Falcoknight Posted May 19, 2007 Report Posted May 19, 2007 (edited) Either A) Increase the rate that they are spawned or Increase the cost by a _lot_. I make/have enough money now, even with only ~16k troops, so that I can afford many more weapons than I have soldiers.I have my UP at 100, so it shouldn't be a problem, unfortunatly it is. With every attack I make, army size doesn't seem to matter. On very, very lucky attacks I'll only lose 30 soldiers. On most I'll lose 50-100. So for me to make any money at all, I have to suffer enough casualties to almost completely negate my UP. I already have more weapons than soldiers, and enough money to double that number, so what is my only solution? Buy mercs. That, however, is a completely useless feature to me, as I've only been able to buy a few hundred ONCE in the last week, as they are almost ALWAYS sold out, as they regen in such small amounts that they are all bought on the spot. Obviously me being in the number one spot shows that the amount of soldiers is not the most important thing in winning, but if I had even remotely close to the amount of troops I need to match the number of weapons, the gap would probably be much larger. So I propose the following. Mercenary regen should be changed from 100 an hour, to at least 1000 an hour. As they don't bring any income and die first, having a massive amount of mercs wouldn't necessarily give a huge advantage to any one person. If not the previous idea, drastically increase the price of Mercenaries. They are what 3000/3500 a merc now? Why not increase it to 6000/7000, or even 9000/10500? By increasing the price it forces people to think before they buy them, and make sure they have a reason to buy them. Or even, better yet, a combination of both of the above ideas!Increase the merc output, maybe not to 1000, but maybe 500+? Along with increasing the price to at least 6000 a merc. With both of these combined, it would widen the array of those who have an opportunity to buy mercenaries to those outside the group of the few who simply sit and wait for the exact regen time and buy them as quickly as possible, with no real actual purpose for their stats. (Which has become apparent with how many people have massive armies at lower ranks. What does everyone think? Edited May 19, 2007 by Falcoknight
Dav Posted May 19, 2007 Report Posted May 19, 2007 i think (if possible) increase merc production to 500 per hour and limit each person to buying 100 per hour so some stay in the market.
Suicide_Run Posted May 19, 2007 Report Posted May 19, 2007 I say 200 per hr since theres a huge amount in the beginning and i suppose its a strategy to stock up on mercs rite in the beginning lol
Falcoknight Posted May 19, 2007 Author Report Posted May 19, 2007 200 per hour would make virtually no difference whatsoever. The same people who wait and buy them every hour would probably still make enough per hour to buy all 600 mercs instead of 300. An increase in price and an increase in production by around 500+ would make it so that it would actually be possible for most people to buy mercs.
Aileron Posted May 20, 2007 Report Posted May 20, 2007 I'm thinking... This is just one of many problems that have occured this round which I am trying to come up with a fix for in leiu of proper features in the core. In this case, the proper feature would be a percent merc population limit. However, it looks like its related to what my second biggest settings mistake for this round...my first being that I overdid UP. The second is that I all but removed army size limit, because I thought it was lame to protect yourself just with numbers. In this case, a healthy market of mercs can mean somebody could buy mercs in order to reach army size limits, so I think if I could solve the merc problem the army size wouldn't be so bad...people could buy or sell mercs as needed. That is except for people who make themselves immune to attack by buying spies. I figure the solution to that will be to scale up the effectiveness of spy and sentry weapons so that unarmed covert means a whole lot of nothing. As for the merc problem...I'm trying to come up with something, but I don't think either plan will work. Mercs are supposed to be disposable shock troops, make them expensive and you miss the point in buying them, make them too plentiful and people will abuse them. meh...I think I figured out the solution while I was posting...I'll announce it soon after I've got all the other peices together.
Suicide_Run Posted May 20, 2007 Report Posted May 20, 2007 Maybe you should make the UP upgrade change by 10UP starting at 0 instead of just straight to 50.
Animate Dreams Posted May 20, 2007 Report Posted May 20, 2007 In this case, a healthy market of mercs can mean somebody could buy mercs in order to reach army size limits, so I think if I could solve the merc problem the army size wouldn't be so bad...people could buy or sell mercs as needed. That is except for people who make themselves immune to attack by buying spies. I figure the solution to that will be to scale up the effectiveness of spy and sentry weapons so that unarmed covert means a whole lot of nothing. The only solution here is to have the spy's income at 0. You can't stock up on spies for protection if you're broke all the time. Well, you CAN, but you won't get anywhere. As for Sentries, they can also be set to 0, but having their income set to half of a soldier's is also a viable option, possibly even full income. This is because selling all your soldiers for spies gives you lots of power in that attackers can't hurt you, but you can sabotage the !@#$%^&* out of them. Sentries doesn't give you that power, it would be a defensive maneuver, whereas changing to spies would be an offensive maneuver that just happens to also be incredibly defensive. Aileron, increasing spy power is NOT going to make people think twice about switching to spies. That's ridiculous. As for Mercs, they should probably be taken out. There are viable and legitimate strategies that involve mercs, but there are some that are unbalanced. Rather than spend forever trying to find a way to balance mercs, which play a very small part in the game when balanced, you should probably focus on the more important parts of the game. No sense in making what's already incredibly broken even harder to sort out. Then in a month or two, if you have things under control(not gonna happen), try adding in mercs. It shouldn't be a problem at that point.
Suicide_Run Posted May 20, 2007 Report Posted May 20, 2007 Something I dont get is y Mines/Decoy's price less more than 50% of Xradar/Stealth when Mines/Decoy's strenght is only 50% of Xradar/Stealth. The attack and defense items are the way its post to be but why is the convert items like that? It would be pointless at all to get Mines/Decoys at all. That alone needs fixing =/
Falcoknight Posted May 21, 2007 Author Report Posted May 21, 2007 I still think it's completely re!@#$%^&*ed that Ail can regularly sab THOUSANDS of my items, while he can sit pretty and not have to worry about retribution, as I can't attack him. But if Mercs are taken out, UP either needs to be increased, or weapon prices need to be drastically increased. What is the point of making money when you don't have enough soldiers to do anything with it, and to attack to get more you lose as many soldiers as you make?
Aileron Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 awwwww......sucks when you are on the receiving end of it doesn't it?
Suicide_Run Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 Basically right now, we are back at square one. This is just like a repeat of what happened 2 rounds ago: People have too much cash and not enough troops to hold them. The only difference between the two rounds was that bank was screwed up then and well....money is screwed up now i suppose.
Falcoknight Posted May 21, 2007 Author Report Posted May 21, 2007 awwwww......sucks when you are on the receiving end of it doesn't it? When I'm on the receiving end? I don't believe I've _ever_ decided I wanted to turn all my troops into spies/sentries and sabbed people up the !@#$%^&* and made it so I couldnt be attacked by any of the people whos items I destroy. You see I believe games like this should be set up so that every aggressive action you take has a good chance that you will receive retribution, not made in such a way that you can cost someone tens of millions of points in one blow just to be cheap and sit invulnerable to attack, while having so little troops that sabbing you back is incredibly pointless, as I can't sab your spy items.
Animate Dreams Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 awwwww......sucks when you are on the receiving end of it doesn't it? When I'm on the receiving end? I don't believe I've _ever_ decided I wanted to turn all my troops into spies/sentries and sabbed people up the !@#$%^&* and made it so I couldnt be attacked by any of the people whos items I destroy. You see I believe games like this should be set up so that every aggressive action you take has a good chance that you will receive retribution, not made in such a way that you can cost someone tens of millions of points in one blow just to be cheap and sit invulnerable to attack, while having so little troops that sabbing you back is incredibly pointless, as I can't sab your spy items.To be fair, Falco, I made the move to 100% spy first. Of course, I ended up switching to nightwasp after I realized how bored I was with the game. I wish I hadn't done that, now... after all, had I started doing it, it surely would've been made impossible, just like massing was.
Aileron Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 Actually, while I've been trying to avoid using the admin powers to spy on people, when I was putting the Nightwasp in, I did notice that a couple players have noticed that while the bank's income is small, it is still exponential (the opening screen displays the best stats of each catagory including bank, and is unavoidable.) Just like it round two, the bank is still whacked. Okay, the problem I'm having is what my theorey was for this round. I wanted it to be compe!@#$%^&*ive the whole way through, and a precursur to not ever having to reset at all. I actually wanted to make it such that fleeting things like weapons and armies could be destroyed and repaired on a regular basis. I wanted people to sometimes suffer casualties higher than their growth rates so that other players can catch up. I wanted people to sometimes lose half the armory to sabotage so that weaker players can possibly hit them. I wanted UP, though expensive, to be the most valueble resource because UP cannot be massed or sabbed. Enter the Penis clan, a clan which consists of 70% of the field. In perfectly balanced settings, the game would still be unbalanced because of this hugely unfair odds. Right now, I'm still trying to figure out which effects were the result of my screwing up and which were the result of overwhelming odds. Its not so much that we got massed, its the fact that the big three *didn't* get massed which is the major problem. If they *had* gotten massed, then right now everyone would be contending for #1. This problem was half my fault and half theirs...if I hadn't remove the attack size cap, the massers would still suffer a lot, but if the odds were fair then there would have been atleast one low-ranked masser going after the big three. Because of that, UP wasn't valueble to the big three. While if you are under duress of constant massings, UP is extremely important, but if you aren't then its best to collect interest. I figured that if you have more money than you can spend on soldiers, there's always the next UP upgrade, which should solve the problem for you on both fronts. Indeed, there are a couple of players who if they wanted to could probably buy the 140 UP upgrade. However, I overestimated the effect, as UP is just far too expensive to be worth the result. Other than that, I didn't get repair costs right...I wanted the "just scrap 'em" point to be around 60% when infact it is around %. Spy weapons are not as effective as a lot of spies. Attacks occur too frequently. The maximum weapons aren't expensive enough. However, I think we are getting closer. The list of changes that I want to make is addressing smaller details. -Reducing repair costs.-(Possibly) Making Super/Shield normal weapons which are essentially the opposite of the shrapnels...insanely expensive to buy but free to repair. I'd have to come up with a new special for the Nightwasp.-Reducing turn rate to 2 per hour.-Increasing the effectivness of spy and sentry tools. That way, it will be just as easy/difficult to sab people as before. However, since no one is buying mines and decoys, they will be less efficient as strength goes up, like regular weapons. -UP will be fixed to make it more usefull - I'm thinking of using a quadratic price system with a bigger upgrade (like 30 or 40).If I overdo it casualties will keep pop down. I'd also increase income per soldier to something around 1000 per hour. Fixing the massing:The only limit that exists as far as massing is concerned is that army size limit. I'd have set that to a really restrictive value (like 2 or 3). To attack someone outside your range, you would have to buy or sell mercs. !@#$%^&*uming I fix the UP, the lower ranked players will have a low population to match. Untrained mercs will be virtually unlimited, though attack and defense mercs will *not* be. Mercs will also be more expensive. The general method of massing for a low ranked player to attack a high ranked one will be: 1) Buy enough mercs to get within half the target's population2) M!@#$%^&*3) Sell excess mercs Mercs will be expensive enough that the masser will pay the price in the form of mercs that die and can't be resold. However, defense mercs don't die in offense, so they certainly *won't* be unlimited. I'm debating whether or not to make untrained or attack the unlimited variety, and right now I'm leaning towards untrained. Now for the change which many people will hate me for:No bank income. Period. Maybe even charge a price to limit using it too much. Now for the change that a ton of people will *really* hate me for:Dissolve all of the clans. Replace them with two clans: "Freq 0000" and "Freq 0001". Generally, the clans will be forced to be of equal size and strength to start, while during the course of the game new members will be alotted to the side currently losing. Most MMORPGs wouldn't consider this, but most MMORPGs suck. Wheras every other game in the world whether in sports or video games, (including Subspace) has equal sized teams.
Dav Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 couldnt you just limit the numer of people allowed in a clan to 5 or 6 to force numbers to be more equil? If you cant do it in the core perhaps do it in the admin pannel manually.
Dav Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 I was thinking with wepons / repair. Perhaps weapon cost should be higher for attack and def then repair cost should be something like (Initial cost x 0.90)/damage points = repair cost per point for the most expencive and perhaps (Initial cost x 0.50)/damage points = repair cost per point for the cheapest weapons with all others being somewhere in between. Keep degradation at the same rate so repair becomes neccacary. For UP make it double per updrade but this ime you get 10 when you pick race. 20 costs 1 mil and it goes from there. This would ;let people start to develop fast but get harder near the end. hopefully making mercs less of a factor. Also if units are more expensive to equip then trained mercs will be less of a factor. Finally if you make a clan have a max of 5 or 6 members there will be enough clan wars to reduce the massive in balance of the penis clan this round. I like the idea of untrained mercs being unlimited, but should be at a cost and perhaps limit the number of mercs to 1/10th of the remainder of your army.
Aileron Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 A merc pop limit is impossible due to the core. Limiting clans to 5 or 6 members looks good on paper, but in reality the clans would make alliances and gang up on each other. (Great...thanks for the profanity guys...as I write this in a public library there are young children running around...maybe there will have to be a rule against profane clan names as well.) All it would do is force P___ clan to split into P____ 1, P____ 2, and P____ 3. The process for making settings is to first build the economy. Then repair costs, and then weapon strength and price. Repair costs have to be based upon what the income is, so as to force people to wait. Weapon strength is then built upon whatever the repair costs are. If you haven't noticed, weapons are about as cheap as mercs are. It's already not cost effective to buy mercs...we have people doing it mostly because they know they have the numbers and if half of P____ clan exists just to mess up everyone else, that still leaves a lot of people in their clan on top.
Suicide_Run Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 Removal of the clans and changing it to Freq 0/1 is pretty stupid idea and pointless. Clans doesnt stop people from attacking each other, its just showing they belong in the same group. I had some clan mates hit me, clans sure doesnt prevent that. I ill just start hitting ppl on the same freq, not like thats gonna do anything. Also, putting ppl in the same freq when that freq is losing? Thats also pointless cause as you can see, half of the population playing SS RPG has 0 army size or is inactive and just have their account sitting there with the initial upgrade. All the clan change is gonna do is pretty much absolutely nothing cause we can always form alliances with other people we know so people like jds/ani wont hit me and I wont hit them even if we are different freqs. All Clan does is show we have a written peace on with each other that isnt iron clad. I could care less if bank doesnt produce income, but charging ppl so they can keep their money safe? If you make the price too high, it would be gay, too low it would be pointless, just right? It will become annoying. I would actually love 2/3 hits per person. That way, ppl cant just hit on their !@#$%^&* and hit me every 2-3hrs once I leave my comp. Also, I dont think you can sell mercs.....either that or you just havent made it possible right now.
Dav Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 i think you can sell mercs bu putting -### in the buy box
Suicide_Run Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 Doesnt work Dav, all that does is just refresh your page w/ a msg saying your hiring is done but doesnt actually do anything.
Animate Dreams Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 Actually, while I've been trying to avoid using the admin powers to spy on people, when I was putting the Nightwasp in, I did notice that a couple players have noticed that while the bank's income is small, it is still exponential (the opening screen displays the best stats of each catagory including bank, and is unavoidable.) Just like it round two, the bank is still whacked. I warned you about this. I've said ever since I started that both UP and bank were the way to win. The Bank is inherently broken, and UP is the past was simply boring, since anyone that understood the game knew you just had to max it out first before focusing on anything else. This round, though, you managed to screw it up big time. I still haven't figured out how you did that one. Okay, the problem I'm having is what my theorey was for this round. 1. I wanted it to be compe!@#$%^&*ive the whole way through, and a precursur to not ever having to reset at all. 2. I actually wanted to make it such that fleeting things like weapons and armies could be destroyed and repaired on a regular basis. 3. I wanted people to sometimes suffer casualties higher than their growth rates so that other players can catch up. 4. I wanted people to sometimes lose half the armory to sabotage so that weaker players can possibly hit them. 5. I wanted UP, though expensive, to be the most valueble resource because UP cannot be massed or sabbed. As you can see, I've taken the privilege of labeling your points, so I can shoot them down.#1 Wtf? Never resetting at all? ALL of the popular html strategy games reset, and for a very good reason. The only ones that don't are not only extremely unbalanced and unpopular, they end up a sausage fest where the original creators and some of the original players sit around and suck each other's !@#$%^&*s all day. Although I guess that's similar to the way a lot of SS zones have been run in the past. I'm not really sure I can even explain why it needs to be reset, but I can guarantee that the noobs would quickly tire and quit, there would be no more new noobs given SSForum's small population, and eventually, the guys at the top would get bored of hoarding their items(and probably being all spy by that point).#2 This is !@#$%^&*ing re!@#$%^&*ed. No one likes losing a !@#$%^&*load of items, but it's part of the game. But it can't be taken to that exponential level. The game isn't built to stand the high numbers you've set it up for this round... it didn't even work right last round, and you made it exponentially worse this round. Armies and items certainly are "fleeting", but they're not SUPPOSED to be. That's a symptom, coming from Spy being overpowered. It's meant to grow at a slower rate in the beginning, but quicker later in the round. But there's so much growing going on this round that spy beats standard attack methods very early, and the gap grows to monumental proportions.#3 Maybe if you hadn't increased an already super overpowered UP, that might work. Of course, you've got to be re!@#$%^&*ed to think that's a good idea in the first place. What? You're great at this game and have an army 10x everyone else's size? Well, that's cool, because some noob's about to !@#$%^&* your world up. I don't think so.#4 That's so !@#$%^&*ing ridiculous it doesn't even need a proper response. I will however mention that since spy items can't be destroyed, you make something that's already exponentially overpowered to the nth degree even further overpowered. As the matter of fact, nearly all of your changes have done this(except for the UP move) despite my best attempts to show how broken it was last round.#5 Um... UP can't be massed, but the army it produces can, so that's the same thing. And freaking SPY can't be sabbed. Wtf are you trying to do to spy? Enter the Penis clan, a clan which consists of 70% of the field. In perfectly balanced settings, the game would still be unbalanced because of this hugely unfair odds. You are the very definition of a scrub. You yourself tried to dominate with your SSCentral Gods clan. However, when another clan that's even bigger enters the arena and overpowers you, all of the sudden, it's cheap. That's like throwing people a lot in SSBM, but then calling it cheap when someone chain-throws you way more than you ever were able to. If it's unbalanced at high levels, then it's probably unbalanced at low levels. Most importantly, there aren't any limiters on any level. I will now refer you to a series of articles on video games and developing video games, which also goes into detail about what exactly classifies as "cheap" and "broken" in games, and also goes into detail of the psychology of scrubs. ( http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlaytoWinPart0.htm ) I suggest you read every article under the "Playing to Win" section. Right now, I'm still trying to figure out which effects were the result of my screwing up and which were the result of overwhelming odds. Its not so much that we got massed, its the fact that the big three *didn't* get massed which is the major problem. If they *had* gotten massed, then right now everyone would be contending for #1. This problem was half my fault and half theirs...if I hadn't remove the attack size cap, the massers would still suffer a lot, but if the odds were fair then there would have been atleast one low-ranked masser going after the big three. You don't understand how casualties work, and that's why you were so weak to massing. It's that simple. Add to that the fact that this game isn't meant to be run at such high numbers(for one reason, because the casualty system breaks down, slowly) and you get a humongous, steaming pile of !@#$%^&*. However, you are STILL treating massing as a "problem", and not as the symptom it is. It's a result of bigger problems closer to the base, it's not a problem in and of itself. Because of that, UP wasn't valueble to the big three. While if you are under duress of constant massings, UP is extremely important, but if you aren't then its best to collect interest. I figured that if you have more money than you can spend on soldiers, there's always the next UP upgrade, which should solve the problem for you on both fronts. Indeed, there are a couple of players who if they wanted to could probably buy the 140 UP upgrade. However, I overestimated the effect, as UP is just far too expensive to be worth the result. There are a few reasons for why UP is and isn't useful at different times. For one, 100m in the bank gives you 500k an hour. However, if you spend 128m on the 100UP, it'll take 10 days before the extra troops gained from UP begin to make you 500k per hour, and this is !@#$%^&*uming no extra soldiers have died as a result of your increased army size. However, having a larger army is in and of itself a good thing, so depending on your strategy(and your amount of bank whoring), up to even 150 UP could quite plausibly be useful. Were these strategies not a direct result of other incredibly broken things, they could actually be legitimate, balanced strategies. Other than that, I didn't get repair costs right...I wanted the "just scrap 'em" point to be around 60% when infact it is around %. Spy weapons are not as effective as a lot of spies. Attacks occur too frequently. The maximum weapons aren't expensive enough. I'll admit I never mastered how spy works, but I always was a more effective spy than you, so I can only take that to mean I understand it a bit better than you, and I disagree with the statement about spy weapons. As for the repair costs, you're wrong yet again. Repair costs CAN'T be balanced when dealing with such high numbers. The reality is you should never repair your items, when they are bought and sold in amounts of several digits - I could explain why, but that'd take a while, and I prefer to keep the secret to myself, should I decide to play again. However, I think we are getting closer. The list of changes that I want to make is addressing smaller details. Oh, really? 1. -Reducing repair costs.2. -(Possibly) Making Super/Shield normal weapons which are essentially the opposite of the shrapnels...insanely expensive to buy but free to repair. I'd have to come up with a new special for the Nightwasp.3. -Reducing turn rate to 2 per hour.4. -Increasing the effectivness of spy and sentry tools. That way, it will be just as easy/difficult to sab people as before. However, since no one is buying mines and decoys, they will be less efficient as strength goes up, like regular weapons. 5. -UP will be fixed to make it more usefull - I'm thinking of using a quadratic price system with a bigger upgrade (like 30 or 40).If I overdo it casualties will keep pop down. I'd also increase income per soldier to something around 1000 per hour. Ahem.#1 Repairing is useless. I figured this out when the repair system was broken last round, and repairing was near impossible - I never repaired my weapons, and never once did it affect me.#2 The whole item system needs to be reworked, this isn't going to help. Especially since you're still factoring in repair.#3 I honestly don't know what to say about turns. They haven't really mattered except in the beginning of the round yet, at least to those that have been smart with their attacks. People in the Penis clan have had limited targets, so they've been forced to play their attacks smarter than other people have - as a result, they've had an abundance of turns. I can think of some problems that would arise from having a very limited amount of turns, but all of them can only hurt you if you don't think of the possible strategies and prepare a defense against them. So I suppose there's nothing wrong with it. Too little turns, though, and you weaken attack even more - not something that needs to be done when spy is so boss right now.#4 Kill yourself.#5 I don't know what you mean by quadratic price system, but if it has anything to do with quadratic equations, it's almost definitely re!@#$%^&*ed. I suggest lowering numbers all around, though. Start at 5, next upgrade at 10, etc. I don't know what to think about increasing soldier income, but I'd be hesitant to do that. Not because I'm worried you'll break an already working system because absolutely nothing works, but because none of your ideas have worked so far. Fixing the massing:The only limit that exists as far as massing is concerned is that army size limit. I'd have set that to a really restrictive value (like 2 or 3). To attack someone outside your range, you would have to buy or sell mercs. !@#$%^&*uming I fix the UP, the lower ranked players will have a low population to match. Untrained mercs will be virtually unlimited, though attack and defense mercs will *not* be. Mercs will also be more expensive. The general method of massing for a low ranked player to attack a high ranked one will be: 1) Buy enough mercs to get within half the target's population2) M!@#$%^&*3) Sell excess mercs Mercs will be expensive enough that the masser will pay the price in the form of mercs that die and can't be resold. However, defense mercs don't die in offense, so they certainly *won't* be unlimited. I'm debating whether or not to make untrained or attack the unlimited variety, and right now I'm leaning towards untrained. My biggest problem is with the line, "...defense mercs don't die in offense, so they certainly *won't* be unlimited.". This just further proves that you don't understand how casualties, and therefore massing, works. Take mercs out. If the system isn't there, it can't be broken. !@#$%^&*, that one statement makes me want to play next round so I can m!@#$%^&* the living !@#$%^&* out of you so that you have to change the whole game just because I used it against you. Again. Now for the change which many people will hate me for:No bank income. Period. Maybe even charge a price to limit using it too much. Like I said before, get rid of the bank. Don't take the !@#$%^&* way out and get rid of the income, get rid of the whole !@#$%^&* thing. This forces them to buy items, which makes someone's rank days 1-29 mean a lot more than they do now. Because now, rank means nothing until about an hour before the game ends. This is your first good idea so far, no one's going to hate ou for it. I don't know why it's taken you two months to figure out that banking was broken, or why you still want to keep banks. But at least this shows you're capable of learning. Now for the change that a ton of people will *really* hate me for:Dissolve all of the clans. Replace them with two clans: "Freq 0000" and "Freq 0001". Generally, the clans will be forced to be of equal size and strength to start, while during the course of the game new members will be alotted to the side currently losing. Most MMORPGs wouldn't consider this, but most MMORPGs suck. Wheras every other game in the world whether in sports or video games, (including Subspace) has equal sized teams. No, SS RPG sucks. Most html strategy games don't suck. And for that matter, lots of them already DO have a system like that. You obviously have no experience with html strategy games, why on Earth did you just make that re!@#$%^&*ed statement? I can safely say that your last two lines are without a doubt the stupidest in your whole post. Also, you should stop referring to SS RPG as an MMORPG, because it's not one. I guess there's a chance you actually were referring to real MMORPGs, in which case, I'll just remind you of the existence of the most well known MMORPG, WoW, in which there are two teams. I will further elaborate on this, because I believe Alliance is bigger than Horde(I could be wrong). But I also remember Horde having about 10x the skill Alliance does. As for your actual idea, it won't work. For example, I seriously doubt you'll be attacking Dav next round, regardless of the system set up. Joining clans has only been a representation of bonds shared outside the subspace community - one reason people have stuck to them so well. Betray someone in-game and they might feel betrayed in real life. Well, in Continuum, which is practically real life for most of us. It's not even a matter of being a good idea, or not, it just plain won't work. Seriously, you piss me off with stuff like this. You obviously have no experience with these games, so why do you go off and plan everything on your own? What makes me angry is you actually made topics last round telling us about the changes you were going to make next round. I !@#$%^&*umed that meant you would listen to our opinions and consider them. Turns out it was a lie, you never once told us about your re!@#$%^&*ed ideas like wanting to never reset. We could've told you it was a horrible idea from the get-go and saved a month. I swear, you could probably staff at DS with the way you pretend to do things for the pop and then do everything for yourself. This whole time I thought we were playing SS RPG, but apparently it's now Aileron RPG. This is ridiculous.
jacob hunter! Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 All i'm going to say is that We still need changes done to ssrpg and I am suggesting this. Make everything 50 percent lower. That way things will not break down as fast..... and be in chaos. Can we manage that?
The Real Picard Posted May 21, 2007 Report Posted May 21, 2007 Actually, while I've been trying to avoid using the admin powers to spy on people, when I was putting the Nightwasp in, I did notice that a couple players have noticed that while the bank's income is small, it is still exponential (the opening screen displays the best stats of each catagory including bank, and is unavoidable.) Just like it round two, the bank is still whacked. I warned you about this. I've said ever since I started that both UP and bank were the way to win. The Bank is inherently broken, and UP is the past was simply boring, since anyone that understood the game knew you just had to max it out first before focusing on anything else. This round, though, you managed to screw it up big time. I still haven't figured out how you did that one. Okay, the problem I'm having is what my theorey was for this round. 1. I wanted it to be compe!@#$%^&*ive the whole way through, and a precursur to not ever having to reset at all. 2. I actually wanted to make it such that fleeting things like weapons and armies could be destroyed and repaired on a regular basis. 3. I wanted people to sometimes suffer casualties higher than their growth rates so that other players can catch up. 4. I wanted people to sometimes lose half the armory to sabotage so that weaker players can possibly hit them. 5. I wanted UP, though expensive, to be the most valueble resource because UP cannot be massed or sabbed. As you can see, I've taken the privilege of labeling your points, so I can shoot them down.#1 Wtf? Never resetting at all? ALL of the popular html strategy games reset, and for a very good reason. The only ones that don't are not only extremely unbalanced and unpopular, they end up a sausage fest where the original creators and some of the original players sit around and suck each other's !@#$%^&*s all day. Although I guess that's similar to the way a lot of SS zones have been run in the past. I'm not really sure I can even explain why it needs to be reset, but I can guarantee that the noobs would quickly tire and quit, there would be no more new noobs given SSForum's small population, and eventually, the guys at the top would get bored of hoarding their items(and probably being all spy by that point).#2 This is !@#$%^&*ing re!@#$%^&*ed. No one likes losing a !@#$%^&*load of items, but it's part of the game. But it can't be taken to that exponential level. The game isn't built to stand the high numbers you've set it up for this round... it didn't even work right last round, and you made it exponentially worse this round. Armies and items certainly are "fleeting", but they're not SUPPOSED to be. That's a symptom, coming from Spy being overpowered. It's meant to grow at a slower rate in the beginning, but quicker later in the round. But there's so much growing going on this round that spy beats standard attack methods very early, and the gap grows to monumental proportions.#3 Maybe if you hadn't increased an already super overpowered UP, that might work. Of course, you've got to be re!@#$%^&*ed to think that's a good idea in the first place. What? You're great at this game and have an army 10x everyone else's size? Well, that's cool, because some noob's about to !@#$%^&* your world up. I don't think so.#4 That's so !@#$%^&*ing ridiculous it doesn't even need a proper response. I will however mention that since spy items can't be destroyed, you make something that's already exponentially overpowered to the nth degree even further overpowered. As the matter of fact, nearly all of your changes have done this(except for the UP move) despite my best attempts to show how broken it was last round.#5 Um... UP can't be massed, but the army it produces can, so that's the same thing. And freaking SPY can't be sabbed. Wtf are you trying to do to spy? Enter the Penis clan, a clan which consists of 70% of the field. In perfectly balanced settings, the game would still be unbalanced because of this hugely unfair odds. You are the very definition of a scrub. You yourself tried to dominate with your SSCentral Gods clan. However, when another clan that's even bigger enters the arena and overpowers you, all of the sudden, it's cheap. That's like throwing people a lot in SSBM, but then calling it cheap when someone chain-throws you way more than you ever were able to. If it's unbalanced at high levels, then it's probably unbalanced at low levels. Most importantly, there aren't any limiters on any level. I will now refer you to a series of articles on video games and developing video games, which also goes into detail about what exactly classifies as "cheap" and "broken" in games, and also goes into detail of the psychology of scrubs. ( http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlaytoWinPart0.htm ) I suggest you read every article under the "Playing to Win" section. Right now, I'm still trying to figure out which effects were the result of my screwing up and which were the result of overwhelming odds. Its not so much that we got massed, its the fact that the big three *didn't* get massed which is the major problem. If they *had* gotten massed, then right now everyone would be contending for #1. This problem was half my fault and half theirs...if I hadn't remove the attack size cap, the massers would still suffer a lot, but if the odds were fair then there would have been atleast one low-ranked masser going after the big three. You don't understand how casualties work, and that's why you were so weak to massing. It's that simple. Add to that the fact that this game isn't meant to be run at such high numbers(for one reason, because the casualty system breaks down, slowly) and you get a humongous, steaming pile of !@#$%^&*. However, you are STILL treating massing as a "problem", and not as the symptom it is. It's a result of bigger problems closer to the base, it's not a problem in and of itself. Because of that, UP wasn't valueble to the big three. While if you are under duress of constant massings, UP is extremely important, but if you aren't then its best to collect interest. I figured that if you have more money than you can spend on soldiers, there's always the next UP upgrade, which should solve the problem for you on both fronts. Indeed, there are a couple of players who if they wanted to could probably buy the 140 UP upgrade. However, I overestimated the effect, as UP is just far too expensive to be worth the result. There are a few reasons for why UP is and isn't useful at different times. For one, 100m in the bank gives you 500k an hour. However, if you spend 128m on the 100UP, it'll take 10 days before the extra troops gained from UP begin to make you 500k per hour, and this is !@#$%^&*uming no extra soldiers have died as a result of your increased army size. However, having a larger army is in and of itself a good thing, so depending on your strategy(and your amount of bank whoring), up to even 150 UP could quite plausibly be useful. Were these strategies not a direct result of other incredibly broken things, they could actually be legitimate, balanced strategies. Other than that, I didn't get repair costs right...I wanted the "just scrap 'em" point to be around 60% when infact it is around %. Spy weapons are not as effective as a lot of spies. Attacks occur too frequently. The maximum weapons aren't expensive enough. I'll admit I never mastered how spy works, but I always was a more effective spy than you, so I can only take that to mean I understand it a bit better than you, and I disagree with the statement about spy weapons. As for the repair costs, you're wrong yet again. Repair costs CAN'T be balanced when dealing with such high numbers. The reality is you should never repair your items, when they are bought and sold in amounts of several digits - I could explain why, but that'd take a while, and I prefer to keep the secret to myself, should I decide to play again. However, I think we are getting closer. The list of changes that I want to make is addressing smaller details. Oh, really? 1. -Reducing repair costs.2. -(Possibly) Making Super/Shield normal weapons which are essentially the opposite of the shrapnels...insanely expensive to buy but free to repair. I'd have to come up with a new special for the Nightwasp.3. -Reducing turn rate to 2 per hour.4. -Increasing the effectivness of spy and sentry tools. That way, it will be just as easy/difficult to sab people as before. However, since no one is buying mines and decoys, they will be less efficient as strength goes up, like regular weapons. 5. -UP will be fixed to make it more usefull - I'm thinking of using a quadratic price system with a bigger upgrade (like 30 or 40).If I overdo it casualties will keep pop down. I'd also increase income per soldier to something around 1000 per hour. Ahem.#1 Repairing is useless. I figured this out when the repair system was broken last round, and repairing was near impossible - I never repaired my weapons, and never once did it affect me.#2 The whole item system needs to be reworked, this isn't going to help. Especially since you're still factoring in repair.#3 I honestly don't know what to say about turns. They haven't really mattered except in the beginning of the round yet, at least to those that have been smart with their attacks. People in the Penis clan have had limited targets, so they've been forced to play their attacks smarter than other people have - as a result, they've had an abundance of turns. I can think of some problems that would arise from having a very limited amount of turns, but all of them can only hurt you if you don't think of the possible strategies and prepare a defense against them. So I suppose there's nothing wrong with it. Too little turns, though, and you weaken attack even more - not something that needs to be done when spy is so boss right now.#4 Kill yourself.#5 I don't know what you mean by quadratic price system, but if it has anything to do with quadratic equations, it's almost definitely re!@#$%^&*ed. I suggest lowering numbers all around, though. Start at 5, next upgrade at 10, etc. I don't know what to think about increasing soldier income, but I'd be hesitant to do that. Not because I'm worried you'll break an already working system because absolutely nothing works, but because none of your ideas have worked so far. Fixing the massing:The only limit that exists as far as massing is concerned is that army size limit. I'd have set that to a really restrictive value (like 2 or 3). To attack someone outside your range, you would have to buy or sell mercs. !@#$%^&*uming I fix the UP, the lower ranked players will have a low population to match. Untrained mercs will be virtually unlimited, though attack and defense mercs will *not* be. Mercs will also be more expensive. The general method of massing for a low ranked player to attack a high ranked one will be: 1) Buy enough mercs to get within half the target's population2) M!@#$%^&*3) Sell excess mercs Mercs will be expensive enough that the masser will pay the price in the form of mercs that die and can't be resold. However, defense mercs don't die in offense, so they certainly *won't* be unlimited. I'm debating whether or not to make untrained or attack the unlimited variety, and right now I'm leaning towards untrained. My biggest problem is with the line, "...defense mercs don't die in offense, so they certainly *won't* be unlimited.". This just further proves that you don't understand how casualties, and therefore massing, works. Take mercs out. If the system isn't there, it can't be broken. !@#$%^&*, that one statement makes me want to play next round so I can m!@#$%^&* the living !@#$%^&* out of you so that you have to change the whole game just because I used it against you. Again. Now for the change which many people will hate me for:No bank income. Period. Maybe even charge a price to limit using it too much. Like I said before, get rid of the bank. Don't take the !@#$%^&* way out and get rid of the income, get rid of the whole !@#$%^&* thing. This forces them to buy items, which makes someone's rank days 1-29 mean a lot more than they do now. Because now, rank means nothing until about an hour before the game ends. This is your first good idea so far, no one's going to hate ou for it. I don't know why it's taken you two months to figure out that banking was broken, or why you still want to keep banks. But at least this shows you're capable of learning. Now for the change that a ton of people will *really* hate me for:Dissolve all of the clans. Replace them with two clans: "Freq 0000" and "Freq 0001". Generally, the clans will be forced to be of equal size and strength to start, while during the course of the game new members will be alotted to the side currently losing. Most MMORPGs wouldn't consider this, but most MMORPGs suck. Wheras every other game in the world whether in sports or video games, (including Subspace) has equal sized teams. No, SS RPG sucks. Most html strategy games don't suck. And for that matter, lots of them already DO have a system like that. You obviously have no experience with html strategy games, why on Earth did you just make that re!@#$%^&*ed statement? I can safely say that your last two lines are without a doubt the stupidest in your whole post. Also, you should stop referring to SS RPG as an MMORPG, because it's not one. I guess there's a chance you actually were referring to real MMORPGs, in which case, I'll just remind you of the existence of the most well known MMORPG, WoW, in which there are two teams. I will further elaborate on this, because I believe Alliance is bigger than Horde(I could be wrong). But I also remember Horde having about 10x the skill Alliance does. As for your actual idea, it won't work. For example, I seriously doubt you'll be attacking Dav next round, regardless of the system set up. Joining clans has only been a representation of bonds shared outside the subspace community - one reason people have stuck to them so well. Betray someone in-game and they might feel betrayed in real life. Well, in Continuum, which is practically real life for most of us. It's not even a matter of being a good idea, or not, it just plain won't work. Seriously, you piss me off with stuff like this. You obviously have no experience with these games, so why do you go off and plan everything on your own? What makes me angry is you actually made topics last round telling us about the changes you were going to make next round. I !@#$%^&*umed that meant you would listen to our opinions and consider them. Turns out it was a lie, you never once told us about your re!@#$%^&*ed ideas like wanting to never reset. We could've told you it was a horrible idea from the get-go and saved a month. I swear, you could probably staff at DS with the way you pretend to do things for the pop and then do everything for yourself. This whole time I thought we were playing SS RPG, but apparently it's now Aileron RPG. This is ridiculous. This reply is entirely too long for me to read, can you folks please speak in easy to read laymans terms for the reading impaired?! How many kinds of changes take place to the RPG every month? Is it a different format each month?
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