I’m not suggesting any of these now, but it could have been designed to not be a collaborative effort that has no actual collaboration, eg.
Pet gnomes appear several times as often, but the rescue appears only for the player that triggered it
OR
any regular gnome defeated in PvP also spawns an event for that player and pet gnomes aren’t a thing
OR
regular gnomes drop a map to a pet (instead of garbage like 2 minors) which can be triggered at any time for said player to get a random pet rescue
OR
any of the above, plus the ability to use spare resources to spawn random dungeons
I’d like to highlight for those that think I’m just mad at not getting my pets quickly enough - I’m only missing about 6 pets now, and we’ve gotten a ton of duplicate events. My guild gets quite a few of them, and most days I’m at least at my computer, and I’m more or less in the same timezone as my guild (my odd sleep and work schedules led me to four unique ones so far, but thats it). Following any of the above “only the player triggers it”, I’d have less opportunities at pets as I probably have less average playtime than the rest of my guild. But I also wouldn’t have a bunch of mini schedule conflicts with the game, each one causing a minor pang of irritation. I’ve skipped several non-unique ones because randomly taking 10-15 minutes messes with my work flow, and I hate that I even took the time in the middle of my day for the ones that were unique. When I don’t have free time, I don’t want the game to be offering unique rewards during that time to try to get me to drop what I’m doing. When I do, I want to be participating in and clearing the not-completely-trivial pet events for at least a portion of that time, not futilely farming completely trivial 1 trophies as quickly as possible for the best chance at spawning them.
But yeah, it is purposely designed to be inconvenient to a degree several times over anything else in the game is and that they had appeared to be avoiding up to this point by the way guild wars, sigil events, guild tasks, and events are constructed. I have no doubt this activity hook and is working exactly as intended, its just gross.
You’re comparing Gems of War to a business. This seems like intuitively the same thing but it’s really not when you think about it.
It’s an F2P game, and these games rely on the psychology of addiction for their revenue. Players who aren’t spending money are a burden: they create costs without generating revenue. Having these players ragequit is par for the course and part of good F2P business.
Negative reviews fall on deaf ears because the initial phases of the game revolve around making progress fast and easy. New players might see the bad reviews but not have made it to the “hump” yet so it seems incorrect. This cycle repeats so long as new players come in.
I agree that the design of pet rescues falls on the gross end of F2P behavior. It requires you to pay constant attention to a game that typically made a good bathroom break endeavor.
I also believe it’s going to work, because addiction sells and some degree of ragequit attrition is expected with each hook. The point of any F2P endeavor is to either turn you into a whale or get you to quit as soon as you’ve spent what you think the game is “worth”.
It’s not McDonald’s. It’s a casino. You only get the customer service if you look like there’s still money in your wallet. The free drinks stop pretty quick once you stop putting coins in the machine. And it works because of the sheer number of people who won’t stop until they’re out of money. “Don’t play here, it’s rigged!” falls on deaf ears, because gamblers have a natural tendency to assume their luck is supernaturally better than anyone else’s and they are going to beat the house.
Ok, so back to the op’s point of only 1 pet in these 24 hour events. Surely they can make it so after you have done the 24 hour event you can then trigger more pet events like normal? I bet if they checked the game data they would see a huge drop off in hours played during these 24 hour events.
If that’s too hard to code or whatever then how about SIGNIFICANTLY increasing the appearance of the pet gnome during the 24 hour event so we can at least farm some white pet food. Boost his appearance to 1:11 like the treasure gnome during his events.
I think people are still excited about the “new” pet events, but once people start to balance the burn-out from constantly being on-call for these events with the diminishing returns of each event, play patterns are going to normalize again. I know for myself, that I’m starting to mentally filter my discord notifications and only worry about events for pets that I don’t already have if I’m not already playing. I don’t think the pet obsession will continue for more than another week or two for most players.
I like your idea of boosting the pet gnomes, but I wonder if that would feel like a tease. I can already imagine the complaints.
The excitement factor of pet events dropped off quite a lot for me when I completed my collection, but the drive to get them all now to mythic still exists lol.
Yes, that will be true for a lot of people, but others (like me) will be obsessed until they have one of everything and then will be content to pick them up as they come.
It is amazing how much quieter my guild’s discord is on pet event days, or conversely, how much excitement the pets have stirred up on every other day.
Did you like the “resume normal operations after the first pet event is completed” idea, or the “let us farm the crap out of pet gnomes on pet event days” idea?
If the first, I think that would only work if the entire guild had completed their weekly event, otherwise someone logging in mid-way through the day would potentially have conflicting pet events.
Or it could simply be that any pet gnome you kill triggers another pet event for you only for the current 24 hour pet. (slightly increase pet gnome appearance rates)
Yeah, I’m thinking ahead (maybe 6 months) when a lot of people will have all pets mythic and then when a new pet enters the drop pool it’s going to be the only triggered pet event those people will care about. When a new pet event gets triggered for 1 hour it’s going to really be a huge deal for completionists if they are at work or asleep or whatever. It would save a lot of frustration if we could get several copies at least during the 24 hour event. (without spending gems of course.)
You have, of course, put your finger on TPTB’s end-game with these events. If the completionists aren’t spending gems now, they sure as heck will be when they have every other pet to level 20 and a new one comes out for one day and then won’t even appear at random for another 4 weeks.
Imagine the outcry if you could only get 1 copy of the new weekly troop without spending gems. I don’t see why pets should be any different. Unless they want to send the message that EVERYTHING new from now on will be a gem sink.
Wednesday’s are annoying with only 1 pet rescue possible. I do my tasks and guild wars/raids/invasions then that’s it. Wednesday’s have become less game time for gems, allowing some time off for the week.
I’m in a different boat. Every other day of the week I feel pressure to peek at GoW multiple times daily to see if there’s a pet I can rescue. Sometimes I just want to go play the event, or farm something I need, but the pet alert is there and I end up doing that instead.
It’s nice to have 1 day a week where once I finish the pet rescue I’m done.