I was a bit shocked to see my kindle tablet with the Christmas Icon. Upon further inspection, it is 5.3
Here is what is listed on the Amazon App page
What’s new in this version
NEW RECRUITS, MORE GOLD AND PRESENTS, FA-LA-LA-LA-LA…
WHAT’S NEW:
WARBANDS, ASSEMBLE! - Warbands are powerful premade teams ready to be recruited and taken into battle. Gather War Coins to acquire and upgrade them.
YOUR VAULTS WILL GLIMMER WITH GOLD… AND CHAOS - Shrines are a new way to earn extra resources: they will fill up with Gold or other earnings from each of your battles. Once half full, they will open up for you to purchase accumulated gold up to a maximum, plus a bonus reward.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS! - The season of joy invades Krystara! Log in daily for free rewards, holiday-themed challenges and Season Offers during our event later in December.
Improvements in new user experience, VIP chests, the Arena, and various bug fixes round up this update. For more details, please visit https://gemsofwar.com/patch-notes/
Just a warning to those who play on other devices. Based on @Saltypatra stream schedule. This platform released the update super early. But if you update early on this client, then you won’t be able to play the same account on Steam or Android. Idk if it’ll cause the other clients to release early as well. I’d definitely prefer this over it being pushed out during GW and ToD week…fo sho though.
Yes, there is no way I’m opening the game on the kindle since I also play on steam and my phone. Not going to risk being out of sync with way too much to do.
I set the bar for my expectations from this patch extremely low… Somehow, based on the patch notes, they managed to limbo under the bar I set without even coming close to touching it. Amazing
Update: Based on a guildmate who downloaded it… you get 2 major orbs and 100k gold for $10
That one “feature” sounds an awful lot like the piggy bank on casino apps. I know gow is headed that way, but i had hoped they would keep some level of gow uniqueness in their predatory spending. It’s gone full on gatcha mode and that makes me very sad.
Well, it looks suspiciously like this is going to be yet another update that focuses on the cash shop. Word has it that shrines cost $10 to collect, which would just be another flash offer, except that you have to play some battles first to receive it. And going by datamined strings, Warbands is about buying booster gashas, you pay for some random upgrades. Sure, it might not turn out as bad. There’s been zero previews from the devs though, which the past months have taught us to expect something that’s not going to be received well.
I can confirm that the shrine is as expected but the value of the shrine is different depending on the account level you have. For example on our baby alt account it offered 20,000 gold and a minor orb of chaos for $1.99. The more upgraded alt was offered 100,000 and 2 major orbs for $9.99. This may be random and could also be different each day.
There was also an arena update that should make some players happy. You can now select the troops in reverse order, so the Epic troop is selected first. The other nice update is that you can reroll at the end of the selections if you aren’t happy with the team setup. I haven’t noticed anything else updated yet and as for the Warband I’m not sure what that will be.
My two cents which will probably be lost in the forum couch is that this update has a nice arena update, but probably won’t move the needle for most players with anything else. It’s not a total cash grab but does bring gems more in line with other games of the gacha genre. Things like the campaign, ads, daily offers, and this new shrine update are all copy and paste features from other games. Gems is just a little late to the party.
The biggest outstanding questions I have going forward.
Warbands and how do they work? Could be another offer situation like the shrine but with troops, which is where it seems to be leaning.
Direction going forward after this update
2020 has been the year of catch up for gems in my opinion. Playing some other games of this genre already It was surprising gems got away with being as F2P as they were for soo long. A few theories on this are that the dev team has changed and thus the direction of the game has changed. The publisher is trying to milk gems for everything it’s worth. According to the financial statement from Digital Bros, Gems is doing very well and making them money so my guess is they will want to keep going down that path until the money stops coming in. Of course the pandemic could be to blame for some of the updates not being as massively game changing, but since there is no gems roadmap from the development team, we will never know for sure if this was updates as planned, or things got pushed.
As a F2P this update doesn’t affect me one bit. Sure there are more offers but they aren’t in your face and unlike most other games they don’t do a half dozen pop up offers every time i log in. Pvp/explore are still unlimited play and unless that changes, I can’t see a F2P not being ok with these cash grab updates. They still have not paywalled anything even though some of the campaign troops/weapons are now time walled a bit. A great example of this is I already crafted enraged kurandara but still don’t have regular kurandara lol. Thankfully none of those mythics are meta changing so It’s only my FOMO that get’s a hit and not my actual account health.
TL;DR Update doesn’t seem horrible. Little cash grabby, but brings it more in line with other games. Not intrusive but won’t make the players who have been looking for a big content update happy. Arena got some nice updates. Still not sure where Warband comes into play.
$10 for 2 Major Growth orbs and some gold would make even EA games look at y’all like you’re cray cray.
As governments try to ban these loot box type practices… Why is Gems of War trying to adopt them more and more? It’s idiotic.
$10 for 2 Guaranteed Major Ascension Orbs (not a great deal imo) (but at least not a loot box screw the player over tremendously bad deal) however would be a different story.
If this were a one-off thing, I’d be totally fine with it. Games like this absolutely need to make money, and GoW is still comparatively f2p-friendly. But let’s take a look at the updates we’ve been getting for a long time now.
5.2
Modified the awful Arena to an Arena that is, at best, slightly more playable, and at worse, less playable
New Arena event which most people can’t stand and is a huge time sink
Flash offers for doing this time-sink, tiny reward gamemode
5.1
New kingdom upgrades which are ridiculously expensive, allowing them to incentivize paying for new Book currency
5.0
Campaigns comprised of time/resource sink and little/no reward for f2p players
Temporarily paywalled Mythics, pets, weapons, etc
Notably, this obvious time/resource/money sink was the only notable feature for the “major” 5.0 update
4.9
Daily deals
Shop adjustments
Again, these are the only notable features of this update
4.8
World Events, which everyone LOVES! Right…?
Less of the old, boring events which no one likes, such as Tower of Doom… sarcasm intensifies
4.7
Epic Tasks
4.6 - the last update I was really excited for
New Explore system
Medal system
Elite levels
Point of this list being that few, if any, of the last several updates have had much meat to them. It’s been very much focused on making players pay with their time, resources, and cash.
Hearing that 5.3 is no different is a letdown. An expected letdown, but a letdown nonetheless.
Looks pretty disappointing overall if there’s nothing here for F2P.
The less that’s available for F2P, the less everyone gets…
And if I understand correctly — what’s with this model of “We’ll allow you the privilege of spending real money, but only if you earn the right first”? Uh, yeah — no thanks at all. Hard pass.
IMO it’s an improvement over the model of “We’ll let you to spend money right away, but then you’ll have to work hard to get the things you already paid for” that is campaign.
and I might add to that, that you might to cash in extra gems/$ as a new player, if you lack troops to finish some campaign tasks (like lvl 110 delves). So, that’s a double privilege, right there…
That isn’t a loot box. Loot boxes are when you pay real money for a chance at something. If you know what you’re getting, 2 major growth orbs and gold in your example, it’s not a loot box.
Equivalent for GoW would be paying money for keys.
This is what confuses me about the arena and offers at the end. You play a game mode and only then get a chance of buying something? (Ok, technically, you’re spending gems and not real dollars, but gems are the real world currency.) And the offer may not even be a good one. This is what rubs me wrong about the arena really. It should instead give you a reward for completing it, not a chance to spend money.
I made the mistake of starting the game on my amazon tablet today because I didn’t realize there was any reason not to. I haven’t tried the arena yet, but the new “temple” is totally broken for me. All the text is broken, including the tutorial text, and the external link it directs me to doesn’t even exist. Yay. And now I can’t use the Steam version, which is where I normally play.
