New item! - Stygandr's Banner of the Horde!

[ssfgrgawer]

Before i start - This is me speaking as an evony player, NOT an evony forum moderator. Brace for butthurt people! be warned i held back nothing!

No I think your missing the point. The game is broken into 2 clear groups - those that have taken advantage and hoarded the ressies and troops able to replace massive losses as a result of massive ingame alts and botting. The others are those that dont run massive numbers of alts and bots. They are the only 2 type of players. To say that those that dont run bots and massive alts will not have anything to lose is a myth as those people are the ones that spend more than the alt hoarding bot making players.... the point of this item is to knock down the archer shields GREAT!! But we have to have the massive number of mechs to be able to do so...... and sadly even then we have to have the resources available to us to rebuild the 2m - 5m mech losses that will be incurred. The alt playing, troop hoarding ressie gatherer will simply rebuild the losses incurred in a week while they sleep thanks to a never sleeping script and endless resources while the legitimate player struggles through for another month.

Now explain to me HOW this item can possibly be used to effect when you compete against the above scenario.

If evony were serious about improving the game there are some clear issues that need to be addressed to ensure level playing field is back in the game and that those that play to massive alts to gain advantage in supply, hero ghosting, unlimited resources and unlimited troops. Also good luck swinging away they auto truce or share access so someone will be on fast enough to truce to benefit from the carnage that is wreaked.

I am a realist about this - love the item but its futile and a game changer as long as only those with the massive troops are able to benefit in more ways than one.

ps I did not realise that the item operates through gates (so you dont need to apply broken gates?) that is awesome.

Firstly you do not need to run a million bots to be a competitive player. I have shown that on multiple servers. I was able to feed upwards of 1m each mech on 175 quite easily, without even a handful of accounts, and lets face it there is almost no one now days who does not have at least two accounts.

secondly - This is a test run of the item. its to see if the item is completely overpowered or what. That is what this thread is for. to find if there is any game breaking glitches caused by this item.

You say you struggle for resources. Ask your alliance mates. Chances are some of them have more res than they will ever use. This has been the case since the dawn of evony. Obviously age two is different to age one in that respect due to the lack of constant npcs.

On the downside:
1. Says will ignore walls and go highest value pool - it doesnt - in CD Archer Towers up will kill all 1.56m pults! http://ww.evonyurl.com/9a8sjc
2. No value in sending anymore than 125k trans - the max it returns with is 156k trans worth (1m trans sent to get some of the 120b food in there and look what it came back with http://evonyurl.com/j6p1h4)
3. Cant send 1.56m trans when trying to send with castle,ensign and horde banner it returns a negative in food consumption and unable to send.

NOOOOOOO FINALLY THEY GIVE ME AN ITEM WORTHY OF MY TRANSPORTYNESS AND BOMBINESS AND THEY DON'T LET ME MEGA TRANSBOMB PROPERLY!!!! CAPS IS REQUIRED FOR MY LEVEL OF DISTRESS!!!!

These are bugs. Can you file two separate tickets and post them here? I'll make sure they get to the dev in charge of implementation of the item.

Well this unrussled my jimmies. Glad to know my potential to throw massive amounts of trans will be considered!

I'm actually surprised to see so many positive opinions on this item.. I think it's an awful idea. I think it's quite possibly the worst idea they've had so far amongst many many bad ideas. I'm not a weak player, I'm not in a crappy alliance. I'm typically top 5 on all 3 heroes, top 10 overall on any server I play in top alliances (not bragging, just giving perspective so people don't assume I'm just a whiney noob). Yeah this item will make attacking fun because destroying your target is always fun but... the target is going to be most unhappy. My skype has already blown up with "I quit" and I've even seen a couple people reset. Not even a goodbye, just a flat out reset.

Do you realise the only ones who fear this item are the ones its specifically designed to target? The ones that attempt to avoid being hit at all costs? THIS item is for them. Being top 5 and having awesome heros has nothing to do with it, People in evony got scared of being attacked years ago.

Not everyone on evony is running a hundred+ alts with instant pult heroes. Not everyone has a chance to recover from the damage this item will do. This item will allow even a mediocre player to completely destroy a medium sized player in a single set. The noobs may as well reset and chargeback now, they're done for.

Not really. Provided you are in 5k and have a reasonable war city its still not going to be easy to clear an online player. 1m+ scoutbombs are scary at the moment, but not everyone is going to be throwing scoutbombs with 1500+ heros. Cause thats a great way to LOSE said 1500+ heros. You do not need 100+ alts to be a major player in evony. You never did. You can be a beast of your server with less then 10 if you arent wasteful, and less than 5 if you holiday. People are lazy and that is what brought about 100+ alts.

Heaven forbid people learn to drip feed layers again, That would be... witchcraft or something wouldn't it?

I don't think the benefit of a massive archer shield was ever protection from mech attacks, it was just a way to wear down the mech heroes on the attacker before they got to the "real" troops. This is no longer an issue. You won't be doing ram defense instead, even a scout bomb with 1mil scouts is gonna take out 10k+ rams per hit, a million layered mechs hitting those rams well.. ouch. You won't be using trans defense. You won't be going with a mech defense under the assumption you have simply too many ballista/pults for them to scout bomb down within a 1 hour gate breaker. Basically you just won't be using any kind of defense. The game mechanics are just not setup for 1mil troops hitting you within a single attack. I get it, you want people attacking. But they gotta be attacking people. If those people can't ever feel safe, or even be safe if they're sitting here actively defending, then they're not gonna play the game. Does anyone remember embassy bombing how we laughed and laughed that people couldn't defend it? Well evony just made it possible without the messy need to join the alliance and reinforce.

Actually the purpose of mega arch shields has always been cowardice. It is the number one garenteed way to survive a single set from any attacker shy of someone with 40x 1k attack heros, and anyone with less than 5x 1k attack heros probably wont bother attacking you because it will cost more than its worth to hit you. This is why Hubs and mega arch shields were born. If you wanted to truly be unbreakable build 100m lista and sit in a 5k. It will take millennia to scoutbomb down that many lista. Why does no one do it? because it costs a fortune and if they accidentally catch you with dumb walls then your up the creek without a canue, paddle or underwear. archer CDs are cheap enough for most people to be able to afford on the number of bots they run, i mean whats another 10 bots to feed another 100m archers right?

No one runs an archer CD because they feel confident. You olny run an archer CD because you are worried about getting wiped. The sooner people realise that it is infact a game, not a source of your internal power and that getting wiped doesn't mean you have to quit the server, The better the game will become.

You mentioned specific defences are not viable. Yes, however if you are online there is a counter to EVERY possible attack that can be thrown. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I don't think anyone will be sending a full set of 40x 1.56m waves any time soon. the items are too rare and will be use as breaker waves/ major damage waves. Yes in the future this may well change, but as may how the item works, plus if someone DOES do that, just port your city. No more problem and your attacker just wasted every item they had. GG.


This will take two posts to reply too everyone. Sorry for doubleposting.

[ssfgrgawer]

I've seen a few saying "oh don't worry, it's only for 4 days.. only a max of 20 items". Wrong. It's only for 4 days right now. When their greedy number crunchers decide they can make money off it, it will be in the shop & on the wheel every promo, and bought by the 1000's by your favorite neighborhood coiner. Only 20 items right now? Wrong. Only 20 items per account right now. It's not that hard for people to build scouts on their hundred+ alts to hit you with 1mil scout bombs all day.

it is olny four days. And yes they will likely make returns over time as the devs try and balance the item. Most people don't have alts with 1b scouts to scoutbomb with 1m+ constantly, and 2m rams will suck up that many for weeks. you could probably out build rams with an instant arch hero, to how quickly they can send them inside a nice cozy hub. not to mention cap every hero on the server in the process.

You're over thinking this item because your scared of it. Its like caveman hiding from the flame because it burnt him. Once he realised barbie'd dinosaur tastes bloody delicious, he learnt not to stick his hands in the flame and to crack open a beer and enjoy Trex steaks for dinner. Its the same here. Yeah the damage potential is unreal, But YOU Have that same potential. If you don't have the mechs or scouts to throw then chances are you aren't a full time player anyway. Come back in a weeks time and your stuff will be rebuilt and you can go back to turtling safely from the middle of your friends hub.

you mentioned coiners but here i find that irrelevant. You get the items for FREE at the moment. if they leave an option to get a few free for a couple of days every single time they do a promotion, then its even to every single player in the game, Coiner or otherwise.

Dave, I don't think you guys realize the stuff you (and players) don't like are CAUSED BY the stuff you guys keep doing and adding.

War teleports made people start building hubs. Hubs being those big islands of players in the middle surrounded by miles of alts and valleys. It's tough to defend at 1 mile when someone pops in right beside you.

Wrong. Hubs are purely defensive because people are scared of losing troops. War teleporters were the next natural step since states are perma gridlocked by people dropping fillers to protect themselves by not letting foes random into their state. Its tough to defend a decent one mile attacker yeah, but not impossible. Every wave can be countered and there is no perfect set if you have a reasonable account. War tele's are one of the best additions to this game to date, even better than instant troops.

Gate breakers and fleet feet made people start building archer shields. Archer shields being those 10's or 100's of millions of archers in compact defense. Because when someone can warport in 1 mile away and double fleet feet hit your city with scout bombs (or mechs, or whatever) and you can't even close gates.. well ouch. Even your 7 mile buffer from being in a hub doesn't help against that. But having enough archers to survive the onslought for awhile does help against that.

In order to feed these big archer shields, people started making more alts. In order to more easily start making more alts people made scripts to do more stuff automatically. Those scripts are now enabling even noobs to make 100's of alts.

You are just reinforcing my point "I don't know how to defend well enough, so ill just build LOTS of archers. ill be safe then right?" maybe you should look into learning the game instead of exploiting it. yes FF/gatebreakers can be hard to defend without a reasonable account, but once you have a few mill troops its not impossible. There are only a few players in this game i actually have a hard time defending. 99% of people are not hard to defend, weather they have a 100m burn war city or a 10b burn war city.

Now you're adding an item to help attackers get around the hubs and the archer shields that are used because of the warports and ff/bg. I assure you that the result will not be anything you hoped. The result will be an even bigger and nastier and more alt-filled solution to protecting from horde items. I am trying really hard to imagine evony's goal in adding this item. The only thing I can come up with (other than pure future greed of course) is that you're hoping everyone will wreck each other's troops so much that they will start abandoning dozens of extra alts that are no longer needed. You're WRONG if this is the goal. People will not start running less alts. Even if they have 1 worker left to feed they will run those alts. They'll stockpile res, they'll sell res, they'll just start feeding multiple smaller accounts instead of 1 big account so that the losses are less centralized if they are hit by millions of troops per set. The only thing this item will accomplish is more heartbreak for evony players, and more lag on your servers.

Chances are this is 100% True. my server is already half on holidays. "OH NOES! I CANT HIDE IN MY 40 mile hub behind gatebreakers and 500m scouts/arch anymore?!?!?! HOW AM I SPOST TO DEFEND?!?!? WHAT IS EVONY?!?! Grow a set. Its a game, not a source of your power. This isnt an anime. losing troops is not the end of the world.

I really don't want people to add another thousand accounts to already overstressed servers, but i cant stop them from doing it. Your just going to make the lag worse if you do make more alts you realise? you know what them making multiple smaller war citys means? MORE TARGETS. Not just one city in the middle of a hub you cant hit anymore.

If you want to make a difference in evony, start by changing some fundamental way map data is sent to the client, break the bot map scan function, stop the NQViper and similar script.
If you want to help your paying customers, require email verification before playing.
If you want to get cheered instead of boo'd for a change, lock the good items on the wheel (100+ cents, mars heroes, etc.) to players with prestige over 10k or so, to stop spinner accounts.
If you want to look like you're actually putting in effort to save your dying game, go clear the 15k 0 prestige spinner accounts from bavaria on 197, or maybe ban the guy in world chat that's selling the loot they spun.

Map data is not really an issue. People learnt to scan by hand before bots existed in the way they do today. I used to have a mental mud map of bohemia in my head, and my evolliance page had a pretty detailed map of server 6 at one point, This was before bots were a thing. I still get cold shivers and shudder when the brown chases me as im looking around the map. I expect people to know where i am after nearly seven years on the same server. Doesn't change what kind of player i am.

i don't see how email verification will help. Most people already have 200 emails associated with the game as is. what good is making new players verify their emails gonna do?

Locking good items is not a half bad idea, but people will just script build accounts to the minimum prestige requirement and then spin all the accs same as they did before. War never changes....

and finally you hit the nail on the head. start banning sellers. that is the BEST thing evony can do. It used to be a way to keep servers alive, now its become big business. it needs to stop for the sake of future servers.

And, Dave, since you are listening here... how about allowing more than 100 members in an alliance?

This is probably the worst idea ive seen. "I want to make it easier for my bots to transfer res to me, so can you let me have my 2000 alts in my main alliance, plus room for my friends so they can do the same?

WHY would that be a good idea. I cant think of a single server where there are 100 active hitters in any given alliance. not ONE server in nearly seven years of playing this game, and countless servers.
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This item is not a new idea. I can remember discussing this item with AwesomeX years ago on these very forums, at the time it was not a good idea since the average player could not send a full 1.25m wave. NOW however the game has evolved past that point and bigger citys require bigger battering rams to break in. knock knock, SSF calling! Im glad to see evony has actually read suggestions that were made years ago and worked out which ones might be viable on the battlefields of today.

Yall are being a bit over the top about this. You guys cry constantly you want to see change, but when that change comes, you fight it tooth and nail.

Remember anything that can be done to you in evony, YOU CAN DO FIRST. move outta yo' mommas hub and go bust some ankles with a baseball bat (Horde wave) yourself.

[Blackhands]

This is being posted from a concerned team member who does not use the forums.......I personally have no opinion on the item as of yet other than why don't 1.56 million transports bring back the right amount of res......

"If Evony ownership and management can't see for themselves that the implementation of this item on Age I servers will nearly instantly cause them a monthly loss of nearly 80% of their income... let them install it on a regular basis and they will just have to go back to work like normal people that will no longer play this game!"

Your 'concerned team-mate' is undoubtedly an utter buffoon.I quite honestly think that the permanent implication of this item would do the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of what your suggesting- and i'd like to use the examples of your ****wit team-mates who have more money than sense and will absolutely 100% coin MORE to holiday 350+ days of the year so they don't get hit by people using this item OR coin to buy these items if they are given out in chests or in the shop. Evony will make MORE money from this item rather than less if it is implemented. Fact.

[Ailuros]

I'm not gonna reply to all of that line for line, it's pointless. You like the item and aren't going to change your opinion. I've played with you before and respected you as someone not afraid to jump in the trenches and get dirty with some troops. But I also remember you were afk a lot, small, and a bit out of touch with the game. Maybe that has changed now, who knows.

War ports were not the next natural step due to full states. Npc10 capping/hopping was the natural step, which we all (begrudgingly) did since the early days. The sudden lack of need to move all our troops/res every time we hopped from one npc10 war city to the next npc10 war city made our war cities bigger. With them being bigger we needed more food. With that we needed more alts. With bigger troops attacking we needed bigger troops defending. With bigger troops defending we needed even bigger troops attacking. It's a cold war arms race that everyone on evony loses in lag, stuck troops, and ip hider drama. This item is going to further enforce that build up. It will have the temporary effect (like this week) of making everyone lose troops to fast-on-the-draw attackers. Then it will have the long term effect of making everyone keep even MORE troops on hand to protect from this kind of thing in the future, you know.. for the next promo when evony "tests" their new item.

Map data is not an issue of course. I know everyone knows how to do a map scan. I was talking about changing something that would break the NQViper script. If you don't know what that is, you need to leave the forums a bit and return to evony. If you don't see a need for it to be broken well, open your eyes I guess.

Most people playing evony do not have 200 real emails they can use. They have 1 or 2 real emails and a whole bunch of alt#@fakeevonyserver1234.com emails. My email verification suggestion was not to prevent 200 real emails from people, it was to prevent the automated php scripts from creating jibberish accounts on fake emails that log on, spin 3 amulets and/or coin quest, and then whisper/mail their master when they win goodies so he can then sell it on world chat and skype. It also benefits the prevention (or at least slowdown) of fillers. It also benefits the prevention (or at least slowdown) of temporary alts people create during free gift promos to collect the cents, buffs, whatever to use on their main. Again if you don't see the benefit of preventing or slowing down fake accounts, you're not playing evony. Please for the love of god, just log onto 197 and look at bavaria, or swabia.. just LOOK at them. If you aren't disgusted you aren't an evony player, period.

My protesting is not because I'm scared. I'm frustrated. Yes obviously I see that I have zero chance of defending 1mil troop waves on a 10 day old new server. That goes for me and -everyone else- on the server. I'm frustrated because I see the outcome of this item is more troops, more alts, more standoffs, more lag, more stuck waves, more alliancemates quitting because of another unplayable server. I'm frustrated because I see people in my alliance... smaller players that don't coin a lot or don't run dozens of alts... quitting in a panic or quitting in a cloud of hopelessness. One of the people that quit today has spent 10's of thousands of dollars on Evony. He played on 5 different servers and ran 0 alts on all of them. He's the kind of player that evony is alienating with this item, and probably the ideal kind of player that evony should want to keep. He's also not the kind of player to come to forums and complain about this item. He's the kind of player to go find another game instead, which is exactly what he did.

[Braile]

ssfgrgawer's I read your response and I am not disagreeing with what you are saying..... but you do realise that you said the following:

"Firstly you do not need to run a million bots to be a competitive player. I have shown that on multiple servers. I was able to feed upwards of 1m each mech on 175 quite easily, without even a handful of accounts, and lets face it there is almost no one now days who does not have at least two accounts."

Which means if you - like me - have that sort of troop count your only going to be able to send max of 3 WAVES!!! Which means your not going to kill much of those war cities that the lovely alt loving , ressie hoarding reds have (you know the ones with 198m archers and 34m each mech). Then once sent what? Sit back and rebuild for 2 days to get back to 1m each mech to fire off some more wavess?

So whether you realise it or not you have reinforced what I have said....the player that you say has nothing to lose with an avg of 2m each mech is still not able to do any damage to those cities with 198m archer shields and more.....sure you say .....take more in? Guess what? The big nasty red just ports - you wasted all horde banners from multiple accounts.

It does not change that the only people able to benefit from horde are those with the mech counts to kill the large war cities and the only people that have those are the script loving, alt owning, ressie hoarding manipulators of the game.

[Twofaces]

love it, add to shop now

[LordZion]

Can't you just fix the servers and then release these new items? It's hard to decide whether or not I like the item when all my attacking waves get stuck for hours.

[instylex]

While the initial concept of the item seems very cool I believe the long term effects of this item is very bad. What this item does is eliminate archer defenses completely from the game. This leaves us with one basic kind of defense - Mech Defenses... This brings less variety. It almost completely negates having archer towers.

This item is really only practical for the biggest abusers of bots. The types of people that have so many alts they can send 1.56m mech in one wave. Think about this, this could actually make the alt abuse problem worse. Those building up to send these types of attacks and those building up to defend against these. This means you need considerable offline troops to even last till you are able to get online. If you are offline they might as well be hitting an npc. This is not a defense its a slaughter. Keep in mind the time it took to build those troops and how quickly the troops are gone. The outcome of these 'non-defenses' I believe actually will lead to many quiting the game entirely. More bots and no defense options. You build millions of troops and wiped in under 10 minutes if someone uses hordes and fleet feet. Situations vary but you get my point.

Next I see the following counter measures being taken to those that don't want to mass up on alts to defend against this.
-Instant truces
-Instant Porting scripts
-Dismissing troops to avoid large reports (smart thing to do - deny report and keep the resources)
-Holiday
-Extremely small cities
-Hubs created with extreme barriers (Mulitiple accounts shielding their main cities that form barriers miles and miles out. 5-10 miles)
-Reinforcing troops to a secondary city to clear city completely

My point is this, you now have the complete avoidance of a fight or you have a complete wipe of your war city while you are using the bathroom. This item is extremely overpowered and does NOT help this game. I like the concept of it but it needs to be scaled down dramatically. Instead of 10x, do 2x. That is still a huge hit but not the kind of hit that is gonna cause people to rage quit.

[HairyBear]

The item itself is quite a good idea, and I understand the reasons why something like this might be required/needed/wanted.

However it needs to be controlled. I have already heard of some players who have 100's of these items already. Whilst I appreciate they are going to be removed when the promotion is over, an item like this cannot be hugely available in large numbers. It is a game wrecker and will cause no end of players to quit instantly and never return.

Can I suggest that if it becomes a normal part of game play, can it have a similar drop rate as say a Mars hero. Either that, or the 10 x troop feature needs to be greatly reduced.

Let us not forget, only a particular type of player can afford to send a 1.5m mech wave anyway. These are the particular kind of players that Evony has tried to outlaw for years.

I have played this game many years, and only now do i feel compelled enough to register on the forums and make my feelings heard. It is THAT much of a game changer.

[Yolanda]

Well I would have to say this is THE worse thing you have ever done Evony. Have you REALLY thought this out. This works for the really BIG guys, but no one else. Are you wanting to close down Evony, is this why you have probably introduced the worse and most individualised item you could ever have done. This item is ONLY for huge alt players, not for the normal run of the mill. Quite frankly, if you keep this around, you will find it is the end of Evony. All those smaller and middle size players cannot compete and will just be wiped. I am not one of the small nor middle size but I dont like that a game is starting to sway towards the BIG players and not across the board. We need those new players but there can be no new players with this item in play.