Given this company’s recent history, Probability seems incompatible with Hope.
I worked at a video store back in the early 2000s and we would sell these god awful drinks for kids that were like $4 each. There was almost nothing to them to actually drink, they were so small, but they had fun kid designs with characters. Well, we kept them out on display and would sell like one every week if we were lucky. We had of course dug ourselves into it, because we had already purchased them for resale. They looked so tacky, I just wanted to throw them away.
You ever go into a Michael’s craft store and to get up to the cash register you have to walk through like three snaking aisles made up of all this useless crap that you don’t really need? Same deal. It’s companies trying to make an “extra” buck or two from impulse purchases, because they figure you’re standing in line anyway, and studies have shown that the longer people are in a store, the more likely they are to buy extra things.
Well, 505 is doing the same thing as the video store and the same thing as Michael’s. They’ve dug themselves so deep they refuse to let go of their awful, tacky crap that they have up on display… their 75k gold for 300 gem offers, their “daily gold” and “daily gem” offers, their awful Weapon Upgrade pack, $25 for 250 epic ingots? No one uses epic weapons! You don’t even release new ones!
And these Weekly packs selling a single legendary troop and some other useless crap for $50!?!? What?!
Now tell me this. If they are selling all of these things for the ridiculously high prices they are marked at, why on earth would they need to start introducing an ad system?
Maybe because no one is buying their crap and they don’t know what to do? Yeah, probably.
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But Flash Offers do pop-up, sometimes several times a day, at least for me (I play mainly on PC). My reason for assuming these new ads will be a blinky icon is that they’ve stated they won’t be pop-ups. Again, there has to be a means of driving eyeballs towards them.
At least I’m not the only one who is waiting for the other shoe to drop. 
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Puts on Nostradamus Turban
Holds sealed envelope to head
“What 90% of players will consider insufficient”
Opens envelope
What 505 games & IP2 determine what 30 seconds of PVP is worth
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I’m not sure why anything thinks this is controversial. Isn’t a voluntary waste of 30 seconds perfectly acceptable? If anything, I’m curious the value placed on 30 seconds of our life. It’ll be telling 
I’m more concerned about how this interacts with the ongoing and increasing predatory nature of the game.
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I truly think this is where the bulk of peoples’ concern comes from. If watching a 30s ad gives 1000-1500 gold, or a few points of glory, or a random traitstone, I don’t think most players will care.
If at some point in the future, the fact that we have “free resources” available via ads is twisted into a justification for nerfing resource gain in another part of the game, it will turn out that watching the ads is not in fact “optional” if one wishes their resource gain to remain constant.
With the track this game has been on for a couple years now, I suspect there are at least some of us who more or less expect this to happen at some point.
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I mean this is very obviously a first step and will go downhill, so my concern is that the rewards are small.
I played a clicker game that had this setup, and the rewards were small amounts of the premium currency. It was just enough to be relevant, and I got more through ads than any of the other free ways to get it. So I watched every dang ad I could, and learned when the timer would be up.
If GoW wants to give me less rewards than a PvP match, I’m not going out of my way to watch one of these. It should be fairly obvious that if you want me to do a thing that isn’t “playing the game” to help you make money, I want to be compensated. I don’t mean this as a complaint, as it’s not really a harmful feature. Yet.
But I feel like it’s a precursor to injecting ads in between matches, and despite having said this in other cases I’m really off the boat if that happens. I already feel overwhelmed in terms of gaming.
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Thanks for all the feedback, adventurers.
I’ve collated what’s in this thread and passed it on. I also wanted to clarify that we don’t intend to place these ads in loading screens, or as a gate between PVP battles. Putting ads in a position where they block gameflow in a game like GoW would be counterproductive, and likely cause players to leave (which would cost us more than ads would ever generate).
As mentioned in my first post, the ads won’t pop up, and can be accessed by an icon on the map. Players won’t be forced to watch them at any point, and they are entirely optional. They won’t be jumping on screen like our flash offers.
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I think it would help if this comment was added to the OP. Rather than having to scroll through the comments to get further explanations of what to expect.
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I thought this was pretty clear. 
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For the record though, when I click on the icon, the ads will… pop up… though… right? ;-D /s
This kind of sass/salt response (to a post that seemed largely in good faith to me) upsets me a fair bit, and doesn’t seem like a substitute for good listening/communication. You did clarify for players, despite how clear you thought it was, and you did give new information, that they wouldn’t be jumping on the screen like flash offers, which was a legitimate concern presented by several posters (re: the blinking Gem for Gem sales).
My bad, I read it wrong. The concern around the icon for the ads being animated or ‘blinking’ wasn’t actually addressed – which is coincidentally also reason to be annoyed on the grounds of listening/communication – so there wasn’t any new information after all, and I can also agree that the clarifications would add unnecessary bulk to the OP.
The (non-)blinking is brought up again and clarified by Arelana and Salty a few posts below.
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I feel like this is exactly my feedback, for some reason the thing I like most about GoW is just mindlessly grinding a mode without interruption. Make sure the ones above you understand this, the grind is sacred. Interrupt it and the spell’s broken, I start asking why I’m doing this instead of something productive.
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My name is Salty for a reason. In all seriousness, I don’t want to bog down the initial post more. I’ll find a way to present this information without the original post getting into the weeds.
What was originally said does clarify that they’re not pop up ads, but I wanted to allay further fears. Also, I do like to have fun on occassion, but I apologise if my tongue in cheek post caused any harm or upset.
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Thank you for this. And thank you for the early heads up.
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Flash offers pop-up and she specifically said there would be no pop-ups, and that’s great!
I didn’t, however, get the sense that she addressed the blinky Gem at all, which means at this point, I’m expecting some kind of animated eye-catcher to draw attention the ads.
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@Arelana I wanted to triple check with the devs before commenting, so now I can.
The icon for the ads will be static, and won’t blink or be animated.
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I’m assuming it’ll be something like this.
Which basically everyone that isn’t new has learned to ignore if they aren’t interested in it.
Not every single change has to either help the player nor screw them… Nor be the first step in future hypothetical screw jobs.
It can just simply be a change in favor of the prosperity and longevity of Gems of War.
And if you’re reading is and don’t care if GoW lives or dies. Then why are you here? (Rhetorical question)
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@Saltypatra Can we make it be available to watch 3 times per day instead of every 8 hours? So players can do it in one go. Otherwise too hard not to miss 1 or 2 times.