Hi, and welcome to the second part of our Q&A blog posts (you can find part one here). Let’s get straight into it.

Skulls

Sander Jacobs asks, “I was wondering what different skulls are rewarded for winning games. And what kind of rewards can we expect?” And Matthew Budd had a similar query: “How is the Kill Pack worked out you get when you win a battle? Is it random or is there a trigger for the 3/8/12/24 hours?”

The victory skulls you get are determined by a long list which you progress through. So, each time you win a battle and have a free ‘skull slot’ open then you receive the next victory skull on that list.

The list is over 400 skulls long (if you ever reach the end it simply wraps round), and has been designed to try and provide a mix of quick to open skulls, and ‘better’ but slower ones. The idea is for players to be able to think ‘what time do I next expect to play this game?’ and choose a skull pack which will open around that time.

This ‘cycle’ is a fairly common system for live, serviced games like ours (albeit usually with fewer skulls) because it works. I imagine we’ll look at evolving and improving it over time, but other areas are higher on the list right now. Speaking of which…

Progress

Bram Dngn writes, “I would like to know when we can have the option to save your progress? I have the game on my mobile but I would like to play on my tablet also.” And, Gary Morris adds, “Some potential ideas for game improvement: 1. Multiple decks can be stored and used. 2. Single card purchases available in the store.”

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. The team are working through a long list of improvements, which includes things like cloud saving (for multi-device play and so player’s saves are safe, even if they delete the app), multiple decks (because Objectives require you to keep swapping Warlords) and single card purchases (so you can collect those annoying ‘just one more card for an upgrade!’ cards).

We’re a small team at the moment (though we’re growing – more on this in a future blog post), which unfortunately means these improvements take time. This is because we have to balance shiny, new features with important but less impressive bug fixes and ‘behind the scenes’ upgrades.

Suggestions

Lachlan Graham sent a couple of ideas for ways we could improve the game: “1. More frequent rewards and ways to slowly grind so the game doesn’t get stale after pushing the “war” button for hours with no rewards ???? 2. Having a “friends list” feature and pvp to encourage people to get their whole circle of gaming friends playing.”

Thanks for the suggestions, we’re always happy to listen to ideas and feedback from players.

I addressed the first point in this blog post about why Combat Cards is designed to be played in short bursts, not long sessions. However, we’ve had quite a few requests for some sort of reward for players who do want to play for longer, so we’re looking into ways that we can cater for this, without fundamentally changing the metagame  we have, which is tuned for ‘pick up and play’, short-burst sessions.

As for the second point, we definitely agree that playing alongside friends would be very cool, so intend to implement a complete ‘clans’ system (you’ll have seen the ‘coming soon’ tab in the game). I don’t want to go into detail on this yet, but do let us know if there’s something you’d love / hate to see in a clan feature.

Advice

Finally, Steven Benson asks: “Will there ever be a live battling PvP system?” to which the answer is ‘yes… maybe… it depends’.

We originally planned to test which type of battling players prefer – the current system, or realtime PvP – at an early stage. But we found that most players really enjoy the current battling, which has a higher than 50% win rate because people are smarter than the AI (and even with the upcoming AI improvements this is likely to remain so). As a result, implementing other features and fixing bugs have become higher priority than testing a potential change to realtime PvP. It doesn’t mean we’ve given up on this test, but I can’t give a date for when it might happen.

Then, to wrap up, here’s Steve’s advice for other players: “Really liking campaign as it forces players to think, adapt and change. Rotating factions used and facing as well as rewards is super cool. Positioning, timing and brains will see an underpowered deck win everytime. Remember it’s not about wiping out your opponent, but destroying their commander. Some must sacrifice for the greater good. Strategically get your opponents commander to drop when you want, and make the most of it.”

Exactly.

More

Thanks to everyone who submitted a comment or question for this Q&A, or who generally gets in touch with us. We see a lot of anonymous stats as we work, but that’s not the same as hearing directly from players, because even if someone’s ‘Kharn-the-Betrayer’s-just-stubbed-his-toe’ levels of angry, they’ve still taken the time to engage and let us know.

As a result, we do genuinely take note of all your suggestions, complaints and bug reports (sorry about those), so please keep sending them – hopefully I’ll run another of these Q&A posts in the future.

You can get in touch through [email protected], or our Facebook page.

Thanks,
Stu