[FAQ] Suffering from massive attacks, destruction, game without war, defenses...

Very well done  Stitch, as usual :)

I need to post this before leaving the game.  I am a peaceful player in an alliance.  I and members of my alliance are being constantly attacked by another alliance and our towns destroyed.  We are not able to defend as we are being made weaker and weaker.  The game does not do enough to protect players who want to play a peaceful game.  As the game stands I will never pay for it and others feel the same.  I will not be recommending it to anyone else unless more protection is given for peaceful players.  Many others are leaving the game for the same reason.

I think the attitude of the berserker is, If you cant stand the heat get out of the kitchen. I dont think that the peaceful player is wanted in this game. I spent 5 months building up my towns  and my army only to be wiped out completely. I put my army of over 130 units including full level ballistas  and full oil towers against an army of over 700 units with planes, tanks and cannons. My army was totally destroyed and my town demolished while the attacking army didnt lose not even 1 unit and the berserker calls this fair. 

How come the official FAQ and the About page (quoted before) accessible from this website’s header are still so full of fake promises for a TT1 fan that contradict everything admitted in this well hidden thread?

No, that’s not how communication works. Not just the reader is solely to be blamed for ‘misinterpreting’ a text, the writer bears a share of responsibility as well. The audience’s expectations, often based on previous experience, can be or be not taken into account. If the game is an unique and non-trivial mix, nobody expects this uniqueness until has to find out the hard way and only then get the idea to look for something with ‘suffering’ and ‘destruction’ in the header.

Quite clearly i suggest to change wrong statements in the FAQ and About. Myself i could only write in Russian but anyway i have near zero experience in the game (instead realizing what it actually is from the forums and reviews while the FAQ would have hugely misleaded me as well) so the exact wording is not what i’m able to suggest. Unfortunately the ingame tutorial doesn‘t inform about the actual cruel world out there any better, but in the reply above i was only talking about the website.

If i’m allowed to post one example of how ‘wrong’ interpretation works. A casual player is often the one who never wants to compete in effectiveness against hardcore human players but is used to beating a limited, casually adjusted AI in many ‘cute’ games (that, btw, throw a ton of praise and pixelated reward on you even when you actually suck). In TT1 as far as i remember if one failed their first attempt on one island they had to redo just that one island and the hostile AI could not follow them to their base and burn it to the ground, forcing them to restart the entire game from scratch because on some very late stage it finally turns clear they’re comparatively too weak. With this experience, a casual player comes here and reads: “…steady expansion, trading, quests, or puzzles, you will feel right at home too. …a very serious defense bonus … you will keep that protection until you feel ready to interact with others, not after a small amount of time like one week.” This definitely reads like: nobody hurts your puzzle solving and lazy growing intil you yourself venture somewhere out in a T-shirt that says ‘OK, kick me now’. While all it actually means is you can keep the ridiculous Collectivism bonus for more than one week. Well, how much that is an effective ‘serious protection’ of itself (and a shield from… interaction?!), we have heard from many reports above. Actual players also say you have to chat all the time, to beg ones for mercy and others for advice, and instead of learning from own experience and own (punished with sliiiiiight drawbacks you’re used to) mistakes you have no better choice than to become a pawn of your experienced allies’ direction because they only need an effective participant in their alliance.

Another example of ‘wrong’ experience leading to ‘misinterpreting’ the same text may come even from war pvp games where the worst things attackers could do to you was, steal a (maybe large) share of resources, or enslave you to constantly receive that share of resources but then automatically provide protection from other stealers in the same time. Not burn most of your empire! Yet those games would easily prevent clashing of players whose abilities are by whatever reasons too different, by dividing everyone into leagues (eras here) where a player needed to manually move to the next league (era) to be able to use better techs and more advanced concepts, but once they did that they no longer could attack players still in lower eras, only the same as their own or maybe higher. So some players switch eras in a risky fashion and some only when prepared, and all realize they’ll be easy target at first but also expect that those who currently prevail in a league will soon continue to move on, even temporarily leaving the role of the bigger fish in current pond for the ones behind. That’s what ‘advancing / opening yourself for attacks when you’re ready’ (not when the 5% best and most devoted players on your server are ready) actually looks like.
A player either can enjoy competitive / allied playing or can not. Lying to casuals that the game is casual won’t turn 99% of them into hardcores, but, however, will temporarily lure some fresh meat for those whose opinions are only important (the close group of permanent customers of a niche product) who should not get ‘bored’.

Sand Apple, looks like you love searching for wrong things and mistakes in the game rather than having fun in playing the game.
Try to join an alliance, they can give you great tips for defense, building, puzzles etc.. Have contact with other players all over the world, make friends and try to be positive. The real world is negative enough.
The developers do the best they can and players in the game will help you when you want to learn things.
If you don't like the game there's a very easy solution for you: just stop playing.

It’s strange to teach a very fond of games stranger how to have fun gaming. Games are different. This one is very different from TT1 where players could enjoy it a lot without forming any alliances with other players. The problem i found this time is secrecy built around this huge difference for some reason. Instead of quitting the game, the informed player could not start it at all and not bother any of you. As for the real world, what it does is demands to compromise enough, to look for the same frustration in games as well.

I sort of agree with the poster, I have often been under the impression that a lot of new players don't get stuck in the game because the reality of the game differs from what is being advertised in the various game description/adverts. Or the game description might actually be correct(ish), and the descrepency might more so come from how a majority have over time defined and established how the game should be played. That majorities don't necessarily stand for what it right/best/sensible/logical (list of adverbs could go on), can be observed in countless r/l situations, past and present.

I can't see this changing, given the best way to avoid monster attacks is to attack other players.  It's clear the PVP and war aspect are big components and even if one plays solo, that player has to either attack neighbors and kill units or fight off monsters.  Either way, there is some sort of warfare. 

It's just maybe that people expected tt2 to have a gameplay very similar to tt1. While half-life 2 is very similar in gameplay to half-life 1, tt2 is very different from tt1, it's a bit like if "dust 514" would have been called "eve online 2" just because it's in the same lore universe despite the first is a space game while the other one a fps.

That being said, it doesn't even matter, because unlike tt1 (back 10 years ago at least), tt2 is free so one can try, not like it and stop without loosing anything.

Also it's too late to change the name anyway.

Well yes tt2 is more similar to tt1 than dust 514 is to eve online, but still, you can't say that both are rts even if it's technically true: tt1 is not as apm (action per minute) intense as starcraft (about 300) but still it's about 15, here in tt2 it's more likely about 1, where often you don't do anything for half an hour, this is called something else: an idle game. Yes you have dungeons etc where you can be busy for minutes with no idling, but so do you in games categorized as idle games. (I'm not complaining, just saying)

Rereading I realize you didn't say "rts" but "strategy", well strategy games are very diverse, 4x (turn based or not), rts or even chess are all strategy games but with extremely different gameplay, while fps games are very very similar for example.

I don't see the contradiction, more like interpretations of some people are different from what is meant in the FAQ.

Then perhaps don't leave it OPEN to interpretation.... I mentioned this probably about a decade ago, and got chat-banned for it, but whatever; just change the wording of the description for Collectivism enough so that it's CLEAR to those new to the game, that you WILL eventually HAVE to fight. It is NOT clear in the current description, which is why you still keep getting so many complaints about it; should have been your first clue... Games are meant to grow and adapt, according to player needs, not just what the developer thinks it should be. Sure you have a small group of people who have played for a long time who "think it's fine the way it is", but you're not doing much to attract and keep new ones. This game has been around for over a decade, there's been few changes, very little new content added, and the same complaints over and over from new people coming in to the game. Why is it a such a stretch to make a small change like the wording of a description?? Would save you so many headaches, for real.. I'm not opposed to the war aspect as much as I used to be, because now I know what to expect, I would rather not, but it's been made clear that will never change, so why can't YOU compromise, and just change the description to leave it less open to "interpretation" 🙄