I really enjoyed nearly all additions to Gems of War in the last 2 years and more. I really appreciate the ideas you are coming up with. Even though things like multi-gems, super-skulls etc. make the game even more RNG related than ever.
However, the addition of Kingdom Pass is something I don’t like.
My reason is simple: Every addition before felt like it embedded well in the daily play. I invest ~1 hour each day for enjoying GoW. I don’t want to/I cannot increase that by much. So I am already not playing anything the game has to offer (e.g. I do Arena only when it is part of the Artifact quests). Which brings me to the important point: Additions like new troops or new gem types is embedded into EVERY match you make. So these can be enjoyed by every one. Additions like the Campaign (Artifact quests) can guide us to try new/rarely played content in form of short quests. But time invest for solving them is short and even if the content is not likable, it is acceptible for that time.
But Kingdom Pass is much different:
The first challenge is that it feels OBLIGATORY. If you don’t make progress on a daily base, you must spend gems to proceed or fail to acquire important items which speed up your progess in other parts of the game (e.g. the kingdom pet, kingdom weapons,…).
This challenge is pushed into an obstacle as the battlecrasher only occurs in specific battles: PvP and Exploration. However, i have to say that spawn rate (never exceeded more than 5 battlecrusher a day) is flawed as:
PvP spawn rate: 0% in Guild War (5 battles each day, 30 in total, not a single spawn of the battlecrusher)
Exploration spawn rate ~20% (once for a run of 5 or 6 battles, depending if you exceed the 100 mythsstone budget) for less than 5 battlecrusher on a single day. Obviously, the last battlecrusher already has a spawn rate of less than 10% (had 10 matches without having the 5th being spawned)
There is currently no other way to spawn this specific battlecrusher and it requires activities which are not on my daily list: Exploration battles.
As a result, I currently use a AE death machine deck and run tier 1 explorations. It takes between 1 and usually 4 turns to win the match. A single turn (might be a slow player) takes about 10 seconds. So a match is about 30 seconds.
With current spawn rate, to have 5 battlecrushers, you would therefore need ~5(matches)*0.5(match time in minutes)*5(number of battlecrushers) => ~15 minutes extra each day, to just get 50% of the maximum and desirable progress. This is very close to being outrageous.
I think the idea for the Kingdom Pass is good. Don’t take me wrong on this. But it requires some rework to get enjoyable and embeddable into the daily game play:
Increase the spawn rate of the first five battlecrusher to 100% in exploration. This way, you only need ~2-3 minutes of extra invest per day. Not really desirable, but better than current state.
Alterantively
Stick with current spawn rate of this specific battlecrusher but allow it to spawn in ANY battle (excluding training). This is preferrable as the battlecrusher would now behave like most battlecrushers already do and embeds nicely into ANY play style we players might have!
Or is it really that you want to design content pushing long time players into playing tier 1 content just to be fast in solving mandatory content?
The battlecrasher does spawn in ranked and casual PvP; that’s mostly where I grind for my daily 10 as I’m also after pet gnomes.
That said I too am not enjoying the KP; we have another FOUR WEEKS of this daily grind.
I also really hate the timegatey bullshit of it; of having to consult the news item to see what Nexus troops are and are not in chests; that we can’t progress Nexus kingdom power because the troops needed for it are time locked.
Release of a new kingdom should be fun – a rush of new progression! The KP turns it into a slow grindy drip; not fun.
It is not a surprise, that the battlecrashers never spawn in Guild Wars. That does not mean, that PvP spawn rate is 0%. Neither battlecrashers nor gnomes can be found in Guild War battles.
That said, I also don´t like, that you can only get 10 battlecrashers per day and that you have to collect them every day or you are missing 10. I had one day last week, where I didn´t have so much time for GoW and it was really annoying to farm for the battlecrashers then. Today, I have a lot of time, I would have preferred to collect 20 today and none on my busy day.
Tuesdays are faction assault, no battlecrashers.
Wednesday is pet rescue, no battlecrashers plus you don’t want to play pvp in case you find a pet gnome.
Thursdays are class trials, no battlecrashers
I am a late game player, playing E1 maybe be fast but is mindlessly boring.
I am not even bothering to look for battlecrashers today, did the basic tasks and guild event, done for the week.
Was really looking forward to new kingdom and new event but the need to grind for battlecrashers has sucked the fun right out of it.
I actually don’t mind the battlecrasher thing so much. If you have a quick (1 or 2 click) team for Explore 1, then you can probably finish collecting the crowns for the day in 5-10min or so.
I’m personally choosing to make it longer because I’m also working on classes, so I have to use PVP. It does take longer but I would be doing the same thing anyways lol.
That said, if you do make sure to get 10 a day, you can skip a few days if you need to. This thing is on for 5 weeks (35 days) but there’s only 49 levels of rewards (first one was free), which is about 25 days. Those extra days are only relevant if you have the royal pass.
Most days this week, I just used E1 explore - the fastest team with Ironhawks - to get to 10 kingdom crowns of the day. They come pretty soon to my surprise.
My biggest problem is the spawn rate is all over the place. With double ironhawk speed team I have finished all 10 in about 20 min one day…and another it was near an hour of non stop play…they are actively trying to burn out their customers
Remember when a new kingdom would come out and we could simply spend our keys that we have been saving for weeks/months and get all the troops? Looks like those days are gone forever. Now we get some of the troops with keys, some you have to pay $10 and some you have to grind 20 minutes a day/for 5 weeks or pay a whopping 5000 gems.
This is the direction the game is heading folks, and it’s only going to get worse. Don’t recommend this game to your friends. I’ve been telling mine who ask to stay away.
Having to grind battlecrashers every day to avoid a gem sink leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
I work a schedule that essentially ensures I don’t get any game time for 2 days each week, other than grabbing a few tributes. Needing to grind crowns daily or face a gem sink is a slap in the face to people with a life.
Maybe it would help if battlecrashers had a progress limit instead of a daily limit? Meaning on the first day your overall limit would be 10, on the second day 20, on the last day 350, no matter when you play. That way you wouldn’t feel forced to play each day, you could still catch up when starting late or playing on weekends only. Just tossing ideas around, since this would slightly reduce the pressure to spend money it’s guaranteed to never happen.
That would be huge QOL and a welcome change. Increment the total obtainable cap by 10 each day and let players do their grinding when they have time to do so.
