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Again we fail to reach maximum.
Next time we have an event like this you all will have to do it without me.
Smells like yesterdays garbage, this one, just like the last one.
At lvl50 myself, and im sure lots and lots of us lvl50 will feel do just like me.
BB = Fail again.
Agree, the fears that it would be one sided have been proved correct, shame on bb, what a sham..
Seems like some cant stop complaining, nothing to do without events , only complaints during events ......
Just saying , very annoying to read so negative posts all day every day.
Glad to see many of us have been enjoying this event and are helping out with this balloon making
we all had the same thoughts until theres a level field re gens ect we cant compete
did eotw one and have not done any others till this and when t o have trades of over 100k for things i wonder why i have empty storage and get the same as players that have done very little resource to balloons
until these a better way of them to do counts for goodies i will not be doing the next one just hope they put the delete x back in
"Fair chance to all"
(The amount of balloons required depends on the economic output of your server. The leader board will take into account the economic output of each server; relative to its amount of active players. This should guarantee a fair competition, no matter how old or young game worlds are.
http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...r-Anniversary!)
Really, BB, really?
In deed mate,I do feel the same.
BB knows very well where the germans servers,I do have nothing against the germans and it isn't their fault,they will be in a clear advantage no matter what.
BB did fail and it is failing and will keep failing every time they do a competition like this involving different servers with different conditions but they know it!
Well the next few lines show how it is:
In a polar opposite of the recent PopCap talk, Teut Weidemann, lead designer of Settlers Online for Ubisoft's Blue Byte studio, says that the key to free-to-play success is to exploit human weakness. Essentially, find those areas in which players can be monetized, and go after that aggressively.
As a caveat, Weidemann said that first and foremost, developers have to make a fun game in order to attract users. Then once those users are there, the mandate is to figure out ways to monetize them, or else the game can't go on. It was an unusually frank discussion of the ways in which human psychology can be exploited in order to make a buck.
Weidemann began by discussing the differences between the single player and MMO game worlds - Settlers Online is an MMO with PvE and PvP, bi-weekly and monthly updates as a retention strategy, plus a free to play business model. "You have complete control of the environment in a single player game, whereas of course in an online game you have not," he said. And you can't just think about fun, he asserts. "You have to think about making a fun game and monetizing it at the same time."
"That's a huge burden and a big change from what we've done before," he said, adding that "we have to bring them in and keep them addicted and make them keep playing. Selling advantages is seen as evil. That's over for free-to-play games."
Monetization has become the most crucial and integral part of game design, says Weidemann; developers have to think about it from the start. "In your game, progress has to be measurable." he says. "The most common thing is player level -- that's something everyone can now grasp," he says. You can monetize this with a speeding-up experience, but you have to make sure that paying players usually can't be identified. If you hide from the players what other players are actually paying for, you can get more money without making players angry."
Some of the kinds of things you can sell, according to Weidemann, are rare achievements, access to later stages earlier, early access to new maps, faster exploration or comfort, and all manner of socialization elements, such as avatar customization, emotes, and larger guild sizes.
Exploiting Human Sin
"We are monetizing all the weakness of people," Weidemann says, turning his talk toward the seven biblical sins, and how these can be turned into hard cash.
Vanity. "I'm the best. That's something they want to have," he says. But players need to be able to see their posing and posturing, which is usually difficult in a strategy game, where seeing what the other player has could be perceived as an advantage. In Settlers Online the game allows players to see their friends, but in a controlled environment. Here, they monetize avatars and guild creation.
Envy. "To make this succeed, the player has to see his neighbor's possessions," says Weidemann, noting that in China it's popular to steal items from other players. "I believe that in the next few years we'll see some game that does this well in the West," he said. "And then everybody will steal, and this will be a lot of fun."
Gluttony. Here, the aim is to get players to consume more. Make consumables (such as healing potions in a traditional MMORPG) available, and then sell them directly. "It's an indirect timesaver," he says. "If you upgrade a building to the next level, it takes time and resources, but you can buy an instant upgrade," he says.
Lust. In Settlers Online, this is measured by instant gratification. Instead of waiting, the player can unlock what they want immediately. "[This kind of player] is easy to monetize," Weidemann says, "because everything instant, that's what he wants." Examples include instantly recruiting troops, instead of having to wait for them.
Anger. "You hate your enemy, that's something we're gonna monetize," he says. This type of player is one of the simplest to exploit, because they will want all the best items right away, in order to defeat other players. Games can sell them this at the onset, and give them paid access to better battle reports, and more experienced units. It should be noted that Settlers Online does not force PvP, which is how weaker players who may not be interested in that can enjoy the game in this sort of environment.
Greed. This includes housing production increases or buffs. "The trader is someone who's sensible for unfairness. So if he wants to be wealthy, he doesn't want to buy [gold] directly," says Weidemann, because then it doesn't feel like an achievement. "Never directly sell gold to the player -- it must be indirect."
Sloth. This is represented by avoidance of work. Players are lazy, he says, so sell comfort. Sell extensions to buildings, and automizations for repair and overproduction handling. "You're saving clicks. That's all you do. And if he pays for that, why not?"
Settle For Nothing Less Than Cash
"Game design is not about game design anymore -- now it's about business," said Blue Byte executive producer Christopher Schmitz. "We do exploit them, but they should not feel like they're treated in a bad way," he added. If they do, then players will dislike the developer.
"If you think you have the same items for this year and next year, you're wrong. You have to change everything like in the Superstore," says Weidemann. He says designers should ask themselves how the major brands in the grocery store sell you new versions of detergent and the like, when it's basically the same stuff. Then use that to your advantage, since the psychology of consumerism is well documented.
As a designer of an online game, you must learn to balance within a chaotic environment when players have more control than ever before. That's difficult because they try to hack your game - Settlers Online had its first hacking attempt within five seconds of Open Beta. On the other hand, Weidemann reminds us, "sometimes players do things you didn't expect, but sometimes you can say 'hey, we didn't know the game could do that.'" And why should you care about this kind of emergent gameplay? Of course, because "you can monetize that."
My feelings in a nutshell are:
BB moved the goalposts after reaching 100%. End of...
Anything after that, I feel it was never really achievable. Sad really, cos after phase 1, most felt it could be done.
We feel let down BB :(
Interesting Ares-1.. Do you got a link?
I can't compare this event with the previous one, since I was not playing The Settlers Online back then. From what I can gather, it was badly organised and not particularly fair. This event also seems to have been badly organised and not particularly fair, albeit slightly better organised and slightly fairer than the last event. The funny thing is that it would have been so easy to make it a lot fairer.
1. Proper announcements of start time and date and end time and date to all servers at the same time prior to the event. It is not difficult to say that the event will start at 09.00 GMT + 1 on 26th June 2013 (after a short shutdown of all servers) and ends at (assuming here since I don't have the official time yet) 00.30 GMT + 1 on 24th June 2013 with a maintenance for all servers.
2. Clear information on what the qualifying phase would entail and that there would be a 'pause' in between phase 1 and phase 2. Again, a concrete number would have been easier to deal with than a nebulous 100%.
3. A more intelligent grouping of servers. This time round it seemed to be mainly language-based, rather than on size, strength etc.
4. Don't use percentages for handing out rewards unless you are prepared to give everyone that is on track to reach 200% the rewards. There was obviously some recalculation of the percentages which makes a mockery of the word percent. Also, it is difficult for people to stay motivated after 100% if they feel that there is no way that they will reach 150% and therefore won't get any further rewards.
5. If BB wants to give rewards for Gold (top 5?), Silver (top 10?) and Bronze (everyone who participated?), then use position. It is easy to see who is 10th and who is 11th. For top 10 rewards, 1st - 10th get them and 11th miss out. It would mean servers would compete to move up a place in the rankings instead of feeling that they can't achieve the next percentage target.
6. Concrete information on the amount of balloons, or other event-resource, donated. This means concrete figures for every server and a final leaderboard where all the figures are shown.
7. Information given to all servers at the same time. If this means that it takes some time to translate it all, get the translations back and get them put on all the frontpages, then it will require a bit of time. It is very annoying to see that the German servers get information and other servers have to wait hours for it to be translated.
8. It might help to understand what BB consider to be an active player. For guild quests there is a definition of an active player and also a percentage of active players required to do guild quests. If we knew that 70% of server players were taken into account for the server event on a daily / weekly / whole event basis, then we could work around the players that do not wish to participate but have logged in and count as active. Obviously if only 50% of a particular server were actively participating, those players would have to work pretty hard to achieve the same output as the 70% target figure.
9. Cancel button / opt-out. With any event there will be players that have no interest in participating. They would like the option to cancel the event quests from their quest book. If they could be given the choice to opt out of the event and wouldn't count as active event players, then this would decrease tension between the players that want to compete and the players that don't. This would make it easier for event and non-event players to co-exist on the same server.
10. Some attempt to group players by level and give challenges based on those groupings. For this event 'every player from the highest to the lowest' was supposed to be able to compete and donate balloons, however some players could donate 400k balloons a day and some players found 5k balloons a day to be a challenge. It panned out so that only large donations and higher level players seemed to be of importance, and lower level players became merely resource providers. Most of the thanks went to the players that donated the balloons and not so much to the whole team of people that allowed them to donate in this way.
Well.. after reading all that i will never spend another penny on TSO.
this event is immensely boring and a massive waste of resources not to mention the tedious 'click..scroll..click..slide...click..scroll...etc . making MILLIONS of balloons 500 at a time only to see ze germans getting a leg up from BB with gem deals days before everyone else so they could finish 1st and get top prize.
I'm getting bored of this game. I don't know how long i'll be here if the game keeps going downhill like it is.
TSO is becoming like all the other games.. [ Removed ]
ps. why can't we have Nords 2? Jokers..
No self censorship please,
peck_ed
the nords 2 discussion is a bit of a non starter- only a limited amount of people willing to overpay for a limited edition retail box get it - so it is not widely available anyway
the monetizing discussion- well if they cant make money of the game, they will pull the plug - plain and simple. In the end they develop these games to make money. Even a company that makes a game just for the enjoyment of their customers will need to think of how to make money and if in FTP environment, those same principles will apply-
But not putting in effort to ensure a reasonably fair playing field or a more engaging event is just laziness
It could well be that the german development team looks at the german server statistics only to develop the game and play around with em and then project em over all servers and find out after the fact that it doesnt work but they knew that after eotw event and should have put in the effort to correct it- esp with that balancing phase they put in. The balancing hasnt worked and once again a large proportion of people feel let down or worse feel cheated by BB.
BB, u have to realize that this costs you money as people will be less and less willing to invest money- not for lack of liking the game but for lack of trust
Monetising the game is one issue - obviously BB need it to be profitable - but you don't make it plain to your customers that you are exploiting them. There is a difference between making a profit and trying to get every last penny out of your players. Eventually players get fed up if they feel exploited, and they leave. I've done that when I've felt an online game is just trying to make me spend money at every turn. The online games that I enjoy playing are able to treat their customers as intelligent people who will pay for a good game without being forced into it. I enjoy the general game provided in TSO, and most of the events, but if other events end up being like 20th Anniversary Event, I might get annoyed enough to leave.Quote:
Originally Posted by Qualan
It's a legal requirement that corporations put profit before everything else, humans are exploited 24/7, by the time a child is seven years old they will have seen 20,000 adverts a year, money money money is the bottom line
Want to see how the rest of the world really veiws you?
[ Removed ]
Please note political subjects/views are not allowed on the forum as stated in the rules,
peck_ed
Ares, that speech has been doing the rounds since 2010, I have a hardcopy of the original from 1 of Teut's lecture tours.
Yes,here it is:
gamasutra.com/view/news/29983/GDC_Europe_To_Succeed_In_FreeToPlay_Exploit_Human_ Weaknesses.php%5D
Look at the date of it, that's the same interview we read last year.
Not sure what the point of posting that article is, though. Nothing in it should have prevented the balloon event from being better! Indeed, you could argue that BB would have monetised us players more if the event had been better thought through and organised.
I don't feel the game is a "spend money or you can't progress" type nor a - if you dont spend money you will be at a distinct disadvantage. Maybe when pvp comes this will be the case but as gem bought items are tradable, a lot of non spending players due to effort and smart trading/producing will be able to get most items they need to be on equal footing with paying players.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sto_Helit
However, i do agree that their events are getting worse- mostly due to lack of investing time in seeing what is really beneficial and fair to the playerbase as a whole and what would be considered fun
clicking eggs or 5 items on a map and end on the whole is not fun- playing an adventure for 10 balloons and a handful of xp is no fun. Adding epic adventure items as a random reward or a quest line reward is fun- but events focused on converting stuff in the prov house as the main stay of the adventure is just a waste of time- after a week of clicking till you drop you get bored and it gets very shallow
Agreed, there is a pretty good game to be played within the confines of the free game. It is satisfying enough for me and I don't feel at a huge disadvantage compared to players that have spent a lot of money on it. I do like the ability to earn gems through the 7 day login bonus, levelling up and server competitions or the occasional gem item that is made available to purchase through an ingame resource such as eggs. All of this is pretty satisfying and I feel that I'm treated relatively well in this way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Qualan
A small gripe would be regarding the positioning of the 'instant complete' button, which I have mistakenly hit a few times during the 20th Anniversary Event. Each time I lost gems and felt annoyed because I had not intended to activate that button. This feels like manipulation on the part of the game developers and all it does is annoy me. If this becomes a big enough issue; ie I hit an 'instant complete' that loses me a large amount of gems, this would be the tipping point for me to leave the game. At this point I would not be happy and would be very unlikely to recommend the game to people that might enjoy playing a building and trading game.
This is the major issue with these events - they are not actually that much fun. They seem to be unfair and they don't seem to have been well thought out. I did build wells, convert resources and click buttons until I was so bored that I wanted to scream and I did it almost to the bitter end. I decided not to stay up all night to convert the last few batches of water into balloons, but I did donate up until I logged out of the game. Many people did this; many people ended up with aching hands, insomnia, computers overheating and threatening to melt, family members wondering why they were being forsaken for well-building, all in the spirit of fighting to the end even though there was probably no chance of getting the next level of rewards. It turned into a water-and-balloon grinder of an event that also caused massive resentment, anger, envy and a whole host of negative feelings.Quote:
However, i do agree that their events are getting worse- mostly due to lack of investing time in seeing what is really beneficial and fair to the playerbase as a whole and what would be considered fun
clicking eggs or 5 items on a map and end on the whole is not fun- playing an adventure for 10 balloons and a handful of xp is no fun. Adding epic adventure items as a random reward or a quest line reward is fun- but events focused on converting stuff in the prov house as the main stay of the adventure is just a waste of time- after a week of clicking till you drop you get bored and it gets very shallow
BB needs to learn that although it is possible to monetise players via the seven deadly sins, it might not be the best business model, and there are distinct advantages to using positive attributes to keep your players happy and enthused.