Solving the innactives and trade problem

[DeletedUser]

Surely the best way to solve these two problems is to change how neighbourhoods are built. No, I'm not suggesting larger neighbourhoods.

If a neighbourhood was made up groups of 80 closest to each other in global ranking, the innactives would be pushed down and those around you would be needing similar goods to you and so able to trade.

At the moment, your neighbourhood is made from those who joined at around the same time as you. To trade with each other, your group must all have similar commitment. Otherwise you drop behind or get too far ahead.

The programme to build neighbourhoods is already there with the guilds programme. You only need to exchange the activation to global position rather than a linking it to the "accept" button and everythings done. Have it on a timer (say, one a week the neighbourhoods update) and its homely too.

The only problem in all this is new members to FoE. They'll be stuck at the bottom with the rubbish. But I'm sure someone can solve that easily enough.

 

[DeletedUser]

if they came up with a logarithm that used point growth over a set amount of time = which neighborhood you would be placed in would place you in a group of 80 that have similar playing styles thus you wouldn't be too far ahead of others or too far behind.

 

[DeletedUser]

Trading will be helped out once guilds are able to trade among each other.

Replacing a entire neighborhood like this for some people with others could be a issue as too many active people would cause issues for pvp towers with everyone trying to get the medals in them.

And having higher level people to attack would cause the people in the top to stay ahead of others as you would get a ton more points from defeating higher level troops while the people at lower levels would never be able to catch up.

Also it could cause a lot of people to have only guild mates in your neighborhood and it is annoying how you have a limited ability to attack people from your guild.

Changing a ton of people in your neighborhood often will not fix much compared to guild / global trading.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think they should just have a way to eliminate people automatically who never do anything except register. One way would be to not allow anyone into any neighborhood who does not achieve the first 5 steps into the tutorial, or so. Like make getting into the neighborhood part of the tutorial. This way all of the spots are filled with people who have at least got an idea of what the game is and did not just give up.

I am not sure exactly how it works, but perhaps all of these empty spots are automatically created, when people are playing actively in another world, but on my neighborhood there are at least 40 people who have never moved anything. Then there are thirty who did not play much at all. And maybe ten who are still playing. Maybe only 5 or 6.

But I do not support disbanding neighborhood based upon points. You can have a repoire with the folks in your neighborhood even when they are not nearly as high in points. I think that it is just important to erase those inactive accounts, and get some fresh players in.

At the moment, your neighbourhood is made from those who joined at around the same time as you. To trade with each other, your group must all have similar commitment. Otherwise you drop behind or get too far ahead.

I am not sure how this is for others, but I am 3000 points ahead of the rest of the crowd (just two people) in my neighborhood. They are behind, that is sure. But the fact is that once they have a resource on their map, and they make the factory, they can trade resources before they build all of the buildings, collect all of the coins, etc., that come from playing time. The fact that we all started at the same time makes us equal in terms of forge points, as long as they are all active. Now if they do not progress along with their technologies at 100% speed, expanding fast, that is OK, as long as they are still able to explore, pick up a few new territories, and build the appropriate factories. Most people learn to build factories when they get the resources, after running out of them, perhaps earlier on. Therefore, I would say that even players with a great disparity in scores might actually be in the same range to be able to trade. It is just that vast quantity of people in the neighborhood are not even playing, or have not even played at all (at least there is no evidence of it).

Put it in other words. Even in the middle ages, the basic bronze age resources are still needed. If I progress two ages beyond the rest of my group, then that means that I have bought 100,000 coins worth of forge points. That is clearly overplaying. The trading keeps the players in the same ballpark, and in tune with what is going on in eachother's cities. If I want to overplay to the point of getting so far ahead as to be way out of range of everyone in my group, then I guess that means I could take a break and do something useful. Otherwise, I can still benefit from them, theoretically, as long as there are some of them still playing.

The question is, are there at least two people still active enough to trade anything of use? And the reason the answer is no, is maybe not because the groups have not been matched to the score, or something like this, but because more than half of the stinking spots are wasted on dead players.

 

[DeletedUser]

But the fact is that once they have a resource on their map, and they make the factory, they can trade resources before they build all of the buildings, collect all of the coins, etc., that come from playing time. The fact that we all started at the same time makes us equal in terms of forge points, as long as they are all active. Now if they do not progress along with their technologies at 100% speed, expanding fast, that is OK, as long as they are still able to explore, pick up a few new territories, and build the appropriate factories. Most people learn to build factories when they get the resources, after running out of them, perhaps earlier on.

I'm not sure if you're aware of it, that you can build and produce goods without having the resources on the map, be it on a 1 per 4 hour basis, instead of 5 per 4 hour .
Also, it is no longer possible to run out of resources - once you discover one on the map, you can use it indefinitely!

That said, I do agree with you that we need players of all ages to help each other along. Activity is the keyword here indeed, not how far people have progressed.

 

[DeletedUser]

I'm not sure if you're aware of it, that you can build and produce goods without having the resources on the map, be it on a 1 per 4 hour basis, instead of 5 per 4 hour .
Also, it is no longer possible to run out of resources - once you discover one on the map, you can use it indefinitely!

My point might have been misunderstood. What I was saying was that progress between two players can take place on the tech tree at a comparable rate, whereas there can be a large point spread between the same two players, due to amounts of time spent playing, style of play, and so on. It is sort of a tricky concept, and not a very well organized paragraph.

 

[DeletedUser]

I will add that while I agree with those arguing that partically 'activity' is key to the trade to work, it is not the whole story... I can clearly see from the PvP-towers that around 10 players are active in a sense that they score points on the pvp-tower, which ever way they do so. And from city points i can also see that these are the ones ahead of all the 'lost civilizations'; still though from those 10 only 2 are trading, one of which is myself.

Now if 2/10 is the ratio, then indeed with 70 or so active players there'd be 14 people trading which will be more than enough to keep those people fairly happy with the current barter system, and it's likely that if 14people are trading the ratio of trading people (atleast buying stuff) will increase as well, as more people will see how this will give them an advantage over going at a 1/4h ratio, even if these goods also help the other player ahead...

So it's either a different trading system, or, a way to keep active people together and put the 'lost civs' in their own neighbourhood. Perhaps a harbor feature could be placed at some point in the tech tree, where reaching this point and building it will put you in a different neighbourhood based upon various factors, which could be global score, progress speed, production speed, battles fought, etc ... placing certain types of player within a certain 'bandwidth' together will make the game interesting for all... even slow progressing people, that do play but at a real slow pace, will be teamed up with other slow playing people, and thus feel 'at home' in their neighbourhood, may even have a shot at certain features, like the PvP-towers or reaching 1st in the neighbourhood, without feeling like they never have a chance because they just can't put the hours in (for w/e reason).

And this can be done at various instances in the game, to reshuffle players based upon the progress they made and the speed between two defined points.

Or server or global trading will just open up the economy to all those interested in trading, other trading features (like for gold or for supply or even for diamonds) can be integrated into the system. Even advanced civ's can still benefit from having a marble mason as they can see it to lower level players for gold or supply or even diamonds. And you wont have to shuffle databases together every so often, because for some reason stuff like that has a tendency to mess up :/

 

[DeletedUser]

I would limit the total number of neigbourhoods, and only 'bump' people who are lowest in that neighbourhood who have been inactive for a certain time, maybe 2 weeks. That way you keep adding 'fresh meat', sorry that's new neighbours, for those who are active, which hopefully means that eventually more and more of the players will be active.

Obviously if enough new people are joining you could create a new neighbourhood. Maybe they could even have 'noob' neighbourhoods and the active ones could then be transferred to a veteran one if they stay active and reach a certain level.

In my neighbourhood I can never get any loot from most players, even their houses, as I presume that once looting occurs it has to be cleared for them to grow again. This isn't a problem as I'm mostly after the vp for medals.

I wouldn't even mind if rather than an attack button, there was a 'noob' button which provided protection for a couple of weeks, even if they try attacking someone. This could also alert established players to the fact that there may be someone new to trade with, invite to guilds, otherwise help etc