Tribal Wars, A Dying Game?

[DeletedUser]

Do account id's go up only 1 per account, or do they go up a lot more than that. On another game I play, I was id 105846, and I know that the player next up to me on the list of registered players was like 105855 or something.

I'm quite sure it goes up by 1, it did that on co.uk start.

 

[DeletedUser]

Varying the worlds is one of the better aspects of the way TW is organized, as it allows the game to cater to different customer bases, getting some bigger variables into the mix would at the same time be a decent way to counter for the effect of players not bothering to stay on a world because they know a new one is around the corner, lets face it, different speeds and a unit/ building extra doesn't make the biggest changes in gameplay o.o

And I like the idea of a smaller world, though if too small you risk a world finishing before it's properly started, though half-sized worlds and the like might be a good way to go, throw in some form of clear goal, e.g "when a tribe reaches X% dominance the world will enter a countdown, and if the tribe still has X% dominance at the end of the countdown they win". why don't we atleast ask innogames if they can make having an end/ smaller world a feature, and try it out on a few worlds? I'm pretty sure this would be a good way for the game to gain some ground in new gamer bases

There are numerous smaller world discussions already in place, and its never actually been tried out. Other servers, although I dont know which ones, do have smaller worlds simply because they have fewer people playing

 

[DeletedUser656]

But the statistics on the stats page are right right? Since you can access them via the linky and i bothered to add all worlds up i got ~750k. The point remains.

That's a really, really inaccurate way of doing it. If a player plays on 25 worlds, you count them as 25 players instead of 1. If I remember correctly the 800k+ figure was due to a bug which prevented inactive accounts from being deleted. When the bug was fixed, and we manually ran a script to clear out all the in-actives the number dropped by 300-400k in one night.

The account ID system is also flawed, there's a gap of around 3.5 million with no accounts from around 3.5 mill to 7 mill.

 

[DeletedUser]

I'm quite sure it goes up by 1, it did that on co.uk start.

Is it the same for uk and .net? It probably is, but who knows.

Anyways, if it is based on ip's then theyre really screwed because if coplaying is going up, that shouldnt effect the number at all, since both ip's would still be there.

 

[DeletedUser]

That's a really, really inaccurate way of doing it. If a player plays on 25 worlds, you count them as 25 players instead of 1. If I remember correctly the 800k+ figure was due to a bug which prevented inactive accounts from being deleted. When the bug was fixed, and we manually ran a script to clear out all the in-actives the number dropped by 300-400k in one night.

The account ID system is also flawed, there's a gap of around 3.5 million with no accounts from around 3.5 mill to 7 mill.

Umm, ok. :/
Though, technically the 1 poor guy IS 25 players, since it has 25 active accounts with the possibility of all of them using PA. Or 24 in actives and 1 active. Meh. ._.

The ID gap isn't that huge it's more like 5 mio to 7.
/has several alias' with ~4.8 mio as the ID.

 

[DeletedUser]

There are numerous smaller world discussions already in place, and its never actually been tried out. Other servers, although I dont know which ones, do have smaller worlds simply because they have fewer people playing

I've played on some national worlds where you only get a 4x4 map, and in my experience it alone doesn't make a big difference, especially since you still have the (slowly) growing rim which never manage to become very attractive to noble in due to large amounts of inactives/ small villages. if you actually get a filled up 16 K map with people who all started at more or less the same time you would most likely see a different kind of world than the ones who just don't really fill up. The small-due-to-lack-of-players worlds are actually even worse than a filled up one, as whatever experienced players win through in the core will face close to no competition from the rim players, meaning that the entire thing just fizzes out without much else happening. I will still say that the combination of a small world with a potential finish would be a lot more attractive together than they will be alone, at least to me

 

[DeletedUser]

I've played on some national worlds where you only get a 4x4 map, and in my experience it alone doesn't make a big difference, especially since you still have the (slowly) growing rim which never manage to become very attractive to noble in due to large amounts of inactives/ small villages. if you actually get a filled up 16 K map with people who all started at more or less the same time you would most likely see a different kind of world than the ones who just don't really fill up. The small-due-to-lack-of-players worlds are actually even worse than a filled up one, as whatever experienced players win through in the core will face close to no competition from the rim players, meaning that the entire thing just fizzes out without much else happening. I will still say that the combination of a small world with a potential finish would be a lot more attractive together than they will be alone, at least to me

Oh no, I wasnt disagreeing or anything, just saying they do have them out there, and there is dicussion about one on .net, it just never happened here. I would definitely join a smaller world here.

 

[busamad]

The game was not thought out very well. When things happened in game it took ages for an answer from the makers.

The 2 big examples are:
Nobles in late game does anyone in charge know how boring it is always having 50% plus of nukes at home due to no nobles letting players who never attack grow faster than players who do attack others.

The end game. DNY will get the world closed soon but should that not have happened a long time ago?

Now they have let things drift along for so long they have a major problem in changing things around.

We also see new worlds which do nothing to help new players as pointed out the number of targets for a player are less now which means more players leave due to not gaining any ground.

This happens far too fast in game due to co playing & grow barbs just look how many players who know very little about the game feel the need for a co player to try & get ahead.
I also noticed loads of players on W51 using multi ID's just to try & find that area which will give them a chance to do well.

Also world speed that has now gone above this "One" setting that would never happen having faster worlds makes it even harder for the average player to do well.

For me reduce the number of full worlds that open.

Look after the HP world & make sure that what is said does happen that they pump out a new world every 3 months without fail which will give any start up player a quick fix.

 

[DeletedUser]

Oh no, I wasnt disagreeing or anything, just saying they do have them out there, and there is dicussion about one on .net, it just never happened here. I would definitely join a smaller world here.

just wanted to make the point that there is a difference between a planned small world and a world that was "supposed" to be big but turned out small I guess I'll go n look up the other discussions so that this topic can go back to the main point

 

[Michael Corleone.]

I think what is being overlooked here is that traffic for TW has been down, and has been declining over the years.

 

[DeletedUser]

And we are discussing those problems and ways to solve them

Yes - as you pointed out, advertisements are down and that is a major problem, but thats not something we can really do anything about.

The other major point was that new players simply arent staying around, not all of them anyways. The more experienced players going from world to world dominate, blowing away the new players, and we are left with the same old ones world after world. We are discussing ways out of that continuous cycle, because it does nothing good for the game

 

[DeletedUser]

Varying the worlds is one of the better aspects of the way TW is organized, as it allows the game to cater to different customer bases, getting some bigger variables into the mix would at the same time be a decent way to counter for the effect of players not bothering to stay on a world because they know a new one is around the corner, lets face it, different speeds and a unit/ building extra doesn't make the biggest changes in gameplay o.o

And I like the idea of a smaller world, though if too small you risk a world finishing before it's properly started, though half-sized worlds and the like might be a good way to go, throw in some form of clear goal, e.g "when a tribe reaches X% dominance the world will enter a countdown, and if the tribe still has X% dominance at the end of the countdown they win". why don't we atleast ask innogames if they can make having an end/ smaller world a feature, and try it out on a few worlds? I'm pretty sure this would be a good way for the game to gain some ground in new gamer bases

Varying worlds is great as long as worlds are also closing down so there's not too many worlds opened at once.

I personally like the idea of smaller worlds, would love to try it at least, personally I feel a year term on a speed 2 world is plenty of time to see how a world is going to turn out. You rarely see a world 'play' out after that, you mostly just see the top tribes move on, and other tribes fill the gap, until they become large enough that they also move on.

That said if the term was a year, you'd either have to increase resource production (creates a lot more troops/packets), or reduce the cost of nobles (more packets), so that worlds could play out in a year, and/or limit their size so as to keep the competition bubbling. Do away with growing barbs too, creates far too many villages that people would rather noble, which also increases how long it takes for a world to play out.

 

[DeletedUser]

Only grow barbs to like 1500 then, great for early farming, and speeds up growth early, without being something people want to noble

 

[DeletedUser91937]

TW has become a boring same old same old game over the past few worlds. Nothing has changed greatly, and the things that have changed (Army Camps) sucked as well.

I agree with 'AreYouKidden'. A smaller world in my opinion could bring more players back as they can see an endgame to the world.

Possibly, if you had a 4K*4K World. This would mean you have 160000 fields. Equaling out to about 10K fields per K. I this is an ample amount of fields which would equate to a decent amount of players per K. It increases the density of the world making it more action packed and faster.

It also gives the player something to play for and actually achieving the win of the world. Instead of the same as the rest of the worlds where they will just slowly finish.

I also think more attention is being put into InnoGames' other new games. Such as Grepolis and The West.

But of course this is just my thoughts.
/Ollie

 

[DeletedUser]

Regarding the core>rim problem, would a possible solution of implementing a system where growing speed of barbs barbs increases gradually towards the rim be valid? This would mean those that start in core have let's say 1k barb towns while they are in their nobling stage, while those completely on the rim have 9k barbs when they get to nobling stage. This would even up the disadvantage of players starting late on the rim. The core players would be at let's say 20 towns surrounded by 3k bars, while the new players on the rim would be surrounded by 9k barbs, giving them chance to farm more, and expand faster, to catch up with the core. Again, just an idea, not sure how valid its implementation would be.

And let's not forget something else - the recent increase in premium price, but not only that, as the main problem with that increase is that it forces people to buy premium with credit cards, in large bundles. I know dozen of players on .hr servers who were buying their premium with SMS - now they don't play anymore because they don't have a credit card, and buying with SMS is too expensive.

To try and sum up some of the points mentioned so far:

1. Lack of good marketing

- this is something InnoGames need to solve. My suggestion would be ride the FaceBook train, make something up so TribalWar mentions get enough 'likes' to spread around, what some of us on Croatian servers are doing is spreading the link for TW around Facebook and inviting friends to try it out. I hate social networks but sadly they are the best way of marketing something these days

2. Better tutorials for new players

The current 9 or 11 pages tutorial box that opens when starting a world really doesn't do anything to help new players with the game. The regular person probably won't go on public forums, to search for tutorials and advices. Even if they see couple of them, they probably won't be arsed to read a bunch of text. My suggestion would be video guides, done in progressively advanced notion. Start with basic stuff, then move towards the more complex. Nag the new player with links to it, be boring, but make sure they take some time and go through those tutorials. Let them see the benefits of premium account at least in that way.


3. Worlds with ending

I think many would like this, have worlds last 1.5 years as a fixed dead line, and possibly have a survey around that time for possible extension of that date. Make smaller worlds, with incentive for players to keep playing it. I would imagine players would feel more proud if their accomplishments were uniquely linked to their profile, so whatever the world they are playing, along the 'You pillaged most villages today', there were awards like 'Most aggressive player of w25', 'Best defender of w34', 'Rank 3 player of w16'...It might even give some incentive for those world hoppers to stick with one nickname and fewer worlds, so their list of accomplishments show their achievements.


4. More friendly worlds for newer players

Make worlds where farming doesn't have that much effect on the world by reducing unit hauling capacities, and increase pits resource production. Set up a world with no premium (not sure if that would be financially valid). Try to implement a world where barbs gradually grow towards the rim, so the players who start late can catch up with core players.



Will add few more if I remember something new

 

[DeletedUser]

Varying worlds is great as long as worlds are also closing down so there's not too many worlds opened at once.

I personally like the idea of smaller worlds, would love to try it at least, personally I feel a year term on a speed 2 world is plenty of time to see how a world is going to turn out. You rarely see a world 'play' out after that, you mostly just see the top tribes move on, and other tribes fill the gap, until they become large enough that they also move on.

That said if the term was a year, you'd either have to increase resource production (creates a lot more troops/packets), or reduce the cost of nobles (more packets), so that worlds could play out in a year, and/or limit their size so as to keep the competition bubbling. Do away with growing barbs too, creates far too many villages that people would rather noble, which also increases how long it takes for a world to play out.

I'm not too sure how much a direct time limit on a world would help, as there's generally massive variations in how long it takes for the world to reach it's "finished" form, in my opinion it would be better to instead say that after say.. half a year, the admin comes in and puts an end date decided by how long they estimate it will take until a winner becomes apparent. this would allow them to put an early date for a world where there's only a few tribes that competes, and a longer one for the worlds where there are more tribes that have a chance of reaching the top spot.

a one year world would pretty much have to be speed 2, or start with half/ constant priced packages, otherwise people wouldn't be able to noble each other in time for the deadline, no mater how motivated they might be

Edit: I really like the whole world achievement thing, it would be a good way of both getting people to stick it out until the world ends (assuming it does end) and it will be a nice way to archive the players who achieved something, instead of just having all their stats deleted with their accs :/

 

[DeletedUser]

I think a decline is inevitable and catering to new players is only going to drive away current players. What would be beneficial is to strongly encourage restarting in order to get a well developed rim going where the talent level is lower. There is a certain percentage of players who just quit or linger and get catted down once they start getting farmed. If they were to get an automated message suggesting they restart it might keep the interest going long enough to get hooked and the more casual atmosphere on the rim should also make for a more competitive game. Suggesting that players vassal up is not a solution as the ultimate result is they will invest time only to be taken out in a flash and with little chance to fight. Devoting time just to get pwned by the much larger and better players around you will not get return business and is more likely to lead to negative word of mouth about trying out TW.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think a decline is inevitable and catering to new players is only going to drive away current players. What would be beneficial is to strongly encourage restarting in order to get a well developed rim going where the talent level is lower. There is a certain percentage of players who just quit or linger and get catted down once they start getting farmed. If they were to get an automated message suggesting they restart it might keep the interest going long enough to get hooked and the more casual atmosphere on the rim should also make for a more competitive game. Suggesting that players vassal up is not a solution as the ultimate result is they will invest time only to be taken out in a flash and with little chance to fight. Devoting time just to get pwned by the much larger and better players around you will not get return business and is more likely to lead to negative word of mouth about trying out TW.

Im not sure what you mean here. On W47, I am the rim. Like I am legit, touching the rim, or at least can see it on my small map (non premium map I mean). Yet I managed, with 2 logins a day, no scripts, etc, to at this point be ranked about 120th in the world. I would be a top 40 member in every Top 10 tribe, and a top 20 member in about the bottom half of them. If I was active, especially if I was still farming, I would likely be top 100, who knows how high up there. Starting on the rim doesnt mean instant fail - it actually means easier targets.

And I have also done my best to get some players learning. A few players out here I have now got in my tribe, this is their first world. They began as barb noblers, and to be honest, I was only having them up to noble once their villas got higher, but I eventually decided to be nice and let them join the tribe. A couple of them are excelling of late, and another is doing well enough to be considered a solid player, the type that makes up the large middle class of TW players. So like I said, starting on the rim isnt a terrible fate, unless it is far into the world, hard to give an exact time due to differing speeds.

 

[DeletedUser]

I'm not too sure how much a direct time limit on a world would help, as there's generally massive variations in how long it takes for the world to reach it's "finished" form, in my opinion it would be better to instead say that after say.. half a year, the admin comes in and puts an end date decided by how long they estimate it will take until a winner becomes apparent. this would allow them to put an early date for a world where there's only a few tribes that competes, and a longer one for the worlds where there are more tribes that have a chance of reaching the top spot.

a one year world would pretty much have to be speed 2, or start with half/ constant priced packages, otherwise people wouldn't be able to noble each other in time for the deadline, no mater how motivated they might be

Edit: I really like the whole world achievement thing, it would be a good way of both getting people to stick it out until the world ends (assuming it does end) and it will be a nice way to archive the players who achieved something, instead of just having all their stats deleted with their accs :/

I agree, not sure a direct time limit would help, but if you structure your worlds so they come to completion faster, it accomplishes the same thing.
If a world takes 3 years to close now, then make them 1/3 price nobles, or increase the world speed from 1 to 3.

Regarding the core>rim problem, would a possible solution of implementing a system where growing speed of barbs barbs increases gradually towards the rim be valid? This would mean those that start in core have let's say 1k barb towns while they are in their nobling stage, while those completely on the rim have 9k barbs when they get to nobling stage. This would even up the disadvantage of players starting late on the rim. The core players would be at let's say 20 towns surrounded by 3k bars, while the new players on the rim would be surrounded by 9k barbs, giving them chance to farm more, and expand faster, to catch up with the core. Again, just an idea, not sure how valid its implementation would be

At first glance, I really like this idea.
It'd be interesting I think also if you came into a world late, and just became one of the barbs on the rim, there'd be some logistics to work out with people attacking those barbs, but I'm sure you could find one without an attack history to stick a player into, so they have a developed village, and can get started up much faster, then having to build from 50 points when the world is already developed.

 

[DeletedUser]

Or simply continue growing starting players vils. Early on the village size for starting players goes up a little. It should just keep going up, in my opinion. You will always be behind the core players, but you wont be sitting there for a few weeks farming all night trying to get ne village up to size