I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now - drop rates are sacrosanct. This would include keeping your players properly informed of what they can and can’t pull before they attempt to pull it. This is in contrast to the numerous other issues this game has, many which are frustratingly lax at getting fixed, are not on the same level as drops. Yes, I get irritated at all that stuff too, and yes, I really wish it would get fixed, and yes, some of them I really find an affront to the concept of game design, but drop rates are your bread and butter. These are the worst type of issues to have and even worse when you don’t give a proper resolution to them.
My personal interpretation of this when this started was this was something that was intended to help players out by extending the exclusives into event chests. Unfortunately, this meant to them removing a drop from event chests due to the mythic being exclusive in other chests - something that has never happened before in Gems of War history. There was no documentation to even hint that Weaver would not be present in event chests during the first half of the week before people opened chests and reported it, not in game, not on support sites, and only afterward in a response post buried in an unrelated thread.
Fundamentally what is not getting communicated here is that changing the drop table on purpose and failing to directly and appropriately communicate this when there is no way for players to do their due diligence and determine something is or is not in the drop pool is for all intents and purposes the same thing as something not being in the drop table due to a bug. The have the same outcome - due to your negligence, people are gambling on getting (sometimes with real money) a prize that is not in the prize pool.
Now, allow me to present a less-than-charitable interpretation of this:
- There were at one point tools that allowed players to do their due-dilligence through third party API access because the severs were sending logs of chest contents. After calling out drop issues multiple times, these tools were eventually removed. There was no evidence before this point of them ever being incorrect, and in fact they were used to double check many of the drop issues and both save people some grief ahead of time. This was before the (vastly inferior) “drop rate” preview was added to chest screens, where it is impossible to tell if something is or is not in chests, and was, famously, blatantly incorrect (which did have a favorable resolution at least… eventually). Before this post (and during the fix) they were claimed to be “correct” multiple times.
- When confronted over not properly communicating AW being removed from chests during the first part of the week it was stated that it was both an old change and it was in response to player feedback. Others were quick to point out that four years ago, there were no more than one mythic in any given kingdom. and such a change would have been irrelevant at that time since no kingdom had more than one kingdom in the event key pool at any given time until years after that, and this is the only overlap of such since.
It isn’t hard to see here how this could be interpreted as gaslighting in an attempt to cover up mistakes and avoid responsibility. The worse interpretation given the facts would be intentional fraud with malice of forethought, and while I don’t personally believe this, I have to admit that a lot of these issues (and the way they are dealt with after the fact) stretch the concept of Hanlon’s Razor to the breaking point.
Unfortunately, I can’t pledge to stop spending on GoW until this is addressed I already have (I have not ever bought anything since campaigns were introduced because of this) because campaigns introduced “timed exclusives” you could only get by paying money that are becoming less and less possible to even collect at all after the fact (think about how hard an individual tarot will be to pull when there are 13 of them sharing the same tiny corner of the drop pool, even with GAP, and that these are going to likely gate mythic collections from here on out). While I know this is seen as “normal” to alot of people playing free to play games, the moving across this particular line was a huge red flag in a sea of monetization progressions checkered with them. But thats a subject for another thread.
I’m almost convinced at this point that they do a coin flip to determine which issues that they will properly compensate.
Devs, if you bother reading this, let me reiterate, this is not a “player entitlement” issue. You have a resource you can charge money for to get random loot, you removed a drop from said random loot without properly communicating. There has to be at least some instances where you have actively defrauded paying customers and not just consumed “digital goods”. Maybe not to a standard that can be upheld in court, but you really don’t want the reputation that this is how you operate.
It is not impossible to get something closer to a favorable result here. Rollbacks being “too hard” is not on us. Not having the support staff to individually address these issues for a full resolution is not on us. If you are looking for suggestions about an “easy” way to give “appropriate” compensation, the following was already floated - have a soulforge recipe that consumes Archproxy and gives Weaver. Anybody using keys to pull Weaver would have at least had to roll “a mythic” before having the 50/50 shot at Weaver if both were in the pool as all prior evidence would have suggested they would be, so allowing someone to just swap them would be slightly player favorable. Anyone who could have pulled Weaver during this period and at least hit the mythic roll would just be afforded to have the opportunity of them choosing the one they were after, it wouldn’t affect anyone that wasn’t happy with what they got (since there was already a documented chance to get Archproxy here too, the issue is that there was no documentation that AW would be removed). Anyone that didn’t receive at least Archproxy… you wouldn’t have ever rolled Weaver due to how the drop rates work internally so you aren’t entitled to a copy here because you weren’t directly affected (and I say directly because any droprate miscommunication or error affects EVERYBODY). This reaches the most people affected by the miscommunication while “giving away” the least amount extra.
In closing, so long as the discourse remains on this forum, they can just ignore it until it dies out. I recommend discussing this on other platforms. Again, I remind people do not harass whatever point of contact you may get (if you get any), but more people need to be aware of what happened, the extent of how bad it is because of what it represents, and why the “compensation” put forth right now is completely unacceptable. Reach out