Discussion Pay to Win?

[CrashBoom]

That's another question how likely it is you can do that for free, within 18 months

still impossible with current building stats

but some could argue that in 18 month the buildings will be 3 times as good as now

so now you fill your city with Jester Stages and inventory with Finish Special productions
and in 18 month you get the gold league building (sometimes you could end in gold for free) producing the event building
and then you directly finish it 1000 times

there are 3 buildings which allows you produce 11000 Fps per day + more than 20000 titan goods per day

I only need 2: Arc & Chateau
and the whole day to use them

 

[Emberguard]

Doubt there is much mystery here. Yes, if you collect just once a day, that doesn't seem to be possible, but there are items that make it possible to collect more than once. How often you can do this depends on the buildings you have. E.g. 15 nutcrackers and a ton of Jesters can boost your goods/FP income pretty heavily.

That's another question how likely it is you can do that for free, within 18 months, didn't do the math.

Can't find the post anymore. But someone did the math for how many jesters you'd have after 1 year using Blue Galaxy + the 1% Gold building (Trailside Smithy).

I'm not going to do the math myself, so going off memory here. But in 1 year if you don't deviate you'd basically have a city full of just Jesters and Sunhaven Palaces. Then you can keep stocking up on Finish Specials for whatever. That still leaves about 6 months to get something with those finish specials

Edit: Oh hey, found the spreadsheet

Math for only 1 Palace:

Spoiler

Assuming you start with 2 Palaces and the Trailside Smithy (which I did on my free-to-play account), after 1 year that'd get 244 Jesters in the city. (24 - 25 Finish Specials worth, per day)

For starting on 1 Palace that'd drop down to 191 Jesters, which is still a lot. That's between 573 - 605 Finish Special Production Fragments per day depending on how you use the blue galaxy charges (19 - 20 Finish Specials)

How many Jesters would you want to pivot out of that and into something else?

Edit (2):
Changing the settings so the spreadsheet does the math for just 1 Palace, no Trailside Smithy, you'd have 51 Jesters after 1 year. Which would mean about 5 or 6 Finish Specials per day at that point.

By the time you finish your second year any difference between getting in top 1% or not is going to be negligible, you're going to have run out of space for Jesters by then

If you want 18 months exactly, then you'd get this. Enough for 14 Finish Specials a day:

 

[Pericles the Lion]

Can't find the post anymore. But someone did the math for how many jesters you'd have after 1 year using Blue Galaxy + the 1% Gold building (Trailside Smithy).

I'm not going to do the math myself, so going off memory here. But in 1 year if you don't deviate you'd basically have a city full of just Jesters and Sunhaven Palaces. Then you can keep stocking up on Finish Specials for whatever. That still leaves about 6 months to get something with those finish specials

Edit: Oh hey, found the spreadsheet

Math for only 1 Palace:

Spoiler

Assuming you start with 2 Palaces and the Trailside Smithy (which I did on my free-to-play account), after 1 year that'd get 244 Jesters in the city. (24 - 25 Finish Specials worth, per day)

For starting on 1 Palace that'd drop down to 191 Jesters, which is still a lot. That's between 573 - 605 Finish Special Production Fragments per day depending on how you use the blue galaxy charges (19 - 20 Finish Specials)

How many Jesters would you want to pivot out of that and into something else?

Edit (2):
Changing the settings so the spreadsheet does the math for just 1 Palace, no Trailside Smithy, you'd have 51 Jesters after 1 year. Which would mean about 5 or 6 Finish Specials per day at that point.

By the time you finish your second year any difference between getting in top 1% or not is going to be negligible, you're going to have run out of space for Jesters by then

If you want 18 months exactly, then you'd get this. Enough for 14 Finish Specials a day:

I have the Smithy and have leveraged it into 7 Sunhavens and 25 Jesters so far. The claim is that it is possible to get a SAT city to a daily production of 20K+ SAT goods and 11K FPs. I suppose that I could continue to plant Jesters and get to the point where I have a city with mostly Jesters. Getting to 20K goods will require 571 Jesters. At 7.5 squares per Jester they would occupy 4,286 squares (which is almost 1000 squares more than what is available in a fully expanded SAT city). So, lets assume that fewer Jesters get built and that their Finish Special Productions are used on them for more goods, where do the 11K FPs come from? Lastly, even if it were possible to build a city with little else besides Jesters and some unnamed FP producers, the question is "why do it?". The only thing that comes to mind is that the millions of goods and supplies could be used to hyper level the SAT GBs (but, with no other attack boosts they wouldn't do much in the battle venues). It's an interesting exercise but seems to be impractical.

 

[paraskevas8]

Yes, just 11k of fps and more than 20K of goods per day, without forgotten temples, and you just need copies of 3 different buildings to achieve that.

What are we talking about now? You are confused me...
Do you have this city right now NOW yes or no???
If not then I don't care what you say...
By your logic if I put all the settlement guards level 2 I will have 16,000 defense in the attacking army...
Has anyone done this??? NO

 

[Thunderdome]

My turn.

When I first started to play FoE in 2012, I didn't spend any money whatsoever. I often laughed at fools who do as with other games I had played went straight to the shredder due to developers not caring for the players. This game, however, was different when I played as all the players gave good reviews (remember year 1 awards for the best browser game in the world?). Work consumed me and I took a hiatus from the game (even started a city in beta to see what the hub bub was about with events before time and getting the free diamonds that I often spend; yeah, I was a noob back then, heh heh).

Fast forward to a few years back for when I decided to rebuild my city (after it was deleted due to inactivity). I missed the reviews and forum posts (yeah, there were thousands of them to catch up on). I had a bit on me that I decided to spend for diamonds in one of the events that I wind up taking the 1% in the leagues due to my spending.

However, to this day, I had stopped spending altogether due to the fact that Inno always tried to get me to go for their gimmicks (monkey see what monkey do in the world of being a game developer and the rest of the lot), to which to no avail they have yet to get me to bite. Things are nerfed (for balance supposedly) and things are broken as well as things are left just the way they are (don't know if Inno bans for multiple accounts or is that just smoke and mirrors now).

While this game is still F2P, the events (some) had turned it into P2W if anyone wants to get the max building. Cases in comparison: Halloween Event vs Winter Event. The Halloween one has us in a Pokemon/Digimon type of sense, but it still retains the strategy part of which faction beats which other faction for a bonus. It reminds me of units where the fast unit is beaten by a light unit and a light unit is beaten by a heavy unit. Smart players would play their "cards" right so they can win, including keeping any special cards until the final boss for lots of rewards. Myself, I missed the HE where I go through a spooky maze of collecting candles to progress further and have to decide if I wanted to get the other stuff. Also, it was one that I managed to complete the extra quests (dolls, bears, etc.) to get its prize and one I can determine if I want to progress further once I picked up the calendar key before picking up the next one. The Winter Event, is all about chance (something I do not give a toss about or care for, hence why I don't do Casinos) where you get 1 or 2 houses lit up to advance (most of mine got hit at 1, very little at 2). The league ranking (score wise) is not even lined up with the progress bar that is currently in play (so I wonder how league rankings are really determined).

I might or might not get the full building with the luck that I am having, and I feel for those out there. Considering that, if anyone plays this in the live servers, they will have to be prepared to pay for diamonds (if they don't have any to their names) or just take the event as it is with a not so completed building and hoping the upgrades will be presented in the AD to be bought or bid on.

 

[Pericles the Lion]

My turn.

I might or might not get the full building with the luck that I am having, and I feel for those out there. Considering that, if anyone plays this in the live servers, they will have to be prepared to pay for diamonds (if they don't have any to their names) or just take the event as it is with a not so completed building and hoping the upgrades will be presented in the AD to be bought or bid on.

I'm playing the Halloween Event in two of my live worlds. Including the progress that I will get from keys that I have not used I passed 4500 progress in both cities this morning. Enough for the full building and the Tarot Cards upgrade. I've spent no diamonds. Unlike many mini-games in the past, this one is much less reliant on luck. It takes a bit of skill.

 

[Thunderdome]

I'm playing the Halloween Event in two of my live worlds. Including the progress that I will get from keys that I have not used I passed 4500 progress in both cities this morning. Enough for the full building and the Tarot Cards upgrade. I've spent no diamonds. Unlike many mini-games in the past, this one is much less reliant on luck. It takes a bit of skill.

Hence why I said I kind of liked it (still missed the maze one) than this event (Winter).

 

[-Alin-]

I can't understand why still people are so toxic to each other over a silly game.

Arguments are fine, it is ok to have disagreements, it is ok to not have the same point of view or opinion as the other ones, but You really need to be toxic when You try to point something?

None is better than anyone and none is superior, it is just a silly game where we try to hide our RL and problems and trying to enjoy something in the free time, also ranking doesn't tell the truth, nor for players nor for guilds.

I have 11 years of Forge of Empires, since 15 October 2012 and moved to beta from RO around the end of 2014 beginning of 2015, and I barely reached 2B points in this time, had weeks of breaks, exams, school, working, RL stuff which is more important than anything. Others began to play a year or so ago and got more ranking points than me, but it is completely fine, I never cared that much about ranking points and I never judged a player based on that, but the era, the city and stats, what You can do with those to help a guild matters in the end, especially now with the changed GbG and the future Guild Raids where every player is very important.

Regarding FoE Pay to win aspects, can be observed by everyone, but You are not forced to buy anything, You still can manage to get a fully upgraded event building now, but slower, waiting for fragments.
All this pushing to season passes and more fragments, was to balance the game that was destroyed by GbG, this mechanic turned the whole game and none can't deny that. The monetization around 2020-2021 was on top of everything that InnoGames had untill that time, but after pandemic was done, people abandoned the games or stopped in buying certain things for the game, and in the past years InnoGames revenue is going down, year by year, they had to do something to keep on surface somehow their revenue and not close the game that You play now.
Forge of Empires alone is worth 1B euro all time revenue which is 50% of InnoGames revenue, subsidiary of MTG(Modern Times Group that bought the entire InnoGames in 2017), but from that billion of euro, You have to include the salaries, servers, new stuff, buildings whatever the spendings are required, also they laid 75 people in April of this year and in some games it can be seen already things are going slower, RoC as example, another Inno game.

I dislike a lot some of the new updates and some of these events, not to mention all of these interminable fragments, I complained also about some mechanics that made the game feel bad, but now they kinda fixed them and I consider FoE it is on the right way after all the past mistakes, also I began to got used to it, like I did in all these years.

We'll see now how Guild Raids will be, hopefully is something attractive for guilds. GvG used to be like that in its early days, untill a point when it became a toxic place and was scripted...

What is sad from my point of view, is the fact that FoE is becoming more and more of a mediocre Mobile game, with lot of stuff to keep players tapping ...
I don't think in the near future there will be any longer a browser variant of Forge of Empires, but I might be wrong here.

 

[Zio Dyhos]

I can't understand why still people are so toxic to each other over a silly game.

Arguments are fine, it is ok to have disagreements, it is ok to not have the same point of view or opinion as the other ones, but You really need to be toxic when You try to point something?

None is better than anyone and none is superior, it is just a silly game where we try to hide our RL and problems and trying to enjoy something in the free time, also ranking doesn't tell the truth, nor for players nor for guilds.

I have 11 years of Forge of Empires, since 15 October 2012 and moved to beta from RO around the end of 2014 beginning of 2015, and I barely reached 2B points in this time, had weeks of breaks, exams, school, working, RL stuff which is more important than anything. Others began to play a year or so ago and got more ranking points than me, but it is completely fine, I never cared that much about ranking points and I never judged a player based on that, but the era, the city and stats, what You can do with those to help a guild matters in the end, especially now with the changed GbG and the future Guild Raids where every player is very important.

Regarding FoE Pay to win aspects, can be observed by everyone, but You are not forced to buy anything, You still can manage to get a fully upgraded event building now, but slower, waiting for fragments.
All this pushing to season passes and more fragments, was to balance the game that was destroyed by GbG, this mechanic turned the whole game and none can't deny that. The monetization around 2020-2021 was on top of everything that InnoGames had untill that time, but after pandemic was done, people abandoned the games or stopped in buying certain things for the game, and in the past years InnoGames revenue is going down, year by year, they had to do something to keep on surface somehow their revenue and not close the game that You play now.
Forge of Empires alone is worth 1B euro all time revenue which is 50% of InnoGames revenue, subsidiary of MTG(Modern Times Group that bought the entire InnoGames in 2017), but from that billion of euro, You have to include the salaries, servers, new stuff, buildings whatever the spendings are required, also they laid 75 people in April of this year and in some games it can be seen already things are going slower, RoC as example, another Inno game.

I dislike a lot some of the new updates and some of these events, not to mention all of these interminable fragments, I complained also about some mechanics that made the game feel bad, but now they kinda fixed them and I consider FoE it is on the right way after all the past mistakes, also I began to got used to it, like I did in all these years.

We'll see now how Guild Raids will be, hopefully is something attractive for guilds. GvG used to be like that in its early days, untill a point when it became a toxic place and was scripted...

What is sad from my point of view, is the fact that FoE is becoming more and more of a mediocre Mobile game, with lot of stuff to keep players tapping ...
I don't think in the near future there will be any longer a browser variant of Forge of Empires, but I might be wrong here.

I totally agree with everything you say.

 

[Adthen]

I have never spent a dime on this game and I've been able to compete against the best of them. The problem is that most people think that to be the best they have to compete with everyone. I think more assymetrically. I compete where there is no competition. I had over 15 worlds in US server and no matter what I couldn't compete with fighting. So with Beta and some other worlds, I decided to just not fight. If you look at my medal standings I'm # 2 (with only 1 battle won), would have been # 3 but one person cancelled their account. As for General rankings I'm just at 204 but slowly climbing. Besides on Beta, you get free diamonds and one can also earn diamonds through GE and Guild Battlegrounds and of course if one has some wishing wells.

This game is for fun just like in all games except of course casino games where people actually alter their destinies, livelihoods, most for the worse.

Thank you Inno for designing a game that I've been playing for a decade now and will continue until I get bored or die.

 

[Panthera]

Hello everyone
as you know, Foe has decided to remove GvG in favor of Raid.
If the GvG is removed and the Raid does not comply with the GvG rule of engagement and the Raid turns into Pay to Win, I would definitely leave the game.
the GvG being the last part of the game which makes me stay.
Have a good week
chouchouille28