Man this is depressing.. all the fun people that make this game and community are slowly leaving. And for good reason. This game has no future with the way it's heading.
Cheaters have overrun this game and instead of perma-banning them, they give them 72 hour bans or medal reductions since they don't want to lose their "customers". I'm sick of Nexon's coddling with cheaters, treating them as valuable customers since they may have a receipt for a random crown purchase in the past. And if you're going to punish someone who crown hacked to max levels, you need to downgrade their walls and send their base back to the stone age. Or you can do the more logical option of just perma-banning like everyone is asking for.
Besides the ineptitude and unwillingness to deal with cheating, the game's direction is troubling. It's my impression that either the developers are completely out of touch with their game or they choose to ignore our qualms and suggestions. The player-base is unanimous about the terrible medal system and yet it seems perfect according to the devs. Hearing their reasoning for the new 24hr general cooldown and nations "rebalance" in the December Sate of Nations only makes me wonder if any of the devs actually play/test the game at high leagues and industrial age. World war was an underwhelming feature for the game's most anticipated update and it arrived bug-laden as they always do. None of the suggestions from the player-base were actually implemented and instead we got a rehash of regular multiplayer with a medal summation table and an aesthetically pleasing yet pointless map to go along with it.
I've never been this pessimistic about a game I care about. Maybe it's because I was a huge fan of BHG's Rise of Nations and saw this game's awesome potential. It's a shame that it'll never be reached like this, and many players here feel the same way. These forums have gotten pretty toxic the past couple of months and not without reason. I mean the mods hilariously removed the "Fan-art Fridays" thread out of embarrassment since no one bothered to submit anything, and those who did only wanted to express their grievances with the game. Do they really expect us to be 'happy go lucky' about everything in this little to no community with the current game state?
I only expect more players to quit out of frustration until all the veteran players and frequent forum posters are gone from these forums. Then we'll have a little echo chamber here and I'll be gone before then.
Take care Eddie I'll miss your humorous analyses and sarcasm. This place won't be the same without you.