Changelog 2.124

[DeletedUser836]

Changelog 2.124

Dear Community,

We would like to inform you that update 2.124 will be released to all of our servers on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016.

Summary

• We continue working on improvements for the age of world wonders:
  • The world wonder donation overview feature is expanded with a search function and rights management for all members of the alliance.
  • To prevent unfair advantages and blocking in the late game, we adjust the effects of vacation mode if you own a city on a world wonder island.
• For game worlds with battle point villages, we rebalance farming villages to streamline all values and give you a more smooth experience with this feature.
• As always, other changes and bugfixes were also implemented, so feel free to read on to learn about all changes.

New Features and Changes

• Vacation mode will no longer apply for cities on islands with present world wonders.
  • This change is necessary to prevent alliances from gaining unfair advantages by activitely blocking cities on world wonder islands with some of their members going into in vacation mode.
  • In the first step of implementation, this change will only be applied to worlds on which the age of world wonders has not started yet. All other worlds will follow from January 2nd, 2017.
• We are adding some more functionality to the world wonder donation overview:
  • The rights management in the alliance member tab has been expanded to include priviledges to review donations in the world wonder donation overview.
  • A search bar was added at the bottom of the overview, making it easier to look for a specific player in the list of all donors.
  • When opening the donation overview, the donation list will jump to your position in the list, so you can easily see your own donations at a glance.

• Battle point villages have been rebalanced to offer a more streamlined experience. The following changes only apply to worlds with battle point villages:
  • Upgrade costs for farming villages are lower in the beginning but ramp up more with each subsequent level. The overall costs for an upgrade to level 6 have been decreased slightly.
  • Farming villages start with a bigger resource capacity with less subsequent increase for higher levels. The maximum capacity has been decreased.
  • The amount of resources that can be demanded with each cooldown have been increased slightly.
  • The number of units you can ask for has been increased as world speed is now taken into account.
  • Maximum trade ratios have been decreased as resource trading felt mandatory to maximize resource gain. In turn the trading capacity has been increased.
• Heroes taking part in a battle are now automatically and correctly preselected when opening the simulator from a battle report. However, they are only selected when they were visible in the battle report itself.

Bugfixes

• User interface - When opening and closing the "Troops from this city" overview in the agora, units no longer disappear from the overview on the right hand side of the screen.
• User interface - Banners for advisors are no longer displayed in respective menus (e.g. Captain for farming villages) if these advisors are already activated.
• Farming villages overview (Premium) - If demanding and looting resources in one or more farming villages is currently not possible, listed villages and checkboxes are deactivated and tooltips reflect the situation with corresponding information.
• World wonder donation overview - Donation data is now updated properly as soon as new donations arrive.
• World wonder donation overview - NaN was displayed for percentage values if no donations were made yet.
• World wonder donation overview - All world wonders owned by the alliance will now be displayed in the dropdown menu, even if no there were no donations yet.
• Reports - Defenders can no longer see if attackers had divine senses activated during their attack.
• Island view - Another farm town was moved as it was overlapping with the clickable area of founding spot for a new city.
• Grepolisscore - Awards gained on other worlds are displayed properly
• Island quests - After making a decision, both options were still displayed when opening the quest from the island view.
• Grepolisscore - The world overview window was slightly too big, causing an ugly scroll bar.

As always we hope you enjoy the update and would love to hear any feedback you might have here.

Best regards,
Your Grepolis Team

 

[DeletedUser11235]

The implementation of an ineffective vacation mode on wonder islands is a step in the right direction for Inno recognizing an exploit in the World Wonder system, but this is not the best way to fix that, in my opinion. There are real life issues that require legitimate use of vacation mode. I think some sort of penalty system could have been designed to help curb the vacation mode blocking, but to also not punish players with issues happening in their personal lives. An example of the penalty system could be:

- Increase in wonder construction time per number of cities in VM on wonder island
- Increase in number of resources needed to build stage per number of VM cities
- Increase in required favor to accelerate construction times

These penalties would effect a wonder for the duration of their current stage and any penalty would disappear when a stage is completed and the vm players have returned.

If a player enters VM after the wonder has been completed, a resource or construction penalty could still be applied by dropping the wonder back down to level 9 and then requiring the additional time/resources for completion.

 

[DeletedUser15240]

I agree with karch131 completely. Denying VM is an unnecessary imposition. Quite why something such as a family death should result in such a harsh penalty on an entire alliance, in what is already quite a time consuming game, I don't understand.

Perhaps a less draconian penalty, leveraged to impose lesser penalties on minor WW island VM's could be introduced instead, whilst still discouraging the one player WW VM Protection strategies used by some alliances.

For example, and using karch's example of WW construction time, how about applying the following formula:

t1 = original WW construction time
t2 = new revised WW construction time
a = number of active (non VM) cities on WW island

t2 = t1 x ((1+power(20 - a,2) / 20)

note: power(20 - a,2) is the square of 20 - a

So, for a WW construction time of say, 10 hours, the following would apply:



Pretty sure this would achieve the fair result we are looking for in this change.

Cheers

 

[DeletedUser15241]

Please leave your feedback here.

I assume Grep is run by humans , for humans?

This has to be the one of the most draconian amendments I have ever seen.

We aren't robots.

We are people, with families and lives and circumstances out of our immediate control.

There is no reward for any of us now for playing the game fairly, with dedication, camaraderie and in a good spirit - logging in hourly, daily.....sleepless nights..

because all that effort, over months and months, is in jeopardy for every player in every alliance if ONE of your WW holders has a crisis and cant VM.

How can players guarantee that they wont get sick, have anyone die, have any kind of of negative thing happen in their life for an indeterminate period of time?

And in this light, who will want to accept the responsibility of having a WW city?

This new ethos not only punishes players willing to make the WW holder sacrifice, but also the rest of their team.

How will it not make desperation and cheating all the more prevalent?

Discourage poor game play by all means- but don't punish people for having a life they cant predict.

 

[DeletedUser9133]

life happens and if inno refuses to understand that, they just lost a customer. Some of the previous recommendations seem reasonable save dropping a level of a completed wonder. set a reasonable time limit on WW Vacations. Say a week. If that isn't long enough then they player would have to transition the wonder, but don't deny your CUSTOMERS the ability to have a life outside or the game. You will find that many, like myself, will become ex-customers.

sincerely,
your soon to be ex-customer.

 

[Whitty]

I agree with all the comments noted here. If this occurs, it will really take a ton of unnecessary movement by our players if someone has to take a few days off for vacation. I could see this being beneficial if someone took more than 7 - 10 days; however, it's not uncommon for our players to take a day off here and there because they are flying for a trip, a family member has a special event or they just need a break. We've been in wonders for almost a year now, so we are to tell our team "Join the WW team; but, we're going to ask you not to take any time off, as we have to flip your cities. Please note you will lose everything you have built. And, send home all support home and hopefully you will get it back on your return." It's simply a logistical nightmare that doesn't need to happen and we will never find people who want to be on wonders. Some of our players have over a dozen cities that must be flipped every time they decide to take a day off.

And, what if there is a death in someones family or they are in an accident. Shall we say to them, "I'm sorry for your life issue; however, we need you to take some time over the next two days and focus on the game, release all troops from your cities and let us take them from you", or "please turn off your alarm for the next two days so we can massively attack you and take your cities."

The developers have done a great job with the design of this game and none of us want someone to be on permanent vacation, blocking wonder progress; however, there has to be some balance. If balance is not achieved, then we'll have to seek another game that provides some real-life perspective.

 

[DeletedUser4460]

As long as you don't allow minimum 3 days VM with protection a non-attackable ban is more attractive than VM.
More WW players will cheat than before, result is the same.

3 days VM would be enough to handle an emergency and disable VM blockage of wonder islands, even if a player wanted to abuse / reactivate VM, there's always a 2 days attackable period, what should be enough to perform OPs.

Fyi you gave us 1 week to adjust to this, wonders will start soon...

I don't think this direction is any better, wonders will be relocated to the rim, where you can turtle only 1 city and safety won't be affected by this new -in my opinion unfair- rule. Players will rather not take the responsibility long term to hold ww cities even in a safe core. 'Blind defense' is the least entertaining part of this game.

VM blockage delayed the chance to OP a wonder, relocation to rim will make it almost impossible. There will be less winners, less motivation to play.
Serves will drag on longer than before.

I hope you will reconsider this after it's been tested on a wider scale and modify the effect of VM protection. VM is more important then the quality of the endgame, it should be a basic right for every player, not limited for some.

 

[DeletedUser11525]

I believe the change only affects the city/cities on the wonder island, and not the balance of the players cities. The city on the wonder island would be open for attack, but presumably the alliance would have it stacked anyway. All other cities would be protected as they are now.

Losing a wonder level, as suggested by karch131, would be much more draconian. Just imagine the discussion if someone did need to hit VM to handle RL issues - not supportive, but who can grab the city fastest.

We've all seen WW cities protected by VM, and it frees up the support that would normally been dedicated to the city redeployed to other WW cities.

This doesn't really address the overall shortcoming of WW, but does close one of the abusive loopholes.

 

[DeletedUser]

What I find disgusting and underhand is that it stated on Beta forums that the changes to VM not affecting WW cities was put on Hold, then you sneakily re-add it to this update, even though on every forum I've read the majority of the community was against this as it stands. From what I can see no alteration was made to the way it affected, you just claimed it was ON HOLD, then brought it in anyway.

Well I can tell you right now you have just lost another customer as I won't be buying anymore gold and once my current worlds finish I will never play this game again, when you claim to care what your CUSTOMERS/COMMUNITY thinks and then just disregard them and do whatever you want and what will ultimately make you more money.