S4 - Patch Notes - 30.09.2020

  • Here are the patch notes for the upcoming round: S4, beginning on September 30th, 2020 at 11:00 CEST.

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    Content:

    uNw4UB4.png?1 Added Polish and Russian language
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Added 4 new Warlords

    uNw4UB4.png?1 Renamed Dwarven Warlords in order to use universal names across all languages

    uNw4UB4.png?1 New notification system and some new notifications


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    MJuZGmB.png?1

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    p0puNRL.png?1



    Balancing:

    uNw4UB4.png?1 Increased the Soul Energy gained by selling items of Tier II and Tier III quality.

    New values:


    Tier Common Uncommon Rare Epic Legendary
    Tier 1 100 150 200 250 300
    Tier 2 1000 1200 1500 2000 2500
    Tier 3 3000 4000 5000 7000 10000



    uNw4UB4.png?1 Re-balanced units and Warlords. Changes for Elfs and Dwarves marked in red.
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Changed the Max Level Bonus for the Market Place to: +35% resource production from resource supplies
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Reduced the production of resource fields for level 12+


    Level Production old Production new
    1 200 200
    2 225 225
    3 250 250
    4 275 275
    5 325 325
    6 375 375
    7 450 450
    8 550 550
    9 700 700
    10 900 900
    11 1250 1250
    12 1800 1750
    13 2500 2400
    14 3500 3200
    15 5000 4200
    16 7000 5400
    17 10000 6800
    18 13500 8400
    19 17500 10300
    20 22000 12600
    21 26500 15600
    22 31500 19600
    23 37000 25100
    24 43000 32600
    25 50000 42600



    uNw4UB4.png?1 Added the new premium Warlords to the “Epos of Conquest” package in the shop, and changed the Sapphires it contains to 3000.
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Added an assembly time (5 fields) to Goblin Towers
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Added Daggertooth to supplies on Midiata (Island II)
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Switched the unlock level for Soul Forge (now 13) and the first Workshop (now 14)

    uNw4UB4.png?1 Rare supplies bonus increased from 10% to 15%.



    Improvements

    uNw4UB4.png?1 The construction phase of a portal will be paused as long as an enemy army is stationed in it for destruction
    uNw4UB4.png?1 The cooldown after switching a realm now only applies to the Realm the player left. He can still switch again to a third Realm without having to wait for 24h
    uNw4UB4.png?1 The number of votes and what you voted for is now shown on an active vote
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Several improvements to the tutorial flow
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Added information about Moon Phase limitations to the building level overviews
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Removed item slots from NPC Warlord cards
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Removed the XP and Soul Energy Modifier information for NPC and Training battles, since it does not apply there
    uNw4UB4.png?1 If a tower is in deconstruction, the Gear will now spin to the left
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Portals will now be named as follows:
    - 1st slot: "Portal I"
    - 2nd slot: "Portal II"
    - 3rd slot: "Portal III"
    uNw4UB4.png?1 In strategy mode, the map can now be zoomed out further for a better overview



    Bug Fixes

    uNw4UB4.png?1 Fixed a bug where warlords got stuck after a successful defense
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Conquering towers in the endgame now transfers ownership of the Orbs correctly
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Players in the combat screen will now be sorted correctly by their fighting power
    uNw4UB4.png?1 Donation buttons will no longer be greyed out after the Al
    chemist is used to gain enough resources

  • We don’t understand what this patch was supposed to do.


    The unit changes don’t make any sense at all. Instead of trying to balance the defensive bonus, based on a full round of player experience, it is decided to throw the whole concept back to the bin and instead come up with some randomly, decided other bonus which restarts the balance and throws everything learned from this round away in favor of another "attempt".


    All this does is once again heavily throw the balance back to one race. In this case dwarf. 1/1/1 Darrak will become most the oppressive warlord again, as there is no way to counter him, yet again.


    The cavalry bonus from SE will be overall vastly superior to the infantry bonus that elves get. Not only do Elves barely use infantry for their top warlords, the dwarven roster is actually fairly balance in lategame, so they don’t use a lot of infantry either. However, the elven roster is heavily cavalry based and even dwarfs use a lot of cavalry on their currently used meta warlords. And in the same moment you also nerf SC's, while simultaneously implementing a hard counter to them.


    Slots by currently used meta heros:



    Elves:

    11 cavalry slots

    8 artillery slots

    6 Infantry slots


    Dwarfs:

    9 cavalry slots

    8 Infantry slots

    7 artillery slots


    Not to mention warlords like Cerulean and Trankard will now be much easier countered, so dwarfs will be way more mandatory than elves.


    What basically happened here, is that an entire round of experience which could have been used to balance the game properly, was wasted and instead replaced with another attempt at creating a balanced meta from the start, yet without even fixing or touching half of the currently broken unit roster, such as Valks, Daggertooths, Detonatress or dwarven cavalry in general, the list goes on. Or implement changes to enough warlords to emphasize the use of different ones to refresh the meta.


    Resource Generation Nerf


    Once again, we cannot fathom why this was done. The only explanation I could think of is because donation value was too high. Yet, if that was the case why not just nerf donation exp? The nerf to resource generation, without adjusting any costs at all, will not only cause a massive slowdown of the game, but it will also make personal town building a thing of the past now.


    Personal town building was a in bad spot before, but with this change its literally dead. Buildings will be far too expensive to invest and push to 25, before you finally reap any benefit out of them. The only meta tactic will be spamming donations now, less effective than before, but still the very best way to play. You just eliminated one part of the game entirely for any competitive player.


    Since the supply cost for upgrading was also untouched, every realm is harder pressed to upgrade supplies asap, since time on an island is also limited. The result will be overall less troops available to all realms, as upgrading will be slower and personal troop building was also nerfed due to a shortcoming of resources. The result will be an even slower paced game, with realms hoarding more troops for i4 since amassing a solid amount of them just became harder for no reason other than nerfing donations.


    This will be especially bad going on for island 3 and above, seeing the massive nerf to level 19 fields and above. The natural result will be less wars until i4 hits, less reason to buy building time reduction, and less reason to actually log into the game.


    This patch so far is a total a huge step back.


    In total I rate this patch 2/10.


    2 for the effort and bugfixes, I guess.

  • they shoot themselves in the foot with this patch


    players bought building reduction time because they had enough stuff to upgrade buildings asap when a new moonphase hits, with this nerf thats no longer possible as stacking up materials is no longer possible while donating and building anti gobling, since the income is so heavily nerfed you wont have any stockpile anymore


    and supplies will be overall much harder and slower to level, so even the need for watching videos AND buying scrolls will go down


    you guys are killing our own income , WTF?!

  • Actually that scrolls become less useful because of the patch is a positive point, not a negative one. If you so desperately want p2w, please leave the game, there so many (literally any other) browser games in which you can for example buy resources directly from the bank. Why not play that?


    Apart from that I'm afraid I have to agree that the patch was poorly done and they choose the easiest solution possible to the xp-donation problem. (except just cutting the amount in half)

    => They should have given us more possibilities to invest those resources, preferably some who were as good as donating or better, instead of reducing the available resources.


    I (sadly) also have to agree with Violet on the unit balancing changes. Most people say that the artillery is too strong (has to much FP) but the bonus is okay. What do they do? They change the FP and the bonus. It's the same with Aphaca, they have identified her as being to strong so they could either nerf the units or the warlords. What do they do? Nerf the units AND the WL.




    ---


    If the option was between doing nothing or to reduce the res-income, then reducing res was the better option.

  • Hey there,


    Thank you very much for providing your opinions about the current balancing changes. I am responsible for these changes and used a lot of input sources in order to come decide for them. So let me share my reasoning why I decided to do them in the way I did.


    Resource production: The resource production is only adjusted from level 12 onwards. I think on the first island it worked quite good for most players to build up their production. But from island two on, it seemed to be too good to invest resources in their own production instead of realm supplies & troops. So these change is supposed to make the path to invest too many resources in your own production less good and by this improve the multiplayer of the game. Also, I think being a bit shorter on resources, makes it more interesting where and how to invest the limited resources and - as Twelve pointed out - reduces P2W. In general resources did not feel worthy enough in the last round. In the last phase the new Marketplace bonus will boost Resource Supplies in late game. The former donation bonus of the Marked had a strange feeling to it: The best strategy at some point was not to donate and wait until you had your Marked level 25. I do not think it was good to get +50% XP for donating by one building level.


    Unit Balancing: I understand the attraction of the defensive bonus. But the overall feeling with the defense bonus was described by many players as "trench war". It should feel good to attack and it should not be so easy to counter a big attack that was set up. The other unit changes are made to balance out both races better.


    We will see what the changes provide. But I am confident that the upcoming round will be more smoothly and interesting with these changes.

  • The intention might be the right, but the path might be wrong. The greatest multiplayer part of Arkheim currently is the warfare and the diplomacy part of it (hate it or love it). For warfare to happen you need troops. Players come together in discord and coordinate attacks, defensive measures and joint-operations together. This requires a lot of activity, team work and effort to work. Clicking a donation button doesn’t.


    Donations were the single best way to play on the previous servers and nothing will change that in server 4. The only change that will occur is that your own town is now even less attractive to build up, because you can no longer do both simultaneous. So, troop queues and buildings queues will run dry and you are forced to wait for the supplies to tick in. This we believe will only cause boredom to players, as quite frankly, you will simply have less to do and less to be excited about that. What are these level 25 buildings going to do, if you cannot invest into them without hurting your own realm? There is no choice, you will donate.


    The breakeven points for fields past 23+ was already bad, and a good amount of players simply skipped upgrading to donate more into supplies. This patch will just worsen the situation. Everyone will literally be a supply bot, as you ensured personal town building to simply be terrible this server.


    Also the resulting less personal troops, will mean less personal engagement to the game, as you will run out of troops faster, less wars will happen and this will hurt the teamwork harder than anything else, because planning and doing wars is the greatest fun in the game, despite it many issues :X.

  • Hey Violet. Thanks for your post. I honestly do not belive that the impact will be that dramatic. There is still the relative good base income of resource fields level 12 and the basic income by the supplies. Maybe the the average player will run his unit queues on production buildings that are a few levels lower. I think by the supplies still a lot of troops will come in.


    For the breakeven point of fields past level 23+ not so much has changed for different production. It were more the levels between 12 and 23 that were corrected by their roi.

  • uNw4UB4.png?1 If a tower is in deconstruction, the Gear will now spin to the left


    Can anyone give more details about that?


    Quote

    uNw4UB4.png?1 Conquering towers in the endgame now transfers ownership of the Orbs correctly


    Even though support claimed everything was fine this round, I am happy that the bug will be fixed next round. We lost a lot of orbs because of this.

  • Surely it is simple mathematics that if there is less income available, then there will be fewer troops created and fewer building upgrades.


    As for the return on investment being 'Corrected', it is again obvious to anyone who can count, that 8 days + of resources being required for a single resource field upgrade is already far too much, so reducing the return on investment beggars belief.


    This will impact the game quite dramatically, as pointed out already, there will be less troops and much less ability to get any building to level 25.

  • 199 million speaks Portuguese but no lets put Polish

    País ou território População (est. 2019) Mais informações
    Brasil 211,994,695 Português do Brasil
    Angola 31.787,566 Português de Angola
    Moçambique 31.117,272 Português de Moçambique
    Portugal 10.264,164 Português europeu
    Guiné-Bissau 1.941,521 Português da Guiné-Bissau
    Timor-Leste 1.344,944 Português de Timor-Leste
    Guiné Equatorial 1.347,90 Português da Guiné Equatorial
    Macau 639,558 Português de Macau
    Cabo Verde 558,514 Português cabo-verdiano
    São Tomé e Príncipe 212,182 Português de São Tomé e Príncipe
    Total 289.860,416 Língua Portuguesa

    According to wikipedia

  • no matter what the programmer do no one will be happy, but we all have equal chance to compete with what is offered in the game. what I do not like is the changes that are been made from server to server regarding dwarfs and elves, it seems to me I have to constantly make a decision for the next server of which will be a stronger unit. so I felt last server elves where stronger ( and they were a little stronger) not by much, this next server I probably will play dwarf as it looks to me that they down graded elves a little too much. saying that a great player (not me) can win with the difference that are made, best example that the leader in XP lead all players by a great margin. as far as not having as many resources that should not bother any player at all because that will effect all of us the same way, in a way I like the though that a lot of us will have many different options of how we will play the game. the GAME is a WAR or a SIM game, players decide how they want to play, I hope the programmers realize this and accommodate both, leaders pick the players they want , it is their choice and there decision. I personally feel that in each realm there should be one (only ONE) designated leader and after the first island player should have to vote who that player is and the programmer would have to know who it is. if the realm finishes first that player should receive a great reward from the game for their accomplishment as been a good leaders is very hard work. two very important things would come out of this: more good leaders would play in different realm because now that in my assessment is a major flow and you would create more serious competition between the better players

  • 199 million speaks Portuguese but no lets put Polish

    We have plans of adding more languages in the future.


    The number of speakers of a certain language does not directly indicate how popular a game would be within those regions or what efforts it would take to make the game known there.


    So, please don't think of it as a competition between millions of PL speakers versus millions of PT speakers. It's a journey for all of us from around the globe to make this game a success story and to add more and more languages as we go.