fluffING CATALINA WINE MIXER

can you guys go make your own thread to bash eachother on?

we get it, Vic. we were able to achieve perfection in 2010 then for someone reason everyone left. and now you need to bring them back for us. thanks for the help! :p

that being said, I'm not at all worried about bringing back people en masse. but when that is executed we better be able to give them a reason to stay. that's where new ideas and a new UI come in :)

Don't be a bash nazi, Pang!!

everyone knows my e-poon reigns supreme

lol, thats the typo of the year for me... and possible freudian slip. i'm keeping it there

islams positive population bonus would be a misnomer- they dont gain population, per se, they just murder anyone who isnt mooslim.

also, vics aught one retirement left me emotionally asunder :(

hhahahahha

*lubes up trife and throws him at mrford*

So Pang, did you guys already have in mind some things you wanted to tweak? Is it possible to share that info, or is it still in the early stages or under wraps?

don't push me, KoH, or I will cut you like you're social security benefits!

I don't have any strong opinions, plans or the like related to mechanic changes or tweaks. Everything I care about is in the vein of design and user experience....

although I do loosely support the idea of clans being more like a federal government and that expands the gameplay options for keeners (leaders) to focus on instead of trying to out-douche each other politically. also allow you to help pick up the slack for players who aren't as engaged, go away for extended periods, etc rather than just figuring out which new bonuses to throw into an optimization matrix

forget about tweaks, pang

do you have any plans to twerk?

http://i.imgur.com/QBhYccq.jpg

What!?, I am the benefits to social security!

You know the funny thing about that clip ford isn't just how awkward it is, it's that she manages to shake everything *except* her ass.

Kinda like this: http://i.imgur.com/w8Ahaq2.gif

that just set white people back 30 years

made me think of that girl in rebecca blacks' friday video

http://excusememe.com/...4gifwhitepeoplefriday.gif

yeah well you set white people back, like, more years or something.

aghhkkkkk this is turning into a spam thread.

anyhow, back to the topic at hand.

So Pang, do you think that it would be a good idea to have separate discussion threads and each topic, like design, UI, mechanics...etc? I mean, might as well brainstorm now so down the road, if there's ever time, we could have a framework for updates ready.

http://i.imgur.com/Mm5V1ne.gifv

I don't want to promote false hope that something imminent is in the works but do whatever you like.... it's a free country. And by that, I mean Canada.

I like this global events idea, and the state of the server affects all who are in it.

Too bad Vic had to come in and pollute the thread with anti-Tan comments. Difficult to find good posts.

Something simple like that could work.

I feel that a land limit cap could have seriously interesting implications, but it might be prone to abuse by the larger alliances. Also, wouldn't that mean new countries can't even be created if the server is at the land limit?

I actually agree with TAN here.

Vic you're stuck in the 1999's to 2000's.

Also don't get lost in the minutia of TANs idea. The bonuses etc can all be played with but the underlying idea is there.

There have been TONS of good suggestions over the years but unfortunately we always get the same answer: "Good idea but we don't have time"

That's fine if they don't have time but don't tell us all the game needs is a UI overhaul! That's just not truthful.

The lazy thing... Err no... The easy thing to do would be just fluff up the UI and make it look new (bootstrap) but that doesn't do anything for the game play, which is why you play... Right?. People can look past UI for a great game play experience but you cannot look past bad game play for a great UI. It doesn't go in reverse.

Also if Pang was such a game designing genius he wouldn't have just copied a game he would have invented a new game. Nothing against Pang but he is no innovator just an imitator at least as far as EE is concerned. And you can say some things have been changed, which they have, but there are very very few differences between the game we play now and the game that Mehul invented in 1999 and the game play is virtually identical.

Now what does this all mean? Nothing just my opinions of course :)

But the Pangean doesn't have time, blame CANADA!!!

OK, so I don't remember claiming to be a game designing genius... I helped put this game together so an online community that was a big part of my life at the time (and had been for over a decade) would continue. I've never really been much into app dev and that's where you need to be in this day and age to be anything more than an hobbyist in that industry. But thanks for the random hate! :p

I think you're forgetting the purpose of what our project was: improve all the things that annoyed us about E2025, continue the legacy and keep the community together. We weren't that interested in crazy new ideas and one of the major items we DIDN'T get done that was planned with the initial build was to build a more modern UI to make it more accessible for mobile (and Facebook, at the time...).

However, I'm confused by your post. Since you feel I'm not good at designing games in terms of creating the rules and mechanics for the game, wouldn't you want me to focus my time on a UI redesign project that would run in parallel to any work others would do dealing with mechanics changes? Do you like the current UI? It also hasn't really changed in 20 years in terms of its crapiness. There's plenty of changes when you actually objectively compare the two games but that's part of what I like about a lot of our changes: they were so good you don't even remember a time when they weren't there. :)

Anyway, did you have a bad day/week at work? That's a lot of random negativity on a Friday afternoon.

I blame Sweet Brown.

*humps pang*

I like the idea of adding to the strats, however, that is NOT what this game needs.

The reason this game did well for a long time was because new people kept joining. This is a text based game, which means almost no new players, ever. The people who do decide to give it a try have a bunch of hurdles, like qz said: such as, getting farmed because they aren't in a clan, instead of being invited to a clan and taught how to play; figuring out what server to join; etc.

What this game needs is two things: 1) an app, preferably one with some graphics, even if they are extremely basic, 2) a facebook interface, again, with some graphics.

When I ran my game, I put it on facebook. Now, I didn't integrate it, I just made it playable through facebook. Also, my game had no graphics. During the first weekend on facebook, my game was listed on a new games list and I got a few hundred new players during the weekend. My game was very hard for new players to figure out, so people would join and quit, all in the same day.

So, if EE was fixed up, with some graphics, and launched both an app and a facebook presence, we should easily see growth.

It's the people and the socializing that have made this game fun for me. Also, the programming. I learned to program because of the clan forums, and the irc chat rooms. I don't know of any other game that allows the players to have such interaction with the game.

I just wish we could get some people who want to code graphics for the game, as a hobby, or a learning project, or whatever...but just do it. The mechanics are good enough, we just need a way to entice people to try the game and stick with it for a little while.

It is a great idea and one that I really loved. However, as Juice already mentioned and/or hinted at. This has already been done and proved not to be what was needed. Imho, that version of e2025 evolved more into its own game, and although similar enough for most old earthers to recognize, yet different enough that it was no longer the same game. Also, at least again imho, the attitude of the server(s) was more palatable for noob players.

Anyway, it has been done and although it may have helped attract some new players, it proved to be in the end not sustainable and as such, not the answer. I think the game needs at least some graphics to appeal to new players, even if they are just basic static graphics and/or background images. It also could use some kinda noob how to play UI, which guides them through the game the first set. A decent enough of a helper UI that would involve quite a bit of time setting up and coding. But sadly even if both of those are implemented, I fear the attitude in most servers here would still run most the new players out, so unless the attitude changed around here, I am unsure how effective anything new would be. At least the attitude here is not as bad as say mars, but still think it needs to be improved in order to keep players around long enough to give the game a decent try while trying to learn it.

How about clans have training tags and new players are randomly assigned to a training tag that way they get to play the game for a bit without being farmed into the ground the second they leave protection? Or give them free gdi for a certain amount of turns and when its about to run they get a message explaining gdi and asking if they want to pay for it?

New governments and having religons is going to be a sort term fix as once people get used to it they'll want another change.

The mobile UI does need some attention as the side meno links do sometimes overlay on the main bit. It doesnt bother me that much as i like the game but that kinda thing could put off a new player.

I know I'm old, but no n00b, nub however you want to spell it these days. I've been Earthy off and on since eesite. :(

Auto assigning players in a clan might work on this server, yet it would do nothing for the other servers, so that really is not an entire answer either.

the mobile UI needs some serious work, I could log on to the game on my old phone, but I was unable to actually play it on my old phone. I have since bought a newer phone, which I am sure can play the game since it is a smartphone. The problem is, that most will have newer smartphones, I am sure I was in the minority that had an old non smartphone. However, I still think it is sad that one of the biggest selling points to this game originally, for military personnel to be able to play from any phone anywhere in the world, is no longer capable here.

And imho at least, one of the biggest things that needs to be done is a mobile app, which I would guess means the basic mobile UI needs to be done better to begin with. However, that should prolly have been done years ago, by time any such thing is done now, it will prolly be some other mass thing that is most popular by the time that work is done.

YOU ARE NOOB UNLESS YOU STARTED WITH SOLARIANET OR BRE LARRR
IF YOU CAN REMEMBER UCN BEFORE FINGOLFIN LEAD IT LARRRRRRR
AND TAN
.
.
I AM STILL

AT HEAD OF TAN
++martian

AT HEAD OF TAN

If anything is changed, I'd like an option to buy land from the private market first. The price per acre being relative to your current acreage. We can use math to make sure landgrabbing is still a much better deal to expand, but buying land is a safer option and still lets treehuggers/the passive bunch grow and actually compete. Letting people buy land would also make the server effectively fatter, benefiting the aggressive players and overall increasing networth on the server too. With the lack of players land is hard to come by, even with bots since they're almost always farmed down. It's pure luck if you catch one coming out of DR...and I don't like things that are too luck involved...Also, we have people faking as bots just to screw you over, but it's a legit thing to do I suppose, just hurts server as people leave.

If not the above proposal, how about a minimum explore rate of 10-12 or something? Or combine that with a technology that increases explore rate & ghost acres? Could try it on one server and see how it goes.

Just ideas.

buying land without some1 selling it? sounds weird.

What pang said! :)

just copy everything from Civ5

I would love a navy aspect to this game.

Pretty challenging to get all this stuff done at once. Especially with only 2-3 guys being able to work semi part time. Most games have dozens of people on the dev team. One group for graphics, one for calc and programming (database, too), one team for UI and another for UX, then the ever important testers, etc.

While we have some good ideas, I think the first step is building a good team of people with the spare time and the minimum experience to do it in small phases. As far as testing goes, we have a few hundred at the ready. :)

GODWINS LAW - - - - - A C T I V A T E!!!

Relax lah :)

I like the idea of letting alliances make alliance wide decisions that impact all countries. It would add some interesting strategy and perhaps give an alliance a strength in netting but at the risk of another declaring war. It would have to be well thought out and planned as an error here could really hurt game play as well.

Having a subset of attributes to apply to an alliance would be interesting but I think Vic's fears are legit.

Who led UCN before fingolfin?

Nice it only took half a page for this thread to go apefluff LOL

*Grabs popcorn

making the ui in general more clicky is a laudable goal

theres no reason people shouldnt be able to click a button to tech 1 turn instead of typing it in

pictures/aesthetic is fine, but any redesign should focus on clickiness

and little things like defaulting text boxes to numerical input on mobile

TAN is mafia!

years ago we had a 3rd party browser plugin that added functionality to the tech screen. it added +/- to the side of where we type tech points so that we could easily click + or - to add or remove a full turn of tech points. And if you still want to type numbers to spread out the turn you still can.

i'm sure you could all anticipate this ...
but I thoroughly enjoy typing in the numbers :p
I also think it's part of the game, and if you mistype your #, you should indeed be penalized :p
(thinks of all the times I've hit enter early and teched 13 points in one turn instead of 13,000)