If Mountain Crusher or Dragon’s Eye having those kind of affixes, I’m ok, because this kind of weapon is messing up the board in the first place.
But for other weapons, they mess up the board and feed AI match 4 most of the times.
Especially this time, Dark Shot. Creating up to 17 purple gems could be a very good purple engine. But why is there an Umbral affix? Why? Don’t you know destroy even one gem could potential destroy a match 4, let alone destroy 3?
The one that pissing me off the most, is Spark Rocket 2.0.16. This weapon could be a replacement for Goblin Rocket, because I can still create a match 4 with this kind of board control. And the Volcanic affix defeats the whole purpose of this weapon for me.
I mean, seriously, every time I see this kind of upgrades, I doubt if you guys even play GoW.
4.2 is out, exploder affixes are replaced. this is good. but create/destroy gems affixes are still there.
i’m happy if you just remove them. i don’t mind if some weapons lack one affixes or two. as long as they don’t mess the board, i’m happy.
Yeah, it’s like they heard people complaining and didn’t think it all the way through. Oh well. At least I can use Divine Protector again.
The “upgrade” Hot on Summer’s Fury is another example. The times this “destroy 1 red gem” on a red gem creating weapon has broken a chain for me are countless.
I totally disagree. I preferred the previous affix.
Which weapons and why?
Je suis curieux de savoir quel arme vous préférez avec lancien affixe zt surtout pourquoi. Parce que exploser des gemmes la ou vous pouvez avoir un tour supplémentaire hum pas sure que ca tourne en votre faveur…
The devs doesn’t seems inclined or able to stop putting these stupid affixes. The situation can be explained as:
- They prefer to keep making weapons with these bad upgrades, to only later release a global fix to change them all at once.
- Or they can’t simply change it due code restrictions that are a sign of bad design choices and lack of insight from the past so we are stuck having to walk some more miles with these stones on our shoes.
I’m more inclined to believe on my second theory, because they could certainly use these “Explode/Create/Destroy X gems” in some weapons that already do that and create some other affixes to replace these on weapons that have different roles/uses, but that would require some time reviewing each weapon and making manual fixes that may not be possible due the limitations as i already said as well as willingness to invest more money and working hours to fix/code all of that.
I like the random aspect of some of these affixes you complain about. It makes the game more exciting.
Try fully upgraded Dark Shot in Raid yourself, maybe then you can talk about exciting.
That’s exactly what I have been doing.
Although I’m not a fan of anything random that I can’t control in general, I can’t definitively attribute any single match loss to any of these affixes. Therefore I’m indifferent to them and don’t share the animosity some have toward them.
In regular battles it really doesn’t matter as much as bad cascades happening, but it’s particularly infuriating in features where enemies have hundreds of levels and the board changes have much more impact, like Delves for example.
Could it all be avoided by applying common sense when creating these upgrades in the first place? Hell yes, a weapon that deals damage doesn’t need to create one meager gem for no reason apparent, specially as the turn is passed and this gem could give an advantage to the enemies even if the risk is really low i don’t see any good reason for it, it doesn’t even justifies using 1 Legendary Ingot, much less 10(?) Mythic ones as we see in Dawnbringer.
It’s honestly a poor design choice and we can surely have better things. Even from a business perspective designing desirable and good effects opens more windows of opportunity to make profit with sales of weapons and gems to be converted in Ingots during events like Raids as newish players won’t be able to play Delves at full force for a while.
I know you are not being dismissive with your comment, but i honestly can’t stand by your opinion, i believe this is a better way to do thing to everyone involved.
And yet, and yet… the devs keep being defensive about this, they don’t want to admit that they did it poorly in the first place.
It “hurts” to see this game not living to it’s full potential, after so many years the devs seems more disconnected from their playerbase and their own game than ever sometimes, i’m not even sure what the publisher is doing behind the scenes as i can only assume they SHOULD have people to offer some guidance in such matters, it shouldn’t be me or other players trying to offer input time and time again on how to make things better and possibly profitable WITHOUT pissing off the playerbase.
As you surmised, my intent is far from trying to be dismissive. It is genuinely my opinion these affixes are not earthshatteringly terrible. They can be annoying from time to time but even in GW or raid or any other important match they haven’t lost me the match single handedly. At worst a series of bad board states and/or lucky AI cascades or even a poor move on my part had already lost me the match and I just had to wait to be put out of my misery.
These types of statements are why you would perceive the devs as being “defensive”. (These are mild compared to the jabs & complaints by many others so I don’t mean to pick on your critiques solely, i’m just too lazy to go find more in other threads) I’d like to see you remain completely non-defensive if people were saying similar things or worse about a creation of yours or about all the work you put into something. The fact they’ve stated they’re reviewing affixes should be admission enough they understand not everyone is happy about them. But personally there are more important things they should be working on, though clearly you would disagree. And I’m fine with that.
And yet time & time again the devs claim they’re happy with where the game & player base is - player count is up, player spending is up, despite what appears like a majority of people disliking game modes like raid & invasion they claim they are highly successful (by whatever measure they are using) & highly attended/played.
Sure, they could be blowing smoke so we don’t all abandon a sinking ship but I find that highly unlikely. We all have opinions on what GoW should be & where it should head, but there’s no way we are all going to get our way and no way are each of our opinions in the majority at all times. You can’t stand the affixes, @Vorlon loves the extra randomness, I’m not a fan of uncontrollable random effects but haven’t seen them be enough of an impact to care about them over other aspects of the game. Clearly the devs need to tread lightly on how they address it so as not to piss off more people than already are? No matter what they do, some part of the player base isn’t going to be happy. You’re part of that group on this issue. I’m going to be in that group for some other issue down the road I’m sure.
I can’t say if i would or would not be defensive as i can only offer a theorical biased view: I would try to figure out why my players are so worked up and then use this knowledge to guide my actions in order to recover their trust.
Some actions and decisions will innevitably make players disgruntled, but there are other actions and decisions that could surely avoid or minimise such sentiments.
From the parts you quoted:
“The devs doesn’t seems inclined or able to stop putting these stupid affixes…” They didn’t offered ANY explanation for why they won’t change really underwhelming upgrades.
“It’s honestly a poor design choice…” I’ll assume it wasn’t your intention to quote just a bit that can be twisted from my original intent, but when you look at the rest of the sentence: “…we can surely have better things.” and also using the context of the example i gave, “10 Mythic Ingots just to generate one Red gem on Dawnbringer” (which by the way was a mistake from my part as the upgrade destroys one gem), i cannot simply take back my statement…
Destroying one single gem is the best they could give us? For a weapon that is an icon of an achievement by itself?
Honestly i can understand how my opinions might sound harsh as of late, but for what it’s worth i believe i’ve been nothing less than supportive to this game and community for a long time and yet i’m still seeing the devs making mistakes that they could just as well avoid entirely…
If they are not able to change the affixes mannualy then it’s a poor design choice to code something so contrived in this fashion wouldn’t you agree? If they are not willing to spend time changing these affixes then AT LEAST stop making them. Spent some time, maybe it won’t take more than 10 minutes, reviewing a weapon before releasing it. I requested this A LOT in the past weeks and it can only benefit everyone involved as i’ve put.
Everyone, no matter how misguided some might be, will request things they think are better for the game, and in this thread and some past others we aren’t requesting they launch a Koala in the low orbit of Mars, we are asking something supposedly (as we don’t know what is preventing them from doing it) very viable with short and long-term benefits.
changes will always make some players unhappy. i agree. but this doesn’t mean a feature is good.
it’s like the 4 divines team, some even said they were not strong enough and didn’t want them to be nerfed.
remember when fizzbang got hotfixed? a new player said fizzbang was so good for them and wanted it back.
this game, to me at least, is about skills and board control, and the ability to deal with randomness of drops. this type of affixes are purely luck based and totally opposing the idea of board control.
why explode gems got nerfed few times but convert gems basically untouched? think yourself.
but darkshot is on another level. i’m creating purple gems, to have a 4 match and gain extra turn. destroy 3 purple gems just ruins the 4 match. you think this is funny or exciting?
it should be destroying 3 other color gems, not interfering the purple gems.
I believe that on paper raid/invasion/etc appear successful because players are spending gems on them and participating in those events. The devs were clever in how they set up the shops and placed weapons at certain price points and new troops/ascensions at other price points. Many people in this game are collectors and will spend to make sure they get everything. So, this model guarantees some gem spending from a decent amount of players.
As for event participation, the devs tied these events into guilds and attached orbs to them. The only reason I bother with the invasion or raid event is to help my guild close portals so that we all can get the orb rewards. The vast majority of players I know play them for the same reason. Most of them are either indifferent to the events or hate them with a passion. I literally only know a few players personally that “like” raid/invasion. Yet, here we are still playing the modes. So, I don’t doubt that they look like a success in the metrics.
I agree with you totally on this point. Have I gotten irritated when some affix ruined a 4/5-match? Hell yes. Have I lost a match because of an affix? Nope.
Frankly, I would have preferred if certain weapons like Mountain Crusher, Bronzelock Pistol and other explosion weapons would have kept their old affixes since they did actually have synergy. But, of course, the devs created a single solution that changed all weapons whether they needed it or not.
Weapons, like classes, will never reach their full potential because they don’t get the individual mechanics that they need for unique synergies. It would be great if each class had talents that worked in perfect synergy and that each weapon had upgrades tailored for it. But, I know this isn’t ever going to happen for a number of reasons.
I feel like the problem before, the problem after, and the problem in even some of these arguments is a lack of thinking about cohesion.
Broke: “Explosions, destruction, and gem creation are always good.”
Broke: “Explosions, destruction, and gem creation are always bad.”
Woke: “Explosions, destruction, and gem creation should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis because they can be good OR bad based on context.”
The problem is taking a very simplistic approach and assuming “explode” or “destroy” is good or bad with no other context. Whether it is good or bad and how good or bad it is relies on the context of what ability it’s interacting with.
Some easy cases:
- If the weapon already explodes things as part of its ability, “more explosions” is better.
- If the weapon already explodes or destroys things, “destroy one more” is better.
- If the weapon generates gems as its ability, exploding or destroying them is at best dubious and more typically harmful.
- Adding randomized destruction, creation, or generation of one gem to a weapon that doesn’t do it as part of the ability is very dubious. On average it does nothing. Players won’t notice when it helps. Players will notice and hate when it hurts.
- Adding predictable destruction, creation, or generation is less dubious but still subject to the above.
- Adding large scale destruction, creation, or generation is probably “a feature”, but more powerful than any extant affix.
So the “real” solution would be to revisit every weapon that explodes, destroys, or generates gems via affixes. From there, I think there are choices to make.
The “easy” choice is to use the heuristics above. Anything that gets worse when gems are destroyed/exploded should be adjusted. The more subjective ones like Dawnbringer can be left to interpretation.
This part is cool so please read it
The “cooler” choice is to make a game design opportunity of this. I think it was attempted but not done well. What do I mean?
Let’s talk about Divine Protector again because we get what it does. It generates a mix of red and yellow gems. That’s great! It is a good weapon without any affixes.
Fully-affixed, it does that, generates some mana, cleanses the caster, and barriers the caster. That’s amazing! I’m very happy with the change.
But let’s imagine it a different way. What if you had a choice: a basic weapon that is good, or an upgraded weapon that’s amazing with a different upside? What if affix IX was “Barrier all allies”. Wow. We’re talking Dawnbringer powerlevel here. So we can use the “bad” affix as a way to downplay the effect. What if affix VIII were, “Explode 3 random red gems.”?
Then the weapon would have 2 modes. You can ignore the affixes and get lots of mana + a likely free turn. Or you can fully upgrade it to get slightly less chances at free turns and mana but a full-team barrier. Choices are good!
The downside is you can’t undo upgrades, and you might want either weapon contextually. Oh well.