I'm against. This is just asking for trouble. The admins have a particular bent they want for the game. Whatever that bent is, it is an outside and exploitable influence. The main bent currently is to feed more land into the game to 'take pressure from the newer players.' This will benefit netters mostly, putting pressure on war tags to keep up.
Currently, a large portion of the server plays allX, as it is a reasonably viable strategy that obtains respectable rankings. By introducing more land, had only by LGing, you will alter the mix of strats in the game.
This will only force the allX countries back into the LGing mix. Your thought for how much more land is likely greatly underestimated.
Actually, you alter everything. Markets, tags, wars; by this outside influence. Influence programed by the admins that decide what factors they want more or less of within the game. You can't balance the alteration perfectly to not provide an advantage to certain groups and, thus, a disadvantage to other groups.
How well made will the bots be? So well that they will not be identifiable, and thus exploitable? I doubt that. We can't have them assist established tags, correct? What constitutes an established tag? How is it fair to a small tag to have bots in their midst then? Does that leave us with the bots only being untaggeds? How good will they play? Won't their auto-responses have negative impact? The newbs need land too and will be hitting bots to get it. I imagine the newbs will have to farm the bots extensively, as the veteran plays will be farming the hell out of the bots already. This will increase admin programed sucides on the very newbs they are 'protecting,' the very class least able to absorb it...both country-wise and emtional-wise (i.e. quitting).
If you want to protect newbs, why not raise the cuts offs for what difference in net you can hit? 1/10th your net to 10 times? I don't see a point to an upper limit.
ponderer's comment about ghost acres and limiting bottom feeding returns are good!
Originally
posted by
ponderer:
There is nothing more frustrating than trying to pick up a new game while some ass that you can't damage bullies you. Even if it's reduced to a few hits a day, bottom feeding is enough to cost us any new players that our game attracts. It needs to change, and trying to guilt people into not doing it is not and will not work. The mechanics of the game need to change - either to reduce the returns or increase the risk of bottom feeding.
Very true, I know of a few games I've left over this. It isn't fun to 'learn' a game that way.
You may find outside forced changes to the game to be a benefit. I don't agree, I want to play against humans, how I'd like to play, not being trained into the admin 'acceptable' limits of what they want to see. I don't want to have my set destroyed by some computer program be it run by cheater scumbags of old or by benevolent admins today.
