Bushtarion Today

[SadYear]

When people first get into the game, they might be a little put off by the apparent lack of action. In fact, it may take some time for the newcomers to complete the tutorial and since figthing for your land is not taught in the tutorial (yet ?), beginners have yet to imagine what a battle looks like. Plus, they have absolutely no idea of what's going on, rank-wise, or alliances-wise. It's a bit sad, considering this is one of the most interesting and social aspect of the game : sharing Battle Reports, talking about ratios, layers or how the Alliance A stuffed Alliance B yesterday and stuff like that.

One could argue that most of the information is up to the players to discover, and surely, I agree with that, but the truth is that when you register an ID, all you do at first is grow seeds and plant stuff with absolutely no idea of what's going on or what will be going on. The first few days within the game hardly give an accurate picture of the real gameplay.

So yeah, enough with the justifications, on with the suggestion : how about we get a daily optional (as in : you may deactivate it if you like) automated Newsfeed from the game ?

The Bushtarion Today could be a link at the bottom of the "Main Options:" tab or be fully integrated into the News. At 12:00 GMT, it would publish the BR of one the best land grabs (no IDs revealed, of course) or the one with the highest values of troops killed or involved. It could also show advertisements for alliances recruiting or random news on how the first T-Rex has been spotted 3 days ago according to the rumour (with a quick description of the units or a link to the manual/wiki). Links to get onto IRC and ask for help could be shown once a week too. A lot of possibility there : publish awesome ratios on Traps, how to contact an admins, how active the average player of the game is, etc. as long as all those global news remain anonymous.

It would have to be automated obviously, so that Azzer wouldn't have to select the BR manually or the interesting stats/facts each day.

Would you want to wake up to a nice BR that isn't yours ? I know I would like that. Probably ain't gonna be implemented any time soon, as I s'ppose it would represent a lot of hard work but yeah.

It would give the new players a heads-up on what a BR looks like, and how fun it can be to fight for your acres. I don't think it'd be dangerous in anyway since nothing too important, no vital informations, or nothing that could be used to gain knowledge against a particular someone/alliance would be shared. Probably useless to veterans though, even if fun, so an option to hide the link or disable the newsfeed would probably be more than welcome.

Thoughts on this ?

 

[f0xx]

Theoretically, the idea is great. I've always wanted something like a newspaper and the idea behind G-pols was the exact same thing. The problem is, the useless spam.

While I am a great fan of the idea, while spam exists it WILL fail.

Few ways to battle it is to allow helpers read articles and approve them. All articles should of course be in Role-Play style and written in an attractive way. But then there comes a problem with helpers bieng biased and stuff like that, so the idea is quite complexed.

I am still a fan though...

 

[Souls]

Indeed, you can always just submit an article/battle report and the helpers will approve/deny it into the Bushtarion Today. That's the easiest way I see it happening.

 

[SadYear]

I was thinking of a more automated approach, the game picking up semi-interesting facts and 'good' BRs. Bias and lazyness would be too great of a problem if people were to be involved in the process.

 

[atsanjose]

i like sadyears idea of an automated newsletter, if i want to read crap that people are writing themselfs then i visit the forum.

good idea would be to make a "did you know"

like:

Did you know:

...that the last week 384 billion staff died due to attacks and defence...
...394 individual id's made an successful attack of which 120 landed...
...in those attacks 19.384 land was stolen...

etc etc

just to show new players that this isnt the average dead game you come across most of the time.

 

[f0xx]

Hm..I am gonna use an example of another game with a lot of us are now familiar with. The example is just to show how something boring can be made to look VERY interesting and inspiring.


http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/the-battle-for-ontario-885941/1/20[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

Of course, this article was written by the team that administrates the game it seems.

 

[DarkSider]

Nice article, i suggested something like that a couple times
I did wrote a couple articles myself but instead of a small summary i had to take the version of the sides involved as it's a bit harder in bush to have accurate data just from using spy and checking the alliance size every now and then.

Instead of an automatic script i'd go with something close to that article where bushtarion writers can be approached with some material or take interviews and write a quick story

 

[Cyrus]

i like sadyears idea of an automated newsletter, if i want to read crap that people are writing themselfs then i visit the forum.

good idea would be to make a "did you know"

like:

Did you know:

...that the last week 384 billion staff died due to attacks and defence...
...394 individual id's made an successful attack of which 120 landed...
...in those attacks 19.384 land was stolen...

etc etc

just to show new players that this isnt the average dead game you come across most of the time.

i think thats a boring way of displaying it, that is basically how the stats page is, what would be good is if a FULL BR was shown, somehow azzer can have someone that selects the biggest BR of the day and shows it somewhere, this is more eye catching than 5 people killed 4 people.. or is that just me?

or maybe on the actual main page, a news feed that is similar to our news page thats like a day behind exactly showing Br's from that tick, that may also bring in new players randomly finding bushtarion homepage?

thats just a thought off the top of my head so dont rape me

 

[Azzer]

A feature present in a fair few games is a sort of live "ticker tape" style news feed at the top of the page. Basically every fight that happens in X period (where X can be 30 seconds or 1 hour or whatever), it picks the "Biggest battle" and displays a quick summary across the top.

Ofc in Bushtarion "no ID's" and anonimity etc. are quite important, since unlike many games, in Bush you could find an ID under heavy attack via a news ticker and be there stealing land within the hour. So some thought would have to go in to what the news ticker would/could actually display, and how. (ID's? Alliance names? No names? Just show total damage done? Land lost?).

Very different to a roleplay like player-written "newsletter", which, of course, takes players to write them

 

[Cyrus]

i think blurring out id's wouldnt be a problem?

have the news feed 24 hours behind and make it state that somewhere close so people understand that this happened 24 hours previous, no random times like lets say alliance stats.

putting it as part of the main page and maybe also have it somewhere once your logged in would be a bonus all round. because we all know how pretty things capture attention so it would surely make someone create an account just to see what the fuss is about and people that are playing get to see big BR's

 

[CFalcon]

Having players submit articles to be approved by helpers, or another group, would certainly be the easiest way to do it. That way would probably generate the most interesting material too, as a summary of alliance wars is much more interesting than just seeing a BR with no context.

That said, I can't imagine that many people actually being bothered to write these things. Maybe I'm wrong, and just say that 'cos I wouldn't be bothered myself. But it would probably be a good idea to supplement the player submitted articles with the automated BR/stat feed.

 

[Steve_God]

Hmmm...
A script (ticker tape... separate page... whatever...) that scans the top battles from 24 hours ago to 72 hours ago (so displaying 2 days worth of info with a day delay) that displays maybe the top 5 reports in terms of total damage done during a tick by both sides (attacking + defending) and top 1 reports for: most land stolen / most bribed / most disabled / most distracted.
{Would need to be a check in place to avoid duplication}

Info would contain the exact numbers of the units involved, no ids, no alliance details, but would give the number of players involved for that tick. (But not how many were defending or attacking, just a total from both sides)


Would something like that be doable?
Wouldn't give anything away that would be detrimental to the player, would be very good for players not involved in the top wars, to see the size and complexity of the battles that go on at the top, and what can be achieved!

 

[DarkSider]

Just a big BR after a big BR without any drama is not interesting at all imo
Oh look 100 mil rpg's killed a robot .. surprise .. not

I'm with CFalcon, we need articles instead Either Bush writters take interviews and write the story, or players submit their story and helpers/writters accept them as long as the content is interesting and worth reading

 

[Mysterious]

how about both?

 

[Khris]

I think like a weekly/biweekly full newsletter which would be like the weeks round up would be great.

There is not THAT much interesting stuff to wanna do this every day.

But you could play if off pretty well... bounties and all that are always fun to see.


have like weekly rewards/awards for the lower ranks... Like Congratulations to XXX alli for climbing there way into the top 10!!

we need stuff not just made to get the e-penis' even more hard and to keep the lower ranks interested.


I love this suggestion and think we could really come up with something that should be implemented.