W3C - Game News March 30, 2017

Both the history and the current state of the game highlighted issues with those systems.

1. Purchased war protection is too inexpensive and too timely.

-Too inexpensive. Players would pay for year-round war protection. It was, and is, simply cheaper than paying for defense. In an environment where leaving it up is almost a "no-brainer", the price simply has to be on a level where it makes more sense to participate and count on a federation and your own force of arms rather than simply logging in here and there and purchasing a few more months of guaranteed protection.

-Too timely. Aggressive nations are given the luxury of walling off their assets with this system on the eve of a war they would start. In my opinion, this is what led to adding restrictions to strategic weapons use, where, at least, some manner of assets were in play with the offensive use of strategic weapons. There must be some system that does not allow a game mechanic with the intention of protecting assets while unavailable, like on vacation or some emergency, to instead be used for an active aggressive player to remove options for the defender.

2. Econ-players have built empires within the current game rule-set and should not be thrust into game-play they didn't sign up for, except for one exception. War level protection should exist except for on Fearless Blue, where no protections should be enforced beyond the newbie 21-days protection. Player have and continue to play on that world based on the promise described in the docs, that war restrictions are loose and players make the rules there. As we know, this is not the case.

3. Raiding as the undisputed way to raise cash didn't make sense for several reasons.

-In an environment where cash made in the game overwhelming came from raiding, it made no sense to spend time building an empire. In the end, the game encouraged an environment where there was little to fight over. Why spend time nurturing an economy in an empire when 40 minutes of raiding could yield $40 trillion? This simply made no sense with the game's investment in a complex economic system and the promise of powerful empires being the game standard.

-There must be a balance and room to gain assets in econ and war. Overall, this balance is pretty good now. An incredible head start can be achieved in war against the computer, as detailed in my "Path of a Warrior" guide in the beginners forum. However, the game now smartly has limits on assets that can be squeezed from mostly defenseless computer countries, transitioning the player to need to find some economic base for long-term play. Proper incentive exists to participate in both raiding and econ, though I have said, and offered suggestions, to make actual PvP play more lucrative, as it seems the natural progression for players who have cut their teeth against the computer.

Address these issues, and I am on board. I would be interested to see other fully thought out ideas to incentivize actual PvP play. My ideas for War College and Battlegrounds have been available on the suggestions forum for some time and have no comparable peer in this area.

Players recklessly throwing around nukes was, frankly, too simple. That was possible because they had nothing to loose, either because they had nothing, because raiding helpless computer countries was king, or their important assets were protection by another game restriction you guys seem to leave untouched, despite the argument against restrictions, in temporary war protection. Why are game restrictions okay for the victim but not the bomb throwers?

See, Aries, not to be rude or provocative, I would indulge you, but then I would nerf my own points earlier. We'd be going back and forth over the same no "right or wrong" answer arguments that should take a back seat to the facts that are staring everyone in the face.

Everyone who wanted protections and less powerful weapons got everything they wanted and everything they didn't as a result. Now the game is tilted to favor the garden variety type play, and strikingly, this was done to preserve and in the best case grow the community, yet the exact opposite has occurred.

There is no need to argue the merits of any previous configurations of this game except based on participation. Presently it is at an all time low, following what I can recount as an all time high.


Also, assuming you are correct, and nukes are so overpowered. Who cares? Do players casually land nukes on you? Haven't seen any in the news lately. What is to stop players from duplicating your successful nuclear defenses. No, why do that when they can just ask the GM to make the weapon obsolete and forget trying to put in the work.

Also, assuming c3s is a seemingly "easy way" to achieve wealth. Well, you click for it, and make money economically, because it pleases you to do so this way. Some players, and clearly many, many more enjoyed accruing assets the old tried and true raiding way. I realize you don't agree, but no one is forcing you to play in this manner. Do you have a problem with a persistent raider challenging your Quads of assets and thousands of GC with his or her raiding riches?

Also, purchased war protection is too cheap? Says who? And Why. Should a player do what is required to purchase what was a few months of war protection for a gold coin, why should they not be able to do so simply because you disagree. Apparently, many players spent many gold coins on war protection for various reasons. It doesn't matter. It was a product in demand, so why not sell it?

I shouldn't have responded in this manner because I think the circle jerk of response and counter response will only drown out the larger point many players are realizing have more legitimacy than the narrow view of the player sitting at the top of the game's riches making moral arguments for how 'this or that' should be.

Facts and realities are the only thing that should matter here. On the business side the answer is even more simple. Players were appeased, the community shrank from a community that was vibrant and active, even if a small(extremely small) sample were ultimately unhappy. Many of the unhappy which I also do not see playing or participating in this forum today.

Almost every paragraph you just wrote talks about player participation again and very little addresses the points I made. You then threw in some talk about overpowered vs. under-powered weapons which makes no sense since at all weapons are just as powerful as they ever were.

Your argument isn't good enough to say there happened to be more players before so its time to roll all game rules back. There are many more possible reasons for decline in active players. Maybe we are not just getting the younger folks, who are looking for more mindless entertainment with superior graphics, or many similar reasons. You will have to do better than say everything you suggest makes sense on that point alone.

That's the point Aries, I'm not addressing any points you made. I only address the relevant one. There is NO argument, ONLY facts.

There was a game, and there is less of it now. This is a brain, making simple observations. You need to face reality. Carrying on like this with you in circles is like one's brain on drugs.... Any questions?

Even More Astounding....

we have a browser game, that is also being ported as an app... and your target audience is primarily the 55 and up community not looking for any instant gratification and somewhat better graphics???

Nah bruh.... You'll have to do better. You nearly disqualified yourself from making any legitimate comment on the topic... like ever..........

Just stop please...........

I can understand why you would want to quiet me. You simply have no relevant answer to my valid points. Though what changes you think are actually warranted remain mostly unclear, other than some going back to the past, and the reason you state for them is empty other than it is assumed it will bring back some panacea for player participation, now the best you have is some worn out old commercial quotes and some competition who can type the most dots. Classy

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By gawd I won that one.

A long time ago, before many improvements, you could choose to either play a peaceful game or war game and there was no secured mode. There was either peaceful countries that couldn't war, meaning empires had to be bought, or you could play non peaceful countries and there was war protection but you only earned something like 1 month of wp every 8 game months or something like that. The war game wasn't nearly as refined but there was a lot of participation and communication. As years have passed there has been more and more forced separation of players due to secured countries, paid war protection and war levels. The level of participation and communication has dropped as there has been more and more improvements in the name of safety. This is a war game though and even though I've never been great at war it has been one of the biggest attractions of it for me. That and communication with other players, the problem is there isn't much of either anymore. I never saw the need for more protections, to protect a few who wanted the economical benefits of non peaceful countries while being protected from attacks while cheating many people out of chances to war never made sense to me. I like the current war game but in my opinion it is too time consuming to attract the interest it used to have, its technically far better but simplicity made it much more playable for many more people in the past, the now distant past which made for a more active world. This is all just my opinion, feel free to disagree, it doesn't matter much anyway since I can never manage more than a few consecutive months of active game play anymore.

stay classy my friends!

What's your beef with dots... Aries...?

Not beef. Definitely more of a poultry. Possibly chicken.

chicken is practically a vegetable. Have a beef for Gods sake, gods of war aren't supposed to do poultry

I know right? Dots=poultry. Stick with beef. Aaron said it best.

3. Raiding as the undisputed way to raise cash didn't make sense for several reasons.

Not everyone has the time or desire to micromanage an economic empire.

Raiding should be returned.

Raiding exists, and offers plenty of rewards, as my "Path of a Warrior" guide shows.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/16295/25064.html?1440190635

Fighting just 36 computer wars on just 2 worlds, many of those newbie-level, yields some $78 Trillion and 640 gold coins (worth another $128 Trillion at current market price). A return of nearly $6 trillion per C3 war. Not too shabby and in not too much time. If you don't desire to build an empire and don't put in the time that others have decided to, than others might receive a different set of rewards that you do not. Is this not fair?

I would agree I've even made around 400Billion per C3 country fighting at war level 3 (Fighting to Expand Empire. You can make quite a bit of cash quickly but unfortunately your war level increases which can cause players to not want to fight wars against a C3 when it could increase there war level.

Nobody is interested in your version of "Path To a Warrior"

C3 raiding as form of entertainment is like asking boxing prospect if he is interested in a title fight versus the heavy bag.... For the boxer, a real opponent versus hitting something that will never hit back kind of seems boooooring, useful albeit but boring.

Where is the support for these coding tasks for battlegrounds from actual genuine players 6 months or a year into the game. I don't mean the flock of try-hards who swear by the gospel of Aries, I mean actual players.

It also puzzles me how you need to drown out everyone who brings up the topic of improving the game by rolling back these obvious conceptual failures that have been implemented. It's almost as if the whole idea of the current configuration was your idea and you are butthurt that anyone would challenge your proven wisdom. If your ego is bruised becuase you got it wrong its ok I mean it can be undone with a few rollbacks.

Your version of the game is as it is today. Where not much of anything happens and we all log in to perform relentless ipo chores and come to chat and boast of taking 600 corps public.

Might be your pace and all, but not everyone likes watching jeopardy. Perhaps it is a demographics issue.

Unless you are a GM. There is no need for anyone pointing out what is obvious to prove anything to you or explain to you why common sense should prevail. Unless you're happy with failure. In fact, it should be YOU who explains why this model should continue and why it is beneficial for the general activity of the game to suffer by allowing it to continue on this current course.

Who is attempting to drown anyone out? You were the one asking me to "stop" and said I am somehow "disqualified" from comment. I have made no such demands nor statements. I am the one willing to debate changes based on their individual merits while you appear to be absolutely disturbed at the thought of needing to justify your game demands. I trust our intelligent players to read this discourse and determine whose ego is on full display.

If I recall, Battlegrounds and War College passed a player vote by a tally of 11-1. After months of being available on the Suggestions Forum, an actual player who actually plays the game suggested I put it up for a vote. So I did. Can you find 11 players to support whatever they can figure out you are suggesting? My guess the only ones who sign on are the ones you can get to buy that bunk that a binary choice exists between what exists now and some fantasy cloud cuckoo land.

As for "Path of the Warrior", I typically mention it when I hear loathing regarding the absence of raiding rewards. If you can do better, go ahead, but I will not accept the perception that there are no gains to be had in raiding. It just isn't true.

Lets put egos aside for a minute.

I prefer the term aggressive recycling.

And it is not just C3's. I captured many hundreds of millions of population, rebuilt countries for later sale, and built huge stock pile of weapons/ammo. Not even mentioning the dozens of rebuilt countries I sold or gave away over the years.

So yes I did better. But that was then, this is now.

I can do better, actually I don't have to do better, the game actually did better on substantive factual figures not simply opinions. Exaggerated opinions about this or that, ethical, tactical or otherwise led us here. A stagnant Republic of Aries. Where 11 people voted yes to anything but "this" but that doesn't disqualify the obvious reality the game was better then, not now. And when I say better, I don't mean I liked it better, I mean better from every conceivable category you can measure it against today. Better as in every aspect we can point out that is missing today, was very evident in the previous configurations for good reasons or "bad" (according to a very tiny presently extinct minority). I don't know how many times this has to be pointed out to you.

It is a binary choice, a player micro managing or approving every other players' choices according to their own whims gets us to this version where that singular player is apparently very happy playing by himself or an otherwise largely non motivated dwindling player base(Seem Familiar? Look around you.) For an older gentleman, I don't fathom how your vision for things never extends past the point of the nose in front of your face, yet has almost nothing to do with the visual acuity of your eyes.

I probably can't get 11 players to vote on anything these days because... of the hopefully 11 active players with enough sense to figure out how to reach the forum the rest can't gather how to get to the voting mechanism. This too, is a result of diminished communication throughout this community. Presently, there is little incentive to even speak to another player or post on this forum unless a player cannot figure out something economically going on within their empire. Aside from that, they creep back into their own countries, or lose interest in the game and move on.

It is a binary choice, and discussions and methods to "improve" things for all the crybabies from there would be far less complex than trying to figure it out from this end. The contrasts of then til now is as black is to white. That justifies the position of a binary choice. Disagree all you like but the facts and every measurable category of success are on my side without question. There is no argument here. There is only you debating with yourself if you can stomach anyone other than yourself enjoying this game.

My keyboard is getting hot... don't make me strike these keys like this....

Concerning the real issue here.

-Problem. Too many protections were implemented and now clearly have proven damaging to the game overall.

-Solution. Roll back to a clearly proven previous configuration of the game.

-Outcomes.
* Those who enjoy raiding, can enjoy raiding, rewards for that raiding can be easily tweaked.
* Those who enjoy PVP war, can enjoy warring and all the fixins that go hand in hand with this added possibility.
* Those who wish to play an economic game, can use easily accessed war protections via gold coins or secured mode as it was in the previous configurations. Thereby avoiding warmongers, lil kim jong uns armed with over powered nuclear weapons, wars, federation wars, becoming inadvertent casualties to wars they don't wish to participate in due to complex politics/, or war altogether.


**Players can go back to playing the game having options to suit their desired style of play. Increasing satisfaction of premium members and offering a more robust game with more robust options for new free members considering premium membership. Expecting an ultimate outcome of expanding the community back to previous levels or exceeding them altogether.

Okay, there is the problem and the solution put in a format programmers are taught to how solve them.

Why create problems where none actually existed? There was nothing broken in the first place. Just a small band of players exaggerating a bunch of nothing into smoke and mirrors and clearly by and large weren't loyal enough to the game to stick around to enjoy their newfound utopia, save 1(The God Of Snore). Give it a rest and take a nap old man. With all Due respect of course. Good night.

I realize at first read, some may see this conversation as a clash of ego's.....I definitely do not see it that way. Any discussion to give the game a kick in the arse is a good step.

As far as player votes....that system has NEVER been reliable as a decision making tool. I don't know exactly why it doesn't work, but it has always frustrated me to the point of wanting to punch myself in the face. For some reason, players either can't figure out how to use the system, or just don't care. Either way...it doesn't work.

The game used to be alive and flourishing with players. It is now a shell of what it used to be....actually very sad to see what it has become. I was really excited to come back and establish relationships with players again. Well, I was more that a bit surprised to see that it's basically like pulling teeth to try to get players to communicate in the game.....then I realized it's because there AREN'T MANY PLAYERS ACTIVE now.

I've been away for a few years...at least 4 years I think. When I left, the new restrictions against warring players had just started to be implemented.

It used to be, I could come home from work, take down a few c3's or the occasional country that had been abandoned by it's president for over a month. Raiding these c3's and countries was a blast...helped me to expand my empire and most importantly, it helped curb the itch to go to war.

Forcing up war levels by fighting c3's has never made sense to me....period. I'm not saying that following Aries warrior guide isn't lucrative, it certainly is, but the levels haven't worked since the day they were introduced.

Economic only players have always been coddled. They can eliminate ANY threat to their assets by simply investing in the cheapest form of protection in the game....war protection. It's far cheaper to use wp than it is to establish proper defenses....and it's unbeatable.

War protection IS THEIR CHOICE to not war with other players.

The system now is broke...just look at the activity now compared to a few years ago.

I'm with Wendy 100%. Reset the game to where it was 4-5 years ago. Both econ only players and warring players could both have it their way. (Utopia seems to certainly be the proper description)

Good discussion guys (And gals)

EC

I guess fundamentally, I don't understand the appeal of a PvP environment that Psycho Honey, EC, and Johanas envision. My understanding is that they see three categories of players:

1. Econ-only. The smart ones never get of PvP war level (though maybe they believe war levels themselves should be removed. again, their views are some fantasy cloud cuckoo land rollback that hasn't been explained). The ones who are not protected by war level are expected to purchase gold-coin protection for all their slave countries. Those thatfail to renew this will fall into the next category.

2. Inactives/The Prey. These are the players who didn't renew their war protection. These players are highly vulnerable either because they are not available to defend their empire or never intended to and lack the skills and resources to do anything about a war declaration.

3. "War Players". These are players who never intend to build any country/empire of any value. Since they can mash buttons for cash against a mostly defenseless computer country (It doesn't shoot back) as often as they want, there isn't reason to seek any other income source. Between these fake wars (the GM's own term on this), they search their world for Inactives/Prey for easy conquests of what other players have built. They have little or no intention of actually fighting any challenging war ever.


In this game-state, there is still little role for federations, since war protection is the only defense that makes sense, and little incentive for war players to build something worth fighting over. The way I see it, the game should incentivize building things of value and having those things outside of game protections. The end game should be an environment of federations having a central role in the game along with careful diplomacy to protect player assets. The game isn't there yet but certainly should not move backward.

My list in that direction looks like this:

1. War College - A system similar to game levels that focuses on teaching PvP basics and ends with advancing the player to war level 10 with all rewards.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/25043.html?1453899584

2. Battlegrounds - Real player PvP fought over a neutral ground.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/25045.html?1439461174

3. Natural Resources - Allow players to choose a bonus for an existing country they own. They must pay for it in gold coins. The bonus only applies if the player is war level 4+ and has removed war level protection. The bonus for that country, once paid for, applies permanently for that country for any owner as long as the current owner is war level 4+ and has removed war level protection.

4. Total War/All-Out War - A system to spark fed/large wars.

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/24038.html?1434986948

5. The War World - Remove war level protection for all Fearless Blue countries. Only 21 day protection applies here.

6. Gold Coin War Protection - Increase the cost of gold-coin purchased protection to 4 coins on FB and 3 coins elsewhere per 4 game months. This should be reserved for vacation/emergency use. Perhaps increase it a bit further than that and offer a small allotment of free protection for each month of purchased premium membership. This protection should also not apply for the duration of a war declaration against another player.


The goal should be real PvP against players and participation in federations and diplomacy to protect game assets. Not a system of fake wars against the computer and PvP limited to preying on inactive/defenseless players. Lets take the game forward, not backwards.

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

I guess fundamentally, I don't understand the appeal of a PvP environment that Psycho Honey, EC, and Johanas envision.<!-/Quote-!>

Jeebus H Aries.... We didn't envision it, we remember what already existed.

Its really sad that one cannot follow what you make of what everyone is saying despite clear concise posts about their desires. It's cool though, I will just reference...

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

-Problem. Too many protections were implemented and now clearly have proven damaging to the game overall.

-Solution. Roll back to a clearly proven previous configuration of the game.

-Outcomes.
* Those who enjoy raiding, can enjoy raiding, rewards for that raiding can be easily tweaked.
* Those who enjoy PVP war, can enjoy warring and all the fixins that go hand in hand with this added possibility.
* Those who wish to play an economic game, can use easily accessed war protections via gold coins or secured mode as it was in the previous configurations. Thereby avoiding warmongers, lil kim jong uns armed with over powered nuclear weapons, wars, federation wars, becoming inadvertent casualties to wars they don't wish to participate in due to complex politics/, or war altogether.


**Players can go back to playing the game having options to suit their desired style of play. Increasing satisfaction of premium members and offering a more robust game with more robust options for new free members considering premium membership. Expecting an ultimate outcome of expanding the community back to previous levels or exceeding them altogether.<!-/Quote-!>