Guild Wars - Sneak Peek VI

Let’s see how it goes. I’m sure the devs will tweak the rewards and costs once we really get into it.

Release the Krak… Errrmmmmm… Update!

Please explain to me how this is not like a pyramid scheme? Does the "general, chief, head-honcho glean a little more then all his underlings from this process? I want a revolution/coup button option.

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I would very much like to know this as well @Sirrian please

It would make a huge difference in perception

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So if I understand well, the max bonus for a Paragon of each guild is:

  • +5 attack/magic, +10 life/armor → coming from him
  • +15 attack/magic, +29 life/armor → coming from 29 guildmembers

I think you believe that players are going to buy gems for dollars, but are we really doing to do that when 75% of the bonus is coming from our guildmates?

Now as a guildmaster how I have to manage that? Do I have to kick members who contribute not enough to this new system?

I undestand now why Bone Dragon has to be nerfed ;-).

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One of the lamest additions to Gems of War so far. Just another round of stat increases that introduce no new gameplay.
Uninspiring and not as hard to implement as you make it out to be.

Just sad.

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Worth noting that the “head” in this case is not the head of the guild, it’s most likely the higher ranks of defenders:

So the head honcho will possibly change each week, based on results.

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All in one big bracket, like PvP, for now. We might adjust the way that works later though if it’s a problem.

That 1500 Gems EACH as a reward, not divided between players

No those numbers are incorrect… guildmates won’t contribute anywhere near that much

Aww… maybe we should have brought you in to write the code! :stuck_out_tongue:

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@Sirrian could we see a whole “ranking rewards” temporary table ?

i want to know will this be just competition for top 50 guilds or can the ~300 skim anything and how will it look like in general for all the guilds…

maybe in another sneak peak if not a comment? :slight_smile:

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Hehe, the way you answer, it sounds like you correct me, while I in fact said exactly the same as you (when reading everything in context, i.e. the sentence before and after) :slight_smile:

Sorry, @Sirrian but I’m out. We’re a top 25 guild (top 10 in trophies) and you’re telling me you’ve based GW rewards off the very, very, very broken PvP weekly ranking system?

No, just no. I can’t believe how you thought this would be ok? That’s bordering on the ludicrous.

I love GoW but if that’s how it’s going to be, you’re definitely heading in the wrong direction; hell you’re running in the wrong direction right towards a giant cliff.

Very disappointed.

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i also hate pvp ranking rewards not scaling with population growth :slight_frown: (and the idea that guild wars would go the same way)

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I’m cautiously optimistic. A couple of counter-points to the @ogunther’s of the world:

Don’t most guilds sorta know how competitive they are and thus know whether or not they should be contributing Gems? I don’t see why a guild that knows it has no shot of getting Top 10 would require its members to donate 340 gems. Wouldn’t you reasonable assume if your guild is likely to land in the Top 30 then you should buy upgrades to the point where you’re more or less breaking even? Why wouldn’t you just buy to level 3 or 4, where the cost is 40-140 Gems? If you do that, you’re actually coming out ahead. It seems to me that any reasonable guild will min-max its contributions vs its rewards.

Also, aren’t you sort of exchanging Gems for both Gems and new troop cards? If these troops are supposed to be Guardian-level in strength, then think about how long it takes to get one of those to Ultra-Rare or Epic, or think about how many gems you spend chasing a Legendary. With these rewards, you’re spending something like 100 Gems for what equates to a Legendary-tier cards. That seems pretty reasonable.

I’d love to just get more Gems across the board, but I can see why that doesn’t make sense from their perspective. If they just give us more Gems overall then that hurts them. If there are other ideas for how they can make money from this then I’m sure they’re interested!

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@ogunther Well… let’s offer up some alternatives and discuss then… we’ve been very open in making some design changes based upon suggestions here.

There’s always room for improvement… but the way that PvP system has retained players has been magnificent for the game. So I think “broken” is too strong a word. I can understand if it’s not to someone’s taste though… that’s a matter of personal preference.

Regarding the current iteration of Guild Wars… I personally like the system… I look at it and see extra free stuff for everyone who participates… with top groups of participants earning LOTS of free stuff.

If your objection is that other players who work harder and coordinate better than your guild will out-earn you… that’s a legitimate position to have. I don’t think we can ever STOP that in a competitive game, but we can look to soften it.

If you can make top 10 in trophies, you can make top 10 in Guild Wars… at 10th slot, if all of your members buy 4 levels of guardians, they all profit 160 Gems + Cards + Gold for effectively doing what they did anyway. I can’t really see the downside here

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Sorry I think this is a terrible idea that is just bad for everyone. With every guild in the game competing against each other a lot of guild leaders with make upgrades a requirement but there is going to be a lot of people that don’t want to pay for upgrades and those people will get kicked. There is going to be a lot of guilds that only want top players and will kick more casual players. There is going to be a lot of people wanting in the top guilds and then the lower guilds miss out.

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Short version: GW looks really good, and needs a couple small tweaks and not a complete overall, and spending for top tier is not a bad thing.

Full version (buckle up):

Hopefully I don’t alienate too many (including my own guild-mates), but I don’t see all of this as horrible or the end of the world. Further, I actually see this as reasonable and expected, so I’ll try to play devil’s advocate. F2P games are always funded by some whales, so as @Sirrian mentioned, having a way to monetize this is necessary to keep the game going. I’ve played in a few other games competitively, and also developed/published games. There is always this tough balance, and there does end up being a disparity between the very top and a second tier of “competitive free players”. It’s an ugly reality that developers need to eat too.

So when I saw the huge jump between level 4 and 5 costs, I actually think it is a good design. A “gentler” curve/increase would mean that there would be quite a few “tweener” guilds, around the same level but some spend and some don’t. The current system with the big jump almost creates an actual wall, so you’re deciding what level to compete for based on your investment.

Now it’s not all roses though. While I can understand this scaling system for the sentinels, only the top 10 rewards have been given. The majority of us simply won’t compete at that level, so the interesting comparision/decision will be what are the rewards for say guilds 20-50, compared to the costs of either just level 3 or level 4. Assuming those are reasonable, I don’t mind competing in AAA rather than the majors.

And that leads to my second big issue, which others have already highlighted. I think that one big bracket is a mistake and not much fun, because it will both pair guilds that have no business playing each other, and it fails to create the friendly rivalry we currently have between certain similar ranked guilds (and would take away my guilds ability to continue to dominate Mean Machines every week :wink: ). Not being competitive removes the lower guilds, and lack of known opponents removes the higher guilds.

While I understand adding new features this late would be costly and problematic, hopefully there is a “middle” solution that addresses some of these issues. As it is, I think GW looks really great, but it will ostracize the majority of the guilds and simply not be played by the majority. I do have some practical ideas on how to solve this if you’re interested (just not sure if you are, and/or if you’ve figured out legal yet), just message me.

Hopefully you just mean competitively. From previous previews, just for participating (even not spending) will get you some rewards, and I’d like the new cards :wink: So sign us up even if we don’t play…

Also, as far as “gambling on other players”, I’m no gamble :smiley: . Right now guilds already have to do this on new members, and figure out who are the leeches and who are the contributors, and take some risks. I think this just adds another dimension to it, but not one that should be considered truly problematic.

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You know i have huge respect for you but i need to correct you here.
Pvp rewards are s###. Not a single person is going top 100 PvP for those rewards. They are a nice extra but are completely ignored otherwise.

Also in PvP you dont need pay anything to stay competitive as anyone else in there, and again rewards are just a bonus.
Based on the rewards for the top 10 guilds i see another bad design of rewards like in PvP ranking system. If only guilds ranked 6 or higher gain enough to cover those 340 gems, in a pool of about 1000 guilds competing, thats lame and bad distributuon. Im not saying rewards are bad, just that they need to be more spreed to lower ranks. The ones you listed should be spreading all the way to rank 50.

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I think it would be very helpful if everyone dropped the hysteria/absurdity from their comments. The idea that any guild would not play is silly. At a minimum, you can spend nothing on the sentinels and get free stuff just by participating for the week. You can literally sign up, never play in a single battle, and still get rewards! There’s zero downside to participating. The only real issue is whether it’s worth it to spend on sentinels based on the ranking you think your guild will get.

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Yeah…I’m going to disagree with you on the PVP ranking system as well. I’ve been disappointed for months that the reward system hasn’t been altered. The number of players has increased massively since I started about 9 months ago, yet the reward system has remained the same. And getting into the top 100, which is no small feat, gets you next to nothing as a reward. Pretty much any other mobile game I’ve seen spread it based on population. Currently, rewards for 50-100 should be closer to 500-1000. It’s getting more ridiculous as the player base grows.

As for guild wars, if the goal is profit (which every business model generally has in mind) then what is there to convince any guild below the top 100 to purchase these upgrades if they don’t have their own bracket? They certainly won’t win against the top dogs, and will basically put in minimum effort each week for the base rewards. There’s no profit to be made there. How do you involve lower guilds and lower players if they start with no chance? I say this entirely as a player in a higher end guild who is simply looking at this from a business perspective. 75% or more of the guilds in the game don’t even have the full 30 members unlocked. They lose by default to any sort of coordinated effort by any ten guilds.

So either you need to look again at your breadth of rewards for top guilds (top 100? Top 500?) or look again at your bracket system. Or you won’t get back your investment with this idea. I promise.

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As always, I appreciate your willingness to both discuss changes and (potentially) to make them. I haven’t fully woken up yet nor had my coffee so the rest of this post may come off gruffer than I intend.

The fact that you don’t see the current PvP bracket as broken is worrisome as, other than maybe a handful of players who compete at an insane level; there’s nothing in the bracket for most players. The top 100 players out of what? 100,000 active players get prizes? That’s insanely low, and on top of that, none of the said prizes are worth the insane amount of time it takes to earn them. But really, that is a conversation for another day.

I do not disagree with this sentiment. Free stuff is awesome, and you guys (devs) are awesome for giving us so many ways to earn free stuff. I think everyone agrees with this. For at least me personally, my complaint isn’t that I want more free stuff or an easier time earning free stuff.

I know some people do have this complaint (or at least did on previous Sneak Peeks), this is not a complaint of mine. I’m all for hard work = better rewards.

There are some downsides that I think you’re either missing or not fully grasping their implications:

  1. To make investing in GW Sentinels worthwhile, a member needs to feel like his guild is going to do well enough to recoup the investment. With one giant bracket, the chances of doing that not only become increasingly harder to figure out but also become increasingly less likely.

  2. Unlike in the PvP bracket where “rewards” (whether that means the actual rewards or just bragging rights) are based solely on an individual’s performance as compared to everyone else’s. There’s also no weekly “buy-in” to help ensure victory. In GW not only is there a weekly buy-in but then the path to victory for any individual is non-existent. They can’t win unless everyone else competes at their level or higher. That means only the most organized of guilds is going to be able to offer any insurance that a member’s weekly GW Sentinel investment is worthwhile.

This will lead to two things: Hardcore guilds requiring max contributions; semi-casual guilds having to decide if they move up to try and compete with hardcore guilds or if they give up on any kind of organized effort in GW and just let individual players decide their participation level. The split between casual and hardcore becomes a gulf and most players never bother to find their sweet spot. That’s bad for them, bad for the game and ultimately bad for everyone else.

But enough about the problems I see, you’ve asked for some alternatives; since this is already a wall of text, I’m going to start a new comment to bring up some potential fixes. :slight_smile:

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The biggest issue I see, and I know it has been mentioned further up in the thread, is that guilds will start requiring their members to max the sentinels.

Scenario:
My guild requires me to max my sentinels, and because I don’t want to be kicked out, I do so. Sadly, this week my guild fails to make top 10, and I get no gem compensation. Now, if this were a personal decision, I wouldn’t feel that bad, but since I HAVE to do it, I feel a bit annoyed, perhaps frustrated. I like my guild. The regular requirements are easy enough to manage, but a gem expenditure requirement is not a healthy way to go…imo of course.

And we all KNOW there are going to be guilds that require it.

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