It really looks like that list was given to a dev. and they didn't want any extra work so they just went down the list with a cynical personal objective to say 'no' to everything, some with valid reasons, some clearly totally obtuse/disingenuous. For example the "This has been refused on the basis of new players being helped by placing 0 and 1 star trades. It is important that these remain visible for this purpose." answer - yeah you can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I'm not going to accept those kind of trades, except from growing fellows. Having a toggle on/off for unfair and cross-tier trades wouldn't stop people helping fellows, or anyone for that matter, if a player wanted to turn if off to check for unfair trades to help newer players/small fellows. It wouldn't impact the server load at all either, as it's purely a client-side filter being applied to the existing API response. Also, just because a particular action in another game requires premium currency, doesn't automatically mean that this has to be true for a similar action here.
Stop 'pulling the ladders up' too, after they've already been well used by other players. You let loads of people get huge AW donations before introducing the credit system. You let loads of people upgrade their AWs easily, then change it to require fragments and RR.
Now we get news from the beta that KP donations to AWs are being limited to only those people whom you've discovered on the world map (this is going to be extra fun for people near the edge like me - about 25% of my world map is goldmines). So no more KP hunting. Is this all to try and frustrate people into spending diamonds to progress AWs? Between chapters there's not much to do in-game, outside of events, but even those only take minutes a day at some point. Hunting was another activity end-game players could partake in to keep their interest in the game alive and now you want to take that away too!?
The most valuable thing from the spire was the diamonds and then you go and reduce those and give us pointless stuff instead. Events used to give decent buildings as rewards, but they've been noticibally worse, nigh on worthless, for the last four years at least. I don't care about being able to buy premium culture buildings for the new spire currency - they're just not worth it, mostly because, unlike with event buildings, you can't ever upgrade premium culture buildings with RR, or with anything. They just fall behind with each new chapter and have to be deleted when they no longer justify the space they occupy versus newer buildings or even some event buildings that can be upgraded each new chapter (that's not an invite for a typical Inno solution, make good things worse, instead of making bad things better - so don't stop allowing event buildings to be upgraded - a proper fix would be allowing the premium culture buildings to be upgradable either by RR, or a [fair] percentage of their original diamond/spire currency cost, or a blueprint, or a blueprint per 2000 diamonds of original cost, same as with magic residences and workshops). Premium culture buildings just aren't a long-term investment they way they're currently implemented and that makes them a waste of money/spire effort in my book.
Royal rewards in events that clearly aren't worth the diamond cost, that just prey on people who can't control their FOMO. Same with the leagues, want gold (or even sometimes silver)? - Gotta buy extra currency, putting in more work than other players, or being better at the skill-based events isn't worthy of the top rewards - they're only for people who can't control themsevles and will pay for a bad deal soas to not miss out. Predatory design.
When I first started playing this game (about 6 years and 8 months ago) I tried to gauge the pay-to-win mechanics and there weren't that many, so I was willing to give the game a chance. I hate pay-to-win and I would have passed on the game in its current state if I was just starting out now.
I'm not a leech, I know that game needs to make money to survive, but it's getting downright cynical now. I've spent hundreds of pounds on this game over the years, but not recently, it's just not worth it anymore, even when I get a 200% bonus diamonds offer. I'm not paying £100+ for a
single premium expansion - the ever-growing cost of these makes them outrageously poor value for money. I have disposable income coming out of my ears, but I won't be exploited - If I don't get value for money, I won't buy.
Sometimes it feels like Inno have real contempt for us players and the dev that went down that list and said no to everything just typifies this!
