GoW 2025: what would I spend real money on?

VIP 11, and I stopped spending on GoW since 2019 due to the treatment of players by the previous mods.

Fortunately, we now have @Jeto who is making me feel like I may be willing to spend again, and I decided to look at what are the current offers.

..I wasn’t very impressed though with what I saw:

  • PvP Premium Pass relies heavily on Burning Marks, that continue to contain the RNG factor for rewards that I’m not interested in (e.g. Icons, Silver Marks). I’m not going to pay real money for random rewards, unless the reward pool contains ONLY THINGS I WANT (yes, that means no duplicates of stuff I already have). Not to mention that the whole Alliance Rank Reset left me with a significant distaste towards putting effort in PvP.
  • Campaign Premium Pass again is offering me mainly RNG via keys & Dragonite, so maybe I’m not the target audience for that either since I do not care for getting the Troops/Pets early. Additionally, I find the whole method of Tarot Troops in Vault with unlimited duplicates quite distasteful, and I feel that I would be supporting this system if I purchased the Campaign Premium Pass.
  • Other offers (e.g. shrines, shop…) are unrealistically priced, and thus likely aimed at new players

So I asked myself: what would I actually pay real money for?

I would pay maybe around 5 USD/month for a pass that gave me a button that automatically cleared the daily battles for me (e.g. Daily Plunder, Dungeon) and extended the Tribute Collection beyond 1 hour (6? 12? 24hs?)

I would pay maybe around a one-off 5 USD to cap ALL my Vault Troop Pulls to 4 copies once they are Max Rarity (as per Guild Chests system with Guardian Troops)

I would pay maybe around a one-off 5 USD to cap ALL my Dragonite Soulforge Pulls to 4 copies once they are Max Rarity (as per Guild Chests system with Guardian Troops)

I would pay maybe around a one-off 10 USD to have the option to disable animations during battles (e.g. battlecrashers, traits, spells, special gems), and all sorts of victory screen fillers that we consistently skip when trying to play the came

That’s off the top of my head: just some feedback now that I trust the Mod team will be able to pass some of this on to the appropriate channels.

:vulcan_salute:

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I have a qol I wrote to see if we can implement an animation option just generally.. I think I’ve mentioned that before in the thread about the Genie/Pet/Buccaneer offer animations.

Think there has been a qol generally about updating tribute collection, but not 100% sure.. but QOLs are almost never real money suggestions. Unless it’s feedback around an existing IAP

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Not having to live my life in 1 hour increments…priceless. I would be willing to start spending money again if the game would automatically collect tributes for me.:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Being able to craft verses would be nice. Weve been asking for this for quite some time but nothing yet

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Please, please burn anything related to that particular topic and pretend it never existed. I am very sure this would result in way more grief and resentment that most around here could possibly imagine.

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You won’t be getting more from tributes, you’ll be getting far less. IP2 has zero reasons to suddenly shower you with free extras. Every rework so far has been a nerf in regards to what gets handed out.

The way this would likely play out is that you only receive tributes once per day, as part of your daily login. They’ll bump up the amount a bit, maybe by a factor of 2 - 3 compared to hourly tributes, so it’s a minor improvement for the average Joe that doesn’t play more than an hour each day. There may be some paid Login Pass that throws in some extras, as an active player you’ll still receive far less in total compared to now.

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Some great ideas. :smiley:

Like you vip 11, spent a little since 2019 but not much, going from 10-11. Investment not worth the reward, too many passes.

So I am no completionist and since mid game everything I have done in game and who with as well has been managed so that I don’t exceed my ‘burn out’ threshold.

So to add to that I quit once, because of the guild wars debacle on top of the pvp rework broke my will. I came back because of a couple reasons to do with people I interacted with on the server in discord, and that guild wars was on the horizon at least.

As a result of quitting, I came back with an even better mindset about prolonging fun, so everything about previous thoughts like dragonite and dragons and anything like sentinels, now goes straight over my head. Do not care, doesn’t matter, it is what it is. Of course I may complain about stuff, but at the end of the day, truly doesn’t matter. A good moan seems to sometimes break bad luck, but that’s ofc seriously anecdotal…

15 hoard mimics doesn’t help that thought process with many players with 0, I wish i could trade 14 to guildees, but ofc that’s not occurring.

With that, the new pvp being so anti players who have played, no longer matters either.

To test my thought process on pvp and what it entails, last season I cleared all ranks after half of it. I completed all rewards early, had every single free achievement weeks early. I had a decent amount of fun team building, not using meta, and didn’t care much about gold marks or vp. I got what I got and I largely avoided bs areas like Bay of Stars…

I couldn’t get the immortal past 11. That was the first red flag on pvp. Every single possible reward maxxed out, except traiting immortal from 11 to 14. I got fairly lucky with burning marks I suppose, but If I had extreme luck, I don’t think it would be any higher. Maybe, but 11/12 that’s your barrow. Trait to 14 is probably impossible without paying or maybe 75% of chest opening is immortal souls for the desired mythic.

The point about buying stuff and then being subject to more RNG is pretty relevant, because it is a morale sapper for those upset about constant dross coming from chests.

Then pvp resets, I’m done on that wheel because it’s reset, but also it’s a complete fools errand as is. The reset is a kicker, but I’ve already said I’m not interested in the hamster wheel, but add to the fact that your efforts are futile unless you pay for more bad luck, and ofc the immortals block kingdom progression on newer kingdoms now - see Sin of Maraj.

This time, I had 0 immortal souls after 7 chests, silver marks, gold, silver, bronze icon, silver marks, silver marks, silver icon. After 200 burning marks I had 1 pull of immortal souls.

It didn’t bother me in the slightest, because the whole thing makes 0 sense to pay for.

Anyway until they address some level of sense, then no sense means no sense for many.
Adding some sense may get more actually paying than those that pay regardless or every day.

However we’ve been here before with gems, so this is just a little story I’ve shared about futility :smiley:

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I think the community is fed up with all of the “gambling” features that have been added to the game. Ever since the start of the pvp seasons, I took my chances on trying to get Immortal Ossifer fully traited, and I was able to just barely have enough burning marks to be able to.

After that? My burning marks will keep piling up. Throwing away burning marks on thousands yes, thousands of battles feels about just as bad as losing your alliance ranks. I honestly don’t think that the developers fully understand how much time and effort it takes to get all of the rewards in pvp and keep up in pvp leagues.

Epic burning chests were a decent attempt at making burning marks useful, but quite honestly, the featured season Immortal and the pvp icons need to be removed. If people could directly target their favorite Immortals easier, people would be more willing to invest in something that they can actually upgrade.

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Soooo in the end you want to spend about a 40 bucks and don’t play this game anymore?) You would not need to do dailies, open chests, collect troops, playing a game to farm a dragonite. Sounds like a some jewel legend game or smth where you just have to put 3-in-a-row and that’s all

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Don’t get me wrong, prices here is just strange when we say about targeted things like when you get a new myth - some traitstones for a tons of money and gems for tons of money - i’m not sure this is a real offers - as to me, devs look at them like a kinda some way to donate for a good will like tips or something, not as a real active transaction.

The real prices and not really high is for pvp pass and a season pass - it contait reasonable amount of goodies for a time periods you bye them - it looks like other game passes in other commercial projects

I just don’t understand those, who demand a game to be a fullfree and get a new content and support. People are working and deserve their work to be paid. We have no commercials at an any place it would be like other “FTP” games. Just think - from what do the devs get a money to contain game functionality and further development? from their pockets just to make a game for you? You would do that if you can? No way)
Anytime when you are willing something - just put yourself at a place of other side. If you’ll have a choice - get 40 bucks immediatelly or a 5 bucks/month for a half a year what would you prefer? But mention that a lot of players, who will get an option to immediatelly bye a resources they need will bye it and then quit.

While their prices are reasonable and not really necessary - it’s fine, as to me.

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There’s so much more in the game to play than those basic dailies.

I play another F2P game that recently added a 1-click completion for dailies and has been slowly adding other dailies to it. My engagement with the game hasn’t gone down. In reality, it’s probably gone up because I’m willing to spend more time on that game versus GoW which has just been adding more daily/weekly tasks. I’m also willing to spend money on that game, even though it makes little difference compared to whales. I see it as a tip to the devs.

Now credit where credit is due. GoW has drastically decreased grinding for Valhawks in PvP and I greatly appreciate that. Fingers are crossed that they continue reducing the daily grind.

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It’s connected. At a current time i craft a 21 floral eggs and get only 5 of needed dragons, if i just need 6 - i’ll lose a bit of my interest a little early - that concern to a vault - if we’ll need a 5-10 vault keys to garanteed obtain a needed card, i think it would lead to a sugnificant activity decrease. But ballance must be in a first place if you have to play 6hours-a-row without any result - it woild lead to a suborbital flight on a chair)

That just means the Vault is unrewarding if people would stop playing after 5-10 Vault Keys.

See: Cedric drop rate

Still doesn’t change the drop rate of different Tarot cards getting worse and worse over time

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Nothing tbh. This just a mobile game to pass time while im doing other stuff.

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It’s about playing the parts I enjoy while skipping those parts that I don’t, without losing the corresponding rewards (instead of investing my time to get those daily rewards that I would be getting anyway since we have unlimited tries, I unlock the skip option with real money).

:vulcan_salute:

This is really crucial for GoW and all other free games. Notably, cosmetics alone do NOT tend to make enough cash to sustain a game and its team (I’m too lazy to find hard evidence for this, but I think that’s a hard point to realistically argue against - very few successful, long-lasting, free games have only cosmetic transactions).

A great example is another free, successful game, Path of Exile. While I’m by no means an expert on the game, from what I gather it’s very non-P2W, an outlier for the genre. Many transactions are cosmetic. But the transactions most popular among the community are the transactions which provide more storage space - a mechanical advantage over non-paying players.

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Some of the most resilient games like Fortnite, CS:GO, League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends etc. still exist and thrive with just Cosmetics Only options.

But… you need people actually playing the game first before selling content means a thing.

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Very true. I’m not super familiar with those games, but it’s interesting that (to my knowledge) all those games are less about progression. I’d be curious how progression or lack thereof in a game affects its ability to monetize, though that’s a rabbit hole not necessary for this topic.

I really hope that OP’s suggestions are included as QoL rather than paid features.

Been playing this game for the better part of a decade and I’m only VIP 4. I bought a couple of things here and there, but realized that the cost of all these passes just wasn’t worth it and stopped spending any money.

Frankly I feel that the game is oversaturated with so many cash grabs that it is more of a deterrent and makes me not want to spend money.

Especially as I’ve watched the game change from a casual gem matching game to a full blown job to just keep up with everything. I don’t even play 75% of the games modes anymore as I just don’t have the time to play them or I just don’t see the point as the rewards no longer help me.

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Gaming since 2015, VIP 9. Last Item I purchased was PVP season pass. Won’t do that again.

I was regularly purchasing the Elite Campaign pass, just to get the Dragonite. But getting the RNG on trying to get specific dragon… And yes now you can craft them for double price… I don’t know what is worst.

I am missing 3 of the original Boss Dragons (Amathialas, Diamantina, Sapphirax)
I missing all Cosmic and Floral.
I have very bad RNG with the Dungeon.

Honestly, there is too much in this game now that costs money and you end up not getting what you need, plus taking away a lot of what could be done on the weekend (such as PVP) makes it harder to get things.

So I am now just a guildy, playing because I love the guild I am in, and those things that count, we get…because we are collaborating instead of competing.

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