Serious question and conclusion on the New UI

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" i suppose if you make a “dark/gothic” themed game and keep it that way for few years, then add rainbows to it - microsoft etc would still be positive about its direction? "

Thank you,

It’s surprising how many people don’t get the idea of ‘aristict cohesiveness’ when it comes to aesthetic style, i.e. the people ‘defending’ the update.

The example are endless, a nice house with warm brown bricks, green grass dark shingles, and all the sudden a bright orange door.

A guy wearing a dark suit and tie, dark brown shoes, black close-cropped hair, and all the sudden pink and red make-up and lipstick on his face.

You could sit here and go down the list, everyone would be ‘shocked’ if they saw things lhat in real life, and would probably often-times comment how ‘crazy’ that person was, or at least looked, but somehow for some reason it passes on some people in this game…

Anyways, having just checked steam, I still have hope in humanity, since there’s been countless posts all saying the general same thing - this update ruined the aesthetic cohesiveness this game had, and they had no why idea they did it but yeah it just doesn’t ‘feel’ the same lol.
It’s disturbing to a player and yeah I still haven’t scrolled all the way down the posts yet but I hope Sirrian answered if the icons were temporary place-holders or not, otherwise this update was the death-knell of this game.

Just too many games out there to want to play less than anything ‘ideal’…

but again, that applies mostly to steam, on mobile I’m sure this still ranks as one of the best games…

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144

lol great post, like hearing myself talk (lol…)

want to add some things though,

" I wonder if the guys behind magic : the gathering puzzle quest will still want him when they see what he’s done to a beautifully designed game like gow used to be. "

Yeah that’s the thing, I mentioned in another post (actually another thread, the ‘UPDATE’ to this one) that that’s just it, we, as the ‘kept-in-the-dark’ consumers, don’t know what’s going on with Sirrian (I’m assuming he’s ‘Steve Fawkner’?..), because he might’ve been the one to give this ‘go-ahead’ on this update, OR, he got busy with the other game and another guy might’ve taken over design lead here (temporarily or whatnot at least) and gave the ‘go-ahead’ for this update without Steve actually having much input.

Who knows… and again, that’s part of the problem I was addressing to that other poster, it’s just that we’re not told much of anything here. Anyways I’m sure you guys can see that post I made to that recent poster about that…

" How can ANYONE look at this and think it’s better in any way than what we have had before? It just isn’t.
From the dreadful medieval toilet sign for deceased troops, to the awful ‘jason vorhees’ mask for silence and the crosses drawn with a red lipstick for stun and the barrier what’s barely visible. It’s just shockingly bad. You’ve totally ruined your game. It’s gone from a beautiful fantasy themed game to a botched hotch potch "

Yep, verbatim like my other posts… again though, I heard 4th hand talk that this is all place-holder stuff? I asked Sirrian if it was not sure if he answered yet. (Still have to finish reading the thread’s new posts).

Either way he either did, in which case, they might be placeholders (so we don’t have to worry, but they should’ve told us). If they are not, then we have to wonder who/why lost their sanity and did this ‘update’, and at the same time the reason behind it.

K but that still leaves one more thing, if Sirrian didn’t answer the question yet (if the icons are new placeholders or not), then there’s a chance he might be ‘arguing’ with the various companies to fix this mess, but because they might be giving him reasons why they don’t want to, then he can’t functionally answer the above question at this point.
Meaning he might honestly be trying to change it, either to change it back or to change it in the near future with new icons etc to make it truly ‘better’, but without the companies management agreeing he can’t come out and say anything yet.

Honestly it’s tough to say how much ‘clout’ the guy has to be able to enact these changes, is it his ‘fault’ because it was his decision all along, or is he stuck in the ‘machine’ of game development and can’t really do what he wants?..

Who knows, I don’t at least…

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" I can second that we are getting a lot of positive feedback privately. "

Yeah that’s obviously a lie,

actually was supposed to mention about that to another poster, sec

(glad people can see through the lies on this)

(Please note there -are- some ‘positive’ things from the update, even I have a few positive things to say, but the gist is obviously the whole overall package, is it better or worse?.. This atrocity is obviously overall much worse, regardless how few ‘better’ things there are…)

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I must’ve missed those explanations… (or they were so shadowy and watered down I wouldn’t have counted them as ‘explanations’ for anything…). No many people have seen those ‘answers’ and reasons and like numerous posts following yours, thankfully, most are not buying into the ‘snake oil’ lol… .
Unfortunately Sirrian’s answers reek of ‘image manipulation’, it’s pretty blatant but that’s not to say he’s a ‘bad’ person, maybe he got manipulated himself into this situation.

Nobody really knows, which is part of the problem of this situation…

" And we both know that haters don’t care about devs’s answers as their goal is only rage on the forum…"

Actually I found this whole issue to have brought out the reason and sense in people, it is unfortunate that through most of a persons daily life things are so easy they become desensitized and complacent, but this mess has brought out the good in people, they are both standing up for themselves and also using their common sense (not buying into the ‘hot air’ in this issue).

People have been surprisingly articulate and restrained in regards to this, the forums I think have been highly positive and productive (in the sense people voice their exact issues on what they see the problems to be), this is all in the developers ‘court’ now, it’s up to them to swing things back.

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Okay this is the great quote I had to answer to,

guys that ’ good pms ’ thing is obviously a lie, it’s a psy-op technique used on the masses. The idea behind it is a form of ‘self-fulfilling positive thinking transference’, you see this all the time in other types of sales “gimmicks”, like how to ‘game’ women etc, like if you watch some guy telling you to buy his course on how to ‘get women’, what people are most ‘sub-consciously’ responsive are ‘proofs’ that he somehow does get all these women.

Okay so it goes like this, some dorky looking guy that’s hard to believe gets tons of ‘women’, tells you ‘yeah i get tons of women! so you can too!’, then he posts fake pics of his supposedly “last 10 girlfriends” hes had (paid models etc), the not-so-bright believe it, buy his course, listen to his stuff… and somehow thinking they’re more like ‘him’ now, with him having had all those hot women, then they too should be able to get those women!

Now here’s the crazy part, most would say, “well yeah they’re scammers people should know better”, but in deep (esoteric/illuminati) psychology they know it can actually work, why? because now that guy goes around with that much more self-esteem, no matter how small, even though it was all based on fiction and fantasy… and you know what?

It might actually make the difference he needed to be able to go talk to someone he otherwise wouldn’t, and hence, ‘job done’, mission accomplished, it actually -was- a ‘success’ and his money was well spent.

Crazy I know but that’s psychology for you, and how the Illuminati (high-degree) Msons run the earth.

In terms of this game, the idea is for you to somehow subconciously ‘believe’ they got those ‘good’ pms (even though obviously fictional relatively speaking), then give the game ‘another shot’, realize “hey it’s not so bad”, and then go back to playing it again.

See how it works?..

I myself, have tried to play it again, but no it’s just too lame, lol… in the end your resonant frequency (mindset) decides what you’ll put up with.

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LOL, glad to see more common sense here lol.

This is what we’re talking about it’s amazing how some people have common sense to not believe what’s blatant bs, yet others ‘believe’ stuff and then actually go about ‘defending’ the (fake) statements made as they attack other posters.

This is the ‘sheep attacking the other (waking up) sheep’ type scenario.

Best way to run a society is get those that believe the fake lies to ‘police’ the people that know something’s up and want a change (or just basically not get screwed over).

Very interesting to see how forums are the ‘micro’ to the civilization as a whole ‘macro’.

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By the way, wanted to mention earlier you have a point there, in that there are actual ‘interactive UI’ changes that would have required some form of programming, there are the actual new decent icons like trait-stones and some other stuff, plus I noted all the troops have had a massive over-haul in terms of their detail. (Honestly though I think they look worse because now they’re just closer to that ‘uncanny valley’ of trying to be too realistic in something that wasn’t meant to be, but anyways…).

What’s important though is that I never counted those few ‘better’ things in the gist of the discussion, but that those new black/white/blue icons are so -darn- -bad- that the actual ‘work’ having gone into the other few things that are reasonable are easy to dismiss.

The over-all balance is far into the worse than into the ‘better’, and as I can see in your most recent posts, you seem to agree the recent update has been an ‘iconic’ failure …

(lol excuse my attempt at the cheesy pun, lol…)

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I have been 100% consistent in my dislike for the graphical refresh since the moment I saw it. It doesn’t require an over-the-top consiracy theory to explain the fact that the ball was dropped here, big-time.

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I’m assuming they’re keeping the game the exact same for both mobile and pc, which is what’s causing the problem (making it better for ‘one’ style of play is perhaps screwing over the other, though it’s noted it seems like every type of system is getting screwed by this update, so who knows what they were thinking lol…)

" Still I don’t see how it’s worst for PC player: I can click as usual to move on (better for mobile does not mean worst for PC). "

There are noticable things far worse for pc players now, think I mentioned that for example after you open stuff or try to pass screen in general, I would oftentimes quickly just ‘click anywhere on screen’ to move along dialogue boxes , but now I have to stop whatever else i’m doing, look at the screen, head over to that ridiculous Irradiated Big Green Button, get smashed in the face by how Incongruent it looks to the rest of the art, click, then wait and click again for more Big Green Buttons etc, this is while all the while before it was just a quick click click click to get my stuff and move along.

Seems silly but when you have 200k + gold and you use that to open those gold chests you want to hurry up and move things along, since you know it’s all garbage in the gold chests anyways.

" Come on are you saying that drag on the side is easier that draging up/down? Before mobile players could drag up and down so it’s the same for them… "

Absolutely, because the ‘drag up and down’ before was based on having to ‘hone in and click’ on that specific tab box on the side, a relatively small area for both and finger. Many people have commented that it was a far better way though (which I agree with) for pc, because it let you see quick if you actually got that ‘new’ card you wanted, since again most chest ‘drops’ are trash, you just want to know, by colour, which ‘useful’ cards you got.

I have no idea if mobile users had to ‘hone in and finger hold’ that one small box on the side as well, I assumed so because Gems is identical across all platforms?.. I assume so don’t blame me if I’m wrong I don’t know for sure.

" Steve for his work on his games
And apparently you don’t know about Warlords (too young maybe? Amiga era) :wink: . "

lol, Thing about Steve is I dont know for sure if ‘Sirrian’ is Steve Fawkner, but yeah some of those games he did are absolutely amazing.
Honestly the more I talk in these forums about GoW the more bad I feel, because I strongly feel (and suggest to everyone) they simply stop taking Gems seriously (until it gets it’s act together), and go play some of those crazy-awesome games Steve made before, like Warlords Battlecry 3 and the Puzzle quest series (especially Puzzle Quest 2, since it has the most ‘rpg’ aspects of all the games, extremely enjoyable).

Yeah I actually beat the first warlords if I remember right, back when it came out. Warords 3 Battlecry however I only tried recently (I have no ‘nostalgia’ attached to it), and it blew me away how fun it was/is and well designed in general.
I cannot find one fault with it, awesome gameplay, awesome mechanics, great art, incredible music, etc etc.

In fact, with his history of game design, it’s clear Gems is somehow stuck in that ‘uncanny valley’ (lol!) between ‘game design’ and ‘profitiability’.

I mean really, how many games on steam started out great, but then over that ‘golden number’ of 2-3 years they almost -all- start having these weird changes nobody’s happy with (that used to be older long term players) because now all the sudden they’re putting in weird new mechanics that are more ‘pay-2-win’ , pvp becomes somehow stale and unfair, weird things are done, etc etc

The count is endless it’s happened to so many games.

I think this speaks to where gaming has gone to in general, a guy like Steve is probably caught in all that, on one hand wants to make great fun games, like he always used to, but now is being pressured to squeezing every last drop out of them, for whatever reason (his own personal gain, or pressure from publishers etc), and the game (and inevitably the player base), suffers…

I’m waiting for my new computer to be delivered in the mail, once I finally can’t wait to go back to playing some Warlords 3 lol

(I only got stuck here cause my last laptop my mom let get rained on, honestly I would be playing lots of other steam games if I wasn’t on a tablet… (with pc/windows operating system))

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but that’s just it, lol, it does.

Because no sane person (like you agree with yourself), could possibly think (most of) that new stuff is better.

So what are the reasons?.. Nobody’s told us anything (concrete), so what’s left?

Theories…

There’s a reason all science and physics and whatever else explains the universe all started out as ‘theories’, because when you have a limited set of information to ‘prove’ anything you have to fill in the blanks yourself to get to the bottom of things…

Until Sirrian comes and answers those questions of, " Are those black/white/blue icons temporary place-holders or not? " then who knows what’s going on.

I’m starting to think he’s caught in what’s happening to all ‘pay-2-win/play’ games nowadays, publishers (or whoever) wanting to change the game up for more profit while not taking seriously the long term effects it will have on the game.

Or at least what they think will be more profitable, who knows with this mess LOL…

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I totally agree with you. Of course I like some new features in this new update like the 2 colours mana selection in filter. But they all could have been added while keeping old UI design! I dont think I will ever accommodate to this black and white design! This main menu on the world map, no thanks!

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You’re ridiculous. You don’t speak for all of us and to post a thread on the developer’s own site claiming they wanted to sabotage their own game and success is laughable. There are already threads created where you can post your grievances instead of creating this one.

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I’m not sure you managed to get to reading the whole thread, the majority spoke and they seem to agree this update was made by aliens for an agenda we don’t quite understand.

(LOL trying to poke fun at your ‘serious’ all-knowing tone, since it’s obvious the vast majority agree something’s wrong with this update… what the ‘root’ of it was nobody knows for sure, but that’s part of the point of the thread, to get to the bottom of it… I never said I know for ‘sure’ what it was for, other than pointing out most don’t agree with it or like it, and the fact we’re all kept in the dark means it’s not a fun experience for us players…)

By the way if you read the posts in the threads up to this point, you will see I change my views around to fit whatever new information comes in. I don’t necessarily believe they are ‘trying to sabotage their own game’ anymore at this point, but I do however state that because of their ‘silence’, the game is none-the-less being sabotaged indirectly.
Most do agree with that sentiment whether you like to hear it or not.

(By the way, everything at this point hinges on if they’re going to actually do ‘something’ with the UI to get rid of those ghastly ‘place-holder’ icons, in the overworld and in battle etc, until someone comes and tells us for sure that they will changed to something ‘finished’ to fit the game, then it’s guess-work for the players and few are going to like what they see now.
Would be nice to get an answer from someone soon on that…)

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Exactly. I only replied to you because of the “devs prefer Mobile players” conspiracy, which seems wrong.

Exactly the same for Mobile players. You can argue that it’s simpler to “move” the cursor for them, but it’s not became easier compared to the previous patch.

I opened 20k chests. Not so much issue compared to before as it seems to me that the loadings are faster and you can move your cursor where the green button will appear during the loading.
It’s not that bad, but I also prefer the previous version.

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No that’s not true, for mobile players (I just got a cell a couple of weeks ago) one thing is obvious, you have to have something to ‘click’ on specific, or else while your’e fumbling to get something out of your bag on the bus etc you’re bound to hit the screen with your fingers, as a dev it woudl be absolutely essential to -not- ever have anything ‘click anywhere on the screen’ on a mobile device, because that would lead to tons of problems as people carry a cell with one hand and try to do something else…

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Yes while I do see you ‘agree’ in a general sense, it’s nowhere near the same as before, having to constantly ‘look and aim’ for the green button totally changes it, means in the past I could talk on the phone, look at other stuff, read something whatever, now you gotta ‘focus’ on aiming for the button, never mind the actual time it takes to get to it, etc

It’s nowhere near as fast and efficient as before, and if i remember right they did have that blue ‘double-arrow’ icon before right? which icon was pretty small if you were on a mobile device, taking off the ‘click-anywhere’ thing still seems like a fail-safe method for mobiles like cells etc

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The opening of this thread sounded like someone trolling the community ,and the devs,but if you say your views have changed since then that’s fine,but like I said before,there are other threads this could have gone in. If you’re trying to get their attention you’re doing it the wrong way. By now they’re fully aware of players concerns with the new UI,they don’t need someone making accusations that they did this on purpose. When someone makes an artistic choice for their own creation they take a risk on whether or not it will be well received by the fans but they were taking risks,sometimes it pays off and sometimes it does not. They probably haven’t responded to this backlash because they’re probably busy trying to fix the things people didn’t like or are having trouble with like visual issues for people experiencing migraines,etc. Most of the new UI will probably be staying I imagine so you might have to learn to live with it until future changes can be made.

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I’m not sure that’s a fair conclusion since I’m pretty sure I included a literal cut+paste of Sirrian (Steve Fawkner) going to work on the other Magic Gems game. I was simply trying to stipulate how that might’ve been correlated to this mess we’re having in this game.

The dating on that article was about 2-3 weeks back, anyone would’ve come to some sort of tie-in seeing how closely timed it all was.

I dare say it worked rather well, didn’t Sirrian himself come here and ‘answer’ post after post?

Note too how well the community has come together, it went far better than I ever could’ve hoped for.

People have expressed their thoughts and apprehensions rather well, it’s rare to find a thread with such little trash-talking and so much agreement on things.

Its safe to say (as most have agreed to already), that what was done has/had no ‘artistic merit’ , hence the backlash to this update (speaking as always about those obscene white/blue/black icons, text etc).

I don’t mean to offend or incite but you sound as one would when comparing ‘styles’ of equal caliber. What was done was not impose a ‘style of equal caliber’, but a total downgrade to what you would expect a 1970s ‘game’ to look like.
You are free to google examples of such (lol…)…

Again, knowing full well it was such a ‘downgrade’, it wasn’t a ‘risk’, it was a sure failure.

lol I hate to do this, but using ‘analogy’, your take is 'well I have a hot girlfriend, and she usually dresses ‘goth’, dark clothes, dark makeup, leather, etc… and one day, she ‘takes a risk’ and surprises me by wearing pink and red, rosey makeup, red lipstick, pink shoes, etc! So hey whatever I think she took the risk.

Lol, nonsense.

The actual reality is your ‘goth’ girlfriend, who usually dresses and looks ‘hot’, in a ‘goth’ style, now all the sudden shows up at your door wearing the clothes she picked off a bum that just died in the street, smearing herself with urine and fecal matter, shaving her head, busting out her teeth, cutting and stabbing herself and LOL I can’t type anymore it’s too funny,

and showing up at your door, and going like, 'Hey! so aren’t you excited about my new ‘style’ ?"…

LOL!!! enough posts have pointed this out it isn’t an ‘equivalent’ thing…

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Ok, this thread was entertaining, but OP could come with more interesting theories like:

  • Sirrian is funding an army of genetically engineered shark-rider velociraptors.
  • Saltypatra has elemental powers that change her hair color.
  • Nimhain is a powerful sorceress that transform enemies into plushies, but she keeps only the cat ones.
  • Ozball, the most dangerous of them all, plans to create a machine to mix mustard with ice cream all around the world. Not a single flavor will be spared…

Hmmm… I think i just created a team of super-villains for an anime that will be canceled after season two…

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I think @Lyya would prefer shark with fricken lasers :slight_smile:

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