Europe 4 and New Rule Set....Stinks!

[PeterTheGreat]

I've played since Beta World 1. While there are gripes here and there...the "new" ruleset really stinks in Europe 4. Specifically the ability to raze other players being pushed off to Prince level. There is no counter balance to the select few who dump tons of money in the game to reach the Prince level super quick. In the old rule set, at least at Knight you could provide some deterrence. As it stand now, Europe 4 will be unplayable in a couple weeks. There's literally nothing you can do to not be pushed around by the top dozen or so players. Fix this, or you will see very low numbers playing. And I'm not griping as a non-paying player...I do pay for many bits and use cards frequently, but this is ridiculous.

Also, in the explanation of the reason for the rules changes, it states it was to thwart the practice of a few players that remained at the Knight level just to raze. I've seen that happen, but that's no reason to shift the balance so far the other way. I won't be playing any future worlds with this rule set.

[Dumpster Fire]

You forget your place, if you're not a big spender then you're cannon fodder!

[Dave1]

I agree with peter i am on Euro 4 not playing just checking out the new rules, the world is dead already none or only a few wars no fun its *, when i say no wars there is a war but 70% of the players are not intested and just staying out of it many of the big players have not joined so understandable its a dead world,
But if FF want to keep the game active they need to change the raise at prince rule as if you are not a prince you can't help your faction in war except keep a village open to counter capture enemy landing in your land which slows you up for ranking to prince to raise and join the war
also the Faction and house membership limit needs changing as no new players will hang around if not under color as they and their parish will be open to attack
and new players will not get help from the older players on how to play the game if they are not in house/faction
BUT WE HAVE ALL SAID THIS BEFORE SO ITS UP TO FF IF THEY WANT TO MAKE THE GAME WORK OR KILL IT OFF

[Wilksy]

I agree with peter i am on Euro 4 not playing just checking out the new rules, the world is dead already none or only a few wars no fun its *, when i say no wars there is a war but 70% of the players are not intested and just staying out of it many of the big players have not joined so understandable its a dead world,
But if FF want to keep the game active they need to change the raise at prince rule as if you are not a prince you can't help your faction in war except keep a village open to counter capture enemy landing in your land which slows you up for ranking to prince to raise and join the war
also the Faction and house membership limit needs changing as no new players will hang around if not under color as they and their parish will be open to attack
and new players will not get help from the older players on how to play the game if they are not in house/faction
BUT WE HAVE ALL SAID THIS BEFORE SO ITS UP TO FF IF THEY WANT TO MAKE THE GAME WORK OR KILL IT OFF

Yup.

[WaywardChampion]

I believe that I have expressed many of the preceding concerns in previous topics, but here are a few things that you may not yet be aware.

The first is that you need to be a Crown Prince to ID another Prince. This is going to make it extremely difficult to protect your fellow faction members in the event of a surprise attack and your companions are offline.

Also, when you gain a rank where a new level of Interdiction can be researched, there is a 5 - 11 hour period of time where you are vulnerable, simply because you can no longer self ID until that research is completed.

When FF introduced these new Era rules, they stated that these new rules would help reduce the number of Alts and offer new players greater protection from losing their villages. I can tell you with absolute certainty that they have utterly failed on both counts.

Thus far on EU4, my faction and I have captured more new and unaligned villages than on the previous 3 worlds on which we have played combined. This is simply due to the excessively high number of flags needed to build the necessary parish defenses. Most of my faction would even cap a Village Idiot if it meant getting into a parish with ballista available. Also seeing that most of these low ranked players don't contribute to the parish anyway, it doesn't make much sense to keep a bunch of freeloaders when an experienced active player needs a new village. This is truly a sorry state of affairs.

As for limiting the number and utility of alts, the truth is that I have seen more place holder alts on this server than on any other that I have ever played. These cheating alt players are using a "deadlock" strategy to fill a potential adversary's counties with non-contributing placeholder alts so that no new charters spawn. This forces us to pay unreasonably high honor penalties while capping them, just so that we can get another village. To make matters worse, when these alts despawn, no new charter appears to replace it.

I have really enjoyed playing together with the friends that I have made here in SHK, but unless some very necessary changes are made to these new rules before EU4 ends, I will simply find another strategy game that is completely unconnected to FF or any of its affiliates. I will then try to convince the 30-40 players that I normally play with to make the move to the new game with me. Seeing as most of them are as dissatisfied with the current rules as I am, it should not be too difficult.

I estimate that FF generates about $1500 to $1800 per month just from my 40+ member faction alone. I realize that to FF this may not seem like much, but that's enough to cover a large part of a programmers salary.

So I guess that the question FF needs to ask themselves is who's job gets dropped when my faction leaves SHK?

[Lord Alacrity]

We appreciate the feedback and criticisms that are being discussed here and as in the past, we're happy to implement tweaks and changes that have widespread community consensus.

The most effective way to have your concerns addressed is to have concise descriptions of the new difficulties presented by the ruleset along with two or three suggestions for improvement.

So far, the recurring points I've seen here and elsewhere have been:

House size - Fairly easy to change. A game world will always have the most players in its First Era, but the point about new players unable to find "color protection" is a very valid one. We're happy to change this if we hear some good suggestions on what the new sizes should be.

Raze rank - Very easy to change, but requires some discussion. What rank should it be and why?

While these are not the only two points, they've been the most common. Feel free to post additional suggestions!

[WaywardChampion]

I actually liked having the raze rank at knight, however I understand other players concerns over rogue players abusing this privilege.

So here is what I suggest. Keep the raze rank at Knight, but rather than having this ability be a privilege of rank, require that this ability be earned through the completion of quests.

I feel that 80 - 100 completed quests to unlock the ability to raze is a fair compromise that addresses most everyone's concerns.

Another alternative is to require membership into a house faction to unlock the ability to raze, but this privilege is lost when that player is no longer a member of a house. This would be most effective if the house and faction sizes were increased. This would severely hamper a rogue players effectiveness, and prevent "False Flag" type players fighting any undeclared wars with other houses.

[nhmoose]

taking raze away from knights just makes it harder to move around the map, as the friendly raze is now impossible. it also makes it easier to invade an area, as the preemptive raze is also off the table. and it leaves the landscape dotted with pimple villages of people who have rage quit because they have been ransacked to the ground and have no recourse but abandoning a village once a week or rebuilding from scratch in place. a village ransacked to a nipple is much more demoralizing than being razed.

my suggestion would be to give the raze back to knights and above, which is where i believe it was previously. actually i would like to see it taken all the way down to squire, but i doubt that is going to happen as it is, my faction is remaining at squire and pirating the server. we have no incentive to rank to knight. there is no room in the houses for us due to unrealistic limits. so we produce nothing and prey on those who do.

speaking of the house limits, we definitely need to have larger factions (maybe 30 players per faction) and more factions per house. there is no room right now for many of the players who would like to contribute to and benefit from house membership. we are left out in the cold, supporting friends from outside the house or, like my pirates, preying on everyone.

[81700a0d58c3670ae541003d25380d271a71288c]

I sent this to support because this is a support issue at this point. They are not supporting game....

I just want you to know that only having 5 factions in a house is the worse thing this game has ever done. All it did was make the bigger houses take control of 4 houses instead of 1 or 2. So for all the factions that are banding together to play this game, you have made this world unplayable. Also only letting peopling raze other people at price was a very bad move. You are turning an entire game world against you all. There is a huge list of things people do not like about this server. There was 14k people playing but in a month I think it will drop down to 10k than 8k than it will become another dead world because of this. We have been trying to get a house for a long time but out of the 20 houses all of them are taking by 5 other houses alt houses. That is insane and does not support growth for new players.

The worse part of this is I just wish it was just me complaining about it but its the entire server that is. I wish you did read these mails and would help us so we can justify spending more money on this server. Bad worlds like this is what is driving the people away. Like I said earlier, I am 100% sure I will get a generic response from you and a go play on another server. I just wish you guys listened to people helped us help you make a better game for everyone to play. This is most true since the app is coming out and if this game doesn't get improved for it than the app will fail.

There is so many issues with this world that hurt it pretty bad but the only reason people are still on this server is that there is no new server out there. So in short this complaint is about you guys and your bad choices on Europe world 4. Please make the cap for houses larger and lower the raze level ability. You make every new player mad because they can't help in any wars or even be helpful. Stop killing your game and the server. The best change though is the faith points cap. That was amazing so you can leave that but the raze option at prince and small house rate is very bad. There is almost no reason to play that world.


Thank you very much for hearing me out and sending me back a generic message in response. I know you will never read this and I wasted my time because my worst fear is you don't care about the community and it really looks like. I am a community leader on this game and it is getting hard to let my new players know they can help us raze at prince....

Please help and hopefully you can make this game fun again.

A very sad panda and House leader of House 21 because you didn't make enough houses or add enough faction spots for houses Leader.

=(

[Bglizard]

Personally I like house size of 5 factions I think it was an interesting change. with 12 - 20 faction houses it would make it so everyone bandwagoned into usually 3 houses

However, I think faction size should be changed to 30, not house size. This would allow houses to have 200 members not 150. I think it would also lower the sheer number of "Faction Name #8"

As far as raze rank goes, I like the idea of making it questing based, though I think 80-100 is far to easy to reach 120-150 be much more challenging in my opinion and if you wanted to be a Knight razer you'd still have to put in a decent bit of work.