Recruitment reduction: discussion

[DeletedUser]

will people stop saying that an active non premium player will be better than a premium player who is not as skilled/active, we all know this and have heard it many times.
the point is if two equally skilled players 1 premium 1 not, the premium player will be at an advantage.

 

[DeletedUser19260]

i dont think it makes a difference.
i have played with and without and it didnt make much of a difference for me. but maybe thats just me.

 

[DeletedUser]

commander and captain make a huge difference I feel.
admin is useful when you have a lot of cities and struggle to keep them in order

of course there are more than one benefit to these things (especially admin) but I am just stating the main ones

 

[DeletedUser]

i saw many players saying that premium makes no difference.really?then why peoples buy it?

 

[DeletedUser19260]

sploggo - captain and commander dont make any more of a difference than spells.
the only thing i think is realy helpful about premium is the admin when you have a few citys.

daizans - i dont think it makes a difference but some players do.
some people get it so they can get more culture points for 50 gold each and dont use it for anything else. for players who cant be online very much cause of work or something admin helps them with longer construction queues but if your on 2 or 3 times a day you dont need longer queues.

 

[DeletedUser]

spells on top of premium have no effect? do they not stack? is 20% improvement not as good as the 10% from spells? :S

 

[DeletedUser]

How on earth did you deduce that this gives a defender an advantage?

If an attacker and a defender both have premium, and both use this feature, why is anyone at an advantage?

Also, having just read the thread, I can see that no-one has cleared this up for you.

The reduction for troops does not allow you to infinitely reduce the time taken, it decreases it down to a percentage of the time (I'm not sure of the exact amount).

Here's a question for you though...

Why shouldn't premium players get an advantage? They're paying for the game you play, they've got to get something for their money, right?

An attacker has travel times, a defender doesn't - this adds a massive advantage to defence when the game already has a defence bias.
Also, I agree with other comments that this may ruin the game.
Those who are for this idea, may be a little short sighted... if the game is not popular and players leave or don't stay around, you will have nobody to fight.

It won't take long for players to realise they don't have (much of) a chance of taking a premium players city when they can queue up a big army very quickly; maybe not in an instant but within minutes not hours.

My money is on in-actives going through the roof. There will be a lag effect first though.

The DEVs are indeed a business, but if business gets too greedy, business fails.

I'm all for create whatever you want in new worlds, see how they perform. Don't make such drastic changes to existing worlds.

 

[DeletedUser5061]

Agreed. Not to mention, at least for me...and I am likely representative of a substantial pool of players, I don't use premium other than to run my basics. If the premium cost to cut build time of armies costs the same as cutting building time in the senate I doubt I would do it often as that really can add up. And...I really don't need to either cos I don't mind waiting a few days to replace a nuke.

While you'll always have your players that have and are willing to pay for large quantities of gold, I don't see this as having too big an impact on non-premium players overall.

Without repeating what people like Atti have said, I will say this is really bad idea coming up with ways to extract more money from the people that already pay is a good way to alienate your current customer base. It's crazy to think in the 14-15 months I have played this game I have spent at least £70 if not more, it's redonkulous to think that amount isn't enough for InnoGames GmbH, they want to squeeze more out players like me. I don't think it will generate more revenue for inno, definitely not in the long run, so why bring such unbalance to the game. Cutting build times doesn't hurt the game since players who don't do it can just concentrate on their armies and can conquer big fully built cities to get the advantage back, but with this new recruitment reduction thing there is no way to get the advantage back which brings unbalances the game.

One of the main problems is that the top tier players use the ABP ranks to push each other, which encourage players in the second tier to spend more on gold so they can break in to the top tier, by implementing this recruitment reduction feature you completely devalue the point of the ABP ranks, thus alienating a lot of top tier players from the server, inturn your second tier now become your top tier and the level of competition is a lowered because the third tier of players are active but don't use gold, without players pushing each other inno will just make a lot less money not more. Maybe I can't fully express my point fully but implementing something like this shows how disconnected the developers have become to their own creation.

Again there are so many other reasons why this is a bad idea I won't go into because it would be a waste of time since inno will go ahead with it anyway. So rather than bitching about it, I will look at it objectively and say I agree with what Jenn said on most parts, there are not a lot of players that use gold to cut times, just like me and her majority just use premium to run the basics. I too don't see this as having too big an impact on non-premium players overall, what's one more thing in a long list of disadvantages, if anything this evens the playing field a little more for them since now they have majority of the players that use gold but don't cut times on the same boat as them, so that would be the only pro about the feature if can even call it that, the rest are all cons.

If this new feature brings in a huge influx of revenue for the game great, I am all for it, I don't think it will improve the product but it might improve service, maybe if the mods were rewarded a little more for their efforts some of them wouldn't be so stuck up

If inno feel they are not making enough money from the the amount of unique users they get per day, they should be finding ways to get the one that don't pay to pay and target a more specific market with their advertising campaigns to drive in the right kind of traffic in the first place.

I hope for the sake of the game recruitment reduction feature is not something that is implemented in all future servers of grepo, it should be used as a settings preference like morale and revolt, every now and then they should release a server that doesn't have it activated like they do with morale, that way inno can keep the vets happy while burning a hole in the pockets of their new customers.

 

[DeletedUser]

sploggo - captain and commander dont make any more of a difference than spells.

This is ridiculous.
First, spells don´t make much of a difference?
The amounts of times I have seen battles resolve thanks to Heroic power or Cs landing thanks to Fav wind.
Heroic Power - 10% + commander - 20% . Tha equeals to 30%, 40 if you add phalanx, that isnt a "difference" in combat for you??.

As for this new implement, I agree with all that Dazian said

 

[DeletedUser]

hehe...since most of the players here are teens i would like to see face of their daddies when they find hole in their pocket and explanation--i needed my nukes rebuilt

 

[DeletedUser4013]

This is ridiculous.
First, spells don´t make much of a difference?
The amounts of times I have seen battles resolve thanks to Heroic power or Cs landing thanks to Fav wind.
Heroic Power - 10% + commander - 20% . Tha equeals to 30%, 40 if you add phalanx, that isnt a "difference" in combat for you??.

The spell and Captain/Commander buffs do not stack up like that. You cannot just add 10%+20%+30%+etc... There are very specific formulae that get calculated into how those bonuses are applied to the attacking/defending force.

As for the reduction feature...has anyone considered that people don't have to use it at all? And Daizan, as you mentioned, Inno is looking for a way to get those non-premium players to use premium. Well this could be that way. We've heard that a lot of the top players do and don't use premium in-game. Well, some of the less experienced players may see this as a way to help boost them into the next tier of players and allow them to enjoy the game more. I cannot honestly see the top tier of players being threatened by the lower ones just because of this change. If anything, it may open up new tiers to players that were otherwise unaccessable.

 

[DeletedUser14385]

i dont understand the moaning about speeding defence recruitment through, if somebodys that pressed they feel the need to spend money on swords theyre only slowing their demise

Atticus makes a good point, it would be a very dangerous weapon in somebody like his hands...but then will the top players realy feel the need when they dominate allready?

in any case the tactics for beating somebody using this bonus will be the same as fighting somebody bigger than you, dodge everything except the cs and be tight with the bp untill you can grow abit

if your worried about it maybe you need more practice, go find some big old enemies and try your luck ......whats the worst that can happen?

 

[DeletedUser]

The discussion is useless inno dont care for their player base, we are just little bags of money and nothing more.
And as for the addition i will not be buying premium purely because this bonus is unfair and I dont want to cheat or be labeled a cheater by those playing for fun

 

[DeletedUser]

This is the greatest thing since since since grepolis itself. I love it. But at the same time it kinda stinks that im broke atm so wont really be using it right away... but at least once i do decide to buy gold again it will be really nice yay for building 1k slingers in like 5 hours on chi

 

[DeletedUser]

The discussion is useless inno dont care for their player base, we are just little bags of money and nothing more.
And as for the addition i will not be buying premium purely because this bonus is unfair and I dont want to cheat or be labeled a cheater by those playing for fun

We care very much about this forum and the opinions of the players. Rest assure that we thought about implementing this feature very carefully before actually going threw with it.

 

[DeletedUser]

The discussion is useless inno dont care for their player base, we are just little bags of money and nothing more.
And as for the addition i will not be buying premium purely because this bonus is unfair and I dont want to cheat or be labeled a cheater by those playing for fun

We care very much about this forum and the opinions of the players. Rest assure that we thought about implementing this feature very carefully before actually going threw with it.

To add to what Gordopolis has said, if we didn't care would this thread even exist? Or would we simply shut it down.

I have seen numerous times in here people moaning that premium gives an advantage to players. Well, I'm afraid that's kind of the point.

I can understand those saying this takes that advantage to far, however I honestly don't expect that the top players will use this, nor will it be widely used as far as people think because of how expensive it ends up.

You can quite easily burn 2 or 3,000 coins a day on cutting building times, never mind this. This makes it prohibitively expensive. Then consider the players that have 10's of cities. I saw a calc in this thread that said a 186 LS nuke cut to it's min time would cost 900 gold. Now imagine that on 25 cities of LS nukes, every week.

You're soon talking about 100's of thousands of coins. For 1 player.

It isn't going to be used as much as people fear I don't think.

 

[DeletedUser]

just the 20 gold per attempt if u can max a training que it will be more then enough especially after using call of ocean ull get an extremly heavy advantage over most any player and this is without cutting down alot just once per max que is always ALOT more then enough

 

[DeletedUser12512]

Pyth, much respect to you, however, if you and I were to square off against one another, you without premium, and me with it...who would win?

You state players like Socrates who if you say doesn't use premium excells at the game, and this is true to a point, however, Socrates didn't get to where he is by himself, he got there because his team helped him get there, so now, give yourself a team of non premium users, and give me a team of premium users, and who would win?

I don't mean this to sound like I am thumping my chest, but I know the answer. Player for player premium does make a difference, its irrefutable or noone would use it. When was the last time you lost a city to a non premium user? Do we need more ways to dominate? I'd be happier paying more for the features I already have then risk losing non-paying players to a decided disadvantage in the game. Personally, I like haivng enemies to fight, and the 800 or so premium players just aren't enough for me. But mix in a few thousand players that although they aren't paying to play, they make my game more enjoyable for just being here.... and I prefer they stay.

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On another note, I like to play these 'war' games because they allow me to use my imagination somewhat, but always I look for some sort of justification for the elements of the game. For example, I can see having a seasoned admiral in my navy making me more of a threat in the seas, I can see the same thing with a general, but what justification do I have for being able to pop out troops faster than the next 'nation'?

Reasonably I should expect that my nation has a similar training in the barracks as the next guy, and if I am building 'spartans' shouldn't it take me longer? not less time?

Training troops faster then the other guy is simply an advantage I don't need, but if truth be told, these fights/wars do become personal at times, and I would put money on the fact hat the majority of premium users would spend an extra $3 to make sure their nemesis didn't tke their city from them.

I would.

Some of you are saying it's likely not going to be a widely used feature if it costs so much, but then why implement it? Innogames anticipate it being used, and I can see that it will, when needed, like any other premium feature.

I don't think I have shortened a build time for a building in a long time, but I know I do when it matters (at the begginning of a server) each premium feature has its advantage, and its 'maximum return on investment potential'.

Personally, I would rather pay for the ability to trade resources for favor as a premium feature, at least then I could call it a 'sacrifice to the gods' and know that by filling Inno's pockets, I am at least playing into the realm of possibilities in the genre.

I am against this one feature, and a 'recruitment reduction' seems like a lot of programming work to implement a solution for a revenue generating device. If this is where the devs are spending their time, their priorities are not unlike other game companies, but aren't most of us here because we appreciated Innogames unique stint on making the game fun for anyone and everyone?

If it ain't broke....

 

[DeletedUser]

well said

 

[DeletedUser]

first of all, great post. i do agree with a lot of stuff you said and you make some good points, but there are a few things i wanna comment on of course

Pyth, much respect to you, however, if you and I were to square off against one another, you without premium, and me with it...who would win?

you would win, atti. but then you would also win if we squared off 1v1 with me having premium and you without.

You state players like Socrates who if you say doesn't use premium excells at the game, and this is true to a point, however, Socrates didn't get to where he is by himself, he got there because his team helped him get there, so now, give yourself a team of non premium users, and give me a team of premium users, and who would win?

if i get to chose the teams then there will only be one winner but seriously, if my non-premium team consisted of better players than your premium team on average then my team would win. if the teams were exact duplicates then the premium would make the difference, as it should.

Player for player premium does make a difference, its irrefutable or noone would use it. When was the last time you lost a city to a non premium user? Do we need more ways to dominate? I'd be happier paying more for the features I already have then risk losing non-paying players to a decided disadvantage in the game. Personally, I like haivng enemies to fight, and the 800 or so premium players just aren't enough for me. But mix in a few thousand players that although they aren't paying to play, they make my game more enjoyable for just being here.... and I prefer they stay.

i agree with this, i just don't think that recruitment reduction will be something which is used in multiple cities on a regular basis by a large number of players (and that is really the situation which would make grepo less enjoyable for non-premium players imo)

On another note, I like to play these 'war' games because they allow me to use my imagination somewhat, but always I look for some sort of justification for the elements of the game. For example, I can see having a seasoned admiral in my navy making me more of a threat in the seas, I can see the same thing with a general, but what justification do I have for being able to pop out troops faster than the next 'nation'?

maybe excellent trainers or training techniques?

Some of you are saying it's likely not going to be a widely used feature if it costs so much, but then why implement it? Innogames anticipate it being used, and I can see that it will, when needed, like any other premium feature.

I don't think I have shortened a build time for a building in a long time, but I know I do when it matters (at the begginning of a server) each premium feature has its advantage, and its 'maximum return on investment potential'.

no doubt it will be used, but i think more spread out over premium players, so the effect won't be as noticeable as some may think. a bit more of a selling a bicycle to every man in china story than selling a few luxury cars in terms of innos business plan for this feature i would think. if the feature is used sparingly (when it matters, like maybe with an incoming CS) then we won't have people rebuilding a new LS nuke every day, the thought of which is what was upsetting some people i think. the fact that it is a feature more suited to emergency use than everyday use also tends to highlight the fact that resources are still needed to build the troops and in a limited time-frame (if there was a CS incoming which required you to reduce training time more than the boost by a spell) then there might not be enough time to refill your warehouse multiple times to build a full defence.

I am against this one feature, and a 'recruitment reduction' seems like a lot of programming work to implement a solution for a revenue generating device. If this is where the devs are spending their time, their priorities are not unlike other game companies, but aren't most of us here because we appreciated Innogames unique stint on making the game fun for anyone and everyone?

If it ain't broke....

it's not a feature i will use and it's a feature that will put me at a disadvantage, but i would say that it's certainly a feature that will make extra income for inno. i'm assuming that they use that money to improve grepolis, then i'm all for it anyway. of course if they don't then i would abandon my defence of the idea in a heartbeat