Quote Originally Posted by X~Calibur View Post
Actually, if I want intense, I hit another game entirely. Evony simply doesn't do it for me on that front.



And thus my own policy of capping historical cities and showing other people how to do it. And it isn't quite like being a suzereign. You can draft, but only a fairly limited number of times per day, and you don't get the resources like a suzerain. Owning an historical city is a nice bonus, and I think a key toward honestly being able to control a state, but as you've shown with your playing-while-colonized style, there is a point at which the victorious party can do nothing more against the weaker party.

On the one hand, I can understand Evony's desire to keep lowbies/newbies viable in the game for a longer period of time, but accomplishing them is not entirely without cost for the larger dynamics of the game. To get things back to the basics, people play games because they find them fun. Granted, different players will find different kinds of games fun, and for different periods of time. I can applaud you for digging out all kinds of interestings ways in which to encourage players to find it fun, but at the end of the day, the decision ultimately belongs to each individual player. I do not think the game offers much in terms of solid player versus player interaction, and thus I've reached a point where I've accomplished all that I think this game has to offer for me. Other players may reach that point sooner than I did, some will reach it much later. Now it may also be the case that Evony wants players to self-select out of the game---that is, to reach a point where they realize that their own goals as gamers don't match the designers' goals for the game, and then go play other games. After all, one cannot design a game that pleases everyone. I've got a feeling, however, that this game could be made substantially better on a number of fronts (building, social interaction, PvP interaction, to name a few), and this improvement stems from designing with a clear goal and target audience in mind.
Hm, well said. I can't really argue that.