Seeker

Yeah, @Seeker! Get to work! It might help getting on Discord every once and a while @norvian. We do require it for a reason and it's for your benefit! ? ?

I get the sentiment and I would agree with what you're conveying as well. I think the best way to approach it would be a warn then ban. It's pretty hard line but I think that's the only way people are going to learn. You have the option to talk to sheepy about something before it gets reported which is a move that I would highly encourage to avoid hypothetical warn/ban if you're not entirely confident on your potential moves. I understand that it's arguably annoying for sheepy to have to constantly monitor things such as this and I totally get the whole "You get money for doing it" logic. If there seems to be a continual issue regarding a specific rule being broken then up the response and perhaps people will be a lot less likely to do said move. I don't think removing an in-game feature because of some outliers you need to address is a proper way to address the issue. That's just purely being lazy (which I know you're lazy sheepy but suck it up lol). This is reminiscent of mass punishment which I highly dislike when the majority don't do it.

I have heard of it before, I've never seen a screenshot of it though but it looked similar. I have heard mixed reviews about it though, some people love it and some hate it.

What game is that? Like an old EU?

Lmao, Th0tPatrol becomes official is hilarious asf.

I have a better idea; do it yourself.

Who is man is this?

Just because you don't like it doesn't discount it as being a good solution.

A change is going to happen and Alex has said it's going to be the embargo change that was said earlier. I don't know if I can make that any clearer.

Per Alex's to-do list, it is going to happen. You're essentially just complaining to complain at this point.

That's a false narrative to claim that restricting who you play against will kill baseball. You're quite able to send someone a message or DM on Discord to communicate on either 1.) tipping for him/her or 2.) Discuss if you guys will switch from playing home/away games to make it fair to both parties. You should come to an agreement either way if both parties are willing to be fair. If someone isn't willing to work under those pretenses then you know they only care about themselves so you can eliminate their ability to play with you via an embargo which is completely warranted in that scenario. I believe that it is a complete stretch to say that people who play baseball will just embargo you to not play with you entirely especially if you're willing to work together to make it fair. Actually, I would say that it would help players get to know people that they might not typically talk to if it wasn't for the baseball connection so in reality it actually adds value to the game. You're using a broad brush to paint a picture over everyone that plays baseball. I don't care who I play with as long as they're willing to work with me and be fair. If they are only concerned with doing home games and never tipping/switching then I don't want to play baseball with that type of individual. Plain and simple. I would say a lot of baseball players feel similar to myself. It has never been implemented before so how would you know what it will or will not do. You're just theorizing which I admittedly am doing the same. My point was that it's currently fine how it is in regards to upgrading players, it's tedious but it's not meant to be fast either as Alex has already stated. If you want to play baseball, understand that upgrading players is going to require some time investment.

I disagree with a lot of what @Lightning is saying, there are things wrong with baseball but it's not anything that you've really covered. However, @Sir Scarfalot is on the right track in regards to the embargoes for people who are just going to sit on home and never play away. I was thinking of an idea for having the ability where you can just play with only your alliance which helps people stay active/busy and gives them something to do while things aren't going on without having to bother with the people who want to abuse a system by doing purely home games. I rather have the option to not deal with morons than be forced to deal with them because I can't do anything to prevent them from doing solely home games only caring about themselves. Other than that, I have no issues with baseball. Is it tedious? Yes, but that was the intention and if you play it then you should expect nothing less. It shouldn't be changed so people can be lazier and get the same reward or allow the richest to reap all the rewards.

Good point and honestly it didn't take me 6 months to figure out how to play this game on the individual level. That's a bit absurd imo.

It wasn't really said outright, it was more hinted in his language. The only thing it realistically achieves is giving people a reason to sign on daily which is due to the daily log in bonus. That's possible as well, I mean lets take this at it is which is just a suggestion that requires proper feedback to be properly manifested lol. I don't think we should just outright discount it.

I think you're just not understanding his intent perhaps, it seems to me that he is trying to make people work together that usually would not work together. Like upper tier alliances and lower tier alliances. Glad you agree on it being taxable.

The reason I asked about taxing is because if people utilize 100 then it would be really annoying to have to micro manage it. I think it would be better to have it pre-tax like the current system utilizes for simplicity. You could limit it and that would probably be a good idea because people don't typically switch very often if at all besides from grey/beige to current color of alliance. Like I said earlier, whatever incentives people logging on and joining the game is totally something that I think we need to seriously be investing into more. Just to mention, I am very glad to see you providing a lot of ideas to the community and trying to make things better. Good job man! ? I know this might seem off the rail but it does have to do with a big message of the topic regarding in-game activity. I think we should perhaps lower baseball captchas because that would be a really solid way to get people staying online more as well since they have baseball to play. Just an idea to think about!

Congratulations to both parties! @Verin, I need more gifs, I'm super disappointed right now!

If you think about it in terms of keeping people logging in, that's a pretty good reason to log in daily so I am totally good with giving that a bigger incentive. Would that be taxable since currently the color bonus is taxable while the daily log in bonus is not taxable? I'm going to assume that it would be taxable since you're just suggesting replacing one with the other. I could see it creating some different FA climate cause you would essentially have to work with upper tier alliances if you're a lower-mid tier alliance to maximize the bonus but I'm not sure if that would really be enough for some people to consider doing that in replacement of the current strategy implemented (allying people you can tier well with). I think it's a pretty good idea to keep people active but what I think might happen is upper tier alliances merge onto one color then people are constantly switching colors to get max bonus. You can't really have an upper tier alliance declare on a low tier alliance so it's not like anyone can force someone off their color per se (dependent on the alliances obviously).

171 days old isn't really what I would define as a "new player" considering that's almost half a year of game play under your belt.

That's not at all what I stated, I however did say that new people being able to compete in high tiers would allow them to get more involved in the game which should allow them to stay more vested in the game.

You're not really seeing it in the way a newer player sees it as which is understandable. The issue as I have stated previously is more so the amount of time/investment monetarily that it requires to get to a competitive level such as 20. If you think 20 is too high then perhaps there's some merit in that argument that we can lower the limit from 20 to something more reasonable to everyone. I haven't really seen anyone outside a couple that have been willing to actually argue the suggestion so I'm not entirely convinced of reducing the suggestion. I believe the argument isn't really being understood perhaps? My thoughts at least are the fact that if people can reach a certain city tier that they can actively participate more actively in wars and be more competitive instead of waiting for a ridiculous amount of time AND requiring a significant amount of financial backing. The more small alliances can't afford it and those types of alliances need to be brought more into the fold easier to foster more dynamic plays on the meta however it's really hard to do currently. Like you said, something needs to be done so people can be more actively involved in the game and be more competitive. That's the point in my opinion. The point of the whole suggestion to get newer people to a competitive level within a reasonable amount of time which isn't do-able especially as a smaller AA. Infrastructure isn't really the main issue when going up in city tiers, it's mostly city costs once you reach a certain level which is really dependent on your AA size/abilities. Wars have a direct correlation with the ability to get to a city tier that competes with other city tiers. You can still only build three cities per month so in reality even if it was cheaper to go to 20 cities it'd still take over half a year unless they utilized credits. That's still a decent amount of time of game play to reach that level and if you compare it to currently it's much more reasonable. The reason I didn't address your comment about making it go from 5 to 10 is the fact that smaller AAs still can't just magically afford it which is the entire point. It only really helps those that can afford it which isn't beneficial to the newcomers so it's not a viable option at all. Adding randomness(newer AAs) to the fold adds to the meta which should be the point. How long term does it realistically need to be though? I don't think currently it's realistic for new players to reach it within a reasonable amount of time. It has nothing to do with anything you said and this really didn't do anything besides make you look more biased and didn't actually provide analysis of the suggestion and a proper counter.

I would agree with the fact that there is indeed more to player retention than just city growth but that doesn't mean there's not an issue with the current city growth either. I disagree completely with the second sentence because it's simply not true. People are able to estimate that the time it takes to get to x city would take y amount of time which right now is pretty absurd. Typically micros don't exist for very long either even if they do manage to find a bigger alliance that can help guide them along the way, they do manage to hit a plateau that requires a lot of financial backing to continue growing to get at a competitive level. I think you're misunderstanding the correlation between city sizes and war. If you aren't able to reach a certain city size then your ability to effectively compete/war is diminished greatly. So yes, growth does affect war to an extent. You're completely right, the implication of wars would be affected by more people able to grow into bigger city tiers which would help add to the game dynamics. However you're construing this as a purely IQ thing when in reality if you recruit at all, you're affected by this update positively (should be most alliances even the micros). I would say that I agree people stay within their alliances due to the community, that's not why people play the game or why people quit the game. That's a false narrative. Once again, it's subject to everyone and not to just IQ (unless you don't recruit). Does this have anything to do with the actual suggestion? It doesn't so DM leo if you have a hard on for him I don't think anyone is arguing that it's possible to keep everyone who joins the game to play. It was more a way to increase retention which is the point of getting people involved faster. It should have been changed a while ago if we are going to be honest, it has been a problem that has been occurring for a while but that doesn't mean that because it hasn't got brought up till now that it's not a problem.

The issue isn't about game boredom. I'm not sure why that's even being brought up especially whenever we had a war that just ended that utilized a large portion of the game player base. Nothing you said actually has anything to do with the suggestion that was brought up. Nothing to do with the suggestion either, why are you even posting in here if you're not going to debate the idea itself? I don't see the correlation between something being around for a while and it being the right thing to continue utilizing. That's some backwards thinking whenever it comes to game mechanics and that goes across the spectrum of various games. Things change and the courses need to be altered for the sake of the meta and it doesn't always benefit everyone but that's how updates are generally speaking. There's always going to be a balancing act whenever introducing an update. The notion to prioritize a small group over the larger group of new players that may add to the game. That's pretty silly in my opinion especially whenever those newer nations could help add more dynamics to the game whether through newer AAs that can compete or just newer nations that can be introduced into the action faster. People complain about the game being stagnant but whenever an idea is proposed that can allow NEW people to add more to the game they withdraw at the thought of it. There is a correlation between new people staying whenever they realize that there's a current allocated time limit incurred to get to a certain city size that's absurd. I don't see anyone being able to validate staying around for 2 years+ just to finally get to a decent level that would be able to challenge more experienced members. It's a pretty common occurrence whether you want to admit it or not.

I have another revolutionary idea: Provide an argument against it if you don't like the idea. Thought provoking, I know.