Safemode/Sleepmode/Awaymode- u name it

[Username]

I think the current activity demand is too high even for the moderate player. And overall the activity needed for this game cause to much frustration for the player.
So what I would like to suggest is that you can have a 6hours-10hours *pause* each day. Much like the the current sleepmode function but without the seed production reduction.

I think this game would be more enjoyable to play then. Then everyone could fight fair fights and you could see skilled ppl and alliances. You could make full alliances with ppl from your own country and not to worry about nightcover.

I think it is bullshit that you can be zeroed over a period time where you cannot be online. I mean, Im a very dedicated player and always do my best. But what really bored me out was that I have no chance of defending myself when offline, even my alliance couldnt do this even thou they defended me good.

So my guess is that players that can spend more time on this game wont like this idea. But really I dont think it would hurt with a safemode like this since you will still be attackable for around 16hours a day but atleast you could have a good sleep without being worried being zeroed.

This would create more fair and skilled competion and fights for everyone. Atleast as I see it.

 

[pinpower]

I'll come back and edit this later with a few links to sleepmode ideas i like...but in the mean time

The problem with this is that with the current playerbase being relatively small (active playerbase anyway) if every player could take 6-10 hours out each day and be unattackable then it would mean alot of targets would be taken out of the game at any one time...

Also, active players can be online 12+ hours a day easy...give them the ability to be unattackable for 10 hours without any seed loss/penalty and alot of people can litterally become invincible...

Like i said i'll come back and edit this when i have a bit more time, as i do agree that something needs to be done to open up the game to the more casual player but there has to be certain negatives to suggestions like this... I personally like the idea of developing sleep mode so you can still be attacked but gain a higher injury/insurance (and are unable to attack/defend still ofc) and get a lower seed income but not the 15% you get now (iirc)...so that people could use this alot more without taking targets out of the game...and they still loose a fair chunk of their income so its still a choice...


Edit: Few ideas/discussions on this.

As an idea i like Polo's thoughts on Changing sleep mode - Just as an initial idea to work from.

Also DarkSider's thread on Reducing Activity has some ideas. While i dont like the entire idea i think HG has a point when she suggests something like he outlined (varying injury levels for different troops) as part of Sleep mode could be a good idea...Like i said the actual suggestion as a whole im not really for but if you made it similar to polo's idea but with varying injury levels...

Hope i've made sense...typed this up quickly...

 

[Turnip2k]

I agree that the game gets boring due to getting zeroed whenever you can't be around a computer - but I don't think making people unattackable is a solution to the problem.

What needs to be done is people have to stop caring about getting zeroed. This will encourage people to actually fight and battle more (rather than just send out) and mean that logging off won't be the end of days of time put in.

Maybe increace insurance to a huge level, or give defenders bounty for fighting - anything which :

a) Encourages battles to take place
b) Stops getting zeroed (and probably landraped) being such a big issue.

This activity of this game damages it in two ways

a) You have to spend many hours on it to do well / survive
b) When you do die, all those hours have been wasted (especially in the case of bribers), because you start from scratch (minus a 30% insurance rate on units).

Some people enjoy this, and can cope with it - most get annoyed, bored or simply lose interest since putting in more than 3 hours a day is beyond comprehension for alot of people (let alone 16 or whatever the FTW people do).

Suggested possible fixes -

a) Bump up insurance
b) Injuries for bribers on all bribed units and similarly gargantua
c) Some sort of insurance from land loss

Logging off the game should not be a problem - and it currently is if you want to hold onto your land and units.

 

[DarkSider]

Replies are spot on with my views, i'm against even this 8 hour sleepmode that is currently in place. Minimum vacantion mode should be 3 days imo.

And as Turnip said, getting killed needs to be less dramatic. You can't say/expect ppl not to care over night about getting zeroed, but i do believe ingame changes can be made to improve the situation.

 

[WackyJacky]

Make it worth it to fight and die. Last night I had incoming from 3 people at once. I middle-ticked the first guy (much larger the me) and barely got anything from it. I got a bit of insurance and some crappy eff.... woot! Then when the second guy was af3 and the first guy was af1 I got some more crappy insurance and eff....hooray! Then the PoM showed up and fked me over

Basically I wasted ~350 bil for no reason and still lost 3kish acres. I was restarting anyways so it doesn't matter, but if I wasn't I would have run. Even though I won every tick accept the last when the PoM showed up (and 3/4 of my troops were dead) I got nothing. I got a bit of satisfaction because I knocked Davis around a bit but that's it.

I'm fine dying for my land, but I should get more from it (especially when going up against 3 players, 2 that were bigger then me.)

If I think of any suggestions I'll edit later, but for now all I've got is my gripe

 

[Username]

Well the most active ppl will still be the ppl on the top, what this would do is just that u have more fair fights and more ppl that acutally can try to fight back. Now u cant do nothing when offline just get zeroed to death and loose all ur land if its really bad.

This wouldnt hurt the top players at all, maybe that they would have less targets and the playerbase is little, like pinpower said but the targets would still be there for 16hours a day and ppl would have a chance to fight back.

 

[DarkSider]

I don't really know how you get to those conclusions. You actually want players to be able to run their troops more often and not to "put a better fight back".
I have a feeling if that was implemented and the event of getting zeroed would be much less frequent, then when one gets killed it would be even more catastrophical than it is now .. since many others have better chances to stay on higher score and you'd be one of the few who gets pushed to low score.

As others said make attacks to be more about rewarding attackers and less about taking targets out of the circuit.

 

[f0xx]

How are we supposed to kill each other then and how is this going to be a war game if this is to be implied (huge insurance, injuries and so on)?

This ain't gonna reduce activity, not at all. It will make solos even more invincible, wars between alliances will take even longer which will require even more activity.

 

[Turnip2k]

The game needs more battles, not less. Don't increace peoples ability to avoid getting killed. Make it so that it doesn't matter if they do get killed - then you will see more fights. Which is what makes this game fun. I don't like sitting on land and having every target in range run away from every single attack I make - good BR's are pivotal to making this game enjoyable. Make them want to stay and fight, and not care if they die. I will do the same when someone attacks me should this be the case.

@ Foxx - if allies want to kill each other, declare war and remove all injuries and landcaps.

 

[Azzer]

Fairly random and perhaps relatively unrelated, but incase it offers any inspiration in terms of people not fighting enough (bit off track of the OT, but following the conversation)...

Could have a couple of statistics;

"Successful grabs" - if you (just *YOU* your personal ID not "all attackers that tick") steal a minimum of say 12% of somebody's land, it counts towards a "Successful land grabs" statistic which could be for <insert concepts/inspirations/things that would encourage attacks>
"Fleeing" - if you lose any land at all while more than X% of your non-INN troops are out, you get 1 to this stat for being a "run away" person (say X% could be 30%, allowing some attack to be out but if you're basically leaving nothing at home...).

Not sure if a couple of stats along those lines could be incoporated anywhere other than the "statistics" page (world tables mayhaps? Visible when you view an ID?) to perhaps aid pushing more towards "staying and fighting", and getting a land grab for yourself. Just a couple of things I've had floating around my mind for the last few weeks

 

[Username]

Well I speak from my point of view and im new to this game but I deffiently think it would be much more cool if you could have this kind of safemode or maybe somekind of savemode.

I just really didnt like loosing 60% of my land the 9hours i was sleeping and totally zeroed. I realised that this would happen every night if i tryed to steal back the land so I just quit. Just pointless for me to be some sort of landfarm when offline.

 

[f0xx]

The point is, if this happens every night (as you describe it), then the problem is with you and your play style. After you get killed and lose 60% of your land, you not only get huge insurance from the land/unit losses, but you get your AR at 90%.

In bushtarion at the moment you get very soft punishments for being killed compared to some other much larger games in which once you make a wrong step you are simply dead and game over, then you have to start from square one. Comparing bushtarion to them would be like when someone zeroes you, they would be also able to destroy your teches.

 

[CFalcon]

What needs to be done is people have to stop caring about getting zeroed. This will encourage people to actually fight and battle more (rather than just send out) and mean that logging off won't be the end of days of time put in.

Maybe increace insurance to a huge level, or give defenders bounty for fighting - anything which :

a) Encourages battles to take place
b) Stops getting zeroed (and probably landraped) being such a big issue.

http://www.bushtarion.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3090

@ Foxx - if allies want to kill each other, declare war and remove all injuries and landcaps.

To me, this is the single biggest issue facing bushtarion. Sort this out, and new player retention will rocket, people leaving through not being able to keep up with the required activity will plummet, and the game will all together be more fun.

But when a suggestion about this comes up we get a couple of positive posts, a couple of grumpy posts about not wanting change, and then it's forgotten, and nothing gets changed.

We MUST get more behind ideas along these lines.

 

[DarkSider]

...

Don't think anybody would care about it if it was a stat, hell if you need to flee you might even want to get the best run away ranking in that stat so i doubt it would be of any use
Make attacks and defences give a proper reward that's actually worth fighting for. Effectiveness was awesome at this when it was a ranking, but without it i feel we need something that will aid to the current scoring system.

 

[Turnip2k]

No one is going to really care about that sort of stat unless it affects their game in someway Azzer. Infact, that is probably going to have the reverse intended effect of having the person who 'runs away' regularly being targeted by people even more than usual, and thus make them even more fed up with the game.

You can't really impose 'YOU MUST STAY AND DIE' rules / requirements on people without giving them a reason to - at the moment, almost any attack on you will flak past your defenses or zero you without being able to put up much of a fight, losing you all your troops (well, 70%, assuming no bribers / converters, of which there are plenty this round). There is no incentive to stay.

Fix the reasons people never want to fight if online, then start encouraging them to stick around and see what happens!

 

[f0xx]

Fix the reasons people never want to fight if online.

I find this really funny. No matter what changes get implemented, an RPG that is under attack by a bigger SA/TL player will *NEVER* stay to fight. It's just not gonna happen. Ask DS, he knows best.

And why does this bother you at first place? It's free land for you, enjoy it!

 

[Turnip2k]

Encouraging the fighting will need to be accompanied with a L/F substitute or somthing similar. People won't fight if they are going to get bashed into oblivion by someone 330% of their score, but if they are going to do some damage back, and get somthing for it, then of course they will (especially if it saves them their land).

This may be interesting - maybe we should have a poll. Who plays the game for getting as much land as possible (i.e. for rank) and who plays for the fights? Doing it on the forums may be slightly biased, since it tends to be FTW players who post in here. Maybe an ingame somthing?

Land is boring - its the battles which make the game for (for me anyway). Some people may find getting masses and masses of land great fun, but that never really appealed to me. When solo, I enjoy attacking people 70% + of my score when (not bribing / converting) and seeing how the fight goes. When ally, I enjoy wars (when I have the time).

 

[atsanjose]

get yourself in some decent alliances username

then you will probbebly get less incoming

ways to get in good alliances:

- be active
- be experienced
- be contactable
- have the right friends

if this doesnt work for you.

then be a less desirable target (low landfat)

 

[WackyJacky]

"Successful grabs" - if you (just *YOU* your personal ID not "all attackers that tick") steal a minimum of say 12% of somebody's land, it counts towards a "Successful land grabs" statistic which could be for <insert concepts/inspirations/things that would encourage attacks>
"Fleeing" - if you lose any land at all while more than X% of your non-INN troops are out, you get 1 to this stat for being a "run away" person (say X% could be 30%, allowing some attack to be out but if you're basically leaving nothing at home...).

He did mention that it could be more then just a stat. Hell if I could get my Balls of Doom http://bushtarion.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3330 for having 20 "Successful land grabs." I would stop bashing a little bit

A few suggestions if you get X numbers of successful grabs:
- Increased insurance
- Increased bounty
- Increased eff
- Special Units (More for fun then use)(Non-zeroable special units that make you look uber?)
- Lower landcap limits (so you can hit smaller and smaller players % wise and still get 12% +)
- Automatically send mails to players alerting them they are facing a "Successful attacker" and if they stop them from landing, they will get a bonus/award (could be anything from one of these suggestions I currently am typing, or even something entirely new.)
- Profile Award if you are in the top x percentile of Successful attackers.
- Increased seed production (would benefit lower players/alliance more then top 10ers?)

I think Azzer's idea has incredible potential, just needs some t's crossed, and i's dotted.