1.Or is there a way to consume the excess soul? New cards purchased with honor every week, Change to using the soul?There are also too many Traitstones waiting to be consumed.
2.Wednesday’s pet event, hoping for a change. Into a big event.
3.The treasure gnome dropped things too messy, hoping to add a Vault that only dropped gold or Vault cards in the future.
I like you a lot but I think all forms of “please change the topic” don’t belong here.
Posting suggestions and solutions has happened for at least 2 years for some of these issues, and the end result was “we’re working on doing that 6 months out”. It means if I have any feedback at all about 4.4, I sort of don’t expect to see it implemented until 2023.
The devs knew about weapons issues before I even started playing, and players asked for a solution then. There have been complaints about this PvP point disparity for at least a year and a half, and players asked for a solution then. Players wanted a solution to faction delves within the first couple of weeks of release. Notice a pattern here?
We’re doing what you asked for. It’s just some of the things we still have suggestions about were implemented when Obama was still in office and Brexit just sounded like a last name. Undertale was implemented in the time it’s taken to get weapon restocks acknowledged. Entire Final Fantasies have been implemented in less time.
This is the price of kicking the can. Eventually there are so many old issues that need tweaking nobody wants to hear about new things that will need new tweaks that won’t ever come.
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Thank you so much for taking the time to write to us, @Sirrian.
I think we’ve met (PAX AUS 2014-15), but for now, I’m the one who builds the Gems of War Quick Reference Tables: http://paulius.50webs.com/gow-tables.html
I am hugely impressed by some of the new features I saw for version 4.4. Stuff that really shows off the excellence of your team.
But I also saw some disturbing issues. As quickly as I can:
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Previous Event Weapons: Personally, I really want them to be earned through quest-like play, as that puts everyone on a level playing field. I don’t think allowing them to be crafted is a good idea, when so many end-game players have such large resource stacks.
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Adventure Board: Two reasons I really don’t like what I’ve seen of this:
a) Daily Quests are the only element of the game that forces us to learn how to build teams. Every other event, we can just look them up. Losing this will dumb down the player base.
b) Weekly Quests could be completed even if we couldn’t log in every day. The new quest system seems to penalise people even more heavily if they don’t play every single day. -
New GUI Elements: I’m afraid many of the new GUI elements appear to break fundamental rules of GUI design, especially Clarity and Consistency. The worst are the Manage Teams dialogue (never-before-seen pale buttons and a text box that is actually a button) and the top row of the Adventure Board (there is no way anyone will expect the green arrow to behave as it does). The distinction between (?) and (i) icons also needs to be examined. Honestly, how could this slip through both the GUI Design process and the beta unless there are problems in those processes?
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PvP: The talk I hear suggests Guild Wars is a bigger issue than PvP scoring. I may be hearing from a very different cross-section of players than Salty. We can mostly work around PvP scoring issues; there’s nothing we can do to change Guild Wars.
My research suggests that any fully active Guild not already in the top 30 brackets or so is highly likely to blitz their GW bracket every single month, with very few exceptions. I would like to see Guilds that don’t play (enough of) their battles treated the same as if they had not registered at all, when brackets are recalculated. -
Expecting to Fix New Features: I fully expected the issues with inserting emojis to be fixed in 4.3.5 – loss of cursor, and iOS keyboard preventing access to the emoji button. But nothing happened. Every new feature will always have issues, both code bugs and design bugs. I would like to see the scheduling process include time for fixing these in the subsequent patch, by default.
Really hope this helps.
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A daily issue tends to be bigger than one that effects 91 days a year. Correct.
Guild Wars has been bugged since conception. “They say you can’t win them all”… Well that’s a fight I’ve learned just to take a L on. If it was every week like it used to be… That’s a different story.
I get it though. GW brackets don’t effect me. Just like PvP points don’t effect you. 
What about if the adventure board updated daily but all the adventures stayed available all week. And it gave you a bonus for completing quests on the day they come out (small bonus). I think this would encourage daily play like the publishers want but wouldn’t really penalize people who prefer (can only) do weekend grind sessions. It might be a nice compromise.
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Fair enough, @awryan.
I’m still 2-3 months from owning Zuul’Goth and missing 20 Mythics, so it’s true I’m still in the early part of end-game. That said, I think I also have very different expectations for PvP compared to those who have played longer than the single year I’ve been in the game.
I actually just finished my first week of deliberately keeping my PvP score low (to farm Tidecaller XP). I was surprised at how rarely the middle battle was under 10k in Casual – and how often the left battle was under 6k in Ranked once I approached and exceeded Tier 1, just now.
I did learn never to bother with Life and Death teams, though! (My only two – very lengthy – losses.)
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@Starlite I guess what I have to say RE: your issues:
- Previous Event Weapons: To some extent “getting anything at all” is better than “getting something that was designed to be a fun mini game”. At this point I’d rather get “a boring store” this month with a promise that “something better is coming”. That’s how First Aid works. You don’t let a person bleed out because “I called for an ambulance and they’ll be better at it.”
- Adventure Board: I have a feeling we’ll all have an entire thread about how we don’t like AB when it comes out. That’s kind of the point of this thread: we all know no matter how much we ask for a user feedback session on Adventure Board it is going to release, we’re going to have to interact with it, and it’s probably never going to change to address our feedback. Not even the beta testers seem to get to influence game design.
- GUI Elements: to be fair I haven’t even looked at screenshots so I have no comments other than “yes, I agree.”
- I think it would take a different thread to enumerate the several ways players think GW is broken and discuss fixes for each. I think PvP can be fixed. I think GW belongs in a different game.
- It sure would be nice if, someday, we did get on a cadence where if version X has a new feature, then X.5 is devoted to fixing its bugs. But right now the cycle seems to reserve 90% or more of all effort for new features, leaving 10% or less for maintenance. That’s how we get threads like these.
I brought this up in beta for consistency purposes. Or greater concern, is that individual drop rates aren’t given. Granted, this provides conciseness with the amount of information to be displayed on the screen to players. On the other hand, without individual drop rates, there’s going to be “that person” who is going to cause legal problems claiming that individual drop rates within a given rarity is rigged against the player for a newly released unit. Historically, that isn’t the case. But “that person” is going to be the one that claims rigging as a direct result of not providing specific rates (aka “What are you hiding from the players?”). I don’t know of a single gacha that provides draw rates that doesn’t provide specific drop rates per unit to intentionally head off this problem at the pass.
I would be absolutely floored if the old weapons were allowed to be crafted using existing resources, for the exact reason you mentioned. See: Dawnbringer.
My personal take is twofold.
One is what everyone here is saying by shifting the rewards model towards requiring daily logins over single long cram sessions.
The second is that a shift starting to move away from those long cram sessions (who likes 750 snotstone events, anyways?) to bite size daily chunks. For most mid-gamers or later, the Adventure Board is going to be cleared in 10-15 mins tops. In reality, it’s just the Daily Dungeon, 3 more times daily, for randomly rolled rewards. Even faster if it rolls a resource that a end-gamer ignores, such as souls, that are going to be ignored (no penalty for doing so).
Great for those who can only briefly play during the day, and likely also as a means to get those players beyond simply “doing dailies” and onto actual events/PvP with their limited playtime.
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That’s kind of my problem. There are a lot of “dailies” like Delve events I abstain from so I have more time to deal with “weeklies” like event gems and trophy goals.
I don’t have room for “more dailies” or for converting “weeklies” into “dailies”.
On this point, I heavily disagree.
For the most part, initial run of weapon availability is a combination of a warm body check, a small resource sink, and a time gate (since they only release one weapon at a time). I’m an endgamer, I was around for a lot of the early ones and every raid/invasion weapon. I didn’t have to jump through a ton of hoops to get these, and I don’t expect newer players to have to either. The way everything else works in this game is that there is generally a “tax” associated with missing initial runs of things, but I remember seeing people say these should have costs on par with mythics, which is, quite frankly, absurd.
Conversely, (if this is what you are in fact suggesting) I don’t expect them to be available in effort-driven gameplay, ie, where you can complete a given “quest” (series of gameplay totalling x hours) to get your weapon, but your limiter is how much time you have to play (an “effort cost”) or how developed your account is (a “stat check”) versus how much real time has passed (a “time gate”). They should trickle in on somewhat of a time gate, regardless of how much effort a player has to throw at them at a given moment - everything else about the way the game is designed supports this for every other collectible thing in the game (eg., troops/pets). This is an appropriate use of the rotation method that is currently being used for mythics (which I still maintain is inappropriate and unnecessary use of said rotation, since the bottleneck for newer players crafting old mythics is always raw diamonds, which in and of itself functions as a time gate).
Putting people on an equal playing field here would mean that any prior event weapon would at most have a slightly higher total resource cost with possibly some effort cost as the initial run, with some kind of time gate expected thus that I’d expect a savvy player who started playing as little as few months ago to be able to cherry pick out all the best weapons within their next 6 months or so of play, while still needing potentially years to craft the years worth of weapons they missed, which is perfectly fair.
The initial run soulforge costs of the weapons is already somewhat of a tax, as 200 diamonds 800 jewels 10k souls and 2 celestials is already a significantly higher cost for anybody still building their collection than 250 gems, so I sincerely hope for everyone that whatever cost is associated with these, that it isn’t much higher than this (I would expect maybe a small ingot sink tacked onto these, if anything). As an endgamer, I fully expect whatever time gate is added to prevent the last few weapons I need to be snapped up instantly to be the only relevant limiting factor for obtaining the old old weapons, because I’ve already earned these resources multiple times over, and having old event weapons having similar costs would still make sense. So even though the resource costs, and associated tax, may be trivial, I fully expect 6+ months to be able to grab the scattered weapons that I have missed.
As I’ve said many times here, a huge part of it is about perception. Like it or not, new players coming in are a lifeblood to games like this. We do not want the perception that any section of the game is hard block (or cash blocked) for players that happened to have started later. As more and more players that have started after not having weapons started to directly impact their gameplay, there is more an more danger of this happening, especially if the solution is so far off that they can’t even talk about it yet. But if a single weapon has such a high “tax” as that they could still never hope to catch up, that is just as bad. So if even they add a new resource that functions as a time gate, it still has to be as such that the “good” older weapons are meted out over the course of multiple months, and that “all” old weapons is still an attainable goal, which the system is already fully capable of doing with a simple rotation.
Forward thinking would have had all old weapons should have been part of soulforge when soulforge launched, and continued this practice when raids and invasions added. Smart design should have done this with at least the newer event raid/invasion weapons within three months of when they launched (and I still believe this was their initial plan, based on the fact that the original event still states that Hook Sword will be periodically available in soulforge, but either they veered off course with the implementation somewhere, got resistance from the publisher for whatever reason, or couldn’t decide on a good “tax” to associate with missing initial runs).
Yes, this part is plainly obvious. It works off a tighter conditioned behavior loop, which is very clearly going to be better for their metrics.
Nothing wrong with this really. This actually incentivizes a level of interaction with the game that tends to be less burnout inducing, and therefore a mutually beneficial change. Also, even though they are replacing a flat, static system with a system another system that is also fairly flat on the long time scale, the adventure board system at least promises some day to day novelty.
However
And this is where the change, for me anyways, negatively impacts my core gameplay.
Daily tasks are a huge part driving force in what has been keeping my gameplay dynamic over the past several months. Yes, there are a lot of garbage tasks that I repick or skip, and this sometimes means I don’t bother with tasks that entire day, and less important accounts sit out for a week while waiting for some good overlap. But the way they can overlap and intersect, and be done in concert with any other game mode allows for the kind of creativity in both team building and optimization that I get the most enjoyment out of in Gems of War. I’ve found myself taking daily tasks even when I know they are resource negative (in comparison to the easiest infinitely repeatable way to get said resource) because I’m trying to eek out the last little bit of novelty I can in a game that heavily rewards otherwise sticking to a handful of teams and repeating trivial tasks ad-nauseum.
I’ve taken to doing daily tasks before doing a farming delve or using a task team in a different delve, even though I know the normal farming runs are more significant for the account in question. I generally run the first three battles of a daily task team within dungeons, but I’m much more likely to skip the day completely if all my daily tasks are bad. I almost always try to find a PvP viable solution otherwise.
Also, as pointed out, these tasks incentivize experimentation with teams and gently incentivize players to make some team-building related choices, which actively helps train them at getting better at one of the most critical (and IMO one of the most engaging) aspects of the game.
All these little gameplay nuances - incentivizing critical thinking and having a ton of room for overlaps and optimization - all of this goes away when daily tasks go away. We just, as stated, play another 3 dungeons (or mini-pet-rescues) with randomized rewards. Or as I put it above, check for a pulse then exchange x of my time for y reward without really needing to think about anything too much. It guess it suits the direction the game has been heading, and some people are already applauding it, but it still makes me sad.
Yes, there is a lot to do in the game, but most of it is very much “going through the motions” with tiny bright spots where the novelty shines through and the longer you have been playing, the more out of your way you have to go to find these, often at the expense of efficiency. I just like when I’m allowed to think a bit without worrying about it being detrimental to efficiency, my rewards, and thus, long term, my ability to unlock content.
So I’ll just leave off some positive experiences I had with daily tasks:
I would have never bothered with a team this “inefficient” had it not been for some specific daily task overlaps, but it turned out to be pretty fun, and I won all 9 of the PvP battles (and 3 dungeons) I took it into.
I set up this delve when requested to do a Brown team + Knight team. It is pretty close to optimal farming unless you run into the submerge room very early on and them empowered later, and I’m using one of the worst classes in the game and a troop I rarely bother with anymore.
I have many, many teams I can quickly tweak to fit some task criteria, most of which play significantly differently than any “meta” team I were to run.
Sometimes, I even run these in events themselves. 3x Constructs was obviously pretty free this week, but having both 3x brown and 3x construct makes you think a bit more.
I would have never bothered randomly opening a single gem key, particularly not on an account that has over half their mythics. Yeah, its just Gargantaur, but this alt didn’t have it yet, so its still a unique experience I don’t get with “optimal” key spending.
So RIP Daily Tasks. You weren’t perfect. Many of you outright had no reason to exist and I had always planned to do an analysis on resource-negative tasks, but there really isn’t any reason to now (maybe with the next system). But you will be missed.
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If I have to spend my already precious Diamonds on old Event Weapons, I’m gonna lose it. Just sayin’.
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There is some lag time, but lots of long wanted feature have been delivered for sure.
I don’t think the AI cheats. I do think there’s a bug in the RNG that increases the chances of repeating the previous outcome versus other outcomes, exhibiting streaky behavior. That’s not the same thing.
Whatever the new feature for end-gamers, I hope we don’t add more grinds to the game like leveling heroes. This game is already consuming so much of my life. I feel like my treadmill is on a treadmill.
It seems the thing that really effects things more than team score is how many troops are summoned. I’ve had matches where I killed 14 troops and it was still not enough. Those matches last 2-4 times longer.
How about a simple system equation like:
1 trophy - 5 points per troop defeated
2 trophy - 10 points per troop defeated
3 trophy - 15 points per troop defeated
Certainly, the codebase will only get more complex. Such a simple change would be one less possible interaction.
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Technically speaking it really is rigged. Glory shop troops have a significantly increased drop rate from event chests on the week they are released, for Ultra-Rare it seems to be triple chance. That’s good when you are specifically looking for that one troop (which is unlikely, you usually buy them in the glory shop anyway for extra traitstones). If you rather want to obtain any of the other troops of same rarity you are better off waiting for the next kingdom event, hoping it skews the distribution in some other rarity tier you are not interested in. I really wish the game would convey this handling better (or drop all the invisible special rules).
The initial plan was this, per Sirrian on a old dev Q&A:
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Purchasable via Tiers in the appropriate event’s Shop during that week for gems.
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Craftable via diamonds and jewels in the Soulforge as an alternative method to obtaining the week’s weapon without spending gems. Being more expensive overall than choice 1 was intentional, by design. This choice was also supposed to be only for the original event only, despite the language otherwise.
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Purchasable in afterwards in various events for cash only.
After the trial??? of Divine Protector in the cash shop, options 2 and 3 were discontinued for an unknown reason.
If the current-looking intent was to simply place the old weapons in the Soulforge, where would be no reason to create an original solution to the matter. As many have said here numerous times, all that would take is the creation of a record in a table of the database assigned to the Soulforge. It would have happened ages ago.
Are you talking about Event keys? If so, that’s entirely by design and has been for ages (if not has been always that way).
If you’re talking purely about Glory keys, historical drop rates from Tarans when that data existed clearly shows the distribution of troops within a given rarity tier are equally distributed. Those pages are still available for viewing, if one wants to check them.
Glory shop troops from event chests. Yes, it’s by design and it’s been around for ages, I wouldn’t really know how a new player could learn about it though. Such a new player will be seeing the published, rarity-based odds and possibly be quite annoyed due to receiving a lot of the troops just bought from the glory shop, few of the other still needed troops with same rarity. Anyone would reasonably expect a fair distribution unless stated otherwise, so I suspect “rigged” will become a popular term until this special handling gets communicated in-game.
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What side you on? I know you trying to look good by giving the benefit of doubt. You’ll look good too if you give that same benefit to the players/community and I believe that so many points been discussed and we are nearly at the conclusion 
Suggestions, bug reports, balance concerns, pvp…ect
We are not dogs we humans we spoke we got ignored we lost trust. It’s simple
Now it’s up to them to rebuild that trust and recognise the passion of some players that been contributing to this game from day1.
I’ve been GOW for a year and half and I could be wrong but I haven’t heard any suggestion from a player being accepted yet.
FIY: this is not the only game or forum I participate in so my views are from experience and witnessing how other studios operate:v:
I weighed in heavily that hero class be stickied to the team and that happened
Doomskulls was revised upon player request
There are lots.
You are right that we are passionate about gow 
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Also, trophies for towers, raid, etc. For me, devs listening to that was huge.
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