Manetheren wrote:Robe wrote:Mojo Rising wrote:
You have taken everything else away from us. If you take our ability to grow away, then you leave a bunch of huge accounts with nothing to do but take out their frustration on the lower accounts. It takes one REALLY good ascension or perhaps two exceptional ascensions to make your account self-sufficient in ascension. I can't help it that people didn't play ascension the way I played ascension. I played to win. Others played to get bonuses in main.
This is a gross generalisation. I know many people that tried very hard to play ascended.
Here is the thing...
If you get extorted, massed or raided on a regular basis for a year and you can't put a scratch on the person doing it because they ascended 6 months before you even started playing SGW,
or
because they belong to a power house that protects them....then most sane people give up and go find a game where they can actually compete.
Well said Robe. It's wrong to assume everyone that isnt in the top 10-20 accounts ascended to "just get main bonuses". What happens when you witness the strongest ascended person you know have their account raided on a daily basis and defense massed repeatedly and then get extorted to boot.. what do you think that does to people's motivation to play that server. If its no longer possible to raid someones resource planets away then that helps a bit but its also important to have ppt or vacation option available. Tekki's situation is a perfect example of that.
The account manetheren is talking about is mine of course.
There was a time I could put in 5 percent of my planets and have #1 defense. Although then that #1 defense protection was worthy of squat because I would log on and find 20-40 percent of my resource planets taken away. About every month or 2 this would repeat. Sometimes the massings would last close to 3 weeks long. Close to 1 1/2 years ago I had 1+ mill army size in ascension, even after being kept down for 6 months by having another 1 mill taken from me between jan-may 06.
I did play hard, I didn't have the same main account so I didn't ascend with the same app, and what I built I did without a single attack for resource until 2007. I started playing in march/april 05, and ascended the first day...and didn't have ss until 2 or 3 days before I ascended.
Even though I had grown from 0-1 million planets in 9 months, and had been kept down. (at a time when although I had an idea of what were the good powerups, practice makes perfect, and the exchange rate if memory serves correct was 6 and not 33 when it started) I only had 3 mill planets by the time jan 07 was around. Kinda funny since I had close to a 40k cer at that point and was making 1+ mill planets a month. (should have been much higher at that point, hell should have been 40k by march 06, but whatever) Alltogether you can surmise what occurred to my account all along the way. So defensive forcefield is but one of many that had good growth that started going exponentially, and then was ganged up on and their growth curve flattened or even turned negative. Meanwhile those that already had the numbers, and ganged up in a proactive manner never stopped growing exponentially.
This was the m.o. of what happened up there. Say you had a 60 bill defense at a time that was supposedly godly. Obviously you took the time and energy to do that....it's the #1 defense in ascension.
Well one guy would hit you until you say had 30-40 bill defense left and steal about 15 percent of your resource planets, and destroy a bunch of d planets, and leave a huge dmu repair bill.
Since there is no bank, you have a choice. Sell off attack weapons (if you have any), sell off weapons that are damaged and lose a ton, or wait the 10-40 hours it took for most people to get the dmu to repair their weapons. (farming 500k dmu to pay for 150 mill repair bill is not feasible)
Obviously nothings a good option, but most said, I'll try to wait it out. Others in addition tried to farm a couple of people, maybe sell off some attack weapons, maybe convert lf back to dmu.
Problem was, if it wasn't a coordinated strike right from the get-go, i.e. that now 30-40 bill d lowered to say 20-25 by the next person raiding an additional 5 percent of your planets...if that didn't happen right away, and even a 3rd or 4th person right away....within those 10-40 hours you wait for the repair dmu to be created, everyone on their forum knows, and the vultures start coming. Many times I was hit by people thinking I was even in worse shape, and they lost a ton because of it, but nevertheless, enough people with 20-25 bill attacks would then try to hit you lower, and lower, until eventually your defense would be gone, and you never had a chance to repair it. So looking at it in a simplistic fashion it would go like levels, one bring you down from say level 5 to 4, then another group 4 to 3, then 3 to 2, etc, etc.
I saw a person who never touched any member of a certain group, get this treatment done to him from 13 members of that certain group. 13...and they kept on him for days. When this sort of thing is widespread, the lack of activity on the server was reaped and sowed a long time ago. Funny how bullying people at first, can now have a double benefit by using what resulted as a way of declaring no one cares and thus a triple benefit of a new update needs to be implemented. Personally I can't buy into that logic.
One on one server my behind, and has been that way since the start. So if some of the talk is directed at what ascension was supposed to be, the way most of the power was gained was against the spirit of the rules. The superweapon is another example... so although ascension was supposed to be one on one and such, and that spirit is forgotten, the one where people get descended 2 years after ascending and are being asked to have something implemented that could severely hurt their main account ALL because it's in the spirit of the game, is a bit...umm..'OFF' I should say. Which way is it? Whats the point of it, I never had a massing that was one on one in ascension, the sw wasn't the spirit, yet decension, and it's possible future consequences must be in that spirit that has been totally forgotten up until we talk about decension?
None of us had the option of retaliating, (well we could hit buttons ofc) because if we did, and some of us could have a little, we'd then have 10 similar accounts ganged up on us. I was alone up there in my alliance basically, so they could pick me off easily, same with the 1-2-3 members other alliances had in ascension. Tough to go against the top guys, determined to gang-up. So for that I congratulate them on doing, I don't think it was right, but they made that strategy, and they did effectively implement it. So in a sense my hats are off to them for that.
In hindsight I think of this, One on one, as a whole the way ascension plays, within reason, and maybe a few tweaks...it could have worked well. But the teamwork action was undervalued. Because as soon as ganging up happens, and teamwork happens, and we should have all known it would have happened, all of those ways to kill someone makes it far too easy to absolutely destroy someones account, with ease, without much cost, and many times profitable. That's what happened. Acknowledging the teamwork and fixing the effects is what is needed, and of course a couple of updates have helped in that regard.
From what I understand and If I'm wrong correct me, the GA was created with the purpose not only of what occurred in main, but mainly for the elite players in those alliance to result in consolidating your ascension games. The top accounts in ascension, in the same alliance grouping, to ensure no one fought between you 2, and no one rose up from below. You guys succeeded.
However that success ultimately created the situation where people didn't want to play.
Now that the resource planets need to be revolutioned, it's better, but at the same time...none of the top 20 accounts will raid the planets for gain since it wouldn't be worth it to, so that update didn't hurt the big guys, and they didn't give on that one. They already got all the boost they needed from raiding the planets the first 1 2/3 years.
In january of this year, the situation had gotten so outta hand, that they could sit on people, steal their resources, and still afford to boost people with the superweapon. Which was not what it was intended for. I don't know when the idea was first brought up, but by the time is was online, it was known definitely among the top people in a certain grouping. I watched who they were testing it on.
Had one of my officer's not accidentally hit an account that 'seemed' dead, but instead it was hit with the sw, TO BOOST, it would have gone unnoticed for longer, however because they wanted to then ask for main resources to pay back (in a time that person was being boosted..yep benefit on both ends), then their secret would have been kept longer. But pressing that issue, revealed what was going on. Smart way to use it, but it wasn't sold as such. Especially because of that I think people now pay more attention to the meetings since they don't want another update to get lobbied for one reason, and be used for another reason.
Then a person they boosted theoretically, could go from 1 CER to 40-60k CER in ONE DAY, after ascending with 1000 g and r and 1800 app, and not having to basically EVER have to worry about 1 successful attack against them. How is that fair? How can anyone claim with a straight face that they built that account?
So now we have people that say we don't play because we are kept down, not because we didn't play, who used a sw not in a way not intended, to boost people who do not have to have ever played ascension before above people that do play, and when the blowback from this is that some of the dmu is then kept to keep people from descending..people complain...I say why? Everything arises from the root, and those roots take hold from subsequent updates, and then anything that's not good needs to be updated again?
So people that play hard, and ascend early = sat on
People in the group ascend a year later, or even 1 week ago = boosted beyond and generally never face attack because everyone knows who they can call in, and at least when it comes to main server...even a noob will understand what that means in ascension...if they know how an alliance is in main.
IMO that is not fair. However, one good thing came of it. Well 2. People used that dmu to help build themselves a bit, it did add a bit of fun gameplay to the server.
The 2nd thing is that people used their own dmu against them by raising their LF from it.
I say that's the cost of boosting players...allowing others to be undescendable. Don't want that happening, don't use the sw to boost. They gave them that dmu, what else were they supposed to do with it...not play?
Now that people have been boosted, it's almost unfair to take it away, and make uber lf people descendable, as all these updates benefit one group, brought tons of people above most everyone else, and as soon as it isn't worth it, another update is implemented, etc, etc. Which is fine and dandy to ask for, but again another thing to implement.
How much of the sw auction going away really is because some people don't want people to store uber lifeforce? I mean what was once fought for very hard, now that the lf issue happened, how much of a fight to keep it was put up?
I know I would of had 100's of millions of planets at this point, but oh well, not a big deal, I took 6 months off of ascension because well, it wasn't fun spending hundreds of hours to rebuild an account that was just getting trashed for no reason once a month or two. Just not worth it to play a game under those conditions. Everywhere I turn, I saw others experiencing the same fate, and yes word DOES get around.
Now the resource planets is a bit better, if that update wasn't in, I'd be done with ascension. Not because I don't want to play, not because I lost a ton of stuff, because I didn't want to spin my wheels for no reason for months on end, only to be bullied again.
What do I think, dmu rate 10 mill to 1 needs to be the same. Only change, if any, is for uber accounts . Rank is meaningless to base off it. As someone ranked 40 could never come close to touch a top account, yet might be set to the same dmu rate. At some point a way to fix it would be each rank 1-10 having a different conversion level, and after that the same 10 mill to 1k lf. But then that has to be monitored to see if rank 11, 12, etc are getting too big. But again that way is pretty unfair to the top people's accounts individually so is it really fair or not, I guess it depends on one's viewpoint. There probably is a better way.
I think the lf thing is fine. If more activity is needed, the fact they need to log on to transfer it, or they are 'caught slipping' is more than is needed for ascension, but is an understandable request.
I think revolution needs to be taken out. Raiding undeveloped...i.e. inactive players, fine, developed into resource planets, no. Too late for me, but if it keeps others from suffering the same fate, I'm all for it. That in of itself probably was the greatest factor in people saying the game is unplayable. Now that the problem is bigger, it won't quell the overall problem, but it will provide a foundation for any update you make to be built upon. People didn't like raiding of trained units in main for a reason (yes you could for a short while), and here in ascension it's no different.
Overall though, whatever is decided I feel needs to follow the following critria
1. Any update benefit's the masses, even if it benefits the top, but MUST benefit the masses
2. Any update does not create a situation where it is easier for smaller, weaker accounts to be preyed upon, or uber accounts to prey upon relatively big accounts, but that are nothing against those uber accounts
Maybe more stuff as well, and there is a good chance I could have worded stuff better but I wrote this 1-4 AM so I'm tired goodnight all
