#Drastically reduce the amount of servers

150 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

proven torrent
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As it stands almost all servers are 1v1 between the 2 biggest kingdoms, that is not really the best way the servers play out. Now that many teams have left the game there just isn't enough players to support this amount of servers running simultaniously. The new kingdom cap helps this a bit but still the amount of servers is way too much.

I propose completely shutting down regionals, as they are pretty much dead alrdy and might bring some more life to com servers, if it doesn't help then reduce amount of com servers also. For specials, only have 1 bbash/hahu server, would also make the winning more prestigious.

light arrow
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Agree and cap on the ammount of members in a kingdom. Would be so much better

proven torrent
ebon kindle
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i said this one year ago
they didn't agree
and cap on the amount of members is a rly good thing
but still the low number of players is the main problem

tidal stream
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The is still way too big, and you cannot just take regional servers out.
Most of the players playing there, just don't want to play on a COM server, COM and Regionals are 2 different games, not only different servers

woven condor
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Heya. This topic pops up once a while and Game Center just wrote a response in the latest blog article: https://blog.kingdoms.com/feedback-loop-community-topics-3/

As many gameworlds only have a few players left, close less active gameworlds to concentrate traffic on more active ones.

👑 Chicken or the egg problem. Players have different styles for playing Travian Kingdoms, which can vary by country, and we don’t want to dictate how they should play. Closing gameworlds would limit players’ freedom of choice and could result in losing players who are attached to their current world and people there. Contrary to what many believe, closing a world does not mean players automatically gather in other worlds. With careful planning, we’ll avoid spreading the player base too thin, direct players to alternative worlds, and skip restarting the least active ones.

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So the short version is, with careful planning certain worlds might not be restarted but closing regionals on one go would hurt the playerbase more than help.

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A good example comes from Legends, they merged all in 5 regions. This did not match the different play styles and experiences people seek so they started rolling out more and more local worlds.

undone idol
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I have no experience in the regional servers, but perhaps the people there are looking for a different experience?
I do however think there are too many com servers running. When players start avoiding starting servers because they think it will be dull, then there are clearly too many servers.

And if someone makes plans for playing a server with 4000 players, a lot of those plans will be pointless on a server with 600.

This gives me an idea. There could be servers with pre-registration that only start after a threshold has been reached.

old patrol
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Regional servers don't need to be completely shut down, but there should absolutely be wayyyy less of them. I propose 1 Regional server per continent maybe? Such as:

North America
Europe East
Europe West
Asia

This way there are still regional servers that will be smaller for casual players, but they aren't going to be incredibly divided that there is almost never an actual competition in them.

uneven walrus
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Slight issue I see is language barriers. Players on local servers might not be comfortable switching to English as the default server language (which I assume will happen similar to COMs).

old patrol
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Google Translate, while not perfect, exists well enough as a line of communication. And as for people who don't want to bother with language barriers, that percentage of the community is so small that it's just not worth catering to them. The negatives outweigh the positives with too many dead servers

uneven walrus
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But then, why even differentiate between regions? Just for timezones sake? What is the original reason why local servers exist? What makes the local servers so different that one would prefer them over a COM?

On that note, what would be the difference between a regional/continental and a COM? I can't imagine it would be much of a smaller playerbase, not the way COMs are looking right now. (not rhetorical questions, I'm curious)

old patrol
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That's the whole point of the problem, with such a low player count in TK at the moment the regional servers are a hindrance to the game. So much to the point where even COM servers are dead most of the time. The only servers that aren't just 2 Kingdoms after day 40, are the ones where multiple groups get together to organize a server to all play against

uneven walrus
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So when the playerbase was bigger, why DID they add local servers instead of more COMs? From the top of my head I can only think of languages and timezones. Maybe different currencies, if I squint reeeeally hard.

I mean, there had to have been a specific reason. Something that could be implemented in COMs? Like have an inbuilt translator, or COMs with continental night truces?

old patrol
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Obviously they add regional servers for language barriers and people who would rather join lowly populated servers. I'm not denying any of that. What I'm saying is at the moment with the Travian Kingdoms community continuing to shrink, there's too many servers with no action, and for most new players that's an experience that won't have them return to play again, unless they were lucky enough to be recruited into a winning Kingdom where they got the opportunity to learn the game from more experienced players, and have the luxury of learning without getting destroyed

At the moment there's too many servers in contrast to amount of players. The amount of people who would rather quit than sometimes use Google Translate are not the players pushing this game forward. Yes it would be nice to be able to cater to every single type of player, but sometimes in the world of business and profit, that's not an option. Condensing the playerbase into fewer servers would result in an overall improvement of gameplay experience for new and old players, and result in higher turnout of people continuing to play the game

uneven walrus
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I'm not arguing with that, in fact I'm of the same opinion that there are too many servers, spreading the players too thin. Nothing kills fun faster than boredom. So I'm not saying consolidating local servers is a bad thing, I just don't think that alone would solve much. I don't see how continental servers are any different than COMs - and if there are no differences, why do continentals at all?

For casual players I could instead see a COM with limited online time per day for each player. Or have the continentals all be their respective night truces. Or a server with more PvE but way less prestige.

As for using Google Translate, I'll use the old refrain "Bugs'n'Features" from Appy McApp. I have been told recently that iPhone users can't copy messages, making it hard to put something into Google Translate. Might have been a cop-out, but if true, I hope that this and other similar issues will be solved before they weed out the locals.

Tl;dr - I'm for less servers, but think only merging locals into continentals would be a really shortterm fix.

turbid sky
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There are two points I want to make against your reasoning :

  1. if you reduce the number of servers, nothing proves that it would concentrate the players more.
    They may not like the feel of the one left or the starting date may not be convenient for them.
    Instead of concentrating the player base you may just reduce it overall, even more true for an old game as this one.
  2. about regional servers. Of course you feel like using google translate is just easy and not a bother at all. And the traduction is so perfect. Last time I played with a kingdom were they used Google translate, they were asking for canons and I don't remember the other thing. It was on def call chanel so we just sent troups to assist but still.
    Ask yourself this :
    If a player contact you in a langage you don't understand, do you really use Google translate everytime or do you just ignore him?
    If you do translate it, how willing are you to translate your answer before sending it back ?
    Have you tried to play on a server whose langage you don't understand before deciding others should do it and not find it bothersome ?
neat patio
# uneven walrus Slight issue I see is language barriers. Players on local servers might not be c...

I agree with this. I'm at the moment playing on cz server with small com team. We decided to merge with local newbies and some players were complaining about it because language barrier. At the moment I'm using chatgpt (it works better than google translate imo) to write everything in cz as well. And if player answer me in cz, I'm translating everything. Because operating only english would not work with them. And it not small amount of players. From team we merged with two out of 3 royals doesn't speak english at all. Also the first server I ever joined with was nordic server and from mobile. Sure I never played another nordic again, and changed to pc. But having app at your own language is something that attracts new players.

flat ingot
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Some local servers have regional pricing and if local servers with this regional pricing are removed, the company will lose those people playing the game, TR and RU are examples of this

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But it seems logical to integrate servers that use Euro and have around 200-300 players into COM servers.

neat patio
rancid umbra
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The main thing I loved about local servers back in the day was being able to see familiar people on the servers as com servers tended to be so crowded

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But the com servers are small enough to get that feeling now

ember marsh
neat patio
ember marsh
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less players means less money. sorry but this feels more personal issue than actually solving some problem. cheating should be dealt with other ways than trying to reduce the playerbase. guess what, if no one plays the game -> no one cheats. And from business stand point - > it does not work that way. We have no info about what expertise have people in Rule enforcement team. You can't just say - let's get them to programming.

neat patio
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ember marsh
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ember marsh
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ember marsh
quick hornet
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If you wanna mix politics then america should lose access to every game, they are the one responsible for all the wars around the globe, they stick their nose everywhere and make problems

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But politics shouldnt mix with games and other stuff anyway.. why should russian people suffer and lose access to stuff because of something that isnt in their control

neat patio
# quick hornet Why are you trying to mix politics with a game ?

I'm not, I'm actually doing effort here to keep my arguments outside of politics. My statement was that TK should leave Russian market because it is bad for brand image. I'm not trying to discuss about any political reasons why TK should leave russian market here.

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I'm only talking about economical reasons

quick hornet
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I have no clue why would russia cause bad brand image in the first place..

neat patio
# quick hornet I have no clue why would russia cause bad brand image in the first place..

The fact working at Russian market is really bad brand imagine and that why a lot of western companies have withdrawn from there. I have quit buying some products from companies that work in Russian market and another consumers had quit as well. I still do play this game, but I would wish, I could play this game without supporting company that working on Russian market.

quick hornet
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Thats just your personal reason, I can tell you Serbia , Turkey or other countrys who are not under influence of NATO have no problem with Russia or russian markets.. and as I said all of your reasons are purerly political.. you didnt give me 1 single fact why is it bad to work with russian market and why are you refusinf to buy from them.. your reaso was that western comapnies are withdrawing, which is 100 political

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And not 1 big western company withdrawed from russian market , Nike , kfc, mcdonalds and alot of others just renamed their brand in Russia and continue to work with with them even better then before

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And nobady had problems with russian markets before war in ukraine , so dont tell me it isnt political.. Im strongly against war , poor people are suffering while big countrys especially Amerika makes tons of money

neat patio
# quick hornet Thats just your personal reason, I can tell you Serbia , Turkey or other country...

Sure I may have political reasons to not buy from certain companies. But if we gonna drag this topic into politics, it gonna go way out of original topic, which is reducing local servers. And it will be moderated. If you want debate me over politics, feel free to pm me. I don't mind. This is feedback loop with topic of reducing local servers, and we should be discussing here how to make game better, (like quitting Russian local servers) not trying to counter against misinformation about how not a single western company has not withdrawn from Russian market. They do, at this month Unilever decided to leave Russian market. So it definitely isn't too late for TK made that choice as well. If I was new player in EU, I would not be trying this game in first place because of being at Russian market.

quick hornet
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There are no benefits to quiting russian markets so just stop with an idea that its good for the game. If you hate russia thats your personal reasons but let me give you a tip from someone who studied defense sciense for 8 years and works at a ministry of defense and works with secret data who media and normal humans have no acces to.. DO NOT believe media , they are feeding you false info .. and bdw if you dont support russia and meanwhile support china with buying and using their stuff which ,for sure you do, because their parts are in your phone and cars, you are really delusional

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And yet again you are wrong about Unilever, they will still be delivering their products to russia under different names, let me guess you got the info from the media 😂

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I will end my discussion with you here, If I would have checked your profile before, I wouldnt even engage in conversatin with you. Have a nice day

neat patio
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quick hornet
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quick hornet
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Congratz to the team who made that, probably took alot of effort.. and with probably way less manpower and money at their disposal compared to TK team.. dont hate hackers, there will always be people who are going to hack, script ot abuse game mechanics in a way. Hate companys who have that bad of a security who make that possible

ember marsh
quick hornet
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If your wallet gets stolen from a table , and you are stupid enough to repeat that again its your foult. Put the wallet somewhere safe and that wont happen again.. you can only blame yourself for giving wallet at the table again

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You cant control hackers/ thieves but you can control your protection against them

neat patio
quick hornet
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All you can do is not play russian servers if you think they are the only ones doing that and your problem is solved

ember marsh
quick hornet
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Thank god there are no more thieves in the world because there are prisons 👍

ember marsh
neat patio
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I guess main problem with putting hackers prison is that russian police doesn't coorperate with western police arresting them. Which is, back to original topic, one more reason why TK should not be at Russian market.

quick hornet
quick hornet
quick hornet
neat patio
quick hornet
quick hornet
neat patio
# quick hornet 💸💸💸

The main reason why there is companies at Russian market is because of it close to west so it had seemed like obvious way to go. But it isn't even that big of market, there is another market choices to go at

quick hornet
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If developers made game better and attract more players , there wouldnt be a topic about reducting amount of servers but a topic of making more servers.

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Travian Legends has quite a few servers aswell and they all bring it big numbers, so amount of servers isnt a problem

proven torrent
neat patio
# proven torrent There is 2. Unreal and Teutonic

I thought Teutonic is like unreal with different name, but I didn't play at dynasty so I have no clue. Anyway that just proves my point. Teutonic is not necessary well know for their positive contribution to game either.

uneven walrus
old patrol
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How many servers are there in Tk right now, like roughly?

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If people don't like the continental servers idea then that's fair. As an English speaker I don't run into language barrier problem hardly ever, so I guess not having to do it much doesn't give me good insight to getting tired of using it a lot

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Are there currently multiple servers of the same regions?

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Like Turkish 1/2/3 etc?

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Spanish 1/2/3?

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Maybe there should only be 1 of each

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Yes not having your ideal type of server ready for a month you want to start playing again would be a pain at times, but I'd rather wait 2 months for a good server than wait 2 weeks for a bad server. Especially for a x1 which will last 5 months

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So maybe reduce number of Coms from 5-6 to 4. Recuce each region to 1, unless a specific region is much more populated then those can maybe have 2

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And the idea that region specific servers are night truce for their time zone is a nice idea

undone idol
old patrol
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That's so much worse than I thought lmao

neat patio
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Why does players who not play locals complain how they bad and too many? Like should it be asked about players who play those if they want more or less.

old patrol
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And that's a detriment to the game and the community

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Because most newcomers quit if their first time experience is uneventful

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The game has been on the decline for a very long time in player numbers

neat patio
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There been effort to have options to join crowded servers by tk having more special rounds.

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I would not even want play only crowded servers

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I’m not huge gold user and on super crowded servers, I just can’t do my best play if it impossible to bid on art work

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So it great there are servers, I can play game to full potential. Instead of just adapting and not doing so great

old patrol
# neat patio And what your prove, it is cause of dead servers? Tk team said that by their exp...

The proof is in the constantly declining playerbase. Dead servers is not the entire issue, but it's a contributing factor. The main issue in the past was no progress happening with the game, and the TK Team back then being much worse. Seeing all of that improve lately has been very exciting to see, and hopefully it continues to improve.

And you're talking like I want to get rid of all regional servers. I don't want to do that. But look at that list, it's massive for such a small playerbase nowadays! You could easily have half those number of servers, and there would still be dead servers for you to play. Just a lot less of them would be dead, due to condensing the playerbase more, and creating more opportunities for higher activity competitive servers.

The problem right now is the balance between high activity and low activity servers and way too heavy on the low activity side. It's difficult to find those good active fun servers without joining the overly cutthroat and chaotic Mayhem/Dynasty/TrickTreat type servers, which are too much for a lot of people to want to play. Especially when those servers have the highest meta problems

neat patio
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And I don’t think constantly declining player base is prove that servers not being crowded enough is reason for it. It just made up conclusion that players who want to believe do believe

wheat saddle
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Iirc Polish regional servers were removed when they still had comparable activity to most of current COMs.

old patrol
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The facts are that it would be good to have a very even divide of highly competitive servers, and lesser/dead servers. But right now it's very imbalanced with more dead servers on the regular

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wheat saddle
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Difference between local servers and COMs is just language though. Speed servers are different game with different balance.

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undone idol
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my solution is to redo the whole system so that a server only starts when a predetermined contract player has registered on it. There could be servers that start at 500, 1000, 2000. All according to taste.

old patrol
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That might be a bit much

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old patrol
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The servers just take longer

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old patrol
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If it replaced a server then that would be cool

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proven torrent
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# proven torrent Not really. There is 2 teams and other1 wins. There should only be 1 hahu and 1 ...

I agree with 1 hahu and 1 bbash, but they told they can’t do it. And if I remember right that was a consept of it before and lags were terrible. Besides more players doesn’t always mean more competive servers. It also about how players divide between teams. Biggest killer of competitive servers is not lack of players in speed servers. It players themselfs who are too scared to have smaller teams and not cheat. Every server with big cheating meta who recruits everyone is gonna feel dead.

proven torrent
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woven condor
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Hi. I see lots of different points of view and to summarize ours

  • We rotate worlds on COM and local communities that serve player needs
  • The "library" of worlds we have available doesn't mean we run all of those
  • All communities tend to have players who like vanilla, speed, night truce versions (rotation)
  • When we see a decline where a world doesn't have an audience, we can skip/postpone restarting it
  • We do not decide for the players where they join, because playing styles vary, also between rounds
  • Adding more special worlds (Dynasty & Mayhem) in the rotation means we'll either cut something from the rotation or postpone
  • From the lobby you can check how many local worlds are active at once where people can join (none to one when I last checked)
  • If local players do not have their own world to join, they may leave the game instead of joining a COM world. We've got experience in the house to prove it.
  • Think of it as a balancing act, the solution is not hard closing of worlds, but instead following and guiding the flow of players so most players have something to match their needs.
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And in general: Having worlds to join that match the variety of needs means people stick around and can move between worlds. Removing those options, well, you can guess what happens. Players appreciate choices.

stuck jungle
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typical example of useless server 🤣

stuck jungle
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another fantastic tight server 🤣

woven condor
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Will be interesting to see how these change with the Kingdom member cap.

undone idol
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There could be different cap depending on number of players on server maybe.

woven condor
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I agree completely

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Not sure if a "fluid" cap would make sense that is based on the number of players on a world (never decreasing though) or if "set" caps make more sense for the players. Latter sounds more simple.

undone idol
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But would be awkward if a big premade joins a small server and not all can be in kingdom

woven condor
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They'll just split into multiple teams and and select the best new Kings for each. It'll be a very small group of players who wouldn't want that (too used to dominating the world alone)

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In long-term, birth of new Kings sounds very good for the game. There hasn't been pressure to learn the royal ways yet the game has room for new leaders.

proven torrent
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Fluid cap can really screw up premade teams

proven torrent
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But tbf not many premades play regionals because they are dead servers

woven condor
# proven torrent Fluid cap can really screw up premade teams

Knowing there’s at minimum room for 30 in a smaller local world, but also knowing if the world becomes more popular than expected then it could increase all within the first days to let’s say 40. That’s how I see a fluid version working, but it also sounds complicated compared to knowing from start what the max is.

woven condor
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Although not everyone in those massive teams want that, but some do. It was around 20 percent in one past survey who wanted to keep the game without a member cap.

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But hey, maybe cap size would be one of those features that attract different types of teams. The current 50/100 seems good, but who knows… maybe we can play with the number and make room for more massive teams on some worlds.

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Will await the november’s test and new survey to see where we’re heading. But it’s clear different cap sizes will be part of game center discussions.

undone idol
# woven condor They'll just split into multiple teams and and select the best new Kings for eac...

I hardly think that would happen. If a premade starts a server and decides to speed settle around a ww, they will not enjoy hhaving to split in two groups and fight their close neighbours and mates the first thing they do. And being a royal in a good team is a big responsibility and requires a lot more work than to be a governor. I would dodge that bullet if I was asked. But I do like the idea of having servers with different cap on members.

wheat saddle
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Fluid cap won't work imo, you need to know caps before starting.

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Having different caps for different servers would be great though. For example rotate server cap sizes and have 20/40, 30/60, 50/100 caps.