Concerns and Ideas

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DeletedUser4460

Guest
Feel free to post here any concern or idea about the game that doesn't fit in one of our main discussion topics!
Please use the following questions as guideline when forming your post:
  • What is your concern / idea?
  • How do you think this will improve the game?
  • If you have a solution, list it. If not, feel free to ask for one.
Topics that require more discussion may result in an external thread.
 

DeletedUser1048

Guest
I might as well start this off with controversy, hopefully that'll get everyone speaking.

Idea: Night bonus on for all worlds

Some experienced players might not like it, but think about it. Before the app, the game was practically dead in the night (relative to now). We didn't have alarms waking us up, and we attacked when we were online. Since this sever started we have been unique, in that other countries had night bonus and we (for many years) did not. Now that we have it on some worlds it's time to put it on all worlds.

Our biggest problem is dead worlds. There are so few people on worlds now in days that the rim is a barren wasteland. This reflects a struggle to add and retain new players. One of the biggest disincentives to play this game (for a new player) is the amount of activity that is required. Not only do they need the attack alarm but they also need to wake up at any hour of the day to attack and defend. That's great for diehards but casual players are not going to be willing to do that, especially before they have time to appreciate all that the game has to offer. So we put night bonus on all worlds. Now diehards have a penalty if they do indeed attack in the middle of the night. Less attacks at night and worse results on those attacks allows casuals to have more time to learn and love this game. More people= more interesting worlds. Seems like a great trade off.


And yes for those wondering, I do have an opinion on basically everything :D
 

DeletedUser11525

Guest
I agree that the real issue is dead worlds. So, what is the root cause of that?

I don't think its the attack alarm, or night bonus, or the lack of night bonus. Night bonus just affects when you plan you attacks to land. Not when they can be sent. I can still ring someones attack alarm (assuming it's working at the moment) by launching my attacks late at night to land after the night bonus window. I sure someone will correct me on this, but aren't the US servers a little different from some of the other countries in that they inherently span multiple time zones, and seem to attract players from around the world, making the night bonus concept a bit more challenging.

I would put 4 alternate theories out there for the dead worlds and lack of new players:
1) Frequent events - the events disrupt the growth of a world. This is especially true with experienced players that drop non-trivial gold to get the awards they want. I would guess that new players spend very little while they are getting up to speed on the game. Remedy: exclude new worlds from events for the first 3-6 months to actually let the world get started and have people actually need to rely on strategy and ability instead of relying on event boosts.
2) Gold - need more be said? If the perception by new players is that the only way to succeed in the game is to spend a lot of money, they will find another game. The perception may, or may not be real, but with gold in events, and the change from halving the completion time to instant complete means that early in a world, gold can be king. It doesn't make a bad player great, but does give them an advantage. Instant complete on buildings means a wall can go back up in no time, and the units can be instantly completed to reinforce a city. Remedy: Change these back to only being able to half the remaining time, or put a cap on the number of instant completes a player has each day (with no way to buy more).
3) Impediments to small player growth - I've written else where on the down side of the BP farming villages, and how they are a drag on growth for smaller players. This is especially true if a player is in a relatively quiet part of a world, or aren't part of an alliance yet. Remedy: add resource based farm villages back as an option for smaller players.
4) All of us - Those of us that have played for a while tend to fall into playing with the same teams from world to world, and with the low alliance limits, tend to stick with the players we know. There's no incentive to 'waste' an alliance spot on an unknown/new player when you can take some one you've played with before, or can look up a history on. Remedy: Add 10-20% newbie bonus cap on alliance size.

Just some of my thoughts on it.
 

DeletedUser1048

Guest
I would agree that night bonus and attack alarms are not the top reasons for dead worlds. I just believe that Innogames are less likely to cut down the number of events then they are to play with night bonus. I mean this is a company that tried to cram Warfare Packages down our throat, they will stop at no length to maximize their revenue. That's reasonable but it also means that the things that most drastically alter the game (for worse) are basically untouchable.

1) That would be much better. When I started I'm pretty sure there was a summer event, Halloween event, and Christmas event. 3 events a years is way better than event, 2 week break, another event, repeat process.
2) I like the idea of a cap, would definitely be a step in the right direction.
3) I agree, that farming village change really hurts the players it was meant to help. Resource based farming villages would be better for smaller players. If the game isn't willing to do that, perhaps they could expand bandit camps? Can hit them more than 100 times, or maybe you get a bandit camp on the island of your first few cities.
4) Didn't TSF also have an idea for this problem :confused: Something about disabling the invite link and that the world would put you in a random direction. I like both of your ideas on this. Worlds are way to top heavy, and we can't get players to stick if they have to compete on a lopsided playing field.

Your list makes me kind of sad because there were plenty of us that warned about these effects when they were just ideas, and here they are in the game with those same side effects. Hopefully this time around things will be different.
 

DeletedUser4460

Guest
Your list makes me kind of sad because there were plenty of us that warned about these effects when they were just ideas, and here they are in the game with those same side effects. Hopefully this time around things will be different.

I have to agree with this, many good ideas probably didn't get proper attention in the past, or the game took a different direction.
Our main task in Council is how to change that and especially how to motivate others to contribute with feedback here on forum.

In questions of night bonus and alliance cap: your ideas reach beyond what we proposed (Council requested polls about settings for all new worlds like on German market - pending issue).
Inner Council (2 members per market) gets a summary of ideas / concerns that you posted here almost daily, they may post about them on their own forum / chat for more feedback, just like how we can bring up here topics that they found important. At the end we sort and select all supported ideas by priority before presenting them for Innogames, Devs... ;)
 

Selectron

Citizen
This might need a new thread, but I’d like to know what progress, if any, is being made:

1. To stop spam. Many players, including myself, chose to quit playing a world after they became a target of an obsessive spammer. The game is not fun when a player has to put up with such cheap tactics.

2. To ban players who use Team Viewer. For those who don’t know about Team Viewer, players install this software on their computer, and then they can log into each other’s account to play the game, while the other player is offline. Sometimes one player manages several accounts, while those players are offline. Nori/Morg, maybe you can add more to how this dynamic works. So far, Inno is unable to detect this type of cheating.
 
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DeletedUser4460

Guest
This might need a new thread, but I’d like to know what progress, if any, is being made:

1. To stop spam. Many players, including myself, chose to quit playing a world after they became a target of an obsessive spammer. The game is not fun when a player has to put up with such cheap tactics.

2. To ban players who use Team Viewer. For those who don’t know about Team Viewer, players install this software on their computer, and then they can log into each other’s account to play the game, while the other player is offline. Sometimes one player manages several accounts, while those players are offline. Nori/Morg, maybe you can add more to how this dynamic works. So far, Inno is unable to detect this type of cheating.

1. Spam will get a topic soon.

2. Unfortunately this issue is not on Player Council’s scope, we can suggest game changes and provide general feedback about rules, but don’t have any insights of Innogames detection methods nor such problems of their tools therefore can’t comment on that. Playing multiple accounts on same world is breach of rules regardless the methods.
 

DeletedUser1048

Guest
Ok you know what would be great, for the game to stop randomly refreshing when you're trying to do things. Few things are more annoying than when your trying to put troops in queue or store silver in the cave and it refreshes the number you had. Especially when it's refreshing as you click the green check mark. Really this is the only game I can think of where this type of thing is even an issue.

Rant over.
 

DeletedUser11525

Guest
Ok you know what would be great, for the game to stop randomly refreshing when you're trying to do things. Few things are more annoying than when your trying to put troops in queue or store silver in the cave and it refreshes the number you had. Especially when it's refreshing as you click the green check mark. Really this is the only game I can think of where this type of thing is even an issue.

Rant over.

It's actually a little worse than that.

If you have a non-default unit selected (Horse instead of sword), the refresh reverts back to the default unit, so instead of build 50 horses, you select 150 swords. And then if you cancel, you only get part of the resources back.

The refreshes are annoying. Not having an oops ability to cancel an operation within even 10 seconds of issuing it is a real issue. We can cancel attacks or spies within the first 5 minutes with no penalty, so why can't I cancel a build within a few seconds?
 

DeletedUser1048

Guest
It's actually a little worse than that.

If you have a non-default unit selected (Horse instead of sword), the refresh reverts back to the default unit, so instead of build 50 horses, you select 150 swords. And then if you cancel, you only get part of the resources back.

The refreshes are annoying. Not having an oops ability to cancel an operation within even 10 seconds of issuing it is a real issue. We can cancel attacks or spies within the first 5 minutes with no penalty, so why can't I cancel a build within a few seconds?

Thank you for filling in the gaps, was too annoyed to speak before. It doesn't surprise me as I've been dealing with it for 6 years, but it is never less annoying.

Switching the units is definitely the bigger problem that comes out of this since there is no grace period to cancel troops. I remember that a grace period was suggested several years ago, going to see if I can find the thread later. See no reason why we should be negatively affected by something out of our control.
 

DeletedUser10912

Guest
I might as well start this off with controversy, hopefully that'll get everyone speaking.

Idea: Night bonus on for all worlds

Some experienced players might not like it, but think about it. Before the app, the game was practically dead in the night (relative to now). We didn't have alarms waking us up, and we attacked when we were online. Since this sever started we have been unique, in that other countries had night bonus and we (for many years) did not. Now that we have it on some worlds it's time to put it on all worlds.

Our biggest problem is dead worlds. There are so few people on worlds now in days that the rim is a barren wasteland. This reflects a struggle to add and retain new players. One of the biggest disincentives to play this game (for a new player) is the amount of activity that is required. Not only do they need the attack alarm but they also need to wake up at any hour of the day to attack and defend. That's great for diehards but casual players are not going to be willing to do that, especially before they have time to appreciate all that the game has to offer. So we put night bonus on all worlds. Now diehards have a penalty if they do indeed attack in the middle of the night. Less attacks at night and worse results on those attacks allows casuals to have more time to learn and love this game. More people= more interesting worlds. Seems like a great trade off.


And yes for those wondering, I do have an opinion on basically everything :D
I disagree with the night bonus. Not everyone works during the day. I’d love to be able to sleep during the day and not be attacked lol
 

Rodrk

Peltast
I agree that the real issue is dead worlds. So, what is the root cause of that?

I don't think its the attack alarm, or night bonus, or the lack of night bonus. Night bonus just affects when you plan you attacks to land. Not when they can be sent. I can still ring someones attack alarm (assuming it's working at the moment) by launching my attacks late at night to land after the night bonus window. I sure someone will correct me on this, but aren't the US servers a little different from some of the other countries in that they inherently span multiple time zones, and seem to attract players from around the world, making the night bonus concept a bit more challenging.

I would put 4 alternate theories out there for the dead worlds and lack of new players:
1) Frequent events - the events disrupt the growth of a world. This is especially true with experienced players that drop non-trivial gold to get the awards they want. I would guess that new players spend very little while they are getting up to speed on the game. Remedy: exclude new worlds from events for the first 3-6 months to actually let the world get started and have people actually need to rely on strategy and ability instead of relying on event boosts.
2) Gold - need more be said? If the perception by new players is that the only way to succeed in the game is to spend a lot of money, they will find another game. The perception may, or may not be real, but with gold in events, and the change from halving the completion time to instant complete means that early in a world, gold can be king. It doesn't make a bad player great, but does give them an advantage. Instant complete on buildings means a wall can go back up in no time, and the units can be instantly completed to reinforce a city. Remedy: Change these back to only being able to half the remaining time, or put a cap on the number of instant completes a player has each day (with no way to buy more).
3) Impediments to small player growth - I've written else where on the down side of the BP farming villages, and how they are a drag on growth for smaller players. This is especially true if a player is in a relatively quiet part of a world, or aren't part of an alliance yet. Remedy: add resource based farm villages back as an option for smaller players.
4) All of us - Those of us that have played for a while tend to fall into playing with the same teams from world to world, and with the low alliance limits, tend to stick with the players we know. There's no incentive to 'waste' an alliance spot on an unknown/new player when you can take some one you've played with before, or can look up a history on. Remedy: Add 10-20% newbie bonus cap on alliance size.

Just some of my thoughts on it.

Mark and I have played together many servers. I had no idea he had so many good thoughts!

  • Night bonus is not the answer to participation issues, this would cause many more people to leave. All that would be left are casual players.
  • The #1 issue is the gold change, and has always been terrible. But the damage is done and there is no undoing it. Now inno is implementing other things like Night Bonus because they think that's the issue. Too bad they don't player their own game
  • Using gold to cut production by 50% was reasonable, current system is not. I'm one of the guys instant building all the time so not crying, but this was a money grab and basically the cause of running off a ton of great players who don't gold or are modest golders
  • This issue is further compounded by the frequency of events. Again, not an issue for me, but players who only buy a little gold for advisers get tired of getting pounded and walk. I've known some excellent limited or no gold players in the past. Now they are hard to find.
  • The timing and settings of worlds being released rarely makes sense. I also don't understand 30 player alliance caps at all, when the top alliances then become 3 - 5 branches.
I really like the fact that there is so much discussion around the game currently. Some new life has been breathed into the externals and Inno seems to be listening a little.

What i would love more then anything would be for the Dev's to PLAY THEIR GAME!

I do have bad news for everyone. While what's left of our community may reap the benefits of some positive changes, it's too little too late. The people that have been run off by game changes, BS bans, frustration etc are not coming back (maybe a few) and the population will continue to shrink.

The last 5 years is a case study for what not to do. Great to see the energy. If Inno was responsive years ago when they needed to be, things might be different
 

DeletedUser16164

Guest
As a player who has walked away once, due to the inability to keep up with without golding, I see this as the number 1 obstacle surrounding player retention. A very difficult problem to solve.

My second thought about lack of rim activity is the number 2. The game breaks down when there are no new cities to conquer. No new players joining worlds. Adding AI cities might be a solution. Cities that are generated, protected for a time, produce troops and will auto attack - randomly. Having almost a personality. Max growth at 6k or 10k and that would keep the expansion of the worlds up. Give a small player hope of conquest late in a world. Give a big player reason to expand to the rim. Provide another strategy that an alliance might employ to make to the end.
 
What is your concern/idea?
That island quests that want me to attack or defend always appear in bir/LS cities, never the relevant ones. So change it, give the quest people ships. It's like regular quest enemies but now they're PIRATE QUEST PEOPLE!
How do you think this will improve the game?
Now people can stop getting island quests they can't complete because they built ship nukes. Now those extra attack or defense buffs you usually see are now usable, plus it increases the chances that the unloved trireme will be used. It's also one of the big pet peeves I know that other people have with the island quests, so this aims to fix it.
If you have a solution, list it. If not, feel free to ask for one.
Pretty sure I already offered a solution, but the island quests could always check to see what kind of units it's looking for (land or sea) and then check the units that the city created, not the units in the city because alliance members sent support and tripwires which would throw the island quest's check off.
Foreseeable Problem & Fix:
1) Getting quests to attack/defend against ships in the wrong city build (ie bir nukes attacking and LS defending)
Easy fix, have the game perform a second check in addition to the land/sea check to check if its offense or defensive units built by the city. This also reduces the chance DLU nukes get attack quests while OLU nukes get defend quests, which is a bonus!
 

DeletedUser4601

Guest
Many of my friends have left because the "night bonus" was not strong. If it doesn't protect against losing a city while sleeping----what difference did it make. I still think GREPO is the best game to play,,,but could be SO much better!
 

DeletedUser5524

Guest
Many of my friends have left because the "night bonus" was not strong. If it doesn't protect against losing a city while sleeping----what difference did it make. I still think GREPO is the best game to play,,,but could be SO much better!
Lol this is the stupidest idea. Basically you are just suggesting turning attacks off at night which makes no sense what so ever. Just because it seems fair for you and your "friends" doesn't mean it is fair for everyone else.
 
Many of my friends have left because the "night bonus" was not strong. If it doesn't protect against losing a city while sleeping----what difference did it make. I still think GREPO is the best game to play,,,but could be SO much better!
Night bonus seems to be something disliked by many people as-is. If it's buffed then even more people will leave simply because you wanted your friends to come back. I'm not sure if this is true, but it would seem that buffing night bonus would do more harm than good to a world.
 

DeletedUser11525

Guest
Many of my friends have left because the "night bonus" was not strong. If it doesn't protect against losing a city while sleeping----what difference did it make. I still think GREPO is the best game to play,,,but could be SO much better!

I could make the same argument about losing cities while people are at work and unable to defend. Maybe we need a "work bonus" as well. So, now I'm attackable for a couple hours in the morning, and a few at night. Where do we stop trying to 'protect' players from attacks coming at inconvenient times?

I've always been in alliances with members from around the world, and with suitable cross tripping, we cover each other 24/7. If your alliance is solely a group of friends all in the same time zone, then maybe you need to broaden your alliance outside your little clique.
 
we cover each other 24/7. If your alliance is solely a group of friends all in the same time zone, then maybe you need to broaden your alliance outside your little clique.
You don't even need to do that if you don't want to. On Eubea I have forum mod rights in my alliance, so occasionally I'll be up until NB kicks in monitoring things and editing posts as needed since things quiet down when NB kicks in.
 
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