No more blaming Jason.

[Zeratul]

true... that part we have not quite worked out...

best solution there would probably be to implement some sort of limit on merlin use, as well as adding risk... easiest risk is probably similar to the one with stealing planets... less code to write...
our idea isnt perfect...

[Clarkey]

Maybe when disabling all planet making tools that he disables the ability to add planet defences too. That way anyone that remains with untouchable planets may actually find that they are "not" untouchable because they can't top up their defences.

I certainly like Zeratul's idea.

[Sarevok]

true... that part we have not quite worked out...

best solution there would probably be to implement some sort of limit on merlin use, as well as adding risk... easiest risk is probably similar to the one with stealing planets... less code to write...
our idea isnt perfect...

Sorry Z-man, but even that won't help. Those that spend the like $160/month to keep their planets protected, would simply buy themselves 160T/month, building up platforms and planet defences.

Whilst i like planets, i can partly see the need to remove them. Though, rather then remove them, i didn't see you comment on the idea, wouldn't it just be better to reduce their effectiveness? Like i said before, to like 25%, not 50%. Then it's not 500% bonus, but only 250%? Or even 20%, with a limit of 5 of 1 type? Then it's only adding as much as a MS would be.

Biggest problem i would foresee, in removing them, is either:
1) The big spenders will do what it takes to hold theirs
2) You'll have to somehow compensate for planets. Which would be VERY tricky, especially if someone took a good planet, but it was someone else that invested. Do they get someone else's invested resources, or does it get returned to original builder...

Maybe when disabling all planet making tools that he disables the ability to add planet defences too. That way anyone that remains with untouchable planets may actually find that they are "not" untouchable because they can't top up their defences.

And what happens when the spenders get wind of that possibly happening? And they build multi-trillion defences, so that no fleets will be able to take them for years to come

[Clarkey]

Maybe when disabling all planet making tools that he disables the ability to add planet defences too. That way anyone that remains with untouchable planets may actually find that they are "not" untouchable because they can't top up their defences.

And what happens when the spenders get wind of that possibly happening? And they build multi-trillion defences, so that no fleets will be able to take them for years to come

Then they're the fools spending all that money lol.

[Sarevok]

Yes, excellent counter argument there

Then they're the fools

[Zeratul]

while defenses can be near-impenetrable, there is no planetary defense that is truly unkillable...
just as one person can put lots of money into defenses, so that another person put equal money into mothership fleets, just to be nasty to the ones paying dollars for breakable defenses.

there is no perfect solution.

giving some sort of warning ahead of time would allow people to think out the risks in either defending or getting rid of planets if it is considered too risky to keep...

[Sarevok]

No, of that i agree. But i do wonder if there is another method to make them not quite so potient.

[MaxSterling]

Far too many people are beignning to blame jason for the games turmoil. It may be said that he neglected the game for a while, but this game isnt the only thing in his life.

While that is true, most of us do have lives outside this game... he could have tried to find a replacement admin to help fix updates or something of that nature. As it is, the admin staff is barely around for anything... and that's just plain **Filtered** customer service when you do earn some income off of that game. Is it right to blame Jason? Hell yes. Even when we provide him with solutions to help fix things, he's too stubborn to listen most of the time. We are the ones that actually play the game and have a better grasp of whether something will work or not.

This game is breaking because of the style of game that it is. Resources will always increase as their is no way to get rid of miners. This means people will keep growing and growing. This result will end up with the same thing happening to prices.

I agree. People fail to realize that if planets and motherships weren't added, the only decent investment would have been UP. UP would have skyrocketed to obscene levels and we'd have 100's of accounts suffering from the plague cap and probably have even more players with obscene incomes.

Yes the market change didnt help. but i think with a bit more talking to jason he may fix that.

One can only hope that ATs increase, but people seem to think that reducing the ATs is the best fix to resolve the issue of one person massing an entire alliance... when just making a defense last longer will make people waste a lot more ATs and unable to finish massing an entire alliance without help from other players in their alliance.

So in short, while incomes, UPs and armies keep growing, the game is gonna keep getting worse, the gap between rich and poor wil get bigger and activity will become lower untill gatewars is just another server of origins

While the gap does get larger, I'm living proof that it's not impossible to bridge that gap if you put in the time and effort. If people would stop throwing up their hands and saying it's impossible and constantly nagging for handouts and bonuses... and start putting in the time ( or finding methods to maximize the time they put in ), then the game will be better for it.

the game went downhill when people wanted to sell their "extra" resources, admin then made it easy to gather such resources, and we are where we are.

I agree with this. While paying for resources for $ is unfair to those of us that actually farm to build our accounts, when admin started adjusting in-game black market rates for resources to get a piece of the action... he actually crushed the game. Had he not done this, $ rates would still be fairly higher and people would get much fewer resources per $. He pretty much screwed up his own game.

But surely, even without these updates, it would have happened eventually, everything would have been a lot slower(especially to those just starting) and therefore more boring. You cannot say that despite it going downhill, you dont enjoy the game- otherwise you wouldnt be here. But i seem to have a lot more interest in this game than i did 3-4 years ago when things were slower.

I remember the time when we only generated 1AT/turn and hated this game. There was nothing fun about waiting 7-8 hours to make a full attack again when I was out of ATs. You want to talk about dead... I can't believe people would prefer it go back to that. ATs = growth and is the only way actual players can keep up with $ spenders. Since the last update to reduce ATs, the reduction in active players is noticeably apparent. How can anyone say having almost 100 fewer players online at any time since the AT update is better for the game?

Admin is trying to make his game interesting with updates (not all are popular, but it's not humanly possible to always have popular updates), people shouldn't blame him for whatever he does or doesn't do. And he also tries to fix issues leading to non stop growth and lowering of value of naq & uu due to inflating amount of both. It's not that easy to find out the best thing to do, when you are ALONE infront of thousands of customers.

Him being alone is his own choice... and he's not really alone, hence the admin meet and the "For Admin" section of the forum. His problem is that he believes he knows what's best for the game despite not even playing it himself. Despite everything told him at the meets and in the forums, he still thinks he knows what's best for the game.

PLANETS WERE A TERRIBLE IDEA!!!

they only speeded up the game which was totally unnecessary because if you have something, you want it runing as long as it can and not ridiculously speed it up...there is no finish line in this case...

planets only increased the growth of big players, gave admin extra work to put in extra caps and restrictions for unlimited growth and so on and that had lead us to the point where we are now...

I wasn't nearly as active back then when this update came into play, but I imagine that this kind of discussion went on... only because it's a discussion that keeps going on and on...

1st person - How can we make it so new players can compete with the bigger players?
2nd person - Why not just let them grow like we did?
1st person - It would take them too long and they may get discouraged and quit.
3rd person - Lets give them bonuses!
1st person - YEAH! How can we do it?
3rd person - I dunno. Maybe admin can think of something?
GOD aka Admin - I shall put forth an update without thinking it entirely through that will give smaller/newer players a chance to catch up to the larger players.
*GOD aka Admin adds planet update*
1st person - THANK YOU ADMIN!
3rd person - YAY! Thanks Admin!
2nd person -
1st and 3rd person - Hey wait a minute... those bigger players are growing even faster and making it more difficult for me to catch up!
*2nd person *
GOD aka Admin -

I imagine a very similar conversation took place with the MS tech update and Perg update. Now I'm no rocket scientist, hell I didn't even finish college... but how long will it take for people to realize that new players should just learn to play the game like we did and take their lickings like we all did. Sure players will quit, but the players that can't hack it would eventually quit anyways... and those that learn to play will thrive.

[Sarevok]

The one thing i most strongly agree with, is the cash market. IMO, remove it. Leave the "supporter packages", but all the other ones, remove. With these gone, we can one again increase ATs. Since the only way people can get them, is to trade them, and not buy with cash. This would limit the ability for the spenders to just spend to get what they want. Sure, they can buy from players, but those players are limited to what AT they can get on the market

[MaxSterling]

It's more "interesting" now because you can mass, and effecitvely lose nothing, meaning you can mass more people, it use to be it actually took a lot of tactical ability to mass, and often involved numerous people.

Try telling that to people that try to mass me...

On Monday, I lost my MS 3 times in one hour long online, so he had a 1T MS bonus added to his ground troops... and I still lost dramatically fewer soldiers than him.

All admin needs to do is make defense weapons last longer. If he does that, then the soldier cost to mass someone comes back up... and I can take naps that last longer than 3 turn changes.

[spoiler=Snippets from my Military Records]Military Records and Achievements OF ALL TIME

[spoiler]Attack Mercs Killed (1) 97,245,918
Attack Super Soldiers Killed(15) 68,763,338

Defending Mercenaries Lost 53,545,993
Super Guards Lost 30,941,955[/spoiler]

Monday's Records...

[spoiler]Attack Mercs Killed (1) 7,984,442
Attack Super Soldiers Killed(15) 5,487,616

Defending Mercenaries Lost 2,080,919
Super Guards Lost 1,250,443[/spoiler]

Tuesday's Records...

[spoiler]Attack Mercs Killed (1) 186,153
Attack Super Soldiers Killed(15) 745,134

Defending Mercenaries Lost 209,598
Super Guards Lost 90,987[/spoiler]

Wednesday's Records...

[spoiler]Attack Mercs Killed (1) 2,834,627
Attack Super Soldiers Killed(15) 1,331,074

Defending Mercenaries Lost 938,954
Super Guards Lost 476,953[/spoiler]

Thursday's Records...

[spoiler]Attack Mercs Killed (1) 118,785
Attack Super Soldiers Killed(15) 60,683

Defending Mercenaries Lost 30,000
Super Guards Lost 12,500[/spoiler][/spoiler]

Planets along with boosting too much UP & income, partly replaced supers which used to be counted as losses which brought strategy of team massing in the game.

As I proved above... planets are not a bad update. As a matter of fact, they assisted in counteracting a 1T MS bonus. It's people's refusal to build defenses and invest in defense planets that's the problem...

People fail to realize that while many people complain about fewer losses, there are also people that complain about new accounts not having a chance against huge accounts. Planets are the one thing that levels that playing field. It allows an unascended small army to suffer fewer losses against a larger army with more ascensions and bonuses.

I would suggest a complete removal of planets for a period of 3 months, if things and market along would shape up, would leave the game without the planets

I mean how do you expect people to PLAY and actually work for resources if you each morning find 2 mill + units on your acount without even breaking a sweat????

Just a FYI... there are those of us that actually bust our asses to compete with $ spenders and have taken the time and resources to build their accounts accordingly. How about you stop trying to drop everyone else's accounts down to your level and start building yours up to our level?

I swear there are way too many people complaining about planets and such because they want all the bonuses now instead of using a strategy to build their account to compete. How about trying to build one awesome planet, heavily protected at a time instead of 10 at once? It's much easier to protect one planet than 10, so develop one planet and merlin it. Slap a crapload of defenses and platforms on it. When it's untakeable, leave it out in the open and start on a new one. This is exactly what I did, the only difference is that I farm so much naq that it takes me much less time than others. I don't buy dual planets unless I have enough naq to at the very least put 500k defenses on it within a couple of days.

That said, Jason is to blame for the crazy ill-conceived updates and not reading the suggestions area where many fixes and great update idea's that players actually want have been posted. If Jason actually listened to the players ( his customer base ) the game could be in a very different, and IMO better place.

I agree.

not hard to understand, ppl used to exchange MT's in at's and sell them, after the update MT are useless , except for merlins, so only teh generated/turn are at market , smth like 70% of ats are missing at market resulting in rising their price , this way admins want to slow farmers while its well known that cash players dont farm they jsut buy a 10k pack and play farm/mass.

reapiring a mistake wit another is genuine instead of finding a way to make member play the game.

I agree. Admin has actually made the active players even more reliable on the $ spenders. The ones that buy the ATs with $ are more in control of what the market prices for ATs are. With everyone else gaining ATs at a snail's pace, they have most of the AT supply while the demand for ATs remains constant... thus the people that buy ATs with $ now control the AT market and set the prices.

removing planets all at once is not practical...

it would be better to just:
- disable all planet making tools
- make abandoned planets have a 50% chance of disappearing permanently
- add a 20% chance that stolen planets disappear mid-transport

those three steps would eventually result in there being few planets left... the added risk that one would loose what one stole will make people think more when stealing planets...
perhaps, for the transit loss system, have it so that one has to wait 48 hours after stealing, due to repairs to planet hauler tech...

While I see why people don't want planets in the game, you'd pretty much alienate new players and only the elite accounts would have planets... and thus the bonuses. Therefore restarting the vicious cycle of arguments.

I personally see no need to remove planets. There are other solutions to resolving the issue of "fewer losses" than eliminating people's investments. Yes they sped up the game, but the issues of abundant resources would have happened with or without the addition of planets, eventually.

Maybe when disabling all planet making tools that he disables the ability to add planet defences too. That way anyone that remains with untouchable planets may actually find that they are "not" untouchable because they can't top up their defences.

Three words...
Planet
stealing
multis

They're already bad enough now...


Sorry for the very long posts. I was off PPT for 4 days and my forum activity drops when I'm farming all day long.

[Sarevok]

As I proved above... planets are not a bad update. As a matter of fact, they assisted in counteracting a 1T MS bonus. It's people's refusal to build defenses and invest in defense planets that's the problem...

Exactly. And gave people an option. Build planets which maybe taken, but never have their power lost (unless taken). Or build a MS, which can be massed, and it's temporary power reduced, but never able to be taken/permanently damaged.

[spoiler]Just a FYI... there are those of us that actually bust our asses to compete with $ spenders and have taken the time and resources to build their accounts accordingly. How about you stop trying to drop everyone else's accounts down to your level and start building yours up to our level?

I swear there are way too many people complaining about planets and such because they want all the bonuses now instead of using a strategy to build their account to compete. How about trying to build one awesome planet, heavily protected at a time instead of 10 at once? It's much easier to protect one planet than 10, so develop one planet and merlin it. Slap a crapload of defenses and platforms on it. When it's untakeable, leave it out in the open and start on a new one. This is exactly what I did, the only difference is that I farm so much naq that it takes me much less time than others. I don't buy dual planets unless I have enough naq to at the very least put 500k defenses on it within a couple of days.[/spoiler]

Again, good call. Why say "NO, planets are NOT a viable option, and were gonna make it easier to take them from you, so you can't use your strategy.

[proph]

Such discussion only aides doubt, and a sense of injustice. Peace can only come from the acceptance of form. Lets just be happy that we have this at all, and keep hope that we can evolve to the good and bad changes made in future.

"In the end, the universe tends to unfold as it should."
Consider it akin to, peaceful entropy.

[spoiler=]

As I proved above...

Not to be technical; but there is nothings in life that is an assurance, not even in closed systems. Science generally accepts that logic 'shows' processes to be complimentary with reality, however, this is never indisputable. Thus use of the word 'proved' only ever causes the clash of more ideas.[/spoiler]