Feedback Regarding Recent Feedback

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

Just to give a comparison, on my favorite game's website there have been 12 actual developer responses in the forum within the last 24 hours ranging from balancing issues to patchnotes, with other stuff in between (just a typical day). And that is on top of releasing upcoming change notes (Jira) on a weekly to monthly basis, adding to game lore via multiple methods, and releasing 2+ videos per week which include deep dives into all aspects of gameplay and development. Plus there is an actual bug tracker system with reproduction and dev participation.

 

[drakenridder]

They were just expressing their disappointment in the temperature of the feedback of late.

I don't like to be negative towards anyone or any entity/company but Inno really managed to getting this on themselves. As the community in general has continued to address the same points over and over. I’m sure that @Juber and other mods and cm’s have countless times forwarded it.
If anything Inno unleashed an greatly enhanced Cobra effect by starting an discussion regarding recent feedback, but choosing to lurk, not to interact and not to discus a single thing regarding recent feedback. Not even making any statement regarding recent feedback after opening the discussion.
The community might’ve been too general by asking for more transparency. Likely causing Inno to misinterpret it as rolling out more information in regards of events, changes and features. While appreciated and an improvement, an clear statement regarding the hot topics like: GbG and copy paste ages and any progress/attempts made to tackle those issues. Admitting bottlenecks where the community could help inspiring the devs and such, would probably lessens the sour mood of nowadays in the feedback. In addition towards Beta it would be massively helpful if an official statement would come for not changing something or why something is changed. EG an statement why the AI core’s bonus is exclusive for main city productions, rendering it useless for SAJM players except for those who are looking for additional guild goods buildings.

 

[jovada]

I have the feeling this message of innogames is just an handkerchief we received to wipe our tears.
They speak mostly about events and that are not our real complaints, we know that beta is testing and you have deadlines to put them on the live servers and we also know that some of the feedback given (always demanding more and bigger bonusses) is not realistic.
But the real problems about gameplay is our feedback always ignored, more then a year we complained about pvp (that is not pvp, since the start of it i always received the same rotation of AI players). More then a year we complained about balancing in GbG, nothing is done and we never received an answer if something will be done or not.
You speak about transparency and communication but your score is a big ZERO so far.

 

[JosefD]

Innogames will finally answer all our questions and comments.....
April Fool

Yeah, if we're "lucky" they will answer by shutting down this forum!

 

[Finkadel]

I don't like to be negative towards anyone or any entity/company but Inno really managed to getting this on themselves. As the community in general has continued to address the same points over and over. I’m sure that @Juber and other mods and cm’s have countless times forwarded it.
If anything Inno unleashed an greatly enhanced Cobra effect by starting an discussion regarding recent feedback, but choosing to lurk, not to interact and not to discus a single thing regarding recent feedback. Not even making any statement regarding recent feedback after opening the discussion.
The community might’ve been too general by asking for more transparency. Likely causing Inno to misinterpret it as rolling out more information in regards of events, changes and features. While appreciated and an improvement, an clear statement regarding the hot topics like: GbG and copy paste ages and any progress/attempts made to tackle those issues. Admitting bottlenecks where the community could help inspiring the devs and such, would probably lessens the sour mood of nowadays in the feedback. In addition towards Beta it would be massively helpful if an official statement would come for not changing something or why something is changed. EG an statement why the AI core’s bonus is exclusive for main city productions, rendering it useless for SAJM players except for those who are looking for additional guild goods buildings.

That is that, they do not RESPOND to the feedback, they ANNOUNCE. They give us feeling like they don't play the game, just watching it from above and thinking they outsmart us.

Like it's nursery care - like we all are toddlers and cannot understand and be understood, so what is the point having CONVERSATION with us...? Patting us on the heads is good enough, and that is what they do. I seriously don't envy @Juber his work, so many stupid toddlers to handle, sigh.

 

[drakenridder]

That is that, they do not RESPOND to the feedback, they ANNOUNCE. They give us feeling like they don't play the game, just watching it from above and thinking they outsmart us.

Like it's nursery care - like we all are toddlers and cannot understand and be understood, so what is the point having CONVERSATION with us...? Patting us on the heads is good enough, and that is what they do. I seriously don't envy @Juber his work, so many stupid toddlers to handle, sigh.

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.

I'm afraid that what I've said above still applies.

 

[jovada]

Don't forget the forum users are just about 1% of all players and the majority of players (by numbers) hasn't even an idea how we are thinking this game has to be played . Stay humble - we are the minority

You forget that 1% are mostly guildleaders representing a lot more then 1% of the players.

 

[JosefD]

You forget that 1% are mostly guildleaders representing a lot more then 1% of the players.

True! I am in the guild leading teams of 3 guilds with, altogether, about 150 users.

That is that, they do not RESPOND to the feedback, they ANNOUNCE. They give us feeling like they don't play the game, just watching it from above and thinking they outsmart us.

Like it's nursery care - like we all are toddlers and cannot understand and be understood, so what is the point having CONVERSATION with us...? Patting us on the heads is good enough, and that is what they do. I seriously don't envy @Juber his work, so many stupid toddlers to handle, sigh.

As far as @Juber and the other admins and moderators are concerned, I think they've got the hardest job of all. I believe they receive just as little (or, rather, no) information as we do and have nothing they could forward to us. And if ever they receive some information of the inner macchinations of Inno they're probably not even allowed to forward this information to us. I'm under the impression that they have to adhere to very strict rules.

All in all, this is depressing. Apparently Inno does not see that the users in this forum and that of the live servers are multiplicators as are those who watch Inno's videos on social media. I'm talking to the people in my guilds and I can tell that the general displeasure with Inno is on the rise. That's what Inno needs to understand.

 

[Amdira]

You forget that 1% are mostly guildleaders representing a lot more then 1% of the players.

Ok, let's take an average "old" world with about 80.000 players.
Let's assume 50.000 of them are at least active casual players
With an AVERAGE of 50 ppl/guild this would make about 1.000 guilds, but there are in average about 8.000 guilds due to many 1-man-guilds (let'sassume again 5.000 active ones)
If we take the TOP 100 guilds with an average of 50 players each, they still make only 10% of all players.
Those remaining 90% are mostly players/guilds you will never meet or see in a forum or global chat, You might meet some of those players in the hood from time to time placed at spot 50-80
Those players may be completely uninterestering for us, as they are playing in a rather different way as most of us think the game has to be played.
BUT many, I mean really many of those players may make the majority of silent diamond buyers. Not the whales, but those invisible players, who are buying diamonds on a regular base for things we never would. For negotiations, buildings, events, goods, FPs, Medals and so on.

What I'm trying to say is, that forum users are a special group of players playing the game in a special way, which might even be the "right" one, if there is somehting like this. But they might not be the best customers. Thus Inno has to make the game attractive for the majority of players/customers, which mostly just want to go through ages as easy as possible.

Maybe I'm completely wrong with this assumption, maybe I'm not. Only Inno knows

 

[DEADP00L]

Ok, let's take an average "old" world with about 80.000 players.

I would like to play on your servers...
Because on the 3 servers of different nationalities that I played, when there were more than 1,000 really active players, it was really the maximum.
I think that players who don't log in every day and only for 5 minutes don't really care about the evolutions of the game, they suffer them without taking pleasure or complaining about it.

Make no mistake, the purpose of the forum for Inno is only to identify bugs because no employee actually plays the games.
So if the minority of players (but active on the forum), as you imply, no longer report any bugs or info, would that help the silent majority better?
In any case, this would strongly penalize Inno, which would see more and more comments on the many uncorrected bugs (and for good reason) on google play, thus lowering its reputation and therefore its profits.

 

[Amdira]

The main purpose of the beta server should be identifying and reporting bugs. For doing this we get some diamonds for free. On the other hand this could be done with tickets to the support, too.
I wouldn't even assume, that no emloyee is playing the game at all. They rather are playing it under other conditions, with unlimited ressources and time converters and whatever tools we don't have access to. This makes them blind for the needs of actual players and thus they need our feedback. I assume, some or even most of the mods are also playing the game, but they aren't allowed to take sides, which is understandable. So it's not an easy job to reply to our feedback, I guess, especially when most of the feedback is negative and brought forward in an unappropiate way.
I guess there are many reasons for Inno to act in the way they do, we will never know and they are under no obligation to tell us. If they did, it just would end in endless discussions about different playstyles and preferences of still a minority of players, who are already addicted to the game and rarely won't leave it anyway. Thus they have to take care, that the majority of casual players and regulary customers are becoming addicted, too

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

Ok, let's take an average "old" world with about 80.000 players.
Let's assume 50.000 of them are at least active casual players

And right there your argument starts to fall apart. For US worlds the average number of active players (those that log in at least once a week) hovers between 7000 and 8000 players (out of around 20k total players), approaching a factor of 10 less than your argument. I consider those that log in every 1-3 days as active, and 3-7 as casual active, maybe you have a different definition.

Germany is about double that, International about half, and most of the rest around the same as the US server or far lower (with many well under 2k active players). The numbers have been hovering in about the same area for a while now, slowly diminishing by about 25% over the last 5 years on the US server.

Maybe I'm completely wrong with this assumption, maybe I'm not. Only Inno knows

Statistics are available, so not only Inno knows

If Inno is only interested in the quick money from casual players who have no concept of how the game progresses, then it is truly in a death spiral (which I believe it actually is, though currently a slow one), because it is the active players who foster new players to advance and stay in the game, and it's the active players who run the active guilds. Without the active players the game will fall to pieces very quickly or at least become a boring slogfest where you can't get anything done.

In reality I honestly think that Inno really doesn't care beyond just trying to provide the minimum viable product that will keep enough active players in the game so that Inno can milk the cow as long as possible. I believe that the Inno development effort has for the most part moved on to newer more mobile oriented pastures.

I believe this is partly why most top 25 guilds now only have half rosters whereas a couple of years ago almost all top 50 guilds were full to the brim. What happens to the game when there are only a handful of semi-active guilds remaining and the rest are dead guilds?

 

[xivarmy]

I believe this is partly why most top 25 guilds now only have half rosters whereas a couple of years ago almost all top 50 guilds were full to the brim. What happens to the game when there are only a handful of semi-active guilds remaining and the rest are dead guilds?

This has largely been brought about by GE and then GBG.

The first big cull came when the GE championship came out - guilds that don't like to lose had to start cutting their not so active "legacy" players.

The next big cull came from GBG where the ability of a guild to pay for siege camps is a concern. So you cut players in underpopulated ages that can't support the treasury themselves. Furthermore you restrict your recruitment of players to the kinds of players that won't hold you back.

These days "recruitment" from top guilds pretty much consists of messaging top people in tier 2/3 guilds and begging them to either leave their guilds or merge their entire guild into you (which will eventually lead to 80%+ of them being booted when they're not up to standard so you can cannibalize another guild). Because the way the attrition-free GBG meta goes it hurts too much to raise your own people.

With such restrictive conditions it's hard for more than a few top guilds to recruit to full.

 

[Thunderdome]

The main purpose of the beta server should be identifying and reporting bugs.

And, voicing any feedback to any "prior-to-live" releases so they know what to do to ensure it's fair for everyone to include those wishing to spend.

For doing this we get some diamonds for free.

As we might so we can spend on the event tested or just put them away. The receipt of diamonds simulates a player that buys such premium currency in a live server. For us being able to get diamonds, makes testing a feature/event much easier.

Make no mistake, the purpose of the forum for Inno is only to identify bugs because no employee actually plays the games.

If they did their own testing, beta server would be used only to test the features and identify balancing issues prior to releasing such on to the live servers. Then again, if they did their own testing, none of us would be pulling out our hair in frustration when something's gone wrong since nothing would be wrong, LOL.

 

[Yekk]

Ok, let's take an average "old" world with about 80.000 players.
Let's assume 50.000 of them are at least active casual players
With an AVERAGE of 50 ppl/guild this would make about 1.000 guilds, but there are in average about 8.000 guilds due to many 1-man-guilds (let'sassume again 5.000 active ones)
If we take the TOP 100 guilds with an average of 50 players each, they still make only 10% of all players.
Those remaining 90% are mostly players/guilds you will never meet or see in a forum or global chat, You might meet some of those players in the hood from time to time placed at spot 50-80
Those players may be completely uninterestering for us, as they are playing in a rather different way as most of us think the game has to be played.
BUT many, I mean really many of those players may make the majority of silent diamond buyers. Not the whales, but those invisible players, who are buying diamonds on a regular base for things we never would. For negotiations, buildings, events, goods, FPs, Medals and so on.

What I'm trying to say is, that forum users are a special group of players playing the game in a special way, which might even be the "right" one, if there is somehting like this. But they might not be the best customers. Thus Inno has to make the game attractive for the majority of players/customers, which mostly just want to go through ages as easy as possible.

Maybe I'm completely wrong with this assumption, maybe I'm not. Only Inno knows

Again so much wrong... First most worlds have 4000-8000 active players each day. As per Foestats. Top 40 guilds ( 4 pages of foestatsdotcom) will have 1/3 of the active players. True that not all buy diamonds but many do and for all the things you mentioned. Myself included. Those people are in the guilds I am. They are not silent. They have me speak for them...

It is important if you post you do your homework first. You did not. You will not get many who agree with your input without doing the work. The beta forum is open to guilds from all over the world. The top players from most servers have toons here on beta. Done for two reasons. First they want to stay up on future changes. Secondly to post in this forum which is a sounding board for all the worlds on all the servers. French, German, English, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, and many more nationalities make guilds and characters here on Beta to help the game.

 

[Yekk]

The main purpose of the beta server should be identifying and reporting bugs. For doing this we get some diamonds for free. On the other hand this could be done with tickets to the support, too.
I wouldn't even assume, that no employee is playing the game at all. They rather are playing it under other conditions, with unlimited resources and time converters and whatever tools we don't have access to. This makes them blind for the needs of actual players and thus they need our feedback. I assume, some or even most of the mods are also playing the game, but they aren't allowed to take sides, which is understandable. So it's not an easy job to reply to our feedback, I guess, especially when most of the feedback is negative and brought forward in an inappropriate way.
I guess there are many reasons for Inno to act in the way they do, we will never know and they are under no obligation to tell us. If they did, it just would end in endless discussions about different playstyles and preferences of still a minority of players, who are already addicted to the game and rarely won't leave it anyway. Thus they have to take care, that the majority of casual players and regularly customers are becoming addicted, too

During the second try at guild perks I put up that a perk did not work. I was told that support was the best spot to post such a problem. I had waited to post long enough I knew others had already sent support the problem.

My post was to warn guilds that the perk did not work. An item support should have done immediately upon the first support report (but did not). My post went a long way to getting Guild Perks pulled. My post was an alpha type posting. This is the Beta server. On an Alpha server my post is the norm. As long as Inno continues to use Beta as the Alpha testing server it is to be expected Alpha quality posts will be the norm. After Inno pulled Guild Perks Juber did do a small focus group consisting of a few of the more active posters. I was invited to post there. Some very excellent suggestions were made of which mine were small in stature. That should have been done prior to Guild Perks on an alpha server. It was not...

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

This has largely been brought about by GE and then GBG.

Ya, which is why I said partly. Didn't want to derail onto the GBG topic.

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

Again so much wrong... First most worlds have 4000-8000 active players each day. As per Foestats. Top 40 guilds ( 4 pages of foestatsdotcom) will have 1/3 of the active players.

Remember, foestats is almost 5 months out of date since it hasn't been updated since November 9th. Other sources I've seen show the continuing downward trend since then.

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

The beta forum is open to guilds from all over the world. The top players from most servers have toons here on beta. Done for two reasons. First they want to stay up on future changes. Secondly to post in this forum which is a sounding board for all the worlds on all the servers. French, German, English, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, and many more nationalities make guilds and characters here on Beta to help the game.

Plus, at least on the US forum, it seems like nothing is ever heard by Inno. It is just a player to player sounding board. Doesn't mean we don't try there, but it always seems like the the only place to be heard is on the beta forum, and that very rarely.

 

[Yekk]

Remember, foestats is almost 5 months out of date since it hasn't been updated since November 9th. Other sources I've seen show the continuing downward trend since then.

Yes Foestats is a bit out of date but still relevant as a tool to show server numbers. I am not sure if Inno "stopped" the owner of Foestats crawler or he just got tired of fixing the code each time a change was done. It was a strong tool which Inno should/could add to the game easily. I would be interested in your other sources. Feel free to PM me.