The % of gems spent on class changes must be minuscule compared to gems spent on events/chests etc. Surely that minuscule amount of gems is vastly outweighed by the gratitude and thanks that all players would express. Can you make this argument on our behalf to whoever is stopping you from from making the change? Surely it’s an easy fix to reduce the timer to 1 hour?
This old chestnut…
Heroes have seen massive investment recently, long since the 50 gem cost was first implemented.
Heroes used to be pretty useless, frankly - and once you got 250 wins for the weapon (not even needing the hero in your team) you had no reason to ever again touch 90% of the classes. The 50 gem cost was needless and egregious friction from the start, but didn’t have so much impact.
Now, with talent trees: heroes are significantly better to use, or at least some are, with a few almost game-breakingly strong talents, especially clustered on Titan class (permanent barrier and extra explosions), AND the champion level system means players need to spend far longer levelling each hero with that hero class in the team. And we have daily tasks and delves, and raid and Invasion events that actually get quite hard. Now the 50 gem cost is a massive obstacle and annoyance.
Every day this week, I want to switch often:
- for pushing up Delve levels and for Invasion mode, which are getting seriously hard, I need Titan class
- for pvp, daily tasks, pet events repeatedly, most other things, I want to switch to Frostmage or Warden or whatever I’m currently grinding to level 100
I can’t switch when I like. Yes I have gems. No I’m not stupid enough to waste them on this friction cost. I’m stopped from playing modes I want the way I want, when I want. That’s seriously annoying and ultimately needless. I’m losing agency: I’ve heard it suggested that the cost makes us make more interesting decisions: I don’t buy that - it stops me trying different things constantly.
The game is a very different one to when classes and 50 gems to try something new were first introduced. Whatever reasoning and economics applied then cannot still apply and the debate should be re-opened…
…and if it can change from 72 hrs to 24 hrs without breaking a zillion other pieces of code and creating many destructive bugs, then it can surely change to 1 hour. I’m no programmer but I’m pretty sure I could find the integer variable that defines that timer and change its digits, and the world wouldn’t end…
…sigh…
30 Likes
between this “not being able to adjust legacy code” and the issue last week of people from certain countries not being able to play the game without deleting/fresh install and changing languages…i have to wonder what is going on…
not to mention bugs that have been around yet remain unfixed for ages, such as “ghost troops”. or the ever persistent having to close and reload the game just to be able to access my troops.
these are serious issues that still remain in the game month after month.
2 Likes
This ^
The 50 gem cost on a 24-hour delay is not valid. It wasn’t then and it sure as hell isn’t now.
Its stopping us from playing all these new modes how we want to play them.
The 72-hour delay wasn’t really “dark days” because a) we didn’t need to change nearly as much, and b) you actually went and fixed the thing.
@Saltypatra Tell the publishers or whoever else is stopping this happening to pull their head out of wherever it shouldn’t be and enable us to play the game right. Tell them it earns more money - that’s the truth!
We’re losing people every day because they can’t keep up with all the new stuff without only using the same strongest-possible meta troops and classes, at least give us some freedom of choice. We’ve constantly been forced to “work against the system” (see how wrong that sounds?) with things like conserving all the GW/Raid/Invasion fights until the one or two days a week we feel like using the OP classes, while the rest we have to level the other ones and avoid anything challenging. With Delves, we can’t do that. Not that it was healthy to do in the first place.
22 Likes
I just got your Post to an even 120 likes @Fleg. “Fight the Power!”
Yeah I’ve had a post for almost over a year now…
Obv nowadays, maybe this is way more useful & instead of just fun because how much stupid extra crap they’re adding. But yeah.
If the gem cost can’t be changed. Then surely the time it takes to trigger a free one can be changed Instead. Meet the community half way by changing the timer from 24 hours to 12 hours. Otherwise don’t insult us by saying “you care about” what your player base thinks.
11 Likes
Was already covered whether we like it or not.
That was… ages ago!!
Back when gems were in legendary tasks and there wasn’t 8 million other ways to spend gems in GoW?
Perhaps we should be grateful? 
Was that also when there wasn’t a new class released every month?
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This could have 1,000 likes and still nothing would be done. Enjoy the middle finger 
1 Like
I know that reason has been given before, but…from the perspective of someone on the outside, who has no idea what your code base looks like and only knows how the game plays, it doesn’t pass the sniff test. Even if that is the actual reason, it makes you guys look ridiculous, if I’m being blunt.
I’d make a reasonable guess that “slot Class in a per-team basis, right alongside slotting a Weapon” is the QOL change that people would want. Hell, I’d make a wildly speculative assumption that people would be happy if that was the only QOL change you put in.
I feel like the biggest problem here is that the longer this drags on, the more and more ridiculous it seems. I can’t remember the last time I changed class, because honestly, I just can’t be bothered to jump through the hoops - the fact that this seemingly fixable issue is what’s effectively negating an entire game system for me is kinda silly.
Again, I can’t speak to the actual reality, because what the hell do I know about it? But this is the perception, and I kinda think the perception is really beating you folks up.
11 Likes
One software devleloper to another:
I am struggling very hard to imagine how I could possibly implement class change such that there is high risk of shrapnel if I change it. I am calling “severe bullshit”.
It’s like arguing you can’t turn the lights off in a room because it’s an integral part of your house and you’re worried it might cause the toilet to clog.
If you need a developer qualified to analyze and suggest how to change a 50 to a 0, I will do this work pro bono. Analysis, design, testing, you name it. This is an absolute steal, I have nearly 15 years of development experience specifically in C#. I can even give an entire PowerPoint on how to change numbers in code. Drop me a DM. I’m used to collaborating with a team in New Zealand, so your office hours are very convenient for me to do a screen share presentation after work.
Otherwise, I’d really love a technical explanation of how it was implemented. It’s like a puzzle. All I can figure is you did the unspeakable: you put damn game logic in the SQL. That’s what you did, didn’t you? That’s the only way I can see it being so difficult to understand the side-effects you don’t want to change it. Even then, I’m really curious what the implication of changing the ‘50’ in the code to a ‘0’ or ‘1’ might be.
You’ve got beta testers, right?
19 Likes
The mana surge chances secretly contained a factor of 1/(gems cost to change classes) all along! Do you enjoy NaNs? ’Cause that’s what you’ll get if you set the cost to zero!
3 Likes
Honestly, it could be 3 months for what I and many others care. I might occasionally change my class for a day or a weekend but most of the time I don’t change it at all. Many people have titan as the active class for months. It’s just unused content for many players.
I suppose the 50 gems cost is a big income source for you from some players who just pay it every time they change. But having game design driven just by the profit kind of sucks.
The “shrapnel” in question must be coming from the publisher, as a resource sink disappears. The argument that this is a technical limitation is, as you rightly point out, ludicrous.
16 Likes
Yeah I want them to be honest.
Either their codebase has such questionable practices they can’t change an integer value for fear of the entire thing smashing down, or there is an external force demanding they leave it as-is. This is the kind of thing my team would delay a release so we could fix. We can’t stand having parts of our code so brittle everyone is afraid to touch them.
If it’s really the publisher, the best I can do is shake my fist at their greedy mandate.
When this is going to get really ugly is when they get the mandate at some point to increase the cost and they can casually do that. “Oh, well, it’s only complicated to LOWER the cost, it’s actually easy to increase it.” Yeah. Sure.
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To be fair, it’s felt like the publisher has been in the driver’s seat for a long time now. I’m not necessarily surprised to see the team carrying water for them (or at least, appearing to)…but I’m certainly saddened by it. Some of the transparency we used to have would be nice, that’s all, and it just feels like we’ve lost that.
6 Likes