Shooting Blanks: Innogames Destroys Dueling in v1.21

Innogames has now associated motivation to cash. This means that if your dueling motivation drops to zero, IF you win a duel, not only do you not receive any xp, but you do not receive any cash. None, nada, nothing! Those characters who make their meager income from dueling are now unable to do so. Dueling is no longer a viable career.

Betrayed
The incredibly talented developers at Innogames have, unfortunately, recently changed a most crucial aspect of dueling, which now leaves those of us, who duel for a living, in a most horrid lurch. While I like much of the creativity Innogames has applied to this game, this latest development, this latest REVERSAL, is a deal-breaker, a game-breaker. In fact, to me it feels like a betrayal. This is so dramatic a change, it leaves me with only two options: respec my character to be something other than a dueler(soldier) or quit the game.

The developers, for no reason whatsoever, have decided that cash obtained in duels will now be affected by the attackers duel motivation. I.e., if your duel motivation is 50, you receive only 50% of 1/3 of what the opponent is carrying on hand, assuming you even win. If your duel motivation is 0, you receive nothing. No cash, no xp.

Dueling Is Not A Job
Dueling is not like any other job, in that it is far more risky. In no other job can you lose a percentage of your cash, lest you inadvertently die (very rare that is). In no other job can you lose cash. In no other job is there consequence. In fact, compared to the standard jobs, dueling is low paying EVEN WITHOUT this latest change. Those who spec their characters to be duelers simply cannot work good paying jobs, so their only means for income is to duel, and now this option is being taken away. Dueling is not a job, it's a career choice, one fraught with ingame dangers and, oftentimes, very low pay.

Express Yourself
This is your opportunity to voice your thoughts on this most critical of game changes. Express yourselves clearly, and with respect to all. It is my hope the developers will eventually be directed here, to read all our thoughts, and be motivated to reverse their decision, to return dueling to its former state.

Serious Discussion Only
No off-topic, no spamming, no profanity, no jokes. You may want to lighten the mood, but don't. Stick to the subject, address the issue, speak your mind in whatever direction you deem the discussion needs to go, but remain focused. This recent change dramatically affects a large percentage of players, so maintain civility, maintain respect.

I have added a poll to this.

Completely agreed, it doesn't work on a realism level or as a mechanic.

Its basically saying, don't be a dueler, be a builder, be an adventurer if you want to get big. Duelists don't have the skills to do decent jobs, in fact the game deliberately handicaps the player into making the choice between a worker/adventurer or a fighter.

This coupled with the whole game dynamic being provided by all the duels, I'm very disappointed with this decision.

This new change is ridiculous. A dueler/soldier is specced to duel and that is what they spend most of their time doing. If they want to treat dueling like a job then they should only lose enough energy and motivation for their 10 minute duel as someone would in doing a 10 minute job. In addition you can make money at every job on the map. You are not guaranteed to make money in dueling even at 100% motivation.

I think Inno will see that Duelers and Soldiers will stop buying Premium for the Character Bonus when their Character Bonus becomes less useful and eventually useless the more they play the game. That is what this new update is, a punishment to those who duel and play the game often. Doesn't seem like good business sense to force players to play less.

I am flabbergasted by Inno not informing anybody of these changes well in advance. The suggestion that they should just respec to do jobs is ludicrous. I remember when they were going to change the skills for building, taking out one of the construction multipliers in favor of something else. We had plenty of warning for that and the community was up in arms over it. Inno ended up not changing the skills for constructing in a town. Why? Because it would make workers less effective at their job. This change does exactly that to Duelers and Soldiers. I don't see why anyone how anyone can make the argument that duelers should suck it up and respec to do jobs.

This is a heavy blow to a majority of the community with no forwarning and should not be allowed to continue. I had faith in the devs that this was a bug they would fix because I couldn't imagine them nerfing battle mechanics, let alone without warning. I am truly disappointed and I don't even have a Dueler or Soldier.

I don't really have anything to add that has not already been said in the three posts above.

I'm just posting to show that I am against this change.

As a pure dueler, I can understand this change. People exploit the system by doing 0 motivation dueling so they need to do something about it. Without this change, people can farm the builders by intentionally keep their motivation at 0 or lose to 1 and builder's townmates can't retaliate because these attackers' dueling levels are too low.

Still maybe they need to reduce the penalty and only reduce it after a certain motivation level like maybe at lower than 50% motivation.

I voted for NO as well!

Okay. I have a soldier on world 9 and a dueller on world 7, and even though duelling isn't the best way to level up it was at least a good source of cash. I've already had to resort to mainly doing jobs with my dueller, now they're going to reinforce this by making it an even more unreliable means of making money. I say we put VOTE NO in our sigs and petition in every other way to make Innogames know we want things changed back. Obviously a BIG NO from me.

As much as I love my dueler, I can't support what innogames is doing. We have it hard enough and now instead of just being the bad guy, we are broke to boot. I only did a bit of 0 motivation dueling but it made me a ton of loot in the mid 20s.

I am now retiring my dueler for a more productive class on w9. I kept telling myself, they have to boost the class bonuses, they have to improve the quest line, they have to even the playing field.. obviously they have no plans to do so.

Innogames missed the boat yet again. Bad Idea!

This change makes absolutely no sense. People who become duellers accept that they won't be able to do many jobs and therefore would be able to finish a lot of the quests. This hampers them on the amount of experience and cash available to them which is open to people who choose not to duel and aim for jobs.

Duelling is a massive part of the game and changing it without warning is just disrespectful to the players. I hope the devs can see that they have alienated many players and can make a change for the better.

Doesn't really affect me as I don't duel often enough to lower motivation.
That said - I voted no.

VRaverna said:

As a pure dueler, I can understand this change. People exploit the system by doing 0 motivation dueling so they need to do something about it. Without this change, people can farm the builders by intentionally keep their motivation at 0 or lose to 1 and builder's townmates can't retaliate because these attackers' dueling levels are too low.

Still maybe they need to reduce the penalty and only reduce it after a certain motivation level like maybe at lower than 50% motivation.

Click to expand...

The problem, if there were one, would be that dueling level is based upon something that can be so easily manipulated - i.e. the experience gained from dueling. If it were based on something inviolate, such as the number of duel victories, then people couldn't use 0 motivation dueling to hide from retaliation.

If there were a problem, and I don't agree that there was really, then this wasn't really the way to fix it.

All I have to say this new change is stupid!

Talk about zero motivation... I hope the fact that Innogames will be seeing less money themselves in the form of premiums helps them to see that this was a really dumb and "unmotivated" move.

Big NO from me on this one:

Basically, the developers said that dueling is a job... oh really?

Wages: In JOBs money is a guarantee, even with low low low motivation you receive wages. In dueling there is NO guarantee to receiving wages, most players are smart enough to keep their money in the bank. So you need a few duels of $0, $20, $30 before you can get a decent pay out of over $100.

XP: As you increase in levels it gets tougher and tougher to find decent opponents with good XP to give you... Jobs are suppose to give you more XP as you level up.

Luck: In jobs you have a chance in receiving items... in dueling nodda, lucky if you survive! Maybe we should receive that brown shawl from your KOed opponent???

Danger: Jobs can injure you, but rarely KO you unless you have like no LP... what's the danger % of dueling??? like 99%???

Motivation: Jobs, based on hours worked... Dueling based on 12 MP per duel... clearly there some mathematical problems here. If money earned is based on motivation then motivation=dueling should be calculated differently.

Lastly... jobs you have a choice, dueling you may be dueled at any point.

Therefore, dueling is not a job... it is a completely different aspect to The West and should be treated differently.

There's my piece of mind.

I won't start a big argument about my opinion of the change, but I will say that if there will finally be a detrimental effect for 0% motivation dueling, then the motivation drop should go down to 6% per hour (1% per duel) like it is for any other job.

This is crazy. Especially how we were just blind sided by it. Us 0 motivation duelers were going around spending lots of time and energy on duels hoping for some money. Time and energy (energy that some of us pay for with premium) all completely wasted.

Being a zero motivational dueler already has its draw backs, zero xp. They are quickly left behind in the ranks by those that they can farm. Its a way to play the game, trading xp for money.

aweful idea, How are we meant to make any money at all, Im level 42 on this world and the best money job i can do is building coffins, and olny just started being able to do that.
From now on then its just dueling for laughs not as a career. It has made my character next to useless!

has to be said that this is probably the worst move the devs could ever have made, while it doesn't directly effect the way i play the game there are quite a few guys in the same town as me that are 0 motivation duellers and they only play the game to duel and find cash cows and i know of quite a few others

this move will see people leaving this game in droves and it will have an impact on nearly everyone in this game, the 0 motivation duellers have just had their gaming experience ruined which will more than likely see them leave which will in turn make a lot of towns lose good players and good friends

hopefully the barrage of complaints that will be headed the devs way over this will make them see what a monumental mistake this is and i truly hope that they change it back or this could well be known as the day The West died