Suggestion for next game

[Blade]

Wiz, Kiky and myself where having a convo last night about possible game changes and all 3 of us agreed that maybe next game we should remove coded naps and cap alliances to 15 while the playerbase is still small, this will conquer the mining issuesd and stop the game turning in to a 2 way battle, with a cap of 15 we would see at least 5 alliances and with no coded naps a 5 way battle that could make the game very interesting. 15 would still allow Ops, but stop 30 seed sectors and stale wars.

I think it's a great and refreshing idea.

Thoughts?

[Freon22]

I think this is a question better answered by the players.

[Blade]

I agree, but wanted to run it past here first

[Edgecrusher]

Well, I fully agree, but don't have the illusion that this alone will solve the mining issue. 15 humans with 225/225/23 stacks would make an impenetrable minefield.

[Infinity]

I think this is a question better answered by the players.

We're playing the game. Actively. 2 alliance leaders posting on this thread.

Edge, I'll make sure my silly Humans have stat points in something else then bigger stacks as I want to cry when I see Markus missing with 500k (while he had it).

It would be VERY refreshing, it would open ways to somewhat different way of playing, as I said last night, I'm all in for something new. Player base is small anyway, lack of targets is killing all of us sometimes and minefields still wouldn't have 24 seeds as mine had some time during this round.

[Kahless_]

Its an idea that has been thrown around alot many time before now and has pretty much always met with a generally negative response from the player base.

Im gonna say no to this for reasons which have always been used to shoot this idea down. These are:

1) The 30 man alliance cap gives alliances that lack skill/experience to make up for it with numbers. A team of 30 average players can compete with a team of 15 great players with 15 average players. A team of 15 average players however will struggle to compete with a team of 15 great players. 15 player team requires very good teamwork, good players will relish this, average players will struggle and possibly ultimately fail and quit. Its reality. 30 man cap leaves margin for error.

2) The biggest issue is to do with newbies. A 30 man cap leaves many places for new players to come into the alliance. A core group of experienced people (10-15-20) look after the day to day runnings of the alliance, allowing new players to relax and learn in a structured environment. By Reducing the cap, you remove the place in the alliance for new players.

So yea basically you achieve 1 goal, you get more action in the game, things are more fun for a while etc, but ultimately, you kill the game because no new players get stuck into the game. They approach, try it, dont get absorbed into a big alliance and ultimately dont see the point in the game.

The only way to implement a reduced cap is to force alliances to take on new players.

[Infinity]

How about 20 then?

I'd be able to have a core of 15 good (team) players together with 5 newbies and go thru the round decently.

[Kahless_]

I think we tried 25 at one point in SMR1 and it did not go well..The 5 slots that are lost are 5 less spots for newbs. It really is a simple thing. The aim of alliance cap is to spread out the talented players, but that just doesnt happen. The talented ones stay in their groups and there is just less space for everyone else.

What needs to happen for a new alliance cap to be put in place is:

1) User rankings need to be coded
2) Alliance needs to be forced to have a certain number of players with low user ranking.


I'd actually kinda like to hijack this thread slightly if i may and tag on a more complicated suggestion..It does relate to alliance caps..

I always liked the concept of giving each user ranking a number, a score if you will..And i wanted to see rather than having a set number of players allowed in your alliance, have a set score which the sum of your players scores can add up too..So a collection of brand new players might be able to amass an army of 40 people while if your top players choose to play together, they may only be able to have 10 players..This would then hopefully give you that spread of experienced players. And recruiting and training newbies becomes beneficial..If your able to train 2 newbies they could be more useful than 1 average person for example..

(And don't got saying this will just encourage multis.. Have to have faith that we are going to be able to control multis..I do)

[Blade]

This wouldn't be a perm fix, but with 30 your not seeing anything different, bascially the same 2 lots of people fighting but mixed up a little.

We dont have enough players to have 30 man alliances, it just makes for 2 aliance games (Which it has been for 3 games now) making the game smaller would encourage more people to spread out and work together, lots of the player base dont like a big change, specially one that will impact them playing with all their friends instead of having to choose a few and splitting it up.

Kah saying it was tried once, maybe but then we also had 3 times the player base, you the game could hold a 30 man cap. We had a cap of 20 for a few games in SM, worked well, just the player base was far bigger than the cap so it was raised again to 30.

[Blade]

And to raise a point, the way this game is now, with a cap of 30 is not intising new players to stay, they join, see 2 big alliances, realise it's impossible to move and no one wants to take on fresh newbies, so they leave and play other games, FE and EE will take on newwer players but lets be honest, you would only take on a new player if they had proved themself a little, but in this state new players have very few options.

so basically it's either 2 30 man alliances fighting each other or 4 15 man alliances, I know what would make the game more interesting for the players now and make it look more interesting to new players.