| Maestro2000 (White Giant) | Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - 03:05 pm 
What do you enjoy doing in this game? |
| nix001 (Fearless Blue) | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 11:21 am
Watching my enemies economy fail after getting through their nuke defences 
How about you Maestro2000? Apart from making profit ;) |
| Maestro2000 (Fearless Blue) | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 05:14 pm
Profits...I enjoy |
| Kitsuné | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 08:16 pm
For me the most interesting thing that I do is giving new names to my countries and corporations ;_;
well that and reading the occasional forum drama... |
| Psycho_Honey (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 08:29 pm
I'm glad I could be of help Kitsune |
| Laguna | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 08:42 pm
Post completely loony nonsense on the forum. |
| Psycho_Honey (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 08:55 pm
Is the forum drama representing a better part of enjoyment for members a good or bad thing? Is there more room for entertainment IN THE GAME? |
| Laguna | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 10:21 pm
Game? What are you talking about? The game is a lie! |
| Psycho_Honey (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 11:52 pm
CONSPIRACY!!! |
| Maestro2000 (Golden Rainbow) | Thursday, March 17, 2011 - 12:56 am
guess you people enjoy this message board... |
| Linebacker Six | Thursday, March 17, 2011 - 06:50 am
Having players' intelligence insulted when major unannounced, undocumented game changes take place.
The process goes something like this:
1. Player(s) notice something seriously askew that is impacting their performance.
2. Smart player(s) track down and isolate the issue and experiment to determine precisely what is going on.
3. Player(s) post their finding in the forums and start a minor uproar as their discoveries are verified bu others.
This is when the fun starts....
4. W3C starts getting emails about the problem and eventually enters the forums to deny any such changes and point out irrevelancies that imply the player(s) are incompentent idiots.
5. Player(s) respond with documented evidence that conclusively demonstrate the validity of their observations with increasing expressions of frustration.
6. 4 and 5 are repeated with increasingly caustic rhetoric until player(s) are banned from the forum.
7. The debate dies as other players are intimidated into silence.
8. Whatever issue the initial player(s) identified is accepted as common knowledge and the community adjusts to the change(s).
9. Everyone accepts the new status quo until the next time.
The process is extremely entertaining; a bit like watching the politician caught with the underaged hookers and a bag of coke in a hotel room insist that he was leading a Bible study to help save the young womens' souls or perhaps an interview with a North Korean military officer.
Simply priceless. |
| Scarlet (Kebir Blue) | Thursday, March 17, 2011 - 09:34 am
Setting up well-organized and well-prepared defense. |
| Victor R (Kebir Blue) | Friday, March 18, 2011 - 03:11 pm
I enjoyed organized world wars. I always seem to miss them though  the last one I sort of participated was the Monkey war... |
| Crafty (Fearless Blue) | Friday, March 18, 2011 - 03:33 pm
I enjoy cyber-sex with BorderC. |
| Parsifal (Kebir Blue) | Friday, March 18, 2011 - 10:17 pm
Crafty, i'm jealous. That's why i was sneaking up on you. i thought we were an item. |
| Maestro2000 (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, March 22, 2011 - 05:10 pm
What do you enjoy? |
| Tom Willard | Tuesday, March 22, 2011 - 07:26 pm
Linebacker six
nice description. slightly one sided.
When players discover that their income is increasing and they make a lot of money.
Then what? you forgot to describe the protocol.
We, like you, make mistakes.
we made many and probably more because we try to have short cycles and react/move quickly.
there might have been cases where a change ended with disagreement about the reasons and results.
in all cases however, when we made an error and found out, with or without help from players, we said so and fixed it quickly.
I know all these cases and how we all here participated.
We have experienced it as a great ride and some bumps and don't forget, it's a game! |
| Maestro2000 (Golden Rainbow) | Tuesday, March 22, 2011 - 07:45 pm
I enjoy reading Tom's replays on the board. |
| Border C | Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - 01:26 am
mmmmmm... BorderC |
| hymy1 (Kebir Blue) | Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - 02:02 am
Tom is good people. W3C should put him in charge of everything, instead of using him as a human shield when they screw up.
@ Victor, I think my last world war was also the monkey war. yeah, the monkeys didn't like me...... |
| Linebacker Six | Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - 07:37 am
What I truly enjoy, Tom, is the people who play SC.
That would include you folks at W3C. You provide some of the best entertainment.
What continually gets my goat, however, is your, W3C, reactions to player issues.
Of course mistakes are going to happen. Mistakes are not, nor ever have been, the issue.
What is the issue is your, W3C, apparent tendency, at times, to obuscate and not simply make your intentions clear to players when you are tinkering with game mechanics.
My first post was inspired by memories of the fiasco created by the 296 quality cap.
However, let us examine this latest situation arising from your, W3C, tinkering with the Enterprise Tax.
To begin, you, W3C, have made it abundantly clear over the years that levels of money and military are unrealistically high in relation to population, and that you would be gradually reducing them both by assorted means for the forseeable future.
Got that. No problem. I, personally, would agree and have no issue whatsoever with that goal.
We might discuss the methods of accomplishing those goals, but such is not the subject of this discussion.
Returning to the latest situation involving the Enterprise Tax, as an example, it appears clear to me that said tax was being "recalculated" to bleed a little extra game cash from the players. I am not actually criticizing that intention. We might disagree over whether the Enterprise Tax is the best tool for that job; but again, that isn't the issue.
What can be highlighted is the response to players' outcries when this reformulation did not function as you apparently intended and resulted in profitable Enterprises becoming very unprofitable overnight.
To your credit, the new formula was either thrown out or corrected immediately when you became aware of the result and Jonni was the first Forum responder who let the community know that it was being addressed. He did so in a very commendable manner: short, to the point, no argumentation, and gave us an immediate response.
That's the model of how it should be done.
However, the existence of this bug highlights some problems that continually arise between W3C and your player base.
#1. You were tinkering with a game feature and made changes that effect players greatly, again, Undocumented and Unannounced.
- That is not the end of the world, but it creates the impression that you, W3C, are continuously trying to sneak things by the players that, to many of us, appear as umwarranted punishments or penalties.
- Now I recognize and acknowledge this as simply another step in an ongoing process with a definitive purpose to improve the game, but the back door methodology creates issues where none need exist.
#2. By the posts by you in the Problems section, where this was being discussed, you gave almost textbook responses to what I was lampooning in my previous post.
That "what are you talking about? This isn't really happening. sort of thing.
You weren't rude or combative, but rather dismissive with the tendency to tangentalize.
You answered the question in your first post when you said that the Enterprise Tax was being calculated differently. That was a completely sufficient response.
Obviously, whatever the initial bug was, it was fixed quickly and no harm done. The rest of your posts were unnecessary and only exacerbated the players involved.
Conclusions.
1. Don't debate us. We are going to complain incessantly. That's what customers do. You will only make it worse.
2. Take a note from Jonni. Short, to the point, and just fix whatever the problem is.
3. If the issue is not a bug, but rather an adjustment that was deliberately made, just say so.
4. Continuously remind the player base that profitability in terms of $SC has been going down for years and will be reduced in the future by a number of means. Real profitability is relative to GC exchange rates, so you are entirely justified in pointing out that real profitability is not decreasing, only in relation to population. And that is deliberate.
5. You control the direction of the game. Be clear on the designer's goals and be equally clear when you take steps in attempting to achieve those goals.
6. You don't have to apologize. You are going to get complaints no matter what you do or how you do it. Don't take it personally. |
| Tom Willard (Golden Rainbow) | Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - 08:37 am
Thanks for your views on our communications.
Tax issues, financial services, corporate size and profitability are all part of the central economic mechanism in Simcountry which is being tuned and re-tuned with the evolution of the game.
Enterprise profitability, country income from enterprises, new players economies etc. are under review from time to time and we may decide to tune the model.
The formulas are very complex and sometimes hard to see if an error was made because the visible effects of the change are in most cases gradual.
when an error is made, we fix it immediately when it is understood. Sometimes it is not obvious.
in the process, it might seem like we are hiding something and the initial reaction on the forum might be wrong.
for example: The recent change in pensions as it is clear now, DID have an influence on the tax income, it took me some digging into our sources to find out.
we are trying to prevent big changes and most of the code is not being changed at all.
we will keep having some bumps as we move forward but will try to publish more information ahead of time and keep these surprises to a minimum. |
