Forum: empire-en
Board: [590] Ideas, Suggestions & Feedback
Topic: [387525] Just Stop
[-387525]
oWarHero (GB1) [GB1]
:: Oct. 6, 2022, 5:57 p.m.
It's been quite some time since I've done a forum post, and this may come across as a bit of a ramble - I assure you it's only because I'm a long standing player that has watched the game go from new, to great, to whatever the hell it is now and as sad it is, I care that the game is deteriorating more quickly than a pint after work on a Friday afternoon. Personally I feel there are SO many issues with the game at the moment that the developers are simply ignoring. Yes, you are a business and your aim is to earn money, but if you continue you will not have a customer base left.
PvP
I've just spent 5 minutes reading all the comments on the latest thread asking for feedback. Not ONE was positive. Not one player has come on here to say, good job GGE! It is imbalanced and has been since you changed the attack limit from 1064 all those years ago. There is little to no benefit of participating in PvP and nowadays the recovery period is just far too much. Let's say you lose 150k troops overnight (because let's be honest, not many have the cahunas to hit during the day due to stacking bonuses), then you either have to spend £100 on the WoA or spend days replacing your losses (and the coin to do so). [Based on 500 troops per castle on aristo feasting and 7 castles, you're looking at around 3 days minimum of constant recruiting and 3M coin] During all that recruiting you are obviously not recruiting attack so could potentially be limited in how many attackers you can use for events. I'd also like to point out I've based the recruitment speed on my best castle, and I'm a 9M+ might points player - not your average player.
Alliances
65 players per team used to be appropriate because you had the player base. It may well be different on other servers but on UK1 it's too many. The strongest team on the server is on 836M might, with the second on 366M. Both teams (and a couple more) have players with 50M might that could easily outscore a top 20 team given the team in 20th is only on 56M might total with 34 players. You don't need to be good at math to know that means it's going to be the same team winning the best rewards again, and again, and again... Fun for everyone else eh... And don't get me started on the support numbers achievable by the biggest teams...
Events
Your bonuses are screwed and as I've lightly touched on above, single players can now outscore entire teams. The events are monotonous and generally the number of hits required to unlock higher levels only suits the strong. FLs/BCs for example need 600 hits to unlock Hard+. With 6 wave hits (as most F2P players won't have additional wave items), let's say you're looking at 3k per attack and you're not all that likely to win off the first, so let's say it's 3.5k losses per hit. That's a 'lowly' 2,100,000 troops to unlock the next level. [A 'mere' 420M gold coin to recruit in mead troops FYI, albeit I use the cheaper troops construction yard item] Not only that but some events are still outdated and the rewards to effort simply don't match. You revamped Storm only to defecate all over the potential rewards of a month's hard work just a couple more updates later.
The biggest joke of an event is the Beyond The Horizon event in which players are clearly selling top positions outside of the game, and you're doing nothing about it. It's so obvious it hurts. You have genuine players adopting strategies to get themselves and their teams 10 fabric an event (an absolutely pitiful return for the effort and number of items it can be used for) and then you can see players with 1k might achieving a score of 20M after 2 days of the event. Either you're blind or just stupid, or (and I suspect the most likely) you just don't care.
Last to note on this - don't give a sub LL950 player the same reward as a LL950 for winning events. This just opens the door to proxy players (see further down) and stops those players from racing to LL950, because they can get the +7 wave item and start smashing their way through LL950 players' defences. Or maybe in the same way you've segregated the rewards with levels, you could try this with might. Back in the games heyday I won a few events but I've now resigned to the fact I'll never win another.
Rubies & Offers
My first point here is stop trying to confuse people! You have a loyal customer base and you're throwing 'offers' at us like they're going out of fashion! I'm now getting offers for the same items at different prices at the same time. Do you think I'm going to be happy if I buy some new decorations to open a different offer and see I could've bought them 5k rubies cheaper had I waited? Obviously not! There's too many items to buy, too many offers and unless you buy, you have no chance of keeping up. Again, let's take one example - 45k rubies for 4 decoration items. An RBC can (if you're lucky) give around 30 rubies, which would need 1500 wins. However it's not that simple as you don't get rubies every time, oh no that'd be too simple. Let's use a (generous) success rate of 50%. I'm also going to use the old strategy of 15 max RBCs per kingdom. 60 hits a time, 3 hour cooldown. 45,000 / 30 = 1,500 hits. 50% implies 3,000 hits. Including cooldowns, that's 150 hours, 6.25 days of constant hitting. For FOUR decorations.
Strip it back, if people can justify to themselves what they're buying is 'good value', you'll have more purchases. Everyone can see at the moment that you're intentionally trying to overwhelm and confuse.
Proxies
How oh how are these still a thing. No normal player will get a 5M+ account within a month of starting without the use of cheap currency. No normal player would WANT to - they'd have their normal account and go from there. Even the names some of the idiots on our server come up with are so obvious it hurts. So you reset their currency when you finally notice... You don't take away the rewards they've earned, the items they've bought for a fraction of the price, or compensate those they have affected - be it directly (e.g. PvP) or indirectly (e.g. taking an event reward from a genuine player).
I'm also fairly confident there's still bots being used but whether or not you'll ever sort that I don't know. Just watch people's looting scores and investigate any that look a bit suspicious. It can't be more than a handful per server, it wouldn't be hard to weed them out.
I have ideas, as I'm sure many other players do, of how to improve the game. I've posted ideas before and they've been implemented but typically it's only the minor ideas that get addressed, for example the scroll bar on the alliance members page. I also suggested a way to auto-sell equipment and you monetised it as a 'convenience feature', which in my opinion really shows the greedy nature of those in charge. So now I think, why bother? Any ideas I come up with will be ignored or I'll end up paying for.
What you're severely lacking is the understanding of how different players actually play the game. You need to know how those with different time available, with different expenditure possible and with different interests play. Your surveys don't seem to actually do anything as you clearly don't understand the majority. Play the game. Try it. Go on. I dare you. (And no, don't play it where you can unlock anything you want, actually PLAY it, see how far even £50 a month gets you.)
So, to the point of my subject title. JUST STOP. Stop releasing new updates. Stop ignoring your customer base. Stop grabbing all the money you can as quickly as you can. Plan for a long term future, and for customer retention. Re-evaluate, play the game yourselves to understand the various natures of your players and live up to your name - GOODGAME.
You have my email address if you care enough to get some honest feedback, otherwise I'll assume this will fall on deaf ears. Maybe other players will agree, or feel free to disagree if you think I'm talking rubbish. Maybe I just needed the rant.
PvP
I've just spent 5 minutes reading all the comments on the latest thread asking for feedback. Not ONE was positive. Not one player has come on here to say, good job GGE! It is imbalanced and has been since you changed the attack limit from 1064 all those years ago. There is little to no benefit of participating in PvP and nowadays the recovery period is just far too much. Let's say you lose 150k troops overnight (because let's be honest, not many have the cahunas to hit during the day due to stacking bonuses), then you either have to spend £100 on the WoA or spend days replacing your losses (and the coin to do so). [Based on 500 troops per castle on aristo feasting and 7 castles, you're looking at around 3 days minimum of constant recruiting and 3M coin] During all that recruiting you are obviously not recruiting attack so could potentially be limited in how many attackers you can use for events. I'd also like to point out I've based the recruitment speed on my best castle, and I'm a 9M+ might points player - not your average player.
Alliances
65 players per team used to be appropriate because you had the player base. It may well be different on other servers but on UK1 it's too many. The strongest team on the server is on 836M might, with the second on 366M. Both teams (and a couple more) have players with 50M might that could easily outscore a top 20 team given the team in 20th is only on 56M might total with 34 players. You don't need to be good at math to know that means it's going to be the same team winning the best rewards again, and again, and again... Fun for everyone else eh... And don't get me started on the support numbers achievable by the biggest teams...
Events
Your bonuses are screwed and as I've lightly touched on above, single players can now outscore entire teams. The events are monotonous and generally the number of hits required to unlock higher levels only suits the strong. FLs/BCs for example need 600 hits to unlock Hard+. With 6 wave hits (as most F2P players won't have additional wave items), let's say you're looking at 3k per attack and you're not all that likely to win off the first, so let's say it's 3.5k losses per hit. That's a 'lowly' 2,100,000 troops to unlock the next level. [A 'mere' 420M gold coin to recruit in mead troops FYI, albeit I use the cheaper troops construction yard item] Not only that but some events are still outdated and the rewards to effort simply don't match. You revamped Storm only to defecate all over the potential rewards of a month's hard work just a couple more updates later.
The biggest joke of an event is the Beyond The Horizon event in which players are clearly selling top positions outside of the game, and you're doing nothing about it. It's so obvious it hurts. You have genuine players adopting strategies to get themselves and their teams 10 fabric an event (an absolutely pitiful return for the effort and number of items it can be used for) and then you can see players with 1k might achieving a score of 20M after 2 days of the event. Either you're blind or just stupid, or (and I suspect the most likely) you just don't care.
Last to note on this - don't give a sub LL950 player the same reward as a LL950 for winning events. This just opens the door to proxy players (see further down) and stops those players from racing to LL950, because they can get the +7 wave item and start smashing their way through LL950 players' defences. Or maybe in the same way you've segregated the rewards with levels, you could try this with might. Back in the games heyday I won a few events but I've now resigned to the fact I'll never win another.
Rubies & Offers
My first point here is stop trying to confuse people! You have a loyal customer base and you're throwing 'offers' at us like they're going out of fashion! I'm now getting offers for the same items at different prices at the same time. Do you think I'm going to be happy if I buy some new decorations to open a different offer and see I could've bought them 5k rubies cheaper had I waited? Obviously not! There's too many items to buy, too many offers and unless you buy, you have no chance of keeping up. Again, let's take one example - 45k rubies for 4 decoration items. An RBC can (if you're lucky) give around 30 rubies, which would need 1500 wins. However it's not that simple as you don't get rubies every time, oh no that'd be too simple. Let's use a (generous) success rate of 50%. I'm also going to use the old strategy of 15 max RBCs per kingdom. 60 hits a time, 3 hour cooldown. 45,000 / 30 = 1,500 hits. 50% implies 3,000 hits. Including cooldowns, that's 150 hours, 6.25 days of constant hitting. For FOUR decorations.
Strip it back, if people can justify to themselves what they're buying is 'good value', you'll have more purchases. Everyone can see at the moment that you're intentionally trying to overwhelm and confuse.
Proxies
How oh how are these still a thing. No normal player will get a 5M+ account within a month of starting without the use of cheap currency. No normal player would WANT to - they'd have their normal account and go from there. Even the names some of the idiots on our server come up with are so obvious it hurts. So you reset their currency when you finally notice... You don't take away the rewards they've earned, the items they've bought for a fraction of the price, or compensate those they have affected - be it directly (e.g. PvP) or indirectly (e.g. taking an event reward from a genuine player).
I'm also fairly confident there's still bots being used but whether or not you'll ever sort that I don't know. Just watch people's looting scores and investigate any that look a bit suspicious. It can't be more than a handful per server, it wouldn't be hard to weed them out.
I have ideas, as I'm sure many other players do, of how to improve the game. I've posted ideas before and they've been implemented but typically it's only the minor ideas that get addressed, for example the scroll bar on the alliance members page. I also suggested a way to auto-sell equipment and you monetised it as a 'convenience feature', which in my opinion really shows the greedy nature of those in charge. So now I think, why bother? Any ideas I come up with will be ignored or I'll end up paying for.
What you're severely lacking is the understanding of how different players actually play the game. You need to know how those with different time available, with different expenditure possible and with different interests play. Your surveys don't seem to actually do anything as you clearly don't understand the majority. Play the game. Try it. Go on. I dare you. (And no, don't play it where you can unlock anything you want, actually PLAY it, see how far even £50 a month gets you.)
So, to the point of my subject title. JUST STOP. Stop releasing new updates. Stop ignoring your customer base. Stop grabbing all the money you can as quickly as you can. Plan for a long term future, and for customer retention. Re-evaluate, play the game yourselves to understand the various natures of your players and live up to your name - GOODGAME.
You have my email address if you care enough to get some honest feedback, otherwise I'll assume this will fall on deaf ears. Maybe other players will agree, or feel free to disagree if you think I'm talking rubbish. Maybe I just needed the rant.
[5237700]
dandelion1958 (GB1) [GB1]
:: Oct. 6, 2022, 6:40 p.m.
Awesome post
- hit the nail on the head
- several plkayers i've chatted to in the past with almost unlimited funds (due to their circumstances) have gone under the bird because of the bots and "proxy" accounts
- why can't GGS see that
- it's not just the small buyers (like me) they are losing but some potential very big spender
- Uk server used to have 20k active players - now probably less than 2k - some other servers are similar !
[5237733]
FatherPretzel (US1) [US1]
:: Oct. 6, 2022, 9:33 p.m.
Good post but do not be surprised if GGE does noting or very little of what you say even after 1 or 2 years.
It is their game and they have never been one to take many helpful or good suggestions and run with it.
It is their game and they have never been one to take many helpful or good suggestions and run with it.
[5238783]
empereur2014 (FR1) [FR1]
:: Oct. 7, 2022, 6:36 p.m.
la dernière màj est une véritable mascarade, tant au niveau de la visibilité pour effectuer une off ( les programmeurs on du fumer grave ) que la manière totalement illogique pour les défenses.
vous avez 300k de def et au final quand se attaquer il n'en reste de 4k ???
il est impossible de def contre V8 ou plus.
Remettez l'ancienne version ou GGE va perdre énormément de joueurs car la ça devient du grand n'importe quoi
vous avez 300k de def et au final quand se attaquer il n'en reste de 4k ???
il est impossible de def contre V8 ou plus.
Remettez l'ancienne version ou GGE va perdre énormément de joueurs car la ça devient du grand n'importe quoi
[5240374]
PM6969 (US1) [US1]
:: Oct. 9, 2022, 1:24 p.m.
New attack format sucks.
[5240384]
monty242 (GB1) [GB1]
:: Oct. 9, 2022, 1:53 p.m.
Simple answer to this total rubbish upgrade; DO NOT BUY ANYMORE RUBIES. Loss of earnings is the only way to get GGE to see sense and sort this ABSOLUTE BALLS UP!!
[5240591]
Теодора М (BG1) [BG1]
:: Oct. 9, 2022, 8:37 p.m.
I think the time come for GGS to realize what they have been doing for the last few years. It is so obvious no game awards since 2014. There was a time when this game was a good game. Now it is an unfortunate likeness of a flea market(neither good nor game)So everything is so clear: if they don't change something the GGS will fail and the game will die.
[5240605]
Теодора М (BG1) [BG1]
:: Oct. 9, 2022, 9:05 p.m.
This is the way to kill the game fastermonty242 (GB1) said:Simple answer to this total rubbish upgrade; DO NOT BUY ANYMORE RUBIES. Loss of earnings is the only way to get GGE to see sense and sort this ABSOLUTE BALLS UP!!
If there are no earnings how GGS will pay the devs, QA's, moderators, etc? Who will maintain and develop the game for free? In my opinion, making the game open-source is the best solution. But it won't happen 
There are very good examples of a good game economy and I will suggest to the GGS team to go and play and check it out: Albion online-this is an example of an excellent game economy. If they start thinking a bit more about the game experience and try to give all players(not only buyers) an opportunity to play and have fun in the game our dream can become true and the game will be good.