We have nearly finished 40 days ofA5, and have had plenty of opportunity to test the full impact of the changes made for novice protection on game play. I would like to take this opportunity to initiate a discussion with the hope that some additional adjustments and/or improvements to the system can be considered.
After discussing with others both in my alliance and outside, it would seem that while the goal was to protect 'newbies' from tough attacks by more experienced players, it has also introduced a very severe restriction on the PVP aspect of game play in early stages. This seems to be inconsistent with and potentially a negation of the introduction of the stripes system, where the hope was to encourage PVP players to start fighting early.
My alliance has been involved now in several siege attacks and almost every single attack results in newbie protection being applied immediately. This means that a single target can only be hit once every 12 hours, or if the defender is ‘savvy’ enough, they can use flags to make this once every 24 to 72 hours. Even then, coordinated attacks are a definite must’ since a single attack worth a disappointing 2k of damage can be enough to trigger the protection. While I understand this was the point of adding newbie protection, which I agree is a good thing, it has served to protect experienced players as well *brand new players* to the game. No one is disputing that brand new players need some additional protection from the established, experienced players, but every hero, new or very experienced, is protected under this system as long as they meet the protection criteria.
As per the original posts We Did It For The Newbies, and Prolonged Protection, newbie protection is disabled if any of the following conditions are met a) hero level is 10 or above (although has been tested – heroes level 10 (and as we discovered today, heroes level 11) are still protected as noted in bug reports Novice Protection Not Working and Novice Protection) b) domain has more than 4 towns (not yet been tested) c) hero has reached medieval age (not yet been tested) or d) domain is older than 2 months ( 20 more days remaining so not tested). Additionally, it was stipulated that a town with a lot of military buildings can take a lot more damage before protection is enabled (exact figures are unknown). We have noticed that for despot heroes, even as low as level 5, novice protection does not get triggered when there are a number of military buildings in the town. Since despots typically build more military buildings than collective heroes this has the net effect of rewarding collective players with novice protection on top of their already 300% defensive bonus, regardless of how many towers they have. Moreover, targeting military buildings has resulted in triggering novice protection since that one element of prevention is removed, again, regardless of the number of towers present.
Of these four conditions, the majority of the players are still protected under condition a) with ONLY 25% of all heroes in game now reaching level 10. This leaves a large portion of the map, still protected to this day under the novice system. In early stages, war is difficult enough, when rafts and siege weapons are still being built. Damage done is very little and travel times long, so repeated attacks (even without novice protection in place) are not possible, unless the defender is a very close neighbor. As mentioned before, coordinated attacks are definitely required, especially if the target is well defended with army and/or towers – but again, coordinating with others in different time zones and with such a huge map, can also be a difficult challenge.
No one that chooses to play despot wants things to be easy. With all the changes introduced over the last two alphas, it gets more and more challenging. What I am requesting is a discussion and review of the novice protection system to ‘rebalance’ the PVP aspect of the game a bit, and get back to the original reason why this system was put in place. We have been encouraged to ‘fight’ early, but instead, we are fighting with our hands tied behind our backs, and we are no longer able to defend our domains by sending out retaliatory attacks or by attacking aggressive collect players that throw up flags and build on borders due to the precipitous triggering of novice protection.
Ideally, newbie protection should be granted to players just starting and learning the game (i.e. new accounts only) since experienced players already know how to defend their domains. If they choose instead to build only culture, they should not also be rewarded with all sorts of additional protection simply because they choose expansion over defense. If this is not an option, and we have to continue on with the complex, restrictive system as it is, I am opening the discussion to have the following points be considered (note some of these have already been suggested in other threads, just combining them all together here):
1. Reduce the hero level requirement for disabling protection from 10 to 5, and (as suggested already by Tsunami) base it on hero experience instead of level. As evident from the current rankings, only 25% of players have made it to lvl 10, despite all new monster dens added this alpha. Either players are not visiting the dens as often as expected, they have chosen not to build their armies to fight what is in them or, they are not levelling up their heroes by meditating. (At the very least, please fix the open bug report, since protection is still being activated with levels 10 and11 heroes).
2. As indicated, more military buildings reduces entitlement to novice protection. Please include towers in this clause as More towers = less additional protection.
3. Reduce amount of time for disabling protection from 2 months to 1 month. The game is supposed to be played in 6 month segments, allowing players to play ‘under the radar’ for 1/3 of the total session time seems a bit much.
4. Allow users to turn off protection if they choose. As a despot player, if I get attacked and lose resources in the attack, I’d like to be able to go out and plunder to make up for the loss or retaliate against the attacker immediately and not have to be forced to wait 12 hours to do so.
5. Disable protection once a player has joined an alliance. Joining an alliance already gives a bit of protection in itself, as in order to attack that player with siege, war must be declared, and first researched by an alliance leader (and it’s far down in the classical age research tree). Additionally, new players learning the game now have a huge support system with other players in their alliances (if they join one) for game tips, tricks, reinforcements and resource help once in an there.
6. Increase the total amount of damage allowed before protection is activated and possibly base it also on total amount of buildings within a single domain instead of on a per-town basis. We have seen protection activated on domains with three towns when as little as 5-6k of damage is done to just one of those towns. This is no more than a few levels of a building or two, depending on what is hit. This is hardly a huge loss when no damage was done to any of the other towns in the domain.
7. Consider allowing only one hero per account to be protected under this system. So often we see newbies start 4-5 heroes all at once without even taking the time to learn the game first. As a result, we have a scattering of these small domains that take forever to level up and grow because the players don’t have enough time to play them and they all get the benefit of novice protection when someone who is actually playing and expanding encroaches on them and seeks to remove the untended domain from their expansion path.
