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War Stats - Global War 12


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1 hour ago, Roquentin said:

snip

I’m going to address what I see as the main points, because quoting is too hard. If I misunderstood anything, please let me know. It is not my intention to talk past you or misrepresent.


1. GoB are “selfish” because they advertise as elite

Maybe its a semantic disagreement between selfish and self interested. The former has an OOC negative connotation that I disagree with. Nobody owes anybody else anything here, and the dynamics of mass members, elite, pvp, etc, exist in all online games. IMO the only responsibility people have is to have fun and not be a dick. If you think we need to focus solely on new player experience, we really ought to ban Arrgh while we’re at it.

I’m not going to comment on the VE stuff. I wasn’t there, I don’t necessarily disagree with the choices seeker has made. I get that is the context for this, and I don’t blame ThatGuy for his choices (kudos to him). But the general sentiment has been bandied around before, and I disagree with it.

Ok, I think I misunderstood you here. I thought you were primarily targeting them as selfish due to wanting to be an upper tier alliance and not be part of mass recruiting and the aid that goes with it. I stand by my belief that there is nothing wrong with that. GoB's other conduct and words, is another matter entirely. And I don't disagree with labeling them for that.


2. It’s exclusionary to view the game as only important in the upper tier

I agree. I think smaller nations, micros, and the like get way too much shit. You can criticize Grumpy for their denigration of smaller nations if you want. But I don’t see it as bad for the games health or exclusionary to new players, for people to focus their own efforts in their tiers. You can do that without belittling newer players. These arguments can be just as easily applied to TEst, CoS and Guardian.


3. Being upper tier tends towards consolidation and not fighting

Only if you define upper tier as mega whales focused only on growth. Yeah, if your goal is to grow in farm mode and never fight, that can lead to consolidation. But being upper tier doesn’t mean not fighting. Sure, you might lose your grip on the leader boards, but that isn’t the goal of all upper tier alliances.

We were upper tier with no recruitment for a while. We warred a lot. Guardian is one of the most powerful upper tier AA’s, they’ve fought more wars than anyone. Plenty of mid tier guys try and duck the challenge. I agree that trying to gather all the upper tier together and grow above the rest of the game is bad. I don't agree that focusing on the upper tier and trying to dominate it through intrigue and open warfare, as other upper tier AA's have done in the past, is a problem.


4. Universalizing upper tier focus would kill most of the game

I don't advocate for its universalization, just as you don't advocate for the universalization of your method. Hell I don't even use it in SK. We aren't taking applicants while we sort some internal issues, but generally we ran one of the highest tax rate/aid packages in the game, to the point where we've lost members over it. But that doesn't mean I oppose other people choosing to focus elsewhere. New players don't need everything paid for them anyway. We all got started without it. Many micros exist and attract members without the big aid packages of TKR or SK or NPO. The real important thing recruiting AA's offer is the community and orientation into the game. Which is important, to be sure. I don't think it would be good if every alliance stopped taking new members, though even if they did, we'd likely see new ones form to accommodate. But even still, I don't believe anybody owes it to "the game" to boost growth for new players if they don't want to. And I don't think its a problem that several alliances choose not to.

Edited by Mikey
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Archduke Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Reach, Warden of the South, Breaker of Forums.

 

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31 minutes ago, Mikey said:

I’m going to address what I see as the main points, because quoting is too hard. If I misunderstood anything, please let me know. It is not my intention to talk past you or misrepresent.


1. GoB are “selfish” because they advertise as elite

Maybe its a semantic disagreement between selfish and self interested. The former has an OOC negative connotation that I disagree with. Nobody owes anybody else anything here, and the dynamics of mass members, elite, pvp, etc, exist in all online games. IMO the only responsibility people haev is to have fun and not be a dick. If you think we need to focus solely on new player experience, we really ought to ban Arrgh while we’re at it.

I’m not going to comment on the VE stuff. I wasn’t there, I don’t necessarily disagree with the choices seeker has made. I get that is the context for this, and I don’t blame ThatGuy for his choices (kudos to him). But the general sentiment has been bandied around before, and I disagree with it.

I think it is just a semantic distinction there since you seemed to take issue with the selfish word choice when they're synonyms.  They don't advertise as just being elite. It's more that it's specifically geared to the top %.

It's possible you haven't read the postings from GOB in the past.

"

Are you a large nation sick of your alliance doing stupid things to get you rolled?  Are you sick of getting taxed up the wazoo to help out the little scrub nations in your alliance? 

 

If you are a large self sufficient, well run nation of over 16 cities, come join Grumpy Old Bastards.  It's a one time non refundable payment of 10 million dollars, which is deposited in the alliance bank, and we will never charge you taxes again.

 

So if you are a nation that knows what its doing and is sick of carrying a bunch of scrubs, Message me Sweeeeet Ronny D and come join Grumpy Old Bastards."

Source: 

 

Here's one instance. There's plenty of elite alliances that don't go that far.

 

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2. It’s exclusionary to view the game as only important in the upper tier

I agree. I think smaller nations, micros, and the like get way too much shit. You can criticize Grumpy for their denigration of smaller nations if you want. But I don’t see it as bad for the games health or exclusionary to new players, for people to focus their own efforts in their tiers. You can do that without belittling newer players. These arguments can be just as easily applied to TEst, CoS and Guardian.

If everyone did the elite alliance model, it would eventually have that effect. I don't really think those alliances view it as *only* important in the upper tier and they're not patronizing people as much.

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3. Being upper tier tends towards consolidation and not fighting

Only if you define upper tier as mega whales focused only on growth. Yeah, if your goal is to grow in farm mode and never fight, that can lead to consolidation. But being upper tier doesn’t mean not fighting. Sure, you might lose your grip on the leader boards, but that isn’t the goal of all upper tier alliances.

We were upper tier with no recruitment for a while. We warred a lot. Guardian is one of the most powerful upper tier AA’s, they’ve fought more wars than anyone. Plenty of mid tier guys try and duck the challenge. I agree that trying to gather all the upper tier together and grow above the rest of the game is bad. I don't agree that focusing on the upper tier and trying to dominate it through intrigue and open warfare, as other upper tier AA's have done in the past, is a problem.

We can go back to the GOB advertisement since that's the attitude I'm talking about. It's an alliance designed to avoid getting rolled.

I think you just took the points made vis a vis GOB itself to be applied more broadly.  It's not the current trend with the upper tier emphasis. 

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4. Universalizing upper tier focus would kill most of the game

I don't advocate for its universalization, just as you don't advocate for the universalization of your method. Hell I don't even use it in SK. We aren't taking applicants while we sort some internal issues, but generally we ran one of the highest tax rate/aid packages in the game, to the point where we've lost members over it. But that doesn't mean I oppose other people choosing to focus elsewhere. New players don't need everything paid for them anyway. We all got started without it. Many micros exist and attract members without the big aid packages of TKR or SK or NPO. The real important thing recruiting AA's offer is the community and orientation into the game. Which is important, to be sure. I don't think it would be good if every alliance stopped taking new members, though even if they did, we'd likely see new ones form to accommodate. But even still, I don't believe anybody owes it to "the game" to boost growth for new players if they don't want to. And I don't think its a problem that several alliances choose not to.

You got started without it 4 years ago, so it's a lot harder to compete on your own as a new nation when other alliances can insta-boost people. No one owes it to "the game" but if no one chooses to take it on it's an issue. Recruitment is contributing to the game's health and it would have an overall deleterious impact if everyone chose not to.

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22 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

People are trying to argue GOB isn't selfish?

God damn gimme some of whatever you guys are on, that must be some strong shit.

No. The only thing I said was that I don't believe the decision to be exclusively upper tier is itself selfish. Unless you believe TEst, CoS, Guardian and others who have city requirements, are also selfish for it. In which case, fair enough, although I wouldn't agree. Their conduct in consolidation their tier, trying to avoid wars or talking down to new players is another matter which may well merit that epithet.

I think I just misunderstood Roq to be mainly criticizing them for not wanting to be part of high taxes or mass recruitment (which I do not view negatively), rather than their other actions and words.

Edited by Mikey

Archduke Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Reach, Warden of the South, Breaker of Forums.

 

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Yeah that's fair enough. I just think if upper tier alliances want to dominate the upper tier via fighting others, that's different since it involves setting yourself back. With GPA, they also wanted to grow forever, but because they weren't politically connected and didn't really fight back, they fell apart. It was feasible for a smaller group rather than massive coalition to take them down. If an upper tier alliance exists because it's a tight knit group of people and they don't want or can't handle the overhead of having a lot of people, it's different than one where it's because they don't want to lose anymore and want to attract everyone of a certain size who doesn't want to risk a loss.

At the end of the day, an upper tier alliance that is wiling to fight other upper tier alliances is good because it can stop them growing way above everyone else. It's just the trend of the past two years has been to avoid confrontation with similarly sized nations in the upper tier if it could end up setting your own growth back.

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Just now, Roquentin said:

Yeah that's fair enough. I just think if upper tier alliances want to dominate the upper tier via fighting others, that's different since it involves setting yourself back. With GPA, they also wanted to grow forever, but because they weren't politically connected and didn't really fight back, they fell apart. It was feasible for a smaller group rather than massive coalition to take them down. If an upper tier alliance exists because it's a tight knit group of people and they don't want or can't handle the overhead of having a lot of people, it's different than one where it's because they don't want to lose anymore and want to attract everyone of a certain size who doesn't want to risk a loss.

At the end of the day, an upper tier alliance that is wiling to fight other upper tier alliances is good because it can stop them growing way above everyone else. It's just the trend of the past two years has been to avoid confrontation with similarly sized nations in the upper tier if it could end up setting your own growth back.

GOB will never dominate anything. People have inflated levels of concern about them.

GOB will eventually grow so far out of range, noone will be able to hit them and they won't be able to hit anyone. Then we can just block them on the forums and they can post announcements about how they reached 48 average cities that noone can see because we blocked them.

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24 minutes ago, Sketchy said:

Elite alliances who also act like Elitists are cancerous, in that respect I'd agree. Hoarding skill and not teaching new people to play the game is only slightly better than micros hoarding noobs and teaching them nothing and making them quit.

That being said, noone is under an obligation to let anyone into their alliances they don't want to regardless of size, so I wouldn't classify that as selfish, just stupid, given its proven to be unsustainable for most alliances.

That being said, GOBs entire marketing strategy is "Oh look at these filthy noob cretins, we don't let them in because they are expensive and because we sit up in the upper tier and do shit all and only fight when we have the advantage stacked in our favour, we left VE because we didn't want to pay for those noobs because we have no sense of loyalty to our alliance and just want to play farmville haha look at us and our average of 38 cities isn't our e-peen real big".

You're full of it:

1. Elitist part is your opinion, we prefer it this way because we dont want the hassle of making everyone create a copy paste version of a nation model, that is boring to us, so we take people who make their own decisions on their nations however they want it.

2. saying that method is unsustainable is also false, just because we rarely take people in isnt something stupid, we have a very close community whom we trust each individual of our alliance far more than smaller alliances do with their membership.

3. Our marketing strategy is "You tired of tax's and want to handle your nation your own way join" we have nothing against newer players and many of us have friends outside the alliance that are simply tiny raiders, we dont care about the "expense" of growing a new nation, we probably bring in more money than many other alliances, we simply don't want to go through the whole deal of creating a ton of guides, programs, unnecessary gov roles, etc... as for fighting when we have advantages or not, we didn't have to join this war, we are paperless, we came in knowing that we were gonna fight until we ran out of fumes and we still joined because why not? we like Guardian and side with them quite often thats about it.

4. Our members are from many different alliances around orbis, some defunct some still active, we have a strong sense of loyalty towards Grumpy, that is why we have such a high retention rate and whenever we go to war no one VM's or tries to hide and broker individual peace. If you don't like the size of our e-peen then stop staring at it pleb.

5. Our members can reach for whatever individual goals they want to achieve, if they want to just grow they can, if they want to invest in alliances they find agreeable they can, if they want to play the market or do baseball they can, you arent anyone to tell them they cant do what they want to set out to do.

Also the whole idea behind the role play of the alliance is GRUMPY OLD BASTARDS, that is why in public channels and forums we stick to our roles of acting the way we do, anyone who has talked to us behind closed doors know that generally we are actually nice and dont treat them inferior, (except SRD he is 100% in character 100% of the time).

3 minutes ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Nah, on SRD's eyes they are below human at this point.

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like I said SRD can be a dick at times :v I am guessing that was regarding the color bonus.

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15 minutes ago, TheNG Rising said:

You know, you actually said something decently accurate in that little WoT Seppy.

While the rest of your secret treaty EMC pals have enough VM nations between them to form a top 20 alliance (and enough VM gov members to run it, albeit poorly), GoB only has a few like Tywin. It would be commendable, although I assume the reason is less "loyalty to GoB" and more the fact that the number of clicks it'd take to put your nation in VM is a few more than the average GoB nation makes in a day or two, so it's been too much effort so far!

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We click enough to cause all the damage your side has taken so far.

 

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On 11/4/2018 at 5:22 AM, Roquentin said:

At the end of the day, we could have easily concentrated resources in boosting people to upper tier if we gave a shit about having big nations for e-peen. The concept has been  done to death and we know what's better for long-term sustainability and what isn't. It's not a single player game. If you want to focus on building your own stuff, there's plenty of single player games for that.

First of all, I want to preface this by saying that I do not disagree with you politically, Grumpy's political consolidation question has already been argued to death, and I'm not here for that. There are a plethora of more qualified people than me to talk about this. However, there are plenty of economic/game points you made to validate your argument that are wrong. I want to go over those.

Mikey has made some valid points, because you're generalizing economics and trying to argue that boosting nations into the upper tier/focusing your growth in the upper tier exclusively by being an individualist alliance/nation is wrong and inherently bad for the game. 

I'm strictly here to point out why that argument is wrong.

Individualist ambition and growth is incredibly important to the game, on a nation level and on an alliance level. You said that "If you want to focus on building your own stuff, there's plenty of single player games for that". The reason I found this particularly interesting is because NPO players use this to argue a lot of their points.

When you're playing a multiplayer game, the main drive in the game is to become better than the people you're playing with/against, that's the whole point of putting time and effort into growing your nation. It's a competition. If you were playing a singleplayer game against AI/bots, there is no drive and competition to make you grow, you simply play until you beat the AI. 

That's what a competitive market is, whether it be in terms of individual nation growth within your own alliance, or wider alliance growth across the top 20. 

Now I know what you're going to say. "That wasn't the point, I was arguing about Grumpy consolidating in the upper tier and not letting the rest of the game catch up". The reason I disagree with you is because your argument is insinuating that this type of game behavior is bad, while your game behavior is good. You're inherently trying to discourage people being selfish individualists primarily growing themselves, by pointing at grumpy. It's as if you're using it as an excuse without realizing that you're including a big portion of the game.  That's what I have a problem with. You may not be wrong in your political argument about large upper tier consolidation, but you're also trying to argue that being selfish is bad for the game.

The same way you argue that being selfish and individualistic is inherently bad for the game, I could just as easily make the argument that consolidating in the lower tier is the same, and just as bad, or even worse for the game. See what I mean? It's redundant to argue that playing the game one way is terrible, while playing the game another way is good.

Any multiplayer game needs certain people that want to rise above the occasion and be the largest player/community in the game. If it wasn't grumpy, it would've been someone else. The game curves naturally no matter which way you play. When/If Grumpy is gone, someone will take their place.

 

5 hours ago, Roquentin said:

Over the past few years, there has been an attitude shift as more people got into the upper echelons and consolidated together that the upper tier of the game is the real game and  that the other people don't really have much of an impact so if you want to play for real, you need to whale upThat's certainly not a positive trend and it's up to the community to see that as it's inherently exclusionary and alienating for anyone who isn't upper tier and that's what will happen in any game where that becomes the prevalent ideal.

I agree with you on your first point. Saying that the upper tier is the only game that's relevant is inherently alienating, but again, you're insinuating that staying small is okay. It's not.

You are dismissing that attitude on face value, as if they're greedy hacks that want to put the small man down. When looking at players that play for years that put a big portion of their life into the game, you want to do the same, you want to be like them. My opinion always was and will be that it stimulates growth. Alex has gone above and beyond to make changes that help newer players catch up to the old guards, which is never more true than now where you can literally knock on the door of a bank and get boosted up to 20 cities in a few months. There is no shortage of capital anymore, nothing is stopping you. Taking that into consideration, you could see why their attitude has changed. It's simply true that today, anybody can become a high tier nation, and if you want to have individual power and influence over game mechanics, your natural instinct tells you that you need to grow your nation and become larger. 

If you're talking about protectorates or micros, micros that are alienated by larger alliances/nations ARE irrelevant to the game, because micros are shit stained piles that contribute nothing. They recycle leadership until they die. If you want to contribute to the game, you need to join up a larger alliance that will grow you up, be that NPO that will grow you to mid tier or Guardian that will grow you to upper tier. In an ideal world, we would encourage players to grow their nations into the mid-high tier instead of telling them that running shitty leadership and staying small is okay. 

 

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I'm not trying to sell GOB on anything. Their model only works because other people are willing to shoulder the costs of newer players or else it'd be a pretty isolated setting where they'd have nothing to brag about and no one to be bigger except the other supertier and eventually enough of them would just go inactive in a daisy chain or get beaten down by other super tiers and quit. In order for an alliance to be "an elite upper tier" alliance, there have to be non-elite alliances.   I'm not trying to sell anyone on our alliance model. It would be pretty boring if everyone did the same thing, but recruiting alliances and people who are willing to spend on people are overall helpful to the game. There are ways elite players can contribute and some have in the past by loaning to newer alliances, but then that means someone else is taxing high to enforce the loans on an alliance level.  I've never said everyone should do the same but it's doing more to grow the community than an elite old boys club of people who were gov together in a previous alliance.

Again, your first point holds great value and I agree with it. Recruiting alliances that put great effort into consistently recruiting, educating and growing the new playerbase are great for the game. However, you're insinuating again in your second point. First of all, giving money to micros is far worse than keeping it for themselves, micros need to die and go through the food chain of quitting their alliance and joining an established top 30 alliance. Second of all, whales already do that. Whales invest in banks and banks invest in low tier-mid tier players. To insinuate that whales these days sit on billions and never circulate it around the economy is simply false. I've built close to 50 cities in low-mid tier nations in the past month with nothing but whale money.

 

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2 hours ago, Radoje said:

First of all, I want to preface this by saying that I do not disagree with you politically, Grumpy's political consolidation question has already been argued to death, and I'm not here for that. There are a plethora of more qualified people than me to talk about this. However, there are plenty of economic/game points you made to validate your argument that are wrong. I want to go over those.

Mikey has made some valid points, because you're generalizing economics and trying to argue that boosting nations into the upper tier/focusing your growth in the upper tier exclusively by being an individualist alliance/nation is wrong and inherently bad for the game. 

I'm strictly here to point out why that argument is wrong.

Individualist ambition and growth is incredibly important to the game, on a nation level and on an alliance level. You said that "If you want to focus on building your own stuff, there's plenty of single player games for that". The reason I found this particularly interesting is because NPO players use this to argue a lot of their points.

When you're playing a multiplayer game, the main drive in the game is to become better than the people you're playing with/against, that's the whole point of putting time and effort into growing your nation. It's a competition. If you were playing a singleplayer game against AI/bots, there is no drive and competition to make you grow, you simply play until you beat the AI. 

Being an individualist nation usually tends to mean you're not going to do much fighting or only fight easy battles. It's also the sustainability argument. If people think they can sustain an individualist alliance without bringing in new players, then it's their problem when the guys lose interest and dial it back. There's plenty of upper tier nations that have quit and it starts to show. It's a dead end ultimately to venerate and focus entirely on the biggest nations around. The empirical results have shown it to be the case.  I remember several alliances that had big upper tiers in the past like DEIC and others lost those nations. 

I'm not really sure what you're talking about on an alliance level. If it's about an alliance's growth it stops being about the individual and individuals will have to make sacrifices unless they're primarily growing by attracting big nations like GOB by advertising it as "not losing wars". If everyone is only playing for their individual ambition, it makes no sense for anyone to help anyone else and that is going to eventually stagnate the player count. 

A lot of the whale players think they *have* to grow no matter what and war will get in the way of that. When it's treated as a building simulator and there's the fact that you can't lose your cities, it encourages anti-competitive behavior to continue growing. Being the biggest nation isn't competitive when you're relying on gaming the system while others have to fight.  Fighting other nations to try to be on top or stop them from being on top is competitive. Individual nations are ultimately not the primary actors in a nation simulator and that's not how this one is structured either. It's more guild/alliance oriented than any previous one; so any emphasis on simply growing individually for its own sake misses the point.  

2 hours ago, Radoje said:

 

That's what a competitive market is, whether it be in terms of individual nation growth within your own alliance, or wider alliance growth across the top 20. 

Now I know what you're going to say. "That wasn't the point, I was arguing about Grumpy consolidating in the upper tier and not letting the rest of the game catch up". The reason I disagree with you is because your argument is insinuating that this type of game behavior is bad, while your game behavior is good. You're inherently trying to discourage people being selfish individualists primarily growing themselves, by pointing at grumpy. It's as if you're using it as an excuse without realizing that you're including a big portion of the game.  That's what I have a problem with. You may not be wrong in your political argument about large upper tier consolidation, but you're also trying to argue that being selfish is bad for the game.

The same way you argue that being selfish and individualistic is inherently bad for the game, I could just as easily make the argument that consolidating in the lower tier is the same, and just as bad, or even worse for the game. See what I mean? It's redundant to argue that playing the game one way is terrible, while playing the game another way is good.

Any multiplayer game needs certain people that want to rise above the occasion and be the largest player/community in the game. If it wasn't grumpy, it would've been someone else. The game curves naturally no matter which way you play. When/If Grumpy is gone, someone will take their place.

I mean I did say it was a disturbing trend in the past few years that people shifted their perspective to trying to whale up and idealizing being a whale. In the past, being the biggest whale was seen as the domain of people who didn't fight like GPA or Pantheon or various similar AAs or people like Les Paul Supreme. Most people didn't think highly of it.  When it became part of the political mainstream to incorporate as much upper tier mass from wherever you could, it became acceptable and promoted to whale out rather than fight other upper tier nations.  There's a difference between wanting to grow to some extent and wanting to whale out. It's inherently stagnatory to make it your priority to whale out.

I'm not talking about being the largest community. If people want to compete on having the best community in the game, then that's actually conducive to overall game health regardless of the alliance size. I'm sure plenty of 30-50 member count alliances have good communities.   I never said Grumpy was the first of its kind or that it'd be the last. GPA and Pantheon were earlier examples and received similar opprobrium  and GOB got a lot of the Pantheon OG whales who left for some reason who were never really tested except for a round of war against TEst 2 years ago. Not sure why they shifted to Grumpy, but Grumpy is ultimately the latest in the line descendants. The difference is the level of incorporation Grumpy had into the political sphere and how it insulated them from any conflict. Those alliances always received that criticism. 

2 hours ago, Radoje said:

 

I agree with you on your first point. Saying that the upper tier is the only game that's relevant is inherently alienating, but again, you're insinuating that staying small is okay. It's not.

You are dismissing that attitude on face value, as if they're greedy hacks that want to put the small man down. When looking at players that play for years that put a big portion of their life into the game, you want to do the same, you want to be like them. My opinion always was and will be that it stimulates growth. Alex has gone above and beyond to make changes that help newer players catch up to the old guards, which is never more true than now where you can literally knock on the door of a bank and get boosted up to 20 cities in a few months. There is no shortage of capital anymore, nothing is stopping you. Taking that into consideration, you could see why their attitude has changed. It's simply true that today, anybody can become a high tier nation, and if you want to have individual power and influence over game mechanics, your natural instinct tells you that you need to grow your nation and become larger. 

Now you're making a normative claim. If people want to stay small, then it's their right and you can probably keep a decent amount of people in the game if they're just doing the low tier raiding thing if it's an intentional decision rather than just not listening to econ advice. I'm not really sure every new player would be able to do that especially with the high rate of delinquency banks have experienced and the lack of confidence post-what happened with Dillon and the Emerald Bank collapse. SO shut down as well and Gringott's had its various issues. There are fewer big banks now than there were a year ago for certain. We can look at the total money in the game even though it's a lot  and it doesn't support this argument.  It's also really weird to expect everyone to shoulder the interest and associated costs with long-term debt to get to 20 cities.

2 hours ago, Radoje said:

If you're talking about protectorates or micros, micros that are alienated by larger alliances/nations ARE irrelevant to the game, because micros are shit stained piles that contribute nothing. They recycle leadership until they die. If you want to contribute to the game, you need to join up a larger alliance that will grow you up, be that NPO that will grow you to mid tier or Guardian that will grow you to upper tier. In an ideal world, we would encourage players to grow their nations into the mid-high tier instead of telling them that running shitty leadership and staying small is okay. 

Again, your first point holds great value and I agree with it. Recruiting alliances that put great effort into consistently recruiting, educating and growing the new playerbase are great for the game. However, you're insinuating again in your second point. First of all, giving money to micros is far worse than keeping it for themselves, micros need to die and go through the food chain of quitting their alliance and joining an established top 30 alliance. Second of all, whales already do that. Whales invest in banks and banks invest in low tier-mid tier players. To insinuate that whales these days sit on billions and never circulate it around the economy is simply false. I've built close to 50 cities in low-mid tier nations in the past month with nothing but whale money.

 

Without a massive increase in total existing capital, it's not viable to push everyone to 20 cities and have a mass player game. Most alliances if faced with an influx of newer nations would shut down recruitment. Most alliances do not accept new players after they hit a certain cap. It's just not how the game works. Eventually even the biggest recruiting alliances would  shut down their recruitment if everyone has to be growing as much as possible.

I didn't say it was giving money to micros. I meant newer alliances in general even if they're started by experienced players since usually they won't start with a huge capital base and if they're recruiting they're going to need the money and the whales have contributed to that process in the past.

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This is an interesting debate. :D

I think I see Mikey's point: "There's no invalid way to play, and every alliance has the right to define how they want to do things" and I mostly agree. The asterix on that I'd put is that as other players in a community, we have the right to object to the way other people choose to do that, and fight over it if we want. That's the whole game! Grumpy's the easy example, so I'll stick with it. SRD's philosophy is logically sound (just follows from premises I don't agree with) and not invalid... I just don't ascribe to it or like it myself, so I want to fight him.

I don't see how Grumpy has some unique monopoly on making players not enjoy the game. That's a wider problem they are a smaller part of, perhaps. But, without getting TOO tangenty here, I think every alliance has a bit of responsibility to share for the political state of the game.

Edited by Spaceman Thrax
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2 hours ago, Spaceman Thrax said:

I don't see how Grumpy has some unique monopoly on making players not enjoy the game. That's a wider problem they are a smaller part of, perhaps. But, without getting TOO tangenty here, I think every alliance has a bit of responsibility to share for the political state of the game.

yes because we still havent published the Ass Squad bloc

 

so you are responsible for the problem ;)

 

(Jk thraxy!!!)

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PoJQyFJ.gif

 

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I think the game is pretty...pretty...pretty..fun.

Just good clean fun....filled with a few heros...maybe 14 villains...and 7,000 others who just want to pretend to blow something up and can't figure out how to get to 115% commerce.

I remember a time (in my youth) when a war stat post actually contained war stats.

 

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 Registered slot thief

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

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15 minutes ago, Mikalus II said:

I think the game is pretty...pretty...pretty..fun.

Just good clean fun....filled with a few heros...maybe 14 villains...and 7,000 others who just want to pretend to blow something up and can't figure out how to get to 115% commerce.

I remember a time (in my youth) when a war stat post actually contained war stats.

 

List them.

 

os9LcJK.gif

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On 11/3/2018 at 11:22 PM, Roquentin said:

He knows what he signed up and he knows what it's like outside. At the end of the day, we could have easily concentrated resources in boosting people to upper tier if we gave a shit about having big nations for e-peen. The concept has been  done to death and we know what's better for long-term sustainability and what isn't. It's not a single player game. If you want to focus on building your own stuff, there's plenty of single player games for that. The only reason your alliance can exist is because of Alex's design flaws as he never anticipated people hording cities to the level you've gotten, which he was going to change in his next game because he realize how flawed people getting as big as possible was.  All you've done is boost your e-peen and people are finally sick of you.  If everyone acted the way you do, this game would be long dead as no one would aid newer players ever or raise taxes to fund them ever and you would have no one to lord over. I can name more than a dozen micros with low taxes and even if everyone had optimal builds, they would never grow much on their own. 

It's without a doubt that Seeker has done more to keep the VE community going than 5-6 members who just hoard stuff for themselves and their clique.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE ANTI-ELITIST TALK!       I LOVE IT

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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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haha i am back to the game what happened with the previous alliances? this political scene is different

haha you all lucky my account is in vacation

 

Edited by LordMane611
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20 minutes ago, LordMane611 said:

haha i am back to the game what happened with the previous alliances? this political scene is different

haha you all lucky my account is in vacation

 

who are you even?

Listen to J Kell's new single: 

 

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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