Lycanthropy, the why and the moving forward
It’s not going away and I’m glad to hear it - a week in and I’ve enjoyed the campaign so far. They are clearly looking at some fixes but until then I’ll just enjoy it. I’m still intrigued to see the GW effect and the inevitable outrage that may fall out from that. My view on GoW will always be the same - if it gets too much or something is added that really kills it for me, I will walk away but I can’t see that happening any time soon
Looking at fixes and being competent enough to fix them or even attempting at all are very different.
There are things they have added over the past year or so that were broken, on the known issue list and still haven’t been addressed.
Anyone who is saying that they like the fact that your hero or a vital mythic on your team is turned into a random useless card is lying or really craving attention.
They came out today, and said they will be putting out a patch, which will make the new troop have half stats, and the Valraven and gnomes still give the rewards.
wow today? so fast !
tbh i like the idea of heroic gem, but i dont like increasing the RNG power to determine the battle outlook.
i think it’s best that there’s only 1 or 2 heroic gems of a kind on a given battle, other than that… this game will turn into more like flipping coins and not strategizing and planning battle
That’s already the case even with only a few lycan gems dropping so far. As @ChunkyMono said, I like my teams, building a team with a synergy works and is fun.
Personally I am not a huge fan of GW but that is where team builds matter the most, I guess.
I don’t want to lose to a turn one enemy Leprechaun hitting a lycan gem, neither do I find an easy win, in case a lycan gem works in my favor, satisfying.
Lycanthropy as effect was already a bad idea but they committed to it and want it their way be it fun or not, it feels like someone banging their head against a wall, noticing it hurts but they keep doing it because: “hey I started it, I have to see it through now”.
Troops causing the effect with their spell is not that bad, not great but ok.
Troops generating lycan gems is just pushing RNG (like the trait that has a 50% chance to create one, should be replaced or reduced to like 20%)
The random dropping of lycan gems (and other upcoming heroic gems) should be limited to World Events, maybe I can see some fun of it in arena but I am not playing it that much.
I am not against the addition of heroic gems but add them carefully, like game mode limited first, if they turn out to be fun in general and improving player experience add them to other modes.
I mean was it really necessary to make the first live testing of the first heroic gem (not counting Uberdoom) like this?
@ChunkyMono I’m sorry I was out of sugar 
Sort of the problem, though. This is a strategy game with randomness. That’s fine. But once the amount of randomness goes beyond a certain threshold… it’s just a funky slot machine.
I was not a fan of lycanthropy until tonight.
it’s late here, finally made it to level 500 in today’s delve event in werewoods. 2nd battle, my first troop gets transformed by lycanthropy into p4-nth4, who autokills troops with high armour. its mana matched my +2 red, +2green banner, and tore a bloody path to the end room where with the luck of some 4+ matches beat it in 3 turns!
three cheers for luckanthropy! 
I had an extremely long and epic fight in the Beast Whisperer, the troops kept changing on both teams almost every turn, for awhile I kept reading the new troops descriptions, but after a few turns it was turned to something else and eventually I stopped reading. lyca was everywhere and the battle was a huge mess, but I wasn’t cursing or crying, I was laughing… It was hilarious PS: As many have said, it doesn’t fit the delves at all, so…
This is on par with Cyberpunks mess of a game when it first released. It’s funny to see bugs and game going to shit every once in a while, but that’s just it. If it was like an aprils fools thing or whatever for a day or so, nobody would’ve minded it. It would’ve been a fun little thing to laugh about but instead they implement it as a real mechanic to screw over people just enough so that it becomes more annoying and hard to progress but not enough to say “fuck the game I’m out”. This is how these companies work. Gatcha, lottery, slot machine, whatever you wanna call it. They gotta make sure “innovation” is equivalent to “money first” it seems. Just an observation tho, given how the game is set up and how it plays. Devs feel free to prove me wrong with some facts!
Lucky me, I got a heads up on the problems with cyberpunk and didn’t buy it in December and still haven’t… I would not have laughed after paying a lot of money to get cyberpunk…
Some times it can be annoying but I think change is good so you don’t get bored.
Anyone against change is a bad person. No matter what aspect of life.
That said, you evaluate. Not all change is good change. Sure, be open to it, but don’t embrace ANYTHING just cause it’s “different”.
Lycanthropy was evidently a really bad change. Sure, some people like it, or force themselves to like it, or had absolutely nothing else going on so it’s new and by default, good for them. The vast majority tho, dislike it and for good reasons.
ehm… gems are a strategy game?? isn’t this just a casual match3 with some flavour added to make it be less brainless than Candy Crush ? 
I admit, it has some elements of tactics… (which gems to match in what order), but strategy game… meh?
I don’t feel putting GoW next to anything I call ‘a strategy game’ would do a good comparision…
If anything, GoW is more similiar to deck-building games than any RTS or TBS…
There is more than making the right matches, like building a good team as well as using it correctly, decisions like taking skull hits on purpose.
But I agree it’s too much randomness, and Lycanthropy/Lycan gems are just one part (a horrible one though), like all the empowered troops make it more boring than interesting.
But I enjoy the good parts and putting in more randomness than we already have is really counterproductive in my opinion.
Deck building games are strategy games. 
well they involve tactic and planning, but is that enough to call something a strategy game? 
Monopoly also involves some tactic and planning (even though it’s reduced to whether I buy it or not and leave some cash for other property, whether I buy housing here or there etc.)
I still stand on my opinion that GoW isn’t a strategy game… same as it isn’t a RPG (even though hero gains experience, levels up his stats and does quests…).
GoW is a match3 game with some extra elements from strategy and rpgs . Which makes it unique in some way But it’s neither strategy nor RPG.
But it also means (in my opinion) that the strategy (and for some the lore, really not much rpg here), is a part of them game and turning it into slot machine is not improving it.
in my opinion it’s “not much strategy here” to begin with, but:
Aren’t you exaggerating impact of lycanthropy? It’s just another mechanic- one of many that are there in game already. And Lycanthropy gems aren’t that much impacting the game (personal opinion after playing this new campaign from day0)- ofc they can trigger some unpredicatble results, but than again → unless there’s a troops, that encourages these gems to spawn, there aren’t many during fights.
for whole faction event (so like 200+ battles) in the weekend i had exactly 1 enemy transformed by lycanthropy and at most 1 of my troops getting transformed… is it realy such a big deal to make so much noise about it?
and if you’re looking for RNG factors that are making this game look as slots machine, i’d recomend you revisiting the topic of empowered converters → each time, there’s GW I feel like playing slots:
when i get a good board - my teams are able to obliterate/(or at least kill half of) enemy teams on turn 1
when i get bad board - i’m not able to prevent enemy team empowered converters from filling up enemy self-loopers and getting half of my team dead on their turn 1
anything between is probably a gray zone, where depending from player/ai actions and gems dropping it can be somewhat entertaining
Totally agree with this @Sytro - I’ve been hammering the game this campaign - did the Faction event last weekend to completion, have done the full Bounty run today, have really put hours in and the effect of Lycanthropy on all that? Negligible. It’s made me focus to get the gems quicker than the AI, it’s occasionally gone against me and often worked in my favour. It hadn’t made me rage quit once. I don’t see it as a game breaker - I’m still enjoying it tbh
I’m gonna guess you are a lot younger than me. Which is fine. But you seem engaged, but the definitions shift with the times so that’s why I think that.
In my day (old poop). A strategy game involved planning beyond the tactical (in battle ) level. Tactical was soldier level. Mid strategy/tactical was also a thing but not enough to say strategy game. High level long term plans… aka general level was strategy. Things like where do I invest my gold, my diamonds, my medals, my orbs, my traitstones, my souls, my playtime even.
We can disagree on the strict definition. But monopoly? Please.
The bottom line here with this mechanic is that you can have your entire team transformed very quickly. So why even bother having a team? Just max your beasts and go in with something random. Why not? It’s gonna be even more fun when they back door nerf it and maxing your beasts won’t matter.
It’s a train wreck. But to be as positive as I can, I’ll say that if it were JUST the gems (no troops that work off them) meh… not fun for me, but it would be sorta tame. As long as it was nerfed in delves.