After more than a year now since the 3.4.0 update added Pets to the game, I can say with certainty that the system should be majorly retooled.
As a very late-game player (Level 1235 last I checked), pets are quickly becoming a major roadblock to my progress in increasing my kingdom power. Currently, 7 different kingdoms require me to level a pet to level 20 in order to continue improving my tributes and get better stat bonuses.
However, this progress has been aggravatingly slow, mainly due to the fact that the vast majority of my pet events occur when I am busy, working, or even asleep.
This system is the only one in the game which puts such a harsh time restraint on players; I canât wait until the evening to do a pet event, I need to do it now or I miss out on the progress towards completing those kingdoms.
I feel like the Guild aspect of pets is a cool and fun concept, that encourages players to compete in PvP for not just their own benefit, but for the benefit of their guildmates as well. However, these time constraints, especially on such an important aspect of late game progression, are quite frustrating. One suggestion could be that each Pet Gnome killed grants all guildmates a sigil, that can be spent to unlock a random pet event.
Please consider reworking this system, for the benefit of those players who arenât online 24/7/365.
P.S. Also mix cosmetic pets back into the normal system, waiting a year after the pet was originally released should be more than enough.
Said this from the beginning. My concerns were kind of brushed aside. Granted, pets werenât needed for kingdom power yet, but just the way you interact with the system period is extremely harsh in terms of commitment. Having things be progression locked just makes it worse.
Inb4 âthey want you to spend gemsâ. There are a couple problems with that:
Spending gems to get a pet to upgrade a kingdom is severely economically negative. Spending gems to get just one copy of one pet costs more gems than you would earn back with increased tributes over a year (assuming 16 daily collects, every day) for any set of kingdom upgrade tiers bottlenecked by pet level. Between 10 star (no pet upgrades needed) and 20 stars (not even remotely possible right now, and has much more severe bottlenecks if you wanted to get that juicy stat point anyway), the only reason to upgrade kingdoms is to increase economy from tributes, soâŚ
I canât even spend gems if Iâm not there and available during the hour the pet appears.
And the solution is not âmore fixed Wednesday style rescuesâ. The incidence of those that are just cosmetic pets or repeats of something that was just featured two months ago is way too high.
I said from the beginning that there needs to be a way to manually trigger these, even if still subject to RNG within a given set (but hopefully a smaller set that every pet), with resources collected from the pet rescues so that you could eventually pair down into the pets that you need based on your average playtime and you could still interact with the system if you had âbad luckâ. Jewels are now heavily used by the âold weaponsâ in soulforge, so that leaves pet food⌠neither is really ideal. I like your âsigilâ idea better, even if the triggerd âsigilâ resuce was self-only and it took 10 âsigilsâ to do it (so as not to be recursive).
Thatâs the point, they are supposed to be a major roadblock. You can also spend gems at the pet shop during the event to get more copies, which is what they want you to do. Needing to mythic X troops, and needing to pay to get the invasion / bounty / godslayer troop to mythic is another gem sink road block.
Which again is what they want you to do. They give away for free way too many gems, and some players are way too rich with 50,000 plus gems. But instead of nerfing hourly tribute, which they probably should do for mobile users where it is too easy, they invent some gem sinks to help drain excess gems.
Ahhh is it not fair that we get codes too?
No one made you start an account on the Xbox instead of Mobile/PCâŚI guess they should nerf Switch tribute as well. And I hope your stance doesnât change the second youâre able to access the Xbox GoW on your phone or Mobile device.
The devs âbalanceâ things in mind with mobile / steam players who can collect tribute on the go. Console players are much more limited in that and collect far fewer of the same amount of hourly tributes. Codes annoy me too, they gave away for free my last missing weapon, which I just paid $5 for in a flash offer. My wife plays gems on steam, so I enter the codes for her when I get them.
If my main incentive to upgrade kingdoms is better tributes, and the only thing I really want from better tributes is more gems, and doing so costs more gems than Iâll ever get back, what is my incentive, as a person that is using my brain, to do so? How many gems I have is irrelevant. Regardless of if this is what they âwant me to doâ, theres no incentive there if you are looking at the big picture⌠thats the problem with it being only âgems in, less gems outâ. At some point, 20 star will be available and it will be âgems in, stats outâ, but even that is a bad trade over âgems in, get powerful toolâ. It has to be âeffort in, gems outâ or âgems in, unique thing outâ to be a good incentive. A system where you donât want to progress is just as bad as a system where you canât. And a sink I can avoid by doing some basic math isnât a good sink.
Back to the topic at hand, even if I wanted to spend gems, I still canât if the dang rescue doesnât appear or if Iâm not present when it does. They can still try to incentivize negative economy by allowing âcraftableâ pet resuces using some stuff you get from triggering pet rescues (tokens instead of white pet food from the gnomes, for example) by then adding high value resources to the combine (diamonds, gems, jewels). But they arenât even doing this. You just⌠canât.
The point is, the current system wants you to be available in such a way that no system before or since even attempts to get you to interact with the game and hard locks progression unless you do this, with no route forward, as there is no guarantee youâll even get the pet you need on a Wednesday rescue. Unlike every single other thing that can progression block you (besides stuff that hasnât been put in game yet) - troops, troop upgrades, weapons, weapon upgrades, kingdom levels, champions and champion levels, each of which has their own potential benefits if you choose to develop them independently and every day you play you can inch closer to this eventual goal, even if you canât get the thing right away (get a few jewels, get a few diamonds, get some ingots⌠all these move you closer to your long term goal). But pet rescues donât have this kind of mechanism at all. Great if you are trying to burn people out, I guess, but it is currently very out of place and not a good system.
The game started on mobile or PC and will therefore always be looked at there to keep the balance for all platforms.
Keep in mind that your guild dominates GW on Xbox. PC and mobile have vastly more competition and not everyone is able to easily screen share. So itâs hard for me to take your complaint seriously when youâre sitting on 40k gems and I just collected 9 gems from my hourly tribute.
I paid 5$ at least 15 times for the weekly useless weapon to be a completionist,
and to support the devs with money. That was my incentive. Now we have a new incentive, kingdom level progression.
24 hr pet rescue every week, and not getting pets triggered regularly is being in an inactive guild problem. Iâm in an active xbox guild (must play from home) and pet rescues are not a problem.
Guys at some point you accidentally closed the thread with the âUK and AWR yell at each other about their egosâ title and ended up in one about the pet system, which disproportionately favors people who can play 24/7.
Pet system also disproportionately favors mobile users since even at work they can spend a few gems at the shop to get a pet. Itâs not can play, but who has access.
