Creature Habitats Kill Too Much

Dear Berserker,

I've played this game for many years with much fun. Have played it during big wars between alliances, played it in peacefull times. Even with the background of the PVP aspect of this game, also it had a team player factor, that enabled combined attacks or defense.

The Creature Habitats changed the basics of this way of gaming in many ways. It forces everybody to play on their own in a pre designed way. No teamplay involved. Experience players can manage, but not always, when they play occasionally. So i see 3 ways for starters, where this new feature is a killing aspect for this game.

1: Now we all have NPC's that attack us and forcing us to play this game like you like us to play it. Like an extra tutorial saying:" Build your towns in a way, you can defend against this new feature". This kills the freedom to develop the play as a player likes to play.

2: We can't interact as a team against these attacks. This kills the value of team play against attacking forces.

3. Creature habitats make it so much more difficult for new players to learn to play this game, having small armies wiped in 1 attack for example. So it also kills the growth of this small community.

I understand you like more data, interaction, feedback. Well, here it is:

If you only like to keep fanatic, addicted players in your community, you're on the right track. If you like to keep the player base you have and want it to grow, you're on the wrong track. Make attacks by Creature habitats vissible for alliances, than you may achieve what you may aim for: more interaction, better developed heroes, more community fun and enthousiasm.

So, Berserker, i ask you basically this: Make attacks by Creature Habitats vissible for alliances. That way they fit in with the way this game is developing.

I agree. I have seen new players quit because of this component and don't think they would have if the alliance could have gotten notification about the monster attacks and helped out. There are so many things to learn as a new player and, honestly, you just don't have the knowledge base to deal with the monster attacks adequately early on. I personally like this addition, but do see that it is frustrating to new players and players who are not able to play the game very often. If the alliance could see and respond to the attacks on all members, it would strengthen the bond of the alliance, make it more fun, and lessen the frustration of new players.

I too think the monster attacks are not a good addition, personally I hate them. If you are playing solo or in a small alliance finding them in the fog is like a needle in a haystack. It forces players to play as despot or monarchy because collect troops do not have the strength to take down the habitats. Most players do not have enough playing time for quests and take care of the monsters too. There are to many monsters in the habitats and in the attacking mobs and they are attacking to often.

Me I like them like they are, I don't think anything should change.

i like the creature hab.  but it makes you play like you are at war.  with players that dont play alot they are getting killed.  so if attacks could be seen by everybody in allaince , that would HELP ALOT.

I Have just quit playing this game today because of the monster habitats.  Reasons are:

1. Time  - I don't play for more than maybe 1-2 hours and not every day.  I work full time , commute, have family and lots of other commitments. Plus I don't want to spend my whole free time in front of a screen.

In the time I have to play, it can take all available playing time I have to eg spy or plunder 1 MD which is over an hour away on the map.  That leaves me no time to actually learn or enjoy the rest of the game.

2.Alliances are great but you can't join an alliance straight away and have to have built and developed a fair bit to get consulate levelled up to join.  alliances can help with the fog clearing

3.Fog clearing - most new players ( me included) have no idea of how important it is to clear fog for miles and miles around your town - I had been regularly going to plunder those MDs I'd found but then got destroyed time after time by ones still hidden in fog.

4.Loss of res - you need so many res at the start and again I found that being plundered almost daily just left me with an army to retrain and much less res to build buildings, retrain or even hope to build stashes or shelters big enough to protect my army and res.

5.So disheartening as a newbie player who had previously enjoyed going to locations and solving puzzles and following the plot to keep finding I'd been wiped out or lost eg 7k of res overnnight.  I felt a bit like " what's the point in me retraining and restocking res to build up my towns when they get killed/stolen daily".

6.As I didn't realise there were still several MDs under fog, they grew to high strength and monsters coming for me that I couldn't possibly beat in my towns nor did I have the troops or cats to go and attack myself.  It just felt like I was a fly in a web waiting helplessly for the spider to come and kill me again and again.

7. I know you wanted to bring back fighting and more battles that I understand were common before.  That is great for older and more experienced players but not so great for us newbies - there is so much to learn and understand in the game as it is without making it even harder. Existing heros get to take equipment etc when their 150 days is up, a newbie doesn't get the same. making any battles fairly unequal.

For those reasons, particularly the addition of monster dens,  has destroyed all my fun of this game and I have no enjoyment in it anymore.  I've donated fairly regularly and feel so disappointed in how it's turned out as a game.

I came from regularly loving TT Gold which allowed me to battle monsters as and when I chose and to have troops enough to defend and attack - this game doesn't have that.  New players are often sitting ducks for big established alliances to attack time and time and destroy.

If you want to grow this and get new players in you either need a much clearer instruction book/guide ( no one has time to read posts going back 5+ years in the hope you'll find the right info on here) or even the odds a little so newbie players get protection from others and MDs.  Also you should be able to join an alliance right from the start before you make mistakes that can't be undone before you learn from alliance members.

Sorry Devs team.  I love love loved this game but not any more. 

Thanks to all who helped me or gave advice.  Play nice with the other alliances and remember to be kinder to new players who are probably struggling to work out what the heck to do next!

I dislike the Creature Habitats very much. It is not that I mind losing army, or having to build defences in town. It takes out the one thing I loved most of this game: the freedom to choose how you want to play. The beauty of this game is, that there is not just one good way, and one bad way to play. There are so many ways you can play.

But now, it feels like I am forced to focus on those habitats... and it does not bring any kind of satisfaction. It adds nothing to the group dynamics, the interaction between players. We are playing solo, running up and down those Habitats to plunder or destroy. Or we spend days and days building houses and towers... houses and towers... houses and towers.

If you want more interaction this is definitly not the way to achieve that goal.

I have almost finished the Wonder of the World, get that victory done, and will take a break; burning candles and say a lot of prayers that the dev's will remove those Habitats.

1. Time  - I don't play for more than maybe 1-2 hours and not every day.  I work full time , commute, have family and lots of other commitments. Plus I don't want to spend my whole free time in front of a screen.

Berserker, that point is very interesting, you should think about it, not changing anything in the game but for when you are advertising for the game: the biggest difference between tt1 and tt2, is that, tt1 is a very short, casual (it was on big fish, that's saying enough) game, while tt2 is a very long game that's more made for hardcore gamers with no job like me (also, for the same reason (mental health issues) I have no children and no friends, that sure gives a lot of free time).

So when you advertise for this game, I guess you tell people "Did you like Totem Tribe and Totem Tribe Gold, doing puzzles, casual gaming etc ? Then you will like the sequel Totem Tribe 2" while in fact you should say the opposite: "Do you want to play a hardcore game for hours everyday for months, where the more you play, the more you win ? Then this game is for you, no other game goes as far as this one", this way you would attract some people that would stay, instead of attracting some that feel that this game isn't casual like tt1 was and stop playing after a few weeks/months, still in classical/medieval age (some people stop playing in those ages because they stop quickly, but for some like Liney, it is because even after months of play they weren't able to play enough to reach higher ages, I noticed often some people with very low population/culture still in those ages even at 149 days while I already completed the whole tech tree in about 3 months).

Even with the game now available to mobile, the idea of playing a little bit from time to time doesn't work for most people: to play optimally (at least to always be upgrading buildings in all towns) you would need to connect like every 10 minutes, so if you work in an office (and if your boss is okay with seeing you play a video game from time to time...), then yes you can do that, but I worked in factories and there was no way this was going to happen (it's not only that I was busy, it's that the company forbid the use of mobiles at work), at most I would have been able to play 10 minutes every 2 hours for 8 hours everyday. So yeah, to play tt2 well, you either need to have a job that let you play it a bit often, or no job at all, hence what I suggest you to advert next times.

To get back on the subject of monster habitats, I personally like them and don't think they should change, I have multiple victories so they are harder for me yet I find them balanced, BUT, I see all those reports from my alliance members, and it is very clear since the beginning and still now that they are pathetic at defending against them, and even worst at attacking (they likely don't realize that because of collectivism they loose all their units without killing any), so maybe some in-game tutorial about that would help them, you can maybe just make a post about them on this forum (or maybe I will myself, I have the time for it, I just need to be sure that everyone that struggle with them would see it easily, as most people never check the forum. Also a Russian and maybe German translation would have to be done by someone else), and put the link to it (named "How to defend or attack efficiently against those monsters" I think) in every description of monster habitats when you select one and click on "?".

If one has a job then they should have some money. Maybe more building queueing or even automation options should be available for sale (the player is probably unable to queue buildings or training if they don’t have the required resources yet, but those resources will add while the player has to be offline…) But i can’t help but keep thinking about difficulty levels. Maybe Sid Meier is a genius but among his game series the one that gained maximum popularity and became the industry changer (influenced this game somehow as well) was the one that practically always had not only single player mode, but also Chieftain difficulty level, precisely fitting the current ingame chat request of ‘the freedom to choose to play the game the way you like’.

If one has a job then they should have some money. Maybe more building queueing or even automation options should be available for sale (the player is probably unable to queue buildings or training if they don’t have the required resources yet, but those resources will add while the player has to be offline…) But i can’t help but keep thinking about difficulty levels. Maybe Sid Meier is a genius but among his game series the one that gained maximum popularity and became the industry changer (influenced this game somehow as well) was the one that practically always had not only single player mode, but also Chieftain difficulty level, precisely fitting the current ingame chat request of ‘the freedom to choose to play the game the way you like’.

Thanks for that post Orange knee.  I do have a job and it is reasonably paid but have you not seen what is happenning in the UK right now?  Fuel poverty, food poverty,  cost of living crisis is very real.  I have paid for items in this game and speed ups etc. I am leaving with a balance of 7169 encord coins.  BUT I don't have tons of spare cash to splash on this anymore.  Plus it won't attract new players who don't yet get the joy of this game if they have to start spending money just to progress a tiny bit or survive in the game.  You gotta hook them in first so they want to spend on it not force them to spend before they are interested in it because I don't think it the economic climate we have today, people will keep chipping in at the early stages of the game.

No one has mentioned this point yet.  As I posted on the Mob Den introduction page, I really find the mob attacks annoying and negatively affecting my game play.  In particular, it is really disruptive to attempting to achieve (an already difficult) culture victory when you can't have much, if any army/towers.  Loss of resources and a dead hero are eating into an already short timeline to get this victory.  

At a minimum, allow the mobs attacks to be announced in alliance chat for the ability to reinforce.  Preferably, eliminate or cut them wayyyyy back to an occasional strike.

it is really disruptive to attempting to achieve (an already difficult) culture victory when you can't have much, if any army/towers.  Loss of resources and a dead hero are eating into an already short timeline to get this victory.  

Berserker, I though a lot about this precise case, and I think she's right. If you think "it would be the same or even worst if you were attacked by real players", the big difference is that with players the alliance is alerted, so maybe a fair update here would be that, if you have 25/25 goals reached in your pantheon, then in that case your alliance get an alert when you are attacked by monsters ?

Monsters prioritize less cultural towns than more cultural ones in your kingdom, that was specifically made to simplify culture victory.

With that, for culture victory, dragons still kill many units (that you can't retrain for next time) and/or plunder a lot of resources. The only thing one could do would be to have a 6th "bait" town which is purposely empty so monsters only attack this town, but then you have 2 choices: being in monarchy, or having 10% more corruption in every town so you would need more culture on other towns to still have rainbows and also some culture on the bait town itself to reach the total culture goals, but I'm not sure that it would be just more difficult to do for, say the 10th culture victory, it might be impossible because of the corruption and the amount of culture required, but maybe in that case monarchy is simply required and I'm fine with that. Also the bait town could at least make units, but you would need more than 20 riflemen 20 commandos to kill dragons, but since you can make 40 towers I guess that's fine. It's just weird that from now on you have to do a bait town to do culture victory, you made monster habitats to motivate people to pvp and this is not related at all.

I agree with the other post to this issue. Get rid of or reduce the monster dens to one per hero

I feel that monster dens have failed.  They have not acheived bers desire for more PVP.  For an experienced player, I find them at best a nuisance.  They bring no positive to my game.  For a bigginer player, I Cannot image how they would cope.  I have only heard from 1 or 2 players who think they are OK.  Usually for reasons like: It gives a little rss on plunder.

I have noted some players build more towers, perhaps in 1 town where they keep their army.  This has had minimal change to our PVP gameplay as despots, we always anticipate towers.

Some players may decide to build some seige and go attack the monster towns, but this tends to be 10-20 catapults which is sufficient.  This does not seem to entice the player to begin PVP as this amount of seige is innefective against a live player who can recover such damage within an hour perhaps.

In my honest opinion, momnster towns need to either be redesigned to acheive the intended purpose (or a new purpose, i still think NPC towns could be great for alliance group fights / alliance PVP training / Alliance PVP defense training / Quest goals / etc) , or removed altogether as they are adding nothing possitive to almost all players game experience as they currently stand.

My 2c :D

They have not acheived bers desire for more PVP.

Well, there is at least one alliance that does now and didn't seem to do before.

For the rest, if I keep seeing people complaining about habitats, I will make a guide of how I easily get rid of them.

I feel that monster dens have failed.  They have not acheived bers desire for more PVP. 

You misunderstood my desire then. The problem was people are getting too soft, they join alliance and noone attacks them so they skip defenses entirely which shifts the game too much to the "farm game" side which I don't like. So the creature habitats make you pay more attention to fighting and defense like it was in the early days of TT2 when alliances still been fighting with each other. Comparing to those days and those wars, creature habitats and their attacks are peanuts.

Don't agree. The big difference between the habitats and those old days of war, is that the habitats are strictly solo playing. It does not stimulate any kind of interaction. It does not make players paying more attention to fighting and defense... they just leave the game.

And getting attacked with a big mob of dragons and not being able to reinforce, because the player is not online, is not peanuts. It is just frustrating and demotivating.