Is it just me, or has there been a serious decline in the number of players that participating in the EC? In the past three EC's that I've participated in, one had 4 players total, one had 2 players total, and one had just me.

What is the cause of this mysterious decline? I propose that the answer can be found in nuts, and not the crunchy ones loved by squirrles everywhere, but the digital kind that are supposed to be spent on kingdoms.

Most players that I've talked to don't like digital acorns. They say that the acorns are worthless, especially given the fact that acorns can not currently be used to do anything in you kingdom thanks to the "expansion error". (To those that don't know: once you place a certain number of items, the game wants you to expand your kingdom before placing more figures. Unfortunately, it also wants you to expand before expanding, meaning that you are unable to spend Acorns).

There's a prominent theory that states that people will spend money when they have a chance to make money. That chance doesn't even have to be a good chance: take a look at the lottery system in many states!

In terms of the game, when there is the possibility of winning gold (or power, which can be converted to gold), players will spend money (revenue for Jed) to buy packs, to enter domain leagues, to play keep cards --> because they want to build a deck that is good enough to consistantly win tournaments, giving more gold and more power. When there is nothing to win, many players won't spend money anymore.

I know a prominent player in this game who is currently not spending any more money on packs or leagues because of the fact that there is nothing worthwhile (in his opinion) of winning.

Jed, has revenue increased or decreased as a result of the Acorn introduction?

All this being said, I don't beleive the real problem is Acorns. I think the root of the problem is Alt accounts.

Currently, an alt account can be used to horde acorns, leaving no paper trail and no way for other players to get those acorns back.

Alt accounts are the reason the ladder stopped giving away gold, as they were being abused by great players on low rated accounts.

Alt accounts can be used in domain leagues to give free wins to yourself.

I strongly feel that the banning of alt accounts would allow for tournaments to give out money again, causig players to spend money to make money, making this game a viable product for the developer.

And is it really that difficult to tie an account to the IP address and only allow one account per IP? Is it that hard to set up a system to monitor accounts and, if you notice recurring unbalanced trades between the same to accounts, to deduce that one is an alt?

_________________

Altren wrote:

I agree with Keyser, and that's what I'm planning to implement actually.

|| The Rise of the DCC | Plasmatium Netherious | Tastes Like Chicken | The Astridian Conspiracy ||

Guild -> | Platypus Rising|

detecting fraud can be very difficult and time consuming.

personally, I think the seeming stagnation of TFW has nothing to do with alts or acorns -- it is a lack of faith in both existing and new players that money spent is worthwhile. from a player perspective, changes are implemented and documented in a very haphazard way. similarly with bug fixes. if I were a player looking to invest in the game, I'd want to know what I am investing in, have an idea of the future roadmap, and be assured that the administration is responsive. sadly, in the year I have been here, I have mostly seen regression in these areas.

Yes, detecting it can be difficult, but I think it's easier to do in this case. The IP check is simple. IPs should be logged when a user logs in.

Making alts against the rules and having a dire consequence for them would also put players on the look out for other players that are using alts. I think that most of us have alts right now, and that's OK, as they aren't against the rules. However, using alts to get an unfair advantage (such as alts raiding the acorns or entering a tournament against yourself to give one account more wins) should have consequences.


I fully agree that there should be more documentaition and a face on is happening. I'm more than happy to do that job if Jed would send me a list of current projects, fixes, plans, etc. I can make them into a nice presentable public new document.

_________________

Altren wrote:

I agree with Keyser, and that's what I'm planning to implement actually.

|| The Rise of the DCC | Plasmatium Netherious | Tastes Like Chicken | The Astridian Conspiracy ||

Guild -> | Platypus Rising|

I mostly agree with both Keyser and Queesai.
First, let me be clear. TFW is a great game to me because it combines the best aspects of board games and CCGs. It's cool and I plan to stay around for a long while.
That said, I agree with Keyser about alt accounts. My biggest complaint about the game is the abuse of alt accounts, which has diminished some of the nicer secondary aspects of the game. I miss the old ladder which awarded gold. The ladder allows new players to compete with experienced players on a more or less even footing. I think it less effective at keeping new players now that it awards phantoms instead of gold and it sucks the format had to be changed because of cheaters. It sucks that abuse of alt accounts can sway the outcome of domain leagues. It even sucks that people are using alt accounts to cheat with acorns… which cannot be exchanged for cards inside of TFW or real money outside of TFW. That helps to turn public opinion against acorns and kingdoms before they have a chance to be evaluated on their own merits. As a secondary point, if people are willing to cheat to gain a currency completely useless outside of TFW and mostly useless in it, how can TFW reasonably expect to create any contest with a prize and not expect abuse if it is so easy to do?
TFW has bent over backwards to allow alt accounts, and I must admit I don’t understand why. Cheating with alt accounts essentially ruined the ladder and has weakened the domain leagues. And now people are willing to use alt accounts to cheat to get something as completely worthless as acorns. These features are not the core aspect of the game, but the hooks which make people decide the spend money to acquire the resources needed to be competitive in the game at a non-noob level. If these hooks are continually undermined by alt account abuse, I don’t see how the game can convert enough new potential players into regular hard-core players needed to make the game viable long term. Stopping abuse of alt accounts is not a new feature, but a change which I think would enhance the enjoyment of existing aspects of the game (especially if the ladder gave out gold again).
My second biggest complaint about the game is shoddy documentation. The Tutorial game is decent, and a current instruction manual is being written. (Thank you Altren) But Queeshai is correct in saying how haphazardly changes are implemented. For a day or so, people were wondering if ECs were giving out 400 power instead of 400 acorns. Combined with the complete lack of notice of what kingdoms were, and the buggy-ness of them when rolled out, it was not a real smooth implementation. So in addition to seconding what Queeshai said, I’d like to add a buzz of nervous uncertainty around what is happening to a game is not generally what developers try to achieve. But, more often than not, that is what TFW creates. On the positive side, I thought a good job was done in keeping people appraised of changes in the last round of balancing.

The Pug has spoken.

Can't tie an account to an IP... first of all, many people have dynamic IP's and their accounts will become unusable once that IP changes. The IP will also change when you want to play away from your usual place.

You also can't really restrict usage to one logged-in account per IP. That would mean someone and his roommate/boytoy couldn't play at the same time during their rest period because they share a single public IP even if they have separate computers.

You can't restrict accounts to one account per email address since those are as cheap and easy to get as acorns.

You can't prevent two accounts from playing against each other more than X times over a Y period of time because... well, then you run out of possible opponents very fast.

The only reasonable way to prevent result manipulation with alts is with a human/subhuman moderator making objective judgements. I nominate... nobody... Heads are too hot in this game.

Best to do what other games do, accept as many alt accounts as they can get and minimize the damage that they can do. A good way to handle that is with a currency separate from gold, one that can't be traded, is rewarded based on in-game performance and is markedly less valuable and more difficult to obtain than the basic currency (gold).

Now, some of you may argue that what I just described are... wait for it... here it comes... ACORNS!!!

Well, not really... I did say, "markedly less valuable" not "completely devoid of value".

There are quite a few of opinions about how acorns should be handled and that does not count "shoving them up your arse." Most pressing issue to be adressed, in my opinion, is how worthless they are. How difficult is it to get acorns, really? Build a bunch of alts and raid them... Too lazy? Join a 3-man EC and hope to get a bye, then resign your match... Still too lazy? Chat in the lobby for 3 hours and get some for nothing.

What do you get once you have all those acorns? Well... you get a means to make it even easier to get more acorns!!! Eventually people will realize they're stuck in an endless cycle of amassing acorns and when they have 982,284,201,573 acorns... well, what else are they gonna do with them?

So... back to alts... you want to get rid of alts because of how they're affecting acorns? Just wait until they hit a few million acorns in their account and the alts will be gone. Problem solved on that end.

What about the alts on other formats like leagues that once meant something? That is really only something that can be overcome by a larger player base or, heck, even more participation! It gets much less practical to do result manipulation in, say, domain league with increased competition. There's a lot of math involved and I'm not a fan of maths and stuff but the way it works is, you eventually hit a breaking point where the 50g cost of entering alts in a league nets you less gold in rewards to your primary account. The alt can no longer win a couple of games on its own and feed the primary account and still win something. Someone else do the maths...

Additionally, limiting the games to 1 per interval per opponent will help a lot in that aspect... it's also much easier than:

A) Creating IP restrictions and the like.
B) Writing a long rant about acorns being worthless and then answering the whole thread with half a sentence.

_________________
Looking for: Crumbling Alone (2)
Also looking for: Revenant Bishop, Osin Faith Healer, Pilgrim's Cairn, Avenging Angel (2)