this is the note I sent to Inno a while back:
Hello,
this is not for the Mods or even the Devs but rather toward the Direction and Management team.
I certainly am no-one within your world, spending my career in the medical professions. Non the less, as a long time active consumer of Forge of Empires, I feel I must voice my concern over the direction the game appears to be on now.
This last change to GE has really been obviously destructive in the community - no, not the perceived difficulty or the change in bonuses but rather the rewards.
Eliminating diamonds and buildings (replaced with fragments). but wait a minute this is just the current complaint out of a constant stream, right?
No, the accumulation of changes has become crystal clear, lets take a count:
1. The introduction of fragments of rewards (long time ago)
2. The introduction of watching ads (then removed)
3. The introduction of ongoing monthly charges (forge plus)
4. the introduction of pay for event rewards ($15 event pass)
5. the dilution of event prize (max level is now for purchase to obtain)
6. the reintroduction of ads
7. the upcoming dilution of the paid event pass to several different levels of cost
I am only pointing out the obvious things and briefly; mind you
But on the reverse side of all this degradation-of-prize and continuous harassments for payment, what else do we see?
Content has become dubious, repetitive, and non-exciting. all the space ages, since the first, are literally copy and pastes with different graphics. the last great building of any real importance was Space Carrier and that is questionable. The community has been begging for fixes and changes to guild versus guild for literally a decade with little to no effort in response. gBg was a good idea the first year but has since totally broken the game as a means for players to perversely and extremely boost their player score with little effort. anyway, you get the point.
Thus now that the stage is set, my question is then - what encouragement do players actually get now to continue in the game, given this decline in content and increase in harassments?
I will give you an example - I used to go to McDonalds becuase the cheap cost of their food was a fair price for the convience of their low quality. Now McDonalds has doubled the price of there same low quality food - why would I pay $5 for a $2 1/8th pound cheeseburger? makes no logical sense for a consumer and, as such, look at McDonalds now - just announced the largest layoff in their corperate history...
You have a long dedicated group of core players; we are adults, we are professionals, many of us are high net-worth and thus, have rewarded FoE with millions in revenue over the years -- and as such, we are intelligent enough to know when a good thing is ending and their is no value left.
Please don't end the game like this
no verbal reply is necessary, we will get our answer by seeing your actions - I hope it will work out for all parties thats why I write...
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Its a sad shame to see such disregard for your customer base but I guess nothing lasts forever...
