Aug 20th 2012, 0:31:51
I'm going to go ahead and drop out of character for this one, because I actually want to be serious for a minute. This is a very rare occurrence only witnessed once before.
If you want to save this war game, stop trying to take the war out of it.
Every time I see the phrase "in order to combat suiciding", it makes me cringe, because what you're really talking about there is finding a way to remove some or all risk from those who wish to engage in aggression against another player in order to grow their own country. I think too often people forget that when you grab a country 20 times over 3 days, there's a person behind that country who you're risking chasing away from the game. Every time you take away or diminish that person's ability to get what little bit of satisfaction he can, you're increasing the odds that he'll just leave.
Some will say, "Or he'll learn to play a better country".. Yeah, he may. And his group of 7 or 8 friends in the tag HEROES or GOOFBALLS or SPANK will soon find out that even if they do play well, they still get farmed. Bill and I were running two of the slimmer countries in the top 20. That didn't stop us from getting hit. We reacted the way we did to LaF because we've been around a very long time and know what comes next. Allow a double tap.. fail to take back as mush as the attacker took... show any weakness.. give even an inch.. and you become the entire server's landfarm. WE knew that going into this.. Not so for the new player who talks a few of his friends from work or school into trying to start an alliance. Bill and I will stick around because we knew what we were getting ourselves into. The newbie will most likely throw his hands up in frustration and go play something else.
For every self-important "I QUIT!" post from a vet that you might save by "combatting suiciding", you're losing dozens of other players who will just silently disappear. Just look at the news for pretty much any major alliance, and you'll see the relentless, vicious farming of anybody who dares to play outside of the big fifteen. And if one of those small guys manages to actually get a blow in on his tormentor?? HOO BOY, the fan is going to be hit by some stuff that doesn't smell good. Now take those same people doing the farming, tell them that their risk has been reduced by 50%, and do you think they'll do it less?
So in my always incredibly humble opinion, the admins should STOP worrying about suiciding, STOP protecting the big guy, and STOP trying to make war something from which both parties can gain. Eliminate or scale back most of the changes which are designed to do those things, and I think you'd have a better game, and eventually more players.
"Ghost acres" that are almost equal to the amount of land taken from the victim country... that's a little ridiculous. Scale back or get rid of ghost acres. "But where will all the land come from?".. I don't know, maybe increase the effectiveness of exploring somewhat.. or maybe there's a different, better way to get land into the system. Zahc may be on to something with the land market idea. But warring actions that benefit both parties are just stupid.
I think the formulae for missile damage need to be revisited as well. It shouldn't be possible for a country to go without SDI, eat 23 missiles from somebody that he just farmed into the ground, and shrug it off like nothing happened. As I was looking for targets before I was killed today, I was astonished by the number of extremely landfat countries I found with literally zero SDI. If there are that many people willing to take that much risk for the sake of netgaining, then missiles aren't scary enough any more, IMO. Perhaps tweak those formulae so that the limiting factor of the attacker's level of [x] on the damage done is slightly smaller. Or maybe allow for sale of missiles on the public market again. That was FUN back in the day. It got out of hand in a game with 10k players, but we're sub-1000 now. Maybe it could work again.
I definitely disagree with separating special attack DR from landgrab DR, and I hope the admins won't consider it. Zahc, what avenue for revenge would you leave the farming victim? Going down in flames and taking some of the big alliance's land with you is currently about the only effective tool most of the small guys have. Wish I'd done a better job of it today, but I got killed in the 10 minutes that I was switching rooms at my hotel (after doing practically nothing but watching my country for 2 days) :)
Bots are also a terrible idea. Why bother having land at all, if we're just going to make it copletely risk free? Might as well just change this to a straight math game and forget strategy.
For the most part, the big alliances aren't stupid. If you want them to stop chasing away your newbies, then stop taking away the power of those newbies to fight back. Sure, a couple of self righteous, arrogant players will quit "because you've ruined the game", but I think the gains would outweigh those losses. Big alliances will adjust their policies, netgainers will have to actually have some defense (but the playing field will still be level because all of them will have to have it), and smaller players or alliances might stop feeling like the game is just pointless. When netters come boo-hooing about how they have to keep defense which increases their expenses, remind them that every single other netter is faced with the same risk-reward trade off.
Another side note: While they most definitely did not work in the favor of THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER] this time around, I think the recent special attack changes are fairly close to being just about right. When a player ticks off two other countries his size, they should be able to put a pretty good hurt on him. We didn't really, but we did a pretty piss-poor job of it. From not putting any prep into it (we were full on turns for another batch explore when we got double tapped) to warning H4xOr THE FLAILING CHICKEN in advance on AT, to just plain making a lot of mistakes (I even bombed the jets of country #4 instead of bombing haxor's jets 4 times.. SORRY!), we could have done a lot better. And even with all that, we still managed to take out 1/3 of his buildings and jets. Not great, but a better prepared duo could have done a lot better. I think maybe the new attack formulae are just a little toO heavy at the beginning and ending of the kill/destroy runs, but not by a lot.
OH, AND WE ARE ALSO CERTAIN THAT A PUBLIC FLOGGING OF ROCKMAN THE PETULANT APE WOULD BRING IN HUNDREDS, IF NOT THOUSANDS OF NEW PLAYERS!
HA!
SAM
If you want to save this war game, stop trying to take the war out of it.
Every time I see the phrase "in order to combat suiciding", it makes me cringe, because what you're really talking about there is finding a way to remove some or all risk from those who wish to engage in aggression against another player in order to grow their own country. I think too often people forget that when you grab a country 20 times over 3 days, there's a person behind that country who you're risking chasing away from the game. Every time you take away or diminish that person's ability to get what little bit of satisfaction he can, you're increasing the odds that he'll just leave.
Some will say, "Or he'll learn to play a better country".. Yeah, he may. And his group of 7 or 8 friends in the tag HEROES or GOOFBALLS or SPANK will soon find out that even if they do play well, they still get farmed. Bill and I were running two of the slimmer countries in the top 20. That didn't stop us from getting hit. We reacted the way we did to LaF because we've been around a very long time and know what comes next. Allow a double tap.. fail to take back as mush as the attacker took... show any weakness.. give even an inch.. and you become the entire server's landfarm. WE knew that going into this.. Not so for the new player who talks a few of his friends from work or school into trying to start an alliance. Bill and I will stick around because we knew what we were getting ourselves into. The newbie will most likely throw his hands up in frustration and go play something else.
For every self-important "I QUIT!" post from a vet that you might save by "combatting suiciding", you're losing dozens of other players who will just silently disappear. Just look at the news for pretty much any major alliance, and you'll see the relentless, vicious farming of anybody who dares to play outside of the big fifteen. And if one of those small guys manages to actually get a blow in on his tormentor?? HOO BOY, the fan is going to be hit by some stuff that doesn't smell good. Now take those same people doing the farming, tell them that their risk has been reduced by 50%, and do you think they'll do it less?
So in my always incredibly humble opinion, the admins should STOP worrying about suiciding, STOP protecting the big guy, and STOP trying to make war something from which both parties can gain. Eliminate or scale back most of the changes which are designed to do those things, and I think you'd have a better game, and eventually more players.
"Ghost acres" that are almost equal to the amount of land taken from the victim country... that's a little ridiculous. Scale back or get rid of ghost acres. "But where will all the land come from?".. I don't know, maybe increase the effectiveness of exploring somewhat.. or maybe there's a different, better way to get land into the system. Zahc may be on to something with the land market idea. But warring actions that benefit both parties are just stupid.
I think the formulae for missile damage need to be revisited as well. It shouldn't be possible for a country to go without SDI, eat 23 missiles from somebody that he just farmed into the ground, and shrug it off like nothing happened. As I was looking for targets before I was killed today, I was astonished by the number of extremely landfat countries I found with literally zero SDI. If there are that many people willing to take that much risk for the sake of netgaining, then missiles aren't scary enough any more, IMO. Perhaps tweak those formulae so that the limiting factor of the attacker's level of [x] on the damage done is slightly smaller. Or maybe allow for sale of missiles on the public market again. That was FUN back in the day. It got out of hand in a game with 10k players, but we're sub-1000 now. Maybe it could work again.
I definitely disagree with separating special attack DR from landgrab DR, and I hope the admins won't consider it. Zahc, what avenue for revenge would you leave the farming victim? Going down in flames and taking some of the big alliance's land with you is currently about the only effective tool most of the small guys have. Wish I'd done a better job of it today, but I got killed in the 10 minutes that I was switching rooms at my hotel (after doing practically nothing but watching my country for 2 days) :)
Bots are also a terrible idea. Why bother having land at all, if we're just going to make it copletely risk free? Might as well just change this to a straight math game and forget strategy.
For the most part, the big alliances aren't stupid. If you want them to stop chasing away your newbies, then stop taking away the power of those newbies to fight back. Sure, a couple of self righteous, arrogant players will quit "because you've ruined the game", but I think the gains would outweigh those losses. Big alliances will adjust their policies, netgainers will have to actually have some defense (but the playing field will still be level because all of them will have to have it), and smaller players or alliances might stop feeling like the game is just pointless. When netters come boo-hooing about how they have to keep defense which increases their expenses, remind them that every single other netter is faced with the same risk-reward trade off.
Another side note: While they most definitely did not work in the favor of THE MIGHTY CLAN [DANGER] this time around, I think the recent special attack changes are fairly close to being just about right. When a player ticks off two other countries his size, they should be able to put a pretty good hurt on him. We didn't really, but we did a pretty piss-poor job of it. From not putting any prep into it (we were full on turns for another batch explore when we got double tapped) to warning H4xOr THE FLAILING CHICKEN in advance on AT, to just plain making a lot of mistakes (I even bombed the jets of country #4 instead of bombing haxor's jets 4 times.. SORRY!), we could have done a lot better. And even with all that, we still managed to take out 1/3 of his buildings and jets. Not great, but a better prepared duo could have done a lot better. I think maybe the new attack formulae are just a little toO heavy at the beginning and ending of the kill/destroy runs, but not by a lot.
OH, AND WE ARE ALSO CERTAIN THAT A PUBLIC FLOGGING OF ROCKMAN THE PETULANT APE WOULD BRING IN HUNDREDS, IF NOT THOUSANDS OF NEW PLAYERS!
HA!
SAM