To answer questions, YES I do believe that hyper-aggressive and active fams should provide space and room for smaller social fams, and I have been saying so for the past 2 years. Good of you to pay attention to the forums in that time.
The issue is that you lot are thinking as though this is still 2005 (about the time of Spartan’s story, give or take a year or two) with the thousands of players and 5 or 6 galaxies all running at the same time. Same with all the games mentioned… hundreds of thousands if not millions of players. What that means is that there is space for social play as well as competitive or pro-level play. With 40-50 players we don’t have that.
Here is the scenario you asked us to accept
- Tick 152 (end of week 1) - no more space to explore, stuck at 160 planets surrounded by bigger fams
What were our options for playing this game over the remaining 3 weeks? Sit around, wait for 42 to take a few systems, wait for 39 to take a few more, wait for 40 to take a few more… end up on what we are on? Or dipo and NAP everyone, hope no one decides to cancel because “they need a few planets to take size victory” or “we are just clearing a few NAPs and won’t take much, just let it happen”? Where is our fun in all this? all for what 10 systems max? 50 planets… leaving you on 410 planets now and 2nd place… and no drama and no taint to the round? Leaving us to still have the same diplo issues, but more of a solid base to work from… maybe nothing changes for us in the end, but we can face each war with some amount of hope, and everyone in the family has some fun and comes back next round.
I mean lucky for you my fam is full of old vets, some who will stick around, a few like me who will probably take a round or two off then come back, or maybe just say that and still random in somewhere. But if it was new players then likely they don’t come back in your scenario, or even a few of the older vets. Numbers don’t grow, maybe they go down some more, and you have a smaller and smaller player base.
My point is somewhere and is that there isn’t space for hyper-competitive where you kill everyone just to prove you are the best at waking up 1/hour everyday for a whole month. But there is still space for competitive play within a social framework. Something that I have consistently pushed for is for the so called “top fams” to recognise that they are that (i.e. you draft in early, or get known “top players” and have the gentlemen’s agreement not to attack “social” fams unless attacked first. They let social fams have their space, maybe give them semi-perm NAPs with only core for the social fam, and then in last 72 hours all NAPs expire and there can be a free for all including attacking social fams. Social fams accept the contract and know that they won’t abuse that position. They also accept that if they grow lots they will lose the “social” defence and become fair targets.
To make this work requires the community to actually want to play nice, and realise that winning the non-existent shiny trophy is not worth continuing the problems that IC has
Somewhere in here is an actual good game, and it revolves around the social element. I see it more as an online space empire based game of diplomacy, but even in that there are social contracts, between the experienced, the pros and the newbies; where the pros don’t decimate the new players so that they game will grow, and they play nice in social games and leave their sharpest knives for the official tournaments (and even then, for the ones labelled as competitive, not a social tournament).
Ideally I want HydroP’s idea, at least 2 galaxies… .1 is the pro-bowl where the competitive play is, and the other is the training galaxy where us socials and the new players can play and actually enjoy the game. (my idea is for 3, so there can be a semi-competitive gal as well for training/qualification to the pro-bowl)
Final note: I am not saying you can’t play serious and be competitive… I am just saying you should not ruin people’s rounds just so you can win… and despite what you might say, your initial “core” ended our round there and then. To accept your terms at any stage was to just all stop logging in. You can try and pretend otherwise, but it is the simple truth of the position.
. This game loses players because there are better games out there plain and simple. And thats not a bash on Pie or this game, it’s a fact. The level of sophistication and user friendliness in some of these developed games are unreal.