I dropped some AW's that looked like no longer interesting i have 18 of them now, top players can do the same if they want, do they really need 30AW's, The game became unbalanced in their favor and inno tried to fix it.
Why is it considered "unbalanced" for people who have been playing a game for a long time to benefit from the game's regular activities?
I realize this is an open-ended game. There is no set story completion marker, and getting your character/team up to max level (chapter here) like in a JRPG doesn't mean you're going to be able to hack the end-game boss (75th tourney province/10th floor Spire boss) to pieces with two strikes.
But this is a city builder, not a JRPG. I shouldn't be penalized because I like the look of 26 Ancient Wonders and the challenge of fitting them all into my limited city space alongside everything I need to maintain my city and my activity in the game.
If that's what I want to do with my city. It shouldn't be, "You can only have x number of Ancient Wonders if you want to be able to be active in the Tournaments and the Spire."
So, why, if someone has invested
six years into the game - along with probably thousands of dollars - should they be
forced to play in a way contrary to the one they've played the whole time just in order to have any chance at competing in the tourney/spire? Why should they have to completely scrap their military cities and rebuild them as catering cities? (And at what point does Inno then decide, "Oops, now there's an 'imbalance' in the other direction!" and basically make it so playing the game past chapter five is in no one's best interest?)
Why should the experienced players not be given some benefit for being able to pass on their understanding of the game to players like me? If there's no benefit to them to do it, why would they allow smaller cities into their fellowships? Why would they spend time engaging in neighborly help? Sure, there's the gold, but their world map progress no doubt makes my paltry 2646 look like spittle in comparison to an ocean. I'm not sure if some players could even make it through the amount of uncovered map in whatever time they allot themselves to play the game each day. Add to that world map help time the time answering questions either in the forum or fellowship chat and boosting their FS' newer cities w/ tiny trades (yeah, I can make the 3k trade between marble (outgoing) and steel (incoming) between me and a member of my FS, but most of my trades are small still, and I try to be mindful of the cities even smaller than mine in the FS and trade tier 1 goods below 250 when I post the trades up; but it'll be a
long time before I can make the 75k trades that are in my trader every day from my very large neighbors) -- all of that time added up and then Inno wants to say, "Sorry, mate, we know you've been a real boon to us taking on all those duties in game and in the forum, helping out and all, but we think letting you reap the rewards of your hard work in game isn't fair to all those people you've been spending all of your time helping." ??
That sounds like an imbalance to me - in favor of the newer players like me.
If Inno (and you, I guess) thinks there is an imbalance because newer players like me "will never see their names in the top 10 of anything", how about just creating new subdivisions in the tourney? Instead of making it everyone on that world, they could make it so that there's a new ranking catalogued every 5,000 or so WMP. Then the top 10 for that ranking could get a prize - and the higher your WMP, the better your prize. Because that's the way it should be. Their time and effort and energy - their money, too - should be
rewarded, not penalized.
And, mind you, these are the same people who so graciously maintain third-party sites like ElvenArchitect, ElvenGems and ElvenStats. They don't get paid for that. It's only love of the game and to help their fellow players that they do it, and Inno is making changes that drive them away... Perhaps, though it doesn't answer
@Simpumba's question of the reasons behind a player leaving, this might be an explanation for why Inno has made so many changes that affect so many players negatively. But if they didn't want the information getting out there, they would have made it part of the contract agreement to have an account on the beta servers, or they would have filed complaints with the webhosts of the third-party sites. If it is an impetus behind their behavior, it's passive-aggressive as can be.