Version 0.36 is somehow more unplayable than 0.35

Early Access Archive Early Access Game Feedback
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Now that version 0.36 has been out for a little while, figured I give my feedback on it. My initial impressions were that it was bad, but I didn’t quite realize how deep it goes.

My main issues currently are the following:

  • Daily system takes WAY too long. Before all dailies, including maintaining chests, took around 30-60 minutes. In the current state of the game, this has been increased to 2-4 hours. This is a result of the game adding challenges, adding events, and the increased stats making mark farming substantially slower. In comparison, Gems of War’s daily and weekly system combined is around 10 hours most weeks, where the current state of PQ3 is at 14-28 hours despite there likely being even more planned.
  • All non-pure color builds have been phased out of the game. This is one of the weirdest changes in 0.36, as the dev stream mentioned they wanted to make pure color builds weaker. Despite this, the most recent patch made anything that isn’t a pure color build useless. This is due to multiple factors, but the main one being how much mastery colored gear gives now. Since a player can only wear 1 piece of single colored gear per slot, it makes no sense to not make it as pure colored as possible to maximize the ability of a single color. The best 4 color builds in the game were also completely phased out due to the increased mana cost, and 2 color builds are now unrealistically weak and slow compared to 1 color, whereas before they at least functioned at a decent speed despite not being meta.
  • Ascensions that matter are still nonexistent. While the patch added a lot of ascension material, all the ascensions that really matter, legendary and mythic, are still near impossible to do. This has been the issue since day 1 of the game and every patch has made it HARDER to do this, not easier. The biggest issue with this is the glyph drop rate. Since version 0.35 months ago, I still have gotten 0 total glyphs. 2 are needed for a legend, 4 are needed for a mythic, and 14 are needed for a maxed mythic. One week of this patch has yielded 0, 2 months of previous patch has yielded 0. They are the most crucial resource in the game yet seemingly don’t exist in any reasonable way.
  • Battles take too long. Even before this patch battles were taking too long. Between timer, animations, and everything else a single turn can often take several seconds. Biggest issue with this currently is all enemies are way too bulky relative to damage output that can be done to them. The few second timer not having a way to deplete automatically to 0 with consistency makes these battles go on forever, as dozens of these mandatory timers go off during the course of a battle elongating it even further. This has been requested many times in the past, but no response yet.
  • Gear balance is nonexistent. Gear within the game were not touched at all in the most recent patch, causing some laughably bad equipment now. Some things that were good became useless, and everything with a scaling capability have become the only equipment that matter. Build diversity in the game has never been lower as only a few strategies can deal with higher level content in a even remotely timely manner.
  • Citadel reset and balance. This is something that the game has been needing since day 1, even made a thread for it on week 1 of the beta, but it is more apparent than ever in the most recent patch. For the longest time many of the citadel bonuses don’t even work properly, the balance on them is horrific, the meta for which one is best changes literally every single patch, and through it all there is still no way to change them.

So far around 25% of all guilds members in most guilds quit after the 0.36 patch. Would be nice to finally see a major patch that doesn’t make the game more unplayable again like 0.35 and 0.36.

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Excellent insights and recap of the state of the game since the update. I was thinking of summarizing all my thoughts and posts to date since the update and you have spared me the pain of doing so with this effort. Kudos! :+1: :laughing:

My other priority issue not mentioned here is the lack of updates or assistance to kingdom management and participation. Active, engaged kingdoms (or guilds or clans, etc.) are a critical part of maintaining an active player base. To date though, updates to kingdoms have been nonexistent and the current setup of kingdoms actually makes it tougher to maintain active communities as the “community” incentives are very marginal or even adverserially competitive.

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100% agree, right down the line. One thing I would add is this:

It’s not fun. Reading the storyline was cute/fun, the first 2 or 3 times. But the actual game? Not really much fun to be had. This really did not register with me until things got dramatically slowed down. In a game like this, its asking a lot to expect the actual gameplay mechanics to be fun. Progression is where the fun would happen. This is why, when you slow down gameplay, everyone groans.

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I’ll add my voice to this thread, agreeing with everything that’s been stated. Been playing a while now, with all heroes at Lvl 50. This used to be a game I WANTED to play. Now its a game I feel like I HAVE to play to get everything done. Seriously considering hanging it up soon because of this update.

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Bottom line for me is add a battle speed toggle or an option to turn off battle animations (only if it speeds up how long a battle takes) and I’ll be happier. Tons of other issues that need to be fixed progression wise but I’ll at least be happier waiting for them if I can get through battles quicker. My phone battery and limited time will thank you

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I share this sentiment. I saw the 0.36 had been released, got excited, poked around the new menus and liked what I saw. Then I did one event fight, thought it was cool (still 1 shotting enemies at that point, and the mana increases didn’t actually hurt my un-optimized build in any meaningful way), and tried to do a dungeon. Way, waaaaaay too long. Especially for god awful rewards. I’m now back to waiting for 0.37, as I feel the requisite modifications to fix this won’t be released in a hotfix.

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I’m holding off on my assessment on 0.36 to verify a few more things for now, but I can definitely say that the crux of the update was to lay out the monetization platform going forward. Every system focuses on spending gems/crowns/cash for advancing in the game.

While in the most technical sense the game is not P2W because there are “free” options of obtaining needed things, these options are so ludicrous at the moment that to the average player they would never know they are even there.

Case in point, as @Tacet calls out:

Let’s look at what the new Material Finder says where Glyphs could be found:

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As most of us here know already, “a small chance” means sub 1% chances, possibly 0.5% or even lower. This isn’t a realistic option. Sure, once in a blue moon, a single Glyph might be randomly tripped over. But, that’s not enough for any meaningful ascension that requires Glyphs.

So, that leaves the Shop as the only viable source of Glyphs, which require very substantial quantities of either Gems or Crowns to acquire. Glyphs can only show up in Slot 6 in the Shop (the row right above the VIP offers, right side of the Shop).

Relics are not in a much better position, either. Relics can be found in dungeons, again at that “small chance” rates. Salvaging for relics isn’t really an realistic option either. According to the Material Finder, some relics can only show up on the Skirmish side of the Challenge list, while others on the Dungeon side. Plus, some of the Challenge requirements are absurd. A level 70-75 Skirmish or Dungeon run, just for an Epic relic?

That leaves once again, the Shop. But, there are tons of relics for the game to choose from and Relics are one of the rarer draws for a Shop offer. The odds of me being offered the exact relics I need? Very, very small. Which frequently means no progress that day in terms of gear.

There’s an unanswered question about the acquisition rates of Relics and Glyphs as Event rewards still, which is obfuscated by the time-lock system put into place to slow players down from reaching Tiers where Relics or Glyphs could show up as a chest reward.

These topics were discussed on the two streams that Salty hosted before the pandemic locked down Australia again. On the last stream before the lockdown, the issue was discussed with Joe (lead animator), and was announced that there were no plans to speed up battles in the future.

IMO, if there ever was a chance for speed-ups to happen in PQ3, that chance went permanently out the window with Gnome-A-Palooza debacle that happened over in GoW recently. The economic damage there would not have been anywhere near as severe if 4x speed was not a thing. I believe, with hindsight being 20/20, that the devs consider 4x speed in GoW to be a substantial mistake and one that they have literal zero desire in allowing in PQ3.

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Most of you on here know my feelings pretty well about this also :innocent: Rates of Glyphs and relics as drops are still absurd. Period. I think we were all aware that the difficulty of the game was going to be rebalanced upwards (harder matches, required gear levelling, etc), but the question was one of when. The “small chance” was laughable then and is comically absurd at this point now that it takes even that much longer to complete matches.

As to the availability of Glyphs in the Shop, I will say that I’ve seen Glyphs how up in the Shop in several of the “slots” (not VIP though); however, since 0.35 I have tracked 250+ unique Shop Offers (either the given daily refresh or a gem-bought refresh), and I have been offered exactly 11 glyphs in total. Again that’s 11 total of the 4 different varieties. For the purposes of Shop tracking, I have definitely done an above average number of refreshes compared to the average player. But even if that rate was increased, you would ultimately be priced out of even acquiring the rarely-occurring glyphs unless you want to spend money given that the price of 1 Weapon Glyph is 2,500 gems. A minion Glyph is an “amazing value” of 1,688 gems.

Obviously I agree with this with the caveat that I offered in my long-running thread about this issue: that the provision of Relics in the shop that can be purchased with Gold at least goes a little way towards providing a means to acquire multiple relics over time outside of the “drip” system of the events/challenges. Does this absolve the issue of the absurd “small chance” of relics from dungeons? No, but at least now, over time, it looks likely that Relics will not be the limitation it once was, especially given that the number of Relics required for lower evolutions was lowered significantly (1 Lesser needed to evolve to Rare, 2 Greaters needed to evolve to Epic). Also, in about ~50 shop observations since 0.36, approximately 20 Lesser Relics have been offered, of which 13 were valued in gold and about 8 Greater Relics have been offered, of which 6 were valued in gold. This suggests that Rare evolutions will be rather commonplace (provided you have enough Lesser Shards) and that Epic evolutions will be somewhat commonplace given a few months playtime (again here I think the issue will be one more of shard limitation unless shards can be exchanged or allowed for “down-level” use since Superior shards will continue to be the most common shard acquired for players at 50).

The problem still remains as I’ve said before and was just said here, a player cannot actively play to obtain the evolution materials for a specific piece of gear of interest. It is entirely passive and this will ultimately be at odds with most players’ goal-oriented approach to loot progression.

This to me is the most critical issue. If the Event system at higher Tiers offers a realistic means to acquire these materials, then it could offset the some of the challenge outlined so far. Currently the Siege Event feels underwhelming unless it offers unique opportunities since any gem purchases for additional plays is 1/3 less valuable than gem purchases made in the Dungeon Event (100 Gem pack gives you two additional tokens to play in the 24 hour Siege Event window, whereas the 100 Gem pack from the Dungeon Event gives you 6 total tokens over the 3-day window if bought on the first day of the Event). It will be a long time before we even get to see what the top rewards for the Siege Event is since the max number of medals earned per day is 3 regardless of gems spend and it appears that it will take approximately 6 months to reach Tier X. Fortunately we should be able to get a picture of the top end of the Dungeon Event system much sooner due to the additional medal rewards from the leaderboard. We shall see if the rewards are enough to overlook the the failingly absurd drop rates of Glyphs and Relics needed to evolve items to Legendary/Mythic elsewhere.

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I’m skeptical that anyone is going to get close to Tier X anytime soon.

Unlike Challenges, the player can’t reroll the board until they get a favorable starting board. They have to play what they are given, no matter how poor that board may be.

In addition, the Event dungeons’ special effects are going to force players to hit a brick wall much faster than they anticipated. A great example of this in effect is the Ice Event Dungeon that is ending shortly later today. All of the enemies are Empowered and can cast their first assigned spell on Turn 1. For now, the enemy levels are still low enough that moderately-equipped players can still power through them, especially with the freebie Epic Runic Mace that was handed out. But add 1 or 2 more tiers of difficulty, and I believe most players will start encountering significant difficulties.

The leaderboard for Event Dungeon Tier 2 right now strongly signals this already occurring. There’s about 30 players with perfect Shop Tier 1 perfect scores of 9,792. However, looking at the 13 players who purchased at least Shop Tier 2, their scores are all over the place. That would mean that these players are not achieving perfect scores anymore and are taking damage that is affecting their overall performance. For much of the playerbase, I think Tier 3 or 4 is going to the limit for them for a long time.

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While I agree regarding the Seige Event for the reason I stated (Medals awarded do not appear to increase per Tier for Daily Rewards but the Medal requirement for each Tier does) I disagree in regards to the Dungeon Event. Two weeks there.

Perhaps, but with the number of purchasable consumables I think that number is a bit low … unless the assumption is that so many higher level players have quit playing the game so the playerbase is just underlevelled :grimacing:

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The scores are all over the place mostly because of how tedious the game is now. I know I don’t do all 11 battles at once as it is around an hour to do so, on top of all the other dailies that exist in the game.

Tier X only goes to around level 50-70 depending on the dungeon 3 day, so still very much survivable. Current meta seems to be just berserker rush everything since he now has the highest non-stacking damage per turn, but higher tiers would just switch to anything that can incorporate a heal or no damage loop like upscale Assassin, barrier Paladin, or 1 shot cycle Shaman.

The only thing that is going to be particularly difficult is the RNG involved when enemy starts with full mana, as both the starting board and the character that will show up 1st to receive the full mana is randomized. Almost everyone has 0 levels in citadel resistance as well, making it even more difficult to deal with a turn 1 cast.

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I agree completely. I have also noticed that, when I am trying to move/swap gems, it either tries to move the wrong gem or moves it to the wrong spot, causing me to miss a big combo or a stun.

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Hey!

I shared this in the main .36 announcement thread, but wanted to post in here too.

We are collecting all your feedback regularly and looking into player bug reports.

While we aren’t posting a response in every thread that pops up, or every day, please know that we are actively checking the forums and passing on what is being discussed.

Jeto - Support Human :woman_mage:t2:

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With all due respect, if you can’t even be bothered to post something in actual legitimate player bug reports, what even is the point? That should be the bare minimum of “Support”.

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Feel free to reference all the threads I copy/pasted with this lame response since they didn’t merit your time to actually respond to.

There was a time when some sort of effort was actually expended towards this:

Could use an update!

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" Don’t sell us an outhouse and tell us it’s the Taj Mahal "

Please read my other posts on the " 2 hrs 20 minute daily " thread for full context…

and know that I feel that I must now add more issues and perspective here and this will be hard for me to seperate these multiple subjects. I will also address the shortsightedness of the potential usefulness of the given-away .36 Epic items only in respect to the game goals High lvl Story/Sidestory and the ability to easily repeat successful Lvl X Dungeons/Skirmishes in PVE…

There is a miserably unmistakable Dominance of nearly negligible impact, low percentage, and incredibly niche loot items that come in 1 of 5 Random Element Types.

The sad lottery math (without any Spells included) is : 15 Gear sets × 12 Item types × 5 Element types = 1 in 900 pulls you will theoretically get 1 item Exactly that you are hoping for.

Also, The Devs audaciously pulled the rug out from under EVERY player
when they made needing multiple copies useless.

Players can pay real money for ( as in Crowns ) for in the ingame store. You can also try to get the item that you want randomly from their valuable time spent earning loot boxes but…

New players will be at a great disadvantage now…

even if they are given the (mostly not sought after… except Elven Charm/Jeweled Glove ? ) update .36 Epic items ( some of which are Bugged ) to start out with.

Are those Epic items alone enough to beat the highest Lvl PVE ? With comfortable ease… No. Elven Charm was essentially nerfed by .36 from the many Spell Mana cost increases…

If new players knew what they would be in for as of .36, would they even play this current game or would they choose a less Time-sucking, more fun and rewarding game ?

Imagine, now, that you are aware of all of this that and that you are a new player starting with very, very little… Would you endure, 1 to 5 Characters worth of the Ordeals of beating every Story mode and all the Sidestories and invest the time and money to achieve a Gear loadout to slowly and comfortably beat the highest Lvl. Dungeons/Skirmishes in PQ3’s current and difficult, Time-sucking gamestate ?

Thank you very much for considering all of this and I truly wish that the Devs will understand what is at stake for us all and that they could have a game with 100,000 or 1,000,000 players, as many other games do, if they listen to good advice and change this game for the good of us all. They will decide their fate but we need to speak truth to them and hope to bring us all positive change.

I hope that you choose the path to a 1,000,000 + player base. Do you hope so, like I do ?

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As a newer player of only 2 months I find I have to force myself just to log on and accept my daily gifts. If I hadn’t paid $9.99 for a monthly pass I wouldn’t even bother with that. This update sucked ALL the fun out of the game and it is a chore.

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Highly respected Kingdom leaders are reporting these large player losses and they are correct with their numbers as I witness these losses firsthand being in one of the highest lvl. Kingdoms.

Our Kingdom leaders likely do not work for your Company so we are seeing different numbers.

When a kingdom leader tells you on these Forums that one of their daily player’s that was so into PQ3 achieved Lvl. 180 Citadel left the game… Every single player that this game is losing might be a permanent, major loss for them and negativily effects the game ( financially and even from word of mouth ) .

The Devs should consider All of the negatives in each update that might drive the players away permanently before dropping an update, yet we’ve gotten drastic changes that hurt us all and sent us scrambling like…

Evolve using 3 copies of an item became Now you need Glyphs, oh and now you need Relics with close to 0 chance to aquire them ( How many did you find in update .35 ? ) and your copies ( Especially spells ) which took up your inventory space, might be nearly useless… Sorry ?.

Spell Restriction to 1 copy and Restrict class spells, you should not get Free Class spells anymore so have fun New players, now go out and find them if you can. Now heavy Spell Mana cost increases for many of the most necessary spells on top of that now as well… Sorry ?.

Many drastic, consequential changes were older ones made before update .36 and some have altered the game too much at once.

As I stated in my previous post above, the player loss that I was talking about is not just from .36 but from older problems and ongoing issues as well.

There are a multitude of QOL issues that need addressing and I hope that the issues that people that bring to you will be strongly considered and that positive change and happiness comes to us all.

We ask for many positive changes Because of these drastic and often detrimental changes that you decided to put upon us since the game’s inception.

We all truly appreciate your responses and we look forward to you bringing positive change to the players as there are now daily QOL changes that are very pressing issues especially concerning the Time consumption problems and the New player dilemmas brought on by update .36. We want players to stay and consider coming back and we want you to have a PQ3 that players would never consider permanently leaving.

Thank you,

ShomiTheMonkey

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Thank you for the spot-on assessment. I could not agree more.