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 
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.
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