This won't be what you expect.

First of all, I need to give SP props. Of late, they're doing a few things right. They've realized the game is evolving, and have either eased up on monetary pressures (eg. free skill swapping) or given a few more freebies (eg. the cave) to compensate. The point is, the game we've come to know and love has changed dramatically since it was first released, and some aspects need to catch up.

Over the last two weeks, rune-swaps-for-gold has been GLORIOUS. Seriously, it cannot be overstated how much life this has brought into the game. I understand it was only intended to allow for conversions to mutant runes, but it's made other things possible. I enjoyed watching my friends change rune configurations to better combat certain levels of the nemesis survival dungeon, and joined fellow teammates in moving runes around for wars. It also let us change monsters' ROLES as needed, something that's been sorely lacking in this game. Customizing our monsters shouldn't be such a drain on our resources, especially considering how expensive good monsters have become lately.

On the ML Community page on Facebook, we were told that when the game was first made, the intent was to have all our monsters equipped with runes. Folks, that was when people had probably a dozen monsters to equip. We're WAY past that now, and to add to the strain, you've given us a rune sink in the Mutant Runes feature.

25 gems to remove an X rune is way, way too harsh. When reconfiguring a monster for war, you'll usually need to change at least two runes on at least one monster. Then after the war, you'll usually have to switch them back. That cost is bonkers, by any metric.

Now, I'm not onboard for a permanently "free" rune removal. That on its own wouldn't just change how the game is played, but could impact the economy in a negative way. However, there are no shortage of ideas for compromise I'd like you to consider. For example:

• Tie further discounted rune removal fees into the rune guardian. For example, 50% off fees while the guardian is active.

• My favorite: Keep the rune removal fees, but create a mechanic for unlimited rune type changes. If someone has a speed rune equipped, let them change the type to strength, team life, stamina, etc. on the fly (excluding golds). If they have a mutant, let them change the mutant combos. This way all monsters will still need to be equipped (which is already crazy expensive btw), but reconfiguring for wars will become accessible to non-whales.

As I've said in these forums before, we're increasingly feeling like we're being squeezed. Milked. Even ripped off. Why not back it off just a bit and evolve this part of the game as you've done others? This little change would make a big difference for your best customers. Please, consider this request and make them happy.

I am more in favor of earning it as an achievement.

For example after you own a certain number of Level X runes (amount to be determined by SP) you unlock the perk to unequip runes for free. This helps ensure their income from sales of Level X runes do not diminish, and may have the added benefit of providing an incentive for the average players to purchase more in order to earn the perk.

@roger-c well, now we got Super Mutants, so ...

@keki14 Simple:

• remove all standard runes for gold after # standard X runes owned
• remove all mutant runes for gold after # mutant X runes owned
• remove all super mutant runes for gold after # super mutant X runes owned

still provides an incentive as @Roger-C suggests, maybe even more so because it will incentise us to upgrade to mutant and beyond.

Good post. I would suggest making runes 1-5 a gold fee, 6-10 gem to give players starting out more leniency while they grow.

@sinisism said in Rune Removal Fees:

Keep the rune removal fees, but create a mechanic for unlimited rune type changes.

I like this idea! You should be allowed to swap runes at the same level with what you have in your inventory. This means that you can swap types on your monsters (eg. lvl 7 speed with lvl 7 team speed) but you can't constantly swap around X runes to always have a 9 x X team. If you want to change rune levels, you get charged for unequipping the rune so that you can add a higher level one. It would allow flexibility in your team setup yet still maintains the need to obtain high level runes!!! @Fox can this please be passed on for consideration

You guys are off your nut with these expensive ideas.
It’s already been shown in another thread that the cave and new dungeon set up gives less rewards than we used to get, so no, the cave is a horrible addition to the game. (Aside from the gambling)
Anything over 5 or 6 gems to swap level 10 runes is too much. Swapping 2 runes a war would be spending 20 gems every 2 days for war will burn through your gems quick especially free to play.
We already have team battlegrounds to make you need lot and lots of runes. To say people will stop buying runes cuz they’re free to remove is crazy talk. You need more than 9 runes. I have over 60 level 10 runes and it’s not enough.

@david-ml said in Rune Removal Fees:

@sinisism said in Rune Removal Fees:

Keep the rune removal fees, but create a mechanic for unlimited rune type changes.

I like this idea! You should be allowed to swap runes at the same level with what you have in your inventory. This means that you can swap types on your monsters (eg. lvl 7 speed with lvl 7 team speed) but you can't constantly swap around X runes to always have a 9 x X team. If you want to change rune levels, you get charged for unequipping the rune so that you can add a higher level one. It would allow flexibility in your team setup yet still maintains the need to obtain high level runes!!! @Fox can this please be passed on for consideration

This has been discussed for a while in the Discord. There were a few reasons why we felt this was a reasonable change if SP didn't think allowing removal for gold wasn't a large enough boon to player experience to trade off against, what I'm guessing would be, a small loss in gem revenue.

To me keeping removal for gold is the ideal, but swapping would be a decent alternative, as both of those allow for sensibly swapping runes between and even during wars. Giving the players the flexibility to do that will help narrow the increasing power gap between teams that is a huge contributor to getting matchmaking working in an ideal state, with close matches (which is still pretty erratic so far this season).

Behind that is the rune cooldown system that could match the cooldown mechanic already present in the game. That allows us to at least occasionally change the runes on our monsters, but probably won't allow for flexing setups in back to back to back close wars (which is the goal, right?). It also doesn't address the huge issue the very top teams have with facing other top teams constantly, the cost of following intricate game plans that rely on detailed tweaking of monsters' speed/strength/life.

In any case, reducing the cost from 35 gems to 25 gems is not going to have a large impact, at least within our team. Folks who used to remove runes will still do so, those who never did, will still never do, because paying 75 gems for a one time move is a long term goal drainer, as that's 30% the cost of a new monster egg, and it's already impossible to keep up with constant influx of new monsters.

As I'm setting up my roster for Battlegrounds, I've realized the rune-type-change idea would be an overall great QoL improvement for this game. As we're given an increasing number of game modes, easily tweaking or even changing a monster's role becomes ever more important. And honestly, the vast majority of us just do without and usually run with the "set it and forget it" mentality due to costs and, yes, hassle.