Lets make IC great again... and we don't need Pie to do anything

Universal News
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So, I have been meaning to post something for… awhile… but general apathy has gotten in the way. I have wanted to reach out to the rest of your and find a way that we can stop the shit. I see in the forum several posts asking for changes from Pie, to make things different, but we all seem to want him, the owner and developer who has no time (albeit more time and attention than the previous one), but we don’t actually need Pie to do things. Most of the stuff seems to be to fix the ways the community acts with rules, but we as a community can just do that ourselves. Sure some people may do it anyway, and gain an advantage, but then when we talk about the round and who won we discount people who did the stuff we as a community dislike. I have listed below some of the issues that seem to have popped up that have caught my attention as things we, as a community, can do something about via attitude and behavioural changes, not just code changes.

  1. If we as a community dislike UA, then we as a community agree to not do them.
  2. Don’t like market aid, then don’t do it… no matter how easy it may seem
  3. Farming to win size is bad, so don’t farm
  4. Don’t like wars where one fam takes all the other fams planets, then don’t do it yourself.

My solution is that we as a community agree on some terms of play, terms that allow all levels of skill and activity to engage so we can grow the community once more. I have thought on these solutions based on what I have read in the community, how some of my recent rounds have gone (esp. Clan Wars 1 & 2 last year) and the results of the two polls I put up

  1. Agree that top* fams don’t fight lower* fams for any reason
  2. Lower fams can band together in alliances, but top fams do not
  3. Top fams never market aid, only lower fams and only within their alliance
  4. All wars posted in uni news, and agreement that wars don’t go past 10* days, at which time the fam that took the most planets won the war.
  5. Round winner is the fam that won the most wars (as posted in Uni News)
  6. Bring back community EOR awards, and agree to vote in them properly, not just for friends and family members
  7. Other ranks are used to compliment total wins to help with EOR awards
    1. NW rank shows best econ fam
    2. Size rank shows most expansive/aggressive fam
  8. Post more in forums and chat in a constructive manner, so that we create a cool vibe
  9. Help new players… if you are in a fam that is gunning for the top spot and don’t want to carry the weight, talk to Pie/the newbie/others to see if they can get moved to a fam that will help them out
  10. Just want to play to win and not care about anyone else, go play Stellaris or something else…
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NB:

I realise some terms are subjective, here are my definitions

  • Top fam is a fam that is at or near the top of the NW standings as an example, in MW75 for most of the round the top 6 fams were within about 10-15% of each other in terms of NW, this got stretched out to about 25% near EOR (and out to 60% between #1 and #6 at EOR, but that was EOR nw jumps). I would say any fam that is within 20% of the #1 by NW counts as “Top fam” I realise that this is not been true all the way through, but if we take this as a definition, then maybe it will also incentivise a wider distribution of “talent”
  • Lower fams is any fam who is not a “top” fam, although if we take MW75 as an example again, then really there were 3 tiers of fams. So we can have each tier be a band of 20% of the top of the band and agree that you only fight/play within your band. Only the lowest band can have UA and market aiding. If you are in a fam and manage to go up a band, then you start playing as though you are in your new band at that time
  • 10 days for wars is my completely made up number, we can go any time… I think that is what was used in CW1 to be the max time, but whatever seems to make sense
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I also realise that some people played CW and the scoring system we used was a bit clunky… I liked it and where it was going, but to get it to work we need code changes (or maybe the API will allow us what we need and we can do it ourselves).

But here I am not asking for a scoring system, just a straight count of war wins.

Maybe an 11. guideline -> wars where the winning fam ends up with <10% gain have an automatic 48hr NAP at end, 10-20% gain = 96hr NAP, >20% = P-NAP (noting that there may be changes in tiers post-war)

Fam tier changes happen 48 hours after the end of the war (to account for war fleets which may not stay)

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Also, poll results

Team game vs empire simulation

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Reasons to play

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Very good ideas here, but some of your rules would need to be altered to be more practical and fair to all levels of players…will post a much more lengthy response once I get home

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I like the idea. But my preference in all aspects of life is not to create fixed rules to govern behavior but have general agreement. For example saying you can only attack a fam within 20% of nw migh exclude the fam at 21% that has acquired planets in/near your systems but include the fam at 19% that is clearly trying to build for a war far away from your interests. Instead i would prefer a general agreement that says you agree not to get involved in wars that aren’t your concern and not to attack/op players/fams that aren’t able to adequately defend or retaliate.

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I agree completely… my post wasn’t meant to be hard rules, but guidelines about what that means

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@You_Fool i totally get the apathy part when it comes to posting here. I have had 4 or 5 threads and responses floating in my head for weeks, and I just can not seem to make myself post them.

I like all of your ideas about ways to change the game, but I do not think they should be community driven. No internet community I have ever seen has been 100% in self policing its guidelines and policies. There will always be bad apples, and as our community hopefully grows, so do the number of bad apples.

Plus without this type of stuff fixed from a game standpoint, there is no true way to prove if a family is market aiding, participating in an IA, or literally anything.

I like almost all of those ideas, but I think they need to be game driven.

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Game driven means it doesn’t happen and we die… there is only 30-50 people playing this game so we can do this 100% community based… that isn’t a lot of people to get on board… and any who don’t get ignored, their achievements not remembered by the rest of us, not aided as part of a family, basically removed from the game…

We can do this without pie making changes, it just requires our own self belief and restraint

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I also agree that it is possible to do this with it being 70% community and 30% game driven…

@MTG_Dad to be honest with you the community is a big part of why people don’t stick around. Same old gameplay and the lack of innovation is second. If we can make or alter community guidelines that are peer to peer with game implementation…it would probably be helpful.

That’s all to say, it is not entirely possible to make this 100% community driven because, there will always be people with a bad nature, or bad mentality. Who thinks it’s fine to farm people down to nothing just to try and win…or farm people that can not defend them selves and call it a fair war…in that sense we need some type of game implementation.

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This is nonsense, the game doesn’t need us to behave better for it to be saved. Can we speak openly and just admit that in it’s current state this game is not attractive to new players, and the only way to improve that is to let the developer do his thing, it will either work or not. If the game was good, people would come. Our only focus is to support the game and Pie by logging in. Those who have left the game because of the community are traitors to the cause and should be stoned to death.

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Thanks @You_Fool for posting this, and everybody for your thoughts.

There is truth to all sides of this. The players can take much into their own hands, and it isn’t even a new thing. Take unofficial NAPs and Galactic Congress for example: those are things in our history that empowered players to self-govern.

Self-governance was even a defining characteristic of the betas before the IA rule was ever a thing. It isn’t impossible by any means.

However, to the point @MTG_Dad and @kingray are making, there needs to be at least some adjustment on the game side to better facilitate this.

Our challenge is finding the balance while being realistic about our available dev time. We have to be very picky about what gets priority. We want it all, but we have to pick. @OrBit is also very much correct that a lot of our issues are with the game itself, not the community.

It’s not a matter of which: it’s both, and there is overlap between the two.

I proposed an idea recently about a more formalized Galactic Congress in which family leaders could vote to provide help or to impose penalties depending on what is happening in the round. This came out of a discussion about UA but it could just as well serve @You_Fool’s ideas here.

What’s even better is, such a feature could evolve with the players because it doesn’t define any rules itself: it only gives players the tools to better control their environment. This is literally what is being asked for here in that the community could influence behavioral change without staff having to oversee anything.

This all boils down to behavioral reinforcement. If we want players to act a certain way, we need to reward them for doing so. If we want players to not act a certain way, we need to deter them.

Some of this is a matter of game design and UX design, like @You_Fool’s point about other ranking types influencing how people play. However, some of this should also be in the hands of the players themselves. Not just because it’s more practical for me as the owner, but also because it gives players self-determination.

Player autonomy is not just an option; it’s our only option. Player churn will continue and we simply cannot grow if these problems are not addressed, and done in a way that scales. Staff oversight does not scale. Self-governance scales.

You don’t need to wait for staff.

I will be exploring changes further, but to the original point of this post: you don’t need to wait for staff.

There is nothing stopping players from getting together and agreeing to standards right now.

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Maybe we can agree to some simple guidelines for the upcoming Andro round?

  1. All wars posted in their own Uni News thread, with posts showing 1 tick before war, wat start tick and end tick rankings?
  2. No wars to last more than 5 days (unless specifically agreed by both family leaderships in the war thread)?
  3. Wars should only happen between fans within 50% of the largest nw? Despite what rules/ mechanics say?
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This would be very usuable.

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Yes would be good, but have to remember that will be just the leadership group from the round… be good to also have something from all players, and non-players as well…

Important part for the congress is early on though, and setting expectations for the round

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All great ideas, I like the Congress idea…one big family being farmers…apply the -100% attack and -50% income to the fam.

Be nice if a sliding scale of bonuses and negatives could be applied so rounds don’t die out after 2 weeks. Let’s be honest every round for the past 7 has been won by day 14 then it’s just boring and everyone quits and waits for the next. If say a fam has x % NW increase over fam below them thier income is decreased by x% and other fams income is increased by x%. Similar for planet count. If family A has X more planets than planet B attack is decreased by X % for fam A and attack increased by X % for Fam B.

Much like a racing game with catch up mode. Those in front are slowed down a little and those at the back have extra speed and eventually everyone gets on middle ground. I dont think the infalation in infrastructure costs are enough. Once a fam has a lead and wins the first war and has many more planets its game over now, especially with the low amount of fams.

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Correct, but even if the game was good: with the way people play it now, no new player would stick. Playing for 2 weeks and then getting raided, nukes, and plundered to death is not a way to have people getting enthousiastic about the game.
Some ground rules we agree on with the community, a gentlemens code, would help bigtime.

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We need a big enough pool of new players that they can have there own rounds and graduate up. Having a new player play with some as skilled as say orbit is almost unfair. And it sucks that one new player Can skew a fam it’s the case at this point in time

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its funny actually that more new players means more imbalance and worse experiences haha

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Been meaning to get back to this… but these last 2 opinions are fine when we gave hundreds if players, but when we have 40 players then this can’t be tolerated.

If we want to have a high level of challenge again, and able to sustain multiple galaxies and get Pie to make the changes needed, then we need to do things that welcomes new players in…

See a new player, message them, get them to chat, find our what they need and aid them… find out what they like and give them a prominent (but not lead) role that fits those likes… be teachers even if it costs you a round… if you do there will ge more rounds to try and win…

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