A Myriad of Suggestions

Okay, so I have been playing now for almost three months and in that time have thought of a few things that I believe could benefit this game. First off, some organizational improvements:

User Interface:

Friend's List Chat Tab
I have noticed on many occasions people posting in trade if anyone on their friend's list can help them with something. Usually it is to drop a buff on their island or do a round trade. This isn't really a trade matter, and I believe that having a chat tab that sends to only people on your FL will help with this.

Battle/Buff Message Tabs
As is, after a battle a message gets sent to your mailbox showing the results. However, after an adventure these can clog up your mailbox. Now if you only have those, it isn't a problem as you can delete all. However, there are some mail messages I want to keep and that means having to select them individually in order to not delete the wrong ones. Creating a separate mail tab for battle results (as well as one for whenever someone buffs your island) would allow people like me to instantly delete all of the unwanted messages quickly and easily.

Detailed Mining Tab
I have actually seen this one brought up here before, but it is worth repeating. Some sort of menu screen that shows us the remaining level of all mines/deposits that are currently being mined. This will make things much easier as we will not have to constantly scan the island to check levels in order to make sure we are operating at full steam.

Separate tabs for Generals and Specialists in the Star Menu
At the beginning this isn't really a problem, but when you reach the higher levels and you have 15 or so generals and 20 specialists, looking through them can be a pain. Adding an extra tab to the Star Menu to separate will clean that up.

Trade System Improvements:

Red Letters/Red Background when Can't Afford
When selecting "Deals I can't afford", the deals in question come up on a red background with red letters. This makes it very difficult to see what the requested price is. It may be that I can afford, but just need to shuffle some resources around. I believe the red background is enough and that changing the lettering to white will make it much easier to read.

Refresh/Edit Sale Offer
Often when posting an offer for sale in TO, there will come times when a mistake is made (entering 100 instead of 1000 for example) and that means we have to cancel the current offer and enter it again properly. On the first free slot this is no big deal, but when it is a subsequent slot it costs us coins each time we want to post. Adding an 'edit' button to the side of each would allow us to fix our mistakes without paying additional coins. Also this would also help in cases where someone else posts an offer after that is better and we wish to change ours to stay competitive. It doesn't need to change the time remaining on the offer, just alter the offer itself.

On that note however, I would also like to suggest a 'refresh' button that would allow us to resubmit the same offer again in order to extend the time it is in the trade office. This way when I am going to log off, I don't need to cancel all my offers and resubmit them all over again to give them six more hours. This one can still cost the required coins for that slot as we are effectively buying that slot again. This just saves a lot of time.

Permanently Purchase Sales Slots
So speaking of paying coins to use the sales slots each time, I believe that allowing us to use gems to permanently buy those slots (so we can post more trades for free) would also be very useful. Right now we can pay for the slot with gems but as I understand it, that usage is limited to that one transaction wherein we have to pay again after just like with coins. Allowing us to purchase those slots would save us coins and get players to spend those gems (and that makes money for you!)

New Buildings:

Epic Barracks
A barracks that can produce both regular units and elite units from the same building! Can either be simultaneous or toggle between types. Main benefit is a secondary elite/reg barracks for faster overall troop building. Can be limited with slower build times if needed for balance.

Improved Bakery
Pretty self explanatory. Bread is a huge necessity to keep those settlers rolling out, and space is already at a premium without needing 20 bakeries and the subsequent farms/fields/mills to supply them. Improved bakeries are a logical step.

Improvements to Buffs:

Area of Effect Buffs
Things like Efficient Traps, Kitty Lure, Forest Offerings, etc.. all currently use this wonky grid system to determine area of effect. However, it doesn't react well to buildings as a building half included in the area will sometimes count and sometimes not. Worse yet, the grid always sets whatever building you are placing it on at the right hand side of the grid. That means if you try to use that buff on a building that has other buildings of its kind to the right of it, they won't count. It limits best placement to a very specific layout.

Moreover, it can only be placed on the building type in question, even if the required types are in range (example: three buildings around a storehouse. If you hover the buff over the storehouse it should still cover the three buildings but you can't place it because it is on the storehouse) My suggestion here is to do away with the grid and instead have a circular range around the the placement spot that will activate on any qualifying building in range, and can be placed anywhere as long at least one qualifying building is in range. (allowing you to place buff on the storehouse and have it activate on all the surrounding buildings)

Clearcutter Buff
Much like the Shotfirer and demolition buff except this one will allow us to clear away the small shrubs and non-deposit type trees that get in the way of better building placement. Either much cheaper than shotfirer types or multi-use given the small size of the objects to be removed.

Adventure Improvements:

Selectable Landing Spots
Adventures as is have predetermined landing spots for generals, however there is much more room for them to occupy, and usually starting an adventuring involves immediately moving your generals to a better position - sometimes all the way across the map! My suggestion here is to incorporate the ability to pick where your general will land. So at the start of an adventure, as long as your general is still in transit, you would be able to click on him (or her Nusala) and pick a landing spot from all land that is available to you to move to. Would speed things up nicely. Can be limited to your own adventures.

New General
Now I don't know if lootspotting was ever an intended design choice by BlueByte, but whether it was or not, no one can deny that it is a big part of the game now. Why not celebrate this user created part of your world with a general that reflects that creation? I propose "Lootie McTaggart", a new female general. She can travel to and from the battlefield in five minutes, walks twice as fact on the map as other generals, gets First Strike and Attack Weakest and does 500 damage. However, she can only carry 50 troops and does not get splash damage. This will allow her to be the perfect 'tagging' general for loot, while balancing her to not be overpowered in any way on the regular battlefield.

Gem Shop/Merchant Improvements:

Random Sales on Items
So far I have noticed, your current strategy to get people to buy gems is the Happy Hour sale. That is fine and it works, but I would like to offer a supplementary suggestion here. Sales in the Gem shop! To illustrate, currently the MMA cost 6,999 gems. That is a lot for a lot of players and takes some saving to do and so they wait. However, if on random occasions a sale were to occur and that MMA was to drop to 3,499, the people would want to buy it right away. This means they will have reason to buy those gems immediately (or even buy more often on Happy Hour to prepare for sales) and it is a good way to reward long time players who have been saving those gems so diligently.

Christmas Generals
This has less to do with the overall improvement of the game than just a random suggestion, but I would like to suggest that when the new generals end up in the shop for gems that they be placed on sale for a week or so before being bumped up to regular price. It will encourage people to buy gems so that they can get them while cheap and buying gems is always good for you!

Okay, I do apologize for the length of this post, but I hope that will give some thought to these ideas and consider implementing in the future. To anyone else who reads through this I appreciate any feedback or criticism you may have also, as refining these ideas only makes it easier for them to be accepted! Thank you.

Battle/Buff Message Tab: This suggestion for the mailbox has been brought up several times.

Separate tabs for Generals and Specialists in the Star Menu: Not really needed, it's already narrows down a LOT by having only them in a tab. Generals first, then specialists. It's already separated from each other.

Sale Slots: First, buying the extra sale slots isn't that expensive, only going up by 3 gold per slot. If you start listing 30 different things (totaling around 1300c for 30 slots), it can get expensive, but you just need to learn to limit how much you put up. If you only list 5 things (Free slot + 30c for 5 listings), pricing is more manageable. And because of this, there is no real reason to add in option to buy with gems, a permanent sale slot to save you only a few coins.

Epic Barracks: This game is designed to be a time sink with resource management. If you want troops built faster, there are buffs for the barracks (Improved Drill Plan, Drill Serg. Skunk, Mr Myers and Nash Williams, are the ones that come to mind).

Area of Effect Buffs: Working as intended. Redesign your layout for optimum performance.

Landing Spots: Most likely won't happen. If you want generals to land in an optimum spot, before you move them, figure out which is landing spot 1, 2, 3, etc. in each adventure, and send generals 1 at a time, wait for them to leave your island, so they will end up going to the slot you desire for it. Or just spend the extra couple minutes waiting for all the generals to tare down their garrison, walk to the spot you actually want them stationed at, and rebuild their garrison. As you wait, go make a sandwich or some other snack that you'll consume as you run the adventure :)

New General: There are already a large array of generals you can tag with. Everyone has their own set amount of troops they like to tag with. Some do a BHG with some Recruits and Cav. Some do Lord Drac, but most do MMA (and I guess Nusala now as well).

Christmas Generals: No reason for BB to put the CoA generals on sale. People want them and will pay the gem price for them, so putting them on sale, means that people won't buy as many gems.

Well, first off, thank you for your feedback. Second let me try to address your concerns:

Battle/Buff Message Tab: I hadn't seen it, but even so, if it has been brought up multiple times and still nothing has been done about it, then all the more reason to bring it up again. The more people that request it, the more likely they are to be heard.

Separating Generals/Specialists: While the second tab does narrow it down a lot, it is still very crowded once you have 15+ generals, 10+ savage scouts, luckies, jollies and other geos.

Sale slots: You seem to be mistaken about something here, this isn't just about saving "a few coins". First off, it is a few coins every. single. time. Second it is the annoyance of having to click the confirmation dialogue that pops up every time I want to buy the slot every. single. time. While you say it is only a few coins, how many hundreds of time have you had to do it? How many thousands of times? Add to that the sheer worthlessness of the current gem purchase aspect of the sales slots. Why would anyone waste 9 gems to temporarily bought a slot, when they could use three coins? This is about convenience and choice. Allowing people to use their gems in a way that makes their gameplay experience better and more enjoyable, while removing a system that has no value and no incentive to use, and replacing it with one that does.

Epic Barracks: I get that this is meant to be a time sink. I also understand that the devs do not want people reaching the level cap easily. It is why the total exp needed is over one billion apparently. But there has to be a balance between drawing out the levels and essentially stopping progress altogether. We are talking many years to cap which is far more than the vast majority of players will ever have patience for. This is something that will cause players to get frustrated and quit. Who wants to grind the same advs forever when it already takes forever just to get the troops necessary to do it in the first place? I am not suggesting this building be for low level players, I hadn't even assumed it would be something I would be able to use. No, this is a building better suited for level 70+, at the point where levelling needs hundreds of millions of exp and it just becomes tedious to do.

AoE buffs: "Working as intended"? Then you suggest it was intended to be horribly flawed. As is, the only way I can place four buildings in an optimum layout for both the buff and production would require that I place an individual storehouse for each one. That aside, even if I place four buildings in a square for the buff, the buff itself can only be placed on one of those buildings to work properly. Place it on the top and only the top two hit. Bottom and only the left two. Left one hits ONLY the left one. This is already a problem, but actual optimum placement would see me place a group of buildings in a circle with a storehouse in the middle. With the storehouse in the middle, there is no longer anyway to hit all the buildings efficiently. You can hit three on the right and then waste multiple buffs trying to hit the ones on the left. Even something as simple as a more intuitive grid that wouldn't lock to the one position but would rotate to allow buildings on the right to be targeted would be a vast improvement.

Landing spots: I don't think you understand the point here. Who lands in what landing spot is irrelevant. The designated landing spots themselves are the problem as they are virtually never where you want your general to be. The beginning of every adventure always start with repositioning your generals so that you can attack where you want. Spending five minutes waiting to send them in order so that will be two squares closer to where you will have to move them to does absolutely nothing to eliminate or even alleviate this problem. As for the go make a sandwich suggestion, the purpose of the suggestion portion of these forums is to find ways to improve upon existing gameplay, not to find ways to tolerate when something is bad. If you have to make food to kill time every time an adventure starts because it takes too long, then something needs to be done about the wait time itself.

New general: I can't say I understand your logic here. Why create a new general when we already have generals that can do it? Well, we already had the MMA, Veteran, Major and tavern generals that were fully capable of running and completing every adventure in the game. So why give us Lord Dracul? Why create Vargus? Nusala? Anslem? Because it sees an area that can be improved and works to do so. More is not worse. The MMA that is currently used by most has far more value in adventures than tagging. Creating a new general would improve on that situation by creating one that does the tag job better while freeing up that MMA to do what he does best.

Christmas Generals: No reason you say? Of course there is a reason. It is the same reason most businesses from grocery stores to car dealerships have sales. It encourages the customers to "buy now". It brings in more customers than the regular price does. Right now the majority of people who will buy the new gens at 7k are the ones who already have gem pits or who are the type that have already spent hundreds of dollars on gems and won't think twice about doing it again, and sure there will be a few who will be motivated to buy some for these generals. However, a sale with its limited time offer quality motivates far more people into buying as they won't be able to get that price later. This also makes it more likely they will buy even more gems in the future since they will already have done it once. Also, there is just the matter of the price, 7k gems even with happy hour is $30+ (Canada). Without you need to pay sixty. Sixty dollars for one general? That isn't something the average person would even consider. Even the thirty is an unlikely purchase for the average player, but on sale to where you can happy hour for about $12. Far more people would find that acceptable. Each person may not buy as many gems, but that is offset by the fact that far more people will be buying gems.

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AoE buffs: "Working as intended"? Then you suggest it was intended to be horribly flawed. As is, the only way I can place four buildings in an optimum layout for both the buff and production would require that I place an individual storehouse for each one.

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Indeed, working as intended, regardless how you place it and how awesome you can move your buff to cover the most buildings (any building that gets half the radius is valid from what I've seen, thus you could hit at least 6) it will only ever accept 4 buildings at a time. The AoE buffs are pretty terrible overall though, be it cost, duration or both, ignoring he fact you need to have some sort of compact layout to make it efficient.

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Christmas Generals: No reason you say? Of course there is a reason.

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Probably more of a "No reason to do it right away because many people will be lining up to buy it at the full price and a discounted version could be weeks after to get another round in". Then again, we never had any discounts for anything in forever, so I wouldn't count on that. And yes, I AM dismissing those 1 week "specials" that are a load of rip off onl, aka Start Packs that are worthless in the first place. The only thing we occasionally get is a limited offer for various things....at full price. Speaking of which, when is the next one? Been a while lol

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Originally Posted by Ceruhe

Indeed, working as intended, regardless how you place it and how awesome you can move your buff to cover the most buildings (any building that gets half the radius is valid from what I've seen, thus you could hit at least 6) it will only ever accept 4 buildings at a time. The AoE buffs are pretty terrible overall though, be it cost, duration or both, ignoring he fact you need to have some sort of compact layout to make it efficient.

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My problem isn't with that it only hits 4. Sure I would love it if it could hit all six around a storehouse. My problem is that it always magnet locks whichever building you hover over as the far right position. To illustrate:

_____1.....2
__3.....S.....4
___5.....6

Now let's say these are the buildings around your storehouse to give you minimum travel time. If you place the buff on 4, the buff will also affect 2 and 6. However if you place it on 2, the buff will only hit 2 and 1. 6 will only hit 6 and 5,1 does 1 and 3, 5 does 5 and 3, and 3 will ONLY hit 3. That means at best, to hit all 6 you need to use at least three buffs. But it isn't as though the three on the left are different distances apart from the three on the right. The buff range should be able to fit all three in no problem, but because it for some odd reason insists that the building you click can only be on the right, you can't actually get all three. Just as if you could hover the buff above the storehouse the range would cover all three on the left but you can't because you have a storehouse as your target.

My suggestion to make it a circular range AoE that can activate as long as any qualifying building is in range removes the problem of forced placement (left/right). Even If they were to change it to allow placement when targeting a non-affected building as long as affected building are in range, or even something as simple as allowing to rotate the buff grid so it isn't just locked to one spot would fix the problem.

(Also: Edited original post to include suggestion for Clearcutter buff I forgot to include originally.)

Well, to explain my point more about the CoA generals.. BB has no reason to discount the price of them. Everyone wants them pretty much. BB is in it for the long haul. If it means that it will take you 9 months to buy 1 of the generals (you got 1 for free from xmas), well, You've bought it and you'll keep saving or buying gems to buy the 3rd and final one as well, which may take another 9 months. Like I've said before, this game is meant to be a time sink, and thus, you are going to be playing the game for a long time. BB will give you plenty of opportunities to spend gems, gently nudging you in the direction of buying gems, this giving them revenue to keep the game going.

Generals/Explorer tab.. I have 20 Explorers, 9 Geo's and ... 35 Generals (5 of them are PvP generals). You can name them all, so in their respective grouping, they appear in a certain order. Or, you can just suck it up and be grateful with what you already have. Played for years without the extra tabs in star menu.

Barracks: As I said before, use buffs. Upgrade them to level 6. This game is a time sink and resource management game.. Manage your resources better.

Landing Spots: If push came to shove, BB would likely not implement your idea, but rather do something like, generals don't land, period, and you just place them wherever you want in the starting landing area.

New tag general: *walks away as it's late and doesn't care any more*...

You are absolutely right that people want them. The question is how much? Enough to spend thirty or sixty dollars of real money to get one digital general? That's not as easy a choice as you may think. As for saving almost two years to get the two generals, anyone patient enough to wait that long is just going to wait longer and get a gem pit, and the point is to get those kind of people to not wait to get free gems, but instead to act now and buy some. Anyway, enough about that. That particular suggestion wasn't so much about how to improve the game but as a way to get people to buy gems as well as letting us save some. It is up to BB to decide how they want to run that part of their business.

Barracks: Managing your resources better will do nothing to alleviate the tedium that is grinding to a billion exp. Yes they want players to take longer to reach level, but they don't want them to die of old age before getting there. Jokes aside, taking many months of non-stop grinding to get one level at that range is the kind of thing that can force players to quit. It already happens now at the lower levels once levelling slows down and that isn't even remotely as bad.

Landing Spots: I have no problem at all if they were to do that. That is the same or even better than what I suggested. You are still picking their landing spot, you just have more time to do it.

Now then, again I appreciate your interest in this and the feedback is useful. I mean, if you want to offer criticism and show how something might make the game worse or not improve it all, that's absolutely fine. You want to give feedback to help me improve the suggestions, great! You want to show agreement with an idea to show that there is demand for it to make it more likely to be implemented? That's great too! But this?

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Originally Posted by Kinson001

Or, you can just suck it up and be grateful with what you already have.

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This sentiment runs entirely contrary the very nature of this section of the forums. If just "sucking it up" was a valid ideology here, then why bother even having the forums? We don't need to offer feedback. We don't need to report bugs. We don't need to try to improve anything. Just "suck it up and be grateful". Play what they give you and be quiet.

I'm glad you are trying to help me with your own perspective on the game, but that particular attitude is not helpful at all.

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We don't need to report bugs. We don't need to try to improve anything.

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Kind of a time difference to us. Although you are fairly new (though I'd swear you've been playing for a lot longer on another server because you display knowledge that many vets can't put together yet....hint hint I'm stalking you), we who have been around for a few years now are simple at the "The hell with it, just do whatever, can't be bothered to say anything anymore" junction.

So many bug reports are being made on the test server about upcoming features and every single bug pointed out makes it to the live servers and usually sticks around for many months and years to come. Then of course the same bugs will be reported on the regional forums all over again and still takes forever and 3 days to get fixed, if even. Expeditions have been one hell of a massive failure to the game with a myriad of problems/issues/are-you-serious?/just-no/questionable balance and just about none have been addressed yet. Granted, I saw 2 updates to them "as of late" and can't verify if it actually did get solved but I just can't be bothered with it anymore as the bag of salt that has been shoved into this wound hasn't healed yet.
The star menu now over the old one is one massive improvement already, despite being flawed (and of course was already pointed out multiple times), I still wonder what "Default" does as it could literally be "Random" and would make more sense to me. Though now that I finally just gave Explorers a number and they stay like that (on Default no less because the Star Menu won't save your filter by Name or whichever), they actually stay in line and don't randomly move forth and back.

I doubt any of the commentary was to "put you down" but just having been here for so long, the old grumpy man mentality does settle in. Currently a highly desired "quick" feature that would make many people massively happy, be a tremendous addition to the game and experience is the "Clear all" button for Barracks/PH and the "Move to top" for Barracks and PH as well...considering that loading the barracks the way we do it now with sliders only took the better of some 3 years and that has been requested and sacrificed for, whined and moaned upon and brought up around twenty-seven million nine-hundred eighty-eight thousand and then some many times. So there isn't really anything besides wishing you best of luck with the suggestion while just getting grumpy reading "all of the old requested things" all over again hehe

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Originally Posted by Trialgame

Barracks: Managing your resources better will do nothing to alleviate the tedium that is grinding to a billion exp. Yes they want players to take longer to reach level, but they don't want them to die of old age before getting there. Jokes aside, taking many months of non-stop grinding to get one level at that range is the kind of thing that can force players to quit. It already happens now at the lower levels once leveling slows down and that isn't even remotely as bad.

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Expansion came out in Sept 2015. Level cap increase, etc etc.. On Aries, Olfred is the highest level player at 72, and he(she to some reports, but profile is a male) just got to 72 at the beginning of Jan. Over 15 months to get 22 Levels. Seems like some will die of old age before getting to level 75 LOL.

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Originally Posted by Kinson001

Expansion came out in Sept 2015. Level cap increase, etc etc.. On Aries, Olfred is the highest level player at 72, and he(she to some reports, but profile is a male) just got to 72 at the beginning of Jan. Over 15 months to get 22 Levels. Seems like some will die of old age before getting to level 75 LOL.

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Yep, and level 72 is barely half way to 75 in terms of exp. So there's another 15 months for just three levels. And Olfred plays every day, all day. I know because I am on Ares server quite a lot myself, and Olfred's trade are never not in the TO, and with a 6 hour limit on trades that means s/he is constantly around. Realistically how many people play that much?