Developer Q & A

Official News
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I’ll add my own input for the last couple of posts. I spent some money on this game, I’m a VIP level 8 and a half. I first got the game when it came out, then quit for a few years and came back about a year ago and have played every day since.

The game took a turn for the worst when the new UI got added, and the energy system and the clear message from the developers that “we want your cash” ensured that I’ll never spend another penny on this game again unless something drastically changes.

Every week I see a new event post, and every week I roll my eyes at the “buy this worthless but good for one week only troop/weapon”.

And I’m not even going to start on the bugs. The QA testing is non existent. There is NOBODY testing this game. And what’s even more insulting is the fact that a GoFundMe is beyond them, or people wanting to do it for free… or hey, use the beta testers?

But the most insulting part? They want to bypass a myriad of options to make this a better game, but they have NO PROBLEM making it pay to play/win with all of the new systems.

I paid when it was a good game. I’m not going to pay for a game where half of the bugs aren’t even fathomable to them, let alone fixable. “Maybe in 3.5”, really? LOL! Yeah, let me spend 100 bucks to get some gems really quick, just to maybe pull a card that maybe will work right or wait I won’t know because sometimes the basic mechanic of matching gems doesn’t even work well enough to give me mana? Really?

I’m here because I care, but my financial support is long gone. I’m not going to reward being slapped in the face by piss poor update implementation and an energy system.

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I’m looking forward to a nerf to exploders. They were fine when magic stats were lower. Now they blow up the whole board and fill whole teams. That has to go down, and I’d like to see skill return more to the game…

I take @gouki ‘s point that single tactical exploders will get hit. They should maybe get buffed to counter this.

Infernus is the best troop in the game by a country mile and needs as a minimum to cost more mana.

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@Lyrian Thank you for the feedback

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I wouldn’t worry about the changes. As a fellow survivor of numerous incarnations of the game, I find adapting to the changes are part of the fun of GoW. The transitions are usually messy and buggy. Things however get fixed relatively quickly.

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So who is excited about new mythic?
Any team idea yet?

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I am excited, I hope he turns out as good as I think!

Ishballa
Ubastet
Who care
Who care

Lol jk

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I have a question for the devs - Can you post the new rewards for Guild Rankings? Our guild went from Warlord IV to Warlord V but I’m pretty sure that our login bonus didn’t change - it’s been 17 seals the whole time. I’d like to see a list to know when it actually changes.

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I guess since you ran two copies its who cares?

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I don’t get what you mean loll

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I wonder how much they will change arena. It has the potential to be really fun game mode. Deck building is one of the best parts of the game, but the current event’s (Invasions, raids, gw) are repeatitive due to the oppostion being the same.

My idea’s

Different entry fees for different difficulties, each difficulty will have better rewards. (glory,gems,keys,etc) Could cost gems or glory at higher difficulties.

More then 3 picks. You would have 5-7 picks and a random hero weapon pick. Then you would build a 4 troop deck from those and lock it in.

Different raritys. The higher difficultly you enter the more likely you are to get higher rarity troops, including mythics. Ai would also get these chances. No more buy with gems option.

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These folks pretty well covered my feelings.

When the Great Task Nerf of June 2017 hit PC I was accused of having an agenda when I encouraged people to vote with their wallets and not spend money on a product they were dissatisfied with.

Guess what, I haven’t (and will never) spend a dime on Gems, no matter how the publisher tries to strongarm me. I’m VIP 6, which I earned prior to last June. In the past year I’ve spent $5 on the game, in a moment of weakness when a weapon I was excited about was in the shop. I’ve used the weapon for less than an hour. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have spent the $5.

I fell in love with Gems of War largely because it was one of the most “fair to the players” F2P games I had ever seen. I spent far, far more money on this game than I’ve spent on any other F2P, ever…because I wanted to support a system that I wished I saw more of in the F2P genre. I was literally telling everyone about how amazing this game was…until it stopped being amazing.

With the repeated resource nerfs, and the addition of both a stamina system and a multitude of in-your-face unapologetic Gem sinks that remind me of a hotel bellhop who stands in your doorway with his hand stuck out waiting for money…yeah, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore. There’d have to be some drastic changes to open my wallet again.

That said…I’m not so naive as to think anything will actually change. The one constant through all these sweeping changes is that once implemented, we’re stuck with them. We’re playing a new game, ladies and gents, and the new direction is here to stay.

Another new currency. Any bets there will also be a new Gem sink (shop) or energy meter (sigils)?

I still spend money on games, just not this one, and my playtime is noticeably less than it was a year ago. I’m hanging on for now. Given the new direction, I’m sure that eventually something will change that pushes me off the edge. It’s just a matter of when.

Also -

No pet food, please. At least the Glory keys we get now could, in theory, result in a Mythic troop. Please upgrade daily VIP rewards, not rework them into something less useful/more constrained while using the “Gem value” justification. This is one place where some real goodwill could be shown to the players who opened their wallets and made this game possible and yet I’m already fearing what VIP rewards will look like after the rework.

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Hi Arelana,

The scary thing here is the changes aren’t complete yet. There’s more yet to come, with what I believe are the most profound sinks yet to be implemented in 3.5.

Like JonathanStriker said earlier, it almost feels like a different game, and I would agree with you as well. When all of the game modes have finished to converting to the new system, it might as well be GoW2.

If my spider-sense is correct, you’re going to want to revise that statement about pet food after 3.5 hits. The game, under the new system being implemented, is moving away from troops and keys being the primary bottleneck of the game. Newer currencies (such as pet food) are being implemented and very tightly controlled to replace keys as gatekeeping mechanisms. Although keys are still important in a sense to pull Legendary and Mythic troops, I’m reasonably sure that they will be the least of everyone’s currency woes post 3.5.

I believe someone datamined ingots as the new currency? My expectations at the moment are that they will be as controlled similar to how Diamonds are currently; tightly distributed with a gem purchase option to increase allotments.

The sky is the limit to be honest. As the devs are only making changes to game systems whenever major changes are possible and ready, I’m expecting a major rehaul of the arena. Whatever the devs come up with, I’m expecting a gem sink somewhere in their solution.

Bonus Thought for the Day:

I had a dreadful idea today. Let’s revisit one of my earlier posts to increase the “intuitiveness” of it.

Previously, I presented a post about how the the kingdom power score might be reworked into a single “task”.

I wrote:

— Fully ascend, level, and trait 17 troops from this kingdom. (Progress: 17/17)
— XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
— XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The first line isn’t that “intuitive” and can be better clarified for a more specific meaning.

— Level 17 troops from this kingdom to 20 and unlock all three traits on each of them.

The distinction to clarify level 20 as max level is very important here as it creates a very specific hurdle to that has to be overcome.

An example illustrates this point well.

– Last month’s Legendary was the The Widow Queen. Let’s say that a player pulled for her, got one, and decided to level and trait her. So, the troop is at Level 19 and fully traited.

So, what would be the difference between how this troop would be evaluated under the old system and the potentially new one?

Under the old system, the troop would only be short one level and therefore would only suffer a loss of 2 kingdom power points (likely trivial) for not being ascended to Mythic.

Under the theorized system above, the troop would be worth nothing towards kingdom power. Being Level 19, the troop does not meet the Level 20 requirement and therefore does not count towards the requirement. There is no partial credit, like under the existing system. Either you meet the requirement or you don’t.

I’m expecting there to be a lot of requirements that will be relatively easy to “come close” to achieving under the new system, but be actually quite hard and costly to achieve.

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Possibly, I’ll wait and see what comes. Right now I don’t value pet food much at all because just unlocking a pet and leveling it to 5 gives you the biggest jump in benefit.

I really, really hope you’re wrong.

Depending on how long it would take to earn something, this might not be too bad. It’s how Diamonds work now and while there is a definite time-gate, it could be a lot worse.

Sad that this is the new way of thinking, and more sad that I agree. This game really has changed. :frowning:

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I agree with everyone about what was said about the game, gem sinks, me not spending money anymore (I’m VIP 7 and a bit and stopped around four months ago; I used to buy several forge bundles a week as well as the weekly weapon at least).

But I think the saddest thing about this all - the changes, the gem sinks, the future - is the following: It works. The devs can only afford to do these things because they get away with it. A lot of old players stopped cashing and F2P doesn’t get money into anyone’s pocket, but new players, who are likely younger than me and most of the older players here, are simply used to this type of game. There are hundreds of “F2P” games which actually are just micro-transaction-money-sinks (some more obvious than others) these days and everyone in the smartphone-generation knows that. This is the sad norm now. It’s normal for new players testing out games these days that they can get some content for free, but if they want to seriously participate, they have to cash. And because it’s normal, they do and just accept it as being a normal part of (multiplayer/online) gaming these days.

GoW was one of the wonderful games which weren’t following the formula yet when I joined last August and its art (back on the old UI) and charm and the fact how incredibly fair and generous it was led me to invest so much time and also money into it (note I am disabled, I do not have as much money as people with normal jobs and VIP7 says a lot, given my monetary possibilities). Sadly, I joined in the last months of when things were still like that… and now we have this mess. I really wish I would have joined sooner to have some more of the old, bygone times. :confused: And I miss members like Ivar/Razagor and others who have quit over the changes.

I’m barely playing anymore myself and only the fact that I had invested so much and got so far that just logging in and getting tribute is what keeps me going - because it is possible to keep getting the monthly mythics just by collecting all the tribute and being in a guild which only has a gold requirement, which I can fulfill with said tribute gatherings. If kingdoms get changed and this will not be possible anymore, I fear this might be the final nail in my coffin. If tributes in this form end up not existing anymore (either because tributes end up getting changed or because it will simply be impossible to reach such tribute heights because of a change in the kingdom system), it might be the end of me playing if I cannot meet the requirements of my guild anymore.

So yeah… I am definitely not looking forward to the change. In fact, I dread it. I had been excited for a long time when the devs said months ago that the questlines, for example, will become redoable for “rewards”. Now I fear what that might mean… maybe playing through it several times will be a requirement for a kingdom star. Maybe paying gems to be allowed to do so might be required - at this point, I am expecting the weirdest gem sinks just to squeeze more gems from people.

The future looks horrible…

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Bingo! That’s the core problem with the pet system at the moment. I made this same argument waaaaaay up in the beginning of the the thread before the devs had their Q&A stream. Cryptically, in the stream, the answer to this issue was implied.

So… the devs implemented this new system that right now has very little value after the initial unlock. That’s going to be corrected in 3.5. The only way to do this is by introducing something that is going to mandate the leveling of pets.

You’re 98% of the way to the answer. The 64 million near-worthless gold question is this then: What could the devs do, with what is known to be coming in 3.5, to require players to unlock and potentially fully level up their pets?

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They spent a year working on pets and forgot to rethink team bonuses and how rounding works. They’ll probably adjust the numbers to make every 5 level jump give at least a small bonus.

My mythic maester of nature gives my gw green team +12 life which isn’t too bad.

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Still want to know what they are doing about broken ps4 shop :angry:

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For those that aren’t crazy about Twitch, we have uploaded the entirety of the the Developer Q & A to Youtube. We hope to do this with all of our Q & As moving forward :slight_smile:

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Awesome! So surprised for it to show up on my YouTube’s subscription section. My phone’s slow data plan make watching twitch very laggy (even the archive ones), so Youtube upload is very great!! ^^

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We’re glad to hear it! :heart::heart::heart: