Actually, I'm ok with a specialist general that only gets used on 2 or three camps per Arabian adventure. I think increasing his capacity (other than through skills) would throw him out of balance. I seem to recall people complained about the reduced troop capacitry of the Champions when they came out, but I don't see anyone saying they are too weak these days...
This whole game is about making choices and balancing. How could we make those decisions if BB changed things after we have to make the decision, eg after the event. I want things to stay as they are, not because the benefit me, but because the game would become unplayable.
Secondly, I'm just giving my opinion (as predicted by MorellaCarter), so why the remarks about me not being constructive. Did you even read the last line in my post?
Thirdly, this is a discussion(forum), so you better get used to people having arguments against the new idea.
He is as he is and so be it. I see no reason whatsoever for BB to change his stats. Those who bought him did so knowing his (in)abilities. Those who didn't buy him did so based on those same (in)abilities. Changing his stats would make all those decisions worthless.
Lower levels would have been far better getting Dracula and Grim and then chasing items to help their economies such as fish farms and siloes rather than this very odd new general.
I would largely have to agree with this, with the notable exception of the idea of him granting splash damage to cannoneers, without which only a small fraction of his true potential is available to those players below level 57, whom are yet to unlock their access to besieger units.
As he stands, I could not agree more.
Using status quo as an argument against improvement is a very lame approach imo. From what I understand BB failed to do a good job when designing this general and our top gun testers failed to comment on his uselessness enough to enact a change before he went live. Both probably happened due to too many changees, too much rush and not enough time to properly think through and balance everything that comes in the game. Since I'm not hardcore I don't have time for test server and so rely on the game provider and immensely more active players to "negotiate" what the improvement should be exactly. But if there is a universal agreement that the gen is more or less useless for both low and high level players then what's the point of keeping something useless in the game for status quo argument?
Improvements like that happened before, like most recent probably Scouting post buffs going from 20 % boost to 50 % boost and others (surely active players could point out many more).
So I'd expect BB guys and experienced very active players to get together and redesign the gen features so that he fit's the game. It should have been done on test before going live, but better late then never imo. Status Quo is simply not an excuse for preserving faulty design, otherwise we could even stop the game development completely. That same Status Quo argument could be used to stop introducing better improved buildings, as some guys invested a lot of high end material to upgrade less powerful older buildings which now become useless, or stop adding tasks and buffs demanding rebalancing of economy for the same reason, etc. I think everybody can see that it would not be very smart approach. To rectify the "harm" some may feel would happen to them there's always option to make him available for gems or stalks or next event with absolute amount limited to one to equalize the field.
Last edited by Norton_C; 17.11.18 at 12:00.
Like it was said if they begin to change things afterwards it will make user decisions difficult or impossible and everyone should begin to buy everything in case something gets readjusted. There is also a difference between a low and a high level player vs new and old player. A new player can have a high level but since he has not been in the game for long enough to acquire large set of generals so the general is useful to him. The champions were available for only during on Christmas event and now they are for a large amount of gems. Mad Scientist can match or be close to Anslem in some cases.
Scouting post with 50% was not really something new and solely/at all based on community feedback aftermath as it was already mentioned at test server by BB months before we got the event. There was even a possibility for 100% one if I recall correctly. It could have been that it just did not make it in time with the update as there was a lot of other stuff going on at the same time. Regardless what ever the reason was it was easy to change as everyone got the same building and for free which is not the case with event items.
But is there a faulty design? Like I replied in the 1st part there are many benefits of him to certain players. Also if you look at the other threads there are number of people happy with him. To me Dracula for example was when originally introduced and still is more useless as he has a poor accuracy with no splash and has zero traits. We complained back then too as he seemed very expensive for the features he has. I found a far more cases for Mad Scientist than Dracula by simulating adventures.
It looks to me as if this is nothing more than a rehash of the usefulness of MoD generals with nothing more than a different general in the staring roll. We even have players claiming that BGH class and Vet gens are equally useless. The truth is like the MoD he is a Marmite gen.
If you want him changed then you need to suggest something which the whole community will support and it's obvious from the previous posts that increasing his capacity to 270 is not it.
When it comes to Gene pools and shallow ends they can be found at the bar drinking pina colada's
I don't really agree with giving him 270 units as he would just be a replacement for the Major then (and not very interesting). They need to do something so the extra units on the major doesn't just offset the extra damage and fewer units on the Scientist.
I like the idea of adding splash damage to cannons, but maybe the damage bonus needs increasing too? It needs to be high enough so that 70 extra cannons on a major still does less damage. Ideally he could do with being the "go to" general when you are planning to use siege weapons.
A random suggestion for something completely different would be like adding siege reflect damage, so enemy siege units do ~50% of their damage back to their own side.
Last edited by Kotugo; 17.11.18 at 17:29.
I'm sorry to say, but the Scientist doesn't feel like he has "depth". Same goes for the Medic. As much as I like introducing new generals, I would like them to be interesting and unique. I think we don't even need new gens that often. I'd much rather get 1 in a year but so that I feel like a lot of thought went behind developing him.
Champions are an exceptional example, in my opinion. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and their traits really make players think about every enemy camp and setup. That's what makes it interesting!
I don't agree with giving Scientist more units. I think traits/abilities should always be priority #1 and then troops should be adjusted accordingly later just so we would not get an upgraded 270-gen, which is boring like Kotugo said above.
Some of my suggestions:
- Splash to cannons (+ increased unit cap if necessary)
- give heavy units normal attack speed (and reduce dmg bonus; decrease/increase unit cap if necessary)
- give heavy units flanking (and reduce dmg bonus; decrease/increase unit cap if necessarcy)
- general-specific skill tree (not every single skill, but add some different key skills to his kit to really make us decide how to build him)
I think gen-specific skill trees could be a huge and interesting improvement to generals and combat system in general.