8.2 Update: 10th Anniversary!

Official News
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I know that you take our feedback seriously and love hearing from us @Kafka.:lion:

We know that the developers need to add extra cash offers to support the game, but the problem is more complicated than that–every new update there are new bugs or previous problems that haven’t been addressed. I don’t know how to consolidate all of our feedback so that it’s easier for you guys to understand, but there is so much to go through.

Quality of life is a better life for us I think. I don’t know why the developers don’t improve existing game modes and keep adding new things that just increase our play time with a daily laundry list. As an end gamer, some days it takes me over two hours just to get through dailies, before I can actually enjoy playing the game.

That’s utter nonsense. Feeling pressured to having to play the game every day has caused many of my friends to leave. We don’t have the time or energy to have “fun” anymore, and I don’t even know what “fun” means anymore…

And guild wars taking this long to rework is very concerning, especially when we have heard nothing for about a year. I know that you mentioned that we will be getting more information “soon,” but it has felt a lot like when I used to play Blizzard games…

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At first glance, Buccaneer’s Bounty feels like an exceptionally weird way to do it though. A real money purchase that can show up at most once a day, and is supposed to be so rare it won’t show up at all most days? Why would you intentionally withhold the opportunity to spend money?

Pessimistic view, the offer is able to contain something highly controversial, possibly paygating some future resources or collectibles not obtainable otherwise in any realistic way for years. And the line of defense is going to be that since it’s all random, it’s all fair, no matter how big the paid advantage. Because we won’t be able to just wallet our way to some cash only future Uber Dragon God, which would register as P2W. We have to get lucky to be allowed to wallet our way to some cash only future Uber Dragon God, so it registers as game of chance available to (but not completable by) everybody.

Any somewhat more optimistic view you would be allowed to share on this?

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That’s a comical justification because every single update you release leads to less and less spending from players.

There are only two purchase feasibilities in the game now:

  1. Offers that are so extreme lacklustre that you get nearly nothing for your money (including VIP).
  2. You have to pay real money for items/gamemodes or you never complete your collection.

Both are a complete turnoff for spending ambitions.

In the early years I happily bought stuff to support the game. But in the last few years it was less and less in lockstep with the growing frustration. And since you introduced the abysmal PVP it became finally nothing at all.

I’m still here because I invested 9 years into it already and still hope it will turn to the better. But you can scrape as many of your rock bottom offer ideas as you want but not fixing your game will not change that spending freeze mindset.

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@Kafka I respect this answer, thank you.

I have been playing on and off for 10 years. At one point in time there was livestreams done by the team, now there is nothing. WE as players hear nothing and we honestly all feel as if you guys don’t listen at all. There is hardly any feedback from you devs at all on anything that happens. The same things have been put on these forums posts with literally 0 answer to any of them. Why can’t there be a Q&A Monthly to talk about what is in the works or what you guys have decided was good ideas from the community. There needs to be much more engagement with the player base… I think everyone would like that as a whole.

Example:

“We hear you about the sentinels and the drop rates, we are working on fixing that”

something as simple as that to let the player base know that you look at these forums and don’t just ignore it.

All we ask is for some engagement with the community… Something so simple, yet overlooked.

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When are you going to fix the VP issue in PvP??? I’m tired of being punished for having the audacity to play enough to level my character over 2k. I can do 100 battles and be lucky to see a battle with VP above 50. How ridiculous is it that a higher-level player can’t compete with lower-level players? Why do I have to do 2x-3x as many battles to compete in my ladder???

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I think part of the reaction is because when you look at the update text, there’s a lack of specifics.

I feel like Daily Plunder really should have included a picture. Understanding the usefulness of it is hard when it’s all just described via text. I think it’ll be interesting, but will it include stuff like tracking the number of Valhawks you’ve encountered, or whether you’ve done all your gold sigil battles, spent your delve attempts or completed dungeon for the day? Will it include references to Wednesday Pet Rescue, Thursday Class Trial or Tuesday Faction Assault events? Will it include anything for Underspire? There’s a lot in the game to keep track of, and it’d be nice if there’s a singular dashboard of all the things to do each day (that will expire end of day).

Buccaneer’s Bounty has the most specific text in the whole update. There’s been a lot of cash offers lately, and when the most specific details are about how we can spend more cash it doesn’t feel great.

  • It especially doesn’t feel great when Immortals from the last release and cash purchase still feel nearly unusable. If I do use them when they don’t qualify for that region I have to rebuild my team constantly. Having to rebuild my PvP teams once a week across 9 different regions sucks on its own but having to rebuild my PvP team that includes an immortal once a day (or more) makes it that much worse, and just makes me not want to even use the immortals. This directly affects the viability of the last cash offer you added.

Special weekly goals sound intriguing, but there is almost no context there. Will they run once a month, or 3 times a year? Holiday events occur 6 times a year, so there’s some fun when those events come up, and they come up often. Legends reborn on the other hand has only occurred twice this year. It’s hard to get excited about something when it may end up barely being used or available, and whether achievements are being tied to something that will happen rarely.

There’s no mention of any other surprises. If there’s something else the update notes should at least tease us to let us know there’s more. Otherwise, it really looks like this is primarily about the Buccaneer’s Bounty.

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This is all fine and dandy but, as been mentioned before, perhaps you might start with making existing offers somewhat more worthwhile?
If we randomly open store and look at “Specials” tab:
Typhoon of keys - awfully overpriced, make it 19,99 instead of 99,99. I personally still wouldn’t buy it but it would at least look somewhere in the realm of reality;
“Weapon upgrade pack” - shameless ripoff. Make it 0.49 instead of 24.99 and one might consider it in case of sudden need for epic ingots;
“Deathknight armor” - it’s okay; I bought mine for the higher price before the change when I suddenly couldn’t get the thing I had wanted but had already mentally parted with the money;
“Avatar bundles” - make it 2.99 instead of 9.99 and it would deserve considering;
“Mini VIP pack” - make it at most 1.99 instead of 4.99 and it would be passable.

Let’s switch to weekly event:
“Legendary troop offers” - heavily overpriced, nothing in there justifies the cost;
“Traitstone pack” - another shameless ripoff;
“Rare troop pack” - again heavily overpriced, nothing justifies the cost;
“Paygated weapon” - I must admit I bought some (Crescendo, Staff of Madness off the top of my head) back in the day, but that was ages ago. If you made it cost 0.99 instead of 4.99 I reckon I’d eventually might get them all, current price however - nope, hard pass.

Do I need to continue or do you start seeing the picture? Too high of a price for too little of a content.

That brings us to your newest addition…can you give your wild guess what is first though that comes in my mind? You’re correct - the stuff will be horribly overpriced and require me to sell my kidneys.
While actually, you lost me as a customer for your Buccaneer’s Bounty even before price came into consideration. “How so?” you might ask. Recall that part where it says the offer only lasts for 10 minutes? I happen to play the game on my phone while commuting, waiting for things to take place and such - I do daily stuff then BUT I only make purchases at home on Steam. If I chance to trigger the offer on phone, it’s gone; I’m not buying whatever you’re trying to sell. And I’m not going to change the way I play in order to cater to your popup offers. If you want my money you cater to me, not the other way round.

But all that aside, what it is that you’re even trying to sell me?

Everything in this short snippet is just a piece of crap as far as spending real money is concerned! Bronze and Silver Icons? Really? If you wanted me to die of laughter at how much you’re out of touch with reality, this was a commendable effort. Shiny keys - not worth it. Dragonite - not for real money. Burning marks - you do happen to know that the stuff burning chests give is random and great deal of that is just a bunch of damn junk, don’t you? Why, in your humble opinion, would I want to spend my real money on that?

At this point I don’t even care whether there are other things on the offer that you didn’t mention and what those things might be. It’s all dead content that likely won’t be worth squat anyway.

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There’s a very old joke about something costing a “buck an ear” that comes to mind with this offer.

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Personally, if the Burning Chests couldn’t give silver marks, I’d probably buy the Burning Marks Packs now and then. But the silver marks are too offensive to spend real money on.

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First of all, I want to express my appreciation of the players who have posted their detailed analytics. Guys, you are awesome!

I feel like I can share my personal experience with the in-game purchases.

Vip9 here (which I consider relatively low, but there sre some things I purchase regularly).

What I never miss: a kingdom pass and a campaign pass. I guess this is the result of my FOMO. But this purchase also gives books of deeds along with the troops, so I feel buying these passes has the best money/resourses ratio. Not talking about elite+, this one is too expensive for me.

PvP pass: bought the first one, won’t consider buying it ever again, unless silver marks are removed from the burning chests.

Legends reborn: bought two times, during the events offering books of deeds that I needed most.

Kingdom weapon offer: made a few spontaneous purchases, to get a weapon which either seemed interesting to me, or was needed to raise the power level of the corresponding kingdom.

Pet offer (sorry, cannot remember the proper name): bought some of them once, to get missing pets, e.g. War Corgi. Don’t consider buying such offers multiple times, it’s useless and too expensive.

As already mentioned, all the other offers seem not worth their cost

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We have very similar game spend outlooks (VIP 8) and I agree on all fronts. One thing I’ll say is I did buy this Season’s Pass but I’m holding my Burning Chests until the pool is skimmed for Silver Sludge. 116 and counting…

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I would love to see some new avatars, especially stryx. I’d spend money on that for sure.

It would be great to see them in the holiday event shop, maybe unlocking behind the holiday armour.

For example, in the current holiday event you could offer an undead avatar or something.

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yep myself been a vip 20 for sometime and now we buy something and get more points but no more tiers or rewards i feel by now i should be a vip 40 if ranks and tiers went that far

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yup I agree, I hope if they do add higher VIP rewards, that they can look back in our history to see how much we have spent…

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SALTY POST WARNING
I havent got a problem with pop up offers. But what i do have a problem with the fact theyre adding 2 immortals a season which is another shuffled step towards “pay to win” that noone is supposed to notice, and when the inevitable nerf of stellarix comes well all be stuck with a pay to win game and hours of hours of game grind flushed down the karzie (toilet)

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Tbh I don’t expect Stella to be nerfed, as they clearly believe removing it from the defense teams fixes everything

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Look after they Nerfed Shiny troops that people “may” have paid good money for… I definitely wont be surprised when they nerf anything. If you bought a house or say a fast car you pay good money then a few month the car company decides to down grade the size of the engine youd sue… I would have been tempted to buy the immortals season passes but there history with nefing troops has stopped me and wont I be buying any content post shiny key nerf.

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It’s understandable that purchases are needed to keep a F2P game going but there isn’t a single mode in the game that doesn’t have some kind of transactions for more benefits/items. Which also get thrown in face with pop ups such as when getting a new mythic. Even currently with the Halloween advent only last day is free and there’s an ask of 2 euro for quite some mediocre items.

Slowing down with the begging for money in all game modes and lowering prices for digital items will feel people more inclined to support the game. As before i wanted to support things so bought the campaign and kingdom passes. Then the Switch synch and Immortals update came which cause more problems that started to pile up ontop of the issues people have been mentioning for years. Barely anything is done with that feedback which made me decide to not put money in the game anymore. After all why would i support something that doesn’t listen to it’s playerbase? Already learned that lesson from the scumbags at Niantic with Pokémon Go that has a greedy business practice as well. Now i even tell people not to get into this game or at least not to spend money on it.

Am also playing Monster Hunter Puzzles which has way more payments but am more inclined to spend money there as it’s a fair price vs item balance and it’s also not pushed or completly needed. It feels like i have a choice to purchase not feel like i’m being forced to buy things.
Have had that with other game as well like Dauntless and Monster Hunter. It’s not forced, the developers listen, the developers communicate with playerbase which helps those games thrive.
Even with Destiny 2 which has alot of issues from the higher ups in Bungie people like myself still also see the good that the developers do and therefore want to support it when possible.

Learn from the better communities to see what works and stop being tone deaf while asking for money at every turn. Cause while the income is nice short term it won’t last forever as the playerbase will start to dwindle further. That’s what kills a game that could have much more potential and a thriving community.
This might all seem harsh but it’s because i do like the game, community and just want it to be what it used to be. With the developers being able to interact in genuine positive way instead of having people being very sceptic and cynical whenever something new is introduced.
That’s all for now. Hope something will be done with it cause otherwise unfortunatly there won’t be another 10 years for Gems of War.

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the khafru bug is still there. i was playing on phone in pvp spire & did not take screenshot but i could not cast at all & had to retreat.
for me, it never really happened before unless i alt tabbed from the game but today it happened in normal play so seems like its still broken.

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The update hasn’t gone live. It was delayed. Kafka even mentioned this earlier in this thread, which means we can’t say yet that the bug hasn’t been fixed in the update.

The new release date is Monday 28th at 5 PM (PDT). I don’t know what time that is for you, but the update being delayed is why you’re still experiencing the bug.

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