(21/09/17)
After listening to your feedback and discussing with the team, we decided to tweek the proposed changes. Here is how it looks now:
- Normal calculation still applies but with an added layer.
- We increase the minimum morale based on the number of cities currently controlled by the defender, up to a maximum cap of 80%.
- Every additional controlled city after the first reduces the efficiency of morale by increasing the minimum possible morale by 5% up until the cap is reached.
- This means if a player controls 1 city he can have the full potential of morale protection, that is 30% (70% reduction on attack power).
- 2 cities = 35% (65% reduction on attack power).
- 3 cities = 40% (60% reduction on attack power).
- 4 cities = 45% (55% reduction on attack power).
- 5 cities = 50% (50% reduction on attack power).
- 6 cities = 55% (45% reduction on attack power).
- 7 cities = 60% (40% reduction on attack power).
- 8 cities = 65% (35% reduction on attack power).
- 9 cities = 70% (30% reduction on attack power).
- 10 cities = 75% (25% reduction on attack power).
- 11 cities = 80% (20% reduction on attack power).
- with 11 cities and above players can have a minimum of 80% morale (20% reduction on attack power).
- Additionally morale will have no effect on cities located on an island with an active world wonder.
- This also applies to active sieges on these cities.
We are not yet tackling the inactivity issue as this requires further investigation.
Hello guys,
I know you have been waiting for this for quite a while, but solutions are not always simple.
Recently we have received a lot of valuable feedback about morale and about the fact that almost all of our most recent worlds were started with morale activated. We have also been informed about the “clever use” of some of the flaws of the system and therefore decided that we will not aim for an all-encompassing solution anymore but instead try to improve the morale system in several iterations, starting as early as possible.
So for a first stage of the morale system rework, we want to add a simple but effective principle, diminishing returns.
What does that mean?
We want to make morale become less and less effective with the growth of your power, for that we will take into account the number of owned cities.
Just to be clear, this is the first step and depending on how well it performs we shall improve it and extend it. If it doesn’t work we go back to the drawing board.
So, Morale currently:
When one player attacks another, a Morale figure is calculated using the following formula:
[(Points Defender/Points Attacker)*3+0.3]*100
If this figure is greater than 100, morale will be 100% and will, therefore, have no effect on a battle. Only if the attacker’s point total is 4 times or greater than that of the defender, morale will take effect. The lowest possible figure of morale is 30. Essentially, it helps smaller players as it means larger players need to think twice before sending an attack. The larger player’s numerical advantage will not help them very much.
Example:
Attacker has 10000 points Defender has 1000 points [(1000/10000)*3+0.3]*100 [0.1*3+0.3]*100 0.6*100 60%
That means that the attacker will attack with 60% of his army’s power, or with 40% of morale reduction to his total attack value.
The smaller the morale, the stronger the effect. Currently, the minimum morale is 30% (maximum effect), this means the power of the attacking army is reduced by 70%.
Proposed changes:
- Normal calculation still applies but with an added layer.
- We increase the minimum morale based on the number of cities currently controlled by the defender.
- Every additional controlled city after the first reduces the efficiency of morale by increasing the minimum possible morale by 7%.
- This means if a player controls 1 city he can have the full potential of morale protection, that is 30% (70% reduction on attack power).
- 2 cities = 37% (63% reduction on attack power).
- 3 cities = 44% (56% reduction on attack power).
- 4 cities = 51% (49% reduction on attack power).
- 5 cities = 58% (42% reduction on attack power).
- 6 cities = 65% (35% reduction on attack power).
- 7 cities = 72% (28% reduction on attack power).
- 8 cities = 79% (21% reduction on attack power).
- 9 cities = 86% (14% reduction on attack power).
- 10 cities = 93% (7% reduction on attack power).
- 11 cities = 100% (0% reduction on attack power).
- with 11 cities and above no player gets the benefit for morale anymore.
The rationale behind this is that the more cities a player controls, the better he is able to defend himself, even with smaller cities.
I would love to hear feedback on this, possible exploits we did not foresee or anything really that might make the system better. We already have a few ideas to expand on it, but for now, we would like to try out this simple principle and see how effective it can be.
Remember this is the first stage of change, we are aware that there are other problems that still need to be covered, but please do not hesitate to reply listing them, there might be of course some things that we did not foresee.
Cheers,
Bernard
As a Game Designer, I work to improve Grepolis in any way I can. I mostly listen to the community and find good ways to make players life easier and more exciting.
Will the new morale calculation affect existing worlds or just new worlds?
The objective is that it will affect all existing worlds, but we will start only with Beta and select markets (US for now) so that we make sure the system works.
I sent original as a support request & was informed that this blog was the place to address my concern for Nicaea
US Server
—————————————————-
I request you reconsider changing the rules on an existing world that would dramatically alter play.
It took quite a few days to adjust to reducing the CS research level in the academy AND the harbor level required to build a CS.
Quite a bit of money has been spent by players on this world to get to the end game. Please reconsider this major change for existing worlds.
Thank you
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I’m worried about small cities which are held by almost inactive players – these don’t grow and they can’t be deleted as they often log in the game e.g. once per 2 weeks etc. I sometimes meet these cities supported by other players… So, there should be also another requirement for deleting “inactive” accounts.
I think the impact on conquest worlds should be disabled too. I mean situations where smaller player conquers a bigger one. Why should he benefit from the morale? It’s multiplayer game focused on co-operation… that’t why I think this is absolutely nonsense.
Many years ago, I read an interesting idea about this topic – morale based not only on players points (and/or cities) but also on ally points (or amount of members) as (again) it’s a co-op game. However, that concept has many gaps… so, it would be necessary to combine it with other solution.
However, I like the proposed concept itself… it’s on right way in my opinion. If I find some issues in (near) future, I’ll let you know but for now…
Hello Thass,
There are a few other problems we want to tackle with the morale system, but for now we decided to start with this, the fact that small players are able to conquer bigger cities will diminish as they grow in power, that is the point of the whole change. With this, we hope that morale keeps the effectiveness of helping the small players only until they are able to take care of themselves.
We also want to tackle the inactive problem as well, we are aware of it and working on it, but when we see some results of this first iteration it might change our perspective.
About the alliance based morale idea, we were also tossing around this idea but like you said there are many potential loopholes to it. I think there is potential to something lime an Alliance based morale, but I cannot say that it will solve all of the problems, so, for now, we are extending the “single player” morale.
Cheers
I totally agree with your worries.
But I don’t think alliancebroad morale will really solve it. You then just don’t invite this morale player into your alliance, but just cooperate with them.
What I think that would work better is:
For the inactives, just base morale (also) om growth. (Really) not growing –> decreasing morale bonus
No need to protect inactivity indeed.
For the morale-sieges misuse, I think you could best turn of morale in late game, at least when the world wonders start as no new players will join anymore.
And/or maybe just disable morale on sieges and/or cities that are on world wonder islands (as well defensively as on a siege on them)
Love this update, keep up the good work 🙂
You should make this iterative relative to the difference in cities to then. You’re basically saying a player with 10 or 11 cities can fend off a player with 100 cities
Hello Hammer44,
Yes, this is one of the problems with this change, and we want to tackle it as well, but as we said before the idea is that we improve the system in smaller steps. The idea to take the difference between cities is also a good one, but we want to analyse the situation with a simpler version before moving to the next step.
Cheers
Add in inactive layer of protections. once a player has been IA for x amount of days they are no longer affected by moral. this will prevent people from just parking troops in someones last city to wait for them to ghost
Hello meapuppetv2,
The inactive problem is also one of our targets like I answered in other comments, we are taking this step by step, and your proposal is a valid one.
Cheers
I love this idea. That will be a big surprise for all the player who used small and inactive player for deff points.
But I guess it will be hard to implement this.
Put a max time limit on morale from the time you join a world.
As it is now, a low morale Cs driver is used to make siege breaks IMPOSSIBLE for alliances. With the number of cities deciding morale, a morale player just hands off cities to keep the morale advantage.
Hello Steve,
Adding a time limit to morale is something that we do not want to do, otherwise, we will punish players that are not active or experienced enough to hold their cities against larger strong players only for participating in the world for a long time.
This is something that will not move those players forward in the game, and all cities that are handed over to other larger players will also fall in the morale system again, so we are trying to make any type of “morale playing” a less viable option for the users.
Cheers
This is probably not the best solution. A player may be able to defend 1 city better with multiple cities, but if all their cities are being attacked it doesn’t really help much. A player with 60-70+ cities could easily rim a player with this method. As I understand it, morale is supposed to give newer, less experienced players a better chance in the game. This will make newer players not want to learn the game and find other games to play.
Hello Darkrystal,
We understand that larger players still have a large advantage against smaller players, and our idea is to tackle this problem on a future iteration of the system. Could you maybe elaborate on why this change, in particular, would make new players give up learning the game and go looking for other games to play?
Cheers
this is a horrible idea. As a reaction to large gold spenders who complain you punish smaller players? The answer for them has been and always should be go play non morale worlds instead of complaining about the rules of the world you are in. This change just hands the win in US-Baris to the multipact of 300 players against our 30. I am so done with this game.
Hello Michael,
We have been getting feedback on the morale system for a lot longer than this one world and also from a lot of different markets.
After recent events, we decided to start with the implementation on the US market seen as the current trend towards the combined creative use of several different game mechanics, which has been tolerated so far, has caused problems with the technical stability and integrity of our game systems. Furthermore, we feel like this gives us an opportunity to test the system in a potentially problematic market that can prove our hypothesizes.
Cheers
Never did know how morale was worked..it has always been a crap shoot. MY and many others problem has been with Bots and Malware contained within the game. I have addressed this many times. Expecially coming out of Eastern Europe, a Trojan has been placed that deactivates alarms. This can be handled by activating Malware 10 times at least per day. I can not switch to a different browser to eliminate this problem as my games are on going. Only new games can be activated in a new browser. Because of THESE flaws, many have stopped playing GREPO all together. Many more just do not care anymore…costing YOUR revenue stream to drop I am sure.
Hey Llynn!
Seen as we have no malware, trojans or bots within the game itself, we can only guess what the actual problem here might be.
For one, we currently have a bug that causes sound notifications for attacks in the browser version of the game to not be triggered properly in case they are not shown in the command overview. It is related to another bug that causes the attacks to not show up in the overview to begin with and we hope to be able to fix this with one of the next updates.
What you are describing, however, sounds like you may be using an external, third party script to enhance your game experience. While there are some approved scripts out there, others are not and may contain malicious content. We take no responsibility in case of the use of such 3rd party tools and would advise to deactivate any additional scripts used while playing the game until you can figure out which of the scripts may be causing your issues.
We can guarantee that no such software is installed while playing our game regularly and without any additional plugins within your browser.
I have never used external scripting of ANY kind. The failure of the alarms to work drove me to try them however. I did as stated by the Grep help to empty my caches both ingame and system and that also failed to help. All other sounds work fine! How about some real help in solving? Its not just me either..others are beginning to have similar problems. Without those alarms we are fish in a barrel!
As stated earlier, we are aware of an error and already actively looking into it.
However, this error requires another bug to be fixed first before it can be fully resolved – that will happen in one of the next updates.
We hear you!
For Instance, by me reading this announcements…my alarms are now off. I will activate malware, and they will come back on.
ugh!!
I understand the rule change and agree my issue is this should not effect any worlds that have already started they should be grandfathered in. All new world should start with the new rule change this is only fair to all players involved. No organization changes rules mid game it is just bad for the game and shows inconsistencies. The NFL, NBA, and NHL all make changes before the seasons begin.
Hello David,
I can understand the point you are trying to make, but there are several older worlds that can be positively affected by this change. We have done changes in rules before, and since we believe this is an improvement to the game it does not make sense that we leave a large group of players out. Grepolis is a live game that grows and expands with the community and experience.
Cheers
This change is bogus. It seems clearly designed to help a group of cheats that have not been able to break through to winning a crown despite rampant and blatant use of illegal bots and scripts, account sharing, and other activities that are supposedly illegal.
There is no reason I can think of to give a player with 200 or 300 cities a morale of 100% going against a player with 11 cities.
Rushed implementation in just 2 weeks also seems designed to help this particular group of cheats on a particular world. Inno SHOULD be putting their efforts toward rooting out the cheats who have destroyed the game but instead rolls out garbage like this — one of the reasons I am on my last world and will never buy gold or play an Inno game again.
Hello D H,
Like I said on previous comments:
Also like I said on previous comments, the problem with very large players against players with 11+ cities is one we do want to tackle, we just want to take this step by step.
I am sorry that you feel that way about the game, but our purpose is improving the game for the entire player base, I hope you understand.
Cheers
If someone has only 11 cities while others have 200-300, something else is going seriously wrong.
Either you have been very very imactive, no reason to protect that I think..
Or you have started (far) later on this world. Then it is just logical you won’t get it easy, thats your own choice.
If you want to have a “fairer” position, just start on a newer world. There starting more then enough new worlds to do this.
This will not work, as low morale can still be an advantage.
I suggest a different direction, every month the morale rises. No matter how many cities a person has, the morale has to keep going up.
Example:
1 city for 1 month = 30% morale
1 city for 2 months = 50% morale
1 city for 3 months = 70% morale
Example 2:
1 city for 1 month = 30% morale
2 cities in 2 months = 50% morale
3 cities in 2~3 months = 70% morale
3 cities in 5 or more months = 100% morale
That’s the only solution I can see that does not have any flaws. The morale has to be time based, a pro-player can do a lot of damage with 3~4 cities, even with the new update at 51% is still a big advantage for players to exploit it.
The only possible solution is to make morale time based.
Hello Marco,
A time-based solution is one that we do not want to include, it punishes smaller slower players and conquered or reset players. The morale system is a very complex one, and that is why it is taking so long to find a “perfect” solution to it. We are aware that this is not a complete solution, and will expand on it.
Cheers
This will not work because alliances will keep low morale players small, less than 5-10 cities They will use these players to sit on wonder islands making them almost impossible to break. You guys are supposed to be the experts but even a medium skilled player such as myself can figure this out.
The rules need to apply both ways or the game is no longer fair. Larger players experienced or not, should also be protected from the flaws in the morale system. If a player is a low morale player and the goal is to give a low morale player a fair chance against a larger player, then a low morale player should not be allowed to:
1) To put a player that has 40 cities or more in siege. This can be achieve with a limiter, in the same manner that a minimum amount of troops are needed to attack another player.
2) Low morale players should not be allowed to babysit WW islands because now by virtue of the low morale rules. The wonder Islands and cities on said Islands becomes near impossible to break, (this also gives an unfair advantage to the low morale player and it’s alliance), this is by all intents and purposes a blatant abuse of the low morale objective thus making the game itself an unfair game to play)
I truly enjoy this game and I spend over $1,000 a year buying gold, but if low morale is what the future of Grepolis will be then I will move on to other platforms that offers fair game play.
Hello Donald,
Just adding a limiter is not the ideal solution to this, we do not want players to be forbidden to attack others, this would be an unfair limitation. More experienced players can come into the game later and should not be limited to attack larger players based on the number of their cities, we are trying to create ways to make this less effective but not forbidden.
This change should help to stop low morale players babysitting WW islands as it becomes harder and harder to coordinate with more players to achieve something like this. Also keeping a large number of low points players in an alliance makes it weaker and should help other alliances to stop them with regular gameplay.
I am glad to hear you enjoy the game, and we are working on the morale system exactly to make it fair to everyone, I hope you will stay to see the changes.
Cheers
I’m not much for that system. Yes a player with 11 cities can defend themselves, but if the attacking player has 40 cities that’s still a lot to handle.
The quantity also hurts if a player is founding cities. A foundling is worthless for off/def until its 4k or bigger. I can see some keen eyed players watching for new cities, then attacking that player who might now have 8 cities (6 regular and 2 foundings). The defensive player would only have 6 cities to try anything with.
If quantity of cities is put in, it should be a ratio of cities, sticking with the 11 city idea
This means if a player controls 1 city to 11 enemy cities he can have the full potential of morale protection, that is 30% (70% reduction on attack power).
2/11 = 37% (63% reduction on attack power).
3/11 = 44% (56% reduction on attack power).
4/11 = 51% (49% reduction on attack power).
5/11 = 58% (42% reduction on attack power).
6/11 = 65% (35% reduction on attack power).
7/11 = 72% (28% reduction on attack power).
8/11 = 79% (21% reduction on attack power).
9/11 = 86% (14% reduction on attack power).
10/11 = 93% (7% reduction on attack power).
11/11 = 100% (0% reduction on attack power).
So a player that has 14 cities and gets hit someone with say 36, the ratio would be close to 4/11, so the reduction is more scaled.
In another sense either way hurts the smaller player because he may not be using gold to build, so his 14 cities average 8k points, while the guy with 36 is golding everything and averages 12k per city, that makes for quite a large point and population change.
Not saying the morale system can’t be tweaked, just don’t like the proposed idea as is.
Thanks
Hello Marcus,
I agree that the difference in the number of cities for larger players is a problem as well, and like I said in other comments it is our objective to tackle that problem. Some sort of scaling of this morale is a possible solution and one we are considering. This first step should help with some of the more pressing matters of the morale system, but we will get to the others.
Cheers
Doing such to a world already in wonder stage is most outrageous.
This should only apply during the World Wonder phases for worlds with morale active. Otherwise, it completely defeats the purpose of having morale worlds.
I might have 11 cities to defend myself adequately from another player with… 22 cities, but with this new rule, I’m dead against a player with 110 cities. Does Inno understand how many cities players accumulate over the life of the game?
By limiting it to the World Wonder phase of the game, you eliminate the problems you see in Baris (US46). Where a large player 100+ cities, ghosts, restarts and occupies an entire Wonder island. Giving every enemy miserable morale.
Hello SlickerThanNick,
The system should work for all stages of the game as we have different players in all stages and they should be covered no matter the time.
Like I said on other comments we want to tackle the problem of players a large difference of cities, just not on this iteration.
Cheers
The updated guidelines above are better, Worth giving it a try I guess. Still think you’re overcompensating for morale needlessly before World Wonders phase begins, but okay. Thanks for replying to everyone.
This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.. effectively eliminating morale advantage IN A MORALE WORLD! Why bother having morale at all if you think a 20 city player doesn’t need it? Isn’t that what NO MORALE worlds are for?
Hello Alphababe,
Our intention is not to remove the morale advantage, but to make it fair to all players. We will keep working on it to improve the system and tackle the other problems still has.
Cheers
I really appreciate this new game changes. This will help newbie players being constantly preyed by big players, thereby losing interest in the game. This new development may also give fair game play to Grepoholics like me, who aren’t fall in either good attacker nor good defender at all, but loves the game, from being constantly rimmed, LOL.^_^
This change in morale is clearly aimed at Baris, specifically to help TBA and their coalition of alliances, numbering over 200 players defeat the 30 players remaining in Victors of Baris. Instead of being honest and saying that you want to help them defeat us because they have been unable to do so in spite of what seems to be clear sharing of accounts and use of bots that you ignore, you are now basically getting rid of morale in all the US worlds. To claim that a player with 10 cities should be able to hold his or her own against one with 200 is ridiculous, and in any case, there are worlds with no morale for players who want to play that way. Our team has been struggling hard to stay alive with the odds against us- yes, Mike with the wonder cities has a morale advantage, but he depends on the rest of us to send him troops, and we are being constantly overwhelmed by the much greater numbers against us- who by the way long ago gave up even bothering to build walls or defensive troops. The playing field is by no means uneven at present, eliminating the morale advantage will make it completely one-sided in favor of the coalition that outnumbers us 6 to 1. If you are truly neutral and have the interests of fair play at heart, you need to seriously reconsider what you are doing. If you go ahead with this plan, you will lose some long time fans of Grepolis for good.
Hello magpieQ,
Like I said in other comments this is not aimed to a specific case, this is something that we have been planning for some time based on feedback from several different markets.
Cheers.
This is actually terrible rule change in the middle of a world.
I play by your rules, set out by you and now mid stream you want to change them?
I spent considerable amounts of money on your game to achieve low morale under YOUR rules. If you change this should I not at least get a refund on the gold I used to get to low morale?
I understand you making a change, no problem. To do it in the middle of a world would be wrong.
Set the rules for a world, everyone joins that world and lives by the rules set. To change them during the world would be a travesty.
Would love to hear your response to this. I mean, Grepolis isn’t exactly a new game so why this change in the middle of a world?
I’d love to keep playing and spending my money on this game. Please don’t allow me to lose all faith I have in the people that run this game.
Hello Next Door Neighbor,
I understand your point, and other said the same, but Grepolis is a changing game and we are always trying to improve it. If we have a rule that causes problems we will change it for all worlds otherwise players that are enjoying their time on an older world would have to restart from scratch to enjoy an improved version of the game. I hope you can keep enjoying it, our main goal is to improve it.
Cheers
So it’s your game and you do what you want with no regard to the feedback you’re receiving?
Not the type of game and people I think I will continue to support and have for numberous years. If you proceed, I will never spend another dollar on this game and if you look at my history, it’s been substantial. Good luck with your dying game.
You totally didn’t address a re-imbursement of money spent while abiding by your rules.
Will there be compensation?
Hello Next Door Neighbor,
We want to perform these changes based exactly on the community feedback like I said before Grepolis is a changing game and we aim to improve it with the help from the community. As you can see we have even incorporated some of the feedback and updated our proposal.
About the reimbursement, I cannot help you as this is not my field of expertise. Please contact support for more information on the matter.
Cheers
I think also a good change for smaller players and groups if spy bombing on the same city multiple times because of the amount of lag it can cause is just the same of sending multi attacks to same cities. The lag is so great it can crash browsers and freeze phones. The same amount of attacks is the same. To me also attacking someone during special events such as the Olympia or others where you are heavily dependent on men is cheating because it destroys another groups chance to earn a top 10 award etc. No one should be allowed to attack someone who set their vacation timer the 24 hours before it starts because they are basically defenseless. The storage capacity should be increased with or without banker or maybe a good thing would be to allow us all to have two buildings on each side such as a bath and lighthouse and a banker and a tower. You can have a tower and still loose your wall from max to 0. the thing in the academy supposed to cut the losses of being spied on doesnt do its intended job if you are attacked 20 times at least.
Here’s a “real” world situation on US63, look at player “ille nicu” and run through scenarios of that player fairing against the top players with 0 morale bonus
I do not think this is fair to do mid world. A lot of time, energy, strategy and gold goes into playing a world by the parameters set out in the beginning. It is simply unfair to change midstream.
Ii have no problem with the changes for new worlds but it is absurd to change mid world.
I understand that the morale will affect existing games. I find it appalling that Innogames would change rules on players, especially in worlds that have been around for a long time.
I seriously question whether I will play another world in Grepolis.
Battyanyi
This is a great first step. I still believe that morale should be turned off on any ww island. If the low point player wants to protect his/her other cities with morale more power to them, but just like disabling Vacation mode, morale should be disable on ww cities.
I really do not..now have a player less here..is time to goodbye..
regards
MDGeist74
or
Geisti
with this new format you are giving simmers and golders an unfair advantage. Morale in game chat not working is making this game not fun any more and i do buy plenty of gold too help pay your wages but whatever we say you will do what you think is best
The only thing I can see as an issue is if the defender has just been “opped” and uses the last of his gold to being CS ready and starts 10 new cities that are only 1200 pts. We both know that the defender will never have the ability to defend himself in any city with enough cities to make morale a push (if I am understanding this correctly). The city should only count if he is over 5k pts (random pt amount for discussion) in each city. Then it become a better balance.
Hello James,
Yes, that is a valid point. We are planning on extending the system to tackle problems like these.
Cheers
the way it is set up seems fair to me, if you lean it towards the the bigger players the smaller players will leave and never come back. morale can be a bitch some times but to keep newcomers playing. its a necessary that I understand.
I don’t like it – it takes away the whole concept of Moral to protect smaller players or players who are not Wallet Warriors!!!! i can maybe accept it if after WW to end a world then ok but for new worlds NO the play in speed 1 world and have 11 cities and def. against players with 50 cities is depressing and many will quit playing and look for another game to play???? i had some RL things to take care of quit and come back and restart over and lost my slots ??? and if this goes through ??? I will rethink playing this game – i live on Fixed income being Disabled and don’t mind spending a lil to play a game i like but when it comes to having to pay to play just to survive??? No Thank You
Hello RaginCajun50,
This change does not oblige players to pay to be able to play the game, we are expanding the morale system so it makes it fair for all players in all stages of the game, and this will not be done in one single change. Refer to my other answers for a response about the players with a lot of cities.
Cheers
While I hate to see this change honestly, I do know it is much needed and THIS change will be well accepted (or at least I believe). I do think it’s a great and positive way to go. So great job. I just don’t want morale to change because I feel for those little guys who will [especially now] get crushed by the bigger guys because those big guys are too afraid to attack their enemies and instead want to go after people who are either still too new or “too small” in comparison.
Rather than work on something insignificant like morale why not address the issue of BP Farming among alliance members and members of pacted alliances. I have seen players with 80+ cities dong nothing but killing transport ships and colony ships built by members of the alliance without ever attacking a member of an alliance they are war with.
How about cutting the BP gained by this activity by say 90% to stop this activity. Please consider improving Grepolis with this change to make it more exciting.
Well, I LOVE the game, and I thank you all for your work, but I am not in agreement with the way I understand this will be done.
I always felt that morale should be much more that it is already is.
I feel that if one player has 100 cities and he is attacking a player with 50 cities, there should be a 50% morale.
In US Hyperborea, I one time asked a player with over 300 cities, what his morale was toward my 114 cities….. he said it was 93%…….he was close 3 times bigger than me, I should have had about a 30% morale…..
In bowling we had a thing called it a handicap. I was not a good bowler and I had a big handicap. It helped.
I personally think that morale should be more like a handicap as they use in other games.
I play the English Server Nagados…… There was no morale there…..I had some player name Taz whipping the crap out of me.
He ended up with more cities than I think my whole alliance had, it wasn’t fair, I didn’t think….. but it what it is.
So that is my take on it.
Again, I love Grep. I am not thrilled about this new proposal, again, I think that there should be a lot morale rather than less.
Thanks for listening.
Treenie
I generally don’t have an issue with the moral system as it currently is, except with moral being applied to WW cities. Those cities are always going to be stacked, so moral shouldn’t really apply.
This doesn’t really address the issue that has been making the rounds of the forums with beginners protection and a small player owning a WW city making it exceptionally difficult to break due to the moral bonus.
Other than that, the proposal essentially phases out moral as players grow. You could argue that the ramp shouldn’t start until city 3 or 4 since there are beginners quests about founding or conquering a second city, so a new player following the quests would lose some of their moral protection early in the game.
Hello Markasp,
Your points are valid, we can definitely change a bit of the values to make the system itself more adequate to all players. As to morale being ineffective to world wonder cities, that also makes sense, it is something that we may visit once this stage is validated.
Cheers
I am sorry, but I am afraid that 11 cities do not a large player make. While true that, in the new worlds, having 11 cities is huge, in the old worlds on Grepolis 11 cities means that you are small-average sized, and a large player would have 40 cities at least. I am considered small with 15. While a good idea, I am afraid your numbers should change a bit.
That 15 number is an average. 19 in one older world, plus 11 in another old world equals 30, which divided in two is 15. I have one old world where I have 2 cities, and that is because I have been conquered a lot there.
Hello Linda,
A change in the numbers is, of course, a possibility, this is a start to the expansion of the morale system and we know it will need changes and adjustments.
Cheers
This new rule has mad a whole aliance ghost and a bunch of botting muti accounts cheats win i wont give inno anymore money i want mine back to be honest
If you suspect players of cheating or botting, please report these players to our support teams.
It doesn’t make sense to spread wild accusations while our teams have tools at their disposal to confirm irregularities and take action against any players violating our game rules, botting or cheating in any other way.
Thank you very much.
The accusations aren’t wild. Said players have been reported repeatedly and caught repeatedly with nothing more than slaps on the wrist. Players from these suspect alliances have admitted to talking with moderators but all you have to do is look at your game logs — or do you honestly believe any player can send attacks every 15 minutes for 3 days straight? or that a human can honestly send 6 attacks within 15 seconds, all landing within 8 seconds of each other?
The claim that Inno was using bot detection tools but found nothing on such transparent activity is utterly laughable.
The punishments were likely in accordance to our findings. Unfortunately we cannot disclose any further information in regards to account specific punishments and/or findings due to data protection reasons, hence I cannot go into further detail.
However, as I said before, I don’t think the feedback section of this post is the right place to discuss bot suspicions. I understand that the comparison of actions taken in different cases might seem to bear context. However, seen as we handle all cases individually, I can assure you that we are not intending to take any sides here.
Should you have any more concerns or evidence for potential bot use, please send it our way, but please use the support system to put this information forward so that we can further look into potential improvements of bot detection methods and our findings in general.
Thank you very much.
Please note that any comments containing lots of profanity and little to no actual feedback will not get approved to show up in this comment section.
If you would like to contribute to this discussion, please keep your comments free of swear words and otherwise inappropriate content.
Thank you for your understanding
Maybe there should be a distinction between siege worlds and revolt worlds.
You just cannot really make a system that fits both, because this systems are so very different.
I see lots of reactions that without morale anyone with a little fewer cities then his enemies would be doomed.
On the siege worlds, that just isn’t true and can you just perfectly fine defend yourself with 11 cities against any other amount. (Unless the enemy is really putting you under attack in all your cities in the same time perhaps, but then you also don’t have that much help from this morale)
On this worlds I think this update is fine (but certainly not enough to prevent misuse by inactives and sieges)
———–
On revolt worlds it is far more about “numbers”, bigger = stronger. There I understand that the smaller players really want a bonus against the bigger. Not that the current system works 100% fine for that, but no system ever will. It will always be the opinion of the big players against the small.
So for revolt worlds, maybe this idea is far to complicated and revolutionary, but why don’t help both opinions and change the settings between worlds. Disable it on the first world, enable on the second etc… than ereryone can choose for themselves and everyone can be happy
Your rule has distroyed my faith in inno game this rule is clearly aimed at Baris pat yourselves on the back and enjoy your bmw we paid for
Hello kjm2,
Like we said on previous answers:
The technical problems may have been the most noticeable on Baris but the decision to tackle these issues has been made long before that.
Cheers
So you are asking for feed back and I shall give you some. It is absurd that Inno would implement a game change of such magnitude, with such a significant impact on the strategies set into motion by groups of players on several different existing worlds long ago.
You have essentially said, “yes we know you played fairly in accordance with the rules that we set up for you, when you enrolled to play our game. However we now don’t like our own rules, so we are going to change them on you whether you like it or not.”
So let me put this into real life perspective for you. You go to a restaurant with your wife. And you order a Rib eye steak, but when your food arrives your server hands you a chicken Alfredo, and explains that the restaurant (you chose to eat at an hour ago and agreed to order from based on it’s menu selection), as of 20 mins. ago decided it will no longer be serving rib eye’s on there menu, OH and by the way. you still have to pay for it. Would this be acceptable? Would you pay? No you wouldn’t, at least I hope you wouldn’t.
If there is to be no refunding of gold expenditure to players on current/existing worlds that this new rule is implemented on, then I assure you that you are doing quite the opposite of what it is you intend on doing.
You will not be INCREASING your player base, but instead you will lose a significant portion of your current active player base that spends money on your game. It is bad business to change something that effects current worlds of this magnitude.
When you guys changed the World Wonder Phase, you did the same thing. Which caused a drop in players, players I know and played with, who now play another R.T.S. because they felt cheated by the game designers. Your changes should go into effect for NEW worlds only, as once a player agrees to the rules and settings YOUR company has mapped out for them, there should be no changes made by YOUR company for the duration of that world. It is unprofessional to take our money after we agree to your terms, and then change the terms on us and give us no reimbursement for time spent and money spent, under the banner of “problems with the morale system.” IT IS YOUR SYSTEM!! YOU SET IT UP!! Don’t penalize teams of players of YOUR game, on existing worlds for playing under YOUR SYSTEM!! I know that you will most likely not read this, and or skim through it and pay it no mind. Because why listen to your players, we are just the ones signing your paychecks after all right?
Sincerely,
ZS
Hello Zhao Shun,
we are aware that certain strategies, which were not originally intended to be a valid option upon the release of the morale system, have been widely accepted as part of the rules by our player base because we tolerated them up until this point.
However, the morale system has had some flaws since it was first introduced and these same flaws have always sparked some controversy among our players. It is a fact that morale was never meant to become a valid option to trade some of your progression for additional defensive bonuses for select cities. Therefore we have now decided to make this even more clear by limiting the possibilities for such a trade-off.
We understand that such a change may require adjustments in strategies that have been deemed valid – or rather tolerated – for quite a while now, which is why we wanted to inform you as soon as possible.
However, we also feel that it is unavoidable to implement these balancing adjustments as soon as possible and not just for new worlds, seen as recent events have shown that the existing flaws in the system can potentially cause further (technical) issues that have an impact far beyond just rendering some players unable to defeat certain enemies.
Cheers
“we are aware that certain strategies, which were not originally intended to be a valid option upon the release of the morale system, have been widely accepted as part of the rules by our player base because we tolerated them up until this point.”
So you are aware that players of your game utilized the morale system to implement strategies to benefit there teams during world wonders, and throughout servers with morale. So because you are no longer willing to “tolerate” them you are going to change them with a 2 week notice, and offer no type of compensation to those that spent money on your game to align there teams strategies with your “tolerated” system.
“However the morale system has had some flaws since it was first introduced and these same flaws have always sparked some controversy among our players.”
If the system was flawed since it was introduced years ago, why all of a sudden is the change being made to existing worlds? Why the sudden sense of urgency and call to action? What changed?
“We understand that such a change may require adjustments in strategies that have been deemed valid – or rather tolerated – for quite a while now”
But yet you still offer, those that have to go through the change and put forth the necessary efforts that will be required to adjust to your change, no compensation for there time and or wasted gold. That sounds fair……
“However, we also feel that it is unavoidable to implement these balancing adjustments as soon as possible and not just for new worlds”
Why? I ask again why the sudden change and why to existing worlds, and why only US and Beta? Sorry to say but, from a players perspective it appears as if you are targeting us, and targeting our very specific team/teams.
“seen as recent events have shown that the existing flaws in the system can potentially cause further (technical) issues that have an impact far beyond just rendering some players unable to defeat certain enemies.”
Then maybe that should have been explained in the beginning. If the changes are being made because of technical issues that are impacting the game code itself, why not just say that? Instead of making it appear to most of us as if you are favoring certain teams in the game?
I mean if you believe these changes are necessary to avoid “technical issues”, then why are they only necessary for US and Beta Servers? Would not these “technical issues” be possibly detrimental to your other servers as well, and would not your company’s sense of urgency to implement it on all servers be equally as urgent to set into motion?
I wait for your reply,
Sincerely,
ZS
As you mentioned, we are implementing these changes with urgency due to the technical issues we expected recently. These issues had the biggest impact on US game worlds so far, hence the implementation on US and beta worlds.
However, as you may have noticed already, we have now made further adjustments to our implementation strategy and will only release the world wonder changes with version 2.148 as we expect these changes to fix most of the performance related issues. The other changes to the balancing of morale will follow at a later point and only for new worlds.
How is this then with internal conquests? It is already hard enough on moral worlds, internally to conquer. With this scheme, it is almost impossible. Less cities but full protection *facepalm*
Player is no longer online, gets even the full protection program served.
Have really ever laughed better here..
regards
Geisti
german player
Hello MDGeist74,
Can you please elaborate on this matter, as I see it would be easier to conquer internal players, and if they do not have more than one city the system remains as it was before. I don’t understand how it becomes harder.
Cheers
Dear inno,
i am sending you this ticket to express my disappointment in in the news regarding the change of rules that will be put to effect soon.
I am not a big fan of morale world, but joined a bunch of friend in Nicea and crack on with it, adapting to the morale situation.
As much as i understand changes are in order i feel and believe this should only affect new or recently open world, not (like in Nicea’s case) world which are in full flow, World Wonders well on the way.
It is a game of teamwork and strategies, and therefore each team need to adapt to whatever the world settings are, which we did and now you expect us to rethink and change or strategies, this is not on.
I am not a big gold user, but i have invested in this world and you are now about to change the rules, this does not seam right to me and believe strongly it should not be allowed.
Hoping you make the right decisions and take the right actions.
Yours Truly
www85
Hello www85,
I tried to say this in different ways in other answers but, Morale was never intended to be used to trade points/strength to get a bonus to your overall protection. It was always to help weaker players grow in a safer condition. When we decide to change the rules on this system the objective is to keep it working for its intended purpose and to prevent misusage by other players.
This change is not aimed to mess with strategies from specific alliances or players, it is aimed to improve the game, and that is the reason why we intend to activate it on all worlds.
Cheers
If it wasn’t the intention then why even have morale, walls, towers, defense tokens, attack tokens? they all give one player an advantage so lets just have a game with no morale, no luck %, no power tokens, and just play straight up. also intend to activate this on all worlds or we are activating on all worlds? which one is it or just in Nicaea
Hello KingDaveJr,
The intention is to improve the morale system, not remove players advantages.
We do intend to activate on all worlds, but we will start with the US market (all morale active worlds), and later move on to other markets once the system is proven. I was already explained on other replies why we are starting with the US market.
Cheers
I will repeat the protest to introducing new morale rules to an existing world. No need to respond to that comment—I’ve read the cut and paste answer.
But I would like to take issue with commenters, and possibly even the Grep Dev team itself, that consider all Low Morale players new or inactive. I believe this morale update comes from complaints from larger players who may only have the ability to play with might rather than skill.
Low Morale playing (as opposed to low morale existing) is a complex strategy that requires a great deal of active play. Low Morale Players must invest in very large caves in order to catch their targets while cities are empty……They must constantly maintain communication with their team mates, because successful conquest is impossible without support. They should be willing to completely change up the troop composition of their cities to effectively land a CS in a stacked target…the list goes on. The point: It is NOT easy for a Low Morale player to take a city from a larger player, and to suggest so proves weakness or inexperience in game play.
I have played Grep with as many as 30 cities, then devolved to as low as 5 when alliance requirements demanded a Low Morale Player. What I have found as a Low Morale Conqueror, is that many larger players are not in good communication with their alliance members, they don’t know how to snipe, they are asleep, etc…Picking those targets takes research……Anyone can build a large empire with enough time and gold….Successful Low Morale Players must study strategy, plan long-term, and have a full understanding of the tools and processes of the game.
I will continue play and see how the morale update works. But I’m afraid, certainly at the new levels you propose, that Grep will devolve into a gold-selling version of Shutes’N’Ladders, not the wonderful, complex and challenging game it is.
It would be nice if you can offer a list of worlds THAT WILL NOT be making the morale update.
NOTE: No disrespect to the many large skilled players in Grepolis.
Hello Missi,
Hello www85,
Like I said before, Morale was never intended to be used to trade points/strength to get a bonus to your overall protection. It was always to help weaker players grow in a safer condition. Using it as a strategy was the consequence of the problems we are trying to prevent. I understand that it demands a lot of skill to do it, but it was never our intention to allow such a strategy in the first place.
Cheers
Well done. These changes will help avoid a long term stalemate on WW cities. The losing side in Baris insists this is favoritism because it is a change on existing ww cities. They fail to recognize it is not the first such change. When the rules were changed to negate taking VM on ww Baris was already in stalemate. This isn’t much different. They difference here is that they were employing a game mechanic in a way that it was never intended. Morale was designed to help the new player get a decent start before the big guys could wipe them out. Having a player with 100+ cities restart then take all 20 cities on a ww for the sole purpose of allowing him to defend with low morale is not the same thing and while most are not willing to admit it, they know it.
Well sadly.. the simple fix to this was to just eliminate morale on wonder islands and leave the rest the same. Only you know, but i suspect 90% of the morale complaints are related to morale use on a wonder. Seems to me you are breaking the game in terms of morale because an 11 city cutoff is a bit of a joke. If you truly have players with 100’s of cities crying about morale vs some players with 10-20 cities. Well..that’s bully gaming and it’s just fine, just do it on a No-Morale worlds.
That said, I thank you for what was a fantastic game for many years. I am now moving on to other online gaming options as this method of essentially removing morale in effect makes the game even more of a bully type game than it had become previous to this upcoming change.
Hello Zimmerlli,
I appreciate your feedback on the matter, as this is a first iteration of the Morale system update, the numbers and values might change if we find that the protection is less effective than we anticipate it. Like I said before, the main objective is to make the system fair to all players in different stages of the game.
I hope you can stay to experience the changes and provide even more feedback, as we intend to change and improve the game in many other ways.
Cheers
I have played this game for over 5 years and I have seen a lot of changes in relation to world wonders, how resources can be sent, and now with the moral issue and how it relates to world wonders. lets be honest that is exactly what the issue is! I have stated previously that this is my last world, and with this change it is confirmed. You can not change the rules at half time because a few players are complaining because they are on the losing side, this game has zero integrity! This change will result in the loss of many players that are just disgusted with this lack of consideration from the developers to listen to the many instead of the few that have complained. Also a 14 day notice to change and comply or have a world wonder be in jeopardy due to the rule changes, are you serious! The main goal of every world that takes over a year to establish a core, ready the islands, and send resources for weeks with no sleep but Inno can change the rules in a few weeks notice. All the developer has done has cheapened the game and your brand, what is next a no attack rule during night time so players can sleep? This game has no marketing the only way you get new players is by word of mouth from current player who Inno has clearly ignored. I ask that you do some research on companies that change policies and rules without considering the opinions of the people who make the company successful. They are out of business. I honestly don’t care about the morale change, my issue is the way it was delivered, implemented, and most importantly the lack of integrity. Before the next world opens get a plan together, lock in the rules, and let us just play the game.
This is a horrible decision. Admitting that there are many parts of this problem and then only changing the ONE aspect is the most glaring problem.
Making a change to even the playing field for a player with 300 cities AGAINST a player with 11 cities makes no sense and cannot be defended… which is why you didn’t defend it. All you are doing is removing a shield to protect the small and weak.
Thats pretty lame. If you are just going to destroy morale worlds STOP MAKING THEM ALL MORALE.
Hello amdiz113,
The intention is to improve the morale system and remove possible abuses, it was also already said that if the numbers are too harsh they can be adjusted to improve the experience. The main point of adding this is so we have another layer of control with morale that can be adjusted to provide a better experience to all players.
Cheers
Please do not change rules to existing worlds. I believe this to be harmful to the games positive reputation. I understand the moral rule will be going away. Please keep moral intact until world ends. The moral rule is friendly to small players and is used as a positive game tactic.
Thanks
/ Almeroth
I sent in a support ticket and the reply was to look at this blog. I skimmed through some of this as it is a lot to take in for any single person. Basically your response is that morale never had the intent to be used as a bonus. Two things on this:
1) whether you are external or internal the very function and idea of morale is just that…to give a player more of an advantage/ bonus to their strength/protection since they have fewer points. Your argument contradicts itself.
2) If the intent was different I am not sure how after years and numerous servers of gameplay you can try and retract on this. I ask do you play the game yourself? Or, anyone you work with actually play the game? Theory and reality don’t always match up, and much of what you are deciding for the players who are your customers is showing how you do not understand the reality of the morale rules, function, and what is actually happening in the game.
It does allow weaker players to grow as it is a deterrent for larger more established players to pick on smaller ones, so it’s intended purpose as stated in your own words means it is working.
What is the misuse by other players? Clearly that statement shows favoritism to someone. People share accounts, use bots, which are forms of cheating, but players don’t have a way around game speed, unit speed, morale, conquest, night bonus, as players choose worlds based on their settings.
Simply saying it will improve the game is misguided as you cannot tell your customers what their preferences are, that is why their are always multiple worlds with a variety of settings so they may pick and choose. Changing the underlying structure of the game mid-game will make you lose customers.
Hello No Limbs,
1) The system was not intended to be used by large players as a strategy to reduce their own points and therefore get a large advantage against their enemies. This is a strategy I get it, but using a system that was designed for a different purpose, this is why we are adjusting the system to make it work exclusively for what it was designed for.
2) We do play the game, and yes I agree that theory is many times different than reality. But in this case you can be sure that we know how the system works.
I believe I made clear what the misuse of the system is on point one.
Cheers
Looks great of course there will always be things someone likes and things someone dislikes, pretty much impossible to make everyone happy unless you offer them 5000 gold.
Would it be possible to turn the morale completely off after a server reaches a certain age? A server that a closing in to the famous end game isn’t a place for new players to start anyways.
Hello Zteren,
We do not like the idea of shutting the system completely off after a certain age as we cannot guarantee that all participants would not need it. There are smaller and larger players on all moments of a world, so turning the system completely off would remove the defense, even if a small one, smaller players get.
Cheers
Hello Bernard,
As i understand the main purpose of morale factor in the game is to give new players a chance to learn to play before they are conquered by experienced players. And as a result keep their interest and give them the chance to stay in the game.There are different opinions if it works good or not and so on. I have one example – on Russian server ru 50 .The world is with morale.One alliance keeps control on their single island with world wounder for about half a year.They just put a single player with 20 cities only to control all the cities on that wounder island. Size of each city is reduced to 2 k points. That makes impossible to attack that player. This has nothing to do with protecting new player as a beginner as no alliance would put a noob on a world wounder. That is simple using the possibility that game allows.
Hello vladsk,
That is one of the “strategies” we want to prevent, as this is not something the morale system was designed for. This is part of the game right now, but it is not a valid strategy for the system being used to achieve this was never intended for something like this.
Cheers
Hello Bernard,
As i see game developers tried to prevent *tricks* that can be used in the game.That was some stages It is not more allowed to build world wounder on an island with single city,it does not work to go to vacation when player is on world wounder (i personally is on ww and got to hospital for about a day but still think that is more better than worse)/So i think it goes in right direction.When i ask players in existing world where we wait for half a year lot of players just wait and many do not even spend efforts on getting Commander-Captain or so.
So the new rules are to help the small players, but since i have started playing grepo i have seen changes that favor the big players and the gold spenders, more and more events where you can get myth nukes on demand as long as you got deep pockets, introduction of heroes (the more cities, the more heroes you can use), favor farming, gold tradding…… the list goes on and on.
For the normal Joe who like to play the game with his head rather than his pocket it has become a bit of a joke to be honest.
Yes you did not intend for morale to be used the way it has been, but the fact that you have players clever enough to use loop holes should be a good thing.
Either way, just the fact that you can change the goal post when and wherever you want made up my mind about inno’s integrity towards their players, once again i don’t think that the changes are bad, just shouldn’t be applied to world that are already started.
If you want to be fair, then why not bring back the old grepo, when players knew what troops are best against what, when people actually used strategy rather than just bully players to submission because they have the gold to be able to. let’s face it, when someone can rebuild a wall and restack a city just by using gold, or rebuild a manty nuke within a day where is the fun gone.
Hi Inno,
Can you clarify when the morale changes for number of cities are going to be applied to existing US markets?
In US64 Apollonia we were very much looking forward to this change and we are still half a year from age of wonders. I understand not applying the change to very developed worlds with active wonder battles going where applying the change would certainly mean the end of their crown attempt, but this server is only two months old and really if we do not get the update we will be very disappointed =/
thanks for considering servers that are still many months away from age of wonders starting. taksor
Hello taksor,
Refer to the new post for the final decision on what markets will receive the change.
Cheers
Dear grepo team,
I tried to leave a comment on Sept. 29 but it was not approved for some reason. I am urging you to please implement the morale-cities patch to certain older servers that have not yet reached the age of wonders. I am the top score ranking player on Apollonia and there is not even one enemy alliance target that I can attack that is above 80% morale(!). Yet these players have over 30 cities and are abusing low score to produce massive amounts of biremes to farm defensive battle points. These players have over 300,000 GrepoScore meaning they are very experienced and are knowingly abusing morale to prevent the top players from hitting them.
Please for the love of god give US64 Apollonia the morale-cities patch, and consider applying it to US63 Zacynthus and US65 Byllis as these servers are also many many months away from the age of wonders. We desperately want this patch to prevent players from abusing low score to use morale even though they have 30+ cities and know exactly what they are doing.
taksor
I have played for an long time and have come to appreciate the current morale system even though I have played with many cities and had to consider it carefully while planning attacks.
At the same time I have also seen how this feature can be used in a way that it does not serve its designed functionality.
However, most ‘tricks’ are played within alliances, while the proposed adjustments are focused on players.
This could lead to be slightly unfair conditions to lone riders – non-allied players and small alliances.
I would like to see the alliance factor brought into the equation in a manner that the alliance size would also regulate the morale.
The larger the alliance in comparison to the overall world points, the larger the effect on the modification of morale.