2.0 Upgrade

[DeletedUser]

4 days into the upgrade, and everything is slower and more buggy than ever...

I would love for someone from Innogames to explain what the problem is, what they are doing about it, whether they think the upgrade have been a success or not?

At present, i personally have lost a lot of interest in what was one of the best and most addictive games i have played.

But the whole lack of communication and thought for the customers is shocking...

I know i am not the only one feeling like this, so I really think we deserve some communication back and not just leave us in the dark.

GD

 

[DeletedUser4013]

Yes, 2.0 has bugs and part of the reason for that is because the Devs were splitting their time between 1.26 and 2.0. Now that there is one version, they can devote themselves to fixing the bugs. As for the slowness and lagging of the game, Inno is aware of this and are working on it.

In terms of the lack of communication and disregard for the players, Inno has been making announcements for some time since 2.0 was released. It was originally supposed to have been rolled out across all servers at the time, but was delayed for reasons that I don't know as it was before I was made an Admin. There was the survey sent to the 1.26 Worlds, and announcements about the results and when the update would take place. Even with the delay in the update, we gave reasons as to why it was delayed. I really don't think it's fair to say that we failed to communicate this to the players.

As for saying we disregarded the players, which players would that be? The vocal minority here on the Forums or the playing majority who voted for the update? Yes there are issues with the game that 1.26 didn't have, but now that the Devs can focus on 2.0 completely, those issues will start to disappear.

 

[DeletedUser12512]

Yes, 2.0 has bugs and part of the reason for that is because the Devs were splitting their time between 1.26 and 2.0. Now that there is one version, they can devote themselves to fixing the bugs. As for the slowness and lagging of the game, Inno is aware of this and are working on it.

In terms of the lack of communication and disregard for the players, Inno has been making announcements for some time since 2.0 was released. It was originally supposed to have been rolled out across all servers at the time, but was delayed for reasons that I don't know as it was before I was made an Admin. There was the survey sent to the 1.26 Worlds, and announcements about the results and when the update would take place. Even with the delay in the update, we gave reasons as to why it was delayed. I really don't think it's fair to say that we failed to communicate this to the players.

As for saying we disregarded the players, which players would that be? The vocal minority here on the Forums or the playing majority who voted for the update? Yes there are issues with the game that 1.26 didn't have, but now that the Devs can focus on 2.0 completely, those issues will start to disappear.

you will never learn.

 

[DeletedUser]

you will never learn.

And who the hell excatly are you ? '' You will never learn '' ? Tyrion gave a direct and to the point answer, and you come in with that rubbish ? You don't even play epsilon ? Why are you commenting on our server forum ? ~X

 

[DeletedUser]

Well, even we who voted for 2.0 are having quite a few issues with the interface. Whether it is lagging, bandwidth requirements or more complex and less user friendly interaction with the game.

I might sound all negative here, but 2.0 has many good points. But I would like to pinpoint some of the issues I think the developers should address at this point. Some might be easy, but other goes against the design of the 2.0 interface itself and might not at all be easy to remedy.

1. Grepolis 1.0 was a lot more browser and user friendly in the way it allowed you to copy/paste links, use the back and forward buttons in the browser, etc. It cooperated well with the standard user interface of our web browsers. 2.0 does not at all work well in this way, and I do understand it might not be easy to modify 2.0 to be as friendly as 1.0 in this respect as this comes to the basic interface design of the 2.0 version.

2. Recruitment tab when using admin is loaded on demand. This makes the process of recruiting take a lot more time. Especially over a slow net connection.

3. You do need to consider that your users have a various number of different network connections. Normally I vary between using low latency high bandwidth connections, down to low bandwidth high latency connections. Grepolis 2.0 is performing a lot worse with the latter.

4. Farming and Trading. Some good improvements here if you have admin. But, it requires more clicks to trade a resource with a farm village than before. And the admin farming interface where you can farm all the villages on an island is not effective enough. I find myself spending too much time looking for the island I want to farm. It should be accessible in a more direct manner when you are in a given city.

5. Forum layout. Please let us choose whether we want horisontal only layout of forums groups or the old mixed horizontal/vertical layout. With current layout it makes it harder for our players to see whether anything has happened to the particular forums they are tracking.

6. Forum posting. Almost half of my forum posts fails just hanging. Okay, network might have been the problem, but I can copy and paste the contents of my post after submitting it. This is an interface issue, and I hope we don't need to remember to a copy of every post before we submit it.

I have other things as well, but hope you take this as what it is meant as. Constructive criticism to make sure the game is more enjoyable for everyone, and so innogames can bring in more cash for xmas;-D

cheers,
enga

 

[DeletedUser]

Failure to Deliver

Yes, 2.0 has bugs and part of the reason for that is because the Devs were splitting their time between 1.26 and 2.0. Now that there is one version, they can devote themselves to fixing the bugs. As for the slowness and lagging of the game, Inno is aware of this and are working on it.

In terms of the lack of communication and disregard for the players, Inno has been making announcements for some time since 2.0 was released. It was originally supposed to have been rolled out across all servers at the time, but was delayed for reasons that I don't know as it was before I was made an Admin. There was the survey sent to the 1.26 Worlds, and announcements about the results and when the update would take place. Even with the delay in the update, we gave reasons as to why it was delayed. I really don't think it's fair to say that we failed to communicate this to the players.

As for saying we disregarded the players, which players would that be? The vocal minority here on the Forums or the playing majority who voted for the update? Yes there are issues with the game that 1.26 didn't have, but now that the Devs can focus on 2.0 completely, those issues will start to disappear.

First. i was not one who voted for the change.
Second most of the ones that did had NO IDEA it would be this jacked up.
I think if you are going to make something sound so wondreful and better for the collective then it should deliver just that. All these excuses of we havent had everyone supporting 2.0 to fix all the bugs is garbage. Like GD was saying before these problems have never gone away in the other worlds. WHY WOULD YOU CREATE ANOTHER PROBLEM IN AN ALREADY FUNCTIONING WORLD UNTIL YOU KNEW IT WOULD WORK PROPERLY?
This is bad business anyway you look at it. NO ONE wants to spend a dime when things dont work right and if they do then i guess they like throwing their money away. Looks like you guys tried to deliver a Super Sports Car and gave us a P O C. anyway i hope now that all the engineers are on the same page things will turn around since you say so.

 

[DeletedUser]

Yes, 2.0 has bugs and part of the reason for that is because the Devs were splitting their time between 1.26 and 2.0. Now that there is one version, they can devote themselves to fixing the bugs. As for the slowness and lagging of the game, Inno is aware of this and are working on it.

In terms of the lack of communication and disregard for the players, Inno has been making announcements for some time since 2.0 was released. It was originally supposed to have been rolled out across all servers at the time, but was delayed for reasons that I don't know as it was before I was made an Admin. There was the survey sent to the 1.26 Worlds, and announcements about the results and when the update would take place. Even with the delay in the update, we gave reasons as to why it was delayed. I really don't think it's fair to say that we failed to communicate this to the players.

As for saying we disregarded the players, which players would that be? The vocal minority here on the Forums or the playing majority who voted for the update? Yes there are issues with the game that 1.26 didn't have, but now that the Devs can focus on 2.0 completely, those issues will start to disappear.

Hi Tyrion,

thanks a lot for your reply.

I think Enga has mentioned a lot of the improvements that is needed, but he is a very positive guy which shows in his post.

However, let me try and answer some of your questions from your reply.

i fully get the fact your developers were split over 2 versions, but all the problems i have encountered in Eps 2.0 were the same problems in Sigma and Athens. So these problems seem to be still there and haven't been fixed, hence why I am struggling to understand the importance of the speed of the upgrade. It was bearable in those worlds, as my account was small, but here it is almost impossible to run my account probably without dedicating ridiculous amount of time to it.

i think the communication were fine when we were being told that they were looking into moving the worlds to 2.0, and the information leading up to the change was fine. The communication i am missing is since we have gone live, and the obvious bugs, the slowness of the system, the total lack of full browser control issues, nothing have been communicated from Innogames, we have had a few of the Forum mods saying they are looking into it, but why not something a bit more from themselves? It is after all us that need to be satisfied and happy... else there is no business for Innogames!

in terms of the disregard, yeah you asked people to vote, but you did it in a way so that the only real outcome was 2.0. If you chose to stay on 1.26, you were asked if you were sure and given an explanation to why this wasn't the correct choice, how many players changed their mind after that??

I have been here before with other Browser Game Developers, and unfortunately something similar happened. I just find it sad that a game which i loved and chose to spend both time and money on have felt it needed to change when actually there was nothing wrong with the old product.

GD

 

[DeletedUser]

yeah i agree with GD here. I never wanted the v2.0 update and everyone i have asked about it (and i know you will refrence me to the vote, but can i just point out that the people i chat with are the "oldies" of the game, you know the people who PAY to play sorta thing) and none of them enjoy the update and many are choosing to leave, dont believe me look at this message i got in game:

king emm today at 10:12
hello mate ......thought i'd let you as from monday , The stooges will be disbanding and myself and my players will be quitting. We do not agree with the changes with the worlds and have played 2.0 worlds before and quit because its to time consuming and such a slow server while playing , everything egg times and waste of time.
So wish you good luck in the world and keep Rocking mate , You were one of the SE players i liked playing against always good fun.
King and The stooges


But i understand and accept the fact that the game has updated, and that's not my point. Rather my point is that the reason most people are annoyed at 2.0 (me included) is because it is un-responsive and time consuming (which can be related to the un-responsiveness). You seem to think we will be pleased by a fancy interface and nice visuals, but the fact is is that there was nothing wrong with v1.26's visuals. However many people assumed Grep would play the same but just look nicer and have a few new features and force alliances to work together (ino that was a big point for many players). But Grep didnt, instead we have nicer visuals, but worse responsiveness, and with many large players what is a 5 second delay for 1 city, is a 500 second delay overall, which really adds up. I dont understand whats going on, i prefer a faster performing Grep than a nice looking Grep and im sure most people would agree with that.

So what im trying to say here is in order to make me happy, and what i believe is the first step for success is for you to make Grep more responsive, as all i want out of the game is fun and for things to happen when i tell them to happen, not 5 seconds later, and to be able to play the game without refreshing my webpage every 5 minutes just because i wanted to look at the alliance forum.

Thanks,
Pip

 

[DeletedUser4013]

Well, even we who voted for 2.0 are having quite a few issues with the interface. Whether it is lagging, bandwidth requirements or more complex and less user friendly interaction with the game.

I might sound all negative here, but 2.0 has many good points. But I would like to pinpoint some of the issues I think the developers should address at this point. Some might be easy, but other goes against the design of the 2.0 interface itself and might not at all be easy to remedy.

I will try to address these as best as I can. Where possible I will see about passing them on to the PM.

1. Grepolis 1.0 was a lot more browser and user friendly in the way it allowed you to copy/paste links, use the back and forward buttons in the browser, etc. It cooperated well with the standard user interface of our web browsers. 2.0 does not at all work well in this way, and I do understand it might not be easy to modify 2.0 to be as friendly as 1.0 in this respect as this comes to the basic interface design of the 2.0 version.

I don't claim to know a lot about internet techo-babble, but I would assume that this may have to do with reducing internet traffic and allowing for fewer webpages to be generated. Again, I'm not a techie, so I'm just assuming here. However, I did pass on an idea about being able to link internal forums to PMs in-game as this was a great feature in 1.26 and should be kept.

2. Recruitment tab when using admin is loaded on demand. This makes the process of recruiting take a lot more time. Especially over a slow net connection.

This is one of the issues that has been passed on. It seems to be affecting other overviews as well.

3. You do need to consider that your users have a various number of different network connections. Normally I vary between using low latency high bandwidth connections, down to low bandwidth high latency connections. Grepolis 2.0 is performing a lot worse with the latter.

I'm not entirely sure what can be done about this from Inno's side. There are ways to reduce the load times of the game in the options settings. Also, regular cache clearing has proven useful for some players.

4. Farming and Trading. Some good improvements here if you have admin. But, it requires more clicks to trade a resource with a farm village than before. And the admin farming interface where you can farm all the villages on an island is not effective enough. I find myself spending too much time looking for the island I want to farm. It should be accessible in a more direct manner when you are in a given city.

I can pass this along to the PM about perhaps adding in a way to collapse the island lists so it can reduce the scrolling.

5. Forum layout. Please let us choose whether we want horisontal only layout of forums groups or the old mixed horizontal/vertical layout. With current layout it makes it harder for our players to see whether anything has happened to the particular forums they are tracking.

I know that if you maximize the alliance forum you can see all of the tabs, but this opens it in a new tab. There are some issues that players have had with this. I'm not entirely sure I understand this suggestion though. Are you asking for tabs on the side, or something like a sidebar?

6. Forum posting. Almost half of my forum posts fails just hanging. Okay, network might have been the problem, but I can copy and paste the contents of my post after submitting it. This is an interface issue, and I hope we don't need to remember to a copy of every post before we submit it.

This may be related to the server lag and respose errors that have been occurring. Hopefully we'll have this resolved soon.

I have other things as well, but hope you take this as what it is meant as. Constructive criticism to make sure the game is more enjoyable for everyone, and so innogames can bring in more cash for xmas;-D

cheers,
enga

Keep the ideas coming please. I am keeping on top of the PM to see whether any of this can be implemented for the game.

Hi Tyrion,

thanks a lot for your reply.

I think Enga has mentioned a lot of the improvements that is needed, but he is a very positive guy which shows in his post.

However, let me try and answer some of your questions from your reply.

i fully get the fact your developers were split over 2 versions, but all the problems i have encountered in Eps 2.0 were the same problems in Sigma and Athens. So these problems seem to be still there and haven't been fixed, hence why I am struggling to understand the importance of the speed of the upgrade. It was bearable in those worlds, as my account was small, but here it is almost impossible to run my account probably without dedicating ridiculous amount of time to it.

i think the communication were fine when we were being told that they were looking into moving the worlds to 2.0, and the information leading up to the change was fine. The communication i am missing is since we have gone live, and the obvious bugs, the slowness of the system, the total lack of full browser control issues, nothing have been communicated from Innogames, we have had a few of the Forum mods saying they are looking into it, but why not something a bit more from themselves? It is after all us that need to be satisfied and happy... else there is no business for Innogames!

in terms of the disregard, yeah you asked people to vote, but you did it in a way so that the only real outcome was 2.0. If you chose to stay on 1.26, you were asked if you were sure and given an explanation to why this wasn't the correct choice, how many players changed their mind after that??

I have been here before with other Browser Game Developers, and unfortunately something similar happened. I just find it sad that a game which i loved and chose to spend both time and money on have felt it needed to change when actually there was nothing wrong with the old product.

GD

The reason that the bugs are still present is that the Devs have only recently been able to work on 2.0 exclusively with out having 1.26 as well. I can say for certain that the main focus right now of Inno is to get the bugs out of 2.0 and to deal with the response errors. To be honest, I am unsure as to why there are so many response errors. This seems to be unique to the .en servers as far as I can tell.

yeah i agree with GD here. I never wanted the v2.0 update and everyone i have asked about it (and i know you will refrence me to the vote, but can i just point out that the people i chat with are the "oldies" of the game, you know the people who PAY to play sorta thing) and none of them enjoy the update and many are choosing to leave, dont believe me look at this message i got in game:

king emm today at 10:12
hello mate ......thought i'd let you as from monday , The stooges will be disbanding and myself and my players will be quitting. We do not agree with the changes with the worlds and have played 2.0 worlds before and quit because its to time consuming and such a slow server while playing , everything egg times and waste of time.
So wish you good luck in the world and keep Rocking mate , You were one of the SE players i liked playing against always good fun.
King and The stooges


But i understand and accept the fact that the game has updated, and that's not my point. Rather my point is that the reason most people are annoyed at 2.0 (me included) is because it is un-responsive and time consuming (which can be related to the un-responsiveness). You seem to think we will be pleased by a fancy interface and nice visuals, but the fact is is that there was nothing wrong with v1.26's visuals. However many people assumed Grep would play the same but just look nicer and have a few new features and force alliances to work together (ino that was a big point for many players). But Grep didnt, instead we have nicer visuals, but worse responsiveness, and with many large players what is a 5 second delay for 1 city, is a 500 second delay overall, which really adds up. I dont understand whats going on, i prefer a faster performing Grep than a nice looking Grep and im sure most people would agree with that.

So what im trying to say here is in order to make me happy, and what i believe is the first step for success is for you to make Grep more responsive, as all i want out of the game is fun and for things to happen when i tell them to happen, not 5 seconds later, and to be able to play the game without refreshing my webpage every 5 minutes just because i wanted to look at the alliance forum.

Thanks,
Pip

As I said in reply to GD, it is the main focus right now of Inno.

 

[DeletedUser]

Im going to throw my hands in the air, and agree with what these guys have said.

I voted for the 2.0 change, simply because it offered a new addition of gameplay to grepolis.

While Epsilon was updated to 2.0, I'm also a player on the Athens server, I find it easy to play with one city, and although im not as big as i used to be on epsilon, im struggling with the small ammount of cities i have, no doubt it's even worse for the heavyweights of epsilon.

With the feel of the old grepolis, it was carved in stone, it was quick on responsive times and allthough the graphics weren't brillant, they were decent.

The 2.0 updated brings alot more lag ( cache clearing does not help, what so ever ).

The timing for changing city to city is incredibly slow and half the time the map doesn't updated to actually show you the island and to touch on what the others have said, the forums are incredibly slow, not to mention with many High ranking alliances, we have multiple tabs dedicated and relied upon, 2.0 slows the forum down, and in turn slows the entire line of communcation down.

It's the same with mail, half the time i can't even send a MM to my Alliance, simply because im smacking the send key and absolutely nothing is happening ( Not a singular occourance, and not simply affecting me ).

I don't know about you, but i'd gladly got back to the old settings, and i'd gladly loose the graphics for the gameplay, anyday, any time.

~X

 

[DeletedUser]

Don't have the time now to dive deep into further analysis and comments, but what browser has been the main target for 2.0? Previously my innogame experience have been excellent when using to Google Chrome, but from some responses it seems the developers might have shifted their base browser development platform and hence some of the issues we see?

 

[DeletedUser]

And who the hell excatly are you ? '' You will never learn '' ? Tyrion gave a direct and to the point answer, and you come in with that rubbish ? You don't even play epsilon ? Why are you commenting on our server forum ? ~X

He's been fighting the 2.0 update since they sent out the survey.

I will try to address these as best as I can. Where possible I will see about passing them on to the PM.

Thanks for all your effort in providing us (forum people) with the best answers possible.

I'm not entirely sure what can be done about this from Inno's side. There are ways to reduce the load times of the game in the options settings. Also, regular cache clearing has proven useful for some players.

I've had almost no problem with bugs or lag so far apart from the occasional one. Clearing the cache has always worked for me. I've also noticed that most peoples problems have been happening on Chrome, so if you're having a lot of problems on Chrome it might work with changing browsers. Firefox works best for me.

I know that if you maximize the alliance forum you can see all of the tabs, but this opens it in a new tab. There are some issues that players have had with this. I'm not entirely sure I understand this suggestion though. Are you asking for tabs on the side, or something like a sidebar?

I'm assuming he is meaning this:

Btw that is not what the LOO forums look like, it's the old Paths. It would be good to have that kind of forum thing again.

Im going to throw my hands in the air, and agree with what these guys have said.

I voted for the 2.0 change, simply because it offered a new addition of gameplay to grepolis.

While Epsilon was updated to 2.0, I'm also a player on the Athens server, I find it easy to play with one city, and although im not as big as i used to be on epsilon, im struggling with the small ammount of cities i have, no doubt it's even worse for the heavyweights of epsilon.

With the feel of the old grepolis, it was carved in stone, it was quick on responsive times and allthough the graphics weren't brillant, they were decent.

The 2.0 updated brings alot more lag ( cache clearing does not help, what so ever ).

The timing for changing city to city is incredibly slow and half the time the map doesn't updated to actually show you the island and to touch on what the others have said, the forums are incredibly slow, not to mention with many High ranking alliances, we have multiple tabs dedicated and relied upon, 2.0 slows the forum down, and in turn slows the entire line of communcation down.

It's the same with mail, half the time i can't even send a MM to my Alliance, simply because im smacking the send key and absolutely nothing is happening ( Not a singular occourance, and not simply affecting me ).

I don't know about you, but i'd gladly got back to the old settings, and i'd gladly loose the graphics for the gameplay, anyday, any time.

~X

I'd be happy to go back to 1.26 but since they've already updated it I don't think that's going to be happening.

 

[DeletedUser4013]

Don't have the time now to dive deep into further analysis and comments, but what browser has been the main target for 2.0? Previously my innogame experience have been excellent when using to Google Chrome, but from some responses it seems the developers might have shifted their base browser development platform and hence some of the issues we see?

Chrome has generally been the ideal browser for 2.0, however all of the recommended ones: Chrome, FF, and Opera (and Safari if you're desperate ) have been having issues with the lag and response error.

I'm assuming he is meaning this:

Btw that is not what the LOO forums look like, it's the old Paths. It would be good to have that kind of forum thing again.I'd be happy to go back to 1.26 but since they've already updated it I don't think that's going to be happening.

Ahh, ok. So the old block bar with the topics instead of the tabs. I can see what can be done with regards to that. Thanks for the image to help illustrate.

 

[DeletedUser]

I mainly use Internet Explorer 8 for Grep and i get a fair amont of lag, but whenever im going to do a timings attack i switch over to my google chrome as Grep seems to run much smoother on that (even in v1.26), so i would recommend trying that if you havent already. If you're wondering why i still use IE8 its because i prefer the looks of it as ive always used that and im familiar with how it works, unlike chrome and the others.

And on the alliance forums i agree on the old style look, as the new style only shows half the tabs at once and the scroll is really slow. Also on the topic of forums, the blue unread indicator (the 1 that says there's a new comment in the tab) doesnt go away after clicking onto another tab, instead i have to close the forum and reopen it for a refreshed view of whats been read or not.

 

[DeletedUser]

the main then i'll find with 2.0 is i can no longer run any celebration so i can get more city

build as will there time i have to hit build fo say cave 7 time befor it will work

 

[DeletedUser1405]

My game is lagging and i understand why, I can see the problem of having 2 sets of Devs working on the game and now having One making it quicker, this is common sense.
As for the vote, it happened and was finalised 2.0 won so it is now the only way to play Grep.
As for problems, the only One I am having is that when scrolling through villages the screen doesn't change to the village requested it stays on the First One chosen, while this is minor it could help with speed.
I honestly think that over 50% of the moaners about the change are doing so because they have nothing better to do, c'mon guys get with the plan and enjoy the new setup.

 

[DeletedUser14937]

In 2.0 when you switch cities it does not automatically change the map to the city you have changed to, you have to click "switch to current city" for it to do so.

 

[DeletedUser]

I honestly think that over 50% of the moaners about the change are doing so because they have nothing better to do, c'mon guys get with the plan and enjoy the new setup.

you are having a laugh Mike right??

that is a sweeping statement, which i find insulting to the many players who have issues with 2.0 as they cannot play the game as they used to.

Right now i am sitting trying to build some troops, but for some unknown (Read Bug) reason, the Recruitment screen wont scroll my cities... *sigh

the system is a week and a bit on Still as buggy and laggy as ever...

Happy Xmas Innogames... you done well!

GD

 

[DeletedUser]

I haven't moaned as you put it mike62 cause everyone has said what I would have pointed out so I didn't see a need to spam the forum

 

[DeletedUser]

2. Recruitment tab when using admin is loaded on demand. This makes the process of recruiting take a lot more time. Especially over a slow net connection.
cheers,
enga

I am having major issues with recruiting using admin. I can't cycle through all my cities to recruit troops and ships. I get halfway through and no more cities will load. It has been the most frustrating thing so far, so much so that I dont even want to get on and try anymore. Whats the word on this glitch?