Intro
I was one of the people accepted into the Guild of Guardians beta, so I figured I'd share some gameplay and thoughts for those curious.
Gameplay
I recorded the gameplay on my phone and then attempted to add a voice-over, but the re-render caused the game to look bad/pixelated, and I figured GoG wouldn't appreciate that. I'll figure out what settings need to change for future attempts, but for now, the video covers:
- Summoning a hero using hero shards
- Using the Barracks to equip heroes
- Running through a level, using ults, and the rewards screen
- Using exp elixirs to level up our new hero and equip her
General Thoughts
The new ultimate system is probably the most noticeable improvement. Slowing the game down while you select and then line up the ultimate is great. In my gameplay vid, my other characters were using their ultimate immediately, which is fine for easy levels, but you can also change their behavior so you can choose when to use them.
What are these Cubelet things on my reward screen?! It's part of the (very cool) guild crafting system:
(source: GoG official content)
TLDR: your guild makes things to sell and you get part of the proceeds.
I think this is a really interesting way to incorporate NFTs into the game. It also solves the problem of crafting gear for members directly. Who gets this piece of gear? Wait you skipped me! etc. This way, crafted gear gets sold, everyone divides up the proceeds, and then you can buy your own gear. Nicely done.
The difficulty is much easier than I recall from the first demo. They were explicit that this difficulty level does not reflect what it will be in the final game, which makes sense. For the demo, they want you to be able to play through the game and test systems. Not have to grind out gear or get frustrated.
The inventory system doesn't appear improved. It's hard to tell if a new piece of equipment is better than what you have, and I don't see any way to sell your weak gear. This was a big piece of feedback from the first demo, and they have said they are working on it. I guess it just wasn't ready yet.
Of course, the other major update is the release of the 3rd world (Frostmire), so nice to see progress in both systems and content.
My GoG NFT Activity
I've had the Aria hero for a long time now. I only bought one at the time, because they were $28 or so. At these prices, I decided to finish off my team. I was honestly going to leave it there, but I figured if I'm going to do it, then I should do it for real. That's when I grabbed the pet and energy token. I still didn't go all in like @copperpitch and others who grabbed guild tokens, but I'm looking forward to joining up and playing together. The guild experience will likely make or break the game in terms of 'fun factor'.
One of the big things for me is buy-in price. So many games right now require $100s just to get a foot in the door. I much prefer games where you can buy in for a few bucks, start seeing some benefits, and then decide to take a bigger plunge.
Conclusion
Pumped for the game to come out. Mobile is a huge addressable market, so hopefully enough people will play to make the game fun, guilds competitive, etc. On the flip side, this does mean that somewhere out there, someone is going to treat this game as their full-time job if the earning potential is high enough. More power to them, but that won't be me.
Happy to see progress continuing, and looking forward to playing more.