As far as I can tell, Lycanthropy is just a stupid way for the developers to troll the players.
As a fellow Guild Member said, “You don’t want to get it and you don’t to give it.”
If it must exist in one Faction, fine.
Anything broader than that (like the Lycanthropy Gem) just makes it harder to do already difficult things (like Pure Faction level 500). It’s a stupid randomness that negates our skill in building teams and playing them.
No-one is going to enjoy Lycanthropy.
I’ve yet to see any positive feedback for lycanthropy that wasn’t blatantly scathing sarcasm.
It’s caused multiple game breaking bugs and makes hard encounters like PF500s virtually impossible yet the devs don’t really seem to care anymore.
There’s now a few threads asking for this or some similar feature but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
I don’t need details for this.
Its bad, we don’t want it, we don’t need it. Its gonna make people quit, it might make me quit.
I agree with the OP, but the feedback falls on deaf ears… See for reference the current campaign 
I don’t think the devs care at all what their players think.
Remember when they told us when Campaigns first started we’d have another way to get Doom Scrolls? Salty sat on stream and promised a remedy that didn’t involve us having to spend 2k gems every 10 weeks for one color to collect the needed scrolls for our weapons… survey said that was a lie.
They make additions to the game that prompt us to spend real money - that’s all they care about.
They do not put any real thought into actual updates for the game, just add ins that help them make a quick dime. It’s evident none of them play the game (well they claim to, but it appears to be only for bug testing and not general game play) as the last few updates have done nothing but upset their player base, break good modes of the game (IE here with Factions) and prompt us to spend more money.
The state of this game is degrading, and it’s a shame.
I disagree that the devs are money-driven, based on the few times we’ve seen Sirrian and Nimhain. I am certain there’s been pressure from 505, the publisher, to monetise. But they could have done a LOT more – evil things.
The issues, in my mind, are that Salty doesn’t know what to pass on to the devs, the devs aren’t great at scheduling (and terrible at renegotiating a schedule), and the devs actually don’t have much clue how the game plays on a daily basis.
It’s all quite disappointing, because the elements of a great game are all there. But instead of polishing, they keep adding dumb ingredients.
Forums and other bidirectional channels are where the hardcore playerbase (an unquestionably important segment of the customer base, both directly and indirectly) tends to express itself: the company liaison person/people must have the trust of all sides and consistently demonstrate a set of soft skills and commitment in order to avoid communication gaps between the producer and the consumer (i.e. Lycanthropy as a ‘debuff’ in its current form).
While the current status quo pertaining to the quality of said communication is unequivocably above where it was a year ago (see Kurandara Release fiasco as a reminder), the fact that Lycanthropy exists in its current form as a ‘debuff’ (RIP EoE) is a strong indicator that the aforementioned segment of the customer base is not being heard (or listened to).
Pay to win is the motto of 505!
As proof, in the delves except potions there is lycanthropy and with potions the lycanthropy is no longer there !!
Look !!
You disagree they are money driven?
Can you think of any updates over the last year that actually benefited the game? The only “game update” that improved state of play was game play not slowing down when you click on a troop to cast a spell. Literally every other add in to the game is some sort of money incentive perk for the devs.
People are encouraged (the completionist) to buy the elite campaign pass as it is the ONLY way to obtain a mythic every campaign (along with items only obtainable by the pass)
Shrines encourage people to buy orbs of power
Warbands encourage people to buy
They have NO fix for Tower of Doom Scrolls - the promised other ways to obtain them (years ago) but as YOU know, the Books are the BEST weapons for guild wars… and in order for them to be most effective they have to be max leveled (as they drain mana) - if you’ve not been playing this game for years… the only choice you have to max them out is to spend over 2k gems once every 10 weeks when the next color appears in the tower.
This game feature (changing a create into a beast) is it really beneficial to play? Clearly it makes Delves a lot harder, as a troop can almost be dead then be transformed into a beast with full health. This can also hurt guild wars (you being the guild wars expert should know this) When an almost dead troop transforms into a beast with full health it extends the game… thus lowering your score.
What does this tell us? That the devs are out of scope with how the mechanics of the game really work. They just added some random bullshit feature because they needed to do an update. In no way does this improve game play. Their only real improvement to the game (that I’ve seen to date) is the ability to click on a troop to cast a spell without it slowing the cascade of gems down, and that was more quality of life than game improvement.
Every other implementation they have released has resulted in us having to spend more to achieve more.
I won’t fault them for adding the campaign pass. It’s just adding goodies you could buy that were not there before.
The lycanthropy also doesn’t seem to be money driven; it just seems to be driven by a desire to make people suffer whether they’ve paid money or not. If anything, I think it’s a move that’s very unmotivated by money, because it’s clearly designed to drive players away from the game so that they can make less money.
Would you be happier if you had to pay for the game up-front instead of it being a F2P model? Would you be happier if you had to pay a subscription fee every month just to play the game? Or if there was some sort of “energy” mechanic like a lot of mobile gacha games have that could only be circumvented by paying actual money and not in-game currency?
I have a hard time blaming the developers and the overarching corporation behind it for monetizing things when it’s likely the only way they’re going to see money from this thing. Because I doubt they’d keep the game running this long and releasing new content for a charity case.
I suspect a significant majority of players don’t contribute any money to the game at all. They’re getting the advantage of a free game and everything that goes along with it without returning the favor. So while the developers may not be going about things in a good/best way when it comes to how they monetize things, I defend their right to try and make some money from the fruits of their labor and the efforts they put into this game.
Because the alternative might be shutting down the game in its entirety and all of us being unhappy that we have to go and find something else to do, a something else that likely wouldn’t be anywhere near as “free”.
It’s the point that the mechanic was not very thought out and seems to have a negative impact on game play.
This mechanic seems as if they have no knowledge on what daily players actually go through. It’s something they just threw together to supply an update. The majority of the other updates have been pay to play type things.
I (well most players) are frustrated because they are not providing quality updates to the game. It comes off as them just wanting to make money off the game instead of making the overall gaming experience better.
Of course there has to be aspects that are money driven… they need to get paid for what they do (it’s a free game) - my point is they have not really released any good updates for the game to improve overall game play since the revamp of explore?
I feel the community wishes they would take a bit more time (and actually daily play the game) thinking about better updates and features than what we they have been doing. Every update we get excited for some new feature and then are immediately disappointed because they end up being something that is pay to play, or a feature like this that breaks delves, pet gnomes, and possibly guild wars lol. Remember when they nerfed Sunspear and the community had an outrage? I’ll give them props for resolving it… but the point is it was an update that was out of touch with actual game play, just as this one is.
They seem to be clueless as to what their players do daily on their game.
This is very true. Seeing those two talk about the game, I saw how passionate they are about it. They love the game. However, they don’t interact with the community. They only get information from us via Salty.
I’m sure they love the game, they just hate the players.
As a product/ money making thing, yeah. But I doubt they even like it as a game. Devs have openly express that they do not play the game as it feel like extra work time for them
To be fair, this is true for most devs playing their own games, and especially games with ongoing content releases.
The trick is to recognise this as a problem, and put systems in place to address it. I can’t recall this ever being done well by a games company, but my experience is pretty narrow.
Now with this lycanthropy/lycanthropy gems, disaster as well as with previous content and bugs, I wonder what are Beta testers doing/supposed to do?
I don’t mean to offend any beta tester, I’m just curious.
I support the title of this thread. Just 1 faction is enough. Not everywhere.
from the new Beta tester thread, it seem like 18 out of 19 beta bester hate Lycantrope