-
Good day, Stranger! — Are you new to our forums?
Have I seen you here before? To participate in or to create forum discussions, you will need your own forum account. Register your account here!
Version 1.125
- Thread starter anonglitch
- Start date
Laurelin
Sorcerer
Is there a reason why we are so rarely provided with actual figures or any kind of data, rather than vague statements such as this? If meaningful views are genuinely sought, anyone who wishes to comment on the new "slightly better Culture value on many buildings" (which ones? how much better? etc.) would need firstly to load up their game and make a note of the Culture value of every single building they possess, then update the game, then note every single one of the new values, then decide "what [they] think" about the changes. Is this actually a serious request for useful feedback...?
Furthermore: if changes have only/largely been made to such obscure and rarely owned buildings as Redbeard's Throne and the Gravity Inn, how many readers of this Forum will even be qualified to judge those buildings? In the case of the Gravity Inn, and although not many have been given out in any case, the majority of those which have, so far, been given to players have been awarded mainly via contests on Social Media platforms, not the Forums, so perhaps it would be more sensible to ask the (few) lucky Facebook-inhabiting owners of this building what they think about its new Culture rating, rather than the large majority of Forum-preferring players who have, as yet, had very little chance even to acquire it, let alone assess its Cultural value.
And finally: I'm not usually inclined to be 'that person' who picks up on linguistic niceties, but seriously: "tapable"...?! Even if there were such a word in English, which there is not, it would have to be spelled "tappable". I do realise that trendy and often short-lived neologisms are an inevitable feature of [especially mobile-based] gaming culture these days, but the game itself already has far too many textual errors (one day I'll post a semi-comprehensive list of them in the form of a bug report, but I'm not that bored just yet!), and surely the line has to be drawn somewhere... :/
Pauly7
Magus
I just got mine too. This launched on Beta about a week ago, but has only been given to a certain percentage of players. It was done over there without announcement also.
Anyway, it seems to refresh once a day and you can collect something random from the diamond shop. It can be 1kp, a handful of goods, a few seeds, a 5% coin rain, or even 9 diamonds.
And yeah... it's only available on the mobile app.
FieryArien
Necromancer
And the pattern continues on live servers. I have it on beta and here on EN server, but I don’t have it on DE server (but some other people there have it).
The amount of diamonds depends on chapter. If you got 9 you are in the 9th chapter. (For example I’m in 8th chapter on beta and I got 8.)
kimkimkim
Summoner
Pauly7
Magus
Ah OK. I'm not in chapter 9, but the friend who was telling me must have been.
Pauly7
Magus
Luckily it's nothing worth winning. It only exists to tempt people to open the diamond shop.I feel discriminated against because I play on PC
FieryArien
Necromancer
I’d bet they’ll release it on browser too. It doesn’t seem likely that Inno would want to antagonize browser players. ;-) The only possible problem is that their testing (mainly A/B testing on players) sometime takes months ...I feel discriminated against because I play on PC
Giraffi
Enchanter
Definitely only some players. Not all my profiles got it.
Gargon667
Mentor
So if I don´t go to the shop I´ll never know if I had a present? Or does it give a pop-up or notification of some kind?
Hekata
Artisan
I have to agree with everything @Laurelin said and just add that event buildings stats shouldn't be changed after the event hits live servers. Maybe someone decided not to get a building because they thought it wasn't worth the stats it had during the event but would have gone after it with the new stats.
As for the better culture values for the Gravity Inn, since I happen to be the lucky owner of one, here are the stats before and after the update.
Before
After
I'm a bit confused
Did they not go ahead with the update? Or is there no improvement for the chapter 15 Gravity Inn? Or did they just mention those 2 rare buildings because they thought so few people have them no one would notice there is no increase in culture value?
Last edited:
m4rt1n
Adept
It gave me a pop up on the app, I never visit the shop myself, without the pop up I would never had known.
Pauly7
Magus
Yeah you see a little gift icon in the top right corner of the screen
Thrakazoga
Adventurer
I guess its a pre full release test for a few random players, to gauge response. I like it, gives a little something each day, costs nothing, takes up no space and got a lovely tappable (or tapable, but never tapeable) button
Please be aware that this was announced back in December for the Daily Gift that some players are being offered: Release notes 1.119
- A small series of technical and interface adjustments are being rolled out for our Diamond Shop. These changes only become available to a small percentage of players at first, while we thoroughly test their technical performance.
Laurelin
Sorcerer
Although everything in the game which involves interaction between the program and its users must, by definition, be both technical and also part of the game's interface (without either of which no interaction - or game! - can even occur), it seems to be very much stretching the generally understood definition of both of these terms to argue that adding significant new in-game content (i.e. giving daily rewards to some, any, or all players) can be categorised as merely a small adjustment to the game's interface, which requires no further description or explanation.
I would further argue that giving free items, whether great or small, to only a percentage of players (while also favouring the mobile client over the browser client, as appears to be the case at present) is about the opposite, in most people's minds, of a 'small' change, in both practical and, probably more importantly, psychological/emotional terms. I'd say there is a very high chance that those players who do not currently receive this new largesse will feel anything from mystified (best) to neglected, unfairly treated, or even insulted (worst), and it is interesting, to me at least, that InnoGames would take such a quite apparent risk of upsetting, offending, or even simply confusing any - let alone, as it currently appears - many of its players.
Inno must be very confident that the material appeal of the daily 'freebies' - and the [possibly intentional?] 'buzz' created by releasing these freebies, at first, only to a percentage of the playerbase - will be more valuable, in commercial terms, than the intangible concept of the fair and equal treatment of all their players, and even basic honesty, which I would argue is definitely missing from the content of Release Notes 1.119. In fact, I'd say that this course of action on Inno's part was quite a gamble, if I didn't know that both the corporate psychologists and the marketing executives alike will already have given it the go-ahead... but for what it's worth, and even though I am one of the 'lucky' players who is being offered the daily bribe on my mobile phone (where I almost never play) but not on my PC (where I play daily), this kind of behaviour only encourages me to avoid the mobile platform even more than I already do. And yes, I know I'll be in a small minority on this, but hey, I'm used to that!
Then again, according to this response provided by the US Forum Community Manager on the question of the new 'Daily Gift', it seems that Inno were aware, in advance of the event, that providing a daily login incentive to only a percentage of players would not be the most popular of moves, and it was for that reason, specifically, that the 1.119 Release Notes were so unforthcoming on the nature of the upcoming 'ajdustments':
Well, yes... quite. But the question then arises: is it better to try (and, as could easily be predicted, fail) to conceal an unpopular move, or just to announce it honestly and preserve one's integrity? And of course, as others have already suggested: why not use the Beta Server for the trial period...?
One would, indeed, hope that this new system will also appear on the browser client - although I would not be surprised if one of the reasons why the 'Daily Gifts' are being handed out, at present, solely via the mobile client is not so much because any technical problems are anticipated (I very much doubt that it involves any difficult or unusual coding), but more probably in order to see how many players can be 'encouraged' to abandon the browser game - or at least use it less heavily - in favour of the mobile version.
If one follows InnoGames's Press Releases aimed at their shareholders and the gaming investment market (as opposed to their announcements to their playerbase), it seems - unfortunately for non-mobile players such as myself - to be fairly probable that Inno would indeed wish not so much to antagonise - that's far too personal - but rather simply to 'disincentivise' (as gaming industry jargon would rather euphemistically put it) and, ultimately, stop supporting their less lucrative browser-based (and especially browser-only) players. I won't bore you with a comprehensive list of sources on which I base this opinion, but by way of illustration, here is a small selection:
Quote : Hendrik Klindworth, Co-founder and CEO of InnoGames, commented: “We have scored major success with our live games and are now focusing on the development of new mobile first titles..." : (Source)
Quote : Initially focused on PC browser titles, InnoGames now reports more than half of its revenues come from mobile... : (Source)
Quote : The overall goal [of InnoGames] was converting some of our browser players onto mobile platforms. [...] Forge of Empires Mobile was the only product which could keep up with our high expectations. Taking this as a role model, we went for focusing on one platform first, without considering other platforms [...] Since then we've sent three mobile-based game projects into production stage. More to follow soon. For all of them we focused on a true mobile user experience and skipped any thought of a potential browser version... : (Source)
Quote : Why cross-platform's compromises and mediocre results led us [InnoGames] to a mobile-first focus: "... the browser market as a whole is not growing anymore [so] our overall growth opportunities are limited. [...] Our overall cross-platform approach meant huge teams, complex productions, a lot of compromises, no focus and, more importantly, mediocre quality when it came to usability of our games. [...] That's the reason why we moved from cross-platform to one [mobile] platform first, having three new mobile games in production now..." : (Source)
In light of the above (and the many more similar quotes from Inno's management which all give the same perspective, i.e. that InnoGames now sees itself very much as a mobile-first-and-eventually-mobile-only gaming company), and although this is far from what I would wish, it has been apparent to me for some time that browser-only players such as myself will not only continue to see the mobile client being prioritised in most, if not all, of the game's new developments, but that we will eventually find ourselves without a game to play at all - unless it be on a mobile device, of course.
Last edited:
Pauly7
Magus
I agree with what you say @Laurelin, but part of me feels like too much is made of this. The daily rewards are such a small thing so as not to give any of those players any advantage, and the only reason it is done is to tempt people into the diamond shop where they may spend some money. So I feel like being one of the "lucky" ones is actually more like being one of the ones that Inno is experimenting on to see whether I'm willing to spend more money because I am opening the diamond store more often.
It's not a daily reward. It's a daily lure-people-into-the-premium-area.
It's not a daily reward. It's a daily lure-people-into-the-premium-area.