Apr 26th 2017, 22:48:12
So hi (Hi Marshal =p)
I'm still playing utopia, still with the same group of people I've played with for years. Sometimes I quit for a few months or a few years, but I always get back there, mostly cuz the friends there are easy friends. There's no crazy shifting diplomacy where you're best buddies are your worst enemies all of a sudden, you're never worried if your new player is actually a cheater trying to screw your group over, etc. Once your friends, you're friends and you will hardly ever find a disagreement big enough to break ties over. The dynamics between people are just completely different, and really, it's tame (and lame) over there, nothing like earth ever was. It used to bore the hell out of me, now it means I can play my game without any of the drama and moaning I'd have if I played here. Most utopians are complete idiots by now too, the old guys are all bitter and sticking together in their secluded groups, and the plebz around them are 99% fluffy nublets who never learned how to play properly cuz the game sucks too much to punish them for their stupidity. Wars are mostly won by activity, not so much by strategy. Is that a good thing for the game? I doubt it.
Most of us utopians are actually quite certain the game is as good as dead. Utopia was just sold to two guys who seem to be somewhat famous ex-players, and immediately the word went all about how they are linked to 'the wrong people' which will lead the game to death even faster. Some others think it will pick up popularity. Basically the same things are said now than we used to say back when Pang and Qz took over here in earth. The ingame chat feels nice, but overall it means that it's really easy to be mediocre and semi-active. With the ingame chat, you don't have to be around at a certain time to interact with your buddies, you just read or rant when you feel like it and log out again. I feel it has not helped activity and heck, out of the 22 players we currently have, I can only connect 4 players' nicks with their provinces (countries), and whenever we get fresh blood, you never get the opportunity to really talk with them, because everything is much more disengaged through that chat feature.
As for the code, I have no background or knowledge in coding, but I can tell you that the amount of times that my attacks, or ops, fail because the code shows an 'oops something went wrong'-message is more than enough to piss any sane person off. One of the mods posted in the forums that the "Oopses" are just 'normal', whatever the hell that means. There is also the fact that now there is such a thing as downtime during a tick (the like the moment where you gain a turn). Whatever you were just doing, whether it's writing a message or training troops, if you hit enter the moment that tick happens, everything is lost and you cannot get back into the game for another minute or so. It's kind of minor, but it's annoying and with Mehul's code it was never necessary to have this. I'm sure Mehul's code was outdated, but the new(er) code had and has so many problems and idiotic bugs that I can't really call the guys who made it serious programmers. The new owners own the game for a couple weeks now and already fixed bugs that were obvious but never acknowledged (for years) by the old team.
Basically what I'm trying to say, utopia sucks too. And utopians are whining and crying about how the rest of the players are destroying the game, too. For a game that is set up the way utopia is, our 3,3k provinces are not really a whole lot. You constantly end up fighting the same nublets, and worst is, half of the time you can't even win cuz the rest of your team is mostly laid back veterans who have no interest in being super active. So as soon as you get outhit by some idiots with a terrible strategy, you already lost, cuz activity wins wars. There is no fix to our games and you all should just try to have fun instead of moan and cry about who did what.
