Player Council 2nd Term: Discussion

[DeletedUser31931]

• This has continued into discussions on what else people are offering in exchange for gold: cities are being sold for gold, under the pretence of gold trading, and some players have gone as far as offering to spam a customer's enemies in exchange for gold. Both of these are actually against the rules of the game, but because the gold has to change hands via resource trades (even if it's minimum resources for maximum gold), there's little way of proving when it actually happens.

Wouldn't making the minimum res offered for gold 1000 instead of the current 100 at least help to limit this? Obviously not a real fix, as 1k res per 200 gold is still very little, but it makes it more difficult for them, at least. Silly to have the minimum so low when the fair market value of gold is never going to be that low.

 

[Rachel.L]

I'm going to apologise for the lack of activity from the EN Council. Both myself and DizzlJoe have been indisposed recently, due to personal reasons.
Thanks for that, Kal. Personal issues always happen. Now my question is where are the other two members? If they are not active, why have they not been replaced by the 12 other ppl who ran for their spots? Why has the fifth slot designated for EN not been filled? @Baudin Toolan @Richard

Points of Discussions

• Events (frequency, and the actual impact of "improvements").

Would it be possible to have someone direct a question to the devs about this thread:
https://en.forum.grepolis.com/index.php?threads/grepolympia-greek-cup-feedback-thread.60553/
There was a question about the mechanics of an event. Mods would not check. Players were left in the dark. An event that used to run smoothly, and about which there was no griping in spending gold, now left players frustrated.

• Other minor issues, such as clarification of the descriptions/mechanics.

Perhaps these minor issues are not minor to players. For those new to the game, clarity is important, maybe more essential than the bells and whistles that seem to have the devs interests such as new graphics that cause abysmal lag.

Summary of the first Player Council term 2 event
Innogames: Thorsten Schankin (Product Manager), Bernard Graham (Game Designer), Anna Sieprawska (Lead Community Manager)
Inner Player Council: AnWePe (GER), Dark-shadow35 (FRA), firebloem (NL), morg (US)
Council Advisory Board: florian799 (FRA)
This is rhetorical but a question more for inno… if space is limited on a call, isn’t it more important to have as many platforms represented as possible rather than have THREE inno ppl? Anna, as LCM, should have enough info to cover all of that info.

After sharing our concerns, we learned that the Events are being constantly adjusted to the new challenges, based on our feedback and analytics of market results, as tests outside of live markets cannot always point out all issues.
Isn’t Beta a live market? Are all events not tested there first anymore?

Since Term 2 start Grepolis Player Councils have collected 80+ suggestions, rated these ideas from 1 to 5. Selected main topics and suggestions:
- app (travel time check, culture overview, show number of incoming attacks, city search option)
There are two main items that are asked for again and again with app users. Be able to hook into the same game clock as computer users, rather than it defaulting to local time. This helps with timing within an alliance. Have a simulator available. All other items are great as well.

- start phase (free world selection for new players, Christopholus as starter hero, Tutorial Overview for beginners, extend trial period of premium functions, new quests that encourage communication and interaction between players)
Perhaps a choice of Andromeda, Chris, or Apheledes as a start hero. They are all blue so it would make it easy to code rewards. But it gives new players a chance to learn how heroes work.

- unit rebalance (reconsider event myths’ cost and power)
This has been discussed ad nauseum even tho they did a rebalance just a few years ago. I think the better solution is a) myth free events, b) flyer free events, c) new heroes that work with defensive myths. jmso

As promised, here is the weekly update.
· The combat-related researches do not work on conquest servers in the way that a lot of the community believed. This change was made back in 2014. It was posted on the DE forum's changelog, however it was missed out in the translation to the EN changelog.
Thank you for this illumination. Since there have been numerous (it appears incorrect) discussions about the mechanics you describe in these forums, would it be possible to get an EN mod or CM to post a clarification in those threads, if not a changelog update?

· Excluding new worlds from events.
Not every world has to have every event. Good idea.

· What else people are offering in exchange for gold: cities, spam enemies…
Until they get caught it will continue. IG mods have to be willing to punish them when evidence is provided.

Thank you for your efforts keeping us up to date, Kal.

 

[DeletedUser31931]

Summary of the first Player Council term 2 event
Innogames: Thorsten Schankin (Product Manager), Bernard Graham (Game Designer), Anna Sieprawska (Lead Community Manager)
Inner Player Council: AnWePe (GER), Dark-shadow35 (FRA), firebloem (NL), morg (US)
Council Advisory Board: florian799 (FRA)
This is rhetorical but a question more for inno… if space is limited on a call, isn’t it more important to have as many platforms represented as possible rather than have THREE inno ppl? Anna, as LCM, should have enough info to cover all of that info.

The more reps inno is willing to send, the better, imo. Anna does not know every little detail about the coding, nor does she have much decision-making power herself as to what the developers dedicate their time to (as I understand it). You could just as easily say that morg "should have enough info to cover all of that info" of the community, but different people bring different opinions and skill sets to the table.

 

[Rachel.L]

The more reps inno is willing to send, the better, imo. Anna does not know every little detail about the coding, nor does she have much decision-making power herself as to what the developers dedicate their time to (as I understand it). You could just as easily say that morg "should have enough info to cover all of that info" of the community, but different people bring different opinions and skill sets to the table.

As LCM, Anna is in charge of ALL the dev, design, etc. If she isn't the right ONE to send, then someone else. The point of the GPC is for the PLAYERS to have input not inno. Therefore the representation is supposed to be heavy on the various platforms. Perhaps a review of the GPC mandate.

 

[Baudin Toolan]

Posted a reply with the answer to the event question, short answer for here is that it's not a new feature and it has always been present in the Grepolympia events. When you participate with your chosen point set up you randomly get a result between x and y. So 2 players with the same point set up could get slightly different results.

When the council was originally set up here on EN I got 4 replies from our 4 listed members and radio silence from the 5th. However I didn't add the substitute immediately as their activity was sporadic on the forum and I figured to wait for the original member for a bit longer. Either way our 4 got themselves set up really quick and without any of the initial fuss from the first term. As I don't really like to step into the running of the GPC much if at all as this is a player initiative I took my eyes of the GPC for a bit as all 4 members were active. I didn't notice the inactivity of the council as nothing was due to start with the council for a while but Kal has come back and has been doing a great job keeping the community up to date and I'll be sorting out the inactivity in our council this week.

Also the LCM isn't exactly in charge of every facet of Grepolis nor do they inherently know everything about it. As such having an extra person or two from Inno on the call with the GPC, be they a dev or someone with another set of knowledge, is very helpful for answering questions or explaining why a certain idea might need tweaking from a technical standpoint.

 

[Rachel.L]

Baudin, as i said in the event thread, it's not about two different players but one player moving backward. I believe everyone moved on from the original post of DOWT to what came later. This is a much different issue that has not been addressed.

Okay, this is a player initiative and you don't like to step in. But I'm not the only one who has asked (multiple times.... players INITIATING movement) to have GPC members be here and active. If it isn't your job to get them here and/ or replace them, then whoever's job it is should step up. Yes, Kal, is here but he is only one of five who are supposed to be taking on this burden of answering all our questions.

I see everyone is getting in on hyperbole. No, the LCM isn't in charge of all grepo or inno or all of gaming. And as I said if Anna isn't THE best person to have, then find one, technical, in charge, whatever. Because, again, as you yourself said, this is about the players. If you are going to limit the number of ppl on a call, then players should take priority. Just as an IC member has to report to the rest of the GPC for a platform, the inno rep can report to all of inno on the call. Is it a player initiative or not?

 

[DeletedUser55069]

I participated in this first call as US rep. As I see these calls are our chance to get real-time and professional feedback to players' suggestions / concerns that can only happen if Innogames is well represented - Lead Community Manager, Game Designer and Product Manager can respond to different type of issues, none of them is dispensable.
Inner Council delegates players who represent all markets - 3 players would be perfectly fine, but if there are more volunteers than spots we vote. Grepolis has 23 markets (if I counted right ), so if all markets could set up their own GPC it was possible that some markets would not participate in a call during a term. (My main market -US- could not participate in Term 1 at all for example, it was a loss, but I don't feel the achievements of GPC Term 1 didn't affect us in a positive way.) The delegated players must be on top of the actual discussions and know the priority suggestions which the whole Inner Council - all active GPC markets rated and approved.

Beta worlds are public but not normal game worlds. Progress on beta worlds can be reset at any time. (There is a warning about this too.)

We discussed and rated many suggestions in Inner Council, not all made it to the priority list. GPC is good to filter ideas that are very important, good for everyone and won't harm anyone... the BIG WINs.

Combat-related researches were discussed here on EN forum and the answers were correct.
Forums > Bugs, Guides and Questions > Gameplay Questions > Answered Questions
Not to defend anyone who may be in fault, but we only found out the reason of the problem as result of digging in old changelogs... if someone was looking for the answer, unlikely they would have done that in changelogs. Lesson learned... don't follow traditions rather ask questions.
EN WIKI should get an update too hopefully soon as promised... some language versions already have it.
https://en.forum.grepolis.com/index...g-ram-and-divine-selection.58239/#post-997657

Gold trade is one of the most recent topics discussed in IC, start phase is planned to be the next...

Kudos for @Kal Gordon, keep up the good job!

 

[Rachel.L]

@Baudin Toolan, thanks for your second post in the other thread
i'm getting a clearer picture and may get it solved after this next question...

whatever was or wasn't done over the last couple months, that's over
for now, i would hope we could move forward in the short time that is left
for the sake of the community (and kal's sanity), can we get other gpc members active? or can we get replacements in?

@molinillo, i agree that all inno personnel and their pov are important to the process
therefore different members of the team could be available during diff calls
however the stated goal of this process was to be player driven, not inno/ dev driven
you have explained some unknown info about how these calls worked during the first term and i (personally) disagree with how it was done
i have no say (and my opinion counts zero) but it seems that during a single term all platforms should be in a call at least once
perhaps to accommodate all markets that mean a term is 7 (or 8) months rather than 6
a market not being in a single call (or all calls for a term), does not mean they are not participating since ideas are generated thru GPC/ IC/ forums

I know beta isn't "normal" but my understanding (perhaps wrong) is that it is live. It used to be a place to test almost everything and there was a lot of comments in the beta forum that devs used to fix what was tested. It's a step that seems to be skipped a lot in order to rush "the product".

I know there were other things listed. For the brevity of the post, I only listed the things on which I wanted to comment. Also, I understand that anything I say/ suggested is added to 1M others and the GPC picks the low hanging fruit with the biggest payout.

I'm not yelling at mods/ CMs about bad info in terms of combat discussions. The best-known info was given at the time. All I'm saying is, whatever 2-line clarification is needed, add it to the threads. No apology needed just "Here is new info on this mechanic:..."

Yes, @Kal Gordon is doing a great job.

 

[Baudin Toolan]

I'll be sorting out the inactives and substitutes for the EN GPC in the coming days.

 

[DeletedUser55069]

[USER=55069]@molinillo, i agree that all inno personnel and their pov are important to the process
therefore different members of the team could be available during diff calls
however the stated goal of this process was to be player driven, not inno/ dev driven
you have explained some unknown info about how these calls worked during the first term and i (personally) disagree with how it was done
i have no say (and my opinion counts zero) but it seems that during a single term all platforms should be in a call at least once[/USER]

The calls are not thematic (we try to get and provide feedback about all actual suggestions asap) and only happen every other month, therefore require an interdisciplinary approach. The whole player driven concept would be wasted time if Innogames didn't show maximal interest in our suggestions - these calls are living proof that they do.

Rotation of markets is an aspect when delegating IC members. In reality we have 3-5 daily active markets in IC and 4 spots for calls (1 spot is CAB). For this first call we were full with the that time most active IC reps (every IC rep who signed up could join), but substitute reps had no chance (Kal is still substitute rep). IC members take only the results to the call, it's not about representing market preferences.

What I think would be positive if CAB (Council Advisory Board) could also report to their market about a call thus open up a spot for another market. We have 3 CABs from different markets and one of them is supposed to participate, but IC from same market can also participate. For me that seems total unnecessary, CAB and IC are all players. The call can really give one big plus and that's motivation to continue with this project.

[QUOTE="Rachel.L, post: 1041331, member: 53422"][USER=3987]
[USER=55069]@molinillo
perhaps to accommodate all markets that mean a term is 7 (or 8) months rather than 6
a market not being in a single call (or all calls for a term), does not mean they are not participating since ideas are generated thru GPC/ IC/ forums
[/USER][/QUOTE]
Council members' time and capacity is limited too. 6 months is very long time as volunteer... Some markets that have GPC don't participate after 1-2 months or could not set up a GPC because a 2nd candidate didn't confirm their participation by the time election ended. These are the real issues that result in lower representation of a market not that who was delegated to the call and who wasn't.[/USER]

 

[Rachel.L]

The calls are not thematic and only happen every other month, therefore require an interdisciplinary approach. ... Would be wasted time if Innogames didn't show maximal interest in our suggestions.

Rotation of markets is an aspect when delegating IC members. In reality we have 3-5 daily active markets in IC and 4 spots for calls (1 spot is CAB). For this first call we were full with the that time most active IC reps (every IC rep who signed up could join). IC members take only the results to the call, it's not about representing market preferences.

What I think would be positive if CAB (Council Advisory Board) could also report to their market about a call thus open up a spot for another market. We have 3 CABs from different markets and one of them is supposed to participate, but IC from same market can also participate. For me that seems total unnecessary, CAB and IC are all players. The call can really give one big plus and that's motivation to continue with this project.

I understand the IC/CAB has developed a way of approaching content. I'm not questioning that.
Why every other month instead of every month since time is so short? No need to answer just something for GPC to consider.

"Rotation of markets...": I think you may have misunderstood my point. As I understand it, prior to a call all GPC members input ideas that the IC then hones and ranks. Those ideas come from all markets so there is no market preference when talking to inno reps, just "player" issues. My point in the rotation is that during these calls, when presenting the united points, all reps from all markets, should be able to make the case. It may be a slightly different wording/ view that may resonate with an inno rep on whatever topic is being discussed on that particular call. Additionally, it allows smaller platforms to feel more involved. There SHOULD always be equal input to inno from a market, whether on a call or not. But some may not feel that way.

If they are only advisors to IC, then they can't speak for the IC. If they are ex officio members of the IC, then they can.
I have no idea where exactly the CABs fit in so I can't comment on what should be done.

Council members' time and capacity is limited too. 6 months is very long time as volunteer.[/USER]

what? all GPC members are not retired, unemployed, or have partners with endless means?
i'm sorry if i implied your time is not valuable
i also understand that some markets don't have representation b/c there are no volunteers or the reps go mia
my thought was just to try to include everyone available, not just the quickest or loudest

 

[DeletedUser55069]

Additionally, it allows smaller platforms to feel more involved.

That's something to work on - most don't have GPC, so there is no big competition for the spots nor threat that an active market would miss all the calls. It is a great question and hopefully future problem how the whole GPC could work by a lot higher participation. In few months we will be smarter to respond to this...

I understand the IC/CAB has developed a way of approaching content. I'm not questioning that.
Why every other month instead of every month since time is so short?

I guess we could ask for more, but 2 months was about right time for discussions on markets, sharing feedback, discuss it again with GPC, IC, rate... that's all time and work. We get daily feedback on forum too from Innogames, calls are just special events.

If they are only advisors to IC, then they can't speak for the IC. If they are ex officio members of the IC, then they can.
I have no idea where exactly the CABs fit in so I can't comment on what should be done.

CABs are former IC representatives.

i also understand that some markets don't have representation b/c there are no volunteers or the reps go mia
my thought was just to try to include everyone available, not just the quickest or loudest

It all depends on the GPC members how much they participate, the chance is given, most discussions are on forum / chat... being available is not exactly representation. Sometimes debates become intense... but isn't this a war game? Aren't we all fighters?

 

[Rachel.L]

@molinillo, thank you for the great discussion
i'm sure there is a lot happening behind the scenes that members don't see
i appreciate the time you, kal, and others have taken to interact with all of us
cheers

 

[DeletedUser44867]

About CAB, and the role of it:

What I was told when offered the position:
- I didn't have to commit for the full term
- I can leave the project at any time if I wanted
- I was expected to guide new inner council members and assist them in their duties
- I could continue to participate in calls and give opinions on inner council forum.

SO..... That is still a bit..... up in the air.
Smaller details: I don't have access to EN council forums, and I'm not really related to EN in any way outside of playing on their servers. However, the FR representative of CAB does have access to FR council forums, so the role of CAB is still a bit odd and up in the air about whether or not we should be involved with our servers' individual council. (I don't know about the NL CAB's status, as far as forum sharing goes...) Personally, I went with the no-involvement route, because I didn't particularly want to..... affect or influence the opinions of any of the current members in EN. Ultimately, they are the 5 who were ELECTED by the players this term, so their opinions are the most important and probably shouldn't be influenced by some floater.

As you can see - I have no role on these forums with any relation to council at all.

I think, from where I stand as to 'what' council advisory board is: it is just that: advisory.
It is a small group of prior council members who advise the current council, yet still gives input to matters pertaining to inner council.
I'd say a majority of what we have done is mostly "okay, this happened last term, don't do that." or "we had that discussion last term, here was the main opinion" or "this is why we decided we liked this change" etc.

I think, in general, this position becomes however involved as the individual advisory member wants it to be involved.

 

[Rachel.L]

I'll be sorting out the inactives and substitutes for the EN GPC in the coming days.

@Baudin Toolan, any updates with this since last month?
i see @ErikWijmeersch is active in the forum, talking trash in the world forum for which he is playing, but hasn't posted a single thought on gpc
@DizzlJoe hasn't made a post since june and @Hyper no post since april
we already know lyndya is out

perhaps a sub would like to help @Kal Gordon and contribute to this effort

The following candidates have been elected/confirmed and can therefore proceed to join the local council for the EN language version:

1. ErikWijmeersch - 925 votes (20.04%)
2. DizzlJoe - 799 votes (17.31%)
3. lyndya1 - 772 votes (16.72%)
4. Kal Gordon- 694 votes (15.03%)
5. Hyper - 692 votes (14.99%)

With the runner-up candidates being as follows:

6. TaskCo1 - 654 votes (14.17%)
7. Fluvisol - 649 votes (14.06%)
8. Dementivs - 643 votes (13.93%)

 

[Baudin Toolan]

Already have messages out to subs and I have the ranking of the other people who applied for the council if it comes to that.

 

[Rachel.L]

Already have messages out to subs and I have the ranking of the other people who applied for the council if it comes to that.

Great then we should have some new blood very soon. Thanks for the update.

 

[Rachel.L]

Nice to see that @Fluvisol and @TaskCo1 have been added to our local council. Hope to see some input from the two of you regularly.

As for the two remaining squatters, get you butts moving or make way for those who wanna be helpful.

Thanks for the follow through, @Baudin Toolan.

 

[DeletedUser]

@Rachel.L looking forward to it

 

[Fluvisol]

Nice to see that @Fluvisol and @TaskCo1 have been added to our local council. Hope to see some input from the two of you regularly.

As for the two remaining squatters, get you butts moving or make way for those who wanna be helpful.

Thanks for the follow through, @Baudin Toolan.

I'll try my best, a little more busy irl than when I applied but should still be able to pop up regularly