Sorry ac04, I have to say that I fully agree with JonnyDixon for once. The announcements are confusing to say the least. Some explicit clarification by Zeus, not second hand, is needed.
The first announcement states (my paraphrase based on my understanding of the English language) we are going to do this everywhere, but we are going to start with new worlds first, other worlds will be weeks later. The second announcement states (again my paraphrase) we are still going to do this, starting with world Zeta and the other worlds will stay as is. When I read that after having read the first announcement, I automatically add two key words to the second announcement, FOR NOW. I strongly suspect that most others do also, because as stated in the deleted JonnyDixon post, there never was an edit of the original announcement (as of this writing) nor was there every any explicit wording to state that the first announcement was incorrect within the second one.
But enough on that. This thread is supposed to be about concerns/questions on the new "improved" conquer system. So ...
1. On what rationale was the decision made to effectively cut the time a player had to rescue his village in half? How is this supposed to be better for the defender?
2. Why do the developers believe that introducing a system which can be exploited continuously is a more robust and stronger system than the current one? What precautions will be put in place to keep people from having friends trigger the revolts, thus rendering the villages unconquerable by others?
3. Wouldn't it have been better to simply tweak the old system to offer the player under seige more abilities?
4. Why was this not tested on the beta testing server prior to making the decision on the change?
Much has been said on how this is better for the smaller player. But to me it seems like just the opposite has happened. Granted that the same player who triggers the revolt must be the one who sends the colony ship. However, nothing has been done to keep others from repeatedly clearing the village during the 12 hour period that the player has to try and scrap together troops. Yes, it does give the small player 12 hours to call in support. He used to have 24 hours to call in attacks. So he has now half the time. Certainly it would be possible to stack his village with troops, placing more burden on the attacker to keep the village cleared. Problem with that is, if it is a small player, he probably is not going to have the same level of reserves to pull on than a larger player who is working in concert with his alliance. Also, he now has less time to get them there, especially if he was not online at the time when the revolt was started The end result is still going to be the same, he loses his village.
After reading all that I have here and doing a bit of experimenting with the new system too, I can only truly see one real reason for this change. Perhaps I'm just too cynical, but. It seems to be so that Innogames can bleed another helping of gold out of the small semi-active sort of player before he quits. This truly seems to be the most likely reason. I mean, if a person is going to mass use gold, it would be to build up walls and such to try and keep his village or to mass destroy it so that his conquer can only get a shell of a village 12 hours later. I wonder how much gold it would take to go from a level 0 wall to a level 25 wall in a 12 hour period of time ...