[Feedback] Colonies and PvP - Dev Diary

[eternalove]

My feedback:
* retreat button react too slow, on a few occasion I wanted to attack certain camp by attacking another camp and let it intercept, and i failed to retreat the marshal eventhough I press retreat as soon as it won the first battle (then obviously the remaining troops went on and SPLASH!)
* weapon too expensive (iron bar), and you literally run at a lost from playing PvP, no incentive at all
* lag issue prevent the battle graphic from showing, sometimes well into a battle, preventing user from picking the appropriate troops type, resulting in unnecessary heavy lost
* receiving mail notification saying I have lost a Colony (with rewards??) when I have actually repelled an attacker
* the position where we can place the D is limited, and sometimes very obsolete (as you can completely by pass these D position)

that's all for now.

[Shelob81]

You may add the fact that resource income from conquered colonies is limited to a max of 2000 atm. which means with my 5 colonies I need to log in every 12 hours to empty the colony storage. Very useless feature if you ask me and having more than 2 colonies isn't fun if it makes you need to log in that often.

[Gerontius]

Here is my first feedback thread on trying out the tutorial expedition

Here is my second feedback thread of my experiences in going on a proper expedition

Above are links to my detailed experiences and feedback of trying out the colony system

This post is to summarise my feedback

Negative:
1. The decision to use realtime combat forcing a player to actively watch practically every battle was a bad one
2. The decision to put strict/short limits on how long players had to complete the expedition was a bad one
3. The system is clearly unfinished and should never have gone live in its current state
4. The system is poorly designed, particularly the key interfaces for making weapons/troops and assigning them to marshalls and needs re-working from the ground up
5. The options for defending colonies are far too limited
6. The system is bugged and would probably best be removed for fixes before trying again in 3 months time
7. I did not find it fun for at least the above reasons
8. I won't be bothering with another expedition, except to use up my remaining troops

Positive:
1. The rock/paper/scissors mechanic is nice
2. The summary report at the end is nice and should be provided at the end of normal adventures, too
3. Nice rewards from successfully defending colony (although it now looks like that's bug! But it's a bug that should be implemented properly!)

[Zotamedu]

Above are links to my detailed experiences and feedback of trying out the colony system

This post is to summarise my feedback

Negative:
1. The decision to use realtime combat forcing a player to actively watch practically every battle was a bad one
2. The decision to put strict/short limits on how long players had to complete the expedition was a bad one
3. The system is clearly unfinished and should never have gone live in its current state
4. The system is poorly designed, particularly the key interfaces for making weapons/troops and assigning them to marshalls and needs re-working from the ground up
5. The system is bugged and would probably best be removed for fixes before trying again in 3 months time
6. I did not find it fun for at least the above reasons
7. I won't be bothering with another expedition, except to use up my remaining troops

Positive:
1. The rock/paper/scissors mechanic is nice
2. The summary report at the end is nice and should be provided at the end of normal adventures, too

How they figured that combat with a real time element when losses are calculated server side is beyond me. How can they possibly have missed that their game cannot handle that. People have been complaining about blocks not working because of lag for years and the lag is getting worse. How stupid do you have to be to then build a combat system that requires low latency? It's like they have no idea what platform they are coding for. We told them this on the test server. I told them specifically that they needed to go back to the drawing board because this game cannot handle real time combat. It has to be turn based or it will never work.

That's freaking game design 101, know your platform.

[mdavo]

thats what it is all about , they want ppl to use real money and buy gems so BB can waste It on stuff that the players do not want

[Onejug]

This PVP is just terrible.

After 3 years, goodbye.

How can I sell my stuff?

[Cully]

I've not actually done an expedition yet for the simple reason that it costs too much to train the troops. Iron is a valuable commodity and using iron bars seems extreme. I'm still training up the troops required for the training expedition. I'm not even halfway. Like a lot of people I don't have the time to buff, trade and basically constantly try to get the bars needed to make the weapons. I'm also not prepared to trade half my inventory just to complete an expedition. It can't possibly offer rewards which will cover the loss. The resources needed to make the weapons really needs to be looked at.

[Gerontius]

Someone on talk just had a brilliant idea for Colonies: remove PvP from it

Sounds stupid? Let me explain.

The (so-called) PvP aspect of colonies is essentially a dead duck. Poorly implemented and adds no additional fun to the colony system. Also, it means you can lose a colony long before you've gained any sensible amount of resources from it.

Remove PvP and you have the option of conquering up to 6 different colonies AND HOLDING THEM PERMANENTLY.

Under such a system, the slow trickle of resources from those colonies would build up over the long term into something worthwhile - the quantity of resources could even conceivably be reduced from their current level to promote this long-term investment way of thinking.

The target for colonies therefore would be to slowly recoup losses and then build up your strength and target better and stronger colonies over time with increasing resource accumulation.

Seriously, dump the PvP and colonies would actually be a worthwhile long term investment for people. Do it, BB. Do it now!


EDIT: Additional thought - to make colonies a real long-term challenge, more powerful troops could be made available only with valour points. Then make it so valour points (and medium resources such as iron) are accumulated slowly from holding low-level colonies. And make high level colonies accessible/defeatable only if you have those more powerful troops, but they come with greater rewards - eg access to granite/beans/gold producing colonies etc

Removing PvP suddenly makes SO MUCH sense. Has nobody thought of this before?

[Strasilo22]

U can keep PvP if u like it so much but 7 day for colony is just silly.Someone need to spend 2X more troops to get colony from me just to have her 6 or less days?
U have to come to ur senses and do something practical and smart like permanent posession of colony with possabilty of losing her to other player and curent owner must have cahnce to repair what is lost during attack or it can be repaired automaticaly after attack or once per 24 hours.
Btw u should get back weapons in adv loot.
Be resonable or this game will die.Hope i covered all of it.
Ty

[MrCheesecake]

sounds a great idea. especially as at the moment camps are just sat on my island taking up much needed space.at least they could be useful in the long term.