Devs, please slow down!

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

I’ve been long wanting to post this, but I am at the point where it gets too much for me, so here goes.

When you announced that there would be no more kingdoms for a while, I was relieved. Finally an opportunity to play what was currently around instead of chasing new content; Then you started delves, which are in fact also … kingdoms, but underground ones. We are already at our 4th now, along with new troops.

I don’t mind new content but I get the feeling that you are just pushing new content out for the sake of new content. For the regular players, who like to play a fair amount weekly but not as replacement of his whole life, this is becoming a burden. I play the game for over more than 3 years and I see that ‘carrot’ becoming more and more distant, or I should play 5hrs daily.

I like to complete things, like most gamers, but when you can only do a fraction of it because every hr there is something else to do, you get burned up quickly.

I can only imagine what it is for a new player:
hundreds (almost 1000) cards, dozens of kingdoms, delves, pvp, bounties, pets, weapons, treasure hunt, weekly events, daily events, hourly events all those materials to collect,…

What do I really want then?

Quality over quantity. I think most players would prefer 100 useable cards, than 1000 of which 800 will never see play. Be creative with what there is, instead of new content to just ‘up the numbers’.

Be creative, set objectives on the board. Do something with the board like monster busters for example. Dont just restrict troops and up enemy stats, that’s-sorry-lazy. The blocks in delves and treasure hunt are a welcome change. But treasure hunt isnt worth it due to time-reward issues.

I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking this. Just look at the current number of mid and endgame players quitting.

I love this game already more than 3 yrs, that’s why I’m doing this post. So plz one of the devs, reply on this 1, you owe me that much.

Other players, you can add comments, even be critic on me if you thin k I’m wrong.

Grtz.

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2

I think some of what you’ve said is valid. The guild i’m in has lost several long time player over the last month or so, and have specifically stated the amount extra time they are “required” to play as the reason for leaving the game.
Personally I don’t really care about the delves or class events, as i’ve already fully levelled up the classes and weapons I use the most so I just pick and choose to play what I want.

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Recruiting has been a pain also. before the 4.0 update, i would get a recruit within a week, usually on the weekend. Now we are having a hard time recruiting enough to keep up with the number of people leaving the game.

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Hey, @thegreyorc, old team mate and friend. Hope you are doing well! :+1:

I believe players that is leaving the game affect the perfectionist in the game the most, the ones who needs to do absolutely every single daily tasks, delves, dungeons, pet rescues and other events every day. They don’t manage to adapt and accepting that its okay to not do every single event, tasks, rescues etc every single day. Then a major burn out will arrive sooner or later for those players, and we are see them leaving.

Also worth to mention. This game might not be the best game to start out on for new players. I think it can be a very overwhelming game. There is just too much of stuff, and confusions often follows with that. So I believe a ton of players is leaving the game fairly early after they have downloaded the game. 3 years ago it was a simple game that met the eye, when I first started out. That is not the case anymore.

For me this game have become a “Gems of Events”. But also that only counts for those players or guilds that actually aim for the events. If I was not able to adapt being in a top guild, I would probably aim for a casual guild and it could have been a “Gems of Arena”, “Gems of PvP” or “Gems of Freedom” for me.

About the new troops we get, It have been like that since I started playing 3 years ago, 80% of the new troops we get is not much playable for midgame/endgame players. I totally agree that they must slow down a little and spend more time creating some of the troops. But I can’t see this change come after 3 years have passed already without any changes. Its kinda strange that months might pas by without getting any good troops.

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I think it’s all a matter of perception. I welcome new content.

Gems of War has crossed over from Tetris to Fallout 4. There isn’t one goal or one way to play. You can ignore all the side quests and keep playing the original, or you can branch out if you got bored with PvP-only.

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A massive +1 to this, it needed to be said and you’ve done so quite well, thank you!

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I don’t personally feel this way about the progression of the game, but as GM, I’ve lost several long-time players who said almost exactly this.

I will be their voice here and agree with you.

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Great post. A massive +1 from me. :+1::+1::+1:

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Same here, I dont mind all the stuff added, but too much too fast is pushing people away. I get trying to make money, (Must be already making some to be able to create all this new content) But when long time members that have most of the troops and high level are quitting, seems like the new players starting with nothing will really be overwhelmed.

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I wish for more things to do… I’m level 1623, I do all my daily tasks very quickly, do my delves shortly, and mostly do casual pvp, arena since I have so little left to do. Bounty took me less than three hours to finish on Friday, so my weekend was just guild wars and my bounty free sigils.

I don’t get why people gripe about not having play-time and wanting everyone to have to play as they do.

There are plenty of guilds with low requirements, and though there are I’ve even heard people in those guilds claim earning 200 seals takes way too long…

Why can’t you pace yourself, play as little or as much as you want, and join a guild that meets your pace and schedule? Why is the only other option for the game to stop getting new content, and to need as little time invested as possible?

I don’t understand it, but I guess some people would rather this game not have any reason to make them want to login, so they could live their lives and play a few minutes here and there…

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And another +1 here.

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yup i also agree +1 from me

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Feels odd being told to ‘pace yourself’ by someone who could play for three hours solid on Friday. That can’t be representative of most players…

Perhaps re-read the post. It’s hardly the writing of a ‘few minutes a day to login’ player. Don’t belittle the views of someone who doesn’t match your playing time.

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I am in 100% agreement with this post, as I had already stated in the patch note thread. I personally quit because of the chore-like structure. When I started the game, I hoped to complete my troops - this was taken from me, as I will always lack troops and Zuul’Goth in particular as I don’t have the time or fun for raid/invasion or the gems for the shop. And delves take me an hour to complete every day - and two more for the delve events (which are now changed to take up even more time if you wanna get the rewards, so I’m not doing them anymore).

I personally never minded new kingdoms - the troops could be pulled from chests easily enough - but with delves gating troops, ingots and pets from you, forcing you to play every day, this is not a casual game anymore that I loved to play to relax. I have complete burnout from doing delves, so that’s why I’m out now. I am luckily in a guild which has no event requirements, but only a gold one, so I will keep checking in until my gold reserves run out meeting the weekly requirement, in hopes that things change - but why would they; we just got another event that equals delves. While I don’t know how long the doom thing will take, it surely will be longer than GW…

That said, whenever I check the steam page, I see that more people than ever are logging in, so between the publisher likely pestering the devs to add more and more new content and it working out for players, I am at the point where I believe that this “new” GoW is very attractive to new players, but the older players who played a game that had a very different approach (casual vs. today’s hardcore appeal) are turned away at this point.

But yeah, I always see 1700-1900 people logged in via steam a lot when in April it was like 1200-1400.

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Sheba has summed it up quite neatly.

At what point does more new content end up being too much content?

The devs have said that you can do what you wish and don’t have to do everything.
However those of us with collector and or completionist mindsets would disagree.

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This whole situation with the recently released troops being more than often subpar or even unplayable inside their own thematic weekly event is dreadful.

There are a lot of missing opportunities within these new features and eventually the experience can get really dull to many players.

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You felt I was belittling people because I put more time into the game than they do? I enjoy playing Gems of war, it saddens me people want the game to have less content because they would prefer the game to fit their lives and other hobbies and interests… However, reading your comments I’d say it was clear how you feel about people that have three hours, or more, to play Gems of War.

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18

I would also like to add an analysis of how the game and what it offers to the player progressed, in terms of showing why things have gotten worse lately and the burnout feeling happened.

  • Gold: Was always there, can be earned from literally any game mode in various amount. Freedom to earn however you please. Also tribute.
  • Traitstones: Drop mainly from explore, but every battle grants one and so does Treasure Hunt. Getting them as a PVP-player through the Glory shop was always an option. No issues to earn them by preferring one playstyle over the other. Also guild legendary tasks.
  • Souls: While in huge quantity farmed through Challenges, they are also gained through everything and will pile up slowly but surely no matter how you play.
  • Glory: Mainly from PVP, but I got all my armors through Treasure Hunt saving up. I never did PVP, but still have 60k Glory right now, also thanks to tribute and guild tasks.
  • Gem Keys: Guild tasks mainly, but as long as you earn gold (and contribute to your guild), these are pretty much tied to gold that way. Newbies also get them from TH.
  • Glory Keys: Arena, PVP, Treasure Hunt, Guild tasks…not limiting you very much.
  • Gold Keys: Are everywhere.
  • New troops (Krystara): Mythics can be gotten through the soulforge, but are also in chests all the time, so you are not forced to do dungeons. You do pull most epics and legendaries sooner or later through chests. Rare and Common troops are never a problem, no matter what you play.
  • Gems: Tribute and Guild Tasks and Treasure Hunt. I still think GoW offers them pretty freely, despite the amount of Gem Sinks being ungodly at this point.
  • Kingdom Stat Points before the Underworld happened: Were gained by playing the game in whatever way you wanted as you would progress through the currencies and troops - as shown above - no matter what you did.

These were the things that were there when I joined. None of these things ever limited me in how I wanted to play.
Then, things got a little more iffy:

  • Pets (Krystara): Needed to be in a good guild for them, needed quite a few strong troops to clear the event. Optional and not very useful, though, so skippable.
  • Orbs/Zuul’Goth: Orbs themselves don’t do much for you that you cannot do on your own. That much is true. However, there are some exceptions - Common Vault Troops (which are basically impossible to ascend to mythic if you don’t use orbs for that) and of course Zuul’Goth. If you don’t hardcore farm vault events, you are forced to either do bounty or raid/invasion in a great guild. Both will take you a LONG time to do and can be very stressful. Let’s not even talk about Zuul’Goth. I still have only one Orb of Power, lol…
  • Hero-Exp: You are now forced to use the hero to earn that class-exp - before, you didn’t need to use the hero to unlock the class-weapon. I never use the hero, I never get class-exp. Still, it is tolerably doable in explore even if you hate the hero.

And then there came delves:

  • Troops (Underworld): You cannot earn shards any other way than delves and these troops require shards. You are forced to do delves. This translates directly into stat points and tribute, both from kingdom stars and renown.
  • Pets (Underworld): Ha, ha, ha, good luck getting them from highlevel delves only.
  • Hoard-renown: No way to do without delves, so you can’t get renown from here without delves, either.
  • Highlevel Ingots: While theoretically you can get legendary and mythic ingots from PVP, good luck. Given the amount needed and the amount of legendary weapons, I would deem it impossible without delves.

And now, delves are NOT like Treasure Hunt, where you can save up your maps until you wanna use them. Either you do your three delves a day or you fall behind. And let’s not even start on how hard delves are and the hoard gold sink and how the latest patch made reaching 500 basically crazy impossible.

Delves are technically fun and a good addition. But they are time-consuming, the player is FORCED to do them to get a LOT of the content required to advance and the player cannot even choose when to do them but instead has to do them every day. And that is the stage where chore/burnout-feelings set in. While raid and invasion and Zuul’Goth made the game impossible for completionists to be feasible unless you cash out gems every week and have a LOT of patience for Zuul’Goth unless you want to spend hours for the leaderboard, delves made something even worse: Making a very time-consuming game mode a requirement to get anything in the game. I sit on enough traitstones and souls to level and trait all the troops from the underworld, but I cannot get them without delves. I can earn all the legendary weapons, but leveling them is a pain without delve ingots.

I wouldn’t mind delves if they were shorter. I REALLY wouldn’t mind them if I could save my attempts like treasure maps to use when I want. I definitely wouldn’t mind them if I could get the rewards from them through other game modes as well so that I would have a choice again. But force me to do something for a longer period of time every day with a lot of restrictions (level is pretty much set once you get high since you cannot adjust downwards again, colors are restricted…), then it becomes less fun and also a job. And a game should never be a job.

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Your post certainly came across as belittling and patronising… I guess you didn’t intend it - but I got the fastest ten likes I’ve had in an age, so clearly others also found your post annoying at least…

I’m sorry if my response came back as harsh. I also love playing the game, and play for at least 1-2 hours most days - typically on my train commute. But the amount of daily content and events now often exceeds the time I can make available, and if I don’t do it, I feel I’m missing out, and the speed at which new stuff arrives makes my collection effort start to feel pointless. I’m hardly a casual player, and very sure my activity levels put me in the top ‘something’ percentage of the player base - the game has many thousands of casual players who also tend to be those putting in cash, btw.

I’m invested enough in the game to put up with the above feelings for now. But the OP is right that this deluge of tasks and events may put off a big part of the player population… and I agree I’d rather see more quality and less quantity…

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These two posts from Sheba pretty much express how I feel, but a couple things I want to add:

  1. I’m not a hater of new content, but I feel there is a quantity vs quality (content) issue, in this game. You don’t have to look much further than Sigil events (basically, the same game mode, just copy-paste with minor tweaks) to see my point there.

  2. Some of the content is great, in theory, but less than stellar, in practice. For example, Pets. Cool, neat, little idea. But, the battle stats can be ridiculous, the bonuses are small (especially, for how much work goes into them), etc. Another example is Gnomes. Cool, neat, I like the idea of them. But, the drop rates in the Vault are pitiful, at best. Also, even for low level players, some of the rewards are still meh. Especially, when we have a Soul Gnome yet the Treasure Gnome can still drop souls.

  3. This whole “only one way” to get new content stuff. Sheba talked about troops in the Underworld. Great example here. You could have all the traitstones in the world, but if you don’t play Delves (or at least buy Faction Tiers and get shards that way), you aren’t getting those troops. Now, this wouldn’t bother me so much if they were like Vault troops or Primal troops, where they aren’t tied to Kingdom Power. Another example of this issue is Raid, Invasion, and Faction weapons. Yes, Raid and Invasion ones you can also Forge… But only for that week. If you’re missed them or are new to the game, kiss them good bye… Unless you pay $5. Faction weapons are even worse in a way. You never see them on the Forge and there is no Gem free way to get them (to my knowledge). Only good thing is they eventually pop up again during each Faction (event) that they are from.

So, in short, it’s not that I’m opposed to new content (I actually love when devs try to keep a game fresh and fun), but the way a lot of this “new” stuff is done is neither fresh nor fun, a lot of the time, in my opinion.

Anyway, you got another +1 here from me, OP

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