In terms of our accessibility improvements that were mentioned on the roadmap for the first quarter of 2016, we want to simplify the way how to get into an alliance.
Joining an alliance is a very useful way for new players to learn how to succeed in Grepolis. You can ask questions, request for help or just find new friends. Anyway new players that joined an alliance stay longer in the game and therefore we want to simplify the current process how to find an alliance. We had several meetings over the past weeks and thought about changes to our current alliance-invitation-system.
Before we talk about our planned changes, let’s have look on how the system currently works:
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1. New players probably play the quests until they get the quest “Join or found an alliance”
2. The quest guides you to the alliance menu where you can find a list of alliances nearby.
3. Now you can click the apply button that opens a message screen where you can write a personal message or just use the pre-filled text and send the application.
4. Then the alliance leader (or someone else with the according rights) receives the message, reads it and sends the player an invitation.
5. Afterwards the player gets a notification/message with the invitation and link to the alliance screen again.
6. By clicking the link in the message (Or by manually open the alliance window and switching to the “Create alliance” tab) a window appears where the player can finally accept the alliance invitation.
From our perspective the players’ effort is way to high to join an alliance.
Our new idea is way more simple:
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1. You get the quest that leads you to the alliance window.
2. In the list you click on apply that opens the pre-filled message you can edit and send.
3. The alliance leader gets a message that includes two buttons: Accept and Reject. That’s it.
The other way around would be similar:
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1. The alliance leader invites a player
2. The player gets a message with two buttons: Accept and Reject. That’s it.
In case something changes in between (invitation got canceled, alliance full, player joined another alliance, …) the buttons in the message would be replaced by a text explaining why the buttons have been replaced.
Of course we would also keep the current overview in the alliance window and enhance it by an additional box for applications:
Additionally we would like to change the alliance settings a bit and introduce a new state: “open”. Alliances with open state would auto-accept any application that meets the point requirements until it is full. We think this could be quite useful in the early game-phase. We would also remove the current setting “List my alliance in the alliance finder” and replace it with:
- ‘Open’ – Alliance appears in the alliance finder list and players can join directly (if they meet the point requirements)
- ‘Application’ – Alliance appears in the alliance finder list and players can apply (if they meet the point requirements)
- ‘Closed’ – Alliance does not appear in the alliance finder list and players can not apply, they can only be invited by leaders
How do you like this idea? Any suggestions for improvements? We would love to hear your opinion on the follow questions! Just comment here or join our beta forum discussion.
- Are there any negative side effects we might have forgotten?
- Would you (as a founder) like to define the pre-filled application text on your own that your applicants will see?
- What sort of questions would you put in there?
- Do you use external tools or websites to get more info about the applicants? What are you interested in?
- Would you use the ‘open’ setting for your alliance to get new members faster?
Waste of time, 80% of the players starts with friends.
Ik would never alow that players automatic join my aliance.
Players who want to join have to send a correct message to the recruiter.
(ps When are you start working on new End game ? )
Thanks for your feedback. What would a correct messages contain in your opinion?
Address the end game and the issue with new players being given an opportunity to play with experienced players will solve itself. Start by removing the ability to share forums and by removing the possibility for a crown to be awarded more than once per server and the problem will disappear.
At the moment all of the most active and experienced players play together in pre-made alliances with multiple branches that work together for world wonders. They share forums and players rotate from academies/sister alliances into the main alliance to send resources to the world wonders. Once they have been built, the players from the academies/sister alliances are rotated into the main so they can get their crowns.
You won’t be given the opportunity to join these players unless you can demonstrate capability, commitment and give references of players/alliances who you have played with before and can vouch for your skills.
Thanks for your feedback. We are already aware of the problems with the current endgame and are thinking about possible solutions and/or a completely new endgame. But this is not related to this feature. This feature is supposed to make it easier for new players to get into an alliance that can help them learn the game and become good players, so in the end they can also take part in the (reworked) endgame and not drop out before they even know what was happening.
I do understand what you are trying to achieve but the point I make is that the endgame is preventing that more than anything else. Teams set up for the endgame as soon as a server begins now. If you solve the endgame issue then you can potentially do more to help retain new players than this proposal might achieve.
Please think about the fact that there is no incentive for experienced players to help new players. If anything, the reverse is true. Experienced players want to grow quickly and it’s easier to take a city from a new player with no friends than an experienced player with a good team to help them. It’s counter productive for experienced players to help new players because new players are the food that experienced players use to grow.
The above means that most top alliances don’t recruit new players and will not even if these changes are made. All that will happen is that all the new players will end up in alliances full of inexperienced players and these will be targeted by the more experienced teams and I suspect your retention rate of new players will not improve.
Making it easier for a new player to join an alliance is a good idea. If the new player is lucky it will be admitted in a alliance with player wiling to help and teach him the in and out of this game. But in many case he will have to do by himself.
I would suggest you to add a tutor system if at all possible, player with proven experience could register as tutor and when a new player comes in he could select one from a list. The tutor could be reward by an increase in % of ressources for a period of time for the help he gives to this new player.
I also think seriously the end of the game should be change, so fighting can be as important as building worder.
It has much to commend it; I particularly like the feature where it says about already recruited or joined another alliance. However I see more questions in regards to moving alliances – i get asked more about how to leave an alliance than I do about how to join or other becoming a member of an alliance problems. It would also be good to have some mechanism to prevent a single founder dissolving an alliance: perhaps all active founders should have to confirm the dissolution of an alliance before it happens.
Thanks for your input, I will forward it to the game designers