I wish harsher punishments for MAing/botting + some game rule clarifications

    Quote from CarloIT

    If the problem is the money to keep up the servers I am more than sure if you made a funding campaign you will find funds even from retired players that would easily come back if they knew the game became enjoyable again.

    off topic: Im working in data-analytics. On occasion we have clients willing to know what they can do to attract more customers. So, we do the analytics and present them the exact solution, lets say A.. There is a certain type of clients who react in the following way: "Oh, thats interesting, but we dont have budget to implement solution A. Can you please "re-calculate" your analytics so it would suggest B? We would like to do B. We have budget for B. We want to implement B".

    Sometimes, they care about the problems only on paper. They just want to make nice presentation for their bosses to show them, that they are doing a perfect job. Because they are doing shitty job...

    My guess is, this could be the same story in Munich as well. We all know what the problem is and what the solution should be. Except of TK-Management Team. They are probably celebrating the growing number of new "accounts".

    Quote from CarloIT

    Now this aged well I guess, what is it a year and 3 months that "we are going to do a lot" and "will try to understand our players a bit more"? I don't want to be offensive, but if the progress has been negative, then probably there is something wrong with the approach, isn't there? "give a second chance before being too harsh" Player gets banned 2 times in 2 days, loses barely any population, that he easily gains back in less than a day with gold and resources from multi accounts, but that's a "second chance" I guess. Education theory doesn't look like it has a great effect, but I could be wrong... Now, could I get told a reason why I shouldn't start abusing multi accounts myself other than being superior both as an individual and as a player? I just want to hear one good reason why I shouldn't, as it becomes close to impossible to one against who does, and that is making the whole community quit, as server population shows. If the problem is the money to keep up the servers I am more than sure if you made a funding campaign you will find funds even from retired players that would easily come back if they knew the game became enjoyable again. But that is not contemplated in your plans, you just want to make money as soon as possible, which makes me guess you are planning to shut the game down, as I can't see any other reason why you wouldn't invest a little for a couple months in order to start getting a growing community back. How many players have started one server and quit because they couldn't find any kingdom willing to take them, as they could be suspected of being multi accounts? Did you really not think that the community can't grow if this keeps being the status of the game? If you need help from the community make a player council, get in touch with the members and discuss with them what changes could help the server itself, it could be elected by the community between players that have been around for a long time and have never been punished for cheating etc. You would get infinite tips on how to fix issues and improve the game, because some players do know this game extraordinarily well. I don't think I am amongst them of course, but I know some people that have more game knowledge that you would ever expect. I hope you will consider this, I am always open for dms either here or on discord, I am willing to put in as much work as I can to improve this game, which I sincerely love, so, please, give us an answer, a real answer for once. An answer that comes from people first and then from money makers, as that issue could be solved as I explained earlier. Please, the community is slowly becoming less and less populated, answer us, tell us something. I have had a ticket open for 4 days, with no answer, but that's alright, I suppose Black Swan is working or is busy, I am not saying this is the issue. The issue is we need answers, we need to see that something happens, we need to see a change, or sooner rather than later this game will die, maybe someone will make it again if the code becomes open source, I don't know if it will ever happen or not, but either way, please don't let it die, please answer us, tell us something, open your ears to our suggestions, for this game not to disappear completely.


    BridgetB  Unknown  Black Swan please, we need answers, and you are the only ones that can give them to us.


    Carlo#5464 is my discord tag, if anyone, especially of the people above, wants to speak about this. Yet again, please give us an answer.

    carlo you were wrong to ask this thing to black swan, you have to make her friends ask her to whom she satisfies all the whims, even against the rules! for everyone else it just closes conversations without replying, so good wishes if you hope to have answers or even action!

    Quote from Presequencer#EN

    off topic: Im working in data-analytics. On occasion we have clients willing to know what they can do to attract more customers. So, we do the analytics and present them the exact solution, lets say A.. There is a certain type of clients who react in the following way: "Oh, thats interesting, but we dont have budget to implement solution A. Can you please "re-calculate" your analytics so it would suggest B? We would like to do B. We have budget for B. We want to implement B".

    Sometimes, they care about the problems only on paper. They just want to make nice presentation for their bosses to show them, that they are doing a perfect job. Because they are doing shitty job...

    My guess is, this could be the same story in Munich as well. We all know what the problem is and what the solution should be. Except of TK-Management Team. They are probably celebrating the growing number of new "accounts".

    ^this, ye. Never trust statistics you didnt fake yourself- meanwhile TK doesnt even pretend to fake the statistics or care, they just derp off on minimum life support and eat peoples money ;D

    I had a hard time reading this. Paragraph next time, please.


    The game will not end. Not in the next year or two, at least. They are still making money. It doesn't really matter how many players there are, there will always be the big spenders who will just keep spending and buy tons of gold for each server they play, and then buy some more for their multi accounts.


    I think the biggest problem with the multi accounts is that there is no way to get things done. You accuse someone of being multi - how are devs even supposed to check if your only evidence is a screenshot of player raiding another player or two players playing from the same IP. Devs will always give players the benefit of the doubt. Innocent before proven guilty.


    They don't seem to have an anti hacking software or anything of the sort. I truly don't understand anything about this kind of thing, but I remember, a few years ago, there was a free bot everyone was using to farm, and nobody got caught. All top farmers in 3x servers were using it. Nothing happened to them.


    I don't support multi accounting, but suppose you are playing some other game, hypothetically ,of course, and people are playing against the rules and beating you, it would the best option for you to just do the same, instead of waiting for that other game to improve and do something against those people.


    Real problem, in my opinion, is the big kingdoms. Every server has one huge kingdom that just forces people to join it - or destroy them. It's possible to beat them but they are too much. The game has many flaws in it and it's not quite possible to change this (or at least I don't see a way to).


    Again, I do NOT support cheating, botting or any activity that is against the rules of travian kingdoms.

    Thank you very much for the candid message CarloIT.


    I will start saying that you don't have to worry about the game ending, as far as I know, internally it is doing alright and it is here to stay.


    Regarding your question of why you should not cheat, there are many reasons, it is against the rules, you will probably get caught and banned, ethics, and a long etc.


    But the main one, even if you would do that, cheat and get away with it... what would be the achievement?

    You may win a game world, but it will be worth nothing... you will know you cheated, you will not have any pride in the achievement, since it will be worthless knowing that you don't deserve it.


    What we have to do is join and defeat the cheats thought the game and multihunting. Clean playing gamers have to join to defeat cheats.


    On our side we will keep improving things to make sure we offer clean fair game worlds, I honestly think we are doing much better than a few years back, and as we gain more experience and knowledge things will keep improving.


    And if we need to improve our tools, I don't know about that so I cannot answer you, but if it is the case, I am sure the CSR will be in touch with the devs to achieve that. It may take longer for that type of fix, but what ever is needed we will do.


    Regarding having a community representative, if you want to, it is easily done, go ahead and talk with the community and organize it, but right now everyone in the community has easy access to me and I assure you everything that reaches me goes to the whole team.


    So the whole team is aware of your concerns, and we will be looking at things to improve future wise... you just have to understand some things take longer to implement and to be seen through your perspective than through ours.


    For a long time players said we didn't care and we didn't fix things like vacation and menhir for xxx reasons, but, we kept on going and we reached a position were we could implement improvements and we did. Now no body talks about that any longer since it has improved.

    I guess we have the same situation with this, we internally will keep working at it and eventually things will be much better and the community will understand that and stop talking about that, instead concentrating on other aspects of the game. :)


    From my part I can assure you I will keep on pushing for player's requests, since that is what I am passionate about... knowing that your requests are put into practice in game when ever possible and seeing your satisfaction when that happens.

    Quote from Presequencer#EN

    My guess is, this could be the same story in Munich as well. We all know what the problem is and what the solution should be. Except of TK-Management Team. They are probably celebrating the growing number of new "accounts".


    Sorry I have missed a lot over the last week, I have been away ill, but, reading this I had to answer since it is just not true.


    I assure you we care and we want to do the right thing here, but sometimes doing the right thing is not doing exactly what the players expect or the way you expect it.


    There are many things internally that cannot be talked about, but I assure you that right now this issue is center stage in all our internal discussions.


    The only thing I can ask for now is patience.


    Over the last year we had lots of different issues that came up, exploits, that we had to give immediate attention and we closed them so they are not an issue any longer. That deviated our attention from other things we wanted to do, but the good thing is that the exploits are now closed.

    Then we did some other changes that were important and were creating issues, like vacation and menhir, both now nerfed.


    Now, if no other issue comes up, we understand the bigger issue the community feels needs attention is the fight against cheats.


    We are giving it the attention it deserves, but, as other issues already shown, we need time to find the best long term solutions.


    I am very confident we will get there.

    Quote from Unknown

    I assure you we care and we want to do the right thing here, but sometimes doing the right thing is not doing exactly what the players expect or the way you expect it.

    That is something we often hear on DE too. But somehow, after that thought process for the best solution, you often find ways to make the things even worse for those who realy try to enjoy Travian, because they love the core mechanics and the other crazy players.
    What is the point in endless discusions, when the solutions doesnt make things better?

    If money isnt the issure here, i have to suspect, that you dont know enough about the actual gameplay experience of your own game. Its a feeling i get very often, when i read staff comments. About the problems, the kingom leaders are faced with every week, just because of some stupid rule that in 90% of the cases does more bad then good. About the app, that lacks so many things, that people who use it are almost guaranted to make painful errors. Youre looking out for the people, who play the game for one or two rounds when bored and quit after that and for those who like to abuse everthing they can, to get a win. But not for your regulars.
    ,
    Please stat listening to you community and their ideas for solutions, instead of trying to not anger poeple, who dont even care for your actual game.
    Please stop endless staff discusions and use your capabilities to listen and act fast.
    We dont want this game to die.

    1) Ty for the feedback, next time I will.

    2) That's relatively true, if server population keeps getting lower and lower not even cheaters will keep playing in my opinion.

    3) I have a solution for that: defining what "multiaccount behaviour" is and make a rule against it: Ex. "an account menhiring close to a player, getting farmed and menhired back"

    4) I am agreeing on that, it still exists, there actually are a few of those.

    5)Exactly my point

    6) Yes and no, if there are many of those you can both have close fight action and long term simming action, which makes it more enjoyable for all of the players, even because it allows worse players to improve and have teammates help them, numbers don't make them "invincible".

    Quote from Unknown

    Thank you very much for the candid message CarloIT.


    I will start saying that you don't have to worry about the game ending, as far as I know, internally it is doing alright and it is here to stay.

    I do not worry about the game ending, I am worried about the whole community, both local servers related and com servers related, being declining in number, which would bring the game to its end as a consequence, as the number of new players joining it is lower than the amount of players leaving it.

    First of all, I would remove the world "probably" as the odds of getting punished are not as high as the ones of evading it.


    I agree on ethics etc. and on the fact that winning a game world by cheating is worthless, but this becomes a lose lose situation: Cheating winners have no pride and their win is worthless, losers that didn't cheat do not win and do not get any source of pride themselves, so who gains something from that?


    Are you suggesting clean players join to defeat cheater? Then ummahusla, th0mm  Bare  Kragh/Dan  Jak  Angelix#US  Bugzy#EN(2) @I CROCIATI Kreuz#US would you be interested in making a pact between all of the clean kingdoms ( I forgot someone for sure I don't remember all of the names ) agreeing that in any server I Y I or Unreal join clean kingdoms themselves will cooperate to erase them? Admins are suggesting this could be a solution.

    Quote from Unknown

    On our side we will keep improving things to make sure we offer clean fair game worlds, I honestly think we are doing much better than a few years back, and as we gain more experience and knowledge things will keep improving.


    And if we need to improve our tools, I don't know about that so I cannot answer you, but if it is the case, I am sure the CSR will be in touch with the devs to achieve that. It may take longer for that type of fix, but what ever is needed we will do.

    I would agree on the fact that you are doing much better if I wasn't witnessing com2x3, and com1nx3, unfortunately those servers are incredibly not fair, which doesn't let me agree with you as stated before.


    I do not think you need to improve your tools, because who cheats is way further away, it would take too long to reach that point, and they would always be a step ahead. I am suggesting you add a "human component" to your tools, as sometimes cheating is so blatant that it is so easy to recognise from a human point of view.

    If that's the case then a community representative is not needed, but I am going to try organising one anyway, even for the future.


    I understand some things take a long time to implement, but if there is a temporary solution that could partially limit the issue, why wouldn't you implement that? What is there to lose?


    Vacation and menhir issues had a much lower impact on the game, let's do some maths: a clean player starting with level 10 fields could get 13.5k resources an hour at the start of the game. Assuming that making a multi account reach level 5 fields would take around 1h:30 of account activity, that would be of course done by a bot, let's say only one account an hour is made: they will get the resources from dismantling wood fields, 17880, + 17920 from clay fields etc. etc. which add up to way more than 13.5 k even after subtracting the percentage you lose. Now, as you know, the more troop strength you have the less troops you will lose while attacking, which means that the cheater will be able to attack with way more troops, suffer way less losses, and have a huge advantage at the beginning.


    I don't blame you for anything, I am just saying that something can be done, even if isn't perfect, as it would be "choosing the lesser evil".


    I appreciate your answer, and hope to hear from you again soon.

    Edited once, last by CarloIT: Correcting a possible mistake. ().

    Sad 1
    Quote from CarloIT

    Are you suggesting clean players join to defeat cheater? Then ummahusla, th0mm#NL Bare Kragh/Dan Jak Angelix#US Bugzy#EN(2) @I CROCIATI Kreuz#US would you be interested in making a mega kingdom between all of the clean players ( I forgot someone for sure I don't remember all of the names ) that will go in any servers I Y I or Unreal join? Admins are suggesting this could be a solution.

    I would not, a mega meta kingdom is not for our team, sorry
    What I would do if they ever landed on this scale on our server though would be to take them out by working with the other kingdoms, a bit like other kingdoms usually do with us. But then once that issue had been addressed we would revert back to being independent again (if that makes sense)

    I have no objection to putting our moral values aside to remove abusers from the server though & making some plans with the other kingdoms to collectively remove them & I do think this should be considered until a better solution is found.


    I deffo do not agree with becoming a cheat to be equal, as in my eyes we (the clean players) are already far far superior to any of these abusers, we don't need a pixel medal to recognise talent ;)

    Quote from Jak

    I would not, a mega meta kingdom is not for our team, sorry
    What I would do if they ever landed on this scale on our server though would be to take them out by working with the other kingdoms, a bit like other kingdoms usually do with us. But then once that issue had been addressed we would revert back to being independent again (if that makes sense)

    I have no objection to putting our moral values aside to remove abusers from the server though & making some plans with the other kingdoms to collectively remove them & I do think this should be considered until a better solution is found.

    That is another possible view, not a mega meta kingdom but just working all together against them and then "better player wins", probably the mega meta kingdom idea does not actually fit the principles of the game itself, as it would be insanely boring after defeating cheaters, and trivially easy after that, I see your point and agree with me being wrong, going to edit the message accordingly.


    Quote from Jak

    I deffo do not agree with becoming a cheat to be equal, as in my eyes we (the clean players) are already far far superior to any of these abusers, we don't need a pixel medal to recognise talent ;)

    I do not agree either, and that's the same view I have, but isn't the game less enjoyable for everyone where the fight you are fighting is already unbalanced? Personally, for example, I think triangles have close to 0 chances to fight for the win in com1nx3, but I am doing my best, and will keep doing so, in order to make unreal have a harder life winning, and helping clean players such as "nerds" overcome them.


    This is how I personally see it, but it is pretty hard to think that you are fighting a fight you have nearly zero chances to win, just in order to weaken the enemy enough for someone to be able to overcome them, is a concept that many players do not embrace, and that's why some of them are deleting their accounts.


    But at the end of the server, unreal will just banter saying they defeated us, and that's how it will go down in my eyes, that's what makes me not really frustrated, but kinda sad.

    I doubt any decent player/kingdom (read non multiacc/multifarm/pw sharing, whatsoever) has interest in a server where all the groups team up just to defeat some other kingdom.


    The TEST server before the gold shop was there used to be a "variant of DOPING vs a variant of North" and these have been boring almost every round.


    The recent servers already proved to which extent others are willing to go to win, they said themselves punishments should even be harsher. Why wait and not start with it right now.


    As the state the game is in right now, i think alot of players will tone down after com1x3. So maybe all future comx rounds will be multi kingdoms vs multi kingdoms (when they start evading eachother).


    As PaulTheGaul once mentioned, it seems to be a cultural thing ( racist posts incoming.... ). Which i don't mean on a bad way, but some cross borders faster then others to secure a shiny pixel win medal.


    In some teams : Win >>>> fun

    In other teams : Fun >>>> win


    Most of these teams that win support cheating from within the core lead, they probably cheat the most themselves. So all the bragging and showing reports are just useless. More and more people start to see who they are, what they've done in the past and how they are playing right now (as some now, my archives are endless).


    Atleast it's good meme material we have been using for years.


    TLDR: If you dont start implementing bigger punishments for every single acc who abuses multi acc in some way (yes everyone who farms them and/or menhirs them) and eventually the kingdoms. Else playerbase decreases and every server = multi vs multi.

    I think the biggest problem is the bots and multiaccounts in this game, unfortunately there are people totally immersed in this game creating it, but I am also convinced that we are at a tipping point to allow new players to be able to play this game which everyone likes, by now the names of the cheaters are known, it is up to Travian to settle the matter :)

    Started playing travian legends, they have very strict rules about multis:


    • § 1.1.a Each player may only own and play one account per game world.

    • § 1.1.b An account must always be played for its benefit or its confederacy’s benefit. Accounts that exist for the benefit of an account outside the same alliance or confederacy may be permanently banned and deleted. Accounts that benefit from accounts that existed for their benefit may be severely punished.

      Implement this and truly enforce it, and you have no multi problem
    Quote from Duck#EN(8)

    • Implement this and truly enforce it, and you have no multi problem

    Yeah, we asked for this repeatedly, but they simply refuse to do so.


    As a systems engineer, software engineer, web developer and DBA-er I know it's not that hard to do.

    It's just a matter of whether they want to or not. Apparently creating wallpapers and making puzzles is way more important than fixing issues.

    Quote from Duck#EN(8)

    I think the biggest problem with the multi-accounts is that there is no way to get things done. You accuse someone of being multi - how are devs even supposed to check if your only evidence is a screenshot of a player raiding another player or two players playing from the same IP. Devs will always give players the benefit of the doubt. Innocent before proven guilty.



    It's really not that hard to identify a multi-account. 90% of them are dead accounts that have buildings queued up in a certain pattern, dodge all incoming "friendly" attacks, and def only those which are not from their main wing. Mostly, there are no chats (or just randomly generated text that repeats itself).


    Any experienced player who can put 1 and 1 together can identify one of those accounts within minutes. I am not even mentioning the ease to find the account that is benefiting from it. If you see a player with millions farmed and close to 0 off points, you can already tell there is something fishy. If you as a bonus take a look at the villages he's farming (active village with 0 troops but 100% focus in res. upgrading), you will be able to clearly identify what's going on.


    The fact that most of the accounts have close to 0 prestige and are being spawned in the middle of the kingdoms benefiting most out of it is also helping to backtrack this.

    Those are just a few of the things we as players are doing, now imagine what the Tk "leaders" can see? :)

    dude what the F**k you talk about....1st of all it's easy to spot all those multi abusers or atleast the most greedy one's.2nd there are atleast 20 reports to that dude made and admins can easly check on his account.3th the punishments for multi abusing are terrible.what -10%pop?wtf is this?He raided 20mil res and he got 10% pop lowered?it's joke.4th best way to get rid of multi abusers is active admins that look for the game worlds,atleast for the 1st 2 weeks where the most imbalance from farming multis comes from.After 2nd week no1 will care if someone raid multis or not...5th No one is donating from multi account's.6th big kingdoms are no problem 50% of those players inside the kingdoms are inactive or log 1-2 times a day so it's w/e.7th IDK why when so many ppl want harsh punishments for cheaters admin dont make harsher punishments?