Let’s see if they are any more common than writ daily adventures before jumping to that conclusion. Also, these WarCoins would have value in any case, as banners are being locked behind these initial warband purchases.
Here for some clarity!
Warband troops are existing troops. The teams aren’t built by the team generator, they are teams that have good synergy that we are aware of, and would be most useful for early to mid gamers. (For example, of course we included a goblin team!) This means that we won’t be releasing new troops directly to Warbands and walling off content that way. The point is to help newer players, and let them target troops for their teams.
The QoL changes in Arena are based on player feedback.
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What was the Growth Orb soul forge based on?
Feedback that Growth orbs and Delve Treasures are useless to a lot of end gamers so combine the two?
For years we’ve asked to recycle extra growth orbs and wisdom orbs into something more useful than a Random Mythic troop costing 8 Power Orbs every 2 years. And this is what we get… More a slap in the face than an actual QoL change.
Hopefully the people that wasted time on it couldn’t of been doing something more worthwhile like fixing the kingdom offer bug after star level 21.
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I’m trying really hard to see both sides of the coin here, so bear with me.
This isn’t a bad update, really. It’s got some nice QoL features like the Arena troop re-order and re-roll, as well as converting green orbs to Delve treasure! It also helps newbies get on their feet with a non-premium currency, while giving vets new banners and team slots to play with. VIP chests got a boost, and paying players can also choose to use Shrines for some extra resources, and these don’t appear to negatively affect f2p players in any way.
The unfortunate part about this update is that it continues the trend since 4.7 of lackluster, largely monetization-based updates. So while it’s not a bad update, necessarily, combined with the other updates for a year or more, I admit I’m dissapointed.
Hoping for a better 2021 
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Agreed, but not the feedback that actually solved any of the “problems” present.
I get that reversing the draft order was the easiest “fix”. But as I, and others, pointed out when giving feedback to the initial rework, a blind draft in any direction does not allow synergistic team building.
Selecting from all available 12 troops was the much more elegant solution and would have been much less the “bandaid fix—that’s bad design” that this is despite Kafka once claiming our devs are against implementing such things when they don’t really solve the base issue.
Yes, there is strategy involved in the current method. But the “strategy” can be reduced to “if it poisons, pick it. If it does damage with a boost ratio, pick it. If it does something to all, especially if it’s burn, pick it.”
That’s it. Ignore the mana colors — they do not matter, especially since you can’t pair a banner. Ignore troop types, and roles, and basic stats — they do not matter, and you’ll basically never be able to capitalize on potential team bonuses you could have built anyway.
Because you aren’t building a team. You’re panning for a one-troop army, or a group of troops that can each stand alone.
And as far as redrafts being made easier? WHY? And have they really? If drafts were more meaningful in the first place, there would be no demand for redrafting, by the way. And — oh! — it sure sounds like a lot of extra clicks to slow the UI down and make it clunky RATHER THAN some of the other things actually asked for, like the ability to weigh flash offers by exiting the Arena interface and being able to return to the offer after making an informed decision by checking whether a person actually needs/wants what’s being offered.
The prevention of accidental gem expenditures is nice. But it mostly misses the point.
I think this update is full of that.
A fair amount seems well-intentioned.
But I fear it mostly misses the point
And not just for endgamers like me, by the way, which is why it’s such a big problem — if an update for beginners solves the problem of “teambuilding is confusing” by handing out teams so that teambuilding is no longer necessary, then it isn’t a solution at all.
I’m sorry to be so negative.
I’m just really disappointed. Because I’ve felt like the game has been pretty out-of-touch for a long while now.
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This was never meant to be a feature intensive update, as we try to avoid huge ones with complicated moving parts before the holidays. Even so, we included a lot of stuff, and made sure to hit some QoL issues as best we could in the timeframe we had.
Not every player will like this update, and this has been the case for each update we have released in the past. I think that this (admittedly) smaller update tackles some things we have been wanting to work on for a while, primarily FTUX.
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I don’t think this is the fix players needed, even if some thought they wanted it. It doesn’t solve the issue they said they were having; see above, and the other thread, for further explanation of why this was the least they could do, and why it’s so little they needn’t have bothered.
Not to the treasures that anyone should actually be spending, though.
Crowns are potentially worthwhile.
But if you spend any lower treasures ever, you’re wasting a ton of gold, which is a pretty well-documented reality.
New banners are nice, but if these slots have the pre-selected troops, can endgamers actually use them? It sounds to me they’re much more likely just to be in the way if they can’t be modified.
Agreed. Tiny nice thing for those it affects.
Disagree. This is 100% gold generation. It’s a double ring of wonder.
That could have significant impacts. Especially if the “bonus” items end up being Imperial Deeds, Books of Deeds, or any other time-gated resources that determine kingdom power progression caps.
Remains to be seen. But I’m not optimistic.
Best part of the update: drum roll please…Christmas music 
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Was surprised to see Salty swear in her official capacity, but it seems this isn’t actually a curse word. I learned something today!
Edit: first time user experience
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They come pre-named and pre-set with the troops, which I believe you get a copy of each. But from that point on, it’s just a new free slot, which is pretty nice for F2P players and the very limited # of troop slots.
The update took nothing away from you, and had a bunch of stuff, some even helpful.
Re Arena - Epic troops first does mean a lot, because most of the time, the singular troop you base your run on will be Epic or the Ultra-Rare. Having these out of the way and picking non-blocking colours as meat shields up front makes a lot of difference.
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Hello, Salty.
I have to say, that i’m really tired to hear you saying the same things over and over again. Btw, that’s also the reason why you hear the same things over and over again from the playerbase.
Example: “Not every player will like this update, and this has been the case for each update we have released in the past.”
Truth: Most players i know didn’t like any of the updates in the past 18 months or so!
Example: “Even so, we included a lot of stuff, and made sure to hit some QoL issues as best we could in the timeframe we had.”
Truth: I don’t want you to include a lot of stuff, I want you to slow down with new stuff, fixing some bugs and existing problems and rethink about some stuff, that was included in the last 18 months.
As you can see, I’m speaking about what I don’t want…sure not speaking for every player.
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The update on its own is well and good; what bugs a lot of us is that very few, if any, of the updates since 4.6 have been “feature intensive.” Medals, introduced in 4.6 alongside the new Explore, gave us new things to chase, more power for our teams, and different skills we could attach to team depending on what we needed, while also improving an otherwise very basic gamemode. The updates that could arguably be considered feature intensive past that are very blatantly a drive for monetization, such as Epic Tasks and Campaigns, although taking a closer look, neither of these really added content to the game. World Events have their own assortment of issues, but I suppose for the sake of argument we could consider those the primary non-monetization-based major update. World Events are neat and all, but definitely don’t cut it for major content I was hoping for out of the past 7 x.0 updates due to their repetitiveness and lack of meaningful changes between events.
In summary, it’s a fine update, it’s just that it’s yet another one on the line of “updates that add very little for players not willing to pay money.”
1 Like
Not my runs (bone scorpion, dwarven gate, wall of bones, zhenniao, and many others ARE the heavy-hitters because they pack so much bang for their low mana costs. I often sweep with Orc, or Lance Knight, and I haven’t even gotten to the OP Rares like Wood Rynax, Vampire Lord, Summer Knight, Mist Stalker, etc…) and it doesn’t, but I can agree to disagree on these points.
The new team slots will be nice if they’re fully functional. I can always appreciate having more slots for Guild Wars teams.
And as for the update not taking anything from me, I never claimed otherwise — but I WILL say, any development time that is spent “missing the point” as I’ve claimed does take time away from development that hit the mark.
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The team slots will function as normal team slots. 
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Unrelated to the next patch, but do you know if the Hairy Hoarder pet is available on Xbox One?
I’ve seen posts that PC players have had rescues show up, but on Xbox One, it doesn’t show up in the unowned section.
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This summarises my reaction a little bit, as well.
If newer players are having difficulty getting through the quests because it turns out there are really only a few teams that are actually viable to get through what is (imo) too large a number of quest battles in an enjoyable amount of time, the solution would be to rebalance underwhelming troops (the problem) or scale back the over-performers and then make battles enjoyable in some other way (e.g. by introducing “power-ups” that you can earn ¯_(ツ)_/¯), and then to also reduce the overall number of quest battles (one per story segment, so ~21 → ~7), but keep them tough, while still providing areas they can train up in and gain resources.
So when thinking about, “Was it a good thing that Warbands were added to the game?”, at its core I like that it’s supposed to help new players pick up the game and get a feel for it (I mean, releasing a bajillion new troops, sometimes just for the sake of having “new content” each week probably hasn’t helped in terms of pool dilution and players being overwhelmed), but then I do also feel a bit like it misses the more holistic mark and that
One, little part that stuck out for me as being out of touch was the conversion of Minor Orbs of Growth → Gold Rings:
It’s been stated by the devs before that Orbs of Growth are most valued by newer players, so it’s less likely they’ll be wanting to trade these in or have a huge excess.
Newer players are probably the only ones that might consider using Gold Rings for their Treasure Hoards, though, due to an initial scarcity of treasures and wanting to increase Hoard Quality asap, first and foremost.
Later-game players are the ones who are most likely to have an excess of minor Growth orbs – but they’re also the ones least likely to use Gold Rings to upgrade their Hoards, and due to the high Soul cost of Medal upgrades, these Growth orbs are probably best used on the last level upgrade or two of Mythics, Legendaries, Epics etc.
I.e. Late-game players ‘won’t’ use this function (not worth it), and early-game players probably can’t, or not to any significant extent before it becomes uneconomical – so it’s kind of a superfluous feature.
So yeah, the ‘out of touch’ theme (also in AWR’s point about Warbands and using the hero/XP) does kind of resonate with me a little bit.
It also feels weird to be discussing what seem like essentially the entire Patch Notes before the update’s been released 
and in this thread (per usual) no less.
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I blame @Lyrian and the extremely helpful notes taken every time Salty does a preview stream, personally.
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Meh+. Thats my grade for this patch. Couple positive things (arena, vip keys), other stuff is just meh for me (end gamer). Feels more like 5.26 patch than bigger 5.3 patch to me.
That is so true.
Another thing to look at is that so many of my arena fights are won/lost due to skulls - it is just a matter of if it is the AI or me being lucky. Then the selection of team doesn’t matter anyway.
This update is another clear hint to where the game is going and which players are their focus. Veterans are clearly not valuable to them - even though lots of these are the reason the game is still going. Veterans in guilds guiding new/mid players how to/when to…
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Yes, a game that uses Gold, Glory, Souls, Gems, Seals, 6 types of keys, 6 Colored Jewels, Diamonds, Shards, Chaos Shards, 6 Color Deeds, Imperial Deeds, 6 types of Forge Scrolls, 6 types of Ingots, Orbs of Growth, Wisdom, Clans, and Ascension, Power Orbs, 7 types of Pet Food & 34 types of traitstones CLEARLY needs another resource to manage in warcoins.
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