Neighbor Removal

[DeletedUser]

I can only speak for Khelonaar here as that is my only active city. I know I am part of the problem in the other worlds because I DO have cities I started in all but 1. I quickly gave up those cities as time became an issue. Since there was no way for me to delete the city myself, I have to wait for the developers to do so. On this regard I send my deepest apologies to anyone that is my neighbor in those worlds.

Back to Khelonarr.... Here are the stats as of an hour ago:

There are 83,048 players on the rankings list in Khelonaar
Of that 59,624 have a 0 (zero) score!
There are 5,676 players with a score between 1-1000
That leaves only 17,448 active members
This does NOT take into account all of the people who were active at one point and have gone AWOL.

These numbers are staggering!!! A total of 65,300 inactive members out of 83,048. That is A LOT of inactive accounts. Gold mines will not ever be a justifiable solution to the neighbor problem. As so many others have stated before me. I think the real issue is that they have opened up way too many worlds for this game before deleting any inactive accounts. I am sure all of the other worlds numbers are exactly like mine. IF... the development team were to close down 2 worlds and merge them together placing all active players next to each other this game would get a whole lot more interesting. I know this can be done because Game of War has been successful at doing so several times.

As far as moving active players towards the center ... that too can be done if done correctly. First, the main issue would be the boosts for each individual city. The way to get around this would be to take stock of everything in an individual city. If that city cannot be moved to a corresponding placement with the same boost it is simple... let the individual KEEP their score, developers then replace their buildings with the NEW boosted goods at the same current level they already had in their city with the old boosts. Problem solved.

Yes, then we would run into an issue in fellowships where it is entirely possible to have an unbalanced load of boosted goods as a whole. These are called 'Growing Pains' every new game has them. We adjust, we learn, we grow and move on. A massive 'cull' is in order here to get an accurate picture of active vs. non-active. Furthermore, it is not hard to reinstate a city that has been deleted if the player complains that they 'were active'

 

[DeletedUser627]

I think it would be easier if they just made it irrelevant whether we have active / inactive neighbors.

Give us coins and supplies for visiting empty cities.
Broaden the scope of the Trader - so that more players' goods are displayed. Give us filters if we need to pare it down.
Focus the Tournaments on Fellowship.

Problem solved. Not to mention, it would mean we no longer have to rely on chance as to whether we happen to get active members osr inactive ones. Even if they magically find a solution to "fix" neighborhoods, statistically half of us are going to get worse neighbors than the other half of us. If we are interdependent on those neighbors in crucial ways, it's still going to just suck.

So, they had an idea...it's turned out to be a malfunctioning idea. They should know when to cut their losses - and they are sooooo very far past that mark.

 

[DeletedUser1611]

I agree with Bobbipiazza above. The trader needs to reach further, PLEASE!!!

 

[DeletedUser2447]

I can only speak for Khelonaar here as that is my only active city. I know I am part of the problem in the other worlds because I DO have cities I started in all but 1. I quickly gave up those cities as time became an issue. Since there was no way for me to delete the city myself, I have to wait for the developers to do so. On this regard I send my deepest apologies to anyone that is my neighbor in those worlds.

Back to Khelonarr.... Here are the stats as of an hour ago:

There are 83,048 players on the rankings list in Khelonaar
Of that 59,624 have a 0 (zero) score!
There are 5,676 players with a score between 1-1000
That leaves only 17,448 active members
This does NOT take into account all of the people who were active at one point and have gone AWOL.

These numbers are staggering!!! A total of 65,300 inactive members out of 83,048. That is A LOT of inactive accounts. Gold mines will not ever be a justifiable solution to the neighbor problem. As so many others have stated before me. I think the real issue is that they have opened up way too many worlds for this game before deleting any inactive accounts. I am sure all of the other worlds numbers are exactly like mine. IF... the development team were to close down 2 worlds and merge them together placing all active players next to each other this game would get a whole lot more interesting. I know this can be done because Game of War has been successful at doing so several times.

As far as moving active players towards the center ... that too can be done if done correctly. First, the main issue would be the boosts for each individual city. The way to get around this would be to take stock of everything in an individual city. If that city cannot be moved to a corresponding placement with the same boost it is simple... let the individual KEEP their score, developers then replace their buildings with the NEW boosted goods at the same current level they already had in their city with the old boosts. Problem solved.

Yes, then we would run into an issue in fellowships where it is entirely possible to have an unbalanced load of boosted goods as a whole. These are called 'Growing Pains' every new game has them. We adjust, we learn, we grow and move on. A massive 'cull' is in order here to get an accurate picture of active vs. non-active. Furthermore, it is not hard to reinstate a city that has been deleted if the player complains that they 'were active'

It would be a great idea if we could delete our inactive cities ourselves. I bit off a bit more than I could chew to and had to give up 1 game

 

[DeletedUser]

The gold mines have filled almost 2/3rds of my map on Winyandor - I counted up something like 70 in my discovered provinces. This has actually drastically reduced my ability to recover from big expenditures - by visiting my entire map I was making something like 3 million coins. It's probably closer to 1.5 or 2 now. I haven't run the exact numbers. Also, my Crystal Lighthouse is practically worthless. Thanks guys. At least soon it'll add to my score. :/ I guess it's just a matter of waiting until those spots fill up with fly-by-night cities again.

 

[DeletedUser627]

The gold mines have filled almost 2/3rds of my map on Winyandor - I counted up something like 70 in my discovered provinces. This has actually drastically reduced my ability to recover from big expenditures - by visiting my entire map I was making something like 3 million coins. It's probably closer to 1.5 or 2 now. I haven't run the exact numbers. Also, my Crystal Lighthouse is practically worthless. Thanks guys. At least soon it'll add to my score. :/ I guess it's just a matter of waiting until those spots fill up with fly-by-night cities again.

Meanwhile, think of the KP you could be buying with those coins...KP for Wonders that add permanent Rank Score.

 

[DeletedUser1016]

It would be a great idea if we could delete our inactive cities ourselves. I bit off a bit more than I could chew to and had to give up 1 game

Hmmm - I agree, then I probably would take advantage of that and start a city - check out the neighborhood, and if it looked like it was "fairly" active after a brief time, then stay. If it turned out to be dead without activity, then bail and start another after I deleted that city...

Of course the other benefit would be helping Inno with filling in these empty cities faster if they allowed the individual players to have a delete button/abandon button to quit the game. Not everyone would use it, but it couldn't hurt? There's just got to be a better way of filling in with new players then these ridiculous purges?

 

[DeletedUser43]

We have asked to be able to delete accounts for over a year. The answer is no. I don't understand why.

 

[DeletedUser627]

Perhaps they don't want us to be able to choose boosts?

 

[DeletedUser2953]

I know I am coming in late to this discussion.

My experience is different. Out of the 90+ neighbors I have and visited on a regular basis, only 38 remain. I am given half the coins I would receive if there were a city there, and since I have a light house, I don't receive any goods at all from these vacant lots. This makes it almost impossible to continue because I am not getting any money to fuel expansions, which help me progress.

Condensing the worlds would be a solution to this. Making the population denser, would help the beginners as well as those of us who are further along. Face it. This game isn't as popular as it used to be, and you are experiencing quite a lot of churn (people leaving and entering the game). Eventually, more people will leave than enter the game, and you have to plan for that, to protect your player base.

I understand all of this is in a virtual world, so you (inno games) may have to change your view of the world. Make the world a doughnut shape (toroid). That way, the world can be expanded and contracted as needed, without too much trouble because there are no "edges". Just a thought.

In the short term, throttling back in game cash, will slow down progress, which you may want, but it also reduces the success of new players and increases their frustration. That will lead to even more vacancies.

 

[DeletedUser2753]

See my ideas and last comment re this issue at: https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/a-few-ideas-comments-requested.3017/#post-17705

 

[DeletedUser3143]

I can only speak for Khelonaar here as that is my only active city. I know I am part of the problem in the other worlds because I DO have cities I started in all but 1. I quickly gave up those cities as time became an issue. Since there was no way for me to delete the city myself, I have to wait for the developers to do so. On this regard I send my deepest apologies to anyone that is my neighbor in those worlds.

Back to Khelonarr.... Here are the stats as of an hour ago:

There are 83,048 players on the rankings list in Khelonaar
Of that 59,624 have a 0 (zero) score!
There are 5,676 players with a score between 1-1000
That leaves only 17,448 active members
This does NOT take into account all of the people who were active at one point and have gone AWOL.

These numbers are staggering!!! A total of 65,300 inactive members out of 83,048. That is A LOT of inactive accounts. Gold mines will not ever be a justifiable solution to the neighbor problem. As so many others have stated before me. I think the real issue is that they have opened up way too many worlds for this game before deleting any inactive accounts. I am sure all of the other worlds numbers are exactly like mine. IF... the development team were to close down 2 worlds and merge them together placing all active players next to each other this game would get a whole lot more interesting. I know this can be done because Game of War has been successful at doing so several times.

As far as moving active players towards the center ... that too can be done if done correctly. First, the main issue would be the boosts for each individual city. The way to get around this would be to take stock of everything in an individual city. If that city cannot be moved to a corresponding placement with the same boost it is simple... let the individual KEEP their score, developers then replace their buildings with the NEW boosted goods at the same current level they already had in their city with the old boosts. Problem solved.

Yes, then we would run into an issue in fellowships where it is entirely possible to have an unbalanced load of boosted goods as a whole. These are called 'Growing Pains' every new game has them. We adjust, we learn, we grow and move on. A massive 'cull' is in order here to get an accurate picture of active vs. non-active. Furthermore, it is not hard to reinstate a city that has been deleted if the player complains that they 'were active'

I only have 9 left out of 103

The gold mines have filled almost 2/3rds of my map on Winyandor - I counted up something like 70 in my discovered provinces. This has actually drastically reduced my ability to recover from big expenditures - by visiting my entire map I was making something like 3 million coins. It's probably closer to 1.5 or 2 now. I haven't run the exact numbers. Also, my Crystal Lighthouse is practically worthless. Thanks guys. At least soon it'll add to my score. :/ I guess it's just a matter of waiting until those spots fill up with fly-by-night cities again.

I was making 4.2 million and now I'm making under 100 K!!!

 

[DeletedUser61]

Click on the placeholder Goldmines.
They pay half of what an occupied city would pay, and an equal half more than the zero that a vacant sector would pay.

If you were making 4.2 million before, you should be making at least 2.1 million now.

 

[DeletedUser1349]

inno has improved the situation with the gold mines giving us half the coins a real city would. i am very happy with this solution.

i concluded a long time ago that dead tiny cities where the player has not even placed many buildings are boost hunting multiple account players, whether same or different names. that is entirely another kettle of fish. i do not approve of multiple accounting, but it is difficult to police with even isp tracking.

wanting inno to migrate us, or giving us the option to migrate ourselves, including to another world; would be complex due to the way boosts are placed on the map and new players joining all the time. converting our cities to a new boost complex, having inno change our buildings is out of the question.

i have experience with allowing unhappy players to migrate to other, especially new worlds in their west game. it destroyed worlds they left and made a new world begin with top players who created super-fellowships. the abuse and exploiting was terrible.

giving us the ability to delete cities would be nice, but inno likes the fake world population sizes for marketing purposes. also, players just quit, few actually care enough to delete.

the real problem appears to be that inno waited too long to start sweeping cities and/or started with a map too large. i hope inno is sweeping new worlds from day one. they apparently also had a 200 diamond rule. buy/spend that many, your city was immune to sweeps. that needs to change and change now!

that leaves the trader range. personally, i am fine with the current range. yes i am a fellowship person, but my locals always filled in the blanks, even when i was a baby. if your archmage is too lazy or stupid to keep your fellowship boost-balanced, full and active, then LEAVE!

inno has designed this game to force us into fellowships and go boost-only (due to lack of space and efficiency of boosts vs non-boosts). increasing the trader range would only encourage players to go w/o a fellowship and be self-sufficient (all manufactories). worse, it would take those players longer to realize they have been playing wrong, much harder to convert to boost-only at higher score.

we do not want a large trader range or fellowships become meaningless.

 

[DeletedUser1016]

the real problem appears to be that inno waited too long to start sweeping cities and/or started with a map too large. i hope inno is sweeping new worlds from day one. they apparently also had a 200 diamond rule. buy/spend that many, your city was immune to sweeps. that needs to change and change now!

So true - if they'd purge continuously the map wouldn't expand to the point where it becomes such an issue - then filling in with new players in a smaller map should, I would think, be more manageable. And putting some disclaimer when new players join, indicating that abandoned city would be deleted after a certain time period of inactivity, clearly describing the definition of "inactivity" [not logged in for 4 weeks; ignored warnings via messages/emails, etc] then removing even paying players could happen with greater frequency. The player turnover is a reality, not addressing it head on is naive.

 

[DeletedUser43]

Does anyone know the retention rate this game has? In other words, how many players who start this game actually stick with it?

 

[DeletedUser61]

I would suspect that the Marketing Folks have a very good idea of how many people test drive Elvenar, how far they get, and where they come from.
See https://www.adjust.com/attribution/ whereof InnoGames is a customer.

https://legal.innogames.com/portal/en/privacy is very nearly a Marketing Seminar.

Their competition would LOVE to know that information as well, so I suspect that it's about as confidential as it gets.

 

[DeletedUser2753]

Look, I have discovered more then 200 provinces and with a city to goods province ratio of 2 to 1 That is about 100 "players" in my discovered area. Of these only 4 are active really, a few others come in once and awhile and my trade something or play one tournament but the don't give help, nor have they grown. ( hard to know because of the score bug). tell me if your stats are different.....
So I would estimate just from a small sample that is a retention rate of less then 5 % even with new played additions over the past 8 months.
Now Inno gets it's income to feed the 300+employees and it's bottom line from selling diamonds or whatever, not from every new player gained at that kind of retention rate. Frankly its advertising budget is costly for click-thrus and they should listen to their real paying customers, the %5 that remain and play at all and maybe 2% that pay the bills. They don't. I dont blame the poor developers, they get assignments and must hop to it, all so agile. It is the Game Designers/Architects and Program Managers I would like to have a good talk with.

 

[DeletedUser61]

That is about 100 "players" in my discovered area. Of these only 4 are active really, a few others come in once and awhile and my trade something or play one tournament but the don't give help, nor have they grown.

They won't be able to visit your city unless THEY have discovered YOU. Likewise with the trades that have a 50% penalty.

I'm not going to argue the percentages with you, because the developers are currently making a big push to clean out the cities that have not logged in for 30+ days. If a city is not growing and isn't ever showing up in your Notification log then yeah, they're probably inactive, but we don't have that kind of visibility.

I'm intentionally playing one of my cities solo, and other than 3 other cities of similar size that I need for trading convenience, I DO NOT need any more Coins/Supplies/Culture, so visiting everybody on the map would be wasting my time. You have to ADD that type of player to your 5%.

 

[DeletedUser627]

In a year, my neighborhood has been purged 3 times. I still only have 4 actives and 15 occasional players. I've completed 278 provinces. They've cleared this area 2 times in the past 4 months, and I haven't gained any actives from the purge.

we do not want a large trader range or fellowships become meaningless

Doesn't it depend on the nature of the fellowship? Centering a fellowship around boosts is common - but it causes ancillary problems. I just had to leave a fellowship - with players I really enjoyed - because of imbalances created when some members quit Elvenar entirely. I prefer forming longterm Fellowship relationships when possible, since chat and Wonders are also integral to many players game experience.