Perks of a 'Balanced Game'

[kita_drisk]

Every single time a game design changes to make it 'more balanced,' I immediately see a lot of outrage. So, I'd like to see a discussion thread about positivity.

For instance, with this newest one, I noticed that several of our fails have also dropped in time. I, for one, am thrilled to have an extra hour off of my firefox fail and the thunderhawks which were such and issue for other players is drastically dropped to 6 hours. I'm definitely okay with most of the evolution changes. I think it is a bit more fair. Yes, 36 hours is a while, but lets be honest, that's the same with several other games. The best items/creatures take a while.

I'd like to see if anyone else has anything about the 'balanced game changes' that they like.

[SANDSCApe]

Nevermind how people feel about "balance"; are you saying that breeding & hatching times have been reduced? I have seen no evidence of this.

[igames4me]

Nevermind how people feel about "balance"; are you saying that breeding & hatching times have been reduced? I have seen no evidence of this.

I haven't seen this either tired of 16hr and 17 hr fail.
We need a second nest

[zenobia42]

Every single time a game design changes to make it 'more balanced,' I immediately see a lot of outrage. So, I'd like to see a discussion thread about positivity.

For instance, with this newest one, I noticed that several of our fails have also dropped in time. I, for one, am thrilled to have an extra hour off of my firefox fail and the thunderhawks which were such and issue for other players is drastically dropped to 6 hours. I'm definitely okay with most of the evolution changes. I think it is a bit more fair. Yes, 36 hours is a while, but lets be honest, that's the same with several other games. The best items/creatures take a while.

I'd like to see if anyone else has anything about the 'balanced game changes' that they like.

I think you might be confusing breeding/incubation times with evolution times.

Thunderhawk used to be 16 hours to breed + 16 hours to hatch the egg + 1 hour each evolution. Total time from breed to level 10 was 34 hours.
Now it is still 16 hours to breed + 16 hours to hatch the egg but it is + 6 hours to evolve. Total time from breed to level 10 is now 44 hours.
None of the times got better.
Only one time changed (evolution) and that was to make it six times worse.

I think the evidence is fairly conclusive that TL's definition of "balance" is 100% about increasing their income by making us so frustrated with slow gameplay that we buy gems. NONE of the changes in the name of game balance have EVER made ANYTHING better from the players' perspective. There is nothing beneficial to players about the time they drastically reduced the income of all animals after level 4 or so. There is nothing beneficial to players about them greatly reducing the odds of getting a unicorn after it was out only a short time. There is nothing beneficial to players about the emerald dragon fail becoming 1 hour and 5 gems to hurry as opposed to 30 seconds and no gem ever needed to hurry that amount of time. There was nothing beneficial to players about all evolution times becoming at LEAST 3x as long (in some cases 8x a long) as they were for the first 2 months of the game. NONE of those things make the game more fun for us. They make everything in the game take longer. "Balance" to them means trying to drive us to buy gems so as to actually be able to play the dam game rather than just check in twice a day to see if anything is ready yet.

[mysticfrost]

As I've mentioned, it's the majority of people's complacency that makes nothing change...while we are upset and will say so...many people are just "oh well, that's fine"....

[BlueCanary]

I'm fine to be complacent in a phone game. If a game cheeses me off too much, I just quit playing. I'm very thankful that TL games don't force you to pester friends on Facebook in order to advance, like other games I've played (and dropped because I'm not annoying people with game requests!)

You have to wait a while for things and its based on luck- and my luck is often quite bad. BUT! You can literally get every single thing in this game without spending anything other than a bit of time which is rare for a free to play cash purchases type game. Even DS keeps its cash only items to a minimum, and its set up so you can earn a decent amount of gems, gold whatever ingame to save up for things. Sure things are set up to tempt you to spend money to make it quicker and easier, but you don't have to.

Yeah its annoying to have long waits, and breed 10+ conductors in a row like you've got an island made out of breadcrumbs or something, but its cute and free so I'm happy with it.

[zenobia42]

I'm very thankful that TL games don't force you to pester friends on Facebook in order to advance, like other games I've played (and dropped because I'm not annoying people with game requests!)

Now THAT is something truly VERY positive that can be said about this game - excellent point!!!

[Jestmint]

Great idea for this thread!
While I at first thought it was a bug when my Glacial Griffin said it would take more than 8 hours to evolve, I saw the announcement and didn't seem that upset. While we have the extremely long breed and hatch times, it only makes sense for the evolution times to follow. With evolution as they WERE, it would be done evolving and I didn't have that long to anticipate what the new one would look like (although I've seen them when visiting others, but I still like to be 'surprised'.
I have the mind set that I'd like to always keep my evolution flower going, so the longer evolution times gives me more time to get another creature ready to evolve.

[zenobia42]

Well, I've been trying to think of something positive to say about all evolution times becoming 3x to 8x as long as they were. And all I've got is that I am glad I got 74% of the animals in my park to level 10+ before the change occurred. Most of my animals I leveled that high because the + income / food spent per level seemed worth it. And it WAS worth it - I now pull in over a million a day even with ZERO ultra rares. And I'm getting close to the cost of leveling one more super rare from 10-15 for the next arena challenge. It will be a bummer that if I decide I really need a certain super rare to be level 15 for the arena, that even with all the 80,000 food that requires saved up it will still be useless once the tournament started due to the obscenely extended evolution times... but at least I'll have all my super rares to 10 and can pick one a couple days before we expect the next to start and get it to 15.

[SANDSCApe]

Well, I've been trying to think of something positive to say about all evolution times becoming 3x to 8x as long as they were. And all I've got is that I am glad I got 74% of the animals in my park to level 10+ before the change occurred. Most of my animals I leveled that high because the + income / food spent per level seemed worth it. And it WAS worth it - I now pull in over a million a day even with ZERO ultra rares. And I'm getting close to the cost of leveling one more super rare from 10-15 for the next arena challenge. It will be a bummer that if I decide I really need a certain super rare to be level 15 for the arena, that even with all the 80,000 food that requires saved up it will still be useless once the tournament started due to the obscenely extended evolution times... but at least I'll have all my super rares to 10 and can pick one a couple days before we expect the next to start and get it to 15.

You'll be fine, Ms Millionaire (congrats!). The difference between a Level 14 and a Level 15 amounts to little more than the skin. No significant gain in income or battle scores.

Still, if you want that edge, pick the one you'll most heavily use for battles and evolve it today (Sunday). Next Tournament Tuesday may be 2 days away. If so, you have ...hmmm... 56 hours? You can promote two fighters by then if you're feeling fruitful.