Summary of The Toobers + Zeus Q&A (2/2/2019)

Hi everyone, here's a summary of the 2/2/2019 Q&A that happened with Zeus on The Toobers Youtube stream. All of the points are paraphrasing/summarizing Zeus' answers, and are organized by catagory (and then chronological within the category)

Game Mechanics/Content:

Spoiler

Account sharing/changing wasn't planned from the start so it's not officially supported
The idea was to have a single main progression instead of multiple accounts
Not many people would want to play multiple acccounts, so it would be better to spending time on developing other things

"There are always new maps on the horizon"

The game code is structured to always be online so offline bot battles aren't happening anytime soon, online bot battles in Custom Battles are a possibility

Item/Boost Economy:

Spoiler

Giving more legendary pieces for NML1 doesn't devalue Legendaries because Legendaries aren't that much better than Epics, and you don't get rewards that often

Guild Boost sales are a good idea

Zeus doesn't know the exact reason for why Guild Boosts only count for one ship in Hardcore TDM

A "pity timer" (incrementing chances for getting rare items) for event rewards is a good idea and was talked about internally

In hindsight, legendaries pieces for every 10 event boxes was a mistake because it inflated the legendary economy

UI/Sound:

Spoiler

A post-game item breakdown (damage blocked by Tesla Shield, etc) would be cool and the data is available, the biggest problem is it would require a big change to the UI and you would need to load a lot of data

If sound alerts for in-game quickchat would be implemented, they would need to limit the sound cues to avoid spam

The options menu should be slim so new players don't get disheartened when they open it, that's why really niche options would rather be not added at all than clutter up the options menu

Adding the ability to commend your teammates could be a good idea, but could also be used sarcastically in a negative way

The inventory is an outdated concept, isn't made for all of the new item colors and extra items for HTDM, and isn't a huge revenue source for Rovio, so the inventory might get some changes or a rework eventually

Gamemodes/Matchmaking:

Spoiler

Casual is meant to ease players into ranked, which is why it's the same gamemode as ranked

Uneven casual matchmaking can be an effect of:
- Long queue time - The parameters relax as time goes on
- If you tank infamy, you're still treated as a high-infamy player

The game is balanced for Ranked

An event where all players have the same level of items "is one of the main things [Zeus] wants to do for events" but doesn't have any more information on "when" or "if"

Items:

Spoiler

Teal items need a bit of tweaking (eg. Defense Wall nerfed, Cleanse Pulse/Defense Aura Buffed) but Zeus wants to wait until people have leveled up versions of them instead of making knee-jerk changes
In general, don't want to change newly-launched items unless they're blatantly unbalanced

Cleanse Pulse doesn't self-cleanse because Zeus didn't want it to be too powerful

Minigun can be a good item if your items are limited, but you lose out on DPS while you use it
Possible fixes: Increase firerate, or decrease amount of rounds and increase damage

Misc:

Spoiler

Zeus started out as a tester, now focuses on design (like the Teal items)

The wiki is abandoned because it wasn't promoted, wasn't considered that impactful, and was put on the backburner

Many of the game design decisions are inspired from other games (Like the Defense Wall and Reinhardt's shield)

Things are coming up for Valentine's Day

Rovio has "quite a few" people with multiple accounts that play frequently

Check out The Toobers Youtube channel: here
Or check out the full livestream: here

 

Thanks a bunch for this! I didn’t watch the stream but I still wanted to know what they spoke about. Did anyone sink Zeus?

 

Good summary!

One of my questions was asked about removing auto-zoom when you are next to a wall which messes with the camera. Zeus thinks it would be difficult because the camera would have to detect where the wall is, and that would add too much processing to the game, but he doesn't know much about the mechanics behind it.

 

Oh there was plenty of Zeus being sunk, even moments like 1:11:56 that show that everyone can have bad games. Overall it was cool to hear a dev talk about their work and what kind of things are and aren't important when developing a game

 

Anyone have an approximate timestamp for the inventory discussion?

 

1:52:52

 

Appreciate it ... you've saved me an hour and a half

 

WHat?

 

Anyone have an approximate timestamp for the 5 fixers vs others discussion?

 

What do u mean by inventory rework ...it is good now i guess??
Can anyone explain plzz

 

A simple example for this would be like Speeders are better than usual in 2v2 events, but because Rovio balances for Ranked which is 5v5, they're not about to nerf Speeders just because they're good in certain events

They're adding more and more items/piece types/perks but inventory upgrade costs are still the same, so the changes would be somewhere to put perks (like a perk tab), or to put pieces in another menu, or some other solution to free up inventory space

 

"Things are coming up for Valentine's Day"

Can't wait to see fixers pouring love on everyone with their repair pulse and duct tape
(Those heart-shaped healing UI instead of normal one especially for Valentine's Day)

 

More importantly Zeus says the way they charge for Inventory is a dated idea, and he doesn't necessarily agree with it, particularly since it's not much of a revenue generator.

 

Don't forget most of the time Zeus was answering questions so he obviously didn't have his full attention in the games

 

It might even be a revenue inhibitor, as there is no point buying more stuff when you have nowhere to keep it.

Harsh inventory limits force people to be more sensible, conservative and austere with their purchases. That should be anathema to a company who’s entire business model is based on prodigal impulse buys.

 

He doesn‘t know why guild boosts only work for one ship? Maybe because only last ship counts in HCTDM (which still is not stated as intended or bug)
Yeah sure they play their own game

 

I'm pretty sure Zeus said this was intended, but he couldn't really come up with a plausible reason for only the last ship counting, something about you just should not die in HCTDM, then your first and only ship counts. When the toobers pointed out that in regular TDM, it doesn't matter how many times you die, all your stats count, it felt a little bit awkward and nobody knew what to say.

 

All weapons should count in HCTDM, no questions. If each ship you use counts, you could possibly exploit this by dying fast with a lame boat and then finishing with your top one. So with VIP you could get full match credits for three ship types, which is not intended for sure. I think the answer is that the ship you SELECT, should only count. Not the one you die with. That is too unpredictable to work with when questing.

 

I don’t think that the ability to complete 2-3 quests at once is that much of an ‘exploit’, since most quests can already be complete simultaneously. The problem is, it incentivises people to kill themselvs (although you do still need to win, which is a disincentive).

You could fix that by just allowing HCTDM to award full points to all ship quests, regardless of which ships you actually use. Since there is a hard limit of 3, it’s not really a big deal.