@Saltypatra was talking about the idea of giving us players special rewards during the current quarantine. On-stream, she said the team were talking about it, but hadn’t settled on anything yet.
I’m thinking one of the best encouragements to play Gems of War more would be an increase in Token drop rates. Specifically, one or both of the following:
A 10% bonus to the number of Mythstones that drop from Mini Boss battles.
Doubling the chance that Nysha Tokens will drop from Boss Chests (1.5 times for Anu and Aranaea, and reductions of the rest).
While I would actually love a 25% increase in the Mythstone drop rate, I think it might be too much of an advantage for those who happen to have more free time at the moment, unbalancing the game long-term.
The increased drop rate for the rarest Tokens, on the other hand, shouldn’t be too unbalancing, as the rates are already tiny. And it could always be repeated as a weekend event.
I like the idea of bonuses for explore. There was concern that giving us more sigils for anything would put too much pressure on people to play more than they want to in order to spend them, so the devs decided not to do that. Improving the token drops from explore just doesn’t have that problem - it gives us the incentive to play more rather than the obligation.
Also, having event periods with boosted drop rates for Anu/Nysha tokens would finally make explore actually tolerable and satisfying to play, which it really isn’t right now, so I think that would be a great way to go with that system just in general.
Quite a few games have these types of things, xx bonus to Xp or currency, probably once a month. Maybe apples and oranges, but if we are floating ideas at the request of the devs…
I’d agree with @Samyaza, an additional delve or two per day under quarantine and possibly tacking onto the idea re once periodic bonuses from @Evelyn. Make the bonus per day during any determined duration.
Probably actually give an incentive for more gold spending too…which wouldn’t be bad for the devs point of view., so wouldn’t effect the economy? I’d spend gold for sure!
It would be great to have some extra delves per day. It should benefit most players from those of us who got going late to newbies. Even two more would awesome. @igniteice yes but it got totally derailed and descended into a big argument.
This topic was discussed on last Wednesday’s Puzzle Quest stream. Sadly, extra delves per day are completely off-the table and a non-starter. It sounded like any bonuses or rewards probably needs publisher approval to be implemented. The general vibe seemed to be that much past an unplanned battlecrasher event was probably not going to happen, although not yet 100% set in stone.
What do you mean by this? The problem most here vent about is not the lack of things to spend gold on. Rather, the problem is often stated as either a lack of income to buy all the bonuses/things offered each week and/or a general resistance to spending gold on anything that isn’t Epic/Legendary tasks.
If you’re asking about increased gold generation rates for players to buy more things in the same timeframe/amount of playtime. then that’s probably an 99.9%+ “no” answer.
They could at least send thoughts and prayers, jeez. A battlecrasher’s worth even less than that, it just brings out, “Is the battlecrasher bugged?” posts on the forums when someone doesn’t get 10 in a row.
The answer we tend to get is ‘hurting the economy’ - so anything suggested is often argued that it doesn’t fit with devs designs.
Adding an extra delve would certainly encourage those trying faction teams to spend more in game gold. Maybe more gold expenditure from the player base, after all we are in terrible times and locked down, hence the thread based on request for suggestions.
The biggest criticism often levelled is time to do things. Agree, and of course the cost of events, but that’s a different topic.
Daily delves are quite possibly something, maybe amongst other things, that ordinarily players could skip when time is an issue.
The only reason it’s been mentioned is the current world state and time being greater at this particular moment.
For example, it cost me a million gold today just to raise circa 40 hoard. I’d do that more if there were more delves available. So for me, there’s no in game economic argument breaking the economy. I can see a reticence to give too many delves due to the events giving good income, but 1 extra daily delve isn’t really going to effect that in reality…
Indeed conversely it might make more players start doing them and then spending more in the potion faction events. I know I and others in my guild have storied faction delve exploits and this has led to other, previously disinterested members doing events, daily delves and faction attempts.
Additionally an extra delve per day could offset any perceived economic argument by granting more tokens, as per OP - example, players getting too much gold, so devs won’t allow it. An extra daily delve would likely cause some players to spend on hoard, which was the original gold sink, that hasn’t perhaps had the desired effect.
I hear they probably won’t do it, but at the same time it could be a good gesture.
They already made it clear that they have no intention of doing anything. Kafka already pretentiously replied to another person’s thread so I wouldn’t count on getting a response here. They can do whatever they want but if I were in their position I would be offering high value offers at an affordable price, and then donating that money to help the needs of people fighting in the front lines.
Video game companies are in a very special position right now in my opinion. Most everyone is stuck at home, and video games are one of our strongest forms of entertainment, as well as social interaction while being publicly isolated. At first thought you may not think the gaming industry is of much use at a time like this, but honestly they can be a very powerful asset by funneling money to those in need through their player communities.
This concept you stated is the cornerstone of the modern in-game economy in GoW. The economy’s foundation is that various activities are so time-intensive to complete for free, that a pain point is created that motivates players to spend gems in a relevant shop to accelerate that activity towards completion.
When evaluating whether a request ‘hurts the economy’, the question really is “Would implementing this request reduce chances that players would engage (or spend less) in a given activity’s shop?”.
With that in mind, let’s examine the the economic model surrounding delves.
What’s the pain point?: 3 delves per day max. Given a new faction starting as low as level 20, that’s 48 levels / 3 runs per day = up to 16 days to reach to level 500 + additional time for failed delves or forgotten runs per day.
What’s the solution?: A once-per-week opportunity to speed through delves (or advance farther than normally possible) with potion boosts via large amounts of gem spending.
So, the question here is whether an extra daily delve per day would impact this model.
48 runs / 4 runs = 12 per day + time add-ons, so a potential four day net savings.
Would this potential time savings be enough to motivate some players to not interact with the gem shop (or to a lesser degree), especially if the player doesn’t care about pure faction 500 runs? The answer is “possibly”. A 12 day timeframe might be acceptable for some players, whereas 16 days might be too long of a timeframe. Any reduced interaction with gem shops by players will potentially impair the game’s financial income, and becomes an almost certain “no” response.
And that’s before getting into the other pain point I’ve discussed previously of Chaos Shards and their diminishing returns conversion rates into relevant Treasures for high level Hoards. More runs per day equates into increased Chaos Shard generation rates outside of events.
I’m skeptical of these arguments in general. Epic Tasks effectively cut off the conversion of Gold → Mythics for most players. Those that can still reach Legendary Tasks very likely have accounts advanced enough that random Mythics are generally meaningless to them. Keep in mind that these guilds not only have to clear Epic Tasks, but they need further significant gold generation to actually leverage Legendary Tasks to a useful level. If a guild can get there, they are generating enough keys to pull monthly Mythics with high reliability anyways.
