Feb 26th 2012, 19:47:08
While I somewhat agree with the lack of randomness, I disagree that the availability of newsfeeds and scripts and APIs (causing "less randomness" because you can write scripts to determine/deduce a lot of things) as the main reason that is wrong about the alliance server.
Consider this:
I suggested this
http://forums.earthempires.com/...ame-mechanics-every-reset
To change the game mechanics slightly every reset, so that every reset, there is something slightly different, or outrageously different, so that there is something new to try out - that makes the game random, you don't know for sure what is the best way to play your country given changing game mechanics.
But it got shot down as being time consuming to test whether each change would unbalance the game. Part of the problem has been that the game admins are resistant to big changes.
What Forgotten suggested has some potential to be realized, but it essentially amounts to similar ideas - add/change game mechanics in some manner to spice up the game and add more variables so that it is "more random". Bonus points was such an addition that spiced up the game. It was great, it changed the game significantly. I think more of such changes is good.
Hanlong, you are describing things that apply to every server with clan tags, not just this server. Fundamentally, the problem is not really with the game mechanics. The problem is really that there are only something like 15 alliances, everyone knows everyone else pretty much. The number of alliances is too small, and hence "randomness" is reduced.
Consider the Team Server, originally created with the concept of "5 person teams", and see which team is the best. Great idea, but didn't turn out the way it was imagined to be. But what if you could enforcce 5-man teams? There would be something like 50-100 teams, there is no way each team is going to pact with every other team out there - That is what will create randomness. Our current Alliance clans are simply too little, too few, and as a consequence, everything becomes predictable. If there are 50 alliances, then grabbing would become so much more random and unpredictable simply because you don't know which unpacted clan would attack you. This is essentially what drives the solo servers. Every man is his own alliance, that is total chaos/randomness.
If we could not enforce smaller alliances, the other obvious method would be to increase the playerbase by 10 fold or 100 fold. That would obviously cause more alliances to form. And that's not happening soon.
Consider this:
I suggested this
http://forums.earthempires.com/...ame-mechanics-every-reset
To change the game mechanics slightly every reset, so that every reset, there is something slightly different, or outrageously different, so that there is something new to try out - that makes the game random, you don't know for sure what is the best way to play your country given changing game mechanics.
But it got shot down as being time consuming to test whether each change would unbalance the game. Part of the problem has been that the game admins are resistant to big changes.
What Forgotten suggested has some potential to be realized, but it essentially amounts to similar ideas - add/change game mechanics in some manner to spice up the game and add more variables so that it is "more random". Bonus points was such an addition that spiced up the game. It was great, it changed the game significantly. I think more of such changes is good.
Hanlong, you are describing things that apply to every server with clan tags, not just this server. Fundamentally, the problem is not really with the game mechanics. The problem is really that there are only something like 15 alliances, everyone knows everyone else pretty much. The number of alliances is too small, and hence "randomness" is reduced.
Consider the Team Server, originally created with the concept of "5 person teams", and see which team is the best. Great idea, but didn't turn out the way it was imagined to be. But what if you could enforcce 5-man teams? There would be something like 50-100 teams, there is no way each team is going to pact with every other team out there - That is what will create randomness. Our current Alliance clans are simply too little, too few, and as a consequence, everything becomes predictable. If there are 50 alliances, then grabbing would become so much more random and unpredictable simply because you don't know which unpacted clan would attack you. This is essentially what drives the solo servers. Every man is his own alliance, that is total chaos/randomness.
If we could not enforce smaller alliances, the other obvious method would be to increase the playerbase by 10 fold or 100 fold. That would obviously cause more alliances to form. And that's not happening soon.