Increasing playerbase

[Forwandert]

There's numerous things that have driven players away over the years, especially the last 5/6 years. (not going to go into the list of changes that made me stop playing 5 years ago again but there where changes and I didn't like them so stopped playing)

Unfortunately the loss of the player base makes what I think is the problem even worse.

Main issue in my opinion is players like to play certain settings (creatures of habit) and if you're only wanting to play certain settings there's sometimes a very long wait between servers. That wait can be years sometimes and in all honesty it's hardly worth the wait anymore. Players get bored waiting and I dont think its a solveable situation now, it was the same 2013/14 onwards but there is no solution that doesn't dilute what's left in terms of play base.

You will also have some players that tend to only play with the same people, when your waiting x amount of time for the right settings pop up, then you're trying to get hold of everyone and everything to line up with RL activities isn't always possible.

Years back with the larger playerbase servers where pushed out every few weeks so there was more chance of a server with the settings you liked or close enough that you could live with it and just play, you could even join one 6/12 months in and play but now servers are done by that point.

I'd be happy just playing on a long term server with decent settings and play as long as I wanted. Your buddies could come and go as available. That would keep me playing more than the current set up which seems to have gone worse, There's no time to establish the alliance if you start with new players and create the allaince community as we used to, now it's all game end, game end from the start. If it wasn't for the settings I would have moved to Achilles 8 years ago.

[Edit] The only possible solution I can think of to the preferred settings is remove 90% of the options and just have servers either fast or slow (someone figure out optimal settings for that) and then alternate between morale and no morale. That would mean 1 in every 4 server (revolt and conq) would have the 'right' settings so every 4 months if released monthly. Think we have had to much choice and that's created the situation. Before I figured different servers had different settings I was happy with the game just playing it. Adding different game ends might have actually made the problem worse as its created even more choices that players might prefer. Essentially it's diluted even further the servers I might want to play.

 

[1saaa]

One big issue with everything being so much smaller now is that it's much harder to set up shop on the rim, kick back, and play some casual grep with another rim team.

 

[Zen Shadow]

It’s the big MRAs that have ruined the game. Even if someone beats them by the end of the server, they bully out the new blood in the first few weeks. I fight against MRAs as general principle and only ran one once due to on server conditions which forced me to run one I had joined and found the leadership so inept I actually took it over.
New player retention would increase if pacts and tab shares were limited. This would give smaller groups more of a chance to get established and new players a chance to learn to play without being immediately surrounded and rimmed by an MRA group.

 

[The Kitten Fatalis]

MRA's/Premades don't cause people to quit. A 7 man premade will still go after newer players because they're the easiest. Everyone targets new players/alliances from the best players to the worst. The game mechanics itself causes people to quit. We're talking about a slower building/war game. On top of that, usually new players leave BP with maybe 3-4 cities max. Sometimes 1-2 depending on the speed. They then get taken out. Founding cities isn't a serious or viable strategy past the very early game since it produces a 997 point city.

Its why Heph blessing needs to become a standard setting. A faster building time with an average unit speed + being able to produce bigger cities eases the pain of losing them. It also slows down the rate of conquests because founding becomes a viable strategy that doesn't make everyone groan past the first couple of weeks.

Its actually ridiculous that Inno considers this a special setting and not standard practice as its popular with just about everyone.

 

[XUNGA]

Limit the number of cities a player can have, lower number of members in each alliance, limit the use of gold to purchasing resources and not units, increased protection time for beginners while they are active, players receive secret and personal objectives at certain stages of evolution with prizes. like conquer city X or reach a certain ranking in battle points, game promotion.

 

[Reimu Hakurei]

Limit the number of cities a player can have, lower number of members in each alliance, limit the use of gold to purchasing resources and not units, increased protection time for beginners while they are active, players receive secret and personal objectives at certain stages of evolution with prizes. like conquer city X or reach a certain ranking in battle points, game promotion.

Jesse what the hell are you talking about

 

[XUNGA]

Even 10 years ago one of the game's problems was the lack of competitiveness. Veteran players are almost all in alliances full of friends who are also veterans and between them they have hundreds of cities which doesn't leave free space for others. With limited members, the best players were more distributed and with city limits they wouldn't be as powerful. The game would depend more on skill and not exclusively on numbers as it is now.

 

[Back2Basics]

Even 10 years ago one of the game's problems was the lack of competitiveness. Veteran players are almost all in alliances full of friends who are also veterans and between them they have hundreds of cities which doesn't leave free space for others. With limited members, the best players were more distributed and with city limits they wouldn't be as powerful. The game would depend more on skill and not exclusively on numbers as it is now.

Veteran =/= skilled

 

[The Kitten Fatalis]

Even 10 years ago one of the game's problems was the lack of competitiveness. Veteran players are almost all in alliances full of friends who are also veterans and between them they have hundreds of cities which doesn't leave free space for others. With limited members, the best players were more distributed and with city limits they wouldn't be as powerful. The game would depend more on skill and not exclusively on numbers as it is now.

1) Hey was here 10 years ago. Veteran teams struggled like crazy because they often faced either other veteran teams or lots of other teams with mixes of new and experienced players.

2) Yes, in a 12 year old game, people will want to play with their friends.

3) Make it easier to acquire decent cities. Usually the problem for casual/newer players isn’t losing cities. It’s getting set back in a slow game significantly by losing their larger towns early.

4) Caps don’t reduce alliance sizes. People have abused 250 cap before.

 

[VIRTUALSELF]

1) Hey was here 10 years ago. Veteran teams struggled like crazy because they often faced either other veteran teams or lots of other teams with mixes of new and experienced players.

2) Yes, in a 12 year old game, people will want to play with their friends.

3) Make it easier to acquire decent cities. Usually the problem for casual/newer players isn’t losing cities. It’s getting set back in a slow game significantly by losing their larger towns early.

4) Caps don’t reduce alliance sizes. People have abused 250 cap before.

Tbh at times it feels like **** and completely illogical why building takes so long in a wargame. The blessing thing should be the standard and possibly be buffed to even more starting points. New players will never learn if they never get to midgame

 

[Malrov]

I think the hardest thing for new players is the meta mechanics. The game tells you to "attack a city or bandit camp" but you have almost no idea with what. There is no direct explanation within game about even the most general of nuances when it comes to fighting. New players would have no idea that a nuke is more powerful then a mix, no idea of mixing and matching units based on spy reports etc.

While I say that is the case, I do understand that grepolis is a game that does require you to both think and to investigate. I don't think that we need a mass tutorialised edition just so that new player A can understand how a nuke works. But we do have too much bare bones. The other thing is that I think its time to be honest with the noob community. The first thing I say to any friends I want to invite, is "this game takes alot of time". Like you think World of warcraft or Runescape takes time? Think again. This is never explained to the new playerbase when you do get a random person interested, so they log in once in 2 days, are so far behind come end of beginners protection, that they could have lost their city without even realizing they could be attacked.

It's a viscous cycle. I hope that inno decides to make some changes. as the potential fun and comradery of this game is almost infinite, but the learning curve and determination required at the current moment I think is its major downfall.

I know that gold users can end up ruining the game too, like the heavy spenders, but I argue that right now what we should focus on is just onboarding newbies. and the gold issues isnt necessarily something that would be affecting newbies that much directly. The crappiness of gold use generally gets shown during alliance vs alliance wars, not necassarily on an individual basis.

 

[Malrov]

Even 10 years ago one of the game's problems was the lack of competitiveness. Veteran players are almost all in alliances full of friends who are also veterans and between them they have hundreds of cities which doesn't leave free space for others. With limited members, the best players were more distributed and with city limits they wouldn't be as powerful. The game would depend more on skill and not exclusively on numbers as it is now.

Fair question, have you ever done a 20 city line up on an opponent where you are the only one doing it? Thats skill, and its also mass.

 

[XUNGA]

My suggestions were just in the sense of giving more chances to players and less strong alliances, when you have 50 cities
(those who are active and interested at the moment because you will see the top alliances and their first 4 - 5 members have between them more than 200 cities, corresponding to 10 big islands just for them) which you can launch attacks how many attempts do you have until you get the attack or support in the exact second? Even more with the abilities of syrens and heroes?
Anyway, what I'm saying is related to the topic of increasing the player base and it's in that spirit that I make these comments. As it is is wonderful for me as long as they don't get more software to help manage so many cities and schedule attacks while they're sleeping...

 

[XUNGA]

On the third world I enter I finally realized what the problem is. The game is without any ethics, all the small subterfuges to obtain advantages are used without any shame and worse still, they are glorified and gain followers. There will always be traitors, spies and opportunists and in a way they are part of the game but I appeal to those who like Grepolis to refrain from all other tricks and cheats and to cultivate the values that must prevail in a war game. I think this more than anything can give Grepolis more vigor and help prevent players leaving it

 

[XUNGA]

Whoever enters this game for the first time registers most of the times in this forum. Having some kind of input that would help them to better understand the game could be interesting because as someone said here before the mechanics of the beginning is not enough. It could even revive the habit that some alliances had of creating academies . There are now many guides but learning within the game is more interesting

 

[Alexander the Okay]

I think the hardest thing for new players is the meta mechanics. The game tells you to "attack a city or bandit camp" but you have almost no idea with what. There is no direct explanation within game about even the most general of nuances when it comes to fighting. New players would have no idea that a nuke is more powerful then a mix, no idea of mixing and matching units based on spy reports etc.

While I say that is the case, I do understand that grepolis is a game that does require you to both think and to investigate. I don't think that we need a mass tutorialised edition just so that new player A can understand how a nuke works. But we do have too much bare bones. The other thing is that I think its time to be honest with the noob community. The first thing I say to any friends I want to invite, is "this game takes alot of time". Like you think World of warcraft or Runescape takes time? Think again. This is never explained to the new playerbase when you do get a random person interested, so they log in once in 2 days, are so far behind come end of beginners protection, that they could have lost their city without even realizing they could be attacked.

It's a viscous cycle. I hope that inno decides to make some changes. as the potential fun and comradery of this game is almost infinite, but the learning curve and determination required at the current moment I think is its major downfall.

I know that gold users can end up ruining the game too, like the heavy spenders, but I argue that right now what we should focus on is just onboarding newbies. and the gold issues isnt necessarily something that would be affecting newbies that much directly. The crappiness of gold use generally gets shown during alliance vs alliance wars, not necassarily on an individual basis.

This needs to be stressed to new players. As well as mastering the mechanics of the game, we need to make it clear that a lot of people who play this game often spend more time with their alliance mates than their families. It's a HUGE investment of time and very dense in terms of the level of commitment you need to succeed

 

[NutsNBoltz]

This needs to be stressed to new players. As well as mastering the mechanics of the game, we need to make it clear that a lot of people who play this game often spend more time with their alliance mates than their families. It's a HUGE investment of time and very dense in terms of the level of commitment you need to succeed

very true, also what's up AOK?

 

[Nine Fingers]

People talk about how servers are dying and haven't seen the truth. Don't you think it's strange that the US server with its millions has fewer active players than the Portuguese one? Not to mention the German... And why? Because that's where a few spammers and bullies managed to get others to give up on the game and now they're here on this server allong with more sick people gradually killing it.

 

[NutsNBoltz]

People talk about how servers are dying and haven't seen the truth. Don't you think it's strange that the US server with its millions has fewer active players than the Portuguese one? Not to mention the German... And why? Because that's where a few spammers and bullies managed to get others to give up on the game and now they're here on this server allong with more sick people gradually killing it.

 

[NutsNBoltz]

makes no sense @Nine Fingers . you're generalizing that as the issue? Spam honestly is not an issue, game bugs, lack of innovation, taking forever to change things. that's killing the game. Not some spam