Where did GoW go wrong?

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
1

Even though a bit negative, am wondering what people that aren’t (completly) happy with the game see as the starting point of all the problems we have nowadays.

Personally see the changing of the Overworld UI as the start of what made me not enjoy the game as much. While not that bad and bothered by it the changes to the troop UI that followed it did make things alot worse. Player feedback wasn’t taken serious fast enough and the fix wasn’t that great either.
It made me realise that the devs aren’t caring about accessibility at all. Which all spiralled further down with at first good updates, such as the PvP kingdoms, to shortly after it alot more confusing stuff that just wasn’t needed. All the while other things aren’t fixed or improved at all that deserve it more. Most simple example in the ToD event being able to ingame see which rooms are aleady cleared by guild members and the reward for it.

Remember to keep this civil and if possible mention what should improve.

2 Likes
2

The constant focus on rng. Didn’t like the first set of dragons? Here’s another more expensive set. Didn’t like cosmic rng? Here are some sentinels. Did not like the sentinels i hear you say? Here are some immortal troops and you will acquire the upgrades through yet more rng.

They say they listen to player feedback and this is really not the case, if i wasn’t in such an awesome guild i would have uninstalled a long time ago. A shame because i have had a lot of fun with this but i think it may be time to say goodbye

8 Likes
3

The doubling down on ‘unfair’ RnG mechanics for troops etc. The apparent lack of QA given everything releases with bugs (see todays PvP update). The optics of every time a player benefit bug is identified it seems to get hit fixed while detrimental bugs take ages ( if ever) to be resolved. The broken promises ( e.g. dragon targeting).

4 Likes
4

I really agree with you on these events. No matter what we say and request unfortunately no one listen. Not only not listen but doing the opposite and what everyone is asking to be removed, Many of my friends left already and that is really sad and heartbreaking loss to digest.

Hopefully one day they turn things around before it is too late. I love this game and I wish for it to stay and succeed.

4 Likes
5

I think things started to go wrong with the UI changes. Some people had to stop playing because of the visual changes. However, since I am not affected by them myself, I’m unable to speak for the problems with them. Players gave their feedback and the troop cards still look the same. I was able to adjust. Not every player had this luxury so they were forced to stop playing.

The PVP rework is when the bulk of the problems truly began, but the writing on the wall first happened with the weird appearance changes. My timeline of events is a bit jumbled, by the way. Maybe the appearance changes were introduced alongside the PVP rework and I forgot.

We mentioned our issues with the Gem Dragons. They then released Cosmic Dragons and Underspire Sentinels. There is more RNG with Immortals so I’m struggling here. Am I supposed to hear something else when RNG keeps being emphasized with updates? There’s seemingly a double-down approach every time we complain and mention we don’t like this or that. On a related note, some people are still chasing after the Hoard Mimic Mythic from Explore.

Hopefully, RNG is just a theme for the year and updates will be much better after Guild Wars makes its return. Unfortunately, I doubt it’ll be what players want when they say, “Bring Guild Wars back.” If anything, it’ll lack the charm that players explained made Guild Wars so great for them and their guilds.

I wouldn’t say the game is dead, but as always, the lack of communication is harming the health of the game overall. I’m hoping to see the game recover and continue to exist for years to come.

We’ll see how my response ages. I’m not convinced it’ll age well.

7 Likes
6

The amount of bugs in each update went up in the last multiple years. So too did the monetization.

Losing Salty was a big loss to Gems of War.

9 Likes
7

I will say that this was the first thing that really bothered me on a core level. The fact that whatever “they” makes these decisions didn’t care about people getting migraines and worse - just really rubbed me the wrong way and made me start to see things very differently. There have been plenty of other things since then, but that was the thing that, for me, was the most disquieting. I’ve been hoping for something to restore my faith but…IDK, it feels like some kind of shift in management/decision-making - something feels fundamentally different.

5 Likes
8

Epic Tasks… it’s all been down hill since then.

2 Likes
9

Oh my gosh, where did it go wrong?

I quit last week and loving it. I did log in though, but I won’t be doing Tuesday as I’m go away without Ipad and that will be the end.

What did GoW do right?

It did a lot of things right.

Guild Wars - it was a good competitive system for players wanting challenge and pressure. Imperfect of course due to bugs, cost us 2 B1 wins, 1 before I was GL and 1 after. Made better by discord and community.

Casual PvP was right. 2 XP being the winner for that.

Explore change was much better than old explore. Not a fan of the nag screens which was all that was, genie and the other one, but the merchant is a good concept, maybe needs to be more game tailored to the receiver of the offer, not generic stuff.

Team codes - excellent.

Hmm now I’m starting to struggle.

Delves were a nice challenge, the delve Tuesday event is horrific for workers, needs to be changed.

50 gem change class drop.

Listening and reverting changes to Sunspear.

Where it went wrong?

Hmm, I think we start with the offer system, it was so lazy and so poorly implemented.

We can then revert back to the first community manager who actually threatened the playerbase to not complain or else, or even ask about things. That was smoothed over by radio silence, but lasting damage done.

That started the slippery slope of radio silence, gaslighting and false hope.

That changed my approach to paying. I left at Vip 10, almost Vip 11, it made a huge difference to me and stopped me paying to contribute and support eventually.

Going to Digital Bros made a difference. Generosity ended, fair enough and profit boosted. All effort dropped for profiteering. Minimal effort, maximum gain. Consequently the game is full of bugs, simple issues that they won’t fix in the pursuit of profit. Copy and paste troops and traits and events, even on forum posts - they earn 17 times the revenue a year than they did 5 years ago… How can it have got worse?

World Event sucked away so many players. I can think off the top of my head a few who purely left because of it, exceptionally lazy design, utter boredom 99% of the time.

Medals not being saved by team. Omg how is it still not done?

Aranaea medal useless - come on.

Team slots for currency payments - warcoins.

No response over offers.

Adventure board - yep, has to be same for all, yet all throughout the game there are offers to pay to get faster progress.

Books of Deeds - madness - just overkill on demands.

Writs - yep, writing writs task 10 writs.

Soulforge mythics - needs 50% boost.

I cba to list any more, you get the drift. I would say, I had 100k minor fire traitstones, 200k common ingots and nearly 70k maps, 12 million glory, I can have almost 1k gold medalled troops,50 million souls still (!) . 140k gems, 230 million gold, 7k cursed runes and so much junk it’s untrue.

The more recent issues are obvious such as Dragon eggs and stuff, no need to comment.

PvP gold marks/immortals and all the fluff associated → all, all that stuff bar a standing 10k gems is obsolete. Orbs borderline obsolete.

Gems of War is a fabulous game, great thought put into it, being ruined by greed. Not just basic greed, overwhelming greed and it will get worse.

Good Luck!

21 Likes
10

I understand all of the issues being mentioned. They should be fixed, but it seems that devs are too invested in finding new ways to add more currencies and more ways to monetize almost everything to have time or will to address the players’ concerns.

I have been playing since 2015 and I uninstalled the game three times. Last time I didn’t play for almost two years, because of the overwhelming amount of things to do daily in this game. It’s just too much for people that work and have a life and family, which I assume is probably 80-90% of the player base. You have to either do this game for living (like creating Youtube videos for GoW) or have absolutely no obligations/work/family/etc to be on top of everything and play all events. For me, it’s just too much and devs just keep adding more. Underspire, Dungeon and Delves are daily tasks, and on top of that faction assaults, pet rescues, class trials, and then World events, Journeys, Season events plus PVP. You have to spend 8 hours a day playing GoW just to do events and explore farming. When I play this game, I feel like I am going to work, and after some time it feels more like a chore than enjoyment of playing the game. I feel like I will be uninstalling the game again, not long from now.

8 Likes
11

For a company so focused on monetizing, it seems absurd that they have allowed themselves to lose so many paying customers over this, without remedying the obvious issue that cannot be mentioned “or else”.

Silos, I guess?
:person_shrugging: :vulcan_salute:

4 Likes
12

You can also add that time when their response to a detailed feedback post basically included - too long, didn’t read, stop bothering.

10 Likes
13

The focus on pvp

14

Indeed.

The problem in my retired view is;

1 There are so many players paying €$£ preverbal peanuts almost daily that don’t care about much.

2 Then there are those players who consider paying to progress, happy to contribute.

3 Then those who pay because they feel it essential. Probably don’t like doing so because of issues and bugs but 2 dollars here and there is nothing to the individual, but there might a lot of these players.

Devs like all 3 of those types. The first they love but not as much as that player is addicted to the game.

2 they keep onside by addiction and feeling they are doing their bit.

3 they get what they can, totting up to a fair proportion of revenue.

4 Maybe a 4th player type - there are those that hate paying but when pressed might make the odd purchase. They loathe paying but do it if it’s a thing they have to have regardless. An example might have been the Medusa campaign pass.

5 Those that will never pay.

My issue with the monetisation is the customer service has gotten worse, yet the gross revenue is so much higher, that it can’t possibly be worse than it was. It is.

The game has more bugs and the excuses given are ridiculous. The edict from on high is fix nothing until you make more money. It’s so obvious a blind person can see it. However we are always led to believe it’s going to get fixed. It doesn’t.

I made this post yesterday when I saw that the 3xp bug wasn’t fixed. There is no excuse for not fixing that, none.

For devs if it costs, don’t bother unless it breaks monetisation.

The customer service is below zero in Gems. That’s because they don’t need to do anything because of 1 above and to some extent player type 2. 3 tops them off.

Until players stop their addiction to spend it will only get worse.

More people will see what’s wrong and I see today VP reset. It’s too much now and I just can’t support by playing.

They don’t even need any customer satisfaction, they just want money in. It flies in the face of business, you are nothing without your customers, but these models work differently, so no need.

The only way it changes is not only do players leave, they protest with their wallets, those still staying and make noise. That’s never worked so far but we have reached a nadir imho.

It’s sad, for me it’s been a great experience and especially the past 3 years with discord, alliance leadership and friends, and even enemies in guild wars.

I’ve left all behind because I can stand no more.

9 Likes
15

Lol yes, shame on me for forgetting that one… :smiley:

16

Immortals if full blown pay to win. Once the last spear weapon is released in the next TOD, I am done.

17

As this rash of horrendous updates placed me on the fence as to whether I should even keep playing this game, I’ve been thinking a lot about Sid Meier’s quote, that good games are a “series of interesting decisions.”

I started to ask myself, when was the last interesting decision this game set forth?

Team-building? Maybe in the early game. Once you’ve got the standard crutches – Wand of Stars, Elementalist, Stellarix, Zuul’goth/Ctharrasque, Takshaka, Beetrix/Gobtruffle, Irongut – building teams becomes autopilot.

Move-by-move gem matches? Again, maybe early game, but with the crutches mentioned above, most game flow is quick, mindless, and completely uninteresting.

Team restrictions? Maybe for some people this is where the game shines. Building a team from a limited pool, iterating and refining it over multiple battles, working to counter weaknesses and compensate for, say, a powerful mythic you’re missing, would probably be the most gratifying part of the game for the sort of person who works to optimize their builds.

There’s a problem, though. We’re not working with a set of thousands of carefully-balanced, intricately-synergized troop/weapon/class choices. I’d characterize our options more like 1% overpowered, 4-5% useful, 4-5% conditional, and ~90% trash.

And let’s be honest, it takes a certain mindset. Most players aren’t built to savor team-building. For most of us (and I say “us” because I’ll be honest and count myself among them), team-building restrictions are not a satisfying hurdle to surmount – they’re an annoyance. An impediment to fun, not a source of it. Most of us would just as soon slap together or copy the nearest thing we can find to the “meta,” get our daily quota of fights over with, and move on.

So what makes up the bulk of our gameplay loop? Best I can assess, it amounts to three things, none of which lend themselves to Sid’s “interesting decisions” paradigm:

  • Well-trodden formulas. (Meta teams. Pure-faction delves. Tower of Doom for anyone but the guild scout.) Decisions can’t be “interesting” if any departure from an optimized path only worsens your experience.

  • Uncontrollable RNG mechanics. (Chest/dragonite/sentinel rewards. Deed book colors from gold marks. “Perfect” dungeon runs. Skull cascades. Horde mimic. Tower of Doom for the guild scout.) Throw the dice and live with the consequence is not an “interesting decision,” because it’s not a decision in the first place.

  • Mindless grind. (Pretty much everything else.) Here we may have decisions involved, often dozens of them, but even taken collectively they don’t add up to anything interesting.

Oddly enough, when I was mulling over what I would call the last “interesting decision” the game gave me, the only recent thing that sprang to mind is Merchant and Angel appearances. Even those are either easy or pointless 90-95% of the time, but once in a while you get an actual tough call to make. (Pet food for a negligible amount of gold, or two deeds for 150 gems? Would I benefit more from the angel’s epic vault key or 15 dragonite? A hundred writs, or three celestial traitstones?) Funny that the only thing I found interesting in all these recent updates, had nothing to do with fundamental gameplay.

Above all else, I wish the devs would realize that deciding whether to play until you get bored, or to force yourself to keep playing long after that, is NOT AN INTERESTING DECISION.

And I’m not saying grind can’t make for good games, but here’s the key: if you want people to stick with a grindy game, you need to make the rewards meaningful and satisfying.

My partner has been slogging through explore 12’s for months now, over 800 mythic bosses since we’ve been keeping count, and still the horde mimic encounter refuses to yield the troop card. The most frustrating part is that, since everything is pure RNG, nothing we’ve done amounts to a single modicum of progress. We’re no closer and no further from obtaining her achievement than someone running their first E12 ever.

Scrounging weeks of dungeons and gnomes for dragonite only to see it squandered on yet another worthless duplicate, is neither meaningful nor satisfying.

Grinding PVP for burning chests only for your work to evaporate into icons and silver marks, is neither meaningful nor satisfying.

Paying gems/lanterns to search out every dead end in Underspire and come away with zero treasure sentinels, week after week, is neither meaningful nor satisfying.

Anyway, for the initial question of where GoW went wrong – I don’t know a specific point, but I’m thinking it was sooner than most of us would suppose.

17 Likes
18

How the heck am I supposed to get the Gold Marks now to buy Dragonite?
I dont even get gold rewards anymore, I remember it used to be like 11/20/15 double like every day!

If they are going to cap Gold rewards for the day, the clearly state it.

1 Like
19

Some great points.

I wish I could give your partner one of my 14 Hoard Minics. :hugs:

2 Likes