[Feedback] 20th Anniversary!

[Sto_Helit]

The use of resources is in the eye of the beholder. I do not believe that my resources were 'wasted' on making wells to make water to make balloons to help us win tenth place. I wonder about those who know the price of everything, but apparently the value of nothing. To what end do I make a pile of 10k gold coins; it would give me but a moment's satisfaction and would be quickly forgotten. 3/4 million balloons was probably a drop in the ocean as far as % went, but they were for my server and I do not regret a single minute of making them. Maybe a bit of recognition for 10th place would have been nice, but at the end of the day I still know that we came 10th, rewards or no rewards.

[Herr_Pannenkoek]

Wasted?!

Buildings are everything to me, the rarer and harder to come by the better and you know what? I don't even care how useful or how much space they take.

Now please unles you actually have some constructive feedback I think your bridge is missing you.

Feel free to edit as you wish to Peck_Ed, I apologise to you in advance.

I'm not sure if you're sarcastic or not (especially considering your very submissive last line). But assuming that you're not, I'd say a building is not that rare or unique if it's given to every single player on every server (like in this case). Of course, it will become rare eventually when the old players quit playing for various reasons (like getting reseted to level 1), but it doesn't make it much more interesting as very limited people can see (or are interested in seeing) your island. Of course one can enjoy it by himself as a decoration, but in case someone really wants to build a beautiful island, I'd recommend him some more dynamic game where everyone doesn't have exactly similar islands with zero terraforming and practically zero city planning possibilities in case you want to keep you production flowing.

To be constructive, this game has lots of useless (or nearly useless) features. To name few besides this new building; most of the in-game store deals such as "buy 10 settlers for 95 gems!", "pay 100 euros to update your barracks" or "buy a gold fever buff for a price that makes you lose gold even if you had a level 5 mine and you let your friend buff you". BB has made some improvements to make the game more interesting, e.g. by buffing the 7 day log-in rewards to 100 gems and adding geologist skills [which actually weren't that creative or useful to the end], and naming generals [which again is a feature only you can see]), but often it just seems they don't have a clue about the in-game values or usefulness of certain items.

Considering the amount of negative feedback about this event, I don't think my whining is totally unjustified.

[RonPope]

but often it just seems they don't have a clue about the in-game values or usefulness of certain items.
Considering the amount of negative feedback about this event, I don't think my whining is totally unjustified.

Feedback is feedback. Positive or Negative. I welcome to hear negative feedbacks since to me, it helps developers FIX and IMPROVE.

Negative feedbacks happen for a reason. A player enjoyed the game at one point or another and took the time to post a feedback in hopes that the game will improve, otherwise, they would just quit the game and move on to another game and not bother spending time to post.

That being said. Yes- I do have to agree that the folks over at BB often have NO CLUE on how their game really gets played.
Silly events like Crisis events with bad RNG elements. Cost/Value of in game items. Some dailies ask you to pay something, and the reward is worth less than the value of the item they're asking you to pay. This event is a huge example of how clueless the developers are in terms of 'fairness'.

The biggest example was the 'first attempt at the fairy tale content with less than subpar rewards. GoldTower consuming 50 wheat. Magnificent residence 120 pop that takes up 5 witch tower worth of space.

[DutchDuty]

( I saved up all my feedback during the event, to place it all togheter after the event, wich is now, this means its a lot of text so dont feel bad iff you skipp it, I just hope the BB_employees here will take the time to read it, and hope they pass it by thru their own channels)

20 th Anniversary Event Feedback.....

Well where to start....

Let me start with congratulating the Settlers brand on its 20th birthday.
And let me also give a word of thanks to the BB dev team, who try to give us extra events. (Its a pitty most fail but the intention is good ,I do realise that)

Why is it that these “suprise events”go wrong ? In my opinion its the refusal to test them on the testserver, the place to get good feedback before launching an event, tool or resource.
I can understand that th DEV team want to keep an suprise element in it, and that is why they dont test it. But the result seems to be that the DEV team gets a lot of comments and bad reactions for their affords. I dont think that feels good... so i will try to keep this a constructive feedback, without wanting to whine or anything, but only in hope the next event will be better organised.

I often wonder if someone from the DEV team plays this game in her/his freetime.... cause I strongly got the idea that the DEV team has a compete other idea of the goal of this game then the mayority of players..... Most active players see this game for most as an economical game.
It all turns around economics, even the batle's and adventures have been calculated , look at the simulators and you will find that every piece of lost troop is being calculated in how many resources (or gc) its gonna cost you to replace them. Most servers have 1 or more google-sheets with the localserver's trade prices. Kept up to date on a daily basis.
Iff the DEV team had realised this more they would have came up with better rewards then the onces we got for this event.
Most players who didnt take part in the event did so because the rewards werent worth it, a few buffs that give no economical advantage at all, and a building that houses so few settlers (20) that its a pitty to use up a good place for it, when you could put on the same spot a noble deed residence wich holds 50 settlers at lvl 3 and even 80 at lvl 5. And a couple of gems that could just as easy could be gained by just logging in daily for 2 weeks.

I have spent during this event 2k gc a day to buy water (to convert into balloons) and buffs baskets (wich I couldnt make cause PH was used for balloonproduction), plus 2 choc rabbits daily.
And I can asure you it wasnt for those worthless rewards I did that. Onliest reason was that I wanted to wash away the humiliation we got at the EOTW event. The fact we made the top 10, and where best after the oldest german and (1) polish server made it all worth for me.....
But iff I will do this again a next time when the rewards will be so bad again....I strongly doubt that......

Wich brings me to my next point..... At the start of this event the DEV team told us they had learned from former events, and that they would combine servers to give every one a fair chance.....
Then why the hack did you put all (also in the first part) good scoring german servers together????

Again just as in EOTW the other worlds didnt stand a chance against the (combined) german servers....

Would it have been such a problem to mix german servers with other servers then german ones????
And please dont tell me its was done because of the language, afterall that was not a problem when you putted UK2 together with the czech server, or the combination of greece,italy,spain and brazil (and another one I cant remember), or for the Dutch, romanian-polish combination....

So why didnt you just put the nr 1 of the first phase together with the greeks on place 39? , nr 2 with nr 38 and so on ? By combining the servers as you did you again load the suspion on you to be advancing those german servers....
Giving them as first a 3x happy hour wasnt smart in this aspective too, allready the germans got more then we can have, like the 220 general and the Nords 2 adventure... No wonder forum was loaded with comments about the disadvantage we have against the german servers.

So iff the next event again will have the german servers combined together then count me out, I wont take part in it... simply cause we dont stand a chance in that case again...

The balloon idea was nice.... an sich....

But have you got any idea how much rsi you caused by making us use the slices in the PH to convert water into balloons, and then again to take all those balloons from star menu into the mayor house (in my case, as for others who gave it their best) that was over 150k balloons a day.
Maybe next time it will be possible to put them straight into the storehouse, it will save a lot of click's I wouldnt have to make then

The retro adventures was a nice idea again.....but to much made with the pegi7 in mind I think
Most took less then 50 seconds to get all hidden objects, next time take the eastern adventures as an example, those where a lot harder to find... Now it was a walk over, even a 7 year old wouldnt need more then a minute to finish it.

Ballons thru the mail.... again a nice idea... just a pitty we never had an idea for what we got them
I got mails with 5 balloons, but also mails with 165 balloons, but really got no clue why....

All together there where to much secrets in this event, not only the amount of balloons you would get for each action (like 5 balloons for putting up a trade, 10 balloons for upgrading an building, 25 balloons for going on adventure or whatever).
But also the fact it was never reveiled how many balloons where needed for 1% has not worked in the advantage of this event I think. There are strong suspecions that the amount needed for 0 to 100% was a total different one then the amount needed for 100% to 200%. But nothing from BB on this matter.. with as a result we never had a fair chance to decide if it was worth it to go on after a certain point … and as side result people giving up on it all together...
As a result people arguing in chat if it was the changed amount, the sudden maintenace we got after 100%, or the fact most people stopped donating after 100%... that made us go back from 10-15% a day to a poor 2 % a day.....

Back to rewards for a moment...
Its nice to let servers compeed eachother, but it would add an whole extra dimension to the event iff you would have kept list of server donations, like who is the top 10 this day/week/event in donating, maybe a prize for the player who donates the most balloons, or even better a couple of competitions, like wich guild donates the most, wich guildless player donates the most (maybe even in several category's like level 1 till level 15, 15 to 25 and so on. With some extra prizes for the most donating guilds/players...

Converting resources... again a nice idea, all though it gave spice to the rumour the whole event was just to drain out the servers from resources...
But I think the conversionrates could be better then they where now, in some cases produced goods that took 2 resources to make gave less balloons then the 2 resources it was made of apart gave...
As I said before most considder this an economical-strategy game so soon we all knew water gave the best ratio for converting
I myself liked the fact I finnaly had a good reason to use up my totally useless amount of saltpetter

Worst moment of the event!!!

For me that was the moment some [crazy] BB employee had the lumineus idea to put the possibility at the testserver to convert balloons for gc at the rate of 25 balloons for 1 gc.
Off course players noticed this, and word spreaded soon worldwide over all servers about this.

Luckely BB changed this at the first upcommig maintenance at the testserver, but a lot of harm was done by then...
Again comunication wasnt BB's strongest point in this matter, at least the testserver comunity manager BB_Slash had the guts to respond to my mail about this, in wich i requested him to take action in this matter cause it would make that people would only make balloons to convert them into gc , instead of donating them. By the rate of 25 balloons for 1 gc a player like me who made 150k balloons a day could get 6k gc for those balloons if he/she wouldnt donate them but keep them till after the event. He pointed me to my comunity manager who sadly not only didnt respond to my mail ,but also removed the whole thread that another player started on this forum about this topic and to wich I had responded. I had expected better from someone who calls herself our advocate..... ( all though i got to mention I am not 100% sure it was BB_Alpaca who deleted the thread, could have been a MOD, but fact is that after my mail to her the topic was suddenly gone)
Lets hope it was just a starters mistake


Let me end with the fact that certainly not all was bad in this event....
It made the comunity work together on a common goal, and it took me from my lethargy where i was since I made it to level 50 last novembre. )))
An extra aplause for the quick respond to the fact a lot of people got stuck in the shaman adventure and cancelled it, to find themselves being stuck in the event questchain. Giving us a Voucher code for an extra shaman was a good an proper reaction.

Oh wait , I almost forgot... Why did we get the event quest just 1 time? In most other events we get a new questline each week.

LESSONS FOR NEXT EVENT!!!


Mix up german servers with other servers then german.

Make the rewards more rewarding the effort. (Example: give us 100gems for each 10% we make, it would make a lot more players active in the event.)

Comunicate clearly what the goal is, dont hide it under a 100% mark, certainly not when the next 100% is not the same as the first 100% was .

Comunicate clearly what action has what reward (upgrading so many balloons, and buffing so much).

Use real players to test the event and give you the feedback to make a event that gets a better reception then the 2 we had til now.

Make an option for players to step out of the event, so they dont got bothered with event related stuff, and off course also wont get the rewards wich others win. Even better make taking part at the event a choice for each player. So not compeeting players dont get counted in the big whole.

Comunicate the same message to all servers at the same time, so not again warn the germans when the event is going to end exactly first and then hours later on our servers

Give all the servers the same possibility to buy in an happy hour at the same time, again not first the germans and days later after complaints the rest...

Make it possible to compeed inside the servers too, guilds against guilds and players against players...

Make the guild-quest chainline for the time the event lasts a part of the event quests.

Last and most important lesson Always keep in mind this game is all about economics. )))



(well i think that is about all I got to say about this subject, congratulations iff you managed to read it all)

No selfcensorship please. Cheers, Fexno

[lulu10093]

Personally i believe some of this event was flawed:
1 yes way to much clicking
2 yes i had a very rare unusual bug that only seemed to affect my PH preventing me make balloons (see link below)
http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...OONS-WONT-MAKE
3 yes a lot of resources got used
4 yes a lot of people did nothing but moan or refused to participate (there right and choice)
5 yes the rewards were not fantastic
BUT
6 i still made balloons all the way through (see link below)
http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...152#post229152
7 the bug i had did annoy me but i worked around it sending people resources i could trust to make balloons when i couldn't use my PH
8 the resources used can easily be built back up again so no major loss really
9 yes i moaned but only because all the negative comments were doing my head in as there was those determined to get our servers to be the best they could be against all the problems and unwilling participants etc
10 it was never about the rewards for me. However it was about TEAM WORK its just as shame a lot of people don't want to be part of the same team. I even started and run the 1st forum competition for a person on Sandy cove to win a personal prize so they did get some recognition for their hard work to help in the Team

Those of you who were playing when the Mayans End of the world were the event in question That was hard and Was unfair as not many of us had a veteran (i didn't at the time). We didn't have many high level troops we were killing 1000's upon thousands of troops some like me doing 5-8 adventures a day and Failed to reach 100% Just like with that event we had those who DID try their best and those who were all about trying to profiteer and rip off as many people as they could. Therefore I believe as BB learned from that and changed the way the Event was organised to not having to loose troops etc they can learn from mistakes in this also.

None of the resources i used or gave away to others were wasted in my eyes,
Yes the groupings could have been better and I AM SO PROUD ALL UK SERVERS GOT AT LEAST 100%
I am also PROUD we got 10th and 11th place in the results table and all those who did participate in their own way should be proud also.

[tr1c]

I felt as if this event could have been planned better there was a distinct lack of communication between the servers, there were rumors of favoritism towards certain servers people refusing to 'waste their resources' for such a poor reward and yet again many players feeling let down by the lack of feed back from BB, feeling let down when we are told not to talk about what is upsetting us in global chat when we complained to support nothing said and worst of all no clear direction from MODS over things like when exactly maintenance are going to happen etc. all in all i feel as if the entire event was a let down in the end when by active players estimations less than half of the players were taking part due to the fact that they felt the whole event was poorly planned and if I am truly honest I do not think i will be actively encouraging players in my guild to take part in any future events as if feel that not only have you let down your servers and guilds you have let down every single player the players on sandycove were more willing to take part in the player run competition than they were the actual event now i think that says everything right there don't you?

[RonPope]

The lesson for next is event is not to have one?

Or how about not doing 'competition' events but a 'completion' event.

Competition for these types of events will NEVER be fair. NEVER. How fair is it to when a low pop server gets put with a high pop server and it gets carried to the top.
The big problem is the prize for "fastest" and "most". This is the utter most unfair aspect of the event. People got upset but it boils down to those two elements that make it unfair.

If this event was just purely about reaching the goals. 100%, 150%, 200% which are doable. Each server gets awarded for reaching those goals (merging servers with each other is fine to achieve the goals.)

But most importantly, the unfairness and unpredictable/unreliable factor is that some players will donate more than others. And its frustrating that others just decided to stop donating because they feel the reward is not worth it. Or why they should do all the work when somebody else is doing none.

This could have been easily resolved by offering some sort of individual awards/rewards? Maybe a badge or a decoration trinket for their effort. Or maybe a raffle ticket/lotto ticket. The more you donate the more chances of winning some prize. This way the folks who donate a lot 'feels' at least they're doing something with a 'chance of getting something. Sure they might not get anything but that's what a lottery is about. You give up something in hopes to gain something. Here you're blindly donating balloons and have no clue how much you contributed or even if you're getting anything back.

1. My advice is probably don't do any more competition events.
2. If you have to have an event, than focus on the individual rewards for incentives and don't have competition rewards (fastest/most).

[Dorotheus]

What I don't understand is how Germany 1 won. Granted they have a lot of level 50 players with maxed out islands, but that means they had little or no room to build wells. Guess BB did not just fail, they even got failure wrong.

[RonPope]

What I don't understand is how Germany 1 won. Granted they have a lot of level 50 players with maxed out islands, but that means they had little or no room to build wells. Guess BB did not just fail, they even got failure wrong.

that's kind of a good point. my island has a lot of space for wells. looking at other 50s on my server they have little space for wells but lots of level 5 watermills though.

maybe they had lots of watermills at lvl 5? turned off their other resource water suckers?

[Wreckless-]

The whole concept of pitting servers against each other is completely flawed. It's like aliens vs predator. Makes absolutely no sense, nobody would want to watch that movie. And nobody did.
But seriously, why don't you pit guilds against each other, taking into account the number of players in the guild and their xp lvl. Might even encourage some of the older guilds to dump their inactive members.
Also, I repeat my suggestion to make the HQ upgradable:
Upgr 1: stockpile for 15.000 weapons and food
Upgr 2: reduce training time by 10%
Upgr 3: reduce losses in combat, 1/3 of your troop MIA makes it back to your island, but they take the scenic route.
Upgr 4: hey, I have to think of everything myself???

It would stop the whining in about one a third of a second.