I played a different game where guild tournaments happened about twice a week. The tournament lasted for 24 hours but each player could only play for one hour during that time period. It worked very well for that type of game which was a spot the hidden items game, but I’m not sure it would translate as well to a match three. However, I would definitely be interested in trying it out. But I like to mix things up.
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Lol paloozas are only time gated if you run out of verses
I can play paloozas all day, if my fingers didn’t fall off.
Even 100 battles per hour is not likely in PvP now, at least not while maximizing VP gains. In order to get the 8 extra turns and an 8-match, you are looking at probably 25 second battles minimum with most battles over 30 seconds. Add to that the load times and another second or 2 to pick the opponent with most VP offered, and 80-90 matches per hour is probably the maximum, not necessarily the average. 100 battles per hour in E1, easy. For lower level players, the strategy is to get through as many fights as fast as possible, but for higher level players (2000+) getting all the bonuses is worth more than finishing the fight 5-10 seconds faster, as it often doubles their point gain per fight.
Also, they have said they will be adding new modes to PvP over this year, so we will see what they have planned at some point.
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I still need to read up but addressing the starting concern:
I mentioned in my post in the thread you quoted that we do not have a hot seating problem in Gems of War currently.
I’ve definitely seen cases of account sharing but never hot seating.
Also the account sharing thing is really not giving those players a real advantage as I’ve not really seen one competing at the level of those top solo players.
If hot seating does become a problem we’ll definitely look into it.
But my main message was, account sharing isn’t happening on the level anyone should be concerned about currently - we don’t have a hot seating problem unless suddenly a whole bunch of people started hotseating in the past week while I was on Xmas/new years break, because no one was really doing it before Christmas.
The solo players are playing a lot more hours than the account sharers and it’s usually these solo players most people are concerned about when talking about cheating/account sharing.
If there was a bunch of hot seating going on in game then these concerns are absolutely valid and something we’d have to work out, but currently based on everything I’ve seen this is a concern for a potential future and not a concern that is based in the current state of the game.
Hopefully this offers some reassurance.
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Could you explain what you mean by hot seating? I can make some guesses based on context but I feel like there may be some nuance there that’s important. I tried a google search but got a bunch of results about drama and debate.
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By hot seating, I think originally it literally meant different people jumping into the same PC chair to continue playing/doing something on the PC without pauses.
When I use it I mean players taking turns signing in to keep an account actively playing.
I am being looser with the term though because I would consider it hot seating even if it wasn’t 24/7 play, because obviously it would be a problem well before an account managed 24/7 play in GoW that we’d want to address before we had accounts getting to that crazy stage.
So we do have some players sharing logins (we super don’t advise this as it often ends up in account ownership disputes). But I haven’t really seen anyone playing competitively that way and I don’t often see it. I would definitely raise it as an important thing to address if it started affecting other players, and I know the team would agree with me because I remember having a conversation with the Producers about our stance on account sharing ages ago.
Side note: we do have solo players who will go through spurts of playing for a 24 hour period because gamer life 
We do have some quite hardcore people in game.
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as a way to mitigate the issue to the point that most people would not care one way or the other, can you please pass on the idea for gold mark distribution to be mostly based on the league you are in, with only a minor boost to top 3? Most people would be much less frustrated if their efforts did not REQUIRE a top 3 finish in their league to earn any bonuses.
As an example, for Topaz league, it is currently 75/65/60 gold marks for 1/2/3 place, but it would be great for everyone if it was, say, 50 gold marks for everyone in Topaz, with 25/15/10 bonus gold marks for 1/2/3. I understand this would have more gold marks in the economy, but it would result in everyone being happy and the 1% who play super hard would not have as big of an advantage.
Even if the base amount of gold marks given to a league was lower than what it is currently available to top 3, it would make MANY more people happy and give us an incentive to stay in higher leagues, rather than demote on purpose to farm the top 3 gold marks.
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I find it fascinating how everyone is taking a distance from the main problem: The cheaters and the terrible weak anti-cheat tools we have.
I do wonder though, even if hot seating were to become illegal, how would you even be able to accurately enforce such a rule? How would you be able to able to tell the difference between multiple people sharing a PC or console, and some extremely hardcore player who can function on hardly any sleep (just like a military soldier, for example) and spends pretty much every waking hour on GOW?
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I would love to see either this or at the very least, gold marks to everyone who gets promoted, not just the top 3.
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Thank you for looking into my concerns. What I noticed when trying to play on leaderboards is that top accounts play non-stop for 24/7 for several DAYS in a row - which is really not possible for single players (maybe one or two mad ones, but not so many). And you will NEVER know if it is a husband/wife or two friends or even kids in a family all making turns - which is why fundamentally this type of competition if not viable for a single player. Hence my request for some other PVP modes with time and battle limitations, to make competition for single players more possible.
Or alternatively gold marks for all players in a league, which will lessen the problem, and also prevent players from deliberately dropping down so they can get to the 1 - 3 spots in a lower league again (which is what many players are doing this week - dropping down).
Also you did not reply as to why the cosmic/gem dragon eggs situation is so extremely unfair with some people really really penalized by the number of eggs they need to open compared to others - can something not be done to make the distribution more equal since dragonite is such and expensive and scarce resource?
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Yip - with the current system no one will stay in the top leagues (apart from maybe a few that care for their reputation or something) but the majority are going to drop down on purpose so they can easily get to position 1 again. That is already what I am doing this week.
Giving some amount of gold marks for being in a particular league and staying there will be necessary to keep players up in higher leagues.
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Yes! This would be so much better.
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I also find it hard to believe people are not using some kind of exploit. Even if they have nigh on failsafe one hit teams, it’s just mind-numbingly boring to do this non-stop, and seems to be pointless as well. Then again, I have no evidence for this hypothesis and maybe people really do just sit there all day one hitting pvp battles.
However, this brings us to the question: Is it good game design if players can legitimately one click any battle, irrespective of its difficulty? Might as well have kept the old pvp system if that’s ultimately the only way for people to hit the top tiers.
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Just go for third…unless your actually trying to say 3 out of every 30 players in the game are cheating? Sounds like a you problem
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This is probably difficult to grasp from an outside perspective. A very dedicated person can and will achieve things way beyond anything in your wildest imagination. Without the use of magic (or, in these days, cheating). Gaming attracts this type of person, especially games as grindy as Gems of War. If you believe that matching gems 12 hours a day, without any break, for months in sequence, is anything remotely special, you haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet.
I don’t really trust the anti-cheat tools in GoW either, especially considering the, um, high quality of work that we see in other areas each week. However, I’m convinced there are plenty of legit very high level players around. If you find it hard to even remotely compete against them, pick a better personal goal. I wouldn’t ever try to beat Kasparov at a game of chess.
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Fyi
Kasparov couldn’t lace Magnus Carlson’s boots.
Carlson could whip Kasparov with one eye one hand and death metal music in his ear 
.
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haha good one! 
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“Just go for third” - you are most welcome to do so in my League - here are the numbers - and this is only Thursday - by Sunday those numbers will be more than double. Obviously it makes sense to drop down to a lower league. Battles also get harder and take longer time in higher leagues. I am not a full-time GOW jobber. Not everyone cheats, or plays in multiple members - but definitely many do, especially on the main Leaderboard.
And yes Sinny many of the top players are deliberately dropping and will be coming for you in your low League…see you soon.
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Yes, that exactly. I teach music and anymore if you haven’t started playing violin by 4 years old at latest and are well into 8-12 hours a day of practice by high school, you are never going to be a traditional soloist or possibly even concert master. In every hobby/profession I’ve done (and I’ve done a lot because I’m more of a jack of all trades master of none person) there is always a segment willing to do it to the limit. It takes all types to move the world 
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