Hi,
you know this is more or less the first time, where we try to engage in such a direct way with you as community. Saying that, I want to thank you for your arguments and patience. We still need to sort and categorize all your input and I really want to be honest with you – I am not used to work this way, but I really like to make it work.
So for today I want to write down an overview of the arguments we’ve received. I also want to add my perspective on them and add some questions.
So, let’s start with an overview of arguments:
- Hammers and World Wonder Killers can grow too big.
- Hammers can be moved and surprise players.
- The gold-spending-gap will increase heavily.
If your argument is missing, or I have written it down wrongly, please let me know in the comments.
Hammers and WWKs can grow too big
For that I’ve asked our Devs to give me the report with the most catapults on our Tournament Finals. From all the reports we still have, 19k catapults is the biggest one. I’ve put that into simulation to find out how many catapults would have been needed to destroy a level 99 WW to zero. In that particular constellation it was 91.500 catapults. Yes, such a hammer would be disastrous, so let’s see how much somebody needs to put in, to create this amount of catapults. First, resources: 273.585.000 to train the catapults. Now time: Assuming a player trains in 10 villages, he would need to train 9.150 catapults per village, which would need with workshop level 20 in total 64 days, 9 hours and 20 minutes. If I double the amount of villages involved, it’s still a month to go. And last but not least, the amount of Gold which needs to be involved: 14.334 Gold. I don’t see players doing that all the time, but I see that this will eventually happen.
Hammers can be moved and used to surprise players.
This argument concerns that hammers in future will be moved (and merged) in order to do some surprising attacks. While usually catapults are pretty slow, and so give some warning, this will shorten the warning time.
Still, however, the village needs to be there in the first place. So if you keep your surroundings clean of small enemy villages, you should be fine. It could be, that a player conquers a neutral village while already sending the reinforcement, so that it has even more camouflage. Yes, it is thinkable, and yes, it would allow them to place some hits. But for how long would such a hammer survive? You know when he has hit, you know where his way back is, you (hopefully) have some offensive troops as well. Just eradicate that small village.
As I’ve said yesterday, Travian: Legends is the more hardcore big brother of Travian: Kingdoms. Funny enough we’ve received complaints that Travian: Legends is not more hardcore than Travian: Kingdoms… And even if this would be true – the potential to hit others hard would bring the game a bit more hardcoreness.
The gold-spending-gap will increase heavily.
I guess every new monetization feature would increase the gold-spending-gap at least a bit. And with every gap there are two sides – as example: if we would lower the amount of resources needed to merge troops, the gap would be smaller… but that maybe is not a good thing either. What I want to ask is – is this discussion about gold usage in general, or is it bound to the merge feature?
What could solve these concerns?
Most of the current feedback we receive is pointing out the concerns players have. I want to proof that we are listening, and that we indeed do care. What I am looking for is: What changes would decrease your concerns or even remove them. We’ve asked our CMs to inform us about your suggestions.
I want to discuss your suggestions with the team, but as it is Friday, we will need some time for the next post. Also over the weekend we are not able to monitor your comments, but we will continue on Monday.
And again – thank you for your dedication and your patience.
Jake
Hello Jakob ,
I will answer to your arguments from a REAL PLAYER point of view.
1. Why are you thinking directly to end GAME ? Before arriving at WWs there is a long way ahead and i would like to know who you even think is possible to stop offensive players during this time when they are building attack armys on several villages? It doesn’t matter if they merged the troops with gold or not, is quite impossible to stop in mid game 40-50 army’s that should arrive at 300-400k clubs with 100k tk ?
Do you really think that in end GAME defense players will have the same amount of defensive troops like they normally have without the merge option ? A defensive player that is building NON STOP defense troops in 4-5-8 villages during the server will have his troops killed daily or let’s say weekly. Remember, defensive players are not quite heavy gold users and they usually play the game for fun.
With the merge troop feature activated where will be nonsence to:
– play with ROMANS as defensive player because the troops are slow , the cost are high and the training time is bigger.
– play with GAULS and ROMAN as offensive player because the costs of merging will be much higher than TEUTONS
With other words ROMANS are almost useless in any case.
2. “But for how long would such a hammer survive?” – COME ONE!!! Really ? Did you even play this game before or your just write the codes ? Travian is an TEAM GAME , alone you are nobody!
“You know when he has hit, you know where his way back is, you (hopefully) have some offensive troops as well.”
If the enemy is planting his army (non necessary a huge hammer) in the middle of an DEFENSIVE PLAYERS AREA they don’t have a chance to hit back , they will sit and watch how some maniac with a lot of gold is destroying everything they build with strategy in time!
With a well organized team support you will be able to make real damage.
3. “The gold-spending-gap will increase heavily.”
In football there is so called “SPORTIVE FAIR PLAY” and is does the following : “The regulations provide for sanctions to be taken against clubs who exceed spending, over several seasons, within a set budgetary framework”.
In other words they stopped those who think they money can buy anything. If you want to win something , if you want to achieve something then, YOU HAVE TO WORK !!! NOTHING is for free so, of course you need also money.
Another one thing , for the future: Before you even thing of throwing into the game features with such a big impact you should try to make a REAL survey between the players that will be directly influenced by these game upgrades. Please , don’t ask NOOBS or childrens if they like the cookies , of course they do!!!
In the end i would like to introduce myself ,
Traian Pasca , veteran of the Romanian domain with over 20 rounds played (3 finals included).
I’m playing travian since 2008 and i see a lot of thinks during the time but this upgrade in this form will be the end of this game.
Thanks
Thanks
I think the issue is that TG is not getting why we are concerned.
First of all, it does not matter how much gold is set for moving the hammer (instead of resource use) as there is always going to be someone who can afford it. It’s the thought of “being able to move a hammer instantly” which bothers. And to add to that, if you can buy resources with gold (and this time we’re not talking 250 res/hr from plus bonus, but millions of merging resources!!) This gap is not something that can be closed by any amount of skills!
And the solution to infiltration movement of enemy hammers is not clearing your surroundings! Can you answer this, “how can i know, an alliance member 6 blocks away from me is actually my ally and not a spy?”. And if everyone clears their surroundings, what are we going to farm? Are we ending the farming era? Or are you trying to promote mutli accounting? or personal farms?
and additionally no one hits a ww at level 99, though I still think that we’re going to see 90k catapults. specially if they have to pay only the 1x catapult amount of resources for it and merge it through gold.
Solution:
If the gold is removed from merging, the factor of instantly movement of hammers will be removed. If you want the gold to be involved, make it part of merging. Like 50 gold required to merge your troops each time if you have the resources. The game has already become a luxury, but consider this as a balance change. (if you want do not want to lose customers, ignore the merge gold requisition and make it only resource based. But I doubt we have any value).
And if you want more gold, change the climbers medals too so that it’s population based and not ranks climbed. This way players will gold up more buildings, spend more on artworks and sim more. You do not have to destroy the balance to earn more.
(a .com player here, and on behalf of all those that I have talked to I’m making this post. There were some Golders which were really looking forward to this and to create havoc – feeling sad for those that will play against them in a .com).
“Funny enough we’ve received complaints that Travian: Legends is not more hardcore than Travian: Kingdoms”
It wasn’t a complaint, just stating the facts. TL is exactly as casual as TK if you look at how players actually play. Fighting is almost completely absent in both versions. Most players inactively sim away and don’t interact with eachother at all. Why do you think the playerbase took such a dip around the time T4 came out?
Its not only that they this still does not tackle the issue of issue of almost directly allowing “buying of resurces” trought merging on troops. You might talk about “it requires” 1 month to que catapults etc. Thats not the point. I am currently running 40+ villa account and even tho we are not superhard core golders we do spend over 10k gold per server.
Imagine this. Player with 40 villages. Get UT on rotation from alliance. Lets forget helmet ettects etc. And say player can que ~6250 clubs per villa a day. (I know its bit off just making stuff simple).
Lets say player gets push from alliance or is HEAVY raider. Hes going to que clubs in all 40 villages with trainer effect. He ques them for 4 days. Making 1000k clubs.(250k clubs A DAY!!!!!)Cost of these clubs is 250m resurces. (250/ea)(NOT THAT MUCH!!) Lets say player was a top raider. Raided 2.5mph (we have done 3.1 this server). His villages will generate around 1.5m res/h. Income is 4m/h. 96*4=384m He does NOT NEED EVEN PUSH FROM alliance to que those clubs. Now lets say he combines them (~6500gold) and starts attacking enemy hammers and capitals. They wont stand a chance. Hammers will fall or be relocated. Capitals will be destroyed. As no alliance can defend themselves against such hammer if he fakes multiple villages. Creating wall of 1m in 15 villas is not gonna happen. And so lets say he lost it? In ~4 days he will have a new one. Hammers will grow absurdly big and defending anything will become nearly impossible. Sure you can compare stuff to finals, But finals is a different world to lets say comx or usx. Finals ww deff is in 50m+ were as comx or usx deff does not allways even reach 10m . Iv personally seen WWs get knocked down to zero with us little as 20k catapults.
(its not “little” but after update will be.”)
Besides i think everyone is missing the fact that this makes playing deff even LESS REWARDING. As allies will concentrare arounf off players even more. Decreasing amount of deff players in meta we would need even more.
I know i am quitting if this update goes live. So are many of my teammates and friends. And they are all heavy golders. Funny enought i think this update would loosw you the customers you are trying to get more from.
It’s all been said already and you do not react by acknowledging concerns but by arguing. I also notice that you ignored what many people are concerned about: that alliances will “work together” to build those big armies which essentially converts half of players into chess pawns.
You are overestimating our love of the game. It’s the community we are here for, not the gameplay. You will not need to erode the “fun” value very much before it becomes not worthwhile for us to stay. It’s already borderline for many people. The changes will take away the few things we enjoy – the skill of landing our defs just in time to save wheat, or coordinating five players to attack at the same time – and if we have nothing else to do in this game but grow fields or send our defs off to a def hub, then it becomes a pretty crappy game in terms of the fun factor.
Stop crunching numbers and consider the human element.
Hi
Have you looked at numbers from other servers than tournament finals? Normal legends servers have hammers with 19k catapults but WW defenses are a small fraction of what one will encounter on finals. Take a look at some normal Legends servers from different domains and you might get numbers quite a bit different than what you are using. On normal servers high level WWs do get zeroed already; currently it’s not a problem as very few players can get such catapult numbers. Not so with merging.
Hi Jake,
You forget a huge thing. The possibility for players to save their army during an ennemy ope.
What is the logical here ? You can not do anything to stop that, you send your army and you cross your fingers… This is impossible to have some players with golds that are untouchable !!!
1. “Hammers and WWKs can grow too big”
Well, let’s start with the obvious problem. You take tournament server as an example. Comparing tournament server (every WW taken, multiple sides, WW-deff is tens of millions instead of the usual 6-7 million average you see on “smaller” 3x servers) to the 3x speed servers or even 1x servers around the world just does not work. I have played now close to 9 years, on mainly fix and inx, with some odd rounds in eex and usx. FI, IN and EE are pretty small servers, and WW deff there very rarely rises above 10 million, and usually there ends up being 2-3 sides with 2-3 competitive WW’s taken.
Getting super high deff takes many enourmous deff players or large alliance to contribute towards it. Problem is, you need only one off-player willing to spend that gold to get the insane 90k cata hammer to be able to zero the WW over and over. And you point that who will be able to spend that gold – I suggest you just look at the auctions. People bid insane amounts of silver on items, and when you can get that crazy hammers, people will do it. You put 10 people playing on that account, it is only 1400 gold / each which doesnt sound as bad anymore.
End result will be especially on the smaller servers, that few big spenders are enough to make one side win, or make natars win depending on if they are on one side or both sides.
2. “Hammers can be moved and used to surprise players.”
People are already using the old “send attack without hero, settle village next to an arti protected with eyesight and send hero from there” trick. I have been playing with an alliance which used this trick to steal small and even a large artifact using this trick. You can push granaries + crop for hammer pretty easily in a new village with fast gaul merchants, and when it has been used to even steal large artifacts, it is doable. People can’t be spending entire day staring at a map if there is villages settled next to you while there is no attacks incoming to your off. If you dont have big permanent deff in your off, people can just send small 100k club + 20k tk hammers in the new village, zero your 500k club + 100k tk WWK and it’s a clear win for him even if you manage to zero his new village as well. And if the cost is 1 gold = 40k res, you can literally move that hammer with rams+catas for around 2000 gold. It is quite cheap price to get your enemy’s large WWK out of the game.
3. “The gold-spending-gap will increase heavily.”
Well, yes. You can practically buy troops with gold as you dont need to spend res to merge them. The game as of now is leaning towards gold users, but the merging of troops with gold would turn the balance totally towards gold players. You have gold – you can decide the winner.
Then some things which were not pointed in the blog post:
+ Forwarding troops – I think only the owner of the troops and his/her sitters should be able to forward them if this is implemented.
– Clubs = win.. Romans and gaul’s expensive troops will be absolutely useless compared to teuton’s cheap clubs when considering the merging feature.
I am a quite heavy gold user, we usually end up spending roughly 20-30k gold for every speed server we play, and I know what we would be able to do with the merging. I personally dont like the idea at all, and I will most probably end my long travian career here if the merging feature is implemented. I think troop forwarding would be fine with the nerf I suggested above, merging feature should be thrown in to the bin and forgot for good.
And I for sure hope you test these things on normal Travian:Legends servers if you are going to implement the updates on them. Testing on Scattered Empire and then suddenly just moving the update on EVERY Travian:Legends server is quite horrible idea, as you saw here.
As for more gold features.. As I’m pretty lazy and usually busy, I tend to forget stuff and all, I would love to have some way to see if some village is overflowing without going to the warehouse tab, having the time until granary is empty or warehouse is full right where the amount of resources currently is, basically having all the info you get from the Warehouse, Culture Points etc tabs right in the village view when you change village. Also stuff like “Build this building automatically to level 10” instead of the usual 2 buildings + 3 with master builder would make things easier. Easier trade routes, ability to make trade routes from one village for all 24 hours with one click instead of 1 hour at a time. This stuff could be behind some “Enchanced user interface” option, which would cost a moderate amount of gold. Stuff like this would not break the game like merging would, it would make playing bit easier and encourage us lazy gold spenders to spend that little bit more gold to make our lives that tiny little bit easier without giving a massive advantage.
Travian Legends public test server, where these innovations can be tested. You’ll end up with a survey, how much I liked it. If the positive feedback, it will be introduced. If you are negative, you can not. Hmm?
I will give you one example of what can happen with merging troops and gold use. On UK20 (an SE server) the alliance I was in had expanded into a new region, a good many of us settled there and were doing well. ONE player settled a village amongst us and overnight had a 100k+ (in crop) hammer in a village with less that 200 pop. He proceeded to wipe most of our villages in the region out in short order. There were 7 players on that account (another issue TG is unable or unwilling to deal with), all contributing gold, and they used it to claim that region with a single low pop and newly settled village. It was shortly after that that almost all my alliance deleted en masse.
Now, I am a gold user, and it is not unusual for me to spend 300-500 gold in one week when simming along and making troops. I buy items from the auction to equip the stupid hero with as well as consumables. I play a dual account. But I absolutely will not play if it is possible to settle a village, gold up the storage and RP overnight and assign 100k+ troops so I can destroy every village an enemy alliance has in the area. That is not playing the game, it is buying it.
You spoke of the end game – but it takes a good long while to get to that part of a server. If you continue on this path, there will be no need for an end game because there will be no game. I was a long time Travian addict. You have found the final cure for that addiction.
1) Size of WWK
a) Why did you choose tournament server as an example? Tournament is special server. Leading coalitions manage 60-100M defense at WW. I have only seen it once on regular server that defense at WW reached 20M on call, not even standing. 10M is good result, and most have under 7M. 45K will do. 45K catas can be build within 600 hours (time to build WW from 0 to 99) in 20 villages with large trainer. That makes game, at least in theory, endless. I see nothing that will prevent the theory to become reality. Note I did not even mentioned gold in this example.
b) Tournament finals server is also extremely competitive. Nobody even dreams about demolishing a WW at level 99 🙂 and there is no need for that, one level would be enough and not even at 99. No need to wait for 99 on any other server either, by the way.
c) If you indeed want to discuss last tournament, here is an example. A player on that server had 2 WWk. One with about 19K catas, another with somewhat 35K rams. Each accompanied by at least 800K troops. Put them together, replace rams with equal amount of catas and you changed outcome of last finals. Note that because the player does not have to use great barracks/stable the amount of troops that can be trained with same amount resources is doubled (or extra catas). And if you think tournament does not have players who would not spend $1K on such operation, you are mistaken.
2) Surprise hammers
a) If everyone clears his area that will put the end to raiding part because there will be nothing to raid. TG will lose noticeable portion of players just because of this.
b) How a defender supposed to do this? Yes, some have a few catas, but not nearly enough to zero all neutral villages or do real damage to the intruder.
c) What about friendly but less active accounts? Or your own villages? It’s not that hard to chief a village if you fake well. All of them will be equal targets and you can’t defend everything, even with forwarding.
d) How long the hammer will survive? How long do you think it will take to zero a capital with decent number of catas from 2-3 fields, especially with speed artifact (aka boots)? The only problem is feeding in the first couple of hours, so some troops will starve but who cares? And only if the chiefed village is an active ally, otherwise food will be send in advance as well as defense.
I saw that done on SE. Infantry defense without boots walks at the same speed (more or less) as catas with boots, so even if you have defense close only horses will help you and horses are much less common than infantry as standing (or forwarding hub) defense. I don’t know how to defend against it. Troops changing home village in a matter of seconds is not acceptable for SE either. Several suggestions were made earlier: merge can be limited by the age of the village (i.e. you can’t use gold for the first day, for example), require research of the unit in that village or take time (i.e. it will take several hours, depending on hammers size, after you use gold for merge for troops to become functional. All that time they will stay in the village without ability to move and be an easy target).
3) Is it gold or new feature?
They are connected. You said earlier that you expect any new feature to be monetized. This is fair, but only if your customers want the feature. It is questionable that merge would be tolerated (leave alone welcome) even without gold advantage attached to it. Expecting extra income from it is next level.
Getting money from a feature does not necessarily leads to increase in total revenue. I hope it’s clear for you by now that many people will leave the game if the features are incorporated. It will decrease already low population and lead to more players leaving. I doubt any changes, restrictions etc will help.
Leave regular servers as is. Replace some regular servers with SE (there is a demand for no WW environment), hopefully with restrictions I mentioned earlier. Maybe run test server (that will require free play on such server, with gold offered at the level you expect people spend it to see realistic picture).
Few points:
-The guy that moves his hammer in next door to your capitol does not mean to just leave it there for the rest of the server. He’s either going to suicide into everything in the neighborhood, or merge it away back to a cropper in his main cluster. Catapult merging is a devastating tactic and is really overpowered. A 2 population village with enough trade routes could do it (I’ve seen it done with a 100 population village, which just takes a bit of gold and you’re there in an hour). My team and I did it over and over again. We would chief your feeder, or a natar near you, then destroy everything you have, then merge the hammer back out — and destroy the natar we chiefed so that we could repeat the process elsewhere. It’s insanely efficient if you don’t mind the gold spending
I previously mentioned my solution: keep catapults out of the merging process. Perhaps we could make it to where catapults can only be merged into a village that has a treasure chamber level 20. All serious players put a TC in their hammer village anyways — so if someone truly wants to merge catapults into their main hammer all server, then let them pay the bills for the rest of us. But don’t allow them to be used in this chief–merge–catapult–self destruct method.
Removal of the Goldron and now the devs are actually listening to us.. Did I miss something? Am I dreaming?
I did not read most of the comments here yet.
But I have another point next to general discussion. You started to post only on the english blog and did not even give any hint to german and russian blog, also no hint on forum to new blog posts, neither on facebook. You always gave same post on every of those three languages, so why should anyone of the other two have a look on the english blog?
I got to know of some people who are disappointed about your silence and they did not know that the english blog is more active by TG side. So many are sitting on the forum and waiting for any response to their feedback while you already gave some.
Please introduce your mods on the forums to give a link to the english blog and keep people informed.
Please stop basing it all off a tournament server. Using one server to cover all is beyond daft – You’re taking the most popular/competitive server and comparing it to ones with 800 Active Players. The average defence is around 5-6x lower than that in even the higher WW Defences on average servers.