Roughly two years ago. Have you heard anything back since?
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Thanks for the assistance @Kafka.
Imagine Mercy - an empowered gem converter from purple to yellow that also had a create a blue or brown gem as part of the cast.That overlays and overwrites the gem cast.
Thatās the issue.that we have been asking about for at least 18 months. We got a reply of sorts that there was some tech issue (from memory). It was followed up I think with ābut looking into itā.
If it really is a problem, to deal with the affix, can we not delete the existing weapons and remake them minus the offending affixes?
There is another issue or two with having an option to choose an affix.
1 it reduces the power of the weapon so needs a workaround,
2 Fully upgradeable weapons are required for future kingdom progression,
3 it may require some detailed programming work.
A simple affix of create a skull or doom skull would be cool too.
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Let me clarify whatās not present in your user story.
Long Version
As a player, I am attracted to weapons that convert or generate gems. In the right circumstances, these have a high probability of both filling my mana and generating a free turn. This presents a significant advantage to me.
But these abilities do not always interact well with their affixes when the affixes explode, generate, or convert some number of gems. Since these affixes happen after the ability but before matches are determined, it is often the case that the weapon creates a 4-or-5 match with its ability only to have that match disrupted by the affix.
This means upgrading the weapon devalues its utility. But as a player, I am encouraged by the Kingdom Power system to upgrade all weapons for many kingdom. This creates a dissatisfying competition between my Kingdom Power goals and my strategic abilities in combat.
Shorter Version
Explosions as an affix arenāt a problem on their own. But for weapons that create or convert gems as their ability, the explosion ruins the strategic advantages of that ability. People donāt like paying resources for upgrades that make weapons worse.
In the past, this issue has been āaddressedā for some weapons, but all agreed the āfixā applied did not show full understanding of the problem. Please think this through, because your current user story does not capture the most important aspects of this feedback.
12 Likes
If I had to condense this:
(As an endgamer), I am frustrated with destroy/create a gem affixes being on weapons where they directly interfere with the main spell on the weapon. Iād like these affixes replaced for these weapons.
It is absolutely the combination of mass board mod as one of the weapons primary function and affixes that run contrary to that being able to land extra turns that are universally disliked. Other weapons with these affixes have more ambiguous feedback from the playerbase. Lumping everything together that āall affixes that have board mod are badā is the problem, because there is no way to get a united front on that, so of course feedback will be conflicting.
Full Explanation
In context, Destroy/Create a gem affixes for these weapons are generally agreed on as this:
Terrible (nobody will defend these, anything would be better):
Creation Affixes that interfere with guaranteed extra turns you can line up - Doomed Blade + 7/Doomed Club + 7
Bad (most people say not to upgrade to this point, almost anything would be better):
Other Creation/destruction affixes on mass spawn that can interfere with extra turns (Primal Axe + 8, Eternal Flame +7, Razorclaw + 7, etc)
Debated (some hate, some like, some donāt care):
Creation/destruction affixes on weapons with an otherwise āstableā outcome (Mang, Earthās Fury, Yasmineās Pride, Etc)
Good (very few dislike these and it would probably be a nerf to change these):
Creation affixes that actually align with a mass spawn/convert the weapon is already trying to do, or at least donāt interfere with it (Doomed Crossbow, Morthaniās Scythe, etc)
Very Good (definite nerf if removed, unlikely to be able to replace it with something of similar power, will receive complaints from some people if changed and/or debates that it āneededā to be nerfed):
Weapons that grant an extra turn through other means and do not mass board mod (Death Knell, Rope Dart)
There is no single thing you can just change all gem creation and destruction affixes to and expect everybody to be happy about it because most of them had no business in being placed on the weapons they are currently on in the first place because they interfere with a primary function of the weapon. These are the ones that need to be addressed with different affixes, not a universal change that just nukes all the affixes as a whole.
A very, very long standing suggestion was to change the Carved/Watery affixes on Doomed Club and Doomed Blade to Ruined (create a doomskull) like Doomed Crossbow, bringing these in line with each other (bringing these from the worst and most out of place existing upgrades to beneficial upgrades). Can we please start with these?
As for the rest, Iām sure we can get very specific on which ones specifically are ābadā and which are āgoodā (and a bunch that will be debated, of course, but there are a lot where it is very cut and dry that the upgrade runs contrary to the weaponās function).
There are also other affixes that are occasionally debated that often depend on the context of that specific weapon in a specific context, ie., storm creation on certain weapons or the toad transform on Essence of Evil. I donāt believe these can ever be āsolvedā by simply altering these affixes in any way, as the weapons are better (occasionally much better) in certain scenarios with the upgrades and worse in others (occasionally much worse). People like myself will almost universally avoid upgrades like this because there is no guarantee one scenario wonāt become much more common than the other.
A system where you could turn off, downgrade, or change certain affixes would be nice and would āsolveā all affix woes including these, but most of them can be fixed with just some minor attention to what the weapon is supposed to do and how the affix might prevent that. I would like such a system, but Iām not sure if it is in the cards as far as dev time would go. Even with all the weapons in game now, identifying all instances where an affix directly conflicts with a weaponās function wouldnāt take all that long by comparison.
Edit: Hid longer explanation to highlight the main point
13 Likes
Thank you for calling that out, I should have added more detail.
Iāve updated it to:
"As an endgamer Iām frustrated that specific weapons have affixes which explode or create gems as it ruins my gem board control. Itās frustrating when the affix conflicts with the Weaponās spell. For example Doomed Blade transforms Red Gems to Doomskulls so I can strategically line up 4-5 matches, only to have it ruined by the Weaponās +7 affix āCreate a blue gemā.
I upgrade my Weapons to unlock these Affixes to increase my Kingdom Power but then I get frustrated using the Weapon with the new affix.
This only frustrates me on Weapons where Gems are predictably transformed or removed from the board by the Weaponās spell.
Iād like these affixes replaced with something that gives a more predictable outcome on Weapons where these affixes conflict with the spell."
I donāt want to make it longer than that as long as Iāve captured the key points, because the idea is to have a brief description of the user experience which is then followed up by a discussion where questions can be asked and different possible solutions can be discussed. Any further details will get noted down then.
Itās unlikely thereāll be the possibility to downgrade Weapons in the future simply because itās not good game play to go through upgrade weapons then downgrade them to suit your team better then doing that with idk how many weapons we have in the game now, it sounds like a boring nightmare for any player regardless of your play style. Ideally, the affixes will just feel like upgrades, there will be some balance decisions where as you said Mithran, some Weapons will work great in specific situations but not in others, in that case Iād classify that as a balance choice. Where as the affixes with exploding or randomly creating Gems is a general cause of frustration, so itās different.
Edit: @Slypenslyde I saw that comment 
think of it when we ask for succinct points as the executive summary. If you work in an office or went to college (Iām using the word āyouā as a general term and not meaning YOU specifically), at some point youāve probably had to write an executive summary. We donāt write executive summaries because executives have short attention spans, we write them to help use everyoneās time efficiently, the detail is still there to be read by the people who need it, when they need it, but they donāt need to read a 20 page report on the spot to find out what they need to know to get the wheels in motion on the subject matter. It means more can get done in the time we have.
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I wanted to add here that:
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Part of the frustration (for me) also comes because there might be more tantalising upgrades further down, but to unlock them, we have to compromise by getting something we donāt want.
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Itās not always as simple as, āOh, just donāt get the upgrade, no harm no foulā
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This is another way the unwanted upgrades are incentivised, like with Kingdom Power levels, Ć la:
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Itās possible that some of the players who have given this feedback were mid- or mid-to-end-gamers, who have since become 'end-'gamers, including people from my guild or in-game/in global, although itās hard to define that or forensically check
- I know I sometimes appeal on behalf of other players when I hear complaints in Guild or Global chat
I get that length/clutter is an issue, just notes that I wanted to make, and thanks in any case - I hope this hasnāt been a āripped to shredsā experience.
Iām generally on board with how Mithran characterised the upgrades in his longer explanation, of course with minor foibles in the āDebatedā (makes sense, right? 
) and āGoodā sections.
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Since the current appeal has gotten us no where. May I add the idea that the weapons affix can never transform a skull or a doomskull to anything else. It can only target actual Mana gems. Since it goes last in the cast order it should solve the issues mechanically.
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Good point.
Also, creating a skull or doomskull randomly on a board might be best to left out as well.
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Youāve received feedback on how unpopular some of these āupgradesā are for years now, the reponse was always that you are working on a replacement, it just needs a little more time to get it perfectly right. To be very frank, I doubt IP2 has the manpower and gameplay understanding to hit anywhere close to the mark.
Iād like to yet once again point out the solution likely to make most players happy, allow us to activate/deactivate any individual upgrades that have been unlocked, somewhat similar to class talents. That way players can tailor their weapons to their personal play style, whatever that may look like.
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IMO This is the easiest one to fix.
You got this amazing weapon that applies every single status effect in the game on a troop which is game changing, effectively taking the top troop out of the match, making him do no skull damage, and potentially ending turns with freeze. If you fully upgrade it there is a 10% chance that it will effectively cleanse all these effects you just put on and simply turn him into a frog instead.
All you have to do to fix this is apply the transform FIRST then apply all the status effects.
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Thatās not a solution, it doesnāt solve the problem, itās a work around, a bandaid. Thatās bad development practice.
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I am quoting my earlier post here.
In an ideal situation, we would get the option to enable/disable certain upgrades and the order in which they trigger or occur, and the requirement for enabling such features would be a fully upgraded weapon.
HOWEVER, since this is probably not what we will get, we should get the weapon upgrades that make (more) sense and not adversely undermine our efforts. If we need to list the EXACT weapon upgrades that are doing so at the moment, I would be happy to provide the exact weapon upgrades and the included SCREENSHOTS, so that that all information is gathered in one place instead of looking in other places and summarize it all.
@Kafka, thank you very much for sharing with us publicly on this issue.
I hope it will be part of the 5.0 update package and that we will finally be heard after all this time.
I am sure that the game will become even more popular after this issue gets addressed properly.
P.S.: I havenāt edited my thread title, but I forgot to mention DOOMed weapons, which is crucial.
The issue with the weapon is the transform removes all the status effects, I donāt think it was ever intended to do this. I donāt think anyone would mind the toad transform effect if it did not result in all the debuffs becoming meaningless. This is a thread about upgraded weapons being worse correct?
Here is an example. You have essence of evil ready to go, your opponent has divine ishbaala ready to cast with alignment. You use EoE on their top troop, so their skulls do no damage and 4 matches of skulls end their turnā¦ but insteadā¦ uh oh it turned the top troop into a frog because I upgraded the weapon fully, now my team gets completed skull matched to death in an endless loop because the toad isnāt rooted or frozen.
If EoE Applied the toad transform first THEN applied the status effects, the weapon is not ruined by the toad transform.
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Thatās why I mentioned that it would be perfect if you could disable/enable weapon nodes/upgrades in a sequential order, not just disable or enable them at your own discretion.
Since this is probably not the system we are getting, itās essential that all problematic weapon upgrades also include and take into account the TRANSFORM weapon upgrade, which is also a huge downgrade in the current situation and you already pointed out, why.
Iām note quite sure who you are responding to, so Iāll just pretend itās me.
Iāve heard a story once about a company producing toothpaste. Their customers were unhappy, the toothpaste just didnāt flow well, it took way too much effort to get it out of the tube. They eventually offered a big monetary price for whoever could come up with a good solution for this problem. They were thinking they needed some change to their toothpaste formula, the proposal that collected the money was increasing the hole size.
I believe you havenāt understood the problem yet. Putting it simply, players donāt care whether you think something is ānot a solutionā, a āwork aroundā or a ābandaidā. They do care that the weapon upgrade system is riddled with upgrades that, pardon my French, can best desribed as āa steaming pile of design turdsā. They are such an outstanding failure in anything remotely resembling āgood development practiceā that players are even begging you to take their money, to undo āupgradesā they purchased without realizing how much it permanently hurts their account. Imagine that, eager to pay twice just to be allowed back to square one, and nobody willing to listen to the bells that have been ringing for years now.
Being able to selectively disable āupgradesā doesnāt change the formula, thereās still the same toothpaste in the tube. But at least we can use the toothpaste without causing a major mess every other time we try to.
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- āDear Mr. Plumber: my pipe is leaking, can you please patch it until you can fix it properly?ā
- āNo, thatās not proper: let it leak until we get a new part in a few yearsā
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Hereās a very quick list I was able to produce in a spreadsheet with the attached image. I do not have every weapon, but have all event weapons and mythics.
If anyone wants to list any more weapons that have problematic affixes, then please quote and I will update.
I am not aware of the affixes for Farsight Orb which has a create 7 blue gems as itās cast. I think thatās the only one that would overlay anything if so.
I didnāt add weapons that transform after negative effects, other than of course Essence of Evil.
I also havenāt covered Mang and itās āWarmā as I suppose it doesnāt break anything.
Similarly with Dawnbringer the Dawn and Hot affixes actually can benefit, as I have know it to create a 4 gem match and even refill (against me of courseā¦).
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It depends on your play style. Iām using Mang quite often against level 500 opponents, me getting an extra 4-match would make little difference, the opponent getting an extra 4-match plus resulting cascades would likely lose me the battle. The day my Mang ends up with that Warm āupgradeā Iāll probably delete my account and never return, way to destroy one of the most amazing tools for control play.
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True.
Wanted to make a list of the glaryingly obvious, and get feedback from others, so we can pass something as simple as an image to the devs to get them fixed. We get told make it brief, so canāt be much briefer than that.
We could include all affixes that create gems after an action, like in the case of Mang.
Then we get onto destroy random gems and such. Iāve recently had a couple of pvp battles where AI Rope Dart has refilled from destroying the three random red gems. Conversely, that could work our way, so we would have to include Dawnbringer and others.
A quick search of āwarmā revealed 9 other weapons that use the affix.
Bullās Edge, Dragonfire, Fire and Ice, Gaardās Wall, Golden Cog, Riftblade, Warlordās Battlecry, Fire Sword and Order and Chaos.
Typing āwarmā also picked up three weapons with either Fiendish or Astral, purple and yellow create gem affixes respectively.
I would suppose we would need a consensus for altering all create and destroy affixes?
Change doom weapons to create a doomskull instead of colored gem, change eoe to transform last troop instead of first. Problem solved. No need to take 2 years to fix, probably take someone an hour at most.
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