Player's Council Discussion Thread

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Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
Feel free to use this thread to discuss ideas/game concepts/issues/etc that you feel the Player's Council should bring up with Inno. Additionally use it as a general thread for the discussion of the council. This thread will remain open till the end of the first term whereby it will be closed and a post term discussion thread created. Please try to keep the spam out of the thread and have all posts be related to the Council.
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
I got a few ideas.

1) Votes: Turn over major updates (anything outside of quality, pricing,or bug fixes) to the community for a vote. For an update to be implemented, it must be supported by 70% of the voters. The voting would be done on the forums and announced on the forums, in a game message containing a link, and the red update bar would appear on the game screen announcing the update. Just so nobody misses it and nobody can complain later on.

2) Noob Protection: The easiest way to protect newer players is to give them a chance to not be conquered by a premade. It doesn't matter which world, there's always a premade or two on it.That's not to knock premades, but it is a fact that they will rip up new players and newer alliances with no effort. To counter this, I propose releasing a series of worlds that disables the invite link and only allows players to join in random directions. This ends any attempt of a coordinated start. This forces leaders joining to actively recruit in their area and teach newer players to play. It also gives newer players a chance to play with good teams.

Note: This is NOT a proposal for all worlds going forward. Just some worlds.

3) Cheating: While I don't have a way to catch cheaters, I do have a proposal for their punishment. Stop slapping on the wrist and hoping the good of humanity prevails and global ban their accounts on the first offense. The rules are listed, they're made clear, usually alliances announces their expectations about cheating at the start. The player will get a chance to have their case appealed, if they use it, this will drop the account into a non-attackable ban, if its not overturned then the account goes back into an attackable ban and can't be accessed again.

Just so there's absolutely 100% hands down no ability to complain about the results or hide a modding error. All players who ask for a review are also forfeiting their privacy on the issue and the mods can and will post their evidence. This eliminates two problems.

A) The "I didn't do it this is BS" crowd that posts on every major ban.
B) A lack of transparency between the mods and players regarding bans.

That's all I got for now.
 

Silver Witch

Strategos
I think this is a good start so that general ideas can be posted here but longer term I think this council is going to need its own forum. Its just too confusing to have a free for all in one thread. In the meantime probably we can start with the following:

1. General ideas - exactly as we have here. This to lead to the council selecting at least one topic per month but ideally i would say 2 topics to properly discuss and actually have a decision ultimately.

2. Current Discussion thread. This to be one topic, selected from the ideas.
Initially this can be a brain storm from the community which a council member then takes responsibility for. The council member then puts the whole idea into a presentation format that everyone can understand, lists the pros/cons/implications etc. the council then fully discuss it and come up with a decision which the community can comment on.

If the community is split then the council should discuss again and then revise as appropriate and put to a vote. The vote result is passed to inno for either implementation (in which case we want a timescale and updates) or if it is not possible they can decline with reasons why. That subject is then finished. I don't see why anything should take longer than a month.

3. Council members and their roles. Lets have a list of them with very brief details.
Ive suggested that each one takes responsibility for a discussion topic, this should be also listed so we can all see what they have done/are doing. One of them needs to be 'chairman' posting updates of what is on the agenda for their next meeting/ brief minutes of their monthly meetings etc. Im not trying to make loads of work. I just think we need some order here.

This thread to be clean - only council members add to it so its a quick reference to what is happening. If it works in 12 months we can see who did what, are any members unable (through work/illness/'too many ears'/whatever) to actually do the job.

Personally unless we do something like this i just don't see it working at all.
 

Ranga1

Strategos
Standardised bans with a published list of offenses and their applicable punishment. Im so sick of mods issuing totally different bans for the same offense, take away their discretion for everything. Eases pressure on mods and makes it more transparent instead of the "we cant talk about bans, what we say is always right regardless of circumstances" current policy
 

Silver Witch

Strategos
I think the council should spend the first month getting organised and give us a plan for how they will operate.

In terms of ideas we have a thread with 38 pages going back 5 years! We also have Figtree telling us half of them don't have enough responses to go to a vote. Im not sure just listing even more ideas here is the answer. Rachel has suggested 15 of the ideas and Fig says he can't even look at them for another 4 days! (https://en.forum.grepolis.com/index.php?threads/voting-moving-suggestions.54402/)

Part of the problem is that there is so much in this forum that not many read it all. This is why just adding threads to the acropolis may not work. Players new to the forum or who log in sporadically need to have clear focus on page 1 of the forum.

As a start maybe the council/mods could sort out the Ideas thread, decide which are no longer relevant and archive them and then prioritise the rest to review over the next 6 months. I don't believe low response necessarily means people don't agree. We have 5 council members who are experienced players - presumably they could draft in a sub team if needed and then each one of them could pick a thread a week to review. Rachel might be willing to help here since she has already had a good look at the ideas thread.

If we could get ideas under discussion down to 1 page then maybe people would get more involved in it and then the council going forward would have a clear basis to begin.
 

Silver Witch

Strategos
2) Noob Protection: The easiest way to protect newer players is to give them a chance to not be conquered by a premade. It doesn't matter which world, there's always a premade or two on it.That's not to knock premades, but it is a fact that they will rip up new players and newer alliances with no effort. To counter this, I propose releasing a series of worlds that disables the invite link and only allows players to join in random directions. This ends any attempt of a coordinated start. This forces leaders joining to actively recruit in their area and teach newer players to play. It also gives newer players a chance to play with good teams.

Note: This is NOT a proposal for all worlds going forward. Just some worlds.

I think this is an interesting idea but i wonder whether this is really necessary. My first world i started late in North 74 - it was probably as you describe, not really pre-mades and no one had much idea how to play. Had i started earlier probably i would have lost my city and been sent to the rim - same situation. It takes a mentor and experience to play against other experienced players. If you are a noob then what you need most is to play without pressure for a bit and the centre/an area of premades is never going to work. I look back on that world and consider it was quite successful even if i didn't win/never really had a chance. I don't think I needed special looking after. I learnt most of what i know there - especially how to help a noob :)
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
Most people play to win though. Having a decent team would help them learn faster though. I'm not saying it would save everyone on the world. But I think it would do a lot of good if Inno occasionally dropped that.

We've already had a hardcore game mode in tegea. Why not have another curve ball thrown? I think it would get good players and leaders to play as a challenge and make them work with newer players.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
1) Votes: Turn over major updates (anything outside of quality, pricing,or bug fixes) to the community for a vote. For an update to be implemented, it must be supported by 70% of the voters. The voting would be done on the forums and announced on the forums, in a game message containing a link, and the red update bar would appear on the game screen announcing the update. Just so nobody misses it and nobody can complain later on.
It's nonsense. Many players decline every single change... just because it's a change! Content of updates can be also related to each other. That means if one update was declined, then all planned ones would be cancelled as well. So, the dev team would invest more effort to planning and developing "useless" features. That's not the right way at all. The community should be interested in a new feature as soon as any plans are annouced and provide feedback. There's enough space to do it. However, players don't want to spend their time for that thing. Even the players who are currently members of GPCs haven't been interested in providing constructive feedback on purposed places. I do think the devs are open-minded and they always try to find the best possible (for both sides - the community & the company) solution.

2) Noob Protection: The easiest way to protect newer players is to give them a chance to not be conquered by a premade. It doesn't matter which world, there's always a premade or two on it.That's not to knock premades, but it is a fact that they will rip up new players and newer alliances with no effort. To counter this, I propose releasing a series of worlds that disables the invite link and only allows players to join in random directions. This ends any attempt of a coordinated start. This forces leaders joining to actively recruit in their area and teach newer players to play. It also gives newer players a chance to play with good teams.

Note: This is NOT a proposal for all worlds going forward. Just some worlds.
No, I don't think it's supposed to work. Do you know that there are many smaller markets where ally members can be still close to each other even they've been registered on different sea? This problem can be solved only partially. I believe if a newbie is active, he can join to a good ally even though he's a beginner. Speaking about really elite teams, these are closed for the most of players... regardless on their (poor) experience. However, the most newbies are not very active players. The early game stage doesn't require much experience.

3) Cheating: While I don't have a way to catch cheaters, I do have a proposal for their punishment. Stop slapping on the wrist and hoping the good of humanity prevails and global ban their accounts on the first offense. The rules are listed, they're made clear, usually alliances announces their expectations about cheating at the start. The player will get a chance to have their case appealed, if they use it, this will drop the account into a non-attackable ban, if its not overturned then the account goes back into an attackable ban and can't be accessed again.

Just so there's absolutely 100% hands down no ability to complain about the results or hide a modding error. All players who ask for a review are also forfeiting their privacy on the issue and the mods can and will post their evidence. This eliminates two problems.
Unfortunately, it's not so easy as you think. There are many issues which you're not able to consider without experience.


Now about the GPC: I don't see any members' list. I don't see any plans how they're supposed to work/interact with the community. I don't see any activity! They're like shade. Not only here on EN.
 

Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
The GPC will become more readily active and noticeable once all the server representatives have had a moment to gather on the Beta server and begin the work of the GPC. While each server might have their council up and running they still need to gather collectively and begin their interaction with Innogames. The vote only recently finished for the reps and they have just gathered together on Beta.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
So many days just to gather them on the Beta... uff. I hope they'll be much more flexible very soon. :)
 

Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
Gathering players from a dozen+ servers and getting them to immediately coordinate on a brand new project was going to be a little rough at the start for the first iteration of the Council. It'll smooth out from here.
 

DeletedUser36697

Guest
my Thinking is the "members of the Players Council" should have time to organize, explore their mandate and find out much power/influence they will have with owners/developers.
- THEY get back to us and let us know whether the Council believes: this Council Concept, is feasible or just another stalling, delaying tactic.
-they present us with their Mandate..
their points of contention
most important a method of measuring the response and actions of the developers wrt the items they take on, a weekly update, with a edd (estimated delivery date)


My main fear is this is another level of BS for the players (Cash Cows) to jump through to try and get their monies worth from the game.. is this just another level of bureaucracy us?
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
@dadofwildthang, that would be fine if any council player were responding to this thread with any update
all we know is bear was sick and is now better
some communication from them would be appreciated
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
@ThasossCZ

1) I actually play a game where they run a update poll and advertise it constantly. People participate and vote to pass updates all the time. By the way, the servers they vote for updates on were throwback servers that were made strictly on the premise of "we as developers messed up and this community hates change." Since then new weapons, areas, spell books, and quests have been added...by popular vote that passes a 75% threshold. Usually these updates hit in the high 80's and 90's. People don't hate updates or change. They hate bad updates or change. And in this particular game, they messed up so hard that the throwback version with horrible graphics has overtaken the main game.

Actually players do spend their time on feedback, people play beta and give their feedback, its not always listened to. Players didn't like the following.

A) 2.0
B) World Wonders
C) Instant buy/ IB without a cut time option
D) Event spamming/unbalanced events
E) War packages

I think every person on the council at one point or another has provided feedback about bad updates/game issues. Along with most the candidates who ran.

2) Actually I have a solution for small markets...close them and move them back to En. The markets being merged back would transfer their gold or even get a small amount of extra gold for the inconvenience. All open worlds would remain open until won or inactive. There's some new worlds that are already past or near closing conditions for player counts for small markets. At this point the main servers are France and En. Most people from other servers work their way here anyways. So worst case we can employ these kinds of worlds here and on FR. Would it solve every issue? No players would still get conquered. But it would definitely stop the bleeding, because right now unless the new player is golding hard, nobody is picking them up if they drop in a 3/3. And they wouldn't have the knowledge to know how stacked out a 3/3 is.

Merging markets would solve three problems.
A) Pointless markets
B) More players creating a need for worlds to be released faster.
C) Better competition of worlds. Right now I can tell you everyone that's relevant that will show up on any decent conq world. Can't imagine that getting old can you?

3) Again I'm not a developer, I leave the mechanics of catching bots to them. But if you get hit with a bot ban, you should be out, none of this 3 day attackable and you're back in business. You get one appeal, and you get thrown out of its not overturned. I just believe that slaps and the wrist and hoping for the best of humanity to prevail is a clearly failed method. And when it does succeed everyone cries foul. So I think the proof of it should be publicly available.
 

Silver Witch

Strategos
@dadofwildthang, that would be fine if any council player were responding to this thread with any update
all we know is bear was sick and is now better
some communication from them would be appreciated
I agree - could some of these council members give us their view. Im actually quite confused about what they are supposed to be doing.

I understand it takes time to sort out at the start. I agree its better they work out their mandate and what power if any is to be granted.
 

DeletedUser53923

Guest
If you'll allow my honesty, I've got this feeling all we're doing is talking to walls.

its hard to make comments after your insolence has been called out publicly. it takes time to carefully craft statements that make it seem like youve actually accomplished something when you havent.

if they were serious there would have been the words "were sorry" or "we will do better" already said. instead weve gotten silence, and an excuse of the worst case of food poisoning on human record. give them some time to figure out how to deflect attention from their behavior.
 
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DeletedUser41523

Guest
I heard some aren't even doing the required things by Inno.

Anyways, maybe a lack of direction is the issue? The council should make a poll here and announce to all active worlds that one is running. The poll should be about gauging what people want them to focus on. Then they have a clear goal to start with.
 

thewilsh

Phrourach
Hi All,

Much has been said recently regarding the players council and its lack of ability to be a transparent unit which in turn has shown a distinct lack of action from us. For a month you have had zero action whilst we have continued with our disagreements and it has taken a thread in the forum to actually spark life into us. As a commununity we offer you an apology for this with the intent on turning this round in a swift manner in order to serve you best for the remainder of our tenure.

I will take time to run through this thread and capture the comments and ideas and will discuss these with the other members of the players council before onward transmission. As a council we will endeavour to update you on a weekly basis or more frequent as information becomes available.

Outside of the forum we can also be contacted on the following email addresses;
bearissimus@representative.com
grepowilsh@gmail.com
gothamsoldier5@gmail.com
phidipp@gmail.com

And finally please keep the contructive ideas coming.

Wilsh
(member of the Inner Council)
 
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