Dear Kings and Queens,
Please leave any feedback for our announcement
Next steps with Mobile Video Ads below. Please keep it constructive so we can pass along your thoughts. Thanks!
Your forge of Empires team
I am not a big complainer, but I think there was a bit of bait and switch on the whole ad thing. As many people have stated, when this announcement came out Inno stated that if you monetized, then you would be exempt from ads. I continued purchasing diamonds and event bonuses based on that assumption. I do not expect the game to be 100% free because a company has to make money at the end of the day.
HOWEVER, this past week I started getting the ad-flood that everyone is complaining about. Nobody at Inno will respond to why they opted to not honor the "you give us $$ and we won't blast ads" promise.
As someone else stated, I also went to look at the package to get rid of ads, but $28 was completely unacceptable. I noticed today that there is a new offer in the market for the no-ads "subscription at $3.99 per month, but with the caveat that it automatically renews each month. Putting in that automatic renewal is not acceptable, especially given the current climate of people over-paying for all kinds of subscriptions because they forget to stop the billing or opt out.
I do play some other games (ie. Supercell), and the Inno pricepoint is comparable to that, but I purchase it each month, and there are months I do opt out because I will not be active due to lack of updates/upgrades. The auto-renewal is old school AOL tactics and not acceptable today.
Additionally, if Inno is going to start this whole pay to remove ad thing, then they should be doing monthly upgrades as other games do (you want $$ we expect improvements). It's not a one-way street, and monthly "events" do not count as an upgrade, because there are parts to it which can only be realized through paying $$.
As a side note, maybe if Inno stopped paying all the $$ for all of the TV ads, they could afford to lower the price-points for people who actually play.