For the sake of truth, in case I would even edit something from my post, due some typo or such, I’m giving you and everyone else the chance to look into this screeshot and to find EXACTLY where I said that Free Players should get as much rewards as Paying Players:
I like to think that my post is charming, endearing and witty.
The thing is: I could be wrong! And that’s why I decided to put it as an independent reply/rant so Igniteice wouldn’t think I was talking about him. And I clearly stated: “It honestly comes of as entitlement:”
It’s just how it looks to me. And just like I think my hyperbolic examples are charming, endearing and witty, I could be… Guess what? WRONG!
So let’s entertain this a little longer: Why people bringing up Paying versus Free Players can be seen as entitlement to me, and possibly others?
Because of how people expressed themselves…
Because of the reader’s (my) mood…
Because of how things escalated from a discussion with another person in the same topic…
So many things are about how we express ourselves and how people interpret it. Do you agree?
What the devs expressed lately and what the players interpreted that could warrant complains and bad publicity?
Sorry, it was Fourdottwoone who I was replying to, and then you replied to my reply, somehow defending them, so I just ignored who I was talking to and talked the point. Fourdottwoone said that the free pass’s “rewards” is the “biggest exaggeration” and expressed doubt that there would be any meaningful amount of Books in the Free Pass.
I replied to that arguing that paying players are of course getting more than free players, that’s how it should work, otherwise people wouldn’t pay, and we wouldn’t have a game.
You came in and somehow argued that the game would go down in flames if all of the free players went away and just left the paying players. Well, the player base would dwindle a bit, but uh… nothing would change, because they’d have the same revenue stream, just a drastically smaller player base.
And a drastically decrease in the playerbase would extinguish many guilds in the process. An interesting point made by Turintuor was:
No one can buy their way into “The Endgame”, with a snap of fingers. Well… Technically they can I guess, but not realisticaly.
People join as free players, they play and make friends, building bonds that can improve their experience and making them value their time in the game, they also compete against other players and challenges, they unlock troops, powerups… To sum it up, the whole “New and fun things to do” package.
Could that work with a monthly subscription/fee to join the game. Yes, but it would at first look like a gamble…
“What if I don’t like the game?”
“What if I don’t make friends?”
“What if the gnolls suck?”
Many of these things (specially the last one) could be a deterrent to get new players into the game, and the way GoW works as of now, with new troops and gamemodes (even if they are just the same old stuff “remastered” with a few tweaks) it demands a flow of revenue that probably wouldn’t work with closed servers/subscriptions/entry fees UNLESS they manage to gain and keep new customers.
Without people in a similar level range to become buddies/guildmates and offer help/guidance some people could join the game, feel it’s too much for them when they see everything locked out with a monetary investiment and a HUGE time investiment that will “translate” into a HUGE monetary investiment.
So what the devs did?
I think they managed to make the game interesting enough to guide players towards some stuff they could monetize like DK Armor and a few small purchases to unlock Vip 5 for access to Vip Chests. That was good!
I also think they FAILED to push things beyond that… To give the players more reasons to support the game. The game demands so much of players nowadays that even having the DK Armor and Vip 5 can barely give players a fair chance of getting the Mythics they need/want.
But well, in my opinion Free Players are important and the F2P model is not something bad IF DONE RIGHT. I honestly think the devs are not doing the right thing lately by just offering the same boring battles and mechanics while also creating “obstacles” to unlock more powerups that we don’t need at all with the “Kingdom’s Rework”.
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.
There are 2 dimensions of leveling here: Kingdom Level 20 & Kingdom Power Level 30 so this answer kind of applies to both.
At this current moment, both of these are clearly out of reach.
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.)
To even get to Kingdom Level 30 a lot more troops need to be released. At this time, it isn’t possible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you did a great job doing so just now.
Sirrian (in regards to the forums) was a voice that would break down any changes to the game.
People are more understanding of change if they can understand it.
To be fair, control of the game back then was much more in Sirrians hands. As 505 became more of a directional force… It became harder and harder to explain changes. Can’t throw the publisher under the bus, but seemingly can’t give “we want more money” as an accepted answer in society from a company.
Personally, I see 5.1 as a “hey we’re going to be here for a while” update. To make it clear to gamers that GoW doesn’t have any intentions of turning off their servers any time soon.
I liked the stealth drop of the update because it kept expectations from being too high. But I also enjoy the “heads up” that your preview streams provide.
Both can’t exist obviously at the same time. So I think a mixture of both moving forward would be nice.
5.0 needed a preview stream because there was a lot to explain even if the update felt light on content.
I can’t remember 4.9 or 4.8 exactly…but because I can’t remember them… they probably could of been stealth dropped like 5.1 was.
I played the game from Nov 2016 thru Oct 2017. I liked the game, but didn’t love it. It wasn’t until Jun/Jul of 2017 that I found a decent Guild and made friends. And while the Gnolls did suck, I suffered thru that because I liked the friends I had made.
It was th ui change that drove me away, and it was my brother (on PS4, not Xbox) that brought me back. He made all the changes done since I had left sound interesting…Pets, Ascension Orbs, Hero Classes…
If I had known that the Orc class would take another 18 months to release, or that Gnolls would still suck, I might not have returned. Still, I was able to reconnect with old friends, and make new ones.
And I did all that while being a no-good deadbeat f2p player. I don’t argue that Elite pass deserves better rewards. And we don’t even know the distribution rates for this new update. Will f2p get 1 writ per week, while Elite get 1 Deed? Dunno.
Nor do I know if I’ll be playing this game a month from now, if my friends will leave, or if Gnolls will still suck. (Probably/Maybe Not/Almost Assuredly).
If I do leave, maybe I’ll toss the devs a Fiver on my way out the door, for old times sake.
Edit: I wrote this before @Saltypatra’s post…Thank you Salty for all that you, and others, do to keep this game moving forward.
Unfortunatelly, among these word I personally have not found anything what I cound say to my guildmates who thinking about leaving the game after 5.1 update because they not willing to pay subscription (even if they bought the pass for current campaign) as well as not willing to hit paywall.
Maybe number of deeds in free pass will be reasonable, but they’re disappointed just now and I doubt that all will wait 2 monthes till start of a new campaign to know if there is light at the end of the tunnel.
I haven’t (because it hasn’t been an issue) but I would offer my 5 guilds this advice about 5.0 and 5.1…
The recent updates are designed for players willing to pay $1 a week to play the Campaigns.
The campaign rewards for those free to play are absolutely shit. So if you don’t want to do the Campaigns it’s completely understandable.
So is a company designing a small sector of their game to those who are willing to pay money to play.
Therefore free to play players should still enjoy all the content between 1.0 and 4.9 instead.
If that’s not enough. Then so be it. But none of those facets in the game were changed at all by the Campaigns. So if you were enjoying the game prior to 4.9 then you should still continue to enjoy it now.
He did that, because, as mentioned in many other posts, you need to spend more resources to complete campaign tasks, than you get as rewards from free pass. And it is true, up to now, for current campaign. Might not be true for next one, but that alone leads to a conclusion… that taking part in campaign provides a net loss in resources. That’s why he said, free pass “rewards” are “exaggeration”.
You could also said that in more civilised manner. They way you stated it, made Razzagor feel like it’s a kind of rebuke on free players.
Other than that, this whole discussion of Free vs Paying players of GoW is repeteadly comming back with every new content brought onto the game. I understand @Fourdottwoone point of view, i understand your point of view (and also awryan one). I personally belive, that both groups are needed by F2P game, and it’s in best interest of publisher to make both of these groups content.
As for number of books. If i were to guess, what would be optimal solution:
1 book on free to play track
1 book on elite track before 1000
1 book on elite track on 1200 point
that way, those who dont pay, get a book,
those who buy elite pass, get 2 books
those who but elite+ pass, get 3 books
That might get elite+ offer look more attactive. Heck, even if it were 2 books on free track, and 2 on elite track (one before 1000 points, one after), it still might be considered attractive offer for people to pay.
(you get 50% more books with elite pass, and 100% more books with elite+ pass- you can get your kingdoms to lvl 20 twice as fast as free players)
I’m sure you have good intentions, but you may need to adjust your numbers. To take a Kingdom from level 16 to 20, you need 30 Book of Deeds and 29 Imperial Deeds. There’s also 34 Kingdoms.
Campaigns are also 11 weeks (10 weeks + 1 off-week)
1-3 is not going to mean much and I could see the forums catching fire in that regard.
1-3 or 2-4 is still better than 0. Still cuts time needed to gain these by some fraction.
On top of that I’m still looking forward to arena and treasure hunt updates, especially their rewards rework. Counting for another source of gaining deeds (or at least writs).
Remember that nothing (what is in current game state) is final as new sources of these can be added in future.
I have only one word for such statemanet: Bulls**t
And more politely: that’s only your opinion with which i strongly disagree
Each month new content is added to the game (more or less useful for a range of players).
Every now and then, there’s an update that introduces new game mechanics and/or improves some bugs.
The biggest issue of this game are forum people that complain all the time: “DEVs arent doing a thing, there’s no content for endgame players”, “DEVs are adding some ridiculous kingdom levels, nobody is able to complete in XX weeks/months”, “DEVs fix this bug/rebalance this crap”, “No this change is terrible, revert it!”, “Free players aren’t getting good stuff” , “Paying players aren’t getting good stuff” and so on…
I’ve been quite short on forums (arround 3 months), but ammount of such crap being thrown onto @Kafka and @Saltypatra (who are bravely representing whole DEV team) is beyond anything that’s reasonable. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if it was a feedback, but most of it like:
“Forum guy: I dont like it!
Devs: Why you dont like it?
FG: Because i dont.
D: How can we improve it?
FG: Dont know, just fix it.
D: …”
Just… don’t have Books of Deeds show up in Elite Campaign rewards. Its not too late. And it’ll be “better”.
I can’t really say it will be “fine” or that I and other like-minded individuals won’t complain at all going forward, but perhaps less…
Fact of the matter is, some of us have been rather hoping to see an update that isn’t purely based on a new currency, a new but still monotonous / repetitive mode, etc. And we haven’t seen anything come close to the uniqueness of delves since, well, delves (ToD recycling their rooms doesn’t really qualify). That was almost two entire years ago.
What we do get is “do this fight eighteen times” or “do these six fights fifteen times each”.
I think I’m going to save the rest for another day to open.
…”