Version 12.0.0

Quote from badidol

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.

Universally known? I think not. I've never seen this before, never heard of it before.

Pointing at some random web site that happens to mention this does not make it universal or standard or well known.

The SI standards are known and used everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix

And from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

(auf Deutsch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/…%C3%BCr_Ma%C3%9Feinheiten )

"The prefixes are never combined, so for example a millionth of a metre is a micrometre, not a millimillimetre."

( Präfixe dürfen nicht kombiniert werden. Es gibt also keine Mega-Kilometer oder Dezi-Kilogramm. In Einheiten, die als Produkte oder Quotienten geschrieben werden, darf jeder Faktor ein Präfix tragen; kg/dm3 ist also zulässig. )

Adhering to standards instead of coming up with random stuff would be useful.

Quote from bll

Universally known? I think not. I've never seen this before, never heard of it before.

Anecdotal evidence.

You never heard it. I see it in dozens of games and in dozens of tools/scripts with very high numbers.

In dozens of games players use it themselves when trading on markets.

Just because you don't know it, doesn't mean, it's not known generally.

If this message is to be considered as feedback, please change the high scores section back to its old state, it looks very bad. Other than that, thank you for the innovations.

Quote from badidol

https://www.math.net/thousand

And we have Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera, etc.

Quote from badidol

Quote from bll

Universally known? I think not. I've never seen this before, never heard of it before.

Anecdotal evidence.

You never heard it. I see it in dozens of games and in dozens of tools/scripts with very high numbers.

In dozens of games players use it themselves when trading on markets.

Just because you don't know it, doesn't mean, it's not known generally.

This is specious.

Quote

I see it in dozens of games and in dozens of tools/scripts with very high numbers.

In dozens of games players use it themselves when trading on markets.

Anecdotal evidence.

Use the standards.

I also find it very amusing that the developers are shortening the numbers and then adding this huge suffix 'kkk' or 'kkkk' on.

We need to stop complaining, its not changing anything in our gameplay. in other hand, the building options is a resource that everyone asked for years and we finally have it, its a great upgrade, a few smaller number things cant throw aside that

Here are my 2 cents to the matter: first of all i really like the new changes to building and town sorting. they are a great quality of life improvement that will make a lot of people really happy - including myself. so great job, congratulation!

As for numbering format i really liked previous format a lot more.

I have no idea why but the new KKK format just feels off - especially for display on highscore. it might be useful when people chat to each other "send me 100k wood for 100k wine", but i really never seen "send me 1kk wood for 1kk wine" people usually just say 1m for million. (in this game you also never realistically need a number higher than a million in day to day activity, so term "billion(meaning 1000*millions - not million*million)" in not really applicable in player interactions)

It also seems strange that the difference in score of 1 k means 1000-times more points, it could be just my monkey brain but i somehow do not connect seeing 6,71 kk and connecting that to an account with almost 7 million points

First of all ;

BIG THANKS for the QoL improvements, nobody could imagine this day would come!

So thanks for that!

As for new numbers format,

Either bring back older version or make this new one as an option for those wants to use and make old version available.

Also, combat report numbers now have so many digits at the report, I believe it's related with new number style,

reports shows like this,

Military...............-24140.599999999998545 - Military...............-30565.200000000000728

Offensive points........................76413 - Defence points........................60351.5

Bring back old number system ! Or make display selections, that we could choose how to display numbers... It's a very bad experience on the phone browser because I don't know the exact resource amounts because everything is rounded, if you know what i mean ...

Please stop the KKK.

Quote from badidol

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).

As an accountant, I can assure you that people can and do work with big numbers all the time. Pulling out digits to replace them with a "k" only makes every end-user need to convert the k back to whatever it was supposed to be in order to use that number. This is time consuming and pointless.

Quote from badidol

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.

This system of displaying numbers with k's is not "universal." You may be able to find some people everywhere who know what it means, but that's different from all people everywhere recognizing it and finding it to be an improvement.

This game is all about numbers, whether that's people calculating the best ROI for upgrading mines/producers, or people calculating the most effective military set up to maximize the damage ratio in CRs, or people calculating the least expensive way to upgrading reducers, or people competing to get the highest score, most OPs, etc. Without actual numbers, this becomes an exercise in frustration for everyone. Hiding the numbers and rounding to the nearest million doesn't help anyone.

Please, put the numbers back.

I mostly agree with your impressions. But...

The new notification system for rankings and resources is awful. The rest of the changes (even though they are not very necessary) are okay, a few old players were waiting for the relocation of buildings, the possibility of editing the list of cities is also okay, although it is only cosmetic.

But the new notification, although it is also a cosmetic change, is very bad, unclear, simply: much worse than the old one. We don't expect changes in the game just for change anything from time to time. The point is to change for the better, either something necessary or something aesthetic. This change looks very bad.

I would be very happy if the operators drew a conclusion from the posts on the Forum and withdrew from it in the next patch, because it looks easy to repair.

Quote from badidol

Dear players,

following up on the release of 12.0.0 (Infinite Horizons Milestone 1), we've gathered your feedback and will continue to do so.

We're happy, that the QoL features (rearranging buildings in your cities and sorting the city dropdown) were perceived so well by you.

We obviously also noticed, that quite a lot of you had a lot less love for the new numeral notation/number formatting, which was also introduced with 12.0.0.

Just to reiterate and explain, why it was done in the first place: with ever growing numbers in Ikariam, brought on by changes such as the raise of the building level cap and with that also the raise of potential building costs etc., we also faced the issue of having more and more data to display and an available space to do so, that doesn't grow along with the numbers. On the long run, keeping in mind that we've always said that we're planning on also doing more with income, bonuses and further development of buildings etc., we will always need some way of formatting numbers in a better way that uses less space. Obviously, we underestimated how inert Ikariam players are and what works just fine in dozens of other games, didn't turn out to work just as well in Ikariam. k, kk, kkk as an expression of thousands, while working well in other games and in maths, is an unknown concept to many Ikariam players and let's face it: it doesn't work here. We expected some discomfort, but not as much as was ultimately voiced now.

As a result, we're evaluating the feedback and discuss internally, how to change this. As said before, we will still need a different way of formatting numbers, for the reasons explained already. To that end, we'll post options in our #polls-and-questions channel, to get a better idea of what would be more accepted by you, the players. However, it is not likely, that a full reversion to full numbers everywhere will be possible. We'll also work on ideas to make better use of the available space in the UI or even change the UI to provide more space in future updates, but like with everything else: we prefer to not edit single views wherever needed but rather try and find a more rounded solution.

Given the time (holiday season, etc.), however, any change to this will very likely be decided and implemented in the beginning of 2025 and therefore no longer this year.

Your Ikariam Team

Display More

Get used to it during December.

First of all I would like to stress that I am truly happy that especially in the last few years, the development of Ika really revived. We got plenty of new upgrades offering new possibilities and new goals, specifically for larger players. It is understandable that these possibilities also have some other effects, like the amount of recourses necessary for upgrades and how to display that. Having almost 100 million points, I was already quite used to resources and gold being displayed with a 'k' in the city overview and I think this is necessary as well and this shouldn't be altered in the city overview.

However, I agree with everyone here that the implementation of 'kk' and 'kkk' is absolutely horrible to the eye. And while referring to the same website math.net seems to be the standardized response, I sincerely doubt that this website should be considered a leading authority in the field of mathematics as it looks more like a high-school maths website. And ofcourse, you can find a website supporting any statement on the internet. I don't doubt that this notation is used elsewhere or in other games, but I think that it is not standardized notation. As previously suggested, the suffixes k, M, B would be more appropriate I think. Whilst this was simply disregarded with the previously mentioned website, these are the suffixes that are used in the SI metric system, which I would consider pretty standardized and internationally accepted (https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/metric-si-prefixes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://www.bipm.org/en/measurement-units/si-prefixes).

It is also absolutely true that 'k' is used to represent 1000. However, we are not shortening 1000 to k, we are rounding to k. In the game, k doesn't represent 1000, it represents probably anything between 501 and 1499. And kk probably anything between 500001 and 1499999, which in itself implies a variation as big as the symbol itself, a variation of 1 million (or kk :)), okay, decimals are still used, so the variation is turned down to 10.000. Yet I find this a problem when I want to upgrade a building and the required recourses are not shown exactly. And I have to say, I've upgraded my palace to lvl 15 with less than 10.000 storage space left, so I do think this is relevant. And, correct me if I am wrong, only the display of recourses is brought back to kk instead of the actually required recourses. And if I look in my palace now, the required recourses are all placed on separate lines, so there is still plenty of space to write out the full numbers.

As for the highscore, well, I don't have any rational arguments, but it just looks much nicer to have 100.000.000 points than 100.00kk :). And there were plenty of players that already had exceeded 100.000.000 points, yet this number will only further expand in terms of symbols if they reach a billion points. It took me 10 years to grow from 18 million to 98 million points, so I guess we are still safe regarding that issue in the highscores for a long time.

Lastly I do want to mention that I am genuinely shocked by the responses to players who love this game, care about the game and pay for this game. Disregarding people's comment by repeating a random high school website over and over again, calling their opinions and experiences anecdotal evidence, I mean, are we in court? By the way, 'this is used in many other games' is probably equally anecdotal. Saying things as 'we are definitely not going to change anything based on 50 individuals' and degrading the opinions of the players who care enough about the game to give their opinion at the forum. And the worst of all, in an official statement "we underestimated how inert Ikariam players are" is plainly insulting to those people, like myself, who have been playing this game for almost every day for over 15 years. As players we have a lot to thank the developers for, but I think that is something that goes both ways. There wouldn't be a game without developers, but also not without players.

Here you have a script, if you want to get rid of the kk's.

Note: You need the tampermonkey extension. Then create new Script and copy paste the content from the attachment here (getRidOfTheKKs_forum_1.0.txt).

The view of the warehouse/dump are not changed yet.

Feedbacks are welcome

And as always, Disclaimer: Use at your own risk!

Quote from Paull

Disregarding people's comment by repeating a random high school website over and over again, calling their opinions and experiences anecdotal evidence, I mean, are we in court?

It IS anecdotal evidence. For everyone who says they never heard of k, kk, kkk you can easily find someone who has heard it and is used to it. Pointing that out is absolutely ok. It's ok to mention ALL the facts.

Quote from Paull

By the way, 'this is used in many other games' is probably equally anecdotal.

Of course it is. I said so myself, actually. Several times.

Quote from Paull

Saying things as 'we are definitely not going to change anything based on 50 individuals' and degrading the opinions of the players who care enough about the game to give their opinion at the forum.

Would you rather I'd lied and said "Sure, I am going to put all my power into changing this, since you 15 people here told me very loudly to do so!", when that's not how it works? I'm just being honest and direct with you and tell you right away, that we're not going to shoot from the hips in panic mode just because a couple of hours after an update a couple of players had negative feedback about it. I've explained more than once that we gather feedback for a while, evaluate it and then decide based on that feedback as well as our own ideas and plans for the development of the game. If you'd prefer me to lie to you...I'm sorry, indeed we'll need to look for someone else for the job then. I prefer honesty.

Quote from Paull

And the worst of all, in an official statement "we underestimated how inert Ikariam players are" is plainly insulting to those people, like myself, who have been playing this game for almost every day for over 15 years.

There is absolutely nothing insulting about the reality.

You - like me myself as well by the way, we all are - ARE inert. You dislike change in general. That's just the plain and simple reality of gaming.

Once players found something they like in this or that way, touching that in ANY way will illicit dislike. This is just simply true.

This is not an insult, this is just a simple, factual statement. We all are that way. If we find something we like and got used to, we don't want it to change.

Personally I do not care about kk , but i hope the number of generals in combat reports will be fix in the future

Generali...............-5506.8000000000001819 - Generali...............-5665.3999999999996362

badidol

My 2 cents on all the K business is everyone is arguing over the wrong thing, and missing the bigger picture.

Seems to be a debate about the technical validity of that format, instead ignoring that fact that even if it is correct it seems pretty universally disliked.

It's like imagine 2 people arguing over a shade of paint and one is technically correct on the name of the paint but the other simply hates the color no matter if the other person is right on the name of the color or not.

I can live with it but I also am not a fan of this change.

I hesitated to say anything about it because I didn't want to overshadow the building and drop list change which I have been wanting for a long time and am grateful the team implemented it and is as universally liked as the as the "K" format seems to be disliked.

Again express your thanks to the Team for the town/list changes from us I've not seen a single negative comment about it.. it's a home run.

I agreed with Paull on most of his comments, though I found inert go be amusing rather than insulting, speaking as someone who is likely to be fully inert in a few years from now. But as a graduate mathematician with decades of experience working on 4 continents in a few fields, I have to say I have only once come across the notation kk, and that was in a mathematics course. Never saw anything to do with the Ku Klux Klan, which I would certainly have remembered, nor further extended strings of k characters. I accept it may be a prevalent practice in gaming, as my width of experience is very limited there.

It does seem reasonably obvious to use single characters like SI terminology if UI screen space is an issue. I'm probably affected more than most short term, with storage nearing max in some towns for GR upgrades and being unable to check some unrounded values while using my tablet, but even allowing for workarounds, my main issues are with choosing to display values as rounded, not truncated; the shortening of displayed mantissas to 2 digits; and the displaying of leading zeros in time data.

Quote from JuneBarcarolle

This game is all about numbers, whether that's people calculating the best ROI for upgrading mines/producers, or people calculating the most effective military set up to maximize the damage ratio in CRs, or people calculating the least expensive way to upgrading reducers, or people competing to get the highest score, most OPs, etc. Without actual numbers, this becomes an exercise in frustration for everyone. Hiding the numbers and rounding to the nearest million doesn't help anyone.

Well said, thanks for sticking up for those of us who like to play with numbers xD.

Quote from Rastan

Seems to be a debate about the technical validity of that format, instead ignoring that fact that even if it is correct it seems pretty universally disliked.

Boom! Right there, nailed it. He keeps referring to it as anecdotal evidence, while the rest of us see an overwhelming dislike for the new format, which includes several polls with 300-400 votes.

Quote from Rastan

Again express your thanks to the Team for the town/list changes from us I've not seen a single negative comment about it.. it's a home run.

This too, some very cool new features are being overshadowed by just how bad the new number format is.