By the time it finally turns up, you’ll probably have enough to craft it twice as you’ve been saving for so long waiting for the specific mythic to turn up.
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The money to diamonds conversion are too tightly gated for this to be applicable outside of very, very specific situations (I have almost enough diamonds, and the mythic is only available this week). If you pre-spend on impulse you are more likely to feel “ripped off” when your target doesn’t show up endless weeks. In other words, it isn’t an effective way to generate repeat revenue. This was one of my points why it kinda fails from even that standpoint.
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Very good point. There’s no impulse buy here. You run to stand still as you wait for “RNG” to catch up with the rush of blood to your head.
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I agree it is not a good strategy - I think there are a lot of issues with the pricing structure throughout the game.
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The thing with the pricing structure is that we have to assume the publisher is competent. That is, they know how to price things to maximize the amount of money a game brings in. That may mean (and for freemium games, I think always means) designing products to appeal to a small fraction of players willing to spend vast amounts of money. So where you or I might look at an item in the game and think, “No way is that worth $50”, the publisher has identified that item as being worth $50 to the whales who spend much more money than either of us.
If we don’t assume the publisher is competent, then all bets are off.
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See, after all this attention…The devs are still deathly silent…they’re wanting this to just go away…This needs to be addressed …Soon.
Salty already popped in and said there isn’t any information the devs can provide, because they haven’t discussed it at any length. If/when it comes up at a staff meeting (or a meeting between 505 and I+2), there will surely be discussions about something the players have requested now, quite vocally. But in the meantime, everyone associated with this game has a day job: making the game, fixing bugs, dealing with servers, etc. That there is no news after, what, one and a half business days does not mean that the devs are going to ignore it forever. (Of course, it also doesn’t mean the devs aren’t going to ignore it. But it’s still a mistake to conflate no announcement with no consideration.)
Edit: Salty posted just over 26 hours ago. It’s barely been one business day.
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Something needs to be done soon. War has been in the forge for the last 3 week and Ketras in there almost every other week
All the Soul Forge troops for the last 3 weeks
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I’m voting for daily resets. Even if the devs choose what’s in there it could still be over a month before the one you want is available. It’s hard to get enough diamonds to craft one we shouldn’t have to wait weeks for the one we want to be available after waiting at least a month to get enough diamonds for it.
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Imps appear an awful lot too. Makes you wonder if all cards are even in the possible rotation.
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I think it is a quite old fashioned system, the failure of the cosmetic items being an example of that.
It also has a major input into the design of the game as the structure is not very sustainable - reducing the importance of keeping veterans and increasing the necessity to attract new players instead.
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Actually, I do want that first extreme. I don’t even see it as anything remotely resembling an extreme, rather the norm, with all other variants feeling like an attempt to put a square peg into a round hole, for reasons not yet disclosed. I consider crafting troops very much similar to leveling them up and traiting them. If we could only spend souls and traitstones on half a dozen randomly determined troops each week, I’d also wonder what reason could possibly warrant such a design.
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OK so I picked option 3 in the survey. I would still like troops to be selected by RNG and on a weekly basis, but once a troop has appeared in the soulforge it should then be taken out of rotation until all other troops have appeared. Once all troops have appeared they all go back in the pot for selection again by RNG.
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This is a very interesting analogy!
And honestly, one I had not considered before… 
This might actually sway me more towards accepting that “extreme” as more of a “normalcy”. Well said… 
Vaguely on-topic idea:
- a player can spend a quantity of souls, jewels, and celestial traitstones to craft a “Mythic Shard” of a particular color
- only one color of mythic shard is available to craft each week, on a fixed rotation
- a player can spend three differently-colored mythic shards, along with a quantity of souls, diamonds, and mythic traitstones, to create one copy of a mythic troop whose colors match the sacrificed mythic shards (e.g. Famine requires one each of green, yellow, and brown). New mythic troops could be kept non-craftable until two months after their release, to encourage players to continue opening chests to fish for new mythics.
Presently, mythic troops cost 20,000 souls, 4,000 diamonds, and 10 celestial traitstones. Some of that cost can be easily converted to jewels because a celestial traitstone can be crafted from 600 jewels (100 of each type. With a bit of shuffling around, here’s a possible crafting structure which leaves the total cost of a mythic troop virtually unchanged.
- mythic shard: 5,000 souls, 1,000 diamonds, 1,000 jewels of a single color, 1 celestial traitstone
- mythic troop: 5,000 souls, 1,000 diamonds, 2 celestial traitstones, 3 differently-colored mythic shards
This would have a number of advantages over the present crafting structure.
- Total cost remains almost exactly the same. 20,000 souls, 4,000 diamonds, 5 celestial traitstones, 3,000 jewels split between three colors. The only change is consolidating the jewels into three colors; 3,000 jewels split between all six colors can be crafted into 5 celestial traitstones.
- Shifting some of the celestial traitstones to jewels makes the gem- and cash-based daily dungeon offers more appealing to players, which boosts revenue directly through cash purchases and indirectly through increased use of gems.
- Keeping the 4,000 diamond cost means that mythics could be crafted no more quickly than in the current crafting structure.
- Mythic troops become available for crafting at different times for different players, so mythic crafting feels like more of a personal achievement.
- Distributing the cost into four chunks gives players smaller milestones on the way to a mythic, which makes the process of accumulating resources and assembling components a more rewarding experience.
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Another well thought out suggestion!
Thank you @Anchovies, I think this would be a really neat way to allow crafting to have some personalization that it currently lacks… in spades… 
Might be too much of an “abandon ship” in the eyes of the devs, but I personally think it has legs… sea legs? 
“No one” is hyperbole but I get the feeling this is a very minority opinion in GoW. What I’ve been able to absorb from the past couple of months is the players of this game seem to favor high-variance mechanics.
I’ll go ahead and reveal I’d much rather prefer “every card costs X to craft”, and you can craft any card, any time." It will introduce a higher degree of P2W in the game, but we’re talking so much money I reckon if someone wants to spend all that they should get to win a little.
I don’t believe it’s realistic to expect the developers to take that approach. Everything in this game is RNG. In combat, the most powerful teams are gem generators and exploders. Chest rewards are always random, and only a small portion of the universe of chest rewards cares if you get duplicates. It’s random chance if you get your rewards or crash when the Dungeon ends. So it’s no surprise they chose to introduce a lot of randomness to Soulforge.
What I do predict:
Every week that passes without Pharos Ra is going to make this thread more prominent. That week is going to come, but it won’t solve, “What about these other mythics?” I’m going to make a prophecy. Once they get Pharos Ra, 90% of the people who agree Soulforge is bullshit are going to stop participating in threads about Soulforge. Or, if they participate, their opinion will be “it’s fine as-is, just be patient like I had to be”.
I think we have differing opinions on just what constitutes “P2W.”
- Mythics drop from many sources, so it’s not like someone putting down money is able to acquire anything exclusive (only things that are exclusive to cash are Deathknight Armor, avatar skins, and VIP chests I think).
- No Mythic is required to “win” the game unless “winning” means “has a complete collection.” Many forumgoers, like @KrudlerTheHorse, put together creative teams of lower-rarity troops that are quite competitive.
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Technically, it was always possible own all cards by spending excessive amount of money. Just keep buying chests, there’s no in-game limit on how many you can open. Crafting doesn’t follow this pattern, there’s a limited amount of diamonds you can obtain each day, no matter how much money you are willing to spend. Since all the cards require diamonds craft, being able to craft any card, any time, wouldn’t really help to promote P2W. It just removes the annoyance of having to wait for your card to eventually show up in the craft pool once you’ve stockpiled enough diamonds.
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