Admin Table - September 12

[jouldax]

Don't worry, xdx, we're all reading this and taking it into consideration. I had planned on having some votes or possibly a second admin table to have a more fleshed out discussion on the above points once we made some initial discussion headway. Please know that this is a team effort and not just any one of us making unilateral decisions. JJ is just offering his opinion here. Nothing is set in stone.

I think you bring up some interesting points regarding cloak - I like the current system as it forces others to trade up to an exp number to see that player rather than just having to obtain the same level but you're right that it de-emphasizes levels. I'll have to think about this a bit more before I weigh in.

I don't have a really big issue with raising exp for kills again but, to your point, while it takes a lot more skill to hunt, it's also a lot less risky than trading, especially with hunters on. I'm not sure the two should ever be equivalent, but I think it may have been nerfed too much.

[XDemonX]

Don't worry, xdx, we're all reading this and taking it into consideration. I had planned on having some votes or possibly a second admin table to have a more fleshed out discussion on the above points once we made some initial discussion headway. Please know that this is a team effort and not just any one of us making unilateral decisions. JJ is just offering his opinion here. Nothing is set in stone.

I think you bring up some interesting points regarding cloak - I like the current system as it forces others to trade up to an exp number to see that player rather than just having to obtain the same level but you're right that it de-emphasizes levels. I'll have to think about this a bit more before I weigh in.

I don't have a really big issue with raising exp for kills again but, to your point, while it takes a lot more skill to hunt, it's also a lot less risky than trading, especially with hunters on. I'm not sure the two should ever be equivalent, but I think it may have been nerfed too much.

I appreciate the response Jouldax, the webboard gets so little activity it is hard to tell the amount of reach each posts get. This is sort of off topic, but maybe look into implementing a simple webboard into main SMR page. I have stressed this many times and believe me the code is beyond simple to do this even if you have only a few sections I believe player feedback and visibility will be greatly improved. I would like to be included in the next admin table if possible so please set it up on a non weekend night.

I could make a case that hunting is infact, a lot more risky than trading. Trading you're exposed with little defense for 5-10 minutes a day. Hunting, you're exposed for sometimes hours with moderate defense. It is why you usually don't put the newer players in hunters right off the bat because of the risk with the cost daily it takes to arm a hunter and the risk of them getting podded which happens pretty often. So to support the raise in exp, hunting takes more time as we all know which = more activity. The more hunters = the more active the playerbase is. Yes it is stressful for traders when there are tons of hunters online and people get annoyed but I have heard feedback that some traders enjoy the challenge.

[jouldax]

I agree that if there were more hunters, hunting would be a lot riskier. As it is now, though, how often do you see hunters kill other hunters these days? Not very often. Frankly, I think it's too easy to just wait to trade when no one is online but let's also recall that game where you guys just sat online all day - your opinion is certainly a bit biased towards hunting while many people claimed you were ruining the game (I wish we had enough activity to support both).

I do enjoy a challenge while trading while many others have become complacent and expect not to be hunted (a bad attitude and the wrong one for the game, I agree). So we either figure out how to get people to trade while being hunted (give traders more incentives) or just get more activity so it can't be avoided or everyone gets a piece of the action. We don't have an ideal solution just yet but being more punitive towards traders and more rewarding towards hunters I don't think is the answer.

Also, don't confuse activity with player count. Lots of people on all day doesn't necessarily mean more activity in a turn based game. You also can't force people to play hunters. We need more players and most of these issues will be resolved. That's why we're working so hard on an smr redesign .

[XDemonX]

I agree that if there were more hunters, hunting would be a lot riskier. As it is now, though, how often do you see hunters kill other hunters these days? Not very often. Frankly, I think it's too easy to just wait to trade when no one is online but let's also recall that game where you guys just sat online all day - your opinion is certainly a bit biased towards hunting while many people claimed you were ruining the game (I wish we had enough activity to support both).

I do enjoy a challenge while trading while many others have become complacent and expect not to be hunted (a bad attitude and the wrong one for the game, I agree). So we either figure out how to get people to trade while being hunted (give traders more incentives) or just get more activity so it can't be avoided or everyone gets a piece of the action. We don't have an ideal solution just yet but being more punitive towards traders and more rewarding towards hunters I don't think is the answer.

Also, don't confuse activity with player count. Lots of people on all day doesn't necessarily mean more activity in a turn based game. You also can't force people to play hunters. We need more players and most of these issues will be resolved. That's why we're working so hard on an smr redesign .

We were able to sit online all day because there were no other hunters. We sat there and feasted with little to no one else bothering us. I do truly believe with a lot more reward for kills, more people will be inclined to hunt earlier and more often.

Activity is definitely related to how much time a user spends on the game. 100 players logging on once every other day for 10 min < 50 users logging on multiple times a day for hours. To gain more users, it is best that there is activity throughout the day, not a few people trading sparadically throughout the day when no one else is on or the hour every other night when an alliance is opping. So I got a little time so lets deep dive on this to see what have changed from now, and back when classic was around.

First of all, mines have been nerfed. I don't remember a time where i had to come to a "clearing" op. Fury going back to no mine buff and FU going up in price should help with this. Every op it is just bust through the mines and get to planet. No problem. Map designs need to get more complexed or soemthing to make getting to a planet much more difficult. It should take more than 1 op to get to an enemies planet's.

If you remember correctly, players like orca, sergei and myself didn't really do much planet busting back then. We strictly had to defend our minefield. I could sit online all day and protect from enemy clearers so I wouldn't have turns to op. Orca/Serg were always DC feasting on clearers.

Maybe a reduction in mine cost? It seems mines are too expensive and doesn't make sense to mine as heavily as before. Also, make seeds last longer especially single CDs. Time seeds lasted were nerfed because people would just single mine the crap out of everything. 1 CD should be similar or even longer than a scout drone since 1 CD does nothing except be there for a seed.

The reason i am bringing this up, is because I am trying to incorporate more things for players to do. When leading an alliance, it is difficult to keep people interested halfway through the game because at that point what is there left to do? Mainly just op. It doesn't make sense for people to keep switching back and fourth from traders to warbirds ect. If there is no op then people sit on max turns. If there is a minefield, i could get some friends together to start chipping away at it and then the enemies will have sometime to defend and vice versa.

[JettJackson]

Could you spark a discussion with other admins and deep dive into the cloak issue a bit more?

I think this is something that doesn't need to be just quickly decided and then move on.

Having cloak be level based made people pay attention to levels more than just raw experience. It gave them a tangible reason to get to certain levels. I like consistency in coding. Right now, the combat code is based off level correct? So should cloak. If not, then combat code should be based off raw experience and we should just do away with levels all together. In combat, it only makes sense to trade to a certain point because beyond that the level gap is just too high. I can confirm the "sweet spot" for combat is around 120k-140k.

Another point of this being, this will get more people out of fed. We are always pushing to promote gameplay out of fed and being able to cloak and have somewhat of a bubble in exp to be sort of safe is fun. You have never really been a cloak hunter JJ so it is hard to explain to you. I can remember countless times where I hunted all day knowing I needed to make atleast 7k experience that day to get me to the next level so I didn't have to dearm that night. Or the countless times I cloaked in open knowing only a couple people could see me. These level gaps make sure a huge difference in it. Now that DC is coming back to it's fighting form, i'd like to see cloak switched back to level based. Again, a discussion with the admin team would be greatly appreciated than just having one person make the decision. We are still some time before the classic release, the more discussion the better.

Cloak by level gives too much of a leeway, the only way I would agree with it by level is if you can be seen by the same level you are on which would also fix the level 50 issue. TJ the game doesn't need unseeable cloaks even if level 50 doesn't happen often it can happen, plus with the level gaps people can be in a place where they can be essentially safe because they know no one can gain 15k exp in a day.

The whole point of it being changed to exp based was due to logic and due to not wanting cloak to be this impenetrable fortress.

[XDemonX]

Could you spark a discussion with other admins and deep dive into the cloak issue a bit more?

I think this is something that doesn't need to be just quickly decided and then move on.

Having cloak be level based made people pay attention to levels more than just raw experience. It gave them a tangible reason to get to certain levels. I like consistency in coding. Right now, the combat code is based off level correct? So should cloak. If not, then combat code should be based off raw experience and we should just do away with levels all together. In combat, it only makes sense to trade to a certain point because beyond that the level gap is just too high. I can confirm the "sweet spot" for combat is around 120k-140k.

Another point of this being, this will get more people out of fed. We are always pushing to promote gameplay out of fed and being able to cloak and have somewhat of a bubble in exp to be sort of safe is fun. You have never really been a cloak hunter JJ so it is hard to explain to you. I can remember countless times where I hunted all day knowing I needed to make atleast 7k experience that day to get me to the next level so I didn't have to dearm that night. Or the countless times I cloaked in open knowing only a couple people could see me. These level gaps make sure a huge difference in it. Now that DC is coming back to it's fighting form, i'd like to see cloak switched back to level based. Again, a discussion with the admin team would be greatly appreciated than just having one person make the decision. We are still some time before the classic release, the more discussion the better.

Cloak by level gives too much of a leeway, the only way I would agree with it by level is if you can be seen by the same level you are on which would also fix the level 50 issue. TJ the game doesn't need unseeable cloaks even if level 50 doesn't happen often it can happen, plus with the level gaps people can be in a place where they can be essentially safe because they know no one can gain 15k exp in a day.

The whole point of it being changed to exp based was due to logic and due to not wanting cloak to be this impenetrable fortress.

To fix the level 50 issue a basic If statement in the coding would suffice. At level 50, same level can see same level. Again, I can't ever remember a time where two people traded to level 50 and complained they couldn't see each other... Except in beta... To change it overall that same level can see same level I can see some issues of players severely complaining when they get podded by someone with less exp than them because they thought they were cloaked.

15k exp is do-able in one day. If the experience gets changed back with killing then it was approx 10% of the player's exp is gained so killing a 100k person is 10k right there. I traded on the first day in main game with not full turns and gained near 15k experience. The gap has never been a problem where people complain about people being unseeable besides when Holy gets a 200k lead on everyone and trades in his cloaked ship . I actually remember many times where people sandbagged their turns and someone logged off because they thought they were safe then they were traded or even were slaved to get a level above to see that person.

It is just more consistent with the coding and the levels. Everything in the code is based off levels. You get experience to gain levels, cloak should be based off levels. This was a nice classic feel that i enjoyed about the game that was easy to explain to people and makes sense. We never had a problem with how cloak was. All these changes happened to cloak at once and that is something someone threw in there that Page changed.

Another change in cloak I disagree with is not being able to see a cloaked ship when examining an enemy. But that is a whole different issue.

[JettJackson]

If we do by level then it only makes sense that you are seen by the same level as you are at par with them. Otherwise the experience based cloak as current code uses would be the way to go. I understand you harbor great feelings about this but we don't need cloak being an overpowered entity to the game. Especially when we are taking away the turn for cloaking already.

[XDemonX]

If we do by level then it only makes sense that you are seen by the same level as you are at par with them. Otherwise the experience based cloak as current code uses would be the way to go. I understand you harbor great feelings about this but we don't need cloak being an overpowered entity to the game. Especially when we are taking away the turn for cloaking already.

We never had this issue before in classic why do you think it will be an issue now?. You lose your cloak with dropping a mine that is a big difference than what it was in classic.

[JettJackson]

If we do by level then it only makes sense that you are seen by the same level as you are at par with them. Otherwise the experience based cloak as current code uses would be the way to go. I understand you harbor great feelings about this but we don't need cloak being an overpowered entity to the game. Especially when we are taking away the turn for cloaking already.

We never had this issue before in classic why do you think it will be an issue now?. You lose your cloak with dropping a mine that is a big difference than what it was in classic.

It was an issue then actually. Furthermore you could explain why having it based upon experience is so bad because from what I have seen many like how it is currently modeled except for a select few who would directly benefit from it changing back.

[XDemonX]

If we do by level then it only makes sense that you are seen by the same level as you are at par with them. Otherwise the experience based cloak as current code uses would be the way to go. I understand you harbor great feelings about this but we don't need cloak being an overpowered entity to the game. Especially when we are taking away the turn for cloaking already.

We never had this issue before in classic why do you think it will be an issue now?. You lose your cloak with dropping a mine that is a big difference than what it was in classic.

It was an issue then actually. Furthermore you could explain why having it based upon experience is so bad because from what I have seen many like how it is currently modeled except for a select few who would directly benefit from it changing back.

Yes, I can explain it but it will be mostly repeating myself on what I already said in previous posts. Having it based on experience is not consistent with other coding aspects of the game. The only other code that uses raw experience is player ranking. Combat code ect uses the levels. What are these example of the levels being an issue in classic? Again, I can remember many fun times where I busted my butt to get a level above someone that logged in open. Or vice versa, I tried real hard to get that next level so I could logoff in open. Raw experience is boring. You have the level system there, use it. I traded again yesterday and gained over 15k experience in 1 day worth of trading so the gaps are not really as harsh as you're making it. Having it by raw experience just doesn't make sense. The game is based off levels not raw experience. This how classic was setup and many people enjoyed it. If you feel so strongly about raw experience is the way to go then again, you need to change everything across the board and get rid of levels and the names associated with the levels (Wing Leader ect.). Because if this is such a huge issue for cloak, then it is a similar issue for combat code because of the larger experience gaps in levels as you get higher up.

You see the point I am making?