The problem is they have decided to go for a standard pay 2 win mobile gaming model now. quick worlds with fast wins for people with low attention spans.
I tried the classic world but it's too fast paced to keep up with unless you really have no job. I am sure there will be a lot of older players that want to enjoy the game the way it was, where more than just 4 continents were used and the top20 tribes were all major players for the win. The pay to win crap would definitely need to be diabled for this game to be competitive and fun, otherwise you get stuck with that guy who spent £500 on the game and has 10 villages while still under BP. The person with the most money to burn wins the game, that's not competition or fun.
Tribalwars is in such a sad state right now, if you don't pay through the nose you don't get anywhere and if you want to try a world without pay to win then you're stuck with about 1k players at a speed too fast to really enjoy. It used to be such a fun game, there was plenty of competition and the worlds would take more than 10 minutes to end, I doubt TW will go back there though as I'm sure they are making plenty of money right now to care.
So definitely agree with this 100%.
There is no limitation naturally to how much PP you can buy or spend in a world.
If I happen to be well financially off I can just buy my way through everything and gain a bigger advantage than others.
The other major thing I've noticed is that when Tribal Wars started off everything was about the IRL time it would take for things to get done.
The game since then has progressed more and more away from a game that would take years to complete and build the longstanding relationships with out players, to a game that has the attention span of a 3 year old.
I hear it every single world now, "Man I hope this world ends fast, it's already been 6 months."
6 months back in the day was a drop in the bucket.
This game was about the determination and grit to put in the long hours of attention to detail and strategy.
Now it's just how quickly can we get this done. How can I do this or that faster. Can I pay to make it happen?
Separate the two.
Put those that want to drop money on the game in their own category and worlds and those that don't in a different one where they can actually be competitive.
Also, I do tend to side with the thought that Tribal Wars is a dying game.
They made the highest amount of profit ever this last year of I believe close to $260million.
This is in part due to a smaller base of players, but bigger wallets and the extreme push towards an almost complete Pay 2 Win system.
Slowly but surely the people that can't keep up with paying for premium will quit the game and you'll be stuck with an extremely small base of the same big wallet players, which at that point the competitiveness will completely die off and the game will be shutdown.
How many years that is, idk, could be 1, 5 ,10, or never. It's just my speculation, but the pathway being chosen points directly to that.
The InnoGames parent company has recently gotten big investments into them and they will surely be focusing on producing more mobile platform games than investing into a 17 year old browser game.