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Thread: Drop rates in age II

  1. #91

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    never mind... remove...
    Last edited by neko_lord; 06-04-2010 at 01:56 AM.

  2. #92

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    Quote Originally Posted by WARMONGER777 View Post
    Yes you do need a porter as a core item. It allows you to move to new places, avoid attacks you cant take, move to a new place to colonize more after you finish colonizing or... to attack another alliance.. this game becomes boring after a while sitting in one spot. Keep the players interested keeps people buying stuff.
    I agree with everything you just said, but you are confusing entertainment with requirement.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    It's becoming clear that the freemium business model under which we operate has one great drawback, which is a small segment of players will always want the premium features as zero cost and won't be satisfied otherwise. Those players will always have a voice, but I'll lend my ear to others.
    Dawsnseeker, I am contending that if you allow for a higher medal drop rate your income will increase. Your major drawback is that the drop rates are hindering people from advancing. This is bad for a number of reasons.

    1. It hurts the fun factor. Farming for the same medals everyday becomes NO FUN. You need to give people a reason to want to come back and play. A sense of accomplishment does that. When people get hung up, they tend to quit.

    2. It kills the beginner (new money). Evony is not a game that makes you instantly want to spend money. It is more of an acquired taste. The longer people play it the more fun it becomes and the more likely they are to spend money. If you don't give them that initial sense of accomplishment, they will get bored and move to another game. You are letting them walk out the door before they even realize that they want to spend money.

    This is also one reason why you can not introduce new players to older servers. When they get hung up at low levels, they do not have the ability to build armies fast enough to defend themselves. They are sitting ducks for the high level players. If they can only produce from 2 cities after a month of playing, they will not stand a chance.

    Your advancement rate should resemble a pyramid. It should be a lot easier to advance from 1-5 cities than from 5-10 cities. If you allow for the average of 5 cities, the game becomes more balanced. If everyone is bunched near the middle, you will have a lot less of the "bully" effect going on.

    3. The core of your game is nation building and war. Those are the areas that you should be making your primary income on. Medals and materials should be secondary sources of income. I believe you said that speed ups were your best seller. Well every time a player advances, that is another opportunity for you to sell more speed ups.

    4. Your time frames are too long. This game should take the average player (5 hour a day player) 6 months to finish. Get players to the end game quicker. Fighting is the other highlight of this game. You came up with new war focused items for Age 2, give more people the opportunity to want to use them.

    The core of Evony is excellent, but there are certain areas in the game (like drop rates) that if tweaked, would increase the fun factor dramatically. If you increase the fun factor, you will keep people around longer. The longer they stay the more likely you are to make money from them.

  3. #93

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    So..the only way to change drop rate is to quit or don't buy cents anymore :s

  4. #94
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    Some of the top players in the game fiercely and proudly proclaim that they've "never spent a penny" on the game and yet they have succeeded, brilliantly.
    This is Age1 players, Age2 is far more difficult to grow without coins. Historical heroes and gear materials cost a lot of coin. The commission quests are still buggy and not very common. Unless you win A LOT of coin on the wheel many times over you have to spend coin to be the top players.

    We're continuing to look at the drop rate of all items and the effect that the drop rate has on player advancement and on revenue.
    This is of course expected in any business. It shows the company cares about keeping evony a fuctional game. That is not the same thing as caring if players are having a hard time progressing.

    We continue to do things that players now take for granted.

    Free amulet, every day.
    (This is a standard marketing tactic to encourage players to login daily and get involved in the game. It adds to the addictivness of the game. I am not saying this is wrong, but hardly Altruistic, evony can see that one spin a day also keeps player incentivized to spend coin as they see others winning great stuff (hence the system messages).

    Extremely valuable items and even Cents winnable for free on the Wheel.
    Yes and we do not take it for granted, but the benefit of the wheel drops is that it ENCOURAGES people to buy amulets. These items are bits of code, not RL valuable items, and cents cannot be used outside of the game, so it is a win win for evony. You CANNOT lose. IF you did not have the wheel your revenue would drop dramatically as players spend coins to spin in the hope they get something good (actually worth the money spent in their view) rather than pay for the items in the shop which are overvalued to most players.

    Free speed-ups for all buildings with a base construction time under 5 minutes.
    This is because charging for a 5 minutes speedup would not be feasible and it promotes the starting of a new game getting new players involved in the game without wasting excessive time and boring them.

    All items have a chance to drop after combat.
    There is a chance of a drop, but its not going to be enough to make any player progress far on that alone. Also colonising reduces overall attacks in Age2.

    Free compensation packages to entire servers when players are negatively impacted even by events outside of our control, or events that are inevitable in an online game, such as long server outages and emergency maintenance. These free packages even go to players who have never purchased anything.
    There is no such thing as inevitable, I know multi billion businesses that work failsafes in to a 99.9999% up rate. Failure short of a Act of God is because of not enough investment in your mainframe. Compensation packages are a good idea and do raise moral on the server effected and are good PR for your company.
    The list goes on...
    Good that you look after your customers.
    We have dramatically improved communication with our players by posting patch notes several times a week, and we have a team of individuals dedicated to responding to player concerns on the forums and/or bringing those concerns to the developers.
    A+ for this.

    We are working to keep the game exciting for players by merging low population servers so that players always have opponents to fight and friends to make.
    Thats one side of it. The other is keeping the remaining players, often the spenders, happy is good for you too, and merging servers reduces cost.

    We have dramatically improved customer service with a dedicated customer service portal where players get personal responses to pressing needs.
    Its nice to get a reply from a human. Its proven a higher satisfaction rate occurs when someone cares about your problem.

    We are in the process of evaluating and implementing exciting new game mechanics, such as adding an Attack function in Age II, copying Age I accounts into Age II and other mechanics I'm not able to discuss at this time.
    Ah, the reason Age2 was slowing down and Age1 servers were being opened was the No attack button. I am delighted that evony is listening to us when we say we do not want to spend money on a farmville game.

    To say that we ignore players, or don't respond to players, or that we're greedy is unfair and untrue. We listen, we respond. Player concerns are the #1 factor driving development.
    Well then the drop rate will be readdressed in the future, thats good to know.

    If none of that means anything and you won't be happy unless every item you want drops like candy from a pinata, then your not ever going to be happy, so we'll spend our time listening to players with reasonable concerns that we can make happy.
    Customers will always have issues, that is the nature of customer service, please tell me a business that never gets complaints. The fact that they complain is a GOOD thing. They know you care enough to listen and reduces the likelyhood of bad reviews outside of your forum. It keeps the moaning inhouse.

    It's becoming clear that the freemium business model under which we operate has one great drawback, which is a small segment of players will always want the premium features as zero cost and won't be satisfied otherwise.
    Welcome to doing business with people, not robots. They always want more. That means they strive to play better and want more from evony.

    Those players will always have a voice, but I'll lend my ear to others.
    haha, comeon. You are going to ignore players who ask for more than evony currently provides. That will help give your developers a well rounded customer viewpoint.
    Scythe on S3, W12, etc.
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    +REP me if I helped you.

  5. #95

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    @foxy

    I am new to Evony.
    I did not play age I.
    I may or may not be a typical customer. I don't know.

    I have spent a grand total of $5 on Evony.

    Most of my online games I spend $30 every 2 weeks.

    One other online game I spent $30 grand total and now just go free.

    What is the difference between spending hundreds of dollars a year and $30 or $5 in total ever?

    Please lend your ear as you promised.

    1) I look for a balanced system that is free of most bugs.
    2) I look for a game system that paying gives you a moderate advantage but not an overwhelming one.
    3) I look for a game that has a chalenging PVP
    4) I look for a game administered by high character managers who understand that there is really no intrinsic value in pixels. When you "give" us a "free happiness pkge" you haven't given anything actually. What you are selling really is entertainment including interaction between other users. Therefore anything you do that limits interactions or makes interactions non competitive will reduce revenues in the long run.

    Right now I give Evony a c+ on these issues.
    1)Lots of bugs
    2)Paying advantage is a bit too high.
    3)PVP in age two has several built in flawed mechanics
    4)Management is relatively good at customer service, but has a "elitist" attitude from time to time. (real or imagined) Seemingly also has limited experience and over worked.
    5)I sometimes feel "pressured" by the system to open my wallet. This of course ALWAYS makes me close it.

    Improvements that can be made.
    1)Fix the bugs,fix the bugs,fix the bugs (I realize you are working hard at that)
    2)Give players a chance to advance (obviously low medal drop rates ruin that)
    3)paying for chat? Give me a break! Bad bad bad. Instead find volunteers to monitor chat and "pay" them with a small ammount of free cents. They then can ban spammers and the idiots who are simply rude and profane.
    4)Balance the PVP part of the game and include some type of plunder ability (if not total conquer)
    5)make the combat system transparent enough that it can actually be analysed. This will allow people to come up with multiple strategies. These guides can be helpful but clearly based by speculation as much as anything. Alternately improve the exercise section to give real results. You may be surprised at how many intellegent people can help you playbalance this game and fix conceptually the loopholes and imbalances present.

    I see the potential to be an A+
    Last edited by reddbaron; 06-04-2010 at 09:05 AM.

  6. #96
    Join Date
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    ok....

    another wk long of npc raids ' and still not a single drop of treasure/item ' just gems ! thats 3 wks in total ' i will try another wk hopefully they might listen and like warmonger posted give us all a fair chance of competing against the ridiculous spenders...oh and on another note the wheel is just another chance of winning nothing....

    i dont normally winge but i think after 3 wks of plunders you would at least gain something ?

    / king '


    I think that choosing between the aforementioned material (racism, profanity, nazism) and spongebob squarepants is a highly exaggerated extreme.

  7. #97

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    3 weeks here too and nothing. like two posters above me was saying about he closes his wallet and coiners get huge unfair advantage.

    even more so now that NOTHING drops.

    dawn/evony: question you like people spending money. but do people automatically come in and spnd it? no they need chance to play the game and grow, but you restrict that with no loot drops, people now playing that did not play before the nerf, have no clue that stuff would even drop. why would they continue playing? or farm, or anything all they see is the occasional medal drop, and/or gem if they stick around the game long enuf to NPC farm (ive seen about 30 in my alliance quit before they got to that point since you nerfed drops..)

    retaining customers was far more likely when stuff dropped, people played more and did not quit, now that you ruined the drop rate, far less people play on daily/active basis and only 1 person in my alliance buys coins (i see from the packages..)and he quit yesterday. He bought 18 $30 packs, and you drove him off now. good job.

    okay, so lets say you get a coiner/spender that does stay. now when everyone else quits except other coiners, or high end players there are: no new players, no active low/middle ground players, bc everyone quit. no competition, dead chat , dead alliances, dead servers all bc you want to drive the game into the ground and squeeze every last cent outta it.

    who wants to play a game with no one else playing it? and then to play that game with a dying population you gotta spend money to do anything bc nothing drops anymore.

  8. #98

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    Quote Originally Posted by Napolleon View Post
    3 weeks here too and nothing. like two posters above me was saying about he closes his wallet and coiners get huge unfair advantage.

    even more so now that NOTHING drops.

    dawn/evony: question you like people spending money. but do people automatically come in and spnd it? no they need chance to play the game and grow, but you restrict that with no loot drops, people now playing that did not play before the nerf, have no clue that stuff would even drop. why would they continue playing? or farm, or anything all they see is the occasional medal drop, and/or gem if they stick around the game long enuf to NPC farm (ive seen about 30 in my alliance quit before they got to that point since you nerfed drops..)

    retaining customers was far more likely when stuff dropped, people played more and did not quit, now that you ruined the drop rate, far less people play on daily/active basis and only 1 person in my alliance buys coins (i see from the packages..)and he quit yesterday. He bought 18 $30 packs, and you drove him off now. good job.

    okay, so lets say you get a coiner/spender that does stay. now when everyone else quits except other coiners, or high end players there are: no new players, no active low/middle ground players, bc everyone quit. no competition, dead chat , dead alliances, dead servers all bc you want to drive the game into the ground and squeeze every last cent outta it.

    who wants to play a game with no one else playing it? and then to play that game with a dying population you gotta spend money to do anything bc nothing drops anymore.
    Thats what I have been saying this whole time... make the game enjoyable for non, low-medium spenders to compete with the insane spenders who have a HUGE advantage. Make the game possible to compete with them not right away but be able to catch up to them eventually.

    Otherwise people will quit. You lose customers and thats lost profit. More customers= more profit. Wouldnt you agree?

    *********
    KEY POINTS:
    Random ports a must
    materials a must. The big spenders will always spend the money since advanced porters, penicillin, etc. Do not drop. They will buy them just to be the best and take over other people.
    Mich scripts should be in but thats your call.
    Make the game more competitive/fun by giving random ports and materials out to upgrade heros not as fast as the big spenders but so eventually they can catch up. Mich scripts should be in more often but not as required as the other 2 items.. materials/normal porters.
    END KEY POINTS:
    **********

  9. #99
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    OMG I just won a Lost Armor Script from a spamming wave on a LVL10 NPC lol

    still no materials tho

  10. #100

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    Quote Originally Posted by Woldere View Post
    OMG I just won a Lost Armor Script from a spamming wave on a LVL10 NPC lol

    still no materials tho
    Armor scripts do nothing without materials... pull out ur visa.. only way you can upgrade your heros to compete .

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