Player Council 2nd Term: Weekly Updates

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DeletedUser54339

Guest
I do not need to apologize for having a different opinion based on the evidence. You can not blame the staff and the company on this one. If you think it carefully, then you will be able to explain the situation.
What is the theory that him and other are putting forward? complete blame on the company and the staff. I do not see it that way. The council and him need to reflect what was their part in the break down in communications.

Unless you work for Inno, which you don't, you're engaging in baseless speculation.

What WAS their part in the breakdown of communications then? Since you're pretending to know something nobody else was privy to...
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
Futbol, there are dozens of threads on every platform, not just EN, where GPC/ IC explain every step of interaction with Inno. They are also on skype and discord interacting with them. As Alex said, you make baseless accusations to try to back your personal vendetta.

Want more evidence that this is on Inno not GPC: markets where devs used to be on the forum on a regular basis (not EN, ofc) are no longer there. This stopped before this term of the GPC. If you did more try to sabotage individual players and kiss butt, you would know this. Talk to players from other markets. Oh, wait, that would involve actual work. What was I thinking.

Per usual, you are nothing but an attention-seeker. The posts are all against you so I'm not engaging in more of your petty time sink.
 

DeletedUser54775

Guest
Why you get so angry? You will have to reflect on that issue. As I said, for me the response of InnoGame staff is the logical and natural conclusion of the approach taken by some of the members. You might disagree and are entitled to your opinion. For me, the company and staff have greatly improved and this opportunity was wasted with trifling issues, to which Kal Gordon is an expert in point out and dragging discussions.
 

DeletedUser54775

Guest
I think that biggest problem with the council is the limited representation and disconnection from the customer base. Please allow me to elaborate. This is not the fault of the current members. It is just the way it is.

1) Either through apathy, lack of awareness, in game feuds and other variety of situations, the current active members CAN not feasible represent the views of all active customers. There are many ways to play the game. There are many ways to perceive the features of the game. For some, a particular feature is a problem. For others it is an advantage. The participants in the council or here in the forum are really small subsection of the grepolis base. They are a very biased sample.

2) The dynamics of the game has created this strange "plutocracy" or "oligarchy". For example, in one of the worlds where I am playing, the future of the server is almost decided by very few people. The staff should try to move the game to a more competitive situation instead of having this Cartels and Olygopolies within the worlds. It is almost like anti-trust policy. Grepolis is like many real economic markets. There is a tendency for Monopolies and Corporations to become big and stall the market. We observe this scenario in almost every world.

Putting limited number of members on alliances and making it very hard to switch, transfer resources, and providing rewards for attacking will make a big difference in the world. If my first attack in a day has double the amount of points or any sort of incentive, then this will give people incentives to attack, do not form NAP, and the like. A person should not have an influence In no more than 30 players. Right now if people decide a NAP, they can influence hundreds of players and bring a server to halt. Essentially, make sure that you limit the power of people.
 

DeletedUser54339

Guest
I think that biggest problem with the council is the limited representation and disconnection from the customer base. Please allow me to elaborate. This is not the fault of the current members. It is just the way it is.

1) Either through apathy, lack of awareness, in game feuds and other variety of situations, the current active members CAN not feasible represent the views of all active customers. There are many ways to play the game. There are many ways to perceive the features of the game. For some, a particular feature is a problem. For others it is an advantage. The participants in the council or here in the forum are really small subsection of the grepolis base. They are a very biased sample.

2) The dynamics of the game has created this strange "plutocracy" or "oligarchy". For example, in one of the worlds where I am playing, the future of the server is almost decided by very few people. The staff should try to move the game to a more competitive situation instead of having this Cartels and Olygopolies within the worlds. It is almost like anti-trust policy. Grepolis is like many real economic markets. There is a tendency for Monopolies and Corporations to become big and stall the market. We observe this scenario in almost every world.

Putting limited number of members on alliances and making it very hard to switch, transfer resources, and providing rewards for attacking will make a big difference in the world. If my first attack in a day has double the amount of points or any sort of incentive, then this will give people incentives to attack, do not form NAP, and the like. A person should not have an influence In no more than 30 players. Right now if people decide a NAP, they can influence hundreds of players and bring a server to halt. Essentially, make sure that you limit the power of people.

You know what? You're probably right about a lot of this in my opinion. Playing the game in the wrong way is one of the many things ruining Grepolis. And it's probably the one the GPC can do least about.

The three things ruining the game at the moment are:

Cuddling
Consistent gold abuse
Cheating/botting (AKA ignoring elephants in the room)

And some of those issues fall more within the remit of the GPC than others.

I still don't understand why you would throw Kal under the bus so hard with all this in mind.
 

DeletedUser54775

Guest
This is the paradoxical issue. Many alliances, in fact the last one where we got the crown, prided itself in been the little guy against the mega alliances. As this rebel alliance got bigger, it started to do the exact same practices. I have been in enough alliances to realize that we do not have true competition in Grepolis. We have this "cartels" and oligarchs deciding the direction of the game in very shameful ways.
Trust me. I am completely disgusted. It did not take even 24 hours for the Toons to self destroy the world wonder and started to hand it the crowns to everyone like candy. I do feel completely disgusted by this shameless practice.
 

VIRTUALSELF

Phrourach
That would not fix the problem.
You are absolutely right. Why? Because every single person in those 'cartels' are scared of fighting, scared of losing their cities and most of all scared of attacking their so called friends. That's why you end up with the kronoss, Erik and poop swinger club in every single server

You see, the developers arent to blame for this problem, it is solely the playerbase's fault. Grepolis has turned into who has the diggest bick
 

DeletedUser54775

Guest
Yes....perhaps...this is the human condition ....play it safe....it kills me the cynicism ....they are lining up the players....to give multiple rounds of crowns and have plans to avoid the 3 day ban on resource transfer.....complete disregard for the spirit of the game...no shame or guilt....we won by bunching multiple alliances...and trading wonders...and it is all fine and dandy....
 

DeletedUser54775

Guest
Yes....perhaps...this is the human condition ....play it safe....it kills me the cynicism ....they are lining up the players....to give multiple rounds of crowns and have plans to avoid the 3 day ban on resource transfer.....complete disregard for the spirit of the game...no shame or guilt....we won by bunching multiple alliances...and trading wonders...and it is all fine and dandy....
...of house now I have been silenced...and pretty much have threats of execution and annihilation for calling them out....
 

OutOfCharacters

Phrourach
You are absolutely right. Why? Because every single person in those 'cartels' are scared of fighting, scared of losing their cities and most of all scared of attacking their so called friends. That's why you end up with the kronoss, Erik and poop swinger club in every single server

You see, the developers arent to blame for this problem, it is solely the playerbase's fault. Grepolis has turned into who has the diggest bick

I actually think it’s the SMALLEST...:p

The big ones are standing alone with pride because they don’t need false accolades to feel like a big boy.
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
Well, this got a little busy in my absence! I'd like to say a big thank you to @dadofwildthang, @ana perssons, @Raydium88, @Rachel.L, @Alexander the Okay for all the kind words.

As a quick update: Bernard (Lead Designer) hasn't logged into the Beta forum since 05.11.2018 and Sieperka (Lead Community Manager) hasn't logged into the Beta forum since 22.11.2018, so Inno senior staff are obviously extremely interested in the community's opinions.

When I have had a chance to catch up with everything, I will see if there is anything else I can update on. I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and are enjoying the New Year!
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
Hello everyone.

I know it's been a while. I know you're thinking "here comes yet another essay". And yes, this post may be a bit long. As some of you have already heard, the Grepolis Player Council is being shut down, effective next Monday (18/02/2019). Therefore I'd like to take this opportunity to summarise what I believe to be some of the key points of Term 2 of the Grepolis Player Council, for the EN Community.

Achievements:
We may not have achieved as much as we hoped we could, or as much as the community deserved, but we haven't come home entirely empty-handed.
  • The prohibition of posting Skype/Discord joining links on the external forums was removed from the rules for EN and US markets.
    • This also allowed for the creation of a joint EN+US GPC-Community Discord server to allow for easier communication.
  • The restrictions on idea submissions (i.e. the Do Not Suggest List) were removed for EN, bringing us in-line with the freedom allowed in other markets.
  • The Domination Victor's reward (+10% warehouse capacity in all worlds) was suggested and subsequently implemented.
  • Event rebalancing. This is a controversial one, due to the seemingly hit-and-miss rebalancing attempts, but we do appear to have got the message across that events are too powerful and need to be toned down (given that the idea of reducing the number of events was rejected).

Issues:

As those of you who have read some of my previous updates may know, we've certainly had some issues.
  • Lack of communication:
    • Long silences from the InnoGames staff involved (Lead Community Manager Sieperka, Lead Designer Bernard), reaching up to 3 months in duration.
      • Some issues were never handled or properly discussed as a result of this, and therefore may well be abandoned, or developed in an unintended way.
    • Certain questions/points being intentionally ignored when staff were around.
    • Only 1 of the 3 supposed Skype calls was ever held.
    • Lack of information with respect to the end of the term, whether there would be a Term 3.
    • Being kept out of the loop. This is primarily with regards to Casual Worlds: we were given no warning on this major new release, which resulted in obvious flaws making it into gameplay and barely fixed in time before live market release.
  • Commitment issues:
    • Reluctance to deal with certain issues (DNS List, Skype Discord links) that had obvious easy solutions.
    • Not following through on statements. (DE Hero Design Competition - Sieperka agreed that these competitions could be run on other markets in future, but a few months later another hero was introduced to the game from the same DE competition, with no option for other markets to get involved. Also with War Packages, where an issue was raised over the prevalence of BP tokens, acknowledged, and then repeated with Land Expansion tokens.)

Thanks to:
  • My fellow council members, especially Morg (US), AnWePe (DE) and Bullspirit Dancer (NL) for their constant devotion to trying to achieve as much as possible from this opportunity, Fluvisol (EN) for stepping up when so many others disappeared, and Phi (EN) from the Council Advisory Board for helping the EN Council find their feet when first elected.
  • Baudin Toolan, for his work in helping solve the DNS List and Skype/Discord link issues.
  • This community. Everyone who gave feedback, suggestions, or got involved in the discussions, be they here on the external forums, on the GPC-Community discord server, or in various different Skype and Discord chats. Your support has been fantastic, and I hope I haven't let you down too badly with the relative lack of achievements this term.

I'll be following this up shortly with the Lead Community Manager's statement about the Future of the GPC and any comments that I have on it. It's been a long and interesting time these last few months. We've had highs and lows. Issues aplenty, but we've made some (small) improvements, and there's hope for more achievements to be made in the future as a result of remaining suggestions.

I'd like to say thank you again to everyone, for choosing me to be one of your representatives on the Player Council, and for your support through thick and thin while I was in there. I hope I've not been too much of a disappointment, and I'll continue to do whatever I can to help this community. If you ever want to chat, you know by now where to find me.

smiley_emoticons_grepolove.gif
 

DeletedUser54192

Guest
As promised, here is the "Future of the GPC" Statement from the Lead Community Manager, Sieperka.
Dear Grepolis Player Council Members,

From the bottom of my heart – thank you for all your messages and suggestions posted in this section of beta forum. I am aware, that our cooperation did not always work how you would wish for it and I would like to apologize for that. We did, however, benefit greatly from your help and based some important decisions on your feedback, so we are very grateful for all your work and passion.

It is unfortunately clear to us now, that Grepolis Player Council, even though a great project, requires way too much time and effort on our side. Currently we do not have time and will not be able to continue the project in the way it existed so far. It also seems that we did not manage to explain the role of the GPC well enough, as there have been many misunderstandings on this topic. Grepolis Player Council was intended to be a channel for feedback and gathering new ideas from all the communities, which was not always the main discussion focus. But we did get some great input from your side for which we are grateful.

What will happen next?

We would like to ensure you that after very busy 2018 (new edition of Grepolympia, new endgame, Casual Worlds) we are working hard on bringing even more cool new features to the game but we also plan to continue realizing community wishes. So please, do not worry - we will continue asking our players for feedback and implementing changes that will improve Grepolis. So with this last message I would like to mention list of ideas you created at the beginning of 2nd term. We looked through it and would like to comment on a few top ideas (hidden in a spoiler). We will keep the whole list for the future as it includes some nice suggestions - thank you for them!
  • ‘A search function in the PM's with which you can search for conversations per player’ – we will look into it and implement the feature if technically possible.
  • ‘Exclude new worlds from events’ – we will not exclude new worlds from events. We understand that this comes from players believing that events influence the worlds and we would rather work on making sure the events are well-balanced then disable them on the new worlds.
  • ‘Search option for reports.’ – unfortunately impossible due to technical limitations. It would require re-doing the whole report system from a scratch, which would be a massive undertaking.
  • ‘Disable morale once the world becomes eligible for world wonders’ – we consider it as something mostly top alliances and experienced players would benefit from and morale are there to protect weaker players. This would be too big of a change to the current system and strategies our players know and use for years.
  • ‘Making sieges visible on the commands overview’ – Good idea. We hope we can make some improvements there.
  • ‘Runtime (travel time) check on App / Mobile.’ – We would like to make a change that would allow players to choose the number of units they want to send even if they don't own the units (currently not possible on mobile, but possible on browser).
  • 'Integrate administrator overview for starting city festivals on App / Mobile.’ – We will look into it and would like to bring a simplified version of the browser feature to mobile.
  • ‘Show the number of incoming attacks on App / Mobile.’ – we will into it and would like to implement something similar.
  • ‘Search a city by typing its name on App / Mobile. (Some players find it difficult to find a city if they got a lot, for example 150)’ – we would like to bring it to the app.
  • ‘Tutorial Overview: The current Turtorial does not achieve the desired goal. It should serve to show beginners the functions and the meaning of the game.’ – we will be working to make small changes to tutorial. We do not plan currently reworking the whole system.
  • ‘Make it possible that a player can change the title of own topic on forum ingame.’ – good idea, we would like to add it to the game,

Grepolis community is great, we very much enjoy working with our players and are happy to see their passion. That's why we are grateful for every suggestion and every opinion we read on the forums. Unfortunately, there is one last thing we always need to keep in mind – there are hundreds of ideas and small things we would like to change in Grepolis. But we simply do not have time to do all of them. However, that will not stop us from trying to improve Grepolis with every new game version, so please keep posting your ideas on our forums!

Feel free to share translated version of this announcement with your communities. This forum section will stay opened until next week.

Once again – thank you very much for your help and you will most certainly hear from us again!

Best,

Anna
I do have some opinions of my own on parts of this statement, but I'll let you lot have the first crack at it. Enjoy!
 
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DeletedUser41523

Guest
Having been in that council before I can say that you guys did well with the hand that was dealt. Its a tough job and was designed poorly from the get go with basically having 3 dead seats and the 2 inner having no clue how to proceed with relaying information to the local council. I remember Phi and I asked a few times about what we could share due to the NDA. Needless to say, this was all very frustrating.

Adding to those frustrations is that the management on EN pretty much treated the council like their personal country club in the first term. I could fill up a page on this alone. The management on US was so atrocious that the winners of their term 1 elections didn't even get promoted...I could also fill up another page on that manager. But I'll only say that this definitely destabilized the whole thing and hindered progress in term 1.

Getting world chats back was a huge improvement in itself and I'd like to think that having an alternative to world wonders will provide some fun. I was wondering what was up with that casual world. Thanks for clarifying on it. I'm sorry that you guys won't be able to continue your work and I know that its a rough job, especially when you appear to have been doing the job yourself for most the term. But you did well. There was a lot of potential in this project. But unfortunately it takes good local management and a willingness by Inno to listen to proposals. The first just wasn't there in either the US or EN in my experience and anyone outside of Bernard seemed unwilling to listen to proposals.
 
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