Runtime “simulator”

From time to time we just have those small, random ideas that sound pretty good and would be easy to implement, but we are sometimes not sure if they will have any obscure side effects. So we thought why not asking the people that know our game best, you!?

Right now, when I play Grepolis and I want to check how long would it take for the colo to get to the city I want to conquer, I go to the attack or support window, put in a 1 and the time appears. The same if I have an incoming attack, I check the runtimes from that attacked city to the attacking city to get an idea of what might be coming. This is rather time consuming and annoying.

attack_window runtime now

So we had the idea of having a button in the attack/support windows that opens a small window with all the runtimes of the different units to that city (of course if the target is not on your island we would hide the land units). You could then cycle through your cities, the window would update and you could easily see which city has what runtime. You could even open multiple run-time windows to compare different targets. Also the current hero would be there to select in case she/he influences the runtime. It might look like this:

runtime_  runtime 1  runtime 2

For the future it might even be an idea to add more functionality like enable/disable different effects/research to simulate the runtime with or without them as well as adjusting the hero and its level. What do you think? Would this be a nice addition? Or is it rather useless? Where else do you need to know runtimes at the moment and could these situations also benefit from a runtime simulator?

Posted in Game Design
11 comments on “Runtime “simulator”
  1. Louie045 says:

    Please implement this feature, it would be great 😀

  2. luzifer333 says:

    oh shit yes that will be very usefully! it make it more easierly to caculate interceptings.
    good idea

  3. Ikari says:

    Excellent idea!

  4. Thasoss says:

    Yep! This is the way you should go! Finally useful idea

  5. Mim le Fay says:

    Dear all,

    actually, I do not like this idea.

    What do you need it exactly for? To know, which unit is faster than the other?
    How will you implement all the reward and the Heroes? Have I closing the window, before I can change the city?

    In my view, it will be much more relevant, to revise the attack planner, instead of this gadget. Add there an arrival time for each City and give them in the attack planner as a proposal. For reward there should be a cross over field and for Heroes a choice box.

    • Florian Waldmann says:

      Hey Mim, thanks for your Feedback. I as a player would use it for the cases described in the post and hoped to get more ideas about how other players would use it by asking for your feedback.
      How rewards and heroes will exactly be implemented is still not decided, this is a first draft to get early feedback, nothing final.
      We plan that you can change the city without closing the window and it will update.
      Sadly revising the attack planer is way more effort than this – but we are also considering that.

      Do you see any negative impact with this feature?

      • Mim le Fay says:

        Well,
        I play Grepolis now for more than five years, and as lessons learned, with every change in the UI or the windows was for the beginning time a high loss in performance and functionality. Unfortunately I lost the faith to you, that’s now everything will be better and now we have the period there won’t give any problems in game performance and experience.
        Which means for myself, if you change something the risk in the number of bugs and other problems is so high, there have to be a big benefit for all players, you understand, what I mean?
        Okay, if you want to sent a cs, you have to click on the button and see the running time with but also without any effect from reward, research or Hero, and that’s is it. I really think, that we would have to much bugs for this useless thing.

        On the other hand, if you will insert your idea at Grepolis, why don’t you put in the running times in the attack window? For example, under the number of units? Why do you use two new windows for this? Is there a different between the performance and answering times?

        • Florian Waldmann says:

          The attack window would be really crowded if we add the runtimes for every unit. Also we want to keep this seperate because it is a simulator – so more “pro” player content. Like I already said in the article we also think about adding effects from rewards, research or heroes into the simulator.

          Of course for every change there is the chance for bugs, but because this is an add-on there is only a really really small chance that bugs that occur there will affect anything else in the game.

  6. Quentin says:

    I do not see negative impacts personally, but I think this is a secondary feature and big ones like the end game revamp and the early game changes, without talking about the app, are more important and so they should be a priority. This is only my point of the.
    And don’t forget that you said the first world with early game changes would be available before 2016.

  7. Ermir says:

    I don’t think this a negative thing to implement. Its one of those little tweaks that make things a bit more userfriendly and also easier to teach to new players.
    Generally I like the idea and my feedback can’t but be positive for this.

  8. HBB-1 says:

    I agree with Mim le Fay, it is a gadget no more then that.
    I realy dont see a use for this option, its faster to press #1 in the kolo box or other unit you want to see then press button and scroll.

    Things that need to be upgraded are in my opinion:
    — Better stats
    — Attack planner
    — Alliance forum
    — Think some premium functions are killing the game

    But what realy realy realy every hard core Grepolis player wants is a new end game