Server Push (Slight Changes)

Early Access Archive Early Access Official News
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What an average player would do is do dungeons and then use all those marks to get chests based on the rarity of the chest. This gives an exceedingly high chest hour number relative to time grinded. I haven’t done the exact math, but 1 hour of max dungeons is around a week of chests if not converting any of them upwards.

What is likely not to be the average player is converting nearly every stack into diamond so that only diamonds ever touch pets. That takes substantially more time than just using the face value of the marks. Under this method 1 hour converts to a little under 1 day of diamond marks.

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I still think this ignores the negative feedback loop of all the deferred benefit that this system essentially embodies, of which the absence of drop rates of Relics is just one more nail in a potential coffin.

I myself have run 900+ dungeons since 0.35 and whereas I gather you have essentially salvaged every chest during that time, focusing on your Mark/vault management technique, I have opened every non-wooden chest to confirm that the Relic (and Glyph!) rate is as bad as it seems. To date I have received 0 Relics and 0 Glyphs from dungeon completion. If that is the system they want to keep in place, then in my view it is a failed system and will ultimately kill the interest players have in doing more than the “daily drip”.

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see, my point was just to increase the reward factor of dungeons for the time being until they release .36 where relics and crystals into their own game mode.

right now Im struggling to make advancements in my gear without having tons of luck finding better quality gear. the biggest pain point right now is lack of real access to relics.

I know .36 isnt going to magically fix access to relics, because Im sure this new mode will have it’s own set of problems when it releases and we are likely going to have fight 10 more levels of RNG with this new mode.

But their patch notes indicated that relics should drop from dungeons. it would be nice to actually have relics drop slightly more frequently than they already are. I would be fine if I can get 1 relic per week from dungeon grinding, at least I know that relics do exist.

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I don’t disagree that relics from dungeons should be higher, as well as all chests in general, but particularly dungeon chests where the game literally shows it as “extra chance” to have a 0% chance of getting one. XD

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Agreed and this is the dead horse that I have supposedly been flogging for a while but is I think I pretty widespread view that the developers hope will be forgotten when their “drip” system goes into place. The system will have to be pretty enticing for players to forget the fact that it is impossible to get Relics from dungeon runs.

EDIT: and just to add, maybe it will be amazing! Maybe you will start getting so many relics from this system that it becomes its own motivation to run more dungeons to get more chests and marks because you are desperate to use all those relics piling up! But I’m going to go ahead push all my chips in that it will not be the case :laughing:

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nope. if Gems of War of any indication… Devs love to make grindy games. Heaven forbid they make a game that is rewarding to play.

Im not sure if Salty/Cyrup read this, but I hope you reconsider making this game grindy and change the rewards to be more player friendly.

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The game is being made to generate profits for the devs and the publisher and will not be a charity. Regardless of what Salty/Cyrup think on the matter, the publisher will expect to see a return on all of the development costs invested into PQ3. As the game has no entry price, revenues are going to have to be generated in game.

The Gems of War operational model has worked very well for the devs and the publisher. As you imply (most likely correctly), the devs are probably not going to create a business model for the game that is significantly different from what already has been proven to work well in the past.

My personal take, but I would not expect the PQ3 apple to fall far from the GoW tree.

There has been no official timeframe given so far, which is normal. Salty’s normal position is to not announce such things greater than 2 days in advance of that event.

That said, there was an indirect unofficial projection given a week and a half ago (which may or may not be accurate anymore) by Salty.

This lines up with personal projections for when I am expecting the update to land.

The cookie crumbs are out there if anyone wants to do some sleuthing, but the update should be rather close now. While this is Early Access, it won’t be the end of the world as if a GoW update misses its release window. That said, I would think though that devs would strongly prefer to release 0.36 by their planned target date (because of reasons).

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Honest question: Why is it that anytime someone on the forums gives any type of feedback to advocate for players’ interests you step in as developer spokesperson with “This is not a charity, the publisher has to make money” comments as if the only two modalities in the world of F2P game design is one in which either publishers are happy or gamers are happy. That’s a very simplistic way to respond to everything; It’s not a zero sum game.

Players are not ignorant of the F2P modality and landscape of different play modes that are available. Plenty of other F2P games (not sure if you’ve heard but there are other F2P games beside Gems of War) have found ways to both entice players interests with non-sales gaming incentives and yet still make money. I think we get it that the developers/publisher are not Socialists.

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right. but gamers are MORE willing to spend knowing their money actually gives them value in return. Right now, if you want spend your gems on chests… you wouldnt “come out ahead” if you had spent those gems elsewhere.

One way to increase spending on gems/crowns is to increase the value of those drops in which players would spend those currencies. ie, increase the value of opening chests using gems. Something as simple as a pity mechanic of sorts with chest goes a LONG way to increasing the value of grinding and spending on money on the game.

There are ways to improve the game so both sides win. A poor solution only considers one side winning. But rather than take those approaches, we should work on solutions that increase player player value so the player has more incentive to spend.

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Because I’m devil’s advocating against that position as a sounding board for the feasibility of that proposal. In doing so, I am presenting the reality of the matter as a counterbalance against what is being proposed.

Advocating for things that are feasible is a good thing. Advocating for things that have near or actual zero chances of being implemented is not a good thing to be arguing for.

I would with agree with you on that. I also don’t have the energy or desire to write 1000-2000 word posts every time that subject comes up to go into greater detail. That said, it is a core cornerstone of the game’s business model. PQ3 exists to make the devs and publisher money and far more so than just breaking even on production costs. If the game was not projected to do so, it never would have been greenlit to be produced. So, as a TL;DR form, the oversimplistic one-sentence version of the explanation works.

Salty has spoken about this very topic many times on stream. How a game is monetized (and how hard it is monetized) is a function of the developers’ vision for the game, the publisher’s desires for the productivity of the game, and the size of the game’s audience. For example, Salty has held discussions on-stream multiple times on how GoW’s small audience compared to a larger game like Fortnite made producing and selling cosmetics cost-prohibitive to do so. On the other hand, for PQ3, the recent dev stream with Sirrian implied that the expected audience of PQ3 (as a stronger brand to market than GoW) is allowing them to consider creating cosmetic things. Whether that comes into reality or not, is another matter altogether.

Early in GoW’s life, the game had a similar business model to the one you are suggesting. Create a good game and make it enjoyable with the result being that players reward the devs for that effort. That business model ended somewhere around the 4.x series of updates to the model that is being used today. The publisher is not going to allow the devs to back to the previous business model for PQ3. They expect PQ3 to bring in more money that GoW does and goodwill alone does not achieve that goal. And yes, that’s capitalism.

I fully agree with you on that. It’s a hard concept to discuss at the moment without being able to see what the majority of the game’s economy looks like. Hoping that the imminent 0.36 will shed paint a much clearer picture of the economic landscape for us to productively debate.

Devs aren’t really into pity mechanics though. They want the player to directly buy things than get awarded them through some sort of default mechanic. That’s one of the likely purposes of Crowns in this game, to directly buy things that a player wants.

Also, if the game’s economies are going to be designed close to that of the model used in GoW, there’s going to be a distinct limit on what is going to be farmable. As Sibellos has said elsewhere, the key currencies are likely going to be strictly controlled and slowly drip-fed to players. I agree with their assessment of their observations towards the likely economy that is going to be revealed in 0.36.

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But why? If the idea is unfounded or unrealistic and yet is substantive enough to merit a response, that’s what community managers are for. The even get paid to do the job of responding to people! Furthermore, your default position is that the developer/publisher decision is fundamentally correct in their “proposals” (e.g. design decisions) while the alternative proposed by the player is unrealistic or is dismissible as unproductive. Perhaps we need more player voices, regardless of whether the ideas are tenable, and less publisher surrogacy.

Hopefully the core cornerstone of the developer’s business model is to make a game that is actually playable by players that through its engagement entices players to make purchases and turn a profit. A failure of many business models is focusing too often on the potential revenue streams and forgetting that the revenue stream is actually dependent on a viable product.

“That subject” I assume you are referring to is ideas from players that you think run counter to the profit motive of the publisher. You can always just not comment if you have nothing better to offer than publisher promotion masquerading as devil’s advocacy. But let’s consider what you took time to address before:

Well I guess a publisher was asleep at the wheel because the developer did make a change to allow you to salvage one chest to replace with the preferred chest. They even offered up another chest slot. Good thing players offered feedback!

Let’s do another:

Although the timers have not expected to change, the developer has acknowledged the underwhelming contents of Diamond chests and has suggested that the contents will be improved. Feedback makes a difference!

My point in this reply is to point out that despite your repeated responses of what is not possible or the fact that something that exists currently in the game is immutable and we just have to accept it, time and again changes are made favorably based on player feedback. Playing devil’s advocate is fine; constantly suggesting that anything players propose are defacto impossible and is just tedious.

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Thank you for your thoughts on player advocacy. I wish you the best in your endeavors in striving for the changes that you are seeking.

I will disengage from this topic, as the discussion in this thread is reaching a point that is becoming counterproductive and is border-lining on personal attacks. I have no desire to re-litigate the last thread that needed to be locked down, nor to engage in further activities that are against the revised community guidelines that went into effect yesterday.

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OK! :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1:

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