Nonsense From Grim Words

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Long ago I believed that my words written here could change something. Unfortunately, people with my vision of the game are already gone. I stayed, because I’m the leader of the clan. Usually I just endure, recrut players, try to interest them. But for a long time I can not find anything interesting for myself. Everything here is done according to the simplest principle - banal copying. Three weeks of monotonous events in anticipation of GW, this is a mockery. Three weeks of farm resources to use them for one week. Why? Just to show that developers are doing something. Oh yes, there’s still a store - you won’t make much money on the GW without making it dishonest.

We get a lot of new cards, and it seems like a good thing. But the size of our deck is four cards which means that almost all the cards are idle. New myths have lost value. Getting them is simply a formality for leveling kingdoms. Such a small size of the deck allows you to make changes only if an excessively powerful card comes out. So another card is sent to a bunch of unnecessary cards, with no chance of a return. I remember only one card that has not lost value throughout its existence - Queen Mab.

Three weeks I need to spend diamonds and, most importantly, time, to keep up with others. I feel like a squirrel in a wheel. Sometimes I stop, look at the wheel from the side and understand that I have to go back there, or go completely.

When the series of bans passed, I dreamed that my character would be banned. Then I would have an honest excuse to say that I do not want to start from the beginning. But I was clean. I used to play honestly, although I was often offered options for sharing games. And I also have a rule - if the game claims to be free, then I will not invest a single dollar in it. Yes, now I spend a lot of money on MTG, but I have 0 vip points in gems. This is because the first game honestly says that it costs money, and the second one tries to force a monotonous gameplay from which it has long been reversed, it makes interesting events less often so that players can’t stand the repetition of the same process and just buy everything ready-made. I hate this game. I’m wildly tired of her. But I don’t want to waste everything I reached and there are no volunteers to replace me as the leader of the clan.

Sometimes I recall the excitement that GW was introduced into the game. That memories make you feel better. In those days, I led my channel on YouTube, made a video for a Russian-speaking audience. And he believed that the game would be a masterpiece. Unfortunately, there was a reversal and degradation. We got a grind-game.

Hear my roar

Hear my pain

LastGrim, Glorious Immortals

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Care to clarify what you mean by this? We got 3rd overall on PC/Mobile last GW bracket 1. And personally, I’ve done everything possible to run a clean and honest program. So yes, you can have success in GW without being “dishonest”.
Despite what the devs may claim. GW remains the only event where players can earn a substantial amount of gems for free. THE ONLY ONE. :grinning:

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I think he means GW is the only event that’s not monetized in a way that gives an advantage to people who spend a lot. The sentinel levels certainly cost resources, but it’s the cheapest event in the game by far.

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Interesting rule. If every player had that attitude, professional F2P games wouldn’t exist.

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Or…we’d be buried with advertising.
Want another sigil for the Invasions this week for free? Sure, just watch this 30 second video about gemroid cream. For those that want everything for nothing. :grinning:

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This wouldn’t be a bad thing. It wouldn’t mean we’d have no video games. It’d mean we’d have video games you pay for up-front and don’t change themselves every four months. To get new features you’d buy a new game that advertises what it is, and if you don’t like the new features you wouldn’t buy it. That’s also a market where unpopular features lead to games going out of business, but it also means when they do you still have the old games you already bought.

The alternative I guess is ad support but that’s the same problem: instead of trying to make 10,000 people happy enough to spend $20 on your game to justify it, you need to find a way to convince 500,000 people to log into your game for 3 hours daily over the course of four years and pray your ad provider’s rates stay constant. It turns out it’s just as stressful and laden with external risks.

If you put a tray of cookies on the table with a “FREE” sign on it, you can’t be upset if you end up with $0 at the end of the day. Even if you put a “donations, please” jar next to it. That’s not how selling things works.

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God. I really DESPISE that method.

It is a bad thing for people that can’t afford to pay for a game. If someone just doesn’t have the money to spend on games, they can play GoW without ever spending a dime if they are willing to put in a lot of time. Will a brand spanking new player spending 0 cash have everything in the game as fast as his paying counterpart, no. But, he can still enjoy the core mechanics for zero dollars if he joins a good guild.

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If no customers have money to support the game, it goes out of business in both models. When those no-money customers wake up one morning, the servers won’t be working and they won’t have a game.

All models have their risk, but “gotta make money” isn’t a good excuse for doing things that upset people. Ask Phillip Morris.

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That’s why it’s important to enjoy it while it lasts! Of course it will eventually come to an end, that’s a given. Hopefully it isn’t anytime soon though.

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That isn’t my point in the least. I’m not sure why you are even replying to me with a “gotta make money” comment.

My last comment isn’t about game business owners. Both business models are viable and make money for companies. My last comment was simply about individual players (who can’t AFFORD to pay) having the ability to enjoy professional game content for free.

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I think what happens when you reach “the end game” is that you’re basically in auto-pilot.

When you first start playing, every new thing you get is exciting. Your ability to eventually start completing higher level content is rewarding. The rewards you get feel exciting and valuable.

We have all the tools we need to beat any event at any level in a PVE context, so the events aren’t particularly exciting anymore. Right now I’m sure other end game players would agree that events are really just a vehicle to get us new weapons and troops to use in Guild Wars at the end of the day.

Guild Wars is the only event that is completely dynamic month to month. The new troops and weapons and classes can all be arranged in new and interesting ways, and the level of difficulty is directly proportional to the amount of creativity and achievement your opponents have.

The problem with PVE content is that scaling troops to vastly high levels doesn’t really make them much harder. If you can beat a level 150 team, you’ll just as likely be able to beat a level 500 team. It’s all about playing around with scaling weapons and classes or troops with barriers.

The way they handle delve faction teams are much more akin to how I wish all of the events played out. All of those troops are specifically designed to work well together in some capacity, and often if not always do something to your team that really messes up your strategy.

…as far as F2P vs. Paid, I still stand-by my feelings that this game is incredibly well designed to be both enticing to spend money without requiring it.

Like all games, this game just needs a way to keep end-game players hooked beyond just “new stuff weekly and GWs once a month”. I’m not going to pretend that’s easy or assume they aren’t constantly discussing this internally…you can tell the dev team actually cares about this game beyond just this elaborate money making machine.

It’s just that all the new stuff we get doesn’t really change how the game loop plays out week to week until GW hits right now…and then suddenly the game busts wide open and anything is possible.

Hell, maybe just make GW-style events a weekly addition to the rotation, and keep the monthly GW as like the SuperBowl that affects ranking.

…lots of typing, but the punchline is that I still love this game, still super appreciate everything the devs do, and hopefully we get that carrot on a stick situation sorted out in the future for end-gamers.

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I still stand by that the addition of potions killed these modes.
Invasion and Raid was tedious yet challenging, now it’s just tedious.

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As this is a “grim” thread, last time I gave my thoughts regarding the transmogrification of “old GoW” into “new GoW”, I said that there was two things that still needed to happen.

The first is coming to pass in 4.6, with removal of player choice of difficulty in all remaining modes that still have them.

The second, involves fixing that monetization issue regarding PvP related game modes. I feel badly about what I’m reasonably sure is coming for competitive guilds when this change occurs. Just a matter of when, at this point. In my head canon, I’ve got this occurring pegged by 4.7 at the latest.

All of these changes will need to be in place for 5.0 to occur, which will mark the “launch” of New GoW and the formal death of Old GoW.

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If they take away the difficulty option in casual PvP then they therefore remove casual PvP. No?

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I have the opposite reaction to almost everything here. I hate guild wars, but I play it because my guild needs me to, even if sometimes they’d be better off if I didn’t. I have spent tons of money on this game and I don’t regret any of it. It has given me hours of pleasure every day for almost 5 years. Every day is something different and every day I enjoy it. I can see that if you focus on only one game mode, everything else seems a waste. But why do that? There is so much else to do and enjoy, you’re only causing yourself to miss out.

I have no doubt that I will be here until the end. But by then, I will be ready to move over to whatever new thing the devs have planned. I look forward to it.

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@RiverSong I think the preference of GW vs. PVE events comes down to player preferences.

In an MMO like WoW it’s the difference between preferring raids or arena. Some people like the puzzle and execution aspect of raiding, others like the dynamics of PVP.

It’s funny when I think of it in these contexts because I was always a raider vs. a PVPer in my MMO days, but I think that was largely because all the prestige in that game was tied to raiding, and for a long time all the best gear was exclusive to raiding.

That gets back to the carrot on a stick thing I was poking at before.

“Figuring out” how to beat a new event can usually be done by saying “Put Mang in the top slot on a Titan, and 3 troops under it that either make skulls or make mana”. That doesn’t mean that’s where my creativity stops, but the challenge aspect of it isn’t really there once you have access to the entire enchilada of options.

I still very much enjoy playing through events and coming up with new teams, it’s just the GW in this game actually nets the highest reward and comes with the highest difficulty to achieve (outside of leaderboard attempts during events).

For what it’s worth, the idea of enjoying PVE events and hating GW is shared by probably a vast majority of players. Not at all talking down to the mindset or dismissing it! :heart:

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Exactly my thoughts.

I love the more exciting Flash Offers. I love the game. I’m not sure why people that claim they put $0.00 into this game feel they should be getting a better experience. If they aren’t happy no investment means they have nothing to lose by walking away.

I intend to be here until the end, and I hope that’s years away.

However, if they touch my Casual PVP, I won’t be happy… And if they ever make me do Guild Wars more than once every few weeks again, I won’t be happy… Since I’ve spent more money than most I know on this game, I truly hope they avoid adding more modes that aren’t fun for me – like GW…

Oh well, I love the devs, and I hope we get more deeds soon, because that would make me love the Devs even more. :heart_eyes_cat:

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Some great points being made here.

Bingo. I’m not bagging on the devs. But this goes to my belief that F2P is a predatory business model, and in 10-20 years, the gaming companies that rely upon it (which is pretty much everybody now) will be held in the same esteem as the tobacco companies.

Did I throw the publisher $10 in appreciation of this terrific game? Yes. Would I rather spend $40-$50 and get a full game? Absolutely.

More truth (well, ranked pvp is somewhat dynamic, though it needs more disincentives to fielding weak teams). I will add that scaling troops to ridiculous levels actively makes the game less fun to play, as it leads to random chance having a disproportionate impact (i.e. skyfall and starting boards become everything).

Would love to see a GW day every week.

I don’t really get where this point is coming from. Any device you play GoW on (including smartphones) costs money, significantly more than what a game would cost. All of this is a luxury.

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Eh there’s a wide range of ways you can have a mobile device and no money. Being a kid’s one of them. There’s also a plethora of free devices at my mobile carrier. I guess you could argue having wifi or mobile data is a luxury, but contemplating trying to get a job without email or a mobile these days seems sort of tough. This veers real quick into the territory where we nitpick about whether poor people “deserve” this or that, and it’s a real gross conversation I don’t wish to play a part in.

It’s the same thing as the “people who pay support the game” argument, it’s an attempt to separate players into “people who matter” and “people who don’t”.

It all comes back to the same thing: if I put a bowl on the table that says “FREE CANDY” I can’t cry later about how much candy people stole from me even if I put a tip jar next to it. The price tag means nobody is ethically or morally obligated to pay.

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It would sound like that to me. I’ve looked again at the notes I took for both 4.5 streams, and all that was said on the matter was that player selectable difficulty was going away from the legacy modes that still had them in 4.6.

But, as you mention, casual PvP would be affected if the statement holds completely true. I wouldn’t be surprised if such a change is made to close down casual PvP farming (similarly to also shut down speed Explore farming at the same time as well).

Personally, I believe that in the long run, ranked PvP (or some close version of it) becomes the new casual PvP mode. The upcoming “PvP Events” that have been mentioned in the last two dev Q&A streams will be the future PvP mode to replace the current Ranked PvP mode (and of course the guildwide version of it will be the revamp to Guild Wars week).