Game Abuses - Making the Game Less Fun and Costing Quark Money

[Case00]

Hello Valor Community,

I would like to bring the developers attention to three game abuses that are both making the game less fun and costing them money. I believe they all have relatively easy solutions.

1. Alt accounts

An increasing number of players are using an increasing number of alt accounts. This problem stems from the ability to put both Valor and Valor HD on the same device. This allows you to have two accounts on your main phone, two on your iPad, and two on your old phone that can still be used with wireless. It is not uncommon for players to enter a world with six accounts this way. This costs Quark money because there is less incentive to spend gold at the beginning to grow one account when you can farm your five alt accounts or use them to clear barbs.

Easy solution: Deactivate the old version of Valor and delete it from the app store. Only have Valor HD. This will not get rid of all alts but it will cut them in half.


2. Nerd farms

Nerd farms can be used by anybody with an alt account. This is how it works: the alt account gets enough scholarships to make five nerds. Alt account caps a second city. Main account caps the alt account city with nerds out. Alt account's second city makes 5 nerds. Rinse and repeat. You don't have to make anymore scholarships and can generate as many scholars as your resources can handle. This is how people go so far negative with their scholarships. It's a huge advantage and disrupts game balance. This costs Quark money because there is less incentive to spend gold when you don't need to spend any resources on scholarships after that initial investment.

Easy solution: Stop allowing a player to go into the negative for scholarships. If the account doesn't have enough scholarships then the nerd should just disappear.


3. Chaos

Chaos is when a city has 40 incoming attacks and no further attacks can be added. This can be abused in two ways. First, a player with a few incoming attacks can have an alt or friend in another guild send enough attacks to put the city under attack into chaos. This prevents the true attacker from being able to add further attacks. This is a small abuse and no big deal. Second, a player can have an alt or friend in another guild send 40 attacks at all his cities. This will put all those cities into chaos. It will stay that way until one of the players checks the city and makes the game recognize that the action has taken place by triggering the report. So if neither party checks those cities for three days then those cities will remain in chaos the entire time. This is like trucing but is indefinite and costs no gold. This costs Quark money because there is no reason to pay for truce.

Easy solution: Get rid of Chaos. There should be no limit on the number of attacks on a city.

I very much enjoy playing this game. I believe these three small changes will improve game balance and generate Quark more money.

Sincerely,
Case00
Shark Attack/Legacy

[Kingaddis]

Even thou I agree with you, it doesn't bother me, the way I look at extra alts are like active players. They all need to be capped.
I've got more of a problem with heavy coiners, so having alts help tilt the balance.
Chaos is a ruthless but effective tactic. I don't use chaos anymore but in earlier worlds chaos would help the little guy against an alliance.
Stopping the non HD valor is not an option, I use non HD valor as it's the 'better' app for when you have in excess of 400 cities, it helps combat the dredded lag.

[MyName999]

I agree with you, but unfortunately these issues are known since long and nothing's been to be done...

About the alts, you'll see that entire alt guilds appeared, maybe even controlled by bots? Quark don't care, it make other people being more active and spend"ive"...

The negative scholarship is told as an "exploit" by Quark since about 1,5 years. This was promised to be fixed. This only has been forgot...

Choas has been eradicated since w80 if I remember well. Rules changed, and Quark told that reaching the "new" chaos was directly seen and players using this could be banned. This never happened. Chaos even appeared back in some worlds, fresh legacy ones if I'm right: this was told to be a glitch...


Oh, and HI King Addis. Gratz having won w319 ;-)

[MononokeHime]

Personally, I think removing the non-HD Valor from the either GooglePlay or Apple Apps Store wouldn't solve the overall alt issue. I understand that having both a non-HD version and HD version of Valor on one device can be annoying to other players and in some instances may not seem fair, but there is really nothing stopping any player from using ValorHD on multiple devices. As Kingaddis had mentioned, sometimes ValorHD lags a bit, so there are players that utilize the non-HD version to access their cities quicker.

As for the other two issues, both of these issues have been known for quite some time now. I'm not sure what a nerd farmer would use gold for, but then again I only use gold for the RSS boosts, Queue Extenders and an occasional Instaspy.

In the past two + years of playing Valor, I used to shun anyone who exploited any of the issues that you mentioned, including the excessive gold spenders; however, after having dealt with a whole lot of different types of Valor players, I have come to terms with the fact that everyone plays differently. If players have the money, means, energy, and time to exploit these system issues then more power to them. In the end, your team needs to achieve an end result, and quite frankly if your team is unable to work in any type of condition then maybe that's something to work on.

The other thing to keep in mind about these "glitches" is that sometimes changing one thing in a program has negative consequences, so programmers have to be careful of what sort of changes they can and cannot make to a system without compromising the integrity of the game. I'm sure QuarkGames is doing what they can to make the game that we love better, and I'm looking forward to seeing what other things they may have in store for us.

[Kingaddis]

I agree with you, but unfortunately these issues are known since long and nothing's been to be done...

About the alts, you'll see that entire alt guilds appeared, maybe even controlled by bots? Quark don't care, it make other people being more active and spend"ive"...

The negative scholarship is told as an "exploit" by Quark since about 1,5 years. This was promised to be fixed. This only has been forgot...

Choas has been eradicated since w80 if I remember well. Rules changed, and Quark told that reaching the "new" chaos was directly seen and players using this could be banned. This never happened. Chaos even appeared back in some worlds, fresh legacy ones if I'm right: this was told to be a glitch...


Oh, and HI King Addis. Gratz having won w319 ;-)

Cheers buddy, prepping for our next adventure

[SirBlazeALot420]

Everything that has been proposed to fix this issue in the complaints and suggestions would end up writing an entire new program by the time it was all done. I agree we can complain about it and nothing gets done, or we can counter by performing the same thing against them. I am trying two devices now and if you don't have a life or a wife then that system is for them. Too much work! They can still be killed and thanked for all the hard work!

[MyName999]

Everything that has been proposed to fix this issue in the complaints and suggestions would end up writing an entire new program by the time it was all done. I agree we can complain about it and nothing gets done, or we can counter by performing the same thing against them. I am trying two devices now and if you don't have a life or a wife then that system is for them. Too much work! They can still be killed and thanked for all the hard work!

I agree you about the multiple-alts fact...

But for the rest, it's easy to get rid of negative scholars and of chaos as well. It's just a need of will, what Quark is lacking since years

[SirBlazeALot420]

Yes or limit negative scholars to 1. If I take your city while you have nerds walking what would happen if your nerd took the city you were walking on and I had capped you out? Would you remain in game or the city just drop off the map? If there is no negative scholar count that would be the problem.

[MyName999]

Yes or limit negative scholars to 1. If I take your city while you have nerds walking what would happen if your nerd took the city you were walking on and I had capped you out? Would you remain in game or the city just drop off the map? If there is no negative scholar count that would be the problem.

There are multiple solutions to negative scholars, already talked since long in lion and guildmasters's rooms, with Quark as interlocutor... The solution isn't the problem, the will to solve it is...

[SirBlazeALot420]

Yes this might be true due to Champions game getting so much attention. Is anyone that is any good at valor playing that game? I have heard no one speek of it at all