I guess this game really never changes anymore, does it?

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

So, of course we have an Australian-themed offer and pet rescue, as we do every year. I know I brought this up a year or two ago and was obviously ignored, so I won’t rehash the entire argument. You know it already.

What I will reiterate is that an Australian game still continuing to run nationalism-themed events on Jan 26 feels at best, to put it very charitably, in poor taste. And before some idiot comes in to tell me to keep politics out of GoW because it’s irrelevant, the better question is, why have the devs inserted politics into the game in the first place? Why actively make this kind of statement on a contentious, sensitive issue, that’s completely unnecessary and doesn’t need to be in the game? GoW isn’t taking a neutral stance, it’s continuing to normalise something that is hurtful to people who are already marginalised, just for the sake of a cynical cash crab. I’d say taking the politics out of the game would be a great move that’s long overdue, not to mention it would make GoW more welcoming to more diverse players by avoiding the whole “white pride” vibe and the message that sends to indigenous gamers.

To be honest, this game has given me (a VIP 5 player) enough reasons to quit over the last few months:

  • the increasingly paywalled troops/weapons/resources - it often feels like they’re actively screwing over people like me who spent a lot of money to support the game in the past instead of waiting until now
  • the poor QA leading to frequent buggy updates
  • the constant repetition, tedium and let-downs of big new “features” that ultimately don’t change anything or amount to more than a dull grind
  • doing nothing to address the godawful guild wars meta that has essentially killed the fun of that event in high brackets
  • the absurdly incremental and unrewarding nature of the few remaining forms of progression (e.g. kingdom levels that will take years to actually give us anything back) - just, astoundingly bad game design that goals do not even feel achievable or like we’re ever making a dent in them
  • of course, maybe worst of all, the obsession with anything new only being obtainable from gnomes or the vault - which aside from being infuriatingly RNG-prone even over a span of months of attempts, also skirts major legal and ethical bounds since the relevant appearance and drop rates aren’t published.

I’ve already stopped spending money as my form of “protest” against the direction GoW has taken in the last year or so (yes I know they don’t care but I still won’t support it), but the bad taste this leaves in my mouth might be enough to just drop it entirely. There are games out there that actually respect my time and the money I’ve spent on them, and don’t make me feel gross just by playing them on a particular day. It’s really time to start doing better.

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Well done for the call out.
They are not culturally sensitive here.
They are hip pocket sensitive or there’s a better card description- their own-greed.

In a modern world embracing social justice for all they should be aware how insensitive it is to name up an 'invasion day ’ to line their pockets. Just another slice of white bread for them.
White sliced bread

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Can you elaborate on what you believe is paywalled in this game? Is there something that non-paying customers can’t get?

Furthermore, why do so many players feel ENTITLED to things in this game for FREE? What on earth makes you think you should even get to log into the servers without paying something first?

Developers, writers, artists, musicians, advertising, programmers, servers, distribution – everything costs money. The fact that you can have everything in this game FOR FREE is astonishing. Go play any other mobile game – they aren’t free at all. Paywall means you need to PAY for it or you’ll NEVER get it.

I can think of TWO things in this game that are actually behind a paywall. The first is Deathknight Armor, which isn’t even a resource – it just helps you get resources faster.

The second is the monthly Ring of Wonder – which again, isn’t a resource, it just helps you get the real resources faster.

Nothing else in the game is paywalled. Every troop, weapon, pet is (or was) available for free.

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This is the paywalled stuff.

It is real-money-only for anybody that was not playing at the time of release (like me, for example).
Sure, one can argue that this content is not essential and whatnot, but the fact still remains - paywall, and I can never get them with ingame resources.

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Also the platform specific pets, right?

But good thing is, you really don’t need any of that stuff.

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Why should weapons that were part of one-time events, and free in those events, be available to you free now, 5-7 years later? Yes, Goblin Crusher came out in 2015. EVERYONE who has played after that event and didn’t get it doesn’t have it unless they’ve paid for it now. To say it’s paywalled is a bit of a misnomer, because those weapons are in fact not holding any players back from anything. I’ve been playing since 2018. I’ve never purchased a weapon. I have every troop in the game, and I have every kingdom maxed out in power. There are no kingdoms that I am unable to advance unless I pay money for a weapon.

Furthermore, not every past weapon is even offered at the same time. You couldn’t even buy them all if you wanted to. You’d have to wait till they become available, and news flash, they don’t have to be offered to you.

So, just like they don’t have to make them available for sale, they don’t have to make them available to craft either. If they want to say “Alright, we’ll just leave it in the past and never offer it again,” they can do that.

Let’s take a look at this week’s Broken Spire weapon though…

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Let’s see how many I own…

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And ones I don’t own…

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Alright… so, let’s look at the original post:

the increasingly paywalled troops/weapons/resources - it often feels like they’re actively screwing over people like me who spent a lot of money to support the game in the past instead of waiting until now

So first off – troops and resources are not paywalled. Every troop and resource is 100% available to F2P players. They might not get it at the same time, but that’s like complaining that Early Access players get to play a game a year before everyone else – they just had to pay full price, but someone who plays it 3 years later gets it on sale for 70% off! Okay? And?

But weapons – the weapons that are “increasingly” being paywalled… aren’t increasingly being paywalled. These are old, useless weapons. There is absolutely no one with a “paywalled” weapon who is somehow playing better than someone else without that specific weapon.

So, yes, you are quite right that you might never be able to get those things without spending real money. But the original post specifically said these things were increasing, and didn’t limit it to just weapons. That’s blatantly false.

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Slight self-contradiction/self-retcon.

Aside from this, as much as you may have a bit of an issue with this particular point, it’s far from the main theme of the post, so your lengthy replies here feel like a bit of a derail.

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Let’s leave aside for a bit the issue that OP is overdramatizing, however:
Thank you for pointing out that players who started later should be treated as second class citizens, it truly warms my heart to know.

And you’re also wrong on account that

because before latest Ghulvania weapon was released I was blocked from completing a kingdom star task for a few weeks precisely because of missing Chain Flail from my collection. It solved eventually, but the fact that it actually happened still remains.

To be honest, I don’t care what sort of verbal equilibristics and legal mumbo jumbo are used to justify and convince that black is white, it is of no importance that weapons in question are useless junk as far as using them in battle is concerned or might, hopefully, never be needed for kingdom progression either, but for me they are 100% pay money or never get them which is your exact definition of a paywall.

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9

FOMO and pay to win are close enough.
We can be specific about words as much as you like.
However, the game has become a preying system and I doubt there are few who would not acknowledge that.
The rewards in this game are never commensurate with the effort or gem input.
Ok its a game. We can take it or leave it.
There are plenty leaving it.
There are defends of it .
Morally, defending it, I can’t.
There is no paywall - you can have that- but the rest of the gaming experience has moved so far from the journey gaming experience it once was- its has become a game thats lost its soul - it soulless.
Its soulless and that sad, for where it began.
Soulless -defined as lacking empathy or consideration of its player base.
caveat emptor

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Jesus christ, so many entitled people.

Nothing I said was contradictory. I meant exactly what I said. The weapons being sold were available for free to players who participated in those events. And I specifically said:

Just because you missed out doesn’t mean you need to complain.

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Honestly, that doesn’t make sense.

Only the tiniest fraction of the microscope-iest group of players has been around long enough to obtain these now-paywalled weapons.

For everyone else (the other 99.75%), the game never has been and never will be fully F2P, that’s just the reality of it.

Argue all you want! :slight_smile:

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Did you miss the part where I said I’m VIP5? Which in itself was pretty overpriced to reach. Being VIP5 gets me almost nothing now, as it has virtually no impact on any of the newer resources or forms of progression. Everything is locked behind buying campaign and kingdom passes (at no point did I bring up the paid weapon offers which you’ve obsessively fixated on for some reason), but I spent so much money back when there was nothing like that to buy. It’s hard to argue I haven’t supported the game or have expected to get everything for free, I just think there’s a limit on how much I should have to continue to spend to even have an enjoyable experience.

Most of the paywalls are temporary, but it’s still the case that far more new troops and weapons are locked behind paying than they’ve ever been in the past (especially for anything good), and there’s no way to earn them other than just waiting months for their soulforge appearances - or worse, having to get them from the vault (which, again, is ethically and legally dubious). Which in itself is boring and unsatisfying, and entirely separates them from the events they’re supposed to be tied to, which are of course severely lacking when it comes to the rewards you can still earn by playing them. I’ll also never be able to make up for having fewer books of deeds and whatever else they’re putting behind passes, I barely bother looking anymore.

Arguing that the game hasn’t gotten greedier in the past year or so is pretty much just denying reality. Most updates are either centred on new things we can pay for, or on fucking gnomes and the vault. The real money component (as opposed to spending gems or any other in-game currency) of every new mode and event is an obvious shift in priorities, it’s more important to them than actually making sure the new content is fun. I was playing before it was like this, so I feel pretty justified in listing the ways in which the game has gotten worse.

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13

If you think it is right then in the name of fair play I want items what can not be obtained for free by players whose account older than lets say 3 months or 6 months.

On the paywall thing, tarot cards are paywalled. If you don’t buy the campaign pass good luck to get them from vault keys. If something has 0 chance to get or an insignificantly small chance to get other than buying some enabler item like the campaign pass, it is paywalled.

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Tarot cards are absolutely not paywalled. You can 100% get them from the Vault – and in fact, use ONE minor orb of ascension to get them to mythic. The amount of vault keys you can get from a single gnome vault weekend is staggering now, easily 400+ keys if you really want to grind, but 100+ is easy with a couple hours.

Regardless of anything, it wouldn’t even matter if EVERYTHING in this game WAS paywalled. If you want a free game for YOU, that means someone else is paying for it.

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Paywalled - you can only get it by paying real money

Paygated - you can get it by paying real money now or wait and get it for free later (but it might be difficult to get)

Or at least that’s what I thought…

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That sounds like a “It’s totally your fault for not having started playing the game earlier so you could have obtained it when it was part of an event”.

Some impressive mental gymnastics going on here.

I have myself had daily offers of ingots for weapons I don’t have, which were available in some events in the past, but are only part of some weekly $5 offers now.

Then again, there’s a lot of completely unrealistic & non-logical failures in the daily offers system.

I’m sure you can figure out some brilliant defensive mental parkours to explain & defend those, and shift the blame on me/other players with same problem.

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I started playing in 2018 – all of these weapons for sale in the shop for $5 – Crescendo, Slay Bells, Goblin Crusher, whatever they are, I don’t have them either. I won’t be paying $5 for them, because they serve me no purpose. But I don’t think it’s outrageous that they are being sold. They are at least being offered. You know what players did before the weapons were even offered for real money? They complained that they weren’t offered at all. Now that they are being offered, players are complaining that they aren’t being offered for free.

How do you think free to play games actually make money? Gems of War has NO advertisements in it. I can log onto a number of other mobile games right now, play for a good 30 seconds, and be forced to watch an ad. Some of the games even allow you to disable the ads for a monthly fee (and the really generous ones allow you to disable them permanently for a fee). Some of them even disable ads, but then keep showing ads in certain situations, like if you want to double your daily rewards.

Gems of War has NONE of that. The only ads are voluntary, you have to purposefully bring them up and watch them, and it’s only available on mobile. So again, they aren’t making money through forced advertising. That means money has to come from players willing to buy stuff.

Don’t want to buy something? Don’t buy it. But don’t complain when things are for sale, because those are the things that support the game. What you can complain about is how and what is for sale. For instance, I think shrines are ridiculous. I think most of the shop items are hilariously overpriced ($50 for a legendary and some stuff? no thanks). But they are being offered. Other things are a great deal. Campaign pass for $10? That’s $1 a week, less when you consider the week off in between campaigns.

So yeah, “mental gymnastics” abound. But at least I understand how businesses work and don’t think the world is free.

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You’re wrong I stopped reading when you started talking about hurtful marginalization your post is just pc culture nonsense

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A good example would be War Coins:

These, when they first came out, a nightmare to obtain without “buying” them. Or you played the long waiting game…

So we waited, and over the last few weeks they gave these out like candy!

The same, i predict, will be for the new forge rune stones. As of now, for most these are impossible to obtain, so we WILL see money purchase offers start showing up in future.

The game is not “paywall” as such to be honest. There are just three cultures: 1) Pay and buy everything, 2) Nope, i will wait and 3) I am off the game is too much of a grind!

I have played this game on and off from the start, i am VIP lvl 10 so i have spent a few £££s, but these days i tend to hold off as the game is getting pretty stale.

The content is kind of grindy, the new Mythics are a thoughtless joke and the game is still full of bugs.

But as I am kind of “bought in” i will not walk away, i just take the odd break once every few years.

I do feel that the Devs and the publishers attitudes do need to change moving forward though. The lack of communication with their player base and these forums is disgusting.

Lose your player base support, the game will eventually die…

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From the tone of your reply, I’m just going to assume you think I’m a freebie player who has never paid anything.
Couldn’t be further from the truth.

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This isn’t the only f2p game I’ve supported (and not even on my top 3 spenders in the f2p market). I do know how business works. Thanks for implying otherwise.

While you’re being hung up on one small specific detail, I’d rather try to shift the conversation towards alternative solutions.
Also, the game is getting a bit old by now, and there is nothing wrong with adding alternative ways of getting older things, especially things that might only be available every once in a while with many months/year+ between them.
At the same time, the progress goal posts have kept moving further & further in the game, which means it gets increasingly harder for newer players to catch up.

Unfortunately, some players (in any long term game like this one) tend to hate seeing older things made “easier” for newer players, because they “suffered back then”.