Whats funny is that if asked if I’d have paid $1 a week just to play the game, period, the answer would probably be yes. The answer if I’d play for free but pay $1 for a better reward schedule based on the gameplay during that time, also yes. But when it presented to me in a way where it is “pay or else you’ll fall behind” it not only not makes me want to pay but it kind of erodes my attachment to “staying ahead” in the first place. Putting rewards on the paid track that are simply impossible to earn on the free track for a minimum of four weeks (the mythic, apparently) with some of them having arbitrary wait lengths that could exceed even a year (waiting for a kingdom event to craft a weapon or trying to pull an epic troop with keys in an ocean of them) is specifically the thing that makes it feel like that.
Honestly, if everything from the campaign was just in soulforge the week the next campaign began, I’d be more ok with it. Yes, thats a potentially massive amount of resources to “sell” for $10, but really you are heavily subsidizing that with gems, gameplay, or other resources. Looking at the entirety of a 10 week sequence of the free track rewards from the staging area, all of them combined don’t seem to be worth skipping more than 1 or 2 of the tasks with gems. 10 bucks doesn’t land you a mythic and the other stuff. Its 10 bucks and… what I’ve seen estimated at 20-40 hours of gameplay (at endgame, possibly more)/ up to 12k gems worth of skips or come combination thereof over 10 weeks to land a mythic(in this case), a couple weapons, a couple other troops a week ahead of time in addition to some other rewards and then also not have to dump 4k diamonds for a mythic/a bunch of summoning stones for a troop/300 diamonds + 1200 jewels per weapon seems perfectly fair. It is being locked out of getting the “exclusives” for an arbitrary amount of time (and a month minimum for the mythic) that does not seem “fair”, and why this is not the “same thing as it has always been” in terms of monetization. Multiple (extremely restricted) world events and several patch cycles happen in this amount of time. It is bound to happen that these exclusives, at some point, that some “exclusive” available is the most effective tactic available for a given event, or even in general over a given patch cycle, available to paid players only in that time period, and that will definitely not be considered “fair”.
As for the tasks themselves that would come up in the course of normal gameplay… they aren’t for the most part, just from seeing the preview, they get very specific, they occasionally include spending resources, and if you are on the free track, there is very little reason to push through any of these because if you ever get to a bottleneck task the combined rewards probably wouldn’t be worth just skipping that one task. Looking over the preview, it seemed like the worst of both worlds from the old weekly snotstone system (which I was lukewarm on, gameplay wise) and the old daily task system (which was one of my favorite parts of the game as far as gameplay). With having strict bottlenecks that you must spend exorbitant gem fees (compared to the total rewards available) to get past if you can’t or don’t want to finish them, I can easily see getting “stuck” on an early week task and stop interacting with the system entirely. Part of what made the old daily tasks system work was the ability to slowly cycle out tasks you just didn’t want to interact with without any cost. Now its a gem fee that for one task represents a huge chunk of the “value” of all the free rewards combined over ten weeks.
Then there is the cosmetic pet, which we don’t know will ever make its way into something that can be collected by non-paid players. Not even sure what to say about that. I guess thats fine as long as it never bottlenecks kingdom power. Cash only cosmetics that don’t affect gameplay have been a thing for a while and I can live with it.
Overall, from what I’ve seen, the main ways to interact with this system would be the free to play path, where they only reason to try to complete it is having way too much time to play and because you can, but I just know a bunch of people are going to get trapped by the psychology of having incomplete tasks and spend gems to skip them even though the rewards for completing that one task is less than spending the gems… pretty much anywhere else in the game. Its a very effective trap, but not one I particularly enjoy “defeating” because sidestepping it means… not engaging with the system. Which is increasingly becoming more of the game (resource traps that you can easily sidestep).
However, if you have shelled out the 10-25 bucks, you’d be a fool not to complete any task by any means necessary if there is a mythic prize at the end, and if not, to at least as far as any exclusive that matters. This creates a dichotomy where basically the entire system doesn’t even look very interactive unless you shelled out at least the 10 bucks. I’m struggling to find a reason for the free side existing except to be able to say that it was not a paid feature (and the psychology driven gem sinks, I guess).
Which brings me to the stats… stats in the quantities granted don’t make a huge difference (by endgame, or even at the level of having just all 5 star plus kingdoms, anyways) in a majority of the gameplay modes. The main function of stats in this game is to decrease the amount of time it takes to clear a given match, either by way of making a fast team safter so you can use a fast team for longer, or making a fast team faster by decreasing the amount of actions you need to take to win. Very occasionally, some basic stat points factors in to your ability to win a match at all, but outside of very specific things (ie., faction team delves), running a team that depends on taking more than 1 or 2 hits while setting up is not a very effective way to play… just in general. These very temporary stats aren’t all that much of prizes unless they either grant you the ability to do something you couldn’t before, or significantly speed up some other reward-bearing gameplay to the degree greater than the time sunk by diverting your attention to said task. Even factoring in the stats, the skipping (or even chasing high time commitment bottleneck tasks) on the free track is likely opportunity cost negative, unless those stats end up saving you a lot of time and you can use that time very effectively. And I’ve said many times in other areas, I don’t really have much of a desire to play a Gems of War where the majority of the content is “stat checked”.
As an aside, from what I’ve seen of this interface also makes me think I’ll probably dislike it even before I use it. You have to go back to this window every time you complete a task to “collect” it and unlock the next one of that tier. You start on a different page other than tasks when clicking into the window. On stream, it took a fairly long time just to click through tasks while skipping them with gems. I know it is far too late to do this now, but this is really something that could have been streamlined a lot better. This isn’t even as much of a time sink issue as it is with explore’s cumbersome interface where all the clicks take up a not-insignificant portion of time relative to the gameplay, it just looks to have very poor flow to a degree of being a nagging annoyance over time. You just need way too many inputs to do stuff that should be automatic. Why not, for example, have one tap on the campaign tab on the left “pop out” into the three different tasks with their progress bars, like the adventure board; and have them auto update their given progress, like adventure board; and auto-finish with a popup in the corner of your screen, like adventure board; with a second click taking you into the actual campaign window with the full details… like when you click on adventure board. Then you could open the tab once and click into the window exactly zero times to know what your next task was, only checking it to grab your rewards periodically. Might have even saved on server load. Oh well. Please make UX a bigger consideration for future systems.
One more thought: To everyone stating that the artifact will affect PvP gold payout… was it ever confirmed that artifact stats inflate PvP scores? You can get stat bonuses that don’t affect your team scores and therefore don’t affect the gold formula. Medals, for example, give global stat bonuses that don’t affect team score in any way, and the preview showed artifact bonuses being listed in the same way as medal bonuses. There also all the slew of stat bonuses you can get from team composition, also not affected by team score, plus elite leveling, also not affected by team score. If artifact stat bonuses do not affect team score, then they won’t (rather shouldn’t, barring a situation where they are included in the team score calc for one area of the game by mistake and not the other) affect gold payouts in PvP. Which means you’d be free to chase the temporary stat points and potentially get through some stuff faster without lowering your per battle PvP payouts, if you so choose. Outside of the aforementioned “stat checked” situations, it probably wont help a ton if you are already endgame maxed except for any week where the magic boost means one less cast to clear most given battles.
“Executive Summary”:
- Wait lengths for campaign “exclusives” to be available in any way to the “unpaid masses” regardless of relative resource costs is the biggest thing that makes the system seem problematic or unfair (currently at least 4 weeks for the mythic to be in the souforge rotation, currently placing it at appearing between 1-3.5 months after a campaign ends, or an entire patch cycle, 9 months average rotation for kingdoms but without a set kingdom rotation potentially over a year for the weapons, multiple patches later). If all said things were directly available a short fixed period afterward for in-game resources (not “in chests and in rotation” but actually “in soulforge”) - a week, maybe even a month later, this wouldn’t be nearly as bad. Immediately after the campaign ends would of course be preferable to preserve the spirit of F2P (or at least prevent further erosion of it), but probably not something the publisher would allow.
- Barring that and granting ready availability of said items, I actually don’t find the $10 “paywall” in and of itself problematic for the amount of rewards given on the elite pass and their relative costs, given that this $10 is subsidized by dozens of hours of gameplay or thousands of gems to complete the tasks which are not worth the time or effort if you are on the free track
- However, this also means if you don’t pay at least the $10, the system doesn’t even really look all that interactive (previewed rewards are bad enough to be potentially opportunity cost negative, skips are definitely resource-cost-negative, leaving no real carrot in the whole system besides stats, which are too temporary to justify chasing). Basically, the smartest decision if I hit a wall on the free track is to disengage completely, which is bad.
- many of the tasks previewed seem very not fun regardless (or require spending resources in sums greater than the entirety of what the free track rewards, potentially bottlenecking at inopportune times) in an effort purely to create bottlenecks for gem skips rather than allowing them to happen organically for players that actually are just in a hurry to get through
- UX wise, flow of the campaign system seems poor, needing tons of unnecessary inputs to do stuff that should be automatic and having frequently visited windows not first in line
- Not crazy about the new event schedule
- Lore is interesting, I guess
Sorry if that is overly negative, but thats my thoughts. Would have really liked for there to not be paid exclusives for any length of time, but I guess thats where we are now. Just seems like this patch is going to be very content light, especially for a major version number, for those unable or unwilling to get on that paid track, while simultaneously using a monetization tactic that makes me (and probably others) not want to be on the paid track despite being both willing and able otherwise.
Side note: I thought we’d get something revealed as to why medals were globalized instead of on teams and why they are (and why it was good design for them to be) displayed prominently on the main screen rather than somewhere accessed while you are switching troops around by 5.0. Did I miss that?