A PLEA to BB regarding the 20th Anniversary Event

[Battlegirl]

I think it is fair to say that all groups were not created equal. You have your reasons to make some stronger, and that is your prerogative. But it would be nice if at the very least we all had a fighting chance to make it to the end goal with our efforts.

This is your Anniversary BB, and I’m sure it was meant to be a joyous occasion for all. But it looks like somewhere along the way, an error was made in your assumptions. The groupings are much less favourable for some servers.

I would like to ask you to consider a re-evaluation of the situation, and perhaps take the 2-3 bottom server groupings and re-distribute those servers amongst the other teams. You should have a pretty good idea of each server’s production by now and that should be totally doable. You don’t need to add their donated balloons, only give a bit more vigour to servers that are trying very hard to reach a goal that may be out of reach, by increasing the size of the donor base.

I think doing this would show that you do care about all servers and that you act on the evidence before you in a fair manner. It would help reinvigorate spirits and dwindling support for your Anniversary Party.

Please consider this plea, and I promise to bring home-made pie to the big event-end bash ! :)

Thanks,

Battlegirl

PS: Posters to this thread, if I may ask for your cooperation in keeping the spirit positive and forward moving rather than negative. Thank you.

[Rieux1972]

Or at least they could play around with the percentage weighting, so that the bigger older servers have to donate a lot more balloons for each percentage point, than the smaller younger servers.

I am sure that there is already some weighting in play, but maybe it could be tweaked a little!

[Battlegirl]

PChamps, i appreciate you and your posts on forums, but I am hoping to keep this one a positive thread... rehashing all the negative thoughts will not help us to find a positive solution. txs in advance for your understanding :)

[PChamps]

Sorry Battegirl not trying to bring negativity.

Bottom line BB dont respond to a thread which has 10,000 views and hundreds of posts I assume they wont respond to this. Not in the time we hope anyway.

[Battlegirl]

Or at least they could play around with the percentage weighting, so that the bigger older servers have to donate a lot more balloons for each percentage point, than the smaller younger servers.

I am sure that there is already some weighting in play, but maybe it could be tweaked a little!


*thumbs up* Rieux. This could also help equal the playing fields, thus make things fair across the board. Txs for your suggestion :)

[Battlegirl]

Sorry Battegirl not trying to bring negativity.

Bottom line BB dont respond to a thread which has 10,000 views and hundreds of posts I assume they wont respond to this. Not in the time we hope anyway.

All I can hope is that they read and consider it PChamps :)

[lulu10093]

http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/24737-Battlegirl-master-of-the-balloons!


:D here is a positive post

[Battlegirl]

http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/24737-Battlegirl-master-of-the-balloons!


:D here is a positive post

Lulu you're a doll :) why aren't you here in Northisle with us ??

[Timberril]

I support your view Battlegirl, despite the obvious inequality (reflected by the servers who are well ahead) I continue to contribute thousands of balloons daily to our cause in the hope that others are doing the same (tho our % increase is only creeping up). Who knows BB in the spirit of celebrating their 20th Anniversary, may listen to our plea and make adjustments that give us a glimmer of hope in competing for the top prize....we live in hope.

[lulu10093]

I don't know lol when i started the game it picked Sandycove lol

[PChamps]

Looks like they have listened (checkout the leader board)... or maybe its another bug

[Angus_McGregor]

I am supporting this issue as well. As Battlegirl says, it seems like there is some sort of problem, like in early phase 1.
Of course its so hard for us players to figure out on how we have to approach this event, when we dont know any amounts of balloons to donate, which way rankings are affected and so on.
It is a struggle to find out if our effort is actually enough and many are working their butt off and get Repeated Strain Injuries from all that clickety-click-click-click. (An automatic move from PH to storage would have been such a nice feature. Consider donating 250k balloons daily and be forced to add 250 - 1000 at a time) :mad:

And to quote Rieux1972
I am sure that there is already some weighting in play, but maybe it could be tweaked a little!

But looking from the bright side ; I have been level 50 for so long, waiting for more serious content for "older"/endgame players, its perhaps one of the few things keeping me in the game. ;)

So BB, please do have a look at this issue and do try respond. No response is so frustrating. All MODs can say is "Post in forum", cant bother support, as its not in ingame problem as such, so what are we to do to get heard and answered.?

Namaste

[Nanufe]

Hi all,

I agree with BattleGirl and reckon that a tweak-ity tweak here and there would be marvellous. Angus, your concept on direct balloon increase from ph to mayor's is grand.

However, I must add that it is a game and I enjoy it,.. BB, love the graphics!

[Loefie]

I do agree also !!!

It does kinda look that other servers (as the german ones) got a step ahead of all all the time... I do not believe that they are more active then us and having the same strugling as we have in this server...

I looks like it every single event that it is harder for us and the others as it is for the german ones.... (as much as i like the german people though, yeah, you can cal me a nazi or a nsb, but i do like the people there)

Just make the game more equal fur us as in the end, we still have to pay more for the gems etc as the germans, so i should be our right to give us a stup ahead... and not them...


In the end al i wanna say, give us some chance to also get the goal of 200% (as it looks like even the 100% isnt able for us...)

Cheers, Loefie

[dahmmy]

BB

Lets get real here, the younger servers will never catch up with the mature ones, as the young servers grow so do the mature ones.......


If you want to do these type of events - then you need to make sure you apply good weighting algorithms to "even things up" but that will mean you may agitate your home markets, but are you prepared to do that??

[jip1976]

Yes the server pairing are totally unfair and always skewed to favour the bigger older servers. Yet another fix!

[Sto_Helit]

It would have been a bit easier if we had a few concrete targets for this event, rather than a nebulous 100%, 150% and 200%. And maybe some idea of how much other 'game actions' counted towards balloons.

Obviously we can see the conversion ratios of resources to balloons, we know what rewards the event adventures and quests give and we can work out what balloons we may get in lootspots. However, if we knew that 5 upgrades / successful trades / successful buffs / other game actions would give us 1 balloon, for example, it might be easier to feel motivated.

This is the same with more concrete figures for sever targets rather than a race to a hard-to-calculate 100%. If we had rewards for reaching targets of 100,000,000 balloons, 200,000,000 balloons and 300,000,000 balloons, for example, then we could see where we were. It could also combine personal and server targets. Give rewards for each individual that hits certain donation targets and rewards for everyone if the server hits certain donation targets. If everything is worked out in level groups as has happened with other events (higher level players get harder quest chains to do), that might help too.

[Trakist]

I am grateful for the event but seems again not greatly thought out beforehand
I have only 1 question they need to answer please explain "BB how is this event fair when it is same as last one... out of balance towards your home servers"
I understand alot of servers have higher and better players but how is it balanced and fair when it is obvious and nowhere near balanced.
We still try and and push but we know the outcome every time so please just answer us or give an OPT out option before we start and stop wasting our time with unbalanced fights

[MissSuzzyUK]

I have to agree with this post as I was devastated when I see how they grouped the teams, we were told at the start that we all would be teamed up for an equal chance to win. Just looking at the teams from day one, I knew this was so unequal and probably done for political reasons meaning it was done to make the most money. Then the site went on to prove the favouritism with the x3 gems for you know who and I think that was the final straw for me and many others to swear we would never buy any more gems. If more people on the less favoured severs stop buying gems we will either be treated worse, which I can’t believe is possible or BB will somehow turn our anger around and recalculate the teams. I finally want to add, what BB expect from the newer servers to give is far more than the top established servers as most of our people don’t have a large stock of resources or a large storage.

I'm one very unhappy Settler and I know many others feel the same way.

I would like to see the first phase result totals to be published for all to see.

[RonPope]

These events are and will always be unfair. BB should stop trying to do them as they will only upset a majority of your customers.

Putting small pop servers with the high pop servers and you think that is calling it fair?

It's a free ride for the small pop server because the high pop will carry them. Look at that german server 12 or 15 or whatever. being carried by server 2 or 3.


This entire event is a shame.

They need to stop creating "competition" out of it. By this- I mean stop rewarding the "fastest and most" prizes.

Call it a "Completion Event". not a "Competition Event". There is no competition here that would make it fair.

Completion event would be just everybody trying to reach 200%

It would be better to do server based competition only amongst the players for whoever donates the most. Since this competition is designed where anything can be used. Like water balloons- new players have a really good chance to do this as they can cover their island with wells- so long as they keep the provision house topped off and flowing, they can reasonably compete. Since most high level players are out of space on their island they can't spam wells all over. So they must use other resources.

This to me is a bit more balanced than a whoever has the most active players competition.

[RonPope]

This is supposed to be a "Happy" anniversary event?

All it has done so far is made a lot of people upset and angry and frustrated.

BB you fail miserably in making this a happy event.

[Bailliff]

I find the blatant favouritism shown by BB towards the German servers very strange and quite shocking, some people have said it's natural human behaviour to look after your own, which is true, but it doesn't make sense from a business point of view. It's not as if German customers are going to walk out if the game was made fair, but international customers aren't going to be keen to part with their cash in the face of such obvious discrimination. At this point in time the score board is out of action, so we can live in hope that BB may actually be sorting the issue out as we speak and making things fair. I think it's in their best interests to do so, I hope they realise this too.

[Ozzymandeus]

All it has done so far is made a lot of people upset and angry and frustrated.
I beg to differ.

From the small amount of information that's trickled its way into my attention from the German forums and chat channels, it sounds very much to me like this event has made BlueByte a significant amount of money.
[/CYNICISM]

As for the OP, I certainly hope, during this period of downtime for the leaderboard, that BlueByte take the opportunity to rebalance things in some way. Whether that takes the form of tweaking target totals, redistribution of teams or some other measure, they really need to do something to try and restore confidence in a significant portion of their customer base.

[Dorotheus]

If you're going to do something which brings in more revenue then it makes sense to do it on all servers so as to maximise profits. Look at the US, traditionally US players have more disposable income than any other country. Thanks to BB's pricing structure for different sever regions if they was going to pander for economic reasons it would be the US servers who would benefit, to the best of my knowledge at this time that is the last thing BB can be accused of.

[Harald_Villraade]

The server vs server competitions are a good idea in so many ways (from a business- as well as a gamers pov...), but I agree that they probably never will be fair. The reasons are complex, and I don´t believe bb are intentionally favoring the german servers. Rather, it seems to me that all of bbs attempts to balance or rectify things tend to make matters worse...

At the bottom of all this lies, as I understand, the fact that bb will not give out information regarding number of players, activity etc, as these are business secrets. That means that any idea of a simple, predictable "reach this number of balloons" contest, or any open solution where we know the conditions of the competition, are a lost cause. Unfortunately. That leaves us with the "we can´t tell you the rules of this contest (but trust us, it´s balanced!), so just do as you´re told and you´ll do fine!" kind of competition, which I frankly find a bit insulting.

I hope I am wrong in this chain of thought, but if bb cannot make these contests more predictable, transparent AND fair (which seems like a contradiction right now), then I, too, kindly ask they stop doing them. There lies a strong social obligation for participation in these events, and with the levels of negative stress people are displaying, it seems to me bb are all but forcing people to quit playing...

Finally, I disagree with the OP that bb should use any opportunity to rig the contest even further, although that may be just what they did! I have had my share of compensations and consolation prizes in this game, sorry.

my 2 cents... :P