Player Council 2nd Term: Discussion

Rachel.L

Phrourach
@molinillo, sorry but I think your response is a load.
1. Domination was started by the last GPC group and in the works before Anna took over.
2. There is not a new world type. We already had causal worlds in the hero and elysian fields worlds. As far as the new iteration, no one asked for it and the beta forum is full of players saying it is a terrible idea. Why does inno continue to break what is fixed? Why not fix the broken stuff we already have?
3. App development HAS NOT continued. On this forum, the players have made a list of things that are needed and have worked with staff on what is/ not reasonable in terms of coding and third party limitations. (You may not be aware of the history as this is not your home base.) However, as the game is updated, we have continued to ask about parallel updates to the app and have gotten no response. Not, "no that isn't possible", but NO RESPONSE. Players are ignored by the LCM, devs, and mods alike. You want the new endgame to be the focus, fine. Then don't lie to the huge portion of app-only players who can't use 50% of the game's features, rewards, or events. The percentage of players using the app as their only means of playing grepo is growing, not decreasing and inno continues to ignore this population.
4. Steff is one person. Anna is one person. If Anna is not up to the job, why is she there? If Steff did the job of more than one person, why weren't more people hired to do her job? I never said Anna was the only one responsible for the lack of communication but as the boss, she sets the tone. If she wants better communication between inno and players, she needs to step up.
5. You made my point for me. Inno doesn't have enough staff devoted to grepo nor staff that care about players. You may have gotten answers but players have none.
 

DeletedUser55069

Guest
The Domination idea was brought to GPC by Devs, it was altered based on Term 1 feedback, by the time Term 2 started the base concept was final but the realization took months after we joined.

The new Casual world concept is a response to many current issues that players found important and GPC also suggested to deal with (start phase is one of our main topics, see GPC discord chat), but none of us thought such an all-in-one solution would happen and so soon - we knew a big surprise was coming but nothing more specific. A rather raw version was introduced on public Beta market and the feedback pointed out the flaws. Probably if GPC was involved some of these mistakes could have been prevented, but Devs can collect more feedback this way (just have to deal with more critics too).
Hyperborea worlds are found / conquer ghosts only, players can be farmed until it makes no sense to play and aren't able to learn how to handle a CS attack... Casual worlds deal with all that, the attack prevention element aimed to limit farming and battles between small and big players. Newly registered players are now thrown to the latest world and have low chance for survival - if they get rimmed they will be offered to transfer their last built-up city to a Casual world and won't have to rebuild from scraps. Players can choose a protected city on Casual world that is attackable but can't be conquered. It opens new interesting strategies for experienced players too who can not dedicate the time and activity anymore that regular worlds require or are just interested to try a new challenge. Hopefully it will become a melting pot of vets and beginners who finally get a chance to learn the full game without the frustration of restarts and later adapt this knowledge on regular worlds. So far these game features are in contradiction with conquest system and that's a problem, but Casual world concept has so much potential, probably won't take long to figure out how to fix it.

Grepolis is a browser game, mobile app is a companion not intended to be a full game. You must have got the wrong impression if you think it was promised to be a full game... Browser updates happen weekly, app updates are less frequent, but app development is still ongoing. Player suggestions are part of a backlog, none of them is lost nor ignored only there is a priority order. For example you would be righteously more upset if browser version had a new endgame but app players could not play it because Devs worked on event integration instead.

We don't have real insight on the LCM situation and it's not in GPC scope to deal with such questions...

I understand but don't share your point that fixing existing problems are the most important, certainly that was not Innogames focus during Term 2, but it was GPC's focus to make sure these issues are collected for them when the time comes.
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
Thanks for explaining to all of us things we already know. Your slight tweeking of what I said doesn't make me wrong.

Glad you are taking credit for team 1 work. We all get that the new casual worlds and the old are different. Point is no one asked for the new ones and the features you think are great have flaws. Inno doesn't listen to players so why you believe the beta foum comments will make a difference is beyond me. Grepo STARTED as a browser game. The app was a companion but many players use it as a stand alone. If YOU do not understand this, you have the wrong impression. No one asked you to have perspective on the LCM sit and you jumping to their defense has made this a bigger problem. Don't want you to share my POV. Just want you to do your job.
 

DeletedUser22115

Guest
Last time i checked, the 2 biggest games in the world is completely play for free.
This statement made me laugh alot, im not sure whether your a troll or being serious. Grepolis can be played for free, can be won for free. Is it easier with gold? can you pay to win? To a certain degree yes. Fortnite and League of Legends make their money off skin purchases and character customization instead of the gold purchases which grepolis has. In terms of skin or character customization, grepolis is limited as to what customization it could have for each player. Not to mind the fact that Fortnite is estimated to have around 8 million concurrent players currently and i believe in 2014 Riot Games stated that they had approximately 67 million active monthly players, 27 million daily players with around 7.5 million concurrent players during peak hours. Grepolis in it hayday i doubt was even within 10% of the player base that LoL or Fortnite has. I don't believe InnoGames has released any statements about their player counts or amount of concurrent players that grepolis has had, but i highly doubt it was near 10% of what LoL and Fortnite had during their peak. Honestly i would say that grepolis concurrent player count at the games peak would probably be closed to 20% of the 8 million that Fortnite is estimated to have, which would be roughly 400,000 players, that number to me even seems to large, but i could be wrong.
Saying that the games are free to play is cool and all, but i am assuming that you think that grepolis should be similar? free to play and have skins for you senate? I think there are bigger issues with the game than worrying about changing the gold system to fornite skins, its just not feasible.
Grepolis is a browser game, mobile app is a companion not intended to be a full game. You must have got the wrong impression if you think it was promised to be a full game... Browser updates happen weekly, app updates are less frequent, but app development is still ongoing. Player suggestions are part of a backlog, none of them is lost nor ignored only there is a priority order. For example you would be righteously more upset if browser version had a new endgame but app players could not play it because Devs worked on event integration instead.
I never knew the mobile app was supposed to be a companion of the main game, is there a document i could read about that? As the grepolis wiki states that the purpose of the app is supposed to grant the user access to the necessary game features to manage their account, it also states the wiki should the little differences in display between the app and desktop version. I understand that everything on the desktop cannot be on the phone app due to screen limitation and phone processing power etc being less powerful in comparison to a pc, but to me it isn't a companion, mobile apps are supposed to be designed to be quick and easy, many mobile apps are actually quicker than their desktop counterparts, many companies value their mobile apps more than websites especially considering that mobile traffic is generally larger than that of desktop traffic, in some cases desktop traffic is more valued but mobile traffic count is increasing per year. I don't know what the ratio of mobile:desktop users is on grepolis but surely mobile app is up their on the priority list. if they put less time into aesthetics and more time into developing the functionality of the app itself, it might serve them better but who knows.
This is just me rambling, not really been paying too much attention to the forums in a while.
 

DeletedUser55701

Guest
Nobody complained when gold was just used for admins and reducing the time on Buildings and troops. The instant completion thing however changed the game entirely. Also the countless events that gives tons of advantages for gold users and nothing for the casual players.

Take away/change those features and we might go back to fair play.
 

DeletedUser55069

Guest
I never knew the mobile app was supposed to be a companion of the main game, is there a document i could read about that? As the grepolis wiki states that the purpose of the app is supposed to grant the user access to the necessary game features to manage their account, it also states the wiki should the little differences in display between the app and desktop version. I understand that everything on the desktop cannot be on the phone app due to screen limitation and phone processing power etc being less powerful in comparison to a pc, but to me it isn't a companion, mobile apps are supposed to be designed to be quick and easy, many mobile apps are actually quicker than their desktop counterparts, many companies value their mobile apps more than websites especially considering that mobile traffic is generally larger than that of desktop traffic, in some cases desktop traffic is more valued but mobile traffic count is increasing per year. I don't know what the ratio of mobile:desktop users is on grepolis but surely mobile app is up their on the priority list...

You are right, it is not advertised as companion on WIKI, but also not advertised as a full game with all features - only enough features to maintain an account - open for interpretation.
Since the events became so important and frequent part of the game the wording changed from app to companion app - the explanation is that some event types would be too difficult to integrate and won't have app version anytime soon.

"...as the companion app does not offer full event support." (DevBlog 2017)
https://devblog.grepolis.com/?p=1761

When IC asked questions about event integration the answer was "...app will never have all the features of the browser version of the game. But we still are thinking how we can improve it for all the Players and will continue to do so." (LCM)

Player feedback, suggestions are not rated by players or communities. Innogames rates them, they ask the questions. No one can know with high certainty whether actual players prefer new features / event integration for app / usability improvements / strategical changes (spam, allybash, LMD...) on the price of delaying the others. Recent surveys targeted quitters and premium users...

First time when we rated ideas in IC spam suggestions got low rating and some new features got high rating, just because it was easy to like them, not because those are the most pressuring problems. We are also very critical when it comes to changing existing game features and dynamics. New features are often prioritized over improvements for same reasons, but of course there are other factors too.

Suggestions tagged as community request are missing changes or features that would potentially make our lives easier according to Innogames (!) but aren't part of other big projects - for example battle camp animation ("aesthetics") was one of these recent so-called community requests, then the real community request raised to create a turn off animation button. There is a GPC that could potentially help in filtering which ideas would be supported by community if anyone cared, but GPC was not involved in Casual worlds project or anything serious the past few months. Wonder why? Most if not all our topics are the issues of the active player base (like app usability, functionality, strategy exploits) and not the current target group ("the quitters").
Meanwhile what are/were Devs working on behind closed doors?
- how to keep old players: new endgame which we got ~3 years later than first promised /ofc they didn't work on it that long/
- how to keep new players: casual worlds.
Both required parallel desktop version and app development = full attention of all the different dev teams.
My conclusion is the force (players dropping rate) must be huge if they managed to deliver both relatively quick and ignored us ("the loyal players"). Functionality, usability issues mean you are still playing the game...

As much as I agree with you @kuriants that app should be a priority, it's time for a reality check that players quit right after beginner protection ended and they got rimmed before experiencing most of the usability problems or will choose other games because Grepolis didn't renew much in strategy over the years rather became total P2W due to all the events.
I only feel sorry at this point for all the players and GPC members whose time was potentially wasted right here, because the way GPC is handled makes me think this project was dropped months ago, but we didn't get the memo...
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
@Baudin Toolan have you got a reply as to why InnoGames went ahead and released Casual Worlds onto live markets without fixing the known bias towards larger players? You said on 16th November that you would ask them. (If they aren't replying, or refuse to comment, that's still something I'd like to know, because it would still tell us something.)
 

Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
Sorry I was away on vacation all of last week, first non illness related one in like 5 years. I've been catching up on what I missed all of last week as well as looking into previously posed questions.
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
Sorry I was away on vacation all of last week, first non illness related one in like 5 years. I've been catching up on what I missed all of last week as well as looking into previously posed questions.

@Baudin Toolan glad you had a vaca and hope you've been able to catch up. Any word on a "fix" to the casual worlds? There have been a number of threads started with questions, problems, and suggestions.
TY
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
@Baudin Toolan glad you had a vaca and hope you've been able to catch up. Any word on a "fix" to the casual worlds? There have been a number of threads started with questions, problems, and suggestions.
TY
They have apparently fixed the imbalance (by only allowing attacks if both players are within the ±20% range of each other, rather than the previous system of only checking the attacker's ±20% range). I'm not sure if they have yet rolled this fix out to the live worlds, as the announcement was made on the public Beta forum.

I would still be very interested to know why they released Casual Worlds on live servers before fixing this problem though.
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
They have apparently fixed the imbalance (by only allowing attacks if both players are within the ±20% range of each other, rather than the previous system of only checking the attacker's ±20% range). I'm not sure if they have yet rolled this fix out to the live worlds, as the announcement was made on the public Beta forum.

I would still be very interested to know why they released Casual Worlds on live servers before fixing this problem though.
Not sure this is a fix but okay. And, yes, still waiting on answers hence my poke at BT. TY, for the info, Kal.
 

DeletedUser56412

Guest
Here are my suggest to make Grepolis to be great again.


Build a server to for the mode: Players can earn real money from playing game.
Nowaday, more people earn money from forex. Why players can not earn money from this game?

Some rules:

1. One account join game must pay a mount of money to join the game, example 2 dolars($) to join this server at world 2, speed 2.

Payment method: Visa card, paypal, bitcoin, ...

+ 1 dolar is for the game developer.

+ Remain 1 dolar to get about 10 diamonds in game.


- Tell a time that a player can get back real money from diamond in game.

Example: A time that a player is can get back real money from diamond in game is after there's at least one alliance finish world wonder and after that finishing time 2 months at world 2, speed 2.

If the time from start to world wonder is about 6 months, so a time that a player is can get back real money from diamond in game is after 8 months (6 + 2).

If he had 1001 diamonds at that time, that means after 8 months, he can get back about 100 dolars in his account.

(1001/10 ~= 100)

So after playing a long time, he can earn a profit about 98 dolars (100$ final minus 2$ at starting)


2. Players get 10 diamonds at start. He will start with the first city and all that diamond in his first city.

If he loses this city for a enemy, he will lose all the diamonds for that enemy.


3. If he have 2 or more cities, he can choose a city to hide all the diamonds in that city, or he can distribute all his diamonds for every city


Example:

A a player have 10 diamonds store at his first city.

After a player had second city. He can store 9 diamonds at his first city and 1 diamond at his second city.

Or he can store 10 diamonds at his first city and 0 diamond at his second city.

If he lose the city with 1 diamond, so he has 9 diamonds remain in his last city.


4. Players can exchange diamonds to gold in game.

But players can not exchange gold to diamond.


5. A player can not give his diamond to other players.

He can move diamonds to any his city like moving resource.


That means a city from this player can not move/give his diamonds to a city of other players.

But he can distribulte his diamonds from this city to other city.

While he can move/give his resource(wood, stone, silver) to any city.

And while he can give his gold to other players.


6. You can not farm the diamond, but you can farm resource.


7. If you spy a city successful, you can see the resource, infomation and the diamond in that city.


8. Once a player buy gold, he also get diamonds in his city. He must choose a city to get the diamonds.

Example:

+ If a player pay 15 dolars to buy gold, that mean he also get half of that money in diamond, in this example he also get 70 diamonds in his cites.

+ So he has more diamonds than other players at starting game at 10 diamonds.

In this example he had 80 diamonds in total.


9. When a player lose a city, if that city has diamonds, he will lose all diamonds in that city.

When a player conquer a city successful, if that city has diamonds, he will get all diamonds in that city


10. All players must protect theirs cities and most of all protect the cities have the diamonds in there.


11. Make the game more security, more contact with game developers
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
@Glucimi, the Grepolis Player Council was shut down earlier this year by InnoGames staff, on account of them not having enough time to put into it alongside their other tasks. If you'd like to make ideas for the games, I'd suggest the Ideas section of this forum, as that's more likely to be looked at nowadays.
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
@Kal Gordon Thanks for the info! I posted in Ideas section. It's hard to find a place to post in there
The idea is to create a thread for your idea, using the format outlined in the Ideas Section Rework thread that is pinned at the top of the thread list in that section. (To create a thread, click on the + symbol in a circle on the bottom right of the screen.)
 

Seriko Lee

Lochagos
I just wish we can just see options to colonize more rather than invite people who may just quit.
I can't even get the option to colonize the Island like Achilles.
 
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