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Game Development Discussion: New Players


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Game Development Discussion: New Players  

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  1. 1. (READ POST BELOW) Extended new player revenue bonus

    • 100% bonus for C10 and below, decreasing by 10% from C11 to C20 (C11 will have 90%, C20 will have 0%)
    • 100% bonus for C10 and below, decreasing by 20% from C11 to C15 (C11 will have 80%, C15 will have 0%)
    • 100% bonus for C1, decreasing by 5% from C2 to C20 (C2 will have 95%, C20 will have 5%)
    • 200% bonus for C1, decreasing by 10% from C2 to C20 (C2 will have 190%, C20 will have 10%)
    • 200% bonus for C10 and below, decreasing by 20% from C11 to C20 (C11 will have 180%, C20 will have 0%)
    • 200% bonus for C10 and below, decreasing by 40% from C11 to C20 (C11 will have 160%, C15 will have 0%)
    • Something else, put a comment below!
    • No change (can't move this to the top sorry)
  2. 2. (READ POST BELOW) Increased login bonus - max bonus

    • 500k (no change)
    • 3mil
    • 5mil
    • Something else, put a comment below!
  3. 3. (READ POST BELOW) Increased login bonus - if max bonus is increased, new player bonus is removed

    • Yes it should be removed
    • No it should not be removed
  4. 4. (READ POST BELOW) Increased login bonus - max daily increase

  5. 5. (READ POST BELOW) Increased login bonus - max new player bonus

    • Same as everyone else
    • 2x (no change)
    • 3x
    • Something else, put a comment below!
  6. 6. (READ POST BELOW) Raiding and inactive nations - should it happen

    • Nations should be raidable by anyone when inactive
    • Score ranges should still apply when a nation is inactive (no change)
    • Something else, put a comment below!
  7. 7. (READ POST BELOW) Raiding and inactive nations - considered inactive

  8. 8. Which came first?

  9. 9. (READ POST BELOW) Do you like this style of forum posts



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If you make the bonus decrease by 10% of the bonus per city after 10, then building new cities effectively makes your revenue not move, and I don't think that's a good thing.

Instead, the game should further incentivize raiding.

If you really want new nations to catch up, you could tweak the city cost formula instead.

I'm no math genius, but here's propositions, if anything.

 

Here's the current formula

50000*(x-1)^3+150000*x+75000

Under this formula, going from c1 to c10 costs $72,225,000, and c10 to c20 costs $1,419,750,000.

 

Here's a proposed revised formula between cities 1 and 19 (included)

(10000+x*2000)*(x-1)^3+150000*x+75000

Under this revised formula, going from c1 to c10 would cost $40,521,000, and c10 to c20 would cost $1,204,986,000.

After c20, the cost would revert to the current city formula instead.

For maximum ease of viewing, refer to this handy-dandy chart. (Red is current formula, green is proposed new formula)

image.thumb.png.c05c69e930df1c124c49a2123ddfaa0b.png

Crucially, you may notice that the city cost eventually catches up with the current formula, but getting the earlier cities is cheaper, and helps push nations to the mid-tier quicker.

 

Now, a few things should be taken into consideration with this new formula. Not least of which being, how does this interface with the urban planning projects?

 

Let's look at Urban Planning first ($50,000,000 discount per city, starting at c11).

With this new formula, c12 would cost $33,725,000, or $32,038,750 with the Manifest Destiny domestic policy (or $31,195,625 with Government Support Agency).

And now, Advanced Urban Planning ($100,000,000 discount per city, starting at c16).

With this new formula, c17 would cost $144,225,000, or $137,013,750 with the Manifest Destiny domestic policy (or $133,408,125 with Government Support Agency) .

 

We notice that in both cases, the discount is high enough that cities would hit a negative cost, which is not desirable.

What I can propose to counter that is a minimum city unmodified cost of $225,000, or $213,750 with Manifest Destiny (or $208,125 with Government Support Agency), which is the cost of c2.

 

Using Domestic Policy (boosted by Government Support Agency) and both Urban Planning projects the moment they become available, the minimum cost of getting to c20 would become $514,593,400, as opposed to the approximately $609,876,250 (Look, I did a lot of math, let me be lazy and just use the wiki's number and not recalculate for the 7.5% discount provided by GSA this time) that it does now.

It would reduce the cost of going from c1 to c20 by 16%.

 

Of course, that's only one proposed formula, it can be tweaked further, or differently if the idea is close to your heart.

 

Anyway, enough math, more coffee. 

Edited by Exalts
Grammar is important.
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14 hours ago, Malinok said:

The idea is to encourage them to join an alliance. 

The idea is to encourage them to engage and feel involved. We do not want them to join an alliance that gives them strict instructions on how to play the game, kicking or defunding them for non-compliance, while at the same time not informing them of the Discord/community discussions and memes/jokes that make up the bulk of the game. That's why most new players quit, they realize (or worse, they never are told) that unless they are engaged in the Discord channels, OWF, or they are in on all the memes/jokes there is nothing more to this game than sitting there like Stanley pushing the buttons his alliance leader tells him to push.

Edited by J Kell
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 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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Just like to echo Village's sentiment that we're quite appreciative of the feedback. There are defs some issues brought up that neither myself or him thought of. We have a bit of a list going atm on what to address and will tinker with the proposal a little further.

Please keep any other feedback coming that has not already been mentioned though.

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[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

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9 hours ago, Zevari said:

Failure to log in = 10% to 30% bonus loss

That's an interesting idea, I think that'd be really interesting. Thanks for the feedback!

9 hours ago, Zevari said:

E.g Starting from C1 you get a 100%/200% down/up declare bonus range, for each city after that 5/10% is removed from that bonus.

 

Interesting idea as well, we're looking at some very similar stuff right now to limit the range/loot and I'll make sure this one gets brought up, thanks for your feedback!

7 hours ago, Potayto said:

I believe instead of removing war range for inactive people would be bad for people staying in lower city tiers to raid, but relaxing the range would be better, something like 0.5x - 2x or 3x ( promote updeclares )

Thank you for your feedback! We're looking at some ideas regarding this right now, I'll make sure this one ends up in the discussion as well!

2 hours ago, Exalts said:

If you really want new nations to catch up, you could tweak the city cost formula instead.

Thank you so much Exalts, that's a really good idea, and thank you for the formulas! I'll make sure this gets brought up as well.

 

17 minutes ago, J Kell said:

This idea is to encourage them to engage and feel involved. We do not want them to join an alliance that gives them strict instructions on how to play the game, kicking or defunding them for non-compliance, while at the same time not informing them of the Discord/community discussions and memes/jokes that make up the bulk of the game. That's why most new players quit, they realize that unless they are engaged in the Discord channels, OWF, or they are in on all the memes/jokes there is nothing more to this game than sitting there like Stanley pushing the buttons his alliance leader tells him to push.

Yes! The goal is to make the game a little more engaging and encourage people to get more attached to their nation and enjoy playing the game rather than being Stanley pushing buttons as he's told to. The new tutorial and PWPedia work are hopefully going to help new nations engage with Discord and the community by informing them that it exists and how the game and community works.

5 minutes ago, Keegoz said:

Just like to echo Village's sentiment that we're quite appreciative of the feedback. There are defs some issues brought up that neither myself or him thought of. We have a bit of a list going atm on what to address and will tinker with the proposal a little further.

Please keep any other feedback coming that has not already been mentioned though.

Yes! Thank you guys SO SO SO MUCH! I super appreciate it all. I've got a long list of other ideas and concerns and have had some great discussions with people about how to refine the ideas. Thank you all!!!!!!!!!

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It may not be appropriate for this thread; but other ideas for helping new player retention & growth should be considered too so this isn't done in a vacuum. The meta has changed to raiding for new nations (c3 raid for c10-15 and urban planning). The game becomes log in everyday, raid 4 inactive targets, or find someone who made a mistake (and at this size they're all new players), grind until you have the cash. That's nothing like what the game is played as you're larger, or how it should be played to encourage politics & community engagement. Players should not be encouraged to over forest the same pool of inactive fish, or poor new players, in a barrel to play properly. This only means we need new nations just to feed the few that stick around, and that people's mistakes are punished to the point where they may be discouraged from continuing entirely. War should the way politics are conducted. It should not necessarily be monetarily profitable. I believe more focus in wars should be on the damage and less on the profits.

17 hours ago, Zevari said:

2. Increased login bonus.
Going to further break this into two sections, newbie login bonus and general login bonus

Newbies:
Personally I think a 2x bonus for newbies works quite well, it gives a nice revenue boost and gives incentives for them to log in for an extended period of time, ideally it should be set up (in my opinion) so that new players take AT MOST 30 days of consistent login to reach the max bonus, but at minimum 10-15 days. This makes it more rewarding for them to actively login and build up a routine for playing the game. (this is assuming the new player bonus last 60 days)

All:
For the general bonus I think an increased amount would be interesting, however in my opinion the way it works should be something like this:
Max bonus = 3mil
Your bonus increase = 50k
Failure to log in = 10% to 30% bonus loss

E.g each day I log in I get 50k closer to the max bonus, taking 60 days to reach it (for newbies they would get 100k each day), if I was at 1mil and missed a log in I would lose 30% effectively resetting me to zero. (30% of the max which would be ~1mil removed).
If I had hit the max bonus of 3mil I would only drop to 2mil on the first day I missed my login, 1mil on the second missed day and lose the entirety on the third. If the

reduction was a lower percentage like 25% it would take 4 days to compleletly lose a max log-in bonus. This allows people a little bit of lee-way for missing a login while still harshly punishing them.

I want to echo how much I like this suggestion: Giving players more wiggle room in missing a login. We should use these mechanics to encourage players to be active, as well as to encourage them to grow & have fun. Expecting people to play daily in a persistent MMO with a large punishment for missing a day hurts retention and makes the game too much of a chore to keep up with. The reduction should be a simple "# of days" reduction though. If the increase is exponential the decrease could be the same, but I think keeping the mental math as simple as possible helps everyone.

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4 hours ago, KiWilliam said:

It may not be appropriate for this thread; but other ideas for helping new player retention & growth should be considered too so this isn't done in a vacuum. The meta has changed to raiding for new nations (c3 raid for c10-15 and urban planning). The game becomes log in everyday, raid 4 inactive targets, or find someone who made a mistake (and at this size they're all new players), grind until you have the cash. That's nothing like what the game is played as you're larger, or how it should be played to encourage politics & community engagement. Players should not be encouraged to over forest the same pool of inactive fish, or poor new players, in a barrel to play properly. This only means we need new nations just to feed the few that stick around, and that people's mistakes are punished to the point where they may be discouraged from continuing entirely. War should the way politics are conducted. It should not necessarily be monetarily profitable. I believe more focus in wars should be on the damage and less on the profits.

I want to echo how much I like this suggestion: Giving players more wiggle room in missing a login. We should use these mechanics to encourage players to be active, as well as to encourage them to grow & have fun. Expecting people to play daily in a persistent MMO with a large punishment for missing a day hurts retention and makes the game too much of a chore to keep up with. The reduction should be a simple "# of days" reduction though. If the increase is exponential the decrease could be the same, but I think keeping the mental math as simple as possible helps everyone.

Thank you for the feedback! I'll make sure it gets brought up and discussed. I definitely think the login bonus should be much more forgiving and I'm hopeful that we can make that happen!

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10 hours ago, KiWilliam said:

It may not be appropriate for this thread; but other ideas for helping new player retention & growth should be considered too so this isn't done in a vacuum... 

The game becomes log in everyday, raid 4 inactive targets, or find someone who made a mistake (and at this size they're all new players), grind until you have the cash.

War should the way politics are conducted. It should not necessarily be monetarily profitable. I believe more focus in wars should be on the damage and less on the profits.
Edited to condense my post

That's a lot of my mentality when approaching stuff like this, I personally believe anything that increases the general community activity and creates good/new reasons for conflicts is extremely important. A trend a lot of my suggestions have is some mechanic that allows nations to have points of conflict on the individual through to the collective levels. Plus for the sake of user retention having punishments that are harsh but allow for some leeway is important, I know a lot of people easily get burnt out from trying to maintain a daily log-in, let alone maximising reward ads, baseball etc. Allowing people to spend a little less time in the game on a daily basis will improve the overall lifespan of the game, most of it is on discord anyway so keeping them in these servers and communities is important.

The only thing here I don't agree with is the focus in wars, personally I see profit as an extremely acceptable form of politics considering the environment we are in where war reps are extremely hated. This is kind of a distinction between alliance level politics and individual as well though, as a nation I want to go to war and bring back tangible results, as an alliance I want to ensure we meet our objectives (typically in the CB). It's individual vs collective.
 

19 hours ago, Village said:

Interesting idea as well, we're looking at some very similar stuff right now to limit the range/loot and I'll make sure this one gets brought up, thanks for your feedback!

Odds are you guys already saw this but I wanted to shamelessly plug this suggestion anyway. It isn't amazing but I feel like it got a little buried under war declarations and bloc announcements when I posted it. (while it is kinda off topic it does relate back to user retention and providing more options to smaller nations/alliances which was mentioned a bit)

 

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5 hours ago, Zevari said:

Odds are you guys already saw this but I wanted to shamelessly plug this suggestion anyway. It isn't amazing but I feel like it got a little buried under war declarations and bloc announcements when I posted it. (while it is kinda off topic it does relate back to user retention and providing more options to smaller nations/alliances which was mentioned a bit)

I'm not sure if the other members have, but I definitely haven't. I don't spend nearly enough time browsing the forum for suggestions, going to go through and compile a list of the things folks have suggested soon though! (Also those are some cool ideas for color blocs, I'm going to try to open some discussion about those soon and I'll be sure to bring up your ideas!)

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How about fixing the tutorial before you touch the mechanics? It's what held me back the most when I started. Besides, raiding is essential for newbies to learn the 'war' half of the game.

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On 9/13/2022 at 4:23 PM, Marika said:

As Hwan mentioned, I don't think the economy needs more free cash injections for older players. We just need more catchups.

 

Another useful thing would be to somehow get the city cost reducing projects into the hands of newer players faster/cheaper.

While I do believe cash injection to be a useful thing for new members and, I believe it'd be a good way to play catchup I also, completely agree with making projects more accessible.

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We should make people want to join alliances and play a bit more without making them feel forced to play all the time like  play now or get raided.

So there will always be pro and cons to idea's so it is great that you are hearing the active community out before making changes.

Edited by Nonna
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Sorry for the late responses everyone, I was away over the weekend and didn't notice! Sorry!!

On 9/15/2022 at 7:02 PM, Rughzhenhaide said:

How about fixing the tutorial before you touch the mechanics? It's what held me back the most when I started. Besides, raiding is essential for newbies to learn the 'war' half of the game.

A redo of the tutorial has been in the works for the past few months, hopefully there'll be a draft up for the community to view soon. I'm not involved in that project so I can't comment on specifics sorry.

On 9/17/2022 at 8:06 AM, Nokia Rokia said:

While I do believe cash injection to be a useful thing for new members and, I believe it'd be a good way to play catchup I also, completely agree with making projects more accessible.

 I 100% agree as well! I've got some ideas around UP/AUP/MP that I'm going to be proposing later on (would love other ideas!) and allowing people to be up to a higher city count and continue raiding also exposes them to projects earlier and gets that ball rolling.

On 9/18/2022 at 6:34 AM, Nonna said:

We should make people want to join alliances and play a bit more without making them feel forced to play all the time like  play now or get raided.

Also completely agree, hopefully the aforementioned new tutorial will help drive people to alliances and I have some stuff in my dev backlog to improve that process as well.

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10 hours ago, Vanek26 said:

Decrease the cost of the UP and AUP projects - at this point every veteran player who would ever get it has already gotten it, so this would benefit new players and allow them to catch up faster. 

I wouldn't mind a slight rework of the cost. Whereby the cost of buying UP/AUP/MP in total is the same but UP/AUP are made cheaper with the bulk of the cost moving towards MP (and possibly whatever other project that comes after that).

[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

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19 hours ago, Vanek26 said:

Decrease the cost of the UP and AUP projects - at this point every veteran player who would ever get it has already gotten it, so this would benefit new players and allow them to catch up faster. 

Ignoring the impossibility of it being coded and implemented correctly without bugs. But gameplay wise, I've always wanted them to give retro active reductions on cities. So someone who built to c21 without any projects could then build all 3 (UP/AUP/MUP) and at the time of building them receive the reduction they would have gotten. e.g. at c21 building the UP would give the player (50m*10 cities) in cash. Turning them into a project that basically just converted resources into pure cash so long as you couldn't destroy it and remake it to abuse resource prices (again why I wouldn't want to see it implemented for real due to bugs). Which I thought was the original intention behind them. Now it's just a roadblock for players because it's hard to do on your own, and it becomes a necessary component of a good alliance econ differentiating between alliances. Instead of what its supposed purpose was.

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18 hours ago, KiWilliam said:

Ignoring the impossibility of it being coded and implemented correctly without bugs. But gameplay wise, I've always wanted them to give retro active reductions on cities. So someone who built to c21 without any projects could then build all 3 (UP/AUP/MUP) and at the time of building them receive the reduction they would have gotten. e.g. at c21 building the UP would give the player (50m*10 cities) in cash. Turning them into a project that basically just converted resources into pure cash so long as you couldn't destroy it and remake it to abuse resource prices (again why I wouldn't want to see it implemented for real due to bugs). Which I thought was the original intention behind them. Now it's just a roadblock for players because it's hard to do on your own, and it becomes a necessary component of a good alliance econ differentiating between alliances. Instead of what its supposed purpose was.

How wude! Jokes aside, that'd be a very easy thing to implement, without any bugs. It'd take like three minutes. Interesting idea for sure though, I'll be sure to bring it up!

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8 hours ago, Village said:

How wude! Jokes aside, that'd be a very easy thing to implement, without any bugs. It'd take like three minutes. Interesting idea for sure though, I'll be sure to bring it up!

It is no slight towards you. Thank you for opening this discussion. Regarding my project idea, I'd suggest not allowing players to sell (the) projects once they're bought. Remove any chance for funny business. I would also recommend changing project slots to be based off max infra instead of current infra. Players would never lose project slots and always retain some marker of success, or have room to change their nation's development should their situation change (I would like to see different types of projects as well, but that's outside this segue's scope).

About this style of forum post: I hope there is some larger process behind game changes. Identifying problems, examining root causes, brain storming, and logically working through those suggestions in conjunction with the current game and other changes in order to improve the game. Between coding restraints, stylistic choice, and perceived community support, we seem to circle the drain on this sore subject. My question is if the original intention of changes are reconsidered after they are implemented. My original understanding of the City Planning projects (resource sink, catch up mechanic). If the team thinks they adequately accomplished those goals. What other effects, good or bad, did they bring. If they were a net improvement to the game. If that discussion is ever had seriously, and if that same process would be applied to this same topic of the Revenue Bonus/Activity Login, new player raiding rules. What's the feedback loop for these changes?

My personal opinion, I reiterate I think the rote process of raiding inactives should be clamped down on. I'd rather see other ideas implemented to accomplish the same goals, or if we could reexamine what our goals are. Maybe an idea to give monetary rewards for certain achievements (e.g. winning so many raid or attrition wars, doing 2x damage, achieving ground+air+navy supremacy on the same target, breaking naval supremacy on another nation by fighting a *mutual* nation, winning a war without using any munitions, etc). More scenarios that players would actually come across in the game. Exploring different aspects of the game. Ideally this would be tied into any tutorial changes. And wouldn't necessarily be size based, so if a player ignores an achievement to make 5m dollars for doing something relatively minor, they could just earn it once they're a c30 if they for example never took the chance in their first year of playing to win a war with a missile. 5m is nice but spare change for a c30. Just one idea. For inactivity, if a war lasts up to 60 turns (5 days) I think activity should be based on that same number. And bonuses should step in a way so dummy's can remember the number easily. So 100k is far preferable to 50k, 75k, or 150k. If you did quarter million steps and capped at 1m (5 days to get 4 days of consecutive login) that would fit that 5 day number and be fairly easy to remember. I think everything should try to tie into other parts of the game and keep the numbers stupid simple.

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