First, some disclaimers:

DISCLAIMER ONE: I apologize for not using the letters of power in this post. However, this is one of those rare occasions on which I would like to actually be taken seriously.

DISCLAIMER TWO: Some of what I am about to post may come across as dev-bashing, but it is certainly not intended that way. I for one appreciate that you folks are trying to keep alive a game which most of us have loved (and at times hated) for almost two decades.

DISCLAIMER THREE: I will wait until the end of this post to explain what I mean by "easy-moding" and what I believe are always the outcomes of such a practice, across every game and every genre which involves competition between players.

DISCLAIMER FOUR: During the course of writing this, I am finding myself repeatedly using LaF as an example. This does not in any way indicate that I believe LaF to be a problem for the alliance server. They are simply the best example right now of an alliance which exceeds the capabilities of all others, in virtually every facet of the game.

Now, on to the comment which prompted me to finally make this post. From a thread on the alliance talk board:



If the above quote is indeed an accurate description of the current development mindset here, and if that mindset continues, then this game is ultimately doomed.

This game is inevitably about power. There is no getting around that. The very basics of the game demand that it be about power. For when one player can improve his country by negatively impacting another, power (or perceived power) and risk vs reward are the only factors which will ever enter into the decision making processes of the players. **And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that dynamic!**

In a game of this nature, you will ALWAYS have players - or groups of players - who are better at grasping the finer details. Also, specifically on the alliance server, you will ALWAYS have groups of players trying to become more numerous than their foes, in order to gain power over them. This is human nature and CANNOT be changed no matter how you might try, and it SHOULD not be changed.

No matter what changes you make, whether it be insane restarts, longer kill runs, shorter kill runs, higher military losses, lower military losses... nothing will change the fact that some people or groups will be better than others. The five man clan will ALWAYS be at the mercy of the 80 man clan, and must either make that big clan like them, or find a way to make it clear that the larger clan will not gain in the long run by abusing the smaller (by demonstrating a willingness to throw everything away in order to make sure that the abuser loses more than he gains)

But should it come to a fight, in the absence of dramatically superior planning and/or skill, the large clans will always defeat the smaller. Want to beat LaF in a straight-up war, but you're in a 35 member clan? It isn't going to happen unless you outmaneuver them politically or find a way to increase your member count. That's just the cold hard truth. It has always been the truth. There have always been alliances - or coalitions of alliances - which dominate the server for a time. In time, a new alliance or group of alliances always emerges to topple the behemoth. This too is inevitable. For as soon as one has achieved dominance, there is nothing left to achieve but to attempt to gain even more power. This inevitably leads to abuse which the masses eventually find so unacceptable that they find a way to combat it. And as soon as one group has achieved dominance, the result is for those less empowered to both despise AND covet the behemoth's power all the more. This has never failed to happen, that I can remember.

If game developers seek to find ways to slant the playing field, in order to take power away from the large and give it to the small, those efforts will always result in failure, and eventually an irreparably damaged game. The numerically and/or logistically superior alliance will always be able to use whatever changes have been made, just as the numerically inferior alliance can. And in most cases, since they have more resources to work with, changes of this nature will benefit the larger alliance. It seems to me that the unintended consequences of most of the recent changes have only served to further concentrate power in the hands of the few, since those few are the only players with the resources necessary to use the changes to maximum advantage.

Now, I know that the recent radical change to restarts was not aimed at changing the balance of power, but rather at stopping players from losing all their hard work. This too, in my opinion, is a terrible goal to work towards. It SOUNDS great, but we will have unintended consequences - some of which we have already seen - which are far worse than the initial problem (or perceived problem)

Any time you remove some of the consequences of abuse, you will see an increase in abuse. Again, we come back to the very nature of the game.. The easiest way to improve your country is and has always been to abuse others as much as you can without incurring their wrath. Piss somebody off enough, and they're going to destroy you, or at least try. If the consequences of abuse are dramatically reduced, then that good old risk / reward scale shifts, and abuse becomes more valuable. LaF never had much reason not to farm any 20 member clan if they wished to do so, but now they have even less reason. So what if four of their countries are killed? They'll have four members out of 80 who have lost 30% or less of their country. As someone pointed out in another thread, larger alliances can now ENTIRELY ignore troops, and become all the more unbreakable on AB and BR. The only risk they run now if they farm a smaller alliance is creating more untagged "suiciders". Which brings me to my next point.

I know netgainers hate "suiciders", but changes to eliminate "suiciders" should be avoided whenever possible. The "suicider", whom I refer to as the righteous defender, is the one who shifts the risk/reward scale on abuse towards risk more than any change you could ever make. What better deterrent can there be to widespread massive farming, than knowing that you may cause this person to decide to run an untagged country - or worse, a country in a friendly tag - with his only goal being to steal as much of your alliance's stock, or steal/destroy as much of your land and buildings as he can, late in the reset?

All of this revolves around a facet of the game which I believe makes it unique and infinitely more interesting: This is one of the few games out there in which diplomacy, and the ability to avoid pissing people off, can actually be a huge factor in your success. I have always enjoyed this aspect of the game. My primary server country this reset is a pretty good example. I engaged in a war fairly early. It didn't take long before someone hit me. Being engaged in war, and also not being good at dealing with being a land source for the top ten, I was infuriated. But this person chose to send a note of apology along with his grab. I could have retaliated and taken back probably 3X what he had gained, but I chose to retaliate against someone else instead. The simple act of spending 30 seconds writing a note spared the first aggressor from losing a boatload of land. One of those whom I did choose to retaliate against believed himself invincible, and hit me back three more times. He was not the only person to break GDI on me this reset, but he was the one who pissed of off the most, and as a result his netgaining reset was ended. Some people would call what I did "suiciding". I call it fighting back, and achieving two goals: Making sure he who abused me did not profit from it, and putting an advertisement out there that abusing me will not pay. A successful reset if ever there was one!

Anyway, I may be getting a little off track here, but the point of that last long paragraph was that diplomacy is a vital and enjoyable part of this game, and any time you make wars less painful or abuse less risky, you diminish the diplomacy aspect of the game.

And now, part two! I say that because all of the paragraphs previous to this one were typed before I took a break to watch the Seahawks destroy the Rams. Now, it is several hours later, and I am quite inebriated!!! You are all in trouble now!

I think there were several other points which I wanted to touch on before I got drunk, but now I am drunk, and I just want to end this.. so, just one or two more hours of typing for the summary!

So, what do I mean by "Easy-moding" the game? Simple! I have played a lot of online games during my life, and virtually every one of them has eventually succumbed to "easy-moding".. This occurs when developers start to listen to the complaints of "this is too hard" or "this is too tedious", or the worst.. "this is not fair!!!". And the result has been the same in every one of those games: The sometimes-slow, sometimes-quick, inexorable death of the game. The failure of Earth 2025 (and now Earth Empires) devs to easy-mode this game is what kept me coming back to it.

The best example I have of easy-moding is Asheron's Call, the greatest MMORPG ever made. At first it was fun! Very fun! And for a long time it remained fun! Yes, it took a lot of work to build a good and powerful character in that game, but it was fun doing it! And there was satisfaction in having successfully done something which was difficult.

But eventually, the devs began to hear the cries of "this is too hard" or "this is too tedious".. Fearing to lose those players who were complaining, they began to "easy-mode" the game. At first, some of the changes seemed to make sense. The process of learning spells in Asheron's Call was indeed quite tedious. In order to discover a new spell, one had to repeatedly mix different combinations of reagents until one discovered a combination which resulted in a spell. During the early days of AC, if you walked into any major town, you were sure to see in your chat channel, "NoobMage's spell fizzled" over and over as aspiring magicians worked feverishly to learn their trade. It was also possible - very possible - to "gimp" a character.. by making poor decisions in your character's development which resulted in the character being much less powerful than it potentially could have been.

So the devs first made learning spells a very simple process of just getting to a certain skill level.. bam, you know all the spells for that level. And they introduced the ability to undo poor choices players had made in their characters' attribute selection.. bam, you're no longer gimped. And the people rejoiced... For a time! It was not long however, before the people reaped the rewards of their desires. No longer was there any satisfaction in having a mage with every spell, or a warrior with no useless skills. For EVERY mage knew every spell, and EVERY warrior was optimized with exactly the right XP points in every single category. We were all winners, but none of us were special any more. Nothing separated any of us from the rest. And the player base diminished.

Then came the death blow. For it had been a long time since the game had begun, and it was "not fair" that some people who started playing later than others or rerolled new characters had to go through all the tedious levels everybody else had gone through in order to catch up. Along came the XP levers.. Literally, levers in a dungeon that all you had to do was get there, and then pull the lever over and over to gain XP. Everyone was truly equal now. The challenge was gone, there was no satisfaction in achievement...and the player base diminished.. and then faded away to nothing.

Every competitive game I've played, with the exception of Earth (until now) has followed this same fatal progression. Sadly, it looks to me like Earth is now finally headed down that road to self destruction.

Ghost acres! Oh how I hate these! "But there is a shortage of land now that there are fewer players!" So what? Everyone is on a level playing field. Everyone must deal with the same difficulties in gaining land. All ghost acres do is to ensure that no all-explore country ever has a chance to compete. "But how can I ever attain the all-time net worth record with less land?" Who cares! Under more optimum conditions, someone who may or may not have had less skill than you attained higher net worth. BFD. Deal with it. Don't encourage the devs to wreck the game just to satisfy your vanity. Being able to attack a country and gain more than DOUBLE what he lost is absolutely absurd. And stupid! And infuriating!!!!!

The way I see it, our ghost acres are akin to something between AC's easier spell system and ungimping ability, and the new, outrageous restart rules are our XP levers. It is time to turn away from the easy mode path, and back to a path where achievement is actually difficult, and as a consequence, more satisfying.

NOW I WOULD LIKE TO CONCLUDE THIS MEETING AS WE CONCLUDE ALL MEETINGS OF THE COMMITTEE OF ONE: WITH A SONG! A SLIGHTLY MODIFIED SONG!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
AND THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMMITTEE CAME UNTO ME
SNATCHING ME UP FROM MY PLACE OF SLUMBER
AND TOOK ME ON HIGH
AND HIGHER STILL UNTIL WE MOVED TO THE SPACES BETWIXT THE AIR ITSELF
AND HE BROUGHT ME INTO A VAST FARMLAND OF OUR OWN SCORES LIST
AND AS WE DESCENDED, CRIES OF IMPENDING DOOM ROSE FROM THE SOIL!
ONE THOUSAND, NAY! A MILLION VOICES! FULL OF FEAR!
AND TERROR POSSESSED ME THEN!
AND I BEGGED,
"REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMMITTEE, WHAT ARE THESE TORTURED SCREAMS?"
AND THE REPRESENTATIVE SAID UNTO ME,
"THESE ARE THE CRIES OF THE NETGAINING ELITE"
"THE CRIES OF THE NETGAINING ELITE"
"YOU SEE, REVEREND SAMUEL,
TOMORROW IS RETRIBUTION DAY, AND TO THEM..
IT IS..
THE HOLOCAUST!"
AND I SPRANG FROM MY SLUMBER,
DRENCHED IN SWEAT LIKE THE TEARS OF ONE MILLION TERRIFIED BROTHERS!
AND ROARED!
"HEAR ME NOW!"
"I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT"
"THEY HAVE A CONSCIOUSNESS!"
"THEY HAVE A LIFE!"
"THEY HAVE A SOUL!"
"DAMN YOU! LET THE NETGAINERS EXPLORE!"
"SAVE OUR BROTHERS!"
CAN I GET AN AMEN?
CAN I GET A HALLELUJAH?
THANK YOU QZJUL!

THIS! IS! NECESSARY!
THIS! IS! NECESSARY!
LIFE! FEEDS ON LIFE!
FEEDS ON LIFE!
FEEDS ON LIFE!
FEEDS ON
THIS! IS! NECESSARY!
THIS! IS! NECESSARY!
LIFE! FEEDS ON LIFE!
FEEDS ON LIFE!
FEEDS ON LIFE!
FEEDS ON LIFE!

THIS!!!!!!
IS!!!!!!!!
NECESSARY!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS!!!!
IS!!!!!!!
NECESSARY!!!!!!!!!!
LIFE!!!!!!!!
FEEDS ON LIFE!!!!!!!!
FEEDS ON LIFE!!!!!!!!
FEEDS ON LIFE!!!!!!!!!
FEEDS ON THIS!!!!!!!!!
IS!!!!!!!!
NECESSARY!!!!!!!!!
THIS!!!!!!!!!!
IS!!!!!!
NECESSARY!!!!!!!!!
LIFE!!!!!!
FEEDS ON LIFE!!!!!!!!!!
FEEDS ON LIFE!!!!!!!!!!
FEEDS ON LIFE!!!!!!!!!
FEEDS ON LIFE!!!!!!!!!!
(REPEAT A FEW MORE TIMES)

HA!

SAM
PHILOSOPHER,
THE MIGHT CLAN [DANGER]!

short version?

MAKING THINGS EASIER IS SUCK

short version??

the new changes and the mindset of the admins suck balls


i think thats basically what he is trying to say

That is why, Alliances should be cap to... say a 25 member tag. Thats where real capabilities of fighting a war shows.

Currently more people = win even if you have the same fighting capabilities.

Uggh.. no.

We already have a limited alliance server. And nothing will stop an alliance which wishes to be 50 members from splitting into two 25 member alliances.

Artificial caps and hindrances on power will never work, and will only diminish the server. Alliances will rise, alliances will fall. Some will achieve dominance, but never permanently. They always fall apart eventually, and it is usually their size and the resulting arrogance that does it. Its the story of mankind throughout history, not just this game.

a 25 member tag so that 1 tag can only be at war with 1 tag at a time and any other tags that interfere will have a -95% reduce in gains from successful attacks.

just like Utopia. fair fight every war if you start off with around the same nw and land. Strategies on the war will be really important at this stage, i.e who to take out first, who to protect and government factors in as well.

The problem with this game is simply that it is based on a 1990s gaming era mindset. That you profit your country/account/avatar off the misery/abuse of others to come out on top.

All modern games made in the last 5 years have moved on - all the games made nowadays are such that no player can negatively impact the play experience of any other player - or at least, any such negative impact is severely limited, in most cases only to verbal exchanges.

The old gaming era mindsets do not appeal to the younger gamers, and this is why EE doesn't grow.

I like that SAM_DANGER is talking about risk vs reward of game design (since I work in the game industry), but really the problem is that
1. Being suicided on is not fun, particularly if you have not done anything to cause such aggression
2. Being abused by someone 10x larger than you is also not fun.

So how do you reconcile this? It's almost impossible without changing the game significantly, because (1) and (2) are direct counter consequences of each other. You can't mitigate (1) without increasing (2), and likewise you can't mitigate (2) without increasing (1).

Many old era games have "protection" where you become immune after taking X% damage, so wars revolve around knocking players from a higher NW band to a lower NW band from day to day, or achieve similar effects by having a VERY narrow attack range (+-30% NW for example), rather than EE's very generous 1/12x - 12x. These are just some ways of how old text based MMO games used to do mitigate both (1) and (2).

SAM_DANGER's post talks about how all the new generation games tries to cater to the vocal players, and/or making it easier for the newer players to catch up and thus causing homogenization of all the players (that is, less differentiating skills/abilities/etc). This is just how every MMO game evolves. A game that starts out will often have a young adult audience - people that are generally still studying, in high school, university, etc. These players have huge amounts of time to play. Fast forward 4-5 years, they graduate, and find jobs or get married, etc. Amount of free/play times dramatically decreases. If any aging game wants to keep their playerbase, they MUST cater to the aging population by making it more casual friendly. People whine about how World of Warcraft has been dumbed down expansion after expansion (in exactly the same fashion SAM described about having respecs/dual-spec/faster leveling/etc), but it is still hugely successful, still having over twice as much subs than the next biggest MMO. Why? Because the game ages with the players, and new players do not feel like they are starting out behind.

As with any game, people like to experience new things. New games, new ideas. It is natural that any game will dwindle over time until it needs to be shutdown. Asheron's Call lasted for a very long time, much longer than most other games out there. It may be dying/dead, but I would still consider it highly successful. If they didn't make the changes they did with all the "Easy Moding", it would have died much faster.

Game design has always been a very interesting topic, but sometimes, hard/difficult decisions have to be made because of the $$ factor. A game cannot operate if it doesn't make money.

I LOL'd... I thought this thread was about EE? ;)

I'll also like to add on that EE has a very high learning curve. It involves a lot of number crunching if you want to get good at the game, and the fact that diplomacy is a factor can further scare people.

Yes, games used to be hard. I'm talking 1990 era, where games often let the players fumble around and pick up on themselves. But we're in the 2010s now. Practically every game produced in the last 5 years are EXPECTED to have a tutorial. Making cheap games and putting it out on the App Store or Steam or GoG (etc) is now exceedingly easy compared to 10 years old where you needed publisher support. Now small companies (termed Indies) are all the rage, new games are released every 2 days, and for ANY game to get noticed on the market, you need to be able to draw in a crowd that doesn't leave after 10 minutes of frustration. Hence the tutorials and hand-holding.

Qzjul/Pang had a plan for EE expansion to Facebook. But it never took off since Pang understood that the game would never take off without providing a real tutorial and handholding. And then there was the problem of multies. Gamers are practically expected to make 10 Facebook accounts that friended each other so that they can gift the main account free goodies everyday. Mafia Wars, Farmville, and all the similar clones worked that way. And they were relatively easy to pick up, had tutorials, and you couldn't negatively impact any other player in the game. EE just isn't compatible with Facebook the current way it is setup.

You seriously think qz/pang wouldn't have pulled the plug if the ads didn't at least cover the operating costs of the server?

I consider Pang and qz to be lunatics. I wouldn't want to run this game even if the revenue does cover the operating costs. I have no idea where there sanity is. ;)

But hey, I like the game so I appreciate it! :)

facebook is dying anyway!

lol....

Smartest thing on this thread.



People will always find ways around caps. And the idea alone is the dumbest thing on this thread.



Say what? My knowledge of modern games doesn't get past the games my lnephews play and I only witness them play these 4-6 times a year when I go visiting. GTA, COD, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, FIFA, etc. One person or in some of the games, a group of people win and the other group loses. I characterize getting LGed in this game as a negative experience, just as when I last played FIFA with my cousin and he thrashed me 7-0, that was a negative experience. Akin to getting 'sniped' aka, getting shot in the face out of no where. Unless your idea of a modern game is Candy Crush (heard of it, really don't know what it means and too lazy to care about it to even look it up on Wiki and willing to bet that there are negative experiences there too).

No, there aren't really "negatives" on Candy Crush Saga. But it isn't really multi-player either. You don't ever fall back or lose ground or anything like that. You simply fail to pass a level and repeat it until you pass it. Friends might send you help but they cannot send you hindrance.

However, most games are not like that. It is certainly one of the attributes that has made Facebook games successful though. All positive reinforcement. Like in ST:TNG Season 5, Episode 6, "The Game" which was highly addictive because the player couldn't actually fail and every success stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

ST:TNG reference FTW!

hehe.

In all those games you listed, you still don't permanently lose anything. Even if you lose, you generally still keep your levels, items, team, etc. Every competitive game (that is not Player vs Environment) has a winner and a loser, and losing just means you respawn and/or go to the next game within minutes. In EE, you die, you wait 2 months (dependent on server speed), or restart and ankle bite. EE has one of the most punishing negative experiences.