Does the army ever become useful or should I just not bother with that entire section of the game? Because it looks to me like all I need to do is have my army be just strong enough to not die first. On the flip side, my hero is an absolute scrub and now I'm stuck because I can't make them any stronger without AFKing and finding a better game to play for an hour. while they do questing to become barely strong enough to not die like a puts.
Needless to say I'm a bit peeved at the balance of this game.
Reading down through the comments it looks like you've got yourself a case of spaghetti code for your combat. Might be helpful to just insert an if/then statement to just cut a hero's stats in half when their army is drained of units as a band-aid fix until you can get something more ideal implemented.
It's not about spaghetti code, it's just about game balance. I didn't really receive feedback about the heroes being too weak or troops too strong during the Beta, so I wasn't really aware of the issue. It's a big priority for me now to work on said balance, however.
gambling is a complete mess. it costs 1mil gold to have a 1 in 3 chance of getting a dragon eye. it also takes forever to get through that useless animation. you really need to fix that.
archer tower targeting is a nightmare. there's no way to get them to target airborne enemies over ground based, so you're basically screwed if you dont get lucky.
That blatant jax rip off in the salvia temple is stupid. his attack buff stacks, and when he uses it he always crits. he can 2 shot me at that point, which leaves no room for anything, apparently not even running away as I failed 5/5 times to flee. For ripping off League of legends you really don't understand the concept of counter-play. Also, this is with me being over leveled vainly trying to farm quest items, and still getting none.
with how your multiplicative upgrades work, upgrading the click multiplier as soon as you can is worthless since further upgrades don't benefit from the multiplier. The game gets to a point where you pretty much can't buy any more clicker upgrades because they cost somewhere around 1000x anything else you can afford, that's when you want to pick them up.
As long as you don't pull the shit that R2 games pulled and belt out recycled pay to win crap for a few years you're good to go. If the kred gear is cosmetic then charge whatever you please, cosmetics are just a reward for people who want to donate to a game.
With max luck the gem to coin conversion is just a waste, as is putting gems into anything except the slots. 50 gems into the slots got me roughly 300 gems worth of specials, and a few hundred gold on top of it.
Pretty simple game, easy to abuse the AI. I farmed up 1k credits by just trading worlds. made it a bit difficult since i couldn't deselect any planets, but I found a pretty good system. Last level came at a bit of a surprise since it seemed like there were only 10-20 levels, most of which I just rolled through with super ships.
So I got caught on the last stage of the first mission so I figured I'd save scum the free silver chalice to see what all I could get. As it turns out, not all games are created equal and what you get from that chalice defines your entire early game.
I enjoyed how different the PvP system was from other games of this type, the Ruins was a really interesting twist on the usual. Though I have to say that having no ability for non payers to get VIP benefits just puts a huge dampener on the player base, especially with how prevalent you made the VIP options for this game. Part of how I decide whether or not to put money into a game is dependent on how far I can go without putting in any money. If the game stays fun for a few weeks without cashing I'll generally put in a few dollars whenever it starts to slow down.
Defensive technologies would be amazing. I kinda feel bad throwing millions of people to their deaths over and over again just so I can throw millions of people to their deaths more effectively.
It seems like the only point of the game past 40 or so LP is filling out quests to get more LP so you can max out your skill tree. getting the skills upgraded is effortless, and you gain xp far faster then quests finish.
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It's not about spaghetti code, it's just about game balance. I didn't really receive feedback about the heroes being too weak or troops too strong during the Beta, so I wasn't really aware of the issue. It's a big priority for me now to work on said balance, however.