Making the game easier for newcomers

    The discussion about vacation mode made me realize how hard it is now to be a newcomer on Kingdoms, because only newcomers would need vacation mode. For the others, sitting or dual is the perfect solution. "We" are a community of people who know each other sometimes for years, mosts of the kingdoms are set up before the server starts, and it takes quite a lot of research to understand how to start and what are the strategic basis. If you start on a classic server, it can be rather boring at the beginning, and you don't realize it's necessary to be often connected, and that you are loosing time and possibilities for the future. You know no one, you might hoop from bad kingdom to bad kingdom, even worse start as a king just for the fun, and get stuck with no gov, not attracting anyone to your kingdom because you have just 10 treasures, etc.


    And you delete, and do not come back. "We" are happy because we can easily raid you and it helps us start, but on a long term basis, this is bad. I'd love to see much more players on each server, good newcomers, etc. and it will make the game more interesting for all for us.


    It might be a good idea to facilitate the start of these newcomers. Of course, this would be fair only if/when Travian really fight against multi. If not, there will be a programmatic multiplication of people with similar names and no star in a few kingdoms...


    - prolongated Travian Plus features. They are not that helpful at the beginning of the game (except saving a few resources because you have higher W/G) but later on with the trade routes or farm lists for example. It would also help Travian selling more gold


    - not possible to be a king (or three strong warnings like "are you sure, are you really sure.... ")


    - Improvement of the documentation. Wiki is just a mess, not updated (still a menu item about alliances, for example, or a lot of wrong information, I even learned in the Beginners Guide that the Roman wss the fastest build off in the game - somehow not wrong but very misleading for a newcomer). I do not even understand how there can be wrong information about troops costs and training time, when it would be so "easy" to draw them directly from the code. There are interesting threads scattered in this forum, but they are not always easy to find, and many players, also, do not "read the fucking manual" (me included). The guides section is full of information in the english speaking part, much poorer in French for example. And then there are the posts on the blog which also difficult to find (and in english only). Why not make "somewhere" a global list of these links and make it available in the tutorial ?


    - A little troops bonus : more troops in the adventures, search of the first off. cavalry offered in the first village.


    - Blocking the possibility to join a server that has started more than 1/3 weeks before. Do not add difficulty of a late start :)


    Of course, this would work only if the hunting of multi accounts is efficient and enforced. So it is a choice of development also, bring many real new players in the game or not ?

    Ah wiki! So true!
    Still as a veteran player some information are still hidden. E.g. I've never seen any official information about how robber hideouts are structured (troops and resources in). We have guesses from experience, but that's all.

    Back on the topic, indeed. I think we need to charm way more new players, but as I gathered Travian Team is happy with the current player base.
    Making the game less p2w is one step in my opinion.

    I love the ideas you propose... but I agree totally, they will work best if the multi hunting is done properly.


    Although I do believe we do have a very good MHing already... but I will mention that the perception of it has to improve to make you feel it, not only know it.


    If anyone has anything else to add to the things mentioned here, the team will be very happy to get any extra input, like ways to implement it.


    I love the idea of new avatars from new lobby accounts getting something extra, like extra advice, extra push in game etc... I wonder how to do that without making it too OP or even worst, making it so good first time around that when they make a second avatar and don't have that extra help would sink and leave anyway.

    Thanks Tokmak, any specific idea on how to do that?


    If you think there is a way to help them we are very interested on that.


    Doing as Koubbi mentioned, for example a little extra push at their start, may be helpful. Anything else you can think of?

    Sir Cin Sincere thank you, it could be interesting to have something in that front regarding quests.


    That gave me another idea, I don't know what you guys think about it.


    What if we had a viewer's option alongside the sitting option. That would mean that you allow someone to view your account but not do anything to it.

    That way a veteran player could allow a new player to be able to see his/her account but not touch anything. That way the new player can learn from the veteran without the risk of doing anything wrong to it.


    What do you think? Would that be useful in any way?

    Unknown this is a good idea with little or no impact on the account and would allow new players to see a bigger account.


    When you say "alongside sitters" do you mean "in addition" to sitters? In which case it could be used by kingdom members to check each others accounts to see incoming attacks, location of troops, crop situation e.t.c. That would probably have a bigger value than for beginners.

    Unknown I guess I was not saying one thing or another. ^^


    It would be a useful function for players who are working together, so from my perspective would be a welcome addition. But some might feel that it detracted from the team collaboration.... i.e. wouldn't need to wait for a player to get online to find out who is attacking them (would make fakes potentially less effective). I guess the number of Viewers could be limited in the same way as Sitters are.

    Best advice to keep new players is to make sure the game is less buggy on mobile. Most people in the world access the internet via mobile devices now. Making a game that is only free of bugs by using a PC is acting like it's the 1990's again. It's 2021. Mobile or bust.


    Was playing the game in a browser on a tablet earlier (don't get me started on the app) and I was using Chrome because it's the best of the bad options for the game. I couldn't move resources between villages without refreshing nearly every time I changed a village on the screen. It's was just plain obnoxious.


    I'm addicted to the game, so you got me. But if I was new to the game and just learning it, I would call this game trash and move on - the very first day.


    Fix the bugs on mobile. That's how you increase the playerbase.

    Quote from Koubbi

    Replacing multis by real players would have no impact on the servers perf, and increase revenues.

    well, one of the big problems I've seen.

    people come to play and 1 single account with multiple multi-accounts destroys them. and people stop playing.

    in Spanish x3 that is right now, that happened, 3 people with several multi-accounts, they killed 100 people.

    As of game day 10, 70k troops destroyed kingdoms. Goodbye 100-150 people who played (the server is composed of 200 people in total) so basically there were 2 kingdoms left on day 10 of the game.

    they reported it, to everyone, and to their multi-accounts.

    but it's boring to send 200 reports.

    by the time they do something, that account has already destroyed a lot, it's already too late.

    and the wonder comes out on that server, and they keep creating accounts.

    It is boring, it takes out the desire to play, it gives new players a bad experience, and worst of all, they do nothing to your main account, sometimes a 10% ddebuff slower construction.


    summary: multi-accounts will not be replaced, because they are now meta-game

    This this and so much this. The mobile "gaming market" is huge missed opportunity, and if people try travian on mobile with the app (which is to put it nicely flaming pile of dogshit) they get experience of buggy game with horrible UI and where the notifications come when ever they please to come if they come.



    E: As it stands the app is more likely to turn players away from game than bring them in. A WORKING "companion" app would be nice where you could get quick overview of your villages(on iOS app you can't even see who is attacking you...), attacks, troop ques, warehouse/granary levels etc.

    Give the newcomers power of multiaccounting and dualing together in the form of a united village that multiple players can control together..it might be counterintuitive, but tell me...

    Which other game lets different players to cooperate in the level of controlling the same village as different accounts in the game?..could be one of a kind reinvention of a genre.

    Quote from kicke

    This this and so much this. The mobile "gaming market" is huge missed opportunity, and if people try travian on mobile with the app (which is to put it nicely flaming pile of dogshit) they get experience of buggy game with horrible UI and where the notifications come when ever they please to come if they come.



    E: As it stands the app is more likely to turn players away from game than bring them in. A WORKING "companion" app would be nice where you could get quick overview of your villages(on iOS app you can't even see who is attacking you...), attacks, troop ques, warehouse/granary levels etc.

    what about a widget of your capital