Tribal Warriors!
The time has come again where we would like YOU to share your ideas for improvements to the game.
Please contribute your ideas as precisely as you can, offering reasons for the change you are suggesting.
Please use this thread to positively contribute your ideas and not bash out arguments about removing premium features or co-playing as there are already threads extensively discussing such issues, please search the forum if you wish to contribute to those, we would like to focus this thread on New ideas for the future. So please be informed any such discussions will be moved or deleted in order to clearly focus on suggestions given for game improvement.
Please be aware contribution to the thread is not a guarantee of your suggestion being implemented, however we are looking forward to your awesome ideas and passing them on to the Development Team!
Thanks in advance!
Can't wait to read them!
Tribal Wars NET Team.
Okay i'll bite because i dont have much else to do right now during the attack break (same as most people i'd imagine). I feel like its quite difficult to answer this question as i have no idea what innogames are aiming at. Example, if you're looking to increase the playerbase again then the improvements to the game would probably cater to making the game more accessible because in my experience flat out the more time you put in the more likely you are to succeed (no guarantee). This time involvement i'd imagine puts a lot of starting players off and when you combine with the fact that even if you do put in lots of hours you can fail anyway its actually quite a brutal and un-friendly game for people new to the genre.
TW is sort of like chess in that its easy to get the hang of at a very basic level (i.e bishops move diagonals = high level production buildings get you more troops) but the difference between a 'master' and a beginner is truly staggering. If player A is new to the game and just by RNG happens to spawn near player B who has played the game for many years then quite frankly player A is relying on the goodwill of player B to survive 90% of the time ignoring external factors. You can say that the fault here is with player B for not taking the time to befriend and encourage player A but i feel that is a very naive viewpoint as really whats in it for player B in the long run? In theory anybody can succeed with the right coaching and support but its a real commitment on behalf of player B and what happens if you spend your time helping player A and then they quit? Or something else happens that player B has no control over? You feel like your time has been wasted and you are less likely to help the next player C who might be new and ready to learn. 99% of people who are reliably good at this game (multiple world wins) have spent YEARS practicing and playing. Its a lot to ask for that group of experienced veterans to take on fresh newbie over another experienced veteran especially when the vast majority of time you will see no tangible results.
So here are my (very basic) suggestions to improve the game providing that increasing the playerbase is the goal:
1) Greatly expand the mentoring system. Its a nice idea but i feel in its current form its basically useless 99% of the time. If you want people to actually help new players into the game then you're going to have to realistically bribe them to do so. For every player that you assist who reach x points or y points you get a real tangible reward (boosts/pp/whatever). The mentoring badge/achivement thingy is quite frankly pretty farcical and insulting considering the amount of effort it takes to teach people to be actually good at this game.
2) Implement a "recruit a noob system" for tribes. Currently a lot of tribes dont recruit newbies because of several limits (future noblings/no spots left/points) and again there is no real incentive. So how about encouraging new players to fill out a form saying "hello i'd like to learn and play real good" or whatever then once a month allocate them at random (or closest location maybe?) to a top 5 tribe. These players would not count towards tribal space cap or anything they just have the tag and can see tribal forums or whatever. They would not be attackable by their tribe and at the end of the month they fill out another short form saying "yes this tribe helped me they are really good" or "no they ignored me". If a tribe gets a positive review then maybe that can be displayed by a badge or something somewhere and again an actual tangible reward for players in said tribe.
3) Have a "baby" world that runs with very bog-standard settings that resets once a month. I understand that casual worlds were implemented to allow new players space to work out what to do but quite frankly (imo) they're fairly poorly done as players are utterly left to their own devices and nobody helps them there either. These baby worlds would have 'advanced' tutorials maybe as the current ones although do a good job of getting someone actually started up to 500 points they sort of taper off after a while. The advanced tutorials could be more detail/goals. You could also implement a buddy system where when people sign up for a world they could indicate they are happy to assist a newbie and they spawn near a buddy and assist them and guide them through the world for the next month. Personally i'd actually be okay with doing something like that, not every month but a few times a year where i know there is no real pressure to succeed and you can just make friends with new people.
These ideas are just ones that i've thought about on the spot so there is a lot of potential adjustment/improvement but i think if these ideas (or something along those lines) could be implemented then that would be a massive step forward to increasing the active playerbase.
Now on the other hand if the goal of innogames is to improve player experience for their playerbase that already exists then there are some radically different changes i could suggest as these would not be particularly noob friendly but would certainly make the game more interesting for people who play actively and consistently. And who knows it may encourage ex-players (of which there are probably millions) to restart again:
1) Artificially increase world sizes. Several ways you could do this, increase distances between people who start up or greatly increase barb spawns or allow someone to relocate their village on the same world once they have been nobled provided it is below x points (maybe 3k?). Although im not too sure about that last idea as it could be exploited but its an option certainly if its done properly
2) Improve the mobile app to give you larger options and more similar to desktop version. Now i understand that is probably not very easy (i dont think most people appreciate how expensive/difficult it is to make a GOOD phone app) but it would certainly help player experience, im sure everyone has been frustrated at the app at some point although i will say it is a fantastic thing in general
3) I dont feel like we really need more units/buildings but perhaps you can change the effectiveness slightly per world? Im not talking anything drastic but example you could say that world 95 is in a "hilly/woody region" and therefore cavalry effectiveness (all round) drops by 10%. Or that in world 96 infantry can carry double the amount of resources that they normally would. I think stuff like that would be quite exciting and would open up new strategies. Im not talking huge changes but things that if you know what you're doing you can exploit them to their fullest potential and gain an edge.
4) I think there are a lot of active players out there who are consistently mediocre and manage to get to 5/10/20 vils each world they play but then dont really know how to play beyond that. There are hundreds of players like this each world and it wouldnt take much guidance for them to make the step from being average to good so how about encouraging official 'advanced' guides. I know there is a guide section but that is often out of date and often (imo) relatively basic. I'd suggest to pay people (pp) who can prove that they've succeeded multiple times to write guides that teach people how to go beyond the intermidate stage. Then pay them more to keep these guides fresh and up to date with the latest changes. Then display these guides prominently and really encourage people to read them and maybe contact author/others for questions/advice.
All suggestions above are just rough ideas that i've contemplated today. I understand that some might not be feasible but i think some might be worth a shot or at least further/more considered discussion.
TLDR: Basically there are many parts of the game that i feel that innogames dont really put enough effort into and rely on the community goodwill (basically helping new players). If innogames actually dedicated virtual resources towards current players with the design that they help new players than i really feel that would be the best way to improve the game overall.
(p.s) Really really, please dont listen to people who moan and say "the game was better before pp/old skool is cool!!!!!" then ask for retarded changes to take the game back to how it was when their nostalgia tinted brain thought it was better because it was less intricate. You guys remind me of trump's "Make America Great Again" or whatever it is, its embarrassing to read how people actually think they can revert progress and go back to their comfort zone of previous times.
