Suggestion: 2 Guild War Boss Difficulties (update)

[lolwut]

TL-DR: Adding a 2nd, easier difficulty to the GW boss fights would improve the experience for low-end players and make PM more money.

I'm guessing this has already been suggested because it seems like it's an idea someone else would have come up with already, but I'm posting it regardless, along with my own reasons and counter-arguments. Also, this post is long, so thank you to those who go through the whole thing.

Suggestion - 2 Guild War Boss Difficulties
You have Regular and Heroic:

- Heroic difficulty is just as it is now.
- Regular difficulty is aimed towards the new- low- and mid-range players, and features 60% reduced HP (maybe around 800k-1mil), 60% reduced damage (if not less), possibly a cap in damage (a point where it won't increase any further), and a point cap of around 500 (about 60% less than current/heroic).

This way, newer players can have a chance to do more damage to the guild war boss, earn more points and feel like they're contributing more to their guild and to themselves. As it stands now, new players can barely score 100+ points since they can't score massive hits against the boss without spending tons of revives (which most new players will not have). This is also true for low and medium-end players who don't already have a gw boss card to boost their attack and survivability. I believe new, low- and mid-level players will find the new difficulty more reasonable and improve their opinion of the game as a whole. They may even decide to spend gems to get that push to over 50k even if they can't do the GW boss on heroic yet.

Regular difficulty should be designed so that it's possible to kill without an existing gw boss card, but it's not possible to score over 50k points without refreshing (in other words, if you want a boss card, you have to fight regular mode on cooldown and do a few refreshes; or do as the top-end players do and kill the boss on heroic difficulty on cooldown). Again, the purpose of this is to give non-high-end players a fighting chance of scoring points, and will open up the opportunity for those players to spend gems to earn a gw boss card.

A summary of reasons why this needs to happen:
- As it is now, the setup is so difficult that low end players cannot hope to get a gw card without spending probably hundreds of dollars. If you can only score 200 points, you'd have to fight it 250 times, and that's around 2000 gems worth of refreshes. Nobody's doing that. This new setup will make it so all the players in this category will actually have hope of getting it by spending a feasible amount of money on it.
~ It will shorten the gap between low-to-mid-range players and the high-end players, preventing people from getting frustrated with the game and quitting. (granted I can't say that it's an issue because I can't see the player data, but I feel like it might be). I believe it will increase player's overall opinion of the game.
- More players will likely spend money to get gems in order to score a boss card. Money for the company is always a good thing. I can almost guarantee that sales will increase.
- More people will fight in the guilds. As an example, in my guild, I'm the only one capable of scoring over 50k points. Typically, nobody else scores more than 1000; in fact, in this last war, second place was around 800, and nobody else even bothered to attempt it. What does that tell you? It tells me that players who can't score high on the current system don't care about scoring at all. It's understandable, since, without owning a boss card, it's difficult, if not impossible, to score over 100 points per run. You die before any offensive or defensive CD's come up, and non-high-end players don't have the revive potions to keep going; nor will they ever blow gems on refreshing and/or buying potions. It gets frustrating REALLY fast, believe me; I've been there.
- This increased participation will also decrease the gap between the top few guilds and all the others, since almost everyone will want to participate with a difficulty level that's actually doable. More players playing is what any game developer should want.

Counter arguments I imagine popping up:
Non-high-end players don't use gems on the GW bosses now and they won't for this either. ~~ I think if it's balanced correctly, players will use gems to refresh and gain enough points, especially if it means they get a copy of the gw boss card. I'd say it should be balanced out so that it requires around 10~15 refreshes (20 maximum) on top of fighting the gw boss every CD; so that each time they forget to fight it, they have to refresh more. I would have happily used 100, 200 or even 300 gems back in the day to get a GW boss card back when I didn't have a team capable of scoring 800-1000 points like I do now. On top of that, once they have a gw boss or two, they'll be more likely to build teams capable of defeating the heroic boss and will start using gems/potions on that as well.
This will negatively impact high-end players ~~ I don't see how. If anything, it should positively affect high-end players. 1: More players will buy gems, so PM will make more money and be able to afford adding more features to the game, and 2: More players will be scrambling to level up so they can get the command points to use their new cards, so that means more opportunities for friends and pal-points and stuff like that, plus more medium-high end players means more content centered around them, so see point 1.
Playmage doesn't have the resources to program this into the game ~~ Whether that's true or not, the time it would take to program and implement this feature into the game should be more than covered by the surplus of low- and mid-range players who will be buying and spending gems to compete in the wars.

So, in conclusion, I think this idea is a good idea and should be implemented. There are no feasible drawbacks to doing this that I can think of, and the benefits should more than outweigh them.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post, and I hope you will give it a +1.

~ lolwut

Ps. I'd like the ability to change my display name xD I chose "lolwut" back when I started because I didn't think I would be as engrossed in this game as I have. I really need to change it xD

[pmsupport]

Hi lolwut, thank you for the suggestion. Players who get the boss cards but don't have the command point limit to use them might get upset? And the powerful boss cards will make the normal map stages they haven't fought yet seem too easy and redundant. I will forward it to the team.

[kenji]

Very nice suggestion.
The guild war point should parameterize for lower level players scores... At least... The 20k or 40k.

[TEDtheMUTINEER]

The only problem i would see is guilds like mine have mixed membership. Some lvl 160+ and some level 60 n below. So which guild war would we play in?

[Armand Star]

i thought the suggestion was about each player individually choosing their own difficulty, not each guild

[lolwut]

Players who get the boss cards but don't have the command point limit to use them might get upset?

I don't think so; if anything, I think the lack of command points would make players put more emphasis on playing the game more often and leveling up during weekends when they can get the most XP-per-energy ratio running stage 12. Any player willing to pay gems to get the gw boss cards should also realize good and well the importance of leveling up. If they get discouraged because of lack of command points, then they'd never have the motivation to fight in the guild war to begin with; much less have a team capable of killing the normal boss and gaining 500 points each run, running it every 3 hours, and spending gems to refresh for the 50k cap. Those willing to put in the time and effort will then continue to put up the effort to prepare their level for the CP requirement.

And the powerful boss cards will make the normal map stages they haven't fought yet seem too easy and redundant.

I disagree; using an existing leader that boosts HP and a healer friend (or vice versa) is no different than using a gw boss card and a healer, and players who are willing and able to beat the normal-mode gw boss should already have that strategy in mind. I was lucky enough to have the green healer as my starting 6-star card when I first started playing, and it very well trivialized all the levels up until the damage out-did my healing capability, which wasn't until like stage 19 or so (or even later). At that stage, you'd have to either run death-guard or double-HP-Boosting leaders which savvy players will have figured out how to do already anyway. I think it shouldn't matter if having a GW boss trivializes a few of the story levels; especially if they spent a surplus of gems to get it; it's no different than spending those gems on recruits except that this process helps their guild and empowers them to feel good about themselves and feel better about the game as a whole. Rather, a better counterpoint would be to say that players capable of scoring 50k points on normal mode will have already set up a team capable of trivializing most of the story levels up until the point where they hit a wall.

Now, granted, I'm not asking for a difficulty in which the boss can be killed and 500-ish points given to people with a team full of 3 or 4 stars that started last week, but you have to consider the extreme opposite, even a mid-level 6-star team can barely score over 200 points on the bosses the way they are now. I think at worst, a new or low-range player should be able to score 100 or 200, and mid range players should be able to score 300-500 so they can feel like they're accomplishing SOMETHING.

I'll point it out again: I scored only 9274 points in the last war because even my team couldn't keep up with the attack-every-turn, and I just gave up because it was not worth the hundreds of revives I'd had to have used (which I don't even have) to score 50k points; and the 2nd place in my guild only scored 1535. All the other players never even attempted the boss and scored 0 points; they knew it wouldn't even be worth trying because they'd be decimated before even hitting triple-digit scores; AND these players range from 58-138. Maybe this example is a little extreme due to the excessive difficulty of this boss compared to the last 4, but still, the point remains.

I can almost guarantee it's probably the same story in most guilds that finished around us; they had 1 or 2 strong players that tried to score, and everyone else just either gave up or only attempted it a couple times. I'd bet money the guilds who scored between 50k and 60k points were just 1 guy who got the card and everyone else hardly tried at all. If I were a game dev, that wouldn't feel good to me. I'd want everyone to want to be involved, not just a select few.

The final point I'll make for this reply is this; Imagine you're still the mid-range player you once were, with a team of 4-5-6star cards, a hp&attack boosting leader and a healer, and you were able to fight a GW boss and score 25-30k points just simply doing the boss on cooldown (missing maybe 9-12 hours for rest); even if you didn't want to pay gems to get that extra push, you'd at least still feel proud of yourself for getting that far and gaining valuable points to buy something nice from the shop when it shows up next (maybe a new 6-star for your collection or even one to evolve to make your first 7-star). That would have felt pretty good to me.

[lolwut]

The only problem i would see is guilds like mine have mixed membership. Some lvl 160+ and some level 60 n below. So which guild war would we play in?

i thought the suggestion was about each player individually choosing their own difficulty, not each guild

Armand is correct: on the screen with the "FIGHT" button, it would be replaced with "Fight - Normal" and "Fight - Heroic" and you could choose one or the other on each refresh (both with a shared 3-hour CD). So if you decided to put in an attempt on heroic while farming normal mode, you can. It should be individualized per player, rather than per guild - that would just be terrible and would break low and mid-level guilds apart.

[pmsupport]

Hi lolwut, thanks for the explanation. The new guild war system you designed is made for the mid level players (level 80-130 players)? As far as I have observed, even though mid level players might not be able to score 50,000 points to get the boss card, they can score 2,000 points to get the 5 star cards and gems in the member rewards. And since the guild war stages usually rotate once, they can evolve their 5 star cards to a 6 star card after the rotated guild war. That should be enough for them to participate in the guild war?

[Endless]

I am a bit confused reading this. I am a high level player, with mid level playing ability. My frustration with this is how do we decide who is mid level? Is it based on level or based on skill? I am level 156, but my friend who is level 80 ( who understood the game more when starting and has had better luck with cards dropping than I ) got more points in this past guild war as me. So if we do it based on level, that seems unfair to players who have had a rather hard go at it. If we do it based on player choice, well everyone is going to choose the lower level to get the guild boss card...

I think the only way this would be fair to all players would be if the regular difficulty had different prizes compared to heroic. Sort of like the maps have the different levels. Like on Difficult you receive different prizes than on Insane. Low level players work hard to get the cards in the difficult map, whereas higher level players work hard to get the cards from Insane and Hell. So I wouldn't be opposed to this new guild war system if say, the "regular" difficulty offered the 6star card as the big prize for scoring high, whereas the "heroic" difficulty would offer the guild war boss card for scoring high. This would encourage players to aim for heroic to get the boss cards, prevent higher level players who have been playing for a long time from getting frustrated that low level players can now get guild war boss cards easily, and still help the lower level players obtain more hard to get 5 and 6 star cards. Different prizes for different level of difficulty seems fair.

Another thing I am thinking is that it would mess up the balance between guild war points in the guild totals. Would the lower level guild points equal the same as heroic guild points in a guild team? If so people will play on regular to get higher up in the guild war rankings. I feel that this would imbalance the entire game.

Anyway, that's just my thoughts on the subject. Definitely not opposed to different difficulties, but some certain things need to be considered and ironed out.

[david22]

To add to what was posted above I also think since there are chest on the wheel there should be a miniscule chance that you get a (bonus card say 5 awarded) this might bring more free players to buy gems just to get what ever guild war boss card I also agree to the post about 2 difficulty lvls for GW also it would really awesome if there was like a trade system implemented within each guild and I'm not talking about just mats but cards also I have a higher lvl account that I know has good card multiples of cards that they don't use maybe put a limit at to how often it can be used and limit how much you could trade at a time I think it could be based on your guild lvl the guild should be as least a certain lvl access the trade option just a few thoughts I haven't got all the bugs figured out but I think true players would agree