Feedback Regarding Recent Feedback

[Juber]

@Juber nice that you were so active here today, I wish you would do that more often. I would still like to ask about one point. Suggestions that you forward end up on a list and are implemented or not. That is an unfair way of dealing with suggestions. There should be feedback, such as "coming soon", "coming in 3-9 months", "we like it, may come at some point" or "we will not implement". That would be a transparent way of dealing with suggestions.

I will try my best. Had not the time to do so, but now i hopefully found my rhythm
As I explained earlier, there are simply no details like "we like that" or "coming soon". It is on the list and when there is time for them, they are looked at and some are done. If you take the community sprint (yes, I know, many hate that word now) for example, only suggestions from this list will be done during that sprint. But nobody knows what will be done from that until it is decided to do it in the very near future.
Ideas, that fall into the category "We will not implement" are almost completely sorted out by us before forwarding them. We have a bit more insight and especially me and @Fire Witch know the game in and out, so we are pretty good in determine what can be done.

@Fire Witch a note from players who log in and harvest, yet do nothing that gives ranking points, is not really playing, no progress in the game, these can be done sometimes when real life leaves little time, but should not be a permanent condition. If statistics are to be used, then Inno should concentrate on the players who actively use many facets of the game. They know the game very well, they love it and are probably willing to spend money.

I think there are some points most don't consider, so I just want to add them. These statistic pages count "active" as: "Has gained at least 1 point since last file dump." This in theory is ok, but there are many points left out, under which the vast majority of player fall under. These are for example:

• Players, that don't play daily: If 10 000 players play on day 1 and 10 000 different players at day 2, only 10 000 players are considered as active, even though all 20 000 players are active, just not every day.
• Players, that did not gain ranking points on one day: As already written before, if you don't gain any ranking points, these sites don't count you as active.
• Players with less than X ranking points.

Most players fall into one or a combination of some, especially if they don't gain points daily.

Other factors to determine activity is of course the PvP Arena, but let's be real: If you would only play once a day or even less frequent, would you care about the PvP Arena? I think not. So most don't even touch it.
I was also surprised to see how many players just play the game without any ambitions, just for fun. They build their little city, go slowly through the ages, are sometimes not even aware, that there is an arc and don't like it, when their productions are plundered, because they just want to build up their city and don't engage much with other players.
From all people I met, where I did not know they played Forge, almost all played in this style.
The problem is you don't really see them. They don't engage much, play in their own guilds or guilds, that are full of these players without really strong ambitions and don't communicate. We are all mostly in our bubbles of active guilds, very active players, players that gain ranking points very fast.

In conclusion, there is a very high amount of players in the shadows (We have a very good word for that in German: The Dunkelziffer ^^). This does of course not mean, that your feedback is less valuable, it is great in fact and helped a lot, especially in event balancing. This is just to show you where the other sources come from.

 

[DEADP00L]

So Inno prefers to neglect the requests of the few active players in the face of the silent majority who do not test any of these new features?
How to say ??? You do not have a concern for objective and targeting of your customers?

 

[Juber]

So Inno prefers to neglect the requests of the few active players in the face of the silent majority who do not test any of these new features?
How to say ??? You do not have a concern for objective and targeting of your customers?

This does of course not mean, that your feedback is less valuable, it is great in fact and helped a lot, especially in event balancing. This is just to show you where the other sources come from.

 

[Outlaw Dread]

players who log in and harvest, yet do nothing that gives ranking points, is not really playing,

Over the years I've seen many, many different ways to play, from tiny town enthusiasts to no-Arc cities playing a retro style, to "kill -em-all" fighters and all possible varieties of "casual play". Possibly many, many players could care less about ranking points, advancing, or anything outside of enjoying themselves or enjoying their guild.

I've deleted and restarted cities several times over the past 5 years, just for fun. My latest interest is starting 2 cities solely to see how many advanced era units I can get while in InA. Eventually, I'll probably take one of those cities to the last Age just to tick off that box. That will take a couple more easy-going years.

FoE is, at its (very rare) best, a diversion from RL. FoE has no more RL relevance than any other hobby. Some players are dabblers, others hard-core, but each style is completely legitimate, and all are "real" players.

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

I'll just add this...

Spending one fp gives ranking points. Collecting a diamond farm of all wishing wells still requires the player to spend fp in order to collect their wells once their bar hits 100 fp, so even the example above will acquire ranking points.

Yes, Inno has much better statistics and analytics than we do as players, but active players intuitively feel the pulse of the game in a way that pure statistics will never reveal. Smart companies always take their most active customer's input to heart.

 

[Emberguard]

To be fair, you need a very specific development of the city, so that none of the buildings will give you goods to the treasury of the guild. You have to give up the arc. You should also exclude some special buildings such as an Airship or a Celtic village and 3-4 more, including reward buildings for settlements. That is, it is technically possible to harvest without violating your ranking.

There are a lot of players that hate the Arc and having to play in that manner though. And while there are a lot more guild treasury event buildings, not everyone maxes out the events.

But here the question arises: will such a very specific player appreciate the care of developers for him? And the second question: If developers care about such players, shouldn't those who play differently look for another game? So that we do not interfere with the first group and don't make waves here

I think getting them to look for a different game is completely the wrong approach, surely the player can decide that for themselves. There’s been plenty of games I’ve played where I’m not really playing the game and am just messing around having fun.

Personally I think the developers should have a difficulty level in mind, balancing based on best-case scenario initially on a competent player and then use the player feedback to inform the direction and re-balancing. Cause obviously each subset of player has their own idea on what constitutes a balanced or fun game

 

[drakenridder]

There should be feedback, such as "coming soon", "coming in 3-9 months", "we like it, may come at some point" or "we will not implement". That would be a transparent way of dealing with suggestions.

This comment should be pint and forwarded under priority urgent and where possible start to take affect asap if not immediately. As this is exactly what the community meant and was asking for with transparency, not sudo "transparency" with announcements in events with stats. While useful for event announcements it's unrelated to community concerns.

 

[Owl II]

There are a lot of players that hate the Arc and having to play in that manner though. And while there are a lot more guild treasury event buildings, not everyone maxes out the events.

You don't have to prove it to me. that such players exist. I believe you. I also believe that the efforts of developers to develop FOE are aimed specifically at this category of players. It is for them that all efforts are made. We see it here every day.

 

[Fire Witch]

Spending one fp gives ranking points. Collecting a diamond farm of all wishing wells still requires the player to spend fp in order to collect their wells once their bar hits 100 fp, so even the example above will acquire ranking points.

This is not true.
Spending FP in your own GB does not give any ranking points until you level it.
Spending FP in another players GB does not give any ranking points.
Spending FP in research does not give any ranking points (maybe it does when a tech is unlocked, not entirely sure and too lazy to test rn sorry).

https://en.wiki.forgeofempires.com/index.php?title=Player%27s_Ranking

But anyways, this was not really the point of what I was trying to say.

 

[Fire Witch]

This comment should be pint and forwarded under priority urgent and where possible start to take affect asap if not immediately. As this is exactly what the community meant and was asking for with transparency, not sudo "transparency" with announcements in events with stats. While useful for event announcements it's unrelated to community concerns.

I understand the sentiment, and as a player I personally would like to see more transparency in the ideas section aswell... but: Do you know how many forums and ideas there are? Sorry, but the sheer amount of suggestions would make this really hard to implement.
Also, as the game changes over time ideas might be looked at again that have been "dismissed" before.

Edit: I'd assume if an idea would be marked as "might be implemented at some point" people would ask about it time and time again and still be upset if it is not implemented within a certain time frame. Ideas might also not be implemented how they were suggested, but merged with other ideas.
I believe that the idea section gives good insight on where the "problems" in the game are. How to solve them is not really up to the players, though.

Again, just to make sure: this is all just my personal opinion. It has nothing to do with the way I act as a mod and has nothing to do with InnoGames etc.

 

[DEADP00L]

I understand the sentiment, and as a player I personally would like to see more transparency in the ideas section aswell... but: Do you know how many forums and ideas there are? Sorry, but the sheer amount of suggestions would make this really hard to implement.

Before I retired, my office was processing between 30 and 60 new complaints and files a day.
We did not wait to accumulate 500 to update monitoring tables to report to the hierarchy.
I would find it honest on the part of Inno and the CMs of each community (sorry Juber but you are salaried after all) to announce that all pending suggestions are canceled and that henceforth any suggestions will be followed up clear so that the communities know what is possible or not.

I believe that the idea section gives good insight on where the "problems" in the game are. How to solve them is not really up to the players, though.

There will always be impatient players or players who do not respect others by asking the same question several times, but if I base myself on the French forum (the most active of all FOE forums) there are a few members and moderators who will quickly be able to calm these impatient people by giving them the right answer.

Moreover, Inno does not have this transparency and yet there is no shortage of redundant questions, so this would not be anything new...

 

[drakenridder]

I understand the sentiment, and as a player I personally would like to see more transparency in the ideas section aswell... but: Do you know how many forums and ideas there are? Sorry, but the sheer amount of suggestions would make this really hard to implement.
Also, as the game changes over time ideas might be looked at again that have been "dismissed" before.

Edit: I'd assume if an idea would be marked as "might be implemented at some point" people would ask about it time and time again and still be upset if it is not implemented within a certain time frame. Ideas might also not be implemented how they were suggested, but merged with other ideas.
I believe that the idea section gives good insight on where the "problems" in the game are. How to solve them is not really up to the players, though.

Again, just to make sure: this is all just my personal opinion. It has nothing to do with the way I act as a mod and has nothing to do with InnoGames etc.

It's more in regards of the most urgent community concerns and ideas/suggestions aimed to resolving them. If Inno could only be transparent regarding those it would be helpful. For example:
GbG,
Ideas/suggestions are under review?
Concerns are rejected?
Dealing with is postponed in favour of new features?
Solutions are looked into, progress has been made with a number of potential solutions?

Space age: copy paste
Concerns are dismissed or rejected?
New mechanics are brainstormed?
Ideas/suggestions are under review?
Ideas/suggestions are considered?
New stuff is getting experimented with?
Anything..?

Other ideas/suggestions that are under review or something? Even Minecraft for example has thousands of ideas/suggestions and even that community gets feedback like: under review, rejected, etc. And in comparison that's dwarfing every other game in existence. Als is the above not feasible?
It can be me but it appears to me that misinterpretation after misinterpretation is on going. I can see the challenges for giving feedback to every tiny idea/suggestion but not even being able to give any feedback in regards general subjects is exceptionally unlikely to me as it's boiling down to less then 10 subjects, if not 5...

 

[Juber]

I will try answering these with my current knowledge and what I can say about that.

GbG,
Ideas/suggestions are under review?

Yes, always. Not only for gbg, but in general. Sadly, I can't give you more details on this (yet).

Concerns are rejected?

Hmm, "rejected" is a difficult word. The developers are very much aware of the concerns you all have raised. But there are just so many factors to consider (internally), that these things might get moved to a later point or not addressed at all.

Dealing with is postponed in favour of new features?

You always have to find the right balance between bringing new features and improving existing ones. This is not only the case for Forge, not even only for InnoGames, but a major point in the whole software programming industry.

Solutions are looked into, progress has been made with a number of potential solutions?

I have asked for details on this one and if there is anything I can share with you.

Space age: copy paste
Concerns are dismissed or rejected?

This, we will address in the post coming probably later this week.

New mechanics are brainstormed?

Yes, but there are a lot of steps between actually brainstorming ideas and implementing them.

Ideas/suggestions are under review?

Same here, yes.

Ideas/suggestions are considered?

Yes.

New stuff is getting experimented with?

Yes.

Other ideas/suggestions that are under review or something?

Game Design always experiments with new ideas. But again, there is a big difference between thinking about things and having them.

Even Minecraft for example has thousands of ideas/suggestions and even that community gets feedback like: under review, rejected, etc.

This is because Mojang has a very different approach. But comparing it to us is like saying: "Hey, your brother goes out partying and drinking. Why don't you do it?".
This example might be extreme, but it shows that just because one does anything, does not mean that others have to do so too. There are always a lot of reasons why this and that is done and why not. But this goes very far to the topic of company policy, which we really should not discuss in a game forum like here.
Also, you can also flip it around: Why don't they make more updates? Some features are not liked by players, for example the phantoms, so why don't they address this?
Every game has it flaws and some can and will be fixed, but others can't or are intentionally not done. Not only for Forge, but for all video games.

I can see the challenges for giving feedback to every tiny idea/suggestion but not even being able to give any feedback in regards general subjects is exceptionally unlikely to me as it's boiling down to less then 10 subjects, if not 5...

This is exactly, what we want to improve, especially with the 2 projects we are planning.
@Fire Witch s point was, that it is simply not possibly to meet all players expectations. We try improving, but there is also a limit.

 

[DEADP00L]

Fire Witch s point was, that it is simply not possibly to meet all players expectations. We try improving, but there is also a limit.

No, his idea was to say that an unknown or silent majority was also a source of suggestions.

But like the presidential elections (currently underway in France) it would be inadmissible to give the floor after the elections to those who have not made the effort to vote.

Once, only once in 10 years of gaming have I seen a multiple poll sent by Innogames directly to the in-game account to narrow down ideas. Why not renew this operation if you think that the guild leaders of the different servers who speak here are not representative of the communities?

You are even aware that the beta server is not ideal for certain tests by testing certain novelties on a few servers.
GbG, for example, is not experienced at all the same on the beta and live servers.
How would you test improved Guild Expeditions that pit guilds from different worlds against each other on the beta server?
Even Diamond spending is skewed between Beta (where Diamonds are offered to all while few use them to thoroughly test events) and Live Servants (where some covet rankings).

@Juber you say that every suggestion is studied and implemented according to schedule and possibilities, which the devs can't do miracles. So why has visually impaired color concerns in GbG never been addressed? Does it require a lot of coding work?
Sorry, this reminds me of the time we had to "wait" for the "heal all" button to be moved and without any message in response.

And finally, are you aware that those who waste time on this forum to report information are considered above all to be imbeciles, with their community, who do not understand what we are for, given the lack of consideration?

 

[Fire Witch]

No, his idea was to say that an unknown or silent majority was also a source of suggestions.

Sorry, where did I say that?

Also, I'm female. Thanks.

 

[Nickneck the Lion]

@ Fire Witch you get Forge points when buildings are built, GBs are levelled, fighting/negotiating on the Campania map, and when research is completed. So even if I leave out the guild expedition, GBG, GvsG and PvP arena, it's almost impossible to avoid getting ranked points. A player does not have to be online every day, maybe he is not in the game for 2 days, 3 days only briefly and 2 days a little more, but he will still do something that brings ranking points. No player who enjoys FoE will spend weeks without building, researching or leveling any GB.
If there are these ominous players, they should definitely not be taken into account in game development.

 

[Juber]

@ Fire Witch you get Forge points when buildings are built, GBs are levelled, fighting/negotiating on the Campania map, and when research is completed. So even if I leave out the guild expedition, GBG, GvsG and PvP arena, it's almost impossible to avoid getting ranked points. A player does not have to be online every day, maybe he is not in the game for 2 days, 3 days only briefly and 2 days a little more, but he will still do something that brings ranking points. No player who enjoys FoE will spend weeks without building, researching or leveling any GB.
If there are these ominous players, they should definitely not be taken into account in game development.

They should be considered and are. I have explained it here too

I think there are some points most don't consider, so I just want to add them. These statistic pages count "active" as: "Has gained at least 1 point since last file dump." This in theory is ok, but there are many points left out, under which the vast majority of player fall under. These are for example:

• Players, that don't play daily: If 10 000 players play on day 1 and 10 000 different players at day 2, only 10 000 players are considered as active, even though all 20 000 players are active, just not every day.
• Players, that did not gain ranking points on one day: As already written before, if you don't gain any ranking points, these sites don't count you as active.
• Players with less than X ranking points.

Most players fall into one or a combination of some, especially if they don't gain points daily.

Other factors to determine activity is of course the PvP Arena, but let's be real: If you would only play once a day or even less frequent, would you care about the PvP Arena? I think not. So most don't even touch it.
I was also surprised to see how many players just play the game without any ambitions, just for fun. They build their little city, go slowly through the ages, are sometimes not even aware, that there is an arc and don't like it, when their productions are plundered, because they just want to build up their city and don't engage much with other players.
From all people I met, where I did not know they played Forge, almost all played in this style.
The problem is you don't really see them. They don't engage much, play in their own guilds or guilds, that are full of these players without really strong ambitions and don't communicate. We are all mostly in our bubbles of active guilds, very active players, players that gain ranking points very fast.

In conclusion, there is a very high amount of players in the shadows (We have a very good word for that in German: The Dunkelziffer ^^). This does of course not mean, that your feedback is less valuable, it is great in fact and helped a lot, especially in event balancing. This is just to show you where the other sources come from.

 

[Nickneck the Lion]

@Juber maybe I am explaining it wrong as English is not my first language.
At the moment, as a community, we don't get any feedback on what happens with proposals. As a result, the same or similar proposals keep coming up (perennials), similar proposals in different countries are also treated differently, here is an example of a proposal for an improved display in GBG
In Beta it was forwarded quite promptly

https://forum.beta.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/extended-detail-view-in-guild-battlegrounds.15309/

In the German forum it is still stewing and waiting to be forwarded.

https://forum.de.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/anzeige-bebauter-baupl%C3%A4tze-gg.53333/

This should perhaps be treated a little more uniformly.
Feedback on the suggestions could probably reduce the number and duplicates, as well as improve the drafting of the suggestions on our part.

 

[Juber]

At the moment, as a community, we don't get any feedback on what happens with proposals. As a result, the same or similar proposals keep coming up (perennials)

This I already explained. If we forward it, the devs have it and can decide, what they want to do. But the whole internal process is not that easy and there are many factors, that I already explained too, referring to Scrum.

This should perhaps be treated a little more uniformly.

It is. The idea in the German Forum you posted has not been forwarded yet. But this has nothing to do with how it is handled on "Development" side but simply has the reason, that nobody/not enough people are on the German team to forward it. I know this problem, because I once was one of the DE CMs and tried my best to forward them. If you don't have enough people to forward it, then it can't be forwarded in a timely manner. Here on beta we get way less suggestions, meaning @Fire Witch and me are enough to do that in a relatively timely manner.

Feedback on the suggestions could probably reduce the number and duplicates, as well as improve the drafting of the suggestions on our part.

We always mark ideas with "duplicate, forwarded, do not suggest, etc." and in most cases also explain why we did that. If an idea got forwarded, it passed the criteria, that it could be implemented, but this does not mean it will be anytime soon.

 

[Amdira]

I just took my current #31 from my hood in AF with 12.5 k points as example
He has several GB (almost none over lvl 10), complete event-buildings (we don't know whether gained with or without diamonds), the haven and even statue of honor (we don't know whether he is playing active or just parking in an active GbG-guild)
So would you say, this kind of player isn't active and hasn't to be considered? The cities of players from 31 - 75 (2.9 k points !) are looking similar. Those players are definitely actively playing the game, maybe not the way top players are playing it, but they are playing it. There are no rules how to play this game, no rules to participate in GE, GbG or GvG at all and not everyone is interested in ranking points. Maybe we don't have to understand their intentions and way of playing FoE, but they cannot be ignored. At least they are some of the few players honoring the work of designers longer than up to LMA by building houses and other building of the current eras.
I admit the further you go in your hood, the cities are looking more and more confusing in my opinion, but actually played active.