New interview of Community manager Darian.

[Be A Legend]

Too many skins and not enough heroes.

I think the game would be fine with loads of skins and just a few heroes.

[helloworld2]

https://youtu.be/e79mqg2S_B4
It is a 1 hour long interview.

even though it’s an hour long , one thing that Judo does well is putting chapters in. I even jumped to those where the chapter was short and you knew what the answer was going to be like more or less (eg ruled out ideas) was still fun to watch

[toofinedog]

I think the game would be fine with loads of skins and just a few heroes.

That’s the point of shuffling skins. I want to use them all without having to think about it.

The idea as I see it, would be similar to the "shuffle" feature on your favorite music player. It's an option you manually set. You never know what song is going to come up next on your playlist. If I understand the Skin Randomizer idea correctly, it would function the same way. Each time you attack, it would randomly assign a skin to your Heroes from the skins you've already acquired.

So one attack, your AQ might be sporting the Winter Queen skin, then the next attack she might be swagging down the funnel in her Clashy Constructs attire, and so forth.

While this suggestion is purely cosmetic in nature, the reason I like it is that there's a psychological impact. Most people pick a favorite skin and then set & forget it. But with the randomizer, you'll likely go "oh hey I forgot I had that skin. I hated that skin! (or I loved that skin!)".

This will be especially true as we add more and more and more skins to the game until there's a massive library of them for each hero.

While we rarely ever comment on player suggestions, I felt this one was harmless enough to say I thought it was pretty cool since it doesn't actually affect gameplay. I genuinely don't know what it would take to implement something like this in the game, or how complex it would be, but it's a fun idea.

I don’t understand the programming difficulties either, but the explanation of the idea, a manual selection for the shuffling of skins per hero, is correct. Thanks for the feedback.

In Supercell games, the best example I can think of is the Mask Spike skin for Spike in Brawl Stars that cycles through a predetermined character mask upon entering battle, respawning, and returning to the game lobby. While this is just a single skin with multiple embedded alternatives, it would be nice to see the same randomization option idea over there since I have multiple skins for my brawlers too, and the only thing that really stops me from getting new skins on favorite characters is I already have one or two excellent premium skins (e.g. I’d get Dark Lord Spike if I didn’t already have Mask Spike and Sakura Spike.).

Outside of Supercell, I would say it’s akin to a fighting game character selection screen where you can pick a random fighter. In the case of hero skins, the fighter remains the same with a random costume change instead.

[MommySnooks]

The idea as I see it, would be similar to the "shuffle" feature on your favorite music player. It's an option you manually set. You never know what song is going to come up next on your playlist. If I understand the Skin Randomizer idea correctly, it would function the same way. Each time you attack, it would randomly assign a skin to your Heroes from the skins you've already acquired.

So one attack, your AQ might be sporting the Winter Queen skin, then the next attack she might be swagging down the funnel in her Clashy Constructs attire, and so forth.

While this suggestion is purely cosmetic in nature, the reason I like it is that there's a psychological impact. Most people pick a favorite skin and then set & forget it. But with the randomizer, you'll likely go "oh hey I forgot I had that skin. I hated that skin! (or I loved that skin!)".

This will be especially true as we add more and more and more skins to the game until there's a massive library of them for each hero.

While we rarely ever comment on player suggestions, I felt this one was harmless enough to say I thought it was pretty cool since it doesn't actually affect gameplay. I genuinely don't know what it would take to implement something like this in the game, or how complex it would be, but it's a fun idea.

I could see how it might be for many.

Thanks for taking the time to do that interview. Some things I’ve heard/read here before, but overall still a very worthwhile watch. The explanations for a few things like the recruitment tool, etc. were informative & helpful.

(And thanks to Judo for putting it together.)

[2222]

At about 13:40, Darian discussed recruiting tool and specifically whether some recruiting badges should not be available to a player until he has earned the right to use it.

"Let's say my TH13 account is not the clan leader of my clan. Let's say I pass that leadership to my TH7, and that mini has only been around for 2 weeks. Does that mean I don't get to choose veteran? Because I've been playing the game for 6 years now."

Permit me a counter point. Suppose I am searching for a recruit looking only for badge "Veteran". I refresh the search multiple times at various times throughout the day. I see your TH7 with six years experience behind it and 50 to 100 other TH7s with veteran badges, but without the experience to back it up. How do I, as a recruiter differentiate your TH7 with six years of experience from the dozens of new accounts that chose veteran because they thought it would look good on a resume? When you permit anyone to choose veteran, it makes the veteran badge meaningless and cheapens it for the player who actually does have the experience. It no longer provides meaningful information to the recruiter.

Agreed. I think what SC misses most with the recruiting tool is efficiency. Nothing is perfect, any filters, options, changes might not work for everyone, but the tool needs to be more efficient. If I am able to reduce my results to only players from my country, does that prevent me from seeing some other players that might be a great fit? Sure it does, but it increases the percentage of players in my search result who might be a good fit. That is an improvement. The same goes for narrowing down my results by war stars or wins last season or clan games points or whatever. Yes, I will miss out on some players who could be a good fit, but who cares, there are millions of players, narrowing it down is an improvement. I'd rather see a list of 30 players I'd be interested in inviting than a list that has 28 players that I have no interest in, 2 players I am willing to invite and one of them happens to be a player who wouldn't have made my list if I was given the power to narrow it down. Give me the list of 30 I'd be willing to invite any day.

Right now, I can limit the players by hall, that is about it. Even the badges that I select don't work well because I'm given a long list of players that often have only one of the badges that I selected (in addition to the problem of that player choosing to note the badge himself, even if he doesn't really fit what that badge means). So, I get a long list of players that I have to look at, over and over, go to their profile, look at their statistics, look at what clan they are in now, etc. to then decide to send an invite, an invite I know will likely not get a response. Going through the whole list results in maybe 1 or 2 players we'd consider in our clan. So, after all that time spent I send out 2 invites to 2 players that likely won't respond. That is why so many players have stopped using it. It is a time waster. It has to be even worse for newer clans who are sending invites to players that take one look at the clan and ignore it.

[rusherford]

Are judo sloth and sumo sloth the same person? I thought one was inspired by the other.

To keep my post on-topic: Darian’s explanation on why new clans can’t use the recruitment tool right away makes sense.

And he mentions the possibility of using a HayDay-like bulletin board for clan recruitment which is something I suggested in the recruitment sticky. Great idea.

If it was judo it would have a username highlitghed in purple and I have seen his official username before but I don't remember how I found it.

[Rizzob]

(in addition to the problem of that player choosing to note the badge himself, even if he doesn't really fit what that badge means)

I wanted to note that this itself is indicative of a bigger problem with the badges. I would amend your statement to say "even if the player doesn't really fit what that badge means to me".

Suppose I'm a TH11 that has focused exclusively on farming. Say I've spent my time in farming clans that rarely war, and usually skip CWL. As a result, I have maybe 10 war stars. However, I've decided since my heroes are maxed (for TH11), I want to start warring more. So, I choose the "Clan War" and "CWL" badges and start looking for a clan. Because, to me, that's what I'm looking to do. Should I not be allowed to choose those badges?

That, IMO, is the bigger problem with the badges, is that there's no objective definition of what they mean, and they mean different things to different people.

[toofinedog]

I wanted to note that this itself is indicative of a bigger problem with the badges. I would amend your statement to say "even if the player doesn't really fit what that badge means to me".

Suppose I'm a TH11 that has focused exclusively on farming. Say I've spent my time in farming clans that rarely war, and usually skip CWL. As a result, I have maybe 10 war stars. However, I've decided since my heroes are maxed (for TH11), I want to start warring more. So, I choose the "Clan War" and "CWL" badges and start looking for a clan. Because, to me, that's what I'm looking to do. Should I not be allowed to choose those badges?

That, IMO, is the bigger problem with the badges, is that there's no objective definition of what they mean, and they mean different things to different people.

Here is an excerpt from a few ideas I proposed for the recruitment tool as it pertains to badges/labels and their use:

“Keep labels as filters. A previous idea someone proposed to have rankings on some labels such as gold, silver, and bronze to denote profile information or other benchmarks by ranking. For example, The Donations label can rank up with stars earned on the Friend in Need achievement as can the Clan Games label with the Games Champion achievement. If no stars have been earned on one of these achievement-based labels, it will begin with no rank. Labels that can’t be associated with an achievement like Relaxed or Friendly won’t have ranks. Remove vague labels like Underdog, and refine other ones. Make the clan label Donations and the player Active Donator the same label, and rename other differently-named clan/player labels similarly.

The non-ranked player labels are the three the player chooses from to customize their profile. It’s good to know if you say you’re friendly or talkative before I invite you if I’m the same. Achievement-based labels are always displayed with their rank.”

This still allows a th7 to use the veteran label, and that’s great. If you’re a veteran, and you’re applying your veteran label to your mini account, more power to you, but unless I can discern from your naming scheme this might be a mini, I’ll just skip over a “veteran” th7, because I would only invite knowing it served as a gateway to a much more powerful village.

You can read the rest here: https://forum.supercell.com/showthre...1#post12754548.

[Mayankkumar]

https://forum.supercell.com/member.p...59-JuDoSloTh89
Here it is, Judo Sloth's official forum account for anyone who was confused between him and sumosloth.

[toofinedog]

If it was judo it would have a username highlitghed in purple and I have seen his official username before but I don't remember how I found it.

https://forum.supercell.com/member.p...59-JuDoSloTh89
Here it is, Judo Sloth's official forum account for anyone who was confused between him and sumosloth.

That was my bad for assuming sumo and judo were linked. I did do an advanced search for a judosloth user name but didn’t know the one ending in 89 was him.

Also, sounds like both judo and Darian like the skin randomization option I keep pitching.

I’m not by any means saying I am inspiring new ideas or deserve credit for them but that it’s good to know the things I’d like to see in the game are the same things they’d like to see.

I think that ship has sailed, but thank you for double-checking.