I don’t care what you all say. This is a pay to win now. I only still play because I have spent enough real money on this game. I did because I thought it was worth it. Now… Nope. I won’t pay to spend 10,000 years grinding. The point of paying to to get ahead not fall back. And this update has done just that. People with real jobs don’t have time spending 8-16 hours a day grinding and maybe in 20 years you proceed further in the game. Then this mini boss and mythic boss trash. Extra steps. No more just win or lose and click next. Now you have to confirm or press continue after each boss. This new explore is just garbage imo. And those stupid badges… Not worth the time. The time and work are not worth the bonuses and you can only use 3 global ones at a time. Whatever. R.I.P. GoW. This super grind fest will detour many new players. Too complicated and too long. Enjoy your 10,000 year grinding.
True. I just can’t explore anymore. It became a pain in the back. Just like it was farming traitstones.
I do know the feeling. No way! I simply gave up exploring. I have boring stuffs at work already and I don’t need one else lol
has anyone test the interaction between barrier and death mark since 4.6 update?
What’s wrong with it?
Your whole post complaining about it being pay to win is describing how it is not pay to win. First of all you can’t buy medals, so everyone is in the same boat. The explore mechanic, much like the pets or honor systems were not meant to max or at least not meant to rush to max for the average player. They are all passive systems. If you don’t have the time to grind that much, simple, just don’t. It’s a choice you as the player are making, not one the game is forcing you to do. As you said the global and troop bonuses from medals arent that game altering that NOT having them would handicap a player, especially at the high levels.
It’s not a pay to win game at all, in fact it’s one of the most free player friendly games out there(I’m VIP 0). The issue for most players is they mix grinding time with gameplay progression so it can seem pay to win if you aren’t playing hours a day. I will admit this could be frustrating to a completionist but this is a game that can’t be won, only played. I think too many people on here expect to max everything fast when the game is intentionally slowing progression to retain players longer as they slowly roll out other updates over time.
I’m not going to completly take the Devs side, as it’s been posted all over the forums about their mistakes. But I will say if you unhappy you should quit. Players that spend money on a freemium game should be more aware of their choices and the consequences of them. If you are looking for a game you complete in a timely manner go play a triple AAA title. Cause this isn’t one of them.
I don’t think it’s fair to call GoW a P2W game, but I think it’s worth stating that “P2W” and “F2P” aren’t binary states. GoW is a very monetized F2P game. I think it is monetized as aggressively as some P2W games, but the store is so bad at selling things it’s more a money pit for stupid people than P2W. (That doesn’t mean “spending any money is stupid”, bear with me.)
I think people get confused because GoW is a very long game, much longer than a lot of F2Ps are comfortable with revealing all at once. When I signed up in August 2017 or so, by the end of the first week I had a feeling it’d be at least 6 months before I had good teams, and a year to reach “endgame”. I was mostly right, and I think it’s gotten longer since then.
But it’s notable that you don’t have to have everything to be at endgame. There are only 4 or 5 meta teams you need to assemble, and you need Kingdom Power to be at a certain level, but those are all goals a very active player will achieve in a year. This means you’re playing at least an hour a day, preferably 2-3. Even then, 90% of your rewards will come in once per week from your guild. None of this costs money.
A P2W player can’t even really get much further faster than that. Even if you guy gems to open troops, you need 4 troops to make a team. Even if you buy diamonds to build those troops faster, your reward is you stop caring about keys earlier and thanks to most rewards being guild-based you’re only farming gold and souls faster, which are arguably the least-used currencies in the game for relevant goals.
The most P2W aspect is the Tier VII event potions, but even that is solely for leaderboards that hand out rewards that very quickly become irrelevant. 8 orbs of power = 1 Zuul’goth. Craft that and they’re kind of worthless. If you are at the level of play where you can win an LB, you aren’t hurting for the traitstones OR souls to max out a troop. So in the end it’s not P2W, it’s “Pay for Bragging Rights”. And a significant portion of the people who do it hoard their free gems to do it, there’s a pattern in the LBs you can note if you watch them.
Once you reach endgame (which you CAN pay your way up to but it’s a ridiculous expense), what’s left?
Faction 500? It takes an entire weekend and a big Tier VII investment to “pay to win” there and what do you get? Well, a pet. And like, 30% of +1 magic. (I did no research there, don’t correct me.)
Badges? You’re going to be grinding at the same rate as anyone else. You can’t really buy them. Even if you could, the elite levels on a troop represent an almost insignificant boost compared to what Tier VII potions provide. I’m willing to bet in a matchup where I win 80% vs. an opponent, if they are 100% elite level and I’m not I still win 80%.
Deeds? Again, for all the concern over them, they’re gating only a handful of stat points in a game where suddenly we’re more worried about how we’re going to gain ~50 points. They’re doled out so slowly and have a spending cap I consider the payment aspect insignificant at this point. I don’t have energy left to be mad over it.
There’s just no way in GoW to get a significant advantage over an endgame player by paying money outside of the Tier VII potions, and those are so accessible to F2P players it’s possible the leaderboard is a group of people who hoard their free gems just for that purpose. I got that feeling every time I whined about it being P2W. The people on the leaderboard feel like they aren’t threatened by P2W players, and they’re the ones who would know.
So in the end:
- Whales are chasing the dopamine rush of being super powerful.
- Nothing significant is attainable with money in the grand picture.
- Unless we’re talking about spending $2k+ in one sitting, but even then it only makes you “equal to the next rung on the ladder”, not “a god who can’t be defeated this week”.
- If a whale is only marginally more powerful after whaling, they’re not going to whale again and aren’t going to attract whale friends.
THEREFORE I intuitively believe GoW doesn’t have a lot of whales, and the people who do spend money don’t believe they’re doing it “to win” so much as trying to satisfy some temporary lack of resources. It’s a very long game where spending money does not represent a significant boost in power, however it is aggressively monetized so it looks P2W on the surface.
Mandatory TLDR for my posts:
I don’t think any purchase in GoW, even at the multi-thousand-dollar level, makes you so powerful that any current F2P endgamer can’t defeat you in any relevant mode given a month or two to prepare. GoW is such a slow game, I think “a month or two to prepare” is fair. It can’t be P2W if after P you don’t W. But I do think it’s fair to say, “It asks me for money more frequently than games famous for being P2W”. It’s not our fault it doesn’t offer a fair dollars-to-power exchange.
I just gotta laugh
I get the new mythic, then an offer to trait and level it for $35
This is why I’m VIP 0 and always will be
Lol
Remember, they think we are all idiots. By not buying you prove that you’re not one of them.
Hmm 7/10ths of my PS membership for a year
Or not using easily attained resources for a near useless troop
Buying/not buying this could be a test for if u are allowed to reproduce
Lmao
You should totally buy it though. It’s $70 VALUE!!! Half price!!!
150 traitstones and 7930 souls are a $70 value
Who wants to buy my GoW profile
It’s got over 200000 traitstones and 6 million souls, if u add everything else
It’s probably worth about 2 million
I’ll sell it for half price
Good deal!!
Now I’m confused
I thought I may have a 2% chance of flagging for my first post by someone overly sensitive
But the second post I see no reason whatsoever
Unless that was taken as a serious offer(I guess solicitation) Lol
Was basically just saying if the value of what is being sold in game to us were equivalent to what we earned, we’d be filthy rich as end gamers
Yeah agreed, that was sarcastic enough it was unworthy of a flag. 
I feel the same way. To me $30 is even above “a monthly subscription” to a lot of games. There’s no way in heck I’d get that much value out of one troop.
But if that offer had been $4.99, I think I might’ve bought one at least once a month for the legendary or mythic. Same with events, for right around $5 I’d be really tempted to get that extra ascension.
But they ask for $30, and apparently they believe less than 6x the number of people would pay $5. That seems weird to me, given that I’d probably spend $5 2-3 times per month on impulse. I’ve already spent $25 on a different game this month that way because they had nice Halloween cosmetic items. GoW’s idea of a Halloween event was not so tempting as “what if this character had a cute witch hat?”
Yeah
I dunno which flash offer is less appealing
The one in GoW or the one from a middle aged man in a trenchcoat in a park😖