Posts by Dutcher

  • Exploiting the game to gain unfair advantage

    HMR, that's great but it's also ludicrous. And you proved my point. Sharing an account with multiple people makes it much much easier to win.

    I didn't say it was necessary, I said it guarantees you will win or at the very least do better than any single player.


    And yes Samisu of course there are players that were able to win by themselves but you are missing the point entirely.

    Playing with multiple people greatly increases the chances of winning and give that account a huge unfair advantage over any other singel player account.

    As HMR mentions here, you need a lot of activity, at least EVERY hour at recalc and to participate in all comps and the only way to do that is to have multiple players on the same account.


    I would even easily argue, that it creates an unfair advantage 10x larger than having multiple accounts, which in reality other than bidding extra money for workers does not really bring any other unfair advatage.

    Nevertheless you have designated playing multiple accounts as unfair and not allowed, yet you do allow multiple players on the same account?

    This is really crazy and ridiculous. And your explanation on "trying out new games bla bla" is not really funny or relevant.


    You have legalized a huge unfair advantage and ruined any competitive factor in the game, and ignored all logic regarding cheating in contrast to all other Travian games.

    I stadd by my argument, if you want to ever win a server, you will need to play on your account with multiple players. The more players the better. And I can not believe that RN would want this or that the current rules were set specifically to accommodate this with intention.


    I suspect you set these ridiculous rules because (as Octa mentions above) you simply have no good way to prevent family members from playing on the same account.

  • Exploiting the game to gain unfair advantage

    Exactly my point, you can't beat an account that can run 24/7 with multiple people running it. And i would pose that It is as important as in Travian, it guarantees a win.


    I am amazed and disappointed that this is allowed. It's crazy, what is this game all about now? Just huddle up with 5 players in 3 time zones and win server after server.

    WTAF?


    No wonder I can't place higher than 2nd lol. You know what, you can keep your 4th star, I don't want it anymore if this is how this game is supposed to be played.

  • Exploiting the game to gain unfair advantage

    I want more clarification please on the 'Hotseat Account".

    There seems to be many players including local crew members that say it is allowed to play with multiple players on 1 account, as long as those players do not play on any other accounts on the same server.


    This .... is complete cheating and is against the rules imo. It allows an account to run competitions 24/7 and to win any server they want, there is no physical way in the world any other player can compete with that!


    According to my 10 year long career with various Travian games, it has always been the rule that only 1 player per account is allowed, and only 1 account per player.

    What in the world is going on here, am I stupid for not turning my account into a Hotseat or is everyone (including crewmembers) cheating?

  • 🔀 Sidetracked Bugs

    The missing 'jump to bottom' button on all of the industry ranking screens is still missing, and the 'jump to top' button is still there, which makes no sense as the rankings all open at the top already and it is impossible to scroll down to the bottom if you have 500 industries and are only allowed to page down 5 at a time (equals more than 100 button presses if the ranking screen does not freeze before you get there).


    Simply put, the 'jump to top' button should have been a 'jump to bottom' button.

    Especially on the industry investment tab ranking but it is a problem on all of the rankings tabs.


    It shouldn't take that long to fix this either, just change the effect of the already existent but useless 'jump to top' button.

    You can probably get it done before I reach the bottom of my next 0 investment industry search :P

  • 2nd video still not working

    At least that's the same on mobile. If you don't press 'collect' right away, it freezes and you have the watch the first 30 second blank screen countdown again.

    And again. and again. and again,

    Then after you finally were able to watch the second blank screens 30 second countdown, you again have to be quick to collect, otherwise, you can re watch the amazingly fun 2nd 30 second blank screen countdown again, and again, and again, and again ....


    oh, what a fun game this has become, truly enjoyable :(


    The entire video bonus system is now broken, both on web and on mobile. Good job.

  • 🚅 New Shop

    I can't get rid of the notification that you can collect the bonus. Even after I collect it, the notification keeps coming back.

    It's very annoying and slows the game down even more.

    The prizes... oh well, we'll see.

  • I can't get into the game servers

    You are not the only one. The issue of packet loss, freezing the game or unable to log in, or loading bars hanging at 50% or 0% is quite common.

    Although recently it has been stable for me, I had many many issues with this before (based in USA but the distance and teh speed is not the problem).

    The problem is indeed bad Telia hops.There is nothing you can do about it. But RN / Travian can. They have the service level agreement with Telia and can follow up if there is a big problem with their customers (us) not being able to reach the RN servers.


    So, the issue is really about how to get RN to get Travian to get Telia to get their act together ;)

  • 💬 Let's discuss the changes in videos

    You could have just added a 5 second skip to the long, useless, 0 money making and boring travian game videos, like we asked.

    That way both Web AND Mobile players would have been on the same level with equal chances and all would have been able to take advantage of video bonuses while still enjoying the game.


    This way, you have made it impossible for anyone to do this. The game is already unplayable in html, needing to open windows, scroll map or change trains multiple times before it works correctly, taking enormous amounts of playing time away. And now you have just eaten up ALL of the remaining playing time with the 30 second countdowns. With 30 seconds per video, it takes at least 0,5 x 6 = 3 minutes (usually 5 with some time in between videos, so let's call it 4) to watch all of 1 player's videos. With 25 players in a corp, that's 100 minutes to make 1 full round if you are the only one watching. The restaurant bonus only takes 90 minutes to regenerate, so now it is IMPOSSIBLE to activate everyone's station bonuses.

    Furthermore, half of the time after watching a long boring Travian game video or blank screen on mobile, if you do not press collect right away within a few seconds, the second video does not activate and you get stuck. That requires clicking away the video you just watched and starting over, with each single video now taking well over a minute to watch. And for what? What is the intention or value in this other than to just annoy every single player?


    Plus, who in the world thought it was a good idea to take 100% of player's time and force them to watch useless blank screens or videos of other games which they have seen 1mln+ times, instead of enticing them to actually play the game itself? Even just for a few minutes every hour can I please try to play the game?


    "Rail Nation, the great strategic Blank Screen watching game! You will be able to stare at a blank screen 24/7 without having to do anything complicated or interesting. Come play now for free with all your friends!"

    "Also reschedule your trains over and over and over and over and over again with no effect, your enjoyment will be endless!"


    Any other marketing statements or external adverts stating anything different than the above should be deemed misleading and false.

    I stand by my judgement of stupidity and add on a case of insanity...

    Goodbye.

  • 🚆 Endgame tonnage (City warehouse size)

    Just a suggestion, I have seen the usage of the word 'warehouse' used for many different things and I believe it is confusing to many.

    You are not talking about the actual (facility) warehouse sizes or levels, but the end game Quota that needs to be filled, yes?


    I understand, cities have stocks etc, built up delivered goods which are 'warehoused' of course, but I would suggest just using the term Quota instead of Warehouse for city level up amounts and end game filling of goods. It will be easier to understand.

  • 💬 Let's discuss the changes in videos

    Same. We demand 5 second skip buttons for boring, useless and non-working videos. We ask 1000x.

    And what do the geniuses do? Keep the non-working videos that do not complete and do not give the 2nd bonus, and change the 5 second mobile countdown to 30 seconds. Really genius. Why why why ???? It seems RN takes every opportunity they get to make the game more unplayable and more annoying or boring for the players. Every single time. 1000 times you can make suggestions or offer solutions. They will just never listen and probably do the exact opposite. It's almost funny, if it wasn't extremely frustrating.


    Goodbye RN, it was a fun game for a while but you screwed it up beyond repair and are providing 0 hope that anything will change. And I'm not talking about the game itself which is still unplayable for me, but more so because of your attitude, stupidity and unwillingness to listen to the players. I wish you good luck in your future endeavors, you will need it.

  • New icons on the RGs

    When are they finally going to fix / swap the icons for silicone & quartz?

    This huge mistake by the Devs has been a bug since the beginning, a very annoying one.

    (quartz is a mineral rock, and should be represented by the purple minerals which is now stupidly called silicone.

    silicone, is sand, which is now represented by the purple rocks). lol.

  • 💬 Let's discuss the changes in videos

    Thank you for the reply Salix, and I understand what you are trying to say regarding 'cross selling' and having players informed about all the different products a company has to offer.


    But there is also something called 'Cannibalism' in business, where different divisions of the same company try to compete with each other. The outcome is always the same: bankruptcy.


    Gamers are generally well informed about the total offering of Travian games, as they are clearly displayed on the Travian site. I have played many of them over the years. The real problem is that you think that gamers will dedicate more playing time and money to Travian games if they switch to another Travian game. This is just simply not the case and all you are doing is pulling a customer you already won in different directions, splitting their gaming time (and probably therefore also their money as they are not going to magically increase their gaming budget all of a sudden) between different games. The real marketing value you (read Travian) should be after is marketing your games to NEW customers, not current customers. And you should definitely not be annoying or boring your current customers to death with these pointless marketing tactics. Even if you are able to pull a player away from RN to a new game AND you are able to increase his daily gaming time from say 8 hours to 16 hours (which is highly unlikely) AND if you are able to increase his budget he or she is willing to spend on games, in the process you will still lose 10 other players to your competitors, because they are beyond frustration with these videos and can not bear to watch a single one of them anymore (even if you did just add 2 new ones like adam's office view and American Dream). In these couple of days I have already watched those another 1000 times and can probably draw them frame by frame already from memory. The older Travian game videos I have to guess at least 100,000 times each :P. What in the world do you hope to accomplish by forcing me to watch these in full length that many times???


    I have a lot of experience in marketing, I have seen great marketing campaigns and very poor ones. This strategy is a poor one, and although I do not have access to the numbers I strongly believe the thinking is flawed and Travian is only hurting themselves and wasting a lot of time and effort on the wrong target market, while at the same time pushing valued and difficult to win current customers away. I would urge you to really think about this.


    Last point, great that there will be less need for the 'back up videos' in the future, but this I also find hard to believe. Over the last 2 years, more than 95% of all videos I received have been Travian game videos. They are now maybe 99%. I simply do not believe you that all of a sudden this will switch to less than 10% or some other small number after COVID is over. Furthermore, the mobile users all have a 5 second countdown already. So why punish the web users until they are unable to compete and until they seriously fall behind in game vs the mobile users? What is the business or marketing strategy behind this??? It can not be a good thing to treat users that differently or to give huge advantages or disadvantages to certain platforms. Before you realize what you are doing, you will lose an entire player base!


    Also, what exploit are you referring to? You don't have to explain it in detail, but you would only be giving the web users a similar (albeit still smaller due to loading times) advantage as the mobile users. If there is an 'exploit' then this is already available to half of your players and not to the other half?