Explore needs to be made efficient again, the way it was before the change.
The following needs to be changed:
I shouldn’t have to select my difficulty on every single explore run. Having to click on the difficulty, scroll all the way to 12, and confirm it is a phenomenal time waster. Put a “start round” button on the Explore screen to give the player the option to immediately begin a round.
The mountain of extra clicks has got to go. I don’t need to know I’ve unlocked the mini boss. I don’t need to know I unlocked a mythic battle. When a battle finishes, there should be a “next battle” button on the victory screen. There could be a caption under the “next battle” button indicating if it is a mini boss or mythic. Stop forcing all the extra clicks as a way to slow us down, please.
There should be an option at the end of an Explore run to jump to the next bonus kingdom without having to exit out to the map and scroll around like a doofus looking for it. The option to immediately jump into another battle was one of the best QOL from the last Explore rework and excluding it from the plan this time was a terrible, short-sighted decision.
Also, as cited here:
I paid for my VIP level specifically for the extra Gold bonus. Please stop devaluing my purchase by constantly putting mechanics in the game to slow down how fast I earn Gold.
The only thing they need to change is all the excessive clicking imho. In every other game, the game automatically moves to the mini-boss or final boss battle screen.
On reflection, I thought it might be useful to resummarise my main points.
My first point is that the psychology of new Explore needs to be tweaked, in order for it to appear more rewarding. Emphasising the guaranteed Arcane Traitstone seems to be a key element of this.
My second point is that new Explore has a real impact on reducing certain rewards, mainly Class XP, but also the entirety of Gnome weekends. And the two are intimately connected for many players. The solution here needs to compensate for the losses in a real way.
Something I hadn’t thought of explicitly was that boosting rewards (real or psychological) will offset, to some degree, the aspects that feel negative. This can work either way, and is a powerful tool for balancing things out.
Also worth noting is the number of respondents who spontaneously asked for the number of clicks to be reduced, even though I barely mentioned it (because it’s in my previous thread). Please take note that this is a major concern for people.
An outstanding post. I just hope for an exception here and that at least one Dev will take their time to read the whole post. The summary was a nice addition too.
I’m not talking about being forced to change team every match, I am talking about being able to. Because at the moment there are, what 700 troops, 300 weapons and 30 classes, and it feels like there are only about 4-5 teams who can efficiently do level 12 explore battles.
But since you mention switching teams, would it be so awful if they did something like making it on every explore kingdom, troops from another kingdom would get a bonus? So you wouldn’t be forced to change, but it might be an option.
‘Too much attention’ You want to remove all skill from the game? Play an autoclicker instead. At level 11 or 12 you get a mythic boss battle quickly. I also find it necessary to keep the difficulty choice, in order to avoid starting at too high a difficulty level for certain mythic boss battles. Not everyone can beat them all easily.
There are certain grinds that are much more palatable if you can multitask with watching TV, without having to think too much. Class XP is one of them. If that weren’t true, I wouldn’t have all my classes (except the new one) at level 100.
The Gnome grind on a Vault Weekend is much the same. It’s much harder to make yourself drop to D2 for fast wins (hence, more Gnomes), when you feel you’re missing out on Tokens. That makes Vault Weekends less exciting, hence I’m less engaged with the game and play less. That’s not a good thing.
Any grind is about the balance of reward to time/effort. But because it’s all psychology, when it’s broken, it can often be fixed in surprising ways that don’t actually change the economy.
Incidentally, I’ve just figured out that the Maraji Queen/Scorpius team is a much more brainless variation than the Apothecary version. Not as tough, nor as fast, but more versatile, and much more grindable while watching TV.
My opinion on auto-play changed drastically from “no, never” to “well, sometimes” after playing a different game that has it. Part of why I say, “I’ve been playing GoW less” is when I sit down to spend my free time, it’s more attractive to let the other game grind itself.
It didn’t remove strategy from the other game. Generally, when new content comes out, you get creamed if you try to auto-play it. But in that game they have a clever system where the more you beat a level the more bonuses you get, so after the first few days most people have ground their farming levels to the point where auto-play with cheaper farming teams is possible.
I think the problem, though, is that game’s gameplay is not the same kind of repetitive as GoW’s. People want to auto-grind it because the game itself is not particularly fun, the game’s draw is more about collection and socialization. I feel like GoW rests on “the core gameplay is what people want to do” so automating it doesn’t seem as desirable.
So I can’t describe how I’d like it to work in GoW. Auto-play would reduce my interactions to just the stage selection UI, which is the part of the game I want to see less. I think I’d be just as happy with, “If you start an Explore you can opt to play all four matches plus bosses back to back without stopping” as I would be with auto-play for GoW.
Actually the above is why tower of doom is my least favorite event: in between every match I have to double-check a chart, pick a specific room, then tap “start match”. I spend more time in the UI than I do in the game!
@Slypenslyde - Spending more time in the GUI than the game is an ever-increasing issue with Gems of War, unfortunately.
My own take on Tower of Doom is that I love it when it brings the Guild together (this is not something every Guild will do well).
As far as the grind goes, I think any grind is inherently painful. There’s a number of things that can make it feel fun, including: the level of Rewards, interesting gameplay, being able to multi-task (eg: watch TV), surprise mechanics (NOT the version proposed by EA!), the degree of variation from battle to battle, knowing you’re helping other people (in your Guild), a strong feeling of making progress towards a worthy goal. This is what I was trying to get at, in my post.
My point is basically that the psychological balance of new Explore could stand to be greatly improved. And both simple and complex measures are available to do so.
My view is that game modes should have class boost potential. I can’t think of a single slayer team that would triumph in level 12 (or even level 8) explore. What’s that about? Horrific design; that’s what.
