Barely any new players will bother with them and what fun is it to have a bunch of troops to make teams with if you can’t use them? It feels like paying for the company to play and make decisions for you. Robbed of choice no freedom the leash just gets tighter around our necks. This is very bold. Barely any new playets will bother with this. Most will get discouraged and we all already think its lame. I for 1 will never ever make a purchase with 505 again.
5 Likes
Wondered that myself tbh.
1 Like
Devs have said before that PQ3 is taking priority
2 Likes
We should all be leaving reviews on PlayStore or Steam or wherever possible. No need to lie. Tell the truth, game is fun mostly, community is strong and commited. Development team is out of touch and only interested in monetary improvements.
11 Likes
I agree. I hope something helps us be heard. I thought most game companys want you to want to play their games not run from it!
1 Like
If they wanted to “end” Gems of War, they could simply do so. They could announce a shutdown date, they could stop releasing any new content at all, et cetera. There’s literally nothing to gain through intentional self-sabotage and quite a bit to lose, such as whatever goodwill remains among the player base and corporate reputation across the interwebs.
This is Hanlon’s Razor in action. It’s not malice, it’s stupidity. It’s the same sort of thing you see from businesses large and small across the world where the people in charge aren’t in touch with their consumer base and make decisions that seem intelligent to them but don’t address what the customer really wants.
It’s not that “the customer is always right” because they’re not no matter what the ridiculous adage claims. But when there’s enough of a disconnect, as there seems to be here, the side producing the product/service doesn’t maintain the proper priorities that would lead to greater success.
30 Likes
A little tidbit - that’s only part of the actual thing.
It’s “the customer is always right in matters of taste”. If your customer wants that tacky purple suede suit, you don’t tell them it’s ugly. They’re right. It’s an amazing suit that you definitely want to sell them.
Gems us doing the worst possible thing, telling players that they as a company know better than their customers.
2 Likes
That’s what gaming companies do, destroy a game by adding something really broken/unfair at the end of its run 'til the point of the playerbase will enjoy it, until a brand new game arrives. It’s a very smart business strategy.
2 Likes
Depends… It should be smarter to keep the servers running without investing time, money, and energy into creating new stuff until players fizzle out.
I don’t see that for gems.
What I see is a massive disconnect between devs and players.
No one programs a new mode to get rid of players. They wanted another gem sink which is fine. They want to make money, also fine.
Not knowing what players want on the other hand, that’s not good. It’s not good for either side.
10 Likes
Self-destructive behavior is never a good strategy. Not in business, and not in life.
1 Like
Gems of War and Puzzle Quest 3 have completely separate teams.
It doesn’t matter what happens on Puzzle Quest 3, the Gems of War team isn’t involved in PQ3 and vice versa.
8 Likes
Highly doubt they are purposely tanking the game. Like why would they do that? As someone said, if they wanted to pull the plug, they could just do that, they don’t need permission. No.
The sad fact is the bad game design is just that. Bad game design. In their defense, bad game design is always going to be the end result for players who think everything should be free. It just is. Because people who work on games like to eat and pay rent too. So as a FTP game ages, things get weird to keep the lights on. The development budget gets smaller and smaller and the monetization focus gets bigger and bigger.
1 Like
These are my thoughts as how I see it.
I feel the issues started after they released the Gnome-a-Polooza. They clearly did no testing on how much money this was going to cost them. I say “no testing” because:
- They allowed the Verses Gnomes to spawn during a Polooza.
- The spike of total Vault Keys received at the end of the event for each player is too big of an increase that is not sustainable.
Yes they quickly make the change so Verses Gnomes have a very low % chance to spawn during a Polooza however the damage had already been done as for example: The players that did a Polooza before the fix may have only been able to craft 1 Polooza but after completing that one Polooza they defeated enough Verses Gnomes to craft another 5 Poloozas.
As for the spike in Vault Keys, I will use myself as an example. My playing time for Vault Events that currently run is the same as before the Poloozas were released. Below is a rough total of keys I received before and after the Polooza release.
- Before the Poloozas were released I would finish each Vault Event with around 20-30 Vault Keys and 0 Epic Vault Keys.
- Since the Poloozas were released I finish each vault event on around 250-350 Vault Keys and 20-40 Epic Vault Keys.
As you can see this is a huge increase which im sure if they had of tested this they would have realised that they would need to make changes before releasing.
Since they released the poloozas they have been back pedalling trying to recover the cost of their incompetence. Below is what I have witnessed:
- Vault Events either canceled or rescheduled so we don’t have them. Giving excuses like “we can’t have a vault event during a kingdom pass as it clashes with the battle crashers”, even though this was fixed and working fine if I remember correctly.
- Kingdom Pass is just a money grab with very little benefit to the player.
- Legends Reborn is just a money grab with very little benefit to the player.
- Holiday Events is just a money grab with very little benefit to the player.
- The change they made to all kingdoms so the 3x Ironhawk team doesn’t 1 shot kill the enemy team. this is to slow the player down from hunting gnomes during a Vault Event. Less Gnomes = less Verses Gnomes = less Vault Keys.
- Treasures & Temptations are ok as some offers can be good but most are completely useless and the buffs are pointless but this is to slow the player down from hunting gnomes during a Vault Event. Less Gnomes = less Verses Gnomes = less Vault Keys.
- Trials is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen which not only restricts and frustrates the player but it also slows the player down from gaining to many resources as they are not completing as many battles due to being stuck on the 1 trial battle. Players are now using a Polooza to get through the epic battles which of course means that’s 1 less Polooza the player has to use during a Vault Event.
- Dragons - need I say anymore.
I have not mentioned everything above but I think you get the idea as basically since the Poloozas were released they have either:
- Limited the amount of Vault Events we get.
- Every new release has a money spend option.
- Every new release has a gem spend option.
- They have introduced ways to either slow players down or use their resources.
On top of all that they release updates with major bugs that end in no or incorrect compensation.
All of this this and a lot more = a crap gaming experience for the player.
This is just my opinion and what I have experience playing Gems of War.
9 Likes
May I ask how many different people were fulltime actively involved in ‘Gems of War’ since 2023 started? (I don’t mean “translators” or someone doing a “troop design”.)
2 Likes
with the quality of the bugs, max 1 junior 
5 Likes
How do trials make them money? I cannot buy anything even if I want to, as I only get the epic trials and in the current kingdom, I can’t beat the first one, but even if I could, the pets are not worth it imo, as the benefit they provide is too small and too restricted. I’d buy troops I’m missing within reason, but am not given the option. I get that I’m just one example, but overall, this doesn’t seem like much of a cash cow. I’d also buy the campaign pass, but it’s rubbish this time round. And the prices on some things in the game make no sense. Like 35 EUR or something to upgrade a legendary. That’s a ridiculous price.
1 Like
I seem to recall that Salty always stressed the point that the Customer Experience team is part of Gems of War. Which kind of made sense, because that team was supposed to act as go-between for developers and players. If I understand you correctly this is no longer the case? You are now entirely decoupled from the Gems of War team, which would explain why our feedback always has… difficulties in reaching its intended target?
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You need to scale with the enemy’s team by upgrading your kingdoms overall (level, power) and your troops to max elite. Can you imagine how much money to spend to accomplish such tasks? 37 kingdoms (level, power), 4 troops each (traits, ascension, elite), et cetera. If a player is crazy enough to do as such, that’s still a huge gain for the company.
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Sure, but do that many people do that just to get hold of a pet that gives a tiny boost to a very specific team? I might be crazy, but I reckon there are better ways to get more people overall to spend money.
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Somewhere out there still exists dome people crazy enough to make the company gain profit. It happens that you and I are not one of those people.
1 Like