Lockdown51 said:
Honestly with your attitude, I wonder how you get the motivation to get anything done in the real world. By your logic no new player should even try to play the game because the veteran players are so far ahead of them. Yeah this is true but guess what? Those vets get bored (or whiny) and leave and then the newbies become the vets eventually. If you never tried at anything because someone has already done it then how do you honestly get anything done? Why bother going to work? Someone will always have done it for longer, have more experience, and be better than you at it.
Maybe, just maybe, people do it for the experience. Maybe they enjoy the challenge of doing something that is deemed "useless" or "worthless" by others.
Sparta is a monetized game. Of course wallet warriors are going to have an advantage. It's called growing up. You don't have the free time you did when you were a kid. Instead you have money now. Welcome to how Free to Play games work.
I have to wonder how long you have played the game and how well you understand it? I am not complaining about the disparity between coiners and non-coiners. I believe that the current complaints have nothing to do with a change in that balance.
The complaints are about the core mechanics of the game and the dumbing down of the strategy. Veteran players, whether coiners or non-coiners, are joining the protest because they see what Plarium is doing and they have a lot of time and money invested in the game. They feel Plarium is ruining the game and they believe they should have a say in what is happening.
If the real world worked like this game I would certainly not be motivated to do anything but fortunately it does not work like this game.
Do you believe this is a strategy game? If you do you're wrong. It is more like a rigged lottery. It takes a while to see through the mechanics and the smoke and mirrors to understand how it works and how Plarium controls it. At first all the different buildings, agreements, academy skills, units, equipment, weapons, elixirs, quests, tournaments will keep you on a steep learning curve. Possibilities seem endless and there is a feeling that you can crack some code or sign an agreement or find a strategy that will put you ahead of the herd. The game makes it appear as if you're making progress, but it is little more than learning a bunch of mechanical tasks that need to be repeated, month-after-month, just to keep up with other players. No skills involved and really very little fun repeating tons of boring tasks just to "manage" your city.
As far as PVP & PP battles and tournaments, you nearly always lose more than you gain even if you are a skilled player and invest a lot of time testing strategies. This means that if your goal is to build a bigger stronger army you are better off never playing any of the "fun" parts of the game. Instead just build and hoard units.
As an example I recently placed in the top 40 in the Emporium tournament. I received a 2,500 Drachma prize in addition to the regular rewards of Drachma, 900 Imperial Thureophoros and a bunch of other stuff. With the Drachma prize I could revive 1/3 of the Champion Units I lost in the tourney and the 900 units I gained replaced about 1/2 of what I lost. Net result of the tourney I lost 1 million in defensive power and I was considered one of the "winners"... wonder what the "losers" got?
Through the "free resources" that Plarium gives you (City production and bot raiding) you can build either 18 mill offense or 16 mill defense/year with all 4 production buildings running 24/7. Considering that coiners quickly can reach 100 million offense and defense it will take a non-coiner about 11 years to build to the same level. If you compete in PVP tournaments and Persian Positions you will have less than those totals because you lose more than you gain in those events. The idea that somehow newbie free players will become tomorrow's top players by attrition is ludicrous. Coiners will always reach the top and free players will run their farms for them.
I have advocated changing some of the core dynamics of the game for many months and many posts. I am asking for more "fun features" and less boring management tasks. I am also asking for battle mechanics that favor skilled players over dumb ones. Response from Plarium has been to add more boring management features and remove some of the features that allowed for strategy.
As you may know there used to be a tactic for building a large army through PPs. This feature was allowing non-coiners to really compete with coiners. Of course the feature also competed with Plarium's goal of selling more unit revivals and unit packs so it was removed in one of the last "upgrades" basically killing all non-coiner's chance to be competitive. The way to build a large army now is to systematically revive fallen units with Drachmas at a price of $200-$300/month.
I am a modest spender on this game and I don't care if I don't have a mega army but I cant keep playing if they kill all the fun features and multiply the boring ones.
