Update Direction Thread

[Pingoinhyrule]

16 hours ago, Chima said:

Definitely the military update. Like on the test where navy actually is important other than blockading. You can remove air and ground control with navy. This would make wars a lot more close and test the better fighter. Definitely military update!!! While you're at that maybe throw in a new weapon. I dunno what it is but add a weapon. 

Definitly think that we should make military better maybe add like submarines or spaxe battles?? We already have national projects for that. I agree that we should go through the qol improvements as there are many good sugestions and just add a few more things to keep ppl engaged like another sport, daily challenges, etc

[Pingoinhyrule]

Oh yeah, also make more stuff that espionage can do and just expand the mechanics of it, currently the only way to do real damage is sabotaging misslies(add warheads too :)) andkilling spies. There should be more ways such as in dns you can use cyberoperarions to deal damage to commerce

[Sketchy]

4 hours ago, Corvidae said:

This post is my personal try-hard roadmap if I were Alex:

 

It's time to re-analyze the design philosophy of the team. By the end of April, devs need to agree on a few things:

1. Wars will no longer prevent rollouts. If that looks like rolling out mid-war, so be it. If that looks like a global forced period of peace, so be it. If you can find another solution, great. The development cycle should not lean on player wars as an excuse. Ideally this would mean establishing a release date for updates so the players can plan around it.

This would be more feasible if people didn't immediately accuse Keegoz of bias every time a change happens, yourself included.

The reason war updates don't get pushed out during war is because an update can potentially impact the outcome and advantage someone in one direction or the other.

This most recent war, the changes were tested on the test server, during a war. That seems pretty reasonable to me, and then holding back the update to be pushed onto the main server when a global conflict is over.

My only criticism would be they should definitely prepare these updates to be ready to push immediately when a conflict ends, as many cases of conflicts starting shortly after have created problems with roll outs.

Edited April 15 by Sketchy

[George Clooney]

Easy.  Fix the spying mechanics.  Too many spies get killed with a successful spy kill op.  Also, spies should be immune from attack while on Beige (the flip side perhaps being they can't be used to spy while you are on Beige). 

You can pretty much take someone down from 60 to irrelevant for the duration of a weeks long conflict and keep them there with a few attacks.

[Keegoz]

8 hours ago, Corvidae said:

This post is my personal try-hard roadmap if I were Alex:

 

It's time to re-analyze the design philosophy of the team. By the end of April, devs need to agree on a few things:

1. Wars will no longer prevent rollouts. If that looks like rolling out mid-war, so be it. If that looks like a global forced period of peace, so be it. If you can find another solution, great. The development cycle should not lean on player wars as an excuse. Ideally this would mean establishing a release date for updates so the players can plan around it.

2. Establish and stick to a pipeline: Pick an idea, work on it, send it on the coders, test it, implement it. Get a pipeline flowing. Every quarter should have an update which includes bug fixes, UI improvements, and new content for players both old and new. It doesn't have to be a massive World-of-Warcraft-esque expansion pack, but every quarter should have those three things as a minimum and never miss a release. Reliability and accountability are key pieces to growing your game instead of watching it wither away.

 

Thirdly, utilize your resources on-hand:

 

 The QoL improvements threads is still pinned to the top of the suggestions subforum. Start going through and picking some for each quarter.

 

Fourth, even though the numbers are controversial, the city cost change was long coming. It modernizes and future-proofs the game in a way that we haven't yet seen with any other mechanic. Take that philosophy forward with the bones of the game. Referral bonuses on a sliding scale, credit redemption amount on a sliding scale, get the foundations of the game all on the same page.

 

Now after that work is done, start skimming for new content ideas. Someone complained in Discord that suggestions aren't detailed enough anymore. Here are a handful of examples just from me in the past few months that got ignored. You don't need to pull them directly but perhaps they could give some inspiration:

 

 

There are a lot more in the suggestions subforum, you just have to skim through titles and see what strikes your fancy.

 

 

Again: I don't care what we do next. What we need is a reliable development cycle that can generate interest in the game, like every other modern multiplayer game does.

Wars aren't preventing rollouts but I have asked to not be involved in rollouts to avoid any side accusing me of bias. If an update comes out it is because the Devs and/or Alex deemed it was time for it to come out. Release dates would be feasible if we had a full time coder working on the game, but we do not. The game is designed and coded by people who have full time jobs and do this in their spare time. Design and development therefore happens spoaradically and that's not something we can fix.

We have largely stuck to an idea, tested it and hopefully it will now be implemented once the feedback suggestions are done. I am generally trying to add QoL updates with whatever main update we focus on as to knock a few out. The devs also sometimes do some QoL updates when they can as their own seperate updates.

I will skim ideas on the forums once an area is selected on where to focus next.

6 hours ago, KiWilliam said:

The options presented are vague. So I had to vote for "Improved community engagement, tutorials, and alliance recruitment mechanics to help new players find alliances". Emphasis mine. Improving the pipeline from idea to implementation I think is the most important thing. Right now development is a black box of sporadic lunges and jerks. Between what is discussed and comes out, your average player is shut out from the process and then has virtually zero recourse afterwards. The process should be transparent, consistent, and to scale for the proposed change. The most recent game change, the marketplace popup warning for listing a PPU 10% outside the market price. Unless there are niche technical errors with this change, I don't see in any way this harms, or would even be noticed by a normal player unless it was actively improving the game play experience for them. This change has no downsides. Seeing the idea go from conversation, solicitation of details, coding, and implementation, did more to improve my opinion on game development than anything else in the last half decade.

I want to see a process where there is a public timeline of changes rolling out in advance. Including a test (not a tournament) on the test server, tweaks made during or rerunning the test (if it's truly a test, it should not matter if you end it early or change things in the middle), and then announcement of when it's coming to main.

@Corvidae
1. Wars will no longer prevent rollouts.

Couldn't agree more. Set a week for peace/rollout 3 months in advance. Do it twice a year, stop holding up development and making things uncertain. People can't plan around uncertainties. If you change the exact time for any reason give at least 48 hours, including an in-game notification.

2. Establish and stick to a pipeline.

Couldn't agree more. Needs to be at least 3 months in advance, and there should never be a chance for people with inside information to make beneficial trades or plans to their nation or alliance member's builds.

3. Utilize your resources on-hand

Couldn't agree more. I would stress QoL changes first, and then some cosmetic/non major game play changes, done in between or instead of major game changes if they're not ready. Things like finally fixing approval rating to being a run role play mechanic rather than useless. But make it the new normal for changes to happen to the game and for feedback to matter. No one wants to speak when you're speaking into a void.

4. Take the sliding scale philosophy forward with the bones of the game (referral bonuses, credit redemption, etc).

Couldn't agree more. I'll add the time when the price changes happen should be made public as well and listed in-game. The current average city count, or any other metrics used should be public and listed in-game if they're used for formula's as well.

You can probably read above to answer a lot of your questions. 

[im317]

"The $top20Average will be calculated on the first of every month and is calculated as the mean average top 20% of all nations in alliances and also not in VM."

 

has this been done yet? it didn't happen in March and was not done at the start of April either. i was already expecting the single biggest increase to be the first but at this point its going to go from 40.82 all the way to 43+

 

on a more helpful note you need to update the reference material. there is so much info that is just not available from game links, the wiki in particular is practically useless

Edited April 16 by im317

[im317]

5 hours ago, George Clooney said:

Easy.  Fix the spying mechanics.  Too many spies get killed with a successful spy kill op.  Also, spies should be immune from attack while on Beige (the flip side perhaps being they can't be used to spy while you are on Beige). 

You can pretty much take someone down from 60 to irrelevant for the duration of a weeks long conflict and keep them there with a few attacks.

oh yeah also this. except add in an exception so nations at war with each other can always do spy ops on each other. of course i figure the odds this is added are infinitesimal

[Keegoz]

51 minutes ago, im317 said:

"The $top20Average will be calculated on the first of every month and is calculated as the mean average top 20% of all nations in alliances and also not in VM."

 

has this been done yet? it didn't happen in March and was not done at the start of April either. i was already expecting the single biggest increase to be the first but at this point its going to go from 40.82 all the way to 43+

 

on a more helpful note you need to update the reference material. there is so much info that is just not available from game links, the wiki in particular is practically useless

Afaik it should happen for May. The devs are aware it hasn't updated.

[Sinisa Vuco]

We could make defense pacts avilable to nations , and we could make  more types of alliances like for example europe union , they don't get involved with who we are in defense pact or etc............ If you do a fu***ng button  update after this topic im going to nuke myself from contract pirate nation.

Edited April 16 by Sinisa Vuco

[whiskerz]

Add a third or fourth offensive spy operation. Add things you kill with spies to the nation totals. If my spies destroy 3000 tanks right now it is not added to the totals. Same with everything else spies destroy. It makes the in game leaderboard wrong. It has done this for the history of the game. I already have a ticket to add the 4.2 % infra destroyed to the war total when you win. It makes the losers feel better not seeing another 800-1200+ in lost infra.  Politics plays a very small factor in the game. Maybe reduce income for communist nations. Increased income for capitalist nations. Maybe a random communist nation has a purge and half of the people disappear in the night.  

[Pingoinhyrule]

I do think spies need a redo where it is better to do a variety of different attacks, maybe buff spying infra or make it so that it destroys an improvement instead(maybe cause nuclear meltdowns???) killing spies is way too powerful and I think there needs to be more national projects that allow you to do stuff not just with spies, but change mechanics in general.

[Anarchist Empire]

"Further research options and research tree's"
This sounds good and my vote. I can see this option is currently winning "Economic update with more engaging day to day economic mechanics"; also might not be a bad focus.

Some of the other options might be more likely to break things rather than improve.

These 2 options could be hit or miss. Where might make things worse or could be beneficial, depends how it's done.
Global political mechanics, to drive game politics. (This one has the high risk of breaking things)

Military improvements, including changes to strategies/attacks or perhaps new units. (This one also has risk of breaking things, but also has potential to improve things if done right). If you do this route, adding more units and more features would be better than just changing the mechanics, where some people will hate it and some will like it if it benefits their gameplay style.

I think more research option trees sound interesting. I'm guessing by this you mean, how you can choose to buy space program, which then lets you buy other projects, etc. So more projects. Since people are limited in how many they can fit, adding more is unlikely to be game breaking. Adding more can be good, more variety in gameplay. I do think removing those projects which only decrease cost of cities, but other than that just waste a project slot was good improvement. So definitely shouldn't go back to projects like that, but more useful ones.

Edited April 17 by Anarchist Empire

[Keegoz]

Thanks for voting everyone. The poll has now concluded with Economic update with more engaging day to day economic mechanics winning the poll overall and will be a focus when developing a new update in the future.

We also note that Improved nation simulation mechanics surrounding policies, government types and approval. had significant support and will also be explored by a few design team members as well.

Please note that although we will develop ideas around this, hopefully within the near future, other updates may come out before their design completion. This does not mean we have abandoned any of the aforementioned design areas but that designing new updates can hit roadblocks and take longer than other ideas. Hopefully you will hear from me soon with some new exciting updates!

Edited April 21 by Keegoz