What an old find!
I still hold the same stance, but I have a better sense now of what it means for the larger game. Back then I might have said “you shouldn’t do this” whereas now I tend to say “I personally wouldn’t do this, but nobody should tell you how to play.”.
Imo the real problem is that small families are at such a disadvantage that they have no choice but to pay the demands. There isn’t an attractive enough incentive to say “fuck off” and keep fighting, which is how I am used to playing. I think that is because, amongst other things:
- The battle logic, including morale, is imbalanced
- Large empires and families can too easily support impenetrable defenses, creating an unreasonable power disparity
- Small empires do not having enough retaliatory options generally, including ops
- Players focus on rank over everything else
- Players lack an easy to access history and reputation metrics
In other words, planets-for-peace became standard because the game itself failed to provide a viable alternative. UA, despite people complaining about it, is part of the solution, but I also think feature changes will help. To the same points above:
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Revamp Attack Formula and Fleet Efficiency will address large families becoming so untouchable.
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Addressing the game’s long-standing embrace of abundance will curb the power disparity that makes playing sometimes feel pointless if you’re not in the upper ranks.
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Giving small empires a more effective means to fight back will reduce the efficacy of extortion.
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Giving players something other than just size/nw rank to care about will change what it means to “win” and therefore how people on both sides treat each other during war.
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De-anonymizing empires and providing an easily accessible way to gauge history will incentivize players to care more about their reputations, and therefore affect their actions as attackers and their reactions as defenders.
I could go on, but the point is that honor is subjective, which is the exact problem it’s always been. There is no objective truth on what is honorable, there is only a consensus that can and will change depending on the player base.
If that consensus is ever at odds with the game’s success, then we need to adjust the factors that lead players to that consensus. Hence the need to consider the impact of game mechanics on the decisions players are able to make at all.
This is much harder to do than to just throw arbitrary rules all over the place, but the payoff is also much larger.