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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote ajqtrz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Mar 2016 at 21:57
Originally posted by Inferno Inferno wrote:

Large amounts of gold can be acquired within the game with no need whatsoever for real money, so buying prestige, turning it into scrolls, then selling it on the market is no different from hunting, gathering and/or crafting and selling what you've collected or made on the market for gold, or straight up selling basic resources, in the end all players are still governed by troop production times and there is no way around that.

Pay to win in games like Illy is usually associated with acquiring power instantly or at a much faster pace than the normal non-paying player would, I don't believe that's possible here, the only edge a paying player could get over a non-paying one regarding troops is that +10% attack power, and that is still achievable for non-paying players through daily prestige.

The only aspect that I could think of that is borderline pay to win is the insta-build option, personally I don't like it, even from the perspective of a prestige user, but I don't really have time to get into it now.

Have a nice day :)


The buying of scrolls and selling them for gold is a lot more lucrative than gathering, crafting, etc.  And if you have the real money to do it, you can therefore generate a lot more gold.  As I just said above, and with gold you can have 50 sov squares pumping out units so the time factor is not a real throttle. 

As for the time factor, I think being able to produce troops at 800% would go a long way toward making things move more quickly.  Yet, I do think you are right that the "instant pay to win" crowd may not like it and avoid Illyriad.   But the "insta-build" is itself a nod to that crowd in my opinion.

AJ
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Sun Tzu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Mar 2016 at 22:04
no need to be skeptical.  when your opponent loses the skill and work ethic required and can only manage a few hundred troops at a time.  for a majority of time elite divisions were all that was necessary.  he did all the damage to himself, at first without meaning to, then as time went on when the fever took ahold, started razing himself.  
That is why BB left him in the pathetic mess that he created, HE WASNT/ISNT WORTH TO FIGHT US. Couldve been a fun little war, at that time more than reasonable surrender terms from our end, instead turned into us questioning his sanity.  if thats a win for ajq then I pat him on the back of his straight jacket and send him on his way. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Brandmeister Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Mar 2016 at 23:10
Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

And, finally, if you have unlimited gold do you stop at 20 squares of sov?  Not if you don't need too.  And if you have 50 squares of sov does that not mean you can produce a lot faster?  It all adds up to fact that if you can generate X amount of gold without selling prestige, you can generate a lot more gold that AND selling prestige...which means, all things being equal, you CAN pay to win.

You clearly don't understand how sov works.

You can only build 20 structures. The basic resource consumption for 1-5 doubles at every level: 150, 300, 600, 1200, 2400. Even at 0 taxes, you can only produce a certain maximum amount of basic resources for production sovereign structures. So no, even with infinite gold, your production rate cannot be unlimited. You are limited by the practical aspect that if any of your basic resources run out while you are negative in that basic, all your sov structures will instantly fall apart. Above a certain consumption, it would be exhausting trying to ship in sufficient resources, although I know a few people who did it one month per year for tournaments, long before prestige sales were possible.

If you don't understand how sov works, I fail to see why anyone should take the rest of your P2W argument seriously. There is a practical amount you can boost even given limitless gold, which many accounts already had due to permasats.
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Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:

This thread should be changed to Unintended Nonsense. 

Firstly a player that razes his own towns and claims them as a victory should re-evaluate anything they post, though since AJ is miles above us mere mortals he does not have to consider that.


Be all that what it may, it's nice to know you will look past my weaknesses and take the time to consider and respond to my ideas.  I guess not all is lost.


Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:


Now, to the nonsense posted and how dumb it really is. 

1. What you are saying here is that people should be limited to 45k spears and others to 45k cavalry. I am not sure what game you are playing, on most terrain with most players cav will get somewhere between 3:1-6:1 ratios. The defending player will not be able to generate enough def/s to over come the attack/s posed by the cavalry let alone marching to the target where the undersiege player will continue to generate attack/s where the attacking player is fixed for defense. In summary rubbish idea. 


Actually a (sort of ) good point.  My 45k is pretty much irrelevant though since whatever number you place there will have the same ratio between cav and other forces.  Right now many players favor plains to get that bonus, but their are similar bonuses for other types of troops on other terrain.  More to the point, if you are building a spear city on the plains, you might like to reconsider your strategy.  The same error might be as much building a cav city in a forest where cav doesn't do well and infantry does.  I the end it's what you build and where you build it that determines what size an army is needed to overcome your defenses.  And if you have more gold than the other guy (see above responses) you can have more troops, all other considerations being equal.  Right now the size of armies is limited only by the gold you are able to generate...a distinct advantage to those able to purchase prestige and sell it for gold.


Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:


2. The problem with this particular strategy is that it takes a lot of time/investment and/or RL money to build these large towns. So this would have the reverse effect you would say and people wont risk their precious towns which is what occurs now. Having the complete opposite effect of what you are saying. The pvp is coming from the smaller dynamic towns where the large fat whale towns just get fatter. 

Well, at least you put in "or RL money" so I guess you do agree that RL money can help you in your goals.  As it stands now people don't risk their towns and most of Illy is pretty calm.  But that's their choice.  My point is that if I don't wish to risk my towns and my neighbor has the RL money to rebuild his any time he wishes he will probably be less intimidated by the idea of attacking me.  As for a lot of time and investment, that's true of anything for normal people, but there is little that can't be bought if your piggy bank is big enough, and bought fast.  There is the throttle of the research and I'm quite certain that's a good thing to have, but once you get to a certain size you can just capture the cities that have the research done as you need them.  Again, unlimited gold beats limited gold every time, no matter how high you put the "limit" on the limited gold.



Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:



3. This is counter productive, you would then have the coiners actually buying all of the crafted gear, leaving nothing for the poorer player. If I will do anything to win and I am paying to do that, I will ensure that by buying every single piece of advanced gear that the other player might need. That aside with both parties full stacking their armies with elites does not work as well as you would think.

You have a very good point.  If you limit the troops then the crafted gear becomes the next thing the player "pays [for] to win."  But of course, if he or she does that then he or she stimulates the creating of the crafted items and the gathering of the resources etc...with which to make them and instead of the player stimulating wars only they stimulate the economy as people rush to fulfill the need for gathered and crafted items.  At that point it's difficult to say what would happen.  Maybe their would be a real benefit to traders, gatherers, and crafters...not a bad scenario.


Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:



4.I dont know where to start with this particularly hopeless idea. You have 0 warfare experience in this game yet you are trying to outline a viable concept for war with 0 comprehension of the war mechanic. One of the things you fail to take into consideration here is travel distance. If I send an army from fellandire to Aindara, I cant make anything to replace that army till its dead. That in and of itself shows this is nonsense. I could go on, but i dont have the time to get out the crayons and outline how war mechanics actually work. 


Not sure why you can't produce troops why your army is in motion.  Seems to me I've done that a time or two.  As for commanders, yes you can send all five if you wish, but if you send two with 100,000 troops you would still have three at home while you used your 150 squares of sov to pump out 2000 per day or more...

As for the distances, if you have unlimited funds a couple of cities here and a couple of cities there, each with 200k troops or so should cover a lot of ground.  Again, it's the unlimited, or nearly unlimited resources that make the problem.



Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:


You keep banging on about this concept of "pay to win". The only difference that has occurred now is that prestige can be traded. Previously, the rich players could allocate prestige to the alliance pool and go have at it. 


Actually, it's the relatively easy way they can supply anybody with prestige in exchange for gold that makes the difference.  Before you bought prestige and it could be used to basic raise resources, increase van speeds, etc.  It couldn't be used to pay for sov or anything requiring gold.  Now it can.  Now prestige is, in essence, an in game currency and can be easily exchanged for gold.  By allowing this the devs enabled rich players to, in essence, print their own money...because they can easily convert RL money into in-game money.

Now since gold can be used to do anything in Illy that you need done, with the exception of speeding up research, it's obvious that "pay to win" is 80% there.  And if you use your wealth to simply capture well developed cities (where the research is done already) in only a matter of months you can be a very large player.  And if you have an alliance doing this you have "pay to win."


Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:


You are not considering the one important aspect of this. Illyriad can not be pay to win as you cannot buy gold through the shop, you cannot instabuild armies, you cannot prestige research, you cannot speed up armies past the 50% FM, you cannot queue more than 2 buildings per queue. Need I go on?


You cannot buy gold directly but you can buy a much needed in-game asset, prestige.  And that you can easily trade for gold.
You cannot Insta-build armies but you can get pretty close with 1000% - 2000% sov.  (25x40 =1,000).  You cannot speed up armies but you can capture cities across the map and reduce times to about 4 days max.  And you can purchase the riding horses and equipment to go a bit faster than 50%  (25% fm, 25% riding horse, 15% extra light armour, 15% extra light weapon = 80%).  And if you have the gold to purchase all the gear needed and know that you can just replace it with more gold when you need it you will be more likely to use it.


Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:


There is only a finite amount of gold in the server, it goes up and down depending on whats happening in game. Whilst there is only a finite amount of gold generated by the server this game cannot be a "play to win" game. If people are desperate to accumulate gold they will dilute the value of tomes and what not which in the end will see a stop trade on people selling prestige as they will perceive the return on investment in buying prestige will not be worth selling. 


I'm glad you noticed a possible self balancing feedback loop in the value of tomes.  Unfortunately, the cost of prestige is 0 to those who pay to win.  That's why it's so difficult to stop p2w.  If you value prestige at 0 you can sell it as low as you want so long as you are generating the gold you need.  Since prestige is far above 0 for the average player there will always be a market and thus the self balancing will not occur.  Self-balancing only occurs when the actual perception of value is relatively normalizes.  In Illy it's not, it's more of a polarized distribution along two axis.


Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:


Players are also limited to how fast they can produce troops as well, traditionally I could out produce anyone running large negatives having to keep up by doing a lot of trading. Whilst others have large standing armies based on the fact that they have 7 food towns and higher taxes. The trade off there being they cant re-produce said army in a hurry. 


And if you had no limit of gold?  How big a deficit could you run then? And how big an army?  Which is exactly my point...by giving RL well-to-do players access to in-game gold via prestige trading you open the door to limitless armies because you can just buy more sov to speed things up, more prestige to speed things up, more armies to capture well researched towns to speed things up...etc...etc...etc...


Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:



The rich player concept is also rubbish. This game is not played on an individual basis, it is an alliance based game. A
comprehensive understanding of how to wage war will trump a rich player any day of the week. There are some wealthy players in Shark/Vic/Unbow yet the wealth of that alliance group is not a major factor because if being a wealthy player was, sin would be dust by now simply down to the fact there are more players in those alliances which means a higher chance of people willing to spend money. This is a perpetual server and the players that have been playing for 5+ years have accumulated a significant amount of ingame wealth, and starting from before prestige was a tradeable item.
[/Quote

I'm not privy to the finances of players in any alliance except my own, and since I'm the only one in my alliance I have 100% knowledge of that aspect...lol.  However, if the rich player(s) and the "less rich" players are equally knowledgeable about how to fight a war, I'm putting my money on the rich player who can purchase whatever he or she needs to get the job done over the "less rich" player who has limited resources.  You seem to assume that p2w means the player isn't knowledgeable and thus the knowledge of the others will overwhelm him or her, or his or or her alliance. 

And no doubt people who have accumulated a "significant amount of in-game wealth" will do quite well for a long, long time.  But again, if I had to bet on a long, long war, my money would be on the one with the unlimited wealth over the one with even 5 years of accumulated riches. 



Your raise some interesting and provocative points.  Yet, you miss the fundamental problem in that once you allow the inflow of unlimited wealth you allow unlimited purchasing. And once you allow unlimited purchasing you allow pay to win.  It's not so much about the game mechanics but a fundamental flow of wealth into the game at a potential rate that makes it pay to win. 

On the more positive side you do present a good case for the rate of the flow into the game being slow enough that it might not actually develop into a pay to win, but I'm not happy with taking the wait and see route when some sort of limit on army size would put into place a throttle on the war side, which is usually where you find the pay to win crowd.

Of course that last statement may not be true.  My 10 years of playing online games like Illyriad says it is, but there are thousands of games I've never even heard of and thus it's only my impression.  Maybe there's pay to win in Farmland too.  I don't really know.  All I do know is that in the games I've played where that became an option it wasn't long before it was the only option.

Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

[Quote=Malek]

I think in the long run, you stick to philosophy and preaching your intellectual superiority and stay away from game mechanics since you clearly do not understand them and simply spew forth the first thing that comes out of your mouth. 


I would humbly suggest you broaden your perspective past simple game mechanics and investigate basic economics, human behavior and other games like Illyriad where play to win has become dominant.  I'm suggesting an improved game mechanics to keep the game away from p2w but understand that, as I've said before, "unintended consequences" are always lurking in the shadows.

Thanks for your comments.  Most of what you say did well to stick to the topic, and I appreciate that.

AJ




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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote mjc2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Mar 2016 at 00:29
Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:

You keep banging on about this concept of "pay to win". The only difference that has occurred now is that prestige can be traded. Previously, the rich players could allocate prestige to the alliance pool and go have at it. 


Actually, it's the relatively easy way they can supply anybody with prestige in exchange for gold that makes the difference.  Before you bought prestige and it could be used to basic raise resources, increase van speeds, etc.  It couldn't be used to pay for sov or anything requiring gold.  Now it can.  Now prestige is, in essence, an in game currency and can be easily exchanged for gold.  By allowing this the devs enabled rich players to, in essence, print their own money...because they can easily convert RL money into in-game money.

Now since gold can be used to do anything in Illy that you need done, with the exception of speeding up research, it's obvious that "pay to win" is 80% there.  And if you use your wealth to simply capture well developed cities (where the research is done already) in only a matter of months you can be a very large player.  And if you have an alliance doing this you have "pay to win."

this is incorrect.  you could always buy pres with gold in this game.  the sit feature allows a sitter to buy pres for you using their payment info and prior to scrolls coming out players regularly set up deals in GC using the sit feature to transfer pres.  this was done while the Devs where in GC talking to other people so it was always allowed.  the only thing the scrolls did to the pres market is place them on the market itself so buyers no longer had to trust sellers with their accounts through the sit feature.

Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:


You are not considering the one important aspect of this. Illyriad can not be pay to win as you cannot buy gold through the shop, you cannot instabuild armies, you cannot prestige research, you cannot speed up armies past the 50% FM, you cannot queue more than 2 buildings per queue. Need I go on?


You cannot buy gold directly but you can buy a much needed in-game asset, prestige.  And that you can easily trade for gold.
You cannot Insta-build armies but you can get pretty close with 1000% - 2000% sov.  (25x40 =1,000).  You cannot speed up armies but you can capture cities across the map and reduce times to about 4 days max.  And you can purchase the riding horses and equipment to go a bit faster than 50%  (25% fm, 25% riding horse, 15% extra light armour, 15% extra light weapon = 80%).  And if you have the gold to purchase all the gear needed and know that you can just replace it with more gold when you need it you will be more likely to use it.


your numbers here are also incorrect.  the highest you can possibly get troop sov is 800%.  this is 20sqs (max sov buildings you may build per city) x lvl 5(highest possible sov per sq) x 8%(if all 20 sqs give 3% troop sov bonus, which is the highest in game).  but doing this will cost you 48k of each basic per hour which is very hard to maintain and will take you days to set up not instantly.  you cannot claim lvl 5 sov or build lvl 5 sov buildings instantly, they both take time to build and cannot be pres built.  and this isnt even taking into account that most military players are running 200-400% troop sov anyway so the most a "play 2 win"(according to you) player can actually produce is 2-4 times as many troops as a non "pay 2 win" player and this will require a lot of basics management on their end to ensure they do not lose the sov bonuses.

Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:


Players are also limited to how fast they can produce troops as well, traditionally I could out produce anyone running large negatives having to keep up by doing a lot of trading. Whilst others have large standing armies based on the fact that they have 7 food towns and higher taxes. The trade off there being they cant re-produce said army in a hurry. 


And if you had no limit of gold?  How big a deficit could you run then? And how big an army?  Which is exactly my point...by giving RL well-to-do players access to in-game gold via prestige trading you open the door to limitless armies because you can just buy more sov to speed things up, more prestige to speed things up, more armies to capture well researched towns to speed things up...etc...etc...etc...


the gold deficit does not matter, we are telling you the big problem with army size is build time, you can only speed that up so much.  all of the calculations i have seen you use for potential troop production have been flawed on their basic assumptions.  actually read the limits everyone is telling you about and apply them to your math, then see what happens to the numbers you are worried about.  you are also ignoring the basics costs for troop sov.  you cant really move the amount of basics needed for the sov you are talking about in this game, cities simply do not have enough van capacity to do it.

Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:



The rich player concept is also rubbish. This game is not played on an individual basis, it is an alliance based game. A
comprehensive understanding of how to wage war will trump a rich player any day of the week. There are some wealthy players in Shark/Vic/Unbow yet the wealth of that alliance group is not a major factor because if being a wealthy player was, sin would be dust by now simply down to the fact there are more players in those alliances which means a higher chance of people willing to spend money. This is a perpetual server and the players that have been playing for 5+ years have accumulated a significant amount of ingame wealth, and starting from before prestige was a tradeable item.
[/Quote

I'm not privy to the finances of players in any alliance except my own, and since I'm the only one in my alliance I have 100% knowledge of that aspect...lol.  However, if the rich player(s) and the "less rich" players are equally knowledgeable about how to fight a war, I'm putting my money on the rich player who can purchase whatever he or she needs to get the job done over the "less rich" player who has limited resources.  You seem to assume that p2w means the player isn't knowledgeable and thus the knowledge of the others will overwhelm him or her, or his or or her alliance. 

And no doubt people who have accumulated a "significant amount of in-game wealth" will do quite well for a long, long time.  But again, if I had to bet on a long, long war, my money would be on the one with the unlimited wealth over the one with even 5 years of accumulated riches. 



Your raise some interesting and provocative points.  Yet, you miss the fundamental problem in that once you allow the inflow of unlimited wealth you allow unlimited purchasing. And once you allow unlimited purchasing you allow pay to win.  It's not so much about the game mechanics but a fundamental flow of wealth into the game at a potential rate that makes it pay to win. 

On the more positive side you do present a good case for the rate of the flow into the game being slow enough that it might not actually develop into a pay to win, but I'm not happy with taking the wait and see route when some sort of limit on army size would put into place a throttle on the war side, which is usually where you find the pay to win crowd.

Of course that last statement may not be true.  My 10 years of playing online games like Illyriad says it is, but there are thousands of games I've never even heard of and thus it's only my impression.  Maybe there's pay to win in Farmland too.  I don't really know.  All I do know is that in the games I've played where that became an option it wasn't long before it was the only option.

Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Originally posted by Malek Malek wrote:



I think in the long run, you stick to philosophy and preaching your intellectual superiority and stay away from game mechanics since you clearly do not understand them and simply spew forth the first thing that comes out of your mouth. 


I would humbly suggest you broaden your perspective past simple game mechanics and investigate basic economics, human behavior and other games like Illyriad where play to win has become dominant.  I'm suggesting an improved game mechanics to keep the game away from p2w but understand that, as I've said before, "unintended consequences" are always lurking in the shadows.

Thanks for your comments.  Most of what you say did well to stick to the topic, and I appreciate that.

AJ





well the only 2 ways i can think of to prevent "pay 2 win" without using game mechanics are to either have the devs work for free or make the game "pay 2 play" which in both cases will just bring in illegal gold sellers(which would bring "pay 2 win" right back into the game) so if we do not allow the devs to make money off this game why should we allow others?  

and as for taking the "wait to see route" like you mentioned, this game has been around for over 5 years now with pres being able to be sold for gold in some way, if that isnt long enough for you then idk what is

as for your troop limit requirement, you would have to set it so high that it would take a year for someone to actually build that many troops which would make it completely useless.  the reason i am saying it would have to be that high is i can easily build cities that are capable of maintaining 100k troops and 320% troop sov without being negative in any item, including gold.  so your 45k troop limit is way too low.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Brandmeister Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Mar 2016 at 02:42
Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

You cannot Insta-build armies but you can get pretty close with 1000% - 2000% sov. (25x40 =1,000).

You cannot have 40 sov squares. Your grasp of the game mechanics is flawed. Trying to run production sov V on 20 squares would give a basic 500%, and would consume 48000 resources per hour. It would take enormous effort to keep one city running at that level without a breakdown, let alone 8-10. You can't buy basic resources directly with prestige, so you would either need to run multiple supply accounts non-stop or purchase and shuttle huge volumes of resources from the hubs. A single successful troop or thief attack on your city would cause an instant collapse.

For fast production, I run four Sov IV and sixteen Sov III, and that requires a specially built production template that doesn't use a 7 food square.

For about the tenth time, please learn how to use the quote tags properly.
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as said above u can't sov more than 20 sq and actually gold is not the main prob for sov to reduce troop production time and main prob is basic res and RPs remember with pres u can get 20% boast for all these things which allows u to get more sov for troops . 
plus consider this fact that now u can have upto 42 cities (limit on paper is 47 though but thats what one can achieve ) . and u can't even imagine to go pass 10-12 cities with out pres . so a player who can buy pres can go to 30-40 cities but some one who don't likes or can't pay RL money for pres will be limited to 10-12 now what ever troop limit u put for a town check the diff plus consider a pres buying player can get more troop sov as he has +20% boast for res and RP . he aslo has attack and def boast for his troops through pres . now is not this a Pay to Win situation ? when one can get all those boast while other can't 
Remember they only way to actually generate gold in this game is through tax by selling anything including pres items u only get that gold which others have already generated and are willing to give u in return of that item . so just stopping the ability to sell pres items will not resolve the matter as people already have that big amount of gold they r just not using it properly . while one who sells pres items and gather the gold to support his troops upkeep is actually sending that gold out of server so he is actually reducing the chance of having biggg armies. 
and just to tell i m a player who can't buy Pres for RL money and this option to buy pres for illy gold actually benefits me as i m a military player but never realised a prob for gold (although i don't sell pres items for illy gold) . as i have other means to get the gold the prob i face is that +20% boast for basic res production and RPs to get more troop sov
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tink XX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Mar 2016 at 06:13
Originally posted by ajqtrz ajqtrz wrote:

Maybe there's pay to win in Farmland too.


It's Farmville, AJ, get it right! LOL Although it appears that there does indeed exist a knock-off of Farmville called Farmland. Kinda reminds me of "Nice" and "Adibas" running shoes that used to be sold on street markets in Russia in the days of my childhood. If you google "farmville revenues" you pretty quickly find out that said revenues hit 1 billion in 2013 Shocked Maybe it's not pay-to-win, but sure is pay-to-turnip.

I find it hilarious that you are lecturing Malek on the increase in troop production sov. Your entire post here is made out of false premises. This is such basic game mechanics that it requires zero peer reviewed academic research and/or syllogisms to comprehend it.

P.S. Being a player who hasn't bought prestige in the last 5 months and having run a few successful siege operations, I would like to know how much you were betting on the richer players winning. Tongue



Edited by Tink XX - 02 Mar 2016 at 06:25
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hyrdmoth Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Mar 2016 at 14:10
Originally posted by Rill Rill wrote:

The bottom line is that wringing more and more money from a smaller and smaller group of players WILL have consequences for the game long-term.  This is the consequence, intended or not, that has me most concerned.
Now that aj's lack of knowledge of sovereignty has been comprehensively addressed, I would like to try and draw discussion back to Rill's point, which I think is interesting.

The vast majority of (or perhaps all?) free-to-play games rely on a small number of whale players who bring in the vast majority of the income for the developers of the game. This has consequences for the design of such games, which by necessity is skewed to keeping such players happy. All the other players only matter insofar as they keep the spending players happy.

It would result in a better game, and a more sustainable game in the long-run, if the same quantity of prestige was bought in smaller increments by a larger number of players. Trading of prestige makes that less likely, because a player can easily access moderate amounts of prestige with gold.

I'm not sure what the best thing to do is, but I would like the funding of the game to encourage the developers to continue work on Faction AI and other new content.

I think that increasing the in-game value of non-gold items would be good for the game (ie by adding the magic that would require the currently useless minerals, anatomies and herbs, or by changing the way that crafted items work - perhaps by increasing the maximum size elite divisions). How would this encourage a greater number of players to purchase modest quantities of prestige? I'm not sure.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote IbnSenna Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Mar 2016 at 17:45
Let's be comforted in the idea that some undocumented features in the game:
  • can happen
  • follow some rules
  • can be witnessed/obtained within the limits of an Illy player's lifetime
thinking of berries/fruit, diamond, mysteries, advanced crafted items, schools of magic, factions standing, portals, water ways, pathfinding…

I can remember some time when players in BL were unable to send diplos to Fortune Teller positions wihin the 23:59:59 limit…
This was mended!

So other features might be?
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