Player Movement is coming to US!!

[DeletedUser6335]

I agree with this. As I suggested in the Suggestion forum, place the upgrade-lock-down cities on some sort of timer to complete so that we can at least be able to and be rewarded for "Neighborly Help"'ing them. On Elcysandir "Paleface21321" is a good example of a non-FS city, with very few buildings, and a MH "stuck" in perpetual build mode.

When I questioned this the answer I got was that the MH doesn't come out of upgrade until the timer has counted down *and* the owner of the city has logged in to it. I'm not sure if the residences and workshop/factories are the same -but I suspect they are from some of the neighbors I have around me. And yes, being able to at least give them help would be something -but the real desire here is to have the possibility of that help given being returned...so just making them accessible to help would be nice but not enough for those surrounded by neighbors like that.

 

[Jackluyt]

This is my understanding of how inactive cities work, having discussed it in depth with Support:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10208312274225116&set=oa.1652024521719596&type=3&theater

 

[SoggyShorts]

Visit everyone on the Map!
Then your chance of a move is higher.

Where did you get that specific information from? I've never heard any indication from the developers that visiting your neighbors gives you a better chance at being moved. I see from your post that you stated "players that are the most active get priority"
How is activity defined?
Most log ins per day?
Length of time online?
Visits to other cities?
Trades taken/posted?

 

[Sir Squirrel]

I read something like that when they were starting the city movement, saying the more active players would get moved to where more active players where on the map. Not sure if I read that it would increase your chance of getting moved, but it makes since they would over non active cities.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I read something like that when they were starting the city movement, saying the more active players would get moved to where more active players where on the map. Not sure if I read that it would increase your chance of getting moved, but it makes since they would over non active cities.

I also recall a mod saying that a player that is active is defined as one that has recently logged in, and none of the criteria I listed above were a factor.
So logging in 2 times a day or 10x made no difference, nor did length of log in factor at all. What actions you performed while logged in was also not mentioned. I don't actually recall there being anything other than "active" and "inactive" as categories. The only other factor mentioned at the time was whether an identical hex is available, and that priority is given to active players furthest from the center.

I would love to know if any of these have changed.

[QUOTE-"SUPPORT'S ANSWER]
Hello Jackluyt,
Thank you for contacting the Elvenar support team.
Inactive players who have not spent any premium will be flagged for removal after 30 days.
That means their name goes on a list and the program removes them one by one, starting at the top of the list. Because of the volume of inactive players, even though deletions are done every week, it can take several months for the player to be removed.[/QUOTE]

Months to delete inactive players?!!? You've got to be kidding me.

 

[Calenmir]

Well you can't base activity solely on NH. They created the problem of no one being able to give NH to cities in perpetual upgrade, and of course only wanting to give to those willing to return it and finally killing it for a lot of people by the wholesaler change.

I was moved shortly after I created a city in the beta world, so I'm not so sure that is true. I had very few active neighbors in my original location and chose rather to concentrate my efforts on my FS - this was all after the wholesaler change, so my efforts to those around me were very limited since I had no decent location to dump coins off. Since I was fairly inactive in the world around me, if this were at all true, I wouldn't have been moved.

 

[Jackluyt]

Where did you get that specific information from? I've never heard any indication from the developers that visiting your neighbors gives you a better chance at being moved. I see from your post that you stated "players that are the most active get priority"
How is activity defined?
Most log ins per day?
Length of time online?
Visits to other cities?
Trades taken/posted?

I just did some research on this, with help from Support – and have to correct the info posted previously in the EPL Tip I posted:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10208312274225116&set=oa.1652024521719596&type=3&theater

Here is a post from the US Forum:
"The move will take ACTIVITY into consideration, so it's very likely that some players that you see in your area now will not be there once you move.
On the plus side, you'll have all NEW ACTIVE neighbors." -Aider

What determines 'activity'?
It is NOT now often you give neighborly help – though a lot of players, myself included, assumed that! There would be too much raw data to store – visiting information is purged from the system at the 23 hour reset for individual cities.

What DOES tracks activity is LOGINS!
This data is collected and stored each time a player selects one of their game worlds.
This is the only way to obtain accurate data on 'activity'.
It does not matter what you do in your city, it only matters that you login to it!

 

[SoggyShorts]

It does not matter what you do in your city, it only matters that you login to it!

As i suspected, thank you for confirming. I'm still fairy certain that there are also no "degrees of activity" you are either marked as "active" or not, and that is just based on whether you have logged in in the last XX days. (probably 30 days as that is when inactives get flagged, but possibly 7 days as that is how often player movement is done)

 

[edeba]

I think this player movement is working poorly. So, I had a lot of "maybe went through the tutorial abandoned cities" and they disappeared and were replaced with coin. Nothing happened to two that have the main hall upgrading and no culture to polish.

All of these baby cities disappeared and were replaced by coin, for about a month. Now the coin cities have filled up with what appears to be baby cities, which we know tend to be abandoned easily based on how it seems that all of the baby cities that started with a previous "player movement" turned to coin, in the same kind of time frame that it took for new players to replace coin cities.

I don't get how this is thought to be helpful. Out of all of the "new" cities I think that indeed, 95%+ are cities that have just started. One is definitely a player movement, main hall level 11, trade, barrack, magic shop and all of the streets, residences and workshops are gone, so I got an abandoned city moved in. There were a couple that look to be around chapter 2 or so and I have no way of telling if they are still actually playing. And that's the big change from this round of player movement... So, maybe I have a couple of fairly low level players on my map after this latest player movement. I mostly have the same thing that was removed over the past month, so what was the point?

I am really seeing the idea that newbies start on a separate world is a very good idea, maybe with artificial players to take trades after a random amount of time that ranges from say a minute to an hour and once they reach a score of 500 or 1000 then move them into the main game. And I wonder if there is something undesirable programmed into my area that other players are not moved there. I have player movement turned off because there is a handful of good active neighbours, and it is away from my fellowship members. One of my fellowship members talks about having a super active map, but to move close to someone in my fs doesn't improve access to trading, and actually reduces it because shared neighbours and loss of the old map.

 

[Ashrem]

I am really seeing the idea that newbies start on a separate world is a very good idea, maybe with artificial players to take trades after a random amount of time that ranges from say a minute to an hour and once they reach a score of 500 or 1000 then move them into the main game.

This has some possibilities. I don't think players should be attached to the map until they've finished a certain amount of activity, and maybe the pre-map tutorial needs to be longer and more involved, possibly requiring a day or two of play (i.e. more than 24 hours to pass) before they get to the map.

And if players could have an option to look at other worlds without creating a world, that would be good, too.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I don't think players should be attached to the map until they've finished a certain amount of activity

I can't remember if you have to cater provinces before you get a barracks or not. If not, being placed on the map after you at least have a barracks seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

[mucksterme]

I can't remember if you have to cater provinces before you get a barracks or not. If not, being placed on the map after you at least have a barracks seems pretty reasonable to me.

Or maybe after you get a trader.
You have only minimal interaction with other players until you get a trader anyway.

 

[Ashrem]

Or maybe after you get a trader.
You have only minimal interaction with other players until you get a trader anyway.

Potentially. Even if you need to do a little fighting and negotiating, They could present a reduced map until you finish it, that only has the 6 surrounding non-city hexes and doesn't show anything else. That allows you to explore six hexes and handle 48 encounters before you need to see who your neighbors are.

 

[edeba]

Getting the trader seems a perfect place to allow people onto the worlds. It doesn't matter who is there for the polishing the map activity and the main reason you want active neighbours is to have trading partners, so having the trader is an awesome criteria for screening for actual playing.

Or maybe after you get a trader.
You have only minimal interaction with other players until you get a trader anyway.

 

[AtaguS]

And if players could have an option to look at other worlds without creating a world, that would be good, too.

Really good idea, and a big part of the problem I think.

I am really seeing the idea that newbies start on a separate world is a very good idea, maybe with artificial players to take trades after a random amount of time that ranges from say a minute to an hour and once they reach a score of 500 or 1000 then move them into the main game.

I like this, provided the artificial players are also programmed to visit the new city in addition to taking trades. On my very first day of playing, it was the neighbor visits I received which convinced me to keep going and set the tone of the game for me. Neighbor visits are useful to me for keeping my limited culture fully charged.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

Right now I have 71 gold mines. Have had them for a couple of weeks. Chaps as there are times when I go through and visit everyone to recoup goods via my Great Bell Spire. I wonder how long we will have to have these? I guess they are feeding new players to the new worlds they created instead of the existing worlds that were already hurting for new members that actually play.

 

[mucksterme]

Right now I have 71 gold mines. Have had them for a couple of weeks. Chaps as there are times when I go through and visit everyone to recoup goods via my Great Bell Spire. I wonder how long we will have to have these? I guess they are feeding new players to the new worlds they created instead of the existing worlds that were already hurting for new members that actually play.

at one point i had 20 coins
then all of a sudden they decreased significantly
when i did visits tonight there were zero
i still have some long dead cities but the movement system seems to be making some difference
I am on F world btw

 

[SoggyShorts]

when i did visits tonight there were zero
i still have some long dead cities but the movement system seems to be making some difference

Any chance you know whether you got new players added, newish players moved, or more advance players moved into those 20 spots?

 

[mucksterme]

Any chance you know whether you got new players added, newish players moved, or more advance players moved into those 20 spots?

it has mostly been new or newish people
i haven't noticed any new advanced cities
but i couldn't swear to there being none

 

[SoggyShorts]

In Beta I am very close to the middle of the map, 20 rings from manfred (the guy in the very middle)
Of my 155 neighbors there are only maybe 3 that can ever get deleted, all the rest have advanced far enough that they are now "protected" forever. Even the 3 that deleted all of their buildings (one of whom did so before I started a year ago)

I imagine that this is the same on most live servers too, meaning that it is very unlikely we will ever move closer to an advanced player, or have one moved closer to us.

Player movement is effectively dead unless the devs change their mind about moving dead cities out, and/or the criteria for deletion.