Aug 21st 2014, 17:49:36
Overall, as a noob, I have to say, first impression of this game is negative, although it has incredible potential. As you say, only if it attracts more players can this game be successful.
Solution 1: Find way to get people to use market more. Much of the potential for awesomeness for this games comes from the prospect of having an active, dependable market, with reasonable, stable prices, and high frequency of trading going on in terms of tech and goods. With more stable prices and higher frequency of trades comes with it more players willing to depend on the market to fulfill their strat objectives. And so solving this issue requires critical mass of players using it. A market with frequent trading opens the game up for means more variety of strats and more varieties of variations of strats. And once that happens, the game's fun factor rises exponentially.
Solution 2: Make alliance system that provides advantage for the noobish players / smaller countries rather than verteran players / larger countries. From what I can tell as a noob, you've got to be really lucky to get selected to join a gang of veteran allies on any server. And getting selected the first round a noob plays is quite improbable, no? How soon do noobs realize that the only way to have any fun and really learn the game is get in with a clique of veteran players somehow and that that is essentially impossible their first round? Do they have the patience to stick it out 20 rounds before they get 'in' with the cool crowd? They'll have to suffer a humiliating, unjust disparity for many rounds: the advantages to joining a clan are huge simply due to avoiding getting attacked. And who primarily gets this benefit? The veteran players, not the noobs who actually need it. The thing is, the way it is set up presently is to provide a huge advantage to veteran players over noobs than to help noobs learn the game and have fun. Instead of making the alliance system an advantage to smaller counties / noob players, it seems all that was done to try and balance things was to place a bunch of restrictions on the alliance system and to diminish the benefits of being in an alliance in the first place. In my honest, noobish, opinion, this is counterproductive since the alliance system could be the best thing about this game. I think forming groups of players under a clan holds most potential for fun game play. But only if it could be redesigned somehow to work for noobish players / smaller countries, rather than veteran players / larger countries. A simple suggestion might be to allow smaller net worth countries to have more / cheaper alliances or to incentivize larger countries allying smaller countries somehow?
Solution 3: Noobish players / smaller countries should have more of a spy advantage over larger. Ops should be beefed-up as well as effectiveness of spying according to ratio of number of spies to acreage, simply to provide more of a deterrence to larger countries / veteran players attacking noobish players / smaller countries. If a small net worth country can use a small number of spies to cause more damage against a larger country than it would be worth it for that larger country to attack the smaller one, you have 'balance'.
And so, yeah, overall, this game needs some work. Concepts need to change so as to attract enough new players to create the critical mass of activity necessary on markets and between alliances for this game's 'fun factor' rather than 'vote-buying' to provide for its own marketing success.
Solution 1: Find way to get people to use market more. Much of the potential for awesomeness for this games comes from the prospect of having an active, dependable market, with reasonable, stable prices, and high frequency of trading going on in terms of tech and goods. With more stable prices and higher frequency of trades comes with it more players willing to depend on the market to fulfill their strat objectives. And so solving this issue requires critical mass of players using it. A market with frequent trading opens the game up for means more variety of strats and more varieties of variations of strats. And once that happens, the game's fun factor rises exponentially.
Solution 2: Make alliance system that provides advantage for the noobish players / smaller countries rather than verteran players / larger countries. From what I can tell as a noob, you've got to be really lucky to get selected to join a gang of veteran allies on any server. And getting selected the first round a noob plays is quite improbable, no? How soon do noobs realize that the only way to have any fun and really learn the game is get in with a clique of veteran players somehow and that that is essentially impossible their first round? Do they have the patience to stick it out 20 rounds before they get 'in' with the cool crowd? They'll have to suffer a humiliating, unjust disparity for many rounds: the advantages to joining a clan are huge simply due to avoiding getting attacked. And who primarily gets this benefit? The veteran players, not the noobs who actually need it. The thing is, the way it is set up presently is to provide a huge advantage to veteran players over noobs than to help noobs learn the game and have fun. Instead of making the alliance system an advantage to smaller counties / noob players, it seems all that was done to try and balance things was to place a bunch of restrictions on the alliance system and to diminish the benefits of being in an alliance in the first place. In my honest, noobish, opinion, this is counterproductive since the alliance system could be the best thing about this game. I think forming groups of players under a clan holds most potential for fun game play. But only if it could be redesigned somehow to work for noobish players / smaller countries, rather than veteran players / larger countries. A simple suggestion might be to allow smaller net worth countries to have more / cheaper alliances or to incentivize larger countries allying smaller countries somehow?
Solution 3: Noobish players / smaller countries should have more of a spy advantage over larger. Ops should be beefed-up as well as effectiveness of spying according to ratio of number of spies to acreage, simply to provide more of a deterrence to larger countries / veteran players attacking noobish players / smaller countries. If a small net worth country can use a small number of spies to cause more damage against a larger country than it would be worth it for that larger country to attack the smaller one, you have 'balance'.
And so, yeah, overall, this game needs some work. Concepts need to change so as to attract enough new players to create the critical mass of activity necessary on markets and between alliances for this game's 'fun factor' rather than 'vote-buying' to provide for its own marketing success.