If not Guild Wars then what?

It is a VERY difficult line to walk.

If you design things that require more gems, to ‘encourage’ people to buy gems, you alienate your free player base.
If you add other things to buy that are powerful, you get branded PTW and alienate your free player base.
If you add things to buy that aren’t powerful or are just cosmetic, you don’t get many sales so you lose money (money spent to develop < money gained from sales)
If you don’t make money you lose staff and perhaps bandwidth, which lowers game quality and people leave because the game “isn’t good anymore”

I do not envy their position. They poured a LOT of resources (money, manhours, etc) into Guild Wars banking on the competition aspect providing staying power to those that otherwise would have gotten bored and quit. And while it obviously has enthralled many at the top and some at the middle, it has alienated many others.

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We already know Crafting is next in line, and if it were a Mini-Game that would be a double bonus!

I too really want to see Boss Fights. But I’m stretched to come up with anything beyond that.

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Exactly, finally someone that can look at the big picture. It’s not like Sirrian went into the office at a given day, after fighting an alligator in the parking lot, and declared: - Yo’ know what? Let’s create a feature just to piss off our players. We’ll call it… Guild Wars!

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I think someone else mentioned this on the forums previously but I feel a live PVP game mode could be interesting. It’d be cool if we could face real people instead of AI.

IDK how realistic this would be for the developers to build but it would add a new element to the game. Maybe live PVP matches could cost have a cost (1 gem), include some sort of wager component, be part of competition/events, etc…

I’m totally fine that devs want to make beneficts.

You decided it. One can imagine a Survival where you have to do battles after battles without healing your troop. Devs can put a fee of 10 gems to restore 20% life/armour. Just an example.
Same for Treasure Hunt: devs can add the possibility to pay with gems extra turns.
Same for Arena: devs can add the possibility to pay with gems a new reroll for one rarity.

So I don’t see why for you mini-games = no profit.

Yeah… I personnaly don’t buy it because all the races have male/female avatar but not for both of these packages. So it seems unfinished… so no thanks.
Moreover, Hero has this bad reputation to be useless (okay there is now Deathknight, maybe Mechanist but not super popular).
Why not making an alternate visual of the most popular troop like Khorvash or Bone Dragon (sorry to repeat myself)? @Saltypatra could animate a monthly or weekly poll to know what players want (sort of Design-a-troop but only the visual). It could be fun.
The amount of dollars paid for doing one artwork should not be so big (compared to the cost of GW…), so they could try at least. I don’t say I’m right, I say “devs can try”.

Again I don’t see how they will gain any benefict from GW. Is there really someone that will buy gems to increase their Sentinels? I doubt.

Hello Bear, since you are new in the forums you’ve missed some old discussions regarding some problems with a real live PVP. Among some points made:

  • Some players could stall their turns as they are about to lose or just to frustrate the opponent. While there are some features already being used in other games to reduce the negative impact of this behavior it’s still a problem that would reduce the general fun.

  • Having something to be waged, making it much more competitive, could just increase the stress of those battles.

So this probably wouldn’t be a very popular feature, try to use the search engine in the forums and you’ll probably find some topics about this subject. If anything it’ll give you some perspective about it.

Finally, welcome to the forums and be sure to follow our discussions and give your input and ask anything if you have a doubt. :slight_smile:

Thanks! I did some browsing and it seems like there was a lot of chatter about this. I guess it ended with the devs saying they’d look into it + no updates in 2017?

I totally hear your concerns (re: live PVP) but it sounded like most of those things could be addressed (via gameplay restrictions, timers, etc). The mode would be different and would add more depth to GoW. Sure - it wouldn’t be as casual as a standard PVP match and will likely last longer but I don’t think those are necessarily bad things. I think it could help build on some of the elements people are enjoying about GW.

Anyways, I’ll leave it at that. I’m interested to see how the developers go about implementing crafting - will it be just a resource sink or a new game mode that you play to earn the troop/resource?

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Actual PvP would work if it was planned from the beginning. Games designed for it are able to solve the problems of balancing going first in a turn-based game via different mechanics and minimize griefing by having timers. There are a lot of options to balance, such giving free mana/skill points/barrier/enchant to the player going 2nd. But the most important thing probably would be to limit extra turns to 1 or 2 turns max. This will limit the impact of going 1st, as well as reduce the power of looping teams. GoW with actual PvP would be a very different game for sure, I for one would definitely like to see it. The next best thing would be raid bosses.

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From my experience outside GoW, mini-games in general are little “timekillers” that usually rewards us with some tiny amount of premium currencies. Pretty much like Treasure Hunt works as we know. And not to be rude or anything, but if you think it’s foolish to expect that people would pay gems in order to increase their bonus in order to acquire more gems in GW, why would someone pay gems to get extra turns to MAYBE obtain some more gems in Treasure Hunt?

Right now, with my very superficial understanding of how the game’s files work, new visuals for cards would need some sort of “locked folder” to be added into the gameto prevent people from simply downloading the picture/animation files and exchanging it.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, or that it shouldn’t be done, but right now as we are (sort of) close to be ported into a new plataform, this idea might be already on their list among other things that aren’t worth to be implemented twice.

You might even consider this a weird decision/perspective, as they introduced GW that was very time/effort consuming to implement once (and doing it twice as we move into Unity) but maybe they took this path considering that GW would clearly keep us entertained longer than simple cosmetic changes to cards/hero while it gives them time to prepare GW codes for Unity among a lot of other small things that would follow.

Exactly, as i said i’m not arguing with you, mostly trying to show another angle. The devs tried something, with X reasons in mind. Some reasons we can’t understand instantly… so we discuss in the best hope to achieve some enlightment together.

Sometimes the intended effect is not so straight-forward. Some players may spend some gems here and there in a lot of things and fall short at a given time where they would wish to have some more gems. Like trying to get the last Legendary they need for ascenssion from the Event Chests for example. So maybe some of those players will buy packs of gems…

As i said it’s not like they need to make money out of it in the very first days, but if in the next months they get (let’s say) 10% more sales of gem packs compared to the same period last year, then they made some progress. I’m not implying that it is enough progress, or that they will make some progress, but they certainly wouldn’t make any progress without trying something…

In this case they decided to try Guild Wars, for reasons only they know for sure, but i tried my best to share some insight with you.

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Thanks for the long answer.

I just give a GoWesque example of fees that could be seen in the actual mini-games (that I will certainly never use if they would be implemented).
You could also just finish your TH and begin another one better than pay gems. But in the case of you’re doing a very good party you could want to extend it.
Same for Arena, you have perfect Common and Rare but for Ultra-Rare the 3 choices are meh. So for 1 gem, you reroll.

It was done for Hero avatar so I don’t see why they couldn’t do it for troops. Moreover, not everyone are aware/able to modify pictures by themselves (even if it’s super easy).
I didn’t play to so much other F2P games but in the ones that I tested there were these “tuning-your-troops” purchasable packs. And it’s something that I can see myself buying. Maybe I’m alone. Maybe not according to this poll Alternative visual for troops. And as usual I remind Path of Exile which works pretty well thanks to its buyable cosmetics (thanks also to Diablo 3 doing sh*t but it’s out-of-topic).

Related to visual, what about the special skulls? Why not a 5$ pack?

Good point. It will difficult to see GW impact on the beneficts aside if it’s huge what I doubt. But I’m blocked in the 1st bracket so it’s difficult for me to know what is going on in the lower brackets where they should be susceptible to give in and buy the gem packs.

And that’s why I don’t like this kind of fees, it’s all about give in or not (1st time ever to use “give in” so not sure if it’s the good word, haha).
Tired of the 3 choices in PVP? Give in and reroll.
Tired of waiting to change your Hero class? Give in and pay the fees.
Tired of loosing in GW? Give in and buy some sentinels.

The cost for GW should be huge so I hope that they will success to get enough money.

But it should better for them to focus on features that could clearly provide incomes for them. And that can be a P2W mini-game, a mini-game with gem entry or why not a tombola for one Mythic.

Thanks for the discussion ;-).

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I’m not much one for mini games, but that is because my definition of mini-games is stuff like treasure hunt and arena, where you engage in something that has nothing to do with the main game as a whole (your kingdom progression, troops, banners, stat boosts… all meaningless). I’d love more modes where we could engage in otherwise normal battles with different rulesets, with perhaps some restrictions on what should be used.

I’d also really like if these alternate modes were alternate paths to get existing rewards and required to get some exclusive thing so that people that like it can play it and people that don’t feel obligated, because that is a huge part of what makes guild wars so divisive in the first place. I’d have loved a guild-wars style challenge mode that meted out personal rewards for a certain amount of consecutive wins versus increasing difficulty, deliberately designed fights. I could do without a treasure hunt 2.0, especially if it is decided that there is a “treasure hunt 2.0 troop” and you have to play treasure hunt 2.0 in order to get this troop.

On the monetization side, there is a lot they need to fix. Gem prices have not been updated ever, and they continued to be devalued on multiple fronts every week - you need more to hunt specific troops every time a troop ultra-rare or above is added, you have less probability to get something useful from any gem purchase the more gems you have AND the baseline amount of gems an average player will earn has gone way up. I just don’t see how continued (informed) gem purchases are expected when people are flipping literally tens of thousands of gems worth of gem/event keys chasing a drop and coming up empty as the norm.

Hopefully crafting will address this by assigning permanent, fixed costs to what this supposedly premium currency can buy you in terms of what it is by in large used for, the acquisition of troops, but as of now, it is pretty out of control and that is why there isn’t really any room for frivolous stuff costing gems - you don’t use them for “other stuff” (armors not withstanding) unless you are super flush with gems and it doesn’t lead to actual cash purchases, or just uninformed which can lead to people feeling “tricked” and harms the game in the long run.

Going forward, we also need at least some monetization options that scale to all levels of play. The $5 weapon packs are a nice start, either you have them or you don’t, they aren’t overly expensive and bloated down with too much “bonus” stuff that doesn’t scale. Guild seals are nice if you needed some people to chip in to reach 40k so your entire guild can benefit, but the $20 pack amounts to basically 25 gem key drops and 25 guardian troops (or 50 gem key drops), tops, so they are pretty useless to people in guilds already getting 40k or those that 40k is a distant pipe dream. Deathknight Amor pack is generally lauded as having the most long term value of any purchasable item in GoW has some lasting benefit, but even that drops off considerably when you are level 1000+ and don’t have anything else to spend souls on. Reasonably priced cosmetics I wouldn’t have a problem with… only this isn’t the type of game where you interact directly with other players outside of them briefly seeing your avatar in a menu somewhere, so it isn’t exactly the best fit.

What else could we have purchasable? Timed or subscription style service buffs to your global gold bonus (or souls/xp, either combined or at a much higher rate) perhaps? Maybe a traitstone drops buff? Or a true subscription style purchase that increases all earnings from all sources by a certain percent?

Maybe a NPC that would appear in diferent loacations/kingdoms to every player and sell us some special map leading to certain mazes and challenges. Those could provide/reward some materials needed to craft cards, assuming that there will be some farmable materials just like @ogunther said, even if it was a joke it have some merit and if well done it would be cool.

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I would like to see something worthwhile to do for casual players.

PvP is not casual… Maybe at the beginning, but once you get higher, you have to start using a specific attack team (or at least a few cards) to counter all the nasty cards that are out there, in highly buffed form in PvP.
That, in definition, is not casual… Casual players like to find a team they like, and play with that. Not change teams for every fight.

Since we have all these kingdoms sitting there, how about adding some new kinds of game modes to them?
Maybe like a challenge mode, where you try and get as many wins in a row vs teams of that kingdom.

What I am trying to say is, in PvP the player gets pitted against other players teams. These are often filled with the most nastiest cards in the game, and more often then not, those are always the same cards.
This is boring, and not fun.

I would rather play against teams that the game/developers set up for me, as I believe those would be more varied… even if they can also, sometimes, contain nasty cards.

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What if the crafting utilizes a new premium token…? :scream:
Actually, I think it should, but I would hope that GoW sticks to form and those tokens will be made available in game via a new mini-game. :wink:

1000x this! Now that we have GW, it is going to become that much more important for players to stay in their guilds and meet reqs. Whether we like it or not, Trophies are the req du jour. And right now that means PVP. Period. I would love to play other game modes, but Devs, @Saltypatra, HAVE to consider awarding TROPHIES, not just seals for these new modes, to offer the casual player a way to participate as a member of a top Guild without just grinding PvP. :wink:

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Absolutely. The problem is, as I said before, they seem to be losing so many opportunities to make money. It’s hard to understand.

There’s no way. They can’t make asynchronous battles work 100%. Real-time PVP would be a disaster.

Plus the resources required ($$$, time, and server/dbase) would be much better spent doing other things.

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FYI regarding the mini-games not having a cost…

Sirrian has said before that they sell A TON of map packs in the store. So mini-games are actually generating real $$$.

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Yeah, i also think that some new premium currency or token of sorts is required. But that’s up to their judgement.

I think they avoid being called “Pay to Win” or “Money Grabbers” even if it goes against the best business call. To make a comparation i’ve start a new game that is quite good and also gives us some decent amount or premium currency, but here is the catch, to buy certain packs you can’t use “Free/farmable Premium Currency” only the Premium Currency bought with cash… :sweat_smile:

So honestly, people should give credit where is due. GoW is fantastic, our developers are fantastic and very generous with us players. But they can’t keep giving stuff over and over, they need to make some profit to keep growing, to hire more people with fresh and exciting ideas, to increase server capacity if needed and all of this brings awesomeness to our beloved game.

But sadly it seems like a portion of the players can’t even dream about something being objectively profitable.

They would get a fever in the middle of their sleep, their minds regressing into a reptilian state, their mouth frothing in abundance and then, a loud shriek tearing the silence of night: PAAAYYY TOOOO WIIIIN!!!
… and as far as this ominous howl would be carried by the wind children would cry on their cribs and get sick. The cow’s milk, spoiled. The frail doves would die in their nests. And farmer Francis’s gout aching as if the devil himself decided to torment the old seasoned man…

(Hyperbolic and dramatic exaggerations are among my literary exercises. It’s been a while so i hope you enjoy. :grin:)

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Ooooh giving me ideas there… battle with your team against a single opponent starting at about 800 hp and 100 att? :smiley: cost to participate like 100 gems? Gems always fall in opponents favour and you gain 20-30 gem keys on win? SOLD!
All thats still missing is OP skill and OP Traits… and a “once per week/day/hour” Limit so its not farmable…

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