Along with most of the thread, my vote is for Version 2. While, for what it is, Version 4 is likely the best possible incarnation of the new formatting style, it’s cold and emotionless compared to Version 2’s flairs and designs. There’s no identity amongst the units. To an average player, the cyan bars around an ascended mythic look exactly the same as on a base mythic. There’s no differentiation at all.
I love Puzzle Quest, and still enjoy playing this game, despite the changes and the continually harder and harder push for monetization.
I remember a post from Sirrian that was the harbinger moment for me for these changes. Two distinct comments within the same post spoke more than entire volumes of prose.
Those lines right there was the moment most people dread, but never really writes or talks about. No one ever wants to admit when THAT moment happens. But, there it was. It was in that moment that I realized that the reason for the UI changes and the card design shift from V2 to V3 was because that we (the traditional playerbase at that point) were no longer the target demographic for the game moving forward. The game refocused its targeting towards the Millennial/Gen-Z demographics, and to do so, needed to abandon the traditional fantasy motif in favor the current modern styling.
Coupled with this comment, within the very same post,
Having played the other mobile-designed versions of Puzzle Quest (that were not designed by Sirrian), I was fearful about what that collaboration likely meant. And, indeed, my fears were realized in the 3.3 patch which brought about the hard monetization push for GoW. To that extent, I’m fairly confident that the push isn’t over yet by any stretch of the imagination. 3.4 will bring pets, which will surely be monetized in one way or another. Also, there are doomskulls, which will assuredly bring nightmarish levels of instant annihilation powers in the hands of the “lucky” AI. Yes, players will have the same potential of destruction. But, you can bet your diamonds that in upcoming events, players will be restricted as usual to a set of troops or kingdoms, while AI opponents will have access to doomskulls and all the tools needed leverage them for maximum carnage and faster player defeats than ever before.
The game is changing, and the realization that the game is no longer being designed to our tastes is saddening for sure. Becoming older and not being the target demographic sucks, for sure. Doubly so, when one has a collection that spans multiple years’ worth of gameplay to acquire.