If you were a Sirrian, what would you advise your team to improve about Gems of War?

I think the subject is self explanatory. No need to influence the votes by sharing my thoughts more than I need to for the clarifications below.

  • Adventure Boards
  • Challenges
  • Chaos Orbs (drop rate/use)
  • Cheating (more human focus eliminating cheaters from the game)
  • Class Trials (variety, ability to earn XP)
  • Classes (Champion XP) / Hero Talent Trees
  • Deeds (Imperial Deeds as well)
  • Diamonds/Jewels (more uses or less cost)
  • Explore/Quests
  • Factions/Delves
  • Faction Assaults (Length of Time, ability to get to level 500, rewards)
  • Game Chat (Changes/Moderation)
  • Gems Currency (consistent value balance across the game)
  • Gold (Increase ability to attain due to increase cost over the years.)
  • Guild Wars
  • Guilds
  • Invasions
  • Legendary Tasks
  • Mailbox
  • Monetization (how GoW Earns money)*
  • Notifications (more stability)
  • Other*
  • Overall Difficulty
  • Pets (more balance with food and kingdoms)
  • Pet Rescues (Length of Time, cosmetic pets, pet baskets, less RNG streaking)
  • Player Interaction (less time working on the game, more time playing/talking about the game)
  • PvP (Ranked or Casual)
  • PvP/Guild Wars Defense (ability to have influence over it ex. “Gem Sliders”)
  • RNG (less streaky, more balance)
  • Quality Assurance (bug testing)
  • Servers (less lag, more dependability)
  • Souls/Glory (More uses for it)
  • Soulsforge
  • Towers of Doom
  • TraitStones (every type)
  • Treasure Maps
  • Troops (rebalances/more variety)
  • Tutorials/Game Guides (teaching players how to play)
  • VIP Bonuses
  • Weapons (rebalance/more variety)

0 voters

Whether it should or shouldn’t matter is not up for debate. But please (your choice mind you) include your vip level in the comments below after voting. As well as your current hero level** and how long you have been playing gems of war***.

*Please elaborate in the comments below.
**If you have multiple accounts just go with the highest level on each platform please.
***If you took any breaks from the game. Please deduct that time from your initial install to now.

The max options for polls is 40. So at least a few categories had to be combined. I tried to keep them as seperate as possible though.

16 Likes

I would really have enjoyed seeing the cross tabs on this broken down by player status. Do endgame players care less about chat than new players? Are midgame players more likely to want a revamped PVP experience?

This should be fun. I hope you get lots of responses and discussion.

Edit: I can read instructions! My character is level 1280-something. Been playing for four(?) years.

1 Like

I’m level 1150-something and vip 4. Been playing for a bit more than 1 year.

My choices:

  1. Hero classes.
    I’d want to see more specialisation to the current classes, as now champion exp goes to waste after maxing a class. Maybe ranks and perks to the existing talents (like each talent have 3 ranks with increasing bonuses, that can be further unlocked and advanced after achieving the talent itself). Maybe special effects to existing talents (take a talent like barrier on brown matches; rank 1: barrier on brown matches. Rank 2: barrier and cleanse on brown matches. Rank 3: barrier and curse random enemy on brown matches; etc). Gives more depth to the otherwise strangely plain talent trees (strangely, when comparing with the complexity of the rest of the game).

  2. Explore/quests.
    Add further layers of quests and storylines, add overaching quests and scenarios (for example, add historical and world/gamewide quests, like leading Scorpius in his campaign vs Bright Isles; or a quest spanning the wars that destroyed Karakorath). Add dynamical scenarios/questlines, either individual or guild based, like a guild working together to finish a so-called scenario, by fulfilling certain requirements under certain time (tex X won matches, X troops traited, X explores, etc etc), that gives time limited bonuses to the guild; a quest-driven variant of the guild guardians.

  3. Soulforge
    Add other resources, add resource intechangeability. Deeds, doom scrolls, etc. Can be used together with the previous quest thing, like exchanging X treasure maps for a scenario/historical quest token, etc.

  4. Treasure maps
    Complete rework of the rewards, expanding them, and integrating with the quest and soulforge changes.

1 Like

My exact speech would be:

“Remember when we made a high-quality game that people paid $15-$30 for? Remember how, instead of constantly tweaking it until it didn’t resemble the game people loved, we put new efforts into new games and let people buy those if they wanted? Remember how fun that was? I think we should get out of this F2P business, where our artistic expression is limited by a need to turn everything into a feedback loop, and instead work on what we do best: puzzle-based RPGs with a discrete ending.”

5 Likes

VIP level 12, Player level 1450, 3 years of GoW experience in October.

  • Class Talents - there needs to be more talent trees to give classes more customization. There’s what 5-7 different trees intended to be used between 34 classes.
    Ability to earn XP is way too daunting to new players. Please attach class XP to the difficulty of the match.
    A casual PvP match that is easy for me is currently 2 xp. While a level 500 delve is 2 xp as well. Don’t nerf the one. Just do a better job of scaling the xp. And bring it back to the arena.
  • Chaos Orbs - 60-80% useless for end gamers who earn them from modes designed for end Gamers. (it boggles the mind.)
  • Deeds - Make them actually useful in terms of Delves. Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with a community that tells folks not to buy deeds that aren’t purple or imperial. So once they max out on purple. Flash offers become useless for them.
  • Diamonds/ Jewels - thanks to pets not having enough food in the economy. I have an abundance of diamonds and a low amount of jewels. This seems be the opposite of what is intended. Why I can’t make white pet food with diamonds…once again…boggles my mind.
  • Faction Assaults - Getting a Faction to 2500’s best option is to do it during a Faction Assault. But only those with an abundance of time can do it during the 24 hour events. My solution would be. Every weekend is a Faction Assault weekend. Make Tuesdays a cosmetic pet only event, but don’t lock out normal Rescues. Then make Class Trials run Wednesday - Thursday regardless of if it’s a new class or not.
  • Gems currency - if a gem costs 10 cents today, it should cost 10 cents tomorrow. There’s no consistency. So those who buy gems outside of flash offers or “sales” feel screwed over.
  • Guild Wars - Fix it or bury it
  • Guilds - Too many dead ones for the amount of players in the game. Make a cap on the amount of guilds in the game. And make guilds purchasable for gold or gems. If a GM wants a guild bad enough they’ll have to save and find a GM willing to sell. Otherwise, there will be a sign up list for players to start a guild when the cap is raised. Guilds with less than 10 members will be disbanded automatically when the cap is lowered. Caps will be adjusted on a monthly basis immediately following guild wars and prior to the ability to register for the next guild wars.
  • Legendary Tasks - the more gold you want us to sink Factions or deeds. Decreases the value of Legendary Tasks. Therefore calling for a constant rebalance.
  • Monetization - the only way to keep this free to play and profitable is to include ads. Make earning gems by watching adverts an option. Don’t force it, but make it an option to click on somewhere in the game. You can only Target your whales so much before they move on to other Waters.
    *Notifications - You’re aware of the stability issues already.
    *Pet Rescues - pet Rescues should never repeat in a 24 hour cycle or even between resets. Yesterday Flutter needed rescue at least 4 times. By now, even if I need Flutter, I’d say Flut Flutter. It can rescue itself.
    *Pet Food - Faction pets should come with food. It’s a :eggplant: move to buy a pet from a store and then be told you have to go to a different store for the food. But the food isn’t available 24 hours a day. You’ll have to wait for RNG to dictate when the store opens for a hour. And if you’re at work when the store opens. Which is the only reason you could afford to buy the pet in the first place. Well that sucks. Sorry about your luck bub.
  • PvP - will defer for future revamp. But I hope it includes 5 options for matches ranging from 1 trophy to 5 trophies. With gold and Difficulty scaled as well.
  • Quality Assurance - More money spent on the game should result in more money being spent to test the game.
  • RNG - 4 or more of any mana or skulls should never Cascade directly in a row outside of storms. NEVER.
  • Souls, Glory, TraitStones - become useless for end gamers. Give us a way to convert them into gems or gold. You put a gem value on everything. How many gems is 1 million souls worth? Okay, then allow me to convert my souls for gems. What you fear will result in less money spent. Is understandable. But happy players spend more and promote more. What’s a 5 star reviews gem value? Because that’s what you need to be more concerned with.
  • Troops - need to have 4 traits to offset ones like bounty and race tie ins.
  • Vip Bonuses - Deathknight Armor should be sent out to anyone who reaches VIP level 10. If they already have Deathknight armor, then $30-50 worth of gems instead. (Whatever the actual cost is that just Death Knight armor is valued at.)
3 Likes

I fear that would lead to falsified answers in hopes of resolution for whatever they want changed.
By making the information more volunteer based. It’ll be more difficult for those who might falsify answers decide whether they should or shouldn’t. My hope is they figure out the deception isn’t worth the time or effort and just go with the truth. :grinning:

1 Like

VIP 19.5. Hero level 1707. Been playing a little over 4.5 years.

2 Likes

VIP 20 Level 1770
Playing 3 years, 4 months
Comments I would offer already mentioned above.

2 Likes

Level 1326
VIP 10

I’ve played the game since March 2016. During that time, I’ve taken 2 breaks from the game. (One for 3 months and another for 6 months)


Pure Faction Matches in Delves
So, my biggest gripe with the game is pure faction delving. I assume the devs are aware that some people are resorting to playing all the way up to delve 500 during the 24 hour Faction Assault just so they can use potions to beat the delve with a pure faction team. Hopefully, this wasn’t the devs plan.

It’s one thing for a player to do that because he thinks it’s fun. However, everyone I know that has done this did it because they felt desperate to max their factions. They felt as though they had no other option because it would be practically impossible otherwise for them without spending 2 weeks waiting for pure luck to make it happen.

So, at the moment, the cost of leveling all hoards above 100 is prohibitive for most. The 50% bonus from raising kingdom level is nearly useless unless you have a hoard far above 100. And finally, surely no one can expect people to use a 24 hour period to play the game all day to have a chance at getting max renown for one faction.

There really needs to be a better solution. Perhaps limited potion sales outside of events? Or, increase the bonus given from raising kingdom levels?

Class XP
I understand that leveling classes isn’t supposed to be a fast process. You want us to play it long enough to get a feel for it… experiment with the possibilities. I actually agree with that thought process. I know that I’ve written off some classes because they looked lackluster on paper to me. However, I later came to like them after playing them a few days and seeing the true potential when paired with the right troops and talent combinations.

But…
The climb from level 1 to 100 is seriously too long for even a dedicated active player. As AWR mentioned earlier, it doesn’t seem equitable for a player to get 2 XP for fighting level 500 troops. In other words, if the AI’s level scales higher then the class XP points should rise accordingly.

Orb of Ascension
Would it truly add imbalance to the game to have a minor orb of ascension as a guaranteed guild prize at the end of one of the events? It wouldn’t even have to be added every time. There really isn’t anything in this game more demoralizing than going months without seeing any type of orb of ascension even though you play every single event to the final reward.

10 Likes

1300+, 5~ years soon, VIP level 6 but only because you asked nicely.

Pretty sure my thoughts on these subjects are well known, I try to make them so. I could write a post this long on each one of these, but in short form though:

Chaos Orbs are aggravating and the green and orange ones are useless to every late-game player.

Classes need to be readjusted drastically, we keep getting stuff like Corsair and Stormcaller where there’s one or two good talents or traits and the rest is so appalling that it’s impossible to use. I MADE A THING ABOUT THIS.

Deeds need to be in more places than PAID and RNG NONSENSE. They also need to do way more, particularly if they remain as stupidly annoyingly difficult to get as at present. (I feel like the AB is almost okay but the way Deeds have been shunted there is not.)

Factions/Delves need a stronger helping hand than Deeds for the lvl500 mirror matches. Obvious. Next.

QA Testing. Get some. We’re not paid enough (read: not paid at all) to do a proper job and even when we try to stuff gets through because we can’t test events before they happen.

Souls and Glory need more uses. Definitely. My amounts of each keep going up and I burn as much as I can manage without feeling stupid about it.

Soulforge needs more things. Wider range of otherwise-unattainable weapons, for instance. It also needs to not be in the “games” section, after all this time WTF is it there?

Treasure Maps … please for the love of god do something for these things.

Weapons need to have more than “create 6 gems per this type/kingdom” because that got boring years ago. Weapon “UPGRADES” also need to not suck and either add things to the weapons that don’t do anything or add things that have bad effects like giving away the board on what would be an extra turn.

OTHER: Treasure are not troops, they are currency, get them out of my collection and into my inventory.

OTHER: What’s the deal with poison? Seriously.

OTHER: Consistency of text / mechanics / etc. Things are being phrased really differently over the years. We keep getting new keywords that are entirely unnecessary and its confusing and annoying regardless of how good one’s memory is for such things. Let me at it. Take me a day or three but it’d be worth it.

OTHER: Another few/dozen things I could go into but are wishful thinking by comparison. Like slowing the flow of stupid never-seen-again event troops.

6 Likes

On another note I feel like this is a very well-executed thread and if the devs have any sense at all they’ll pore over this thing for info. *nod*

3 Likes

My main gripes:

  • Chaos Orbs - The useless orbs of growth and orbs of wisdom are a kick in the teeth for end game players who have absolutely no use for them. Spending gems (or $$$) to reach that next event tier just to get something you don’t need makes you really not want to do that again.

  • Delves - 500 delves are not worth it to the end game player to play. Rewards need to be rebalanced (higher delve = more rewards) so that they are actually worth the time. Portals should perhaps act like guild guardians in when you have all faction troops at mythic, the portals will give you pure treasures instead.

  • Faction Runs - 500 faction runs cost too much and are too difficult. Number tweaking is required.

  • Pets - I never realized it earlier in my “career” but pets are really a huge blocker to kingdom progress. Pet food is too scarce, and the pets rarely show up. Pet rescues need to be overhauled in general. Maybe these just need to be player based (not guild based), and a player can go and grind them like they can mythstones. If this were the case, then you should never have a rescue for a pet that was at mythic.

  • Things To Do - Most of the time I actually am really bored and rarely log in. I’m at the point in the game where I am gated by time. I can’t grind pets effectively, I can’t grind diamonds for the mythics I have missing, I can’t grind keys in order to open chests for the few epics I’m missing for kingdom power, I can’t grind gems to maybe purchase more tiers in events. I can’t grind deeds in order for kingdom levels. Maybe this is a good thing so people don’t feel forced. But on the occasion that I want to log in and play, there really isn’t anything rewarding for me to do.

  • Bad Luck Protection - I know that this is a game that prides itself on RNG, but it feels really bad to spend money and resources to not get something you need. You save up a whole month and try for a mythic? No dice? That gets depressing. Spend 3 months of resources to try for that mythic you are missing? Get 4 Tian-Yis. I know this is a touchy subject, but something should be done to make the bad RNG not feel so soul-crushing.

2 Likes

This. It seems like people rarely mention this. But, the pet food shortage is real and annoying. The exchange rate in the forge or drop rate in pet rescues should be revised in my opinion.

1 Like

@Ashasekayi to be fair @TheIdleOne was the first to champion the issue. But ever since my highly active :peach: ran out of green food, white food, and green jewels despite how much I do in regards to pet Rescues. Yeah… I’ve been thinking wtf ever since. The Faction pets being the main culprit for the imbalance.

3 Likes

I agree with this 100%. Iirc the devs stated that the guaranteed Growth orb at reward stage 4 or 5 was for the low-level folks who aren’t in guilds capable of finishing the events. Sadly, that theory has never held much water for me. It only stands to reason that if they look out for one group; then do the same for others!
Sure, keep the stage four guaranteed orb for the newer players, but also add a guaranteed blue orb at or near the end as well for end-gamers or those in guilds that can complete these events. After all…they did invest quite a few gems in the end and should be rewarded with something other than RNG to show for it. I won’t get started on what I think about literally everything on the game at this time being left to luck and chance. There’s just no need for so much of it.

Edited - I have thought maybe by having a rotation for a last guaranteed orb might work. Like Wisdom one event, Clans the next, then Ascension. Once the cycle completes then it resets. But after further thinking this most likely wouldn’t work very well because many would just wait until the blue orbs were guaranteed to play in the events. That would not only hurt the game, but the respective guilds they are in as well.
I’ll keep pondering on that one :joy:

5 Likes

Great thread. Very constructive rather than ranty. I’m level 1,300+, VIP 5. Can’t remember exactly when I started, but it was around when Suncrest dropped on Xbox. I read this whole thread and don’t have a whole lot to add, except…

  1. I wanted to elaborate on why this is such an awesome idea (bear with me for a sec). I’ve seen people complain on the boards in the past when there is a problem during a weekend event, and the response is that the devs need a break too, and they’ll fix it on Monday. I’m not arguing with that logic. Rather, I think the devs need to think about that same logic from the player standpoint. As outlined above, the only real way to max a delve is to buy potions. And for older delves, my only option is to do that on a single Tuesday? I have kids and a job. I can’t reach 500 in the four hours of free time after work and the kids go to bed. And I use vacation days for family, not so I can play video games all day. Just like the player base needs to be reasonable in what we expect from the human devs, the devs need to give the human players a reasonable window for completing events as well. From a business standpoint, I’m a lot more likely to drop gems on a weekly faction event if I actually have time to use the potions.

  2. Pet rescues: the big issue here in my mind is it is a giant roadblock on kingdom power. In other words, getting a pet to level 20 is a very long grind. Even though I’m in an active guild, I miss out on a lot of rescues due to working normal business hours. Then when a rescue finally hits, that’s a one-hour block I can’t get another rescue. This is of course further complicated by Wednesday all-day rescues and now the occasional Saturday all-day cosmetic rescue, when pet gnomes are a punch to the kidneys rather than a reason to celebrate. My proposed solution to both issues is to allow two rescues to stack at a time. And if this absolutely cannot be done, then at least prevent pet gnomes from spawning when a rescue is active. From a business standpoint, one could argue that people will get “free” pets twice as fast. But on the same token, two active pet rescues at a time means two stores active at a time and thus more opportunity for spending.

6 Likes
  • VIP level: 7
  • Hero level: 1136
  • Playing for: 3-4 months

The above data may seem a bit contradictory, but I’m really enjoying Gems of War and have no problem diverting some disposable income in the direction of a dev team whose product I enjoy (hence the VIP level and the high-ish hero level after only a couple of months).

I have 2 problems with the game which I can do nothing about:

  1. No hard counters for several troops
  2. No way to “catch up” even if you try real hard

No hard counters for several troops
I’m looking at you, L&D/Orbweaver. This would be easily solvable if we had a “revealing” troop which could “see through” stealthy so that we could still target L&D somehow even after it managed to cast once. Maybe the solution is to nerf Orbweaver so we don’t have to fight through hordes of spiders while L&D only gets stronger, but I would still like to see hard counters to everything so that tactics would beat RNG.

This isn’t a problem in PvP, but in Guild Wars my options are really limited and you can bet that I was facing L&D and Rope Dart teams exclusively in Bracket 2. Which brings me to…

No way to “catch up” even if you try real hard
I’m not even talking about mythics, but rather weapons (although I would love to be able to get some mythics easier).
I’m missing Rope Dart, Doomed Crossbow, Dommed Club, Doomed Scythe, Flammifer, etc.
Yeah, they are going to appear in the Soulforge in the next 1-2 years, but I would like to have an option of catching up apart from waiting for years or hoping for a lucky weapon offer.

4 Likes

Vip 10, level 1368, Xbox player since Jan 2016 and fabulously wealthy in game.

Overall, I’m 9 out of 10 satisfied. I think the game is the best it has ever been and I like the overall direction it is headed in.

Character class system was one of the best additions in the game. But the skill trees were hammered out in basically a weekend. :roll_eyes: Let’s give it the design effort this cool feature deserves.

Weapon upgrade system, again one of the coolest features. Upgrade of some weapons needs some work with some abilities not making sense.

Invasion/Bounty/Towers/Class/Pets Maybe a it more variety in enemy teams, or something to shake it up. I don’t really mind the repetition so much thanks to potions making things easier.

Delves. Yeah they need a better system for pure delve teams.

Game Economy seems fine to me if not overly generous. Yes I’m in a good guild that completes all tasks and events with a million minimum weekly gold donation. I generally only legendary the event troop and open keys only for a new mythic. My stash of gems / gem key equivalents grows over time.

Chaos Orbs: Green is annoying, but through play and guild activities I got Zuul,all mythic gnomes, and enough blue orbs left over to regularly mythic troops.

1 Like

Level 887, been playing for about 40 days, no VIP level yet.

Class experience
It takes too long to level them. This was maybe fine when the game had less classes, but with the amount it has now I think you should level quicker.

Class talents
I agree that given the amount of classes in the game it’s about time they add more talent trees as well. Also some talents should be buffed to make them worth using.

Troops Balance
This game has decent variety when it comes to viable teams (compared to other gacha games), but still a lot of troops are just not worth using and I think that should change to offer us more variety and make the game more fun.

Good variety and balance will make PvP more enjoyable as well.

Adventure Boards
A lot of them just aren’t worth bothering with. They should either remove the low rarity stuff that barely gives you anything, or make it so finishing everything on the adventure board gives you a reward to motivate people to actually go through low rarity stuff instead of just ignoring them.

Soulsforge
I think event weapons are overpriced. It sucks that you have to save diamonds and jewels for like two months to craft an event weapon that someone bought with gems during an event which he got for free that week from guild tasks.

I have mixed feelings about some other costs in Soulsforge too.

Treasure Hunt
Rewards you get are just not worth the time. Something should be done about this mode to actually make it worth bothering with.

Guild Wars
Needs a lot of changes. Dead guilds should drop in bracket much quicker. Barely active guilds shouldn’t be allowed to participate. Rewards should be better.

Monetization
I think Ryan’s idea of adding an option to watch ads for gems is a nice idea. Doesn’t have to be gems, could be other valuable resources like diamons, jewels. Maybe make it a different resource each time. Games that do this usually limit the amount of ads you can watch for rewards per day to prevent abuse.

Also I think the pricing should be reconsidered. I feel like most things you can buy in cash shop are overpriced and that you don’t get enough value for what you spend.

The only things I see worth buying in this game at the moment are weapon flash offers and maybe vault key + gems offer.

1 Like

Hero 1256
VIP 9
Playing about 3 1/2 years

1 Like