Dev Diary v.2: Top Troops Upgrade

Good day, Commanders! We bring forth major news from the Kingdom! A huge update is coming to Top Troops soon, and we asked some members of our game team to tell you about the big improvements heading your way. Let’s dig in!

Adding new levels and ranks

We are aware that one of the biggest problems on the island for advanced users is the lack of space. We previously tried to address the excess of Common and Rare units by introducing the Retirement feature. However, this was not a final solution, as many players did not engage with the Yonder Yacht and it was not well-integrated.

We believe we can create a more rounded experience by using Common and Rare units, along with Squad Coins, to level up your squads. These units will now transfer their experience to other units during the leveling-up process. Additionally, the receivers of this experience will get bonuses based on their rank (the higher, the better) and faction (try to match the faction of the units you use as XP, and the one of the leveled-up unit!). To make this process smoother, Rank 4 is the new maximum for Common and Rare units.

Another change we are making is increasing the maximum rank of Epic units to 15 in order to make them more valuable in battle.

On top of that, we will increase the maximum level for Epics and Legendaries to 300. To streamline this level-up system, we will remove certain materials from the level-up requirements and maintain a single material per faction.

Now that both Epics and Legendaries will bring high value to you due to their parity of power, it’s only fair to set the same deploy limit for Epics as we have for Legendaries. Starting on this upcoming update, you will not be able to deploy more than 2 Epics from the same squad at the same time in battle.

Updated Summon probabilities

We've heard your feedback loud and clear! Many of you have expressed a desire for more Legendary units and have shared your frustration with the Summon experience, especially going through numerous pulls without receiving a single Legendary unit.

To address this, we're happy to announce a significant update: we're increasing the probabilities of obtaining Legendary units in both Celestial and Legendary Summons. Now, both of them will have a 10% probability of granting a Legendary unit. This enhancement not only increases the frequency of Legendary unit obtention but also creates equal opportunities for all, whether you are looking for new units or enhancing your existing roster.

Moreover, the Legendary Summon will be restructured to help players in pursuing the units they are interested in. With this update, the Legendary Summon will feature four units, each with a 2% probability drop rate. Instead of having all featured units randomized daily, you can now select two of those featured units. That's right! You can choose 2 out of the 4 featured units to ensure progress with every Legendary pull. The remaining 2% of the probabilities will be spread between units from your Wishlist.

The Celestial Summon functionality will remain the same with a slight tweak. With the updated 10% total drop rate for Legendary units, 5% is reserved for the newest unit, and the remaining 5% is for other Legendary units, determined by your Wishlist.

Finally, the Essential Summon and the Faction Summon will see their Legendary drop rate reduced from 3% and 4% respectively to 2%. At the same time the amount of Essential Shards you can get on a daily basis will increase. Notably, the Shards you’ll get from Daily Battle Rewards at the Arena have increased from 10 to 25, from Daily Missions from 5 to 10, and from the Once-A-Day Free Pack at the Royal Shop from 1 to 3.

With these changes, we hope to bring more value to each summon, offering you meaningful progress.

Changes to Ascension

In the early days of Top Troops, all units used to get stronger through merging. However, we realized that this caused it to take too long for our players to reach the highest ranks. We decided a change was needed, so we introduced Ascension for Epic and Legendary units, differentiating their progression from that of Common and Rare units.

Despite our best efforts, the way our Ascension Hall was set turned out to be less intuitive than we anticipated. The requirements made the game more stressful, and some players mistakenly ascended or sacrificed the wrong units.

We are now changing how units ascend to create a more user-friendly experience. We will eliminate the complex requirements, opting for a much more straightforward system. With this change, you will be able to use Fragments to rank up Epic and Legendary units.

Collect the required number of Fragments, press one button, and voilá! You now have a stronger unit to defeat the Dark Army.

General stats rebalancing

Our team is constantly monitoring the way Commanders use their units to generate the best strategies. In recent months, we have discovered a systemic imbalance that is keeping whole groups of units from bringing true value to players. Through the release of powerful Assassins and bulky Melees, Ranged and Mage units were clearly at a disadvantage and were not valued by you as much as other archetypes.

For this reason, we have undergone a general rebalance of the Health and Damage stats in the game. Our goal is to allow these undervalued units to shine just as much as other archetypes and give players the option to create strategies around them just as they already do around others.

We also realized that the difference in power between rarities was too great, with non-Legendary units offering little value very soon during the player’s journey. We have reduced that difference greatly, putting Legendary and Epic stats much closer to Common and Rares. This should help all units feel valuable for a long time, offering more gameplay choices. Players might notice a general drop in their Army Power due to this.

Moreover, the Army Power of your Kingdom is now calculated based on your 12 best units and not every unit you own, as it was up until now. We think that this number will be a better representation of a Commander's might in battle than the previous calculation.

As always, a completely balanced game is just as unfun as an utterly unbalanced one. We are always striving to achieve the perfect equilibrium between allowing you the freedom to build whatever strategy you want and make it powerful, and having a clear meta that everyone can strive to achieve. This effort is an ongoing one, so don’t hesitate to share your feedback with us to guide future rebalances!

Further Arena changes

The Arena has been a hot topic in the Community after the changes implemented around mid-June. We tried to manage it in the best way possible but we know that the timing and communication around those changes could and should have been better.

We want the Arena to be the ultimate competitive mode where you can test your units, experiment, and prove that you are the best strategists in the game. Unfortunately, the data pointed in the opposite direction. Instead of rewarding the best players, we were rewarding those who played the most.

Additionally, we discovered that the experience at the end of each Season was not ideal. Many of you dropped several leagues, and battles during the first week of the new season were very unbalanced, facing either very difficult or very easy opponents. For this reason, we decided to make several changes to the matchmaking engine and the season reset by introducing two new leagues and adjusting the number of trophies required to reach Master and Legend leagues.

Now, we want to continue making improvements. We want to give a tactical advantage to the defending players, as they do not have the option to choose which troops defend every battle or where to position them. Therefore, we are increasing the number of defender units to 14 and allowing two of those units to be hidden until the battle starts in higher leagues.

At the same time, we are reworking how Arena medals are acquired. Instead of acquiring most of your daily Arena medals by playing as many battles as possible, you will now get most of your daily Arena medals from the Daily Battle Rewards. If you want more medals, you will still need to play as many battles as you can and climb up the rankings.

What is being removed?

As certain items in the game will be automatically deprecated due to the changes we’ve been talking about, we will exchange those for the ones you’ll need instead.

For example, Magical Ascension items will no longer exist and will be replaced with Wild Fragments that serve the same purpose. Every player will receive 100 Wild Fragments in exchange for every full Magical Ascension Item and a portion of those Wild Fragments for any smaller pieces of Magical Ascension Items they may own.

We will also be removing certain materials from the game and simplifying the level up process. The old materials will remain in the inventory for the moment, but we will remove them in future updates. We recommend that you use them before the next update.

As Common and Rare units will now have a new purpose, the Yonder Yacht will stop accepting new units. The Retirement Shop will remain open for a limited time, so hurry up and use your Hero Coins before the Yacht sails away in a future version!

Finally, the max rank of Common and Rare units will be adjusted. We will transfer all that experience to new Trainer items that will be waiting for you in your Inbox whenever you update the game.

That’s it for this Dev Diary!

👀 Excited for the upcoming changes? We look forward to hearing your feedback on the Top Troops social channels (FB, IG, X) and Discord server.