Are the Devs taking things too far?

The funny thing is, I can still win reliably in three turns or less with my Justice/Mab team. So I have no idea what you’re on about.

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Some do read the OP.

So, after reading the original post (and subsequent ones) you made, it seems that you take issues with how the game can be overwhelming for newer players, and how PvP for you is essentially facing an invincible divine meta ad nauseam.

You are not necessarily incorrect in your assessment.

I mean, if you’re a newer player and approach the game thinking that it’s only about matching gems, then the experience has the likelihood of defeating you. The in-game tutorial(s), while slightly improved, do very little to assist newer players with the nuances of the game… the stuff that will make them a better, more effective player.

What I find kind of amazing is how an actual helpful player base exists, so newer players can find help if they seek it. Perhaps, it shouldn’t and wouldn’t have to be like that if the game did a better job?

Oh, in one of your other posts, lemme see if I can find it…

And, your Hero Level:

This would mean that you do have fourteen. That’s something. It’s more than something. It’s FOURTEEN. (Wait, is my math correct? Thirty-one Mythics currently, minus seventeen you do not own, equals… )

It’s probably safe to say that there are quite a few Lvl 1000+ players roaming Krystara that possess far less than that.

And, as another forum member suggested, if you don’t have a particular Mythic, you can always craft 'em in Soulforge.

But, I (kinda) digress, as your main point seems to be this:

Almost seems like you’re suggesting that newer players have things just given to them.

Clearly, that’s not what you’re saying. You’re saying that newer players are overwhelmed with guild requirements, like participation in GW or meeting guild minimums, while still attempting to build up a healthy roster of troops and resources.

Perhaps, a newer player should prioritize differently. There are other game modes that can assist in bolstering an account… a forum member suggested Arena, which is decent for newer players. Treasure Hunt is another game mode that allows for some resource acquirement.

Basically, the way a new player approaches Gems of War will ultimately determine how long they’ll continue playing, imho.

If you’re a “give it to me now,” and “you’re not giving it to me fast enough,” uh, good luck with all your other future endeavors.

If you have a modicum of patience and take some pleasure in the process of earning opportunities to earn things (note how I worded that… Gacha! [or Gasha, if you prefer]), then, you’ll always have a home here… in Krystara.

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A perfect summary.

Many players come with different ideas of what this game is or should be. As a community we try our best sharing more perspectives and giving advice base on our experiences.

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You make great points RE: new players, but I think how the game organizes itself can be a big part of this.

The most important thing for a new player to get is “troops”. The best way to increase your troop income is to join a guild. This immediately presents a problem, because we have several guild activities that do not pay a newbie guild. Invasion, Guild Wars, and Raid only reward guilds that are made up of a majority of mid-to-endgame players who are capable of pushing all the way to the upper reward tiers.

Meanwhile, the player is also being bombarded by popups for Pet Rescue, which requires you to be able to use mid-to-endgame teams to win. When they open the Games menu they have to see the Class event or Bounty Hunt, which also require the capability to fight scaling teams to do “well”. All of these are displayed to level 1 players even if they haven’t unlocked any kingdoms.

So it’s not a newbie’s fault they’re led to believe this game has 5 or 6 modes they need to participate in but can’t. These are all challenges meant to be most interesting to players past the TDS/Infernus progress mark, but the game is indiscriminate in distributing them.

To me the best versions of this kind of content are things like Dungeon or Soulforge, which at least require you to have unlocked some kingdoms to get to them. It looks like Delve is also cordoned off behind Sin of Maraj, so at least they won’t get thrown into that right away.

But in theory, yes, I expect the games I play to eventually start giving newbies things I had to work to get. It took me a year to get my account to this point. If it takes a newbie a year to catch up to me today, how much more powerful am I a year from now? Ideally, I would like a newbie to reach 95% or more of “next year’s me” in the time it took me to get here. If that means, at some point, staple early troops like TDS or Emperor Khorvash are given as quest rewards, I welcome that change.

This is not a new concept. What was the original level cap in World of Warcraft? How long did it take to reach it? How long does it take to reach that now? I don’t play that game, but I’m vaguely familiar, and I remember people whining for months that it was getting “too easy” to reach the cap. But it was needed: as they added more content to the higher levels, it made less sense to require players to spend so long getting there.

That’s where Gems of War is now. If you don’t have a specific set of legendaries and at least one of a set of mythics, you can’t meaningfully participate in more than half of the content you will be bombarded with. When do you get those legendaries? Lady Luck decides. It’s faster if you’re in a guild, but guilds can only take on so many newbies before they can’t reach those levels of rewards anymore. Oops.

This game is incredibly hostile to newbies and it gets worse with every update. The only mindset a newbie can adopt and stay happy is “I’ll be playing this game in six months, and that is when I can consider most of the things I see.” The only way to find that out is to come to the forums, rant about how rudderless you feel, then have us veterans pat you on the back and say, “I know how you feel. Let me draw you a map.”

It’s not our job to do that. It should be the game’s job to help new players feel like there are goals. This is crucial for an F2P game. GoW is too busy implementing flashy new features to do this and it bugs me.

But on the other hand, if a 4.1 were announced with little more than “more guided tutorial content for newbies”, I can’t imagine this “friendly” forum’s response.

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Seems like OP only came here to vent a little, then left…
Book pages might still be useful for newer players tho…

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Indeed.

Often heard when introducing GoW to new players:

Wait, what am I supposed to do?

To “borrow” something you posted (sorry):

…of my misanthropic nature.

There’s no denying the benefits that a guild can provide, and I won’t argue that it’s not the best means of increasing your roster. It certainly isn’t the only way, however.

Back when I decided to play Gems of War, I approached this game with the intention of doing things all by my lonesome. I didn’t want to benefit from a guild, nor did I want to be beholden to one. I didn’t mind the disadvantage/challenge in obtaining new troops.

Additionally, I decided that I would basically “play the game without really playing it.” In other words, I wanted to see how far I could get with just the Treasure Hunt mini game. There’s a thread buried somewhere on the forums if anyone cares.

But, I suppose that no one else here is a weirdo, so don’t mind me. :slightly_smiling_face:

Gotta say as newbye there was goals ans satisfactions too, let’s take dungeon as example, at fist could barely do the first (and sometimes not eve that), then with Cerberus help could manage to do more (with tons of restart and dwarfs was still impossible cuz all of them are impervious but still…:P) and the first time i did all 3 was proud.

Same apply to pet rescue, 1 max 2 at start then slowly up until i could clear all.

Never had probs in pvp, prolly cuz x me was more the fastest way to make golds than anything else, in fact about that thx to the one that reminded me the casual exist and is so cheap reroll (always did ranked before), bomb teams at warlord 4 are amazing.

Right now both of them take few mins despite i miss bazzillions of cards and the only 2 mythic i got are ascended with orbs (Gorgotha and a crafted in the forge TDS), can do good decently in all other events and am starting to get how GW work (is just my second one overall) am at 24k+ points right now.

But now the game is finished, became just a boring and tedious spamming of boring stuff for? a CHANCE to maybe get something, but lot more likely not, that remind me i actually got 3 mythics, also got 1 common i had enough to ascend all the way lol.

So it’s basically like all other mobile games now, log in , do “daily’s”, log out.

But ppls should stop say “get a good guild and all is solved” good guilds got reqs that newbyes will never be able to reach (especially as golds) and IF they decide to piggyback someone defo wont be some random newbye (and cant blame those guilds either, the limits are stupidly low, take me 2 days max to cap seals).

Leaving aside that even the guild just give you more CHANCES, this isnt a mmorpg like the one i was playing and where we was dressing up new players in “no time” (dw, they still had tons of stuff to work on but having good gear was making the game playable for them), hell, there isnt even some kind of trade option (Battle island commander, another 505 mobile game got it for example) or auction house.

Anyway for newbyes i would advice to unlock Merlantis asap (is on west side about the center of the map) and get Azura, she’s osom and will stay in my team still for lor long time (despite am a bard using a yellow team)

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Yep, I have 2 lvl 1000+ guild members and these are the mythics they have
First one: Only pharos
Second: WB and famine

Current War teams in my list:

My Blue GW team:
PNG

Mercy into Abynissia for explosions. Hopefully, proc an enrage on War. Bam! Generally, first troop dead. Explode/loop Abynissia and Mercy while firing off War generally when I can get a free turn into a skull match. Doomclaw devours are icing on the cake.

War led Knight team:
4x Blue, 4x Knights, 3x Humans, 3x Sword’s Edge
PNG

Pretty simple here, rush Queen for boost damage from War’s trait and Anu. Sometimes I use Ser Cygnea instead of Knight Coronet but KC puts out a lot more damage, SC can tank longer if no devour etc.

Skadi - Is a 4x Glacial Peaks team, cause I like making kingdom teams. :wink: Haven’t really used her anywhere else.
PNG

Ice Golem tanks for you and freezes and generates mana. Snowman gets a damage boost from those frozen enemies and sometimes makes more blue gems for you. While the Hare puts more blues out on the board as well, making it easier for Golem to freeze 3+ enemies with its gem explosion.

Skadi is blocked down there, so depending on the board can take awhile to fill her.

Disclaimer: I don’t use the Skadi team against the meta, but have certainly beat a few divines team with that first War team. The other Knight is ok but generally too slow against meta divines if you can’t get greens to fill the Queen quickly.

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Thank you. It’s always intresting how people use, lets say no popular, troops.

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The anti-divine troop doesn’t even look like it is an actual counter to Divines. Oh, you can silence all divines with 24 mana? That’s cute. Good luck surviving long enough to get that mana when all the divines charge up at 10-14 mana. I mean, you might as well just use The Silent One, he’s 10 mana cheaper to cast, and isn’t limited to just divines.

Man, there is a lot of teams (without using a mythic troop) that can beat divine teams, jut like the justice one : Kraken, Valkyria, Justice, Queen Mab, another one is Alchemist, Moneylender, Yaoguai and Queen Titania…

And those are just an example… do you want to exterminate them use Psion they are done…

If you are interested i have some weird teams in this vein of “non-popular” troops: But with War in specific i just went with a skull oriented build:

image

The hero is there just covering all colors and getting XP, any green weapon capable of removing armor can help. The main engine is War, Wrath and Skeleton, when war is Enraged by Wrath’s spell the whole battle is quick, i can cast War’s spell if it gives an extra turn and the Skeleton always gives us some skulls and an extra turn. Skeletons are just the best buddies. Have you ever wondered how your life would be if you didn’t had an skeleton inside of you? It would be terrible!

People should be thankful for the “skelebros” and all the (literal) support they give us in our lives.
:wink::laughing:

Edit: Almost forgot, the first talent from the Cuning Talent Tree is also great in such builds:
image

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War
Green Seer
Apothecary
The Wild Queen

Unpredictable? Sure. But devastating when it works!

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You reminded me!

Assassin hero build I had for a GW Brown team when I was playing around with the new mythic weapon.

PNG

Allows for lots of instant kills from skull matches (dmg also boosted by cunning talent) or devours, and utilising Assassin class poisoning an enemy on purple matches talent to have Scorpius instant kill too! :wink:

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I was going to touch on this, but it seems you all have already. One of the problems we have as a growing free-to-play game is that as we add more content it changes the dynamics of what is achievable in the game. It’s easy, as an end-gamer, to absorb these new features. However, as a new player you are constantly comparing yourself to everyone higher than you (Level 20 and “How can I get a 9,000 team score? This dude has it in PVP, it must be possible!”).

We realise the game can be overwhelming for new players, and this is something are going to improve in the future.

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Actually, I am in that position right now. Deliberately, so I’m a ‘weirdo’ too. :slight_smile: I was actually going to start a thread at some point asking if there’s anyone who has NOT joined a guild – to see how many are like me.

Throughout the 6 months I’ve been playing this game, I’ve received numerous Guild invites, but I did not and still have not joined a Guild. I know it’s critical to do so in order to move up the ranks, but I really do enjoy playing on my own, for now.

Plus, I also don’t feel ready to commit to a guild and specific requirements or durations of play due to my job (in film/TV) taking me away from my Console for some periods at a time – long enough to know that it will happen too often and I’d be booted from the Guild anyway. I don’t even play any more than two hours the days when I do log on. I’m sure these reasons are enough to say I cannot commit to a guild the way one should.

I know I could have better troops that everyone talks about. I have no Mythics (except my Hero), but I still enjoy the game. I’m at Level 548, only played Pet Rescue once (today) went only as high as Battle #6, and I’m fine with that. I’m in no hurry, which actually helps me enjoy the experience of GOW – no pressure.

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I’m more interesting in team with skadi. Wanna craft her or famin. Find team for War much easy, but i like your knights team. I’m not thinking about War, Anu and Ysabelle in one team.

The post literally above yours gives a team that beast ubastet.

I manage to beat this lineup at about a 50/50 rate with Orpheus Lute, Queen Aurora, Yao Guai, Ketras, Talon Banner but I’ll admit that I too am sick of seeing so many of them and I do tend to avoid them… It’s gotten to a point however where occasionally, 2 or even all 3 of the available opponents use this team.