Q&A sessions with Almost a Hero producer.
Hi there, Almost Heroes!
Here’s a very useful doc with all your questions and the producer's answers from sessions we’re doing on Discord. Please, join if you haven’t already!
Without any further due, let’s get started!
Session from 09/18/2020
Q:
How much math do you put into almost a hero? Seems complex in some way.
A:
It is an exponential game, thus there is a lot of math, ofc, and the interaction of rewards and currencies is pretty complex. Also all the hero skills + trinkets + you know all the effects that stack up, in short: not easy to balance.
Q:
Is there some trick to keep an overview? Or do you just do it one by one?
A:
We have multiple people wrestling with design and analytics, and ofc tools with dashboards... aaaand Excel. Excel is still the king.
Q:
Did you personally play the game before you became its product owner?
A:
Me myself, I played the game a long time ago, like in its first year, but honestly not too much. And then I started playing like 2 months or so before the announcement of Deca.
Definitely, some catching up to do.
Q:
I know in the AMA on reddit you guys talked about the events, do you have an opinion on those? Like the Lia event, which was pretty much a one of a kind.
A:
Yes, the Lia event looks pretty cool, I like it. Tbh my opinion on those is what is written in the AMA but yes, I can imagine doing another one of these.
Q:
Anything you can tell us about the potential of a new hero coming out soon? Since it is the holiday season, a nice gift so to speak?
A:
About heroes, I don't want to talk just yet. But we are designing & planning on doing heroes... timeline is hard to talk about, bc - like we said just before - new hero will upset the balance and is a lot of work by itself already.
Q:
Can you go into a bit more of what your job is? Being a producer and product owner.
A:
I'm basically the manager of the team that works directly on the game, and I overlook the planning of content, development, events. I'm the moderator of discussions about new content and also a contributor. And I'm supposed to see a fire before it burns, anticipate problems for developers etc.
Q:
What is your background? Business?
A:
My background is both biz and design... and passion for games. I play games since I'm 13, but first I studied biz related, then like 10.5 years ago, I switched into design & games.
Q:
What made you move into the product manager/owner role? Or was that a natural career progression?
A:
I think in the AMA I said how many years I play games, so now you can calculate even my age.
Most of the years, I worked in a combination of design & product management; design because it was my passion & reason to join the gaming industry, and the PM part of the job... bc I have a hand for it. In this case it was moving from 1 company to another on the same role.
Q:
Speaking of events, will Lia's event be back?
A:
No promises really, but like I said, we like this type of event a lot. So we want to make such events, but again I cannot tell when / what / how... I will be happy as a fish once we got the Halloween event out and hope you like it.
Then we can think about something in the direction of Lia, which is more complex / more effort etc.
Q:
So the next update is for Halloween. Can we also expect some QOL changes? There are very good QOL #suggestions (Discord channel).
A:
There are really good suggestions, also from reddit, I read a lot of good input, also got suggestions passed on from BEESquare, they had collected it from you guys before; they explained me these issues.
I can tell you something about the Halloween event that kinda answers your question:
The Halloween content is planned in several parts; bc our people are new to the game, I must expect as an experienced producer that some of my parts cannot be done, things take longer than expected for the people new to the game, this is normal.
We have QOL changes from your suggestions on the plan, but for this time, making a good event is more important, thus they might be a part that gets axed.
Q:
What's your fav game genre?
A:
4X strategy... no wait... MMO RPG ... ummm story-driven role playing games?
top 3 is a fair dodge for that unfair question
Q:
Where is Deca HQ at geographical wise?
A:
Europe. As to the timezone, it's UTC +2.
Session from 11/06/2020
Q:
Any plans for more support or defense heroes?
A:
Yes, we have plans for them. Actually, we do have a design started on a new hero. But... certainly, you understand that a hero is a big effort with all the skills etc pp, and it needs to find its place among other heroes... so yes, the work has started, but defo won't hit your phone for XMas.
Q:
As far as Halloween goes: why didn't we have a spooky loading screen when starting the game?
A:
Certainly, an oversight when we searched through the loads & loads of existing art assets to compile all the Halloween assets for the release.
A bit technical: these assets are not in the game the whole year, to keep the game size smaller for better downloads. They get added & removed before / after the event.
Q:
Are any of the merchant/GoG items going to remain after Halloween?
A:
Which ones do you like a lot @Psildrip? Or consider it so useful, that you'd be happy they stay?
Other people can ofc chime in and name their faves.
The best GoG item is Pick a Charm.
Q:
How are season effects chosen? Is it in response to the meta players use or some other methodology?
A:
It is a mix of things:
* player feedback (like too little attack hero centric seasons or support or XYZ)
* looking at figures (how many people did how many sessions in challenges & how far did they get etc)
* making sure there is a bit of rotation to have variety
* designer trying to make combinations that are challenging due to the synergy between effects
I think that is the most important points, but there are more details a designer considers.
Q:
What happened with moth development?
A:
Ok, not gonna lie here, the fact that the moth was actually an atomic reactor dressed up as a moth, ready to go supergau in adventure... well, was a design mistake. Nothing to hide there.
As you know, we tuned it down already a bit, and currently we have another version of it flying around in dev environments. But as we did already a tuning release, I prefer now to have our guys play it more, before we consider the next step. Maybe we will - based on internal testing - change the development moth another time, need to see.
Q:
Some questions from my side please: can we expect anything "special" for Black Friday and/or Christmas?
A:
I can confirm special thingies on XMas, yes. Black Friday is under consideration.
Q:
Any big plans for adventure in the coming updates?
A:
I'd say about this: we are aware that there were continuous upgrades of max stages & shifting of the fame etc, and that we'll pick up once the right time comes. Anything else: maybe yes, maybe no, don't wanna tell yet.
Q:
Easiest/hardest development thing since taking the reins.
A:
Much easier to code & test & release than I expected was making new merchant items.
Hardest problem... changes or fixes or upgrading a thing I won't name today, sry. Also not sure when we'll come to a solution that is good, but then we'll certainly post about it.
From my experience in design and from other projects, the game has a design problem we want to tackle, but yeah, I shall keep my mouth shut now.
Q:
Will we ever get new effects to put on trinkets?
A:
I'd say it is likely. I can also give a spoiler? But you know, it will just touch the surface.
XMas release is likely to have a QoL change about trinkets from player suggestions is all I say now.
Q:
How big is the DECA team working on AaH?
Are you guys mainly based in one location or global? How has Covid impacted you?
A:
We are currently working fully remote. Our team has people from 8 different countries, and most of them work from home, from their home countries, others are in the "homeland" of Deca, Germany.
I think we have quite a diverse team, but I just notice that we need to hire an Asian if we wanna complete "the set of colors" haha.
Our team could handle the pandemic well so far, but we had Almost a huge trouble, as our Sr Dev tested Covid positive 2 weeks before Halloween release and was gone for the majority of these 2 weeks. But he is back on his feet now and already working again, wonderful! That was indeed a huge problem for us, but ofc his health came first.
All in all we were lucky to have 2 Sr developers on the team, otherwise we would have needed to cut some stuff from the release.
That is all for today but we promise to handle more sessions like this and update this document.
You can also take a look at our AMA post to find more answers:
Part 1 and Part 2.
Enjoy the game and prepare your questions for the next session!
Session from 01.10.21
Q:
Why is aeon mine at stage 110 when you don't use the currency until 450 and don't unlock the mode until 600?
Why rewards at 6k if it's not even attainable through cheats?
Will there be more scrap resource gain planned for the future or are we going to be stuck behind this >2 million scrap wall to max without change given recent updates both reducing income and increasing need?
A:
So that players can have some aeon when they unlock the other mines and they can already have some going into GoG.
It's a progression thing done mostly for consistency as we'll most likely expand the levels (and was the way it was handled on previous expands)
Yes, I'd like to share more details on this but can't now. #soon
Q: What's going on behind the scenes currently? Any juicy reveals of upcoming patches?
A: There's a nice update shaping up. I can't give you guys much details right now but you'll sure hear about it soon. Also look at 3. from my previous response.
Q:
Any teaser of some hero's skill rework?
If you can only say 1 thing, prioritize responding about nanna, tam or bellylarf, please?
A: Even more than a teaser, currently looking into a beta QA session and PEX will let you know shortly about this (we are still in the process of setting it up)
Q: What’s your favourite hero?
A: Has to be Arbara. I really like the design. That said, all heroes are really diverse and all make me laugh.
Q: What programs are used to add/create things for Almost a Hero? like what tools do you guys use?
A: The game is built on Unity; We don't use many other tools in our day to day work, other than excel and some design software for mockups, planning, etc
Q: Do you like Bloodborne?
A: "We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood; Fear the old blood."
Q: Do you plan on developing a new game mode anytime in the near future?
A: 🔜 can't give more details but this question is on point
Q: Which ring is your favorite?
A: I like the Fire Ring, just for the damage and also for the different playstyles. I also like the Dark Ring.
Q: Would it be possible to release this on steam? It'd probably be popular as you can idle easily on it and could even try to add modding support for custom almost heroes.
A: Technically it should be possible but I'm not aware of such a plan and in general don't like the idea. The game works best as mobile, a PC port will be compromised among other issues.
Q: What is DECA’s philosophy behind the balance?
A: We try to inherit the original designers' philosophy and take it from there. This mostly depends on the game itself, we try to expand rather than rework things
Q: Do you plan on reworking anyone though? (tam) (say tam)
A: We have already made some changes to some of the heroes' skills and would like to share them with you guys soon. In a closed beta of sorts, which we still need to set up, but is close.
Q: Also one more thing before I go work, would you guys consider adding new trinket effects?
A: Yes, there's such an idea and maybe will be coming sooner than expected but as with all things this is uncertain.
Q: What happens with all the skill points after maxing all skills or are the reworks made in a way that it will be harder to max all skills then? let's hope we don't see some damage loss for earlier stages and skill levels.
A: For now we only edit some of the hero skill figures, meaning their numeric values. We have not changed, removed or altered any of the skills nor their system. We plan to do this in future updates, but started by balancing the skills and taking it from there. Nice of you to bring the excess points issue, I'll have the team think about that.
Q: Are there any plans to remove spirits from season reward pools after we have enough to max all the runes? or will there be any new runes added? I feel like the spirit rewards are underwhelming in a sense that runes are not adding any real power boost to the game
A: No plans to remove spirits but we are looking into the rewards distribution as we figured the balance got a bit off when we introduced the spirits. There are reworks coming to some of the currencies' economy and we're looking for ways to balance scraps input as well. The way I see it, the issue is not that there are too many spirits, but too little scraps. Runes on the other hand are meant to provide a varied experience, but the nature of the game is in the strengths of the heroes, not the ring. So we can't make runes do better without changing this balance.
Q: Instead of making runes better are we ever going to get a better availability to the runs? One that doesn’t require 400 plus gems?
A: There will be additional ways introduced for players to get runes, but most of them will still be a drop, meaning random chance
Q: new gamemode was brought up earlier, might it possibly be related to the battlegrounds concept I ran with a few months ago?
A: I had very little time to familiarize myself with the concept but the new feature is not really similar to the battlegrounds idea, which I find somehow related to GoG. It's really nice to have such input from our community; even if we don't do things 1:1 as your ideas we always consider them during brainstorming, design calls, etc. The Runes contest for example was great!
Q: Will seasons rewards be increased to be closer to what they were before? Will more pet cards be made available in the shop since there are many more pets now? Can something be done se we don’t earn endless amounts of spirits beyond what is needed to max the runes?
A: What do you mean by "before"? Before Spirits? As answered in a previous question we plan to revise the economy of spirits and other currencies, both by balancing their output and providing more ways to obtain them (new game mode, etc). More pet cards is a great idea, the team is already aware of this suggestion and looking into options to handle it. As for endless amount of spirits - yes, there's balancing WIP.
Q: Do you think about possibility of extending adventure mode (new max stage) and adding new mythics or more levels to normal artifacts to be able to not only farm seasons and gog curseds ?
A: Yes on all questions. Increasing the maximum stage happens naturally as we add more content. We just added new Mythical Artifacts last update and are looking to up the level of some of the older ones. With the addition of the new runes we also updated the max Adventure level a few updates ago but will surely happen again in the future.
Q: You mention that strength is in heroes, and not ring. Do you think ring should never be on par with heroes past a certain point in game progression? Most damage runes for rings don't make sense as past a certain point ring cannot kill enemies, so utility becomes the main factor for a ring's use
A: The ring damage, as far as I understand was never meant to be really high. I believe there was a point in the game's history where it was and the heroes became irrelevant. Of course, we don't want it to be the other way around as well, it's a tough balance and in a game with so many variables we as designers and you as players can't really make it click perfectly, but we sure try to 😄 You say "past a certain point" and exactly, the game gets really hard past a certain point, it's all about the little optimizations one makes to progress
Q: Do You think that adding more rune slots to a ring (currently we can equip only 3 runes) will break the rings in some way? I feel that many runes are there just to be collected and never be used
A: This sure is a good suggestion and honestly I haven't thought much of it. Balancing the runes with 4 variables instead of 3 (and sometimes 8 as some runes have multiple conditions) is surely harder but we can make it work if needed. I'll pass this idea on to the team
Q: While I don't think it should be brought back in that capacity, Hilt and Wendle's ring boosting skills should return to maybe a small scaling of their damage when alive instead of a % boost to an already irrelevant number
A: Yes, I think we already acted a bit on this. 😉
Q: It also doesn't make sense to have ring so abysmally low when there's a few effects that boost and scale with ring damage, which doesn't matter in the slightest unless you're using earth
A: As with heroes, we started doing the adjustments on the rings not from their base figures (damage) but from the runes, then heroes by their skills and so on. Once we do such passes and edits we're open to adjust the base figures as well but I can't promise this will happen; it's a complex game (in terms of numbers) and little things can snowball big time.