W3C - War Levels (Fearless Blue)

War level settings are now many months old.

War levels settings were at the time set depending on the history of wars the country had.
in the months following the initial settings, we have agreed to reset the levels in some cases.

this ended long time ago and no such resetting had taken place in the past 3 months or longer and the function is disabled.

we keep getting such requests and we have checked some.
in all cases, there was no reason for a reset. we understand that a low war level might be convenient but it is impossible to have an experienced war player back to a low war level where you expect inexperienced players only.

it remains impossible to wipe out the players knowledge and experience and the war level should reflect knowledge and experience.
we will also never change a war level even if a new player has taken over. setting temporary war protection for a short period is always possible.

It is impossible for our engineers to perform any manual changes. With so many countries, enterprises, corporations and millions of parameters, manual interventions are impossible and we are sure our players are happy that such interventions never take place.

War levels should decrease by one level, if the player remains military inactive for a month.

Knowledge gets outdated, weapons get sold and destroyed, countries become inefficient with lack of maintenance.

Or, just listen to this: we get rid of the f**king war levels and let people take over other player controlled countries again.

If that didn't drive players out of the game, I would agree, but that is not the case.

@ Tom: if war levels are intended to reflect experience and knowledge, then why are players at different levels on different planets?

@ Laguna: it's not war that drives players out of the game. It's the way other players use it which drives players out of the game. But that's part of life and is a reflection of human nature. If it can be policed, which I doubt, war levels are not an effective way to police it.

Hugs and respect

Jo

Jo,

you are right.
we have discussed this and I am not even sure about why we do have different war levels in different worlds. Do we?

I will find out the details and reasons next week.

Oh, it's very easy to police war. Just put in an oil corporation and let the U.S. off of our leashes.

Uh oh, possibly another change to war levels???

Are you sure this is what you want players?

Second that. I think I'm going back to DVD/CD based games ... really. Once you have the disk the rules stay the same.

Oh boy.

Simcountry is changing quickly.
This is what happened in the past years and will continue to take place.

Some people hate all changes.
Some people hate some of the changes.

New players don't know the difference.

Some players complain about changes even if nothing was changed.

I said I will find out what was decided on war levels and why. did I change anything?

One thing is sure:
the game now is not the same as it was several years ago and judging by the reactions we get from long time players by mail in all these years, and also judging by the support we receive each month, most think it is a great ride. Some don't think so.

Hey, it's your guys's game. As long as it's still fun, I'll keep playing.

Well, lets take a walk through the last year or so of changes, most of which have been positive, and the general ideas of the changes that haven't been so positive, had good intention and one way or another many could see the ' why's ' of the changes.

Now, lets look at the changes to War and Econ, the two basic principles of playing SC. One of which, hasn't changed that much other than making corps larger, IPOing a bit different, Investment funds purpose and effect change, and a change to pensions..well that covering Econ lets look at this thing what is it.. War? or something?

Well the war level idea was in all good intentions I do agree with the new players not getting killed by vets..., etc..etc.. and making the game more balanced between vets and new players etc..etc..

but in what shape or form has it done anything? Why cant if you are going to "review" resets, or try to altar it, to keep war levels in play, its only going to turn into a huge fuss for everyone, as if we haven't had enough long time players leave or become inactive...

for me to use what would have been a great war slave in any decency now days, not only takes over a month to upgrade but also:

Cost of upgrades, only the more ' SC rich ' players can afford, as it takes alot of trillions to upgrade all garrisons, offense/defenses/units/supply

As mentioned, the time it takes to get things upgraded, just to discover "oh we're making a change to such and such in the war engine" and it takes more time..


I'm not going to go much further but there are so many reasons why, hitting reset to PRIOR to war levels is a much better option, and give new players like ' new protection ' for 6 months or something vs players over x amount of time, or x amount of milli rather than try to figure out who gets to reset, who doesnt, who should go up if someones going to get to come down, whining, and not to mention UPDATE AFTER UPDATE AFTER CHANGE AFTER CHANGE, gets hard for new players to keep up, much less stay around.

Simply put, SC is complicated for new players, and old players. doesnt matter how long you've been playing, with all the changes that go back and forth, sure NEW things or fixing bugs...but changing the general format of a game..why not make a Simcountry II or something. When people go to purchase a Wii or PS3, or whatever else is out right now, and get a game (that costs 60 USD) or so these days..

just saying for an example btw... that they want to have to always adjust and reconfigure everything about it once or twice a month? no. but they do have updates and downloadable add ons for those games. and patches to fix things..not completely altar it...


Sorry if I rambled on, but I think somewhere in that mess I got my point across.

and in reply, yes Tom Willard, somethings I like some I don't, somethings I've mailed ideas on fixing, something's I ask so i understand why things happen the way they do, sometimes i flat out just say "look this is wrong fix it". I don't mind the ride, though sure we all complain about change. Sim country is a great game and I do love it dearly, but gosh please make the carousel stop spinning so fast...lol

New players deserve a much stabler game than the past few months, just as well as the older players do. sometimes you just need to realize a feature is causing you as GM's more of a headache than it is smiles

the bringing back free membership brings lots of smiles...but i'm sure getting all of our different opinions on war, war levels etc..gets to be overwhelming. we need more admin involvement in chat so communicating overlying issues that are constantly repeated or complained about or misunderstood can be resolved. It'd surely help us older players help newer ones, as well as being more adaptive to changes when we fully understand just whats been changed ;) cant hurt to come and chat with us for a while could it? and no, 1 jozi chat per month on IRC, isnt what I'm talking about, I mean, actual, become friendly and approachable daily/weekly at least one of you could come in and just chat!

you'd be amazed what you can learn in there, and how many variations people teach to new players about every thing from naming countries to figuring out what supplies to ASQ...

But I'd much prefer you're variation on things (changes) , since err...your understanding of them is kinda the important one ;) Game News isn't exactly descriptive and detailed Q&A etc...as chat is..give it a whirl..

I used to play SC a long time ago (I think back in 04 or 05), and only recently joined back up, and I was impressed with that has changed.

Playing Econ is a bit more fun now than it was, and although I'm starting to get the hang of war, it is easy to understand provided you read about it. I followed Scarlet's war guide pretty closely, and after hanging on the chat, picking up tips, I'm getting better at war (rebuilding is something different though).

in regards to different war levels on different planets.

i have empires on all 5 worlds. all but one, GR, i am WL7. on GR, WL0. Its really nice to have a little corner of my space empire that i don't have to worry about. i mean, i don't spend allot of time checking my GR stuff. its just an income source. I have 4 other worlds and countless assets out of WP and in WL7 avaible to be declared war on. i don't see why i can't have one world where i'm safe.

although, i can agree, that if i was to be at WL3, on gr, and i was taking advantage of newer players, while i'm playing wl7 every where else... that would be reason to question.

if you see what i'm getting at. i'm not bothering anyone on gr, and i have no intention to, ever. infact, i wish i could reset kb, and lu back to wl0, and stay at wl7 on fb, and wg. or rather i'd love to be returned to wl3 on wg, (but a snowball has a better chance...)

another concern, the concept of war levels is for the experienced players to be able to war, and compete with each other. but their are many players, that have been around for years. have econ, and political power bases, but maintain a low war level...

yet another concern. along the lines of C3 only fighting. you can have experienced war players, that just haven't leveled up, on purpose, to take advantage of lower war level players. while the high war levels, can do nothing but watch...

their are some magor flaws behind war levels. and as time goes on, it wont be the old timers that are complaigning