New Shrines

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
22

I disagree, actually. Now, I know nothing about game development, so this is speculation and educated guessing, but here goes.

The devs have more stats than we can conceive of. They can run countless simulations and have data to who owns which troops, who has done which achievements, and I would guess even how many gems have been matched. Their primary concern (as we can all very clearly see) is making money. It would be ineffective to gather all income and only look at the final number. They want to know what exactly is making them money and what isn’t so that they can make tweaks to make more money.

We saw this with the shop a few updates ago. It was apparently not making them enough money, so they updated and tweaked it. It would be naive at this point to assume they did it out of goodwill and wanting to make things more fair for the players. We also saw an example of this more recently with the ad reward revamp. Again, they’re not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, not when it comes to monetized content. They’re looking at how many ads people are watching, seeing it’s not earning them enough money, and thus upping the incentive.

You bet they have access to how much they’re making from Campaign passes versus each individual shop offer versus ad clicks. It would be ineffective and unprofitable to do otherwise.

In regards to players ending all spending, I believe this would send the wrong message. One data point devs obviously don’t have access to is WHY people stop spending. Sure, we can complain on the forums, and maybe Salty brings that up to the team in some form, but there has been so much complaining about so many different things for so many years here that I doubt they’re all that interested in players’ threats to stop spending. So what they see, from looking at their monetized content data, is an overall lack of funds. Again, I think it would be naive to state that an overall lack of funds would cause devs to realize they should improve QoL and fix longstanding bugs and issues in the game. We’ve seen it over and over again - they’ll just change their deals and offer more things to buy.

The refusal to spend on specific parts of the game, however, does send a clear message, precisely because they have access to the data of each spending point. Going back to the ad change again - they look at their data and if it’s not high enough, they modify it to make the incentive higher. If Campaign money dropped, for example, they would likely modify the pass rewards, just like they did for the shop a while back.

6 Likes
23

That is why I won’t be buying Shrines at all. With the campaign, I at least know exactly the rewards I will be getting. I don’t gamble with real money.

And I still maintain that catering to those that do are making this game worse and the forums worse as well. Then they turn around and complain endlessly about the negativity. You reap what you sow.

6 Likes
24

This is a fair view.

However, I posit that once a monetization item is implemented, there is a “break-even point” where development on that item has been, in essence, paid for. After that, even a slow trickle of profit is still profit.

The question then becomes what would generate more profit - revamping an old mechanic, or implement a new mechanic. We’ve seen historically that this tends to overwhelmingly favor implementing new mechanics. We do get the occasional revamp, yes, and I likewise assume these things are not revamped out of the goodness of anyone’s heart - IP2/505 are a business.

If someone buys “elite” (lol) pa$$es but doesn’t spend anywhere else, all that does is tell IP2/505 that pa$$es are a trigger point for getting players to spend. My money is on the new Shrine mechanic being related to the pa$$es because of the pressure on FOMO. “Buy this now, it’ll eventually go away.” If we see a future Shrine include some kind of exclusive (like a troop, weapon, pet, etc.) that’ll just underline the correlation in my opinion.

The powers that be want to maximize profit from the game, yes. However, that doesn’t mean the first response to “people aren’t buying Shrines” is going to be to make Shrines a better value than they are now - because they could have another half-dozen monetization schemes in the pipe that are projected to make even more money.

Thus, the crappy Shrines stay, and even pull in a trickle of revenue. More new monetization is added, or another pa$$ with another exclusive pet or another mythic or a whole pile of Imperial Deeds or something else that a bunch of players consider worthy of an impulse buy, and the suits see huge profits, which tells them the game is successful.

Just like you, I also don’t believe I’m talking out my hiney. I am looking at historical experience of adding new monetization vs revamping existing stuff, and I don’t feel like “pay for this, but not that” is going to send the desired message. Then again, if people collectively stop paying (along with not providing feedback - especially the heavy spenders) it’s also possible the company will cut their losses and shut down the game. We don’t know.

I personally consider buying anything in GoW to be tantamount to saying “I like this game and I approve of the direction it’s taking.” That’s why I stopped spending when it was obvious the direction was changing in a way that I didn’t want to reward with my money, and it’s why I encourage people with serious gripes about the game to stop spending (if they spend) and stop engaging in the game mode(s) that they are not happy with - for example, I also didn’t play the second Campaign beyond a few tasks I completed by accident doing my normal play during Week 1. I think the Campaigns were poorly implemented so I’m not going to add to the metrics. It’s the only vote I have left since I don’t spend money anymore.

I have no doubt they have tons of metrics that we don’t even think about. How much weight those metrics carry regarding internal development is anyone’s guess. We waited how long for an Arena revamp, as an example.

When the name of the game is making money, the “how” doesn’t matter to a lot of companies. Check out a video called “Let’s go whaling!” on youtube.

3 Likes
25

Tbh the forum posts and any complaints are borderline irrelevant to the devs. Even more so now than ever. Those on these forums are unlikely to be the target audience. The avoidance of communication is completely deliberate, no care etc.

We, you, I are nothing in the grand scheme of things. All the publisher sees is $$$ and that’s all the matters. Any conceivable way to get more money is all that matters.

Instructions downwards are to make more money, at less effort for more.

Nothing said on the forum now makes a jot of difference.

I will give an example of the DGAF coming from above - the Adventure Board.

It’s just an excuse, with no compelling data to argue it working to restrict progression for monetisation.

In other words the AB is deliberately rubbish so we strive for spending to get back onto the drip feed.

We were told our calculations of it taking way over a year to get to all L 15 kingdoms was way out. It’s nearly 16 months and without offers we are still around 45% towards.

Now add in war coins to further dilute chance.

7 Likes
26

If it had been guarenteed Ascension - I would have done this in a heart beat.
I have a lot of 19th level troops…just sitting here…

But that it’s orbs unspecified, I don’t need anymore of anything other than clans maybe.

27

Inb4 the achievement is broken too. Why add the feature and achievement update just for it not to work. At least the text is correct…

28

On Xbox the achievement related to filling the Shrine is broken. You fill the Shrine up and the achievement doesn’t pop and that green exclamation point never goes away.

If the description is incorrect and you need to redeem the Shrine, then it can’t be for real money, they have to change it to the ingame currency and make it gems. Cause paywalling achievements I believe is in violation of Microsoft’s ToS.

Frankly I am not spending a dime on these shrines or on the war coins. This is a cash grab plain and simple and it’s not aimed at veteran players, it’s aimed at new players so that they can quickly progress through the early stages of the game.

2 Likes
29

This is likely intended behavior. It’s a “nag mechanism” to remind you there’s an available purchase. It’s just like the floaty Gem on the Shop button during Bonus Buy events no matter how many times you open the Shop window.

The achievement not unlocking seems like a bug. It unlocked for me (Steam) when I filled a Shrine.

30

The shrines don’t bug me. The exclamation mark that won’t go away, that bugs me.

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31

Devs:

4r2oef

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32

Yep all done spending$ It is a money grubbing grab…snd pi…sea me off.

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33

Not so bad.

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34

I just wish the shrines gave you something tangible - anything - other than the opportunity to spend money on a randomized reward, which, to be totally honest, could turn out to be two major growth orbs, which is why I will never buy the shrine. I agree with the other posters that this is, on its surface, a major cash grab, poorly implemented. I would love to just ignore it and pretend it is there only for those who choose to spend a lot of cash on the game, but it is constantly marked with the exclamation point and until the shrine is full there’s a reminder after every battle. It’s more obscene than the daily offer popups.

Instead, I would have loved to have seen a small stat boost once it gets full (for free), and then the option to buy the power up, which would maybe double the stat boost and get you the orbs. In this there’s incentive to grind out the shrine and it would have made the whole thing much more palatable. The way it is implemented currently it is at best a minor annoyance and at worst an abhorrent attempt to set up another new revenue stream within the game. I’m a little disgusted at it.

5 Likes
35

I have the bad feeling that you do advertising for the shrine…

1 Like
36

I get where you’re going with this, but no matter what, it would lead to outrage on the forums. Half-way through, you could pay $10 for 50k gold and 2 Major Orbs. Or you could wait and fill up the other 50k… but then it would say 100k filled, but you would only get 50k and no orbs? So the orbs listed would be removed, makes sense, but then the 100k would decrease to 50k, even though you had to “earn” 100k?

And at what point would it stop? Like, could you pay $10 still if it was at 100k and get the full 100k and 2 orbs? So then there would be two buttons? I’m still wildly lost on the idea that anyone would pay $10 for only 50k and 2 orbs when it takes practically no time at all to get it to 100k.

The problem:

– Paying players are only paying for the chaos orbs (otherwise they could just pay and get the gold for free if they didn’t care about the orbs).
– Free players cannot get the chaos orbs without spending money.

Currently, the shrines are of no benefit at all to free players. However, that’s how it was before they were implemented, so really it’s just one more thing I can ignore on the screen.

If they did change it to some kind of hybrid version where both playing and free players could benefit, I can’t imagine either side would be happy in the end.

37

I recommend you try to avoid feeling bad. :smile:. And no, I don’t do advertising for the shrine.

38

Do that 8 more times and a craft able mythic would be $80. That’s if you are lucky. That little bit of gold is of no value.

39

How were shrines even allowed with some countries ban on loot boxes?

1 Like
40

Has anyone gotten a Power Orb from a Major Chaos Orb that wasn’t tied to the shrine?

41

I know of 1 and it was night of update.

1 Like