towards the featured heroes will pile up.
This prevents us from doing what I and I guess most of you love(d) about bounty. Hitting a target as hard as possible to smash it to ashes. That the high geared bountys may need a second attamped is no trouble, since we can still see the high numbers. But to be forced to use the featured heroes to attack bountys, they have no element advantage against ,decreases the numbers and whilst that, decreasing the “bounty feeling” too.

Conclusion: The way bounty needs to be played now, is not the way that made it great. Dynamic spawning, adjusted to the featured fractions would help alot.

 

3.) Challenging gameplay:

This topic is discussed in this thread already so I will make it short.
The game lacks challenges. Why should I level up my heroes or add some gear, if I beat any raid and mission with the heroes I already have? If I would have to guess the power level with which you can beat 90% of the missions/raids, I would say it is about 400k of power. This is while more and more players exceed the 1 million mark.

Conclusion: Give us some challenging raids. If I can not beat a raid, I have a reason to improve my team. Right now there is no reason for that.

 

4.) Maxing out heroes:

I will not go to much into detail with this topic too, since @Poobgloob already made a detailed thread about it. Just to give you a feeling of the trouble I did some different math than him. To get Hero from Plat+4 to Plat+5 you need about one month worth of stamina, while the reward you have from it is in no comparison to the effort.

Conclusion: The increase of needed fragments to equip your heroes past platinum needs to be rebalanced.

 

5.) Events and special chests

The events we have are decreasing. We had some event everyday a few month ago. Now we have two or three days without. It seems that they are reduced to fragment collections, gauntlet wins. There are propably some more, but I can not remember them right now. The rewards have changed too. We got gold once or twice a month before. I have not seen this event for a long time.
Same goes with the special chests. I have not seen a super hero crate for about nine month or so. The last crate that had some added value towards the normal hero crates was the brogan crate in October. The special crates afterwards did not have a higher value as the hero crate, if you put the price and the rewards in perspective.

Conclusion: I do not want to demand to give out free or cheap stuff all the time, but a little goodie every now and then will not ruin the company, since it was possible before.

 

6. Communication:

While I admire @Muninn meme game and like the overall tone the devs show in the offical channels, I can not get over how few informations they provide. We do not need to know everything and we do not need to get every information as soon as we demand it. But there are troubles that were adressed many times before, like the bio bounty pile up or the lack of bucks. Still we did not get any information whether they work on it or if it is intended for some reason. There is no need to give us dates or how it is planed to be solved, just a little “we have that as top priority” or “we do not see a need to change it” would help.
Btw, lack of yommunication was one of the biggest points of criticizm before and is unanswered too.

Conclusion: Open up a bit more. Most people can stand through some trouble, if they know that it will change for the better.

 

These are the topics bothering me right now. Feel free to add your concerns or discuss mine.

[DESTROYER1DAN]

First off: Bucket is female.

2. Regarding bounties, it kinda just sounds like you don’t enjoy the fact that it takes a little while to kill a plat +5 bounty. That doesn’t really make sense to me.

3. Challenging Gameplay (or lack thereof): this depends on who you ask. I’m VIP 1, 588k power, and playing since global like yourself. I’m stuck on 13-9 normal, and I used to be stuck on 13-7 for a while (energy is my weakest element). I also have 11-9 hard to hit 3 stars on, as well as District 13 hard. Hmmm… raids, co-ops, and gauntlet are pretty easy though. There should be more challenging stuff. The Devs are on the right track with the Danger Simulator.

Those Plat bar item requirements definitely need some adjusting. I agree with 5 and 6 as well.

[WalleWu]

I have no problem with killing a plat+5 heroes, even if it takes a little while. But to kill a bio plat+5 hero with a 8* energy hero team takes all three lives, sometimes even more. Since you rush through most of the other bountys, they pile up and you have to take your bonus heroes to get rid of them in a reasonable amount of time. And that is not what bounty is about for me. It is about putting out as much damage as possible, but atm it is more like a grind to me.

[Vintermyst]

I agree with your statements. In general, it seems that there is 2 main issues that these are based on (this is more of a speculation, so I don’t intend for this to be accusative in any way.)

(1 HHG is a small company with multiple games to manage. It is possible that the development team is stretched thin between the different games, not to mention the sizable alliance wars project in Hero Hunters. A dev was telling me that they were very busy, and with how the new game mode beta looks, it certainly seems that way.

(2 Because they aren’t a very large company, it’s also possible that this is a financial decision to make Bucket a pay-2-own hero. For her lackluster performance plus not being able to get her in enough time for bounty, I think the decision with her was not wise. If she was Kurtz himself and was a major game changer, that decision would be more plausible. At it stands, since she is a 3* that is less useful than Kobold, Jarek, and maybe Kaishi, I believe it was a foolhardy desicion that will deter new players and drive away old ones.

Let’s hope HHG really listens to its customers and the community.

[nao132]

I can only agree with what you’re saying. Sad to say my motivation to play HH right is really low because of all the things you listed.

11/19 unplayable bounties for most of my alliance since I think only 2 members got Bucket.

Making Bucket a payed only hero before the bounty wasn’t a good decision and doing it for the next new hero will only hurt your playerbase.

[Haywire0311]

@WalleWu

I do not need to have a new hero within a week or two for free, even if some heroes would be a cash exclusiv it would be okay, if they are not mandatory to comprehensibly. succeed in any game mode.

This is the part of your Bucket argument that I strongly agree with. In my opinion, have pay only heroes, make them badass, but don’t make them mandatory to play the game.

I like HHGs implementation of featured faction months. When it comes to bounty, just treat it like you do with PvP. If the player has the hero, great! They do x more damage to the bounty which is how you are treating most of bounty except for the bonus featured hero. So get rid of the exception. Maybe just make it so the bonus bounty hero does an exceptional amount of damage or something like that.

Back to the OP concern about bounty and something you said in a reply.

@WalleWu

t is about putting out as much damage as possible, but atm it is more like a grind to me.

I used to think the same way but I think this mindset is a community made issue due to alliance having minimum bounty damage requirements. Sure, bounty is about doing lots of damage but it’s also about being a team player - summoning a lot, cleaning up low health bounties, etc. You don’t win bounty solely off of damage. You need points. So grinding away at a plat5 is what you gotta do to get the points. We all have to do it. Some do it a bit faster than others but so be it. However, I do agree it would be nice to have a slightly better mix of hero types. And FFS, I hate seeing fisher appear (although it does seem his appearance rate this bounty is less frequent).

@WalleWu

Give us some challenging raids. If I can not beat a raid, I have a reason to improve my team. Right now there is no reason for that.

I believe it seems they are doing this with the intro of alliance wars. And they love done it in the past with the Min simulator. They should have made that simulator permanent. But I definitely think there needs to be more challenging stuff for the high end players. Quick winning stuff gets old. P.S. Please please please give us a way to spend quick win tickets.

@WalleWu

The increase of needed fragments to equip your heroes past platinum needs to be rebalanced.

Yes and no. @Poobgloob point about some of the Core pieces is perfectly stated and that item definitely needs to be readjusted. But the rest of the items needed for plat bars seem fine to me. When they introduced platinum level and dropped the item requirements for all levels, I believe it made it a bit too easy to level up. Prior to opening up plat, I was grinding away to get each hero to gold and found it to be rewarding when I finally achieved that. Once plat opened and requirements dropped, in some instances it was stupid easy to level a hero to plat. Fairly certain everyone and their mother had Mandrake to plat in the first week (exaggerating here of course). For higher level players, I get a player to plat in a day, maybe two. That seems a bit too easy to me.

@WalleWu

I do not want to demand to give out free or cheap stuff all the time, but a little goodie every now and then will not ruin the company, since it was possible before.

I miss the PvP against the dev event, mainly because I never got to play against a dev and beat them. Also, I do remember that some events gave out gold a bit more frequently which was nice but I can see how that can affect game balance in some aspects. The only thing I’d say is that instead of stacking events on top of each other like pvp, maybe spread them out more to have events running all the time.

@WalleWu

Open up a bit more. Most people can stand through some trouble, if they know that it will change for the better.

I like to see the devs in Chat but don’t think that is a very effective mode of communicating game development, especially since VIP chat tends to have a lot of trolls doing what they do best and then it adds confusion to the chat room and makes it difficult to drown out the noise to see the important stuff. Perhaps a better mode would be to have a bi-weekly AMA thread here on the forums.

[WalleWu]

@Haywire0311

point about some of the Core pieces is perfectly stated and that item definitely needs to be readjusted

That was what I was refering to, too. The rest is perfectly okay, but the stacking of core frags is to much.

What I noticed is that the game feels more like an idle game to me. I log in, do some quick/auto wins and log out. That is it. And I do not think that the alliance war will change it. It may be a good game mode, but it has nothing to do with the team shooter HH once was. It is like a game of risk. But I did not play HH because it is a strategy game, but because it is fast paced shooter. Now, for me it is an idle game with strategy elements.

A second thing I really miss is some depth in gameplay. If i meet a Dogface in PvP, I exactly know what to expect from him. I know the size of his magazine, I know how long it takes to empty it and I know how long it takes for him to reload and to load his skills. There is no element of suprise or any tactic in the battle, except of chosing who to go for first. Many games have some kind of customization. You could add an item that Dogface has a larger magazine, or reloads faster, loads his skills faster or hits harder, has more HP etc. You could add one of the items to each hero and fit him more to your playing style. It would make PvP so much more interesting.

[Haywire0311]

@WalleWu

A second thing I really miss is some depth in gameplay. If i meet a Dogface in PvP, I exactly know what to expect from him. I know the size of his magazine, I know how long it takes to empty it and I know how long it takes for him to reload and to load his skills. There is no element of suprise or any tactic in the battle, except of chosing who to go for first. Many games have some kind of customization. You could add an item that Dogface has a larger magazine, or reloads faster, loads his skills faster or hits harder, has more HP etc. You could add one of the items to each hero and fit him more to your playing style. It would make PvP so much more interesting.

Fair enough on the differences between gameplay preferences (strategy vs. shooter). But this idea I really love! I was gonna write up a topic on customized items and drops. The hero skins were a slight step in that direction but custom items would bring it to a whole new level of gameplay. Some items could drop through events, some just by grinding through missions, some bought using gems and such, and some could be purchased with cash. Win-win for everyone. Great idea and would love to see this implemented.