Hey everyone,

We are updating Art of Conquest frequently and doing our best to improve the game and provide you the best game experience possible. But right now what do you think that needs to be improved most? Is there any system in the game that is bothering you and could get some changes? Please share. Your feedback is very important for us.

The 10 dollar hero deal is not bad but I wish I could get more heroes for that price... Right now I only have the ranking hero plus Cleo that I got from the promotion. This really creates a gap between players, some heroes are just too strong.

Hey there! In minor changes i would like to see the improvement for Expert Mercenary Camp, so you can see it reset time from the map, like you see it now for dungeons.
Because most times Expert Mercenary Camp is located at war territory and you don't want to defy your luck every time you want to check the timer on it, riding around enemies. Thanks.

A lot of the suggestions i often see for AoC are short term problems or balance issues, likely a product of the server hopping that occurs (due to reasons that have been stated many times).

Yes Cleo is powerful. Yes spiders are strong. Yes carts are bugged and we all like the idea of more races and ranks.

But if we're talking big picture, systemic issues, try playing on a server past 40 days and tell me there is any content left to do. The fundamental systems of this game are great and a lot of fun but two of the major overarching goals - building a kickass army and taking territory - are so disincentivised in the 'late' game that you start to lose motivation to login. So to expand upon that:

Building an Army:
Why do you build an army? To fight other players with or to fight in PvE. PvE is an easy one to tackle, there is no PvE content after 40 days and little before that. After two weeks or less you can take out every world boss and after 40 days or less you can finish the tactic school. Done, no more PvE. Okay what about PvP? Let's divide it into duels and city capture. That big bad army you're so proud of that you've spend the last month building? A single bad duel and you've lost a third of it (something that can take upwards of a week or more to recover; a quarter or more of the play time you have invested so far) and the other 2/3rd's is in the hospital unusable for two or three days. Well there has to be some risk, right? We don't want some coddled game whereby there are no consequences to your actions. But the RISK has to match the REWARD. And it doesn't. At all. the reward to that risk i just mentioned is Honour, a currency of some use in the early game but, again, no use at all after 40 days when your honour has already been maxed out for a week or more.

Well what about City Capture? That IS the aim of the game, right? A perfect opportunity to flex your armies muscles and show what the last 40 days of quest grinding, hero leveling and army planning has got you. Territory is pivotal in a servers early stages but lets look again at the risk v reward of City Capture 40 days into a servers life.

Risk: The risk is the same as in a duel - an entire third of your army can be lost and the rest hospitalised for days, putting you out of action and setting you back big time. On top of this you may be assaulting walls which are, by this point, filled with golds and you're opening your base up to revenge attacks; you're risking not just your army but your entire resource bank.

Reward: A 60 hr quest timer and, lets say, a moderate increase in resource production (you may be fighting for a bigger city or you may just be fighting for some more resource tiles).

I don't want to fill this post with hypothetical math but i don't feel like it takes extensive calculation to realise that the resources invested to take a city are rarely, if ever, going to be made up as a consequence of taking a city once the server has reached its 'late' game, 40 day mark.

And ultimately what it comes down to is that this big army you're building, this castle you're leveling, this research you're pouring resources into: you're never incentivised to actually use it.

The solution? Add (substantially) more PvE content OR Modify the current reward structure to make PvP in the late game worth the risk OR provide alternate outlets to use our army - whether it's PvP arenas or whatever.

What isn't the solution? Duke units, new ranks and new races. These are bandaid 'fixes' that add content in the short term but fail to address the underlying issue.

That's my 2c and my biggest concern for what is a game with a fantastic concept and foundation.

I think that hospital time should be lowered a little bit, iti s important that it is not to low, but waiting 7 days or more to get all your troops back up once they all died feels a little bit to much, i acually want to PLAY the game.

And i think the shop and the overall ways to spend money arent great for the game right now, make the only possible thing to buy patron and increase what you get from it, aswell as overall ressource availability to keep the overall accessible ressources in a realm at the same level. Right now people only have enough ressources because they can take it from people buying them, or atleast thats what i feel like it is. I think there would be alot more people subscribing as patron if it were they only thing you could pay money for because its value would increase dramatically. I think thats the most important thing for now though there is still more to improve.
Greetings,
D.

Sparkles wrote:

What isn't the solution? Duke units, new ranks and new races. These are bandaid 'fixes' that add content in the short term but fail to address the underlying issue.

I think this is a pretty important point, especially duke units will only make pvp more unbalanced, it wont make pvp any better if your enemy is fighting you with a super strong unit that only a few people can obtain, which kills your entire army and puts you back into hospital for several days.

Sparkles wrote:

What isn't the solution? Duke units, new ranks and new races. These are bandaid 'fixes' that add content in the short term but fail to address the underlying issue. That's my 2c and my biggest concern for what is a game with a fantastic concept and foundation.

Destination wrote:

I think this is a pretty important point, especially duke units will only make pvp more unbalanced, it wont make pvp any better if your enemy is fighting you with a super strong unit that only a few people can obtain, which kills your entire army and puts you back into hospital for several days.

`

I think Sparkles really got a point there and named a few good point, but Destination already argued with some good remarks too.
My guess is there need to be some rebalancing and adjusting here and there, but with very good thoughts behind it.

There need to be some new challenges for the high level players and some goals to reach, some advantages,
BUT those don't need to be disadvantages for lower players.

In response to above posts I think the duke units should be used in attacking cities only. Can not be used in duels. This will help in killing all gold walls but be limited to few enough players that you can't a city in an hour.

My suggestion for gameplay is when you start on a server. You pick your race. Any race. This would change up the early game a lot. (Whatever race you pick you unlock human at that level instead, so if you picked dwarf you unlock human at the grimms unlock rank)

On top of this change. When you unlock the free heroes. Instead of getting a pre set hero. Allow us to choose from a set of heroes. For example

Instead of getting Vega at rank two you can choose to get vega (a human hero) or a dwarf hero or a loch hero (add a hero of each race) but you only get one. Do this for every free hero rank. This way you could theme your army around one race or have more variety in heroes peroid.

Currently pvp is kinda boring because there are only so many different builds you can go with the free heroes having a better mix would allow for more variety in combat.

I'd like to see some events.

Possible Events/tasks:
- Weekly Bosses (You know you can recycle... do it)
- Kill 100 skeletons/humans/dwarfs
- Attack 5 Players
- Raid 5 Dungeons
- Kill random monsters that pop up, must be something special, not just the regular units
-> Rewards could be cool sets or something. Regarding sets.. are there only three? Is that all?

I'm really happy with the new shop system, nice one guys. Finally more stuff, enough variation. But you could have one unit every time, with a chance for gold units. They come rarely, and quite frankly, I won't spend a dime for silver or bronze units.

It would be really cool to have new maps, only for PVE or PVP. In PVP.. well, capture some stuff, I don't know. Or let five versus five players fight against each other, whoever wins, wins. For PVE, I want more monsters and crazy stuff. Exploration has come to a halt, nothing is happening outside my territory... boring.

In response to above posts I think the duke units should be used in attacking cities only. Can not be used in duels. This will help in killing all gold walls but be limited to few enough players that you can't a city in an hour.

What's to stop people from simply transferring governor between players to have the majority of players running them?