woodchuck321
Private
In the interest of remaining polite, I am going to state this in the kindest way I possibly can:
QI sucks. It is a half-baked idea with some, but few, redeeming qualities. As a new feature to introduce to the game and slowly improve? Perhaps. As a replacement for GvG? What a joke.
I'm not even going to cover the monetization aspect. That's a given. GvG loses money, QI brings in money, end of story. Yeah, we get it, and we don't care. We want the game to be GOOD, or we're not going to PLAY IT, and then you won't make ANY MONEY because your game will be DEAD. Riddle me that.
So how do we make the game good?
Well, what are we even supposed to do in the game? There's a Story Questline to follow, which starts off pretty entertaining (remember when Ragu Silvertounge tried to stage a coup? Still waiting for him to show his ugly face again...) but falls off towards the later eras. (In SAT they didn't even bother writing text for quests; they're all just "Your Grace! <<Incoming Task Type: miscellaneous. Data request active.>>" Like, really? Come on. Regardless I digress.) Let’s be honest though: FoE is a very, very long game, and nobody logs on daily just for the story quests.
Some people like advancing in ages. Maybe they want to finish the tech tree! Some people like building GBs. Arc80 is a good goal for new players, as is Arc180 for veterans. Some people want to grow a guild. Some people want to be on top of the leaderboards. Some people push the game to its limits, unlocking Advance Age Units far ahead of their current age. Some people just want to build a nice looking city. So what we really see is that the game is self-directed. It’s open ended.
Forge of Empires is a game without goals. Or, rather, it’s a game where you set your own goals. And if you, the player, aren’t motivated towards some goal? You’re not going to log on tomorrow. This is something that’s happened to me before, and I think a lot of players can relate. Sometimes we’re just… not motivated to play the game. So we don’t. For weeks or months or years. Maybe we eventually come back for a time. Sometimes we don’t.
So you have a game without goals. The players need to motivate themselves. How do you make a game in which the players motivate themselves?
You give the players freedom. You give them a sandbox, a blank canvas with some paint, and you say “Have at it!” The city building aspect is already fantastic for this. As mentioned above, you can really build your city however you want, and many people opt for different styles.
So we build our cities up. They produce great amounts of FP, Goods, and Units. We’ve build our pretty little cities, and we’re sitting on top of our success, looking for more. Where do we go from here?
Enter Guild vs Guild. For the players who want to do more, play more, engage more. For the people who are so good at building their cities they have resources to spare. GvG does provide an actual, material motivation - being the best way to increase Guild Level - but it is also very intrinsically rewarding.
It’s a warzone with simple rules. A sandbox of a battlefield to complement a sandbox of a city. GvG is remarkable; a gem of a feature rarely seen in any game, let alone a simple browser game from 2012. For motivated players - the primary group of people who keep playing the game - the depth of GvG is infinite. The amount of planning, coordination, and strategy required for GvG success is a wonder to behold, and a limitless source of engagement and motivation. The drama of war. The intensity of battle. The pride of having a small little section of the game that’s yours, a bit of territory that you fought to hold and protect.
---
Let’s take a pause for a moment to tell the story of Boorg from en7. Boorg is a player in Colonial Age. He’s got a nice little city, a couple high level GBs, nothing too crazy given the amount of time he’s been playing. During my time playing GvG, I encountered Boorg and his solo guild Green Alien on one of the lower age maps. Seeing as it was a solo guild, and one which I hadn’t seen change any territory in months, I presumed he was an inactive. It would be a trivial task to land and take his territory, especially as I was a GvG leader in a much larger guild. I directed our team to make a landing on his sectors. Next day come reset, I had that territory on my list of things to do, but it was all the way at the bottom. Other ages took higher priority. I led our GvG team through a brutal fight in All Ages, then hopped down the ages until eventually reacing Boorg on the Late Middle Age map.
To my astonishment, while we were fighting on other maps, Boorg had recaptured all of the territory that I had taken yesterday. Unless we had happened to be extremely unlucky, this meant that Boorg checked his two stretches of territory - a handful of sectors in Late Middle Ages and Colonial Age - every day, even when there was nobody trying to capture them. So I let Boorg have his sectors for the time being.
A few months go by. There’s been no more GvG activity out of Boorg, but his player points keep going up, so he’s still logging in. On a random day, I launch another attack on his sectors; the next reset, he’s recapturing his land. He really does check the GvG map every day, watching over his own little corner of the game.
---
This is one story among many. Many people play GvG like this, watching over their small kingdoms. Some people get to experience a much grander spectacle: GvG wars.
I am a GvG Marshal for en7’s Lords of War. I’ve had the honor of fighting with and leading our GvG team for over two years, and the last 500 of our 2,013 total top 1 days. For the past decade, Lords of War has been (gasp) at war with a menagerie of other guilds to maintain that top spot. Throughout this entire time - and even up through the time I was helping to lead, nearly a decade later - GvG strategy was evolving, changing. In the past fourteen months specifically, there’s been a massive conflict as LoW approached 2000 days. Our lowest daily attendance for GvG over that period was 12 players. Our highest was 33. Our opponents had similar numbers. We pushed GvG (and the entire game!) to its limits, constantly evolving strategies in a brutal fight for the top.
Navigating an ever-shifting web of alliances. Traitors and spies sabotaging both sides. Adrenaline pumping as we wait for recalc to drop, the entire voice call silent in anticipation of the battle. Yelling at our guild leader for running his mouth about our strategies on global.
Sitting in our GvG voice call long after the daily fighting had ended, chatting and having a good time, becoming friends.
Dozens of guilds, hundreds of players, thousands of days.
For me, and many of my friends (and enemies!) who participated, GvG elevated the game. Battles. Wars. Politics. Allies and enemies. Strategy. Camaraderie. Before I joined Lords of War, I would often have month or year-long breaks from the game. Since I began participating in GvG, I have had no such breaks. This was my reason for playing the game.
---
So Quantum Incursions recently released to main server. Let’s evaluate it on it’s own merits first:
I’m going to be completely honest - QI has potential. It’s an interesting gimmick remeniscent of the Settlements. Every couple weeks you start a new mini-city, build it up for a while, and then get some rewards for your main city at the end of it. Not a bad deal, on it’s own.
The actual QI track itself is decent for players who want to log in, contribute a bit, get some rewards, and leave. It’s rather difficult for people not used to manual fighting, and manual fighting hasn’t been meta since like red stat inflation started half a decade ago, so it provides a mildly interesting challenge to the players’ personal fighting skill.
From a sandbox standpoint? A good bit of space for customization and strategizing, although let’s be honest - the progression is VERY linear. Numerous people have already come up with optimal, or close to optimal, strategies for QI city building. I fail to see how there could possibly be an evolving meta for QI, or how anyone except those playing within a very narrow optimal playstyle can hope to see rewards from it.
From a rewards standpoint? The rewards are decent. Not exemplary considering the current progression of stats released alongside QI (have you SEEN the 2024 Anniversary Event rewards??), but decent red & blue stats, with some FP and goods thrown in.
From a leadership standpoint? The mode is strategically dead. There are hardly any decisions to be made, and nearly all of the decisions to be made EITHER have an extremely obvious correct choice (yes, you always do the side nodes first) OR don’t provide you with enough information to make an educated choice (how are we supposed to decide which track to take if we don’t know what units/goods they require?).
From a motivation standpoint? QI is primarily rewards-motivated. There is little intrinsic value in QI; it requires considerable skill and attention while erasing all progress often. Just like Settlements, you don’t do QI because you love building a short-lived mini-city around painful Impediments; you do QI because you want the rewards for your main city. (If you happen to love doing Settlements for their own sake, please correct me, but I’ve never met anyone who does.)
---
Now let’s evaluate it as it sits among other game features, and as a replacement for GvG:
GvG, as we discussed above, has NO rewards, provides great freedom to the player, is strongly intrinsically-motivated, and has great strategic depth at a leadership level.
GbG has outstanding rewards, provides less but still great freedom to the player, can be either reward-motivated or intrinsically-motivated, and has great strategic depth at a leadership level.
GEx has outstanding rewards, provides no freedom to the player, is exclusively reward-motivated, and has no strategy at a leadership level.
---
QI is, comparatively speaking, the worst of all worlds. For active players it has relatively underwhelming rewards, especially considering the difficulty. Players are given insufficient freedom for any self-motivation, and there is no strategic depth to explore.
Perhaps it can be remediated. Perhaps the rewards will improve, perhaps the difficulty will be adjusted, perhaps we will find more freedom to develop goals and strategies in the future. But as it stands now?
QI fails laughably to fill the void left by the removal of GvG.
QI sucks. It is a half-baked idea with some, but few, redeeming qualities. As a new feature to introduce to the game and slowly improve? Perhaps. As a replacement for GvG? What a joke.
I'm not even going to cover the monetization aspect. That's a given. GvG loses money, QI brings in money, end of story. Yeah, we get it, and we don't care. We want the game to be GOOD, or we're not going to PLAY IT, and then you won't make ANY MONEY because your game will be DEAD. Riddle me that.
So how do we make the game good?
Well, what are we even supposed to do in the game? There's a Story Questline to follow, which starts off pretty entertaining (remember when Ragu Silvertounge tried to stage a coup? Still waiting for him to show his ugly face again...) but falls off towards the later eras. (In SAT they didn't even bother writing text for quests; they're all just "Your Grace! <<Incoming Task Type: miscellaneous. Data request active.>>" Like, really? Come on. Regardless I digress.) Let’s be honest though: FoE is a very, very long game, and nobody logs on daily just for the story quests.
Some people like advancing in ages. Maybe they want to finish the tech tree! Some people like building GBs. Arc80 is a good goal for new players, as is Arc180 for veterans. Some people want to grow a guild. Some people want to be on top of the leaderboards. Some people push the game to its limits, unlocking Advance Age Units far ahead of their current age. Some people just want to build a nice looking city. So what we really see is that the game is self-directed. It’s open ended.
Forge of Empires is a game without goals. Or, rather, it’s a game where you set your own goals. And if you, the player, aren’t motivated towards some goal? You’re not going to log on tomorrow. This is something that’s happened to me before, and I think a lot of players can relate. Sometimes we’re just… not motivated to play the game. So we don’t. For weeks or months or years. Maybe we eventually come back for a time. Sometimes we don’t.
So you have a game without goals. The players need to motivate themselves. How do you make a game in which the players motivate themselves?
You give the players freedom. You give them a sandbox, a blank canvas with some paint, and you say “Have at it!” The city building aspect is already fantastic for this. As mentioned above, you can really build your city however you want, and many people opt for different styles.
So we build our cities up. They produce great amounts of FP, Goods, and Units. We’ve build our pretty little cities, and we’re sitting on top of our success, looking for more. Where do we go from here?
Enter Guild vs Guild. For the players who want to do more, play more, engage more. For the people who are so good at building their cities they have resources to spare. GvG does provide an actual, material motivation - being the best way to increase Guild Level - but it is also very intrinsically rewarding.
It’s a warzone with simple rules. A sandbox of a battlefield to complement a sandbox of a city. GvG is remarkable; a gem of a feature rarely seen in any game, let alone a simple browser game from 2012. For motivated players - the primary group of people who keep playing the game - the depth of GvG is infinite. The amount of planning, coordination, and strategy required for GvG success is a wonder to behold, and a limitless source of engagement and motivation. The drama of war. The intensity of battle. The pride of having a small little section of the game that’s yours, a bit of territory that you fought to hold and protect.
---
Let’s take a pause for a moment to tell the story of Boorg from en7. Boorg is a player in Colonial Age. He’s got a nice little city, a couple high level GBs, nothing too crazy given the amount of time he’s been playing. During my time playing GvG, I encountered Boorg and his solo guild Green Alien on one of the lower age maps. Seeing as it was a solo guild, and one which I hadn’t seen change any territory in months, I presumed he was an inactive. It would be a trivial task to land and take his territory, especially as I was a GvG leader in a much larger guild. I directed our team to make a landing on his sectors. Next day come reset, I had that territory on my list of things to do, but it was all the way at the bottom. Other ages took higher priority. I led our GvG team through a brutal fight in All Ages, then hopped down the ages until eventually reacing Boorg on the Late Middle Age map.
To my astonishment, while we were fighting on other maps, Boorg had recaptured all of the territory that I had taken yesterday. Unless we had happened to be extremely unlucky, this meant that Boorg checked his two stretches of territory - a handful of sectors in Late Middle Ages and Colonial Age - every day, even when there was nobody trying to capture them. So I let Boorg have his sectors for the time being.
A few months go by. There’s been no more GvG activity out of Boorg, but his player points keep going up, so he’s still logging in. On a random day, I launch another attack on his sectors; the next reset, he’s recapturing his land. He really does check the GvG map every day, watching over his own little corner of the game.
---
This is one story among many. Many people play GvG like this, watching over their small kingdoms. Some people get to experience a much grander spectacle: GvG wars.
I am a GvG Marshal for en7’s Lords of War. I’ve had the honor of fighting with and leading our GvG team for over two years, and the last 500 of our 2,013 total top 1 days. For the past decade, Lords of War has been (gasp) at war with a menagerie of other guilds to maintain that top spot. Throughout this entire time - and even up through the time I was helping to lead, nearly a decade later - GvG strategy was evolving, changing. In the past fourteen months specifically, there’s been a massive conflict as LoW approached 2000 days. Our lowest daily attendance for GvG over that period was 12 players. Our highest was 33. Our opponents had similar numbers. We pushed GvG (and the entire game!) to its limits, constantly evolving strategies in a brutal fight for the top.
Navigating an ever-shifting web of alliances. Traitors and spies sabotaging both sides. Adrenaline pumping as we wait for recalc to drop, the entire voice call silent in anticipation of the battle. Yelling at our guild leader for running his mouth about our strategies on global.
Sitting in our GvG voice call long after the daily fighting had ended, chatting and having a good time, becoming friends.
Dozens of guilds, hundreds of players, thousands of days.
For me, and many of my friends (and enemies!) who participated, GvG elevated the game. Battles. Wars. Politics. Allies and enemies. Strategy. Camaraderie. Before I joined Lords of War, I would often have month or year-long breaks from the game. Since I began participating in GvG, I have had no such breaks. This was my reason for playing the game.
---
So Quantum Incursions recently released to main server. Let’s evaluate it on it’s own merits first:
I’m going to be completely honest - QI has potential. It’s an interesting gimmick remeniscent of the Settlements. Every couple weeks you start a new mini-city, build it up for a while, and then get some rewards for your main city at the end of it. Not a bad deal, on it’s own.
The actual QI track itself is decent for players who want to log in, contribute a bit, get some rewards, and leave. It’s rather difficult for people not used to manual fighting, and manual fighting hasn’t been meta since like red stat inflation started half a decade ago, so it provides a mildly interesting challenge to the players’ personal fighting skill.
From a sandbox standpoint? A good bit of space for customization and strategizing, although let’s be honest - the progression is VERY linear. Numerous people have already come up with optimal, or close to optimal, strategies for QI city building. I fail to see how there could possibly be an evolving meta for QI, or how anyone except those playing within a very narrow optimal playstyle can hope to see rewards from it.
From a rewards standpoint? The rewards are decent. Not exemplary considering the current progression of stats released alongside QI (have you SEEN the 2024 Anniversary Event rewards??), but decent red & blue stats, with some FP and goods thrown in.
From a leadership standpoint? The mode is strategically dead. There are hardly any decisions to be made, and nearly all of the decisions to be made EITHER have an extremely obvious correct choice (yes, you always do the side nodes first) OR don’t provide you with enough information to make an educated choice (how are we supposed to decide which track to take if we don’t know what units/goods they require?).
From a motivation standpoint? QI is primarily rewards-motivated. There is little intrinsic value in QI; it requires considerable skill and attention while erasing all progress often. Just like Settlements, you don’t do QI because you love building a short-lived mini-city around painful Impediments; you do QI because you want the rewards for your main city. (If you happen to love doing Settlements for their own sake, please correct me, but I’ve never met anyone who does.)
---
Now let’s evaluate it as it sits among other game features, and as a replacement for GvG:
GvG, as we discussed above, has NO rewards, provides great freedom to the player, is strongly intrinsically-motivated, and has great strategic depth at a leadership level.
GbG has outstanding rewards, provides less but still great freedom to the player, can be either reward-motivated or intrinsically-motivated, and has great strategic depth at a leadership level.
GEx has outstanding rewards, provides no freedom to the player, is exclusively reward-motivated, and has no strategy at a leadership level.
---
QI is, comparatively speaking, the worst of all worlds. For active players it has relatively underwhelming rewards, especially considering the difficulty. Players are given insufficient freedom for any self-motivation, and there is no strategic depth to explore.
Perhaps it can be remediated. Perhaps the rewards will improve, perhaps the difficulty will be adjusted, perhaps we will find more freedom to develop goals and strategies in the future. But as it stands now?
QI fails laughably to fill the void left by the removal of GvG.
