Originally
posted by
Gerdler:
I totally get that this game would be better with 10k players than 300 players. But you cant just reverse the changes that have been made and they all come back.
The game was changed in some ways for the better and the bots are just a necessity with so few players and so many turns. If you want no bots you get landtrading, I didnt play then but from what I hear its a great exercise in math and spreadsheeting and much to no ones surprise that is what LaF excels at, and much to no ones surprise the community disliked landtrading. So bots were introduced.
If no land trading and no bots you get farming of untagged and small tags til they leave, we had that for 10+ years in e2025 and its when most players quit. It was really hard to start a new tag and not get farmed to oblivion and that is the good old days you seek to return to, the time when everyone left the game because the game forced players to farm others to get ahead.
I have to disagree with the e2025 reference of players quitting due to small tags being farmed. We had 10k+ countries, with lots of multis/bots, but those bots were not risk free in hitting, same with the multi's. It added risk to your LG'ing. Small alliances back in the day were never ran off the game from farming. They'd stand up and fight against it, politically allign themselves so that they could survive. There were many things that happened, and while a poorly ran small alliance may have died, the players didn't leave the game, they went to another alliance.
Bot farming is no where near bottom feeding of the old e2025 days. YOu can't even compare it. Show me a bot that has gotten bottomfed, and retaliated, attempted to retal, topfeed to get the bottom feeds to stop. There is none becasue there is ZERO risk in lg'ing a bot, where there were many risks in bottom feeding. Comparing the 2 is one of the worst comparisons you can make.
The reason most players quit, was because a large portion of the playerbase was in the 14-22 age. As that player base grew up, this game became either boring, or less important. Players graduated college, started thier new job, and new lives. Thus by about 2010, that age group turned to the 24-35 age, and this isn't a game that attracted new players, as there is no flash, graphics, or instant gratitfiacation one gets with this game.
Leaders also burned out back in those days, because we had to do something called LEAD. There were actual politics played. You were managing 50-200 people, over ICQ, IRC, or message boards. There was a lot more to do and worry about back in those days, and being an FA or alliance leader you had tons of political implications to issues.
But bottomfeeding was probally the least reason of reasons people quit back then. We did this thing called adapt.