I’ve been playing for less than a year (9 mo?), level 1014, and I agree with the basic sentiments of frustration and disappointment in the games evolution. It really is an enjoyable game that fills a unique niche. There is a lot of potential that’s increasingly going off the rails and missing the mark(s). From insultingly cheap monetization efforts to disproportionate reward systems to sketchy enemy AI algorithms. It’s odd because the game itself, it’s artwork and mechanics, is …great really. There’s no need to break what isn’t broken but like a lot of companies it’s an improve it until its a shitty and unrecognizable plastic version of its original self. It’s anyone’s guess what really goes on behind the scenes though. I don’t know the company or it’s culture but from a distance it seems like muddied waters. I hope that direction changes. There is…so much potential
From a certain point of view, I quit playing their game a year ago. I saw a screenshot the other day from Feb 2019. I was level 1221, while another player was…higher. Since that time, I’ve gained 76 levels despite logging in most days. And I still feel burnt out.
We had a Herald ‘give the game up for Lent, possibly longer’. It certainly wasn’t because our guild’s reqs were too high. I’m not sure if he gave up all games or just GoW. I’m not spiritual, so I don’t see it as much of a sacrifice. He might’ve been joking, but we still haven’t seen him since.
Anyway, I don’t know why people leave the game. I’ve answered the Polls as to why I would. Thank you.
This is not asking questions, this is merely seeking confirmation for your opinion. I’m not saying your observations are wrong (I personally can’t even answer because I just startet playing 3 month ago), but the wording of the questions is extremly biased.
I wasn’t aware that asking if others have the same thoughts as me was an opening for criticism. I guess of should have known the internet better.
No one is forcing anyone to partake in the poll.
If you don’t like it… Don’t partake… Or better yet make your own.
Otherwise it’s super meta to come here with the purpose of criticizing someone for having criticism of the game.
@Redi1 since you “liked” the comment you are welcome to do the same as Rhissa.
Not sure what I’m supposed to be biased about. But considering the topic name is “Players quitting the game poll”…shocker that the poll isn’t surrounded by warm and fuzzies about the game. 
Just speaking for my guild personally; we have lost 7 people in a two-week time period. Some of which had been in the guild for years. That’s as much turnover as we’ve had in the last 6 months combined. They didn’t go to other guilds, instead they quit GoW entirely.
The common theme that I keep hearing from them is, “The game is just too much of a grind now and it seems like a second job, and I’m not enjoying playing it any longer.”
In my opinion the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was tasks almost tripled in what it takes to complete them now. That coupled with the nerf to the gold that we can earn just magnifies it. One we may could’ve managed, but both is just too much. I’m still trying to figure out what business sense it makes for the company to do that. I honestly don’t know of anyone who buys gold with gems.
Made the offers more reasonably priced. Lots of the offers are the same price at AAA games. Not micro transactions are they ?
I do dip into offers VIP 8 at moment but spend not more than £3.99 at a time nowadays as value is terrible.
Oh and stop the trophies/achievements that are grinds , been debated to death but I resent the game as a trophy hunter. Which is a shame this is my go to chill game, but I have to spend far too much of my limited time to do daily Delve/grind medals. Yes i know it’s my problem and not compulsory but trophy/achievement hunters are allowed a voice 
I would spend more money if their offers would actually be at reasonable prices instead of absurdly high prices.
I would spend more money on the game if GoW offered (more) ways to earn Writs. Not necessarily buying them, ways to play to earn them.
Regarding obligation vs. fun; There was a time when if the game frustrated me, I would never consider stopping because it was always more fun than frustrating. I can’t deny that now sometimes I choose to stay out of obligation.
I see it as a combination which i labelled "Covid 4.9.
Covid didn’t necessarily increase the play time of everyone but for some of our players they had to spend more time doing domestical duties eventually moving down or quitting the game.
The other part is the excessive grind.
Having so many events and tasks (especially when invasion kicks in over the weekend we have a surge of complaints), it drains the people from repetitive game play and some have left the game as they no longer find this fun.
Do we play games to stess ourselves out and out of duty?
I think the clear answer is a no.
We all play games to relieve ourselves in our downtime but the current structure demands too much to stay competitive or create a sense of achievement.
I would argue that in most cases (not all), burnout and quitting due to excessive grinding is self-imposed, by the player and/or the guild they’re in. Nothing in GoW forces us to grind as much as we do other than our own impression of what it takes to be “competitive” or “successful”.
The majority of people seeing increased quitting are in high req guilds, upper end of the top 100 to be sure. Guilds that require large trophy and/or gold especially. Guilds that feel inadequate if they don’t finish some exorbitant number of LTs every week. People & guilds do this to themselves.
I’ll be the first to say I get disappointed not having time to finish an event or to complete more ETs every week because that’s human nature. But (for the most part) I’ve made my peace with not being able to finish everything every week, as has most of my guild. We’ve decided on what’s most important to us & focus there. We accomplish what I feel is an amazing amount of stuff as a 600k/1000s/B3-4 guild. In all honesty we could be a 1m/2000s/B2-3 guild with our current crew, but why force everyone to do more when most are already doing it on their own most of the time?
Rarely do I see complaints of quitting because of the grind from lower top 100 guilds & below. And actually I know a fair number of people who appreciate being able to mindlessly grind things like explore, PvP & treasure hunt because let’s face it, many of us do repetitive, mindless, menial tasks as a form of calming therapy in real life, so why not in a game.
For the record, I’m not advocating for more grinding nor do I care for unnecessary repetitiveness, but again people need to understand they themselves or their guilds are the ones forcing burnout in most cases, not the game or the devs.
All “subscription” games are a grind - that’s life. What grinds my gears is that certain items that need to be grinded (writs/deeds) cannot be. That’s BS.
I am going to counter argue that since all four of my guilds have a lower request than yours.
Maybe my guild consists of filthy casuals but the only people who move on to other guilds are the ones who want to accomplish more, the rest retire.
Just look at the recruitment flow on global.
Higher end guilds get more recruits than mid-lower guild.
Not everyone makes peace like yourself since many will prefer to accomplish more for their time spent.
Couldn’t the devs look for ways to make the experience more enjoyable and challenging instead of repetitive/“grindy”?
Q1: Do you believe in the past 6 months more players are quitting the game than ever before?
Undoubtedly. That said, the game is likely picking up new players to offset these losses. It’s doubtful that the game is net losing players, even if players at the top-end are quitting more than ever.
Q2: Do you believe the massive change to the game economy brought in by Epic Tasks is to blame for alleged decrease in players?
At the top-end? Perhaps, and even plausibly so. My experiences in a “second-tier” guild sees a lot of players either jumping to a “first-tier” guild in an attempt to reach LTs every week (the guild I’m in clears 4/6 ETs a week), drop to a “third-tier” (casual) guild because of gold reqs, or just drop the game completely from farming burnout.
Below “second-tier” guilds, ETs are a complete non-issue for those players.
Q3: Do you believe the difficulty of Factions/Delves is to blame for alleged decrease in players?
Negligible impact at best, zero impact below “second-tier” guilds.
Unless Kingdom Levels 16-20 are implemented in 5.0, don’t expect the situation with delves to change for a very, very long time. Are people who care about PF 500 runs jumping through the required hoops to clear them on Tuesdays/New Faction weekends? Yup. And the devs are quite happy with those players continuing to do so.
I seriously doubt the situation will change until all factions have been released, and that’s still over a full year away.
Q4: Would you spend (more) money on the game if Gems of War did _______ (please answer in the comments below) better?
Unsure. Possibly to probably. Would need to see a value proposition that is agreeable to me. It’s hard to quantify, as it’s one of those “I’ll know it when I see it” propositions.
Q5: Do you believe in the business aspect of GoW that patch 4.7 did more harm than good to the bottom line?
No. In terms of 4.7 only, the benefit to the devs was to limit nigh-guaranteed Mythic farming via LTs for many guilds. For top guilds, most players are still pulling the monthly mythic every week easily. And even if there is a miss, these players likely have sufficient Diamond stashes to buy that mythic from the Soulforge anyways.
As this is an economy-based poll, I’m going to get on my soapbox about the economy in the future.
Economy-wise, I’m dreading 5.0.
Not because of whatever is coming, but because of the economic impact it will being. It’s a major update. There will surely be new systems in place. Fragments of future things have started showing up in the spoiler thread. Change is coming.
This week’s event situation is a great lead-in. People were (rightfully) frustrated about reward tier coding requiring T6 purchases to obtain weekly rewards, when T4 has long been the norm for Major Chaos Orbs. With 5.0, it is likely that the game may move onto the next long-term grind. For the sake of example, let’s call the new things pastries. Random of course, as you don’t know if that pastry will be an apple, cherry, lemon, or any other type of turnover or baked pastry. I can completely see a future where World Events start offering pastries at T6 pricing, while weekend “old” events continue to offer Major Chaos Orbs at T4 pricing. Any argument about trying to make pastries available at T4 pricing is going to be completely invalid, as the devs can correctly point out that the pricing of these items are correct as pastries are not Major Chaos Orbs.
And this is outside of the other new monetization methods that appear to be implied in 5.0 from the spoiler thread. Keep in mind that that 5.0 update is the first major update to be designed with monetization as a primary goal.
@awryan , you really might want to re-run this poll in a post-5.0 world and compare responses between then and now. Only ~6 weeks (give or take) away at this point.
My hope is that their Pastry are not as salty as their Pancakes were.
I guess my Guild would classify as a Tier 4 guild, as in, we show up every four weeks for GW, and last year, we got some LT done once a quarter. I never thought the LT were worth the effort. Maybe 10-12 total for the year.
So 4.7 didn’t kill our Guild. I doubt 5.0 will either. Doubling up on Guild event sucks. We used to finish ToD, but now with Invasions, Bounty, and Delve weekends, we’ve failed 3 straight. I miss my major orbs of disappointment.
Depending on the distribution of obtaining pastries, if they are worse than orbs, there will be a different kind of turnover.
I hope I didn’t give the impression i have anything against casual play, because i neither said nor meant that. I’m a firm believer in play the game your way. My guild is on the low end of top 100 so while we’re no slouches we’re also not masochists.
I’m also not discounting your observation, merely offering a different one. My observation has been as I explained above and yours was as you described. They can both be true.
As for higher guilds getting more recruits, I don’t disagree at all. They have more to offer in the way of rewards to be sure. My point though was that those higher guilds are always recruiting because they’re chewing people up and spitting them out at alarming rates to fuel their “need” to be the highest in trophies/GW/LTs/troops/pets/what-have-you. I have lots of recruits pass us over because they assume our reqs are too low or because we only complete ETs on GW week. So be it. I’ve been where you are (and still am) - too high level for casual players & too low for hardcore players. Recruiting in that range is a pain in the ass. I don’t ever expect to escape that issue.
I took no offense vanyel 
Actually we self label ourselves filthy casuals and we like it that way.
Our guilds are just like yours, low request but everyone does their bits to be a high performance guild.
Just our mindset always remains casual.
They need to actually have the players beta test stuff before just rolling out these surprise patches with no testing. And the beta testers need to be a mix of players from end gamers to newer players so they can see the response from people at different stages in the game. I can’t imagine many players would have said the new offers were priced adequately based on what you get.
Also one thing that should have been changed from 4.7 additional stats should have all stayed attached to basic tasks. That was so unfair to smaller guilds and guilds that don’t play a large amount of time. Epic Tasks just give you more rewards and have to be completed for LT’s.
I think there are lots of other things beta testers would have been able to provide feedback on over the years that would have greatly improved the quality of the game. People who apply to be beta testers generally care for the game and are willing to spend their time for free to improve it so why not actually let them do that.
I almost put “no” for this due to the fact that it’s never going to happen, but…
- Remove the freaking slowdowns (i.e. extra clicks in Explores).
- In addition, add/re-add missing QOL stuff to speed gameplay back up (i.e. the ‘next battle’ button in explores that we had before; or a world map button to open an explore with a current bonus kingdom).
- Scale PVP gold properly so that guilds completing ETs/players leveling up/etc are not killing their own earning potential. Progression should be rewarded, not penalized.
- Remove the “!” over the video button and daily deal button, or at least make it a toggle or tie it to a low VIP level. This is more an annoyance than anything but it messes with my head and makes me think I still need to do a thing - but I don’t!
- Either give more free sigils for events or noticeably lower the cost of shop tiers, especially since we’re facing having two events per week most weeks in the future once Raid Boss and Tower of Doom move to weekends. (Essentially the Gem cost to complete events is going to double, so either another free way to earn Gems needs to be added, or current costs need to be reduced somewhat.)
- Revamp the shop prices to make them attractive. $50 for a troop and some keys is not attractive, and when this is listed as “$100 value” people are literally laughing at you/rolling their eyes/scratching their heads. Gem prices are equally ludicrous. The $20 subscription is horribly overpriced. Look at the shop with the eyes of a player instead of the eyes of a company intent on maximizing profit at every turn. People are more likely to buy when they feel like they’re getting a great deal.
- No cash-only weapons. Seriously, stop it. Add the option to pay $5 worth of Gems to give the player a choice.
TL;DR The game would require a massive QOL/player-friendliness overhaul to get me to consider spending money again. I’m not holding my breath.