Tbrh
I’m going to preface with a disclaimer.
GW is optional for nearly all players.
You have a choice to play it or not.
As an example in our 12 guild alliance at least 5, maybe 6 don’t care about it. 1 high ranking guild at least encourages no participation and the others are finish battles. Of those they allow off colour.
So every option to play Gens of War occurs here and I’m sure there are similar situations across alliances on all platforms.
So because it’s so polarising, and it’s imperfect, at times frustrating, putting a feedback message inside an announcement is really bad. All it will do is change the narrative and bad news (for those that care) is being buried.
I think this announcement is really poor.
I’m not going to give devs my future feedback because I cannot remember one significant beneficial result from anyone providing feedback. We only have to look at the fubar of PVP.
Feedback should be in a separate thread.
Now let’s get to the issue.
Devs have decided that they’ve broken the game so much that they are now postponing guild wars til ‘later in the year’.
Which by the time that gets here, we may have had guild wars absent for a year. When it returns it could be in any guise.
So I’m isolating the issue to the top bracket guilds who play guild wars and mostly for guild wars only. Seeing as they are the most affected, but their loss will be felt by a lot more players.
The issue for those is they are mostly configured to play guild wars. So what’s the difference between guild wars in high brackets and say bracket 10?
In terms of gameplay, in bracket 10 you might get some random defences, you might get wrong colour defences and you might get convoluted teams that can’t win fast enough. You will get optimised defences, a lot of. In B1 it’s about cohesion and troubling defences in every fight. Btw book defences are so 2022.
Incidentally I’ve played more or less every bracket from 1-25 and most from 25-100+ either with alts or helping alliances or guilds.
In high brackets and specifically bracket 1, but I’ve seen it in 1-4, players will sometimes stream or record replay their games with watchers, helpers, lurkers.
GW to top bracket guilds is about getting together, designing teams, tactics, strategies, testing theories and sometimes even being ultra aggressive to get high scores, with the caveat that a loss is also very likely. It’s hard work and once a month is enough. It’s also engaging between guild wars, theorising and interacting between guild mates.
So guild wars involves people, making acquaintances, friends, maybe players you avoid all with the idea that you try and win, but have fun.
Other guilds seem to be more intense in their desire to win and also seem to have maybe a few more options available to them. We go for fun, try to win.
GW is pressure for all players really. There’s no mulligan and some of the defence teams and starting boards can really be devastating.
So guild war may come back, it’s said so, but it’s going to come back different. Guild Wars can’t have monetisation because it breaks it. Imho of course but we can’t have two tier guild wars, it would explode the player base.
The monetisation element of guild wars, and one of our best players (retired after this announcement, making our two best players going in the same week, was free to play), comes from buying campaign passes or other things, to get their account in shape.
You simply can’t monetise buffs.
So I fear there will be a lot of leavers as a result then, as there is now.
Guild wars liove or hate diversifies the game. You as a player pick your poison.
in the meantime what do guild war focused guilds do?
Every single time the game is updated, it’s further frustration that those designing seem to not understand how their game plays. Even the messengers don’t understand to convey the message properly.
So that’s why so many are leaving and more will follow.
I would suggest to the devs that actually you need to revisit your update schedule, and get back to fixing guild war and the PvP mode fully.
PvP is broken. It also broke guild wars. Go fix it properly and get players onside.
Look at all the threads. It’s not whining, in fact wasn’t the feedback applauded by the community manager? Now in the spoilers there is another mode incoming but the new one is bust, broke. It’s dying already.
Fix the content first! Go play it for an hour, try and count 15 unique troops in PvP zones in that hour. See how many times you fight the same 2-3 players. See the effect of blood frenzy. Go look at the junk options in certain areas. No logical play tested thought had gone into gameplay. The logic has been about this might work.
Why aren’t there opposing teams vs colours, red vs blue. Beasts vs Mechs etc. it’s same vs same.
The game is stale, it’s broke, it’s boring and it’s going to drive more away. Those that remain will be looking over their shoulders as more leave and less start playing.
I will actually add that even though our alliance has GW optional or GW no, as well as GW focused, we do have players in lower brackets who hookup on discord sharing just to catch up as friends, and play. We also invite players from all guilds, so the alliance passes on tips, helps players, who may go away with a new team or tactics, or we just chin wag. Personally part of the experience has been meeting people from other cultures, countries and just chatting about anything, which has helped us become a team, without any ranking, player status or hierarchy. Often with no game being played.
Anyway it had to be said. Good luck those that remain.