It seems to me that there are a lot of different little areas where the player base could modify its’ behavior that would better send the message to the developers and the financial backers. Complaining here? It’s going to look like “blowing off steam” assuming those Powers That Be are even aware of it; even should the moderators and support staff that we do see posting in these spaces refer it up the line, it could very easily be ignored by those making the decisions.
So going back to TC’s post at the top? There are ways to get the publisher’s attention through your spending and playing habits if you changed and if enough people changed along with you. And many of them probably would come at minimal cost to a player, even a late-game player such as TC (and myself). Some examples:
Stop spending Gems on Dragonite. Or on Cursed Runes. Those spending items were put in place to be a Gem sink with questionable “rate of return” for the Player. Worse, they were probably intended to be a significant sink for the player to help the developers, either because the Player would spend real money to get the Gems or because they’d spend significantly more time with the game playing to accumulate them, even if “significantly more time” reduces to “log in every single hour to collect tribute”.
Figure out which game modes you can safely drop without impacting yourself. Don’t like the Arena? Only play it when a campaign task requires it, or maybe just re-roll it when it does. When an Arena weekend rolls around, ignore it entirely. Et cetera.
Pretty much ignore Legends Reborn. You can probably blow through the first iteration (level 20-40) lightning quick with the same sort of team many of us use to speed-run Explore 1/2 such as on Vault weekends. So just do that and ignore the rest. Don’t go out of your way to do the “bonk a number of this colored troops” tasks; either it happens on its own or it doesn’t. And don’t spend on the two advanced tracks. (Personally, I decided after the first LR event that 1300 gems for a Pest Gnome, a Cursed Gnome, and a pet I can gradually farm through Pest Rescues was a terrible value.) It’ll take longer to accumulate the pests that are rewarded, but there are other ways around it.
Don’t chase the leaderboards on other events. Do what is necessary for your guild requirements and nothing more.
…
Alas, I think the Battlecrashers still have to be done, because there’s a weapon up near the end of that rewards track that probably becomes a premium purchase after this event. But I still grind those in Explore 1 with a Rowanne team. It can take a little while, but it doesn’t seem like too excessive a time sink to me. But I don’t see an urgent reason to pay for the upgraded Kingdom Pass stuff beyond that; it’s still stuff that is time-gated but isn’t exclusive to those forking out real money or even just gems.
And, finally? Recognise that this is a game. Recognise where the game and the developers are nudging you into self-harmful behavior and resolve to change. It might seem better if the developers weren’t that way, but personally I have difficulty faulting them for behavior that clearly has their own motivations and interests behind it. And I see a person’s failure to adapt as their problem and not that of the developer.
But my basic point? The way to get the developers to sit up and take notice is to change. Hit them in the wallet by not spending on certain things. Hit them in the wallet by decreasing your commitment to playing time enough that they’ll notice. And maybe then they’ll change.
Because what’s being tried right now isn’t going to do it. Like so many other people in positions of “power” that I know, they’ll simply take complaints on the forum as a nothing-burger. As not representative of the player base at large.
Same here. I’m playing something else that takes most of my gaming time up anyway.