Regarding the “loss should feel bad” thing. I agree, BUT, there are two kinds of loss.
“Dang, had I taken this match instead of that mach, maybe I could have countered. I’ll watch more carefully next time.”
“Freaking AI one-rounded me on their first turn again due to cascade after cascade. This isn’t fun! Give me a freaking CHANCE! RAAAAGGGGGEEEEEE!!!”
The former is constructive, the latter is not, and lately it feels like we’re getting more and more of the latter.
QFT, very well put. It’s the lack of control, the shift in balance from “choices, with some influence from board layout and RnG” to “RnG with minor impact from choices”. While you can’t get rid of the RnG from the game, the equilibrium between control and RnG has changed to chaos.
This is a great post, only I liked Fizzbang and really enjoyed this week as I was preparing to quit from getting bored with all the REALLY REALLY stupid troops they’ve been vomitng onto us and expecting us to be happy.
So they release one that brings the fun back into the game and nerf it in less than 4 days! I guess they were planning on having their whales quit in masse. I spent over $3000 in this game and have been VIP13 most of this year and part of last because I support the devs, but have not supported them once this year because of all their terrible decisions in making this game less fun for the long-term gamers.
no, you are not the only one that is fed up with the constant nerfs and call for nerfs.
That said, I’m almost as fed up with the new cascades as most of the more veteran players are. I think I know why they changed it. I remember when I was a newer player I would be saying to myself, “man what does it take to get more than one match per turn?” The handful of times I would get a cascade, even if it was only 3 or 4 matches, it felt awesome. And they want players to have that feeling more often.
The problem is, the changes they made to the gem drops in order to give the player more cascades also gives the AI the same cascades, and giving the AI more cascades results in that ‘bad feeling’ everyone is talking about. Recall bias ensures that no matter how often the gems fall in our favor, the handful of times they don’t are going to stick out more.
What troubles me most are the people arguing against the ‘race to fill first’ gameplay. That is exactly how the game should work: First to get their mana wins (that is after all why we play GoW instead of another match 3, to cast the spells). But with that sort of gameplay, the race needs to favor the player over the AI, and the current pro-cascade RNG doesn’t do that well enough.
EDIT: Also, when every match results in cascades of 3-4 matches, you don’t get that ‘awesome’ feeling you would if the cascades are rare. The cascades become normal, and normal doesn’t feel awesome.
Gems of Loop & Broke
2 weeks ago - 92% a decent game
now: 52% - no skill whatsoever - avoid.
Please, Please restore old algorithm
I’m playing this game for more then 20 months now and i had never complaints about . It’s also my most expensive game i ever played , but i don’t care because it’s ( or was ) a fun game . But after the last update i see a completely different game. The game is too much depending on luck now . This is not what players want . And unhappy players are not spending money or they leave and gonna search something fun .
That’s all .Hope they fix this soon 
Never seen anything like it.
Take away gems, oh sorry, we will give a token amount back.
Change dungeon reward system after week has started.
Ridiculous OP troops. Oops, sorry, don’t know how that happened.
Let’s nerf them into uselessness. In the middle of the week!!! What???
I just don’t get it, been playing two years, guess just call it the whacko week and hope things get sorted out.
It’s no problem losing when you fight the good fight! What I think most people are talking about is getting destroyed in a few turns and you never stood a chance. Strategy play has been taken over by pure luck.
Exactly Losing sucks, but losing when you know you could have maybe made a difference is a lot easier to swallow than the AI going “trololololCURBSTOMPlolololChainChainChainChain U DED! I WIN!” Losing when it’s my fault for making a bad move or not considering the board carefully makes me a better player. Losing because the AI decided that I had won too many games in a row just pisses me off. There’s nothing to learn there, no improvements to my play. It’s a coin flip.
I started playing the original PQ again recently (nostalgia!) and noticed the AI in that game tends to chain cascade a lot too. Doh.
This post speaks to exactly how I feel about the state of the game. I have been playing for almost a year and have invested enough money to be vip6. I also GM Marshal2 and spend at least 3-5 hours a day on this game. Over the last few months I had to drop from my home guild Marshal and move down to Marshal2 simply because the game has not been enjoyable enough to fight out 500t every week. Now I am 300t a week in the same amount of time.
I want to continue to play and I wish things where more the way they where before the gem drop change. This is the one thing that has given the AI the edge in the RNG battle. For now I am trying to ride through all the ups and downs but posts like this remind me that my feelings are not alone on this issue.