DeletedUser41523
Guest
EN has been in decline for the last couple of years now. In fact, its been in decline for the better part of the last five years, save for one year which I'll talk about later. The explanations for this decline can and have been be explained by a number of different factors and I'll get into some of that here too. But I want to give my take on how to rebuild the EN servers and keep the game going for years to come.
Morale- I'll go with the most obvious thing for killing conquest worlds, AKA half the game's player base, morale. Somebody tell me that taking morale out of sieges would both not be an easy fix compared to other projects and not bring back or retain players who are frustrated by low morale sieges. To people thinking that it levels the playing field, here's the dirty secret, its never going to be the under dog team with the best LMDs. Recruiting in Grep has become about as important as recruiting in college sports, the best teams usually get the best players and the best players usually go to the hot teams, this includes LMDs. We've gotten two new end games in two years, surely there is now time to fix this feature.
Alternatively, release more no morale conquest worlds.
Risk Taking- So as I said, EN has been in mostly decline for roughly the last half decade. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that its a ten year old game and this is out of anyone's control. But a huge part of this has come from a lack of risk taking. Either Inno, the COMAs, or both prefer to play it safe. Which is a shame because when they do take risks the player count seems to increase by a minor amount at worst and by a large margin at best. I'll give some examples of some successful risks that were taken in this community.
1) EN Lato: 3/3 no morale conquest was considered the elite world for the highest forms of competition and maybe it still is. Now if you check the forum history, you'll see that worlds have release dates, and you'll also see that prior to Lato there hadn't been a 3/3 no morale conquest in years, I think roughly three years to be exact. It was pretty clear there was no real desire or plan to release another without community pressure. When Lato was released, everybody who was anybody at the time rushed to join it. The world was highly successful in both gathering active players and teams, but bringing many players out of retirement...some of who re-retired because it took two years for a similar world to drop.
2) The Player's Council: While it was pretty controversial in practice, I obviously believe that its existence was better than its lack of existence. The council helped produce the Domination end game + get world chats back in the forums. But additionally, if you look at the 2017 En worlds on Grepolismaps.org, they're mostly larger than the 2016 maps. The ones that aren't such as En96 tend to have bugged data since having won En96, I can say that the world was bigger than is represented.
3) Different Settings: Staying in line with the 2017-2018 trend, Tegea (6/6 Conquest, no morale) was pretty ground breaking at the time and while it produced only a niche community, it caused a lot of US players to switch over to EN and stay here. Additionally its become a fun setting type for the people who do play the server. On top of this, Inno experimented with a throwback world in Beta that featured the original Grepolis settings from way back in 1.26. Something that by their own admission, was so unexpectedly popular that the server couldn't be supported and crashed frequently. There's likely a market for people who want the old game back and I'm going to guess that most of this market does not currently play the game.
The thing that I've noticed over the last few years is that when Inno plays its safe, whether that's introducing morale to all worlds to try to help the new players or releasing Kastoria because The Big Bad decided he was quitting due to the lack of no morale servers, nerfing Domination from its original idea, or removing GPC, it becomes pretty clear that the game suffers. This is perfectly embodied by En128 - Therma and the Olympus problem. Half the player base was ready to get their hands on the new endgame, which is quite fun, and its rewards, which are quite powerful. Instead they got a last minute notice that the world was a 2/2 morale conquest....Again playing it safe where a risk would have payed off. I doubt many revolt players cared if they had to use the conquest system on the temples. Instead a world that adds nothing new for conquest players was released making this even worse is that none of the notable Sidon conquest teams are beaten yet, EN121 has a battle for the crown, EN124 is still active, and EN125 is still active. There's not many people for this world.
COMA Combinations- This has already been addressed but it should stay addressed indefinitely. While I don't think any COMA on any server should lead their own teams or premades while holding the position, I do think that at least one has to play the game because the results are disastrous if neither are playing. This isn't meant as a bash of Richard or Baudin but neither of them have/had played a meaningful round of Grep from start to finish for years now. That became pretty clear in the case of Richard who usually handled in game tickets if Hydna didn't. It was pretty clear that the guy hadn't touched the game in awhile and all you needed to do was send in a few tickets and ask to send them above Hydna to find that out.
Better & More Involved Modding- Note: This does not mean fire and replace all the mods. It means that the mods have to do better. And I'm going to use a mod that's a perfect example of the potential to make great and terrible calls...Hydna/Silver Witch. The most obvious for great calls so far would be the effort she puts into rebuilding the externals and EN community and trying to safeguard it. Little things like the Amphora competition created a flurry of new accounts that I couldn't even come close to if I power ranked and MMed every world and was paid six figures to do so...The Fair Play rule is also a pretty necessary rule at this point and will be good so long as its applied rationally and fairly. Which it seems like is trying to be done.
On the other hand Miknel is banned still. He's pretty much proven he's gotten IP banned from the forums and the reason for it was pretty weak. I've done and said worse, I promise. Furthermore its pretty sad that Miknel is IP banned but Charlie can make new accounts indefinitely and the spammers have had countless accounts banned to the point where the mods gave up trying. I bring this up because it goes directly against what Hydna is trying to do with the community and that like him or not (most of you fall under not), the guy helps make the community more lively.
Rebuild The External Forums Community- I honestly believe that a large part of the appeal to EN is that it serves as an international server where people from all over the world come to play and you can see this in the external forums, which always has been lively and gives players something extra to do while their cities and troops build. This also provides an outlet for players to express their concerns, discuss the worlds they play, create or join premade teams for new worlds, or make hastily made power rankings. I believe that this creates a better community than somewhere like the US server and I believe that building on this community will increase the lifespan of EN.
Morale- I'll go with the most obvious thing for killing conquest worlds, AKA half the game's player base, morale. Somebody tell me that taking morale out of sieges would both not be an easy fix compared to other projects and not bring back or retain players who are frustrated by low morale sieges. To people thinking that it levels the playing field, here's the dirty secret, its never going to be the under dog team with the best LMDs. Recruiting in Grep has become about as important as recruiting in college sports, the best teams usually get the best players and the best players usually go to the hot teams, this includes LMDs. We've gotten two new end games in two years, surely there is now time to fix this feature.
Alternatively, release more no morale conquest worlds.
Risk Taking- So as I said, EN has been in mostly decline for roughly the last half decade. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that its a ten year old game and this is out of anyone's control. But a huge part of this has come from a lack of risk taking. Either Inno, the COMAs, or both prefer to play it safe. Which is a shame because when they do take risks the player count seems to increase by a minor amount at worst and by a large margin at best. I'll give some examples of some successful risks that were taken in this community.
1) EN Lato: 3/3 no morale conquest was considered the elite world for the highest forms of competition and maybe it still is. Now if you check the forum history, you'll see that worlds have release dates, and you'll also see that prior to Lato there hadn't been a 3/3 no morale conquest in years, I think roughly three years to be exact. It was pretty clear there was no real desire or plan to release another without community pressure. When Lato was released, everybody who was anybody at the time rushed to join it. The world was highly successful in both gathering active players and teams, but bringing many players out of retirement...some of who re-retired because it took two years for a similar world to drop.
2) The Player's Council: While it was pretty controversial in practice, I obviously believe that its existence was better than its lack of existence. The council helped produce the Domination end game + get world chats back in the forums. But additionally, if you look at the 2017 En worlds on Grepolismaps.org, they're mostly larger than the 2016 maps. The ones that aren't such as En96 tend to have bugged data since having won En96, I can say that the world was bigger than is represented.
3) Different Settings: Staying in line with the 2017-2018 trend, Tegea (6/6 Conquest, no morale) was pretty ground breaking at the time and while it produced only a niche community, it caused a lot of US players to switch over to EN and stay here. Additionally its become a fun setting type for the people who do play the server. On top of this, Inno experimented with a throwback world in Beta that featured the original Grepolis settings from way back in 1.26. Something that by their own admission, was so unexpectedly popular that the server couldn't be supported and crashed frequently. There's likely a market for people who want the old game back and I'm going to guess that most of this market does not currently play the game.
The thing that I've noticed over the last few years is that when Inno plays its safe, whether that's introducing morale to all worlds to try to help the new players or releasing Kastoria because The Big Bad decided he was quitting due to the lack of no morale servers, nerfing Domination from its original idea, or removing GPC, it becomes pretty clear that the game suffers. This is perfectly embodied by En128 - Therma and the Olympus problem. Half the player base was ready to get their hands on the new endgame, which is quite fun, and its rewards, which are quite powerful. Instead they got a last minute notice that the world was a 2/2 morale conquest....Again playing it safe where a risk would have payed off. I doubt many revolt players cared if they had to use the conquest system on the temples. Instead a world that adds nothing new for conquest players was released making this even worse is that none of the notable Sidon conquest teams are beaten yet, EN121 has a battle for the crown, EN124 is still active, and EN125 is still active. There's not many people for this world.
COMA Combinations- This has already been addressed but it should stay addressed indefinitely. While I don't think any COMA on any server should lead their own teams or premades while holding the position, I do think that at least one has to play the game because the results are disastrous if neither are playing. This isn't meant as a bash of Richard or Baudin but neither of them have/had played a meaningful round of Grep from start to finish for years now. That became pretty clear in the case of Richard who usually handled in game tickets if Hydna didn't. It was pretty clear that the guy hadn't touched the game in awhile and all you needed to do was send in a few tickets and ask to send them above Hydna to find that out.
Better & More Involved Modding- Note: This does not mean fire and replace all the mods. It means that the mods have to do better. And I'm going to use a mod that's a perfect example of the potential to make great and terrible calls...Hydna/Silver Witch. The most obvious for great calls so far would be the effort she puts into rebuilding the externals and EN community and trying to safeguard it. Little things like the Amphora competition created a flurry of new accounts that I couldn't even come close to if I power ranked and MMed every world and was paid six figures to do so...The Fair Play rule is also a pretty necessary rule at this point and will be good so long as its applied rationally and fairly. Which it seems like is trying to be done.
On the other hand Miknel is banned still. He's pretty much proven he's gotten IP banned from the forums and the reason for it was pretty weak. I've done and said worse, I promise. Furthermore its pretty sad that Miknel is IP banned but Charlie can make new accounts indefinitely and the spammers have had countless accounts banned to the point where the mods gave up trying. I bring this up because it goes directly against what Hydna is trying to do with the community and that like him or not (most of you fall under not), the guy helps make the community more lively.
Rebuild The External Forums Community- I honestly believe that a large part of the appeal to EN is that it serves as an international server where people from all over the world come to play and you can see this in the external forums, which always has been lively and gives players something extra to do while their cities and troops build. This also provides an outlet for players to express their concerns, discuss the worlds they play, create or join premade teams for new worlds, or make hastily made power rankings. I believe that this creates a better community than somewhere like the US server and I believe that building on this community will increase the lifespan of EN.
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