What happened

Aicy

Strategos
I visit these forums for the first time in two months and at my subscription list for all the threads I've ever posted in there is only two updates (this thread and the en80 top12 thread).

4 years ago if I left for just 2 hours there would be at least 20 threads. You can't even call this game and it's community a shell of it's former self, the shell long ago turn into dust and then was blow away by the wind. All you can see that is left is the dark, dirty imprint it has left on the ground.
 

Aicy

Strategos
That said Grepolis is still a fantastic game and the best of it's kind. Tribalwars and Grepolis are very unique, cut-throat, skillful and strategic games. What's going on in world en80 is a lot of fun.

That's why I make these angry posts, because it's a good game but could be so much better!
 

DeletedUser44027

Guest
Meh. It's hard for Inno, I think. Maybe they didn't do it in the optimal way, but im not sure if there is an optimal way. The audience isn't very large, compared to other game types. Even though Inno has the best browser RTSes in the business, I don't think too many people play browser RTSes in general. It takes a lot of time out of your life to play seriously, so it's a limited playerbase. I think. As usual, I didn't read the thread, or do any research, just commenting from my general observations.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Grepolis as a whole has been (and still is) a large financial and fame-building success. At the risk of parroting Joris, browser games (especially ones like Grepo) don't typically last longer than a few years. And you are correct in saying the game is dying - but that is because old players are in want of something new and the stream of new players has slowed (as to be expected).

Again, to parrot Joris: Inno is a company - a smart one. If you're a farmer and a cow can only give milk for one more year, what do you do? Give the cow a hug and make it fuzzy for the next year or try and get the most milk ya can while it grants profit? A true businessman would likely choose the latter.

I like fuzzy things and warm hugs, so the first for me! :p <3
 

Lugosi

Strategos
That said Grepolis is still a fantastic game and the best of it's kind. Tribalwars and Grepolis are very unique, cut-throat, skillful and strategic games. What's going on in world en80 is a lot of fun.

en45 has also been experiencing fun after fun since it opened. Highly skilled and consistent game play as well.





*snigger*
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Smart is subjective in this scenario. They're doing it the short-term profits way. They don't care about their consumers, and they will do anything to get more money from the last few hardcore users. Now, if InnoGames were a publicly traded company I wouldn't blame them as they would be obliged by law to maximize their profits, but they aren't. They're a privately owned company and could easily do some good for consumers. Judging by their rate of hiring they seem to be doing just fine financially, so building trust and brand-loyalty from their users could help them a lot in the long-run I think. Instead they're following the freemium model which exploits users as much as possible. Innogames could gain a lot from interacting with and caring more about their userbase I think.

A++ , beautifully said. Throwing in my own words, yeah, they have so much to gain by interacting and caring for the Grepolis player. Also going off what Aicy said, this place isn't even close to what it was. Back then this place was a hive of activity all day! Why has it gone down? Inno has done way too little to keep it going.

The game concept is perfect, I love it. When I first started playing Grepolis, I LOVED the amount of inner organization and the amount of planning required to be successful. It made me feel like I was actually part of some form of army as like a strategist. I loved the amount of cooperation that was required between players, I still do! The only problem today is that Inno has, in my opinion, rather blatantly refused to put effort into keeping it fresh and unique.

Going to Sele's comment about RS, I'll be hopping around a lot, I played A LOT starting around a 2009 to 2014. They also kept it unique, constantly adding to it and everything. Sure, as a non member, you could do about jack diddly, but even when I was just NM it was incredibly fun to just mess around. Not to mention the amazing events! As a paying member, it was totally worth it! So much more to the game as a member for a decent cost! Now I know, RS and Grepolis are VERY different games, but not just game style wise, but effort put into too.

As a RS paying player, it was worth it, and it was at no huge disadvantage to other non payin players to be around/interacting with paying members. In Grepolis, not only is it a disadvantage playing with paying members, but it really isn't worth it! Paying adds little to no interest in Grepolis. Now, not only is it Inno not doing so well in the money department, but they are hardly trying to keep this game unique! They eventually threw in events and quests and heroes but guess what? So many games like it had already done so! Too little, too late, too uncaring.

However, all that being said, I still thinking that Grepolis has every right to try and make money. As (Pebbles?) said, Inno isn't stupid for trying to make money, those who give them money might be at best. I guarantee anyone putting effort into a game like Inno put into Grepolis, even if they haven't been caring for it as much as they should be, would want to make money for your efforts, and to keep it going.

Currently, I've run out of stuff to say, so to finish up the bottom line is this: Inno hasn't been caring for Grepolis as much as it should. It should be actively and constantly searching for GOOD ideas to spice it up, change it up, and keep it going. It should stop trying to think 'what money can we get' as much and start thinking 'what more can we do to keep it going and keep and bring in new players'. I guarantee there are ways they can spice it up. There have to be dozen upon dozens of ways they can do that WITHOUT changing the original concept and game style. However, props for them taking all the effort to put up this game and update it as much as they have. The game has an amazing concept to it, and I'd hate to see it disappear. Also, giving the amount of effort put into it, they deserve to bring in some cash along with they'd be fools to give up on it and continue to put as little effort into as they are now.

Update. Freshen. CARE. Earn.
 
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DeletedUser40768

Guest
Very nice posts to read, don't see anything that can really add to the conversation. So I have a question: Is it just me or are the grepolis ads not as common anymore? Used to see them all the time, but I haven't seen one in a few months :pro:
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I've only ever seen one once, so I wouldn't be able to say if the have become less common. It would seem likely though..
 

DeletedUser30092

Guest
Such a shame that the game didn't last longer. I remember playing Rising Generals in its beta and remember having a great time, any chance it will come back any time in the future?
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
I'll join in...

You provide a good game people stay. Look at RS around since 1999
RS is a completely different game. First, there's no disadvantages to not paying for the game. At least none that come back to haunt the player. Secondly, you're not at risk of being slaughtered for going to bed and falling behind other players. In fact they released servers with similar risk/reward to grepolis. The RS3 version was shut down in under a year. The OSRS version is dead in a month and needs to offer $10k per season to a tournament winner to keep its base interested.

Here's the things that Inno went wrong with. First Wonders, which was bearable but not the best end game, taking 3 years to address it was a slap in the face too, then the fix being something that's been suggested numerous times prior wasn't great either, but better than nothing. The original farming village update was cancer but they took steps to fix that and having tried the new system I can say I like it. Don't get me wrong, Inno lost players over these updates, but they weren't game breaking and they fixed them. Gold trading, admittedly this was initially unpopular, but now its a fairly nice balancing effect and makes it possible for players who can't spend tons on the game to keep up.

But there's still problems and these are the bigger problems in the game. First is iInstant buy, this update is pure cancer and when players quit they often reference this. In my opinion this is something Inno needs to fix. Events are another serious problem in Grepolis, even just toning them down would make them much more bearable. Because right now, when an event is active, nobody is conquering many cities off good alliances on conquest worlds. And when I played revolt during events, it was just constantly revolting and being in revolt with flyer nukes. There used to be a time about 3-4 years ago when gold didn't this big of a difference and skill over came large sums of money. When this is no longer the case, your average player will just ask what the point of playing is, and find new games. Events are something that need to be toned down big time to at most bi-annual events, if not altogether scraped.

Even with that though, the game needs activity. Now there's been a few updates that have slown down world growth. These being things like accounts ghosting/being deleted faster 175 point cities are completely ghosted and deleted in a day or two. Tight coring being the new way alliances play also have shook up the game and slowed down worldly expansion a bit. But in my opinion unnecessarily expanding markets has killed player base on the main servers. It seems if there's 3,000 people playing in a country then they get their own server now a days. Recombining some of the lesser servers would do wonders for raising competitiveness and activity in the main community. Scandinavian servers, Greek servers, Brazilian servers, and the US servers should be merged into EN and their gold transferred. Perhaps even give them a free 1k gold for their troubles to encourage more activity. This will do a few things. First off, new competition will be brought to the server. Right now, I can tell you everyone who will be on a top tier conquest world and many big names that go to every top tier revolt world. That's been a result of slower world release, the same teams now face off on a different world about every 8-12 months. Shaking that up will do wonders. This will also spread out the top teams and allow for new blood the opportunity to rise up, this making this game better. I think we can all admit, right now a new team that isn't totally a premade is a 2-3 world process. That needs to change.
 
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