Update to Version 2.228 Discussion Thread

Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
On Wednesday the game will be updated to version 2.228. Please post any feedback or questions about the update in this thread.

Changelog 2.228


Dear Community,

On Wednesday December 9th Grepolis will be updated to version 2.228. As always there will be a short downtime while the update is applied.

New Features and Changes

  • As you may have noticed, the artwork for our six original gods didn't quite match the style of Aphrodite. So, our artists worked hard to create updated versions so they now all have a fresh lick of paint. Check them out:

    GodsCircle2.png
  • We also updated the layout of the gods portraits in the gods overview of the Administrator to better fit with the new style.
Bugfixes

  • The Temple gods scrollbar will automatically scroll to the currently selected god.
  • If a spell such as Call of the Ocean expires (or is purified) when its ritual spell (such as Help of the Nereids) is active, you can cast it again, and don't have to wait for the ritual spell to expire. This will give you another basic spell (such as Call of the Ocean) as well as refresh the duration of the ritual spell (such a Help of the Nereids).
  • Hero level in published reports now show their level correctly on the app.
  • Travel and arrival time will be shown correctly again on farming villages in non-battlepoints village worlds.
  • Resources to be collected in a farming village window will be updated when casting Hymn to Aphrodite without needing to close and re-open the window.
  • It is no longer possible to send attacks containing only a hero. Heroes must be accompanied, and the standard minimum population requirements apply when sending these commands, too.
  • Estimated vs actual arrival time will now match (+ or - 10 seconds) on the app.
  • Casting Charitable Festival will update the cost of a Victory Procession even if the Agora window is already open when it is cast.

* Found on beta, did not occur on live worlds.

gpcl-line.png


We hope you enjoy the update and would love to hear any feedback you have here.

Best regards,
Your Grepolis Team

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Rachel.L

Phrourach
How exactly is this going to work with anchors? Or for revolt servers a multiple revolt system? Or ....

I'm all for anti-spam, if we all agreed on a definition of spam, which we don't, but even a newbie can meet these conditions and be blocked.
 

Lethal-Bacon

Polemarch
How exactly is this going to work with anchors? Or for revolt servers a multiple revolt system? Or ....

I'm all for anti-spam, if we all agreed on a definition of spam, which we don't, but even a newbie can meet these conditions and be blocked.

as far as i know on beta when you try to anchor via attack planner and do 12 attacks trying to time it you get blocked from sending new attacks for 2 hours hahaha

so this will only make spammers spread amount of spam across more cities and limit to 11 flash pings and be "within" the game rules :)

they are currently "working" on changing/updating this anti spam attempt of a system on beta via feedback and internal dev testing before enrolling this or something similar to live servers to try and mitigate spam, but i dont see this helping anyone on this particular issue.. best mods can do is revamp how attack notifications and alarms work so all players can select who they can ignore alarms from either by adding specific bb coded city/player name or filter the points not to get alarmed from anyone below 1 or 2k pts which sums up most if not all flash spammers, this gives more options to each players on how they deal with spam because each player gets targeted by different spammers and teams that are somewhat spammy, while mods continue to investigate and look into fair play/smart spam without any bias for their friends and teams they play in (hopefully)
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
yeah but knowing 12 (or 11) is the limit is telling the spammers how to cheat the system
or just wait a few seconds and send; it breaks that 60 second barrier so start the count again
a different notification system might work but then again, not

i just hope the devs listen to feedback from players
i know, i know that's like believing in the tooth fairy
 

kingpg28

Phrourach
@Baudin Toolan lets discuss this app update .. yall just changing attack noti? or how trash the app moves now? it moves slow asf, cant scroll thru the forums and cant look at the map.. not to mention it is recently impossible to time on app due to not accounting for carto all of a sudden ... app needs a MAJOR update .. it is pathetic
 

Hydna

Grepolis Team
@Baudin Toolan maybe developers should think harder and longer before even thinking about implementing this system of addressing the spam issue in the game because this will do absolutely nothing.

2020-12-08_15_52_24-.png

We accept that just implementing a number like this is something players can work around. This is being developed to combat some specific situations of automated spam that we are seeing. If it interferes with gameplay we will adjust the parameters.

We want your feedback here. We want to automate a system to minimise spam. Today the app starts to show you who is attacking which allows you to ignore some attacks if there's a specific situation. If you have any feedback about what has been implemented and/or what you would like to see next please post it. Like you we want to create a better game experience for all.
 

Lethal-Bacon

Polemarch
We accept that just implementing a number like this is something players can work around. This is being developed to combat some specific situations of automated spam that we are seeing. If it interferes with gameplay we will adjust the parameters.

We want your feedback here. We want to automate a system to minimise spam. Today the app starts to show you who is attacking which allows you to ignore some attacks if there's a specific situation. If you have any feedback about what has been implemented and/or what you would like to see next please post it. Like you we want to create a better game experience for all.

while i appreciate developers and support staff finally trying to turn things around and make the game better by combating number of things community hates and thinks ruins the game, most tools that provide automated spam/flash pings are totally customizable making it entirely obsolete by any attempts to counter it by anti spam system that monitors how many attacks have been sent from a single city within x seconds/minutes.

myself being target of automated flash ping/spam in multiple worlds i can tell you that 99% of automated spams happen overnight when support staff are sleeping so they cant read reports, while the automated spam is customized to send 1 ping every 15 minutes to 1 hour and then recalled within seconds, there is absolutely nothing you can do with automated system that minimizes spam that doesnt break the core game features like timing, while automated tools can still be customized to keep on sending 1 ping a minute or every few minutes, constantly monitoring, analyzing and fixing/adjusting parameters to combat those that try to screw with automated anti spam system will only waste developers time they can spend on far better system.

the best possible way to both combat in game regular spam and automated rim flash ping/spam is right in this thread

https://beta.forum.grepolis.com/index.php?threads/what-if-we-had-a-way-to-deal-with-flash-spam.4883/

and yes it gets better, right now there is no process of approving new scripts but what if developers could spend a little bit of time to integrate a solution like that that allows players to customize on who's attacks they do get notification and for what cities/players they do not.

as said above, in past experience 90-99% of automated flash ping/spam is caused by newly registered accounts which can be neutralized easy by either marking their city bb code/player name or range of points for players example, 0-2000 pts no alarms.

in my opinion the system in the linked thread is better quality implementation than any automated anti spam system that constantly needs adjusting/monitoring/fixing in comparison to the above mentioned system of delivering/muting attack notifications both to mobile app and browser app, yes it might take a bit more time to integrate but once its finished you have effectively solved most if not all spam issues in the game, while support staff continues to monitor "fair play" rules about regular players attacking too much.

now it really comes down to developers on what they want to do, whether they want to fix the spam after so many years with 1 simple implementation/integration or to do it in their own way by adding somewhat useless automated anti spam system that is more likely to kill the core game features of timing than actually blocking someone from spamming...
 

Hydna

Grepolis Team
while i appreciate developers and support staff finally trying to turn things around and make the game better by combating number of things community hates and thinks ruins the game, most tools that provide automated spam/flash pings are totally customizable making it entirely obsolete by any attempts to counter it by anti spam system that monitors how many attacks have been sent from a single city within x seconds/minutes................

The kind of spamming this is designed to prevent is not really seen on en. This tool will help enormously in other servers. For en as you say we need to look at other areas and the issue is complex. It has not been ignored it is just difficult to resolve without interfering in the actual game.

On Beta we are currently testing a way to 'snooze' the attack notifications that you can tailor to your own specifications. This has also been suggested in the past in the numerous threads on this subject. There is an option in settings to customise this:

Screenshot 2020-12-10 at 12.14.23.png

We continue to listen and look at options. The posts and suggestions here have already been read by Inno.
 

Lethal-Bacon

Polemarch
The kind of spamming this is designed to prevent is not really seen on en. This tool will help enormously in other servers. For en as you say we need to look at other areas and the issue is complex. It has not been ignored it is just difficult to resolve without interfering in the actual game.

On Beta we are currently testing a way to 'snooze' the attack notifications that you can tailor to your own specifications. This has also been suggested in the past in the numerous threads on this subject. There is an option in settings to customise this:

Screenshot 2020-12-10 at 12.14.23.png

We continue to listen and look at options. The posts and suggestions here have already been read by Inno.

i certainly like what i see, both devs and support staff are clearly taking this issue seriously as it should be taken.

as a conquest player i have seen that in majority of wars/fights players are really trying hard to figure out when enemies sleep and attack the mostly during those hours, pausing attack notifications entirely during your sleep time can be dangerous for players themselves, but yes as long as devs are reading this thread and brainstorming ideas and ways to minimize/entirely neutralize spam/flash spam i would say its a great start.
 

xFate

Strategos
The kind of spamming this is designed to prevent is not really seen on en. This tool will help enormously in other servers. For en as you say we need to look at other areas and the issue is complex. It has not been ignored it is just difficult to resolve without interfering in the actual game.

On Beta we are currently testing a way to 'snooze' the attack notifications that you can tailor to your own specifications. This has also been suggested in the past in the numerous threads on this subject. There is an option in settings to customise this:

Screenshot 2020-12-10 at 12.14.23.png

We continue to listen and look at options. The posts and suggestions here have already been read by Inno.

"Pausing notifications" doesn't solve anything - if you wanted to pause notifications between x and y, you can just turn your alarm off (which defeats the purpose of fair play rules). While I am happy to see that the team is taking spam seriously, you need to look at how it is happening. You can hard-code a 'block' to some of the spam we see on En (like what Sema did) and sometimes it just requires active moderation (I'm sure you're aware of what I'm talking about Hydna). I'd argue most of the time you can solve the individual issue of spam through moderation, but once you start including hard-code solutions, you impact how the game can be played fairly. i.e the "attack limit" idea. It has fundamental flaws that impact the game for everyone, not just spammers. Something I've seen multiple times now is the idea of not allowing accounts below a certain point value trigger alarms on players. If you're being spammed by a player above said point limit, that's when moderation needs to kick in.

Look at the purpose of those attacks - is there even a purpose? You already got the fundamental core idea of what is spam and what isn't. All it needs is action from you guys in the right way and people may think twice before engaging in spam wars :shrug:
 

1saaa

Strategos
I think a good solution would 100% be to allow players to block pings from certain cities or players. This would allow players to shut up that moron who sits at their desk in ocean 73 sending attacks to you every other minute and would allow you to block notifications from specific offending cities that are generally used for spam.

It wouldn't be a perfect solution but it would definitely help mitigate the damage.
 

Shuri2060

Strategos
For me, the biggest spam issue is spam you cannot retaliate against. If a player decides to frequently send attacks, whether or not that is classified as 'spam' by fair play isn't an issue - appropriate reaction/retaliation is very possible in most cases (and something most players complaining seem incapable of doing). I know there are some irritating asses out there who'd love nothing more than a spam war (and have what it takes to do it for days on end), but there are at least existing strategic countermeasures that can be taken against them.

However, when the spam comes from alt accounts and/or players 'hired' to do it - be it a 1k pt city spawned next to you or attacks from o99 then it becomes a problem you can't do much about. You can 'retaliate' against those you think are responsible (sometimes fairly obvious), but when you have multiple enemies and if one of them is doing it without the knowledge of their allies things can get out of hand. It is not easy to cover all cases but I feel the devs' focus should go here first.
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
So let’s say I end up on a mostly red island. I can’t HC routinely or go to farm them if I catch a mistake as often?
 
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