As a new player, I look at the leaderboard of any event and find me nowhere close to even top10%. I dont have zuul or plenty mythics to get even close to level 300, not to say 500.
Funny thing is, I need both gems, and orbs of power, to get some of those. And there are such a reward - just become top1 4Head. So, once you’ve got those troops ( soul forged game changes) , you dont actually need those orbs any more, yet you can farm them if you feel you need one.
And the new players will never be able to get those orbs or extragems even once.
Somehow we have brackets in the guild wars to separate mayhem from newbie guilds, but we dont have such a mechanic here. Making brackets into common events will provide more orbs of power inflation between players - that can be solved, only grant those orbs for high level brackets (like the first 10?) , but make sure new players have some kind of reward of trying to be the best as they strive thru the event with their limited resources. Right now there are no point even trying.
Find a helpful active guild on your activity level, get further guidance and use tools like gemologica and taransworld to plan your game journey ahead of time. Remain active and over a few years you’ll be there you want to be without asking for shortcuts. You’ll see progress nearly immediately with a proper guild.
btw: long time players face the same issues with different resources. it is what it is. The game is not designed to be “completed” in a few weeks or months. I’d personally dislike to see new players get things just handed out while long-term players had to put in the work.
I had about 4 months since my start when the first vault weekend with gnome-a-Palooza happened and just with Black Manacles, Rowanne, The Maraji Queen and Leprechaun, I’ve got enough orbs to craft Zuul and Kurandara and keys to get other mythics too.
play vault weekend exp1 and gap’s to open hundreds/thousands of vault keys afterwards and you won’t have a gem/orb problem (in the near future). also don’t “waste” blue bubbles on certain stuff if you want zuul asap.
“back then” - without “gnome-a-palooza” things weren’t as easy (or lets call it “new player friendly”) as they’re now. it also doesn’t make much difference if you’re ironhawking around or if you use something like ‘RootsSeed’ suggested - it is simply about activity and maxing out playtime during vault events. since gap was introduced u can basically skip (most) guild events completely if you’re not interested and your guild doesn’t mind ^^ and u won’t really feel the effects because the rewards are so crappy.
& u can’t expect to place top1 - or top10 - or top100… in any leaderboard without the proper effort (investment! + playtime!). this effort can only be accomplished with (wasting) many gems. u get gems from hourly tributes - or via $. u obviously receive much more hourly tribute gems if your account is properly lvl’d. this takes time and isn’t accomplished overnight as “a new player”. and believe it or not, many of the players that you can see high up in the leaderboards regularly are investing $. but that’s everyone’s own decision and absolutely fine.
Stop focusing on zuul. My point is - the current leaderboard makes no sense, strong players gets stronger, thats it. My idea is to provide players with some kind of reason to put efforts to get along with active players of their relative level. It doesn’t matter what exactly will be the reward, right now there are 0 reasons to even try spending gems.
It would change nothing, someone will always burn tons of gems to get the first place no matter the level of the buckets. A gem spending cap would be better, the devs would most likely love that idea too
Dont disregard the help others are trying to give. By definition, you cant expect any leaderboard to come easy. People are competitive, therefore its going to take a lot to reach the top. As others have mentioned, you do have options. Your best bet is to farm vault weekends, as others have suggested. You can get orbs far faster than you realize now. Use the methods posted by others here.
It may seem unfair, but your path to whatever you need the power orbs for, is faster and easier for you, as it is for me. You just have to power grind vault weekends. If I wanted to, I can run 4x En Kura and 4x Zuul. Dont feel like you need to match what a certain path presents. You can always get the same result as others. Just grind the vault events… easy peasy.
why does guild buckets exists then?
It’s not about GIT GUT
it’s about creating a reason to put efforts.
If somebody spent a lot of gems and got to the top, he’ll move to the higher bucket next event, fighting with other whales for the leadership. Win-win for all kind of players.
Maybe people would understand you better if you use right word. It is brackets not buckets.
Guild wars use brackets and it is terrible system because it doesnt work
Anyways, the players would game the brackets and the top bracket would have current prizes and the lesser brackets would have lesser prizes which nobody would want to win because it will not be equal to the gem cost to get to first place of whatever bracket. It is already terribly costly, 5k or more gems for a Orb of Power which is not worth it in my opinion.
sorry, i’ve seen ‘buckets’ being used
anyway, a player will have nothing for his attempts to get into top100 'cause there are plenty long-time players to hold these. Instead, you will have at least something. Something is better than nothing. So brackets here won’t hurt and will even be useful somehow.
Draco, you just said it yourself. “Effort” All you have to do, is put forth considerable effort durring a vault event. You’ll save gems and still get the PO’s you need. These proposed brackets, would create the same problems. Someone will always be left out. Also, if someone got the same rewards as me, while spending thousands less, how fair would that be? You have options… Use them.
Sure, some will be left out, so they will move below, to compete with others who arent that lucky / can’t spend hours in vault / can’t donate enough. So they will have more equal conditions between themselves. Right now it’s not enough for me or anyone else to do hundreds of vaults to compete with the global leaderboard. Thats exactly my base idea.
I think the point some are trying to make is that the top of the leaderboard typically will spend 4k gems or more for 700 gems in return. That us why they are suggesting using gnome weekends.
Sometimes you simply have to decide whether to invest the time / effort / resources necessary to make the leaderboard, if doing so is a priority for you.
But I don’t believe the solution is to increase the amount of rewards and broaden the number of players who receive them. Because there are consequences to that, and not just the notion that “everybody gets a trophy” (if you’re being particularly uncharitable).
Right now, there’s a fixed amount of leaderboard rewards. Maybe it’s too heavily concentrated on the top handful of players, but there’s a level of certainty as to how many “free” rewards are being given out. If you expand the amount of rewards given out, might thte developers then raise the “buy-in” to purchase shop tiers during an event to re-balance the game’s economy a little bit?
And what would be a “fair” method to determine “brackets” for the leaderboard in the first place? And to ensure that the system is not easily “gamed”, such as by players sandbagging in previous events to drop themselves into lower tiers in future events to run up their rewards?
And orbs are a heck of a lot easier to farm these days than they were when events and leaderboards were first introduced. If that’s your white whale, there are many more of that fish in the sea nowadays.
Draco, you’d only need to push hard in 2-3 vault events. If you want the payout, you have to work for it. Im telling you man, you guys got it easy now. If a person doesn’t have much time to play, it would behoove them to make time for when we do get the vault events.
You can rack up significant amounts of resources. I can promise you that fragmented brackets, would get gamed by high lvl alts.
The leaderboards are for everyone. If you cant compete at that high a lvl, you have to take advantage of alternate means. The reason we keep stressing vault events, is because the rewards you talk about being easier to get dont matter. Yor goal is too get as many vault keys as you can, per vault event. Shoot for 50-100 minimum.
You may get very lucky and find a few epic keys in that time. Nobody has to be locked out of anything. They already give you the means to compete equally. If you want the payout, put in the time
Talking of buckets, taking the first place once before retiring is on my bucket list, no other reason for me to do it… Got close last week and I just loved the competition, but really can’t try it weekly, not even monthly, because of the huge gem cost.
In most games, leaderboards only tell you who is willing to invest the most resources (gems in GoW) and time, nothing about skill. Almost inevitably, whether or not you have brackets, they end up being dominated by whales and people who spend 18 hours a day playing. The only way I’ve seen to avoid this is limit the number of attempts, as in GW. So you’d need a more fundamental change than just brackets, there would need to be a replay limit and something like level limits to avoid the usual traps
it is what it is. The game is not designed to be “completed” in a few weeks or months. I’d personally dislike to see new players get things just handed out while long-term players had to put in the work.
