
It was a mix. I like the general direction of the game -- however, this round got off to a very rocky due to a combination of bad events, so I didn't get as good a feel for it as I would have liked. The general trend however very definitely very positive. |
We need to strike a good balance here. The idea is not to remove landgrabbing, but instead to encourage kingdom to kingdom wars, since that is where all of the features of Utopia -- teamwork, coordination, etc -- really come together. A big part of Utopia is to emphasize the Kingdom rather than the individual, so I do want to do things that encourage that. At the same time, I don't want to overly restrict players. I think the original change might have gone too far, so we decided to back off a little for the time being. |
It was a bad situation, and combined with the delay of fixing the attacks, I felt it was something that had to be dealt with immediately. Not notifying players was a mistake, though. We actually have done this once before, but it wasn't as noticable and no one complained that time. :) |
Yes and no. It definitely has helped tremendously. However, I still need to commit more time to the manual deletions, so in that respect, it hasn't been as effective as I'd like. The original goal of the automation was to get rid of the obvious multis, giving me more time to focus on other multis... Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way just yet. |
Yeah -- that was a fluke situation that happened because of a combination of factors. It should never happen again (at least, that particular situation), but we put extra precautions for it as well. |
Honestly, not really. If we spread players out too much initially, and we over-estimate how many players will play, then we have a big mess of unfilled kingdoms. If we go the other way too far, we get the ghettos. It's a matter of finding a balance, but it's almost impossible to predict how many players we'll have next round, especially since many join throughout the game. |
Definitely. Many, many players got a chance to experience the politics involved from the start, and many new players got to be regents. I felt that after the 3rd round, alot of the game was being lost because everything was determined from Day #1. I don't think it's necessary to do it often, but I do think it worked in that particular situation. It's one of those things that has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. |
Since this took too long, the new stats are already posted :) |
Hopefully, yes. We made some serious improvements in the file access last round that's helped. But at some point, again, the server will get slow and we'll go through this all again.. It's one of those things that goes in cycles, just as a home computer will be fast for a year or two but then be seriously out of date, our servers need constant replacement to stay on top of things... |
Our standard response to this is (1) Be honest, (2) Play only your account, and (3) Don't try to fool the system and you'll be fine... It generally works. When people try to get around the system is where they tend to get in trouble most. |
I'd prefer there were no informal-type alliances, but that's unfortunately a part of any internet game... It also makes the game more involving, so it does have good points. We're hoping things like the diminishing returns and lower returns for random landgrabs helps in this respect. A smart player should realize that they can get more working with their kingdom than through ICQ. |
I don't like this idea. For one, it's relatively difficult to kill someone -- what is the point if they can just come back to life? Also, it would encourage multis (giving their stuff away, dying, coming back to life, etc) and fraudulent gaming in general... |
No -- that's part of the game. Yes, it's more difficult to get in the Top 100 if you start 2 weeks late, but then, it should be. If it was not, then there'd be no benefit to playing the whole time. The best players should be the ones who can survive and grow over the whole timeframe of the game, in my opinion. |
I don't like alliances at all, but they are unfortunately not something we can really control. (It is also difficult to define them -- are 3 friends who play together an informal alliance? What if they play separately but occasionally talk about who they attacked?) In Earth, it works OK because we have separate games for those who like and those who dislike these alliances. Since Utopia is just one big game, that doesn't work. However, we would like to make them less effective and rewarding if possible. |
I've never really considered this. Utopia is more of a social-interaction game than Earth, where many players get by as loners. In that respect, I think the pace of the game is fine... Another issue is that once you've sped up a game, you can never slow it back down again, even if it's best for the game. Think about the response if were to change Earth from 40 minutes/turn back to the original 60 minutes/turn... |
These kinds of things are always possible. As we grow and have more resources, we may offer prizes and the like, but we have to ensure the integrity & fairness of the game before we do anything like that. |
People are more than welcome to play at these kinds of places... However, they have to understand that they may be subject to deletion based on the actions of others. There's no way for us to know where they are playing from and to analyze each individual's circumstance. If at all possible, it's always safer to play from a private computer. |
Again, because of the rocky start, I couldn't get quite the feel I would have liked. But in general, I definitely think we're heading in the right direction. There were many areas that needed refocusing, and I felt it would be best to get it all out of the way in one reset (the 4th Age) so we could go ahead and start tweaking things again. We still need to work on the building balance, but otherwise things are definitely headed in the right direction. |
Yeah -- Unfortunately, this is one of those things that's multi-abused. The best solution would be to eliminate multis, but that's obviously more difficult. As we get more resources, though, we'll do better in that area and that's automatically balance thievery more. |
This is one thing we won't allow ... Alot of players aren't as active as others, but that's their choice and it's something kingdoms have to individually deal with. I believe it's part of the concept of organization and teamwork -- sacrificing resources to eliminate inactives, etc. I think voting a province away is too easy a way out.. |
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Day Walker
(Posted as CoS Lance) Posts: 2 ( 25-Apr-2002 10:00 pm) Report | ahahah go mehul the monkey | Assisi
(Posted as Adam) Posts: 1 ( 13-Jun-2002 01:37 am) Report | All I know is that I stopped playing the game for a long time, because of the whole Undead thing, I am not a great player but I am not bad either. The first round I played I broke over 350k, and that was around round 4 or 5. | tzeteng
Posts: 2 ( 29-Jul-2003 01:19 am) Report | I respect mehul But there's something i must tell, why did mehul delete my friends account just becoz we all used same theme for alliance indication.
My fren is having war and the enemy king get unhappy with my fren becoz he got propoganda.....And he reports and then........ y? | Utopian Devil
Posts: 397 ( 06-Sep-2003 04:51 am) Report | klaa dirk, get some respect.. dAtAb0y.. what are you doing? tzeteng, better post this at the forums.. don't you think so? | Iaaavot
Posts: 1 ( 28-Jan-2005 09:28 am) Report | cant find where to put this so putting it here am having a problem with my military calc on two occasions that I saw now in my last 5 attacks my personality (orc) has been changed to feary and dwarf both have failed obviously in our paper yesterday there were 7 failed attacks in all so am wondering if this is a bug you need to look at or not dont really understand how it can change my character ? to fail my attack |
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