quitting properly vs city abandonment

[shimmerfly]

It isn't just boredom for new players. How long should people wait for someone, anyone to take their 25 plank trades before they go seek out a busier neighborhood?

If your posting same tier trades it shouldn't take long for them to be taken. Maybe your in a lousy neighborhood or need to join a FS so they can help?
There are tons of threads here on trades if you use the "search" top right... good luck!

 

[SoggyShorts]

Maybe an automated email they are if inactive more than a year. If no reply after 30 days delete the account. Especially those with only 1 city in the game.

I'm not sure that would improve things a whole lot. I left for a year and if I had received that email I would have logged in to refresh the clock "just in case" I ever wanted to return. Selfish, but realistic.

I can't explain it well (hopefully someone knowledgable chimes in, or corrects me), but it is my understanding regarding map compression, it isn't simple because the map has specific repeating pattern for boosts and the entering city would need to match (and having exactly what is needed is unrealistic).

There are only 9 combinations so it is possible. In fact, there already is this feature of player movement towards the center, but it was so poorly launched that it barely works.

Spoiler: A not-so-brief history of player movement

What happened was inno had super a strict almost-never-delete-cities system and then introduced player movement where "active" cities would be moved to a matching tile closer to the center.
They did however give players a choice to opt out and stay put.
Then they did do a sweep of inactive deleting and ran the program. It moved players from the outside towards the inside filling coin spots with "active players" the problem was that many of those cities from the outside were new abandoned cities that hadn't been flagged as dead yet.
On top of that, several players chose not to move because they liked the 10-12 active players near them but then half or more moved.
Now half were left behind in a sea of inactives and half were moved into a sea of inactives.
This caused several more players to turn the feature off for fear of worse results which of course compounds the problem, as the program is worse with fewer players participating.
To make everything even worse, inno would only run the program at random times, often not for several months, and when they did run it, it wasn't at the same time as a deletion sweep so dead cities in "the center" were deleted and then new players (the most likely to quit) filled the spots before the next movement program was run.
Obviously, inno should have regularly run a delete sweep and immediately run the movement program, but even that would have been far from perfect because of the flagging system: For a city to be flagged for deletion after 30 days of inactivity, the player must have never purchased diamonds on their account, never reached chapter 4, and had an average building level of 4 or less.

Several suggestions were made to fix it with (IMO) the most promising being:
1. Delete chapter 1 cities with fewer than 100 points buildings after 1-week of being inactive. (100 points takes 5 minutes)
2. Move other inactive players out of the center (regardless of diamond purchases, building levels or chapter) by running the program in reverse.
3. Run the program forwards moving active cities towards the center
4. Repeat this WEEKLY.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

This is fantastic news! I have several of those "Sorry, Not Playing" cities on other worlds and am thrilled to finally be able to make space for actual players.

Not really, if the player quit all their cities and put that as the city name on all of them. Or only had the one city. The ability to ask for individual city deletion does no good if the player is gone for good. Plus, Inno is not publicizing this. If @Nightguest had not mentioned it in another thread, no one would even know, as it was not part of any release notes or anything.

 

[AtaguS]

Plus, Inno is not publicizing this. If @Nightguest had not mentioned it in another thread, no one would even know, as it was not part of any release notes or anything.

Unfortunate, and so thank you for mentioning it. I did message support and ask them to delete three cities specifcally, hopefully they can. And maybe word will start to leak out. You're right, nothing can be done about players who have quit the game entirely though...

 

[SoulsSilhouette]

A possible solution would be to put them in 'cold storage'. Remove them, put them in an 'inactive file' ... and then migrate appropriate accounts. I would hate to lose my great neighbors, but if it improves the game in the overall sense... then move me. If the migration hits the point where certain cities can't be condensed and moved, then contact the ACTIVE player and ask if they would mind changing their boosts.... For example, in Khel, my boosts are the classic, planks-silk-gems.... if they needed to change that and put the comparable factories in my inventory, while removing the currents, I would agree. I don't want to lose anything, but I like this game and getting rid of something that really does prevent the enjoyment of it, I would be willing to do so.

 

[Aritra]

For example, in Khel, my boosts are the classic, planks-silk-gems....

By referring to your boosts as classics, does this mean there are combos more common than others?

 

[SoulsSilhouette]

If you look at the relics list.... the marble, crystal, elixir trio.... steel, scrolls, dust trio, and planks, silk, gems trio.... they are what I call the classics. If you look at the catering costs and fighters...they are all copacetic.

If you are catering for gems... the costs are heavy in planks, silks and gems. So I call them the 'classic combo's'

Just my own nomenclature.

 

[Henroo]

By referring to your boosts as classics, does this mean there are combos more common than others?

Actually there are only 9 possible combos of boosted goods in the game. They are: 1. Marble/Crystal/Elixer 2. Marble/Crystal/Gems 3. Marble/Silk/Gems 4. Steel/Scrolls/Dust 5. Steel/Scrolls/Elixer 6. Steel/Crystal/Elixer 7. Planks/Silk/Dust 8. Planks/SilkGems 9. Planks/Scrolls/Dust

Obviously this means there are many combinations that are impossible. For example, if you are T1 marble boosted it is impossible to also be boosted in either scrolls (T2)or dust (T3).

 

[ekarat]

As a useful anecdote: I took a 1.5 year break from the game and came back. They did not move my city away, despite me allowing automatic movement.

At the same time, I've never cared much about inactive players. I don't have a problem with trades, and I don't visit my neighbors anyway (unless they show up on the notifications screen, where I can do a quick visit).

 

[Aritra]

If you look at the relics list.... the marble, crystal, elixir trio.... steel, scrolls, dust trio, and planks, silk, gems trio.... they are what I call the classics. If you look at the catering costs and fighters...they are all copacetic.
Just my own nomenclature.

I don't really follow why you call them classics, but it's your nomenclature and I can leave it at that.

Actually there are only 9 possible combos of boosted goods in the game. They are: 1. Marble/Crystal/Elixer 2. Marble/Crystal/Gems 3. Marble/Silk/Gems 4. Steel/Scrolls/Dust 5. Steel/Scrolls/Elixer 6. Steel/Crystal/Elixer 7. Planks/Silk/Dust 8. Planks/SilkGems 9. Planks/Scrolls/Dust

I was asking if any of those nine combos were somehow more common than other of the nine combos.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I was asking if any of those nine combos were somehow more common than other of the nine combos.

In general, no, because the pattern repeats as you move away from the center of the server. But in reality, yes, every server seems to have an imbalance, as people who quit playing, do not quit in an equal number for each set of boosts, and the game assigns new player boosts based on total players, not total active players, and open spots on the map closest to the center. For example, on Arendyll, when I was hunting for players with specific boosts to fill a former fellowship, gems-boosted players, who were both active and not in a fellowship, were rare. But there were plenty of dead cities that were boosted in gems.

 

[AtaguS]

It worked! Contacted support this morning and just now when I logged into the game there was just the 1, active city left.
They did say that it was a one time per world deal, fyi to anyone else thinking of contacting them.

 

[DeletedUser25391]

Somewhere in the settings/options there is link to let a player delete their entire account.

No.
But you can use this,,,,

https://goodbye.innogames.com/login