TGIF! Development News August 11 2017

Welcome to our first TGIF in a long, long time!

Over the past year we've focused a lot on rolling out our mobile apps. For us they are a big part of keeping LCN, Viking Clan, Pirate Clan and Zombie Slayer relevant and fun in 2017, by giving us a chance to design a fresh interface and give people a chance to play on the go. We have seen a lot of new players come in this way, but now that the apps are out we are looking to renew our focus on gameplay. Coming up we're going to have a lot more to report about changes we're making based on your guys' feedback, and so we're bringing back TGIFs to keep you posted on all the news.

Here's what we worked on this week:

Link Parser & Fixes - For a long time in the games, players would copy links from the game into faction boards and it would show the whole big link that didn't describe anything and took up a lot of space. If you posted it from KP1, it'd also show a KP1 link to FB players and vice versa. On mobile, these links would show up as text and not work at all.

Using links and being social is something a lot of players mentioned in our surveys, so we recently rolled out a new system for converting these links when you paste them in-game. They will now convert from ugly text into player names or boss names, and they work on all platforms. However, there were a few bugs.

If you tried to post a link on the faction messageboard, it would convert the link neatly but would delete all the rest of the text you put in; obviously this made it pretty tough to explain why you were posting the link. We also had an issue where posting the link more than once broke things. These have been fixed this week, including on Kong/Armour where for a while you couldn't post boss links between the two platforms despite being on the same network. Thank you to everyone who reported these issues and especially those who sent us a video and helped us diagnose the problem!

Faction War Division Rewards reaches Internal Alpha - The system we promised for awarding prizes by division is now live on our test servers. We'll be testing it next week to ensure everything is as smooth as we can get it, and we're still on track for release sometime in September.

Facebook API Rate Limiting - On Sunday we had a brief issue where people couldn't log in to ZS on mobile. We're still working on a solution to what's causing this problem, but our monitoring is better now and we should be able to avoid it until we can push a permanent fix.

Hitlist Cooldown - This feature is ready for testing, but we've heard players have a lot of feedback on this one. Keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming forum post where we'll talk about solutions to this problem and detail exactly what the change would mean at first.

Achievements - This is consistently one of the most requested changes we hear about. Right now we're taking a fresh look at what the tiers are and where they should be, specifically working on the spacing of new tiers so that they are a fun challenge to reach. We know you guys had a lot of input last time we added new achievements so we're reading through old comments, and if you have any ideas about how quickly they should jump, we'd love to hear it.

That's it for the return of the TGIF — next week we should have a more in-depth post with more info about what's coming up. Thanks for reading and as always for playing the games! Kano wouldn't exist without you and every day we're grateful we get to work on this cool stuff.

Have a great weekend!

 

Glad to have the weekly updates back!♥

 

Great stuff, but how about some new venues in pirate clan, been in London too long

 

as a newbie nice to have this for updates on what's happening or changes in the game, thank you to all involved

 

One thing about the links... I actually like the shorter version. But it used to show the percentage you had set for damage, and that's gone now. Any chance you can bring that back for posting on the syndicate board like it used to be? Not a big deal, but it would be nice to have it back.

 

Will NEVER EVER play the Kano mobile apps . They suck and are crappy. They will never EVER be as good as the pc versions .

 

here is a thread i made regarding the stat achievements. for attack and def i would put another step or 2 to get it up to the 50k mark. health would go one more step up to the 500k mark.
http://forums.kanoapps.com/threads/more-stat-achieves.22847/

achieves for the armada wars overall points truly needs an increase since getting 75k is something a player is capable of doing in a single war at most 2 wars assuming they are using their tokens wisely (or just all heals would do it as well at 20 wp a heal).

battle arena achieves in general need a bit of a boost, they are simply outdated. With the format of the current version where you go in every half hour its extremely easy to rack up kills and attacks. still takes a while but new tiers might get some people to start playing it more since they would have something o strive for even if they do not rank high.

challenge achieves are still in a good position at 20 total times to get all 3, dont see any reason to change those since new locations come out every now and then which slightly expands that list.

for bosses, that is a strange one to tackle and if there should be new ones added. I still believe there should be a slight revamp where every 50 or 100 lvls you have the choice to restart the boss back to lvl 1 so that it would avoid the long term result of a player never being able to finish a boss in the allotted time. Could add a star with a number in it to represent the amount of times it has been ascended. possibly could be achievements involved in that which are awarded by X amount of times boss has been ascended. Ascension of a boss would be optional though in order to allow players the freedom of either wanting to farm a boss up to insane lvls for the drops or if they want to go for the achieves and lower lvl boss to get better xp. There are quite a lot of options and actions that could be done to improve and evolve this part of the game.

raids as a whole need a bit of work with the amount of them available to people now and them only going up, in PC there are 13 soon to be another next raid(i think). that would put 14 and a player wanting to gain all the achieves for them would have a hard time doing so needing to play for a minimum of 13/14 months assuming no new ones are being released. at a certain point it starts to become unrealistic. I have proposed an idea in the past which would allow a person to summon any raid from a select list of previous or the most current so that any given month raids are around a player can gain the past ones without needing to wait a minimum of a year for a raid they missed leaving them a achieve that is impossible to get for a extended period of time.

If players have the ability to summon any raid they choose expanding on the achieves would be a realistic possibility. I believe having the achieves for killing a select raid 5 times, 10 or even more would be a nice line of progression for them but only if they are able to be obtained without the need of a player waiting upwards of 2 years to do so and even then if they miss a single raid for a select boss it would push the expectancy of gaining that achieve another year. I find it a problem that should be addressed that i feel not enough people mention.
http://forums.kanoapps.com/threads/raid-selection.16482/

As for world bosses, the way it stands now the only thing i would recommend is another world boss but then that makes 6 total and the layout and way they work doesnt cope well with that unless it becomes possible to attack 3 at a given time. Some adjustments could be made but do not see it as a problem just more of something that needs to be looked over at some point.

battle achieves up to 2m, i made a thread not to long ago pointing out that the battle arena attacks should count towards this achieve since the 2m mark is a tad bit much and essentially the only true way of obtaining is to have a battle buddy which is shunned upon in the community.
http://forums.kanoapps.com/threads/battle-arena-attack-wins.31903/

the battle kill achievements are fine but there should be a few jumps inside of it to ease out from one achieve to the next. the first achieve should be a lot less then 500, the 500 mark should be a second achieve and the jump between 500 and 2500 should have achieves at 1000 and 1750. would do the same for in between the other kill achieves to ease the difficulty between the up a bit.

bounty kill achieves i would leave alone, the progression and total amount to gain the last are hard to get but not unreachable assuming a player is active enough and actually goes bounty hunting. Same goes for the surviving X amount of battles and X amount of battle victories in a row.

i personal dont use a lot of counter attacks but for people that do increasing the top end amount would be a nice change for them so they have even more reason to set a few extra traps on people.going up to possibly 7500 or 10k counter attacks.

cage matching is a huge controversy among people but i believe there should be another tier or 2 added on top of the existing ones. Not a lot more but just 1 or 2.

bounty listing regular people outside or within range should be at least on par with the bounty list honorable achieves. But with the honorable achieves there needs to be a similar couple added in between like the gain X amount of kills achieves. The line of progression in the bounty list honorable is to far between.

pistol whip damage is perfect in my opinion since it is a high amount for most players but isnt to high to where people are not able to obtain them, seems to be at a sweet spot.

Rule income achieves are something that desperately need an increase since anybody in the modern locations is way pat that mark of 4.5 tril income. Going up to 20 tril with jumps at 6.0, 8.5, 11.0, 14.0, 17.5, 20.0

adventures completed should have one or 2 more considering the amount of time its been since the release of up to 50k. another tier or 2 would be suitable.

assisting adventures is fine since it takes bare minimum 1k days to complete. if anything there should be an increase in amount possible to help in a day.

adventure achieves with only gaining one for completing X amount of times works great with the style of game, some do several stages but just having a single tier and done i find works the best.

The GP gained is a good amount as well considering the bare minimum amount of time to complete them all is 1428 days which is a pretty high amount of time for a player to consecutively play for any type of game. The 1428 is assuming the player gets full GP everyday as well so realistic amount would be a bit higher.

income from captains is a big one that needs to be adjusted since as players income goes up the higher amount of gold given away to others in the inner circle. having a progression up to 1 quad would be a good amount that would encourage more bounties to go up for higher amounts to allow people to achieve this and assist in the amount of gold spent which overall benefits the people in the game.

hoarding X amount of gold should be increased a bit. 15 quad use to be a lot but now days is chump change to people, players usually have more on hand then that at a given time. Upping to hoarding 500 quad would prove to be a challenge for nearly everybody but also possible given people are willing to actually hoard their gold away for said achieve.

And last but definitely not least is the lvl achieves, having them go to 35k i find is suitable and more then enough at this given time but the jumps between 20k-35k need some adjusting. having jumps at every 2500 lvls instead of 5k would ease up a bit for people or even lowing the jumps down to 1k each so that people have a reachable goal every few months would be suitable instead of a player seeing a 5k jump thinking they will never get that even after a year more of playing.

 

cagematching should be closed to players once they reach a certain level and have full clan, that is about it for cagematching. it is lame and is useless after a player has full clan and has reached, and I am being generous, Level 7K, end that feature, none of the other games have it , we don't need it

 

Cagematch adds skill to the game it is a great part of the game it has already been adjusted and should remain in the game for all levels. If you don't need it don't use it

 

bout time u finally started doing this stuff...sure did take ya way too long you know..maybe some of the older players will comeback if u can do what we ask an request!

 

Cagematching should end as an option for a player once they reach 10k. All it becomes after that is a shortcut for weak pirates to score cheap victories against a stronger opponent due to a lopsided build. Force these weaklings to earn their victories. You'd be doing them a favor in the long run. End it!

 

Nice ideas. Also, having the bounty achievements is a bad idea. People in the lower levels are constantly getting hit listed by higher levels just so they can get a achievement. It's not fair to the lower levels.

 

most people that are consistently listing people have a list of people they bounty every day or 2. More often then not the people being listed are not active hence why they continuously bounty them. the lower lvls that are active and being listed by the higher ups i would say 99% of the time did something to cause them to be bounties. People hold grudges for a long time lol, got to be careful what you say and do, or at least be prepared for consequences your actions cause.

 

Wait what? wow a update. Jesus that was a long time ago when i see this stuff. Glad to see it back. Lets hoop it keeps that way. Love the refresh of this game for me 6k+ player its going to get stall and i think for everyone around this level and higher. Lets see how this is going to work in the future.

 

so all you have done is fix the broken things that no one was really bothered about ...."great " the mobile mobile app..having tried it once wont be rushing back to it ..how about doing something crazy ..say like a new city ???? or rehashing the bossess adding some new lvl rewards on them . oh yeah cant do that ,that might reward the long term players sorry forgot about that.

 

all about money ,for kano ? you have players that have been stuck on a level for about a year that have no where to go? so yes your making it better for new players but what about those that have played a long time seriously ,the drops suck from jobs and I agree the apps are bad you can only do minor things on it and still to many cheats that you do nothing about, so if you think your doing wonders think again get some new stuff new characters ..for a start and your prizes really suck 50gf lol wow but sit back and count your cash because you are doing nothing to improve the game only to make you more money

 

With these things sorted, does that me that you will be getting to tickets submitted a week or more ago?

 

Instead of tacking on extra cities, mostly of benefit only to those at the dizzy heights of levels, why not just introduce some new tiers for the old ones and/or a second, or even third world boss for them? In case you're still thinking old school, I don't mean "Return to Paris" I mean the original Paris, Paris and New York, London and the rest (LCN cities, revise and adjust for your whichever game you're playing)..
If you tacked on some extra jobs, etc, as well you may even find yourselves making workshop remotely relevant again, you never know...

 

Kano, I think you are missing the boat here and focusing on all the wrong stuff. No one was really bothered about the links nor the apps.... I play 99% of time on phone and dont use the App, its too different from the pc set up and just doesnt "work" right, use I use the kano server like on pc, so really why bother with the App? And as for log in issues, those arent updates but stuff that you HAVE to deal with.
Hitlist: you got this all wrong. With the big money spender in the game these days they WANT to be listed so they can chain players and listing them becomes increasingly difficult. With all the changes in the game it should become cheaper to list players for a greater bounty. The more the player attacks you then the cheaper it should become instead of more costly. The game has simply changed. With all the purchased weapons and raid drops there are simply too many players that are unbeatable even with top attack boost. Older players who structured their skill points on attack and def, are also disadvantaged by not having as much Stam and Energy as new players of same level because the game was simply put, Different. By introducing raids and all the GF weapons you have altered the very fabric of the game. This needs to be balanced out. I had suggested before that weapons should contribute to a % of a mobs skill allocation and not simply add to it. We were told this actually happens... sorry guys, it doesnt. Its a straight up add. Do the math again. The imbalance in strengths you have allowed to be created it just too high.

Achievement update... well that's long overdue but you guys introduced new aspects to the game that encourages players to level super fast. There are now masses of players with 400 days who are over level 10k, something you guys said wouldnt be able to happen (see multiple comments by admins on older threads), well it has happened and you simply havent kept up with the core of the game, cities, crafting etc. In the past the difference between best crafting and bought GF weapons wasnt great, so players still stood a chance if there skills were properly allocated. Now the disparity is so high skill allocation is meaningless. Whats the point of increasing your def and attack when you get beat by 50-60% and the player has only bought weapons on his read out... no point in even competing with them or trying to. Which goes back to the hitlist issue again. But the point here is that there are now over 100 players that are in the last city... and as a result attained or completed all level achievements. But you have focused on leveling people and not rewarding for time in the game. You may well be gaining some big spenders but how many older players have you lost? Out of my friends alone the numbers are crazy.

The game has been killed for older players. Its that simple really. The balance that existed between those that didnt spend or spent moderately and those that spend alot has grown to be too high rendering it pointless to try to keep up. I know I am venting, but the game WAS great... it was fun, now its just fulfilling a silly addiction and helping friends out.