got stuck
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I have read it all, but this is probably the most important reply to this topic.
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You’re aware that taking away this one weapon, one class and two troops would only mean that other obnoxious troops would take their place? Players would turn to other troops, which would be then banned, and it would continue in this manner, leaving us nothing to play with.
Let’s not even start going down this rabbit hole.
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Yeah 1400 obnoxious troops to ban, I wonder what will we have left… If only arena was a thing
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In the end, most of us only care about the books, I think, and would just ignore pvp otherwise.
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If U were a NOOB, would U want to keep playing this BS?
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A lot of us despise Guild Wars. Now PvP IS GW. without your teammates breathing down your neck.
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None of the feedback here is going to get to the root of the problem. This is a game design problem and not an execution one.
The Journey troops were mentioned-- the nerf wasn’t for power level or “fun”, it was because those troops were far too easily available. Stellarix is so powerful because acquiring the troop fits one of the key design philosophies on display-- you’re going to either spend a) time or b) money which are the 1 and 1a in important metrics in the game’s success.
By that logic, seeing Stellarix and Wand et al in every team was exactly by design. You’re meant to see them. You’re meant to want them. You’re meant to spend then time/money to acquire them. Then you’re meant to create FOMO for the next player. It’s why there’s books (for the power user) and pets (for the collect-a-thoner) in the shop. You’re consistently being provided with the carrot to stay on the wheel.
This same logic is why GW has been on hiatus. If GW provided the same impetus to get on the time/money treadmill, it would never have left. None of this is a programming problem. If the demand was there, the bandwidth to fix it would be there. GW is a ROI problem and right now, GW in its current form didn’t get people spending time (see: the whatever % of guilds are either no GW at all or GW optional-- those sheer numbers far outweigh the small percentage who dedicate hours using Paint to choreograph their next move) nor money (see the only spend being a comparatively meager and finite amount of both gems and other farmable reasources).
So for actual feedback-- my question would sincerely be how long do you think the treadmill can last? The devs clearly have more metrics than what we can pull as users. PQ3 has < 10% of the average active users GoW has (and this is via Steam but since both games are on both platforms, I think it’s a safe bet the breakdowns are similar elsewhere) so are these the changes that will really drive that much needed growth? I’m not so sure. I’m just a data guy not a developer and looking at the overall state of the gaming industry right now, that’s a huge relief.
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I wholeheartedly support the idea of restricting hero class. In outer ring, restrict class by kingdom / troop type. In inner ring, restrict class by its “magic bonus” color. Since all these filters are already there on collection - class page, it should be easy to implement them in PvP.
On variety / difficulties: Well, that’s the nature of PvP. There are always meta teams. And as long as people are allowed to build the team from all available troops, it is natural that meta teams win out. There is a PvP mode that offers great varieties and is very balanced, which is named Arena, yet it seems very unpopular…
However, there is a gold among all those complaints. People want to have an “alter-explore” mode, to grind gold, to grind class xp, to grind pet gnomes. That is a valid need. People want to have a fast way to do weekly PvP goal tasks. That, I think, is also a valid need. So I suggest, re-introduce non-hero random (within restriction) defense team, as “casual” mode. It will perform the same as PvP pre-fix in all manner (but with new VP calculation, of course), with only one exception: It gives no silver marks, and gives no VP after weekly VP >= 6500. Want to farm gold? Fine. Want to farm class xp? Also fine. Want to farm pet gnomes? Still fine. Want to complete weekly PvP goals in an easy way? Why not. But if you want to compete for PvP leaderboard, you have to do actual PvP.
On nerfing Elementalist: While I agree it’s overpowered and need to nerf, I’d say it’s a separate issue (after implementing class restriction, that is). My suggestion of nerf is, instead of (currently) applying all four status onto a random enemy, apply a random one status (within four) onto two random enemies.
But as I have said, this is a separate issue, and don’t have to bundle with PvP rebalance.
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Can we just revert PvP back to what it was?
When we created different teams.
Used different Monolith buffs.
Utilized Victory Talismans on teams with 70+ VP battles (which have completely disappeared)
U know, back when it was fun.
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I am a 6-year player veteran, level 1659, only troops missing now, Stella (need weapons only now), and the Sentinal troops (gave up trying). Indeed, for the moment, Central Spire continues to be winnable if you don’t mind all the back and forth with copy and pasting team codes for best outcome because our (I paid $$$$ for them, VIP level 18) team build slots are no longer accessible from PvP (and hopefully this will be fixed soon), it is winnable, should you wish to play CS.
But the team posted here unfortunately does not work for the outer regions, especially not in the RedBar regions. The attitude posted, to just suck it up, start building teams,(like veteran players don’t do that?) ‘Just start playing’ isn’t going to work until the devs fix the HUGE issues with this latest update.
I am a Guild Leader also. We’ve lost so many decent players to the ridiculous and time consuming game content added in the past 3 years, and every update but the one before this one has made it more and more like a full-time job instead of the very fun game it was to play 6 years ago. (I have one of those already, thank you).
It’s not fun to be in a fight with your hands tied behind your back, because, unless you get lucky with a headbutt, a loss is inevitable. When the fight is fair, a loss is simply irritating. This update makes an outer region pvp battle win sadistically unobtainable. the win/loss ratio is 1/10, because the AI is broken. There are many skilled and veteran players posting similar issues here, the above comment is disrespectful. We are not ‘whining’. PVP is now really, really, broken. I’ve had battles where ‘all enemy’ damage doesn’t damage everyone (no barrier present), I had a battle last night where the enemy hero had barrier the 3 times I cast a damage spell on it in the same turn, so no damage was done to the enemy at all. 1st cast should have removed barrier, 2nd done damage. You can’t win a battle when the enemy has tanks and you have, nothing. I maintain my stance: worst update ever.
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I think PVP isn’t actually bad now. But what needs to be changed is that Elementalist and the Staff or both need to be changed together. All you can see is the staff and the greatness. Constantly cleaning and the barrier and looping. here are the statistics
More defensive victories than defeats
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All of us like to win, but also be a little challenged. Problematically, the battles are more luck than skill, and/or having enough copies of the latest hotness. Is it possible that some of Takshaka’s multipliers won’t hit? That the enemy’s wand of stars doesn’t make an extra turn? That the board configuration isn’t completely terrible?
I’m still winning most of my battles, but it feels unsatsifying. I was grinding PVP happily last week. PVP was more fun when your enemies are varied, and you need different strategies. Guess I’m going back to auto-battle explore.
They’ve really screwed themselves here with PVP, and elementalist, and to a lesser extent Wand of Stars. No one was publicly speaking about Wand of Stars on the forums, but it’s pretty obvious now. I can easily see the cost going up to 21, and it’d still be worth it. With PVP, they let us get used to easy PVP for pretty good rewards. Since they made it tougher it feels like a slog. Maybe it’s proportionate to the rewards, but the jump in difficulty is bad optics. Elementalist was always OP, but they left it so long that people have gotten used to it. Further, even if we nerfed Elementalist to reduce the number of statuses, we wouldn’t be able to handle Takshaka spam, which requires us to either have a freezer or faster kill engine.
It’s the way this game is going I guess.
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You want change? Easy.
Write what you not like and why.
Stop playing and buying things.
If you still play and buy, nothing will change - every company ever
1 Like
Some really good posts here.
I think the issue has been mentioned and I believe that there is a clear lack of understanding right down to basics about the game, and how it is played by players.
PvP was stale for a long time, in fact it was almost borderline pointless playing. Thankfully guilds have players with different mindsets and some chose to play PvP so pets were in reasonable supply.
We as players wanted something different, but it would appear that Devs also want something different, which obviously involves as much monetisation as possible. The two rarely meet.
Players have individual ideas about how and why they play, pushed considerably by their colleagues and by the game creating the 30 person guild system.
Guilds chose to set their goals and targets and requirements and players chose to join the right guild for them. It doesn’t always work out of course, but that’s all somewhat the experience, and different guilds and players will have different opinions of how they want to play.
For some time now we have had a change of course from the developers, in order to pursue maximum revenue and maximum gem expenditure. Players have by and large lost the ability to try and manage how they play, have had to change to a different guild to fit their playstyle/time restrictions, or watch guildees leave the game. Those staying in guilds that have reasonable requirements have been deliberately pushed as hard as they can by the game model, to feel obligated to consider spending to short cut things, spending more gems to stay the same, whilst more and more deliberate ‘largely out of reach’ carrots dangled in front of them. This all leads to a lot of dissatisfaction and burnout, yet the game is addictive and ways can be found to still enjoy elements of it.
I think from my anecdotal evidence of discords, guilds, alliances and forums and users, the player base is just exhausted by the way things are working. Bugs, more bugs, more monetisation, more gem sinks, none targetable troops, duplicate dragons, 1% chance sentinel drops, stonewalling, radio silence, misleading comments and the PvP update has just been so poorly executed it has just almost broke. So all in all the gaming experience has ultimately become so bad, that even for the type of genre it purports to be in, it makes the experience so disjointed, and prone to complaints about just about anything.
I’ve been playing 8 years and for the past 3 in a large alliance and a B1 Guild Wars guild. I’ve been the leader for nearly 2 years. The pressure on players is way worse than ever, most are staying put because of friends made on Discord, but daily we see players disappear and never to return.
Personally for me/us in our guild, the missing guild wars for 4+ months has been an exceptionally challenging time. Players only largely played to compete with rivals and interact more with guildees. GW has obvious failings and is absolutely not perfect, it can really be hated by some, but what it did do was bring together some guild(s)/alliance(s) to play and see if we can win. That’s the same across the top brackets by and large. It would be a huge step in the right direction if it returned in as close a format as possible, for those that only play due to it. Oh and pay for campaign passes etc.
Having guild wars, love or hate it, helps the game have some diversity amongst the playerbase, we can all choose where we want to go.
Recruiting new players also becomes an issue. Getting players bar new players is the same problem for all of us, regardless of requirements or preferences, it’s at the hardest ever by an absolute chasm (from my experience across the game/discord/people). New players were targeted as potential cash cows more recently by the Devs and it’s much harder for those players to remain on track, albeit obtaining things like Zuul are historically easier if you join the right place for that, failing to get there often occurs.
So the PVP thing is just another great lump of granite in the way of playing. I honestly didn’t mind it pre hero as it was something different I suppose. Nothing bewilderingly good, but different to E12 treadmills.
However the whole point of actually playing now is being lost. Ok, I am a GW enthusiast, but I’ve lost exactly what else there is to the point of playing. There has been no progression for a long time. Everything is disjointed, it’s like a plate of spaghetti thrown at a wall. Sure the shrewd players can sometimes join the dots, but more and more dots are disappearing.
And Books are realistically pointless, think about it? What are you going to get, how many do you need. Let’s say +4 armour on 30/30 kingdom level/power, it’s not going to make any difference. Sure +4 magic, well it’s really +2 as most have at least that, might help a tad but I’ve only ever seen 1 battle won by a team with a gold medalled mythic. Don’t get me started on tribute, yes I remember 1 gem tributes, but 35 now is equivalent to that with all the sinks.
We aren’t progressing, the bugs and the delays and other things gets people so disenchanted that seeing just another horror show with the PvP makes it harder for players to stay. Even a scintilla of progress surely is more of a carrot. I have seen the thread with the E1 spamming and salute those doing that, but it’s not much fun and honestly not really worth it against your sanity. Kudos for keeping it up.
Maybe if the developers didn’t overpush, got a few more things right, more than just a select band would part with cash to help maintain their margins. Instead, the new PVP feels like another grind into the dust scenario. It’s a really sticky path the Devs are on, even those spending hundreds can’t support everything, and those quite rightly not paying because of the issues.
It surely can’t be right that say in a Blue Kingdom your opponent is Wand/Stella/Takshaka 2 nearly every time. And lol the matching is broken too, 2 out of 3 reappear each time.
Absolutely no to nerfing anything. There is no need. It needs to be made easier to play and select troops and not be so marginalised against the player. It needs effort, something that’s be lacking for a long long time.
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Can people please explain to me why BETA-team has absolutely no sayings or not even the smallest impact on these decisions? Why is everything just so rushed, because there is about everything to win to take in use BETA-team, and start listening to what they have to say.
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Deleting is overkill. It needs nerfing, it needs balancing, but throwing the whole thing out is too much.
Some people hate nerfs. They want all balancing to be done with buffing. Those people are fools, because that is not possible in a game with dozens or hundreds of options that would all need to be buffed to bring them in line, compared to one or dozens of nerfs. Like elementalist - it needs nerfing, bringing it down to a similar power level as other classes, not for all the other classes to be raised up to become overpowerful and annoying as hell to play against. That doesn’t mean that none of the others need buffing, but nerfing that one and buffing one or two others is a lot easier than buffing 20-ish classes and trying to balance the game that way.
This has definitely been a problem for a long time. So many terrible design choices and changes point to this. Just for example, the recent changes to the pause screen, which STILL haven’t been rolled back, which removed vital information that we no longer have access to. And, similarly, the trait icon change, which made it harder to access information. It shows the devs don’t know that players need that information or don’t care.
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regarding UI changes - don’t forget there are UI design team which has to be paid and has to make something in order to proof their usefulness. This kind of work always leads to ‘break whats not broken or you gonna lose your job’ kind of UI changes, which provides you with years of salary and tasks.
To add to this, the reason all our guilds are having trouble recruiting is the game also throws in an almost purely inverse difficulty curve so they can sell the solutions back. There was a mantra some time ago that the first 1000 levels here were the tutorial and that remains the case.
So how it works is you have the initial player base (and while transient, the “starter” guilds have more often than not had fewer recruiting problems as compared to the more advanced) get the carrot of paying to catch up. You have the endgame folks with gem/time sinks like the dragons, Hoard Mimic, Sentinels, etc etc. that have the carrot of completion.
And you have nothing in the middle which is where a large majority of the complaints are coming from here and where the recruiting problems stem from. Your chasm allusion was absolutely on point. Selling buffs/headstarts/etc while nerfing the easy to get stuff was the “answer” proposed to bridge that chasm. You and I can take apart the Wand teams and the Stellarix teams because we’re equipped to do so because we’ve been playing for years. It’s clearly not the case overall because of all those in that middle stage chasm (while they last) unless they put in the money/time to get across.
Making a live service game is hard. Again, look at the industry for how many of those are falling on their face. Combine that with this game being built on Unity-- whose former CEO said that devs that don’t focus on monetization are “idiots” and here we are. The sloppiness is a function of the priorities to keep the lights on. Anything with a cash shop attached is going to see the top priority.
From a business point, I get the why. But from a business point, I don’t think the devs expected PQ3 to have a literal fraction of the userbase and those costs have to be subsidized somewhere. I just don’t think this was pulling the right lever. That said, they’re not the first company to reactively swing and miss and they won’t be the last.
I fully expect to see more monetization (and I expect to see it loud and proud in whatever GW becomes) as they look for the next source of “infinite” growth whether that be in GoW or some other project.
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