In the time it took you to write this you probably could have played both
@UKresistance - Salty has repeatedly suggested that most players don’t take Guild Wars very seriously. I wanted to try and factor that into my calculations, so they’re more in line with what the devs think – and might have stats for.
I agree that GW is taken very seriously by people like you and me. But I think Tacet is a good example of someone in a relatively high bracket who does it pretty quickly and without sweating it much. That’s what I’ve based my numbers on – except for the “Leaderboard” classification, which is where serious GW players are going to fal, in terms of time.
To reiterate, even people who play GW quite casually are going to spend at least 1-2 hours on it during the week, and this is roughly the same time they will spend on the World Event.
Of course, if you skip GW (as many do) – well, I guess it’s nice to have a week off.
I bought T7 once. Last I looked I was 17th and I haven’t used all my sigils yet.
I did 6xtier7 this last weekend faction event and ended up on the PC/mobile leaderboard, and that’s consistently been the case for every weekend faction event… You don’t need to spend 50k gems, just do full clears instead of skipping to the boss room (which yes, takes more time).
That being said, it’s true that events seem to be piling on since 5.0 was released, I expect players will eventually need to specialise instead of completing everything… We’ll see
Switch to a guild with no demands on GW or events, many just chill and chat.
There is a subset of serious players that love Guild Wars and invest a significant amount of their time and energy towards it. This is an important part of our playerbase, but it is also by no means our largest. Many of these players spend several hours in game weekly as well, regardless of whether it is Guild Wars week.
I’m collating feedback in this thread, so please keep discussing the things @Starlite has mentioned. I do not know if anything can be changed, and we won’t be able to run Guild Wars and World Events seperately, but I’ll gather opinions from here for the devs just in case.
The things @Starlite mentioned are not that crucial, as the mechanics of the game dictates that if you want to compete - invest more time, that’s all games do. So running GW alongside with WE is fine. Lemme share some calculations:
- GW battles take 5-10 minutes per battle in an average. Let’s round it up to 1 hour per day.
- World Event battle with a proper team is 6-8 battles 2 minutes tops. So it is 15 - 20 minutes with loading and clicking through the splash screens.
- If you purchased a lot of sigils for the event - be ready that 20 minutes will expand to unlimited amount of time, but it’s your choice.
So, basically, based on my personal experience , GW+WE is 1.5 hours. Yesterday, for example, everything, along Delving the faction (one-day event) up to last tier reward, Adventure board + farming in my low-level faction + PvP to tier 1 took approximately 3.5 hours to complete.
To sum-up I seriously doubt that devs will respond differently on that matter, but I would agree with them: “wanna hit the leaderboard - be ready to invest time”
Time spent dedicated to GW is more than just the battles tho. New troops have joined since the last war.
Some of the topics under discussion in our Guild include but are not limited to: Is the Hive Mind worth using? Which team is giving us problems today, and how do we counter it? What issues do our newer players have? We are a bracket 5 guild. I am certain the discussions are more involved in the top bracket.
But with all that said, my guild mostly wonders why medals can’t be linked to teams. Mostly.
We are one with the Horde, and the Horde is with us. May the Horde be with you as well.
Maybe I’m in the minority
But GW takes me 5-10 minutes a day, plus a couple practice battles, don’t need to change much planning and teamwise as time goes on
World event even less than 5 mins after initial day
I don’t know if I can just scan boards n make decisions more quickly than most or what, but nothing takes me long outside new faction releases
For most brackets, the time invested in GW is better spent doing something else such as Treasure Maps. The return on time is not worth it; unless you are in bracket 1.
Thanks, @Saltypatra.
My estimate that World Event and Guild Wars both take roughly the same time on average is very much based on the idea that people do try to at least do the events, of course. But I hope I’ve tried to capture the reality of different levels of seriousness about doing well in them.
I think there’s a rule of thumb there you should keep in mind.
I’m a little disappointed that there seems no room to adjust the World Event schedule based on feedback. Calendars should never be completely fixed (as you were forced to discover when Stonesong Eyrie had to be delayed, for example).
@Lorien1973, you raise an excellent point, which all game designers would do well to be aware of.
My granddad was CFO of Hoover, Australia. He gave me a fascinating book that I didn’t read until years later.
In the book, a couple of researchers at McKinsey & Co. surveyed and interviewed a large number of successful businesses to try and determine why they were so successful.
One of their key observations was related to rewarding salespeople – and this very much applies to game leaderboards, as well.
Incentivisation in the Real World
I believe the company involved was IBM, but I may have misremembered. In any case, allow me to switch from a narrative to just making the point:
If, at the end of every month (event), you give a special reward to just the top 5 people (out of 100 salespeople, for example), then you will get a strong sales effort from perhaps 20 people. The other 80 know that they have no chance of getting a bonus, so they’ll just phone it in.
If, instead, you spread the rewards more evenly, you will get a lot more keen salespeople doing their best, because they all know they have something extra to work for.
Applying the Principle to Gems of War (and other games)
In the Gems of War context, the first scenario is strongly reflected by the Guilds who register for Guild Wars but don’t play any of their matches. They just get the minimum reward for participation.
Adding the possibility of a bonus from topping your bracket is an excellent incentive (a change that I strongly applaud), but it still leaves you with half a bracket of non-participation.
The basic principle is, the more you flatten the reward structure, the more effort and participation you will see from players (or salespeople). Of course, there has to be a sweet spot, but GoW hasn’t hit it.
Preliminary Suggestions
My basic suggestions are:
- In every bracket, each Guild should get a bonus reward based on their Guild Wars results within their bracket. This would be identical for every bracket.
- All leaderboards should have a flatter structure, so everyone willing to put in some effort feels rewarded for the amount of effort they put in.
For example, everyone who reaches Level 500 in a Faction Event might get a bonus, not just the top 100.
I would like Guild Wars to be its own week, with no other events. Time constraints are the reason — I don’t know how some of y’all are completing all of your Wars battles in an hour or two, but it seems crazy to this mush-brained orc for whom it takes that much time a day, for a total of (at least) 15 hours a week on Wars. FOR THE HORDE, of course — and as Chunky mentions, some of that time is spent adjusting defenses, writing notes for guild mates, etc…
What I do NOT want — PLEASE don’t make Wars happen only once every 11 weeks UNLESS the rewards across the board are three times as high.
Guild Wars rewards have already been nerfed by making the event run a quarter as often as it used to. It doesn’t need to be pared down further — especially considering I wasn’t at the top in the Golden Age, and only just started to enjoy in the bounty.
Also—at the risk of being off-topic (sorry)—make rewards more worth it for all involved. Everyone in Bracket 1 should at least be able to buy maxed Sentinels without running a gem deficit. The easiest solution is to multiply every reward by 4, to account for the reduction in event frequency, but I would rather see a more refined tweak designed to make rewards for all brackets much more enticing — and not just a “I get the same thing regardless of performance” participation-trophy like the game has now.
I know the ship’s probably sailed, but I wanted to try; if people get the same reward regardless of effort, they are being incentivized to invest as little effort (and caring) as possible—hence dead guilds clogging the brackets, players as far as Bracket 10-5 still not knowing the basics of the game mode (though, can you blame them, when the game never gives a comprehensive “How-To”?!), etc…
I agree. Wars investment time wise can be significant if you are competitive. It is the only genre where creative team building is necessary; potions etc have made everything else far too easy. I only really build and test teams generally with wars in mind so that is in itself additional (but indirect) wars time in my view.
I’ve said this before. But I’ll say it again.
Yes those who take Guild Wars super seriously will always be in the minority. I allege that the same minority provides a majority of your revenue though.
They may not be in bracket 1 every month. I think it’s deductive reasoning that they have been in bracket 1 at least once.
Only one patch out of the 10-20 patches since it’s inception has improved guild wars in anyway. Y’all consistently treat it like the freckled red head step kid. Put it out of it’s misery already. I’m not even mad about it anymore. Just feel sorry to see an abandoned guild mode hang around like a fart after eating potato salad on a hot summer day.
It was great at the beginning… but now it’s just smelly shit.
No way we could even have a full guild if wars were less often. The world event can be done on Monday except for the daily sigils. If anything make world event daily sigils happen all at once on Monday for those that want to spend all their time the rest of the week on wars if that’s even possible. The big thing is don’t get behind on the world event or you will have to likely rush Wars which leads to disaster. I guess guilds can choose to skip the world event on Wars week since there will be another the following week as another option. Nothing says you have to do everything every week right.
What about campaign? Oh, oh, and what about bounty?
The title to this is missing 2 other things for a total of 4 things going on in the same week.
This is all a total joke. Guild wars should have an entire week designated to it. It should cost more to play and the prizes should be much more intense. You should get both individual and guild rewards. It should be more transparent and have more information on what’s going on.
This game is turning into a competitive joke. It is feeding the grinders only. So what’s the future? Play all day every day and do nothing with the stuff because there is no goal other than getting more stuff.
And of course you might end up spending 10 hours plus on Tuesday faction if you can’t afford the gems to shortcut from the start.
Not on guild wars/campaign/world event/ bounty week. Lol
Don’t forget we had a faction weekend last weekend and two days later another faction on top of other stuff. Which I need to do as choosing not to complete with potions.
I did all my sigils in world event Monday so I didn’t screw my GW defence and tbh I wish I didn’t even do world event.
I think for me world event has to give as Monday was a complete and utter chore.