And in that statement, you have crystallized the essence of a modern gacha-based game.
A well-made gacha-based game doesnāt let the player ever have control of outcomes. Knowledge enables planning, which in turn enables control. Iām still impressed that GoW allows datamining of future troops and events, as 99.9% of games of this type will go after any dataminer and very quickly issue them a cease and desist legal letter (at the minimum).
And, yes, pets are explicitly designed to incur large amounts of gem spending on impulse binges because one never knows if it will be months until that pet shows up again in a rescue. Like anything else, spending on pets is not a requirement, but good luck finishing a pet naturally for free; not anymore.
And also, yes, pets not being in explore is intentional to force players to give up something to farm a specific resource. The days of one-stop game mode playing for resource farming are over. If you farm explores, youāre giving up pets to do so. If you farm PvP, then you are giving up gold output in exchange.
They consider Farming PvP an Exploit. Better to be safe and play Explore and act like pets donāt exist outside of those wanting the kingdom stars maxed.
Its in the spoiler since months, any chance for a release with one of the next updates AND an appearence outside PVP?
If you can find him in every other mode with a PVP Win afterwards would also be a solution for the pet problem.
Posting a quick FYI on the matter. This issue was discussed on the PQ stream tonight. The design intent is for each game mode to have its own rewards for players to choose to pursue, and move away from the āone-mode-fits-allā model of the past. The core rewards for PvP at this time are the 2 CXP per match and the chance at pet gnomes, both of which are not available in Explore. To add pet gnomes to Explore would even further aggravate the situation even more than it is currently.
Instead, in a future update, the devs have decided to add additional incentives to PvP to encourage players to play there. But, that wonāt happen until sometime after the 5.0 update because a solution needs to be designed to address the situation that agrees with their current design goals for each game mode.
They can easily accomplish that by balancing the game more properly. Not putting an incentive on a game mode that people donāt want to play, but have to if they want pets.
The best incentive that GoW used to be based on was āFunā. Now itās all about trapping rewards behind shitty design elements.
Besides the uncalled for gold nerf. The worst part about PvP is the 90% Life and Death Defenses. And since you only play like 10 different players. Itās like a song being on repeat over and over again. Even the best songs in the world can be brain numbing on the 50th consecutive play. Basically all they have to do about Life and Death is removed the blessed upgrade. But they wonāt. They like how much Life and Death slows players down.
So basically they want PvP to be slow, no matter the cost to the fun aspect of it.
They want us to care about pets, no matter if playing PvP is the worst part of the game right now. Which is sad, because for years it used to be the best element of it.
Itās wonderful to plan such amazing things for 5.0ā¦I hope the servers stay on that long. At this rate itāll require a bail out from 505 because thereās no way in hell they are going to be profitable this quarter.
(I am under the assumption that 5.0 will come after 4.8 and 4.8.5 so at least 3-4 months from now.)
It was indeed: now they just keep digging deeper in the hopes of getting out of a hole, all at the expense of the playerbase. The explore extra clicks are one of the most hypocritical game design features I have come across. But Devsā conscience is unaffected by it, because it helps dig the hole.
Unsurprising though, seeing how they consistently ālikeā posts that try to justify their abusive philosophy (see two posts above), whereas they delete posts containing facts that expose their shortcomings for others to see.
Except kingdoms are one of the core progress markers.
If I donāt do delves I get less gold and ingots, ok, I can get those somewhere else.
But pets are now essentially exclusive to PvP, and even there they arenāt a reliable reward. First you have to get lucky enough to find a gnome, defeat it (thatās usually the easiest step), and then pray to everything you can think that itās the pet you were looking for. If itās not, you can try looking for a new gnome in an hour.
This is simply not true. If you are āableā to add new gnomes to specific or multiple game modes (eg jewel gnomes) then you are āableā to introduce pet gnomes to any mode you choose. Translating āarenāt ableā to its more commonplace alternative, ācantā puts this situation into context; itās not that you ācanātā, itās that you āwonātā. Thatās a big difference.
As far as the post stating that communication and teamwork means pet availability is āfineā, then that reflects a niche situation which doesnāt reflect the general pet availability experience. 12, 18 (canāt be exact on the numbers) pets per day is a far cry from the number of pets most guilds encounter during the same time frame. And as others have pointed out, the 1 hour limit greatly inhibits viable rescue opportunities due to everyday activities, timezone variations and so on. Why canāt ALL pets rescued remain available to all guild members within a daily reset 24 hour window? We could rise from sleep, return from work etc and open the games menu to see if there are any gnomes available to rescue thanks to the endeavours of our friends? Similarly, if a guild member finds a gnome, rescues it, and then goes back to pvp and finds another gnome 20 minutes later, why should he feel obliged to sit until the remainder of the original rescue hour expires before killing off the 2nd pet to trigger another rescue. Most of us donāt have time for that. Expanding the hour long rescue window to a 24 hour reset window would give most members a chance to rescue the pets found in that period. This one change would keep pvp relevant and possibly end requests for pet gnome integration in other game modes such as explore.
@Saltypatra Is there any chance of pet gnomes becoming stackable? Itās beyond frustrating to have a pet up and then come across another pet gnome that is basically wasted. I think having the next pet gnome activate when the first pet is down might be a step in the right direction.
As I started writing down gnomes in PvPā¦here is how this week looks so far (460 games): M (45); M (75); J (145); T (182); P (312; magmapillar); G (335); G (453); T (455)
which gives a Pet Gnome rate of stunning 0,2% (with overall gnome rate being 1,7%).
Since adding Pet Gnomes to explore is out of the question, I entertain the idea of two possible scenarios to alleviate the situation:
make Pet Gnomes the only ones to spawn in PvP;
(because #1 will probably sound too radical and extreme) ramp Pet Gnome spawn rate up to 50% and other gnomes (Treasure; Soul; Glory; Jewel; Mecha) get 10% each, giving a grand total of 100%.
Even then I and all of us would absolutely love for pet gnomes to be in Explore, itās unfortunately very obvious why it wonāt happen any time soon or ever: there already is very little reason to play PVP now so making pet gnomes no longer exclusive to it will further reduce the incentive to play PVP.
Salty has confirmed that PVP will be updated eventually, which will hopefully make it more attractive. Further, Arena is confirmed for a rework eventually and thus its source of pet gnomes will become attractive as well.
As is, having pet gnomes exclusive to a dead game mode is most frustrating, but I completely understand why the devs refuse to change this.
@Saltypatra The suggestion to increase pet gnome rates in PVP is a very good suggestion in my opinion since it helps with player complaints that pets are too hard to acquire while also incentivizing playing PVP. Two birds, one stone. And then the devs can tout this as a way they did something for the community.
@Smeeg had an idea in another thread that I liked: If a pet gnome is triggered while another pet event is up (like on Wednesdays), instead of receiving two white pet food, you receive pet gnome bait.
I like the idea, too, but Iām sure itās too generous and would ābreak the economyā (i.e. āremove the pet gates intended to frustrate players into spending their way past themā).
I wouldnāt be opposed to them giving (yet another) crafting resource, though. 1/5 of a thing I could use to create a pet bait would result in a few more pet rescues over time, but not as many, and it would have the added benefit of making a thing already in the game not something with which only people who pay can interact.
Iād be pretty curious to see what current pet bait purchase numbers are. Iām sure theyāre not zeroābut Itād be pretty surprising to me if they were lucrative. Maybe if more people got a little taste, theyād want to buy in (which is why the game gives free gems, right? Get Tiers I and II for free, tempt you to spring to buy Tier IIIā¦).
