7 Things holding Zening back.

1.Guilds would help the game to grow and maintain popularity.
2. Sometimes, a game will be waiting for 8 people to start a 4v4 hero game. The creator will then decide to start with 6 people (3v3). And Sometimes something will glitch so that there are in fact 6 viewable players in the game loading, however there is a 7th player able to chat in the game chat. The 7th player receives a loss.
3. All games with enough players to make teams should be able to play with your friends ViA pre-made teams. A password to join a game could be a solution. The option to choose which team you want is a solution. Whatever solution you choose, the way it functions now is NOT enjoyable.
4. The game should stop waiting for players to sync after a finite amount of time and just continue as tho they are not connected. Those players not yet synchronized should simply miss that turn, or lag themselves while others continue to play. More like world of warcraft than starcraft works.
5. Setting up the hero should be done on either a different screen (page) or a different area of the manage army page and should not effect your army set up what so ever. (think Tactics arena online avatars)
6. In 1v1 hero games, the creator can “Kick” the opponent for any reason, including but not limited to: the creator lagging. The opponent who did not create the game can not kick the creator. A minimum 5 second or 10 second lag before enabling the Kick button would fix this.
7. Zening will increase your browsers memory usage add infinitum. That is, with out end. You’ll either have to warn people to refresh their browser every ~30 mins, fix it, or abandon zening for now and take some courses on how to code. This memory dump/leak is perhaps what causes the lag.

- Phyrexian Level 50 – Story mode complete. (I’d go further into each topic but It’s already a wall of text).

EDIT 8. Large hero games would be awfully more fun if a healer on your team was at all viable. However healing others almost never works as they must not move in order to receive a heal. Furthermore, The damage that a single character can take in a single turn in hero is often greater than the hero’s max HP, Making healing spells often useless. U could change healing spells to work as shields in hero games. Increasing max HP Temporarily by the amount the heal would do in army would have the same effect. And I know it can be done since Trap works differently in hero than it does in Army. Would Also be acceptable if heals like “Team Heal” worked on all players including the ones that chose to move that phase. Please fix, healing is broken in hero.

EDIT: By Request, My suggestions to even out the available units.

Kiel: Increase HP to 118-126 (up from 100)
Epic probe: Increase Hp to 56-64 (up from 40) and Increase movement to star(3) like peatin.
T.N.R.: Increase HP to 64-72 (up from 48) and increase Movement 1 square to diamond(3) like dragon.
Keavy: Increase Attack to 14-16 (up from 12)and Increase health gained per round to 4.
Lluks: Decrease life lost per round to 7-10 (down from 15).
A-Bot: Increase HP gain per round to 2, Increase attack range to be the same as miri’s, Reduce attack fatigue to 12 (down from 16).
Nicole: Increase attack to 22 (up from 9).
Telsna: Increase attack to 18 (up from 12) and increase attack fatigue to 12 (up from 6).
Roach: Increase HP to 48 (up from 40).
Airro: Increase movement by one square (like peatin)
Noga: Increase HP to 48 (up from 40).
Beverly: Increase Attack to 15 (up from 12).
Ben: Decrease attack fatigue to 4 (down from 12).
Katrina: Decrease attack farigue to 8 (down from 12).

Higher level units would still have some advantage over lower lever units.

EDIT Suggestions to increase spell balance.
Enemy Drain: Increase health drained from each unit to 4-6. (Up from 1)
Trap: Decrease Number of turns to 3. (down from 4)
Team Heal: Reduce Cool Down to 5 turns (down from 6)
Self Heal 2: Reduce Cool Down to 7-8 (down from 9)
Fireball 2: Increase damage to 18 (up from 6) Increase Cool down to 4 turns (up from 3)
Single Summon: Decrease cool down to 4-6 turns (down from 16) or increase Summoned peatin stats to be the same as Peatin.
Poison 2: Reduce cool down to 6 turns (down from 7) And increase damage to 8 (up from 6)
Area Kamikaze: Increase damage to 12 (up from 5).
Line Wall: Reduce Cool down to 4 turns (down from 8)
Self Maelstrom: Reduce Cool down to 4 turns (down from 8)
Fireball 1: Reduce Cool down to 4 turns (down from 6)
Single Heal 2: Increase range to 3 squares, Reduce cool down to 6 turns (down from 7).
Drain: Decrease Cool down to 6-8 turns (down from 9)
Lightning: Decrease cool down to 3 turns (down from 7)
Self Kamikaze: Increase damage to 18 (up from 5) Increase Cool Down to 12 turns (up from 8).

Here’s a Copy of the Email I sent the creator of Zening.

Hello, I am Phyrexian from Kongregate. I am writing to you to offer some feedback on your game Zening.

Just to introduce myself; I’m 26 years old, I’m perusing a Master’s in Mathematics @ Concordia University in Montreal. I’ve played many games in the past, Almost always strategic, and preferably Turn based.

I’ve Played and helped the developer of Three Card Magic. I assisted with rules and new ideas to make the game more attractive and balanced for users.

I’ve played all of the following for as many hours as it took for me to master them and be In top guilds or have an elite record and skill.

Tactics Arena Online
Magic The Gathering
Chess
Castle Wars
Starcraft
World of Warcraft. (including beta testing and feedback for patches)
WarBook.

I’ve also played these games with interest

Maganic Wars
Tactics 100
Risk online
Monster Master
Raversi
Advanced-Wars
Final Fantasy Tactics.

I’m something of a Turn Based Strategy Games Addict. >.< I’ve just quit world of warcraft, looking for something new. I’d Like to play Zening competitively But It’s not popular enough. I was surprised at first because it’s really a Beautiful game yet it is less popular than castle wars (not a terrible game but it pales in comparison to what Zening could be). But as I played more and more, completed story mode and reached Level 50 I realized that Zening was missing some essential things for success. I’ve talked about Zening a lot with other users and I’ll share with you the main ideas.

Most obvious, Most important, and Least interesting are the bugs and the lag. I know that I, along with many others, have reported several bugs several times with the “report a bug” feature on Kongregate. I could include a list of them in this email but I think you have access to these reports and this email will be lengthy enough without such a list. Still, let me know if you would like one. There are some bugs that you have left unfixed for so long that we, the player base, have began to wonder If u still care about the game at all. Simple things like how Single heal 1 and single heal 2 are mixed up, and fury 5 is +10 while the tool tip still reads + 5, among many others. I hope you are still interested and passionate about Zening because the potential of this game is huge.

The next most Important and Vital thing a game like this needs is a way to organize the community. This would also, unfortunately, be the largest change to the game. This would be a huge project and I couldn’t suggest a complete functional way to go about it just yet, but I’ll try to walk you through my reasoning for starters. What keeps your player base comming back is two things; Sense of community and the chance to stand out in it, and Competition. Guilds (or alliances between friends) meet both of these criteria. The guilds would have a rating or score that would distinguish them from other guilds. This rating could be the combined XP of the members or the Average XP or level of the members. I would suggest average so that a guild of 100 level 5’s does not beat a guild of 10 level 10’s. This is a new dimension of competition, one in which friends have to answer for their level to not just them selves, but to the guild as a whole. Provided the basic bugs and lag are fixed, this would give a mighty boost to your player base and to general interest in the game.

I do not believe Kongregate is set up to allow things like /g to whisper all members of one’s guild (guild chat) but that’s one important thing; a way for guilds to interact in private. I also do not think Kongregate is set up to allow for users to create private chat rooms (password-ed) so that guilds can congregate and discuss things in private. It may take some innovation on your part to integrate guilds into Zening if it remains on Kongregate.

Guilds are great and all, but Zening is NOT purely a 1v1 game. It’s no use to be in a guild with other equally skilled players if the people on your team are random. In fact you may end up on the team of an opposing guild fighting against your own guild-mates. The way people join games should change. Here is one option:

1.Before creating or joining a game, you can choose to invite other players to your team, not necessarily players from your guild. Simply enter the players names in a field and press invite, which pops up the window asking the entered players to accept the invite.
2. Once you are happy with the size of your team you can either create a game or join a game.
3. Teams of players all join the game on the same team. Games are no longer forced to remain even as players fill up, one team can be full while the other one is empty and waiting for players or teams to join.
4. If there is a game where one team is not full, and a team would like to join, they may press join, this will notify the creator of the game that a team would like to join but there is not enough room. He or she may then choose to accept the entire team, removing the other players in that team from the que for the game.

I hope that was clear. Well that’s one example, there are others, but that’s the most simple I’ve thought of so far. Adding this feature/function to the game (on top of fixing the bugs, lag, and adding guilds) would greatly increase 1). The experience of playing zening 2). the sense of community and the bonds between friends on Zening, and 3). The competition. Being in control of who you play with is 100% Necessary in order for healthy competition. It’s possible in all other games, and it’s so obvious one doesn’t even think about it in major league sports.

My last two suggestions are not as important as the last two, but they are still of huge significance. I want to mention that I understand the Army / Hero balance very well. Personally I think army balance is the most important to maintain. The problem is that right now there is next to no balance in hero games. Some minor stat changes to characters and spells would help and at the end of this email I will list my suggestions. First I want to explain a short cut I thought of to balance hero without messing up army. The problem in hero is that a single unit can be attacked by 5 other units in a single turn, without the chance to heal, run, or do anything at all. This, like it or not, is a problem. The simplest, and so far best, solution is to change the way healing spells work in hero games. I know you can do this relatively easily (code wise) as Trap works differently in hero than it does in army. Healing is also useless in hero games (at least large number games like 3v3 or more) since a unit can die in one turn. My solution to both these problems at once is simple:

Healing spells no longer heal in hero games, instead they increase max HP for a limited time (3-4 turns). This simple yet elegant change will allow for hero games to be far more complex and interesting. It would also make healers a viable unit for Hero games (provided you fix the healing bug which I’m sure you know about). The key to balancing hero without effecting army is changing how spells work in hero games (although some stat adjustments are sill needed for both hero and army and I’ll leave you with that list now:

Kiel: Increase HP to 118-126 (up from 100)
Epic probe: Increase Hp to 56-64 (up from 40) and Increase movement to star(3) like peatin.
T.N.R.: Increase HP to 64-72 (up from 48) and increase Movement 1 square to diamond(3) like dragon.
Keavy: Increase Attack to 14-16 (up from 12)and Increase health gained per round to 4.
Lluks: Decrease life lost per round to 7-10 (down from 15).
A-Bot: Increase HP gain per round to 2, Increase attack range to be the same as miri’s, Reduce attack fatigue to 12 (down from 16).
Nicole: Increase attack to 22 (up from 9).
Telsna: Increase attack to 18 (up from 12) and increase attack fatigue to 12 (up from 6).
Roach: Increase HP to 48 (up from 40).
Airro: Increase movement by one square (like peatin)
Noga: Increase HP to 48 (up from 40).
Beverly: Increase Attack to 15 (up from 12).
Ben: Decrease attack fatigue to 4 (down from 12).
Katrina: Decrease attack fatigue to 8 (down from 12).

Enemy Drain: Increase health drained from each unit to 4-6. (Up from 1)
Trap: Decrease Number of turns to 3. (down from 4)
Team Heal: Reduce Cool Down to 5 turns (down from 6)
Self Heal 2: Reduce Cool Down to 7-8 (down from 9)
Fireball 2: Increase damage to 18 (up from 6) Increase Cool down to 4 turns (up from 3)
Single Summon: Decrease cool down to 4-6 turns (down from 16) OR increase Summoned peatin stats to be the same as Peatin.
Poison 2: Reduce cool down to 6 turns (down from 7) And increase damage to 8 (up from 6)
Area Kamikaze: Increase damage to 12 (up from 5).
Line Wall: Reduce Cool down to 4 turns (down from 8)
Self Maelstrom: Reduce Cool down to 4 turns (down from 8)
Fireball 1: Reduce Cool down to 4 turns (down from 6)
Single Heal 2: Increase range to 3 squares, Reduce cool down to 6 turns (down from 7).
Drain: Decrease Cool down to 6-8 turns (down from 9)
Lightning: Decrease cool down to 3 turns (down from 7)
Self Kamikaze: Increase damage to 18 (up from 5) Increase Cool Down to 12 turns (up from 8).

I’d really appreciate some feedback letting me know what you think.
Thanks for reading,
Phyrexian

well this is a really pointless thread.

Well, Me and zening are talking now through email. So I guess it is pointless now. Don’t bump anymore.

I agree with most of what you say.

But your ideas for talsna, beverly and poison spells show, that you do not know the high level metagame very well.

both beverly and talsna are top tier characters. along with the spell poison 3.

especially poison 3 needs to be nerfed significantly.

I can wipe entire teams just with talsna and beverly as casters

Just have to bring something up in defense of Phyr. Phyr, as I know him, is a very Hero oriented player, as am I. Talsna means next to nothing in hero, and poison means next to nothing in hero. There are a multitude of reasons as to why this is, and I will not explain all of them. The Simple two are :

Talsna lacks attack strength in hero.

Poison pales in comparison to other uses for hero game spell slots.

Originally posted by NicolBolas:

I agree with most of what you say.

But your ideas for talsna, beverly and poison spells show, that you do not know the high level metagame very well.

both beverly and talsna are top tier characters. along with the spell poison 3.

especially poison 3 needs to be nerfed significantly.

I can wipe entire teams just with talsna and beverly as casters

Thanks for the feedback. I think I have a significantly better understanding of higher level meta. Beverly is not used by anyone at any tier. Poison 3 is only for two turns. At high level everyone can heal to remove it, with team heal or one of the two area heals. Effectively it only ever works as a fireball if used against a turtle formation.

Originally posted by Dual_Smoke:

Just have to bring something up in defense of Phyr. Phyr, as I know him, is a very Hero oriented player, as am I. Talsna means next to nothing in hero, and poison means next to nothing in hero. There are a multitude of reasons as to why this is, and I will not explain all of them. The Simple two are :

Talsna lacks attack strength in hero.

Poison pales in comparison to other uses for hero game spell slots.

I enjoy both hero and army. I think I prefer army actually. Both games have their strengths and weaknesses. Poison is not overpowering in army once you get team heal. And telsna lacks strength in army too. He’s a good spell ninja but his use is a little too limited with the tiny health pool. I’d rather give him attack than health, but he needs a boost to at least one in Army.

Also, most of my suggestions have been added. Sadly a little after the game died. I hope they market/advertise it on TAO and other sites. Would be fun to get more people in.

This is definatly not a pointless thread btw. I played Zening for about a minute and didn’t really check it out enough to really like it and dropped it pretty quick. Then I saw this thread and read most of it. Couple things I learned. 1. This games sounds really cool with phyrexian explaining all the stuff to it. 2. Phyrexian is incrediable at leaving feedback. I would love to have you review my game when it is near completion. I think this is really cool, sorry for keeping this going but I had to say something..

Can’t help but notice your “evening out” of the characters is more like “make them all much better for no reason.”

Originally posted by explodingferret:

Can’t help but notice your “evening out” of the characters is more like “make them all much better for no reason.”

I didn’t suggest to make ALL the characters much better. I suggested to raise up the characters that are lacking, instead of decreasing the characters that are powerful. One could have done either but ppl tend to not like it when things are nerfed.

Originally posted by phyrexian:

Originally posted by explodingferret:

Can’t help but notice your “evening out” of the characters is more like “make them all much better for no reason.”

I didn’t suggest to make ALL the characters much better. I suggested to raise up the characters that are lacking, instead of decreasing the characters that are powerful. One could have done either but ppl tend to not like it when things are nerfed.

and it would also make battles faster with all those damage improvements wich is needed in my case atleast

Biggest thing holding ening back is that it takes forever to start a game because there are so few people playing. And I think the number 1 reason for that is the noob farming. If you are under level 10 you just continually get raped by the higher levels. And the clans have actually made this worse, because noobs playing 4+ person hero games will be paired with each other and face of against a team of pros.

Last week Zening was on the Kongregate’s front page and was averaging 100+ users most days. Its already back in the 40s and very few of them ranked under level 10.

Dyrtball brings up an interesting point, which should be considered. I think one partial solution to this for hero matches would be to reduce the amount of skill points awarded if the average level of the winning team is much higher. that could reduce the time benefit of having higher levels sweep through the new people farming them for points.

The greatest solution would be multiplayer badges (which I believe are coming soon). They would significantly enhance the community and the average number of people online (see: Kongai, Dinowaurs). It could also use some advertising – again, Dinowaurs is a good example – limited versions were posted on other sites and attracted crowd to Kongregate.

I believe the best solution would be two fold.

1) Decrease the difference between: skills point received for a win, and skill points lost for a loss. At least so that the same thing happens in a 1v1 for level 10 as what happens in 1v1 for level 20, 30, etc.

2.) Then, drastically increase the amount of XP needed per level.

The goal being that someone with twice as many points as you have, hasn’t necessarily received twice as many powerful units and spells as you have received (which is now the case). THIS, imo, is the sole reason leveling is impossible without farming the low level players.

You can think of the way the game is now as a pyramid, the top player relies on there being some very high level players, who rely on there being several more high level players, who rely on their being a great deal more medium level players, who rely on there being a constant influx of noobs. In short, the total amount of XP of all players doesn’t really grow as a function of play time and play skill.

It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but Increasing the ease of gaining XP + decreasing the ease of gaining levels is what I believe would fix the problem.

Not bad,this thread is not a useless thread.

Another problem- nobody seems to play anymore. Even the last post on the forums was at the beginning of January. Not counting this one.

I wonder if the badge description will eternally promise extra multiplayer badges :P

Again, look at many games that got popular like Sacred Seasons. The older players didn’t get anything and simply quit. I say that if the game is gonna advertise and make multiplayer badges, the old players should get something, such as an alternate skin for a player just to show their loyalty.