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Dev Q/A

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9/21/2020

  • What is your team’s “Mission Statement” for DSA? Meaning, when you create something, what are you trying to achieve?
    • Our mission statement is to make the best Disney/Pixar game that we possibly can. As creative people, we want to make high quality content that brings us and our players joy. As a dev team we are very passionate about Disney Sorcerer’s Arena and the opportunity to work with so many legendary characters is a dream come true.
  • Will there be other PvP modes introduced into the game?
    • I mean the easiest answer is yes. The Arena, the place where we all battle, is important to us and we want to keep working on making PVP fun and viable for all of you. We have plenty of issues we want to fix and new ideas we want to put into PVP.
  • How is working from home affecting the process of making a video game? Can you describe what it’s like building a video game with zero in-person contact with your co-workers?
    • Like so many around the world, our team’s been working from home since March. We launched DSA from our homes. Is it challenging to make a game from home? Well sure…however we have deep admiration for folks that are out there on the front lines, the folks that have to go out every day in the face of this pandemic. We’re so thankful to all the doctors, nurses, teachers and others who are doing the work to make us all safer and they inspire us to put our best into our work too. We find our passion from our players who are all experiencing stressful times just like us and we take a lot of joy from knowing that the game that we are building is doing its part to help people to escape and find some fun in their day-to-day.
  • Are there any plans to bring members of the community in under NDA to test upcoming items and provide feedback?
    • We definitely take players’ feedback into account, so this is something we are interested to continue to do. We will not always be able to do what players want but we will always want to hear from our community and we are pretty sure you will see from us that community matters.
  • What determines which characters from which franchise get picked to create?
    • This is a great question in that it makes us think about the many hours we have spent arguing about our favorite Disney and Pixar Everyone on the team has their preferences and everyone always lobbies for their favorites. Now that we are a few months post-launch however, we are striking a balance between surveying our community about what they want, working with Disney to discuss the best upcoming opportunities, and then also looking at what characters would make the best combat-ready additions. There is no shortage of awesome characters for us to bring into the Arena and for that we are fortunate.
  • Will we see Wreck-it-Ralph in game?
    • It is likely that at some point Wreck-it-Ralph himself will be in the game – and likely others from the franchise.
  • When are you going to address all the bugs in the game? Especially ones that have been in there since Beta and Global launch?
    • Bugs are always a challenge in games. Rest assured, we aren’t ignoring them and do have them all prioritized appropriately. While we continue to move forward, we will do our best to not make TOO many more!
  • How many viable teams are players expected to have and does it feel like we have that many teams from your point of view?
    • This isn’t a question with a cut-and-dry answer. It’s not about numbers but rather making sure every character and team composition is viable in some area of the game. If some are falling behind, we’ll take measures to improve upon them by refreshing them or giving them more identity. It’s not our intention to have one team be the absolute best at everything because that’s a great disservice to the other amazing characters (and Spells) within DSA.
  • Are there further plans for trials for other items in the game?
    • Anything’s possible. Always looking to improve upon the game. Trials are a great place to introduce fun, puzzle-y mechanics but we want to make sure the effort is worth the reward.
  • In how many game modes should each character be viable in?
    • This isn’t a question with a cut-and-dry answer either. Our ultimate goal is to ensure every character is at least viable somewhere. If we need to do character refreshes to reach that goal – that’s something we’ll take on.
  • Is there any plan to have a potion exchange? I’m currently sitting on a couple million potions.
    • We have no plans for a potion exchange currently but we will keep an eye on this.
  • Can a Spell ever be used also as a character, or vice versa? Example, can Zap or Mufasa become playable characters at some point?
    • There are no limitations necessarily, and we wouldn’t want to limit ourselves to not have that fluidity in creating new characters and Spells. While we do not have any in the works at the moment, we are constantly evaluating what makes the most sense for the game. 
  • What can we expect with new costumes? I would love to see more cosmetics in this game.
    • We love costumes too. We will continue to make more so stay tuned. We’ve also loving lots of the suggestions made so far!
  • What other Club specific content do you have planned or thinking about?
    • Lots, and we will have more details here soon. In fact, a lot of our current focus is on Club related content.
  • What do you think the game will look like 6-months from now?
    • We are working on polishing the art to make a more attractive experience overall. Additionally, you will see a most robust Elder game feature set as well – and of course more new characters to enhance your parties!
  • Can we expect more Zootopia characters?
    • We are big Zootopia fans around here.*Wink Wink Nudge Nudge*
  • While you may not be able to stick to this philosophy the entire time, do you think as a team you side more with nerfing characters or buffing characters when trying to bring balance to DSA?
    • We take game balance seriously, so when you look at balance you have to look at it objectively. That is our philosophy, to be objective. This means that sometimes we have to nerf and sometimes we have to buff. We aim to make the game fun and enjoyable and fair in terms of balancing.
  • What other TAGs like “Tech” do you think you’ll bring to the game?
    • Yes you may see more tags when new character types are released, for example the Tech category was born thanks to the release of Gizmoduck.
  • When are more iconic villains coming to the game?
    • We LOVE Disney Villains. They are powerful. They are wicked fun. Stay Tuned.
  • How long does it take to create a character from concept to implementation?
    • It takes quite a bit of time due to our team wanting to give players the highest quality experience possible. With character designs, for example, there is a lot of work done between the teams at Disney and our team to ensure authenticity. Not every character is created exactly the same. Some characters and their designs leap off the page and into DSA, and others just take longer to conceptualize to be perfectly game-ready.
  • Will characters be swapped out of the exchanges? While it’s fun to go after certain characters, it can be stale seeing the same ones over and over again.
    • We have proven that we will look to keep exchanges fresh, but we don’t have a set timetable for this.
  • What are you doing to make a better F2P experience?
    • We are constantly thinking about the player experience and how they acquire characters and Spells. For example, the Big Hero 6 team is all farmable, and while a F2P player may not be able to get Baymax on the first go around, they can continue to farm those nodes at their own pace.
  • How often do you plan on releasing “Legendary” characters/teams like Elsa?
    • We have no set time table on Legendary characters but we understand that Legendary characters are highly coveted. The expectation from players is that Legendary characters change the way the game is played so we want to be careful about how often we introduce these into the game for sake of game balance.
  • What other types of game modes are you thinking about introducing?
    • Oh soooo many! This is too open a question to answer, but know that features that help you enjoy the game with your Clubs are important to us.
  • Will we see live PvP challenges between friends and Club members? Was your recent introduction of PvE against friends’ defense teams the start of that process?
    • This is a cool idea! While we have no immediate plans to introduce a live PvP challenge system amongst friends, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the Club and friend side of DSA.
  • How are characters/teams tested for balance before releasing them to the community?
    • Testing is constant for us. From the minute a character is playable we are testing them.
  • Can we please get a better understanding of turn meter and how it affects a character’s placement in battle?
    • Turn meter is based on Speed and can be manipulated through Abilities and Spells
  • Will there be any way to earn characters costumes without spending money?
    • That sounds like a good idea. We do not have anything concrete planned for this at the moment, but we do recognize how popular and desired costumes are by all players.
  • Will we see more Disney Parks related content? There is so much there to choose from!
    • We are huge Disney Parks fans and visit as often as we can. We only hope we can create great content that does the experience inside the Parks Let us know what you would like to see in DSA!