Feedback for Guild Expedition.. Level 5

[Graviton]

The top players won't stick around without the F2P players. There's no point in spending money to be better than everyone when everyone is spending just as much as you. If spending money ceases to have benefit, people won't do it

I don't see the logic here. Assuming the flawed premise that F2P players are leaving in droves, those who are competitive enough to spend money will still be competitive. You seem to imply that the only reason people are spending money is to beat up weaker players, which can't really be called competition.

 

[Dursland]

Assuming the flawed premise that F2P players are leaving in droves

How is it flawed? One only needs to compare active users in Zorskog to active users in Dilmun.

The playerbase has shrank significantly. Dilmun is a much smaller world and plays differently than Zorskog did.

Not to mention how many 7+day inactive people I've removed off my list so far, I've lost track now. It's like 2-4 every week.

 

[Graviton]

How is it flawed? One only needs to compare active users in Zorskog to active users in Dilmun.

The playerbase has shrank significantly. Dilmun is a much smaller world and plays differently than Zorskog did.

Not to mention how many 7+day inactive people I've removed off my list so far, I've lost track now. It's like 2-4 every week.

It's flawed because none of us has access to actual numbers. So maybe flawed isn't the right word, but accurate or informed sure aren't either. We're just guessing.

 

[Graviton]

F2P brings diversity to the game and most if not all players start like that. It has nothing to do with beating players up.

"Diversity" in this context = somebody I can beat 'cause I'm paying money to beat them, so I can always beat them. Sounds like beating up to me.

 

[DreadfulCadillac]

It's flawed because none of us has access to actual numbers. So maybe flawed isn't the right word, but accurate or informed sure aren't either. We're just guessing.

anecdotal would probably be the best word to fit the situation IMO

 

[Pericles the Lion]

How is it flawed? One only needs to compare active users in Zorskog to active users in Dilmun.

The playerbase has shrank significantly. Dilmun is a much smaller world and plays differently than Zorskog did.

Not to mention how many 7+day inactive people I've removed off my list so far, I've lost track now. It's like 2-4 every week.

I just went through the friends lists on my 4 GE diamond farm cities (3 in IA, one in Indy). Unlike my main city, where I cull the FL every week, I've been lazy keeping up with these other cities. I haven't cleaned these lists up for a month, or more. Out of a total of 487 friends there were 18 that showed inactive for 7+ days. 17 of the 18 were in the bottom quartile, only one was ranked in the top quartile. Tbh, this doesn't seem out of the ordinary.

 

[thathurts]

Why the false sense of entitlement though? You're not required to complete GEV - it's certainly not an obligation. I ignore cultural settlements, and likewise, if you hate GEV this much, you can ignore GEV

who ever at inno that came up whit this ge level 5 is a twat

 

[Angel.]

have finished it 5 times now was able to fight all the way to 11 but could not get that 1 but only left 6 to nego so not bad

 

[Graviton]

So now you just tell people what they are thinking too ? How does diversity = bully in your world. Let's make Tea Cup = Car while we are changing the meanings of words to something completely unrelated.

Good grief, calm down. I didn't tell anybody what they're thinking. I must've touched a nerve.

But please, tell us exactly what would prompt paying players to leave if there are no free players, other than viewing free players as easy targets. I'm all ears.

 

[DreadfulCadillac]

I've got the new buildings! Great efficiency, great benefits, great everything. Well done INNO! (Well except for the diamond nerf)

 

[Graviton]

Targets for what ? I don't play GVG , Dabble a little in PVP Arena but not often. I enjoy GBG and the strategy and corralling everyone together as a team , it's fun. I honestly have no clue what you are talking about.

I asked for a clarification of your assertion about "diversity" and what that has to do with paying or not paying.

This is a game and I like the people in it and with a solid F2P base you get a wide section of folks on here. I know two doctors , a cop , bunches of teachers , retirees and everything in between , it's a good environment.

That's great but none of that has anything to do with whether a player is paying to play or not, nor why paying players would quit if there were no free players. But okay.

 

[Emberguard]

How is it flawed? One only needs to compare active users in Zorskog to active users in Dilmun.

The playerbase has shrank significantly. Dilmun is a much smaller world and plays differently than Zorskog did.

Regardless of whether I agree or disagree on how the player growth in general is doing, the premise you're working on is flawed for a lot of reasons. When the game was newer people used to have multiple cities and keep up with all of them. Nowadays it's far more likely you'll have a single world and end up abandoning additional cities. If you do that you're probably going to keep the city you've put the most work into building up

Dilmun is 8 months old. Zorksog is 6 years old. The oldest worlds are the ones that would naturally contain the most established players simply because newer worlds haven't been around long enough to grow to the same size. So I would be far more concerned if the older worlds had the smaller communities instead of the other way around. Dilmun being smaller as a isolated observation on its own, really doesn't tell us anything we shouldn't already be expecting if the established players are staying in the game

You've also got to take into account in the time between Zorksog and Dilmun you need enough players to maintain an additional 4 worlds, in addition to players being stretched between another 6 or 7 Ages across 29 worlds and replacing anyone that leaves during that time.

To get a proper perspective on what the playerbase growth is doing it would need a much broader analysis to know whether it's actually growing or shrinking given the more Ages and Worlds that are added the more diluted the playerbase is naturally going to feel anyway. A thousand players actively playing on 5 worlds each would feel far more active than the exact same thousand players on 1 world each evenly spread out across 5 worlds (as then you'd have 200 per world)

 

[Dursland]

It's a shame so many are hating on GE5 instead of thinking long term with stacking blue stats to beat it.

I'm already at 130/150 when I had almost nothing before. Can beat encounter 65 by fighting. Gained a little recently so will try encounter 66 this week.

 

[Dursland]

In my world the top in the league is almost double of professional. this is not a good stat to see. It shows a split in the customer market now. It's the free players that try to get to professional so it shows that many just aren't playing the event that much.

As usual, Dilmun is heavy on the spenders. I'm using tools and have bought coins, still not in Professional. It's 93k to get there, and 308k for gold.

Edit: I think we are both in wrong thread? lol, just realized.

 

[Darkest.Knight]

I'm playing in Sinerania, it takes 85,675 to make Professional.

 

[DoubleJ]

Good grief, calm down. I didn't tell anybody what they're thinking. I must've touched a nerve.

But please, tell us exactly what would prompt paying players to leave if there are no free players, other than viewing free players as easy targets. I'm all ears.

Fewer players over all. We only have one top guild with 80 members now. Dozens of billion+ players have left in the last six months. Of course that's before GE5, but as I've mentioned GE5 is just the newest iteration of the pay2play model Inno has implemented. Free players fill guild treasuries just as well as paid players since respectable guilds give full boost for guilds goods buildings. A free hover account is as fast or faster than a paid SAJM account in GBG. Free players provide camaraderie and other voices in guild and world chat. And also, yes, paid players with 3000% attack love stomping them. But that's such a minor part of the game, one plunder opportunity a day, PVP Arena penalizes you for targeting players over AI, and basically nothing else. The greater issue is that without the solid base of the pyramid (F2P) the whole scheme collapses because there's nothing holding up to paid players

 

[qaccy]

Free players provide camaraderie and other voices in guild and world chat.

What, paying players can't do this? The only difference between the paying playerbase and the non-paying playerbase, if we're going to evaluate them both as a whole, is that one spends and one doesn't. Nothing else about playstyle or...personality? is going to universally apply to only one or the other.

As far as monetization goes, Inno's not doing anything new. They're keeping up with the times, and there's a difference. The game's always been monetized, and depending on who you ask, it's always been 'pay to win' (the most jaded ones, like you, will say 'pay to play' even though that's categorically false). Inno just can't have the same approach to monetization as they did back in the early 2010s because both the game and the players are different now than they were back then. And for the record, no, I don't think GE5 is monetized. I don't really see how that could be argued unless you're also going to argue that something like GBG is monetized as well, since both features can require just as much investment in order to succeed, with the only difference being the military bonuses used.

Anyway, just cleared GE5 for the 4th week in a row. Portraits delayed me getting both the Feathered Serpent and a chain element, but I got a GRF, DSW, and of course the Forgotten Temple! Still haven't negotiated a single encounter. Tested the waters with auto battle this week, and cleared all the way up through 76 with it. The last 4 are probably going to remain manual-only for a while, but we'll see!

Also, SBCs continue to be the most active GB across my guild. Deal is still basically ignored, and after actually checking, I can see that most of my guild actually doesn't have Virgo either. Including myself, there're only 12 of them. All of them were built prior to GE5 and none of them have gotten any levels recently. I suspect most if not all of my guildmates are fighting as far as they can and then negotiating the rest, rather than opting to roll the dice with Virgo for the more challenging encounters. It's nice to have some battles where Virgo can actually be significant, though!

 

[DoubleJ]

What, paying players can't do this? The only difference between the paying playerbase and the non-paying playerbase, if we're going to evaluate them both as a whole, is that one spends and one doesn't. Nothing else about playstyle or...personality? is going to universally apply to only one or the other.

As far as monetization goes, Inno's not doing anything new. They're keeping up with the times, and there's a difference. The game's always been monetized, and depending on who you ask, it's always been 'pay to win' (the most jaded ones, like you, will say 'pay to play' even though that's categorically false). Inno just can't have the same approach to monetization as they did back in the early 2010s because both the game and the players are different now than they were back then. And for the record, no, I don't think GE5 is monetized. I don't really see how that could be argued unless you're also going to argue that something like GBG is monetized as well, since both features can require just as much investment in order to succeed, with the only difference being the military bonuses used.

Anyway, just cleared GE5 for the 4th week in a row. Portraits delayed me getting both the Feathered Serpent and a chain element, but I got a GRF, DSW, and of course the Forgotten Temple! Still haven't negotiated a single encounter. Tested the waters with auto battle this week, and cleared all the way up through 76 with it. The last 4 are probably going to remain manual-only for a while, but we'll see!

Also, SBCs continue to be the most active GB across my guild. Deal is still basically ignored, and after actually checking, I can see that most of my guild actually doesn't have Virgo either. Including myself, there're only 12 of them. All of them were built prior to GE5 and none of them have gotten any levels recently. I suspect most if not all of my guildmates are fighting as far as they can and then negotiating the rest, rather than opting to roll the dice with Virgo for the more challenging encounters. It's nice to have some battles where Virgo can actually be significant, though!

Most players don't pay. So it's not that they can't do it, it's that there aren't enough of them to do it. No one likes a conversation with themselves.

Inno has recently: added a premium track to all events, gated the best things behind that premium track, started charging $15 for that premium track, added intrusive ads anywhere they'll fit, dramatically reduced opportunities to get free premium currency, and required spending to complete "features" in a timely manner. To regularly complete GE5, nearly all players will require diamonds now and for the foreseeable future (either extra turns for negotiations, or reviving between waves). Most people can gain more diamonds from a season of GBG than they spend, the same is not true for GE. The only way to get away from spending diamonds will be after massive boosts to city defense, which are only available in a realistic timeframe for people who buy premium buildings.

Anecdotally, there was one player who built a SBC in my guild, and none of my swap threads have seen a single one. Some players already had them at the 60-80 range, but most people are still focusing on the trinity, guild goods, TA, HC, and BG.

 

[DoubleJ]

The reason why this works is time can replace money in the old model to put F2P on a more equal footing. This attracts new players , paying players want new players. The math isn't really that hard Inno.

Exactly. The main reason I spend is because I didn't want to make diamond worlds or farm/push accounts. Which I know are against the rules but which I also know many players do.

 

[qaccy]

Most players don't pay. So it's not that they can't do it, it's that there aren't enough of them to do it. No one likes a conversation with themselves.

There're still plenty of non-paying players regardless. Or at least, Inno regards the playerbase as healthy enough to continue updating the game.

Inno has recently: added a premium track to all events, gated the best things behind that premium track, started charging $15 for that premium track, added intrusive ads anywhere they'll fit, dramatically reduced opportunities to get free premium currency, and required spending to complete "features" in a timely manner. To regularly complete GE5, nearly all players will require diamonds now and for the foreseeable future (either extra turns for negotiations, or reviving between waves). Most people can gain more diamonds from a season of GBG than they spend, the same is not true for GE. The only way to get away from spending diamonds will be after massive boosts to city defense, which are only available in a realistic timeframe for people who buy premium buildings.

Like I said, Inno's keeping up with the times. The way the game was monetized in the past is neither attractive nor significant in 2023. All of those old methods are still present, but players today want more to be able to spend on. However, the core concept is the same, and you said it yourself. Spending allows players to do things more easily and/or faster (or as you said, 'in a timely manner'). Costing money now instead of diamonds is, again, keeping up with the times. Something like the Key Master's Workshop is a modern take on something like the Film Studio or any of the other old premium buildings that none of us even know the names of anymore because they haven't been relevant for years. Paying players don't want those old buildings. They want something that actually matters in today's game, and Inno's delivered on that. Still nothing that's 'required' though. Just because it's something you particularly want doesn't mean that it's a bad thing that it requires spending. It means they added something that's actually worth spending on, for the players who choose to do so.

Your mention of diamond use in GE does bring to mind all the complaints about how 'hard' GE4 was when it was first added as well. A lot of the same complaints back then, actually. Diamonds being 'required' for negotiations because of how 'expensive' it was, and the units being 'unbeatable' with their boost levels. Hindsight makes those complaints look pretty silly now, doesn't it?

Also, there's a lot of overlap between GE and GBG participation. The same players making diamonds from GBG are also going to make diamonds in GE, because they most likely aren't using many diamonds in either. The players using diamonds in GE are the ones who're less developed and don't have the resources necessary to avoid spending diamonds, meaning they probably also lack the resources to gain a lot from GBG.

Side note: I think we've done a good job at making this feedback thread absolutely useless with how derailed it's become.