Feedback Regarding Recent Feedback

[DEADP00L]

it only shocks me that inno makes a ranking where all the players are not equal? A kind of exclusion depending on the type of device used...
If a ranking took into account gender or religion or nationality, it would shock you.
In the individual rankings, you have the points, that of the medals, that of the GB. Why not do the same with guild rankings? A unique GvG ranking and another more general one where each guild can participate equally.

 

[Amdira]

Deleting gvg just would be the last reason for long time players finally leaving the game. There are still lots of players who are only staying for gvg.
I rather think gbg killed a lot of the balance. After "working hard" for years to see implented a feature which makes it rather easy to make all your efforts in vain and find you behind some 24/7 players, whose first intention is just farming FPS, must be very frustrating.

 

[xivarmy]

it only shocks me that inno makes a ranking where all the players are not equal? A kind of exclusion depending on the type of device used...
If a ranking took into account gender or religion or nationality, it would shock you.
In the individual rankings, you have the points, that of the medals, that of the GB. Why not do the same with guild rankings? A unique GvG ranking and another more general one where each guild can participate equally.

You have to also look at it from the perspective of GvGers though: why are they doing what they're doing if not for ranking? And it's not like mobile players are excluded from having some browser players with them to GvG - a guild is a composition of many different players who may contribute in different ways. Nor is "mobile players" a race or gender

BTW there already is a more general ranking (GvG + GBG MMR contribution). And a no-GvG ranking (i.e. just MMR - it doesn't rank much very well at all )

for the record, I haven't seriously GvGed myself in years - typically only to express displeasure with a guild that has holdings by burning some of their t-goods It wouldn't phase me if they did delete it entirely. I'm just trying to point out that your half-way suggestion of just removing it as the e-peen contest for guilds to differentiate themselves may as well be deleting it in its entirety. The "#1 guild" has to continue to include a contribution from it or GvG may as well not even exist.

 

[Finkadel]

Deleting gvg just would be the last reason for long time players finally leaving the game. There are still lots of players who are only staying for gvg.
I rather think gbg killed a lot of the balance. After "working hard" for years to see implented a feature which makes it rather easy to make all your efforts in vain and find you behind some 24/7 players, whose first intention is just farming FPS, must be very frustrating.

Well, Inno is not answering a lot of a lot GvG flaws for years... And no, there are not that many players involved in GvG. Besides, they are only endgame players, they invested what they had to invest in terms of real money, they have cities full of useful stuff and no space for new... Why keep them...?

 

[Amdira]

Well, Inno is not answering a lot of a lot GvG flaws for years... And no, there are not that many players involved in GvG. Besides, they are only endgame players, they invested what they had to invest in terms of real money, they have cities full of useful stuff and no space for new... Why keep them...?

that's noz true in my obxervation. Most of gvg players I see are the ones who spent lots of time and "hard work" since years until gbg was inplemented. You don't need real money for gvg, but rather for gbg

 

[Nickneck the Lion]

Well, Inno is not answering a lot of a lot GvG flaws for years... And no, there are not that many players involved in GvG. Besides, they are only endgame players, they invested what they had to invest in terms of real money, they have cities full of useful stuff and no space for new... Why keep them...?

But the statement is cynical, back to the topic
Inno has to learn to talk to us and take our concerns seriously, so we shouldn't get bogged down in a discussion about pro and con GvG.

 

[BetaWadie]

You want feedback to improve the game but you don't seem ready to make concessions. There are lots of things to do though, often simple, but are you willing to challenge yourself?


- Overhaul the general ranking system to integrate all kinds of facets of the game instead of representing the fights at 99%. Thus you will demonstrate the richness of the game which is not just one way to play.


And if you don't think all of these remarks are wise, say so frankly instead of a silence or the typical phrase "we will study the matter". Be honest and respect your community.

I have long wished to see successful negotiations incorporated into player scoring rather than the goods spent simply contributed to the player score. Have done way too many egos to count in 5 years of play and have always wondered what my nego count is vs fight counts.

I also find that GBG and sector swapping between elite guilds completely skewed player scoring in the game by putting too much emphasis on fight counts and do feel bad seeing so many long term browser players who have ground through the eras for so long quickly surpassed in the ranks by mobile only players who are solely active in GBG. Even at "only" 5 years of play I've been around long enough to see countless players who have only played a year or two that have shot up the ranks past myself and others I know due to being in the right place at the right time in the lifetime of Forge gameplay.

 

[qaccy]

As always, I think some players expect too much. And I don't mean that to put Inno down. I mean that some players have this expectation that they should essentially be able to tell the developers what to do. Players aren't developers. Players may have more 'experience' with how a game actually plays, especially as a collective, but when most players talk about feedback or making changes to the game, they're only thinking about themselves and what they want in that moment, rather than the game or playerbase as a whole.

Example: Players ask for Rogues to have their own filter option in the military unit UI. They say it should be easy to do, but they don't consider how that option doesn't make any sense when the UI is set up to filter for age and/or unit type, not specific units. So it'd be a list of all the ages in the game, plus one that just says 'Rogue'? Doesn't work. Rogues also are just a light unit, so they can't get their own tab either. I've said before when this suggestion is made that what they should be asking for is a 'No Age' filter, since that works within the existing design of the UI and pretty much gives Rogues their own filter anyway, just that it would also include Color Guards and Military Drummers.

Anyway, my point is that a lot of players don't really know how to design games any better than the developers some of them try to claim are bad at their jobs. But they continually ask for more and more of their feedback to be acted upon like they know what's best for the game, and stamp their feet insisting that they're 'ignored' when that doesn't happen. Maybe they're just being 'ignored' because their feedback isn't very good or helpful. It seems to me like Inno's been getting better at involving player feedback in the development process, but some folks just aren't going to be satisfied until it gets to a point where there's someone from Inno responding to literally every single feedback post (or at least the ones that they make).

 

[Yekk]

There is a major gap between what Inno Says and what Inno does regarding feedback and players. Something simple like moving a "heal all" button that was obviously an issue took months of complaining to get fixed. Or the GBG matchmaking issue which took months of complaining and being told lies by support (i.e. nothing is wrong, matchmaking is random) before finally fixing it. But when there's the rare something that benefits players, it gets "fixed" practically overnight.

Forge/inno could easily get a small group of players to vet ideas before wasting valuable development resources on them. Instead, arrogant game designers force-feed players their lousy ideas (while having an extremely restrictive DNSL which basically limits suggestions to UI updates only - preventing any real discussion about good, balanced features and ideas).

Reference: PVP Arena, Perks, Event Hub (seriously?! lol), flying n00b trap, Virgo project, 4 copy/paste space ages, heal all, fighting RQs/RQ about limit, multiple Recalcs per day (but no changes to landing zones), lack of in-game rule enforcement, no mobile gvg, no gvg rewards, no gbg balancing, suppressive/oppressive communication restrictions, etc.

A core group of truly top endgame players could help to vet a lot of these ideas as either bad or what could be done to improve them. Instead, inno just re-uses code and mechanics across all their games, and while there's nothing specifically wrong with that, failing to provide a unique experience is a failure.

Juber is lightyears ahead of any other mod or CM that we've seen on the forums but is still forced to withhold the majority of details that players want. We have no timelines, no reasoning, and no sign of improvement moving forward.

In many ways, The players of Forge have become hostages of innogames in this sense - We have invested countless hours (and in some cases huge sums of money) into this game and it is a major social ecosystem for many players - to leave this game would be leaving behind a huge part of what players have built accomplished (and having to start over somewhere else.). On one hand, there is a sense of appreciation for making a fun/great game for many years, but on the other hand, there is a feeling a betrayal that things have gone so far off course from where it was when we started.

There used to be great anticipation about new ages, new GBs, new events, etc. Now, all we have to look forward to are copy/paste ages, time consuming monthlong events every 2 weeks, and garbage features that add no excitement, adventure, or challenge to the game.

Player surveys would help. A less restrictive DNSL would help (at least let players discuss why bad ideas are bad rather than killing them before the discussion starts). A Trello board with status updates about what inno is working on would be huge (many other games have this type of thing). At least we could see if inno was even hearing our feedback in a tangible way.

Players get "Empty Talk with a complete lack of conviction" when they bring up real problems. Just reading the latest Innogames
post makes me cringe... Beta commenters are here to see what happens on beta gets fixed and polished before it reaches live.

The tenth anniversary event is an excellent example. It took a couple players showing calculations that the event was almost impossible to complete to get it fixed. This should not have happened. The math is one of the easiest parts of an event. Someone at Inno dropped the ball. The "fix" was done to late for most players on beta. Some will report to their live guilds that this event is garbage.

Guild Perks is another. We were told it was bugged. That was incorrect. Math percentages (odds of an occurrence) are easy to code. It took players showing Inno had messed up some perks then had not told the community those were broke to get it removed. Pre testing had not been done...

 

[Yekk]

As always, I think some players expect too much. And I don't mean that to put Inno down. I mean that some players have this expectation that they should essentially be able to tell the developers what to do. Players aren't developers. Players may have more 'experience' with how a game actually plays, especially as a collective, but when most players talk about feedback or making changes to the game, they're only thinking about themselves and what they want in that moment, rather than the game or playerbase as a whole.

Example: Players ask for Rogues to have their own filter option in the military unit UI. They say it should be easy to do, but they don't consider how that option doesn't make any sense when the UI is set up to filter for age and/or unit type, not specific units. So it'd be a list of all the ages in the game, plus one that just says 'Rogue'? Doesn't work. Rogues also are just a light unit, so they can't get their own tab either. I've said before when this suggestion is made that what they should be asking for is a 'No Age' filter, since that works within the existing design of the UI and pretty much gives Rogues their own filter anyway, just that it would also include Color Guards and Military Drummers.

Anyway, my point is that a lot of players don't really know how to design games any better than the developers some of them try to claim are bad at their jobs. But they continually ask for more and more of their feedback to be acted upon like they know what's best for the game, and stamp their feet insisting that they're 'ignored' when that doesn't happen. Maybe they're just being 'ignored' because their feedback isn't very good or helpful. It seems to me like Inno's been getting better at involving player feedback in the development process, but some folks just aren't going to be satisfied until it gets to a point where there's someone from Inno responding to literally every single feedback post (or at least the ones that they make).

Looking at the crawler you have not played on beta in almost 2 years...

 

[Nickneck the Lion]

In my opinion, it's not about a player knowing better, it's about players playing every day and noticing things or coming up with ideas that no developer would come up with.
What I would like is that we get answers as to whether forwarded suggestions are implemented, or in the case of negative feedback, a discussion can follow, as an example the guild perks, here there was dissatisfaction with what was offered. There were many suggestions, good and not so good. What does Inno do, it takes the guild perks out of the game, why not a discussion with the community to improve it, so both sides get what they want. Many here on Beta also play live, are in guilds and take many suggestions, wishes and criticism with them here. Yes, there is always a bit of self-interest in suggestions, but also wishes from our guilds.

 

[Tanmay11]

I guess one of the problems is, that it's only very few players here in the forum giving feedback at all and 90% are playing FoE for combat in the first place. I don't think this has been the intention of the game to make it a full combat game, but a strategy game, as it is still described. But there are many players who don't want to spend all their time on combat - you just won't see them here, because they are being mocked from the beginning and tried to be convinced, that FoE is a combat game and there is no other way to play it. I'm watching this also on live servers - whenever a new player is asking for help, it starts with Oracle bashing and ends with convincing them to concentrate on combat and nothing else. Maybe combat is the best way to take a seat in the TOP 10, but not everyone is interested in clicking auto-fight some thousand times a day.
Looking at the new features of the last 2 years I see the attempt to make it more attractive for those players, who don't want to spend all their time on combat, but also on building and make negotiatons and teamplay within the guilds more attractive again (started with settlements, space carrier, auto select for negotiations, more goods in event-buildings and last but not least guild perks).
What I try to say is, that the interests of current beta-forum-members are rather one-sided and just won't help devs to implement features for non-combat, new and casual players. On the other hand I understand when very active players are frustrated if new eras seemingly are just copy-paste and don't bring new attractive features. Also the new GB is not really of interest for SAJM players, but more for AF-players upwards. There were many suggestions for improvement, but I lost hope, that anything will be changed. That may be the main reason for frustration and the feeling, that beta-feedback is just being ignored.
Just my 2 Cents

Everything has Become about GbG and it sickening.

 

[Edwin the First]

I think it's about time Inno communicated honestly with its players.
Just tell me in all honesty if you want to break the game on purpose, if you want to get the active players to stop playing the game, if you're just pretending that our opinions matter, etc......

 

[DEADP00L]

Hoping that by Monday night we hear from @InnoGames who started the discussion (unless the goal is to put us to sleep), I have a few questions for them:

- don't you think it's better to improve what already exists than to try to constantly integrate new things?
(personally, I can wait 2 years for a new age to arrive, especially when it is a simple copy-paste, and you see the antique shop, the tavern, the colonies, the GbGs, .. .)

- don't you think that in any strategy/management game players should lack all elements instead of overflowing?
(it seems abnormal to me to overflow gold coins, goods, medals, antique coins, tavern coins, ...)

You don't, it seems, want to create a pool of thoughtful players (for some mysterious reason) who could help you with your lineup projections. So why don't you do simple polls, in the game, in order to collect the opinions of a greater majority of players?

In any case, I hope for answers on this topic that YOU created.

 

[drakenridder]

Hoping that by Monday night we hear from @InnoGames who started the discussion

Honestly don't keep you're hopes high up. I've hardly seen them responding to anything in years. A few
times announcing/starting an discussion but that's all. They're highly mysterious. Even mythical and illusive
to some degreed.
In any case I hope they'll fixing the game's greatest issue: purposelessness.

 

[Dessire]

All that I read was:

- We are not going to improve the bonus of the gold orery to: 20FPS, 5% 25 diamonds per day, 30% to all type of attacks and defense in venus age, 100 random goods of your age and your previous age and to your guild treasury, 5 random units of your age and limited to only 1 copie of this building in your city because it must ver very special! a real 10th anniversary event reward.

- We are not going to add a new league in GbG

- We are not going to add the aid all players button

- We are not going to increase the amount of FPs you can stack at the same time to 500 atleast

- We are not going to improve the Flying Island and change the bonuses of the A.I Core

- We are not going to modify and improve the bonuses of great buildings like colosseum (like a weak version of alcatraz, at lelvel 80, you receive 50 random units of your age)

- We are not going to improve our systems to identify who is cheating

- We are not going to stop of copy-pasting space ages

- We are not going to create a new way to experience how ages are investigated and lived

- We are not going to allow a system to allow players move their expansions (some times you buy and put an expansion in a place that later you realize it was a very bad desision to put it there

- We are not going to eliminate/remove summer event, halloween event, archaeology event and change them to make them more fair and enjoyable like spring event or fall event

- We are not going to improve the designs of certain great buildings like

- We are not going to do anything related to the terrain arround our cities to make it fit to the age where players are and we are not going to add a new design to the tavern for ages above contemporary era

- We are not going to add any new idea of bonuses suggested in our forums

- We are not going to allow players level up their arc as much as they want to have a % above 100%

- We are not going to elimintate the amount of recurring quests you can cancel per day and we are not allow players select which recurring quests you can see and which you want to hidde/remove from all the ones you have in each era.

- We are not going to remove/eliminate GvG despite the fact that more than the 80% of players don't play it and it doesn't give any personal reward to players who spend their time and effort doing it, the same for GbG and we are not going to make a mix of both to create the best pvp feature in the history of FoE.

- We are not going to eliminate/remove the option of plunder your neighbors despite the fact that almost all players hate that, despite the fact that is not porfitable anymore doing that and we are not going to use the defensive attack and defense bonus in other ways like: the max % of attack and defense of the military units in each territory your guild owns in GbG is 1.5% of the total % of all your guild's members. so if 80 players in a guild have 2000% of defenseive defense, that would be 160000% of defense, 1.5% of that would be 2400% of defense, so if a player of an enemy guild attacks one of your territories in GbG, the highes attrition will make him/her fight against military units with 2400% of defense. (it is just an example).

- We are not going to eliminate the useless items in ADealer.

etc. etc. etc.

 

[Herr Voxner]

Two things.
1. Volunteers and Support are wonderful! You're customer service (support) is absolutely amazing and I appreciate so MUCH how well Inno reacts to suggestions/comments/feedback in the forums. I feel like Inno volunteers do a great job, especially compared to other similar games. I respect it, but I do not share the person's viewpoint above.

2. My critical feedback is with Forge Plus. This new style of (probably labeled under A/B testing) not having an item appear at all for some and only for others is OK in a beta setting, but not on live release. It is, quite frankly discriminatory in nature and quite unfair to be the people that are not even offered to view the item, let alone weigh in their opinion about it.

 

[Goldra]

The trouble is since the SAM, game has changed and turned into a battle farming game. With the battles on recurent quest and the BG, the way to be on the top is to do battles and more battles.
Gb has turned something obsolet and the new ones arent so good. Upgrade them over level 100 has no sense for more of them because its so expensive for what they give.
Battles in recurring quest should be eliminated, becuase they make too much diference between players over SAM and the others. Recurring quest needs an actualization.
GVG is obsolet and you dont erase it, becuase you know that you will loose a lot of players. It needs a renovation. Avoid cheaters, and transform it into something that makes an empire with the help of the guild.
BG has turned in something boring, just for farming battles. Need some changes.
Events are repetitive and boring.
Building in the city is limited to put event buildings and some GB. If you want to do something different, you wont be competitive. It needs more options.
Game needs to turn back before the SA.

 

[Nessie]

I advise all players not to spend money on this game. InnoGames does not meet the expectations of the players and the management reacts extremely rigidly to any form of criticism up to and including bans

 

[Juber]

Some personal words here. As they are just personal thought, they are not considered official information in any way. I just feel like I have to say some things. I am sorry in advance, if anyone feels insulted in any way by my post. This is definitely not what I was aiming for writing it.

Guys (and girls), I know it can be frustrating, if the feedback you provide is not considered as you would like, I and the devs totally understand this. With this post we wanted to give you a small insight and explain, why the devs did not do changes exactly as the forum members here expected/wanted. Improving the transparency is a big bullet point for this year, that I, together with my bosses want to improve this year. We already did some things, like including stats in the announcements and also provide way more information in the announcements themselves. We also have further plans, we want to introduce in the next couple of months.
Going back, your frustration does not give you the right to insult developers, other forum members or moderators. We are all just people, trying our best to provide happiness all around. The toxicity only makes things worse. Way worse. It makes it unbearable to read the forum from times to times and we have to moderate a lot, which in return just makes the people more angry again, as we removed posts containing insult, hate, racism and other stuff, that violates the forum rules and we (and most other players) don't want to see here.
Your criticism is always welcome, do not understand me wrong here, it is just the way many currently share their dissatisfaction.
Yes, the current age has almost no new features compared to the previous one, yes, some changes in the Anniversary Event were maybe not enough or what some expected, yes, the feedback handling is not the greatest currently (from your standpoint), this is all correct and can and is a part of the dissatisfaction many of you currently feel and clearly show. However, it is important that you don't go overboard.

To give you all a small insight on what I have been doing lately with your feedback:
As always, I read every new post on the forum almost daily. In addition, I forward your general feedback and feature specific feedback separately once a week to the developers. For that, I go through all the comments in the feedback threads again, count the likes and posts, include feedback from support tickets and what I got from other smaller sources (other players from my main world on the German servers, my Mods and various Discord servers, YouTube comments, etc.) and forward it showing clearly what is liked and disliked for each specific part of a feature.
So I read through all the feedback posts multiple times a week. I personally love to see real criticism and calculations from @MooingCat. On the other side I hate to read comments from some other specific people, as I already know, that what they are writing is just the same like every comment they write (and yes, I will not name anyone, the ones in question probably know already I mean them). But I still forward their criticism, even though I don't enjoy reading the comments. I am only human, so is is just natural, that I like and hate things. But this does not influence how I work (well, maybe this post does, but as you know, I don't normally write such posts).

So to summarize everything: Please don't go overboard with your feelings here, criticism is important, but only if it is constructive and don't insult others, especially not because they were born in another country.
Thanks for reading and whoever read all of this up to here: You earned yourself a virtual cookie!