Ideas/Concerns

DeletedUser41523

Guest
End Game- I'm with you on this one and how its hard to react. We're bound by an NDA so I think there's been a lot of cold feet on posting because of what we can/can't say. I did put a draft up but its still awaiting approval from the Beta Coma. I'll see about getting it to the Dev for approval instead. I'll say this, I believe we have a pretty cool alternative and its gained a lot of traction but its not a certainty yet as all the details aren't yet ironed out. I'd say its more likely to happen than not though. Its based around dominance and map control this time. That's as much as I know I can say for now. So I'll cut it there. Sorry for the vagueness but I hope it helps.

Mobile- @Phidippidies is more of an app expert than me, I just use it to check attacks when I'm out or too lazy to pull out the laptop.

Casual- I think casual world is more a slowed down pace with morale on. So 2/2 morale, 2/1 morale, 1/2 morale, etc. Basically a world where someone who doesn't live on the comp or app can play or a world where a new player can learn the game.

Spamming- I agree with you on spamming.

Pay2win- Personally i'm seeing some changes with the events being nerfed in the flyer department, its a start in my opinion but based on the feedback there's a lot of work to be done. My ideal situation would be them being scrapped entirely, sadly real outweighs ideal. So getting the frequency reduced is the main goal here. No guarantees that doesn't conflict with wonders though.

Morale- There's been a no morale world released recently both in EN and US. Most the worlds released are to be morale if I read correctly. But the word most implies not all.
 

DeletedUser44867

Guest
Let me rephrase some things with concerns to the end game: "discussion" isn't always the best phrasing to use......
..... When I say 'discuss' I mean this idea is one that we went back and forth with, with the developers inputting ideas, and us inputting our reaction to those ideas and giving ideas of our own. SO, with concerns to the developers 'reactions' to it, the developers themselves were very involved with developing this idea. Now that multiple parties have said 'okay we got an idea we like', we'd like to get some general first reactions on it while they get development possibilities fully confirmed.
When they find out what kind of development possibilities concerning this idea is available, a fully fleshed out post that explains in detail what this potential end game will be is going to be made public.

I'm tiptoeing around my wording a little bit - so let me emphasize that this is something the developers are considering and nothing is set in stone or promised, but I don't think it'd be against the NDA for me to tell you that they are very eager to get an end game idea up and running.

The mobile stuff - yep, I've got a list of the priorities for mobile app from Rachel and others... Something about this stuff, though, to keep in mind: things we find important might not be things that other servers find important. I know I added a few things into our council's original 'idea and vote' concerning a few of those ideas, that the other servers didn't think were important. So, it's possible we mention something, and everyone else goes 'ahahaha no.'
I'd also really like to get opinions from a lot of players, if possible... like the top 3 things they'd want to see in app in some form. That way we get an idea of what the most important things are across the board in EN. The key here is size limitation - we can't get everything in, so what are the things we most want? When one player says "i would like this thing" it's great - and we can assume a lot of people want the same thing, but it's nice to know which ideas are the most important. Live conquests, for instance, a lot of people said they wanted. Mobile alarms were clearly a priority. Also, this section in particular is dedicated to premiums for the app - as in advisor additions.
To answer your question - I don't have specific details on what kinds of things aren't a possibility right now. I might be able to get a list of things they think are an obvious yes/no situation - but fair warning they might say they would prefer not to disclose that information. There are some that you can kind of just infer wouldn't work... I know, for instance, the attack planner is probably going to be too much - even on a basis that your phone screen is tiny and it would probably just become a pain for a lot of people to try and use.

Casual - I'll admit that I struggle with this definition. there are a few worlds that we have where the world kind of seems to just go on forever... There isn't really a 'winning.' And they've been open so long if you join now, you're a small fish in a huge pond. Also hero worlds. I believe EN's three casual worlds are Bellerophon, Achilles, and Hyperborea. So the developers are wondering, do you want to see new ones open up?

Morale - yeah, as dan said - the rumor of absolutely no more morale is false. But the word "majority" is one to keep in mind, the majority of worlds released will be active morale. But yeah, we're open to reactions to the new morale though.

Also, I'm sorry but I have failed to ask said questions. I'll make sure to post in the inner council forum and try to get a response for you.

If I missed something please let me know I was jumping between sections a lot and temporarily got distracted when a dog jumped on my lap and started to push my computer off so he could sit down.
 

Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
Just my 2 cents but I've always thought the casual worlds were the worlds like Hyperborea that do not have conquest enabled. I'm not entirely sure if every server has a no conquer server but the ones that do have seen that they last a long time and maintain steady popularity. Plus new worlds like Hyperborea have been asked for from time to time.
 

DeletedUser22115

Guest
@Loves You in regards to the Mobile things you thought of, you can list them here if you'd like.

To my understanding of a casual world is a world like Hyperborea in which there is no form of conquering another player's city, but there is an option to colonize and attack other's without the risk of losing a city whereas Achilles and Bellerophon are hero worlds in which there was a set requirement to join them of something like 25k points and some other things, both of these worlds have a conquest type enabled. To the best of my understanding these worlds were made to create a more competitive world for big and serious alliances that existed back when the worlds were first created which is why there were requirements for joining said worlds.In regards to Hyperborea, to the best of my knowledge when Hyperborea came out many people thought it was a Paradise for Simmers but in fact if you work and have a family i would imagine that this sort of world would be an enjoyable experience and the world has been open for a long duration and maintained a player count over the closing quota, so if you have a busy schedule still having the ability to attack without the worry of losing your empire seems like an enjoyable time.
 

DeletedUser44867

Guest
^ what Kuri said about mobile ideas, feel free to post publicly. probably works better that way, since people can respond and say if they feel the same about said ideas.

Kuri and Baud also both definitely gave better explanations of casual worlds aha. I'll add that description to the update thread as well, so it's easier for people who might have a similar question.
But as to your comment of 'they've been open so long' - that's one of the reasons the devs were asking if we'd like to see some new ones open, so that there's a fresher one open for people to join.
 

DeletedUser36697

Guest
Just my 2 cents but I've always thought the casual worlds were the worlds like Hyperborea that do not have conquest enabled. I'm not entirely sure if every server has a no conquer server but the ones that do have seen that they last a long time and maintain steady popularity. Plus new worlds like Hyperborea have been asked for from time to time.

I am sure that the players in Hyperborea will appreciate being considered a casual world.. I thought "Elysian fields" was bad enough
Perhaps the focus should be on Casual Players.

Having played mostly Hyperborea, leaving then returning. It does allow for a more relaxed and sometimes enjoyable time. Faster speed would help but the ability to build is always there as is the ability to garner BPs at all stages of a players growth. There are folks in this world that have r/l jobs and e families and trips and all sorts of stuff going on and at the end of a really bad week.. you still got your cities and your troops to rebuild with ;{)
Would be awesome if they could speed up hyper to like a 1.5=2.0 .. Hyper and a speed 1 do not seem to flow well
smiley_emoticons_kolobok-sanduhr.gif
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
When I think casual, I sort of think of the average player, since the vast majority of the community aren't hardcore level players. I think even the average player still likes conquer a target and be part of a team since that's the premise of the game. I don't think Inno can keep releasing Hyperboreas every few months (though maybe its time for a clean slate on Hyperborea now, i'm not opposed to a new one) and your average player wouldn't join them as they grew older, instead opting for a newer world.

I think the thing that impacts the average player the most is unit speed. In a unit 1, the time you have to react is pretty long. You can see a CS, post it, go about your day, and come back to snipe it. Even an on island CS is still sometimes an hour to jump a few cities over, this also allows for someone to not play with the alarm or live through an alarm failure as the siege could still be caught early. In unit 3 you'd best not miss that alarm or you're losing a few cities.

In revolt i'd imagine its similar, i'm playing a unit 4 in the US right now for revolt. We've taken 90ish cities in a week off a quality opponent. I'd imagine if the unit speed was 1 or 2 we'd have taken maybe 15-20. I bring up the unit 4 because it also has morale and night bonus. Obviously this was intended as a world for newer/casual players.

Here's my point, rather than morale and night bonus, I feel the best consistent solution is to make a slower unit speed more of a trend. This helps newer players learn the game and casual players enjoy it. I also feel that a warning with 3/3+ world would help keep newer players from joining and having a bad experience. Though casual players would obviously know better here.
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
@Phidippidies - Thanks for the updates! :)

New Endgame:
  • Dominance-style endgame would definitely be attractive for a lot of players, and is something that I definitely like the sound of.
  • Is there any restriction on the location of the cities in that endgame idea? I wouldn't want to penalise rim alliances, but at the same time I feel like there will be the occasional team that migrates out to ocean 99 (or equivalent), and then the players just feed BP to each other and to themselves to churn out slots to colonise with. They'd be able to get tonnes of cities, but without doing much of the actual fighting that is what people hope for in a dominance-based endgame, and with no real threat of another alliance being able to take a significant number of their cities.
  • I may be misreading it, but is the new system proposing that WWs grant rewards but don't actually count in any way towards the victory conditions?
  • This might be a silly question, but when they do present it on the devblog and we give feedback, will they work on the feedback and propose a new version, or will they implement it as it is and then work on an improved version to implement later on?

Mobile App Development:
  • I agree that the mobile app will never be quite as detailed as the browser version, but I do think that the mobile version does need a lot of improvements:
    • Will they include the travel time simulator that allows you to check travel times for units that you don't have? That's always been a bug bear I've had with the app, as it means that I can't tell what the incoming attack might be, a fair amount of the time.
    • The battle simulator is something that is definitely needed, even if it is only a slightly slimmed-down version. At the moment, browser players have a serious advantage in terms of being able to use spy/wisdom reports effectively, and they can test out hypothetical situations as well.
    • While the priestess, commander and merchant should probably be kept the same price as the benefits are automatic bonuses rather than extra features, I think that the captain and administrator need to be slimmed down. I believe that you only get 1 of the administrator's overviews on the app (the command overview): while some overviews are used a lot less than others and the command overview is the most useful by far (in my opinion), charging the same price for a lot less functionality is unfair.
    • Unless the attack planner can be put into the app in similar detail to the browser version, I'm not sure how much point there is including it at all. (Including reminders for attacks/supports would be good to do, but I don't see how including a half-working version of the planning page would make life easier.) However this is the opinion of someone who rarely uses the attack planner on the browser anyways, so I admit that I may be completely wrong on that.
    • If you had to include only a couple of features from the advisor (in addition to what we already have), I'd say it should be the trade overview and the city groupings. City groups are more and more useful as you grow in size (especially as you don't have access to DioTools to assign images to your cities to show you the specialisations in another way). And trading between your cities is a complete nightmare on the app, at least for me it seems like that.

Casual Worlds:
  • Can we get confirmation from the developers on exactly what they define as casual worlds? @Baudin Toolan is probably right, but it would be nice if we can know for certain.

Spam:
  • It's nice to see the spam issue being taken seriously by the team for once, but I'm curious about what the developers would be intending to class as spam, and what they wouldn't. For instance, you could say that you can't send multiple attacks from a single city in the space of a few minutes, but you are left with the issue that it doesn't prevent repetitive pinging to spam someone's alarm, yet is does prevent you splitting an attack into a main attack and a tiny decoy attack in order to make the enemy waste favour trying to find the correct attack to rage/storm.

Events:
  • If the developers do shorten the current events, have they confirmed that they won't just wait a few months and then increase the event frequency so that approximately the same time is being spent on events, just split into more chunks.
  • I would be more in favour of keeping events at the current length per event but reducing the number of events that they run in any one year. That way we get less time spent on events, but the developers don't have to spend as much time rewriting the code.

Other Comments:
  • @The Smilodon Fatalis - While I agree that slower unit speeds are good for more casual players, I strongly disagree with the idea that we need more worlds with slow unit speeds, at least for revolt worlds. En105 Epidamnos will the first En revolt world with a unit speed of 3+ since en89 Golgi, which opened almost 2 years ago. We've had a variety of world speeds from 1/1 to 4/2, but nothing above unit speed 2 in that time. Meanwhile, conquest players got 2/3 (en90 Helike), 3/3 (en93 Lato), 6/6 (en100 Tegea) and 3/4 (en102 Byblos). For the anniversary worlds, conquest players got the fastest world they've had in a long time, if ever (not including the Summer Speed Worlds), while revolt players got a 1/1 world despite having a 1/2 (en94 Mesembria, which was partially killed off by the opening of en101) and a 2/2 (en99 Selymbria) open. Maybe this isn't the same on the US server or on other servers, but the lack of unit speed 3+ revolt worlds has been a major cause for complaint by revolt players for ages, so I really would recommend against increasing the proportion of worlds that have low unit speeds.
  • @dadofwildthang - I think it would be good to put in a mid-speed Elysian Fields world and/or a fresh slow-speed Elysian Fields world. However I do think that we won't want them to be coming out every few worlds - as many people as there are that enjoy them, I feel that the majority of the community would not choose to play in worlds where they can't actually take cities from the enemy.
  • @Loves You - TSF did lead on en96 Olous until sometime around the late-WW stage (when OSG locked down all 7), and he is playing on en102 Byblos at the moment (or at least until a day or two ago, according to his points growths). So while he is apparently focusing more on the US server at the moment, he has had a presence on the En server for most of recent times. (Not saying that I think it's fantastic to have a GPC representative for the EN community who is focusing on the US server over the EN server, but he is actually here still.)
 

DeletedUser44867

Guest
Answers to some of those questions, and I'll also try to get a general definition of what a casual world is. -
I might not touch on everything because I have to leave shortly....

End game -
You are correct that this new system proposes that WW would grant rewards, but wouldn't count in any way to the victory conditions. WW would not be a requirement to win. (However, it's possible there would still be a crown for completing all seven wonders, and a separate crown for if you won domination.)
As for presenting the full idea on devblog - probably a little bit of both. I imagine they will get some feedback on it, + maybe make some changes as necessary from reactions, then do some testing to check for bugs, etc before actually implementing it. But...They will also probably try to improve it after it's already been implemented. There's some things that can't be anticipated until the game is already being played, so some changes will likely happen during gameplay.
But yes, I am also very excited for the idea of a domination based end game, it's something I've heard from a lot of players that they would love to see, and personally I also like the idea of wonders being used as a strategy instead of a victory condition. I'm interested to see if people would still actually build them, and if there rewards would be a huge advantage - especially since you would be able to build them immediately.
As for restriction of cities - we had been talking about this issue a little bit, and how foundations would come into play. The theory is, when you found a city, you're also adding to the total number of cities that there are, so your total percentage isn't increasing at all. i.e. if your alliance had 3000/10,000 cities it's 3%. Let's say that alliance founds 1,000 cities. You're now at 4000/11,000 cities, which only improves your percentage to 3.6%, which isn't a whole lot. Obviously there's a little bit of a growth to that equation - 7000/14000 would go up to 5% total, but you've still only had a gross growth of 2% total for founding 4,000 cities.... so foundations wouldn't add a ton to your alliances' total. But this is definitely one topic that might need to be adjusted as the game is played.

Actively playing -
Also... yeah I'd be careful with measuring alternate accounts, because a lot of people have multiple and a lot of the times they are alternate accounts because people don't want them associated with their forum accounts or old accounts for whatever reason. I personally have probably 4-6 alternate accounts, and usually either one or two are active at any given time. Currently it's only one. I retired this particular account a long time ago because people were usually hesitant to respond to me for newspapers, because they thought I was gathering intel for my alliance, or trying to find out their natural offline times.... I got some not so nice responses and sometimes would become a target for those people of spam. But yeah, I make new accounts with the intentions that only my alliance/close grepolis friends know what my account relations are. My current one is admittedly probably known to a lot of people, though....

However that being said - there is no US council currently. There was an issue on the US forum, where they couldn't get the council members into a hidden forum and council was never able to be 'initiated' per se, so for the time being, unfortunately, there isn't one. I know some of the players who were elected to US council mentioned their world was ending soon, and I believe they said they are now taking a brea since they aren't obligated to council, which might explain why you see some of them aren't playing....
I would not be surprised if EN/US are combined in future terms....

I'm not sure about the other servers, though, to be honest.... I only speak to the inner council members from other servers, and they have all talked about the worlds they are playing in, so I'm assuming they're in game on some account. I've never talked to any of their local council members though.
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
@Loves You I just won Olous this past fall and am still poking around there and am in Byblos...Maybe do some research before getting upset man. Could save you some grief. Also I would hope you would know my alternate account, its listed under my signature, I'm not exactly hiding out. :p

@Kal Gordon- I'm not saying make every world from here on out a 1/2, 2/1, 2/2, etc. Variety is a good thing and I think we definitely need 3/3s or even the occasional extreme settings otherwise the hardcore community would quit. Sorry if I made it seem otherwise. But I do think that that unit speed is the most helpful factor for a casual or newer player.
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
@Phidippidies - Thanks for the clarifications on everything!

I'm not massively worried about the idea of colonisations within the domination mode. It's more about the fact that a team could colonise way out of the way of everyone else, and sustain quick growth by killing their own troops or each others' troops, without the risk of losing cities. So while they won't be getting a huge number of cities to improve their percentages, they would effectively avoid the risk of losing many cities, in comparison to the teams in the main part of the world that will be trying to balance growth, attack and defense, rather than just growth.

@The Smilodon Fatalis - I can see what you are saying. I think you had bad timing in saying it, intentionally or not. :p EN revolt players finally got a world with a unit speed better than 2, almost 2 years after the last one, and the first comment made about it by a GPC representative is that perhaps we need more worlds with low unit speeds rather than making a couple of Elysian Fields worlds.

@The Smilodon Fatalis + @Loves You - I appreciate that the two of you may have your differences about each other and about events of particular worlds. It's pretty well-known that I had some strong opinions on the events of en96. But this is for discussing GPC-related ideas and concerns, so it would be better if the fighting could be taken elsewhere. We'll get even less done if we have personal fights derailing threads that are actually proving useful. Please?
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
I agree, hence why I said any personal complaints about me can be taken to the Acropolis.

Anyways getting back on topic, I'll see how much detail we can share about the end game. And yeah, its bad timing on my end, I didn't even know there was an En105 coming. :D
 

DeletedUser44867

Guest
Alright, I have clarification from developers concerning "casual" worlds. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused, I think I got two separate questions mixed up into one idea:

Casual worlds are worlds that cannot end and where you cannot lose any of your cities at the moment. So, Hyperborea.

So, concerning casual worlds, the devs are wondering if there is big interest in the casual world type, and if there is interest in casual worlds in general - ones where you can't lose your city. Or, if players would be interested in versions of Hyperborea that have new features added, but are just more peaceful.

The OTHER question they wanted us to ask was about non-hero worlds, same general question, but different world type in question:

Concerning non-hero/legacy worlds, the devs are interested in hearing ideas about the future of these worlds - since across servers some of them seem to be lingering, and have been open for a long time.
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
Phi-
I think you've heard from ppl that casual worlds hold a place for a subset of ppl who prefer a slower speed and atmosphere where they can come and go to the world when they have time. So new ones, yes, but as Kal says above (I think) they are not needed at the same frequency as cq/ revolt worlds.

In terms of non-hero worlds, I think some play these just because they are simpler. You don't have to worry about the heroes or the coins and, if I'm not mistaken, some of them have the old farming system which many long time players prefer. But I think if you have all the same bells and whistles as a regular server and say pick heroes or not, that would neither encourage or discourage players from joining.

mwtc
 

DeletedUser35722

Guest
1. What is your concern / idea?
They are going to implement a way for you to not be able to kill off your own troops, and i think this is a bad idea. ( look at updated development blog)
2. Why/How do you think this will improve the game?
I don't, I thought this was a strategy game where people should respect the strategies chosen by other players. Removing all these different strategies is just killing the game, and telling us how we should all play the same way - how boring.
3. If you have a solution, list it. If not, feel free to ask for one.
Don't implement this. Or at least start putting this in new worlds, and warn people beforehand ( and not just put it into old worlds where systems have been put into place for half a year already).

Thank you and i hope you understand my concern

Pianoman98
 

DeletedUser44867

Guest
I believe the changes mentioned (concerning BP) would only be put on new domination worlds, but can't say that for sure.
I've just asked, will update when I get a response.

See fig's post.
 
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Rachel.L

Phrourach
I made a post on the dev blog with similar concerns. That was 2 days ago and it still isn't posted for all to see, i.e. waiting remediation. Even if this is done only on domination worlds, which will be half of them????, this concerns me.

Here is my post in case anyone cares:
In terms of the penalty for attacking alliance mates’ troops and only receiving 20% bps, have you considered how this will affect siege breaks? An important reason to have an alliance in CQ worlds is so alliance and pact members can assist in breaking a siege. If allies feel that siege breaks are an inefficient use of troops compared to the bps they can get attacking an enemy, there will no longer be cooperation in saving a city. Players may even abandon their own cities since they will get no bps for recovering them. This will change how the game is played entirely, making it a free-for-all, except when an endgame situation is in effect. Is this what you envision?
 

DeletedUser31385

Guest
I believe the changes mentioned (concerning BP) would only be put on new domination worlds, but can't say that for sure.
I've just asked, will update when I get a response.
The post specifically mentions the devs plan to roll out the BP changes to all worlds once they finalize it.

I made a post on the dev blog with similar concerns. That was 2 days ago and it still isn't posted for all to see, i.e. waiting remediation. Even if this is done only on domination worlds, which will be half of them????, this concerns me.

Here is my post in case anyone cares:
In terms of the penalty for attacking alliance mates’ troops and only receiving 20% bps, have you considered how this will affect siege breaks? An important reason to have an alliance in CQ worlds is so alliance and pact members can assist in breaking a siege. If allies feel that siege breaks are an inefficient use of troops compared to the bps they can get attacking an enemy, there will no longer be cooperation in saving a city. Players may even abandon their own cities since they will get no bps for recovering them. This will change how the game is played entirely, making it a free-for-all, except when an endgame situation is in effect. Is this what you envision?

In theory, the troops defending the city are from an unaffiliated alliance/player and thus would not have a penalty applied to the BPs. The defending troops are NOT from the player who owns the city or from members of his/her alliance. The dev blog post specifically mentions your owned units and alliance member owned units as having penalties applied to them. That is my understanding of it.
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
My concern was internals. You often get to stay in the fight because of the BP you pick up from the internals you clear and take. I can speak from my experience on Olous where OSG would have just steamrolled us and popped up all over our wonder island if this had been implemented then.
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
@figtree2 , your reading of it and mine are different
I read troops, period, not troops in alliance members own cities
if what you say is true then one problem is solved and the problem of preventing a cs from landing still remains... few bps for stacking a city
either way this doesn't seem 100% thought through

additionally, there are good reasons for sacrificing troops... leaders giving small players bps to help them grow, changing a city from offense to defense when moving into ww era, freeing pop for a cs/ needed trans/ etc.

plus, I don't think anyone has addressed @pianoman98 's point
in this game of strategy, where many choices are not favored by others, as long as it is within the rules, it is a viable option
to my knowledge, being on top of the bps board gives you bragging rights and slots but no other advantage
you can get the same thing by using gold and killing lots of troops randomly on the enemy
I personally don't think cannibalism is a great strategy but it is not illegal
so to implement something that can harm the game to prevent something that you can get in other ways, seems like a bad idea to me
 
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