^_^

[Calibretto]

I am thinking of just playing ascended, as its way cooler with the achievements now...

Main is....just not fun anymore.

There should be small alliances imo and no empires, problem is how to create...its just not possible.

Maybe it should be more like a soccerleague, there is no benefit in empires in football
But every team plays for just the team and his m8s.

[Field Marshall]

Do you wanna know whats wrong with the game?
Its really fairly simple.

Its the damn people playing it.

Yeah if they stopped playing it we could just switch off the server and move on with our lives

if they stopped playing it, new people could come play

Or the new players could be put in a newbie-friendly (attack limit, sab limit, no $) training plane/server with the option to move to normal/Main. Sort of like perg, but without the insane covert levels, huge motherships, ascension bonuses and such. Something only the newbies would be interested in playing, and minus the whole 'ascension to Main'/'legal multies' issue.

been suggested tons and tons of times. And would be nice to see eventually done.
But it doesn't change my statement.

Unless of course you plan on making a forum just for them?
I've said it for years, the thing killing the game and driving people away is the vile attitude of its players towards other players. War game or not, the majority, imo, of the people playing this game should be ashamed of themselves.

Mechanics aside if its not a place people can enjoy from the community aspect, the best game in the world with perfect everything would suffer the same. The change has to start with us, here. Or nothing else done will ever make a difference.

Fair point, however this comes back to my original point. War always start well, then comes the bickering of who has done what. After this comes the **Filtered**...he's breaking this rule, your not building a defence etc. making wars unwinnable unless one party swallows its pride and says "ok, you win, good game".

Wars have dragged out for eternity only for a mutual "withdrawal" at a stalemate.

Sure, we can all act better, but with such history it's easier said then done.

[Field Marshall]

Do you wanna know whats wrong with the game?
Its really fairly simple.

Its the damn people playing it.

Yeah if they stopped playing it we could just switch off the server and move on with our lives

if they stopped playing it, new people could come play

Or the new players could be put in a newbie-friendly (attack limit, sab limit, no $) training plane/server with the option to move to normal/Main. Sort of like perg, but without the insane covert levels, huge motherships, ascension bonuses and such. Something only the newbies would be interested in playing, and minus the whole 'ascension to Main'/'legal multies' issue.

been suggested tons and tons of times. And would be nice to see eventually done.
But it doesn't change my statement.

Unless of course you plan on making a forum just for them?
I've said it for years, the thing killing the game and driving people away is the vile attitude of its players towards other players. War game or not, the majority, imo, of the people playing this game should be ashamed of themselves.

Mechanics aside if its not a place people can enjoy from the community aspect, the best game in the world with perfect everything would suffer the same. The change has to start with us, here. Or nothing else done will ever make a difference.

Fair point, however this comes back to my original point. War always start well, then comes the bickering of who has done what. After this comes the **Filtered**...he's breaking this rule, your not building a defence etc. making wars unwinnable unless one party swallows its pride and says "ok, you win, good game".

Wars have dragged out for eternity only for a mutual "withdrawal" at a stalemate.

Sure, we can all act better, but with such history it's easier said then done.

I didn't say it would be easy
Tis merely just what I think is the biggest problem with the game.

So how and where do we start?

There is nobody with better credentials than you! Forum Admin, leader to the biggest Empire in the game, loved by many...hands down how do you change the ill temperament of us?

[Field Marshall]

Do you wanna know whats wrong with the game?
Its really fairly simple.

Its the damn people playing it.

Yeah if they stopped playing it we could just switch off the server and move on with our lives

if they stopped playing it, new people could come play

Or the new players could be put in a newbie-friendly (attack limit, sab limit, no $) training plane/server with the option to move to normal/Main. Sort of like perg, but without the insane covert levels, huge motherships, ascension bonuses and such. Something only the newbies would be interested in playing, and minus the whole 'ascension to Main'/'legal multies' issue.

been suggested tons and tons of times. And would be nice to see eventually done.
But it doesn't change my statement.

Unless of course you plan on making a forum just for them?
I've said it for years, the thing killing the game and driving people away is the vile attitude of its players towards other players. War game or not, the majority, imo, of the people playing this game should be ashamed of themselves.

Mechanics aside if its not a place people can enjoy from the community aspect, the best game in the world with perfect everything would suffer the same. The change has to start with us, here. Or nothing else done will ever make a difference.

Fair point, however this comes back to my original point. War always start well, then comes the bickering of who has done what. After this comes the **Filtered**...he's breaking this rule, your not building a defence etc. making wars unwinnable unless one party swallows its pride and says "ok, you win, good game".

Wars have dragged out for eternity only for a mutual "withdrawal" at a stalemate.

Sure, we can all act better, but with such history it's easier said then done.

I didn't say it would be easy
Tis merely just what I think is the biggest problem with the game.

So how and where do we start?

There is nobody with better credentials than you! Forum Admin, leader to the biggest Empire in the game, loved by many...hands down how do you change the ill temperament of us?

no one person can change another person.
The only way is for people to get over themselves and see the bigger picture

Too many over inflated egos mate, you know that I am one of them, we've come to heads in the past even after once considering each other good friends...as much as I could try, it only takes one bad egg and the whole bunch is ruined. You can't change the mentality in the game unless the mechanics allow it. As I say, the way that wars are strung out...I don't think that there will be any positive movement for the foreseeable future.

[RepliMagni]

Oh come on guys, this is nothing new!

EPA vs TO - May 2005: War lasted one month, longest in sgw history up till then. Mud slinging, 30-odd page war thread, etc, etc. It was all there right from the start.

Neb vs ETL - no one remember those two chasing each other around the forums? Accusations of cheating, etc, etc. Brothercrit, JUAN, Esker, Unknown - $$$ users, accusations of cheaters, etc, etc

ie: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1799
Same stuff, right back in the start at April 05

Over and over again. The main difference is the escalation. Wars have gotten longer and longer, Hatreds gotten deeper and deeper. AND the game community has gotten smaller. Whereas once these people and wars were a minority, now it is the majority of active players. Whereas once role-playing was an important part of the game, now it is real dislike and distrust.

Get the game mechanics to allow winners and losers. Get advertisement levels up. Get new players in. Get the gap between old and new players down. There is nothing wrong with conflict and controversy - this game thrives on that. It always has. What it needs is NEW players. NEW conflicts. NEW controversies. Not the same old tired ones of seven years ago...

[Wolfstien]

And with that likely outlook, nothing will change regardless tweaks to the mechanics
Best thing to do is to just chill, get with a good bunch of folks and enjoy your time here as much as possible whilst ignoring the rest of the nonsense as much as possible

Stop feeding the trolls and they'll starve to death

+1

[jedi~tank]

Forum dribble and articulate posts about it, and doing nothing.

[Kjarkur]

Maybe everyone is making a bigger deal out of it then it actually is.

All things run it's course. This game started out by attracting (mostly, not all though) Stargate fans. I joined it originally for the role-playing, as a Stargate fan.

Most of my mates that have left the game did so because they had done what they wanted, and moved on to other games. Or because of certain players that cheat, or because the Stargate role-playing was gone. I actually knew 2 key players that left shortly after race-names were free.

So like I said, maybe it isn't as big of a mystery like some of you make it out to by.

-KJ

[The Cue]

What's wrong with the game goes so far back that I doubt many people were around to remember it. Ascension was created with the idea of slowing down the big players to allow for other players to have a chance. There was some grey area here while things changed in and out a bit, but the end result was a benefit for ascending in the form of more powerful weapons, and an across the board bonus. Allowing more ascensions increased the across the board bonus. The problem was that this bonus was too powerful, and there was no down side. Even without a bonus across the board, the more powerful weapons meant less UU invested in attack and defense.

These changes were ill conceived since descension took so long to come out. After years of there being no reason to play ascension and every reason to ascend, the ascended server was dominated by a small group who basically controlled everything. When descension finally came out, it couldn't be strong enough to offset the benefits gained from ascending else the player base would revolt. If you had the choice between being descended for the next six months or being a base race which would you choose? Even without the 47% bonus, ascended weapons still make being ascended the better choice. There is no reason at all to not ascend. If descension had been released at the same time that ascension was, then the process MIGHT be more balanced, but that's neither here nor there.

As it stands right now, to create a new account and be semi-decent and effective requires 46 weeks alone just in ascending. After ascending you need to build your shell of an account up. Just to be considered an average player will require at lest a year of play. That's too long to attract any new player to the game, so they feel either driven to buy an account or leave.

To really fix the game we need to start by assessing what the game would look like if it wasn't broken. Since it's a relatively simple principle of mathmatics, that's easy. If we were to plot the overall "power" of every player in the game the end result of the graph should be a rational with an asymptote or at the very least a radical based on a 4th or higher even numbered root. The most powerful player and the second most powerful player should be extremely close to either other in raw numbers, but weeks or months apart at their growth rate. This allows newer players to reach the arcing curve of the graph and become an "average" player relatively quickly, but growth gets harder and requires more skill as time goes on. The game was built on this principle, but not properly executed. The cost functions are almost all exponentially increasing, but the income function is also exponentially increasing, so growth ends up being a simple y=x. Ascension, size caps, and war end up being small speed bumps to this growth, not really changing much.

The answers aren't simple and straight forward. Changing the covert formula to double every 4th level instead of every second won't change much, just cheapen the level and eventually even out at the end of it all, instead of covert 41, it'll be covert 50. As the game sits in it's current format, fixing the power of players to match that graph is going to be a serious change. When it was a much more simple game without planets, ascension, motherships and what not, it'd be easier. As it stands, the changes need to be more complex to match the more complex game.

I'd like to preserve my conclusions of what's wrong separate from my suggestions, so here's your cutoff point if you want to disagree with my conclusions as opposed to my suggestions. My suggestions are just my take on it, whereas I believe my conclusions to be more grounded in mathematical facts.

I propose the following two changes at start, with more in the same general direction over time:
- Change covert levels to a diminishing return model for the basis of power at a rate of 10%. From level 0 to 1 will double your covert power, 1 to 2 make your covert 90% stronger, 2 to 3 will make your covert 81% stronger. That would mean covert level 42 would make your covert 1% stronger than 41, but covert 42 would still make your covert 9.87 times more powerful than covert 0. Obviously this would invalidate a certain level of covert, making it nearly pointless. To counter that, I suggest a similiar formula on changing losses. Currently, it's always 5% of what's sent on a sabotage, but if we were to change that to a diminishing loss formula based on a 1% less losses per level, that would mean that covert 42 would have only 03.34% losses. Obviously that formula can be changed easily by just changing the diminishing value. I also considered and maybe am still considering some form of losses and sabotage success being more grounded in covert level comparison and less so in spies invested, but I'm unsure of how to mathematically do that short of brute force.

- Make being descended more meaningful by subtracting a single ascension level for each time you're descended, and for a period of two weeks reducing your bonuses to 0 and returning your weapons to the power of a basic race. Painful yes? That's the point, allowing basic races to still have certain advantages in the fact that they never loose their bonuses in war and don't need to check on a second server. Obviously, to do this there would need to be chances to ascended as well, but I don't have enough data on how ETL managed to get a 7.5b TOC while the closest to him is a 4.*b TOC to suggest what to change or to even know what's broken. An amazing achievement, yes, but it points out the glaringly obvious imbalances in ascended as well.

[Mathlord]

The game is 7 years old. It's bound to be hard to catch up. If it wasn't, it would cheapen the fact that all of us have been playing here for so long.

Games like this aren't meant to last this long. This game has prospered and survived because of the players and the storylines and the relationships and intrigue and all of the glorious things the player-base has brought to this game. It's not supposed to be a game where new players can necessarily compete with the big names right away.

That said...because there are so many dead accounts out there, farming and raiding are quite good nowadays. A player can focus on raiding or farming and get tons of naq. Now with the ability to buy ascensions, something I don't necessarily agree with for other reasons but for this it's helpful, people can farm roughly 60 tril naq and get an ascension. With no slow-down period between black market ascensions, getting to unknown is solely dependent on your activity.

The game isn't perfect...far from it. But we can't devalue the work that the top people have put into their accounts either. This game is at its best when we leave it alone to its own devices and let the community do with it what they will. Sometimes things have to be changed, especially if one stat becomes completely overpowered, but in general this is a game that we play. We should play to the game not tailor the game to us. This is an old game full of old players. We all need to remember that.

[xDaku]

The game is 7 years old. It's bound to be hard to catch up. If it wasn't, it would cheapen the fact that all of us have been playing here for so long.

Games like this aren't meant to last this long. This game has prospered and survived because of the players and the storylines and the relationships and intrigue and all of the glorious things the player-base has brought to this game. It's not supposed to be a game where new players can necessarily compete with the big names right away.

That said...because there are so many dead accounts out there, farming and raiding are quite good nowadays. A player can focus on raiding or farming and get tons of naq. Now with the ability to buy ascensions, something I don't necessarily agree with for other reasons but for this it's helpful, people can farm roughly 60 tril naq and get an ascension. With no slow-down period between black market ascensions, getting to unknown is solely dependent on your activity.

The game isn't perfect...far from it. But we can't devalue the work that the top people have put into their accounts either. This game is at its best when we leave it alone to its own devices and let the community do with it what they will. Sometimes things have to be changed, especially if one stat becomes completely overpowered, but in general this is a game that we play. We should play to the game not tailor the game to us. This is an old game full of old players. We all need to remember that.

$$ isn't work. Most top peeps are there through money means. Not too much of an accomplishment.

You can't stay in the aura of the past when the present isn't working.

[Calibretto]

The game is 7 years old. It's bound to be hard to catch up. If it wasn't, it would cheapen the fact that all of us have been playing here for so long.

Games like this aren't meant to last this long. This game has prospered and survived because of the players and the storylines and the relationships and intrigue and all of the glorious things the player-base has brought to this game. It's not supposed to be a game where new players can necessarily compete with the big names right away.

That said...because there are so many dead accounts out there, farming and raiding are quite good nowadays. A player can focus on raiding or farming and get tons of naq. Now with the ability to buy ascensions, something I don't necessarily agree with for other reasons but for this it's helpful, people can farm roughly 60 tril naq and get an ascension. With no slow-down period between black market ascensions, getting to unknown is solely dependent on your activity.

The game isn't perfect...far from it. But we can't devalue the work that the top people have put into their accounts either. This game is at its best when we leave it alone to its own devices and let the community do with it what they will. Sometimes things have to be changed, especially if one stat becomes completely overpowered, but in general this is a game that we play. We should play to the game not tailor the game to us. This is an old game full of old players. We all need to remember that.

$$ isn't work. Most top peeps are there through money means. Not too much of an accomplishment.

You can't stay in the aura of the past when the present isn't working.

Hurray! lets move on to another text-based game...where the present is working?
My god we still do text-based games when we should do all this in 3D...or another game ofc...

Any suggestions? If there are, lets move all on to that new game, so we have at least still a cool community, but a fresh new game.

[Mathlord]

The game is 7 years old. It's bound to be hard to catch up. If it wasn't, it would cheapen the fact that all of us have been playing here for so long.

Games like this aren't meant to last this long. This game has prospered and survived because of the players and the storylines and the relationships and intrigue and all of the glorious things the player-base has brought to this game. It's not supposed to be a game where new players can necessarily compete with the big names right away.

That said...because there are so many dead accounts out there, farming and raiding are quite good nowadays. A player can focus on raiding or farming and get tons of naq. Now with the ability to buy ascensions, something I don't necessarily agree with for other reasons but for this it's helpful, people can farm roughly 60 tril naq and get an ascension. With no slow-down period between black market ascensions, getting to unknown is solely dependent on your activity.

The game isn't perfect...far from it. But we can't devalue the work that the top people have put into their accounts either. This game is at its best when we leave it alone to its own devices and let the community do with it what they will. Sometimes things have to be changed, especially if one stat becomes completely overpowered, but in general this is a game that we play. We should play to the game not tailor the game to us. This is an old game full of old players. We all need to remember that.

$$ isn't work. Most top peeps are there through money means. Not too much of an accomplishment.

You can't stay in the aura of the past when the present isn't working.

Then get rid of player to player trading to remove $$ from the equation...oh wait nothing can stop the $$ market. Plenty of people at the top or in the middle have used $$. Others haven't, or have only used some or whatever. It would be a crime to see a player who worked hard for seven years playing this game see someone who just started his account be able to catch up to him in a snap.

[Calibretto]

I wonder FM makes this topic now, and before him several others, but the main point is if Jason cares about it to actually do something.

He should notice, if he cares, why doesnt he do something about it?

Its not about tweaking small things, like WOW I have a red title...its about tuning the game into a whole new thing.

Still we tend to keep playing this game and if we leave we return...

[xDaku]

I've seen people come and go who have surpassed both our accounts just this year math. People already catch up in a snap through outside means.

For a f2p game, the f2p keen players can't compete. Not a single farmer can reach 40's within the next year, while we have 41's.

Not a single one of the top players is there through ingame means....so what hardwork are you trying to protect?

The real hard workers are the people trying to catchup - the same people that are also being punished for it. Old or new doesn't matter.

It's about what's fair, not about (in essence) respecting the elderly.

Caps at 39 would be good, if a system is implemented to gradually increase the cap at fair intervals.