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Reduce Sub 20 City Costs


The Mad Titan
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9 minutes ago, Seeker said:

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.

Would you like me to take it one sentence at a time, then? 

I however did say "I'd counter and state that with the exception of gov, most whale-tier players log in once a day and spend a few minutes to make trade offers and do what gov asks. On the contrary, new players have the tutorial and aim to complete those objectives and also have many more raiding opportunities, which is more time consuming and engaging." Not only did I say that once, but twice. I believe this makes three times and nobody has yet to counter with any meaningful response. 

4 minutes ago, element85 said:

 I have an even better idea: Don't brigade downvotes on everything we brigade upvotes on, hypocrite.

Fixed. 

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Why can't my alliance grow faster, oh it is because I do not know how to use the system properly and do not want to learn about it...   

 

That's a lot of work....

 

SHEEPY!!!!

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About The Author

 An early member of Roz Wei in 2015, J Kell went on to stay within the paperless world of Empyrea before signing with Soup Kitchen while scoring a record deal in 2019. J Kell went on to release multiple Orbis Top 40 hits. In 2020, J Kell took a break from Orbis. He's back.

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4 hours ago, LeotheGreat said:

When noobs see people with 20+ cities, and realize that it takes literal years to reach that level it hurts retention as many noobs get disheartened.

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1 hour ago, Seeker said:

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.

>Thread about player retention
>The issue isn't about game boredom


Yeah, no. If a new player is having fun, they will continue to play, regardless of their city count.

This is a community issue, not an economic issue. 

So by trying to lower city costs in an attempt to raise player retention will do nothing and misses the point. So my argument has everything to do with the suggestion.

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@Seeker

The amount of cities you have doesn't make you any more or less competitive. It just looks like you are arguing that you and yours are trying to gain a advantage in cities, but talking about member retention. Being competitive doesn't retain you any of the supposed 95% of people that leave the game.

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16 minutes ago, element85 said:

You first

sorry pham but

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The game has a mechanic for newer players to catch up. There are diminishing returns for larger players, so most alliances have their larger players invest in smaller ones. Look at how long it takes a new player to reach city 10 compared to how long it took the first few players to.

It is pretty flagrant for BK to suggest this in terms of the current ingame meta. It doesn't exactly surprise me, because a lot of people in IQ did the same thing trying to get Alex to change infra costs, but it's still pretty wretched.

 

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24 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Then if the argument is a lack of meaningful regular action is the cause of issues with retention, then the game would have to shift to less of an emphasis on growth and one where war is more a regular thing either by making growth less of a financial issue or by making war a lot less financially consequential. Other stuff like more player vs environment type situations(NPC nations to fight as objectives) would also help with retention. Over time as the average city count went up and the costs associated with warring went up, war became less frequent and there's no real denying it. 

You have completely missed the point.

Roq, the game doesn't have to change at all. There is no need to push changes onto the game because you can't adapt to it.

The game system and lack of war have very little to no influence on the retention your alliance creates, you have to accept the fact that peace is a thing and you need to create systems that keep players active during it. If the only reason people played this game was war, Arrgh would have 2000 players. There is a far greater amount of players that simply like their community.

TKR lost upwards of 20 members after the EMC split. @Buorhann, @Queen M can in detail tell you how we've failed to maintain retention as an alliance because of poor decisions in the past. We were in a far worse situation than you are right now.

What is happening to IQ is no different. You have to move on and adapt to what is making you lose members, every alliance goes through this many times in it's history. What do you expect is going to happen if you maintain high taxes and do not give people a chance for promotion or advancement, even worse, keeping them at the same tier for a year. The thing that keeps them together is each other, not how often NPO goes to war.

NPO, BK, Polaris and basically most IQ alliances in the past have elite governments built up from years of playing together and numerous mergers. If you want to keep your government and cabinet pure and elite, don't be surprised when people who want political advancement leave to go somewhere else given the chance.

Even further, don't complain about not being able to retain members to 14 cities, when your whole strategy is to grant people to 14 cities without any input, involvement or effort required. It's simply embarrassing.

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2 hours ago, Rimski said:

+we get it iq,  your only ways of making yourself seem superior to us is downvoting us. Great accomplishment

pot something something kettle

2 hours ago, Ⓕurpk said:

The problem I see in shrinking the city cost sub-30 cities is the implications it could have on wars. This proposition is basically just a call to make everyone in IQ into whales to accommodate for the lack of skill within their players, citing it would help everyone else to give themselves the moral high ground. Making this an altruistic argument, or one of keeping players in, is overall a false dogma laid down by the IQ hegemon. Trust me, players don't stay in this game because they want to pixel farm, I would have left long ago because such a proposition is laughable. People stay because they love the community; it's fun to engage with your fellow Orbisians. 

Look, to propose that the growth factor among us minors is skewed in favor of whales and not us is a false statement. If you pursued growth in your alliance, you'd select your most competent members and supercharge them to a higher status, bringing up a few first than all together. Hell, if I recall correctly, you lot have ludicrous taxes on your base, that should have been enough capital to rebuild your top and middle brass, then bring up the shining stars among your lower rung. But to lobby Alex over lowering city costs to supercharge yourselves, then alluding to its many benefits while alluding briefly that somehow growth in this game is somehow too "prohibitive" is just absolutely devious, especially with your votemongering by flooding this forum with your bloc members. I see no reason why we should shift city prices from their status quo, and until you can change my mind, I stand by my argument. 

Sorry, we members of the meme-machine cesspool of Admin pandering, inactivity, and incompetency have embraced the good ideals of equality laid out by our very own Black Knights Worker's Party. In our gommunist utopia, nobody will work a day and we'll all live like Kings! I don't always agree with Leo, but please don't attribute intent to his posts. I'm sure it's easy to make a case if you could just wave your hand and make his argument disappear, but that would be being dishonest, no? The suggestion may be a horrible one and the altruism argument may be a bit over-beaten, but with Sheepy expressing interest I see no compelling reasons against the theme of the proposal—maybe tweaking the numbers a bit since Sheepy is terribad and overshoots everything. Looking for an argument favoring the change outside of retention isn't too hard, either: Less money spent on cities means more money potentially spent on war—and we all love war. Maybe the community is terrible. I sure think so. However, while Sheepy can't force the community to be engaging for new players, he can certainly band-aid the mechanics of his dysfunctional game. Rather than using "muh IQ incompetence" as a blanket argument against change, why should this change not be implemented? Is it not fair, does it not have the intended effect, etc? The community was generally for reducing the impact of global radiation and for reverting Sheepy's deflation update because they disadvantaged newer players. Maybe there's a better method of doing so, but the fact that Leo made the post isn't an argument.

Just now, Vince McMahon said:

sorry pham but

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no u

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"Why are you making it political?"

For the love of god, can we please cut the sh*t @IQ.

 

You're really going to come out here, suggesting a decrease in city costs for "nations below 20 cities" and try and tell people its a non-bias suggestion and for the benefit of the game and not yourselves? I mean, you're entirely allowed to make a suggestion, even if it is terrible, unfair and won't help the issue you're framing it's all about. But please don't pretend that the suggestion isn't for your own benefit.

 

This suggestion, is not going to help the whole thing you're making it about. Player retention in this game is because 99% of new nations join micros or don't join alliances at all. If BK or other established alliances have trouble with retention that is the failure of their government to keep their community interested in the game. BK has been leaking members like a bastard, so much to the point where you've had to merge three alliances into yourselves to maintain relevancy or an alliance at all. 

@Alex This suggestion is unfair to the hundreds who've worked and successfully learned the econ system. This is a bias suggestion from the leader of an alliance with the largest group of players, below 20 cities(shocker). It doesn't help the retention issue. 

 

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1 hour ago, Marianna said:

This is a terrible idea. It's basically a fix for shitty econ management by AAs. Git gud scrubs.

The solution to the slow growth problem is to join an alliance whose econ people know what they're doing.

I've been here for eighteen months and I'm at 15 cities, going on city 16 because I joined an AA who know what they're doing.

But sure blame the game mechanics for your inadequacies.

All you're doing now is proving their point about it taking a ridiculous amount of time. Think about it, you've been around for a year and half, and you're just getting to City 16. That's 1 city, every 35... 40 days? Not many new players will wait through that, and, in fact, at that current rate, you may very well hit city 20 right around your 'two year anniversary' as it were. Two years, to get to what is considered high tier in this game. 

Comparatively to other, free to play games out there, that's insane. Fair enough, this a niche genre and drawing comparisons by things within that genre is next to impossible, but here's a thing. There's a game called World of Tanks, now it also has an issue with player retention. The thing with WoT is, you can get to what's considered high tiers, within 3 months if you just play casually. Actually, if you spend more time than that, you can reach top tier in the game before even that. 

Not everyone necessarily want 20 cities, but alot of people would. The investment across the board, to get to 'high tier gameplay' in PW, compared to anything else, is absurd. Two years is approximately 1/11.5 of my currently lived lifespan. World of Tanks, and other games, can people dragging behind it for years and years, even after they reach the top tier and got nothing else to do it. Not small, niche, dedicated bases like PW has, either. Big ones.

You can argue that you don't want progression to be that fast for a variety of reasons. Obviously someone getting to city 25 in 3 months would be unacceptable. On the other hand, taking 8x long to only end up 80% of the way there if you're lucky is absolutely preposterous, new players going in to a game don't daydream about what it's like in the middle of the pack. They daydream about leading the pack, and when your requirements for that is asking for years, in your case, it'll be nearly 2 unless it speeds up, just to get "Ahead of most" let alone to the front?

It's not the only factor stopping retention or growth, not by a long shot. To pretend it does not matter is a farce. Not many people, even interested in this game, in nationsims, will stick around for that. About a week or so ago, a friend who fits that description, who i invited to the game, got into ADM, got them started with guides and all that, they deleted and left. This is somebody who is actually interested in this niche. Things take too long and go too slowly for the majority of people, even nerds who play every nation sim ever. 

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29 minutes ago, Radoje said:

You have completely missed the point.

Roq, the game doesn't have to change at all. There is no need to push changes onto the game because you can't adapt to it.

The game system and lack of war have very little to no influence on the retention your alliance creates, you have to accept the fact that peace is a thing and you need to create systems that keep players active during it. If the only reason people played this game was war, Arrgh would have 2000 players. There is a far greater amount of players that simply like their community.

TKR lost upwards of 20 members after the EMC split. @Buorhann, @Queen M can in detail tell you how we've failed to maintain retention as an alliance because of poor decisions in the past. We were in a far worse situation than you are right now.

What is happening to IQ is no different. You have to move on and adapt to what is making you lose members, every alliance goes through this many times in it's history. What do you expect is going to happen if you maintain high taxes and do not give people a chance for promotion or advancement, even worse, keeping them at the same tier for a year. The thing that keeps them together is each other, not how often NPO goes to war.

NPO, BK, Polaris and basically most IQ alliances in the past have elite governments built up from years of playing together and numerous mergers. If you want to keep your government and cabinet pure and elite, don't be surprised when people who want political advancement leave to go somewhere else given the chance.

Even further, don't complain about not being able to retain members to 14 cities, when your whole strategy is to grant people to 14 cities without any input, involvement or effort required. It's simply embarrassing.

I'm not really sure where you got the idea I was complaining about *our* retention being related to the game mechanics. It's more a comment about the game's general retention in that it's not engaging enough for the average player who joins from say the google playstore. I was responding to the point being made that people got bored after they couldn't raid anymore, which you said was happening in your own alliance. This whole diatribe just finally sheds some light on your enmity, however. You just wanted to attack me/NPO here, but it's good it's out in the open now. When I responded to Buorhann's post I assumed he was talking in general that players grow to a certain level and then become less active, not about IQ. 

Retention isn't a referendum on taxation. BK had a 95% attrition rate before when they had much lower taxes. Trying to make this into some sort of anti-tax rampage is just demagoguery.  Most of the other big alliances that lost tons of members e.g. VE/UPN/Pantheon/DEIC had low taxes so trying to essentially try to crucify anyone who has more taxes is just you pushing your own agenda.  Trying to divert this thread into your own personal game ideology doesn't really address the wider issues. If the point being made is the community has to be engaging than making it about tax rates doesn't really hold much water. Your idea even of casting several alliances as old boys clubs that don't let anyone advance is also a severe misapprehension. The condescension and hubris is over the top and it makes it hard to take you seriously.

Most people who join a game don't want to be far behind a number of people who got there first for the remainder of its duration, which will happen in any game so at a certain point in its development it's no longer as appealing to newer players as when it first came out. 

Edited by Roquentin
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26 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

I'm not really sure where you got the idea I was complaining about *our* retention being related to the game mechanics. It's more a comment about the game's general retention in that it's not engaging enough for the average player who joins from say the google playstore. I was responding to the point being made that people got bored after they couldn't raid anymore, which you said was happening in your own alliance. This whole diatribe just finally sheds some light on your enmity, however. You just wanted to attack me/NPO here, but it's good it's out in the open now. When I responded to Buorhann's post I assumed he was talking in general that players grow to a certain level and then become less active, not about IQ. 

Retention isn't a referendum on taxation. BK had a 95% attrition rate before when they had much lower taxes. Trying to make this into some sort of anti-tax rampage is just demagoguery.  Most of the other big alliances that lost tons of members e.g. VE/UPN/Pantheon/DEIC had low taxes so trying to essentially try to crucify anyone who has more taxes is just you pushing your own agenda.  Trying to divert this thread into your own personal game ideology doesn't really address the wider issues. If the point being made is the community has to be engaging than making it about tax rates doesn't really hold much water. Your idea even of casting several alliances as old boys clubs that don't let anyone advance is also a severe misapprehension. The condescension and hubris is over the top and it makes it hard to take you seriously.

Most people who join a game don't want to be far behind a number of people who got there first for the remainder of its duration, which will happen in any game so at a certain point in its development it's no longer as appealing to newer players as when it first came out. 


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I disagree with city prices being nerfed.

1. Making cities cheaper will NOT actually have an affect on retention, might actually do the opposite. Many large players might actually end up quitting just because you are killing all the work and dedication they took by nerfing the hell out of city cost.

2. 20 cities is a crazy high amount and making it possible to achieve that in less than a year is just crazy, what about everyone that had to put cold hard dedication into this game? most whales take pride in being large through their dedication to the game and their sharp thinking on how to best set economy to max output. (maybe something like what Shifty recommended is more reasonable.).

3. There are nations with 10+ cities that aren't even 100 days old, this shows that its possible to make it to 20 cities within a year already if you push yourself to grow and think on your feet.

4. The way the economy currently works new players grow very quickly (daily login bonus, bonus for specialized resource production, higher prices for resources than in the past, alliances with such large banks that they can slap you up to 20 in just a couple of months, baseball "even though its just pocket change", among other things.)

5. just a little FYI, one of those players with 33 cities isn't even 3 years old. If he could make it to 33 cities in less than 3 years then why is it that you guys want to nerf cities even more?

6. If you actually want some more player retention then do something that makes the game more interesting (add more visual aspects to the game, add mini clips to battles, add more options for decorating your nation to make it more unique, add a leaderboard for all aspects of growth like land for example.)

 

Basically there are many ways you can make this game a lot more interesting, but making everything cheaper isn't one of them.

Edited by Sephiroth
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If this gets approved, can we also change the war declare range so that I can actually declare war on anyone that can declare war on me, since it looks like people want to make it much easier to hit nations like mine.

That being said you should also decrease the cost of cities after 30... I mean over a billion dollars for a city!?!? you guys are crying about paying 250 million...  You guys have no idea. 

Also for the record, Grumpy's smallest member just turned 1 year old today, and bought city 20.

I also noted that someone earlier said something about people having to wait to hit city 20?  You don't wait to hit a certain city number, you earn it.

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Just now, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

You don't wait to hit a certain city number, you earn it.

I mean, it's the leader of Grumpy posting so there's a non-zero amount of bias, but damn he's talking some sense.

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5 minutes ago, Sephiroth said:

I disagree with city prices being nerfed.

1. Making cities cheaper will NOT actually have an affect on retention, might actually do the opposite. Many large players might actually end up quitting just because you are killing all the work and dedication they took by nerfing the hell out of city cost.

2. 20 cities is a crazy high amount and making it possible to achieve that in less than a year is just crazy, what about everyone that had to put cold hard dedication into this game? most whales take pride in being large through their dedication to the game and their sharp thinking on how to best set economy to max output. (maybe something like what Shifty recommended is more reasonable.).

3. There are nations with 10+ cities that aren't even 100 days old, this shows that its possible to make it to 20 cities within a year already if you push yourself to grow and think on your feet.

4. The way the economy currently works new players grow very quickly (daily login bonus, bonus for specialized resource production, higher prices for resources than in the past, alliances with such large banks that they can slap you up to 20 in just a couple of months, baseball "even though its just pocket change", among other things.)

5. just a little FYI, one of those players with 33 cities isn't even 3 years old. If he could make it to 33 cities in less than 3 years then why is it that you guys want to nerf cities even more?

6. If you actually want some more player retention than do something that makes the game more interesting (add more visual aspects to the game, add mini clips to battles, add more options for decorating your nation to make it more unique, add a leaderboard for all aspects of growth like land for example.)

 

Basically there are many ways you can make this game a lot more interesting, but making everything cheaper isn't one of them.

It's amazing how casually you speak of years passing by without seeming to actually acknowledge how much time that is.
Baseball is pocket change. Sorry, but i don't exactly have the money to be investing in a baseball team that within the month will need to be replaced anyway, instead of saving up for my own warchest, infra, improvements, land, etc. If you want to donate that money to people you go right ahead, because we all have better things to spend it on. 

Can't complain about no wars if you don't have anything to fight them with, after all.

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1 minute ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

I mean, it's the leader of Grumpy posting so there's a non-zero amount of bias, but damn he's talking some sense.

I am 100 percent biased for the record.  But then again my alliance was specifically designed so that I don't have to deal with little scrub nations.

 

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5 minutes ago, Lairah said:

It's amazing how casually you speak of years passing by without seeming to actually acknowledge how much time that is.
Baseball is pocket change. Sorry, but i don't exactly have the money to be investing in a baseball team that within the month will need to be replaced anyway, instead of saving up for my own warchest, infra, improvements, land, etc. If you want to donate that money to people you go right ahead, because we all have better things to spend it on. 

Can't complain about no wars if you don't have anything to fight them with, after all.

Baseball... is an investment. And it pays off. When I was in the DoO, I made the vast majority of my money through baseball; it has in fact paid for all of my wars and cities to date through net profit, not gross revenue.

Admittedly I have slowed that down, but according to my baseball stats I've made $100 million net profit off ball. And that's a low number, the top baseballer is still and likely forever will be Who Me with his $3-4 billion net profit

Edited by Sir Scarfalot
joke wasn't funny tbh
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4 minutes ago, Lairah said:

It's amazing how casually you speak of years passing by without seeming to actually acknowledge how much time that is.
Baseball is pocket change. Sorry, but i don't exactly have the money to be investing in a baseball team that within the month will need to be replaced anyway, instead of saving up for my own warchest, infra, improvements, land, etc. If you want to donate that money to people you go right ahead, because we all have better things to spend it on. 

Can't complain about no wars if you don't have anything to fight them with, after all.

Yes and in 60 days, you have 9 cities, it took me (who sits currently at 30 cities) 165 days to do that.  I know you guys think you have it bad, but you have it much easier than most of us old timers.

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15 minutes ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

Baseball... is an investment. And it pays off. When I was in the DoO, I made the vast majority of my money through baseball; it has in fact paid for all of my wars and cities to date through net profit, not gross revenue.

Admittedly I have slowed that down, but according to my baseball stats I've made $100 million net profit off ball. And that's a low number, the top baseballer is still and likely forever will be Who Me with his $3-4 billion net profit

How long did that take? I know how quickly baseball can resolve itself, i don't much like the idea of essentially staring at the page for hours doing that. I'd use a bot, yanno, if that wasn't bannable for incredibly obvious reasons. I have... just under $37 million right now. Since you know how this works, i wanna ask. If, theoretically, i were to invest all of that right now, into baseball, how long does it take to break even. Assume for simplicity i'm able and willing to play it as much as you did. 

All i've ever heard is not to waste time on it, i am genuinely curious.

 

13 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Yes and in 60 days, you have 9 cities, it took me (who sits currently at 30 cities) 165 days to do that.  I know you guys think you have it bad, but you have it much easier than most of us old timers.

Which has alot to do with me getting to fight Nuke Bloc, which was free money. Even after the repairs, it was around $40 million of free money, which i bought city 7 with, and then boosted all of them to 1700, with enough left over to play the market a little and keep having money to build at the very least my own infrastructure. 

This also ignoring that unlike most new players, i'm not a potentially huge money sink. Dio dragged me here, has been teaching how to play (Recently how to FA), both he and Senry have the benefit of knowing that not only am i going to not disappear suddenly like my friend i mentioned earlier, i'm actually going to try and do things. Right now, i'm learning how to perform in an FA capacity as a diplomat, i already perform duties and have some time for Milcom.

Yes, i'm here way faster than alot of people. I'm also flooring the gas pedal, and wondering where exactly the speed limiter is hidden, so it can be removed. I'm not the average noobie, i'm not a blind investment that maybe gives you a return, more likely disappears suddenly without word. My ROI is guaranteed, the only stipulation being how long you stay in to get it, i won't be going anywhere.

Even despite that, i'm not expecting city 20 within a year just yet. Unless i get so good at Diplomacy i can talk people out of their alliance banks, which... would be interesting, if it were possible. 

 

 

 

TL;DR - I'm the exception, not the rule. 

Edited by Lairah
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