The real reason Casual PvP's gold was nerfed

I’m pretty sure Salty explained it somewhere but it wasn’t front and center. If it wasn’t Salty it was someone else who represents the devs. I forget the exact details but it was something like this:

If all you do is Casual PvP and never ranked, you don’t get any of the revenge/whatever battles with increased rewards. But gaining PvP rank tells matchmaking to give you stronger opponents, which also affects Casual matchmaking because of course it does.

So smart people would fight 1 Ranked PvP battle to win so they’d get in the Revenge pool, then lose a few battles to look “weak” to the matchmaking system. Then they’d fight non-stop casual PvP, using cheap refreshes to seek either very easy or Revenge battles to get more gold. (I didn’t even think Revenge battles worked in Casual? Maybe they did it because losses are negative points. I don’t know. It’s all messed up.)

Anyway, the obvious problem is your actions in Ranked could affect Casual, so the obvious solution is to make all PvP fights pay out worse rewards. That way nobody’s happy.

#weareinthebusinessoffun #workingasintended

Since patch went live, I searched for ways to boost gold. We have troops, and teams, that do just that.

Using this I’m making more gold than prior to 4.7, because before the patch I didn’t prioritize gold boosting.

I’m using this not only to maximize my gold per match, in modes I can, but also as a way to quickly level classes.

We have options. In fact, if you wanted too, with two Cedrics and a Greed you could boost gold to 300/300, or with Merchant Prince 325/325. Those options might be slower though, so I personally stick with Egg Thief.

Though in my daily delve I use the Merchant Prince with two Cedrics, since it helps maximize my daily delve gold.

I do really appreciate a post I can paste to people to highlight a good way to set up the Skeleton Key team. The part of my post you’ll like: why are you running Oracle instead of Thief? My understanding was Thief made it more streamlined and dangerous.

(Here’s a copyable companion to the post: [6498,6629,1214,6600,3048,2,2,1,2,1,2,0,14010])

The part this kind of misses is I do wish I could quickly farm classes in PvP and get as much gold as I used to. It’s not like I’m losing gold, but I’ve been farming more Explore too. Really my deal on this topic is:

  • I didn’t have to make this choice before, PvP was for trophies + gold + class XP and everyone knew Explore/Arena were better at some of those things.
  • I don’t like this particular choice because I liked being able to do those 2 at once.
    • In return, I wasn’t farming medals, which I arguably should focus on harder than class XP.
  • The devs didn’t say they did this for economy balance. It was to fix an exploit that affected Casual PvP.
    • It is :poop: that Casual and Ranked affect each other, always has been.
    • The devs have had 5 years to fix that, this isn’t the first exploit of this form.
    • I’m pretty sure their stated reason is :poop: because they don’t want to call it an economy rebalance.

So that last one is the angle I’m going to gripe until the cows, who have come home, stop depositing :poop: because they don’t want to say “economy rebalance”. I sense, as is usual, a lot of the steam’s been let out of opposition due to time.

So I’ll see you next release when something in Explore has to be nerfed because they’re “fixing an exploit in Arena”.

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I’m currently trying to finish Oracle Class to 100, sure there are way better hero classes for the Key team, but I’m trying to maximize gold production, as well as level a class. Two birds, one stone.

And as I said, with the gold boost from Cedric, I’m making much more per match than prior to 4.7, because I wasn’t prioritizing gold boosting.

It’s working out great for me, because more gold means less worry about meeting my guild requirements, and the other gold sinks such as Monthly Delves.

I look for solutions as a problem solver, I don’t like complaining about problems I can actively solve, and in doing so, I hope to help others as well.

OK I thought it might be “for leveling” but I’m always curious if there’s some weird skill interaction I didn’t notice.

We sort of get that 4.7 is your favorite update and it’s the most fun you’ve been having in your entire life. That’s still not quite an argument as to whether this one achievement was a good idea or not. You’re not going to get a trophy for making every post 2/3 about how much you like the game, just like I won’t for making 2/3 of my content about what I want improved.

Maybe that’s a part you don’t get about me. I can bitch about things I like. Part of my job’s always involved going over what we have and thinking about or asking what our customers want. We get paid a lot more if we can do what they want before they ask. So while I’m proud of what I build, I’m always prepared to throw it away if I get a strong customer report it was wrong.

If I thought GoW was bad I’d just leave. It only takes me 2-3 days to tire of a game I don’t actually like. There’s too many other things to do. The things I complain about the most tend to be the things I like the best, because they’re the ones I’m most invested in thinking about making better. I can’t post on the forums at work, but I spend about an hour a day thinking about the posts I want to make. When I’m playing modes, I ask myself which parts aren’t fun. Then I try to think about how they could be fun.

So the reason I aggressively push back against you is part of the conversation above, but you overlooked it because it was stated harshly. It’s not right that only the people who praise a thing enjoy it. The harshest critics are often also the most passionate players.

If the core of your argument were true, we could just delete all negative reviews of things because “those are people who don’t care about it anyway”. But that’s preposterous, we’re supposed to read the criticism and decide if it’s based on things we agree with. That’s why I consider your arguments weak so far: it’s just based on “I like it” as opposed to something stronger like “here’s the math, this seems like an attainable goal”. (Though I think you did that math somewhere else, it got lost in all the back and forth.)

I don’t want to see GOW go down the toilet either. Your approach is “Let’s talk about the parts of the boat that aren’t leaking, we can seal off the others.” My approach is “Let’s look for leaks and tools to fix them.” We can work together, but if we stay opposed we won’t accomplish as much.

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4.7 is my favorite patch, but only because I play a lot and before 4.7 my playtime wasn’t reflected on the guild roster. With trophies added to everything, I can now generate thousands of trophies a week, rather than 1,000 or less.

That’s not important to everyone, but it is to me.

I was hurt by 4.7, I always did casual pvp for my gold production, and rank 12 explore. So, when I saw how poorly my team was doing in cpvp in terms of gold making, I started looking at ways to help level classes and make good gold.

The Skeleton key team seemed to be a sound fix, and after using it a few hours I noticed my gold per hour was up by a lot vs pre-4.7.

I have no idea why you feel utilizing tools we all have access to, means I am in someway praising 4.7. I’m trying to find ways to help the situation, and since I like leveling a class quickly and I like making more gold per match, I simply experimented until I was satisfied.

You can look for all the holes you want in this ship and post about all the holes you find, I’d rather play the game and make the most of the time I put in myself, which is why I mentioned I look for solutions to a problem, instead of accepting a problem and doing nothing but complain about it…

Prior to 4.7, most people had good soul farming teams, by boosting souls per match, and I’m sure those teams still function the same. I just took that concept and switched it to gold boosting, and the results really surprised me.

I could have made millions more a month had I used Cedric/Greed prior to 4.7, but I was complacent. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

Can we go just one post without you phrasing my argument the way you want it and putting it in my mouth? I praise this particular effort but can you do it “to help people” instead of “to spite me”?

I did try that key team and I’m curious if you do lower levels just for gold yield? I played at 10 and it was a little clunkier than I wanted but solid, more or less what I expected. I think I’m going to keep using my less-gold-but-more-fun teams at 12 but it’s good to know a gold farming trick if I ever get in that mood.

I farm Broken Spire Rank 6 with my Skeleton key team, also the daily Adventure Board, Daily Dungeon, and casual pvp. I switch over to rank 12 throughout my playtime though to help get better tokens, but I use a less gold friendly team because I like faster rank 12.

It’s great to farm rank 6 with key team to meet any gold requirements. It’s fast and safe, it’s also great to help level classes, though I do wish we got 2 class EXP per battle in Explore.

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Aha, I don’t even have to try that out to believe it, it lines up exactly with what I felt like rank 10 with SK taught me.

In the end it’s really just a shift from “PvP is gold + class XP” to “PvP is mostly for class XP now”. I feel like the trophy changes confirm that, even giving 2 trophies to some modes has seriously lessened the need for farming.

So a kernel of your argument across several threads I agree with is, “while the dust settles it’s scary, but there sure are obvious routes for farming still.” I’m still going to miss getting class XP and gold out of PvP. :wink: Can’t take the desire to multitask away from me.

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I agree. I was only trying to say I make more gold now and not less with 4.7, but like you said, class exp is a bit slower at 1 per win rather than 2 battling mostly explore.

Maybe they will up class exp to 2 in all modes, and add pet gnomes to all modes where gnomes pop up, that would solve almost everything (in my opinion).

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But 4.7 isn’t the reason you’re making more gold. Optimizing your farm team for gold is the reason. 4.7 has still reduced your potential gold production.
And by optimizing for gold, you possibly sacrificed something else, such as speed.
PS. I agree getting trophies for all game modes is a great positive for 4.7.

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That’s all valid. I can only post my results, and though I am making more gold, it’s absolutely true that prior to 4.7 I used faster killing groups without concern for optimizing Gold production. Using Key team is a compromise, yet not one that feels like a sacrifice. And it’s better to have options, rather than be limited, so if killing faster feels more efficient, I say go do that. I was only trying to present a solid way for people to boost their gold earnings, while still having a valid way to level classes.

LOL To make it fair, raise the Guild member cap to 40 or 50 if you’re gonna nerf the gold income.

Gold is nerfed…FACT. anyone with ETS completed will tell you that. So the option becomes gold farm team in explore. Boring AF. 4.7 has some nice touches (eg showing dmG boost in delves) but this info isn’t available on other modes. I’ve noticed significantly less gold despite being top 300 pvp. The screw is turning and all free to play types like me are gonna get left behind. Cash only will allow you to keep up now.

Forget Casual PVP.

Ranked PVP is broken.

It’s Monday and where we get Tier 1 (and normally busy) and it’s the same team over and over and over again. Daughter of Ice, Drowned Sailor, Zully and Jar of Eyes.

Everyone in explore chasing the ‘Infinity Medals’.

Is this the masterplan to make it such an incredibly poor experience so that when next patch comes we are begging for something new?

It’s absolutely depressing. :frowning:

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To be honest. Ever since I was told I was Exploiting the game. I haven’t touched casual PvP. Had to do ranked last week due to GW, I’ll still get tier 1 at some point this week.
Nerfs I can endure because the devs are in charge of the bank that is GoW Gold. But to be basically be told I’ve been stealing from their bank
… I’m still having a hard letting that sink in. I’m still playing just as much as before 4.7…I still love the game… But it’s entirely possible to love something and not enjoy it as much as you used to.

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Gold has been Nerfed all the way around not just casual PVP. Now that no one needs INGOTS you are getting flooded with them. Delve gold Nerf seems the worst to me.

What delve gold nerf? I saw 1 post from you before about it, and someone responded stating they didn’t see any difference.

I haven’t noticed a change to delve gold. I don’t think they’d change the gold payout without announcing it, given recent controversies.