Leveling Bad News

[Johan -]

We actually have some algorithm changes in the works for down the road that will make camping a less attractive strategy. We're not fans of it either - it's counterintuative and a strange way to play a game.

Thanks for your comments, hopefully is doesn't stay by comments alone.
It has been a long time ago when the subject came up about new buildings, up to now nothing changed. Furthermore I question why the level200 is still the limit, it will not take long till many players are floating around in that level and what else to do? just collecting the money from the buildings and waiting for a LTQ? many other games updated there play with more levels. more maps etc.. The game must stay attractive, I think many long term players are tired of the game already, the only thing what keep them playing the game is because they still have a little bit hope that the game will improve ! ( and the fact they spent already much money in this game)

Same for subject "the vault" , the vault increased to 1,13 mill., but because the frequent guild wars and LTQs, the players who go overvault are just a handfull.

Means the only thing what is left to do is raid some kingdoms, attacking other players is not really interesting anymore..
Strange that for an online pvp game, most aspects to play against each other are brought to a minimum..

We have so many LTQ/EVENTS, but what about a PVP events? last time we had something like that was more than 5 months ago???

About camping, for me the term camping has changed, I do LTQ/EVENTS, collect money from my money buildings and raid minimal, I stopped with map quests and since 4 months, don't buy any units or armor. I non-stop upgrade my money buildings.. the gold from collecting I donate to the guild. I try to stay as long as possible in a level, I don't have any interest to enter the whale zone, now my stats are good, ones I enter the whale zone, my stats will be average....

Looking forward to some more improvements in the game

[Chief_K]

Furthermore I question why the level200 is still the limit, it will not take long till many players are floating around in that level and what else to do? just collecting the money from the buildings and waiting for a LTQ? many other games updated there play with more levels. more maps etc.. The game must stay attractive, I think many long term players are tired of the game already, the only thing what keep them playing the game is because they still have a little bit hope that the game will improve ! ( and the fact they spent already much money in this game)

I certainly agree about questioning why level 200 is still the limit. What is the incentive for me to get to level 200 now when I know there are so many whales stuck there and waiting for some fresh blood. Whale zones at other levels are different because you can either level past them or eventually the whales will level up themselves. At 200, they're just stuck there and I know they will most definitely have better stats than me since many of them have probably been there for months.

[LordIndy]

We actually have some algorithm changes in the works for down the road that will make camping a less attractive strategy. We're not fans of it either - it's counterintuative and a strange way to play a game.

It would seem the easiest way to fix this would be to remove the 500 ally limit. Just keep it at 5 allies per level. Eliminating the level 200 cap seems to make sense too, but it would punish those that have been there a while.

[Colony Colonel]

What is the problem with camping? you face weaker opponents and therefore can work on your manor upgrades etc with less threat and try to keep a higher W:L ratio.

If you don't want people to camp in this game then why create levels? if your end goal is for everyone to be level 200 then you may aswell just remove levels. Yes, players that have been playing for longer will be stronger and new players won't stand a chance... but if everyone is then level 200 you will encounter this problem regardless.

lower levels also score more points in guild wars (or so we are lead to believe) if everyone was the same level, more gems would have to be spent to score enough points to take the top spots. I assume this is your reasoning.

[Mickeytah]

We have so many LTQ/EVENTS, but what about a PVP events? last time we had something like that was more than 5 months ago???

The Guild Wars are PvP events.

[Johan -]

The Guild Wars are PvP events.

Of course they are, or better said GvG events . It's not the same as the PvP quests before.
Before we had quests for which we needed to raid farms, attack castles etc.., browsing through the rival list searching for buildings to destroy . Guild wars we have plenty now.

Anyway, I'm still waiting for new buildings, many of my buildings are lv.10, because I got bored I bought more gem buildings to improve my Kingdom! What is a kingdom without progress, I have so much space to expand my kingdom, but I don't have the buildings to do it! I'm actually also dissapointed that my decorations are not visual for other players, our quest maps have trees and other decorations, so why can't other players not see mine!! I removed a couple of trees lately, because I covered some of my buildings behind it! ( to find out it was only more difficult for myself to upgrade these buildings)
Just my 2 cents..

[Shinazueli]

What is the problem with camping? you face weaker opponents and therefore can work on your manor upgrades etc with less threat and try to keep a higher W:L ratio.

If you don't want people to camp in this game then why create levels? if your end goal is for everyone to be level 200 then you may aswell just remove levels. Yes, players that have been playing for longer will be stronger and new players won't stand a chance... but if everyone is then level 200 you will encounter this problem regardless.

lower levels also score more points in guild wars (or so we are lead to believe) if everyone was the same level, more
gems would have to be spent to score enough points to take the top spots. I assume this is your reasoning.

From a developers perspective it's harder to develop content across all brackets; most games only release new content for maximum level, because that's the way the game is meant to be played. I camped for a looong time, until the LTQs came out and wrecked my strategies, along with everyone else's. There's already no point in camping, because you really don't need to go over vault any more. But the strongest disincentive towards levelling is and will continue to be the "whales" at maximum level. Until that's resolved there will always be campers.

Extending the level cap is a band aid, at best. Those players are still there. The root cause is imbalance caused by huge differences in played time. Fix the root cause, and a lot of the other problems will simply vanish.

For those among us with massive advantages in stats over players just starting out, that's just not going to work out long term. I would like the game to live on, but it's on the fast track to a train wreck right now. Outside of completely overhauling the way stats are calculated, I don't see a solution.

You might anger a lot of players who've paid for those advantages, but the other choice is losing everyone when nobody wants to start playing because they can't hope to compete, and the population dwindles due to natural attrition.

And then:

[Mickeytah]

I'm actually also dissapointed that my decorations are not visual for other players, our quest maps have trees and other decorations, so why can't other players not see mine!!

Well, that blows. I did not know that decorations could not be seen by other people. That's so stupidly lame.

I'm willing to bet they did it so people can't hide their small to smallish income buildings behind trees. Way to remove part of the strategy.

[Shinazueli]

Well, that blows. I did not know that decorations could not be seen by other people. That's so stupidly lame.

I'm willing to bet they did it so people can't hide their small to smallish income buildings behind trees. Way to remove part of the strategy.

You can still hide them behind other buildings. Good rotation and placement make them extremely hard to click on; and at least in KA you can tell the level by clicking on it, unlike some of the other Gree games.

[Mickeytah]

You can still hide them behind other buildings. Good rotation and placement make them extremely hard to click on; and at least in KA you can tell the level by clicking on it, unlike some of the other Gree games.

Now I understand why you said, "Too bad we'll never get to see it" when I posted about the graveyard I built in my kingdom. I'd just assumed you meant you wouldn't see me in the rival list in order to pay me a visit.

I know you can hid them behind other buildings, but I had just come up with a very mean and evil thing to do to visitors that I can no longer do because they don't see decorations.

[Shinazueli]

Now I understand why you said, "Too bad we'll never get to see it" when I posted about the graveyard I built in my kingdom. I'd just assumed you meant you wouldn't see me in the rival list in order to pay me a visit.

I know you can hid them behind other buildings, but I had just come up with a very mean and evil thing to do to visitors that I can no longer do because they don't see decorations.

Post a screenshot. At least then I can find your manors quicker.

[LordIndy]

?.......I camped for a looong time, until the LTQs came out and wrecked my strategies, along with everyone else's. There's already no point in camping, because you really don't need to go over vault any more. But the strongest disincentive towards levelling is and will continue to be the "whales" at maximum level. Until that's resolved there will always be campers.

Extending the level cap is a band aid, at best. Those players are still there. The root cause is imbalance caused by huge differences in played time. Fix the root cause, and a lot of the other problems will simply vanish.

For those among us with massive advantages in stats over players just starting out, that's just not going to work out long term. I would like the game to live on, but it's on the fast track to a train wreck right now. Outside of completely overhauling the way stats are calculated, I don't see a solution.

You might anger a lot of players who've paid for those advantages, but the other choice is losing everyone when nobody wants to start playing because they can't hope to compete, and the population dwindles due to natural attrition.

You contraindicated yourself here many times. Camping has become a flawed strategy. People camping for months and years just found their kingdoms leveled by players who started a week ago, picked up all the units from the guild quest, beat the boss, etc. you can start out and quickly have 200-300k stats so quick now it is ridiculous and the speed with which you can gather stats will only increase with time. The elite guilds are building super LLPs with crazy stats (like 1M) in the level 20s. The game has changed to completely take camping away from the mix.

The idea behind this game is to not be the best player overall, just pretty good for your level. That will be best achieved by beating LTQs and placing well in wars. Both require gems. Gree obviously wants people to spend money to gain in-game advantages. Before, the main advantage gems bought was time, now that has shifted to the primary focus of the game which is stats. I give them props for achieving their purpose.

[Mickeytah]

You contraindicated yourself here many times. Camping has become a flawed strategy. People camping for months and years just found their kingdoms leveled by players who started a week ago, picked up all the units from the guild quest, beat the boss, etc. you can start out and quickly have 200-300k stats so quick now it is ridiculous and the speed with which you can gather stats will only increase with time. The elite guilds are building super LLPs with crazy stats (like 1M) in the level 20s. The game has changed to completely take camping away from the mix.

The idea behind this game is to not be the best player overall, just pretty good for your level. That will be best achieved by beating LTQs and placing well in wars. Both require gems. Gree obviously wants people to spend money to gain in-game advantages. Before, the main advantage gems bought was time, now that has shifted to the primary focus of the game which is stats. I give them props for achieving their purpose.

While you are correct, Shin is also correct because you two are making different points. You're pointing out that GREE has successfully boosted their sales and increased revenue. Shin's point is that they have currently fast tracked to game to dying out faster than it would have under Funzio.

They are doing what Shin is talking about by having done what you are bringing up.

I'm not a fan of sacrificing long term gain for short term gain.

[LordIndy]

While you are correct, Shin is also correct because you two are making different points. You're pointing out that GREE has successfully boosted their sales and increased revenue. Shin's point is that they have currently fast tracked to game to dying out faster than it would have under Funzio.

They are doing what Shin is talking about by having done what you are bringing up.

I'm not a fan of sacrificing long term gain for short term gain.

But see that is exactly what they needed to do. The way to make the game more interesting is to keep these events and guild wars. Prior to those things occurring I and many others simply logged on at most, a few times a day, collected money, and did any upgrades you could do and then logged off. The strategy was simple get to BD10 any way you could. Many could do that for free by camping and just taking your time. There was no need to be in a hurry because to afford a dragon army with gold you needed to build your economy anyway.

The survival of the game depends on it being profitable. By creating an atmosphere that encourages spending through guild wars and LTQs they have increased interest and commitment to the game while boosting profits.

[Shinazueli]

But see that is exactly what they needed to do. The way to make the game more interesting is to keep these events and guild wars. Prior to those things occurring I and many others simply logged on at most, a few times a day, collected money, and did any upgrades you could do and then logged off. The strategy was simple get to BD10 any way you could. Many could do that for free by camping and just taking your time. There was no need to be in a hurry because to afford a dragon army with gold you needed to build your economy anyway.

The survival of the game depends on it being profitable. By creating an atmosphere that encourages spending through guild wars and LTQs they have increased interest and commitment to the game while boosting profits.

No. This is incorrect. The survival of the game depends on people playing it. As in any social game, regardless of their business model.

We are talking past each other. Allow me to clarify.

I'm not advocating camping at this point. It's dead or dying. Exponential stat inflation was the murder weapon. Which you've correctly described in detail.

What I am saying is that exponential growth cannot continue without bound. There are realistic limits. And when they are reached, the game will be in a very bad spot. (for instance, how many bits are used to store your stats on the server? How much would it cost to add another, and another? Go look at the graph of e^x. You'll see what I mean.)

On a tangent to that, even if they could grow without bound, the same 1% stat boost is not the same stats for a player whose been playing for six months versus someone who's been playing for 12 months or someone who's been playing for one month. Which is why I said the root cause of the imbalance that causes players to want to camp is the huge disparity in played time.

Because they allow you to bring every single unit you've ever earned to battle, (with a high limit of 1500 units), a player who has only been around long enough to earn 200 units cannot hope to compete with one who is almost full indestructible. It's just not going to happen. So that player will camp, and get stronger at lower levels.

The whole "relative" strength idea is based upon a flawed concept where it doesn't matter what your raw stats are because you don't have to compete with those HLPs with 3M stats. Ie, camping.

When the xp from the LTQs starts pushing players up into the same brackets, they're going to quit. Because they cannot catch up.

Which is why I said they are going to have to overhaul the way battle stats are calculated. Because bringing a year of units to someone's kingdom that's played for 3 months doesn't work out.

A level increase and a corresponding ally increase only delays the inevitable.

Because the inherent source of the imbalance wouldn't be corrected.

Now do you see what I'm trying to say? Buying a permanent advantage and not allowing others to go back and purchase them (or earn them, god forbid) is a recipe for disaster.

The best solution I can come up with is this:

About 3 months after you release an LTQ, re-release the same quest, but with no time limit. This will add quite a huge variety of things for your free players to do, and not completely erase the advantage of your gem players. They will still have a three month advantage in stats, which is easily 3-400k stats.

It's not even like they'd all catch up immediately, as those quests would easily take two weeks apiece of real time natural energy regeneration. But it would go a long way towards rebalancing the game. And you'd have no additional work or cost associated with it, because all of the content is already developed.

To those who would flame me for saying these players should just be handed the best units available... They wouldn't. They still wouldn't be able to best a gem player doing the current LTQs. But they wouldn't be 2 million stats behind and they wouldn't quit.

The best part? For those who do spend to "keep up", they'd have to even more, so they wouldn't lose spenders.

It's like wow did with their patches. After new content has been out for a while, and they were about to release new content, they'd just nerf the crap out of the current content to equalize gear before a new patch. The hardcore raiders would still have the very best gear available, but someone that wants to get into raiding could gear up to a respectable level within a short (month) period of time. Win-win.

Doubt they'll do it, but it would fix the problem.

Edit : allow me to add one more clarifying example that I'm sure most of you are familiar with. When you apply to a guild, or are looking at an applicant to your guild, do you have a minimum stats requirement? I bet most of you do. I also bet that that minimum stats requirement is based on the strength of your opponents. Which is exponentially increasing. Someone starting the game today will never be able to meet those minimum requirements. You may have noticed a drying up of potential applicants that meet your minimum requirements. That's because you pretty much need someone that has been playing for x months, and if new players stop coming in... No more qualified applicants. So you start stealing from other guilds, because there are a finite numbe of players who have been playing for x months. Some guilds fail. Eventually, everyone in the TopXYZ is just the long time players, and you all know each other. There are no new additions to this pool, because time only goes one way, and attrition only works one way. Eventually, you reach critical mass.

I'm not going to speculate on a timeline, but it's a finite amount of time. You do the math.