[PREVIEW] 5.0.0 Update Breakdown and Discussion

Spoilers
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Devs have to eat too. This is not a precedent, this is a necessity!

Finally they have found a fair and reasonable way for monetarization. I’m intentionally using all-caps now: THERE HAS TO BE MONETARIZATION attractive for the majority of the players or the game will just be shut down. They terribly failed in this point until now. The gem income is so high for mediocre players, there is no point in buying them for cash. After only 6 months in this game I’m already making a gem surplus even after buying all event weapons, troops etc. to at least shop tier 3-5 depending on the event / on guild activity. And all my kingdoms are only 5/6 stars yet, so my income will become even bigger next months.

All the previous shop offers were basically rip-offs, patch v4.9 daily offers were mostly a fiasco. I’ve been buying a few monday weapons before but it was more like “That’s expensive, but I reeaaaally want it”. Looking at the 10$ elite pass, this is the first time they are making me an offer where I think “OK, that’s a good one, I’m taking it”.

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It’s actually $2.5 each week. The way campaign tasks are set up the Elite Pass is only viable for players into heavy grinding. The vast majority of players will only ever reach the mythic reward by paying $25 for the Elite+ Pass.

$125 a year gets me a Humble Choice subscription with several AAA games each month. Or a platinum membership in just about any MMORPG, where game issues are addressed within days, not years.

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Thank you for this, much appreciated.

This preview just proves what the community has been saying for a long time about the direction this game has taken and still is.

I do not mind getting the old daily tasks back, those before the adventure board, but calling it something new is rubbish.
Also I hope the “rewards” are a mistake? Otherwise it isn’t worth doing.

Seriously, any company needs money to keep it running. No one is working for free.
Why not devide the game into 2. A free version, where all players are equal, but with restricted access to the content - a teaser version. Then a version which cost money to get or a monthly fee.
This would be an honest approach, instead of how they are trying to push the ftp players out.

What is worrying me the most, which I simply won’t do, is Guild Wars AT THE SAME TIME AS a World Event or Tower of Doom.
That is just too stressful, and will only be possible for players, that can play for many hours daily. For me and many others, there just isn’t enough hours to play, have a family and work. What were you thinking devs?

The other thing I am sad about is that World Events are replacing Tower of Doom and Raid Boss. Also that Invasion was replaced.
World Events are NOT exciting or fun. I even like Raid Boss more - and Raid Boss was my least favourite event.
I hate the Guild weekend events(currently only Invasion) - it is stressful. Instead drop the weekend guild events and use Invasion + Raid Boss and Tower of Doom content in the World events.

Also the devs undermine the benefits being in a guild with this pressure/stress. And put the guilds under pressure: can you really ask members to have time for GW and World Event PLUS all the solo events, content. Or having the gems needed, unless you don’t spend gems at all.
This is another bomb under most guilds.
I think some/many will consider not being in a guild, then there is no pressure to do World Events - troops and weapons will eventually be craftable or drop from chests(troops). No pressure to do Guild wars - no great rewards anyway - it is mostly competing about moving up/down brackets.
You can still do Bounty, Pet Rescue, Vault Events, Faction assault, Class Trials and isn’t Campaign intended as a solo event?

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Gems of War is owned by a mega-corp with investors, shareholders, etc. Check out all the games they own:

https://www.digitalbros.com/videogames/

Up top, click on “VideoGames” and then “Free to Play” and you’ll see all their f2p games, including GoW. This is a statement from their recent investor report:

"The Free to Play operating segment revenue showed a 7.6% increase, following the positive performance of the videogame Gems of War, launched more five years ago and constantly updated and improved. "

GoW made so much profit last year, that it bumped the revenue of the ENTIRE f2p division up 7.6% (and this was before the Elite Passes). So I’m not quite sure why you think they “terribly failed” … they seem to be doing quite well.

Look, I have no problem with spending money on the game. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars in the past. I spent $10 (the price of the elite pass) on vault keys just the last gnome weekend. So I’m not some sour f2p player complaining about having to spend money. But this notion that in-game purchases are somehow staving off the collapse of this company is a silly canard perpetuated by the devs to their own benefit.

In reality, your in-game purchases support a mega-corp, it’s investors, and it’s shareholders … who seem to be doing quite nicely:

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There is also another disturbing matter about having World event + GW running same time. Since World event, require you to use medals, which works only inside World event, I bet it won’t be rare situation to switch medals to World event medals, and then got beaten in GW defense, because your team just defended without any medals set!
But of course devs didn’t have time to work on ‘different teams requires different medals’ issue!

I actually see this a bit differently.
I think 5.0 update might be good time for guilds, which will completely abandon GW element of the game. Because plenty of free to play players will decide not to do campaign at all! And since you won’t get boosted stats from artifact, you won’t be able to compete in GW on reasonable level - if you are in guild which cares about GW, it will be a problem!

If some guild resign completely from GW (rewards from GW are skippable anyway), people could play in similar way to how it looked like before 5.0 (just without GW). Of course we will have more annoying World events (almost every single week to be exact), but at least rewards from finishing World event are not that bad (assuming, all World events will have proper scoring!).

Why am I predicting this? Because i’m actually considering myself steeping a bit away from the game, switching to guild, which doesn’t require doing GW battles at all, then ignore guild wars, ignore campaign, focus only on events. At this moment, this looks like best solution for me tbh. But is this what devs wanted to achieve with 5.0 update? I doubt it.

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Elite+ Pass does not help to do the tasks. It provides 200 free stars only.
So in short, you don’t have to do the tasks of the two last weeks (I simplify because they are 3 different kind of tasks so you can skip only one kind etc.).
But the 8 other weeks you have to do all of them as you can’t skip task (and in my dictionary completing task with gems is not skipping).
So in summary even with Elite+ Pass you still need to 8/10 of the campaign tasks. Still “heavy grinding”.

So my guess is that the standard will be the Elite Pass. So less than 1$ each week (a coffee).

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My only question is if the tasks are so bad people want to skip them then why have them at all? What am I missing here. The game should be for enjoyment not full of hated crap no one wants to do.

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crash? yes they like leeches suck ss us money, why would they at the expense of people who do not consider their money rise
I can’t afford to spend Dolars, all the more so in such a game, it’s not even a MMO project in which you’re diving so that it develops more quickly, I believe that you will poke them so that you will give them your money

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it’s not only money but also in our time, it all started with epic statues, after increasing the amount to close the statue and adding medals, they do everything that people didn’t rest and played the game, they worked there, and you can imagine what top guilds and the usual ones that do not even reach the epic statues
think again you and only you can change the future update !!

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definitely money

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My issue is not the affordability of the elite pass. My issue is instead of fixing existing content or creating any new content, the patch is just a cash grab to exploit completionists. I could not in good conscience support this new direction by buying it, even if I was a billionaire.

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Sorry but I am tired of all these lame excuses to not support this game:

  • The rewards are too good “this game is P2W, I don’t want to support them”.
  • The rewards are not good enough “rewards are :poop: , I don’t want to support them”.
  • “I am not a dev but I know better than them what the game should do or not, I don’t want to support them”.
  • “I am feeling force to buy the pass, I don’t want to support them”.
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Because heavily encouraging daily activities/“chores” creates the sense of personal investment into a game, and leans into the sunk cost fallacy to retain players.

Gaming companies aren’t just competing for your dollar, they’re also competing for your time. This is why games, especially major studio games and mobile games, are turning into increasingly-massive grinds. The longer you spend “engaging” with a game, the more opportunities the company has to market to you…and, the more they keep you from checking out the competition. Plus, habituating you to constant interaction with their game can cause you to view the game as your hobby, and therefore make you more open-minded to investing money - because it’s your hobby, and it’s totally normal to invest money into your hobbies.

There is a video on youtube of a talk given by Torulf Jernström in 2016 entitled “Let’s Go Whaling!” that covers some mobile monetization strategies. It’s something every gamer should watch.

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While I’m sure people are going to not like or even hate doing certain tasks, the idea isn’t to specifically give us tasks we don’t like & therefore forced to skip them.

The idea is that because you can’t get a new task until you’ve finished 1 of the 3 visible ones, you can potentially get stuck on one for days or weeks that you

(a) don’t want to spend the time on because you feel there are better ways to spend your time

(b) can’t complete until a later time which holds up getting new tasks (like being required to use keys you don’t have & can’t get for a couple days)

(c) you just don’t like the task & don’t want to have to do it

(d) you’ve run out of time at the end of a week so you physically can’t complete 1 or more tasks but you can still buy out of them if you really want to in order to get credit for them.

Everyone has different things they like & don’t like to do and the devs can’t please everyone with all the tasks, so they gave us “get out of jail free” cards to bypass anything we don’t feel like/can’t do.

Or as some have already claimed and as I’m sure will be one of the 1st responses to this, you can view it as a way for the devs to steal your hard earned gems & force you us to spend even more money. To each their own on how they want to see it. :man_shrugging:

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Okay… how about “I haven’t felt engaged in at least a year, everything is either monotonous or aggravating or both and I’ve only stayed this long because of people” - does that qualify?

Or “there’s so much broken stuff in here and we keep telling them and they don’t lift a finger, why should we feel obliged to do anything for them”?

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Because everyone plays differently.

Some in the game open keys ASAP, there are tasks for them.
Some love TH, there are tasks for them.
Some mainly play Arena, tasks for them.
Some play PvP constantly, tasks for them.
Some play only explore, tasks for them.
Some craft summoning stones, tasks for them.

There are tasks that suit a wide range of play styles, and yes not everyone will like every tasks, but those that are claiming to hate all the tasks, are hating because thats what they do.

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Thanks, you are right, I didn’t read the summary correctly. Elite+ only awards extra stars of past weeks when purchased, not all the stars.

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So why is everybody suddenly forced to play the same?

And there’s next to nobody who loves to do all this stuff. Or even most of it, going by the reasons the devs gave for removing the old daily task system. And if you happen to not love any one of those recurring tasks, congratulations, your campaign won’t progress any further, see you back in a couple of months for the next campaign.

Besides, going by the datamined tasks, some of them seem to be designed to intentionally lock out players later in the campaign who haven’t made quite a bit of account progress. Probably going to suck for those who shelled out money for the rewards, then get the carrot yanked away after a few weeks by scaling difficulty.

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I havent stopped saying it really, anyone prior to mid game straight up will not finish campaign without gems. New players unlock campaign at level 35, but wont be able to unlock Underworld, or Soulforge, or anything else really, but will have access to the campaign.

Everyone isnt being forced to do it, you either do it, skip it, or dont participate.

Whats the line from literally every update? Its optional?

I do agree, some of it sucks to be forced to do, like Arena and TH and personally would consider skipping them.

But the tasks in general are not hard for the most part, a few exceptions, and will be fairly easy to do

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Let’s look at a few choice ones:

Intrepid Explorer - Win (10) Explore Runs in {Kingdom} at difficulty {DifficultyLevelIncreases}+

10 full explore runs, and the difficulty level you need to run them at increases as the campaign progresses.

Grave Keeper - Match (500) Skulls

Am I reading this correctly, 500 skull matches till you are able to progress to the next task?

Safe Cracker - Win (1) Vault Battles

Don’t have a Vault key? Not in a guild that gets one from guild events? Take a break from the campaign, there’s a vault event scheduled every five weeks.

Treasure Hunter - Complete (10) Treasure Hunts with 60+ turns

I suck at Treasure Maps, I wouldn’t even want to know how many attempts it will take me to get 60+ turns a single time, let alone 10 times.

Pet Hoarder - Complete all Battles in (2) Pet Rescues

Not in a pretty active guild? Play the Pet Rescue events the next two Wednesdays to proceed, just pray this task doesn’t roll up more than every other week.

Pest Control - Defeat (1) Treasure Gnomes

That’s going to be fun to hunt down, knowing that your task chain is locked until you luck into one.

Those aren’t tasks, those are chores requiring an heroic effort. And you get 16 of them each week. Seriously, what’s next, beat a level 500 delve five times with a pure faction team, because too many players that paid $10 actually managed to collect the campaign mythic?

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