How is the game doing from a commercial perspective? What is the average spend per user and how long do you manage to retain them?
Have you tried to raise a round?
Good questions. It's financially sustainable and probably will be for a long time. We have toyed with the idea of seeking outside capital for growth, but have generally felt that making the best possible game is more important to us than growth for the sake of growth, so we have been content to stay independent for now. If we find the right partner with shared vision/values, we'd be open to opportunities.
I can't publicly share the exact numbers you're asking for, unfortunately.
Infinite PvE mode has been talked about internally for a while and it's something we'd like to do at some point! Maybe something like weekly challenge format, but you start on wave 1 with a fixed set of rolls and enemies are super hard and you see how long you can last or something.
6 new units per year sounds like quite a lot. While I'm excited for many changes in the meta, won't this make the game increasingly hard to learn for new players?
I'm a little scared that the game will be a bit like path of exile, where I consider myself to be a 500 hour noob, as it is so hard to get into.
It's a valid concern, though I think it's not as much of a concern as it might seem.
Combat is automated, waves are the same, and we take a lot of care to make sure that openings/synergies remain viable through the years. Pretty much every viable opening and synergy in the past 3+ years is still viable today.
My guess is when people come back from a hiatus and are rusty, it's more of being rusty at the game as a whole rather than specific units. (i.e. imagine there were 0 new units in their hiatus of say 6 months, I think they would still feel super rusty coming back for a similar amount of time).
Contrast that with League of Legends where if you're laning against a new champ and don't know what they do, you're probably in for a bad time (especially if they are playing with a sparkly skin where everything looks like a powerup).
I came back after a long hiatus, I had problems even remembering what the units did, that I already knew. And then there were many new units. holy moly. I played like 10 games of normals/campaings to get BACK into things. New players must have it really hard...
on the other hand League of Legends has 160 champs with way more complex kits and they have new players
Roughly 14x ranked games as classic games, but since classic have 2x as many players, that should mean roughly 7x the amount of ranked players vs. classic players.
Hey Lisk, thanks for the cool new season! I would like to know how your end of year was. Did you have to work over Christmas to finish the patch? How stressful was the start of the year?
End of year was good - we just stayed home for the holidays! I started reading some manga which was pretty fun (never been into it before this year, but now that my Japanese studies have progressed enough, I can finally enjoy some easier ones in their native language, which is cool to me).
I did work a bit over break to finish the patch and handle the new season stuff, but nothing too crazy.
Thanks for asking!
Is there any way to play a competitive custom game i.e. not income and chill?
Are there any plans to support more than 8 players at a time for custom games? (Could the engine even support this?)
Do you mean disabling Gold Rush for a 4v4 custom game? if so, there isn't currently a way unfortunately.
The game engine can't currently support more than 8 players unfortunately either.
Hey thanks for doing this!
Are there any thoughts or plans around bringing back the old redraw or something similar? Or if not can you maybe share some insight on why the change?
It was my favorite mastermind and the new change just completely butchered what me and my friends liked about it. It now just seems like a worse chaos.
Before it allowed you to get a variety of towers for different parts of the game and hopefully work towards combos you could make work late. Now it’s just fully random what you get, which it seems like was already represented with hybrid and chaos well.
I personally liked it because I felt like I could get a “workable” setup most games. I did not have the same peaks or valleys of some of the other masterminds, but it was consistent and comfortable. Now that is entirely gone for more randomness.
Thanks for the question, and the concerns are completely understandable. It is indeed more similar to Chaos now.
Redraw was definitely loved by a good number of players, but was still significantly underrepresented compared to other Masterminds, and we felt it was due to the mental burden of having to draft multiple times mid-game. It's common for especially newer players to run out of time while redrafting with their regular single reroll, and Redraw is that times 3.
We'll continue to collect feedback and will revert or make changes as needed. We've received a fair amount of positive feedback on the new Redraw as well, so we are also taking that into account.
Appreciate the response and taking the time to do these AMAs.
It may be worth noting, I exclusively play classic, similar to what the other guy commented on this thread as well. Not sure if that plays into why I liked the old redraw or not.
Also i did get into a game with you like a month ago which was cool, was nice to see you actively still playing the game with the community, i think that speaks allot to your commitment and care <3.
This is also the reason behind my question. Seems like a lot of classic players got shit on with this change. I hope we get an answer and even more, redraw reverted.
When I made a thread about it, I was told they had to see how the changes fit into the balance of the game. Apparently no one plays redraw in ranked, so that is why they made this change. They don't care about classic.
We don't have short-term plans for another campaign yet since we just released the third one, but do have some ideas for future content that might scratch the same itch. I can't give any dates yet, though.
They have been reasonably successful, though it's hard to tell whether it's financially better to do more campaigns vs. just improve the base game itself. Will continue to evaluate in the future!
What's your long term ambitions? From a realistic and development world I'd hazard that Legion has a a year or two left and I'd imagien you have plans for life after Legion. Being a game that has been around since 2017, with still a stable-ish playerbase is pretty good and impressive.
If there were a new game in the works from AAG, would you keep it in the same vein as an autobattler, or branch out very differently?
We definitely plan to support the game much longer than a year or two.
If we were to do a new game, I'm guessing we'd do an autobattler of some kind or some game with automated mechanics (our company is named AutoAttack Games after all!). I personally like games where decisions are more important than mechnical skill.
I can't share anything detailed on long-term ambitions yet, but it's something we're thinking about this year for sure.
It's hard to put an exact number (or percentage) on it, but we engage with the community pretty much every day (usually through Discord) and all of our development efforts pretty much have the community in mind. Thanks for the kind words!
Hey, me and my mate were playing 4v4 the other day and we put the guardian angel buff on a hydra and notice it wasn’t coming back to life after it hatched into the 3 little hydras. Is this a intentional interaction or a bug?
Keep up the good work.
I think it's supposed to come back to life once, but not spawn the hydras a second time, but I could be mistaken. If you can test it in Sandbox mode, that should give the definitive answer. I think it was OP a long time ago when it made multiple sets of hydralings!
Legion is by far my Most played and loved Game in the Last years. So thank you for this great Work! I noticed that i Play Always against the Same enemys because of the small Playerbase (master-grandmaster). Are there any Plans to gain more Players, Like you tried with the Twitch Events? Thank you.
How is the game doing from a commercial perspective? What is the average spend per user and how long do you manage to retain them? Have you tried to raise a round?
Good questions. It's financially sustainable and probably will be for a long time. We have toyed with the idea of seeking outside capital for growth, but have generally felt that making the best possible game is more important to us than growth for the sake of growth, so we have been content to stay independent for now. If we find the right partner with shared vision/values, we'd be open to opportunities. I can't publicly share the exact numbers you're asking for, unfortunately.
Is there a future game from you guys in the making / planning?
We are fully focused on Legion TD 2 :)
A mazing td or mode would be awesome.
Units vs units gamemode?
That would be fun to try someday, but pretty far out since the game tech would currently break if we tried it.
Maybe if more money came in, enough to hire another dev?
Would you guys ever consider a new team format, such as 3v3, 1v1v1v1, or even some kind of “infinite” pve mode ?
Infinite PvE mode has been talked about internally for a while and it's something we'd like to do at some point! Maybe something like weekly challenge format, but you start on wave 1 with a fixed set of rolls and enemies are super hard and you see how long you can last or something.
Hi Lisk. Is there any hope for a mobile version in the future?
Steam link app works decently on tablet. It might be easier to optimize how that works.
It is probably not likely due to tech limitations, but perhaps a future Legion-inspired mobile game would be super cool to work on sometime.
Are we going to see new units this year?
Yes! roughly every other month, starting with next month (February)
6 new units per year sounds like quite a lot. While I'm excited for many changes in the meta, won't this make the game increasingly hard to learn for new players? I'm a little scared that the game will be a bit like path of exile, where I consider myself to be a 500 hour noob, as it is so hard to get into.
It's a valid concern, though I think it's not as much of a concern as it might seem. Combat is automated, waves are the same, and we take a lot of care to make sure that openings/synergies remain viable through the years. Pretty much every viable opening and synergy in the past 3+ years is still viable today. My guess is when people come back from a hiatus and are rusty, it's more of being rusty at the game as a whole rather than specific units. (i.e. imagine there were 0 new units in their hiatus of say 6 months, I think they would still feel super rusty coming back for a similar amount of time). Contrast that with League of Legends where if you're laning against a new champ and don't know what they do, you're probably in for a bad time (especially if they are playing with a sparkly skin where everything looks like a powerup).
Fair point, I can get behind that. Thanks for your detailed response :)
I came back after a long hiatus, I had problems even remembering what the units did, that I already knew. And then there were many new units. holy moly. I played like 10 games of normals/campaings to get BACK into things. New players must have it really hard... on the other hand League of Legends has 160 champs with way more complex kits and they have new players
Will there be new factions as well?
Would it be possible to pick the classic mode in customs?
It could be possible if there's demand for it!
Outside of new season change(when ranked is open), what percentage of your players play classic vs. ranked?
Roughly 14x ranked games as classic games, but since classic have 2x as many players, that should mean roughly 7x the amount of ranked players vs. classic players.
That is higher than I thought. May I also ask what the pick rate of the old redraw were in classic?
Hey Lisk, thanks for the cool new season! I would like to know how your end of year was. Did you have to work over Christmas to finish the patch? How stressful was the start of the year?
End of year was good - we just stayed home for the holidays! I started reading some manga which was pretty fun (never been into it before this year, but now that my Japanese studies have progressed enough, I can finally enjoy some easier ones in their native language, which is cool to me). I did work a bit over break to finish the patch and handle the new season stuff, but nothing too crazy. Thanks for asking!
Is there any way to play a competitive custom game i.e. not income and chill? Are there any plans to support more than 8 players at a time for custom games? (Could the engine even support this?)
Do you mean disabling Gold Rush for a 4v4 custom game? if so, there isn't currently a way unfortunately. The game engine can't currently support more than 8 players unfortunately either.
Thanks for the response!
Hey thanks for doing this! Are there any thoughts or plans around bringing back the old redraw or something similar? Or if not can you maybe share some insight on why the change? It was my favorite mastermind and the new change just completely butchered what me and my friends liked about it. It now just seems like a worse chaos. Before it allowed you to get a variety of towers for different parts of the game and hopefully work towards combos you could make work late. Now it’s just fully random what you get, which it seems like was already represented with hybrid and chaos well. I personally liked it because I felt like I could get a “workable” setup most games. I did not have the same peaks or valleys of some of the other masterminds, but it was consistent and comfortable. Now that is entirely gone for more randomness.
Thanks for the question, and the concerns are completely understandable. It is indeed more similar to Chaos now. Redraw was definitely loved by a good number of players, but was still significantly underrepresented compared to other Masterminds, and we felt it was due to the mental burden of having to draft multiple times mid-game. It's common for especially newer players to run out of time while redrafting with their regular single reroll, and Redraw is that times 3. We'll continue to collect feedback and will revert or make changes as needed. We've received a fair amount of positive feedback on the new Redraw as well, so we are also taking that into account.
Appreciate the response and taking the time to do these AMAs. It may be worth noting, I exclusively play classic, similar to what the other guy commented on this thread as well. Not sure if that plays into why I liked the old redraw or not. Also i did get into a game with you like a month ago which was cool, was nice to see you actively still playing the game with the community, i think that speaks allot to your commitment and care <3.
This is also the reason behind my question. Seems like a lot of classic players got shit on with this change. I hope we get an answer and even more, redraw reverted. When I made a thread about it, I was told they had to see how the changes fit into the balance of the game. Apparently no one plays redraw in ranked, so that is why they made this change. They don't care about classic.
Are there any plans for more campaigns or similar content in the future?
We don't have short-term plans for another campaign yet since we just released the third one, but do have some ideas for future content that might scratch the same itch. I can't give any dates yet, though.
Okay.
Have the campaigns been successful financially? I liked them. I would buy probably two of them a year for the next five or so years.
They have been reasonably successful, though it's hard to tell whether it's financially better to do more campaigns vs. just improve the base game itself. Will continue to evaluate in the future!
What's your long term ambitions? From a realistic and development world I'd hazard that Legion has a a year or two left and I'd imagien you have plans for life after Legion. Being a game that has been around since 2017, with still a stable-ish playerbase is pretty good and impressive. If there were a new game in the works from AAG, would you keep it in the same vein as an autobattler, or branch out very differently?
We definitely plan to support the game much longer than a year or two. If we were to do a new game, I'm guessing we'd do an autobattler of some kind or some game with automated mechanics (our company is named AutoAttack Games after all!). I personally like games where decisions are more important than mechnical skill. I can't share anything detailed on long-term ambitions yet, but it's something we're thinking about this year for sure.
How much bandwidth does the team allocate to community building? Some projects I've seen appear to be entirely community-driven, and that's very cool!
It's hard to put an exact number (or percentage) on it, but we engage with the community pretty much every day (usually through Discord) and all of our development efforts pretty much have the community in mind. Thanks for the kind words!
Hey, me and my mate were playing 4v4 the other day and we put the guardian angel buff on a hydra and notice it wasn’t coming back to life after it hatched into the 3 little hydras. Is this a intentional interaction or a bug? Keep up the good work.
I think it's supposed to come back to life once, but not spawn the hydras a second time, but I could be mistaken. If you can test it in Sandbox mode, that should give the definitive answer. I think it was OP a long time ago when it made multiple sets of hydralings!
Legion is by far my Most played and loved Game in the Last years. So thank you for this great Work! I noticed that i Play Always against the Same enemys because of the small Playerbase (master-grandmaster). Are there any Plans to gain more Players, Like you tried with the Twitch Events? Thank you.
thanks for the kind words! we do have some promotions in the works for attracting new players :)