Another "celebration" event built to exploit, gouge, and punish the playerbase. Thanks devs!

Feature Requests and Game feedback
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The “Spirit of Giving” event currently running will last through New Year’s Eve. I can’t tell if that name was chosen ironically, or if they really are that oblivious to how anti-player their “giving” event really is.

We get three sigils a day, with no carryover of free sigils. Extra sigils cost an ascending sum of gems (50 for the first 3, 100 for the next 3, 150 for 3 more etc.), resetting daily, and will actually cost you sigils if you neglect to spend every last one on the day of purchase.

So from the very outset we have a vexing incongruity. Holidays are supposed to be a time for stepping away from obligations – for spending time with family and loved ones – for rest, for travel – in short, a reprieve, an all-too-brief break from the grind that weighs so heavily on most of our waking hours.

Gems of War holiday events? There’s no reprieve here. No affordances for time away. These predatory offerings have been deliberately engineered to punish and penalize anyone who misses so much as one single day of their added grind.

Exactly how much punishment they have in store for you depends on two factors:

  • How many of the rewards you’re interested in;
  • How many days you dare to miss.

And it is flagrantly rigged to reserve the harshest punishments for those who want the most of these rewards.

If you only want a few items, missing a day won’t cost you much. But let’s imagine you’re interested in making the most of what’s on offer: one orb, the armor, 2x troop packs for mythic, 30 pet copies, one golden pet, and the traitstone and pet food bundles. You’ll need 3200 points to afford everything here.

A bit of math shows that you can optimize this with 21 sigil purchases. Spreading this out to defray the cost, you can buy 2 packs on 7 days and 1 pack on the rest, costing you 1400 gems over the entire event. A bit pricey, but to some it’s worth it.

But…

Let’s say you have to miss a day. Maybe you don’t have access to your console on Christmas. How much will observing a holiday cost you?

An extra 150 gems at minimum to make up the difference. Stings a bit, but could be worse.

What about missing two days? Christmas Eve and Christmas day, maybe? Those sigil packs will now cost 1700 gems, for a surcharge of 300.

Say four days? Now it really begins to snowball. Prepare to either forego some part of what you wanted, or shell out 2250 gems total.

Or – gasp… – dare we imagine you need a week away, and can only participate for half of the event? What price for a week of freedom? 3500 gems. 250% of the price tag. Are you feeling the “spirit of giving” yet?

And all this is assuming that you’ve done all the math ahead of time, and don’t get bilked out of your points by bad RNG or connection errors or clicking through too quickly when the enemy level screen pops up and defaults to decreasing your rewards rather than increasing them (with NO confirmation prompt, mind you).

What a fun way to celebrate! Either plan ahead and grind every last day and still gouge your funds, or else get ready to choose which rewards you’ll forego or how much deeper you can empty your pockets to reclaim them.

These events, ostensibly built to celebrate a holiday, are unapologetically designed to put the screws to the player. Of course, the devs have kindly given you the option to buckle and send them cash to make up for those missing sigils…

Those of us who suffer the mental defects that manifest as FOMO or completionism – and there are lots of us, and they KNOW this and are as gung-ho as ever about exploiting us – we get to carry IP2’s “gift” with us as we spend the holiday with our families.

And what “gift” is that? Why, the needling thought, chafing at the back of our minds, that soon we’ll be logging back in to either lost rewards or a MASSIVE upcharge to catch back up.

Don’t wait up for my thank-you card.

You’d have a hard time designing a Scroogier, Grinchier way to treat a playerbase if you tried. “Spirit of giving” indeed.

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Go for the troop and the pet if you can’t afford more, easy as is

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Sounds like you need a break from the game tbh.

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While presented in a bit of a wordy manner, the main post isn’t wrong.

These holiday events reward daily login and play, but occur during times where people are expected not to be around. The designers know this too, since instead of accommodating the event to be more holiday friendly, you can pay to catch up instead. … great…

I don’t like these holiday events, similar to how I never liked the old Kingdom grind passes.

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There’s been a visible tendency in the game to push for daily playing. Events that last only a day (all one-day-long events), limited number of sigils per day (3 delve sigils daily, 4 event sigils daily - the event sigils system is the least problematic because event sigils don’t get lost if not played immediately), limited availability of torch packs in underspire… Holiday events are just one more example of this style of design.

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On one hand, you’re absolutely right.

On the other hand, the vast majority of F2P games utilize predatory tactics, especially on the holidays, to glean every possible bit of cash from players.

I’m not saying it’s moral, but unfortunately that is where the F2P “genre” is at. It’s part of the package. If FOMO is causing significant stress, that’s a good sign to take a break, focus more on other things, or even quit if needed.

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In all honesty, GoW is still very fair to its playerbase in terms of cash grabs and cash options and its limitations. This isn’t even close to the predatory level that I’ve seen in other games. It doesn’t display mandatory ads every few battles, it doesn’t ask you to pay real cash over and over and over to buy three extra moves to complete a battle/level… I’ve tried several mobile match-3 (and other genres too) F2P games over the years, the longest I lasted with any given one was two weeks - after that, they become unplayable.

Divide and conquer, we don’t have to have / own / get everything immediately. Underspire sentinels cured me of the completionist and FOMO bug :wink:

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How about crunching some numbers?

If you can play every day then:

  • Over 14 days, you get 42 free battles.
  • If you are willing to spend “only” 50 Gems each day, that’s another +42 battles (total 84).
  • There’s also the free Golden Lantern, for a total of 43 or 85 battles.

Thus:

  • If you play (and win) every battle each day, you can get a minimum of 42*20 = 840 event tokens (+30 for the Golden Lantern) – just enough for the top prize, one Orb of Power.
  • If you raise the difficulty at every opportunity (i.e. every 5 battles), then just 40 battles will net you an additional +140 tokens, bringing your cumulative total to 940 tokens after 40 battles, or 996 tokens after 42 battles; +38 for one more battle with the free Golden Lantern, for a total of 1034 tokens cumulatively, enough to redeem (for example) one Orb of Power plus two event Pets.
  • But if you are also spending 50 Gems/day, you can have a total of 84 battles (85 with free Golden Lantern), for a minimum payout of 1680 tokens (or 1710 with free Golden Lantern), maximum payout of 2344 tokens at 84 battles (or 2376 with free Golden Lantern). Which is a little more than double the free payout, and enough to get one each of the Orb of Power, Holiday Armor, event Troop, and event Pet, while still having 500 tokens left over.

The only downside? To maximize the rewards you do need to play every day. But at least it doesn’t have to be for long sessions. I, for one, try to not play this game for more than an hour daily, but that’s still enough time to clear the daily Adventure Board, Boss Dungeon, meet the daily “kill 100 troops” quota (for the +20 free Gems) and still have 10 minutes left over to wind down with a few rounds of Treasure Hunt. Of course, I am by no means a new player here, and I will sometimes leave the game suspended just so I can check back later for hourly tributes (but without actually playing more battles).

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This is the entire point. Holidays – the time we’re supposed to be allowed a break – get “celebrated” by way of deliberate design to either lock a player into full daily participation, or punish them for every last step they miss.

Compare this to guild event/invasion/tower design. If I miss 3-4 days there, all my sigils are waiting for me when I get back, and sigil pack prices don’t get jacked sky-high in response. Players can fully complete an event on the last day or two without getting gouged.

Is there any reason besides greed to go the exact opposite direction for holidays? As you said, sure, you can clear 1000 points without spending any gems, if you obligate yourself to playing every last day. But try getting that on the final two days and it will cost you, bare minimum, 2100 gems.

What rationale is there for this absurd upcharge just for taking time off, at a time when people are supposed to be taking time off? Holdays are the MOST appropriate time to make accommodations for people who can’t participate every last day. But in IP2’s design philosophy this should get punished, hard.

And the most insulting part, as they force you to play on Christmas or face penalties, is that they have the gall to title it “Spirit of Giving.” As if this cynical money-grab were somehow motivated by generosity, charity, or even the faintest flicker of goodwill toward their players.

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Everything the TO says is correct - except for his unstated starting premise, “I have to get every reward offered.” One can start with a wrong premise, and then go on to say many correct things, but that does not logically lead to his claimed conclusion.

I fully understand that not everyone wants to dutifully commit 20 minutes every day (as Stratelier implied) to get the rewards. But if one cannot make that level of investment (which is really not too bad), why insist on the compulsion to get all the rewards (for a game one cannot commit to on a certain level)? Just play some, get some rewards, and live with that and be happy.

I luckily got a Giant Sentinel dropped. It actually helps to make these event battles more fun: I make one or two blue matches to fill its mana, lure the AI to skull me, and then go to town with Sapphirix and co. So I am happy. Does the miniscule chance of my ever getting the other Sentinels upset me? Not at all.

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I’m going out of town for New Years for family reasons and I’m not in a location to bring my console to play an online game.

It’s not a matter of not dutifully playing the game, I can’t access the game in the first place.

Your own statement is a wrong premise, and then…

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If you can not play, then you don’t. It’s simple. Maybe a lot more people can play during this time. It is beneficial to them. Why would the world spin around you so that the game will only have events when you can play? That is so laughable. There is no argument here.

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Bit of a tangent, but would you mind sharing that team? I finally got my first sentinel drop and I don’t really know what to do with it yet.

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Yeah, that is basically my playstyle. I don’t care much about the reward ladders (my guild generally reaches about tier 4 or 5 in the weekly events, i.e. the first Diamond and/or chat portrait reward tiers). The only events I play to completion are Pet Rescues and Tuesday Faction Assaults.

Yeah … that’s life. I may get annoyed if I miss a day, but usually only because of that free Orb of Chaos at Day 28 of the monthly login calendar.

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Why would you actively encourage a game condition where you have to play 14 days straight? Most games in the world let you play at a player’s leisure because games are supposed to be fun.

The only thing laughable here is encouraging bad gameplay design.

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Giant Sentinel, Sapphire Giant, Sapphirax, and Thingamabob.

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