Oh, I still get a lot of traitstones from Arena battles, TH and chests. I don’t look for them (although if I need specific ones that the weekly unit come with I might blow all of my glory on it) because grinding is boring to me (I tried at first, farming challenges over and over again and got fed up real fast). I do level up my units since a chunk of my resources come from tributes. All my kingdoms are level 10, most of them are 5 stars, and that wouldn’t be possible without traitstones. But I don’t farm them or look for them. I play, open chests, and if I’m lucky, get what I need. If I don’t, well, too bad for me. 
Although since I don’t play PvP, I don’t really care about giving traits to specific units, just about units in a specific kingdom. So if one of my kingdom has X stars and is close to the next level, I won’t worry about blowing my traitstones on the common or rare cards rather than the legendary for instance, which makes the whole process a bit easier. I think I only have 3 legendary cards fully traited, for instance. It’s not like I’m going to use them anyway, so I go for easiest to trait rather than more useful with trait. It’s always faster when you don’t care. 
Sure, it’s a very interesting approach. I may put some of that wisdom to use in fact. Thanks for replying.
No worries. If you have any follow-up questions feel free to PM me, I think we’ve derailed the thread juuuuuuuuuust a bit.
I agree with everything that was said here.
Holy huge wall of text, but I made it through!
I hope the developers see this and take some of the things into consideration. Especially the treasure map thing. And the kicking to main screen or pvp screen after battles … That has bothered me forever.
However my absolute biggest annoyance with this game is the abysmal drop rates of arcane.
If there were not weekly rewards I would have hardly any traits on my troops… Already I’m struggling with it. It like… Okay let me wait weeks until I can get it from the weekly rewards, stock up, and that’s it…trying to get arcane a outside of that seems hopeless.
And on a side note, I have been waiting for swamps for what feels like forever!! The last swamp week I didn’t have any glory and no mercy and now I just want to fully trait her!!! Ahhh! I tried farming… But no… Super stale playing the same groups over and over and over. Which is why I love pvp and the new changes to pvp. The rewards are sooo much better. I I hope a similar rework happens for the arena and treasure maps (although they did recently tweak treasure hunt… Not good enough. Still a huge waste of time).
I hate that there are like no rewards for getting in the top 1000… I made it to rank 80 something one week… Never again. So much grind. So much gold… But so much grind… And then I get to the end of the week and get two crappy dark arcane… I will never be doing that again. The time I spent was too much for only two traitstones. Over 300 pvp battles (closer to 400), out of which I only got the 2 arcanes at the end of the week… and it bothers me that the rewards skyrocket… They couldn’t be a bit more… Fair? Like obviously 1-10 should be getting more… But at rank 80 I feel like I should have gotten more rewards than what I did. Very lackluster. Felt pretty pointless. If the gold wouldn’t have been buffed from pvp I probably would have quit at the end of that week…
Anyways, I really hope that the rewards can be shifted a little bit to make it so not just the elite can get the much sought after arcanes. Top 1000 should be getting 1. And progressively higher. That 1 arcane would make us feel a bit Better about never being able to win haha
If I played enough PVP games to make it into the top 1000, I would get at least one arcane stone from the post-match drops alone. I can’t imagine that the players who grind for top PVP ranks actually care about the traitstones, since they almost surely score more stones in the process of playing than they receive at the end of the week.
well, you are apparently luckier than I.
I did not receive a single arcane traitstone from my almost 400 games that it took to get to rank 80ish.
The fact that I didn’t largely added to my burnt out and disappointed feelings towards the ladder.
Needless to say, I won’t be doing that again.
You should see my post on how PvP is working… it might be good to have some of these comments in that thread for others to consider.
I too this week put in what I consider rediculous amounts of time into PvP, but I won’t be putting that quantity in ever again. It was too much to get to top 100. At one point, I was in the 70s and went to bed last night at 84 only to find I earned a single trait stone so getting bumped to the 101-200 bracket I’m sure. I didn’t really care as I already knew the rewards were less than impressive… and I also knew, as designed, I’d never put that much TIME into it again. It’s a bit of a joke how much time is required for someone like me (father of 3, husband, professional employee, etc). This game turns into a job if you want to get to the arcanes in PvP. As noted in the other thread, they could impliment any number of PvP changes to address the time, but don’t know if that even appeals. It seems from a select vocal few, they are fine with it, and from others, they don’t care for the time required and will never participate or attempt to get to top spots, and I can appreciate why.
If the arcanes were available in other aspects of the game, say in mini-game loot tables, folks wouldn’t feel like all they had was impossible pvp grind time, or challenge grind time… or grinding for glory in pvp so they could purchase whatever was in the rewards chest that week… grind, grind grind… it would be far better if there were other fun events that were simply rewarding arcanes in their loot tables without being a simple grind.
Adding arcanes to TH would be nice, as would also making sure those completions counted toward your leveling up of your class… as it stands, I don’t ever want to play TH as it takes far longer to get less out of it. I cannot get player level out of it… class level won’t come out of it, and rewards from it are lessor than what I can do just playing PvP and contributing to the guild… so, why bother? I guess they could add an auto roll button, then I would go in, roll quickly, and get out… but I would prefer they just improve the value of TH for the time it requires.
Other mini games added and arena more profitable… or multiple arena types were perhaps other types in other kingdoms are more profitable for focused on stones or gold… or whatever for that kingdom would be great.
In short, they just need other in game and less grindy sources of arcane traits to keep it enjoyable, to keep the folks playing who play this game for many aspects, but don’t want to be grinding and cant or don’t want to put the PvP time in weekly.
Agreed, hope the devs have an ear to the thread.
You can get arcanes from TH.
Fair enough, and good point. Yes, you can and I have… but the severe random nature of it could be reworked I guess is what I’m thinking. Starting with green chests, it would be nice to see the arcane traits chance improved, or when you get the red chests, the arcanes are more improved in drop rate chance, and vault just guarantees one plus whatever else it pops… afterall, it’s a vault!
PS - seems the devs are doing somthing in the form of adding trait stone access to the game, as they mention here:
I’m impartial to the news. it’s as vague as it always is.
Vague perhaps, but specific enough to see they are addressing items folks are more than vocal about. When the guys at mid and top are feeling the grind, still needing arcane traitstones, and burn out is setting in… I think the devs see they have a good initial hook and folks enjoy the progression, but ‘grind’ is an aweful mechanic to keep players interested. It’s the the death nell for any game. See this thread for more:
Dev’s seem to see a need for better servers, more / faster / stable updates, more of what players are looking for such as - addressing the arcane trait stone availability issue, which plenty of players see as a problem. That probelm is only compounded by regular release of troops and with mythics being added. Resources are now in even greater demand, and the fun of the game should be maintained as paramount, not grind. Perhaps the dev’s see and are taking some actions accordingly. I’m encouraged.
There is no traitstone availability problem. Just play the game and get in a good guild.
Grinding is a part of many RPGs. Final Fantasy series and Pokemon series. Arguably, the juggernauts of the Eastern World, are grindy. While your Mass Effect and [insert] Bethesda game of the Western World are not. In this case, pick your poison.
You mean the handful of forum members? Gotcha.
I have to diasagree here. Resources are resources. Resources are inherently vital to any ecosystem, at any given time. Moving on, the game is becoming easier for the player. You have more troops to gain stars for kingdoms. That are less souls needed and less resources needed. If you are a completionist, like me, then it is the inverse of the aforementioned.
There we go with that “fun” again. I don’t mind “grindy” games. Video games are innately fun. A game not measuring up to your standards is your opinion.
The developers have always improved the game based on 3 pillars.
Taken from:
Discussion about pay-to-win frustrations
Insert quoted by @Sirrian
The core of it goes like this: good design needs to be built on 3
PILLARS - player feedback, designer intuition/experience, and hard
statistics/analytics. Each of those pillars is of equal value. As soon
as you lean on one too hard, you get problems… and that’s kind of what
you’re implying in your post, but it’s not the case here.
Lean on analytics too hard? You get the strip-mining you mentioned.
Lean on designer feedback too hard? You add features that lose your core audience, and don’t work with your business model.
Lean
on player feedback too hard? You skew the game features to cater to the
most vocal players,and you either go broke by giving too much away, or
alter the difficulty to cater for a minority.
@Koolbiird Thanks for the detailed response. I appreciate your candor. It’s a forum, I’m just here to present questions and ideas.
Well, if you are correct… I’m happy the dev’s are then just gifting us a new feature to improve arcane traitstone availability. From my experience of forum, RL friends and respondents to youtube vids, seems there are more than an handful who would share in that appreciation.
Cheers,
As someone who is slowly losing the fight against the grind, and taking into consideration the major updates, it seems like the devs are leaning too much on hard stats and player feedback even though those things should balance each other. In the last 2 major updates alone it was obvious that the devs had implemented a lot of user generated suggestions.
Sorry to hear grind is getting to you. I think a game with simple combat system but this breath of characters not to mention kingdoms, seems to have a huge untapped potential.
Imagine each kingdom with different ‘global’ or environmental effects… not something as simple as improved or decreased mana surge chances, but a global effect chance… say up north, constant freeze effect in play - both sides… always (unless you are immune), how would that alone change your play style?
What if you were in a red/brown heavy lava area… and a constant burn effect was in play, both sides, unless your character was immune? Plus - whatever mana bonus’s they might add? What if water link was nullified in this kingdom too?
Now, what if you could customize a default defense for all kingdoms, or you could customize a defense team, by each kingdom? What defenses would you put in place then?
What if PvP rewards were based not on your ladder performance against all others… which they could keep that too, but what if you were rewarded based on your performance, in each kingdom? And then pvp rewards were based on how you did in each kingdom, vs others attacking that kingdom… and each kingdom also afforded different reward tables?
Heck, you might all the sudden use more of those 200+ troops available to you, as certain cards get bonuses in certain areas and certain environmental effects are in play, and now you actually care where you are fighting - not just what their team is made up of.
I’m only spit balling some ideas, which all talk to various points at the beginning of the thread… and it’s only one idea how they could make the ‘global conflict’ and tap into the fiction they already have started with so many character cards and kingdoms… and it doesn’t even begin to get into the special mini-games they could have (like arena or treasure hunt) found at each kingdom that players could explore.
I applaud the dev’s for considering all the options, looking at where they came from with puzzle quest, and where they are going with Gems. It seems like a very compelling growth path and world that they could do so much with.
If there’s a grind for traitstones, it’s a grind for glory. The only practical way to get Arcane traitstones is to be patient (waiting for an event week and blowing glory) or rich and slightly-less-patient (waiting for a Legendary bundle or Arcane bundle for the color you care about to show). Every other approach leads to madness, burnout, and table flipping. I most definitely do not recommend challenge grinding, and (if you have access to them) even the 2x VIP chest payout is too scattershot to justify unless you really don’t care what kind of Traitstone you’ll get.
No, video games are not innately fun.
A lot of games–this one included–know that feelings of progress, satisfaction and accomplishment trigger the release of hormones like dopamine. Basically, the natural version of opoids.
“You did good!” “You win!” “What an accomplishment!” —> hormones —> addiction.
There are lot of ways to hook people on games. If the means by which a video game ropes people in is FUN the people who made it should feel very, very proud of themselves. They’ve done something special.
The game is fun but i have had a goal in mind that i am working on finishing and as far as your suggestion goes, it would make the game harder and in hardness comes challenge. I normally dislike legendary troops, heck anything higher than epic except for tyri. I have a general love for rare and below troops thinking mana cost is just as important as the effect. I am trying to get the glory kingdoms to level 9 and i am only missing 7 of them at the moment. I also am missing 30 troops over all which happen to be epic and above in rarity. I pushed the wall to hard and for that i wasted my energy while it would not move. I made progress in the game but for every week that passes, that progress gets smaller and smaller. I like the grind, but i have to know when to stop. I will be a shadow player of the game so i can keep tabs on it and maybe i will come back and put a lot of effort into it again but it is only a game, there is nothing wrong with saying it beat me.
Yes, video games are inherently incentive-based systems. Games are expected to be rewarding. Receiving rewards are “fun”. Those rewards are “fun” incentives. So, video games are inherently incentive-based systems which are “fun”. “Fun” is a by-product of playing a video game. Just like a story has a protagonist that the entire story revolves around; the “fun” is an inherent model that the game is built around.
In conclusion, "A game begins with “fun” and ends with “fun”.
I can agree with your use of “fun”, with quotation marks.
Because if you need the quotation marks, you’re not really talking about fun anymore.