EQAULITY IN NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!

[DeletedUser16869]

"Intended manner"???? The Gospel according to Saint Fernshield?
Let me make sure I understand your point. Everybody is out of step except you?

I also believe the game was never intended to put HMA and Contemporary players in the same neighborhood. Thus whatever led to the current state of affairs was a defect that should be corrected.

From a technical point of view it isn't difficult to put the first 85 ranked players into a neighborhood followed by the next 85 in the next neighborhood followed by the next 85 and so forth. That way the 2nd ranked person in a world and the 4864th would never be put into the same neighborhood together. Clearly there are better matching algorithms out there then the one they are currently using which has caused so many people to quit or disconnect their cities. Back before the Aid algorithm I used to wonder why people disconnected their roads or deleted their entire cities. After being put in a neighborhood with Contemporary players it makes sense.

 

[DeletedUser16839]

I won't bother to post anymore, thought it was an intelligent exchange of ideas between matured adults. Pick apart anything you might not like to hear, I won't be returning to read your smug comments. I will continue to vocalize this issue on every gaming forum I can find. I will in fact use social media to alert potential future players.

@Eric LC - Just so it's clear, the disparity that causes me to shut a city down is 6 ages apart, you can view my presently shut down EMA city on Jaims. It is in a neighborhood with Contemporary Era players. These are not people "more advanced", these are people totally out of my league.

@Katwijk - If everyone accepts mediocrity and claims to enjoy it, then yes, I am proudly out of step.


You all have a wonderful day. Happy gaming.

 

[DeletedUser6172]

From a technical point of view it isn't difficult to put the first 85 ranked players into a neighborhood followed by the next 85 in the next neighborhood followed by the next 85 and so forth. That way the 2nd ranked person in a world and the 4864th would never be put into the same neighborhood together.

That approach would be disastrous for the folks who need blueprints and trading partners, so that they can progress.

 

[DeletedUser16869]

That approach would be disastrous for the folks who need blueprints and trading partners, so that they can progress.

As discussed in a previous post, the vast majority of trade in the game (and all of my personal trade) is through guild mates. In addition, the only BPs I need are from my own era, because those are the only ones I don't already have and have the goods to build. So having neighbors that are all at my own level of advancement would be ideal. I think it would also be ideal for most players. At the very least they should put the top 85 people in a world together, and then each neighborhood after that could be constructed such that a neighborhood spanned at most two eras. Once a neighborhood spanned more than 3 eras (due to player advancement) all of the neighborhoods would be rebuilt to span only two eras again.

 

[DeletedUser8428]

Having neighbors of only my own era would have seriously ed my progress through the game. It's been important to me to develop friendships from many neighborhoods, in addition to my own. And, if I had to depend solely on my guild I'd have been in real difficulty, as I have mostly been 2 eras ahead of the rest of my guild. Being stuck in a neighborhood where everyone is in the same is would be boring as well as tedious to navigate.

 

[DeletedUser16869]

My friend list is comprised almost entirely of former guild members, either guilds I left or people that left the guild I was in. In terms of my interaction with neighbors I will motivate/polish anyone who doesn't attack me, unless I have a quest which requires plunder and then I'll plunder. GvG and the single player Campaign is where I do my battling. So no, I do not believe that having a neighborhood of players that were all within one era of me would be a drawback. It would be a significant boon because:

1) My defenses would deter any but the most determined plunderers
2) I would be getting BPs from my current age and the two adjacent ages, the only ones where I need BPs
3) I could still plunder for the quests, and it would be a challenge not to lose units
4) I wouldn't have neighbors that left due to being plundered by people two ages ahead of them

But I suppose it's a little silly to keep discussing this when the proposal to fix this was already overwhelmingly supported by the players and on its way to the developers.

 

[Volodya]

We're told over and over that Inno is aware of the discontent with the merge system as it currently functions. Given that, and given that there's no easy fix that will satisfy everyone, is it unreasonable to ask that the developers give players some indication of when and how they are planning to address this? For the record, I've never been a victim of a bad merge myself, but I can easily see how being plundered multiple times daily can cause players to lose interest in this game. As has been suggested multiple times, I would support a limitation of the ability to plunder players if the difference in ages between attacker and defender exceeds a set number; probably that number should be two.

 

[DeletedUser]

The issue that is experienced by some is simply the inability to place certain chunks of players anywhere. It happens when a chunk of players is taken out from a previous hood because they no longer fit in there, but now there is no appropriate hood for them so the game simply places them in the next-best hood.

Is it possible that this happens because the constraints on hood size are too restrictive? Might it be better to have two hoods of only 30 people of similar technology instead of one hood of 60 mismatched people? Keep in mind that the "It's only two weeks" argument might apply equally to disadvantages that may be raised around an unusually small hood.

 

[DeletedUser2145]

I can't say for sure because we don't actually access the merging code, but I would assume so. Instead of placing chunks of players in a small hood (a single "chunk" can be a one person or even 20, I think) because they don't fit elsewhere, the system groups them with other players. It wouldn't classify a group of 20-30 players as a hood, the lowest I've seen is 70+ so it would likely put together a group of mismatched people in order to make a hood of 70+ as opposed to keeping 1 person or 10 or 20 or even 30 with similar tech tree progress alone.

I can't say which version would be better, both have their own disadvantages. I can only speak for myself and personally I'd rather be at the bottom of a mismatched hood than spending 2 weeks with almost no other players (and so this isn't taken out of context, I'm not saying the mismatched hoods are good, I'm just saying that imo they're better than the alternative of having no neighbors to interact with).

 

[DeletedUser16869]

I won't bother to post anymore, thought it was an intelligent exchange of ideas between matured adults. Pick apart anything you might not like to hear, I won't be returning to read your smug comments. I will continue to vocalize this issue on every gaming forum I can find. I will in fact use social media to alert potential future players.

@Eric LC - Just so it's clear, the disparity that causes me to shut a city down is 6 ages apart, you can view my presently shut down EMA city on Jaims. It is in a neighborhood with Contemporary Era players. These are not people "more advanced", these are people totally out of my league.

@Katwijk - If everyone accepts mediocrity and claims to enjoy it, then yes, I am proudly out of step.


You all have a wonderful day. Happy gaming.

Developers take note: A failure to fix serious problems in an application doesn't just cause players to quit using the application, sometimes it inspires them to start social media crusades to prevent future users from using it. If a problem inspires such hatred that users are inclined to destroy the very product you are creating, perhaps you should take that as a sign that the issue in question is top priority. Please fix the logic that causes neighborhoods to be created which span 8 Ages. If you cannot do this, please add logic to prevent players from attacking other players that are more than 2 ages below them.

- - - Updated - - -

Is it possible that this happens because the constraints on hood size are too restrictive? Might it be better to have two hoods of only 30 people of similar technology instead of one hood of 60 mismatched people? Keep in mind that the "It's only two weeks" argument might apply equally to disadvantages that may be raised around an unusually small hood.

Based on what I've seen in practice (generally neighborhoods span 2 or 3 ages, but occasionally span 8 of them) I would speculate that the people who are mismatched are the remainders... people who didn't fit once all of the other neighborhoods were created, and then were lumped into a single neighborhood together. There are plenty of ways to address this, the simplest solution would be to rebuild all neighborhoods starting with the most advanced players and ending with the least advanced ones.

 

[DeletedUser3556]

they're better than the alternative of having no neighbors to interact with).

That sentiment in particular is why we have the current system in place that keeps neighborhoods near 80 over just about anything else. There are plenty of old posts in this forum of players complaining that they were stuck with less than 20 people for months in the old system. Boredom killed the game for a lot of people back then. Special events aren't much fun when you have no neighbors to interact with, especially the Easter event where the more people that can interact with your town the better off you'll be.

 

[DeletedUser3556]

Developers take note: A failure to fix serious problems in an application doesn't just cause players to quit using the application, sometimes it inspires them to start social media crusades to prevent future users from using it. If a problem inspires such hatred that users are inclined to destroy the very product you are creating, perhaps you should take that as a sign that the issue in question is top priority. Please fix the logic that causes neighborhoods to be created which span 8 Ages. If you cannot do this, please add logic to prevent players from attacking other players that are more than 2 ages below them.

Games been out for more than 2 years and in that time Fernshield won't be the first or last to complain on some online forum about the game. Guess what, the games still here and still going strong. The developers aren't going to change their game because a few people don't like it as it is. Those players can go play something else or make their own game the way they want it to be.

 

[DeletedUser16869]

Games been out for more than 2 years and in that time Fernshield won't be the first or last to complain on some online forum about the game. Guess what, the games still here and still going strong. The developers aren't going to change their game because a few people don't like it as it is. Those players can go play something else or make their own game the way they want it to be.

Again, the fact that the game exists isn't enough to say it is successful. The only reasonable measure of success or failure with regards to addressing an issue is how well the game would do with the issue fixed relative to how well it is doing with the issue unresolved. Developers (good ones anyway) change their products constantly in response to feedback. If you've played League of Legends over the years (which I believe is still the top played game on the internet) you'll see they are constantly patching it. Same thing with Hearthstone and Clash of Clans or any other good game I've played. The ones I've played where developers did not address frequently mentioned issues didn't stick around, because the player base got frustrated and left.

 

[DeletedUser2145]

Can we kindly drop the whole "the game's gonna die if this isn't fixed" thing? It's an old, beaten up argument that adds literally nothing to a discussion while giving the impression that you're giving ultimatums, in the style of f this isn't fixed I'll leave. It's the number one thing why these discussions don't go anywhere and cannot be productive. Proper feedback gets replaced with "yeah, this game is over if this isn't fixed because it makes it clear the devs don't care about their players" type of comments and you can't blame the developers for not taking those seriously. They keep doing updates after updates, fixing issues, adding new content, improving old content and all of that is done because they've considered all proper feedback and addressed what they considered to be possible to address.

You may not realize it yourself but you're doing more damage to your opinion by keep repeating that over and over again when all it says is "well usually if the game doesn't address issues then it's going to prosper" --- but not always and the game does address issues, lots of them, so just because it hasn't addressed yours yet it doesn't mean it's going to the grave.

What works and what doesn't work, when does the merge go as planned and when doesn't it, what are ways to improve this and what shouldn't be done (so it's not messed up even more). That would be proper feedback.

 

[DeletedUser]

That sentiment in particular is why we have the current system in place that keeps neighborhoods near 80 over just about anything else. There are plenty of old posts in this forum of players complaining that they were stuck with less than 20 people for months in the old system. Boredom killed the game for a lot of people back then. Special events aren't much fun when you have no neighbors to interact with, especially the Easter event where the more people that can interact with your town the better off you'll be.

The Easter event is before my time, so I'll just have to take your word for it. I haven't witnessed any significant neighborhood interaction since I first joined, so apart from some special event behaviors, I don't see the point. I've yet to see any participation in neighborhood chat on my world (not that I check frequently), so what's the big deal? There's plenty of interaction in my guild.

 

[DeletedUser16869]

I cannot fathom why people don't see bad neighborhood merges as a major factor holding back the game. I've only seen two myself, but that is more than enough to convince me it is a problem. My current Contemporary->HMA neighborhood is only a week old and already 4 people have quit. There are 8 players who still attack me daily and I'm in Progressive so I can only imagine what the HMA players are going through.

So perhaps a better way to look at it would be to imagine that the issue was already fixed. Would anyone advocate for going back to a system where Contemporary and HMA players are put in the same neighbor and the Contemporary players are allowed to attack the HMA players at will? Because while people seem divided on how bad this problem is, can anyone honestly defend neighborhoods spanning 8 eras as a good thing?

 

[DeletedUser8152]

I don't think a lot of people are arguing that it isn't a problem, or that it shouldn't be fixed. (There are certainly some folks who like it as it is, but the majority of players on the forum voted to fix it).

People are arguing that it isn't the end of the world, and the fact that the game has been working so far is powerful evidence for that.

Why the devs haven't chosen to do something about it yet, that I can't say.

 

[DeletedUser16869]

Well I decided to interview some of the lower ranked people in my current hood. I am 36th and the first one I heard back from was 41st. He said he was attacked more in the last week than in the previous 5 months. The second one was 50th and said she was attacked daily by 15 different players. She also said that the top player in our neighborhood had 7 million contemporary tower points. Both seemed like they were in pretty good spirits despite being attacked, but I imagine the ones who aren't are the ones who'll never write back. I'd still like to hear back from an HMA or LMA player, if I hear back I'll put the reply here.

 

[DeletedUser2145]

Of course a player who is in a hood with players way ahead of them won't feel great, of course they'll be attacked more frequently, of course it can be frustrating, and of course it's an issue. The point is all of that is already established and known and there's no need in repeating all of that all over again. Instead we should be focused on discussing or presenting ideas which can resolve the issue. We submitted a proposal for this already a bit less than 3 months ago, it can be found HERE and it asks from the devs that hoods have at most 2 ages present. Whether or not that is implemented, or when it's going to be implemented is not something that can be answered by anyone.

If that doesn't seem like a sufficient enough idea, or in case it's not implemented, then put forward a new, fresher idea. With so many folks interested in the same topic you could move mountains, yet all discussions eventually end the same way, by not doing anything and only venting. That's why we have so many individual threads on the same topic, most folks either don't check the previous posts or don't care to get involved with a proper discussion for ideas on how to resolve the issue, they vent in a post and then almost never return to the forum at all. Yes, not a very good observation and could definitely be put together in a more professional manner, but really, focus on ideas is all that's needed here. Would preventing player A from attacking player B who is 3 ages lower than them suffice? Does that seem receptive from the posts other have made? Then put that in a proposal and let's get it rolling.

Just keep in mind what's already part of the game and don't make the idea personal but make it general. If the proposal is to limit plundering then it won't get any support because you already have the needs to prevent plundering, time your productions and be there to collect them. You can't find the plundering an issue but not the attack, those two go together and if you're only worried about plundering that tells me you don't really mind the age discrepancy, you just mind getting plundered which can happen regardless of the ages present in your hood.

ETA: It should be noted though, it's simply easier to complain and that's why folks are vocal on the topic, there are a lot of players who don't want hoods to become more selective --- see the results of that poll (barely passed the mark with 0.44% votes) and read the responses there. I can't say which group is larger based on a single post, but just because the topic is all over the forum it doesn't mean a change will turn the world bright and pink. Just as the issue may be driving away some players, changes also frustrate players and pushes them to quit the game.

 

[DeletedUser]

Although I've said it before, I don't think this has been beat to death yet: When you tell people to collect on time, you'll telling them that they have to play according to the game's schedule. That's not an attribute of a fun game; schedules are for work, not play. So you can say it, and it obviously works for many people, but understand that it legitimately detracts from the game for many people.

Perhaps if Inno were to make it clear during the sign up process that this particular game is best played several times a week, with at least some consecutive days (or hours), and people only interested in once or twice a week playing should be referred to one of their other games. (Are any of Inno's other games suitable for once a week play?)