PvP

@ BB_Endesmor I think its more that the resource sink doesn't have a chance of any worthwhile loot. Look in the pvp shop its complete garbage. To make the thing viable there needs to be something to spend those pvp 'coins' on that is worth putting on your island. Better pop buildings, some sort of buff that is hard to get, something though.

That aside it still doesn't fix the basic design issue where the pvp isn't engaging other than 10-20 mins of fun and then you set it and forget it. To get people engaged I still really think there has to be some attachment to the system through a pvp island that can be kept or upgraded in some way, or does something special to your normal island.

Cheers,
B

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Blocking DOES not work like it is supposed to at all times. So one bad loss and you have wasted too many troops to finish the quest.

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I've only done 2 small colonies with the fail questchain they provided and it has worked just fine for me...what exactly is the issue? Or is that just coupled with the fail lag since the fail update that was "PvP"? Otherwise, do tell as I'd like to know.

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What would make PvP more interesting to your guild? Is it only about the rewards?

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Let's assume we only go from the loot perspective...the rewards don't pay for the cost at all.
We again assume, you are doing it with a full army consisting Attack Infantry/Archer/Cavalry and the Heavy things.
As blocking units are lost (which wouldn't be that unreasonable), and attack units die as well by large amounts, we can calculate that our warchest needs to be pretty filled.
Seeing as 250 ironbars (or 300 for Cavalry) _only_ make 4 troops and takes a long time to produce from iron mine to smelter, we can add alot of time to our warchest as well.
As and expedition easily kills off 200 of said units, even with excellent blocking, that's a tremendous amount of resources and time required to acumulate them.
The rewards barely pay a fraction of that investment. The 6h bonus resources are just a single stich in the huge wound you currently have. If you actually are lucky enough (lucky enough, not skilled enough or smart enough or whatever enough) to keep your colony for the full 7 days, you maybe got half your wound stiched up.

Let's assume we do this resource friendly now. We solely use Attack Infantry and Heavy Infantry for attack and blocks, disregarding the penalty we may get from archers and bonus we could deal to enemy infantry otherwise, our losses might be in the upper 300 range, however, it only takes 25 Steel to make 4 units, and 25 steel can be made from 25 iron bars. So with that in mind, we cut our cost to a 1/10th of the initial full scale arsenal. Add in the extra losses we occur and we can say losses have been cut to 2/10th or 3/10th at worst.

Going with that cost and coming out with ideal losses, the reward will _just_about_ break the cost even, not quite, but almost. Add in the 6h bonus from the colony and you _may_ make a profit out of the thing. That is, if you can at least keep it some 30h at least...preferrable the whole week, but somebody needs to wake up from the dream.

Who with a half lit lightbulb goes to war a massive loss or a fleeting possibility at a reward?
Mind you, if I were to go to war and I can't cover my expenses through raiding, claiming land, permanently stopping invaders or otherwise (lol guys stop, don't start with politics and religion here, I'm trying to hold back as good as I can haha), then I see no point to do exactly that. Specially if my alternative option is pretty much the opposite, low cost for big gain.
It really doesn't take much brainpower to make a reasonable call here. I'm also aware there will be people who will participate regardless of the outcome, are happy enough with the potential benefit or just for the troll of it, but for the majority that will not be the case.
Have your Devs look at the statics realistically and make some more decision, for most of us players, without even needing to see the statistics, it's blindingly obvious that it isn't anywhere near the expected player base that the content was added for.
Going from business perspective, you can't be seriously telling us that it is a succeess of any level whatsoever. We are aware of some brilliant geniuses at the company who don't even play the game that only give a side **** about it and just executive ordering that new content must be released at whatever cost and hokuspokus pressure whatever the state of the game is. As players we are perfectly aware of that...not because those geniuses are behind our backs yelling at us (sorry for you guys) but we feel it in the game getting worse and worse..mostly bugwise and performance wise that is...not going to ramble of content that I'm not going to use, somebody will and that's cool, but if fail decisions with fail coding and fail balancing along with fail updates lead to bugs and failing performance (which currently has been extreme for a month now...the audacity) then we as players will feel it...and since we are actually playing (for fun most of the time) and it causing the exact opposite, it becomes obvious that the game or the players, if not both, are not valued,

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@Troll-Phu:I get your point, but resources sinks are necessary to maintain an healthy economy.

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While this can be countered with numerous ways, we can accept resource sinks, such as upgrading our buildings etc. The whole PvP thing however is a resource WASTE and still "only" a fraction of all the resources we do have. Again, sinking resources has some sort of benefit for us, if only emotional or epeen factor, but a resource waste just is that.

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@MarMarl & Ornais: I will forward your concern to the design team.

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And we thank you for that, but at the same time...save yourself the walk and drink a cup of coffee instead.
We can also tell that hundreds of confirmed bugs on the testserver always make it with the update to the live servers. It doesn't help to say "with the testserver we have eliminated 90% of the problems" when the remaining 10% still need to be taken care of, not to mention have been made aware of prior several times.

The only 2 times I can remember BB actually listening to the playerbase madness was the rebalancing of the woodchain and the rebalancing of the combat system where everything gets splash dmg. Hooray for that, constructive ideas have still been dismissed.


As PvP stands now, it's just not worth doing whatsoever (trolling doesn't count).
Cost to participate is bad, loot is bad, potential rewards are bad, achieveable rewards (merchant) are bad, managing space forth and back for your marshalls and troops is aggrevating, continueing with this randomnized colony defense that like makes only random sense (well, since it is random) is bad, add in bad server performance and viola, move along nothing to see here.

Only thing I do like about PvP is that I don't have to be present at a certain time of the day to defend it, but even here we could do great changes.

Well, that's it for my venting and going to be ignored 2 cents among the other thousands ;)

I hope the PvP is optional! I left Anno games because of PvP! I don't do guilds, I play alone. I don't want to deal with anyone else, just let me build my city, do my little quests and fritter some time away. All I want is a computer game (like in the old days on my computer where the only person I had to deal with was me) but larger and longer lasting than the old computer games. Why oh why do developers think that everyone wants to turn everything into a social event? Go Away and leave me alone to play my game :)

And I so miss the cd version of Settlers! I loved watching those little guys move the boundaries. The online game is not quite as interesting, or as visually appealing. What is with the dam boundary markers that NEVER GO AWAY!!!!!!! Please make them go away once I conquer the section.

Ok, venting over, I miss the old school games. Where's Zork when you need it?

They have stated many of times that PVP will always be optional, ClassyGeek.

My biggest issues with PVP is the rewards vs cost issues with no befits to anything.

I personally like the time frame where you set your island to guard itself because I don't want to sit there and watch it but I don't like how you have preset locations for towers as it reduces peoples ability to be creative and find ways around your defense because someone else already has and posted it. If you don't make it standard than people can pick and chose how to set it up and it opens up so many more possibility for those who want to play PVP.

The resource cost will not allow people under 40 to actively play because the cost of iron is sky high which prevents people from logging on more often at the lower levels.

I believe that you should be able to recoup all of your 75% of your losses with in 24 hours because I don't think anyone will ever hold it longer than that if it is popular and if they do than they should be rewarded with more resources. To combat people from getting lucky you could reduce the amount of resources that come from the island after 36 as to encourage people to attack more frequently and not hide behind there islands.

"The only 2 times I can remember BB actually listening to the player base madness was the rebalancing of the wood chain and the rebalancing of the combat system where everything gets splash dmg..."

They had to scrap that out Ceruhe. The wood change would work beautifully if only the wood deposits could hold more than 5 wood. Shifting it to 100-200 wood in a depo would work just like a farm-silo, you could place your woodcutters and foresters around it and kept it always in surplus by managing your forester/cutters ratio on each deposit. For some reason that was too much problem to do for the intern coders at BB.

The new combat balance HAD to go after the overwhelming response from players and even guilds threatening quitting the game if it goes life. The after math of the whole drama was a peak into developers minds and the realization some of them don't even understand the game design. That was embarrasing...

"PVP" (yes in quotation because this is not a real pvp) could get interesting if added few things. First the rewards must be something that you can obtain ONLY through pvp (special housing unit or a buff), something very valuable and worth the losses. The rewards for capturing an island also need to improve.

There could be an interesting feature that would keep players engaged. Allow the owner of the island to "put it up for grabs" by choosing on his/her timer when the island is vulnerable to attack by other players. During the "pvp" timer on the production of island resources could go x4 (just an example) but you got to be there to defend it. Once someone decides to attack your island you get 15 min warning and kaboom war happens.

This would be engaging, and players could decide when they want to have this happen (during the 7 day period of owning the island). Of course that would require leading bards and info who owns the island, when it becomes vulnerable (this can be planned in advanced ect). Dueling (inviting another player to a pvp competition) would be also a very interesting addition.

Current pvp system has none of that. It is a "pvp" for infants. You don't know who you are attacking no room for epeen or bragging rights. No adrenaline rush or excitement either. You are doing a regular adventure with real time attack/fight mode, that's all to it. In MMO's there are plenty of ways to implement a pvp system that is completely optional if you chose to participate and keep some of the real pvp features in it. So nobody gets griefed, or no one is forced to participate if they don't want to do it.

Judging by number of people in my guild who did it - most only did it for the quest and are not planning to do another in a future. Unless there will be something in a reward worth doing it.