Decline in battle activity

[Teresita]

as each week goes by without a new season I'm seeing less and less competitive guilds out there. What does Gaea need to do to bring people back into the game? or do they even want to bring people back in. It's really sad to once very strong guilds only having one or 2 people battling even on a 3x day.

Is it just the stale seasons?
The lack of new content?
blue Balls?
Or the lack of what? and what needs to be done to make the game fun for people again?

[Spiritsurge]

Depends on the guild honestly....the top plat guilds are still pretty active...while vanguard is always active

[Teresita]

Depends on the guild honestly....the top plat guilds are still pretty active...while vanguard is always active

not really, not of late. a lot less activity than what there once was. when facing guilds that had on avg 50-70 actives a battle and now lucky if the have 20..well it's disconcerting..and seeing this more often than not of late

[graeme]

I'm in a vanguard 10x squad, the only regular active in that squad and would say I get active opponents less than 1 in 10 battles

I think many mid level guilds are realising there's not much left in the game unless your prepared to spend big - couple of 10x and conquest gives enough guild coins to tick over and with no new seasons or anything to really use the coins on the hassle of blue balls/cheaters means longer battles just don't give the rewards to justify the time.

[Falco]

Is it just the stale seasons?
The lack of new content?
blue Balls?
Or the lack of what? and what needs to be done to make the game fun for people again?

Yes, all of the above.

Sometimes, I don't show up to battle because there are just too many blue swirls.

Other times, battle just isn't a priority because it's just the same thing over and over again, and I have all the prizes available. I suppose I could use more guild coins, but what I can buy is just more of the same, and it's hard to get excited about collecting 11,000 coins for 15 skill points when I was able to get 40 skill points for 7500 coins before. Diminishing returns results in diminishing enthusiasm for playing. Our grocery store gets its big produce truck deliveries on Monday night, and they stock the floor Tuesday morning, so the produce is freshest on Tuesday afternoons. We've had so many of the same battles over and over again that the idea of getting the freshest produce possible is far more exciting than triple coins.

Also, the season is too old. We need to beat the guild above us by 8843 points to move up, and the guild below us needs to beat us by 6448 for us to move down. Even if we were 100% inactive, it would still take a minimum of 21 days for us to drop down by one place. When the season itself has so much inertia, it's difficult to consider any battle to be important. As different people in the guild have different rhythms for when we'd want to battle or not, we end up with a mediocre number of players for any given battle.

Besides, there are too many battles per day. Spending 2 hours per battle 3 times per day is a lot of time to be seeing the same people over and over, day in and day out. We run out of life events to share, we run out of jokes to tell. Without exciting new "deep" content in the game (Meteorite and Treasure Island aren't at all deep), the game itself doesn't give us much opportunity for discussion. We used to talk about which abilities to use and when, which classes are more valuable under which circumstances. We used to talk about battle strategy and coordination. We used to have a lot more to talk about in the game. It's very difficult to find something in the game that we haven't already talked about or hasn't already been documented extensively.

Reducing the number of possible battles per day for all guilds might help game performance as well as focus actives and increase interest. One Festival battle per day was a good sustainable number. Giving everybody 6 hours of battle per day exhausts player enthusiasm.

[Frodo]

Agree for sure. Blue balls has been an ongoing thing like today. They take to long to fix the issue. Lack of content, quests done, Emporium only high priced sp costs like 13k. Just hitting monsters for fun and maybe IA.
100v our guild jumps between vanguard and Platinum, depends on our activity level and theirs, sometimes we beat a top 25 guild, some battles we lose to low Platinum. Seems Gaia does not want to invest anything like new seasons or monsters so not sure but the game will bleed out at this rate

[Teresita]

so I guess my question is why does a company invest in a game like CA and not want to improve it and keep their player base happy and coming back for more?

[Golden Mean]

The blue balls are getting really really tiresome and ruining the game for me. Play becomes literally impossible at times and if you've ever had a great battle going to the end only to get screwed by not being able to play???... Poor performance is having me seriously considering quitting this game!
The lack of new meaningful content is another obvious one. NEW QUESTS COMING SOON (apparently SOON = >4 years!)

They could do so much with this game but the Devs are (as always) too focused on the bean counting and making the $. That business model never lasts and you can see it taking it's toll on this game.
This is a highly addictive game for many and the new Devs could do really well with it if they focus on creating an excellent experience for the players but they need to FIX THE PERFORMANCE or hire someone who CAN!
I, for one, will not spend any more $ on this game until that performance issue is fixed and the game shows stability for more than a month or two.
Ok.. rant over... just frustrated with blue balls today!!

[AyameNoop]

Yes, all of the above.

Sometimes, I don't show up to battle because there are just too many blue swirls.

Other times, battle just isn't a priority because it's just the same thing over and over again, and I have all the prizes available. I suppose I could use more guild coins, but what I can buy is just more of the same, and it's hard to get excited about collecting 11,000 coins for 15 skill points when I was able to get 40 skill points for 7500 coins before. Diminishing returns results in diminishing enthusiasm for playing.

I'd like to think that the majority of the playbase has plucked must of the low hanging fruit and has pretty much given up on the rest

[cheeseslug]

Which guild are you in Teresita?

[Falco]

so I guess my question is why does a company invest in a game like CA and not want to improve it and keep their player base happy and coming back for more?

The previous developers couldn't fix the blue swirls, no matter how hard they tried. I suspect that Gaea would very much like to improve the game and keep players happy but they found that it's a legitimately difficult problem. Some problems can't be solved by throwing more money at it.

Without solving the performance problem, releasing new content would be a waste of resources from a financial point of view. New content costs resources to develop. If they can't count on the system performing well enough to take payments reliably when they release new content, then there is no incentive to develop new content. In order for it to be cost-effective to release new content, the system has to be stable enough to convert the renewed player enthusiasm into bigger numbers in the revenue column.

[Teresita]

which guild are you in teresita?

‡ntegrity🎓

[Teresita]

The previous developers couldn't fix the blue swirls, no matter how hard they tried. I suspect that Gaea would very much like to improve the game and keep players happy but they found that it's a legitimately difficult problem. Some problems can't be solved by throwing more money at it.

Without solving the performance problem, releasing new content would be a waste of resources from a financial point of view. New content costs resources to develop. If they can't count on the system performing well enough to take payments reliably when they release new content, then there is no incentive to develop new content. In order for it to be cost-effective to release new content, the system has to be stable enough to convert the renewed player enthusiasm into bigger numbers in the revenue column.

not knowing anything about coding..what can be the causes of poor performance on the servers? I haven't played Underworld empire but from my understanding from discussion with guild mates that do, they don't experience the same issues, and the two games are similar from my understanding.

[MOMsterJW]

Reducing the number of possible battles per day for all guilds might help game performance as well as focus actives and increase interest. One Festival battle per day was a good sustainable number. Giving everybody 6 hours of battle per day exhausts player enthusiasm.

I totally agree with a reduction in the number of battles per day, but "6 hours of battle per day" only accounts for three 100v100 battles. Those of us who still click the button for a classic guild battle plus taking into account the "opportunity" to fight in three 10v10 battles can lead to 12.5 potential hours of battling. Our guild never farms, so we don't go 12.5 hours unless faced with a bigger, farmer guild OR when we get a really excellent match in classic that has us on the edge of our seats until the final seconds. Nonetheless, I'd be in favor of:

☻ NEW 100v100 and 10v10 seasons
☻ Revamped 100v100 and 10v10 schedules reduced to 2 of each per day
☻ Revamped classic GB to 3-hour, with more rapid generation of tokens
☻ Alteration of the Leaderboards for battles to more significantly assign value to win/loss like the old Festival battles were ranked, instead of battle point accumulation (to dispel the value of farming and bring 'battle' back into focus)

[cheeseslug]

We are also noticing a decline in activity. It means some people are just leaving the game. We don't hold onto inactive "players" so will no doubt cut some and recruit some fresh blood.
It seems a symptom of many things, frustration mostly, at lack of new seasons, having to fight cheating guilds, blue balls and no new content. I'm personally at an all time low with this game and have started spending on another that deserves the $