2.1 Preview - Guilds

It’s time for a preview of our 2.1 Guild update.

There’s not long to go now (we don’t have an actual date/time yet - we’ll keep you all updated on THAT front), but while we’re all waiting , we thought now is a great time to share some details on the upcoming changes. Hold onto your hats, helms, and Raksha-Ears… there’s a LOT of stuff in this one!

Now… to answer a few obvious questions (it’s turned into a VERY long post!)

1. WHY ARE WE CHANGING GUILD TASKS?

The Guild Task system is almost 2 years old now… .that seems like forever in the evolution of Gems of War. It really did come from a different age, before battles were free (they used to cost gold), before Armor & Difficulty Levels gave bonuses to Gold, and before PvP was such a steady reliable Gold-Generator.

It’s pretty safe to say, that the Guild Task system, although it worked fairly well at the start, has NOT kept pace with the growing economy of the game, and the general inflation of the amount of resources earned.

But, at the same time, simply changing the numbers in the current system is probably one of the least fair things we could do… we really don’t want anybody to have LESS STUFF after all, and we definitely don’t want to disadvantage up-and-coming players, which is part of the problem with the current system, as you’ll see below when we share some data with you.

And so the obvious solution is to create a new system… one that has some similarities to the previous one (similar values in the amount of rewards given) but one that also allows a lot more diversity in how it is approached. Simply changing numbers on the rewards wasn’t able to do this, as there was no method which would not allow top-tier guilds to accelerate their earnings even faster.

2. WHAT EXACTLY WAS WRONG WITH THE OLD SYSTEM?

A picture is worth a 1000 words with this one. Here is a graph of rewards that shows the old system (orange) and the new one (blue).

We’ve split guilds up into 10 categories, based upon the value of the rewards they can extract from the system.
As you can see, until you get near the top, the current system (in orange) is working okay (okay-ish… it’s a bit stingy in my book, still), but the massive difference as you get into a top guild is really disheartening for a lot of up-and-coming players. And what we’ve aimed to do here is to provide a new system (in blue) that ramps up in a more equitable fashion, and is generally a lot kinder to newbies down the far right.

Now if you’re wondering what percentage of players are in the various types of guilds, here’s another chart.

Only around half a percent of our daily players are in the those very top guilds (the two categories on the left). And we respect that you guys work hard for your rewards… we don’t want to take that away from you… you should be out in front getting more than everyone else! That will still be the case, but we also need to show a little love to the other 99.5% of players and get them a little closer to you.

So THAT was what was wrong with the rewards. But there was also a second issue that the current guild implementation became simply about extracting as many Glory Keys and Gems as possible from the system… which is a missed opportunity to do something more interesting! Gems of War has LOTS of potentially-cool rewards we could be giving: Gems Keys, Event Keys, Skill Bonuses, Income Bonuses, Tribute Bonuses, ALL of which can be valuable to many different types of players, and it now has a Guild System that lets you prioritize what YOU want to collect. It will never give as many Gems & Glory Keys per week as the top 0.5% of players could get from the old system, but it will give other things instead, including SKILL BONUSES, which are hard to put a price on!

3. WHAT ARE THESE GUILD GUARDIAN TROOPS ?

Guild Guardians are a Common troop that scales up in a very UN-common fashion.

When fully Mythic, their Skill Values are equivalent of an actual Mythic card… they get extremely good value from Ascension.
Their spells are support-y in nature, and generally affect the board.
They also get a Legendary 3rd trait like a more powerful card.
These guys are only available from Guild Chests, and they will drop at about a 50% rate from those chests (until you have them all at Mythic, at which time they will disappear, and the chest will drop troops of the appropriate rarity).
We estimate that very organized free-play guilds might take 5-6 months to to get them to Mythic… it’s intended to be a long term goal.
The cost to trait them up is also extremely high, which fits in with the idea of them being a long-term goal (on the plus side, they use LOTS of Major traitstones though!)
Oh, and if you’ve seen the “Eternals” kingdom… that’s where they come from.
And as a final teaser, they will (in some way) be involved in the upcoming Guild Wars.

4. THIS SOUNDS LIKE A NERF! OMG YOU GUYS SUCK! [Insert Death Threat Here] (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Not a question, but yeah… in before the first one of these posts :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

This update is a nerf to 2 things, and a buff to a whole bunch of others to compensate.
If you’re in the top 0.17% of daily players… you’ll pull back 23% less total rewards from your guild every week (which consisted entirely of Gems & Glory Keys). Considering the sheer volume of stuff you were getting up until now - more than we ever intended - we think you’ll still be doing fine and out-earning everybody else!
In fact, part of the reason you’ll get less is that you’re guild simply can’t donate that much gold every week (it tops out around 16,000,000 which only a few guilds regularly manage), which leaves you free to spend the remainder on lots of Gold Keys, or other things we may add in future updates… in which case you’re probably going to about break even.

We’re also aware that in the big bunch of new rewards you get are some things you may not value at end-game (Souls & Maps for example). But consider for a moment the newer players who quite often have the Gem/Glory Key cycle enforced on them by Guildmasters optimizing the current system, and are struggling for things like Souls… you may get a few things you don’t want here… but the potential benefit to the health of the game for mid-to-low tier players is enormous, and a healthier game (in which your’e still getting tons of free stuff) is better for everyone.

And finally, don’t forget the Skill Buffs you can get from the current system… we struggled to put a price on these, and we ended up costing them about 25%-33% of what we really think they’re worth… so I feel our estimates on the value of the new system are actually conservative.

30 Likes

Would that be Triple Skill Bonus or Triple Tribute Chance after +150 Gold per Day?

Oops - I showed a little bit of the (unavailable) 8-star Skill didn’t I…
You’ll see it grayed out in 2.1 and marked as unavailable (until we have 13-14 troops in a kingdom I believe), but it is actually Triple Tribute Chance. Triple Skill Bonus will happen WAYYYYYY in future at 10-stars!

8 Likes

Will there be a new cap for the level of the players?

New level cap is 10,000… but the XP required for levels begins to increase after 1000… we’re pretty sure nobody will be reaching 10,000 any time soon!

Oh… obvious next question will be what do these levels give?

Well extra mastery is boring, so we stop that after level 1000.

Instead we send you a little present in the in-game mail every time you level up :slight_smile:
There are also 10 more skill points to gain at levels 1100, 1200, 1300, etc… (up to level 2000)

6 Likes

Want to play it right now :frowning:

So, +150 Gold per Day is the 8 star, and Triple Tribute Chance is the 9 star. If Triple Skill Bonus is the 10 star, then there won’t be +200 Gold per Day. That would mess with my OCD. :disappointed_relieved:

I suggest starting Kingdom Power at no stars, and giving the first reward at bronze.

-23% rewards for 3x variety. Easy call. Although nobody in the top guilds needs souls… we’ll live?

No level cap is a huge plus. Just in time in my case.

And all the UI reworks in there look excellent.

Do those guild tasks cap out when we’ve done all 6 x 12 ?

4 Likes

The improvements of the guild tasks seems nice :wink: .
Some questions:
What about the current guild tokens?
What the guild level change?

I think so:

Yes, I just had that part pointed out to me. (Oops!)

Thing is that lots of us can already go way higher than 16mil per week… I guess - again - that’s our problem. Though a set limit means we can now say things like ‘16mil / 30 people = 500-550k, no one person should do much more than that per week’.

1 Like

what will be the maximum level for a guild? We re soon at 1000 and i heard it is the actual limit?
If it is the limit, will we still get rewards with next update?

edit: im on xbox

We are lvl 2000. So no worries :slight_smile:

Sounds good. Cant watch the video right now.
What actually are the new guild tasks?

As a guild leader, I can happily say this preview very much excites me!

Also,
A measly 5000 Gold for 10 gems?! That’s frickin’ beautiful!
2 Gem keys for only 40k? Hell yeah! (Not as good as the above, but who cares! Still better than now!)
50 Gold keys for a 10k Gold? Yes, please! (Don’t lie, you know you top guilds want more commons. ;))
Souls are a better cost, as are maps.
Glory keys are the only considerable cost affected ones.
Event keys are also pretty costly, but eh. Still, still better than now!

I expect a complete list by Anonymous & Match Masters for task costs by the end of next week!

2 Likes

6 tasks one for each color.
They give either: gold keys, magic keys, glory keys, gems, souls, event keys or maps.
You can do only 12 tasks of each color by week and the amount of the gift increases each time and so on, the gold requires.
The guild tasks also provides exp to guardians that give bonus to ressource and a +3 to one stat for all troops if you complete the 12 tasks of the corresponding color during the curent week.
EDIT: I don’t know if the bonus are for the current week or for 7 days.
EDIT2: correct it

2 Likes

I’m a player who has lost interest in the mind numbing grind of the game as of late but from what I see I think you may have created something to spark my interest again. Thanks @Sirrian and the rest of the dev team. Can’t wait to try it out.

2 Likes

No, step 0 - 5000 step 1 -10000 step 2 - 20000 step 3 - 40000 :wink:

Very interesting! Just as I reach max level you raise the cap! Looking forward to all of this!

True fighters can never rest!