Hello guys,
I’ve been playing for around 2 years and decided to come on up and share some feedback and ideas to make, in my opinion, the “end game” more fun, more rewarding and keep the “thrill” you need to keep enjoying GoW. It relies mainly on 3 mains points (PvP, farming and hero classes) and some options to make things more efficient.
Someone pointed out that a summay would help “market” the ideas to the dev, so here we are.
1 - incentives to vary defense teams in PvP and avoid to fight meta team after meta team.
2 - add a back-office to apply “rules” as for how the AI should play your defense team.
3 - stop with the mindless farming please! New content is good while it makes the “strategy” part of the game richer, not when it just make the game a collection of chores…
4 - scale battles rewards with the level of the defeated units (except for in PvP where it’s OK).
5 - give back level 20 vaults with base “1” multiplicator when you reach level 500…
6 - heroes should get one “genre specific” skill tree and more coherent choices for talents.
7 - heroes and units should have “switchable” traits to make them more flexible and give them usefulness throughout the game, not only at the beginning or at the end.
8 - possibility to reallocate stats on a unit and make things like a wall with attack a thing of the past (with some limistes of course).
9 - give something for heroes level 100 when they win, for instance reinforcing the first trait (after X victories, rather than 2 LP, you get 3 LP bonus, etc.). Otherwise, what’s the point of leveling a hero you won’t use since he won’t get better with xp?
10 - just like for heroes and units, allow more tinkering on weapons. I can’t get over the waste of weapons creating gems or a tempest of a stupid colour…
11 - make the teams the cornerstone of everything (the medals, the customization of hero and units, etc.).
First is about PvP. This is the “go to” place to try out your teams and get some fresh air. However, as things stand today, I just get to fight the same boring teams over and over (rope dart, gobelins, life and death, queen bee for most of them). This really ruins the fun to the point I devised teams just to take them down like a machine. No suspense, no thrill. It’s just too predictable. Maybe you could put in place a system that reduces PvP rewards for those who rely on “overused units” or reward use of uncommon units. Anything that might clear this “copycat mania”. If we could also set “priorities” (a set of rules) for our defense teams, it might make them more varied, cause the AI is kinda… well, it kinda sucks. Just one exemple: for “starter” units, decide whether to use its spell if you don’t get a 4 gems match (plus a gimmick on frozen clause) or if the enemy team will get one (based on what’s on the board obviously) or if the amount of mana, even without a match 4 would be superior to a fixed amount (without accounting for banners).
Second is about farming. While I generally do enjoy new content, I didn’t appreciate the recent additions. A life of soulless farming to upgrade even one kingdom to level 15, boring new weekly “challenges” (just more farming in disguise, while I’m not even mentioning all those continuous boring unrewarding repetitive multiplying guild events). The only useful guild event is the Doom Tower, where we get interesting weapons and the scroll to upgrade them… To continue on farming, I do find really frustrating that rewards don’t scale with the level of the enemy teams. You win in 10 seconds against an AI team level 20 and get the exact same rewards for taking down a level 150 or a level 500 AI team in 1 ~ 2 minutes. That doesn’t really make sense in my opinion. This leads me to pointing out the fact that I can’t get back to level 20 vaults once I reached level 500. Too bad, cause it was a great addition to level up those damn class levels…
Third, time to write about those hero classes. Just like I commented on PvP, there are several overused classes (frost mage, titan, orbweaver, thief, sunspear, and that’s about it at high level). The rest is between rarely and never used and that’s part of why PvP has become surpriseless. I think each class should have a specific class tree linked to its genre (monster, gobelin, dragon, etc.) and more flexibility to pick more varied talents, whether you want to turn into a tank, a “skull killer” and a mage, or even other possible choices. Isn’t it weird that a fairy class (frost mage here) doesn’t get the level 100 talent that gives fairies 2 LP each turn while other classes unrelated to fairies do? That might apply to traits too, like some classes (Warden is a true a masterpiece) only have useless traits - or useful only at very low level. If we could choose between several traits, that would really boost the possibilities! For exemple, the monster hero might be super powerful when you have low stats but pointless whan you have all kingdoms at level 10, that’s pretty sad… And why do we have three elfs or demon classes while I’m desperately waiting for an elementary class? To finish on classes, I do find kinda upsetting that there’s “nothing” at level 100. Most of the talents are clearly disappointing and you can play it but the class xp is lost. So I can finally use “fire sword” but I won’t gain xp from this fight… I advise you to convert this xp into something else (souls, bonus for the first very useless trait, etc.). If classes were more specific, players would still continue to level up other classes to go for new tactics to try on the battlefield, directly linked to the potential of the other units, especially of the same “genre”. Talents are more or less useful depending on your overall level.
Though you might find me very self-centered at this point, I think some new ways of playing the game would really lighten the “end game”. New challenges with different rules (“hoards” of enemies – spawning a new unit after you defeat one – long time battling challenge relaying on “durability”, timed battle (number of turns, time limit), reserve units, special gems, one clour will never drop, more units on a team, different layers of spells (charge 1 at 10 mana, charge 2 at 15 mana, charge 3 at 20 mana, a switcheroo mode where you buildd you team over the defeated ennemies, etc.) etc.) and scaling rewards. In PvP, everything is fast-paced, there’s no place for durable teams… and no places for around 70% or more of all the units. That’s just cutting through all the work you did to design so many units! Though I’m really disappointed by all those new useless mythics recently. Except for upgrading kingdom, they are mostly never used in PvP (at the very least as far as defense teams are concerned) and I guess nobody uses them in PvE either. Just like heroes, if we could tweak them a bit (choose between several traits for instance or if we could choose to allocate the stats points differently – thanks to the kingdoms, even a wall gets attack… those points should go to life and armor, not mindlessly stack), the possibilities would multiply, as it would only strengthen one of the most addictive aspect of this game that is precisely making the best out of countless options to win. Building and trying out teams is fun, even more so if it’s far from the “standards” and really “fits” the player. The same applies for weapons, as some upgrades are really risky (why waste some doom weapons with things like “create a brown gem” that might ruin the match 4 you’re aiming for with skulls?).
The medal system is great but it should be linked with each team rather than globally. It’s a pain to switch medals when I change teams (more magic, more attack, purification…) with different needs. The same goes for hero’s talents, that might be used differently from team to team. Teams are the cornerstone of GoW. And if you decide to make changes for more varied builds like I suggested, stats, traits and such should also be linked to a team, not to a unit.
There are other bit of things, like just how it seems a waste that you get completely “unthemed” units in vaults compared to their origin kingdom (why mix knights and undeads?!). Familiars are already a pain to collect, it would be really nice if you stopped putting in “cosmetic” units that just make it harder to level up the useful ones. The cake is a lie as some said…
It took me quite a while to write this much feedback and I hope it will inspire some changes in the game. Though it’s massively about how I’d like the game to change, I enjoy it and hope you’ll keep running it smoothly!