Administrator
Game Development
822
Aug 10th 2010, 17:14:49
well part of the reason why alliances are losing members, IMO, is that they are not tailoring the playing experience to be what their members want -- at least in not any sustainable way.
From my experience playing as a fighter and a netter, there are generally a few things members want.
-Wars that are fun, challenging and not a blowout for one side
-Being able to fight generally on your own schedule (ie not fighting a war one set, then being AB'ed OOP the next set and into a war for the duration)
-Being able to net when and if netting is desired
-A community of people who have a good time playing.
Think about the time since EC started. I don't think we have had a solid community since we left 1a... EC was a complete failure IMO as it accentuated the problems that already existed without removing a big part of the cheating element due to incomplete mod tools. Think back to EC.... were there many fun and challenging wars on that server? Not really... most were FS's and then 2 weeks of mopping up, or gangbangs or blindsiding people.
Who fought on their own schedule? Really, no one did... most of the wars were forced by the same 3 or 4 alliances reset in and reset out.... near the end, it was almost a crapshoot to see who was going to get hit.
Who was able to net when they desired/needed to to regroup internally? None of the netters were able to for the latter half of EC; they were systematically targeted.
Good time playing? The major talk was about how long it would take until the game died, or until there was no competition left for some of the major alliances.
If you look at that, NO ONE was playing in EC in the way that made the Alliance game great. I think a major part of that was the change in turn structure from 2 turns per hour to 3 turns per hour.
I'd almost like to see us go back to 2 turns an hr vs 3 so that we can make the playing experience better for war folks. Mitigating FS's will result in better, longer wars where the FS doesn't decide who is victorious. That was the biggest mistake that was made in the later stages of Earth2025, IMO -- the change from 2 turns per hour to 3 on the EC server.
It made FS's too powerful to be absorbed and fought back against in most cases, and with the political shift that went on during EC, it just served to make the problem worse.
anyways... I'm getting pretty far off topic now
-=Dave=-
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