Wow just wow
I will not offer a solution or nerf, but I just want to say that yes, the devs need to look into the exploding-end-of-doom, also called by myself « What-Just-Happened » (aka WJH)
For exemple, normal game, opponent has zero mana, you just Famined him.
AI makes a regular match. Mana Surge! And an wierd drop for an extra turn. And another. And What?? Infernus is fulled 0 to full in 1 turn?? And then BOOM BOOM EXTRATURN BOOM MANA SURGE BOOM BOOM all dead (WJH).
Why does it need to be adressed?
Player retention.
I have shown , and thus recruited, dozens of players to GoW.
They all love it.
And then, after 2-3 months, they all leave, specifically, all of them, because they just die all the time in PVP from WJH games.
It drives new players away.
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Like everyone I do not have a solution. But I have been thinking about this.
And all I came up with is this:
Introduce a new spell type Can only be cast once each turn. (or variations, cast x times per turn)
And apply this to the worst looping troops. Sure, it will hurt your attack loop too…but I’ll take it.
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As far as infernus goes I’m for reducing the explosions he gets as well. I’ve seen him cast and get full mana back a few too many times, sometimes I’m lucky and he doesn’t get an extra turn
HOO-EE! Time to break out the ol’ Tl;dr tag here.
Yeah, that can’t exactly be done.
Why? Because the game sees each spell cast as its own turn. While us, the players, may interpret casting the same two spells back and forth ad infinitum a single turn, the game itself processes it as multiple consecutive turns.
Think of it like a two player game of “Uno!”. Using a Skip card doesn’t extend your turn, it just makes it so that you take another one directly after your turn ends.
While Gems of War doesn’t skip enemy turns, what it does is give you an extra turn, which is what you’ll often hear the awesome-sounding announcer say each time you get a four-match. It doesn’t extend your turn, it just places a new turn, of yours, in the turn order queue before the AI’s next turn.
Another way of looking at it is like thinking about Final Fantasy X. You have Rikku cast Hastega, and suddenly the turn order changes, and all of your allies get another turn before the enemy’s.
You don’t get just one long turn, you get several consecutive ones.
Now this is the part where you say “Oh, just change that!”
And this, here, after that part, is where anyone that has ever designed a system for a game, video, tabletop, card, etc., will laugh at you and tell you that doing so will not just be a quick rewrite, or a couple lines of code being changed, but ENTIRE SYSTEMS being reworked, and likely HUNDREDS of man hours dedicated to that one thing. It’ll often take entirely scrapping the system that is already in place, and everything will have to be bodged back together.
Tl;dr:
Not. Viable.
Addendum; If I’m wrong, I will happily be so. If this can be done, I’d support a change like this wholeheartedly and probably even start playing again.
2 Likes
Out of curiosity could it be implemented as a status effect.
For instance each troop can cast 2 twice and when status effect triggers it gets refreshed.
Ahh there are also traits that activate only when turns change from opponent to yourself (scorpious 3rd trait)
In regards to Goblins, the easiest way to counter is freeze them but none-the-less I do agree they are quite the boring, Nyx and Florian 100% agreed although i’d more say /3 not /2.
Lady Anariel yes she is quite the popular among humility teams isn’t she? Despite being an epic she’s quite frankly the best healer… where as there’s poor Queen Aurora despite her unicornian(not a word but you know what I mean lol) self and mythic rarity doesn’t heal herself.
Majority of the new troops are abit under looked in my eyes compared to certain old one’s like certain new mythics won’t be used simply because the obvious most people can’t attain them due to RNG luck… can say that why are certain ultra-rares an epics way more better than legend’s/mythics? it makes no sense to even try for some of them compared to what other rarity’s can do it just seems that some troops are just put in for lols an not done properly imo.
Also off topic about looping teams as it may seem but can I vote to be rid of the Psion/Rag/Fam/Inf/ meta
aswell plox?
Didn’t know that. Not exactly anyway. Thanks for the info.
A status effect then perhaps, that breaks on the first enemy turn.
Yeah, I really hate WTF losses like that. I think 4x speed just exacerbates it.
I think it happens to me as often as against me, but the difference is when I get 5-6 turns in a row it’s very slow, because it takes me a moment to find the new 4/5 match, hunt for “better” or “other” ones, pick a move, and repeat.
When the AI does it, often all I know is I went from 4 troops in good shape to 1-2 weakened troops in a flurry of explosions and words on the board. Even though I understand “them’s the breaks in a game with lots of extra turns”, having it happen so fast is even more frustrating than if I had to watch the opponent do it at 1x speed.
I don’t have, and never have had, a proposed solution for this, because anything I can think of either boils down to “the AI is now too easy to beat” or “we take looping out of the game entirely” and I don’t think those are satisfactory solutions.
In the end, I have more fun in GoW when I accept “this is a low-probability thing that happens”. I think if you are end-game and have the super-secret T1 teams it probably happens less, because you’re better able to gain the advantage first. The trouble is all the mid-game and new players who have absolutely zero tools to deal with someone that’s fielding a really good looping team. Your only choice is to avoid those matches. That’s not “fun”.
Again, it’s hard for me to propose a solution so I don’t tend to get flaily. Any “simple” fix runs the risk of making it dramatically worse, and the “complex” fixes drive players away by changing the face of the game.
That would require constant monitoring of what would possibly qualify as worst looping troops as new troops change the meta. There’s really a much simpler approach to this, diminishing returns. Whenever an Extra Turn is gained, make all troops operate at lowered Attack and Magic values until the opponent gains control.
Needs some fine tuning to find good balance, e.g. first Extra Turn doesn’t change anything, second and subsequent Extra Turn in a row incrementally halves current Attack and Magic. The important part is to prevent both sides from gaining landslide victories (e.g. the Goblin loop of death). If control doesn’t get passed on after a few moves, skull hits and spells gradually become ineffective until the other side gets a move in.
The Match-3 I came from manipulated the RNG of “skyfall” (the icons that fall from the sky) such that they weren’t as likely to create cascades. In general, you didn’t expect to get a cascade chain longer than 2 or 3 unless you had specifically chosen a team with abilities that could increase the odds. Even then, getting further than 5 took high degrees of luck.
They did this because it’s a move-limited puzzle-based game, and having even a moderate chance of long cascades could break the game. They went a little further, and in many stages the first few hundred skyfall icons were hard-coded in patterns not conducive to cascades, but I think that extreme is inappropriate for GoW: we aren’t really a puzzle-oriented game.
But in GOW long cascades can be just as damaging. When I feel like I have “bad luck”, I am playing games where every opponent move results in an average of 4-6 cascades AND an extra turn. Vs. a team like Khorvash/Queen Mab, this can mean situations like “By the second move I make, my entire team is stunned and frozen.” This is even worse vs. teams with very powerful troops such as Death. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the high casting cost, which is supposed to be the downside to those troops, completely satisfied in the early phases of the game. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen, just this week, Gorgotha die before I’ve even collected 10 total mana. How’s that happen? Easy. An opponent with Khorvash goes match-cascade-cascade(stun)-skull-skull-skull-skull-skull-skull-skull-Khorvash ability. This should never happen, even on offense.
This is frustrating because it represents a game where no amount of teambuilding is going to help. I don’t care if you’ve got some magic secret sauce PvP team, if the opponent can gather mana, on average, 5-to-1 vs. you then you’re far more likely to lose. If they can trigger their “match 4+ gems” traits multiple times per “turn”, you can fall so far behind you lose all hope of winning.
So I’m not convinced individual troop nerfs are needed. I think we should play around with what happens if the skyfall algorithm were tweaked. But I also like the ideas that involve diminishing returns as cascades/turns increase.
Been brooding some more about this subject. I’ve come to the conclusion that it should be possible to add in the current game engine.
Enchanting only triggers on your ‘first turn’ not on extra turns.
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Unpopular opinion, but what the game really needs, is a max moves per turn.
I play games to play them, not to watch the computer have 20 turns in a row…
Even at 4x speed, it’s still annoying as hell.
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Darned right that’s an unpopular opinion! Leave my looping teams alone!
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I pulled my only famine from a 20 glory chest unlock
I want to add Siren to this list, only for the AI. If a player casts, its not consistent in the slightest. If the AI casts, there’s a high percentage chance that it’ll create it in a line or an easy 5 match variation. Enough to make AI teams viable that shouldn’t be viable.
I don’t think she really needs a nerf, but enemy AI luck mechanics need to be checked out.
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Good thing you had that True damage troop.
Abesolutely, Whether Siren is on my team or on the A.I.'s, she gives the A.I. an extra turn.
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