Hello friends! Welcome back to another developer interview. I am Tabris, one of the two Community Managers at WB Games Boston on Game of Thrones: Conquest.
For our last liveshow, we had the incredible opportunity to welcome one of our Product Managers, Guy, to ask some questions about Kingdom Merge and Stake Your Claim in preparation for October’s Month of Migration!
Guy had the opportunity to answer questions directly from players who happened to be part of our Ambassador Program.
So, without further ado, let us begin!
Introduce yourself! Who are you, what do you do at Warner Brothers Games Boston?
Guy
Hi, I am That Guy. I am a Product Manager working on Game of Thrones: Conquest. I mainly work on designing events.
What was the history of Stake Your Claim and how it was formed? What originally inspired SYC, And how hard was it to translate the idea into actual game mechanics?
– Freyja of K1694
Guy
Before SYC, the only big event we had was Merge. We started running into a problem where the kingdoms were getting overpopulated and players were having performance issues. We still wanted to create the excitement and change up for players by giving them new opponents to fight and so we worked to design an event that would allow us to split up the kingdoms to reduce the performance issues but also allow players the choice of where to go to find the competition they wanted. It did take a while for us to fully design and implement, I believe it was around 9 months to a year for it to fully come together.
Original Stake Your Claim Concepts and Wireframes from our Kingdom Lifecycle – May 2022 Update
What are the indications that a kingdom needs a merge or a stake your claim event?
– House Chienne K1685
Guy
One of the first signs we look at is population. Ranging from how large or small a population is, to its allegiances and the power they hold. We don’t want you guys stuck on empty kingdoms, and merging guarantees that we will increase a kingdom’s size whereas SYC can lead to some bigger and some smaller kingdoms.
When merging kingdoms, how much emphasis, if any, is placed on the power levels of each kingdom?
– House Snogaryen of K1670
Guy
We do take power level into consideration. Occasionally the reality of the game doesn’t exactly match with the metrics and data we look at and so we use the information we gather from surveys to help.
Which are harder to pair? Merge pairings or Stake Your Claim pairings, and why?
– Bügsy of K1681
Guy
We don’t really consider them separate as the goal is to keep all of the Seasonal Kingdoms at some level of equality. So creating one SYC pairing limits the options for all the other kingdoms. If something needs to change, it usually means other pairings also need to change in order to compensate.
How long does it take you to prepare a SYC or merge and collect data to make the best parings possible?
– Lola of 1682
How influential are surveys in your pairing decisions compared to data?
– Arty of 1637
Guy
We usually take a month to analyze the kingdoms and see how they are currently behaving and start making pairings. Surveys are important and we certainly take them into account. They may not be the main driving force for decisions but they definitely add weight to the scales.
Does the seasonal leaderboard play a part in how the pairings are determined?
– Bügsy of K1681
Guy
We look at many metrics that are apart of Seasonal Leaderboards as that gives us deeper insight into pairings.
Stake Your Claim has a rebalancing system, can you clarify what threshold needs to be met for a kingdom to be rebalanced?
– Asturic of 1680
Guy
The rebalancing system is there as a safety net to prevent the creation of an empty kingdom after a SYC. The system looks at the total population of players participating in the event and checks to see that the spread across the new kingdoms are within our thresholds.
What is the overall intention with SYC/Merges? To create a kingdom with a competitive dynamic in a vacuum or to create multiple kingdoms of similar power within the game?
– R2 – D2 of 1680
Guy
Our goal is to give you guys an active and engaging kingdom to play around in. We know that there are different types of players and so we want to make kingdoms that have sizable populations for each play type and have some close competitors.
Thank you Guy for coming on to our live show to answer questions from our Ambassadors about Stake Your Claim and Kingdom Merge!
Remember, October is not only our 8th Anniversary, but is a Month of Migration! Elder kingdoms, make sure you’re giving us your feedback on your kingdoms health and activity in our surveys!
And as always, thank you so much for jumping in and reading this interview. If you have any interest in joining our Ambassador program keep a look out for bi-yearly raven messages promoting Player Court applications!
Have any questions, or suggestions for future interviews? Feel free to tag @community in discord!