I think one of the biggest issues with flags right now, that makes it difficult to say how they should be improved for newer players, is that they are actually not balanced versus each other. Almost every post here alludes to it like it's a problem that can't be solved. It absolutely could be solved. Fix the luck flag. Make the haul flag more useful in late-game (or replace it entirely). This is not impossible and would make many of the other fixes here less problematic.
The luck flag should either purely boost luck (like how all the other flags are a pure buff), or balance other RNG in the game - for example, balancing loyalty drops. Alternately, it could balance luck to be between a higher positive number and a smaller negative number, so that on average it is a buff (for example, instead of 'balance luck by x points' it would say 'balance luck to fall between +x and -y').
The haul flag I don't know for sure, as I haven't experienced earlygame recently, but the main problem I see with the haul flag is that farming isn't as necessary in lategame with the other premium features in the game now. Why farm when you can pop a 30% res pack? I think an interesting suggestion here, if we were looking at replacing the flag, would be a merchant flag. Increase the number of merchants in the village, or make existing merchants move faster or carry more resources. This would add a second element of strategy to mass-minting: which villages can you afford to put the merchant flag on to help feed your minting village, and which villages do you need to leave a different flag on?
Bro you go the most off All us here off topic. You are just telling them that luck and haul flags are useless and they are needed to be balanced or replaced. We are speaking here about fairness of flags. Not only for New players, it's for the old ones too, who stopped to play this game and saw now w114 good settings and want to play it.
Bro you go the most off All us here off topic. You are just telling them that luck and haul flags are useless and they are needed to be balanced or replaced. We are speaking here about fairness of flags. Not only for New players, it's for the old ones too, who stopped to play this game and saw now w114 good settings and want to play it.
I'm considering it on-topic as I do want to know what the community thinks about flags in general. Which is also why the OP shows three dots as 4th question.
If fairness is really the desired goal here, while trying to balance rewarding others dedication to the game and thus built up flags. Yah sure a +18% res flag gives an advantage over the +4% one that a new player would be playing with. But the real advantage of good flags come later in the game when you've hit an academy and are getting into the meat of the game, nobling villages. Flag doubling the best coin flag will give you a 48% reduction on the costs of coins. Even go down a couple levels and its still a 44% cost reduction. This is quite simply a percentage in coin costs reduction that new players can not hope to get or ton compete with. Even if a new player knew to flag double their coin flag, doubling a grey would only get you 20% or less then half the cost reduction that the experienced player is getting. This gives a huge advantage to "experienced" players or people with good flags in comparison to those who are just starting out. Flag doublers and the use of coin reduction flags lead to experienced players getting a huge head start and continued start in the amount of coins they mint/nobles available/and thus village count and troop counts over new players. The same principles can be applied to flag doublers and D flags, where experienced players get a large def bonus for villages that new/newer players have no access to. 20% compared to 2-4%.
This option would still give experienced players their "well earned" advantage as a black coin flag still gives better coin costs the a grey or brown one. But would level the playing field more in not allowing players to "double" the advantage that they are already getting from having better flags.
I think this is a really valid idea, and worth considering. Now, there are other options. It is called a flag booster - so you could just make the boost a flat number. Say, boost a flag by a certain number of levels. If you want it could go past level 10, but it doesn't have to. This would even open up the possibility of having multiple levels of flag boosters, like there are for other items (and we know Inno likes that because they can give you the lower tiers easier). But it would also eliminate the extra boost that it gives older accounts over newer ones.
And just an aside, I think it's important that we word things correctly here - older accounts are prioritized over newer ones. Longtime players can still create new accounts and get punished by the flag system, and new players could still be given access to older accounts.
Lol I've just told you I've done it and keep doing it, so it works.
Even smaller players don't touch you because they dont wanna waste nuke+ on your small village, everybody is looking for easy villages. All you will get is multiple scout attacks daily, but nobody is stupid enough or brave enough to attack. You are just lucky stop using your luck in a non standard tactic to be the standard for how others should behave.
Again, older player who has put in more time and work in his account DESERVES to have advantage over you, what should mods do? Give you 1000+ flags for free on your every new account just because someone like Tudadar has plenty of max flags? Do you even realize how stupid that is? No one in this has said anything about giving 1000+ flags to new accounts...You are over dramatizing what is being suggested here. I have been playing for a long time my flag accounts unfortunately I no longer have access to. My main has never played a flag world so it is at a serious disadvantage...I do miss all my black flags. 18% resource production to start combined with farming is a HUGE advantage over no flags...Starting fairness could be balanced out a tiny bit by handing a small pack of flags or modifying the quests to take how many flags you own into account.
This is not charity, and this game is brutal (as someone mentioned before already). Wanna succeed then put in work. Find some "easy" way to gain flags like I did, or just bitch about how someone like Tudadar has +18 resource flags and you don't. This is mostly aimed at people creating new accounts or inviting their friends who have never played to the game or new people just finding the game...People who do not know or will not put in the time to learn once they find out the disparity in starting. I love the fact that flags allow my account to age stronger though starting from scratch is a major hindrance.
I would like to see the quests change to count how many/what level your flags are and INCREASE the flags for the quests that generate flags based on how many flags you have. If you have 0 flags the first quest instead of giving you 1 grey flag the quest would give you 1 red 1 yellow flag or some balanced number. If I remember right you earn 6 flags currently for completing the tutorial...(have not completed despite nobling things) maybe increase that number to 20 total flags for players with 0-10 low level flags 15 for players with 10-20 low level flags etc down to 6 for players fully decked out. These numbers are rough but seem relatively fair if you take into account all the flags it takes to make a black flag would put you out of the running to get the advanced quest rewards.
Flag Aquisition for New Players:
I personally feel like the quest system should reward way more flags and better flags the more you progress towards the end of it. This can be done in conjunction with them wanting to re-do the entire beginner quest-line. And then as one of your final quests when you have to build an Academy or noble a village you get 2-3 random Green or Blue flags.
There has also been a community suggestion long time ago for adding a diamond tier of achievements to the game which will award higher tier flags for reaching those (blue or light blue flags since they would be hard to get). Which could also be done in conjunction with rebalancing some the current achievements since some of them are almost impossible to finish. (unless you spend tens of thousands pp on them - yes literally that much. Look at the Accomplished student Achievement. In all the worlds I played these years I only ever saw 1 single player fully reroll all paladin books to get every paladin fully equipped. 300 Books for the gold Achievement is absolutely ridiculous. So ridiculous that you might aswell reward a black flag for getting that achievement. Because any person who would ever do that achievement would have to invest atleast 30k pp or more into it. And that is 300$ or € which is out of my mind.)
Flag Balance in General:
We all know what the good flags are, and which aren't. Ofc I am speaking of LUCK and HAUL flags.
They are actually so bad, and noone really wants them in the current game design and meta at all. Reasoning:
Luck:
Let's compare Luck flags for the attacker with Attack flags. First of all to clarify: In the long run, every player will have 50% of the time bad luck and 50% of the time good luck. Sometimes you have more luck, sometimes less luck. But that already inherently means that Luck flags have their effect NULLIFIED for the attacker since they try to draw the luck towards 0% from -luck and +luck.
So basically using luck flags literally strengthens your attack power by NOTHING if you were to use them. Attack flags instead will ALWAYS grant you a flat amount of attack power (up to 10% for a black flag)
Why then would I ever pick a luck flag? Some Player told me that using the current luck flags against low morale players might be of use since it is important for your first nukes to not hit with -luck since that has a meaningful impact if you are able to kill the stack or not. Which is true. A nuke that hits a player with -20% luck and like 60% morale will do close to no damage to that player at all. But you can also argue that IF that nuke would hit that player with +20% luck and on 60% morale it would be a massive big deal. Sadly, this also get's reduced to as close to 0% if I used luck flags. And since most players like to gamble anyway they go for the attack flags anyway.
How awesome would it be if my nuke were to hit with +20% luck on that 60% morale player with a +10% attack flag (or 20% if I used a flag booster). Better in every scenario I can think off.
To fix it? How about making them just give +% luck by default?
Currently it says "Balances an offensive's battle luck by X%"
1. What if it said "Gives the attacker of a battle +X% luck to their attack." (It would still cap out at +25%)
2. What if it said "Increases the positive Luck range for the attacker by +X%" (With this system attacks can now range from -25% to +40%)
3. What if we just removed luck flags in general and added construction flags instead? As funny as it sounds, A construction flag that would increase building speed by let's say 6-20% would be so infinitly more useful than luck flags right now. This one will probably not make into the game but I always thought that a construction flags if those existed would be useful at any point in the game in specific scenarios, which is a good thing.
Haul:
Not too much to say here I think, they are straight up underpowered at any point of the game compared to resource flags. A resource flags will always yield more resources in the long run than a Haul flag. Why would I equip a 10% haul flag if I can equip a 18% Ressource flag instead? They aren't even useful enough earlygame anymore with scavenging or the small amount of barbs that initially spawn per 1 player village in current game worlds. On top of that with LA enhancer existing on .net this allows every player to power farm all these barbs so there no situation earlygame where you ever would see your hauls to bring back so many resources that you would consider equipping a haul flag to further increase your loot. That is a thing of the past. The game has changed alot in the past few years in this regard.
One of the major flaws that Haul flags have is that they also increase the time of your hauls if you are scavenging with a haul flag. This is one thing that really discourages me from using them when I scavenge. Yes, I do get 10% more loot from scavenging, but I also like what? 5% longer to haul now? Which makes it around 5% more hauled per day. And then there is a resource flag that gives literally 18% flat production where you don't even have to press any button to get that huge bonus.
My Idea is that Haul flags SHOULD be more rewarding than resource flags if you are actively scavenging or looting barbs in a day.
This can be achieved with the following changes:
1. Increase the values of Haul flags to match them with the same % of resource flags. They now can range from 4%-18%.
2. Remove the additional increase in time for your hauls while scavenging. If it took you 4 hours before to haul 2k/2k/2k in one category it should you also only take 4 hours to haul 2.36k/2.36k/2.36k while using a haul flag. (with a 18% haul flag equipped in this example)
3. Spawn more barbarian villages per 1 player village on new game worlds. This will naturally allow for higher hauls per 1 player since people will be spread out a little more and hauls on barbs will overlap less from different players which makes individual farm attacks yield more resources to a point where you actually can bring back full hauls with farm attacks. Because only if you bring back enough full hauls I would ever consider myself starting to use haul flags instead of resource flags.
4. Change the way how the game settings for new worlds are coded. They should be split up for player settings and barbarian village settings.
For anyone who doesn't know. How TW currently works is that if a new world releases every player village starts at 26 points (or 36 with church active). That means that every barb will also always only spawn at 26 points early game. If the game world has 1.0 speed, pit production of barbs will also only be at 1.0 speed. What if that could be changed? And be set individually from player settings? That also can lead to new interesting world setting in the future.
I think it would be great to see some barbs at the start have more points than player villages, or have already a few pit levels built when a world releases. Or make them have double pit production by default while player production is still normal. What if like 3 barbs per 1 continent spawn with 3k points in the start of the world already, Juicy filled warehouses but with some troops residing which the players need to clear out first to get those res.
They can also reduce the time it takes for barbs to automatically build buildings. When a player reaches 3000 points on non premium world, most barbs still only have 200-300~ points at that time since they are building out very slowly. I would much rather see them have more points so you haul more of them.
Like I said earlier, a haul flag is only worth using if you start seeing your hauls being full. and they won't be full with these very low point barbs ever.
5. I am pretty sure that this one is currently not in place yet but the devs could add a weighting for every individual building that a barb automatically grows over time. If every building has a weighting of 100 that means every building is being built similarly often. If they had a weighting system in place they could change the values of Iron mine/ Clay pit / Timber camp to like 300. That makes the barb build pit levels instead of something else 3x more likely in this case.
That can also mean they can make the weighting of walls to 50 which makes barbs less likely to build walls in the future. Just cool idea. Many other games use this system and it works well.
Option 4: Get rid of the flag doubler event item.
If fairness is really the desired goal here, while trying to balance rewarding others dedication to the game and thus built up flags.
I completely agree that the flag doubler event item makes accounts extremely overpowered in terms of noble accessibility and is a negative to the game as a result.
I think that removing this won't actually resolve the imbalance of flags for new players and additional fixes are needed, but I fully support this extension to improving the flag system.
@Ragestyles
I like the suggestions of altering the way the luck flags operate and adjusting the haul flags. I don't think haul flags should avoid extending the time taken to scavenge, as the extra resources will take extra time to 'scavenge'. Logically, this should remain as it is.
The other suggestions (barb growth / production changes) I don't see how it is directly connected to the flag ideas and would be better served being posted as a new idea.
It was between W40 - 50 forget which that the barbs grew much quicker than the players it was a mix up in the code every barb had walls before lcav came out.
Did not realize the haul flag reduced travel speed only used it once after the festive break on one world. Does not mention this on the flag help page would be handy to give further details so players know what they are selecting.
As what you haul is so random, it should give a greater gain maybe even magic resources putting in a multiplier on what you have managed to farm regardless of whats in the village. That would negate the need for massive barb numbers on a world.
Still think in relation to scavenging its unfair as who when they scavenge in the real world would gain even anything I feel that the resources gained should be more random in value.
If the luck flag also had a bit of a loyalty gain when used with nobles that would make it a more worth while flag. Even if it say forced the loyalty to as near 25 as it could depending on level. As luck on its own does not work well as mentioned.
The flag rewards are not good enough for some achievements or the targets are not well thought out. It would be interesting to see by the end of the world just how many reach gold in the basic tasks.
As for pally maybe not get a better flag but at each achievement level maybe an option to re-specialize a certain number of pally. I used to see loads reach 300 maybe worlds end too quick now for that to happen.
I like the suggestions of altering the way the luck flags operate and adjusting the haul flags. I don't think haul flags should avoid extending the time taken to scavenge, as the extra resources will take extra time to 'scavenge'. Logically, this should remain as it is.
No it clearly makes sense to me. With your logic mining 10 full carts of iron in the iron mine should always take lets say 4 hours. For your logic it would never make sense that another set of workers could be able to mine 11 full carts in 4 hours. since they would always need longer.
There is even an item in the game called "Effective Workers" which permanently increases pit production by 3%. It is all about being more effective. And hauling should make your hauls more effective.
The other suggestions (barb growth / production changes) I don't see how it is directly connected to the flag ideas and would be better served being posted as a new idea.
I literally explained here why these ideas are directly catered towards haul flags. Because first you need to figure out WHY haul flags are bad and then you can think off possibilities on how to fix them. Idea 1, 2 and 3 are quick and easy fixes for haul flags. While Idea 4 and 5 are bigger ideas and take more development time doing those changes will indirectly buff Haul flags as a whole as you will start seeing more full hauls from barbs with those changes. (Which ofc, would help fix the issue of haul flags being bad right now)
It should be clear to everyone that a haul flag has 0 effect if all my haul attacks aren't full hauls. The effect of haul flags only starts when you get full hauls, and nowadays in current TW barely anyone does, especially earlygame where barbs start at 26p. And those 2 proposed changes would definitely help haul flags have more use in the game right now.
If they only changed their values to be higher then I would see myself only use haul flags for scavenging. On any non scavenging world? Still gonna prefer resource flags there.
No it clearly makes sense to me. With your logic mining 10 full carts of iron in the iron mine should always take lets say 4 hours. For your logic it would never make sense that another set of workers could be able to mine 11 full carts in 4 hours. since they would always need longer.
There is even an item in the game called "Effective Workers" which permanently increases pit production by 3%. It is all about being more effective. And hauling should make your hauls more effective.
The thing about flags is, they aren't additional 'troops'. From your logic, they are adding extra people to do the job. From my logic, the troops being sent have extra capacity. I can see both sides of the coin on that.
I think the overhauling barbarians suggestion is far more wider-reaching than indirectly impacting haul flags and actually would be detrimental to the game. A lot of players (especially new ones) might notice how much better farming resources than players is, and as a result start nobling barbarians under the misguided belief that they will continue doing so for players. I can see pitfalls in suggestion 4 and it would need looking at from lots of different angles - which is why I think it is better off as a separate suggestion because of the far-reaching consequences. In reality, I don't believe it would barely affect flags and certainly wouldn't help imbalance the new/old player issue.
Suggestion 5 is more intriguing as an idea. Would you be wanting it to be preset numbers, or random for every barbarian village? Which would be more beneficial and why?
Not that I have anything against improving the haul flag and pointing out how pointless luck flags are. I thought that the point of this thread was to discuss the "fairness" or advantages that come from some accounts having access to a vast amount more flags then brand new accounts. Thus while I agree that the haul flag could definitely do with improvements, for the purpose of this conversation, doing so would only further increase the benefits given to people with lots of flags and high level flags. As now there would be an additional beneficial flag that new accounts would only have the grey ones for while other accounts have top level flags.
Furthermore I don't like the proposed ideas about giving flag packages or more flags per world quests as much, simply because unless there is some way to make so these package flags can't be traded, then they will simply make the current problem worse, were some people will start making new accounts solely so they can get a new flag package and then move "good" flags to their main account in place of "bad" flags.
Furthermore I don't like the proposed ideas about giving flag packages or more flags per world quests as much, simply because unless there is some way to make so these package flags can't be traded, then they will simply make the current problem worse, were some people will start making new accounts solely so they can get a new flag package and then move "good" flags to their main account in place of "bad" flags.
That is exactly the reason that rebalancing flags is being discussed. If you rebalance flags to be relatively equal, you remove this drawback to giving new accounts extra flags.
Res flags being better then haul flags has nothing to do with the original concept of new accounts being at a major disadvantage to accounts that have lots of higher flags. New accounts don't have good res or haul flags. Older accounts have not just have good res flags, but likely also have good haul flags and flags of every other type. So rebalancing haul flags (which is something I agree with) would only increase this advantage that accounts that have high level flags over new accounts with no flags.
Edit: As far as rebalancing res flags vs haul flags to take away the chance people use "flag packages" to get better flags to a main account. Even a better haul flag is still of lesser importance then say a coin flag. I would trade a high level res flag, assuming its not my highest res flag for start up for an equal coin flag, especially if that got me closer to a black coin flag per say. Thus rebalancing flags does not remove the drawback of giving accounts extra flags
The thing about flags is, they aren't additional 'troops'. From your logic, they are adding extra people to do the job. From my logic, the troops being sent have extra capacity. I can see both sides of the coin on that.
No with my logic they are not adding extra workers to do the job. That would be a pointless example then. If I equip a haul flag then I want my troops to be more effective with hauling or scavenging. Being effective means either a) doing 1 thing in a shorter amount of time or b) doing more of a thing in a set amount of time. B applies for TW.
With your logic it would also mean that Light Cavalry if they were farming barbarian villages that they would travel 10% longer if I equipped a 10% haul flag since they have to carry 10% more resources.
The amount of workers do not increase if I put a haul flag on, just the carrying capacity of them. My LC will still travel 10 minutes per field and yield 10% more resources if i were to farm barbs right now in the game. That is 10% more effective.
However scavenging with a haul flag DOES increase the time for them to gather those extra resources. Which kind of nullifies the effect.
A Pizza delivery guy doesn't get more effective when he delivers 8 Pizzas to 8 Customers in 8 hours, and in the next day delivers 9 Pizzas to 9 Customers in 9 hours. He will still only deliver 1 pizza per hour. That does not make him better.
If we now translate to TW: 8 troops plunder 8 res in 8 hous, with haul flag: 8 troops plunder 9 res in 8.5 hours. Does that give the player any benefit for using a haul flag? hell no, might aswell not equip a flag at all. (obv just a simple example)
Suggestion 5 is more intriguing as an idea. Would you be wanting it to be preset numbers, or random for every barbarian village? Which would be more beneficial and why?
Could be either tbh. Different worlds could have different settings. But for something like that I would like to read up on these settings on the world announcement page.
If it is preset numbers then it is easier to code and faster to implement. If its individual aka random for all barbs then it would definitely be alot funnier though.
Atleast I wouldn't wanna be a neighbor of a barb that constantly builds walls up because the devs decided to have a large amount of barbs this world to focus building walls to 20. Would be cool to see this kind of diversity in this game though. On the other hand if it is random then anything BUT focus on pitlevels on these barbs will automatically be bad again.
The main purpose for those barbs is to plunder them, makes new players build more troops if they see their hauls are good. So if its preset that pitlevels are more likely to be built then I would be happy with this aswell. What I suggested is that they could make some barbs start at a higher level when the world starts. Right now every barb is always only 26p when a new world begins. What if some barbs start at higher levels? (Obviously at a certain level they would have troops residing that players need to defeat first to get looting) They actually have these levels in the game and only use them for Speed worlds.
I think anything from level 0 to 6 on a new world sounds reasonable to me for barbs to have that.
If you use a weighting system then it would look like something like this.
Level 0: Weighting 5000
Level 1: Weighting 500
Level 2: Weighting 350
Level 3: Weighting 200
Level 4: Weighting 100
Level 5: Weighting 50
Level 6: Weighting 10
These are just adjustable numbers, but this would mean one in every 621 barbs will be a (Level 6) 3543 point barb. The player who spawns next to it will have indeed a great time this world that he is gonna remember. I think this kind of randomness would be healthy for this game.
I am not lucky, try it and see for yourself. It's simple logic, nobody is gonna waste precious troops and resources at start of game for small village. Nobody is loosing 4-5 nukes (low moral) to clean 3k village, but whatever, I gave you example on how to make easy flags, but it's easier to complain I guess.
You are complaining about how it's not fair for you now, you've lost your main account and now you have to start over. Well it's your fault (either you forgot pass, or someone changed it I assume?), but I bet if you had account full of max flags you wouldn't be posting here. Btw I gave away account with many flags and 50k prem, and I am not bitching about it, just started all over.
I think here on net I only have yellow flags, maybe few green (I don't need them for what I am doing now) and I don't complain about people who have +18 resources for example, they put in time to play and earn those flags, let them have advantage over me, simple as that,
What's next, completely deactivate haul because new players still don't know how to farm and experienced players are growing too fast due to that? Maybe even disable nobling villages for first few months of server because new players are not familiar with game, and need time to learn it?
1. Have flags as an 'alternate' world setting.
It could be any ratio of worlds (every other one, 2 in every 3 or whatever suits the game best) but could be an option for exploring. This would allow players who are new to have some worlds that, upon joining, won't have an immediate disadvantage from the lack of flags.
2. Alter flag quests.
New accounts could be given an improved selection of flags during the initial startup quests, which accounts who have played on a previous world would not get. In my mind, this would be some flags 2-3 levels higher but of course, that would be a matter of opinion and discussion as well. A new player receiving a yellow flag instead of a grey flag on several occasions immediately begins to address the imbalance between new accounts and older accounts.
3. Starter flag package.
New accounts could be given a package of several flags upon registering (for the purposes of an example, say 15 random flags ranging from red to green). Again, this would ensure new players immediately get put onto a fairer starting platform where they have some more valuable flags to compete with. This particular suggestion I can see being a problem with accounts being used to gain flags and then trade them for less valuable flags (eg luck flags which seem to be unused by many players), so these starter flags I would envisage being locked to an account in a similar manner to premium gained through the market.
In response to 1)
I think this has a couple of issues. Firstly, a new player would have to happen to join when this is the most recent world, or it would be slightly pointless. Therefore if there was 2 flag worlds to 1 non-flag, only 1 in 3 beginners would benefit from this idea (unless there's times of the year when new players are particularly prone to joining and maybe the mods/developers could gain this. They could have the opportunity to Gain flags on these non-flag worlds, but not use them on that particular world obviously. Not a bad idea. However, I really think inno/the developers will never go along with this. It would be financially a poor decision: firstly 1000's of PP daily must be spent on flag packs, secondly think of the PP indirectly spent in events related to flags: warehouse packs are extra great because you can mint cheap, flag boosters are gold dust etc. So I think this would probably never be implemented, and also as I said, if it wasn't every world then it wouldn't help every new player.
In response to 2)
I definitely think this would be a good idea, if it weren't for the exploit-ability. Likewise with 3). Players will find ways to mass-create
accounts (and no they won't always be caught sadly), multi account and then get top level flags instantly. or 3 months down the line if there was a temporary block.
Suggestion
My idea for trying to solve these issues is a slight altering of the above to try to counteract the potential flaws. If you think of issues with it, hit me. Perhaps together we can come up with an entirely bullet proof idea:
-New player joins a world and is given a temporary flag pack that is completely untradeable and the flags will disappear after several weeks:
The flag pack lasts for say 50 game-play days (50 days on speed 1, 25 on speed 2 etc).
The flags are probably yellow level (feel red is too low), and so will give a decent boost while not devaluing the hardwork of older accounts.
What will this do is help to ease the new player through the treacherous start-up stage when, for example, a decent defence flag or res boost flag can give a significant benefit.
As the player survives the world and grows, he will naturally start to accumulate more flags as he goes, and so when his yellow res boost flag disappears after 50 days, he likely will have earned a similar flag anyway.
--> The new account could gain these temporary flags on every world it plays until it reaches a certain point (has already accumulated 1+ yellow flags, multiple villages, goes from being mentee to mentor/whatever. After the account graduates it will no longer gain the pack).
--> This avoids any issues also of trying to farm flags.
--> Also due to the temporary nature, it probably won't lose inno a great deal of revenue with players forgoing purchasing new flags. If someone joins this game and is instantly willing to drop hundreds of PP on flags then tbh, they were going to spend the PP anyway and if they get a good flag and don't buy flag packs, it'll go on other stuff. Not to mention, more new players = more player base = more profit!
Would be interested if someone could highlight issues with this idea so we can reach a better and better solution!
Pointless flags
Haul flags, luck flags. I have never once found these to be any use. There is, that I can think of, 1 theoretical situation in which the haul flag would be optimal (for 24hours), and 1 situation the luck flag would be useful.
--> Haul flag potentially may be useful after attack breaks, early into a world. Villages haven't been farmed for a few days and are full, with ur few lc a haul flag could help to get more full hauls with fewer lc. maybe, maybe it'll give you more res than a 16% boost on mines, I could do arbitrary numbers with regards to say level 15 mines and 100lc and the estimate gains blah blah, kinda pointless and boring.
--> Luck flag useful for the 1 time you have a very accurate/recent scout rep, know what def is in the village, and -25% luck + 7% attack flag would fail to clear and you wouldn't conquer, whereas a -25%+16% luck would. Like literally the 1 situation I can think of where the luck flag is useful. I have never personally used a luck flag. The expected gain of a luck flag is exactly 0%. Which is just mathematically worse than a guaranteed gain of 2% or more.
These flags really need to be removed, or at least altered significantly.
Alter them:
1. Luck
- make it affect loyalty as well, although this would devalue noble boosters, potential money loss for inno at events...
- make it affect scouts (attack flags obviously don't)
- make it always positive (could, or could not cap at 25%, either way it's same for everyone)
- and yeah thats about it, this really sucks please swap it.
2. Haul
- make it also increase scavenging?
- ok yeah I'm out.
Swap them for actual useful flags:
1. Construction booster
2. Faster support travel
3. scavenging boost (more res or reduce time, similar outcome, subtle difference).
4. Increased merchants
^some of these exists an item so it's a slight conflict for inno.
A lot of players are talking about people finding ways to mass-create flags based on suggestion 2. I'd like to challenge that somewhat and explain why this isn't a major issue (and how a temporary / permanent lock of those flags to an account negates the issue entirely).
Flags can't be 'sent' to other accounts. The best that can happen is a like-for-like trade. A player wanting to get rid of 20 grey flags cannot trade them for 20 blue flags. This restriction actually already is a big block to any attempts to 'stockpile' flags and use the suggestion to a player's advantage.
So, this prevents players from using this suggestion to gain more flags. The best they could do is trade a same-level flag for one they would prefer. Which they cannot do directly because it would involve owning two accounts on a single world, which would be a multi-accounting breach.
So, a temporary - or permanent lock - on 'starter flag' packages, or perhaps any flags that aren't earned by ingame actions, would completely negate the perceived issue of leaving this open to abuse.
A lot of players are talking about people finding ways to mass-create flags based on suggestion 2. I'd like to challenge that somewhat and explain why this isn't a major issue (and how a temporary / permanent lock of those flags to an account negates the issue entirely).
Flags can't be 'sent' to other accounts. The best that can happen is a like-for-like trade. A player wanting to get rid of 20 grey flags cannot trade them for 20 blue flags. This restriction actually already is a big block to any attempts to 'stockpile' flags and use the suggestion to a player's advantage.
So, this prevents players from using this suggestion to gain more flags. The best they could do is trade a same-level flag for one they would prefer. Which they cannot do directly because it would involve owning two accounts on a single world, which would be a multi-accounting breach.
1. Trading same level for same level still allows people to funnel. You could make 5 or 10 new beginner accounts on a world (multiple ways of doing this, not going to advertise it on the externals though), do the quests / get the flag packs. 3 months down the line the lock expires and they can trade all their new useful res/coin/attack/whatever flags from the beginner accounts to their big account for Haul/Luck/whatever pointless flags they don’t want.
The flags the beginner gets are a high level naturally, and so this could make a chunk of a difference. 9 of the same yellow flag from X beginner accounts would make 1 dark blue (a pretty high flag by anyone’s standards).
the only way to avoid this would be to have them permanently locked. which isn’t a bad idea really, just a bit peak if the beginner gets 2 luck flags and a haul flag as their ‘“‘good’’’’ flags.
