Originally
posted by
hanIong:
Pact this, pact that.
Who gives a fluff? It's clouding the real issue; LaF's constant gangbanging and fighting dumb wars is driving people from the game and putting the game on a course of never ending stupidity.
Thanks, LaF.
Wall of text incoming.
You are mistaken. People aren't quitting this game because of one alliance or another. Specifically, the game mechanics and the server rules are the problem.
The game says right there, you have to be in a clan to be competitive. The game adds opportunities and recruitment messages to players that are untagged (there is a system that does this for clan tag holders). The game encourages ppl to join a clan. The whole premise of the server is really clan vs clan interaction, clan war, clan farming, politicking, whatever.
So how does this cause problems? Let's say you can somehow get 1000 new players join the server, woo hoo! Loads of land! But they get farmed. So they either leave the server because they feel they cannot commit to playing in a clan, or they join a clan.
After 2 months, of that 1000 new players, maybe 500 stayed on the server, and the other 500 quit. And of the 500 that stayed, maybe 400 joins an existing or create a new alliance. And what do we have? More players in clans, and back to no untags to farm. The 100 that remained untagged is barely enough to support the 400 new people that tagged up.
Where does that leave clans? The server does not encourage untags to begin with. Clans either all explore, or hit each other for land via land grab pacts or land trading, or war for whatever reason such as for land, or for fun.
So I'll avoid discussing the mechanics of ghost acres and land trading for now, and focus on clan wars. Everyone knows right now FSes are overpowered due to the game mechanics of being able to store over 2 days of turns, it is a significant advantage to obtain an FS, that can kill off over 2 days of turns per country killed in the FS.
The results in wars getting earlier and earlier, with alliances wanting to pre-empt each other to get the FS, leading to early wars, or wars that are what you call a "timing attack" in Starcraft 2. In SC2, there are windows in time where an enemy is weakest because they invested resources into upgrading tech (for new units) and thus are military weak during that one or two minutes. The same applies, a clan is weak at the point after an all-explore batch of turns, or during the conversion after a tech start.
Countries are too easily killed or crippled in this game due to the game/server mechanics, one of the factors that result in FSes being strong. 10 seconds is all it takes to kill a country. Or ruin it completely into a worthless one. In other games, such as Archmage, a country will instead enter immunity protection after suffering 30% NW loss within 24 hours, until you climb back above the 30% loss threshold. In Archmage, immunity protection still allows you to be retalled - up till you lose 50% of your NW, so alliances allow for land grabs that weaken a country to -30%, to let a retal inflict more damage up to -50%.
In our situation, because the game mechanics allows for unlimited attacks, there are advantages in numbers, you have more turns, more production, more attacks. Smaller clans are unable to defend themselves, smaller clans are eventually driven out by larger clans, or they get merged into a bigger clan. Over the years, clans coalesce. Do you really believe that if LaF did not exist, the same thing wouldn't be happening with another alliance?
The nature of the game mechanics results in all these emergent behavior. The game doesn't allow for smaller clans to even remotely have a chance without resulting in coalitions. Few other text based browser MMO games have these problems.
The game itself has been pretty stagnant, but I definitely see that itnis trying to remain true to the original Earth:2025. I like that they added special GDI rules for the solo servers, but new players are unlikely to even notice the GDI link at the corner bottom of their page and get farmed/killed, etc, for not knowing the GDI double tapping rule. Plus, GDI should be opt-out, not opt-in like it currently is. Earth can do better in being newbie friendly.
Game mechanics are always what results in player/clan behavior as everyone tries to make their clan/country be the best given the situation. Another issue is that warring is not inherently given any recognition within the game mechanics, there is no meaningful way to reward or recognize warring, unlike that for netgaining. Wars in itself as a consequence are generally not meaningful other than being used as a means towards netgaining. Evo doesn't war unless pulled into one. LaF doesn't war unless provoked into one or helping an ally. Some alliances out there are what we call "warring alliances", but to what end?
Have you considered how the meta game will change if the land grab limits for humanitarians are changed to x2 or /2 range instead of 12? It will force all clans to allow limited grabbing with each other, wars will become more interesting because it is impossible for 10 countries to kill a single country instantly, only those in the x2 and /2 range could attack, and wars would become more strategic because a clan at war would need to divide up the clan into networth bands for kill runs, and higher bands attempt to knock countries into lower bands. Alliance server has the largest population of players across all the servers to support the limited humanitarians range. Primary server already has x4 and /4 limits and it works somewhat nicely.
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