UW fighting rewards

The whole arti topic won`t amount to anything because of what ear stated. Changing dig times via code rewrite is the proper fix but all that can be done is through the admin panel so staff is limited. Bottom line their isn`t enough players on rt to have balanced uw attempts so I recommend saving this discussion for a latter date and focus on balancing the needs of our servers and its players and work on getting our stagnant player base up and running then work on increasing activity. Like I mentioned earlier its baby steps and if we don`t establish a good foundation for change, the big changes will do more damage than good.

GC can`t be fixed at the flip of a switch or a push of a button.

The issues is though that it would hurt more players who aren`t living in digging timezones than players who are. :P

EE i also have long thought that artis should also be reduced on completion of a uw and think this would influence uw fighting alot as old empires can recash quickly but getting artis back takes a lot longer due to dig times. maybe 50% of major artis like btc stc gordos historias pcc and all grands for non fed mates and 25% for fed mates.

I think the majority of the people playing would welcome updates; however, who is going to do the updates?

you guys are thinking in the wrong direction.

change fed member capacity from 20 to 10.

it only makes sense considering the activity difference from then and now. there`s no longer 150 players logged in each day. it`s 25-35.
The fed member capacity was instated with consideration to how many people played the game. this number has significantly changed.

matter of fact if you scale it mathematically the fed member capacity should be closer to 5.

150 / 20 = 7.5
25~35 / 5 = 7.5

* AvgOnlinePlayers / FedCapacity = Value that represents possible strength a single federation can have over the server

the value only stays the same if member capacity is reduced. this would also encourage more UW fighting because the attempts wouldn`t seem completely hopeless.

right now it`s ridiculous, why play on a TB server if 90% of the active players there are in the same fed and can easily do an endless chain of UWs?
this is especially a problem with TB servers. there`s no longer any challenge, there`s no longer any fun.

this might be an intermittent issue but it`s a problem that exists in the current structure of GC and if a dominant fed needs to do an endless chain of UWs to prove this point it will be done.

this is a relevant issue and the lack of balancing updates is killing GC. it`s a slow death like a progressing sickness that goes ignored.

are we just going to neglect it until it dies, is that the plan?

Kudos to you rag for a great idea but I would disagree with arti rewards for the same reasons stated below and just to add a little further explanation . Not that I could surmount the wall of impenetrable text posted below. The problem at hand is the lack of activity and players so it would seem certain uw attempts that are well prepared in advance will suddenly appear one sided so most players will just up and say "forget it" it is what it is. You can`t reward a player base for doing what needs to be done in the first place to protect themselves from losing 90%.

Its like trying to jump over a lake to get to a canoe that you needed in the first place. The main issue at hand is first establishing an insentive program based on how many players we have now with a team of staff members regularly carrying out these insentives on a preset schedule to gain back the current player base and help them resume part/full time playing again. Next step is to institute a way to gain and add to the current player base and then when we avg at least twice our current activity we can change up the incentive to support more active players.

On rt alone we avg from 19-25 people online and during the last few attempts we have seen upwards of 35-45. When 15-20 of those are supporting an uw attempt with control on the ranks most players aren`t going to try. I gave it my all on the last one and tried to rally help but all in all theirs just not enough on to make it interesting anymore.

So its baby steps at first, can`t have a toddler throw on a jet pack and expect him to safely travel back and forth from mom to dad cause something bad is going to happen.

Great idea and definitely keep it coming.

**In Bane`s voice** Your punishment must be more severe.

I would prefer 99% of all resources lost instead of 90%. Also, I don`t understand why artifact stores are not touched. If we lost artifacts, I would bet all my savings more vets would fight UWs, and more younger empires would try UWs to destroy older empires` artifacts.

Also, land and colonies dont change. So people with well established economies dont care about losing 90% of cash when they will be back at max credits in less than a week. Maybe losing 10-20% of land would get people active in fighting.

tons of other ideas you can do.... losing research, hurt turn production, hurt build rates, yada yada yada

I`m all for it and think it a good idea except I would only agree upon rewards if people SUCCESSFULLY defend against it.

I just think ideas like these can be dangerous. In that it makes things more like UC where everything becomes sugar coated. The ones who are able potentially able to do the most damage are already going to be the oldest empires with the most artifacts so you`re just giving more kick backs to older lazy empires trying to motivate them to get of the couch.

I think a much more effective way bolster activity during a UW would be to make loses more harsh, such as everyone loses 50% of all artifacts, or 35% if you`re in the same fed. its never been fair that artifacts are not touched by UW`s Especially when Certain Geographic locations have more of an advantage in getting artifacts over others due to time zones. but don`t go getting to upset, there`s no way i see to implement this change as it would probably take rewriting code and could potentially cause alot of other issues.

I also feel that some empires on TB servers just love collecting BTC/STC and Historias and it`s almost obscene the amount some have there. they rare ever use any in fact most would rather VM than use artifacts to get them out of a situation. I wished we could change the max capacities on artifacts which i do think i will look into, though it would be best if it could be done on a server by server basis. i think a max cap of 10 btcs and 10 historas would fit slow better then maybe making that 12/12 for normal 17/17 for fast 25/25 for ultra though these numbers are just off the top of my head and would need much more thought put into the exact amount. and also perhaps a limit on how many can be used in an hour or a day

though what i`m trying to get at is artifacts were meant to help give a player an advantage yes, but they shouldn`t be able to negate all skill. I`ve seen situations where a group of people have worked to take down a handful of players and then those handful players use 20+ btcs to clear the ranks and put themselves out of reach. things like that make younger players see the gap between their empires and those older ones and frankly it can make you want to quit, because what is the point when you work that hard to have everything stripped away not really because of skill or even luck, but because of someone can burn a few artifacts.

Also things like this make the older empires who play there, despite if they have artifacts themselves, pretty much just log in for borders and to use turns and ignore the server around the or even worse they just go from vm to vm. I think things like this are why larger groups are more readily able to control a server nearly uncontested for years. and as far as larger groups are concerned i think max fed member capacity should be be augmented, again it would be far better if it could be done on a server by server basis, but on a server like slow where you may have 20 people who actually log in a week at the most why should feds be able to hold 21 players.

While yes i know changing fed limits to 8 or 12 or what have you, doesn`t really break up any powerblocks nor would it stop multiple feds from working together. but it does hinder communication and those groups of people could drift apart, or chaos could arise from being able to hit those they weren`t able to before. Also it makes it so everyone and their friends can`t jump into a fed during a UW so they get the less harsh affects. in way i think feds should be locked from a UW start also where people are able to be kicked out of feds but no one can join a fed. Again though if Admins could make it happen we probably would have or at least threw the idea out for a vote long ago.

Sorry i went off on a long tangent that doesn`t necessarily have anything to do your Idea Rag.

I suppose in summary is why provide more incentive for people to use artifacts, gain the benefit of those and then give them a way to recover some or depending on how this could be done a gross profit on artifacts. and depending on the final idea and how it`s worked it might just be easier for staff to do something like remove a percentage of artifacts after a successful UW, as per my first idea, by hand than it would to give rewards for stopping one.

I`m not saying no, or shrugging off the idea, i would just like to see more work put into the hows and whys, and a few alternatives to giving btcs as the rewards so that maybe we could mix and match prizes. Though i will say that i would rather work on bolstering activity and getting players on TB servers than this atm but there`s still no reason why this idea can`t be worked on.

Edited by EphemeralEternity on 2013-07-15

Fraud was not really what I was referring too. I just think incentive to kill the UW is needed more than a hitting reward. EE is totally right about us younger TB players. We want and need you to UW. Plain and simple. All this would do is get ya a couple more hits. And maybe a extra defender lol. I would as a young empire hit as much as possible to get the reward then stop the other attackers from doing more damage than I did. Because in long run I need you to be successful. This would just give some a chance to gain few Artie`s as well.
Now a reward worthy of older empires to fight for, and maybe even backstabbing to get would be more effective lol and it would need to be a kill the whole UW reward not just damage it.

its my experience that positive motivation is better than negative motivation - people like rewards especially after they realize they can live with the losses.

Think this is a good thought. But I don`t think it will solve the problem really. In a lot of cases on TB,especially the slower servers, it`s best to allow the empire to boom. This is because of the low player base here lately. Hopefully the start up boost will change that a bit. Now a reward for the killing of a TB UW might be better :) and little less prone to abuse.

Maybe, we`ll talk more about this after guide apps, but if people aren`t going to fight to save 90% of their resources i doubt a few artifacts will change their mind.

I think the primary reason as to why UW don`t get fought often especially on TB servers are because of activity levels, usually the active people are the ones who attempt UW`s and they`re also the ones with friends who have BTC`s and Historia`s...not to mention the practice of Historiaing people Who you know may resist before the UW begins,

Why would you want to care if you long in and just lost 2-3 days worth of turns and you assume that anyone else that might be able to do damage received the same treatment it makes you think why bother it`s better to just save my BTC for later, and let them restart this X00 day old TB account.

Also alot of people that could help, as you mentioned you know there are those with BTC`s out there during AdmiralSarek`s UW. But i`d wager a good bit of the BTC that didn`t belong to those friendly towards AdmiralSarek were locked up in VM.

I think the bigger issue isn`t the willingness to fight UW`s is just inactivity present especially on the slower TB accounts. Which hopefully can be changed in time, but it will take quiet some time for newer empires to be able to compete with 1k+ empires who have over 100 infra and a cache of historia`s and btc. and sadly for some who aren`t able to be on during dig times that will probably be an insurmountable challenge for them. especially when no matter the skill you can`t compete with being historia`d and chasing down people capable of using a btcs or two out of 50+ when ever you finally manage to get the best of them unless you have friends with artifacts too.

Great idea Ragnarok.

*like