Is the game dying or does it just appear that way?

[EAT THE WATERMELON]

Take all the inactive accounts, throw them in a barrel, mix it up reallllllllll gooooood, and then dump half of them back into the bin at random, and toss the rest. screw ppl who bought SS, screw people who Might come back someday, if they leave their account inactive for sayy.. 3 months, its eligible for deletion. and THEN, rinse and repeat until the active player base is actually competing for the currency in the game.


im drunk so this idea might sound better to me thabn to yall, lemme knmow!

you wouldn't have to delete them

put em on vacation beacaus they could come back though unlikley with the most of em

[~Kronos~]

Take all the inactive accounts, throw them in a barrel, mix it up reallllllllll gooooood, and then dump half of them back into the bin at random, and toss the rest. screw ppl who bought SS, screw people who Might come back someday, if they leave their account inactive for sayy.. 3 months, its eligible for deletion. and THEN, rinse and repeat until the active player base is actually competing for the currency in the game.


im drunk so this idea might sound better to me thabn to yall, lemme knmow!

you wouldn't have to delete them

put em on vacation beacaus they could come back though unlikley with the most of em

I agree with mellon. I like the idea, it would be interesting. When the game reset 20k something accounts were deleted if I'm not mistaken.

[EAT THE WATERMELON]

this isnt the place for sujestions but .... ya there are alot of problems with inactive accounts

pm me if youd like me to list them

[Mathlord]

As for Mathlord..... here's what ur missing. When you look at someone's record on let's sayyyy Halo..... do you care how long a certain match lasted? "Oh yeah, we technically lost that game but man it lasted hours!"

**Filtered** no you don't. you look at games won/lost. it's about bragging rights. if a balanced system could be created and implemented to decide the victor in a war, then it should be done. Why? Not to prevent the loser from striking back, in fact thats what we want! You can come at me all day, all week, all month, all year, maybe even on Feb 29th... (when is the next leap year btw?)...... anyways... u can bring it all you want... if the system is deciding that I'm winning each week and giving me that little tally saying I'm better than you...then I'm winning. If I decided that I don't want to play anymore. mid war,,, good for you! You just got one win, but how many times did you have to come at me? if I win 5 wars and lose 2 ... guess what... im awesome.



Math's statement is exactly what is wrong with the war system... "Break their will"



why? so they'll stop playing and you'll have one less person to **Filtered** with you? Good idea back when there where hundred and hundreds of players... but overtime, that mentality drove ppl away because in this game, there is no escape. If someone wants to harass you, you either get sat on, do the sitting, or quit.

So currently there are 2 ways to lose and one way to win...... = bad



A war system with points and whatnot has always been necessary, and should have been a major undertaking back when it mattered. Now... once again, not enough players coming in or still around to make the effort worth the reward.

I just wrote a long-winded reply to this that took me about 20 minutes and then I somehow closed the window so I will try to be more brief this time.

I never said that by breaking their will, they leave the game. The wars in this game are about making people decide if the alliance they currently in is where they should stay or if they should find greener pastures someplace else. More often than not, people don't quit the game, they go to another alliance, rebuild, maybe form their own alliance and the game regrows on a different path.

Definitive wars aren't going to prevent people from leaving the game. They will just frustrate people moreso and it will be even more limited in who can compete and who can't.

The thing about this game is, to me, it's more like real life than most out there. Far more than something like Halo or other fps' where people mostly care about a kill:death ratio or whatever else. This game is about building and maintaining strength and the wars here are far more about the personal interactions of players than about the game mechanics or what goes on at the front lines. Don't get me wrong, you have to mass your opponent back to the stone age, but what decides wars and decides conflicts here is the will of the players and their determination to keep fighting despite the odds. I find that to be a great thing. And no, we don't have a war win-loss count, but that would be pretty meaningless if all it meant was I won this battle, you win the next. We do have military experience, and we post about it on the forums every once in awhile.

Why not instead realize that the warring experience here is a combination of everything we already have? We have ME, we have a forum which can be used to be friendly with an opponent, or go after their strength, or post kills and losses. The community knows who wins battles, that's a given...at least the battles that really matter. What truly matters for the whole war is what happens to the alliances that are fighting them during the time frame. And that's something that no physical counter can really address. It's a state of mind, a world driven by opinions and emotions not numbers.

There is no fair way to calculate who should win or lose a war. Every war is different. Every war has its own set of circumstances that determine how the enemies will fight eachother. Everything in this game can and will be exploited if people are given the opportunity. That's not trying to insult anyone, it's just fact. We have brilliant people that play this game that will do anything to win.

I've said it many times before. The game is fine. It is a template. That's all it is. A platform with which we have built our community. The actions of alliances and wars of old still have impact today adding determination to those who would rather sit statless and fight back when they can otherwise just lie down and give up. There are no rules of conduct, requirements for terms on how people are supposed to fight and what should or shouldn't imply victory or defeat, just like the real world. In reality, a country can be reduced to a guerrilla campaign for a generation only for their enemy to give up and leave and they are restored to strength. So too can an enemy in sgw fight a "sniper" style and still take down the biggest of the big in the game.

Of course we have our super powers too who duke it out, but that combination of styles and complexity of fighting is one of the things that makes this game fascinating and in my opinion has kept it alive for so long. You start regulating how people are supposed to behave here and you will just disappoint more people.

So this apparently became longer than last time...go figure...*rant over*


Edit: One more thing...on an fps I rate the quality of a match by how long it goes. If it's over in 5 minutes, it was a pretty crappy fight and not that exciting. That said, if it lasts 30 minutes or an hour of fighting back and forth...even if a lot of it is building up and defending what you have, then that for me is pretty impressive and I have more respect for both teams during it...their will to keep trying even when their task seems impossible.

[Amar]

See I have a differing point of view than you math. When someone loses their will to fight, they are very close to losing the will to play. The problem with the game as current is you can sit and sit on someone and thurrs a chance they might rebuild while you're goign after them.

The problem occurs when the winning side decides they won't stop until the loser says they surrender. Since their is no physical counter to force an end to the conflict, well then neither side CAN STOP until the other gives in. To much is put into who wins or loses currently. It shouldn't matter so much. If we got into the mindset that it's ok to surrender a battle, well then we probably wouldn't have a 2 or 3 year long war that ends with half the active and committed players leaving eh? It's difficult to say how it should be without giving examples, and I don't want to give a poorly thought out example room to breathe just because I thought of it off the top of my head, and then have it turn out that it wont work in a war system if one is ever created... know what I mean?


it's peoples attitudes really, which stemmed from some people got good at this game... banded together and started messing with people because they had more on their side and nobody could stop them... *cough*douchebags who wanted to be like omega*cough*

[sarparto]

As for Mathlord..... here's what ur missing. When you look at someone's record on let's sayyyy Halo..... do you care how long a certain match lasted? "Oh yeah, we technically lost that game but man it lasted hours!"

**Filtered** no you don't. you look at games won/lost. it's about bragging rights. if a balanced system could be created and implemented to decide the victor in a war, then it should be done. Why? Not to prevent the loser from striking back, in fact thats what we want! You can come at me all day, all week, all month, all year, maybe even on Feb 29th... (when is the next leap year btw?)...... anyways... u can bring it all you want... if the system is deciding that I'm winning each week and giving me that little tally saying I'm better than you...then I'm winning. If I decided that I don't want to play anymore. mid war,,, good for you! You just got one win, but how many times did you have to come at me? if I win 5 wars and lose 2 ... guess what... im awesome.



Math's statement is exactly what is wrong with the war system... "Break their will"



why? so they'll stop playing and you'll have one less person to **Filtered** with you? Good idea back when there where hundred and hundreds of players... but overtime, that mentality drove ppl away because in this game, there is no escape. If someone wants to harass you, you either get sat on, do the sitting, or quit.

So currently there are 2 ways to lose and one way to win...... = bad



A war system with points and whatnot has always been necessary, and should have been a major undertaking back when it mattered. Now... once again, not enough players coming in or still around to make the effort worth the reward.

What do you consider worthy of greater bragging rights:

A) A quick, easy, victory where you aren't challenged.
or
B) A long, hard fought, victory where your opponent throw's everything at you and you still percevere?

Give me option B. There was nothing wrong with Mathlord's statement, unless he was too correct. All these wars are is a battle of wills. You get AT's/Naq/UU every turn and their's nothing your opponent can do. So whoever has the stronger will wins every war, which is how it should be. Who would actually want to win on a technicallity? There was an alliance war system before, it may still exist, that was based off of a point system and my alliance lost because they massed us with less stats and didn't build anything in return. No matter what war/point system's implemented people will still stratigize to make this happen. A battle of wills is the truest outcome of a war, imo.

[~Kronos~]

I think what it boils down to is that it's a matter of peoples' perspectives. If the majority like it math's way, then the game is good as it is. If the majority like it amar's way then some changes probably should be made. Even then it's hard to say if changes should be made b/c the people playing are bound to change. Maybe the majority will switch from one perspective to another. Then if we changed it once, we'd probably need to change it again for the new majority. I think it's best to leave it as is. That's just my opinion though. I would still play if changes were made. It would be interesting to see how things develop.

[Amar]

The old war system was bugged and very exploitable, it would require a very precise set of checks and balances to make sure it worked properly. My system would count many different variables and is to complex and barely thought out atm soo meh.



Do I believe it can be better? Yes.
Do I think it COULD be done? Yes.
Do I think it SHOULD be done? No. Not without doing it right, and to do it right requires more effort than the reward is worth IMO, although I'm a fairly shortsighted person

[Mathlord]

I do agree with you there. The problem is people's attitudes on how they want to play the game. If someone's plan for how they want to play the game is to mass anyone that touches them, what else can you do other than back down and let them do whatever they want? You have to hit them until they see the error in their ways and realize that if they try to bully the server, the server won't take it lying down. You can't do that by having a two week long war where at the end we all say, well that was fun, let's do it again sometime. I've been in those conversations with other alliance leaders. That just leads to more bullying and another war a month later...

It's also the difference between alliances. There are many out there (and there's nothing wrong with this, it's their right), that fight wars for fun and do it because they're bored and want to add excitement to their gameplay. I don't like it, but there is nothing wrong with it. Other alliances, like TA, try to fight only when war is inevitable. This doesn't always work out, but it's a goal. When you fight for pleasure, it's okay if it ends after a week or two, then rest, and then restart the war. If what you're after is a resolution to the problem of constantly having these wars, those couple week wars solve nothing. It takes a long time of pressing against an opponent for them to give in and accept terms that are agreeable. Sometimes it's faster, but that tends to be rare.

The system isn't perfect, but neither are the players. Things like this can't really be fixed though cause to fix it, we'd all have to change the way we look at the game and how we play and that isn't fair to anyone involved.

[geisha]

I suggested a better war system years ago. One taht actually makes wars winnable. It should be pretty easy to make it work.

- If more than 2 people from 1 alliance attack another alliance with more than [to be discussed] turns within 24 hours, the alliances are automatically set to war

- during the duration of war (let's say 2 weeks) people can't leave the alliance to avoid the war setting. They should be able to surrender though. When they click the surrender button, they leave their alliance but are unable to attack the alliance they were at war with for the duration of war. However they can still be attacked by both, their old alliance and the alliance they were at war with.

- when the war is over, the alliance that did more damage is declared the winner. all players from the involved alliances are unable to attack each other for [to be discussed] days. this gives people time to rebuild and negotiate peace treaties etc. If they are stubborn and want to sit on each others accounts, they can still go to war again when the peace times are over.

[~Kronos~]

[spoiler]

I suggested a better war system years ago. One taht actually makes wars winnable. It should be pretty easy to make it work.

- If more than 2 people from 1 alliance attack another alliance with more than [to be discussed] turns within 24 hours, the alliances are automatically set to war

- during the duration of war (let's say 2 weeks) people can't leave the alliance to avoid the war setting. They should be able to surrender though. When they click the surrender button, they leave their alliance but are unable to attack the alliance they were at war with for the duration of war. However they can still be attacked by both, their old alliance and the alliance they were at war with.

- when the war is over, the alliance that did more damage is declared the winner. all players from the involved alliances are unable to attack each other for [to be discussed] days. this gives people time to rebuild and negotiate peace treaties etc. If they are stubborn and want to sit on each others accounts, they can still go to war again when the peace times are over.

[/spoiler]

I really like that idea. What happened to it? That sounds like a great idea to me

[Mathlord]

That still poses the problem of, define damage. Remember the damage-based wars back in 06 when they first came out? Alpha and TA fought a war like that and neither side thought the scoring system was really indicative of what was going on in the game. How do you define damage given? Defenses zero'd? What if one side didn't have much built before the war starts compared to the other side? If they don't build much during the war, but snipe down defenses on their opponent, then they'd be considered the victors.

Everything has a way to be abused. We've seen it happen so many times already. It's a nice thought to have "winnable" wars, but it's just not feasible the way the game is designed.

Now you want winnable wars? Go back to how the game was in the beginning of 05...where every trained unit was killable. That ended snipers. We're getting that to an extent with the ability to lifer attack troops, but I digress.

[Amar]

What do you consider worthy of greater bragging rights:

A) A quick, easy, victory where you aren't challenged.
or
B) A long, hard fought, victory where your opponent throw's everything at you and you still percevere?

Give me option B. There was nothing wrong with Mathlord's statement, unless he was too correct. All these wars are is a battle of wills. You get AT's/Naq/UU every turn and their's nothing your opponent can do. So whoever has the stronger will wins every war, which is how it should be. Who would actually want to win on a technicallity? There was an alliance war system before, it may still exist, that was based off of a point system and my alliance lost because they massed us with less stats and didn't build anything in return. No matter what war/point system's implemented people will still stratigize to make this happen. A battle of wills is the truest outcome of a war, imo.

Neither of those options is fun in the long run. Why can't we just have wars for the sake of having wars, and when you surrender, you surrender. Again, i has a game mechanic cooking for that one

[geisha]

That still poses the problem of, define damage. Remember the damage-based wars back in 06 when they first came out? Alpha and TA fought a war like that and neither side thought the scoring system was really indicative of what was going on in the game. How do you define damage given? Defenses zero'd? What if one side didn't have much built before the war starts compared to the other side? If they don't build much during the war, but snipe down defenses on their opponent, then they'd be considered the victors.

Everything has a way to be abused. We've seen it happen so many times already. It's a nice thought to have "winnable" wars, but it's just not feasible the way the game is designed.

Now you want winnable wars? Go back to how the game was in the beginning of 05...where every trained unit was killable. That ended snipers. We're getting that to an extent with the ability to lifer attack troops, but I digress.

I also suggested that lifers should be killable if they can kill AC and even attackers. Everything that can kill stuff should be killable too.

You're right about the damage definition. Counting only what's recorded in the ME doesn't seem to make much sense but you could add a scoring system that counts things like how long a player has been with 0 def. Combine those 2 scoring systems and you will be rewarded for destroying defs over and over again, even if they are only small ones. And people will also be forced to rebuild their defs if they want their alliance to win the war.

[Amar]

[spoiler]

I suggested a better war system years ago. One taht actually makes wars winnable. It should be pretty easy to make it work.

- If more than 2 people from 1 alliance attack another alliance with more than [to be discussed] turns within 24 hours, the alliances are automatically set to war

- during the duration of war (let's say 2 weeks) people can't leave the alliance to avoid the war setting. They should be able to surrender though. When they click the surrender button, they leave their alliance but are unable to attack the alliance they were at war with for the duration of war. However they can still be attacked by both, their old alliance and the alliance they were at war with.

- when the war is over, the alliance that did more damage is declared the winner. all players from the involved alliances are unable to attack each other for [to be discussed] days. this gives people time to rebuild and negotiate peace treaties etc. If they are stubborn and want to sit on each others accounts, they can still go to war again when the peace times are over.

[/spoiler]


All great ideas. and as for who asked how do you determine damage? % of Units Killed, Overall Cost Killed, successful attacks , etc etc.... say ur alliance has 5 members, each member starts with 100 points, ur alliance starts at 500 points, each variable... toomany to name off top of my head affects this score. Successful attacks will gain you points, failed LOSE you points! losing a certain percent of your men loses you points. A person leaving the alliance loses ALL that players points, not attacking the enemy alliance a certain amount of times each day loses a player points... staying without rebuilding stats causes loss of points etc etc

if alliance A declares war on Alliance B= Alliance B gets bonus points because its harder to invade than to defend.

If A n B are fighting and Alliance C declares war on A== Alliance A get bonus points for firghting on two fronts while Alliance C starts with a penalty for trying to double team another alliance.(unless alliance B and C PREVIOUSLY had a peace treaty, then no bonus or penalty for C or A)


etc etc... lots of factors, would need to be balanced.. I can't code so I can't do it.