Version 12.0.0

Quote from Luky

but ..... please , you can't say it's better now than before !!!

There are gazillions of games using similar notations. There are many games, some of us even ours (Metin2 for example comes to mind), where players themselves count in k, kk, kkk in the markets when trading items etc. k, kk, kkk is not exactly unknown to gamers in general, albeit obviously unusual and unknown to Ikariam players.

With constantly growing numbers in Ikariam a change to a different numeral notation and handling was ultimately necessary. Many games solve too high number growth with a number squish, but somehow I think, Ikariam players wouldn't love the idea much of their 5.000.000 gold suddenly becoming 500 gold (prices would of course also shrink, every number would simply be squished).

k, kk, kkk is a mathematical notation that's universally known and used in maths etc., so that also doesn't change with localization, which is another problem that existed. Turkish for example had an expression for million that was, for some reason, even longer than the word million. In the US, a billion is something different than in the EU. There are many, many good reasons not to use words but simple units that are universally the same.

Sure, we could have also used exponential notation, then 1.000.000 would have been 1x10⁶. The fact remains: with the ever growing numbers in Ikariam, this needed shortening AND a universal notation that doesn't change with language.

As always: we'll gather feedback and see what happens. I am not going to go into panic mode after not even a full 24 hours of the thing being live and in total not even 50 unique users mentioning dislike. We don't make decisions based on panic mode, we gather feedback, evaluate and then work with a more rounded foundation of feedback.

Quote from badidol

Quote from Luky

but ..... please , you can't say it's better now than before !!!

There are gazillions of games using similar notations. There are many games, some of us even ours (Metin2 for example comes to mind), where players themselves count in k, kk, kkk in the markets when trading items etc. k, kk, kkk is not exactly unknown to gamers in general, albeit obviously unusual and unknown to Ikariam players.

With constantly growing numbers in Ikariam a change to a different numeral notation and handling was ultimately necessary. Many games solve too high number growth with a number squish, but somehow I think, Ikariam players wouldn't love the idea much of their 5.000.000 gold suddenly becoming 500 gold (prices would of course also shrink, every number would simply be squished).

k, kk, kkk is a mathematical notation that's universally known and used in maths etc., so that also doesn't change with localization, which is another problem that existed. Turkish for example had an expression for million that was, for some reason, even longer than the word million. In the US, a billion is something different than in the EU. There are many, many good reasons not to use words but simple units that are universally the same.

Sure, we could have also used exponential notation, then 1.000.000 would have been 1x10⁶. The fact remains: with the ever growing numbers in Ikariam, this needed shortening AND a universal notation that doesn't change with language.

As always: we'll gather feedback and see what happens. I am not going to go into panic mode after not even a full 24 hours of the thing being live and in total not even 50 unique users mentioning dislike. We don't make decisions based on panic mode, we gather feedback, evaluate and then work with a more rounded foundation of feedback.

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OK

I understand

You are right

But it would be better not to consider units tens and hundreds

Example

1,234,567

Show it as

1,234 K

Or

1.234.567.890

In

1.234 Kk

Quote from badidol

Quote from Luky

but ..... please , you can't say it's better now than before !!!

There are gazillions of games using similar notations. There are many games, some of us even ours (Metin2 for example comes to mind), where players themselves count in k, kk, kkk in the markets when trading items etc. k, kk, kkk is not exactly unknown to gamers in general, albeit obviously unusual and unknown to Ikariam players.

With constantly growing numbers in Ikariam a change to a different numeral notation and handling was ultimately necessary. Many games solve too high number growth with a number squish, but somehow I think, Ikariam players wouldn't love the idea much of their 5.000.000 gold suddenly becoming 500 gold (prices would of course also shrink, every number would simply be squished).

k, kk, kkk is a mathematical notation that's universally known and used in maths etc., so that also doesn't change with localization, which is another problem that existed. Turkish for example had an expression for million that was, for some reason, even longer than the word million. In the US, a billion is something different than in the EU. There are many, many good reasons not to use words but simple units that are universally the same.

Sure, we could have also used exponential notation, then 1.000.000 would have been 1x10⁶. The fact remains: with the ever growing numbers in Ikariam, this needed shortening AND a universal notation that doesn't change with language.

As always: we'll gather feedback and see what happens. I am not going to go into panic mode after not even a full 24 hours of the thing being live and in total not even 50 unique users mentioning dislike. We don't make decisions based on panic mode, we gather feedback, evaluate and then work with a more rounded foundation of feedback.

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As a person who plays video games and has studied mathematics at fairly high levels, I've never seen this notation in my life. So I don't know about "universally known and used in mathematics". Quite the opposite I would say, in pure mathematics everyone pretty much universally avoid using any kind of "large number prefix letters" from what I've seen, not even standard SI prefixes (k, M, G) because letters are already used to represent variables. Closest you might see is someone writing 5.0e6 or something instead of 5.0 × 10⁶ when typing just because there's no exponents on the keyboard. Maybe in some certain specializations or regions kkkk is used, but it's far from "universal".

Likewise having played a lot of games and never seen it before... I haven't played every game in the world of course but I'm not very convinced it's as common as you make it sound.

I find this update very bizarre and I disapprove of it (just adding my voice to the pile, since you're in the "gathering feedback" stage). If something were to be done, I would have expected standard SI prefixes (k, M, G) would be the obvious choice. It should be understood by almost everyone, certainly more people than would understand kkk I'm quite sure. And they are (generally) independent of locale.

Quote from Glenwing

Quite the opposite I would say, in pure mathematics everyone pretty much universally avoid using any kind of "large number prefix letters" from what I've seen, not even standard SI prefixes (k, M, G) because letters are already used to represent variables. Closest you might see is someone writing 5.0e6 or something instead of 5.0 × 10⁶ when typing just because there's no exponents on the keyboard. Maybe in some certain specializations or regions kkkk is used, but it's far from "universal".

https://www.math.net/thousand

Quote from Glenwing

Likewise having played a lot of games and never seen it before... I haven't played every game in the world of course but I'm not very convinced it's as common as you make it sound.

I guess we can chalk that up as anecdotal evidence then. I can easily name several games I've played (or still play), in which especially in trade between players k, kk is commonly used to abbreviate millions and thousands ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We'll see.

Seems this is clearly a clash of (pan-)national symbol usage with using a prefix to shorten a number. From some limited googling I found that "kk..." finds usage in the (far) eastern hemisphere and possible USA somewhat, while "M" can be found in EU and scientific dominated fields.

Most people will understand, after 5 seconds, of what the "kk" means. But it has basically been dropped on people who never used it before while not understanding that part of the world just does not use it.

Grab the fellow who added this, make him code a extra menu into the game option tab and let people actually chose which they prefer!

And speaking about anecdotal evidence (Ogame uses "M" btw) together with URL dropping, how about this: link (pdf)

Quote from JamesBond79

Quote from badidol

Quote from Luky

With constantly growing numbers in Ikariam a change to a different numeral notation and handling was ultimately necessary. Many games solve too high number growth with a number squish, but somehow I think, Ikariam players wouldn't love the idea much of their 5.000.000 gold suddenly becoming 500 gold (prices would of course also shrink, every number would simply be squished).

I understand your need for a solution of this problem,but and we the players have used to the previous highscore and the new highscore is very different.Most players dont still have billion in our points.Couldnt be there the 1 billion to be the number which start the new difference?This i believe could help and the company and the players.

For example for numbers 1 to 999.999.999 without change and from 1.000.000.000 and over could make it 1.000.000k or something like that.

Numbers are simply formatted the same everywhere, there's no different formatting. That's why points are formatted the same as well.

As for billion: as said before, the US billion is not the same as the EU billion. That's what I was referring to before with localization.

Quote from badidol

Quote from JuneBarcarolle

These "numbers" are meaningless.

Quote from Quartz

Can we please have M and G instead of kk and kkk? They're only international standards.

https://www.math.net/thousand

This isn't however what you've done.

1k is a place holder for 1.000 not any number between 501 and 1.500 as is the case with your update!

So you need to do something about numbers in Ikariam getting bigger yet space to display remaining unchanged? Fine, I can see that.

But please cant you do it without rounding?

PS: And personally I dont care about the Highscores, but the resource displays are a real problem, if I cant see at once, what's the exakt amount.

Quote from Boros

So you need to do something about numbers in Ikariam getting bigger yet space to display remaining unchanged? Fine, I can see that.

But please cant you do it without rounding?

Not sure why the rounding was necessary, but it was done on purpose.

Quote from badidol

Quote from Glenwing

Quite the opposite I would say, in pure mathematics everyone pretty much universally avoid using any kind of "large number prefix letters" from what I've seen, not even standard SI prefixes (k, M, G) because letters are already used to represent variables. Closest you might see is someone writing 5.0e6 or something instead of 5.0 × 10⁶ when typing just because there's no exponents on the keyboard. Maybe in some certain specializations or regions kkkk is used, but it's far from "universal".

https://www.math.net/thousand

I saw your link, I just think it's a long way off from something I'd call "universal". Like I said, never heard of it before in my life.

Quote from badidol

Turkish for example had an expression for million that was, for some reason, even longer than the word million.

Milyon means "million" in Turkish.

What was the word you heard?

Now that I know that each "k" represents 3 "zeroes", I can understand it now

but that Math.net/Thousands or whatever page -- is the 1st time I have ever heard of using it in this way -- I have always heard of 1 "k" but not "kk" nor "kkk" even

Not every player is an AVID player to know this so you have to "explain" some of the changes that you do for the rest of us

Came here to see the likely outrage over formats and praise over the other changes - have not been surprised. It's a bit unfair of me to concentrate on the negative, but here goes anyway...

That one can't see exact numbers is ridiculous. Storage limits can be exceeded easily now. Rounding adds to this. The use of more than one letter presumably restricts field length to 2 decimal places rather than the previous display on the overviews at the top of the screen; if not, why give less info than before?

The previously introduced ludicrous leading triple zeros that came up on times have now been suppressed - can coders now remove the equally irritating leading single zero, please? It used to be much easier to see which times were coming to fruition if only one digit was displayed, contrasting with the larger amounts on other entries. Working on small screens and with old eyes it makes a difference to me. (Not as much as removing the Captchas would, especially with cheats available to bypass them, but I guess I'm tilting at windmills here.)

Finally, regarding time displays, I thought a change that should be made would be to include number of days against info on trades arriving, shown at the bottom of a town's trading port. These show the time of day, but with the introduction especially of freighters, the info becomes temporarily misleading if they need more than 24 hours to arrive. Yes, such full info is available in the military advisor, but it needs to be scrolled through to find the specific destination.

Just to show I'm not a 100% moaner, I expect your main 2 changes to be highly useful (not tried them yet) and it shows commitment to a fine game that the "end of the worlders" have been predicting would meet its demise soon for a decade now. Well done.

Quote from DogEnds

That one can't see exact numbers is ridiculous.

One can hover over the number and see the exact number.

Quote from badidol

As always: we'll gather feedback and see what happens. I am not going to go into panic mode after not even a full 24 hours of the thing being live and in total not even 50 unique users mentioning dislike.

It's not so much that there are only 50 unique users, it's the ratio of 50 to 0 where you can draw some meaningful conclusions. There's not a single person in our alliance that likes the new format. Not one person who even suggested maybe we only need to get used to it. It seems to be universal, everyone likes the town/building arrangement options, but hate the new number format, and for a variety of reasons.

There's also those of us who like playing with data and making calculations. With the old format we could copy/paste numbers directly to spreadsheets quickly, now we can't. That's going to be a pain to hover over every individual number and enter it manually.

What about an option in the user menu where people can choose how they want numbers displayed?

Quote from Reignman

It's not so much that there are only 50 unique users, it's the ratio of 50 to 0 where you can draw some meaningful conclusions. There's not a single person in our alliance that likes the new format. Not one person who even suggested maybe we only need to get used to it. It seems to be universal, everyone likes the town/building arrangement options, but hate the new number format, and for a variety of reasons.

Doesn't change anything in regards to how we proceed with feedback though.

Quote from Reignman

What about an option in the user menu where people can choose how they want numbers displayed?

The way it's built right now, this is not possible.

Quote from badidol

Quote from DogEnds

That one can't see exact numbers is ridiculous.

One can hover over the number and see the exact number.

One can however only do that with one number at once. Pretty useless if you want to compare several numbers like e.g. the premium view.

"One can hover over the number and see the exact number."

Try that on a touchscreen. If it's a good you're producing, you get taken to the mine/mill. Other goods, fair enough, but I'd rather be able to see all values on one screen, with one action. It's a retrograde step in an otherwise commendable upgrade.

Quote from DogEnds

"One can hover over the number and see the exact number."

Try that on a touchscreen. If it's a good you're producing, you get taken to the mine/mill. Other goods, fair enough, but I'd rather be able to see all values on one screen, with one action. It's a retrograde step in an otherwise commendable upgrade.

As sorry as I am for you there, our focus doesn't lie on mobile devices but on PC browsers. It's still a PC browser game first and foremost.

I get, that this doesn't make many people happy, however, it is what it is.

Well, I guess I'm going to have to use my antediluvian laptop, then, in some instances 🙂