In our defense, I think we’ve been pretty straight up with the community about the fact that you’ll get a lot less Gems & Glory Keys every week (if you’re in that top few percent of players). That’ message has never been sugar-coated at all. I’ve never shied away from that answer, but I always qualify with what you’ll gain in their stead.
And I don’t believe that comparing current gem values of rewards with future gem values of rewards is sugar-coating either… that’s simply us explaining the methodology behind the calculations that have driven these changes.
If we don’t do that second part (and compare the rewards somehow), then people are misinformed as to our intentions, and will assume the worst. Therein lies Chaos and Madness.
Anyone is of course entitled to their view that we ARE sugar-coating things, but I’m pretty satisfied that our communications have been perfectly ethical.
I use sleep deprivation as an excuse to cover up my lack of perceptive skills and generally below-average intelligence. I wonder if it would work in this context…
Any chance of getting purely cosmetic guild rewards? I think that was mentioned once and would be a fun thing to spend gold on without upsetting a power curve.
The problem is that people value different resources differently depending on their progress, as some of them lose most of their value once you have a certain amount or gain access to a certain level of income. So any single % resource number you could give would be wrong for some group, which kind of disrupts any attempt to use a single number to compare across them.
Individual comparisons on the resources the people with the most at stake care about (gems, glory keys) would make them feel less deceived, if not necessarily better about the change. Emphasizing the new things they’re getting is certainly important, as well as showing how those new things serve to replace some of what they’re losing.
Finding ways to make those less-desired resources (treasure maps, souls) valuable to players at the top would also help.
I just had flashbacks to the Kingdom Tribute rework. When it first came out I was pretty upset that gems gained from tribute were nerfed so hard I was forced to join an active guild to compensate. Now that tribute primarily gives glory, I am happier with it as I can afford more reward packs. For top players that have a surplus of all of the other troops anyways, the event troop is really all that matters. It appears glory gained from guild will improve greatly, so this will make getting event troops easier.
To be fair, a surprisingly large number of players doesn’t understand what that means without further explanations. They just read the “at worst 23% less” part and feel betrayed once they figure out they may now receive only a tenth of the resources they are interested in. Maybe listing the future maximum number of resources obtainable each week would have helped to get the message across better.
I’m okay with the change, even though it hurts. Guild rewards were way out of whack, both on the high end and the low end, the new approach feels fairer. There’s one thing that keeps bugging me though, the guild chest level. I don’t want to hoard my keys throughout each week, waiting for the quality to improve, possibly just a few hours within the deadline. Any chance the obtained level could be made sticky for the next week, just like the stats bonus? I’d really hate having to play at odd times in order to not miss out on major benefits.
As for the maximum available rewards per week. They could tell you it’s 500 gems for example. And if you used to get 1000 gems through guild you think you are getting half what you used to get. But they will also say you will get 50 gem keys (which is worth 500 (technical 450 if bought on bulk)) do it evens out. But you won’t notice the gem keys part only that total gems is much lower, not considering that on the end of the day you use those gems on those gem keys anyway.
Being in a top tier guild I understand it, but once you get to a certain level 99% of what you get is useless. It’s not unusual to put out 5000 glory keys and 5000 gems or more in the attempt to get the mythic we need. Did I get a lot of other stuff, yes. Does it have a purpose, no.
1500 gems → 99$
We did 1800 gems last week so why I will buy these gems when I gain more of them thanks to guild tasks?
For sure, this system cannot be healty to make money (despite the fact that I really hope that pure cosmetic items will be added in the future).
But devs added the weekly Legendary that can be obtained with only Event keys. It seems that it was a solution to force players to use their gems. But now that we are going to receive a limited amount of gems by week, will the Legendary have their own Weekly chest? At least a “Limit: 1” weekly chest?
I think the perception of sugar-coating comes in the math. The claim is that the 90% reduction in resource gain for top guilds will be offset by other gains to make it the equivalent of only a 23% nerf. But the other gains glimpsed in the video aren’t convincing.
The primary “replacement” resource appears from the video to be bonus stats - +2 magic, etc. But the perception in the top guilds is that most of their time is spent PVPing against other top guild teams, which will all have the same exact bonuses. If everyone they encounter has the same bonuses, they will effectively cancel each other out.
Those perceptions (that bonuses are the bulk of the replacement value and that matching bonuses will nullify their value) may both be wrong - time will tell. But in the meantime it feels disingenuous.
I am all for the rewards change. Didn’t seem sugar coated either. There was no way the rewards could have stayed the same forever. Incredibly off balance with little incentive to IAP besides buying the deathknight armor. The game development team needs people to IAP to sustain the game and expand the experience. With the new changes I think it will make IAP more attractive option. Now that we won’t get a extreme amount of gems every week. If the VIP rewards were reworked as well it would help even more.
Has anything concerning when/how the guardian statue bonuses apply been answered?
I assume:
Glory bonus only for pvp battles
Tribute chance and amount is applied additive after kingdom power bonuses are applied (so with 5%/10% statue bonus you get 25% chance for 310% base tribute for 7🌟 kingdoms)
Soul and exp bonus additive to your vip/difficulty bonus (expanding the souls-cap?)
Also i really hope to read something along the lines of “lifted gold cap in battles” in the final patchnotes… But thats just naive me, dreaming of a better world…
I’m not sure if I understand your vitriol. Sure, it’s just a game, but does that detract from the toil required to reach the apex?
When @DEMONorANGEL said work, he meant it as an informality; I think you know that. If a persons “works” hard at training for a sport, are they less entitled to rewards when they win more consistently than others at more events? This is a bit of a stretch, considering they are compensated for their efforts with endorsements, salaries or trophies. As an antithesis, what about students seeking higher education? They work harder by studying more, but they aren’t being driven by monetary gains (short-term; nevertheless, employment isn’t guaranteed); they are actually paying to attend a secondary/tertiary school, yet they still put in the “work” to score well on tests and graduate. Gems of War is a card collecting game with RPG elements. A staple in RPGs is “grinding” (or repeating actions indefinitely for a target purpose/reward). To get to the meridian and be content with everything you have in a game takes “work.” My point: just because it’s a video-game doesn’t directly mean that it doesn’t entail some sort of commitment to reach goals or completion.
You stated that we play the game mostly for free, but that isn’t controlled by DoA. The fact that Gems of War is free to play game wasn’t his decision. He is only playing with the cards he was dealt. When Gems of War was created, they had the choice of either making it a free to play game (with micro-transactions) or releasing it with a one-shot price point and they opted for the former. What you’re saying suggests that people who don’t spend any money on the the game don’t contribute to the developers in any way. However, even if the initial person to play the game doesn’t contribute, if he/she likes the game enough, they are likely to recommend the game to friends, co-workers and family members. The newcomers will then decide if they like they game, if they want to support the development team and spread the word as those before them have. The marketing is then carried out by the players and the referrals are just as likely to engage in-app purchases as the initial user was. Free to play games are built on this foundation. “Whales” (or people who spend excessive amounts of money) are also the lifeblood of free to play games, as the structure encourages impulse buyers. For example: you don’t want to grind out resources? Buy them while they are on sale. It’s just 10 bucks! But that ten bucks can add up quickly for a person with an addictive personality. Couple that with a VIPsystem that promises extra perks relative to how much you spend and the total profits can be on par with (or even exceed) the expected returns of a one time MSRP.
Gems of War is very good with alternatives to gaining resources. Instead of dumping money in, you can play some mini-games to farm certain things and it has been made even easier with recent additions. They also constantly update content and tweak the performance of cards to make everything balance out. That means they are doing a good job. At the end of the day, this is a business and you have to try and keep customers as happy as you can without wrecking your bottom line; it’s simple game theory. But there is two sides to that coin. As a gamer, you want to get as much out of the product as you can with as little hindrance as possible, so you shouldn’t be punished simply because you put more time into the game… It’s not as if you didn’t put in the effort.
Sorry, @Jainus. This was originally just going to be a short response to what you said, but I got lost in my thoughts about the whole guild revamp and drifted a bit. Feel free to pick it apart.
