Increasing playerbase

[Emberguard]

I remember spending about the same a couple years ago and having to just ghost out because my alliance was just out of BP and some heavy spenders took 200 point cities on our core islands overnight and immediately built those cities into 10k point cities. It wasn’t strategy or good game play, just big wallets. I’m experienced and don’t care, but a new player would quit and never play again due to that kind of gold abuse. You have to cap spending if you want to get new players to stay.

I agree. As long as Free to Play can compete, you’ll get willing spenders. Make it an impossible task and no one’s going to want to bother. No one joins a game to bet on who has the biggest wallet

The 7 day protection for newbies is great in theory. That “should” be enough to get your toes wet. And in theory the sooner you can get a player attacking and defending the better they should adjust to the mechanics. Ripping the bandaid off ”should” be less painful… in theory.

In practice I’d probably need more like two months before I can be remotely close to being strong enough to defend myself properly when it comes to preventing the loss of a city. Those that have unlocked the Revolt function are just so much stronger than those who can’t revolt on any of their cities and with good reason. Academy Lvl 28 takes time to reach, and no one’s going to beeline an Academy to lvl 28 while ignoring everything else. I’m nowhere near that yet. By that point I’d have a lot more resources to work with. Without joining the strongest alliance in my area I would have a hopeless battle to face. The moment I reach 2k points my city gets taken by opponents who have more units than my entire city population combined, and the alliance I first joined were all players of a similar strength to my own and therefore unable to prevent a city being taken. But with now joining the strongest alliance in my area I at least stand a chance to both defend and eventually reach a point where I can be a formidable opponent.

 

[Zen Shadow]

I agree. As long as Free to Play can compete, you’ll get willing spenders. Make it an impossible task and no one’s going to want to bother. No one joins a game to bet on who has the biggest wallet

The 7 day protection for newbies is great in theory. That “should” be enough to get your toes wet. And in theory the sooner you can get a player attacking and defending the better they should adjust to the mechanics. Ripping the bandaid off ”should” be less painful… in theory.

In practice I’d probably need more like two months before I can be remotely close to being strong enough to defend myself properly when it comes to preventing the loss of a city. Those that have unlocked the Revolt function are just so much stronger than those who can’t revolt on any of their cities and with good reason. Academy Lvl 28 takes time to reach, and no one’s going to beeline an Academy to lvl 28 while ignoring everything else. I’m nowhere near that yet. By that point I’d have a lot more resources to work with. Without joining the strongest alliance in my area I would have a hopeless battle to face. The moment I reach 2k points my city gets taken by opponents who have more units than my entire city population combined, and the alliance I first joined were all players of a similar strength to my own and therefore unable to prevent a city being taken. But with now joining the strongest alliance in my area I at least stand a chance to both defend and eventually reach a point where I can be a formidable opponent.

The ability to reach CQ or revolt in BP time without spending money is there. You do have to start when you have a day or two off work and sit and do 5 min or 10 min demands on villages and kill all of your bandits and use the architect buffs only when you have 7 buildings in queue. It’s a bit of work, but you can have 3 cities and conquest ready a day before BP ends.
The learning curve is steep for new players. Some join alliance and never post in forum or respond to mail ever after, others are willing to learn. I had one new player I trained from noob to alliance leader in one server. She went on to win a world after that, but she was exceptionally willing to learn how the game works. Most new players will struggle. The game balance issue is mostly about not just letting wallets win. A spending cap will make players, even heavy gold users, actually work a little harder…
The reason Escape From Tarkov is the most loved and hated game by FPS players is because you have to grind the game and it’s realistic and hard. It’s 10x harder than CoD…
I’ll add, to get CQ and 3 or 4 cities by end of BP without gold use requires you know when to quit the quest line and just build farm or warehouse and also that you do complete quests quickly, but build mostly attacking troops so you can kill bandits. You also get more resources the more troops you send at bandits and lose fewer troops if you overpower the bandits. Just following quests you will hit dead ends where you need population or warehouse space. It takes finesse to finish before BP ends.

 

[Emberguard]

The ability to reach CQ or revolt in BP time without spending money is there. You do have to start when you have a day or two off work and sit and do 5 min or 10 min demands on villages and kill all of your bandits and use the architect buffs only when you have 7 buildings in queue. It’s a bit of work, but you can have 3 cities and conquest ready a day before BP ends.

Oh… what beginner is going to pick up on that though? xD But good to know it’s technically possible and I just have stuff to learn

 

[Zen Shadow]

Oh… what beginner is going to pick up on that though? xD But good to know it’s technically possible and I just have stuff to learn

It’s not just technically possible. On 139 I finished bandits and had CQ and 3 cities with a slot to spare on day 4 of a 5 day BP. I did not spend gold to do that. I came out of BP early because I wanted 4th city…
Granted, a beginner won’t know enough to make sure they have population or warehouse space for some quest rewards. Example, temple build quests are easy to finish, but you have to build warehouse first if you want those resources for building academy etc…
It’s about looking 5 or 6 builds ahead and sequencing your quest completions to use the resources for the next thing you need. I do it every server, but it was hard the first time or two until I figured out where to go off the quest line for a build or two so as to speed things up. Plus, you have to always have population for builds and troops including bandit quest rewards. Most new players hit the wall on population or warehouse and lose resources or the ability to keep building. That slows you down.

 

[The Kitten Fatalis]

The thing is that at least on conquest. Is that you can generally defeat somebody who spends a lot if you have a high skill level and a few good team mates. The two problems with just blaming gold is this.

A) You’re always going to have losers in this game due to the type of game it is. Even with just 4k-5k gold on a speed 3 with 5 days protection, you’re looking at having 2-3 cities and conquest researched out of protection. Since most of the gold is spent in the beginning, a cap won’t help.

2) A lack of players games the game insanely more difficult to learn than gold useage does. If you can’t restart in a rim ocean, you’ll get conquered again. If you’re just a new player, you’ll get targeted first.

However in a large world it’s not just as simple as beating up noobs. Sure you could win 400-0 on a conq sheet. But if the world has a large player base, those new players come into play as the end games are designed around having warm bodies. People will stay in worlds that are dynamic. Nobody wants to play in a 1-2 horse town.

 

[Zen Shadow]

The thing is that at least on conquest. Is that you can generally defeat somebody who spends a lot if you have a high skill level and a few good team mates. The two problems with just blaming gold is this.

A) You’re always going to have losers in this game due to the type of game it is. Even with just 4k-5k gold on a speed 3 with 5 days protection, you’re looking at having 2-3 cities and conquest researched out of protection. Since most of the gold is spent in the beginning, a cap won’t help.

2) A lack of players games the game insanely more difficult to learn than gold useage does. If you can’t restart in a rim ocean, you’ll get conquered again. If you’re just a new player, you’ll get targeted first.

However in a large world it’s not just as simple as beating up noobs. Sure you could win 400-0 on a conq sheet. But if the world has a large player base, those new players come into play as the end games are designed around having warm bodies. People will stay in worlds that are dynamic. Nobody wants to play in a 1-2 horse town.

The cap idea would help because players wouldn’t be able to build cities to 13k points overnight or run Olympics 24/7 to get slots or hit the Tyche wheel like it’s an internet slot machine so they can continually throw manti nukes at an enemy. If you only had the ability to add say 3k gold a week to a server, the heavy gold user would run out in hours. This would curtail the excesses of wallet players. As a result, the average player or new player would have better survivability and the game would be more competitive and thus attractive to a larger player base. That would fix your 2nd point as with a little advertisement and game balance, you would get the bigger servers with a real rim…

 

[The Kitten Fatalis]

The cap idea would help because players wouldn’t be able to build cities to 13k points overnight or run Olympics 24/7 to get slots or hit the Tyche wheel like it’s an internet slot machine so they can continually throw manti nukes at an enemy. If you only had the ability to add say 3k gold a week to a server, the heavy gold user would run out in hours. This would curtail the excesses of wallet players. As a result, the average player or new player would have better survivability and the game would be more competitive and thus attractive to a larger player base. That would fix your 2nd point as with a little advertisement and game balance, you would get the bigger servers with a real rim…

Do you know how rare it is for somebody to actually build a 13k city overnight at all let alone on a consistent basis? Even players buying up all the resources don't do that on any speed enough to make a difference in the player count.

A gold limit still wouldn't improve survivability, it would just delay the inevitable. I generally have no more than 10k gold on my account and usually get conq ready with 3k gold roughly, always before BP drops. Assume at this point, most established teams have a decent skill level and compare it to new players/teams. They're still going to get slaughtered. There's almost no way around the fact that if you're new, you're going to take it on the chin, unless a friend who is both good and patient enough to teach you, brought you in. As for flyer nukes, even with reduced gold, you're still assuming that a group of new players will be sieging an experienced team frequently enough to make a difference in that. Typically, speaking, they won't. Even the lower tier experienced teams don't get enough sieges in to actually make a difference.

The problem is that there's not a way to get a established fast enough. More players would probably stay if they had 5+ cities instead of 2-3 coming out of BP.

 

[Zen Shadow]

Do you know how rare it is for somebody to actually build a 13k city overnight at all let alone on a consistent basis? Even players buying up all the resources don't do that on any speed enough to make a difference in the player count.

A gold limit still wouldn't improve survivability, it would just delay the inevitable. I generally have no more than 10k gold on my account and usually get conq ready with 3k gold roughly, always before BP drops. Assume at this point, most established teams have a decent skill level and compare it to new players/teams. They're still going to get slaughtered. There's almost no way around the fact that if you're new, you're going to take it on the chin, unless a friend who is both good and patient enough to teach you, brought you in. As for flyer nukes, even with reduced gold, you're still assuming that a group of new players will be sieging an experienced team frequently enough to make a difference in that. Typically, speaking, they won't. Even the lower tier experienced teams don't get enough sieges in to actually make a difference.

The problem is that there's not a way to get a established fast enough. More players would probably stay if they had 5+ cities instead of 2-3 coming out of BP.

I’ve seen gold abuse such as several 10k plus cities founded and built overnight by an enemy that kept getting sniped. I’ve also seen enemies spam manti nukes every couple hours during events just for BP and to weaken enemies. While most players are mature and don’t do that kind of thing, we do still have wallet warriors in the game. Saying it ain’t so doesn’t make it less of a fact. A gold cap would limit that kind of play. Inno would still make plenty of money due to an increased player base.

 

[The Kitten Fatalis]

I’ve seen gold abuse such as several 10k plus cities founded and built overnight by an enemy that kept getting sniped. I’ve also seen enemies spam manti nukes every couple hours during events just for BP and to weaken enemies. While most players are mature and don’t do that kind of thing, we do still have wallet warriors in the game. Saying it ain’t so doesn’t make it less of a fact. A gold cap would limit that kind of play. Inno would still make plenty of money due to an increased player base.

I didn't say it didn't exist. I said that somebody golding out a 10k over night isn't very common. Especially not early on. As for event abuse, if you use your alarm, you're probably not going to get caught a lot by event flyers. They might contest some sieges but in most events, a break isn't really a sure thing anymore.

I'd say that getting a player immersed is the main issue. Imo the game speeds should be 3-5 primarily with unit speeds being the main variable in a world. 1, 2, and 6 should be something of a special occasion. I'd say that the starting slots should be 5 as well without the culture point requirements changing. People like faster paced games now a days in terms of building. Seeing something like a 6/3 with 5 starting slots would get attention. As would a 3/2, 4/3, 3/4, etc. Reason I say this is that at a decent speed, its possible to have a few towns before BP ends. Especially without a slot restriction. The speed would allow players to get established and have a reason to stay if things go wrong.

 

[WingedHussar]

I didn't say it didn't exist. I said that somebody golding out a 10k over night isn't very common. Especially not early on. As for event abuse, if you use your alarm, you're probably not going to get caught a lot by event flyers. They might contest some sieges but in most events, a break isn't really a sure thing anymore.

I'd say that getting a player immersed is the main issue. Imo the game speeds should be 3-5 primarily with unit speeds being the main variable in a world. 1, 2, and 6 should be something of a special occasion. I'd say that the starting slots should be 5 as well without the culture point requirements changing. People like faster paced games now a days in terms of building. Seeing something like a 6/3 with 5 starting slots would get attention. As would a 3/2, 4/3, 3/4, etc. Reason I say this is that at a decent speed, its possible to have a few towns before BP ends. Especially without a slot restriction. The speed would allow players to get established and have a reason to stay if things go wrong.

Cities being bigger than 700 pt when you found them is also a good thing, it was so **** to found cities and build them from the ground up.
This allows newer people to grow easier by founding cities during bp, which should also attract new players

 

[jack9r9]

Its the modern age of marketing...sponser one of their videos, they cut together a promo for the game, then boom. Video comes out, gets views and we see an influx...however slight/big that might be.

Just starting to contribute to this thread as I came back to play in en141 and us105 after a long hiatus (started in en19 Tau, left for 5+ years). Funny reading about the email comments above - I came back because inno still emails me about new worlds opening (honestly had almost forgot about this game). Anyway, I think you're spot on with the youtube marketing, it's huge now for many things including gaming and all we need is a couple paid promos after the opening of a world (hint, hint: now) to hopefully gain some traction again...

I will say the game has gotten even more confusing since I left - adding gods is nice I guess for longterm players but I think it just adds another layer of confusion on which is the best. I played back when heroes were introduced and honestly I think they just add yet another layer of confusion that is kind of unnecessary. This concept is just really, really good in my opinion though and I don't mind the old graphics (maybe it's just the nostalgia). I really miss worlds filling up to oceans 33 and 76 but, honestly, I thought this game would have been dead a long time ago and was surprised to find it still pumping out worlds (even if just every 2 months now).

I don't know what Inno's marketing budget is like but we definitely need some love if Grepo is to survive... but honestly, they've probably given up on it and are just milking the remaining gold guzzlers until there's no one else left.

 

[Pro-Grep]

Actually I absolutely agree with advertising stuff, if Grepo gets at least half of other InnoGames’ ads playerbase could definitely grow. But that’s not the only thing which should be done.

I have read nearly all posts in this topic and people mainly complain that nothing changed in this game and all look same like back in good old times. Yeah I agree that it looks same way, but I doubt its a problem. I have been playing this game since 2010 and game visuals always were last thing to complain about. Thing is that this game requires knowledge and lots of time, alarm, tools and so on to play properly, so new players who aren’t already addicted with this game like we are, might get bored too soon. You must just like this kind of games to stick with Grepo.

Second thing about which was complains, was enormous advantage which you can buy. That’s right, too much Gold users can be sometimes really annoying and have advantage over most players, mainly new ones. But still I think it’s pretty okay (maybe if slight restrictions, it could be better), cuz we should remember that Inno is overall a company who creates games and operates them in order to get income. And I still think that this is definitely free to play game. I have been playing Grepo with 0$ wasted since 2010 and it have never been a problem for me, mainly since there exists gold trade, which can always give you enough gold for Advisors (maybe old gold trading system was better, since F2P players were getting more gold). Also I don’t agree that you can’t be ready for battle before BP expires if you don’t waste gold, yes it will require time and dedication from you but it’s easy like abc to get 3 cities + revolt/cq ready before BP.

These two reasons are definitely not the reason for new players loosing interest. As I mentioned above you must have good game knowledge and have game tools for this game to play properly and new ones don’t know that stuff and playerbase nowadays aren’t as friendly as they used to be. When I joined this game I was absolute noob, who was lazy to read Grepo wiki or in game explanations and was being surprised how enemy took out my 500 defending slingers with 100 attacking and instead of just conquering my city old players invited me into the team and taught me absolutely everything about game. Now 90% of players will just take your city, because there is WW crown and Domination award, so no one wants to waste time on noobs and prefer team from experienced players to get throne easier.

Also there is another topic made by VF about merging servers ( and decided to include it here), which definitely sounds reasonable, since if you check their world maps, you will understand how dead those servers are. Definitely all those servers should be merged into main EN servers, but thing is that I’m 100% sure that who wants to play this game and loves this game are already here in EN servers, the rest who still play in regional servers might be players who like this game, but prefer to most likely sim or have language barrier. Time zone shouldn’t be problem since in EN servers plays everyone from all sides of world and time zone barrier already exists, but still if that’s main problem all these are solvable so I have nothing against this merge, but it shouldn’t be done with significant changes into the game since it might disappoint lots of players.

There might be more problems to speak about, but these are which flew up to my mind and to sum up there must be done definitely lots of reorganization to grow this game in the size as it used to be. There should be added way much more detailed tutorial, Mobile App literally needs to be changed by 100%, that could grow player base more,cuz right now Mobile App has 10% of real games features and its 2x more money focused than real game ( you can’t even activate advisor with gold it requires 0.99$), if visuals are problem let them change it as well, because Inno must hear voices of their loyal players, Gold advantage should be decreased and lots of more minor changes, which doesn’t come to my mind right now, but if Inno seriously takes all these our players will make tons of good suggestions.

And once again Inno should waste some $ on Adds, back in 2012 I even saw Grepolis ad on TV, while now you can’t find it even in net.

 

[Zen Shadow]

So, here is something I know about business. You can have great sales reps who get you contracts, but if you can’t deliver the goods or services, you will lose your client base.

Now, I know most of what I say is rejected by external forum trolls, but…
The current problem in the game is something I will try to articulate clearly…


You see the discussions of game balance and game settings. There are two types of players. The selfish MRA players want fast worlds so they don’t have to siege for 12 hours, no alliance cap so they can recruit everyone and just feed off inactive players, no morale so they can bully smaller players, more gold use so they can buy nukes all day long, and no limitations on spamming or pacting everyone.

The other type of players like me want medium speed 2-3 worlds, low alliance cap with limits on pacts and tab shares, morale active to punish bullies, limits on ability to buy the game with gold, and generally a more competitive culture in the game.

If Inno would stop catering to the MRA crown crowd and advertise again, the game could regain its lost glory. Advertising won’t help until they end the dominance of MRA MPA play by limiting alliance size and number of Pacts.

I know some of you are of the former stripe of players, but you must understand that your selfish perspective on the game is why the game is almost dead. The Dev’s need to rebalance the game and that is all fact, no self interest. I literally spent 20 dollars to be in the top 50 players on 141. I remember spending a lot more, so don’t BS about economics. The game is almost dead from lack of competition and you can’t build a new player base without a chance to win. When 40 players drop on a server and sew up endgame in 2 months, you have a game balance problem.

Don’t even talk about esthetics or other superficial complaints. The game mechanics are good at their root. MRA MPA play needs to be limited in game. That is the only fix needed before Inno could advertise a rebalanced game and get back to 20k player, 36 ocean servers and all that money and fun and uncertainty of outcome…

 

[Pro-Grep]

Even though I don’t like MRA’s with infinity of branches but therefore lots of people will disagree with you, since nowadays MRA become normal thing while in past you would be ashamed of that. Only thing to stop MRA’s is make big capacity worlds like it used to be (but with current playerbase I doubt it’s possible) or simple remove diplomacy features from the game, like pacts and sharing forums. And I think proper diplomacy was always a good part of this game, so Inno can at least limit it as you said, like max 1 pact and 1 shared forums for example. Other than that if players don’t change their minds Inno would be powerless against MRA thing.

PS: and since I remember this game there always were at least 2 MRA teams in worlds, difference is that in past times there were x5 ammount of players so that MRA couldn’t go far and get just eaten from all sides by good teams, now we have low playerbase and 2 MRA are already more than half of the server, that’s the problem. So blaming everything on MRAs doesn’t sound reasonable.

 

[Zen Shadow]

Even though I don’t like MRA’s with infinity of branches but therefore lots of people will disagree with you, since nowadays MRA become normal thing while in past you would be ashamed of that. Only thing to stop MRA’s is make big capacity worlds like it used to be (but with current playerbase I doubt it’s possible) or simple remove diplomacy features from the game, like pacts and sharing forums. And I think proper diplomacy was always a good part of this game, so Inno can at least limit it as you said, like max 1 pact and 1 shared forums for example. Other than that if players don’t change their minds Inno would be powerless against MRA thing.

PS: and since I remember this game there always were at least 2 MRA teams in worlds, difference is that in past times there were x5 ammount of players so that MRA couldn’t go far and get just eaten from all sides by good teams, now we have low playerbase and 2 MRA are already more than half of the server, that’s the problem. So blaming everything on MRAs doesn’t sound reasonable.

You and I agree on most points. The MRA strategy was indeed the stuff of laughable legend back in the day, but then came greater P2W and some folks repeatedly made high gold use MRAs. That drove other players away due to not wanting to see who’s wallet is larger.
Slowly the player base trickled away. There you get to the point where one large MRA can be half the server almost from the start. There may be other factors that contributed to the loss of player base, but the MRA cannibal strategy winning many servers is the primary problem. Granted, an MRA can be beaten by a very active gold using alliance, but there are only a few of those left in the game and relying on them to break the MRAs doesn’t change the damage done to the player base early in every server. Glad you agree that a limit on pacts and tab shares might be worth trying. I think it’s the primary solution to the game balance problem.

 

[Back2Basics]

You and I agree on most points. The MRA strategy was indeed the stuff of laughable legend back in the day, but then came greater P2W and some folks repeatedly made high gold use MRAs. That drove other players away due to not wanting to see who’s wallet is larger.
Slowly the player base trickled away. There you get to the point where one large MRA can be half the server almost from the start. There may be other factors that contributed to the loss of player base, but the MRA cannibal strategy winning many servers is the primary problem. Granted, an MRA can be beaten by a very active gold using alliance, but there are only a few of those left in the game and relying on them to break the MRAs doesn’t change the damage done to the player base early in every server. Glad you agree that a limit on pacts and tab shares might be worth trying. I think it’s the primary solution to the game balance problem.

point out a world where an MRA won that wasn't wonders

you keep echoing the same point like you're some kind of messiah but a good alliance rolls an MRA 99 times out of 100, maybe you're just not as good as you think?

 

[The Kitten Fatalis]

How are you all classifying an MRA? Is it total players? Having more than one branch? At any rate.

- Methone
- Neopolis
- Sidon

Pretty sure those qualify regardless.

 

[Pro-Grep]

point out a world where an MRA won that wasn't wonders

you keep echoing the same point like you're some kind of messiah but a good alliance rolls an MRA 99 times out of 100, maybe you're just not as good as you think?

Mate even though MRAs are considered as just bunch of players who are just joining forces and creating unorganized huge teams, but those alliances with 3 branches who might be highly organized are still considered as MRAs. Nowadays MRAs consist from really experienced players, so literally 99 of worlds are won by MRAs.

PS: As you said good organized teams will still most likely beat them in war, but endgames aren’t won solely by war score.

 

[Back2Basics]

Mate even though MRAs are considered as just bunch of players who are just joining forces and creating unorganized huge teams, but those alliances with 3 branches who might be highly organized are still considered as MRAs. Nowadays MRAs consist from really experienced players, so literally 99 of worlds are won by MRAs.

PS: As you said good organized teams will still most likely beat them in war, but endgames aren’t won solely by war score.

I mean, you're just wrong lmao

 

[Pro-Grep]

I mean, you're just wrong lmao

Obviously we have different opinions, and just because you think like that doesn’t mean you are right and I’m wrong. But whatever.