Stop overusing the RNG - It is NOT fun!

[RottenSis]

I am putting this feedback into its own post as it keeps getting lost inside of the many other Hoard Mimic and Dungeon feedback posts and I’m pretty sure there are many others are in a similar position as me.

My scenario:
My Dragon’s Claw power level upgrade is stuck, I now have TWO troop options to get it unstuck and I have absolutely no way to work toward resolving it.

First Option: Hoard Mimic – RNG upon RNG upon RNG with no way to earn the troop

On the rare occasion when I do have the time to grind extra Explore battles just hoping:

1. I get a Mimic Battle
2. Which might trigger a Hoard Mimic battle
3. Which might actually drop the Hoard Mimic troop

The Hoard Mimic drop rates are so TERRIBLE that I’ve only triggered the battle 4 or 5 times since the launch and on those rare occasions I wind up just getting more tokens which become medals that I no longer need.
Fun? NO
Exciting? NO

Nothing worse than ending a gaming session feeling like the time spent was completely wasted.

Second Option: Diamantina – RNG upon RNG upon RNG with no way to earn Dragonite

Fourdottwoone summed the Dungeon issue up perfectly in this post and presented some fantastic solution options to make it fun again here: Continuing the discussion from Dungeon Feedback:

PROBLEM

@Fourdottwoone

Players aren’t asking for more Dragonite, players are asking for less frustration. They are perfectly okay with receiving the same amount of Dragonite over time, as long as it can be gained and spent in a predictable way.

Perfect Runs

Consider these two scenarios:

1. A complete run hands out 0 Dragonite, a perfect run hands out 100 Dragonite, at 10% chance. That’s an average of 100 Dragonite over 10 days. Players are unhappy, because most days they receive nothing.
2. A complete run hands out 10 Dragonite, a perfect run hands out 0 Dragonite, at 100% chance. That’s an average of 100 Dragonite over 10 days. Players are happy, because they are making steady progress towards their goal, crafting the next dragon.

SOLUTION OPTIONS PRESENTED

@Fourdottwoone

Recommendation

1. Add each dragon directly to the forge for crafting, at least until those vague future plans actually become reality. This is a server side change that shouldn’t take more than a few days. Personally, I’d put the cost at 1000 Dragonite, it doesn’t change too much and flows better.
2. Hand out 10% of the Dragonite currently gained from a perfect run as part of clearing the whole dungeon. Don’t hand anything out for a perfect run (or 10% of the current amount if you want to make it feel more special), not having to deal with the trap debuffs is already reward enough. This might require a client update, it should be an easy to implement change though.

TL:DR -
My Dragon’s Claw power level upgrade is stuck, I now have TWO troop options to get it unstuck and I have absolutely no way to work toward resolving it.

First Option: Hoard Mimic – RNG upon RNG upon RNG with no way to earn the troop
Second Option: Diamantina – RNG upon RNG upon RNG with no way to earn Dragonite

Let me be very clear that my failure to be able to proceed in my game is because of the overuse of RNG with no way to work toward these goals.

This makes me very angry and frustrated with the game and frankly quite sad.

The very best part of this game, in my opinion, has always been the awesome balance between being able to work toward every goal in the game by playing the game along with the element of a single RNG to be able to help you get there faster if you were lucky! That’s fun!

STOP OVERUSING THE RNG - It is NOT fun!

[HounganAtLarge]

Fun Fact about the Hoard mythic: I am currently running 2 accounts. 1 of those has had 600+ Boss fights. Can you guess how many Hoard fights have cropped up?
Zero.
Zilch.
Nada.
None.

Make the damn thing craftable. Enough time has passed for the “new car smell” to wear off.
The odor it gives off now is completely different.

[Jerry_the_skunk]

May I add to this list troops that drop from vault fights? Unlike with hoard mimics and egg dragons, the rate to get one of those keeps getting continually worse, as there are more and more introduced to the pool.

… not like I would rule out, that there will be a set of six more dragons added to the gem egg half a year from now, because it means “more content”…

P.S.: I would have trouble to name anything the “best part” about this game since… don’t know, I think, I left my negative game review on it in late 2017.
Started playing it in 2015, because it was a nice casual experience, that required maybe two hours a week and left the rest for times, when I felt in the mood for it. Let’s say, it is no longer like that.

[Raistlin]

Wait…there are troops other than Cedric in the vault pool???
/sarcasm

[Eika]

I am now 16 or 17 Hoard Mimic battles in without getting one. I believe that the % is just very low. But have guild mates that already found more than one. I wish you good luck hunting!

[Darkscythe]

I have 29 battles and no troop

[Moriad]

Agree!

The very nature of RNG means that real successes are massively outweighed by failures. This is inherently demoralizing.

Especially when…

Unlike in skill based tasks, those failures contribute absolutely nothing to future goals.

And even more so…

If each attempt uses up valuable resources, those failures become not just a failure to move forward, but an actual step backwards.

To enjoy this sort of play, you’d have to find losing and getting nowhere far more satisfying than winning and reaching goals.

Finally, if RNG were truly fun in and of itself, every one of us would just sit around flipping coins and rolling dice. We’d have no time to play this game.

[Jerry_the_skunk]

A little additional remark about the thread title:

Random chances are not fun. But they are addictive.
Players are more likely to keep doing a thing, if the next attempt might “just be the one”.

Skipping a dungeon day with a flat payout means missing a small amount. Forgivable. Skipping a dungeon day, when there is a small chance to get a large payout, even if it averages at the same, is something, you will regret far more.

This is about creating and consilidating player behaviour and habits.
Somehow, the gaming industry has been able to spin “addictive” into a positive marketing term, something I still consider disgusting.

[Moriad]

Like opiates, gambling and its variations may be addictive for a small subset of people. But not for the overwhelming majority.

Most of us will tolerate the often unpleasant side-effects for a short time when necessary (e.g. post surgery pain relief) but feel very little desire, if any, for the drug otherwise. And we’ll put up with RNG in a game we enjoy (to a point). But that does not mean we like the RNG or find ourselves compulsively drawn to games of chance.

People enjoy feeling that they have some control over outcomes. If it’s clear that you have none at all it’s not even a game any more.

[Stratelier]

@Moriad

People enjoy feeling that they have some control over outcomes. If it’s clear that you have none at all it’s not even a game any more.

Indeed. This is kind of why I want the “door X never contains room Y” to return on purpose. Just shuffle it once a week to ensure that the “detectable patterns” don’t stay static, and nevermind the rest.

[Jerry_the_skunk]

At Moriad:
This is not about my own addictive tendencies (that I am only too aware of), but a general statement on human behaviour.

If you do not like doing thing X, then under the conditions of free will you would stop doing it. In this game, treasure hunts are a good example. Only moderately entertaining, extremely lengthy timewise and without a feeling of reward. Barely anyone does them.
If you do keep doing thing X and care about it, despite not liking it, then it is either by external pressure (like guild requirements) or by internal. I’d take a wild guess and say, it’s not the others, who are interested in your dragonite inventory.

This weekend, there’s a new mythic in chests. Unless you have a bunch of VIP keys, it is likely, that you keep opening chests until you either got it or run out of seals, gems and glory, and not until you have reached a previously decided amount of attempts.

It’s gambling. It’s all gambling. And it’s working. On you too. You would not complain, if you did not feel pressured about it.
We are lab rats, franticly pushing a button.

[sls]

@Jerry_the_skunk

We are lab rats, franticly pushing a button.

Until we don’t

(Note that Y-axis limits do not go from 0 to 100. Data from steamcharts.com and Digital Bros’ financial documents)

(Somebody fix the unreadable green colour for links please)

[Moriad]

Interesting psychoanalysis.

I keep doing the dungeons because I want diamonds. I don’t find the battles themselves unpleasant. Quite the opposite: at least with traps and increasing levels, I find it occasionally worthwhile to switch to a different team!

The dragonite controversy provides a bit of interesting drama to a game that has become increasingly less challenging. Aside from Guild War battles against high rated opponents and level 500 faction team assaults, almost everything can be done without thinking. The dungeons do not reward successfully completing a more difficult challenge. Instead, they reward randomly avoiding it, so I’m opposed to them on principle.

Funny that discussing the dungeon is actually more fun than playing the dungeon. I got dragged into the debate by the enticing possibility that the dungeons weren’t actually random.

I don’t feel pressured by rewards, or lack of them. I did for a while, a few years ago, but you can progress beyond that fairly quickly once you reach a certain level. At this point, it will take decades to level up the most important kingdoms much beyond where they are currently. Assuming GoW survives that long, I may have grown tired of the game long before then.

I complain in the forums because, for the moment, it’s more entertaining than the game. That’ll pass soon enough, though, and me and my spouse will return to amusing ourselves by trying out more and more silly teams. Or by trying to figure out the best defensive teams based upon the AI’s curiously incompetent playing of them.

I love Treasure Hunt.

[Tarana]

Let’s not forget that apparently the rates don’t work the same for players versus a.i. your percentage rate of occurrence(proc) is very obviously completely different for players compared to the same for the enemy a.i.

For example…my 35% chance for a thief to drop from thief skills happens about 25% of the time not 35%. And yet…for the enemy using same skill it happens literally 80% of the time…screw your messing with the drop rates when it gets so bad and obvious a blind man could tell. Please stop changing rates for the enemy a.i. versus players ccamces.

[Stratelier]

@Tarana

Let’s not forget that apparently the rates don’t work the same for players versus a.i. your percentage rate of occurrence(proc) is very obviously completely different for players compared to the same for the enemy a.i.

Okay, if it really is that obvious how about tracking it statistically for awhile and showing us your results?

I’ve had matches where Persistence is hungrier than Cerberus or even High King Irongut.

I’ve seen Princess Fizzbang go all bang, no fizz.

An unfortunate fact about “fair RNG” is that it has a tendency to cluster, because if it doesn’t (ever) then that implies it is NOT a fully independent RNG.

[Xtowers]

I agree with you, friend, on each of your points.

What I find really laughable is that the last few “content drops” really don’t add any new content for the average player. Taking data from a site you and I know well: Gems of War Achievements | TrueAchievements

New updates usually include a couple achievements on every system tied to the new content. TrueAchievements, which has a player-base that’s focused on unlocking achievements can tell us unlock percentages for those who have played the game (unlocked at least one achievement). So, let’s check out the hardest achievements from each of the last couple updates to see what percent of TrueAchievement users have unlocked them:

Update 6.5, Dragon’s Path: Only 2% of players have crafted a dragon egg.
Update 6.4, Legends Reborn: Only 2% of players have completed the story 5 times during the event.
Update 6.3, Depths Below: Only 1% of players have unlocked a Power Potion in a Treasure Hoard
Update 6.2, The Secret Hoard: Only 0% of players have gained the Hoard Mimic from a Boss Chest

These are rounded, but only 287 players out of 68,177 have obtained the Hoard Mimic so far, and that’s since March 2022, over 7 months at this point. And the only new content out of that title update was the Hoard Mimic card - everything else (tokens) was already obtainable, you now just have a slightly better chance to double your token reward.

My beef is that these new updates don’t really add any content for your average player, the RNG is so heavy that it’s basically locked content. Unless you go through hundreds, if not thousands of explore runs. Or, in the case of dragons eggs, you can buy your way to the content way faster, but even then you have another RNG hurdle to unlock each of the 6 dragon cards.

Personally, I’ve stopped playing dungeons again; if I hit a trap on my first pick I just call it a day and move on. Traps aren’t fun, they just make the remaining battles more of a slog. I’ve also given up hope for the Hoard Mimic - it’s too big of an RNG hurdle and too much perceived effort for the reward. So I’m like you and I am stuck at my current kingdom power level.

[Kezef]

@Xtowers

So, let’s check out the hardest achievements from each of the last couple updates to see what percent of TrueAchievement users have unlocked them:

I’m pretty sure the “numerator” in this equation is the number of people who have earned the achievement. But what’s the “denominator”? Is it the number of people who have played the game since the update came out, or the number of people who have ever played their game and are being tracked by TrueAchievement?

Because the percentages you cite get a bit misleading if it includes somebody who played the game for a couple of minutes/hours/days/weeks back in 2019 and hasn’t touched it since. That’s a somebody who won’t ever get the new trophies, but gets counted as a player every bit as much as somebody who has played 8 hours/day since the game debuted.

[TheIdleOne]

@Kezef

But what’s the “denominator”? Is it the number of people who have played the game since the update came out, or the number of people who have ever played their game and are being tracked by TrueAchievement?

If you examine the site for DLC/title updates, its neither.

The denominator for DLC/title updates is based on how many people have unlocked at least one Achievement for said DLC/title update.

That being said, the closest point of reference you’ll be able to get is

from the July 20, 2020 title update. Quite humorously:

Only 4,522 can be bothered to reroll a task, which takes less effort. Maybe the rest of the players care that little for Achievements… or maybe people lost interest from the amazing direction the game is taking. Nah, must be people that don’t care about Achievements and love every task in a campaign to the point of not rerolling.

How many of that 4,522 are left from 2021 to 2022? couldn’t tell ya.:

From the Title Update on August 24, 2022:

1,682 players have gotten a Perfect Run from a Dungeon since August 24, 2022.

So 288 people in 6 months of a known nearly 1700+ player base is still a pretty awful rate. There’s probably more people that play that don’t have perfect runs, because they don’t play every day to try that many times.

It actually still says a lot that we’re down to around 5k tracked players (and likely more not tracked) in 2021 from its total lifetime count of 68k (and more that aren’t tracked) no matter how you spin it.

or you could just compare it to the Steam Player chart to get a similar result:

Gems of War - Steam Charts

I’m kinda impressed how many players they’ve lost on average from month to month in the last year.

---

And really I don’t get the point to call into question about his denominator, 288 people that unlocked it in 7 months is a really pathetic amount of people compared to whatever the exact active player base can currently possibly be. Unless, you want to question the current denominator is something incredibly small to the point that 288 people is a fair size of the population.

And after that, you can question if there’s more in the wild than the 288 that are being tracked. At the same time, feel free to question if there are more players in the wild not being tracked that haven’t unlocked it.

There’s already people with 4+ Hoard Mimics.

That really just means that most people don’t find RNG activities engaging enough to keep chasing to the point of getting even 1.

[Moriad]

Hmm. Hoard Mimics. I got one. My beloved other half has three. Neither of us set out to get them. We just do a lot of E12’s because: medals.

E12’s take me about 3x as long to complete as E1’s but give ~10x the mythstones. If you’re not concerned about medals, maybe E6’s are more efficient?

In any case, if you’re the average level 500-800 player, without many guild or kingdom bonuses, E6’s are going to take significantly more time than E1’s (as opposed to the same time for high level players), and E12’s may be a real struggle. You also won’t have kingdom mythstone bonuses. Just getting enough boss fights to overcome the RNG will be hard.

So it doesn’t surprise me that Hoard Mimics are rare. They’re not exactly… playable, either. I’m not sure why anyone would want one, except to raise kingdom levels, but getting mythics for that purpose via keys involves a boatload of RNG, too. So why all the fuss over Hoard Mimics specifically?

Don’t get me wrong: I am no fan of RNG. It took me months to get my first mythic. My hubby got one with his very FIRST gem key.

[RottenSis]

@RottenSis

My Dragon’s Claw power level upgrade is stuck, I now have TWO troop options to get it unstuck and I have absolutely no way to work toward resolving it.

First Option: Hoard Mimic – RNG upon RNG upon RNG with no way to earn the troop
Second Option: Diamantina – RNG upon RNG upon RNG with no way to earn Dragonite

This is why.