Gems of War - A Game for Mid-Level Players

Oh gosh I feel this. I like them as a mechanic and they probably help people who don’t buy a lot of tiers, but I really, really feel this thread. Sometimes I look forward to running out of sigils, and Valravens prevent that!

Basically, in most events there comes a point where there’s no reason to go on. If my guild hits the last reward tier, why should I spend the remaining sigils? I’m usually 150+ sigils away from even thinking about the leaderboard. So I usually resent the tiers I bought, even though they were sort of required.

All in all I just agree with this thread. I had a lot more fun as a midgamer. I had goals then. Now my only goals are “wait for ascension orbs” :frowning:

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I agree with most things posted. On treasure hunt in particular you could just allow us to gamble more maps per hunt. Even if it scales down I would be happier than 1 at a time.

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Thank you for taking so much time to respond and assist with ideas. I don’t this game has run its course, I just think it needs course correction.

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Great suggestions @Zepp and @Shimrra, couldn’t agree more! If some of these proposed changes were implemented it would be really welcome.

Just to add to it, one particular source of annoyance for me that I think you haven’t touched on: why in the world do we get the same time (24h) to complete a delve event on Tuesday, and a pet rescue on Wednesday? I would really appreciate getting at least 48h for delve events, and both could take place at the same time anyways, pet rescue isn’t a “real” event (no sigils/leaderboard/dozens of battles)

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Not even dramatic, as far as I’m concerned :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: (just sensible). It’s a fun concept on a smaller scale; with events stretching on as they do, just eugh.

So apparently some of the feedback they’ve received is that lower-level players like Growth orbs, which is why they have no plans to change anything at the moment.

I strongly suspect this feedback made no differentiation between Minor and Major Orbs, though, as otherwise I find it very difficult to swallow. I’ve made and levelled up new accounts several times, and a Minor Growth Orb is disappointing no matter which way you look at it. I could understand Major Growth Orbs being liked, though.

This could potentially also allow for integration with the Soulforge to allow for the crafting of higher rarity treasures, if that were deemed sensible!

:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: :laughing: Don’t be silly.

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I would like to point out I’m cynical the spirit of this thread will be respected because this is the nature of F2P.

(Disclaimer: I don’t have GoW numbers, maybe they’re different, this is just the industry average.)

Newbies are hard to get! The store is full of options, and getting them to click on your game in particular costs a lot of effort, which usually means ad money. Other excited players are a factor in influencing them too. Newbies are very likely to spend money, both because they want to catch up to other people and they have no clue what the wisest purchases will be. So every game wants a constant influx of newbies.

Mid-game players are still valuable. They’re making progress, and feeling good about it, so even though they know what impulse buys to ignore, they’re very likely to bite on good deals. Since mid-game players are easy to keep happy, they tend to help a lot in terms of attracting newbies.

Endgamers are problematic. They’ve seen all of your content, so it takes something very big and very new to keep them from burning out. The game has probably changed dramatically since they started, and each change is more likely than the last to be something they didn’t like. Since they’ve seen and experienced everything, they are least likely to spend more money. Since they’re disgruntled, they’re more likely to talk people out of joining.

When your revenue is monthly, you don’t care how much someone spent last month. You care how likely they’ll spend that or more this month. Endgamers are the people least likely to spend. They’re also the people most likely to sour the community and prevent new signups. So most games are optimized to send smiling people to take endgamers by the hand and lead them to a Pain Room until they decide they don’t like the game anymore. Preferably quickly.

So is it any wonder that the PvP reward system, the game’s most important grind, is designed to:

  • Present high rewards to newbies but create a sense of frustration because the most rewarding teams aren’t teams they can beat.
  • Give mid-game players the highest average rewards just as they’re able to maintain high win rates.
  • Progressively lower the rewards for endgamers such that they have to win multiples of matches or ask their guild to abstain from rewards just to feel like they break even.

GoW wants endgamers to leave. Not stay. Unless you’re going to spend a lot of money and recruit a lot of newbies, then you can stay. (But the game won’t be any more fun.)

The devs will deny it, and deep in their hearts they probably care about endgamers and want a game that keeps them. But actions speak louder than words. I first saw someone point out the PvP disparity more than a year ago. The only adjustment that’s been made is to make it worse for endgamers. It’s hard to ignore the writing when it’s in flaming letters.

(That has the cynical bit built right in, too. The reason PvP revamp isn’t and hasn’t been a major focus is it affects every group of players. If it’s unsatisfactory for newbies it’s probably also bad for mid-gamers. It’s hard to prioritize something that will give you three groups of unhappy players instead of two.

I really hope the next update fixes one of the major endgamer gripes. It is very true that sometimes they do that. 4.2 was the “make classes interesting” update by removing the class change fee. But we had to whine for years to get it. Nobody was asking for emoji with such vigor; they just wanted functional chat. We’ve had quite a few “for the newbies/midgamers” updates. It’d be nice to have one for the endgamers.

Because in my eyes, everyone eventually becomes an endgamer. So even newbies should care how they’re treated. Why would you invest a year into a game that will show you the door when you get there? What’s the point?)

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I have, kinda. :wink:

But, of course, you meant the devs.

With the way things are trending, and with the mandate by decision makers to find “creative” ways to increase microtransactions, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a furtive method implemented that somehow monetizes Treasure Hunt, disguised as a “rework”… like, how they “reworked” event keys. :unamused:

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They could always add negative valraven boosts to shop tiers. Like if you don’t buy any tier, you have the nominal chance for ravens. Each tier you buy descrease the chance for ravens to spawn with like 10-15% per tier. That should be a middle ground between allowing non spenders play more than 4 matches/day in an event, and the too many sigils issue.

Except then you’re effectively punishing people who make purchases compared to those who don’t.

Having fewer battles than everyone else is way less cool than everyone just having fewer battles, especially for anyone trying to compete with others’ scores.

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You don’t really punish them, as each tier had a bunch of sigils too, and those tend to be far more than you’d find with ravens alone without any tiers bought.

I guess the problem is some people really want Valravens and other people don’t. Not everyone buying a lot of tiers is an endgamer, so some people are going to struggle even though they have a lot of sigils/potions.

Maybe the solution isn’t to nerf Valravens directly, but give you some other outlet for sigils. Maybe at the end of the week, unspent sigils could be converted to something?

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Maybe they could only appear in the preliminary stages of an event, e.g. before Zuul, before 4x Towers, before the first Ultimate Doom? :man_shrugging:

Raid would then have fewer battles in which Valravens could appear, though, so it’s not ideal. They could alter the chance to appear, but you might end up with Valravens galore (potentially very helpful for lower levels trying to claim those Raid rewards, though!).

since potions have been brought up. I really like potions. what if there was a way to get potions in-game? like on rare occasion, a potion could drop from the top of the board and you have a small number of turns to get it to the very bottom of the board (like 2 or 3, and maybe it depends on the potion). if you get it to the bottom, you get the effects of that potion. this could be something like a shielding potion, or maybe a potion that gives you double coins at the end of the battle. any explosions or aoe remove/destroy gems effects that hit the potion destroys it.

Given how many battles you need to do for Tuesday Delves I’d even appreciate that event running for the whole week. Or at least from Monday to Thursday, Friday to Sunday being reserved for new release events. The same handling could be applied to Pet Rescue Wednesday and Class Thursday, so players have freedom of choice when to play which event. Note that this would require the Pet Rescue event and the gnome triggered Pet Rescue to run in parallel as two separate games, which would by itself make Wednesdays much less boring.

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Because in my eyes, everyone eventually becomes an endgamer. So even newbies should care how they’re treated. Why would you invest a year into a game that will show you the door when you get there? What’s the point?)

So I don’t intrinsically agree with this notion that eventually everyone aims for the top of the leaderboard in PVP or in events. I don’t believe every player wants the grind or hassle or spend to be an endgame player. I’d go out on a limb and say most players remain in and around the mid game stage for their time in GoW and this is why the mid game phase is the most attractive portion of the game.

That’s not exactly unusual though for mobile games, endgame players are the most susceptible to burn out and so investing heavily in an ever shifting end game goal is rather pointless. You’re attempting to pacify the most vocal but not largest group in the game. The people who consistently spend money and support the game are committed players who are in guilds that don’t generate millions of gold, complete 100’s of legendary tasks or max out the event rewards often (if at all).

These are players of enjoy the game, you don;t see them on the forum because they are happy to play the game as it is presented. They don’t attempt to get every mythic and every weapon in the game the day it’s released, they spend the cash when they feel like it and enjoy to consistent reward of random mythic drops as they play. Sure eventually they are likely to end up with all of them but it’ll take a long time. Endgame players who spunked a load of money to max everything out and now can save up oodles of gold, glory and gems to hit the new mythic or new faction days to simply won everything ASAP aren;t spending to do so regularly.

My point in reply to this and the OP is not to believe that because the people you hear from most often are the ones complaining about how PVP works for the high end (and I don’t say it isn’t an issue) but looking to fundamentally change large chunks of the game to suit that particular section is a dead horse waiting to be flogged. Everyone who played or is playing LGOH knows very well what it;s like to play a mobile match game where the devs are out to fleece every cent from end game players.

That said there’s nothing in OP’s plans that I think significantly play to end game players. Treasure hunt is a dead game mode and could have a lot more done with it or with treasure maps in general, Class talents aren’t well balanced at each level meaning there is rarely an actual choice with one trait being vastly superior, Delves are really end game fodder and could do with some rework on making the daily grind more appealing and Guild Wars probably does need a quicker way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. However I think most of those changes benefit the early/mid game players than endgame :smiley:

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End game isn’t a phase that starts when you decide to chase a goal like leaderboards. It’s a phase that starts out of your control.

No matter what you do, you’re accumulating souls, traitstones, ingots, etc. At some point you will have more of those than you need unless you’re playing at an extremely casual rate. That’s when I think “endgame” begins. Suddenly you don’t care about rewards that were a big deal before.

A lot of people can and probably do quit before that point, but I don’t think players who participate in the forums or other social media start playing GoW with the idea “I’m going to quit in a month or two.” If you think you’re going to be here for a year or two, you’re going to be endgame.

You’re going to get there, and then you’re going to ask, “Now what?” The answer’s in this thread: “just keep grinding and hope it amounts to something”.

Endgame does not equal leaderboard chasing, no.

I’m almost lvl 1300 and I think know that leaderboards are trash.

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Having played LGOH for over a year, in one of the top five guilds, I can say that I know exactly what happens to a mobile game where the devs bring about massive changes under the guise of “betterment and player satisfaction”, while really all those changes are just a way to maximize profit. Players left in droves, myself being one of them. However, I disagree with your thoughts on endgame players. I think that most GoW players will hope to reach this stage, and it’s not marked by trying to get a place on the leaderboard. It’s simply having an accumulation of resources that begin to go unused, and not much drive or need to use them. I don’t think any large reworks should happen, but I really like the ideas about changes to the level cap on classes and the changes to make treasure hunt viable again. The game isn’t broken, but small tweaks could help keep the player base for a longer time, which is good for everyone.

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Yes! I joined this forum specifically to say I agree completely with your comments. I’m level 242, been playing approximately two months and have been thinking much the same things. So much potential.

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Lol, last week on Tower of Doom I was on floor 64 boss room with 1 sigil left. I can finally move onto other game modes, or so I thought. I actually made it through to floor level 73 using just 3 Hero scrolls and what seemed like a never ending supply of Valverens and Haste scrolls!