Let me start by saying that I have really enjoyed my time playing Gems of War over the past 2-1/2 years.
The issue that I have right now is the amount of gem sinks. The only way to get hero weapons is to spend around 400-500 gems per “event”. I’ve missed out on the last two weapons, both introduced via the new delve mini-game, which has it’s own issues that people have already went into in other threads.
Players are now being forced to spend £/$ in order to have the gems required. It was optional. It no longer is, if you want the weapon.
I have spent money in the past, recently too and am at VIP 5. Getting there was a conscious choice on my part as I do really enjoy the game and it’s nice to support the people making it as it is F2P.
I bought when i felt i’d like something, not because i felt forced to. Especially with those ridiculous prices.
Everybody hates me around here because I constantly “complain” about the pay to play direction this game is going in. Somehow, everybody is really happy for these new “features” which are really just designed to screw everybody over. Addiction is a powerful thing I guess, people just want everything leveled and obtained.
BUT, not only are they doing the gem sinks, they are also slowly invalidating everything in the overworld. Keys, souls, etc, they aren’t what they used to be because the new world with the delves and all, they want the focus on that? Why? Cash shops.
Try prioritizing the raids/invasion weapons,which currently have no method to repeat. The weapons through delves should be coming back with every delve event that occurs.
I don’t know if I agree it’s a problem. Let me talk out my points and see how I feel at the end.
If you are an endgame player with high kingdom powers in a competitive guild, you are still making more than enough gems to participate in the events that matter. I did Tier V in Invasion and Tier IV in the faction event and I’m already back to my week’s starting gem total.
HOWEVER: I consciously chose to buy nothing in the class event, because I didn’t value “Warlord XP” as much as “faction event”. Had I tried to compete in the class event, I would’ve lost gems this week. That’s not so rough, because next week is GW and I need fewer gems for that week.
But I can imagine a week with a Raid/Invasion, the Faction Event, a Class Event, and a Bounty Hunt. There’s no way I’m going to have enough gems to participate in everything that week and meet my requirements the next week.
But OK, let’s take a step back. The question this raises is, “Should a player be able to compete in every event for free?”
Historically, this has been true. We’ve been coasting in GoW for a long time. Most endgamers have a surplus of gems.
In a vacuum, if I started playing a new game, I wouldn’t be upset if I found out there are 5 or 6 competitive events but you can only compete in 3 or 4 of them regularly for free.
So I think GoW is changing to a thing I can agree with, but I don’t like it changing away from something I like better. That said, I really like Delves. I’d rather lose Bounty Hunt or Class Events to keep them.
Yeah, this is the only reason I haven’t done a post about this. The pushy “now or never” shtick for high cost items, in game or otherwise, is something that always rubs me the wrong way, but, so long as there is a future path to acquisition at similar cost, having weapons sold like this is fine. You don’t need the 410 gems now, it could be now, or in the next few weeks, or the next few after that. So long as there is a repeating delivery system, you don’t have to get a mediocre weapon now, you can always “save up” for it. Then you don’t have to worry so much about it getting arbitrarily mega-buffed and becoming “meta” and then never seeing it again through any in-game acquisition method even though it was supposed to be. Though even this could get obnoxious when the events are far enough apart that skipping it now means not seeing it again for 8 months, but it won’t be too much of an issue - I suspect all current players will have adjusted their gem spending habits before then so that they don’t miss important weapons the first time they appear (eg., prioritize gem spending, become hoarders like me), and newer players might actually be willing to spend cash to get the gems to get the weapon early and not have it feel like a used car salesman pitch because it represents a significant jump in gameplay. At least for the first couple times.
Had they said “another 410 gems right now, or x dollars later” (while leaving baseline gem acquisition where it is, particularly at midgame and early game), then these weapons become a gameplay affecting paywalled feature first that some people have the fortune to be able to circumvent by paying exorbitant amounts of in-game obtainable premium currency in a ridiculously small window by virtue of having started the game before a period when said thing was available the first time, but this isn’t what is going on here.
But thats only if you trust them coming back every time. Right now, that seems to be the pattern, and patterns tend to hold, but to my knowledge we have no official word on this.
It isn’t hard to collect just the new weapons/troops without spending money. I do it without spending any gems on pet shops and very few on bounties and none on class events.
More gems sink doesn’t mean you’re forced to spend gems on them all, or using real money for it.
Gems is very plentiful if you keep all your kingdom to maximum stars. I get close to 2,000 gems per week from tributes/guild/event/treasure-hunt without spending any money, so everyone can do the same.
But if your gem income is not that high, you can just prioritize your gems spending. Buying pets is the least interesting deal, while Class event is okay if you have some gems to spare. If what you want is all the weapon, it’s 250 gems for weekly Raid/Invasion (0 gem if you craft it with diamond), and 410 gems for monthly Faction weapon. It’s not that high if you use your gems wisely.
I do some analysis on how to get everything from all events by spending less gems as possible, so I know that new mode actually give more prizes to be exchanged with gems, instead of demanding players to waste it.
I find this interesting, 2000 Gems/week? You must be quite the dedicated treasure hunter to achieve that.
I do not know the exact figures (could someone provide them please?), but Guild tasks give (I think), around 500-600 Gems? Or was it 340? I really should keep track for things like this. Tributes are RNG, I have all kingdoms at 10 and 7 stars+ with 2 or 3 lower but still 5* at the least. I play perhaps 2 or 3 hours a day, sometimes a little longer if I can spare the time to do so. I think this is certainly a large amount of time and probably the average across the dedicated player base. Then you have events, which do sometimes give Gem rewards, although they pale in comparison to the investment required to get to the tier where purchasing the weapon is possible, thus giving a net loss. I think Class Event’s can be avoided in order to save gems as the EXP will be earned over time anyway. They’re a nice shortcut, but not a mandatory purchase. I’ll admit, I did mess up by spending gems to go for leaderboard this week, which was my choice.
I disagree with your first point, as, logically; adding more things to spend on will increase the amount of gems required. Given the nerfs to LT’s and Blue Tasks and the increase in Gem pay-2-play events, this increases the preassure to spend money because you’d otherwise miss out on being able to acquire the weapon/item which, currently, there is no other method to obtain. While we aren’t manually forced to spend, we’re coerced in a rather sinister way into parting with our money or falling behind. At least, that is how I feel.
You say you do analysis, may we see that? Sharing would certainly be helpful to the community as a whole and possibly help to alleviate some of the tension incurred
I only play Treasure Hunt when I’m bored with other mode. It’s also important to note that every gems sink can also be gem generator (except Faction Event).
The main income is from tribute. I got around 10 gems every hours, so it’s 150 gems a day (can’t be 240 due to sleep), 1,050 gems a week. Guild task give 390 more, and daily tasks could give as high as 140 gems per week. Even Class event can give 25 more gems without buying any Tiers.
Raid/Invasion/Bounty can also do that. Weekly Greenstone event is another source of big income. Opening Glory/Gold keys also help. Almost 2,000 is just a rough estimation.
Except collecting tributes and playing occasional 8-minute Pet Rescues, I play about 2-3 hours a day as well.
As I said, it based on what you want. Not all gem sinks have an exclusive stuffs like weapons, so it can be ignore without missing out.
Having more option to trade your gems for other stuffs doesn’t mean you have to take every offers.
I’ve actually already share them all. What’s the point of doing them if I’m gonna keeping it all to myself anyway? They’re scattered somewhere on the board. If you want to know about anything, just search on my profile or ask me for it. Most analysis are actually from other players, mainly @Mithran, from before the time I joined here.
Despite this being true, it would be nice if these people that refuse to use gems on anything could craft the weapon. Of course, they would complain about that too, but at least they would have an option other than using gems.
The thing is, do they need these weapons? Or do they want them… If just collecting for collectings sake, then they should save up the gems over a couple weeks of tribute, and daily tasks to get it on an upcoming Tuesday.
They won’t though, because then they couldn’t claim they were being forced to pay for it…
All the events allow all players to participate. This faction event gives three sigils a day, that’s three extra delves each day, that’s 9 extra delves from Friday to Sunday, on top of the 3 normal daily delves. Free to play players get 18 delves (plus a chance at birds for extra delve sigils in the event), for free this weekend, and yet that’s not enough for them…
Thursday class event gives 8 sigils, for 8 battles + chance at bird for extra sigils… Free.
Pet Rescues are free. (using gems is on the player, not forced).
Daily tasks give great rewards…
Dungeon is free, gives great rewards.
Over a week Raid and Invasion give 28 sigils plus a chance at birds for extra sigils, all for free…
Bounty gives sigils +birds each day for an entire weekend.
People seem to forget, and omit, that they get plenty of free resources. But in life, and in game, how you save and use your resources, have consequences.
You can play every event in the game for free and get something back. But you get back more if you pay in. Getting all reward tiers and chasing leaderboards is “competing”.
I think a lot of people feel like you should be able to open every reward tier at the F2P level, but it’s already not true. The devs laid on the table when Raid/Invasion released that the guild would have to buy a certain number of tiers to open every portal.
3 free Delves per day gives out a pretty decent amount of rewards. People always want more, but all said and done I tend to get “some” legendary ingots and “some” chaos shards daily. This time 2 weeks ago I was getting only the PvP legendary ingots weekly. So it just got a lot easier for F2P players to chase kingdom power, but nobody’s clapping because they think they deserve 50 legendary ingots instead of 15.
So anyway… yeah. I think if you want to “compete” in every event it’s fine if it costs you money. I think it’s more interesting if I have to look at the week, look at my income, and decide how and where I will focus.
Also I don’t want to join the “ha ha you are blessed” argument. I was in a really shitty place last year when I joined GoW and on some days, knowing that I could match some gems for a while was all I had. It’s part of why I spend so much damn time on the forums.
You don’t know what the person on the other end’s going through, and for all you know in the burning fuselage of their days the event rewards are the one bright spot. Don’t rub that in for them.
A little bit of both. The problem is, as it stands right now:
if you don’t get that weapon, that week, that’s it. Kiss your chance to get it, in game, goodbye. And, because of this, it makes it feel like a necessity. Especially, when you have a “dynamic” game like this, that has updates and balance changes. that could make the weapon you lost out on, really good. So, you feel pressure to get it that week.
Divine Protector is a good example of this. When it came out, it was decent, but not overwhelming great. I picked it up anyway, because, why not? I could afford it, at the time, so I did. Others did not pick it up, either because they couldn’t afford it or didn’t want to purchase it for whatever reason.
Then… They buffed the weapon and it was pretty good. But, by then, it was long gone from the “purchase with in game resources” store.
Now, one could argue a lot of things, here: One could say that, good or bad, you don’t “need” DP; One could argue that it just “sucks to be them” for the players that couldn’t get it; and so on. But, you could argue the opposite, as well. And, after seeing what happened with DP; I feel, now, more than ever, that there is a pressure to buy that Tier weapon, because you never know when it might come in handy, and if/when it will be available, in game again, if ever.
Now, as far as the Tier troops go, they feel like less of a need, from an in game stand point; because, eventually, you will get them in chests. However, there is still a pressure to buy them, because they are special. Game modes like Raids and Invasions are designed in a way that if you want to do well/get far, in them, you need that troop, to give you a helping hand.
Also, because we have so many kingdoms and troop types and with the way these troops are designed, if you don’t get the troop during the event, you’ll feel like you missed out on their usefulness, because another event for that type/kingdom won’t happen for years.
So, if you wait until they are in chests, when you get the troop, all you have is a troop that helps with Kingdom Power, and little else. The reason is, because, outside of those events, they aren’t nearly as useful, due to them not being designed for that type of play.
In short, while these purchases, much like the game itself are “optional”, one can not help but notice that they are used/made in such a way that it pressures the player into getting them, right away, when released.
Also, one could argue that the Tiers themselves are a need, because certain Guilds require them, if you want to stay and benefit from their activity. Now, while you could say: “that is their choice to do so, and by extension, your choice to stay” (ie, no one is forcing them or you to do so), I feel it’s right to point out that they are just trying to get the most out of how the game is already designed.
You can’t really blame the player for trying to work with what’s in front of them and trying to get the most out of their game. But, you can blame whomever pushed for those things to be that way, in the game, in the first place.
Basically, if things like Gem Sinks/Tiers never existed, you wouldn’t have to worry about any of this, to begin with. None of us asked for this. We are just playing the cards (game) we have been dealt and are trying to make the best of that reality.
But if the designs and gameplay features changes this means the players can still try to get the most out of their game.
Sure, there are designs flaws here and there¹, but i feel some issues and concerns raised recently are more about the players not being willing to adapt than not being able to do so.
¹ Wild Plains being the trashiest kingdom for over two years and still receiving bad designs like this week’s Siegebreaker for example… It’s simply the worst troop of the bunch! Why the developers even consider this failure of design acceptable in the first place? It’s insulting to anynone with a functional brain…
