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Reducing Combat Speed


Lu Xun
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I think one thing I've pointed out is how war in this game is so antagonistic to casual players. The activity requirements are simply too high, which results in high player attrition during wartime.


One way to deal with it is to reduce the speed of war, that is to say, to increase the amount of time available for players to counter, as well as to punish players less for being semi-inactive.

 

The two ways of doing this would be as follows:

 

1. Reduce MAP generation from one every 2 hours to one every 4 hours, or some other factor. This would also decrease server load, but it'd also make the game a lot less energetic for active players. The averse effects would be that this would effectively punish raiders, as well as decrease the rate in-game in which infra  is destroyed.

 

2. Reduce the rate at which units are destroyed by non-spy ops / improvement destruction. As before, this would make it so that players have more time to counter. The primary adverse effect would be making it harder to stop raiders, as raiders can deal more damage before their military is zeroed out.

 

In both scenarios, this would require the cost of units to be increased to compensate for lower war destructiveness (the point is not to start 12 month wars), and have the adverse effect of making it harder to updeclare and making downdeclares more dangerous, as unit rebuys are more powerful. One way to deal with that is to simply halve the rebuy time, making it so that planes now take 12 days to max out, soldiers take 6 days, and so on. Alternatively, for a third option, soldier, tank, aircraft, and ship maxes could be further increased, but this would make the problems of downdeclares even more irritating, as cities and infra now comprise smaller score components of the game.

 

Still, slowing down the pace of war would have many benefits in that the power of the blitz would be much reduced and that players and alliances would have more time to react to a preemptive strike. It would help reduce the tyranny of the offensive and create more tactical combat that's focused more on counters and deployments instead of simply who gets the better overwhelming blitz.

Edited by Inst
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I actually agree that the game has a pacing issue. During peacetime one really doesn't need to log in very often, but during wartime multiple daily logins are needed to be effective. I would imagine the sudden change of game pace is jarring for most players participating in their first war, and probably challenges their notions about the time they need to commit to the game to be successful. Having said that, I am not attempting to make the case that the game pacing is the issue responsible for wartime nation losses. I will simply say that the irregular game pace can't be great for retaining the interest of casual players with limited day to day availability.

I'd also like to make a few suggestions that would help slow down wars while being simple modifications to the existing game mechanics:

  1. Start wars without MAPs. This also reduces the attacker blitz advantage which IMO is ridiculous. This could make wars more interesting as strategy and tactics become more important for wrestling control over opponents than simply hitting them hard and fast with numbers at turn/day change. Don't forget the attacker still has the advantage of selecting their targets along with any score manipulation they can pull off to down/up declare as they wish, so this wouldn't be robbing them of all their fun as the aggressor.
  2. Increase the MAPs required to perform each of the war actions. Combined with the above, and say adding 2 MAPs to the cost of each attack, this means the first attacks in a war (ground battle) would at soonest occur about 8 hours and 1 minute after a war declared immediately prior a turn change. This actually gives defenders reasonable time to log in and organise at the individual level (militarisation) and alliance level (counters) instead of all the important action happening while you're busy sleeping. It may even distribute the load on the server better as it's no longer particularly advantageous to declare specifically prior to a turn change.
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Starting wars without MAPs doesn't need to be an if-or, it could simply be starting wars with 2-4 or 3-5 MAPs depending on Blitzkrieg/Fortress position (old Blitzkrieg may not be so broken if it were 3-4 or 4-5).

 

One thing that has to be pointed out is that no one is still capable of the classic Mensa "I 3-countered you and blew up your planes before you could even attack" trick. These days, I mainly see 3 decs from NPO (battle groups) and counter times tend to be higher than they should be.

Of course slowing the pace of war favors alliances with high activity that can put in hits within 1 turn of attack, but these barely exist anymore.

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8 hours ago, Tiberius said:

Another idea is to make resistance match MAPs x2. So an Immense airstrike would be worth 8 resistance, Ground attack would be worth 6 etc. 

Part of the design is that attack types are so that resistance efficient attacks are often not damage efficient. Unfortunately, it's backfired to an extent with planes being rather efficient because they destroy resistance so inefficiently.

 

2 hours ago, Micchan said:

If you can't login once a day for 5 minutes why do you play this kind of games?

Zephyr put out the point quite well that the shift from "doing nothing" activity to wartime multiple log-ins is bad for player activity and retention.

13 hours ago, MonkeyDLegend said:

I think the opposite, the game is to slow. 1turn every 60 mins!

The original idea I was thinking was 50% damage speed, 4x unit cost, which would have made combat more kinetic. But limiting the game to activity hounds and no-lifers isn't healthy.

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9 hours ago, Mandystalin said:

Wars are already slow enough. One attack every 6-8 hours is enough

This war has gone on for what, 3 months? KECHTOG has been at war for almost 4 months by now, and if things go well they'll be at war for completely half a year. The activity requirements needed are excessive. As I've posted elsewhere, you want to make it so that, first, the game isn't so taxing on players (i.e, more time to counter, less requirement for constant activity), as well as increase the cost of warfighting so that wars end more quickly.

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Well, there are a few counter-argument

 

Firstly, long wars seem to be atypical here in PnW

 

Secondly, wars always cull numbers, whether they are short or long, presumably because people don't like watching their nations burn

 

Thirdly, a maximum of three logins a day (or 1 if you're a nuke turtle) is not excessive, by any stretch of the imagination 

 

Fourthly, imagine how many new players will quit when they declare a war, only to be told that they can't actually launch any attacks for another 6 hours. How dull would that war be?

 

Fifthly, most wars are raids. In and out quick to grab resources. It has become a fairly core part of the game, so why make that harder to do?

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1 hour ago, Inst said:

This war has gone on for what, 3 months? KECHTOG has been at war for almost 4 months by now, and if things go well they'll be at war for completely half a year. The activity requirements needed are excessive. As I've posted elsewhere, you want to make it so that, first, the game isn't so taxing on players (i.e, more time to counter, less requirement for constant activity), as well as increase the cost of warfighting so that wars end more quickly.

Uhm. So, if we make wars slower, this war is going to last 9 months, at the bare minimum?

Twelve if we're lucky?

I don't see your point. Let's make a slow aspect of this game, even slower. Why do we need 6 month wars at our current snail pace, when we can have thirteen month wars at an even slower pace. 

 

The cost of war would barely take a hit. Losses will be slow, and the less attacks you get off, the more infrastructure your opponents will have. With that infrastructure they can continue to be making resources and war stuff. They aren't forced to switch to a military build for a few days because they won't have to deal with the loss infra. That means that war is going to last even longer because we're going to have way more resources to keep fighting them. It will also be slower to progress wars.

On 9/14/2019 at 2:17 AM, Zephyr said:
  1. Start wars without MAPs. This also reduces the attacker blitz advantage which IMO is ridiculous. This could make wars more interesting as strategy and tactics become more important for wrestling control over opponents than simply hitting them hard and fast with numbers at turn/day change. Don't forget the attacker still has the advantage of selecting their targets along with any score manipulation they can pull off to down/up declare as they wish, so this wouldn't be robbing them of all their fun as the aggressor.
  2. Increase the MAPs required to perform each of the war actions. Combined with the above, and say adding 2 MAPs to the cost of each attack, this means the first attacks in a war (ground battle) would at soonest occur about 8 hours and 1 minute after a war declared immediately prior a turn change. This actually gives defenders reasonable time to log in and organise at the individual level (militarisation) and alliance level (counters) instead of all the important action happening while you're busy sleeping. It may even distribute the load on the server better as it's no longer particularly advantageous to declare specifically prior to a turn change.

1. What the hell is wrong with you? Why declare a war when you will have no advantage. Numbers will become the end-all be all in wars because there's going to be literally nothing else that could decide it. Who needs strategy when you have four bloody turns to counter. The attackers will only be able to down-declare so much, or up-declare so much. Double buying after update would do literally nothing as you couldn't get an attack off. It will only increase your score for other people to hit you.

"But Citrusss. Think of the players. Think about how easy wars will become if this happens."
Well, war would be really easy. I will admit that. You won't need to be active, at all, and you can create a horde of players and control the game. You will worsen the issue that we already have, and the results? The longest-running players will quit after the first year-long war. The players who create new strategy's will become useless because strategy won't need to exist, when all your opponent has to do is log-in once a day and airstrike your planes. 

 

2. What, in God's name, is wrong with you? Not only are you slowing down the start of war, you want to give the defender even more time to respond. So, instead of three turns (six hours) to launch an attack (at the minimum) you want the defender to have ten hours to defend against an attack. 

This is the way that BK and NPO takes over the game. You can declare a war, be unable to attack, and instantly be slotted before you even got to land an attack. You wouldn't be able to play the game without begging to NPO for bloody mercy. I don't know what pit of hell your idea came from, but I can't express how much distaste I hold for it.

Take this for example, I as a city seventeen nation, could go and declare on Bob, a c13. I would have to wait six turns to launch an airstrike. In that time, Bob's alliance, has put three city twenties on me (all within the second turn of declaration). So, I get to airstrike Bob once, before my planes get torn to literal shreds. That's not something I would particularly enjoy. It would take six days to rebuild those planes, and I would be sat on for fifty-eight turns, unable to do anything.

That doesn't seem like a fun game. Log-in, declare war, get zeroed, wait 58 turns, rinse and repeat. That's not a war system, that's a system of control.

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1 minute ago, CitrusK said:

Uhm. So, if we make wars slower, this war is going to last 9 months, at the bare minimum?

Twelve if we're lucky?

I don't see your point. Let's make a slow aspect of this game, even slower. Why do we need 6 month wars at our current snail pace, when we can have thirteen month wars at an even slower pace. 

 

The cost of war would barely take a hit. Losses will be slow, and the less attacks you get off, the more infrastructure your opponents will have. With that infrastructure they can continue to be making resources and war stuff. They aren't forced to switch to a military build for a few days because they won't have to deal with the loss infra. That means that war is going to last even longer because we're going to have way more resources to keep fighting them. It will also be slower to progress wars.

1. What the hell is wrong with you? Why declare a war when you will have no advantage. Numbers will become the end-all be all in wars because there's going to be literally nothing else that could decide it. Who needs strategy when you have four bloody turns to counter. The attackers will only be able to down-declare so much, or up-declare so much. Double buying after update would do literally nothing as you couldn't get an attack off. It will only increase your score for other people to hit you.

"But Citrusss. Think of the players. Think about how easy wars will become if this happens."
Well, war would be really easy. I will admit that. You won't need to be active, at all, and you can create a horde of players and control the game. You will worsen the issue that we already have, and the results? The longest-running players will quit after the first year-long war. The players who create new strategy's will become useless because strategy won't need to exist, when all your opponent has to do is log-in once a day and airstrike your planes. 

 

2. What, in God's name, is wrong with you? Not only are you slowing down the start of war, you want to give the defender even more time to respond. So, instead of three turns (six hours) to launch an attack (at the minimum) you want the defender to have ten hours to defend against an attack. 

This is the way that BK and NPO takes over the game. You can declare a war, be unable to attack, and instantly be slotted before you even got to land an attack. You wouldn't be able to play the game without begging to NPO for bloody mercy. I don't know what pit of hell your idea came from, but I can't express how much distaste I hold for it.

Take this for example, I as a city seventeen nation, could go and declare on Bob, a c13. I would have to wait six turns to launch an airstrike. In that time, Bob's alliance, has put three city twenties on me (all within the second turn of declaration). So, I get to airstrike Bob once, before my planes get torn to literal shreds. That's not something I would particularly enjoy. It would take six days to rebuild those planes, and I would be sat on for fifty-eight turns, unable to do anything.

That doesn't seem like a fun game. Log-in, declare war, get zeroed, wait 58 turns, rinse and repeat. That's not a war system, that's a system of control.

Wars are slow because of cost, my proposal is to increase war cost while decreasing war activity requirements at the same time. This war could have ended when either or both KERCHTOG and BKNPO were economically exhausted. But that's not happening.

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1 minute ago, Inst said:

Wars are slow because of cost, my proposal is to increase war cost while decreasing war activity requirements at the same time. This war could have ended when either or both KERCHTOG and BKNPO were economically exhausted. But that's not happening.

 

On 9/14/2019 at 12:54 AM, Inst said:

1. Reduce MAP generation from one every 2 hours to one every 4 hours, or some other factor. This would also decrease server load, but it'd also make the game a lot less energetic for active players. The averse effects would be that this would effectively punish raiders, as well as decrease the rate in-game in which infra  is destroyed.

 

(Decrease the rate in which infra is destroyed. Very economically exhausting.)

On 9/14/2019 at 12:54 AM, Inst said:

2. Reduce the rate at which units are destroyed by non-spy ops / improvement destruction. As before, this would make it so that players have more time to counter. The primary adverse effect would be making it harder to stop raiders, as raiders can deal more damage before their military is zeroed out.

 

(Decrease the rate in which military is destroyed. Very, very economically exhausting.)

On 9/14/2019 at 12:54 AM, Inst said:

In both scenarios, this would require the cost of units to be increased to compensate for lower war destructiveness (the point is not to start 12 month wars), and have the adverse effect of making it harder to updeclare and making downdeclares more dangerous, as unit rebuys are more powerful. One way to deal with that is to simply halve the rebuy time, making it so that planes now take 12 days to max out, soldiers take 6 days, and so on. Alternatively, for a third option, soldier, tank, aircraft, and ship maxes could be further increased, but this would make the problems of downdeclares even more irritating, as cities and infra now comprise smaller score components of the game.

 

(Alright. Increase the time it takes to create military. People can be sat on, and create zero military, which is very economically exhausting.)

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As you can see, I've offered proposals for discussion, but nothing particularly definite. There's various options available, from Zephyr's "let's reduce starting MAP" to the "let's reduce MAP accumulation rate" to "let's reduce unit damage rate". Obviously, all of these ideas have their flaws, but they can be patched, i.e, with the unit damage rate, what I'd prefer, I'm suggesting that unit costs are also increased to compensate. Infra costs and loot yields aren't touched, so the amount of infra being destroyed remains the same and the loot being gained also remains the same.

 

One radical option I was proposing but not seriously considering would be to halve unit destruction rates, but also quadruple unit costs, i.e, war would become extremely expensive, the opening stages of a war (where it's really contested and interesting) would become quite prolonged, but wars would also end faster.

 

@CitrusK I suggest you consider thinking over the content in this thread before making criticism. Empyrea has lost 50% of its members. You could say that's just weeding out the weak, but it's not necessarily good for the game.

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1 hour ago, Inst said:

image.thumb.png.2944c7a9d5905b8f526c99ddcf5ad9d3.png

Well another way at looking at this, is it take to long to get anything done. Warfare, the part of the game that require the biggest active involvment from the player, therefor the best tool to keep people engaged is to lower the time between MAP, so people have more to do.

Edited by Zim

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Honestly though slowing the game down more won't solve the problem, the problem is this kind of game is only interesting to a very specific kind of nerd.  Most inactive people are permanently inactive, on that they tried the game, didn't like it and never logged back in.  The remaining inactive population are people who are no longer interested but have fallen victim to the sunk cost fallacy, so they keep their nations around on life support until they are forced to choose abandonment or obliteration via war, at which time they finally quit

Edited by Ogaden
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7 hours ago, Inst said:

As you can see, I've offered proposals for discussion, but nothing particularly definite. There's various options available, from Zephyr's "let's reduce starting MAP" to the "let's reduce MAP accumulation rate" to "let's reduce unit damage rate". Obviously, all of these ideas have their flaws, but they can be patched, i.e, with the unit damage rate, what I'd prefer, I'm suggesting that unit costs are also increased to compensate. Infra costs and loot yields aren't touched, so the amount of infra being destroyed remains the same and the loot being gained also remains the same.

 

One radical option I was proposing but not seriously considering would be to halve unit destruction rates, but also quadruple unit costs, i.e, war would become extremely expensive, the opening stages of a war (where it's really contested and interesting) would become quite prolonged, but wars would also end faster.

 

@CitrusK I suggest you consider thinking over the content in this thread before making criticism. Empyrea has lost 50% of its members. You could say that's just weeding out the weak, but it's not necessarily good for the game.

1. War's are slow. You look at a long war, and instead of trying to speed up the war process (i.e. Increase unit destruction, loot gained, turn time, war length (cause sitting on someone for 50+ turns is ridiculous), you want to make every war last longer.

You want to slow town turn time, you want to decrease the rate units are destroyed, but you want to speed up wars by increasing the costs? We shouldn't slow down certain aspects of the game (in an already slow-paced game) just to create more cost. 

It would be better if we increased the munitions/gasoline usage during war time (cause those two resources have always had notably low resource cost). We could decrease the time of war from 60 turns to 40 turns. Doing so would increase the munitions and gasoline used, it'd be harder to sit on someone (and keep them out of the war), it'd be harder to keep someone out of the war. It would make it harder for you to declare, get countered, and do nothing. 

 

I would never say that losing membership is "weeding" out the weak. I know a lot of Empyrea's membership, I've been talking to them for ages. We all talk to each other, and we all have a blast doing it. But... 

 

Your last point is odd. You point out that we've lost 50% of our membership, but you don't say why we would lose such a thing. Do you think, perhaps, the war system is too slow?

I mean, who knows? Why would experienced players, who have been in dozens of wars, be so keen on leaving? Why do we keep losing the top city-nations of Grumpy and such? What's going on? Is it a conspiracy?

 

Or... Are they getting bored of how slow the game currently is? Are they getting bored of how incredibly dull the game has become? I mean, look at BK's side right now, they've lost more players than Empyrea, and most of Kerchtog combined, but they hide it away under their huge numbers. They dig the ditch, call them weak, and move on with their day. Members of BK side are getting sick of how the current wars work. I mean, look at Elijah. He called them out, and they waited for him to make a mistake. The moment that Elijah made a mistake, they pounced. It's not that Yakuza's membership was weak either.

It doesn't matter what side you're on. If you are in a war, being sat on, and unable to do anything, you will be bored. Why play a boring game when you have better things to do with your life?

We should decrease the amount of time that a single player can be sat on, and find the balance of war.

The current war system is for the "once a day log-in people." your idea makes the game for the "I mean, I can log in tomorrow" type of people.

(Would have responded earlier, wifi went down).

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22 minutes ago, Marlboro lalo said:

Wars are so slow. They should be like test. 1 point every half an hour; or if you're conservative, monkey's suggestion of 1hr is also okay

every 30 mins is too fast, 8h of sleep and ur nation is rekt ?

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- War length to 3 days

- Unit resistance damage = MAPs x 2 (i.e Ground = 6 IT, 4 Mod, 2 Pyrrhic)

- Increase Gas and Munitions usage per attack x 2

Result = Doubles war cost minimum and allows you to fight the whole length of the war. 

Edited by Tiberius
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Back in test server, turns really are one every 30 minutes. Thing is, that means you absolutely, positively cannot sleep for more than 3 hours in a row or you risk losing out on potential action points. I did that for a month straight in the 3rd tournament... and I actually hurt myself doing it. People really DO die of fatigue-induced heart failure in games that require too much activity. For example, back in early WoW people had to literally play 24/7 in order to get the best PvP achievements and titles, and while the smarter players had a team that took shifts on one toon, other people went until they collapsed or in fact died.

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