As awful as most of the recent changes have been, GoW still is muuuuch better than that censored, censored and censored again called Puzzle Quest 3 … 
5 Likes
You’re not wrong, but also that’s not saying much. I’ve never played a game that did such a bad job of explaining its game mechanics to beginners. It’s like it relied on people having played Puzzle Quest 1 & 2 (which I didn’t) and they just couldn’t be bothered with anyone actually new.
Maybe they’ve fixed it since, but first impressions matter and if they can’t be bothered to explain their game, I can’t be bothered to play it.
4 Likes
Problem with that at least on Steam is that the newer game is getting destroyed by the nearly 10 year old game. Last month the old game 1,455 more players than the newer game. Unless the smaller playerbase is full of millionaires I don’t see PQ3 making anywhere near what GoW makes.
It was the same when R* released Red Dead Redemption 2 with GTA being 5 years old. GTA still recieved updates but they were smaller and less frequent than RDR however RDR never really took off so GTA updates got bigger again and RDR dropped the number of updates each year. 2022 GTA was 9 while RDR was 4 and R* wanted more resources for GTA 6 and they dumped RDR and stopped updating the game. GTA will be 11 in October and a new update has been announced.
If anything has to go I would think even with their ages that PQ3 will go. R* dumped a 4 year old game for a 9 year old game.
7 Likes
December 2023 was the last GW. Between then and now the game has lost 236 players but it will also have lost players that disliked the new PvP and some that have just been playing for a while that don’t enjoy the game anymore. At the very most 236 players no longer play because of GW but it is probably more like 100 or less. Of course this is just Steam but Xbox, Playstation and Switch will be similar numbers to Steam or possibly smaller.
1 Like
On Xbox GOW global chat 001, I’ve seen a multitude of people say that they played PQ3 for a while but ultimately quit that game. Granted, I don’t know how big the GOW and PQ3 playerbases are on Xbox, but from what I’ve seen I’d be shocked if PQ3 ever overtook GOW in terms of number of players.
My best guess is that PQ3 will get shut down before GOW. As much as IP2 and 505 would like for PQ3 to become their next big cash cow, it’ll be hard for that to happen with such a small playerbase relative to GOW.
7 Likes
I’d imagine they’re funneling most of the money Gems of War makes to try to make Puzzle Quest 3 work, and justifying it by using the same ideas for PQ3 to use on Gems of War updates…
Naming sense, Puzzle Quest 3 is their actual pride and joy and Gems of War was probably supposed to be a silly spin-off that wasn’t supposed to last as long as it has until they could actually make PQ3.
5 Likes
I wish we could see stats for players on mobile, as that’s the platform these games are really designed for. The Steam charts are good, but it only represents a portion of the playerbase.
12 Likes
Digital bros publishes the annual gross revenue (€) of their games by 31st march
GOW:
2023 3‘658k
2024 2‘752k
PQ3:
2023 250k
2024 655k
PQ3 definitely is growing.
1 Like
Based solely on the report. If I’m a stockholder and had to choose between Gems Of War or Puzzle Quest 3 in regards to investment. I’m buying stock in Gems Of War.
3 Likes
I’m not seeing the positive that you are for GoW in that statement. Although PQ3 only grew by a relatively small amount (although by a large %) from the same time the year before, it was the only F2P offering that demonstrated growth.
What am I missing?
I would hope it grew at least for last year… they officially released on May 30, 2023, which should see a bump in player base count and subsequently, money.
2 Likes
Not all positive trends can be assessed as positive enough. Meanwhile a decline in profit can be expected but overall still a positive number when factoring in cost to sustain.
Gems of War is, was, and will continue to be the bread winner for 505 Games in their free to play sector. If they shut down the servers for Gems of War at this current time then Puzzle Quest 3 would shut down not longer after. If Puzzle Quest 3 shut down then Gems of War would stay the same or improve in profit. Therefore my money is on Gems Of War.
6 Likes
Hey all,
Just wanted to let you know I’ve read this thread.
We aren’t concerned about the current health of Gems of War, the entire games industry has seen a downturn post-covid due to people going back to their regular lives and increased cost of living etc. but Gems of War has remained successful and is here to stay for a long time yet!
However, we always want to increase installs and player retention, more installs and better retention = longer game life and more fun for everyone because it’s an online game with guilds and cooperative and PVP content, so the more the merrier!
So we are taking note of your concerns and reasons for why your guild mates are leaving by listening when we’re told the reasons and also assessing it with the game analytics.
We’re also very aware of the broader feedback and concerns you’ve all been sharing with us, for example about PVP, Alliances, the current meta PVP teams, Journey events and Dragon Eggs just as some examples!
Regarding the communication stuff, I want to check some things with the team before I post about the comms specifically.
13 Likes
I appreciate the response. This week we had a big gold dump in hopes of improving moral. 700 legendary tasks were done without pulling a single mythic troop. I assume RNG is the same so the bad luck is mainly due to less guilds than ever before doing legendary tasks.
Guild tasks need to be adjusted to the current state of play and not aimed at the 1% that crushes them weekly.
Guild tasks, epic tasks, and legendary tasks need to be kept updated with all the resources needed to advance in Gems of War. To the best of my knowledge, tasks have only been adjusted once in the almost decade long existence. Meanwhile the amount of resources added to the game has multiplied by at least 30.
19 Likes
please tell me the Underspire Sentinel Drop Rates are part of the awareness…
21 Likes
I’ll be direct here. It doesn’t help in any way that you are aware of the broader feedback and concerns. From our perspective, there isn’t any difference to you being entirely oblivious to what is going on. Picking just two examples from your list:
1.) Dragon Eggs. We are told roughly two years ago you are looking into ways to make this a less frustrating experience, by allowing us to target specific dragons. We’ve asked multiple times about the status, we’ve never received any answer. Not a single word. I believe we can agree that two years of actively refusing to communicate sends a very strong message how much you actually care about our feedback and concerns.
2.) Journey. This got broken half a year ago, when the only thing making this event reasonably playable got taken away. After truckloads of feedback and some hefty forum censoring to get rid of inconvenient opinions, miniscule things got changed, which didn’t really return Journey to a much more playable state. I’ll skip the details, you’ve received and subsequently ignored our feedback on that often and long enough, another iteration is unlikely to make any difference.
I’ll also be direct here. Word are cheaps, especially when it’s the same empty words every couple of months. However, it’s actions that count, and your company keeps doing zero in that regard. THIS is the main reason why people are leaving. It’s not due to the game having so many frustrating parts, it’s because we keep giving feedback about those frustrating parts, getting told twice a year you’d do something about those frustrating parts, then nothing ever happening. I’m afraid you’ll find no game analytics to assess this with, this is really mismanagement within your company, which unfortunately means nothing at all will improve.
And just to highlight the all talk, zero action thing once more, any plans yet on when those special campaign pet rescues are going to run? Those we got promised the last dozen or so campaigns and haven’t seen a single one of yet?
29 Likes
Pvp focused updates a bad move. Its fake pvp if it was live yeah but its not.
Get those wrapped up asap and update treasure hunt or something if you want players to quit leaving.
3 Likes
In addition to all of that, we are STILL waiting for gold mark compensation from when they forgot to turn them on the first week of the update. Again…nothing but silence.
4 Likes
Long and short of it is. If it affects devs money it gets sorted asap. If it benefits players ( targeted dragon eggs and fixing sentinels ) then the player base can go and whistle. I would love to be proven wrong but sadly i don’t think I will. Stop spending money until they listen
4 Likes
A very accurate summary of the past 5+ years: the only noticeable change has been more bans/locked threads/deletions since everything became a callout.
11 Likes