Originally Posted by
FoxyBunny
I'm not going to tell you that you should like how this is being done, but I would like to point out a few things:
1) The current way of taking a vacation is to open your gates, ask your alliance mates to watch your cities for attacks, garrison some troops in your cities for protection, set tax rate to 0%, and cross your fingers. This still exists and you are welcome to use it. Nothing there has been nerfed.
2) Should you want to take an extra step, you can basically shutter up your account (same way as you would your house for vacation...turn off the lights, close the windows, make sure all pets are inside, etc.) and pay $1/day to have it guaranteed protected from all attacks.
3) You can use coins won, coins gathered via iEvony referrals, coins given to you in contests, etc. There are actually a fair number of ways to get coins without spending a cent of your own money. I also think Evony might be amenable to a request from the players for some kind of item on the Wheel that would enable you to use vacation mode for free for a certain period of time. That might be something to discuss.
4) As darkbrady said, vacation mode is abused in a number of other games I've played. I always said it should have some elements that discourage its casual use to avoid retaliation from attacks. For example, there are games where you can drop into vacation mode for free, at the drop of a hat, and unlock in just 6 hours, and do that as often as you want. People use it to plunder all day then sleep soundly without fear of revenge. Not fair. Here at least you get stuck in it for 2 days minimum and you don't get to build or produce during that time.
Is this perfect? Maybe not. But I think that it's got some great ideas incorporated into it, and it isn't as if it couldn't be improved upon. Maybe the players would like to stop screaming about how terrible it is and offer some suggestions on improvements? A well-constructed and logical argument would be considered, I have no doubt. So let's hear your ideas: what do you like about this? What do you hate? How would you change it?