I really don’t think there is. A year or more ago, someone tried to lower their PVP score to zero by deliberately losing matches to see how far down the PVP rankings went, but anyone who is skeptical about the reality of those numbers wouldn’t be any more convinced by that than they would be with someone’s rankings based on any other amount or quality of play. Steam charts show peak and average number of users, but not unique number of players who log in over a given period. Mobile, PS4 and XBox have even less information available, that is, none.
3 Likes
15,000 people ahead of me and who knows how many behind. That just shows the forums has only a few players out of the thousands. This feedback helps, but it’s not everyone’s voice, that’s for sure.
2 Likes
Hrmmm… let’s see.
Personally, mixed bag here as well.
Gnomes are a nice addition, although as others have mentioned, the launch was bumpy.
On the new game modes: I’ve taken a dubious, but accepting stance towards them. The Raid Boss and Invasion modes are retwists of the Simulator and Gauntlet modes in Marvel Puzzle Quest. Not expecting anything different with Bounty mode when it launches tomorrow, as most signs point to another event shop.
On that note, everyone here surely has looked at Taram’s spoiler pages. To that extent, everyone knows that the 3-week cycle of events from now on is pretty much permanent. There’s yet to be released Godslayer, Siegebreaker, and Bounty Hunter troops as far as the eye can see (and very likely well beyond). The devs have locked in their business model choices and that’s not going to change, no matter how much people on this forum vent.
The event shops have made it unconditionally clear that the game has officially transferred from a “soft sell” (we’re generous and donate if you like the game) to the “hard sell” (need to purchase resources to maximize outcomes in the game because the limited amount of resources given in the game is unsustainable for most accounts). As others have noted, this is likely due to publisher pressure as well as the growing team requiring more financial resources to operate than donations were likely generating.
I’m fortunately to have developed enough kingdoms and to be in a solid late-game guild that lets me fully participate in events, as long as I play conservatively. That said, for newer accounts, the wall that has to be climbed is now much steeper, likely to induce gem purchases. The +50% effort required to complete weekly events is becoming exhausting. I personally do not want to run bombots/firebombs constantly to avoid having to grind for 10+ hours a week to clear an event. Last week, with the 750 explore kills, was the first time in the over 1000 levels of my account that I conceded to using one of these teams to clear the weekly event.
All that said, these changes were made not with most forum goers in mind, but rather to induce newer gamers to make at least one big purchase before abandoning the game.
This chart here is a bit dated, as it was created in 2014. However, it shows the percentage of retention of players in these types of games over time. I can’t fathom that the graph has changed for the better since then.
So, congrats everyone here, you’re part of the 1% retention club if you have an account that’s over a year old. I can guarantee you that business decisions are not made with the 1% in mind, as an even small percentage of that 1% are the paying customers that the devs are chasing.
The game modes and UI revamp were crafted to attract new players and induce them to making a large purchase before they leave the game. This is standard operating procedure for most games of this type.
And, as the graph shows, this is why giant numbers of players tend to not show up on rankings, because the churn (turnover) on new accounts is very high (and normal to observe).
12 Likes
…If you happen to meet them.
This new piece of content is hidden behind yet another rng wall and by that just useless for me.
Why would i care or be excited about content i may only get to see twice a month for a Minute if rng hates me?..and that in addition then might only result in really useless rewards again determined by pure rng.
I don’t get why the Devs seem so obsessed with making every aspect of this game rng dependent(Invasion sigils…), but in any case a grayed out “option” for a new minigame i can’t enter because i miss rng keys does nothing for me or my excitement.
5 Likes
In fact that is a coincidence. 
2 Likes
For what??? It’s certainly not for quality testing or bug fixing…
3 Likes
@Santandrix That was one of my larger worries coming into the new modes. I initially only thought they were adding only 1. I never did read into it before it became live. So a week before it went live and I found out it was 2 modes. I had very mixed feelings. Happy enough that Raid went fine with no requirements attached to it. And we ended with 10/12 at the end of the week. We also had no requirements attached to Invasion and ended up doing 12/12. So it was very nice. And seems no one felt like ‘I am done’. Coming into Guild Wars I did have to change our requirement to adjust for the every 3 weeks bits. Before we had it at 15 battles per week. With the GW change I felt changing it to 25-30 of 30 was best. The week isn’t over yet so a little soon to tell there. I am just hoping for the best!
I do have 1-2 on the waitlist but I’d rather not replace anyone if I don’t have to. I will know more how its doing by the 4th day of GW.
1 Like
I agree with you that they stuff the PVP leader board w fake accounts. One reason I think that is that I always end up in about the same place (far) down the rankings although the amount of trophies I win varies greatly from week to week… an off week would be about 300, an on week around 1000. I think what happens is that I play enough to pass over the many casual player, but not enough to catch up w the bots.
That said, last week was a bad one to judge how many people do PVP. Between the new game mode and the Explore event trophy production in my guild was down about 30% from normal…
1 Like
Overall I’m happy with the changes but there’s plenty of room for improvement:
• Love the Gnomes and the Vault. My only criticism here is that I think the extra treasure provided by Gnomes contributed to the decision to make the new game modes so gem-intensive. Got to keep the game “economy” in balance, as they say.
• Love the Orbs, but my sympathies to those who’ve just gotten a pile of Growth Orbs… the others are awesome. 
• The two new modes do need some rebalancing of costs/rewards, but then I remember when GW started… I boosted my Sentinels all the way up-- at a cost of what, 240 gems?-- then was furious to find that my gems were “wasted.” But after that first week I was smarter and restricted my Sentinel purchases to level III or sometimes IV. I think the same thing will happen with the new game modes. You don’t need to purchase all 7 tiers to complete the game. I did 5 tiers in Raid Boss (too much, next time I’ll do 2 or 3) and 4 in Invasion (the 4th mostly because I really needed Storm stones right then for other things). My guild finished both quests with no trouble.
• I also agree that the new modes are a bit repetitive, much more so for the Raid Boss. The towers I was able to dispatch with ease and destroyed 200-something while only losing a single match (not counting 2 lost due to crashes 
), and the matches went fast. Not so on Raid Boss, where the later stages really did take too long.
• Everything else was fine, I didn’t even mind the Dragon Soul nerfing.
Now we’ll see about Bounty…
3 Likes
In what way does getting a FEW gnomes a day, and thats if RNJESUS loves you, balance out a 1 to 2k gem sink???
Most just don’t want the demands / commitment of being in a competitive guild. Also many want to play with family and friends.
2 Likes
and the nail is hit on the head
1 Like
I was referring to gnomes in general, not the Vault (which has its own issues, which the devs have implied is going to be adjusted). I was very unlucky during the Vault event and only found 2 keys all weekend. Others in my guild had much better luck.
The answer is about who has control.
A great illustration of this occurred on the stream Monday night when Nim was discussing Dawnbringer. On the stream, she said that Dawnbringer was not intended for anyone to obtain for a very long time. Yet, as everyone here knows, Dawnbringers are prevalent throughout the end-game.
Why did this occur? Because the primary gating resource for Dawnbringer was souls, and players are in control of how and when they earn souls. Pharos-Ra stacking, mass disenchantments, and so on, gave players multiple methods to obtain the weapon on their terms.
So, with that out the window, in comes Zuul’Goth as a replacement end-game chase unit. Only this time, the devs are in control. There is no way for players to play the game naturally and influence the rate of obtaining orbs (not considering the extraordinarily rare minor chaos orb drop by gnomes) faster than what the devs intend. Intentional RNG slows down players even more, as this causes players to get undesired items and “loser” RNG results, such as minor orbs of clans and growth. As noted on the stream, when the devs decide to increase orb drop rates in the future, it will be on their terms not on the players’ terms.
Thinking about bounties, I’ve got some thoughts on what that entails and I think the lightbulb just flickered on in my head on what it is. Got the popcorn ready for the announcement tomorrow.
The crux of the event is going to depend on:
- Is the event energy-gated (sigils)?
- Are the rewards for the event progression based (reaching point thresholds), or is there a event currency shop in which to spend the “points” earned? (And if so, do these points expire if unused at the end of the event? [In other words, no saving points for the next bounty event])
3 Likes
I’m hoping bounty points can simply be earned in any game mode of choice by using the bounty troops with no sigils needed. Being a weekend only event like gnomes raises my hopes a little. And I hope we can earn unlimited points and rewards based on how much time we put in, like gnomes. If I “close portal 10” on Friday I’ll be disappointed.
1 Like
You will be dissapointed cause you will need sigils
2 Likes
I disagree.
As for the Dawnbringer thing, many long time players could simply craft it close to release, because of the massive amount of let’s call it legacy resources they amassed long ago when tasks worked differently and the same will be true for any introduced item that will be purchasable with ‘classic’ resources.
Grinding up the Dawnbringer from zero does indeed take a lot of time Investment.
I’d argue only very few players that actually started out with zero souls the day Dawnbringer was introduced actually own it now, and while depending on how many people use bots i might underestimate the number of those players a bit but nevertheless farming Dawnbringer from zero would be a hundreds of hours of playtime investment.
If control was their reason for any of the rng, they could just put actual controllable gates in place, like a limit on how many single parts of a wanted item you can craft in a certain amount of time etc.
Actual control is much better achieved by installing hard gates instead of rng that just stops some and not others.
Rng ‘control’ will just achieve that some players reach their goals much quicker than the Devs want anyways, and some players get the shaft and never achieve their set goals.
In any case rng is introduced in so many aspects now where it serves no purpose whatsoever, for example the random extra sigils for events that can make a huge difference in the personal performance of players in those Events for no frigging reason.
2 Likes
We lost 2 already.
1 Like
One more game mode to go, we’ll see how much it looks like the other 2 tomorrow.
I think it will be the same as raids and invasions, but you can use any teams. Oh and sigils will likely be involved.
And thank you everyone who’s voted so far, quite the turn out. A lot of great feedback here as well!
Thanks!
1 Like
For me personally, the improvements needed are to change the rewards for the Invasion and Raid modes. Less of what they perceive Gems to be worth and more actual Gems.
Oh, and get rid of Guild Wars.
1 Like
Counteroffer: increase the per-battle rewards for Invasion and Raid, but keep Guild Wars.
(There needs to be a “crossed arms” emoji.)
2 Likes