Please Improve "Aid" Priorities

[DeletedUser1081]

I have discussed this further with the LCM, and the feedback we've received is that the designers have deliberately made the feature imperfect, as they wish to encourage people to still visit manually

Thank you for the feedback Starzaan dear but that is hugely disappointing. Making it cruddy for the "aidee" doesn't discourage the people racing to push the bleedin' "aid" button. If they want to encourage people to visit in person, they need to make this gizmo imperfect for the button-pushers. As in reduce the pay and don't give BPs for "aiding" instead of visiting.

If they don't rearrange the priorities as requested, they need to remove decorations from the gizmo's reach altogether. Meanwhile they can stop designing/offering any decorations - no one can afford them.

I hope they're pleased with themselves for kicking the players in the teeth yet again. Tis the season and all that.

 

[Galladhorn]

+1 on all 3.

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As a more advanced option one could imagine a few player selective AID Gizmo doctrinal Priority options:
00) Default (Minks optimized AID)
01) Special buildings 1st.
02) Happiness 1st.
03) Coins 1st.
04) Supplies 1st.

I know it´s properly an option that would require more work, but this is usually how the general play styles/Polivation Requests looks.
Also often seen with new players is the switching between different needs of coins, supplies etc.

In addition I find it slightly problematic/sad that with the very timesaving+++ AID button a generalization of the individual playstyle is very likely to occur over time.
Adaptions will on a longer time perspective, only happen in accordance with the AID Gizmo priority algorithm - Let´s say some experienced players have by now figured out how to utilize the Gizmo system the best way; then this will be the standard for everybody to follow - in other words this is how you should play. Yes it does not mean that everybody will do this, but so far many play styles has been. E.g. In Guilds some players are fighters, other producers etc. Only one Gizmo algorithm leaves little room for different playstyle.

- Anyways I´m totally on for Minks suggestion -

Part 3 with decorations is important too.
1) Decorations has for most players been a pain in the first place. Many many Profile info´s stating e.g.; No Decorations! etc.
2) Because people that like to beautify their cities are now left in the dust if they keep a lot of e.g green stuff around. For all Bob the builders deco´s is way to nerd around.
- So it´s fairly annoying that Decorations has such a high priority in the Aid Gizmo Algorithm, both for the effective player and for the medium casual city decorator.

 

[Galladhorn]

I think Minks got it right here.

I have now Polivated individual players for more than a year. I´t been painful at time I must admit, such a tedious repetitive and not fun part of the game.
But After the AID button I do manual to max 5 players out of a lot and I can see from the received Polivations that they are by far and mostly AID´s - that is from trusted players on freindlists that used to follow the Profile requests.

If the designers wish to Encourage manual Aiding this is certainly not the way because it´s a double negative proposal;
"To avoid getting you decorations Polished you will need to ask friend and guildies to manually and specifically AID you..."
- Seen in the light of the new AID all that has happened is players getting many more players in their friend lists to make sure they have enough AIDs to cover all their "Mains".
That essentially means less trusted/quality friends and just more "friends".
- In that regard the proposal has already outplayed itself; People use AID because it´s easy and it´s partly solving something that was a tedious part of the game.

All the experienced players will do is 1st to remove their decorations, then figure out how to play the Algorithm as stated in the below reply leading to a generalized playstyle.
Deleting Decorations is a bit sad IMO for the spice of cities, but as such I do not look at other players cities anymore since I do not do Polivation rounds - Another side effect of the AID button.

So while I can understand the Design and AID Algorithm in concept* it certainly does not look like it´s applying itself in the game.
*The understanding would be that players can now offer manual AID as a kind of Personal Bonus feature. Sorry I simply think it´s too far fetched because it is much easier to AID a lot of players than to remember specific polivations for a reasonable amount of players. Personally I have already gotten so many new players in friend list that it would be a hell to restart manual rounds and read every profiles request.

 

[DeletedUser100555]

A quick solution would be to make decorations have no polish effect availble - just cultural. This would also help people who like polishing cities that light up like a christmas tree.

 

[DeletedUser102829]

+1 for me

 

[DeletedUser99705]

NEWS FLASH: Inno embraces imperfection!

Great proposals like this one should not be so summarily dismissed to foster imperfection. I don’t know a single player who wants a deco polished...let alone all of them. All this does is encourage us to dump all decos. If you wish to encourage players to still polivate manually, this is the most idiotic approach possible. By manually polivating, you are in no way guaranteeing YOUR decos will not be polished. How is that supposed to work again?

Decos should be the absolute very last thing to receive aid…if any at all. I logged into one of my cities today and the top 4 events were; a polish on a Progressive Era Phoenix Statue, a polish on a Zen Garden, a polish on an Industrial Era Phoenix Statue, and a polish on a Progressive Era Palm Tree. All this at a time when every one of my cultural buildings were polished and all three of my Postmodern Era Hall of Fames were untouched. In what universe does this make sense?

I am collecting on unmotivated Shrines, Haunted Houses, Hall of Fames, Progressive Era Reindeer Paddocks and Confectionaries, Kings and Queens, Greenhouse Complexes, and Deli Shops on a daily basis between my four cities like never before. Yet somehow, my Sundials, Award Trophies, Palm Trees, Phoenix Statues, Neighborhood Cups, and Mobiliths never seem to miss a day without a polish or two. And some of those are from a much lower age than the buildings being ignored.

If imperfection is the goal...take a bow Inno!
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!!

I think you can do better. Don't set the bar so low for yourselves.

 

[DeletedUser7719]

I am collecting on unmotivated Shrines

Weird, if Shrines are prioritized first, how do you have unmotivated Shrines?

 

[DeletedUser99705]

Weird! I write all that and the only thing your question is the lack of motivation of Shrines? If I could answer your question...I wouldn't need to post it here. Yes, I've had a Shrine or two that did not get motivated. More disturbing is the fact that lower level decos are getting preferential treatment over upper level production, Hall of Fames, Haunted Houses, and Royalty every single day. Why on earth would they give us the aid feature and then have it polish decos?
I thought it was supposed to decrease the time commitment while increasing the amount of support...not infuriate the players by pointlessly polishing decos instead of motivating things we actually need motivated. This would be a moot point if they would simply allow us to sell back certain items to our inventory. I like seeing my Industrial Era Sundials...I don't like having them polished twice a day when my Postmodern Hall of Fames go untouched. That makes no sense!!! I don't like the idea of dumping all the interesting decos I've acquired over time...but if I can't keep them without them all being polished twice a day...I may have to. No more decos for me...thanks!
If the priority list allegedly goes by Era, how do four Industrial Era decos get polished before a Postmodern Era Hall of Fame?

 

[DeletedUser7719]

Weird! I write all that and the only thing your question is the lack of motivation of Shrines?

Yep, I understood everything else :p

Just to clarify, the priority list first targets Shrines, Tiger's Dens, and Oases, then it picks either polish or motivate (50/50 chance) and then it targets buildings from highest to lowest. If the system picks polish, it will only focus on polishable buildings, so buildings that can be motivated (i.e. Halls of Fame, Haunted Houses, and Kings & Queens) are not even looked at unless the system picks motivate.

Note I said just to clarify, this does not mean I support the way the feature is currently working now (though it personally doesn't bother me in any of my 3 main cities) which is why I'm in favor of this proposal

 

[DeletedUser99705]

Note I said just to clarify...

So sorry! I must have missed that in your original message...wait, check that...no I didn't, because you didn't say that at all. It's right there for everyone to see.
At least now I see why low level decos get polished before PME HoF's. Thanks for the info. That doesn't really make it any better because as I said (along with everyone else) nobody wants or needs decos to be polished. The acceptance of failure by Inno is stunning. So because we have far more buildings that can be motivated than we have that can be polished, we are punished. Got it!
Do you have any idea what happens if I aid someone, the system picks polish, and the person I aided has nothing left to polish? Does my aid vanish into the depths of the internet? Does it change to a motivation? Or is the system prevented from picking polish if there is nothing to polish?

 

[DeletedUser7719]

So sorry! I must have missed that in your original message...wait, check that...no I didn't, because you didn't say that at all. It's right there for everyone to see.

I wasn't implying that I said it before. I was implying that what I said was just to explain how it works; not to favor how it currently works. Here's something I said before in this thread:

+1 from me

Do you have any idea what happens if I aid someone, the system picks polish, and the person I aided has nothing left to polish? Does my aid vanish into the depths of the internet? Does it change to a motivation? Or is the system prevented from picking polish if there is nothing to polish?

It switches to motivation if there is nothing available to polish. (There is actually times an aid will vanish, but that's being addressed in another idea, and I don't want to get too off-topic from this one)

 

[DeletedUser99705]

Yea, I saw that discussion today as well. Equally disturbing. Thanks for the info!
And sorry for the sarcasm before...I have a hard time shutting it off.

 

[DeletedUser96867]

As I highly doubt INNO will make any positive changes to the AID feature, and I agree I can't see most players going back to manually polivation everyone. One possibility guilds could consider is setting up small groups of players who manually polivate each other so everyone is at least getting some manual polivation. For example ever player in the guild rank 1-9 manually polivate each other(as player requests) same for groups 10-19, 20-29 etc.

Just an idea.

 

[DeletedUser100555]

If the priority list allegedly goes by Era, how do four Industrial Era decos get polished before a Postmodern Era Hall of Fame?

You have everything polished, do collections and all your decos still have 11 hours to run. Looks as though its all gone wrong, but possibly not.

 

[DeletedUser]

+1 from me. Ofcourse we wish we could set our own polivation goals, but since that is unlikely to happen this one is a must have! The new aid feature is awesome in my opinion, but that it polishes decorations is just... weird.

 

[DeletedUser4879]

From experiencing the Aid feature it polishes first! However I noticed that there
are a lot more players taking part which means more buildings get motivated!
I love it and it gets a +1 from me!

 

[DeletedUser]

this post from Mink should really be applied to the game, it definetly shows all the pros and cons of that new feature

Thumbs up Mink

Phil

 

[DeletedUser]

+1 if I haven't already....

 

[DeletedUser97349]

FOE-21165 is planned to improve the logic of the Aid feature, however it has been stated that decorations will not be de-prioritised at the present time.

Consequently, I will mark this as forwarded as the feedback has been passed on, but part of the idea cannot be feasibly suggested at this point.

 

[DeletedUser2989]

This idea was rejected and now falls under "Do Not Suggest".