Guardians.

I don't like the idea of people converting drachmas to emeralds. Rich people would then upgrade their guardians with guardians, and simple buy new guardians. They will do this until they have what they want. And people would aim and get much more grade 3's. Well maybe some people would have like 80 grade 3's very fast and leave the last 20 spots to the 4's and 5's they buy in some package. This is not a good idea versus balance.

Pantheons.

I don't like the idea that it gets implemented to ongoing servers, it would not change anything, coalitions are too strong. This feature has to be known from day 1 on a fresh server. Like what do you go for, capital upgrades, that sketches pantheon, whatever. I like it. But can't just introduce it to ongoing servers.

Thats my opinion. And I agree on everything els you said.

Make a new server and introduce all of these things, and don't forget to lower the prices on packages. Also you could have ONE BIG WORLD and then have servers all around the globe, there would probably be people out there willing to pay for that local server, let everyone play together/versus eachother. US, Europe, Asia, Russia, Australia, Middle-east, Africa, EVERYONE. And you could do this with all your games, but for a start just focus on sparta since I play it. Make sure all the features is there from the start and then do not introduce anything new for at least a year or two. All you should do is look for unbalance/glitches/bugs/cheat and change it.

One last things.. "Merely having people logging in to update build queues and pick up a few daily rewards".. This is what I do 90% of the time.

NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

Have a nice day! 

some good ideas here

Hi Morteeee,

I strongly agree with the points raised around Emporiums. So much potential to be a more engaging feature of the game. Many suggestions have been raised on this topic in the past, and I'm sure the developers have heard just about every suggestion in the book. Is any development planned around Emporiums, or what is the view of the developers on the emporium topic?

I also agree with the suggestions around general's equipment. I am not sure if class V is the best way to do. I do appreciate the freebies of class IV legend items we are getting recently. With new features like guardians and unit XP, making the general's equipment available more easily prevents players from falling behind massively in strength compared to more significant money spenders. However, I really do miss the element of PP associated with hunting/searching for something. Lots of other things can also be added, for example, small chance to win some elite units (like the Megarian, Paeonian, etc), or perhaps a champion.

Hello, PAROXYSM!

Thanks a lot for your detailed and extended feedback.

I will try to reply on each point of it.

1. General Equipment

Devs are already working on the update to General equipment feature. 

They plan to add new type of equipment and ways to receive it.

I also know that many players are overloaded with Equipment and they can't break all of it. That's why I already forwarded a suggestion that will allow destroying Equipment at once.

Other than that, no changes to Generals equipment is planned.

2. Phylarch

Devs plan to add additional skills in the near future.

3. General Skills / Intellect Level

As you said, it's not a top priority task for now.

Maybe in the future devs will consider new Skills to this feature as well. For now, the majority of players still have what to achieve here.

4. Dominion

Dominion activators are given as a reward in the Tournaments and Quests quite often.

You can avoid using Drachmas for activators if you take an active part in the in-game Events.

Plus, activate Dominion only when you really need it is a way to go as well.

5. Guardians

Devs already thought about the possibility of adding the conversion from Emeralds to Drachmas and vise versa.

It's not the feature they want to implement for now. Still, in the future, it can be added.

They're working on a new type of Tournament that will involve a lot of activity in the game including Guardians. This Tournament will have nice rewards and I think many players will be interested in it. So, this type of event should help to increase players' activity with Guardians.

6. Unit Upgrades

The additional ways to obtain Relics will be introduced in the future. More likely it will be Tournament rewards, Quest rewards and Special Offers.

7. Upgrade Sketches 

It's a known issue well. Devs plan to increase the number of Sketches given in Tournament rewards. Though there are no plans to change their price on the Market.

As for the discounts, we already forwarded feedback to run global discounts on them more often.

Regarding, the Wheel of Fortune, devs plan to review the whole mechanics of this feature as well as the Offers we have there.

8. Sanctum / Academy 

New levels for Sanctum will be added in the near future.

As for the Academy, I haven't got what exactly your suggestion is. Please clarify it.

9. Emporia

A lot of suggestions have been forwarded to devs regarding this part of the game. 

Unfortunately, no changes are planned for now except for adding an ability to send Coalition reinforcement to them, and ask for it via Coalition help.

Other than that, not changes as devs are busy with the tasks that have higher priority.

10. Pantheons

Devs know that Pantheons are not a very popular part of the game right now and they're working on features that will allow changing it.

For example, in this update devs will add a force limit to the attack that can be sent to Pantheon. In this way, it will be easier to hold them.

More updates to this part of the game are expected to come in the future.

Thanks a lot for your detailed and well-reasoned suggestions!

I would like to see all "special package" items also sold for Drachmas. I would buy Holy Summoning bonds, Grade IV and V Skill Stones and the Helios city skin if they were.  Currently they are only available as $ packages and buying them has all kinds of implications on future purchases so I don't buy them anymore.  Since Drachmas are "money" in the game there would be no negative impact if they were priced properly.

my experience with the guardians, has been from best to worst, and the main reason for my reluctance, has been to receive several times level 3 or 4 guardians of one type (who will use nothing or little) and none of the one who wanted (or better) use could give him). So it would be nice some kind of exchange of guardians between players or the possibility of choosing the type of guardian in some way .....

Wow! It's very nice to see such excellent and positive feedback so far.

Keep it coming!

Coeus

Guardians

I totally get your point and I agree that buying you way to elite levels is not desirable. However, that wasn't exactly my intention with the currency conversion suggestion.

One would assume that any major coiners would have already just bought the guardian packs outright, and gotten what they wanted when the feature was introduced.

My thoughts were more geared towards getting players who haven't done much with guardians or who avoid stepping out of their normal spending patterns more engaged.

I will also say that it is honestly quite difficult to just keep buying bonds looking to get what you want as you will end up with a lot of undesirable and duplicate guardians before the random hand of fate bestows you with what you want Needless to say this method can get very expensive and frustrating.

Perhaps a much steeper conversion rate of say (1000 Drach = 100 Emeralds) would keep things more stable? Obviously it would be more pragmatic to simply buy guardian packs, but it could allow those who are reluctant to do so a chance to better enjoy this feature.

Pantheons

It is true that such fundamental changes to the game can upset the established meta and those results can be quite unpredictable.

I certainly wouldn't want this to supersede what we already prioritize in our individual or collective advancement. It would be more of a side engagement that could offer something new and interesting to compete over.

Maybe a better suggestion would be to randomly drop these new types of pantheons on the map as part of events or during certain tournaments? They could be captured and defended for a predetermined period of time (a few hours or a few days). Then simply disappear when the time has expired with any units stationed there being safely returned to the respective player’s acropolis.

Another idea could be to make these types of pantheons more difficult to defend (de-buffs for all occupying troops) depending on the value of the rewards they offer.

Also, the main reasoning behind the suggestion was to mitigate the lack of interest in the current pantheon system. I see a lot of coalitions controlling groups of them unchallenged for months at a time simply because there is no worthwhile benefit for another coalition to conquer them.

Then on the other side of the spectrum I see strong coalitions controlling none because they prefer to focus their resources elsewhere. They deem their capital as being the only asset worth defending, and if they do find themselves in conflict, holding pantheons spreads their defenses too thin and simply creates soft targets for the enemy.

What I envisioned here was an opportunity for the more centrally defensive coalitions, as mentioned above, something to engage in and focus on beyond their capital and individual cities. I also had hoped that a more lucrative class of asset to compete over could spark more conflict between the groups of stronger coalitions that maintain long lists of alliances and no-hit agreements. While these peaceful scenarios can be nice it does become quite boring when they are maintained for extended periods of time.

Morteee

Thank you!

Agaghas

General’s Equipment

When I suggested a fifth tier of equipment above our current max level of class 4 legendary I had no intention of it being overwhelmingly more powerful than what we have now.

The level of rarity should also be incredibly high so that any concerns about the usefulness and loss of hard work put into current top tier equipment would be mitigated.

This would be the final level of progression in general’s equipment for the foreseeable future.

For any player that engages high level Persian positions consistently I would expect for any one of them to have more than two or three piece of this gear a year after its initial introduction to be incredibly rare.

The pieces required to upgrade the tier five equipment will also need to be high, This will allow current tier four equipment to remain competitive and useful to all players for quite some time.

Alina Phoenix 

Thank you for your cordial and informative responses my initial statements.

I am glad to see that so many things are in development and will be looking forward to seeing any progress that can be made.

General’s Equipment

The ability to simply discard an unwanted item has been something I have desired for quite some time, but have never thought to inquire about it.

I cannot count how many times I have had an item locked into my inventory that to me simply had no value when comparing the amount of time to break it with the amount of pieces I would receive.

Dominion

Yes, you are quite right. Dominion activators can commonly be earned for free with regular play.

My idea revolved around the concept of making the player see more value in a buying a block of active dominion status at a lower cost.

This could actually benefit Plarium by creating more incentive for players to purchase something they could normally get for free.

Upgrade Sketches

An increase in tournament rewards would be great and I am glad they are considering it.

Now in terms of purchasing the sketches on the market I see the problem being made too complicated.

Most players, including myself, try to only make major purchases during sales. It’s just good economics, and most of the items that do go on sale are not what I would consider essential to enjoying the game.

Champion units, walls, towers, décor, ect… They are luxury items and the upgrade sketches are no exception.

If I find myself in a bind I will occasionally buy basic resources on the market at full price, but the net loss between the base price in the market and the sale price is just too great when it comes to this.

Unfortunately, any advanced construction or agreement signing for me is on hold and will remain so until I can acquire them at the cost we all frequently had access to in the past. I know this is also true for many others I have spoken to in regards to this matter.

I believe my proposal to simply reduce the price permanently to the levels we all believe to be fair will just allow us to purchase them more reliably and more often. This of course will also give the developers time to work on other more important issues instead of dealing with the mechanics of the wheel of fortune and which global offers to run.

Academy

I simply said that it would be nice to receive more scrolls than we currently do in tournaments and other rewards.

I have around 100 scrolls in my academy that I have not used and I need around 800 to complete everything available at this time.

Everything that I wanted to study in the academy has been completed for a long time. I could keep using scrolls on other things that I do not need, but I would quickly run out since I do not seem to get new ones very often.

I know that I can use the cypher to change things around if I need to, but I would prefer not to do this unnecessarily.

Currently I just do nothing with the academy in case I decide to make a change in the types of troops I produce and need to study something to make that process more efficient.

I suppose I am just disappointed since it has simply become a stagnant feature in the game for me and many others.

Emporia

The ability to send coalition reinforcements sounds very similar to the suggestion I made. Are you able to elaborate anymore in regards to how this will work?

Now while the emporia may not seem like the most important thing in the game it can offer many benefits that are not so easy to see…

There are quite a few players who log in for maybe 5-10 mins every day. They check to see if there have been any big attacks or maybe something happened that started a war. Usually there is nothing new so they add more troops to training, check to see if they need to sign new agreement or start new construction, and maybe if there is time raid for resources.

Then this player may log in for an hour or two one day if there in an event that they like, but once they complete the desired rewards they will probably log out and find something else to do that entertains them.

The problem is that there is nothing consistent for players to engage in at any time that offers the unlimited potential for good rewards, good pvp, and a reason to even speak to the other members of their coalition on a regular basis.

This is where the ability to hold emporia with many players defending the same outpost becomes important. (I think introducing the different types of pans I described earlier can apply in the same way). It allows everyone to mitigate the risk involved in collecting those resources, while allowing for everyday cooperation and interaction between coalition members.

The type of social interaction that is achieved here is what makes players more inclined to log in more frequently and for longer periods of time. Of course they will also be more likely to spend time in and out of the game throughout the day to check and see if there has been an attack, or if they need to adjust their strategy in some way since these occupations could now last several hours or even days at a time.

Now why would this be important to this game as a business? Because it allows for more opportunities to engage the player on a consumer level.

Even though I do not have access to the statistics you have gathered in regards to player spending habits. I can almost guarantee you there is a direct correlation between login frequency and lengths of time spent playing the game, and the likelihood in which they will buy packages and other offers.

Now the other important reason we would want to cultivate more player interaction is that it helps build a stronger community. The game itself is simply the catalyst in which to bring all of us into the social environment that these types of games create.

The players and the relationships they have with one another, be it friend or foe, is what keeps people coming back. It creates loyalty and is the driving force behind any successful online game.

Now the reason I am speaking so in depth about this topic is that I have noticed a gradual change in this game over the years. The coalition I am in now is by no means inactive and it is full of some really great people, but I see the difference every day between the level of communication and cooperation I experience now and what I saw when I started all those years ago.

The game back then was fundamentally the same game we have now, but the styles of play have dramatically changed. City attacks used to be rampant and a well-organized coalition could capitalize on stacking up multiple players defenses very quickly to subdue even a very powerful aggressor. Pantheons were fought over constantly, but the armies could be easily replaced due to the exploitative nature of Persian position playing strategies.

This allowed for great pvp tournament rewards especially since at that time they could be very generous. However, the reason this doesn’t work today is largely due to many players being more knowledgeable of how to play strategically and the inability to easily recover big losses by playing PP.

Nobody charges around with their entire armies raiding everything in sight anymore and it is generally agreed upon that defending your city isn’t worth it. Pantheons are not as desirable since the introduction of capitals, and webs of diplomacy rule the day since a majority of serious conflicts would be meaningless.

People don’t want to waste expensive armies that they will never recover over things that in no way can even remotely compare to their value.

Now in the current era of the game we still deal with the occasional raider. There is some back and forth fighting between various groups in lower level, sparsely defended pantheons, and attacks on capitals are rarely serious even between warring coalitions.

So what do we talk about now between players in a coalition? Not much. We exchange pleasantries. Talk about how to de-escalate negative situations between other big coalitions. Make some plans on how to set a trap for some petty raider that will probably end up losing his army sooner than later, regardless of whether or not we get involved.

It is never the old style communication of rapid engagement and strategic movement of defenses. Never coordinating strikes on big targets to take them down just for the sake of having a huge battle. Generally-speaking there is no reason to be on for longer than 20 mins or so at a time even if you are an active player these days.

So where do I go when I do want some pvp action when a tournament is on? When I need a guarantee that I am not attacking yet another empty city, or on the other extreme, a target that is so well defended that my army is completely annihilated and I get practically no reward.

The emporia. There are almost always several other players there and most of them are there to fight. I go in fast and I take a gamble that what I send in can take out whatever the other guy has to offer. You roll the dice on what you’re willing to bet, but no matter what you can always find a fight. It’s the only real live consistent action I can find in this game anymore.

Now give us the opportunity to do that as a team. Let us start coordinating and planning again.

Give us all a reason to fight and make it well worth it and I guarantee it will breathe some new life into this game that it has not seen in quite a while.

Alina, Pantheons.

I think there need to be a maximum of attacks per day aswell. Or people could basically just attack 50 times and still acheive what they wanted, taking that pan down. Sure, they might lose a bit more troops because they attack with less troops.

Mikalosos.

I just agree here. Everything should be for sale versus drachmas. Ofcourse a Holy Bond or Helios City should not be cheap... but I mean you know how to make important things - not cheap.This should not be a problem. Also there is people who don't want to spend money, they don't have access to all the game has to offer, in a free to play game, wierd and annoying for those people, and maybe enough to make them walk away as soon as they realise that.

Javi.

It would be nice to pick my own rewards/guardians, 100%. But when I have 50 guardians of my choice, will I then play the guardians anymore? Most likely not. And if you play the guardian tournaments, you will end up having alot of good guardians also the ones you want.

PAROXYSM.

Guardians. 

Even the biggest guys don't have all the guardians they want.. Not at all. Grade 5's all upgraded, I dont think so. (1000 Drach = 100 Emeralds) would keep things more stable? Absolutely. And selling Holy Bonds or straight up grade 4's or 5's would be even better. Again just make the price super expensive, especially if we talk buy a grade 5.

Pantheons.

Some good suggestions again. Drop pantheons that give you a reason to hold them randomly during pan tournaments. Also the de-buff might be interesting together with that, maybe depending on what that pantheon offer. Dropping pantheons for a limited time, good suggestion. And much better than just have all pans in the servers now get some bonus.

Suggestion/rant

As PAROXUSM mention here, and people out there saying/thinking the same.. There is not enough to do. Thats why we/i log in, click a few times, log out. I suggest a one month long/every month PVP tournament and a one month long PP/XP tournament, maybe even a tournament in each catagory Pan Emp Dev Phy all of them.. with basically no limits on rewards, or at least it has to be very rare that anyone reach that limit. Then there would always be a reason to play the persians and there is always a pvp tournament. And it should have no effect on already ongoing tournament.

Right now it is exactly as said... I log-in a 1-2-3 times a day few minutes doing the rutine, aaand looking at the tournaments. If there is a PVP, and only if its good, then I MIGHT do some PVP. If there is a PP, I look to see if its one of these good ones or the bad ones, then I decide whether I should play PP the next like 2 days were that tournament is. If there is a PP and XP at the same time, that is good news, and I will most likely do persians. Same with PVP and XP at the same time, good news. Guardian tournament, if I have enough time.

But basically you lose more troops than you win no matter what you do.. There is a few situations where if you get those exact 5k 20k pvp points you acually win some troops. But most of the time, you dont win anything at all, you lose every time. And you could say, well yeah you lose troops when you fight.. Okay.. But its not like I lose a few troops.. If I play persians positions every day.. Depending on the PP level you fight, you will either lose a bit every day until you have zero troops left or you play high levels and end up having ZERO troops one day because it wasnt time for your payout....... Same goes for PVP.. I want to send my army at whatever enemy every day.. But I cant.. Because if I lose 1million.. 10 millions... 100 millions... It will take ages to get back, so attacking often, will lead to you having basically no troops. And we also need troops in whatever we defend as a coalition, we want and are basically expected to have some troops to attack attackers... Guys we don't have enough troops, and we don't have enough to do between those rarely pan/cap/huge player takedown/defences. We are getting bored.

So basically monthly tournaments. And also bigger rewards, much bigger rewards. The rewards actually can't be big enough if we at the same time has something to do. You might think we end up doing what we do now, all sitting on our troops doing nothing. But we actually ask for changes.

Super long read in not perfect english.. I am sorry. Have a nice day!

---

10. Pantheons

Devs know that Pantheons are not a very popular part of the game right now and they're working on features that will allow changing it.

For example, in this update devs will add a force limit to the attack that can be sent to Pantheon. In this way, it will be easier to hold them.

More updates to this part of the game are expected to come in the future.

Thanks a lot for your detailed and well-reasoned suggestions!

The re-naming of bot cities as "General" and some numbers is probably the worst change in this game. It does NOT enhance the game ... quite the opposite it severely detracts from the game. Most players will keep a list in their heads of the names of cities they can easily raid and generally know the location, but now all these cities can only be identified by keeping a spreadsheet and doing a search. How stupid!! To make matters worse there are a lot of players whose game names start with "General" ... these changes will cause massive confusion and be a major annoyance to those players. So why have Plarium made these name changes? It makes absolutely no sense, does not enhance the game, and has only caused player confusion and annoyance!! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Mikalosos said:

I would like to see all "special package" items also sold for Drachmas. I would buy Holy Summoning bonds, Grade IV and V Skill Stones and the Helios city skin if they were.  Currently they are only available as $ packages and buying them has all kinds of implications on future purchases so I don't buy them anymore.  Since Drachmas are "money" in the game there would be no negative impact if they were priced properly.

Regarding the General equipment I feel that items upgraded for pieces should return at least a portion (50%) of the pieces used to upgrade them when they are broken.  As huge number of pieces are required for upgrading the class IV equipment it pretty much precludes upgrading anything except Legendary items.  If new even rarer equipment is introduced every top player will have to break fully upgraded Class IV Legendary items that have taken years to attain. I shudder when I imagine how many pieces the new equipment will cost to upgrade.

Hello :)

I don't think it would be ever possible to get Special Offers for Drachmas.

Still, you can get in the game itself the majority of Items offered in these Special Packages.

There is a chance to receive Holy Bonds from fights with Undeads. Plus, in the future devs plan to add them to Tournaments rewards as well.

As for pieces returning from the break of General's Equipment, I will forward this feedback to devs.

Javi said:

my experience with the guardians, has been from best to worst, and the main reason for my reluctance, has been to receive several times level 3 or 4 guardians of one type (who will use nothing or little) and none of the one who wanted (or better) use could give him). So it would be nice some kind of exchange of guardians between players or the possibility of choosing the type of guardian in some way .....

You can use the Guardians you don't need to upgrade the Guardians you need :)

Odysseus said:

The re-naming of bot cities as "General" and some numbers is probably the worst change in this game. It does NOT enhance the game ... quite the opposite it severely detracts from the game. Most players will keep a list in their heads of the names of cities they can easily raid and generally know the location, but now all these cities can only be identified by keeping a spreadsheet and doing a search. How stupid!! To make matters worse there are a lot of players whose game names start with "General" ... these changes will cause massive confusion and be a major annoyance to those players. So why have Plarium made these name changes? It makes absolutely no sense, does not enhance the game, and has only caused player confusion and annoyance!! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Hello!

It was done because of GDPR: https://eugdpr.org/

According to this regulation, companies should remove personal data of users who haven't used their services for more than 3 years.

It's what was done from our end as well. All in-game information of players remained untouched: the number of resources produced in their Cities, number of Units/Buildings they have, their Coalitions.

Alina Phoenix said:

Hello :)

I don't think it would be ever possible to get Special Offers for Drachmas.

Still, you can get in the game itself the majority of Items offered in these Special Packages.

There is a chance to receive Holy Bonds from fights with Undeads. Plus, in the future devs plan to add them to Tournaments rewards as well.

As for pieces returning from the break of General's Equipment, I will forward this feedback to devs.

The items I am talking about are the items you cannot get in the game itself.  The Holy bonds are practically unattainable through warlord combat.  I have five guardians rank 6 - each having required 720 rank 1 guardians to create.  So I have won about 3600 summoning bonds through warlord combat to produce them. (Of course the were a few rank 2 and 3 guardians so not exactly 3600). While winning 3600 basic bonds I received exactly ONE holy bond and TWO epic bonds... 3597 were basic bonds.  It probably took over 50 hours of actual playing time to do this... The Helios city and high grade skill stones are not attainable via regular game play at all.

By placing these items in Special Offers only and "booby trapping" the Special Offers, Plarium makes them unavailable to most players - at least after being burned once. 

The re-naming of bot cities as "General" and some numbers is probably the worst change in this game. It does NOT enhance the game ... quite the opposite it severely detracts from the game. Most players will keep a list in their heads of the names of cities they can easily raid and generally know the location, but now all these cities can only be identified by keeping a spreadsheet and doing a search. How stupid!! To make matters worse there are a lot of players whose game names start with "General" ... these changes will cause massive confusion and be a major annoyance to those players. So why have Plarium made these name changes? It makes absolutely no sense, does not enhance the game, and has only caused player confusion and annoyance!! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Maybe if Plarium had given us advance warning about deleting all the city names we might have had a chance to move information from the city list to the contact list... as it is all my cities have same name and I have no record of which is which.  I have close to 100 sieges and 100 other raid targets on my contact list - I had been raiding some of these for several years when you deleted them. Now I have to start over creating new IDs for them with detailed info in the tracking list. 

I think this is exactly the kind of answer I would expect from Plarium... Customer service is a foreign word to them... They don't really care about their customers as long as they continue to collect our money.

City names is minor problem ...

The real problems are a lot more than this.

The Gap between Credit Card Players and Time Players is huge now with the latest features.

Max Guardian V bonus is 112.5%
Max Unit XP bonus is 40%
Max Building bonus is 50%
Max General abilities bonus is 20%

Total 222.5%

A lot of CC players already have these bonus almost at max.

Time players never reach these bonus at max not even at half.

As Time players can not attack CC players the only actions that can do is Raiding abandoned cities, training units, upgrading only that neads "Time" and attacking low power time players.