Asjo
Hekatontarch
I'm a returning player to Grepolis. Originally, I was one of the top players in one of the earlier worlds. Havet spent a lot of time and stress on both Ogame and Grepolis, and finally came to the realization that these browser-games just weren't worth it, and that once I engaged in them, I could never been offline without giving them thought. You always want more, and it feels good to get resources and cities. The more time you invest, the more effort you make to preserve this investment.
So, I quit Grepolis many years ago. Of course, what always makes the decision to leave easier is that the bane of these online games is that the worlds always die out. The developers keep opening up new world, and as a result the old ones get neglected. The rich history and entrenched alliances don't matter, and everyone has to start over again.
Around a week ago I was at a LAN with some friend, and things were very slow in the game that we were playing. So slow, in fact, that I decided: "Why not start a Grepolis account?". I have been playing EVE Online lately, and while it's still quite bad in terms of constantly being logged on, it was more meaningful and very rich in stories and interaction. I guess already playing a mass online game made it easier for me to get back into old habits. I knew it was a bad idea, but just wanted to do something meaningful with the waiting time. Since I didn't care much, I just registered for the first world there was and started building.
Needless to say, I've already spent way too more time that I intended, and I started looking into the state of things. I found out that the world I had registered for (Kepoi) was one with insanely high speed of everything. That means no one can ever be online in time to defend against an attack, and you max out your buildings within a few days. That seemed a bit silly, and it was ever worse when I found out that the world had an "endgame". So, everything I was building and collecting could all be deleted within a few months. I understand why the developers do this, since the worlds often stagnate. The developers don't want to waste server resources, so they change the way you compete in the game, and make sure there's a predictable cycle. However, if I was goin to spend time building stuff, I didn't want to risk it just disappearing after a short time. So, I registered for the latest and biggest casual word (Naucratis), since that's the gameplay I wanted. I could make sure that I had one city I would never lose, which is nice, the speed was normal, and the world would never die (I was afraid that other casual worlds might take over and leave this one inactive, but I was relived to see that it was three years old). I wanted conquest instead of revolt, but I saw that the difference wasn't too bad.
So, I've been playing for a bit on this world, and this I started to reach a point where I'm maxed out in population and resources, having killed all the bandits and find that I'm desperate to trade some army for battlepoints and free up some population. And then I find that this whole world is fucking meaningless. I cannot attack any of my neighbors, not even nearby players out of starting protection before me. The error message doesn't say, but I check, and apparently you cannot attack anyone unless they're within +/- 20% of your points. That fucking insane. A player might have 50.000 points, but he's still too fucking weak for a playing with 100.000 points to attack. Horrible. You're limited to 2-10% of the player base as your targets and you might just not be able to attack anyone within ten islands of you. Whether or not you can attack someone can change arbitrarily overnight. Any combat you have with other players is extremely limited. Are you a new guy and want to bring down some of the bigger guys around or farm some of their cities on your island to provoke them into attack you and giving you battle points? You're out of luck - you'll be lucky if you find anyone nearby to attack at all.
It's probably for the best, since I know I should spend time of these browser games, but I just wanted come here and express my frustration and disappointment anyway. I've been having fun in Kepoi, fucking around and attack different players, finding some good opportunities to profit from some guys who have a few months heads start. But it all just seem so arbitrary and moot when the speed is so high and the world will end.
I'm sure I cannot be the only one who feels this way. It seems quite that the developers keep these worlds to keep milking the players that are beaten in other worlds but decide to transfer their cities to a casual world to keep playing. I find it very hard to believe that any large percentage of the player base are so extremely casual that they want to play this game with an absolute minimal risk of ever getting attacks, just building cities and minding their own business.
So, I quit Grepolis many years ago. Of course, what always makes the decision to leave easier is that the bane of these online games is that the worlds always die out. The developers keep opening up new world, and as a result the old ones get neglected. The rich history and entrenched alliances don't matter, and everyone has to start over again.
Around a week ago I was at a LAN with some friend, and things were very slow in the game that we were playing. So slow, in fact, that I decided: "Why not start a Grepolis account?". I have been playing EVE Online lately, and while it's still quite bad in terms of constantly being logged on, it was more meaningful and very rich in stories and interaction. I guess already playing a mass online game made it easier for me to get back into old habits. I knew it was a bad idea, but just wanted to do something meaningful with the waiting time. Since I didn't care much, I just registered for the first world there was and started building.
Needless to say, I've already spent way too more time that I intended, and I started looking into the state of things. I found out that the world I had registered for (Kepoi) was one with insanely high speed of everything. That means no one can ever be online in time to defend against an attack, and you max out your buildings within a few days. That seemed a bit silly, and it was ever worse when I found out that the world had an "endgame". So, everything I was building and collecting could all be deleted within a few months. I understand why the developers do this, since the worlds often stagnate. The developers don't want to waste server resources, so they change the way you compete in the game, and make sure there's a predictable cycle. However, if I was goin to spend time building stuff, I didn't want to risk it just disappearing after a short time. So, I registered for the latest and biggest casual word (Naucratis), since that's the gameplay I wanted. I could make sure that I had one city I would never lose, which is nice, the speed was normal, and the world would never die (I was afraid that other casual worlds might take over and leave this one inactive, but I was relived to see that it was three years old). I wanted conquest instead of revolt, but I saw that the difference wasn't too bad.
So, I've been playing for a bit on this world, and this I started to reach a point where I'm maxed out in population and resources, having killed all the bandits and find that I'm desperate to trade some army for battlepoints and free up some population. And then I find that this whole world is fucking meaningless. I cannot attack any of my neighbors, not even nearby players out of starting protection before me. The error message doesn't say, but I check, and apparently you cannot attack anyone unless they're within +/- 20% of your points. That fucking insane. A player might have 50.000 points, but he's still too fucking weak for a playing with 100.000 points to attack. Horrible. You're limited to 2-10% of the player base as your targets and you might just not be able to attack anyone within ten islands of you. Whether or not you can attack someone can change arbitrarily overnight. Any combat you have with other players is extremely limited. Are you a new guy and want to bring down some of the bigger guys around or farm some of their cities on your island to provoke them into attack you and giving you battle points? You're out of luck - you'll be lucky if you find anyone nearby to attack at all.
It's probably for the best, since I know I should spend time of these browser games, but I just wanted come here and express my frustration and disappointment anyway. I've been having fun in Kepoi, fucking around and attack different players, finding some good opportunities to profit from some guys who have a few months heads start. But it all just seem so arbitrary and moot when the speed is so high and the world will end.
I'm sure I cannot be the only one who feels this way. It seems quite that the developers keep these worlds to keep milking the players that are beaten in other worlds but decide to transfer their cities to a casual world to keep playing. I find it very hard to believe that any large percentage of the player base are so extremely casual that they want to play this game with an absolute minimal risk of ever getting attacks, just building cities and minding their own business.
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