For new and existing players

[Дядя Никита]

This review was a couple of years in the making but due to several reasons like: laziness, some pity for developers and mainly that is not exactly in older players interests to discourage others from trying the game out which at least somewhat enriches actual "alive" player pool which creates a slightly better experience than just having to deal with bots and all sorts of automated accounts in already completely dead environment.



Having played this game diligently full-time for almost 4 years (hours on Steam are just a tiny fraction of hours on mobile device) on a significantly above average competitive level with over 9k USD spent on it the feedback is as follows:



1. It's general consensus that mobile games are a copy of a copy of a copy these days. And this one is not an exception. Complete lack of lore, features that are borrowed from other games get implemented like a cheap cake with layers and layers stacked on top of each other with very little regard in terms of in-game balance. 90% characters styling "borrowed" from games like Dota 2 with some remodeling and tiny description stories that hold no value whatsoever in terms of actual game play. Some sort of "collaborations" with long time forgotten names turn into money sink and furthermore reduce any story line or authenticity of the game to below zero.



2. Actual game play in terms of war activities can be described as "paper, rock, scissors, wallet" and is not sustainable for long regardless of the amount of time you put into the game. For new players who do not wish to re-mortgage their house to be relevant it will take 3 years of just "sitting" in one spot in a very active guild to be able to somewhat compensate for lack of "investment" on their part to start actually getting some sort of emotions or get into interesting situations game wise.



3. Value/$ spent is the lowest I've seen in any game in my lifetime. Horrible rates of valuable ingredients drops combined with specifically added garbage to "balance" the RNG just purely leaves you with a choice to either spend 2-3k USD on ONE item or "sit" for another 3 years. Chinese players as the biggest market for such games from the start got significant discounts on "black market" supported by developers through local agents. Consequences of such discounts include not just rebates or significantly lower prices but also introduce a ton of accounts with extremely overpowered Gear that normally should've never been in the game. Have had experience with people actually ordering custom built accounts from those agents for a price that get added into the game and ruin the balance further. Those accounts are not being built from the ground up like they should in terms of money/time spent but just get drawn and added into the game by developers for people who do not wish to undergo the whole leveling process. Such steps are made to milk any more money possible out of player pool who otherwise wouldn't have paid. All recent promotions that are coming out non-stop revolve about winning some mythical IPhone 12 if you spend enough to buy a 2021 Toyota Camry.



3. To back up some of the points above it's quite simple to follow several streamers on Youtube which are sponsored by IGG and clearly stating in their videos that they're waiting for some gifts to start making content for making some introductory low quality coaching videos from IGG. Then once they receive the gifts or some sort (gear, speed ups etc) or made up custom built accounts they will prey on the live player pool that is actually playing the game which causes reduction in player base due to frustration. This is the cheapest form of "marketing" imaginable since first of all no one really learns about this game through Youtube videos. Secondly content is repetitive and goes beyond their own Terms of Service. Thirdly, at some point there was a stream for Russian speaking players on one of those channels with developers who somewhat described the situation when IGG decides to shut down the project and milk every single dollar that is still left. Based on their descriptions this is the situation we're slowly approaching now in the game.



4. The amount of breaches of ToS in this game is just mind blowing. No one cares a single bit anymore since it creates an illusion for newer players that the kingdoms still are somewhat full when in fact it's only about 200 people playing per kingdom on average. The rest are secondary accounts, bots and abandoned castles. So much automated software has been written for this game already that basically if you pay a subscription fee you don't even need to be present to click anything in person anymore. Starting with automated resource gatherers and monster hunting accounts that operate literally for years in the majority of kingdoms that after numerous reports still "doing their thing". Bots that help with guild management are extremely common in every guild which are somewhat less of a concern but still go against ToS. Bots that are scanning whole kingdom for shield drops which are the worst with a slightly higher subscription fee provide you with automatic notifications without the need of scouting the map or spending time whatsoever. These ones completely DESTROY live player base. Nothing gets done. Bots that are used for war activities like fort, barons, emperors battles with 10+ accounts operating as one with identical timings and play patterns. Nothing gets done. The only thing players receive are once in few months tiny patch note at the bottom of the list that in their words some "fraudulent activity BEEN CRACKED UPON". This is literally the exact wording. There's a type of content which LM streamers call "Opening boxes or reviewing SUBSCRIBERS accounts" where they will go on some random account that is loaded with inventory worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at times and start showcasing the results in terms of RNG. For some reason it's quite hard to imagine such a subscriber who will just give you the keys to their new Tesla and just tell you go take it for a test drive without any gain. While solo multi-accounting is not against ToS to my knowledge, playing other people's accounts that have no relation to you is.



5. Going to patch notes. In every respectable strategy game before or after every significant update there will be detailed patch notes regarding the changes made in terms of game balance, mechanics, skills etc etc. Here we have nothing since Day 1. New monsters, features, events get rolled out randomly and mainly just involve your ability to spend extra money. Skill descriptions, how different mechanics implemented are basically trial and error and have extremely vague wording. Just recently after almost 4 years of playing without actually having to bring up any principal issues before to Customer support I've encountered a situation where I specifically had doubts about the mechanics of a particular skill so to alleviate any confusion i messaged CS directly and asked precisely what i needed to know. Not only I've been given WRONG information which caused for unnecessary losses which cost money & time. Based on my further communication with customer support I've been ghosted and given generic responses that have no relevance towards that particular situation and to this point based on THEIR mistake there was no compensation, no proper response.



6. Servers issue, lag and lack of Customer support. Expanding on previous CS feedback (Don't worry, in every message they will tell you how they care so much about players with generic sentences) the game been downgraded so much in terms of staff that perhaps all my previous concerns are not valid. The game been outsources into oblivion to be "managed" by the cheapest staff and a few of them if possible. No one has any knowledge regarding the game and if asked even the simplest question will take over 5-10 minutes to cross reference somewhere before sometimes coming up with wrong answers like in my case described earlier. For events that require a higher degree of server power than usual there been countless occasions where the company hosts more servers already after the event has started which causes frustration and game play disruption across the whole game. Constant lag even on top 5% internet speed in the world from HK and close proximity to Singapore where their headquarters are have no effect whatsoever on quality of

game play.



7. Extremely stale rotation of events year in year out with nothing new except cosmetic tiny cosmetic features (that are marketed like INSANELY HUGE improvements) are introduced. Players whose accounts are below that "sitting quietly for 3 years" benchmark are stuck with same routine every single day which completely ruins the experience after a short while. Currently only players that have some sort of emotional/material attachment to their account are left which provides even more boring game play as we used to see in previous years. The rest of the "players" have no interest in actual game whatsoever and are there only to engage in black market activities like selling resources/gems/speedups/accounts for actual cash. Nothing gets done. Right now the sole developers purpose is too rarely introduce a promotional video among some potential player base that they couldn't target before (like low quality little videos with UFC few months back) make them spent few hundred dollars, get frustrated and leave. No regards to retaining player base whatsoever. Some battle for wonders that go uncontested in developers eyes that will not generate any value for the company will have introduced guilds that are sponsored by developers to create some sort of action. If this all sounds too f***ed to be true, believe me after all these years being in various top tier guilds I have plenty of feedback from other players and seeing all these situations on a first hand basis.



I think based on written above I've provided enough free advice to both new players and developers. Surely, missed a few key points along the way but can't always write a complete post on the spot. Considering most new players play from mobile phones are rarely use Steam as a primary platform doubt there will be much exposure to these facts but hopefully I've helped a few to make up their mind regarding the present and the future of this game and provide some advice on the safety of your wallet in relation to enjoyment you wish to gain here which is not much.

[ThatThing]

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[Дядя Никита]

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[Rezzier]

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хау ду ю ду.

[Acerola # GODJAH]

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[Sylver]

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[ThatThing]

Bump

[Дядя Никита]

Breaking news:

In addition to all the existing types of bots currently in the game now can purchase the one which shows if the person is online or not. Without tracking any of account statistics. Just direct information from the server if account is online. Wonderful. Who would've thought.

Resources & hunting bots feedback time also been improved to almost instant reaction since
servers have much less load now since no one is actually playing anymore.

Reporting any blatant violations over and over again still have no value or response from Customer Support. Trying to squeeze every last penny from people who somehow still find reasons to log in.

[Дядя Никита]

Finally decided enough is enough. Quit the game completely since it's impossible to go on further. Asked to delete both of my accounts but apparently it's still an impossible task for them. Had to write a "follow-up" message

[Дядя Никита]

Dear Whoever,

I truly don't know if any amount of player feedback over the years has made you think on any level to improve the player experience for the game in question. To me and others who have spent significant amounts of time and money to support your company this is just disappointment beyond belief to be treated like this. I will go over EVERY single aspect why this game has failed and why you FAILED personally to deliver any kind of reasonable customer service for the price tag that is required to stay competitive.

1. IGG doesn't not own any standalone gaming titles that can be called unique. Everything been copied, rebranded, same yellow helmet retarded guy screaming on the icon (as if it's considered as some kind of special appeal for strategy game players), slight changes here and there. But fundamentally is the same "paper-rock-scissors" gameplay, with added useless items like (siege jewels, other miscellaneous things) to extend progression. All of the above so far is reasonable since everyone does it to a certain extent. In order for players to be interested in the same tedious gameplay day in and day out though there needs to be an active player pool. Back when I've started playing the game in 2018, proper marketing activities been carried out (even though cheap but still some that made sense). What we got now for the past 3 years?

a). All the marketing reverted to such primitive stage that is just beyond belief. If the content of the game and customer experience are on the level where people feel like it's appropriate, you don't even need to keep making stupid posts on Facebook or wherever where it goes like this : "Dear Lords & Ladies, our Royal Team has found out that bananas are yellow, blueberries are blue, but what colour are strawberries? Only "genius minds" can solve this riddle. Please press Like 35 thousand times and share with your "genius friends". Good games market themselves continuously. Proper attitude and care towards players also needs no fake promises of "doing something" to improve the game when nothing ever gets done.

b). All the social media channels are managed in the cheapest way possible. Same posts over and over and over. Some kinda "memes" that are borderline trolling the player base. Like for example there've been hundreds of pictures like "Bla bla bla, time to sleep, need to do something tmr. 5 minutes later: "Did i put on shield?" And retarded panic face". I don't want to even go in full detail listing every single one one of those.

c). Instead of paying to keep Google Play rating above 4.2-4.3 since you know below that noone would ever download and coming up with some completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ "promotional videos" for brainless people that are completely irrelevant to the game and calling it later "creative freedom to appeal to a wider audience". Should've just managed the game correctly from the very beginning based on your own ToS and not turning a blind eye to every single violation.

d). Youtube and other "marketing". As we all know you're sponsoring pretty much anybody these days with even minimal viewer base with free in-game items, sometimes with miniscule monetary incentives to "promote" Lords Mobile supposedly. How regular players supposed to feel when the company they support and then get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ by the very same company through other players who haven't paid a dollar of their own money in order to do that? Who is your target customer? A masochist fast-food worker with brain disabilities? Let's take OlegTheBest for example as your most popular "content creator" for Russian audience. How is that possible that he's allowed to manage accounts for Emperor, Baron wars that have NO connection to him whatsoever on a regular basis and actually SHOW it and it's still ok by your company? The answer is very simple. The accounts he "manages" are created by you. There're no people like BLgym, all those Prada Tai's and whatever random ♥♥♥♥. They're placed in a game to create action to create fake feeling of thriving for something for mid-high spenders. Same goes for other mid-tier imaginary accounts. I have been playing in Chinese guilds for some time as well and have screenshots upon screenshots from in-game or Whatsapp conversations where people somewhat new to the game ask how to purchase an account (which is illegal according to your ToS supposedly). But they receive replies from agents who ask which approximate specs the person wants from an account and if the price is agreed on. The account in question just gets "drawn on a board" and added into the game with believable account statistics (helps, colosseum etc). How can explain that?

2. Regarding the automated accounts. Just shocking what you've allowed to happen either of stupidity, greed or whatever other reasons that are applicable. How can you still post some kinda "memos" in news after years of blatant abuse of your own game by players and say when you're punishing whatever use of 3rd party programs? In what way? When you're the ones either outsourcing it, since all those accounts like rss/economy/guild bots have DIRECT access to server. Please explain to me how on software level it's possible to write !stats all in chat and you get hunting statistics for your whole guild for example? How is it possible just by a message in YOUR chat, to get data from YOUR server if it's not whitelisted directly on your part? And those accounts have been operating for YEARS already. Something that you've never properly admitted. Even mentioning of bots on official streams by 100$ Aevatrex or whatever than new Executi3 that says been playing for 5 years when noone ever seen that person in a thousand years and has 0 knowledge about the game is banned as a keyword. Any explanation?

Any 50 cent game developer will tell you that It's impossible to achieve such things without direct access to the server. The report feature in the game been added for what reason? I've personally submitted HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of reports with detailed explanation of players using botted software and NOTHING. NOT A SINGLE TIME any action was taken. NOT A SINGLE TIME. Meanwhile me as the ONLY player that has spent 12k USD on the game and ALWAYS advocated for the improvement of the game, discouraging others to use any software that will eventually kill it off completely. I now get to look like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idiot wasting my time talking to a wall. When I just want to delete my accounts that nobody ever used in this game except me, tied to the same e-mail since Day 1 and still get treated like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moron. Do you have ANY sense of loyalty, respect, admiration to the people that helped develop your game all this years to just keep messaging me random ♥♥♥♥ when I've submitted all you've wanted already multiple times?

Now let's discuss shield bots. When either IGG came up with the idea of introducing such feature based on tiny subscription fee per guild or you're allowing someone to HACK your servers for years you've never understood what it's gonna cause? Ok let's say 100 guilds buy it for 80$ a month. Fantastic. That's a WHOPPING 8 THOUSAND USD/month. Since you have all the player count statistics etc did you estimate how much it actually cost u in long run in profit loss? I'm not even gonna speculate on calculating with all the 1+1 coupons that you throw out 3 times a month now. Was it a plan all along to just kill the game? Do you realize that by destroying your ONLY proper gaming title as a company noone will ever trust you anymore as a developer? If even if u rebrand 25 times as UGG, IGO, GTFO and keep copying other people's games. I've stopped spending almost entirely after shield bots been introduced in to the game since there's no point to even play anymore. What type of content you think people can still enjoy in your game? Hitting same ♥♥♥♥♥♥ monster thousand times, waiting 5 more years to "make it" till servers shut down? Then what are you gonna say? Ohh, Lords & Ladies, It's been a blast. Please join our new title "Imbeciles Online" for a new ADVENTURE?

Players like me we CONSTANTLY provide you with information how to make the game better by combating these (or your) bots. What's the point to still keep telling how you disapprove and working on fixing it when doing NOTHING when given real live feedback? The person I've reported (kotikmuy) for example I've still haven't received a single notification about the imaginary investigation, since there was none obviously. Just like hundreds of other players I've reported, providing videos, screenshots. On your official discord I've posted numerous videos of hunting bots, rss bots, shield bots. What was the response everytime? "please don't promote your videos". That's just fantastic. What am i ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ promoting? My "channel" with 0 subscribers or trying to improve YOUR GAME?

Every kingdom now 24/7 all you see are emojis, every guild you join be it XIX or whatever else, 50% of communication are bot commands. People only log in when they receive a notification from discord bot channel. Click few buttons, look at some red green numbers. Log off. Which part is supposed to be fun? 30% of "players" now only dream about selling a bank for 30$ from several bots they pay 10$ for once a month and hope to buy a bag of rice. That's what Lords Mobile became about. Nothing else is left. You never bothered to expand on extremely stale boring gameplay, only facilitated to kill it further apparently with an idea that "passive income" from allowing those bots will be beneficial. To whom? I am not sure

3. Content of the game is EXTREMELY cheap. No story, no ongoing history. Have you ever read any of the heroes descriptions? It goes like: "There was a wonderful knight, bad things happened and his ♥♥♥♥ got hard" Please pay 375 USD to get the hero. For 375 USD you can buy 30 copies of Skyrim and play till you die 24/7 and will be considerably more fun. That is just one of the things that shows how you much you CARE about the players. Same events over and over again. Same type of gameplay that only revolves around increasing some % numbers for obscene amounts of money that in the end doesn't matter whatsoever since there's noone to play with.

4. Customer service is just horrendous. Everything is a copy paste of a copy paste of a copy paste. Instead you can buy Matrix movie for 10$ and enjoy it much more than wasting hours listening to your fairytales. Did anybody ever from management thought that it's not the right way to go? Even right now instead of putting this e-mail in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ golden frame in your office for everyone to see and think how they're doing their jobs I'm 100% positive I will receive all the available copy paste responses and if I don't ever msg again, noone will ever do anything regarding my previous quieries. I was trying my BEST to enjoy this game and find ways to help others enjoy it even given the circumstance we have to play but SUCH attitude towards players is just beyond me. I've asked to monitor ONE player. JUST ONE! A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ schoolchild for no salary, just gems would do it extremely efficiently in a live setting instantly and provide necessary reports for verification to GM's. Do you even have GM's anymore? I'm just telling you honestly. If you've cared about your game, could hire just THREE people like me for GM team. Noone would even dare to purchase a botted account in all 1100+ kingdoms. Every single kingdom would be still populated properly. People would keep buying stuff and competing how it was meant to be.

Several times in CS I've been given wrong information regarding game mechanics for example that caused unnecessary losses (like Queen Bee familiar skill for example etc etc). Then you have to WAIT THOUSAND WORKING DAYS, then you will get a response. Oh no, we've ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up but will never admit, so it's your problem. GREAT!

5. All my suggestions about how to improve the game were unanswered COMPLETELY. I was the FIRST and ONLY person to suggest how to deal with shield bots in a "win-win" scenario considering the greedy nature of your company. Did it ever get forwarded or considered??? If for some reason let's assume your software is so ♥♥♥♥ that you can't make any changes to it to combat shield bots. Ok. Then introduce a system to temp-ban players for a price to unban. 1st violation 100$, 2nd 300$, 3rd 1000$ and perma banned after that. Word will spread much faster than whatever you're doing over there and people by themselves will stop abusing these programs. The "inappropriate language" report system I WAS THE PERSON TO suggest. Since players would abuse it by reporting randomly without reason to get your account muted and limit your gameplay. Then you finally introduced the warning first function. Where my 10 grand USD for that?

If you can't provide an adequate gameplay value based on investment at least could've stuck to your actual ToS. Not allowing any grey market economy which is 50% of the game now. Virtually 9/10 guilds I would ask now if they have a shield bot, the answer is yes. If you join those guilds, you find out 40% accounts even mains sleep on rss bots. Obviously NOW you can't ban them all. Then ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ listen to people with ideas how to solve this ♥♥♥♥ and reward them and do you work. I don't know what else to say... I gave up so much that I just simply ASK YOU to DELETE my accounts since noone ever beat me at this game honestly and I want to keep it that way. I don't want to sell anyone any ♥♥♥♥ cause my account got tons of history and is like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ relic of your game, just without cheating. Even I know you don't give a sh1t to anything I've written above, is it SO complicated just to follow one players final wish? I feel so disgusted having accidentally downloaded this game now and spending all the time here every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ day for 1547 days that I have no words. 1547 days. And i'm still getting dumb responses about sending some other ♥♥♥♥ to you? some other ♥♥♥♥? I already submitted all the screenshots even extra today. What "CONSENT" you want? We're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in a court for courtesy of our children? I would've never quit the game till last day and played it PROPERLY only if not to get treated like ♥♥♥♥ by you.

Anyway, I'm just too tired to list every single thing what has been done wrong in this game. And regardless even I've written another 10 passages, there STILL will be ZERO result. Everyone just way to ♥♥♥♥♥ ass to do anything. Noone actually cares. Cause that's the plan all along apparently.

My last suggestion is to introduce a 1,000USD/month Elite bot. That will do everything for you from cargo ship to starting rallies and soloing. You just log in once a month and look. Then log off. What a wonderful idea would that be?

Since you would never be able to reply anything properly, just delete my accounts so I leave on the terms that i deserve to never remember this chapter of my life again.