[Feedback] 20th Anniversary!

[Sir_Wills]

Does anyone else besides me feel a little bit disappointed by this event? I thought that we would be having a real celebration with some decent rewards for our efforts. A couple of hundred gems and a few retro buildings doesn't seem very much, not when you have donated thousands of balloons. Now don't get me wrong, I love the Settlers, I have bought and played every one, yes, right back to the very first which I played on a 386 PC. I still have them all somewhere, but let me ask you something, why have you gone backwards when you should be going forwards? The best version to play was version V. Version 6 wasnt bad either, but 7, well I'm sure you know how dissatisfied many people are with this. And if you have a crappy internet connection like me (it's a satellite system which comes and goes like the wind) then it tends to spoil the playability of the game. Now playing it online is ok, providing you can actually get on that is, but lets have the next version in a box, with an optional online addition that lets you upgrade stuff occasionally, rather than having to be connected and play online all the time.
I'm playing two versions online at the moment, the test version (Prestaging) and the free online version (Sandycove), both of which are slow to play, even when my internet connection is fast. However if you could make the next version saved and run from my hard drive with a connection to the net, I would be very pleased and I am sure that many others would be too.

[Sto_Helit]

I'm playing two versions online at the moment, the test version (Prestaging) and the free online version (Sandycove), both of which are slow to play, even when my internet connection is fast. However if you could make the next version saved and run from my hard drive with a connection to the net, I would be very pleased and I am sure that many others would be too.

That is available, in the form of Settlers 7, which requires an internet connection to play. It is fast and is saved on your hard drive. The only thing it isn't is free....

[Sir_Wills]

I have that version too, Sto_Helit, but it is awfully slow compared to all other versions (I know, I have bought them all). What we could do with is a version which has all the game on your hard drive, but one that you can connect to the net and buy, update, download and communicate with others as and when you want. If you look on any retailers web page you will find that there are more complaints about The Settlers 7 than anything else on there.

[Promethos]

I didn't enjoy the event at all.

* too much clicking. I'm a level 50 player with a well developed Island, I've got enough daily clicking just to feed the fish, build troops, buff, rebuild mines fields and well. I'm already getting tired of that, Í dont want a click-party to create 500 or 1000 batches of balloons which then go to the starmenu first. Aargh seriously, why not bigger batches and send the balloons directly to the inventory? This was just too much dumb clicking. My settlers like adventures, not sitting at the office clicking away the day.

If I could have opted-out, I certainly would have. Now I just felt bad for the folks trying to make loads of balloons, and I didn't want to get rewards for doing nothing. So yeah, I did make some balloons and gave away resources. But I wasn't motivated to really try hard. I made 100k balloons or so (and gave away resources), which isn't that much for my Island.

Some other things that went wrong:
* an adventure with decent exp, but no loot. Great, that's just a slap in the face for the level 50 players. (the conversion from exp. to star coins wasn't announced yet). Apparently they wanted to give a reward apart from the balloons, but just forgot about the level50 players.
* uhm statistics breaking down twice? Given the difficult task to balance different servers, making a graph that shows the progress is really easy to do. And yet it failed. No wait, it failed again a week later. If the developers cant even make a table whith the balloons, and display the results in a diagram.... should we trust they did manage to count all the balloons correctly then?
* get lost with that sir-thingy bringing 25 balloons or so. That just adds to the clicking, and doesn't help at all. I easily made 100k balloons, how does 25 help, or 10 fromm a treasurehunt? Just plain annoying.
* why is the link to the event-window still there, but right after the event didn't work anymore? That's the time everyone want to know where we ended, but the easiest link to the results is disabled. If you can disable it, why not remove it completely?
* oh and the servers were not balanced. Kinda problematic in a competition. The Germans might have been a bit more motivated given the EotW-event, but that cant explain the huge difference. We just did not have a fair chance. Not to mention the poor folks on the US servers


The servers are very different from each other. That does make it very hard, almost impossible to give everyone a fair chance. If you do want to give it a try, you need to bring in some different developers. The game does look nice and has some good things to offer, but balancing the game never has been a strong point. The whole expertweapon-industry is pointless for example, because they dind't foresee no one would loose crossbows or cannoneers (except by accident).
This time they clearly expected the bigger players to make hundred Thousand+ balloons. Yet they introduce sir thingy and daily adventures for 100 balloons. Uhm, how does that relate, isn't that completely pointless? Is that lack of feeling for proportion and numbers or what?

For a well balanced event, you have to pay attention to details. It's a lot of number-crunching, analyzing the dynamics of the different server and coming up with a formula to give everyone a fair chance. There is not much room to correct things during an event. Then a simple thing as a result-table breaking down twice.... well I'm afraid that is a signal the developers have a whole different approach. They might know how to make things look nice, but they lack the skills to work precise, pay attention to detail, plan ahead of an event, and make things actually work without lots of bugs first.

I'm not sure if it's even possible to do a cross-server event giving everyone a fair chance. BB has to think hard if it's something they want to try again. Given the mistakes they make with easier things, I'de say give up on cross-server event's. It's too difficult, and there are other things that need your attention.

[RonPope]

I didn't enjoy the event at all.

* too much clicking. I'm a level 50 player with a well developed Island, I've got enough daily clicking just to feed the fish, build troops, buff, rebuild mines fields and well. I'm already getting tired of that, Í dont want a click-party to create 500 or 1000 batches of balloons which then go to the starmenu first. Aargh seriously, why not bigger batches and send the balloons directly to the inventory? This was just too much dumb clicking. My settlers like adventures, not sitting at the office clicking away the day.

If I could have opted-out, I certainly would have. Now I just felt bad for the folks trying to make loads of balloons, and I didn't want to get rewards for doing nothing. So yeah, I did make some balloons and gave away resources. But I wasn't motivated to really try hard. I made 100k balloons or so (and gave away resources), which isn't that much for my Island.

Some other things that went wrong:
* an adventure with decent exp, but no loot. Great, that's just a slap in the face for the level 50 players. (the conversion from exp. to star coins wasn't announced yet). Apparently they wanted to give a reward apart from the balloons, but just forgot about the level50 players.
* uhm statistics breaking down twice? Given the difficult task to balance different servers, making a graph that shows the progress is really easy to do. And yet it failed. No wait, it failed again a week later. If the developers cant even make a table whith the balloons, and display the results in a diagram.... should we trust they did manage to count all the balloons correctly then?
* get lost with that sir-thingy bringing 25 balloons or so. That just adds to the clicking, and doesn't help at all. I easily made 100k balloons, how does 25 help, or 10 fromm a treasurehunt? Just plain annoying.
* why is the link to the event-window still there, but right after the event didn't work anymore? That's the time everyone want to know where we ended, but the easiest link to the results is disabled. If you can disable it, why not remove it completely?
* oh and the servers were not balanced. Kinda problematic in a competition. The Germans might have been a bit more motivated given the EotW-event, but that cant explain the huge difference. We just did not have a fair chance. Not to mention the poor folks on the US servers


The servers are very different from each other. That does make it very hard, almost impossible to give everyone a fair chance. If you do want to give it a try, you need to bring in some different developers. The game does look nice and has some good things to offer, but balancing the game never has been a strong point. The whole expertweapon-industry is pointless for example, because they dind't foresee no one would loose crossbows or cannoneers (except by accident).
This time they clearly expected the bigger players to make hundred Thousand+ balloons. Yet they introduce sir thingy and daily adventures for 100 balloons. Uhm, how does that relate, isn't that completely pointless? Is that lack of feeling for proportion and numbers or what?

For a well balanced event, you have to pay attention to details. It's a lot of number-crunching, analyzing the dynamics of the different server and coming up with a formula to give everyone a fair chance. There is not much room to correct things during an event. Then a simple thing as a result-table breaking down twice.... well I'm afraid that is a signal the developers have a whole different approach. They might know how to make things look nice, but they lack the skills to work precise, pay attention to detail, plan ahead of an event, and make things actually work without lots of bugs first.

I'm not sure if it's even possible to do a cross-server event giving everyone a fair chance. BB has to think hard if it's something they want to try again. Given the mistakes they make with easier things, I'de say give up on cross-server event's. It's too difficult, and there are other things that need your attention.

Well said. I totally agree with what you said.
Crisis events were bad.
I think they waste too much time on these events and should be spending time on newer content.

[MrBranch]

I think they waste too much time on these events and should be spending time on newer content.

Or simply on having a look at Fexno's post and finally solve some of the bugs mentioned there. Some existing for years....ridiculous!

[Sto_Helit]

I have that version too, Sto_Helit, but it is awfully slow compared to all other versions (I know, I have bought them all). What we could do with is a version which has all the game on your hard drive, but one that you can connect to the net and buy, update, download and communicate with others as and when you want. If you look on any retailers web page you will find that there are more complaints about The Settlers 7 than anything else on there.

To be honest, I thought that Settlers 7 did all of that, and I got a lot of amusement out of playing it. I was mainly trying to point out that something exists along those lines already, unless there are any plans to make Settlers 8 at some point in the future. I don't believe the free-to-play online browser game The Settlers Online will be made to look like the pc/download game because it is a completely different genre, and the pc/download game would be developed further as Settlers 8, not The Settlers Online v 2.

[Benedicter]

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...

I agree with most of what you wrote, this event had many flaws but IMO this one was different. some flaws are expected from BB which unfortunately seems to fail listening to the community's feedback time after time (or try to fool us, like in the last crisis event people complained about no 'X' to delete to quest chain so this time we had an 'X' but it was a dummy one and it didnt do anything lol).

But this? more like favoritism. Its not just like their usual incompetence, this time they joined the Germans with each other after the knew exactly how good they are as they saw it in phase one. That was not a mistake.
It seems that after they saw what they actually did and that many servers won't reach even 100%, they decided to put their hand in the results and meddle directly with the ranking table. As you can see from these two screenshots which were taken before and after the 2.5 days the ranking table was down - [SS1] [SS2], and supported by the german google doc that documented all changes in the table, in the 2.5 days they recounted the balloons (12-15/7) the top 11 fast servers went up by a total of 56.3% while the lower 8 slower servers went up by a total of 77.8% (3 less servers, a lot slower ones, and 21.5% more).

I think those numbers speak by themselves and that BB went too far this time around.

[Sto_Helit]

It seems that after they saw what they actually did and that many servers won't reach even 100%, they decided to put their hand in the results and meddle directly with the ranking table. As you can see from these two screenshots which were taken before and after the 2.5 days the ranking table was down - [SS1] [SS2], and supported by the german google doc that documented all changes in the table, in the 2.5 days they recounted the balloons (12-15/7) the top 11 fast servers went up by a total of 56.3% while the lower 8 slower servers went up by a total of 77.8% (3 less servers, a lot slower ones, and 21.5% more).

I think those numbers speak by themselves and that BB went too far this time around.

I had a bit of fun with the German google document, and extended the original trajectories of the top and bottom server groups, for the first 100%. I came up with about 650% for Germany 1 and over 150% for USA 1 & 2. So based on that, we should have all won the rewards for 150%, about eleven servers would have got over 200% and Germany 1 would have been in the lead by quite a big margin for both of the top prizes. Obviously that was a bit much for Blue Byte to hand out, therefore they recalculated the numbers.

[Dorotheus]

People i have a solution, send in Sir Alan Sugar.