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A Problem For Discussion


Cooper_
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  1. 1. How would you like to improve Game-Related Issues?

    • Improve the User Interface
      32
    • Add Functionality (RP tools, national issues etc.)
      30
    • Rebalance Units (i.e. planes)
      33
    • Add War Victory/Terms as In-Game Mechanics
      24
    • Increase Infra Attrition from War
      7
    • Lower Casualty Ratios From Attacks
      13
    • Change Score Formula to Avoid Large City Mismatches
      29
    • Make the Customizable Features of VIP Free
      18
    • Update Tutorial to Include War Mechanics
      24
    • Add Constantly-Changing Elements
      27
    • Focus on Player-to-Player Interactions
      23
  2. 2. How would you like to improve Meta-Related Issues?

    • Let Some Alliances Focus on Things Besides War
      26
    • Agreed Constraints on War Duration
      23
    • Require Clearly Defined CBs at the Start of a War
      21
    • Require Clearly Defined War Goals at the Start of a War
      21
    • Limit Interpersonal Rivalries as a Factor in War Decisions
      13
    • Crack Down on Inter-Alliance Toxicity
      33
    • Reestablish Trust
      23
    • Shorter Wars
      33
  3. 3. How would you like to improve Alliance-Related Issues?

    • Expand Outreach Efforts that Mirror GWPC for All Alliances
      37
    • Give Members More Say in War Decisions
      22
    • Provide Players with More Accessibility to what Occurs Behind the Scenes
      23
  4. 4. How would you like to improve Administrative-Related Issues?

    • Increase External Advertising (Google, Discord, etc.)
      38
    • Better-Looking Advertising
      33
    • Increased Game Maintenance/Updates
      45
    • More Community Engagement from Moderation/Administration
      36
    • Fix the Mobile App
      40


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nice to see both sides deflect and blame the other for poor player retention when it's in fact both their faults

EMC used to flex how many people deleted from IQ, and now IQ is doing the same to them. you dug your graves, now lie in them

however, i do in general agree with the fact that shorter wars are better for the game, so if there's a way to make it more expensive to sit on your opponents that would be good, but it also needs to be cheap to rebuild warchest at the same time.

perhaps, make military units more expensive to maintain during wartime, and increase production of manufactured/raw resources? im not sure, id have to give some more time to think about it

toodles

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52 minutes ago, ForgotPants said:

Stealing some concepts from EVE Online:

As part of the changes in war mechanics, I propose a change in alliance membership limits as well. When creating a new alliance, it can start at say 30 member limit and can go up to say 100 with upgrades (suggestions). As a new player joining in, in most cases they might want to go for the biggest or strongest alliances. If there were a lot more alliances filling these positions, it would open up diverse options, multiple coalitions and so on. Coalitions can consist of multiple alliances that can join or leave the coalition and are subject to its affiliations and advantages. There should a be a maximum limit of alliances within a coalition (say 8).

Alliances would also need to declare war with Alliance UI. An official declaration of war can go in a global feed so everyone knows what is happening. Attacks can be declared within 180 seconds of a war dec (can be more to give prep time. think of it like logistics of moving your armies in position for war). War goals can be set like; 12 billion damage to infra, 200000 planes killed, 400 nukes launched etc. Achieving these war goals would be an instant victory leading to the losing side facing penalties like infra damage to all members or a % of all enemy banks (within reasonable limits). Alliances can only declare war on other alliances; coalitions can declare war on other coalitions. Again this would need coalition UI, actual gov roles and so on.

Any wars outside of declared wars will be raids only. This gives individual players a chance as well. An unofficial grouping of players will fight on mostly even terms (raids vs raids) against other individuals or alliances.

Regulating player behavior outside the game with mechanics inside the game doesn't work.

Alliance member limits won't work because large alliances will utilize multiple alliance affiliations. (NPO, for instance, did this in Project Terra when it exceeded the member caps there.)

Coalition member limits won't work for the same reason. If you need more than eight alliances on your side, you make a second coalition that works in tandem with the first.

Restricting wars between nations, alliances, and coalitions is silly. It would impact raiding in gamey ways. (Can an unaligned nation raid an alliance's inactives? Or would that nation need to make its own alliance affiliation first and start an alliance war?) Alliances and coalitions would be almost inherently unbalanced. (Why is a single, 100-member alliance fighting an 8-alliance coalition of micros "fair"? Or is "fairness" not what you're going for?) There are probably other issues I didn't think of in the first minute after I read this.

Why would anyone set war goals higher than $1 worth of damages to achieve instant victory? More generally, what incentive does anyone ever have to be truthful about their war goals, especially when such goals often shift as wars progress?

 

Something along these lines gets proposed multiple times a year, but no one ever seems to think through the consequences or balance issues.

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I do want to point out one reason this war is so bad is because the infra levels for max planes were reduced since last war. The population bonus buff means that older nations can keep on fighting for longer due to needing less infra to have population, and most nations can have max planes at lower infra levels than before.

 

On the other hand, raising infrastructure costs for warfighting encourages Viet Arrgh-type fights, which, while interesting for the members involved, is just really really unbalanced. If a side can cause disproportionate damage with nukes while being militarily destroyed (there are alliances which have had recent experiences of this type), it just encourages balance of terror (i.e, you can't ever roll anyone, and hitman-style attacks with nuke rogues become way too damaging).

.

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2 hours ago, Aragorn, son of Arathorn said:

Your failure to retain members is not our sides problems, particularly since peace could be had at any time.

Funny that.  You still haven't addressed Keegoz/Adrienne in talks, more or less giving them the run around.

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8 hours ago, Leftbehind said:

It's not just the trash mechanics of the game or the look that keeps people away. We sort of need a cultural shift. Alliances put too much emphasis on "opsec" where if you aren't with the right crowd you will never know of the drama that could create a more entertaining experience. 

The steady flow of political intrigue is what got me hooked on other games in this genre. 

Opsec exists for a reason.  There's plenty of examples in the game where opsec info got leaked out (This current war seems familiar...) and started situations.

The few times I was loose with opsec early on in my opportunities of each alliance I was in (Except TKR, since I was rather a deadbeat then), there were always another player who would take the info and go around sharing it to make themselves look "better" or show off what they have.

Keep in mind, these are different players each time too.

A cultural shift of what you're asking is pretty much impossible, as you do not know where loyalties lie.  To the alliance, to a media source, to a group of friends that's spread out amongst the various alliances, or to themselves.

28 minutes ago, hope said:

EMC used to flex how many people deleted from IQ

Citation needed.

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1 hour ago, Buorhann said:

Funny that.  You still haven't addressed Keegoz/Adrienne in talks, more or less giving them the run around.

Talks haven't started yet, nothing to address :) 

31 minutes ago, hope said:

My point is simply in the past, your side has celebrated deletion of IQ nations as being a good thing. Don't act like you didn't participate

Oh my :P Why thx for bringing those up! 

I mean the meta is what it is. Long wars are the norm and that's not problematic insofar as those who want other things have the opportunities to do other things in this game. As I've mentioned a couple of times earlier, the war meta/mechanic is the most stable in the game, its fine this way. Give us other reasons to play apart from a Global every six months, mechanically. Really should focus adding layers of depth into story modes/RP/issues. Or else have a system of emergencies etc/ that affect the nation. Give folks the ability to customise their nations, and see those customizations play out and as always turn the present UI into something that looks better. Add a bunch of these things and you can have a better game to retain folk. Just going after war mechanics because it doesn't suit a few at this moment in time, is not solving the real issues behind the game imho. 

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4 hours ago, Aragorn, son of Arathorn said:

Your failure to retain members is not our sides problems, particularly since peace could be had at any time.

You're implying that our-side is the only one facing inactivity and deletions? Scrolling through your sides alliance membership pages I can see just as much as a problem. 

 

Regardless, I'm beating a dead horse whenever I say anything to anyone on your side. Like talking to a wall. 

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Chief Financial Officer of The Syndicate

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1 hour ago, Buorhann said:

Opsec exists for a reason.  There's plenty of examples in the game where opsec info got leaked out (This current war seems familiar...) and started situations.

The few times I was loose with opsec early on in my opportunities of each alliance I was in (Except TKR, since I was rather a deadbeat then), there were always another player who would take the info and go around sharing it to make themselves look "better" or show off what they have.

Keep in mind, these are different players each time too.

A cultural shift of what you're asking is pretty much impossible, as you do not know where loyalties lie.  To the alliance, to a media source, to a group of friends that's spread out amongst the various alliances, or to themselves.

Citation needed.

That's true. We can go back further and even when people knew the sides, Rose's blitzes would get leaked in terms of when exactly they were happening due to the connections between the Rose and Syndicate communities.

1 hour ago, Buorhann said:

Funny that.  You still haven't addressed Keegoz/Adrienne in talks, more or less giving them the run around.

I thought it had been productive last I heard between Keegoz and Sphinx. I didn't mean to give anyone the run around, but the coalition chose its representatives so that's where they were directed to go.

 

-----

1 hour ago, hope said:

nice to see both sides deflect and blame the other for poor player retention when it's in fact both their faults

EMC used to flex how many people deleted from IQ, and now IQ is doing the same to them. you dug your graves, now lie in them

however, i do in general agree with the fact that shorter wars are better for the game, so if there's a way to make it more expensive to sit on your opponents that would be good, but it also needs to be cheap to rebuild warchest at the same time.

perhaps, make military units more expensive to maintain during wartime, and increase production of manufactured/raw resources? im not sure, id have to give some more time to think about it

toodles

Is there anything to back up that wars being longer has decreased retention from when they were shorter? I'm genuinely curious here.

It's not really any different to get rolled for 2 weeks if the same thing is going to happen like 2 months down the line. The uneven damage short wars previously caused opened up a gap between the winners and the losers. The losers would eventually quit anyway.

As of now, there are now about only 100-150 nations from when the game was  really young. I would think most of the player loss happened before wars became longer.

The only really long wars in the game were Alpha-tS, Knightfall, 69 Day, and this  one. We could count ToT with 1.5 months, but it pales in comparison.  AC was only a month.

So we'd have to see if there was a significant decline in retention of players from either April 2017 - Now or  October 2018 - to now besides the periodic population explosions from advertising that fizzled over time.

Additionally  a lot of people who are quitting were planning to quit before this war too.

Edited by Roquentin
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I'm happy ya'll are commenting, but let's try to steer towards discussion of our problems and their respective solutions.  Although I will note that ya'll are being a tiny bit less adversarial than usual, which isn't saying much but a start lmao.

Also, I will be posting a follow-up poll on all of these ideas later on after I feel we've had a complete discussion on the issues.  Then, the goal is that we can send this off to @Alex for his view on what can actually be achieved among the popular ideas.  

For the alliance/meta-related stuff, I hope that this will give everyone a better view on some of the views that we all share so we can maybe work towards achieving them.  Behind all of the drama and debate we have, we often lose some of the communication too where we might actually share some values.  Just something to keep in mind because I, for one, believe that progress is possible.  

Keep it up everyone!

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2 hours ago, hope said:

however, i do in general agree with the fact that shorter wars are better for the game, so if there's a way to make it more expensive to sit on your opponents that would be good, but it also needs to be cheap to rebuild warchest at the same time.

I think you can argue both ways, it could be more expensive to sit on someone, but it could also be more devastating to sit on the opponent for the opponent. Usually in games the winner is decided instantly when they have literally no military left, in our case kerchtog doesnt seem to mind the situation all that much.

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The issue with wars is it's just a test of wills at their core. So when the infra is all burned and one side has control over the other, it just comes down to who decides to blink first (Not unlike RL wars). 

 

Take this war for example. Each side gets to say they're winning because of X statistic (One side uses planes, other side uses infra damage, whatever). They've spent the last month arguing over specifics of these stats, but really they only serve the purpose of bolstering their own side's morale and attempting to get the other side to lower their own morale to get them to talk. Beyond this, the only other achievable end to a war is to make the game as least fun as it could be for the other side. That's not necessarily a stated goal as it is the only other deliverable effect of war.

 

War, being an extension of the politics in the game, is also stagnate because the politics of this game are stagnate. I know there's the whole "Mini-sphere" debate ongoing, but that's generally a diplomatic meta debate and not necessarily something that can change given the state of the game (because it requires an amount of trust and communication between the spheres that just seems unrealistic at this point).

 

If you want more people to stay in the game, give them something other than fighting to do. The economy is too open to be a useful tool in politics, and alliances can't stop their own members from trading on the world market. Alex could always adjust the market or potential for several markets as an economic influence tool. Alex can also exert in-game mechanics on war, he could refactor score to prevent brutal down-declares. 

 

He could introduce a mechanic that makes recruiting new nations vitally important for alliances. You begin to see where I'm going, in that if you want more people to stay, make the game less about war. Don't nerf war, because it isn't an either-or situation. You can always add another avenue of play to the game to enhance the "Politics" portion of PoliticsandWar, y'know?

 

Anyway, what is definitely clear is the game as-is is really just down to saving massive resources and blowing them out in one long bang, and those alliances that can't keep up with that pace lose members quicker and surrender soonest. War's great, but there has to be more to do than build stockpiles and tossing them away in one big twice-yearly global.

Edited by WSxPhoenix
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"You must begin by gaining power over yourself; then another; then a group, an order, a world, a species, a group of species; finally, the galaxy itself."

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3 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Opsec exists for a reason.  There's plenty of examples in the game where opsec info got leaked out (This current war seems familiar...) and started situations.

The few times I was loose with opsec early on in my opportunities of each alliance I was in (Except TKR, since I was rather a deadbeat then), there were always another player who would take the info and go around sharing it to make themselves look "better" or show off what they have.

Keep in mind, these are different players each time too.

A cultural shift of what you're asking is pretty much impossible, as you do not know where loyalties lie.  To the alliance, to a media source, to a group of friends that's spread out amongst the various alliances, or to themselves.

Citation needed.

I understand the need for OpSec. I think that too much of the game is played or know by too few of the players. The leaking of war plans was good for the overall entertainment value of the game since it forced the "major" players to get out of the back channels and battle on the forums. I am by no means saying that their shouldn't be any OpSec but more just saying that we should allow more things to be push into the open. 

We create our own entertainment not Alex. So when someone lets say gets caught spying on an alliance call them out in the open so we can all see and enjoy. I know I'm a dreamer to actually think that we won't take this game personal or as serious business. 

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FORMER LEADER OF COTL. PLEASE GROW INTERNALLY

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Some players who lose a war will always leave.  It's a shame that people don't know that's part of the game, but many will leave at the first L or only fight in wars where they are bandwagoning onto the winning side.  In my opinion, these are players who do not make for a good community and aren't a big loss when they leave.

I'd like to see a graph of actual players who have left not because of this issue.  Or maybe a better way to say that is people leaving on the TC/BK/Cit/NPO side of the web vs. Chaos/KETGG/Rose side.

Also, I see a lot of inactive players who have given up fighting and just sitting at zeros until the war ends.  Players like this shouldn't be counted as inactive - they are just idling, unwilling to keep fighting, not leaving.

Edited by Placentica
leavings vs. just inactive
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22 hours ago, Aragorn, son of Arathorn said:

I mean the war meta is to make wars not fun. That’s the point and a deterrent to messing with certain alliances. “Fun wars” have a political connotation and benefit one side disproportionately. 

You have nothing to add to the game. You're weak, biased, and boring.

 

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8 hours ago, ForgotPants said:

War goals can be set like; 12 billion damage to infra, 200000 planes killed, 400 nukes launched etc. Achieving these war goals would be an instant victory leading to the losing side facing penalties like infra damage to all members or a % of all enemy banks (within reasonable limits). Alliances can only declare war on other alliances; coalitions can declare war on other coalitions. Again this would need coalition UI, actual gov roles and so on.

Put that on so I can create an alliance with only me and declare war to the top 5 richest alliances with the war goal of 1 soldier killed, then declare the 5 wars and run a ground attack on their inactives to complete my war goal and win the alliance war causing a 10% of their banks being stolen

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Online games tend to have a problem of trying to balance making the game easier for casuals vs not upsetting the hardcore players who love beating casuals. PnW is no different.... wars in PnW are fun if you are highly active and are in the right alliance and able to have some imput in what is going on. If you happen to be less active and less connected or in an alliance that doesn't dominate in your tier wars can result in getting sat on for weeks at a time. 

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6 hours ago, hope said:

 

My point is simply in the past, your side has celebrated deletion of IQ nations as being a good thing. Don't act like you didn't participate

 

Hell, I’ve pointed out in this war too.  But celebrate?  Yeah, that’s a hard pass.

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1 minute ago, Inst said:

I was wondering how long it'd take before someone argues "the solution to deletions is to force the entirety of ex-IQ to delete". The thread seemed awfully civil, so I never snarked in this vein. Now?

Just go back and look at Manthrax/Leo arguments

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3 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Hell, I’ve pointed out in this war too.  But celebrate?  Yeah, that’s a hard pass.

then why bring it up at all? you never sound particularly worried. in fact, you treat it as a good thing.

in my original post i even said “EMC used to flex IQ deletions” which you acted like you had no idea even happened, and now you say that you both did it then and now. so, buorhann, which is it? do you treat people quitting the game during these 3 month+ wars as a good thing or a bad thing? because many people on your side are all “woe is me” now that they’re the ones facing the consequences of it

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On 9/2/2019 at 9:08 PM, Cooper_ said:

- Reestablishing Trust @Sir Scarfalot

 

On 9/2/2019 at 10:03 PM, Sir Scarfalot said:

As for re-establishing trust... It can't happen outside of extreme behavioral shifts and insanely implausible things happening. Neither side feels it can afford to back down, because neither side can possibly afford to trust the other anymore. I just don't see that changing.

This entire notion is naive. This is a game, and saying that anyone is going to not abide by peace terms as they have done time and time again is ridiculous. TKR has surrendered to BK, just as KT has surrendered to TKR. This is normal game play. 

Rid your mind of such implausible notions. Not to mention, it doesn't benefit the community but rather intends to divide.

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14 minutes ago, Khai Jäger said:

 

This entire notion is naive. This is a game, and saying that anyone is going to not abide by peace terms as they have done time and time again is ridiculous. TKR has surrendered to BK, just as KT has surrendered to TKR. This is normal game play. 

Rid your mind of such implausible notions. Not to mention, it doesn't benefit the community but rather intends to divide.

I mean, even though you're Koalition B scrubs, I like you Khai - but Mr. AlotofScarf is pretty on the button. Spend some time talking to your own slave coalition if you even have access and the opposition as well, you'll soon find out that - sure they are seeing eye to eye - but that common ground is both sides not backing down. Unless something drastically changes, which I doubt it will - 1) both will not accept a loss as both feel they have not lost. 2) white peace is somehow 'out of the question' 3) levels of twatness and ego will keep the war engaged until someone just decides frick it. 

Knowing slave coalition from previous wars, you know the aggro, you know the possibilities.
Knowing the constant drama argument since the war happened, you know the tension.

There are deep cuts. If you think this is just going to be a simple 'haha' peace out on a whim, wrong.

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1 hour ago, Khai Jäger said:

 

This entire notion is naive. This is a game, and saying that anyone is going to not abide by peace terms as they have done time and time again is ridiculous. TKR has surrendered to BK, just as KT has surrendered to TKR. This is normal game play. 

Rid your mind of such implausible notions. Not to mention, it doesn't benefit the community but rather intends to divide.

Yeah, no. That much is visible to me just from negotiating for my own peace. 

You have people who legitimately think the best way to ward off someone attacking then again is to treat them harshly now, and doing so in utter disregard of over a decade of history in nationsims proving that's not how it works.

Rational people can learn to trust or otherwise find it somehow. The irrational and the fearful and the hateful will claim to be doing that while taking action which only ensures the opposite effect.

It's a positive feedback loop, and most of both sides are trapped in that mindset right now. It's not unbreakable. Rose was feeling that way weeks back and I like to think I did my share in helping turn the ships rudder away from those rocks. 

But first you have to realize you're heading for them, and then you have to trust whoever's trying to steer the rudder that they're turning the right way. If you can't do that, it'll be paranoia and fear governing decisions of a force bipolar environment.

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