Last night, a group of players was able to reach wave 149 on Tier 5, unlocking a level 94 crate and a 101-slot medal pack. They were able to do this due to an oversight on my part: Lava Golem damage scaled with ENEMY level, instead of PLAYER level. This was fine when games ended at wave 50, but now causes issues.
This wasn’t an exploit, and I take responsibility for the imbalance. This morning I got on headset and made the following compromise:
- Any player who has unlocked a medal pack over 80 slots has had their medal pack reduced to 80 slots (this is still very high, and it should take a while before players unlock a bigger pack)
- Any player who had more than 80 medals has been brought down to 80 medals. Any honor spent on medals past 80 has been refunded
Also, the Golem damage on Lava or Leave It has be DOUBLED, but the damage is now based on PLAYER level.
I know this isn’t ideal. I should probably have decided before releasing this update to scale back any progress past some arbitrary number. However, here we are.
To be clear: If there is another instance similar to this one in the next few weeks, I will take a similar approach. The way the update is designed, it should take a long time to get a pack over level 100, if ever.
February 19th Update
A similar issue happened yesterday (Feb 18) on the new map. I handled it the same way as the issue above.
I apologize for not handling this better, I know it has been messy and disappointing for many. Unfortunately, giving the game to you guys is the only way for me to balance the game, and I just can’t justify giving permanent rewards to players who happened to be playing an imbalanced version of the game.
Moving forward: I’ve increased the difficulty of all games starting with Tier 2. I’ve also increased the difficulty of all rounds starting at Round 6. At this point, the difficulty is almost certainly too high, but I prefer that to the opposite. I really don’t want to take earned rewards away from players again. From here, I’ll scale back the difficulty VERY slowly, as needed.