[Incorrect info] Soulforge Troops

[Stratelier]

@Jeto

I have passed on a suggestion to consider updating the Soulforge rotation to every 12 weeks (or something similar).
The idea being that every 12 weeks the pool refills.

Mathematically, that establishes a “soft cap” of 48 Mythics per rotation which is a problem because that is already less than 50% of total Mythics available for crafting, increasingly less with each new cycle – like a blackjack dealer reshuffling their deck earlier and earlier to reduce the effectiveness of “card counting” strategies.

If the list is selected from truly at random there is simply NO way to specifically guarantee that any one Mythic will appear in the crafting list ever – when the older system, despite its long cycle length, at least was guaranteed to exhaust 100% (or at least 96%) of its available pool before refreshing. There is no simple “fix” for this – pure randomized probability just isn’t “fair enough” in this regard.

But here’s an idea:

• Internally, there is a table/list of Troops eligible to appear in the Soulforge, right?
• This table includes data (a column or field per each row) to flag whether or not each Troop has yet been selected for the current crafting cycle.
• Add a second column/field of data accompanying each row, indicating if (or how long) a Troop didn’t appear in the crafting list before the list was refreshed. Let’s call this a “waiting” value.

First, when the game servers need to refresh the crafting list:

• Every Troop that did not appear in the SF at any point during the cycle has its “waiting” value increased by one.
• Any Troops newly added to the pool receive a default “waiting” value of 1.

Then, when picking the list of craftable Troops for each week:

• The server queries the maximum “waiting” value from the table (which always represents one or more Troops) and randomly selects ONE Troop with that value (aka. which has been waiting the longest without appearing in the SF).
• Then randomly pick additional Troops from the pool at large, until a total of 4 (or however many) Troops are selected.
• Because these Troops will be craftable this week, their “waiting” value now gets reset to zero.

By actively tracking (measured by # of resets) how long a Troop has been waiting to appear in the SF and prioritizing at least one Troop which has been waiting the longest, this guarantees that they will eventually appear for crafting, regardless of if the list gets reshuffled how many times in the meantime.

[redtoadstool]

I would rather see more mythics in the soulforge each week, so that every mythic appears once in each cycle. Anything else is going to be more frustrating than it currently is.

[WhoDat]

Thank you @Jeto
Why not change the format of the Soulforge to let players choose 6 Mythics (Players vote) + another 6 Mythic as the old system (Cycle).

[WHOCARES25]

Please god, no more votes.

PvP purple brown green.
We would have same 6 Mythics every week in forge.

Couldn’t handle that.

[Zuul-Emo]

I’m not saying you’re wrong about the information you were given Jeto, but I think the information you were given is definitely wrong.
Either it was a description of how the game works NOW, in which case players have proven that the game does NOT work that way (the pool is all mythics, not a random assortment of mythics, shown by the fact that the community has accuractely predicted cycles numerous times over years) OR this is a preview of how the soulforge is going to be changed.

If this is the way it’s gonna be going forth, that sounds like it’s either a big improvement, or a huge mistake that’s gonna mess everything up and cause a HUGE amount of bad feeling among players.
So, from what I’m reading of the info you were given, the soulforge will move to a fixed 12 week cycle. My interpretation would be that all the mythics would be split into 12 weeks, and 1/12 of them would be in the soulforge every week (randomly split between weeks). If so, that’s gonna be a long list, and getting longer every year, but it’s a way better system, because the cycle stays the same time period and players only ever have to wait 12 weeks to see a mythic they want. Fantastic! Let’s do that!

…

However… (ah hell) … you saying that the pool will randomly draw a fixed amount from the total each 12 weeks makes it sound more like it’s gonna pick say 60 troops from the total and add those to the pool, then pick 5 from that pool each week to offer in the soulforge. That would be incredibly BAD. Just… I’m struggling to properly express how terrible that idea would be, without violating community standards.

That would be an extra layer of RNG that we don’t need and NOBODY asked for, which wouldn’t fix ANY existing problem, but would add several new ones. Most specifically, one or more mythics could be added to the pool very often thus appearing far more than others, one or more mythics could not be added to the pool very often thus not appearing at all for long periods of time, and worst of all the community would no longer have any means to track which troops are due to appear in any set time.
All of this would be leading to immense frustration that DOESN’T NEED TO EXIST!

There is so much bad feeling among players around several major changes in fairly recent updates (the pause menu change which still hasn’t been fixed, the rewards screen still waiting for an update, and several others that feel like pointless changes, some of which clearly made the game worse and disrespected players for ignoring what we wanted), and this change would be a huge example of this.

I would ask you, please, to go back and verify if the information you got was wrong or a preview and if it’s a preview ask them to engage with the community to understand exactly why that is such an awful idea. Please.

[Zuul-Emo]

@Jeto

How does the Soulforge rotation work?

For example:

• In the Season of Ice, the troop “Kukulkan” was available.
• At the end of the Season, this troop is released into the list of troops that can be pulled for the next Soulforge pool.
• Because there is a current Soulforge pool active, they wait on the potential list.
• The current Soulforge pool empties, and it generates a new pool. Randomly selecting a number of troops from the potential list.
• “Kukulkan” is randomly selected, so it is now in the current Soulforge pool.. it’s just a matter of waiting for it to appear in the Soulforge, in-game.
• After a few weeks, “Kukulkan” is randomly selected to be removed from the pool and can no longer appear.

Just to clarify, in this example given, Kukulkan is never actually available in the soulforge… right?
The 2nd last step is it’s in the pool, but not available for crafting in the soulforge, waiting to appear in-game.
The last step is it being removed from the pool, and can no longer appear in-game.
At no point did it appear in-game.
It was waiting, then it got removed before it could be crafted.

I hope there was a step missing here, and it should have appeared in the game, then been removed from the pool

[Jeto]

I’ll follow up what I can today

[Zuul-Emo]

For what it’s worth, if it was up to me, I’d remove the rotation system entirely and allow players to craft tokens then buy the mythic directly using that token.
Full details here: Streamline Mythic and Legendary Creation in Soulforge - Feature Requests and Game feedback - Gems of War | Forums
Thought I’d put it in a separate post so it’s not lost and not clogging up this post.
Anyway, thanks Jeto.

[Nagflar_dv]

@Zuul-Emo

Just to clarify, in this example given,

If a troop IS in a list of X troops pulled to soulforge pool - it would be in a SF before a end of a cycle. When pool get empty cycle will end and the next X troops would be randomly choosen (including our wanted troop or not including if a fate decides so)
It’s how i read this post)

[ShellM]

What did you call me???

[Stratelier]

@Zuul-Emo

For what it’s worth, if it was up to me, I’d remove the rotation system entirely and allow players to craft tokens then buy the mythic directly using that token.

To me, that is effectively just deferring the list of available Mythics to a separate/different menu screen, and doesn’t necessarily change anything else (though given the size of the SF lists currently, splitting them into more granular categories/tabs isn’t completely a bad thing).

[Jeto]

imma just close and delete this whole thread, if that’s cool with everyone & redo it with the correct info

[AMT]

Under previous mods, it was actually useful to have access to previous instances of information errors on the part of Devs/mods because playerbase claims were often dismissed without further follow up: so I’d say yes delete the whole thing IF you’ll always be around with your open and dedicated modding style, because every single time you ACTUALLY listen to the players without us having to dig and find contradictions et al.

..deal?

[Jeto]

oh yeah I can just close and renamed so it existed still - the idea to delete it was because the majority of this thread is more, that info you got is wrong lol

[Zuul-Emo]

@Nagflar_dv

If a troop IS in a list of X troops pulled to soulforge pool - it would be in a SF before a end of a cycle. When pool get empty cycle will end and the next X troops would be randomly choosen (including our wanted troop or not including if a fate decides so)
It’s how i read this post)

That seems more like how it SHOULD work, yeah. But my point was the example given didn’t say that.
The last three points, in order, are:

• Pool is generated
• Troop is added to pool
• Troop is removed from pool

There’s no point saying “troop is added to soulforge” or something like that. Might just be weird wording, but not saying the troop is availble feels wrong.

[Zuul-Emo]

@Stratelier

To me, that is effectively just deferring the list of available Mythics to a separate/different menu screen,

Yeah. One big menu available all the time, instead of hundreds of small menus available for a week each over several months.

@Stratelier

doesn’t necessarily change anything else (though given the size of the SF lists currently, splitting them into more granular categories/tabs isn’t completely a bad thing)

That was the change I was suggesting. Moving them to somewhere where they’re all visible instead of having them cycles through in small numbers would be a better system. In my view, anyway.