Regarding Server Mergers [focus na1]

[nailbomb]

~start ramble [feel free to pass onto devel or admin to reach someone worth reviewing if you see fit]

I would have loved to have seen a little more thought put into the mergers other than simply dumping a bunch of players from each server into a tight sized map with the exact same setup which leads to the same end result. I went through the very first merger on age1 and while it was fun for a short period of time nothing new or better came out of the gameplay from evony age1. I'm guessing the exact same result will happen on age2 as there is no real game change other than a 'server reset' and all the flaws of the game still exist.

With only a few minor code tweaks Evony could expand the game for longer life and make it more interesting for the vets that have stuck around for an insanely long time and become extremely frustrated with the lack of simple updates which could make Age2 complete and enjoyable for a long duration.

Its obvious that flaws may exist in the below rant but I believe if some form of updates could be implemented for the server mergers it would be a win/win for players and evony alike.

+ Expanded map size is obviously a must. You can't jam all these players into a map the same size.

+ Citadel lvl20 (500k rally), 4 lvl18s, etc.. 16s,14s,12s.

+ Drafting radius would need a bit of a hackup but wouldn't be too hard. Citadels get the whole server.. 18s in 1/4 quad they are currently in.. 16,14,12s same as is. New states names would need to be invented due to the X4 size but this would allow a large amount of room for a server na1-4 super-server merge.

+ Consideration of allowing HCs to be relocated with a adv/teleport cooldown of one week would be interesting and an instantly respawning HC of that level would allow for multiple high level hcs to be taken by players on the server. This would create more token pieces on the board for pvp and npc capture rather than the static setup in place at the moment which combined with the inability to actual capture these tokens making them useless. If a higher level hc 20/18 stays in the same position as its default location it is randomly placed on the board after a random amount of time spawning a new npc of that level. Large level hcs become useless after the areas around them are wiped of hostiles making them a rather useless token piece.

+ Changes in the comforting abilities of hcs i think is a must. After all the game is supposed to be all about pvp and taking over cities but has defaulted to players unable to take cities due to the way that the game is sided towards easy comforting and defense. HC's really should not even have comforting and should auto raise +1 loy after say 10minutes allowing an attacking force to decrease loyalty over the amount of time it takes for loyalty to raise. One Speech-text can be used every 2 hours only.

+ Hero locking of some form. If a town is colonized heros in that town are unable to move until the colonization battle of that town occurs. This forces players to actually defend their hhs rather than just moving them to another city once being put into supp. I mean you pay the 10 cents to lookup the hh.. but one can simply shuffle the hero off to another city once attacked.

+ Stamp out acad backdooring. Make acad locked and unable to be demolished. This allows servers like ours to actually use the colonization feature and to hold towns rather than fear of being acad tech:0 backdoored rendering colonization useless.

A bunch of these minor updates could easily be done by Evony for the new merged servers which would prolong the server life and make it alot more interesting.. in turn.. bringing in alot more revenue to Evony in purchase of items and coins as players stay interested for alot longer periods of time.

People may agree of disagree with the above thoughts but I personally believe these simple updates above would make for a much more fun server and more money in Evony's pocket!

There are plenty of other areas which could be more finely tuned on the game but I hope someone can pass this along before our servers are merged as it did not take me long to grow bored of the last merger on age1 and i came to age2 as it was different but doubt i'll be interested in playing 1-2months after the merger and the server is dominated yet again.. 0,0 or not.

~end ramble thanks for listening

Cheers nb.

[Dawnseeker]

These are really cool ideas. I wish we could implement these and other great suggestions I've seen around the forums but we're always limited by time and manpower, so we have to make hard choices.

Can you explain a little what you mean about academy backdooring? How does destroying your own academy help you?

[nailbomb]

Certainly.. Say I were to colonize your town and win the supp battle making you my colony. All you need to do is demolish your academy in your town and have a friend attack your town to wipe insane amounts of troops on a tech:0 setup (due to no acad). This is one of the reasons why the colonization servers have failed in their purpose. You don't want to colonize enemy towns if you are going to lose all your troops due to someone ripping down their acad and leaving you at tech:0. This has also corrupted the Commission Battle setup rendering it useless and unwanted by the server majority.

There are two fixes for this problem with the first being the easiest. Locking the academy from being able to be demolished. There is no reason for a player to demolish its acad other than to backdoor. Or the second which is to use the suzerains technology levels to fight the battle rather than the colonies.

Regarding the time/manpower.. small code tweaks and investment in the game will reap good returns for Evony in the short/long term. As i'm sure you are already aware.

Also too add
+ Hero Capping. Its way beyond a joke and needs to be corrected to tackle the troop counts when fighting. You lose all your heros before you are able to even clear half the amount of troops in a town even when fighting in large groups!!

There is also a rather large glitch which i'm happy to talk about in a private conversation with you which needs to be patched.

Thanks again for listening.

[Deagen]

Two perfect patches to makes! I have been on Na7 since 04/04/2010...I remember, before we knew about the academy glitches, someone in our alliance would be in suppression, or about to uprise, and the entire alliance would offer assistance...food, troops, hero's, etc...that was FUN...then we learned about the academy demo and one arch wave would destroy millions, so it became more of, who can boot me so I can port next to my friend and get free. The alliance lost that team aspect...I think you offer two very good solutions to a problem that really took teamwork out of the game.

Hero Capping! HERO CAPPING! I hate it, you can siege a 14/16/18 with hundreds of millions of troops...planning, building, etc...If the player is online, you can go through 80 lvl 100 heroes in less than a few hours. I (do) think a defensive player should be able to catch heroes...I think it needs a minor tweak though...What if, a lvl 100 hero that is captured, it is in captured status (takes up a spot) for X amount of hours. That way, the defensive player can still cap some heroes (regular or HH) however, they are only going to get as many spots as they have open, then they have to play some real defensive...and the offensive player can send HH's at that point...

Nice post Nailbomb, perhaps we will see each other on the same server soon...

[Dawnseeker]

Certainly.. Say I were to colonize your town and win the supp battle making you my colony. All you need to do is demolish your academy in your town and have a friend attack your town to wipe insane amounts of troops on a tech:0 setup (due to no acad). This is one of the reasons why the colonization servers have failed in their purpose. You don't want to colonize enemy towns if you are going to lose all your troops due to someone ripping down their acad and leaving you at tech:0. This has also corrupted the Commission Battle setup rendering it useless and unwanted by the server majority.

There are two fixes for this problem with the first being the easiest. Locking the academy from being able to be demolished. There is no reason for a player to demolish its acad other than to backdoor. Or the second which is to use the suzerains technology levels to fight the battle rather than the colonies.

Regarding the time/manpower.. small code tweaks and investment in the game will reap good returns for Evony in the short/long term. As i'm sure you are already aware.

Also too add
+ Hero Capping. Its way beyond a joke and needs to be corrected to tackle the troop counts when fighting. You lose all your heros before you are able to even clear half the amount of troops in a town even when fighting in large groups!!

There is also a rather large glitch which i'm happy to talk about in a private conversation with you which needs to be patched.

Thanks again for listening.

Thanks for explaining this. I thought this had actually been fixed already but it may need another reminder. I believe the goal is for the Suzerain's techs to be used, not the colony. Would you please send information on the glitch to me in a private message? Thank you.

[Soaap]

~start ramble [feel free to pass onto devel or admin to reach someone worth reviewing if you see fit]

I would have loved to have seen a little more thought put into the mergers other than simply dumping a bunch of players from each server into a tight sized map with the exact same setup which leads to the same end result. I went through the very first merger on age1 and while it was fun for a short period of time nothing new or better came out of the gameplay from evony age1. I'm guessing the exact same result will happen on age2 as there is no real game change other than a 'server reset' and all the flaws of the game still exist.

With only a few minor code tweaks Evony could expand the game for longer life and make it more interesting for the vets that have stuck around for an insanely long time and become extremely frustrated with the lack of simple updates which could make Age2 complete and enjoyable for a long duration.

Its obvious that flaws may exist in the below rant but I believe if some form of updates could be implemented for the server mergers it would be a win/win for players and evony alike.

+ Expanded map size is obviously a must. You can't jam all these players into a map the same size.

+ Citadel lvl20 (500k rally), 4 lvl18s, etc.. 16s,14s,12s.

+ Drafting radius would need a bit of a hackup but wouldn't be too hard. Citadels get the whole server.. 18s in 1/4 quad they are currently in.. 16,14,12s same as is. New states names would need to be invented due to the X4 size but this would allow a large amount of room for a server na1-4 super-server merge.

+ Consideration of allowing HCs to be relocated with a adv/teleport cooldown of one week would be interesting and an instantly respawning HC of that level would allow for multiple high level hcs to be taken by players on the server. This would create more token pieces on the board for pvp and npc capture rather than the static setup in place at the moment which combined with the inability to actual capture these tokens making them useless. If a higher level hc 20/18 stays in the same position as its default location it is randomly placed on the board after a random amount of time spawning a new npc of that level. Large level hcs become useless after the areas around them are wiped of hostiles making them a rather useless token piece.

+ Changes in the comforting abilities of hcs i think is a must. After all the game is supposed to be all about pvp and taking over cities but has defaulted to players unable to take cities due to the way that the game is sided towards easy comforting and defense. HC's really should not even have comforting and should auto raise +1 loy after say 10minutes allowing an attacking force to decrease loyalty over the amount of time it takes for loyalty to raise. One Speech-text can be used every 2 hours only.

+ Hero locking of some form. If a town is colonized heros in that town are unable to move until the colonization battle of that town occurs. This forces players to actually defend their hhs rather than just moving them to another city once being put into supp. I mean you pay the 10 cents to lookup the hh.. but one can simply shuffle the hero off to another city once attacked.

+ Stamp out acad backdooring. Make acad locked and unable to be demolished. This allows servers like ours to actually use the colonization feature and to hold towns rather than fear of being acad tech:0 backdoored rendering colonization useless.

A bunch of these minor updates could easily be done by Evony for the new merged servers which would prolong the server life and make it alot more interesting.. in turn.. bringing in alot more revenue to Evony in purchase of items and coins as players stay interested for alot longer periods of time.

People may agree of disagree with the above thoughts but I personally believe these simple updates above would make for a much more fun server and more money in Evony's pocket!

There are plenty of other areas which could be more finely tuned on the game but I hope someone can pass this along before our servers are merged as it did not take me long to grow bored of the last merger on age1 and i came to age2 as it was different but doubt i'll be interested in playing 1-2months after the merger and the server is dominated yet again.. 0,0 or not.

~end ramble thanks for listening

Cheers nb.

Nice ideas I think these would breath a bit of life into a game of the same old same old things repeated over and over again.
Also regarding the backdooring, can't you just set your suppression settings to 0?

[LEIFUR]

Nice ideas I think these would breath a bit of life into a game of the same old same old things repeated over and over again.
Also regarding the backdooring, can't you just set your suppression settings to 0?

Yes you can Soaap and its not really a glitch since you can demolish any building Dawnseeker, just saying, you do noob mistake and build 13 warehouses but yes it should be "fixed" even though I personally think its lazy and noob move to not be online for suppression battles if planning on colonizing and fight, I would always recommend settings at 0 academy or not

Some really nice and well thought through ideas there nailbomb some better then others, but if we could set up some sort of meeting between active players from a couple of servers to talk things through, I'll be happy to give input

Cheers LEIF