Feedback Regarding Recent Feedback

[jmtiago]

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!

Let us thank for the comment, but again the players focus on commenting on how they can earn more and not in the basics

There are 4 things that spoil the game and they do not talk about it:
gvg, bugs and slowness
GBG matchmaking, not random at all
multiple accounts
bots

 

[Juber]

There are 4 things that spoil the game and they do not talk about it:

I can say some things about these things if you want.

gvg

GvG will not see any changes anymore, just as we announced when releasing the Guild Battlegrounds. Only bugfixes will happen.

bugs

If you come across any bugs, please report them. We also addressed this topic in the announcement.

and slowness

What exactly do you mean? I can't follow you there.

GBG matchmaking, not random at all

It is random, trust me. Since the issue from last year occurred, the devs have a closer look on it and it is still random (if you have the same amount of League Points).

multiple accounts

These are against the game rules. If you come across any, please report them to the support team. we will have a look at them and if we can confirm the suspicion, we will ban them. However please not that even if some accounts seem to be obvious multi account, they sometimes not. Maybe a person with their partner created 2 accounts with similar names, maybe someone and their sister play together. These are things you as the player can't see. We of course can't know these things for sure, but we have various tools on our hands to have a deeper look than a normal player.

bots

Same situation here: If you believe someone is using any tools, just report them. Reporting does not harm anyone, but we need them to have a manual look at them in the first place.

 

[Thunderdome]

@Juber nothing against you, mate, because you are a person like the rest of us that had voiced our feedback to this (and other) thread(s), and I truly respect that. However, I am reserved in asking if the devs really want a say, then they better get their hineys on here as they are being called out by the player base. A lot of us are wondering why a company that had a lot good awards in their first couple of years (yes, I played a year before real life took me that I could not have time to play when they first came about with this game) went into a company that is like the rest at the bottom of the barrel.

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

Part of the reason why they have that Plus thing that costs nearly 30 monthly that supposedly gives a player the ability to stack 1k FP in one go. Most of us collect between 200 and 600 FP daily on average with some players collecting far greater than 600 daily due to bonuses tied in their city (GBs). There was a suggestion to convert FP to packages so we don't have to use them on GBs or research if we don't want to, but never got into fruition.

We are not going to eliminate the useless items in ADealer

I won't say that we should get rid of useless items (as there will be those that would like them), but we should get better items in AD (I've only seen a few event related kits in the bidding side, but never any in the buying side). IN FACT, we should get a better return on our AD selling since you see the very same item you sold for like 8-10x (or more) the price. I only use AD to sell off those pesky VTs since Inno won't change them into daily collection from the 7-day collection routine, but I sure would like some bang for my buck if I am selling other stuff, especially if I saw their price in the buy screen to be way up there.

 

[mcbluefire]

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.
....

Awesome post, Juber! Really appreciate having you in the conversation. We can definitely follow the personal you and the work you and hope for even more transparency in the team. The changes will be warmly welcomed. Even if we don't like the answers, at least we'll be getting them!

 

[Ifmountain]

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!

Really appreciate the words and time spent of you to approach the community! Cheers to that!

Regarding transparency and very specifically the “why” behind the design decisions, I would honestly love to understand the way from “we will do a new LG” to “that’s the mechanism for it”. Sure you understand, that as a player in the “endgame”, one would love to see something beneficial for their own gameplay instead of something… else. You simply do not feel addressed as a player anymore and therefore… frustration comes up… same as you said, that is a human thing, none of us can speak themselves free of.

The fact that new gameplay is hard to implement and there is a certain risk that “just one more thing” makes it boring or to much to handle in the city… there are things that might ease the existing gameplay for the “endgamers“… define standard army and change units with one click (no diamonds spent needed for sure, FTP content)… do a task quest line to ear it (think of wow how to earn a legendary item) - trust me, i would spent a week of net-play-time to achieve this… sure others would do too.

Some positive notes…
graphics, love them.
Issue handling, got way better and faster.
events, though repetitive, I am still looking forward to most of them, as they are fun to play
event buildings, mostly brilliant and fair to achieve
communication changes in the chats… best improvement in 2021, helped a lot
GvG - best Game content… please, please address this and do a new area map… perhaps even with mats of the endgame, then the new GB would perhaps even be worthy a bit

Overall game experience still keeps one going, community is quite stable, losses of experienced gamers are mostly due to RL topics. Without FoE the whole Corona thing would have been far worse… so thanks for keeping things up and… the more us get the understand the “why” for the things we are criticising, the more acceptance you will gain.

Again - thanks for the personal note and honesty with it…

if

 

[DEADP00L]

Thank you Juber for your intervention, we already knew that you are involved in our grievances.

You say that GvG won't evolve anymore, so out of honesty point it out on app platforms that not all facets of the game are accessible on phone, unlike PC.

You say that you will offer us more transparency, while the developers tell us the reason for the refusals of the eternal requests of several communities.

You say that the GbGs are balanced by a random with equivalent LPs. But do you still play? We don't blame the randomness (whatever...) but the too great ease of going from the platinum league to 1,000 LP!

Finally, don't forget that you must first prove your good words rather than what has been done now. We talk again about the reaction time and the silence of Innogames concerning the healing button?

Are you tired of the aggressiveness of some? But tell yourself that with google translate, the writings of the players do not represent exactly what they would like to say in their mother tongue. Don't stop at the form, be more discerning, look at the substance!

The easiest way to satisfy the community, beyond spending days programming in their direction, remains above all the so-called transparency, by telling us very regularly the feedback on our requests and suggestions.

 

[Amdira]

I try to understand why Inno cannot respond to every suggestion or critic here.

Just for example, somone makes a suggestion or shares some critics
Inno would respond with "we will discuss it"
2 hours later the first ones will ask, when the discussion is finished and bout the result
4 hours later the first ones will start to blame Inno for no more response on the topic
8 hours later he first ones will start calling Inno and the support team liars
and so on
12 hours later Inno tells the community, that they will start to discuss it tomorrow as they had to fix an urgent problem first
repeat points 3-5
That's like it happens often here due to my observation. Players want everything done at once and just the way they think it has to be done.

I totally understand critics on issues which haven't been solved for months or years and that the community wants answers. Me too would like to know some background of how and why some decisions are being made, especially when there are new features implemented which seem to make no sense at all for no group of players (maybe except whales). I also understand nobody of the moderators team would be happy to give explainations 24/7 and being tired of being made responsible for decisions from devs. The tendency to shoot the bringer of news doesn't make it an easy job for them, I guess.

 

[DEADP00L]

On another game, the designers make a point every week and that is more than enough.
They even note "discussions in progress" on certain points which come up regularly but never a question remains unanswered for more than 2 months.
As a reminder, the "heal all" button left us 3 months without explanations or justifications, whereas if this same button had bugged while giving us diamonds, it would have disappeared in less than 24 hours.
Not saying anything, not communicating is sometimes worse than insulting us directly.

During the 2021 sprint, I had asked for the setting up of a table listing the current suggestions and current discussions with an annotation from inno until the setting up or the definitive cancellation. It's a huge job to put in place but almost nothing to keep updating when you really care about your customers.

 

[Amdira]

Customers - if I define this word right - would be paying users
Most of us are just users of free content

 

[Fire Witch]

I wanted to chime in with a more personal comment.

Don't stop at the form, be more discerning, look at the substance!

We do not stop at the form, but being rude does not help to get the point across. You could say "I am disappointed" or "this change is bad" etc., but try to avoid saying someone must be stupid (or worse) for implementing a change.

I am well aware that getting angry is just normal when you care for something. Personally, I used to be downright offended when I did not like a change or a feature. Why would someone try to ruin my gameplay?!
The answer is: nobody is trying to ruin the game experience, there is just different views on it and interests to take into account. Therefore, player feedback giving reasons why x is bad and y needs to be changed is vital.

As a moderator my least favorite thing to do is deleting posts or parts of them, but if there is just too much negativity I have to do something. The forum has to be a place where people like to go and everyone can voice their view on the game... but it should also be possible for devs or anyone working at InnoGames to read it without feeling like they are the worst people on the planet.

 

[DEADP00L]

Therefore, player feedback giving reasons why x is bad and y needs to be changed is vital.

And what answer do we get when we spend time breaking it all down? Nothing, no answer other than "we have listened to you, we will study the question." where rarely do you follow up or demonstrate that our proposals are not forgotten.

Do you want to make a contest where you score 1 point each time a player's words exceed his thought and where I score a point each time a substantiated proposal has no follow-up or answer?

but it should also be possible for devs or anyone working at InnoGames to read it without feeling like they are the worst people on the planet.

Again, how should WE react to their silence?
I have the right to wonder about the knowledge of the game by the developers.
Let’s take a concrete example, the GbGs:
hot topic that keeps coming back for months where we ask for a readjustment so that they become what has been announced, a championship!
your only answer, confirmed just today, though, is to randomly distribute guilds at equivalent LP.
We are not talking to you about balancing only the "1,000 LP league" but about preventing a platinum guild from ending up in diamond, directly with the strongest, without any intermediate step.
I have read dozens of suggestions, some of which seem to me feasible or at least testable. How much have we been able to read back from the developers, via the CM?

On the FR forum, one of the most active, if not the most active, of all your communities, there are 180 suggestions raised and unanswered, some of which date from 2019.
Do you honestly think this shows innogames respect for its communities?
So of course, now responding one by one to the 180 pending suggestions would be a titanic task, but if from the beginning you gave importance to our opinion, the work would be limited to 1 hour maximum per week.

Another glaring example of your lack of respect, let's talk about the 2021 sprint. The communities and CMs in each language spent more time coming up with things for you than you did putting some of them in place and of course no response for others.

So yes sorry to say that the developers are idiots but you can't help saying, by the overwhelming evidence of recent years that they take us for idiots!

I am not the center of the world and my word has no more importance than another. I'm just pointing out that I spend more time explaining a problem, proposing solutions, writing them in a language that isn't mine, than the decision makers of innogames informing us.

Do you at least understand the current frustration of this new age copy-paste where only the graphic designers seem to have worked.
This mostly implies that the other devs haven't had much work done on age (either by too many changes in the last 12 events, or there aren't enough of them anymore).
Hence an observation that is majority on the French community to want to improve what exists instead of adding more useless or flawed things.

 

[The Lady Ann]

and that rant gets us where? deadpool

 

[Duke of Iowa]

@Juber well said man. I read the Forums a lot. It is so FRUSTRAITING to see so many nasty people. I can understand if you are unhappy with something, but the insults and nasty negativity without any positive is just getting BORING. I enjoy the game and appreciate that some suggestions are being worked on. I respect that some things I don't like or would like to see changed will not be. If I ever get so unhappy with the game as some sound I would just quit playing. Why let it bother you that much? I get many of you have years invested in the game. Nothing is perfect. Try and find the positive in it.

 

[Emberguard]

Again, how should WE react to their silence?
I have the right to wonder about the knowledge of the game by the developers.

Hopefully in the same manner you wish to be addressed if you were to get a reply, regardless of who that reply comes from.

 

[Gedged]

... that they take us for idiots!

I feel the game often treats me as an idiot.

Is ForgePlus an offer or an insult?
How about the button that asks me to pay a million diamonds to power level a Great Building?

Why does the game have to crash with every special offer?
Why do you offer me 200% more diamonds when I already have >100k?
Why do you offer me 20% the day after I rejected your 200% offer?

 

[Owl II]

If someone is unrestrained here, then you provoke it yourself. Why do you ask the opinion of the community every time if you are not interested in it? You're making some minor edits, but you're not going to eliminate the main source of player disappointment. It's more annoying than if you didn't do anything. I left my city on beta because there is nothing to test here. And I would leave my city in the living world. But I have a moral responsibility to my fellow guildmate there.

 

[Owl II]

The inarticulate and bug-ridden functionality of the game has long been no reason why players stay in it. It's more like a kind of social network. You just need to leave everything as it is so that keep it going. But you want to make money on it. So approach the question the right way! Give us a reason to play something besides leveling houses. Redesign the rankings is the first thing. Redesign the LP accrual scheme. Review the rewards on the results of the seasons in the GBG. Make some things that can be exploited indefinitely. Review the rewards in the events. Review the very idea of rewards in events. City space is limited. Players don't need as many buildings. Buildings fall from everywhere: GE, AD, events, daily challenge... Come up with something for the guilds. So players to be interested in building a guild. Raise guild level. Hell, you can finally hire a game creator. Let him do all this for you. But don't ask the players who are the end users of the product, not the creators of the game worlds. If you ask me how to extract data from the database and build it in a readable form, I will give you a detailed consultation. But don't ask me how to build games correctly. Nobody taught me that

 

[Nickneck the Lion]

@Juber I thank them for this detailed contribution. I can only support the statements about criticism and insulting post, no one should be personally attacked. I think you are one of the most active CM/Mod. Here and in the German forum. I was very pleased to read your open words about your way of working, I would wish for many, many more statements from the official side in this open manner. I think then the frustration on the community would be less great, or even non-existent.

PS: I am sure that my comments do not offend anyone, but if they do, please let me know. Nobody is perfect.

 

[drakenridder]

Honestly regarding transparency I think this part got misinterpreted or at least partly. The community would like to get confirmation of the raised concerns are been looked into. Further more to what extend the proposed potential solutions to them are getting discussed or are dismissed. When dismissed what ultimately let to the proposal been dismissed. As this can serve greatly as guidance towards in which direction we shouldn't look for solutions.
An recent example could be the space ages offering little purpose beyond expansions. What the community dies to know is to what extend into an solution is looked. Does the dev. team considered or discuss new ideas for them? On which parts of the space ages are they interested into spicing them slightly up? If that can be communicated the community can provide more direct and more constructively helpful feedback/advice. Just as an example let's say the devs would like to spicing up the colonies to making the space ages more enjoyable / appreciated. The community could providing them with tons of ideas to integrate changes contributing into an more interesting/appealing space age. While I can understand that spicing up the space ages concept is an costly and time consuming investment, I think most players are more willing to be patient if they know that the devs are experimenting with new concepts for the space ages. Most specifically stuff to do while waiting for the next age to come around and how to expend upon the previous age.
Another part of more specific transparency I think the community likes would be for example with GB's bonuses. The most recent 1 for example. The community clearly dislikes that the GB doesn't affect space age special goods of their own age. While for AF and OF the GB is in that regards helpful. The community likely would love to see transparency into why the devs have chosen to make the GB the way it is. All of this would probably aid towards an more healthy and constructively helpful forum environment.

Speaking for myself personally, I try to analyse the issues the community has and translating into what I think might be the (core/main) cause. As well addressing potential solutions I personally see. Though some more guidance from Inno's part into what would the devs like to know? Is at least from my point of view would be an major improvement: I could try to concentrate into finding and formulate feedback that they are interested in and doing my best to making it as easy to understand as possible for them and from their side I can imagine how beneficial it could be to get more specific feedback from the community. For example like has been done with the perks: what perks are appealing? What mechanics would be desirable? Etc.
I simple miss that sorts of transparency for key features:
GbG
Space ages
GB's
In particular the GB's as an content years ago on Beta but ultimately resulted in hardly any bonus and GB seeing the day of light. Which is unfortunate but in regards of the transparency there is an gain from this for example: the devs have looked into the ideas but found some ideas too game changing or overpowering good and thus decided not to using it.

All of this been said, most if not all that's been said might not be personal attacks aimed at the cm, specific devs or mods in particular, in other words not aimed at the person but rather on the subject / disappointments that many issues persist in the game but little is known in what is done or is in progress to trouble shooting it. I personally think if more information could be provided on the biggest concerns and eventually results surfacing in attempts to tackle the issues that the overal situation might improve over time. This can however be easily taking 3-5 years but I think personally there's a lot to gain from it for all parties.

 

[thelegend88]

Well guys, what to say... SAJ is supposed to be a new era and new content but in fact it's just a copy of all previous eras and you just change graphics. GB is not really great at all.

Of course people are disappointed and we all feel let down by the lack of creativity or proper decision making.

And one of the biggest problems is the lack of your response to our feedback. Players give their opinions, say what they like and dislike. None of the people in charge ever replies or has any contact with the community here on forums, we feel like we are talking to ghosts all the time and being ignored as same ridiculous things (like making a copy of one era 4 times in a row and it seems there will be fifth) happen over and over again.