Stop the Plundering INNO !!!!!

[DeletedUser30900]

Of course FoE has always had a PvP element and I don't see it going anywhere but the City Shield, hood change of Jan 2017 and PvP locked to tech all indicate a pretty clear direction away from its original state towards, well, something else whatever you want to call it, doesn't really matter because it shows they have in fact changed PvP, how far they're willing to go and how any of it would affect revenue though will obviously be up to them to consider and figure out.

They also added AM, Voyager, and KD. They added plunderable sign too. Instead of focusing on giving sheep better life, Inno actually takes care both sides at the same time. I guess you should learn a little bit from them.

 

[Triopoly Champion]

They also added AM, Voyager, and KD. They added plunderable sign too. Instead of focusing on giving sheep better life, Inno actually takes care both sides at the same time. I guess you should learn a little bit from them.

When my neighbor has 1 more rogue than me, I know my winning chance is almost 100%. Perfect individual to be plundered.

 

[Klondike Kat the Faire]

how many buildings do i need to delete...

i spend MY time and ENERGY getting the santa set, and all that happenes is it get plundered, I spent the time and enerygy, for some derpo's to get the rewadrs.....

NO...i'm not playing this game just to give away my stuff.

so i deleted my santa set, i deleted my masquarade ball....bla bla bla.

Please take plundering out of the game. it makes me angry, and it makes others angry.
why should we play a game that makes us angry....i abuse players that plunder me, and soon i will get a ban from it, but i dont care.

you make a game that makes ppl angry,what kind of derpos do that....INNO

FOE should make a great building or other building that could be leveled that sets traps in your city, and every time someone plunders you, there’s a chance they fall in a trap and has to give up the same items they were trying to plunder...a higher level great building increases the chance of the plunderer falling in the trap. Make it available in an earlier age, not necessarily bronze age. Why not??

 

[Agent327]

FOE should make a great building or other building that could be leveled that sets traps in your city, and every time someone plunders you, there’s a chance they fall in a trap and has to give up the same items they were trying to plunder...a higher level great building increases the chance of the plunderer falling in the trap. Make it available in an earlier age, not necessarily bronze age. Why not??

Maybe cause you are not supposed to suggest anything that changes plundering? Does that sound like a good reason to you?

 

[DeletedUser31882]

I kept putting this off so I could dedicate appropriate time to it. Of course, I kept putting it at the end of my queue, which is bad planning. Do the big thing first, otherwise the small and unexpected things eat up all the time.

So, yeah, as usual lack of data makes much of any conversation pretty an exercise in futility really because none of us really have much of any data to go on, just limited and anecdotal data and experience with other games as you pointed out. I came from WoW prior to here where they have PvP and PvE servers, of course you can still PvP on the PvE servers it's just more of a choice. They've been around for over 17 years so clearly it can be done in that case anyway, of course it's a subscription game too but who knows how that plays into it all relative to a f2p/p2w game like this.

Who spends the money and why and is that all that matters? Who knows, aint my company.

One fact is less than 10% of FoE players are paying players
@6:18

Former WoW player as well here. Did the PvE server, but enjoyed the instanced and open-world areas of PvP. Especially since there was other incentives other than 'beat the other guy'.

I'm sure PvP plays a part in player retention, just like GvG may or may not give long-term players incentive to keep playing if they hit content cap or start burning out on leveling their Arc/whatever. Due to the interlocking of variables in FoE, I'm sure we can argue PvP has an impact on player retention as well (be it a plunderer or farmville player).

I'm always interested in the finer details, like who spends and why, because that can sway(or even put to bed) the opinion arguments we have here in the forums over it. Assuming I'm magically a product manager (or whatever appropriate title/job responsibility)if 90% of the paying 10% are farmville players, mitigating player lose from plundering would become a priority to maximize retention and/or increase payer conversion. Replace farmville with plundering and same result.

Of course, the problem is how to metric that or if the 10% is equally divided, then balancing turns into a playground game of seesaw.

As far as this game goes the ones I see spending a ton of money are new worlders who clearly have no interest in camping rather getting through the tech tree right to FE to get arc and to also get to the AA map to start dominating GvG in order to be on top of the leaderboard and quickly leveling the guild, not sure how much PvP plays into any of their spending decisions.

I'm sure any potential change made to the game, PvP or otherwise, is scrutinized through the lense of the bottom line but I'm not going let that hold me back in terms of suggestions because that's for them to figure out not me.

Based on your observations and the videos, competition spikes spending. Sometimes that competition is something akin to what Algona described once as "The Player versus Inno", others view ranking points as important to dominate, others still just like having the power to dominate others around them (GvG/Hood). I'd say plundering becomes a huge secondary support action to many of those competitions. Raid enemy neighbors, less resources for enemies in GvG. Resources gained from neighbors are spent on increasing personal infrastructure (GBs, GvG/Guild, etc). Accumulate is the game and money accelerates the process.

Hence why I attempt to being neutral on PvP and making small notions of support to those who cry foul of being pillaged. Usually I demonize people who yell "give me what I want or no money!", but that's capitalism in way. The one with the gold makes the rules.

The CEO and creator Hendrik Klindworth and former lead game designer Anwar Dalati both consider FoE more of a city builder game than a PvP game really, not sure how that primary philosophy plays into it all.

@4:45 "...FoE has a more city building aspect, it's not so much about fighting and conquering..."

@2:37 "...FoE is primarily some would say a city builder..." @4:38 "...because this is not a PvP game..."

The CEO interview did a good job pointing out how PvP is a money maker, but isn't their genre focus so they can extend the demographic.

The Anwar video slam dunks that point home by focusing on how quests are a focus to open wallets.

I wonder if the poor ability to metric spending originating from GvG or PvP ambitions is why GvG has been abandoned in favor of more quests and content. If Inno can easily metric increased sales every time they pop out a historical quest... Huh. Wonder what they learned from the recent gauntlet of Historical quests.

Other Anwar Video commentary:
~To bad they did away with the riddle events (or have they? I'm still under a year old in FoE years). Then again, that could just be good for a quick flux in forum goers/searches and nothing more.

~Daily pressure for a player. Makes sense with most collection times revolving on 4/8/24hrs. Plunder may just be another way to pressure players to play daily. May support the idea of Big dawgs being able to nip the little ones to encourage them to play more.

~Fun history of event design and their iterations/progressions. Especially the revenue comparisons of Easter/summer. I like numbers and graphs.

~'No P2W event', After experiencing some other games that ARE p2w events, yeah FoE is a saint. I'll probably use that more if we get more smart complaints about Inno designing things to pressure diamond use.

~"Can we really give away this much stuff for free?" 'I dunno, let's try it' I laughed. Anwar seems (seemed...) like a cool guy.

~"Familiarity breeds contempt" in relation to quest events. Yeah, I see that reflected in some forum posts. Again, I wonder what the revenue metric graphs look like for those events. Why didn't I become an accountant?

~"If we had put in a 10,000 ceiling on spending we would have lost some money"... I really hope that wasn't CC fraud and just a heck of a whale catch. To combat The abyss, I'll assume a whale. I also want to be a leech servant take-a-loan friend to said whale.

Of course FoE has always had a PvP element and I don't see it going anywhere but the City Shield, hood change of Jan 2017 and PvP locked to tech all indicate a pretty clear direction away from its original state towards, well, something else whatever you want to call it, doesn't really matter because it shows they have in fact changed PvP, how far they're willing to go and how any of it would affect revenue though will obviously be up to them to consider and figure out.

I stand by my initial assessment of the PvP tech lock: Calculated timing to harvest the early payer conversions. The question is if they can metric spending patterns with each of these changes. The City Shield would be a heck of thing to track due to the innate silver drain of building up the tavern infrastructure to sustain the shield. The hood change seems more manageable and I wonder if that factored into the PvP tech lock. There I go creating theories with limited data. Intent behind these changes would be a huge help. Were they done to fit a game dev's vision of a more balanced PvP system? Were they calculated moves to allow them to manage the variables for their financial metrics? Maybe a bit of both? *shrugs*

Edit: Derp. Meant to add this in, but goofed.

They also added AM, Voyager, and KD. They added plunderable sign too. Instead of focusing on giving sheep better life, Inno actually takes care both sides at the same time. I guess you should learn a little bit from them.

Atlantis and Voyager would be neutered in a care bear server. A strong argument that balancing 'challenge' servers would be a significant challenge. Unless they just turned them into off-shoot DTs or other aid/economic boosting GBs.

Regardless, now I want to know the prevalence of the pillaging GBs and if Inno tracked/tracks demographics in association with them. If those GBs were a wallet infusion, then I wonder if we can expect to see more of them or if they will add any more defensive GBs to test that wallet market.

If competition breeds money, I'd say that is strengthens my resolve that a 'carebear' and other 'challenge' servers may be a potential wallet opener. Then again, if 90% of their paying customers are mobile... Simple may be better. Based on what the CEO was saying, sounds like Inno was in a good position and not overreaching their resources (my interpretation of him, anyways). Now I want to know if new servers are opened for an expanding player base or as a way to create competition and thus capitalize on that initial money infusion.

Anywho. Pillaging. Right.

Since they've already violated the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule, the question becomes - What was broken? I think that's the critical question to have answered to address balancing.

 

[DeletedUser15539]

We've all made assumptions about how we want to play the game. Sometimes what we're doing works out, and we keep on doing it. And sometimes we guessed wrong big time, and we realize that changes need to be made. I can empathize with players who made bad assumptions and choose to change tack. What I cannot empathize with are players who made erroneous assumptions about their game play, and then expect everyone else to change to accommodate them.

 

[DeletedUser33665]

how many buildings do i need to delete...

i spend MY time and ENERGY getting the santa set, and all that happenes is it get plundered, I spent the time and enerygy, for some derpo's to get the rewadrs.....

NO...i'm not playing this game just to give away my stuff.

so i deleted my santa set, i deleted my masquarade ball....bla bla bla.

Please take plundering out of the game. it makes me angry, and it makes others angry.
why should we play a game that makes us angry....i abuse players that plunder me, and soon i will get a ban from it, but i dont care.

you make a game that makes ppl angry,what kind of derpos do that....INNO

As a leader of my guild I've seen many members leave and quit the game because of plundering, Inno you are losing lots of diamond sales becase of a part of the game most people would like you to get rid of.

 

[DeletedUser30900]

As a leader of my guild I've seen many members leave and quit the game because of plundering, Inno you are losing lots of diamond sales becase of a part of the game most people would like you to get rid of.

of course you are representing the most people Let's say you are, the only thing I can see from your city in M is that you either didn't spend a penny or you spend them all wrong. The group you represent cant play game right, not spending money and don't want to get plundered by the paying players. so I don't know why would inno care about that at all.

 

[DeletedUser35475]

[QUOTE="icarusethan, post: 207111, member: 3090 The group you represent cant play game right, not spending money and don't want to get plundered by the paying players. .[/QUOTE]

How do you play this game wrong?

 

[DeletedUser30900]

[QUOTE="icarusethan, post: 207111, member: 3090 The group you represent cant play game right, not spending money and don't want to get plundered by the paying players. .

How do you play this game wrong?[/QUOTE]
Just like how you use the "quote" function wrong on this forum.

 

[DeletedUser35475]

I used it wrong? did you not understand my question?

 

[Agent327]

As a leader of my guild I've seen many members leave and quit the game because of plundering, Inno you are losing lots of diamond sales becase of a part of the game most people would like you to get rid of.

Players that quit that easy are not the ones that pay for diamonds. Players that continue to play and want to get stronger are.

 

[DeletedUser26965]

I'm always interested in the finer details, like who spends and why, because that can sway(or even put to bed) the opinion arguments we have here in the forums over it. Assuming I'm magically a product manager (or whatever appropriate title/job responsibility)if 90% of the paying 10% are farmville players, mitigating player lose from plundering would become a priority to maximize retention and/or increase payer conversion. Replace farmville with plundering and same result.

Yep, and why I say and repeat therein lies the rub, we simply just don't know rendering all of our discussion pretty much pointless. Also why I say any proposals/suggestions that effect PvP/plundering be it a PvE/PvP server split or hood merge conditions etc. should go through to IG then they can put it through the ringer relative to the data and make their own conclusions on the validity of said proposal/suggestion.

Intent behind these changes would be a huge help. Were they done to fit a game dev's vision of a more balanced PvP system? Were they calculated moves to allow them to manage the variables for their financial metrics? Maybe a bit of both?

Regarding intent that's also a problem because they rarely say why they do something, and of course they won't tell us everything that went behind the decisions. The hood change of Jan 2017 was expressed like this; "We hope that this new system will eliminate the problem of players ending up in unbalanced neighborhoods." NEW NEIGHBORHOOD MERGING SYSTEM Now while that hope was in part fulfilled it failed to take into account balance of other varibles such as GB's etc. that you've seen me express before. The PvP/Tech lock change of Oct 2017 they expressed; "We are introducing this change to make sure players have a chance to get familiar with the combat system of the game before being exposed to them."PvP Adjustments. I couldn't find anything about why city shield was added.

I think we can say with some confidence, as you know, based on that 0% defense equal profits thread that when potential PvP is compared to actual PvP, actual PvP is nearly non existent. I'm almost thinking if you take my new model/structure for PvP by making it a voluntary server wide competitive feature, with a new reward structure, based in a class competitive system, you would see a massive increase in PvP activity and more revenue but then again I'm not a game developer so what do I know.

 

[DeletedUser7406]

What's worse... getting plundered by the lowest guy in your group or getting plundered by someone 3 levels higher?
Originally, I believed the guy 3 levels higher would not waste their time on the peons for cheap points, but use their units for GvG, GE, and better competitive players.

In 2 worlds, I am at opposite ends of the spectrum. In Live Server I am maxed out (waiting for VF) and it is tough for anyone to fight in the neighborhood.
On Beta, I am hanging back in HMA from middle of the pack and slaying everyone in my neighborhood each day, even those 10 times the rating as me.
I am able to claim at least 2 towers each week and man do I love those Taj Mahals! They are worth at least 50 FP a day from plundering.

 

[DeletedUser35695]

The responses here are extremely disappointing.

1. "Collect on time" is an absurd answer. Not all players are children that can play online games 24x7. Some people have jobs that should and do come first.
2. There is no reason you can't have rich PvP with no plundering. Most games reward the winner and do nothing to the loser. This game is so stupid that the defender doesn't even get a reward when they win. Very few games have penalties for losing because punishing customers is never a smart business practice (OK, maybe if you're running an S&M brothel, but that's about it).
3. This game does NOT have PvP. It has a P attacker and an AI defender. An AI that is so horribly pathetic that it's hard to believe anybody could have written anything that bad. Punishing a customer because INNO is too incompetent to write a simple AI is goofy.

Plundering is stupid and should be dropped. But, at a minimum, either make a decent AI or have BOTH armies controlled by the same horrible AI.

 

[Jase249]

The responses here are extremely disappointing.

1. "Collect on time" is an absurd answer. Not all players are children that can play online games 24x7. Some people have jobs that should and do come first.

You don't have to be online 24/7 to collect. You have to be on for about 30 seconds or so. You just need to schedule your productions for a time when you'll be around to grab it.

2. There is no reason you can't have rich PvP with no plundering. Most games reward the winner and do nothing to the loser. This game is so stupid that the defender doesn't even get a reward when they win. Very few games have penalties for losing because punishing customers is never a smart business practice (OK, maybe if you're running an S&M brothel, but that's about it).

That's like saying baseball should have more ice because they do it that way in hockey. Different games have different sets of rules. If this one is not your cup of tea, try others until you find one that is. I've tried at least a dozen games over the years, this is the only one I really enjoy so I play this one.

3. This game does NOT have PvP. It has a P attacker and an AI defender. An AI that is so horribly pathetic that it's hard to believe anybody could have written anything that bad. Punishing a customer because INNO is too incompetent to write a simple AI is goofy.

That's a fair point and one that's been raised before. I should point out that there already IS a better AI for the defending army; it defends the AI armies on the continent map beginning at PME (I think; may be ME-my memory's not what is used to be). They don't need to develop a new AI, they just need to have the one from the later ages of the continent map be the AI for city defense. However, that has been proposed in the past and went nowhere.

 

[Graviton]

That's like saying baseball should have more ice because they do it that way in hockey.

There's nothing quite as entertaining as a player joining the forum just to tell us all that plundering is stupid, the advice of long-time players is absurd, and IG is punishing customers.

 

[Jase249]

There's nothing quite as entertaining as a player joining the forum just to tell us all that plundering is stupid, the advice of long-time players is absurd, and IG is punishing customers.

I know it's like, "hey I just thought of something I bet no one else has said in the several years prior, in which hundreds of thousands of people have been playing the game-plundering is mean!!"

Yeah, that's a new one, never heard it before lol

 

[DeletedUser35695]

You don't have to be online 24/7 to collect. You have to be on for about 30 seconds or so. You just need to schedule your productions for a time when you'll be around to grab it.

Spoken like the a true, never employed, societal leech. If you've ever had a job, you would know.
1. You don't get to play games while you're there ... not even for 30 seconds (and there's no way you can collect everything in 30 seconds anyways - the animation delays take longer than that).
2. Jobs last more than < 1, 1, 4, or 8 hours, which is the range of collection duration on virtually everything in the game.

That's like saying baseball should have more ice because they do it that way in hockey. Different games have different sets of rules. If this one is not your cup of tea, try others until you find one that is. I've tried at least a dozen games over the years, this is the only one I really enjoy so I play this one.

No, it's like saying thousands and thousands of games have been written over time, and wise people have learned from the successes and the failures. As a result, good games have certain things in common, and bad games have certain things in common. Plundering is a feature lifted from bad games. Many games had similar features and deleted the feature because all the customers hated them.

If you don't like a feature in a game, tell the company. They can't fix it if they don't know you don't like it.

 

[DeletedUser26965]

1. "Collect on time" is an absurd answer.

I think it's an absurd answer as well but not for the reasons you state. I would say it's an absurd answer because it's trite as hell and so painfully obvious as to hardly merit being an answer yet it's treated as the mecca of "plunder proof" strategy. But more still the main reason I find the answer absurd is I sure as hell don't want a game being the same as "real life" with alarm clocks and schedules, jesus, I'm playing game to get away from all that lol. And lastly there's a lot more one can do so one would do better just to link something like this Help, I am being plundered! or this Understanding Why You are Attacked and Plundered and What to Do About It rather than a stock and obvious answer.

In the end though it is what it is, the game has always been this way though it has changed to some degree with City Shield, Jan 2017 hood change and PvP/Tech lock, so you can either accept it and just keep letting them know you don't like how it's set up or move on. Early on they were going to have live battles between players but it never came to fruition for whatever reason. I think PvP can be better than its current form, I don't think they ever intended to have this "camp & domintate" structure they have now but with the Jan 2017 hood change and GE they inadvertently affected PvP to be just that.