An argument in favor of logic.

[the570z]

Ive been flinging lots of suggestions around lately but they pretty much have revolved around a central theme, and that is to try and make the game-play follow how you would expect it to go without knowing the rules. Not everybody likes the idea of making things more logical on the face of it, sometimes because its a rather big shift and sometimes for other reasons. They are all valid complaints but i wish to try and paint a larger picture as to why perhaps we should press forward with some sort of revamp along these lines and then work out the inevitable bugs.

There is only one major advantage to making the rules of the game follow a logical pattern as close as possible and that is ease of learning. This game is tough to learn as it has lots of idiosyncratic rules and ways of doing things. If your walking into it cold, it can be tough to figure out, even with help. I have been trying to bring some of my friends into the game and even with me teaching them, they get frustrated when things dont go the way they expect. I mean to some extent this can be solved with a health application of R.T.F.M. but that just not something people do before getting into a game, some folks wont even go through a tutorial. Now we may not want the truly lazy gamers(at least not enough to put any more effort in then they will, lol) but if we increased the retention rate of new folks to even 1 in ten, judging from the number of >1000 xp players every game we would have doubled the active player-base in 3-5 months. The fact is we may retain at around 1% currently and thats quite pathetic for a game that is fun enough once you understand it to keep folks coming back for YEARS! I realize that some of these changes will shake things up and require new or modified strategies but personally id be willing to risk quite a bit if i never logged on and saw less then 10 on the cpl. Id love any suggestions on what to do toward this end as well, and i would hope we could focus on making the smallest changes first. As every little bit helps!

The downsides of this strategy are equally jarring as well, as there some folks that resist change to the level that they will quit over making any. We cannot afford to lose very many more players and still have a game so either ego's need to be soothed or we just may not be able to make any adjustments and have to hope for the best. Some of the most major flaws in the game logic are some very basic institutions of the game as well and changing them will require a LOT of input from the player-base to balance out properly.

Ill list here everything that i see wrong with the game as far as basic notions go. This is not "wrong" just what doesnt jive with what an experienced gamer would think if he started playing SMR with no idea of its specific rules.

Trading Economics(S&D dont follow how economics are taught in classroom)
Attack/Defense Rating(Not really SMR's fault but the prevalence of CCGs such as Magic have popularized the idea that a 36/21 means it can kill anything below a /36 defense in 1 hit.)
Combat(attacker and defender have equal chances of winning an evenly matched fight, many folks would think the advantage would go to the aggressor)
Player Interactions(being unable to trade weapons/cash/ships between players)
The importance of bought maps(with MGU and paid for maps, the advantages over somebody stuck exploring manually is exponential)