What is being done to increase player base

[thejudge]

By enlarge 95% (and I'm being generous with the 5%) of attacks into our kingdom is by kingdoms 20% larger than us knowing that we won't press the button.

Why would players our kingdom, such as myself, continue to play? I imagine at the end of this age (if we make it that far) another 5 players or so will call it a day if this aspect of the game isn't addressed in the changes.

hits oor are already penalized as is hitting smaller kingdoms.

Total Attacks Made 49
Total Wins 39
Wins Against Larger Opponents 17
Average Relative Opponent Networth 98%
Total Land Gained in Combat 3035
Attacks Suffered 60
Times Defeated 56
Total Land Lost in Combat 2330

Even with getting abducted more than I abduct this is a significant diffrence in land lost vs land gained, and not all can be explained from -30% gans due to gs. If you do not run gs and get hit a lot from bigger kingdoms you are doing things wrong, you can't count on not getting harassed, so you should chose your strategy according to what works in those situations and not what works if everyone leave you alone. I expect to be outnumbered and/or outmatched and plan accordingly.

- In war numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power. Sun Tsu

[DavidC]

By enlarge 95% (and I'm being generous with the 5%) of attacks into our kingdom is by kingdoms 20% larger than us knowing that we won't press the button.

Why would players our kingdom, such as myself, continue to play? I imagine at the end of this age (if we make it that far) another 5 players or so will call it a day if this aspect of the game isn't addressed in the changes.

Are you aware of the Kingdom Relative Networth modifier that already exists in the gains formula?
There are already significant disadvantages for Kingdoms attacking Kingdoms of lower strength while at the same time the smaller Kingdoms have no penalties for retaliating (i.e. no negative modifier on gains).

I don't want you to think I'm just blowing off your statement, but what would your suggestion be to resolve the issue you're stating? Keeping in mind, large kingdoms hitting a small kingdom can receive as much as a -34% penalty in gains just from Kingdom nw difference.

[StratOcastle]

@ thejudge: The prevailing mentality in Utopia follows your assessment.

If we want the game to be exciting then I'd listen to what Madchess is saying. Madchess isn't alone, as I'm quite happy playing in shell kingdoms.

What I Preach: If you aren't the type of kingdom that's challenging for war crown then build your kingdom for top feeding. There's no deterrent in accepting the inability to war big kingdoms, so you build to be tough in relations with deep penetrating ops/sabotage and durable high offense attackers. The majority will be abductions, right?

You get in the practice of isolating pumped aggressors, taking their acres and pouring on the ops to curtail recovery. While this might not be the path to CF I'd be more concerned about kingdom morale. Some of us are built for Ragnarok, some of us aren't.

You can earn a reputation for being an ugly target. In your arsenal you want the ability to Assassinate Wizards. You can use this against enemy attackers so that your attackers can bomb them with instant ops. You want Fools Gold, Amnesia, Magical Ward, Blizzards, Nightmares. The reason you want Nightmares and Amnesia is because these can't be MVd off; they linger and you can stack their effects. Most kingdoms think in terms of waving which is a rediculous notion when retaliating. You go guerilla and slow cook your giant adversaries.

In my time running sages I'd fire off Amnesia on a constant basis. I'd steal runes, cast a few, just keeping the pressure on where the accumulation slowly increases. What your doing by depleting their science is effecting them in all spheres while you take advantage of those debilitations. And I'm not one dimensional. I'd cast tornados, explosions..stuff to make the enemy well aware that we can turn them into food just as they intended to do to us.

There's always a vocal group of crybabies in every kingdom who deny the reality that their resources are earned every tick, not just in a war they were safely unbreakable. This game is full of lions and they will attack. If your not a lion you can be a herd animal and run and run. Me, I like being the porcupine and the honey badger.

[Pillz]

No, and to your other points native intel storage inside Utopia will be coming soon. Currently there are 3rd party tools that do this very well and up until now it's been a poor decision for us to spend the limited hours we have on development on developing something that's already working very well from 3rd party tools (Munk, Stinger, LucidBOT, upoopu).




Utopia has been running for nearly 20 years now. MUGA has owned the game for less than 1 year. Development takes place when time permits and has been focused on items of highest priority first. Your original 'go to' complaint was 'fix oops before anything'. I can't recall the last complaint on oops now, yet "functionality they've been asking for for years" seems to be paramount now.
We've got a long list of development objectives in front of us and they are being handled in a timely fashion.

If you want to complain about something, go through the tutorial and provide some constructive feedback on how to make it better.
Spend your time on something that will help the game grow instead of asking foolish questions like 'why are players donating to the game dev for functionality they've been asking for for years".

I understand you must feel pressure, having accomplished so little and having squandered most of the good faith the community extended a little less than a year ago now, or whenever it was.

But let's not pretend that people haven't been begging for Ingame, full featured Intel services for nearly a decade now. It's been asked for since OMAC bought the game...while b&s had it.. And you had calls for it yourself, after you took ownership.

Congrats on fixing Oops. You made the game playable. Would you like a medal? Should we thank you and grovel because you made your investment/property work?

You've got to be more intelligent than that, acting as though we owe you for the most fundamental 'change' you had to make to even dream of expanding the game.

Oh wait, I'm sure if the calls for intel had been louder, we'd still have to suffer through Oops, is that it?

I have not previously called for Ingame Intel tools developed in house. I'm actually relatively opposed to the idea. But when your paid dev is asking for donations for something you have just admitted you intend to implement... I think there is an ethical consideration there.

But hey, it's okay. Game has no multies, ads are A-OK and not virus laden land mines, and you are making Utopia great again! The greatest, greater than ever, fewer people leaving now than ever before!

[khronosschoty]

I think the integrated Intel system if it totally pushes the 3rd party ones out of the way, is going to be very bad for utopia. That is why I keep insisting that there needs to be a third party api to better integrate 3rd party tools. If you do it this way so that the new system is optional or and third party tools are optional, it will be a win, otherwise it will be a fail. You have to think about your potential target audiences.

[Shortizz]

Why are you guys even suggesting anything when "Oops" still hasnt been fixed? Its frankly embarassing to be playing a game that has existed for so long, yet cant find their bugs. Page not loading while taking intel, oops, and frankly 10 seconds ''ticking'' in 2017 isnt going to attract new players even if you pay them.

We are discussing how to attract new players. U think they are going to care about "Shell KD, 20 Man Prov", "Meter Throttling", "20% 30% OOR"?
Stuff like that only matters to player who are ALREADY playing the game. Lets face it, this game can never be more than a bunch of middle age men being nostalgic. All i see is frankly, 6 pages of nothing that will attract completely NEW players.

Also, the top is incredibly boring. The NW/Land KD are pretty much won by KDs that borderline dealbroke, lie or cheat. The WW tier consists of literally 2-3 KDs that actually actively seeks war while the rest are just a bunch of has been KDs that dodges or try to milk the most advantage out of lesser KDs.

[thejudge]

Yes, I'm aware but that hasn't solved the issue, it's more prevalent now than ever with the reduced number of kingdoms in range, a consequence of low player numbers.

Personally I'd like to see a retal amplifier introduced. So if a kingdom over X% of your kingdom size (20%?) then for ever retal the lesser kingdom gets +X% gains (34%?). The gains amplifier would only be in play up to war meter equivalency.

Maybe the gains penalty and amplifier could be stronger that 30 odd%. I'd like to see something that really deters the bullying mentality of utopia.

Are you aware of the Kingdom Relative Networth modifier that already exists in the gains formula?
There are already significant disadvantages for Kingdoms attacking Kingdoms of lower strength while at the same time the smaller Kingdoms have no penalties for retaliating (i.e. no negative modifier on gains).

I don't want you to think I'm just blowing off your statement, but what would your suggestion be to resolve the issue you're stating? Keeping in mind, large kingdoms hitting a small kingdom can receive as much as a -34% penalty in gains just from Kingdom nw difference.

[Madchess]

Did not actually know it was up to -34% gains I thougth it was -30%, so I guess you learn every day.

Still it could be non existent and I could still win due to -30% gains from gs and gb protection. We usually see kingdoms 3x or bigger hit us since we got 1/4 of the players they got. Most hits on my province has been from smaller provinces with higher nw sine I've had fairly low nw/acre most of the age, and I can still go toe-toe with almost everyone due to smite, reduced loses and reduced gains, only a few well build orc/undeads had gotten the better of me so far.

If you get hit from a 20% disadvantage considder defensive builds and make sure that you got some, preferable unbreakable t/m's with crazy stats, their good gains is gone after the first wave, and all your hits should be to prevent their attackers from getting the better of your t/m's while they in turn make sure your opponents get to be sorry they gave you relations in the first place.

After trying out the Paladin personality this age I can safely say that it would be my prefered setup for next age to go full Paladin core, slower than most to get good for sure, but think about those top kingdoms hoarding millions of gc, if they give you just 5 points you could destroy their stock so easily and bleed them dry, and the defensive capabilities for thieves and mages makes for a decent defender against ops while they are able to take quite a beating and get back at opponents after being outmatched for most of an engagement, they can fight in depth unlike so many others. I'd go with Orc and Dryad as top picks for attackers and use ballanced off and def rather than high off, the harder you can make it to hit you while using Smite, the more troops you can give increased loses.

[Mad_Scottish]

Folks - move on from the "that bigger kingdom hit me" aspect because that is always going to be an aspect of the game. The biggest difference since the game is a lot smaller, it used to be that, you got hit, you were either able to retal or you weren't and if you were not, you would find another kingdom smaller than you to hit for the stuff you lost. This has always been the way of utopia and it really is not a bad thing. This is not a bad thing - it is a war type game and this is how war works.

Learning curves are the hurdle but the post I was reading before from newtatthis - the guy he is trying to teach is deliberately being slow. It is not that complicated to figure out how to go to your war room and to use the calculator. The player also needs to apply some brain cells because that conversation you had to have newatthis was ridiculous. The player has to take some ownership as well.

The game itself has to figure out a way to get access to difference audiences because that currently isn't happening. The fixes or lack there of cannot be blamed on David and team, that is ridiculous. OMAC completed screwed up the coding remember and the game was down. People seem to conveniently forget or are choosing to ignore the fact that the current team of people have had to inherit coding and none of us here know what that looks like, good, bad or otherwise.

My thing is that we have to figure out the above, getting people to a point where they even see utopia and choose to create a province to have a look. The other thing that has fallen off drastically is that the community beyond the kingdoms has disappeared. IRC used to be a great source of meeting other kingdoms and players and learning the game, that is currently gone. Is discord the way forward here? Do we have channels such a Lobby or UtoSchool for people to join and help each other out.

We also need to address (this has been a long outstanding issue) the severe negativity and flaming that some need determined to hold to. That never helps the forums or people wanting to stay because people just got WTF, who is that twit and leave.

Anyway, main thing is, how are we getting uto out there? How are we creating avenues for people to even just want to look at the game and maybe stay?

[bluorr]

Before going into all the details of exactly what we are doing, what do you feel would be successful avenues to travel to find new players?

I assume we're going to ignore the aspect of this discussion that pertains to what needs (or should) to be done to the game prior to any advertising campaign to ensure the campaign results are retained (i.e. the tutorial). So strictly speaking we're discussing what should be done to bring players to the game, not keep players once they arrive. Is that correct?

Hehe :) This is business, not psychology tricks 101 on how to guess what present to buy for the wife. I am positive that a lot of the players are keen on helping out with whatever they can, pro bono per se. A venture like this is time consuming, requiring people, skill and skill sets and wits. But, in order to achieve peak results, money needs to be thrown on the table. When that time comes and you require a marketing/brand specialist, give a shout.

[KvG]

Step 1: Tell your friends you want a prov to farm, then have them sign up
Step 2: Don't farm him but teach him how to play, get him into the game
Step 3: Do this for all your friends, than create a kingdom

[Crunch]

how do you expect to keep your player base let alone grow it when the fraudulent ads you allow on your site continually lock the screen, push down the screen etc. unless you pay for the ad block. This problem with the aggressive ads or video ads has been going on for 3 plus ages now. it is crystal clear that devs have zero interest to correct it. forget about improving the game mechanics it's all secondary why you can't even attack with out buying the ad block. this game deserves to die.....

[Allanon]

I think this is largely unfair. The larger ad companies will only pay for high-viewer placements. Utopia in it's current state doesn't qualify, forcing them to go with the smaller ad companies. Unfortunately, a contract is a contract. They can choose not to renew it and go with someone more considerate of the playerbase, but they are stuck with it for the duration. I have seen the efforts David has been going to in order to rectify the ad situation when it is reported to support, as per the in-game announcement, and I can state categorically the devs are not in favour of the players being screwed around by the ad company.

TL;DR - If you get the crappy ads, report it like you've been asked to in the in-game developer announcement and something will be done about it, but I believe there is nothing else they can do til the contract is over, we just have to ride it out as best we can with Davids efforts. If you can't be bothered reporting it like you were asked to, well, that's your own fault then that nothing is being done about it, cos the devs hands are tied.

[Yadda9To5]

Serving crappy ads is a choice (just like running an adblocker is). It's not true that utopia doesn't qualify for something like google ads, they might have been banned there due to fraud (people clicking to help utopia ;)) but there is no minium pageview count.

The ads utopia serve are more malicious than those on the average porn site, i'd rank them on the same level as warez/download sites. They pay well because, unlike decent ads, they tend to be pay per view and pay per install. Of course, a decent game would question what is installed on your customers pc...

The solution to the bad ads is so astonishingly simply: don't use this ad company, pick another one that pays less and doesn't server malicious ads. Trying to solve things with this ad company (ehm, hello wasn't the argument utopia is small, why the hell would an ad company care about a tiny customer) after literally months of malicious ads and still thinking things will change is either a lie or incredibly naive, i'm not sure which is worse. You can say about the previous owners what you want, they never put malware on pc's or hijacked peoples phones with ads.

Anyway, regarding attracting new players, i've always thought of utopia's greatest asset its player base. You can modernize the game and instantly have a solid population/foundation for this new game (cause for any new game, bootstrapping it with players is the tough part). Obviously it has to be done right, utopia's core is that it's a team game, so making it into an clash of clans clone as was tried is obviously not the way. But i think the principle is still sound. Utopia as is, with it's awful interface and mobile hostile website, is never going to attract and keep new players, a new utopia has to be build from the ground up. Tutorials / race or mechanic changes / more servers are sadly not enough. At a minimum the game needs a fresh first impression and then it needs to keep players engaged (push messages when stuff happens??); players must be able to download an app / load a website, be emerged in a smooth environment and be able to jump right in. Basically, the experience all old players had when joining the game when internet was still new, MUD's were really rough, and a website like utopia was amazingly smooth.

(I think the biggest non cosmetic change needed is the monarchy situation. It's nearly a full-time job to manage and coordinate 25 players. I can see something like utopia being really successful in attracting players that aren't monarch, but getting leadership in these kingdoms will be a real challenge (it's a good thing we currently have 2k experienced players ;)) Of course this is the core of the game, 25 players executing a single strategy. But to make this coordination easy, it should be automated as much as possible. I don't know how)

[umajon911]

Can utopia purchase porn ads? If so, I would totally allow them to pop up all over my browser in support of generating revenue for the game so they can spend the money to expand the player base...