If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

[qaccy]

I came really close to setting up a bunch of new accounts, but integrity won out in the end. I'm just gonna try not to let it bother me. Ranking doesn't mean much and I don't really care about it THAT much (but I don't totally ignore it, either), but it does get under my skin when these illegitimate players start fuffing around in the tournaments and depriving honest players of a better rank.

I'll also echo the ones who suggested that cheaters do spend a fair amount of money on the game as well. Probably the reason why, for better or worse, nothing's really done about the most prominent ones. Spend enough money and you're allowed to cheat, is the message I'm seeing here.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I came really close to setting up a bunch of new accounts, but integrity won out in the end. I'm just gonna try not to let it bother me. Ranking doesn't mean much and I don't really care about it THAT much (but I don't totally ignore it, either), but it does get under my skin when these illegitimate players start fuffing around in the tournaments and depriving honest players of a better rank.

I'll also echo the ones who suggested that cheaters do spend a fair amount of money on the game as well. Probably the reason why, for better or worse, nothing's really done about the most prominent ones. Spend enough money and you're allowed to cheat, is the message I'm seeing here.

Of course cheaters spend the most money. Just look at the New England Patriots! Lol

 

[shimmerfly]

Right or wrong Inno is in businees only to make money. They are not your buddies or your freinds. The Mods are are a different story and their hands are tied too.
I have to agree with Deborah M . I think the big spenders play a different kind of game most of us can't afford. Maybe it's prestige they seek for being "on top" . Ha! I don't care.
We can complain until the cows come home. Nothing will change. It's all about the money. Of course if it floats your boat to bitch go right ahead.. It's fun reading anyway!

 

[Deborah M]

Right or wrong Inno is in businees only to make money. They are not your buddies or your freinds. The Mods are are a different story and their hands are tied too.
I have to agree with Deborah M . I think the big spenders play a different kind of game most of us can't afford. Maybe it's prestige they seek for being "on top" . Ha! I don't care.
We can complain until the cows come home. Nothing will change. It's all about the money. Of course if it floats your boat to bitch go right ahead.. It's fun reading anyway!

Completely agree Another reason I spent a whole lot of $$ before I retired was because I was way too impatient to wait for much. I will note that I came through a lot of the game before they had so many advantages they have now. I guess it is a good thing that this game is not nearly as slow as it used to be. I do think that after spending as much as some of us have spent and then hitting a brick wall for making any ranking progress, for those who value ranking, did give a sense of entitlement to a lot of top players. Better than those who quit.

 

[DeletedUser2959]

Completely agree Another reason I spent a whole lot of $$ before I retired was because I was way too impatient to wait for much. I will note that I came through a lot of the game before they had so many advantages they have now. I guess it is a good thing that this game is not nearly as slow as it used to be. I do think that after spending as much as some of us have spent and then hitting a brick wall for making any ranking progress, for those who value ranking, did give a sense of entitlement to a lot of top players. Better than those who quit.

The silly thing (at least for city ranking) is that the culture/pop/goods sets are so good you don't need to build as many residences, workshops and manufactories. You have to actually make your city worse to get a super high city ranking. But if that is your thing....
I'm just very glad Inno doesn't allow direct trades of resources or any trade of items. Can you imagine how bad it would get if you could buy buildings from other players?

 

[Vergazi]

Recently a game company sent me an email that offered instant level up to lv100 if I come back to them. Now is that a cheat? IMO it is a cheat, but it's sanctioned and within the rules of the game so it's not cheating in actuality. Buying mounts and other in-game items is also a cheat in my way of thinking, but all too many games now follow that model where you can just buy what used to take time and effort. I guess what I take from this thread and others on the subject is that cheating is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. I refuse to feel lesser as a player if I am not in the top rankings when I get to the endgame because I choose to simply categorize players as pay-to-play or free-players. One is no better or worse than the other. It seems to me folly to even compare the pay player to a free player since the pay player will always have a leg-up in the game in terms of progression and ranking.

Just some ramblings inspired by this thread.

 

[DeletedUser24232]

Oh...I didn't even know this was a thing until today. That's really disappointing if that's how people get those super awesome cities. I visited the top ranked cities on my server and everyone had tons of magical residences and magical workshops and I didn't know if they were dropping a thousand bucks to play the game or if there was some way they were earning them. I guess I have my answer? Not sure how they are pushing diamonds from an alt account though. Super discouraging and makes me not even want to play.

 

[DeletedUser23255]

You can’t push diamonds from an alt. It’s physically impossible to transfer diamonds.

The only way to get magic residential/workshop is either money or farming. They’d also need constant updating whenever going up an age. Wishing Wells for farming also require ongoing maintenance due to expiring and wouldn’t be worth spending money on directly.

The feasibility of someone filling their city only with magic residential/workshop while not spending money to do so is next to non-existent. At best you’d need years of hard work even then highly unlikely

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

You can’t push diamonds from an alt. It’s physically impossible to transfer diamonds.

Diamonds are the easiest to push in a limited fashion, and that's not even against the rules (so technically it's not pushing). As diamonds are shared across worlds on the same account, you can run 7 alts (well not truly alts as these have to be on the same account) with wishing wells farms, and spend all these diamonds in the main. That's potentially a lot of diamonds. You can't run unlimited alts this way (limited by number of worlds in a realm), but on US servers that's not that big of a limitation.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

You can’t push diamonds from an alt. It’s physically impossible to transfer diamonds.

The only way to get magic residential/workshop is either money or farming. They’d also need constant updating whenever going up an age. Wishing Wells for farming also require ongoing maintenance due to expiring and wouldn’t be worth spending money on directly.

The feasibility of someone filling their city only with magic residential/workshop while not spending money to do so is next to non-existent. At best you’d need years of hard work even then highly unlikely

Sort of. Diamonds are shared across all cities on one account, so now that there is yet another world, making 8 total, a diamond farmer could easily get 7 smaller cities functioning to the point of easily earning Wishing Wells from events. Say they have just 10 Wells in each of those cities, which is about 2000 collections per city over the 100-day lifetime of the Wells. Multiply that by 7 and you have 14,000 chances at 2 diamonds. I think the general numbers say you will get diamonds on 7-8% of the collections, but lets round down to 5%. That is 700 times 25 for 17,500 diamonds in 100 days, which is enough for 12 Magic Residences. And if you are one of the luckier players, double that to 10% and 35,000 diamonds in 100 days.

Yeah, as @MinMax Gamer says, they make it easy for players on the US servers to game the system for diamonds.

 

[DeletedUser2959]

Diamonds are the easiest to push in a limited fashion, and that's not even against the rules (so technically it's not pushing). As diamonds are shared across worlds on the same account, you can run 7 alts (well not truly alts as these have to be on the same account) with wishing wells farms, and spend all these diamonds in the main. That's potentially a lot of diamonds. You can't run unlimited alts this way (limited by number of worlds in a realm), but on US servers that's not that big of a limitation.

Considering the time that would take you'd be better off picking up a 4 hour minimum wage shift once a week and spending your wages on diamonds.

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

I think the general numbers say you will get diamonds on 7-8% of the collections, but lets round down to 5%.

I believe current view on probability of getting diamonds is 10% per collection (my records of several months are certainly consistent with this), so the numbers look even better.

Considering the time that would take you'd be better off picking up a 4 hour minimum wage shift once a week and spending your wages on diamonds.

Can be said about so many things in this game, don't think diamond farming is nearly as bad as some other things. How do you feel about cost/benefit of an FA?

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Yeah, the thought of trying to run 7-8 cities through every event to earn all those Wishing Wells, I say go ahead. I have my hands full running my 3 cities, I can't fathom adding any more, even if it's just to run events for wells.

 

[DeletedUser23255]

Diamonds are the easiest to push in a limited fashion, and that's not even against the rules (so technically it's not pushing). As diamonds are shared across worlds on the same account, you can run 7 alts (well not truly alts as these have to be on the same account) with wishing wells farms, and spend all these diamonds in the main. That's potentially a lot of diamonds. You can't run unlimited alts this way (limited by number of worlds in a realm), but on US servers that's not that big of a limitation.

That's not an alt nor a push.

An alt requires an entirely separate account interacting with the parent account.

I believe current view on probability of getting diamonds is 10% per collection (my records of several months are certainly consistent with this), so the numbers look even better.

Can be said about so many things in this game, don't think diamond farming is nearly as bad as some other things. How do you feel about cost/benefit of an FA?

10% hey, I was assuming it'd be like FoE's standard 1%. But then FoE doesn't delete buildings after 100 days and has the GE

 

[DeletedUser24211]

Coming down, uneven-handed, in the most erogenous cases.

Perhaps you mean egregious, since erogenous means something else entirely. Unless, of course, you meant to be ironic, in which case, bravo.

 

[Deborah M]

The silly thing (at least for city ranking) is that the culture/pop/goods sets are so good you don't need to build as many residences, workshops and manufactories. You have to actually make your city worse to get a super high city ranking. But if that is your thing....

Case in point. I got up to #7 ranking on Elcysandir. When I decided that I wasn't happy spending as much as I was I sold off 4 Magic Workshops and 27 Magic Residences. I had them all leveled up to level 14 costing approximately $100 each new chapter. That alone was almost 35K drop in ranking points on Magic Workshops and 50K drop on the Magic Residences. That doesn't include my reduction in Manufacture buildings. I cleared 20 expansions. Then I built up culture + pop event prizes to make up my pop needs. That was in April. Now I am back up to my prior total ranking points but of course blue cities like mine used to be have added more ranking points than I can anymore. A lot of that is also because with push accounts some of them have as much as 400K+ ranking points from AW more than I do. Anyway, that puts me at #17 ranking. Does ranking actually make a difference in my game? Nope. I actually like it better now that I can have a whole lot more variety with culture buildings

 

[dikke ikke]

everybody has its own style of playing. 6 months ago I started building diamond farms, ok it is hard to go thru the events but not impossible. I still have to find out what the maximum number wishing wells will be per city that is maintainable, but i guess it will be around 20. My plan is to get all my farms to level 4 but maxed out for level 3, with enough WS and T1 for the events. At the moment i get on average 200 diamonds a day that are good for my main city to stay in the top 100. Farming helps to keep up with the blue cities and will eventually turn my city blue to in maybe 1 year.

 

[DeletedUser2959]

I believe current view on probability of getting diamonds is 10% per collection (my records of several months are certainly consistent with this), so the numbers look even better.


Can be said about so many things in this game, don't think diamond farming is nearly as bad as some other things. How do you feel about cost/benefit of an FA?

The FA is more about team building than anything. We look at it as a common goal and we're proud to help the team succeed.

 

[qaccy]

I'm not really too worried about people having diamond farms, nor spending large amounts of money on the game. If someone wanted to pay diamonds to give themselves a bunch of level 30 AWs and/or win a city full of event buildings, that's totally allowed. It's the very low-effort and rulebreaking action of using multiple accounts (run by the same person) to push up a single city that I take issue with, whether they pay for a bunch of diamonds or not.

 

[Socrates28]

I find it curious how people take umbrage with one style of playing over another. Some object to diamond farms and some do not. Some are upset with “push” accounts and others are not. Unless one is playing for ranking, in which case they are going to be willing to spend money and/or time to get where they want to go, why do I care how they play or how much money they spend!
My overall response is let them do it. As @wtfever pointed out, getting a part time job to pay for diamonds would be less time consuming then trying to run so many cities.
Let the whales spend the big bucks so the rest of us can play free and have Inno keep developing the game so we have new content going forward.
I am comfortable with the amount of time and money I spend on this game. If they what to spend more I have no control over what they do nor do I want any.
As long as I am happy with my city then that is my goal. If I am not happy with my city because I am comparing it to someone else’s city who has more money than I do, then I have a problem and no one else. I might as well compare my house to a billionaire’s and be sad because I don’t have servants and a 10 car garage full of Rolls Royce’s. No thank you.