Very well said.
I’d say the reverse. Gamers are aging and more games than ever reflect that. Like, Witcher III is about a stodgy, grumpy old dad accepting that his daughter is a grown up who makes her own choices & will live her own life.
Sometimes I wonder how anyone under the age of 20 plays that game at all. Maybe they just run from brothel to brothel ignoring the story.
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I wouldn’t sweat it. As vocal as the minority is, the developers are making decisions predominantly based on usage patterns. You’ll find every opinion under the sun on these forums, so it’s important to recognize that the loudest do not necessarily represent the majority.
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I totally agree. But for every Witcher 3 there’s 10 COD Black Ops it seems.
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There are more games that I would play than I actually have time to play.
So long as that’s the case, there could be a million Call of Duties & I’m not going to sweat it.
My point was not that other troops couldn’t kill in one shot. My point was about other troops couldn’t automatically kill in one shot. That’s critical in my point abut devouring being way over-powered.
Even if the AI were perfect – even if it were prescient – I would expect the player to win significantly more than 50% of the time, because they have two advantages: the player gets the first turn, and has the opportunity to scout the defense and pick their invasion team. Every troop, and every team, has strengths and weaknesses, and picking a team that strikes at the opponent’s weaknesses while defending against their strengths is a major part of the game’s strategy. Bar poor luck or poor play, the outcome is quite predictable from the moment you hit “To Battle!”, and it would be hard for it to be otherwise without changing the game’s fundamental nature as a turn-based match-3 game. I don’t think it’s a problem that the player quite reasonably expects to win most battles, or even that the skill cap for the battles themselves isn’t higher. It’s fundamentally a team-building game, and the fun is in exploring the play space, thinking about new possibilities and then testing them out.
The problem with The Great Maw is that it has so few weaknesses – basically only the mana cost of Sandstorm. Everything else is covered, limiting the number of possible teams that would be effective against it. To reliably beat Maw, you must deny brown and yellow or kill it before collects 24, while denying every skull match. Every other strategy is just a gamble. Drain and silence give you some more time, but you must still deny every skull match. Entangle would be an effective strategy, except for Frenzy. Its skill budget mostly went to Life, so it’s not particularly vulnerable to true damage. Maw needs another weakness, rather than being strong against almost everything.
Chance to devour on something that can happen as frequently as a skull match probably isn’t good no matter what the chance. No matter how low the chance is, it could still happen on the first match, making it just as frustrating on defense as it is now, but if it’s too low to be relied upon for an invader to build a strategy around, then it’s effectively worthless. I concur with the suggestion that Hunger should be changed to devour if the hit would kill, rather than on a random skull match. This would make it still powerful and valuable, but there would be effective strategies against it, and the outcome wouldn’t depend on a single die roll.
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if reroll opponent wouldnt cost a gem but some gold, im pretty sure the hassle in all of this would be half as much.
I get what you’re saying but I don’t think you get what I’m saying.
For example one of my favorite single-player series’ of all time is Assassin’s Creed. Recent releases have been marred by buggy single-player campaigns that probably could have been avoided had they not tried to shoehorn in multiplayer.
Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry, yes. But it seems a much larger contingent these days would rather shout profanities through a headset than anything else and the gaming companies seem all too eager to cater to it.
I haven’t played the most recent ac titles, but I personally loved some of the team based multiplayer modes on the older titles.
Yeah I just detest multiplayer games. I’m old, reflexively slow, and have a low tolerance for foul mouthed punks. 
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I get it, I just disagree.
I mean, I hear you about multiplayer because I never use it either and every hour/penny devoted to it is an hour/penny not being spent on the stuff that I happen to like… but then again the most recent Assassin’s Creed also had a fully voiced female protagonist who you could play 90% of the time & who never wore lingerie so there are substantial hours and dollars going in my direction & I know those headset wearing goons are furious about it.
And you say “recent releases” but I wonder if you just mean the Paris AC where the addition of multiplayer was a factor when they were already rushing a release & working on new technology. Syndicate is pretty smooth and they’ve changed their whole release schedule… so the fix was a lot more complex than just “maybe multiplayer is a resource sink.”
Plus, there’s the fact that a studio or a series might be the best one year and then… the creative momentum goes elsewhere over time. That’s a bummer. You want the thing you love to stay on top. But it doesn’t always work out that way.
To be fair, I just finished Unity. I haven’t played Syndicate yet, primarily because I spend so much time playing Gems of War. 
I was speaking specifically of III, Black Flag, and Unity, all of which had significant launch problems. Rogue was the lone exception and I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that it was also void of the multiplayer aspect altogether.
In the current meta there are very few viable defend teams when defend actually counts for something. I have tried other combinations and without Maw the ability to win plummets. Although I truely beileve if something else was equally viable the forums would be full of “it needs to be nerfed” posts.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. That Maw or devour is useful to the player? That it patches a hole in the fundamentally conflicting demands of the game? There certainly is a conflict. Gems of War is, at its base, a puzzle game. A defense team is a puzzle, constructed by other players, using the same pieces that players use to solve it. There is no impenetrable defense, by design! The player is expected to win. The defender cannot assess their opponent, cannot choose who to fight or which team to field on that basis. The outcome is determined by the invader, not the defender. The defender simply sets the difficulty of the battle, the bar which must be overcome, but cannot take an active part in the defense. No matter what team they field, there exists a team which will easily beat it, by design.
The conflict is that the game also suggests to players that they’re supposed to be able to make a successful defense team. They’re not supposed to be able to, though certainly some will be trickier puzzles than others, and not all players will have the intelligence, resources, or skill to overcome it. Under the old revenge system, this wasn’t a problem, as defeat meant an opportunity for greater rewards, and so the defense team’s defeat was considered inconsequential, or even beneficial to the player. Now that defeat means a mark upon your record, and the loss of PvP points, people care that the design is inherently contradictory.
I don’t think a real solution is possible without fundamentally altering the nature of the game, but the illusion could be dispelled by setting more realistic expectations about defense.
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Simple solution to that part: The devs need to make defense stop impacting PVP points.
There is no way to avoid lots and lots of losses on defense without a team that’s borderline game-breaking and that can be controlled by the AI. It’s frustrating to lose tiers now over something that’s entirely out of our control. No matter how good a defense team anyone puts up, it’s going to lose a lot more than it wins.
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As long as Queen Mab exists, nobody should expect more than a 10% win rate on Defense
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Toxic doesn’t need to kill… just damage over time, weaken (skills) etc… kinda like Famine’s 3rd trait I guess
If I could set my defense NOT to prioritize 3 skull match then my defense win % would sky rock.
When I invade I give the defending player almost all 3 skulls and use bonus mana to kill fast >_<
I am not a big fan of nerfing anything. Rather, come up with a strategy that counters the skill such as devour. I am not afraid of a few Maw’s and they can be easily defeated the majority of the time. Devs should always come up with counter troops to those that are “strong” and I think they do that well.
Things I am not a fan of are %'s that appear to be higher than what is listed. Infernal King regen seems closer to 50 plus % recently and it seems the first kill always spawns the regen. Still can be defeated though but annoying nonetheless!
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