Winning 1st Place in PvP - A Point of View

Ever wonder what is going on in Team Battle and what it takes to win the weekly competition? Well, I got in touch with last week's winner and asked her for an interview so we could get to know her more! Clara was the first place champion for week ending September 22, 2014. Clara is a kind, good friend and a long time supporter of mine, so I will be closely moderating replies to this post. Please be courteous!

Panicbutton: Hello Clara (Siam.CRTG) and thank you very much for agreeing to my interview questions. Congratulations on your recent First Place victory in the weekly Team Battle! "Line Rangers & Friends" is very lucky to get to know you and get a closer look at the top tier of Line Rangers Team Battle through your eyes.  

P: How long have you been playing Line Rangers? 
Clara: I've been playing since the game newly started end of March, when they launched the Line Rangers stickers and I downloaded the game to get the stickers, feel in love with the game since.

P: Many long-time Line Rangers players have gotten tired of the game lately. Do you feel this way? Or do you think you will feel this way in the next few months?
C: My heavy paying Line Rangers friends and I got so disappointed by the latest event of Limited Cony Yaris. We spent so much on it because of the first launch stat, but it's been adjusted to more than half less efficient within one night. So if Line Rangers keep doing this, a lot of players will quit soon and so will I.

P: What other games do you like to play?
C: Now I'm starting to play Line Stage, but not as addicted as Line Rangers.

P: The game has a ranger who has the same name as you. Do you like the splash ranger, Clara? Who is your favorite Ranger?
C: 555 That's funny, I wish Clara ranger would be one of those Limited ones. Of course I like splash rangers but it doesn't work much in pvp.

P: Who is your favorite LINE character? Why?
C: I can't really tell which one is my favorite LINE character. I love all of them, especially the funny ones.

P: How did you first decide to try to win the weekly team battle competition? What was your inspiration?
C: Frankly speaking, I only won the battle because of my Siam. team, mostly because Siam.aa (he is the Siam team Mentor), Siam.Ark( he is my line rangers mentor), Siam.อ้น, Siam.Therd and Siam.Chong. We play as a team and help each other.

P: Did you need to do any preparation before the competition began?
C: I need to prepare at least 2000 rubies in advance. I can't waste time to recharge the rubies during the battle. And I need to have lots of rest before the battle week begins.

P: Which rangers did you like to use on your team? Any special reasons why you chose those rangers?
C: I use Erica, Cony Kinnara, Dumpy, Mully , Brown MuayThai. In pvp the attack rangers (Dumpy & Mully) are the most effective rangers. They help me finish the game fast. I also need a splasher to hit the tower so I choose Erica, a long-range splasher and Cony Kinnara melee splasher. Of all the rangers I think Brown MuayThai is one of the best ranger (for now) because of his fast cd, speed type, almost 4 million HP and good attack, too, for only 640 minerals.

P: It seems like each week, the number of points required to get first place is gets higher and higher. How many points did you need to get to win first place last week?
C: The number of points required to get first place is gets higher and higher think it's a nature of competition. My last week points for 1st rank was 31,939.

P: How does it feel to win first place? Do you think you will try to win first place again? 
C: To win the first place takes a lot of time, energy, strategy, and rubies. I couldn't do it without my Siam friends. Last two weeks, I got 3rd place with my Siam friends' help, too. I'm not sure if I can have that much energy and time again.

P: From the point of view of everyone else, it looks like as soon as the weekly points reset, the competition rockets away nonstop. Is is true that nonstop playing is required to win? How much did last week's competition impact your daily life? 
C: It's not really non-stop playing but you need to know when to play and how long you need to play at a time. It could be 18 hours straight or it could be only 1 hour at a time. It is up to many things like your rank, other's score, score gap, etc.

P: Was it exciting and cutthroat for 7 days straight or did you feel like you have time to do some other things?
C: Yes it was fun and exciting. If you are playing for top 5, time is the thing you need to sacrifice. Also the rubies.

P: You did not get to the first place position at the beginning. Was this a strategy, to save some time and rubies in the first couple of days until the ranking settle down? 
C: I just didn't have time to play at the beginning of the week. But it's easier to get a lot of points from below.

P: Can you reveal to us approximately how many rubies you needed to keep at the top of the game? 
C: Well! It's different on each week, depend on lots of things. If you over-prepare special feathers then you will spend a lot more rubies. Last week I spent around 2500 rubies.

P: In the last several weeks, I have noticed that the Siam team and other Line Rangers teams have "stacked" the top ranks together. It created point gaps where the team players all have a much higher score than the next individual rank below them. This strategy is used to block others from gaining enough points to get to the top ranks, is this correct? Can you explain the point gap strategy, and how it began? 
C: We did not intended to block others from gaining the point (there's no such a thing as blocking others to gain enough points to get to the top rank, they can get to that amount of points in time), but to create a gap is just to give us some time to rest.
But you can only make that gap when you get to top rank. But to get to top rank is the most important thing. It takes time energy and a lot of strategies.

P: Is it harder to fight up to first place, or is it harder to remain in first place? How tough is the competition when you are at the top on the last day before reset?
C: The last day wasn't so difficult, only monitoring needed, but the 6 days before that we hardly sleep and eat, we spent almost all of our time on pvp (4 days and 4 nights continuously if I'm not mistaken).

P: Did you have much assistance and support from the Siam team during last week's competition? Can you describe what it is like to be on a Line Rangers team?
C: As I've mentioned before, I will not be able to be 1st rank if I not in Siam team. We are always supporting each other. Siam.aa (our team mentor) always shares video clip of how to win the battle. Siam.อ้น Siam.Chong also share the video clips on Endless Mode, too.
My line rangers mentor Siam.Ark always teaches me how to play and how to use all items. All of us 21 members in Siam team are so nice Siam.aa ,Siam.Ark Badshit ,Siam.#^.^#ครุคริ , Siam.Ball, Siam.THErd , Siam.Chong, Siam.palmyXFreak, Siam.Kurt of BKK, Siam.joEcnx, Siam.อ้น, we always support each other (even though some of us did not use "Siam" in front of their name but they are one of us like Cindy , Totoro ,Naratah , Wachara , Maggy , P'Nhong , DDดีดี , Oat and  หมอชนบท ) .

P: Do you have team strategies that you cannot reveal to the public? If yes, you can just say yes, you don't have to tell me what it is :)
C: Yes we have some strategy that we would like to keep it between us, and also some rules, too, like no cheats. I think every team has it.

P: If you could have one new feature or change to the game, what would it be? 
C: If I could wish for the new feature, exchange rangers from one players to another may be, to reduce our expense in  Gacha, don't you agree? Or maybe Line Rangers can make new extra power feature like Brown combo team or Cony combo team would put a lot more challenge in the game.

P: Is there anything else you would like to share with the Line Rangers & Friends blog audience?
C: Line Rangers is a great game, nice community though, but things are changing. Too many new rangers players had to spend more rubies to mastered new rangers. But things are getting better when the Erica's set comes, a lot easier to get new rangers mastered.
The turning points would be Cony Yaris, it is limited line ranger should think it through before releasing it, not release it and then adjust it after one whole night ( just like you release a ranger that so much like a dragon but when you get hold of it , it's just a simple dog with a dragon skin).  I felt like I've been cheated.

C: Thank you so much Panic, for this interview. It's an honor to be interview by the very famous blogger Panic. Thank you so much again for interviewing me. It's always been my dreams to be in one of your articles.
P: Thanks very much for doing the interview, Clara. I really appreciate that you took the time to share your experience with the Line Rangers community. 

So there you have it! I got some insight on some things about the weekly competition and how intense it can get at various points in the week. In addition, it is quite obvious to those heading into battle with their eyes on the top prize that it is not "worth it" in rubies, because they know they will have to spend at least 2000 rubies on special feathers alone and they will only get a maximum of 1000 rubies as a prize. I get the feeling that the experience of the competitive arena of Team Battle is worth more than the reward. When was the last time you played a game and didn't eat or sleep for 4 days in the heat of it? :)

I am also reminded that even though this game hasn't turned into all we hoped it to be, it has brought a lot of people together in ways that no one ever imagined. The team/clan companionship that has developed is remarkable. Below is a roster list of 2 other famously popular teams in the Line Rangers community. No doubt you have seen some of these players' work on YouTube and elsewhere.

The feeling of gamer burnout is not just for semi-casual players who have grown disappointed at the game. It apparently goes all the way up to the hard core top tiers of competitors as well. Nevertheless, there are still fun aspects to the game -- if you are willing to overlook some of the more frustrating aspects in order to trudge on and save Sally. Many, many people still play Line Rangers with varying degrees of passion. I have stopped spending cash on the game, but I still pick it up and play every now and then. I still look forward to the challenge of new stages. In fact, I was just looking at the calendar... it has been over a month since the Ravine of Death was released. Granted, I've decided since its release to take the slow, casual route through it and I am still working on stage 144, but, I do wonder why it is taking so long to release new stages. Is LINE brewing up something else in the background or are they just taking their sweet time because of the number of new rangers they scheduled to release this month?

Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed reading the interview as much as I enjoyed doing it. Stay fresh, friends.

State of the Game - August 2014

It's been roughly 5 months since the dawn of LINE Rangers and the game has changed drastically since its infancy days. I wanted to take some time to just step back and look at our journey. At its core, LINE Rangers is a straightforward game with a simple goal: destroy the enemy tower and advance to the next stage in our quest to rescue Sally. It has a truly addictive nature about it and has captured the hearts as well as the wallets of many people. For players who have joined at various points in time, here's what the game looked like back then.

We've come a long way to save Sally

The game initially released on February 27, 2014 with 60 stages and 75 rangers:

• 11 5-star rangers + Honey (100 friend invitation gift)
• 12 4-star rangers + Frog Brown (50 friend invitation gift) 
• 18 3-star rangers + Elf Cony (30 friend invitation gift) 
• 15 2-star rangers
• 16 1-star rangers

5 cycles of new rangers were released on a monthly basis:

• March 2014 + 4 rangers: Sorcerer Cony, Opera James, General Brown, Macho Moon
• April 2014 + 6 rangers: KSM, Dancer King Boss, Bernard, Hip Hop Brown, Songster Cony, Red Brown
• May 2014 + 6 rangers:  Ola Brown, Lightning Jessica, Dwight, Dumpy, Abdula
• June 2014 + 7 rangers: Susu, Luis, Prince James, Best Couple Brown and Cony, Hitman, Cherina and Shu 
• July 2014 + 6 rangers: Rider Edward, Mully, Chichi, Summer Brown and Cony, Elle

The game today has 132 stages and 104 rangers. That's a 120% expansion of single player game content and almost 40% more playable rangers than the original game.

Let's let that sink in for a moment: The game has more than doubled in available content. For any game at all, if a game maker is doubling its content in less than half a year, it means the game is hugely successful and the pressure to keep the content fresh is very high. When content is in high demand for a mobile game with such a simple concept, the landscape of the game has to change in order to keep its customers coming back. 

Stages to Plow Through

Today when a new player joins the rescue effort to save Sally, they are given 30 rubies just for starting. There are plenty of players who just started the game and rolled Ola Brown, Cherina, Dumpy or some other similarly powerful 5-star ranger with their first 20 ruby Gacha. And for those players, stages 1-108 are pretty much a breeze, limited only by the number of feathers they can get their hands on. For players who didn't happen to win some super overpowered rangers, their experience is... well, not very different up until around stage 84. I know this because I've personally replayed the game 3 times over. It's all still basically enjoyable but you really don't hit a wall until you reach Temple of Ice or Altar of Flame if you are schlepping through with free rangers.

The most prohibitive factor is actually your player level and the amount of coins you have available to make your upgrades. Especially when playing with the experience boost item, your player level will mostly likely be higher than the level your pocket can support in upgrades. In any case, with some fairly diligent playing, one could realistically arrive at the front gate of Maze of Illusion within 2-3 days with the aid of a powerful premium ranger, or about a week or two with free rangers. If brand new players can blow through 90% of your content in a matter of days, you've got a real problem. 

New Battle Modes and Why We Needed Them

June 19: Enter Team Battle Mode, Friend Battle Mode and Endless Mode. Endless Mode is a really nice addition to the game because it will continually offer players more to do as more areas are released in the future. The challenge continues to mount over time. I wish that they were a bit more clever with EM's stage environment, but nevertheless, it gives people something to wrestle with when they are done with the end-stage of a new area. Friend Battle Mode is a neat little way to duke it out with your friends and earn as many Friendship Points as you like in a day, limited only by the length of your friend list. They were both welcome additions to the game. 

Team Battle Mode became the problem and the solution to the content problems between releases. The player versus player aspect of the game has shaped a competitive edge to the players of the game that didn't exist before. It solved the issue of people going days and even weeks with "nothing to do" because in Team Battle Mode (PvP), there's always someone different to face off against. Day or night, there was another team to fight, another point to gain on the ladder. 

The funny thing about this ladder mode is the fact that players can purchase more feathers to continue to battle, and the rapid rate of climbing up in score is a complaint that a lot of people have with PvP. Half  hour into the weekly ladder contest, there are plenty of people who have already burned dozens of rubies for more chances to battle and gain points. That's likely a bigger investment into PvP than many players are willing to put in. But consider the flip side. If players were not allowed to buy special feathers and everyone could only play Team Battle Mode once every 30 minutes, then we'd run into the problem of the top ranked players being zombies as they would not sleep more than 149 minutes at a time for 7 days straight. Everyone else could only hope to play as many feathers as they can in their waking hours. Furthermore, players are at the mercy of the random matchmaker because the points you gain/lose factor in the ranking of your opponent. Suppose the top 2 players in the ladder both play all 336 feathers for the week, but one of the players got unlucky and got matched against an opponent who was ranked much lower. The loss of even 1 point could mean defeat for the entire week. Where is the fairness in that? 

So instead, the system we have is one where players who wish to participate in the top tiers of competition can buy as many feathers as they wish. Each week since the release of PvP mode, the score of rank #1 has increased. Yes, indeed LINE continues to make a killing as players grow more and more cutthroat. It's a contest of who can play the most number of winning matches in the span of 168 hours. PvP was never intended for be a level playing field for all.

Thank you, nongmetoo

This picture by nongmetoo is a very nice summary of what happened last week (PvP which ended August 4 06:00 JST), and a pretty good setup for the coming week. She did a picture like this a week or two ago, unfortunately I lost it. The trend that I got from the two was that the player behavior at the top 20000 ranks has changed dramatically, and likely will continue to shift for a while. People have been increasingly buying additional feathers to push up in ranks. Six weeks ago, rank 301-1000 could be achieved at approximately 2500 points. Today? You need over 6000 points to secure the 150 rubies. A month ago, to win 100 rubies you could skate by and land in the 2001-5000 rank without buying any additional feathers and profit the whole 100 rubies. Today you simply cannot do it. You will land in the 5001-10000 rank by not buying feathers and playing very solid matches throughout your waking hours. 

It's not at all rosy up in the top tiers. If you want to get up in the 2001-5000, you need to spend some rubies, but the reward gain is only 20 more rubies than the next tier down. So can you jump from 5001-10000 rank to 2001-5000 buying just 20 feathers? It's very unlikely, unless you time your wins very carefully. In the top 101-300 rank, players are rewarded 300 rubies, but they spent over 100 to get there, netting under 200 rubies. In the top 3 ranks it is even worse, players spend well over 1300 rubies for the week to get to 15000 points. They only win 1000 rubies from the competition, so they are in fact netting -300 rubies just to walk away with the glory of being ranked 1, 2 and 3 in the world for the week. 

So what am I saying? Line created a competition that profits off of people who want to reap the greatest rewards? Well... yeah, they did, but you could say that exact statement about tons of other games. If you want a chance to win, you have to put down some cash. Does it create a situation where small cash players get pushed out of the competition? Indeed it does. It's almost like a game of poker. If you want a shot at the pot, you have to buy in. The more fierce the game gets, the more money is involved. At a certain point people will duck out of the race because it's just too rich. But at least in the Rangers weekly ladder, everyone walks away with a minimum 20 rubies back in their pockets. Armed with this information, you can judge for yourself whether you want to step into the fire. These days, I find it easiest to target a tier I want to sit comfortably in, and just do enough to stay there. Trying to climb past rank 5000 requires quite a lot of effort that even I am not prepared to put in, but there are many others who enjoy it very much.

Gross Revenue

Please bear with me a little because these are all relative comparisons and with limitations based upon the data available. According to the website AppAnnie, which indexes app information and sales, LINE Corp has been 4th or 5th place in worldwide revenue for games in both the iOS and Android (Google Play) market from April through June. This includes all of the game titles in the LINE library. So yes, they make a ton of money. 

Now I'm going to use an example and take the Indonesia market because Indonesians are consistently the heaviest traffic viewers on this blog. Based on the information on AppAnnie, LINE Rangers started to surge up in sales almost immediately after release. It steadily climbed up in the ranks of the top grossing app charts in both iOS and Google Play markets in March and April and has been hanging steadily in the top 100 ever since. The in-app sales trend goes as you would expect: Line Rangers dips a bit in sales when there is no event and nothing special going on, then rushes up whenever a big event like new stages and new rangers are released (not coincidentally with double 5-star chance events happening simultaneously). This sales rate for the game is mirrored in similar markets like Thailand and Taiwan. 

So clearly, the gripes we as a playing community have with certain aspects of the game are overshadowed by the huge popularity of the game in the last half year. Yes, the odds of the Gacha are becoming increasingly unfavorable. Yes, the new rangers are increasingly mind-boggling in strength. Yes, the new area is much more challenging than all the previous ones. But despite all that (which are debatable whether they are good/bad) the game continues to be a success. The feedback that LINE gets from each new release of content and rangers is that people get excited. They love it and they are willing to part with their money for the latest stuff. For better or for worse, this is what the revenue stream reflects. 

Versus Other LINE Games

Other competitive game titles for LINE include Pokopang, Cookie Run, Let's Get Rich and Tsum Tsum. I don't play Pokopang and Cookie Run at all but the revenue that those two games draw in are astonishingly steady. Especially Cookie Run, which is almost always found in the top 20 grossing games in the relevant markets. I wish I could tell you why that is, but since I am not an avid player, I don't really know what impacts their sales or whether players would find it compelling to make in-game purchases very often or at a specific time/event. I will say this, because I played it a couple of times and looked up some details: Cookie Run is not an in-house developed game from LINE. The maker is Devsisters, a Korean company. Cookie Run was hugely popular in South Korea for years before it made its debut as part of the LINE family to the rest of the world. So maybe this developer company has created something inherently unique from the rest of the LINE games that affects its sales pattern. Maybe it has just existed long enough that the game is coasting on a winning formula. But in any case, LINE Rangers as a homegrown game has earned a place in LINE's eyes as one of its most popular and surely one of its most profitable. [Also for those of you not aware, LINE Rangers' concept is not original. It's pretty much a copy of the game Battle Cats with prettier graphics and more lovable troops. LINE definitely did a good job making a simple game more appealing.]

One more sort of interesting thing I've noticed is, typically if sales suddenly rockets for one game or the other (like the launch of Disney Tsum Tsum is a very good example), the grossing sales of other LINE games like Pokopang and Cookie Run tend to fall a bit. This indicates to me that there's a really good chance the players of LINE games are roughly the same pool of people and that they probably play multiple LINE games. The time that they can spend on any given game is finite, and so if their interests turn to one game or another, the rest of them may not get much attention. So perhaps they have some kind of event cycle such that the games each get some promotional events which do not overlap. That way, the games don't cannibalize each other. Or if they don't coordinate this way already, they probably should think about it to maximize sales.

Concluding Remarks

I bet a lot of the info here is not news to many readers. Why am I writing all this? This post is meant to be a stake in the ground, just marking where we stand right now. Perhaps the game will take a left turn somewhere in the future and we'll look back on this current state of the game as the "good old days," who knows? 

Events are fun and exciting. And we get stuff which makes us happy

For me, it very much feels like the game is blossoming and we may be at the beginning of a stabilizing time. The last 5 months have given the developers a good idea of what works:

• Challenging content can be cleared with a reasonable amount of effort 
• We really like events. Giving us rewards sprinkled in the day-to-day like the boss stage events or ranger bonus events enable us to achieve what we want to achieve a bit easier. Some events gave us some rubies or chance at something powerful and useful to fuel our desire to keep playing (like the Clara event and Stage 100 SoCo event) 
• Tweaks to free rangers to make them competitive for current areas, as well as the addition of the 80% stat bonus for combining rangers 
• Dangling "limited edition" rangers in front of players to create the "need" to Gacha and promote trendy excitement

And it has given them a good idea of what doesn't work:

• Stage rewards which are not conducive to the current challenge. This triggered the shuffling of all the obtainable 4 and 5 star rangers in the early and mid-level stages a couple months ago. I have a strong feeling that LINE learned from their previous slip up and as a result, there was a good amount of thought put into the decision to include Alice, Opera James and Sorcerer Cony in the recent stages. 
• Giving select regions significant amounts of bonuses while other regional players do not get to participate. This is the age of social media. Everybody finds out about everything, and players feel bitter when they're excluded from promotional events when they are all playing the same game.
• Doing things "behind the scenes" and not giving us any notice of it happening. It really makes players crazy.

I know many people will have differing opinions about the current state of the game and what its biggest issues and successes are. And that's ok. Not everyone plays with the same goals and mindset. But it's nice to have this game that we all feel pretty good about so that there is this feeling of community. Line Rangers & Friends has been on the internet for just over 4 months and I have accumulated over 500,000 hits in a pretty short amount of time. The blog has evolved as well over the course of these few months. I feel good about that. Thanks for playing and reading and contributing to the game, everyone. One of these days, we'll save Sally! 

Illusionary Dice MoI Area 11 Treasure Effect

When I first heard that the Maze of Illusion treasure was increase in attack speed, my first thought was, "oh really, again?" :P My second thought was that it was one of two possible effects:

1. DPS (damage per second) of the ranger would remain the same, but the hit rate increases. Exmaple: Without the treasure, if Ranger X's DPS is 10000 and he hits once every 5 seconds, then his damage per hit is 50000. Assume that with the treasure his hit rate doubles, then he would hit once every 2.5 seconds while his DPS remained the same, then each hit would cause only 25000 damage. This scenario causes no total damage gain, but has its perks as hitting more often can be advantageous. 
2. Damage-per-hit remains the same while the hit rate increases. Example: If without the treasure Ranger X's DPS was 10000, he hits once every 5 seconds, then his damage per hit is 50000. With the treasure, assume the treasure causes hit rate to double, then he is doing 50000 every 2.5 seconds. His new DPS would be 20000, effectively doubling it.

One way gives us just marginal benefits while the other gives us significant gains. So which way is it?

Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 has done the research for us! The text you find contained in the box below is an interpretation of their new article, Increased Attack Speed Treasure Comparison.

Article comes from: LINE Rangers 台灣社團
Author: 小為，黃郁弘
Research participants: 黃郁弘，小為，為執著，張家銘，黃名楊
Editor: 小為

Summary

LINE Rangers 台灣社團's testing has indicated that Maze of Illusion's treasure effect increases the rate of attack while preserving the amount of damage per hit. Each ranger's "attack" in the profile card represents its DPS (damage per second), and the damage per hit is derived from this number. The treasure preserves the ranger's damage per hit value according to its original DPS, but because the treasure causes an increase to the number of hits the ranger produces in a time period, it effectively is increasing its "true" DPS value. We can multiply the profile DPS value by the ranger's attack speed to find out how much the DPS has increased. For instance, Alice's profile lists her DPS as 53128. With 100% Illusionary Dice benefit, her DPS becomes 96693*.

* This value was obtained by using the attack speed value discovered via research method discussed below.

So how good is this treasure? Since this area is so tough, many players have had trouble getting it. Once you get to stage 129, you have a chance to unlock it 100%. Not to disappoint, the raid team has finally obtained 100% of the treasure and solved the mystery of its benefits.

The Method

The test method used recordings of the rangers attacking as researchers watched them in 10x slow motion to see the attack speed of each ranger. They recorded it many times and took averages of their observations so as to minimize error. Their original attack speed values were posted in their first article on the topic here, which I discussed on my blog here. Here is a sampling of their findings post-treasure (measured in time between hits):
  - Sol's speed is now 2.38 seconds, down from 4.33 s
  - Witch Cony's speed is now 1.47 seconds, down from 2.67 s
  - Alice's speed is now 2.55 seconds, down from 4.63 s
  - Opera James's speed is now 1.50 seconds, down from 2.73 s

Compare that to the original attack speed and you will see that obtaining 100% Illusionary Dice results in a 0.55 attack time reduction.

100% Illusionary Dice Attack Speed Coefficient

By battling a friend who does not have the Illusionary Dice treasure unlocked, the testers (who all obtained 100% of the treasure) saw that the Damage-Per-Hit value has not been changed, which is key to understanding how the treasure changes our ranger's damage.

Example: Level 70 Witch Cony

  - Without treasure, Witch Cony's damage-per-hit against the tower is 35648 

  - With 100% Illusionary Dice treasure, Witch Cony's damage-per-hit against tower is still 35648

From this, we can deduce that the treasure does not affect base damage values. Witch Cony's original no-treasure attack speed is one hit every 2.67 seconds while with 100% treasure, she hits once every 1.47 seconds. Since the treasure increases attack speed while preserving her damage-per-hit value, it means that her true DPS value has been increased. Based on damage-per-hit:

  2.67 sec/1.47 sec = approximately 1.82 times

...which means that if you take her profile DPS and multiply it by 1.82, you will get her new DPS. The treasure increases DPS by 1.82 times. 

Other rangers' attack speed changes also reflect the 1.82 coefficient:

  Sol 4.33/2.38 ~ 1.82

  Witch Cony 2.67/1.47 ~ 1.82

  Alice 4.63/2.55 ~ 1.82

  Opera James 2.73/1.50 ~ 1.82

This is how we arrived at the previous example with Alice: 

   53128 (original listed DPS) * 1.82 = 96693

Afterword

Line Ranger stages 109 - 120 of the Skyscraper area originally released with the treasure "increase attack speed" but because they reduced the damage at the same time, they finally changed the treasure altogether to something else, increase attack range. The present treasure for Maze of Illusion carries the same description as the old treasure, but it is vastly different and very beneficial to players. Once you obtain 100% of the Illusionary Dice, go back to Skyscraper and you will realize just how much easier the area becomes with the treasure effect. 

But the treasure effect is not just a DPS increase. It has substantially decreased the amount of time it takes for previously "slow/very slow" attack speed rangers to produce one hit. For instance, before the treasure, there was a very good chance that Sol would be knocked back or totally killed before landing even 1 hit of his red bomb. But now his hits are only 2.38 seconds apart (down from 4.33 seconds), so one quick burp and the enemy loses 250k! 

Conclusion

Long story short, the new treasure is the second scenario that I posed at the start, the effective DPS is increased by a factor of 1.82. 

Regarding Castle in the Sky

What about the 1.4545 multiplier from the Castle in the Sky treasure? Where does it fit in? 

Rest assured, the Castle in the Sky treasure is still in effect and it is still a factor in our rangers' damage-per-hit. The new attack speed is simply doing that amount of damage-per-hit more often.

The calculation of our rangers' damage is getting more and more convoluted as they add more treasure effects and multipliers. And it's getting all the more challenging to backtrack because they took away the enemy tower HP values that we used to measure against >:O It's all bit mind boggling, but we're getting more powerful all the same so I can't complain! 

Thanks again to the gurus at LINE Rangers 台灣社團. They work tirelessly to find out all this cool information.

Team Battle Balancing

This is a delicate subject. A lot of players have expressed that there are issues with Team Battle Mode (which I'll just call PvP, player vs. player, for shorthand). We know that the developers tweak the PvP parameters and the computer AI quite often because we see the game download "new resources." Each time they push new team battle files down, it throws us all for a loop because we don't know what they have changed. Teams you used to ride to victory one day may not serve you very well the next. But here is some breaking news from our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 which may help explain what's going on. Their raid team published this just today, and this will change the way you think about your PvP strategy. Keep in mind that this is subject to change, and very likely will given Line Rangers' track record.

Team Battle Attack Power Reduction Ratio

Published and valid as of: July 14, 2014, 6:37pm. The text contained within this box is an English interpretation of the original article. 

• Article originates from: LINE Rangers 台灣社團
• Authors: 黃郁弘, 小為
• Testing Contributors: 黃郁弘, 陳安安, 小為
• Editor: 小為

The Line Rangers Raid Team is focusing on attack power specific to Team Battle this time. 

Rangers' attack power = DPS x Attack Speed x Attack Power Treasure modifier 

We discussed the details of this formula for finding actual attack damage in the attack speed post where the Raid Team hashed all that out.

The team experimented with rangers in Friend Battle Mode and discovered that rangers' attack power while in Team Battle Mode is weaker than in Single Player Stage Mode. The amount by which they are weakened is determined by the ranger's classification. 

Quick example:
Level 80 Alice's attack is reduced down to 33813. Level 70 Shu is weakened to 4049: Alice's attack power is approximately equivalent to 8 Shus on single target damage.

Test Method

The test team used Friend Battle Mode to do all their research. They allowed the opponent to attack their tower (since only the home tower has HP values now) in order to exact the damage inflicted by rangers. If you click on the article, you will see the pictures which illustrate Witch Cony inflicting exactly 24808 damage on the home tower, a farcry from the calculated 49616 damage per hit she should be making in single player mode. 

Sampling of rangers of various class types and their modified attack power in PvP Mode. The last column is the rangers' attack reduction modifier rate

Conclusion

The Line Rangers game has adjusted the damage rate practically once per week. Last week, splash rangers were reduced to 0.20, single-target rangers were 0.25. 

The week of July 14, highlights were attack class rangers 0.70, while other single target rangers were 0.50. 

This just continues to prove that Team Battle Mode is not ruled by splash rangers. If you have Dumpy, Prince James or Dancer King Boss, it's time to take them off the bench. You may find them surprisingly effective. 

For players who play with free rangers, Alice and Masked Moon are great choices. 

This week, attack rangers have the highest attack modifier as they're attacking at 70% power. All other single-target rangers are performing at 50% power and splash rangers are doing just 15% of their original power. Yikes.

Surely from the early days of Team Battle Mode, we have felt that something was not quite right. Our rangers do not perform the way we expect them to. Thanks to the team at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 we now know what was happening last week for a few days when it seemed as though our rangers were dying faster. Some modifiers must have been changed which created a difference in the actual damage rangers were inflicting and the way we expected our rangers to be performing. 

Some players may be outraged by this, but this info doesn't shock me, actually. A lot of games that have vs. player and vs. computer modes create a modifier for damage vs. other people because the pure damage in vs. computer environment would spell the end of player controlled units in no time at all. The amount of damage that is increasingly demanded to keep up with the challenge and difficulty of single player would not translate well in a PvP environment. This is an attempt to "balance" the rangers to make the PvP experience smoother and more worthwhile. Everyone will have their own opinions about whether this is helping. 

My biggest problem with Line Rangers with regard to these modifiers is the fact that players have gotten NO NOTICE about their existence nor the changing of these values on a near-weekly basis. This is something I criticized in my survey to the developers. They change stats without telling us. They change stage environment and enemy formation without so much as a warning. And they created and tweak these attack rate modifiers without any indication. We're left to wonder week after week why our fine team last week sucks this week. Or why our good tank yesterday is getting fried today. I understand that Team Battle is new and the game still needs tweaking. But the players should not get penalized for the mistakes and trials of the developer. At least give us the opportunity to properly adjust.

If anyone out there in LINE world is reading, my greatest plea would be to give us notices when significant changes like this are pushed out. Please?

And finally, I want to emphasize that the above stats are a snapshot of the PvP environment as of July 14 afternoon in Taiwan time. These numbers may not apply for tomorrow or the week after. And I wouldn't expect for the authors of the article to continually update the modifier numbers, either. It really changes too often to keep up-to-date 100%. But the point is, we know that our team composition needs to take into account for this kind of a parameter. This week, if you have the super good single target attack rangers on your team, you're probably kicking butt all over the place on the ladder ranking. Next week, it might not feel as great.

By the way, this does not mean that there is no place for splash rangers. You shouldn't just cross splash rangers off your team. Their potential damage is still huge when the enemy stacks up a bunch of rangers together. What this deters is having a whole 5-man team of splash rangers. That comp might not be a very effective team at the moment.

It's also possible that they tweak other stuff, like how much HP rangers have. We don't know if they've ever touched that stat in the past or if they will in the future. Sometimes you just have to go by feel of how your team is performing, and adjust accordingly.

Edit: This is more of an afterthought but... I just realized that I should feel kind of cheated by these modifiers. I spun the Gacha a lot over the last few months for splash rangers like SoCo, KSM and Ola Brown. Especially Ola Brown because he came around right as Team Battle was introduced, I wanted him badly! And I'm sure a lot of you were spinning for a chance at Susu recently. They're all splash rangers and they were promoted as the most powerful rangers in the game. And yet we just found out that splash rangers are performing at a mere 15% of their normal power in PvP. Anyone else feel like they've been played for a fool? HMMM...

Team Battle Mode: Basics

Team Battle Mode can be a lot of fun and challenging but it can also be a real pain sometimes. If you are new to the game or new to the latest update which introduced Team Battle Mode, please read the basic premise of it on my first post.

This post will strictly be about the goings on of the battlefield itself. The objective of this post is to give some guidance to players who are just starting out in Team Battle (or Friend Battle), so I will make a lot of generalizations. It will most likely be irrelevant to players who have already pounded their way into the top 1000 global ranking. The very nature of going head-to-head against other player teams is dynamic so there is no way to lay out flawless game plans. The only thing I can do is call attention to some general guidelines and ideas to help you formulate your own battle strategy.

By the way, for the people who are copying/translating my content (this post or any other post) for view somewhere else: I don't mind that you're sharing the knowledge to a wider community, but do me the courtesy of linking the info back to my page, please. I spend a lot of time writing this stuff and would appreciate the link back for acknowledgment. Thanks.

Rank

When the global ladder is reset, you will not have a rank and it will just show you as --. Your first battle game will determine your rank and your score (which always starts at 1000). If you started playing team battles very late after the ladder reset, you may be "--" rank for a long time before you fight your way into the top 50,000 ranks. You only get a number rank if you're in the top 50,000.

Ranks update about once every 5 minutes so if you don't see your rank change right away, wait a few minutes and check again. Your rank will reset every Monday at 06:00 Japan Standard Time. You can see both the global rank on this screen and how you stack up against everyone on your Friends list. Your badge type/icon will change according to how many points you gain throughout the week (click on the ? button to see the ranking badges). Ranking matters a lot as it affects the opponent you will be up against.

The Opponent AI 

The opponent player that you face is determined in part by your global ranking and in part by your score, though the exact algorithm I cannot say for sure. If you are just starting the week's ladder unranked, the server may put you up against some opponents of variable difficulty because they don't exactly know where you stack up yet. It's still very early in the game so I don't have any solid details to confirm this but in my own game play this appears to be the case.

From what I can tell so far, the difficulty of your opponent relies on 2 things: (1) the ranger team and the ranger's stats, which is obvious, and (2) the opponent's AI, or artificial intelligence. At low ranks, when you are going up against other low ranking players, the AI will be quite easy, simple and predictable. They'll use fewer items, upgrade slowly, and deploy rather slowly as well. I'll update when I know more definitively, but for now I will generalize that as you gain points and break through to new badge levels, the AI steps up its game. The AI seems to tune higher and sharper in terms of its decision making. You'll find that at higher ranks, the computer will make marked determinations on how to open the game based on the layout of the path and what you are doing. When it decides to upgrade minerals and when it determines is the time to rush in to attack you are active decisions, not predetermined steps. One of the things that will make or break the game is timing of item usage. At very high ranks, the AI will accurately determine when to unleash items on you to maximize utility and ruin your day. At lower ranks, the AI uses items pretty poorly, and you can turn that into an advantage.

As dinky as the game may seem at times, I must applaud the developers on their tuning of the AI for Team Battle Mode. It's really well done and it plays impressively. So far, I haven't noticed any glaringly obvious robot moves like "if this happens then the computer always does this."

Path Length

The battlefield length varies from battle to battle and the one you get is selected at random. The length of the path affects your entire strategy. In the long paths you will most likely be able to safely upgrade minerals 2 or 3 times before you have to deal with any serious onslaught of enemy units. In the short path, it's much more of a gamble. If you get units out first, you might be able to snipe the enemy tower before the opponent AI has a chance to react. If the enemy immediately deploys units but you are upgrading minerals, you could be dead before you know what's happened. 

The long paths favor faster moving rangers as well as rangers with a very long attack range. You have the opportunity to spread out your team over a lot more space so that your back row units are less vulnerable to enemy splash damage.

On the other hand, short paths tends to allow slower moving power hitters to shine more. Long range units are still valuable, but the slow, hard hitting rangers get a chance to do some serious damage in the short path. It is important to keep this in mind because for short paths you'll most likely want to apply a lot of offensive pressure on the opponent so that they are forced to spend their minerals defending rather than building up a lot of minerals to deploy big hitters like KSM. By the way, you should always be wary of enemy splash rangers on ultra short paths. The splash radius can be bigger than you thought and your tower may be taking damage even if you're not standing right outside of it.

Short paths lend themselves to really fast tower sniping. If you are quick and your team runs fast, you can also do it with long paths, but short makes this obviously easier. You can strategically plan to use your items in quick succession to overwhelm and obliterate your opponent on a short path.

Like in single player mode, in every PvP team battle you must make a decision on whether you want to battle near your tower, in the middle of near their tower. The length of the path and the composition of your team's rangers will help you determine that.

Item Usage

Supposing all rangers, treasures, upgrades, and friends are equal, only 2 things set you apart from the opponent AI: the timing of your deployments and the timing of your items. Items can give you an upper hand if you use them carefully. If you have not read the quirks I found out about Ice shot and Meteor, check them out here. The kicker about items in team battle is that the opponent can use them, too, and now we will have to consider how they can be used both offensively and defensively.

Ice Shot 

If you thought ice shot was strategically important in normal single player mode, it is even more critical in team battle mode. While the opponent is frozen, gauge your team's status. At its current state, will your forces be able to overtake their front line? When the thaw happens, will your front line be safe? Should you upgrade your minerals to prepare for a huge push after the thaw? Or do you want to continually deploy more units to directly push your way through? This is likely to be the only few seconds you have to reconsider your strategy and make big changes if necessary.

Offensive: 

  - Combine tornado with ice shot to freeze the opponent right at their tower to maximize on splash damage. This is a very strong combination to use when both teams are equally matched to push things in your favor. This is also a "rush" tactic you can try to use at the beginning of a match to stunt the opponent's army and try to snipe the tower. After you tornado and ice shot, your rangers will camp outside the foot of the enemy tower. Splash rangers will splash the tower down if you can hold that position. 

  - Used alone, you can optimize by deploying a lot of splash rangers to quickly clean out the opponent's front line defenses. Ice shot is great when the opponent has a lot of rangers sitting clumped up at the front, less ideal when their army is all spread out.

Defensive:
  - If the opponent has slaughtered your front line and you need to regroup, you can use ice shot to buy you a few seconds, but only do this if your back row attackers are healthy and plentiful so you don't waste this precious item without doing any damage on the opponent.
  - If you are desperate to get back in the game, you can use ice shot to try to tear down the opponent's tanking rangers, then when ice shot wears off, follow up with invincibility to buy yourself even more time to keep building up your army.
  - When your opponent uses invincibility, you may want to consider using ice shot if your team is not looking healthy enough to survive through it. It will prevent the opponent from scoring kills while they're unkillable but it will also mean that you cannot maximize on damage. Use this time to rally more forces or upgrade your minerals to face them again once invincibility wears off. This is a sort of desperate measure, though.

Reactive:
  - If the opponent uses ice shot on you, in most cases the appropriate response is to use invincibility. In fact, I personally use invincibility when the ice shot duration reaches about half (few seconds in). Your tanking rangers likely won't die just a couple of seconds into an ice shot, and then you gain the advantage of using the last few seconds of invincibility once you thaw. This way your rangers don't die and they will stick around to help return fire while reinforcements arrive after the thaw. Remember, a front line ranger even with 1 HP + invincibility is still unkillable for the duration of the item, so why waste it being frozen and unable to attack? In fact, you need those rangers post-thaw more than ever because the enemy army is bigger after the ice shot.
  - When your opponent uses ice shot on you, should you use ice shot back on them? This makes for a few frozen seconds when no one is attacking anyone, and the only viable things you can do while you wait are deploy more units for later use, upgrade minerals, deploy friends, or use meteor. My opinion is that ice shot is better strategically used when you can deal damage. There are other ways to defend against being frozen, like tornado (for long paths) and invincibility. Or if you're feeling confident, just let them have at your front line for the few seconds and keep doing what you are doing without wasting any items to defend.

Meteor
Meteor does damage to all enemy units in an area-of-effect, so be sure that the enemy is in a position where the meteors will land on them. By the way, from max distance, meteor will completely miss Dancer King Boss, so that's pretty cool.

Offensive:
  - Try and avoid using meteor early in the game because with fewer units on the field, you're kind of wasting the potential damage that meteor can do. Later on in the game when there are tons of enemies on the screen, meteor can really do enormous damage.
  - About a second after the opponent uses tornado on you, meteor is performs amazingly as all 5 of the meteors that come screaming down are guaranteed to hit some of the enemy rangers passing by. After you are swept backward, the opponent's rangers will start to move forward and that's when you should unleash meteor to hit all of them.
  - Don't use tornado on the opponent then unleash meteor. Doing so will likely result in the enemy only getting hit by 2 out of 5 meteors, wasting 3. If you hit tornado and then immediately hit meteor, your meteors will hit 0 units. :(
  - Combining meteor with invincibility can make a very successful push because it would have weakened the opponent and make them ripe for taking with your unkillable army. If you are having a standoff in the middle of the road, a move like this can be decisive.

Defensive:
  - Meteor isn't the most helpful for defensive plays, but if you combine it with a well-placed ice shot, you could weaken the opponent's rangers.

Reactive: 
  - When the opponent uses meteor on you, you have a split second to decide whether you want to use invincibility or not. If you do, you can save low health rangers in the back of your team. This is particularly helpful to players who use rangers like any of the Cony series (except maybe maxed SoCo), Opera James, Sindy, Ola Brown, etc. They're too scrawny to survive 1-2 meteor hits. If the bulk of your attackers are low HP and long range, you really should try to protect them with invincibility before the last couple meteors descend on them.

Tornado
Offensive:
  - To truly use tornado offensively, you will likely use it in combination with another item. However, you can use tornado to "re-stack" the enemy rangers to maximize your offensive splash damage. This is particularly useful against opponents with a bunch of KSM, Abdula or Sol (heavy hitting, slow attack speed, short range). If your rangers are fast moving or the path is short, after you tornado they'll all be stacked up and you have the opportunity to hit them. If the enemy front line rangers are fast moving (like Hip Hop Brown) and it's a long path, then their front line will burst to the middle of the path with no backup support so you'll have the opportunity to snipe their front rangers and then deal with the heavy hitting back row alone. You must time it appropriately!
  - As mentioned above, when the opponent uses tornado on you, it's a very good time to use meteor to hit the most number of enemy units. Resist the urge to tornado the opponent when they use it on you unless it is really absolutely necessary to survive.
  - Using tornado and following up with invincibility right as the teams are about to meet again is a strong move that will take advantage of "re-stacking" the opponent team.
  - You can do funny things that are a little bit offensive and defensive by timing it so that the tornado will blow them back at the same time as a big hit landing. If you're lucky, you'll hit them at half health and maybe buy another second of knock back.

Defensive:
   - Used alone, tornado by itself is a stall tactic. You buy yourself a little bit of time while the enemy walks back over to you, but if they have you cornered at your tower and splash is hitting the tower, blowing them back is a good option.

Reactive:
  - When the opponent uses tornado on you, should you use tornado on them? Maybe; it depends. If the opponent did it because you're getting close to their tower, you might be better off using tornado because you have the better army and you are pushing forward at that time. You don't have to, but it is a viable option if you think you can finish them off by doing so. If you are fighting a losing battle and the opponent pushes you back, then tornado against the opponent might save you. Whatever you do, don't tornado as soon as they use it unless you are purposely doing so for a reason. Especially if you are doing it to stall -- tornado the enemy when they are about to reach your front line to give yourself maximum time. If you both use tornado at the same time, all you have achieved is equalized both your positions to meet in the middle, which doesn't really gain you any advantage.

Invincibility
Offensive:
  - The benefits are obvious for offensive moves. The few seconds that your troops are invincible can make it very easy to push through a tough front. The added bonus of invincibility besides retaining your army for a few seconds is that you will likely kill quite a few enemy rangers and you'll acquire a lot of minerals for the kills, which enables you to deploy more rangers :D
  - Used at the beginning of a stage, you can quickly overwhelm and snipe the enemy tower
  - Used near the end of the game when you have amassed a huge army, you can use it to attempt to overwhelm the opponent. The only thing I must urge players is to practice keeping track of which items the opponent has already used. If you are using invincibility as an overwhelming offensive tactic, make sure that the opponent has already used their ice shot and their invincibility otherwise you may shoot yourself in the foot by using yours early.

Defensive: 
  - As mentioned above, invincibility is fantastic to use when you are in trouble, or when meteor is going to rain on your scrawny back row, or when ice shot is used on you. Of the three situations, I think using it during ice shot is the best defense because the potential to break you is highest during ice shot.

Reactive:
  - When the opponent uses invincibility, should you also use invincibility? I generally dislike using invincibility when they use it because I like to use invincibility to my advantage whenever possible. I also don't like to use ice shot as a defensive item because ice shot is also such a fantastic offensive item. When the opponent uses invincibility, I try to do one of two things instead: (1) use tornado if it's a very long path as a stall tactic. (2) Spam deployment of tanking rangers to hold the front. All invincibility means is that the opponent is unkillable for a few seconds. If you reinforce your front line, then there's nothing to fear. Once their invincibility is over, you can even retaliate with some items of your own to hit even harder.

Other Considerations

Should I upgrade minerals during a Team Battle? 

    This greatly depends on your production upgrade status. At level 80 and above, you can surely get by without upgrading minerals for many, many of the matches. For most of the lower AI matches, the computer is busy upgrading minerals and deploys nothing at the start. You can easily gain an advantage by deploying first. In the higher AI matches, the computer does not upgrade minerals and goes straight to deployment 9 out of 10 times in my experience. You are forced to defend if you upgrade minerals. 

    I found much higher success in not upgrading minerals at the start, and instead doing it when it is safe and I have minerals to spare during the match. Just don't forget to upgrade because the longer the battle drags on, the more advantageous having faster minerals will be.

Should I mimic the opponent's actions?

    No, you really shouldn't. By doing so you are doing everything it does except slower, and thus are at a disadvantage. Besides, the AI does not have to show you all 5 of its rangers. It is possible that (and I have personally seen) the AI deploys 4 rangers for most of the game, then later in the game suddenly deploy a 5th ranger to surprise you. You should go in with your own game plan, not follow the computer.

How is the opponent able to deploy so many rangers so fast? 

   If the computer does not upgrade minerals at the start, they will spend the initial set of minerals on 2-3 rangers right from the start. In addition, if they kill any of your units, they will gain minerals for the kills. And finally, the mineral max limit of the opponent player may be higher than yours and they might have started with more. The opponent may also have their rangers mastered, which means the ranger's cooldown is halved.

Ola Brown is killing everything. What can I do? 

   Ola Brown is very good and he tends to pop out super early in the fight because he's so cheap to deploy. But luckily, he's so scrawny that if the wind blows, he dies. You must take to the offense early against a team with Ola to prevent the opponent from forming a good defense for him. Tornado is also a great way to "re-stack" the enemy units so you can splash him to death. Also, from max distance, you can hit Ola Brown with the meteor item, so if you are planning on a big push, use meteor to weaken the Ola Brown troupe first, then push in. Not gonna lie, Ola Brown in any team makes things tougher. Ola Brown together with Hip-Hop Brown is a very rough combination to break, too. There's no silver bullet, I can only offer you strategy advice.

KSM is killing everything. What can I do? 

   KSM costs a lot of mineral to deploy and his cooldown is long, so the best defense against a team with KSM is a fast offense. Keep the opponent from deploying him at all by forcing it to defend as early as possible. If you let them deploy a whole stack of KSMs, then you're in trouble. If you have to fight your way through to him, remember that KSM has a rather wide hit radius but it's up in the front where your tanking rangers are. His hits will not be able to touch longer range units like Opera James, Sindy, Cony and Boss. If you must abandon your strongest short range attackers (like Dwight and Dumpy) in favor of long range attackers (like Cony, Opera, Alice, Lia, Boss, especially Dancer King) midway through the fight just to deal with KSM, do it. Strip your deployment down to only your tank ranger and your long range attackers and you will not have to fear KSM's frontal assault. Just like in single player mode, you can also stall with a couple of lowbies if you deploy them in a continuous steady stream while your long range attackers have a killing spree. Need to review which rangers have a long range? Check this post for details.

.............................

This text-filled post has gone on long enough. I may add more as it comes to me, but as far as basics, I think that covers it! 

New Battle Modes Available

After an extra hour of extended maintenance to prepare for the new battle modes, we are finally able to play the game. Unfortunately, the Versus Battle mode is currently plagued by network and ranking server connection errors. Practically every time you try to get to a new screen, or if you finish a game and try to get back to the battle screen with ranking info, the unable to connect error rears its ugly head at us.

Nevertheless, I persisted along with many, many other players to try to get a head start on the global ranking. Many of my questions were answered!

The Versus Modes

Ranking:

Everybody wins

• All players who participate in the ranked Team Battle mode will receive a ranking. Your points/score determines your global ranking. [Note: battling your friends will not help you in the global ladder.]
• Players begin at a score of 1000.
• If you win the battle, you will gain points and your rank will rise.
• If you lose the battle, you will lose points and your rank will fall. 
• The amount you gain/lose depends on the ranking of the opponent you battle (pretty sure), and in small part your winning streak.
• The global ranks are reset on a weekly basis (on Monday 6am JST) 
• The rewards are really worth it to play this battle mode. Top ranked first place, second place and third place receive a whopping 1000 rubies as a prize. Lower rankings aren't bad either. 
• You will also gain experience (for your rangers, not for the player) and coins when you win battles. 
• Note that battles against friends on your friend list will not affect your score and therefore has no impact on your global ranking.
• The bottom of the Team Battle screen will tell you how long until the global ranking will be reset and winners will be determined. 

Team Battle Mode 

• Your "real player" opponent's rangers appear to be AI (artificial intelligence) controlled. There is NOT an actual person playing and controlling the opponent deployments in real time at all. (Boo...)
• Team Battle requires "Special Feathers" which are the rainbow colored feathers. You regenerate 1 special feather every 30 minutes. You can purchase additional feathers with rubies. As with the regular feathers, you also get a new set of 5 each time you gain a player level.
• Somewhat fortunately or unfortunately depending on which point of view you take, you are free to take whichever rangers you please into combat. I'm pretty sure that your opponent's team is based on who that player has chosen in their team at that moment in time, too. 
• The length of the battle path is determined at random.
• Pretty sure that whatever treasure your opponent possesses will be applied to their rangers in battle.
• Whatever upgrades (mineral, max limit, tower health and missile strength) you have will apply in battle mode. 
• You may use items and friends/sidekicks in battle mode. 
• It is possible to hit Hurry Up mode which will just cause the lightning bolts to happen. I believe it also causes all units to become half health to speed up the fight. I don't think it makes the opponent deploy like crazy the way single player mode does, though. 
• So far, I don't believe you can trigger Thomas in this mode. I also don't think you can trigger Gold Brown.
• There is no clear bonus roll when you win a team battle. 
• When you win more than once in a row, the game will tell you what your winning streak is. A low streak gives you no bonus points, a high streak (10 or more) gives you a 2 point bonus. But most of the points depend on whether you were matched against a player who was close to your rank.
• You may only battle each Friend once per day. But you can farm up as many Friendship Points as you have Friends. 

Battle with Friends Mode

• You can access Battle with Friends mode by clicking on Friends in the main screen, then click on the Friend's picture, then click on the Battle with Friend button. 
• Your Friend also appears to be controlled by AI, so it's not your friend actually playing on the other end (Boo.)
• The length of the battle path is determined at random.
• Whatever upgrades (mineral, max limit, tower health and missile strength) you have will apply in battle mode. 
• You may use items and friends/sidekicks in battle mode. 
• You win 50 Friendship Points and personal bragging rights when you defeat a Friend in this battle mode. 
• There is no clear bonus roll when you win a team battle. Battle with Friends is considered a practice for Team Battle. 
• You don't need any feathers to battle your friends.
• If your friends choose to battle you and fail to be victorious, congratulations! You will receive 50 friendship points in the mail for doing nothing other than being absolutely boss mode. Too bad it doesn't tell you in the mail whose pride you hurt today :) 

My Current Impressions

First of all, from the ranking rewards, it would appear that everyone will get 20 rubies for the weekly global ranking system so it would be worth it to buy some rubies because you'll get 20 at the end of the week anyway. It doesn't hurt to participate! You mostly battle people close to your rank score, so you won't immediately be pitted against people who have insanely good rangers; but that said, ranking is no indication of how good that person is because "they" are not playing live on the other end, it's still AI. 

It would appear that in these new battle modes, long range units are incredibly powerful (Ola Brown, Dancer King Boss in particular). Once you get some meaty rangers to tank your front line, you need some nice long range units to stand at a distance and bomb away at the enemy. The opponent AI may decide to use items on you, so you should be prepared to respond. The one that is particularly dangerous in my opinion is enemy Ice Shot. Pretty much if they use Ice Shot, I respond with Invincibility almost immediately so that it negates whatever damage they will try to do while my units are doing nothing. You can deploy while frozen but your units will just sit at the foot of your tower until the Ice Shot wears out. 

Additionally, I would strongly suggest you go ahead and start upgrading your tower health if you have previously been neglecting this upgrade category. Since they took away Tower Repair, your tower is as healthy as it will ever be and there are no take-backs once you enter combat. 

While it's kind of disappointing that it's all AI controlled opponents, it's still kind of addictive because of what's at stake (glory, ranking & rubies). Mostly the fun of these battle modes is in checking out what you can do to respond to various team compositions and enemy formations. I haven't gotten bored with it yet. Try it out! It's pretty fun (when the server behaves). 

Endless Mode

• To get to Endless Mode, you hit the Start button the way you usually do on the main screen. Then instead of selecting a stage, click on the swirly portal on the map where it says "COMING SOON". 
• To play an Endless Mode stage, you must spend a "Special Feather" which is the new rainbow colored feather. It regenerates once every 30 minutes. You can also buy feathers with rubies. As with the regular feathers, you also get a new set of 5 each time you gain a player level.
• In Endless Mode only, it appears that non-speed type rangers incur a 50% longer cooldown "tax". Dancer King Boss who is normally (unmastered) on a 7-second cooldown is now just over 10 seconds in Endless. Ola Brown who is normally (unmastered) on a 8-second cooldown is on a 12 second cooldown in Endless. My Lia is mastered, and her mastered cooldown is 2 seconds, but in Endless Mode her cooldown is 3 seconds. My mastered Xan's cooldown is 4 seconds but in Endless Mode his cooldown is 6 seconds. I believe that the cooldown of speed rangers remains untaxed, but it's pretty hard to tell since the CD is so low for speed rangers anyway. It's noticeably longer for the others. In my recordings, my mastered Hip-Hop Brown is roughly on a 1-2 second cooldown which seems normal for master level. This is a very important consideration for Endless Mode team selection. 
• Unfortunately, I haven't played much yet. It has a similar ranking system, though not a global ladder, with rewards like experience and coins, based on how long you last in battle. It's not a bad way to level your rangers if you have no interest in using special feathers for Team Battle.

New Stuff

The update gave us a lot of nice enhancements that we've been asking for as well as other shiny new things. They've greatly improved on some "quality of life" type of features. 

• When you log in every day consecutively, you will stack up and gain rewards for your good attendance. This is a weekly event and replaces our old "daily login bonus." You will be rewarded once you get your "clear" stamp for that day.
• Experience Booster item will grant you 50% more experience for some time duration (3 hours or all day, d pending on which you buy.) I expect most people will be using 500 Friendship Points to buy the 3 hour one. I don't know yet whether it stacks with Double Experience Day, but I would expect so. Once you buy it, you'll see the timer ticking away in the main screen.
• Player max level has increased to 99 from 80.
• Little banners now tell you when something "new" has been added to your game or if there's an event happening to make sure you don't miss anything.
• The Friend home screen is accessed by hitting the Friends button on the main screen, then clicking on your Friend's picture. It'll show you what rangers they have and what level they are as well as their Collection progress and Treasure progress. 

• If you click on your Friend's portrait in the stage selection map, you can access a list of your friends currently stuck on that stage, send them help and click to go to their friend home page.
• They finally fixed the display of tower health to be the actual tower health rather than maximum of 999999. Unfortunately, they have also taken away the indication of exact health on the enemy tower (likely because we were exploiting it to find out info they didn't want us to know... lol. Boo). 
• When your ranger has reached its absolute max level, it'll say that the ranger is "Master". It's not just a vanity title: Master rangers' cooldown is half of an unmastered ranger. This is a newly added bonus of reaching max level, and naturally more incentive for players to want to play more Gacha. 
• Friendship Point capacity has been raised from 990 max to 2000 max. 

• Ranger storage capacity has been increased from 100 rangers to 150 rangers. 
• The new "Invincibility Item" gives your tower and all of your rangers temporary invincibility (approximately 8 seconds by my count). 
• Auto Mode should make your life a lot easier grinding levels. Once you enter battle in a stage, you can hit the Auto button (located under the Pause button) and the AI will take over your deployment. You can still take over if you wish, or turn off Auto if you want to play yourself again. You must switch Auto mode on for every stage you enter, though. I'm not sure what the AI does to determine which ranger to deploy, but I guess it'll take some time to try and figure that part out.
• Under Settings, there's a new "Coupon" button but not sure what it is for yet. Maybe some localized promotional things will be placed here in the future.
• When you click on a team member on the main screen you'll be presented with its profile and the option to go to the level up screen. 
• There's a Skip button on the Gacha now. Yes, my prayers have been answered! Now we don't have to waste so much time spinning that dumb ball!
• We no longer get 10 friendship points if someone selects you as a friend so people with symbols prefixing their names can more or less drop that style. The mailbox now allows you to kindly reciprocate sending "help" troops to up to 50 people. 

Anyway that's it for now, I'm going back to furiously try to climb the global ladder. Competition is fierce so far. Leave some comments if you have something cool/neat/interesting to add. I'm going to say this right now because I know some of you out there are burning up about it: If you are commenting only to complain about how unfair the Team Battle mode is without any sort of constructive criticism, I will delete it. 

That said, I do hope that the new updates to the game has offered everyone something to do while we wait for more new areas.