Posts by Ammanurt

Ah, found it. It was in a post on the TL forums by BlackBlade:

https://wbb.forum.travian.com/…ostID=7618702#post7618702

"T4 is launched, it takes longer than the previous version updates as its one of the larger updates. They are also hindered by the rapid growth of Legends and what they did to get there. Naturally after T4 they look to T5 and end up going too far for most of the community, requiring a spin off. The T5 update was designed to revolutionize the game and even add the much request mobile app. The level of change would naturally see T4 wound down over the next couple of years. The over extension from the previous years, changing face of the gaming market and poor reception to T5 result in big layoffs as the company seeks to stay afloat."\

"

2015 - Present This period marks a turn around for the company. There are a ton of changes at all levels of company over this period but it starts with change in CEO. The company works to stabilize revenue, rebuild the Legends team that they had only recently expected to shutter. The company enters the publishing game to generate more revenue at lower cost. In 2017 the new tribes debut, a community request 10 years in the making. 2018 sees another major community request in PtP. 2018 also sees the start of major community outreach through the Legends on Tour event, which is built on significantly in 2019. They finally begin the undertaking of untangling 12 years of code to improve the user experience, enable mobile functionality and open up new possibilities. In short the game and wider company undergo a major transformation, one that is still in progress."

That last part obviously referring to Legends, not Kingdoms.

https://blog.travian.com/2019/…ends-on-tour-2019-summit/

I couldn't find the part I was talking about straight away, but it's somewhere in one of the posts related to the legends on tour summit thingy.

What I gathered while I was half-reading the blog updates surrounding the couple-day long meetup thing they did in Munich, was that Kingomds is considered a bit of a flop, there were layoffs because of it, and although Kingdoms was originally supposed to be the next version of Travian (T4 being travian legends, T5 being kingdoms), the focus has now shifted back on developing Legends. What that means for Kingdoms, I don't know. My guess would be that they will either allow TK to...exist, or ultimately find a way to develop it into some other direction since the current version was so obviously not working - obvious, finally, for them as well.

Quote from Faust#EN(9)

Hola again!

These are fake accounts that are used to support yourself and your allies, not legitimate accounts that are actually being played normally. Imo all your accounts should be banned if you play this way. Since the real owner barely even logs in and doesn't play, you're effectively multi-accounting by using a loophole in the rule. You're only technically not multi-accounting, but by the 'spirit of the law', you obviously are.

Georgi I know Faust is usually a troll, but this is actually an existing problem, part of the multi-accounting problem. Would this still count as illegal? It certainly could be caught by checking how often/long an actual user logs in compared to the number of actions taken by the account...

Why not make it a 24h peace round?

This game was created for only casual players, as a supposed counterpart for Travian Legends which was supposedly for more hardcore players. If you can't survive in Kingdoms, there is no game in existence where you could survive. Try Simcity perhaps...

Quote from Be2-e4

Not so funny if it happens to oneself, is it? I know I shouldn't write this, but I just couldn't resist, sorry.

At topic:

a) Main village = Capital, translation error, like QuamWave mentioned. Also I think I saw it every now and then when looking through some ajax requests to find some translations for my toolpage, so maybe they call it like this internally.

b) Ikr, it's a harsh change. But she presented it nicely and since almost nobody voted for yes, they will probably know, that a significant amount of people don't like the idea. Not sure why this was worth a thread on its own.

c) Not adressed to me.

This topic makes me curious though. How exactly does the gamedesign imagine this game to be played? Or, to be more specific, how exactly is it supposed to be played according to their thoughts? Are they intending the changes, they cause? Or are they just coincedental? Maybe one should write them a guide on how the game is currently played. I mean, no offense intended, but from what I know, GD could be doing some maths, calculating roughly "hm, ok, an average 15c has level 14 fields, who builds a second warehouse anyway, and 75% crop bonus, this makes 30k production with plus. If we forbid 15c capitals, it's still 25k production with all 14 and three 25/25% oasis. hey, it's not that bad and peopls complain about 15c being pay to win anyway all the time, come on, let's do it". I mean, I'm quite sure, that nobody from TG expected rubble-settling or menhir-settling to become a thing after the corresponding changes. Hm, I just realized, that I would be very interested in a official TG video in which they show the steps and thoughts an idea / game change / design idea / whatever in depth and detailed.

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Heh, I would love to see that too. Depth of understanding in what makes their own game tick? I think we'll see it when hell freezes over...

Yeah what the other experienced players said - basically we're awaiting more PVP gameplay. NOT more PVE gameplay...Do you guys even bother reading the forums?

It just depends on how strong your group is compared to the other groups of a server. There' s no hard line, you'll recognize a meta when you see one. If a group is clearly much bigger than other important groups on a server, it's probably a meta

Quote from Be2-e4

Like I said, Ammanurt, in a strategy game you should be able to make decisions. You should have all freedom you can possibly get, instead of enforcing one particular way to play. Currently building a meta with huge player counts is a kind of enforced decision, because it's very op and you have to work incredibly hard as smaller kingdom with significant lesser members to beat the huge one, while they can chill on their passive treasure production. This is obviously bad, because again, that's no decision, nothing you have to think about whether you do it or not, what the advantages and disadvantages are. There aren't significant disadvantages right now. But hard-limiting isn't a decision either. Let alone the fact, that, like we (we con-limit guys) pointed out dozens of times, there will just be a wing.

If you want me to stick to your lever-analogy, I'd say it's more like a mixing console (for sound, not sure what the correct english term is), where you can change the strength of certain playstyles with the goal to balance them out. Right now, meta is very strong, now someone needs to change some mechanics to balance it out again, such that metas are weaker (or other playstyles are stronger). But not pulling a lever with an emergency stop sign to ban meta playstyle at all.

Be2-e4 Exactly, you should allow for all playstyles instead of - essentially - only allowing meta playstyles as is currently the case with the existing game incentives. The current situation doesn't allow for more than one playstyle, and a "hard limit", that isn't actually very hard since you would just create wings,, does. At least slightly better, since it still allows for meta gameplay while making life very slightly better for other playstyles. It's obviously not enough though.

How are we not on the same page here? I think you're saying, at the same time, that a player limit is a hard limit and those shouldn't exist because they stop decisions and ban the meta playstyle, but also that a player limit would never work and therefore wouldn't stop decisins or ban the meta playstyle. Which one is it? Also - what do you think of the incentives I proposed that would/should rebalance the game?

Be2-e4

While I mostly agree with you on "Good game design doesn't enforce hard limits to try to force players to do something", good game design and balancing in particular entails "pulling levers" on variables within your control, be it existing or new ones. A member limit can be one such lever, and whether you achieve such a limit by strictly enforcing it or by making it almost completely infeasible (e.g. by a nerf on troop strength or by making treasure production negative or w/e if your kingdom > 60 members) doesn't make much of a difference in this case.

Anyway, I don't think the point is that having a member limit would stop metas in their tracks - it obviously wouldn't. It would only function as a small first incentive against metas. If you want to have a meta you need to organize several wings, which is somewhat more work than simply having everyone in one massive group.

Couple the member limit with other incentives such as a morale-bonus/penalty for treasure production based on group size, a morale-bonus/penalty for troop strength based on the same, perhaps encourage organisation (and not just size) by encouraging warfare: One problem average metas typically can't handle properly is having to fight a smaller, hardened group of veteran players. So encourage having those kinds of groups. Maybe have VP production be dependent on something other than treasury production and attacks on treasuries - get VP for catting/chiefing villages of groups you are at war with (you would have to redesign the "at war" mechanic to stop abuse though). Do enough of these things and you might well end up with a solution that meets all your requirements. But yeah - it's certainly not easy, but at the same time looking into it is worth it: We had a more reasonable balance in the older versions than we do now and not stopping metas isn't an option at this point as the game isn't retaining any players, imo for a large part because of metas.

Jak

Heh, sorry if I'm venting. I think in the latest comment I was more in a hurry than actually venting though

Anyway - It's precisely the anti-meta players like you and me that deserve venting if they still don't understand the role of incentives in any game. Yes, it's possible to completely wipe metas and even win servers if you have an amazing team of highly active players. It happens once in, who knows, 20 servers? Saying then that it's the people playing the game who should change, without the game changing, is just madness. It's like saying the majority of people who currently smoke, should stop smoking, of their own accord. Think we can expect 75% of the current smokers to stop smoking on their own accord? 50%? Even 25%? Or, the majority of people who currently don't care about climate change, should suddenly start caring and acting on it, of their own accord, with no further incentives at all. Because it's the people who should change and not the system... Right. You're technically not wrong, but it's just not how it works and it's probably not gonna happen!

The old version still exists and people can go back if they want, but how is that relevant? TK's playerbase won't survive on the plateau it's on - if it isn't still declining. The game needs to be more fun to retain players, that's the crucial problem, always has been. As long as metas are the only reasonable game in town, it never will be. We've tried every approach by now to make players even safer, even cozier, and are still losing players. The devs needs to finally accept that players not being safe enough was never the problem to begin with. And maybe we really do need some moves back to the old game, if that retains more players. You can always make this game different from TL in whichever way you want. But it needs players.

About the alliances: Having alliances that are full is exactly what is needed. It's an incentive to create new alliances! If an alliance is full, you have to join another or create one yourself -> more diversity of alliances. Yes, sometimes that will cause you to delete and start a new server, or leave altogether. Tough cookies, there's no free lunch here. Also, just to repeat myself, I don't think having a limit is anything more than a miniscule first step in the right direction. It's marginally better than the current situation. It doesn't "fix" anything.

You really think enticing or not enticing a player back is dependent on them receiving prestige or not? Do you remember how everybody, especially the average player, used to not care at all about the endgames? How much do you think that's changed in TK? I would wager not at all...Do you personally care how much prestige you do or don't get? That's what keeps you coming back?

Jallu

But there would be more chance of random teams fighting other random teams in this scenario. Yeah - they wouldn't be able to compete of course, but this is still preferable to just having the entire would-be random teams autojoining the metas basically on server start!

Completely agreed on wanting the devs to base this game on TL/T3 but with better graphics instead of the treasure crap. Honestly as you say - nobody really cares about the hoarding gameplay anwyay. It's irrelevant to most players, there's hardly any gameplay around it for them.

Jak - We all have options, but 99% of the playerbase will follow the options prescribed by the default path of the game's incentives, which are killing the game. Do you really believe restricting to 60 players will make sure players won't help new players anymore? When in older versions 60 players was the default?

Quote from Be2-e4

To sum ...up the cons...

• Hard limits force you to make bad decisions like "do I keep an active, chatty noob or do I kick him for someone who does nothing, but build def"
• This won't work after all, there will just be a wing. In T:L it is like this, main ally only gets the win, wings get nothing. There still are metas. T:L is the living proof, that what you propose won't work as intended at all.
• New players are more or less fucked. You euphemize this by saying "it'll take them some time to get recruited by a top kingdom", but they just won't get recruited at all, get bashed, and get farmed. Either this, or they land in the 17th wing of some random meta.

I dislike kingdoms based on pure mass aswell, which you will know if you read the other thread, but this solution is just not working and this thread and poll is biased as hell ... and there are much better ideas and solutions than hard limits, for the most trivial instance, the one Curtain posted in the post I linked.

The first one isn't really a con in my opinion, also because it doesn't actually work that way in my experience. In the old days, you would have a core team and then recruit whoever seemed qualified. That is, if you're going for a smaller, more hardcore team. So you would start well below the 60 player limit, and then work your way up. It would very rarely happen that you would actually get in a situation where you would try and kick player x to get a slightly better player y. Instead, you would just kind of keep the team you have and simply put a stop on any new players. For metas, you would do the same except without a player limit, you'd put them in wings and still wouldn't kick player x out for y. So you wouldn't have this problem in either scenario. I think this one is in your head only.

The second point is true - there will just be wings. That's still an improvement on the current situation - turning back design choices from TK to TL, T3 or T2.5 is almost always an improvement - and a good first step, since it's one small, very weak, incentive to not make metas. Implement this first, then work from there. There' s an infinitely high number of mechanics and incentives to be tried, and any result that the devs want to achieve with regards to metas can be achieved in principle. I've been waiting for years for the devs to actually want it, however

About the third one, eh...New players are screwed if a hard limit is put into the game? More than now? Who are you kidding? Nobody attacks anybody in this game! Nobody gets catted off of servers permanently, nobody gets chiefed and getting out of being farmed is easier than ever with the kingdoms system. A limit doesn't change that, how is anyone ever screwed in the new situation? The problem here isn't that people actually get hurt, but that they have some kind of victim mentality. That's what TK was based on - everything should always be safe and cozy. Look at the player numbers...it didn't freaking work! Stop pushing the idea that everyone should always be safe already!! New players will certainly have an easier time than in old versions of the game, now that you can teleport around the map to different kingdoms and are by definition put into a kingdom when you start the server. That should be plenty!

So basically, back to the old alliance sizes then from earlier versions.

This discussion again?

If you want to mostly stop metas and have several kingdoms fighting over the WWs during the endgame, make the game competitive enough so that the added organisation issues stop most bigger groups from being effective. The old size limitations made sure you needed extra alliances, more people/accounts to trust in organisatory positions. If you want to send out an announcement, you have to do it in two places. Alliance-chat? Better have Discord/Skype, or you'll be talking in different alliance-chats. Keep adding incentives to make the meta-life less attractive, and you'll run them out of business if that's what you want to achieve. You could extend the morale bonus idea, but for treasure production/VP stealing. Of course - the devs want the opposite, so it'll never happen. Until they finally change their views and see that this game is functionally dead in the water and can't retain players at all, there's no point talking about all this.

You can merge domains and market differently all you want, but as long as the game stays the way it is, the pattern will continue as is and you'll eventually run out of domains and players to merge with. What are the plans to actually make meaningful changes that will make the game less broken or more appealling to retain players?

Hmm, hard to make a anti-multiaccounting algorithm? Probably, but you don't have to go too far to remove a lot of the easy-to-catch stuff. The objective is to stop most of the botting and multiaccounting, while having a human check before the ban is confirmed. Some ideas:

//some pseudocode:


for Player p : Players:
boolean ban = false;


if (resourcesSentToOnePlayerPerDay, directly or indirectly, => e.g. 80% of his resource production)
    ban = true;
//Player not playing to the benefit of his own account, bannable offense. Possible multiaccount.


if(Player not growing, not building troops yet staying active and allowing himself to be farmed)
    ban = true;
//same


if(messages never read, or instantly read, but never responded to in a "human-like" fashion")
    ban = true;
//this is probably a bot.


if(area contains lots of players/villages with no actual names, but just "new village" or random letters, and resource streams are mostly going to the same person/group of people)
    ban = true;


//likely multiaccounts/bots


if(player has lots of timed farming/other attacks over a period of time)
if(!doCaptcha()) 
    ban=true;
//I'm sure real players won't mind proving they're a bot from time to time, right?

This is just from the top of my head. I'm sure there are more patterns that you could use to see who's botting/mh'ing. And there isn't much an intelligent developer can do about most of these. It will always require some vigilance - you have to keep up with the new ways of cheating, but implementing these would be a good first step. And yeah, you would definitely need the rule about playing to the benefit of your own account, but I've always assumed that, among all their other oversights, the devs just forgot to add that one.

A multi-accounter would have pretty much 0 impact overall?! I'm sure that's why every big meta is doing it these days, without even bothering to hide it much. You're a huge noob at multi-accounting if you say that! Why stop at 2 accounts to begin with? Why not have everyone in your kingdom temporarily build a 2nd, 3rd and 4th account, supply their first one with resources either directly or by allowing them to be farmed. Hey, according to your logic, you're putting in 4x the time, so this is all completely fine right? No problems here?? Flawless game-design...?! Do I need to point out the obvious problem here? If you're going to put in 2x the amount of time for the extra benefit, do it on your own account. That's fine, in line with the rules and the spirit of the game.

There was a thread somewhere recently about multiacounters starting a new account and then teleporting 15-croppers to their main player's kingdom. If this sort of thing doesn't convince you that this game shouldn't be named Travian, I don't know what would. The spirit of this game died when they turned it into another run-of-the-mill casual simming game, exactly like Travian Legends but worse, but the grave of the spirit was defiled with the extra number of cheaters and bots that this game is now known for. Trying to get into the mobile market is exactly what they should be doing, but not like this - as the continuous decrease in player numbers is indicating. The game doesn't work on any level. Look away from the problems - such as abuse of mechanics- all you want, but that'll only make it worse devs.

I don't think the "use gold to become unbannable" argument holds any water by the way, the problem is more that the MH's have no good ways of detecting cheaters. They actually used to have better (automated) tools back in the day, and MH's were allowed to ban and punish on suspicion and not just when they had direct proof. If only the the devs could remember where they stored 'em. They don't need any extra engineers for this, there aren't thát many patterns. Give one of their engineers a month or two and the most important things should be covered.

Oh wow, didn't think any other really old players were still around! Couldn't have said it better.