Feedback Game Updates

SwedishBlueCheese

Non-stop Poster
Reaction score
1,052
" A majority of them, we are sure actually are but it became impossible for us to prove it. InnoGames maintains a strict policy that we do not ban people we are not sure about "

Something about your "we got logs but wont tell you shit" policy got changed?
 

Voodoo.

Non-stop Poster
Reaction score
147
Thanks for the in-depth explanation @JawJaw, I was wondering if using apps like BlueStacks so I can use "Mobile version" on desktop is allowed to continue a fluid co-play of which we are on the same timezone. This effects the account I play on for 125 somewhat and am looking for ways to continue playing with those guys.
 

Vanquisher.

Member
Reaction score
13
Alright, to get some stuff out of the way here, as I see people discussing things using screenshots of parts of conversations instead of the full conversations or are just making assumptions without understanding.

First of all - we understand the frustration regarding this change. It is nothing we didn't expect. It is something we have discussed internally for months exactly because if its popularity, but it had to happen. Whether or not you agree with that is a different story. We totally understand using the browser and steam sessions became a thing since we introduced Steam at the end of 2020.

Somewhat ironically, back then many people reported the ability to use the browser and steam version at the same time a bug or an exploit, and even more people actually reported this as 'cheating'. In the very beginning we did not yet see a huge problem with this possibility and just decided to 'let it be'. Let's let the community use it as they please, somewhat in line with our "tolerance" towards co-playing (despite it being against the rules in the strictest sense). Us allowing this to happen of course grew the portion of players (including all of yourselves), to actively use this on a daily basis. It is actually funny when you think about it - our original good intent to give you what you want bites us in the ass right now.

Soon after however we started noticing an increased amount of users using certain abilities in a botting way. We can't go into details on this without revealing how or what (which bot-creators would be happy to read). This immediately brings us to our first constraint. We need to make changes sometimes that we can't explain. Such information is exactly what bot-creators want from us, and they'll be using this against us, further ruining your game with their bots.

Anyway, we watched for a while and this portion of 'unprovable' bot-users grew more and more, simply because of certain functionalities (again, can't go into details). The problem however was that due to this ability, our fight against botting became harder and harder, even impossible.
On a daily basis, we investigate and track dozens of players for potential botting. A majority of them, we are sure actually are but it became impossible for us to prove it. InnoGames maintains a strict policy that we do not ban people we are not sure about. We do make mistakes, and we try to rectify them, but on the moment of banning, we are always sure. Depending on the appeal, new items may come to light that makes us reconsider. However, on the total amount of bans we place (for botting), the amount of reversing is very low.

Going back to the main story, more and more bots are being used worldwide and this is also something that led to more and more complaints from players against botting. Botting that we couldn't prove.

This change makes the fight easier again. We will be able to prove big portions of botting again. This change ensures that we can take away a big amount of botters from our game again. Will this be all botters? No, definitely not. If you believe in a game where cheating doesn't happen, botting doesn't happen, ... then you need a reality check. We will never achieve 100% 'fair-play'. We can however try working towards 100% with all we got!
We also never said anywhere that this change will remove all the botting that is happening.

It basically comes down to this - we have rules against cheating, and we don't have rules that support co-playing. We have had this discussion in the past. While we are aware co-playing happens, it will never be a factor in our decisions to limit rule-breaking or create game features. This will only become one once we do support co-playing (and if ever). We are open for suggestions regarding this, in our Thinktank forums for example, but as long as there are no supported ways for co-playing, we will not be taking this into consideration for changes to the game, and definitely not if this harms our ability to fight cheats.

To wrap up this big bunch of text - we totally and truly understand you guys. There is not a person at InnoGames or the team that doesn't understand the consequences for you. That is exactly why it took so long to get done. It is however a necessary evil if we want to fight bots. There is no other way of putting this. It is necessary. I already know many of you will start flaming right after I post this message and/or insinuate that you just gotta trust us.... Well... yeah. Sadly you do. We can't give you details, some of you also don't understand the technical parts anyway, so whatever we say here is just going to end up with you doubting it. We accept that. We understand that.

As our senior developer, morthy, pointed out yesterday - considering Tribal Wars on Steam was initially a test project to work on a framework to allow our games to be embedded in Steam and Microsoft store (which has been hugely successful for InnoGames), we never expected or wanted our current players to move over to using Steam. At best, this would bring in a new audience. For this reason, we are willing to risk that you stop using Steam, if that means we can effectively fight a big portion of botters again.

We know. We understand. We accept.


I hope this clarified (somewhat) our reasons. I am sure it will still leave a big portion of you unsatisfied. Probably for some this will just lead to even more negative comments or "doubt"-messages. Again - we accept that but it is not a discussion we are going to continue having. It is your right to not believe us when we say it is for the good of the game, but you also need to understand that InnoGames is a business. It is not in our advantage to remove a useful tool such as Steam "for no reason". At most, we may have made some shitty decisions about changes, game features, but we haven't removed stuff "just because".

This is a typical case where we had good intentions, but the 0.1% ruined it for the 99.9% by abusing the mechanisms. I'm sorry.

If steam is still allowed than how are those bots being stopped shouldn't steam be banned all together if thats the reason?
Only thing I can think of would be that people use bots more often because they can still play them selfs in browsers when the bot is using steam or visa versa.

But besides that for me personally I would be fine with having troop movements being disabled on steam when the browser is in use.
Is this something that would be a solution to tackle the bots but still allow some kind of simultaneous play time.
And if that isn't enough would spectator mode be a option? It would already be nice to be able to check on things when my co is playing without having to kick them for it.
 

SwedishBlueCheese

Non-stop Poster
Reaction score
1,052
c8ca7713c3d6c5df0f7b15c8fed7cb7f.png


This sticks out to much. May it be possible to change it to being highlighted WHEN muted and not as standard. Hard to see whats newly posted in
 

JawJaw

Awesomest CM Ever
Reaction score
2,215
@JawJaw how is this forum tagging works? We can't tag each other on the tribe.

As far as I can see, you can use either:
@[player]name[/player] to tag a player
@[ally]name[/ally] to tag members of a tribe
@all to tag everyone in the tribe

There is no visual change (for example @all is displayed as just text), as far as I can see. Could you please try this out and let me know? I did a quick test on EN126 and seems to work.
 

Say Bye

Non-stop Poster
Reaction score
300
As far as I can see, you can use either:
@[player]name[/player] to tag a player
@[ally]name[/ally] to tag members of a tribe
@all to tag everyone in the tribe

There is no visual change (for example @all is displayed as just text), as far as I can see. Could you please try this out and let me know? I did a quick test on EN126 and seems to work.

Thanks!
 

supergeek

New Member
Reaction score
0
I know there has already been a fair amount of chatter about the new forum mute functionality, but I need to add my weight behind the criticism (in a good way).

The forum mute functionality needs to be more subtle (maybe grey instead of the red?). Right now it is just killing my eyes. Also, placement may be a bit questionable, it is too easy to accidentally click that option.

In saying all of that, it is a nice new feature, but lets just implement it properly.

Thank you!
 

JawJaw

Awesomest CM Ever
Reaction score
2,215
Think it would be better to have it to the right of "replies" column, might not mess up with the view as much.
c8ca7713c3d6c5df0f7b15c8fed7cb7f.png


This sticks out to much. May it be possible to change it to being highlighted WHEN muted and not as standard. Hard to see whats newly posted in

Thanks for the feedback guys. We've changed this in today's update. It now looks like:
1648482431531.png
Making it more subtle but still doing what's needed :) Muted threads will also show slightly faded.
We hope you like this change more?
 

SwedishBlueCheese

Non-stop Poster
Reaction score
1,052
Im just here to bump the QoL updates that was suggested to the newly added X fields from coords.

4fe3f6db583db259ce11c4a6207cd6d5.png



Would like some more settings to this like Not X amount of fields from. Right now it only puts close vills but for example if i want to make a BL group i want to use my FL vills coords and do X amount of fields THAT are not close to it. Just as the other dynami group settings got some kind of variatons of the same thing
 

Deleted User - 10017355

Guest
Commands
  • A bug that didn't show the full information of a shared command to others was fixed.
Whatever this bug was, can we replicate it and reintroduce it to have a less cluttered popup on the map? The addition of the village name to a shared command adds additional, often irrelevant information to a popup which previously provided clear, useful info only (most of which also have toggles, this doesn't).
 

Eakshow McGee

Still Going Strong
Reaction score
974
Commands
  • A bug that didn't show the full information of a shared command to others was fixed.
Whatever this bug was, can we replicate it and reintroduce it to have a less cluttered popup on the map? The addition of the village name to a shared command adds additional, often irrelevant information to a popup which previously provided clear, useful info only (most of which also have toggles, this doesn't).

Learn to use Command Renamers, the bug was that it didnt show renamed commands to others, so you just saw the player name and nothing else, which is pretty worthless information. Dont want to see renamed commands on pop-up etc? I think suggestions is the place :rolleyes:
 
Top