Looks to me like the alliance server crashed from 1k players on alliance to 450 in ~3.5 years before the bots were introduced and now its 250(not 150 as you stated, 500-250= 250) players from 450 players after ~5 years with bots.

Thats a decline rate of just over 20% per year without bots to a decline rate of 11% per year after the bots were introduced. And thats almost without development so if anything the numbers suggest that the bots have been pretty epic. Development was rather active the first 3 years of EE. My view is that the landtrading meta together with the farming of small tags and new players drove people from the game rapidly. Numbers support my view, and that is also the view of the developers who has a vested interest in knowing these things.

I also think that the lack of development is the cause of the current decline and the current toxic atmosphere. The restarts strength and the spy op buffs together make every war endless and tireing and premiers a hyper activity that most working people with a family can't sustain. So a game with few rewards, toxic atmosphere(in that its common that individuals or groups of people play with a stated intention to ruin the game experience for another player or group of players) and much much higher time/timing demands than most games is what we have.
I have written extensively about the need to and how to reduce demands on the players through simple formula changes and I do believe that would also help with the toxicity.

A game like this will always greatly reward activity through walling, the market and through grabbing. However, it's absurd that people feel like quitting because they can't compete without deprioritizing work, sleep, friends and/or family to an online game that has not had any real updates for the past five years.

Also I'm not sure if its naivity or thougthlessness when people suggest because there is a spike in activity its always good. I get that all the time from people who are trying to justify themselves. Im sure there was a great spike in activity when Loughner shot Giffords and I hope you are not suggesting that was also good, but your arguementation justifies his actions. Lesson I dispense here is that not all activity is created equal, and not all activity is good for the game.

So clearly cheering for SoF then? Because neither Gains or I fit that description. :P

Man. I get absolutely torched everytime i make that argument. Surprised you feel similarly gerdy. It can be good in the months after when things get worked out and one could technically argue the large activity spikes always bring back some cool old faces. A few people always stick around after activity spikes. There's definitely good aspects to it but it is rather limited to like the 4 people that play in postscript a year after the lcn reunion which i believe was actually bigger than sof.

6 months from now xyle will be gone as will solidly half of this activity spike. The community will lose about 10 players who just wanted to net, gain 5 players who want to be a part of the community, and have a residual 10 players that may or may not stay after they finish suiciding in the sets after, further running off epecially venerable players who can't hang with war no more.

In totality it usually either decreases membership or it remains the same.

Touche lol

When SoF becomes a netting alliance, then this feud will be over. Either that or SoF fights other alliances who play the game for the purpose of warring like elder and sol and maybe even stones who have become much better at fighting over the years. Why can't there be mutual respect where netting alliances play the game to win net-worth records and warring alliances fight warring alliances. On the bright side, a lot of old players came back to play who had been retired for several years. Nice to see some old names around here.

If the bots were not here, the players would have left because I remember when no untags and no bots meant that alliances had to land trade with each other or land trade within there own alliance and this is kind of like cannibalism. We were literally eating on skin and bones. I just wish they would make it where the bots could retaliate or form a war tag and bot SoF back off the server.

I'm pro bots, but it's like using training mode in street fighter.

Yeah, while i agree with Vamps that there's very much a lack of parity, and people tend to just go thru the motions anymore because we are old and tired, that's hardly the fault of the bots. The land trading leading up to the advent of the bots was obviously a way darker period lol.

I honestly haven't come up with a good reason why xyle turned his back on laf after 20 years of being a lapdog. My thought has been that hitting laf is a good recruitment tool and I'm certain some people play there over old grudges. I've heard sof members muse about laf players that i haven't seen in 2 years running multies, which leads one to surmise which players started the same age old rumors.

Ultimately when people first come back, they play the game like it is still 2006. Like they want to prove their dominance and they want to become the best etc. That's xyle's bread and butter. It's not about creating a war that's fun for the players or the community. It's about proving you're the best.

Those of us that have played in 200 wars, who have beaten laf 5 times, who have beaten sol 5 times, who have beaten sof 3 times etc. We feel as though we have very little to prove and would rather just have a fun war that is challanging to win against players who have difficult countries to kill. Plowing thru a bunch of netters will never prove anything, nor is it challanging, and generally just creates long wars that lower membership and are toxic to the community.

Fortunately for everyone, a majority of players that do that often leave within a few months when they start to feel how boring the lack of challenging and engaging wars is. *checks watch* This should all be over sooner than later. Most of these people will unfortunately be gone by the time winter activity comes around and the rest of the war clans want to do something big. That's really the disappointing thing. I'm attempting to make enemies for winter wars out of players who notoriously leave the game at the first signs of defeat.

Haxor Wanger is back? Are you still cheating?

Remember the good old days when you were in RD and ran bots and multies?

Ahh.. so easy to forget eh?

http://earthgraphs.com/...%2Csol&warreport=Show

reminds me of that country song by alan jackson - remember when. Perhaps you 2 should get a room to reminisce in? Naw, you're too much of the air the dirty laundry type.

This is precisely how I feel oftentimes. If it wasn't for smart phones and having the ability to play almost anywhere anytime for short bursts (even if its not as good) I don't know how I would do it sometimes! That is also why the mobile UI is so very important if it is ever finished.

Something still doesn't feel right about a game where you can invest hours upon hours of work and die in 8 seconds? I cannot think of any other game that has such risk / reward of that magnitude. My personal preference would be that it is a tad harder to die and the punishment for dying should be much more severe than it currently is.

You mean similar to how you just suddenly forgot how much you dislike SoF now that they're fighting on your side?

Remember the good old days when you were good at cricket?

don't worry he still hates sof lol

No I don't remember that. Sorry! Must be in your head again.

I'll never forget that Don Marshall admitted to having RD bot UCN off of the server because Laf could not be bothered to sort out their own problems without continuously resorting to using their colorful friends.

Damned gerdler i was about to post that when Reading back up haha but you beat me to it

No. You are miss-characterizing. I didn't ask RD to do anything (as if they would listen). I was given a heads up that they were planning to attack UCN so we didn't have to worry about planning to fight them. I was relieved. That's not the same thing.

Added on edit: Also even if I had asked, I was about 17 at the time heh. Are you the same person you were almost 20 years ago?

Well he is older so maybe.

He got grouchier...
archaic is now one of these guys....

https://youtu.be/14njUwJUg1I


I blame WoTlabs

I can think of a few games where you can lose hundreds of hours more even quicker..... But not while you're offline. Maybe this game needs offline protection, ie. You can only be killed an hour after you're online, with public online lists to make it fair... With an upgrade to special attacks to make them slightly stronger (so a person can still be punished for playing at 2am)

I think it would make more fun and dynamic wars that don't necessarily take place in 2-3 organized war chats a day but have more blitz attacks. But I guess lots will disagree

There's a thread on B&S where Gerdler had some neat ideas that at least make it harder to kill good countries -- especially later in the round. The main driver for the restart mechanics was so that it wouldn't be as painful to die after having built a good country for a long time but it falls a bit short.

I'm still generally keen to find a way to score war that doesn't require killing as much so there is something to shoot for besides tag kills, etc

I agree 100% about the restart rate and the endless wars. It is kinda funny that we feel the same way about things these days. I am dealing with this in FFA now. A war that is like target practice and we are outgrowing everyone, but the restart bonus in the beginning was annoying. I got a wife, a kid, work, a kid due any moment. This game is not high on my list and the restart bonus makes suiciders have an advantage because they come back with some of their stuff.

Honestly anytime I've ever been killed while netting i didnt really care what my restart looked like, my set is over. Kind of doesnt much matter what my restart looks like. I understand the want for netting tags to have some ability to compete when FSed netting, but it's honestly not worth the trade off of making wars endless and suiciders invincible.

I could showcase what a good suicider looks like on volunteers who want to run basic netters. Decent players can die about 5 times and lower the top ten threshold by about 70-90m targeting netters on a good set. It's pretty absurd. It's just fortunate most suiciders are not decent.

The restart bonus was a decent attempt with good intentions in the context of a legitimate war between roughly equal tags.

The problem was that it became a weapon of insurgency and terrorism at exactly the time a group of players showed up that were only interested in suiciding.

I've said for a while that the easiest fix would be to only give the restart bonus once per set. After that you are back on 100 acres and needing FA from clanmates to survive. You would only have to kill a player twice to remove them as a suiciding threat.

But what do I know, I have not played in forever since I got suicided on during a netting set.

Pretty much all those suiciders are tagged up under the SoF tag right now. Come back and kill a few with us?

Gainsboro, you dork.

Your lesson always was: "It's pillage and rape first, pillage and rape FIRST. Then kill and burn…"

still you mess up. Eew ;)

maybe cuz majority is male players?

Nope, he's just kinky like that, get over him already, I'm actually surprized how kinky these LaFers are....

But I don't like to rape men. I leave that to you :-)

Bonus