What’s Going On with Matchmaking, New Features and Patches
02 September 2013
Last week, we gave you one simple proposition: You can ask us anything about the game, and we will answer it.
People from all levels of community interaction -- lurkers, leaders, in-betweeners -- ran to the forums and jumped at the opportunity. It took us quite a bit of effort to answer all of your questions, but we've compiled the Q&A into neatly organized categories below. If you enjoyed reading this, head to the Ask Us Anything news thread and tell us! If you like it, we'll continue doing it.
General
- How big do you honestly expect this game to get? -- Champloncar
We want the game to be as big as possible, but more than numbers, we want quality players. We want a non-toxic community that is helping, kind, and active in all of our activities.
If you build it, they will come. But if you make it taste really, really good, and the person who served it to you is really nice, and the cook in the back gives you a nice thumbs up as the plate is served to you, and the restaurant is full of people talking at a normal volume, then you will likely enjoy your meal.
- What is the single most important thing in the game? (In the opinion of the dev answering, of course.) -- Nim
Teamwork. Teamwork with your friends, with your clan mates, with random people, with the entire community, and most importantly, teamwork with Nival.
Without teamwork in a match, you are essentially a chicken with its head cut off running around the battlefield getting ganked, caught out of position, or generally not assisting the team, which can lead to much stress for all involved.
Working together with the community to improve the game for everyone. Assisting those in need and helping to teach those who are not informed. Reporting players who are toxic to the community and lending a helping hand to those in need.
Creating a positive community centered around teamwork is the most important thing to me. - Tsuda
- Are you intending to advertise the game more after the open beta is finished, or is there a plan for advertisement in the near future? -- Kekrops
Yes. Unfortunately, we’ve made a few mistakes in our approach to advertisement and as a result, the game was not advertised enough in the recent weeks. We are fixing this immediately. We are actively integrating new advertising agencies and are working hard to improve our advertising materials. We hope that the situation will improve soon, but changes thus far have been positive.
As far as other advertising goes, we plan to get all of the big names to review us, the YouTube guys to Tube us, and then we will be at any major gaming event pushing things as much as possible. Problem is, many of the big names won’t do this until the game is released on Steam as they have a general “no beta reviews unless controversial” policy.
- What are your hopes for the competitive side of the game in future, and what steps will you be taking to realise them? -- Synthetic
Right now, we are focused on internal tournaments and community-run tournaments. We just opened up the in-forum tournament system (as of 8/27) that will aid in this process, but we also have a more officially formatted (and nicer looking) system on our main website that will be used for bigger events and “seasons” of tournaments.
At this time, we do not want to focus on any sort of eSport stuff as creating a strong, healthy, and most importantly, non-toxic community is a primary goal.
You can see the Russian tournament example here this “season” was nearly 284 teams, which started in May and ended just last week: http://ru.playpw.com/tournament/8.html
- Will there be free gold giveaways? Surveys, etc. -- ltn2150
Absolutely. We already do these on Facebook, Twitter, the forums, Twitch, and anywhere possible. We did some surveys during the Closed Beta, but we have not done one recently. When we want to ask some important things, we will always post a survey.
Keep an eye on our social media for weekly opportunities to earn free gold.
- What will you focus more on, quality or quantity? -- ltn2150
It depends on what we are talking about. If we are talking about players, then the answer is most certainly quality. We don’t want to have the biggest community (it would be nice though!); we want to have the best community.
If we are talking about updates and additions to the game, this will always be quality. No one is without mistakes, but with proper testing and player patience, a high level of quality bug-free additions will make their way into the game at a reasonable pace.
- I’m curious if people with a Mac can play? If not, are there any plans to expand to Mac and when? -- RANGERBOT
Yes! We have a Mac client in the works. We have many other aspects of development that are taking precedent at the moment, but we are most certainly working on it.
- Any plans to have time limited offers? Such as:
-This week X hero is costs 25% off gold and/or silver
-This week Faction change will cost 50% less -- Lust
Yes!… Yes.
- Will Prime World be translated into other languages, like Portuguese? -- cellasvictory
Portuguese-speaking nations make up a large chunk of MOBA players, so if the Portuguese communities are interested, so are we. Before we do any more translations, we want to make sure the English version is polished and we are satisfied with its quality.
- Why design your game [with] such high minimum requirements and such a tiny amount of configuration options when both League of Legends and DOTA 2 can be run on cardboard boxes? -- Australia
Despite doing many optimizations, especially to the Castle, we are still not satisfied at this time, and we have been working towards and will continue to work towards even more optimizations in the future.
So far, we have managed to improve the minimum requirements of the game to be in line with current generation hardware, but whenever we are able to make improvements, they sneak their way into patches.
- What the heck does the optimization button do and why can I never use it?! -- Ramsi
The “optimize” button was an old feature that never was finished. The UI was created before the feature was scrapped, and it became a sort of inside joke that kept getting pushed back. We will remove it eventually.
- Any chance of more non-Facebook events that give gold rewards? -- Ailesha
Absolutely. Social Media is just a small part of our community, and we will have plenty of opportunities for people to win Gold outside of Facebook. For example, the MS Paint contest we just ran was hosted on the forums, and while it was advertised on Facebook, the winner is chosen from a user with a forum account.
- When are those of us who don't use Facebook gonna be able to add an avatar? -- Ailesha
We are working on more advanced account settings in general. This would include the ability to change your password, avatar, connect/disconnect your network and more.
- Will payment via Ultimate Game Card be supported in the near future? -- StealthKilled
This is something we need to talk about with our processor, Xsolla. If they support Subway cards, I don't see why not.
- Are you going to raise the ranged creeps health while in low level? -- Kunkka
Why would we do this? Feel free to start a thread with some discussion and figures.
- Are you thinking about changing the way that towers attack in this game? Because they suddenly change their agro while their last target is still alive (no enemy heroes are nearby), which is really frustrating for the laning phase. -- Kunkka
Our tower mechanics recently underwent some changes that made them a bit smarter on who they attack and why.
A tower will not attack a player unless they are in tower range and the player is damaging a player of the opposite team. If a player is being attacked by the tower, it will not change targets unless that player either dies or is no longer in tower range or sight. Towers will also prioritize players over the larger lane minion that raises flags when they are the only two target options.
Servers
- How many servers do you have for this game now, and what areas do they mainly cover? -- shadow screem
We have one server cluster in Russia and one in Washington, DC. The US cluster would generally cover all of the US with pings ranging from 25ms in the East to ~100ms in the West. European connections may range from ~100ms to ~200ms. Accessing the US servers from Russian regions will have pings ranging from ~175ms to ~250ms.
We currently only have the one server cluster in the US as it is our test bed for the US/EU launch of the game.
- Are there gonna be new servers (for example, a server for EU region or one for the Middle East)? If yes, do you have a specific date on when these servers might come up? -- shadow screem (And Karnaga)
We are considering adding an European server once we have a stable playerbase. We want to ensure that the US server is stable before we branch out to more cluster locations. We always want players to have the best experience possible, and if the game is widely successful, we would say sooner rather than later.
Matchmaking
- How does matchmaking work? -- Borson
We don't release the details of our algorithm, but we can explain a bit more about the process a player goes through in the queue.
When a player enters the queue you have to imagine it like a points on a line. They begin to search for other players that are very close to their matchmaking rating. After about 30 seconds, their search range begins to widen, but not by much. When the range widens the players rating is considered a bit more and a bit less than it really is so they are able to be matched quicker.
If a player manages to wait 15 minutes in the queue they are placed into a priority position and the server will start to somewhat disregard their rating a bit in hopes of placing them into a match. This is called the Soft Cap.
If a player reaches 20 minutes in the queue their rating is entirely disregarded and they will be put into a match as soon as possible.
Players who are new to the game are queued into their own pool of players where the matchmaking rules do not apply. Players who have not won 10 games will only play against others who have not won 10 games and they will see duplicate heroes in matches since the amount of heroes you have to choose from is lower as a new player.
The last part is about groups and premades. When grouping with 2 or more people, both or all players are matched to the highest rating player in the group. Additionally, more rating is added on top of that as the group is considered more skilled. For a group of 5 players the additional rating added is +150, 4 players +100, and so on, so forth.
So for example, your team looks like this: 1200, 1356, 1293, 1900, 1659, the whole team is queued as 2050 rating. With all other things in consideration, if this group somehow manages to hit 20 minutes into the queue, they will be considered any rating.
All of this may seem a bit unfair, but there is a simple way to make it all work better. Player population. As it is, we want people to get into fair games. The server wants players to get into fair games, but we always want people to at least play, and thats how it all works.
- Why is matchmaking so unbalanced? When will it be fixed? -- Nocturo (And Kenron, WarBandit, StealthKilled, ltn2150)
After 20 minutes of waiting in a queue, players will be automatically readied for a match with other players regardless if it is balanced or not (regarding rating). We do this because no matter what, we want to give players at the top a fair chance to even get into a match. Since we do not have a sufficient amount of high level players yet, they sometimes have no one else to play against and will be matched after 20 minutes resulting in what is considered an “unbalanced match.”
The “fix” will come with population. More players at more ratings will aid in the matchmaking process and will create a higher percentage of “balanced matches” made by the server. When exactly? Two weeks or so with Steam, and more to come after with other efforts.
- Why is the starting rank so low compared to the 1500 on RU? -- Borson
First, we would like to explain that on both the EN and RU versions, new players start with Heroes at 1100 rating. Previously on the RU version, new Heroes started at 1290, but this grew to be a problem. The reasoning is as such:
With new players starting at 1290, they were being matched up with fairly powerful heroes in the 1500 range due to how the matchmaking system works as explained above. So to solve this problem of fairness with matchmaking, we reduced the starting point to 1100.
By starting at 1100, new players were not being matched against mid-rating players and were able to work their way to the mid-rating with less strife.
In the EN version, we also did this because we knew it would be better for matchmaking and fairness; however, in order for this model to work, it requires a large active player base with a wide range of ratings, something we did not have from the start like on the RU version.
- Can we request compensation for leavers who don't come back? Battles are almost always one-sided. -- Ramsi
Unfortunately, this is the nature of multiplayer games. Unless a game is designed for drop-in-drop-out play (like Team Fortress or other deathmatch games), it becomes a lot more technical as to what would be considered “fair.” While giving the players the benefit of the doubt is most certainly what people want, it leaves room for exploitation from others.
The best we can do is punish these types of players and with enough offenses remove them from the game entirely.
When it comes to any multiplayer game, you can never have full control over the “human factor.” The best you can do is set rules and punish those who break them, which leaves no room for exploitation.
- Do you intend on ever letting Keepers and Imperium play on the same team against another mixed team to enhance queue times? -- Cleave Edge (And Kekrops)
Queue times will normalize once the population of the game increases from Steam and other sources.
We are also considering some other platforms that are known for Free-To-Play since Steam is not the ONLY source of online gamers.
- Will you place the Borderlands variants (Native Land, Apocalypse and Switcheroo) in the Borderlands rotation queue? -- Ailesha
Some players may not like those others modes. Borderlands Classic is our most popular mode at the moment, and unless particular testing is needed, we don’t want to force players to play any one mode.
- When's the Borderlands map going to have a visual upgrade? -- zeme
We intend to polish Borderlands in the near future, both visually and balance wise. Part of this is scheduled to be released by the end of the year.
- While the game still has a low population would temporarily disabling premade teams be a viable option? -- Australia
This is not something we want to do and feel it would have an adverse effect on the playerbase. We want players to play together, and we want players to create teams and clans. We understand that when solo players get matched up against groups, the odds are against them, but in the end, skill will always prevail. It would be counter-productive to our goals for the game’s community and message of teamwork and clan play.
Population will increase in time and help all of this. We just ask for patience while we get there.
- Possibility of a solo queue ranking as well as a group ranking? -- Miinkee (And Kekrops)
While we are not considering having two separate ratings, we are working on getting groups matched with other groups more often.
- Will you be adding a non-ranked queue for people who just want to play their heroes and not affect their ranking? (This should also not reward talents as well. It should be purely for fun/learning.) - Miinkee
One of the aspects of Prime World is our leaderboards, clan rankings, and hero rankings. If a player is able to sustain a leaderboard position by reaching a high ranking and “turning off” the ability to gain or lose points, then they will be able to retain that rank.
Additionally, this creates an imbalance in the community as high-skilled players may choose to play high-power heroes at a low ranking and will never be moved out of that bracket for winning. Would you want someone with 1800 power, 1200 rating to be able to turn off their ability to gain or lose points (they don't need the talents at this point) and “unranked queue” over and over? It’s simply not a good solution at this time for players not wanting to risk rating by playing.
Simply adding a map to the rotation that is a non-ranked match would be a less volatile solution, but we are just spitballing here. Even that has its own complications.
- Will the random latency spikes be addressed? -- StealthKilled
We have already started an initiative to gather some more specific data from players about their connections. Once we have that data, we will be able to assess the situation more thoroughly. Server connection integrity is one of our top concerns. What’s the point of the game if you can't actually play it?
We encourage players to post in this thread if they are having issues with latency.
Lag Reports
New Features/Options
- Smartcasting? - bunch of people
We will be adding self-casting, but we are still discussing whether or not we will be adding Smartcasting as well. Some players as well as developers think that Smartcasting will decrease the skill factor of the game, and we are going to give this more thought before we make a decision on it.
- Will you add in a [player] report system? -- ltn2150 (And Kekrops)
Yes.
- Will you add an Ignore/Avoidance System? A system where you can avoid certain players who you deem to be toxic or you just don’t like them. -- ltn2150 (And Miinkee)
Ignore/Avoidance systems to not get matched with certain players is not something we plan to do. Simply put, the effects would be monumental on the matchmaking system. Over time, the whole system would fail to create matches altogether. Having a functional ignore system is the best solution at this time.
- Are you going to apply a Pause option with voting (like surrender)? -- Kunkka
We have discussed this feature before and really want to do it, but in order to make it happen, we would need to push back the report system and other critically important features. When the resources are available, we will explore the option again.
- Are you going to apply spectator mode on live matches? -- Kunkka
Again, it’s something we have discussed, but in order to make it happen, we would need to push back the report system and other critically important features. When the resources are available, we will explore the option again.
This feature also requires a delay system on the match and server changes that would allow for a large number of players to be watching the match without causing lag or bugs to that match.
- Any thoughts on watching/saving replays? -- Kunkka
We don't feel like this feature (which is quite common for eSport-type games) would be popular within our community; however, if there are a lot of players (not just top players) who consider this important, we might reconsider.
- Should there be a way to look at talents in the loading screen? -- Australia
I personally (Tsuda) think that you should not be able to see anyone’s talents until the end of a match. In the same way that looking at players’ name color and rating can instantly cause players to quit or not play their best, seeing another player’s talents may also create this effect if someone does not feel that player is up to par.
On the other hand, you may be able to make suggestions to other players about what they should take considering the hero matchups.
With two sides to a coin, it’s something that needs a lot of consideration before implementation. Does a feature have more negative effects than positive effects? Is it possible to resolve the negatives?
- WHEN DO WE GET THAT ADORABLE DUCKLING AS A PET FROM THE CAMPAIGN?! -- Ramsi
You want that? Ok. Noted.
- When shall we see the Android/[iOS] app for the castle? -- Crazed
While we cannot give any specific times, we can say that we want to finish the Mac version of the game before moving on to the mobile applications.
- When are you going to add a "Skill Stacks" to know at what point a skill has come? [When are you going to add the ability to see how much has stacked in stacking abilities. For example Inflow of Prime and others that gain XX per kill up to YY amount.] -- BryanFury
We already have this feature on in our plans, but have no estimate on it at this time.
- Do you have anything planned that will disconnect the game automatically if you log in from a different location? -- Endalaus
We also have this feature in our plans, but again, we have no estimate on it at this time.
- Will there be potential for talent trading between individuals, or will it be limited to clan members via the aforementioned clan bank? Will the clan bank be for talents, resources and/or gold? -- TSteel (And Turty11, BryanFury)
The Clan Bank will be for Talent “borrowing” from within the clan only. If a player puts a Talent into the bank, other players can withdraw this Talent and use it as long as that player who deposited it remains in the clan. If a clan disbands, all players will have their talents returned to them.
We have no plans to allow trading of resources and gold as it will create a scamming and phishing environment. If players are able to move anything off of one account onto another, it creates this risk, and limiting these factors will reduce or eliminate this possibility.
- Chat interface improvements coming? Specifically, changing the chat color (PM purple is painful), chat window improvements (expanding the window and adding a scroll bar), timestamps. (I afk in castle a bit, would be nice to know how old a message sent to me is.) -- Borson
Some of these improvements like expanding the chat window and better keybindings will be in the next version while others will take more time to be implemented.
- Will there be actual items in the shops that are "active" items? -- ltn2150
No.
- Are you going to add in more Game Modes? -- ltn2150
Yes, right now we are working on polishing our current PvE mode and are working on another. We can't promise any dates, though. We feel ready to start working on another PvP mode as well.
- Will you be adding a button to lock the action bar so abilities won’t accidentally be removed during fights? -- Miinkee
Yes.
- Can you add the ability to chat with the clan during games? -- Miinkee
We will consider this for the future, sure.
- Would it be possible in the near future (preferably next patch) to do some changes to the ignore list? Clan tags screw up the ignore list, allowing someone who was previously ignored to re-appear on the chats. -- Ailesha
This is part of our chat improvements, so it will be fixed in upcoming patches.
Patch Updates
- Do you intend to make any significant changes that are not in the Russian version, or are you going to follow every step they take? (New heroes, hero changes, buildings, etc.) -- Strike (And Departed, Synthetic)
We plan to keep the versions very close to each other in all aspects except monetization. We recognize that the monetization in the RU version may not be what is suitable for the EN version.
- Since we haven't gotten the Russian patch yet, I'm gonna go ahead and ask, are you waiting for the next patch to be out in Russia before releasing new patches here? If so, will you release the patch Russia had (9.9) or the new one (9.10)? In other words, are you planning on skipping a patch entirely? -- Sturm Brightblade (And Derity, Danty, Sharksrage)
It is true that we will be skipping 9.9 and moving on to 9.10. This will be a large patch with many changes. The reasoning for this is because of Steam. We wanted to be able to upload a “final” version to Steam so that players are not having to update so soon after installing as this can create a poor user experience.
- With more games adding updates bi-weekly and monthly to retain playerbase, do you guys have a time schedule to get updates out? -- SHINYxARMOR
We want our updates to be meaningful and without strife. Many players who play online games complain about frequency of patches in relation to file sizes and poor Internet speeds. When you update Prime World, we want it to mean something. Luckily our architecture allows for pretty good diffing, so long gone are the days of 200MB hotfixes.
But to better answer the question, we want to give more of a heads up as to when and what we plan to update and fix sooner rather than later. It’s a part of our communication that we will continue to work on.
Skins
- How much quicker can you come out with skins? -- Departed
Currently our art team is working on updating the original Hero skins to make them better. They are also constantly working to improve the game’s art style in general. New skins are made when there are no other art tasks for them to do, but for now, they are updating old ones.
We have a backlog of skins that are still waiting to be added to the game. It simply comes down to development resources to implement them. Order of priorities comes into play here. Players will complain and call us greedy if we do not fix things and are releasing skins instead.
- Are we going to get that Rainbow Dash skin for the Maiden? Pretty please? -- Riepah
Assuming it does not cut close to copyright, player-desired skins are a possibility. Once we are ready to take on such a task, we will most likely hold a contest or event to determine which skin(s) will be created and added to the game.
Castle
- When will we be able to expand our castle? -- ChiefMace (And BryanFury, Ramsi)
We know you don't want to hear it… but soon. Likely within the year.
- Any chance we might be able to get new castles or one day customize our castle with upgrades? -- Ramsi
With the expansion of the Castle, you will have more free space to place decorations. They are not widely used right now due to optimizing space in the current Castle.
If more customization is desired from the community, we will certainly look into other things that we can do.
- Cheaper spa pricing? -- An Airborne Cat
There are many ways to earn Silver and spend less of it. There is a Silver production building that can be upgraded. Being in a Clan offers Vigor regeneration. Upgrading the Spa will increase Vigor regeneration, and having Golden Age can aid in earning more Silver.
This is all working as intended and balanced so that players choose to play more Heroes. We understand some people want to play the same Hero all the time, but that’s simply the mechanics of our game. The ability to spend Gold on regenerating a Hero is one of the few remaining monetization options for us, so we intend to keep that as well.
- Have you ever thought about making special spaces for decorations? Some small rocks here and there that only decorations can be put close to them, so base would look less like a facility with stacked up buildings. -- Kareblis
This also relates to the expansion of the Castle. When we add that in, players will have more free space to put decorations as the amount of production builds will likely not change much.
- Would removing the limit on top-tier houses be something we could look into in the future? -- Ramsi
No. We want players to have a diverse selection of buildings in their Castle and this includes “housing quarters.” How are you going to cram 1000 people into 1 house?!!?
Heroes
- Will hero buying ever get cheaper? -- Ramsi
At this time, no. If you compare our other premium items like Skins and the equivalent effects of Golden Age to most games, we are cheaper without a doubt. A wide range of the Heroes available are purchasable for only 9 Gold. (~$0.30 USD), only our newly featured Heroes cost 499 Gold.
Silver for Hero purchasing is not very hard to farm at higher levels, and these later Heroes are intended for higher-level players to earn through their progression.
We even have some players complaining about having nothing to spend their Silver on.
- Will you ever balance the heroes? -- Departed (And Kekrops, Stromzor)
Heroes have been undergoing balance since the Russian release two years ago, and they are constantly undergoing balance to this day. The most recent balance was to the Inventor.
Simply saying Heroes are unbalanced does not offer any insight into why or how. There have been very few discussions on the forums that have provided evidence as to any particular Hero being unbalanced. We want people to discuss their vision of a balanced hero more so that we do not simply use data to make changes.
- More exclusive faction-based heroes? -- An Airborne Cat
For now, we have no plans to add any more. Balancing two Heroes at once that are similar but not identical takes a lot of development resources. Additionally, it takes twice as long to develop and can add some already existing strain to the community who wants them on both sides.
We are still considering doing more in the future. Timing just has to be right.
- Can we get a cast time on Blizzard like the Sorcerer [fireball]? -- Stromzor
While Cyro/Blizzard might be a strong character in mid-ratings, it is only a matter of finding the right strategy to use against her. You will not see her dominating on higher rating matches. Adding the cast time would only make her weaker in all rating brackets. We want to give this a little bit more time and see if she will continue to be a strong mid-rating character.
The illusion that she is unbalanced in this nature is due to our current community having several very high-rated Cyro/Blizzard players, and the availability of the character for a very cheap price in the beginning of the game.
- Any chance of making some default male heroes with female skins switch to female default? As it stands, there's too many male heroes compared to female without buying skins. -- Ailesha
We never intended this to be the case, and it has never really been an issue until now. It’s an important matter to us, and we have already stated in interviews that we planned to add more diverse Skins and Heroes in the future to balance things out and go beyond the standard in gaming these days.
As for the defaulting, it’s not something that we feel we need to do at this time. As we continue to add more female Skins and Heroes, it will naturally balance itself out.
- Is there any hope for a Keeper version of Doctrine or an Imperium Artiste? -- Australia
The faction-exclusive Heroes are a feature of the game, and we would like to keep them that way.
Minigame
- Can we look at a potion-brewing minigame one day? -- Ramsi
The Minigame itself is already a controversial topic as some players do not want it in the game and others do. We feel that adding another minigame would only make this even more controversial, and the ability to create Potions would take a long time to balance.
- Do you plan on implementing a change for the current Scroll Workshop to allow for colorblind people to use it or to let users set custom colors? -- Miinkee (And Heal n Peel, Sharksrage)
This is a surprisingly difficult thing to do depending on the way certain games are built. Unfortunately in our case, it would take a lot of development resources to do it. While we would really like to do this, it is not something we can promise any time soon.
- Will there be minigames to play during queues? -- ltn2150 (And Kareblis)
This idea is tempting, but at the moment we want to focus on lowering the queues so that there is no need for such a thing. The average queue time currently is around 5 minutes, but that average will drop significantly with the increase in population from Steam.
- What are some good baseline numbers to be aiming for in the scroll game? I was asked was if I were good at it, and I had no clue at all. -- Australia
As long as you are within 3-4 levels even up into the level 25 range (yes, players do play that long, even in competitive matches), then you are doing just fine. As long as you are consistently winning and doing well, you will never be left too far behind in Prime.
Talents
- Can we at some point get custom talents? I'd kill to be able to spend some of my junk silver I have no use for to make an item with stats I want. -- Ramsi
We were considering something like this in the past, but the negatives were nearly as much as the positives. Since we felt this way, we decided it was not a good addition to the game. Even in the future we do not think this will make its way in.
- Do you ever plan on adding more talents other than Oranges? -- SHINYxARMOR
There are no current plans to add another tier of talents. We plan to add more talent sets that are themed around the new Heroes, and we have limited-time talents that are able to be earned during events and holidays. As far as adding new talents to the lower-quality tiers is concerned, adding more talents there would make it even harder to find the talents to want while working your way up through the qualities.
- Is the 70% reduction of cooldowns talent going to continue to exist as it is? It tends to make the negatives of some heros (i.e. Doctrine and Blizzard most notoriously) almost completely negated. -- Swiftwynd
We have had enough time with the Russian version to evaluate and balance this talent. Through that, we have found that is it only popular in a certain bracket of gameplay and is only seen frequently because these two Heroes are quite popular.
- All of our +5 talents got reduced, but we didn't get all them skills back we used, only the prime crystals. Why not our skills back or a bit more compensation? -- Stromzor
The reduction not just to the talents but the loss of talents used to upgrade them was not only a known effect of the change, but it was also a desired effect. We know that not everyone is happy with this, but it was a balance decision that we had to make. The compensation should help in the recovery of those lost talents.
Part of the idea is that it will take a little bit of time for players to gain back any lost power instead of instantaneously, which is the desired effect.
- Could you create Battle Talents that have a much less "Cool Down", say about 8-16 secs? -- ChiefMace
When designing Prime World, we didn't want players to spam abilities constantly with little care for their energy cost or importance for when they are used. Strategic use of abilities is a core part of the game for us.
- What's with the early jungling talents Awe Striker and Advantage giving an RNG chance of a large amount of bonus damage and not consistent amount of smaller bonus damage? - Australia
This makes an assumption that they were designed as “jungling talents.” While their use in the jungle is very good, they are not limited to this. With last hitting being an important aspect of the game, when laning you may only have several safe opportunities to land hits safely, and these items give a chance opportunity to secure a last hit in less hits.
Other thoughts on the subject: By adding RNG (Random Number Generator [Chance]) to this item, we give the player the opportunity to get very “lucky” with multiple hits in a row allowing them to clear higher HP jungle minions or advanced lane minions (from taking out an Armory) quicker, which also has its “fun” factor.
(“Fun” is a whole other game design discussion that can be saved for another time or a live stream.)
- Is your team happy with the current power of some "activatable" purple quality talents being universally available for any hero to use? -- Swiftwynd
We have balanced them a lot in the past, and some talents have undergone many iterations to get where they are. We think the balance is quite good right now, but this does not mean that they could not be changed in the future if needed.
- When will the ability to equip Orange talents be placed back in? -- Miinkee
Enabling Orange talents is entirely dependent on the health and quality of the community. Once we feel that we have reached the desired balance, we will allow players to use Orange talents again.
- Is the upgrade to the talents going to stay at three stars for a while, or will it again be upgradable to five soon? -- Miinkee
Same answer as above. Enabling Orange talents is entirely dependent on the health and quality of the community. Once we feel that we have reached the desired balance, we will allow players to use Orange talents again.
- Will there be an option to change which talents pop up when you have enough time to equip them during gameplay? -- Miinkee
Currently, talents show up in the quick selection based on their order from left to right; however, Hero-specific talents will sometimes ignore this and be shown in the quick selection first.
We consider this mechanism to be best suited for new players as it aids them in getting their abilities over random stats. We do not have any plans to change it at this time.
- What exactly does Art of War do? It says it lowers Stamina and Will but not by how much. -- Australia
4. It might be a small bug it is not displaying the value on the talent.
http://primeworld.gamepedia.com/Art_of_War_V
- I've read unbinding Blues will cost silver soon. Any plans to making unbinding higher talents cost Crystals instead of Gold? -- Borson
Yes, Blue talents will cost only Silver to unbind in the next patch. No, we intended to keep Purple and Orange talent unbinding to Gold.
Stats
- When a hero gains a level, instead of adding the attribute points to the Level 36, could you allow them to be added to Level 1? -- ChiefMace
Hero attribute points are distributed amongst all 36 levels. They do not simply go into effect at level 36. You can change the interface to show you the stats at level 1 by using the pull-down menu above the stats.
- What does it mean when the Penetration description says, “Penetration has less effect on damage from talents”? -- cbrons
If your attack comes from the use of a skill or talent, it will use 25% less of your Penetration rating.
Max bonus from Penetration is 75% no matter what.
- Is there an easy way to calculate what stats are gained by level? -- Australia
No, stats differ from Hero to Hero and curves differ as well for balance. We do not reveal these exponents.
Golden Age
- Will Golden Age ever be modified in a good way instead of per day to be per time spent in game or Per Match? -- Danty
If we were to do such a thing, we would have to disable Golden Age’s ability to work in the Castle because it is time based and not match based. Having two different types of Golden Age is not something we want to do. If it were “time spent in game,” then you would run into a similar issue with Castle production as it continues while you are not in game.
PVE
- Will we see more PvE from Prime World in the future? -- Crazed (And Kekrops)
Absolutely. We intend to continue to expand on upon PvE. We have a story to tell, and we want it to be told through these challenges.
- Will challenge be nerfed since it’s way too difficult for an average Green party? -- Kekrops
In the next patch, the Green challenge’s difficulty is reduced.
Community
- How come people who constantly harass others aren’t being punished? -- Turty11
They are being punished. We have policies in place that give the players a certain length of suspension, an additional suspension that is longer, a third suspension that is even longer, and a final ban after.
Some of the reports that people have sent in do not qualify for any actions as the content or “evidence” provided did not actually show foul play, or upon deeper investigation we find that the screenshots do not tell the whole story when compared to the chat logs.
This is a good opportunity to talk about reporting players. The first thing we have been telling others and have seen in the reports is that the player submitting a report often tells the offender that they are “reported” in chat. This usually makes people even more angry and more likely to not play nice. We advise against this, and ask that you do not do it.
Additionally, we are finding that players are sometimes reporting others after extensively provoking them to a point where they rage. We have taken action against these types of reporters and advise others to not attempt to “troll” others into getting more angry for the purpose of reporting them for a single outburst.
- What are the actual (approximate) numbers regarding the population among factions split? Does the Imperium vastly outnumber the Keepers? Is it the other way around? -- Borson
49.78% Imperium
50.22% Keepers
- Metrics, other than Borderlands, which is most played game mode? Least played? -- Borson (And Umbrella)
For the moment, Outpost is the second most popular mode. As for the least popular - let’s just say they are all almost equal. :)
Random
- Do you prefer waffles or pancakes? -- Raviren
Pancakes, duh, its Russia.
- Do you like Bunnies? -- BunniValerie
OH YEAH
- What do you suggest Prime World players should cook tonight for their ''borderland raid snack''? -- Stratovarius20
Fries with icecream?
Tsupocket?
