I’m not normally one to post lengthy posts. Your post is a good thought out response to question why people feel the way they do. I have quoted the above.
I’ve watched Tacet’s videos and he is great for this game. I have also noticed he has like 900k glory, 10k gems, oodles of gold.I watched him once drain his entire gold pool to try and get troops, maybe fire bomb to mythic, not sure and he is now back up again at xx million gold.
Did he not once have like 100k gems. He only needs to play a little right now, because his resource pool is infinitely bigger than say mine for example. He has every troop, everything. He doesn’t need to traitstone farm, soul farm, pvp farm for glory, he just uses glory, traits the weekly troop, does the events at a tier to suit and the same with delves. He gets every mythic, he traits them and plays them the same day.
I would love to be in that boat and am near L1300.
I don’t need souls. I am reasonable with traitstones, but not all of my troops are traited and I missed a few mythics by not having the luck or resources to get them prior to 8 months ago when joined a better guild.
I unequipped armour in the early days so as not to level too quick. I don’t like poor designed raids or invasions or bounty, but will spend gems if the troop/options allow for fun. Probably 75% of either/all have been dire with the troop options. Orbs I won that weren’t orbs of growth/clans, I have used to try and short cut more dire farming.
You are maybe looking at it from where you stand, with your resource pool and Tacet’s. I don’t know what your resource pool is like, either now or but you have historically been in a bracket 1 (or high echelon) guild? Where you in the guild when LT’s provided gems. If so, your gem pool will have given you more scope to get mythics, more spare gems to manage, to more easily counter the spending of gems to either get mythics or run events. Even if you weren’t your GW gems will be far better than all put your counterparts in similar brackets.
Those that haven’t and I have been in a bracket 10-15 guild for the past 8 months and was in a 2 man guild before for about 18 months will not have the resource pool you have to more easily maintain equilibrium.
I was writing this before to the OP.
The problem seems to be the creation of a perceived divide. I am not a completionist and also think that most players on this forum are not in the minds of the developers when they do anything.
They are looking for people like I was 2 years plus back, willing to pay to seemingly progress. I have zero interest in getting Zhul and may have even spent major orbs on troop upgrades.
Casual players in any game by their definition will be casual players. From that POV if you want to play gems of war casually, you can do most things. It can be played at an hour a day, but you will still have had to have played for a long time and or not be burned out by all the time sinks. If you play a lot and some weeks I can play a lot, you still are almost overwhelmed by it all. Unless you have reached that zenith, you fall behind.
So apart from completionist arguments, there is the falling behind argument.
PVP is something I have played a lot, over 35k pvp battles and I would actually say that PVP is actually relatively healthy, and the changes recently made are good. I do have one worry though with PVP, the proliferation of Dragon’s Eye, Titan, barrier on brown and no viable counters.
Dragon’s Eye and Titan and brown and the changes to Scorpius have not been thought out, properly tested. So, I now totally avoid any team with Dragon’s Eye and anything with Scorpius and Eye and ofc Euryali. I have never avoided pvp teams before.
Dragon Eye’s needs a rethink, it was made when hero classes didn’t have talent trees and being able to fill with one mana surging three gem match and then refilling the next time the opponent goes to do the same. Spirit Fox is a very very poor counter to it as one three match again and it’s most likely full.
I am pretty sure Dragon’s Eye will need a counter and soon, because the more it appears in PVP with impervious colleagues and as Titan or Frostmage, the more PVP complaints will arise. I know there’s another mythic coming that will use similar mechanics.
I dislike losing, I like a challenge, but a reasonable one, so I will want to get the tools of the trade to help me not lose as often.
Also, the battlecrasher - could we have an option to turn battlecrasher off? In fact same with all types of gnomes, except pet gnomes and when it is event time. 50 souls? C’mon fellas let’s be serious. I don’t care if it weakens my opponent, I didn’t select a 3 trophy match for an easy fight and I’m also wary of the seemingly 100% AI transform on everything with the pain from Night Hag in delves lately.
PVP has been slowed down with all of these additions over the past few months, hero classes being the main thing. The slowing down of PVP makes the player resource pool harder to increase. If you had a great resource pool in the past, you will not be so affected - Tacet being one such example. Hell I listened to him say he had not been in the top 100 pvp for months.
There comes my point, and it certainly feels like all the stuff added is partly designed to diminish the overall resource pool the players have. We have read that the devs were astonished by how much/many resources some people have, so over a period of time things have been added that seem to reduce the resource pool.
Now if this game was not so based around luck, management of resources would be better from the player pov, but it is. A bad mythic attempt and your gems will go. Unless you were part of a higher echelon guild that built up a stockpile of gems before LT nerfs, you are usually earning less and spending more, taking into account a reasonable mythic spend every four weeks. I have never had more than 3-5k gems and after Megavore I had 10 gems. He cost me 75k glory as well. I’m back around 4k and next Mythic due soon. I’ve skipped stuff and we have had 2 GW weeks where gem impact is not as significant as other weeks.
So gem sinks came in, they generally reduce gem collections. Gold sinks reduce gold collections and reduce the amount of gold made to complete LT to increase the resource pool. In turn guilds struggle to keep players. My guild have had 1 LT in the last 3 weeks, whereas pre Delve we had sometimes 6-8 per week.
So, GW altered as it doesn’t make enough money that week I read. This will mean more of a challenge to resources.
Rewards, a thread was started about how they are counterproductive.
I agree with this re rewards, they are and the way things work, if something becomes overly frustrating, then people complain and I think the decisions made increase player frustration, which in turns leads to threads like this.
An example - the recent 4.1 room enemies. Looks like someone read the boards and setup teams to counter the players.
Frustration could end up causing more and more players to quit and I think the devs might need to consider this strategy of bumping out stuff endlessly and actually digest what a wide number of players are saying. Some of the new content looks great, but I’m still a little confused about the delve system and why it is like it is.
Each thing adds more and more time to get more and more things. If you have every traitstone every mythic, every weapon already, you still will have a challenge, but not as much as those that actually need traitstones for example. For every person sitting at the top of Smaug’s pile of gold there are a town full of people in Laketown desperately short of things they need.
If I go out for the day and the experience is rewarding, I will go again, paying again for the privilege. If I go somewhere and it feels unrewarding, frustrating, or a veneer thin way of getting my money for little reward, I won’t go back, or at least will review how I go back and what I do when there.
So the two things in my view are linked, quantity issues and reward issues.
The incentives in this game are upside down. Loyalty/VIP is not properly rewarded. There is too much randomness in the tier system for too little reward. Randomness is everywhere, maybe the odd ‘concrete’ reward of value will motivate players better than continually getting orbs of growth.
I cast my mind back a few weeks and there was an event where the troop used was good. I enjoyed it. I felt it was a challenge, but I didn’t think it was a joke, like the Marilith and Poison Master/Scale Guard/Naga Queen/Lamia crap.
As it was not extremely laden against me, I bought 6 tiers, enjoyed fights, it was good fun. Nearly every other time it is less fun and can be a chore.
So if it incentivises me, I may even spend money, if it is stupid I’ll ride my bike away. What I won’t do anymore is play a bad troop/weapon in raid or invasion or bounty. For the first time this week I skipped an event I could play in as the troop was just junk.
I don’t think the Devs have grasped rewards properly, but again I am now probably no longer the target audience.
Now if the reward system was better, so maybe we could choose between types of orbs gained from gems spent, then surely that would cater for new, old, middle aged, daft like me alike. We complete say tier 8 in raid and when we select the orb we can choose from either growth or wisdom. If we complete the next tier, we can choose either clans or ascension.
Is that not a better incentive? A way to encourage people to pay gems/cash?
Would that even effect hardcore leaderboard people? They will be doing it anyway.
Events, do them properly, provide incentive with maybe even considering troops that are decent, not tosh like last week’s hapless bounty troop. I am sure we will enjoy, maybe even pay.
So with this feeling of adding time sinks to everything, it starts to become more and more overwhelming. The greatest asset any on line gamer can have is time and resources. One works with the other.
Have resources, you might not need to spend so much time. Have time, you will get the resources.
So, the problem escalates with the haves and the have nots. If everyone was equal, we wouldn’t be having this thread. We aren’t and I consider myself way better off than many in this game, yet pondering where we are actually going.
I also know I am going to have to either spend more time, change the way I play and then decide what to do, and that adds to the feeling that I am/will be falling behind/uncompetitive.
So this thread resonates with the way the game feels right now to me and it seems a fair few others.
Still they are doing an amazing job at keeping everyone busy, and the content is great and imaginative to say the least so great job just the same! I’m sure there’s some ppl who like the extras! So thanks Dev’s! 
This is relevant because the bunny is round and so are the gems. This is not off-topic at all.