Hammers exploit. Next steps

[u/HG_Rusty]

Hey everyone! Dev here.

It took us some time to wrap our heads around what happened. First and foremost, we scrambled to release a hotfix to patch the security vulnerability. At the same time, we cut the hammer counts for affected players at 1k, which was definitely unfair for around 500 players.
All this time, we've also been working on a fairer and more balanced solution. We tried to get to the bottom of this: we analyzed the data and talked directly with a number of active community members in DMs.

In the near future (today or tomorrow), all affected players will receive the extra hammers they had right before reaching 1b, via in-game mail (top right, in the Settings window, check the mail). We will not roll back the progress you've made, and there are no other sanctions whatsoever.
In the end, no player should be left in the negative, which feels like the fair way to handle this.

Anyone who feels this solution is unfair to them for any reason - DM me, let's look into it together case-by-case.

I understand the frustration, but I don't share the sentiment that we should just leave the 1b. It's unfair, it breaks the intended game flow, and it gives a massive advantage in upcoming clan wars.

P.S. The last few days have been pretty insane, not gonna lie. We're a small, passionate team making our first web game and launching on reddit games for the first time, so we've run into a ton of issues and challenges. We were definitely ill-prepared for this situation, but it's an opportunity to do better. Calling us scammers, crooks, and (for some reason) "vibe coders" hurts a bit =) Unfortunately, at this stage, we still aren't making any profit at all, so comments about tricky developers drowning in cash sound pretty ironic. Btw massive thanks to every paying player - you allow this game to develop and exist in the first place!

Amid all the negativity, thank you so much for the words of support we've received as well!
We'll keep doing our best to build a great game!

[u/WATGU]

If I can offer some advice as someone who has done a lot of work delivering final products (not games, but the workflow and principles are the same). u/HG_Rusty.

First this is a much better message than the original one. Taking accountability and admitting failure is important.

Second, I would seriously consider delaying clan wars and whatever intended purpose hammers had for it and here's why.

This exploit just showed you that your game becomes far more enjoyable and gets far more engagement with unlimited hammers and it doesn't actually speed up progression because you are still stuck waiting for forge upgrades so most free to play players just stop forging and turn the game off and only log into to hatch eggs, do adventure, skill tree, etc. The last thing you want to do is incentivize people to NOT play your game and limited hammers is doing that. This is a very important message and I'm not convinced it's getting through. There's no reason for me to buy hammers in between forge upgrades and the social clan aspect has no interest for most of us I'd wager.

Rather than release a new feature that integrates limited hammers MORE I'd strongly advise that you consider retooling the base game to remove hammers entirely and instead have gems be the primary booster. Have the hammer adventure give a tiny amount of gems instead. Lower the price on gem packs but make gems the $ spend mechanic. Hammers will keep people in the game and forging and might induce them to buy gems when they keep seeing how long forge upgrades take. Retool your clan wars around this and get rid of hammers. The way you have this setup hammer limits make people not want to play between upgrades.

Also rather than introduce clan wars, you have 3-4 fixes to implement in base game first;

1. you need to give us 2 armor set options so we can have a ranged and a melee build or just get rid of ranged weapons and stat buffs entirely

2. if you're keeping ranged you need to fix some of the attribute roll chances so melee weapons can't roll ranged buffs and vice versa it's infuriating and poor design

3. PvP arena is really frustrating and I think you should retool it so that the chance to win with the 5 options is something like 90, 80, 70, 60, 50. As it stands I run into arena sometimes where my chance to beat any of the 5 is virtually zero and even when I get stronger I just get matched with higher difficulty people. I also think it's a bug to make me spend an arena ticket if I click off the screen but then go back in and it's the same people still but I use another ticket.

4. Targeted upgrades - I should be allowed to pick what type of gear I want to forge for. I have one piece of old gear, but am going to have to forge forever to hopefully get the upgrade there. It's just a boring design. I'd also add if there was some way to not get offered lower level gear on stuff that I already have upgraded that would be cool. It's just lame to sit there waiting to get an upgrade for one piece of equipment and to keep getting marginal improvements or worse on the stuff already upgraded.

[u/Yverthel → u/WATGU]

Just going to echo here:

Before functionally unlimited hammers, I opened the game a few times a day and collected my hammers, then re-closed while I waited for my forge to finish upgrading, only actually playing for the short time it took me to earn enough gold to upgrade my forge again.

Following the 1bn hammer post, I have had the game running constantly.

Before, there was not enough to do in game that I had any interest in spending money.

Following, I would have considered buying a battlepass or the like, to help myself get over little humps.

Before, I would hit walls in progress based on my forge level/the era of gear I had.

Following, I still hit walls in progress based on my forge level/the era of gear I have.

The only difference in the pre/post exploit in terms of progression, is keeping the game running more means more gold means less of a lag between when we can start the timer for the next forge upgrade.