Is it fair to say the game is dead?

DeletedUser11020

Guest
While I'm here posting in the everlasting moment of the eternal (modern) return, is there any thread which details the changes our game has gone through graphically or in timeline?
So essentially you need a picture book
 

DeletedUser7490

Guest
I began playing Grepo back in it's first year of launch, Server (Theta EU)

basic advisor privs was the only premium feature, and no wonders, heros, or the farming systems currently in play.

alliances and players fought for their Rep's only, no alliance jumping or players would be shunned or rimmed from every team close enough.

starting positions were properly spread out, there was none of this crap happening today, where a new start lands on islands with 500k players and becomes their farm right out of beginners protection.

The reason the servers are dying is due to this soul fact, starting placements need to be spread across all ocean space again like it used too.......the pros and benefit of doing so is you get multiple oceans filling up with their own top dog teams, fighting each other for ocean supremacy.....leading to a large anticipation of which ocean rank team is really the best, for big end game wars once they move closer to each other.................however this cant happen due to the Wonder system.......everybody who said it when they introduced that element said it would kill the reason Grepolis was considered the best mmo out there for fighting strategy games.

We currently have a system that throws every player into the centre of the world, and moved outward, the older system when you choose a compass position (N,S,E,W) to begin in a server you actually landed in empty oceans which gave multiple players/teams a realistic chance to grow and dominate their own respective oceans, the servers would draw in 50k players for that very simple reason, ...they had the time to grow a team, not this stupidity of everybody in the same 4 or 5oceans and the big fish bullying the small fry newbies, thats why players come to grepo get ripped apart by a guy with 50+ towns when they only have their beginners city right out bp their a farm and quit and never return because their opinion is the games shit unless you know a good team.

Fix the starting placement and scrap the wonder system and you'll see the numbers go back up per server from the currently less than 1k new server averaging around 500 players. innogames got greedy, they made it all about premium features, and then used Grepolis to fund all their other simmer franchise games.

the stats dont lie, the early Grepo servers would have multiple servers months in, with an average of 25k to 40k players, theres barely 50k total combined from all servers now.
 
The game is most certainly dead (to good players). The players that are left are bottom feeders who have no skill, no idea how to play, and only grow by running festivals only. The yare uncoachable and unapproachable and think the old ways of playing by actually attacking are stupid. This is in no way referencing the Greats of times past, so if you are one, you know who you are - if this offends you, you also know who you are.

If you want to criticize me - go right ahead, just you cant attack me for it because I'm never logging in again. SorryCW12
 

DeletedUser11020

Guest
100% agree with you collateral. Game isnt what it used to be.
 

Bloodtyrant

Peltast
The only problem with grepo, is that now, thanks to being able to spend unlimited amounts on gold, people whom don't know how to really play the game, can now enjoy it as well!!! LOL
 

Corwin36

Artisan
I began playing Grepo back in it's first year of launch, Server (Theta EU)

basic advisor privs was the only premium feature, and no wonders, heros, or the farming systems currently in play.

alliances and players fought for their Rep's only, no alliance jumping or players would be shunned or rimmed from every team close enough.

starting positions were properly spread out, there was none of this crap happening today, where a new start lands on islands with 500k players and becomes their farm right out of beginners protection.

The reason the servers are dying is due to this soul fact, starting placements need to be spread across all ocean space again like it used too.......the pros and benefit of doing so is you get multiple oceans filling up with their own top dog teams, fighting each other for ocean supremacy.....leading to a large anticipation of which ocean rank team is really the best, for big end game wars once they move closer to each other.................however this cant happen due to the Wonder system.......everybody who said it when they introduced that element said it would kill the reason Grepolis was considered the best mmo out there for fighting strategy games.

We currently have a system that throws every player into the centre of the world, and moved outward, the older system when you choose a compass position (N,S,E,W) to begin in a server you actually landed in empty oceans which gave multiple players/teams a realistic chance to grow and dominate their own respective oceans, the servers would draw in 50k players for that very simple reason, ...they had the time to grow a team, not this stupidity of everybody in the same 4 or 5oceans and the big fish bullying the small fry newbies, thats why players come to grepo get ripped apart by a guy with 50+ towns when they only have their beginners city right out bp their a farm and quit and never return because their opinion is the games shit unless you know a good team.

Fix the starting placement and scrap the wonder system and you'll see the numbers go back up per server from the currently less than 1k new server averaging around 500 players. innogames got greedy, they made it all about premium features, and then used Grepolis to fund all their other simmer franchise games.

the stats dont lie, the early Grepo servers would have multiple servers months in, with an average of 25k to 40k players, theres barely 50k total combined from all servers now.


3 minutes ago

The game changed in a major way when it went from growth by farming to growth by bps. Spreading out would just lead to more people setting up bp parties instead of fighting, you gotta play the game the way it is built now now how it was 5 years ago. Now it is a battle from day 7 and the big dogs push the little dogs out. Even starting late and coming in from the rim is harder than it used to be
 
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DeletedUser7492

Guest
Night bonus?!? back in my day we had to stay up for 4 days in a row, to fend off CS's. AND WE LIKED IT. We didn't even have wireless mouses. You all are so spoiled.
 

DeletedUser11212

Guest
I have lost touch with everyone and I notice no one is on skype no more lol. u guys all migrate to line or discord or something.
 

DeletedUser10619

Guest
Howdy Fellas,

Every year everyone is always saying the game is dead... its definitely dying and the only way to get a life out of it is to join the EN servers. Haven't been around here in awhile... but just checking in :)
 

Vindication

Senior Citizen
In all fairness, InnoGames has done a tremendous amount to increase the diversity of the game. However, I feel like they have added so much, to such an extent, that it ostracizes a lot of the older players from a play-style aspect.

New aspects are great, heck, when I played on US40 I broke down a concept to Heracles favor farming, and it was even posted under enemy forums.

However, it often seems like an intellectual barrier returning to the game to find new meta's. Teamwork truly helps to catch players up, but when it comes to a playstyle approach, it's evident that InnoGames is favoring mobile players.

~ Quicker worlds, with more of a populous management approach, compared to specific ocean isolation (*WW's, etc).

The quicker maps, are not something that I'm innately opposed to, and think it's great to bring in new players. However, because of the nature of Dom. it invites more mobile players, and I could say the same for Revolt. Having new players is a great notion, and I actually played with a player named DemiGod69 on US89 that proved to be a solid competitive CQ player.

However, Dom. at least, focuses on merging alliances to control objective sites, and seems to have some inherent issues from my perspective. (Ex: Last Stand to be the basis of the winner, not highest Dom. value).

I played on US2, where the cap was lvl 40 for farms, and the sole flyer God was Zeus. Introducing more flyers has made it thoroughly enjoyable, and now seeing the Year 10 skins for cities, it gives me a push to play until 11-28-2022.

I think an implemented pact limit, and a lower alliance player count is important to create more smaller, more sustainable factions. As MRA's and merging is an inevitability at this stage, I feel like more should be done to stop excessive grouping. This will create more 'PLAYER DIVERSITY', and create more die-hard players from smaller factions.

In a traditional WW game mode, MRA's truly aren't around to last. Unless they can learn to work together and communicate, they can't control 7 WW Sites. However, in Dom. we see a lot of players hiding in VM out of ally, as an exploit, which has no setback to the Dom. teams.

Controlling anchors from de-spawns, has become a huge part of the Dom. game mode (* which I'd almost never do in WW's). It's a beautiful timing/strategy game, and more-so with Sirens as a tool to time. So, it's upsetting to see the almost de-incentivization to attack w/ NB on some maps (*Ex: us95).

From a competitive CQ player's perspective, it has turned into a bit of a farming/SIMS game. I'd love to see an adaptive approach to bringing back WW's, which is honestly my favorite game mode (Speed 4, so it favors CQ instead of building).

From InnoGame's perspective, it makes fiscal sense. They just put R&D funds into the mobile app, so they want to see their mobile dopamine farm ROI asap. They have no precedent to fix/tweak anything on PC, as they currently favor the mobile app (*to my understanding). They sure give us a lot of tools, that we truly can't appreciate on these quick Dom. maps.

I hate to bring B.o.B. up, as I truly respect TheCelt, binderjoel, Razerchique, and Murtagh Murt for being truly exceptional CQ players. However, recent B.o.B. rosters seems to join servers with literally 2-3 rosters of full alliances. Through cause-effect, this naturally causes the communities to cluster to combat their efforts, and decreases alliance/player diversity.

Cooter88, Sobepurdy, Danzach, and their 'Beer is Good' crew, gain so much of my respect from me. Simply because they stay independent, and don't drink the MRA poison simply because they're thirsty.

Less player diversity, causes more polarization, and in return 'spam' / pile-ons & toxicity. I'd like to see a server, where we have 4-5 strong independent factions unique to their oceans. However, I don't think this will ever exist on a Dom. world since it again favors merging & populous control over fighting.

Note: Also, not a big fan of Night Bonus, it again seems like a measure to retain more mobile players, but in itself causes inactivity.
 

Vindication

Senior Citizen
pt. 2

This post kind of ruins grepolis for me
It's the toxic behavior like this, that ruins it for me.
~ He's simply trying to engage in dialogue, and bridge gaps about what truly makes the game fun for our community.

Why I almost quit after us89:
KingAch trying to undermine our WW roster on US89, bc he just wanted attention & to demonize me out of spite for being on the initial build team.
In return, he caused 10 players to lose their crown, including himself in actuality. Even after I'd reached out explaining that they were indeed on the roster & their teamwork was valued. He misled 10 players with lies, and lost them their crowns -_-

Same player also resorted to making homophobic slurs in 2-3 discord world chats & @'ing me, seemingly out of spite-immaturity. I made the mistake of engaging in his 'flame war' in private chat, and led by impulse mistakenly returned the energy. The shear amount of toxicity that I was exposed to by this player was bordering on psychosis, and knowing that this game is catered to age 13+ mobile players, it makes me question the motives of this fully grown man.

Which I'm convinced was him projecting his issues onto me in some odd way. He even implemented spam bots simply out of spite, and got his main account banned shortly after WW's were initiated.

Even to this day, he takes snippets of aged discord messages, and tries to assassinate my character when he finds a listening ear. What comes around goes around, but there's so much truly spiteful, and polarizing behavior nowadays, that I know better than to feed into it. I've learned to let calmer heads prevail, but I'd like to see our communities holding each other accountable, not simply the opposition.
 
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DeletedUser12192

Guest
However, recent B.o.B. rosters seems to join servers with literally 2-3 rosters of full alliances. Through cause-effect, this naturally causes the communities to cluster to combat their efforts, and decreases alliance/player diversity.

This.

In all honesty, a large majority of the players on their rosters are dog shit and aren't capable of playing the game without crying and whining. As a result, they turn to spam as a way to try and win back a world or spending excessive amounts of money to somewhat be able to compete. It does get very frustrating and annoying fighting against their players, and hard to hold sieges early in the world when you immediately see 100+ incoming attacks as soon as you land your CS, all it does is de-motivate players and causes them to quit. So it is really no wonder that the US worlds are dead, and fewer and fewer players are joining the newer worlds. Implementation of night bonus on just about every world because US players like to sleep is another main factor that pushes people away. I think you just about covered everything though. The game just isn't as fun as it used to be for me.
 

BubbaBlu

Messenger
With gold being free to trade it seems the same super active players are wining every server. They have taken any real skill out. its more of catching people offline and clearing all cities. every server is the same people making deals and throwing others out to the wolves for a crown. there is no loyalty anymore. the ones that are loyal are only loyal to the heavy gold users they ride to a crown every server. People quitting every day. the new revolt server is the least active i have ever seen. and rightfully so as i was there for gold trade. i was taken out right out of beginners protection. a year ago i started a server with some friends after being gone almost 2 years. I actually purchased the big starter pack and some gold.... A heavy gold user actually golded 3 cities after the first 2 attempts failed to take mine. then golded troops and boats 4 more times until he finally got it.... all in less than 24 hours... to me thats not skill. thats just overly spending. only reason he was able to stick a cs was because he was finally able to get past my snipes and our bir stack from golding more units. really sad when someone feels they have to do that to win a game
 

Aurabolt

Citizen
So glad I found this thread.

I've been on Selymbria (US97) since January. I love Conquest Worlds. I noticed since I returned to Grep early last year. Had some fun with Rammage on Imbros before I quit in October. The winner of that server was decided months earlier basically but I was having so much fun, I stayed on much longer than planned.

All that said. I played on 2 to 4 servers last year--while under quarantine with COVID-19--and I immediately knew it was not the same game I played back in 2014 or the 4 years that followed. 2020 was my first time back since 2018 in short. I started playing Grep came in at time when skill actually mattered. I noticed since I returned to Grep last year it's no longer about skill anymore. It's about who can outspend who now. You can now prettymuch guess who's going to win a server very early on by how much money they're willing to spend. It's an open secret some people spend hundreds of dollars a week on Grep so...yeah.

Anywho, I do think the game is mostly dead in the U.S. Not just for the reasons other have stated but because of the simple fact Inno doesn't care anymore and they're not not trying to hide this fact. Grep has long been their biggest cash cow and they are funnelling the money they make off of Grep into advertising their other games. As much as it pains us PC players, the game is clearly being tweaked to heavily favor mobile players moving forward. I don't play mobile because even when I'm home, I don't like looking at my phone more than necessary.

Oh and yeah I noticed everyone starts clustered compared to years ago. Everthing's just in 44/45/54/55/56 now. Players need to start spread out to both give folks breathing room as well as give new players a chance once their Beginner's Protection wears off. Restarting on a server is meaningless now on that note. You're likely to get dropped back in the middle of a killing field.

...Whew.

I've already decided to make Selymbria the last server outside Olynthus and Hyperborea I play on. I can Gold trade on Olynthus as needed which works for me. I already know a few players from Hyperborea only join new servers just to Gold Farm but I'm not gonna do that. I'm pretty sad to know the Heavy Golding has forced a lot of highly skilled players from this game.

A lot of changes need to be made to save this game but like I said, Inno doesn't care about U.S. players.
 
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Brajanz0r

Artisan
Here's my 2 cents on this subject.

First we have to concentrate on general public who doesn't understand digital worlds that much. Speaking as a marketing expert in digital area, I have developers under my control and I do know how hard it is to make a change in the code. Especially when the code is the size of a major city. When you edit one small part you have to be damn sure you didn't screw up some other part by that change, which causes hours/days/weeks of beta testing. I have to give it to Inno, for years of playing, not once did the server broke down for days which generally happens. They are playing it smart and they obviously check for every single error so they won't screw up overall gaming experience. If you ever worked with Germans, you know they will invest the last drop of energy and knowledge into perfection and we have to recognize and appreciate that. I really don't know how many Germans work there but if there's only 1 German project manager, I can assure you that the quality will be top notch. As an European I know how they work.

I don't think they are not listening to the community, quite the opposite - they are looking at our suggestion from another angle (development angle) and even though our suggestions are great, they know they need time to implement and test those ideas before making them public. For all we know, they are maybe working on some of them right now?

There's a flaw in their marketing strategy though.

Some of you have said that EU servers, especially EN, are more active. Duh, they know how to activate Europeans because they are Europeans. The problem is that maybe they don't understand US market that much. For US market you have to be more aggressive, you need guerilla marketing. Americans have so many ground-breaking marketing innovations and it's very hard to compete against them in their own terrain. Inno definitely need someone to help them get through and implement more aggressive marketing which would draw some attention to US players. How many marketing tools do you see on your way to work or to the grocery store? Hundreds. You guys are almost immune to marketing. You need something better, something that will jump out and draw your attention - this is where Inno should be more creative and they shouldn't be afraid to invest more into marketing.

I love this community and honestly I prefer US servers more than EU. For that reason, I'll give some free ideas that could be beneficial:

- Stop with TV ads. They are the most expensive ones and you can't get through the millions of commercials on US networks. Invest that money in other areas.
- Make new concept of visual ads which should be distributed to social networks and Youtube display.
- Reach out to Youtube channels that has lots of followers and be their sponsors. This costs WAY less than TV ads and has more power and potential.
- Make collabs with YT influencers in gaming domain and let them show their followers what this game is really about.
- Groundbreaking: create a tournament server. This should be made once per year and the winners should have additional rewards (extended inventory with rare items, bunch of gold and other rewards). We can discuss this one in details, this is just a sketch.
- Make leads from your players. You do get 200 gold for every new player you recruit however this is not enough. Offer something more and you'll get more.
- Establish a safe zone for new players. Every newly registered player should be located to some other non-central ocean with other newbies where they can get to know this game without being harassed by experienced players. This way they'll stay for longer and they will look at central alliances as gods. Everyone that joins any community wants to be a part of something big and climb up the ladder, it's natural.

I can offer more ideas and would gladly discuss their feasibility. I know it can get better, it's just the matter of willingness.
 
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