Yup. So has been their policy, as of late. It should be their new tagline. “Gems of War: Like it or Quit”
Edit: It could be worse, I suppose. They could be like Bungie with Destiny 2 and spout bs PR lines like: “We’re listening to player feedback”. When, you really know they’re not and aren’t going to change a bloody thing.
At least Gems, for the most part, has the decency to be out in the open with their less than savory practices and not hide beyond smokescreens and hollow PR speak
I feel like the weapons are going to make people really mad based on what I’ve seen. Kingdom power, not so much. I’m gonna explain why, then write the explanation I think the devs should’ve wrote and explained before this release to control it. Some people are always going to be mad, but it helps to get the reasonable people on track.
I think people don’t mind this because power carries over. The kingdom power tasks are things that players with a lot of kingdom power have already done, so players with lots of stars will maintain lots of stars. So really there’s not a lot to explain, just that the things you do to get it have changed slightly and you’ll keep credit for your old work.
I think the devs are trying to solve a couple of problems. They want more people to use the Hero classes, and the balance of weapons is very wonky. We know they meant for Dawnbringer to be powerful since it’s a ridiculous soul sink, but they likely didn’t mean for it to be the only weapon that shows up on PvP teams. The problem’s too big to solve by introducing new, powerful weapons. We need a lot of different weapons, and content releases slowly. It’s also not very satisfying to get a random laser cannon for just “gaining levels”, something you’d already do without the rewards.
This system tries to address that problem. All of the weapons are rebalanced, and in general weapons are less powerful at the start. If you do work to upgrade them, they become at least as powerful as they were and, in many cases, more powerful. This means there’s a much wider range of weapon power and, thus, more interesting choices for players to make.
But.
Players already have powerful weapons today. When the patch releases, the weapons are going to be downgraded to the new base models. I think this is going to make a lot of people really grouchy because unlike kingdom power, which carries over, this is an immediate nerf to every player in the game no matter how powerful they are. It’s as if the devs announced all players will lose 10% of their XP.
Someone’s going to suggest that there should be some mechanism where players start with an amount of ingots somehow proportional to accumulated weapons/level/etc. I think the valid argument against this is “then endgame players won’t really experience the content”. Part of this update is making upgrading a weapon a goal that feels satisfying.
The weird part is it won’t affect new players because they have the least to lose. If 3.5 were here when I started playing around last July, I’d already have a lot of weapons upgraded. Now all the endgame accounts are going to be in a weird state where they have tons of upgraded troops and newbie weapons.
I think a lot of on-the-fence endgamers and midgamers are going to make a huge stink. Some of them will quit, the rest will convert to the kind of bitter person who spends more time demanding 3.4 re-release than actually playing the game.
I’ve been over and over it, that’s not how F2P works. We once had a gaming ecosystem where big changes like this were sequels and you only paid for them if you wanted them. Now we shovel money into games that constantly patch themselves. Every game eventually becomes Farmville. The only difference is how long it takes to morph into it.
I can’t disagree with some of what you’ve said. But there is no reason to believe tribute is being nerfed, unless you have evidence of that. And I don’t feel hoping players will participate in content that can improve their hero, makes the devs evil overlords.
Okay, I worded that badly because I have to leave in a bit and am rushing to get things done here.
What I meant was: Because (newer) players will need a LOT longer to get kingdoms to higher star levels, they will need longer to get to a point where the gem income from tribute is substantial enough to let them save up a lot. So, in a way, tribute was nerfed because it’s harder to get to good tribute-gaining levels.
I liked your comment because you could be right, but it seems from Salty’s vid they wanted it to be clearer, and easier, for new players to understand how to improve a kingdom’s rating by giving everyone clear goals to work towards and complete. I have faith they are doing this to make the game more inviting for new players, not harder, or more complicated.
Why is everyone crafting weapons in soulforge? Should I be doing this? I feel like I am missing something…
Might as well wait for 3.5 to hit later today, I would save your resources until then.
I’d think they’d make it ‘easier’ to make progress for the newer players to attract more people to this game, but in fact they are doing the exact opposite. I don’t have a lot of faith in the upcoming update because I was always positive about previous updates and never really was satisfied with the new content afterwards. The way this game is going doesn’t really support my style of play, and it might make me play a lot less as I’m already burning out on the current state of the game.
I haven’t spent anything on this game and maybe would have if it was worth it, but they greedy and all the gem sinks and offers and stuff I think it’s pretty obvious they want your money (which is quite logical as it’s a free game). I just feel like they’re in my face about it.
But hey, just my opinion. No need to get all worked up about it.
Sorry to hear that. Hope you find some enjoyment in 3.5. Being a dreamer, and RPG lover, I am looking forward to new ways to improve my weapons and the hero classes. That’s what RPG’s are all about, leveling, and becoming more powerful. I’m excited, but I can understand others not wanting this to be more than a casual game they pick up and play here and there.
I’m having my doubts, but eventually I will end up playing it. That’s how this game works, I have just pretty much ignored the parts of the game I don’t like and I will probably just end up doing explores without even thinking about it. Just because. I love this game very much and I’m just afraid of what is about to come…
Still waiting to form my opinion until after I receive the update a play for a bit. A bit radical for the internet, I know…
Even without testing the new update, most new features were discussed right?
So I guess you could form a reasonable opinion.
That practice is a bit of a mystery to me as well. Unless there is some reason to believe that weapons which have been the same price in the Soulforge since it appeared are suddenly going to be unavailable or more costly…? There has been absolutely no indication of that, however.
You can craft raid/invasion weapons in the soulforge using diamonds (instead of using gems to buy them from the event shop) during their release week. If you already have all the mythics, and you don’t want to spend gems on tier 3 of the event shop, then this is going to be a better use of resources as gems are more valuable.
I think the complaint is more centered around vintage weapons, certain types that haven’t been on offer for a couple years. And people expect that the only way they will be re-introduced is via the $4.99 weapon packs vs crafting. I could care less, because with this update we will already have so many weapons to upgrade, if we so wish, that new ones will just add to the time, effort, and resources needed to improve any of them.
Generally agree, but experience showed that in this particular game, campaigning for changes on upcoming things is significantly more successful than after they have been released.
So in GoW if you see something coming you don’t like, better make it heard in advance, 'cause once it is out, chances are it won’t be touched again.
You never know when you might need a maxed-out Dusty Tome!
Well, my personal feelings currently look like this:
Champion levels? Count me in, looks pretty exiting. Hope they remembered to finally add a working solution for the whole class mess, I’ll want to set class based defenses for Guild War without making teams a pushover for everybody playing at least a day late.
Weapon upgrades? I like upgrading things, these upgrades seem to thoroughly wreck some weapons though. I definitely don’t want random gem destruction on a weapon that behaved 100% predictable prior to the upgrade. And it’s required for kingdom star levels? Is this some kind of late April Fool joke?
Kingdom star levels. I have to force myself through more than 1k challenges to be able to upgrade star levels again? Grandfather my foot, that sucks hard. And most kingdoms will never be able to reach more than 8 stars due to hero classes? I wish I could pass.
So who is excited to see the stupid devine hero weapon doing more damage, create more gems and deal more status effect?
It certainly won’t happen instantly, could take weeks to level up a weapon. I wouldn’t worry about it until after the patch and we see what’s what.