Hey guys,
on my last post i started telling you about the Grepolisscore. I told you why we started working on it, what that Grepolisscore is, how Grepolisscore can be earned and about the new awards coming to the game.
( If you missed it take a look here -> https://devblog.grepolis.com/?p=1486&preview=true )
There is a huge amount of awards now how to find a specific one?
Looking for specific awards should be easy, so we put them in different categories.
You will see all of them with their pretty Icons as soon as you access the Grepolisscore.
If we add a new award to the game there will be a small badge giving you a hint on that category.
And what about those awards that could be earned somewhere in the past by you but can’t be earned anymore today?
For those unobtainable awards we have an extra category. There you you can check them out and see if you got one of them back then. They still provide you with the points.
So what about the brand new overview of the awards?
Select a category and there it is. But first of all you might recognize the last award that you have unlocked for that category at the top left corner. Its hovering over the fire pit.
Down below you finally can see a part of all the awards of that category. Those will increase your Grepolisscore when you unlock them.
Hovering an award will show you its name and what is necessary to unlock it. That will make it easier to complete all the awards.
On the right side of the screen you see the total amount of Grepolisscore you can earn when you have unlocked all levels of a single award.
The amount of Grepolisscore you earn increases for each level of the award.
The awards will earn you different amount of Grepolisscore as some are more difficult to earn then others. And let me clearly point out that the awards of the events will earn you the lowest tier of points.
Quickly changing between the categories and finding different awards should be easy. So we added a handy drop down interface on top making this possible.
Enjoy the the new overview, with the Grepolisscore and the new awards that will be accompanying it.
You can choose your award goal now and show everyone who’s got the highest Grepolisscore in the island realm.
Greetings
As Game Designer i'm doing my best to provide you with new game features, events and gameplay improvements. Therefore i analyze & play the game likewise to experience and feel the needs of a player. Reading the forums gathering and discussing feedback with my team and the community is part of this as well.
Who needs something..Awards not fight well known..
regards
MDGeist74
Hi MDGeist74,
there is a good amount of players who really is into things like achievements/awards. They like play specialy to get those awards. They enjoy it when the get the award for destroy a huge amount of enemy units, players units, controling whole islands or building the Colossus of Rhodes! Thats something those players love. So thats why we improve it and add even more cool awards to earn.
Thanks for your comment
I was wondering if you had a release date in mind for this concept?
Hi John,
we want to get the feature out as soon as we have finished development, testing and polishing it. And the developers are working already hard on parts of it 🙂
How do you like the current design of it, are you excited about getting it in game too ?
Yes, it looks like a very promising feature from what I have seen so far. It will be interesting to see how it works when it gets added to the beta server. One suggestion I would like to make is for people to get a reward for earning an award.
Thank you John,
is great to see that some of you are already looking forward to it. I’ll be happy to hear how you like it when it finally hits the game worlds 🙂
Concerning rewards for earning the awards, that was a topic we discussed here as well. But first of all we wanted to keep the feature scope small and concentrate on providing better visibility, usability and more content for you guys. Secondly we didn’t want to provide more benefits for those who unlocked the awards. But if there should be enough voices asking for such a thing we will rethink on that.
Thx and have a nice weekend
Is this going to feature pop up banners that interfere with game play?
https://devblog.grepolis.com/?p=1473
^^^they seemed to get in the way in those images. Really don’t think its a plus to have an obtrusive banner lingering on the screen that gets in the way of sniping, slows down trading, or generally gets in the way… form follows function
p.s. nobody enjoys WW, I’m not exaggerating, I have never spoken to anyone that likes WW as an endgame. People will compete to deny others the questionable claim to “winning” a world but it has done nothing to improve the game since it was added.
“They enjoy it when the get the award for destroy a huge amount of enemy units, players units, controling whole islands or building the Colossus of Rhodes!”
That statement makes me very worried about the disconnect between the players, mods, and developers.
Hi,
those banners we visually upgraded are in the same position as they were before. So they are not lingering more on/over screens than before. That was a topic were we explicitly had an eye on to not interfere with any screens or actions by doing this. And yes you’re absolutely right form follows function. Somebody here is working in some field of design as well 😉
Back on the topic, the banners are just not that ugly anymore and they are smaller in height as well. So they actually provide more screen space then the old ones before. (Obviously always comparing same amount of content inside)
By now those banners are already live, so check out for yourself by starting a construction in a city thats an easy way to get a green banner for example.
Concerning the world wonders i appreciate your direct feedback on the current system and developers+designers are reading the forums and see this topic being present quite a long time. Thats why its on our agenda we wanna work on.
On that feeling of being a little disconnected, be welcome to send your friends over to the devblog in addition to the forum and share their thoughts on the topics we have here. Its very appreciated and i and my collogues are happy to talk here with you guys.
Thanks for your questions and thoughts.
I love the awards idea and looking forward to seeing them implemented but I have some concerns about the proposed notification for them.
With the location and duration of the new style banners, they get in the way. Having them appear, when getting attacked and attempting to snipe or timing attacks mid op will cause problems.
Any chance that their could be a change the location for the banners? Not just for the blue but the green and red too, to bottom of screen out of the way. As in their current location they block troop movements and interfere with game play.
Hi Pixie,
happy to hear that you are looking forward on it too.
Concerning the the location/position in the game. We actually didn:t change them. We kept them were they are to explicitly not make them suddenly overlaying any window action that it didnt do before. We even reduced the height of the banner visual in comparison to the old red/green ones. So there is even a smaller chance of overlaying something.In addition to that you can click on a banner to let it vanish.
As the banners are already live and please check back yourself if you really have a situation were now occurs an issue and if so write it here 🙂 I will have an extra look today if the positioning is still as it was expected to be.
Concerning moving them to the bottom, that is something were we had first try in the early stages of the designe and we dumped it. Why? We found that there were a lot of action buttons in that area which then would cause a bottom banner to block a lot of important actions: Button for starting attacks, claim/plunder resources at villages,… Thats because most screens have their action buttons on the bottom and not on the top were the old and new red/green/blue banners are/were. So i think we both dont want to have the banners there overlapping those ones.
Thanks for providing your feedback.
And remember if you have a concrete situation were its overlapping things make sure to post it to me, describe the situation and which action coulndt be triggered.
Hiya,
Thanks for the reply.
The banners are smaller (and much pettier) but previously they only appeared spasmodically so they didn’t interfere with the game as much.
Even on the occasions when they did appear, the banners were the result of me clicking a button, not just appearing when a new target has been achieved which the blue banners will do.
So my concern is that players who use the dropdown troop movements box, will end up with a blue banner saying they have achieved a new award at the time they are trying to snipe and will lose a city as a result.
http://puu.sh/orUzn/7a89302de6.jpg
As you can see, the banner does overlap the X button needed to cancel. So if a player is lining up recall snipe, when they are due to click to cancel, it will get in the way. Just a 1 sec delay in clicking can cause troops to land back on the wrong side of the CS and the banners linger.
Just noticed on the screenshot I posted on the forum yesterday, which was taken off my other comp, the banner covers more of the troop movements.
http://puu.sh/orc75/85f36eb2a2.jpg
On this one, there is also the potential for the banner to cover the last digit on the countdown timer, which is another potential issue with having the banner cover
As the banner can’t be relocated, could it be made narrower?
Or have the troop movements cover the banner and not the other way round?
Or make it so blue banners do not appear during the first 10 mins that attacks/support are sent or when attacks are incoming? That way it won’t matter that it overlaps.
Hi Pixie,
thanks for sending another follow up.
Covering that different elements is quite an issue as i can clearly see. Making it more narrower might be possible but this depends much on the screen resolution the player has and so we need to check if something dynamic can be applied or if we need a differnt approach like i said on my last post. (Maybe bringing back the “move to let the banner vanish function”)
Thanks again for your constructive feedback
Hi Pixie,
thanks for having another look into it.
The red and green banners still will only show up as positive/negative feedback on clicks of you like before.
For the blue banners, they will show up after a certain thing was achieved but definitely not spamming you. As we dont award for every single stupid thing someboddy does 😉
But that screen you applied is helpful so we can see spaces were its overlapping. Although for this case i guess the old green banner would have been overlapping that one as well. But i know back then you only moved the mouse a bit to let it vanish instantly. We killed that function and now you have to click on the banner to let it vanish again thats a difference which might be crucial.
We gonna give that another thought.
Thanks very much for sharing that with me
you have to be kidding all the players who are actually playing this game daily and in an active manner… now almost every mouseclick causes any sort of banner that stays there for 5 seconds if you don’t want to move over 2/3 of your screen and click on it.
have you ever tried to time something with a acreen that isn’t 24”?
idk how you did that, but till now i had 3 to 4 tries with every troop contingent, without having “banner-problems” anytime. now i have to carefully place all windows that i intend to use because there’s a giant thing that lays itself over everything. i do not have alzheimer’s desease, i don’t need to be reminded of everything i did 1 sec before. it should be possible to turn those banners off, and to decide which one you’d like to have and which you don’t.
Hi Urouge,
what we want to achieve is most certainly improving the feedback for players that need it, so make it last long enough that even slow readers can read it so they know what caused an error or what they did right.
The ammount of banners and position stayed the same.
But that said, we are receiving feedback indicating that taking out the function of “moving the mouse to make the banner vanish” and replacing it with a click. Seems to cause some delays in situations that are critical to battle.
So we are taking your feedback very serious and appreciate you sharing it. We all dont want to be kidding all players we wanna improve the game for you and all of us.
We’ll keep doing so and improve with your help and feedback.
Thank you
it’s nice to hear that you take our feedback seriously… you keep on telling that since i started here in 2010 and the situation is all but better than then. if it’s going inno-style, we have to deal with it and/or the problems that follow with “fixing” it for a year or two, or, until someone shows up and solves tis problem with his userscript. without those, btw, the game would be unplayable for me and many others.
Hey Urouge,
i can see that you seem to be disappointed as some of my predecessors didnt work in, all or the right community feedback from your point of view.
But i can tell you, that i ‘ve been working together with my developers in the last day to find a solution for the red/green banners issues that have been mentioned in the feedback of a lot of you guys.
We worked something out which we think will solve the different issues and we are going to release this on beta worlds in the next days.
Hope i can gain back some trust and reduce your skepticism
Greetings
The green banners really suck. If you really must keep them why not move them to the bottom left corner so that they don’t get in the way. They also interfere with rapid game play and having to click on them to turn them off just makes for another mouse click when trying to time things.
I don’t play this game for fancy graphics and the extra lag that it brings. I play for the strategy
Hi Carla,
first of all thanks for sharing your opinion on that topic.
Concerning the idea of moving the banners to the bottom, that is something were we had first tries in the early stages of the designe and we dumped it.
Why? We found that there were a lot of action buttons in that area which then would cause a bottom banner to block a lot of important actions: Button for starting attacks, claim/plunder resources at villages,… Thats because most screens have their action buttons on the bottom and not on the top were the old and new red/green/blue banners are/were already.
So i think we both dont want to have the banners there overlapping those ones.
Concerning the new styled ones being in the same place as before, we are still gathering feedback on issues which might occur.