What I propose is a new easy mode netgainning server for those who want to be in an Alliance but do not want to participate in the heavier and more advanced aspects of Alliance gameplay. I would title this server "Easy Clan Server" which would provide a clear differentiation from the Alliance Server and further promote the Alliance Server as a more elite and advanced playing environment.

The truth is many smaller Alliances do not have the motivated and/or knowledgable leadership to thrive or grow on the Alliance Server.

Essentially the main difference for this proposed server would be the inability to kill countries which would be achieved through changes to special attacks and a civilian minimum floor. These would be the key differences for the server:-

- Countries can not have less than 100 civilians and therefore civilian kills cannot be achieved. Returns from special attacks would reduce to zero once a country hits 100 civilians.
- Returns from all special attacks reduced to 25% of normal, thus reducing the effectiveness of ABs, BRs, NMs, EMs and CMs in terms of harming a country.
- Land can not be lower than 20 acres which means that a landkill cannot be achieved.

This would allow the more casual playerbase to netgain peacefully whilst maintaining the social aspect which attracts them to the game. There are a number of Alliances who exist only for the social environment that has been created and the harsh nature of the Alliance Server is harmful to the existance of those Alliances.

It would create an all new political playing field as Alliances seek less harmful ways of enforcing and establishing their policies, which in turn could aid in the development of better leadership skills within the playerbase.

Whilst this will mean that Alliance Server will lose players and tags, I do believe that in the longterm it will be more productive for the game in general as it would encourage some of those small and casual Alliances to thrive and increase player retention. This would also promote and encourage the maintanence of healthier and stronger tags on the Alliance Server and provide an additional recruiting base for those tags.

A new server would be attractive for more active players to play additional countries which would also lead to the creation of other new tags. This may in time encourage the creation of newer tags on the Alliance Server as players from that new server look to step up and play in the more advanced setting of Alliance Server.

Pros:-
- Additonal advertising revenue for the game.
- Expansion of the playerbase through creation of a more casual gameplay environment.
- Higher player retention for the game overall.

Cons:-
- Slight decrease in playerbase on Alliance Server, at least in the short term.
- Time and effort to create the server and manage thereafter.

It is important that this Server would be distinguished as an easy server as to promote a more elite status for the Alliance Server and a "next step" for propsering tags and ambitious leaders.

There's a Team Server which is a smaller scale server similar to 'Alliance' which provides newer and smaller alliance to survive and to learn much easier.

Yes but you can still be killed on Team. This is designed to be for peaceful netgaining where suiciding is nerfed and there are no wars.

I like this. Easy may even be a misnomer. I think a system where alliances compete for power through other means might be interesting.

An interesting thing to consider is if Alliance Server clans can migrate some of their players there and effectively encourage alliance server players to run 2 countries in two servers. Either through direct copies of clans there or rebranded as a farm team type structure.

So conflicts here can spill over there, adding another dimension, while the more casual playerbase there can participate in alliance politics but not necessarily have to be as intense as we alliance server.

Only danger I see here is for netters to simply quit alliance server leaving this server without an economic base for warring tags to war properly.

I think they have to be connected somehow to discourage the view that Easy server is for netters and therefore there should be no conflict, and alliance server is for warring tags only. It could fracture the game too.

but the easy land :(

Regarding netters leaving Alliance Server... Most netters will stay because the elite netters (such as Evo and LAF) thrive on the challenge of winning in difficult circumstances. No doubt individuals will netgain there, but always a netting title on the "easy" server will never have the prestige of achieving one on Alliance.

Or, LaF/Evo will just dominate both servers. :P

An interesting idea; maybe a good one even; one of the things i like about this is that it might actually be easier to implement heh

Let me mull over it heh

Another thing that could be done to highlight the more passive nature of the server is reduce all landgrab gains by 25%. This would also emphasize the difference with Alliance Server and help maintain the elite/advanced status there.

Good point Xyle :)

How about no attacking at all... or rather... just have land grabs.. no special attacks... so many netters prefer to go all explore ... wouldn't that solve the killing problem?
The main goal of suiciders is to some how cripple a country... with these attacks still available... there is nothing stopping suiciders from doing that... I like how the GDI is set up on express server to stop suicider attepmts but you can still suicide after couple of attacks...

I think if people can peacefully net without being worried about suicider attempts altogether... it would be huge boost for players who have left the game being frustrated with that...

another idea I had was similar to one of those fast servers to which only few people have access... How about just make a server that gives you a fixed 4000 turns or something that resets every week. No attacks at all.. do your best to score the highest possible networth. I am not sure how the market would play on this but it would be interesting trying to possibly get the highest possible networth...

Remove troops and tanks and increase (double) the floor price of jets and turrets.

I don't think you can rid these attacks altogether because some form of retaliation is needed for untagged players and small tags. It just needs to cause so little damage comparatively to make only worthwhile to do if you really have a reason. Suiciders would have to make much more of an effort to have an impact that in many cases they won't bother.

So in effect get rid of suiciders, right?, hence, remove troops and tanks. While we are at it, remove missiles and every harmful spy ops. While we are making up, responding to, discussing dumb ass ideas, also remove dictators and tyrannies.

i dont think this gets rid of suiciders at all. i think its suicider heaven. if i was a suicider id take the 25% loss to never be able to die. 100k+ here i come and i dont even need to spend money on troops/turrets/tanks! w00t.........if i were a suicider

but if you created it, id prob give it a shot

this is the biggest issue i can see tho. if laf brings over 30-40 netters i doubt any new 10-20 member alliances will be able to compete.

It's not a 25% loss, only proposed that on landgrabs. 75% reduced gains on specials. Reduced to 25% of normal.

Hrmmm.. I really have good ideas. We could also allow Bio Missiles & anti-tech EM missiles in this server.

i love the idea, sov. but you could have more or less proposed anything to give me another server to play and i would've loved it :P

the return of the weedy netgaining alliance!

yes, please. anything to play on a different server from sof- world police.

This is a terrible idea, and I'll tell you why.

Currently there are 580~ active countries that play at least 100 turns in a set. For argument sake, let's say that half play in each side... so 260 per server.

260 per server???? Sov, get your head out of a hole if you think any game developer would create something new for this pathetic turn out. All of your condescension aside, it's all a nice idea if we are talking about 5000+ players... But we're not. So, maybe you should spend more time thinking about ways of getting people to play this game instead.

Let's hear your suggestions then Dissident. You cannot go knocking someone's down like that without posting an idea ;)

Training Wheels Server

No Special Attacks
No Missiles
No Harmful Spyops
No Declare War
Training Wheels Government (Maybe less governments and less bonuses)

NEVER ENDING GAME!

wait, what?
Yes, never ending game. This is how you trap newbies playing FB game. they all want the highest score from their friends and stuff.

Pros: 75% reduction in ability for people to act like assholes.

Cons: People will still be assholes.

The idea is fundamentally flawed.

worth to try i guess. lazy vets will flock this server

The fact that you believe that only 260 players would play on each server pretty much proves that it is not worth answering your stupidity. Carry on.

I like it.
tbh when "limited" came out, it didnt' really drain alliance server, people just played in both. I think this would be the case as well.. Also it let people play with others who they would not otherwise play with.

Or could just bring back limited

limited was fluffed up due low playerbase.

Not to bust your chops or harp on your idea... an Easy Clan Server? "Promote Alliance Server as a more elite and advanced playing environment?" Many smaller alliances do not have the motivation and/or knowledgeable leadership because most of the larger alliances farm them thin, defeating any real chance of those who've played any other servers and know the ropes to display any skill. And for those new to the server, most outright quit after having their All Explore country farmed down repeatedly, making any attempt to continue playing futile if not aggravating. Then you get those who after suffering such repeated behaviour decide to strike back out of their frustrations with being reduced to nothing more than an easy landfarm, and in turn get killed. Some of those people outright quit the game and never come back, which means the player base loses one more player... now consider how many times this can happen in any given set and how many tags just decide to hang it up, or how many people just say "fluff it, I'm done." and quit. Then you have the other possibility of one of these guys deciding to become an untagged suicider. Push someone too far, and eventually they'll find a way to push back.



This part sounds all well intentioned and all, but it's still not going to motivate everyone from wanting to war... This would all but make a kill impossible, and effectively make completely crippling a country in this server the only means to effectively ruin someone's set. You kill a country down to 100 civilians, this ruins their PCI... which would cripple any casher. You farm a country down to 20 Acres, any strategy like a Casher, Farmer, Techer, Indy, et cetera would be rendered ineffective, regardless of the amount of tech or cash on hand... And because the explore rate doesn't reset because some jerk-off farms you or nukes you until you're *only* 20 Acres, you're only going to get fluff for your explore rate meaning any chance you'd have in recovering any land to salvage your set would be a waste of time, you would be better of deleting your country and restarting with a brand new country.



Yes, it would create an all new political playing field. All this would serve is instead of someone worrying about their country being killed, they'd need to worry about having it completely crippled and rendered useless to continue playing. This in and of itself would cause some to quit in frustration.



I don't believe for a minute that this would cause the loss of players in Alliance Server as there are those who already play on every server as it is. This new server would be a great place for new players to start, but as far as promoting the maintenance of healthier and stronger tags... Just from my perspective, it sounds more like trying to establish one bloc of players/tags as being better than the rest of the server and trying to establish Alliance as being for elitists only.



While this part of your idea holds some merit, this effective creates some forgone conclusion of the idea of playing on one of the already established servers like Free For All or Team where clans are allowed. This new server idea would effectively create some disillusionment, as players would go from this new server to Alliance Server, where they'd had it easy there to fniding that unlike this new server... the rules would be quite different. The game mechanics would he drastically different, and instead of worrying about getting their population trimmed down to 100 civilians or 20 acres before someone stopped hitting them, they'd find out that all it would take is for someone with a higher SPAL or tons of Warfare tech to kill them with ease.




Let's tackle the pro's first. Realistically, as far as increasing advertising revenue, this is the only 'pro' I can see coming out of this. Expanding the player base? Sure, if virtually every new player of this game starts with this server first before deciding which one best suited their tastes, but in all reality you'd more likely have the same players from the six servers we currently have playing in this one, along with some of the new people who happen to come across this game. As far as higher player retention? Sure, if everything was made easier, it might make it more fun and attract more people to play in this new server... but, alas... Any accomplishments made in this server would always be chalked up to it being an 'easy' netgaining server, and because of the elitist mindsets in Alliance Server, any comparisons would be met with the fact that this new server was made for the 'unskilled' or the 'uninitiated'.

As far as the con's, again with something I stated above, I do not believe anyone would outright stop playing Alliance Server just because a new server was established where anyone can have an easy time netgaining. If anything this new server would be a great place for players to test strategies and that would be it, nothing any player accomplished in this server would be considered on par with a similar accomplishment an any of of the other servers as it's an "Easy Mode" server. It would be like me bragging about a $9,223,372,036,854,775,808 Networth country on one of the Alpha servers.

fluff have some time on your hands ? me no read all that

Making countries unkillable seems to be stupid on it's face.

I can't see how this could possibly be of any benefit to this game at all.

I will have to read that later

I think this is an excellent thread.

Though I would suggest a way is found for people to have to choose between alliance, and ez alliance. Resets start at same time, so an alliance can move down to rebuild, then move back to compete.

I think this is good.

Maybe... encourage some Alliance Server types to come to Free For All server. :P