Feedback Regarding Recent Feedback

[DEADP00L]

The players, as you describe them, don't play like the hyperactive ones, they play with what is available and according to their connection time. So they don't care about any improvements or suggestions.
So you demonstrate that only active people who make the effort to offer things should be listened to, much more than those who have nothing to say.

 

[Owl II]

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.

View attachment 7949

Don't turn everything upside down! No one infringes on them. GBG is balanced for them. Very beautiful GB and sets in archeology are created for them. PVP arena was developed and implemented for them. Everything is for them. The trouble is that it doesn't matter to them what you draw them. Аnd Inno does not listen who can evaluate and use it, because they are a minority. Well, maybe that's right. But they have to be consistent in this case. And not ask to us for feedback. That's all.

 

[Juber]

So they don't care about any improvements or suggestions.

How do you know this? A casual player might enjoy features like the PvP Arena and gbg way more, than others. They just play a completely different style, which some seem to not understand. But these are actually the majority of the players and probably also the source for the most bought diamonds (this is just a speculation, I don't know anything about this topic at all). If this is the case it makes a lot of sense focusing on those players as well.
But again, before it is forgotten again: Don't only see the black and white, Their playstyle is just as important to consider as yours (and mine). This is another source of feedback, that goes into decisions made.

 

[DEADP00L]

So back to basic logic:
If the game must follow the majority, what is the point of giving feedback on what we are experiencing and even suggestions, since the hyperactive are not representative of the majority of players?
You can only say that our feedback is appreciated and assure us that the game should move towards the silent mass.
I even come to wonder the usefulness of a forum in this case.

 

[djd786]

Dear Inno,

Please be sure of what features you need to release for new event buildings. It has happened frequently in the recent events that properties of new even building are getting changed. for e.g. fps were added to Fiore village very late, big update for butterfly design set. I appreciate you people taking the feedback from players, but it should not happen frequently. It only proves that there will be no certainty for the new event building which will be released for future events.

 

[Juber]

So back to basic logic:
If the game must follow the majority, what is the point of giving feedback on what we are experiencing and even suggestions, since the hyperactive are not representative of the majority of players?
You can only say that our feedback is appreciated and assure us that the game should move towards the silent mass.
I even come to wonder the usefulness of a forum in this case.

You should probably read my post to the end, this is the second time now ^^

But again, before it is forgotten again: Don't only see the black and white, Their playstyle is just as important to consider as yours (and mine). This is another source of feedback, that goes into decisions made.

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

Wait, you guys use Scrum? Well that explains everything...

 

[Juber]

Please be sure of what features you need to release for new event buildings. It has happened frequently in the recent events that properties of new even building are getting changed. for e.g. fps were added to Fiore village very late

This was not ideal, yes. It was changed way too late and it was a mistake on how it was handled. This is very valid feedback and the devs know, it was not good.

big update for butterfly design set. I appreciate you people taking the feedback from players, but it should not happen frequently. It only proves that there will be no certainty for the new event building which will be released for future events.

This one on the other hand is different. Beta is mostly there to find technical issues and balancing issues. The set was not balanced in a way players enjoyed it and it was changed during the beta phase. This is completely normal and even to be expected. We are on a beta and not the live servers. If the devs would want to, they could make any change now to the beta server, no matter what. As long as they don't get to the live servers, everything is fine.
This is very important to understand.

 

[DEADP00L]

Juber > You should then also read between the lines:
How can a silent mass do feedback?

I have so many examples of mockery from the parent company which I will not list yet but it would be time to tell us that our comments are useless rather than still wanting to make us believe in Santa Claus.
I tell myself that by not reporting any more information, I will be part of the silent majority and therefore listened! ^^

 

[Juber]

Wait, you guys use Scrum? Well that explains everything...

I used Scrum as an example to explain it easily. If course I do not know all the internal processes in detail, but explaining the general workflow for these things was just the easiest using Scrum as an example.

 

[Juber]

How can a silent mass do feedback?

Easy, by analyzing their behavior: Do they use this feature? What resources do they use for this and that? Do they open this window? Etc.
From all these things you can make very good statistics, that tell you a lot about player behavior.
One example for this is, what if a player says, that they hate feature xy, but still play it every day? Is it even that bad? From this players perspective: Yes. But from a general perspective, it is not.
So if you have a feature, that has positive feedback and many players use it: Very good.
If you have a feature, that has mainly negative feedback, but still many players play it, it is okay, but could be better.
If a feature has mainly positive feedback, but not many play it, it is not that good and it has to be looked at how they can reach more players.
If a feature has negative feedback and is not played, then there have to be changes for sure or it has to go back to the drawing board.

And just to note it: I can not say if this is actually how it is handled. This is just how I would handle it myself, if I was in charge of a game like Forge.

I have so many examples of mockery from the parent company which I will not list yet but it would be time to tell us that our comments are useless rather than still wanting to make us believe in Santa Claus.

Why should I write something, that is not true? I think I have explained it multiple times now, that my posts are not "Hey your feedback does not matter!" but rather "Hey, your feedback is very important, but it is not the only source."

 

[Nickneck the Lion]

In my humble opinion, three groups of players invest in diamonds:
1. those who want to have everything the same and be first.
2. the "hyperactive" ones to get advantages, and
3. players who, out of ignorance, use diamonds for almost everything.
All of these should be nurtured and cared for because they bring in the money. No matter what these three groups do with the diamonds in the game, they generate ranking points.

Anyone who does not build anything, does not research, does not progress on the Campania map, does not build and level any GBs, does not set up any buildings from events, does not take part in guild expeditions, does not do any GbG, no PvP, etc., does not generate any ranking points. They will also not buy any diamonds. What should he spend them on? Besides, what does this player produce goods, coins, supplies, forge points for?

Why should new functions be developed for these players that they will not use?

 

[Owl II]

This was not ideal, yes. It was changed way too late and it was a mistake on how it was handled. This is very valid feedback and the devs know, it was not good.

This one on the other hand is different. Beta is mostly there to find technical issues and balancing issues. The set was not balanced in a way players enjoyed it and it was changed during the beta phase. This is completely normal and even to be expected. We are on a beta and not the live servers. If the devs would want to, they could make any change now to the beta server, no matter what. As long as they don't get to the live servers, everything is fine.
This is very important to understand.

It is not necessary to give this as an example. Devs has completely screwed up here. And it was pointed out to you. It would be funny if nhey left that as it is

 

[Juber]

In my humble opinion, three groups of players invest in diamonds:
1. those who want to have everything the same and be first.
2. the "hyperactive" ones to get advantages, and
3. players who, out of ignorance, use diamonds for almost everything.
All of these should be nurtured and cared for because they bring in the money. No matter what these three groups do with the diamonds in the game, they generate ranking points.

Yes, you are completely right. All groups of players should be considered and all generate ranking points. But the question remains: How often?

Anyone who does not build anything, does not research, does not progress on the Campania map, does not build and level any GBs, does not set up any buildings from events, does not take part in guild expeditions, does not do any GbG, no PvP, etc., does not generate any ranking points. They will also not buy any diamonds. What should he spend them on? Besides, what does this player produce goods, coins, supplies, forge points for?

Why should new functions be developed for these players that they will not use?

This I already explained. You mean players, that never to these things. We mean players, that don't do that daily. Of course they make progress, but not that regularly. This is what I tried to explain here:

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.

 

[Juber]

It is not necessary to give this as an example. Devs has completely screwed up here. And it was pointed out to you. It would be funny if nhey left that as it is

Well, if someone says, that it is bad, that balancing changes are done on beta, I have to correct them. I did not give this example, @djd786 did

 

[Nickneck the Lion]

This I already explained. You mean players, that never to these things. We mean players, that don't do that daily. Of course they make progress, but not that regularly. This is what I tried to explain here:

I understand that and I don't want to deny it. Of course, players who grow slowly are active players, everyone who generates ranking points (even slowly) is to be considered. It came (not from you) this statements "that players who do not generate RP would also be important", this statement was incomprehensible to me, because they actually do not play, there would be almost nothing that you can do without generating RP.

 

[DEADP00L]

Easy, by analyzing their behavior

It only indicates what they do or don't do, not what they would like!
It's like GvG, is it maintained given the statistics that show that the majority of players participate?
It's like ALL the possibilities that FOE offers us (antique dealer, PvP, Expeditions, ...) after the initial spell it drops and your statistics say the opposite?

I think I have explained it multiple times now, that my posts are not "Hey your feedback does not matter!" but rather "Hey, your feedback is very important, but it is not the only source."

"but it is not the only source."
Just as many of us have said that we do not question the work of the CMs but that of the parent company.

Anyway, you're right, it's time for me to waste my time on other things than fighting fruitlessly with programmers who think they know the game better than we do.

Good evening.

 

[BetaForumAccount]

We are complaining because we feel like our voices are not heard enough. But Inno makes more money through the "silent masses", so why should they listen to us? It is evident they do not. They don't even bother to mark ideas as "rejected". We're next to useless to them.
All the problems we are having are not felt by most of the player base, which Inno cares about. There is no point saying the same things again and again because Inno will not listen.
Most of the player base is not in the space ages, so Inno doesn't care whether the space ages are copy/paste. They don't care about GBG being unbalanced in the top ranks. They don't care that we do not like the PVP Arena.
We do not generate much revenue, so Inno does not listen. Given the state of things, I'm quite surprised someone at Inno actually bothered to talk to us about us complaining.

 

[Juber]

You have skipped everything written here in the last 24 hours, have you? To go through your points:

We are complaining because we feel like our voices are not heard enough. But Inno makes more money through the "silent masses", so why should they listen to us? It is evident they do not.

It is totally fine to complaint about that and it is something we want to improve and give you answers why certain decisions were made and why not. I have also already explained multiple times now, that "Other sources of feedback exist." does not equal to "You feedback is irrelevant, because there is other feedback."
I explained, that there are different sources and all sources are being listened to.

They don't even bother to mark ideas as "rejected".

You have never seen these sections of the forum, have you?

https://forum.beta.forgeofempires.com/index.php?forums/archive.107/

https://forum.beta.forgeofempires.com/index.php?forums/do-not-suggest.110/

We're next to useless to them.

Who said this? Nobody said this. You feedback is valuable and considered. Just because certain things were not done, does not mean, that nothing is done. For example there are almost always balancing changes to the events during the beta phase, guild perks were first adjusted and then taken off again for reconsideration because of player feedback, something similar happened to the PvP Arena. Because of your ongoing feedback and complaints about the heal all button a solution for that was also found (not fast, but it was done).

Most of the player base is not in the space ages, so Inno doesn't care whether the space ages are copy/paste.

This is not true at all. The devs do care, but we will explain it later in a separate post.

They don't care about GBG being unbalanced in the top ranks.

This is also not true. Sadly I can't give you more information on this topic yet, but you can trust me, that they do care.

They don't care that we do not like the PVP Arena.

Who are "we"? It sounds like everyone hates the PvP Arena. But just because many high end players don't enjoy it does not mean it is not liked. I don't know details, but I would guess it was planned as a features aimed at especially beginners and mid-progressed players. I play it on a new world on a regular basis and together with gbg it provides some amazing rewards to progress faster in the game.

We do not generate much revenue, so Inno does not listen.

What makes you think this? Because my comment regarding bought diamonds? There I was referring to @DEADP00L s post in particular.

I'm quite surprised someone at Inno actually bothered to talk to us about us complaining.

Why not? Would you prefer for me to stay silent and let everything escalate? I want others to be happy, it is my passion and makes me happy too. But if you think my style is annoying, I can also stop. But this would make nobody happy, not others, not me.

 

[Thunderdome]

Well, well, well. Seems like that dumpster fire's a-burnin'. Before I get to say something, I might as well reply to those statements that caught my attention, eh?

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

So, basically not just by logging in won't count. Am I correct on this? If this is true, no wonder why the statistics sites are "way off" and should not be even relied upon as such. I mean, there are players who just log in to collect, spend FP (since Inno had failed to give us an option to pretty much bank those FP collected beyond 100 into FP packs; instead they wanted us to spend 30 dollars a month so we can have the cap up to 1k FPs), or tidy up their cities.

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.

Even the active players do not care for the PvP Arena to this very day. There is no real player to player involvement on this, and most of the time you get bots. Only way you can tell you got a bot is putting in their name in the rankings list and see if a player matching the name pops up. The PvP Arena was shot down by not only 1 server but 2, which included the EN server. So, you made a few adjustments, but it's still something of a tedious nature (or chore) for less reward.

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?

Hasn't it always been like that? Both you and I had seen the many posts that other players (including you and I) have voiced their concerns of an event, suggestions in making the game better, or something else. We're pretty much our own feedback as we engage with one another day to day. The only ones missing in this party of ours are the developers. In short, I'd rather deal with the dog (developers) instead of the tail (lackeys) of said dog, but we're not getting that.

But comparing it to us is like saying: "Hey, your brother goes out partying and drinking. Why don't you do it?".

I know I get in trouble for having a quick "mouth" when asked these gems through life, so I am going to get in trouble for having quick "fingers" in saying "That's him, not me. I'd rather enjoy a quiet evening at home without the frivolity that drinking and partying has been associated with". The most famous one I had been asked was "if said person jumps off a cliff, would you?" and I would respond "sure, if I have a parachute, hang glider, or even rope (rappel from one) on me, else, I am not that crazy or brain dead to do it without". In short, everyone's different just like every company out in the world is supposed to be as well. However, all I see are companies are being the same in the gaming industry: trying to promote gimmicks (mostly spendy types of features and events) and rush producing (without adequate testing).

I think I have explained it multiple times now, that my posts are not "Hey your feedback does not matter!" but rather "Hey, your feedback is very important, but it is not the only source."

You might explain very much, and you might be of the latter in what you say, but most things we see now a days are of the former when it comes to the developer's ignorance. Remember, we are a beta server. We're supposed to test new things out, give feedback, and have a say in what gets put in and what doesn't. If this wasn't the purpose (as I had seen new things are released into the live server without adequate time to analyze all the feedback just because of rush timing that sometimes break the game --- I am still waiting on my bug report response on why the GE map always have to move away from the quest each time I click on something there as we were left on the screen resolution/zoom to see if that's the problem --- have players quit in frustration), then what in the Hell do we have a beta server for if we are just going to dump everything on live, bugs and all? You can't even keep the beta app and the FOE app separate on a single device as it requires two devices to play if you want to play the events on beta (which is always delayed by a few weeks or never on the FOE app) since the single device will give an error or tries to update the beta app with the FOE app instead.

As I had stated, this is a dumpster fire already burning and the natives (players) are getting restless. Nothing Inno can do, short of actually fixing this game and listening to their players more, will fix this. To even put forth a feedback thread and then letting it fill up only to respond at a later time isn't helping any wonders. I understand that the moderators of this forum are players just like us, but they need to grab a few thick phone books and wake the developers up, lol, since they are much closer than we are.