What is currently wrong with the end game

[Kreegan]

During the last few weeks I realized that I no longer have fun with PoW and I'm stuck in some constant struggle with the game. This is new to me - PoW has always had bad an annoying sides but the part which made me keep playing (and even spending some money on the game, which I have never done before on a MMO and will probably never do on another game of this kind) greatly overpowered the flaws. This is no longer the case, it looks like I've reached a point where I'm playing mechanically, following some habit that developed for more than two years with PoW, than to actually enjoy the experience. Many, if not all of the reasons for this are related to the end game and many of them have already been mentioned by other people in other threads. You may agree or disagree with them but either way, that's my stance on the matter:

1. The general hostility of the Blood Gods bracket toward gladiators who are not already there for a long time is a major problem. In all honesty the end game of PoW has never been fair but now this is especially pronounced. A gladiator ascending from Primus doesn't face challenges but nearly impossible fights which become his/her everyday life for months ahead. The Conquests partially rectified the issue with the ridiculously slow gearing speed but didn't resolve it for two main reasons - due to the randomness of the Conquest drops and due to the unavailability of orange weapons in that mode. With daily dungeon runs, your fighter will still need two months on the average to find adequate armour pieces. That is of course much better than the... about an year needed to gather similar equipment before the Conquests but it still renders your fighter a punchbag in the meantime. That's the (much) smaller problem however.

2. The bigger one is with the rating requirements for orange gear from the blacksmith and especially the weapons. I honestly have no reasonable explanation for its existence apart from an ad hoc "motivation" to spend money on trophies to boost your fighter so he/she can reach the rating necessary for some orange piece faster. It's a barrier for all new entrees in Blood Gods and is probably one of the reasons why the vast majority of the gladiators in the bracket belong to one and the same old-schoolers and new managers enter and stay in Blood Gods for more than a month very rarely. And of course - it totally sucks to spend two months in an attempt to reach the necessary rating and ultimately fail for whatever reason. I'm in such situation for the second time with Vaargus at the moment. Last month he needed 50 more rating points to buy an orange weapon. This month he was going well but during the last couple of days he lost 15-16 out of 20 battles for all sorts of reasons and now he has to win enough fights to get more than 300 points for one week, which is very unlikely to happen. So another season wasted. I'm fine with patience, as long as it doesn't become the sole purpose of a game. Patience without fun is not what I'm looking for in a product which is supposed to be entertaining.

3. Then comes the randomness. "X screams as he gets knocked to the ground by the massive shot". "X can't find an opening to stand". I'm really sick of the knockdown criticals and I've mentioned the reasons for this many times in many threads so I'm not going to repeat them. It's not only them though. You don't have much control over the environment in Blood Gods. You fight everyone and everyone fights you so your win rate depends on what types of gladiators are there in the bracket and how many of them can be countered by your build. Even then however the constant stream of knockdowns, injuries, knockouts, random negative events like your gladiator throwing away his weapon and whatnot can make a mockery of your planning and strategy. These would be acceptable if they didn't happen multiple times every single day, sometimes every single fight. The only effective way to partially control them is either to pick a super-fast, hard-hitting build (something Elaar/Dunder something), or to pick a super-defensive build (something Spite/Trug something) so you can either spam the nasty things yourself or negate them as much as possible. Otherwise you find yourself in a situation where you've spend months on some fighter only to find out that you can't make him/her useful in the end game no matter what you do.

4. And of course, the balance. I partially mentioned in the the upper point but it needs its own place. The game DOES have a lot of balance issues with skills, races, builds and whatnot but that becomes a real problem when you reach Blood Gods. Then it turns out that some race/specialty/skill combinations are completely impotent in that bracket and you have to either rebuild them from the ground up, essentially turning them into completely different fighters, or just discard the months that you have spent on them and retire them. I'm not talking about problems that can be caused by your bad decisions - they would be entirely your fault - but about problems caused by design issues. Like picking War Cry, without knowing how useless it is and going further down the War tree, so the retrain becomes painful as hell. Or like picking a race which just doesn't have the "right" bonuses for Blood Gods, like Human for instance. The game really needs more frequent balance passes.

This is getting a very long post already so to conclude it - I think that PoW has a great core gameplay and potential to expand into many areas. It is the best MMO that I've played (not that I've played many) and one of the best games for me in general. But the frustration from playing it exceeds the fun for some time. That said, it will be good to know how many of the issues mentioned above are acknowledged as such and if there are any plans to fix them in the near future. Based on that, I'll either quit or continue playing.

[Nate]

Thanks for your feedback Kreegan. Sorry to hear about your frustrations. The Blood Gods bracket is a very competitive environment, it represents the best of the best. It is not for everyone and it certainly isn't perfect. Pit of War is a living game and changes and grows over time. It is possible some of the things you find frustrating will ease over time and possibly change. When Blood Gods was introduced it was a different format than it is now and in the future it may again be different. There will probably always be various mechanics in PoW (or any game for that matter) that do not please everyone. It is difficult to create something that makes everyone happy.

I too would love the ability to have more resources to be able to offer more frequent updates. A dedicated team for data analysis to ensure the best balance possible would be amazing. A team dedicated to just QA and another only working on new ideas and designs would be beyond awesome. Unfortunately, that simply isn't the case and I apologize for not being able to offer that level of service, I really wish I could. At the end of the day everyone has to make their own decision on what they do for fun and what makes them happy. I certainly do my best to offer a product that hopefully helps provide some entertainment for those interested in it and while losing players is always part of the business of games or any business endeavor it never gets easier over time. Thanks again for your feedback, I appreciate it. If you decide to move on, I thank you for your support over the years in the Great Realm and wish you all the best. If you decide to stay I'll instead wish you good luck in the Pit!


-Nate-

[Narol]

If you want my feedback too, I totally agree with Kreegan on points 1 and 2. My suggestion would be to remove completely the ranking requirements for orange wear to make the endgame less frustrating for outclassed younger gladiators as it would allow anyway their trainers to gear them up in orange items slowly seasons after seasons, even if they don't have the time to grind conquests/gauntlets all day long (which is currently my case) with very random results or the money to pay for tons of extra fights...

I also understand the frustrations caused by points 3 and 4, but struggling to find the best builds is an important part of the game and there will always be some builds that don't work however the game is balanced. Perhaps that could made less painful is rebuilding was cheaper and easier... The 200 training points for glads finishing Seasons with a bad ranking goes in the right direction and already helps a lot, I must say.

My 2 cents.

[Vertigo]

I wouldn't agree with the removal of legendary gear rating requirements, as it would lose it's value and the whole point. Now at least I something to compete and try for. Otherwise in order to get legendary weapon, all you'd had to do is to save all your season points and just buy it 2 months later without even trying.

[Cynaidh]

I fairly much agree with everything Kreegan has posted.

Bloodgods as it currently is to me is just a contest between the "have's" vs the "have not's". By "have's" i mean the people who have full sets of orange gear be this by being in bloodgods for a long period, having done insane numbers of conquest/gauntlet runs to get orange gear, or those glads that were able to spend large amounts of trophies at the start of the bloodgods to get large amounts of orange gear before the ability to spend trophies if you where in the top 10 was removed. Of course you can attempt to run the gauntlet and conquests numerous times to luck into a useful orange piece of gear and eventually become one of the "have's", but this leads to the biggest change in PoW to me that is driving me away from this game.

The PoW that i fell in love with playing was a gladiator combat game that while insanely fun only took 15-30 minutes to play a day. During my years of playing and spending money to support the game it has been my morning ritual to get a drink and sit down before work and play PoW. Unfortunately with having a full time job and a family with 3 kids that is about the total amount of time i can put towards any game at this time. So with the change of this game into one that now requires, at least for the high end play, large amounts of time (to do conquests/gauntlets) to have any chance to progress in the end game has in fact ruined the game for me. My hope that has kept me playing was that you could just accept the losses at the beginning and slowly gear up, but that has proven to be a false hope because of the artificial gating in bloodgods that comes from having to have 30 wins a week and then rating requirements to purchase good gear even if you are able to finally saved up enough points to afford them. This is further compounded by the fact that there are two pools of orange gear, ones that you can purchase with points and then ones that are given out in the gauntlet/conquests/bloodgames. This means that there is gear that you can only get by playing the time sink part of the game, which honestly sucks in my opinion.

Once this season is over i am going back to lurking in the shadows on the forums here rather then being an active player. But I will keep hoping that Nate gets to a point where he can do the hardcore server which i am hoping will be more like the original pit of war.

[Adoede]

I have 3 glads in blood gods who are in nearly full orange gear from conquests who will still not hit 1000 rating points this season because their gear, though orange, is not optimized to my build-strategy for them. So they're stuck in limbo because they can't get better orange gear due to low ratings points and the purple gear is inferior to their un-optimized orange gear. Thus, all their BGP's go unused.

I agree with Kreegan, Narol and Cynaidh that some aspects of blood gods could use some tweaking. At the moment, the jump from Primus to Blood Gods is laughable. And as Cynaidh points out, the current BGP/ratings point system for gearing up actually exacerbates the imbalance because the "geared up" glads get better faster than the new glads can improve to catch up.

I'm also with Kreegan in thinking the game gets less fun when its an endless grind to luck into better gear in order for your glads performance to improve. I actually enjoyed the end-game dynamics of primus more than what we currently have in blood gods because of the ability to tailor your build and gear and strategy against others doing the same. I think the blood gods game would be much more fun if the focus was on strategy and experimenting with build designs and boosts instead of on hoping for the right gear pieces to come along. I'd love to be able to try stacking gear with the boosts that I want to experiment with in blood gods to try to come up with a novel build, but the current gearing system makes that near impossible since it is so difficult to complete any particular build idea.

My suggestion - If gearing just went back to what gearing is like in the regular game, then managers could tailor their builds exactly as they want them in a reasonable amount of time. Then the focus of the game shifts back to the strategy element instead of being so "luck" based as it is now. And managers can try something out and if it doesn't work, they can re-gear in a different direction in a reasonable amount of time. Then the game really becomes about which manager has the superior tactical, build, and gear strategy as I imagine was the intended dynamic desired for the blood gods bracket. After all, all of the glads in blood gods are supposedly the top of the class...it should be more competitively balanced than it is at present.

How to implement this - Take out rating point requirements and allow BGP's to carry over from season to season. Then all glads can eventually access the gear they want.

[Pit Lord]

"I will be happy to see the rating gear with + stats removed and replaced with some shining gear (colored) or some nice title."

04-24-2013, 11:15

[Apoca1ypse]

RE Gear: This season, I finally managed to get all the legendary gear needed to kit out Ahhnold, and I finished Bruce last season. That took a hell of a long time, and that's after getting an orange nearly every season. It'd take a long time for new gladiators to come close to being on par, even with the gauntlet. Personally, I'd love for the rating requirements for orange gear to go down. Maybe not disappear, but certainly go down. Those of us sitting at the top have had our fun with our elite shinies, now lets make them really acceptable for the masses.

RE Balance: TBH the fight engine feels the most balanced it's been in a while, for me at least. For that, I'm really grateful.

RE Blood Gods: I agree that blood gods is a real PITA as newer/worse glads get dumped on by top tier glads. It's party why I down sized to 2 gladiators. It's not that Blood Gods is bad, as it IS meant to be all about the "Best of the Best" but when that is the only option open to gladiators/managers, it leads to a disheartening end game.

I still think that my favourite system was the old primus system, before Blood Gods was introduced. Sure, it had it's issues, but your gladiator would eventually find it's "place" on the ladder and you'd be paired up against equally competitive gladiators most of the time. For the most part, if your build improved, then you would move up the ladder, still have a challenge, and eventually, if you were good enough, get to the pointy end. I know I'm not explaining it right, but basically, you'd get paired against equally competitive glads more often, and be left feeling like you had a chance (especially with incomplete gladiators), and work your way up to the superstars, rather than getting dumped on by them every 5-10 fights like you do now. Note: it also meant less easy match ups, so w/l records were rarely over 60%



***Following on from this, I would love the old Primus system to come back, but I want Blood Gods to stick around. Maybe Primus goes back to what it originally was, and Blood Gods becomes a separate competition like Seasons have? In face, Nate, can we have this? Pretty please?

[Prinny]

RE Gear: This season, I finally managed to get all the legendary gear needed to kit out Ahhnold, and I finished Bruce last season. That took a hell of a long time, and that's after getting an orange nearly every season. It'd take a long time for new gladiators to come close to being on par, even with the gauntlet. Personally, I'd love for the rating requirements for orange gear to go down. Maybe not disappear, but certainly go down. Those of us sitting at the top have had our fun with our elite shinies, now lets make them really acceptable for the masses.

RE Balance: TBH the fight engine feels the most balanced it's been in a while, for me at least. For that, I'm really grateful.

RE Blood Gods: I agree that blood gods is a real PITA as newer/worse glads get dumped on by top tier glads. It's party why I down sized to 2 gladiators. It's not that Blood Gods is bad, as it IS meant to be all about the "Best of the Best" but when that is the only option open to gladiators/managers, it leads to a disheartening end game.

I still think that my favourite system was the old primus system, before Blood Gods was introduced. Sure, it had it's issues, but your gladiator would eventually find it's "place" on the ladder and you'd be paired up against equally competitive gladiators most of the time. For the most part, if your build improved, then you would move up the ladder, still have a challenge, and eventually, if you were good enough, get to the pointy end. I know I'm not explaining it right, but basically, you'd get paired against equally competitive glads more often, and be left feeling like you had a chance (especially with incomplete gladiators), and work your way up to the superstars, rather than getting dumped on by them every 5-10 fights like you do now. Note: it also meant less easy match ups, so w/l records were rarely over 60%



***Following on from this, I would love the old Primus system to come back, but I want Blood Gods to stick around. Maybe Primus goes back to what it originally was, and Blood Gods becomes a separate competition like Seasons have? In face, Nate, can we have this? Pretty please?

Instead of typing a long assed text...^^^^That^^^^

[Alba Kebab]

For gear advantage, managers who have completely kitted out glads with orange gear in BG also have average/not so great glads with average gear, as well as new recruits who have to go through the whole process too - just like everyone else. Unless a manager is never going to train new glads again, the comparative gear advantage/disadvantage is eventually the same for everyone. Given how the game balance is always shifting from one 'winning' build to another, I don't think anyone will ever be able to sit on a glad and never train a new one again. So over the long run, no one has any permanent gear advantage just because they are older, most will have both older glads and younger glads, your less-equipped younger glad today will be the better-equipped older glad to my new guy tomorrow, and so it goes on.
The only real advantage early entrants in BG have is prior knowledge of what works/doesn't work, but that early bird knowledge advantage is the same in any game - that in itself is not unfair. And you only need to have one glad to make it into BG to match with everyone and have the same knowledge yourself.

If managers are feeling constrained by time/budget/attention span/whatever but would still like to 'enjoy' the game without being forced to play against the top because you feel that's not somewhere you 'belong' or ever will 'belong' due to your constraints, then I think the 'opt-out from BG(let me stay in the kiddie pool)' option should be a better suggestion than 'make BG easy for everyone'. I suppose this is along similar veins of making Primus more active so those who do not wish to be in BG can still enjoy play in a sandbox. But there probably need to be some clear rules/restrictions governing what happens if you choose not to go to BG when you are able to(for example, no HoL slave and no stable ranking for you...for obvious starters).
If some managers simply wants to 'win easier' and not because they don't want to reach the top(in other words, you still want to sleep with hot girls but want them to come to you instead), then seriously, they need to go play an 'everybody win' game like turnip-farming or something.

[Kreegan]

Thanks Nate and everyone else, for the feedback.

Nate, if you don't have the resources to make frequent trend analysis, checking in-game issues, etc. - which you apparently don't as you are working alone - you can ask the community for assistance wherever possible. I've no doubt that many people here, including myself, will be happy to help. Of course I'm not talking about giving access to "classified" game data to someone who plays PoW but about using the tools which are already at everyone's disposal to provide feedback which can later be used to improve the game. This is already done in a sense but in a chaotic and unstructured manner, by everyone providing some opinion once in a while - if you think it's possible, you can organize the crew, give tasks and so on, then we'll do the job for you to the best of our abilities. I suppose you understand that threads like this exist because the game is actually very good and I (and other people) want to keep playing, not to spew random hate toward the not-so-flawless aspects of PoW.

I can say much more about Blood Gods and the difference between what it should be and what it is but that's pointless at the moment. Please consider the suggestion above. There should (and normally there is) a way to make a product likeable to nearly everybody, with the right approach.

[Nate]

As always, thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. I'll see what I can come up with to help address some of the concerns that have been voiced. As you can see opinions run the spectrum from lots of things need improvement to everything is mostly fine. :) The main concerns I see are below and some quick notes on them:

- Gladiators having trouble making the jump from Primus to Blood Gods.
I have two thoughts on this. One is it is a big jump. The other is, Masters should be preparing for Blood Gods when they are in Primus. They should be gearing up using Conquests and The Gauntlet. I see some Masters doing that and their gladiators are hitting the ground running, the ones who are not doing that aren't doing as well. I'm sure those who are not doing it have their reasons. I'll see if I can help with this.

- Players who don't have the time to play as much as they would like to, but still want to remain highly competitive.
It is true as the game has grown the time required to play it has also grown if you want to experience all of it. The way most free to play games solve this problem is by enabling players to trade money for time as this doesn't affect power only the time it takes to get from point A to B. I'll see what I can do to help alleviate time issues for some players. One more note on this though. Nobody should ever expect to be able to walk up to the counter, drop a sack of gold and walk away with a "I win everything potion". I'll try and help those interested save time, but you'll still have to earn it.

- The speed and/or ability to get the exact gear wanted for a gladiator.
This is very subjective so there is no clear answer. What I will say however is there are tiers of items for a reason. Many people want to jump right from epics to legendaries and skip the fabled tier. That tier is there for a reason. That tier is what will help enable you to earn your legendaries easier. Pit of War is a journey not a destination kind of game. Everyone takes their lumps and everyone gets to deal out the lumps, the only difference is when it happens. Regardless, I'll think upon this as well.

I'll spend some time thinking about some possible quick fixes and then think up some longer term solutions as well for many of the concerns. As the game grows some areas lag behind, it is inevitable, however, they will always be addressed in time, that I promise. Keep in mind the game is always in development and the game you see now with whatever limitations you see is probably not the game it will be tomorrow and I probably already saw the limitations/issues before you did and have a plan to address them. :) I've got some interesting irons in the fire now for example that I think will be a lot of fun. Thanks again for your feedback.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Cynaidh]

Just going to throw my thoughts out there, I have a feeling i am in the minority on how i feel about some of these issues but what the hell doesn't hurt to try.


- Gladiators having trouble making the jump from Primus to Blood Gods.
I have two thoughts on this. One is it is a big jump. The other is, Masters should be preparing for Blood Gods when they are in Primus. They should be gearing up using Conquests and The Gauntlet. I see some Masters doing that and their gladiators are hitting the ground running, the ones who are not doing that aren't doing as well. I'm sure those who are not doing it have their reasons. I'll see if I can help with this.

This one part "They should be gearing up using Conquests and The Gauntlet" honestly makes me very sad, one of the things i have always loved about Pit of War (and duelmasters for that matter) is that they where pure PvP games, you matched up against other players, with countless possibilities per match, with how there strategy worked against yours, with each person constantly making changes every match up between two glads could be totally different fights. Now PoW has always had some small amounts of PvE with the tavern runs and arena challenges but these where not a large time sink at all and are in fact two clicks now total to do (yes i spend 2 trophies to do the tavern fights on all my guys till they are maxed out). PvE to me is boring, once you figure out a PvE fight its over, you now know how to beat it every time, they aren't even good reads cause they are just repetition over and over. So with this statement your saying to be ready for the end game PvP you now have to do the PvE, which probably for most people is fine for most but for me is just too large of a time sink and much more boring play.

Now as to how to fix this, i would like to offer a suggestion, the Conquests is a very nice PvE experience so why not make the Gauntlet be a PvP experience, keep the same format (you team up with a friend to fight) but instead of going against PvE minions match them up against two or three random gladiators from the arena. Keep it fair buy using the ranking system points, for example if your glad has 100 rank points and your friend has 500, you'd go up against two or three glads who have 600 + n rank points total (the n would go up for each level of the gauntlet your on, so 0 for the first round of fights, +50 for the 2nd round.... to make each round of fights more challenging, the first fights would be against two glads and the higher end fights against three, each round would just be one fight in this set up instead of 10 to keep the time constant low and to make up for the fact that facing real gladiators would be more challenging then the PvE minions). I personally think this would be a lot of fun and a good alternate way to get ready for the Blood Gods instead of being forced to PvE.


- Players who don't have the time to play as much as they would like to, but still want to remain highly competitive.
It is true as the game has grown the time required to play it has also grown if you want to experience all of it. The way most free to play games solve this problem is by enabling players to trade money for time as this doesn't affect power only the time it takes to get from point A to B. I'll see what I can do to help alleviate time issues for some players. One more note on this though. Nobody should ever expect to be able to walk up to the counter, drop a sack of gold and walk away with a "I win everything potion". I'll try and help those interested save time, but you'll still have to earn it.

I look forward to seeing how this is implemented.


- The speed and/or ability to get the exact gear wanted for a gladiator.
This is very subjective so there is no clear answer. What I will say however is there are tiers of items for a reason. Many people want to jump right from epics to legendaries and skip the fabled tier. That tier is there for a reason. That tier is what will help enable you to earn your legendaries easier. Pit of War is a journey not a destination kind of game. Everyone takes their lumps and everyone gets to deal out the lumps, the only difference is when it happens. Regardless, I'll think upon this as well.

I have no disagreements here, the only thing i would add is that currently going from epics to fabled is very hard if you only do the arena fights, its very hard to get 30 wins to get full points if your just in epic gear, i have 2 glads going threw this right now, in 4 weeks of being in blood gods i finally got enough points to get 1 fabled item (by spending trophies, if i would not have spent trophies i don't think they would have gotten any before the arena reset) and that seems really slow.

[oedi]

one of the things i have always loved about Pit of War (and duelmasters for that matter) is that they where pure PvP games
I totally agree with cyn on this, to me the game was at its best when it came out, almost no grind, just the strat, reading fights, fine tuning the strat and the anticipation for the next days fights. Pure joy and no boring stuff.

Now the game has turned more or less into mindless grinding work, more boring than my real work, and in my case I actually pay to do it. So why do I still play, I just got to much money and time invested in this game, and im done with all grinding, and with Rylok-Zul`s blessing I`ll never do it again. Im sad to say this but grinding out conquest in its current form is probably the most boring game experience ive had in 30 years of computer gaming. Its like Cyn said when youve beaten pve once youll rather not do it again, it becomes tedious on boring real fast.

Ive tried to quit but just didnt manage to do it, so instead I made some changes. Downsized to 10 glads, focused my efforts on 2 glads, which after a while just became 1122. So atm im actively playing 1 gladiator, tracking his fight que, changing strats and equipment to fit the next opponent. This is the only thing I truly enjoy about this game, and why I still play, even though there are so many things that make me go crazy from time to time.
Only grind I do is the tavern runs for the occasional fight token.

The small part of the game that I still enjoy is just AWESOME, and gives me the same feeling that made me play duelmasters for 15 years :)

[Adoede]

Absolutely agree the PvP aspect is by far the most compelling part of the game and the reason I got started and stuck around.

I loved Duelmasters for not muddying the PVP with magical weapons and armor and boosts and the grinding required to get them. Just a pure and incredibly competitively balanced strategy vs. strategy play. Lovely. So simple...but so rich an experience.

No "hump" to get over.
No arbitrary need to "take your lumps" as you're developing because you're always matched against relative peers.
And even though it was just PvP and there were no other "things to do" - I remember spending hours in my youth scouting opponents, planning challenges, and tweaking strategies.

[Dainoji]

Some of you must play much different than me. I don't feel like I'm grinding at all. I log in each day and do my routine, if I have time I'll do a few conquests and skip the heal timers if I'm in a rush maybe have a gauntlet run going as well that I check in on throughout the day. I work in front of a computer so it is easy. I'm sure that doesn't apply to everyone though. I like the direction the game is moving in and look forward to the PvE section getting fleshed out, especially the single player mode Nate mentioned. I also enjoy the PvP and get plenty of it in the arena and Blood Games.

[oedi]

1122 currently owns 29 legendary pieces, of those hes bought 6 with bgp(3 weapons and 3 armor pieces) Those 23 other pieces hes earned by grinding gaunlet and conquest, and you dont get 23 legendaries by casually running gauntlets and conquests. Its hard work and painfully boring. Im amazed by Sotec that still run conquests daily.
One thing im certain of and that is without channeling all my efforts into 1122 he still only be a wanna be contender.

[oedi]

Ok I just cant resist Ill add my own whats wrong to the list.
If I couldve made one change to the game it wouldve been how the blacksmith refreshes. You got your points, you got your rating, you know what you want, you saw it just yesterday and you took a screenshot, feeling a little sad that you couldnt buy it, but now you can and start looking.
after 100 refreshes you start getting a little annoyed, after 100 more frustrated, still 100 more angry, yet another 100 desperation sets in, 100 more goes down to much is lost you just cannot stop, another 100 now your just feeling stupid, close to 700 or was it 800 thropies you just give up an buy whatever shows in the list. Now you just want to cry, you write angry mails to Nate and promise yourself youll never buy another thropy.

Im feeling much better now, think this was about 6 months ago.
The point is that equipment is so important, especially the weapons/shields you just cannot alow yourself to waste 4 months of saved bgp on the random stuff that shows the last day of the season. And for war glads with the most choices in both weapons and armor the search sometimes feels just endless.

[Adoede]

Haha - I'm laughing and crying with you Oedi cuz I did the exact same thing this past seasons (only with about 300 trophies, not 800). I also vowed never to use trophies like that again and it so turned me off that I seriously considered not buying any more trophies at all. That's why I'm now okay with my glads being mediocre for a while.

Now...if there was a better system in place I might start buying trophies again - something that you could see more results for the actual money invested. (Not trying to manipulate Nate here...just being honest).

[Prinny]

Ok I just cant resist Ill add my own whats wrong to the list.
If I couldve made one change to the game it wouldve been how the blacksmith refreshes. You got your points, you got your rating, you know what you want, you saw it just yesterday and you took a screenshot, feeling a little sad that you couldnt buy it, but now you can and start looking.
after 100 refreshes you start getting a little annoyed, after 100 more frustrated, still 100 more angry, yet another 100 desperation sets in, 100 more goes down to much is lost you just cannot stop, another 100 now your just feeling stupid, close to 700 or was it 800 thropies you just give up an buy whatever shows in the list. Now you just want to cry, you write angry mails to Nate and promise yourself youll never buy another thropy.

Im feeling much better now, think this was about 6 months ago.
The point is that equipment is so important, especially the weapons/shields you just cannot alow yourself to waste 4 months of saved bgp on the random stuff that shows the last day of the season. And for war glads with the most choices in both weapons and armor the search sometimes feels just endless.

Completely agree iwht ya on this and I've dropped the issue on both forums and chats multiple times, the blacksmith refreshing really just plainly sucks especially for wars whom as you said have both the most weapons and the most armour options. It's so bad that I actually pick a rage when trying to find a weapon for my war because at the very least I will get 2 armour type options and 2 weapon type options less when cycling with a rage.

Hence I will drop it by here again, make an option to atleast let us disable getting light armour from the blacksmith when refreshing with wars because the moment my war is casually carrying light armour is the moment I am going to retire it.

[Sotc]

I can perform statistical analyses if Nate wants (per Kreegan's suggestion) since I've got access to Minitab.

[Nate]

As promised I spent some time looking things over after listening to your feedback. Below you will find information on changes or actions meant to address some of the concerns some players have. Not all concerns are being addressed now, some will happen later as they fit in with the development schedule. Some of you will agree with the below solutions, some of you will not and that is completely acceptable and understandable. If you are happy with the solutions that's great, I'm glad I could do that for you. If you are unhappy with them because they fall short of your expectations, I apologize in advance. In that case if you have further comments or suggestions regarding this topic I ask you to please move the conversation to private channels and send me a private message(PM) where I'll be more than happy to continue the dialogue with you and listen to your feedback.

Please also understand my complete focus is not and can not be on the end game where only a small fraction of players reside. I have a responsibility to the entire player base (paying and free) and must focus my attention everywhere. The end game has always received the lion's share of my efforts throughout PoW's history and this year is the first time it has not. I ask for your patience and your understanding on this. There are a lot of new developments in the works right now that new players are going to enjoy and veteran players will enjoy as well. Nobody is being neglected but there will be periods of time when your favorite part of the game may not receive frequent updates and then there will be periods of time when it will.

I'm not surprised that the hardcore PvP crowd isn't as happy recently since my efforts as of late have been on PvE content and the retention rate for the game has improved because of it. This is good for everyone. I am a hardcore PvPer myself so I understand your passion and ask you to believe me when I tell you that you have not been forgotten.

Now, without further ado:

The following changes will go into effect very soon:
- rating requirements for Chamber of Power gear are being lowered to 1500 for weapons and 500 for armour. This was planned for next season anyway, however, I'm moving it up a few days.
- at the end of the season gladiators will be allowed to carry over 50% of unused BGP.

The following changes will go into effect next season:
- one time gift to all blood god gladiators of 10,000 BGP (14,000 BGP cap still applies).
- newly promoted Primus gladiators will be gifted 10,000 BGP upon entering the Blood Gods bracket.
- the requirement to win 30+ fights for full BGP is being removed and instead gladiators who win 30+ fights each week will receive a 10% bonus to their weekly BGP.
- the requirement to initiate 20 fights per week to receive any BGP is being removed and instead gladiators who initiate at least 55 fights each week will receive a 10% bonus to their weekly BGP.

The above changes are all that will be implemented for now. As I mentioned earlier if you are still unhappy and have further comments or suggestions please send me a PM and we can discuss it further.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Alba Kebab]

I agree with the blacksmith refreshing for wars for legend gear can be tedious, sometimes the problem isn't even the trophy cost but the time cost, because we only have 1 day to get everything. And to have enough time to cycle through for the pieces you want for all your glads, it might take several hrs, which can be a problem given your schedule on that day.
It's one thing to login everyday and do your chores, which can be done in 10 mins if you don't have time, but for the Seasons ending gear handout day, I find myself regularly in trouble if I have less than 1 hr to login.

[Narol]

Great changes, good job Nate ! You're the Man !

[Sotc]

Very cool changes Nate!

[Vertigo]

nice changes indeed :) will get my first orange weapon yey

[Apoca1ypse]

The following changes will go into effect very soon:
- rating requirements for Chamber of Power gear are being lowered to 1500 for weapons and 500 for armour. This was planned for next season anyway, however, I'm moving it up a few days.
- at the end of the season gladiators will be allowed to carry over 50% of unused BGP.

The following changes will go into effect next season:
- one time gift to all blood god gladiators of 10,000 BGP (14,000 BGP cap still applies).
- newly promoted Primus gladiators will be gifted 10,000 BGP upon entering the Blood Gods bracket.
- the requirement to win 30+ fights for full BGP is being removed and instead gladiators who win 30+ fights each week will receive a 10% bonus to their weekly BGP.
- the requirement to initiate 20 fights per week to receive any BGP is being removed and instead gladiators who initiate at least 55 fights each week will receive a 10% bonus to their weekly BGP.


Excellent changes! The 10k BGP Gift was a nice, unexpected surprise too :)

http://media.tumblr.com/f249e53d6f93718cb29e509cb5932350/tumblr_inline_mo8vj8URV21qz4rgp.gif


Doesnt really affect my glads now that they're kitted up, but the broader player base benefiting makes me very happy :) Let the tougher competition begin :D

[Adoede]

Brilliant changes Nate ;)

I'm particularly impressed by how you made unequal fight queues a non-issue just by lowering the ratings requirements for gear. Nicely done!

Time to put my money where my mouth is and load up on some more trophies :cool:

[JerimyA5]

As a player just getting started in Blood Gods, Thank you very much Nate. The changes look great.

[Narol]

Welcome to the Blood Gods, Jerimy !

Don't forget to contact the captain of the Patron Team of your choice before the start of next season tomorrow. Personnally I would be happy to welcome you in our team with Crow and Cynaidh, please contact our Captain Crow today if you are interested !

[Adoede]

Yes, welcome Jerimy! Now the real challenge begins...

[Kreegan]

All very good, needed and welcome changes. Thanks Nate!

[JerimyA5]

Welcome to the Blood Gods, Jerimy !

Don't forget to contact the captain of the Patron Team of your choice before the start of next season tomorrow. Personnally I would be happy to welcome you in our team with Crow and Cynaidh, please contact our Captain Crow today if you are interested !

Thanks for the welcome. I think I'm still a bit too new to join a team other than the "Others" at the moment. Don't wana bring a team down just yet. In a few more seasons I may be ready.

[Apoca1ypse]

"others" isnt really a thing anymore, as it has Dain and SOTC in it. it's going to be a much more competitive faction this season :)

[JerimyA5]

Haha, well if anyone can use a newb bring their team down I guess it'd be SOTC and Dain. At least I won't have to see the pirate crew mangling my shiny first HoL glad anymore. :rolleyes: