Developer Feedback – January, 2021

The developers of AFK Arena have sat down and answered the most frequently asked questions from the community for January, 2021!

**Q: The Gold Challenge stages of the Misty Valley are too hard!**

**Cauchy**

Seeing player feedback and online data, it appears some of the recent Gold Challenges in the Misty Valley really are too tough. During the December Misty Valley, one of the challenges required players to take out all backline enemy heroes first. However, Tasi was in the back row, and she is able to survive through a lot, meaning players really struggled to put together suitable line-ups to eliminate her before taking down the other enemies and complete the challenge. So, in future Misty Valleys we’ll design the Gold Challenges with clearer, more logical “solutions”.

**Q: Mythic Gear without Faction Bonuses is utterly useless, are there any plans to make adjustments to this?**

**Hong Chen**

A new Field of Stars constellation will be introduced in the future to gradually reduce the drop rate of Mythic Gear that don’t have any Faction Bonuses for Campaign stages, up until all Mythic Gear that drops is guaranteed to have Faction Bonuses.

**Q: The new heroes and Dimensional crossover events are too frequent, it’s hard to keep up!**

**Jiang O**

The pace of recent new hero releases has been pretty high, especially as a few of the more recent heroes have been released in pairs, so let’s see why that is:

Firstly, we had Zaphrael and Lucretia. We wanted to present the tribulations of their story to you through video, so working together on their advertising meant we wouldn’t release these two separately. Next, we had the OVERLORD and P5 crossovers. Whether it’s Ainz and Albedo, or Joker and Queen, they have deep, intertwining relationships within their own universes, so naturally we thought it would be better to release them in pairs. The AFK team and the respective crossover IP owners sincerely hope that the players can enjoy a complete experience.

Following on from this, we’ll do our best to ensure no more than two heroes are released in one month. If it turns out we have a situation like the aforementioned, such as having two heroes released in one event, then the following version won’t have any, that way it’ll reduce pressure on getting new heroes.

**Q: Why does AFK have a ‘Match-Three’ puzzle game?**

**Don**

Initially, we wanted to give players a rich and interesting casual gaming experience. Besides Match-Three, we’re also trying out a casual, yet strategic game mode similar to the Battle of Blood event.

The reaction to the Match-Three game was a surprise for us! We’d never considered that so many people hadn’t ever played it, and how many were even offended by it! That’s all on us, we should’ve looked more carefully at the player feedback instead of just blindly adding in content based on our own likes and preferences. In our future content releases we will definitely be analyzing the stats and player research more carefully, so we don’t make the same mistake again.

As for how to change it, we’ve read a lot of player suggestions. Some suggesting we remove it entirely, others suggesting we alter the difficulty. Following some discussion, we decided implementing changes at this point wouldn’t be fair to those who’ve already completed it. We’ve thought of a way to tweak it in the future by adding a help feature. Provided a friend or Guildmember has completed a certain stage, they can help players illuminate the 3-stars (immediate illumination, no need to complete the stage again). This ensures that players who enjoy match-three can retain their sense of achievement and completion, whilst those who dislike it can gain stars with ease with their friends’ help. Two birds, one stone!