MW Farming Community

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So let me preface this post by saying yes i know i will undoubtedly be flamed for even posting this. Yes I know its not breaking any rules. Yes I know its a war game.

That being said. This game is in revival mode is my understanding. As such most players come back looking to have a good time and I would think as a community that would benefit everyone. That being said here is my gripe.

clearing system shares has always been a thing and I realize some people make get upset instantly and take it as a point to start a war. That’s fine i get it. It’s a war game i piss you off then yes absolutely declare war on me.

This situation however feels different. It’s my first round back in 2 years. I came back because i like to see PIE is legitimately trying to take feedback and do what he thinks is right to bring a player base back. The problem is when the player base itself makes the game pretty miserable for people.

I came back to a family that has little to no activity. Took over leadership, tried to get a discord going, tried to get involvement and growth by aiding like crazy. When that didn’t work i resigned myself to playing SS and basically shooting to just not be the bottom family. To help myself out I like to keep any system i have cleared. So i did this. Apparently angered some people and they declared war. That’s fine I knew i would lose i have no attackers in my family basically playing solo and SS as a rev. Ok i can concede defeat. Now I’m getting to the point where im just pissed and want to delete and leave the game.

My family has had 25% of their planets taken just within what family history will show at this point which doesn’t exactly go back to the start. I alone have lost 46% of my planets. Fine good on ya. At this point we are 30% of their net worth. By that i mean the biggest member in their family (their attacker) is currently worth about the same as my entire family. Yet each tick i keep seeing planets getting taken. I messaged multiple times asking when it would stop. Nothing i can do at this point so i just have to ask. I get told the family hasn’t decided yet.
So at this point i have given up on any fleet defense and i just nuke when i can. So my crying aside i guess here is what i am asking.

Isn’t this game suppose to be fun. Isn’t that what would bring more players back and get new ones to stay? Pie isn’t the only one that can change this game and revive it and bring it back. The player base needs to fix their attitude. Yes it’s a war game, Yes you can attack smaller families. Yes you can grind them into dust. Do you think there is a single person in my family at this point that gives any crap about this game? No.
I am now at the point that I feel like just deleting and moving on with my life.

My parting thought is this. This game used to have a code of honor. Its not something everyone will follow but its something most would. It’s something you yourself can help to enforce and help to grow this community.

TLDR; wah wah boo hoo. Players are the ones that can determine the fun factor of this game. Your ass isn’t a hat please try not to wear it.

/end rant

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The simple answer is that the in-game rule regarding NW difference and the massive morale hit on attacking much smaller empires is completely in shambles. It does NOT work. At all.

WORSE IS THAT FIXING IT DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE A PRIORITY AT ALL.

I am quite adamant that this one issue will prevent the game from ever establishing a steadily growing population of players once again.

We’ve gone from a Milky Way galaxy that once numbered more than 1500 players in 100 families, to what appears to be less than 200 active players across all galaxies. At this rate, I won’t be surprised if the number of active players falls into the mere dozens within three to five years.

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This is not true. It is high on the list (as are a few other things) but I have limited available dev time right now.

I understand the frustration, but spreading FUD is not helpful.

IC’s decline in playerbase predates this specific problem by several years. It’s worth noting that we’re actually seeing increase in players compared to a couple of years ago, so the idea here that we’re bleeding out due to this problem is flat out wrong.

This is a valid problem, but it is by no means the primary factor in our reduced numbers compared to IC’s heydey, nor is it the only thing that is of high priority.

This premise is entirely incorrect, there is no simple answer. @HFO’s concerns represent a mix of several problems. The 35% rule is only one of them.

@HFO, I appreciate your thoughts. There’s no reason for anybody to flame you here, these are all valid concerns and something we need to continue to focus on.

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This is not true. It is high on the list (as are a few other things) but I have limited available dev time right now. I understand the frustration, but spreading FUD is not helpful.

Is it really. I beg to differ using your own words directly to me…

“As it stands, the 35% NW problem isn’t on my personal list of priorities, despite its negative impact on the game. There are simply more pressing matters. However, if players were to vote on this, it would help give me insight into the pain points…”

What is more pressing than correcting a serious imbalance in gameplay, one that you admit has a negative impact on the game?

Also, you seriously believe players that are benefiting from this imbalance will vote to end it?
Every election in the course of humanity has pretty much shown that rarely happens.

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my suggestion would be the bottom 5 family just all agree a an alliance and go to war with the larger more active family and just see what happens! :smiley: although i presume this would be an alliance and not allowed :frowning:

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What I said to you there doesn’t conflict with what I said here.

It isn’t on my personal list of priorities, but it is something that players bring up often and if it doesn’t get its own voting thread it is at least likely to get folded into the attack formula revamp work, that very much is a high priority for players. Here’s the part before that quote that you left out:

In other words: when determining what to work on I evaluate what I think is most important, but also mix in what the players think is most important. It can both not be on my personal priority list while still be a high priority for the game.

Perhaps my language wasn’t clear, but “personal” priority list to me means things that I myself see as necessary, with the understanding that if I am not playing it is impossible for me to accurately gauge all of the game’s needs, hence the voting system. I also said as much to you in the same exchange:

Using my statements without context to further your point is not helpful. If you think I am contradicting myself, feel free to just ask me to clarify within the relevant thread itself.

Site speed, for one. Our page load times are in excess of 4 seconds sometimes, which has a staggering impact on accessibility, particularly for mobile players.

Monetization is another one. IC needs to make money to survive, and given that I don’t want to turn it into a p2w game, it takes a fair amount work to figure out how to get players interested in donating or buying merch.

Delegation is yet another. Given that my available dev time is rapidly shrinking, I need to build adequate tools for the mod team to operate in the absence of my presence.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the point: there are many “top” priorities but they can’t all take what limited time I have.

I believe that players will use what means they have to provide input. Your participation in this thread proves the point.

All that aside, I also want to point out that IC’s drop to “less than 200 active players across all galaxies” occurred in 2014. The 35% rule was ripped out in 2015 as part of the morale revamp. The 35% rule problem didn’t cause this decline; in fact it was born out of an attempt to reverse it. I know this because I was a volunteer dev when Stefan and the mod team at the time discussed and implemented this. This is something I’ve talked about before and have even written about speaking to our stats:

unique-logins

The numbers there don’t lie: by the time the problem with the 35% rule hit in 2015, we are already in the midst of a 3-year low point that ended in 2016. We successfully got out of this low point with no effort to fix the 35% rule because other things were more important.

I really do appreciate your concern, but I would also appreciate if you spoke with fewer assumptions. There are valid reasons we prioritize things the way that we do, and if you really think this needs to be #1 then you are welcome to start a thread in #support:ideas about it because that is the system we have in place to help us manage priorities.

If you are not interested in doing that, then don’t expect it to change.

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True but i find in no way how
7 Lethal Threat (6232) [13,194] 1055 7693499
vs
12 Fire Sale going on now!!! (6240) [186,50] 316 2406304
can promote any kind of fun in the game. I’m not even looking at the devs for this. I blame it on the player base. Ok maybe the code isn’t in there to prevent it but come on now.

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The code was there to limit such behavior. It even had been modified over the years. For whatever reason it has been disabled or ceased to work.

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Understandable but the player base can also look at this and see its wrong. 6232 just continues to farm me down. Yet none of them stop. I have messaged leader, VL, and attacker. Attacker logged in took more of my planets but never responded to my message. So back to Nuking i will go

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I fully agree. It is morally wrong, detrimental to the game’s growth, and should not be tolerated by today’s group of veteran players. Yet, they mostly appear to turn a blind eye to it, or engage upon it themselves.

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The 35% rules never stopped this type of farming but does make it slightly harder.

Top families would just keep a small attacker and pass up the planets pretty much as they do now to avoid the morale loss.

Back in betas there were enough established top players who would police this type of farming.
That slowly eroded over time when players like alturist left.

Still if we’re were to make a council/code or in game in rule, where should we draw the line?

Should it be a a rule not to attack a family X% of family size/networth? Or only taking x% of planets?
Or do you have some other solutions?

Also pie has been looking at this issue of small families and how to improve the experiance. The assimilation feature was a recent attempt to address that issue.

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This has always been my rule when attacking or going to war with a smaller family I take 15% to 20% of a family smaller and 25% to 30% of a family larger than my entire family. But depending on the difference in size of the nw of the lower ranked fam I adjust my percentages. But you wouldn’t see me more then clearing shares of a family that much lower.

That is pretty low of family 32 everyone should take a mental note and remember the leader vl and attackers from that family that don’t even respond to HFO that is just plain pathetic.

HFO try to give it 1 more round I know this really ruins the experience but remember the players that have done this to you and try to get some payback to those specific players not their families but the players

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the rule should not be 35% player vs player but family NW vs family NW. means u shouldnt be able to attack a fam that is 35% of ur fams NW, maybe combined with a size component so u are allowed to attack them even if that fam is under 35% NW if they are similar size to prevent

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oooh ohh see!!! i got a cake!!! today is anniversary i joined IC :slight_smile:

@everyone i accept your planet-gifts in MW, pls send me coords ingame, i am bubble from fam 30

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35% of family nw is a potential solution.

I see a few impacts I see with it being a in-game rule.

You would not being able to clear small families from your core, which gives other families a way of getting shares with you.

Having pop bankers inflates your networth so discourage this type of play.

It encourages people to drop net worth to hit targets, like disbanding fleet, hypno own pop in which doesnt sound like great gameplay.

If smaller families attack, you would have to have some period of attacks being allowed by the larger family.

Still worth considering but the impacts and there are probably others, need to be understood.

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ok anyway worth a try, i think it was more a porblem when there were alliances bec then a smaller fam can sneak into your cores, but nowaday a smaller fam wouldnt attack a (much)bigger fam by sneaking into their cores

but, where are my birthday coords??

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Yes, you have turned this into a pansy core game, which is what we were very afraid was going to happen at least a decade ago. It is IMPERIAL CONFLICT. Getting shares and have guerrilla warfare tactics should be part of the game, and those things very much help to balance the game as well as bringing the conflict component into the game.

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Well it wasn’t me who turned it into a core game.
I believe that concept was was imported from pinwheel when pp moved to milky way around round 6/7/8 ish just before I stopped playing.

Still I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try a 35% family rule, just pointing out some of the impacts it would have, some might view harder to control cores as a positive.

Other ideas people have proposed is 35% rule that considers planet count and networth, you can still attack if they are in range on either of those measures.

If you have some other good ideas that might help feel free to propose them.

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The bit missing from this thread is the fact HFO’s fam was not in last place at the start of this, in fact they were 3 ranks lower and it started from attacks by their fam.

OK, it went on a lot longer than a good few fam members wanted but don’t scream farming when there was three rank difference.

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Sorry @TIF, by YOU, I meant all players in general. Although go back far enough and I put a lot of the blame for this on Talic. Strict cores was one gameplay tactic we did not teach him long ago when he was a newbie Harkonnen. He learned that on his own I suppose.