Stand Up, Organize.

[Twiss]

There existed a great artist, a musical phenom called Prince, who once said in his first ever album:

"Stand up, organize."

It is thus that I feel the need to ask, and implore, each and every one of us to

STAND UP. ORGANIZE

Let's stand up as a community and organize.

We need a thread, a specific place in the forum, where we can officially brainstorm our ideas. A place where veterens from every world can come together and actually brainstorm their ideas, in a place where it actually matters.

Because let's face it people.

We have all these players that have been around since 2009. These people who have actual ideas.

We are implored to share our ideas. They get sent into the 'Brainstorm'

But then they get. . . ignored? Sent to the wayside?

My point of this post: I feel that the whole ''Ideas and Brainstorm" section of the forum is a waste of time. It allows individual ideas to be deleted and ignored. But if we had a collected front, where many veteren players got together and collectively agreed on certain ways the game could be improved, then perhaps the DEVS of The West would take it more seriously.

Idk. I am a noob at this game. But as a noob who likes this game, it pains me to see all these veterens/pros talking about ALLLLLLL these amazing suggestions, ALLLLL these ways to improve the game, yet nothing has changed.

Honestly, I was 10 years old when i played this game for the first time

I am now 23 years old, and nothing much has changed. Towns are exactly the same; tailor, gunsmith, general store. Maybe u build up your church.

I was 10. now i'm 23. Towns are still the same

why is this?

Can someone tell me why this is?


STAND UP.

ORGANIZE.

 

[Billy]

Where is your input? Where are your ideas?
You're playing this game since 13 years and don't give an advice or idea in this post.
Complaining is easy, finding solutions is diffuclt - you took the easy way.

 

[Twiss]

Complaining is indeed easy.

My idea/input is trying to start the conversation where players actually organise.

Because otherwise, when individuals post ideas, they get sent to the wayside. But if many important players, whom are respected in the community, actually come together and put forward ideas together in a united front, then perhaps those ideas would be taken seriously.

STAND UP. ORGANIZE.

Don't get it twisted, Billy. I'm not some a-hole who is just complaining. I'm trying to grasp at something here.

The only problem is that this 'thing' i'm trying to 'grasp' is an extremely broad issue. But as I mentioned, and as you have pointed out, playing this game 13 years, it still had not changed.

Again, Billy. Don't get it twisted. Don't pin this as some kinda degenerate complaining person who has nothing but complaints.

Actually engaging in conversation is not easy.

You trying to say I'm just complaining is actually taking 'the easy way'. You can just pin my criticisms as 'complaints', before actually engaging me in intellectual conversation.

How about instead of shaming me for my thoughts, you actually engage me in the conversation? What was my point?


If you used your brain cells and come the conclusion that I'm just complaining..,

I mean, Idk what to even say to you. Do you wanna have coffee or something? Let's get to know each other ;p

 

[DeletedUser15368]

So you want to start a players union?

We used to actually have a community vote on the ideas proposed in the Ideas section, where posts meeting a certain threshold were passed onto the development team.
However, The-West is now officially seen as "Feature-complete", which pretty much means for those concerned with changes, that there's not a lot of development resources to go around at this stage in its life-cycle. The auxiliary content in the game has also not been maintained for the best part of a decade - things like; the Bonds Shop, crafted buffs, quest item rewards, etc - have fallen well behind the power-creep of, what has become, the primary content for improving our characters: tombola sets. Meanwhile the last ~2 years (I think) of development resources have gone towards an attempt with mixed success at bringing the town shop clothes back into viability. Hats are pretty good now which is on-brand for a western I guess, but "Classic" West is now officially dead.

The new jobs are very underwhelming for their requirements.
Further to this, job rewards, quest rewards and especially PvP rewards have become almost negligible at the new scale past level 150. It was actually kind-of borked past level 120 imo but never really got addressed.

Speaking of PvP, it's broken. Fort battles have desperately needed a formula change since even before the last IFBC, which was tested, got positive player feedback and then the whole project was scrapped. Class bonuses need modernised, the way that players are rewarded for fort battles needs updated, battle-map diversity and reasons (other than to have battles with) for a town/alliance to own forts are sadly missing content. There could be dedicated international fort fighting worlds, which have a planned or goal-orientated ending.
It's my opinion that the sheer scale of skill points in the modern game means duelling is less about being skilled as a dueller, and more about how upgraded your clothing and weapon is. There's no one to duel at high levels, which means people are intentionally losing duels these days because it's advantageous. Duel buffs are outdated. Soldiers tactics bonus...
Skill-creep also crosses over to all other elements of the game, anyone can fill any role with reasonable proficiency just by changing their clothing - which diminishes the Role Playing aspect of this game into nothingness - class choice means almost nothing, skill allocation means almost nothing.

I've seen this game slowly morphed from an award winning PvP focussed MMORPG, into a casino dress-up simulator for doing little quests and building towns and being very fond of berries.

Further to that there's the PvE content, which also hasn't been maintained, and is massively outdated in most cases.
I've mentioned quest rewards before, not only is the old stuff offering laughable rewards by today's standards, but newly-released content is obsolete compared to one log-in bonus worth of exp. New unachievable-achievements offer less exp than one log-in bonus.
Job luck drops are only useful for selling to the wandering trader to make money.
But at least we can build the church a little bit more now with higher levels, eh?

And I almost forgot about Worlds. There 13 worlds right now, which is about 10 more than we can support. No Migrations out of dead worlds.
This is a global problem and would take much of the potential development attention to address.
Colorado should also be changed to full-premium to allow migrations into it, but I digress.

And then we have all of the improvements and ideas that players want... Some of them not very good ideas like whoever suggested raising the level cap because they have ran out of church to build. Okay maybe i'm a little salty about that still, sorry.
Now remembering that there's limited development resources, making development a very slow process, and just about every single aspect of the game needs to be updated in some way, where does the team focus?

It's not an easy choice, I'm sure, there's pressure from all play-styles and sometimes, across the game markets, the feedback from the point of contact between the players and the developers isn't particularly useful, but it's also not a choice that they care to share with the players. If we knew specifically what they wanted to work on, then we'd know what it's worth talking about.
The level cap increase was the biggest change in the game in over 7 years, it was on the public beta for a week and then pushed to all of the game servers, zero player feedback was taken into account showing us that they'll just do their thing regardless. That's the current precedent, sadly.
This forum became pointless when we stopped the official voting, I suppose, and anyway I don't even want to know how many idea threads are sitting in the "to-do" pile at this point. Without a drastic change in approach and attitude from InnoGames, "player's union" or not, we'll not have much say - we'll still just have to wait and see what they do out of all of the things that need doing, and hope that what they do isn't just neglect everything and make more sets until we've all left.

 

[darthmaul99174]

So you want to start a players union?

We used to actually have a community vote on the ideas proposed in the Ideas section, where posts meeting a certain threshold were passed onto the development team.
However, The-West is now officially seen as "Feature-complete", which pretty much means for those concerned with changes, that there's not a lot of development resources to go around at this stage in its life-cycle. The auxiliary content in the game has also not been maintained for the best part of a decade - things like; the Bonds Shop, crafted buffs, quest item rewards, etc - have fallen well behind the power-creep of, what has become, the primary content for improving our characters: tombola sets. Meanwhile the last ~2 years (I think) of development resources have gone towards an attempt with mixed success at bringing the town shop clothes back into viability. Hats are pretty good now which is on-brand for a western I guess, but "Classic" West is now officially dead.

The new jobs are very underwhelming for their requirements.
Further to this, job rewards, quest rewards and especially PvP rewards have become almost negligible at the new scale past level 150. It was actually kind-of borked past level 120 imo but never really got addressed.

Speaking of PvP, it's broken. Fort battles have desperately needed a formula change since even before the last IFBC, which was tested, got positive player feedback and then the whole project was scrapped. Class bonuses need modernised, the way that players are rewarded for fort battles needs updated, battle-map diversity and reasons (other than to have battles with) for a town/alliance to own forts are sadly missing content. There could be dedicated international fort fighting worlds, which have a planned or goal-orientated ending.
It's my opinion that the sheer scale of skill points in the modern game means duelling is less about being skilled as a dueller, and more about how upgraded your clothing and weapon is. There's no one to duel at high levels, which means people are intentionally losing duels these days because it's advantageous. Duel buffs are outdated. Soldiers tactics bonus...
Skill-creep also crosses over to all other elements of the game, anyone can fill any role with reasonable proficiency just by changing their clothing - which diminishes the Role Playing aspect of this game into nothingness - class choice means almost nothing, skill allocation means almost nothing.

I've seen this game slowly morphed from an award winning PvP focussed MMORPG, into a casino dress-up simulator for doing little quests and building towns and being very fond of berries.

Further to that there's the PvE content, which also hasn't been maintained, and is massively outdated in most cases.
I've mentioned quest rewards before, not only is the old stuff offering laughable rewards by today's standards, but newly-released content is obsolete compared to one log-in bonus worth of exp. New unachievable-achievements offer less exp than one log-in bonus.
Job luck drops are only useful for selling to the wandering trader to make money.
But at least we can build the church a little bit more now with higher levels, eh?

And I almost forgot about Worlds. There 13 worlds right now, which is about 10 more than we can support. No Migrations out of dead worlds.
This is a global problem and would take much of the potential development attention to address.
Colorado should also be changed to full-premium to allow migrations into it, but I digress.

And then we have all of the improvements and ideas that players want... Some of them not very good ideas like whoever suggested raising the level cap because they have ran out of church to build. Okay maybe i'm a little salty about that still, sorry.
Now remembering that there's limited development resources, making development a very slow process, and just about every single aspect of the game needs to be updated in some way, where does the team focus?

It's not an easy choice, I'm sure, there's pressure from all play-styles and sometimes, across the game markets, the feedback from the point of contact between the players and the developers isn't particularly useful, but it's also not a choice that they care to share with the players. If we knew specifically what they wanted to work on, then we'd know what it's worth talking about.
The level cap increase was the biggest change in the game in over 7 years, it was on the public beta for a week and then pushed to all of the game servers, zero player feedback was taken into account showing us that they'll just do their thing regardless. That's the current precedent, sadly.
This forum became pointless when we stopped the official voting, I suppose, and anyway I don't even want to know how many idea threads are sitting in the "to-do" pile at this point. Without a drastic change in approach and attitude from InnoGames, "player's union" or not, we'll not have much say - we'll still just have to wait and see what they do out of all of the things that need doing, and hope that what they do isn't just neglect everything and make more sets until we've all left.

Honestly I didn't read any of this but

Also the duel formula & mechanic are broken and hugely outdated.

 

[Poker Alice]

Read at your own risk!

It would mean a lot of work for the organizers for sure.

I think if you want to successfully organize you need to come up with something a players collective can actually do. Forget what an organization can’t do. So what could it do?

1) Ask players to donate money.
2) Ask players to boycott.
3) Ask players to play in one world predominately.
4) Ask players to play the game a certain way.
5) Present only one suggestion to the development team for consideration.

That is all I can think of that a players organization/union/whatever could ever do.

Number one I think is a bad idea because it goes beyond players interest. The money headache can be left to the owners for their deliberation only?

Number two is a consideration but requires a lot of work to have a sufficient number of players onboard. The question is boycott what? Boycotts can be dangerously anti-productive or seen as a threat? Something as simple for example like please don’t use certain equipment in game might please some players who think of some equipment as they have expressed in the past as “ruining the game” but how do you get any kind of reasonable agreement within the players of a game? Not an easy task for sure.

Number three has been suggested often as “merging worlds”. The challenge is convincing everyone to be on the same page. Accept the fact that there will be those that don’t wish to join a players organization and their decision would need to be accepted/tolerated by a players organization. Not much anyone could do about it anyway.

Number four I think would be a poor way to attempt to establish a players organization. Just the idea of excluding new players (noobs) for example from input becomes all downhill afterwards. New player input to an old game can say volumes. In the newest world I noticed a lot of young players stopped at the awesomia location. What part of the game do new players actually like as well as what older players like and therefore what is worth exploring overall? Segregating and dividing players into noobs, veterans, fort fighters, berry pickers, church builders, etc while attempting to make an organization popular might want to be discouraged. An organizational leadership that is willing to accept all viewpoints without prejudice would have a greater chance of success?

Number five might have more strength than any single voice if a strong majority of players (need proof it is a real majority of players) want something. Some players might even be willing to pay for something that they want which has a marketing value? In the end though all any game group can do is attempt to stay united in purpose.

________________________________________________________________________________________________


In any organization it is worth thinking a little about the type of system being employed. An honest reliable report on how many members actually vote and how many members abstain from voting is valuable.

Another method of representation besides a majority vote is called a consensus group which means ALL members must agree when crafting a decision and adopting it. Those that don’t participate in any common directive in a consensus can be heard at a later date and then reasoned with and/or the decision is amended at that time or the decision is held as not valid as it is then not a consensus group.

 

[DeletedUser15368]

Honestly our "player organisation" is supposed to be the Community Manager and the moderation team of experienced player volunteers, it's always worked out with these members working in the game and their communities' best interest, until "feedback" to the office lost its meaning sometime over the last 7 years.

 

[Goober Pyle]

If you want “devs to listen” they need to hear it. They will only “hear” the priority list coming from the lead CM.

To change the priorities of the LCM you pretty much need a solid majority of CMs presenting the same simple to implement idea with a compelling case that there is little downside risk.

 

[Richard Maverick]

Every time I look at the Rankings in my local server (.es. World 1. The """most active world"""), I see new players on Vacation Mode.

Seriously, what are waiting for to increase the PvP rewards?

8 out of 10 player are dressed with Tolbert or Cortez. If this is going to remain as a Church Simulator, please tell us. I don't want to lose more time waiting for any good change, that may not come at all.

The game needs some incentive to keep playing, people enter, leave a 9h church queue and move to another place. Some of them not even bother to enter again. Duels, Battles and Adventures keep the game alive, but there are no incentives to play them.

Any news on PvP improvement?

 

[lumpy39us]

There is already a group and everybody knows it.
The key is each worlds Alliance leadership working with other Alliance leaders. As Sheriff John pointed out the other day "Community". which I've said for years.

Instead of backdoor actions, we should be encouraging and helping all Alliances build and succeeding instead of destroying them. More leaders and Alliances communicating will ensure balance and encourage membership in this game.
We've failed in the day to day running of these worlds, quit blaming inno and expecting them to fix things that are caused by us.

 

[Joe Kidd]

8 out of 10 player are dressed with Tolbert or Cortez. If this is going to remain as a Church Simulator, please tell us. I don't want to lose more time waiting for any good change, that may not come at all.

 

[lumpy39us]

Joe Kidd,
Inno has just made in game changes, how people decide to play is entirely up to them. Many of the changes are very good for the long term players.
Community and working together to improve the game experience for all from within are key.
Quit blaming inno, make a stand, organize and work together. Encourage players and Alliances. Take an active role in in-game leadership.

 

[Lyrinx.]

Inno has just made in game changes, how people decide to play is entirely up to them.

Well you can be a church builder, a hacker / addicted player with 15 sec jobs for xp and money, a berry picker, a thief, a fort figher where all you do is suffer for balance,or your server is dead enough so you can't have good battles, a dueler without opponents, a quest lover but 1 year later you gonna be done with that, collector but if you don't have enough nuggets you wont earn high tier inventory or MPI player without having enough players to play it. Sure we have things to do.

Many of the changes are very good for the long term players.

Yeah, the last major update caused more trouble than happiness.. and I'm not talking about pvp issues, I'm talking about major failures like crashing their tool several times, awaking dead servers and few other lovely things.

Community and working together to improve the game experience for all from within are key.

You can have unlimited ideas if not a single soul have enough time to develop it, or there aren't enough manpower to do changes as fast as we (and the game) want it. Not to mention that in the last couple of years nothing happened, and because of that, the game lost thousands of good players who got bored by the absolute nothing what happened in the game.

So I think Joe and many other players have rights to blame the company, because they did caused damage by doing absolutely nothing, or "making larger updates" years long which damage the stability on every single server in every single region. Not to mention, if you don't have enough fresh meat (aka new players) on your server, why should you save that world with leading an alliance, make a fort battle schedule, be in touch with the other alliance, gather and watch your guys' back all the time + help them out, sit there 15-18 hours a day? Where at the end of the day you'll have a max 15 vs 18 battle, and whoever has the most money on his / her bank account wins always. There are a few masochist player who keep working on their own server, but as the time passes, their number getting be lower and lower.

If you want to play with this game long enough, just don't be an alliance leader. Otherwise you will hate everything here months / years later.

 

[DeletedUser15368]

There is already a group and everybody knows it.
The key is each worlds Alliance leadership working with other Alliance leaders. As Sheriff John pointed out the other day "Community". which I've said for years.

Instead of backdoor actions, we should be encouraging and helping all Alliances build and succeeding instead of destroying them. More leaders and Alliances communicating will ensure balance and encourage membership in this game.
We've failed in the day to day running of these worlds, quit blaming inno and expecting them to fix things that are caused by us.

I mean you're not wrong in your observations, it's just that I think the default cycle of a game-world in The-West is one of; competition, then domination, and eventual death, as the majority of the active player-base move on to the next world. It's accidentally designed this way.

As you pointed out, there's only been one (and a half because Arizona deserves a shout out too) exception(s) to that - the world where players worked together to make it last. We all know the one I'm preaching about.

People have tried to make others last more than the standard year, believe me, but it takes two competitively equal sides that can fill medium forts every night (even Colorado is too small for Large forts), with competent leadership both in battle and in the inter-alliance communications - who can agree on a prime time or on balance measures - who also both have enough leaders for every night, and leaders and fort fighters that have a desire for it all to last...
So far those conditions haven't been met in the worlds that came after Colorado, and it's mostly down to a lack of players over time, or significant time-zone issues.

We can only support one or two fort worlds, actively, with the size of our player-base now.
There's 13 worlds at the moment with an inevitable 14th on the way. Perhaps we can agree the game has been mis-managed and that it's on us to balance a world if we want it to last for more than a year.

If you want to play with this game long enough, just don't be an alliance leader. Otherwise you will hate everything here months / years later.

Probably the best advice you'll ever read about this game.
Leading leads to anger. Anger leads to hatred, Hatred leads to suffering.

 

[Joe Kidd]

Joe Kidd,
Inno has just made in game changes, how people decide to play is entirely up to them. Many of the changes are very good for the long term players.
Community and working together to improve the game experience for all from within are key.
Quit blaming inno, make a stand, organize and work together. Encourage players and Alliances. Take an active role in in-game leadership.

I've put in my time, for years, looking at the game with your point of view and acting on your point of view, genuinely. It's time for Innogames to either take this game seriously as a product or make the arrangements to sunset. The overall quality of game design, quality assurance of new content, general moderation, and communication from above the volunteer ceiling individuals are all of notably less quality, less professionalism, less frequency, and exhibit tangible apathy over the last five years. It's all evidentiary of a game that is losing its substance and purpose.

Please don't tell me to "take a stand". For players like myself and others that have be playing faithfully in some capacity since 2009 or earlier don't need your condescending judgement on our perceptions of the lifespan of The West.

 

[lumpy39us]

Actually, I told you to quit blaming inno.

But, whatever.

A leader without goals and direction is always miserable, not to mention being surrounded by the miseries of others.

OGD, Obsessive Gamer Disorder, addiction.
First we all have to admit that we have a problem, from there we can heal and work towards making the game better from within.

 

[roland jacobs]

There aren't enough active players on every world to have the game in a state it was designed to handle. Each world needs to have 2000 active players minimum to sustain fort battles, duel targets , active markets, and online community. No player wants to lead 15 chars in a small battle on a daily basis. 5-6 battle leaders are needed per side to avoid burnout. Innos product decisions led to massive attrition, and combining with new worlds every year, the product becomes worse.

There aren't enough players on each world to lead, therefore any leader is going to burn out in less than 6months bc without followers, there are no leaders.

 

[lumpy39us]

“A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.”
― Byron Katie

When I reached the point of burn out as a leader, I attempted to place someone in charge and took a break to deal with the burn out.
Would you like to hear the Story of Juarez?

Somehow the assumption that anything is easy and if it's not, requires us to give in or completely change ourselves to adapt to the situation. Giving up is the answer? I'm not giving up and I'm not spreading misery.
You want solutions, ask questions and work together. Be nice to one another and respect people's efforts.
That's not inno's fault.

Leading fort fights and leading Alliances are two completely different things.

 

[lumpy39us]

“The strong-minded rise to the challenge of their goals and dreams. The weak-minded become haters.” – Steve Maraboli

Leadership, provide purpose, motivation and direction.

 

[Joe Kidd]

Ad hominem insinuation is a terrible way to try and sway people to your philosophy.