11/5/2016 - Treasure Anti-Trust Act

[Alex]

Maybe you should start taking your customers opinions for granted. You implement stupid ideas (e.g. Treasures, Nuclear Index) and then fight the people who are actually telling you to differently, or give you another idea instead of yours. It's almost like you are purposely going against what people are recommending, and then create a post like this for propaganda in attempt to let the people know you actually take what they say seriously.

 

I am not trying to call you out here, it just seems suspicious. 

 

Often what players want and what is good for the game are two completely separate things. You have no idea how many people message me and ask them if I can just "help them out" and give them free money and things. Sure, that would make them happy, but would it be good for the game? No.

 

Ultimately what changes are made are based on my belief of what is and isn't good for the game. Every player has a bias when they make suggestions or offer feedback, because certain decisions will help/hurt them. You don't see players from alliance X making suggestions that might make the game more fun or interesting when it hurts then and helps alliance Y, at least not often.

 

My job is to weed out the inherent biases in feedback and suggestions and make decisions that I believe are best. Am I infallible? Obviously not, and many people do not agree with decisions I make, but often it is difficult to decide whether it's because it is just disadvantageous for them and so they're going to make a big stink about it and try to get me to change things in a way that helps them, or whether it's because it's genuinely bad for the game.

 

And players will say just about anything is genuinely bad for the game if they believe it will persuade me to change the game in a way that benefits them.

[kosmokenny]

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[Karrde]

This is good communication. Thanks for listening Alex.

[Sisyphus]

I appreciate your time and attention, Alex. Thank you!

[Apeman]

Perhaps we should just ZI you and others who revel in shadenfreude to make up for this shit.

Like to see you try without your friends

[Ishmael]

Thank you Alex! The timing was my main issue with this change and now it is solved.

[Kurdanak]

That's it, it's official. Since 10 days of the treasures isn't good enough for those with treasures (not that I've ever had one spawn) I say you make the change instant.

Perhaps we should just ZI you and others who revel in shadenfreude to make up for this shit.

Like to see you try without your friends

Well, would you look at that - treasures did instigate war, after all!

 

Edited November 6, 2016 by Kurdanak

[Buorhann]

Like to see you try without your friends

lol.

[Zaxon]

 

 

J/k It's good to see an active Admin who actually cares for the game and is open to both suggestions and criticism to improving the game.

[ArcKnox]

Like to see you try without your friends

So you're saying he doesn't get to bring friends?

[Ayayay]

Kinda annoyed sheepy caved to the very people who previously complained about sheepy caving to the loudest.

 

TI would still have made a net profit at 10 days since that was 125-150 mil per treasure. Instead TI now gets well over 600 mil per treasure.

 

 

Sheepy, if you wanted to cave to the loudest why didn't you cave to monthy reset like they originally asked? At least do that. They still get a net profit since I doubt they were paying 400mil per.

[Prefonteen]

Thank you for taking your time to respond, sheep. I'd unfortunately missed your earlier explanation when I posted.

 

Let's see if I can address your concerns.

 

This conversation that I had with the (unnamed) player was over the course of at least 10 days. We spoke in depth several days before treasures respawned most recently, at least.

 

I decided to flip-flop on my decision after looking at who held which treasures, and was surprised to see how disproportionate the allocation was, and how large the bonuses some alliances were receiving were.

 

Often it is far easier for me to consult one or two people on a (relatively) small change like this than make a big public post, as public posts quickly become overwhelmed with unrelated feedback. As with anything, the smaller your group of people, the more efficient you are. And the conversations I had were something like this:

 

Me: I'm thinking of changing the alliance treasure bonus to sqrt(treasures * 4). Other than those who are disadvantaged by this being upset, can you think of any other unintended consequences I may be missing? I don't think this will cause alliances to split up and form colonies, or anything else similar, etc. but I wanted to check with you if you can think of anything

Player: No, I can't think of anything. Seems pretty straightforward

 

Lastly, when I mentioned toppling the existing power structure, that's just in reference to my belief that the alliances in power should change from time to time. Which is the motivation for this change -- so that one alliance can't remain at the top perpetually. I like the idea of top alliances and nations being cyclical in that they'll change and vary over time; otherwise, what's the point of playing if you're never going to be in the lead? All that said, it was not in specific mention to the existing alliances in power.

 

I hope that sets some things straight here.

 

Fair enough. It came across as if the change had perhaps been initiated or at least heavily influenced by the trustees in question and the complaining player. This provides a more nuanced perspective which I'm content with.

 

 

Glad to see that you decided to take the criticism provided in this thread seriously and found a compromise. I do think that the majority of players agree that the concept of the nerf is a step in the right direction.

 

If only I had a treasure to benefit lel.

[Bambino]

I personally know that to be a lie. Very personally. I have pics. Logs. Voicemails left crying on my phone that show that statement is a lie.

 

Also I like the change, hated the execution and we didn't even pay for any of our treasures. Unless you consider murdering units to be payment. 

 

Khorne only accepts payment in blood and death.  Murdering units = only way to pay.

[Ayayay]

Your very last (bolded) statement is a huge, huge red flag to m. You directly contradict yourself and outright stated that a motivating factor for this nerf is to setback one group of alliances. That statement in light of the rest of your post is a faux pass and frankly disturbing.

 

Sheepy, I'm okay with changes and nerfs. Its your game. But there has been a precedent of many of your major changes and decisions putting one set of alliances at a mechanical disadvantage. Though I am confident in the demonstrated ability of these alliances to adapt (as they have historically) to your changes, it's discouraging to once again see this hypothesis confirmed. I'd be appreciative if you could provide us with a more in-depth explanation here- be it in public or in private.

Sheepy has been doing this since the game was in Alpha. Whenever a mechanic is suitably abused it has always been nerfed. I (as well as UPN and our allies) have been on the receiving end of this multiple times back when we were completely abusing shit(although it is fun everytime). It's called game balance, would you rather PnW have an admin like (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) that does jack shit and let the game die?

Edited November 6, 2016 by Malal

[Beatrix]

You have restored my faith in you and this game, Alex!

[Valdoroth]

I actually agree with Partisan that the Color Stock bonus was better for political tension than the Treasures have been. The nerf is pretty large, to a point that treasures are significantly less worth vying to gather bunches of when gaining 4 only gains like 2% bonus more. I think that it may be better to re-look at the color stock approach and see about a make-over to that system instead of treasures.

[Chunky Monkey]

Lastly, when I mentioned toppling the existing power structure, that's just in reference to my belief that the alliances in power should change from time to time. Which is the motivation for this change -- so that one alliance can't remain at the top perpetually. I like the idea of top alliances and nations being cyclical in that they'll change and vary over time; otherwise, what's the point of playing if you're never going to be in the lead? All that said, it was not in specific mention to the existing alliances in power.

Just a comment on this alone. While I do agree that treasures probably needed changed in some way, the best way to create a cycle of change in alliance dominance is not to nerf what the best alliances are doing, but to add new features to the game that the underdog alliances can use to overthrow the power structure. People always respond better to getting new toys to play with rather than taking parts off their old ones. Sometimes the people on top will stay on top for a while, but people don't deserve to be on top just because you decided there should be a cycle. They should be on top because they decided they want to do better and be better and become the ones on top.

[Bluebear]

It was me by the way guys

[Yosodog]

Just a comment on this alone. While I do agree that treasures probably needed changed in some way, the best way to create a cycle of change in alliance dominance is not to nerf what the best alliances are doing, but to add new features to the game that the underdog alliances can use to overthrow the power structure. People always respond better to getting new toys to play with rather than taking parts off their old ones. Sometimes the people on top will stay on top for a while, but people don't deserve to be on top just because you decided there should be a cycle. They should be on top because they decided they want to do better and be better and become the ones on top.

 

This, but not that new war system.

[Big Brother]

Like to see you try without your friends

 

I'd like to see you try without your nukes.

 

Actually, scratch that. Doesn't matter either way.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Big Brother

[Blade]

3 points...

 

1 - The money paid for the treasures is worth more to small alliances than the bonus income from the treasure.

2 - Collecting treasures requires a huge amount of political manoeuvring which is good for the game.
3 - If whoever your individual was feels he's unable to influence change by himself should find others who feel the same as himself and either organise conflict to bring about change or at least work together to collect treasures themselves and thus use the mechanic the way Admin claims he intended it to be used rather than just throw their hands up and start !@#$ing in private channels.

[Ivan the Red]

I'm glad to see Treasure Island fulfilled it's purpose.

 

Moving forward into another unbalanced game mechanic to exploit!

[rollo]

Edited November 7, 2016 by rollo

[Peace and War]

I'm kinda surprised anyone could not see treasure island and what they were doing. Especially sheepy. You'd think he'd be up to date with the latest happenings.

[Alex]

I'm kinda surprised anyone could not see treasure island and what they were doing. Especially sheepy. You'd think he'd be up to date with the latest happenings.

 

You'd think, but I guess busy and don't check in closely to anything but PMs for a while sometimes.