Serious question and conclusion on the New UI

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Okay, so I logged in today, …

and honestly thought this was either a joke, a bad dream, or basically (upon thinking on it a bit), some kind of ‘mock-up’ for an about-to-be-released new set of icons…

Meaning the UI I was seeing I thought for sure was just, what someone else termed “placeholder”, what I would call a mock-up, to prepare for something else…

Okay, it become clear most (thankfully) do agree, it was a horrendous mess… but here’s the thing,

I’m really, honestly, curious as to why (or maybe ‘who’?..), let something like this get implemented…

There are absolutely no redeeming qualities or features of the new (aesthetic) UI, none whatsoever…

However, since nothing is ever done for no reason, there has to be something to it… -

Developers, can you please make a clear statement on why this new UI was chosen?

Now here’s the thing, I hung around a bit, and besides the amazing jokes, comments and comraderie felt as most everyone totally agreed this was a big pile of garbage, I still felt like I had to figure out what the potential reason was…

So here it is, I finally hit on a post by someone who made a very interesting comment, - “something like this is only done when you want to make your game fail, the devs have been at this game for 3 years and they are probably working on a new project and want this game to fail to move onto something else”

At first, like most things that make total sense but is against the usual grain of thinking (ie. Illuminati running everything etc), it seemed ridiculous… but upon thinking about it (and again, seeing how absolutely -Ridiculous- the new ‘UI’ is… ) you can’t help but think it’s probably not only a not bad reason but actually the most likely route they are taking.

At this point I strongly feel the devs (not necessarily the ‘whole’ team, but the ones ‘in’ on the next company/project, etc) are working on another type of match-3 game, probably more similar to the original Puzzle Quest series (which were great games), which has some sort of ‘RPG’ mechanic, and due to being ready to start ‘hyping’ it, want to start watering down the player base for this game.

Obviously expect them to have a different ‘company name’ etc (or the whole setup would be too obvious), and from there begin taking the players from this game to there (again, not directly, but from players leaving this game and seeing ads for the other, getting hyped and off they go etc…)

Sorry to say but this follows the Illuminati tactics under which the whole world is run (problem - reaction - solution etc, using ‘backwards’, reverse, indirect circular thinking etc, to get results etc), so as ridiculous as this premise seems there can be no other conclusion then the devs purposefully are doing things to make this game ‘fail’ (i.e. the ridiculous ‘new’ UI, weird bugs that are obvious to anyone but someone get left to ‘pass through’ quality control, weird annoying new units nobody wants to fight against, etc…)…

So, I hate to say, keep your eyes (and mind) open, as it wouldn’t be surprising that’s the route they’re taking…

(interesting side note, another game did this too, surprised me by getting shut down out of nowhere, was really upset, only to realize they had another project (new game) going (with much better mechanics) the whole time and didn’t see the point of keeping their ‘lesser’ game going… I forgot the name unfortunately… was made by a company called ‘Spicey Horse’ if i remember right…)

hmm…

(just looked it up, game was called ‘The Gate’, closed it down fairly early to make way for their next game using the exact same cards, but different mechanics, etc)

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If they were actually planning to sabotage their own success (a line of thinking I have never considered even remotely likely), don’t you think they’d have picked an approach that didn’t const as much (money, resources, and time) as a UI refresh?

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@Ozball @Saltypatra can we put every thread about the UI together? This is getting ridiculous we now have over 10 threads about the same thing

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I asked on the Q&A thread hours ago if they had plans on launching a new Gems of War game. This thought crossed my mind.

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This is a conspiracy theory more than a UI complaint, and thus differs in main content from the other ones.

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LOL!!!

in forum terms,

" THIS "

LOL, ‘This’ is exactly it!!!

'cost as much, money, resources, time… as that UI ‘refresh’"

As someone who’s done art, 3d animation, graphics etc since highschool and beyond,

let me tell you how much this ‘new UI’ wouldve ‘cost’ them,

" hey son, want to work on some stuff for the game daddy works on at the office?.."

“Sure Dad!!!”… , “Okay son, well go to your grade 6 teacher, and tell them to let you use that graphics program for a few hours this week, come up with some icons for a list I’ll give you, and show daddy when you’re done okay?..”… “Sure Dad!”

‘half-joking’ aside, if you think the ‘new UI’ " cost " ANYTHING at all but maybe giving a homeless half-blind guy a meal,

well, lol, I can’t comment in any way that can be construed as anything but an insult…

but I had to say something to remind people who know full well deep-down what this ‘new Ui’ is ‘really worth’… lol,

(that it didn’t “cost” frig-all anything lol… excuse my bad language…)

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@ Ricky Gervais,

about ‘linking together all the UI threads’,

sure, why not?

Seriously I had complaints about the game before but I never seen anything as ridiculous as this new ‘update’, in arguably any gaming I’ve seen in my whole life,
but most interestingly and importantly,

never seen so many forum posts, -and- ‘real time’ chat messages (edited few days later: and huge amounts of steam reviews), about people leaving the game, flat-out for one reason and one reason alone (this ridiculous UI).

If they don’t revert back to the old UI there’s -Obviously- something going on here, only someone highly naive would think the devs would purposefully do such garbage to their game to such an extreme extent at this point without a reason (hidden or otherwise)…

Interestingly run across another post much like mine, but even more believable, in that they were talking about the ‘troop selection’ “update”, and how this one guy could only come to the conclusion that they were purposefully trying to make the game harder to navigate for the ‘veterans’ so that they would leave and make ‘space’ (easier time) for the new players,

very valid post especially since either him or something earlier up in the thread mentioned how they sat in in game development meetings and they had stats that people spend the most money in the first 6 months of gameplay, hence by extension that the veterans were making it too difficult for new players so the ‘changes’ were designed to annoy vets the most, allowing new players to enjoy the game more (by not getting wrecked etc)…

hate to say but makes perfect sense…

note on the ‘conspiracy’ thing, that’s how everything is run, we don’t need to go into ‘illuminati’ level stuff here but just everyday things, everyone, including the ‘conspiracy naysayer’ poster himself, almost always do everything most important to them through deception and deceit, this game would be no different because do you actually think they’re purposefully going to tell you that they’re working on something else? and plan on abandoning the game (to whatever extent?..)

think about it,

(the answer is “heck no” because then the ‘regular’ payers will stop paying, assuming the game will stop or stop getting updates etc)

what they’re doing is a slow planned sabotage to keep ‘hope’ alive enough to keep the ‘whales’ (big payers paying ) while making sure space is being made for their new project,

or, like the other poster posted, at least for the ‘new players’.

(interestingly, I myself spent all the money I spent on the game (200+) within the first 6 months, (been at this for 2 years at least?..) so chew on that for a bit…)

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You are of course free to believe what you will, but my point stands. If they wanted to stop supporting GoW and move on to something else, they’d mothball it and move on. There’s no purpose in risking your reputation and investing any amount of new dev time on a product upon which you had no intention of reclaiming that investment.

Emotions are high right now, but something as ludicrous as “intentional sabotage via more resource allocation” make absolutely no business sense.

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Lyya I’m not one to direct attacks at anyone,

but I will indirectly state your post comes from a naive and inexperienced viewpoint,

besides making a ‘blanket’ statement that all people at least at some point in their lives use deception and deceit to do something important to them (because it’s the simplest route of ‘least resistance’), like I did in the prior post,

I will say this, – you’re missing the critical link here…

(which would be the first mistake made as a ‘conspiratorial’ type reference…)

that any game purposefully being ‘failed’ is somehow done ‘instantly over-night’…

that’s totally ridiculous, – Of Course – gems is making tons of money, will make tons of money,

the only way to keep that ‘trickle’ coming in is to give that ‘false hope’ of long-term viablity of the game continuing,
if they destroy that by making it ‘obvious’ they no longer care for the game, then what will happen?

that trickle income that comes in giving the people associating with the game their 10000s of dollars a month will stop,

so will they obviously come ‘out’ and state they no longer want to continue taking gems seriously?

come on think about it…

so yes, it does all make sense, stop seeing it as a group of people all the sudden dropping it into a ‘garbage can’ like a used cigarrette,

but instead see it as a old cow giving less and less milk, it’s still giving milk, but they’re prepping their new calf, with fresh juicy mammary glands, ready to give abundantly more milk…

you don’t kill the old one overnight, you just accept it’s making less and less milk, while plumping up the new one for it’s milking role…

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No, I get your point, it’s just flawed. There’s no reason to invest in a UI refresh if you are trying to decommission the game. I can think of many, much less elaborate means to the end you are describing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go shave my legs with Occam’s razor. If you are quite done with the tinfoil hat, I could use it to catch the trimmings.

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Lyvva,

Another huge point there, which again is made by the less-than-experienced masses who think newspapers are always telling them the truth and that politicians go to the same ‘jails’ as normal people etc…

You made the point of “their reputation”, again there was an important note in that first message, “the devs in the know, who will obviously use a different company name”…

people don’t realize how much masking and stealth there is in any kind of money-making endeavor,

you don’t have ‘reputation’ when you can always change a company name overnight, file bankruptcy while keeping your personal profits, etc

there is no ‘reputation’ on any of the devs because you don’t know any of the devs, never will know, and will never take the time to hone in and investigate who’s behind what company (not an insult who has the time to do all that?..), started now or in the future…

So again, the premise that the head devs are starting to move on to other things is not only not that ‘crazy’, but in an age of virtual reality and such a drastically better way to use the match-3 system, especially with the ‘puzzle quest’ fame and fortune that the rpg system it had garnered,

hate to say but them leaving to start a new game sounds more and more plausible the more you think about it…

(more about reputation, just look at steam - the last couple of years has been nothing but money grabs by company start-ups for their ‘alpha-builds’, who never make it anywhere past alpha but charge almost full price for games they know most likely will never get finished… there’s no accountability so the ‘devs’ learned quick what a great cash-grab it was/is… nobody really knows who’s working behind the scenes, so why pretend ‘reputation’ is such a valid and important claim?.. - it isn’t…)

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Lyya,

Unfortunately mentioning I have 20+ years in graphics seemed to have no affect,

but anyone with common sense knows that ‘UI update’ could’ve been done by a 10 year old, and quickly put in by some coding in probably an afternoon (assuming those icons were ‘objects’ and they just switched up the objects etc).

Attacking my post based on the premise of ‘cost’, is, well, I’m sure most people know how much validity that has, lol…

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Yes, yes, you’re so clever.

I happen to know a thing or two about software development. You are waving a hand so heavily over the issue, I’m surprised you haven’t managed to generate lift and taken flight.

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Lyya,

I also suggest watching , “Devra Davis Truth about Wireless cellphone radiation” ,

I had to go up north for 6 months to tone down the headaches wifi gives me,

finally after about 5 years it’s starting to become mainstream how dangerous cellphone /wifi radiation is etc…

try not to make tin-foil hat jokes at this point many are starting to wake up to the fact electromagnetic fields are real, and they’re not necessarily something you want beaming through your body all the time, lol…

(update, cellphone companies themselves are telling their customers they shouldn’t put a cellphone in their pocket, due to how dangerous that is… so if the company that’s selling you the cellphone is itself telling you how dangerous they are, perhaps it’s time to do away with the inane name-calling?.. just a thought…)

anyways, rest of the people can make up their own minds at this point, though many of the reasonable players seem to be leaving/have left as we speak…

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Lyya,

I’m not being clever, it’s just astounding to see how someone can be so ‘into’ their game so much they don’t see the blatant truth of how ‘bad’ a supposed ‘update’ is,

it doesn’t matter what you call it there’s been countless people cracking ‘jokes’ that the icons look like something their little kid could do,

I’m just a bit surprised that you really defend it as something ‘professional’, when no, really, it truly is something almost anybody can do, in their spare time in a few minutes.

I’m not trying to be ‘smart’ I’m just kinda wondering how you manage to put so much weight into such bad ‘work’.

No offense, but I take it you’re in a left-brained type field that doesn’t require art and spatial thinking but instead words, numbers and lots of text?

Perhaps by contrast you feel that the ‘work’ done is of greater value than it perhaps is… (because you’re not the most artistically inclined person yourself?..)

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Mithram your post about ‘this is mostly theory etc’ is not valid,

The main point of it was to ‘ask’, literally, the devs what the point of the UI switch was.

What takes things into ‘theory’ , like in any other matter and subject, is being kept in the ‘dark’…

The devs probably will not answer the question, since seriously can there be any valid answer?,

So, yes, excuse me, as would anybody else, venture into the dark cloudy territory of ‘theories’, because what else has a person to work with?..

Give a person something concrete (like an actual answer), and we can go from there, give them nothing and one cannot do anything but combine the aspects that he sees and try to make the best of them.

What’s most interesting is remember this would’ve been even to much for me to ‘come up’ with, (though i tried for hours to make sense of it while in global chat), it was stumbling across that post made by someone else that all the sudden it started clicking,

and yes, coming to the conclusion that the game was slowly being picked apart (whether for a new game altogether, or to make way for new players), is all that makes sense out of this…

If any devs would like to comment by all means I’m all ears, that’s why I started this thread with that post…

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I am wondering where you have read into anything I’ve written over the last few days that leads you to believe that I am happy with the new UI, or that I see it as a product of superior craftsmanship. If you can cite me a passage that indicates as such, I would appreciate it.

Whether or not it is good work or bad work, the point is – it was work. That’s not something you do if you truly believe you are sunsetting a project. You strive to minimize the work required. A UI refresh has a ton of upfront cost (despite your attempts to downplay it, nearly every asset needs to be touched and new UI coded), as well as a long tail support cost they are now paying. I’m sure they are veritably flooded by tickets as people seek refunds and provide feedback.

This is not an immature startup company. Sirrian has been in this business for decades. They know better than to sabotage their reputation. This was a mistake, despite your mouth-frothing allegations otherwise.

(Cell phone manufacturers recommend you don’t carry a phone in your pocket due to concerns about overheating – heat radiation – not ionizing radiation. But I won’t debate that, it’s off-topic.)

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What? My point was literally just that this thread has a right to stay separate because it has different content than the other posts complaining about the UI issues, because this thread is discussing the possibility of something shady going on and focusing on complaints about the UI itself, nothing more. I’m sorry the word “theory” is generally taken in a negative light, but thats exactly what it is.

If you want my actual opinion on the whole thing with the UI, I’m going to apply Hanlon’s Razor here: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Given actual evidence, though, I have an open mind.

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Lyya, about your first point being ‘craftmanship’, stating it was ‘costing a fair amount of whatever’ implies it was ‘worthy work’, that’s your own wording that’s what I was basing things off of, your own statement…

Saying something of that magnitude was ‘work’ , lol, is again not realistic with reality, when you have icons like that, it is something someone can do in an afternoon, that’s the end of it. It’s not a discussion to take up in some thread, any type of work involves time and effort, the time and effort put into those icons is obviously completely sub-par or an extreme rush job by a ‘professional’. Nobody wants to see us debating this online, anyone can see and make up their own minds just by looking at the icons.

I’m not trying to be a dink, but I’m not sure what kind of coding you’ve been exposed to in software, but there’s a difference between coding something behind the scenes, and the place-holder objects the coding affects. At this point in programming I think it’s safe to say that the ‘graphics’ are just objects that can easily be swapped, maybe I’m wrong but again most don’t need to see us debating this kind of redundant nonsense. Changing one icon ‘gif’ or whatever it is they use for another somehow I don’t see being that difficult, it’s not something to debate, most are sophisticated enough to have common sense of it nowadays.

Sirrian?.. lol funny I see 3 or 4 company names at the games start up,

it gets even funnier when you know ‘Sirius’ Is a highly masonic term used to denote the star they follow (and all the symbolism that comes with it…)

so yeah, you’re showing more and more how this company (like all others) stem from ‘Secret Societies’ that have 10000s of years of skill and experience hiding in the shadows and pulling their stunts off to the public lol…

Let’s not even go there…

Finally, talking about cell-phone radiation like that is absolutely ridiculous,

the ‘heat’ effect has long been put aside in the ‘radiation’ debate, you’re (unfortunately like most reflexive people in this type of argument) going by outdated information jumping to quick conclusions.

Suffice to say (did you even look at the vid?.. ah… big surprise, lol…) modern day information is actually starting to take root based on the damage that electromagnetic frequencies due to being certain wavelengths etc,

cellphone radiation (wifi etc) is neither ‘heat’ radiation nor ‘ionizing’, the fact you thought it’s ‘either/or’ shows unfortunately you perhaps shouldn’t be making assumptions on the topic.

For everyone else please check the ‘Devra Davis Truth about Cellphone radiation’ etc video, time people started catching up to the same type of fiasco cigarette smoking caused in society…

Good Discussion Lyya at this point everyone has to make their own minds on our discussion, I don’t think I can say anymore to you about the game or how wifi works etc…

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Yes, I think we’ve reached the end of productive discourse here. Your previous post has told me (and hopefully the remainder of the audience) the nature of this conversation, and it’s not one I am interested in pursuing any longer.

I hope you are able to achieve your goals with other like-minded individuals.

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