They are just slowly releasing content made by devs that were laid off a year ago. They are embarassed to admit they don’t know how to fix it. Maybe those devs sabotaged it on purpose because they knew they were getting sacked. Epic keys aren’t even that good, it’s just an achievement to get one that people are concerned over.
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i think “Rob” is a wrong diction here, we didn’t lose anything, did you lose your gems? or diamonds?
If anything it’ll be misinformed at most…
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Is ‘Time’ a valid resource that we may have been robbed of through false advertising of drop rates?
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I disagree. Time is controlled by the player. The player can choose to stop at anytime they want. The joy of gems is that you can play for as long or as little as you want. Just because a player plays hours of a vault event and complains they were robbed, doesn’t mean they were. This goes for both the player who plays a lot of matches and spend lots of time and those who play less and spend less time. Sure the epic key drop rate sucks but they were meant to be rare to begin with. Nobody was robbed. Maybe next event a player won’t spend hours grinding to setup their own inevitable disappointment. As the casino commercials around here say “play responsibly”.
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Take e.g. Vault Weekend: we are promised more gnomes will drop (3x more often than during non-vault weekends, if I recall), and therefore many players spend more Time doing explore, due to the advertised drop rate.
In the case of EVK, the advertised (10% of a Vault Key) percentages are low enough that we’d need a couple of dozen vault keys before starting to wonder if something is amiss: for the plethora of players who usually get <5 vault keys during Gnome Weekend, that’s a significantly higher Time investment, based on a false premise.
Whether that Time would have been used playing other game modes, other games, or going on a camping trip is immaterial: the customer invested based on false advertisement by the company (as recently admitted by a company representative Vault Weekend data collection - for w/e 13 Sept - #176 by Kafka )
The fact that it’s Time instead of e.g. Keys/Gems (in a scenario where the false rates were about Mythic drops), should surely not shift the blame/responsibility toward the Customer who was Misled by the Company.
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You joined the forum since less than one month. If its the same about the game that explain lots of things. It wont take long for you to think differently. Everything in a F2P game is made to produce exactly the opposite as you describe. And without any superior authority regulation (like the ones for casinos for ex.) and with methods that should put them all in jail in a normal world.
Dont they have the talent to create a normal product with a fixed price at release? Probably not…thats why they need to go into this pathetic hustle concept. Implementing addictive mechanics to hook players is much easier than hooking players with a fun and high quality content. For that it dont require talent, all it require is to have zero consideration for other humans.
But back on the subject, it require some weird thinking process to not see the problem when devs state a 10% drop rate of EVKs and so many players played a lot to try to get one EVK because they believed this 10% when in reality the drop rate was 0,5 to 1,5% at best during the vault events.
All the players who invested time got robbed by either incompetence or much more likely by a deliberate hustle from the devs! Because if the drop rate of 10% was working as intended outside vault event, then it have required a deliberate change of said drop rate in vault event to not make it 10% anymore. So it was a malicious act…no surprise here.
Well first of all I’ve been playing this game since 2015 when I was on the xbox. I’ve been playing mobile since Dec 2018, so your assumption that I don’t know what I’m talking about because I joined the forums a short time ago is ridiculous. It’s very clear most of the posters on this thread should have quit this game a long time ago. I have no idea why any you stick around, let alone spend hours here complaining daily/weekly about minor issues in the game. I’ve kept up with the forums long enough to know a toxic player when I see one.
Getting back to the subject of the vault keys, which apparently has all the SHQ’s (Should have quit) in a tizzy. What exactly is a player missing out on that is soo life/game changing about epic vault keys? Just to let you know I actually got less than 6 vault keys, but rarely play the vault hardcore since the rewards aren’t worth the grind for me. Most I’ve ever gotten on any vault event was 9 keys. I have zuul and I’m already 2 power orbs away from enraged Kurandara (I’m F2P). My brother, who started at the same time i did, also rarely plays vault events due to busy weekends and has an almost identical progression to my account (Also F2P).
Now let’s look at some hypothetical examples of what players are “losing” not getting these oh so glorious EVK’s. Let’s assume player A gets 50 vault keys, then we have another player B at 30 vault keys, and then lastly a player C at 10 vault keys.
Using some of the anecdotal averages and my alliances drop rates for EVK’s I’ll just say
Player A got 1
Player B got 0
Player C got 0
EVK’s at 10% drop rate:
Player A 5
Player B 3
Player C 1
Using very very rough math let’s assume you get a gnome every 10 matches. And then every 15 gnomes you get a vault key. Of course this is just an example, but I’m just using some player data that I’ve seen on the forums already and making a judgment call, take this with a grain and adjust up or down to fit your data sets.
Matches/Gnomes/Keys
Player A: 7,500/750/50
Player B: 4,500/450/30
Player C: 1,500/150/10
Player A breakdown:
Player A will be losing out on 4 EVK’s based on the 10% drop rate. Now this seems pretty rough but something everyone seems to be dismissing to fit the “evil devs be evil” mentality is the addition of the pity vault keys. In this scenario Player A is getting a nice group of pity keys in addition to the 50 that they collect. I’m not sure of the exact number but I would guess around 16 pity keys. So that in itself would almost make up for the lost EVK in terms of resources. Sure, the EVK may have more value than 2 vault keys, but I’ve seen a player in our alliance get pretty average rewards from an EVK so even getting an EVK isn’t a guarantee for this flood of resources you’ll never get anywhere else.
This player is also grinding out a ridiculous amount of the resources they are getting from a vault key by just grinding itself. Most vault keys contain traitstones/gold/souls, and when added to the normal vault keys this player got, the loss of EVK’s is easily offset by that. The only thing this player may lose is the achievement for getting an EVK. Player A is most likely an end gamer who already has everything and doesn’t require many of the resources they are obtaining.
Player B breakdown:
Player B is very similar to A but they lose a little more overall since they probably didn’t get as many pity vault keys. But still should have gotten close to double the pity keys getting around 12 vs. the lost EVK’s of 3. This again may not completely offset the loss, but it’s still gaining a lot of resources. This person is probably end game as well as grinding out thousands of battles over a weekend is no easy task and usually left to the top percentage of players. So again, this player isn’t really losing much.
Player C breakdown:
This is the average player. In fact I would go as far as to say this player is grinding more than most are still. In addition to their 10 VK’s they are getting a good return on their “time” investment as the pity keys add up quickly before getting much harder to obtain. 150 gnomes probably nets you around 7 pity keys if I’m not mistaken. They lose out on 1 EVK which still sucks but the 7 regular vault keys would easily make up for that difference.
Conclusion:
I don’t believe anyone is losing out on anything. Yes the EVK drop rate is less than expected, I have no doubt that is probably the case. But I would make the argument that both EVK’s are overrated and that the pity keys a player obtains is making up a lot of the difference when it comes to resources claimed to robbed of by players pissed off here.
Players are always going to complain no matter what especially ones who already feel the devs are out to get them. I’m not on team dev by any means, but I also don’t believe they are specifically out to screw the players over. They make poor decisions and there are things wrong with the game, but not anywhere near the level that you would think listening to forum posters. If a player feels this upset with the developers and the gameplay changes they should consider anther game for both their health and the health of the community. This is a gacha game and it’s not meant to cater to F2P. It’s super F2P friendly in my opinion as that’s how I play and will continue to.
TL;DR
Carole Baskin killed her husband.
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That was a long text.
About the toxic players…its the F2P game concept that is toxic. There is nothing “Super F2P friendly” with that kind of thing. The high toxicity of this F2P game concept compared to normal games with a fixed price at release is what contaminate players with toxicity over the years.
About all your long explanation with these 3 players A,B and C…All that is correct, the rewards from EVKs is nothing special. But you unfortunately failed to understand in your long explanation that most of the hardcore players (at least on Xbox) played strong the vault event only to unlock the achievment, not for EVK reward. Thats what all the hardcore players told me.
If they would have know that the drop rate was 0,5% or 1% like it was these last 2 vault events in place of the 10% wrongly advertised by the devs, most of these players would not have played them that much.
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A similar list of equivalences could be drawn up if e.g. the drop rates for a particular Mythic were false, whereas players who invested in looking for it received other stuff that is pretty good too: the issue is neither about the loot available through an EVK nor about the non-EVK loot collected during the EVK hunt.
Determining the relative value of Time and Collateral Resources on behalf of other players is inherently flawed and fails to address the issue of investment based on false advertising: players were looking for the EVK (irrespective of their reason to want one) based on the drop rates announced, which were false.
If it’s not clear enough, try imagining what if the EVK rate was falsely advertised on a game mode you are not particularly fond of (Treasure Hunt maybe?), to hopefully better illustrate where the issue lies.
Different players enjoy the game differently, and value their resources differently. So surely they are entitled to choose what to be happy about, disappointed about, and what to feel robbed about.
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We are just going to have to agree to disagree here. My opinion stands, I think if a player is that disgruntled over a drop rate of something that doesn’t effect them in the slightest game wise, than it’s time to leave that game. It’s clear most of the players posting in this thread, especially you, shouldn’t be playing anymore.
As i said to a previous player yesterday here, I feel bad for the guilds you are all in. Sure you can have complaints and negative feelings towards the game but when that becomes all you can see and optimism is completly gone I question your motives to continue playing, regardless of the money you put into it.
Like I said, “play responsibly”, no one is forcing you to play.
I sincerely mean this, I hope you all find a game that you can enjoy playing and that doesn’t continue to make you all feel this way. If it’s gems great, if it’s not, also great. You are right, enjoyment is subjective.
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Seeing how yet another weekend of demonstrated professionalism is upon us, it seems pertinent to once again highlight this quote, which should probably be a Sticky in the forum since it so accurately illustrates this company’s philosophy.
#ConditionalCommitment
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They use subhuman methods for earning money and they look happy and proud of themselves. What they need to address is the way how work their minds.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”
-Edmund Burke
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Apples to oranges. A hemi engine is not a video game and has nothing to do with numbers or metrics of a video game. Regardless, obviously unlike you I would do my own due diligence before I bought anything. In this case anything you have paid for in the past you have gotten. No more no less. If you don’t like the direction the game is going now then don’t play it. It would show up in their numbers and metrics.
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Don’t worry about the SHQ’s here, nothing will break their negative unflinching attitude to stay in a game they hate just so they can complain. Just because a player spends X amount does not mean the developers or hell even 505 or digital bros have to listen to them more. Spending that amount is on them and them alone. This a gacha game and for those unaware, no matter how much you spend, you won’t “complete” the game because that’s not how it works in the gacha game world.
I don’t want to shame anyone for spending any amount on gems of war, just be more responsible and understand this is less like buying a car and more like going to a casino. You are spending money to be entertained, if you aren’t entertained, leave the casino.
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I think it originally felt more like magic cards. Where you did, in fact, own the cards forever, but in this case digitally. It has become more reliant on rng, but for at least the first 5 years, i felt like i was building an actual collection not much different than this:
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A week later: Heart of Rage fiasco takeaways.
- Company representatives continue to maintain their level of professionalism:
We were told:
We get:
- Developers are behind some/many of the decisions players keep blaming 505 for:
A couple of options here:
- the original HoR drop rate was determined by Devs using whatever decision-making process they may have (or lack thereof), and then they raised it based on player frustration, thus reinforcing the notion that their decision-making process is disjointed from the reality of the game; or
- they released a deliberately low drop rate, to do the PR stunt of ‘generously’ increasing it (from undisclosed rate X, to undisclosed rate Y)
- Speaking of rate disclosure: Twitch
(go to 00:23:55)
we decided not to release the drop rates on that purely because we thought that it was gonna cause further dissent and discussion among players in a way that was gonna make things quite negative. I know a lot of players were like “oh if you tell us the drop rates we’ll trust you more”, and it’s like no, if we tell you the drop rates you’re just gonna ??? us like you always do, it’s gonna make no difference to the happiness and goodwill about this situation
Interpret the above at will: if it truly made no difference, opting for transparency would seem the preferable path, since there is nothing to hide; especially for a company that likes to justify its actions/inactions behind ethical/moral reasons:
Noteworthy how this ‘reason’ for not disclosing the HoR drop rate was conveyed to 20+ viewers in a stream, instead of the official forums: what we got here instead was
- Much of the ongoing friction continues to be caused by lack of soft-skills required to communicate as a forum moderator, and was very eloquently illustrated by @Fourdottwoone :
Which was unsurprisingly dismissed by a company representative, despite the ongoing evidencing that communication consistently exacerbates situations created by design/QA/localization shortcomings
Worth remembering.
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A week later: Arena ‘Revamp’ takeaways.
Without revisiting the multiple points of view, the customer reviews are (once again) overwhelmingly negative…
…even if such feedback is of little relevance for the company, based on documented precedent: the ~15% supporting views -coupled with the increased activity resulting from the offers attached to the completion of Arena Runs- are likely sufficient to enable the ‘customers are happy with this change, we can’t please everyone anyway’ stance that we have become accustomed to.
The addition of RNG (i.e. gambling) ‘chance’ to spend gems on kingdom progression resources is one of the most noteworthy elements of this arena ‘revamp’ package, as eloquently illustrated by @PGSundling :
The ‘increase grind if you don’t want to feel left behind’ practice by this company (and so many other f2p companies) continues to affect many of its customers, as demonstrated by how many across these forums are bearing with the ‘revamp’ in order to have access to a chance to spend gems on certain resources. As a result we have:
- players spending more gems
- players spending more time on the game, or less time playing modes with a better loot/hour ratio
- more players playing the mode that was ‘revamped’, thus ‘proving’ to the upstream that players like the ‘revamp’
The House wins on all fronts, when even those of us who are not chasing max kingdoms are now left with an even draggier Arena mode when Campaign thrusts it at us (‘Campaign is Optional’ claim as per Campaign Tasks Week 7: How to grind your players into spending gems - #18 by AMT).
Upon seeing the Depression caused by this company’s practices on some players (Anxiety, in less extreme cases) despite recurrent feedback from its customers, no segment of this company can be exempted of the corresponding responsibility: whether a staff decides the design direction, or merely defends it, we are once again faced with the evidence of where their Ethics/Morality stands.
‘Just don’t play the game’ is not a feasible solution for certain people severely affected by these practices: on the other hand, ‘just don’t enable these practices’ and/or ‘just don’t work for a company with such a predatory philosophy’ may be an option for certain players/staff who do not want to be part of affecting people’s lives the way this does.
Is there really no win-win alternative approach?
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We added more suffering to the game. Data says players like to suffer. Add more suffering… 
I fear we are training the devs the wrong lessons.
The real take-away is that if they have writs as a reward, we’ll put up with anything.
If they had writs as a reward for maps, I would probably play that much more. I would much rather play maps than arena given the same rewards.
Maps doesn’t have unfair crap like skull fall with no margin for error or no way to plan for troop synergy. Then again, it hasn’t been revamped yet.
I’m nostalgic for the old days when we looked forward to updates instead of dreading them. I’m not the first to say that and I won’t be the last.
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from negative nancys to positive petras, we really need a Legendary Pinhead lookalike troop from Darkstone!!!
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