[Discussion] The Solution: Player Movement

[DeletedUser724]

The key point i am trying to mention

if the default is "ON"
it means all player, including those "all degree of inactive player" are moved
it composed some player who are ready to turn into "gold mines"
so actually ...Inno is also moving "gold mines" too

If the default is "OFF", player manual turn it to "ON"
only active player can set it to "ON"
so Inno are only moving active player to a better location

all the "move" become meaning and usefull as Inno is serving active player
make the game more attractive

Active player , to me, is player who play daily, or at interval (even login weekly...)
that is to say, player who will login to play

I also urge Inno send a Group message to all player
to tell them to justify his situation and decide to set "move or not move"

remember: inactive player will not change "off" to "on", this save many "gold mines"

p.s. I only aware this annoucement when 1 of our fellow member tell this
otherwise, I am 1 of the victim who actually do not want to move
p.s Muf-Muf is just next to me, he should know our location is not bad, after i see that annoucement, I already set it "OFF"

I reply there ...just hope Inno will not cost any problem to
"those player who has a good hoods around, and suddenly find he is moving as they do not see that annoucement and default is "ON" "

 

[DeletedUser]

Also, on what do you base that the player movement is "based on luck"? Because it is not.

Your algorithm may determine who is eligible to move...but it is incapable of producing equitable end results. Invariably, some players will "end up in" stronger neighborhoods than others. There will be a median, of course, but some players will have more large cities in their discovered range , others will have more small cities. I'm sorry if I'm making an incorrect assumption, but it would be an algorithmic nightmare to try to ensure that every player's move resulted in relatively equal neighborhood strength distribution

This will actually accentuate the problem with Tournaments. As of now, no one has enough active neighbors to reach the upper reward levels. What happens will, due to the move, some players have the ability to reach these upper rewards?

So, whether I gain strong neighbors or moderate or weak neighbors is entire a matter of luck from my perspective: how soon I'm chosen to move, the random alignment of where my city lands based on correlating relics, and whether my neighbors play Tournaments at all.

Yes,it will be good to hopefully have most of my Gold Mines replaced by real cities - even better if I'm fortunate enough to have moderately active neighbors and finally get supplies via NH. I'm sure that players with Lighthouses will be thrilled to see their Wonder re-valued, too. Still, it's "constructive" if I point out that soon we will almost certainly have another big problem once the Tournament inequalities show up.

******************

About the default setting:

I agree that I'd like to see the Default be "OFF". This way, active engaged players will be moved closer to the center, to the best locations.
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We'll have the most active trading / fighting, therefore the strongest neighborhoods. Later, Inno could switch the Default to "ON" if they wanted....

This would be fair, and even go some distance toward alleviating the problem with Tournament levels - the most active players would be more likely to end up in proximity if we're moved first.

 

[Muf-Muf]

it means all player, including those "all degree of inactive player" are moved

No, the system checks for activity before moving. Inactive players will remain where they are.

 

[DeletedUser]

No, the system checks for activity before moving. Inactive players will remain where they are.

What is an active player in this situation?

 

[DeletedUser651]

Our system decides who is "most eligible" for being moved and then moves that player to a spot on the world map identical to theirs as close to the center as possible. There is no luck involved.

Of course there is. There is a finite amount of space on the world map. Not all space is equal. Therefore, some space will be better than others. If you get lucky you are placed in the better space. If you are unlucky you will be placed in a less good space.

I see that you have not sent any notifications out to people in game. You said it would "annoying" to get a repeated message. That will pale in comparison to what will happen if people don't know about this and you spring it on them. Neighborhood friends need to plan together if they are staying or leaving. That takes at least a week of planning. Heck, most people have no clue where they are in the map, so they don't know if they are in a place that is being moved from or being moved to. Even if you don't splash a big message across the screen, could you at least send a mass message so everyone sees it.

The biggest problem people have with this game is the way devs spring things on them. Change is one thing, not having any NOTICE of the change is another. No one likes to have things done TO them. I just can't see this leading to anything other than a lot of upset. People like to plan. Just look at the stock market. It plunges not on bad news, but on uncertain news. We have no idea what we get when we get moved. Or where to...or who with. But hey, this is beta. We are here to test ideas. Let's see how it goes.

@bobbipiazza regarding the tournaments....the checkpoint prizes are worthless so don't worry about them. If you want a couple more relics, do another province or two. No one will ever make it to the rune checkpoint. That takes seven players, all reaching the level 6 in the tournament who are all adjacent to each other, and that is absurd. If you are just a little further away, for some people that key province will be 7 provinces away and for others it will right next to them. It is too hard and too expensive to hit level 6 in a tournament consistently for provinces that far away. Plus, everyone is getting bored with the tourneys anyway.

And even if you happen to be in the same neighborhood as the seven top fighters in the whole of your world because all of them wanted to move and they all happened to get to be adjacent, it still wouldn't matter because the huge prize that they will all get for being this insanely lucky is one rune. And as you know, now it can take getting hundreds of runes in order to build the one wonder you want.

On the other hand, if these "chintzy" tournament rewards, to use Katwijk's term for them, do get better, then what you said is magnified and it will be horribly unfair because as noted, where you end up is the luck of the draw.

If they move you by your fighting ability (aka tourney participation) then all the fighters will be together because there are not that many of them. One neighborhood will be doing great and the rest of the world will get nothing.

Won't it be true that new players will be completely out of luck because once a neighborhood gets good, no one will want to move ever again?

We need to know more about this system.

What defines an active player? Is there some hierarchy of activities? Is once a day "active"? Do you look at their score? How long they have been playing? If they were active last week is that considered active?

 

[DeletedUser867]

Moreover, if we want to move we would like to move to a area with active player ( of course, very active player are the best )

If you hesitate then ALL of the interior slots will be occupied by active players. After the initial rush you'll just end up moving from a TOTALLY isolated area to a "better" location on the fringe of the actively occupied area. Consequently, half of your neighbors will be Goldmines.

You'd then, once again, be in a marginal location, but this time you'll be waiting for the one of the very few interior slots that will become available when a low activity player finally loses interest in the game. Once the dust settles, even the worst of the neighborhoods won't have more than 50% Goldmines, which be the case if you're located on the fringes of the active map area.

Grab the money and run.

 

[DeletedUser1075]

I have heard two things that seem mutually exclusive:
1. Inno will be moving the "most" active players first, regardless of current position on the map
2. Inno will be moving active players based on current placement on the map from inside to outside (so in a concentric circle, evaluating activity level at each ring moving outward)

#1 is a re-shuffle, #2 is a contraction. By definition, the first one will be more rewarding to players who have been most active, the second one will be more rewarding to players who have been playing the game longest.

Which is it? Just curious.

Overall, it sounds like a lot of thought has been put into this, and I'm eager to see who I land near (whenever I wind up in the queue to move). It most likely won't be worse, and it might be more helpful. Though I will miss the few active neighbors I have. I do wonder... as a complete side note... if this increases # active players within trading reach, will that help alleviate the existing trading issues on certain goods? That would be excellent.

 

[DeletedUser]

but if the default is OFF, then you can choose if you want to move or not, let the people choose their own way, having the default as on, makes it seem as if your been forced to move,

i draw an example from real life, people stuck in a path of a hurricane that could move to a better area, but CHOOSE not to because the area their in holds many memories, this is their choice

please make the default as off

erm, something just occured to me, how does inno define peoples activity? this kinda sounds like the people who have spent the most on the game in cash will get first dibs at places, sorry for been synical but thats the impression iv'e had from inno of late , they only seem interested in sqeezing players dry of late, requiring diamonds for this diamonds for that, giving us more ways to use diamonds, been unable to get the highest solstice grand prizes without the use of diamonds been the latest money grab

 

[DeletedUser651]

Is there any downside to making the default off? The upside is that no one gets shockingly relocated.

 

[DeletedUser1075]

I see a lot of comments about setting the default as "OFF". I wanted to put out a few thoughts based on experience with this type of question:

General rule of thumb:
If you set default to OFF, approx. 10% - 30% of players will set it to ON, regardless of how many actually might want to move
If you set default to ON, approx. 10%-20% of players will set it to OFF, regardless of how many actually might not want to move

The difference in range reflects the reality that fewer people generally oppose this type of thing than want it. Note that excessive marketing is what nudges the needle in the first instance. And maybe that 10% - 30% is the entirety of your actives, but in that case... why make them work for it?

Furthermore, if you set default to OFF, you will wind up with worse outcomes than if you set it to "ON":
1. Far more complaints to Inno from players who didn't pay attention, and are upset they didn't move (and to be clear, more = more than the complaints Inno would have gotten from players who were moved when they didn't want to be if the default were set to ON)
2. Fewer players available for Inno to move, resulting in poorer outcomes for those players who do want to move

Inno may want to reach out to all players with a mail in addition to an in-game notice. Just because the mail can be saved. Word will get out to the actives, and the inactives aren't being moved anyway.

 

[DeletedUser867]

Is there any downside to making the default off?

There is. It would take MUCH longer to consolidate the interior of the map, because you'd be depending on immigrants, rather than active, but uninformed, player cities.

Six months later you'd still have people popping up and complaining that everything sucks because they're surrounded by Goldmines.

By defaulting to auto move ON, the folks in the outlying areas will be expeditiously moved toward the active center of the map, and the outlying cities will therefore ONLY contain inactive safe-harbor cities, plus the folks who have opted out of the auto move.

In the best of all possible worlds, new immigrants would land on the fringe of the active area, and those who liked the game, and continued to play, would then be moved toward the center of the map as new openings became available.

So - the longer you've been active, the more likely it will be that you have active neighbors. After a few months "luck" won't have much to do with it.

I'm hoping that "active" will be determined by the most recent weekly Tournament scores, so that folks can actually work their way into the "best" neighborhoods, but that may be wishing for too much.

 

[Dony]

Inactives from middle should be moved outside before others go to middle, this would result in even more active "middle" of the map. Im mainly talking about cities which cant be deleted and abusing this situation (deleted all cultural buildings and main hall under construction just so you have zero benefit from it)

 

[DeletedUser651]

Ok, Kat, then what about making the first few rounds be opt in only so that people can get used to the idea? Would that be a good solution to both problems?

 

[DeletedUser867]

Inactives from middle should be moved outside before others go to middle, this would result in even more active "middle" of the map.

Muf-Muf is very carefully avoiding that question. While moving inactive safe harbor cities to the fringes of the map would get them out of the road, a BETTER solution would be to archive them altogether, with a retrieve/"move" capability if they ever show up again, in the future.

what about making the first few rounds be opt in only so that people can get used to the idea?

I actually hope that nobody opts out, because we need a clean "proof of concept" test.

The emergent properties of something as complicated as map consolidation can provide some nasty surprises, and I'd prefer to allow for very little wiggle room if the movement algorithm still needs more tuning. Programmers have egos too, and they deserve a clean test.

For myself, I would certainly not want to wait until the second or third round, because that would simply guarantee that I'd end up on the fringes of the active area (again), and half of my neighbors would be Goldmines (again).

 

[DeletedUser1075]

Ok, Kat, then what about making the first few rounds be opt in only so that people can get used to the idea? Would that be a good solution to both problems?

No, for reasons I cited above, and also because then you add to the complaints from people who wanted to move but didn't hear and so they now think they should get special consideration because blah blah blah.

I have a lot of experience dealing with this type of question, and I've worked both sides of it. People complain either way, but you get a ton more complaints doing it the way you're asking it be done, rather than the way Inno has chosen to go. It's one of those times when business and customer interests (well, interests of the majority of customers) actually do align, even though the active and alert special interest groups keep trying to tell everyone it doesn't. I know it doesn't sound customer-friendly, but... play it both ways (as I have) and when reality intrudes on speculation, it works better to default ON. It just does. Asking to default to OFF for any period of time is hurting customers under the guise of trying to do the right thing for them. Players in this case.

 

[DeletedUser]

I seldom advocate from a "me me me " position, but this time I really want to. I want something good from Elvenar at the moment - something that isn't dung or ugly buildings, you know?

I strongly feel that players who are actively paying attention to their game should be moved first - since the closer one is to the center the better. Please let "Off " be the intial default, then switch it after the first migration. Pretty please.

 

[DeletedUser]

@Grace i still don't get why your adamant about on been the default, surely if there is a message given out forewarning people of the change then then they would have the chance to turn it on and off themselves, and what about people who have already built up decent trading partners and friendships with people? only to find they can no longer trade with them because they are now outside of their area? personally, given the track record of late with bugs and problems in the game, i'd prefer to leave mine set to off until all the bugs are worked out, by track record i mean releasing tested updates that they know have bugs and yet they still insist on releasing server wide before fixing,

And to be honest if they wanted a clean "proof of concept" test as you call it, why give us a choice in the first place? surely if this was the case then they would just fetch in the feature with no opt in or out

 

[DeletedUser1075]

@Grace i still don't get why your adamant about on been the default, surely if there is a message given out forewarning people of the change then then they would have the chance to turn it on and off themselves

Well, but that's not how this works in reality. Most people ignore, don't read, don't care, assume incorrectly that whatever they want is actually what will happen. So a default to "OFF" means that most do not participate, regardless of whether they want to or not. Read my numbers above. If most don't participate, then there may not be enough to do this correctly, in which case the solution fails and we all continue to suffer for no reason. Based on experience, fewer people will complain if the default is set to ON. Meaning, the majority will be better served with the default as ON. Why would Inno cater to the minority in this case, given that there is an option for OFF?

and what about people who have already built up decent trading partners and friendships with people? only to find they can no longer trade with them because they are now outside of their area?

Well that's why Inno created the "OFF" option - if folks really don't want to move, then they can talk to their trading partners about staying. If we leave it default to OFF, then some move and surprise the others. If we default to ON, then active folks know they need to reach out - otherwise, trading partners will move.

personally, given the track record of late with bugs and problems in the game, i'd prefer to leave mine set to off until all the bugs are worked out, by track record i mean releasing tested updates that they know have bugs and yet they still insist on releasing server wide before fixing,

Ha! Can't argue with that at all. But my guess is that the ON/OFF switch would be the first thing to not work correctly. Murphy's Law and all that.

 

[DeletedUser]

No, the system checks for activity before moving. Inactive players will remain where they are.

is this the same way the system checks for inactives now and removes and replaces with mines? cos that don't work 100% effectively, there are still many cities that are inactive that are left behind after a purge , they my be large ones that people have just left the game, but they are still there

 

[DeletedUser1075]

What defines an active player? Is there some hierarchy of activities? Is once a day "active"? Do you look at their score? How long they have been playing? If they were active last week is that considered active?

I'm curious about this as well. I'm fairly active. If I go on vacation for a week, will I look inactive and miss my chance to move? Will the fact that I haven't built anything in a while thanks to the Orcs make me look less active (because I'm dropping in rankings)? How is activity measured?

is this the same way the system checks for inactives now and removes and replaces with mines? cos that don't work 100% effectively, there are still many cities that are inactive that are left behind after a purge , they my be large ones that people have just left the game, but they are still there

+1. C'mon Muf-Muf, I know Inno won't share the actual equation, but surely they can share some of the actions that define activity within this criteria.