The real story about the changes

[ByronXAN]

I am reposting this under General Discussion because the information herein has been buried inside another thread, and I personally feel this is too important to remain buried elsewhere.

There is a chain of events which has set the world of Evony (formally Civony, beta) on a course of disaster.

The reality is revealed, that the game provider never "intended" for large player armies, nor did they forsee or intend for players to be able to advance to 'end-game' so quickly.

It all began with medal drops being easily obtained en-mass through repetitiously "attack/dump" valley farming. The players who were knowledgeable of this tactic, quickly and (according to the devs) too easily rose to the top tier rank/title. This was obviously not their original vision or intent for their game.

Players were now able to own 10 towns within a few short weeks. The devs responded with a stealth-nerf patch, deliberately removing medal drops, and drastically changing the gameplay experience. Without revisiting the past, suffice to say a LOT of players were insane with rage over this decision. Meanwhile, the player "gap" really took off. Post-patch, players who did not have the necessary advancement medals were unable to catch up to those who already had. Playability stagnated. Luckily, the larger players had high level NPC towns to raid, and so mostly they left the smaller players/new guys alone.

Then came the first patch to nerf NPC farming. The reality in this was simple: The devs wanted a drastic reduction in large player armies. To cut the armies, they gambled on their idea to nerf NPCs. Their gamble backfired. Instead of reducing NPC dependency, they increased it. Panic set in for some players with negative millions in food needs. The logical reaction: Create more NPC's! This caused the large army-style player to start sacking smaller towns, in order to "look under" their city in hopes of getting lucky and finding a lvl 5 NPC, by abandoning the newly conquered town.

Lose/Lose situation: New/weaker players are now losing their cities by the thousands, only to see them instantly abandoned. It's not rocket science to see the outcome: new/weaker players quit. Some changed servers. Who knows if they are still playing.

Somewhere along the way, walls got beefed up, rocks became long-ranged super defenses, and NPC farmers saw thousands upon thousands of their ballista/xport armies decimated. Meanwhile, there was complete silence from the developers over this (yet again) stealth-nerf-patch "solution".

With walls now beefed up, the outcome of this decision forces the player to produce an even -larger- army to attack NPC's and other players.

So, in the beginning, the intention of the devs was to reduce dependency on large armies, or remove the ability to create and sustain them all together. The outcome has come full circle, and actually made a demand for players to have HUGE armies in order to siege lvl 10 NPC's (end-game combat) or attack enemy alliance towns.

So, In summary, the chain of events has brought Evony full circle. New/weaker players have become 'food' for sustainability. Their towns get sacked and dumped to create NPC farms. The slippery-slope gets more steep from here...

Compound this problem with one overlooked "gift" to players. A ton of free advanced teleport items were given out recently in a package. This has now made it possible for enemies to instantly appear next door to player towns. (On server 1, I woke up with an enemy fortress 1 tile away, and totally ready to begin attacking me and my allies after the 24hr wait wears off). congratulations... a bad situation has become much worse..

Where does it end? The developers have not been open and honest with us throughout the implimentation of these "fix" patches. We were not fully informed on what was "broken".. meanwhile, real problems and "broken" bugs in the game have continued to receive zero attention and continue to this day to be real problems.. and the community continues to cry out daily for some relief from the real "broken" parts of the game.

It has to end, Evony... You are destroying a game that we all love to play.. Please, before you send yet another patch in attempt to "fix" the game, release the information no less than 30 days prior... slow down.. you seem to be in crisis mode, scrambling to fix a problem that you have yet to fully disclose or define to your players.

[Repost of my break-down of Dawnseekers illuminating response will follow this post]

[Nesterus]

evony should be in its deaththroes soon

pure mismanagement at its best

hope they did manage to fleece some profit out of the sheep tho

[Valin]

The only thing keeping this game from going under, is the massive amount of carebear players joining, that foolishly buy game coins before they understand the full scope of the game. Since those players are Evony's main income, the devs will do anything they tell them to do, even though their lack of understanding, only causes more problems for them.

[vBobLing]

As Kempion stated, if your having so much trouble with the game write to the Admins, or just don't log in. I can see that the patches annoyed you, but its just that the DEVs have to work towards something and thats what we should be looking forward to.

vBobLing

[fbkiller]

As Kempion stated, if your having so much trouble with the game write to the Admins, or just don't log in.

What fabulous choices for ones customers. So either :

1) Write to a place like the Abyss from which messages go but never return, or
2) Have customers or potential customers just go away.

With a business model like that it is bound to succeed! The fact that a third or fourth or fifth option don't seem to occur to the appeasers and apologists is testimony of how fanatic they are. But honestly, if you guys believe that the above motto is so good, why not post it front and center on UMGE's website and let people see it for themselves and vote with their wallets? Meanwhile in the rest of the world, telling customers to just "go away" is probably ranked 998 or 999 in their list of options after all else is exhausted. But of course the people advocating the GO AWAY chant don't actually at all care about business or bottomline or UMGE's interests, they just want the people who oppose their views to conveniently vanish.

Evony : Love it. If not, send email to circular files or just go away

.

[kassikas]

Some people like to be invincible without putting in any effort into the accomplishment. Those people are not at all frustrated.

Kassi Kas

[Bakakid]

That really sum up the history of nerf patch. Well done sir, well done.

[ByronXAN]

When Evony was conceived, it was intended that large armies would not be able to be sustained. Players would be able to have armies based on their food production and armies over that would be lost either in battle or through Refuge.

At last, some truth comes out. The intention of the previous stealth-nerf-patches has been to covertly reduce large standing armies. These armies were/are viewed as exploitations, since their development by the savy player falls outside the game providers original (and undisclosed) intentions for army size. Bravo!

The maximum troop levels were not imposed as hard caps, but rather as soft caps. We wanted players to be able to temporarily buff up troops, and then either use them or lose them.

Players found that by farming NPCs, they could not only sustain much higher troop levels than we intended, but they could do so indefinitely. This was compounded when they began spawn NPC cities specifically for farming.

While we did not intend for players to be able to sustain armies of the size they are now, we are not necessarily against it. However, there are two things that need to change from the way they are now.

Key word: necessarily. Of course you are against it. “ When Evony was conceived, it was intended that large armies would not be able to be sustained” You have, effectively contradicted yourself.

First, we need to end players ability to make NPC cities wherever they like. This leads to giant clusters of barbarians around many player cities and makes the game map cluttered and unusable.

The issue isn't clutter of unusable space. The issue is large army support by NPC farming. This is a problem only because low level players are getting annihilated simply for the level of flat their town rests on, and those players are quitting. Quitters don't buy game cents.

Second, we need to find a way for players to maintain armies larger than their food supplies can support, without having to spawn NPC cities. There also needs to be a scaling system for troops, so that it gets more difficult to provide upkeep as you get more troops. It should be an active system of support. It could be farming NPCs or something else. This system must not have any work-arounds or exploits or it will be a pointless change.

“Scaling system for troops”? Warning! Future nerf to follow. Troop food costs will increase.

“ This system must not have any work-arounds or exploits or it will be a pointless change.”
The whole problem is the view from the game provider that farming NPC's, and subsequently using the captured spoils to increase the size of ones army/towns, was an exploitation. However, this was never explained to your players who were using this methodology as a means to enjoy your game content and aggress other players of near or equal strength. Prior to all of your nerfs, the Big-Boys pretty much went after one another. There was a competitiveness and server “Status” for having a large army, however it made you a target from your foes. New player cities were not attacked, and certainly not turned into NPC farms. Through the patches (intended to kill off large armies) the players evolved and survived these attempts. The methodology changed, and surviving meant building NPC towns. That led to attacking lower level players in order to “dump” their town and see if there was a lvl 5 “under” it. This has lead to yet another up and coming nerf. When will it end?

We'd like player ideas on ways to support large armies without the ability to make NPC cities and without relying on giant clusters of NPC cities.

How? Again, I say you contradicted yourself before. The reality is you cannot go about making drastic changes to the way a game is being played without transparent, open, honest debate from your customers and developers. You guys seriously messed that up. Strike one.

You continued to ignore real problems, such as bugs and server lag, and then implemented more invisible changes (NPC town rocks suddenly destroying thousands of player ballista without prior notice to this change). This only fueled speculation that you were “out to get” the large-army style players. Congratulations, you've now proven that speculation to be true. Strike two.

We're all ears!

Prove it.
Mess this one up, strike three.

The developers have used the power of the patch to systematically target players with large armies, in order to reduce their size and scope in hopes of putting a tourniquet on the player base bleeding out of Evony, seeking other games to spend their time and money on.

I suggest:

A test server, and test forum with full transparency on upcoming changes at a minimum of 30 days prior. Put the test-patch on the test server, and allow players to try it out, try to exploit it, try to survive under the new changes, etc.

Revisit the real reason to patch a “live game” by the following example:

Patching should happen under a hierarchy of needs, such as:
Need 1: Exploits/bug fixes
Need 2: Tweaks and improvements.
Need 3: New content for player evolution/advancement.

Everything else will work itself out over time...

As I said before...
Do's:
Test. Communicate. Listen. Make changes that fix what is immediately broken (bugs/exploits). Release new content. Involve and empower your customer base. Care about our concerns.
Dont's:
Add more servers. Nerf the mechanics. Underinform, misinform, fail to inform. Ignore the bugs/exploits, server issues. Exibit a 'could care less' attitude though indifference.

[Valin]

Amazing how all the carebear whinners keep saying "use strategy" to get an army you can feed (which we did by the way) but don't bother to think of an in-village food production strategy to get 300k in each city, which took me all of 2 min to come up with. There will ALWAYS be was to "abuse/exploit" the system to get massive army's. Dawnseeker just signaled Evony's death.

[ByronXAN]

Amazing how all the carebear whinners keep saying "use strategy" to get an army you can feed (which we did by the way) but don't bother to think of an in-village food production strategy to get 300k in each city, which took me all of 2 min to come up with. There will ALWAYS be was to "abuse/exploit" the system to get massive army's. Dawnseeker just signaled Evony's death.

I have a food production strategy for my cities... it's called: 40 lvl 9 farms..

Build 'war' towns to house my armies... then build resource towns... 1 for lumber, stone, iron... keep minimal troops in that town to stay at positive food levels.. and transport resources to my cities as needed...

This is my new strategy.. I'm taking it on the chin.. and adapting to the coming inevitable changes...