A Request of the Admins

[Mathlord]

Can we please please please get prior notification of new updates? Once again an update has come in that dramatically alters people's plans for the next few weeks of gaming. Even 24 hour (preferably 2-3 day notice) would give the active players a chance to prepare and redesign their strategies for whatever a new update would throw at them. Changing things in the middle of the week when people were holding out on using market turns gives a lopsided advantage to those select few who weren't waiting to get optimal use out of theirs.

Sigh. We made this request before when market turns were first nuked a couple months ago and here we are again.

[Juliette]

Remember the early times of GW? Back when you could buy covert levels by buying your SS?
Then we decided to change that, 'nerf' it, and removed the covert level from the SS package.

This is the same.



However, I understand your point of view. This is why we tested 'pre-announcing' updates previously. That did not yield any results, so we just went back to the 'old way'. We will provide a pre-update announcement again next time.
As always, the early adapter gets the worm.

[Mathlord]

Where did you test pre-announcing updates? You mean posting them buried in threads that the five people who were reading got a glimpse might happen?

You posting "yeah this is not right as is" doesn't equal "in two days we are changing x to y and z to w".

Do note that posting an update is going to come out...maybe having a thing mentioned on the top of the newgrounds page (check out upcoming update with a forum link)...does not mean people should have to reply and put in their two cents to make it a valuable thing to do. If people don't read about the new update, then it's their loss. If people don't debate something coming out, that's fine too. Shoot, if you don't offer the possibility of debate, just announce what is going to happen because it's your game and you can do what you want, that's also fine. But allowing people the opportunity to know what is going on with the game so we can plan ahead and not get burned for planning ahead is very very important.

In the old days of stargatewars things were nerfed quite often. People complained and Jason saw reason and put in place the system of posting Upcoming Updates in a separate thread, similar to what SoL does for ascended. Do both of them do it all the time? Nope...Should they? Absolutely. Remember, while a lot of us aren't spending money on this game, whether it's our hard-earned dollars or our valuable personal time, we are investing a lot of ourselves here. When things are changed without warning, a lot of that time and/or money ends up going to waste.

Just saying, that's not how a game should be run.

[Mathlord]

Making a post embedded in another thread does not equal an announcement. You can't test how many people have viewed said post and you can't test response. Especially when said post didn't actually say we're making a change, just that something was wrong. If anything all that incident showed (as everyone said at the time) was there needed to be clearer announcement of updates, just as I'm saying again now.

It's moot anyway if you were trying to slow down people from completing the ascensions, they'll be done for the top people within a week. All you did was slow down the people who weren't spending a bunch of money to get to the top...

[HippyFool]

I have to agree with Mathlord. Just have an announcement at the top of the command center page. 48 hours notice is fine, and leave it up for say 48 hours after the update comes into play. The update simply needs to be a VERY brief explanation or even just a link saying "new update, click here for details" and have the date and time that it is becoming active.

It's moot anyway if you were trying to slow down people from completing the ascensions, they'll be done for the top people within a week. All you did was slow down the people who weren't spending a bunch of money to get to the top...

And maybe stop me from being first to 20

LoT was 20 days behind me about 2 weeks ago, then he bought USS. He ascended to 19 4 days behind me and then just bought a USS mere hours before the update came in. He is now AHEAD of me to get to 20 by about a day or 2.

From his USS he got like 1.3tril naq AND almost 200k units.. so he has 40k MORE units AND bigger UP than me after only ascending a few hours ago.

Now that the update that I didn't know about kicked in, I can't even catch him by getting a USS as I only get 100b and 60k units.

[Mathlord]

I should have used my remaining two market turns on Monday but I wanted to wait until the end of the week around when I was ascending...then Bullseye ascended and market turns were dropped and I was determined to wait to get the biggest bang for my buck...alas my time at level 18 will be significantly longer than previously anticipated.

[mattao]

it is ok with me that admin make adjustments to the game as they see fit....but you really should make those adjustments at the market reset to be fair to everyone

[Visentinel]

This is seriously annoying, i had to wait to get my pay today and i almost actually clicked on the paypal donate for USS and lucky i glimpsed at the naq total or i would of payed for a horribly nerfed USS.

but that's the thing, the SS and USS should not be nerfed at this point especially if players right now cannot get the same things as the previous people. it is grocely unfair, Not even petrol jumps up in price that much !!!!

[Slim87R]

This is seriously annoying, i had to wait to get my pay today and i almost actually clicked on the paypal donate for USS and lucky i glimpsed at the naq total or i would of payed for a horribly nerfed USS.

but that's the thing, the SS and USS should not be nerfed at this point especially if players right now cannot get the same things as the previous people. it is grocely unfair, Not even petrol jumps up in price that much !!!!

I do feel for your sentiment there. It really is not fair that my $20 gets more than a noobie's $20.
If you were at a super market bought $50 bucks worth of steak, then saw the person behind you pay $50 for 3 times as much steak, you might be a little peeved.

[Juliette]

Pre-announcement thread: viewtopic.php?f=291&t=195438 - these are just a continuation, a further fleshing-out, if you will, of those ideas as announced in that thread.

Like we said; in Main we did the same thing when the balance was proven to be askew. Is that unfair? No. Some people profited from an obvious balancing issue. We have repeatedly said that it should not be possible to power ascend through use of the MT's alone, and a single individual saw fit to point me in the direction of the Market when it got skewered much sooner and much higher than anticipated. We will not take things away that stem from this imbalance, but we do prevent it re-occurring. So yes, buying an SS will no longer boost you through the roof, and MTs are no longer a viable 'only-income' source, it is as it should be.


As for the "updates in mid-week", we have different views. I personally prefer a little warning ahead, but allowing major imbalance for any longer than necessary after discovering it (i.e. longer than it takes to fix it), is irresponsible.



Edit: As you know, I agree with pre-announcing, so I have made a new thread, the sister to 'Updates', wherein I will outline upcoming/ongoing/ready for release updates/fixes/tweaks. viewtopic.php?f=288&t=195678
In addition, where possible - balancing exempt - I will give some pre-air time on the Command Center to get the news to those who do not use the forum (though forum will remain the main channel of communication).

[[BoT] Jason]

I totally just said "screw farming I have 3 MT's" and ascended.


FML

[Field Marshall]

Sorry Juliette. This wasn't well thought out. Why the variables were placed upon the top naquadah amount, I have no idea. Should be on total average, well I do know..but it's not my place to talk about that.

"Use 1 market turn in exchange for 56,580,988 Naquadah..."

The beginning of the week, I used a 48b MT. Shortly after ascending, I powered through the next one with the other 2 MTs.

The balancing needed to be done, but at least with warning. This should have been seen through the testing. The market option was never there, there was no dev server.

None of the lessons have been learnt from historical events. I would like to see a future policy for the implementation of major affecting changes.

I'm lucky, I have been ascending with minimal effort. Some people have put time, money and effort into this game. I can just leave with little avail, doesn't bother me too much.

[doc holliday]

Last time you changed market turns you said in hindsight it would've been better to do it on market reset. Way to not follow through with what you told the community. That incompetence alone, makes this game suck.

[Juliette]

Last time you changed market turns you said in hindsight it would've been better to do it on market reset. Way to not follow through with what you told the community. That incompetence alone, makes this game suck.

If you notice your bucket is leaking, you patch it. You do not wait for the next time someone will add water to it.
The imbalance was too great to allow it to continue. If we were going to 'marginally' tweak it, we would have waited until market reset. The situation as it was, was the polar opposite of how the game is intended.

Sorry Juliette. This wasn't well thought out. Why the variables were placed upon the top naquadah amount, I have no idea. Should be on total average, well I do know..but it's not my place to talk about that.

Balancing a growing game is more complicated than it looks. It is top pool average now as opposed to 1 single person's income deciding the entire calculation. 'total average' is 1M.
However, I agree, the original calculation was not as well thought out as it should have been.

The balancing needed to be done, but at least with warning. This should have been seen through the testing. The market option was never there, there was no dev server.

The feedback from the community on the Market rates came from a few people who reported that the calculation after the previous tweak seemed to have gone awry. We corrected the incorrect balancing based on that feedback, as everyone else was content to just profit from what was obviously an incorrectly balanced situation.
We have run some tests during Beta with Supporter Status. Given the few people who played Beta, numbers never matured there, making it impossible to predict the behaviour of the calculations in a high value environment.

None of the lessons have been learnt from historical events. I would like to see a future policy for the implementation of major affecting changes.

See my recently created threads. That is as formal as it is going to get.
"Updates" (live ones) - viewtopic.php?f=288&t=195658
"Upcoming Updates" (pipeline) - viewtopic.php?f=288&t=195678
"Current Updates" (discussion) - viewtopic.php?f=291&t=195659

I have been ascending with minimal effort.

A clear giveaway that something was wrong.

I totally just said "screw farming I have 3 MT's" and ascended.

That is the point. It should never have been possible to just coast through the game carried on MT conversions. If that were the aim, we would just give everyone a Quad Naquadah and say: "See if you can get to level 20 with this."

[Field Marshall]

Sorry Juliette. This wasn't well thought out. Why the variables were placed upon the top naquadah amount, I have no idea. Should be on total average, well I do know..but it's not my place to talk about that.

Balancing a growing game is more complicated than it looks. It is top pool average now as opposed to 1 single person's income deciding the entire calculation. 'total average' is 1M.
However, I agree, the original calculation was not as well thought out as it should have been.

I am sure it is difficult and I understand that it is a balancing act. We are not talking about a bucket of water. We are talking about a young online game which doesn't appear to be growing exponentially and your main source of recruitment is the current generation of players that have come from SGW.

It is imperative that you realise this as a few people will get bored and become inactive as a result of this. It should have been a rolling stock, when I ascended, I naturally put everything into techs, up and pastors. I have no naq to spend, to increase MS slightly, to add to MS techs. I will no longer play the game as I am put back a week, I was a very relaxed player, logging in once/twice a day.

I agree with your fixing of the solution, I don't agree with the implementation.

The balancing needed to be done, but at least with warning. This should have been seen through the testing. The market option was never there, there was no dev server.

The feedback from the community on the Market rates came from a few people who reported that the calculation after the previous tweak seemed to have gone awry. We corrected the incorrect balancing based on that feedback, as everyone else was content to just profit from what was obviously an incorrectly balanced situation.
We have run some tests during Beta with Supporter Status. Given the few people who played Beta, numbers never matured there, making it impossible to predict the behaviour of the calculations in a high value environment.

The market was not active during beta? If I remember rightly? There were no market rates. I was extremely active throughout the whole thing. You may recall I was in the top 5. All my officers came from beta.

None of the lessons have been learnt from historical events. I would like to see a future policy for the implementation of major affecting changes.

See my recently created threads. That is as formal as it is going to get.
"Updates" (live ones) - viewtopic.php?f=288&t=195658
"Upcoming Updates" (pipeline) - viewtopic.php?f=288&t=195678
"Current Updates" (discussion) - viewtopic.php?f=291&t=195659

As long as it isn't all live updates without discussion or involvement, then I am happy with this.

I have been ascending with minimal effort.

A clear giveaway that something was wrong.

Now what are you going to do to poor Peter who joins tomorrow. Who now has to make an effort and sees that I had the first 13 ascensions gratis?

I understand the patch. What I don't understand is the lack of warning. This was in place for a fortnight before it happened, why wasn't it fixed before the amounts got upto 48b. When it was first identified, it was obvious it was escalating. I just don't understand why you cannot talk to us. We are your best friends, not your enemies! You say the early bird however...it is more, the lucky ones whose schedule it fell into.