Are you sure its not the new features that you extol that are the reason for the bleeding of players  rather than the want for new ?

Otherwise what do you envisage for what is a standard format for these games, which is farm so you can fight ,so you can grow so you can fight better, and also, in most cases pay for the privilege of trying to get there sooner ?

deidraweb said:

Dear Plarium,

Thank you for bringing us the wonderful world of Vikings. It’s been a mostly pleasant journey thus far.

With that, however, I must say that we’ve been bleeding clan members at alarming rates lately. I am not just speaking for my clan here, I observe the same across many clans. I think the game is long overdue for new content!

Please consider:

 - we’ve not had true new content for a very long time. I’d be brave enough to say, since Fury.

 - the battle of clans scoring system changes have been a mixed bag. The event itself have largely turned into “score into a category and freeze it”

 - achievements, skins, new VIP levels and new hero levels are mostly “cosmetic” additions that don’t really add to the core gameplay experience. Yes, they’ve kept people busy for a while, but it is not a new or an overhauled event.

Don’t get me wrong, the team has been doing a great job and has made lots of quality of life and performance improvements, as well as many exciting new features I listed above, over the last year. However, without new content you’ll continue to bleed player base. Please address!

Cheers,

// Zye \\ of  “Russian Shadows” , kingdom #150

Hello, deidraweb!

Thank you for your commitment to the game. 

We are determined to make the game better, so we'll definitely consider your suggestions, and our developers will decide which of them to implement. Feel free to write us if you have any other ideas or suggestions. 

We wish you a good play and glorious victories!

I started playing Vikings about a month ago. I've played similar games before so I have some background experience. I started with the intent (and still do) play fairly casually; I log in, do some stuff, check competitions and quests, do what I can and that's a good session. 

Here's my experience and my thoughts on why you're bleeding (new) players:

• I start an account.
• Go through tutorial.
• Try stuff out.
• Shield ends. 
• Immediately get hit by 1million tier1 units. 
• ???

At this point 99% of players will probably either quit the game or spend money. 

Mind you this happened to me on a server that had started recently (~7/2020) and the attacker was also an account that had also started recently. Now the thing is, I honestly don't mind that I was attacked by a crazy player who decided to spend money time and effort to progress that quickly on a new server. It's a competitive war game, such is fair. 

The issue as I see it is that the skill and/or influence of the population of a server diverges far too quickly for the game to hold a stable playerbase. There is very little choice other than to spend money to keep up with the top spenders in your Kingdom, start on a new Kingdom, quit, or crawl along. If you start this game and you just coincidentally happen to get another player in your Kingdom who decides they want to be max everything on day 1, there is little you can do about it. For most people who are dipping their toes into the game and trying to decide if they want to continue playing/investing, it's not very encouraging when right around the moment when they're understanding the basics of the game is also the same moment when that Saudi Prince whale decides he wants to be Palace 35 right now. Maybe I wanted to spend a few bucks here and a few bucks there. But if my competition is someone who can and wants to spend thousands of dollars in a week, what incentive do I have to play? (Mind you I'm exaggerating but hopefully you get my point). 

What people want is to be able to fight people around their level. When I was Palace 7 and my shield dropped, I want to have fun and hit my Palace 6-8 neighbors with my 10s of troops. When I'm Palace 10 and seeing the value of resources and invader lairs, I want to compete with the 1000s of troops I have available to me. And so it goes on. 

The clan competitions are supposed to serve this function but it fails because the above phenomena occurs within the members of a clan as the new Kingdom is growing. 

• Start new account
• Search clans. 30k active players in a Kingdom! 100 active clans!
• Join clan
• 100 players! All growing together!
• First CvC happens. 
• One/few person decides he doesn't want to lose next war and progresses quickly.
• Skill/influence of clan members diverges rapidly.
• Clan falls apart as serious players outpace the casual players.

This is great piece aimed at like minded players of which there are probably many, and could be many more as you suggest.

However does this fit in with the parameters of the owners?

What you have observed is the normal pattern within a kingdom.

When the kingdom is young many new players are allocated to it.  Most quickly quit but a sizeable number get hooked on the game and the kingdom experiences a period of high activity and enthusiasm.

I recall that period in my own kingdom some two to three years ago with affection.  Clans are able to recruit, people take an interest in the Kingdom's progress as well as in that of their town/s and their clan.  Perhaps there is some diplomacy to achieve peace within the kingdom and co-operative play in KvK, KvKr and Fury.  Clan chat is a sociable place to spend some time.

Subsequently the likely course for the kingdom is imperceptible decline.  Few new players are allocated, clan numbers begin to fall rather than rise, high spending players who could not hack it in their previous kingdom run away and look to bully players in a much younger kingdom (before, almost always, running away again).  Progress in towns slows.

Eventually it is the hard core players who remain and the kingdom gets called "dead".

Some few kingdoms follow a different course.  Very high spending players group themselves together into the clans which can contest Jotunheim.  I do not know what it may be like to inhabit one of these kingdoms without participating in the huge clan - perhaps it is fun, perhaps it is dull.

Were I a developer within plarium I might challenge the strategy of endlessly allocating servers to create new kingdoms.  It seems to me that were there enough kingdoms for the number of active players (50 perhaps, or a hundred) then new players would continue to be allocated to all the kingdoms and a measure of vigour would thereby be encouraged.  However an immediate consequence would be the need to clear away the inactive accounts and plarium, in common with all other developers, think it important to be able to claim a high number of accounts.  Daft but, I suppose, just about understandable (if you can stomache what amounts to telling lies).  Perhaps they also think that it is important to be able to point to many kingdoms, however many are "dead".

One change to the battle of clans that could liven the event a little and is reasonably simple to implement (I am a software engineer by trade), is to award points for successful Place of Power defence. Say 1T points for a successfully completing the siege.

This would:

 - encourage defence, which is very much lacking these days. many clans just ignore the PoP on the 2nd day

 - reward successful defence. A lot of PoP warfare has turned into hit and flee. This would promote more PoP action.

This is only going to be of benefit of the clan that holds the POP.

I believe its true, though do not know this for sure, that the reason the POP is ignored because the more experienced players found it a lost cause during events.