Abandoned player accounts: freeze&hide from area/friend/guild lists

[AntiDuck]

Proposal: If player hasn't logged in for 14 days (or XX days, or month, or 2 months - etc) - enforce hiding her/his account in all worlds from
• neiighbours list
• friends list
• guild list (and demote her/him to regular member in .. 30 days, because her/his leader role may prevent other members to manage guild)
If player decided to continue playing - s/he restarts with empty friend lists, and guild membership is renewed after acceptance of current leaser

Have you checked the forums for the same or similar idea: No, I'm lazy.

Reason: Per each game world - there are hundreds (if not thousands) of abandoned accounts, which have no input into the game - they don't trade, don't visit Taverns, don't participate in Guild Somethings Events. They are there for others just to click "Aid" and get few coins.

Details: can be discussed in details with more knowledgeable players here in forum.
If there is a specific reason for Inno to keep showing abandoned accounts as active for long months? I'm playing since Oct 2019, and only in March I've realized I have "friends" in friends list, who have same rating for 3 months and they are definitely left the game, and it's time to delete there.
Just few days ago, one of my game friends runned a chat (with all friends in list), asking live friends to click "Leave the chat" and thus seeing live people, and preparing to remove non-active friends - so the problem is for everyone, who wants to play daily.

Visual Aids: None. If you're a Leader in your Guild - you can see last login time of any member - I just think that system message "Friend Fire&Forget removed from your friends list due to inactivity in last 30 days" - will be enough.

Balance/Abuse Prevention: It's a hard question, because I don't know why game is designed in a way to keep holding so many abandoned accounts.

 

[Agent327]

Not likely to happen.

Players that are not active are placed in a hood of their own, so you will not find them in your neighbourlist.
Friend list you need to manage yourself.
Guild list is up to your founder and leaders. Founder has to manage leaders. Inactive founders are replaced.

 

[DeletedUser]

 

[Agent327]

And ofcourse similar ideas are posted about every week.

https://forum.en.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/filter-for-global-rankings-to-filter-out-inactive-players.39812/

https://forum.en.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/player-statistics.39907/

https://forum.en.forgeofempires.com...active-date-of-friends-in-friends-list.39515/

https://forum.en.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/friends-list-last-time-online.38317/

https://forum.en.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/inactive-friends.32296/

 

[AntiDuck]

I see it rather as Inno's policy - many projects in Internet depend on statistics, number of registrations, number of active accounts. These hard-to-check stats have direct influence on project development, bonuses, cost of shares ... lot of things.
So, noone ever heard about Internet project which is intentionally lowering the amount of it's users

If, suddenly, we discover ourselves in each of 20 (it's twenty, or more?) FoE worlds where population dropped from thousands to maybe few hundreds - it will raise questions like - who needs so many half-empty worlds, and why so many people quit game in few days after start ... and it won't be very pleasant quiz for Inno.

However, I don't like ghost game worlds. I believe, it's only live people who make FoE interesting, not abandoned accounts, whcih only deliver confusion.
I just see a comment of a person, I stopped talk with - on this idea being repeatedly offered by other people. If so, it's probably time to do something about it. Except of repeatedly ignoring this problem, of course

Spoiler: It's hard to interact with manekens

 

[Cursedveggie]

It's mainly in the early eras and very early on where most people quit, I've found that once I've moved up a few eras it becomes less of a problem, although as agent says, its upto you to manage your friends. There are several 3rd party sites where you can see how active people are and if they've stopped playing. This can take a while to go through everyone individually but I've found it useful to do every couple of months or so.

Alternatively, you can try the age old methods of messaging everyone and removing those who dont respond (annoying for everyone involved) or just aid from the tavern and remove everyone who hasn't aided you in over a week

 

[AntiDuck]

It's mainly in the early eras and very early on where most people quit

In Guild Battleground, we oppose (and win!) to millionair's club guilds with 10 .. 12 .. 14 members, each of 2 XXX XXX rating. But, only 2-3 people actually participate in GB. And not every day. I saw guilds with high ranks, where some members "titled" as "Left the game", but not excluded.

up to you to manage your friends

I can't do that, I can't see when friends were online last time, I can only guess. And try to make screens, compare their current ratings to ratins one week ago - e.g. it will require extra tools.

. There are several 3rd party sites where you can see how active people are and if they've stopped playing. This can take a while to go through everyone individually but I've found it useful to do every couple of months or so.

Maybe this solved by 3rd party webs (which I'm not eager to use, based on some experience). Maybe it's a question of self-discipline and ability to work for the game developers - when you take task, they don't "notice" and solve it manually, on a regular basis.
But we're in 2020, right? Like, everyone around is programmer nowadays. Maybe it's time for Inno to move on, or it's not a top priority? I saw that other Inno;;s game (clon of FoE) and found it targeted to kids - yet, again, it's very specific dark Teuton genius style (way to complicate for modern kids). So I see, Inno's won't change a bit
With Supercell, it was different - they dive into the millions of euro so quickly and so deep, that their structure of communication immediately became unbreakable labynth of "Thanks you, now get lost" replies But, I recall Clash of Clans to have major changes monthly, new buildinghs and units each 4-6 months, etc.

Alternatively, you can try the age old methods of messaging everyone and removing those who dont respond (annoying for everyone involved) or just aid from the tavern and remove everyone who hasn't aided you in over a week

> old methods (keeping a track on 80+ friends using paper and pen
That's called 2nd non-paid job in a computer game

> annoying
I only annoy on forums and in real life. Game communication should be funny and entertaining, not annoing

 

[Cursedveggie]

Simply aid from your tavern, anyone left unaided hasn't aided you in a week, if they're still playing then they aren't very helpful friends anyway or they are inactive. Just remove them.

Do it once a month, takes a few minutes

 

[Shad23]

then i'm not very usefull i only aid in events for quests

 

[DeletedUser]

then i'm not very usefull i only aid in events for quests

It's why I removed you

 

[Cuthwolf]

Simply aid from your tavern, anyone left unaided hasn't aided you in a week, if they're still playing then they aren't very helpful friends anyway or they are inactive. Just remove them.

Do it once a month, takes a few minutes

Aid from the Tavern? How does that work? I sometimes do a round from the Town Hall event history to identify inactives.

PS stats show that there are 119,880 active and 343,040 inactive players on the EN server

 

[Cursedveggie]

Aid from the Tavern? How does that work?

Tavern = Town Hall!

Fat fingers and autocorrect added to a touch of idiocy

 

[DeletedUser]

Tavern = Town Hall!

Fat fingers and autocorrect added to a touch of idiocy

I believed the fat fingers...but not the autocorrect!

 

[Cursedveggie]

I believed the fat fingers...but not the autocorrect!

What are you trying to say?