Forge of Empires Reviews

It's free and online but gets really boring quite quickly. You spend most of your time waiting... basically you can play like 5 min every couple hours... so frustrating

I have been playing Forge of Empires by InnoGames for about 4 years now. They change up small details to adjust so it either balances the game or to make it necessary to spend money have the full game rewards available. They do A/B "testing" but with one major difference from the expected industry standards. They alter the accounts on the live servers so different paying customers receive different game elements. The latest "testing" involved advertising heavily before an event (a temporary mini game within the game). These are not trivial amounts paid to Inno due to the advertising and can be in the hundreds and even thousands with some players. They essentially advertised , received the revenue from this and then altered the mini game to exclude half the players from the full event. Here is my interaction with "support" , this is not an honest company.

_________________________________________

Good evening ,

I had received a double 200% diamond offer, 3 days before and another the day before the event. The event was advertised well in advance and beta testing came back favorable. So I purchased from both offers to clear my expansions to make more room and to invest in game currency. The double prize line was the main draw of this event and I am very sure the reason for most heavy spending on this event.

I am one of the top 10 spenders in this event in my world and I feel that having half the value of the event rewards removed from my game is an unfair financial penalty even if it is a test. I have spent about 400$ on this event and had half the value of the event removed due to a 15$ option being unavailable to me. I would like the option of paying the difference of the Fellowship line and the Gold line and receiving the corresponding level of rewards in my inventory once paid please.

Thank you

You2023-08-02 23:57:05

The unfair financial penalty is that I have to buy twice as much event currency to obtain the same number of event rewards as the others with the full event rewards.

Forge of Empires - Customer Support2023-08-03 04:39:16

Hello Sharmon the Impaler,

Thanks so much for contacting FOE Support!

It is intended some players only have one option; there is no way for us to add the other chest to any account that did not receive both options. I will pass along your feedback.

Best regards,

Encompassed

Co-Community Manager

Forum | Facebook Group | Wiki

You2023-08-03 08:14:56

I would like this escalated please ,

Inno advertised for the event and I spent accordingly due to the advertising and then was delivered half of what was advertised. The 2 diamond offers were obviously for the event as they were both sent within 72 hours prior to the event opening.

There is a set list of the rewards in the gold tier that I paid for and I am only asking to be treated fairly as a customer that has spent about $12,000 with your firm.

Regards

You2023-08-03 08:32:41

The advertising was for the event and you had a sale for diamonds for the event and customers that purchased them should have been excluded from any testing that would affect what they paid for.

Forge of Empires - Customer Support2023-08-03 09:11:26

NewThis is as high as a ticket goes. There is no further escalation, and we cannot add the chest to your account. I will pass along your feedback.

Best regards,

Encompassed

Co-Community Manager

Forum | Facebook Group | Wiki

I enjoy Forge of Empires, and had fun doing so. I enjoyed the design aspects, cooperative guilds, the assorted GBs.

But I had to leave this game because of one simple fact.

InnoGames does not enforce its Terms of Service that users agree to upon sign up. You see, when you sign up for their free to play game, the expectation is you follow the rules which clearly state:

“It is forbidden to create multiple accounts on a single world for any reason.”

The rules go on to state:

“InnoGames does not accept any publications that the Forge of Empires Team considers illegal, insulting, offensive, threatening, abusive, real-life agressive, sexually explicit, pornographic, politically extreme, religiously fanatic, endangering youth, racist, playing down the use of illegal drugs or alcohol, or promoting the use of said substances, or in any way inappropriate.”

Furthermore:

“Spamming other players with in game mails or chat messages is abusive and will not be tolerated.”

“It is forbidden to use inappropriate names.”

“Spamming the same message repeatedly in the chat room is not permitted as it is poor chat etiquette.”

These are all very reasonable asks, for players to behave themselves like civilized people. And again, all players agree to these by signing up and using the service.

However, Griefental (G World) has become completely unplayable due to one malignant party that InnoGames refuses to deal with despite his sustained and voluminous disruptions and rule violations.

This player’s “main” is called “JaJeek” - a term for a cucumber yogurt. Let’s leave aside for the moment the obvious vulgar innuendo and the mentality that that would originate from and address the conduct that is, again, allowed by InnoGames.

This player routinely spams the chat room. Over sustained periods, he has harassed and annoyed others, even going so far as to lie about multiple illnesses, surgeries, and other things which are a physical impossibility. He will bait others into befriending him and contributing to his GBs and then randomly defriending them with no provocation. He will deny friendly interactions with players who have avatars of persons of color, claiming they “scare” him.

This would be easy enough to deal with if one could simply block “JaJeek” and be done with him. But he escalates.

The “tutorial” keeps new accounts from spamming chat, but it does not prevent them from spamming friend requests or sending private messages. This is where the conduct gets worse.

Routinely, when a player in some way raises the ire of this ceaseless troll, they are besieged by a litany of alt accounts, new in Bronze Age with the same avatar, a goofy looking fellow in arctic wear. These names end in “eek” - for example “PaPeek” and “SaSeek.”

Occasionally, these accounts will message users seen in the chat room. They will routinely have racist messages against Black and Hispanic individuals. They will reference things said by JaJeek, even in days previous, and use the exact same speech patterns and incorrect spellings and phrases. At times, I have logged in to find seven or more of these a day over a period of a week.

JaJeek also has a long running feud (and drove away from the game) a user by the name of OdieBoss. This happened long enough ago that only those present at the time would know, but routinely there are spam accounts ending in “oss” following the above pattern with the same avatar (SlodieSloss, etc.)

There is also an alt named “littlebeanburrito” which occasionally appears and sends the racist messages, while also saying things such as “JaJeek is a good person” and other defenses of JaJeek.

Summarizing, JaJeek has broken multiple Inno policies over a sustained period of time, and has made the game hostile to anyone who crosses his path. Ignoring his main account does not block the new friend requests from the rude or obscene names or the rude messages from the alternate accounts.

Numerous reports have been made documenting this pattern of behavior, and pleading for an IP investigation of this troll, a ban of his IP, a removal of his main account, etc. And InnoGames fails to act.

This can only lead me to believe that either JaJeek is an employee of InnoGames playing what he thinks is a funny game, and immune from enforcement of the rules, or that InnoGames no longer enforces its policies - which is not true, as I know numerous players have gotten bans for far less (profanity, innuendo in the chat room etc.)

boycott guild expeditions on forge of empires FoE developers are killing the game with their new changes on guild expeditions

almost no diamonds anymore , expedition rewards are now almost all fragments lvl 5 of expedition is all fragments and last chest is fragments of a temporary building this is completely ridiculous

no more surprises in rewards

Bought $14.99 package which included “all previous gifts from past special events “ It does not say you don’t actually get them until you beat all the levels. In fact it says “ there is no cost for you to place these”. That is a complete, bold faced lie. Plus I didn’t expect a “international service charge “ for being in the USA on my cc. It is based in Germany so fees involved. I hate liars. Do not spend a dime with these people. I also bought 2 other packs that included 250 diamonds which were all gone by the next morning and I didn’t spend one of them. This is not quite a scam but it is theft.

FOE will delete items and customer service will do Nothing. Playing for nearly two years and yes spent way much on this waste of time game. Now when I goto use upgrades that will help me, poof they disappear. My advice if you find any game asking for purchase to play just turn off and goto a casino at least there you might win sometimes.

I only joined today and after an hour I had not got a clue what to do. I was asked to put my email on for 50 diamonds. I did this and it asked for my username which I had put in, then it said that name was taken. I don't know what the password was as it was automatic set up. I could not find the unsubscribe button anywhere so I contacted them and just get a load of questions about what houses I built. I want to unsubscribe, but they are stalling. I will go on every review site if they do not comply.

Quite tedious. The Developers do not seem to have any ideas beyond battles and encouraging players to attack others. This would be acceptable and fair if established players were unable to attack players many leagues below them.

FoE need to encourage a more principled game, which would put a stop to new players leaving so quickly. Fairer fights would stop the cowards attacking players they know are unable to defend themselves.

Wow, I've read a bunch of reviews (by losers) who blame FOE and its business model for their own defeat. These are people who have little understanding of the game and how to succeed in it. Some may even have "gambling" addiction tendencies.

I have been playing FOE since Sep 2020 and have still never paid a dime. If you use your brain and analyze the rules and gameplay, you will see it is a grand puzzle that needs to be solved. By reading and with your observation abilities, understand the details of the game and it's constraints. Then, using that data, strategize how you will progress and grow in the game.

At this writing I am in the latter half of Oceanic Future (age) and have many GBs (great buildings) and >250 FPs generation per day in my city. Yes, the game will request all the time you want to give it. So this calls for self-discipline. Play the game as much as you want, but don't "blame the game".

Avoid in my opinion, rampant cheating now.

I have played since beta, many of the players that I knew over the years have quit yet their accounts are still active/renamed. Even players who have outright stated they now control x y or z account (and proven it). Reporting them has achieved nothing, every single one.

Between alts and scripts/auto clickers, good luck being competitive unless you are willing to do the same.

I suspect Inno Games either no longer cares or is turning a blind eye to players that actually spend money.

Everyone here complaining about spending real money on diamonds is just foolish. I've played for nearly 4 years, my city is ridiculously powerful, and I've never spent a single cent of real money on this game. Anyone who thinks diamonds are required just doesn't understand how to play the game properly. Or well.

This game is great in a lot of ways, and it is ABSOLUTELY FREE TO PLAY and FREE TO 'WIN'. Don't be misled by unintelligent nonsense. One reviewer said 'challenging without diamonds', and this isn't even slightly true. At all. Not even a bit.

I've played this game for years, and really enjoyed it, spending far to much time on it. I fonally got my son to start playing, and sometimes he only plays with my prompting. We have both supported each other, which has always worked fine until the most recent game update.

Within the FAQs they claim that other people within the same household can play, even on the same computer, provided they each have their own log in name, etc. This worked fine until recently, and now InnoGames is saying we cannot support each other any longer, and I cannnot even log in and play, getting only the attached text only screen.

Basically, this company didn't realize that by spending all this money marketing and advertising the game, they've also working behind the scenes to actually destroy game play for people who previously enjoyed it.

Find another game, and game creator, I'm probably not going to play anything by InnoGames ever again, due to the way they've handled things. Too bad. It was fun, but not any longer.

One of the few true play to win games of its kind. Played for almost 2 years, never felt the need to buy diamonds. You can gain aproximately 200 diamonds every week, and that is enough to buy all the premium expansion. It isn't a fast game, but it isn't supposed to be. If you end up in a good guild you can find lots of cool people. I really can not understand the other comments here. Buying diamonds barely helps, unless you are spending thousands of dollars. It's not a game where you are supposed to play hours every day, but maybe 20 minutes while you watch you city slowly grow

I'm in 10th grade and rarely play videogames. I started playing FoE a few weeks ago just for curiosity and boredom. It was the worst decision I ever made.

I'm so addicted to FoE that I found myself playing 6 hours during classes and straight from 4PM to 2AM just doing endless useless routine tasks. My friends see it as something funny but I know it is not healthy.

Please avoid playing FoE and even more by browsing it because it is extremely easy to switch the tab in your laptop while working.

Please don't do it, I'm forcing my ban through flooding in the GlobalChat but seems there aren't mods now.

Don't let anyone steal 16 hours of your day, it's not fair.

PLEASE DON'T PLAY Forge of Empires!

Turning into pay (too much) to play. Inno has destroyed a good game.

Foe tricks you into investing time, then switches rules so you either have to rebuild your city (which takes weeks) or pay real cash to keep advancing. Turning into a total rip-off. There's a lot better choices out there.

I've played for 3 years, invested almost 800 real dollars over that time to build up my cities.

Inno just introduced a change that has essentially destroyed all that work and effort.

It has become a game solely focused on meeting the needs of players who can spend hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.

Go on the game forums and read the posts about "abortable Quests" and see the anger and disgust from the many players who faithfully supported Inno for years, only to be crapped on.

I officially have spent over 5 thousand dollars on diamonds and my girlfriend left me because I spent all our money on this game, do not play this game it's not fun its money sucking...

I played this on my Ipad for a small amount of time, somewhat enjoyable to begin with, but it eventually gets to the point where you would have to spend years to finish points without buying diamonds. Absolute scam, and it is paying people to advertise it falsely. Its undercover Raid Shadow Legends. They also invade your privacy, look at messages, and collect your data. Don't even install it, its likes are probably botted.

this game has some terrible flaws. its close to impossible to move through the game without buying hundreds of dollars of diamonds(you cant't earn them through game play). there are not enough expansions available(unless you have diamonds or medals) both very scarce. Once you get out of the iron age you need incredible amounts of goods to research the various technologies to get to the expansions at the very end of the era but the catch is if I don't have those expansions I cant't put up the buildings to make the needed goods. Major Flaw. Solution is to buy hundreds of dollars of diamonds. this game is not worth it. Save your money and time.

INNO Games and Forge of Empires is a total scam. I know first hand as I was a Moderator for six months. During that time I gathered evidence that INNO places "bait" accounts in every world.

By "Bait Accounts" I mean fake accounts with unlimited diamonds. This is done with the intention of getting real players (I'm gonna call them suckers) to spend their real money in an attempt to keep pace with the fake accounts, which of course they can never do.

Moral of the story. NEVER spend one cent on this game! It's fake. Play it if you want, but no matter the strategy you deploy, you will NEVER win!

Moderators infring on privacy laws and rights to collect information on you by spying on your private messages