Just some thoughts, what if:

Game has a fixed period for reset, say every 2 - 4 months.
All players are given 3-7 days of immunity at start, so everyone starts on equal footing, levels the playing field.
Home world of all players cannot be captured, so no one is eliminated and thus must restart.
Number of planets are set at beginning of round and that's all which implies players must must be active or will run out of resources to carry on a fight.
Problem with present setup is that once you are established there is little incentive to stay aactive, new players get wiped out before they even can get going, few players makes for boring time.
Finite reources will challenge players to stay active and may increase competition.

Let me know what you think.

We discussed restart in depth when the server crashed, and we generally believe no reset is the way to go.

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20:48:19 | Professor planet 0 from paladin
20:20:21 | Arcanix planet 14 Arcanix 01

Diplomacy & Trading Forum Moderator.

Who's "we"? Just because it was right then, doesn't mean the issue shouldn't be re-visited. Personally, the fact that it is something that gets brought up on a regular basis by a variety of players gives it a weight of credibility in itself. In fact, the only arguement I can really see against it is that it makes the building up of HWs etc... a bit pointless (but this can be good as it forces you to be aggressive?) and it can take a long time to prepare for a large attack. But this problem can then be solved by having longer reset times, perhaps annual or bi-annual. I'm not throwing my support behind a reset just yet, but you shouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

As for the rest:

Immunity: I'd argue no, as this would mean you could only capture SP planets for the first few days and this is boring. Personally I think no immunity at a reset would make the game more interesting. I'd suggest no immunity for anyone in the first month, then introduce it.

HWs: No. Big HW captures are an integral part of the game, inevitably it's what decides rounds. You take the end of round this time where there were two HW attacks in the last 8 hours; it makes the round a bit more exciting.

Number of Planets: What do you mean by this? The total amount in the Universe? Personally on this subject I think there should be a min/max limit with SPs dropped on a regular basis to try and maintain a certain limit. The trouble with capping the planets is that if they start to disappear, it can be very hard for even the better players to find too many planets and this stagnates activity.


So in summary, I'm open to a reset and the immunity question, but the planet cap and HW ideas aren't to my taste.

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We = the general consensus of Skylords at the time.

For a while, I favored a reset, yet I feel the consequences for the game at its present state outweigh the benefits. I do not believe this will promote activity, and may possibly drive away some veterans. The game just needs more name recognition. With ~50-75 players logging in each round, and fewer actually playing on a regular basis, a reset right now would do no good. With more players in the game, I'd be all for it. I believe this conversation would be more appropriate when we have a larger base of players in this game.

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20:48:19 | Professor planet 0 from paladin
20:20:21 | Arcanix planet 14 Arcanix 01

Diplomacy & Trading Forum Moderator.

The status quo does not seem to have been able to produce that player developement. This suggests that there are fundamental problems with the strategical makeup of the game. ie. Why would a player continue playing with present setup??
To use an analogy. We build well defended castles, and at a whim bring some damage to our opponents at very little risk to ourselves.

For me the real challenge and fun in the game was trying to survive the first few weeks and months, Then it was exiting, not knowing if you would wake up in the moerning with your half built castle in ruins. That got the adrenaline going each time I signed in. Now if it wasn't for Nos and Dios with some battle zone activity. I wonder how long it will be before my interest wans and dies.

I think going back to where real danger and adventure exists will create more interest then sitting back, massing a huge force so that I can take out a sleeping opponent who likely doesn't miss that extra castle in the first place.

I think Omnibus has hit the nail on the head there, I don't think I could agree more.

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Well can't that be fixed by decreasing defenses or increasing attacking power? I think there's other methods that should be discussed as well.

I'm not saying increase experience on assaults, I believe that is nice where it is. But maybe decrease the strength of shields, such that 33.4M defense (16.7M T+E) with x30 shields is no more than, say 50M. This makes even the most well defended homeworlds more vulnerable.

What we noticed was that as we increased attack power or decreased attack strength, people stored resources on assaults in deep space. A solution to that problem would be debatable.

To that, I propose we re-bind ships to planets, such that when a planet is taken, all ships attached are also destroyed. This causes the need to protect a single (or few) planets, and causes increases in strategy.

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A storm is coming, a storm is coming in..

20:48:19 | Professor planet 0 from paladin
20:20:21 | Arcanix planet 14 Arcanix 01

Diplomacy & Trading Forum Moderator.

But also de-values HWs and could lead to the old "floating HW" scenario. We've tried playing around with HW building etc.. before and it didn't really work.

Personally I'm more inclined to the option of increasing assault power as even now the return of assaults isn't particularly good. In terms of troops it costs 1.17m to trian, 250k in terms of T:I to build, then 500k to fill. Ergo, 1.9m troops for a 1.5m return. Yes, it's better than using 3 untrained assaults to get the same return, but only just.

However, I can't really see much of a downside to resets. That would generate some more player interest I think. If a few "vets" don't like it, then fair enough - no matter which way the game goes some people will disagree. We've tried pretty much everything except resets and there are a lot of positives to bi-annual resets in terms of maintaining activity and giving various different players a chance to be "King of the Hill".

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Make your move, reindeer games.

Personally, I think we are finally starting to see some stability in the game availability (thanks, Iiri!, and that will help in the long run. I know that we lost a lot of players, old and new, due to the various long- and short-term outages. Now we are down to a much smaller core of active users (with some returning each month).

Part of the fun of this game, for me anyway, is the long-term empire building aspect. It would not be something I returned to if it were constantly being reset. I think a lot of other folks felt the same way and never returned after the outages and resets.

I believe that we need to leave things alone in the real arena for a while.

It does appear that something needs to be done to help new players "get it". I wonder if we need to change the tutorial missions from a bunch of reading to more of a "show me how" and then "let me do" sequence. This could be done using a simple screen capture to create a short "capture a planet" video or something more complex like having a "follow me" script.

Also, the idea of certain vets being allowed to have a separate permanent noob (non-points) "skylords ambassador" role appeals to me. It seems that the people most able to help newcomers are separated from them until the poor saps find all their planets within range of two 100M HWs.

As all the systems where we find one green planet, one player planet and transport, and one SPC planet attest, we get a lot of new players coming here. They cannot figure out what to do for the first step and leave.

The most important thing we need to do is figure out how to keep players here through that first mission. Maybe a simple change like providing an assault with 30K trrops already loaded would solve that.

Just my two pence; carry on.

I agree with FORTRAN completely.

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20:48:19 | Professor planet 0 from paladin
20:20:21 | Arcanix planet 14 Arcanix 01

Diplomacy & Trading Forum Moderator.

The SL Ambassador scheme is something I've supported for a long time because of the exposure it gives new players to Vets and vice versa. Similarly, some active encouragement from veteran players should help to keep new players around.

However with regards to changes to the missions etc... I'd be inclined to wait until theKID finishes experimenting with the missions and the newbie arena.

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