This Friday’s upcoming Faction Troops put the RNG in RNG in RNG. And no one is to blame besides those who have used thousands of gems during Faction Assaults to get that sweet sweet 2500 renown. (Myself included) But I’m proud to say… I’ll be doing Tier 4 and that’s it this weekend. Because I want to continue to love and enjoy Gems of War. Therefore, I’m going to supress this emotional abuse approach to pure Faction team design that has only gotten worse over time. And instead just focus on the aspects of GoW that I personally enjoy. What you do is your own business. But complaints about pure Faction teams are quickly extinguished by the sound of millons of gems dropping for a Faction Assault that simply doesn’t deserve your patronage.
(My apologies if there’s nothing constructive about my honest thoughts and feelings. The forums are littered with suggestions and actual constructive criticism about the Delves already. And all the feedback has only resulted with the Delves becoming more difficult over time considering that Power Potions weren’t designed to help with Faction Assaults. And that deeds/medals only help marginally. )
Update 2/21/20: I’m not sure if it’s all logic at play or truly the addiction side of GoW. But I think I’ve figured out a team that can get me to 2500 if I buy Tier 7, 10 times. And I guess as long as I’m just spending gems and not real money anymore… Then hopefully to devs will see that these new Delves are hurting them more than helping. I can’t help but truly feel like a hypocrite right now. I honestly really wanted to basically skip this event.
How I would balance the Troops to be less masochistic:
Chaos Hound - Summon a Chaos Hound. And create X skulls or Doomskulls.
Crazed Troll - (As it reads already) with the addition. “If there’s a madness storm then gain an extra turn.”
Dementicore - Silence or Mana drain an Enemy and steal X attack from it.
Lyrasza - Damage + Extra turn or Jumble + Extra turn or Explode + Extra turn
Balance the Mana cost to whatever metrics you use.
But there you go… actual constructive criticism that I know the 5-10 minutes spent putting actual thought into it will be for not.
I was going to make a thread entitled “This, that, and the other thing”, but your title makes much more sense. +1. Two thumbs up.
I’m not even gonna try that faction team. I figure if the weapon is worth having, I’ll find out when it becomes the new meta and then buy it when the faction comes around in 7 weeks.
Boring Details about my misadventures today
I won’t bore you with how many times I failed 500 today, because I didn’t make it to 500. I did fail x3 in the first room at 300 tho. Enemy Bladewing sniping my fools at a 5 out of 6 clip. And x1 fail in the final room, before winning on 5th try. Most Harpies I had to kill was only 14, so not too bad. I imagine 500 was worse for most.
I’m done with delves for a while. The next few in the rotation I have already blundered into 2500, so I can save gems til this weekend’s comes back around on a Tuesday.
Nice constructive criticism as well, by the way. Good luck to you Sir.
I know it’s been mentioned that Factions are on the devs’ radar. I am glad to know changes are planned. For now I’ll work on Factions gradually rather than all at once during an event. I love the game & don’t want to risk my spirit being broken over Faction Events in their current form.
I’d go for something even simpler, make all spells do single target damage with the current random effect tacked on top. It’s unlikely opponent troops are going to die from repeatedly getting hit with Silence for a whopping 12 mana.
It’s a skip for me. I made a categoric decision not to ever do a faction to 500 with potions past Tier IV and this just enforces that decision.
I’m not any worse off for making that decision than anyone that’s completed all with potions. If I can’t do the faction 500 without potions, I guess c’est la vie.
The factions are gradually getting worse. The troops are getting worse. The time expended grows. The reason? Potions…
This faction is the epitomy of the potion system, it’s design is geared to people spending too many gems to attempt to complete.
On top of the usual faction scenario;
It’s extremely poorly designed - it’s a grade Z
It’s not going to be fun
It’s really not going to be healthy - irrespective of time issues
It will cost several K gems
The only debate I have is do I actually even bother at all.
I do wish that we would have better consideration for gameplay and the playerbase on factions, at least make them with decent troops that have some synergy together.
I didn’t even do the Tuesday faction event this week. Screw it.
Devs, observe my attitude on the matter and fix the damn thing. I have 27k Chaos Shards and every single faction troop at Mythic, I do not care. Next faction will use less than a third of that. Provide incentive or it is useless.
Eh, I will still do the event this weekend, because I do want the 2500 renown and the pet at level 20. I get six additional sigils towards that end—so probably 8 additional runs if I find a Valraven—and 48 more hours to find time.
For my gems and time, the biggest thing I get is a pet at level 20, which is important. The alternative is getting hella lucky with pet rescues for the right kingdom (cba to look up the info now), and then spending 2000+ gems to buy the copies needed to get to 31.
I’m spending gems one way or the other, so I might as well do it during the faction release.
I have to admit, I have been dreading this particular faction for all the reasons so adeptly outlined by the OP. Like many, I was hopeful the faction troops would get a rework (well at least a significantly greater rework than the minor one given to the Legendary troop) before the actual release. Now I have to decide whether to forgo the entire event to save the purgatorial grind with the added horror-show of trying to use a full faction team along the way, or not. I am debating on making this my new farming faction and saving myself the grief. Even if I do decide to tackle the event, I will also allocate significantly less gems to the endeavor. I have serious doubts I will even attempt a full faction run at any significant level. It’s just not worth the frustration any longer.
As has been mentioned by many before me, it is simply inexplicable that each new Delve release seems to exceed the ones before it with regards to faction-only difficulty and angst. A normal dose of RNG is completely fine. An elevated dose of RNG can be annoying but is still digestible. An RNG dose at the level of this faction is simply too toxic to take, at least for this player.
I’m probably also going to shift all the rubbish treasures on making the hoard, maybe 50, half the cost in treasure, useless treasures used, maybe more on gold, but that’s replenishable.
Actually playing this game properly is completely inefficient at the moment anyway.
So far there’s only 1 pet available for the kingdom that isn’t cosmetic. I’m on the reverse opinion. If I’m going to spend thousands of gems for a bonus then I’d rather do it without having to put the work in to get the bonus. Because pure level 500 Faction teams aren’t fun, they’re work.
After the Faction is released. Shentang will be 7 troops short of the pets really mattering anyway.
Assuming the player has at least 1 of the cosmetic pets at mythic already. If not, then that sucks if they have to get to 2500 to get the Mythic pet.
Only the +1 to Magic is worth the overall renown in Factions. The time spent to get closer to +1 magic this weekend would be better spent getting a Nysha badge in Explore.
Eventually there will be 75k total renown on the table available in GoW.
Before the cap is reached, I’m betting on the fact that a delve or Faction Assault rework will be on the table. Either that… or the servers won’t be on long enough for 75k to be reached by anyone. If I turn out to be wrong then it’ll suck to be stuck at 74,700 renown. But no where near as sucky as spending either 5k gems for one Faction or at least 2+ hours of banging my head against the wall doing an all Faction team run at level 500 waiting for the AI to let me lucky enough to win with troops I never cast and can only do skull damage with or both.
People are good at defending their physical health by saying no to drugs or things that can harm their body.
I think many of us (myself included) need to start worrying more about our mental health. Hell, weren’t you @Grundulum the one who did the thread about these Faction Assaults being unhealthy? This Faction is the pinnacle of unhealthy addiction.
Not all of GoW is unhealthy though to be fair. To me the game has been absolutely great for mental health outside of Factions. Even GW is just stressful in bracket 1, but a much more forgiving stress than Faction Assaults.
I get that it takes time to rework Delves or Assaults as a whole. But releasing troops that only make the Pure Faction team runs more difficult makes Salty’s comments just look like lip service. Just like a month ago… The gimmick of the Faction troops seems to be more important than the well being of the players.
And those who will say it is a choice…are absolutely right. Like I’ll choose to only do tier 4 this week. So as a lot of my peers in AWR’s renown increase by 2500 it’ll suck to fall behind them. So either way I’m headed for “it feels bad” city. Or…I could just not care about renown…(max kingdom stars are still obtainable without it for Shentang)… which is really what’s best for everyone’s mental health. Why the devs should be concerned is… folks aren’t going to spend thousands of gems on a game mode they don’t care about though. So if they continue to release rubbish like this. It may generate an increase in gems spent short term… But it won’t be sustainable. Then again… maybe gimmicky troops are more important than gems and money. If that’s the case, then good luck devs.
I just looked at Shentang’s pet list (thanks for telling me what the associated kingdom is). It’s Shortlong and two cosmetic pets, like you said. I have no clue when I will even have the opportunity to drop 1000-2000 gems to get any of them to mythic, so I think the Lyrasza pet is my best chance at a level 20 pet for the foreseeable future. I’m in a good guild, but we are nowhere near as active as your guild is, so we don’t get as many pet rescues—and thus chances for me to rescue Shortlong.
And yeah, that was me who wrote that the Tuesday events were unhealthy. I haven’t pushed any of the Tuesday faction events past that second orb of chaos since I posted that thread (I think I may have skipped one of them entirely?). But the weekend events are more relaxed, and offer both more time and more sigils. If we assume I want to get to 2500 renown, I am much better off doing it at faction release than trying to come back later.
I don’t know what the eventual fix might look like for the Tuesday events, but I choose not to bank on things being as easy as I would hope (that being “players have the option to resume delving from their current 1x level”).
I don’t remember the gem cost. But basically if you buy Tier 1-6 during a rescue, you’ll get about 15 copies of that pet. (Depending on luck of course)
And also, pet tiers are a better investment because they come with food. Where as Faction pets do not.
It’s possible that you could get Shortlong to Mythic prior to the Monk class being released in a month or 2.
Just farm cPvP for pet rescues instead of beating your head against the wall with this upcoming Faction.
Ultimately… It’s your call though man.
If I thought it would do any good, I’d join in protesting
But realize, I’m sure it’s less than 1% of players even read the forums
All youre doing is making it harder for yourself by missing your best(if not only)chance to do it
Definition of insanity: expecting the devs to care
Yes but AWRyan can also share this with his entire family of guilds. That’s about 150 people or so. I can share it with my guild family. That’s over 200 players. People asking about pure faction runs on discord? “Nah don’t bother, skip this one.” Easy.
I know previous difficult faction runs have been completed. I see the leaders with the 42500 renown.
But I’ve failed the Warrens, Dark Pits, and Fang Moor all while purchasing 9 power potions. Maybe a winning run was just one more purchase away. But I just failed x3 yesterday in the first room at level 300. Bad beats happen, but that was 200 gems for nothing. Well, +7 to all stats for the eventual successful run.
I imagine the bad faction troops here won’t lose x3 in the first room. It was Bladewing’s snipes that did it yesterday. Or Hex Rat’s deathmark. Or Lapina Knight’s submerge/barrier while the rabbit charms team to death. Or bad cascades in Fang Moor. Or…
I’m just not convinced this faction can be done short of more gems and gold that I currently have at my disposal. Plus I just used all my white pet food to get yesterday’s pet to 15, and have 1 Blue pet at 10 and 2 others at 15 waiting on food as well. Which leaves time as the final commodity, and I’m saving that by not participating.
Like everyone else here, i feel that this faction approaches with a sense of foreboding and misery that goes beyond its predecessors. This did not happen by chance; it was designed precisely with this in mind. Previous dev statements said that factions would be reworked at some time to make them more manageable but players didn’t wait for the solution because as the @TheIdleOne said elsewhere, the devs created the problem and expect us to pay for the solution. We have proved to them that this ‘business plan’ is profitable by continuing to throw colossal gems at something we KNOW is stacked hugely against us and which becomes increasingly more abusive and manipulative with each new faction release. We have come to realise that events with potions may well be our one and only chance to max the faction and are thus effectively held to ransom almost by this disgusting approach to gaming. God only knows how bad subsequent factions will become because the trend is to make them more psychologically upsetting with each release (and making previous releases sneakily worse also). We are thus being mistreated and disrespected increasingly and continued engagement (spending way too much time and resources) in a frustrating and unhealthy game mode is reminiscent of trauma bonded codependence as would be described by Stockholm Syndrome. A recent post from Salty revealed the u turn in approach when she said something like "if we decide to change factions…it will be some time in the future…other priorities… ". Tomorrow is faction 18 and I for one have given up on any rework that will benefit the players. I might still spend enough tiers to complete 500 non faction team because it’s got to the stage that I hate delves and would rather spend 3 days playing too much faction assault in the knowledge that I can completely forget about it, including weekly one day events for the rest of the month. This faction has got pain written all over it and even if horde was at the same level as the opposition, the middle rooms would be very hard to navigate. Appalling.
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