@Graeme made a pertinent comment on how the devs are doing their Radio Silence/Business as Usual protocol following the ̶C̶o̶u̶n̶c̶i̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶C̶h̶i̶e̶f̶s̶ ̶2̶ From the Depths release, and was promptly censored with the excuse that he should ‘stay on topic’ and the threat of a warning, whereas a quick scroll up that very same thread reveals countless comments that are as ‘on topic’ as the censored comments, minus the highlighting of the current event design choices that are being so well-received by the playerbase (as illustrated by Do you like the new World Event? (From the Depths.) Poll & discussion , and a cursory glance of the forums feedback).
Through facts like the above hopefully new players will be aware of this company’s impartiality (and/or lack thereof), and set their expectations accordingly.
Three World Events later: lessons learnt, and lack thereof.
Council of Chiefs, Festival of the Sun, and From the Depths have come and gone, providing the playerbase with an opportunity to once again observe the development trends, and how much ‘player feedback’ matters in shaping said trends.
The first iteration (CoC, 16/MAR) was universally disliked, with the main complaints from the playerbase being:
Random Scoring is unfair and makes no sense
Rewards are too hard/expensive to obtain (>Tier IV from 30 Guild Members for full rewards)
Event constraints applying to Hero are overly limiting, especially for newer players who rely on smaller weapon inventories
The ‘choice’ when selecting battles is borderline inconsequential
Players shouldn’t have to read the forum in order to find out what is the scoring method for an event
Then FotS came in on 13/APR, with scores being apparently homogeneous for all players for the same number of battles (thus removing the unfairness factor), and a lowered cost to obtain all rewards: despite ignoring feedback nº 3 to 5, this event was significantly well-received by the playerbase, thus suggesting it was a move in the right direction when it came to customer satisfaction.
On 11/MAY (and despite the positive feedback resulting from FotS) FtD inexplicably reverted back to the CoC model, reincorporating random scoring for the same number of battles, and requiring an extremely high buy-in from guilds wishing to obtain all rewards: however, due to a self-admitted ‘typo’, the cost of rewards was lowered back to FotS range, thus narrowly dodging a full CoC2 situation.
However, if there had been no typo:
it would appear that the higher (CoC-like) cost to get all rewards was the intended requirement (the ‘clarified’ explanation is anything but, as evidenced by subsequent comments by players in the same thread).
It would therefore seem that “2 steps forward, 2 steps backwards”, and still miles away from the destination…
…assuming ‘customer satisfaction’ is a top priority.
As far as new content is concerned in the last 6 months, we got a rehash of explore mode, and a new event which is pretty much a rehash of explore mode.
There are glaring UI issues we have to deal with on a daily basis which do not get fixed, but we’re told they are focusing instead on fun new content for us, and we get… a rehash of explore mode.
Gems of War is a great game and deserves polish and to be built upon and expanded to it’s full potential, and it’s disappointing when it doesn’t happen.
Ah you completely don’t understand those statements, let me explain
The first quote there is a workaround for the end user while we work to fix the bug at the root cause.
The second was in response to a request for a new feature to be developed to get around a bug instead of fixing the root cause and the bug itself.
These statements aren’t contradictory opinions.
In both I have stated the goal is to fix the root cause of the issues - not to put a bandaid on it and ignore it. In the first quote however, players need not go without, there is something they can do to avoid the bug already in the game that we didn’t spend additional development time on, so I am making them aware of that so that even though it’s inconvenient, they are aware there is a way around it while they wait for the fix.
No development time was wasted creating that workaround, it already existed.
The statements were clear, and summarized by the above sentence: the company feels like letting players endure game shortcomings for years (i.e. weapon affixes) is preferable over ‘wasting development time’ to make a quick fix while a permanent ‘proper’ fix is implemented whatever number of years down the road.
as explained in the original thread, creating a new game feature which ties into half the existing game systems, is not a quick fix, which is why it’s not on the table
Fallen Silent world event: more like Player Feedback Falling on Deaf Ears.
So here we are, done with the 4th ‘World Event’, and we get a chance to revisit the ongoing 5 corresponding main complaints from the playerbase since 16/MAR/2020, namely:
Random Scoring is unfair and makes no sense
Rewards are too hard/expensive to obtain (>Tier IV from 30 Guild Members for full rewards)
Event constraints applying to Hero are overly limiting, especially for newer players who rely on smaller weapon inventories
The ‘choice’ when selecting battles is borderline inconsequential
Players shouldn’t have to read the forum in order to find out what is the scoring method for an event
In light of the above, the Devs decided that the best course of action was to maintain random scoring (in the form of random battles presented to us), allow for a day-1 ‘new glitch, not at all the typo thing from the last time this happened’ to again make rewards unattainable unless all guild members went up to ~ Tier VI (‘fixed’ 24 hours into the event), and give even more constraints on troop/weapon selection (Leonis Empire && Yellow||Brown), thus ensuring that players could not use their previously acquired Boss Slayer (namely, ‘Wazir’) so that they were further ‘encouraged’ to spend gems.
The ‘pay to reduce grind’ philosophy continues to be allowed to grow, even when the players voted 90% that they disliked the event. (cue Devs claiming that they know secret internal figures that support that players love this design and direction, no matter what the forums/players say).
Some players claim to enjoy the challenge of having to design a team within restrictions, and the sensible alternative to this is the GW and Bounty approach: offer bonus points for those who use teams that meet restrictions, but stop ignoring players who do not have enough troops that meet the criteria, or who do not wish to grind with a clunky team because they enjoy e.g. bashing everything with Mang while helping their guild in the event.
But that would not align itself with the abovementioned philosophy.
Of course, we still had to inform our guild members of what the scoring system was, because apparently including it in-game continues to be considered an unworthy endeavor.
Half a step forward on slightly less random scoring, big step backwards with the additional team/weapon restriction.
June 2019 - June 2020 … 1 year of incompetence from Saltypatra, Kafka and the french translator!
1 year of incompetence from Saltypatra and Kafka for their incapacity of transmitting the french translation mistake of the Deep king spell description to the french translator and/or make him understand the mistake (I alerted them several times about it but never been able to contact the french translator directly…I guess it would give too good and fast results this way…) and 1 year of incompetence (well…lol more like 4 years) from this french translator for not being able to understand that the Deep king deal true splash damage and not just normal ones.
1 year I am trying to have corrected the wrong spell description of The deep king who deal TRUE splash damage and in the french description, the word TRUE is missing (in french version, TRUE is written PURS so all is needed is to add the word PURS in the spell description)
Yes, you have read that right! All is needed is to add a little word of 4 letters!!! And they are unable to do it since 1 year!! Just a bunch of clowns!
So with this 1 year demonstration that clearly show that you dont care about the french version and your french speaking customers, I dont spend money in your slot machine (to call it a video game would be an insult to all true video games) and also all new french translation mistakes that I find are not transmitted to you anymore. (well I guess this last part must be the last of your concern anyway…)
The facts speak for themselves: they claim that they ‘don’t let people work for free, for a variety of reasons. Some legal, some moral.’ ( Devs Why so Lazy? ), whereas both ‘reasons’ could be easily resolved if they so wished, seeing how players who care(d) about improving the game offered to assist. No go.
They’ve also mentioned in the past how there’s a process to produce translations/localizations: as evidenced by the results of this ‘process’, it delays/prohibits prompt modifications while producing substandard translations (in the case of the French translation, that go beyond mere oversights and instead demonstrate a lack of understanding of the game and even of the language’s grammar/spelling basics) that would take seconds to rectify if the Will existed on the company’s part. Nope.
Which brings us to the statement by a dev above, suggesting that quick fixes/workarounds are seen as a ‘waste’ of development time: this is in line with the pattern of postponing/delaying indefinitely things that do not affect the bottom-line.
But it wasn’t always like that:
It is well-documented that the company’s philosophy at some point became ‘pay to reduce grind’ instead of ‘pay because you’re having fun’: maybe some of the most senior forum members can shed some light over whether the shift happened around the time Fawkner took a step back from the forums? Has any specific incident been identified as the start of the shift in philosophy?
To me, pay to play started around Raid and Invasions (and other similar events). They went radio silent way before that (outside of major outrage issues). Even before The Soulforge.
I don’t know if there is a specific line, but to me it feels when the 3 following things happened
Gems removed from Legendary Tasks.
Gems nerfed in Completing Statues rewards. (And boy, do i remember the uproar over this. They actually put some back, but not until after an outcry that probably could have been heard on Jupiter.)
Introduction of gem-wasting Events, one by one by one. (Raid, Invasion, Bounty, TOD, Delves, World Events, did I miss any? I’m not counting Guild Wars, because you don’t HAVE to spend gems on it. Class events is more of a grey area, but I have’nt spent a gem on a single class event after the first one.)
In being blindsided by the same mistake they’ve made in the past (see Guild Guardians being released in Gold Chests), this company is setting a new precedent: if they ever mess up Mythic Release week, and you pull a different mythic from a chest than the one being released, they’ll take it away and generously give you less than 1/50 of a mythic in RNG…
…and when you tell them that what they’re doing is wrong, they’ll proceed to tell you that you do not understand how generous they are being. (see above quoted comments by a dev)
People using keys pulled a mythic. They got lucky.
It’s not their fault that you gave them the wrong mythic.
By all means, take away the mythic that they shouldn’t have been able to get, but they should get a random mythic from the pool in it’s place. Not a couple of keys, and the chance to get lucky again.
