7.4 Update: Pillars of Light

[Kafka]

This issue was discovered before release by our QA process. But it was not possible to fix it before releasing the update.

The achievements will be released on Xbox as soon as possible.

[alansirer]

@Kafka

PVP Info

We are currently testing and balancing changes to the following 2 parts of PVP:

• Improving base Victory Points when players who are level 1,500+ select an opponent
• Improving accuracy of PVP defense teams - currently, the defense teams you’re fighting against are often not really what the opponent had set.

We are currently testing these changes and are aiming to release them sometime next week.
We’ll provide details when they’re finalised and ready for release.

any news ???

[Fourdottwoone]

@alansirer

any news ???

There likely isn’t going to be any.

There’s a well established communication pattern in Gems of War:

1.) A significant enough number of players complains about some newly introduced broken aspect of the game.
2.) Metrics go down, so the Customer Experience Team needs to improve happiness, without actually being able to do something about the situation.
3.) Some official announcement gets posted that promises to address the issue, after collecting just a bit more feedback and doing just a bit more testing.
4.) Months of stalling later players have become accustomed to the broken aspect of the game. Mission accomplished.

Rule of thumb, if something announced here doesn’t get acted on within a week, there isn’t really any intention to act at all. See shop offers, weapon upgrades, gem dragon crafting, cosmetic campaign pets, Journey and Guild Wars, just to name a few.

[Jerry_the_skunk]

@4.21: Widely and emphaticly agreed, but there is at least one shimmer of hope here: Their shiny new toy of the revamped Pvp seemingly does not draw as much interest, as they were hoping. I suspect that to be the reason to add the monolith feature, which, in theory, should encourage players to play the mode daily and, three times a week, for several hours. And it will fail completely in this regard, I bet.
Give it another rejected Pvp feature update or two, and someone at development might actually take the bold stance, that, maybe, just maybe, there could be a fundamental flaw in the system.

[DracoL1ch]

Sources say monoliths were a part of the plan since the very start, just got delayed. Same as underspire sentinels. Doubt they ever care about pvp numbers, those gold mark subscribers don’t have to play at all to grind for books while paying for the company.

[Fourdottwoone]

@Jerry_the_skunk

Their shiny new toy of the revamped Pvp seemingly does not draw as much interest, as they were hoping. I suspect that to be the reason to add the monolith feature, which, in theory, should encourage players to play the mode daily and, three times a week, for several hours. And it will fail completely in this regard, I bet.

The overall idea feels okay to me. It adds variety to PvP, reactions seem to be positive. It was always planned to get rolled out in several phases, we are still missing alliances/citadels.

Monoliths is kind of disappointing because it’s just more of the same. We can now get twice the VP (which is a zero sum game, everybody is getting them, so you end up with the same rewards as before) and twice the silver marks (which is pointless, because there isn’t anything to spend them on after you’ve bought the pets).

[JHM]

@Fourdottwoone

Monoliths is kind of disappointing because it’s just more of the same. We can now get twice the VP (which is a zero sum game, everybody is getting them, so you end up with the same rewards as before)

Totally agree, but you missed the other side of the equation. Since lower level players get battles that give more VP, and monolith rewards a limited amount of talismans to double that VP, lower level players will get a bigger bonus from those monolith rewards, assuming they use them right, meaning higher level players are screwed over again. In order to compete, they either need to play more, or pay more. And that’s the design.

But, to me, it seems like monoliths is about making it easier to use blood frenzy.
Blood frenzy gives double rewards, but make the enemies 50% harder .You get more reward for more work. For lower level players, that extra 50% to all skills will slow them down a lot, and means they take longer to get the rewards, meaning they’ll probably be faster to avoid blood frenzy and play more battles elsewhere. For the higher level players that aren’t slowed down by the bloated stats, they get more rewards for similar amounts of work, meaning they are better off.
In order to compete, the lower levels players can use monoliths to make themselves stronger, and make use of blood frenzy earlier. As long as they lean in to the system and play exactly the way the devs want. So, they end up competing with the higher level players, while getting advantages to the amount of VP earned. meaning the higher level players need to play more, or pay more, again.

@Kafka

Improving base Victory Points when players who are level 1,500+ select an opponent

It’s really feeling like the devs WANT low level players to have a huge advantage over higher level players, because that puts pressure on the higher level players if they want the rewards like gold marks, in order to unlock the stuff they need to get past bottlenecks, like books of deeds. So, they find themselves pressured to play more and/or pay more, and the devs are laughing.

[Jerry_the_skunk]

@JHM

It’s really feeling like the devs WANT low level players to have a huge advantage over higher level players, because that puts pressure on the higher level players if they want the rewards like gold marks, in order to unlock the stuff they need to get past bottlenecks, like books of deeds. So, they find themselves pressured to play more and/or pay more

if they want those rewards. I’m confident, the number of players, who care enough, will decrease continually. Adding to this is the factor, that, like with all ranking based rewards, if a player pushes harder, it only forces their direct competitors to push equally hard back, making life more miserable for everyone.
No thanks. I’ll grind my gold marks the slow way.

[JHM]

Yeah, exactly. I was originally pushing to score high and try to get rewards, but have lost all interest. The first week, I placed in the top 100 and I’m still waiting for those rewards (more devs promises that still haven’t been delivered). Since then, it’s become harder and harder to earn rewards and feels like a massive waste of time to try, knowing that others will pour more time and effort in, to combat the time and effort I put in. I’d rather play less and accept the rewards I get, instead of obsessing over trying to compete with others for slightly better rewards. And I think a lot of players are seeing it that way.

[Mana_Surgeon]

@Kafka

Your defense team is your attack team for the region.
We plan to add a way to more easily test your defense teams in future.
We also have a request logged for making selecting your attack team each week a better experience, but I don’t have any confirmation/details yet.

Not to shoot the messenger, but it cannot be overstated what a loss being able to independently set your defense team is to the game. Even if you fix the bugs randomizing defense teams currently and get this working as intended, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve removed any real “PVP” concept from the mode. As in, we are not trying to meaningful compete with each other anymore. It is pure PvE, as the “defender” has no control over what they are throwing at the attacker, unless they purposefully weaken their own attack team. All the strategic nuance is gone.

Add in the extra needless complexity introduced by regions, and now all the extra stuff added by 7.4, and I see no fundamental difference between “PvP” and any other leaderboard-based event in the game. It’s all a race to win the most PvE battles against trivial teams, where the stats provide the main challenge.

You talk about testing defense teams, but are we really expected to do that, for zero reward, when playing the new “PVP” has all the rewards attached to it? With that kind of opportunity cost, there’s no incentive for any but the most dedicated B1 players to give a shit about Guild Wars anymore.

[Stratelier]

@Kafka

This issue was discovered before release by our QA process. But it was not possible to fix it before releasing the update.

Well, at least that is nice to hear. Too many times we end up wondering if something was discovered pre-release AT ALL.

[Kafka]

@Mana_Surgeon

You talk about testing defense teams, but are we really expected to do that, for zero reward

This was a community request we plan to implement. Some players do want to be able to test their defense teams. If you don’t want to you don’t have to.

[Campo]

Forgive me for my ignorance, but what defence team am I supposed to test?

PvP? - Nope. People will eventually be attacking our offence teams.
Guild Wars? - Not for the foreseeable future.

Please enlighten me.

[Stratelier]

@Kafka

This was a community request we plan to implement. Some players do want to be able to test their defense teams. If you don’t want to you don’t have to.

The ability to have a “practice/training” fight against one of your own teams is (and has always been) EXTREMELY obtuse to find.

Previously, we could temporarily assign any arbitrary team to our “PVP Defense” slot (in the PVP menu) and then test it with a team of our choice, but with the new PVP map (and no dedicated slot for a defense team) we can only test against our own teams by accessing our in-game Player Profile and selecting “Fight”, but this is not a reliable way of selecting which of our teams we are fighting against.

Training/practice battles need more ease-of-access just in general.

[Kafka]

@Stratelier

Training/practice battles need more ease-of-access just in general.

Agreed, this is the feedback we plan to action.

[Darkborne]

If it is still possible, having “practice” battles available so that we can test teams more easily will give us back a QOL feature that should have never been removed in the first place.

For guild wars specifically, even if I have seen some team compositions before, I like to practice against tough opponents. The starting board, calculating the risk of matching gems, different storms that can affect gem cascades, what gems will be converted and what colors they will turn into with empowered troops on both teams.

It’s hard to sum up the difficult decisions we have to make in guild wars, but it goes with the old saying–practice makes perfect. We just want something back that eased the stress of arguably the most difficult game mode.

[Rob17]

All the new implements they added to game could have alot of potiential to be great. But until the point balence arrives its impossible to keep up mow.At least before the new update it was bad but you could keep up if you have powerful teams that are consinstant 1 shots but now with my new meta green team that smashes everything one shot 1 2 or 3 t even with the blood bonus. I cant even come close to a level 2100 and to be honest the only stat differnce at that level to mine is kingsom bonus and the points he gets to mine are awful and makes it such a chore to try to improve your account anymore . I really belive the only things that should be one there minds at this point is to fix wars and point balence and if they cant put it back to the way it was before. And let us grind out explore for deeds instead of taling all the high level players time just to be at a decent postion on leaderboard

[AMT]

@Kafka

the team plan to fix this so there doesn’t have to be guild wars data while Guild Wars is suspended

Plenty of heads up was given, and all they needed to do is e.g. reschedule GW to six months from now or whatever max their system allows.

Less than 3 days to go, and with the weekend upon us, some attempts by concerned players to get an action on this were met with this instead:

@Kafka

Please don’t abuse the bug report section. Thread locked.

[Stratelier]

@Kafka

Agreed, this is the feedback we plan to action.

Simplest version: You know the “Manage Team” button (the one that pops up the menu with rename/share/etc. options) ?

• Expand this overlay just a little to provide space for a new button: “Test this team” (training battle).
• Hitting this button directs you to a pre-battle screen with that team loaded onto the CPU side. You are still free to select any team to fight it (including the same team).

Mostly all it takes is a little UI work and then DONE, it’s implemented in a way that’s easy to find!

[Graeme]

Yep. We have already been told several weeks ago that GW wouldn’t happen this month so not sure why they haven’t yet changed the in-game data to reflect this by now?

Even if they had just changed it to some much further date at that time, it would have avoided all of this concern about a broken GW being released then cancelled as happened on Switch recently.