Hello there, I will try to take an impartial look at the proposed changes, their implications, and if anything can be done to achieve similar results, but in a less intrusive/drastic way.
"Three countries in Secured Mode."
Implications:
* It will be possible for more players to become involved in the war game, as large warslaves do not have to be supported with billions of population or propped up by the cash market. +
* Big federations will play a much larger and more effective role in the game - military power is no longer reliant on the individual's ability to pay (GC) for upkeep costs - you will have 100 secured economic slaves powering a virtually untouchable strike force. This will be taken to the extreme with the planned implementation of federation contolled armies. + / -
* You nullify the point of honest war in SC - to punish or remove undesirables from the game. Wars only use will be to gain wealth through raiding unsecured countries. -
Conclusion: I feel this change would be a bad one. You will be leaving the door open for a breakdown in the SC community. The game is online and thus has no laws other than those in the license agreement - it takes players to enforce some kind of moral and behavioural standard. If you take away the ability to do so, the dirt stays on the clothes, and noone wants to wear them.
Solution: Give new players 60 days of free war protection per country, and remove the 30 day limit. WP should be placed on automatically, until they turn it off. Make war protection cheaper.
"A War Ending booster."
Implications:
* You nullify the point of war, and make it very hard for players to weed out those who are making the game unpleasant for everyone else. -
* You open up the option for raiding players to 'farm' GC, by declaring on rich weak players who will use the booster. Who needs to strip or take a country when the GC is paid directly to you for it? + / -
Conclusion: I feel this change has both positive and negative implications - new players get an option to keep their countries for a price, and old players get an additional source of income. I can't see W3C liking the ensuing raiding though, and it will again deteriorate into a bitching fest.
Solution: Make war protection cheaper.
"Limit the number of countries that can be attacked simultaneously."
Implications:
* The player will still lose that/those country/ies - they will be outnumbered and stand even less of a chance, and you have solved nothing. Once the country/ies have fallen, the attacker will move onto the next lot, until the empire is gone. -
* You cannot declare on a whole empire unawares, and leave all the countries open for attack. This is good for new players as they cannot lose all their countries at once. +
* The element of surprise will no longer be a factor. War becomes more boring. -
Conclusion All you are doing is adding more limits and restrictions. People play SC to do things online
that they cannot do in real life, they want to be unrestricted. You are making the game less appealing, as with all these baby-coddling changes.
Solution: Make war protection cheaper. (notice a theme going here?)
Overall: I believe you (W3C) are suffering from a lack of trust in the player base. You are adding changes that try to take the power away from some, and give it to all. Unfortunately, all that will do is open the way for anarchy and lead the game towards an unattractive community and subsequent death.
Solution: Trust us more - sometimes things do happen unfairly, yes, innocent players do lose their countries, but
on the whole Very rarely. If you look at the history of all worlds, if someone begins to act unfairly or disfunctionally towards others (especially towards small ones), they are removed, not by the admins, but by other big players.
If you are that worried about new players being attacked, give them free WP for a period of time, and make WP cheaper overall. By adding restrictions, all you are doing is crossing off reasons people have to play.
