Mithranâs posts is quite good, but I fear that they are too lengthy for the Devs to read.
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Mithranâs posts are some of my favorite things on this forum. Very well presented and reasoned arguments that I hope people are reading and taking to heart
Honestly, Iâm still here playing this game due more to the passionate members of the playerbase who are also smart and willing to write lengthy posts that make me consider my own thoughts and feelings than for some of Gemsâ own core mechanics.
Edit: Sorry for that run-on sentence. Sheesh. My brainâs still a little jostled from the last elf I smashed with my forehead â for the Horde @ChunkyMono 
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Agreed that pets are different, and that problems have existed (and been posted about on the forums) before the changes to Explore.
A âperfect stormâ was a phrase used to describe some of the kerfuffle around the changes to Casual PvP in the 4.7 update (combined with dissatisfaction around ETs):
On the one hand, I wanted to sympathise, since there were obviously mistakes made and the devs were under a lot of pressure.
On the other hand, many of the elements of the âperfect stormâ were things that had been brought up or visible well before the âstormâ arrived, like the PvP matchmaking and gold payouts that @Mithran has championed many times on the forums.
So again,
I also thought the points around agency (hat tip @Magnusimus) and having a âway forwardâ to progress pets at any point in time were on the money.
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Can we start a Kickstarter or Gofundme so Mithran can take over this gameâs design direction and implementation?
The mere illusion of such design leadership has my wallet screaming âshut up and take my moneyâ 
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And in that statement, you have crystallized the essence of a modern gacha-based game.
A well-made gacha-based game doesnât let the player ever have control of outcomes. Knowledge enables planning, which in turn enables control. Iâm 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, youâre giving up pets to do so. If you farm PvP, then you are giving up gold output in exchange.
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They consider Farming PvP an Exploit. Better to be safe and play Explore and act like pets donât exist outside of those wanting the kingdom stars maxed.
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Ongoing testing: 90 PvP battles since week reset, zero pet gnomes.
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Ok no Pet Gnome outside PVP⌠
Whats about the Baited Pet Gnome?
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.
Baited pet gnomes were added in 4.7. They are summoned whenever a player uses their pet gnome bait:
Thanks, i know about the shop possibilty.
But the unit itself still hasnt been released, so maybe a alternative or just a spoiler bug 
I doubt they have any intention of releasing the baited gnome as a troop for collection. He just represents a visual way to access an IAP.
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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 âone-mode-fits-allâ 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 wonât 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.
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They can easily accomplish that by balancing the game more properly. Not putting an incentive on a game mode that people donât want to play, but have to if they want pets.
The best incentive that GoW used to be based on was âFunâ. Now itâs 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. Itâs 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 wonât. 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.
Itâs wonderful to plan such amazing things for 5.0âŚI hope the servers stay on that long. At this rate itâll require a bail out from 505 because thereâs 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.)
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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 Devsâ conscience is unaffected by it, because it helps dig the hole.
Unsurprising though, seeing how they consistently âlikeâ 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.
Self-explanatory Denial Syndrome.
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Except kingdoms are one of the core progress markers.
If I donât 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 arenât a reliable reward. First you have to get lucky enough to find a gnome, defeat it (thatâs usually the easiest step), and then pray to everything you can think that itâs the pet you were looking for. If itâs not, you can try looking for a new gnome in an hour.
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This is simply not true. If you are âableâ to add new gnomes to specific or multiple game modes (eg jewel gnomes) then you are âableâ to introduce pet gnomes to any mode you choose. Translating âarenât ableâ to its more commonplace alternative, âcantâ puts this situation into context; itâs not that you âcanâtâ, itâs that you âwonâtâ. Thatâs a big difference.
As far as the post stating that communication and teamwork means pet availability is âfineâ, then that reflects a niche situation which doesnât reflect the general pet availability experience. 12, 18 (canât 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 canât 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 donât 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.
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The biggest problem is at Orbweaver the Stealthy.
If you consider that you have saved forever on Zuul (God Troop) for example and he canât hit it.
@Saltypatra Is there any chance of pet gnomes becoming stackable? Itâs 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.
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As I started writing down gnomes in PvPâŚhere 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%.
6 Likes