Sorry I am going to be blunt hear. "I had about 25 per day" is an out and out lie. If you insist on jumping on the band wagon at least try and make it believable.
You are another player jumping on a bandwagon complaining for the fun of it, they do not pop up 5 times per hour, (90 per 18 hours play) that is an out and out lie. If you wish to complain about a feature at least get your facts correct! Inflating the figures to make your point really does not do much for the credibility for you point.
Seen as you seem so 'aware' of what happens with the captchas you failed to mention the 2 minutes grace period you get to enter the captcha before it forces you to enter it. It doesn't take much to enter it around your timings, therefore either you don't know what you are on about, or you left it out of argument to strengthen your point.
The system is fair, it stops players cheating and I would say rather successfully. I can see the system disappearing fast so my advice is get use to the way it works.
Saska, as senior in-game moderator, I know you have the means to observe every single aspect of any player's account. And you sit here and state we as players cant/dont experience the issues with captcha we complain of.....saying we are lying and inflating the amount.
Do some simple math....
It takes less than 30 seconds to answer a Captcha screen, that turns around and immediately reappears (occasionally with a red banner saying the answer was incorrect), and it takes over an hour for the Captcha to finally accept a correct answer. Presuming a player can maintain a consistent typing rate despite increasing frustration over not being able to clear the Captcha, that alone equates to over 120 in an hour. Now I will admit, the constant reappearance non-stop does slow me down to the point I am probably only entering 50-60 responses before the Captcha finally accepts an answer.
Now then, when the Captcha reappears after about 15-20 minutes of game-play, the scenario repeats itself. By this time, such a play will likely respond slower...and perhaps eventually give up for a while. When s/he returns a couple hours later, the Captcha is still there; but normally accepts a response within two or three tries. And then it reappears again after another 15-20 minutes of game-play, thereby setting off another round of delays.
So while the claims of "25 Captchas in a day" according to you are a lie, I contend they are merely an exaggeration....or more accurately an extrapolation....to illustrate a point of their disruption to playing Grepolis. If you count each round of Captchas as a single occurrence (whether there is only one or several dozen), and they are timed to appear roughly every hour a player is logged into Grepolis, then of course it would be impossible for someone to have more than 25 in a day's play....I guess it all depends on how you count them.
But the fact remains....for many of us, these Captchas have completely ruined our game-play. And I am talking about honest hard core players,
not cheaters using bots and scripts. I earned my status on World Alpha as a Top-10 player through hard work and long activity at the game. I devote over 15 hours a day to playing Grepolis.....and that is no exaggeration. I used to play Tribal Wars with a similar dedication. I have nothing better to do with my time, although with all the delays these Captchas are giving me, I am looking at other forms of "busy-ment". When the Captchas let me play as I usually do (happens maybe once ever 3 days); I am online constantly and consistently constructing my cities, recruiting my troops, moving around resources, sending and defending attacks. When they dont let me in, I might be lucky to set up my city festivals and launch an attack or two before I am locked out again....and yeah, I have gotten to the point that if I cant get in after answering 10 Captchas, I leave for a while and come back later. Only to have to answer that waiting Captcha, and be subjected to them once again within 20 minutes to start the cycle over.
So are the increased Captchas really stopping cheating? or are they InnoGames' way of controlling player in-game activity and time online??
And one final question.....where are these 'warning signs' that the Captcha will appear, giving you a couple minutes leeway to answer it at one's choosing? All I get it a sudden darkening of my browser screen and the window popping up waiting for me to finally enter an equation answer it will accept.
I really wish I could screenshot and submit you a couple hours of my game time (something like a video clip rather than a single picture) when the Captchas appear so you can see that the claims of excessive appearances are no exaggeration, let alone not a lie.
