Game features that need to be expanded or revised.
Here are a few observations I have made over time since the last bits of new content were introduced. Some things in the game seem to be going fairly well, but others I believe could use a little attention in order to get the player base a little more engaged.
General Equipment
Overall it's a good feature but it has become a little stagnant. A few very generous (intended or otherwise) legendary item giveaways have made top tier gear far too common and high level Persian position play much less appealing.
A two pronged approach to this could balance out these issues I believe.
1. Make the gear that is currently available at all tiers more common as a reward when playing Persians so that casual players and those that did not benefit from the giveaways can catch up.
2. Add a 5th tier of gear stronger than legendary that can ONLY be obtained from doing high level positions that is also extremely rare. This would give people with full gear sets and those who feel like they have gotten the best payout they will ever get and have essentially "retired" more incentive to play PP.
Phylarch
I feel like this feature out of all that I will mention is, generally speaking, the most balanced. Coiners can get a bit of an edge here if they desire, but I have never really felt the need to spend Drach and boosts on this since progression requires time and frequent logins more than anything to progress.
Additional skills and levels of progression could be added to the table, however I would not make it a priority.
General Skills / Intellect Level
It is a nice feature and I am glad we finally got it. Also, it was a nice touch leaving us with a discount for dual activation of skills that is seemingly permanent. I like that progression is experience based so all levels of players can benefit from what it has to offer, yet at the same time one has to put in a solid amount of work to achieve those goals.
This skill tree here could also be expanded in the future, but now is probably not the right time since only the elite seem to have it mastered.
Dominion
This one has been around for a while, and compared to other things I could spend Drach on it's not always the best value. I try to keep it on when possible, but if I am going to be somewhat inactive or just not in the mood to buy packages I tend to use it in 30 min - 1 hour increments so I benefit from it only when actively playing.
Perhaps it is time to just lower the cost of buying and maintaining active dominion status overall. Think if it as a reward for long term players and those who actively support the game.
Guardians
I was very skeptical of this feature when it was first introduced. I was certain it was going to be a massive money sink and only be good for big spenders. However, after playing with the feature over the course of a few tournaments and buying a few of the basic packages I have been quite pleased with the results.
The benefits are great and I appreciate the fact that they are merely stunned in battles and not killed outright, which in my opinion would have ruined the feature for me.
Sadly I have not seen as many players as would be expected using guardians to even their minimal potential. I will also admit that I have gotten a bit lazy with leveling mine and participating in tournaments. I have never gotten a top grade guardian or a holy bond, which I think is a good thing, and I am certain that if I had not gotten lax in my advancement here it would have happened by now.
The one thing I would change is that I believe there should be a bridge between the two currencies (Drach and Emeralds) at perhaps a 10-15% conversion fee.
If we establish a way to convert the two currencies in both directions I think it will attract more players to the feature who have otherwise avoided it due to having no desire to buy into a completely different economy for a single game feature.
Unit Upgrades
I like this feature and I think it was implemented well. It was also a good decision by Plarium to retroactively award relics based on experience levels previously earned by established players.
My only complaint is that I have not seen any additional ways to gain relics introduced. While I think they should be rare to obtain and chances to earn them infrequent a reliable system of distribution should be established.
Upgrade Sketches
This one for me is the biggest issue I currently have with the game mechanics. There has been quite a bit of high level construction and agreement levels introduced that require massive amounts of sketches in order to advance. For me and most players just the time involved in the research is far beyond anything I will ever hope to achieve in this game. However, the cost of the sketches themselves makes most of this content completely unattainable for me.
I don't spend a fortune on this game but I am good for a decent sized package a few times a month. I guess you could call me a moderate spender.
What would greatly help and give me and many other players incentive to get more serious about this type of advancement would be to dramatically decrease the cost of buying the sketches outright, and make them available in higher quantities as tournament and other various rewards.
This would hurt nothing and only enrich the game since it literally takes hundreds of thousands of individual sketches to master these aspects of the game.
Even if the cost of the sketches was a small fraction of what it is currently I would never be able to buy enough to even come close to leveling up everything that is currently available.
Actually if only ONE of the suggestions I make here gets implemented or even considered PLEASE let it be this one!
Another complaint in this regard is that the wheel of fortune and global discounts for sketches has pretty much stopped happening all together. I usually tried to buy as many of these as I could afford when they would go on sale. Sadly as it is now I simply cannot justify ever making this type of purchase again at full price knowing that discounts should / could be available...
Sanctum / Academy
I am going to lump these together even though the features are somewhat different.
Essentially these are older game features that have been left stagnant for a while now. Sanctum could use some new levels of progression and greater availability of scrolls for academy would be a welcome addition.
Emporia
Sadly these have been reduced almost exclusively to PVP slaughter houses... There is really no profit to be made here for most people since the losses from random attacks will always outweigh any benefits from collected resources.
I think this could be improved by allowing players who are friends or in the same coalition to occupy them as a group in order to mitigate combat losses and allow each player to collect the resources individually based on how much defense they contribute.
Essentially the defenders would be at the advantage here since they are choosing to collect resources peacefully and any attackers are merely there to take advantage of the weakest defensive position a player can put themselves in. This being due to the fact that there are no walls, towers, and free infirmary revivals that are part of city defense and no boosts that are gained when defending in a pantheon.
This would be a great way to promote teamwork during more casual aspects of the game, and it would give us something to do when multiple people are online but finding themselves bored because there is nothing else going on.
Keeping players actively engaged and social with one another is critical for the future of the game. Merely having people logging in to update build queues and pick up a few daily rewards is not going to foster a long standing and strong community.
Pantheons
While the Orich we get from leveling and maintaining pans is nice, it is not an essential feature of the game. I would even go so far as to say that pantheons are more trouble than they are worth and they are more of a bragging right for bigger coalitions than anything.
On my server I see that quite a few of the pans are barely defended with some not even being captured from Xerxes at all for days at a time. The only well defended ones you will find are the pans that allow for maximum territory control, and even then it's only for bragging rights.
If you want to add a new dynamic to this part of the game and make fighting for, and defending pans, a more serious business I would suggest adding some variety to what the pans offer in terms of rewards.
Perhaps there could be different types of pans introduced that offer relics, upgrade sketches, denarii, emeralds, drach, ect...
I guarantee people will fight aggressively to be in control of these types of pantheons if the rewards are worth the effort and the pantheons available for each type of resource are rare.
A counter argument for this might be that offering these types of rewards is too rich and will upset the balance of the game, but the dramatic increase in the amount of conflict between major powers on each server would offset this greatly.
As it is right now most of the large coalitions (at least on my server) avoid serious confrontations. The cost of large scale wars is deemed too great for any benefits that could possibly be achieved.
I can honestly say that most players do not take holding more pantheons than deemed necessary very seriously at all, and attacks on major capitals are almost unheard of since they are defended in ways that would cripple any serious attacker massively even if they did manage to downgrade it.
What we need are new and exciting targets to get people interested in large scale combat again, because right now too many of the major coalitions are choosing to peacefully co-exist simply because there is nothing worth fighting over.
In closing, the idea behind my observations is to re-ignite player interest by making advancement more attainable / interesting and large scale combat more of a common and ongoing dynamic. This is a war game first and foremost, but unfortunately we have moved in a direction that does not always promote it, and I certainly hope we can do something to change that.
My suggestions were also carefully considered to be fair and not biased towards either the players or the developers of the game. I also believe that most of them can be implemented with minimal changes to the overall structure of the game and in a relatively short span of time.
The overall goal here is to improve the gaming experience for the players while also creating new incentive for them to invest in what they have already achieved, so that we can maintain our community and see it move in a positive direction for the future.
I would love to hear any feedback the community or the admins of this site may have to offer that expands on or makes a counter argument in regards to anything I have proposed.
Hail Sparta!