Alright, I have some things to say!
Sorry for the delay, I have had an exceedingly busy day, and will be working a silly long week. I’m taking some time out of my higher level duties to come and discuss this.
1 - Sirrian will not be returning to these forums in the capacity that he was once here. We have discussed this many times over the years, but it isn’t possible with the size of the game and nature of the community. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but it is the reality of how Gems of War has been for years, and will be moving forward until the game is no more. Touch wood that never happens.
2 - A design vision is a huge process. We implemented these kingdom levels to give end gamers more to work towards. We received a fair few complaints (via reviews, DMS, and our social media accounts) regarding the fact that our previous updates offered little to end gamers. This is a double edged sword, as anytime we put more things in game for end gamers, they complain, but if we don’t, they also complain. The rate at which it will take players to max their kingdoms will vary greatly, with many never doing so. There are too many variables to answer your question with any concrete accuracy. End gamers now will have a much easier time than new hard core players, and many players will never even aspire to it, as it is content purely for our more hardcore endgamers. That being said, we do hope it takes our hardcore endgamers a long time to achieve, as it is important to always have things in game for players to work towards.
Now, that huge disclaimer in place, I have a few more points to raise and discuss.
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There are 2 dimensions of leveling here: Kingdom Level 20 & Kingdom Power Level 30 so this answer kind of applies to both.
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At this current moment, both of these are clearly out of reach.
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Kingdom Level 20 requires Books of Deeds - which are a brand new resource that is not easy to get. Currently, these Books can only be gotten through crafting by using a resource that is already scarce. This is by design. (They will be available in more ways in the future, such as in campaign awards, and in other places that we deem appropriate.)
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To even get to Kingdom Level 30 a lot more troops need to be released. At this time, it isn’t possible.
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Given the current rate of release, this means that Power Level 30 could take years to accomplish. I personally think this is a good idea, as we have needed long term goals for end gamers, and we have many players that have stuck around for over 5 years.
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However, as we’ve done in the past, we need to create space to work into. This means we create big systems that (at first) look like they’re way off on the horizon, and then in a future update, we create events and systems that release the things players need, so they can work towards the goals meaningfully.
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An example of this is when we released the Trait system. Upon release, there was a major complaint was that it would take years to get the Arcane traitstones needed to fully trait all 150 troops in the game. After release, we were able to observe how people were playing and give them fun ways to get those traitstones. As of today, lots of players have fully traited collections of 800-ish troops, because we found lots of ways to make traitstones available.
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Players can expect a similar curve and outcome here. You’re asking how long will it take? Well, it’s meant to be a mountain to climb, but we’ll adjust the height of the mountain and the steepness of the slope over future updates.
3 - You can see the amount of resources needed to craft Books in the body of the post. I cannot give you an accurate time frame on the time it will take to craft these, as there are too many variables. How many resources does the players already have? How long have they been playing? What are they focussing on with their resources? Why? Etc, etc, etc,
4 - I cannot give you a thorough drill down on these rewards. This is because if I provide something that is then changed, myself and the others devs will be burnt at the stake. In the past I have shared similar information, on the caveat that it might change, and then when it has been changed people have abused, threatened, and attacked me anyway. Unfortunately, this is the case of a few ruining things for the majority. I cannot share rough ideas and estimates to give you a more well rounded idea of how things will work, because even if I have a disclaimer on that information saying it isn’t final, if we change it we get relentlessly attacked.
I apologise, as I would love to be able to share that information with you and be more transparent. However, for the mental health and general well being of myself and staff, I will not disclose this sort of information now, or moving forward.
5 - We all have different ideas of what “reasonable” means in the context of your query. This end game content is not gated by a pay wall, but it will take a F2P player a fair amount longer to level their kingdoms. Once again, there are too many variables to accurately tell you how long it should take a player to reach these levels, and I cannot with any firm specificity elaborate on what is reasonable. At the end of the day, what is reasonable is decided by the player, and whether they decide to chase those levels or not. We cannot choose or guess at what is reasonable to a player, they must decide based on their own wants and needs.
Here are my closing words regarding Gems of War still not being “that type of game.” Anything that you can get with money, you can also get with time. (And a bit of luck, but that applies to both paying players and non paying players.)
I am unaware of any concrete measures that COULD be put in place to maintain the balance between players that spend time versus those that purchase campaign passes. There is no magic formula which will 100% solve this perceived problem. We will do what we always do, which is all we can do… That is, we will monitor the data on our end, and tweak and adjust things until they are fair as they possibly can be. We do this as much as we possibly can, and are dedicated to doing it for the entire life cycle of this game. It is one of our highest priorities.
In conclusion, I am not Sirrian, and cannot pick up his sceptre.
But I can write over 1200 words on why this is the case, and try to explain why not all of the above issues raised can have firm answers, or be elaborated on further. I have endevoured to answer and be transparent about what I can, and the information provided above was discussed with Sirrian before I came here to write this massive reply.