PYRO PRINCESS’S ROYAL DEBUT FEEDBACK + GIVEAWAY

Not having the chance to obtain the Pyro Princess herself in tour bags like usual really takes the thrill out of it. Even when the odds are low, the possibility of getting the featured contest superstar as a reward is a big motivator to go hard. Looking at the prizes in the solo and faction contests, there just isn’t much incentive there.

Man, I'm burnt out after a week of showdown and this is how we're capping the week off?

• Zero shards for Mutant Bliss.
• I'm gonna point that out again because I feel it's worth emphasizing and I thought we ditched this dreadful event structure - Zero (0) shards for Mutant Bliss. I suppose there is a chance to get her via the bags which means that in the letter of the law you could get Mutant Bliss, but in any reasonable way of looking at it there was no way to do so. Some might say there's s PoP Bliss shards and she's good and rare and all that, but I've personally had PoP Bliss for the better part of a year. I have enough shards for her on hand right now to recruit her at 4SG. And for those who don't have her, is 250 shards (for doing everything perfectly, mind) going to do it? Why should I care about the contest if I have PoP Bliss? Why should anyone care about this contest?
• But if you really want to talk about the juice not being worth the squeeze (seemingly a trend these last few months), let's talk about the skill plate. Or rather, the worthless inventory items we'll be getting instead of a skill plate. 40 million in feud (one which require you to shell out the big bucks for the steps, mind, not the much easier end of MLC feuds), a bonus milestone deep in the solo contest, and just flat-out spending 200 bucks on the portal. Or I suppose the alternate way of doing things of spending 800 bucks flat on the portal to get the plate outright. Killed the already pretty weak showing of the war score competition, and lent more evidence to show that for being so careful about the game's economy in response to the web coin shop, Scopely clearly has a poor idea of what value things have to players outside of those where money is no object.
• To top everything off in terms of what you get back, all the rewards across the board felt anemic - Maybe 75 Seth shards throughout the entire thing, under 100 Priest tokens, I'm not even counting more than 10,000 MLC points even when accounting paid milestones, and everything just feels so stepped back. And this is after a week where we didn't get any rewards in the tours (Sorry, the one tour), but got drip-fed MLC points in a reiteration that daily showdowns just grind people down.
• There was nothing positive about the tours whatsoever, and the changes made are baffling to me - Three tours on day one that expired in 24 hours, all requiring very rare characters and were pretty limited otherwise - not that you'd know otherwise. The most confusing thing is requiring G.O.A.T Becky not even a month after she debuted, and then just telling someone 'Yeah beat that 5SG Mutant Bliss'. I could do it at 4SG because of some ridiculous sub cheesing, but for one I only had G.O.A.T Becky because I won her on these forums, and I guess every time I get a project I should just bump them up to 5SS for tours. It's a good thing the economy totally allows me to do that for 300+ people.
• I've always spoken out against sticking 5SGs in tours because the health bloat they bring always means that they are incredibly difficult to approach with your hands tied with requirements, and the fact that I had to sub stall for Bayley's, Becky's, and Priest's tours (Priest v. Hogan was only at 5SS in what must be a show of mercy from Scoply, considering most people probably have Priest at 4SB max at this point - meaning Hogan has ten times the health and three times the gem damage output than Priest at 4SB) means that the tours are clearly overtuned, and I'm sure it's not going to be long before Escape Artist plates start getting slapped on these fights to just make them impossible to counter with anything other than sheer numbers.
• I have one good thing to say, and it's about feud bonuses - I thought there were a lot of them, and they were significant enough to actually make a dent in the war score contest unlike prior contests where it felt like there was maybe 500k extra points on the table total. It's a shame that this got figured out at the same time as the worst war score contest in memory, but I hope it lingers into future contests. And I also hope it's literally the only thing from this contest that sticks around.
• Alright, two things - the Bliss model and concept is awesome and the art team did a great job with the card and model (especially since sometimes the card art doesn't translate into a good ingame model).

Solo Contest

• 'Regular' rewards were locked behind very rare CSS, purchasing loot coins every day, AND buying the backstage pass. These are not regular rewards. We all understand there are paid and free rewards but don't mislead players about what they can achieve from events. It's unnecessary and leaves players feeling disappointed that they can't reach milestones that they expected were possible. When you over-promise and under-deliver it is not a good experience for us and makes you look bad.

Tours

• Highly restrictive CSS which heavily hindered progress in the solo contest. Having very rare CSS is okay, but either give us a common (weak) character as an alternative or make the CSS rewards resources like coins, TP, tokens, etc. that don't affect the weekend event. The difficulty of the tours was also too high for players who didn't have the very rare CSS.

Alexa

• Cool character design but no shards at all available. Why not offer even 500 shards or so to at least make players feel like they have progressed somewhat? It costs you nothing and you can still monetize the poster or 1,500 shards down the line. Nothing I did in the game this weekend feels like it will help my progress or benefit me in a future event.

Skill Plate

• At first, I thought the plate shards idea was pretty good. I assumed I could earn one shard from the warscore event and then the remaining 2 shards during future events. Instead, it turns out that I wasted hours of my weekend maxing the warscore event for a shard that is literally worthless. A huge disappointment that makes me feel ripped off.

Community Event

• I'm not sure why these events get rolled out every now and again. They aren't promoted properly. There isn't a proper system for players across the community to communicate. We can't even see progress in-game. Newer players couldn't contribute because the medallions were behind rare paywalled CSS or too deep in the solo contest milestones for them to reach. The rewards were also awful considering how high the milestones were set. If you want to promote the portal, bring value back to trivia or give us a way to actually grind these community events as a team. Designing this event was a waste of everyone's time.

Wasrcore Steps

• Back the increased cost again which turns players off buying them. I'd be amazed if your data doesn't reflect this, so I'm not sure why you persist in the face of consistent negative feedback. Initially, I intended to buy the steps this weekend and play for leaderboard places, but due to the cost of the steps and being dissatisfied with the overall event, I just kept my money and passed.

Feud Requirements and Line Bonus

• The bottom lane felt like a troll. Not only is it very difficult to level feud perks for a week 2 feud, but now we have to combat a -gem generation perk which nerfs many characters completely. We've already been through this issue a few months ago when gem generation and MP were nerfed. Don't make playing the game a miserable experience. This is not encouraging people to play or spend, it's pushing people away from your game.