TGIF! Development News for February 16th, 2018

TGIF! A bit of a shorter update for you this week, but still some changes to cover. We’ll have more to talk about soon as our first Feature Raid for March creeps every closer, but for now let’s go over what happened in the past week:

Mobile App Updates

A couple small updates for the mobile apps this week that will make them a bit more smooth to operate.

We’ve cleaned up that “Awaiting Reply” notification that can get stuck if you delete a message sent to you that you’ve already replied to. This doesn’t completely fix the issue, mind, but if you’ve got any of those hanging around they should be cleaned up and we’ll keep investigating.

The order of Public Messages in your Inbox is now also fixed; sometimes they would show up oldest to newest which isn’t exactly efficient. You’ll now see the freshest messages first in your Inbox.

War Event Update
*Edit* This change has been canceled

Spoiler

One change we’re making to the War Events this week won’t affect the majority of players but it’s good to be aware of it.

Starting next week any Faction/Syndicate/what have you will have to have more than five members to sign up and take part. Any group with less than five people who have already signed up for next week’s Events are fine, but past this point entry will be barred.

We’re doing this to curb some unintended side-effects from a glut of smaller groups, but for regular participants with full rosters this change will not really be noticeable.

Sign-off

We made a lot of behind-the-scenes progress on the Raid Event for March this week and while it isn’t something we’d normally talk about in a TGIF since it is not visible, it is a large cornerstone of what’s going to be coming up.

Look for news on that as well as a sneak preview of Pirate Clan’s fearsome Raid Boss which will be hitting the Seven Seas on March 1st!

Frozen User Count

43

Lame Joke of the Week

How does Moses make tea?

Spoiler

Hebrews it!

 

Why Ban solo players from wars, some choose not to join a syn, so instead create there own, why should they not be able to have fun and play wars like everyone else? game is going down hill fast :/

 

on kong there are high lvl players that have split off and created their own armada due to one reason or another that only have a couple people, due to the AW change they wont be able to join anymore. might want to put a lvl requirement as another check when an armada is signing up so people that are mid to high lvls can still keep separate from armadas they dont want to be with anymore but still want to participate.

Thinking this might cause some of these players to have "friends" or people of the like to happen to join with. Can understand the change though since there has been some discrepancies lately with AW's. Will be nice to go back to normal but now we will have an even smaller pool of armadas to fight. List is already small enough as is lol.

 

I appreciate the feedback BLU 1SE and neill1990. This would be an unintended side affect to this change but we have had some issues of having the event stuffed with "dummy" factions.

No doubt we can respond and remove these Alts but it wouldn't fix the event as the damage has already been done.

Please give more feedback over the weekend and we can re-address this on Monday. We might be able to come to a better solution for everyone.

 

Well it was fun while it lasted.

 

While I understand the reasoning. This sucks. I want to have a chance at getting the fw achievements but I need a break from the drama factions create.

But on the positive note, I'll save some UN so I suppose I should say thank you for keeping me from handing over $$

 

Eh, all folks that cheat will do is drop them in a rival faction/armada and spy and tank that factions wars and still manipulate the war.

But I appreciate y'all trying. This just doesn't feel like the best solution.

 

I do not think that it is fair to ban a fraction, syn, armada, or guild from the wars because they have less than 5 members. Some players do not want to join a group. So, they make one of their own. Why? Because you have made that if you are in a group you receive game playing XP every Monday morning. This XP helps. The XP a player receives in your wars help. Why take it away?

 

why Indeed, instead of banning alts that can mess up the wars, make everyone else pay the price, , no not cool, personally I don't play them but I have a very small guild and armada, and if those few members want to play around and get a few levels, they can, I see way too many people lose friendships over these group events, cause there are always rules, you have to heal , or you have to do this or that, what fun is it to have some bossy player in your group, decide how to and when to play in these events, and if ya don't abide by them they toss the people out and target them, just like years ago with those stupid virtual trophy , gawd forbid someone did not get up in the middle of the night to get their points in, lol

 

some posts from onine.. These are responses from the revamped FP sales. Any response?
not a good sale compared to $25.00 for 275 FPS boycott the rip-off
It's insulting, that they think we don't realize we are paying more even though they are saying 60% off

 

I agree wholeheartedly with Neil! On Armor/Kong there already aren't enough full armadas in the pool to sign up, so we really do need all armadas (regardless of size) to be signing up with all hands on deck!

 

It looks like we jumped the shark a bit on this one. We'll revert the faction size restriction on Wars and look to address this another way.

 

last week TGIF thread i mentioned issue about amada war's letter font visual , the "E" looks like "B" in some case can you please change font to like one on lcn's syn wa r.

 

I see what you are saying now, would be an extremely easy fix. Its just the transparency of the ranking icon. They currently have it set to 0.75 but boosting it to 0.9 or even turning off transparency would make it appear much more clear.

Here is a edited element i did to show the difference -

 

I think something needs done about alt certain faction keeps destroying and making new Alt faction for the purpose of feeding fw kills putting 8 memebers in the factions, if you guys took the time to read the feed in the games you could see it. Its not fare that a faction win fw just cause they cheat when we all spend UN that is OVER priced to buy in the first place just so we can try to out score a faction that get feed unlimited kills from 5 + faction loaded with alts. And then they brag about it in the lounge. Maybe we should all sit out fw maybe then kano will wake up.

 

well the alts need to be reported and kano needs to remove them, seems that is better for us all, honorable players in all aspects of the game, obviously that will require kano to really spend more time investigating cheats, but it needs to be done.

 

I am not clear on your post ??

 

I recently sent a complaint in about this very offer. So if a player is willing to spend more than the typical player, kano lowers the amount of godfathers per dollar spent on the sale items. Not cool, and i wont spend another dime until im offered the same sale as EVERY other player. Kano has done way way to much to cater to the newer people and those that dont spend as much. Wish i was smarter and had quit these games years ago, much more annoying than fun now-a-days.

 

reporting alts to kano hahaha what a joke..kano aint gonna do nothing about it..all them times i reported a player on pirate clan on server 2 she never once gets ban with all her alts on what she has...so i gave up a few years back at actually reporting anyone..so im done with that..what the majority of the player use are..VPN=Virtual private network that is what they use to get away with everything!! Kano needs to set it up where that no one can't use private network on gaming sites..

 

Pretty new to this game so if I dont understand something, please POLITELY correct it. I always tend to have an opinion on things (not the best habit but hey). But when I make an opinion on an issue, I try to present a solution or understand if I cant present a solution than who am I to bitch about the devs not having a solution. Thats not fair. So below I'll post a quote (problem), my solution, and my additional thoughts if you want to read that.

In the case of alt accounts, alt accounts are an Internet games nightmare along with automated bots, cheat coding (aim bot) and such. Every game has them, every game deals with them in different ways. Most notably, EPIC games (Fortnite) sued games who used cheats after repeated bans. Unfortunately, then ended up suing a 14 year old. I doubt Kano wants to do that (most business are in the business of making money not losing it). If anyone can figure out how to successfully permanently ban players from creating alt accounts for the pure purpose of personal gain or advantage over others (not for test or because they got bored and still like the game), please let the world know. Some solutions I present from my understanding:

• From the Player:
  • Report function
    • If you see a clear case of this during or prior to the war, report the alt accounts/armada and then report the accounts/armada using the alt accounts/armada for personal gain. If you ban the MAIN account thats gonna be where the damage will be dealt.
  • Additional thoughts:
    Spoiler

    Unfortunately this is an "after effect" as the effects of reporting will only be seen after the war has started. Though I would say the influx in reporting would be a heads up, especially if 25+ reports each for 2 armadas come around the same time. But you as a player must be willing to accept the fact that for the time being, the cheating armada will have some gains until Kano can do something AND Kano may not have the man power to immediately address the reports coming in. Things takes time.
• From Kano,
  • Division the Player not the Armada
    • Since I'm new, I dont completely understand how wars work but just based on that image posted earlier by Icebreaker. Why is a Division A hitting a Division E? To an extent I can understand as I am one of the lower players in my armada and could only successfully attack Division E players even though we were classed Division C. But thats only a 2 letter difference vs 4. But if you rank the player by division and then rank the armada's overall division power (Yeet - Division E player, in YOLO - Division C Armada) you could then set a limit down how far they can hit, placing alts out of their range. You can hit up as far as you want but they cant counter unless they lose.
  • Report Rewarding
    • Reward players who report SUCCESSFULLY. Encouraging reporting as they are helping to make your game better.
  • Additional Thoughts:
    Spoiler

    Unfortunately, point #1 presents the solution of strip everything and reset your stats so your alt can attack you and you can counter. By to that I would say: Make them pay FP to reset stats (unless you already do that). This solution also requires a lot of reworking of the war system, scoring, filters, explaining, but its just like the battle system as far as I can see. Reward players who report also runs the risk of the Main reporting his own alt and getting FP for that. Though I think there has to be a way to spot that. Pressuring for a connection to a main account, either they're going to point to another dummy and get both accounts banned or be unable to provide the parent account.

In this case, as I stated previously most business (besides charities and even then) are in the business of making money not losing it. This is just typical "Freemium" activity. Business chase "Cash Whales" (the people who will spend 200$ for 1,200 Favor Point to buy that new weapon) and sometimes you have to entice them (couple good deals after a line of crap, loot boxes, couple of wins after a string of losses). You were smart enough to see that in this case. I'm not sure how you want Kano to respond to a typical tactic of every mobile/online/whatever game. Its the same tactic when buying rules. Buy smarter not harder (Harder = waste your money fast, waste resource getting more money or waiting). Use the calculator.

Anyways, there's my points. Sorry the last ones a little on the harsh side but like... its a business not just a game and this happens EVERYWHERE not just in video games but at the grocery store.