3.5 update preview screenshots (part 1)

Spoilers
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Not an issue of win/loss ratios here, but a lack of agency. Those that have taken Bloodhammer versus a firebomb team know first hand the carnage that can ensue with one spark having a doomstorm up - yes, even in a single turn, let alone four. Given that this is a hero talent that triggers at the start of battle (presumably like traits, meaning the enemy has precedence on what storm they chose to start with on their hero over yours unless you are using every turn stormers like Skadi and Umberwolf) it means there are very few ways to counter it out before a firebomb cast can random either a win or a loss for one side.

The really bad part it that it really doesn’t matter if you win or lose more to such a team on an individual basis - its ugly because even if the player mostly comes out on top, you still have your agency largely taken away, and if it even hits any kind hope to eek out a win on defense, it will be used. A tactic like this becoming too prevalent is harmful to the game long term because of the lack of play/counterplay options here plus the large circumventing of whatever is left of “gameplay”, exploder heavy, quick, and violent as it may be for PvP already, you generally do waste a turn or two on setup or at least check if you have a good board before casting. If it is in, people will complain because it is an understandably irritating way to lose and a boring way to win. If they take it away, others will complain because they are “slowing down the game”.

I’m just not sure why anybody that has experienced how broken doomstorm is right now, with the whole “do between 0 and infinite damage in cascades” thing, would think that this is a good idea. I think my record for counting full stop cascades in a doomstorm was “only” seventeen times, though.

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I never really looked at Fire Bomb as a true exploder. It does explode gems so… I guess yeah. Its a bit suicidal to have a 3 man team (after Fire Bomb explodes) with a Doomstorm active, but it could work. Depends on which side that gets the lucky drop.

As for Mercy/Tai-Pan, I wouldn’t blind cast it, so I’m not always going to get a good alignment before the 9 turn storm ends. Chaos when casted yes, but not always in your favor.

Spirit Fox, skip good alignment/turn control for Chaos. People can try it, I wouldn’t dare run Spirit Fox, Astral Spirit or Star Gazer with a Doomstorm if I cared about winning.

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Well… there’s a big discussion going on here and I don’t know what to add. Normally - as most people here know - I’m the type who is all “let’s wait and see how it is before we complain”, but dear goodness, I hate everything I see and read here about this.

What I loved so, so much about GoW for so long was that there were many paths to get what you wanted. You love PVP? Do it, buy your traitstones with Glory in the shop. Hate PVP? Do Arena for guild trophy requirements, farm your traitstones in explore. Hate using the hero? Just don’t use them. Play how you want.

This game has, since then, shifted highly away from this approach.

  • The new events (Raid, Invasion, partially Bounty) force you to use a certain type of troop.
  • Triggering Pet Rescues forces you into PVP if you want pets, with the exception of the one event a week.
  • And now, we are forced to use the hero? Good riddance. We are also, outside of the event, forced to use the hero in PVP? I’m gonna throw up.

Of course, there’s no “forcing” when I can just not do any of this stuff. Sure. But very obviously, participating will be pretty much required, if I look at that talent tree and all that stuff.

I think what scares me so much is… GoW has changed a lot in the last months, with Raid and Invasion. These things were additions which changed a few things (GW schedule). But what I see here is not an addition. This and what we know about the kingdom revamp is… a different game. I am looking at a different game. This has nothing to do anymore with the GoW I once knew and I’m not talking about graphics/UI or having to spend more money than before. We are talking about a big-time mechanic change here.
And I don’t like what I see, sadly.
Not at all.
Not because of yet-another-gem-sink or anything, but because… yeah, someone else wrote in a different thread that we’re basically playing GoW2 by now. I didn’t really agree so far because it felt like “GoW with an immense amount of additions”. But this is a change… into GoW2.

And I’m not sure if I want to play GoW2. :frowning: Like many sequels not reaching what the original was about because they just aimed for prettier-bigger-alwaysmorestuff instead of charm, thinking they need to add new stuff all the time when sometimes things are just perfect the way they are. I look at this and think how much I miss playing my simple game. Without doomskulls, without talent trees and limitations and, most of all, without the gap between new players and old players widening ever further.

GoW used to be a game where even newer players could win against older players. I still get owned ever so often by a midgame dragon team. It happens. Dawnbringer changed a lot of that. I remember how glad I was when I had finally maxed my hero jobs and had to never care again because at least that was one thing done. And now, that one thing that was quickly maxed so that players there could be quickly equal (250 battles aren’t that much) is changed to another grinding hell separating new from old to encourage new players to spend more to catch up. Because as fun and trivial as pets are - the pet battles are a perfect example of how much new players get the “You suck, spend money”-speech rubbed in their faces. We never had that before; I always felt comfortable with my progress even without mythics because PVP matched me good teams. Heck, if I had been midgame during pet introduction, I would have likely just walked away from the game out of sheer frustration.

And all of that makes me only more scared about the kingdom revamp which I absolutely, desperately do not want because I like being done with stuff. I like that after months of investing hundreds of hours, I’m done and can just play casually and be good and enjoy my spoils. But this feels more and more like some bad MMO where every month some new uber-tier-character gets released and no matter how much time and money you spent before: If you don’t keep spending that amount of time and money, you’ll be back at the bottom after a short time.

I still, despite everything, love GoW. But I don’t think I will love Pseudo-GoW2.
This all makes me really, really sad.
I hope “SoonTM” will be delayed for a very long time so that I can still enjoy the game I like to play for some more time.

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65

That’s what Gorgotha is there for. Since your team composition doesn’t really matter if you go for Starting-Doomstorm you might just put Gorgotha/Stonehammer*2 upfront and be super safe.
Hero and some empowered board manipulation in 3 and 4, no allignment needed, just fire away, chances are the cascades bring the extraturns and if not, let the AI scratch your skulltanks for a turn and then explode them to death.

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Haha I read “Doomstone” :wink: . Sure it will be powerfull… :worried:

Time to share all the talents that I found:

20% chance to summon a Sister of Shadows when an enemy dies.,
20% chance to summon an Ancient Golem when I take damage to Life.,
25% chance to summon a Heronath when an ally casts a spell.,
30% chance to dodge Skull damage.,
50% chance to summon a Bandit when an ally dies.,
50% chance to summon a Hellspawn when an enemy dies.,
7% to assassinate the last enemy when another enemy dies.,
Add 20% of Armor to Skull Damage.,
All allies gain 1 Magic.,
All allies gain 2 Life on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
All Allies start battle with 15% Mana.,
All ally Knights gain 2 Armor.,
All Blue Allies gain 4 Life.,
All Brown allies gain 2 Armor.,
All Brown Allies gain 4 Armor.,
All Centaur allies gain 1 Magic.,
All constructs gain 10 Life.,
All Daemons gain 1 Attack.,
All Divine Allies gain 2 Life every turn.,
All Elves gain 1 Magic and Attack at the start of a battle.,
All enemies lose 1 point on a random skill when I match Skulls.,
All Fey Allies gain 2 Life every turn.,
All Giant Allies gain 1 Life and Magic.,
All Goblins gain 2 Attack.,
All Green allies gain 5 Armor.,
All Mech Allies gain 2 Armor per turn.,
All Merfolk allies gain 2 Magic when an enemy dies.,
All Mystics gain 2 Magic and Life when an enemy dies.,
All Naga Allies gain 1 Armor every turn.,
All Purple allies gain 2 Armor.,
All Purple Allies gain 2 Life.,
All Raksha gain 1 Attack and Life.,
All Red Allies gain 1 Magic.,
All Rogues gain 1 Magic on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
All Stryx allies gain 1 Attack every turn.,
All Tauros allies gain 1 Attack every turn.,
All troops gain 4 Armor.,
All Undead gain 1 Armor and Magic every turn.,
All Urska Allies gain 1 Attack every turn.,
All Wargare Allies gain 2 Life every turn.,
All Yellow Allies gain 2 Attack.,
All Yellow allies gain 2 Attack.,
All Yellow Allies start battle with 10% Mana.,
Become enraged on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
Burn a random enemy when an ally dies.,
Cleanse myself on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
Create a darkstorm at the start of a battle.,
Create a Doomstorm at the start of battle.,
Create a duststorm at the start of a battle.,
Create a firestorm at the start of a battle.,
Create a leafstorm at the start of a battle.,
Create a lightstorm at the start of a battle.,
Create an icestorm at the start of a battle.,
Deal triple Skull damage to burning enemies.,
Death Mark a random enemy at the start of battle.,
Disease a random enemy on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
Dispel all enemies on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
Elementals gain 1 Magic when an ally casts a spell.,
Entangle the first enemy at the start of battle.,
Explode 1 Yellow Gem on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
Faerie Fire a random enemy when an Ally dies.,
Freeze a random enemy at the start of battle.,
Gain 1 Glory in PvP Battles.,
Gain 1 Soul every turn.,
Gain 10 Armor if in first position.,
Gain 10% bonus XP from battle.,
Gain 2 attack when I take damage.,
Gain 2 Magic and Attack when I take damage to Life.,
Gain 2 Magic if in last position.,
Gain 2 Magic if using a Bow.,
Gain 2 Magic if using a Dagger.,
Gain 2 Magic if using a Hammer.,
Gain 2 Magic if using a Mace.,
Gain 2 Magic if using a Missile.,
Gain 2 Magic if using a Scythe.,
Gain 2 Magic if using a Staff.,
Gain 2 Magic if using Jewellery.,
Gain 2 to all Skills if in first position.,
Gain 3 Attack when an enemy dies.,
Gain 3 Magic at the start of a battle.,
Gain 3 Magic if using a Polearm.,
Gain 3 Magic if using a Shield.,
Gain 3 Magic if using a Tome.,
Gain 3 Magic if using an Axe.,
Gain 4 Armor for each Dwarven ally.,
Gain 4 Attack in PvP.,
Gain 4 Attack.,
Gain 4 Life when matching Green Gems.,
Gain 4 Magic when using Artifacts.,
Gain 5 Gold every turn.,
Gain 8 Armor.,
Gain 8 Life.,
Gain a Barrier when matching Brown Gems.,
Gain Barrier at the start of battle.,
Gain bonus Blue Mana from Blue Gem matches.,
Gain bonus Brown Mana from Brown Gem matches.,
Gain bonus Green Mana from Green Gem matches.,
Gain bonus Purple Mana from Purple Gem matches.,
Gain bonus Red Mana from Red Gem matches.,
Gain bonus Yellow Mana from Yellow Gem matches.,
Gain Enchant when matching Green Gems.,
Give a random ally a random status effect.,
Hunter’s Mark a random enemy on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
Inflict Stun when enemies deal Skull damage to me.,
Poison a random Enemy when matching purple.,
Recover 2 Life every turn.,
Reduce damage from Spells by 20%.,
Start battles with 50% Mana.,
Steal 2 Life from the first enemy on 4 or 5 of a kind.,
Steal 2 Life from the first enemy when I match Purple Gems.,
Submerge a random ally on Blue Gem matches.,
Summon a random storm when matching Yellow Gems.,
Web a random enemy when I summon a troop.,
When an ally dies, Barrier another random ally.,
When an enemy dies, Freeze another random enemy.,

EDIT: improved lisibility

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67

I’m super impressed with this list taking @turintuor. Thank you for sharing!

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I understand every f2p game need a way to get money to subsist, to keep on life, but there are so many new events and modes based on gems paid mode. Also for long time players are a lot if you want to be competitive in all.

Became vip 5 was specially to open vip chests. For long time in competitive guilds in events is really imposible to open them, I need gems to everything. :sweat_smile:

I see a lot of new players in game but a lot of new features and games and new things to do. Is so much for many people that we can called active at least in the past. Now with all this things is really difficult to continue with the minimums in a guild or just need top players, players who play a lot every day.

Mostly again probably because the game is so long to them, they need lot of hours to just introduce themselves.
They need to level kingdoms, do kingdoms quests, raid boss, invasion, bounty, pets, dungeons, Guild wars, vault, and soon another one. And pvp, explore , arenas and maps are also there :scream:

Try to tell a low level who play a pet rescue to stage 6 maximum and don’t get a pet but he spend a lot of time to win in the 6 one, that they must do a lot of things more, and help the guild.

We must change the view of the game we have or made things to make possible to play all. So much is already on for many people, is under stable they don’t want to play more. :worried:

I like mostly of the new features but I guess is because I have time, what happened when I have less time? :thinking:

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I think it might be quite unwieldy if it were implemented this way. It would work for late game players who have enough souls and traitstones to max out the various hero classes. It would however kill the early to mid-game players if they have to max out a hero class before they can climb the skill tree.

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You’re welcome :wink: .

I have a question: does the Hero lose the racial perk? I mean before he could be a Giant/any other race, but I didn’t see in your preview any clue about this feature.

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So, no “Create a Bonestorm at the start of the battle”, just all the other storms, including Doomstorm? Any chance to get those two exchanged, especially with “Entangle the first enemy at the start of the battle” around?

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Mountain Crusher
Firebomb
Firebomb
Firebomb

= Most OP team ever. Looking forward to it. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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You are missing a hero. No hero no effects :smiley:

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Ah yes. Fixed!

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So, most of these look like traits, running the gamut from rare to almost mythic. I kind of wonder why they didn’t simply fold the current traits into this system for the hero, instead of giving him traits and this additionally?

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I’m probably in the minority but I sort of like the chaos and fast shifts that Doomskulls bring. There’s really two ways you can go about designing GoW and I think different people like different degrees:

  • Games can be slow and strategic.
  • Games can be fast and chaotic.

The upside to fast and chaotic is there’s lots of room for luck because if you’re playing 10 games in a short period, losses don’t “cost” a lot. This style of game suits people who play in 10 or 15 minute bursts, perhaps software developers who play on bathroom breaks like me.

The upside to slow and strategic is ideally luck becomes only a very small factor in this approach. It’s more of a game where it’s believable that a player with the right team can win most games by making clever moves. This style of game is much slower. It’s more of a “puzzle”, in the sense that most people will argue if you can repeat a game with the same random seed you ought to be able to work your way to different results.

I don’t think GoW is in a position to be a slow, strategic game and I don’t think it has been for the year or so I’ve played. The following things are in the way and would have to go:

  • Exploding more than one gem introduces so much randomness it’s hard to feel clever in the aftermath.
  • Any ability or trait with the word “random” like Fizzbang’s ability or Magnus’s unique trait must go. There is no strategy to piling random effects.
  • Generators can’t exist because they work due to randomness.
  • Empowered, Fast, and other such “start with mana” traits should be much more rare. They speed up the game and that is counter to strategic play.
  • Gem converters like Mercy should either be removed or given major downsides. They represent very high degrees of mana acceleration and this is counter to slow play.
  • All instakills such as The Great Maw or Devour should be removed. You should earn your kills via clever series of moves, not “I got enough mana”.

There are plenty of other adjustments that would need to be made, including major shifts in the match rewards to reflect that matches will take 5-10 minutes to complete. I don’t think there’s a way to be half-fast about it: making only one of the changes above only dramatically improves the power of the others. A slow, strategic version of Gems of War is a different game.

We could have it as a mini-game. We sort of almost do in Arena. I think “a separate mode” is the only way we’ll get a slower, more strategic GoW.

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I don’t see how the weapon and hero upgrade will be good against the current divine meta, it will only make it stronger

We are stuck with this for a very long time imo

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I’m pretty sure you’re referring to me. Ever since the new UI and the introduction of sigils and all that jazz, this has been my point. And, I think other people, like you, are seeing it now too. This is, basically, GoW 2. This isn’t the game I started over a year and a half ago. A lot has changed, and most of it, not for the better, in my opinion

I know how you feel. I miss the game I fell in love with all that time ago. And, I’m not really sure how long I want to go on playing this “pseudo sequel”, as you put it. As I’ve said before, this isn’t the game I signed on for. And, I’m honestly wondering for how much longer it can hold my time (as it’s aleady pretty much lost my money).

I don’t know about “love”, but I do still like it. Honestly, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t still be here. All this time, post-New UI, I’ve been on these forums. I, like everyone else, has been trying to make their voice heard. And, at least for me, I hope it gets heard and things change.

But, if I’m being perfectly honest, my metaphorical throat is getting sore from all this “screaming” and I don’t know how long I can do this anymore. All I want is the game I love back and not to see it fade into oblivion, while this GoW 2, “pseudo sequel” thing, rises from its ashes. But, I fear that hope is very wishful thinking, on my end.

This Gems of War 2 train, has all but left the station, and I don’t see it stopping any time soon. So, for those of us that enjoyed GoW, I say hold onto your memories, because, soon, it’s all you’ll have.

Welcome to Gems of War 2, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoy your stay.

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Quests were mentioned in getting hero points. All my quests are done. How is that going to be addressed?

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You will win champion points during class events

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RE: this thread with you and @Sheba

I’m definitely in the boat that somewhere between 3.3 and 3.5 Gems of War is a different game. I don’t have an opinion if that’s good or bad, but I’ve repeated a lament several times.

Some time ago, we couldn’t perpetually patch and tweak games. So you got what the box said. Sometimes the box lied. You paid some money and you got a game, and when you finished with the game that was it. Sometimes, a sequel came out. You’d pay for that and decide if you liked it. If you didn’t, maybe you’d go back to the original. Since the two games were distinct, having the sequel didn’t take the original away from you. Sometimes it happened the two games were so different because the 2nd is what the devs wanted but ran out of time/money. There were a lot of other reasons. I’m going to repeat what’s important: in this style of development you pay for the game you want and have it “forever”.

Games like GoW are perpetually updated. For all I know, Doomskulls were part of what they wanted at the start, but they needed to release a game without them to pay for the costs of developing Doomskulls. It’s just as likely or valid that Doomskulls came about only because “if we stop adding new things we can’t bring in new players”. Either way, it’s very different from the other style and I see Sheba lamenting it:

At some point in the past, GoW was “perfect” to most players that have been around. Every new feature since then has made it less that game. But there is absolutely no way to go back. Thus, every new feature takes something away from an increasing subset of players. There’s no real “GoW 2”, but at some point the game just isn’t the thing people fell in love with.

What frustrates me is because there’s no “GoW 2” there’s also no “GoW 1”. You can’t go back. The only thing we all know for sure is someday, there will be an update that makes the game uninteresting to us. And we have to find a completely different game to play then.

Modern game development sucks.

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