Wartime updates

[Raphael]

How did I know the people actively trying to kill the game would complain about new updates in long-form posts?

Shocker. @Alex please keep pushing updates, war or otherwise. Every other game that exists simply looks upon updates as "how does this affect the meta" and adapts to it. Don't pander to people's political agendas by delaying your own vision.

[Roquentin]

45 minutes ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:

How did I know the people actively trying to kill the game would complain about new updates in long-form posts?

Shocker. @Alex please keep pushing updates, war or otherwise. Every other game that exists simply looks upon updates as "how does this affect the meta" and adapts to it. Don't pander to people's political agendas by delaying your own vision.

Not sure how we're trying to kill the game. If the game = group of people who have an expectation of certain levels of infrastructure and they have to be met, then maybe. Actual updates would be welcome but this is just adding projects that benefit people with the most money/resources to spend. The idea is they will be resource sinks which can sometimes be well-intentioned but the implementation is odd. They aren't sinks where they're needed since it's a drop in the bucket for the people who have the means to buy them. The purchase costs should vary by how many cities you have. The metagame over the past 4 years has gravitated to a mentality where bigger is inherently better and this feeds into that mentalit. While there were outliers before Silent, it wasn't an encouraged model.

 

  

3 hours ago, Menhera said:

I don't think that is too much of a problem. The individual alliances already teach the players how to play the game aside from the basics. Many only do the tutorial for the 100'000$ in-game bonus. And i also believe since that won't be the last update, that a new one will come that benefits younger nations more. 

 

Most players don't join established alliances. Most established alliances don't want to feed all the newer players. Most alliances having limited funds to spend per new player don't want to take chances on someone who will leave to make their own alliance which is the model promoted. The tutorial doesn't teach you how to play the game properly and it requires using external mediums and many players are instantly turned off. The game itself needs increased appeal to work for casual mobile users rather than relying on offsites.

Edited February 3, 2020 by Roquentin

[Viselli]

12 hours ago, Epi said:

The updates aren't that harsh either. There's still 40mil Aluminium in the game, down from 90mil at the start of the war. 

The next space project tho... Didn't that buff your chances of winning a battle by 1% stacking 24x per alliance... Pretty insane change. 

And a spy project... This one I don't remember much. I think it increased the effectiveness, but not the chance of success. 

Just to clarify it takes 4 nation's with the project to get a 1% buff to all attacks and it caps at 24 projects per alliance. 24 projects give the alliance 5% to all attacks

[Syrachime]

I have no issues with the update.  This war has been drug out for almost 8 months and due to the toxic politics of it, the only conceivable end seems to be when banks run dry.  Considering that reality, I can understand why the change was implemented.  Both sides are affected, so it's a fair implementation.  If your complaint is that it happened DURING a war, maybe you shouldn't be fighting a war that pushes into the record books.  The only thing worse than the fact this war has been drug out so long is the stupid reasons why we continue to fight it.

[Emperor Ice]

In my humble opinion, this current update doesn't impact the war too greatly. Given the power of planes, increasing their cost is reasonable (and I'm in NPO). I hope that Alex keeps improving P&W, balancing things that need balance, fixing bugs, etc.

Pushing updates at war that significantly alter the warring system seems like a tricky topic to me though. The admin of a game should attempt to be unbiased in every respect or risk alienating a large player base (likely reducing the revenue he earns, and reducing player count). Issues of corruption among administrators of a game are among the most potent for killing a game, so it seems important to maintain neutrality. The following scenarios seem likely to come up as this war continues (I sure hope it continues for a couple months more, minimum)

• If Alex were to update the war system in a way that favored one coalition and if Alex stated that his goals were to try and level the playing field between the two coalitions, I'd hope that both sides could come to the consensus that this game would be forever changed for the worse. That type of situation seems very unlikely because Alex isn't likely to personally intervene in favor of a coalition - that'd be blatant favoritism and in my opinion: cheating.
• If Alex were to update the war system to balance military units in a way that varies the current meta without purposely or expressedly favoring one particular coalition, I'd hope that both sides could come to the consensus that this game would be changed for the better. This is predicated on Alex providing notice of these changes and making them playable on the test server, as he has in the past.
• If Alex introduces non-war changes such as making peace-time more interesting (ie. new improvements or projects), I hope everyone would be very pleased.

tl;dr: My opinion is that wartime updates to the game aren't problematic unless they are meant to change the outcome of the war. Admins should be neutral or risk destroying their game.

[Hodor]

14 hours ago, Roquentin said:

 If the desire was to normalize shorter wars, objective goals or some benefit to both parties would be different. Wars are mostly fueled by vendettas and personal enmity, so we can't really find any basis for material regulation to mean much as it simply benefits those better off. It just means whoever gets frustrated first or is poorer will be gone. This is mainly why I was saying there would have to be  a way to encourage cooperation and friendly competition between factions where people can excel in different metrics rather than enmity, which is currently encouraged by the way the system works as is. "I get to stay on top and keep these guys poor and I don't want them to ever be well off so we'll hit them when the time comes." The system as it stands encourages crippling opponents economically by hitting when vulnerable.

Some of them would be a must buy but the issue is that will just hurt people who have less stuff as is, and that's an unfortunate effect that adding new projects has is it doesn't really hurt people who have a lot.

Do you have a proposal for a way for this to work? This would be very very promising if possible.

[Charles Bolivar]

8 hours ago, namukara said:

I'll give you a 1v1, see who can kill our infra the quickest.

What if I sell all of mine first? That's the general idea isn't it? 

Edited February 3, 2020 by Charles the Tyrant

[Buorhann]

10 hours ago, Miller said:

Twiddle our thumbs til the next global between the same people. 

Tried to change that to something else, but nope.  Denied.

[Miller]

28 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

Tried to change that to something else, but nope.  Denied.

Oh I know. No matter how hard we try, we’ll never overcome paranoia from one and obsession from the other. Tis what is...

Edited February 3, 2020 by Miller

[durmij]

What's really interesting is the fact that the update essentially gave people who had planes 40% more aluminum, at least in regards to plane cost. Effectively adding billions of dollars in value to the winning side and making the rebuild for the losers that much more expensive. And considering how the aluminum market has been fairing already,

[Charles Bolivar]

22 hours ago, Roquentin said:

The changes are problematic because 1. there was no tutorial overhaul/no UI overhaul/etc. The changes that only benefit established players were implemented. The model of discouraging endless growth that Statekraft would have had is missed here. 2. The issue is even if it's intentionally to affect things; there's just no basis as there is no alliance war mechanism in the game. Prefontaine said something along the lines of him wanting shorter wars, but there's no basis for doing it via material costs. The premise has also been that short wars are good for retention and this has never been the case as the losing sides earlier on would hemmorhage players regardless of war length, because losing a war isn't fun especially when you guaranteed to be at a competitive disadvantage, so shorter wars only benefit people who win or have greater reserves as they can increase the gap. If the desire was to normalize shorter wars, objective goals or some benefit to both parties would be different. Wars are mostly fueled by vendettas and personal enmity, so we can't really find any basis for material regulation to mean much as it simply benefits those better off. It just means whoever gets frustrated first or is poorer will be gone. This is mainly why I was saying there would have to be  a way to encourage cooperation and friendly competition between factions where people can excel in different metrics rather than enmity, which is currently encouraged by the way the system works as is. "I get to stay on top and keep these guys poor and I don't want them to ever be well off so we'll hit them when the time comes." The system as it stands encourages crippling opponents economically by hitting when vulnerable.

Some of them would be a must buy but the issue is that will just hurt people who have less stuff as is, and that's an unfortunate effect that adding new projects has is it doesn't really hurt people who have a lot.

You have a point. Revenue and resources raised basically have no purpose other than for war. Having other uses for revenue and resources would be a good thing I reckon.