Guys many posts have been posted on this topic. I’d love to try and have an open untrolled discussion about the future of ee.

This is a war game but with ranks based on net gaining.

The demishing player based means the amount of tags left who war is less, means what we see now is war tags blindsiding netting tags and that leaking tap of players / tags leaving turns into a fast slowing stream.

Right now tags who want to war is SOL / elders / stones? That’s it. But either way that gets old.

This set saw SOL Kill elders / stones and blindside evo. Next set is it the same war? Or another Netting tag killed and leaving ?

My proposition is that we start a go fund me page, create a brief of changes. Those who contribute get to vote on changes and then it’s implemented.

I’d be happy to contribute $$$ to see bots retal (some), some bot countries actually land grab and also the formation of a variable bot alliance/s and bot tags with random kill runs and wars.

You could random.org the actions of the bot tags each set to create targets and actions that would be played out.

This then gives a storyline and would bring the server together to kill AI tags.

IMO it would also fix the netting strats that have counties running 0 def with 100k acres.

Just my thoughts. I feel the above would bring some purpose back to ee.

It would create room for all players to play how they like.

I think it would help curb suicidiers or at least make it not so easy as countries are forced to run ‘some’ defence.

Fixing this game is only doable by tapping into new sources for a playerbase. All Other solutions are at best, bandages on a large open wound it Will bleef straight through.

thanks for stealing my voting idea from another thread that I just posted on. But you perverted it, by saying only people who pay can vote. This is how corruption is born. You might as well suggest that only player who pay can play this free game.

Go fund me for $$$ to advertise and change EE into a mobile app would do nicely

Theres already money in it to keep this game alive even tho it perhaps is not enough. The owners keep this game alive because of interest and a small monetary gain is my guess. Either side of that has been too small to make changes where issues pop up for the last 4 years. I'm not saying mrcubans idea is great(or not), I'm just saying we are not getting the changes or bug fixes that we have been requesting even tho they are painfully obvious to most players what needs to be done. His analysis of the problem is that the incentives are not strong enough and he has a solution for that.

If I were to pay $X to a mod to take an action he/she otherwise would not do, that would perhaps constitute corruption. But If I was to pay QZ $Y to make an ingame change it would constitute a business transaction. The difference is that QZ has the right to change his game the way he pleases but the mod is there to do a very specific job to the best of his/her abilities.

Cuban, in a sense what you are proposing is bringing back RD as an NPC character. While its an interesting premise, I'm not sure there would not be unintended consequences -i.e. bot alliances would be invincible in war and getting randomly FS by a tag with 100% participation that runs turns perfectly and does kill runs in 10 seconds . . . we've all been down that road before.

In reality, we are probably just going to ride out the twilight years of an old text game community until they day it finally falls and breaks its hip and qz pulls the plug. I'm ok with that - I never would have though in 1997 that I would still be playing this game on a smart phone while my kid is driving. Everything since 2004 has been bonus time really.

@makinso your reply indicates that if there is more players this will solve all the issues. I disagree. I think if we had an influx if 500 new players, with the current state of player and game dynamics very few would stay.

I think my suggestions enable HUGE improvements for the current player base, and may even encourage recent departures to return. I think with those changes, when NEW players are brought into the game it provides more options for enjoyment and player retention...

mrcuban try coming up with something original on your own lol. I apologize, but none of this is going to save anything. Just give it up already, all things must come to an end.

Karnage I haven't seen any other thread.

Add more Japanese Bouncing Boobie animes that play for a few seconds whenever a turn is taken.

Hmm, why didn't they ban this handle of Dibs?

Probably just an oversight that will soon be corrected. :-P

I'm certain there would be interest in this game on the app stores. Even with no/limited graphics.

Also, the idea of using NPCs to drive events/war would be awesome, if it was a dedicated server, and was managed carefully.

Osloos yeah I’ve said for a few years the alliance sever needs a storyline. A npc tag or a GDI with enough countries to carry weight would be great. The storyline could be reported (events) and then it would create events where sometimes the server joins together to kill the GDI or bot tags etc

The mods could use random picked country numbers to attempt krs etc. random.org would mean the tRgets are fair.

I believe this has been covered already, nothing new.

IMO RD was a necessary adversary to this game that gave a true purpose for players to play... which is to beat the cheaters legitly. It gave clans a sense of pride. Among a lot of things RD actions created clan loyalty, created clan mottos and morals like honor, it created hate for a true enemy, and RD created a political randomness to the game.

This is the worst game that most/all of us play... and it's probably not close.

I appreciate QZ and Pang for their efforts, but the experiment has failed. It's dead, it's time we let it rest.


"Put the past behind you, kill it if you have to"

See you in Fallout 76! :-)

LI has a point

I myself enjoy the game. Times have changed, and that has hurt the game. Will I still play the game yes I will until the end. I don't think theres anything wrong with mrcuban bringing this up. At least he is making suggestions to try and better the game then like the ney sayers who keep saying the games dead.

I left the first time because of Family and have returned after almost 18 years. was never the best player but the game helps me with the mind activity. After the last 6 months it is hard for a new player to come into the game as they do not know the rules the people or the game.

I like the game and the strats and feel i do not have to be the best at this game to enjoy. Yet a new player needs some guidance and some tutoring. I think you need a new color to designate a new player. let them wear that color for 3 or 4 resets and with a do not hit policy,
place them with experienced players just to guide them a little but let them grow get legs and then take the color designate off them.

apply some color bots to them as well so they can learn the art of attack and defense and net gainning. Every game out there has a training tutorial we could do this in game.

If the game ever gets an app.. Instead of having a color or safety system/server, there could be a single player/simulation/tutorial.

~U have guided instruction on a simple version of main strategy of your choice (basically teach newb an NPC strategy)
~Maybe 15 to 50 NPC in the Sim, available to attack
~1 or 2 adversaries that will attack you if your nw to land ratio gets skewed
~A scripted market (not true market, just something that follows turn progression)
~Accelerated turns on 1k turn reset, only while actively playing (turn every few seconds while you're online, then maybe every few minutes while you're off)

~After completing, could even become an ingame purchase. For $0.99 you unlock the ability to run the simulation as often as you want, and maybe another $0.99 to unlock the Alpha 'magic market'. Vets could even be interested in this for their own testing purposes.

^if this happens I want royalties

New UI work that actually plays like a more modern game + tens of thousands of email addresses to re-engage is what I'm banking on to make it doable. that includes making it app-able, facebookable, mobile friendly, etc.

I'm like 4 pages away from having things set up enough to do an open beta... unfortunately those pages include attacking and spying, which do not have an API done for yet. qz's been busy with RL stuff so I've largely been working alone :p

I've been playing on the bus on the way to work for the last few months using my alpha UI work and it's getting there. needs some more design love, but the interactions are FAR superior to the legacy version.

osloos has some good ideas there to consider for a tutorial mode, which is something we're also thinking about. except that royalty idea, that's not a good idea ;)

the ramp up to the game right now is very challenging and the current UI isn't strong enough to attract people to stay.

the underlying thing is that we're making a niche, classic indie game for people who loved it and/or the community over the last 20-something years. I think there's a strong possibility that bringing it into a more fresh and modern look with some better training resources will re-engage a large number of people and actually be able to bring in more people to play.

I've also invested significant time into developing things in a manner which can quickly be translated into multiple languages so that we can target non-english markets. The universe of gamers has grown significantly since Earth was in it's prime. We just need to capture a minuscule percentage of those folks to get back to the largest community Earth has ever seen

Hey now, I'm thinking beer money, not mortgage payments

The numbers are truly mind blowing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/...by_smartphone_penetration

PANG i Love the updates and appreciate the effort on the UI front. However I don't have any issue with the current UI when I am netting. So making changes to the UI might attract new players, but if won't keep user retention....

I understand the time thing, that dev work isn't free. Which Is why I suggest a GFM page to raise the actual amount needed to make changes at market rates. IE $30ph x number of hours to complete. Rather than donating beer money, but not having the time to complete it.

The tutorial suggestions along with a new player country colour is great. Along with the safe bot countries (that wont retal) colour all would help a new player understand grabbing, land grabbing and the basics of growing.

But to keep the current player base 'growing' and have any hope of brining back past players to 'stay' then there needs to be storyline development.

We cannot rely on the player base to provide purpose of the game. To keep people returning and playing. I think a NPC tag which random actions creates a storyline. It changes the netting game in a positive way (More challanging) , NPC countries that retal or random landgrabs. NPC tags that can do KR's. I understand this sounds far fetched but with such a small player base, we cannot feed everyone with the thurst for different food types...

If we do it, I'll buy you a beer when you're in Toronto :p



So true! This is the biggest reason why we're taking the path we're taking in developing things. Be where the users are and provide a product that will meet expectations. :)



There's certainly a need for a UI refresh. There was a need 8 or 9 years ago when we made the game and there's even more of a need now. If we don't provide a modern, easy-to-use interface we're not going to be able to retain users either. The current UI is fine for folks who have played the game for many years and primarily play on a desktop with many tabs open but it's a pain in the but to play on the go, stonewall from your phone, etc. The goal is to make playing something that is enjoyable while you're playing it on any platform.



The additional benefit of moving to a better codebase is that it will make it easier to develop - both for the current devs and anyone we onboard. The current codebase is challenging to work with and the UI component is rather challenging to develop because it requires running the full game stack (which is not isolated well).



I'm happy to make some server types where there's objectives -- and I think some sort of new player sandbox is a great idea as well -- but there is definitely room for servers like Alliance where there is no explicit "goal" and the players figure out what they want to do. The underlying goal is to build the biggest country and run the highest networth clans as per our ranking statistics. We still wonder how to quantify war success in the same way but how you achieve those things is generally up to the players to define.

Putting every player on a rail of "you must defeat the big bad NPC tag!" as s storyline that defines someone's round is probably not for everyone so we want to be careful in how we approach it.

Ensuring the folks who play the game are able to play and enjoy it is probably the most important thing. That includes improving the UI to make them want to play in non-traditional ways or making it so it's harder for a country to get ruined (which, IMO, is why many, many people left in the 2008-2015 era) by suiciders or a war they didn't even get to participate in. Trying to create storylines is something that would probably need to happen after those two items are closer to being achieved.

A supplement, or alternative, to storylines, could be simple events or a theme server, which I recently posted about. Basebuilding games, like War and Order, have things like this, where rebel bases spawn, or monsters attack, and they turn it into a single player and guild contest. It's obviously a different environment and platform here, but there could still be periodic activities.

WRT countries being too easy to destroy - as a player who was gone for 10 yrs and came back for LCN reunion, I was extremely surprised by the adjustments put in place. GDI is extremely powerful/useful for the first time ever, and the restart mechanics add an incredible dynamic to the game. I understand the frustration of being killed or suicided, but also know the fun that can be had. Moving too the game too far in protecting either side of that mindset could be devastating.

Also, I won't even walk to the fridge for 1 beer. Minimum royalty would be 6pack/week.

As I was thinking about how some of these events could be accomplished on a server like Alliance... This may be a stretch, but i think it could also solve some of the frustration of having your country get blindsided by a FS or skilled suicider, and add new political and strategic dynamics to the game.

Spawn an alternate reality inside Alliance at say.. week 3 and week 6. The microverse would be an Express type server, where your current alliance country rolls over. Very fast turns, very short duration.

Each version could have its own priorities or tweaks, and rewards could be given to main country upon completion (worthwhile, but not overpowered). Maybe offer a free government change, or 24 hrs of no market commission, double bonus points, a day of 1 turn attacking, whatever.

Inside the microverse, alliances could play for rewards or handle issues. Say SOL was irritated at LAF but wanted to net on the main server. They could declare war in the microverse, get the aggression out and prevent LAF from winning rewards, all the while everyone still peacefully nets in main universe. Skilled suiciders would also have an alternate outlet. Instead of wrecking their main country, they could have an epic Express run and maybe win some rewards of their own.

With a platform like this, you, could introduce the NPC storyline stuff, try different mechanics (new governments, units/tech, whatever), and give ppl new opportunities.

i had 2 counties hit me full out at the same time, same type of strikes, i was concerned it was a multi and not an alliance.

That really is all that needs to be said...... ^_^

clink.... you know what that was Cuban???? that was your last talking-token. you are now out of talking-tokens Sir.

<>

I've thought often that this game would be an interesting educational supplement for a class project on optimization of multivariet systems. Obviously we would have to clean up the forums a lot and retool the game a lot for both realism and and to keep 'fascists' from winning, lol

You lost me at "this is a war game". Nobody has ever been able to demonstrate this to actually be true. As you say, the game ranks you based on NW, not war performance as alliances choose to measure it.

...but there's a tank on the front page

move the bots to Primary and let the netters have a blast