State of the Game: August 2012

==State of the Game: August 2012==
Greetings community! 
Today I’ll be going over some features we’ve seen released already as well as some details on future features to come. 
When we originally started discussing this idea we weren’t sure how the concept of a viral Brawl would translate to Clash. Dawn of the Dragons and Legacy of a Thousand Suns utilize a viral raid system but their mechanics are drastically different than what Clash has available.
One of our biggest goals was to try and make sure we had a chance to really connect with the community on a personal level; getting in and not only Brawling with the players but also chatting and generally having a good time!
We feel like the interaction between player and developer was a great success, and we’re also pretty happy with how the Brawl spread. 
That said there’s definitely room for improvement. In the future we’re going to look into the token mechanic and likely change the requirements for future tokens, as trying to get three different items to make one key can be very tedious and frustrating if lady luck has taken a vacation.
Going forward we’re going to review things internally and work to improve the experience of any future viral Brawls we may run. For right now the Chaluan Hydra will remain unchanged.
Now that we have this diverse and rather awesome system in place you can expect to see us revisit it for the future. While we have some plans for this internally I’m unable to share exact details about where you may see these cards for now.
Something we’d like to start adding to Clash are more tools to be competitive. The first step in this direction we’re going to start with will be Leaderboards, which will initially have no rewards but will progressively have exclusive content added for players who have reached the top of the Leaderboards' various stats.
As more new features are implemented (Clan vs Clan for example) we’ll make sure the Leaderboards are updated appropriately.
There have been some fantastic discussions regarding the balance of various Clash mechanics, most notoriously the Banish and Talisman effects.
It’s always a delicate process to continually add new cards that are both interesting and deck-worthy while still retaining some semblance of balance. While we have no immediate changes to announce at this time, it’s important to know that as a company we’re actively monitoring the situation and actively discussing it.
Please continue to discuss these topics in a constructive manner as we will continue to read them daily.
We still have a lot of work that needs done on both Duels and Colosseum to ensure they’re fun and competitive. We’ve spent some time refining and improving the Duel system but have yet to revisit the Colosseum. I don’t want players to feel as though the Colosseum has been abandoned, we’re simply directing our resources and efforts to Duels first and will then follow up with revisiting the Colosseum system.
Duels still need some love, but we feel good about where it’s going currently.
This isn’t a feature we’ve forgotten about, however there are a lot of things for us to consider with its implementation. We’re still evaluating its value and function to ensure it will be a proper fit for the game.
We will continue to provide Nexus hints every week but we’re also investigating ways we can reach out to players who don’t necessarily read the forums on a regular basis. 
5th Planet has a rich history of reaching out and talking to our players, however we want to further improve this and start scheduling more developer and community events.
Something that was really enjoyable for us during the Chaluan Hydra was simply interacting with the community. We’d like to start scheduling more events like this where we are focused for a few hours here and there on just interacting with you (the players) in various forms.
Be on the lookout for posts and announcements for this in the near future.
The 5th Planet Games Annual Summit has begun! Each year our entire team assembles in our California office to discuss various aspects of our games.
The summit started Monday and will run through the rest of the week. One of the primary focuses for this Summit will be Clash and different ways to keep the game fresh, interesting and competitive.
We don’t have any details to share at this time but you can expect more details before the next State of the Game Post.
Thank you for reading the latest State of the Game Post! We have a lot of big features in the works and you can expect August to be a very busy month. 
As always, stay beautiful Clash Community! 
Category:State of the Game