Oh, I do. But, actually, the single best farming troop in the game is the Noble. A nuke (say, 3000LC) used to farm with would bring home a maximum of 3000*80 = 240K resources a day. That would be if
all troops went out every day and brought home a full load, no exceptions whatsoever. Even my
best farming villages average just 75% of their potential capacity, or
180K resources a day, and farming is worse on the rim. Also, not every village you own is needed to farm your whole environment. Suppose that only one in nine villages is needed to farm your complete territory. As an active farmer that drops the average farming income yet further, from 180K down to just
20K per day per village owned. Further, if you fail to farm on any given day (holiday or war), those 20K resources are often lost.
On the other hand, a nobleman used to "farm" with brings home nearly 130K resources a day with
no additional effort on your part. This is the daily production of a maxxed village's resource pits. Since a packet costs 83K resources to store and a nobleman "makes" nearly
130K a day for you (by ruling a conquered village), each village you have yields a net surplus of resources. The difference goes (mostly) into troops. The faster you grow, the faster you
continue to grow. Personally, I "farm" with all assets available to me, which means ground troops
and nobles too.
The morale change eliminated an entire tribal battle strategy from W16. At one time during war, a tribe
coveted its small front-line players, and in fact, placed them there on purpose! A 20K/20K stack in a village owned by a target attackers have 33% morale against defends as if it were stacked 60K/60K. :icon_eek: Nowadays, Plight still values its small players, but many tribes no longer do, preferring points over ability.
As for your other statements... lets look at the math.
Many television game and reality shows currently use this
exact format as a method of maintaining viewership of their program. People don't get bored of the show as quickly when the stakes (risk & rewards) become ever greater after each commercial break. TW is not a chess match; it is a pay-to-be-entertained game. As such, it is more likely to follow industry trends that reliably maintain an audience.
False conclusion. Lets do the proof by looking at a world that *just* opened, W43.
Total Villages (on W43) = 27K. Abandoned Villages = 5K.
Now, look at the bar graph rate of change.
Identical, yes? This is NOT because that many players have already quit or restarted in W43... in fact, W43 has only been open 3 days, not even
long enough for a deleted account to go gray. When a world is created, the TWStaff manually "populate" the world, gradually, by ADDING new barbs. The added barbs allow a player to farm and/or noble something
other than each other. Lets look at W42 which is already limiting new enrollment: 50K players and 96K villages. Innogames will add more barbs as well when they re-open W42 for non-premium joining. Does this really 'dumb down' the game? Or, did you
depend on those extra farming resources from nearby grays when you built your first village?
There were never more than 100K accounts, tops, on W16 (I am thinking it was about 78K but my stats-memory is foggy after 21 months, especially when I wasn't paying attention to, nor recording, these kinds of stats back then.) Meh, 99% vs. 99.7%, big deal. :icon_wink: But, the "starting player numbers" come into play further on....
There may be 310K villages on W16, however 240K of these are barbs!
A mere 70K of all villages on W16 are in the hands of live players. The top 80 tribes have, between them all, just 64,456 villages and 639 players.
That is an average of 100 villages per W16 player, not counting those who are tribeless or exist in under-top-80 tribes-of-one (a statistically small one-in-fourteen villages).
(I didn't go below top 80 tribes because most the remaining "data" on the really
small tribes are just glitches in the database.) Every day, more players quit. So, that is 100 new barbs/gifts on W16 per each player who quits. (True, many of the quitting players are small, but the huge players quit too... it evens out).
MK predicted a decline rate of 30% per month on W16, but that trend has slowed. Lets assume it is 25% now for the sake of argument. There are currently 1,122 players on W16 (including pointless players waiting to go gray). 1122 players x 100 villages each (average) x 25% drop out = there will be 28K new gift/barb villages appear in the next month on W16. 840 players will remain to show an interest in them. 840 players x (just under) 1 noble per day = capacity to conquer about 25K villages. The rate at which player occupied villages are vanishing from the game exceeds the rate at which those vacant villages can be conquered.
As a world, W16 has become awash in a sea of gray, and it gets worse every month!
So, ignoring the math above and just looking at currently
occupied villages on W16, the trends show that there are MORE grays on W16 now (240K) than there were
ever players. If 100K players
started W16 and only 70K villages now
belong to players, the grays are
increasing at a rate FAR faster than the population can absorb them! Nobling grays and inactives isn't fun... its sim-city! THAT is what is too easy. :icon_sad:
I'd
rather those villages be occupied by a player who will fight back and do battle... that is what makes the game challenging and exciting. But... tribes MUST noble out barbs and inactives in their territory. Why? As the math presented in the C² vs. LSHRV thread clearly shows, the real gains in war conquers are made against the inactives and not against the players who are fighting back. So, to protect themselves, a tribe must not leave weak links in their harbor defense chain. But, under the current system, the weak links (barbs/gifts) are growing faster that ANY tribe's ability to repair the rot. That applies to aggressors as well as defenders.
SO... that brings us to a needful solution. 240K barbs and 1K players, and the numbers get ever more staggering every month. Even if not one single player left W16 after today, and every last player was 100% active and actually nobled one village per day, it would take
eight months to noble them all. And, you KNOW (even with the self-updating maps broken again) that I am the only player on W16 with a noble rate of 1 full village per day. You KNOW that player attrition will continue. You know the growth of barbs will continue to exceed the nobles available to the remaining population of W16 players. Since tribes cannot
avoid being forced to manage the growing population of grays/gifts to stay secure, and the growing problem requires more noble assets than the game provides, tribes spend more time dealing with routine territorial management and less time engaged in genuine battle. I thought the 'challenge of the fight' was what are
here for, no?
W16 is losing its challenge as a game of combat strategy and has become a game of asset management. Look at the enoblement record of the
duke of EVERY leading tribe: myself, Rag1, Zvone1979, Kerbogha... even Endemonadia! An occasional war capture, but as more and more players quit W16, our personal enoblement records have become
almost entirely grays/gifts. Why? Is it because we can't fight? Or don't want to?
Heck no! Like the ancient rulers of one of the most impregnable and sought after territories in history, Constantinople, leaders must try their utmost to keep the chain that guards their harbor free of weak links. It is how they protect and serve their tribe. As the C² vs LSHRV war clearly shows, a tribe suffers the most casualties when the links in its defensive chain are weak. The demands of managing INFRASTRUCTURE are currently exceeding the ability of remaining W16 players to get about the REAL business of Tribal Wars...
WARS!
So... is there anything that could fix this issue and serious threat to the enjoyability of W16?
Blitzen09's assessment is flawless, no misconceptions or misrepresentation of facts. Consider this: even if no one on this server
ever quit again, if everyone on this server was suddenly 100% active and 100% aggressive (like that would EVER happen?), and if we NEVER attacked any other player again and -only- took barbs from here on out ... it would take
8 months (see above) to fill up this world! :icon_eek:
Personally, I would RATHER
fight worthy opponents and face
real challenges than spend my "entertainment time" just managing assets. The *current* noble availability rate actually PROMOTES the long term survivability of 'spineless players who cannot cut it' (to paraphrase MK). The ever-growing sea of gray that W16 has become adrift within allows such players the freedom to go about their shameful existences virtually unfettered. There are not enough remaining nobles "budgetted" by attackers to oppose ("rim") any sizeable target any longer. Think about it... how often
are players in a war actually
rimmed nowadays? Wars are no longer fought for villages; they are fought for players. The unwanted who are left behind, who do not quit, continue to exist because the nobles required to remove them are needed elsewhere to maintain a tribe's infrastructure. If we WANT to remove the under-skilled, those who are "lazy and grossly incompetent players" (to quote MK), we need a tool to do it with!
Bottom line: a vote
for half-priced packets is a vote for
MORE WAR, LESS WHORE! Half priced FUTURE packet storage will do *nothing* to cause an imbalance between players who have stored thousands and players who's academies are empty.... it will affect all players equally, just as Blitzen09 presented it. Furthermore, the "lazy and grossly incompetent players" will continue in their sloppy mismanagement habits and will gain no advantage from the change. The players who stand to benefit are the aggressive ones; the players who will be enabled to stop the fruitless chore of mending weak chain links and take the field of battle in conquest once again!! Isn't THAT what we want?