The game

[Alcibiades]

Fair enough DS.

I maintain that a game mechanic that has easily abused loopholes that cannot be easily fixed is 'fundamentally flawed.' Your definition may differ but what it boils down to is it was broken.

I also do think that while L/F may have helped curtail repeat attacks to some degree, there was a slightly larger playerbase to accomodate larger attacks. The free for all bounty hunting also made good sense since it made you a target from everyone who wanted a piece of you if you behaved badly enough. However, i remember when i got a red title, or a bounty on me, I just did a few attacks and managed to clear my name up pretty quickly. Admittedly this forces people to pay attention to their bounty/title range, but i don't see it as being the main thing preventing repeat attacks; or maybe that was just my playstyle and those of my alliance mates.

meh most of the comments i've noticed have been general and in that not authoritative.

i feel that sometimes people here mistake or confuse a person 'talking confidently' about a point of view they feel strongly about with the person trying to have the last say.

initally for the most part alci was just posting to clarify things as he saw them. regardless, even if l/f came back it would be under the new fc and work differently and thereby not be bringing it back. it wouldn't be the same.

so lets stop mincing words and just discuss the ideas under the topic at hand.

Quoted for truth and rational behaviour.

 

[f0xx]

You actually want to say :


You don't want INDIVIDUALS to mess with alliances. Them beeing solo mode or not has nothing to do with it. As i said in the post above i could make my own 1 man alliance and attack alliances .. what would be different ? Or i join Enmity and never defend them or ask them to defend me. You are only against uncharacteristic playstyle of some players who "have nothing to loose". Them beeing solo or not it's not exactly your problem the way i see it, it just hurts you deep inside you can't hurt them like you can hurt an allied player on resonable amount of acres or just force him to defend and die defending other members. The solo's who rush alliances usually don't care about sitting on their acres and would give a free grab here and there, it's anoying for you they don't play the usual alliance game where you are the wolf and the other alliance is the sheep that gives a fight to keep the acres but this time you actually get free grabs and they anoy you with retaliations .. so nothing like the usual sheep
That's your main problem the way i see it, individual players that you can't hurt and not solo play and it's (dis)advantages.

Actually, you are 100% correct.

I am afraid of such players. I am afraid of them becuase they are INVINCIBLE. There is no way I can put the in the situation where they have to stay and fight. Where they have to defend. They have nothing to lose. They have other means of income so they don't need acres. Which means, if they don't care for the land and they have the activity needed, you can NEVER GET THEM TO FIGHT ON YOUR TERMS. This strongly disbalances the game. There should never be another means of incoming other than LAND.

Now that being said, I agree that there should be a mechanism which punishes repeat attacking of small targets (even if I do that very often). That in no way means putting bounty on their head so someone like you can abuse it and disturb the balance of the game (which I already proved in the paragraph above this one).

Now I will be damned, but I will qoute something which has a lot of truth in it:

I can tell you that you have been here praising your way of game and your solo favoring for ages!! In which time this game managed to split small amount of players to play for multiple different goals and reduced player size even more. If not in field at least in minds of those who still play. It was hellish fight to get things fixed and this game back to what it strong points were/are and I can already say that of you ask from people these last rounds have been most pleasant in alliance fighting for a very long time (not counting one stupid TBA to this).

You can honestly go and showe your BH and L/F where sun doesnt shine, cause they do more harm than good. You can take your solos with you and put it to same place as there clearly is some room left. This game has only been strong and survived because of its strong community and loyal players. It has survived because of intence alliance fighting. If there would be 10k of players we could talk of solos and L/F and bount... but theres not even near that. And yet you want to split these even smaller number of people to play for multiple different goals... That is not just stupid that is directly aimed to harm Azzers income.

 

[DarkSider]

@ Alci:

Yes, the way it worked you could do a "bad attack" and a good attack after and you'd be around same l/f again. On one side it was good as you had to do lawfull attacks to make up so that's more action on another hand it was bad as you could "bribe" your unlawfull attacks and escape bh-ers
That's arguably if it was good or bad, however i remember i suggested positive l/f and negative l/f not to be mixed, you'd keep your negative law all round long with maybe a small decay but Azzer didn't quite like that one. As i said l/f was a great concept and imo while it was implemented it was helping more than it was detrimental. It needed more additions but i saw it as the right way forward. My hope is that it will come back in some shape, i like diversity and not so much brute force raw numbers.


@ f0xx

I sort of agree with that, my last suggestion about unifying the rankings was about population happiness that was combining effectiveness and valuation rankings under 1 score but that score (similar to valuation) would be helped by recent effectiveness gains which would make your citizens happy and provide an increased % of income per acres. That way you needed acres but you could also go killing mode/ wars etc if that's what you like with the benefit of increased happiness rather than bounty. Unfortunatelly Azz didn't really like that one either

P.S. I'm happy you agree solo's have it too hard now

 

[f0xx]

@ f0xx

-snip-

P.S. I'm happy you agree solo's have it too hard now

:evil: :fist:

 

[DarkSider]

It was hellish fight to get things fixed and this game back to what it strong points were/are and I can already say that of you ask from people these last rounds have been most pleasant in alliance fighting for a very long time (not counting one stupid TBA to this).

Well i won't go around asking players but from what i've seen so far this round:

About 3 players told me "I just remembered why i like solo play instead this sort of crap"
Then i look some more over forums and i see Garret depressed and at the point of deleting his account because he's fed up of the way alliances go
Then some RRR members are disgusted with alliance play and delete, some say they're off for good.
Fail fails and their leaders cba with this high demands the alliance play require.
Discworld getting pwned quite a bit and that's the highest ranked outside the "pro's", i assume rest 10 (almost) full allies have it even worse.
Commy coming in mirc and complaining how much it sucks his alliance can't defend.

So sorry if i don't share your view on it i just can't find those players who say: Damn, alliance play rocks ! I see alot of bush addiction around and very little praise for the game and specifically praise for alliance play

Now just to make some things clear:
I know this are just a few of the many who are playing the game but those kind of reactions are what i've heard so far. The rest might ALL love the events their alliance is involved in, have a super blast in attacks and defence just they don't shout out loud for me to hear it.
And second I like team play, i absolutely loved utopia before i came to bush and that was a 100% team play. However the alliance play inside bush it's absolutely bleah for my taste if i compare the requirements and benefits.

 

[BlackWolf]

Compare what you want as much as you want. Some have quit, it happens... let them be solo or allied, those solos just hardly come here to tell why they quit. Then add to that how some idiots break real laws by pranking people... **** happens as I said in other thread about once in 7 rounds so far.

What you dont WANT to see is how many of these people would play at all if this would be solo game. How much these people would hate whole idea of solos competing with alliances and how much better would things be if there wouldnt be solos at all.

Ohh no you dont want to... You just want to see your view of things and push it forward, I see my opinion. I see my opinion brings more people to this game and can make it to have more people. We tried your solos equals over 20 people way... didnt bring us more people... how bout we after all these 25 rounds try it my way and actually make this alliance game... we have much to lose?

No we dont... What I meant that alliances and their fighting has been in current round more intence than in long time before... I dont even have account but I have seen more positive ingame posting during this round, more ranting and curses, more hatered, more fighting etc. than in last 5 rounds almost together. There are always some casualties in war, let it be in online game or real war... some quit the thing is how community feels and talks of things and on current round I have seen finally so much more stuff going between alliances that it makes me feel warm inside.

Not all bad publicity is negative publicity. These alliance stuff have only show us this community is still alive, yes theres some bad stuff like that prank thing, but over all this community and game is going finally forward. More posts to forums of alliances and hatered is never bad thing.

 

[f0xx]

And second I like team play, i absolutely loved utopia before i came to bush and that was a 100% team play. However the alliance play inside bush it's absolutely bleah for my taste if i compare the requirements and benefits.

So how do we fix this?

We lower the requirements and we raise the benefits of being in alliance. I've posted a certain suggestion which can contribute to that. Other ways can be created as well, but that is the correct direction to develop towards, not improving (making easier) solo play.

 

[DarkSider]

Allow me to quote myself in there: "If every account is reacheble 24/7 that's no fun." You don't have to think only from defender/target side but also from the attackers side who want to kill stuff once in a while not to go against an insanely active alliance Alliance improvements should look into other direction than better protection for it's members imo.


And in case i didn't wrote clear enough i was talking about requirements from me as in the time and effort i put into my account, late night calls and so on while playing inside an alliance and benefits as in the enjoyament and satisfaction i get in return, not about stuff like you can get defence inside an alliance etc.


So yeah i'd love the way alliances work to change, but it would be a major structure change and Azzer doesn't really like those
I'd personaly want the whole game to move much slower so it won't be accessible only to the very few who have the ability to get on in 10 minutes or who can spend many hours a day on it, individuals in an alliance to be more self dependent not so much breast feed with defence and just telling the members press a in all boxes and in last box write this number but they actually have to think for themselfs and play bushtarion not 'Simon says' and i had some more but i think those 2 would be a great start Also imo alliance play would be more fun if it was more about revenge instead about defence .. getting woken up at odd hours to defend a member can't be as much fun as starting your day seeking to attack a player who messed with your alliance last night

 

[f0xx]

Allow me to quote myself in there: "If every account is reacheble 24/7 that's no fun."

Oh yeah, I stopped reading your post here. Why is that it won't be fun? It won't be fun for *you* perhaps because you won't be able to do your pure let rushes anymore? Or are you scared that some guy with more skill and much much less activity will actually be able to compete with you?

Please explain, why wouldn't it be fun exactly?

Plus, if you read the whole suggestion again, you will find out that it doesn't cover anything of the sort of "all accounts be reachable 24/7".

 

[DarkSider]

Allow me to quote myself in there: "If every account is reacheble 24/7 that's no fun."

Oh yeah, I stopped reading your post here. Why is that it won't be fun? It won't be fun for *you* perhaps because you won't be able to do your pure let rushes anymore? Or are you scared that some guy with more skill and much much less activity will actually be able to compete with you?

Please explain, why wouldn't it be fun exactly?

Well you might aswell read my whole post and see how off you are with this reply.
Why it wouldn't be as much fun ? What does resistance find fun - a big BR because the target was offline and RRR had to defend or a free 3-4k acre grab ? That should do for an explanation.

 

[f0xx]

Allow me to quote myself in there: "If every account is reacheble 24/7 that's no fun."

Oh yeah, I stopped reading your post here. Why is that it won't be fun? It won't be fun for *you* perhaps because you won't be able to do your pure let rushes anymore? Or are you scared that some guy with more skill and much much less activity will actually be able to compete with you?

Please explain, why wouldn't it be fun exactly?

Well you might aswell read my whole post and see how off you are with this reply.
Why it wouldn't be as much fun ? What does resistance find fun - a big BR because the target was offline and RRR had to defend or a free 3-4k acre grab ? That should do for an explanation.

I don't know DS, you're definition of fun is different than mine. I find it fun when I outsmart the opponent, not catch them with their pants down and kill someone while he is not online. I would much prefer a battle in which 4 alliances use their complete number of 80 members sending fakes/waves/bashes and trying to break the full team of 20 top score players.

That is my definition of fun, not, "Hey guys, icy is usually offline at this time, lets rush him". And then, "Oh sh1t, he got online this time".

The game has too much impact on activty and this has got to change. Two birds with one.

 

[DarkSider]

Hence you should probably read my post before you give replyes to something you assume i said.

 

[f0xx]

Hence you should probably read my post before you give replyes to something you assume i said.

I read it and I see no difference. I still see no explenation to why the game would be less interesting if any acount was raechable 24/7.

 

[DarkSider]

f0xx: I find it fun when I outsmart the opponent, not catch them with their pants down and kill someone while he is not online. I would much prefer a battle in which 4 alliances use their complete number of 80 members sending fakes/waves/bashes and trying to break the full team of 20 top score players.


Your definition of fun applies to only 2 players in a 1:1 war, the 2 organizers and rest 38 remote browsers. I want it to be 40 self dependent players thinking with their own head but aiming for same comun goal. That's my definition of fun in an alliance. Think of tribal wars/travian which i know you played: each member of an alliance was standing on his own 2 feet and his growth depended on his skill and time invested but if situation required they would all coordinate their actions in attacks or defence.


f0xx:The game has too much impact on activty and this has got to change.

As i posted in previous posts i want this to change too, i want more players to have the same chances and their judgement to make the difference. But activity demands reduced by allowing more to control same account or vacantion mode whatever it's not imo an implementation that will bring extra fun. If you have all your 20 members online you will always fight the battles that you have a strong feeling you'll win, there's nothing about outsmarting here just the luxury of picking each and every fight (take as example RRR vs resistance when RRR can make the calls most of the time if they want to fight or not and imagine if they'd never had to fight in a BR they didn't really want .. how fun would that be ?).
In my vision it should be like: They attack and kill one of my members, no biggie, his stuff dies and gets some huge insurance but with a high eta too and we have the troops and the desire to go back and get revenge. It's more fun to instigate to violence and revenge for their revenge etc than to improve ways of dodging fights.

 

[Matthew]

You actually want to say :


You don't want INDIVIDUALS to mess with alliances. Them beeing solo mode or not has nothing to do with it. As i said in the post above i could make my own 1 man alliance and attack alliances .. what would be different ? Or i join Enmity and never defend them or ask them to defend me. You are only against uncharacteristic playstyle of some players who "have nothing to loose". Them beeing solo or not it's not exactly your problem the way i see it, it just hurts you deep inside you can't hurt them like you can hurt an allied player on resonable amount of acres or just force him to defend and die defending other members. The solo's who rush alliances usually don't care about sitting on their acres and would give a free grab here and there, it's anoying for you they don't play the usual alliance game where you are the wolf and the other alliance is the sheep that gives a fight to keep the acres but this time you actually get free grabs and they anoy you with retaliations .. so nothing like the usual sheep
That's your main problem the way i see it, individual players that you can't hurt and not solo play and it's (dis)advantages.

Actually, you are 100% correct.

I am afraid of such players. I am afraid of them becuase they are INVINCIBLE. There is no way I can put the in the situation where they have to stay and fight. Where they have to defend. They have nothing to lose. They have other means of income so they don't need acres. Which means, if they don't care for the land and they have the activity needed, you can NEVER GET THEM TO FIGHT ON YOUR TERMS. This strongly disbalances the game. There should never be another means of incoming other than LAND.

Now that being said, I agree that there should be a mechanism which punishes repeat attacking of small targets (even if I do that very often). That in no way means putting bounty on their head so someone like you can abuse it and disturb the balance of the game (which I already proved in the paragraph above this one).

Now I will be damned, but I will qoute something which has a lot of truth in it:

I can tell you that you have been here praising your way of game and your solo favoring for ages!! In which time this game managed to split small amount of players to play for multiple different goals and reduced player size even more. If not in field at least in minds of those who still play. It was hellish fight to get things fixed and this game back to what it strong points were/are and I can already say that of you ask from people these last rounds have been most pleasant in alliance fighting for a very long time (not counting one stupid TBA to this).

You can honestly go and showe your BH and L/F where sun doesnt shine, cause they do more harm than good. You can take your solos with you and put it to same place as there clearly is some room left. This game has only been strong and survived because of its strong community and loyal players. It has survived because of intence alliance fighting. If there would be 10k of players we could talk of solos and L/F and bount... but theres not even near that. And yet you want to split these even smaller number of people to play for multiple different goals... That is not just stupid that is directly aimed to harm Azzers income.

This post for me highlights all the significant points made through this discussion and illustrates very important points in terms of design directions. I personally was a fan of the old ranking systems but this round I have found the general attitude of the solo playerbase is to have the idea that they think/want to be indestructable. It brings nothing positive to the game.

Quoted for emphasis rather than elaboration.

 

[Melnibone]

It was hellish fight to get things fixed and this game back to what it strong points were/are and I can already say that of you ask from people these last rounds have been most pleasant in alliance fighting for a very long time (not counting one stupid TBA to this).

Well i won't go around asking players but from what i've seen so far this round:

About 3 players told me "I just remembered why i like solo play instead this sort of crap"
Then i look some more over forums and i see Garret depressed and at the point of deleting his account because he's fed up of the way alliances go
Then some RRR members are disgusted with alliance play and delete, some say they're off for good.
Fail fails and their leaders cba with this high demands the alliance play require.
Discworld getting pwned quite a bit and that's the highest ranked outside the "pro's", i assume rest 10 (almost) full allies have it even worse.
Commy coming in mirc and complaining how much it sucks his alliance can't defend.

So sorry if i don't share your view on it i just can't find those players who say: Damn, alliance play rocks ! I see alot of bush addiction around and very little praise for the game and specifically praise for alliance play

Now just to make some things clear:
I know this are just a few of the many who are playing the game but those kind of reactions are what i've heard so far. The rest might ALL love the events their alliance is involved in, have a super blast in attacks and defence just they don't shout out loud for me to hear it.
And second I like team play, i absolutely loved utopia before i came to bush and that was a 100% team play. However the alliance play inside bush it's absolutely bleah for my taste if i compare the requirements and benefits.

About 3 players told me "I just remembered why i like solo play instead this sort of crap" - because solo play is abuseable by skilled players

Then i look some more over forums and i see Garret depressed and at the point of deleting his account because he's fed up of the way alliances go - because alliances of similar size and skill create a stalemate

Then some RRR members are disgusted with alliance play and delete, some say they're off for good. - they feel 'betrayed' they'll be back for vengeance 99% wont quit

Fail fails and their leaders cba with this high demands the alliance play require.
Discworld getting pwned quite a bit and that's the highest ranked outside the "pro's", i assume rest 10 (almost) full allies have it even worse.
Commy coming in mirc and complaining how much it sucks his alliance can't defend.
Dw defend well if the others cant instead of complaining they should learn

Darksider i am not naive enough to think i can win any argument against you involving no's or ingame skill but i can take you to task over this thread the only problem with bushtarion is the whiney playerbase that think they deserve more than their skill/activity allows

Im currently in a rank 2 alliance (that should never be there tbh but thats a different story) players need to start learning how to defend against bashes/waves/rushes this isnt some magical formula its a very simple reading and regular checking of the manual to see what battles can be won and which cant

I'm with Blackwolf on most of what he says this game is ALLIANCE based if your not in a good alliance its not going to be as much fun as if you are, but its the same in every walk of life/game/hobby and doing well in a relatively poor alliance usually gains you an invite into a much better alliance next round

one idea ive been toying with but cant seem to perfect (maybe someone more skilled could help flesh it out) is something similar to a tiered alliance system with bigger sizes

the old idea of private/public alliances appealed to me and id put forward the suggestiion that at the start of the round all alliances begin at 20 after maybe the midpoint of the round any alliance currently not in the top 5 can increase its member limit to 30-40 thus allowing less active and therefore smaller alliances to be able to provide better defensive cover making it harder for the top to land on them leading to a knock on effect where everyone elses skill imroves too

this i dont feel would be abuseable by simply freezing the top 5 alliances (who wouldnt be offered this option) much like the scottish premier league split in scottish soccer i know the idea has many flaws but i feel with some good input could become a useful idea

 

[septimus]

Not all bad publicity is negative publicity. These alliance stuff have only show us this community is still alive, yes theres some bad stuff like that prank thing, but over all this community and game is going finally forward. More posts to forums of alliances and hatered is never bad thing.

I think it's worth mentioning that the posting by the top 5 allies doesn't reflect the community as a whole, and while I imagine it doesn't matter to anyone posting here the alliance things going on this round are leading me to wonder if the game is worth the time and effort anymore.

 

[BlackWolf]

Well there was a time when actually doing and trying for this game was cool and fun. Ofc it also was annoying and boring at times, but over all what ever happend always the goal was to push game forward.

Today I think that time has gone by far. I have seen so many people posting in here and saying how this community should do this and that for this game. I have seen even Azzer telling how posting bad stuff on forums should be avoided. Since when has it been players/customers job to take care of the business of someone elses? Since when it became our job to make this game better one and Azzer who takes all that money doesnt need to do smeg? I just wonder...

Anyways as player count is low and because simply fact is that connections between low end and high end players have widened the cap to very big. Those on top are pretty much same faces all round long and with no much new blood rolling in there should be some changes.

I am once again here and now saying that either Azzer should decide for going full solo... in which case this amount of players would be damn good. Or then try to close cap between oldies and new people with some kind of system like countries or so where everyone would join some kind of "alliance" at the start. As I am pretty old guy and my brains really dont get that much better in future I am really stuck to those 2 options... and unfortunatedly all these bright kids around here clearly have not come up with anything even slightly as working as decision between those two.

I dont say we shouldnt change sleep thingie or so to reduce activity that is needed... but I have seen so many good ways to do so none of those been done so am kinda forced to think none will... Also thats not only thing that must to change to push this sledge around in downhill and start to get climing again. No matter how much more easy the game goes on low activity players as long as these new people have no touch to top at all.

Yeah me ranting... plaah plaah plaah.