Some of your comments in the forums and on Discord made us want to answer in more detail than usual. Therefore, our community managers have banded together, especially as the update nears, to bring you regular recaps of the audio program that responds to your most eloquent contributions!
As passionate as you (if not more, and we mean that), our French CMs gathered around the table, plugged in their microphones (even better), and talked about your ideas, expectations, questions, and suggestions.
The result? A podcast worth listening to over and over that, unfortunately, couldn't be produced in all languages… Even so, you'll have a superb summary of everything that was said!
PODCAST 2 – May – Summary
A new podcast is available in French only. Here is the summary.
Can all the Dofus be made droppable in quests?
It's already the case with the new Dofus (Dorigami) and we want to continue along this path. The drop aspect of this update will focus above all on legendary weapons. Your feedback will let us know if we should continue along the "100% quest" path.
Can the Bonta/Brakmar alignment quests be re-worked?
Changes to the alignment system would be double the work because both versions – Bonta and Brakmar – would need to happen at once. This would be a major overhaul. It is a huge amount of work for a small team and would require an entire update. It isn't a priority.
Is the game's development more complicated because it's a mobile game?
Before thinking about content, we think about ergonomics. DOFUS PC doesn't face this issue, or at least not to the same extent. Here, we try to make the experience as comfortable as possible while working with the legacy of a game that wasn't designed to be played on a phone.
Can the treasure hunts be added to DOFUS Touch?
That is exactly the type of concept that works well on DOFUS PC. However, it was not conceived for the mobile format, and therefore not suited to an interface like Touch's. A redesign for this format would be needed and at the moment we are still thinking about the subject.
When will there be a new class or a class specific to DOFUS Touch?
The team's focus is on class balancing rather than adding a class that would upend the balancing efforts made over several years.
Can profession slots be added to the Elite Bonus Pack? Is it possible to have all the professions on a single character/account?
Professions would no longer be available when the subscription ran out. It would be a source of frustration, and we don't see much use in it.
The game is an MMO and the goal is for players to interact and help each other.
Can we have a colorblind mode?
Changes are already being made in-game for people affected by color blindness, such as the Snailmet and the Sram traps. We will continue anticipating this type of issue when designing new spells or glyphs. We think that it's better to adapt the game for people with color blindness rather than using a mode specifically for that.
When will there be a Kolossium 1v1? Why are fights so imbalanced in 3v3?
1V1
Wanting 1v1 is understandable, especially in mobile format. However, that isn't the path we want to favor at the moment. In addition to the new class balancing issues that this would bring up, other points would also need to be reviewed such as how the Kolossium currently functions, which is not optimal (matchmaking, rankings, etc.).
Imbalanced Matchmaking
The ranking system is one thing (there's a lot that could be said about it, and that's the truth). But matchmaking is entirely based on the principle of circles (roughly speaking).
- The system to find players that meet the 5 criteria (for example) so that the fight will be balanced (victory ratio against the opposing class, level, item level on games when applicable, etc.) => if the system finds them, then the fight is launched.
- If the system doesn't find them, it will open a second, larger circle, and look for players meeting 4 out of 5 conditions => if it finds them, all's good and it will be relatively balanced.
- If it doesn't find any, it will continue widening the search little by little.
But systems like this necessarily depend on the quantity of players in the search. If there are few players, it is harder to find them, and there are two solutions:
=> favor search speed => this is faster, but may lead to less well balanced fights.
=> favor balance => the matchmaking may take a long time before finding a fight (and the fight may well be imbalanced because it needs to find a match and therefore will expand the search).
Therefore, the more we divide the flow of players, the more we weaken matchmaking precision and/or speed. To overcome this, we could obviously use many systems (leagues, weekly seasons, and many more), but in all cases this leads to accepting imbalance and does not necessarily solve everything and, above all, there's the issue of cost and development time.
Among other things, it is difficult to make changes to matchmaking systems little by little because, as said earlier, it relies mainly on the population in the system. Therefore, a huge upheaval is needed to create enthusiasm on release, leading to a virtuous circle that would allow for better matchmaking. Improvements, if they come out individually, will not be enough to bring back enough players and their impact therefore won't be noteworthy (even if they do work) because the population issue will remain.
The explanation here is very simplistic and many systems exist (and are more or less in-depth), just as there are many different ranking systems (the "elo", the "glicko" and more, each with their strengths and weaknesses). All of the reasons mentioned above explain why envisaging an overhaul of the Kolossium is a massive undertaking that would require lengthy development time to lead to results that could be rolled out on the servers.