What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened
When a guild member informs me there is a pet rescue underway, I expect to be able to open Gems of War, go to the “Games” screen (where guild events are, obviously), and choose the “Pet Rescue” game.
Instead, I’m unable to joint the Pet Rescue event. I suppose if I finished a PvP match I might get the notification, but I tried joining a casual match and retreating and didn’t. So far the only way I’ve found to join is to restart my game.
How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
Every pet rescue.
Steps to make it happen again
Be busy doing something that’s not playing PvP matches when a pet arrives.
Take one of your work breaks and try to play the pet event.
Sigh and try to figure out the ritual required to join the event.
Heres some things that don’t work for letting you enter a pet event that you know is up (worked in the past for other stuff through initiating a server contact, which is apparently not enough here):
Entering a battle and retreating
Entering the mail screen
Opening a single key
Collecting guild seals, donating to the guild, etc
gaining rewards from PvP team wins/losses
Some things that will allow you to enter a pet event:
Restarting the game
Winning a battle (explore counts)
Getting the “offers” screen and dismissing it (???)
Also note that you have no in-game way of knowing when a pet event is up or not when this happens, until you are able to enter it.
If this was a “load on the server” optimization, I honestly want to know:
Because of this change I’m force-quitting and restarting my game sometimes every 15 minutes. Is that less of a load than pushing a notification to my client once an hour when a pet is found?
Fortunately, this does not affect me, but my wife: when a guild mate notifies that a pet rescue is ongoing, I am always able to enter the event. My wife, however, does see only the “Pet rescue in 4d 11h” note. Force-quitting the app does not help and neither does entering and winning a battle.
Also, collecting tributes lets you enter the pet rescue event if one is up, but you won’t get the notification until you complete your first rescue battle.
I mentioned on the feedback/suggestions thread (in the original post) that the intention is that the Pet Event notification only appears once you have completed a battle or opened the game to the World Map in case you were wondering
Originally this design choice was made because we wanted to make the notifications to not be obtrusive (i.e. appearing during a battle…). However, if the above is not true, have you left Gems open, but minimised, or have you completely launched the game but been unable to jump in?
If my game is already open and an event is activated I have to do a battle before I can start the pet event is that intended and if it is can it be changed? I leave my game open on the world map while I’m doing other things and if I don’t see an announcement on discord straight away sometimes doing a battle first wastes so much time that I’m not able to finish all 8 battles.
I’m using iOS. During a big chunk of the day, I’m at work. So I leave GoW on the map screen. Every now and then, I check my tribute by starting the app.
What I expect is that, upon waking from background, if it’s been some long interval, the game tries to check tribute again, and would also show me a pet rescue notification. This would allow me to conveniently pay attention to the game an extra 8 hours a day.
What happens instead is the game doesn’t really check for anything, but it does log into annoying iOS Game Center. I have to go do something that causes it to ask the server, generally check my in-game mail. When I do that, the game:
Checks to see if it should display News because sometimes that pops up.
Checks to see if it should show the Offers screen because sometimes that pops up.
Checks to see if it should ask me to leave a review because sometimes that pops up.
So the only things it checks for when I return from background seem to be the obtrusive things I don’t want, and it neglects to check for the obtrusive things I might want.
Ideas, if you’re hoping to not be intrusive:
You can put a number/emblem on the Chests screen to show me how many keys I have. Maybe put one of those on Games so I know there’s a pet rescue.
Many players won’t consider the pet rescue screen obtrusive for a few more weeks, because we’re desperately trying to catch 'em all and ascend them. Making it an optional popup would be nice.
Instagram can randomly notify me that some jerk from high school just joined and I ought to follow them. Gems of War ought to be able to notify me a pet rescue is active.
If I click Pet Rescue when one isn’t active/has expired, maybe it should offer to do a quick check with a 5-10m cooldown.
Sometimes I finish a pet rescue and restart the game for some reason. Maybe I’m switching devices. Maybe the game got shut down because I took a phone call.
Even if I’ve claimed all of the rewards and finished the battles, I get the pet rescue notification. It’s obtrusive at that point: there’s nothing left for me to do.
