Discussion Era composition in the Neighborhood

[Kronan]

I'm wondering...

Does Inno have tools to sweep through neighborhoods, looking for severe outlier era achievement, and moving these "over achievers" to a more correct (and homogenized) era?

Case in point: In beta, I play in the IA, and have about 6.2 million ranking points. In this week's hood, I'm 5th place.

HOWEVER....In 3rd place in my hood, with 10.3 million, is a CONTEMPORARY ERA player.

Read that again:

An IA hood, with a CONTEMPORARY era player.

Yes, I understand people can zoom, zoom, zoom their era - and have no problem with that as a strategy or even, an achievement.

What should be done is to re-host (move) this person to a era built for contemporary players, by a FoE service utility that homogenizes very outlier era players back into a more appropriate era with their piers.

This doesn't mean that a +1 or -1 era player needs to be immediately moved.

But a Contemporary era player in the IA hood, should be - especially as he/she ascends that quickly up the era tree.

 

[outoftheline]

What should be done is to re-host (move) this person to a era built for contemporary players,

why? i mean what exactly is the issue here? is it pvp?

the player will be in a fitting hood within 2 weeks.

 

[xivarmy]

Get over it? They'll be moved in 2 weeks or less automatically. Even if they plundered you every day for those 2 weeks it'd have minimal impact on your progress.

 

[Juber]

What should be done is to re-host (move) this person to a era built for contemporary players, by a FoE service utility that homogenizes very outlier era players back into a more appropriate era with their piers.

This already happens every 2 weeks, as the others mentioned.

 

[CrashBoom]

But a Contemporary era player in the IA hood, should be - especially as he/she ascends that quickly up the era tree.

if he was in the correct hood when the last neighborhood change was I don't see any mistake here

 

[Kronan]

Understand that it happens when the hoods change every 2 weeks. I've seen people an era or at most, 2 above the hood era, but never this high. Though it might be a open exploit for the time they're resident, if the move window is 2 weeks.

I also think you're missing 1 more point:

All over social media sites, there is ALWAYS a lot of talk from people that tried FoE and left. Why? Being mercilessly attacked and plundered in the early game. In the IA, especially as players are trying to build cities.

Nothing is as demoralizing to a new player than to experience this, and many have said on social media site, they just quit the game if it's as unbalanced as I've demonstrated.

I maintain that leaving a Contemporary Era player in the hood for 2 weeks is counter-productive to the retention of new IA players.


Now if Inno doesn't care about that, I don't. I know how the game works. Real players that are new to the game - don't.

I was just calling out something that might be reviewed by FoE product management in Innogames, as an exploit that could be closed., or mitigated.

Do with that datapoint as you wish.

 

[xivarmy]

Understand that it happens when the hoods change every 2 weeks. I've seen people an era or at most, 2 above the hood era, but never this high. Though it might be a open exploit for the time they're resident, if the move window is 2 weeks.

It's more of an exploit that they're enjoying blasting iron age troops using CE troops in GBG for a season But the hood has nothing to do with that.

 

[outoftheline]

I maintain that leaving a Contemporary Era player in the hood for 2 weeks is counter-productive to the retention of new IA players.

i highly doubt that most new players
1) care about the hood or others that much
2) want to do a bunch of pvp

most iron age players do not even have pvp unlocked. and advance to new eras super quickly.

anyways, if this is about pvp: add a protection until early middle ages that pvp can only be played with same-era-troops or sth and problem solved.
(btw i am against using higher era troops in pvp anyways)

 

[Kronan]

@outoftheline

You're entitled to your opinion. I have mine as well.

Again - I'm calling this out as a beta player that saw something extremely anomalous. I'm asking Inno (publicly): Is this what you want?

If it is - then fine. If not, then internally discuss it. It may be treated imperiously. It may be considered for change. That's what product managers do. They take ideas and see if they can make the game better, more fair, and generate MORE REVENUE.

This could have revenue implications.

I've made a point that all over social media, the BIGGEST COMPLAINT (other than recently about GbG) I've seen in over 6 years of playing is that exploits like this exist, and DO have a bearing on retention of players coming into the game. I've seen in firsthand myself - and chose NOT to leave, but to use it as a challenge, and was successful (like the rest of us).

I know the deep ramifications of turning ON the tech tree PVP choice. ALL truly new player don't and go blasting right through that, because they think they should.

A person in CE, but residing in an IA hood, can exploit 70-80 people each day. To me, that's an overt exploit. Not that he can get there - that's fine, but that NO ADJUSTMENT for that accomplishment happens immediately upon doing that.

Sure, it's fun to go blasting through GE and GbG, or even PvP tower - all fighting bots. We all did that in doing the "era up" thing to try to get some advantage in GE, too.

But this is different.

But I'm just concerned that if this is done in the real game, it could make a potential new customer into a quick ghost with yet another shell city, and create more social media posts that FoE allows this to happen. Never good for getting new customers when many who tried it say the same thing and it doesn't get ameliorated.

This turns Innogames into defending it... and it will clearly be labeled, "exploitative".

 

[xivarmy]

I maintain that leaving a Contemporary Era player in the hood for 2 weeks is counter-productive to the retention of new IA players.


Now if Inno doesn't care about that, I don't. I know how the game works. Real players that are new to the game - don't.

I was just calling out something that might be reviewed by FoE product management in Innogames, as an exploit that could be closed., or mitigated.

Do with that datapoint as you wish.

The contemporary era player is hardly a significant difference to a 5M point iron age camper Both will blast them out of the water on autobattle with nothing they can do about it beyond collect on time. At least watching your spears get mauled by tanks might be a little funny 200% boost is still enough to make a same-age matchup no contest - and that 5M point camper probably has more like 1000%+.

It's also not like a multiage jump like this is something that happens often. Or that the jumper will even give a rat's ass about plundering. They're likely doing it for GBG.

They have made a lot of (imo detrimental) changes over the years though to protect new players from plundering - I miss being able to plunder in bronze age on new worlds! 0% boost vs 0% boost!

 

[xivarmy]

Alternative suggestion in light of above:

Compose hoods by point total instead of era. You want to sit in iron age with 5M points, find yourself in a hood with FE players with 5M points too! Would be far more interesting hoods from a trade perspective too, restoring the diversified-needs that used to exist in the old weakly-matched hoods before people whined that it wasn't fair.

 

[Fire Witch]

I started a new city during summer event on live and was in HMA(!) by the end of it. So you should consider not making this argument about IA players.
There has been one attack so far, but it did not succeed.

IMO you are focussing on something that rarely happens.
What I think is more important is: I saw a lot of people with many Great Buildings already and much stronger than me. They could have easily defeated and plundered me (but fortunately did not).

So if you want it to be more balanced, maybe hoods in the same age should be either sorted by ranking points or attack/defense boosts.

 

[Kronan]

I'm going to rest on accomplishing my ONLY goal: Bringing something I saw in my role as a beta player into the forum view for the company to see, and discuss, or discard.

@Fire Witch - I used the IA era because I'm in IA here (beta), and this popped out visible when I P/M'd the hood. It could be any era, but IA is demonstrable as a dominant early one, because the game starts to TURN ON (GBs, PVP, etc)
.
The guy in my hood this week in the #1 position has 50 37 million ranking points, so if you do it by that yardstick, where does he go for era?

There is are multiple HMA players in beta that have a 180 Arc, so go figure, right? People want to be special - I get it.

Mission accomplished. I told InnoGames about something of "interest".

 

[Fire Witch]

Uhm, okay then..

 

[xivarmy]

.
The guy in my hood this week in the #1 position has 50 million ranking points, so if you do it by that yardstick, where does he go for era?

The lowest person in my hood on my SAT world has 56M points. So he could see some pretty high era players! Not that they're the particularly scary high era players - the ones that make it that far without gaining much for points are pretty slack

 

[planetofthehumans2]

Maybe that player just jumped? I was sitting in CA and jumped up to FE in the span of a day after a long time collecting all necessary components. So the player may have started the hood in IA and then jumped at some point during the season. Are they supposed to put him in a new hood once he ages up? That's probably unfeasible from a game standpoint.

 

[Ironrooster]

I think the fix should be to highlight that unlocking Military Tactics allows plundering.
Maybe even add a popup that says are you sure you want to do this.
In addition Galata tower could be an Iron age building.

The other possible solution would be to an option to disable plundering. With PVP and GBG now available, I'm not sure attacking other players' cities really adds anything to the game.

 

[MJ Artisan of War]

Stayed in Iron Age for over a year on all three of my worlds... Had lvl 80 Arcs on all three before moving on and attack trio & traz to 60.
Best thing for my game..... Another plus, still have 100's of items to sell in AD over two years later.... lol