At long last, the time has come to start thinking about Level Expansion again.
Our first expansion came way back in 2019, and we’ve learned a lot since then. Our goals going into this next one are to expand available content for a long time to come, while avoiding irresponsibly contributing to any power gap between mid to end-game players.
In fact, we have already begun taking several measures to shrink existing gaps throughout the last year, and we’re excited to begin laying out the full picture of this 360 expansion approach for you today!
In this post, we will:
- Lay out the basics you can expect from our next Level Expansion
- Discuss our findings from an in-depth analysis of the 2019 expansion
- Outline our 360 approach to this and how we are helping players still climbing that ladder
- And finally we’ll talk about when we’ll check in with you all next – This feature is actively in development, so this is just the first look!
So, let’s jump in!
The Basics
We plan to add 5 levels to buildings, up to Keep Level 40 (KL 40.)
Black Stone, a new building material, will be required for building upgrades KL 36+ (in addition to the usual sorts of upgrade resources.)
We will make the expected extensions & adjustments to various systems throughout the game that are tied to level, including Leaderboard Brackets, Tyrion Quests, and general Reward Scaling.
We also have a whole collection of complementary releases aimed to support the level expansion, which we are calling our 360 approach in this blog.
Before diving into that, let’s take a moment to look back at what we learned from our first level expansion, so you can understand our values and design priorities going into the next.
Beyond Basics: Learnings & Philosophy
So far, the basics we’ve shared here have closely followed what we did for our previous expansion back in 2019, which introduced levels 31-35 to the game. However, we have had 4+ years to analyze the long term impact of that first update, and we feel that the basic approach does not adequately address concerns, particularly surrounding the power gap between mid-level to end-game players.
“We understand that adding rungs to a ladder when you’re not yet at the top can feel daunting.”
We feel an immense responsibility to approach this with care, not just adding content for the sake of it, but rather doing what is best for the long term health of the game and our players. This value is why we waited as long as we have before further level expansion, and why we have invested significant time and resources into developing creative solutions and companion features to support it.
Key Learning #1: Velocity and Volume
As you climb up through levels, costs and rewards increase, usually in exponential ways. This means as we add more levels at the higher end, the sticker shock of leveling becomes especially intimidating.
This was scary to us, too. When levels 31-35 were released, we actually made a choice to deviate from that exponential growth, specifically so those upgrade resource requirements did not feel so impossible to achieve at first glance. In fact, KL 31 required roughly 55% less in resource cost to upgrade compared to KL 30.
In reality, this was not the kindness we had thought. Looking at the economic impact since, we can see this was one of the clearest factors in expanding the perceived power gap. High volumes of players were able to reach the new cap at an unhealthy velocity.
This has 2 notable consequences:
- We denied end-game players the satisfaction of working towards well-paced goals that each felt rewarding. Progression should be aspirational, and that’s the fun.
- T11 troops immediately flooded the combat meta. Some degree of this is unavoidable, but the low cost made it feel less aspirational and more like a requirement that needed to be hit immediately to remain viable.
“Progression should be aspirational, and that’s the fun.”
The lesson, and challenge, here is finding a balance. We could address this a few ways, each with their own pros and cons. Limiting growth could be done via introduction of new upgrade materials through time sensitive gameplay only. However, too much limitation on growth results in a disappointing player experience for those who have been unable to engage in certain gameplay loops for so long, as they waited for more content to release. We want to try and avoid this.
The alternative is to not as strictly limit progression, but increase the upgrade costs to slow the velocity and volume of players rising through these levels. Additionally, We can incentivize the moderate pace more by associating cost reduction benefits for consistently playing and helping your team.
While the latter approach will still allow some players to progress quickly if that is their choice, the key is balance. A few heavy hitters on one end of the scale will not tip it, but a quick flood will, as we saw in the previous expansion.
Higher costs are still daunting, so our following learnings aim to address this.
Key Learning #2: Resources
As we prepared for this next expansion, we did a deep dive into what resources were limiting progression, but also what’s been collecting in excess by analyzing live player inventories.
“You should be able to use all the rewards you earn in worthwhile ways. When there is proper demand for all items in our game, it helps us to increase overall reward diversity, leading to more satisfying gameplay.“
So understanding this is a key factor in both what resources are required for upgrading, as well as modification we could make to things like event rewards in order to better deliver required resources for your level.
Key Learning #3: Catch Up
As new levels are unlocked and new troops are added to combat, this unavoidably shifts the competitive player vs. player (PvP) meta higher.
While high-end combat inevitably focuses on top tier troops and high star Seats of Power (SoP), it is still important to us that enjoyable, rewarding & competitive niches exist at all troop tier levels.
Certain types of gameplay and events explicitly highlight these niches. To name a few examples of this kind of gameplay:
- Night’s Watch Mutiny events allow players to compete for a very limited number of SoPs at the Wall, which are generally dominated by high-end players. However, all players can support their allegiance through companion events, earning boosts/gifts to send to their teammates competing at the Wall.
- Bracketed PvP like Strategic Terrain or Test Your Mettle allows players to compete only among peers at their level.
- There are also many lower star SoPs. Holding those titles for their allegiance benefits teammates going for higher level seats, as well as denies other allegiance footholds in their region.
Folks happily existing in these niches should not feel that a high-end meta-shift completely invalidates their usefulness. Nor should a previously enjoyable progression at their own pace suddenly feel unattainable because of the movement of a ‘finish’ line.
While our first level expansion also included efforts to address this, such as general resource increases at lower levels to make acquiring materials easier, we think we can do better this time. Our solution is to tackle this from many angles, and continue doing so over time, as the results of this next expansion make clear where further effort is required.
In fact, you can already see several of these efforts in the game today since we’ve been releasing them all year!
360 Approach
So now you understand the lessons we took from past expansion and our priorities going into this tricky balancing act, but what are we actually doing?
We have a suite of releases aimed at reducing friction as you progress.
New Building Enhancements
A 4th line of Building Enhancements will be added to all buildings that currently have enhancements.
- This will be for all 40 levels. So whether you are at the current level cap or not, you will have new enhancements available to you.
- For KL 36+, the new 4th line enhancements will require a new upgrade resource called Limestone (in addition to the existing resources.)
This adds a new avenue for permanent stat boosts for players of all levels, so it is quite significant.
While we aim to provide all kinds of stat increases through these 4th line enhancements, we are particularly interested in surfacing cost efficiency bonuses. As building enhancements are tied to your current building level, they can be tailored to what upgrade resources you need to climb that ladder.
Removing Friction Across the Board
Efforts to address friction associated with progression have been steadily rolling out for the last year. Some of these you’ll recognize in-game already, and some you can expect to see continue into the next year as we monitor the impacts of level expansion.
New Cost Reduction/Efficiency Stats
These stats reduce the resources required to upgrade. We’ve been steadily adding to our catalog of boosts like this, targeting specific upgrade materials like Marble or Keystone. We can strategically award these where we see players getting blocked in order to ease progression. There are many avenues to acquire these through (Events, Gear, Allegiance Shop, Enhancements, etc.) Savvy players can stack them up for greater reduction!
Allegiance Shop
The Allegiance Shop is our most recent release. It is a very effective avenue to offer various cost reduction boosts, rewarding players who contribute to their allegiances and participate in Allegiance Leaderboard events. We definitely recommend checking these out in game now if you have not already!
Lots of Reward Improvements
We have been steadily improving rewards across several areas of the game, particularly in events, for the last year. These efforts have increased the overall volume of rewards given, and paid attention to the types of rewards as well, so they can synergize with the needs of progression.
Excitingly, we can already see in our data that all of these efforts have helped players level faster this year, and we hope players are feeling it too!
Post-Expansion
Players can expect to see continued reward evaluation and improvement post-expansion. We will be monitoring to validate whether the steps taken were successful in easing leveling friction, or if more needs to be done.
We will also continue to provide avenues to acquire Cost Reduction boosts, maximizing the impact of your resources.
The Road Ahead
Level expansion is actively under development, and we intend to share more updates in the coming weeks as things take shape! We’re looking forward to sharing more details about topics such as T12 troops, so be on the lookout for our next update.
And some good news for those who can’t wait until then:
Hear from the Devs LIVE on Discord!
Join us live, Thursday August 29th @ 4 PM Eastern as we sit down with our very own McPivot, an Economy Designer working on level expansion.
We’ll be chatting with them about the topics in this Dev Diary in more detail, as well as answering some questions pulled from the discussion over on the official Game of Thrones: Conquest Community Discord!
So join in the discussion in the #level-expansion channel this week, and check out the #stage channel for our livestream with McPivot on Thursday.