We were very pleased to see you all enjoying a plethora of Gnome-a-Paloozas during the last Vault event. Over 50 million Gnomes valiantly gave their lives during that event so we could all collectively bathe in Gems and Gold.
Starting today we are making a small adjustment to the way rewards are calculated in battles during Gnome-a-Palooza. First we’ll explain why, and then we’ll explain the change.
A little over 1% of players are amazingly efficient at dispatching Gnomes at an alarming rate. The clever ones amongst you can manage – with a combination of x4 speed, efficient team design, and the correct selection of weaker opponents – to win games at a rate that is unhealthy for the economy. We were happy to see you enjoying this in the previous event but unfortunately we have to introduce some limits for the health of the game.
As of today, if (and only if) a Gnome-a-Palooza is active, rewards from Gnomes will be reduced if one of two things is noted in a battle; if a battle is completed too quickly or if the enemies are too easy, rewards will be reduced proportionally. So if you can play 6 games per minute, you still earn more than a player who plays 1 game per minute, but it will be significantly less than six times more.
We apologize that we’ve had to do this, and we tip our chainmail hats to the brave adventurers who pulled this off, but we really couldn’t allow it to continue
This is easy to understand for things like gold, souls, or glory—which are awarded in large numbers that can simply be diminished. How does it work for Vault Keys? Are they present at the same probability as before?
Though I don’t like this, I totally understand. I just hope the probabilities have not been nerfed, but only the battle rewards like gold, souls etc which no one really cares.
I understand the nerf, but I am very disappointed as every time something new and fun comes along BAM right away you guys take the fun out of it. It certainly does not at all motivate me to want to spend more money in this game but the opposite. I don’t at all understand this companies logic. The main goal of a company is to earn profits by keeping customers happy. It’s basic business semantics. So you guys making us hate the game more and more is beyond bizarre to me. So now both GOW and PQ3 post nerfs have made the GOW and PQ genre, I’ve adored for many years now something I might have to walk away from.
How do we differentiate between battles that are “too easy” and battle that are considered acceptable? And how does this play out across various player accounts? A battle that is too easy for one player may not be that easy for a player that is a much lower level.
As usual no exact info, it will be up to the community to figure out through a massive data collection effort to figure out what speed and explore level is best.
Is there players that are spending less because of GAP? I’m spending the exact same amount. I do the campaign to get those extra troops and weapons before GAP and still do that. I thought this was the direction the game was heading in. Getting folks to pony up recurring $10 or $25. I guess not lol
There is probably no change in the way an endgamer would spend on the game because of the GaP event. But a new player who’s 3-months old was able to gather all the resources needed for crafting Zuul from the last event. That would surely prevent him from buying any offers involving Orb of Power etc.
If not for GaP, the current Elite Plus Pass is much more alluring.
Totally understand that Devs would like to limit the resources players can get during the events. But I would rather the times of GAP a player can play during vault events get limited, than the rewards getting nerfed.
It’s not that friendly for the players who are good but only play for very limited time. And a player can still get huge amounts of resources if they play long enough. So nerfing the rewards won’t give the result Devs would like to see.
I feel like we need some clarity here. At what thresholds does the throttling kick in? On XBox we’re seeing a max of 66 battles if we do explore 1 with Ironhawk. There’s no way we’re getting 6 battles/minute with loading times. Will 3 battles/minute at Explore 4 or 5 trigger throttling or is that good? Is this going to be scaled to the player level or teams power or are lower level players just going to lose out badly (arguably they are the ones that benefit most from GAPs as a way to catch up on resources, and they just can’t match the same team level that end game players can.
Love how the “1%” get blamed for being too fast. Easy to scapegoat those guys. Fact is ANYBODY could easily do 50+ battles per GAP. Endgames were only doing a few more battles than that per GAP with the most optimal team.
Much easier to blame the 1% than admit nobody in the office could put together a decent speed team to test GAP’s before release.
Also, this. Are the changes really intended to ONLY punish the 1%, or did the threshold get set low enough that if you’re doing more than, say, a battle per minute, you get nerfed?
I understand the why. Because “rewards were balanced with a certain number of gnomes in mind, but the actual number of gnomes we’re seeing is more than what we expected, so we need to rebalance”.
It sucks and it makes everyone feel crappy. If it was just done this way in the first place, people wouldn’t feel like they missed out. Hopefully this has taught you to do better at understanding how even the “most efficient players” of your game play it and you’ll do better in the future.
Now back to what the changes actually are. Can you not just tell us? What is “too quickly” and what enemies are “too easy”? What does “proportionally” mean and which rewards are affected? People are going to figure it out anyway, you know how deviously efficient we can be. Tell us so everyone can make an informed decision on how to play the event.
This change should effect the top 1% of gnome slayers only, and only during a Gnome-a-palooza, those who are fighting against weak opponents and slaughtering them super quickly (the example in the original post is 6 battles per minute), while those who play against opponents more suitable for their own account level and teams, who maybe only play or 2 battles a minute won’t notice a change.
