New ideas for next year !

Karajoca

Hi everyone,

After a solid success of my first letter that you can check here https://forums.nextgames.com/walkingdead/discussion/43520/dear-next-games/p1 i decided to strike again !

Most of this requests are implemented already in game and i am sure we have attention from @Fluxxx so let's please keep going with nice ideas and suggestions here in this thread and one day we can maybe see those in action 
I'll start with few of mine, please feel free to either agree/disagree with me, i accept critics, comment, elaborate, add your ideas ( I will leave room to edit, and add best ideas on top of thread) - Let's put everything on one place and show developers how much potential this game has !

Please note :  This are my personal views of the game and suggestions how to change. Ideas i mention might be already brought up by another player, let me know if you notice. It's not my intention to take credits for anything nor expect from NG to listen and do exactly as i say. In fact, i would be happy if at least something of this we are able to see in future in similar form. I just want to play the game i like, and have fun 

Changes/improvements/re-balance i would like to see in 2021 :

1. Re-balance of classes.
2. Making non-hero survivors useful again
3. Continue changing Leader Traits of old heroes
4. Add New resource(s) to the game & What to do with Trade Goods ?
5. Help players(especially newbies) to find right guild for them early after registration
6. Make challenge more interesting
7. Guild Wars improvements
8. Visual recognition in game. Guild Trophies. Bigger Leaderboard
9. Just few more ideas to consider

10. Other Small changes & improvements
11. New ideas reached after discussion
12. New ideas reached after discussion

Karajoca

1. Re-Balance of Classes

I start with most important one IMO. Thought to make this fully detailed and give correct numbers to show how other classes are overpowered compared to shooters. But i think there is no need to bother, it's very clear. 

Looking at this table, you can see two major things that are making shooter weakest class and that is hitting only one target (except when using spear gun, or Shooter Maggie) while charged hit potential is also somewhat limited for a class that can hit only 1 target

So, how about

-Built-in piercing for shooters (improving chance to make non-body shot hit by 15% + gold piercing on weapon would make it go up to 55% and be slightly better then any other class when comes to that) This is already suggested in other thread by @Troublemaker

-Changing Sure Shot trait to not only being able to increase Critical Chance in case survivor didn't move but increase chance of not making body shot as well(let's say 15% boost to piercing at level 10).

This can make Shooter who didn't move dealing critical hits in ~65% of shots and i can see Shooter Maggie and Sherif Rick have place in game beyond level 40. 

Still, there is a problem of pretty low charged hit damage compared to scouts or to warrior's chainsaw. How about  allowing them to hit twice for 100% critical shot when charged ? 

Does any of this make sense ? Too OP ? Not possible to implement from some reason ? Please discuss. 

Karajoca

2. Making non-hero survivors useful again

Well, it's not like they are not useful. When perfectly re-rolled and badged this survivors are just little weaker and less effective then heroes. Thing is, why using them and lose that few % advantage from heroes or their leader traits who work even when placed on 2nd and 3rd spot(which we asked for and it's great, but that addition "killed" normal survivors) 

Possible solution : 

Is it possible to code that Leader Traits of heroes effect normal survivors who are on 2nd and 3rd spot little better then it would effect other hero ? (5-10% )

Example : Eugene is leader, my non-hero bruiser is on 2nd spot, Morgan is on 3rd spot. Eugene and Morgan have obviously bigger health and their Mullet time has %X chances, while non-hero bruiser has %X+5%

And run occasional events when only normal survivors are boosted ( Stealing this from other thread) 

Karajoca

3. Continue Changing old hero Leader traits

Current status of all heroes & how useful their Leader Traits are :

I support all the changes and hard work that made some of the leaders more useful lately. It's good for the game, adding more options and more ways to play 

Need to keep going !  Have any ideas for specific heroes ? Please post !
I will update this part of the thread when we together develop some nice suggestions for heroes we want to see in action

NEGAN

Ideas will be posted here

EZEKIEL

Ideas will be posted here

JERRY

Ideas will be posted here

MERLE

Ideas will be posted here

ROSITA

Ideas will be posted here

I also want to say that token dilution problem is no more, after significant improvement in calls and there is room for new heroes for sure, but don't ignore old ones please.

Karajoca

4. Add New resource(s) to the game & What to do with Trade Goods

Building cost reduction solved tomato problem for players who are still building their camp. Badge Re-Rolls will sooner or later help end gamers make perfect sets for all of their survivors. So, we can basically just play game and enjoy, sounds good ? Well, yeah but it will become boring fast. On the side playing missions and competing, we need to consistently search for something new, working on improving our survivors/camp. 

Bringing in new resources to collect in game is a must, imo.

What exactly can that be i am not sure, but one part should definitely be tied for craftsman building.

Tools are probably most suitable for this.
Post mission crates and rewards in game modes would give us "pieces/parts" that we bring to craftsman and make our tools.

It's understandable that this tools we made "for free" shouldn't be effective as the ones we pay with gold, and shouldn't be easy crafted(Big amount of pieces needed, let's say that average user who login daily could craft one tool)

Here are some of the examples for crafted tools :

I would like if we can accept tools as something that is part of the game and can use them on daily basis in future. Current prices and how many of them we can obtain per week is not helping players to start liking them

I want to add that end-gamer has quite a hard time spending all the Trade Goods accumulated during week. Maybe those TG boxes can be involved and used for something new as well

Karajoca

5. Help players(especially newbies) to find right guild for them early after registration

When players try to search for guild they get 20 random guilds to choose(few advertised ones), or option to type name of guild
When Guild try to search for members they can only advertise for 50 gold and await random joiner that most likely won't be what they expect. 

Karajoca's suggestion how to solve the problem : 

Change this by adding just two questions for both player and guild when searching for eachother :

FOR GUILD :
While advertising need to fill in :
How many stars per week they expect from new recruit ? ( leave room for 4 digits to manually add or let them choose circle numbers 100/200/500/1000 etc.)
Is Guild Wars participation a must from new recruit ? (Answers offered simple "yes" or "no")
Advertise cost 50 gold, and has no time limit - it should end when guild accept 1 new recruit

FOR PLAYER :
When go into searching tab don't offer any random guild to him/her until they answer :
How many stars per week they can promise to new guild ? (leave room for 4 digits to manually add or let them choose circle numbers 100/200/500/1000 etc.)
Do they expect to play Guild Wars (Answers offered simple "yes" or "no")

When player answer this questions, game is searching for 20 ADVERTISED guilds who are "best matches" . To be a match, GW requirement must be same answer for both, then is searched for closest answer about stars

Other ideas to solve the problem ?

Idea will be posted here

Karajoca

6. Make challenge more interesting

I have a strange feeling about challenge. I can't say that i enjoy it, but can't say i am hating it as well.
Good things about it is definitely Master Missions solved lot of problems, Gas economy is working quite well(maybe helping that i am not playing distance all the time, hoard gas on monday-tuesday instead) 

"Only" problem is boredness, we all get into some kind of routine doing this, i am feeling like it's something "i must do" to not disappoint guild instead of playing because i like it. 

I don't want to change anything about it how it currently works (although Round Passes are something to discuss)

But, I want to propose adding something to this mode to make it more interesting. I call that addition "Side Quests"

What is Side Quest ? 

We play sets of 6 missions every week, we search for most suitable team on those maps and go as far as we can.

Well, side quest would be have to be done on one of those maps but with pre-determined team of heroes, decided for that week.

Less popular heroes that are left in dust, nobody use them,they are simply not good enough, let's face it, no improvements to their leader traits can make them as powerful as most popular ones

Now we would finally have a reason to work on them, use them a little, instead of running same team over and over again for whole week.

Side Mission would have to cost less gas because there is no need to again make problem with gas economy and players might need few repeats to pass it ( it will be harder then normal ones for sure)

Still, this would be, as name say, something "on a side", optional, can be ignored if player doesn't like it, not a must do to complete round. 

I guess it can only work as it was working in old format, where progress on each mission was separated and you could reach different difficulties on all 6 maps

So, side quest would start at level of your survivors and can be played up to level 50. Since it's only 1 mission, stars would have to be doubled or tripled to make any sense 

This is my proposal instead of trying to make challenge go beyond level 50. There is no need for that. Player who complete level 50 already proved a point, tactics used on 50 would be used above that, and those tactics are over-played, one dimensional, boring and take a lot of time (Sasha&Assaults, build a wall while killing tough walker beyound wall , or pre-charge/Stun(dodge if needed) rush to exit, worth mentioning that herding with Beta is another master tactics and refreshment but not enough variabiles on those levels for sure)

Game is most interesting ( and may i say, most realistic ) on early 40 levels, for most users, and even those who can play above 50, would like more to try something new like this then bother repeating same things over and over.

Consider please, and comment this one. Point out mistakes or add ideas

Karajoca

7. Guild Wars Improvements

My posts about this mode can be found all over the forums. Latest, i suggested brand new format
here

 https://forums.nextgames.com/walkingdead/discussion/45512/guild-wars-leagues#latest

If this is impossible to make or unnaceptable for most of the community i step down and will stick to current one.

But i will address most important problems and propose small changes over and over again until it comes to acceptable level for me 

Problems :

1. Tiers are just wrong. 120K VP for Master Tier is a joke that is almost reached by some guilds after 2 wars.
Will be reached by the end of season by ~200 guilds putting them in tier they simply don't belong and possible match against top guilds

2. Top guilds manage to avoid eachother easy through whole season by consistently changing number of players they enter battle.Destroying on the way, smaller guilds way under their league. This matches shouldn't happen

3. Playing with 3-6 members per team is serious lose of Reward Points compared to playing with 10, while playing with 10 has smallest potential when comes to total VP reach over season. I just want confirmation from NG is this working as intended and won't change in future or will, finally, something i am moaning about from beginning of this format be re-balanced ?

Requests most players think are needed ASAP :

1. Fix the number of "kill all walkers" missions appearing in highest "sanctuary" sectors. Can't be random, some guilds get 0 of this missions in 6-H while others can get 5. And just like that we have solid difference in VP made on leader board decided by - luck. Limit of 2 of this missions in each sector, in every battle, would be reasonable.

2. Fix the number of Tough Walkers needed to kill in "Kill Tough Walkers" missions. Some get only 1, some get 3. I think it would be fair if we always have exactly TWO of special type walkers to kill.

3. Limit the number of tools single player can use during battle. Things are just getting ridiculous with this

4. Allow going backwards to sectors 3-F/3-E when completing starting 4-F, or make map full from 1-6 for all routes(A-H) More options are always better, IMO, and battles less predictable

5. Consider opening full map for one season(or one war) like suggested in another thread to see how it works

Karajoca

8. Visual recognition in game. Guild Trophies. Bigger Leaderboard

There is already very nice thread and example about this so i am going to post it here  

https://forums.nextgames.com/walkingdead/discussion/45376/visible-appreciation-of-achievements-gw-challenge#latest

Still,
I would like to request "hall of fame" place where history of greatest achievements is kept( GW Season winners/Winner of each challenge for full year, etc.)

Also,  request for bigger Leaderboards for guilds, Top 100 or even more(few pages if needed, why not)

Why not knowing that your guild is ranked 128th in Challenge and 156th in GW for example? It can only help those guilds,to set some goals, let's say they want to be in top 100, something to fight for.

When they achieve that goal then apetites rise and they improve further and further.

Many will say: this is mobile game, most users don't care about rankings, they are just killing time, don't have any goals .. ok, that is truth. But those users can keep doing their thing.
They won't be affected by this,while it would give motivation to couple of thousands of players! Not something to ignore !

Karajoca

9. Few More Ideas

New Class : Sniper

Has ever considered to add new class ? Is it possible or we are forever stuck with 6 we have?

If possible here is my suggestion :

New Building : Armoury

I mentioned adding new resources to game. This can be for armoury. Or we can simply use tomatoes in it. 

However, i definitely don't want to make all this ideas even more in favor of players who pay. Please, if you consider this,at least for something don't let someone buy infinite boosts, it's meant to be occasional thing, few times per week, during most important missions.

Karajoca

10. Other Small changes & Improvements

Karajoca

Reserved for later

Billbam

I am readying hahahaha...definitely think Piercing should be built in to all hunters/shooters but maybe full piercing that goes up as you increase the level of the character so we can have the trait spot for something else.  This would be just like infused traits on the weapons but on all characters.

Karajoca

Ok, i think i am done   
Few ideas left out (for now) i don't want to add everything, before seeing reactions

I hope i have opened new horizons with this posts, to both players and developers, have fun, use imagination, something good can always came out from simple and healthy conversation !

Governator

Wow! Great reading @Karajoca! I like a lot of these suggestions. I am already looking forward to 2021 just to forget the crappy 2020, so any game improvements would be icing on the cake.

NerfZone187

You're putting in longer hours than next games. They should hire you as the new community liaison. 😂

ATLAS-Z

Comment on the hero leader traits

Notice how three of the top four help you get charge points in some useful way

I think a lot of the rework and new Heroes need to focus on this if they want to have any chance to be viable

Paste

Damn. U crazy @Karajoca! I might never find time to read this and for sure won't agree with it all, but very impressed with the depth and details

JayZ

Will read in greater detail later. But here are some of my previous suggestions... I saw there was a section in Joca's posts about buffing Shooters. Some of these suggestions definitely will help with that.

Weapon improvements:

• Deadly Spike: Threat reduction only on charge attack is just not that useful. Threat Reduction on any kill would be OP. Change the special trait to: Guaranteed threat reduction on charged kill, 75% chance on a non-charged kill.
• Bayonet Musket: Absolutely useless. Make the regular attack hit up to 3 enemies (just like a normal Spear) and reduce the cost of the charge attack to only 2 charge points.
• Festive Road Sign: This is out-classed by the Dragon's Tongue. Add special functionality, like built-in Destructive trait or massively increase the base damage to make it more viable.
• Zweihänder: Offensive Bruiser builds are not that viable, so this weapon has no place in the game meta. That being said, tweaking the traits to switch Lethal for Interrupt could make it more viable.

New weapon releases (money-makers) or GW-exclusive weapons:

• Decimator with Charging/Lucky/Concussion traits.
• Morgan's Staff with Interrupt/Lucky/Razor traits.

Class balance improvements to improve viability of ranged survivors (currently, only Sasha/Assault/Assault or Sasha/Hunter/Hunter are viable on the highest levels):

• Increase Shooter damage to be comparable to Scout damage (Scouts are still better because of Power Strike, Threat Reduction, Prowl, bigger movement, etc. but it will at least make Shooters more useful)
• Make Hazard Suit available on all ranged armor
• Increase Silence trait bonuses from 30% Silver/40% Gold to 40% Silver/60% Gold (will increase effectiveness, but still not allow for 100% unless Hunter Daryl leading, but Hunter Daryl is not useful in the end-game so it won't be OP IMO)
  
• Give Sure Shot a damage bonus, like Power Strike
• Increase chances of Critical Aim
• Update Strong/Marksman to affect TOTAL damage, not just WEAPONS damage

Karajoca

@ATLAS-Z that's very true, yes. I do think that not every hero should be like that, must be some better then others, what i hope is to point out those heroes on the end of table and give them priority in re-balancing. Some will get to yellow, some to green, but it's a start

@Paste man, now when i login on phone i see what i did  was much better looking at PC. must edit some posts or nobody will read 

Excellent @JayZ that's exactly what i need! Soon as i have time will add your ideas up there! 

brucewayne007

I’d love a limitation on the amount of times a person can play 1 map. Then the game would show more skill and not just repetitiveness & gold to get you that ideal map layout and critical hits or RGG charges etc etc
But let’s say you complete a map 1st attempt and move to the next one, you get the carry over “swords/attempts” as such. 

So for 6 maps you get 18-24 attempts.
If you can’t complete in that amount allocated you continue to the next set and move on. Obviously not receiving the round points unless you do all 6 missions to some degree 1-3 star. 

You would see a lot of new names on the LB. 
This idea will never happen though. As NG would only see it as taking away a gold opportunity the get. 

Troublemaker

Carl, Negan, Dwight, Merle, Rosita, Jerry and Ezekiel have the best traits for Outpost and Guild Wars defense. The problem is that we don't see this work, neither those game modes / scenarios are interesting, and they are all broken from bad coding or lack of interest from developer. NG could work on these aspects instead of changing hero traits.

Fluxxx

Great post and some amazing insights @Karajoca , thank you for taking the time to elaborate in such a comprehensive manner! Most of the points you've brought up have been/are being discussed in the team from various angles.

Of course, it's a lot of areas to tackle, and as I've said many times before (and will continue to, so that the context is not lost), we're a relatively small team so we have to be mindful of what we decide to develop. This is based on a number of things:

• DIversity of content. Most, if not all, of the updates should have features/changes that address needs/wants of various player segments. Though, endgame content and general demand from the community hold the highest priority here.
• Impact vs. Time-to-develop. We likely won't work on features that take a long time to develop, but at the same time will have little impact on the game. The impact can refer to a few different aspects: the number of player segments it will affect/help, effect on player experience, effect on monetization, etc..
• Goals. As a team, we have different responsibilities and accountabilities to different stakeholders. As a company, Next Games has its own roadmap and goals, and NML is a big part of that. We're accountable to AMC to some extent, releasing relevant and timely content, such as season missions, heroes, etc.. We're accountable to our player base and especially you, the No Man's Land community - we want to release content that you like, enjoy, and also take some ownership of.
  

This is not an exhaustive list, by any means, but I hope it brings some visibility to how we work as a team.

With that said, I think that a lot of the suggestions align with the above points, so we're going to discuss them in depth for our future updates. Some of them are already in our plans, for example we've seen a lot of positive feedback from the recent LT reworks and changes, as well as some class buffs, so it would make sense to stay on track with these kinds of changes. Also, some of the improvement areas don't necessarily need to be addressed with new features. I'm glad that you brought up the point about helping players find the right guilds - we would definitely like to bring more players to the community/this forum 

To keep the discussion going, I'd be curious to hear how the list posted by Karajoca should be prioritized, in your views!

WellyLuga

Personally I believe rebalancing of classes and reworking hero LT's would be up there amongst the top of the list. The reason for this is it actually affects some of the other items in the list, certain challenge maps have had new life breathed into them with PGG's trait buff for instance. It changes the way the maps are played and makes old maps fresh. At the moment you could literally never use a shooter and get by perfectly fine. The more you balance the classes, the more options we have the more interesting the challenge becomes. I don't expect too much to change at RSL50 but it would be cool to be able to run an all ranged team that wasn't Sasha and assaults at RSL45+.

After that the GW changes mentioned would be 2nd on my list. As mentioned, most of the top guilds currently mix up their teams to maximize points and also to avoid difficult matchups. Guilds finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on can go an entire season and never face each other. Guilds fighting 4x10 can't compete. I think more could be done to balance this.

Karajoca

Thank you @Fluxxx for fast response and detailed answer 

I am aware of those limitations mentioned and like i said don't expect all of this to be implemented in game. It might look a bit messy out there now, all thrown in at once, will work to make it more clear so we can get more people involved in discussion. 
Point of this thread is to see what other players like the most and prioritize so you, developers, can have idea from where to start. I am sure you were already considering something of this just don't have time for all, so hope this helps  

If you ask me what is most important from my posts, i'd say Focus on re-balancing the game. Make everything useful, because i don't think it's good for business to have so many content, heroes and even whole class laying in the dust.
All of my ideas actually came from thinking of re-balancing,
i mention tools that can only be used by specific class - maybe that's how you can re-balance shooters. Can't do it with traits ? Give them tool that only they can use

Or let us craft/forge those few missing % we miss to make them stronger and use at certain time when we think that will be useful. 

Not working and nothing can make them useful? Well, nevermind then... accept the faith, they cannot be used in Guild Wars/High levels of challenge because there are better options so give us something like Side Quests (maybe not exactly in that form, it's just idea) but the reason for us to use all the content we have 

Billbam

Agree that rebalancing the classes is key to everything going forward.  Shooters are a total waste and sasha LT is the only redeeming strength of hunters.  The main issue is lack of killing power while causing more threat, a definitely big boost to piercing and an overall bump in damage would be a good start.  The throw in more dependable way to silence would be awesome.

Firekid

I’m not sure if it was mentioned but one thing you could do to balance ranged is to get rid of their ridiculous bodyshot modifier. Why would a bullet bodyshot do less than an knife bodyshot. This should have been done at the same time razer was introduced and would be a quick win as can’t believe it would be hard to code. 

That with a boost to piercing would make shooters much more viable particularly shooter rick. Also yes sureshot should have a damage mod/piercing buff . Your standing still and taking time to aim it makes sense.
Lastly charge points are key. It’s why SR and Sasha are king and queen of the leaders and RGG is used so often at high level. Maybe something can be done to help ranged get charge points or retain charge points, other than those leader traits? 

ATLAS-Z

I would love to see Shooters get 2 attacks every turn not just on a charge. 

And charge attack just gets a massive damage boost (x2.5) instead of an extra third attack

Edit adding... 

And all shooter weapons get tactical movement (ala winter bow) as a standard , not special functionality. 

Austin_Shiong

It's simple to make Carol useful, all NG need to do is making her LT work individually, which means that once her LT kicks in, it will ignore any body shot. This can not only bring Carol back to the battlefield, but save all the critical-hit-related traits like accurate.

hunter_x

Oh boy, that's alot of ideas

I'll never be able finish this game

Burmeliinis

Awesome effort Karajoca! Huge respect for you!

One more thing, let's not forget that the Distance needs an overhaul.