Non P2W Worlds?

[DeletedUser138]

Hi all,

We have now been working on Tribal Wars 2 for some good time, over 2 years of development has gone in to the game, with many people involved in making it. What you should not forget, is we still provide a free game, we do not put any hurdles in your way, you can play our content without getting a pay wall, something that we have worked very hard to keep that way.

We offer payment options for players who want to spend money and support the work we do, and to help us continue to do it, for hopefully many years to come. But you have to keep in mind that we have to offer attractive options to pay for, as else, you would not feel attracted to use them. As some have already mentioned, some of our officers are said to be "Worth nothing, as they provide too little", and in many cases it is true, and we also see that from our user statistics. The officers that provide more options, and more valuable ones, are also used almost 50 times more. Therefore implementing something that is not valuable enough for you, will also end up in you not using it, and end up with us not being able to support the game.

We have to fight with many free games that are on the market, and to be able to do that, we have to be able to generate enough revenue from the players who choose to pay, to be able to cover our costs and keep the servers populated and fun. Without this, we would end up with empty worlds and no one to fight.

I know i will never be able to justify any paying feature we add to the game in the future, with all of you. But i do hope that you get a understanding for why we have to do it.

At the same time, i would have loved to make this game subscription based, but the Subscription based games are not as popular anymore. If we would turn to subscriptions, we would have to take 30 - 40 dollars a month, to be able to sustain growth of the game, as maybe only 10% or less of the players we would get via marketing would end up going from Trial to a real subscription. And then there are many risks, like that we would not be able to achieve so many subscriptions that we would need, to be able to sustain the game, or that our fees would be too big, and then again, not enough to sustain the game.

Thanks for reading. And most of all, for playing.

 

[DeletedUser1150]

Nino, thank you for answering.

First and foremost, I'm sure everyone here realizes that P2W features are necessary and the game can't become viable without them. We live in a market economy after all. However, what other players are implying is that the current P2W system is breaking the balance. Some of the newly introduced P2W features are crossing the line, at least for me. I've been paying for premium and account manager for quite a long time in TW1 because there was a very good balance between premium and non-premium features and most importantly, there had never been that "instant (victory)" thing. The lack of time has often been an issue for me and that's why it was great to pay for premium features allowing me partial automation of the account. But among all new options you have added I don't think there is even 1 I'd pay for.

 

[DeletedUser1171]

I also thank Nino for his reply, it is interesting to hear the perspective from someone on the inside.

It is sad to see your reasoning for going down the route of p2w features. I think that if you/Innogames had discussed these problems with the community many alternative options could have been found to maintain a balance of: generating profits for Innogames, whilst also maintaining the integrity (in terms of success in this game deriving from: hard work, determination and skill) of the game.

I will play world 1 of Tribal Wars 2 due to the novelty of it being world 1, as I expect many others will too. After this I do not see the point in spending time and effort playing a game that no longer rewards players that are willing to put in their time and effort. Why play a game where the guy with the biggest cheque book will always win? Why support a game and company that believes in the philosophy "the more you pay us the better you will do"?

I seriously hope that you/Innogames make a drastic change of course otherwise this game will die in its infancy. The reason Tribal Wars 1 was successful is because like I said before; it's simplicity but also it's fairness of giving everyone a fair shot of doing well in the game from the get go. If Innogames continues down this unethical p2w business model it will fail because nobody will want to waste their time playing a game where the person with the most money will always wins.

I'm sorry if I come across very harsh but I loved playing Tribal Wars before these p2w features came into place and it's painful to see a game I enjoyed playing so much die like this.

 

[DeletedUser1260]

Hi all,

We have now been working on Tribal Wars 2 for some good time, over 2 years of development has gone in to the game, with many people involved in making it. What you should not forget, is we still provide a free game, we do not put any hurdles in your way, you can play our content without getting a pay wall, something that we have worked very hard to keep that way.

We offer payment options for players who want to spend money and support the work we do, and to help us continue to do it, for hopefully many years to come. But you have to keep in mind that we have to offer attractive options to pay for, as else, you would not feel attracted to use them. As some have already mentioned, some of our officers are said to be "Worth nothing, as they provide too little", and in many cases it is true, and we also see that from our user statistics. The officers that provide more options, and more valuable ones, are also used almost 50 times more. Therefore implementing something that is not valuable enough for you, will also end up in you not using it, and end up with us not being able to support the game.

We have to fight with many free games that are on the market, and to be able to do that, we have to be able to generate enough revenue from the players who choose to pay, to be able to cover our costs and keep the servers populated and fun. Without this, we would end up with empty worlds and no one to fight.

I know i will never be able to justify any paying feature we add to the game in the future, with all of you. But i do hope that you get a understanding for why we have to do it.

At the same time, i would have loved to make this game subscription based, but the Subscription based games are not as popular anymore. If we would turn to subscriptions, we would have to take 30 - 40 dollars a month, to be able to sustain growth of the game, as maybe only 10% or less of the players we would get via marketing would end up going from Trial to a real subscription. And then there are many risks, like that we would not be able to achieve so many subscriptions that we would need, to be able to sustain the game, or that our fees would be too big, and then again, not enough to sustain the game.

Thanks for reading. And most of all, for playing.

Right but what about having non-p2w worlds too? like TW1 has?

On TW1.net even worlds are p2w, and odd worlds are normal.

 

[DeletedUser894]

I also thank Nino for his reply, it is interesting to hear the perspective from someone on the inside.

It is sad to see your reasoning for going down the route of p2w features. I think that if you/Innogames had discussed these problems with the community many alternative options could have been found to maintain a balance of: generating profits for Innogames, whilst also maintaining the integrity (in terms of success in this game deriving from: hard work, determination and skill) of the game.

I will play world 1 of Tribal Wars 2 due to the novelty of it being world 1, as I expect many others will too. After this I do not see the point in spending time and effort playing a game that no longer rewards players that are willing to put in their time and effort. Why play a game where the guy with the biggest cheque book will always win? Why support a game and company that believes in the philosophy "the more you pay us the better you will do"?

I seriously hope that you/Innogames make a drastic change of course otherwise this game will die in its infancy. The reason Tribal Wars 1 was successful is because like I said before; it's simplicity but also it's fairness of giving everyone a fair shot of doing well in the game from the get go. If Innogames continues down this unethical p2w business model it will fail because nobody will want to waste their time playing a game where the person with the most money will always wins.

I'm sorry if I come across very harsh but I loved playing Tribal Wars before these p2w features came into place and it's painful to see a game I enjoyed playing so much die like this.

Can i be a voice of reason here? There has been lots of talk about how those that pay win. It has yet to be proved. These worlds haven't been open enough for it to show winners......

What i would like to know is how many are paying? Do they out number those like me who haven't paid for anything yet. There's been talk of *events* that will allow people to win crowns, lets see how that works and how many at a time get rewarded.

This is a game in development, I can't see Inno keeping features that lose players. I can see some being out of balance and that's where we come in, by playing and commenting in forum we are helping to develop the game. I know its hard for those of us who are experienced in TW1 to step back and remember this, but that's what we need to do.

Personally i am having fun and i will carry on playing for as long as i do so. I hope you guys will to.

 

[DeletedUser886]

English King, I couldn't have put it better myself!

I think automatics are the best method to eleminate the disadvantage of players with less time and don't giving this advantage to players that have time AND money. The current pay-features gives the paid advantage also to players with much time, so the advantage accumulate (e.g. much farming with ressource boost).

The goal is to think about paid features that are only useful when you have not much time. some ideas for paid premium features:
- additionaly to more building slots: plan the builds for the future with spending ressources not until the building is realy build. same for units
- Creating an ingame-Bot: you can define rules for him (if this then that) for production (building/units) and farming

Limiting all pay-features to an fix amount per month. e.g. pay 30 Euro/month and you get all. but perhaps i'm dreaming...

 

[DeletedUser1171]

Can i be a voice of reason here? There has been lots of talk about how those that pay win. It has yet to be proved. These worlds haven't been open enough for it to show winners......

What i would like to know is how many are paying? Do they out number those like me who haven't paid for anything yet. There's been talk of *events* that will allow people to win crowns, lets see how that works and how many at a time get rewarded.

This is a game in development, I can't see Inno keeping features that lose players. I can see some being out of balance and that's where we come in, by playing and commenting in forum we are helping to develop the game. I know its hard for those of us who are experienced in TW1 to step back and remember this, but that's what we need to do.

Personally i am having fun and i will carry on playing for as long as i do so. I hope you guys will to.

The term "P2w" shouldn't be taken literally, it is a term directed at payments options that give a tangible ingame gameplay advantage. An example would be the ability to buy "X" amount of crowns using real money, then paying 50 crowns to upgrade a building at a reduced ingame price. These resources saved give the person paying for this reduction a "gameplay" advantage over someone that generates his resources solely from his mines/camps and farming.

I think TW2 the game itself has potential to be very good, it is a lot more complex than TW1 and the strategies needed to do well will also be more complex. My only problem is with Innogames' model for making their revenue and profits. This p2w model directly damages the integrity of the game, because like I have said in previous posts, the players with the most money to spend on crowns will always have a tangible gameplay advantage over players that cannot afford to spend as much as them.

TW1 was successful using the premium a/c model for generating revenue and profits, why can't TW2 be just as successful using the same model that made it's predecessor so successful?

P.S.
@Sippi
Thanks.

 

[DeletedUser894]

I get what you are saying i just haven't seen it effect game play in my areas in both worlds. Until it does i can't see any advantage. Yes some players have grown quicker than others but none that can't be achieved through farming and frequent log ins.

Things change, this is a new game, while i miss some of TW1's features i am also enjoying most of these new ones. I am interested in seeing what we say in a years time and if we still hold the same opinion and to see how much the game changes as it grows from our playing.

 

[DeletedUser1260]

I get what you are saying i just haven't seen it effect game play in my areas in both worlds. Until it does i can't see any advantage. Yes some players have grown quicker than others but none that can't be achieved through farming and frequent log ins.

Things change, this is a new game, while i miss some of TW1's features i am also enjoying most of these new ones. I am interested in seeing what we say in a years time and if we still hold the same opinion and to see how much the game changes as it grows from our playing.

This is a strategy game, and a competitive game. What point is there if external factors, such as your income are factored in?

There is already a problem in tribalwars where the more active players get ahead, but that is usually countered by just having a crew of coplayers.

People who want to play this competitivity wont even bother because the amount of real money you are willing to spend would give you such a clear and overwhelming advantage, that what is the point?

 

[DeletedUser894]

I still haven't seen any proof that there are players out there who are chucking money at this game and gaining advantage from doing so. If someone in your area is doing so please say so and give an example! So far my experience is that solid play is equal to or better than throwing money at the game. f course some may take that lazy route but then unless they grow their troops there will be a fat villa available to farm/noble.There is no option to complete troop queues for money and troops are the crux of the game, without them it don't matter how big their villa is its vulnerable.

So i don't see it as a clear and overwhelming advantage to have pay features. Game play and bothering to learn the new troops/tactics its what will win in the end. If you are some one who wants to be no1 at all costs then i can see it may cause you issues but then the only time no1 really counts is end game........ Some seem to think that being ahead of every one now is important. But they usually drop out later game and boast in the next one *I was no1 and always am and so is my tribe* (we have one of those already trolling the forum) but they never stay and actually win.....

This game needs to generate revenue to keep it alive and evolving. There have been a few suggestions on how to do so, notably having a flat rate monthly payment. It has also been explained how this wouldn't work by Nino, the only other way i can see of generating income would be through ads and i really don't want to see that! I would much rather have the choice to pay or not to pay than be bombarded by ads for things i don't want.

 

[DeletedUser992]

Most of pay features aren't that big a deal, the build instantly is in my opinion. You can't pay for troops but you can pay to recruit them twice as fast (11 barrack levels). The instant build also gives the possibility for someone to take cities in your province and instabuild the farm to a high enough level to be able to instabuild the church and level 20 wall within minutes, You can chain resource deliveries say 15 seconds apart to give time to add build levels to the queue and complete them before the next delivery arrives so resource delivery isn't an issue.

It may be that they could actually have attacks from outside the province attacking you, since they have no city in your province you believe that you have a 50% advantage and 5 minutes before they land you find they have taken a barb, instabuild a church and the attacks have hit at 100%. I say it may be possible because I've not checked whether the church applies to attacks on the way but yet to land but I would expect the troops to fight based on the situation at the time of the attack rather than when they were sent just as I would assume if you sent a bunch of attacks with cats in the first one to kill the church that the remaining attacks would hit defenders fighting at 50% (if support comes in between) because there is no church any more. I also don't have a level 20 market to see whether resources can be sent to barbs ahead of you capturing them (to arrive shortly after capturing it) which would also be needed to do this.

 

[DeletedUser894]

It all depends my much spare cash you have to chuck at insta builds dosen't it? Most of us are on a budget and as such wont play as you highlighted above. Not sure on your interpretation of the church rule. I definitely would like that to be confirmed or denied so we can all be aware of it. It would suck big time....

 

[DeletedUser992]

I used to play evony until they made it impossible to get past 2 cities without paying and there were lots of people paying hundreds per month there as evidenced by the number of unusable chests I used to get so there are definitely people around willing to spend silly amounts of money on the game and it only takes one of them to choose a good active non payer and wipe them out by having much better recruit times and the ability to use the scenario I describe above. I switched to due to the number of big spenders in evony even though I preferred evony as a game, LOU did require you to spend around $10 per month on ministers to be competitive, anyone spending cash after that got a virtually imperceptible advantage other those that only bought the ministers.

My expectation of the church rule seems logical, if the effect didn't apply at the time the battle occurred then it would be entirely possible for someone to attack you with catapults and for you to lose your church but only defend the attack at 50% since the attack was launched before the church was finished, that seems far less logical. I'd be pretty annoyed if defended at 50% because the effect of the church didn't apply but lost the church in the process. To use the game state at the point the attack was launched would require storing the data with every attack since every attack could have different data it was going to use in the combat algorithm, certainly possible but easier and more logical to use the actual game state at the time the attack arrives. You would get weird inconsistencies if the state at the time of the attack was used, you could for example send attacks from 4 cities at one city and have them land and fight at 50%, 100%, 50% and then 100% strength with say the church being destroyed on the second attack which would seem really weird to me, it would only take the 1st and 3rd attack to land to be sent before the church finished building with the other 2 being sent after it finished for this weird order to apply, entirely possible if the 1st and 3rd to arrive were from cities further away.

 

[DeletedUser894]

Let's have a dev post and clarify the situation.

 

[DeletedUser1260]

Theres nothing to clarify.

You will get people who have poor money management, and who will spend potentially thousands on this game. This isnt something unheard of in gaming, it happens all the time. Especially with kids who get their parents credit/debit card, or themselves get their credit/debit card for the first time, then put themselves in serious trouble.

You cant say "Oh, because i wont do this, that must mean noone else will". Everyone will act differently, its a fact of life.

I do not care if people spend their life worth on tribalwars, all im asking for is a world in which you cannot do this.

 

[DeletedUser1431]

Tribalwars its possible this way they will make more money from less players, meaning even if it were to shrink, they would still have income from loyal players buying things

Economics student here. This is exactly why they did it. More money from fewer people.

 

[DeletedUser1431]

I agree that it is good to give players that work full-time the possibility to compete with more active players, but I think there are better ways to tackle this problem than damaging the integrity of the game itself.

Exactly. The problem with the current system is that it is inherently unfair in a game such as this. It should really be a contest about who is the most skilled at playing the game but these coins change the factors of a winner. Success can be achieved with money instead of skill which could perhaps mean they are more skilled in others at making money, but the game is not about making money. It is about pretending, escaping from the real world. It is very hard to get sucked into a game that tries to sell me things at every turn. Rather than thinking of playing the game, I am forced to think about the money I worked for and if I can afford to spend any of it.

In summary: coins damage the experience of the game because they do not belong in a game. Innogames should make piles of cash, but by providing players with a better experience, not a silly in game advantage.

The problem with activity is undoubtedly the #1 flaw with Tribal Wars i.e. it is a 24/7 ongoing rts, if you don't use co-players or account sitters there will be times when you're account is not being watched and vulnerable to attack. There's ways you can reduce this problem but it will always be there. Perhaps creating a new feature that you can set-up ingame; where the game will automatically defend against an attack, in the event the account is offline say 5-10mins before the attack is about to hit.

One of the core strategies of the game is time management and to remove it would be blasphemous.

(Sorry for the double post, felt like these should be separate)

 

[DeletedUser1441]

Yeah I'm really bummed about it overall. I played the old TW a long, long time ago (world 1,2,4) and I don't remember the bias towards paying players being that huge. I dunno what happened in later worlds, but I doubt the business model was too different. In fact, for the longest of times I fondly remembered TW as being one of the few browser games I had played that didn't require you to spend silly amounts of cash. A premium membership, if that's what it was called, was more than enough: 1) it was a reasonable, monthly price; I have no problem paying that sort of thing (and I don't think many people do); 2)the game didn't penalise you for not paying, you could go toe-to-toe with a paying player and it came down to player skill.

Why they went for this agressive P2W model I have no clue. I thought the game was successful enough, seeing as they have the resources to create a sequel. Why not stick to what worked, while making it flashier (the game's graphics are marvelous, so that's one part done) and a bit easier for new player to get in? (the free stuff/units and quests make it a lot more casual friendly than the old TW) Some of the stuff you can buy is just ridiculous. 10% more combat strength? 10% less casualties? Raising the movement speed of supporting armies to LC speed? Come on...that's just so heavily in favour of the paying player.

It's sad to see the successor to such a cool game go down the Pay 2 Win path, pretty much becoming just like one of the many thousands cash-grabbing "games" out there.

 

[DeletedUser1375]

I've read alot of the comments in here and I'd like to share my opinion as well.

Let me compare TW1 & TW2. In which I will split TW1 up into 2 parts, the newskool and oldskool part. I will talk about the functions you can get to pay.

Oldskool TW1:
- Standard premium ACCOUNT (!!!) and not some loose functions.
- Makes the 'better players' pay for the game to gain some extra, seriously usefull, functions. So it's actually WORTH to GET IT!

Newskool TW1:
- Standard premium account! Which is nice.. But..
- Also loose functions (resource improvement, building time decreasement, building cheaper, etc.)
- Still the non-paying or little-paying players who are more 'skilled' or 'experienced' can get the advantage in the game.

TW2:
- No standard premium ACCOUNT! ...
- Just all these loose functions which you all have to buy seperately over and over AGAIN.. which results into spending alot more money than you normally would have to. They are also, mostly, for just one village. Imagine having several villages. You cannot be in the top 5 without paying alot for each one of them imo. Remember, right now it's still in beta. But I've been playing on TW1 and seeing people playing with 4 on one account and all investing money just to be on that top 1 position. However, the others were still able to fight back, or be close to them!
- The difference between TW1 and TW2 is, that when you spend alot of money in TW2, you can gain a very, VERY big advantage compared to someone who is NOT paying, or not paying as much as you are.

My conclusion:

A game should normally be ment to generate some fair competition in which both parties can participate and have an equal chance at winning. In a game, SKILL should be what matters. How good you are compared to the other one. How much you are willing to invest (time-wise, not money) to defeat the one you are playing with / against. On TW2, I'm very, very afraid that it will all end in the 'lesser-skilled' players fighting it out at the "top" with who-ever pays more for all these neat features which will bring you victory.

I've quit on TW1 with the hope of TW2 being better. I really thought that I could one more time, play a beta which would not be focused yet on paying for winning. Everything is just the other way around. It almost seems like there are more premium functions than normal functions... And yea, the tutorial even makes you notice the premium features and what they do, to make you wanna buy them. Just pathetic.

My opinion:
- Create a general premium account which gives you neat, functional extra's that come in handy for fighting a fair war, and which is affordable. Basically like it used to be on TW1.
- Get rid of alot of the extra, costly 'new premium functions' which are just rubbish and give you WAY too much of an advantage compared to someone who cannot afford it. (Remember, games are also played by kids, kids who don't have as much money as the adults, and who will most likeley just quit whenever they see that they cannot win vs the pay-2-win users.

I Sincerely hope you will look into the features and you have now and realise that you are about to decrease the possible amount of new users that will start, or maintain to play this game your still working on.

Greets,
DeathWing

 

[DeletedUser1484]

I started TW in W6 and my last was 38, in the worlds I played I had a premium account. Extra building queues when taking new villages are important, and so was the bigger map and other features that came with the premium account, especially when you start having a fair collection of villages.

The interactive maps in TW2 is a huge improvement from what I remember from TW1, take some of it away from non paying players, but still give non paying players a fair chance.
Having the ability to reduce building costs with real money and instantly upgrade buildings is not a competitive fun playing ground. But removing presets for non premium players will be.

I am currently in a situation where I find it hard to spend my resources. The P2W way will be to instantly upgrade my barracks at 20% reduced costs a few levels and then with the resources left over build some armies at higher barracks levels than my poorer neighbour. As a added bonus to speed up this process even more you can increase resource production as well. This, with the increased farming ability due to faster barracks levels is a massive advantage for the player with a bottomless wallet, especially when such a player has lots of villages.

Isn't this totally unbalanced and unfair, even among paying players?

One of the achievements is to take 10 villages in one hour, when I do this, does Innogames seriously expect me to pay gold crowns to have extra building queues in every new village I've taken? If this is the case then it's totally ridicules.

There is many other ways to make this game profitable and still fun, fair and competitive for everyone and also keep the quality of the game, just ask the community for ideas, and some good ideas were already posted here, but if any of what I see in the current game will be in the final release, then this game will definitely not be one that I will be playing.

I am prepared to spend money on this game, but I can't feed this bottomless pit called Tribal Wars 2