We want Inno games to make cash flow and be sucsessfull but this is becoming too much of a problem.
Advantages we can counter with skill and experience. But when the day player protection ends and there are players with 4 cities and 4 times as many units as you.
When you have played very efficiently maximised every 24 hours of a day in building times and your still lacking by more than a factor times 4 thats a joke. not a game
@zchesney is observing that Grepolis is a money game now. It was not always like this. At the very beginning of Grepolis, money was a minor benefit and skill was much more important. But like most free-to-play games, this changed.
The following article explains the difference between a money game and a skill game.
Gamasutra - The Top F2P Monetization Tricks
06/26/13 by Ramin Shokrizade
A game of skill is one where your ability to make sound decisions primarily determines your success. A money game is one where your ability to spend money is the primary determinant of your success. Consumers far prefer skill games to money games, for obvious reasons. A key skill in deploying a coercive monetization model is to disguise your money game as a skill game.
[A popular F2P game] is designed masterfully in this regard. Early game play maps can be completed by almost anyone without spending money, and they slowly increase in difficulty. This presents a challenge to the skills of the player, making them feel good when they advance due to their abilities. Once the consumer has been [groomed] as a spender, the game difficulty ramps up massively, shifting the game from a skill game to a money game as progression becomes more dependent on the use of premium boosts than on player skills.
If the shift from skill game to money game is done in a subtle enough manner, the brain of the consumer has a hard time realizing that the rules of the game have changed. If done artfully, the consumer will increasingly spend under the assumption that they are still playing a skill game and “just need a bit of help”. ...the costs just keep going up until the consumer realizes they are playing a money game.
Creative control of Inno shifted from the two German brothers who founded Grepolis and were true gamers, to a large investor group who's main interest is maximizing profit. Ergo, Grepolis became a money game. Unfortunately, gamers are generally logical and analytical and prefer skill games... and the switch from skill to money was discovered by most of the player base. This is why most of the old veteran players quit playing some time ago.
inno doesn´t care about an interesting endgame, they only care about money^^ and a look at the dutch domi world rizina would proof this^
where 20 of the top 30 players are in the ally number one and this ally has more points than ally 2 and 3 together, how will you prevent of this ally will easy win that world inno?^^
@AnWePe makes a different but related observation. The top skill players began banding together many years ago in powerful pre-made teams that, if properly lead, were impossible to beat. However now, the top money players are doing the same thing. If you plan to spend $10000 USD or more to win this game, then of course you will band together with other money players to protect your "investment"