Worlds for the larger player base

Poor

Hipparchus
Grepolis used to be a lot more casual. Between the lack of alarms and night time bonuses, people had more time for real life and less people had to quit the game due to 'lack of time'. This is probably why this game won MMO of the year 2012. It was fun with great dynamics yet did not take up your whole life.
Nowadays the only players who have a chance at winning are the ones with alarm who are active 6 hours a day. This isn't appealing to new players and does not help keep veterans of the game who might be looking for a more classic experience.

My suggestion is to bring back this casual feel without having to go to the full casual world experience.

Suggestion: Make a new type of world for the larger player base

Details: I thought of many options to make it less like a lifestyle and more like a fun game and these are the options I came up with
• Straight up go back to no alarms
• At the beginning of every world make each player choose an 8h time slot in which they cannot be attacked so that they can sleep in peace. This protection is removed for cities they have in siege or revolt (these mechanics shouldnt be hard to implement as there is already the attackable VM on WW islands)
• Like the previous option, bring back the night time bonus for en servers based on a timeslot that the players choose

Pros/Cons to Inno: There are only really pros here as this would appeal to the larger gamer base and probably bring back more people to the game which means more gold bought and greater revenue for Inno

Why I know this will work: Almost everyone works or goes to university/school and add that to the rest of life's challenges and you dont get much free time. Grepolis nowadays is too demanding. Personally I get by because I don't have a lot of work to do this year but previous years I had to quit grepo because I just couldnt give the necessary attention to this game. Its the same with a lot of people and by making this game more casual without removing the original feel of the game Im sure a lot more people would be willing to give this game a shot
 

Fluvisol

Phrourach
Time to play devil's advocate
Straight up go back to no alarms
Issue: PC alarm is an external extension and cannot be disabled by Inno. People who live a life where they can constantly have a pc at the ready now have a massive advantage
At the beginning of every world make each player choose an 8h time slot in which they cannot be attacked so that they can sleep in peace. This protection is removed for cities they have in siege or revolt (these mechanics shouldnt be hard to implement as there is already the attackable VM on WW islands)
Issues:
1) How would you know when someone's timeslot is as this could mess with OPs especially due to the different time of it. Does this also mean you cannot log in at all during that time or at least not attack? If you can attack it would mean being able to attack without anything they can do about it, similar to what you could do in beginners protection before. If you can't attack it could lead to only having 2 4 hour windows to attack someone if your nighttime is for example from 3 to 11 and theirs is from 15 to 23. This would make slower worlds hell to play
2) If you can't attack someone at their night time but you can if they're under siege or being revolted I can easily see this being exploited. Attack teammates at night, if it's possible they're under siege. Siege/revolt someone you want to keep awake, then ping that city all night. And what happens if a siege gets broken but attacks are still on the way?
• Like the previous option, bring back the night time bonus for en servers based on a timeslot that the players choose
Even bigger issue than with the last one on how to find out when someone's nightbonus is. Could hurt a lot if you don't know it. If you implement night bonus on en I think it should be a set time, more casual players can usually find a world in their timezone on their home market which would work just as fine
Pros/Cons to Inno: There are only really pros here as this would appeal to the larger gamer base and probably bring back more people to the game which means more gold bought and greater revenue for Inno
Con would be effort. It's sad to say but they won't put work into improving the quality of the game anymore it seems. Just slap on a new endgame every year or two to have a spike in returning players. A lot of quality of life changes were suggested in the past, including a completely worked out change that would neuter ping recall spamming, yet what we got was more endgames and a few small changes like being able to see bp gained in the simulator to advertise how good bp buffs are :)
 

Fluvisol

Phrourach
Time to play devil's advocate
Straight up go back to no alarms
Issue: PC alarm is an external extension and cannot be disabled by Inno. People who live a life where they can constantly have a pc at the ready now have a massive advantage
At the beginning of every world make each player choose an 8h time slot in which they cannot be attacked so that they can sleep in peace. This protection is removed for cities they have in siege or revolt (these mechanics shouldnt be hard to implement as there is already the attackable VM on WW islands)
Issues:
1) How would you know when someone's timeslot is as this could mess with OPs especially due to the different time of it. Does this also mean you cannot log in at all during that time or at least not attack? If you can attack it would mean being able to attack without anything they can do about it, similar to what you could do in beginners protection before. If you can't attack it could lead to only having 2 4 hour windows to attack someone if your nighttime is for example from 3 to 11 and theirs is from 15 to 23. This would make slower worlds hell to play
2) If you can't attack someone at their night time but you can if they're under siege or being revolted I can easily see this being exploited. Attack teammates at night, if it's possible they're under siege. Siege/revolt someone you want to keep awake, then ping that city all night. And what happens if a siege gets broken but attacks are still on the way?
• Like the previous option, bring back the night time bonus for en servers based on a timeslot that the players choose
Even bigger issue than with the last one on how to find out when someone's nightbonus is. Could hurt a lot if you don't know it. If you implement night bonus on en I think it should be a set time, more casual players can usually find a world in their timezone on their home market which would work just as fine
Pros/Cons to Inno: There are only really pros here as this would appeal to the larger gamer base and probably bring back more people to the game which means more gold bought and greater revenue for Inno
Con would be effort. It's sad to say but they won't put work into improving the quality of the game anymore it seems. Just slap on a new endgame every year or two to have a spike in returning players. A lot of quality of life changes were suggested in the past, including a completely worked out change that would neuter ping recall spamming, yet what we got was more endgames and a few small changes like being able to see bp gained in the simulator to advertise how good bp buffs are :)
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
As someone that’s been around since world 3.

Grep used to be more casual yes. Partially for the reasons you stated. I don’t think En has ever had night bonus. Nor should it.

The thing that made Grep more casual was its lack of mobile alarm combined with the slower overall game play of 1.26. A standard two speed world would probably not see a conquest for a month. This gave players time to learn the game, join the community, and enjoy it. Which helped keep some around even if they got conquered out of BP.

Conquest timers used to be 24 hours as well and the unit speed was 1. Meaning that it was a lot more difficult to conquer opponents. Which usually gave everyone a chance to survive despite no alarms.

Of course, this also can get incredibly boring after a couple worlds. So I get why the pace of the game sped up over the years.

I think the main issue with popularity is that it’s a ten year old game that requires a lot of time (either on alarm or off it) to get to a respectable score and put yourself on a winning team. Couple that with the fact that it’s a fairly repetitive game that can cost money and this makes the burn out rate high. The people who are good at this game usually are students and probably move on after they transition into their careers.
 

DeletedUser21774

Guest
"
The people who are good at this game usually are students and probably move on after they transition into their careers.

"

Except for Triad, which is mostly adults with child, careers, working on advanced degrees. The idea has a bit of merit.
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
Except for Triad, which is mostly adults with child, careers, working on advanced degrees. The idea has a bit of merit.

And primarily plays settings that are friendly to that against competition that is also going to be more friendly to that because said settings are designed for exactly that situation. Which is fine, its not a knock against you. But my comment was more directed at higher level worlds such as a 3 speed or higher. Which do burn you out pretty fast.
 

DeletedUser21774

Guest
And primarily plays settings that are friendly to that against competition that is also going to be more friendly to that because said settings are designed for exactly that situation. Which is fine, its not a knock against you. But my comment was more directed at higher level worlds such as a 3 speed or higher. Which do burn you out pretty fast.
Yes, I've noticed that. The preppie who plays from the dorm and loses interest if the game isn't done in a semester.
 

DeletedUser55989

Guest
Yes, I've noticed that. The preppie who plays from the dorm and loses interest if the game isn't done in a semester.
I don't see an issue with that. personally I'm a student so I can't play grepo for most months of the year but when I can I have the time for a high speed, and high speeds usually wrap up in time for the end of my summer break or quarantine in this case.
 

DeletedUser3303

Guest
i can tell you how to save grepolis and make it popular again, simply remove pay to win and only have premium, then increase world speed, so it moves at a quicker pace. i can guarantee that a world like that, world have a huge player base
 
i can tell you how to save grepolis and make it popular again, simply remove pay to win and only have premium, then increase world speed, so it moves at a quicker pace. i can guarantee that a world like that, world have a huge player base
Innno won’t do that cause they make a ton of money off golders. I just played my last world in 138 and there’s people who have 20+ cities before BP is over. I mentioned this in the worlds newspaper but no wonder Grepolis can’t gain any new players. You have these absolute tools of players who gold and use bots the whole game, how’s a new player learning the game supposed to compete or play against or even with a player like that.
The only realistic solution I can think of is to make new separate worlds that you aren’t allowed to use gold on anything except advisors.

in the long run it likely won’t change and I’m not too bothered since I won’t be playing anymore unless something is done to stop golders and those who cheat by botting or using applications that aren’t made by Inno to give themselves an advantage.
 

Myrddin Emyrs

Phrourach
Inno need to stop releasing so many worlds, need to get the players to play a world, a joke where you have a game and have a world where you create it and has 100 oceans, what is the point in that if you cant fill 6 oceans, Grepolis when first released and in its first 5 years was good, but with the lack of moderation on worlds where players relentlessly gold bot and just cheat worlds end within 6 months with 300 players or less left, Alpha lasted 2years 5 years ago worlds lasted 18 months easy, now you would be lucky if a world lasts 6 months to a year, whatever happened to hero worlds created 2 of them and nothing since, tried to create new endgame, failed created new gods with myths, failed and had to fix, tried new features, failed released a new feature which would have been good for slower worlds but had it in faster worlds, relative success, whether or not they try and keep doing it remains to be seen, inno has made millions of Grepolis, think its time they gave the players what they want and stop focusing on making every bit of money from the small amount of players who just want to gold there way through a world, it has been suggested before about a no gold world or limit the gold spend, better moderation on worlds where Bot use and cheating gets clamped down, its rife in lst few years but nothing gets done, i know alot of players will be walking away from grepolis for a while and probably only come back when the game actually is worth coming back to again.
 

DeletedUser22951

Guest
I gave up Grepo about a year ago as it is way to time consuming, being anywhere near a frontline war was incompatible with having a job and being offline for 8 hrs per day.

I can see merit in a more lifestyle compatible style of play, without going back to 1 speed servers.

If the game is to survive it needs to evolve and modernise.

At the moment it's a handful of players, rehashing the same old scenarios until the servers dwindle down in size so much they are only just able to support the core oceans.

Will you innovate Inno? Or just hold on until it's no longer profitable and pull the plug....
 

DeletedUser20543

Guest
• At the beginning of every world make each player choose an 8h time slot in which they cannot be attacked so that they can sleep in peace.

Agree with this to some extent.
If you want to play grepolis effectively, you need to invest in it great amount of time to build up and keep your cities safe. So if you want to be effective and competitive you will have a lot sleepless nights, especially if you don't use gold in big quantities. Which gradually brings RL obligations at risk and in some cases health.

All of this caused every grepolis world to end up with few hundreds hardcore players with their alts for various purposes, and very small amount of new players who quit after few weeks.
 

Seriko Lee

Lochagos
The main issues are.
1. When new player comes along in a world, chances are they get conquered without a chance to grow.
2. Skill and knowledge of mechanics gap
3. Veterans not sharing their know-how to newbie
4. Many players just want to do what they want and this leads to factions of newbies falling apart
5. No in-game rewards for newbies for sniping a CS or beating back a bigger player.
6. No new units that help newbies grow like supply ships that transport resources to a city when a warehouse is max out.
I have a large list of complaints but the 6 things I mentioned is what I hate the most.
 

bugeyes10

Phrourach
The main issues are.
1. When new player comes along in a world, chances are they get conquered without a chance to grow.
2. Skill and knowledge of mechanics gap
3. Veterans not sharing their know-how to newbie
4. Many players just want to do what they want and this leads to factions of newbies falling apart
5. No in-game rewards for newbies for sniping a CS or beating back a bigger player.
6. No new units that help newbies grow like supply ships that transport resources to a city when a warehouse is max out.
I have a large list of complaints but the 6 things I mentioned is what I hate the most.
You're not wrong a lot of these are issues, the problem is the solutions are already out there.

1. Most of them quit tbf
2-3. Any good, contending alliance, should be teaching people who want to learn. As @Back2Basics said "game doesn't have enough players left to not teach anyone who wants to learn" the problem is most of them are content with accusing veterans of cheating.
4. I mean, good leadership solves this
5. The reward is you get to keep your city, as for beating back a bigger player, that exists in worlds with morale on.
6. Moving resources to a city when a warehouse is running red is called activity and its pretty easy with the trade overview.

Edit: As an example of 2-3 literally has an entire discord channel with threads outlining different parts of the game.
 

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Back2Basics

Chiliarch
You're not wrong a lot of these are issues, the problem is the solutions are already out there.

1. Most of them quit tbf
2-3. Any good, contending alliance, should be teaching people who want to learn. As @Back2Basics said "game doesn't have enough players left to not teach anyone who wants to learn" the problem is most of them are content with accusing veterans of cheating.
4. I mean, good leadership solves this
5. The reward is you get to keep your city, as for beating back a bigger player, that exists in worlds with morale on.
6. Moving resources to a city when a warehouse is running red is called activity and its pretty easy with the trade overview.

Edit: As an example of 2-3 literally has an entire discord channel with threads outlining different parts of the game.


I will admit, we're probably the only alliance to do anything even remotely close to the amount of instructional material that our discord holds. It took me a few minutes to draft up each little subsection, and our players are better for it. Now our entire alliance is being punished for taking the time to learn. That's obviously not the point of this thread, but to say alliances don't want to take the time to teach is asinine, find better leaders who actually have a deeper understanding than tossing fliers at a 25 wall and saying "well done everyone."
 

Trist3

Chiliarch
The teaching stuff I'm with you, the last 2 worlds my team was half full with new players, forums were full with guides on just about anything and leaders kept DMs opened. I personally taught about 4 players the whole game basically and many more asked for tips and tricks on specific subjects along the way. Is it a disadvantage to have new players? sure we have to cuddle them into the game and make sure they're not directly on the front but also I'd like this game to be playable in a few years so it's worth the time. Besides any strong premade at this point has little to no trouble winning a server, might as well take in some newbies and teach them along the way, and they turn out to be some of the most loyal players anyways.
 

Seriko Lee

Lochagos
You're not wrong a lot of these are issues, the problem is the solutions are already out there.

1. Most of them quit tbf
2-3. Any good, contending alliance, should be teaching people who want to learn. As @Back2Basics said "game doesn't have enough players left to not teach anyone who wants to learn" the problem is most of them are content with accusing veterans of cheating.
4. I mean, good leadership solves this
5. The reward is you get to keep your city, as for beating back a bigger player, that exists in worlds with morale on.
6. Moving resources to a city when a warehouse is running red is called activity and its pretty easy with the trade overview.

Edit: As an example of 2-3 literally has an entire discord channel with threads outlining different parts of the game.
True but 6 is like for those that are helping newbies grow and whatever that has growth will be placed in a naval and will go to a selected location cause trade has limitations and my suggestion is for those MIA for while.
 
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