1.6.0 Giving Back Choices to the Players

[LotuS]

In my earlier post under general discussion(http://smrcnn.smrealms.de/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10031), i said that I wanted SMR to give control and power back into the hands of the players instead of most things being predetermined or in most cases, only one way to go about doing certain things.

And Now that this beta team has once again graced me with its presence, I would like to have a chance to explain in a little more detail, what exactly i was trying to say and in what context I'm saying it.

First off, when SMR started the active practice of coding itself out of problems (problems being defined by a player or group of player(s) who do some in-game action that later becomes deemed a "abuse" , "loophole", or "work around" of how the game was suppose to be played. This was the natural response to a active player base who felt the actions of said players were unfair. But what started at the very beginning as a good thing, got taken way to far, and for far to long. One fix creates new side effects, and those side effects are usually just dealt with.

here is an example: It used to be there was no limit on how many people could fire on each other at once. But it caused double kills, bugged deaths, etc. So they coded in the attacker cap, which limited battles to 10vs10. No more bugged deaths, but as a side-effect, you get ops losing 1 man a shot to level 70 planets for at least 10 shots, because 10 ships cant take out enough shields fast enough, and it basically guarantees for about 10 shots that people will die each shot. This is taking power away from players, who are trying to control a online scenario, and forcing it go certain ways. It used to be if you could organize 15 ships for a op, you could use those 15 ships to their potential. Not now.

This is just one example. There are many many many more. Some have been changed back recently such as instant updating CPL list stats, this is good. We need to change a few key areas of the game to re locate the power of control for in game things away from code, and rules, and long standing notions of how things should be done, and give more choices, from the little stupid things such as colors and alignment, to there being more ways to raid a port or a planet, to being able to watch the 10,000 credit bounty you put on Edgecrushers head grow with interest.

Games that give you control and options and different routes to carry out the same task and are flexible in providing choices, are what make you like a game. Even if you are plagued by error storms or down servers, it doesn't matter, people wait and cant wait till game comes back online. But not in the current standing of SMR. In SMR we are surrounded by code and rules which tell you what you can and cant do, and the regulations have gone to far, they need to be reevaluated 1 at a time and decide which to keep and which to change and which to completely throw out. And the game play needs to be revamped to go back towards what we had before, which was a game with many more options than we have now.

I will make specific suggestions later as i think about them more, but this is the gist of what i think the philosophy needs to be to create a healthy, addictive, SMR 1.6