Yeah - it's now "
you like GE (hybrid design, 1 - 4 & 5), or you need to LEARN to like it".
Basically, it's eat what's served for dinner, regardless.
Inno's betting the rapid changes they're making to dump tons of
blue juice bottles on you, reset the probability on when you play GE 1 - 4, you get more
BLUE city defense stuff (ritual flames) from your TOR, etc. They are quietly attempting to rapidly change the underpinnings of the game to make up for the lost time they neglected City Defense (to wit:
@Pericles the Lion ,
@Friggin Unexpected Jeff point). I'm seeing
BLUE-centric buildings a lot more all over the game now - AD daily 6 and AC auctioning (
Globe Fountain is popular now!!), Daily Challenges, ToR idols, event filler "junk", etc.
Historically - it wasn't tunnel vision though- there are NO
BLUE VENUES - except city defense. There are 7 or 8
RED venues. It's no wonder that with limited land to drop buildings on, people go with the
RED ones!! Not rocket science to play a "drop high value buildings that everyone covets..." game.
If you're in doubt, look at how much
RED Venue STUFF goes for in competitive bidding situations in the AD.
Inno did a 180 on us, making
BLUE important in a
RED designed game.
You can "not embrace" now, not embrace ever, but... new generations of players will think this is the "norm" for GE, and only us veterans will know the real story of why it's been done this way...and how we got here.
Inno's grand experiment. Before it's really called a design and implementation victory for them, let's see who's embracing GE 5 multiple months from now, when the novelty and this experiment has tried to secure a place in the game, and attempts to becomes "mainstream".