There's just no more excitement left in the game for me, folks. I'm gonna finish out this reset and call it a decade or so. The game was fun, I loved playing it. The community made te game a lot more fun. Without the community the game would probably die off. I'll stop by every once in a while, perhaps. Have fun, don't get crazy, and remember how much fun it was to be at war.

You mean like real wars for real reasons?

you mean like it is nothing close to the skills once required by Earth 2025

You mean the fact that a game that evolved to be played by 10k+ at a time but is currently only supporting a hundred or so players? The game that's only being kept alive by the grace and labor of a couple of former players? I'm sure endless wars and gangbangs and blindsiding netters would absolutely improve the game experience.

Nostalgia can be a terrible thing. There are a lot of reasons why the game now is absolutely better than its predecessor.

Some things are bad, like a smaller community,. But other things are good, like fixing several major bugs, integrated clan sites and stability.

The biggest thing I want to do to grow the community is make it so some of the things archaic mentioned as driving players off are resolved and the look and feel are modernized for mobile play. It's getting closer but that has to be in a good spot before I spend money marketing it.

Either way, take care Cerberus!! See you when. You're back!

Resignation denied


(Bonus)

Folks, don't get me wrong, I wasn't criticizing the game itself. It still stands on its own as a fun game. It's the way some people turn into assholes and you can't do anything about it in the game, or it would be "inappropriate" according to almost every alliance.

It's not the game or the developers that's got my ass chapped, in any event. I seriously appreciate their dedication to keeping this game going.

Yeah, there used to be real wars over real infractions. If any of you remember the "Anti-RoCK manifesto" published long ago by me and a good friend I made in the game who has played at least as long as I have and is still going although maintaining the lowest profile of anyone I have ever had the pleasure of playing the game with.

My truly biggest problem is that there is no real competitiveness in the game anymore, seemingly.

Back in the day before "clan tags", a single landgrab was just that, a landgrab. Not an act of war. Everyone did it, no one complained. Then all of a sudden no one landgrabs unless it's a "bot" or an untagged player who is likely new to the game and quickly gets disgusted by being continuously farmed.

Personally, I don't like to use the tools provided by the major alliances outside of the game. I much prefer to use the tools provided by the game itself. For example;

1. Looking in your scores list for targets instead of searching a database for the smallest guy you can possibly hit, mostly because you're afraid to be hit back.

If everyone was forced to use their scores list, or perhaps the news to find targets, the game would be much more competitive than it is right now.

It really chaps my ass that I can look in my scores list and find it full of prime targets only to have to choke down the desire to landgrab a country sporting 5 times the land I have and not even trying to defend it because not another player from any other alliance is willing to perform a landgrab. And just in case they did, it would be defined as "topfeeding". Something widely criticized in the game for disrupting things. And along with that, the alliance grabbed from then looks at that as an opportunity to hit the guy 20 times to get back every square inch of the land taken, or in some cases twice as much.

It's become of game of accountants, bean counters and lawyers.

It's just all become so tiresome to watch.

I'm sorry, didn't mean to make the game admins think that it might have been the game itself. It isn't, and never has been.

Start your own alliance, recruit like minded players and enforce your own play style! Don’t quit!

I'm super guilty of helping push the era of rules lawyering and pacting and such, but that being said Requiem's point about getting a group together and implementing your own will is pretty on point. We fought a LOT of wars over our policies back on those days and my former alliance still wears a target on their back for it :D

Also just want to touch on "an untagged player who is likely new to the game and quickly gets disgusted by being continuously farmed."

We actually put in some mechanics to help direct new players to solo servers (Express and Tourney) so they can learn the game before joining the shark tank that is Alliance. My expectation of Alliance is that you should be part of a tag or at least know what you're getting into. I think we can do better at this (and will) but the notion that people are joining Alliance and getting farmed as an untagged country and quitting is not something I've really seen evidence of in years. Even back in E2025, a lot of the untagged fodder was multies and such.

Anyway, if you like the game but got tired of what you're doing, try changing up your focus!
When I joined the game, I played in war tags for a few years...
When I got bored of warring, I joined netting tags and learned to netgain...
When I got bored of netgaining, I moved into leadership...
When I got bored of leading, I built tools (which eventually became Boxcar)...
When I got bored of Boxcar, I rebuilt the game (that one was sorta forced on us :p)
The key thing I was focused on changed half a dozen times over the years. I'd recommend anyone else who feels like they're in a rutt try the look at another aspect of the game you haven't focused on before (or for a long time) and see how that changes your perspective!

But I'd expect that most people that are still playing have followed similar ebbs and flows and changes of focus. That's part of what has made this game enjoyable -- the ability to do so many different and complex things within a fairly simple underlying game.

Also just changing the server offers different thrills.

Yeah it bugs me when people make these complaints. There's tourney, primary, and express, each offering solo gameplay much like what it seems Cerb and other want, and with each server being very different. Alliance is its own type of gameplay entirely because of politics.

In express you get the thrill of possibly seeing me and Prime get called names, countries made in honor, and best of all .... nvm... Lol

Cerb, I totally agree with your post and may not be far behind you. Every time I see this type of post and the perspective, it appears that netters amass to protect their sign-on, hit a few buttons, log off play and then tell me they make this game fun.

Also, every game has assholes, it's a human thing, you just have to embrace the bungholes ;-)

I’m a finance type, but don’t call me an accountant. That fluff is for the birds

I thought you were going to show mercs a lesson or two. We're still waiting.

Embrace his retirement.

See you in a few sets ;)

This is how I feel about getting a bikini on you now

Bonus... but i might read this thread later.

bonus bump

Stop! you are getting me all horny and stuff

You're too old.

I do have to say that clans do take LG'S and blow them out of proportion. If your not pacted, Clan A should be able to hit Clan B. I actually remember when you worked as an alliance and built offensive allies around retailers. I do miss those days. Now of course blatant top feeds 10k acre country hitting 45k acres country is a different story.

It was fun being in a smaller alliance and getting FAT simply doing retails. Later in time initially the whole idea around ghost acres so both party make out.

We did make ghost acres a thing so that people would be more apt to be ok exchanging hits. But it just made organized landtrading a thing instead

It may be illogical that landtrading can be beneficial but is it really bad for the game?

Yes. I’ll support any alliance that would war clans for land trading. It’s a disgusting way to play IMO.

I've actually debated making it so you can't grab your own tag to curb intra-tag landtrading.

But I hope to find more elegant solutions

Making it so you can't grab tour own tag should be a no brainer unless you are in it for netters

no intra-tag hitting would mean every1 should retal hits done on them and if break is 25m jets then that's quite a big expense to carry until gets rid off those (and if is lucky enuf to get profit from sales).

Yeah. I have no idea how people get so up in arms about landtrading. Especially with the bots existing. If anything, I think it should be boosted a little bit (and all-x should be boosted a ton).



Why is something almost no one does except a few bad players on FFA (I'm sure good players could get more use out of it but since it's clearly sub-optimal, good players don't even bother) a problem that needs to be solved?

The great imbalance between exploring and grabbing seems like a much larger issue (wherein even using turns to explore is a bad strategy just a few days into the set..).

There are solutions like:
1. giving exploring an inverted U-shape returns to scale where the acres gained from exploration goes up before going down to a minimum at a competitive amount of acres
2. making exploration worth more as the set goes on
3. adding the ability to DISCOVER things from exploring, which seems blatantly obvious and would make luck a more viable bonus point (ie. you discovered a nuke, 5000 points of tech, 100 mill cash, etc etc)

And a million more suggestions, but people are worried about landtrading, the most irrelevant strategy in this game right now? Really??

PS: In celebration of the new year, this is my 2020'th post

It’s almost like intervention and more government doesn’t actually work

WHO WOULDA THOUGHT?!!

You could make the argument that, other than anarchy, tyranny requires the least amount of government.

Land trading well requires a lot of math and effort as well as cooperation and game knowledge. Its uncompetetive because of bot grabbing but I still dont see why it would be such an issue if it was competetive.

I know people hated it but apart from Requiem its probably about the same crowd that hates bot grabbing right now. They will just hate anything that netters do no matter if it hurts anyone or not.

landtrading came about because there was fewer and fewer people playing in tags without tag protection each set, the server was close to being full allx, which is the least interactive meta possible

and because farming players makes them much more likely to quit, even if its happening to the smallest tags or tags you dont think matter, eventually those people leave and someone else is now on the bottom

but if land trading came back as the meta and it was blocked within tags people would just run multiple tags

heck why not run landtradeclan1 ltc1 landtradeclan2 ltc2 up to 50 or however many people are in the tag

landtrading existed for a long time before laf decided to allow it internally, and it led to people leaving laf just to play in other tags so they could have more targets

and back in the old days the first actual internal landtrading was tags like rd and tga, tended to be a lot more self farming though, and that was before the first time ghost acres were removed

one of the only sets I ever decided to net I lost out on easy rank 1 because mr silver started landtrading to catch me and it left a really bad taste in my mouth and I quit over it.

So people quit for different reasons. Landtrading is pathetic and gay imo GIT GUD

Landtrading or being fed land?

Hitting the same countries back and forth repeatedly for landtrading was lame. Country:country DR changes did improve the situation on this front but that change was only made just before the bots were introduced. Once the bots came in landtrading died off because obviously it was a more lucrative to gain land via bots. Landgrabbing someone from another tag competitively was using the landtrading mechanics was a good system, at the time most alliances had 1:1 retal UNAPs.

When the bots were first introduced though the land amounts gained were not as high as they were now but that is simply because there was more players (and therefore less land to spread around) and the bot coding was different.

At the time the bots came in we had around 400-500 players if memory serves me correctly. It was said that the bots would make the game more interesting and would attract more players back and increase player retention as there would be less bottomfeeding on untagged players. The bots did not improve the situation with the playerbase.

The game is in need of more competitive aspects. I attribute the EWPP (introduced by Alliances in 2014) and the subsequent rise of arranged wars as a result of this to have contributed to the decline in the playerbase. Between 2014 and 2015 the playerbase dropped by almost 50%. For many people the drama, the rivalries between Alliances, the competitiveness and the hatreds made the game more attractive. When we lost that it is like we lost the narrative which motivated people to play. Even the competitiveness (hatred) between netting tags like LAF and Evo helped drive the game. Leaders and admins strove to make the game too friendly and in doing so made the game too stale.

There are those who blame the server wars and blindsides etc for the downfall of the playerbase, but the numbers (and tagged numbers) from set to set do not support that at all.

^^

Land trading sucks, grabbing bots sucks, all-x sucks... If only there was a more interactive/competitive way for players to gain land =\

I think bot grabbing is fun because it reminds me of how I used to play E2025: log in => bottom feed

I almost never got retaled because the people I grabbed just couldn’t. The bot grabbing is a good dose of nostalgia.

Before bots on EE I was pretty much all-x every set because I hated land trading and there was no one to bottom feed.

Bots make the game more fun in today’s environment and quite frankly are needed for market reasons as well. Making bots behave more like real ppl should be a developer focus moving forward.

Why can’t you grab players? You can. Do it. Enforce your retal standards and wage war if necessary. Nothing in the game, right now, prevents plays grabbing players besides self imposed restrictions. Drop pacts. Quit putting up a walled garden.

No matter what the environmental is the game is what you and your group of clan mates make of it. That is after all how we arrived at this current MO.

Shouldn't primary and tournament playerbase have skyrocketed when bots were introduced on the others servers then?

When I look at the rankings I see a very steady decline in player numbers before the bots were introduced. It was 800-1k players in 1a early on in EE and it was down to 400 by the time bots were introduced. Since then it dropped another 150 players over the next 4.5 years with bots. I think its the fact its a text based game of a past era that requires too much of the players and give too little reward that makes it decline.

Either way the numbers dont support the arguement that bots were the downfall or even contributed to it.

That said over the years the bots have been acting silly in one way or more most of the time. Not being consistently on(still an issue at times), Techer bots not teching(fixed), techer bots teching with no regard for market(fixed), techer bots hoarding billions of cash(not fixed), indy bots producing no jets at times even when the jet price is twice that of turrets(still an issue in some stages of the reset), casher/farmer/indy bots buying just one tech at times (still happening every now and then).

I think the bots were a great addition to the game but they were introduced just around the time when the devs kinda left the game so all the obvious errors persisted for years instead of being fixed in the first months of their introduction. I think taking in feedback(mostly not from players, but actually observing what happens and comparing it to the intention of the change) and acting on it is 90% of what makes a change successful. Its very rare to make an addition or alteration that is perfect right from the start.

I don't have any issue with the bots nor do I believe they have contributed to the decline of the numbers. My point was simply that the bots have not improved the numbers as we were told and that the landgain levels are broken because the player base has declined.

A decline in the game was always going to happen because it is not attracting new players, but my point above is that we have made the game stale politically and that is one of the biggest reasons for the sharper decline. The numbers on other servers for the most part have always been underpinned by Alliance Server. When people quit Alliance they quit other servers and that leads to a decline in numbers there.

The problem is the game itself has not had broad appeal since the early 2000s, but what had sustained the game and kept people interested was the politics, the rivalries, the drama and the intrigue. Since 2014 (when the EWPP was introduced) we lost a lot of that and therefore the game has lost it's narrative.

the alternative to this was a combination of:

1) new players who tolerated being farmland for a few resets
2) multies many run by people as personal farmland
3) untagged bots

the things which happened that people think were different only worked because someone else was on the bottom, even bottomfeeding needed someone further on the bottom to keep those people playing

and topfeeding and and midfeeding even more so

almost everything that gets called out as a reason for the game declining is a response to something else that was also seen as a reason for the game declining

ewpp was a response to day 3 or turn 100 wars that dragged on the whole reset, had almost no strategy and planning and burnt everyone out

there wasnt a huge difference between arranged wars and the sides being lined up before the reset anyway, almost nothing happened due to something in the current reset rather than past grudges

for wars to need fresh there needed to be more unaligned factions who got brough in because of tensions that built up during a reset

factions who might war or might net but it wasnt 100% already decided what they were doing

gradual escalations of wars when someone started losing or needed help, or had time to save turns and war prep (its not crazy now to consider all tags might be on constant 160 turn saving)

early wars used to be suicide because even if you won someone else could wait and come in when you were weak later on, if theres no one left unengaged that cant happen

OOP wars were not that common and were even less so with changes to minimum returns which was introduced in October 2013. The EWPP was designed to eliminate any warring before day 21. In doing so almost all major Alliances were pushed in to becoming signatories and forced in to being peaceful. The pact itself was not so much a problem, but the way it was implemented killed the factions because in signing the pact everyone also was pushed in to pacting the side who was overseeing the enforcement of the EWPP (MD, SOL, Evo, PDM).

After the EWPP was implemented it took the server over 2 years to have a non-friendly war between tags, and how many players remained by that point?

The factions ended. Warring alliances sharply declined due to the arms race being over. Politics became stale.

Look at it this way... MD and SOL were the main enforcers of the EWPP. At the end of 2014 each Alliance had over 50 members. They were the strongest faction in the game and they determined the politics. By the end of 2015 MD had 28 members and SOL had 36 members. Why did they decline so badly? They didn't get gangbanged. In fact I don't think the MD tag even warred in 2015. Ironically SoF had declined to having only 26 members at the end of 2014 after being gangbanged by MD/SOL for most of that year but by the end of 2015 we were the largest Alliance in the game again with around 45 members. Why did SoF end up larger than MD/SOL? Because our leadership ran a silent revenge campaign internally and our own arms race in 2015 to redeem ourselves after 2014, so we motivated our own membership and kept them interested.

Another way to look at it... After the SPERM war MD had declined to around 50 members in November 2012. When SoF/MD relations started became tense MD went on a big expansion and by February 2013 MD had peaked at 113 members. Why? Because the arms race with SoF and desire to beat a 90 member SoF motivated them to recruit and grow their tag. When everything became arranged and friendly there was no motivation or desperation for Alliances to recruit for their tag and as such they declined.

2015 was the most significant decline in the amount of players. Basically the game had lost half it's players since 2014 and that cannot be attributed to the server wars because the main decline occurred after them. If you can give me good reason as to why every single major Alliance, with the exception of SoF, declined in membership after the introduction of the EWPP and during 2015 then please go for it.

The EWPP itself did not force the problem, but it's implementation and subsequent crushing of the factions/rivalries which had sustained this game for years made things boring.

Explore to find new techs or worthwhile units is a great idea. I know we don't follow real world, but when rome explored (not fight but walked and found) natural resources they built aquaducts to feed their cities.

Discover tech more populations or military units I kinda feel this all tracks.

Attacking gets you more through taking but making friends gets you something through friendship.


This also might change the game more than expected though. . So great idea not sure on the mechanics..


(There is a lot after sins post that I have yet to read. It's 951am and I'm drunk so bare with me)

+1