Of course they do.
Us.
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If you cant because your told not to, couldn’t you just make it a visual “bug”? Where it still says 50 gems, but really charges zero. Not like we never had a bg before 
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Its a lame-ass supposed resource sink, if that’s what they’re calling it internally, because almost nobody is actually spending gems on that nonsense. I think. Either that or they’re too ashamed of caving to admit it. Not like we’ll ever see those numbers though…
Pretty sure the majority of users would love this as a QOL upgrade… infact most would love this even if it’s the ONLY QOL upgrade for 4.2…
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I went from frostmage to assassin to try and level it… then i regretted my life choice and paid 50 gems to go back to frosty. The ONLY time 50 gems wasnt a bigger burden than playing the class i had selected.
Nooooooooo!
We must boycott! 
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I think some translations of Salty’s comments are needed in this thread, to bring some clarity to her comments. She’s said probably borderline more than she’s allowed to in this thread, but some posters appear to be misinterpreting her comments.
As a disclaimer, these are my interpretations and not those of anyone at Infinity Plus 2 or 505 Games, and are solely mine alone.
Most of the posters, especially the technically oriented ones, understand the issues with legacy code. Where some posters are going astray appear to be the lines thereafter.
Everything in business has costs. Generally sound business decisions take into account a cost/benefit analysis on performing those actions.
For the rest of this post, I am going to use a car analogy to describe issues in lay terms.
Consider a car that is has irregular noises coming from the engine, but otherwise performs satisfactorily. You take it to your mechanic, and says that the issues comes from an old part that require a full disassembly of the engine block to replace, which would cost quite a lot of money and time in labor costs disassembling and reassembling the engine. The mechanic states that although the engine is producing those noises, that it is not a sign of anything causing an engine breakdown in the future. As it would cost a lot of money and time to replace the faulty part, and that there are signs that the engine will break down from the leaving the part there, you decide to deal with the noises and not replace the part.
The devs have surely performed analyses on what it would take to replace the legacy code, the costs involved with testing needed to verify that replacing the code doesn’t break things in the game, and reported those costs to the publisher. At this point, the publisher has decided that the costs involved are too costly for a non-gamebreaking issue. Always subject to change in the future, though.
Some have interpreted these lines correctly.
Infinity Plus 2 is not in creative control over the GoW IP, 505 Games, as the publisher, is. As such, no matter how much the devs may actually have begged and pleaded with the publisher regarding the forum’s feedback on the class change issue, 505 has executive authority to deny any requests the devs make to be implemented in the game.
The publisher is likely over-ruling the request to reduce gems fees from 50 down to some marginal number. Salty, nor any employee of Infinity Plus 2, is surely not allowed to speak ill will of the publisher or to blame an issue on a decision the publisher made about GoW.
That said, the devs do still have a good amount of creative input towards the game (such as delving, which is something the devs wanted for a long time). However, using the car analogy, likely somewhere between 3.0 and 3.1, the devs handed the keys to the car over to the publisher who now drives the car, as evidenced in the content in patches 3.1 and beyond emphasizing monetization of the game.
So to sum up, the publisher likely isn’t allowing either the code update because of development and testing costs and is likely overriding the devs on reducing the class change costs.
Infinity Plus 2’s hands are currently tied on the matter.
If I had to take a stab at this on when the code update would be allowed, it would have to be bundled with a new monetization feature yet to be implemented that covered the lost revenues from removing the class change fee. Otherwise, such a change that removes a revenue stream (even if small) with no other financial benefit will all-but-never be approved.
That’s the cold, harsh reality of how business management works.
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There is a reason that myself and other people that know how to code have called BS on the “technical” excuse. Slypenslyde already went over this point in length. But TLDR: There would need to be something majorly wrong and incompetent in the way that codebase is designed if changing the 50 integer to a 1 integer would cause problems in their codebase. The same could be said of changing 24 hours to 1 hour. This is not an issue of investing hours of development cycles.
So, I choose to believe they don’t have a completely ridiculous and unprofessional codebase. That leaves me with the conclusion that their publisher doesn’t want to reduce the gem cost or the wait period. As others have said, I would have preferred if they just stated that plainly without the hocus pocus aspect.
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I can’t comment much further on this matter, but I would like to bring something up about the legacy code. Our current in house programmers weren’t the ones who implemented it. We used to have our coding outsourced, and this was primarily when we were using Adobe Air. As such, it’s a very finnicky and tricky bit of code to change and/or fix, and we don’t know what else will be affected and how much time and resources that will in turn take to fix, etc.
To further clarify, we have always worked closely with our publisher since the inception of Gems of War. This didn’t change or shift around 3.0 or 3.1, as we have always had a strong working relationship. I understand that there is the perception that there was a significant change around this time, and yes, in a way there was. This was when I joined the team, and our support team grew. These were long overdue additions to the Gems of War team, as Sirrian and Nimhain didn’t have the time to be as active on these forums as the game, and our userbase, grew rapidly. It isn’t just the time either, managing and being a part of a community is emotionally draining, especially if you are not naturally inclined towards constant communication. (Hello, extrovert over here!!!) They would spend hours answering questions and being active, with little reward outside of a rare thanks and the occasional death threat.
As far as development teams go, we are quite transparent. I go out of my way to answer everything I can for you, and even organise Developer Q&As so you can still have access to Sirrian and Nimhain in a way that isn’t overwhelming to them or their extremely busy work schedules. You don’t see this kind of transparency with many titles, and I understand why it is valuable for us to extend it and for players to appreciate it. Some small indies can do so, but as games grow the developers time becomes scarcer, which is true of Gems of War.
That was a bit of a tangent, but to finish… I am sorry you feel this way, but I can’t say anything else on this matter that isn’t repeating what I have said earlier.
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And, from my limited experience with Unity, the way assets and scripts get structured makes it very easy for changes that should be simple to have unexpected and drastic effects elsewhere. Maybe this is just due to my amateur status.
Still of the opinion that Salty has said all she can say without risking getting fired.
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That’s funny! You almost got me there.
I honestly don’t expect her to say anything else on the topic at this point. She has a job to do. I’m well aware of that. However, that doesn’t mean that players are going to stop making their feelings known on the topic. It’s a huge irritation and fun killer for many mid/late game players.
I love the game. Otherwise, I wouldn’t play it as long as I do or spend so much time helping my guild. But honestly, this gem fee topic irritates me every time I think of a great build to do with X, Y, Z class and find that I’m handicapped by a ridiculous limitation that shouldn’t be there. The fee takes away from the enjoyment of the class system they spent all that time and money developing.
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Awesome news since console gems was always Unity. Console players don’t cry about redeem codes, steam/mobile players won’t cry when console gets 50 gem class change dropped.
Easier for them to collect lots of daily tributes anyways.
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I did, and still cry a little about it. Haha.
Tell me about. Can’t collect tribute or get a pet unless I’m “chained” to my Xbox. Stinks.
I really wish we had a companion app like some games do. Not asking for much. Just something I could collect tribute with or open my mail.
Probably will never happen though
All I’m saying is if my house’s electrical box was inside of my shower, I’d prioritize moving it to the garage before building the helipad in the back yard.
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Also make sure that there is not a single remaining, or missing, screw when everything is done.
QFT.
You would be surprised with the level of “transparency” of some games. Just because Salty can’t provide a public answer to a specific point that a specific person wants answered doesn’t mean that there isn’t transparency regarding issues with the game.
Yes, on some things, the devs in general have become a bit murkier than they used to be. But, there are much, MUCH more games in the transparency department than GoW out there.
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Like the exact odds of a mythic drop? How about the way guild war scores are figured? Tribute bug fix? Do me a favor and look up the definition of transparency.
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