Welcome to Travian Loop series! Today we would like to introduce you a bit different format for Travian Loop than usual. The topic that we discussed with the community was a bit controversial and the community opinion divided on that matter a lot ~ Relocation feature.
That’s why we decided to discuss Map Relocation, its advantages, disadvantages, potential risks and benefits directly with our Game Designer Jake. We combined questions asked by community into the groups and asked Jake to answer them.
➡️ – Questions
⬅️ – Answers
➡️ Hello Jake, for those who do not know you, could you briefly introduce yourself, what you do for Legends and for how long?
⬅️ Hey, thank you for having me! I’m Jake, I’ve joined Travian Games in 2010, and Travian Legends in 2014. I’ve worked some years as a developer and created my own browser game way before joining TG. This allowed me to transition to the profession of Game Design. This year I also enjoyed working on The Loop, receiving plenty of information about the state of the game and improving the game.
One of the latest Travian Loop topics was the “game start” discussion. As it seemed to be a rather controversial subject, unable to reach consensus, we thought we’d ask you to share your input on what the community expressed in general about it. Let’s go!
Yeah, there is always the conflict of goals – on the one side is Travian Legends how it is… which makes it great, but also what makes it hard, and on the other side is the market moving towards more casual games, easier games, and frankly more gratifying games.
In the early game Travian Legends has some properties which move players towards registering more accounts, looking for the perfect spot, and discussing how we could make this easier, we also learned that it’s not only about oasis, 15c availability and so on, but also dynamic questions like “how many active Teutons are nearby“, which is something which can also happen after a player already registered.
There were plenty of suggestions, which would ultimately change how the game is played in the first few hours, and while they promise improvement for some, they also affect all other players, who might not see those changes as improvements.
In the end a lot of limitations and rules were suggested, to make the improvement not having too big of an impact, and the worst case would be to introduce a system to reduce re-registration, which might in turn get circumvented by … re-registrations.
Our highest goal is to preserve the Travian: Legends experience, which is enjoyed by so many skilled players, and we don’t want to risk that even slightly.
➡️ Do you think the game restart option would reduce the number of abandoned accounts?
⬅️Yes, but it would also reduce the global amount of raidable income, which has an effect on players who use a more actively raiding strategy for the start of their game world.
So, we could also leave leftovers, to keep it closer to how it is now, but we then need to balance it in the other direction – making it easily possible to populate an area with abandoned villages increases the global amount of raidable income, and would benefit a different set of players.
Keeping the balance here is on the one hand a very important part, and on the other it’s true that the current situation is not ideal either.
➡️ What kind of impact could be expected on early game oasis farming?
⬅️ There is a big mystery around balance – many people see it as “all options must evenly be used / usable“, while actually a strategy game needs to offer multiple ways to allow for diverse strategies.
Currently there are spots which are better than others, and on the highest level of skill these tiny differences have a big effect. The only way for a “perfect balance” would be to give everyone exactly the same conditions – which would forfeit the multiplayer part of the game. And actually, we did some steps in that direction – e.g. by removing the randomness in the starting adventures.
But you were asking about oasis farming in early game. If players could relocate their village in the early game, they would look for the most profitable oasis and squeeze them asap. I’d expect some players to benefit from it hard, and that will make the gap between players even more.
➡️ Would this change impact the quadrant balance? If yes, how?
⬅️ Yeah, of course! Imagine a band of brothers registering in a quad – currently they are spread a bit and need to settle somewhere to form a group. There is a time frame where this can be seen, and plans can be adjusted. If now we would instead allow for relocation, that band of brothers will just look for the juiciest part of the quad, dominate there as they are a pre-made alliance with routines, skill and faith in each other’s skills. With such a power in one place, the quadrant balance is moved by a lot!
➡️ Would the game restart option give benefits or disadvantages for new players?
⬅️ Heavy results of actions are a big disadvantage for new players. A lot is to be considered for the map position, and teaching all that to new players so they can make an educated decision is not going to work out well.
And on the other side players who have that skill will use that advantage and this will make the life not easier for the Newbies.
➡️ Would the game restart option extend the cycle of starter villages compared to the grey zone?
⬅️ Well, depending on the detailed implementation this will have an effect: players moving themselves further out, to have more oasis for themselves, less competition from other neighbors and less risk from these pesky clubsinger-teutons, which only play to a second or third village anyway 😄
➡️ The community is quite divided about a game restart (relocation) feature. Have you considered adding this feature only to Annual special, for instance?
⬅️ We’ve talked a lot about changes to registration for the annual special, and the advanced start was one of the results of it.
Currently we are talking a lot about what we’d see fit for the annual special’s progression, but a relocation feature is currently not there – as it is a feature which the community is very divided about. But there are some ideas around, which could alter the way the early game works, and of course these new ideas would be introduced to the annual special first.
➡️ What restrictions do you think it should have so that players could use it effectively and it still wouldn’t break game balance?
⬅️ Well, that’s a question which needs to be answered very indirectly: first I aim for solutions where the problem is not “solved” but it just does not exist. So I wouldn’t go into looking for “With which limitations can we make it work”, but with “which solution would not need limitations to work in the first place”.
For example, we want to make it possible to take a break from Travian, either for a family weekend, an event, or whenever life happens. Thus, the vacation mode was introduced, and we wanted to “just add limitations” so that it cannot be abused for something else. And we needed to add quite some limitations to it, so that some say it’s not usable anymore, and others say it’s still abusable…
➡️ We know that Travian Kingdoms has this feature. Have you looked into their experience and feedback? Do you think that something like Mehnirs can work for Legends as well?
⬅️ And how much pain they had to make it work… We’ve talked about their experience and the feedback they got, and based on that I can say that it solves different problems than the one we want to face.
➡️ If this feature was implemented, would you consider changing the game rules in terms of re-registering start accounts? (Currently it’s allowed to register multiple accounts at start and pick one best)
⬅️ If we solve the issue perfectly, the need for re-registering start accounts would be gone… and we wouldn’t need to punish players for something they simply won’t do anyway.
