Yes devs, that's right. Play the game you're making. Then stop giving us terrible updates
[Thread merged, "Play your own game"]
for original first post click here
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Yes devs, that's right. Play the game you're making. Then stop giving us terrible updates
[Thread merged, "Play your own game"]
for original first post click here
+1 :(
+1
+1
+1
+1
+1
GREAT idea
+0 but also -0
i think devs are doing some great things but also some bad ideas :(
but the game is improving very good in my opinion
like the upcoming easter event on test server it looks very nice
but like on test server we tested something with remove able rocks like 3 months ago or longer and still i heared nothing about is when will the devs
bring their tested stuff live or at least say us whats going on with it
but keep up the good work devs :)
You are playing the same game as us right? Settlers online?Quote:
Originally Posted by matie2506
I'm not sure why I'm bothering to post anything anymore, as anything I've posted or supported in the past seems to just drift into oblivion without ever being recognised by the developers. Consider this a final cry before I go silent forever.
The way TSO was two years ago was roughly this: On your island you have production giving you materials. These scarce materials could then be used to build military, strengthen your economy or traded with others. Some resources for economy, like granite for upgrades, had to be acquired from adventures. The same would have applied for military (titanium, saltpeter) if the adventure loots hadn't given the weapons without the need to actually produce them. Despite this workaround to acquire expert resources, materials were generally scarce. A player would have to plan, optimise, and make decisions on how to use their materials to best advance in the game. Trade was a key feature in the game as a smart trader could get "more for less" by buying relatively cheap materials and selling relatively expensive materials.
For advanced players all of this has been lost, and in many ways I see that the developers brought it on themselves. Resources are available in abundance, there is no next step to "advance" to, and trade has become a dumping ground flooded by high level players. I know some people think that giving players more and more stuff is a great idea, but ultimately it does not add to the game. Things had value because they were hard to get. Getting that stuff for free will make you happy for a moment, but ultimately getting stuff for free takes away its value and the purpose is lost.
The Veteran general
Who'd be silly enough to try to make their way through massive epic adventures without the veteran? Old-timers like me will remember that the Veteran isn't an original part of the game. In his absence, some adventures truly were hard; losing militia, cavalry and soldiers in bulk was unavoidable, but it may have been the only way to get those cannons or epic buildings. The veteran not only decreases losses, but allows for more loose troop composition. If a boss required you to use 80 soldiers and 120 crossbows to mow down, the veteran can do the same with 130 recruits and 120 crossbows. The loss count is higher, but the need for the expensive weapons is lost.
Resource abundance, Parrot exploit and Christmas freebie Gold towers
Making the most out of what you have is an integral part of any economy-based game. However, TSO has drifted to a course where everything seems to be in excess. There is no resource sink for the higher tier materials, so higher level players sell their surplus materials to lower level players for pennies. This boost in turn leads any starting player to clear their home island in weeks and build it full with no great effort. At least leveling up buildings requires coins at a point, but even that has been made easier. In the past the infamous parrot exploit made sure that coins were artificially accessible to all, and now the free gold tower is basically doing the same thing, without breaking rules.
Epic raids and how they missed their original point
A large player base was reaching the level cap with booming economies. These players were not finding challenge in the existing content, so epic raids were introduced to address this issue. Regrettably, lower level players were complaining that they were "too hard" and BlueByte scaled down the difficulty of the adventures whilst they significantly increased the loot. The issue here is that the need for these adventures came from those players who had it all and needed a challenge. None of those players got that challenge though. A high level player is able to get all the stuff they want from the epic items merchant in a few months. In the time frame of TSO that is near instant. Again, the attempt to make something accessible to all has ultimately lead to a situation where playing has become less interesting rather than more interesting. What if two years ago low level players had complained that it was "too hard" to get cannoneers and BB would have made them available from lv32?
Developers, get back on track
Here are a few guidelines for the devs to ignore that could allow to get the game back on its original trails:-Create features that drain resources in a way that high level players will want to spend them rather than dump on low level playersI would like to point out that this rant is from a high level player's perspective; the early game remains much in its original form to new players apart from the flooded trade market. But even low level players will one day reach high levels. Wouldn't it be nice to think that the game would still be worth playing when that happens?
-Balance off new features that give stronger units, stronger generals and higher production with features that require higher unit losses and higher material consumption
-Keep some resources scarce making players to have to choose how to spend them; don't hand out all at once
-Make the ultimate goals, like the best generals, best units, or best buildings hard to get. Don't listen to whiny players complaining that they're too expensive
-Make gem items that aid players to advance, but don't sell the best stuff directly for gems (Good gem items: Fast gens, scouts and geos; watermills, silos etc; premium time // Bad gem items: Christmas box that gives the best population building in the game; Veteran general)
[Thread merged, Original post: "Developers lack perspective"]
+1
Ironically, you could say that the flood of high-value materials is because the developers "listened to the player base".
Everywhere you see people saying: "why aren't we getting more rewards for X" or "why can't I get Y". This is the feedback the developers seem to listen to
I've never asked for anything except that the game be more fun and that new features be thought through better
Examples
(1) I don't find it fun to wait 20 minutes for a general to walk from one side of an epic adventure to another
(2) The explorer skill tree was so badly organised when it was first announced that I assumed there had been a typo... but no, that was the correct final version...
The developers needed the intelligence to work out which feedback to listen to.
Personally, I think just two key changes will solve a lot of problems for long-term interest and keeping the game challenging
1: Remove weapon resources in adventure loot, instead only offer the resources needed to make them
2: Rebalance copper/iron/steel and troop values to make high level troops more useful and low level troops less attractive for sacrificing in their thousands.
These are not simple changes and will certainly create massive amounts of negative feedback from the people who want this game to be something they can finish in 2 hours on a Sunday afternoon, but some games recognise that balance is something which takes months or years to accomplish and things needs to be tweaked on an ongoing basis. eg Starcraft, which often had patches to rebalance troop strengths and costs and is ranked among the best games of all time
Remember, there's not only an "endgame issue". A lot of players stop playing TSO because it's getting slow and tedious.
1. Will make more players quit TSO.
2. All needed is tougher adventures.
+1
Amen to that ! ! !
That's why BB should give the players not what they want, but what they need. They want "more room on my island". They need a higher goal to aim for. Perhaps the guild should work together to build a lighthouse thus opening the harbor for foreign trade? Leading eventually to a diplomatic struggle with other guilds for the right to trade with exotic countries.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerontius
A problem now is the abundance of goods. This can be solved by limiting trade. We're all supposed to live on our own separate island, but when I buy goods from you, they automagically appear on my island immediately. The trade should take 1 day to arrive, if you pay with coin, 2 days of you barter. That would encourage people to build a balanced economy. If you trade within your guild, the time could be halved or something. I think this would be a first step.
+1 great post Fero.
You got pretty much everything spot on and echo my thoughts exactly.
Sadly its all been said before, even in posts from 2 years ago. Adventure loot needs rebalancing, some buildings are not even worth building let alone running so they need rebalancing too.
Perhaps a redesign of the combat system would help the game too.
Instead we get new popups, bugs (19 or 20 troops when we click 25 on the slider), strange updates like making worthless buffs in the mayor's house, a science system that gets more expensive and takes months to upgrade any specialist by which time the player would easily have reached level 50 and lost interest in the game.
Not to forget level 50 players being asked to complete as many as 3 different adventures a day for quests.
Oh, thought that was just me. Same with baskets in the PHQuote:
Originally Posted by Peajay
And the bars in the storehouse having a small gap at the top when the storehouse is actually full. Weird recent bugs with no obvious explanation for where they came from.
+1 indeed. The game is too easy.
Remove dama swords and cannons from loot. I am level 50 and have no intention of building a titanium smelter, let alone any of the cannon buildings. Coins become increasingly worthless by the day, soon everyone will be using granite as currency. BB encourage people to invest books in finding map fragments worth 6gc each (when gc were valuable), then introduce a building that reduces their value to about 0.9gc.
Yet BB continue to ignore the simplest of changes that would improve the playability enormously. We all ask for the troop/buff production slider to be increased, some said 100, some said 250... ignored. I dread the rebuild after a fairytale adventure, 5000 troops = 200 requests, each needing 3 accurate clicks (plus another one for the ridiculous 18-troop bug).
In summary, stop making the game easier, find ways to make the game more varied (see my suggestion of self-balancing loot from adventures based on how many times it is completed by all players), and listen to players. I thought we were getting somewhere with our previous community leader, who was going to implement a feedback system so we had visibility of what suggestions were being proposed, considered, accepted/rejected. It never happened.
I suspect this thread will receive a similar level of feedback (i.e. none).
I wish for the devs to start play the game they design..
In real as well. Not starting like on test with 100000 gems and an island full of already built level 5 buildings.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kingu
Exactly.. play from level 1.. 0 gems and under nick so its just a regular player feeling the changes and missing bits and all other issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by PChamps
But i guess its to much to ask for...
I agree with most things that have been pointed out here, however there have been a couple of things that still need to be mentioned.
1. Adding extra levels above lvl 50 would be a good thing
2. Being able to move to another island and either purchase it or win it as your own would expand your productions also give more challenges
I understand that the first suggestion has been put in here before, but going by Anno Online where they put in an extra 10 lvls over and above lvl 50 early made a huge difference to the game play. My suggestion of being to expand your island by acquiring new islands would only be available to lvl 50 and above, that increasing the challenge for the higher levels. Also Im not talking gems for these new islands or coins, Im talking conquering harder bandits and bandit leaders. These islands would be randomly generated which would mean that guides would be useless and we would have use the combat simulator and our brains to enable us to take them over.
Of course we would need new buildings eg: ship builder, troops carrier etc. But that would add also the challenge if were to be thought out correctly and we had to use the rarer resources in an effort to build those buildings, no opportunity to buy with gems would definitely be a great way to make it a little harder.
Over the nearly 2 yrs that I have been playing settlers, there have been many improvements made to the game, and some of them I am more than happy to say are a godsend. However, others have been pretty much a waste of time and resources and needless to say gems.
I have played the original settlers games on disc since they first came out, and absolutely love them, but unfortunately BB have now taken the challenges and interest side out of the game. Which in my eyes is a dreadful shame, I still have the other settlers and am at lvl 50 on here, but still find the original disc games alot more challenging than this.