Devs Why so Lazy?

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
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Been playing this game for over 3 years and seems the Developers are getting lazier and lazier. All they seem to be bothered about is flash offer / Gem Sales. No Questions are every answered despite numerous posts.

  1. Are you ever going to modify Arena ? It cannot be hard to add every troop into the pool. Not to mention only 3 weapons which replace Dawnbringer.

  2. Are you ever going to change Tower Of Doom teams (Fighting against the same combinations is so boring).

  3. Delve Rewards - e.g. A level five delve room with a treasure multiplier of 1.2 has the same rewards as a level 3 room with the same multiplier. A harder delve with the same reward - yeah, that makes no sense.

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I am asking myself this question the more every day that passes by.

Have they given up, stopped caring and succumbed to power of the Dark Side?

Or are they simply tired, overworked, underpaid, and frustrated?

Have they grown apathetic?

The biggest issue is probably that they now have to support and maintain GoW on Switch as well.

Updates are small, and months away.
The List of Known Issues is missing quite a lot of listed bug reports.

Game is somehow losing the appeal. I think that part of the reason is that we are absent from its active development. For example, we know that they plan to change or rework all the Hero Classes, but we are offered no details, nor are we asked for our opinion. When the update comes, it may cause another shitstorm, just because it may prove more broken or unbalanced from what we currently have now.

I think that some major overhauls and planned changes, like the Hero Class revamp should be introduced before the active development is in full thrust. So, the main thing is that the Community, or most of the productive members of the Community feel excluded from the active participation.
You could even say that they may be unwanted.

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These two are my vote, with the former causing the latter.

The shitty thing is because they reveal no details about upcoming plans, players are surprised by it. Surprised people overreact. It probably doesn’t feel good to work on something for a few months then be told in a very loud manner it’s terrible.

But it’s SO much more likely to happen this way. I get that some changes like economy tweaks will never be seen as positive. But if players get a couple weeks’ warning, while they’ll still complain about it, the odds something constructive will be said are much higher.

Instead we get, “Here it is, deal with it”. Dozens at a time.

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I understand they may be overworked and underpaid… But that is not my fault nor my responsibility. These fixes are not rocket science, for example it cannot he hard to do a select all for troop drop pool in Arena.

They do not even give me a reason as to why they haven’t or wont… Waiting for a excuse :neutral_face:

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they not lazy they just don’t have the skills. Plus they getting money they wouldn’t care much.
They can’t make the txt right :mask: how can they do the rest right.
(Ya need to stop stating that the Dev’s are overworked…Tacet and other countless players who are not devs spends more time in this game than the Dev’s).
WHO CAN SAY THAT THEY OVERWORKED WHEN THEY GET 3DAYS OFF A WEEK AND DONT GO TO THE OFFICE ON THEIR DAY OFF TO FIX SOMETHING THEY RELEASED BROKEN (last delves)

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I think they probably are on autopilot now
I would assume they have every new troop, delve, new content etc, written and prepped for release
Now they are just releasing it

So I have no idea what they are doing every week
Last week was a new raid, plus repeats of all other events
One would think it would take a single developer a couple hours to do it at most

Maybe they are onto making a new game like puzzle quest, who knows
But they certainly should not have anywhere near a full time job for multiple people with GoW at this point, unless the Switch is the reason
I’m sure they can’t just copy n paste to a new system

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Not a dev, but…

  1. It’s scheduled and has been openly teased for a major rehaul and/or replacement. Timing of the update is being kept very closely held because of the likely complexity of the update. As has been previously stated by the devs, this update isn’t in the pending 4.5 update.

  2. Tower of Doom rooms (non-boss) are standard Delve rooms. New delve rooms (when created) are sent to the client with quarterly updates.

  3. The devs have said previously that this was a conscious design decision, and knew of the shortcomings of doing so. There are some adjustments, as previously announced as pending for this patch, which provides additional incentive (I’ve personally seen these testing 4.5) to clear higher level delves.

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Timing of the update… How much time do they need ? Nothing has changed since they removed the class (Almost 12 month ago).

Delve rooms in tower of doom - They have never been updated, the teams are rotated and after 25 Rooms no new team is even in the mix. That’s what I call lazy Developers… Can’t even be bothered to select new troops.

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1 I don’t PVP, so no opinion
2 They can only spend so much time handcrafting teams. Some repetition is to be expected. Which is not to say that I would object to more variation.
3 YES! THIS! I really see no incentive to make my delves permantly harder for the same rewards!

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I think the devs do the best they can, with the tools and dollars they have, under unrelenting pressure from the publisher to make more money.

As far as the community being consulted on changes, why the hell should they? They have been more than responsive to requests in the past, and all they get for it is more complaints. Face it - while we play the game, it is not our game and we don’t get to say how it goes. Complaining that the devs don’t implement specific requests indicates a massive sense of entitlement and ownership that just isn’t true. I’m not talking about bug fixes, those definitely need to be done. I’m talking about requests for design changes, like the never- ending clamoring for live pvp.

Give them some positive reinforcement for a change. It must be hard for them to want to do good stuff for a community that only gives them a negative response no matter what they do.

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Popping in quickly, cause you know, I’m pretty active here and across all of our various community/social platforms.

We have communicated frequently about several of the issues raised. However, if we don’t say that we are actively working on something, or action player feedback directly, we are often accused of not listening to the community. This isn’t true, we are listening. I tell you when we are listening. Listening does not necessarily equal actioning, which I believe is an important distinction to make. Many times when players claim we are not listening, they actually mean that we are not actioning their feedback. I have explained several times in the past why we cannot always do so, and if everyone really wants me too, I will pull up several of these posts.

Now, to address the issues directly.

  1. We would like to do an arena rework in the future, but it is not our biggest priority. Re-working entire parts of the game takes a considerable about of time and investment. We are currently working on future updates, and are not currently prioritising an arena re-work. It is something we would like to revisit, but due to our development schedules, future updates, and deadlines, is unlikely to to happen in the short term future. Also, whenever we re-work existing parts of the game, not only must we re-design entire systems, but we have to be careful regarding their potential affect on the in-game economy.

  2. We do not plan to change these at this point in time. I am sorry to hear that you feel they are boring. Luckily, the Tower of Doom is not a weekly event, and there are lots of other things to do in-game if you would like a break.

  3. We are aware of the Delve Rewards and do not have any plans to change them at this point in time,

@Slypenslyde, in regards to not revealing upcoming plans, this is something that is not always true. I have been making a concerted effort to speak more about upcoming changes, and action community feedback as quickly as I can. Some tasks are bigger than others, but I have been communicating more clearly and more often with the community at large (these forums in particular) about what we are working on, and when you can expect to see it in game. If this communication is not appreciated, I understand, and will spend my time more wisely in the future. There is never a lack of work for me to do, and I would benefit greatly from having more time for my other duties.

We also do major update previews to let players know what is coming ahead of time. These can be watched at any point prior to an update releasing, as I highlight these streams and make them accessible online. Our beta testers also offer feedback on upcoming updates, and often tweak and change things after hearing their thoughts.

To address an earlier point, I believe that this approach shows that we value our community and their opinions. I have stated in the past that some of the feedback the community offers is detrimental to the health of the game, where others is very useful. It is my job to triage this and curate our Quality of Life requests.

You also need to be aware of the amount of time it takes to be in constant contact with you. We do not have the man power, or hours in the day, to respond to every single question we receive or request that is made. I reply where I can, answer questions on stream, and in general am VERY active across a plethora of accounts. The forums aren’t the only place that offers feedback, and aren’t the only place where I need to help players. Our developers already work long hours, and cannot be expected to reply to every thread when they are already working full time jobs without expecting them to maintain an online presence that is very demanding.

@PeperandSalt I do not know why you assume we get 3 days off a week. We don’t unless we spend our leave to take a long weekend. We work a full work week like everyone else. We also work a full work week, and then choose to play the game OUTSIDE OF THESE HOURS. Anytime we spend in Gems of War is not considered part of our working week, and is something that we choose to do personally. So yes, Tacet likely does spend more time in-game than us, but Tacet also does not have a full time job. So not only are we interacting and making this game for a full working week, we are also choosing to play it in our own time.

Also, we needed specific personnel to fix the Delve issue last week. Sirrian was planning to go into the office to change it, but was unable to do so. It is unreasonable to expect someone to come into work over the weekend, and in other industries this wouldn’t even be questioned. Unfortunately, people view games differently, which I believe is unfair. Banks aren’t physically open on weekends, and their help lines also do not operate during them (at least in Australia) and that is a service that is far more vital to the long term health and well being of the average person than Gems of War. To expect us to work more than we already do is unreasonable, and often at the cost of our physical and mental health.

I understand that this reply probably comes across a bit salty. That would be because it is. I believe that a lot of what has been mentioned here is unfair, and highlights a lack of understanding towards game development and live service games. Have any of you actively worked for a live service game such as Gems of War for a significant period of time? Or worked in the F2P games model? Things that seem simple, such as the arena rework that was mentioned earlier, are not that easy. Firstly, the mode must be redesigned with a suite of different play styles, and players, in mind. We must consider what a re-work would offer early, mid and end-gamers, before even discussing what we can do. Then, the rework must be designed, programmed, implemented, tested, and released. This would need to be done in conjunction with our milestones and deadlines. On top of that, a re-work needs to have a clear chance at bringing in additional revenue, otherwise it won’t be prioritised over a new feature, or fixing bugs.

TLDR; I have answered your questions. We listen to feedback. We action some of your feedback. We work long hours and care about the game. Most of you don’t understand how game development, specifically for live service games, works. That’s cool, you don’t work in it. We do.

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I am glad to have read this feedback from you. Good to know that you never strayed from the path.
You should also post it on Steam. Some players there are raging as well.

I believe that this post would be helpful to be there.

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While I do sympathize with your situation I don’t think this tells the whole story. The Delve was released with broken configuration, impacting chest and progression rewards. The community discovered the error within an hour and tried to contact the powers in charge. There was nobody available at all, not even to offer advise on how players should proceed. Very much later we were told to go ahead and play, there would be compensation for the rewards lost, which turned out to be seriously below what your error cost players. Picking up your bank example, they don’t install new ATMs right before closing down on weekends. And if those ATMs really do end up shortchanging you, you get all you are owed, not just a small amount.

If I may offer some advice, please don’t just deploy new content on your way out of the door, stick around for a few minutes to see if it works. You may not be able to immediately correct issues, you can at least inform us about the intended course of action instead of leaving us guessing for days. Also, please stop thinking of “compensation” as “free gifts”. It’s perfectly okay to hand out presents sparingly, if at all. Compensating isn’t handing out presents, it’s making sure players receive whatever they should have received, so saying “yeah, we’ll be generous and give you half of what you lost due to our bug” doesn’t exactly go down well. Note that the Delve issue was especially aggravating because lots of players had already purchased their participation sigils and couldn’t chose to back out, they didn’t even receive a reply after asking whether this could be an option.

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I understand that you are busy, have full time jobs and work hard to design / implement the game. What I don’t get is why you keep releasing new content as appose to fixing the broken ones / improving existing ones. Not only has Delves been a issue, new troops are another example of when broken content has been released / not tested.

I have never known a company release a new product, then go on Holiday a day later. However, in my eyes this is not a valid enough reason as to why you didn’t fix broken content.

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This is I think the heart of most complaints here. It’s not that people don’t feel there is no effort being put into the game, but rather they disagree with the priorities.
I think a lot of people would be ok if new content came once every 2 weeks for a few months if that meant some long standing issues being adressed.
Then again there would a group who would strongly disagree with this and let it be known. There’s no pleasing everyone.
Personally I don’t agree with all decisions, but I do like the game and appreciate the effort that’s being put into it :slight_smile:

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Saltys reply shows just how far behind we’ve fallen in America, and possibly other countries, but I can’t speak for them
I’m expected to work 40-80 hour work weeks depending on the time of year, along with up to 14 hour days with no break
Mental and physical health is not a concern for employers often here, lucky you :pleading_face:

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You yourself mentioned banks are really important. So trust me, if ATM started giving out double the money when ever you withdraw, but only taking out from your account the amount you wanted to withdraw (you type in 100 bucks, your account goes -100 bucks, but ATM gives you out 200 bucks), there would be bank workers there in matter of minutes, no matter the time of the week. And me as economist, i have many colegues working in banks, they have to come when ever they are called for, bank doesnt have to be open for them to be working.

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But GoW is not a bank that provides monetary services. It is just a game providing entertainment. I think we should all just take it easy. I hardly see any games out there which is generous with their premium currency (gems and diamonds). Try playing Marvel Puzzle Quest and you would know what I mean.

I can see GoW developers are very passionate about their game and it is just too often under appreciated by the communities around here. You would probably won’t get much feedback from the developers compared to other games out there. So just my appreciation to @Saltypatra for arranging all those lovely Q&A and future game content preview.

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I got people that work for me and they kill each other to get the extra hours and most that don’t cover for other (sick days or weekends) are reliability to our workforce😉

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So do you have an exciting and intriguing business to be a part of?
Do they hate their family and outside free time?
Or do they get underpaid to where they need the extra hours?
Or do they wanna work a lot to retire early?
Or do they feel the need to have unnecessarily expensive things?

I can’t think of any other reason to work a lot for someone else

I enjoy my job as a professional chef and waiter ,but if it wasn’t for the pay, I wouldn’t be there obviously
And it’s so physically and mentally demanding when working more than full time hours,that I won’t know the damage I’ve done to my body for the later years of my life
I like a balanced life personally

Not trying to be rude, just trying to see if you know for what purpose your employees are fighting over extra hours
I wish my bosses over the years would have tried to have a human understanding of employees, a couple did, and I appreciated them very much

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